Not looking at the document but 1 lb strike cruisers is as it must be. Why?
Following is the line of thinking sig, adm d'art, rcg, I and others had:
- The standard variant has 2 shields per standard.
- Assault variant with more lb
Yep, standard Strike cruisers have only one bay. An older concept of what would make the Strike Cruiser viable was on the lines of swapping -1 LB for +1 shield.
Since this does limit the SMs AC potential, the compromise was that they would be able to make an Assault Variant, with a LB on each side of the vessel instead of their weapons batteries.
Armageddon is still incorrect. You increased the Batteries but not the lances to 45.
Vanguard...shouldn't it have 2 LB's?
My bad.
Nope, the Vanguard is meant to be a cheaper strike cruiser it gains:
+1 turret
-10 points cheaper
+1wb each side
+4 torpedoes
It loses:
-1 shield
-str.3 prow Bombardment cannon
-fewer options
Fairly balanced I hope, I thought it was a little on the cheap end when I had it at 130 (the Forgeworld Stats), and I think Horizon or Admiral D said something a while back. Now at 130, and looking at this exchange comparison....I'm wondering if the vessel should be returned to 130. You could say that the loss of the shield is 'about equal' to the 10 points and the turret benefit, and the bombardment cannon (1BCFP=2wbeq), roughly means a loss of 5 Concentrated firepower on the sides. With the torps it is roughly equal to the front, and there is some advantage of having a vessel with torps and launch bays.
So we can say that the vessel is losing '4' firepower over what it should.... I think I will reduce it back to 130.
@Andrew
I think the Hydra is a viable vessel, as the Dominator has less comparable firepower at 170pts.... though it is longer ranged, it is only str 8. That said, 30 to 45cm range value exchange is about 33% This means that 4fp at 30cm is about equivalent to 3fp@45cm in 'value'. So 8fp@45=10.7@30. Since this is a smallish reduction I think I had made a mistake on the 'reduction' values of each option. Because of this I will make the reduction for this firepower exchange 5 points instead of 10. To compensate, the Nova Cannon loss will be worth -15pts.
Now comparing the Hydra to the Dominator, hmm.... well the Dominator has 10.7 'value' of firepower, and the Hydra has 11.3. This difference of .6 is close to reasonable for the range disparity, but since this is not likely to provide you much benefit, we can take the average of if it had only 30cm batteries, and the theory calculation. So (10+11.32)/2=10.66 versus the 10.664 of the Dominator.
The vessels are perfectly balanced relative to each other, at least in theory. Players will likely have a slight preference for the Dominator, but this is fine.
On that note I am considering removing the Gothic as an option from the Warden's fleet, to try to further influence players to use the two standard 'Ultima' fleet cruisers. However a more reasonable solution would be to return it and the lunar to 180 points in the fleet, whilst still reducing their torp strength. This would allow for consistency between the datasheet and the fleet list, as I'm certain that is something that will be asked often....
@ Horizon,
I remembered my reasons for removing the IN escorts from the Admech fleet, it's along the same lines as the removal of RSVs.
Basically the IN escorts can't be balanced vs. the SM escorts on a 5 point increment. Since the SM escorts are 5 points cheaper, due to their loss of SMs, they are substantially better than the IN escorts.
