I can never say no to a game of SFB

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Thursday, May 18, 2017 - 07:19 pm: Edit

I am in!!

By David Zimdars (Zimdarsdavid) on Thursday, May 18, 2017 - 09:35 pm: Edit

In

By Ken Lin (Old_School) on Thursday, May 18, 2017 - 09:59 pm: Edit

In!

By Ron Brimeyer (Captainron) on Thursday, May 18, 2017 - 10:02 pm: Edit

In

By Dana Madsen (Dfm330) on Thursday, May 18, 2017 - 11:30 pm: Edit

In

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Friday, May 19, 2017 - 05:54 pm: Edit

Ok, so it looks like we have interest. Good!

Do we have opinions on tournament structure?

The most recent one was:

-3 player teams; 3 games per player.

-Win: 4; lose: 2; Tie 1; no show 0 points (I think...).

-Draft teams with captains based on top NetKill ratings.

By Jarod Ikeda (Allanon) on Saturday, May 20, 2017 - 06:47 pm: Edit

In

By Brian Evans (Romwe) on Sunday, May 21, 2017 - 07:53 am: Edit

Count me in. I think that drafting has resulted in more equal teams overall. It's not perfect, but better than when folks were forming their own teams, IMO.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Sunday, May 21, 2017 - 09:05 am: Edit

I am willing to try again. Perhaps I can use a different ship. Would the Peladine TC be allowed. I have played it a couple of times in practice. I do think that it does not need the scatter pack as shown but the drone upgrades would be nice.

I am playing Peladine in Matts campaign and am enjoying them.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Monday, May 22, 2017 - 08:44 am: Edit

I'm inclined to not use playtest ships, on the grounds that they tend to either be too strong or too weak. The Peladine in particular is kind of a disaster--with P2s and plasma G's, really, the only thing it can do is anchor someone, and if your opponent knows the only thing you can do is anchor them, it is really hard for you to anchor them.

By Majead Farsi (Devil) on Tuesday, May 23, 2017 - 09:05 am: Edit

Peter I think you should allow playtest ships, my reasoning is that they will be getting tested again and if they are either too strong or weak they can be tweaked. For arguments sake consider the War eagle, I have not seen it win a tourney on SFBOL since I have been playing, does it make it too weak so should not be played with, the Fed is too reliant on hitting with most of its photons and can easily miss with 3-4, should that also be considered weak due to its hit probability and yet I have played a match with the Shark and fired no Disruptors and still won the game does that make it too strong?
I just want to say that we should try the playtest ships as there are not many places we can fly them in tourney play.
PS not saying I want one though

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Tuesday, May 23, 2017 - 12:00 pm: Edit

The problem here is that in past World Leagues, we used playtest ships. And we needed to make sure everyone knew all the rules (which was a nightmare with the Maesron ship) and knew how everything worked. And in most cases, the playtest ships are just horrible, and ended up being a giant pile of losses.

-The Vudar is bad (I played it and lost 3 times in the WL we allowed that) if it can't use the IPG for EW effects, which weren't being used in the tournament. And no one could ever agree on what, if any EW effects were ok for the thing.

-The Peladine is terrible (I played it and lost 2 times in the WL that allowed that)--it has plasma Gs and P2s. The only thing it can do is anchor someone. And if that is your only trick, everyone knows it is coming and is prepared for it. So it doesn't work (I won 1 game by accident, against another playtest ship, and when it was over, my opponent was all "Huh. All I had to do to avoid that was this incredibly obvious thing that I just spaced out on at the time...").

-The Andro is in constant flux. I think the one to try is the 2TRH/3Battery version. But without +2APR, it is probably worse off than the current 3xTRL version.

-The Paravians don't have even a moderately official TC.

-The Carnivons are even worse off, making a TC wise, due to the Death Bolt rules.

-Any of the Omega ships require a lot of legwork just so that anyone playing *against* one knows what they can do. As noted, the Maesron is pretty simple, and still had people complaining 'cause they didn't know the rules.

What else am I missing?

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Tuesday, May 23, 2017 - 05:00 pm: Edit

The Jindarian TC

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Tuesday, May 23, 2017 - 07:16 pm: Edit

There could be a Borak TC, an empire with all the needed SSDs for campaign play. Could also add Magellanic TCs.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Tuesday, May 23, 2017 - 09:07 pm: Edit

Oh, heh, the Jindarian is also widely regarded as kind of a disaster--if you can corner it, it dies. And so everyone just corners it. And it dies.

I dunno if there is a Borak TC out there (I think there is, but I'm not sure), and the Magellanic ships may or may not have TCs, but they also have complicated extra rules that not a lot of folks know, which circles back to the hassle I got when I had us use the Maesron :-)

By wayne douglas power (Wayne) on Tuesday, May 23, 2017 - 09:25 pm: Edit

Most of the Omega is so different to the Alpha ships, and some other species in the SFU just do not work in the current tournament environment,
Perhaps have them all put into another tournament module just for Omega ship/simulator ship tournaments.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Wednesday, May 24, 2017 - 08:10 am: Edit

We ran a few Omega Only tournaments a few years back. We tried a third one (which is, IIRC, still posted in this here forum), but it never took off. The current crop of Omega ships are almost viable; some of them are probably a little too strong, some a little too weak. Most of them are very difficult to use against traditional Alpha ships, primarily due to drones--Omega ships were designed in a universe without drones, so phasers tend to be very unreliable against drones, and Tachyon Missiles are incredibly vulnerable to drones.

As such, mixing Omega ships in with Alpha ships tends to work out poorly for the Omega ships. The Maesron did ok vs Alpha ships when we used it, but there is endless monkeying with the Tachyon Missiles, and a lot of consternation about the accuracy of the TG on a fixed map (where it hits on a 1-5 out to R15).

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Thursday, May 25, 2017 - 06:27 pm: Edit

Agreed. And as I have mentioned to Barry on multiple occasions, I think the best thing to do for the Omega ships is just balance them for each other and not try to balance them against Alpha.

By Barry Kirk (Barrykirk) on Saturday, June 10, 2017 - 11:05 am: Edit

Paul is correct that a lot of the Omega ships are not balanced against the Alpha ships.

There are two ways to deal with this.

1. Omega only gets to play Omega.
2. Change Omega so that it is balanced against Alpha.

Since, most SFB players only play what they are comfortable with, option 1 above prevents them from playing against an Omega.

Paul is somewhat familiar with that problem since many people are reluctant to play against Andromedan. Of course the current Andro, is so weak, that many people don't mind playing against it.

I lean towards option 2, changing Omega to make it playable versus Alpha, since it makes it much easier to play a game in the first place.

By Barry Kirk (Barrykirk) on Saturday, June 10, 2017 - 11:07 am: Edit

Oh... and I'm in.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Saturday, June 10, 2017 - 01:03 pm: Edit

Barry,
Understood. But (in theory at least) the Omega ships (i.e. ship design and weapon systems) were designed to fight against other Omega ships. I think that should be the goal. And if we can maybe we can get the Omega rules fixed up along the way to fix some of the issues with them.

By Barry Kirk (Barrykirk) on Monday, June 19, 2017 - 06:59 pm: Edit

We've been going round and round on this issue for years.

Your right that the theory was that the Omega ships were supposed to be balanced against each other.

But that's just not the case.

Some Omega races are just serious Uber versus other Omega races.

One of the primary differences between Omega and Alpha is that different size ships have different speeds.

Cruisers or MC one ships in Omega have 24 warp.

Smaller ships can move faster.

I'm not saying that is wrong, but it does make the game play totally different. Especially since speed is everything in SFB.

Direct fire and missile races probably aren't going to find the speed differences that bad.

Plasma based races such as the Probr, Trobrin, Souldra, and Vari with whipcrack torps get seriously stronger when ships are slower.

The Singers were never balanced to begin with, but there primary weapons are multi-pulse like a PPD, but five impulses. Slower speeds makes them much more powerful.

The Worb are already over-powered, and one of their main weapons is the sub-space torpedo. It's a direct fire weapon that rolls and hits or misses several impulses after being fired.

The sub-space torpedo gets much more accurate when the target is moving slower.

I suppose we could add dragons to the plasma races.

Other races that depend on grinding tactics, such as the Chlorphon and the Drex would be helped by the slower speeds too.

The Hivers would probably be helped out because their ships are small and already fast.

The Vari, Maesron, Alunda, Loriyill are going to get hurt badly.

The Ryn don't have warp, but they were never properly balanced, but they are already uber and they will get even more powerful.

Not sure what happens to the Qixa.

The Andros will kick ass when they are notably faster than everyone else. They can pick the range to fight at and if things start to go South, they can pack up and leave before they get hurt.

By wayne douglas power (Wayne) on Monday, June 19, 2017 - 09:38 pm: Edit

I still think Omega ships should be put in an Omega only tournament module.
This may not be possible, the Omega Octant is not balanced it is chaotic.

By Bill Schoeller (Bigbadbill) on Tuesday, June 20, 2017 - 09:59 am: Edit

I will be in.