I saw the alternate (non-sanctioned) tournament medium cruiser for the ISC; and noticed that it seems to be (somewhat loosely) based on the kind of Pacification-era warships the Concordium used to try and keep the peace.

However, could a viable alternate be derived from one of the post-Andromedan "war" classes instead, such as the heavy war cruiser in R12? Perhaps as somehing which would forego the PPD in favour of a stronger (forward-facing) plasma output.

Granted, losing the PPD might take away some of its signature "ISC" identity, but there are plenty of plasma variants the Concordium have in service (and the rear-firing plasmas would still be a factor).

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Thursday, December 23, 2010 - 08:55 pm: Edit

Gary wrote:
>>However, could a viable alternate be derived from one of the post-Andromedan "war" classes instead, such as the heavy war cruiser in R12? Perhaps as somehing which would forego the PPD in favour of a stronger (forward-facing) plasma output.>>

You probably could, but I'm not convinced that it would be all that exciting.

I'd imagine that if you took the current ISC TC, replaced the the PPD and 2xG torps with 2xFH S torps, maybe doubled up the rear firing F torps (although keeping the "only 1 per turn at SC4+ ships), you'd have a reasonably viable ships--2xS torps, 4xF torps (with firing limits), 6xP1, 4xP3. But there isn't that much that such a ship would be offering the environment. A slight shade between a Romulan and a Gorn. I don't know that the environment needs another slightly different Big Plasma ship.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Friday, December 24, 2010 - 09:37 pm: Edit

I guess my thoughts were leaning more to one of the "war" classes, since they are one of the few really distinct hull types the unified Navy came up with.

That said, one could also look at the likes of the system cruisers (NCA/NCS) as an example; though unlike a "war" derivation, the system ships would have that bulge-induced speed cap to worry about.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Saturday, December 25, 2010 - 07:26 am: Edit

I 2nd the idea of 'we don't need more big plasma ships.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, December 26, 2010 - 10:02 am: Edit

Gary wrote:
>>That said, one could also look at the likes of the system cruisers (NCA/NCS) as an example; though unlike a "war" derivation, the system ships would have that bulge-induced speed cap to worry about.>>

Not being real familiar with the ISC war classes or NCA kinda ships (I remember seeing an ISC CW at some point, but off the top of my head, I don't know what is different between an ISC CW and a CL, for example), what do they have that makes them different than regular ISC ships such that they'd be interesting to add to the tournament environment? I'm not saying that they don't, I just don't have enough of an understanding of the new/war ISC ships to be able to judge.

By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Sunday, December 26, 2010 - 01:57 pm: Edit

Gary - Some basic rules of thumb here, since you don't actually play SFB tourney games that I'm aware of:

1) SFB tournament ships are built for balance across all matchups. It is not *perfect*, but it is surprisingly close. Any ship that wins too much gets toned down a nudge, any ship that wins too seldom will sometimes get a small upgrade.

2) Every time you add a ship to the SFB tournament set, you have to check its balance against all other TCs.

3) Anything with a 2/3 movement cost needs to be viewed with extreme suspicion; the biggest balance headaches in the tournament set stem from the Orion, WYN Aux and Archeo-Tholian. The Andromedan used to lead this list. The LDR is power starved and avoids being on this list.

4) There is a sizeable minority who play SFB tournament that dislike multiple ships for the same race. Their question is this: "What does ship X do that ship Y does not already do?" These are people who'd love to get rid of the WYN Fish ship (It's basically a generic hybrid between the Klingon and Kzinti), the ArcheoTholian (which has largely rendered the NeoTholian obsolete) and the two additional Romulans

The TFH is definitely better than the TKE, and the TKE results in "gnaw your arm off" games of pure tedium. The TKR is comparable to the TFH, but is in many ways a Gorn with a weaker phaser suite and a better turn mode.

The IC TCM and Hydran TAR are both weaker than their standard ships in the TC set and people more or less ignore them. The FRAX TC is weaker than the WYN Fish TC and doesn't offer anything compelling to make people want to play it.

So - whenever you propose a new TC, ask yourself the following:

1) What does this TC do that its nearest two or three counterparts in the mix don't already do? Just because the tourney doesn't have a Super Heavy HDW type doesn't mean that it should...

2) What balance issues will this TC create? Anything that's a 2/3 mover is going to be strong against plasma. Anything with the firepower of 10 ph-1s appears to cross a balance threshold that results in a super ship.

3) What TCs will be rendered obsolete? This is the ATC argument. The NeoTholian flies somewhat differently from the ATC but for the most part, 'differently' translates into 'worse'. Same thing describes the TKE versus TFH set.

By Andy Vancil (Andy) on Sunday, December 26, 2010 - 03:43 pm: Edit

That's one way to look at new TCs, and makes sense if you're talking about adding to the set of officially sanctioned ships. Another, broader view, is that there should be many more TCs, with only the current set sanctioned for RATs, but the broader set available for other purposes.

Tourney ships are great for a quick and easy ship selection for a duel, or for a free-for-all, in ways that the set of regular ships cannot match. If you pick a BPV and let people select ships, then it becomes a meta-game of picking the most optimized ship. With tourney ships, you can still meta-game if you know your opponent's ship, but otherwise, the cookie-cutter nature of the TCs, along with the more limited rule set, makes it much more likely the ships will be balanced.

Personally, I would like to see every race have at least a TCA/TCC and a TCL/TCW. It would be nice to have a matched set of TDDs as well (balanced among themselves, not the TCAs). These will not be quite as well balanced as the RAT ships, as they won't have years of playtesting and tweaking, and RPS issues will be magnified, but it should be possible, with reasonable effort, to make a set that are fairly close.

The RATs can stick with the original set, minus the Andro. I don't think the Shark or the multiple Romulans add much to the tourney, but they don't hurt, either. The ATC is fine as is, and the fact that the Neo is inferior is not a problem because the ATC is more representative of the bulk of the Tholian fleet, anyway.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Sunday, December 26, 2010 - 05:15 pm: Edit

It takes a lot of work to balance tournament ships, with each additional ship increasing the work more than the last.

There simply aren't enough players or enough tournament play to imo justify adding 'many' more tournament ships, especially resulting in two for each race! ! !

If more are added, it would imo be best to add ships for existing races that do not have them, starting with Omega, then Magellanic and finally the more developed simulator races.

The existing alpha octant races do NOT need more tournament ships at this time (and the argument could be made for trimming the AT and a Romulan or two off the list).

By Andrew J. Koch (Droid) on Monday, December 27, 2010 - 11:16 am: Edit

Barry Kirk is currently a one man band trying to playtest Omega ships. My opinion is that we should get some Omega TCs in the fold first, as they are truly different and would be a welcome addition.

By Reid Hupach (Gwbison) on Monday, December 27, 2010 - 11:50 am: Edit

How about some mirror universe TC's

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Monday, December 27, 2010 - 05:02 pm: Edit

My asking about the ISC was more to see if there couldn't be an alternate which reflected the various forks in the road that the historical Concordium went with once the Andromedans got their invasion going.

The war cruiser has three destroyer engines; if I'm not mistaken (and I may well be) the ship looks kind of like a DD which has been cut in half and filled in with an expanded centre section. The HCW takes out the middle engine and replaces it with 3 frigate engines; that ship has a MC of 3/4, rather than 2/3.

In contrast, the system cruisers represented the ingenuity (borne of necessity) out in the isolated ISC cantonments. The NCA/NCS is basically a CL/CS with a large module welded to its ventral hull; this gives the ship more weapons and power (and a MC of 1) but puts a cap on the ship's top speed (since the extra power is in the form of more reactors, not more warp engines).


Speaking of the Tholians, they did something similar for the CAN and CPN, too; a pack fitted to the CW in order to produce a (slower) MC1 ship.


But, as a fan of non-Alpha settings in general, if time might be better spent working on Mæsron, Maghadim or Mallaran TCs, well and good.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Monday, December 27, 2010 - 06:28 pm: Edit

Sorry, that should have read 2 frigate engines, not 3.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Monday, December 27, 2010 - 09:20 pm: Edit

Time working on TCs for products that are not even published in a final form is wasted. YOU might want it but there are a large number of published races that have precedence imo.

Honestly, if I had to choose what TCs to add to the game, I would probably work on some move cost one Omega TCs as a start. Not ALL Omega races, just the ones most easily adapted to the tournament.

Races like RYN, Branthodon, Hivers should wait until the more 'normal' races have feasible ships.

By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Monday, December 27, 2010 - 09:31 pm: Edit

Richard, over a decade ago, I made TCs for four of the five Magellanic powers, and all of the Omega ships I have editable SSDs for. (The Magellanic pirates can't get a viable TC.)

I used to run the Wingnuts and Wierdos tournament at Origins, where people got to try a TC with a cheat sheet on the back against a standard TC.

So, they exist, and Barry Kirk is doing a fair bit of work into getting them on SFBOL.

Most of the Omegan TCs range from average to weak. Some are almost impossible to balance, and not just the 'woogie' ones, like the Souldra or Ryn.

(The contortions Barry has gone through to try and make Tachyon Missiles work for the Maesron is just one example...)

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 - 08:25 am: Edit

Nod. I understand your desire to do Magellanic TCs (heh). I do like those races.

My opinion is that Omega should probably have first priority, at least the non weirdo ones (being closer to how Alpha Octant units work).

Magellanics are, alas, all (at least slightly) weirdo units.

Are these tournament ships available online somewhere?

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 - 11:31 am: Edit

Oh, sure--all (most?) of the Omega ships have playable TCs on SFBOL, as do the Magelanics. They still need tweaking and balancing, but you can certainly play them in the tournament environment.

Barry has done a ton of work on this, and continues to do so. There are currently signups being taken for a new year Omega only playtest tournament. Go look in the SFBOL forum to find the signups and see what ships currently work.

I've played the Chlorophon (not horrible, but has a lot of trouble vs a lot of races) and the Alunda (also not horrible, I still need to fly it more to understand it better).

By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 - 12:13 pm: Edit

Richard, in general, the Magellanic TCs work better (fewer balance problems) than the Omega ones. Both of the sets need playtesting.

(Interesting note: Since Barry Kirk and I started compiling matchups, the ISC is 7 wins and 1 loss against the LMC. You do have to think a little bit outside the box with the ISC, and accept that 40 points of non-enveloped plasma is a viable attack).

When the Magellanics win, it's because they did something the opponent wasn't expecting.

Most of the Omega ships are a little on the weak side.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 - 12:28 pm: Edit

Gary wrote:
>>My asking about the ISC was more to see if there couldn't be an alternate which reflected the various forks in the road that the historical Concordium went with once the Andromedans got their invasion going. >>

Here is the thing with the tournament environment--it isn't so much supposed to be a good reflection of the history of the Star Fleet Universe so much as it is supposed to be a working, viable, balanced subset of the rules, such that two people can sit down for a game with no previous discussion and play a reasonable balanced game of SFB. The current tournament environment is, after 20+ years of testing and tweaking, a reasonably balanced subset of the rules. A few ships are noticeably weak (Andro by design, Selt simply 'cause that is all it can do), but for the most part, all the existing TCs are both reasonably balanced against all the other TCs and bring something unique to the environment.

There are plenty of variation TCs that could be introduced into the environment (Gorn Tournament MC; Fed Tournament Strike Cruiser; ISC Tournament War Cruiser), but unless they actually offer something new to the environment other than a slightly different SSD shape or something, most folks tend to pooh-pooh the idea.

I'm firmly in the camp of "The Romulan TKR, TKE and Tholian Neo should get removed", as they don't really add anything good (you could remove the Archeo instead of the Neo, but the Archeo is better at being a Tholian than the Neo is), but I don't really expect that to happen.

I'm pro the Omega ships being made into a reasonably balanced amongst themselves set of ships (i.e. I don't really see a need to make Omega be particularly balanced with Alpha ships, but if they are reasonably balanced with themselves, that's good). Once that happens, the LMC could certainly happen too.

I mean, don't get me wrong--if folks want to make and mess around with alternate TCs, they can and should do so. But I can't imagine that most plans will get much wide scale support.

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Tuesday, December 28, 2010 - 01:12 pm: Edit

I'm strongly in favor of a Fed TCF. You are adding something truly unique (a Fast ship) to the tourney environment, and giving the Fed something other than the usual choice of 1) roll the overloads and pray or 2) close to range 1 and hope you live.

By Jacob Karpel (Psybomb) on Saturday, February 26, 2011 - 07:16 am: Edit

Posted this elsewhere on the boards, but due to lack of response there I'm cross-posting it where it's more likely to get a discussion going.

I've been thinking about the Andromedan Krait lately, and I think I MIGHT have a way to finally balance it somewhat more evenly than it has been. The idea came to mind when thinking on the one real systems rule change in Tournament, the DisDev.

My idea is to perform one small but significant tweak to the PAs. Specifically, a rule forbidding that they be turned off at any point for any reason other than power loss. In return, the ship gets a slight beef-up in other areas, such as firepower (3x TRL in the LS/RS/FH arrangement), power (+2 APR and maybe an extra battery), and basic toughness (a couple more Cargo/Hull, maybe upwards of 1 more PA panel in each half if it becomes needed). Should these need to be extensive enough, the tournament ship goes to being based on a slimmed-down MC1 hull instead of a beefy 2/3 one.

The effects of this are fairly major, in essence neutering panel-dump tricks. Standard 10% Battery absorption and dissipation become the only ways to clear the shields, which is still much faster than any of the other ships in play. The bonus power and extra crunch let the new Andro fly much more like a standard ship, which will make it much more balanced and balance-able. There is still the reinforced/normal PA states, but the 4-point difference is a MUCH smaller swing than the 8-to-10 point dumps of the current generation.

Someone please shoot me down if this idea is unworkable, or if it's been tried in the past (not just the full package, but the base idea). It seems too obvious a thing to try for me to be the only one to think of it, but I can't find anything on the concept. Until then, I'll be working on a ship concept and mathing out possibilities. Thanks in advance for reading this far, and I hope this ends up working as well as I think it can.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - 05:40 pm: Edit

I think the main problem is that the Powers that Be are loathe to change fundamental rules just for the tournament--they'll limit things that are generally flexible/optional already anyway (i.e. drone loads, option mounts, overload energy, etc.), but any suggestions to change the way particular systems work specifically for the tournament (i.e. changing PA panel rules, for example) are generally met with a "Yeah, that isn't ever going to happen".

By Jacob Karpel (Psybomb) on Tuesday, March 01, 2011 - 05:59 pm: Edit

That is true, and I only considered it because the Andro is already following a few system-mod rules (TRL, DisDev). I think it has a chance, though, and so far the only problem seems to be making the tougher ship. I'd actually underestimated how much bigger it would have to be to be fair by a bit, once I can figure out how I'll be actually playtesting.

By Jacob Karpel (Psybomb) on Sunday, March 06, 2011 - 05:34 am: Edit

For those curious as to what I'm mathing out, the link is at the bottom of this post. I'm trying to get it to the point where I can just take out the DisDev, which will remove a LOT of the RPS issues this guy has. Might not be possible, but I can hope. For now, the TRH shown are under the current "only TRL unless against another Andro" rule, though I'm considering making it stable with a TRH FH and LS/RS being TRL. Also remember the main rules change, this model is not allowed to bring any PA bank down for any reason.

Math says its output is somewhat balanced, averaging 60 points for a point-blank centerline or 48 from range 3 (41 and 33 respectively, if off-center). Notable is that this average doesn't go up very much on the way to Maximum, but falls off sharply if the rolls are towards the low end. The ship is tough with lots of free hits and quick-repairing shields, actually to the point where it may be the most resilient ship out there for absorbing damage... but every Drone hit reduces that substantially and the output is still on the short side for 2-turn arming weapons.

Given how many internals this thing has right now, I think I'm going to try to construct one on a MC1 hull. Basically this with more on the engines would be all. I need people who can playtest it a bit, since I don't have a real group atm for home-cooked ships. Thanks in advance.

http://img833.imageshack.us/i/andronewkrait.png/

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Sunday, March 06, 2011 - 09:26 am: Edit

Jacob,
I wish you luck. I think removing the DisDev is an interesting idea. And it changes the style of Andromedan play to fit a non-Andro style of flying. The current ship you have will not make anybody happy the way I see it.

Nobody (except Andro players) wants to see an Andro ship that can fire their TR beams backwards.

The problem that the Andro will have is doing any kind of panel dump, even without the removal of the ability to turn off panels it is still next to impossible. Because the smaller the battery is as compared to the number of panels the harder it becomes. With the ship in the above link has 4 batteries that means that maximum amount of power that can be dumped is 20 points. With 7 panels in the front that means the ship would need to take less than 62 points of damage but greater 42 points of damage to be able to do any kind of dumping. Yes, that is easier with the larger panels.

As I say I wish you luck. It is a tough ship to balance.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, March 06, 2011 - 10:41 am: Edit

I think the ship posted above (3xTRH/7xPA forward, 5xPA backwards) is just too big and too damaging and too hard to hurt to be viable, even with a "no panel dump" is probably too much. And requires a special tournament only rule (i.e. no panel dumping).

I think the plan of an Andro with no disdev at all is not a horrible plan, and would fix a lot of the balance issues. Stay with 6/4 PA panels, and the basic armament of 2xTRH and 6xP2 and a 2/3 move cost, but bulk up the internals (more hull and cargo) and add more power than it has now (maybe go back up to 32). No disdev means that plasma might hit occasionally, drones are something it needs to deal with, and the galactic ship can play a game of take the first shot from the Andro and then chase it into a corner and try to even things up.

I think if anything is going to make the Andro vaguely balanced is removing the disdev. But most folks will look at an andro with no disdev and say "Hmm. Why play an Andro with no disdev?"