If you could make an Imperial ship legal, which one(s) would it be?

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

280 vs 220. Sorry, still not worth it.

[horizon]

So, how do we improve the Defiant?

I think drop the lances. Make it 6wb batteries.
Drop point value by..... 30.... it is a 1:1 with the Endeavour, thus restricted.

[lastspartacus]

Didnt you just make it an endevour?

And the Defiant iirc is the one with the bays.  So confused now

[horizon]

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.

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

FP6 WB. The other variants only have FP2 WB though adding Str 2 torps. Personally, I'd just give it Str 6 torps for a pure RO ship and keep the pointage.

[flybywire-E2C]

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

[lastspartacus]

To be clear, is the optional 6+ armor/45 turn an alternate option you intend to include, or is that just saying one or the other will see the final draft?  It would be interesting to see something like 'some voss patterns were given additional armor on their prows, though this hampered their ability to rapidly turn.'

[RCgothic]

S4 torps on the Endeavour and Endurance welcome - optional 6+/45' does make them more like mini cruisers. Had a couple good games with the new rules last night, even though the Endurance isn't really to my taste and I'm left a little bit bemused by the S2 WB, but it still performed well.

The continued restriction of the Defiant and Endurance is unwelcome though. You buy ships to fill a role - roles that the Endeavour doesn't share. This will always make them deeply unattractive to me. Why so tied to this method of restriction anyway? If you want to make them rare variants, why not 1 per X points? That way you can still take them to fill their role, and keep them rare and denying the ability to spam them. Restriction of this kind works for Tau, because you're given a points break if you take the restricted escorts compared to not taking them, and there's always room for escorts in a list. It doesn't work for cruisers.

I also think the Defiant needs a little more help than just a points break. Its 2 lances are pitifully weak, and against 2 turrets its AC roll just 2 attacks on average - not enough to reliably score even one hit. In fact, mine didn't do any hits past shields last night. Its best use is to provide a CAP for two other cruisers, but at 120pts it's expensive for that, even without including the price of the mandatory Endeavour.

[flybywire-E2C]

To be clear, is the optional 6+ armor/45 turn an alternate option you intend to include, or is that just saying one or the other will see the final draft?  It would be interesting to see something like 'some voss patterns were given additional armor on their prows, though this hampered their ability to rapidly turn.'

Yes, the option is for it to be something exactly like this. the Rogue Trader Draft has something similar now in the notes for the CL.

- Nate

[lastspartacus]

The Defiant, in my opinion, is still inferior even at the same points.  Because it is essentially missing a hardpoint on each side.  Could it have its AC go up to 4, or gain a lance or str3 weapon battery on the sides?
Still leaves it with less hardpoints than a dictator.

[RCgothic]

What about giving it S4 bays, fighters only?

[flybywire-E2C]

S4 torps on the Endeavour and Endurance welcome - optional 6+/45' does make them more like mini cruisers. Had a couple good games with the new rules last night, even though the Endurance isn't really to my taste and I'm left a little bit bemused by the S2 WB, but it still performed well.

The continued restriction of the Defiant and Endurance is unwelcome though. You buy ships to fill a role - roles that the Endeavour doesn't share. This will always make them deeply unattractive to me. Why so tied to this method of restriction anyway? If you want to make them rare variants, why not 1 per X points? That way you can still take them to fill their role, and keep them rare and denying the ability to spam them. Restriction of this kind works for Tau, because you're given a points break if you take the restricted escorts compared to not taking them, and there's always room for escorts in a list. It doesn't work for cruisers.

I also think the Defiant needs a little more help than just a points break. Its 2 lances are pitifully weak, and against 2 turrets its AC roll just 2 attacks on average - not enough to reliably score even one hit. In fact, mine didn't do any hits past shields last night. Its best use is to provide a CAP for two other cruisers, but at 120pts it's expensive for that, even without including the price of the mandatory Endeavour.

By design, the Defiant was only intended to provide support for the other ships. We most certainly did NOT want this to have a third prow lance because three L/F/R lances would make this ship ridiculous. If you think about it, in most situations 2 lances and a bomber is going to do about as much damage as 2 lances and 2 guns (Endurance). The strength is not in this ship on its own, but how it fits into the fleet.

Remember, it's easy to think of this in a ship to ship setting. Tweaking points and profiles in an individula ship is easy, but when you are only talking about >150 points to start with, small differences add up to a LOT. For example, even with the -10 point deduction it's easy to say a Defiant sucks for the points because for +100 points I get a full up Dictator with more turrets, shields and more than double weapons. However, pretend for a moment the restriction is gone and a player ONLY takes max-fleet, meaning a 1500-point fleet made up of only 12 Defiants. Now we have a fleet that can come up line-abreast with enough ordy to keep itself covered, then go abeam with 24 lances and 24 launch bays. Granted there are many 1500-point fleets that can exceed this for launch bays if you go max-carrier, but it's hard to exceed this AND have 12 capital ships on the table (with 72 total HP's), which is a force multiplier in and of itself.

While I understand their utility, I really dislike basing my arguments on slide-rule and calculator gaming. The Defiant has ALWAYS worked for 120 points. We made it 130 at the time because we purposely wanted this ship to be rarer. As Sigoroth likes to point out every now and again, using points to make a ship rare is a crappy mechanic so blame me for being a dingbat.

On that note, there's nothing wrong for using overpriced points to make a ship rarer, but experience has taught me this is a mechanic to be used for one-off vessels, NOT ships we're trying to incorporate in a fleet. What do I mean? Making the Defiant overpriced was a mistake. On the other hand, I have a single Jovian that I like because it's cool and I like the fluff. Should it be an official ship? Probably not- it doesn't fit well into the larger Imperial storyline for a fleet that is moving away from attack craft in favor of torpedoes. As a one-off ship however it's really neat, and for the privilige I price it at 275- the same cost of a Styx. For the record, a 6+ prow is NOT worth giving up prow weapons and -5cm speed, but that's the premium I pay for using a ship I like that doesn't plug well into official canon, and in any case I only have one in a 7000+ point Imperial fleet.

- Nate

[RCgothic]

So why not the 1 (Defiant &/OR Endurance) per Xpts mechanic I mentioned? If you want it to be rare, that seems like the way to go. It would also eliminate the spam you just mentioned.

You also say you want it to be a support ship - well, it has next to no ability to do that! A wave of 2 AC is far weaker per attack craft than a wave of 4, because turrets take a proportionally greater toll. It can protect itself and only one other ship at the same time with its fighters.

In addition, whilst a normal cruiser gets 4 LBs for trading in its broadsides, the Defiant gets a mere 2. You are effectively saying that S2 F/L/R Lances are equivalent to 3WB from each broadside, 2 F/L/R WBs and a S4 Torp Spread. They aren't. I completely agree with you that S3 F/L/R lances are out of the question, but what about S4 F/L/R WBs and a S4 Torp Salvo? It needs something extra. Even without bombers, S4 LBs and a prow armament similar to its cousins would give it a unique fleet support role.

It's horribly undergunned. Even before taking into account the mandatory Endeavour* I don't think any price break could help the Defiant.

*Please please find a more sensible way of limiting it than tying it to another ship. There are alternatives to a price hike or a mandatory Endeavour.

[flybywire-E2C]

What about giving it S4 bays, fighters only?

This was playtested in the past. What we ended up with was a purely defensive ship with almost no offensive capability whatsoever, which goes against anything themeful for this fleet. We also tried 4 normal launch bays as well (basically a cut-down Dictator), but this ended up making the ship too powerful compared to the other variants.

- Nate

[RCgothic]

Again, I completely agree that it shouldn't have 4 regular bays.

But you say that with S4 fighters it was a completely defensive ship - With an average of 2 attack rolls vs a T2 target with its S2 AC, that doesn't really strike me as being a great deal better. The other variants will roll 3 attacks on average vs the same target with their torps alone, let alone their vastly better weapons fit.

It needs more. Either more weapons, or more of a support role. S4 Fighters, S2 F/L/R Lances, S4 Torps, or something along those lines.