Who is the most Broken

Which Fleet is the most broken?

  • Minbari - oooh, too hard, scary scary, run away....

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Earth Alliance - Bricks in space... about as tough as a sponge

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Old ones - Come on, they keep getting whooped in SFOS!

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Centauri - they have a weakness? where?

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • The League - they are not complete until we have more pak mara

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • Narn - I'd like a good weapon that isn't Boresight please

    Votes: 0 0.0%
  • ISA - Help help, my whitestars keep getting ganked by e-mines

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    0
  • Poll closed .
I don't like changing stats too much and from the series things like white stars and mimbari should be scary - better to simply have more ships when fighting them and expect the losses. Given that Ivanova was able to defeat a larger number of Omega Destroyers with White Stars should these be a battle level choice ?? (In campaign terms would need to allow more league ships - say 2 points worth).
 
If whitestars are to be toned down, I did hear a suggestion that the armour should be reduced to 4, that means that they have more hits to dodge.
 
I think you guys echo a lot of things I believe. Although I am loathe to change things at the drop of a hat by talking like this perhaps we can find the solution. My fear is changing one thing will implications as was said in some other subjects by changing several things at one time it could throw things out of balance and there are a lot of things in here that I think work and would like to keep. I would like to continue to discuss grievances and agree upon them and perhaps start rolling them around too much change all at once could lead to problems as well and I'd prefer to keep the pressure off mongoose. They are very responsive but sometimes there such a thing as bending to the user population too early. Also a lot of these are done from personnel experience in battle as well as of observance but I am a big believer in watch what people do not what they say. That often says volumes more than what anybody can say. And what pauly and emperor penguin are citing is a direct sympton the lack of other fleets in tournaments. Not saying I know the answer or i even agree that there is a huge problem but that shows me there is a concern here.

Personally I would tweak and experiment with the EA first. Of the big 4 races they have the most trouble then take a look at ancients I am not sure what the problems are but I agree it takes a lot of strategy and or luck to make old ones work well and although i have beaten people with them it had a lot to do with a lot of unorthodox tactics.

Then we can see about doing other things. I know no game is perfect but I do like a lot of the work mongoose has put in and would like to see action done but would caution that we should isolate the problems and make sure we don't kill the patient with the cure. There is too much good work in it to just take it apart and throw it away. Also has some have mentioned the changes in fighters were percipitated by player feedback and many now believe too much was done. So I would like to try and be careful with the changes.

I could be wrong but a lot of the problems may be linked with EA. If modifiyng or evolving them would satisfy a lot of the problems then its in my mind better than refactoring whole bunches of ships from all fleets in order to find the re-shuffle the capabilities.

Also encourage more feedbacka nd discussion. While a lot of people agree on minbari and EA there are some pretty interesting comments being made about centauri and Narn. like Narn are crappy or centauri have no wekanesses and are too good. It just is very disconcerting. I want to impress the need to put out a coherent voice so that if changes are made, mongoose can be sure that the changes are made in the best interest of the game and us the game players. Its kind of hard to make a case if we don't show some unity since you can't please everybody, no matter mongoose does there is always going to be issues.

I'll be the first to admit that what I want to happen is not always the right thing in retrospect.

I give kudos to you and Pauly for voicing a similar notion which is that the Narn and Centauri are generally well made and yes there are flaws but since I've seen some serious cnetauri blasting recently I have to disagree with those who say they are cheesy. They are powerful but really there are ways to beat them with good odds.

I am really at a loss as to why people don't play Narn in tourney that much.

Thanks for the info people.
emperorpenguin said:
Pauly_D said:
Earth-most ships need slightly more damage as more people are using ships with beam weapons which totally ignore interceptors, this is why EA do so badly against Minbari because almost all minbari weapons are Beam or Mini-Beam
Earth ship in most need of change: Oracle, needs to brought down to Skirmish level

I agree with this, EA ships have always been big, tough armoured boxes with engines and guns attached.

Minbari-clearly overpowered, Stealth, lots of Double-Damage+Precise+Beam+Super AP Weapons, way too maneoverable, and there damage and crew levels are about the same as races without stealth, saturdays tourney really showed how powerful they are
Minbari ship in most need of change: Veshatan, how much damage does that ship have, AND its got stealth backing it up, easily the most powerful ship at Battle level

Absolutely over the top fleet at present. I'm not happy with this "variant PL for tourney" idea I've heard. Although I wasn't there to hear the specifics I feel that the fleet needs changes not a covering exercise to paper the cracks, though I can understand this soon after SFOS their reluctance to do so. However for a second edition the basic rule that needs to be understood is that ships with stealth should have less damage. The immense firepower of these things is bad enough, the Tigara for example is sick

Centauri-definately balanced, their attack is their defense and skirmish level ships are extremely manoeuverable
Centauri ship in most need of change: Demos, it has too little Damage/Crew for a Hull 5 raid level ship, it cant last long enough to get into range but weapons are powerful but it does need a little more survivability

I'm in agreement that the Narn and Centauri are the most balanced fleets. I'm not sure why there are those who rate the Centauri as cheese. I think if the EA had better damage scores on their ships it might solve things. Centauri are well armed but fragile. As for the Demos, I agree again. I kicked up a stink to get that ship into SFOS (Matt admitted back in Feb he'd forgotten about it!) but with the jump in PL of so many Centauri ships it's been left behind. At hull 5 and 18 damage it's just not viable for such a short range ship. It needs interceptors (which we saw used in season 5) and perhaps hull 6 or a few extra damage

Narns-Also balanced and i was really surprised that no-one took Narns in the tournament (too busy taking Minbo's i expect) but they have enough damage to get in close and give out a lot of damage back, their disadvatage is Boresights but thats the same for EA as well

I've been really impressed by these guys in SFOS. The G'Quan could use an extra AD on its beams and so on but a well rounded fleet. Any clash between them and the Centauri is a close call

ISA-obviously that dodge is too high, and apart from LBH's bad sportsmanship all other ISA players scored very well in the Tournament (even LBH could beat the reigning champions Minbari so they must be too powerful)
ISA ship in most need of change-White Star, more the dodge than the ship but it probably would be better to drop the dodge down to 4+ and give it an extra Beam dice, and do a similar change to the White Star 2

3+ dodge is too good. For a raid level ship it requires a disproportionate amount of fire to eliminate. I'd probably trade an extra AD on the laser for the reduced dodge of 4+

Shadows and Vorlons-well need i say more, too weak at low levels, i know they were designed that way but its too hard for them to do anything

Having fought the only Vorlon player at the torney and destroyed his fleet with an hour left to play I know that the d6 damage thing kills these guys. Whereas a 1 is usually a disappointment when firing at other ships it's good here. My weaponry tore his ships apart and I wasn't impressed by the firepower of vorlon destroyers at all.
Not one of his 9 flights of fighters got to fire on my ships either, shot down by twin arrays or jumped on by my sentris

League-mostly balanced, using mixed league can generally make up for individual league weaknesses
League Race in most need of change-Abbai, they need a good reason to use them

Maybe the Abbai could use shields capable of deflecting beams?
 
Very good post Homerun, knee-jerk reactions are not what we want and we need a consensus not just "fleet x is cheese" remarks

I was genuinely surprised by the lack of Narn players and I'd love to hear why. My brother for one didn't pick them because 1) he mistakenly thought them poor until I thrashed his Brakiri with them and 2) he didn't think he could paint them! :lol:

I took a Balvarin (a ship I feel to be poor) in anticipation of energy mines too! :roll:
 
homerun said:
I could be wrong but a lot of the problems may be linked with EA. If modifiyng or evolving them would satisfy a lot of the problems then its in my mind better than refactoring whole bunches of ships from all fleets in order to find the re-shuffle the capabilities.

how do you mean?
i know that Earth suffer alot because beams are so easily accessible

also to Emperorpenguins comment about the Abbai, i think that is an excellent suggestion, it makes them extremely tough to hurt and lets them survive until they get up close were they can unleash a lot of twin-linked firepower
 
emperorpenguin said:
Very good post Homerun, knee-jerk reactions are not what we want and we need a consensus not just "fleet x is cheese" remarks

I was genuinely surprised by the lack of Narn players and I'd love to hear why. My brother for one didn't pick them because 1) he mistakenly thought them poor until I thrashed his Brakiri with them and 2) he didn't think he could paint them! :lol:

I took a Balvarin (a ship I feel to be poor) in anticipation of energy mines too! :roll:

i was surprised about Narns as well, i did consider taking Narns with WarLeader G'Sten but as a proud Centauri commander i didnt think it was appropriate :p

i learnt in the Gencon tourney that i didnt need the Balvarin, it just doesnt work within a Centauri fleet anymore
 
Pauly_D said:
i was surprised about Narns as well, i did consider taking Narns with WarLeader G'Sten but as a proud Centauri commander i didnt think it was appropriate :p

i learnt in the Gencon tourney that i didnt need the Balvarin, it just doesnt work within a Centauri fleet anymore

He'd only really work on a T'loth at that level. My Balvarin was just either a damage sponge or got ignored, its firepower doesn't earn it respect. The sentris didn't do much against Greg or Andreas. My twin arrays were killing Greg's fighters. The only good my sentris did was killing the vorlon fighters

also to Emperorpenguins comment about the Abbai, i think that is an excellent suggestion, it makes them extremely tough to hurt and lets them survive until they get up close were they can unleash a lot of twin-linked firepower

you could still re-roll for beams as normal piling up hits and the shields would roll to try and reduce each hit just like interceptors, so a sustained barrage of laser fire will cause them to fail.
I think I'll try this out, I've not played Abbai in months
 
emperorpenguin said:
Pauly_D said:
i was surprised about Narns as well, i did consider taking Narns with WarLeader G'Sten but as a proud Centauri commander i didnt think it was appropriate :p

i learnt in the Gencon tourney that i didnt need the Balvarin, it just doesnt work within a Centauri fleet anymore

He'd only really work on a T'loth at that level.

my plan was: 1 T'Loth with G'Sten, 1 G'Lan, 1 G'Sten and 1 Ka'Tan
 
Thanks, good going with the battle against your brother, Narn are evil against brakiri unless you take mostly Kalivas and even then its tough. I played brakiri versus my Narn loving brother in raid and I got absolutely pulversized. My big guns were barely denting him. I don't see how people are not taking them, yeah they are slow yeah they have boresighted weapons but they are on the extreme opposite end of the EA complaint they are so damn tough. Lack of interceptors who cares, these things are built like armadillos with porcupine quills on them. Prickly buggers and if they boresight you it hurts. I think not enough people respect their plasma weapons which are very nasty and getting hit by ion torpedoes royally sucks. Narn are sluggers they may not win all the time but they usually are always in the fight.

I woudl like to know why Narn aren't being taken especially since a good way to beat centauri is to take Narn since most everything narn can hurt centauri in some way.


emperorpenguin said:
Very good post Homerun, knee-jerk reactions are not what we want and we need a consensus not just "fleet x is cheese" remarks

I was genuinely surprised by the lack of Narn players and I'd love to hear why. My brother for one didn't pick them because 1) he mistakenly thought them poor until I thrashed his Brakiri with them and 2) he didn't think he could paint them! :lol:

I took a Balvarin (a ship I feel to be poor) in anticipation of energy mines too! :roll:
 
Hi Pauly, like I said I could be wrong but I get the sneaking suspicion that because EA are a very popular fleet and are attractive for a variety of reasons that at least in the short term a lot of things might be alleviated if EA's tendencies and qirks were examined. I have personally played them well but as even mongoose has said that they can take more experience than others to play or be just downright harder to play. The EA are no longer a very straight forward fleet, there isn't a lot of margin for error, they are good fleet but you have to maximize every single one of their abilities to compete against certain fleets. I also found the sheer variety of the EA can cause a lot of complex fleet combinations and tactics. I think there are a lot of fun and viable combinations but maybe as was said there are not that easy to play since there is so many strategies. WIth so many possible combos its also possible you can create fleet that is not balanced well and thus vlunerable in tournaments. You create a great centauri killing fleet only to run into the Narn. A lot may say with some legitimacy why is the humans so hard to play when other players seem to not be having the same problem.

Keep in mind this is just opinion. But it makes sense to me that being the (my opinion) most popular fleet and being the home team so to speak that as we isolate problems these guys would be a good place to start. The process will take time and probably be completely realized in a second edition but that may be a while so why not address the EA concern and see how that balances out. They seem to be having the most problems out of the 5 main fleets. Abbai are yet to be fully developed and can for now supplement themselves with League. I feel for the old ones and I would like them to be looked at but I think it makes more sense to look to EA first.

I also didn't mean to suggest that addressing EA will fix all the issues they won't but my main concern is repercussions to the games popularity. While I don't agree EA is useless there are some who use their vulneribility to beam fleets as a measuring stick and pronounce their ineffectiveness. SOme people I have met much don't care that they are viable agaisnt the league fleets they want to do some minbo and Centauri bashing. I believe this has given the fleet a bad rap and while many people still play them I think with slight adjustment and perhaps publicizing new approaches we can dispel this issue.


Pauly_D said:
homerun said:
I could be wrong but a lot of the problems may be linked with EA. If modifiyng or evolving them would satisfy a lot of the problems then its in my mind better than refactoring whole bunches of ships from all fleets in order to find the re-shuffle the capabilities.

how do you mean?
i know that Earth suffer alot because beams are so easily accessible

also to Emperorpenguins comment about the Abbai, i think that is an excellent suggestion, it makes them extremely tough to hurt and lets them survive until they get up close were they can unleash a lot of twin-linked firepower
 
I must admit, I agree with homerun on the analysis of the EA. There is too much choice there which makes them very difficult to use properly as they have no real generalist ships - those good at doing multiple things. This means that you need to be particularly careful about your fleet choice and plan of attack. You do need to know how each ship works best, and in most cases that is very not obvious.

emperorpenguin said:
Absolutely over the top fleet at present. I'm not happy with this "variant PL for tourney" idea I've heard. Although I wasn't there to hear the specifics I feel that the fleet needs changes not a covering exercise to paper the cracks, though I can understand this soon after SFOS their reluctance to do so. However for a second edition the basic rule that needs to be understood is that ships with stealth should have less damage. The immense firepower of these things is bad enough, the Tigara for example is sick

I do disagree with your rating of the Tigara, most of its heavy hitting firepower is short ranged and interceptable (unlike most of the Minbari weaponry, meaning when it fires any interceptors on the target are fully functioning). To use this ship to its full potential, you have to do go against the Minbari fight plan and get stuck in. As a knife-fighter this ship is terriffic - probably the best in the game, but that is what it was designed for, and any opponent should know this and work to neutralise it. I have found it usually takes at least 2-3 turns to bring its big guns into play (even if you open an AJP in the first turn), and if you have to cross the field, there is plenty of oppertunity to shoot at it while it can do very little back. Most of the time I have noticed all I am firing are its Fusion Cannons, and an Ashinta in the Fusion Cannon stakes is a much better choice.

As to the Veshatan it is an absolutley stunning design, it makes you wonder why the warrior cast stopped using it. It is in my opinion the best of an already scary list of Battle choices available to the Minbari. It beats the Tinashi by a massive margin in damage and crew, loosing only 1 turn. Together these religate the once (and much under-rated in ACTA) Troligan to a no show. Unless you are playing a year limited game. I agree with Pauly_D that it does need looked at, probably as well as the Twin-Linked Fusion Cannons on the Tinashi. Again however, both of these two ships are limited to having only the front mount with the really scary weaponry (like a Primus), so they are much more vunrable from the other arcs if an opponent can use them. However their Minbari Stealth does go a long way to mitigate this.

Like others, I am suprised that no-one actually took the Narns. I tend not to be able to play them too often as usually they are one of the first choices to get picked in a game.
 
Silvereye said:
emperorpenguin said:
Absolutely over the top fleet at present. I'm not happy with this "variant PL for tourney" idea I've heard. Although I wasn't there to hear the specifics I feel that the fleet needs changes not a covering exercise to paper the cracks, though I can understand this soon after SFOS their reluctance to do so. However for a second edition the basic rule that needs to be understood is that ships with stealth should have less damage. The immense firepower of these things is bad enough, the Tigara for example is sick

I do disagree with your rating of the Tigara, most of its heavy hitting firepower is short ranged and interceptable (unlike most of the Minbari weaponry, meaning when it fires any interceptors on the target are fully functioning). To use this ship to its full potential, you have to do go against the Minbari fight plan and get stuck in. As a knife-fighter this ship is terriffic - probably the best in the game, but that is what it was designed for, and any opponent should know this and work to neutralise it. I have found it usually takes at least 2-3 turns to bring its big guns into play (even if you open an AJP in the first turn), and if you have to cross the field, there is plenty of oppertunity to shoot at it while it can do very little back. Most of the time I have noticed all I am firing are its Fusion Cannons, and an Ashinta in the Fusion Cannon stakes is a much better choice.

at the tourney my fleet got raped by 4 Tigaras and 2 Torothas, even though knife fighting is against the Minbari style of fighting, it is still 4+ stealth, my opponent felt that it would be better to get in closer and use all his weaps than risk me getting a shot at him with my battle lasers and still it would only be a +1 difference to stealth
 
Silvereye said:
emperorpenguin said:
Absolutely over the top fleet at present. I'm not happy with this "variant PL for tourney" idea I've heard. Although I wasn't there to hear the specifics I feel that the fleet needs changes not a covering exercise to paper the cracks, though I can understand this soon after SFOS their reluctance to do so. However for a second edition the basic rule that needs to be understood is that ships with stealth should have less damage. The immense firepower of these things is bad enough, the Tigara for example is sick

I do disagree with your rating of the Tigara, most of its heavy hitting firepower is short ranged and interceptable (unlike most of the Minbari weaponry, meaning when it fires any interceptors on the target are fully functioning). To use this ship to its full potential, you have to do go against the Minbari fight plan and get stuck in. As a knife-fighter this ship is terriffic - probably the best in the game, but that is what it was designed for, and any opponent should know this and work to neutralise it. I have found it usually takes at least 2-3 turns to bring its big guns into play (even if you open an AJP in the first turn), and if you have to cross the field, there is plenty of oppertunity to shoot at it while it can do very little back. Most of the time I have noticed all I am firing are its Fusion Cannons, and an Ashinta in the Fusion Cannon stakes is a much better choice..

Well I'm surprised it takes you so long to bring its guns to bear. My fleet was annihilated by a pair of Tigaras. I kept my fleet behind an asteroid belt and attempted to hit the Tigaras with massive close range firepower. However they jumped out right on top of me and as well as their devestating frontal fire they've got very impressive side and aft shooting including molecular disruptors and fusion cannons, still only get hit 50% and can absorb as much damage as a lot of other raid level ships.

A big problem when fighting Minbari is that you're encouraged to spread firepower in order to try and beat stealth, however conventional military doctrine is to concentrate firepower in order to destroy a target, as scattering your forces too wide will fail to defeat any of them, this is what happens against Minbari with such high damage scores, too little firepower means not enough damage
 
emperorpenguin said:
however conventional military doctrine is to concentrate firepower in order to destroy a target, as scattering your forces too wide will fail to defeat any of them

That is one of the other ways to beat Stealth on the minbari given in the article, get as many ships firing on tham as possible. That or splitting your fire increases the number of stealth rolls you make and so increases your chances of one or more attacks getting through.

LBH
 
lastbesthope said:
That is one of the other ways to beat Stealth on the minbari given in the article, get as many ships firing on tham as possible. That or splitting your fire increases the number of stealth rolls you make and so increases your chances of one or more attacks getting through.

LBH

Well the first part is sensible application of superior firepower applicable to any foe
the second worked in games such as the Full Thrust version of B5 or B5 Wars because if you did a row of damage you might knock out the stealth system. However the only way to knock out stealth in ACTA is crippling and with such high damage values on the Minbari ships, that's not easy if you've split your fire among several Minbari ships in order to try and hit at least one of them.
 
emperorpenguin said:
Well I'm surprised it takes you so long to bring its guns to bear. My fleet was annihilated by a pair of Tigaras. I kept my fleet behind an asteroid belt and attempted to hit the Tigaras with massive close range firepower. However they jumped out right on top of me and as well as their devestating frontal fire they've got very impressive side and aft shooting including molecular disruptors and fusion cannons, still only get hit 50% and can absorb as much damage as a lot of other raid level ships.

I think this is due to the 'flock of birds/shoal of fish' reaction to a predator when a jump point opens - scatter like your life depends on it. All you have to do is stay about 8" away and the Tigara has to chase you. You usally get 1 turn of warning when the jump point opens, as nothing can use it in that turn.

emperorpenguin said:
A big problem when fighting Minbari is that you're encouraged to spread firepower in order to try and beat stealth, however conventional military doctrine is to concentrate firepower in order to destroy a target, as scattering your forces too wide will fail to defeat any of them, this is what happens against Minbari with such high damage scores, too little firepower means not enough damage

This is also what accounts to the high attrition opponents suffer from the Minbari, thier ships stay battle able for longer (also due to the flight computers) as you cannot afford to concentrate ona single target until it is dust. This is not to day that you should not favour 1 or 2 targets to get the majority of the attention, and then try for any others that get into the wrong place.

You just need to be able to cope with the instant losses the Minbari inflict on you, and not panic, while you try to whittle them down. Particularly with EA, a good fleet choice and good gameplan is needed.

You fleet you took for the tournament was certainly not in any way ideal to beat the Minbari, however it looked very solid for use against the EA and Narns.
 
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