Either way... It's one of the few heavy weapons in the game that has a really short range at the higher damage levels. Add that to the LF+L and RF+R arcs for the side TG. The ship does have issues.

By Andrew J Koch (Droid) on Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - 03:39 pm: Edit

Barry you are on fire

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - 03:47 pm: Edit

Barry wrote:
>>The one exception was Peter Bakija, and he let me have the perfect shot on turn 2 for unknown reason. >>

1) Bad maneuvering on my part.

2) Forgetting the the Klingon didn't want to get that close when it could have hit you at R8 and avoided R5 for the rest of the turn.

So ok. Hows about we remove the 2 extra front shield boxes, leave it at 40 power, and see how it goes?

By Andrew J Koch (Droid) on Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - 04:02 pm: Edit

Yeah lets put it in the next couple of JFF tourneys. Because we can.
The charts are on SFBOL and other than that it has pretty straight forward rules. IE no ARFs

By Michael Kenyon (Mikek) on Tuesday, October 29, 2013 - 05:01 pm: Edit

I'm perfectly fine with it not having the 32 #1, pretty sure that doesn't invalidate the existing tests, and I also don't think it makes or breaks the ships.

By Barry Kirk (Barrykirk) on Thursday, October 31, 2013 - 09:21 pm: Edit

Andy Koch(Droid) in Wyn 1g11 defeats Barry Kirk ( BaldnForty ) Maesron.

In that game, Andy played a strategy that spoke to one of the biggest weaknesses of the Maesron which is that the holding cost of the Tachyon Guns is double the holding cost of other heavy weapons.

So, Turn 1, I corner dodged to the NW corner of the board, while Andy went NNW to push me into the corner. I was trying to stay outside range eight. I was slow, because I was preloading the TG, and unarmed, because it was Turn 1 of arming.

About impulse 24 or so, Andy turned towards the NE corner of the board... I was unable to turn quickly, although I probably should have burned my HET at that point.

Turn 2, I chased Andy towards the NE corner of the board, but was unable to reach range five, which was necessary because I had preloaded the TG guns to a 6 point energy level.

Turn 3, I was slow, because of high holding costs, and wasn't able to hit for much damage and run away fast enough. This gave Andy time to pin me to the south side of the board.

Don't remember much about Turn 4 other than it ended with me taking a nasty hit with a chaser of large drone hitting on a down shield.

Turn 5, was never completed, because he was able to punch my remaining lights out before my weapons cycled.

I know everyone thinks the Maesron is very powerful, but as this game showed. Given an opponent who knows how to fight against it, the Maesron is actually very weak.

If you can keep up the tempo of being able to fire the TG every other turn, it can be very powerful, but once it loses that tempo, it can't effectively fight.

Andy asked me if there was a counter to his strategy, and at the time, I was unable to think of one. But there is a counter strategy.

Turn 1, corner dive and fake the heavy preloading of the TG, but instead leave them empty.

Turn 2 start heavy preloading of the TG... Yes this will make you slow, but on turn 3, you'll be able to pound your opponent with lots of power for movement.

You can finesse things, by starting up arming on Turn 1, with one point of power from batteries late in the turn. That way you have loaded TG on turn 2.

Almost like a pseduo battle but with direct fire weapons.

People have been asking to reduce the 32 front shield, which is a Maesron tradition from the SSD book. They've been also asking to reduce power to 38.

So, I'm proposing this.

1. Reduce front shield to 30 points

2. Reduce power from 40 to 38

3. Reduce tachyon missile racks from B racks to A racks which hold 3 missiles each.

4. Reduce the tachyon missiles themselves to base missiles. Base missiles have an explosion of 8, armor of 8, speed 20, and require 2 points of power to tractor at range one.

5. In return for all of the above, improve the arcs of the side Tachyon Guns from LF+L to FA+L and from RF+R to FA+R.

The thought process for the heavy gun firing arc improvement, is that the Maesron is currently under the handicap of normally only being able to fire three TG onto a single shield on a single impulse.

The improved firing arcs would help a lot towards that end. Also, other than the Archeo Tholian, no other ship in the alpha universe has that split firing arc.

The Hydran does have something similar for the fusions, but that is an unusual ship to begin with.

By Barry Kirk (Barrykirk) on Thursday, October 31, 2013 - 09:31 pm: Edit

I should add that one other weakness of the Maesron is that it very often has to count on using it's batteries for heavy weapons. This means that it doesn't have very much reserve power for other stuff like speed changes, tractors, or HETs.

The reason is very simple.

Loading TG to high energy levels can severely reduce their range. If you can guarantee that you will get to that closer range, then by all means load em up in EAF. However, if you can't get that range, your stuck with very short range weapons and high holding costs limiting your speed to catch your opponent.

Therefore, I usually load my TG to one range further than I expect to reach, and if I can't get the closer range, I still have a weapon I can fire. If I can get the closer range, than I'm burning batteries to bump up the TG at the moment of firing.

The other place to use batteries is conjunction with the strategy of leaving the TG empty at EAF. This throws off your opponents stategy for knowing when your TG are holding at great cost or on final turn of arming.

The downside of that strategy, is that if your opponent guesses correctly that you did that, they can run in on you while your essentially unarmed and mug you. You can counter that, if you see that coming by starting the turn 1 arming late in turn 1 from batteries.

What this means, is that the Maesron more than almost any other race is heavily battery dependent and uses reserve power for heavy weapons rather than the stuff you really need it for.

I'm not saying that the Maesron needs more batteries, but I am saying there is a reason it needs 40 power. Mainly to help recharge those batteries.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Friday, November 01, 2013 - 08:47 am: Edit

Barry wrote:
>>1. Reduce front shield to 30 points

2. Reduce power from 40 to 38

3. Reduce tachyon missile racks from B racks to A racks which hold 3 missiles each.

4. Reduce the tachyon missiles themselves to base missiles. Base missiles have an explosion of 8, armor of 8, speed 20, and require 2 points of power to tractor at range one.

5. In return for all of the above, improve the arcs of the side Tachyon Guns from LF+L to FA+L and from RF+R to FA+R. >>

Personally, I'm a big fan of doing minor changes incrementally, rather than sweeping ones. Now that folks are just figuring this thing out, I'd suggest let's just leave the ship as it is other than removing the 2 front shield boxes (I realize that it is a racial quirk, but, like, the Lyran CC starts at 36 front shields too…), and see how it goes.

Monkeying with the TMs and launchers is something that is easy to tweak without changing the SSD, so we could save that for a change if needed later on (remove missile options, reduce ammo, etc.). The split arc TGs is certainly possibly a flaw with the ship, but it is at least kind of interesting, as ship designs go., especially as it has those "directly behind" arcs on the guns as well.

By Barry Kirk (Barrykirk) on Friday, November 01, 2013 - 04:03 pm: Edit

Well, actually I was thinking of making a second rev available and seeing how well it plays. If broken we can always go back.

By Barry Kirk (Barrykirk) on Saturday, November 02, 2013 - 10:23 pm: Edit

I've thought for a while that the split arcs are a major design flaw. This is a crunch ship and with the split arcs, it's almost impossible to get the crunch.

Even with the ability to fire all four TG in the entire FA, it's going to do a lot less damage than a Fed, since it's rare that it will get any or all of the TG up to the eight energy level for max damage.

In return it has a couple of toys.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Monday, November 04, 2013 - 08:58 am: Edit

So are there any proto-C6 TCs out there? i.e. a Paravian TC and/or a Carnivon TC? I'd like to try them out, and TCs are the easiest way to make that happen. And they are, at the very least, fairly interesting.

The Carnivons seem like they might be a tad over the top--the generic CA has 4xDisruptor Cannons, 4xP1, 5xP3, 2xDeath Bolts, and 2xHeel Nippers (Man. I *really* wish those had a different name.), 37 power. The Disruptor Cannons, when non overloaded, are just exactly disruptors armed over 2 turns (2+2) that do twice as much damage (i.e. they do overloaded damage when non overloaded). The overloads are less straight forward (as if they were just 4+4 for double OL Disruptor damage, they'd be just vastly better than photons...); you have to arm them 2+4, you can't hold them, and they do 50% more damage (so 15/12/9 instead of 10/8/6). And the extra 2 power *must* be warp. The Death Bolts are basically Tachyon Missiles (something like speed 20, 30 warhead, 10 damage to kill, you can launch less than 1 per turn per rack due to weird reloading rules). The Heel Nippers are a bizzare, short ranged gun that if it hits you, it automatically kills a warp box, makes you miss your next move, and turns you. So if the ship can get to R1, launch a couple death bolts that move the next impulse, and then hit you with a HN, the two death bolts will basically automatically hit. Which seems like it would be a problem in a tournament duel. So they might have some balance issues.

The Paravians are vastly more straight forward. Generic CA has 6xP1, 4xP3, 4x Quantum Wave Torpedoes, and 38 power. The QWTs are plasma torps that fire every turn for 2 power, have a range of 30 hexes, and do "splash" damage like a PPD (after, say, 20 hexes of movement, they are going to hit for 1-3-1 damage). They don't do a ton of damage (1-5-1 is the best for a standard out to 7 hexes), but they do consistent damage for a long time. And fire every turn. They can be overloaded for 4 power and do about 50% more damage out to 14 hexes (an OL QWT will do 1-7-1 after 14 hexes). They get shot down like drones instead of plasma--do X damage, and you shoot off the splash element; do X+Y damage, shoot down the whole torp. These guys seem like they might have trouble on a closed map, however--the QWTs fire every turn but don't do a ton of damage, and are really good at medium-long range, but invite folks to just run through them, corner, and anchor you (especially as the QWTs are all FA).

So both ships look interesting, but on first glance, the Carnivon seems like it might be difficult to balance for being too strong, and the Paravian might be too difficult to balance for being too weak. But I'd like to see a couple get posted to try out.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Monday, November 04, 2013 - 05:32 pm: Edit

This might to be the place. Has any one here played the Jindarian TC? I have played a couple. One i lost vs a Wyn. The other is undecided against a fed ca. we are both shot all up. Me low on power fed low on weapons and shields. I think it is low on phasers myself.

By Matthew Potter (Neonpico) on Monday, November 04, 2013 - 06:03 pm: Edit

Josh Driscol did up a Paravian TC based on the CapLog version of the GW paravians. I found it to be a plasma ship with a very dangerous long-range strike. The QWTs have all of the advantages of the Plasma Torps and the long-range shield-killing advantage of the PPD, at twice the fire rate. Add in the phaser-hose found on Fed ships, and it's particularly dangerous.
I had not really found a good tactic to use against it. The Hydran "scream and leap" maneuvers tend to lose you your facing shields on the QWTs and lose you weapons to the phaser-hose.
The dancing maneuver used by Klingons (in my favorite HHBB "dancing" pig) tends to end the game with no shield boxes left (anywhere). The Paravian tends to end with moderate damage from being chased by drones (when he decided not to use the phasers on them) and taking the occasional HB blast as I dip into overload range and suck up some QWTs.

I'm not sure if his ship needs a tweak, or I just didn't have a good grasp of anti-QWT tactics. Probably the latter.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Monday, November 04, 2013 - 06:37 pm: Edit

On paper, it looks like the way to deal with the Paravian is just to run it down and corner it--the QWTs don't do a ton of damage up front; if the ship launches 4 overloads (which takes 16 power to do), and you just run into them, that is 4+36+4 damage. If you eat that on the #2/#6, you take a few internals (or not, with a bit of reinforcement), then corner and mug it with whatever you got (plasma and tractors or drones and tractors or just a mean hack and slash). I mean, yeah, it isn't *that* simple, but the torps just don't do that much damage on a single turn. It seems like they'd be great if you can keep the range open, and your opponent is gonna dance around at middle-long ranges, but if you just man up, eat the first launch, and then corner it before the second one (which can't be that difficult, as the QWTs are all FA) gets out, you probably do ok.

By Jim Davies (Mudfoot) on Monday, November 04, 2013 - 06:52 pm: Edit

I did a Paravian TC here, based on CL28. I made the QWT arc FH, as otherwise it's 100% reliant on the #1 shield. Ignore the D turn mode as AFAIK the C6 Paravians don't use that rule.

The QWTs have an impressive range, impressive fire rate and modest power consumption. But not much crunch. They're great in a knife fight, except if restricted to FA which makes them almost useless... hence the FH without which it gets mugged in a dark corner.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Monday, November 04, 2013 - 08:02 pm: Edit

I recall noting (possibly in a podcast?) that there was talk of a "mini-tournament" which would only have playtest TCs for the four "lost empires" (Alpha-Paravian, Carnivon, Peladine, Borak) - but that the changes made between CL28 and C6 would mean that a wholly new Paravian TC would have to be done up from scratch. The cargo boxes would have to go, for example.

Actually, if we ever get the Paravians of Omega in print, I'd be interested to see if any of their reported local technologies, like quantum wave mines or Ymatrian-based antiproton weapons, might make a tourney ship different than one based on the "what-if" Paravians from C6. (Similarly, if the Vulpa are given more of their own post-Civil War ships at some point, I'd hope that they could perhaps offer a distinct challenge to that currently being discussed for the "standard" Mæsron TC.)

By Michael Kenyon (Mikek) on Thursday, November 07, 2013 - 09:12 pm: Edit

I'd love to play in that Tourney. Now I just don't know if I'd play Carnie or Borak ...

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Friday, November 08, 2013 - 09:10 pm: Edit

How about playing in next year's Council of 5 Nations in NY?

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Tuesday, December 17, 2013 - 09:24 pm: Edit

I think everyone has had a chance to digest everything that has been written on the Maesron TC.

Based on all the information so far it seems the consensus seems to be leave the ship as is with the exception of reducing the front shield by 2 boxes to 30 boxes is the only change needed.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Tuesday, February 04, 2014 - 05:07 pm: Edit

Mathew wrote:
>>I've been looking at the ModC6 Carnivons with an eye towards a TCA. What I have (and I've got one or two games with) is a Carnivon CC where I replaced the Flag with a Battery and balanced the shields to match the other ships.

The result is a ship which feels somewhat underpowered (39 power, speed of 15 with full overloads), has an excellent drone defense (5x RX Ph3 + 2x RX Ph2) but no real offensive phaser punch (4x Ph-1).>>

Which makes it like a Kzinti. But with heavy guns that hit for 12-15 instead of 8-10. And nothing but type IV drones.

>>My (very rough) analysis is that the Carnivon is a poor dancer (two-turn arming weapons that do slightly less damage than photons but are fairly accurate and there is no real phaser punch for the off turn). It is certainly deadly up close; even to the point of considering range 4 on a Hydran.>>

It strikes me that a Carnivon TC (based on the eyeballed ship you have listed above) is probably incredibly strong on a tournament map. The death bolts, even just the default ones, are kind of nuts--you get to range 1, hit someone with the HN so they don't move, and launch 2 of them. Which takes 20 damage spread over 2 targets to kill (i.e. about 6xP3). And you already had to deal with 4 of them launched on T1 out of 2 racks. Which is also kind of nuts (and likely results in just having to weasel them, as shooting down 4x death bolts seems like a horrible idea).

>>The Death Bolts do indeed take 3 Ph-3 (or 2 Ph-1) at range 1 to kill with a fourth Ph-3 needed if allowed to dial in an armor enhancement.>>

2xP1 is risky--it isn't that difficult to accidentally end up only hitting for 8 or 9 damage at R1 with a couple P1s (roll only 4-6 on both dice. There could even be a 3 in there and you still only hit for 9). And letting the thing live means you are hit for 30 damage. So you are pretty much always going to need to shoot 3xP3 at one of them (and that is assuming all death bolts are the default 10 damage version).

>>The Heel Nippers make the thing advantaged against the WYN Aux and probably anything else with a TM of D. The ability to reduce an opponents alpha at close ranges by turning them so the Carnivon is out of arc is pretty powerful on paper, but the things hit about as often as photons seem to.>>

You got 2 of them (in general, something to consider for a TC). You just get to R1, fire them both, you'll probably hit with 1 of them, which is all you need to do. Or, conversely, get to R2, fire them both, and your opponent is now facing somewhere weird.

>>All in all, the ship feels like a crunch-race ship. The lack of phasers means the heavy weapons do all of your heavy lifting. The Death Bolts ensure the opponent has to have the drone defense to handle twice as many drones.>>

I think the death bolts are, actually, kind of nuts. Especially now that it is apparent that you can fire two in a single turn out of a single rack if you do it right. Yikes.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Tuesday, February 04, 2014 - 05:24 pm: Edit

Perhaps the Carnivon TCC could have a specific rule restricting its Death Bolt deck crews to the basic amount which are needed to work each rack, with any others obliged to remain in (or be assigned to) the shuttlebays?

A "no transfer" rule could be a way to ensure that the ship can only launch a single DB per rack (or per turn overall), if that was deemed necessary for balance purposes.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Tuesday, February 04, 2014 - 05:30 pm: Edit

That is certainly a possibility as well--limit how many deck crews there are, or what deck crews can go where; if you only have 2 deck crews that are allowed to work on death bolts (impose a "death bolts local 512" union rule, that doesn't allow the default shuttle deck crews to work on them), that limits them to being launched once every 40 impulses instead of once every 24 impulses (i.e. launch a DB on impulse 1, start rearming on impulse 9 with one deck crew that will take 32 impulses, you can launch a second on impulse 10 of the next turn. Maybe 9. We haven't looked up deck crew action sequencing yet…). That would certainly limit them if needed.

By Andrew Harding (Warlock) on Wednesday, February 05, 2014 - 01:57 am: Edit

I'd compare against the Wyn Shark rather than the Kzin since that's another strong ship that doesn't have the scatterpack to complicate comparisons. One for one I'd take Death Bolts over (tourney) drones, think hard about Disruptor Bolts vs Cannons and very likely choose Heel Nippers in the Shark's option mounts if it were possible (presuming the extended range and defensive mode of the HN discussed during development survived playtest, C6 is on my list of things to buy once I get time and space to game again).

By Matthew Potter (Neonpico) on Wednesday, February 05, 2014 - 04:10 am: Edit

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Quote:

You got 2 of them (in general, something to consider for a TC). You just get to R1, fire them both, you'll probably hit with 1 of them, which is all you need to do. Or, conversely, get to R2, fire them both, and your opponent is now facing somewhere weird.

---

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Quote:

I think the death bolts are, actually, kind of nuts. Especially now that it is apparent that you can fire two in a single turn out of a single rack if you do it right. Yikes.

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By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Wednesday, February 05, 2014 - 10:37 am: Edit

Matthew wrote:
>>Only one HN affects the opponent if both hit on the same impulse. So shooting both at once is only useful to increase your chances of doing something.>>

Sure. But firing two of them is pretty much a guaranteed hit. Which means the death bolts you launch that move the next impulse are also a pretty much guaranteed hit. Unless your opponent doesn't shoot you with 6 phasers. Which is a really significant firepower edge in your favor.

>>Additionally, it's pretty hard to get to range 1 without being pasted on the way in and losing some of your heavy weapons.>>

That is certainly an issue. But in reality, I suspect if, say, the Kzinti could pretty much guarantee that if it got to R1, its opponent wouldn't move the next impulse? It would be pretty hard core as well.

>>I don't think they are that bad. How often do drones hit? Most of the time, an opponent will lead them around by the nose with a speed plot of 20, 24, or 28+ until they get tired of being forced to sideslip. In this case, you do the same thing, but take pot-shots with your rear phasers at the same time. There isn't much difference between a pair of DBs and a scatterpack.>>

Oh, sure. But still, they are incredibly dangerous as individual weapons (10 damage to kill; 30 damage scored--there is a reason that type IV drones are significantly limited in tournament play. And Carnivons come with *nothing* but type IV drones, essentially). Are they likely to hit often? Probably not (although the HN+DB at R1 makes it vastly more likely to happen than with regular drones). But they take an awful lot to deal with them.

>>If you really think the dual-Heel-Nipper is a problem, we could do the CWL: 34 power and speed of 18 with full overloads. Same heavy weapons as a CC, but minus a HN. Better phasers, though. I probably would keep it at the given 4 batteries, to keep it in line with the other TCWs.>>

I honestly don't *know* if it is a problem, having only ever used early years Carnivons (and that was a long time ago). But on paper, it seems like the Carnivon comes with a lot of things that could add up to something really scary.