As the author of this, thank you so much for the in-depth review and kind words! I had someone point me at this just today. (And I saw that DISTORION GENERATOR is still a typo on the table of contents...and two of the fighters on the CVS are misnumbered in your copy). To get a reasonably accurate comparison of total shield strength, assume every outer shield box is about 1.75 regular SFB shield boxes, and the inner shields are 1 SFB shield boxes. Shield reinforcement is less efficient, and there's no general shield reinforcement as well; you do get faster repairs. We tried very hard to make sure that all the outer shields are two rows/columns to make calculating VRF easy; if you damage shield boxes in pairs, the VRF is equal to the height or width of the outer shield. Warp Tuned Lasers versus plasma are one of the hidden weaknesses of Magellanic ships. (Plus, LMC ships have a lot more of their firepower ratio in heavy weapons than Alpha Octant ships do, so the ships are a little bit slower, which makes plasma hits more common, and Warp Tuned Lasers are much worse at converting energy into reduced plasma damage than a phaser is...) Twin Lasers are two Light Lasers in one box; it is "Like a phaser-G that sucks" -- except it takes 3 repair points to fix. And the TAG is a big boost to Uthiki firepower because of all their Twin Lasers. What playtesters grumped about 18 years ago was "EPTs are useless! Plasma is hosed!" -- except if you don't use EPTs, plasma works juuuust fine. The LMC ships have a much harder time running away, and they have an even worse time phasering down plasma. SC 4 ships have 10 box inner shields, and SC 3 ships have 20 box inner shields. An important part of the Plasma-E is that it's a 2-turn arming cycle...and it's a weak plasma because LMC ships are weak against plasma (and launches aftward on Eneen ships). There are no SC 2 units in the LMC -- that's not a DN, that's NDD for New Destroyer. :) The Baduvai CS having a command rating of 9, combined with the Fleet Restrictions, is a *huge* local advantage. It can bring an extra CW to a fight compared to the other two powers. The Eneen have a "pseudo overload" by centerlining someone at long(er) range -- 20 or 12. Or when you get too close to someone. Usually, you use one pair of NBs, turn off, and fire the other side while the first ones cool off, and launch plasma when you need to buy some range. If you're looking for "decent matchups with Alpha Octant ships" do CWs versus CWs. :) LMC ships SC 4 ships are harder to kill than their Alpha octant counterparts. If you're used to Frigate Evaporation as a baseline, Magellanic SC 4 ships seem underpriced.
Hi Ken, thanks so much for watching, and for this super-informative comment! I've pinned it to the top of the comments section here so that other viewers will be more likely to see it :) First off, my apologies for messing up the DN/NDD thing! Not having SC2 ships is one of the hallmarks of the LMC, so I shouldn't have made that mistake. That'll teach me to do long review videos after long days at work. Thanks too for discussing the weakness of LMC to plasma. Something that comes across very strongly in this module is that each new system/rule was carefully constructed, and its interaction with ships elsewhere in the game universe was thought about. Thanks to that, I've seen a number of player campaigns on the ADB boards using LMC empires, because they can actually fit in quite well. You managed a difficult balancing act, given all the new systems at play in C5, which is impressive work! Something else I should've mentioned in the video itself is that, unlike Omega, the three main players in the LMC are basically campaign-ready. With such a comprehensive selection of ships, players can dive right in to facing off against Alpha empires, or whomever, whereas in Omega we may never see any of those empires become fully campaign-ready in our lifetimes. This is another big incentive to invest in C5, IMO. Finally, thanks for the tip -- I'll definitely try out some CW vs CW duels between Alpha and the LMC :) Thanks again for watching -- I hope some folks will be inspired to give the LMC a try after watching this. At some point I'm going to do a video on the FC playtest pack for the LMC as well; hopefully that will expand out into a proper expansion someday, but given that X-Ships Attack is about a decade late at this point I suspect I'll need to be patient for that one :)
Due to moving on to my own company, I am only vaguely aware that the LMC Playtest Pack exists for Fed Commander. I've briefly been in contact with Gary Carney in the opening phases of it existing, told him that ADB had asked me not to get involved, and wished him luck. I'm looking forward to your review of it, as I've not seen the final version. When working on an IP you don't own (like Star Trek or the Star Fleet Universe), you must be careful of respecting the IP owner's wishes and intentions. When they say "leave this alone..." You leave it alone.
You are correct! I learned a *lot* about game design over the roughly six years this product was tuned and playtested. It was a huge challenge making something that fit within SFB, but wasn't just "Yeah, we tweaked some numbers and now a Photon Torpedo is called a Muonic Blasterbeam." A lot of things that didn't work in developing C5 ended up in my morgue of "Well, that didn't fit SFB, but...." ideas, and got pulled out later. Again, thank you for the kind words!
As the author of this, thank you so much for the in-depth review and kind words! I had someone point me at this just today.
(And I saw that DISTORION GENERATOR is still a typo on the table of contents...and two of the fighters on the CVS are misnumbered in your copy).
To get a reasonably accurate comparison of total shield strength, assume every outer shield box is about 1.75 regular SFB shield boxes, and the inner shields are 1 SFB shield boxes. Shield reinforcement is less efficient, and there's no general shield reinforcement as well; you do get faster repairs. We tried very hard to make sure that all the outer shields are two rows/columns to make calculating VRF easy; if you damage shield boxes in pairs, the VRF is equal to the height or width of the outer shield.
Warp Tuned Lasers versus plasma are one of the hidden weaknesses of Magellanic ships. (Plus, LMC ships have a lot more of their firepower ratio in heavy weapons than Alpha Octant ships do, so the ships are a little bit slower, which makes plasma hits more common, and Warp Tuned Lasers are much worse at converting energy into reduced plasma damage than a phaser is...) Twin Lasers are two Light Lasers in one box; it is "Like a phaser-G that sucks" -- except it takes 3 repair points to fix. And the TAG is a big boost to Uthiki firepower because of all their Twin Lasers.
What playtesters grumped about 18 years ago was "EPTs are useless! Plasma is hosed!" -- except if you don't use EPTs, plasma works juuuust fine. The LMC ships have a much harder time running away, and they have an even worse time phasering down plasma.
SC 4 ships have 10 box inner shields, and SC 3 ships have 20 box inner shields.
An important part of the Plasma-E is that it's a 2-turn arming cycle...and it's a weak plasma because LMC ships are weak against plasma (and launches aftward on Eneen ships).
There are no SC 2 units in the LMC -- that's not a DN, that's NDD for New Destroyer. :) The Baduvai CS having a command rating of 9, combined with the Fleet Restrictions, is a *huge* local advantage. It can bring an extra CW to a fight compared to the other two powers.
The Eneen have a "pseudo overload" by centerlining someone at long(er) range -- 20 or 12. Or when you get too close to someone. Usually, you use one pair of NBs, turn off, and fire the other side while the first ones cool off, and launch plasma when you need to buy some range.
If you're looking for "decent matchups with Alpha Octant ships" do CWs versus CWs. :) LMC ships SC 4 ships are harder to kill than their Alpha octant counterparts. If you're used to Frigate Evaporation as a baseline, Magellanic SC 4 ships seem underpriced.
Hi Ken, thanks so much for watching, and for this super-informative comment! I've pinned it to the top of the comments section here so that other viewers will be more likely to see it :)
First off, my apologies for messing up the DN/NDD thing! Not having SC2 ships is one of the hallmarks of the LMC, so I shouldn't have made that mistake. That'll teach me to do long review videos after long days at work.
Thanks too for discussing the weakness of LMC to plasma. Something that comes across very strongly in this module is that each new system/rule was carefully constructed, and its interaction with ships elsewhere in the game universe was thought about. Thanks to that, I've seen a number of player campaigns on the ADB boards using LMC empires, because they can actually fit in quite well. You managed a difficult balancing act, given all the new systems at play in C5, which is impressive work!
Something else I should've mentioned in the video itself is that, unlike Omega, the three main players in the LMC are basically campaign-ready. With such a comprehensive selection of ships, players can dive right in to facing off against Alpha empires, or whomever, whereas in Omega we may never see any of those empires become fully campaign-ready in our lifetimes. This is another big incentive to invest in C5, IMO.
Finally, thanks for the tip -- I'll definitely try out some CW vs CW duels between Alpha and the LMC :)
Thanks again for watching -- I hope some folks will be inspired to give the LMC a try after watching this. At some point I'm going to do a video on the FC playtest pack for the LMC as well; hopefully that will expand out into a proper expansion someday, but given that X-Ships Attack is about a decade late at this point I suspect I'll need to be patient for that one :)
Due to moving on to my own company, I am only vaguely aware that the LMC Playtest Pack exists for Fed Commander.
I've briefly been in contact with Gary Carney in the opening phases of it existing, told him that ADB had asked me not to get involved, and wished him luck.
I'm looking forward to your review of it, as I've not seen the final version.
When working on an IP you don't own (like Star Trek or the Star Fleet Universe), you must be careful of respecting the IP owner's wishes and intentions. When they say "leave this alone..."
You leave it alone.
You are correct! I learned a *lot* about game design over the roughly six years this product was tuned and playtested. It was a huge challenge making something that fit within SFB, but wasn't just "Yeah, we tweaked some numbers and now a Photon Torpedo is called a Muonic Blasterbeam."
A lot of things that didn't work in developing C5 ended up in my morgue of "Well, that didn't fit SFB, but...." ideas, and got pulled out later.
Again, thank you for the kind words!