Vorlon Tips

[Alexb83]

Heres my tip when playing Vorlons:

I'd dispute that one - from experience playing vorlons, the best way to kill them (or the way I have the most experience of being killed) is not by beams. Don't play the range/firepower game against Vorlons. You're pretty much guaranteed to lose.
Take small ships with DD weapons, get in close, and blast through the adaptive armour that way.

Get in close enough, and you can take advantage of the fact that they've only got one arc, and not many ships. You should be able to munch through them extremely easily.

 

[Locutus9956]

Ok first off the 'unmaneuverable' reputation:

Many people refute this one by saying things like 'oh but theyre just as maneuverable if not more so than other ships of their level, espeically the bigger ones'.

Well ok that may well be true but the real issue I think people (including myself) are refering to when talking about the Vorlons as unmaneuverable is the fact that they ALL have only forward arc weapons. Now admittedly there are other ships in the game with that same limitation but in every case I can think of they are WAY more maneuverable than anything the Vorlons have (with the possible exception of the Olympus gunship but then thats not a whole FLEET now is it?

When people say the Vorlons are unmaneuverable they dont mean the Vorlons turn slowly, they mean that it is relatively easy to outmaneuver them in such a way that you can fire on them without them being able to fire back. This is especially true if the Vorlon player takes larger ships, which they usually do since frankly the Vorlon bigger ships are extremely nasty (the Destoyers are good too but the Transports arent all that tough, being mainly useful as initiative sinks and for pickig on smaller enemy esocrt ships and so on).

Weapons: There may only be a few dice on each ship but theyre all beams and as a result tend to absoultely slaughter the opposition if said opposition is foolish enough to stop in their fire arc! Theyre also mostly precice allowing them to crit like mad.

Toughness: The biggest advantatge the Vorlons have though is adaptive armour. It makes their ships remarkably tough, though theyre alot more vulnerable now than they used to be as they can now suffer crits (even if only temporarily it makes a BIG difference)

 

[Burger]

A ship with a 1/90 turn (for example Vorlon Destroyer) and an F arc can turn to shoot any point on the board if it passes its Come About roll. How do you out-manouver that?

And Drazi typically have 2/45 turns, but a Boresight weapon. So they are worse off than Vorlons. But I don't think anyone would call Drazi, unmanouverable!

 

[Locutus9956]

Drazi tend to be more numerous though and now all have the agile trait too (or at least nearly all). And actually I WOULD call the drazi a relatively unmaneuverable fleet.

But as I've noted before its not the specific ships its more the case that Vorlon fleets, at least those Ive seen, tend to favour fewer bigger ships that result in them being very tough and powerful but easy to fly rings around.

 

[Burger]

1/90 or 2/45 is not easy to run rings around though. With a successful Come About you can hit virtually any point on the board (range permitting).

 

[Greg Smith]

With the transports dropping to skirmish in 2e, it makes large fleets of smaller ships less effective against Vorlons. However, as Locutus says, fleets with fewer big ships will get overwhelmed by numbers. Which is a factor in the game anyway, just more so for Vorlons with one arc.

So a tip for Vorlon players: use plenty of transports on your fleet composition.

 

[Alexb83]

Definately use transports. The best old 5 raid combination IMO was Destroyer/3 Transports - but now you have Destroyer/6 Transports with no real loss in firepower compared to the old stats (and much better range on all ships - only the destroyer seems to have been slightly shortchanged on AD, but makes up for it with an extra 6 inches to its range).

I'd even hazard that now with QD beam and 30 range, the light cruiser/2 transport fleet might be more viable. Though 3 ship fleets are rarely a good choice - that cruiser is going to pretty reliably cripple or blatt a raid ship off the table each turn, and you'll have enough initiative sinks to get the shots lined up with any luck.

 

[Burger]

reliably

That is not a word which is often associated with the new Beam rules

 

[akenatum]

Well after some play testing, done by me and a friend at home the fleet of heavy cruiser 3 transports and 6 vorlon fighters worked the best at 5 point battle if you wanted a big ship with support.

The fighters give a lot more cover from the small griblies of other racs, and can then turn on ships with thier beamable weapons and do some very nice damage, the heavy cruiser was best used to just blast a small ship into oblivion or near non existance and move on to try and drop the int sinks or make the ship next to useless so when it closes the fighters or the transports get it, but the droping of int sinks this way worked well to bring the enemy fleet down to roughly even numbers before they get in close.

the transports just tag team ships till it dies once they are in range, but they do stay close to the heavy cruiser for support.

 

[Ripple]

Yeah, on the maneuverability issue, it's the sinks as much as anything that hurt the vorlons. Get out sinked and you can't shoot the big guy.

As to come about, yeah that does work, but if you need to do that to fire, your not firing 2/3 of the time. Any fleet that has to come about to fire is in trouble in the long run. Especially now that CBD is so much better.

Ripple

 

[Burger]

So its not a problem with manouverability, its lack of init sinks and A/P/S weapons. I seem to remember a very similar arguement taking place for the White Star's Boresight... manouverability is its turns rating and speed, yes?

 

[akenatum]

Thing you got to remember with vorlons is because of thier fleet list they are like the school bully they don't pck on the big tough guy first, they pick on the little guys, when they try to pick on the big guy they usually end up slinking away from a beating... (in his case they focus on the big things can't get them and then get over run)

Basically they are your average school yard bully. Destroy the little things and work your way up the food chain rather than the other way arround, they have the regen and defences to take the big hits while they focus on the small stuff, and if they do that they will bring the int sink advantage back under control and be able to take care of buisness one on one.


Most of the time in strategy situations you can't use your big hammer against thiers, you have to use it against thier nails wile your nails deal with thier hammer, the vorlon fleets are much like this from what i can see.

I kno most people are probably aware of all of that but so many people are talking about hunting down the enemy big ships in this thread and i think they are trying to work it out entirely the wrong way. choose the "lesser" targets and then watch the scales tip as they are left with a titan fight where you have the odds stacked in your favour.

 

[Locutus9956]

So its not a problem with manouverability, its lack of init sinks and A/P/S weapons. I seem to remember a very similar arguement taking place for the White Star's Boresight... manouverability is its turns rating and speed, yes?

Your still not quite getting my meaning, Im not saying the individual SHIPS arent maneuverable but that the fleet as a whole IS easy to outmaneuver. Whitestars may seem on paper to have the same restrictions but are individually SO maneuverable that that weakness is somewhat mitigated (theyre alos ALOT faster than the Vorlons which also helps somewhat in letting them dicatate the pace (and they also have acess to other non forward arc ships too in their fleet selection)

The main distinction Im trying to make is between ship maneuverability and how easy it is to maneuver the fleet tactically to avoid enemies getting out of your line of fire entirely. I'm not disputing the litteral meaning of the word

 

[Burger]

Surely that's down to fleet selection, you can take Skirmihs level transports after all... then your fleet overall would be manouverable.

 

[Greg Smith]

Plenty of transports is the key, as is starting as far back as you can and moving slowly. Poor fleet selection and mixing it up will result in the fleet being outmaneuvered.

Some scenarios make it difficult to avoid, but in a confrontation across the table, it isn't.

 

[Alexb83]

Another sneaky thing to do, with the LC or HC would be to set up as close to a table corner as possible, and sit in it on all stop orders. Your fore arc will cover most of the table, you will out-range most targets, and they will have to box themselves along a table edge in order to try and outflank you.

By the time they're close enough to force you to move, they will be as restricted in their options as you are, and as many have pointed out - your ships can out-turn most opposition.

Makes for a somewhat boring game - but the thing I've found most with Vorlons is that being aggresive almost /never/ pays off - it gets your ships killed.

 

[akenatum]

that could work... again a horde fleet could just seeing that kind of set up send something out of range/hidden behind terrain and put the rest through a few jump points then reapear right in close and pound on you...

In fact that's pretty much what i would expect too see if a vorlon player tried to pull that tactic with a big ship... akthough i'm assuming you would have some kind of covering ships as well... but it would just be an all in cc brawl anyway in that kind of situation, which kind of defeats the purpose of that tactic.

 

[Locutus9956]

Well you CAN take transports its just that I find people TEND to take the bigger ships (at least one of them AND some transports) and the transports, though good arent NEARLY as scary as the big boys (so you can still endeavour to outmaneuver the really nasty parts of the fleet).

I still find the vorlosn a fairly clunky sit back and blast fleet rather than an nippy outflant and blow up type but I will grant that its far less accentuated that it used to be

 

[Triggy]

Plenty of transports is the key, as is starting as far back as you can and moving slowly. Poor fleet selection and mixing it up will result in the fleet being outmaneuvered.

Some scenarios make it difficult to avoid, but in a confrontation across the table, it isn't.

This matches what is my current Vorlon fleet of 1 Destroyer, 5 Transports and 2 Fighter wings. This gives you the single big ship as a fire magnet/big gun but also the smaller ships that can try to evade severe fire and hassle the enemy, nipping at his heels and repairing any minor damage. Also, Vorlon fighters are too good to miss out on, even if you do have to buy them separately

 

[Right Hand of God]

I played a Vorlon EA game a couple of days ago. 17 points of war

I took 2 Heavy Cruisers
6 light cruisers
8 destroyers
16 Transports
36 fighters

In a straight up fight with cover on the table and both sides using jump gates the score ended up as 69-9 to the Vorlons. I lost 1 destroyer and 4 fighters.

The fleet composition has to change with the size and level of the game.