Mongoose Publishing

[Vertexx69]

I was just wondering why Mongoose hates the minbari so much as to completely cut the legs out from under their ability to even fight at skirmish or patrol level?? How are we supposed to function with 5 fighters at patrol level 5 against 15-20 enemy fighters at all? In campaigns, fully a third of the random priority level is unplayable to one of the original races in the universe now, who had a hard enough time fielding a fleet at those levels before.

With the Dilgars ability to "scare" one level of your fleet off the field already adds complete insult to serious injury.

And the ability to lower any minbari ships stealth to 2+ (scout + fighter:scanners to full + inside 8") effectively removes the Minbari's Advanced defense capabilities leaving our low hull values and damage levels exposed to the night

[WickedE]

If you let someone get within 8 Inches of a Minbari ship, then that Minbari ship deserves to get shot. Seriously. MInbari ships are designed to keep people AWWAAYYY.
And as far as Not fielding in low priorities, Well, the Crusade EA fleet seems to be in the same boat.
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The Minbari think they're superior. that because they've been touched by Vorlons, they've the right to interfere in our affairs!
Today we tell them the Lion of the Galaxy is not dead, and shall tear them apart if they oppose us!

[Iain McGhee]

Yep. You're forced to keep the enemy at long range now, turning tail and running when they get near to the 8" 'stealth - what stealth?' range. Knew they had those aft neutron cannons for something . Bigger problem for me (against the EA anyway) is the increase in some races dogfight ability when you tend to have far fewer fighters available. Last time I played against an (early years) EA fleet I was outnumbered five to one with fighters and they were able to gang up on mine and blow them away pretty early on.

[WickedE]

Nials are still a viable threat, however.
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The Minbari think they're superior. that because they've been touched by Vorlons, they've the right to interfere in our affairs!
Today we tell them the Lion of the Galaxy is not dead, and shall tear them apart if they oppose us!

[Alexb83]

If Nials were 2-3 times more effective than enemy fighters, I'd agree. But as it is, you can get 2-3 flights of (insert generic enemy fighter name here)'s for every flight of nials, whether you're talking individually bought wings, or vs. the battle level morshin.

Given how dogfighting works, all they need to do is swarm the nials, and they're screwed. It's not as if there aren't other fighters out there with +3 dogfight, and when they start stacking up...
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[Vertexx69]

and of course every other race seems to have afterburners, but im talking about not being able to effectively purchase fighters at all when 1 patrol level priority point gets me a whopping 1 effective fighter or 2 ineffective ones, vs. the 3 or 4 allround fighters of any other race.

and even the crusade era still has its 3 thunderbolts to my 1 nial.

[Iain McGhee]

I find I'm now keeping my Nials back as escorts and letting my cruisers whittle down EA fighters (or preferably blowing their parent ships apart before they launch) until the odds of the Nials surviving are a bit more likely.

[Vertexx69]

They just need to seriously give me back my 2 nials per patrol point.

[Sulfurdown]

So what happened in the shift from SFOS to Arma that's put the burr in so many people's fighter shorts. In looking over the SFOS rules I'm seeing that one Nial is a match for four thunderbolts or three starfuries in a dogfight which is the wing count for those flights. Most wings seem to come out to about 2-4 (Centauri being one exception at around +6 when a full wing gets into a dogfights). Most of those exceptions have the balance like the Centauri (2AD weak guns) or the Abbai (1AD weak guns). Even if you add a fleet carrier, that only gives you an effective one flight bonus since you don't add the bonus per flight, just the primary fighter pluse one per extra flight.

[Triggy]

[CZuschlag]

We just had one Minbari fight conclude quite overwhelmingly forthe Minbari over the EA just yesterday. At 6 Raid, the Minbari took one Tinashi (2 Rd.) two Teshlans (2 Rd.), one Leshath (1 Rd.) and one Ashinta. We were opposed by a mixed EA/Abbai force -- they just pretty much gave upon winning initiative, and just went for ships of danger -- of four Milani (2 Rd.), one Marathon, one Chonos, and one Hyperion (yes, not fully EA Crusade ... so sue us.).

Scenario was Call to Arms, so no terrain for the EA/Abbai. The coalition lost initiative (surprise, surprise -- +4 vs. -2 and a scout reroll.) The deployed the Milanis about 5" apart from one another, right in the front center of the deployment zone. The Marathon was behind about 6 ", in between the center Milanis. The Hyperion was placed to be a flanker on the left of the line, with a nearby Chronos as escort.

As a result, the Minbari deployed on the coalition's far right, away from the Chronos and Hyperion and just about as far to the edge of the deployemtn zone as we could get. We were pretty much in a clump, although the Teshlans were a just a bit closer. Range started at about 32" to the closest (our left, their right) Milani.

All the strategy pretty much ended there. The Minbari won initiative, and play started. The rest felt like a tape recording. The Tinashi CAFed an out-of-range Marathon that would have had to move 6", and therefore in range of the Tinashi to get a boresight shot at anything (yet again, the downsides of boresight!!) so it (a bit surprisingly) held back, choosing to swap its missed shot for the Tinashi's. The Ashinta and one Teshlan (CAFed) got to Fusion beam range on a Milani that had closed its blast doors, but some decent rolls on from that Teshlan later and one other unCAFed Neutron Laser shot to the Milani decrewed it. The other Milanis turned in and started barfing Kothas, and the Chronos and Hyperion were rapidly turning into the fight.

If there was anything interesting, it was that we started angling two ships early away from the EA, even at ranges of 20-18. The Leshath, the Ashin ta, and one Teshan had very few targets in the F arc. We wanted to fire, and then scoot through the crud. The Teshlan's extreme speed gives us a shot here. We were also very very aware of range 8!

Turn 3 had us winning inititiave (again ... no shock).The Milanis moved first, and the remaining 3 had guaranteed that the ships that had CAFed were not getting out of range 8. The Leshath made one move sink by angling away from the fight and then turning back towards it in preparation of an All Power to Engines to leapfrog most of the fleet (probably not the Chronos or Marathon Secondaries) next turn. The Ashinta followed. After the third Milani move, we shimmied the one Teshlan that hadn't CAFed out of range 8, on the flank, facing towards the Marathon. At this point, we had used our last real estate, that was doing to be outside of 8". The rest would have to give up the shot. One chronos All Powered to get into range (it started on the far left,so it had to hustle to get there, and because of the boresight on the Hyperions' beam, it wasn't going to make it this turn .. still trying to turn fast after starting on the coalition's left). The Tinashi and Teshlan followed the fleet, but the Marathon was able to get range 8" on a Teshlan and lined up on the poor thing.

Fighters could've been a factor here but weren't. We were massively outrightered -- 4 Milanis, most of which were spitting Kothas at 2/ turn on turns 1 and 2 (Scramble) vs. 3 Nials looked bad, but the Thunderbolts and Kothas didn't jump. The Kothas mostly couldn't - 8" isn't fast enough - and the EA fighters would have to go in alone. And, in retrospect, that's why the fighter issue never was .... Minbari fleets (outside of War ships) are often fast enough to shake fighter pursuit if desparate, all Power can get you just away, fast. And an EA strike wouldn't have been bad, because we won inititiave.

Granted. He could have sent about 3 EA fighters and perhaps 4 Kothas forward to try Scanners to Full. That probably wouldn't have helped too much, however. The 3 Nials then jump almost every one by contacting two bases at a time. One fighter might have gotten a scan, and been in fusion death range in exchange. Many fighters will die as well -- the Nials will decide to dogfight first and +2 dogfight shots to pick off EA fighters -- a good trade by any measure. All that for one roll for a 5 or 6 for stealth reduction. The Kotha's speed -- and ours! -- was key here. We got to the spot before the launched fighters could.

The Leshath failed its roll for redirect on the Marathon. Pity.

The Teshlan that was so nicely borsighted by the Marathon was up.. It tried to Crit out the Marathon before that Particle Cannon could fire ... and scored about 4/6 on a crew crit. The glaring gun fired up .... and ....

... failed its stealth roll.

And there comes my point. There isn't a single raid ship that can face down the Marathon and expect to have any reasonable chance of intact -- or functional -- survival against that beam that isn't Hull 6 ... or isn't a Minbari with Stealth. Sure, the cances are only 1/3 of hiding ... but that still by far the most powerful firepower defense out there. A horde of secndary batteries and a 4 die TD beam system should have cored that ship out wholesale. Even meaty ships like the Rohric look at that and say "Wow, big rock candy mountain." And, to be sure, that Teshlan had already ejected its log buoy. But no other system gives that Teshlan any chance to live at all, especially with other ships just waiting to finish a cripple of (a couple of Milanis, a Chronos).

But, even with stealth reduced in strength, it lived.

The rest of the fire was reduced to crit-fishing, and the Chronos put a 9 point dent in the Tinashi and some small damage was done to the Ashinta, but that was it. The Chronos died in exchange, and the side Fusion beams put a big dent in another Milani.

We called the fight here. Were were now going to overfly everything except the Marathon's back beam any maybe its guns. The Boresighted Hyperion may have gotten a shot, but if we win inititative, that might not be real helpful. Perhaps one Milani gets to use its quad arrays on a come about. This would get exchanged with finishing another damaged Milani, damaging and maybe killing that Hyperion, and wiping out a lot of fighters.

To sum up -- the Minbari played here in full knowledge of thier newfound shortcomings, and still absolutely dominated. Tiagras were avoided as they are forced to cruise into bad bad ranges -- they need to be used carefully and sparingly! Granted, I would agree that Torothas are a total waste and something here needs to be done. But there rest of the fleet is just fine, thank you.
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"Not everything that can be counted counts; and not everything that counts can be counted." -- George Gallup

Dilgar -- Primary
Drakh -- Secondary
Early EA -- Tertiary

[LaranosTZ]

*shrugs* Take Morshins....8 flights of nials, 1 flyer, and fleet carrier. It's a battle level ship, so with the current nial distribution it is = to 2 battle level points worth of fighters with a support ship.

[Iain McGhee]

[Sulfurdown]

I was under the impression that the stealth negation at under an inch was for fighters only.

[CZuschlag]

It is. Don't have a copy of A handy, but I'm pretty certain about that.
_________________
"Not everything that can be counted counts; and not everything that counts can be counted." -- George Gallup

Dilgar -- Primary
Drakh -- Secondary
Early EA -- Tertiary