Vorlon PK rules; suggestions please.

[Centauri_Admiral]

Bah, shadow clouds are for girls, real men have flying dinner plates.

I took another look at the space station rules, and there are a couple of points I'd have to ignore, like damage control, but I still think the space station damage structures and thresholds as well as using targets for the weapons, would be more fitting. I'll have to playtest A LOT; should be fun though.

As far as using priority level ancient though; to my mind it just looks exactly the same as saying 2 points at armageddon. Although that might be because I'm having a brunette moment.

 

[Ripple]

Always fond of the brunettes myself...

Guess I'm in the girls club, as I rather like weapons that actually eat planets rather than be used to serve them on... =)

I agree the targets would be a good choice, but my concern would be we never see the PK actually fire on anything but a planet. Maybe what your building isn't so much the specialized planet killer as the old AoG Vorlon dreadnaught.

ISD would be odd, because who knows how long the vorlons held onto one of these things just in case the shadows got frisky. It didn't seem they threw them together at the last minute, more like dusted off the old things and said, whoops, hoped we wouldn't have to use these babies.

We do see the PK's moving fairly sprightly for ships their size. They didn't seem appreciably slower than the heavy cruisers, so might use that as a base speed. Definately not immobile.

The mass driver idea isn't a bad one... maybe the ship has a number of smaller guns but can do a special action over a couple of turns to turn on the planet cracker beam, but it can only target immobile objects or terrain. It would be almost like the Victory, good guns for anti-ship stuff, but also a super weapon if the situation called for it.

The SA would almost be like using All Stop and All Stop and Pivot. Instead it would be 'charge the canon', 'keep charging the canon', 'still charging the canon' (maybe?)... 'Fire!'... seems almost right for the episode we see it. Turn one it exits a jump point, turn two Sheridan fights and realizes he needs help, turn three the ancients arrive, turn four they pop it before it can fire. Don't want to much faster or who could ever stop it. Well maybe if it didn't have great range so had to do some moving... hmmm....

Oh... just realized you can almost get all the First Ones in a single squadron... ouch... we never play games that big, but ouch....

Ripple

 

[Centauri_Admiral]

Ripple, I really like some of your ideas, especially having it like a vorlon victory. Should the VPK choose to fire on a planet that it has to charge a main cannon, which procludes it from doing anything else other than move, seems okay.

I'm unsure about the VPK, thats why I asked for opinions on here as I know some of you guys really study the logic behind the show, and from that perspective I do agree with a lot of the points. ISD's are going to be hard for the reasons ripple said, and as we never see it fire, do we assume that it can ONLY fire on planets, or was that weapon a major power drain even for the vorlons? I know the VPK was escorted by a vorlon fleet, but would they really leave such an asset with only one weapon system, usable only against planetary targets? I don't know. I would have thought it would at least have defensive discharge guns?

More opinions/ suggestions are welcome; I'm still trying to keep this thing balanced.

 

[Ripple]

Given we see the energy crackling along that entire edge wall, I could easily see that as a three arc set of discharge guns, just channeled forward for the big hoorah.

Another interesting note about he VPK is that the forward tentacles are not around a fixed central point, but set up as four sets of two, over/under configuration. Given how we see them fire normally (four small beams coming together to form the larger beam) I would view this a decent evidence for an unusual array of four lesser beams forward.

Say four 2 AD range 18 DD precise beams? (or maybe no precise and TD?)

give it range 12 discharge guns f, s, and p... 6 AD each?

Or go bold... give a T arc, 12 AD, DD, Precise weapon called the flux field. For an ancient level ship that would be a fine amount of firepower when not planet cracking.

You would need a fleet to cover an asset like this at any planet as the weapon would shut down its other defensive guns when doing its job. Boresight the cracker beam maybe?

Ripple

 

[daishi]

Given we see the energy crackling along that entire edge wall, I could easily see that as a three arc set of discharge guns, just channeled forward for the big hoorah.

Or go bold... give a T arc, 12 AD, DD, Precise weapon called the flux field. For an ancient level ship that would be a fine amount of firepower when not planet cracking.

I agree with the above statement of the energy crackling & since you can split AD that wouldnt make it huge damage if spread over multiple ships. I also think it should have for its main weapon
Planet Cracker Beam 6" BF Infinite AD special rules may only fire once after every 6 turns & may only target stationary targets but all targets between VPK & Target are destroyed
This should prevent the VPK from firing too often, as well as it cant fire as soon as game starts & anyone foolish enough to get in its way when firing should be removed from the gene pool
I dont remember what sort of HPs a standard space station has but I would give it similar & movement of 4" 1/45 every 2 turns

 

[Shadow Queen]

deffo Lumbering.

and must keep station for 3 turns to fire its main gun.

 

[MadDoc]

Here are some pics of the almost to scale PK I scratch-built from a Star Trek Enterprise model.
This was for a Coriana VI game we played at a convention here in Denver a few years ago. The thing is a monster, but it worked out ok.

-Steve

Scrum!

A pic of the Ancients just for good measure

 

[Shadow Queen]

thats fracking massave

 

[Omnipotent]

holy crap! That must be plastic or otherwise it must "crash" often =)

 

[Commador Q]

I'd give it stats something like this:

PL: 2 Armagedon
speed: 4
turns: 1/45
hull: 5
Damage: 200
craft: none
special: Adaptive Armor, Advanced Anti-fighter 2, Advanced Jump Engine, Flight Computer, Lumbering, Self repairing 6d6, unique (technically there were several but under what circumstances would you need 2?)

Weapons:
Lightning cannon, range 30, B, 8AD, Beam, precice, Quad damage, slow loading
Lightning cannon, range 30, F, 6AD, Beam, precice, Quad damage, slow loading
Lightning cannon, range 30, T, 4AD, Beam, precice, Quad damage, slow loading

Special action: CQ automatic, This ship may not fire any weapons during the combat phase. During the end phase the planet killer may target a single planet within 5 inches of it's position with any of it's lightning cannons. for each cannon commited, role a die (it's worded this way in case it has one or more cannon which can't fire this turn). if the total result of the dice is grater than the diamater of the planet, the planet is destroyed. in the planetary assault scenario this will constitute a victory for the vorlon player.

it's not perticularly cannon but it would have some level of use in games asside from the "i win" effect in the planetary assault scenario. at 2 armagedon points though, and with so little manuverability i don't think i'd use it much personaly, but then again vorlons aren't really my styal anyway

 

[Ripple]

With that much Quad damage on fairly easy arcs... hardly needs escorts.

As too the unique... the one at centauri prime was recalled with its fleet, presumably to the coriana six fight.

Ripple

 

[Commador Q]

With that much Quad damage on fairly easy arcs... hardly needs escorts.

As too the unique... the one at centauri prime was recalled with its fleet, presumably to the coriana six fight.

Ripple

it doesn't need escorts in the same sence a modern super carrier doesn't need escorts. It's not supposed to come under fire in the first place, and it has conciderable defencive weaponry. However it'd be follish to deploy one without escorts because of the huge investment it represents and it is by no means invulnerable. against a fleet dedicated to stopping it at all costs (the sort of fleet it's most likley to encounter), the slow loading trait on the lightning cannons will be signifigant, because even if every shot kills a ship, you've still only got the ability to fire at most 3 shots every 2 turns, and against 2+ Armagedon worth of ships that'll still let the enemy do a lot of damage. combine that with it's limited mobility and it's high cost, and it'll be hard to use all of it's firepower.

 

[Ripple]

true enough...

just think we wouldn've seen it blowing ships up with stats like that. when the other first ones appeared the ship would have fired on them rather than keep going for a planet shot that was no longer relevant give the fight happening all around it.

Ripple

 

[Da Boss]

That is one damn fine model

 

[David Anla Shok']

Here are some pics of the almost to scale PK I scratch-built from a Star Trek Enterprise model.
This was for a Coriana VI game we played at a convention here in Denver a few years ago. The thing is a monster, but it worked out ok.

-Steve

Scrum!

A pic of the Ancients just for good measure

Yeah. That was one heck of a game... too bad the Shadow players were such girly men though