As Mauler (and perhaps indirectly SFG's ships too) create so many balance issues (i.e. rule will not work, because Maulers make the rule too dangerous)…

So why not remove the ability of Maulers to maul anything other than Bases and PDU's?

(Crippled ships is an interesting point....).

Slightly reduce the conversion cost (example 5pts for a D6M is a lot - 3 or 4 Ep's isn't too bad to gain 2 compot and a base killing function)...

and reduce Shock chance to 1/6...

Alliance carriers are made much safer..

….and so other changes might then work to weaken carriers?

Dead horse?

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Thursday, October 01, 2020 - 09:08 am: Edit

The only way I would support something like this would be if carrier groups were also made more vulnerable, and/or fighters were reduced. Ship kills are good.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Thursday, October 01, 2020 - 09:23 am: Edit

They had the opportunity to nerf maulers when they did 2K10, and they did go out of their way to downgrade them, but did not remove the ability for them to shoot ships, which folks had advocated for for 20+ years to that point. So, yeah, I suspect that horse is dead.

As it stands, maulers are generally fine, given the dynamic of "The Alliance can generally make lines where the only thing the mauler can realistically shoot is an FF and a bunch of fighters" (see: all the stuff that folks are trying to suggest changes to currently :-).

Where maulers tend to really warp the game are in the face of excessive/abusive intentional minus points (where the Coalition over crippling a CC for -8 damage means the Alliance can't possibly direct a ship on the next round, where the Alliance over crippling a CC for -8 damage means that the Coalition still can maul whatever they want on the next round, and now the Alliance have to repair a CC instead of building another FF next turn...) and in the instances where the Romulans can maul Gorn CV groups, 'cause Gorn CV groups are generally unintentionally weak and they can't overstuff escorts [*].

But other than those two specific instances, maulers, in the current dynamic of the game, tend to be fine.

[*] This dynamic was certainly tweaked in the advanced rules, where the Gorn can use FCRs to save crippled CV groups, and the Gorn can at a certain point, aggressively build CMVs which helps a lot. But in the base game, this is a significant issue for the Gorn.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Thursday, October 01, 2020 - 11:18 am: Edit

Peter

Which is why it got my brain thinking.

So many rules work well - but Maulers change the game Dynamics (Persuit being a really good example) - and it is those dynamics which perhaps means the changes we like, won't work

P.S. You missed where the Alliance over crippled the CC tp get -8 for the next round ...only have it then mauled in pursuit

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, October 01, 2020 - 11:56 am: Edit

I for one think this is a bad idea but if you get the staff behind it I may have to reconsider. If you cannot get them to support it, I'm happy to let it die.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Thursday, October 01, 2020 - 02:21 pm: Edit

>>P.S. You missed where the Alliance over crippled the CC tp get -8 for the next round ...only have it then mauled in pursuit >>

Where then the -8 damage is arbitrarily limited to -3 damage and won't help save it, 'cause it is perfectly reasonable to arbitrarily limit voluntary negative points to -3 in pursuit, but not in actual rounds of combat.

Ahem. I digress. Sorry.

By Joe Stevenson (Ikv_Sabre) on Wednesday, May 10, 2023 - 04:36 pm: Edit

I think the reduction in maulers that is already in place is sufficient. All of the addition units added in the expansions makes the initial offensive harder as it is, and taking this away would make the Hydrans unstoppable.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Wednesday, May 10, 2023 - 11:56 pm: Edit

I think maulers are right where they should be.