Archive through July 20, 2020
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Tournament Zone:
Proposed Ship Changes:
Archive through July 20, 2020
The problem with the Andro was, is, and always will be its RPS is intrinsically broken due to tech mis-mash. If it is powerful enough to have a decent chance to take down the Fed and the Orion, it will usually overwhelm big plasma and mostly win against D&D.
The only solution to this problem is to have TWO Andros - one that fights Orion and Fed, and one that fights everyone else. But that doesn't feel very Andro.
I'd rather just remove it and add some fresh blood to the TC field.
Ted,
I completely understand what you are saying, and yet Petrick is interested in there being an Andro, and I'm currently flying an Andro, and there is apparently general interest in there being a viable Andro. So I started a new discussion on the Andro :-)
John wrote:
>>How about creating a Tournament Energy Module?>>
I think that is another one that is gonna get us lost in the weeds.
For the sake of clarity--the big issue with the Andro in tournament duel play is that it can take a full alpha strike, take limited to no internals, and then run off, empty the panels, and come back for a second attack, no worse off than it was the first time.
The whole point of the Andro having only 3 batteries is specifically to limit the ability of the ship to dump energy from the panels to the batteries, both to prevent the ship from essentially instantly regenerating all of its defenses while also eliminating the ability to go from zero battery power to 30 battery power instantly.
With only 3 batteries, the ship can generally only remove power from the panels the mundane way--absorb 10% at the end of the turn, and radiate 1 per panel into space. Under certain either lucky or cleverly arranged situations, the ship will still be able to do a minor energy dump into the panels, but still, with only 15 battery capacity, it can only restore a limited amount of panel capacity at a time.
This is *important* to making the ship viable. Adding an energy module or increasing the battery capacity just gets us back where we started.
At this point, with 3 batteries, I suspect that the ability to regenerate defenses and restore needed reserve power is *probably* fine. Again, I haven't flown this ship in the 2011 version for a while, but when playing it at the time, it seemed almost a reasonable ship.
I certainly can understand the reluctance to just hand it 2TRH, which can still result in "get to R0, do a huge amount of damage, take way less in return, displace away to reload and restore panels", but even then, I think the 3 batteries is going to make a huge difference. But I could certainly see trying it out with 3TRL as an obvious halfway point between 2TRL (which I suspect is completely insufficient) and 2TRH (which might be a little too strong still).
Good luck, Peter.
To some extent I personally thought the main problems with the Andros was the panel dump. I had hoped that when they got revised long ago that they should lose the panel dump but keep a fairly robust dissipation/absorption to batteries. Then they'd be rather resilient and need continued pounding to defeat, but never have the potential game ending big dump that fixed them too much.
But, that was one of the Andro's themes, so it stayed. Which is fine.
It is rather likely not a palatable way to balance a tourney Andro now. (e.g. disallow panel dumping in tourney, give it 'better' dissipation/absorption. Then the the ship itself could be better balanced without having to worry about if it can too easily dump or not. Cause it cannot. But even doing that level of deviation from the proper rules still leaves what level of dissipation/absorption would be warranted instead, as well as the rest of the ship tweaking needed, so...)
I definitely agree it should keep its disdev. Not that Paul Scott needed his in the game where it failed him all three times. Man. Hand him lemons and he makes lemonade and sells it back to you for a profit. 
And even though I rather disliked losing to it a bunch, I would still rather have a reasonably viable and not broken Andro tourney ship.
Tim Linden.
Tim wrote:
>>It is rather likely not a palatable way to balance a tourney Andro now.>>
With 3 batteries, it is currently *almost* balanced. Again, like, the 2011 Playtest version (2TRH, 3BTTY, 6P2, whatever), flies *almost* like a reasonable ship. It mostly can only clear panels through absorbing 10% and radiating 1 per panel. It *can* panel dump some, but only 15 points at a time, and it is difficult to make that work (as there is no setting on full panels that is a legal dump from the start).
-Front full to front standard with off rears is 24 power slosh. Illegal.
-Back full to back standard with off fronts is 16 power slosh. Illegal.
-Full front turned off to empty reinforced rear is 20 power slosh. Illegal.
Like, yeah, if you have exactly 54 power in the front panels, you can make something happen, but that's all randomosity.
The trick seems to be either winning before you run out of power, or running out of power and losing 'cause you are speed 12.
The firepower is certainly in dispute at the current time, but the basic ship that is 28 power and 3 batteries is almost a viable ship.
Maybe slosh power after a turn break.
Sure. There are ways to make things happen, but they are complicated, and require planning and often shenanagins. And even then, the amount you can pull out of the panels into batteries is significantly limited.
With 6 batteries, the Andro could just, from the get go, turn off the rears, drop to standard, and move 24 power to batteries with minimal to no overhead.
With 3 batteries, you can get some power into the batteries, up to a max of 15, with fustication.
The 2 TRH 6-p-1 was fine IMO.
I got beat in my Lyran by Paul Scott back when we were playtesting but it was very close. That says something to me as PS >than AK
I remember beating Peter in a Klingon which was almost by accident because I am not a Klingon Arc Rememberer or Schemer....that also says something to me as PB> AK.
Anyway..point being it's beatable but not a patsy.
It's still tough against plasma.. but who cares?
Classes of ships are supposed to have RPS troubles. Fed and Lyran and Selt say hello
I have no idea why we are piddling around with two TRLs....seems like we are going backwards here.
I mean, yes? That is probably true about the TRLs. I don't know how we got here, but, well, this is where we are, so might as well work with it.
Peter- you seem closer to the powers that be and so maybe you can answer this question. I have asked it before but gotten no answer.
Do we know what would need to happen in playtesting in order to get anything new sanctioned whether that be changes to existing ships or anything else new?
I know we need playtesting and probably write up's....but how much....dozens, hundreds, thousands??
I mean, like, I suspect to get something fixed, there needs to be a lot of collected data and then some discussion, and then probably SPP needs to be in the loop on all of it; I haven't actually been involved in actual playtesting for a long time (until now :-), but in the past, there was always a combination of "Here is stuff we'd like to change", and "here is what happened when we tried the thing that is changed", and eventually, the thing got changed (or not, as the case may be).
I don't see any new Tournament ships getting sanctioned except perhaps the Jindarian. Obviously the Andromedan may get changed and one could argue that the 'weaker' ships might get changes (ie Seltorian).
Have there ever been EY or non-Alpha tournaments?
Ginger McMurray:
Nope. And never been an X-Tourney either.
We were messing around with a bunch of Tournament standardized Omega ships (i.e. up their warp to 30-32; make sure they all have about 38 power; 2 tractor beams, 4 shuttles, regular shields, etc.) for a number of years (most of the SSDs are still on SFBOL), but they were notoriously difficult to balance, especially if you tried to balance them against Alpha ships (Omega ships have a heck of a time against drones, as they were designed to play in a universe without drones, so their phasers tend to be terrible against plain old Alpha Type I and Type IV drones, as they tend to be very unreliable at doing 4 damage).
We had 2 or 3 full on Omega tournaments online (probably 8 people each, I think they were round robin, not single elimination). I won one with the Alunda ship (which, to be fair, was probably too strong). I don't remember what happened in the other one I played in, and I think there was one before I started using the Omega ships as well.
IIRC, the ones that were reasonable playable/balanced were:
-Maesron: The tachyon missiles really needed to just be, like, simple and generic, but it was ok. I think we even used it once as an actual ship in a FtF tournament (Council of 5) a few years back.
-Probr: Weird, but ok.
-Alunda: The CC was just too strong, and I think we ended up cutting back its repair capacity (giving it a DamCon of 4 instead of 6?), but I think the last version on SFBOL (which was pretty much a standard HS layout with 10xBB and 4xPW but also only 4 DamCon) was not wildy overpowered.
-Vari: An upgunned BC that wasn't out of the realm of ok (as the Vari are kind of terrible in general).
I think the rest of them were all a little on the rough side of sort of balanced--the Kohligar had troubles 'cause of their ability to blow up plasma with their phasers; the Hivers were difficult as they were a small ship with strong fighters, and it was difficult to get the right balance there; the Chlorophon were difficult as all their guns were long ranged and not real effective up close, and they were easy to corner on the closed map; the Drex were kind of a dead end as the Drex are kind of wildly overpowered in the non tournament game (mostly due to their always having a -1 to die roll bonus, but also their main guns are just absurdly effective); the Trobrin were, ahem, hard to make work as their ships are all super big and full of armor, but I think there was an almost reasonable CW sized ship. I don't think anyone got anywhere with the real fringe ships (Sigvirion, the dragon guys or the teleportation movement guys or the Shadows or whatever).
EY tournament ships wouldn't really be *that* different than regular tournament ships, but it'd just take a lot longer to actually hurt anyone. Except for the Kzinti who are just gonna tractor the opponent and kill them.
Seltorian thoughts. The ship isn't all that horrible. I think it might be getting a bad rap.
I have played it a couple times now and watched it played a couple times lately. I think it might be almost a middle of the pack ship as it is. It could be there just aren't many skilled players in it.
If I were to suggest anything for it - maybe a single t-bomb. And give it 2 shuttle bays instead of 1. Other then that, that ship isn't really all that terrible.
Selt already has two bays, I think.
Most players don't like it because the PCs are not reliable and don't have crunch. But the phaser suite is top notch.
The Selt only has 1 bay as per the SSD for the HC.
Ah, yeah. No bueno.
Get up close and put Shield crackers with the PC's and it all is plenty enough damage. Centerlined at range 4 I did 59 the other day only hitting with 2 PC's and not rolling better then a 4 with p1's.
That's a lot of range 4 damage after not rolling awesomely great. I did that, 59 at range 4----moving 18 times and had 14 in reinforcement + still had all the batteries left. Think about that for a sec.....
Must be nice having no seeking weapons to deal with?
I don't think you can really count on a range four centerline shot like that too often. Turn mode D and all that.
The Selt isn't horrible, it just has no "magic".
Even with Fleet Captains flying it, it just doesn't do well.
Yeah. The biggest issue with the Seltorian is that it has nothing to distract your opponent. No seeking weapons what so ever. Even the Lyran has the ESG to avoid being overrun if it wants to use it defensively.
Playing the Selt 2 games, in SS#5 was kind of interesting. I'm pretty sure that doubles the total number of games that I've played in it. It's better than I thought it was. I'll probably give it another try in the next tournament. My last game against the Hydran, was actually very close. A very timely speed change, by the Hydran, was probably the difference in the outcome.