Hi Sigoroth! Not all of the changes to were done with the HA's input! That being said, I am really interested in hearing why you think the Armageddon should be brought down to 235. From much of the feedback I have seen, it is MUCH better than an Overlord for the same price, even without the 60cm WB's. I'm not saying we're not going to entertain it, I just want to hear your thoughts.
Separately, I agree the Oberon should not have been dumbed down, though the logic is sound- the ship is supposed to be OLD. I can bring this up with the HA's. Ray's back so he may already be reading this as well.
I especially want to address the Voss cruisers, but I will address that separately as a reply to another one of your posts.
- Nate
The Oberon range upgrade option is fine. I wouldn't mind it as a forced upgrade, but to me that's what it would be anyway. I see no use in the ship as it stands.
You're right that the Armageddon is much better than the Overlord. This, however, is because the Overlord is utter rubbish. Let's take a base cruiser with 12WB@30cmL+R and 6 prow torps for 180 pts. Add dorsal lances - 210 pts. Increase range of broadsides to 45cm - 225 pts (this is cheaper than if given the option to upgrade, because of the forced choice). Now, increase the range again, this time to 60cm but drop the strength down to 8. If this were optional I'd say that it should cost nothing. However I, and a lot of other players, would prefer the 12WB@45cm version, so I'd say that if this were a forced choice it should actually bring the price down to 220 pts. Now you can add another 5 pts just to cover any possible undercosting, bringing us back to 225 pts maximum. Of course, I still wouldn't take it because of how useless its firepower is.
For the Armageddon, let's take a Lunar (180), add dorsal lances (210), extend range to 45cm (230), add 5 pts for error = 235 pts. Basically there should only be a 5 pt difference between an Armageddon and a 12WB@45cmL+R Overlord (because lances are better at range). The 8WB@60cmL+R Overlord is crapper though, so the larger break.
If I were to make the range upgrades on the Armageddon optional I would simply make the base ship cost 215 pts with dorsal lances (error included), allow the WBs to be upgraded for 10 pts and the lances for 15 pts. Even this one is cheaper than the current incarnation.
Sigoroth, before I say anything else, I received your off-line reply yesterday, and it’s too bad theire’s no emoticon here for ROFL LMAO!!! It’s nice to know you’re carefully monitoring your vegemite intake! Also, PLEASE feel free to keep kicking my @$$ and keeping me honest. I expect nothing less. I much prefer a reasoned argument that COMPLETELY and passionately disagrees with me any day of the week instead of, “the HA’s are all stupid, they don’t care about the fans, they’re ruining the game and can all go kick rocks, I'm not going to use anything they produce and may even quit ever playing the game anymore!†without even giving a chance to the rule changes simply because they disagreed with the HA’s or we didn’t take their suggestion onboard.
…even if I
am stupid and can go kick rocks!
(so what if I'm stupid?)
In any case, your above analysis makes good sense, but one of the reasons I hate using the Smotherman formula for anything other than a soft baseline is because it does not account for how ships behave in a given fleet. A classic example is the Dauntless. Going by the Smotherman formula the Dauntless doesn’t seem that far out of balance, but the way its firepower is distributed on the ship makes this guy awesome for the points considering how it fits in an IN fleet.
By design, IN vessels are supposed to have shorter arms than Chaos, and 60cm weapons are supposed to be reserved for battleships in the Imperial Navy. This is what makes the Overlord the oddball- it’s the only cruiser-weight ship in the whole IN with 60cm batteries, and that’s where the point premium comes into play. If you consider the ship to be 2/3 a Retribution (or technically a tad less than that once you start counting shields & turrets), the points make much more sense. You are right that at range, 8WB’s aren’t rolling a lot of dice; at best it will do good to drop a BM on the enemy past 45cm before its lances go to work. However, when you consider the IN does best to go prow-on until it can cross the T, then the Overlord comes into its own when reaching out at the enemy’s prows, and when doing so it’s the only IN cruiser in the fleet that can gun on with the battleships it is supporting. (Which brings us back to the Oberon…)
As for the Voss ships, they cost two thirds of a line cruiser. So let's see what two thirds of a line cruiser would be:
Hits - 5.33
Speed - 20cm
Turns - 45°
Shields - 1.33
Armour - 6+/5+
Turrets - 1.33
Prow Torps - 4 F
P+S WBs - 8 L+R
Compared to the stats above the Voss has +0.67 hits, +0.67 turrets, -0.33 shields, -6+ prow, +45° turns, -2 torps, -2WBs (offside)
So, assuming that we do a straight swap of armour for turn rate, equalising these two attributes, do you think the loss of firepower and shielding (slight) makes up for the slight raise in hits/turrets (less than 1 in each case)? I think the rounding up of the turret makes up for rounding down the shields. I don't think that the +0.67 hits comes close to making up for 2 torps and 2 offside WBs (given it's a line-breaking ship after all).
Did I mention how much I hate slide-rule profiling?!? How a ship fits into a fleet incorporates far more than its weapons loadout and hull characteristics. The fact that the IN has access to exceedingly cheap cruisers comes with a premium in and of itself.
So, from a balance perspective, if you're going to add another shield I don't think it should cost anything, since the Voss would still be overpriced at 6+ prow and 45° turns.
I believe the 90° turn is far more justified than the 2nd shield. For a start, it's a cruiser in miniature. One would presume that better handling would simply be a natural consequence of the lowered mass. The 2nd shield is unprecedented on an IN CL. Not saying that it isn't doable, or that 90° turn rate is unavoidable, just that the former is harder to justify than the latter.
Actually, a second shield is perfectly justifiable if the ship is going to be a line-breaker and a “cruiser but smaller†immersed in the gun line as opposed to an “escort but bigger†such as the Dauntless, designed to be a fleet greyhound or escort patrol leader for lonely patrols, running pirates down, scouting missions where it may have to male a quick getaway, etc.
So you know, we are examining several options with the Voss ships right now, one of which being the ship getting the 6+ prow for free (meaning no change in turn rate). I personally don’t like this outcome, but the stark reality is the Endeavor/Endurance are fantastic ships that are never going to get their due as long as the Dauntless remains a better deal for the point cost, which in the larger scheme is what really needs to be addressed.
As for being a "small cruiser" as opposed to "large escort" I get this in terms of its role. But what I want to know is, just what do these ships bring to the line? If they're identical in capabilities but smaller then what was the point of the IN making them in the first place? I would have thought that they'd have made them so that they could act in the line, but also to cover the weak spots of the IN line. I would have thought this would have been the entire point of making the ship in the first place. Huzzah for the 90°/6+ prow Voss!
I addressed this somewhat in the line above, but immersed in this paragraph is a $10k question: “what was the point of the IN making them in the first place?â€
Does anyone notice no restriction was ever placed on how many Dauntless or Endeavor CL’s a fleet is allowed to have? From a fluff perspective, the Imperium is vast, far more so than can possibly be patrolled with any regularity, and entire sub-sectors sometimes go generations without the visit of a single capital ship of the Imperial Navy. Light cruisers are intended to fill this gap by being cheap capital ships with relatively undemanding weapon systems that can be built by secondary yards in considerable numbers. These are typically sent out in pairs or at best with a few escorts tossed in as under-strength cruiser-destroyer groups on lonely patrols through systems at risk from or frequented by pirates and such, freeing larger capital ships for the many wars the Imperium is engaged in at any one time.
Fluff is great, but here’s the real scoop. From a game (and model-selling) standpoint, the Dauntless was created as a counterpoint to the fact that ship-for-ship, Chaos capital ships are intentionally cheaper than their IN counterparts. Before BFG proved itself to be popular soon after 2000, the intention was for the four core fleets to be all that was developed for the game, with Orks and Eldar never intended to be more than peripheral components of a rule-set that was supposed to center around the conflict between Imperials and Chaos in general and the 12th Black Crusade in the Gothic Sector in particular.
Because the game actually did prove to be popular, the decision was made to expand the game beyond the Gothic Sector. This proved to be a bit difficult for several reasons. Think about it- for all the threat Chaos poses to the Imperium (and they do, no doubt), in the larger scheme of things Chaos is but one of several grave threats the Imperium faces at any given moment. In reality, the Eye of Terror (and to a smaller extent the Maelstrom) is the only real bastion of Chaos in the whole galaxy; everywhere else they exist only as small, isolated bands or lonely flotillas that become a threat only by cutting off remote systems or by subverting pre-existing Imperial authority. Even at the Eye of Terror, Chaos only holds firm to one actual forge world and whatever shipyards they managed to hold onto after the 13th Black Crusade, and in sum their resources are but a tiny fraction of the Imperium’s. For example, the first Armageddon War was between Chaos and the Imperium, but that entire war was waged from the Chaos side primarily from a single Space Hulk.
In the larger scheme of things, Chaos isn’t even the Imperium’s biggest threat. The Orks assail the Imperium in several different warzones at any given moment, each one as large as the Waagh! of Armageddon (what made Armageddon so significant was its importance to the Imperium as a linchpin of several different forgeworlds, the presence in the system of St. Jowen’s Dock and its vital shipyards and repair facilities, and not least its proximity to Holy Terra). The Tyranids are becoming an even greater threat; so far the only significant victory the Imperium has gained against their encroaching advance that didn’t cost the Exterminatus of a system was at Maccrage, and even that was at the expense of nearly an entire battlefleet. The list of threats go on and on, and the game can be expanded ad infinitum to an extent as varied and encompassing as Wh40k itself.
- Nate
