What should a ship at a priority level look like, anyway?

[locarno24]

There's a lot of back-and-forthing in various threads about 'such and such a ship is too weak' or 'this other ship is too strong'....these often get corrected but because they get corrected at the same time they generally just end up swapping places.

The list of ships which have been 'too weak...too weak....aaaghh! Brokenly powerful!' or have been nerf-batted off the table in the eyes of most players is quite an extensive one.

So, mostly for my own curiosity, I ask what a 'balanced' ship at each of the priorities looks like. I understand that different ships excel in different areas so there's a degree of comparing apples and oranges, but if there can be four ships that are agreed to sit firmly in the 'okay' category then that's what other ships at that priority level should be capable of.

(Preferably one slugger, one sniper, one tactical all-rounder and one 'other' - scout/carrier/etc)

I think I remember someone saying that the Hyperion was the original yardstick used for points values, so that should go in as the Raid-level all-rounder.

Patrol
Skirmish
Raid - Hyperion
Battle
War

Anyone care to add an entry?

 

[Jim?]

It's difficult to spot the average for each PL... you have to look at how well it performs it's role in the fleet, as well as how good it is individually.

For example, the Avioki is an OK battle level ship, about average I'd say, to be honest. Slightly short ranged, but with great burst damage and can CBD most turns, making it tough.

I think I'll go for it over the Omega, as it can operate individually and without support, something an OK ship should be able to achieve.

 

[nekomata fuyu]

Looking at the Avioki, I'd say that 2 Hyperions are still the better choice. We might have to start looking at weak War level ships for a ship to stick in the Battle section. The G'Quonth maybe?

 

[H]

you of course need to look at a natural progression in terms of damage output, damage receiving, abilities etc. very few fleets will give you this so you need to mix and match to get a full list. this is skewed somewhat by sertainm potential ships having the "luck factor" defances, so you should ideally remove these from any "vanilla" fleet you try to create.

so if the hyperion is your raid ship, you are looking at powerful weapons but fragile approach. but if you then added a bin'tak as a war ship (which is in itself a great ship) you change your vanilla ethose to a superb bruiser with some excelent longer range sniping abilities. Therefore instead of a single ship at each level, should you look for a rounded fleet, in this one I would say the brakiri are an excelent choice from which to benchmark others, as there ships seem to follow a standard progression through the weapons and damage upgrades per level. of course they lack a patrol ship, but it would be easy to extrapolate details from other ships, and indeed wasn't the Kabrokta origionally planned as a patrol choice, only to be modeled a lot larger than intended?!

 

[Triggy]

Looking at the Avioki, I'd say that 2 Hyperions are still the better choice. We might have to start looking at weak War level ships for a ship to stick in the Battle section. The G'Quonth maybe?

Well it's pretty much universally the case that two ships of a PL below are slightly better than a single ship of the PL above so this point is not really relevant to the question (what are the "average ships at each PL?")

My examples of balanced ships would be: (slugger, sniper, all-rounder)

Patrol: Tiraca, Jashakar Tae, Kutai
Skirmish: T'Rakk, Xixx, Sataaka
Raid: Kahtrik-So, Var'Nic, Haltona
Battle: Wahant, Shantavi, Omega
War: Juyaca, Vorlon Light Cruiser, Warlock

 

[ATN082268]

<Snip Post>

Well it's pretty much universally the case that two ships of a PL below are slightly better than a single ship of the PL above

This is the reason why the Fleet Allocation Point system doesn't work in creating balanced forces. I am curious though, was there significant concern over this in playtest?

Sincerely,

Andrew

 

[Jim?]

This is the reason why the Fleet Allocation Point system doesn't work in creating balanced forces. I am curious though, was there significant concern over this in playtest?

Sincerely,

Andrew

I think it's design rather than error, to be honest... point being that if a big ship turns all of it's firepower on a lower PL ship, it can elliminate it reasonably quickly, leaving 1 low PL ship vs 1 high PL ship.

This works if they face off and charge, but in reality, forcing the big ship to focus it's fire on a sacrifical goat with careful deployment/movement (particularly if it's punch is in one arc, or worse, boresighted) the second ship should achieve positional advantage and kill the larger craft with attritional damage, even if the first ship is completely destroyed.

this problem is heightened by smaller ships generally being faster and more agile than their larger counterparts.

 

[Burger]

Well it's pretty much universally the case that two ships of a PL below are slightly better than a single ship of the PL above

This is the reason why the Fleet Allocation Point system doesn't work in creating balanced forces. I am curious though, was there significant concern over this in playtest?

This is more a symptom of the critical hit system/table and initiative system, rather than the FAP system. Although going back to the Armageddon FAP splits would improve the situation.

 

[Foxmeister]

Although going back to the Armageddon FAP splits would improve the situation.

Purely as a matter of interest, does anyone have those to hand as I've never seen them?

Thanks,

Dave

 

[Burger]

Although going back to the Armageddon FAP splits would improve the situation.

Purely as a matter of interest, does anyone have those to hand as I've never seen them?

http://www.mongoosepublishing.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=27048
3rd post down

 

[chainmailler]

well its not neccesarly accurate to do that because certain races have a higer base tech value, so not all ships will be equal, in the same way that a churchill mk VII is not quite as good as a Tiger II

 

[l33tpenguin]

well its not neccesarly accurate to do that because certain races have a higer base tech value, so not all ships will be equal, in the same way that a churchill mk VII is not quite as good as a Tiger II

That just means their ship of the line is at a higher PL. The Minbari, for examply, their main stay ship is at War level (Sharlin), while most others are at Battle (Omega, Primus, etc)

 

[Ripple]

Exactly, pl should mean you get what you pay for, if your better than the other guy (higher tech) you should be moved up a pl to do the same role.

On the two lower being better than one higher, this really is a basic flaw in thinking that caused so many problems. It's pretty well written above that having an initiative sink is it's own reward, and your slightly increased vulnerability to sudden death does not counter it due to crit vulnerability.

If you went from the basis that two of a lower pl were slight LESS than one above, you would have a much more accurate measure of utility/power within the game, as you would trade initiative control for direct durability/firepower.

The Arm. splits were better, but still had some issues.

(Mind you, making All Hands to Deck did try to help this... but as you can still lose your SA's to a crit, it didn't help that much.)

Ripple

 

[Greg Smith]

The Arm. splits were better, but still had some issues.

One of the biggest quirks was you could gain an extra ship by splitting points, which was odd. But it definitely helped the balance/PL issue.

(Mind you, making All Hands to Deck did try to help this... but as you can still lose your SA's to a crit, it didn't help that much.)

There were a number of reductions in crit effects to help big ships, but the PL breaks helped shift the balance back towards smaller ships.

Hopefully we'll see a shift back in P&P.

 

[l33tpenguin]

I'm still behind introducing a 'redundancy' type trait that would help larger ships weather crits better. Introduced across the board at a mostly even rate it wouldn't be terribly difficult to balance. Start at Raid with an average of +1 through Arm at +4 with some variance in between to give certain ships more staying power *cough*g'quan*cough*

Keeping an upward curve from Raid through Arm would show the increased in survivability of larger ships verses smaller ones. I think this will offset the initiative sink problem to some extent as well as the advantage of crits being less significant against smaller ships (1 crit against 2 ships is 'half' as effective as 1 crit against 1 ship).

 

[nekomata fuyu]

Seeing as he asked for examples of balanced ships (not average) at each PL, and gave us the Hyperion as a starting point, I'd argue that it is relevent to take into account balance across the PLs. That the current ships aren't balanced isn't a fault of the points system, but of the ships just not being balanced, and making FAP more convoluted than it already is isn't going to help matters much. Lets face it, what other games try to make you choose your force using an exponential points system?

 

[locarno24]

well its not neccesarly accurate to do that because certain races have a higer base tech value, so not all ships will be equal, in the same way that a churchill mk VII is not quite as good as a Tiger II

That just means their ship of the line is at a higher PL. The Minbari, for examply, their main stay ship is at War level (Sharlin), while most others are at Battle (Omega, Primus, etc)

Exactly. A Minbari frigate should beat an EA frigate.

But in a game where both sides are to have equal chance of winning (disregarding intentionally unbalanced scenarios like Battle of the Line where victory conditions are altered as a result), then both sides should have an equal force on the table.

In such a game, if a ship is twice as good (including any artifacts of the rules which benefit or penalist large ships vs. numbers) then you should get half as many.

If the game used a 'normal' points value, that means the points cost should double. A priority level increase is the direct representative of this, and is entirely artificial with no reflection on how a fleet is organised.

For those who like that sort of thing, I believe some games (including starship troopers) include a sort of 'tailorable victory conditions' where you can voluntarily end up with an unpleasantly small force that gets bonuses merely for survival, or vice-versa, or where deployment is a result of a combination of objectives chosen by the two players.

what other games try to make you choose your force using an exponential points system?

I think this has been one of the stumbling blocks - if you start by writing a statline that's fluff-justified, characterful, and unique, the odds are you'll end up with "...and a half" points.

One of the key weaknesses when modelling new variants or upgrades is that either the resulting ship has to be twice as good, or else it has to be balanced out so as to actually be no better. This has been done pretty well for most EA ships but it's resulted in some issues for other races (the G'Quanth springs to mind)

One of the biggest quirks was you could gain an extra ship by splitting points, which was odd. But it definitely helped the balance/PL issue.

I didn't actually mind that - it rewarded you for having a mix of all priority levels in a fleet rather than tanking up on the uber-ship of the month (Demos/Saggitarius/Shuuka etc)

Patrol: Tiraca, Jashakar Tae, Kutai
Skirmish: T'Rakk, Xixx, Sataaka
Raid: Kahtrik-So, Var'Nic, Haltona
Battle: Wahant, Shantavi, Omega
War: Juyaca, Vorlon Light Cruiser, Warlock

Interesting set of suggestions. The Shantavi jumps out at me as an odd one - but then maybe I'm just jaded by my opponent's tendancy to roll 4,562,733 hits with beam weapons, so a precise, triple damage beam sounds like one scarily unpleasant thing.

There are so few armageddon-priority ships that it's not worth suggesting a 'normal' really, but there you go.

Seeing as he asked for examples of balanced ships (not average) at each PL, and gave us the Hyperion as a starting point, I'd argue that it is relevent to take into account balance across the PLs.

This is sort of the debate I wanted to start, as it's the fundamental underlying principle of ACTA.

Given that the Hyperion and/or Kahtrik-So, Var'Nic, Haltona are the 'balanced' yardstick of 1 point raid, precisely how hard does something need to be, given the game mechanics, to justify 2-to-1 odds (or vice-versa).

 

[Da Boss]

Balance is always a hard thing - I tried as much as possible in my project and had excellent people to consult and fire things at who helped no end.

Matching fluff to ships is often difficult and staying within a Pl again can be hard...............

It can be easier to spot the "broken" ships rather than the

slightly betterthan average, but with this and that combination added to this ship giving it XYZ makes it then borken.

 

[Triggy]

Patrol: Tiraca, Jashakar Tae, Kutai
Skirmish: T'Rakk, Xixx, Sataaka
Raid: Kahtrik-So, Var'Nic, Haltona
Battle: Wahant, Shantavi, Omega
War: Juyaca, Vorlon Light Cruiser, Warlock

Interesting set of suggestions. The Shantavi jumps out at me as an odd one - but then maybe I'm just jaded by my opponent's tendancy to roll 4,562,733 hits with beam weapons, so a precise, triple damage beam sounds like one scarily unpleasant thing.

I tried to pick a variety of ships to show that one particular style isn't necessarily the only way of getting a balanced ship. The Shantavi is a perfect example of a sniper (whether you think it balanced or not) as it relies on hitting hard from range and most of its defences rely on it not getting hit rather than surviving the hit. Personally I think it a fair ship as once you do see it, it tends to die quite quickly and if you can get close/to the side then it has a hard time shooting you. However, if it can sit in front of you for a while then it's scary.

Seeing as he asked for examples of balanced ships (not average) at each PL, and gave us the Hyperion as a starting point, I'd argue that it is relevent to take into account balance across the PLs.

This is sort of the debate I wanted to start, as it's the fundamental underlying principle of ACTA.

Given that the Hyperion and/or Kahtrik-So, Var'Nic, Haltona are the 'balanced' yardstick of 1 point raid, precisely how hard does something need to be, given the game mechanics, to justify 2-to-1 odds (or vice-versa).

These ships are ones I believe balanced (or at least close to balanced) but each of them does it in a completely different way. Generally to justify a 2-to-1 ratio it needs to be the PL above - I can't think of a single ship that is a whole PL too good or too poor. Sure, the PL structure means that you get a slight break on two ships being better than one but hopefully with the Special Action "Track That Target!" or similar and going back to something similar to the Armageddon splits, we will see less of an issue.

 

[Ripple]

Jumping back to Greg's response a bit ago...

Yes the crit table effects were reduced in a couple of ways, but new effects were added (trait loss) and/or increased in frequency (-1 AD loss) negating the bonuses, largely, so big ships did not overcome small ships crit resilience, even given the older charts for FAP.

As too balanced ships... (my fleet book is missing... so won't hazard specifics yet)

I was surprised to see the Shantavi (stealth doesn't degrade over time, so you need to kill it the one time you see it, eventually doesn't really enter into it), and the Juyaca (I love her dearly, but she just gets avoided 'til the shield falls, then one move crit and she's pointless).

Ripple