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Billinator wrote:Sentry
I'd change it to a 1-model unit, putting it in the Elites section, adding the IC rule to it and toning down the Guardian Shield ability. I'd also improove it's Ld, as we ARE dealing with a psyker unit. relying on a Ld 8 psychic test is too unrealiable. The IC, rather than a unit upgrade for, say, Zealots units, is to make it more fragile. This means that it can be targeted out in CC. Elite choice is simply stressing on the utility of the unit, as it is a obvious choice to have your whole army getting a better save.

Well, one thing I was thinking about was to make them a squad of IC's similar to Wolf Guard, so you can buy like 5 for 1 FoC slot. While Sentries are a marvelious defensive unit, they arn't something one would spam. And as I said with the Dragoon, I don't like the jump from Gateway to Cybernetic Core is a big enough jump to say, "ok, these guys are the elites of the protoss."

Guardian Shield
- All models within 12" gain +1 to their invulnerable save against shooting .
(Reasoning: ATM, we're looking at a unit granting ALL units within 12" a Terminator TH/SS save. Furthermore, the unit granting this ability has T3 and is a stand alone unit, meaning it'll most likely go down in the first turn.)

I believe you are right. While popping Guardian Shield can change the coarse of a battle, it's not an "I win"' button. Maybe, all weapons shooting at a Protoss within 12" of the Sentry suffer a -1 to Strength.

Here's a question that could answer whether the Carrier should be HS or SH. Is the firepower of this Battlecruiser comparable to the Stormraven or the Thunderhawk?

Battlecruisers are space ships, not small transports. They are more like Thunderhawks than Stormravens, though even that is a bit too small. Remember, the majority of the SC2 campaign cutscenes and dialogue takes place on a battlecruiser.

Carriers are even bigger than Battlecruisers, and if I'm not mistaken, a Cruiser vaporizes a terran scavenger ship in the opening cinematic of SC1 by fully encompassing it and blowing it up.

That being said, starcraft capital ships seem to be hideously undergunned compared to their warhammer counterparts. Of course, it is perfectly valid to argue that compared to the capital ships of other universes, Warhammer vessels are overgunned to the point of being silly.

broodstar wrote:

Billinator wrote:Sentry
I'd change it to a 1-model unit, putting it in the Elites section, adding the IC rule to it and toning down the Guardian Shield ability. I'd also improove it's Ld, as we ARE dealing with a psyker unit. relying on a Ld 8 psychic test is too unrealiable. The IC, rather than a unit upgrade for, say, Zealots units, is to make it more fragile. This means that it can be targeted out in CC. Elite choice is simply stressing on the utility of the unit, as it is a obvious choice to have your whole army getting a better save.

Well, one thing I was thinking about was to make them a squad of IC's similar to Wolf Guard, so you can buy like 5 for 1 FoC slot. While Sentries are a marvelious defensive unit, they arn't something one would spam. And as I said with the Dragoon, I don't like the jump from Gateway to Cybernetic Core is a big enough jump to say, "ok, these guys are the elites of the protoss."

Why not make them a squad upgrade like a sergeant? So you could control which units get the buff (if you give the guardian shield only to the attached unit) and imho it would be kinda strange for a sentry to be attached to something like for example DTs and it would be harder to bring it down because it would be a part of the unit.

@Kain having played a fair amount of BFG and comparing it to other starfleet simulators, I can safely and accurately say that the energy output of WH40K vessels is in the kiddy range. When Planet-Crackers are your machinegun bullets and antimatter singularities are bandied about like no-one's business, THEN you've got some real firepower. When your guns alter the matter-information of entire solar systems and rewrite the basic rules of the universe in areas irreparably, causing past and future to merge in ways inimical to even the fiercest of warpstorms, THEN you've got some high-level tech. 40K is rule of cool, but there are no engineers or real sci-fi writers for it; its fluff is closer to romance novels than anything really hard.

chrisrawr wrote:@Kain having played a fair amount of BFG and comparing it to other starfleet simulators, I can safely and accurately say that the energy output of WH40K vessels is in the kiddy range. When Planet-Crackers are your machinegun bullets and antimatter singularities are bandied about like no-one's business, THEN you've got some real firepower. When your guns alter the matter-information of entire solar systems and rewrite the basic rules of the universe in areas irreparably, causing past and future to merge in ways inimical to even the fiercest of warpstorms, THEN you've got some high-level tech. 40K is rule of cool, but there are no engineers or real sci-fi writers for it; its fluff is closer to romance novels than anything really hard.

A lance strike still puts out firepower in the terraton range. So WH40k is in the mid-high range. What you're talking about is silliness like the Xeelee Sequence and the Culture which would curbstomp Star Wars, Starcraft, and WH40k put together without breaking a sweat.

In any case I was talking about number of guns. Compared to a imperial cruiser, a star destroyer has far, far fewer guns and a much smaller capacity of small craft.

Starwars is weak as balls. Starcraft is paper airplanes. I'm talking about Forge of the Heavens / Neutronium / Larry Niven-verse level tech and hard scifi edge-of-physics speculation. Converting exoplanets into solar-system-wide antimatter shells. quantum-entangled communications and recursive-modifying agent AI electronic warfare. Psychological abuse, direct conversion of enemy craft/parts from matter to antimatter, antimatter wasps, C-speed flechette clouds, sending stars or even planets into supernova via singularitybombs, self-modifying noach ships, modular nanocluster ships, neutronium ships, quark-bonded ships, proto-matter and virtual-matter ships, ghost ships, non-ships, and ships cloaked in their own singularities. Sci-Fi Space travel and warfare has a rich history of stuff that puts 40K and Xeelee to shame, and most of it is at least potentially feasible given our current understanding of the universe, and therefore doesn't need to be handwaved too hard beyond the lack of engineering viability.

Remember, in Rocket Tag, it's quality, not quantity.

Call me mortal, but what you have just discribed is absurd! Converting solar systems into antimatter? non-ships? We don't even know if the warp exists. (M-theory)

But then again, physicist have this nach for telling people absurd sounding things with a straight face. If you read the definition for "Our Holographic Universe" your natural instinct is to say the man is insane. But they do claim to have math backing it up, and I'm not even going to claim to even understand the math, let alone say it's wrong.

The math and basic concept behind the holographic universe theory are both fairly solid, but that's why we're pushing for giant lasers in space - for more accurate science and more accurate values on plank lengths and universe granularity.

Solar Systems -> antimatter is a concept similar to quantum entanglement; using a bunch of base anti-matter (quarks and leptons etc) you entangle them with a bunch of regular matter, tricking the universe into thinking the regular matter is antimatter - it's all information that theoretically could be changed.

non-ships are patches of space that you've tricked the universe into rendering. Alternatively, they're ships that you've tricked the universe into thinking are patches of space.

Personally, The bits that scare me the most are the agent-class AI's; one accidental slip in their utility function and you've got recursively optimizing AI amiss in the universe, like a paperclip optimizer - You'd best hope that there are no paperclip optimizers in the universe :<

You know, when you say Holographic Universe all I think of is the band Scar Symmetry.