BFG:R—Tyrants versus Dominators

[Thinking Stone]

One last post (to avoid over-stimulating the flock of loyal BFGers! ).

I was recently reading through the BFG:R Imperial fleet list and I saw the changes to the Tyrant. I recall it being the, er, runt of the list so it's nice to see it have a beefed up profile! However, as someone who took the Dominator because of its Fp 12 weapons batteries, I worry that there might now be a bit too much role overlap between the two.

If I read correctly, a Tyrant is 180 pts, +20 pts for a Nova cannon and +10 pts for S10 45 cm broadsides.
A Dominator is 190 pts, -5 pts for S6 45 cm broadsides.

So, the comparison: a Tyrant with nova and S12 broadsides is 200 pts. A Dominator with nova and S12 broadsides is 190 pts. Essentially the same ship, different points.

And with range adjustments: Tyrant with Nova and 45 cm S10 is 210 pts. Dominator with Nova and 45 cm S6 is 185 pts. This price difference seems more reasonable.

But the problem remains: the Dominator and the nova-Tyrant basically serve the same role! I suppose that since the Dominator is only in 1 fleet in BFG:R (I think) it serves a niche role as the 'cheap nova ship' but I think the Dominator perhaps deserves some fleshing out if it and the Tyrant both stay. Although, I always did kind of like the two tiers of Tyrant weapons batteries... the background is not quite accurate with the single battery range now .

Anyway was just wondering if anyone had thought about the issue! Food for thought:
Thinking Stone

[AndrewChristlieb]

I play pretty extensively with the Tyrant and have been pretty happy with it, but I agree that the roles are too similar now. I think the Tyrant should go back to its 4@45/6@30, or 6@45/4@30 if people still have an issue with the 45's being worthless on that profile, for the same 180.

[Jimmy Zimms]

^^^this^^^

[afterimagedan]

So, the comparison: a Tyrant with nova and S12 broadsides is 200 pts. A Dominator with nova and S12 broadsides is 190 pts. Essentially the same ship, different points.

But the problem remains: the Dominator and the nova-Tyrant basically serve the same role! I suppose that since the Dominator is only in 1 fleet in BFG:R (I think) it serves a niche role as the 'cheap nova ship' but I think the Dominator perhaps deserves some fleshing out if it and the Tyrant both stay.

Personally, I like the Tyrant where it is now in BFG:R. I suppose I should argue why, but that discussion is something you can read earlier on in the forums. Currently, I am totally ok with the Dominator being the discount Tyrant with a NC in one of the fleets.

[Thinking Stone]

I knew I should have read through Vote 1 more thoroughly...! I haven't used many Tyrants so as long as they were looked after, I thought, "It'll all be okay!"

I guess if we look at the roles of each cruiser in the non-Revised rules, we see:
Dominator Features

• Nova cannon
• Heavy weapons batteries
• Short range

Tyrant Features

• Torpedoes
• Medium Range
• Respectable firepower
• Option for Nova cannon

Revised Tyrant Features

• Torpedoes
• Heavy Firepower
• Option for medium range & respectable firepower
• Option for Nova cannon

The revised Tyrant takes over heavy firepower as well as nova cannon availability, leaving the Dominator with 'Short Ranged' as its niche... just like every mundane Imperial cruiser . If the Dominator's only good point is that it's a cheap nova cannon (something the community wants to limit anyway due to memories of 6 nova templates killing battleships in 1 go) then why should it really be there according to the background? For the sake of 20 pts I don't think it's necessary to waste another 1/2 page of ink on a ship with no real gameplay enhancement (toner and ink are expensive!). Most fleets are stuck with small gaps anyway because the cheapest ships are ~30 pts (excepting Power Rams! Forgot their cheapness).

So, what I suggest is one of two solutions: revert the Tyrant (to the sadness of Afterimagedan and Sigoroth ) or make the Dominator unique.

Reverting the Tyrant (at least somewhat) is the easiest option, I think. It preserves the background. It preserves the two niches: Tyrant has medium range, Dominator has heavier firepower.
I would suggest that Dominators could take torpedoes this way ('The Stone of Thoughts suffered heavy damage to its Nova cannon array in the Archilangilean crusade and was refitted with a S6 torpedo launcher) OR that Tyrants (and maybe Lunars) lose the option for Nova cannon (which means the role that AndrewChristlieb uses Nova-Tyrants for is lost). Alternatively, some fleets might have access to the Nova option but not others?
The Tyrant could still get some upgunning if needed or the Dominator could get more guns to make it more unique. I guess the Tyrant could even be able to swap the Fp 6 battery with a S2 45 cm lance battery as an option?

Making the Dominator option unique means eliminating the current Dominator stat-line: essentially, the Tyrant takes on the role of the old Dominator entirely (could even make the Hammer shown in the rulebook a rare refit). We then need to make a new Dominator story and vessel: maybe it could be a battlecruiser? Or say that the Nova cannon on the miniature is actually a mega-lance array? With some firepower on the broadsides, it could be like a larger Dauntless, which might be interesting... but possibly too Chaotic as well .

Personally, I think that option 1 (reverting the Tyrant) is the option to go with (I always did like the split Tyrant profile... ) but discussion is what makes this an interesting task. Are there other options people would like to go with instead? Are my options silly? Should one of the venerable cruisers be upgraded to battlecruiser?

Anyway, food for thought:
Thinking Stone

PS: Don't think that I spent time pre-preparing a long document here... this was just my thoughts after reading BFG:R Vote 1 and thinking a bit

[afterimagedan]

Personally, I don't think the lance variant would fly, because then you are in Lunar territory. I personally would like to see the Tyranid with the 12 30cm like it is in BFG:R currently, but drop the NC option. That would differentiate it from the Dominator.

[Thinking Stone]

Yea, I was thinking the lance variant would be really undergunned but might give it a nice role as longer range lances. But we do get into the problem of the Imperial navy: it's like ships are medieval nobles! Low ranking nobles (the grunt cruisers) get stuck with only commanding a regiment of peasants. As you go up, the next rank (battlecruisers) gets to command dismounted knights, infantry that really kill stuff but are still lowly infantry. The next rank is battleship/grand cruisers and these guys get the heavy cavalry regiment that always saves the day and gets all the glory!

Likewise, heavy firepower and medium range are the 'privileges' that 'higher class' Imperial ships get. So, if we give Tyrants and Dominators too much power, we start to tread on the battlecruiser toes. After all, if the Tyrant has Fp 12, how can we make the Dominator have meaningfully more Fp without being a grand/battle cruiser equivalent? And we can't just give out lance turrets to anyone because they firmly belong to battlecruisers and up! And of course, we can't give out stuff that would make the other iconic grunt cruisers lose out (e.g. launch bays are the Dictator's speciality, lances are the stuff of Lunars and Gothics etc.).

So maybe we should make the Dominator the only unrestricted ship with Nova cannon. Then we can upgrade the Dominator to have longer range, more guns, lances etc. (to take the roles of the other ships) but be more expensive and/or worse than the other cruisers. This would encourage players that want a cruiser Nova to take the Dominator despite its poorer characteristics and make nova cannons a bit rarer because less people would want to 'waste' a cruiser on the inferior Dominator. To keep historical versions alive, I suppose we could then put a hard limit on the number of nova-armed Lunars and Tyrants—the problem is, for normal fleets (1,500 pts-ish, BFG:R limit of 3 novas anyway), why would you not take one of these 'special character' ships?

As an alternative, I always thought it was really weird that the Dominator traded its Fp6 45 cm batteries for a whopping Fp12 battery! And that the Fp12 version was the standard one in the fleet list! Maybe if we make the 45 cm Fp 6 Dominator standard and introduce some kind of fleet limit to the number of nova cannon upgrades based on what list is being used? So restrict some fleets to only having > battlecruiser + Dominator nova cannons, and others to no Dominators but upgrading other cruisers to have nova? Probably would need a big 'carrot'/'lollypop'/'jellybaby' in the fleet with Dominators to get people to use it, like Grand Cruisers or something.

The real problem is the original overlap of the Tyrant and the Dominator! They look different in the rules (because of the two-tiered Tyrant, I guess...) but they have essentially the same model and you can make them essentially the same in the list! The only real difference was the medium range of the Tyrant and the implication that Tyrants with Nova cannon were somewhat rarer.

But I think that the range difference and lack of Nova cannon might be enough to separate them. That and starting the Dominator off with the Fp6 batteries (which surely represents the other fleets better?). Without the range difference, the Fp12 for both in the starting rules really makes them look the same. With the range difference and with Fp10, the Dominator and Nova-Tyrant are comparable for different reasons. If the Tyrant is to have Fp10 standard again, in my opinion it MUST have at least 4 Fp at 45 cm to show the difference in weapons batteries.

Anyway, sorry for unleashing the superflux of my mind!
Thinking Stone

[Thinking Stone]

So, a summary of the mega-post. 

I would prefer these starting profiles, personally:
Tyrant: Fp6 30 cm, Fp4 45 cm broadsides, S6 torpedo salvo.
Dominator: Fp6 45 cm broadsides, Nova cannon.

And these upgrades to be available:
Tyrant: Upgrade Fp6 30 cm batteries to Fp6 45 cm batteries. Upgrade torpedoes to Nova cannon.
Dominator: Upgrade Fp6 45 cm batteries to Fp12 30 cm. Upgrade Nova cannon to torpedoes.



More thinking also occurred between then and now... . 1. Assume 45 cm Fp4 battery looks the same as 30 cm Fp6 battery. 2. Assume batteries on Dominator and Tyrant are equivalent. 3. Surely the Dominator should have had Fp8 45 cm batteries in its original incarnation? And thus, would the Tyrant have a Fp8 broadside with the 45 cm range upgrades? If it had a Fp6 45 cm battery and a Fp6 30 cm battery, this would work out to Fp10 45 cm after upgrades.

And furthermore, just how common are these Chaos weapons batteries that the Tyrant steals to upgrade range? I mean, couldn't they have just stolen them off of reserve vessels...? This is the trade-off between mass-production and technological prowess I guess....

Thinking Stone

[AndrewChristlieb]

Well on the 45cm weapons batteries the swap from fp6@30 to fp4@45 should be free (+15cm range -2 firepower) The Tyrant then pays +10 pts to change its fp6 to 45cm (which seems pretty pricy when you think about it as your really paying 10 pts for 2 firepower :/).

I would agree tho that the Dominator should swap the 2 fp6 wbs@ 30cm for 2 fp4 wbs@ 45cm for free but meh...

[Khar]

What if we just made Tyrant's range upgrade mandatory?

That would give us fp12 30cm [+mandatory nova] Dominator for 190
and fp10 45cm Tyrant, also for 190. +nova for 20.

That makes them less like the same ship.

[afterimagedan]

One of the parts that made the current BFG:R Tyrant so appealing is that there is now an option for a 12wb cruiser that isn't stuck with a nova. We have the Gothic, which is all 30cm lances and torpedoes, yet the Tyrant is the only one that matches, and the Tyrant has almost always been seen as a bad option. Here are the options:

Lunar+Lunar (fine)
Gothic+Dominator (conflicting roles in the prow)
Gothic+Tyrant (Gothic wanting to be in close, Tyrant paying points for range and less firepower)

BFG:R can't make every wish come true, but it seems like enough people would not use the Tyrant because you are paying for decreased firepower. The range is nice, but not good enough. Making the Tyrant 12wb 30cm + torps makes it the perfect ship to be combined with a Gothic, and most believe that, in order to be effective with IN cruiser, you should take them in pairs. The old Tyrant has its uses; pairing it with an Armageddon for example. But I still thing the 12wb 30cm option makes it more appealing and also makes the Gothic more appealing.

[Vaaish]

I would support reverting the tyrant and reduce the points a bit.

[Casus belli]

One of the parts that made the current BFG:R Tyrant so appealing is that there is now an option for a 12wb cruiser that isn't stuck with a nova.

It sure looks appealing at first glance, but I think it may not be a good thing for the internal balance of the list. I remember looking through the BBB in the first few days after BFG was released. Back then I found the lack of a 12WB, 6 torp cruiser seemed to be a glaring hole in the IN list, not just based on stats, but on flavor. That just seemed to be the most aesthetically Imperial of all possible configurations, but the ship didn't exist. Of course this was a deliberate choice on the part of designers. We can't know exactly why they chose it that way, but I now think it was a wise choice as it resulted in a nice internal balance for IN.

IMO there should not be a "no-brainer" choice for a single ship, or for a pairing of ships. In BBB+FAQ2010, choosing IN cruisers requires some thought. In current BFG:R, the Tyrant-Gothic pairing is IMO a no-brainer choice. It doesn't suffer from the BFI problem of Lunar squadrons, or the staggered WB problem of un-squadroned Lunar pairs, or the confused forward firepower of the Gothic-Dominator pair.

I agree with Vaaish that it should probably go back to its original stats, with a point drop. It was thought to be underpowered originally, but IMO, the only correct response to underpowered stats is to drop the points cost accordingly and leave the stats themselves alone.

[horizon]

Hey,
I voted against the BFG:R Tyrant iirc so if there is a way...

I also agree that the best thing is to return to the original Tyrant and make it 180pts base cost.

[FistusMaximus]

Making the Tyrant 12wb 30cm + torps makes it the perfect ship to be combined with a Gothic, and most believe that, in order to be effective with IN cruiser, you should take them in pairs.

but would pairing a gothic (4 lances 30cm) and the 12wb 30cm tyrant not be the same as pairing two lunars...? (4 lances 30cm, 12wb 30cm...)  so where exactly would be the point...?