From: "Geoffrey Long" To: babylon5-wars@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU Copies to: agent1@agentsofgaming.com Subject: [B5W] Thunderbolt, playtesting results Date sent: Fri, 21 Aug 1998 12:27:01 PDT Send reply to: babylon5-wars@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU Alright, just finished my 3rd battle playtesting Thunderbolts. Rules used are as follows- Jinking vs. Missles- Works as x2 like Bruce suggested. Gunners(+1 OB, +1 Init Bonus) were used. In 1st 2 battles, pulse gatling raked capital ships. In 3rd battle, it raked fighters too. Missles affecting Thrust- Tbolts played with 14 thrust, -1 per missle. BPV-Tbolts played as being 100 pts each. Analysis- For those of you out there who are afraid of swarms of T-Bolts slaughtering you with missles, fear no longer. With 2x jinking, medium/light fighters can make themselves immune to missles. Heavies can get the to-hit down to a 4. Vs. cap ships, the missles are not the greatest. DEW MAJORLY screws these things up, (like the time I fired 24 at a ship, and only 4 impacted). So missles are no longer all that they're cracked up to be. They're nice, but they are no longer sick and excessive and wrong. The gunner is an excellant idea, and he greatly improves the effectiveness of the fighter. I've won many an initiative with that little +1. He is still pretty fragile though, as 6 points of internal damage happens rather fast in a dogfight. The missles affecting thrust works well also, I actually had a reason to leave some missles behind in 1 battle. It's another unique thing that makes the t-bolt cool. Now the biggee- the Gatling Pulse Cannon. First of all- THIS THING NEEDS TO RAKE SHIPS. If it doesn't rake, the T-bolt is thouroughly USELESSW against capital ships. The missles are in limited supply, and it is not that hard to knock most of them out. Raking on fighters is an iffy- if it's true that a T-bolt vaped a Vorlon fighter, then I guess they should(I've heard Vorlons have good armor, and I doubt a 6 could penetrate). However, to prevent the T-bolt from being the end-all of fighters, make the Gatling Pulse only do d5 pulses. This brings the average penetration(for those number crunchers out there) down to a level a little above the Nial. This is still a lot, but still, I think that it would make a nice fighter. If all of these things happen, I think a T-Bolts BPV w/gunner should be somewhere around 100. maybe 90 in no missles are carried. For peopleon the mailing list- BTW, please, to keep down the number of posts on the mailing list, please playtest your suggestions before commenting how bad they are. ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com