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Elemental wrote:Oh, and sorry to interrupt the argument, but I'm curious what opinions on the factions are? There's been some talk of a campaign at a local club and I've always enjoyed Dystopian Wars, plus the new rulebook is a huge improvement over the old. Based on aesthetics and what isn't already being collected, I was leaning towards Directorate or Relthoza.

I started with Dindrenzi, but got a directorate fleet from a friend. I have found that I really love the fleet. The like to get into knife fight range and use multiple full broadside arcs to damage multiple enemies. The also have the best destroyer in the game, considering the like to close with the enemy they are kind of slow. It pays to make good use of terrain on the approach. They also have good boarding values. It is a fun fleet and I think the ships look great once they are all painted up.

Another problem is: The new Master Books still needs some old PDF, race-specific MARS went out the window and the editor seemed to be asleep. Also issues got corrected that were completly fine and issues that really needed correcting got not fixed.

Amen to all of that.

Spartan just needs to bring Firestorm in line with the quality I think they have in Dystopian Wars and Uncharted Seas. At least... I'm told they have it in US, I've never played that one.

I just played my first game of Dystopian Wars tonight and it's still a tragically crappy system where tactics are meaningless. 40k 6th has nothing on this baby as far as lolrandum dice go. If I count my experience with FA and DW together, this makes 6 of of 6 matches where some small-fry one-shotted an undamaged battleship.

Don't tell me you've never seen luke blow up the death star...?

Agreed, it's all about getting those first shots in and rolling the most dice before you lose dice to damage.

lord_blackfang wrote:I just played my first game of Dystopian Wars tonight and it's still a tragically crappy system where tactics are meaningless. 40k 6th has nothing on this baby as far as lolrandum dice go. If I count my experience with FA and DW together, this makes 6 of of 6 matches where some small-fry one-shotted an undamaged battleship.

Not saying you're lieing, or perhaps I am simply mis understanding what you're saying, but what do you mean a small fry? I mean, I'd assume a destroyer being able to one shot a battleship, the sheer chance of that happening is...it's insane.

I mean for one the Sting Ray Destoyer at it's best range band has 7 dice, you would probably need at least eight hits to by pass a battlehip's DR, and that's just one point of damage, perhaps you crit by getting another two or three hits, that's still only 2 hull points out of probably 8-9.

A squadron of frigates can and will feth big things up, especially at close range with a -1 for being a small target and another crucial -1 for those primary weapons firing within close range.

Avrik_Shasla wrote:

lord_blackfang wrote:I just played my first game of Dystopian Wars tonight and it's still a tragically crappy system where tactics are meaningless. 40k 6th has nothing on this baby as far as lolrandum dice go. If I count my experience with FA and DW together, this makes 6 of of 6 matches where some small-fry one-shotted an undamaged battleship.

Not saying you're lieing, or perhaps I am simply mis understanding what you're saying, but what do you mean a small fry? I mean, I'd assume a destroyer being able to one shot a battleship, the sheer chance of that happening is...it's insane.

I mean for one the Sting Ray Destoyer at it's best range band has 7 dice, you would probably need at least eight hits to by pass a battlehip's DR, and that's just one point of damage, perhaps you crit by getting another two or three hits, that's still only 2 hull points out of probably 8-9.

Avrik, I think you should be warned: blackfang has some serious issues with "exploding 6's" as a game mechanic. I think he's had the same complaint in every thread for Spartan, Rackham, and any other game system that uses it. He's a big believer in "big things should be invincible to little things."

I too, however, am skeptical that you'd see that in every single game. And especially in Dystopian Wars. I'd almost buy it from Firestorm though. I've certainly seen it before, though not in every single game. That would be the equivalent of (in 40K) Jaws of the World Wolf getting both your HQs. Sure, it might happen, but not every game.

Scottywan82 wrote:He's a big believer in "big things should be invincible to little things."

I'm fine with little things whittling away big things little by little. I think it's great. If it couldn't happen, the first guy to lose his battleship would automatically lose the game.

I'm a bit less thrilled when I see battleships consistently get vaporized by pot-shots. Yeah, a random lascannon can take out a Land Raider on turn 1, too, but I've never seen it happen 6 games in a row.

So you're saying you get upset when someone takes a large amount of light ships to take out one big ship? I'd expect that to happen too, if someone focused enough firepower on one big ship you can expect it to go down. Yet now you're saying that if you lose your battleship you lose the game, even though they are (as you say) so easy to kill?

Avrik_Shasla wrote:So you're saying you get upset when someone takes a large amount of light ships to take out one big ship? I'd expect that to happen too, if someone focused enough firepower on one big ship you can expect it to go down. Yet now you're saying that if you lose your battleship you lose the game, even though they are (as you say) so easy to kill?

It sounds like he thinks that damage is too random. The defensive and offensive stats are built with exploding criticals in mind, but thats a form of damage tracking that creates tremendous statistical outliers with low averages. That's almost the definition of a system based in luck rather than skill or risk/reward.

I think anyone who thinks a small ship is going to exploding-6s its way to one-shotting a battleship might need a statistics lesson. It can happen, but the odds are really, really bad.

Claiming it happened in six out of six matches is just silly. I think we have a case of someone telling porkies.

ShumaGorath wrote:

Avrik_Shasla wrote:So you're saying you get upset when someone takes a large amount of light ships to take out one big ship? I'd expect that to happen too, if someone focused enough firepower on one big ship you can expect it to go down. Yet now you're saying that if you lose your battleship you lose the game, even though they are (as you say) so easy to kill?

It sounds like he thinks that damage is too random. The defensive and offensive stats are built with exploding criticals in mind, but thats a form of damage tracking that creates tremendous statistical outliers with low averages. That's almost the definition of a system based in luck rather than skill or risk/reward.

I understand where you're coming from with that. I don't think the system should rely so much on that, but I know from the games I have played there are tactics, alot of it is how you roll, but a lot of games are like that. It's all about how you use your ships, how they manovuer, and terrain, I think terrain works AWESOME in this game.

Avrik_Shasla wrote:

ShumaGorath wrote:

Avrik_Shasla wrote:So you're saying you get upset when someone takes a large amount of light ships to take out one big ship? I'd expect that to happen too, if someone focused enough firepower on one big ship you can expect it to go down. Yet now you're saying that if you lose your battleship you lose the game, even though they are (as you say) so easy to kill?

It sounds like he thinks that damage is too random. The defensive and offensive stats are built with exploding criticals in mind, but thats a form of damage tracking that creates tremendous statistical outliers with low averages. That's almost the definition of a system based in luck rather than skill or risk/reward.

I understand where you're coming from with that. I don't think the system should rely so much on that, but I know from the games I have played there are tactics, alot of it is how you roll, but a lot of games are like that. It's all about how you use your ships, how they manovuer, and terrain, I think terrain works AWESOME in this game.

I don't know how it works with FAs rewrite, but terrain had a lot of holes in it's rules (such as making "minor corrections" infinitely to avoid every terrain piece and have total control of your movement). For that matter you could shuttle your dreadnaught up the table by putting it in a scenario where it had to pass through your entire fleet in order to move over half it's distance, thus making it move possibly twice it's actual movement capability in the first two turns (this also works on every other ship, but not as well since base sizes and dreads are slow). Most of the "tactics" in FA when I was playing were just rules exploits since the game was woefully threadbare of anything else and most "tactical" decisions had virtually no impact on the game what so ever.

frozenwastes wrote:I think anyone who thinks a small ship is going to exploding-6s its way to one-shotting a battleship might need a statistics lesson. It can happen, but the odds are really, really bad.

Claiming it happened in six out of six matches is just silly. I think we have a case of someone telling porkies.

I don't give a flying whether you believe me or not. I don't have a reason to badmouth Spartan, they make models so nice I still buy them even though the rules are gak.

lord_blackfang wrote:

frozenwastes wrote:I think anyone who thinks a small ship is going to exploding-6s its way to one-shotting a battleship might need a statistics lesson. It can happen, but the odds are really, really bad.

Claiming it happened in six out of six matches is just silly. I think we have a case of someone telling porkies.

I don't give a flying whether you believe me or not. I don't have a reason to badmouth Spartan, they make models so nice I still buy them even though the rules are gak.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. The odds of what you say happened is so tiny that the default should be to not believe you. Add in the vitriol with which you discuss the rules and it becomes even more suspect.

It's fine that you don't like the rules, but I think you're intentionally misrepresenting them in your criticisms with tales of one-shotted battleships happening every game. You may not have a reason to badmouth Spartan, but "being correct on the internet" can be a powerful motivation.

And even if it did happen as you say, the odds are so astronomically small that it's not really a valid criticism of the rules. It's theoretically possibly that any game could have one player roll ones all the time and that is meaningless as to whether or not a particular rules are poor-- it's just an accounting of an incredibly unlikely, extreme and rare event.

I currently play FA when my friend brings his two fleets to gaming night at the local store. I'm contemplating getting a fleet myself. I could see how someone in a similar situation who doesn't spot the just how improbable your claims are might be swayed away from a game they might otherwise enjoy.

Criticize real issues in the game. There's no need to exaggerate or make up unlikely results to mislead others.

And even if it did happen as you say, the odds are so astronomically small that it's not really a valid criticism of the rules. It's theoretically possibly that any game could have one player roll ones all the time and that is meaningless as to whether or not a particular rules are poor-- it's just an accounting of an incredibly unlikely, extreme and rare event.

Criticize real issues in the game. There's no need to exaggerate or make up unlikely results to mislead others.

FA is more vulnerable to poor or average dice rolling than any game I have ever played. As I stated before, the games defensive countermeasures take exploding 6's into account, but the problem with doing that is that the mechanic has an exceptional amount of payoff but it is exceedingly random and rare. The standard deviation with the number of dice rolled in a regular FA game could have one player utterly decimate the opponents fleet and take nothing but statistically regular chip damage in response from just a few lucky runs of sixes. Anyone who has played the game has seen this happen because such runs and the "win more" mechanic of causing your incoming damage to be heavily reduced when outputting damage are intertwined and regular within the game. Without external countermeasures to damage other than dealing damage and correctly combining attacks along statistically advantageous lines the game becomes "dumb luck".

40k is a woefully simple game, but even something like it has terrain and armor saves to modify damage spread. FAs attempts at such are limited and almost meaningless within the game itself. There's no comeback mechanic to exploit or scenario to go for to negate suffering losses. The player that starts winning just keeps winning more.

But he is criticising a real issue - his feelings on exlpoding criticals and their frequency.

H.B.M.C. wrote:But he is criticising a real issue - his feelings on exlpoding criticals and their frequency.

I just don't believe he played the game for the first time and just happened to have six games out of six where the biggest thing was taken out by the small fries in one shot. He's misrepresenting the frequency of the issue he's chosen to focus on.

ShumaGorath makes an excellent point about standard deviations and how luck can play a huge part, but he doesn't feel the need to include extraordinary claims. His posts are full of information that actually relate to the game play rather than a vitriolic claims that lord_blackfang is making.

The point about the defensive statistics being geared to mitigate attacks unless they really explode is an interesting one (correct me, ShumaGorath if I'm not explaining it right). If the only way you can do real damage is a good roll with lots of explosions, then it's certainly going to seem like the game is all about lucking out. Maybe it's more than "seems." Maybe if you can't get the right positioning to have overwhelming force on a target, all you have is hoping for lucking out.

The notion of a death spiral where if you start winning/losing, you'll continue on that path is an interesting one. Scenarios definitely help with such an issue and FA doesn't have enough of them.

My basic understanding of the game from playing it a bit is that the tactics enter in when you concentrate on how to get your optimal range band on a target while minimizing the number of optimal range bands you find yourself in from the enemy. I expect using more planets, asteroids, etc., will make the game more interesting than using an empty area of space.

I have also heard that Spartan Games just has balance problems accross all their games. That if you pick the optimal ship in terms of fire-power to points and spam it, you'll do better than the starter box type fleets with different sizes and types of ships. We're only playing starter sets plus a thing or two right now. Anyone have any experience with lists leaning heavily toward multiples of the same type of ship?


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Well, despite my defense of the game in this thread, and the cool new(ish) releases like the Zenian league stuff, I don't think I'll be buying into this game.

The reason is something that's been brewing in the back of my mind and I finally got clear about it when I was watching some Firestorm Armada youtube videos.

The traffic jam effect.

Unlike in Dystopian wars where models can't occupy the same space (perhaps with the exception of air assets), in FA they can as long as the bases don't overlap.

The few times I've played FA, I've generally avoided getting too close, but it always seems to happen that the models themselves get in the way. When we couldn't fit everything around eachother, we ended up removing ships as needed, leaving substitute bases behind as proxies. Or when things were close, but not so close we had to remove models, it was still a big jumbled mess.

It completely ruins the aesthetics for me.

To see an example of the traffic jam effect, check out this battle report on youtube:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wf0SWkesZBg

Ugh. Looks terrible.

There is a reason why DW is their most successfull game. Since it fastly improves upon both other games it play much better. But still it is hamstrung by rules that still need a better editor and some balance issues. There is no traffic jam effect and thanks to the three fleets it distributes all over the table.

Spartan is a really nice company, but their quality level is not up there where they claim it is when it comes to rules. The minsi are excellent most of the time in detail and production quality. And sadly they seem to ignore quite some really good hints regarding the balance coming from the community.

Well, you'll be pleased to know the ratio of absurd games has dropped to 7 out of 8 today. Best ones were critting CR7 with 4AD of torpedoes and then again with a 2AD frigate turret.

NEW RELEASE ON FRONT PAGE


I've been playing quite a bit of games of this actually, and getting familiar with the system and the new rules, I have to say, there have been a lot of changes and all the fleets seem very unique from one another, and the sheer tactics I have seen used are clear to be seen.

So my friend pointed out Corsec Engineering's telescoping bases to me. So when ships get too close, you can just change the elevation of ships so they don't hit each other. So it looks like my main objection can be mitigated.

Those infected ships look really halfassed to me. What probably took several days of CAD work could have been achieved by 20 minutes with green stuff and moderate skill.

They look perfectly cool to me. It's an interesting way to include a new type of scary race without them just being "Tyranids".

I've found with Spartan's stuff that the renders aren't really good enough for a preview. I don't think they look that great in render format, but like other things in the line, they'll look amazing in person.

frozenwastes wrote:I've found with Spartan's stuff that the renders aren't really good enough for a preview. I don't think they look that great in render format, but like other things in the line, they'll look amazing in person.

This is true, the ships look a lot better than they do in the 3D renders. I got myself the Aquan Prime Sting ray destroyers and those looked so much better in person, softer lines and the detail is much more easier to see.

I like the look of these new infected ships though, the sheer size of them will be fun to work with and to see flesh on metal for ships is going to be a nice look. Perhaps someone cxould find a use for them with nurgle ships if they so deemed.

Avrik, are you going to add the shots and links to the new OmniDyne and Syndicate ships?


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Those Syndicate ships are stellar.


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Duncan_Idaho wrote:There is a reason why DW is their most successfull game. Since it fastly improves upon both other games it play much better. But still it is hamstrung by rules that still need a better editor and some balance issues. There is no traffic jam effect and thanks to the three fleets it distributes all over the table.

Spartan is a really nice company, but their quality level is not up there where they claim it is when it comes to rules. The minsi are excellent most of the time in detail and production quality. And sadly they seem to ignore quite some really good hints regarding the balance coming from the community.

Amen to all of this. Especially about ignoring hints from the community. Not only about balance, either. The other big issue is how insular the community is becoming. I know part of it is the forum model they've chosen, but more and more it makes me think of the Rackham forums. Islands of die-hard fans lashed to their own particular platform, snapping and sniping at anyone who draws near. It makes these forums look positively welcoming.

They also REALLY need to get on top of their news releases. D they want to blog them? Or email them? Or post on their own forums? It's completely inconsistent and makes for weird surprises, or models that show up on the Warstore website that have never been previewed. Ten we get previews that never appear (Firestorm small flyer tokens, anyone?). As much as I love the way the news comes in a rush when it DOES come, I'd rather have a steady flow from a regular source. Blog, email, forums, whatever, but make it consistent and make sure if they add it in one place they add it to all of them.

They also REALLY need to get on top of their news releases. D they want to blog them? Or email them? Or post on their own forums? It's completely inconsistent and makes for weird surprises, or models that show up on the Warstore website that have never been previewed. Ten we get previews that never appear (Firestorm small flyer tokens, anyone?). As much as I love the way the news comes in a rush when it DOES come, I'd rather have a steady flow from a regular source. Blog, email, forums, whatever, but make it consistent and make sure if they add it in one place they add it to all of them.

Their blog is where I get all my news, and then I take it upon myself to post it on DakkaDakka.