Re: [FT] FB2 Balancing Corrections Proposed

Alan had written that Brendan Pratt had...
 
>...shown ways that both Phalons and SuVasku can
>get into short range (12") either with little damage or giving as good
or >better than they get. And has shown that the firepower they can
>generate at 12" is unbalancing.

I read Brendan's post as showing that Phalons can get into short range
if the enemy doesn't know how to deal with them, or if the table is
*very* cramped. At least the first "if" is a rather big one. *IF* the
all-C Phalons manage to get close before they take serious losses they
can inflict massive damage, but the enemy usually only needs to stay
out of range for a turn or two in order to wear the Phalons down to a
managable size. Phalon ships die rather fast even when shrouded, and if
they want to use their PBLs they can't shroud either.

Alan also wrote, in reply to me:

>>What Brendan wrote about the SV was that they are able to sit at
>>their own table edge without maneuvering, putting all their power
into >>the A pool. They then outgun all enemies at all ranges, which is
a >>problem. He did not write that the Sa'Vasku can get into short
range >>while simultaneously having unbalancingly much firepower; that
part >>of his posts treated the Phalons only.

>Correct. So we either have to
>a) Reduce them at short range
>b) Remove their long-range capability
>c) Decrease across the board.

A bit difficult to determine if "them" refers to SV, Phalons or both
here. You forgot the d) option though, which is:

d) Wait 'til the autumn and see if the players figure out proper
tactics to deal with them. This is the solution we "applied" to the SMs
during the initial furor after FB1 was published - you remember those
first 2-3 months when the players thought that SMs were horribly
overpowered?

The main reason I'm worried about the Sa'Vasku is that *I* still
haven't figured out how to fight the "sit still and load everything
into the A pool" tactic :-/ This one was a clean miss on my part.

In the Pulser case, I was quite fascinated when Stiltman wrote that the
Pulsers were much too weak for their cost only a couple of days before
Brendan Pratt wrote that the same Pulsers were much too *strong*... I
know how to deal with Phalons though, so I'm not worried about them -
but then I had a head start <g>

>[Bri] "This is a MAJOR crimp in smaller SV ships. Take a
>Fo'Sath'Ann. If it moves at what would be a normal thrust for
>a Human frigate (6), this takes 3 power points leaving 3 If it
>put 1 into D for the spicule and 2 into A for the Stinger you
>get the equivilent of MD6, 1 PDS, 1 Class-1 Beam.
>Now look at the Tacoma (same mass), convert 1 Class-2 to armor
>and 1 Class-1 for the extra hull box. You end up with MD6,
>1 PDS, 1 Class-2 Beam, and 1 Class-1 Beam. That is the Human
>craft gets an extra Class-2 Beam for 1 point cost more than
>the SV."

(I assume the following is Alan's post:)

>The smallest of the SV ships becomes almost useless, unfortunately.
>It would need a hull box/armour  replaced by a 1 pt power source to
>make it work at all. :-(

I'd say that the four or five smallest published SV designs become
almost useless. Even the Fo'Vur'Ath "DH" is able to match the firepower
of human FHs just over half its size and two-thirds its cost only by
not maneuvering or defending itself at all, using your suggestion.

I guess the main thing I don't like with your suggestion is that it
forces the SV to fight as long-range snipers exclusively - or, to view
it from the other direction, it forces their opponents to rely on fixed
table edges to defeat them since the SV will always attempt to stay
away - and they're far better at staying away than human sniper ships
:-(

>As for the Tacoma comparison above, the ability of a SV ship to
>suddenly gain Thrust-12 is worth a fair bit too!

Thrust-12 is worth a fair bit if, but only if, you can actually do
something after maneuvering (other than run away, that is). If the
enemy knows that you have to fly straight ahead to be able to fire more
than a couple of dice at point-blank range, he's got a pretty good
chance of being right where you don't want him to be anyway.
 
>>On Phalons:
>>What Alan probably doesn't know is that this mathematical analysis
>>was preceeded by 18 playtest battles in July last year, featuring the
>>1-2-4 Pulsers. He does know (or at least has known) that it was
>>followed up by another 17 battles, this time using the 1-2-6 Pulser
>>version, in September and October :-/
> 
>Hey, I missed the problem too. Worse, I should have campaigned for
>1-2-4 which I preferred, but in the face of both your analysis and the
>playtesting evidence, I honestly thought I hadn't got a leg to stand
>on.
 
You may have "missed" the problem. I saw the problem coming last
autumn, ran a number of test battles to check it out, and the C-heavy
and all-C fleets lost all of those battles hands down. What I missed
was to test them on small tables with fixed edges - with "small" I mean
48mu or less in width for 1500-2000 pt fleets, or 60mu or less wide for
5000 pt fleets. 

I still don't think you have a leg to stand on here, and I think
Brendan is reacting to the Phalon weapons just like the general FT
community reacted to the SMs two years ago - ie., with an temporary
bout of panic before proper counter-tactics have been worked out.

>>Most of the July battles pitted near-identical Phalon fleets against
>>one another; the only differences between the fleets was the Pulser
>>configurations used. The ratio of M Pulsers to L Pulsers didn't seem
>>to matter very much, but the fleets with the larger number of
>>Pulser-Cs invariably lost. (Eight battles out of eight; in the other
>>four inter-Phalon battles both sides had the same number of
Pulser->>Cs but different mixes of Ms and Ls.)
> 
>I see no problem with this. If fighting other Phalons, don't tune your
>Pulsers to close range. *shrug*

With the 1-2-4 version it is a bit worse than that, I'm afraid:

"If fighting other Phalons, don't tune your Pulsers to C.

If fighting humans, don't tune your Pulsers to C.

If fighting Kra'Vak, don't tune your Pulsers to C."

I haven't fought enough Phalon-Sa'Vasku battles with heavy Pulser-C
loads to say for certain, but I find the above pattern somewhat
disturbing :-/

>>The last six July battles were against Human fleets (mostly FB1
>>designs, but also some all-P-torp custom ones). Here the Phalons
>>were completely massacred in the two battles where they had around
>>half their Pulsers in C configuration. The other four battles,
featuring
>>Pulser mixes with up to  one-third Pulser-Cs, saw two narrow >>Phalon
victories and two equally narrow Phalon defeats.
> 
>The problem is not with Mixed tuning ships. 

On the contrary. If mixed tuning gets better against all foes (except
possibly SV) the fewer Pulser-Cs it has, there is no reason to use the
Pulser-Cs at all. I consider this to be a balance problem.

>Setting half your pulsers to C config means you fall between 2 stools.
>Make em ALL C class and see what happens.

I fought four playtest battles with all-C fleets, two each in July and
October. What happened was that the non-C ships managed to stay outside
the Pulser-C range until the all-C force was reduced to a managable
size and finished them off after taking some losses. In one of the
October battles the all-C force didn't get a single shot off before it
was wiped out; in the three other battles it destroyed between 1/3 and
1/2 of the enemy fleet before dying.

Just for fun, we ran a 1500-point battle on a medium-sized fixed table
this afternoon using the GenCon UK Fleet Action set-up (see Paul
Radford's web page for details); the Phalon CVL fleet with all Pulsers
set to "C" against the NAC BDN fleet. The battle report is at the end
of this post, but the score (using the GCUK scoring system) was if we
got it right NAC 2485, Phalons 512 (which seems odd, because it should
only add up to 2995 points - I can't find the 2 errant ones :-( ), ie.
a rather impressive NAC victory. It was even more impressive to us,
since it is the first time since FB1 was published that we've seen a
vanilla FB1 NAC fleet defeat *anything* :-/

>>Out of curiousity - would any of you arm your fleet exclusively or
>>almost exclusively with B1 batteries? If not, why not?
> 
>No, because of the repair problem. Basically, if you have exclusive
>B1s then you have zero chance of repairing any significant loss,
>there are just too few DCPs. Otherwise, Hell Yes! In a dogfight in
>Cinematic, that all-round arc is worth 50% of the cost, especially
>with Thrust-4 or less.

OK. In my experience (ie., with higher speeds and more space in which
to maneuver) the all-round arc alone doesn't compensate for the 12mu 
range even when the enemy doesn't deliberately keep the range open. If
the enemy *does* try to keep the range open, I'd fully expect you to
lose about one-third of your fleet before you can fire a single shot.
 
>But against KV, this might change. Certainly the B2(All Arc) becomes
>a very powerful weapon against them, and 3 B1s might be better.

On a very restricted table where you can get close enough to use them,
yes. On a larger table, I don't think the 3xB1s will get to fire very
often :-/

Today's battle report:

As I wrote above we ran an "All-C" battle today, using the GenCon UK
Fleet Action rules (available on Paul Radford's homepage, to which I
don't remember the URL offhand but it's been posted to the list several
times recently) on a 96x60 mu fixed table - 8x5 feet for those of you
who measure in inches, or just under the recommended size for a 25mm
DBM battle for those of you who play ancients battles. This is about
1/3 the size of the table we fought our playtest battles on, so we
thought there might be a difference - but no, there wasn't :-/

The fleets used were taken from the GenCon UK fleets. A random roll
between the three Phalon fleets gave my opponent the CVL one (1 Taanis
CVL with 3 normal and 1 Attack squadron, 1 Tuuloth CH, 1 Tsaara CL, 1
Phuun FF and 2 Tyaph FFs) worth 1500 points. All Pulsers were set to
"C", which gave the fleet 96 close-range dice in the (F) arc, 60 in the
(Fx) arcs, 54 in the (Ax) arcs and 36 in the (A) arc, plus four PBLs
(strenghts 3, 2x2 and 1) and the four fighter squadrons. The total
number of armour and hull boxes was 101.

In the local group the FB1 NAC designs have a solid reputation as
losers, so in order to give the Phalons at least a fighting chance -
since all-C Phalon forces are about the only force with an even worse
record locally - I let the dice pick a random NAC fleet; it turned out
to be the BDN one (1 Excalibur BDN with a heavy interceptor sqdn, 1
Furious CE, 2 Huron CLs, 3 Ticonderoga DDs, 1 Tacoma FH and 1 Minerva
FF), worth 1495 points. Counting the P-torps as "Class-3" batteries for
simplicity, this fleet had 71/45/36/19 dice in the various arcs at
close range (but they could of course fire at longer ranges as well);
18 PDS of which 3 were ADFC-guided, one fighter squadron, and 140
hull/armour boxes. On the face of it, the NAC were in for a tough
fight.

The first shots were fired on turn 3. The Phalon FFs were all shrouded,
but the cruisers and carrier launched PBs. The NAC fighters engaged two
Phalon standard squadrons in a dogfight, killing 8 for only 2 of their
own lost; the other two Phalon squadrons attacked a Ticonderoga on the
far flank of the NAC formation (though one squadron failed its morale
check, so the DD only took 1 threshold), and the NAC BDN, CE and FH
were hit by two PBs (both strength-2). A flurry of sixes from both
sides later had the Furious take no damage at all, the BDN 4 pts and
the FH 3. NAC beam fire then destroyed one Tyaph, ripped the armour off
the other one (in spite of both being shrouded), and reduced the Tsaara
CL to 2 hull boxes. Apart from losing virtually every weapon, it also
lost its bridge for 4 turns. (With only 1 DCP remaining it failed to
repair the bridge before it ran off the table; it had no further impact
on the battle). After repairs, the Phalon beam die count was down to
66/42/30/18 close-range dice and 81 hull/armour boxes while the NAC had
only lost a single B1 so were down to 70/44/35/18 close-range dice and
130 hull/armour boxes. Note that the NAC now have *more* close-range
dice than the Phalons at all ranges, after only one turn of shooting in
the 12-24mu bracket.

On turn 4 the Phalon FFs managed to get within 12mu of a Huron and the
Taanis ended up at range 11.5 from a Ticonderoga; all other NAC ships
were either in the Phalon's (A) arc or outside range 12. The "doomed"
Tico killed the damaged Tyaph before itself being destroyed by the
Taanis, the Huron killed the Phuun, the Phalon fighters which attacked
the other Ticonderoga managed to cripple it, and the rest of the NAC
ships poured fire into the Taanis. Its armour held, but only just. The
die and hull count was now: Phalons 48/30/30/12 dice, 61 hull/armour
boxes; NAC 59/37/28/15 dice and 117 hull/armour boxes.

After this, the NAC heavies closed with the two remaining Phalon ships,
since the latter were both out-gunned and out-hulled. The battle went
on for another three turns, and ended with a rather convincing NAC
victory (! - but when two losers meet, one of them *has* to win :-/ ). 

In the end the Phalons lost the CH, all three FFs and 18 fighters
destroyed (the fighters then died because they had no carrier to return
to), the CL had 2 hull boxes left and couldn't avoid leaving the table
(which means "destroyed" in the GenCon UK rules, but in a campaign it
would've escaped into FTL before the NAC could catch it), and the CVL
was turned into a drifting hulk (the *only* systems, including the core
ones, which was operating when it simultaneously ran off the table and
ran out of canned life support were 1 FCS, 1 fighter bay and the FTL
drive.)

The NAC losses were 1 CE, 1 DD, both frigates and all the six fighters,
1 DD crippled (2 thresholds taken and the FCS gone), minor damage to
the BDN and scratched paint on a CL.

During the battle the Phalon ships fired a total of 72 dice from their
PCs, while the NAC fired 55 dice + 2 P-torp shots at range 0-12 and 49
dice + 3 P-torp shots at range 12-24.

Except for the two initial turns when everyone was out of range, all
the action in this battle occurred inside a 48x60mu box. It is
possible, but by no means certain, that the Phalons had done better if
we'd further narrowed the table to a width of 48mu; at least it'd've
reduced the speeds even more than it did now. If we had both narrowed
the table to 48mu *and* increased the fleet sizes by 50%, the NAC would
probably have been forced to close with at least part of the Phalon
fleet on turn 4.

Question: Does anyone on the list know how large tables the CanCon FT
competition uses? (Since Brendan Pratt is one of the organizers for
that tournament, and it is his testimony which worries Alan :-/ )

Later,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry