White Star fleet

[Slightly Norse John]

The really fascinating thing about Sun Tzu is that he was talking from a position of pure theory.
On the ground, he was working with peasant conscripts, and he had about as much chance of putting his theories into practise with them as I have of winning a fencing tournament armed only with a ball of string. (I wouldn't put that past Boj, mind you...)
He speaks in staff officer- ese, and I would love to know what the desertion rate from his army was, because if you sat a company of his men down and exlained his theories of deliberate sacrifice and internal security to them...they'd fall asleep. Once the few that stayed awake explained it all to the rest, though, I doubt there would be many of them left in the ranks the next day.
Drifting forward slowly is good if you're well armed with lots of full arc beams- Centauri, Minbari- but for the Narn, it's 'Yes, I will maximise the length of time you have to shoot the spots off me, and I will do this because I am tired of life.'

 

[Triggy]

Do not know about you folks but Arm. is beginning to make me feel like the GW army books. Did you get your last update book? No...well do not apply to this cause all my stuff got upgrades, and your stuff is not even legal anymore. When do my drazi get re-written so I can get better fighters and a super skirmish hull.

Exactly what I was thinking

Cannot say what I am hearing about Armeggedon is filling me the desire to go out and buy it. In fact, its putting me off the game as a whole... :x

Aside from the Sagittarius "issue", Armageddon is excellent! It has a good variety of new ships (with models of varying quality but generally at least "decent"), new fleet lists and (maybe most importantly) an FAQ section and new rules that address some of the perceived imbalances in the way the game works without going overboard and changing everything for the sake of it.

 

[Voronesh]

Ahm Yes.

The rules are good, but.....

I digress ion the models. This sint 5 years ago. For 50 bucks i expect to get a little more than something between halfway decent (Boombox?) and soandso.

For 50 bucks i get alot of stuff elsewhere, or a single model that is way more detailed. Sorry but for the current stuff MGP wont see a single cent from me.

 

[Furious Jedi]

For 50 bucks i get alot of stuff elsewhere, or a single model that is way more detailed. Sorry but for the current stuff MGP wont see a single cent from me.

I agree, for the money being chared the large scale models are of poor quality. I'll stick with my Fleet Action scale models from the original game and I'll scrath build or convert what I need to for the new stuff coming out. This is not because I'm cheep. I have 3 40k armies, 1 WH Fantasy army, and 2 Warmachine armies, but those companies make beautiful models and worth my money.

Just for the record, I've been playing this game for a long time and I can not for the life of me think of one single situation in which I would ever fire the Victories lightning cannon. Maybe if the range was longer and I could get a shot off before closing into range of the enemy weapons it would be worth it, but with it's range acually being shortened, as it stands right now, it's a just a great big hood ornament. Maybe someone out there can give me a specific example of why it would be better to fire the lightning cannon on one turn instead of firing all the other weapons for two turns. I swear I can't think of one.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

What's the argument for chopping the range back? In Crusade we see the lightning cannon used to fire on a ground target from orbit, and that's plenty of range.

 

[philogara]

Cannot say what I am hearing about Armeggedon is filling me the desire to go out and buy it. In fact, its putting me off the game as a whole... :x

Aside from the Sagittarius "issue", Armageddon is excellent! It has a good variety of new ships (with models of varying quality but generally at least "decent"), new fleet lists and (maybe most importantly) an FAQ section and new rules that address some of the perceived imbalances in the way the game works without going overboard and changing everything for the sake of it.

• Old perceived inbalances have been replaced by new perceived imbalances which will keep this board busy for a while;
  New fleet lists - from what I can work out, a lot of races have an Armageddon ship - why? This should have been reserved for the Ancients IMHO;
  How long before this is superceeded by the next issue of lists (ACTA v2.0?) - we've only had SFOS for about a year and in that time we've seen new lists for Tourny's as well. Even GW don't change that fast!

 

[ubertechie]

If anything the lighting cannon should have more range - say 35 - 40 " this would make it a worthwhile weapon system - use it on the first turn as a alpha strike weapon in conjunction with all stop then float forward on turn 2 (still at a considerable range) then from then on use the secondaries

The main use i can see for it at the moment is a final turn weapon to try and secure some victory points by firing at the largest available target

 

[captainsmirk]

Which would actually be quite appropriate based on the movie ACTA (although not Crusade, where they seemed to use every episode...)

Nick

 

[Furious Jedi]

If anything the lighting cannon should have more range - say 35 - 40 " this would make it a worthwhile weapon system - use it on the first turn as a alpha strike weapon in conjunction with all stop then float forward on turn 2 (still at a considerable range) then from then on use the secondaries

That is exactly the way I used it in a campaign I was in. I rolled for the upgrade that increases the range of a specific weapon by 50%. My lightning cannon had a range of 45". My intention was to fire the cannon on first turn, move the 4" on turn two, depending on the condition and position of the rest of my fleet in relation to my opponent I was considering closing the distance and unloading all weapons including the lightning cannon on turn three into his largest ship. That was the plan. The reality is that my opponent was playing Minbari, I failed the stealth roll on turn one and so fired the lightning cannon off into empty space, moved 4" on turn two, and failed the stealth roll yet again on turn 3. The only reason I even bothered to attempt the above sequence is because due to shear luck the lightning cannon had an extra 15 inches of range.

The main use i can see for it at the moment is a final turn weapon to try and secure some victory points by firing at the largest available target

I still would not use it even then. If the point is to try and grab some last second victory points then I'm going to fire at something small ( maybe several small things ) that can be killed in one turn or I'm going to fire on something that is badly damaged. With the lightning cannon you get one shot at one target, with all the other weapons you get multiple shots at multiple targets. I did think of one possible scenario in which I might fire the lightning cannon: I've got one very large severly damaged target in my front arc and nothing else in range in any other arc. There are also several smaller enemy ships in close proximity to the large one ( all in my front arc). It is the last turn and agian I'm looking for some last second VP's. I would fire the lightning cannon hoping for enough over kill to guarantee an explosion.

 

[Voronesh]

One thing in a campaign i can think of.

Kill the enemy war/armageddon lvl ship in a campaign.

Its you best bet to deprieve your enemy of his flagship towards the end? Go for it. eg it has already opened a jump point......

 

[Goldritter]

With these rulesset there is no real reason why to use the Lighning Cannon.
even with 10AD TD/P/SAP it´s not worth one round of "doing nothing" with no defence.

Better they changed Precise and/or SAP to Accurate, then it would make more sense to use this weapon, because then it´s a real killer and the lost round would be hurt much less.

 

[Goldritter]

What's the argument for chopping the range back? In Crusade we see the lightning cannon used to fire on a ground target from orbit, and that's plenty of range.

Until there is no reference how much Km an Inch represents in ACtA you can´t tell is the range of the Lightning Cannon is realy to short to reach from (Low)Orbit to the surface.

 

[Voronesh]

20" is more than enough range to reach from orbit to ground.

First this is space combat, low orbit is what? 300-400 klicks? Nothing for a Laser that can kill ships beyond the horizon.

Comparing to Mass Drivers, they only have 10", Virus Bombs can only fire at 6", so unless the Lightning Cannon shrinks to 5" it will always reach ground zero from (low) orbit.

 

[Triggy]

20" is more than enough range to reach from orbit to ground.

First this is space combat, low orbit is what? 300-400 klicks? Nothing for a Laser that can kill ships beyond the horizon.

Comparing to Mass Drivers, they only have 10", Virus Bombs can only fire at 6", so unless the Lightning Cannon shrinks to 5" it will always reach ground zero from (low) orbit.

N0ot to mention that "range" is actually "effective range". When hitting a small (under 10km long), moving target in space it is obviously more difficult than a stationary, land based target (no matter its size) and therefore range against land based targets is largely irrelevant for calculating a useful in-game range for a weapon.