Triggy's Armageddon Ship Analysis

[katadder]

tertius has one interceptor so this wont stop much, especially when you use tertiary weapons to drain it. tthen hit with 12AD of ship busters. the g'quan at close range has more firepower than any other battle level ship including the tertius, plus its fighters add in there too for another 8AD attack, just make sure they go front arc and tertius will be too busy shooting the g'quan.

say the g'quan boresights and all weapons are in range

g'quan: 3AD SAP DD beam, 12 AD SAP DD mines, 10 AD twinlinked (weak dont matter), 6 AD pulse canon, 8AD frazis (which now always fire 1st)

compared to tertius: 6AD SAP DD beam, 8 AD DD plasma, 6 AD twinlinked

g'quan has 15 SAP DD weapons even if not gonna get as many beam hits, altho i would say 2 beam hits to the tertius 4. tertius has 11 SAP DD weapons. then the g'quan has another 24 dice compared to the 6 off the tertius. now imagine if this was a primus 6 dice beam and 10 twinlinked as fighters would be dead already to short charge emines.

 

[emperorpenguin]

i play both narn and centauri and i know the tertius is powerful but it should be, its still out gunned by a g'quan for that round when you all firing everything. 8AD plasma accelerators versus 12AD ship busters and then 6 AD twin linked versus 8AD twinlinked and 6 AD

you're still forgetting that the g'quan won't get that close without having taken heavy damage

 

[Triggy]

tertius has one interceptor so this wont stop much, especially when you use tertiary weapons to drain it. tthen hit with 12AD of ship busters. the g'quan at close range has more firepower than any other battle level ship including the tertius, plus its fighters add in there too for another 8AD attack, just make sure they go front arc and tertius will be too busy shooting the g'quan.

say the g'quan boresights and all weapons are in range

g'quan: 3AD SAP DD beam, 12 AD SAP DD mines, 10 AD twinlinked (weak dont matter), 6 AD pulse canon, 8AD frazis (which now always fire 1st)

compared to tertius: 6AD SAP DD beam, 8 AD DD plasma, 6 AD twinlinked

g'quan has 15 SAP DD weapons even if not gonna get as many beam hits, altho i would say 2 beam hits to the tertius 4. tertius has 11 SAP DD weapons. then the g'quan has another 24 dice compared to the 6 off the tertius. now imagine if this was a primus 6 dice beam and 10 twinlinked as fighters would be dead already to short charge emines.

I've just noticed that I'd been using the tourney stats for the G'Quan so it actually puts out less firepower and has fewer hits than I thought a while ago (not too much difference to be fair as the 1AD on the boresight has almost no effect here).

Numbers:
Primus puts out 6AD on its beam x 0.7 hits per shot x 2 for double damage = 8.4 points. Ignoring side/aft weaponry (as per your example): the Primus also puts out 10AD twin linked x 0.31 hits per shot = 3.1 hits. Total 11.5 damage points per turn at close range and front arc only.

Tertius puts out an extra 8AD of plasma accelerator x 0.33 hits per shot x 2 for double damage = 5.33 damage per turn and a total of 16.83 per turn.

G'Quan puts out 3 AD on its beam (if it can boresight) x 0.7 hits per shot x 2 for double damage = 5.6 points. Again ignoring side/aft weaponry and the (large) assumption that some other ship has already reduced the interceptors (that on a Primus only block 0.5 shots more than the Tertius), there are now ship-breakers at 12AD (ignoring the slow-loading too in your example!) x 0.5 hits per shot x 2 for double damage x 0.83 for interceptors catching 1/6 = 10 damage per turn, twin arrays with 10 AD x 0.31 hits per shot x 0.83 for interceptors = 2.55 damage and the light pulsars with 6AD x 0.17 hits per shot x 0.83 for interceptors = 0.83 damage. Finally the Frazi fighters with 8AD x 0.17 hits per shot x 0.83 for interceptors = 1.11 damage per turn. Total of 20.09

So overall, assuming the G'Quan can line up a boresight, has ship-breakers, isn't reloading them and has all of its fighters in range on the same turn and the Tertius isn't using concentrate all fire or close blast doors and has had its interceptors depleted(!!!) then it puts out 19% more damage than a Tertius and can sustain 22% more damage. I'll leave it to you on how likely these things are to all happen at once (let alone the consequences for future turns of reloading, etc.)

 

[katadder]

actually its not as hard as you think to get all that, i do it all the time, plus not gonna fire the ship buster until close anyway just short charge them to take out fighters. on approach its fairly easy and then hopefully you have done enuf with that extra damage or you try to make sure in side arc whilst reload. as both ships move towards each other not too hard really then it all comes down to CQ checks for come about.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

Your reliance on averages to prove your point isn't going to work, Triggy. Besides the fact that your numbers for the Tertius are wrong. It only has 6AD TL on the twin arrays, not 10AD like the Primus.

Averages and percentages only hold true if you play hundreds of game son the trot. Otherwise your XYZ points of damage per turn means diddly squat as the dice dictate the number of hits you get. The feared battle laser could roll all 1s on the first shot. If you're firing at a hull 6 target you need 4+ to hit so that's a 50% chance per die to miss. On average you'll hit with half your dice but in each game you'll see the results come out very differently.

Katadder was saying last night that I was rolling high every time for damage in our Vorlon vs EA game, but I don't usually roll that well. He was consistently rolling low for his shooting otherwise he'd have totalled my fleet a lot faster than he did. The Law of Averages is one thing, but don't forget Sod's Law when working out your numbers, Triggy.

 

[Reaverman]

actually its not as hard as you think to get all that, i do it all the time, plus not gonna fire the ship buster until close anyway just short charge them to take out fighters. on approach its fairly easy and then hopefully you have done enuf with that extra damage or you try to make sure in side arc whilst reload. as both ships move towards each other not too hard really then it all comes down to CQ checks for come about.

That means you are going to have survive withering fire, and not have your engines suffer any hits (any crits have a 50% chance of slowing you down or leaving you dead in the water)

 

[Triggy]

actually its not as hard as you think to get all that, i do it all the time, plus not gonna fire the ship buster until close anyway just short charge them to take out fighters. on approach its fairly easy and then hopefully you have done enuf with that extra damage or you try to make sure in side arc whilst reload. as both ships move towards each other not too hard really then it all comes down to CQ checks for come about.

I'd say you're deluding youself there. For a start, you can only fire your e-mines/ship busters every other turn no matter how good a commander you are. Then theres the issue of getting boresight. I'll give you the fighters as that at least is possible. The interceptors point is a bit silly as even if something else does whittle them down then they're losing more firepower. This means someone somewhere is going to have to lose shots and if you're making a direct comparison then it ought to be the G'Quan. Finally, with a huge reserve of crew and much better weapons at range the Tertius will be concentrating all fire most turns but if not then it will be closing blast doors. Let me give you the opposite distance as you have to take fire for two turns on the way in but still give you your best case scenario:

The range is 20-25", the Tertius has concentrated all fire and the G'Quan has closed blast doors but still has managed to get a boresight and can fire all of its regular e-mines.

G'Quan does 7.6 points of damage a turn
Tertius does 8.4 points of damage a turn

Now don't forget this will happen for two turns (you may not get a boresight and you won't fire your e-mines on turn 2) before you even get into range to fire your good weapons back. Also, close blast doors really doesn't help the G'Quan much as it has nowhere near the crew surplus the Tertius has. The Tertius will be going at minimum speed and may even all stop if you give it the chance to take an extra round of fire without your secondaries being in range.

Taking an "average scenario" at close range with boresight in half of the time, ship-breaker mines shooting every other turn and interceptors fully functional the picture is:

G'Quan does 10.79
Tertius does 15.83 points of damage a turn

and this is still assuming fighters do their stuff and the G'Quan has magically appeared inside the Tertius's long range. The Q'Guan gets beaten comfortably (in four turns as opposed to needing five turns of return fire). The G'Quan has 83% of the Tertius's performance if you count the % damage it can knock off the enemy per turn (counting each of their respective damage values).

 

[Triggy]

Your reliance on averages to prove your point isn't going to work, Triggy. Besides the fact that your numbers for the Tertius are wrong. It only has 6AD TL on the twin arrays, not 10AD like the Primus.

Averages and percentages only hold true if you play hundreds of game son the trot. Otherwise your XYZ points of damage per turn means diddly squat as the dice dictate the number of hits you get. The feared battle laser could roll all 1s on the first shot. If you're firing at a hull 6 target you need 4+ to hit so that's a 50% chance per die to miss. On average you'll hit with half your dice but in each game you'll see the results come out very differently.

Katadder was saying last night that I was rolling high every time for damage in our Vorlon vs EA game, but I don't usually roll that well. He was consistently rolling low for his shooting otherwise he'd have totalled my fleet a lot faster than he did. The Law of Averages is one thing, but don't forget Sod's Law when working out your numbers, Triggy.

I already noticed the AD on the arrays and they are used properly in my example above

As for reliance on averages - surely that's the very essence of balance! If you ignore averages then you might as well claim any ship comparison is meaningless no matter how different they are because luck "could" play a part. Getting the stats right is the way to ensure luck is not needed (even though it can happen). My point is that in this matchup luck is needed to win as fighting fairly will lose

 

[katadder]

for starters if got ship busters the only long range emines you fire are short charge, then theres the fact 1st turn the g'quan will be all power to engines, which in a call to arms game would put you 15 inches away if the centauri doenst move towards u. 2nd turn all hell lets lose on both side. a for interceptors taking down, the frazi have prob done that as tertius has 1 interceptor.

its not only possible to get that line up its probable, its what i do with my g'quans all the teim on approach getting boresights is easy, its after the ships have passed and are turning it gets harder.

 

[Triggy]

for starters if got ship busters the only long range emines you fire are short charge, then theres the fact 1st turn the g'quan will be all power to engines, which in a call to arms game would put you 15 inches away if the centauri doenst move towards u. 2nd turn all hell lets lose on both side. a for interceptors taking down, the frazi have prob done that as tertius has 1 interceptor.

its not only possible to get that line up its probable, its what i do with my g'quans all the teim on approach getting boresights is easy, its after the ships have passed and are turning it gets harder.

Why on earth would the Tertius deploy at the front edge of its deployment zone?!?

Also, your probably is actually impossible as you can't get that set of shots every turn. As a battle you can't just pick the best possible circumstances and multiply by number of turns as they can't stay the same by the very definition of slow loading.

About the Frazis doing that - given an average of 1 and 1/3 of a hit they'll do a bit and when I stated my example above, I assumed the Frazis shot first then you rolled for the arrays and pulsars, leaving the ship-breakers last. Please correct me if you'd do it another way.

 

[katadder]

ok tertius stays back, line up your boresight outside the terius 25" range but inside ur 30" range. remember the tertius is outranged and outgunned by the g'quan.

i know you cant get that set of shots every turn but its probably at least once on approach.

the thing is i am just arguing here that the terius isnt a sbig a bug bear as people think and if it was a primus, god help it againsta g'quan, better hope u get those crits in.

 

[Triggy]

ok tertius stays back, line up your boresight outside the terius 25" range but inside ur 30" range. remember the tertius is outranged and outgunned by the g'quan.

i know you cant get that set of shots every turn but its probably at least once on approach.

Agreed, it's possible at least once on approach - that's what I would expect and the numbers reflect that

This setup is much more likely with one turn of that, two turns at 12-25" then another two turns at 0-12" before passing each other.

I still think the Primus is about level against the G'Quan both from gameplay and numbers. With the Tertius better than the Primus in almost every respect I think the Tertius is (a little) too good but probably only by about 4AD on its plasma accelerator.

 

[Locutus9956]

Well I dont think the tertius is acutally broken per se I DO think it is too good when compared to the primus (which is most peoples objection).

Also saying averages dont mean a thing cos you could roll some lucky dice is just silly. By that logic a Darkner is balanced against a Sharlin cos it COULD win initiative and pass its stealth rolls and roll 947 beam hits. Sure on average the sharlin will blow it to pieces but averages are meaningless so theyre nice and balanced

 

[katadder]

the tertius is better than the primus but then its a later ship, but if people take the 3 "broken" ships whilst they have beams they have no fighters and will fall to them. the tertius and secondus provide alternate ships at battle level, if you just want the beams go primus and get your fighters. otherwise go tertius (a later era model that should be better) but lose your fighters.
as i have said b4 and will say again, the tertius is what the primus should have been IMO but rather than change the primus they created a new ship, after all this is the lion of the galaxy and second among the younger races to only the minbari.
also in the side on side battle the tertius or primus is outgunned by most others

 

[Triggy]

Well I dont think the tertius is acutally broken per se I DO think it is too good when compared to the primus (which is most peoples objection).

Also saying averages dont mean a thing cos you could roll some lucky dice is just silly. By that logic a Darkner is balanced against a Sharlin cos it COULD win initiative and pass its stealth rolls and roll 947 beam hits. Sure on average the sharlin will blow it to pieces but averages are meaningless so theyre nice and balanced

There're probably only two genuinely broken ships at the moment (Sagittarius and Prefect) with in my opinion six others that could benefit from a little down tuning (Tertius, Sulust, Drakh Light Cruiser, Rohric, Tigara and Assault Hyperion). If the top two dogs were changed in some way (the way I suggest would make me happy but many others would too) then I wouldn't even complain about any other ship. Bear in mind I haven't actually claimed the Tertius is broken but I do claim it's a bit too good compared to the Primus that I think is perfect.

 

[katadder]

well tertius will suffer more from the new fighter rules due to having no fighters of its own or anti fighter weapons, plus in a mainly stand offish beam strong centauri fleet you may be better off with the primus plus fighters and extra interceptor (especially against missile fleets).

talking of missiles i think fighters flying CAP should have a chance to intercept missiles or something

 

[Calistan]

ok tertius stays back, line up your boresight outside the terius 25" range but inside ur 30" range. remember the tertius is outranged and outgunned by the g'quan.

i know you cant get that set of shots every turn but its probably at least once on approach.

the thing is i am just arguing here that the terius isnt a sbig a bug bear as people think and if it was a primus, god help it againsta g'quan, better hope u get those crits in.

You forget that it is a boresight and if the g'quan is forced to move first, then it will more than likely not be able to line up a boresight. It is easier to hide from a boresight, than a forward arc, so on an approach the Tertius should on average get in more shots and have more chances to crit the g'quan.

 

[katadder]

crit is 1 in 6 so from a 6AD weapon that needs 4s to start with even CAFed is likely to maybe cause 1 crit on averages, if not CAF thats maybe 1 crit every 2 turns.

 

[Triggy]

crit is 1 in 6 so from a 6AD weapon that needs 4s to start with even CAFed is likely to maybe cause 1 crit on averages, if not CAF thats maybe 1 crit every 2 turns.

Yep, that's 4.2 hits on average and with CAF it's 6.3 hits (with the 1 in 6 being crits).

I've generally almost ignored the effects of crits other than the damage they cause as it's very hard to take this into account and the way I've tried to do this is by comparing similar ships for the most part rather than only comparing to very different ships. In this case the odds of a speed crit causing you to effectively stop are low and fall into the realm of unlikely and requiring a lot of luck to happen (i.e. over lots of games not enough will have been seriously biased by crits to make them worth including in the calculations beyond the damage they cause).

 

[Voronesh]

It is kinda nice to see people defend the Tertius.

Cause im the only Centauri player at my LGS and i definitely would take one over a Primus every day. Prefects are just the same.

Also if you check the tournament ships. You will see a missing Tertius and Prefect, and the Sulust gets balanced down a bit. Actually the G'Quan is upgunned.....

Actually as i play both Narn and Centauri, i am pretty sure, that the G'Quan will hav a hard time against the Tertius. CAF is only good on the turn you can actually fire the ship breakers, which will happen once a game. The beams of a Tertius can keep going for quite a few extra times. And if you add in the boresight nature of the G'Quan you just get to use the little 3AD laser verey other turn, ignoring the Centauri initiative bonus of 1.