Onager Discussion and Light B*tching Thread

@TheSockGap That's not VWC, I think?

Btw, I looked at that and it looks like the high-placing non-Onager fleets didn't actually fight any Onager fleets... But it's not the easiest list to crossref like that.

@Sabelkatten Sorry, I misread. I wasn't involved in the VWC at all so I can't be of any help there.

The interesting part of the Italia tournament happened in the 20-40 positions, I think. There is a huge amount of variety amongst players who are OKish but not great and who are really experimenting. Big range of admirals, big range of ship combos, far more interesting than what happened with the top 10.

@TheSockGap I think the SSD in 14th place is pretty interesting myself. 🙂That fleet even beat one Onager fleet.

But from a game balance viewpoint looking at the "almost-rans" isn't really useful. It's the winners that find the holes in the rules.

I find the idea of testing the Onager and Starhawk against each other but not against anything else extraordinary. When I consider the play experience of the playtesters I know about I would be very surprised if none of them said 'Jinkies, this thing's going to tear VSDs a new one'.

I'm trying not to judge the ship designers and I'm not blaming the playtesters. They may well have been given a very narrow task - test the two ships against each other and report. I just find the decision baffling. Why wouldn't you test something new against everything else that's already out there, at least once?

@duck_bird Surely these were tested against old ships as well, and not just against each other?

Also, did no one see a problem with the fact that the Starhawk is harder to kill than an SSD, without being subject to crippling?

Actual play suggest that the Seppies are holding their own against CW factions just fine. The Republic is struggling more. I expect them to do better once we see the rest of the wave 10 cards.

@Sabelkatten

Once again, I suspect the real problem here is not that the Onager is overpowered or underpriced, but that most of the rest of the Imperial arsenal is overpriced and underpowered. I think if we saw a serious rebalancing of (particularly) SSD’s and VSD’s, the Onager might cease to be the dominant force in Imperial listbuilding. I also think the Starhawk needs a rebalance far more urgently; the Rebels should not be the faction with the best small game AND the best big game... and the Onager is probably a very necessary check on that brick.

I think the real error they made with that whole wave is that giving a mere large base access to 5-6 defense tokens, including redundant Braces and Redirects, was a real mistake, especially when such a tank is not subject to the huge ship “crippled” scoring rule. My pet theory is that “crippled” rules need to be abolished for the SSD, or (possibly) adopted for all ships. I haven’t had a chance to do enough testing myself to fully endorse this, but it seems like a fair assumption, given what I’ve seen of the SSD and Starhawk in the games I’ve played thus far.

@Cpt ObVus Well, it's a while to go but... it seems that Onager fleets beat most everything, not just other imperial fleets.

EDIT: A starhawk and a Sloane list have the top spots right now. So the Onagers aren't unbeatable. It looks very much like Starhawk/Onager/mostly losers now...

So either almost all good players have chosen to go with those ships,or both of them could use a bit of a nerf.

@Sabelkatten Interesting to note the results, but really, we‘re talking about just one tournament in a meta that’s been stunted by a stunning lack of games. I feel like more data is required before anything gets nerfed. And I say that fully aware of the fact that I *personally* feel like the Starhawk probably needs an adjustment (or a rules rewrite, to make everything—or nothing—vulnerable to “crippling”). I just think one needs to be careful about mistaking opinion for fact, given the limited sample size here.

There’s a very good chance that once the metagame evolves a bit, and people start figuring out how to better fight the Onager (my money’s on MC-30’s, which seem to be the answer for just about everything these days), we will see more diversity in Imperial lists. I also think that certain ships are badly overcosted (again, SSD’s, VSD’s, possibly some others), and bringing them down to modern standards might create some negative pressure on the Onager, opening things up a bit.

There is a 4-Acclamator fleet in the game with Proximity mines on all 4. Seems to be doing OK.

I'm not sure that they will have that much of a problem. In the Italia tournament I can see that 3 of the top 15 fleets out of 60 are CW faction fleets. There are a lot of Onagers and Starhawks in the top 15 too, but there were a lot to begin with, and there weren't many CW fleets to begin with.

Come to find out they didn't have time for any of their new ship designs they had notes/drawings for, so they had to recycle and munge together a lot of existing stuff in a hurry.

Morna Kee, Marek Steele, Jendon - the holy trifecta of underpriced ship skilling squads.

@TheSockGap Morna Kee??? well never actualy played her...

@Green Squadron 3 Maarek averages 1.94 damage, twice thanks to Jendon, and Morna averages 2.25 damage thanks to her rerolls. Combined you're getting 6-7 damage a round out of them -- roughly what you'd get out of an ISD2 front arc, only it's split across 3 attacks so much harder for your opponent's defence tokens to deal with. Also Morna's a Rogue, so you only need a Gozanti to manage the whole pack.

@Bertie Wooster

I would be really interested to see some info on what's happening on the Vassal games if it's around.

@TheSockGap

The Vassal World Cup lists are at http://www.steelstrategy.com/ and the website periodically updates how each "round" is going. It's actually in round 3 now, not round 2. @Biggs just hasn't updated it yet. But somehow he had the time to analyze all the round 3 matchups. https://www.twitch.tv/videos/925077243

At the moment, the top 4 lists are AngryEwok's Ackbar, Truthiness's Cracken, Roald's Dooku, GiledPalleon's Thrawn. There is still a Sloane vs. Agate game to be played, and at least one of those two will jump into the top 4 when it's finished.

@Bertie Wooster Im having a hard time following the results from the Swiss Phase, Points arent made public and the website is a bit behind. I watched a few games online while they were being played, @Truthiness vs MandalorianMoose for example, and most games I watched were strange. That game, not taking anything away from the win, cannot be taken as a yardstick for game balance. In another game (no names) strange navigational decisions happened where a player voluntary ran their own ships over asteroids instead of using their squadrons to pick up infested field markers and continued to lose handily. Or Onagers deployed right opposite a MC30 as first ship, even though the Imperial player had deployment advantage, he then continued to be flanked by another MC30 and an AFK. Maybe some Onager players are confused how to play against MC30s, I dont know.

Not to generalize, but the stuff I saw of this VWC, which is admittedly limited, was often ... strange to me with regard to luck and play decisions.

I wish I saw some of @Roald's game, I think its amazing and great that he managed to get so far using Sepis. Would have liked to see the road to understand how he managed it.

A game Im looking forward to is Aresius vs JamesMorgan on Saturday. Gonna be exciting to see if Aresius can pull off another small miracle.

I missed you, this thread really needed more of your constructive input.

My opinion didnt much change by the Vassal results so far. Many of the lists were funky and so far I was able to trust my opinions. Note, I never said its impossible to win against an Onager, I just think it is too powerful for its point cost and that ignition is unnecessary. I will continue to voice my opinion as it is the only way I have to try and have an impact.

RealVeers' Moralo list has Squall, but BigPoppaPalpatine's does not.

Do you have a breakdown of Testbed Onager vs SD Onager?

@TheSockGap I may have missed one, but I only saw 2 Onager Star Destroyers in all of the Pods, 1 fielded by Formynder in a Motti list in Pod Screed and 1 fielded by DreadLordLoki in a Romodi list in Pod Mothma, and neither had any of MMJ. DreadLordLoki moved on to the Swiss rounds, so of the 2 Onagers without MMJ in Swiss, 1 is an Onager SD.

Yes. And I do think the Onager Star Destroyer variant is actually pretty well done. Still would like it's speed bar nerf'd to a Vic's, as the one it has really doesn't feel right; yes, lets make the artillery piece more maneuverable than many of the major combat ships in the game.

It IS, like you said, fairly easy to accomodate and work around it much of the time, but the cost balance for what you get on the Testbed is a little off. Just like the Vics have cost balance issues (and I would argue that the Pelta's also do). With MSU lists you can often dodge and outflank, and it's definitely a tasty MC30 or Demolisher snack. But it also makes it rough on traditional line ships, given it's efficiencies.

In the Adeptus Titanicus scene we had this issue with one of the small Knight units that was released; bang for buck it was AMAZEBALLS, and they ended up half-***** nerf-batting it but it even then tended to make any game where it showed up on the field skewed towards hunting it down and smashing it at all costs, because it could output more firepower at longer range than full blown "battleship" units costing several times what it did. Relatively weak to high-powered shots, but nearly impervious to "small arms" equivalent fire, so it overbalanced and skewed gameplay pretty badly (in what was until then actually a remarkably balanced GW game....). Most people just agreed to largely stop fielding the unit, as kind of a community level way to get back to having fun. Onager Test Bed is not anywhere near that bad, but it feels a little off, and I think needs some tweaks. In my own group we nerfed the firepower on the unit to what felt like a better balance, and it worked very well to make it still a dangerous unit that couldn't be ignored (basically, halved it's primary weapon attacks and stripped a few dice off it's ludicrously overpowered secondary weapon, and it just feels more like what the model should feel like).

I played against an Onager yesterday for the first time. 600pts, My opponent had a Thrawn Onager/Cymoon/VSD/Quasar fleet with a whole heap of interceptors. I had a Raddus MC 30 ldelivering an MC80 Star Cruiser, a couple of CR90s, a Pelta, a Neb B, GR75 and some A Wings.

IThe Pelta suffered 2 igniton attacks, and survived thanks to its token suite and being at Extreme range. The Onager couldn't lock down enough tokens AND do enough damage.

I found the Cymoon, which attacked my CR90s, to be far more effective against tokens, and getting damage to stick to small ships. .

I think the points are fine if you nerf it's movement and either drop salvo entirely, or replace with a redirect (useful, but generally less valuable than Salvo, which makes little sense on a partially staffed prototype/testbed).

@AzraelBlackstar I'd be cautious about adding a second redirect. VSDs and ISDs do well with their second redirect which can be a pain to lock down if you want to go after the brace. That big front shield would also make the second redirect more valuable, especially if you choose to add auxiliary shield tech and run 3 shields on either side as well as 5 at the front.

Giving it the same token suite as the Quasar keeps it interesting, I think.

Less happy about cutting the speed on it. I'm thinking of prototype warships which have their 'standard' engines in, and they have those because they are an integral part of the ship and you can't just swap them in and out. Speed 3 (Imperial standard for modern front line war ships like Gladiator and ISD) isn't unreasonable for a prototype ship.

@TheSockGap Yeah, which is a little lazy from a design perspective, as it is an obvious set of stats/abilities that can provide flavour between versions, in addition to firepower per arc, add-on slots, and points.

There is an argument made, partly validly I think, that there's already quite a lot to remember and you'd forget which variant you were running that had different tokens etc.

I am not convinced by the argument. We already have a game with 20+ ship classes with 40+ different variations, each one of which can have 9 different upgrade slots, each one of which might take half a dozen different upgrades.

We have to keep track of 30 or more variables during a typical turn and a hundred Byzantine rules.

The complexity of the game is such that a few changes to defence tokens between models, especially when you can see the actual tokens on the table in front of you, will make no difference.

@TheSockGap Yeah, I agree that it's a nonsensical argument that we can't keep track of variants having altered speed charts or defense tokens. 40k has immensely more to keep track of, and near constantly edition and faq changes and new meta-rattling releases essentially monthly, for the last several DECADES, and people keep up on it easily enough. SW Armada is a much tighter game, where subtle differences in ships and squadrons and upgrades are really felt and have far more impact, and its hard from a game design perspective to hand wave away something like optionally varying defense tokens or speed charts; we do it with upgrades all the time, so it's already mechanically existent in the game. I would like to see it where appropriate to add flavour and make you have to think more about the differences between variants, and to better represent things like a prototype not having the best combat-rated drives or defensive suites (it's a testbed/prototype). Sometimes they do, like the ridiculously overpowered, basically war-ending red B-wing prototype from Rebels (the argument they would not have been cost effective is nonsense given their immensely disproportional firepower. Was just bad writing...).