Game equality & Force balancing

[Lord Cameron]

It does indeed seem biased towards the French, turrets or not...

I am curious how your forces are chosen. Are you running mainly 1 on 1, 2 on 2, or larger engagements? With all 8 released ships and playing on 2 BT mapsheets, my games are coming down fairly even...until the shots start crippling a site. Once the tide starts turning against a side though, it can be hard to rally back. (I will not speak of a 4-on-4 game that I was winning 3-on-2 only to have two keel rolls in two turns take me to a wounded 1 against those same 2. -glare-)

On smaller 1 on 1 engagements without rolling maps, I've seen whichever ship is faster seems to have a basic edge unless their opponent can get some early crippling shots in.

I've only played full 4 x4 battles, the British come out much the worse against an experienced French  commander. The French ships are fast enough to get behind and rake the British ships,. The Herts is too slow, and the Courser turns like a brick. The french need to circle out of gun range until they win initiative, and then move in for the kill.

Re: Turrets question
« Reply #8 on: Today at 04:34:08 AM »QuoteI've noticed that "combat loss grouping" is even more of a concern in this game than BattleTech. That is, ships tend to lose their fighting ability and be destroyed in an sometimes alarmingly accelerative manner, especially those that rely on Armor and Crew slots (mind you, I've mainly been playing the Commander's rules, which Randall has talked about a few times).

Are the Captain's rules available to agents?

[Tonbo Karasu]

It would be interesting to see how things worked differently with some sort of simultaneous movement instead of initiative.  Personally I'm finding that in some game systems where people are very well matched it all comes down to who wins the initiative at the right time. 

In the past I've worked on various ways to reduce the effect of initiative on games.  Actually, I'll rephrase that.  The effect of a single initiative dice roll on games.

[pianobar]

I've only played full 4 x4 battles, the British come out much the worse against an experienced French  commander. The French ships are fast enough to get behind and rake the British ships,. The Herts is too slow, and the Courser turns like a brick. The french need to circle out of gun range until they win initiative, and then move in for the kill.

Are the Captain's rules available to agents?

Hrm...how are the British deploying, and how are they grouping their targets? I can definitely say that this game requires quite a bit of ship-to-ship cooperation. Trying to play with two people on a 4 ship side has proved disastrous on my tables, at least. Trying to split fire and hope for a few lucky shots might work occasionally, but massing fire is a great way to drop a ship a turn or two.

I know some people who saw the game at GenCon have mentioned playing with Turrets based on their play there, but I'm not sure if Randall has made the standard or advanced rules available to demo agents since then or not.

[ravehnhuhrxt]

Are the Captain's rules available to agents?

No