My thoughts on BFGR

[Talos]

@Sigoroth I find myself agreeing with you on the grand cruisers.

Wow...I go away for a weekend and this happens. I find myself pretty damn disappointed with this community, particularly certain individuals who are deliberately filibuster-ing the entire procedure.

BFG:R obviously means different things to different people, and I get that. We all do. This is a community project, in terms of the fact that everyone has a voice. But what I really hate about the current situation is that everyone seems to think that they can just step in and overhaul the entire system of voting and discussion. Whilst everyone seems content to poke and prod at afterimagedan, constantly complaining about the scope of the project and his methodology, I remember how this started. Quite a while back already, me and Thane had been sifting through the scrapyard of disjointed rules that BFG:R was at the time of Plaxor's era, looking for rules and additions to improve our game. Out of nowhere this guy, afterimagedan comments that it's pretty sad that we have to pick through the failed remnants of a great project. I remember thinking, "Who the hell is THIS guy?"

Soon afterwards, the ball starts rolling. Dan gets community interest in the project, implements a very functional and robust voting system and gets in contact with people who can effectively edit and compile the documents as we finish them. He is the entire reason this project is reborn, and pretty much the only thing pushing it forwards thanks to the petty dissension that is threatening to strangle this child in the womb. So why the hell should I care if his name comes first in the credits, if he is technically in charge, despite the fact that he has not went against a single community decision or edit? It may be a community effort, but I love how there are so many fools here that think they deserve equal credit to him. Where were these simpletons when BFG:R was wallowing in its shallow grave? Where were they when he put in the hours to make this happen? Complaining, that's what.

I have the highest respect for the HA, I really do. But if they wanted to get involved they would have. Why should we surrender our right to vote on these decisions to a couple of elected discussion moderators/tyrants when we have a (fairly slow) but functional system? Vaaish seems pretty keen to hand over the reins of the project over to the HA, even though the HA has never shown any interest in any rule set after FAQ 2010, knowing that GW would never approve anything if not that hallowed document. But the truth is, afterimagedan may not be the leader of this or the dictator in chief, but he is the director at the very least, a coordinator if you will. If he wants to hand it off to the HA, then fine, that's his choice. But it's pretty disgusting that people are trying to enforce anything of the sort on him, like a bunch of lapdogs hoping for some of the crumbs of glory that this project will leave in his absence (a hilarious notion, to say the least).

People are free to make their own projects, and they can be equally good. I know that, even if I disagree with Vaaish on pretty much everything, if he were to start and develop his own project I would be right behind him.

TL;DR This is a community project, but as the guy who does all the freakin' work, afterimagedan gets to decide the scope and direction of it. Want to be that guy? The start your own project.

@horizon Despite the harsh words this is within forum acceptability limits, yes? If not PM me and I will edit any offensive words.

[horizon]

Aside of all the dramaqueens, and "who-has-the-biggest...-prow" talkings all is well.

So that's good.

[Talos]

I don't like to brag, but if you must know the retribution's prow is based off of my own, but due to ineffective energy transfer it had to be downgraded to retain its functionality. Such is the price of having superior size and durability...you are doomed to tower above your contemporaries.

[afterimagedan]

Thanks Horizon. Glad to know you can have some conflict on these forums and not be criticized by a moderator...   

[Vaaish]

Care to explain this?

Sorry, I was referencing the pre-FAQ2010 rule. The updated rule itself is fine giving the BM instead of the crit but I think the ship becomes too reliable since it has a natural 60cm range and no longer requires LO to fire that far.

Prior to the update no one wanted to fire past 30cm because of the crit damage. With just the change to BM when firing there isn't as big of a deterrent but you still have to decide if it's worth trying due to the lock on constraint and your LD value since failing would require a reroll or end any other SO that turn. Now it requires little thought. If something is out at 60cm, go ahead and shoot it, at worst you are aren't going to be able to turn and you have 3 shields. Why even bother with the added rule for firing past 30 at this point?

In it's prime the Apoc was a long range gunship, but at this point it's long past those days and has suboptimal ranges with moments of the former glory.

The dorsal WB increase is for a couple of reasons. Firstly, all the original BBs with dorsal WBs had a pitiful strength. Nowhere near the parity with the lance option. This is terrible as a constraint. So, in effect, some ship or other needed to have at least 9WB dorsal to establish the proper precedent. In the case of the Victory one can account it as a suboptimal BB. The Emperor and Oberon are only carriers and so don't need the extra guns. The Desolator is a fast BB and has CB level firepower anyway. The Apocalypse however is a pure gunship and is meant to be able to compete with the Retribution in terms of firepower. So changing this to 9 establishes a proper precedent and brings it in-line with upgraded Retribution.

Ok, I can see the reasoning here, but out of curiosity did you consider that the Retribution was the odd man out with too much dorsal firepower since, counting dorsal arms only, all of the remaining IN BB have s5-6 WB to the Ret s9wb equivalent?

As for the CGs, well one of the things that bugged the hell outta me was that they had no dorsal or prow weapons.

So things kinda snowballed off course? Looking at the models though they do have that odd double decker weapons configuration and very little space on the spine for weapons emplacements. It kind of seems like the the dorsal arms got shifted outboard and above the regular weapons emplacements.

[Bessemer]

@Talos-wow...now THAT'S a rant!

But he does have a point. I'm a newcomer to the whole forum thing (BFGR being the reason I finally took the plunge), however, I've been a lurker long enough to see the presence of an "old guard". This is never good. Has anyone even heard from the HA in recent years? Do they even WANT the title any-more?

I know a big complaint on BFGR is that some stuff isn't getting tested thoroughly, but a playtesting log is up for use! Get stuff posted, get it discussed, get it stamped/fixed. That is a better way than endless brow-beating! I wish I could do more, but things get in the way, you know work, sleep...little things

As for the GC's Hardpoints, I think the idea was to have two decks per side rather than than the standard side-side-top-front format. I think they tried to go for the characterful route than anything else.

[Seahawk]

BFG:FRE has a nice ring to it. "Fan-made Remake Edition."

Makes it totally obvious what it actually is for the new and old players alike. No confusion, no muss, no fuss.

[Talos]

@ Bessemer Thank you? I think?

I think the idea behind this GC is that they are older vessels, and you will note they are very similar in design to vessels from the age of sail. Exception is the repulsive, but they go into great detail in the RT core book explaining how its an anomaly, not the norm. Of course, in that book a GC would have about 50% more firepower per broadside, and although I have not examined their stats closely/recently I don't think they are quite that high, which is odd considering they have twice the components per side in BFG.

[Vaaish]

@talos the vengeance CG line represent gap in the evolution between the old style IN (now chaos) ships and the modern armored prows.

[Talos]

@Vaaish I am aware of that, but thank you. I was referring more to the actual design rather than the fluff behind said design.

[BaronIveagh]

Where were these simpletons when BFG:R was wallowing in its shallow grave?

Well, some of us were made unwelcome enough that we left.  Others had it made clear by plaxor and certain other posters involved that our input was unwanted in this project.

Dan is probably not guilty of anything, but picking up BFG:R comes with a lot of baggage as well, and not all of it was in plaxor's design decisions and I can see why no one took it up for some time.

[Talos]

Not very familiar with plaxor or his cronies (sorry plaxor ), since I was not into BFG back in the day, but I am merely illustrating that voting and discussing is easy. Dan gets to choose the direction and scope because he does all the hard work.

Despite my harsh words, I don't mean that everyone is stupid just because they did not resurrect BFG themselves. It's a monumental endeavour and I think Dan should get some credit for it, that's all.

[Sigoroth]

Sorry, I was referencing the pre-FAQ2010 rule. The updated rule itself is fine giving the BM instead of the crit but I think the ship becomes too reliable since it has a natural 60cm range and no longer requires LO to fire that far.

Prior to the update no one wanted to fire past 30cm because of the crit damage. With just the change to BM when firing there isn't as big of a deterrent but you still have to decide if it's worth trying due to the lock on constraint and your LD value since failing would require a reroll or end any other SO that turn. Now it requires little thought. If something is out at 60cm, go ahead and shoot it, at worst you are aren't going to be able to turn and you have 3 shields. Why even bother with the added rule for firing past 30 at this point?

Alright, so the issue seems to be not the effects of the crit/bm since the BM idea fits somewhere between the original (ow!) crit and the updated (yawn) crit. Your sticking point seems to be the "thrill" of wondering whether or not you're going to get to shoot this turn.

This uncertainty absolutely had to go. The Apocalypse used to be just plain rubbish. Total garbage. Originally you had to worry about whether you would be able to hit anything at all and even then you got punished by taking a point damage. This got slightly better with the 2010 FAQ in that the crit wouldn't hurt you and since it only took effect at over 45cm it was so inconsequential they may as well have just removed it altogether.

You still couldn't be sure your 365 pt flagship was going to decimate your enemy or just act like a paperweight instead. If you adopt an approach designed to take advantage of the 60cm range then chances are you're going to need to shoot at >30cm. But you need to be locked on in order to get off a single shot. Of course you actually want to be locked on, but what if you failed a RO check earlier and don't even get a chance to attempt it. What if you get a chance to attempt it but just fail. The consequence of a normal ship failing its lock-on attempt is that it only has roughly 67% of the firepower it could have had. The Apocalypse dropped to like 16% effective firepower. Way too harsh.

Note: If you lose fire from this rule even once (that's 6 lances lost!) then you've basically lost 2 turns worth of locking-on (locking on gives ~+3 lances worth of fire).

Let's compare the 365 pt original Apocalypse sans-crit to the 345 pt original Retribution. Torps/NC is a lock, no appreciable difference. Assuming both took the same approach and managed to LO the Apocalypse has 3 lances vs the Retributions 6WBs. That's a decent gain. Then again, the Apocalypse is 20 pts more expensive and the 12WB Ret was a piece of poo. But moving on. Now consider if they don't manage to LO. The Ret gets 3L and 6WB over the Apocalypse. As well as being 20 pts cheaper. Oh, and it's faster. This last minor fact allows the Retribution to manoeuvre under fire and increases its ability to close with the enemy and use its offside guns.

So the original Apoc didn't even compare all that well against the crappy Ret, even when we totally remove the effect of the crit. This is because it was too unreliable.

Now, let's say we kept the unreliability for the BFG:R version. What would we have to do to make it viable? Well, let's say we up the speed, that way it can be used as a linebreaker like the Ret and its range would be more incidental. So then we have an artillery ship (NC) closing with the enemy at full speed. Hmm. Ok. It costs more than a Ret. It has shorter natural range, but longer potential range. Hmm. So, what we'd really have to do to keep the unreliable range increase is drop its cost, up its speed and give it torps instead of a NC. Blech.

It's safe to say that I, for one, can't stand the variable range rule. But you brought up 2 issues. One was your preference for the variable range, which I have been discussing, and the other was the consequence of the current rule. You reckon that without the variable range there is no practical downside and the BM rule may as well just be dumped, right?

I can't help but think that you've underestimated the consequences of that one BM. Sure, when you're looking at extreme range then it's hard to imagine the enemy having sufficient long range fire to be able to really capitalise on that BM. I mean, presumably they'll be shooting at something though, right? So maybe they'll take a shot at one of your 2 shield cruisers or maybe they'll take a shot at your 3 shield BB instead. It's only 1 shield the difference and it might be worth it simply for brace effects, ie, either you're not going to brace your BB because it has a higher crippling threshold and extra shield (in which case they might get more hull hits than shooting at a softer target) or you will brace it (in which case they made you brace a significant portion of your fleet). Either way, you're pretty much locked on course since you can't turn naturally.

However, leaving extreme range aside, how does the BM rule come into play when your enemy isn't 60cm away but is instead, say, 33cm away? Sure you can shoot at them, but their movement next turn could potentially put 1 or more ships into close range of you, depending on their speed and approach. So while losing that one shield may not matter too much at 60cm range it will certainly have an impact when you're looking at the business end of a couple of locked-on Slaughters at close range into your aft. Particularly since you're not likely to be turning to bring guns to bear on your next turn.

In effect the BM rule allows you to choose between 2 different profiles for your ship. You can choose a 3s, 10cm, 0 turns, 6L@60cm ship or a 4s, 15cm, 1 turn, 6L@30cm ship.

Ok, I can see the reasoning here, but out of curiosity did you consider that the Retribution was the odd man out with too much dorsal firepower since, counting dorsal arms only, all of the remaining IN BB have s5-6 WB to the Ret s9wb equivalent?

I'll start out with a pet peeve of mine, slightly off-topic. The strength 5WBs of the Emp/Oberon is anethema to me. I can see having suboptimal guns on these carriers, that's fine. But to me the dorsal guns should have been strength 6. Given the prow antenna array I'd have accepted strength 4 there, giving the same total of 10, but 5 is really quite a weird choice. [ /rant]

That out of the way, and to answer your question, yes I did consider it. However, when you look at the the dorsal lances of the IN and Chaos CBs you'll note that not only is it just a natural progression to increase to strength 3 for a BB, since a BB "should" have greater firepower than a CB, but also those CBs actually have better firepower than the WB armed BBs. We all know that 2L is roughly worth 6WB, but that only holds true up to 30cm. Beyond that the lances are considerably better. So a Hades or Armageddon has a flat out better dorsal weapon than every IN BB except for the "odd man out" Retribution. That seems backwards to me.

Also, the Retribution is not the only ship to have 3 dorsal lances. Both the Despoiler and the Repulsive also have 3 dorsal lances (albeit at a somewhat truncated range on the latter). So while I can get behind the notion of some ships having subpar dorsal weaponry for reasons such as being "just a carrier" (Emp/Oberon) or being a light battleship (Desolator/Victory), I can't get behind the notion of "oh, it's a BB with dorsal WBs, sorry WBs are limited to 6".

So things kinda snowballed off course? Looking at the models though they do have that odd double decker weapons configuration and very little space on the spine for weapons emplacements. It kind of seems like the the dorsal arms got shifted outboard and above the regular weapons emplacements.

Yeah, snowballed as usual. And yeah, design considerations could be a justification for their bare tops. However there is still ample room for at least CB level firepower, even if at suboptimal strength/range due to power requirements, etc. These ships were all mothballed and the IN did try to bring them out of mothballs, so I would imagine that the most obvious way to make them worthy for active duty would be to try some sort of dorsal weapon refit ala Lunar -> Armageddon.