Re: [FT] FB2 Balancing Corrections Proposed

Brendan Pratt wrote:

>> Brendan Pratt wrote:
>>
>> [Difference between 6x4 and 8x4 ft tables]
>>
>>>>Allows a bit more time for acceleration, but no more lateral space
>>>>to dodge in than a 6x4 table (assuming the fleets set up at the
>>>>short edges of the table). I'm not sure the difference between a
5ft >>>>wide table and a 4ft one is that critical (cf. the previous
report >>>>where the 1500-pt Phalon fleet got virtually annihilated for
only light >>>>NAC losses on a 8'x5' table), but it does make it harder
to dodge >>>>than on my 120x100mu table (equivalent to 10'x8'4"for you
>>>>inch-measurers) :-/
> 
>Of course the ship selections and loadouts may have played a part in
>this battle?

We choose the fleets at random from the GenCon UK Fleet Action
tournament pre-selected fleets (3 Phalon and 15 human fleets). All we
chosed ourselves were the fighter configurations, so we ended up with:

Phalons:
1 Taanis-class CVL, 3 Standard and 1 Attack squadron
1 Tuuloth-class CH
1 Tsaara-class CL
1 Phuun-class FF
2 Tyaph-class FF

Had the human fleet had any missiles my opponent would've preferred
replacing the Attack squadron with an Interceptor one and used the
points to upgrade a Tyaph to a Phuun instead (PBL-1s being a favourite
anti-missile weapon of his).

NAC (me):
1 Excalibur-class BDN, 1 Heavy Interceptor squadron
1 Furious-class CE
2 Huron-class CLs
3 Ticonderoga-class DDs
1 Tacoma-class FH
1 Minerva-class FF

The lone NAC squadron being a Heavy Interceptor had some impact on the
battle, since it tied up the Phalon fighters for longer than either of
us had expected. The NAC were helped by not having any ships with
thrust-2 engines, but OTOH they couldn't use their (F)-arc P-torps much
without running straight into the Phalon formation... which I didn't
want to do :-/ With that few fighters and no missiles at all, and a
fairly large number of small ships, I wasn't too happy with this fleet
- fighters and missiles are both extremely useful for drawing off
Phalon firepower and dissuading them from using their vapour shrouds
overly much, and small ships are rather more vulnerable to plasma bolts
than large ones.

>- and of course the relative skill levels of your opponent and
yourself >too.

We're fairly closely matched. I win perhaps 60% of the battles, but
very rarely this decisively. I've been playing FT for a couple years
longer than he, but with seven years to his five I can't say I'm *that*
much more experienced :-/

>My comments have been oriented around the disparity between >weapon
effectiveness' from race to race. Tactics are always going to >be a
contributing factor in the outcome of any given battle - I have >played
tournament type wargames for 22 years now - including Evil >Empire
(TM?) 

I didn't know MicroSoft ran wargame tournaments..? <g>

>and have won most of the tournaments I have entered - stated for the
>record as I believe that any battle I play using the Phalons; or
indeed >any battle in a competition I run, the results will be the same
- Phalon or >Sa'Vasku victroy every single time.

SV agreed; we didn't get those right in the playtests. But the Phalons?
Either you folks use some Phalon (or general) tricks we haven't
learned, or we use some anti-Phalon tricks that you haven't yet
discovered.

>To combat what I see as an improper imbalance in technologies, I am
>introducing some specific tournament alterations to the Sa'Vasku and
>Phalon rules for Cancon 2001 - Beth Fulton contacted me off
>list and I will send her a copy of said mods and she will circulate
them >for comment.

It'll be interesting to see them.

>>>As a generalisation, I would suggest that 8 x 4 playing
>>>surfaces are more commonly in use than larger alternatives -
>>>only said as I have played tournament style games since
>>>1980 and have played in 5 countries.
>>
>>9x5 (table tennis table) is the "recommended standard size" for
>>25mm games in several ancients/medieval rule sets, but no doubt the
>>ancients crowd claim all those tables for themselves <g>
> 
>Our ancients players do indeed horde the 8x5 tables - we have >however
used 8x5 tables in test play - the results were exactly the >same,
although games did sometimes play longer - it often depended >on how
good the Phalon was a anticipating his opponents moves - >however, we
still saw most of the victories go to Phalon or Sa'Vasku on >any sized
table regardless of who played the forces.

Interesting. The opponent's ability to anticipate the Phalons' moves
must've had some importance as well, at least if the Pulser-Cs were
decisive?

>>>We are testing the rules very intensively with about 20 players at
our
>>>twice weekly club meetings - there are a number of players at any
>>>given skill level, all of whom have expressed the same strong
>>>opinions about certain aspects of both Phalon and Sa'Vasku
>>>weaponry.
>>
>>After how many battles each? IIRC, in your post to Jon you mentioned
>>about 30 battles in total (using all three of the alien races), but
>>with twenty players that doesn't give each individual that many
>>chances to try out counter-tactics... it does take a bit of time to
adjust >>from anti-human to anti-Phalon thinking
> 
>At the time of the post, these were the 30 battles specifically
relating to
>the new races against the old whose results I had access to at the
time >of the posting - many more similar results since then :-)

OK. What tactics have you tried against the Phalons? So far you've only
seemed to describe the battles as if the Phalons charge in against
initiative-less enemies, but I don't believe that's true :-/

>>One of the more subtle differences is the range vs arc one. When
>>fighting the FB1 human fleets, being in the right fire arc
(preferrably
>>in the target's (Ax) arcs while keeping it in your own (Fx) arcs) is
>>generally more important than the range at which you fight, since
both
>>sides' firepower drop of at roughly the same rate. The Phalons OTOH
>>don't care much about which fire arcs your ships are in thanks to
their
>>numerous all-arc weapons, but the *range* your ships are at is
>>absolutely critical to them.
> 
>agreed whole heartedly

It is IME easier to control the range to your enemy than it is to end
up in the particular arc you want, too... particularly for the
longer-ranged side 
:-/

>>Conversely a human ship doesn't care from which arc(s) attacking
>>fighters approach since all its PDSs and B1s are all-arc, but most
>>Phalon ships don't have the same PD strength all around (the
>>Vlath-class SC is the only published exception). A fighter squadron
>>hitting a Ptath-class "battleship" (really a battledreadnought if you
>>look at its combat power) on the nose is faced by up to 7 Pulsers
>>firing in PD mode; if instead it attacks up the Ptath's tailpipes it
>>only has 2 Pulsers to worry about.
> 
>my own opinion is that you never ever have enogh PDAFs available
>against any opponent (big grin>)

So if you're under attack by both missiles/fighters and ships, against
which threat do you use your C-configured Pulsers? Or do you drop a
plasma bolt on your own ship to take the missiles out instead (a
perfectly valid tactic, but it sometimes backfires)?

>>>Granted that you argument does hold lots of water - My
>>>main counter is that two players of equal skill are not going
>>>to have similar results over a number of battles
>>
>>Like the 35 playtest battles I and my main opponents fought, you
>>mean? <G>
> 
>I can't comment there as I do not know you or your opponents

We're fairly closely matched, and we all played both with and against
the Phalons during the playtest battles.

>>>>Jon had a whole bunch of posts he was going to forward to you.
>>>>Did you recieve those?
>>>
>>>Not yet - Alan Brain forwarded yours originally.
>>
>>Hm. Jon said to forward 'em all to you about a month ago... I'll see
if
>>I have any of them saved somewhere.
> 
>Please do - I would like to read them
 
Seems I've deleted them :-( Let's hope Jon hasn't - JON?

>>A couple of other questions:
>>
>>* Does your group use player-designed ships, or only the published
>>ones from FB1? (During the FB2 playtesting Alan said something
>>about him very rarely using custom designs, though it does sound a
>>bit curious in light of his ST-to-FT conversions... Alan?)
> 
>FB1 and 2 only - we have too many min/max players to enjoy the
>endless array of optimised ship that would be thrown up if we played
>much self designed material (unless one party designed the ships and
>another party used them).

This also means that you have little or no recent experience in dealing
with min/maxed designs using more vanilla ships :-( IME, extreme FB
designs are considerably less dangerous than extreme CW designs - or
extreme FT2 designs, for that matter.

>>* If you do use custom ships, have you flown human ships with weak
>>hulls, massive armour and armed mainly with Class-1 beam batteries
>>(with some missile or WG/NC backup)? With what results?
> 
>Close range set pulsers are better :-)

In what ways? (...not to put too fine a point to it, but if you haven't
actually *used* ships armed mainly or only with Class-1s, how do you
know...?)

Let's see. Compared to Class-1 batteries:

+ the Pulser is easier to repair due to being bigger. Not that
significant on Weak-hulled ships given their tendency to go BOOM rather
soon after suffering the first threshold check, but still significant.

+ the Pulser is marginally cheaper per anti-ship die - around 10%
cheaper if you only count the cost of the weapon, its proportion of the
engines and the basic hull structure to hold them, but 5% or less of
the cost of the entire ship assuming that hull integrity, armour and
other systems are identical. A single initiative roll has about as much
influence on the outcome of a battle as a 5% difference in total fleet
cost.

+ the Pulser can shoot down plasma bolts if it is lucky; the Class-1
can't do it no matter how lucky it is. This is only important in a
battle between two Phalon fleets, though.

+ the Pulser can use ADFC guidance. Significant if the ship has ADFC,
which most FB ships don't have.

- the Pulser has only 1/3 the point defence firepower against missiles
and fighters. Not important as long as you never get hit by missiles or
fighters, but very important indeed if the enemy is uncouth enough to
use them against you.

- the Pulser is a lot less flexible for targetting - you have to throw
all six dice at the same target even when you know it only has one hull
box left, and you can't use half the Pulser for PD fire and the other
half against enemy ships.

Of the Pulser's advantages the cost one is too small to be significant,
the ability to shoot down plasma bolts only significant in a battle
between two Phalon fleets and the ADFC capability only if you fly
Voth-Es, Keraphs or Klashh-Huulths (or homegrown designs, but you don't
use those). The big question is whether the Pulser-C's higher
repairability outweighs the Class-1s' better targetting flexibility and
(especially) their vastly stronger point-defence firepower, and if so
by how much.

[Phallandros's designs snipped - see the updated versions of the Ptah
and Tulip posted yesterday]
 
>>If you had been the IF High Admiral, would you have bought the above
>>designs instead?
> 
>If I understand your question - no, but I and several other players
have >made an art form of using and defeating SML's 

You don't find the massed all-arc beam batteries attractive, then? 

Would you, as the IF High Admiral, have bought them if the SMRs were
replaced by PBLs?

>- including the aptly named banzai jammers - ask Alan Brain about >the
1999 Cancon tournament when he was using a NSL missile >fleet.....

He's already told the tale. Too bad the Phalon scouts are so expensive,
though... BJs are useful, but they're hardly a sure-fire defence unless
combined with radical maneuvers - ask Alan about the NSL+BJs vs FSE
battles I fought (and reported to this list) last winter, where the FSE
repeatedly smashed the NSL+BJ fleets. That was however on the big
table, where the FSE had space enough to fly around the NSL flank
without coming into weapon range; it is impossible on your narrower
tables unless you use floating edges. Solid edges in space may be
necessary in a tournament, but it does have some rather... strange side
effects :-/

Regards,

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