Andrew:

If you haven't seen them already, there are sample SSDs for the Paravian and Carnivon CWs in the C6 preview PDF on e23 or DTRPG.

The actual rules needed to fly them are in C6 proper, but these samples might give a sense of what to look forward to.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Wednesday, February 05, 2014 - 06:54 pm: Edit

Ken wrote:
>>What about limiting the number of death bolts available? Instead of 2 reloads maybe 1 or no reloads.>>

I can't imagine that it would have any reloads (just like drones). I mean, really, we need to have something to start with to actually figure out what is too strong or not. I suspect the best plan is start with the CC and adjust to tournament standards (I think Matthew suggested this earlier). Change shields to 30-30-24-24. Give it a 5th battery (maybe swapping the Flag for a BTTY; it would still have 6 control). This would give it:

-39 power (30 warp)
-4xDC
-4xP1 (FA)
-2xP2 (RX)
-5xP3 (RX)
-2xHN
-2xDB

The ship comes with 4 or 6 rounds for each death bolt rack (depending on year). If it got standard drone rack like limits, it would have 6 rounds for each death bolt rack and no reloads. The HNs are also hit on drone, so the death bolts probably live a while.

Off the top of my head, looking at the ship as proposed here, I'd probably start out by giving it only 1 of the HNs, both to reduce the ability to protect the DB racks and also 'cause that weapon is kind of nuts in conjunction with the DBs. And always hits for an internal point of damage, which, in the long run, could be kind of devastating.

By Andrew Harding (Warlock) on Thursday, February 06, 2014 - 02:25 am: Edit

As an opponent i'd be less worried about the single internal than the forced turn.
Tourney drones are substantially nerfed compared to the full game - a real Kzin CC carries twice the drone spaces, can launch fifty percent more per turn, starts with some on the board, may make unlimited type IV swaps (each of which reduces the cost of drone speed) and gets to use all the good warhead options. It can have as many drones on the board by the end of turn 1 without a scatterpack as the TCC can with one. Death bolts are competitive, so will likely need similar restraint in tourney. I'd start death bolt testing at 'no modifications, no reloads, no deck crew transfers' and go from there.

By Matthew Potter (Neonpico) on Thursday, February 06, 2014 - 03:28 am: Edit

The TCC I am proposing is thus:
Start with a Carnivon CC.
- Change the Flag to Btty.
- Set the Shields to 30/30/24/24/24/30
- Give the DERFACS and Y175 refit (so it has 6 DBs per rack).
- Remove the (FD20.123) reloads (so those 12 DBs are all it has for the battle)
- Keep the 2 dedicated Deck Crews and the 2 (J4.814) DCs
- Allow the DBs in the racks to have one warhead modification at start (as per WS-III).
- Allow the DB warheads to be Std, Armor, Anti-Trac, Focused Burst (i.e. swordfish), or Spitfire (i.e. starfish).

It has:
2x Heel Nippers (FA)
4x Disruptor Cannons (FA)
2x Death Bolts
4x PH-1 (FA+R/L)
2x Ph-2 (RX)
5x PH-3 (RX)
39 power (30 warp)
Dual shuttle bays
6 Labs
All center hull
This gives it a speed of 19 with full overloads and a phaser capacitor of 8.5.

I could see dropping the warhead modifications entirely, or allowing an Armor and/or Anti-Trac warhead mod. I could also see dropping it to a CA, rather than a CC. That would have a "cruising" speed of 17 and a phaser capacitor of 6.5 (either of which is pretty terrible)

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Thursday, February 06, 2014 - 08:45 am: Edit

Yeah, I'd totally ditch the death bolt modification rules (as they are really fiddly and add a whole lot of opportunity for confusion and weird balance issues).

The TCC above seems totally reasonable, but I'd still reduce the HNs to one of them (that forced turn is crazy; that missed move is crazy; that "hit a warp engine regardless of shields" is gonna be nuts in a long game).

I'm certainly o the fence with the deck crew transfers--if you can't double up deck crews, the DBs are very slow to launch. If you can, they are really fast, but with significant risks.

By Kenneth Jones (Kludge) on Thursday, February 06, 2014 - 08:59 am: Edit

Forced turn with the HN could and possibly would Kill the Aux. If it hits the barrier because of the turn it would take forever to get back up to Aux battle speeds.

Two chances to completely foul up the movement is WAY to much. It already has terrain (DB's) giving it chances to make forced turns as well as the involuntary turns from terrain and that seems to be a wee bit much.

By Matthew Potter (Neonpico) on Thursday, February 06, 2014 - 01:35 pm: Edit

If you want to ditch one of the HNs, we could do the CWL:
Same armament, except: one less HN, one less Ph-3, no Ph-2, 2x more Ph-1s (FA+R/L).
5 less power, but the MC brings it right back to where the CC is. The fifth battery goes back to being a flag bridge.
Better TM, single shuttle bay (vice double bays), 4 labs (vice 6), and fewer internals.
This would theoretically be better at getting into knife-fighting range, but might need to be patient with it (due to shields and internals) so as to come in on a flank.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, February 06, 2014 - 04:30 pm: Edit

Death Bolts:

1.) Because they are more powerful and harder to kill than drones, you might limit them to only four per rack rather than six.

2.) You may limit them to only being operated by their own deck crews, i.e., the tournament ship cannot use the (J4.814) deck crews to increase launch rate at the expense of shuttle operations.

3.) You might do both, or in the second case allow six death bolts per rack.

4.) Any "modifications" to death bolts have to be carefully considered and weighed for balance. Drones are restricted to just explosive warheads, limited numbers of fast and type-IV frames. Maybe the death bolts are allowed to use the "armor" and/or "anti-tractor" mods only and no others. This does impose launch limits as it takes time to make the mods.

5.) While (FD20.31) simply has all death bolts get improved speeds in one given year, perhaps in tournament play the number of death bolts that can be fast is limited, and combined with the mods the Carnivon player can choose if a given fast death bolt will also take the time to be "armored" or be launched simply as fast when readied.

By Jim Davies (Mudfoot) on Thursday, February 06, 2014 - 07:38 pm: Edit

I'm not seeing the panic over the HN, especially the damage. It's got a horrible range (1-3 at R4 even with 2 power?) and an FA arc so isn't threatening except in an overrun.

Sure, banging a pig into the wall is going to be nasty and turning a Fed so his photons are suddenly out of arc could be equally fatal, but there's a good chance it won't turn that way anyway.

The missed move isn't that significant without DBs, and even then they can be shot down like drones. And as for the damage, if you're spending that long at short range, the odd point of warp is hugely outweighed by the other damage you're pouring into each other.

So to use this, you need to get your opponent to very short range when you have DBs ready, and ideally DCs ready to fire too. This takes power and a moderately compliant opponent. In a disruptor ship, you could aim for a hack-&-slash giving you the speed to catch him, but the DCs need power on the chase turn.

If there's only 1 HN, it'll be destroyed on the 3rd internal; you won't give up the DBs to damage if possible because you get no reloads and no more deck crews. So the HN will be largely insignificant, leaving you with a somewhat odd shark.

Compare this thing to a web caster. I know which I'd prefer.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Thursday, February 06, 2014 - 07:43 pm: Edit

Jim wrote:
>>I'm not seeing the panic over the HN, especially the damage. >>

Uh, it is hardly a "panic".

It is a weird piece of strange, not very well known technology. That has an unparalleled effect in the game (randomly turning someone. And doing an automatic internal. And making them miss a move.)

It strikes me as perfectly reasonable to be cautious.

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Thursday, February 06, 2014 - 09:40 pm: Edit

Do you expect there to be 4 or 6 death bolts per rack?

By Dennis Surdu (Aegis) on Thursday, February 06, 2014 - 10:12 pm: Edit

In a fleet game the HN would be fantastic to fire en masse and single out one ship or two.....maybe alpha that ship and gain a quick advantage.

By Matthew Potter (Neonpico) on Friday, February 07, 2014 - 03:14 am: Edit

---

Quote:

Do you expect there to be 4 or 6 death bolts per rack?

---

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Friday, February 07, 2014 - 08:15 am: Edit

>>Do you expect there to be 4 or 6 death bolts per rack?>>

Depends on what seems balanced. Much like the HN, I'd suggest generally erring on the side of caution to start with.

Giving it 6 death bolts per rack doesn't seem totally out of the realm of reason, however, assuming they are all speed 20 and there are no modifications allowed. SPP has a bunch of suggestions/considerations above, and they are all very reasonable possibilities.

Maybe go with: 6 DB per rack. All speed 20. No modifications (so they are all just 10 damage, 30 warhead and have a point of anti-tractor, I think?). Deck crews are allowed to be transferred from the shuttle bay so you can launch 2 in a given turn (if you do that, the launching sequence is very restricted, so probably ok). Start with that and see how it goes.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Friday, February 07, 2014 - 12:44 pm: Edit

That's true there may not be any precedent set in the rules for a ship to have only a limited amount of fast DB's.

But there are tournament ships that already break or bend the rules with their special rules. Several examples are tournament UIM, which is very different than the regular UIM from the rules. The Klingons ability to mask the identity of its drone launchers is another and then you have the Krait and KE each having a TB.

So a special tournament rule allowing a few fast DB's could be a way to dial the ship in if it has been tested and found to be weak.

I was working months ago on a Paravian TCC, but the design has serious problems and is too strong at this point. If we could get both a Paravian and Carnivon TCC figured out I would be interested in setting up a tournament of some type to test these against select sanctioned tournament ships and some of the other playtest ships that are close to balanced like the Maesron and Andromedan.

Maybe we could use the data gathered by this tournament to help us select the oddball ships for this years world league tournament.

From my experience in the Andromedan playtest tournament I wonder if a patrol style tournament wouldn't be better than the system we used. The advantages I see to this are that we could get more playtesters involved and have a better chance that games will be played. Even if a few players drop out of the tournament it wouldn't cause a disruption they would just be out of the running for winning the patrol phase of the tournament.

Would anybody else be interested in a patrol style playtest tournament with a 3 player play off at the end of the period? I could probably afford the $15 that it would take to offer a 3 month subscription prize to the winner.

I would like others opinions on a few details of the Paravian TCC.

How do people feel about the built in ECM of the QWT in a tournament setting? They are not going to be easy to shoot down with or without the built in ECM.

Do any of you see a need to change the QWT arcs form FA to FP?

By Matthew Potter (Neonpico) on Friday, February 07, 2014 - 01:14 pm: Edit

I like the idea of a patrol format tourney. It's sufficiently different from the normal tourney that we might be able to draw some other players into it.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Friday, February 07, 2014 - 01:24 pm: Edit

Josh:

Is your WIP TCC based on the Paravians as presented in Module C6, or on CL28?

(I believe the line ships in C6 no longer have the cargo and NWO boxes, as shown with the sample CW in the preview PDF.)

And in a similar line of discussion to that for the Carnivons, would their own CWL be a potential candidate if the CC was too powerful by comparison? Not that I'd be in a hurry to see too many non-MC 1 hulls added to the list, I might add.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Friday, February 07, 2014 - 01:44 pm: Edit

It was based on CL28 rules, and I want to change what I did to bring it up to date with the changes made in C6.

What I had done is assign the NWO's to various systems to try to bring the ship up to tournament standards.

What I would like to do is use the new C6 CC and probably make only minimal changes to it. The only thing that I see as a problem is the 5th shuttle should be deleted.

What I personally would like to see for the CWL's is to eventually have enough playtest ships from every race to create a new class of tournament ship. I think it would probably be easier to balance them against other CW's than it would be to make them compete against the full sized cruisers.

I don't think it would be hard to make an SSD for a TCW, it looks like it only really needs the shuttle I steal from the CC and probably an extra battery.

There are already playstest CW's for many of the empires in the alpha octant, maybe we could as a group come up with the missing ships and have a second playtest tournament later this year for TCW's.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Friday, February 07, 2014 - 06:32 pm: Edit

Josh wrote:
>>How do people feel about the built in ECM of the QWT in a tournament setting? They are not going to be easy to shoot down with or without the built in ECM.>>

It doesn't seem like that big of an issue. If you are shooting at QWTs, they are likely at R1, and at R1, an EW shift of -1 is unlikely to make that significant of a difference (it changes P3s to 4, 4, 4, 3, 3, 1 instead of 4, 4, 4, 4, 3, 3). Best not to even worry about it.

>>Do any of you see a need to change the QWT arcs form FA to FP?>>

The FA arcs certainly have the potential to be problematic. But I'd suggest try them out as FA first and see how it goes, changing to FP if needed later on.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Friday, February 07, 2014 - 06:35 pm: Edit

Matthew wrote:
>>I like the idea of a patrol format tourney. It's sufficiently different from the normal tourney that we might be able to draw some other players into it.>>

Maybe? I mean, I'd probably be game for something like that. But historically speaking, people are *really* flaky about anything other than a single elimination RAT, in my experience. I have been involved in *many* experimental/playtest/non standard tournament events on SFBOL over the years. And for whatever reason, almost without fail, like, half the people who sign up for the event vanish/quit before the event is done. If not more.

I mean, see how flaky folks are about RAT tournaments, where this is are actual stakes, and you often only have to play, like, 1 or 2 games in the span of a couple months.

Not really anything to be done about it, I suppose. It is just kind of frustrating to try and organize (or play in) one of these sorts of things. As they inevitably collapse.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Friday, February 07, 2014 - 07:02 pm: Edit

My vision for this playtest tournament was to copy the netkill format which requires no registration and has an automated system for reporting games. While there wouldn't be an ace card up for grabs I would be willing to sweeten the deal by offering the winner a gift subscription for 3 months of SFBOL, and probably require at least 6 patrol games with good playtest reports to qualify for the prize and elimination round.

When I work at it I have never had trouble getting player to play NK style games, one quarter I was able to get 50+ NK games completed in one 3 month period.

Perhaps we could add a field to the match report page that would give you a place to write a game summary and whatever suggested modifications to the ships and or tactics.

One issue we may have is a shortage of players with module C6. I remember for world league we got permission for a Maesron rules summary to be added to the download page, I wonder if something similar could be done for these ships.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Saturday, February 08, 2014 - 01:24 pm: Edit

Josh wrote:
>>One issue we may have is a shortage of players with module C6. I remember for world league we got permission for a Maesron rules summary to be added to the download page, I wonder if something similar could be done for these ships.>>

While I don't know for sure, it seems unlikely. Getting the Maesron rules posted took some doing, and the basic just was "we don't want this to set a precedent".

By Matthew Potter (Neonpico) on Saturday, February 08, 2014 - 02:48 pm: Edit

I think convincing Paul to integrate the new weapon's charts into SFBOL would be good enough. The rules for the new systems are simple enough, that a short verbal discussion should be good enough for the opponent: "QWTs are just like plasma, except that they act like this other system and reload like that other system."

By Jim Davies (Mudfoot) on Friday, February 28, 2014 - 09:17 pm: Edit

Revised Paravian TC here for your delectation and delight. It's based on C6 rather than CL28 so loses the cargo. QWTs are FA, but it gets a huge #1 shield to protect its sensitive beak.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Friday, February 28, 2014 - 11:50 pm: Edit

I think that should have the 30 point front shields like most other TCAs.