The reason the old Bakka list was never made official is because it was crap. A very large portion of this crap came from FDTs. Either way, I see no reason for all this bitching that the new Bakka list isn't like the old Bakka list. If this Bakka list was like the old one it wouldn't become official. Because the old one was crap!
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Just out of curiousity, what is your fleet list when using Bakka's original list? Same request also for you Baron, if you don't mind. Maybe from there we can produce something that can get back the Bakka feel.
Mine is Dauntless X3, Endeavour X 2, Hammer of Scaro (yes, it's blue), Enforcer X3, Cardinal, Gothic and firestorms.
Dauntless' supporting heavy ships. People have been using that formula outside of Bakka for years.
Hmm.. I think I see part of the problem then: The Dauntless' don't support the heavy ships, the heavy ships support the Daunt in a bakka fleet. It's backwards to how a regular IN list works. Put forming line out of your mind, think Nelson at Trafalgar or Perry in the latter phases at Put-in-Bay. The heavy ships are there for the coup de grace. Close rapidly, blast at close range with WB and torps, then hit them with massed lance fire. Looking at the Baron's list it looks like he goes torp heavy. Basically it's a trade for a much bigger intial shock for more kills over time with lances.
I will say that without FDT the Dauntless' get chewed up too badly against carrier heavy opponents, even massing turrets. With FDT you can effectively mass during the movement phase, which means that the usual trick of trying to put waves of AC in the Dauntless' path of movement doesn't work. You end up spending all your LBs on fighters to clear the way for th ships rather then clear the way for torp attacks.
I think it's a good alternative as well. I think you are limited to buying just one turret for 10 points right now which I agree is a bit expensive since the fleet is supposed to be about better ordnance defenses and the 10 point cost seems to push people away from bulking up the defenses rather than pulling them to boost it.
The problem is that we're working within some rather strict guidelines. The two options that the HA has given us are Add Turrets at disgusting cost, which is not going to work, or Take FDT, which does work as originally written (reducing bombers) but seems to generate random amounts of hate.
Personally, I like how FDT used to work, and think it's the better solution of the two. The problem with additional turrets is that not every class has two turrets. Some have 1, some have 3. If you give a 1 turret ship +1, you've improved it somewhat, if you give a 3 turret ship +1 you're pretty much creating a monster as far as AC goes.
The Endeavour and Endurance will not really work as flak ships. They're too slow, and too easy to kill. Against, for example, a decent AC heavy Chaos fleet, they'll most likely be torn apart, because at these speeds they'd have to move in front of the fleet, making them easy to pick off with 60cm fire and leave the rest of the fleet flapping in the breeze. Worse, they won't be able to respond quickly to changing situations with AC, and so would be easy to fake out into going in the wrong direction.
