"Full Thrust Sa'Vasku rules tweaks" Topic

If there's one xeno fleet in Full Thrust that really causes people complaints about game balance, it's the Sa'Vasku. New article on the blog with suggested house rules for fixing the Spiders and making them more enjoyable to play with:

link

I seem to have been painting a lot of things orange in the period where I did the ships in the last couple of posts. Must have been near Halloween. :)

orange is good! A nice and a little bit huge fleet. Complaints are normal in front of that!!!

Huge is relative – very small formation compared to my ESU and Phalon collections. I've since sold the Spiders anyway, with an eye towards doing a new one in a different scheme in the future. Never was 100% happy with that paint job.

Those look like good changes, I've never actually fielded Sa'Vasku but I may have to give them a go with those rules.

Robert

Some interesting changes that are similar to the last updates suggested on certain other discussion groups – I do agree about the Lance Pods, but the Spicules seems a little overpowering in some ways.

The screen and spicule changes are probably the most controversial, but those are also arguably the most useless S'V systems in FB2, so whatever small help they can get is needed.

S'V screens are horribly inefficient – between the node and the required power they require twice the mass as human systems to generate the same level of protection. You can leave them unpowered, sure, but that leaves you with 5% dead mass on the ship, or 10% if you have two nodes. The change doesn't help with level 1 screen emulation, but it does let you jam a ton of power through one node to get level 2 screens in a pinch – and at "only" 150% the mass a human screen would have needed (allowing for power generators). Might even tempt the S'V to put power into defense instead of dumping almost everything in attack or movement from turn to turn.

The spicules are inefficient too, and the change doesn't help that any, but the option to buy extra shots in emergencies might make them viable compared to just using interceptor pods. As written in FB2, most S'V would be better off with no spicules at all – better to find the mass and power and extra biomass to mount and use a pod launcher instead, especially since pods can help cover friendly ships nearby as well, making the whole fleet tougher.