Have there been any additions to the official tournament ship list since around 2001? (Yeah, I've been out of the game for a looong time). Specifically, have any Omega ships been added as sanctioned tourney ships? I'm a Gorn at heart (with a secondary love of the Lyrans), but the Omega races are where my interest really lies right now, and I know a lot of people only ever play tourney games.
Nothing Particularly New
Since 2001, uh, the WAX can only have 1 Gatling and needs to have 2 local (P1, drone, disr) mounts, although I think it needed 2 local mounts in 2001, so maybe just the Gat thing is new relative to that. The Archeo Tholian lost a few shield boxes (it is now 30-30-27-27-27-30 instead of 30 all around) and possibly a battery (it has 4 currently; I don't rmember if it had 4 in the T-2000 book).
There are a bunch of Omega playtest ships on SFBOL (a TC for most of the major, not overly wazoo empires), but a lot of them are very untested. Off the top of my head:
-Maesron: Reasonably balanced but underwhelming.
-Klogahr: A lot of trouble due to the M phasers. The current version is really weird, with 5xAC and only 4xMP1/4xMP3, but workable.
-Trobrin: Reasonably balanced and pretty strong.
-Vari: Reasonably balanced, but on the weak side of things.
-Probr: Reasonably balanced.
-Chlorophon: Ok, but unconvincing. Has a lot of serious Rock/Paper/Scissor balance issues (anyone who can run it down and corner it can kill it pretty easily).
-Drex: One of the most difficult to balance, due to the super computer rules, and no one can agree on what to do with them--with the -1 to hit from the supercomputer, it is virtually impossible to balance the ship; no one wants to have one without the -1 to hit.
-Alunda: On the strong side of balanced (I won the recent Omega online playtest tournament with the Alunda). Probably needs some tweaking down, but is in the realm of ok.
-Hivers: A BC with a few Barbs exists, but I don't know if anyone has played it much, if at all.
-Sigvirion: Kind of a lost cause for tournament play, as they are such a one trick pony; either they can keep the range open and do ok, or they get anchored and killed. The closed map doesn't do this dynamic any favors.
-Loriyill: A TC exists, but I don't know that it has been played much. Seems reasonable.
Of the expansion empires, the real wazoo ships (Ryn, Souldra, Branthodon) haven't been developed yet, and there are probably draft TCs of the more mundane empires (FRA, Singers, Bolosco, etc.) but I don't know that anyone has played any of them much either.
The Omega TCs suffer from, among other things, being difficult to balance against the regular Alpha ships--as they are originally designed for a universe (and rules set) that doesn't include drones, they tend to be difficult to make work against the drone heavy Alpha ships; Tachyon Missiles are completely useless against, like, a Klingon or a Kzinti; a lot of the Omega phasers are really bad ad drone defense. The Alunda, for example, is very strong against the other Omega ships, but fairly weak against drone ships.
There is a lot of discussion about all of this stuff over at the official BBS (www.starfleetgames.com/discus) that is worth digging through if you are into this stuff.
And ...
And there's an area effect weapon in the mix! Strictly banned! Unless you happen to be flying a rock designed by SVC.
Yep, the RPS effect is pretty bad.
Ken's Magellenic bunch are remarkably well balanced against each other, but woe to any PPD armed foe!
The Omegas ... have great flavour, slightly less well balanced against each, but seriously suffer on the tourney RPS thing.
And Souldra ... yick, just yick.
Jindo
Jindarians don't have the only area effect weapon in the game. Vudar have one as well.
Magellanics vs PPD
The ISC won five out of five of its matches against the LMC ships it faced at Co5N in 2009. It killed two Baduvai, one Maghadim and two Eneen. In three of those games, the person flying the ISC had to have the Magellanic rules explained to them prior to EA on turn 1. I did the explaining, and also gave the tactics below:
Hold PPD. Hold standard, non-enveloped G torps. Pay housekeeping. You now have 30 points of power to play with, which is more than ANY Magellanic ship will have with weapons hot.
Use 40 point plasma launch (F-torp and G-torp stack) to either hit the LMC ship (unlikely) or force it to turn off (more likely). Accept that you're going to get a seriously dented shield for this opportunity.
If LMC ship turns away, and you're at range 8 or less, fire phaser-1s. Remove rear shield.
Fire PPD into hole made. It may or may not be worth overloading PPD off of battery power for an extra pulse. Yes, the splash elements will bounce. The main elements will remove the inner shield on the rear.
If you get the chance to board - and with no general reinforcement, you probably will - do hit and run raids on the BANK boxes and batteries as your primary targets, followed by any power generating system.
The only time it's "Woe to the PPD user" in a tournament game is when they use the range 15 "scrape and lob" or try to use the classic EPT ballet.
EPT vs LMC
What kind of moron would try an EPT ballet against something that ignores small amounts of damage? You need to crunch through that outer shield THEN switch to EPTs to exploit the weakness (which is presumably turned out of arc now).
I'm also not sure I like the idea of a judge giving tactical advice before a match. Explain the rules differences, sure, but then let the player make up his own mind how to deal with it.
Saaur wrote:
>>I'm also not sure I like the idea of a judge giving tactical advice before a match. >>
These were playtest games. Magelanic TCs aren't tournament legal. Like Omega TCs, which also aren't tournament legal.
Yeah, but still
The point of playtesting is for lots of different people to try it out and come up with different ways of doing things to see if the design is broken.
By giving advice before the match, you're tainting the sample. You're influencing the outcome so as to conform to ONE person's idea of how the battle should (or might) go. It doesn't defeat the purpose of the playtest, but certainly dilutes it.
> If LMC ship turns away, and
> If LMC ship turns away, and you're at range 8 or less, fire phaser-1s. Remove rear shield.
And, if you're a half intelligent LMC, you realize the long range attrition battle is going to be exceedingly one-sided in your favour. Take the R10 shot, leave at high speed. Sorta like a saber-dance, but without you suffering return shield damage.
I also wonder about fleet level. Andros, which were moderately balanced in duels (excluding BP) died horribly in fleet action. I suspect a bunch of LMC are going to laugh at a fleet with the maximum number of PPDs. Each and every one hitting separately. Each and every one utterly useless until a shield goes down. Say, how do those P1s and Plasma do at at ranges greater than 8 while the LMCs are using all their heavies to smack one of your ships each turn? (or every other turn, if you want to fire massive MD salvos in the 11-15 bracket, avoiding the R10 bolting issue)
But definitely agree with Saaur's comments re: playtesting. I have no idea what Graw and his group are like tactically, but the first time I sat down at a playtest event with the Omega stuff (prior to their publication), it was farcical, some were so unbalanced. I vaguely remember looking over one ship I was given (Trobrin?) ... lots of power, decent shields, lots of weapons ... and the total damage was abysmal. I started by congratulating my opponent on his glorious victory, overloaded everything, threw up 10 pts reinforcement on my #2, managed to get to range 3 or so without internals, threw everything at my opponent, hitting with everything, turning to bring all offside weapons into arc at R2, hitting with all those on the same shield ... and failing to penetrate! The revised ship has a slightly higher damage output now.