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
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. 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
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) 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
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.
Personally, I think that option 1 (reverting the Tyrant) is the option to go with (I always did like the split Tyrant profile...
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) 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
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