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1EFQ - Should you have to be in Ops to return fire on a Nor?
Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 3:34 pm
by MidnightLich
Welcome to today's
First Edition Friday Question, where you get a chance to answer questions that will help shape the future of
First Edition. If you'd like to catch up on previous entries, here's a list of all of my previous Friday Questions:
It's Friday and that means it's time for another question. You guys came out in force last week, and thanks to you, you'll be seeing Excalbian Lincoln and Excalbian Kahless in
Project Londo when it comes out later this year. It was a commanding decision, with 85% of respondents preferring the consistent naming to the more natural naming. We really appreciate your votes and your discussion.
Today, I have the first of two Nor-related questions for you, straight from the team working experimental design
Project Babylon. This team, led by Paddy Tye (KazonPADD), is doing painstaking research into Nors and looking for ways we can help them and reduce their overall complexity. In order to facilitate that research, we want your thoughts on two potential rules changes. The first is around using the Station's WEAPONS. Here's what the glossary currently says about doing so:
Glossary wrote:You cannot use your ship's or facility's WEAPONS for any purpose unless it is uncloaked, unphased, and undocked, its WEAPONS are greater than zero, and you have a matching personnel aboard. (If the facility is A Nor, the matching personnel must be in Ops.)
Here's the question, as worded by Paddy himself:
KazonPADD wrote:So our first question is: Does being in Ops really matter? If Sisko were alone on DS9 and was busy trying to fix the reactor core when suddenly the Cardassians attack, would he not be able to order the computer to return fire from any location?
What do you think? Would this change make sense to you? Do you think it would matter? It would eliminate a rule, which is generally good - but there are often other factors involved, and that's why we're turning to you. Share your thoughts with us in a reply, and let us know if this is a rule that's hurt you - or saved you - in past games. And let us know if it's something you'd be okay with going away, and if that makes sense.
Have a great weekend.
-crp
Re: 1EFQ - Should you have to be in Ops to return fire on a
Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 3:40 pm
by AllenGould
The Nor rules are clunky for a reason - Nors give a wide variety of bonuses, and letting you shoot from Ore Processing means you need one less personnel on board. Ditto the walking rules - the intent was that one personnel gets to do one thing.
Re: 1EFQ - Should you have to be in Ops to return fire on a
Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 4:31 pm
by BCSWowbagger
AllenGould wrote:The Nor rules are clunky for a reason - Nors give a wide variety of bonuses, and letting you shoot from Ore Processing means you need one less personnel on board.
That may well be why Decipher did it. Do you think it still makes a difference in 2020? (Did it ever?) Or, more directly:
has it ever made a difference for you in one of your games?
Re: 1EFQ - Should you have to be in Ops to return fire on a
Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 4:40 pm
by Armus
BCSWowbagger wrote:AllenGould wrote:The Nor rules are clunky for a reason - Nors give a wide variety of bonuses, and letting you shoot from Ore Processing means you need one less personnel on board.
That may well be why Decipher did it. Do you think it still makes a difference in 2020? (Did it ever?) Or, more directly: has it ever made a difference for you in one of your games?
Careful, James, you ARE asking that of the original purveyor of the infamous
Death Star 9 deck. You might not get the answer you expect...
Re: 1EFQ - Should you have to be in Ops to return fire on a
Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 4:42 pm
by jjh
I favor anything that simplifies nors.
Re: 1EFQ - Should you have to be in Ops to return fire on a
Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 5:49 pm
by BCSWowbagger
Armus wrote:BCSWowbagger wrote:AllenGould wrote:The Nor rules are clunky for a reason - Nors give a wide variety of bonuses, and letting you shoot from Ore Processing means you need one less personnel on board.
That may well be why Decipher did it. Do you think it still makes a difference in 2020? (Did it ever?) Or, more directly: has it ever made a difference for you in one of your games?
Careful, James, you ARE asking that of the original purveyor of the infamous Death Star 9 deck. You might not get the answer you expect...
Oh, I know exactly whom I'm asking.
It's the edge cases that get ya when you're working on things like this, and Allen knows a few edge cases!
Re: 1EFQ - Should you have to be in Ops to return fire on a
Posted: Fri Aug 21, 2020 11:03 pm
by AllenGould
BCSWowbagger wrote:Armus wrote:
Careful, James, you ARE asking that of the original purveyor of the infamous Death Star 9 deck. You might not get the answer you expect...
Oh, I know exactly whom I'm asking. It's the edge cases that get ya when you're working on things like this, and Allen knows a few edge cases!
Bearing in mind that I was using
Establish Tractor Lock which also expects a personnel in Ops... I don't think anyone was ever crazy enough to try picking a fight with a Nor that was aggressively pumping weapons up. So, I'm probably a bad person to ask because I had other reasons to have a body there. But for normal use (where you're not starting fights with your Nor), if you didn't need a body there, why would you keep one there? Sysco 197 and Automated Security System do a better job of keeping people out of Ops than Joe Redshirt. (Assuming anyone even bothers trying to commandeer - so few functions on a Nor care about the owner, after all.)
Re: 1EFQ - Should you have to be in Ops to return fire on a
Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2020 1:06 am
by Ausgang
I wasn't even aware that this rule exists, but as far as I remember it would have never been relevant so far. A heavily armed deck that aims to blow up your facilities would just scoff at 6 weapons anyways.
Armus wrote:
Careful, James, you ARE asking that of the original purveyor of the infamous Death Star 9 deck. You might not get the answer you expect...
Curious, I'd love to get more details about that one
Re: 1EFQ - Should you have to be in Ops to return fire on a
Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2020 9:52 am
by Rachmaninoff
I don't know about Allen's version of the deck but my brother built a Death Star 9 deck back in the day... for whatever reason he had been obsessed with the idea of a "Nor attack" deck ever since DS9 (like, seed multiple Nors with only Ops and a docking site and then use Reaction Control Thrusters to group them together at the same mission and blast at whatever happened to be there) but it never turned into an actual deck.
When Blaze of Glory released he finally got his chance. His deck played a bunch of Defense System Upgrades on DS9, then used Reaction Control Thrusters to roam around the Bajor region blowing up anything he could (including a few Borg Ships as a win condition). Draw/play engine was lots of Parallax Arguers and Kivas, if you let him play an event he'd either get another Defense System Upgrade or a Kivas to draw more Arguers and events. Dilemmas were lots of things like Cytherians/Conundrum to try and force ships into the Bajor region. Didn't win all that often but incredibly hilarious to play.
Re: 1EFQ - Should you have to be in Ops to return fire on a
Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2020 10:37 am
by AllenGould
Rachmaninoff wrote:I don't know about Allen's version of the deck but my brother built a Death Star 9 deck back in the day... for whatever reason he had been obsessed with the idea of a "Nor attack" deck ever since DS9 (like, seed multiple Nors with only Ops and a docking site and then use Reaction Control Thrusters to group them together at the same mission and blast at whatever happened to be there) but it never turned into an actual deck.
When Blaze of Glory released he finally got his chance. His deck played a bunch of Defense System Upgrades on DS9, then used Reaction Control Thrusters to roam around the Bajor region blowing up anything he could (including a few Borg Ships as a win condition). Draw/play engine was lots of Parallax Arguers and Kivas, if you let him play an event he'd either get another Defense System Upgrade or a Kivas to draw more Arguers and events. Dilemmas were lots of things like Cytherians/Conundrum to try and force ships into the Bajor region. Didn't win all that often but incredibly hilarious to play.
That's pretty close to my version - only things I don't see are the
TIE Bajoran Interceptors (for style and to be a valid target to Hail opponent's ships) and Establish Tractor Lock (to grab and hold your opponent's ships until you're ready to blow them up).
OTF rules ruin the deck outright (and so did Writ, to be fair), which is a shame because it was never exactly tearing up the meta, y'know? (Closest my version came to "serious play" was in a Regionals pre-game to decide which Ambassador was running the tournament - long story - and I played it there and lost to a slightly less janky Klingon deck.)
Re: 1EFQ - Should you have to be in Ops to return fire on a
Posted: Sat Aug 22, 2020 12:11 pm
by Takket
no. as long as you have a matching personnel aboard, which is all a ship asks for, the "Bobs" in Ops should be able to fire phasers if need be.
and for the record, I think "Death Star 9" is my all time favorite name for a deck LOL
Re: 1EFQ - Should you have to be in Ops to return fire on a
Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2020 10:33 am
by Hobie
If having a Nor be considered "staffed" is important, then I think that should require a matching personnel in Ops. Which would then include being able to return fire being tied to that. Morn hanging out in Quark's Bar on DS9 or a VIP in guest quarters should not be able to return fire just because they are on the station.
With how quickly the game can produce a "fleet" of ships with over 32 weapons anyways, I would think improvements to a Nor's defense is more important than its ability to shoot back on its own. In all the episodes of Deep Space 9 where the station was under threat of attack, the issue was "how long can we hold out", not "can we destroy the attackers outright".
Re: 1EFQ - Should you have to be in Ops to return fire on a
Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2020 9:41 pm
by DarkSabre
Having personnel in ops is the same as having a person onboard a ship. Its how a Nor is staffed.
I'll keep echoing this thought: Why are we trying to make Nors less complicated? I don't see how they are complicated at all. If you play a Nor you accept the situation that are Nors.
Re: 1EFQ - Should you have to be in Ops to return fire on a
Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2020 10:06 pm
by Orbin
DarkSabre wrote:Having personnel in ops is the same as having a person onboard a ship. Its how a Nor is staffed.
I'll keep echoing this thought: Why are we trying to make Nors less complicated? I don't see how they are complicated at all. If you play a Nor you accept the situation that are Nors.
I'm not advocating one way or another, I just wanted to point out that you may have to deal with Nors when you don't play one since your opponent may have one, so saying that if you play a Nor you accept the rules complexity is not fair to the opponent who doesn't want to deal with it, but has to because their opponent chose to run a Nor.
- James M
Re: 1EFQ - Should you have to be in Ops to return fire on a
Posted: Tue Aug 25, 2020 10:23 pm
by AllenGould
Orbin wrote:DarkSabre wrote:Having personnel in ops is the same as having a person onboard a ship. Its how a Nor is staffed.
I'll keep echoing this thought: Why are we trying to make Nors less complicated? I don't see how they are complicated at all. If you play a Nor you accept the situation that are Nors.
I'm not advocating one way or another, I just wanted to point out that you may have to deal with Nors when you don't play one since your opponent may have one, so saying that if you play a Nor you accept the rules complexity is not fair to the opponent who doesn't want to deal with it, but has to because their opponent chose to run a Nor.
- James M
Mind, as the opponent you can just treat that Nor as "a very elaborate facility" and otherwise ignore it. There's no obligation to engage with it beyond possibly blowing it up because it offended you.