Clashing Empires At The Dawn Of The Technological Age: Leviathans Discussions > Game Rules Discussion

Are Battleships tough enough?

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Jim1701:
Reading through the playtests on the main page was interesting but it seems like there is a common thread.  Single battleships in mid to large engagements are hosed.  Granted they will attract the most attention but they seem too slow and lack the firepower to prevent lighter ships from swarming them under.  I think I'd rather trade in a single battleship for a number of lighter units (not sure what the ratio would be) to create a numerical advantage.  Now if there were more than one Battleship to work with that might make a difference. 

ApokalypseTest:
In my experience (and thats somewhat dependent on the fleet you play), a) Battleships are not supposed to act alone - a lone Battleship might take out two type 1 or two type twos - but rather as the core of a flotilla. That being said, you are constantly forced to decide if you'd rather shoot the battleship or start whittling away the escort.

By sheer toughness by slot, Battleships are more flimsy than smaller ships - but - they have a lot more Structure and  they have a lot more slots. Most battleships need to lose an entire arc before they are even mildly threatened - which means that they soak up a lot of fire. If you ignore the Battleship and keep pounding the escorts, you have a harder time breaching them and you will likely be forced to take a brutal beating from the BS batteries.

After having played about 40-50 games by now, I found the battleships initially adequate, then way to flimsy and now I am back to think they are roughly where one would expect them to be. The game clearly revolves around squadron based combat, not engagements of individual ships. Usually it is not your choice what ships you play but rather a scenario both players agree upon before the game.

Like in Battletech, extremely boring min-maxing is possible and the game as far as I have seen it is not balanced towards avoiding every possible route of exploit (or even the majority of them) with regard to force-building. In that regard it is definitely more like Battletech than, say Warhammer. To me that is what I come to like about the game. In contrast to Force-Building types of Wargames, the game mainly (only) takes place AFTER the players meet and while they interact, instead of being mostly decided by the time the armies (fleets) hit the tabletop, pending 2 (to me boring) hours of dice-rolling and mostly executing pre-formulated battle plans.

So, are Battleships point for point an equal power compared to four type 1s? If you choose your type 1 wisely, probably not. Are they durable and fulfill the role of centerpiece in a formation: Yes.

Jim1701:
Yeah, I wasn't really thinking about one on one engagements.  I was looking at the "fleet box" vs. "fleet box" battles where where the single battleships on both sides get swarmed under.  I think part of it is the size of the maps being used.  Battles seem to turn into dogfights which aren't a battleship's forte.  I guess I'll have to wait to see first hand just how tough a battleship is vs other unit types and how much a numerical advantage might be as a, uh, advantage. 

ApokalypseTest:
I you let your fleet get broken up, especially if your Battleship stands alone vs a wolfpack, you are either doing the same to your opponent (and have the ships to pull it off) or you made a severe mistake. The playtestreports by Randall point in both cases to his opponents mistake in a early fleet breakup.

Alius:
Also, keep in mind that the Leviathans in-universe are still undergoing the same trial-and-error in their design process as they are in real-life. I expect that when Leviathans presses forward in its timeline, we'll see newer generations of ships which will outperform these early concept models.

Or, at least, that's what I hope from what have been so far rather intelligent game designers.

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