List of flawed ships

[Plaxor]

Reserves are ONLY allowed with your opponents permission. The 1/3 system is just way simpler and less confusing than official rules. Yes, you could do it to get more cruisers... thematically there is no problem, as according to Horizon, the 12 cruiser represents the average number of cruisers in a sector, so these 'reserves' from another sector wouldn't be subject to that.


Not to mention the fact that reserves have -1 LD, a substantial enough reason not to want to take them regularly. Certain fleets are allowed to take 'types' of reserves without the opponents permission, such as Bakka being able to take Admech stuff, or Bastions taking Chaos ships. Naturally these would either count as reserves or allies depending.


Note that allies may not use fleet commander re-rolls and are subject to the 'mercenary' rule. Which means that they must disengage if reduced to 1 or 2 hits.

Races are:
IN
SM
Admech
Chaos
Daemons
Tau
Eldar
Dark Eldar
Necrons
Nids
Demiurg/Kroot

Naturally any fleet which takes vessels from a fleet list of the same race, those vessels count as reserves. Any fleet which takes vessels from another race, counts as allies. Simple as that.

I think that these two corrections (the -1 leadership, and mercenaries) work perfectly thematically, and make it less of an issue with destroying fleet lists. It still allows it to be possible if someone wanted to run a mixed fleet for whatever reason. Given the opponents permission.

Blast markers work at D6+X, I had a bunch of different options, that one worked best. D6 never really seemed like too little at 500-750 points, it always seemed about right. It's just at 1500 it's tiring and pointless when you have upwards of 50 bms on the table. After about 30 we usually don't bother placing or removing them unless they are necessary to denote shield loss.

Given the only fleet this really hurts is Demiurg, who love sucking up BMs. Although their cutting beams were not really so useful until the HA decided on the half&double thing. I might playtest it with demiurg, but I haven't taken them out of their box in a while.

Oh and RC, you are only allowed to take reserves/allies from one other list EVER. So you couldn't take say.... both Ships from the Inquisition, and ones from space marines in your IN fleet. Or reserve vessels in Bastions as well as reserves from Segmentum Solar. Etc.

On that note, you are always allowed to take reserves/allies so long as your list explicitly says so. So every fleet has access to RTs/Demiurg, Inquisition etc. You still are only allowed to take 1 ally/reserves. Which I guess would bring back in the specific inquisitors into the Inquisition doc. Basically each type would allow a different kind of 'extra' reserve to be taken..... Hrmmmm.... Meaning that with a Xenos one you could take demiurg/kroot allies as well, with a witchhunter you could take RT allies as well (but not xenos escorts). Daemonhunter would allow GK strike cruisers?

Something to think about I guess.

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

FP18@45 cm Retribution for 355 points? Seriously?

[lastspartacus]

Agreed, why the price hike?

[Taggerung]

RCGothic thinks that is a fair price...by some fucked up logic

[Sigoroth]

It's not really a price hike, it's actually a reduction. The Ret came out at 365 pts and its competitor, the Emperor, was 345 pts. If the Ret was 18WB@45cm to start with it would never have been swapped. The Ret would have been a good enough ship that the Emperor wouldn't have been the automatic inclusion and there wouldn't have been so many complaints about the Ret. So compared to this it's a price decrease. The swap in costs was meant to fix these problems. The only problem it really addressed was people thinking the Emperor was way too cheap. The conflicted design of the Ret was still a major problem. Without that major problem paying 365 pts wasn't really a problem. in fact, making it cheaper was not part of anyone's solution. Some (me included) said just make it 18WBs, some said 15, some said 18@45cm. What we got was the price swap.

Consider a line-breaking cruiser, such as a Lunar. Now drop its firepower to just 2L broadside. How much would you knock off the price? 20 pts? Would you use this ship? This is effectively what the Ret was.

Compare the Ret to a Desolator. Prow armour vs speed, range/stand-off role vs line-breaking and massive increase in firepower. Surely worth 55 pts? Off-side firepower (massive) much more likely to be used, prow torps much more likely to be used, significantly outguns the Desolator at <45cm.

Compare to an Apocalypse. Increased speed, which is used, no downside rules for fulfilling role and the same focusable and offside firepower. The firepower on the Apoc is better at range and that of the Ret is better up close, which plays to their roles. The torps of the Ret are really more powerful than the NC of the Apoc and will likely end up doing as much or more hull damage across the course of the game while playing to the role of the ship. All this while being 10 pts cheaper ... and it should be cheaper still?

To put it another way, given the original Ret at 365 pts and original Emperor at 345 pts, would you have argued that there should have been a change to the Ret to 18WB@45cm along with a cost reduction of 20 pts and an increase for the Emperor of 20 pts? Because if we left the Ret at 345 that's what we'd have been arguing. I think that stance is far more ambitious than anyone would have owned up to. So I think that a 10 pt increase is actually a conservative estimate.

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

345 points is fair for me. I don't see why it should go up to 355.

[Taggerung]

The original Retribution is at 345 pts...and even when using smotherman it comes at 345 pts...Where in the world are you getting 365 pts??

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

The original, original Retribution was at 365 points. They switched it out when the online PDF came out.

[Taggerung]

Ah, ya I was using what is on the GW website.

[Sigoroth]

The original Retribution is at 345 pts...and even when using smotherman it comes at 345 pts...Where in the world are you getting 365 pts??

Look, Smotherman is shit. Any argument along the lines of "according to Smotherman ..." just won't fly with me.

[Taggerung]

That's fine, I don't need to convince you of anything, because I don't care about your opinion. Your rationalization is biased and wrong, so come up with a better argument than that BS you put up earlier.

In the end it doesn't matter...If I ever did use a Ret BB I would use it at 345, and not the 355 because that cost is flat out wrong.

[lastspartacus]

I think the correct statement on Smotherman is exactly between the two above extremes.  Calling Smotherman BS is patently false, because it is based on a very real and repeatable system throughout the creation of ships in the rules, and cannot be discounted.  At the same time, it is a rough estimate, and sometimes can be way off since it does not factor in things such as fleet strengths/weaknesses and such.
Its a tool.

[horizon]

When I determine a ship cost I usually would take the two closest ships in layout, determine the difference, use smotherman and bfg point fluxes (eg NC as an option is 20pts) to get the value. Then min/max on jist and normally add 5-10 pts on top.



edit:
@ RcGothic:
Keep blastmarker removal as written in the rules.
(Of course re-install the original bm rules when in contact with vessels ).


Perhaps some may find me a bit conservative regarding rules but it is that I like this game as is a lot. Changes to core mechanics should be kept at a slow pace and with thought.
Changing point values (the intention of the thread) is encouraged. If masses decide against my idea of a point value then I'm fine with that.

[RCgothic]

The Retribution is fine at 355pts for exactly the reasons Sigoroth has presented. And don't put this all on me - it was unanimously agreed by at least five of us when we first discussed the ship. It's getting a 50% increase in broadside firepower and none of you think that's worth 10pts?

Smotherman's values are way off, particularly on battleship weaponry. It was built on the premise that all ships were fairly costed, and because the original overlord/retribution were so horribly overcosted/undergunned and paid such a premium for long range, Smotherman had to value them as though they were correct. They're clearly NOT correct - there's simply no way a mere 15cm extra range in a region where all WBs suffer a Right Column Shift are worth 50% more than WBs at 45cm. This is probably why Admiral's throwing such a fit over this, because in his view we haven't changed anything and just slapped a price hike on - this is most definitely not the case. The Retribution is now significantly more powerful and suited to its role than it was - its absolute value has gone up way more than the 10pts reflected in the price.

The fact Smotherman has given a value within 10pts is downright miraculous anyway! It's not bad as a way to put a rough figure on the absolute price of a completely new concept ship, but the best way to value a ship similar to other ships is to compare them to each other; compared to the other battleships the Retribution compares pretty well.

[Admiral_d_Artagnan]

The Retribution is fine at 355pts for exactly the reasons Sigoroth has presented. And don't put this all on me - it was unanimously agreed by at least five of us when we first discussed the ship. It's getting a 50% increase in broadside firepower and none of you think that's worth 10pts?

No. And to repeat myself, I am not just using Smotherman, contrary to what you might think about me. Long before you came to these boards, I already proposed the FP18@45cm for the Ret even before I confirmed that it came out at that value using Smotherman. This was shortly before the time they swapped points when the Ret was at 365. Before the more recent Smotherman PDF came about. I and many others already pointed out then that the Ret was overcosted. While I am not claiming that I caused the changes to be made, I already was using the FP18@45cm for my Ret and that it should really be at least 10 points cheaper. I was happy when they swapped the points of the Emp and Ret with their original profiles. I was only happier to know that 345 was spot on when the Smotherman PDF came out.

Your views on Smotherman are just like Smotherman itself which is not absolute but rather assumptions and allowances made. As noted, Smotherman is a tool. The Retribution is OVERCOSTED at 355 with FP18@45cm. It is FINE at 345.