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Perhaps, and I understand they fill a tight, historical niche, but since they're in the Alpha octant now and in game terms will be played as such (tournament and non-tournament) it needed to be looked at from that perspective. This is why we playtested the first two changes and came to like them quite a bit. Gives the PC a little something but hasn't over-gunned them. The combined shot is not something that we've instituted but it is fun to discuss the merits or lack thereof.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, March 30, 2015 - 05:19 pm: Edit

I've said tis before but I want to repeat it.

It doesn't matter whether the PC is balanced against other heavy weapons. What matters is whether Seltorian ships or squadrons are balanced against comparable opponents. And Seltorian ships usually have above-average phaser suites relative to their size and cost. Many of them are also above average in generated power relative to their cost. Any attempt to "upgrade" the Selts needs to take this into account.

I note also that the "conjectural" Seltorian X-ships get 3 upgrades to their PCs; a larger capacitor, firing delay reduced to 8 impulses, and ability to fire both shots overloaded. I don't thibk a standard-tech PC is as good as a standard tech disruptor (especially if the disruptor has UIM) but I think the X-tech PC, with all 3 of those upgrades, may actually be better than an X-tech disruptor.

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Monday, March 30, 2015 - 05:49 pm: Edit

I have to agree with Glenn, etc., that the PC is what it is.
Had the Andromedans set up for invasion 20 years later, they'd have packed up their gear and went home. By the same token, there's no way the Seltorians could possibly know of the weaponry available to the denizens of the galaxies they scoured seeking those hated rock heads.

I personally am not in favor of changing weaponry or ships for the "tournament crowd" and maintain a "historical" purist kind of stance.

What matters is whether or not Seltorian ships are capable of kicking the crap out of Tholians, and it appears that they are.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, March 30, 2015 - 06:18 pm: Edit

Well, having defended the Seltorians in my previous post, I'm going to have to attack them in response to Randy's post. A well defended Tholian base can hold out even against the Seltorians. Naturally, the Seltorians are in a much better position than most empires to attack a Tholian base. But I continue to believe that with late-war technology and a high enough BPV level for a strong defense, the Tholians can hold off the Selts, given an equal BPV for the attackers. It's just a closer call than would be the case against "normal" galactic empires.

Part of the reason the Tholians are better off defending a base in this galaxy than they were in the home galaxy is that Tholian PFs have web generators (two PFs per flotilla but the Tholians can use the power of all 6 PFs for reinforcement by creating two pinwheels, one around each "W" PF) but no Selt PF can carry WBs. So the Tholians, for comparable BPV, can overwhelm the Selt's web breaker capability, even taking the cost of buying the webs themselves into account. The Selts will still be forced to commit ships to the web to deal with the pinwheels, and the base's ph-4s will wreck them.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandor) on Monday, March 30, 2015 - 07:52 pm: Edit

You do know that the PC can be loaded for 3 points of power. This can be fired as overload are a standard shot. The Disruptor can be loaded for 2 points fired as standard. Are overloaded for 4 points and range 8 only. So cheaper then a disr overload and oh wait they decided to stay out of overload range is ok can still shoot.
There is flexibility in the weapon what other weapon can overload yet still fire a standard shot?

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Monday, March 30, 2015 - 10:19 pm: Edit

In our groups experience, in any equal BPV match up, Seltorians cannot take a base with defended web. Our working assumption is the Tholians had to be significantly outnumbered at the time of the revolt.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, March 30, 2015 - 11:21 pm: Edit

ADM,

I agree. The Seltorians are less disadvantaged than most empires but they are still disadvantaged. I would add that the dgree of disadvantage, whether for the Selts or some other attacker, varies with the BPV level. Partly this is due to the fact that the Tholians in high-BPV battles are spending less of their total points allocation on web. A 3-tier wedding cake (globular web - no asteroid anchors) costs 472.5 BPV if all webs are at full strength. If both attacker and defender have 1000 BPV, the Tholians are spending almost half their points on web (though they can voluntarily start with less-than-full-strength web) so the attackers outgun them almost 2 to 1 in "shooty stuff". But at 1500 BPV, the Tholians are only spending about a third of their allotment and the ratio of attacker shooty stuff to defender shooty stuff is about 3 to 2. At 2000 BPV (a very large scenario, obviously) the ratio is only about 4 to 3. So it gets progressively harder for the attacker to defeat a Tholian prepared defense as the scenario size increases, even if BPV is equal.

A number of years ago I posted a suggestion that the cost of pre-existing web be increased based on scenario year. As time goes by, the energy cost to maintain web decreases, meaning the Tholians spend less energy for web and therefore have more for weapons, EW, shields, movement, etc. The defense gets tougher, even though the Tholians have the same forces. The BPV cost for pre-existing web is .25 per strength point. I suggested increasing that to .4 in Y160 (when web maintenance energy costs decrease) and .5 in Y175 (when they decgrease again). But nothing ever came of my idea.

By Michael Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - 12:11 am: Edit

I you pinwheel your PFs and put them adjacent to the outer web I will crash a couple FF into the web and hit them from range 1 until they explode.

PFs with web generators (which should be on ALL PFs at a base) can zip around, and dump 6 points per turn into the web. I think I covered this in a term paper? Maybe the "Web of Lloth" one?

Basically they hype the packs and get up to high speed while HELD in tractors with an appropriate speed change late in the turn. They get released, zip out to one heck from the web faster than the circling Selts/ Klingons can crash into it, dump the power and come back to the inside of the middle ring to be tractored/ emergency deccel.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - 12:26 am: Edit

Alan,
I know Daniel Thompson, the Tholian player in our group, idea was to hove web breakers work at doubled strength vs. anchored web. That combined with your suggestion for a higher BPV cost for the later more efficient web should be a major improvement.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - 12:06 pm: Edit

Sorry Mike, but I don't thinbk your idea works. Two frigates "crashing" the web will not kill even one pinwheel. They probably don't even do internals. Why? Several reasons. For one thing, my mines will be placed such that you can't get line of site to the pinwheel without encountering large explosive mines. Secondly, you will take massive "preemptive" fire the impulse before you hit the web. This will reduce the overall damage you would take relative to my waiting to fire until you were actually in the web. But any weapons you lose will never get to fire at all. By the time the crippled remains of your frigates hit the web and have of line of site to the pinwheel, they are unlikely to have enough firepower left to get through the pinwheel's shields, which are 36 at the weakest, due to the additive effect of pinwheel shields. Even if you do get through the shields, you have to get through 3 PF's worth of hull before you start hitting things that effect my combat capability. To kill those 3 PFs, you need to commit a lot more than 2 frigates.

Also, I believe that a standard flotilla can have a maximum of 2 "W" PFs. Now you could buy 6 casual Arachnid PWs (PF with phaser-1s replacing the disruptors and web generators replacing the phaser-3s), rather than a standard Arachnid-P flotilla. And this is indeed very effective for web defense. But in strategic terms, there might be times when you would want to sortie the flotilla away from the base. Suppose an enemy raider is harrassing freighters or raiding minor colonies and is obviously no threat to the base itself. Suppose you sortie the base's flotilla to deal with it. A casual flotilla of 6 Arachnid-PWs would have 24 phaser-1s but no additonal EW support. A standard Arachnid-P flotilla (two of the PFs would be PWs) would only have 20 phaser-1s but would also have the EW support of the PWS. Also, the PWL would allow them to have T-bombs, which mifgt be useful against some adversaries. So 6 casual Arachnid-PWs are probably better as a pure base defense force (but note the EW issues with no PWS) but the standard Arachnid-W flotilla is almost as good, and better in open space. I prefer the latter even for an independent scenario, since it is what I would buy for the base if I were playing the Tholians in an strategic campaign. I usually don't buy units for scenarios unless I could see a plausible reason why I might have those same units if the scenario took place as part of a campaign.

Note also that if the base had (as I recommend) a standard Arachnid-P flotilla, you could still put mech-links on some supporting ships and add additional casual Arachnid PWs to those ships.

Just my .02 quatloos worth.

By David Schultz (Ikvavenger) on Tuesday, March 31, 2015 - 12:09 pm: Edit

By Glenn Hoepfner (Ikabar) on Monday, March 30, 2015 - 04:53 pm

"As a last note, I think your playtest group did a great job trying to make the PC a better weapon. Perhaps, had the Selts survived, and should they stick with the PC (cough), these might be good refit designs. SFB is a fluid game with a living constitution."

Thank you. We took a look at it for a reasonable 'upgrade' to see how it would play out. I forgot to mention that we also tagged this as a refit with a slightly increased BV amount. IIRC we added one for each adjustment. This does not count the combined shot as we haven't implemented this at this time. That's still in the 'should we try it or not' stage. The other two adjustments have worked fine.

I would also mention that we have added on to the Alpha sector (octant). We have redrawn the map to reflect the additions. We have kept the traditional canon races in place. To them we have added the Frax, Vudar, Peladine and Borak in the general areas in which they are described in their descriptions. We've added the Nicozians as well and a nice spot was picked for them on the western side. Also the Paravians and Carnivon were added in their described locations. We wanted to add several Omega races since we felt we'd never play them in-and-of-themselves as Omega only races. So we've added the Maesron, Kolighar, Hiver as well as Vari. We've converted them to Alpha strength races i.e. increased the warp engines/shields etc to standard strengths. We put the 'bugs' on the east side of the octant along with the Seltorians. This is why we took a look at several weapon systems, PC included to have them as a general match with the other Alpha races without messing with the actual flavor of the race.

I think we've succeeded. So far the playtesting has proven fruitful with the group.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Friday, April 03, 2015 - 10:19 am: Edit

Mike,

No response to my 12:06 PM post on 31 March? I had hoped to have a tactics discussion (though it should maybe be moved to a different thread) about wedding cake defense and attack. In my experience, taking out a PF pinwheel supporting a well-defended wedding cake will require the Selts to sacrifce a lot more than two frigates. But that is based on only one actual battle, and it's possible that there is a way to do it that neither I nor my opponent thought of. That's why I wanted to hear more about your tactics. If I'm wrong, I would like to learn about that fact.

For the record, I very much like to have ships or PFs hide behind the second ring, run out to reinforce the outer ring, and then run back behind the second ring again; if I'm fighting a Klingon (or any opponent who has to use traditional "onion peeling" tactics). I just don't think it works as well against the Seltorians, due to the amount of power the Tholians will need to pour into the outer ring. In the time period in question, against a "traditional" opponent, the Tholians only need to put 15 energy per turn into the outer ring to maintain it indefinitely. But web breakers require that the Tholians pour a lot more energy into the web. Suppose, hypothetically, that the Selts bring 4 cruisers and 4 destroyers to assault a wedding cake and park them 5 hexes from the outer ring (which keeps them 10 hexes from the phaser-4s on the base). Those 8 ships will, on average, degrade the web by 120 pints each turn. The Tholians will have to put 60 points of energy into the web to counter that plus the 15 to counter natural degradation, 75 points in all. My suggested scheme of two PF pinwheels can provide enough energy to counter that and maintain the web. I'm not convinced your tactic of running out 6 "casual" Arachnid-Ws can supply enough energy, given the power you will have to spend for movement will be much greater than the power I spend for housekeeping and holding the pinwheels together. Of course, if you move out slowly, you have more power for web maintenance but you also increase the risk of attacking Selts being able to get into the web soon enough to kill some defenders. Note also that any given ship can only put 4 energy into the web per impulse. That's not an issue for my pinwheels since they will spend the whole turn adjacent to the outer ring anyway. But it is something to keep in mind for your tactic. Against a Klingon you only need to put 15 points total into the outer web and with 6 PFs no single PF need spend more than one impulse adjacent to the ring. But if you need to put in 75 points divided between 6 PFs, some of them will have to remain adjacent to the outer ring for 4 impulses, again increasing the chances they would be caught and killed. So in my opinion - good tactic against Klingons, but maybe not against Seltorians.

Anyway, I hope you will respond. I do want to hear your thoughts on the matter.

By Michael Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Friday, April 03, 2015 - 11:16 pm: Edit

Don't have my books. They are 8 time zones west of me. Maybe next week?

You have the Old Captains Log where I posited "the Web of Lloth?"

The irreguiarish web with "foxholes?"

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Saturday, April 04, 2015 - 01:53 pm: Edit

Mike, unless it's a very old Captain's Log then yes I do have it. But it would help if you could tell me which Captain's Log, or even describe the cover art. I assume it's a Term Paper and those aren't referenced by individual name in the Table of Contents.

By Steven E. Ehrbar (See) on Saturday, April 04, 2015 - 07:54 pm: Edit

"THE THOLIAN PENTAGRAM OF LLOTH" - CL29, p.96.

By Michael Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Sunday, April 05, 2015 - 05:38 am: Edit

I just got bored with wedding cakes and buzz saw spirals.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, April 06, 2015 - 10:57 am: Edit

Steven, thanks for the reference.

Mike, I had hoped to get something posted over the weekend but other considerations got in the way. I will try to post some comments on web defense this evening.

By William T Wilson (Sheap) on Monday, April 06, 2015 - 12:23 pm: Edit

Why not go to the tholian tactics section?

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, April 07, 2015 - 01:39 pm: Edit

Well, yesterday's "this evening" becomes today's "this afternoon". But I am now working on my comments. Per William Wilson, it will be in the Tholian Tactics section. It may be a while before it shows up since I am a slow typist. But it really will be this afternoon.