Whats with the Armageddon Saggitarius?

[Voronesh]

How a weapons arrangement of 3/2/1 AD of 20" missles is supposed to be equal to:

4/6/2 AD of 30" missles with extras like Flash gaining DD for losing Super.

You do not need to be fast and mobile when you can shoot 30".

The hyp can barely match the Sag with ALL arcs firing. (cause you have to be surrounded for that). Over two turns of firing the hyp is even outclassed.

Yes i did not regard the existance of the pulse cannons, but they give little extra firepower compared to Standard missles let alone the measly 10" range.

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

I never said equal, I said comprable. And the Sag will be lucky to fire each turn unless the enemy flet is spread out, so you're talking about 6 AD every other turn, with maybe 4AD on alternate turns if you're lucky. Compared to a steady pattern of 3/2AD from the Hyperion, plus extra AD from the pulse cannons when you get closer - and unless you all stop with the sag to keep it in place - in which case you're definately only going to get a shot off every other turn the enemy IS going to close.

Now I did say the sag has the advantage of more AD of missiles and the ability to take alternate warheads - but in terms of raw numbers it is comprable to the missile hyperion.

 

[Voronesh]

The Sag has 1 Turn of 45°.

Thats enough to target a ship woth broadside and frontal missles changing. Nothing needed. Just keep the fire arc split line somewhere around the enemies position.

But this isnt about the hyperion being comparable. When enemies are actually bunching up in different arcs of the Hyperion while being nice enough to stay within 10" to allow it to fire pulse cannons. Not something that necessarily happens all the time. The hyp needs multiple enemies to be good, the Sag does just the same, regardless of enemy numbers.

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

The Hyperion's got the speed and manouvrability to keep enemies in arc and range fine unless they're white stars or Hermes or similarly fast and manouvrable targets.

And have you actually fought with/against Saggi? Believe me, it's easy enough to make sure they can't turn enough to keep you in arc every turn.

 

[Twin-Linked Aldades]

I`m not a `fan` of the new Sag, but there are some factors people seem to forget that speak in the benefit of the Hyperion over the Sagittarius...

Pulse cannons are great in battles against races equipped with interceptors. They can do those extra ticks that will make your missiles come through compared to the Sag that will see them start at 2`s... Before people shout `you have the rest of the fleet to overload them` that is true, but for like a page these people have been comparing both mano a mano and not in a fleet build.

The sag will get isolated and outmanouevred in fleet engagements. He should be the prime target for the beam armed opponents, and the list he is part of, the early years, cannot keep up defending it with thier `non spectacular but lots of little guns` make up.

Abuse will make the Sag an overpowering factor, agreed, but having one or two of those blighters will, and this may sound cheesy or such, not. Even more useless he will get in a campaign (which I still think is the `de-facto` mode of play for acta) where all sag campaign fleets frankly don`t stand a chance. They suck in reckon Runs, are toast in Blockades, are dead before the battle starts when ambushed, since your opponent will always go for the -3 on the level roll, and escorting convoys isn`t on the top of their `we`re good at that list` either...

It is a speciality cruiser, designed to bombard the enemy to no end, and it is good in that. If all you play are one of, straight fights with little terrain (like for example tournaments or local groups that don`t want to bother with the paperwork and political bickering of campaigns) yes, that cruiser will have a field day pounding the enemies. Get it in tactical more challenging positions and the only thing it will do is generate bills for RnR spending, and truly so. It`s like the Explorer but then reversed, that vessel is great in a campaign and a VP present in a straight one off

 

[Harmony]

Throw me in with the restricted bunch: A ratio of mainline capital ships and/or escorts to specialty bombardment ships (i.e., Sagittarius, Apollo, Dag’Kar et cetera).

Ten fire support vessels without their own support sounds ludicrous…. The final (and largest) battle in the Dilgar war only had four Sagittarius cruisers…plus a mass (around ten) of Hyperion cruisers, another mass of Olympus corvettes (twelve or so), four Nova dreadnoughts and some other misc. assorted escorts and older cruisers IIRC.

Throw me in with the historical accuracy takes precedent group also.

A bombardment DD(X) firing guided projectiles with assisted OTH targeting would beat the shit out of a typical, missile armed surface action group; but you’re never going to see every versatile CVBG replaced by a SAG of eight or so advanced destroyers…it’s beyond stupid.

 

[Calistan]

Honestly, I think dropping the port and starboard to 4ad would tone down the Sagg to a skirmish level ship.

 

[Ripple]

Really hate the 'play campaign' arguement. There is no penalty in campaign for simply refusing to fight a battle. Sure you lose the site and the fifteen RR, but who cares, you will more than earn back the swing in the most common battles generated (ie call to arms, annihalation and space superiority).

Welcome to the non-campaign of I do not fight battles I won't win before I put figures down. Ick. Fleets need to be more balanced so that you are not rolling to see whether or not you will play that week. The Sag is a real issue ship in this regard but hardly the only one.

The idea of balancing a fleet over different pls doesn't work and Voronesh is correct that having a couple of 'broken' ships in a fleet can be just as problematic.

We play campaign around here quite a bit by the way, but the vast majority of the battles fought are one-offs. While you may believe that the default is campaign that would fly in the face of the poll done on this board and the observations I have made of at least three sepereate groups that play in this region. I can of course be wrong but it just doesn't seem that way.

Ripple

 

[animus]

Welcome to the non-campaign of I do not fight battles I won't win before I put figures down. Ick. Fleets need to be more balanced so that you are not rolling to see whether or not you will play that week. The Sag is a real issue ship in this regard but hardly the only one.

Ripple

What other ships do you see as problematic?

 

[katadder]

use the SFOS sagi and you have a perfect skirmish missile boat, it has 6 tubes forward but only 2 down the sides.

 

[Voronesh]

And anyone who wants to go down the historic route.

It doesnt work. Why?

Since when is an Omega just about as good as 2 Hyps. And just about as good as 3-4 Hyp rail variants.

And Primus are as good as 3-4 Vorchans.

No, cant do with historic values since we have fixed point costs for every priority lvl. The 1,2,4,8,16,32 for patrol to armageddon.

And yes I have not played a single campaign. So for me one-offs are most important. Just pick a good fleet, no need to pick ships only good in campaigns. But those ARE rather rare. And then its kinda ok to have a ship ok in a certain game mode and rather bad in the other.
But the Sag is ok in campaign mode, and overbearing in one offs.....which is not a good thing.

 

[Twin-Linked Aldades]

Really hate the 'play campaign' arguement. There is no penalty in campaign for simply refusing to fight a battle. Sure you lose the site and the fifteen RR, but who cares, you will more than earn back the swing in the most common battles generated (ie call to arms, annihalation and space superiority).

Welcome to the non-campaign of I do not fight battles I won't win before I put figures down. Ick. Fleets need to be more balanced so that you are not rolling to see whether or not you will play that week. The Sag is a real issue ship in this regard but hardly the only one.

The idea of balancing a fleet over different pls doesn't work and Voronesh is correct that having a couple of 'broken' ships in a fleet can be just as problematic.

We play campaign around here quite a bit by the way, but the vast majority of the battles fought are one-offs. While you may believe that the default is campaign that would fly in the face of the poll done on this board and the observations I have made of at least three sepereate groups that play in this region. I can of course be wrong but it just doesn't seem that way.

Ripple

I agree with your opening point completely. We solved that like this: the player that doesn`t play (or fields a singel patrol vessel and flys of his edge) does not get any XP, and no income for the whole turn, and will be last in the initiative of the next round.

Against the rules? Sure, and if they can`t deal with that they can pack up their fleets and go find another ganing group to play their B5 games with... and with only 2 clubs that support the game in antwerp AND who work together a lot, that is going to be a damn hard job...

Does it need to be said that overhere in lil` ol` Belgium we try very hard to protect our `B5` group from ruleslawyering kids that ruined the GW hobby for many experienced gamers lol but seriously, try laying down that house rule in your group. Mongoose probably didn`t count on these sorts of cowardly tactics when they wrote the campaign system and thought everyone wanted to `game` when joining a campaign (if intrested, we also have a nice ally system and an extra phase called the polictics phase)

 

[Triggy]

use the SFOS sagi and you have a perfect skirmish missile boat, it has 6 tubes forward but only 2 down the sides.

Except it was a Raid level ship!

Either bringing it back to Raid, dropping its AD or lowering the hull/interceptors all could help/work but would like a deal of playtesting to back up, not just a knee jerk "good, we nerfed it" reaction.

 

[dant164]

Personally i think the sag made more sense as a raid level ship, hence in battle level you get the Apollo and the fleet makes much more sense, as it is sag's are way to powerful for skirmish, being able to stay 30" away and use flash missiles to crit anything on the other end into extinction. I always used it as raid and never had a problem.

 

[Hash]

1pt Armgeddon bouts FTW...

Seriously though I think many of the problems of having "broken" ships in a PL system is using too many PL points. Personally I also think think "broken" ships at the lower PLs (such as Sagg) are by far the most game unbalancing if expolited.

The new splitting system inherently nerfs swarms so instead of playing 5pt raid as the standard one-off, why not try lower fleet allocation points but at a higher PL. If you play it right you should still have roughly the right amount of ships for a 2hour game but a broad selection available that nerfs low PL broken ships by limiting the number they can take!

I repeat, 1pt Armgeddon bouts FTW!

 

[Twin-Linked Aldades]

Then you would have 12 Sagittarius instead of 10 at 5 points raid...

 

[Locutus9956]

Hooray! It seems the mongoose folks ARE listening to us afterall as evidenced by Matt's recent post (for those that missed it the Saggitarius is being revised in the next issue of S&P, it's still kind of annoying that this is necessary given that we had about a year of the tourney version for them to update it in the big 'A' but better late than never I suppose

 

[Tank]

you've all nerfed my beloved sags!!!! I may just have to destroy all my EA ships in grief!!!

 

[H]

Just don't roll dice to do it, you'll fail...

 

[Tank]

I'll get you yet Hiffano!!!!!! :lol: