ATST and Airspeeder still extremely overcosted

[RaevenKS 111]

2 minutes ago, DarkTrooperZero said:

 

Vehicle units considered good for legions entire life: AtRt

Vehicle units considered bad for legions entire life: AtSt, T47

Pretty sure I can make the at-st working. 

 

This is my next challenge. 

[jocke01 920]

13 hours ago, DarkTrooperZero said:

But that's the problem, for the points without surge or better dice stock standard it's very  poor.

Yes, but that is My point. It's the only real flaw compared to the snowspeeder. 

The new command card and cheap spotter support helps it with this. As well as the new pilot card coming

[jocke01 920]

12 hours ago, Derrault said:

Cover 1 reduces the impact effectiveness when there are hits less than or equal to the impact rating. This is more pronounced when looking at an attack with high impact, ie Vader’s saber throw; because of the impact and pierce, Vader would normally deal 3 damage to any target with 3 hits; with cover 1 automatically reduces that to only 2 damage (less if there are fewer hits of course).

Because of armor, the Cover 1 is only useful against enemies with Impact. 

Yeah cover 1 with armor, it works sometimes. However vs non impact 3 weapons it's 9/10 times not useful.

It really needed a keyword to cancel crits with cover.

[Alpha17 2,853]

8 hours ago, lologrelol said:

The pilot is a trooper mini, who's armour save on foot is surge.

Yes, because he's able to duck or make the most out of his surroundings.  Not possible while sitting on a 3.45m tall walker, that gets the same amount of armor no matter where the fire is coming in from.  If they did give the AT-RT a defensive surge, the Armor keyword should only count on attacks from the front.  Flanking or rear shots shouldn't deal with armor.  Ideally, the Armor X keyword would have been used, but it's a little late for that now. 

4 hours ago, RaevenKS said:

I personnaly play 3 AT-RT in my list, and even against the "meta supa list", i never lost once. That's why I ever say that Meta is not for not what it is suppose to be

I've beaten a 3 AT-RT list a few times, but it really all depends on how the dice are rolling.  I'm actually really looking forward to running them when they're released with the Clone Wars stuff. 

[buckero0 1,956]

the only way to fix these for a competitive environment is to address the 3 points made by the original poster

Reduce points (probably not going to happen)

Release add-on cards to address deficiencies (defensive or offensive) already kind of happening with the driver and FFG's usual MO.

a cheap weapon card or driver that added surges to their weapons or defense would make them more playable. The other route is adding Pierce to the current configuration to make those precious hits mean something. 

I wish they'd made them cheaper to begin with (20pts each would make them more palatable), but I'm okay if they take their time to balance whatever "fix" they have in the works.

[Rumar 244]

11 hours ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

The AT-ST has a huge impact on objective play. Park that bad boy right in front of the center objective and delete any corps unit foolish enough to make a run at it. Or they waste a bunch of attacks trying to kill it.

Most lists nowadays (sniper and corps spam) don't have enough Impact to even attempt to kill an AT-ST inside of 6 rounds

Ignore the AT-ST on the objective and kill troopers instead, which will give you an advantage as the AT-ST lacks firepower. Make a run for the objective in the last round. Problem solved.

Edited February 18, 2019 by Rumar
clarification

[TauntaunScout 4,276]

19 hours ago, Derrault said:

If by trooper units you mean corps units, it’s a minimum of 3, max 6; so at most if you skipped full corps, you’d only be forgoing 3, never 4.

There's lots of non-corps trooper units. I assume he means for the points cost, not just corps force org slots.

 

11 hours ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

The AT-ST has a huge impact on objective play. Park that bad boy right in front of the center objective and delete any corps unit foolish enough to make a run at it. Or they waste a bunch of attacks trying to kill it.

Or use it as your own personal scenery item and park it in an important alleway so they enemy has to spend all day marching around the  buildings instead of through them.

10 hours ago, lologrelol said:

SWL 1st edition already has some clear winners and losers, that I think will remain throughout the life of the edition.

So do all the games that attract a tournament mindset. In casual play the relative winners and losers usually get taken by both sides so it evens out. Fixing one unit usually relegates another to the unplayable. Some companies cynically exploit this as a marketing technique. They change what's competitive according to what model's sales are slumping.

[TauntaunScout 4,276]

1 hour ago, buckero0 said:

the only way to fix these for a competitive environment is to address the 3 points made by the original poster

 

Or a "fix" to the fundamental nature of scoring. What if ANY enemy unit within range X on turn 6 negated trooper's ability to claim an objective? That's just one example.

Edited February 18, 2019 by TauntaunScout

[buckero0 1,956]

13 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

Or a "fix" to the fundamental nature of scoring. What if ANY enemy unit within range X on turn 6 negated trooper's ability to claim an objective? That's just one example.

Yeah, I guess they could create different scenario cards as well which could make it into play.  You can only "claim" an objective with a vehicle, or if a vehicle is within range 1 of a unit carrying an objective token, they drop it. I still think you'll feel they are slightly overpriced or that you're army list is cramped due to their cost/value.

[riker2800 30]

6 minutes ago, buckero0 said:

Yeah, I guess they could create different scenario cards as well which could make it into play.  You can only "claim" an objective with a vehicle, or if a vehicle is within range 1 of a unit carrying an objective token, they drop it. I still think you'll feel they are slightly overpriced or that you're army list is cramped due to their cost/value.

That will make sense, helping vehicles with scoring can change a lot of things...

[arnoldrew 1,713]

27 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

Or a "fix" to the fundamental nature of scoring. What if ANY enemy unit within range X on turn 6 negated trooper's ability to claim an objective? That's just one example.

I actually like that change a lot.

[Derrault 1,091]

32 minutes ago, TauntaunScout said:

There's lots of non-corps trooper units. I assume he means for the points cost, not just corps force org slots.

 

Or use it as your own personal scenery item and park it in an important alleway so they enemy has to spend all day marching around the  buildings instead of through them.

So do all the games that attract a tournament mindset. In casual play the relative winners and losers usually get taken by both sides so it evens out. Fixing one unit usually relegates another to the unplayable. Some companies cynically exploit this as a marketing technique. They change what's competitive according to what model's sales are slumping.

None of them are as cost effective as the corps units though, in terms of damage dice. All special forces/heroes you’re paying way way more per die, and they’re far less survivable than the heavies (as a function of wounds/lack of armor).

Compare Vader to the AT-ST, he’s far slower, shorter range, and has fewer wounds, all for 5 more points baseline. I found it doubtful that could be the point of comparison. 

Edited February 18, 2019 by Derrault

[ResoluteHusky 62]

Wouldn't the airspeeder be a good support for the turn 1 engage of the pathfinders?

[Tirion 2,223]

21 hours ago, TauntaunScout said:

Competitive play, by definition, will always render a subset of a points-buy list, for any wargme, "unplayable". If it wasn't the AT-ST and T-47 it would be something else. The problem, if any can be said to exist, is with the competitive mindset and not the big vehicles. The single-mindedness with which very large numbers of competitive players intentionally try to eke out every advantage in their favorite games is always going to cull lots of cool toys from any game.

Power gamers can be the best thing for a game and there worst thing for a game

[Rumar 244]

On 2/17/2019 at 8:27 PM, TauntaunScout said:

Competitive play, by definition, will always render a subset of a points-buy list, for any wargme, "unplayable". If it wasn't the AT-ST and T-47 it would be something else. The problem, if any can be said to exist, is with the competitive mindset and not the big vehicles. The single-mindedness with which very large numbers of competitive players intentionally try to eke out every advantage in their favorite games is always going to cull lots of cool toys from any game.

There is no excuse for lazy pricing. The mispricing has to be significant to have an impact. If I use a unit that is marginally overpriced and therefore rarely encountered on the battlefield, I still get the advantage of confronting my opponent with something he is not used to.

Edited February 20, 2019 by Rumar
taking to heart the well founded admonishings of Devin Pike

[devin.pike.1989 1,546]

Can we all stop using "costed" when the correct word is "priced"?  It is getting really obnoxious seeing it in thread after thread...

[buckero0 1,956]

49 minutes ago, devin.pike.1989 said:

Can we all stop using "costed" when the correct word is "priced"?  It is getting really obnoxious seeing it in thread after thread...

They are over-COSTEAU'ED

[Fistofriles 126]

9 hours ago, RaevenKS said:

Pretty sure I can make the at-st working. 

 

This is my next challenge. 

but can you make t47 work

[Katarn 317]

10 minutes ago, Fistofriles said:

but can you make t47 work

Sure, just as soon as we adapt them for the cold.

[KommanderKeldoth 3,141]

I think the main thing holding the heavy support units back is that the objective scoring heavily favors activation spam.  Just change the RRG definitions for a few things and you could instantly make heavies more appealing even at their current cost.

• Allow vehicles to contest but not capture objectives for Key Positions and Intercept the Transmissions (that way you can leave the battlefield card text alone).  The vehicle cant capture on its own but it can break ties and stop a lone enemy from scoring
• In the event of a tie between two trooper unit commanders on Key Positions and Intercept the Transmissions, instead of being contested the unit that is worth more points gets the objective (this helps out the elite special forces units against corps spam)
• Likewise, on Breakthrough, the winner is determined by the number of points worth of units that make it to an opponent's deployment zone instead of the number of unit leaders.

[arnoldrew 1,713]

1 hour ago, KommanderKeldoth said:

I think the main thing holding the heavy support units back is that the objective scoring heavily favors activation spam.  Just change the RRG definitions for a few things and you could instantly make heavies more appealing even at their current cost.

• Allow vehicles to contest but not capture objectives for Key Positions and Intercept the Transmissions (that way you can leave the battlefield card text alone).  The vehicle cant capture on its own but it can break ties and stop a lone enemy from scoring
• In the event of a tie between two trooper unit commanders on Key Positions and Intercept the Transmissions, instead of being contested the unit that is worth more points gets the objective (this helps out the elite special forces units against corps spam)
• Likewise, on Breakthrough, the winner is determined by the number of points worth of units that make it to an opponent's deployment zone instead of the number of unit leaders.

I don't think taking away the ability of vehicles to score Key Positions is going to do anything to help them.

[DarkTrooperZero 304]

Instead of rewriting and and changing rules which I find really annoying for game that's been out a year isn't the easiest option to just drop the cost of the 3 main offenders which have a constsnt cycle of posts about them being underpowered for the last year. Doesn't need to set a trend of messing with points it simply means new player Johnny can play with his T47 which got him into the game and not feel that uneasy feeling of it turning out to be poo.

Vader

T47

AtSt

 

[lologrelol 488]

If the designers gave impact a more powerful effect against infantry, it would solve all of this. Think about it. A massive laser turret somehow can smash through a vehicle's armour, but it doesn't make the weapon more effective against infantry???

Impact should now also have something like: dodge cannot be used against impact weapons OR for each point of impact, trooper units must re-roll a number of block results after dice modification.

Also 5 pt upgrade - +2 HP. 😁

[Qark 268]

 

On 2/18/2019 at 7:55 AM, Tokous said:

I additionally disagree with a heavy weapon unit with say DLT-19 is superior to an Airspeeder or AT-ST. I do agree it should do maybe some damage with those 2 red dice and 4 white dice but not to the extent you are speaking of ... the Airspeeder has cover 1 canceling 1 hit in the apply dodge/Cover before Impact in the modify attack dice canceling it's armor in addition. White attack dice stormtroopers aren't reliable to consider even getting a hit. Realistically you might get at least 1-2 damage in if not blocked. It still has 5-6 HP remaining. If it shot at Stormtroopers, I'm sure with 3 red 3 black dice minimum should do more damage to them than them to it even against the red defense dice.

That isn't what was being said. The point is if you max corps units you can have 6 storm troopers with DLT. Against a T-47 each one has a 50% chance of dealing 1 damage without an aim or 65% chance with an aim. Thats 3-4 expected damage out of the corps units at range 4 while the storm troopers without the DLT are still dishing out suppression or damage to what little trooper squads you have. It doesn't take much to crit fish up the extra damage to drop the thing, or bombard with veers, or activate a speeder bike. A T-47 against a good player will drop in one or two rounds of shooting while the army still operates in a way that will cause it to score objectives.

That isn't even considering the crazy good threat range of snow troopers that move-move-impact grenade. 2 squads of those guys can shut down so much of the table that either the T-47 dies or doesn't contribute where it is needed.

Edited February 19, 2019 by Qark

[Qark 268]

There are a lot of posts saying the problem is the "competitive mindset" or something similar. Competitive play is just as valid a way to enjoy the game as casual play and attending events to win is just as valid as attending to have fun (not that the two are mutually exclusive). Competitive play isn't as interesting as it could be when everyone is running similar builds. At the moment that seems to be max corps, multiple snipers, and commanders/operatives to taste. List building variety keeps things from becoming stale which can only be a good thing for the health of game.

There is nothing like a new player turning up at a local comp with some cool looking models only to get wrecked by the same build 3 games in a row and being told the units they like suck to make them think twice about coming back next tournament. That isn't the other player's fault, there are entry fees and prizes on the line so of course they are going to play to win.