From: Leonard Farnsworth To: "'b5w'" , "'playtest'" Subject: [B5W]: Minbari jammers Date sent: Mon, 6 Jul 1998 08:56:58 -0000 Send reply to: babylon5-wars@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU >Also, I would like to hear more reports on the proposal that jammers simply make lock-ons impossible but have no other effect (i.e., you double the range penalty against the Minbari ship but otherwise treat EW as normal). This sounds like a good solution to the balance problem that seems like a big chain around the Minbari's neck. (Damn it, we HAVE to put the jammers in there. They were on the show. It's the play balance that's hard.) --A1 < Over the weekend we playtested this jammer rule. The Minbari had a Sharlin and 6 Nials. EA had 3 Hyperions and 8 Starfuries. In point terms this was a almost exactly even fight (EA had 1 point over the Minbari). The battle it fell on tactics and dice. The Minbari player had bad luck (he lost initiative every turn after the first with almost every ship) and bad planning (has anyone else found that sustained fire is really totally useless). He still managed to burn the front off one Hyperion. EA had good luck (I admit it, it was luck) and managed to burn most of the weapons and thruster off the port side of the Sharlin. The fighters pretty well fragged each other or fell to luck pulse cannon hits (when you need a 5 to hit and still blow up 2 Nials it's luck.) Analysis: First off I'm a little biased since this was (at least most recently) my idea :). Minbari jammers, as is obvious, become less effective at close range, especially against weapons like heavy lasers. An EA ship, using all EW offensively can hit a Minbari ship if it can get lasers into arc (and if you win initiative and have 3 ships this isn't terribly complicated). Still at medium and longer ranges I was looking at to hit penalties in the -12 to -30 range, with DEW on top of that the Minbari ship was very hard to hit and if he had won initiative even once I doubt I would have gotten as close as I did with as many guns as I did. And if he hadn't tried sustained fire I expect I would have lost one of my Hyperions much earlier on... All in all the battle seemed balanced on the points. I made the game much more tactically interesting then previous fights against the Minbari. I spent a lot of time trying to decide which ship would try to take a shot and go all Offensive and which one would hold back on defense. Does this accurately reflect the show... I don't know. It's been my experience that everyone has a different opinion about what happens in the show and, as we all know, it changes from episode to episode. I think it more accurately reflects things then the current system because in the current system ships fighting the Minabri are using almost all their EW defensively. Sure you can't hit the Minbari, but they can't hit you either. As a thought, if someone else would like to try this battle, with different luck and different tactics and see how it goes I'd be interested in seeing the results.