Mike wrote:
>>Putting the SP aside, how's that any different than a Kzinti dealing with a Klingon?>>

That's a very big aside.

As the Kzinti fighting the Klingon (a game that I consider 6-4 in favor of the Klingon), I regularly would hold my own SP on board specifically to counter the Klingon's SP (i.e. I'd launch mine to take down his). Having an SP against a non Kzinti is a huge advantage. Having it against a Kzinti only further props up the Klingon's edge in that fight.

>>The Kzinti can get 6 on the board in 8 impulse, or 8 depending on range, either way you count it, the Klingon is still disadvantaged by the same amount.>>

The Klingon also has the ADD. Which significantly balances out the Kzinti drone edge.

>>My general feeling, however, is that drone users tend to be able to deal with drones easier than non-drone users. The same is true of drone users being able to take care of TMs. I haven't seen a lot of complaining that the Shark has an unfair advantage on the Kzinti because it can negate most to all of it's launch rate. I just don't see how it's different.>>

The Maesron likely need the TMs to be effective, one way or the other, more than the Shark needs drones to be effective.

>>As for comparisons with the Shark, I'd pretty much rate it as better (either 11, BB, or 1B) than the Maesron, but the majority of the difference between them I see in the arcs. The shark is far easier to play offensively than with the Maesron.>>

The arcs. And that the disruptors fire every turn and can run empty on turn N and then fire as OLs on turn N+1. Both of which are significant advantages over the TG. The realistic maximum damage that a TG is going to do is 10. Which isn't enough of a bump up over an OL disruptor to make up for it being an every other turn gun. Especially with the split arcs.

By Michael Kenyon (Mikek) on Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - 11:45 am: Edit

Agreed completely with your analysis of the TG. The TMs and SS are really the only "standoff" power that that Maesron has. The Shark has it's heavy weapons AND the drones to keep someone off, not that it really needs to cause it's armed the next turn.

You really need to fire the TGs, double-launch TMs over a turn break and get out of dodge for a while. Pretty much, they're going to soften the blow by taking out most of the phaser power of your opponent, which means you're still going to take the full might of his heavy weapons while you run. Smart players will probably lab them and if they're armored TMs, will just let them hit (assuming it won't do internals).

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - 12:31 pm: Edit

Mike wrote:
>>You really need to fire the TGs, double-launch TMs over a turn break and get out of dodge for a while. Pretty much, they're going to soften the blow by taking out most of the phaser power of your opponent, which means you're still going to take the full might of his heavy weapons while you run.>>

This is where the drone issue rears its head the most--if the TMs can suck up 4-6 phasers, they have done their job. If they suck up nothing but 2 type I drones, they haven't so much.

>> Smart players will probably lab them and if they're armored TMs, will just let them hit (assuming it won't do internals).>>

Suicide Shuttles can work; tractors work well too--I mean, yeah, you need 2 tractor power for each TM, but 4 tractor power is probably a better solution than 4 some odd P1s.

By Michael Kenyon (Mikek) on Tuesday, July 23, 2013 - 01:18 pm: Edit

Upside, the two bays means you can get the double SS out the door.

Downside, you really need to think about doing it (though in later turns every point of power counts).

Upside, the structure of the ship generally means you can take your opponents first blast at R1 and have the bays survive.

Downside, you probably will get to experience just that.

By John Christie (John46) on Friday, September 13, 2013 - 02:10 am: Edit

By John Christie (John46) on Sunday, September 15, 2013 - 12:51 am: Edit

Fiddling around with my previous message and I think I killed it. Question was "Where can I find SSD's for Omega TC's?" It seems they're around, but I can't seem to find them.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, September 15, 2013 - 08:45 am: Edit

The most recent Omega TC SSDs only exist on SFBOL currently. There are old, mostly unbalanced and certainly unupdated, but reasonably workable Omega TC SSDs available in an old issue of Star Fleet Times (I think?) that one can get as a PDF download for a few bucks (although I don't off hand know which one); they were released before even Omega 1 came out to introduce folks to the rules.

Most of the Omega TC work and testing has happened on SFBOL, so that's where all the SSDs are posted.

By John Christie (John46) on Monday, September 16, 2013 - 06:06 am: Edit

Thanks, Peter.

By Michael Kenyon (Mikek) on Monday, September 16, 2013 - 11:31 am: Edit

The Trobrin from that era is ... not balanced.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Monday, September 16, 2013 - 11:56 am: Edit

Yeah, all the old, original ones were put together without much testing (they were mostly eyeballed), primarily so they could be handed out at Origins as a single sheet of paper with an SSD on one side and a rules synopsis on the other side, so folks could play a goofy playtest tournament to try out the Omega stuff before the rules were actually published.

At that point, the rules hadn't been used much in the wild, so the balance of those ships is sketchy, at best.

The current crop on SFBOL has a bunch of reasonable balanced Omega ships (Probr, Alunda, Maesron, Vari, Loriyill, all seem totally reasonable at this point), a few that are close to balanced but have weird issues (Kolighar has issues with phasers against the rest of the universe, so the TC is odd currently; Trobrin is, I think, pretty good, if on the weak side due to being to strong originally; the Hiver needs tweaking and testing of the current .5MC ship after the 2/3 move BC proved too potent, but it mght be ok). Some are untested and likely not workable (Drex, Sigvirion, most of the further expansion module ships).

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Sunday, October 13, 2013 - 04:54 pm: Edit

We played a large number of games with the Maesron TC.

The consensus is the ship does not really have any weaknesses.

The proposal is to make shield #1 30 boxes like other TCs and remove 2 of the APR's.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, October 13, 2013 - 05:48 pm: Edit

Yeah, the Maesron got a lot of play (two people were playing it, and they each played 4 or 5 games with it), and it did pretty well. Barry was top seed into the Finals tree with the thing, going, like, 4-1 with it.

I think a big factor with it doing well was that most people just had no idea what it was capable of doing. And then it did what it did, pretty well, and won a bunch. I suspect that if it was more common, a lot of that issue would settle out.

I lost a game against it in the Klingon I was flying, and felt that my loss was due to:

A) Me apparently going out of the way to give it the best shot possible on the first firing pass, which Barry took and did well on.

B) Barry being lucky and me being unlucky.

Which is not to imply that Barry didn't fly well, as he absolutely did (and if anyone was gonna do well in the Maesron, it was Barry), but to me, it seemed a lot more like I was outplayed and out rolled, as opposed to the ship being particularly too good or anything.

As the Klingon, I managed to maneuver badly, resulting in us swapping our initial volleys at R5, him centerlined on my #6. He fired 4x Tachyon Guns and 8xPW1, and I returned fire with 4xOL Disr, 5xP1, 2xP2. He hit with all 4 of his TGs (on 1-5), and I only hit with 3 of my OLs (also on 1-5). He had a 5 point brick on his #1 (allocated--the Maesron has a significant amount of extra power on the first attack run), so I did, like, 6 internals, and he did, like, 28 or so to me. After that, I used, like, 8xADD rounds to kill a single Tachyon Missile (as I hit with less than 50% of the ADDs all in the 1-4 to hit zone, and rolled a 1 and a 2 for the first two hits for damage...). Over the next couple of turns, I managed to even out the total number of internals, but on, like, 45-50 total internals over 3 volleys, I managed to hit a grand total of 3 phasers as weapon hits. And in the end, I finally gave up when I did an HET to get my up #1 facing him while crippled, and broke down due to the lack of a free HET bonus anymore.

In general, I didn't feel that the ship was overpowerful in this match up. But I seemed to be in the minority in the room.

I to suspect that the ship is a little too robust, internal wise--it has 16, evenly split, hull, 12 total phasers, 4 torps, 2 drones, and 40 power. And still has the heavy 32 box #1 shield of the historical ship.

I'll echo what Ken says, and suggest that if nothing else is tweaked on the ship, dropping the #1 shield to 30 (like everyone else) and pulling out 2 power is a reasonable starting point for a tweak.

There was also a lot of discussion about a not really noticed before significant benefit that the ship has--the Tachyon Guns completely ignore a lack of fire control. The TGs have a 1-5 to hit all the way out to R16. So firing without AFC has zero penalty for the Tachyon Guns inside of R9. Which is certainly something.

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Sunday, October 13, 2013 - 07:32 pm: Edit

I would propose that an addition to the Tachyon Gun rules would that they require active fire control. If not that then, the range should be at the effective range for damage and not the true range.

By Jim Davies (Mudfoot) on Sunday, October 13, 2013 - 08:27 pm: Edit

Sounds like it would be awesome for subhunting too. But I wouldn't want to change the rule just to fix an otherwise minor issue.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Sunday, October 13, 2013 - 10:03 pm: Edit

With the exception of the example noted above, did either of the Mæsron players make much use of the ship's tachyon missiles (and in any particular configuration), or did they not have much of an impact on the ship's performances one way or the other?

And did the Mæsrons get to fight any "civil war" battles, or were they kept apart for the duration of the competition?

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, October 13, 2013 - 10:48 pm: Edit

The Tachyon Missiles were all over the place, but I don't know that they were particularly significant most of the time. In my game, I killed most of them with drones and ADDs, and took a 8 point warhead on an unimportant shield specifically to launch an extra drone at my opponent rather than one at the missile.

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Monday, October 14, 2013 - 12:42 am: Edit

Jim it was not a minor issue. After a player launches a wild weasel they can still fire their weapons very effectively with no penalty.

For hunting cloaked ships this was the same. The Maesron was able to attack a cloaked ship and do some significant damage.

Since all the range bands to range 15 hit on a 1-5 this is significant.

By Andy Vancil (Andy) on Monday, October 14, 2013 - 12:54 am: Edit

I don't see why you'd see the need to require AFC for the TG. I mean, I can see where they could basically ignore the double range penalty, since their to-hit drops off so slowly. I can see where it would be worthy of a term paper to point out that if you are running and want to snipe with the side TG, you can save the point of power for AFC if you don't need AFC for anything else, or that if you are coming out from under WW, you don't need to wait for AFC to use your TGs.

But I don't see where there is a problem, especially in the tournament. The situation with TGs is really no different than the situation with disruptors, which can fire at 0-1 or 3-5 at no penalty for the double range. (Note the maximum true range for firing under PFC is 45 hexes.)

What is the impetus for suggesting this change?

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Monday, October 14, 2013 - 09:42 am: Edit

I certainly see how it is something that makes the Tachyon Gun stronger than originally obvious, but in the grand scheme of things, I can't really see that it makes *that* much of a difference to how effective the ship is overall. I mean, yeah, once and a while, it'll be very handy to be able to fire under passive and have a 1-5 to hit, but it isn't *that* much different from disruptors (that always have a 1-4 to hit under passive, but also have a 1-5 to hit at R1). I don't know that it is worth changing the rules to tweak it. If it seems too good like that, balance it out by pulling out a couple boxes somewhere.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Monday, October 14, 2013 - 10:27 am: Edit

The only place that it would make a significant difference off the top of my head would be cloak hunting (depending on how the Zosman Marauders cloak equivalent works.).Since the Throne of Ozymondus is the only published cloaked unit in Omega this probably hasn't come up before.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Monday, October 14, 2013 - 11:04 am: Edit

Even then, it wouldn't be that big of a deal--disruptors always hit on 1-4 when sub hunting, and you still have to roll on the cloak chart. I mean, yeah, it helps, but, again, probably not so much that it is worth changing the rules over, rather than just tweaking the ship down a bit with some other methods--if the ship has an advantage over cloaked ships due to the TGs being good against cloaks, make the ship a little worse against plasma (i.e. take out a bit of power, possibly reduce the options on the Missiles).

By Andy Vancil (Andy) on Monday, October 14, 2013 - 12:25 pm: Edit

---

Quote:

Note the maximum true range for firing under PFC is 45 hexes.

---

By Michael Kenyon (Mikek) on Monday, October 14, 2013 - 01:47 pm: Edit

I definitely think that the Maesron is power-advantaged in it's first attack run. My fear is that if you drop the power, the second attack run becomes brutal for it. The TGs are a great weapon, but power hungry. Even ignoring some/all of them, you need the phasers to survive and while they almost always hit, they almost always do a pittance of damage, so it can take quite a few to dent plasma or take out drones.

Having played it a half-dozen times now, never felt as though I had too much power in the second attack, but always felt that way in the first attack.

A possible mitigator for that would be from the opponents perspective. The Maesron CLEARLY wants you centerlined, and as such is going to probably brick the #1 to take it where he wants to trade. If you can keep off that line, you negate both a lot of his firepower as well as making the power advantage more specious.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Monday, October 14, 2013 - 02:54 pm: Edit

Mike wrote:
>>I definitely think that the Maesron is power-advantaged in it's first attack run.>>

Kind of amazingly so--you can pull off, like, some sort of T1 slow speed corner dodge, putting 5 or so power in each gun, and then on T2, you put 1 into each gun, and have 4x6 energy TGs, which is, at R5, a pretty consistent 48 damage (12 each on a 1-5) if you can get a centerline. Given that you have so much power for movement on T2, it shouldn't be that difficult.

>>My fear is that if you drop the power, the second attack run becomes brutal for it.>>

Maybe? But I can't imagine that losing 2 power would make it that horrible to be the ship. It seems not that unlikely that on the second engagement, it'll be down a TG, so less it needs to worry about arming.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Monday, October 14, 2013 - 03:03 pm: Edit

There is an historical example of a Mæsron CA variant removing some of its onboard APRs in order to make room for a different set of boxes; the CBA swaps a pair of them out to make room for two cargo boxes (needed to store additional tachyon missiles for use in longer campaigns).

Since many of the tournament ships we know of are presented as command cruisers, and since we have no historical CC for the Mæsron Alliance (or, at least, none that exists in print just yet), perhaps one bank of APRs could be swapped out for a pair of Flag boxes?

Or would that be giving the ship more control spaces than it ought to have?