Archive through March 12, 2009
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Federation & Empire: F&E INPUT:
F&E Proposals Forum:
Maulers in pursuit:
Archive through March 12, 2009
Kevin-
That is the way the rules currently work. In order to keep balance, there must be either a corresponding balance to the alliance. Perhaps a reduction in usefulness of CEDS repair and replacement would be a place to think about it.
I would think this would make a fine house rule, and could be tested as an option with reports to see how the balance works out.
You are saying the reduction of mauler power balances itself.
That is a logical fallacy. Not buying it.
I'm talking GAME BALANCE.
You are introducing a new game mechanic. It needs either a reduction for the other side, or an increase elsewhere for the mauler's side (not necessarily to maulers, but to that faction)
Now, if there was an imbalance problem we were "solving" it would be one thing. But we aren't. Someone just decided they didn't like the fact that they had to face maulers. My response? That's the way the game works.
If we start pulling at the underpinnings of the game, it could unravel.
Here's a hint:
The side that has the maulers is on the offense for the beginning and middle of the game. They retreat a LOT more often. Reducing the mauler's ability to stunt pursuit will have a multiplicative effect as many more ships die (either maulers or the ships they were protecting). Over the course of a game, this could drastically shift the balance of power, as units that otherwise would have survived to be repair are blown away (and/or maulers that cease to be).
If you think that balances itself, you are sorely mistaken.
Joe
I have to say, I think your taking an extreme view - personally I don't think reducing the power of Maulers in the persued force, IMHO would be a major balancing point (I would go for 'Minor')
(I 100% agree though if we are de-fanging Maulers and only allow them to target Fixed/Slow targets...thats a different issue 
)
Personally, I think only a slight modification is needed.
If the persued force includes a mauler in it - after BIR's are anounced, the persued Mauler can announce it will 'maul'.
Dice are rolled as normal.
Mauler gets to maul as usual
The mauler counts as an additional 1 : 1 allowed directed damage attack.
(i.e. both sides in effect get to target another ship for reduced cost).
The persued - gets to cripple or kill (if sufficent damage done) as normal.
The peruser gets the chance to cheaply kill a Mauler (although, most likely at the cost 1 or more other enemy ships live - as it will take 11 or 14 damage to kill it still).
Should a penal ship be present, the Persuer can elect to target the mauler first - and any residual damage is applied as normal (i.e. the Penal ship is doing it's best to 'annoy' the persuer....but a mauler is likely to annoy them an awful lot more!).
Balance ideas (asuming it's done via errata rather than a new product)
Part balancing payment for the loss of the Kzinti CVE in Battle Groups (I don't own the Captains Log this was in, so don't know if it's already factored in)
Part balancing 'payment' on any enhancement to Romulan Carrier build schedules
Can't think of other 'rules' or errata that is being corrected!
Lastly, with X-Ships (and the Gorn DNT), both sides lose an ability, so that in itself partially balances it - but as the Coalition do have more Maulers than the Alliance - some balancing payment would be required.
Matt, thanks for reminding me of the rules change regarding maulers being used by the pursuer. I forgot about the change.
All, remember that maulers still require 2 uncrippled consorts to use their special ability. Including an uncrippled mauler in the pursued force and using it is extremely risky. You have a 66.67% chance of having another very vaulable crippled ship for little to no net gain.
"personally I don't think reducing the power of Maulers in the persued force, IMHO would be a major balancing point "
It severely reduces the impact; basically, it guarantees maulers, if used, will likely die, unless there is some better target to hit. So, that means they will almost never be employed that way, except to protect something bigger/better; it would be ludicrous to waste a mauler protecting a handful of frigates, unless you could be fairly certain that you'd be able to kill something even better than your about-to-die mauler. So the threat largely disappears, and many more ships die. Compound this over many turns. 3-4 extra ships a turn will be significant after 5-10 turns.
If OTOH the Coalition player continues to throw away his maulers, then THAT will also have a large effect. As it stands now, at least losing that mauler saves 26-28 damage, which is hard to do by the pursuer, but at least if it happens, you aren't likely to have anything else to resolve. Now, you may lose the mauler AND have to do with more cripples or dead ships.
Please, don't tell me this is a minor effect.
"Part balancing payment for the loss of the Kzinti CVE in Battle Groups "
Not even close
"Part balancing 'payment' on any enhancement to Romulan Carrier build schedules"
Not even close
"You have a 66.67% chance of having another very vaulable crippled ship for little to no net gain. "
So then, why do we need to make it WEAKER?
I wasn't born yesterday, nor did I start playing last week.
If the power of using maulers to protect the pursued force is minor, than there is no reason to change it.
I should have said cumulative, and not "multiplicative" above.
@Kevin:
"If we were to play the mauler 'smart', taking long range snipe attacks, using exacting amounts of battery to accomplish exact targetting and damage application (something the mauler fairly well excels at in SFB)... well, it just wouldn't possibly amount to enough to qualify it for the F&E benefits it has been granted."
I would argue that is precisely what is being reflected in-game. At reasonable BIRs (~5), a 10-pt mauler will only be doing around 2-4 points of damage anyway. With maybe an HET and a full blast to knock down a #2 or #6 shield (to get the 1:1 DirDam bonus and trigger the shock roll), and of course some piling on by the other ships in the fleet, this seems perfectly reasonable to me.
John.
I dunno, I think we're all getting hung up on the point that a mauler would always be unloading as close as possible, and with all available power. But, I think this quote is probably a lot more accurate (up until the end):
Quote:If we were to play the mauler 'smart', taking long range snipe attacks, using exacting amounts of battery to accomplish exact targetting and damage application (something the mauler fairly well excels at in SFB)... well, it just wouldn't possibly amount to enough to qualify it for the F&E benefits it has been granted.
Maybe, just maybe the mauler isn't being used only to destroy a ship in one hit. It may be that it is doing a bit more internal damage to the target over time, since a battle hex represents a few months of actual battle and skirmish. Over that time, it's reasonable to say that ships are getting their shields knocked down. And if you have a mauler that can then hit that ship at that moment for 10-20 extra internals, then that ship can no longer keep up with the rest of it's fleet, allowing the mauler owner's fleet to then finish off that ship. The rest of the time in the battle hex, the mauler is probably using it's massive battery reserves to shrug off damage in feint attacks, as no defender would want to allow the mauler to get too close.
I think we're all getting too hung up on "it's the mauler that's doing all of the damage". But in any case, if all we're talking about is pursuit than X-ships should get the same limitation. Since they have to get "too close for comfort".
What about if the rule is: A mauler (or any ship with a shock rating) used by a pursued force in the pursuit battle is killed instead of being crippled if it fails its shock roll from using its special abilities.
That simulates things a lot better as any ship that shocks while being pursued will fall even further behind the force that it was trying to cover.
As Joe continued the error from Thomas's post -
Quote 'You have a 66.67% chance of having another very vaulable crippled ship for little to no net gain.'
Maulers only cripple (unless I am rolling 
) only 33.3% of the time - i.e. on 5 or 6 on a 1D6.
So with that at the way -
The question is - for game balance, should a force with maulers be partially protected (or rather increase the danger sufficently to make it less beneficial to persue) and within the game universe, is a Mauler 'mauling' during it's retreat 'realistic'?
"Maulers only cripple (unless I am rolling ) only 33.3% of the time - i.e. on 5 or 6 on a 1D6. "
I saw it. I was quoting, so I didn't change his post. We all know what the rule said.
That doesn't change my opinion.
"is a Mauler 'mauling' during it's retreat 'realistic'? "
Is a carrier being protected COMPLETELY by escorts "realistic"
That's how the game works. Changing either withouth MASSIVE playtesting risks unravelling the game.
I'll remind the AWC how most of these "let's tear down the Coalition!" drives have ended up.
It's not broken. Leave it alone.
I don't want to see anything changed right now with regards to maulers.
I was just trying to point out that using a mauler while retreating is not usually a good idea.
If you want to use a mauler as 1 of the 3 uncrippled ships in the pursuit battle that's fine. At worst I'll lose a cruiser.
I won't bother waisting my damage points on your mauler. I will let you roll for it to be crippled and kill already crippled maulers, or other high value targets if any.
20 pts is better spent killing a couple of cruisers than crippling a mauler that might find itself crippled in the first place.
OK here is a suggestion that may offset the imbalance that could be created by some of the suggested changes to the way maulers work.
The main advantage that the Coalition has in the early part of the game is its overwhelming superiority in ship count. However, it is limited in how it can benefit from this advantage by command limits. This is most evident in capital assaults.
One way to (partly) alleviate this is to change the way capital assaults are conducted. The current rules permit only one planet per system to be attacked each round. What if this restriction was removed, and any number of planets could be attacked simultaneously? In effect, each planet in the capital hex would be treated as a separate system.
Now, I have no idea how drastic an affect this would have on play balance, so playtesting needs to be done. Setting up a capital assault with identical battle forces and trying it with the existing rules and then the suggested changes (several times) should be fairly easy to do and would provide a good idea of the effect.
I foresee the defender would focus on defending the capital planet and maybe a few of the other major planets, but would give up the rest without much resistance. This would tend to make capital assaults slightly less taxing for the attacker, although probably not drastically so, as the main slugfest would still occur over the capital planet itself.
What do you folks think? Is this a reasonable offset for rules that would make maulers less of a sure bet?
Oh and to clearly state my position, my suggested changes to the way maulers work would be:
- They would work as they currently do when attacking fixed defenses, slow units and crippled ships. For x-ships, anything that is slower than them is by this definition a "slow unit." This would also permit attacks on groups that contain any such units (i.e. a carrier group with a crippled escort).
- Attacking anything else requires the mauler to make a "success role." This is separate from its role to shock, which would still apply after every attempt to use the mauler effect. On a 1-2, the mauler succeeds in its attempt to attack and things proceed as per usual. On a 3-4, it succeeds in its attack, but leaves itself vulnerable to a 1-1 directed damage attack. On a 5-6, it fails in its attack, and leaves itself vulnerable to a 1-1 directed damage attack.
Again, what do you folks think?
@Kosta:
I think your capital assault idea gives way too much power to the attacker, since it dilutes the defense too much. Given the Coalition's numerical superiority, I think that they will be able to either attack on most or all of the planets at once (and have an advantage since they set up after the fixed defenses), or the defenders will concentrate on the capital planet leaving a bunch of freebie devastations. A capital assault should be hard, if the defender has been played reasonably.
I don't think a 'success roll' is needed for maulers. It just adds extra complexity for an unnecessary weakening.
John.
Kosta,
Your suggested changes to the capital assault method would be disasterous to the alliance. Put simply, I would go in, trash everything for a song but the capital planet itself, and then leave and wait for a better time to overwhelm you.
That isn't even a new strategy - many coalition players do that - but with your proposal they can now do that so much easier. The defenses of even the minor planets are critical in hurting the coalition, one little bite at a time. With the coalition's shipcount advantage, most planets would fall without defenders and without coalition casualties.
However, that does remind me of a longtime wish of mine, maybe this could be used as a balance to the mauler changes: I have always hated that the defender can use a planet as a damage sponge. I mean, yes, I understand the attacker wants to raid the planet, but is the attacker always fated to lose all discipline as soon as they have the opportunity to bomb a planet? So the alliance uses each and every planet as a 10-point damage absorber while still freely firing upon enemy ships. That's just goofy, IMO.
So let's take that option away. The defender cannot voluntarily absorb damage on the planet, unless there is no other units to take damage on. (Defenses, PDU's and the like can still take the hit, just not the planet itself). The attacker can still choose to dirdam the planet, but is not required to. That way, the attacker simply beats up on the defender until he leaves, and then at his leisure sends the offending planet back to the stone age where it belongs.
So, does that balance against maulers not working for the pursued player?
To add to the chorus:
Changing the way capital assaults work would be a MASSIVE shift in game balance.
We can't balance one bad move with another worse one.
Kevin,
Let's not take anything away from anyone, and it will work just fine.
I still don't think the changes to the capital assault rules would have as massive an effect as suggested, but I admit I may be wrong. The Kzintis and Hydrans give up their minor planets for a song under the current rules in any case. It would be interesting to run the suggested simulation to see how big a difference it would make.
As for changing the mauler rules, I fundamentally think the way they work now is broken. Joe, if you were an SFB player you would see this to be obvious in an open space battle. Yes, F&E and SFB are different games. And yes, you may need the "gameyness" of the mauler in order to make F&E a balanced game. But I don't think its correct to say the way they work now is fine.
Kosta:
Using SFB play behavior to justify a change to F&E may be a little off the mark. In my experience playing SFB (on and off since the mid 80's), players tend to be far bloodier than would a 'realistic' starship captain or admiral would be, if you could call anything having to do with warp-speed ships realistic. Since no lives are on the line, nor are any real costs involved (except for the cost of a few paper copies), players can make head-long charges to range 1, and grind their ships down to nothing. No real captain would do this, unless there were no other choice. All those mauler captains are probably spending their time training their crews to use the mauler in a 'smart' way.
John.
"I fundamentally think the way they work now is broken"
Telling me how it's not a 1:1 correspondence with SFB does not in any way indicate that it is "broken"
"if you were an SFB player
I used to be. You assume too much.
"But I don't think its correct to say the way they work now is fine. "
I think you are misunderstanding what is meant tht it "works fine"
Johnad indicates one area that you should consider (wasn't what I was getting at, but he's still correct)
"The Kzintis and Hydrans give up their minor planets for a song under the current rules in any case"
If you want to lose, sure.
"I still don't think the changes to the capital assault rules would have as massive an effect as suggested, but I admit I may be wrong"
You are.
It is.
The alliance does not have the ship count or the depth to be able to put up a decent defense at more systems than they currently have to. Your suggestion would result in either
a) Alliance fleet getting destroyed piecemeal, as the Coalition puts up more decent lines than the Alliance can field
b) Alliance failing to defend their systems adequately enough, resulting in substantially few Coalition casualties, and a faster reduction in the Alliance economy
c) Coalition sends chump fleets to take the extra planets, retaining quality (and hence staying power) for the bigger battles
c) all of the above
Your intentions were good, but your suggestion was "fundamentially broken"
I consider myself principally an alliance player, and even so, I don't want the mauler rules changed. (AWC membership application forthcoming.)
This is not one of the "broken" items.
Yeah, it really isn't fun to pursue a bunch of cripples, plus 3 healthy ships and still lose a cruiser to a mauler.
But it also isn't all that realistic that a barely functioning SB (1 SIDS left) can shield a fleet of 30 cripples as they escape.
I think the mauler's big advantage, if we were to play a campaign-like version of SFB rather than a "Wrestemania cage match" version, would be it's accuracy at range 10, not the damage at range 1. (Or else every Fed ship would get the mauler bonus, and the Hydrans would get one that includes the fighters.)
Anybody up for a short scenario with a mauler playing "Kaufman retrograde" in support of a retreating Klingon fleet with skads of disrupters and drones? (Oh, and we'd use the "directed turn mode" rules to expand the mauler firing arc.)
This started as a suggestion about Maulers in pursuit and has largely reverted to the Lets fix the Mauler in F&E debate again. Nothing good will come of it now.
Hey Joe, you ever wonder why everyone wants to 'solve' the mauler 'problem' instead of the carrier 'problem'?
[tongue firmly in cheek]
"Anybody up for a short scenario with a mauler playing "Kaufman retrograde" in support of a retreating Klingon fleet "
Yeah, everyone forgets that.
Stewart,
"Hey Joe, you ever wonder why everyone wants to 'solve' the mauler 'problem' instead of the carrier 'problem'? "
Yeah, I noticed that.
Those guys are around.... they'll be back.