Re: Those annoying aliens...

On Wed, 26 Jun 1996, Ian Dunn wrote:

> Yes i can see that GW could engender a culture of equal points based
> battles. But FT is not a GW product, and in a way is in rebellion
against
> that kind of thinking.
> 
I know, I know...

> Our club is based in WRG ancients (again an equal points battle
culture)
> and we did have a campaign where the Kra'Vak shredded the NSL fleet
that i
> was part of. But also in WRG games we developed a lot of scenario
games
> and campaigns where you have to fight with unbalenced forces.
> 
> And its not to hard to limit Kra'Vak forces to 1/3 of human forces for
a
> fairer game. I can understand that a GW player would see Kra'Vak as a
> cheesy 'army' and just play it to the limit. Personally the only GW
game i
> play is Necromunda otherwise im playing WRG DBM or DBR games.
> 
Oh? Like to discuss the points cost of Ex? 10 AP for... what? ;) ;) ;)
(No, I haven't built a Mithridatic army. I can't afford to...)

I am, admittedly, very much for 'balanced' costs and 'balanced' tech. 
This comes mainly from Starfire campaign play, and a bit from GW and
WRG.
In Starfire, there are lots of different weapons - but in a campaign,
only
about three will ever be used, because those three are by far the most
cost/mass-effective. (In addition, of all various ship sizes in that
game,
only one - the Battlecruisers - were really effective; so most warfleets
would consist of BCs with the few select weapons. Pretty boring.) In
campaigns, even small cost-effectiveness differences matter a lot; in a
single one-off battle it doesn't. (Or, to be more accurate: If I were an
admiral, I'd personally flay the ship designers who put any less than
the
best available weapon into my ships...)

The big balance problems come when (if) you allow Hu'Man ships to use 
Kra'Vak tech. Unless you do something about the points costs, there
won't 
be any reason to use anything but railguns; because railguns are so very

much more effective than beams, both in terms of cost and in terms of 
mass used. Sure, easy to stop: just forbid cross-tech ships. In the same

way, armour is far better than screens, at least for ships up to size 50

(depending on what protection you allow it to give you against pulse 
torps, submunition packs and suchlike; MT says nought about it, but I've

got Mike Elliott's old suggestions (-1 damage per armour level against 
standard missiles and pulse torps, as shields vs beams against
subpacks); 
logical, but scary).

Oh well...

Oerjan Ohlson

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