Hi Sig! OMG, you are posting comments and questions far faster than I can possibly respond to it all! Multiple play-tests and projects in work are complicating this a bit, not to mention I have a day job! Sorry if I miss a few comments, questions, etc.…
Ok, so I've done the naming and fluff post, so that's out of the way. I'd like to comment on the actual profiles now. Ok, first off, I do prefer this Hecate profile to the previous one, but taken in conjunction with the "Inferno" and the rest of the fleet there are still some problems.
If you were to take a Styx over a Hecate you would be dropping 6WB@45cmL+R broadsides to pick up 2AC. For this you pay an extra 30 pts. Very very pricey. Now, compare the "Inferno" to a Carnage. If you were to take the Inferno over the Carnage you would be giving up 6WB@45cmL+R, same as in the previous comparison, but this time you would gain 4 AC (twice as much) and only be paying +10 pts (one third the increase) and you'd be getting an extra turret as well.
I have always played the Hecate (I have one) as 245 points because until now it has always been a house ship, and I always tend to overprice house vessels, a far more forgivable oversight than under-pricing one. All the ships in the Powers of Chaos 2 document in general are overpriced on purpose for the first draft because I specifically expected to be butchered over this, during which time the prices would dial down to something more akin to their true worth.
The Styx pays a premium for more than just how it carries more AC than any other 8HP ship in the game. It can do the fleet-carrier trick while staying strictly abeam- ALL of it’s weapons are L/F/R and 60cm, a very handy characteristic for a fleet carrier. In this regard, giving the Hecate the same general quality gives this ship a set of characteristics in actual gameplay worth far more than using the Smotherman formula to calculate point values would suggest. Because it’s a heave cruiser I don’t have too much heartburn with this, but we have to be careful with how cheap we make this ship for exactly the reasons I just outlined. I get more into why when discussing your points against the Inferno, which in sum are quite accurate.
Sure, the Styx pays a premium for being able to have more than 4 AC, but paying 3 times as much for half the bonus AC is surely a bit much, not to mention the extra turret on top. Ok, some of that is surely that the Styx is overpriced. However, I also think that the current Inferno is probably a touch strong too.
I liked Lastspartacus's original profile better. So instead of being at Carnage level technology it's reduced to Murder level tech. So bring all the guns down from 60cm range to 45cm range. Drop its turrets value down to 2 as well. Bring it down to 180 pts. So then, compared to a Carnage it loses 10WB in the 60cm range band and 6WBs at 45cm or less in exchange for its 4 AC. A much better trade, keeping both viable.
The Inferno actually has a couple of over-power problems, only a few of which you outlined. Taken in sum, the Inferno profile as listed in the current draft is broken and needs to be changed (a bit ironic, since I’m the one that tweaked the profile in the first place!). Here’s what all the problems are.
1. By intention from the original designers, the Devastation at 190 points is the bottom price for a Chaos carrier. Justifying the price is why the Devastation has the clunky 2x60cm lance broadside. I own 4 and have already learned how to play with as well as against it so the profile doesn’t bother me, but I HATE modeling it: I use the metal Vengeance Chaos lance bits and use two turrets each side to make it very distinctive form the Slaughter, which also nicely fits the fluff since it’s supposed to be a later (circa M35) cruiser design. I don’t want to change the 190-point price floor as a fundamental tenet of the Chaos fleet so whatever we do to the Inferno, it can’t be cheaper than 190 points. THIS means we can’t simply make it a Murder-carrier, because the end result will be either overpriced as a model at 190 points or too cheap for the Chaos fleet as a whole if valued below 190 points.
2. My attempt at making the Inferno a Carnage variant to keep the price at 190 broke the profile, and here’s why. When first proposing the Inferno, I had it run the Gauntlet against Imperials and Orks, the former because it would be its most common opponent, and the latter because they are so weak against ordnance. A fleet I did NOT try this ship against was Eldar, and that’s where the problem cropped up. Chaos has lots of long-range gunnery, and with their AC and their beam-on aspect they make a strong opponent for the Eldar. However, Eldar ordnance is very potent, which means if Chaos wants to counter their ordnance, their choices have always been either the very expensive Styx or the Devastation, which is cheap but gives up big guns for useless lances when going broadside against the pointy-ears. Now we create the Inferno, which is Eldar poison because it is beam-perfect against Eldar AND can give Chaos easy ordnance parity. The Hecate does the same thing to an extent, but as an HC woth 45cm broadsides, this isn’t too much of a burden. However, a cruiser with no restrictions, 60cm guns and relatively cheap AC is a bad idea for Chaos. It’s easy to say the pointy-ears deserve it, they need to develop tactics and just suck it up and besides the whole fleet is broken anyway, but that’s not the way to design ships. More on this after your next comments…
Compared to a Dev this profile would be a little weak. The Dev has roughly equivalent firepower at 45cm and slightly more at 30cm and an extra turret. If this was all it got then I'd be happy with the 10 pts difference. However, the Dev can reach out to 60cm, which makes it clearly superior. It should be remembered though that the Dev is an overpowered ship, and new ship classes shouldn't be made overpowered just to compete with it. In fact, I think that a great balance for the Dev would be to drop its broadside lances down to 45cm range, which would make the profile LS proposed competitive, balance the Dev a good deal and make the broadside lances of the Acheron less "sucky".
Sig, I agree with EVERYTHING here. Ideally the Dev should have always had 45cm broadside lances for no price change, which actually fixes not just the Dev profile itself but how the Dev plays in the Chaos fleet and how the Chaos fleet as a whole behaves. However, we’re trying to get the products complete and stapled shut before we address changing any of the existing profiles. Having said this, tweaking the Dev is one of the most needed changes. The problem is up-creep, something you, Horizon and several others have remarked upon at length here on the SG forum. Fans are really quick to complain that a profile is overpriced or not strong enough, but OMG let one of the HA’s even SUGGEST a profile might be a tad too strong or underpriced, and the sulfurous, twisted gates of hades itself blow wide open…
Then I would drop the broadside firepower of the Hecate down to 4WBs, to reflect it being a refitted Inferno (Annihilation!). So, compared to the Anni, er, Inferno, it'd get +15cm prow range, +1 turret and +dorsal lances. It'd still be costly at +60pts (+50 should be the maximum for all this) but at least it makes the Styx slightly better in that it only gives up 4WB@45cmL+R for 2AC at +30pts rather than giving up 6WB@45cmL+R.
We can adjust the Hecate the way you suggest without tying it to the Inferno at all. This gives us a chance to start from scratch with the Inferno, or just get rid of it entirely if we can’t make it right. Chaos isn’t really supposed to have a large assortment of ship classes to start with, but I am averse to creating two new HC classes without creating a new cruiser to leaven the mix.
Right, that's them done. Now the Cerberus (great name choice, where'd you come up with that?
). Ok profile, though if it were up to me I'd drop all ranges to 30cm. Just that bit of extra character. In this case the Slaughter would be simply redirecting energy from engines to power the dorsal lances. A simple upgrade that would require very little in the way of refitting to accomplish. Of course, that's the route you've taken in the fluff too, just that this ship gets a lot of range and firepower for the loss of speed. I don't know, this trade-off might be viable, I just think that the speed for 30cm dorsal lances would definitely be viable.
Giving this 30cm dorsals makes this fit better as a Repulsive precursor, and it also justifies why it is labeled a “failed†HC.The Repulsive mom is also why I think it should keep the 45cm batteries, and DEFINITELY why it needs to NOT have any kind of speed boost over other cruiser classes. If you compare its firepower against other ships (say a Hades for example), its firepower is far stronger. As it is currently, it has just in each broadside almost the same firepower as a Hades, PLUS 2x30cm lances, and that doesn’t count the prow or dorsal weapons as well. It pays for its weapons upgrade by being slowed down a lot. +1D6 when AAF is not NEARLY the game changer an additional 2 dorsal lances are. Simply removing its +1D6 when AAF is not nearly a significant enough speed reduction for the weapons upgrade it gets, and making everything 30cm weapons to justify a speed boost doesn’t really justify why this ship would have even been created in the first place.
I thought process for the 2x45cm dorsal lances is that it comes off as odd like the Acheron, and it gives the ship two layers of complimentary weaponry: 8x45cm batteries and 2x45cm dorsal lances, then 6x30cm prow L/F/R batteries to go with 2x30cm broadside lances. It’s a nice set of mixes that leaves the ship feeling odd compared to other HC’s, which would explain why the IN at the time would have been uncomfortable with this vessel despite all the firepower it brings to bear.
Regardless of whether or not range gets dropped, there is a massive problem with this ship. Its cost. Would you take 2 Cerberus or 3 Slaughter? At 245 pts it would cost 490 pts for 2 Cerberus vs 495 pts for 3 Slaughter. So that's 8 extra hit points, 2 more shields, +5cm speed, +1d6cm on AAF, +8WB focusable fire at 30cm and +22WB total fire at 30cm. On the other hand the 2 Cerberus get +15cm range on half their guns and cost 5 points less. I know which combination I'd take.
If you start with a Slaughter (165 pts), add dorsal lances (30 pts + 5 pts fudge), and upgrade the broadside weapon batteries ranges (+10 pts +5 pts fudge) you come to 215 pts at absolute maximum. That is fudging twice AND ignoring the loss of speed AND ignoring that the dorsal lances are only 45cm range instead of 60cm. This ship is way way waaaaaaaaaaaay too expensive. Way.
Absolutely right- the Cerberus is too expensive. That’s on purpose, and we will dial down the price once the fans play with this thing and find out if its broken one way or the other, kind of like the Inferno right now. That being said, 215 is probably a bit too cheap for this. The combinations of firepower this ship is capable of delivering, meaning how it behaves when massed or in a fleet setting, is far more valuable than the Smotherman values of its weapons would suggest. Regardless of the formula, it’s carrying a LOT of firepower for a single cruiser hull, most vividly illustrated by the Slaughter itself. Slaughters are cheap more because of how odd they are compared to the rest of the Chaos fleet as opposed to the range of firepower they deliver. Getting close to a Slaughter, especially more than one, is bad news for anybody, and its cheap cost and fast speed make these one of the best bargains in the entire game.
So, a summary of recommended changes:
Inferno: Name changed to Annihilation(!). Ranges dropped to 45cm, turrets dropped to 2, price dropped to 180 pts.
We need to fix this ship before anything else. Secondly, if we change the name from Inferno, I would prefer it to be a name favored by the fan that created the profile as long as it fits the Chaos theme (meaning Pillager is still out!). For reasons I stated before, this ship will be no less than 190 points.
Devastation: lance range dropped to 45cm. (Not a part of this document, but I feel it's necessary and at the very least ships should be balanced against a 45cm broadside Dev rather than against a 60cm one, so it should be kept in mind when considering costs and capabilities of other ships.)
You already know my thoughts on this. Agreed to an extent, but there are much bigger fish to fry at the moment.
Hecate: broadside WBs dropped to str 4. Fluff restored to Chaos upgrade (refitted Annihilation).
The Hecate profile adjustment is easy, and I don’t have an objection to a dumbed-down Chaos HC that ends up being a bit cheaper in the process. The fluff however isn’t going to change. Chaos can’t design cruisers, nor can they refit them so heavily that they create entirely new classes in the process. If it’s one thing made abundantly clear in fluff, it’s that the Eye of Terror is exceedingly resource-poor, and on top of that Chaos relies almost entirely on slave labor for everything they do (demons are great with blight swords but do rather poorly with spanners, spin-lathes and the like). A Warmaster with the wherewithal to bend what few resources he has at his disposal to this kind of an endeavor would for far less expense sortie out on a raid on one of the many reserve depots scattered around the EOT to board, re-activate and abscond off with another decommissioned warship, the same way Chaos gathered the vast majority of the capital ships they own currently.
Cerberus: Cost dropped massively. No more than 215 pts, more like 210 pts. And that's still a conservative estimate.
Yep! I don't know about 210-215 (yet), but the price will certainly come down from what it is now, especially if we end up tweaking the profile.
I’m not done commenting on all the replies by the way, but there are a LOT of replies so give me some time to get it all sorted. Thanks…
- Nate