Specialist Arms Forum
Battlefleet Gothic => [BFG] Discussion => Topic started by: Talos on September 28, 2012, 06:44:23 PM
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Open discussion about various characteristics of ships; as I play IN (so far) my examples are mostly theirs.
How does one evaluate a ship characteristic and how does this affect the performance or costing of said ship?
A good example is long range. Extended range is part of the cost of some ships (IN battlecruiser) whereas other ships pay for that advantage in firepower (tyrant cruiser). Other fleets (tau, chaos) have this seemingly for free, because it is the fleet default. How do these fleets justify the boost? They don't seem to cost any more, and yet they have other benefits as well as longer range. Those two don't even have serious fleet drawbacks (like tyrranids, necron or eldar).
Another example: the Lunar cruiser is pretty much the default crusier for the IN, and one of building blocks of ship power level in general. Compare it to a slaughter cruiser, which has higher speed, broadside capability and improved thrusters. It loses an armored prow and its forward firepower is rather mediocre on its lonesome. It costs 15 points less than the lunar. Why? I have read that it is because its high speed makes it more vulnerable, and its short range contrasts it from the rest of the fleet, making it harder to use. This still seems questionable to me, but I have never played chaos so...
More extreme: Lunar vs. Hero. The hero can blast a ship with more than twice the equivalent firepower of any facing the lunar has. It also has more turret alongside combined ordnance, which is apparently a rare ability (dictator pays premium for this ability). The drawback? Marginally less firepower when engaging three targets at once, minor restriction. Both ships have the same cost, so what is the deciding factor?
For characteristics, examine speed: for some vessels, such as carriers and nova cannon vessels, this is considered a drawback. But if said carrier has both kinds of ordnance suddenly it is a boon again. So how much does this effect utility/point cost? If the ship is short ranged and/or battery reliant, the speed is once again an advantage.
And what about premiums? They seem oddly disparate; consider a dictator vs. a devastation. Although their firepower is equivalent in broadsides, the devastation cruiser has less prow FP, but at twice the effective range on all facings. However, it costs 40pts less, so the dictator is paying somehwere along the lines of 30pts + for its combined ordnance capability. Whereas the aforementioned hero pays nothing.
Fleet benefits are another thing: take chaos vs. imperial. The chaotics have better boarding and more AC variety at no cost. They also have more leadership options. The imperials have...nothing in exchange. Yet the chaos vessels cost less on average than their imperial counterparts. Where is that advantage paid for?
Bear in mind this is not a butthurt rant; I like my IN and they seem to perform just fine. As I mentioned I am pretty new and unused to a lot of the fleets. I just wonder at these questions... ???
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A second thread about hating the hero, sure seems like butthurt...
Just kidding around, of course;p
As to Tau, drawbacks for long ranged batteries. Small numbers of batteries, small numbers of lances, small number of bays/torps on cruisers, very few long ranged lances (compared to the ubiquitous long ranged lance of IN grand cruisers, especially) also the inability to h+r and board. So they pay, but their few batteries are mid range, and their (generally smaller number, with exceptions of course) ordnance is better. Oh, they are also more limited in effective fire arcs. I haven't played as chaos, nor have I fielded the hero, so I can't comment on the rest.
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Actually, every class of capital ship in the tau fleet can muster more battery than their imperial counterpart...exception of the merchant, of course...even then it can hold its own, sadly enough...as for lances, every capital ship with lance access has equal or more than an imperial equivalent. As for torpedoes, emissary has small capacity for light cruiser, but hero has imperial equivalent and protector is only one shy (but has AC too). As for launch bays, all their carriers (actual carriers, mind you: most of their capitals have LB but are not carriers) have equal quantities, in addition to superior ordnance. Some of their ships do indeed have piddling amounts of firepower on side arcs and their lances do not really extend past half range; but imperials only have a few vessels with long range lances and like tau those are restricted. In any event, this is not a comparison between imperial an tau; I'm hoping some of the community veterans can enlighten on the above mentioned characteristics; the comparisons in my first post are just to highlight my lack of understanding. :-\
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I'm not trying to refute your statements, just adding to the discussion. Also every class of ship (with the possible exception of the hero, I not have the PDF on me) has 2 lance. Lunar has 4, gothic has 8, Armageddon has like 10. My battleship has 12 batteries, empire has like 24 or something. As to the explorer, I did say there was an exception;p but tau "line ships" are used for their carrying capacity. Of 1.
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Of the ships you mentioned not a single one can target a ship with more than half of its lances; since broadsides cannot reliably target two enemy vessels this is a moot point. Hero has 4 lance and, btw, 2 launch bays. Only time you can actually get a double broadside is against other broadside armies. Prow facing enemies are never on both sides, because to fire at you they maximise from one angle. Does not change the fact that, though you are bringing useful information to the table, this is not really what the forum is about, except to say that I personally don't understand the issues mentioned in my original post and long range weapons are one of them.
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Slaughters just do not work with the rest of the Chaos fleet and despite their great stats I dont see them used very often outside of raids. Actually when you look at them you can see this is what theyre really intended for (and excell at!) their speed allows them to keep pace with their escorts during hit and run style attacks and their short range is not a problem as they are designed to come in, hit hard, and run. The cost difference compared to a Lunar is simply in its durability, it is forced to close and doesnt have the armor to protect itself from the most common weapons. Its very likely that its going to take at least a couple points of damage as it is closing (from long range weapons, torpedoes, etc..). As for the other Chaos ships their range is where they make up the difference against Imperial armor. Armor 6 with a negative range shift means your not likely to get many hits in on an Imperial ship as it closes, on the flip side the Imperials are going to balance any hits from long range guns with hits from nova cannons while closing and torp shotguns. Once the fleets have meet the extra batteries they can bring to bear are balanced by the greater quanity of lances on IN broadsides. The Murder is subpar to the Lunar and the Carnage due to its weapons arangement, to make best use of its lances it has to close, presenting its weak prow to enemy fire while its broadside although strong is still weaker where it counts (within 30). The Dictator/ Devistation is an odd one, the Devi is optimised for its role as fleet support able to hang back and score hits with its lances and launch ordinance while the Dictator is deisgned to close and gain that critical strike with torpedoes/ launch bays. The thing to look at is their roles to determine the difference in cost, the Devi cannot really do any damage without other ships to strip shields for it and since it is going to be focused on reloading its not really going to get the full benifit of its armor busting weapons. The Dictator on the other hand is designed to close and with support will likely close with out a scratch, once it has closed it not only has a powerful armament but its weapons all by themselves support each other the key is just in gaining the first strike.
Hero is overpowered/ underpriced plain and simple. launch should be dropped and an option to take one with launch and no lances should be added to start with. It has the armor needed to close and ranged weapons to use while closing and lances for high armor targets and launch/torp synergy and its all focusable... is it broken tho? no not by itself but when combined with stupidly cheap carriers and stupidly cheap lance escorts and stupidly overpowered light cruisers... ooh wait thats the Tau fleet...
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A good example is long range. Extended range is part of the cost of some ships (IN battlecruiser) whereas other ships pay for that advantage in firepower (tyrant cruiser). Other fleets (tau, chaos) have this seemingly for free, because it is the fleet default. How do these fleets justify the boost? They don't seem to cost any more, and yet they have other benefits as well as longer range. Those two don't even have serious fleet drawbacks (like tyrranids, necron or eldar).
Ha, this is such a typical response from an IN player. The truth is that Chaos don't get "free" range, though it is a fleet theme. Consider the "free" range on the Carnage. Well, like the Tyrant it also has only firepower 10 broadsides, meaning it also sacrifices firepower to get range. To get those prow batteries it sacrifices torpedoes, which are worth at least 1.5 times their weight in batteries. Lastly, the Carnage doesn't have the extra prow armour. So the extra speed, range and prow guns are trade-offs for armour, torpedoes and broadside guns. Not free.
Another example: the Lunar cruiser is pretty much the default crusier for the IN, and one of building blocks of ship power level in general. Compare it to a slaughter cruiser, which has higher speed, broadside capability and improved thrusters. It loses an armored prow and its forward firepower is rather mediocre on its lonesome. It costs 15 points less than the lunar. Why? I have read that it is because its high speed makes it more vulnerable, and its short range contrasts it from the rest of the fleet, making it harder to use. This still seems questionable to me, but I have never played chaos so...
Just how much do you think the prow armour on the IN cruisers is worth? What would you pay for a Lunar that had no prow armour? It is worth at least 35 pts and even if you consider the speed worth +20 pts then that accounts for the 15pt differential. In short, the prow armour is worth a lot more than the speed. The torps are worth 9WB, and the Slaughter gets only 6, leaving it 3WB short of a Lunar. But it gets +2 broadside WBs, and since broadside firepower is worth 1.5 times a single arcs firepower this brings parity. Therefore the Slaughter seems to be perfectly balanced against the Lunar.
More extreme: Lunar vs. Hero. The hero can blast a ship with more than twice the equivalent firepower of any facing the lunar has. It also has more turret alongside combined ordnance, which is apparently a rare ability (dictator pays premium for this ability). The drawback? Marginally less firepower when engaging three targets at once, minor restriction. Both ships have the same cost, so what is the deciding factor?
The Hero is overpowered for its price and also for its fluff. The former is somewhat addressed through composition restrictions, though not completely. The Dictator doesn't pay a premium for its combined ordnance capability, it's simply overpriced.
For characteristics, examine speed: for some vessels, such as carriers and nova cannon vessels, this is considered a drawback. But if said carrier has both kinds of ordnance suddenly it is a boon again. So how much does this effect utility/point cost? If the ship is short ranged and/or battery reliant, the speed is once again an advantage.
Ship characteristics come with costs. The more of it the more it costs. So a faster vessel costs more than a slower vessel. This differs from utility. A ship with 6+ prow armour pays for it, regardless of whether it uses it. The cost doesn't vary, but the worth to the ship does.
And what about premiums? They seem oddly disparate; consider a dictator vs. a devastation. Although their firepower is equivalent in broadsides, the devastation cruiser has less prow FP, but at twice the effective range on all facings. However, it costs 40pts less, so the dictator is paying somehwere along the lines of 30pts + for its combined ordnance capability. Whereas the aforementioned hero pays nothing.
This is not a problem of premiums, but one of balance. The Dictator is 10 pts over-priced and the Devastation is slightly overpowered. As noted already the Hero is also overpowered. Have a look at the Dictator, Devastation and Hero from BFG:R and you'll see these concerns disappear.
Fleet benefits are another thing: take chaos vs. imperial. The chaotics have better boarding and more AC variety at no cost. They also have more leadership options. The imperials have...nothing in exchange. Yet the chaos vessels cost less on average than their imperial counterparts. Where is that advantage paid for?
Boarding and a-boats are both a minor part of BFG and the slight advantages Chaos have can't really be used to base a strategy around, at least not without pouring in far more points to the effort and even then it's still a gamble. These are more for flavour. Also, the vast majority of leadership options are craptastic. Having more craptastic options isn't a bonus.
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Hehe...direct as usual. Refreshing, however. As for the range, i'm not quite sure I follow but the other points make sense to me. Stupid hero... :( Is prow armor really worth that much? That seems like a lot of points, considering the majority of their firepower is broadside and thus vulnerable to 5+ shots. Do you play with BFG:R ships, Sig? It seems more and more tempting per argument in its favor. Stupid hero...
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One point people often miss in the Chaos vs Imperial Navy debate is that the Imperial Navy cruiser ships have a tighter turning circle. (To do a 360 per example).
BFG:R was intended as a cost/stat fix for vessels.
Then it grew into a full game overhaul.
Pity to me as I would already be happy to see the cost/stat fix pdf on its own.
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Hehe...direct as usual. Refreshing, however. As for the range, i'm not quite sure I follow but the other points make sense to me. Stupid hero... :( Is prow armor really worth that much? That seems like a lot of points, considering the majority of their firepower is broadside and thus vulnerable to 5+ shots. Do you play with BFG:R ships, Sig? It seems more and more tempting per argument in its favor. Stupid hero...
There are some BFG:R ships I don't play, and some I play slightly differently. For example, I take the Retribution at 355 pts. Also, the next time I play IN I intend to take the Tyrant as 12WB@30cmL+R with 6 prow torps for 180 pts. If I ever played a Defiant I would give it the same prow armament as the other two Voss CLs and price it at 100 pts. There are yet more examples of slight changes I would make here and there. There are also some ships that I just totally ignore and pretend aren't in the document, such as the Invincible, the Ignus and the Hydra.
But as for the prow ... Consider a locked-on Carnage shooting at your closing Lunar, starting from 60cm away. With 6+ armour you're looking at just 1.5 average hits expected, not even enough to get through your shields most of the time (about 1 in 6 chance of doing at least 1 hull damage). With a 5+ prow however you're looking at 2.78 average damage with a 60% probability of doing at least 1 hull damage (26% chance of 2 or 3 hull damage).
Now, moving into 45cm range you're looking at an average of 2.44 damage, with a 47.2% probability of at least 1 point of hull damage against a 6+ prow. Against a 5+ prow you're looking at 4.44 damage average with a 91.7% probability of at least 1 point of hull damage. It gets even worse at 30cm and by the time you're at 15cm you're pretty much cactus (6.11 and 7.78 average damage respectively against 5+ prows).
In short, chances are pretty good that, with 5+ armour on the prow, you'll be crippled and/or braced by the time you get to fire at the enemy. This is just a one on one example too, not focussed fire from several ships. So if you had 10 Lunars onto 10 Carnages you'd likely have your entire fleet braced and/or crippled by the time you get to grips if you had 5+ armour. Getting a 35 pt price break for the loss of armour would allow you to take another 2 cruisers and a couple of escorts. It would still be pretty tight, given criticals and whatnot. Maybe 35 pts is a low estimate of value.
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Hmmm...that is a compelling argument, but what about fleets with 6+ all around? I am not familiar enough with necron to comment, but if you compare a strike cruiser to a dauntless (145/165 pts to 110, if I am correct), the strike cruiser is superior in pretty much every regard, which is fine, since it costs more. But if prow armor is worth 35pts, how are all the space marine rules justified? Because that SC will eradicate that dauntless, 1:1 or 2:2. And the SC doesn't just have prow 6+ but all around.
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By saying that the 3 lances on the Dauntless do not care about the 6+ armour.
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Fair but it still doesn't explain why 6+ all around and 6+prow are even costed.
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Hmmm...that is a compelling argument, but what about fleets with 6+ all around? I am not familiar enough with necron to comment, but if you compare a strike cruiser to a dauntless (145/165 pts to 110, if I am correct), the strike cruiser is superior in pretty much every regard, which is fine, since it costs more. But if prow armor is worth 35pts, how are all the space marine rules justified? Because that SC will eradicate that dauntless, 1:1 or 2:2. And the SC doesn't just have prow 6+ but all around.
The SC is notable for providing quite a lot for its cost and it has only gained in power since its first release (it now has an extra turret for no cost increase and the option for a 2nd shield). However, this merely highlights the unspoken truth that the value of a defensive ability is directly related to the ships offensive capability (and vice versa). If you put armour 6+ on a ship with no offensive capability then it is worthless. If you put 6+ armour on an escort with 1WB@15cmF then it's worth less than on one with 4WB@30cmLFR. Similarly, the value of a defensive upgrade like armour is increased as the hits and shields of the vessel increase. A Firestorm could certainly benefit from 6+ prow armour, but it certainly wouldn't be worth 35 pts on it.
So a 6+ prow is worth less on a 6 hit hull than it is on an 8 hit hull. So rather than 35 pts, it's worth more like 20 pts. The SM rules are not worth anywhere near their putative cost, btw. They're much closer to 15 pts. This pretty much explains the difference between the SC and the Dauntless, all else being equal. Of course, all else isn't equal. Both ships have the same broadside, but the SC has 3BC@30cmLFR vs the 3L@30cmF of the Dauntless. Weight of fire is in favour of the Dauntless, but the SC crits on a 4+ and can fire in a broader arc. But then the SC gets 2 TH (o_O), 6+ side and rear armour and a turret on top for free. Here the only real explanation can be that the SM ship gets a large points break because SMs don't have an option for a line-cruiser. An inelegant but necessary solution to the SM problem.
Mind you, the side and rear armour isn't a fantastic upgrade. It mostly comes into play against bombers. Even so, a 1 turret target is still vulnerable to bombers, even with 6+ armour. This isn't so bad for a CL, as bombers are meant to be a deterrent against such roaming hunter-killers. A line cruiser is meant to have more resilience to them though, and since SCs are used as line cruisers the SMs were failing in fleet ops. This is quite appropriate from a fluff point of view, but for BFG they should be able to compete, point for point. After all, being tough as nails is also quite fluffy.
The 6+ side armour also makes the SC very strong when used as a flanking force, and the LFR nature of its BC allows it to present its beam to the enemy, taking advantage of this. The Dauntless cannot do this and if it could it would only have 5+ armour.
This all points to the SC being far far far superior to the Dauntless. Well, you've heard of the notion of a force multiplier right? That is to say, the whole being greater than the sum of the parts. Well the SC is an example of the reverse. The sum of the parts is greater than the whole. Why is this so? Firstly, the SC is used as a line cruiser, not as a flanker, and this combined with its 30cm range means it's much more likely to just close with the enemy, presenting its prow. And secondly, a flanking vessel like the Dauntless relies a lot more upon not being fired at in the first place for its survival. In which case its armour is irrelevant. So even in a fleet like the Armageddon list which allows the intermingling of IN and SM vessels the points premium of a SC over that of a Dauntless is dubious in value. Sure you get a lot more survivability and special rules, but at 35 pts more it's still a hefty price to pay. You could either get 2 SM SC or an IN CA and CL.
Of course, the SC also gets those 2 THs, which is typically considered a massive increase, but then again THs aren't really all that offensive in nature. H&R attacks, in general, do sod all. You need to swarm a vessel with them to disable it for a few turns, and if you could have sent in the same number of bombers you'd likely have done a lot more damage. But they are decent at intercepting enemy ordnance or for use on CAP, etc, so this is a bonus. But then, you've now got to reload your gunboat. So again we have a defensive increase without commensurate offensive increase and in fact a slight offensive decrease (due to the need to reload).
So you get a lot, but it's not perfectly used, decreasing its inherent value. Now, normally you'd just have to suck it up and pay the full price, but in the case of the SM SC you get a points break because SMs suck. This is why the SC is so much better, point for point, than a Dauntless and also why it's marginally better than a Dauntless as a flanking hunter-killer.
As for Necrons, well you have to consider their armour in context of the rest of their special rules. Having an armour save instead of shields makes them very susceptible to incidental fire. This, combined with the fact that lances ignore armour, that Necrons give up a lot of VPs when crippled/destroyed and that Necrons cost a heap means they have to brace more often than other races. This reduces their firepower, prevents the use of special weapons, LO or AAF and reduces their armour to 4+, greatly increasing the damage from WBs. So the 6+ armour of Necrons is basically a necessary component of their defences. If they didn't have it they'd be screwed.
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I have heard this about necron, particularly against longer ranged fleets like the tau and chaos. As for the strike cruiser, this argument does seem valid, but I take exception to the strike cruiser version with no AC/ extra bombardment cannon. In this case it provides swathes for firepower, and with 2 turrets and a second shield it is pretty comparable to a full cruiser; to compare the most similar but probably weakest SC it to the lunar, it has 2 less hull, which does suck, and equal ordnance (6 strength torpedo with boarding option, which I realize suck even for marines). It has less firepower on a broadside (4 battery and 1 lance vs. 6 battery and 2 lance) and cannot effectively engage 2 abeam targets. However it does cost 20 points less, and it does move faster, have better armor, better maneuverability and a few special rules. And the variant with torpedoes and a lance is probably the weakest version, the bombardment spam being much stronger IMO (and Seahawk's :)...)
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I know both Sigoroth and I plus others voted heavily against the bombardment strength on the variant. Not the variant shouldn't exist but it should be a lot less bc strength.
So we do not use that variant in our calculations. :)
The Necron threat is overestimated, plus the old tactica from GW/SG obscured a lot of people.
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Old tactica from GW/SG? I do not understand...As for the BC, I agree. Not sure why the lance costs extra but a bazillion bombardment cannon costs zilch...
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There was a tactica in warp storm about fighting necrons, it advised to use lances first forcing the necron player to take the lances with their base armor save or brace making your guns hit easier. Math hammer says this is poo but if you cant roll 6's and get 4's all day long (like me) its great.
Bomb cannon is crap should have been a lance, maybe two. Dorsal lance is crap too. (imo)
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Actually we hate the lance option on the strike cruisers.
We didn't want it at all.
So we forced them into making the lance option expensive and useless.
"Vive le No Lances on Marine Dedicated Vessels"
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No, SMs shouldn't get lances at all. The bombardment cannon variant of the SC is very strong. I think too strong. The problem lies in the fact that it swaps a lot of essentially defensive weaponry for a good deal of purely offensive weaponry. As noted, the SC packs a whole hell of a lot into its little frame. Too much by rights, particularly from a model point of view. Looking at the prow of the ship, for example, the SC gets nearly as much firepower in its BC as the Dauntless has. On top of this it also gets 2 THs, in the same hard point. That prow must be huge to be able to fit all that in. Particularly as 2 THs are worth at least 3 normal AC in terms of bay size (a Styx that is converted to carry THs only has launch capacity instead of 6, and that's the best it ratio there is). So the SC model is supposed to be able to justify 3AC and 3BC in the prow. It doesn't.
So a few of us advocated dropping the prow launch bay to a strength 1 TH to make it more reasonable. Of course, SMs don't really need nerfing, and they do have survivability issues as it stands, so the idea was to compensate them for this loss by adding the extra shield for free. So basically, you get a 2 shield 1 TH SC for 145 pts. Using this prow launch bay as base we were able to "fix" the variants. You can swap the TH for either 3 torpedoes or 3BC@30cmF. So instead of getting roughly +3 lances on top of the ~2 it already had (2-4 extra dice hitting on 4+), it gets only +1.5 lances (1-2 extra dice) equivalent in firepower.
This works out reasonably well. Since 1 TH = 1.5 normal AC and 1 normal AC = 3WBe, therefore 1 TH = 4.5WBe. As 1 lance =3WBe & the 3BC ~1.5 lances then it also roughly equals 4.5WBe. One torpedo = 1.5WBe so the 3 torpedo option is also worth 4.5WBe. So all of these options are weighted equally. While Thunderhawks are more defensive in nature than either the Bombardment Cannon or torpedoes, these weapons are locked to the front arc, meaning they cannot focus on the same target as the broadside weaponry. So if you've only got one target you've basically got the choice of closing and firing 6 BC or presenting a more defensive aspect and firing 3 BC and 4 WB. The standard TH would, of course, go for the latter arrangement and it would have a TH to add to the fleet.
However, this change in the base number of THs on the SC effects the fleets carrying capacity. With an already reduced TH load and then a few ships foregoing them altogether in favour of BCs or torps you run the risk of being overwhelmed by enemy bombers. So a carrier SC variant was proposed, replacing the broadside WBs with a single TH bay each side (for a total of 3; prow, port and starboard) at a premium of +15 pts. So if you had 1 normal SC and 1 carrier SC you'd get 4 THs in total, the same as you do now from 2 normal SCs. Lots of variety and ability to customise your fleet, without having 8 Bombarment Cannon Strike Cruiser monstrosities.
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Im not so much opposed to lances, the strike cruisers were dauntless lc before the sm models were released after all. Either way the bomb cannon is way too much and should be removed, the lance option is just stupid the 3 bomb cannon just flat outperforms the lance for 20 pts less/ 3 bomb have a min 1 die max 3 to hit compared to the 1 die max from the lance, both hit on 4+ but bomb hit ordy on 4+ compared to 6+ for the lance and bomb crits on 4+ compared to 6+ for the lance. The current strike cruiser varients are total crap the only good additions are the shield, turret, and torp salvo.
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Im not so much opposed to lances, the strike cruisers were dauntless lc before the sm models were released after all.
But that were gap-fill rules. I place no authority in them. :)
And I agree with Sig on the SC.
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Im not so much opposed to lances, the strike cruisers were dauntless lc before the sm models were released after all.
But that were gap-fill rules. I place no authority in them. :)
And I agree with Sig on the SC.
Ah but they still are valid rules ;). Speaking of which, how about rebuilding the Campaign rules lord knows thats about 12 years over due... The whole back of the rulebook is full of oversights and nonsense (why should my chaos appeal to the forces of chaos and get... assault boats? dont I already have those... lol. Not to mention nids and necrons and the refit table being opened to general use with fixed pricing and oh lord here I go....
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Interesting points...if you are actually interested in campaign modifications perhaps I will open a thread about it in experimental rules.
As for the SC, I hate that it gets to be better because there's no SM cruiser. Pricing is a strange beast, best slain by sword and flame...
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Indeed, space marines were best left as additions to the imperial fleets and not as their own. Their focus should have been on good escorts not cheap cruisers as a "pirate fleet". Unfortunatly their escorts are almot to oberpriced to be useful, hunters are boarderline 40pts would be the upper limit for an escort imo, gladius gets a 5cm speed boost for 10points... and the nova is just all wrong. Drop the space marine boarding and hit and run rules (on a ship that might have a handful of actual space marines when used in a fleet battle they make no sense anyway) and drop their prices to Admech levels would be a start. Replace the lance on the nova with a couple of bomb cannons would probably go a long way towards appeasing the haters on that one too ;).
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Andrew,
I never considered them valid. ;)
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Andrew,
I never considered them valid. ;)
Thats odd, why not?
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Thats odd, why not?
Because they run directly contrary to fluff. In BFG the lance is purely an anti-ship weapon. SM ships aren't meant for naval battles, they're meant solely to deliver their cargo. Therefore SMs have no reason to have lances. This is due to the separation of forces following the Horus Heresy. SMs were broken into smaller chapters, the Imperial Guard were taken out of their control and the Imperial Navy was also removed from their purview. The idea was that these 3 different institutions could be used to police each other. If a single chapter rebels then the IN, IG and loyalist chapters can easily contain it. In practice this is much harder to accomplish, but if the Imperium can't keep anti-ship weaponry out of SM hands then there's really nothing stopping the SMs from building line cruisers and battleships to their hearts content, essentially giving them a navy to rival the IN.
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Of course, the fluff also specifies that the BC is the shortest range weapon mounted on imperial vessels, so it seems strange that BC in BFG are not short range weapons. Fluffwise. AS has been pointed out in other threads, mind, exceptions exist to every rule such as the fist of russ being a mars battlecruiser with dorsal lances, and the fortress monasteries having lances and even nova cannons in the novels and manuals.
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Thats odd, why not?
Because they run directly contrary to fluff. In BFG the lance is purely an anti-ship weapon. SM ships aren't meant for naval battles, they're meant solely to deliver their cargo. Therefore SMs have no reason to have lances. This is due to the separation of forces following the Horus Heresy. SMs were broken into smaller chapters, the Imperial Guard were taken out of their control and the Imperial Navy was also removed from their purview. The idea was that these 3 different institutions could be used to police each other. If a single chapter rebels then the IN, IG and loyalist chapters can easily contain it. In practice this is much harder to accomplish, but if the Imperium can't keep anti-ship weaponry out of SM hands then there's really nothing stopping the SMs from building line cruisers and battleships to their hearts content, essentially giving them a navy to rival the IN.
Actually the fluff almost exclusivly uses lances as the perfered method of precision strikes in support of orbital landings, you would think SM would have them comming out of their ears in that case. I dont really care either way on the lance issue tho I belive the Bomb cannon to be superior in pretty much every case as stated and this should be the only option for their ships, even if the SM fleet had access to the lance Dauntless (which they dont) its still inferior to the Strike Cruiser.
Bask to the original question tho why do you feel the campaign rules are invalid? I would still say that even if the campaign rules were redone and there was still an option for an IN fleet to receive Strkie Cruisers via an appeal that the Dauntless would make an acceptable alternative for those that do not have the model. After all why should someone be required to buy a model that they would only be able to use if they got one from a random appeal in a campaign? On top of that it would be added for one game to an IN fleet anyway so what exactly is the issue here? It seems that its more about people complaining than anything else. If its still such an unbearable situation for an Imperial fleet to receive a Lance Dauntless from a "space marine" then limit it to the Torpedo version.
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Andrew,
I never considered them valid. ;)
Thats odd, why not?
I never seen it in a rulebook, FAQ or pdf on the GW website (eg Doom of the Eldar, Ships of Mars).
In my mind Dauntless may be used as an alternative model (there was no strike cruiser at that point) with strike cruiser rules.
I know that is flawed, but my mind rewrote history like that.
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That was my interpretation of it, little experience though I have...as for the assault boats for chaos, point in case. The rules could use some re-writing in the campaign at the very least.
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Ah, there is a note on pg 157, under the space marine appeal chart stating that SC can be represented by Dauntless LC and BB by Emperors.
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Lies! Lies!
All of it!
::)
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Ah, there is a note on pg 157, under the space marine appeal chart stating that SC can be represented by Dauntless LC and BB by Emperors.
I've done it.
One of my SC is a Dauntless, I thinks is cool to represent pre-heresy cruisers. ;)
About the Emperors...well I can remember that Space Wolves had Emperors as BB... anyway if you want to pay the extra points it could be a Venerable BB.
IMO Imperial Battleships are very nice, more than the SM BB's. ;)
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Actually the fluff almost exclusivly uses lances as the perfered method of precision strikes in support of orbital landings, you would think SM would have them comming out of their ears in that case. I dont really care either way on the lance issue tho I belive the Bomb cannon to be superior in pretty much every case as stated and this should be the only option for their ships, even if the SM fleet had access to the lance Dauntless (which they dont) its still inferior to the Strike Cruiser.
40k lance is different from BFG lance.
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Umm ok? What does a 40k lance have to do with this at all? Or are you trying to say the 40k fluff doesnt count which being that all BFG fluff is 40k fluff...
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Umm ok? What does a 40k lance have to do with this at all? Or are you trying to say the 40k fluff doesnt count which being that all BFG fluff is 40k fluff...
A lance is a type of weapon mechanic in BFG. It corresponds to a class of weaponry that is specifically anti-shipping in nature. A lance in fluff is merely a pinpoint strike. A macro-laser from a ship's weapon battery would make a "lance" strike at a ground target.
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Intersting, your related to Matt Ward?
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Matt Ward, heh....what a douche. If for some reason you are Matt Ward, no offesnse. But I do hate your work.
But seriously. I don't own all 40k manuals ever released, but several dozen novels make reference to lances as being very specific and different from batteries. There are macrobatteries, plasma batteries, laser batteries, missile batteries, probably even a couple others I can't remember. But lances are pretty specific; I can't find a description near me other than my rogue trader books, which define a lance as having a massive plasma/battery based energy supply, and dozens upon dozens of specifically designed emiters and refractors generally mounted upon a turret. This creates a piercing beam of energy that rapdily cuts through any known ship armor, but inflicts little damage potential compared to betteries. This is very similar to BFG, where batteries usually have superior damage potential to lances, but are not nearly as reliable to actually inflict damage. The only races I know who don't follow this very specific description of lance are the necron and the tyrranids, who either use biological equivalents or some warp based shenanigans. The Rak'Gol are another exception, and they use extremely powerful beams of radiation to achieve the same effect.
Admittedly, I can see where laser based batteries like a sword class frigate blur the line between the two, but that is pretty much the only one. In every thing I have read, lances are used for precision targeting to destroy specific vulnerable enemy elements, bombardment cannon are souped up magmabombs used to destroy large areas and soften up an entire infrastructure before assault and nova cannons are also used in orbital bombardment; thing is, they are hard to position and only for systematically wiping out/cleaning continents, like a poor man's cyclonic torpedo most of the time. They can even destroy the planet itself, given time. All these descriptions are against ground targets, obviously.
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Intersting, your related to Matt Ward?
Matt Ward is a fuckin moron. What I said is in no way Matt Wardish and I resent the association. Consider if they had have swapped the names of weapon batteries and lances around. Then stupid fluff bullshit wouldn't be used as an argument for SMs getting anti-ship weapons. When the SMs were released the authors even realised that they fucked up naming the weapon systems because they went out of their way to give SMs a lance replacement, because they knew that SMs shouldn't have lances. This is because a lance is used purely as an anti-ship weapon. Since fluff is full of examples of SMs making "lance" strikes from orbit one would imagine that if this was the same as the lances in BFG that the authors of the SM rules would not have gone to all that trouble to avoid giving SMs lances.
What we have here is a naming issue. You can either say that a BFG scale Lance Weapon is different to a lance strike as described in (40k!) fluff, OR you can say that they're one and the same and therefore contradict the canon fluff about the division of forces.
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To be perfectly frank, I think its probably just a matter of different authors using different terms for different things, typical GW bullshit. As time goes on since they never standardize anything it becomes more and more convoluted as they introduce new authors who read some of the information and butcher it some more, which is then changed some more by the next batch of aspirants. As far as I am concerned, lances are the ship weapon and a lance strike is a direct attack by a lance type weapon; discrepancies are effectively just typos. Sigoroth is right to disparage the lack of consistency with the term "lance".
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Enhance your calm :). No one is arguing for SM to have lances.