Thoughts on 2e... Game favors fleets of smaller ships. Why?

[Celisasu]

Personally instead of changing the FAP breakdown or initiative penalties we should just go with good old redundancy. It works, it involves the lowest number of changes to the rules, and it supplies you with the ability to enjoy both swarm fleets or big ships as your personal preferences push you. Like Hiffano I wonder if we heard of this strange idea before? :lol: Yeah, it'd require some testing to figure out what the perfect balance of redundancy is but initially I'd go with ignore one crit at Raid, 2 crits at Battle, 3 at War, and 4 at Armageddon and have it be a repairable trait like any other crit you get fixed. The numbers could be adjusted up or down as needed to bring balance. Even by individual ships. Say a Raid ship feels a little weak. Give it it redundancy 2 making it a bit more work to take out compared to most Raid ships(probably good for the T'Loth). Or maybe the ship is a bit strong for it's level. For example the G'Vrahn. Lets say War ships default at Redundancy 3, but the G'Vrahn being a bit good only has Redundacy 2(has to be all those advanced systems, the Narn just aren't used to them yet). So it starts suffering from crits faster than other War ships. And so on.

 

[Gunnvaldr]

Try it out - play larger games. Try a few 15 or 20 point Battle or War level games. They may surprise you!.

Yh i did a 10 arma level game once with 2e shadow vs. centauri when i first dled the pdf, you start noticing squads being more useful and big ships do win out, my vorchans/demo squads were dropin like fighters. and when you have most of the playing field becoming a saturated field of explosive death woes, it becomes crazy.

Shadows won with a disabled stalker and an ancient shadow ship, tried to least ram the ancient with my Adira, failed my CQ :/. I should have gotten more then 1 adira...

In that same token you can at least understand the reasoning for the vorlon's and shadows having more anti-ship oriented fighters. I understand the problems with shadow fighter but in regards of big games, get a big table or they just become bystanders. the 8" x 4" wasn't big enough....

The crit table IS DEADLY but it did keep the game lively for that big game.
Now I am basing this on my experience in playing 1 arma level game. except my shadow player fried, most ppl dont want to have such big games :/

Future goal: to have a 20+ Arma game with painted models lol...

 

[Tolwyn]

Mhm, at least the SFOS breakdown does not allow splitting points down further into different PLs.

 

[Hans Olo]

I think that most of the problems come from some not well thought over decisions!
1st -Problem is the Breakdown, I think the one from SFOS was better.

2nd -Problem, and I strongly hold onto that, is the new Beam rule.
2nd ed Beams really do favour small ships. If the new beam rules would only cap the number of possible re rolls it would be much better. But making a smaller ship more resilient against the main weapon of most fleets but the main Battleships more vulnerable is not a very clever solution for the Hull 4 problem.

More hits on bigger ships mean more crits and that's exactly what makes the big ships suffer the most.
By the way most of the Hull 4 ships still get destroyed from a single beam salvo anyway because most Hull 4 ships have very short damage tracks.

The interesting thing is that in 2nd ed most of the Hull 4 ships are Patrol because the other ones like the Poseidon or Olympus got an upgrade to Hull 5 now.
So what problem exactly does the new Beam rule solve?
Not a single one Hull 4 still gets blasted because of low damage tracks and Hull 6 gets more hits what weakens big ships significantly.
So it creates a problem but solves nothing!

3th- Problem are the crits. In 2nd ed the crit table should be toned down.
But really there happened nothing. Ok the 4-6 is gone but really how often was a big ship struck by that?
In exchange we got more likely to loose 1 random ark (or at least one weapon system), The 1-6 crit is still 0 Speed (only in disguise of running adrift, the effect is nearly the same) so no improvement here.
Ok the all hands to deck SA changed if you are luky enough and don't get a crit during the turn you have to wait for using all hands to deck that prevents you from doing Sa or Damage control (both can now happen more often with the new table), you will benefit from that change.
Counting in all that + the possibility to loose traits makes the new crit table harder than before! So no problem solved here either!

4th- problem to much potent weapons on smaller ships.
In my opinion if you get twice as many ships on raid for one battle point they should be half as good as the battle ship, not nearly double the weapons and have a slight advantage in damage. (Var' Nic <->G'Quan)

What strikes me the most is that this was obvious to see (from the rumores) even before the Books where out and no one of the designers seemed to recognise it :shock:

Ah and Matt dropping in to explain why decisions have been made don't make them better decisions.

P.s The 4 points I mention here are all proven in my gaming group during play. They are not theoretically spoken, that's how it works.

 

[Triggy]

What strikes me the most is that this was obvious to see (from the rumores) even before the Books where out and no one of the designers seemed to recognise it :shock:

Ah and Matt dropping in to explain why decisions have been made don't make them better decisions.

P.s The 4 points I mention here are all proven in my gaming group during play. They are not theoretically spoken, that's how it works.

Well, I really could address your concerns point by point but I get the feeling your group has "proved" them to yourselves so you're not really interested in a counter argument.

All I will say is that in terms of ship balance we worked harder than ever to make each PL step equal (and for almost all ships this is the case) and that we have discussed and playtested each of your points at length and feel at least reasonably happy with the results. We knew not everybody would be perfectly satisfied with every point but that's the case with any wargame.

Just check the previous posts to see how some people are happy with these points and others point out other areas they'd "improve the game".

 

[MustEatBrains]

All I will say is that in terms of ship balance we worked harder than ever to make each PL step equal (and for almost all ships this is the case) and that we have discussed and playtested each of your points at length and feel at least reasonably happy with the results. We knew not everybody would be perfectly satisfied with every point but that's the case with any wargame.

Well said. From my point of view, after all I´ve seen, and yes that is very subjective, the 2nd edition is a definite improvement over everything that has come before (ACTA-wise).

And noone forces you to field a swarm fleet in the first place, just because it would possibly be more effective - I had the opportunity to play with 3 Aviokis, 3 Kalivas, 2 Kabroktas and 1 Takata today (a combination I wanted to try out for quite a while), and while it was "top heavy" it was great fun! And not too uneffective either, I´d like to add...

Yes, the game favours fleets of several ships instead of a few big ones. Just like GW games favour armies of cheap-to-notsoexpensive units, while those consisting of mostly elite units (Demonhunters, Ogre Kingdoms, any kinds of Terminators...) usually have a hard time against an opponent who knows what he´s doing. A Warmachine army with nothing but Warjacks? Looks scary at first, but is sure not unbeatable. The same goes for just about every game I could mention (as others have pointed out before).

And when you really want to put the focus on bigger ships, do play bigger games. With enough points, even taking a ship or two of higher levels will eventually be worth it. That is not a CTA-related phenomenon, but a common feature of Wargaming (and yes, I´m sure there are other games in which things are different, but I hope you get my point).

Maybe there will be a Mongoose game some day focussing on small-scale confrontations (B5Wars 3rd ed?), maybe there won´t, but at the moment, CTA is a pretty awesome fleet game.

 

[Iain McGhee]

/rant mode on/

The game does what it says on the tin: it simulates space combat in the Babylon 5 universe. Which is pretty brutal. Even ships that won a fight were often badly damaged and even the largest ships could get destroyed pretty quickly. Which is why beams and criticals are the way they are. I've played through campaigns in 2e with swarm/beam fleets (Drazi and ISA) against mainly high-PL fleets (EA and Brakiri) and not seen any real advantage with either. Swarm fleets might be able to spread the damage to some degree and sometimes mount a higher total AD than a couple of larger ones, but once the cruisers get into secondary range they'll get hammered due to their (generally) low hull score and poor active defences. Even if they win, many of them are often damaged badly enough that they have to be returned to base to be repaired. That happens a couple of times and they'll have trouble holding on to their strategic targets, never mind taking new ones. And larger ships can make better use of Close Blast Doors and Intensify Defensive Fire as they have enough weapons and AD to still be very effective against smaller craft. Yes, a severe critical will really hurt a single large ship more than a single ship in a swarm but that's how it works on screen. How often did you see White Stars crippling cruisers with a few hits ?

Yes, there's a few things in 2e I don't like (boarding criteria being the main one) but it's far and away better than 1e. IMNSHO.

/rant mode off/

 

[emperorpenguin]

Personally I still miss the instant death crits from the original incarnation of the game and never agreed with losing those!

Certainly allowed for instances such as the Vorchan vs G'Quan fight from "In The Beginning" to be recreated.

 

[Triggy]

Personally I still miss the instant death crits from the original incarnation of the game and never agreed with losing those!

Certainly allowed for instances such as the Vorchan vs G'Quan fight from "In The Beginning" to be recreated.

If you're playing in a friendly environment I'd recommend bringing them back in. The only reason they were dropped (and it is a big reason for some players including myself) is that they were considered too random and unfair as they tipped a game immediately. If you like them, then at least at home, play with them!

 

[emperorpenguin]

Personally I still miss the instant death crits from the original incarnation of the game and never agreed with losing those!

Certainly allowed for instances such as the Vorchan vs G'Quan fight from "In The Beginning" to be recreated.

If you're playing in a friendly environment I'd recommend bringing them back in. The only reason they were dropped (and it is a big reason for some players including myself) is that they were considered too random and unfair as they tipped a game immediately. If you like them, then at least at home, play with them!

I know why they were dropped I was a playtester for SFOS! Just never agreed with it, I think people try too often to remove randomness from games

 

[Target]

The main problem with instant death crit was there was 2 of them 6-6 & 6-5. The 6-5 should never been created ( all crew die ).
Back then fighters all had precise which isn't that bad ( our house rules give them that ) but the fact they can do the full range of crits. I think all of us remember the horde of hull 6 T-Bolts smashing everybody.
We love the 6-6 ship explodes but then everybody likes different things.

 

[David Anla Shok']

At 5 raid, a war unit is not desirable. At 5 battle it's more cost effective. It's no good saying "big ships are no use," they are, what you should be saying is "ships too big for the size of game are no use."

There's no rules fix for swarm fleets. If we move to a points system á la Battlefleet Gothic, small ships will still cost a lot less than big ships, so you'll still be able to swarm the table with them.

What needs to be done is to penalise players who use cheesy fleets, and the only way to do that is to ostracise them from the hobby. Cheese is a problem for every game, but there's no solution to it in-game. It has to be handled out-of-game.

Coming soon to a table near you! The Battle of Brie!"

 

[emperorpenguin]

The main problem with instant death crit was there was 2 of them 6-6 & 6-5. The 6-5 should never been created ( all crew die ).
Back then fighters all had precise which isn't that bad ( our house rules give them that ) but the fact they can do the full range of crits. .

I felt the same, the 6-6 was fine but the 6-5 was too much.

I really hoped to limit fighter crits in the game to "surface" crits, but making them more accurate

 

[Hans Olo]

What strikes me the most is that this was obvious to see (from the rumores) even before the Books where out and no one of the designers seemed to recognise it :shock:

Ah and Matt dropping in to explain why decisions have been made don't make them better decisions.

P.s The 4 points I mention here are all proven in my gaming group during play. They are not theoretically spoken, that's how it works.

Well, I really could address your concerns point by point but I get the feeling your group has "proved" them to yourselves so you're not really interested in a counter argument.

All I will say is that in terms of ship balance we worked harder than ever to make each PL step equal (and for almost all ships this is the case) and that we have discussed and playtested each of your points at length and feel at least reasonably happy with the results. We knew not everybody would be perfectly satisfied with every point but that's the case with any wargame.

Just check the previous posts to see how some people are happy with these points and others point out other areas they'd "improve the game".

Really I would like to hear a counter argument, ore a reason why it is better to have the rules as they are now.
I would love to hear a counter argument for 2nd ed favours Swarms over normal fleets.
I do recognise myself that the fleet lists as a whole are more balanced to each other then before right now (Maybe the Drakh are an exception). But the balance between Raid and Battle or Skirmish and Battle or Skirmish and Raid I fail to see.

I wouldn't blame my opponent if he chooses 4 Skirmish ships over one Battle choice where I have taken a Battle ship. That's not what I would call a Swarm Fleet (especially in a 5Raid game or higher priorities) But right in this moment the odds are on his side I might loose the battle because of a single Battle point.

 

[thehod]

some fleets have to rely on their swarms to do decent i.e. Drazi which have plenty of great patrol through raid level ships but they need plenty of sinks to line up their boresights.

I think the redundancy trait would be a cool idea like redundancy 4 would ignore the effects of critical hits 4 times but yet keep the extra damage caused by the crits.

This shows that the ship is getting hit hard but the backup systems are holding until they get overloaded and subsequently critted

 

[Ripple]

Oddly I'm on the side of the game favors swarms too much folks...but here's a few of the arguements in favor of the current system...

1 - the breakdowns -

The new breakdowns give equal weight to you down purchases across all pls. Previous systems created some 'sweet spots' where you could squeeze in extra levels that only certain races could take advantage of. It is more fair in that regard, especially if the few races that have 'holes' in the lists where there is no ship at a pl are patched so they can continue to buy all the way down to patrol like everyone else.

2 - beam rule and larger ships -

Claiming that hull four ships are not helped by the new rules due to short damage tracks is kinda silly. Sure they aren't helped much vs large beams, but play the Abbai or the Drazi, with single damage beams at lower pls. They used to be a real terror for small hull 4 ships, but not so much now.

Second is the big ships aspect. I agree the big beams can now crit them out easier, etc. but this does reflect the show better where we see large ships getting cut in half. This could be a crit I suppose, but I don't see any explosions ripping the ships apart, I see a nice strait predictable amount of damage prying the ship in half. Sound more like lots of hits (beam stays on target from end to end) than a lucky crit as the beam pierces the reactor.

Not saying those are the best reasons...but it does address the problems of hull 4 ships (still plenty in the game) and it does get big ships closer to what we see in the canon material. That said I'm not fond of this rule as I don't like the huge variance.

3 - crit table

Okay, maybe it was just our group, but we saw a 4-6 virtually every game. Most games we saw an example of almost every crit, so maybe not so surprising, there really aren't that many possibilities. The new table did not really help with a lot of the mid sized ships with only a couple of arcs or weapons (I play vorlons, any weapon crit can be a game ender) but it did help the large ships that drive into the middle of enemy formations a lot.

And the 1/2-6 is actually different in that it isn't adrift AND no SA. Plus adrift is tactically very different from stopped. The change in position can be a big deal as you can pass out of arc, out of boarding range, behind cover, even off the edge...very different.

You are right in that the new DC crits, Troop loss etc, largely made the net effect more damaging than the table used to be though.

4 - potent small ships

Some cases tried to be good here...the Hermes getting cut to 20 inches no swaps say...but the effect is very uneven. Vree universally got more AD and better traits/range say, even though the beam changes had largely fixed them from first ed. But, the big ships gained huge amounts of AD as well. This is not so much a change of big vs small as long vs short games.

Eh...gave a few shots at it...

Ripple

 

[David Anla Shok']

some fleets have to rely on their swarms to do decent i.e. Drazi which have plenty of great patrol through raid level ships but they need plenty of sinks to line up their boresights.

I think the redundancy trait would be a cool idea like redundancy 4 would ignore the effects of critical hits 4 times but yet keep the extra damage caused by the crits.

This shows that the ship is getting hit hard but the backup systems are holding until they get overloaded and subsequently critted

The Drazi could use at least a few more ships that don't have to rely on boresight.

 

[zulu01]

This thread has wandered off my original topic, so I will try again:

2E favors fleets of smaller ships more than 1e. You can't ignore that this is true for two simple reaons:

1. THe PL system now makes it easier to get more smaller ships for the same battle point than it did in SFOS.

2. The beam rules make it harder to hurt lighter hulled ships, easier to hurt heavier hulled ships. See my original post for the statistics.

Playing at higher PL levels (like a ten pt battle or whatever) doesn't change these facts as the math still holds true. I will take 40 Demos over 5 BinTaks every day of the week.

The question is, "Why"? Why would the designers purposefully push the effectiveness of swarm fleets up in 2e versus the previous edition? Other than selling more smaller ships, I don't understand the change.

The rules still work. I can build a cool fleet and still have a good time.

But I don't understand the game development direction. Matt... WHY?

 

[katadder]

i'll see your 40 demos and use 5 G'vrahns
certainly cant avoid all the e-mines with 40 ships.

anyway smaller ships die quicker, therefore you lose firepower everytime you lose a ship. a big ship can stay in the fight at full firepower alot longer unless crit effects lower it.

take 4 demos versus a G'vrahn. i think a g'vrahn could kill a demos every turn quite happily. this means each turn you have less firepower to try and kill my ship, whilst i get the same firepower to kill yet another of your ships the following turn.

 

[zulu01]

The G'Vrahn rocks, I will give you that. But it would still be the same result.

40 Demos fire 240 precise SAP shots turn one. Even if all of them failed to concentrate firepower, that's 120 precise hits. And that is assuming that the Demos arent in range of their 400 double damage twin linked guns.

And since the Demos move 14 and are agile with two turns, they would be behind the G'Vrahns quickly, making it hard for them to bring their forward arcs into range.

It would all be over by turn three. The G'Vrahns just can't kill enough Demos each turn to make a difference.