That nails the coffin shut for the strike cruiser lb/shield conundrum. Great little cruiser for 145 points.... As well as the BB having 4 shields/turrets. I know that there was demand for a cost increase, so I've set this at +15 points (or 440), any objections?
Oh, sorry Baron, I feel for you, and if I were thinking only from an Ork standpoint then.... but this is a group thing and they had a unified idea of what they wanted with numerical reasoning behind it.
Also the avenger, we had 4 votes for 190 and 3 votes for 210. I can't remember who voted what, but I kinda made the executive decision and made a compromise. Which held true with my maths. This vessel will be playtested at this value, and if it still sucks... well then we can talk about it more.
Also the RSV got deleted. Thoughts on the Gladius and Nova, well they are decent, but not great, they still die like Swords.
Anyways an analysis of the two:
Gladius: it has sm rules (basically slightly better resistance to ABs, and slightly higher Ld), and +5cm speed for 10 points on the sword... I think that a 5 point reduction is justifiable.
Nova: For +15 points on the Firestorm, it gets FLR on it's lance, and +10 cm speed as well as sm rules, it loses however a turret. This is kinda a big deal in the escort world. So a 5 point deduction makes sense.
One of the goals of this project is to make escorts as appealing as is reasonable. So many fleets go without them (about half of IN fleets from previous research), but all the fluff describes them as being ubiquitous. This wasn't just due to the AB thing, a cruiser can take hits and not lose firepower, has longer range, more total firepower, although this may not be situated in the optimal arc etc.