What I meant with 1:1
To take a Defiant you need to take an Endeavour first.
So that is already an 'extra cost' for the Defiant. It cannot be taken freely. Thus when both ships would be equal one would need to pay less for the restricted ship to balance it out.
Yes, we're listening, so much so that instead of working on Orks this weekend, we ran three play-test battles. One was yet another SM's vs. Chaos battle to make sure we had that down right.
The rest of the weekend was spent tweaking the Endeavor. Everyone here posted multitudinous arguments as to why the Endeavor and its variants were broken, but the one I picked up on more than any other was the simplest argument: for the points, the Dauntless is simply a better ship so why would anyone pay +10 points for a ship that is inferior? I happen to like these ships and find them to be effective in a fleet setting so that was never my view- point values have more to do (or at least should have more to do) with how a ship behaves in a fleet setting than simply comparing one ship to another. However, that's all besides the point. If a model is too expensive for the points and a cheaper and better alternative exists, who will use it?
I took this to heart, as these three models were the first model profiles designed entirely by the HA's. The inspiration was the Siluria CL, essentially surplus Spacefleet Tyrant models from the Mail Order Archive. How did GW know BFG needed a cool new CL model? Spacefeet Tyrants were sitting in stock gathering dust for the better part of a decade, then sold out within two months of Planet Killer magazine's coming out.
Andy and Matt showed us the model and gave us broad brushstrokes, with the only guidance being they should be more expensive than a Dauntless because they were supposed to be older and represent "cruisers but smaller" as opposed to "escorts but bigger." That was it. We saw the model and play-tested profiles, with me going so far as to scratch-build a Dauntless hull to make the first Endeavor. Ray and I fought over the profiles, Bob thought of the cool names (the Defiant name was mine!) and we cobbled together what became these three ships.
The play-test battles were 8 against 8 CL's, as follows:
4x Dauntless (torp)
4x Dauntless (lances)
2x Cobra
1x Firestorm (I would have preferred 3x Cobras, but I wanted the points to be exactly equal for the play-tests)
vs.
4x Endeavor
2x Endurance
2x Defiant
The first play-test last weekend was with the variants getting an extra shield. What came up was Sigoroth's biggest complaint- the ships became too resilient compared to the Dauntless. 6+ armor and 90deg turns together turned into the same problem but for a completely different reason that DIDN'T come up in the play-test but came up in a game yesterday: Endeavors with 6+ prows and 90deg turns together gain the capability to come in line-abreast with the bigger ships, then quickly go abeam and use their broadsides far more effectively than the larger cruuisers. More importantly, they can present an abeam aspect to enemies far more easily than regular cruisers can, which is too much like escort behavior vs. cruiser behavior and is a potent ability in and of itself. I can see why Tau might need this because their broadsides suck on purpose, but Imperials shouldn't have this capability in a ship that is supposed to behave as a cruiser.
The last play-test proved to be REALLY balanced, so much so that we will probably play it again to make sure its properly tweaked, then play-test it in a fleet setting (with and against larger ships) to see how it behaves. Here's what we did for the last play-test:
4x Dauntless (torp)
4x Dauntless (lances)
2x Firestorm
vs.
4x Endeavor (6+armor, 45deg turns, 4 torps)
2x Endurance (6+armor, 45deg turns, 4 torps)
2x Defiant (no profile change, -10 point drop)
Adding two torps to the Endeavor and Endurance really gave these ships a much better feel than the other proposals (6+ prow with 90deg turns OR a second shield). This now really does make the ships worth the extra +10 points over a Dauntless. The problem was the Defiant: there really wasn't any way to properly tweak this ship without completely starting from scratch, and this ship isn't so broken as to warrant a complete re-write. Instead, we left it as-is and dropped the points to make it the same as the others.
Anyway, here's the proposal on the street:
Endeavor: 120 points (4 torps, optional 6+armor/45deg turns)
Endurance: 120 points (4 torps, optional 6+armor/45deg turns)
Defiant: 120 points (no profile change, optional 6+armor/45deg turns, -10 point drop)
BTW- you still need one Endeavor for every Endurance or Defiant in your fleet. That is intentional.
Before completely shooting this down, PLEASE actually play-test this. Real gaming will reveal behaviors that you will never see crunching numbers and playing with a slide rule. Thoughts?
- Nate