Archive through August 22, 2011
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Tournament Zone:
Proposed Ship Changes:
Archive through August 22, 2011
An Andro with no disdev is like a Rom with no cloak or a Hydran with no gatlings or...
Thanks for the rapid responses. In no particular order:
Paul Franz:
I hear what you're saying about panel-dump problems right now, but in order to make that work I'd need to put a 5th or 6th battery in. Granted, the original actually HAD 6, but it's still something I'm leery of until I get more people testing it other than myself. Thus, for now, the main purpose to "Panel-Dump" shenanigans is to spread power to your other arcs for faster dissipation or to prepare to receive damage. The batteries are more than sufficient for intended purposes, that is, normal dissipation/absorption (where the greatest possible amount is 10 power assuming both banks were shot to capacity).
Peter D Bakija:
I had to make the thing bigger and upgun it when I removed the ability to do full panel dumps, or I'd just be nerfing a ship that's already on the low side of things. Damage output still had to go up, and to be honest I didn't increase it by much. Current armament is 8 P2s, not 6, I removed 2 to help make this work. Thus, the centerline strike went from 2 TR and 8 P2 to 3 TR and 6 P2, which is actually worse on average until you get out of R2, only gaining a significant edge at range 5+ (or against another Andro, making those fights quick and bloody). Add to that the major current complaint of losing half its heavy weapons to a single Torp hit, and that's the arrangement I ended up with. Fits with the Run-n-Gun philosophy and plays to the strengths of the PA system.
One thing I'm seeing is that rear-facing TRLs really aren't THAT much of an advantage unless your opponent decides to come straight up your aft centerline, in which case you get something that looks a lot like your off-center forward strike. They act as particularly solid Phasers that take 4 times as much power and twice the time to arm, and someone coming in from an aft quarter would still only be looking at one plus a couple of P2s.
As for the last question "why play an Andro without a DisDev", I'd personally much rather see them represented in a fair ship first no matter what it took, short of giving them Galactic shields. There is still a LOT of uniqueness to them without the Displacement ability, as seen in the PA system, TRs, and weapon arcs. I'd be one of said players. Anyway, for now it's still there, but it looks to be coming out next iteration if I can make the ship worth flying without it. Would have to mean a stronger alpha, for one, since 30-odd internals from a R0 full alpha is not acceptable without the ability to port out.
I guess I really should have included an actual list of changes with the last post, to make life easier. So, copy-pasted from previous notes...
Armament:
+1 TRH, TRH's now in LS/RS/FH arrangement
-2 P2 FH
Defense:
+1 PA FH
+1 PA RH
Power:
+1 Battery
+2 APR
Other:
+2 Cargo
Total increase in Internals: 6
Again, thank for the quick reviews. Hopefully this project will end up working at some point, and almost nothing is really off the table as I search for a way to make it work. Any and all input is valued and considered, so thanks in advance for any you might give in the future 
Quote:An Andro with no disdev is like a Rom with no cloak or a Hydran with no gatlings or...
An Andromedan with no disdev is a satellite ship, basically. It still has enough Andro flavour IMO because of the way its weapons work, and the strange Andromedan energy economy created by the PA panels.
I beg to disagree. It's pretty rare to see Andro units that have no disdev capability.
Quote:It's pretty rare to see Andro units that have no disdev capability
Isn't the inverse rather more true? After all, by (G18.82), you'll never have more than 2 DisDev-equipped ships in a fleet, *anyway*, so basically by definition they will be outnumbered by no-DisDev-Andro-ships at 2 or 3 to 1 (or more, I suppose).
Yeah, in real life you never see... waitaminute!
Such force will have a disdev unit Xander, which is my point.
Can we test a third disdev on Xander. ;)
How about it starts the game with a broken DisDev? If the player wants to spend 7 turns (25 points of CDR) repairing it, he can.
I'm in something of a bind right now. The DisDev is proving critical to the ship's function, in order to dodge those seeking weapons. If I want to take it out the ship will need at LEAST one more P2 in each of the LS/RS arcs, due to drones. Absent that, the ship suffers serious RPS against anyone with a Scatterpack, which kind of defeats the point. That would bring the total armament back to previous, plus one TR extra with just the arcs changing (significantly).
Seeing how weak the Alpha is at the moment (60 average point-blank centerline), I don't see a problem making that trade. The Conquistador even has that arrangement, so it has a precedent.
Can you give it another tbomb to take out the SP drones with?
Could work. That would bring it up to 2 of each, another bit of uniqueness in the tournament scene. Much less random than the DisDev, rewards skill over a die roll and emphasizes use of those Transporters. I like it.
I think I'm going to go ahead and do that now once I have enough time (plus actually put the two extra APR I said I had there into the SSD, forgot to last time).
So, to recap, only actual change from the last version is removing the DisDev and adding a T-bomb (not on SSD). The other two APR were supposed to be there last time. New link is at:
http://img808.imageshack.us/i/andronewkrait.png/
Playtest note: seems to be working so far. Local friend agreed to fly against it and chose the Gorn. I figured speed would be life even more than usual, so I started with 15 points in batteries.
The entire game consisted of 6 turns of me running away from Plasma and taking long-range shots at him as weapons came up, and ended when I managed to plant the second T-bomb just right to take down his #6 and got two impulses of fire through it. This ended up popping both of his F-torps on unfirable turns, plus some phaser damage, which gave me enough freedom of maneuver to chip him out faster. Probably would have come out differently against a more experienced player, the Dummy bombs were making him maneuver very awkwardly.
During this game I only ever fired at plasma twice, and one of those times was just two P2 shots to bring an F under 15 points after 6 moves, so that I could safely take it to RH without leak. Also, only once did I ever manage anything approaching a traditional panel-dump, on Impulse 30 of turn 2. This ships is good at spreading its damage around for rapid dissipation but very hard-put to force power into batts before it's own time and pace. Which was exactly as intended, so I consider this a success.
The 7-PA front shield may be a HAIR on the strong side, but I don't think it's by so much that bringing it back to 6 would be a good idea. The ships is very, very resistant now to being "punched out" by anything short of close-range Fed Alpha or a seeker mugging (and anchoring an Anro is a LOSING proposition). I took serious internals when I made a maneuvering mistake and got caught in a corner, this ship doesn't like being inside of R3 to most enemies (I lost a PA, about half of my hull and cargo, a couple of phasers and a TR off of combined Phaser/Plasma midway through turn 2). Anyone have a good LDR player to test against? Should be a good way to feel out the ship's weaknesses.
Finally, I did find degradation creep to start being an issue around turn 5. No biggie there and par for the course for an Andro, but it is good to know that there is SOME kind of clock keeping this guy in check. Probably not fast enough of one, to be fair, and I'd be willing to bet that he'll be 9-1 RPS against the TKE due to the time that guy takes to do anything.
Any other thought?
Did you allow it PA mines, or just explosive?
Just explosive, as in current tournament, though each had a dummy. I tended to run out plasma and just take it at weaker warhead strengths
I was looking forward to playing the tournament freighter and base. But the website just gives me a 404 error when I try to download the SSD.
Is the Tournament B10 still out there somewhere?
Disruptor Orion redux: If you put three drones on a tbr you get oakdisc for free. Any support for a free ubitron if you mount three Disruptors?
Yes, but it will still be too weak, and too power hungry armament, for the orion to play.
Would eliminating cloak use altogether in cloak-vs-cloak battles be an improvement? Even when not in use the spectre of the cloak leads to conservative play.
I could see doing that in the case of a civil war. But the TKE relies on the cloak a lot more than the TKR and the Orion, so it would imbalance things otherwise.
I'm in favor of eliminating the cloak all together, but we all already knew that :-)
As you note, even if the cloak never gets turned on, in a Romulan vs Romulan fight, the possibility that it will leads to very conservative play. And really long games. But then, as previously examined, Gorn vs Romulan games can be just as long due to the existence of a cloak. I suspect that if Romulans just had their cloaks removed during Romulan vs Romulan games, they would be a lot quicker. Although if the TKE lost its cloak vs, like, a TFH, the TKE would lose a lot more often than not.
So here is an interesting idea from Brett (we discussed this at Ithaca Cup yesterday, and I was intrigued. This is totally his idea. I'm just talking it up :-)
The ISC TCM. That 2/3 move playtest ISC ship from Module T2000. it is really boring. It has the exact same armament as the regular ISC TC (1xPPD, 2xG torp, 6xP1, 4xP3) except that it gets 2 extra rear plasma F torps. It is incredibly subtle in its difference from the regular ISC (which is generally good enough), and as such, seems extra pointless.
So Brett suggested making the ship into a different kind of ship (i.e. a "Gunline" ISC instead of a "Core" ISC) by simply replacing the PPD with a third plasma G.
That ship would have 3xPlasma G, 4xPlasma F (with the goofy ISC restrictions), 6xP1, 4xP3. 2/3 move. Smaller total hull and whatever. This might be a little underpowered (or, a little overpowered, but that seems really unlikely...) But at least it would be *interesting*. A different dynamic. A weird BP ship. Might be good at anchoring (hold 3xG torps, go fast, arm tractors, catch and anchor with 60 points of plasma, followed by 20 more) although without the 100 point potential anchor, probably not that devastating. Could launch an enveloping G every turn of the game, which seems pretty strong, but very power intensive (that would be 10 power a turn just for the G torps).
This idea (which is totally Brett's) seems like something that is very interesting and worth investigating and possibly playtesting.
Replacing a PPD with a plasma-G? Way too weak. Maybe a plasma-S. Or cut the rear plasmas down to one pair and give it two Gs on the center section. That would be a weird and different dynamic.
If you wanted to do an alternate ISC, perhaps a ship based on the CW or HCW might be an option?
Not only do they count as "gunline" (no PPD) hulls, the alternate layout (with the warp engines, for example) would help add a little extra difference to the way it might fly.
(I might have mentioned those a while ago.)