Specialist Arms Forum
Battlefleet Gothic => [BFG] Discussion => Topic started by: afterimagedan on October 28, 2012, 02:26:44 AM
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Current PDF: ++BFG:R Adeptus Mechanicus++ (https://dl.dropbox.com/u/1596994/BFGR%202/BFGR%20Adeptus%20Mechanicus.pdf)
It's about time for this thread. Please discuss! We are on the verge of pinning down nova cannon limitations for AdMech when this thread stated.
2:750pts?
1:400pts?
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Lets see,
Lunar 180pts
gains:
dorsal 60cm lance
extra repair dice
+1 turret
~ about + 20pts-25pts
worse:
vs hit&run / boarding
~ about -5pts
So we look at a Lunar +180+25-5 = 200pts base cost for the AdMech.
Gift of Omnissiah is something you buy to add.
Issues:
Gifts table is now no longer a d6 roll but something you buy. So the benefit of rolling a 6 for leadership (pick one freely without rolling) is wrong now.
Same applies to Magos entry.
Fix for the Magos/Ld dice 6 = Pays -10pts for Gift.
So weird to have the +1 lance in an entire different paragraph then then +1 turret.
Oh, and I like to see it as this, with all ships:
http://www.twolandscreative.com/wip/docs/BFG%20%5BCodex%5D%20Adeptus%20Mechanicus.pdf
(This also places the rules better)
Made by Brother Argos & Vaaish (with ship pictures provided by me).
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I will get to work on those fixes tomorrow. And holy crap, I have never seen that document before. It's stunning! Should I bring in the pages of the ships from that document and edit them when needed?
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Brother horizon knows his AdMech, it seems...so the price for AdMeching a cruiser is a fixed +20pts, light cruiser is +15pts and battleship is +35pts? Personally I would like to see battleship price descreased to +30pts, but I will not fight it kicking and screaming.
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All ships receive a leadership boost and a negative to hit and runs and boarding actions.
All capitol ships receive +1 turret and +1D6 to repair. They also force the Admech player to take an additional sub plot.
Cruisers get an additional dorsal lance.
Escorts receive no additional bonuses.
In standard games these are the only free modifiers over IN ships I see.
Clearly Cruisers receive the largest benifit, light cruisers and battleships very little and escorts basically none.
The leadership boost I dont know if I could really put a point value on, it makes the ships better but how much is really hit and miss. The boarding modifier, hit and run modifier, and Sub plot rules both suffer from the same problem.
I would call these a wash.
So the bonuses are:
Escort: none
Light Cruiser: +1 Turret +1D6 to repair
Cruiser: +1 Turret +1D6 to repair +1 Lance
Battleship: +1 Turret +1D6 to repair
And the proposed changes in cost are:
Escort: -
Light cruiser: +15 pts (Im ok with this)
Cruiser: +20 points I would think this should be +25pts.
Battleship: +20 points (Im not sure where the +35 came from?) this is fairly reasonable as it can be assumed that that extra turret will go a lot further on these ships but thats still kinda of subjective :/.
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And the proposed changes in cost are:
Escort: -
Light cruiser: +15 pts
Cruiser: +20/25 points I would think this should be +25pts.
Battleship: +20 points
I think 25pts is a better option than 20pts. Smotherman makes the improvements of the turret and lance out to be 22.7pts and that's without the repair die.
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Another option is keep the restricitons and stats for Novas for Admech the same as IN, and make it a 10-15 point upgrade. The increaed cost of the ships themselves will keep the actual number down (for reasonable players). Or Maybe they hoard sweet tech that lets the field CLs with Nova (super limited). If we take the latter option, we should restrict it havily (1/750 or something like that) and disallow reserving, with the possible exception of Bakka.
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@AndrewChristlieb I took that 35pts from the books; if an AdMech Emperor is 400pts, that is a 35pt upgrade yes? But I also believe that the value is too high, so 25pts seems about right.
Also, it would be cool to have some custom escorts for AdMech. Been talking to Evil and Chaos, and it seems he is considering making armed versions of the escorts he is selling, which have a very AdMech cruiser inspired prow and shape. Something to consider for the rules revision?
@ThaneAquilon I have suggested the CL with NC in the past and been branded a heretic. You have been warned...
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Ahh, you suggested it for IN, I'm suggesting for admech only, wih the hyper-specialised premise, I'm praying to the emperor that that will be my saving grace;p also that CLs are more expensive for admech.
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I rather see AdMech NC / IN NC follow the same route.
However, AdMech NC previously had NC for every vessel optional where as IN had this not. With BFG:R (and FAQ2010!) we gave more IN vessels a NC option. Thus an AdMech bonus got minimized.
Give the AdMech shell options. Mwhuahaha.
And no custom escorts imo. Perhaps if only widowmaker upgrade for more available?
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Do the AdMech commanders need voting on, in light of the voted changes to IN? Also, what about the Endurance, Endeavor, and Defiants?
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We are almost done with Tau and Chaos at this point and Admech is next up! So, horizon, can I take and edit the admech document you posted for the admech BFG:R document?
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I have been given permission by the makers of this fine document:
http://www.twolandscreative.com/wip/docs/BFG%20%5BCodex%5D%20Adeptus%20Mechanicus.pdf
...and they have given me permission to use the pages from this book to make the BFG:R book, mainly with their flashy and studly looks. Anyone have some thoughts on what we need to do to the current Admech list before we finalize it?
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ok, so:
+15 Light Cruiser
+20 Cruiser
+25 Battleship
Sound good? I am starting on integrating the new pages into the document.
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Argh, somehow a login was forced as I clicked preview. I'm tired, but I'll recap:
The Ark mechanicus, stripped of its two included gifts (totaling 45pts), sits at 345 in your current edition, and that's including the +1d6 repair. An Emperor is 365, and a Retribution is 355. They add +25 to become mechanicus, and must add 5-30 points for a mandatory upgrade. Admiteddly the ark must take a Veneratus, but so can the Empy and Ret. Is this something you figured out with smotherman; is the Ark that cheap for its stats? Is it by design that the other two battleships will always prove more expensive? I figured the Ark would like to remain the rare kingpin.
Anyways, though after researching into many old threads I may not understand all of the BFG:R reasoning (ex:tyrant pricing), I respect the work you have put in. Afterimagedan especially has been very consistent in pushing for the goal. If I appear to not have a clue about any of this, please assume I don't and fill me in! :)
Cheers,
Duke
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The downfall of the Ark is the veneratus, as you must buy the expensive leader.
But wait, becoming AdMech for a battleship is +25pts. Then gifts should not cost any money.
When gifts are things to be purchased the +25pts should be lowered.
More on this later.
Hi Duke,
most bfg:r pricing is based on proposing stats and voting on them.
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When gifts are things to be purchased the +25pts should be lowered.
What point amount are you thinking would be appropriate?
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Why +25 for Battleships? What would they be getting that a cruiser wouldn't?
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I think +20 is appropriate. Battleships get the same thing as light cruisers for being Admech yet their additional turret is more effective (because of how bombers work).
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Bu what brings +20pts?
Extra a.o.-turret
(Dorsal lance for cruisers)
Extra repair dice
worse at boarding.
1 turrets is 5pts.
What are the upgrade costs once again?
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Everyone is just saying "why should it me #??! :'( " but hardly any numbers have been proposed. Will someone please just lay out a point recommendation and why! Andrew has:
All ships receive a leadership boost and a negative to hit and runs and boarding actions.
All capitol ships receive +1 turret and +1D6 to repair. They also force the Admech player to take an additional sub plot.
Cruisers get an additional dorsal lance.
Escorts receive no additional bonuses.
In standard games these are the only free modifiers over IN ships I see.
Clearly Cruisers receive the largest benifit, light cruisers and battleships very little and escorts basically none.
The leadership boost I dont know if I could really put a point value on, it makes the ships better but how much is really hit and miss. The boarding modifier, hit and run modifier, and Sub plot rules both suffer from the same problem.
I would call these a wash.
So the bonuses are:
Escort: none
Light Cruiser: +1 Turret +1D6 to repair
Cruiser: +1 Turret +1D6 to repair +1 Lance
Battleship: +1 Turret +1D6 to repair
And the proposed changes in cost are:
Escort: -
Light cruiser: +15 pts (Im ok with this)
Cruiser: +20 points I would think this should be +25pts.
Battleship: +20 points (Im not sure where the +35 came from?) this is fairly reasonable as it can be assumed that that extra turret will go a lot further on these ships but thats still kinda of subjective :/.
Going through it again, here is my reasoning:
10pts for light cruisers because of
+ leadership bonus
- boarding
+ turret
- subplot
+ repair D6
+ option to take lance instead of torps (marginal bonus)
25pts to cruisers because of
+ leadership bonus
- boarding
+ turret
- subplot
+ repair D6
+ lance (main bonus)
15pts for Battleships because of
+ leadership bonus
- boarding
+ turret (which is more beneficial than the one on the light cruiser because it makes it near invulnerable to AC)
- subplot
+ option to take NC instead of torps (marginal bonus)
+ repair D6
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I can live with those (NC on the BB, not lance for torps ;) ).
So, Lunar goes to 180+25 = 205pts.
So upgrades will be average on 10pts.
Otherwise the fleet will get to expensive.
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I can live with those (NC on the BB, not lance for torps ;) ).
Oops. Changed that.
So, Lunar goes to 180+25 = 205pts.
So upgrades will be average on 10pts.
Otherwise the fleet will get to expensive.
Average of 10pts for the Gifts of the Omnissiah?
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Thinking about it a few hours later, I think purchasing of the gifts is off. Included previously, the premium totaled thirty five points on every capital ship. Afterimagedan has put some nice price grades above that feel right :), but on average the gifts are fifteen points or higher, and so the cruiser price is generally higher (+40 if your going for good gifts). I'll mention my disclaimer again: I'm not aware of the reasoning for some of this so excuse me, but I did a search for 'Gifts of the Omnissiah' and very little discussion showed up.
Personally I liked the random table for this reason. It makes sure some of the upgrades will be taken and not routinely leave others behind. But choosing does make it more meaningful. :-\
Also: the pdf is showing "fast tracking turrets" rather than "fleet defense turrets." Interested if intentional.
Cheers!
Duke
Edit: Horizon's got me! ah!
Edit: Funny how it worked out: cruisers remain exactly the same, but battleships are cheaper across the board. The Ark remains, counting only it stats, the cheapest BB.
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Was under the impression BB's got the extra lance, too. Dropped that ball... :o
Dan's proposed costs do seem reasonable for what your getting, and makes fielding an Admech fleet more feasible. Let's go with it!
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Great, should we talk about Gifts?
Here's what they are currently:
Mechanicus Gift Table
15pts Emergency Energy Reserves: When crippled,the ship only reduces turrets, shielding and weapons by 25% rather than 50%. The vessel still counts as crippled in every other respect.
15 pts Advanced Engines: The ship gains +5cm speed, as well as +1D6 when on All Ahead Full special orders.
15 pts Repulsor Shielding: Ignore all negative effects of having a blast marker or gas clouds in contact with the ship's base as it applies to leadership, movement and repairing critical damage. This effect goes away if the ship suffers “Shields Collapsed†critical damage.
10 pts Fleet Defense Turrets: Up to two turrets on the ship are exchanged for fleet defense turrets capable of protecting itself or any one other vessel within 15cm each ordnance phase, adding+2 to the turret strength of the ship it is defending (this does not alter bomber attack rolls when used to defend another vessel). These otherwise work exactly as normal turrets do in all other respects.
10 pts Gyro-stabilized Targeting Matrix: Ship weapons are reduced to 75% instead of 50%when on All Ahead Full, Come To New Heading or Burn Retros special orders. Nova Cannons still may not fire.
30 pts Augmented Weapon Relays: Weapon batteries shift left on the gunnery table before all other modifiers are applied. Lance hits count as double on rolls of a 6.
15 pts Extra Magazine: The ship rolls 3D6 and removes 1 die before comparing the result to their leadership when using Reload Ordnance.
Augmented Weapon Relay is great, but 30pts great? Take a Retribution for example. 18wb and 3 lances. The Ret, through this, is basically, according to the weapon charts, and when the Ret gets to shoot 1 side and its lances, it would have around 20pt-25pts bonus in firepower. And, thats a Retribution, a battleship focused entirely on guns (well, torps too...) and so anything smaller, like a Lunar, will get less effect from it. The Ret can get a higher bonus but only if it can fire all its weapons.
The Lunar will get about a 15pt boost firing one side if it has this upgrade, double that if it gets to fire both. I think we should price of AWR it at closer to 20pts.
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Going through it again, here is my reasoning:
10pts for light cruisers because of
+ leadership bonus
- boarding
+ turret 5pts
- subplot
+ repair D6
+ option to take lance instead of torps (marginal bonus) For a point increase so no real bonus
25pts to cruisers because of
+ leadership bonus
- boarding
+ turret 5pts
- subplot
+ repair D6
+ lance (main bonus) 15-20pts
15pts for Battleships because of
+ leadership bonus
- boarding
+ turret (which is more beneficial than the one on the light cruiser because it makes it near invulnerable to AC)5-10pts
- subplot
+ option to take NC instead of torps (marginal bonus) For a point increase so no real bonus
+ repair D6
If we went off the physical upgrades alone you would be looking at +5pts for light cruisers, +20-25pts for cruisers, and +5-10pts for battleships. What we need to see is if a slight boost to leadership and an extra die to repair are worth more than the negatives for having an extra subplot and poor boarding and hit and run abilities. Having had a bit of time to stew on this I dont really see that extra repair die being worth 5pts, maybe half that. I could see these going +5/+20/+10 the more I look at them, theres just not enough there to make them more worthwile.
Great, should we talk about Gifts?
Here's what they are currently:
Mechanicus Gift Table
15pts Emergency Energy Reserves: When crippled,the ship only reduces turrets, shielding and weapons by 25% rather than 50%. The vessel still counts as crippled in every other respect.
15 pts Advanced Engines: The ship gains +5cm speed, as well as +1D6 when on All Ahead Full special orders.
15 pts Repulsor Shielding: Ignore all negative effects of having a blast marker or gas clouds in contact with the ship's base as it applies to leadership, movement and repairing critical damage. This effect goes away if the ship suffers “Shields Collapsed” critical damage.
10 pts Fleet Defense Turrets: Up to two turrets on the ship are exchanged for fleet defense turrets capable of protecting itself or any one other vessel within 15cm each ordnance phase, adding+2 to the turret strength of the ship it is defending (this does not alter bomber attack rolls when used to defend another vessel). These otherwise work exactly as normal turrets do in all other respects.
10 pts Gyro-stabilized Targeting Matrix: Ship weapons are reduced to 75% instead of 50%when on All Ahead Full, Come To New Heading or Burn Retros special orders. Nova Cannons still may not fire.
30 pts Augmented Weapon Relays: Weapon batteries shift left on the gunnery table before all other modifiers are applied. Lance hits count as double on rolls of a 6.
15 pts Extra Magazine: The ship rolls 3D6 and removes 1 die before comparing the result to their leadership when using Reload Ordnance.
Augmented Weapon Relay is great, but 30pts great? Take a Retribution for example. 18wb and 3 lances. The Ret, through this, is basically, according to the weapon charts, and when the Ret gets to shoot 1 side and its lances, it would have around 20pt-25pts bonus in firepower. And, thats a Retribution, a battleship focused entirely on guns (well, torps too...) and so anything smaller, like a Lunar, will get less effect from it. The Ret can get a higher bonus but only if it can fire all its weapons.
The Lunar will get about a 15pt boost firing one side if it has this upgrade, double that if it gets to fire both. I think we should price of AWR it at closer to 20pts.
I dont care for this at all, its way to easy to tailor your ships. Make all of them 15pts and random, some will be priced correctly some will be a bit over priced and some will be a deal but thats why it should be random. Drop the fleet defense turret as an option and build it right into the ships cost for an additional +5pts.
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You don't put a value on the +D6 to repair?
Also, putting a point value on the gifts is there so you CAN tailor your ships. I find that this fleet is not worth playing when it's random. Putting a value on the gifts so that you can buy them allows this fleet to be competitive and not random. Even with the randomness, you will end up paying for gifts that will be overpriced or underpriced anyways so changing to a purchase system won't change that at minimum, and actually will improve that balance problem at best. Imagine playing this fleet in a tournament. You may just have a game where you roll total crap for upgrades and other games where you get great stuff. It's too unpredictable. With Orks, you at least have those random rolls a a bunch of times every turn and it can even out during the game. With random gifts in admech, you get one roll per ship before the game, no change for the randomness to even out. If you are worried about some being overpriced or underpriced based on the ships class, I am not against putting different prices per class on the gifts.
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Of course the extra repair die has value, just not much :P.
Im not worried about them being priced incorrectly, I just really dont like the idea of them being able to take what they want, The reload option feels really over the top.
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The repair dice is not worth a lot, I agree.
A lot of people hated the random gifts. As in you pay for upgrades you do not want.
But, the ad mech cost has to come down with these upgrade costs.
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I'm not sure I like the idea of fixed point cost for gifts. I think it makes the fleet a little too flat since certain gifts will be obviously better and one thing I've learned from epic is that even relatively insane point weighting on "better" options does little to make alternatives attractive. It usually doesn't even drastically upset a list when you are talking about a difference of 50 to 100 points in a 1500 point game.
Has anyone floated the idea of retaining the random gifts but allowing the admech commanders to provide a modifier to the table? Make a 7 as select your gift from the table and then grant the commanders these modifiers.
Ie. explorator grants +1 to rolls on the table
Venator grants. +2 to rolls.
Maybe add a third level that grants +3
It helps reduce the randomness a bit. Or we could expand on it a bit and give the explorator a reroll with no table modifier and the venator +2 or 3 on the table and no rerolls. It effectively gives you your choice of gift either 33% of the time or 50% of the time.
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I was thinking along Vaaish's lines.
Keeping in mind that a Magus gives the flagship the power to select a gift, a slight modifier across the fleet on the table rolls would be helpful (I'm not convinced about the current Magus prices as it is).
Two suggestions/ideas to entertain:
*There are 7 choices: make one of them a basic, always available choice like 40k's primaris powers when the roll is not to your liking.
*Allow squadrons roll on one table, not per ship, and apply the result to all. Each ship in a squadron adds a +1 to the table.
Cheers,
Duke
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5pt light
20 cruiser
10 battleship? anyone? anyone?
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In a way I do a agree. Having the option to pick will see AWR all over the place.
The reload option is, I agree with Andrew, a bit to much. Six options as is is fine.
Limiting the options is kinda daft. I never had problems with the random factor but I do agree that the options are not equal and sometimes no a perfect choice (will of the omnissiah ;) ) on certain vessels. In a campaign upgrades cost 10% of a vessel and these aren't equal as well. So by that token all upgrades for AM can be regarded equal.
Make it random again. And make the AdMech :
cl +5
cc +10
bb +20
but have the +1 turret (+5) and dorsal lance for cc (+15) as an upgrade).
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In a way I do a agree. Having the option to pick will see AWR all over the place.
The reload option is, I agree with Andrew, a bit to much. Six options as is is fine.
Limiting the options is kinda daft. I never had problems with the random factor but I do agree that the options are not equal and sometimes no a perfect choice (will of the omnissiah ;) ) on certain vessels. In a campaign upgrades cost 10% of a vessel and these aren't equal as well. So by that token all upgrades for AM can be regarded equal.
Make it random again. And make the AdMech :
cl +5
cc +10
bb +20
but have the +1 turret (+5) and dorsal lance for cc (+15) as an upgrade).
Ok so to get the modified leadership, +1d6 to repair, and free refit cost (along with all the negatives):
cl +5
cc +10
bb +20
I dont know 5 and 10 pts is awefully low. The only refit I would value at less than 15 is the FDT and over would be the AWR, maybe 15 points for all cruisers and 25 for battleships (most of these would be of more benifit to them than a cruiser).
Now Id like to also point out the fact that as the ability to efficiently produce long-range lance
weaponry by Mars was perfected in late M37, why cant we get the option to boost 30cm lances to 45cm? Maybe at a cost of 15pts/ship or 30 for the Gothic? Nice and pricy the way it should be :P.
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Why not both. You can risk it and roll for a low price, or you can pay extra to choose. We could work on prices that might even be percentage based that way, but if people would rather have the randomness element, they can.
Also, why would Tyranid evolutions be chosen but AdMech upgrades be random?
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Random seems like a step backwards for this thread. Having specific pricing allows vastly different upgrades with varying power levels without having to worry about balancing issues. The ability to randomly get an extra turret (archer quote: hurray!...) versus augmented weapon relays or whatnot is unbalancing (if the pricing is too low, it becomes a win 90% of the time) or severely weakening (if the ability is priced high, the we have potentially weaker vessels for effectively the same price IN THE SAME GAME).
Like 'nids, the upgrades should be purchasable. This is both easiest (no questions about what was rolled, no having to estimate the average point cost that the roll represents) and will result in the most cohesive play experience. If there was a vessel for IN at 200pts that had at the "beginning of the game, roll a d6: on a 1-2 treat this vessel as a cobra class destroyer. On a 3-4 treat it like a lunar class cruiser. On a 5-6 treat it like a Retribution class battleship" people would be hesitant to include it or play against it, since it goes from being vastly underpowered to overpowered from game to game.
By allowing people to purchase the upgrade we are also allowing them to define their fleets strategy. Purposefully buying extended range to allow for a flanking force is cool, but randomly finding out your AAF linebreaker now has it is useful, but less conducive to interesting fleet construction.
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And what do you see with Nids (afaik) that some upgrades are taken more often then others.
I mean, AWR is totally the way to go on gunnery ships. Why bother with an upgrade like GTM for such a ship?
Andrew, 5pts may indeed be to low.
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@horizon Fair point on that. I would rather see a restriction on how many times you can grab a certain upgrade than making it random again, however.
What if we made a small sidebar at the beginning? Restricting an option to 1 per XXXpts is hardly a new twist to fleet lists, so we could easily use that to encourage creative lists.
"Note: You may only have one instance of a mechanicus gift per 500pts."
Basically, you can only have so many AWR, even if you are willing to pay for them.
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We could try actually comming up with a selection of options that are all equaly attractive too.
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"Also, why would Tyranid evolutions be chosen but AdMech upgrades be random?"
-ADmech upgrades don't define the ability of the vessel, they're merely ancillary to the basic cruiser design.
-To roll 'Fleet Defense Turret' rather than AWD isn't crippling, as these choices aren't formative. They're all good choices actually, but some shine brightly. Horizon's nailed it.
To Talos's suggestion:
-Most ADmech fleets consist of 3 (maybe 4) cruisers. Putting at cap on 500 or 750 per upgrade will still mean the player is focusing his points on nabbing AWD.
If randomness played straight bothers some, then Vaaish introduced an interesting idea: modifiers from commanders or other sources. And if Horizon believes that's daft, then consider the roll as determining your bracket of choices. If you roll a two, select option two or lower. Roll a four, select 1, 2, 3, or 4. e.t.c..
-Duke
EDIT: After reading Talos response below, I'll clarify that I meant 'gift' rather than 'upgrade' as being secondary. The upgrades ADmech pays for are (primarily that plasma battery and +1 lance) are essential to the play of the faction. The gifts- I don't believe- are.
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@Duke Not sure what game size you are referring to: at 1500pts, and admech fleet without at least 4+ cruisers (or 3+ and a battleship) is going to be severely outnumbered and outgunned, AWR or not. And it can easily be argued that range increases define a vessel as much as weapon loadout; even if they were the same price, no one would argue that a dominator and a range increased tyrant are the same thing. Range matters, and so does accuracy/firepower.
I don't mind randomness in a game; it's part of what makes it fun. But having randomness in list building is generally a really bad idea. People like to know what they are buying, because random value is not very popular. Look at the american stock market for a good example of what happens when something stable becomes incredibly variable. If asked, most american citizens would have preferred higher real estate prices... infinitely better than spending all that money and finding out it's worth nothing.
Admech fleets require carriers, and nabbing AWR on a carrier is generally wasted points. I think a players should be able to run an AWR squadron if he likes, but it should be limited so that he does not have only AWR vessels. Also, I agree that all the option are good. AWR just adds the most firepower, and more firepower directly and consistently increases the effectiveness of a vessel, whereas most of the other ones are more circumstantial.
I think we all agree that whilst fleet defense turrets (to use Duke's example) are good, they are not in use every turn by every vessel, whereas better guns are. Randomness allows for the possibility of all AWR fleets, which is obviously very powerful. You would have an immediate advantage by shear virtue of having more powerful vessels than your point value was designed to accommodate. No one likes starting a game of with a strong disadvantage (I'm looking at you, Grey Knight vs. Daemons and Dark Angels vs. Chaos Space Marines >:()
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I run a max of 4ac in my admech fleet: a reserve dictator from the IN
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Would you really pay the points for an AWR on a dictator? ;)
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I would rather see a restriction on how many times you can grab a certain upgrade than making it random again, however.
Restrictions don't address the core issue. All they do is tell everyone you realize there's a problem but you aren't dealing with it. For instance, if you put a restriction of 2 on AWR, you can be guaranteed that people will still take the maximum allowed AWR before looking to take a different option. Random keeps the gifts a novelty flavor item rather than a hardcore tournament option.
Would you really pay the points for an AWR on a dictator?
The point being different ships will find different options more or less valuable.
I really don't see restricted selection as a way forward here. All it eventually does is force players to pay for perceived sub-par upgrades to their ships after the "useful" and restricted (and likely most expensive) options have been exhausted. Fixed selection also assures that you will always meet up with the ships having the most optimal configurations. The Gifts should be fun; they should add flavor to the fleet without overshadowing it. The ships you choose, not the gifts you give them should define your fleet.
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@Vaaish I agree with you on certain points here, but others I feel are not quite as much of an issue as you put forth. I once asked if anybody had ever tried an all battleship fleet versus an all cruiser fleet. Someone (I think it might have been Sig, but don't quote him on that) said they had, but that the all battleship fleet had absolutely slaughtered the all cruiser fleet. Hands down. I believe they had only crippled a pair of battleships, not destroyed any IIRC. So clearly Battleships are better than their point value in cruisers, yet we allow Battleships to see play with a restriction to the quantity.
Also, saying the ships you choose define your fleet more than the gifts is a little bit of a misnomer, if you will; since admech vessels (with an exception of course) are just IN vessels with some minor tweaking and special rules, I would say the gits constitute a fair pat of what makes AdMech special. Without them, we could just make another IN list with a mandatory adjustment to capital vessels.
It goes without saying that they will never be a hardcore tournament option; there is no hardcore BFG tournament environment, despite the fact that they do see the light of day. Ours is a mostly casual wargame.
You and horizon are right about one part of the buying however; people are just going to pick the perceived most powerful option available and buy it as many times as they are allowed. But the system is never to blame for the abuse of players, so we don't have to bust our proverbial balls working around people who seeks to abuse a system. No system is flawless, and these people will find ways to abuse it no matter how hard we try.
One solution we could entertain is to reduce the power level of the upgrades overall and make it fully random. People don't mind gambling so much if its only 5 or 10pts a vessel, and if we remove the high powered options (like AWR) there will be no issue with this whatsoever.
The second is that we keep it purchasable but figure out some creative way of stopping people from spamming AWR. I look forward to some suggestions, because I admit I am running out of ideas for this problem. :'( :( Thoughts?
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What if we made a small sidebar at the beginning? Restricting an option to 1 per XXXpts is hardly a new twist to fleet lists, so we could easily use that to encourage creative lists.
Yes. This is the best option and a great compromise.
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"Also, why would Tyranid evolutions be chosen but AdMech upgrades be random?"
I am talking about the Evolutions, not the weapons you have to purchase. Evolutions are just like Gifts.
To Talos's suggestion:
-Most ADmech fleets consist of 3 (maybe 4) cruisers. Putting at cap on 500 or 750 per upgrade will still mean the player is focusing his points on nabbing AWD.
So? What's with people being against letting people pay for AWR?
If randomness played straight bothers some, then Vaaish introduced an interesting idea: modifiers from commanders or other sources. And if Horizon believes that's daft, then consider the roll as determining your bracket of choices. If you roll a two, select option two or lower. Roll a four, select 1, 2, 3, or 4. e.t.c..
-Duke
That's still random and you could still get screwed for a game with worse choices. Why not just make them purchasable? 1 max per gift per 750pts or part thereof?
EDIT: After reading Talos response below, I'll clarify that I meant 'gift' rather than 'upgrade' as being secondary. The upgrades ADmech pays for are (primarily that plasma battery and +1 lance) are essential to the play of the faction. The gifts- I don't believe- are.
I still don't see the difference. If what you are saying is that Tyranids need evolutions because they are pretty terrible without them, then I would agree. But, gifts are pretty much just evolutions for Admech.
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I would rather see a restriction on how many times you can grab a certain upgrade than making it random again, however.
Restrictions don't address the core issue. All they do is tell everyone you realize there's a problem but you aren't dealing with it. For instance, if you put a restriction of 2 on AWR, you can be guaranteed that people will still take the maximum allowed AWR before looking to take a different option. Random keeps the gifts a novelty flavor item rather than a hardcore tournament option.
But we want this list to be a choice that hardcore tournament players would actually consider taking. I don't agree with your point here. Putting a cap on options that seem to be the ones people take the most because of what they do is perfectly acceptable.
Would you really pay the points for an AWR on a dictator?
The point being different ships will find different options more or less valuable.
Right, more reason random is a bad idea.
I really don't see restricted selection as a way forward here. All it eventually does is force players to pay for perceived sub-par upgrades to their ships after the "useful" and restricted (and likely most expensive) options have been exhausted. You make a point here. Why not just make them purchasable at the proper amount and everyone wins?
Fixed selection also assures that you will always meet up with the ships having the most optimal configurations. The Gifts should be fun; they should add flavor to the fleet without overshadowing it. The ships you choose, not the gifts you give them should define your fleet.
I agree with this but who says that the gifts I have chosen while using the original BFG:R Admech fleet was more about the gift than the ship? No, I think that's an unfair assumption. Let's make the ship and gift something that people have to think about. When you restrict the purchase of gifts, it makes the player also have to consider even more which ships to take because they would like to have ships that can benefit from other upgrades.
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@afterimagedan Thanks there, buddy. I was feeling a little alone here... :)
To be perfectly frank; every issue everybody has listed so far seems to stem from around the Augmented Weapons Relay (AWR for short). Is this option considered too powerful, or just the best of the ones presented? In plaxor's BFG:R, he has the AWR at 30pts, a pretty hefty investment. Since a left column shift is worth 15pts if the mars is anything to go by, that would put lance doubling on a 6 at about 15pts as well. Is that accurate? I am not the best at Mathammer.
Before everyone jumps me, would it be too much to remove AWR? Would this solve the solution, or does AdMech need this to be competitive? I don't have lots of experience with them.
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When you start restricting something your going to force people to take them, not because they may or may not be the best but because we say they are the best. You might as well pull all these options and just build the best ones right into the cost of the ships.
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My friend does field an admech cruiser sometimes, but doesn't often take AWR just through sheer cost. would removing the two lance hits on 6's be favourable? As Talos says, this would put it at 15 which is more in line with the other gifts. I can see the point for random gifts, but I also don't like being forced to use things I don't want.
All-in-all, an option cap would probably be the way forward
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If we don't go with random (which I hope is the case), dividing the lances and column shift into two separate abilities might work because then you are limiting a ship to one of the two effectively. Although straight battery and lance vessels might still grab them, mixed vessels like lunars might find that the other option look more appealing.
Just a thought, and maybe a dumb one, but a thought on the table is worth two in your skull. :P
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When you start restricting something your going to force people to take them, not because they may or may not be the best but because we say they are the best. You might as well pull all these options and just build the best ones right into the cost of the ships.
?? If it's just because we say it's the best then someone will eventually disagree and buy other upgrades. Why does it matter if everyone wants to take AWR?
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Since a left column shift is worth 15pts if the mars is anything to go by, that would put lance doubling on a 6 at about 15pts as well. Is that accurate? I am not the best at Mathammer.
For a 60cm FLR lance, put it around 17.3 points. Statistically, you need two for 1 hit. That means 1 hit costs 34.6 at that range with those facings. 1/6 chance to get another hit makes the AWR lance bonus at about 5.77pts.
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Emergency Energy Reserves: When crippled,
the ship does not reduce turrets, shielding or
weapons strength. The vessel still counts as
crippled in every other respect.
Advanced Engines: The ship gains +5cm speed,
as well as +1D6 when on All Ahead Full special
orders. The ship adds +1 to its leadership when
attempting All Ahead Full, Come To New Heading
or Burn Retros special orders.
Advanced Shielding: Ignore all negative effects
of having a blast marker or gas clouds in contact
with the ship's base as it applies to leadership,
movement and repairing critical damage. For each
hit against the shields, roll a D6, the hit is ignored
and no blast marker is placed. This effect goes
away if the ship suffers “Shields Collapsed†critical
damage
Fleet Defense Turrets: Two fleet defense turrets
are added to the ship capable of protecting itself
or any one other vessel within 15cm each
ordnance phase, adding +2 to the turret strength
of the ship it is defending (this does not alter
bomber attack rolls when used to defend another
vessel). These otherwise work exactly as normal
turrets do in all other respects.
Gyro-stabilized Targeting Matrix: Ship
weapons are reduced to 75% instead of 50%
when on All Ahead Full, Come To New
Heading or Burn Retros special orders. Nova
Cannons still may not fire. The ship adds +1 to
its leadership when attempting Lock On special
orders.
Augmented Weapon Relays: Weapon batteries
shift left on the gunnery table before all other
modifiers are applied. Lance hits count as double
on rolls of a 6.
This isnt a suggestion really just pointing out that if they looked like this ^ I would really have to sit down and think about how I want my fleet to be setup with the gifts.
As they sit right now I can think of no reason I would want any of these other than AWR or maybe FDT. Energy reserves assumes Im not going to bug out a crippled ship and I get no benifit till the ship is crippled, Advanced engines might be nice for light cruisers but the AWR is too, repulsor shielding is meh, Gyros are for eatting... umm I mean also blah as theyre of questionable usefulness since I rarely have to use those special orders.
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I think those are fantastic. Could you clarify Advanced Shielding? If these were the list of upgrades, would you be satisfied in putting prices on them instead of randomizing them?
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So clearly Battleships are better than their point value in cruisers, yet we allow Battleships to see play with a restriction to the quantity.
I think you are missing the point of the restriction in this case. A fleet of all battleships isn't really fluffy, nor is a fleet of battleships largely desired. Restrictions to gifts is purely to prevent people from selecting the most optimal option.
But the system is never to blame for the abuse of players, so we don't have to bust our proverbial balls working around people who seeks to abuse a system. No system is flawless, and these people will find ways to abuse it no matter how hard we try.
I'm jumping a head here because I want to address your other comments with something Dan mentioned. I think it should be noted that you are creating an abusable system (pointed and player chosen gifts) and then patching it because it makes some options more desirable and more easily abused. This isn't a good thing.
That's still random and you could still get screwed for a game with worse choices. Why not just make them purchasable? 1 max per gift per 750pts or part thereof?
I believe this is the crux of the issue. Gifts should NEVER cause someone to get screwed over. Gifts should be the seasoning to the meat and potatoes of the ships that make up your fleet. Personally I don't believe they do under the regular fully random rules. Is it possible someone will roll all AWR for their fleet? Yes, but it's extremely unlikely and it's also just as unlikely every ship in the fleet will find the gift that useful. Nor does every ship having AWR immediately or even significantly affect the ability to successfully engage an admech fleet.
Right, more reason random is a bad idea.
You need to explain more than that for this to be a valid point. Random is only bad if the viability of the fleet is directly linked to the gifts you roll. This should never be the case (and I'd argue currently isn't the case). What I was getting at with my statement is that by allowing players to select options, you have to enforce rather draconian limitations (one AWR per 1000 points) for it to have much effect on the list since you might have only two ships that get optimal benefit from AWR and one that benefits from Repulsor shields.
I agree with this but who says that the gifts I have chosen while using the original BFG:R Admech fleet was more about the gift than the ship? No, I think that's an unfair assumption. Let's make the ship and gift something that people have to think about. When you restrict the purchase of gifts, it makes the player also have to consider even more which ships to take because they would like to have ships that can benefit from other upgrades.
I believe that we are even having a discussion on randomization of gifts is evidence enough that people don't see the gifts as flavor. Gifts should be kicks and giggles, minor changes cool if they work but never to be relied on. Your following statements make it pretty clear you see gifts integral to the tactics employed by the fleet. If you are looking to make people think more about which ships to take, it's a step backward to have them base that decision on which gift gets the most benefit. If that is your intent, it would be far easier to simply remove gifts entirely and add them as upgrades like the Mars Targeting Matrix. Of course, that only accents the issue since now the upgrade would be more of a no brainer.
To be perfectly frank; every issue everybody has listed so far seems to stem from around the Augmented Weapons Relay (AWR for short). Is this option considered too powerful, or just the best of the ones presented? In plaxor's BFG:R, he has the AWR at 30pts, a pretty hefty investment. Since a left column shift is worth 15pts if the mars is anything to go by, that would put lance doubling on a 6 at about 15pts as well. Is that accurate? I am not the best at Mathammer.
The issue isn't the power of the AWR, this issue is that the AWR is the easiest gift to use and produces the most immediate perceived benefit. In practice, the gift is nice when it works but the benefit gained is usually pretty minimal (16% odds of making a double hit with lances and removing the restriction on shooting through BM and past 30cm). The effective change in most situations is one or two extra WB dice which really isn't that amazing in the scope of shooting against 5 or 6+ armor. There is the potential for a gothic to score 8 hits on a single go but it's hardly something to center your strategy around.
In the past the biggest concern with Gifts was that they were too random which probably translates into "we don't get the perfect option" I can agree that gifts throw you for a loop sometimes, but I don't think the option is straight up selection.
Another alternative I see is a Gifts pool. The table remains random, you still roll for gifts based on the number of eligible ships in your fleet, but the gifts are placed in a pool that the player can then assign to ships as he sees fit.
For instance I have this fleet:
Lunar + Boosted Batteries
Endeavour + Lance + Boosted Batteries
Gothic
Endurance + Lance
Oberon
I roll on the table 5 times and get:
2x AWR
1x Repulsor shields
1x Advanced Engines
1x FDT
I can now take those and assign them to a specific ship as I see fit.
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That's an elegant solution!
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So clearly Battleships are better than their point value in cruisers, yet we allow Battleships to see play with a restriction to the quantity.
I think you are missing the point of the restriction in this case. A fleet of all battleships isn't really fluffy, nor is a fleet of battleships largely desired. Restrictions to gifts is purely to prevent people from selecting the most optimal option.
But the system is never to blame for the abuse of players, so we don't have to bust our proverbial balls working around people who seeks to abuse a system. No system is flawless, and these people will find ways to abuse it no matter how hard we try.
I'm jumping a head here because I want to address your other comments with something Dan mentioned. I think it should be noted that you are creating an abusable system (pointed and player chosen gifts) and then patching it because it makes some options more desirable and more easily abused. This isn't a good thing.
That's still random and you could still get screwed for a game with worse choices. Why not just make them purchasable? 1 max per gift per 750pts or part thereof?
I believe this is the crux of the issue. Gifts should NEVER cause someone to get screwed over. Gifts should be the seasoning to the meat and potatoes of the ships that make up your fleet. Personally I don't believe they do under the regular fully random rules. Is it possible someone will roll all AWR for their fleet? Yes, but it's extremely unlikely and it's also just as unlikely every ship in the fleet will find the gift that useful. Nor does every ship having AWR immediately or even significantly affect the ability to successfully engage an admech fleet.
Right, more reason random is a bad idea.
You need to explain more than that for this to be a valid point. Random is only bad if the viability of the fleet is directly linked to the gifts you roll. This should never be the case (and I'd argue currently isn't the case). What I was getting at with my statement is that by allowing players to select options, you have to enforce rather draconian limitations (one AWR per 1000 points) for it to have much effect on the list since you might have only two ships that get optimal benefit from AWR and one that benefits from Repulsor shields.
I agree with this but who says that the gifts I have chosen while using the original BFG:R Admech fleet was more about the gift than the ship? No, I think that's an unfair assumption. Let's make the ship and gift something that people have to think about. When you restrict the purchase of gifts, it makes the player also have to consider even more which ships to take because they would like to have ships that can benefit from other upgrades.
I believe that we are even having a discussion on randomization of gifts is evidence enough that people don't see the gifts as flavor. Gifts should be kicks and giggles, minor changes cool if they work but never to be relied on. Your following statements make it pretty clear you see gifts integral to the tactics employed by the fleet. If you are looking to make people think more about which ships to take, it's a step backward to have them base that decision on which gift gets the most benefit. If that is your intent, it would be far easier to simply remove gifts entirely and add them as upgrades like the Mars Targeting Matrix. Of course, that only accents the issue since now the upgrade would be more of a no brainer.
To be perfectly frank; every issue everybody has listed so far seems to stem from around the Augmented Weapons Relay (AWR for short). Is this option considered too powerful, or just the best of the ones presented? In plaxor's BFG:R, he has the AWR at 30pts, a pretty hefty investment. Since a left column shift is worth 15pts if the mars is anything to go by, that would put lance doubling on a 6 at about 15pts as well. Is that accurate? I am not the best at Mathammer.
The issue isn't the power of the AWR, this issue is that the AWR is the easiest gift to use and produces the most immediate perceived benefit. In practice, the gift is nice when it works but the benefit gained is usually pretty minimal (16% odds of making a double hit with lances and removing the restriction on shooting through BM and past 30cm). The effective change in most situations is one or two extra WB dice which really isn't that amazing in the scope of shooting against 5 or 6+ armor. There is the potential for a gothic to score 8 hits on a single go but it's hardly something to center your strategy around.
In the past the biggest concern with Gifts was that they were too random which probably translates into "we don't get the perfect option" I can agree that gifts throw you for a loop sometimes, but I don't think the option is straight up selection.
Another alternative I see is a Gifts pool. The table remains random, you still roll for gifts based on the number of eligible ships in your fleet, but the gifts are placed in a pool that the player can then assign to ships as he sees fit.
For instance I have this fleet:
Lunar + Boosted Batteries
Endeavour + Lance + Boosted Batteries
Gothic
Endurance + Lance
Oberon
I roll on the table 5 times and get:
2x AWR
1x Repulsor shields
1x Advanced Engines
1x FDT
I can now take those and assign them to a specific ship as I see fit.
I think we are just on two different wavelengths here. I think the pool is a nice idea but still has the reasons I have stated before for not liking random rolling. Its better, but purchasing upgrades is just a better idea if we want to have this be a competitive list. You say its just icing on the cake and claim that this conversation is evidence that people sorry more about gifts than the ship. I see it a different way. This conversation is more about making admech a list that isn't something people avoid playing because of the random factor. You admit that there are games where you can actually get terrible options for your ships. There are also games where you can roll really great options. By why leave it where we just have to hope for good gifts for our fleet and not bad? I bet no one will bring Admech to Adepticon this year and its precisely because you may be sitting there rolling for your gifts before the game, get total crap, and then feel like you got screwed for that game. Even if gifts are just icing on the cake, which I think they are more than just novelty, you still paid points for something that you rolled randomly and was crap. If we really want to fix this and have the best of both worlds, we should just make all options viable and properly priced instead of random.
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Okay you all win...let's just stop quoting giant text blocks guys, it's getting hard to read this... ;D
I'm really more in favor of the points buying it's just easier, fits in with existing pricing mechanics and will make the list more competitive.
AndrewChristlieb had a pretty good chart back there, but I have no idea how we would price those.
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You say its just icing on the cake and claim that this conversation is evidence that people sorry more about gifts than the ship. I see it a different way. This conversation is more about making admech a list that isn't something people avoid playing because of the random factor. You admit that there are games where you can actually get terrible options for your ships. There are also games where you can roll really great options. By why leave it where we just have to hope for good gifts for our fleet and not bad? I bet no one will bring Admech to Adepticon this year and its precisely because you may be sitting there rolling for your gifts before the game, get total crap, and then feel like you got screwed for that game. Even if gifts are just icing on the cake, which I think they are more than just novelty, you still paid points for something that you rolled randomly and was crap. If we really want to fix this and have the best of both worlds, we should just make all options viable and properly priced instead of random.
But now (with points) people will only take the good stuff and leave the bad stuff.
Plus the current AdMech isn't as bad as people make them to be. Yes, mostly outnumbered with upgrades that can be iffy to use but if you play there strengths you can win it with them.
Without a carrier I had most succes, lol.
Now with a pool you can place the random upgrade where you want.
Plus a 6 on the Ld dice roll is a select option, plus the magos can select.
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Its better, but purchasing upgrades is just a better idea if we want to have this be a competitive list.
You need to seriously rethink how admech works if you feel that gifts are necessary to competitiveness for admech. The fleet should be competitive without the gifts, not because of them. If the fleet is failing in that regard you are only using the gifts to make up for larger deficiencies in the fleet.
You admit that there are games where you can actually get terrible options for your ships. There are also games where you can roll really great options. By why leave it where we just have to hope for good gifts for our fleet and not bad?
No, I admit that there are some ship and gift combinations that are better than others but none of them will make or break your fleet.
I bet no one will bring Admech to Adepticon this year and its precisely because you may be sitting there rolling for your gifts before the game, get total crap, and then feel like you got screwed for that game.
This is purely assumption. It is just as easily the case that adMech is more expensive and by nature of having fewer ships less forgiving of mistakes regardless of the gifts you get.
Even if gifts are just icing on the cake, which I think they are more than just novelty, you still paid points for something that you rolled randomly and was crap.
Chalking something up to the dice gods, having a laugh and moving on is still a far better result than limiting the option everyone wants and then telling them they have to pay for an upgrade they don't want.
If we really want to fix this and have the best of both worlds, we should just make all options viable and properly priced instead of random.
This will never have the effect you desire. No option will ever be perceived to equally "good" to every situation. The net result is that you first set points then restrictions and then removal entirely. Look at nids. The solution was to just eliminate the refits in one of games.
If you want people to have control over what a ship gets and not create complex solutions, stop trying to reinvent the wheel. Random gifts aren't broken by any means, just give the player control over how those upgrades are assigned.
The disappointment isn't that you didn't roll AWR, it's that your gothic got FDT and your dictator got AWR. If you let people assign from a pool you keep the current system intact, elmininate the need to point out each gift and create restrictions, and give players more control over what each ship has.
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This discussion is way to big. It's hard enough trying to follow, yet to contribute something useful.
Still, I've got one idea for a upgrade restriction I want to drop. Fell free to use, comment or completely ignore it.
"All upgrades have to be picked at least once, before you can pick it a second time." Trying to go for diversity here.
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@Vaaish Your random pool pick is not a terrible idea, but I feel like you are not grasping the implications of why people don't like random things.
@Brethren Yeah, me & Vaaish & horizon & afterimagedan are making this pretty freaking hard to follow. Reminds me of the nid thread...Not a bad idea either, but I doubt it will gain much traction since AdMech fleets are so small, you are basically saying that no Gift can be taken twice. Concept is great, but it's the execution everybody here (including me!) is having a hard time with.
Everybody want's AdMech to be:
1) Balanced: The fleet is of equal power level with all the others.
2) Fun: The fleet brings something new to the table, basically a combination of unique aesthetics, playstyle and ship design
3) Flexible: Every fleet should have vessels that fulfill different roles and have different strengths to allow for many different lists and combination. What we don't want is fleets with only one "effective" list.
4) Streamlined: Part of BFG:R consists of getting rid of clunky "one of" rules and designs to make the game both easier to play and consistent throughout the entire game system. A good example of this is horizon and Sig's MMS 1.9b, which streamlines eldar rules to better fit with existing gameplay and mechanics.
5) Competitive: Similar to balanced, everyone wants the AdMech to see more play a tournaments as an army that stands a chance of winning. It can still have unfavorable matchups, but it should be just as good in its niche as any other fleet.
Since we all want these things, it's fairly easy to see where our mechanic should fit in.
1) A cheap random gift of properly priced selected gift both appeal to a sense of balance. If the gifts are weaker and the player only pays 5pts for it, it becomes more like an exciting little goody than a true upgrade. On the flipside properly priced and chosen gifts becomes the true distinction between vessels of a certain class. In both cases they achieve a balance the current fleet is lacking.
2) AdMech already has different aesthetics, and it's playstyle is distinct from IN, mostly due to significantly enhanced ranged firepower and and a weakness to boarding/H&R. The small random gifts are definitely fun, like opening a christmas present. Purchasable and balanced gifts are also fun, same as normal upgrades are. Options equal player satisfaction, as long as all the options are interesting.
3) The AdMech fleet has good selection of vessels with distinct roles, so this is not too much of a problem.
4) Any kind of random rolling for abilities is unfortunately not a widely used mechanic (outside of orks, obviously) and so keeping it seems oddly outdated, like wearing platform shoes and bright pink fedoras to a formal evening.
5) Being competitive is a combination of a fleet being balanced in general but having and advantage against whatever is expected to be most popular. If this were 40k and Daemons were the big in thing ( ::) :o), Grey Knights would be a good example. Good in general, and strong against the most common opponent. This is more of a question, but is there any fleet that AdMech currently does better against than IN? Enough to count as having at least a slight upper hand.
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The gifts should just be flavor I agree with this. The problem is that not all of the gifts are useful, like at all. getting advanced engines kind of sucks when every other ship moves slower, paying for a gift that does nothing unless your ships is crippled also sucks. I mean comeon we should be working to make a list of SMALL changes to the ships that are instantly useful on most every ship and wont break how you want to play your fleet.
Dan those ones I listed were way over the top and that was the idea behind them, theyre so good you want all of them, we need to go the other direction tho, so minor your ok with getting any of them.
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You need to seriously rethink how admech works if you feel that gifts are necessary to competitiveness for admech.
Actually, I don't and think that you do. Let's no go that route because it's not productive and I really don't want this to go that sort of angry, unkind route. I could respond to each of your points but I think we just aren't going to agree. I am simply not in favor of randomness in upgrades. Basically, making Tyranids not able to take evolutions in one off games was crap. What made that work? Proper limits on how much of things you can take and giving them proper prices. I think we should do that with Admech as well.
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Well, Dan, you run the show.
Vote on it? (first round: random or points)
Then : which upgrades should it be. If vote is on points, how much?
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Actually, do you think we should work with Andrew's suggestions? I think his suggestions are awesome but I would like to discuss that first.
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Okay...
Emergency Energy Reserves: When crippled,
the ship does not reduce turrets, shielding or
weapons strength. The vessel still counts as
crippled in every other respect.
A big improvement to the EER.
Advanced Engines: The ship gains +5cm speed,
as well as +1D6 when on All Ahead Full special
orders. The ship adds +1 to its leadership when
attempting All Ahead Full, Come To New Heading
or Burn Retros special orders.
The +1 seems reasonable addition.
Advanced Shielding: Ignore all negative effects
of having a blast marker or gas clouds in contact
with the ship's base as it applies to leadership,
movement and repairing critical damage. For each
hit against the shields, roll a D6, the hit is ignored
and no blast marker is placed. This effect goes
away if the ship suffers “Shields Collapsed†critical
damage
Rolls a 6 on a d6 I imagine? ;)
So, if you roll a 6 no BM is placed, if you roll 1-5 BM is placed secondary effects to be applied. So order of writing needs to be changed.
Fleet Defense Turrets: Two fleet defense turrets
are added to the ship capable of protecting itself
or any one other vessel within 15cm each
ordnance phase, adding +2 to the turret strength
of the ship it is defending (this does not alter
bomber attack rolls when used to defend another
vessel). These otherwise work exactly as normal
turrets do in all other respects.
No change? Is it good as is? Or add option they can fire at torps & ac in the same turn?
Gyro-stabilized Targeting Matrix: Ship
weapons are reduced to 75% instead of 50%
when on All Ahead Full, Come To New
Heading or Burn Retros special orders. Nova
Cannons still may not fire. The ship adds +1 to
its leadership when attempting Lock On special
orders.
Again,+1 Ld is fine.
Augmented Weapon Relays: Weapon batteries
shift left on the gunnery table before all other
modifiers are applied. Lance hits count as double
on rolls of a 6.
Have you ever seen a Gothic on LockOn with this AWR and some ridiculous good dice rolls? I did... :)
On the Retribution this upgrade is awesomesauce as well.
Now, even with these. Convince me to take another upgrade on a Lunar or Retribution then AWR?
EER, AS & FDT are fine options on carriers and the Endurance CL. Perhaps even on the Endeavour.
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I won't try to convince you because those ships will highly benefit from AWR, but so what? Why not be allowed to take them for a price?
Anyways, I agree with those changes, I think they are fantastic. I also think that the work Andrew was doing when we were discussion Tyranid evolutions, that work could be applied here to make percentile costs, etc.
Vaaish, if you think that the gifts are not a factor in making this a competitive list, why are you against putting a point value on them an allowing people to pick the ones they want? Is it just that you don't want everyone picking AWR for everything?
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A lot of people play last man standing when they play BFG with their buds in a casual setting, and I can definitely see emergency energy reserves being a winner in this department. Having AWR be very common is not much of a problem, as long as players are not penalized for taking the other options.
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mmm...if people are that worried, then split AWR into two.
AWR- the column shift. 15pts?
Overcharged Lance Capacitors: 2 hits on 6. 15-20pts?
Any takers?
I know that's going over 6 gifts, but no-one said there should just be 6. Could go 2D6 like 'Nids. D66? :P
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I could go with the splitting AWR into two. The lance bonus by itself would probably be less than 20pts, maybe even less than 15 pts.
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Lance bonus at 10pts would be fine, IMO.
@Bessemer I swear on my dead grandmothers grave that if you claim credit for the AWR split I'm going to hunt you down >:( ;) ;D
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@Talos: :P
Actually I did notice this proposed earlier on, but things were starting to get lost in a sea of quotes and re-quotes so I thought it best to stick it up.
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Vaaish, if you think that the gifts are not a factor in making this a competitive list, why are you against putting a point value on them an allowing people to pick the ones they want? Is it just that you don't want everyone picking AWR for everything?
I'm partly against it because I've seen this route tried many times and every single time you end up with one thing everyone wants and a bunch of options no one takes. This usually leads to either nerfing the popular option or boosting the power of the unpopular options which leads to power creep.
I also don't think these lists needs pendulum swing changes to fix issues. If total randomization is a problem (well is a problem if you base your fleet strategy on getting a random upgrade), then the first step is to provide a means give the player some control over the result, not ditching randomization entirely.
We already have some control with being able to choose the gift on a roll of a 6 for ld and to a lesser extent with the magos selecting one gift. This has worked for a very long time but there has always been some pushback usually because a player wants AWR and gets FDT and has no way to place the gifts he gets to HIS liking.
The next step would be to increase the control the player has over the result, hence the idea of a gifts pool. You still don't know what gifts you will get each time but you can place them where you like and at least two of them you get to pick.
Ideally, you should be able to strip gifts entirely from the admech fleet and still have it play different than IN. Unfortunately it seems a lot of people start admech and think, oh cool IN with more shooting and AWR would make this awesome. They then decide what ships to take and how they want to play around getting that upgrade and when they don't get it, it throws them off mentally. I know that's a lot of what happened when I first started trying to play with admech. I took too many upgrades and put too much faith in gifts. I lost a lot until I started ignoring the gifts taking upgrades sparingly.
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If you are up for working on it, I would be entirely open to working on having no gifts purchasing or randomization and just have integrated changes, maybe with some ship by ship upgrades. I think that would be a great idea.
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I'm not looking to start radical changes to admech, just incremental adjustments. If there is concern that the gifts are needed make admech competitive, the place to start is to play admech with no gifts and adjust to make it competitive. Once that's set, we should be able to add in gifts with the standard rules and see if the gifts cause balance problems.
If its felt that the fleet itself is fine and the issue lies just with the gifts I would recommend incremental adjustments to the existing system before throwing it out entirely. This is where the idea of the gift pool comes into play. Incrementally give players more control with the least intrusive changes before moving to a far more complex point system to maintain balance.
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They don't need gifts to make them competitive necessarily, it is just where the points are being spent. A page or two back, we seemed to conclude on a point adjustment to the IN ships that accounts for the bonuses they get. We are already there. Technically, they are as competitive as everyone else now. The gifts can now just be additional things to add to ships to make the list not so boring. That's another reason I think we should just have point values on gifts and let people buy them.
Why the increment? I mean, we are here, working on it now. It's not going anywhere and the 2010 admech list is always there. For example, all we really need to to is find out what the gifts will look like, find what sort of limitations we want to put on them (percentage of ship cost or set point value, limit of 1 gift per 750 or just making a list of a few that each ship can take, etc.), and vote.
Personally, I would like to see it be like the tyranid evolutions, where each level of ship is allotted a certain amount of gifts that can be taken for the points. Maybe, we could strip the gifts down to 10-15pt upgrades and make two gift charts. For example, Firepower and Structure. Each list would have 3-6 options you could buy and we could allow cruisers to take a minimum of 1 upgrade, max of one from each.
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STRUCTURE
Emergency Energy Reserves: When crippled,
the ship does not reduce turrets, shielding or
weapons strength. The vessel still counts as
crippled in every other respect.
Advanced Engines: The ship gains +5cm speed,
as well as +1D6 when on All Ahead Full special
orders.
(some cool name?) The ship adds +1 to its leadership when
attempting All Ahead Full, Come To New Heading
or Burn Retros special orders.
Advanced Shielding: Ignore all negative effects
of having a blast marker or gas clouds in contact
with the ship's base as it applies to leadership,
movement and repairing critical damage.
Repulsor Shields: For each
hit against the ship's shields, roll a D6. On the role of a 6, the hit is ignored
and no blast marker is placed. It is as if it never happened.
This effect goes away if the ship suffers “Shields Collapsed†critical
damage.
ARMAMENT
Fleet Defense Turrets: Two fleet defense turrets
are added to the ship capable of protecting itself
or any one other vessel within 15cm each
ordnance phase, adding +2 to the turret strength
of the ship it is defending (this does not alter
bomber attack rolls when used to defend another
vessel). These otherwise work exactly as normal
turrets do in all other respects.
Gyro-stabilized Targeting Matrix: Ship
weapons are reduced to 75% instead of 50%
when on All Ahead Full, Come To New
Heading or Burn Retros special orders. Nova
Cannons still may not fire. The ship adds +1 to
its leadership when attempting Lock On special
orders.
Augmented Weapon Relays: Weapon batteries
shift left on the gunnery table before all other
modifiers are applied.
Overcharged Lance Capacitors: Lance hits count as double
on rolls of a 6.
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(some cool name?) The ship adds +1 to its leadership when
attempting All Ahead Full, Come To New Heading
or Burn Retros special orders.
Directional Vectoring Clusters?
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Ok, if we feel the AdMech ships are competitive without the bonuses then lets discuss how making gifts a fixed point choice makes the fleet less boring. You already know people want to buy what synergizes best with their fleets. Creating a list of gifts with fixed points practically guarantees that eventually everyone will take the same set of optimal gifts. That makes for very boring lists. I've seen it time and again.
I'm advocating incremental changes because they are the safest way to adjust a list. Sweeping changes have far higher probability of being unbalanced and pose a much higher degree of difficulty to balance since you are removing the baseline.
all we really need to to is find out what the gifts will look like, find what sort of limitations we want to put on them (percentage of ship cost or set point value, limit of 1 gift per 750 or just making a list of a few that each ship can take, etc.), and vote.
See this is the problem. You sound like you've already thrown out the existing gifts and are looking for an entirely new solution. We already know what the gifts look like, or at least have a very good baseline of how powerful they should be. The current set of gifts add flavor without overshadowing the ships, personally I don't think we need to reinvent the wheel here. The limitations we currently have on these gifts is also good. One per capital ship means the whole fleet has some flavor. The issue isn't the gifts, or the number you have, it's the means of distribution.
If you haven't noticed, the thread has gone something like this:
1. remove random gifts and give them each point values.
2. implement limitations on certain gifts to force variety
3. try to increase the power of gifts to match the perceived highest powerlevel
Now we are further complicating things by creating a whole table of gifts dedicated more things AND giving greater access. This is feature creep. This kind of thinking doesn't end in balanced lists.
Keep it SIMPLE. Look for elegant solutions that require the least change for the best result. 40k is complex, don't go that route.
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See this is the problem. You sound like you've already thrown out the existing gifts and are looking for an entirely new solution.
It's not a problem just because you see it as a problem. Some people would like to see changes to the gifts, you you call that a problem, so it is? Alright Vaaish, if you knew that people wanted to change the random gifts aspect of Admech, how would you do it? You have a decent idea with the roll random then apply thing, but it's still randomizing.
I agree with keeping it simple. Having gifts with appropriate prices that you can take 1 of seems awfully simple. You say you have seen people just optimizing time and time again, but what about all the other times in BFG that people spend points on different things because they are balanced and appropriately priced? People debate between Lunar/Lunar and Gothic/Dominator a bunch, but both are viable and appropriately priced options. Giving compelling options (what we have been trying to do in changing the gifts) and pricing them accordingly is something that every game does and it doesn't have to go down the route of power creep or optimizing.
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The problem that keeps being avoided is that the "gifts" are not equal. If they were then we wouldnt have several pages of ways to "fix" them.
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Alright Vaaish, if you knew that people wanted to change the random gifts aspect of Admech, how would you do it? You have a decent idea with the roll random then apply thing, but it's still randomizing.
I'll humor you, but why ask a question you already know the answer to?
There is a difference between feeling something is too random and feeling that something shouldn't be random at all. In my years of playing I think the most complaints haven't been that the gifts themselves are random but that there is too much randomness in their assignment. Usually it's because you don't get the gift you hoped for on one ship and then get it on a different ship with no recourse.
This is why I'd put in the gift pool. It gives the player the ability to assign the gifts as they see fit but retains the randomness that creates variety. This eliminates the need to create limits on each gift or fiddle with points to make things like AWR less attractive or come up with entirely new options.
I agree with keeping it simple. Having gifts with appropriate prices that you can take 1 of seems awfully simple.
Don't confuse the appearance of simplicity with a simple solution. You are simplifying the act of selection but it will do so by either making all options equally dull so as to make the gifts boring or by accepting that some gifts will be more popular at the expense of less exciting gifts. It's very easy to say we need to make the gifts have the appropriate price, but it's a very complex process to do just that; a look at nid fleets prior to FAQ2010 should be proof enough.
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Alright Vaaish, if you knew that people wanted to change the random gifts aspect of Admech, how would you do it? You have a decent idea with the roll random then apply thing, but it's still randomizing.
I'll humor you, but why ask a question you already know the answer to? I was asking if you had a way to make it work without the roll then apply thing you already mentioned. Your answer to this indicated that you will not abandon some level of random determination of gifts, so we will have to just agree to disagree on this who subject.
There is a difference between feeling something is too random and feeling that something shouldn't be random at all. In my years of playing I think the most complaints haven't been that the gifts themselves are random but that there is too much randomness in their assignment. Usually it's because you don't get the gift you hoped for on one ship and then get it on a different ship with no recourse.
This is why I'd put in the gift pool. It gives the player the ability to assign the gifts as they see fit but retains the randomness that creates variety. This eliminates the need to create limits on each gift or fiddle with points to make things like AWR less attractive or come up with entirely new options.
I agree with keeping it simple. Having gifts with appropriate prices that you can take 1 of seems awfully simple.
Don't confuse the appearance of simplicity with a simple solution. You were not talking about the simplicity of making the solution, you were talking about keeping the fleet list simple, so I responded to your point. You are simplifying the act of selection but it will do so by either making all options equally dull using the word dull here is very subjective so as to make the gifts boring or by accepting that some gifts will be more popular at the expense of less exciting gifts again, "less exciting" is very subjective. just because you see the same gifts in your game group doesn't mean that everyone does it that way. It's very easy to say we need to make the gifts have the appropriate price, but it's a very complex process to do just that; a look at nid fleets prior to FAQ2010 should be proof enough. the entirety of BFG:R is about juggling prices to try to bring the best balance to things while making sure we have fun an interesting options. I don't see how this is the slightest bit different than all the other BFG:R changes.
Andrew: They don't have to be equal, just properly priced.
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(compromise time) Alright how about this... Random rolling, then apply, like you said earlier. But, rolling a 6 for Ld means that the player can pick a gift to add to the pool (change) AFTER all the lds are rolled (change). So, then you can look at the pool you already have and choose one to match ones you already have and make a plan how you will approach applying the gifts. Will you compromise with me, peeps?
Also, the vote on secondary commanders and admirals would not really apply to Admech because, while they are imperial, they aren't really an "imperial fleet," imperial navy style. We will probably have to vote about secondary commanders for Admech if we want them.
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Dan, this sounds very close to what would already happen if the pool was added. Could you explain what's different?
For instance, would the gift chosen for rolling 6 replace one in the table or add a gift in addition to what's there?
ie. you have 5 eligible ships, one rolls a 6 you now have 6 gifts total in the pool.
If this is adding an additional gift does it mean that ships will still only be allowed one gift leaving you with extra in the pool or could you assign the extras (similar to how the magos ship gets two gifts)?
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Well, I was thinking rolling a 6 meant that ship got to pick its own.
I'm assuming this order:
1. Roll leaderships.
2. Roll for gifts minus ships that rolled a 6.
3. For each six rolled, pick a gift.
4. Assign gifts.
The add a gift option is a cool idea too:
1. Roll leaderships
2. Roll gifts
3. And six rolled during leadership, pick an additional gift
4. Assign gifts.
5. Discard remaining gifts.
I kind of like that second option. This gives some picking power plus the randomness and also forces the player to learn how to utilize all the gifts. I like it.
My only remaining concern: the balance concern of mine would be easily foxed of we made the existing options a little more scaled to a AWR , which seems undisputed the more powerful option. That way, because admech ships are basically built on IN ships with some changes, and we are going to have admech ships be more expensive compared to IN ships, it seems like the most balancing option, considering the points are mandatory, to make the other gifts more viable compared to AWR.
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The second version sounds pretty reasonable. So whos up for doing a few dozen test runs :P.
So with that in mind how about the pricing for these being rolled back into the ships cost and we give them all the option to pick their random gift for +5 points/ship? That would put our pricing back to the FAQ prices if im thinking right.
So pool for say 6 ships:
2 pay extra to choose
1 rolls a 6 for leadership
You would roll 4 random gifts (for the four that didnt opt to auto choose for extra points.
Add in the one choosen gift for rolling a 6 for leadership to its ship only
Assign from there.
Assign the 2 you paid for to their ships only
Assign any commanders benifit to his ship only
Discard any additional.
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Plasma boosted batteries should be amended to say that all Admech ships with 30cm weapons batteries may increase their range to 45cm for +10pts unless noted otherwise in the ships profile.
This takes the Tyrants new profile into account.
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Changes needing votes for Admech:
-Plasma boosted batteries should be amended to say that all Admech ships with 30cm weapons batteries may increase their range to 45cm for +10pts unless noted otherwise in the ships profile.
-Gift pool
1. Roll leaderships
2. Roll gifts
3. And six rolled during leadership, pick an additional gift
4. Assign gifts.
5. Discard remaining gifts.
"Mechanicus capital ships must roll a D6 to determine a Gift of the Omnissiah to add a distribution pool. Vessels that rolled a 6 for leadership may change the result of one roll for a Gift of the Omnissiah to a result of their choosing before it is applied to a ship. Once the pool is determined, each capital ship must be given one Gift from the distribution pool. These improvements are already included in the point cost assigned in the Adeptus Mechanicus Fleet List. Re-roll any refit that is not applicable to the vessel."
Ok, we should talk about the point values for each ship class again and the +5 points to pick option. Also, I think the gifts could be boosted but slightly (like Andrew did) to make them a little more appealing, even if the overall point cost of the Admech ships are higher because of it. Side not on Andrew's changes to gifts: I think Gyro Stabilized targeting matrix (GSTM) should just become the same thing as Tenacity from the Tyranids list (basically drop the +1ld to LO and just make batteries and lances unaffected on AAF, CtNH, and BR SOs.
Why don't we have secondary commanders have something to do with picking?
0-3 Commanders
Magos Juris (+1 Ld, Max 9). . . . . . 35 pts
Each Magos Juris may change the result of one roll for a Gift of the Omnissiah to a result of their choosing before it is applied to a ship.
Magos Juris may purchase a re-roll at the
following cost. This re-roll may only be used on their
vessel or a vessel within their own squadron.
One re-roll. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 pts
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My only remaining concern: the balance concern of mine would be easily foxed of we made the existing options a little more scaled to a AWR , which seems undisputed the more powerful option.
I think it's far less powerful than people would want to believe. It's just as conditional as the other gifts most of the time, but it has the potential to be powerful... if you roll lots of 6's.
Ok, we should talk about the point values for each ship class again and the +5 points to pick option. Also, I think the gifts could be boosted but slightly (like Andrew did) to make them a little more appealing, even if the overall point cost of the Admech ships are higher because of it.
I don't think paying points to pick an option is necessary. It kind of defeats what we were talking about and the cost isn't enough to make it a rare choice. The cost of a reroll to pick all the gifts in the fleet is a bit much. Leave the system as it is. I would also discourage boosting the point cost of AdMech ships higher than the base FAQ2010 prices. The fleet is already pricey and unforgiving because of the number of ships you usually end up fielding. Hulls almost always outweigh options in value. Elite ships are glass cannons most of the time especially when they are still just 2 shield 8 hit cruisers.
Why don't we have secondary commanders have something to do with picking?
What do we gain with secondary commanders? AdMech is an elite fleet I can't see ever justifying added expense for the minor bonus an adjunct commander would give. That's 40 points that could go towards and escort or another ship.
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Yet you argue that people seem to always pick AWR... So, if it's not that much better, you should instead be making the argument that your game group is just picking a gift because it looks shiny and not because it's better. But, it is better, and that's why everyone seems to want it the most, as Horizon also argues.
I don't think big changes to the gifts need to happen, just some. I don't think Andrew's changes are all that huge.
With this new method, I agree that we don't need a pay-to-pick option. I have been testing this out for an hour or so now and like how it works. I will have more to say on it a little later.
Secondary commanders would be like the secondary commanders that are options in the IN fleet now.
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I've been doing test runs for some time now with this fleet:
Battleship
4 cruisers
1 light cruiser
...with the rules written a few posts earlier by me. Basically, secondary commander allows you to alter a result to your choice, and a 6 allows you to alter a result to your choice.
Archmagos purchased (come with additional gift of choice to the battleship)
Secondary magos (alter a result)
For example:
roll leaderships, 1,2,3,3,5,6. (rolled for both commanders because of possible bridge smashed results).
Roll for gifts: 1,1,2,3,4,6. Secondary magos and ld roll of a 6 allows you to alter two of them, so (assuming many will want AWR), change the 2 and 3 to 6s. So in this case, and statistically average, you can achieve 4 AWRs (if you want).
It may be interesting to instead have the secondary magos allow you to increase or decrease a gift roll by 1.
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On the sixes rolled:
under current rules a rolled 6 lets the ship pick the upgrade it wants.
So, your idea doesn't change that. You just add that upgrade to the pool and add it back to the ship you rolled a 6 for and picked it for anyway (full circle logic) ;)
But, for convenience sake, why not more easy:
Roll Ld for AdMech vessels
For every 6 pick an upgrade
Roll a d6 on gift table for remaining upgrades.
All upgrades in a pool to pick from.
So no remaining/discarded options.
Not a lot of change, but a bit more streamlined (in my opinion that is).
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You don't have to use it for that ship. That's the point that makes it not circular. Say you roll the upgrade you are looking for for the ship who rolled a 6 for leadership. It would allow you to pick a result and apply it to another ship this way. I personally like this altered results version much more.
We could just go with the if you roll a 6, pick a gift and add it to the pool method. This would not replace the normally rolled result for that ship. Discard unused gifts.
"Roll a D6 for each capital ship. For every roll of a 6 when rolling for leadership and for every (secondary commander) chosen, alter the result of any of the gift results to any result of your choosing." That's really simple if you ask me.
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Yet you argue that people seem to always pick AWR... So, if it's not that much better, you should instead be making the argument that your game group is just picking a gift because it looks shiny and not because it's better. But, it is better, and that's why everyone seems to want it the most, as Horizon also argues.
hehe, yes, because people DO always go for AWR. It's because it sounds the best of all the gifts and it's the easiest to use. Perception can go a long way towards making something popular even if the results don't always back it up. I believe if you feel inclined to go back over the posts I've been saying that.
Secondary commanders would be like the secondary commanders that are options in the IN fleet now.
Yes, but IN is a cheaper fleet to start with, when you take an expensive fleet and add additional commanders it starts eating into the points you have available for hulls. I'm not seeing a good reason to take a secondary commander when it costs as much as a sword and I'll get rather more utility from that than the +1ld and a gift.
What purpose are these secondary commanders trying to fill and under what circumstances do you expect that people will use them?
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Yet you argue that people seem to always pick AWR... So, if it's not that much better, you should instead be making the argument that your game group is just picking a gift because it looks shiny and not because it's better. But, it is better, and that's why everyone seems to want it the most, as Horizon also argues.
hehe, yes, because people DO always go for AWR. It's because it sounds the best of all the gifts and it's the easiest to use. Perception can go a long way towards making something popular even if the results don't always back it up. I believe if you feel inclined to go back over the posts I've been saying that.
So you want to institute a rule to fix their "perception?"
Secondary commanders would be like the secondary commanders that are options in the IN fleet now.
Yes, but IN is a cheaper fleet to start with, when you take an expensive fleet and add additional commanders it starts eating into the points you have available for hulls. I'm not seeing a good reason to take a secondary commander when it costs as much as a sword and I'll get rather more utility from that than the +1ld and a gift.
What purpose are these secondary commanders trying to fill and under what circumstances do you expect that people will use them?
Again, if you don't want to take it, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be an option. It's exactly the same thing as the gifts argument, Vaaish, you don't like something so you would like to impose those things on others. Just because you don't like that people take an Admech fleet with all AWR doesn't mean it shouldn't be allowable. Just because you don't want to take secondary commanders for the +1ld and choice of gift doesn't mean it shouldn't be allowable.
Personally, I think the Ork fleet is dumb and don't like it. You don't see me pushing for that to get removed. Personally, I would take a secondary commander for the leadership reasons as well as the gift choice.
I am trying to budge here and go with a more random method. I think the roll then apply thing is going to work out. If people want to have a secondary commander for +1ld and choice on a gift for 35pts for it, why not? You think it's too expensive, I think it's just right. Would you like to reduce the cost? The Admech fleet has much more limited options than the IN fleet. Adding this an an option to mirror an option that IN already has is a good thing.
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So you want to institute a rule to fix their "perception?"
No, I'd be fine leaving the gifts as is. Changing the rules for the gifts is what amounts to instituting rules to fix perception. :)
Again, if you don't want to take it, that doesn't mean it shouldn't be an option....
I'm trying to get you to support your position when you add things to lists. Sub commanders in admech popped up seemingly out of the blue and the going theme seems to be we added it to one list why not all of them. You need to have a concept of how these commanders will provide benefit and be used within the structure of the fleet and I don't see that at the moment. I can't say more than "it's a bad idea" if I don't know your rationale for wanting them in the first place or what you are trying to accomplish by adding them. This is especially true when the rules you posted provide very little compelling reason to take them.
The Admech fleet has much more limited options than the IN fleet. Adding this an an option to mirror an option that IN already has is a good thing
Why is it a good thing? AdMech isn't IN. It doesn't play the same nor should it. It doesn't even have the same command structure as IN. What makes mirroring an option in the IN fleet a good thing in the AdMech fleet?
If you feel its priced just right, do you plan to use the commanders regularly? will you be taking all three? Just one? Rerolls? Would you feel you got your points worth if you sunk 105 points in these commanders and fought a mirror fleet that took 3 more swords instead? How about if you just took one with a reroll for 50 points against a fleet that put those points into boosting batteries and NC?
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I dont see the Admech having sub fleet commanders like that either, theyre not needed for the leadership or re-rolls since Admech gets good leadership already so theyre just there as a boost to get the gift you want, for a very steep price. Is there a fluff reason to have secondary commanders? Wouldnt a fleet of Admech be around to support the primary research vessel and wouldnt all ranking researchers be aboard said vessel so they could... you know research :P?
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Alright, well you guys figure it out. I believe I have put forward arguments for secondary commanders in the Admech fleet and my arguments against randomized gifts. If you guys want to discuss and figure out how you want it, we will vote. Just let me know when you are ready.
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I am against sub commanders as well for the admech.
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Why
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Because Andrew and vaaish said so and I agree.
;)
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Ok, no secondary commanders. Anyone else want to present how they think the gift pool should work? Again, no one seems to want to take a crack it it and give enough detail to get it done.
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so what we are currently at on the gifts is this:
Each capital ship in your fleet grants you 1d6 to roll on the gifts table. A capital ship that rolls a 6 for leadership selects a single gift from the gifts table instead of rolling for a gift. These gifts form a pool from which the player must assign one gift to every eligible capital ship in your fleet.
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Any you willing to budge at all and give just one option to choose one (1) gift for a cost, besides the one the Archmagos gets and IF you roll a 6? How much will Admech ships cost now compared to the IN ships now? I still highly favor Andrew's gift changes so rolling some of the current lesser gifts doesn't throw away some of the points you spent.
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Is there a fluff reason to have secondary commanders?
There's always someone running the ship. Do you think the Admech doesn't have people commanding their cruisers? I am fine with not having secondary commanders but I just needed to make this point. And yes, even if secondary commanders were a way to pay for your choice of gifts, I would be in support of that, so long as their is a proper point value to it.
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Well, it's already assumed that every vessel in BFG not carrying an Admiral or SC is captained- hell I'd even say that Chaos Lords/Warmasters don't technically captain their vessels personally, being more like owners (fluff-gods above bless me on this!), but the IN certainly has minor blokes you don't represent. We all know the historical function of Admiral is not that of Captain even on the same ship, so I'll safely assume that it is the case here.
An ADmech fleet is a rare occasion, it would seem they don't spontaneously assemble save under the express centralized goal of an ArchMagus. As such secondary commanders aren't really necessary. And with the fleet as pricey as it is, I don't see them being chosen by players anyways. (Assuming the usual 25 pt upgrade a lesser character usually clocks in at).
-Pay for 2nd commanders, 2-3 times or bring another ship.
Would rather have an endeavor or a few Gladii (Gladiuses? :P).
;D
-Duke
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I am swayed on Admech not needing secondary commanders game-wise, I was merely saying that bringing up fluff as an argument against Admech having them is a bad argument.
I will return back to a previous post again:
"Any you willing to budge at all and give just one option to choose one (1) gift for a cost, besides the one the Archmagos gets and IF you roll a 6? How much will Admech ships cost now compared to the IN ships now? I still highly favor Andrew's gift changes so rolling some of the current lesser gifts doesn't throw away some of the points you spent."
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No change in point costs. The pick it freely pool plus choice from magos plus the six possibility improves the utility of upgrades by a nice margin.
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Again, "Any you willing to budge at all and give just one option to choose one (1) gift for a cost, besides the one the Archmagos gets and IF you roll a 6?"
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Why? I see no reason to do so.
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Because a good chunk of people have spoken up for more choice in what gifts get to be applied to your ships, to put it simply.
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Good, but with the pool the 'conservatists' ;) offered an option to gain more choice in what a ship gets.
Since it is a democracy most votes count, that is the bfg:r approach.
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Well, should we take a vote on it? How would we word it? First, should we vote to adopt the gift pool method?
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Like this?
first vote- Choice or random
if choice, then vote for BFG-R as is, or Andrews version.
If random, then vote for original rules or the gift pool.
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I just put a poll up where you can vote for your two favorite options. Good ideas Bessemer, it may come to that soon.
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Ok ideas for tweaking gifts. I'm assuming the in the following you are looking at the standard admech gifts from FAQ2010 and applying the changes.
1. EER
2. Advanced engines: allow a ship equipped with AE to initiate turns one class better than it is. So a battleship would move 10cm before turning, cruisers could begin turning at any point in a move.
3. Advanced shield: hits against shields must be resolved using the highest armor value on the ship.
4. FDT: add +2 turrets to the ship rather than replace ones already on the ship. If your ship has 4 turrets you go to 6. No turrets over 6 so if you have 5 you still only get six turrets.
5. Gstm: allow the ship to reroll any to hit dice that roll one (does not apply if the ship is locked on)
6. AWR: no change.
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4-6 are great. I'll look into 1-3 later.
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If You ask me I always thought the Random Table was a fun a interesting idea, and I hate to see that be taken away, cause I can just see that only one or two gifts would get picked and the others never see the light of day. Fluff wise I always felt it fit cause of the whole Testing out new stuff plus what the ships Machine Spirit wants might not always agree with what YOU want.
So I say a new Random pool table that has equal gifts across the board cause it seems to me that the original idea was the lower end were weaker upgrades and the higher end were meant to be better. Then just account for these upgrades in the ships cost. In terms of assigning them I would say it should go as following
1) Any ship that rolled a 6 on their LD gets to choose which gift it gets with out rolling
2) Once all ships that rolled a 6 on LD have chosen their gift, the player then rolls a Number of d6's equal to the ships that are left and then assigns what ever gifts that are generated to the ship of their choice.
I think its the best of both worlds really, you got the random factor to keep in old school (and my option more fun) but you will have control over which ship gets what and thus give the ship the gift it would benefit the most from
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That's what I would like to see.
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Ok so, we have had a bunch of gift pool talk and gift changes talk on this and other threads. What else about Admech do you guys think needs to be looked at? Personally, I would like to re-evaluate the command structure in light of the IN, Chaos, and Tau, maybe just for point adjustments. Other than that, I am assuming the Admech Tyrant is getting the same treatment as the IN one. I think the prices for both archmagos is pretty extreme, same with the RRs.
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Points adjustment might be alright. Part of AdMech though is supposed to be the difficulty gaining rerolls. They already have better LD and combined with tabletop effects, they end up with pretty reliable orders. Part of their added cost is being able to outright select a gift. If the discussions on tweaks to gifts go anywhere, the ability to dictate a perfect gift synergy is a very powerful ability. Think about a ship with AWR and GSTM or one that focuses on defense with Advanced shields and FDT.
I would like to re-evaluate the command structure in light of the IN, Chaos, and Tau, maybe just for point adjustments.
What specifically did you have in mind? The two leaders we already have cover most of the situations unless you want to drop in the Fabricator General of Mars for a ld10 (do not do this it's an absurd example). Admech doesn't really have a lot wrong with it outside of being a tad pricey which I think has been addressed.
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The fact that their LD 9 arch maros is 50 point more than their ld8 archmagos for a leadership half their fleet gets is problematic. If their rerolls are supposed to be limited because of LD, they should look look ,pretty like the SM reroll setup. A fleet master comes with a RR and is LD 10 for 50pts. The admech magos at LD 8 comes with no rerolls but gets to choose an additional gift. But, there is a 50% chance their LD 8 is a downgrade. People were concerned with the IN admiral having a downgraded LD if they rolled a 6. This guy is downgraded on a 4+. Also, the LD 9 archmagos pays 50 points for LD 9 with not other benefits. That's steep, not to mention the rerolls are really expensive even compared to another high LD fleet like space marines.
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The fact that their LD 9 arch maros is 50 point more than their ld8 archmagos for a leadership half their fleet gets is problematic.
I don't know what changes have all happened to the IN, but this pricing structure follows the similar pricing structure for IN admirals in the BBB (minus the loss of the reroll for AdMech pricing is identical).
On further thought, I believe that AdMech doesn't have as much access to rerolls because they aren't a pure combat fleet like the IN. AdMech have penalties to boarding and no reroll while IN has no penalties and a reroll. I think this may represent the competency in tech for AdMech vs. the competency in combat for the IN. It seems to me that AdMech commanders trade the included reroll for the gift selection and bonus gift to the ship they are on.
The cost of rerolls is pretty standard for added ones. Even IN pays 25 points for the first extra reroll.
People were concerned with the IN admiral having a downgraded LD if they rolled a 6. This guy is downgraded on a 4+. Also, the LD 9 archmagos pays 50 points for LD 9 with not other benefits. That's steep, not to mention the rerolls are really expensive even compared to another high LD fleet like space marines.
Are people also concerned here? I'm also curious as to why this is so much of an issue. You can assign your commander anywhere you like and I don't see anything in the AdMech rules preventing you from doing this. Why not put him on a ship that rolled low LD?
I'd consider a drop to 75 points for the Veneratus but I think that the Explorator is alright and that the rerolls should remain extra.
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A 50pt jump from ld 8 to ld 9 when half the ships in the fleet will already have ld 9 is a very expensive upgrade.
I am saying is that the ld9 archmagos should be 75pts instead. Now, onto rerolls:
IN commander LD8 with 3 rerolls is 100pts
AM commander LD 8 with 1 reroll is 100pts
-admech also gets extra chosen gift and their fleet already has higher LD. that first RR is too expensive
BUT to move up to a 2nd reroll for the AM is 75PTS?! That's ridiculous. The increment shouldn't be more than 25pts more considering the Imperial Navy, Space Marines, Tau, Chaos have 25pt increments. Admech are between IN and SM on the ld scale which have the same increments, so why 75pts instead of 25?
Anyways, reduce the ld 9 archmagos to 75pts and put their rerolls on the same scale as the previously listed fleets. Most of the commanders (besides SMs) have a reroll built in. Arguing that the Admech need it less doesn't hold weight against the precedent of the SM fleet.
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Admech get a gift instead of a free re-roll as part of their cost.
Their two optional re-rolls should be dropped to 25pts each, making them so expensive isnt the way to limit them, theyre already pretty rare compared to most races.
Their leadership is a bit off tho, leadership 9/10 would be more appropriate.
Leadership 9 w/extra chosen gift. 50pts
Leadership 10 w/extra chosen gift and a re-roll. 75pts
This places them squarely between IN and SM in theory.
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Leadership 9 w/extra chosen gift. 50pts
Leadership 10 w/extra chosen gift and a re-roll. 75pts
This places them squarely between IN and SM in theory.
I'd be a little concerned with a LD10 being available at 75 points but I'd be willing to put this on into playtesting.
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Ld 8/9 is fine enough to me. With 9 you'll be on 10 a lot of times anyway.
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The only problem with a leadership 8 commander is that he would be in the bottom percentile for his fleet list.
We could also try and go a similar route to the SM MotF.
Make one commander give him leadership 9 (the top 50% of the leadership chart is 9 after all) and the chosen gift for 50pts. This would place it between the IN LD8 and 1RR for 50 and the SM LD10 and 1RR for 50.
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One question folks, is it really an issue that your commander might be outshown by his captains? History is rife with generals who don't perform that well.
I'm leaning towards no change to AdMech commanders stats and reducing the ld9 commander to 75 points
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One question folks, is it really an issue that your commander might be outshown by his captains? History is rife with generals who don't perform that well.
I'm leaning towards no change to AdMech commanders stats and reducing the ld9 commander to 75 points
There is a problem with that yes, were paying for an improvement and 8 is not an improvement.
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no, you are paying for a required fleet commander. It's never been guaranteed that would be an improvement; we assume it is an improvement because the FC usually gives us some added benefit like with a reroll or extra gift or better LD. In fact, the BBB makes it clear that sometimes the FC won't be an improvement to LD. That's how it's intended, had it been otherwise we would have been told that the highest LD is what's used. The effect is not an oversight.
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There is a problem with that yes, were paying for an improvement and 8 is not an improvement.
This, exactly.
no, you are paying for a required fleet commander. It's never been guaranteed that would be an improvement; we assume it is an improvement because the FC usually gives us some added benefit like with a reroll or extra gift or better LD. In fact, the BBB makes it clear that sometimes the FC won't be an improvement to LD. That's how it's intended, had it been otherwise we would have been told that the highest LD is what's used. The effect is not an oversight.
We are trying for game balanced here so the Admech commander should be similar to the other commanders. He's right in between the SM and IN commanders, so let's price it accordingly.
Proposal:
1 Commander, ld9, chosen gift 50pts. Rerolls 25pts each just like IN and SM.
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no, you are paying for a required fleet commander. It's never been guaranteed that would be an improvement; we assume it is an improvement because the FC usually gives us some added benefit like with a reroll or extra gift or better LD. In fact, the BBB makes it clear that sometimes the FC won't be an improvement to LD. That's how it's intended, had it been otherwise we would have been told that the highest LD is what's used. The effect is not an oversight.
Nope your paying for an improvement, even at the worst an In or Chaos etc only has a 16% chance that their leadership 8 commander is a downgrade and a 50% chance that it will be an upgrade with the difference breaking even, your Admech ld8 commander has a 50% chance of being a downgrade and only a 16% chance of being an improvement. Thats just plain bad.
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1 Commander, ld9, chosen gift 50pts. Rerolls 25pts each just like IN and SM.
I could go for this. It will require an update to the Ark's rules though.
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(0-1) Omnissiah’s Victory . . . . . . . . . . . . . TBD Points -Needs work on special rules.
Emperor Battleship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390 Points
Retribution Battleship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 Points
Oberon Battleship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 Points
Dictator Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Points
Tyrant Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Points
Lunar Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Points
Gothic Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Points
Endeavor Light Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Points
Endurance Light Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Points
Defiant Light Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Points
Nova Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Points
Firestorm Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Points
Gladius Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Points
Sword Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Points
Falchion Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Points
Hunter Destroyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Points
Cobra Destroyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Points
So based off our earlier discussions on ship price and assuming a nominal 10pt premium for the random gift I have adjusted the ship costs to reflect the BFG-R ship profile updates. With exception to the Ark do these sound reasonable to start testing?
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Actually, the new upgrades are pretty hefty. I would like to talk about the integrated prices a little more.
I'm thinking:
Light +10
Cruiser +25-30 (considering the hefty new gift direction and lance)
Battleship +20 (gifts improve them more)
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1 Commander, ld9 + chosen gift 50pts. Rerolls 25pts each up to 2.
Shall I put this up for a vote?
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(0-1) Omnissiah’s Victory . . . . . . . . . . . . . TBD Points -Needs work on special rules.
Emperor Battleship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390 Points 25
Retribution Battleship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 Points 25
Oberon Battleship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 Points 25
Dictator Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Points 35
Tyrant Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Points 35
Lunar Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Points 35
Gothic Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Points 35
Endeavor Light Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Points 20
Endurance Light Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Points 20
Defiant Light Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Points 20
Nova Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Points
Firestorm Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Points
Gladius Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Points
Sword Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Points
Falchion Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Points
Hunter Destroyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Points
Cobra Destroyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Points
So based off our earlier discussions on ship price and assuming a nominal 10pt premium for the random gift I have adjusted the ship costs to reflect the BFG-R ship profile updates. With exception to the Ark do these sound reasonable to start testing?
Actually, the new upgrades are pretty hefty. I would like to talk about the integrated prices a little more.
I'm thinking:
Light +10
Cruiser +25-30 (considering the hefty new gift direction and lance)
Battleship +20 (gifts improve them more)
As you can see the battleship have been bumped 25pts, cruisers 35pts, and light cruisers 20pts nice bright yellow to make us squint!
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Splendid. Should we vote on the updated point values?
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I could tag along on them.
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Can we hold the added point cost until the gifts change? The gifts are still in flux and I think we get ahead of ourselves to fix the prices of the ships until we have something solid to base it on.
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In see your point on that Vaaish, but I think we have a baseline in AWR that we are aiming for matching. I suppose we should hold off just to make sure we don't end up with something more drastic.
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Considering the changes and the point changes posted by andrew a few posts back, what should we change about the Omnissiah's victory?
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Proposed new Commanders:
Archmagos, ld9, chosen gift 50pts. 0-2 Rerolls @ 25pts each
Proposed Gifts of The Omnissiah Distribution Pool:
Each capital ship in your fleet grants you 1d6 to roll on the gifts table. A capital ship that rolls a 6 for leadership selects a single gift from the gifts table instead of rolling for a gift. These gifts form a pool from which the player must assign one gift to every eligible capital ship in your fleet.
Proposed Gifts of The Omnissiah:
Emergency Energy Reserves:A ship with EER becomes crippled when it loses more than 50% of its starting hit points. When crippled, the ship reduces its turrets, shielding, and weapons strength to 75% instead of 50%. The vessel still counts as crippled in every other respect.
Advanced Engines: The ship gains +5cm speed, reduces the minimum distance to turn by 5cm, and add +1D6 when on All Ahead Full special orders.
Advanced Shielding: Weapons using the gunnery table suffer a right column shift when firing on a vessel equipped with Advanced Shielding. Lance weaponry firing on this vessel must roll a 5+ to score a hit.
Fleet Defense Turrets: A vessel with Fleet Defense Turrets adds 2 to their turret value. This vessel and one additional vessel within 15cm chosen by the player each turn may reroll dice for any turrets that miss until the end of the turn.
Gyro-stabilized Targeting Matrix: Ship weapons are reduced to 75% instead of 50% when on All Ahead Full, Come To New Heading or Burn Retros special orders. Nova Cannons still may not fire. The ship may reroll 1s while firing its weaponry if it is not on lock-on special orders.
Augmented Weapon Relays: Weapon batteries shift left on the gunnery table. Lance hits count as double
on rolls of a 6.
Proposed Point Costs:
(0-1) Omnissiah’s Victory . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 Points (Proposed)
Emperor Battleship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390 Points
Retribution Battleship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 Points
Oberon Battleship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 Points
Dictator Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Points
Tyrant Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Points
Lunar Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Points
Gothic Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Points
Endeavor Light Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Points
Endurance Light Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145 Points
Defiant Light Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Points
Nova Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Points
Firestorm Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Points
Gladius Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Points
Sword Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Points
Falchion Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Points
Hunter Destroyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Points
Cobra Destroyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Points
Proposed Omnissiah's Victory notes:
"The Omnissiah's Victory cannot use “Come To New Heading” special orders. The profile for The Omnissiah’s Victory already reflects the rules for Adeptus Mechanicus vessels. It is equipped with
Advanced Shields and Augmented Weapon Relays as part of its point cost, and can take no other refits from the Mechanicus Gifts table. You may include the Omnissiah’s Victory in
place of one battleship in the Adeptus Mechanicus fleet if it totals 1000 points or greater. If used, it must be the flagship and embark an Archmagos. The Omnissiah’s Victory cannot take any other refits except those described in the notes for this vessel, though it can earn others normally in a campaign. Only one Omnissiah’s
Victory may ever be used in a fleet that includes Adeptus Mechanicus vessels."
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what's up with the endeavour class prices... 145pts? I'd never touch that outside of a strike cruiser. Why the 20 point boost over the base costs?
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+1 turret, +1 die for repairs, + leadership, +gift. Sounds about right to me, +/- 5 pts.
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It's too high for a cl.... The base ad mech list has it far cheaper and practically all of the other ships in the list have stayed the same price or been reduced. I'd never touch a cl like that at 145 too expensive and too easily taken out.
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Vaaish? Suggestion?
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Put them back to the FAQ2010 prices of 125 for the endeavour and endurance for starters since all of the other ships are basically back at the default prices.
If that proves too low bump it by 5 points to 130.
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So, +1 from what the IN version is now?
+1 turret, +1 die for repairs, + leadership, +gift. Sounds about right to me, +/- 5 pts.
As far as this goes, the turret will get as much use on the CLs as regular cruisers. +5. Die repairs? Slightly useful. +1 leadership? Useful. Gift? Useful but many are less so compared to their uses on larger vessels. There is a threshold where point values per durability of ship makes the upgrades less expensive. Their usefulness may still be there, but the fact that it is easier to stop that upgrade from functioning (because of how fragile the CLs are), they should be considered less point-wise than on the regular cruisers.
For me, I would consider +15. It's hard to consider +10 because of how much they get from being admech instead IN.
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Lower than +15pts makes playing IN seem pointless. You are getting a lot of bang for your buck, and some of the CL can match a cruiser on a broadside, if only by concentrating all their weapons.
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Well the faq2010 prices puts the endeavor about 15 points over the in cost of 110 so unless BFGR put them up higher than that (not sure why it would) 125 points would be about right.
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The BFG:R endeavour is currently at 125pts. Are you suggesting that it should be equally costed to the IN version? At +15pts, we have a 140pts endeavour. That 15pts just bought:
-A lance
-A repair die
- +1 Leadership
-Gift, which are all worth 15pts or more INDIVIDUALLY. FDT gives +2 turret, and ship regularly pay 5-10pts for that upgrade.
So far, since we have not dropped randomized upgrades, we basically just went full circle and AdMech will be still composed of small quanities of high firepower low durability ships. All we have really changed is made them slightly more resilient (with some gifts) and even more dangerous on the offense (due to other gifts). As it stands the upgrades already make them very aggressively priced, and reducing it even more sounds insane. We want to make AdMech as competitive as possible, and although we have chosen the casual option we should still endeavour (hehe ;D) to make it as viable as the other fleets.
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Why on earth is the BFGR endeavor 125 points? I can't see any reason for it to cost more than the armada points. Anyway, I think 125 is a good point value for the admech endeavor. It still goes down like any other cl and doesn't have any of the benefits of a strike cruiser for the same points if you put the admech ones at 145 points.
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The BFG:R version has built in 90 degree turn with a 6+ prow, which made it significantly more resilient. You should track down the thread and give it a look ;)
Since that's all said and done, the AdMech version has to cost more than the IN version. Also, at 140pts, the AdMech endeavour is not so much worse than the strike cruiser than you seem to imply. The strike cruiser has better armor and ordnance, but less firepower.
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It seems like this Endeavor discussion is something we should have before we go into voting to accept the change list for Admech. Any other things people can think of that need to be talked about before the huge list of changes on page 10 are voted on?
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The BFG:R version has built in 90 degree turn with a 6+ prow, which made it significantly more resilient. You should track down the thread and give it a look
So giving the endeavor a 6+ prow puts it on parity with a SC that is 6+ all around with the same turns? The SC also gets thunderhawks and BC. The BC alone practically put it on parity with the endeavor and the AC far out do the torps on the endeavor. How about the additional 5cm speed the SC has? Remember, the SC was long considered underpowered for its cost under the Armada rules.
I don't think even the admech bonuses can make it worth 145
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@ Vaaish Really confused as to where you keep pulling 145pts from. 125 + 15 has always equaled 140, at least here in canada... ;D
AWR FP 8 Battery + Lance is more dangerous than 3 bombardment cannon and a pitiful 3 bombardment and 4 battery, particularly at 16-30cm. The SC is 6+ all around but the endeavour has superior turrets. The speed increase is notable thing, but that's part of why the SC is more expensive now isn't it? 8)
You just can't have a massively upgraded endeavour be priced the same as an un-upgraded one. That's ridiculous, since it's clearly a lot better than the basic pattern.
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Compendium AdMech Endeavour = 125pts
FAQ 2010 Endeavour = 110 points, that is with 90*. A 6+ prow can be taken but turn is decreased.
So, here we pay +15pts AdMech.
Now, BFG:R gave Endeavour the prow 6+ AND 90* at the same time for 125pts.
So, ya, 125+15 = 140pts.
Then again, didn't we agree the AdMech bonus was more like 10 points for light cruisers?
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Yup, admech bonus was 10 for light cruisers but that doesnt count the gift and 10 points is seriously under costing them. 125+20=145 here ;) idk where 15 came from.
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145 came from the lists posted multiple times a page back. I don't know how that number was arrived at.
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So..... Andrew says that is 145pts....
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Hey now I dont make the rules, i just think them up and write them down.
125- base
10- admech special rules
10- gift.
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To be honest, 125 pts is way overpriced for the basic Endeavour. It has ~1/2 the firepower and ~2/3 survivability of a Lunar, which should put it more in the 105 pt range. Add on another 5~10 pts for the 90° turns. So call it 115 pts base and then throw on your 20 pts for the upgrades and you'll come up with a much more reasonable number.
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I'm on board with that entirely. 115 and 135 for admech.
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135 still feels a touch high for the mileage. I'd be willing to look at 125-130. Depends on how the changes to the gifts table affects them on the table if 130 is alright..
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The problem with the light cruisers is that a handful of people insist that they can not use them with out 6+ prows and 90* turns. Thats what drove the price to 125. Realistically I dont see any of the three worth more than 100-110pts and having the option to turn 90* or have 6+ armor.
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We are still stuck on light cruisers. Any more thoughts on them?
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Leave them at 125 and test to see if they warrant a point increase.
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125 base? Inclusive I'd toss'em at 130pts.
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I the base price drops back to 110 i can see the Admech@130.
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Proposed new Commanders:
Archmagos, ld9, chosen gift 50pts. 0-2 Rerolls @ 25pts each
Proposed Gifts of The Omnissiah Distribution Pool:
Each capital ship in your fleet grants you 1d6 to roll on the gifts table. A capital ship that rolls a 6 for leadership selects a single gift from the gifts table instead of rolling for a gift. These gifts form a pool from which the player must assign one gift to every eligible capital ship in your fleet.
Proposed Gifts of The Omnissiah:
Emergency Energy Reserves:A ship with EER becomes crippled when it loses more than 50% of its starting hit points. When crippled, the ship reduces its turrets, shielding, and weapons strength to 75% instead of 50%. The vessel still counts as crippled in every other respect.
Advanced Engines: The ship gains +5cm speed, reduces the minimum distance to turn by 5cm, and add +1D6 when on All Ahead Full special orders.
Advanced Shielding: Weapons using the gunnery table suffer a right column shift when firing on a vessel equipped with Advanced Shielding. Lance weaponry firing on this vessel must roll a 5+ to score a hit.
Fleet Defense Turrets: A vessel with Fleet Defense Turrets adds 2 to their turret value. This vessel and one additional vessel within 15cm chosen by the player each turn may reroll dice for any turrets that miss until the end of the turn.
Gyro-stabilized Targeting Matrix: Ship weapons are reduced to 75% instead of 50% when on All Ahead Full, Come To New Heading or Burn Retros special orders. Nova Cannons still may not fire. The ship may reroll 1s while firing its weaponry if it is not on lock-on special orders.
Augmented Weapon Relays: Weapon batteries shift left on the gunnery table. Lance hits count as double
on rolls of a 6.
Proposed Point Costs:
(0-1) Omnissiah’s Victory . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 Points (Proposed)
Emperor Battleship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390 Points
Retribution Battleship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 Points
Oberon Battleship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 Points
Dictator Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Points
Tyrant Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Points
Lunar Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Points
Gothic Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Points
Endeavor Light Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (TBD)
Endurance Light Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (TBD)
Defiant Light Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (TBD)
Nova Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Points
Firestorm Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Points
Gladius Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Points
Sword Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Points
Falchion Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Points
Hunter Destroyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Points
Cobra Destroyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Points
Proposed Omnissiah's Victory notes:
"The Omnissiah's Victory cannot use “Come To New Heading†special orders. The profile for The Omnissiah’s Victory already reflects the rules for Adeptus Mechanicus vessels. It is equipped with
Advanced Shields and Augmented Weapon Relays as part of its point cost, and can take no other refits from the Mechanicus Gifts table. You may include the Omnissiah’s Victory in
place of one battleship in the Adeptus Mechanicus fleet if it totals 1000 points or greater. If used, it must be the flagship and embark an Archmagos. The Omnissiah’s Victory cannot take any other refits except those described in the notes for this vessel, though it can earn others normally in a campaign. Only one Omnissiah’s
Victory may ever be used in a fleet that includes Adeptus Mechanicus vessels."
Are we ready to vote on this? It has been really quiet on the Admech front except the light cruisers. Can we vote on this while we discuss the light cruisers? Notice, it's indicated as TBD in the above quote.
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Ithink perhaps it might make more sense in retrospect to allow players to select one ship each ordnance phase rather than player turn that the effect of the FDT applies to until the end of that ordnance phase.
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Let's get what we have voted for, then add whatever we put in for the light cruisers later. Things have been static too long, lets get thing going again.
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Ithink perhaps it might make more sense in retrospect to allow players to select one ship each ordnance phase rather than player turn that the effect of the FDT applies to until the end of that ordnance phase.
Isn't picking which ship benefits each player turn kind of the same thing? I was thinking of player turns because there will be times in the movement phase where your ship will fly over enemy ordnance and ships be allowed to is FDT. I think it should just be "once a turn" because ordnance protection can also be needed in the movement phase. This keeps it vague so the player can choose.
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There is a difference. Picking each player turn can reference each full turn or each time a new player takes control. It also makes it easier to minimize the benefits of the FDT by ignoring the ship that was nominated and opens the odd situation where the ship nominated could be outside of 15cm after movement. Making it each ordnance phase ensures that the ships selected are in range and there is no confusion. It also gives the player more utility since they can more intelligently nominate which ship gains the benefit.
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When you play against Admech, just put your ordnance right in front of the enemy vessel that will most likely fly through them. Then they don't get FDT. We should just make it clear what a player turn is. I was thinking you nominate it when it happens just like how you choose to fire your turrets on ordnance when you know you are going to have to choose which type of ordnance to shoot at between the two that are going to hit you.
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It needs to be up front. If you let the player nominate things at any point you run into situations where one side or the other feels like they got blind sided which leaves a bad taste.
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OK, so at the beginning of each player's turn?
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I have issue with advanced shielding - firepower part seems ok, but lances hitting on 5+... it seems extremely strong. Also, statistically, it makes Dark Eldar lances on lock on better than normal 4+. While strong upgrade might be tolerable, one that makes ship worse against some weapons really shouldn't be here.
Something like 6+ saving throw against the lances might be a better option... Or even range dependant 5+/6+, Eldar style.
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Although it sound like a lot, it's only a 16% decrease in the number of hits you score on a 5+ to hit.
IIRC 4+ to hit and 6+ to save would also give you about a 16% decrease in the number of hits scored. 5+ just reduces the number of dice needed.
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It needs to be up front. If you let the player nominate things at any point you run into situations where one side or the other feels like they got blind sided which leaves a bad taste.
I disagree with this. Your comment may be true if you opponents are douche bags. A polite player would remind the opponent that they have FDT still to use this turn. Having them designate it at the beginning of the turn is kind of crappy because the ship can then just be avoided and another ship targeted. Essentially, the enemy can deny the FDT from ever getting to be used except for it being able to deter the enemy from attacking a chosen ship for that turn. Also, this doesn't make sense storyline wise. Why would a ship have to designate another ship ahead of time when they don't even know where the enemy ordnance is going to hit? If they see the bombers attacking the ship next to them, they fire their FDTs on them. It should be a reaction to the enemy actions.
If the Admech player has to choose in advance at the beginning of each player's turn or at the beginning of each ordnance phase, this problem occurs and the FDT guarded ship can just be avoided. It can just look like this:
1. Enemy is told up front that there is a ship with FDT. They should know this up front either way because they should be there when the Admech player rolls and applies their gifts.
2. Enemy attacks a ship within FDT range.
3. Player announces that he is going to use his FDT turret reroll on that ship if he doesn't like the result.
It would work a lot like leadership rerolls. You fail, hmm, use a reroll. You don't like the result of your turret outcome? use your FDT reroll for the turn. This reactionary method is the most realistic and the most useful.
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Blah, FDT would be a lot simpler if it would just work for each ship in range.
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Blah, FDT would be a lot simpler if it would just work for each ship in range.
Balls. You're right. It could be said like this: "Any vessel that is within 15cm of a friendly vessel with Fleet Defense Turrets when it gets to use its turrets against enemy ordnance , it may re-roll missed turret results once."
Solved. Please reword my statement into a better one.
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That works.
I disagree with this. Your comment may be true if you opponents are douche bags
Always write rules with douche bags in mind. Normal people will still be fine and you don't have to worry about idiots :)
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Why write rules for douchebags. That sounds like a waste of time. If some douche complains that you are going to use a FDT at his assault boats hitting your battleship, that's his problem for not accepting the rule. Vaaish, I am starting to think you and I live in two different universes. :o That's cool though. I like your style. 8)
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Proposed new Commanders:
Archmagos, ld9, chosen gift 50pts. 0-2 Rerolls @ 25pts each
Proposed Gifts of The Omnissiah Distribution Pool:
Each capital ship in your fleet grants you 1d6 to roll on the gifts table. A capital ship that rolls a 6 for leadership selects a single gift from the gifts table instead of rolling for a gift. These gifts form a pool from which the player must assign one gift to every eligible capital ship in your fleet.
Proposed Gifts of The Omnissiah:
Emergency Energy Reserves:A ship with EER becomes crippled when it loses more than 50% of its starting hit points. When crippled, the ship reduces its turrets, shielding, and weapons strength to 75% instead of 50%. The vessel still counts as crippled in every other respect.
Advanced Engines: The ship gains +5cm speed, reduces the minimum distance to turn by 5cm, and add +1D6 when on All Ahead Full special orders.
Advanced Shielding: Weapons using the gunnery table suffer a right column shift when firing on a vessel equipped with Advanced Shielding. Lance weaponry firing on this vessel must roll a 5+ to score a hit.
Fleet Defense Turrets: A vessel with Fleet Defense Turrets adds 2 to their turret value. Any vessel that is within 15cm of a friendly vessel with Fleet Defense Turrets when it gets to use its turrets against enemy ordnance, including the vessel with FDT itself, may re-roll missed turret results once.
Gyro-stabilized Targeting Matrix: Ship weapons are reduced to 75% instead of 50% when on All Ahead Full, Come To New Heading or Burn Retros special orders. Nova Cannons still may not fire. The ship may reroll 1s while firing its weaponry if it is not on lock-on special orders.
Augmented Weapon Relays: Weapon batteries shift left on the gunnery table. Lance hits count as double
on rolls of a 6.
Proposed Point Costs:
(0-1) Omnissiah’s Victory . . . . . . . . . . . . . 405 Points (Proposed)
Emperor Battleship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 390 Points
Retribution Battleship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 Points
Oberon Battleship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 380 Points
Dictator Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 245 Points
Tyrant Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Points
Lunar Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Points
Gothic Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215 Points
Endeavor Light Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (TBD)
Endurance Light Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (TBD)
Defiant Light Cruiser . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . (TBD)
Nova Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45 Points
Firestorm Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40 Points
Gladius Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40 Points
Sword Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Points
Falchion Frigate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Points
Hunter Destroyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35 Points
Cobra Destroyer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 Points
Proposed Omnissiah's Victory notes:
"The Omnissiah's Victory cannot use “Come To New Heading†special orders. The profile for The Omnissiah’s Victory already reflects the rules for Adeptus Mechanicus vessels. It is equipped with
Advanced Shields and Augmented Weapon Relays as part of its point cost, and can take no other refits from the Mechanicus Gifts table. You may include the Omnissiah’s Victory in
place of one battleship in the Adeptus Mechanicus fleet if it totals 1000 points or greater. If used, it must be the flagship and embark an Archmagos. The Omnissiah’s Victory cannot take any other refits except those described in the notes for this vessel, though it can earn others normally in a campaign. Only one Omnissiah’s
Victory may ever be used in a fleet that includes Adeptus Mechanicus vessels."
Ready to vote?
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Well maybe at least change wording of advanced shielding to lance weapons suffering -1 to hit penalty, just to resolve DE lance issue.
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Khar, could you explain the Dark Eldar lance thing again?
Phantom .83 hits per shot. Against Advanced Shielding, .66 hits per shot.
Regular .50 hits per shot. Against Advanced Shielding, .33 hits per shot.
This seems fine to me.
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While normally it's not much of a problem, when DE lance is locked-on, AS increases chance for double hit from 0,49 to 0,55, due to 4's in the initial roll also being rerolled. While chance do inflict any damage drops (from 1,24 to 1,1), chance to inflict double damage increases, making recieving locked on phantom lance shot more risky affair.
Changing it to -1 to hit would make them do double damage only on 6 and stil retain option for inflicting single point of damage.
It's not that much of a differance, so if no one else thinks alike, I can live with that. Just bothers me a bit.
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It is sort of weird that the change for double damage increases, but the actual damage output is still lowered so it shouldn't be a big deal overall in game. The other problem with this was pointed out earlier: the Necron Particle Whip rolling 6's to ignore shields would just be entirely disregarded by a -1 instead of just hitting on 5+ instead. That's pretty crappy.
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Ah, true, I disregarded necrons here... I still say that 6+ save against lance fire is superior option then ;) hitting on 5+ makes all 'critical' effects more likely on lock on - necron whip, phantom lance, Admech with weapon upgrade and so on. Every lance weapon with different effects on various rolls. While hitting on 5+ changes these weapons' internal dynamic, 6+ save, while having similar effectiveness leaves original internal balance of the weapon in peace. True, it's one more roll, but at least every result is still possible. (5+ eliminates DE inflicting single hit, -1 to ht eliminates weapons with extra effect on 6.)
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Alright, I am going to put up two different votes. One vote will be for the bulk of the Admech stuff, and the other will be for FDT.
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Pending the results of the Light Cruiser votes, I believe we are ready to close the Admech list. Should I put the vote up for finalize?
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Looks like everything is resolved or at least will be soon.
So, what fleet is next?
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Just wondering If this list has been play tested very much to verify that the cost change theory crafting is sound?
Curious about some of the point differences between the IN ships and the AM ships.
Tyrant: AM is 40 point more than the IN version. While the others are 35. In reading though the discussion over the point increases even 35 seems like a lot. The gifts while good are random which makes it not nearly as good.
The Battleships are roughly 25 points more but the gifts have a much larger effect. In my opinion the cruisers should all drop 10 points and the tyrant 15.
Also the PDF lists the Lunar in on the last page as 215 (as intended) but the details ship description lists it as "200fpts".
I'm fairly new to the list but I was hoping there would be something more to set it apart from the IN list. Something involving list composition change from requiring 3 cruisers per 1 battleship to 2. Or some advantage to taking Nova Cannons. I guess the specialized torps are nice (though expensive! considering how double edged they can be)
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Just wondering If this list has been play tested very much to verify that the cost change theory crafting is sound?
Curious about some of the point differences between the IN ships and the AM ships.
Tyrant: AM is 40 point more than the IN version. While the others are 35. In reading though the discussion over the point increases even 35 seems like a lot. The gifts while good are random which makes it not nearly as good.
The Battleships are roughly 25 points more but the gifts have a much larger effect. In my opinion the cruisers should all drop 10 points and the tyrant 15.
Also the PDF lists the Lunar in on the last page as 215 (as intended) but the details ship description lists it as "200fpts".
I'm fairly new to the list but I was hoping there would be something more to set it apart from the IN list. Something involving list composition change from requiring 3 cruisers per 1 battleship to 2. Or some advantage to taking Nova Cannons. I guess the specialized torps are nice (though expensive! considering how double edged they can be)
Go with 215 on the lunar. Alot of the BFG:R documents have typos/format errors.
The thing is that AD Mech was never that different than IN, so the BFG:R version won't be either.
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Might it be worth while revisiting removing the randomness on the gifts. Some on certain ships are.essentially useless.and other very powerful. It's really hard to plan out a good list with so much of its strength left to chance.