Archive through September 28, 2008
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Omega and LMC Tournament Ships:
Archive through September 28, 2008
Concerning integrating Omega TCs with Alpha TCs:
Learning new rules is fine by me. The issue as I see it is that there are about 3 times as many weapons and special systems rules that are used for Omega ships as there are for Alpha ships. Heck, there are close to a dozen different phaser types alone! So the average tourney player who is not familiar with Omega would only know about 25% of these rules and would have to learn the other 75% of them. That's a heckuva lot of rules!
Again, that doesn't bother me much because I'm familiar with Omega. But for somebody just getting into the game that has to be a daunting task.
Ken,
Are the Omega and/or Magellanic TC files available anywhere in electronic format? I have the Omega ones in SFT but it would sure be nice if the mood struck to play these to have ones to print out. This is perhaps more appropriately a Petrick question but I thought I would ask since you were in charge of the W&W thing.
Thanks,
Ken
I sat and watched the Maesron vs. ISC fight on SFBOL for the first turn and it was intriguing enough for me to go buy the Omega Master Rulebook.
After reading through some of it, learning the new weapons isn't really that hard. There's tons of new phasers, but they can all be figured out with a quick glance at the phaser table. Many of the heavy weapons aren't that hard, either. There's only a few of the races which have really weird things going on (like the Ryn), but it's really not much different than learning the Andro rules.
I'd like to see more TCs for these races, balanced to be comparable to the Alpha quadrant foes.
Izzy, congradulations on your purchase of the Omega Master Rulebook.
The Souldra and Branthadan are also really wierd races too.
There is certainly a lot of variety in the Omega stuff.
Ken Burnside, I understand the issue about the Omega ships requiring 30 warp against plasma.
But do they really need 30 warp? 26 may be just enough, or maybe 28 is the magic number or maybe they really do need 30.
It's too soon to tell.
Barry:
An Omega ship with 26 warp can have a maximum HET speed of 22, rather than 26. That's a HUGE difference in the "dodge plasma" dynamic. They'd need something pretty good to make up for that weakness.
I do think they should be in the 38-40 power regime overall.
Ken,
If you go over the talkshoe program from last night. It was decided that the Omega ships will not mix and match with Alphas.
So, Omega TCs will just play against other Omega TCs. Which all have 26 warp.
So, the only plasma players out there are Trobrin and Probr.
Both of those ships should be up and functional within the next few days.
The Trobrin has 1 heavy torp and 2 light torps. The light torps really don't do that much damage at any range, and as for the heavy, well the alphas are going to have trouble running from that too because it implodes at range 1.
Also, against Trobrin, with no pseudos and no fast load option, weaseling may be a decent option.
As for the Probr, well they have 64 speed plasma, against that, 22 isn't much worse than 26.
As always the only true test is combat.
There is one bonus to everybody being slower. The standard tournament map just got bigger. So somebody like the Maesron who has Tachyon Guns which are really good at sniping have more time to run and reload.
I consider the Souldra and Sigs to also be "plasma type" races. It would be interesting to see a Sig ship that won't get hunted down and clobbered by just about anyone within a few turns on a tourney map.
"If you go over the talkshoe program from last night. It was decided that the Omega ships will not mix and match with Alphas. "
I wnet and found the Talkshoe episode. It was interesting to hear, but there really wasn't any discussion on the subject.
"So, Omega TCs will just play against other Omega TCs."
This statement will cause me to lose any interest in Omega. Sad.
I honestly believe that you can easily make TCs for most of the Omega races that are balanced with all the Alpha TCs, yet still retain all their flavor. In fact, I already have some designs in mind that would work very well.
Izzy,
I would certainly be interested in seeing those designs.
They don't need to be pictorial, just let me know the stats.
The updated Masesron, Trobrin, and Koligahr ships are live and ready for playtest.
Andy, I reread your post from a couple of nights ago and understand where your coming from.
While I understand that the year of intro for some of the modules I'm talking about are in the X2 era according to the rulebook.
I would think that the missiles proposed here are far inferior to the old X2 rules proposed drones.
The old X2 rules and i'm looking for Zeus's thunderbolt to strike me down for even bringing them up, had the following characteristics.
Launchers could launch 2 drones per turn with 8 impulse delay between launches.
Launchers could hold 8 spaces of drones.
1 space drones had 24 point warhead speed 32 and armor of 8.
For an effective firing rate of 4 times the tachyon missiles here, with drones that are 75% as good as effective.
These are powerful drones, but if you look at the whole package including launch limits and other restrictions, it's not as powerful as it looks.
Put this another way. If I could substitute out the 2 tachyon missile launchers for the same drone launchers and loadout as a kzinti minus the scatterpack, I'd take the Kzinti any day.
Now I know that it's 2 launchers versus 4, but I was trying to bring the tourney cruiser up to par with a minimum of changes between it and the standard heavy cruiser as published in the SSD book.
"If you go over the talkshoe program from last night. It was decided that the Omega ships will not mix and match with Alphas. "
That's unfortunate. And pointless, really. If you want a set of Omega cruisers that are balanced against each other, the Maesron, Koligahr, Vari, Probr, Chlorophon, Loriyill, Ymatrian, FRA and Singer CAs are all pretty close in BPV as they are. The Drex BD is pretty evenly matched against them (if you allow -1 shift and realize that its BPV should be higher), the Hivers can use a BC with 2xB2, the Iridani can take a BQ with a WPM, the Worb have their DH, and the Bolosco can take a GC with a battle pod. The Alunda CA is a tad strong (way strong with WT) but would probably work.
The only ones that don't have an entry are the Trobrin (CA is too strong), Sigs (a hopeless race anyway), Souldra (technology is very weird, will be hard to balance), Ryn (ditto), Branthodon (ditto), and Qixa (too weak outside cloud).
Andy... Please work with me here...
The Omegas might be close to the alphas... I'm not delibertly trying to make them that far off.
And nothing would prevent anybody from doing an omega alpha battle.
My point is, at 26 warp, it's going to be very difficult to balance against Alpha Quadrant. If you're not going to try balancing against AQ, then 26 warp is fine, but
1. That takes away a lot of interest from the Omega TCs.
2. The CAs for most of the Omega races are balanced as is - no need to create special TC variants. You're set on the non-weird races, with the sole exception of the Trobrin.
Andy.... I'll tell you what...
There is a an old issue of Star Fleet Times #45 that has a 11 SSDs for 30 warp Omega ships...
When I get most of the Omega ships posted based on 24 warp for Omega only Tourney play. I'll go back and do those 11 SSDs for Alpha play as playtest only.
If you have a copy of those SSDs, you can look them over. The orginal couple of ships I did were used those SSDs.
I don't know if any of those SSDs had any playtest on them prior to publication.
I do know that the 30 Warp Trobrin was unbeatable in even semi-skilled hands.
Note that the Maesron SSD does not mention the Tachyon Missile loadouts at all.
"There is a an old issue of Star Fleet Times #45 that has a 11 SSDs for 30 warp Omega ships..."
I went back and looked at those now that I have the rules to go with all the new systems. Most of them actually look pretty close to balanced.
"I do know that the 30 Warp Trobrin was unbeatable in even semi-skilled hands. "
This one is definitely unbalanced, and it has nothing to do with the fact that it had 30 warp. Imagine a Gorn with 2 less P-1s, and 2 S-torps that can only be bolted. In exchange, it gets to replace the two F-torps with a S-torp and 2 G-torp equivalents, gets the hull of a Hydran, and gets the armor of a TKE. The thing has more first pass firepower than an overloaded LDR, and the hull and armor to survive even the more severe strikes.
I'd definitely say these ships were never playtested.
Izzy... Actually I think they tend to be on the strong side... The Koligahr is definitly up there.
Imagine a Fed with ACG which is a really good drone/fighter defense system and 40 power... Not to mention phasers that chew up plasma. That is the Koligahr.
The Maesron would be like the fed with 2 drone racks even with more toned down tachyon missiles.
Not sure about the Probr, but I think it would kick ass too.
As for the Trobrin, those bolts are much more accurate than standard bolted torps.
We are still debating what to do with Omega 30 warp cruisers.
Well Scott and I finished our Kol versus Trobrin battle.. This is with the 26 warp versions of the ships.
The earlier parts of this battle are detailed earlier in this thread.
Any case, I hit the wall late in turn 3 to stop my ship. And Scott ended up with his tail turned to me.
Turn 4, I had a implosion bolt and 1 heavy torp ready. My phasers had taken down most of his rear shield on turn 3.
Started repairing the destroyed implosion bolt.
Any case impulse 1, fired the 2 360 P1R and the bolt. Rolled an 11 so the bolt missed. Any case he still had a few points left on the shield.
He was moving speed 12 and I was moving 10 chasing after him.
I had 2 shuttles out and they fired their phasers as they cycled and I fired the 2 LS P1R as they cycled doing about 7 internals.
Continued to chase scott and he started turning to the left to keep the down shield away from me.
Got to range 3 when he didn't move the following impulse and launched the heavy at him. It moved twice before hitting his damaged #6 shield. Did another 7 internals.
Continued going past him and nailed him for another 7 internals with the RX P3 from range 1 on his down #4.
At that point scott called the game. He had taken too much damage and I was directly behind him.
Although the following turn, I only had the light torps as an overrun deterrent.
Scott's feeling is that the Kol is a bit weak.
Or maybe the Trobrin is still too powerful...
It's too soon to tell.
Finished up the first battle with the new Trobrin Light Cruiser 31 speed ship.
This one took the previous heavy and reduced power, ship, MC down to 2/3, and the heavy torp is completely gone.
However, I added 4 armor and brought the side torps back up to medium size.
This ship is a flying eggshell. With only 12 weapons in the worst possible padding configuration. Anything that gets through the shields and armor is going to quickly reduce the ship to the point where it can't fight.
It is possible although highly improbable for 6 internals from the FA arc to take out half the heavy weapons and 2/3 of the heavy phasers on the ship!
Any case I played against Sweeper in the Fed TCC.
Turn 1, we got to range 5 centerline to centerline and exchanged alphas.
The Fed connected with 1 photon and putz'd with the phasers which took out about 2/3 of the front shield.
The Trobrin hit with both implosion bolts and of course the radiation phasers are auto. Total damage was 49 which crushed the front shield and did a few internals. Trobrin also fired the left side torp.
Next impulse, Trobrin turned left and Fed HET'd away.
Turn 2, that torp struck the #4 shield for about 7 points of damage. Trobrin followed and fired the right side torp which also hit the #4 shield with some chaser phasers did a few more internals.
Turn 3, Trobrin managed to hit with a fast load Implosion bolt on the rear shield doing another 14 internals. Fed managed to get in a shot hitting with 1 photon and poor phaser rolls.
Turn 4, The Trobrin hit with the 4th Implosion Bolt in a row on a badly damaged front shield. Combined with rad phasers, this reduced the Fed to 2 phasers and 3 photons and major loss of power. Fed conceded at that point.
Analysis:
Fed racked up the internals while the Trobrin didn't take a single internal. Didn't even take any armor damage.
While that would seem to indicate the Trobrin is very overpowered, Fed had some of the worst dice rolling possible. Hitting with 2 out of 7 photons fired. Also, the phaser rolls were even worse.
Trobrin hit 4 out of 4 times with the implosion bolts. Everything else on the ship is diceless.
Strategy on both sides was fairly unoptimal, in that Fed should never let a Trobrin centerline him and Trobrin should not have gotten into range 8 on the first firing pass. If Fed had hit with 2 more photons and had average phaser rolls, the Trobrin probably would have lost at that point.
So, it's too soon to tell if this ship is balanced yet.
In my defense, until that battle, I've neither played as or against any Omega ship. I wasn't too sure what kind of tactics to use on Barry, I chose a standard move in, Alpha and turn off to reload. Lady Luck was not with me as I rolled very crappy all game and it started with the 1st alpha and went down hill from there.
I HETed to get distance from him while he launched a Imploding torpedo to chase me. At the start of Turn 2, I phasered it down before it hit, but not before I'd let it slip behind me into a blind spot so my 5-6 ph1s couldn't hit before it got to Range 1 where it exploded on my #4 shield. For the rest of the turn, we both did big loops, myself to get a good FA shot when my phots where reloaded on T3, and Barry to get his other torp in arc. The damage he did to me includes a phot, both ph3s, and some engines, but the fat helped a lot by absorbing a good chunk of the damage. But it was enough to start slowing me down during heavy arming.
Barry got his other launcher into arc and let another torp fly. This caused me to turn away and extend to distance even more. At R2, I turned away and fire some phasers at the torp. It turns out that turning away was a mistake as he maneuvered the torp on to my #4 again. I had to use 5 points of reserve power to prevent any penetration, so Barry follows up with some long range radiation phaser up the kilt shots as it were which is taken by some more hull and destroying my aux control. The rest of the turn is continuation of manuvering for a good shot at each other. I try to keep him on the oblique so he can't get a #1 shield hit, which I had put some minor repairs on to get it up.
On the start of Turn 4, I had 3 phots at OL-16 and a newly repaired tube, (which Barry reminded me to fix after 2 turns) on 1st urn arming. I plotted spd 12, rein my 5 and 6 shield and started to creep towards him, hoping he'd get into Range 8, we did eventually and let fly again. he'd managed to pierce my #1 aging and stripped me of weapon while had yet to get through his shields. I surrendered.
All in all, the Trobin TCL is a nasty customer as it can bring at least half of it's overpowered weapons in any direction, so getting close bring Overloads into play can be trying at best, especially when you take into consideration auto hit nature of the radiation phasers. Though if you do get through it's protection, it's glass jaw comes into play and you can strip it of weapons very quickly.
It is what I'd call a 'Killer Walnut', nasty at saber-dance range (R9-15 for those of you wondering 
), down right lethal at Overload ranges, and will crack like a walnut if you hit it to hard.
Against Direct Dudes like the Fed and the Hydran will be hard pressed if they don't know what a Trobin can do. The Seeker crowd, especially a competent Kzinti, can really put a hurting on the Trobin as, while it has nasty weapons, it doesn't have many and can be overwhelmed quickly by Drone swarms.
Barry is right when he says he need more testing. His next opponent should be a seeker player who knows what the TCL can do.
Well, that's my 50 cents.
Joshua,
Your analysis is dead on. While you were writing this. I was engaged in my second battle with this ship against Ogar. Ogar took the TD7 Klingon. His dice rolling was better than yours, but I was a little more careful about maintaining range. Again I was rolling very hot and my implosion bolts were in can't miss mode.
On Impulse 1.10 his scatter pack let loose and I was able to maintain enough speed to keep away from the drones. Although they spent about 40 impulses total at range 1.
In this game the Trobrin just didn't have the power to keep re-arming the phasers. And Trobrins need to use P1 against drones since their P3 are all but useless against the drones.
Any case, I found that the sweet spot range with this ship is 9 and due to the weapon arcs, it's not that hard to get to range 9 and turn off preventing range 8. On the last turn of the game with the klingon, he did manage to run into range 3 near the beginning of the turn.
Unfortuantely, he fired his disruptors impulse 31 of the previous turn. So, I got an unreturned shot on his down front shield with both IB and 4 rad phaser 1.
At that point, I had blown off almost all his phasers and trashed his ship. He was running straight at me when I fired a medium torp at range 3 towards his down front shield for the coup-de-grasse.
Final analysis, is the Trobrin destroyed another ship without even getting it's shields punched.
What i'm thinking of doing is changing the firing arcs of the 2 bolts to FH and converting one of them to a light torp.
Part of the problem I see with trying to balance and test the Omega ships is that there aren't that many Omega Players as there are Alpha players. I suppose I'm as much to blame as the rest. I only bought O1 and never had much desire to buy the rest. Now I'm pretty sure that the new tourny ships will start to turn that around as time goes by. It's not helping now though. :-/
Hi Barry,
I would be glad to help playtest some Omega TCs. After I finish up with RAT27, I might have some time to do so.
Andy,
Thank you. It's difficult getting people to playtest these things.
Chalk up another win for the Trobrin playtest CL.
This one was against _ZNARG in the Neotholian. I actually missed with a Implosion Bolt ;)
I'm not sure why, but everybody seems to want to eat Implosion Torps. Nobody is running them out.
I'm going to swap out the two IB for one IB FH and one torp FH for the next game on the CL hull.
It sounds like people need to develop their anti-Trobrin tactics. The IT is a pretty short-ranged weapon. While the range-1 detonation makes it impossible to juke, it's not hard to just run it out.