What do you do with Raiders?

[godsgopher]

I think the core element here remains that Raiders, as light warships are still vastly over priced for there performance. I think specifically the problem is that most of the Fading Suns materials was directly translated into the 3rd Edition Call to Arms system. This seems to have worked for many ships but as Rick pointed out those shields soak up all low level fire.

Essentially shields operate on a curve, a little firepower is meaningless, a moderate amount and shields are effective but not unbreakable, but against a lot of firepower their practically non-existent. One of several reasons a single Dreadnought against a small fleet isn't such a hot idea.

Now the issue with the raiders is that they are currently operating in the "Meaningless" firepower category. Now before someone chooses to remind me they can combine firepower with other ships. Let me point out that a single raider at 60 points can not hurt a single Scout worth 50 points which the is "supposed" to be the Raiders chief prey, and the entire point of there existence. In fact it would take 180 points of raiders to equal the average frigate. The Decados Raider is the worst, as it can not even boast of speed and maneuverability, naturally enough as this is a deliberate design flaw of the Decados.

I also feel raiders are a little to beefy defense wise, giving them three shields seems to make the just as solidly built as frigates. I think shield 2 with hull 4 is the better approach, then they (with a firepower upgrade, see previous posts) would be hard hitting, but have a glass jaw.

Other wise, they need to be at MOST 40 points each, after all they come in blisters of six, and I don't even want the two that came in the fleet box.

 

[starbreaker]

While I favor the "lower the cost approach" because of simplicity, if their basic stats do change instead, you might also consider increasing their troop scores to 4 or so, either instead of or in addition to a firepower bump. At that point they're actually a credible boarding threat to explorers, and two of them (while still overpriced IMO) would be able to threaten a frigate about the same way two frigates can threaten a destroyer or two destroyers a cruiser.

Adding troops also seems more fluffy to me - they are called raiders, and IIRC in the Holistic days one of their main roles outside of fleet combat was delivering small units of troops on "Special Forces" style missions. You know - raids.

 

[godsgopher]

I would be for a troop increase. Two troops seems a bit light given the kind of role these ships are undertaking. Honestly most of the present point cost is coming from there very high level of defense. But heavy defense and ineffective firepower is not only a weird combination, its useless.

Consequently a friend and I tried out a few games at 200 points, 2 frigates vs. 1 Destroyer plus enough marauders to make up the point difference. The Frigates lost every game. While both sides had equal firepower, the destroyer only had to destroy one of the frigates to insure victory. The remaining one usually only had enough firepower to down the destroyers shields.

 

[starbreaker]

That's been my experience as well. Two frigates by themselves rarely beat a single destroyer with 20 points of troop upgrades. The best fleets for it are probably Hazat and now Kurgan, who have enough troops to overwhelm the enemy if both ships can grapple. OTOH, two destroyers wth 40 points of troop upgrades will give most cruisers a very hard time, again mostly through boarding threat.

 

[Ben2]

On two frigates vs a destroyer they've also got the Hull 5 hill to climb, so they will do 16.6% less damage to the destroyer, and the destroyer will do 16.6% more damage to them.

 

[starbreaker]

On two frigates vs a destroyer they've also got the Hull 5 hill to climb, so they will do 16.6% less damage to the destroyer, and the destroyer will do 16.6% more damage to them.

Yes, and the destroyer has the advantage of firing all its weapons at once rather than over two exchanges, increasing the chance of crippling a frigate before it can volley that turn.

OTOH, as a single ship it's easier to outmaneuver, and some critical effects (weapons, shields) hurt it worse in terms of performance. A weapon-1 crit on a destroyer affects all its firing, where the frigates would only suffer Inaccurate on half of theirs.

The game is normally played with many more ships on the table though, so comparisons at this level are somewhat imprecise. You have to consider how things will perform in a fleet of ships where support from allies will alter the outcome - in particular, scouting rerolls and stacked critical effects from many ships firing at one. Two Li Halan frigates gunning at a destroyer will probably only poke a single hit through the shields each turn. Ten Li Halan frigates fighting five destroyers will get far more crits through, increasing their effective raw damage and letting them shift to new targets when some vital (ie weapons) fails on the one they've been shooting.

 

[godsgopher]

Personally I think the shields are to blame for this odd imbalance in very small scale skirmishes. Remove the shields from all the ships and I suspect it would play out 40% Frigates / 60% Destroyer win. This is one thing that second edition was good about. Regardless of the scale of the game tiny to massive, the balance was pretty good. Of course different races often got better use out of a priority level than others. I could never win with Raiders against Earth Alliance.

 

[locarno24]

I could never win with Raiders against Earth Alliance.

I could rarely win with raiders against anyone.
(Pre-Powers & Principalities, anyway)

Shields are a nice enough mechanic, and they do drastically change the feel of the game - which is the point. I particularly like the speed/shielding tradeoff, which makes the game one of the few starship combat rulesets without vector movement to explicitely give a good reason why you have a maximum speed....

Dunno. I think I'm planning on going with a Kurgan fleet, so I guess I'll see how the raiders do.