As the thread name implies, IN's lances are ridiculously underpowered.

This includes light lances, ordinary lances and even heavy/super havy lances (although to a lesser extent). They deal hilariously low damage EVEN to enemy escort ships! For all my time in the BFGA2, I haven't seen a single Gothic-class cruiser in a player's hands. And I do understand why. In fact, I understand that very well, because this state of affairs persists from the time I played the first game. Like then, like now lances serve more like a decoration that a valuable weapon. As a direct result of this, lance-based classes of ships, such as the infamous Gothic-class, are highly unpopular. Lances, in their present state, simply can not compete with raw damage output of macrocannons and other weapons.

I am suggesting to significantly increase lances' effectiveness against all range of escort ships, as well as improve their overall damage output, perhaps even at the cost of further increasing their already low rate of fire. The situation presents us with a choice: we either do that, or we leave lance ships, such as the Gothic, or part-lance ships, such as the Lunar dead for players - a toys to be found only at hands of AI opponents. Simply "making them "cheaper" did not work well in the first game, and so it does not work now. There are very few people who'd be willing to risk the meta to try and win with failing and thus cheaper units, because they know that they will have to face competetive fleets, consiting of well-balanced and beloved favorites, such as the Dauntless (Mk.2), the Overlord, the Dominator, the Mars, the Retribution etc.

In my opinion, lances have a lot of unrevealed potential. But we need to test that in order to find out. My suggestion is simple: increase damage output (to at least rreliably kill off enemy escorts) and crit chance, but decrease rate of fire.
Just don't leave lances to be practically useless, as they were in the first game.

I can agree that now that the armour is a flat % damage reduction instead of % chance to mitigate all damage, the lances feel much less powerful. As it is, a Lunar class cruiser, the work horse of the Imperium has little more firepower than a light cruiser, and Ghotic even less than a light cruiser. Someone could take a look at this.

Yes and no. For starters most ships will have 3 times as many macros as lances. Looking at only the base DPS this means that against a 67 armor target the macro ship would only do better within 4500 range. Against 83 armor there is no contest.

As for the escorts its not that lances have gotten worse so much that the health of all ships is doubled. Meaning that escorts aren't destroyed as fast.

Finally, the real reason why people aren't taking lances except for long range is because the reload stance and AP Ammunition upgrade cause macro ships to do 3x as much damage as a lance equivalent within 4500 range.

I actually played a lance-heavy Imperium fleet in my first battles, as I didn't have any good skills to buff macros. I didn't lose too hard, and I won a few times. With increased range and accuracy order you won't do too bad, especially if you have cobras widowmakers, augur probes and increased spotting range. Makes it very difficult for enemies to stay or get out of range. It's definitely not the strongest fleet in the game or even for the Imperium, but it's ok.

There are no "real reasons" why people don't take lance ships, as there is no mystery. But there is one reason, and it's plain and simple: lance ships fail at killing enemies.

It is not about "range" and "value of re-made orders/stances", because those were updated, but the situation seemingly hasn't changed a bit. Apparently, it's all about lances' inability to deal with enemy targets in reasonable (and by "reasonable" I mean short enough) amounts of time.

What should have been a heavy/crit-hitter turned out to be a laser pointer. Again. And yes, I am aware of balance concerns related to this subject, and I do agree that lances should not be overpowered weapons of doom and destruction, but at the same time, lances should become a lot more useful than they used to be in the first game and than they are now.

And lances could be useful... If they would deal additional damage to escort-level ships (and here I mean massive damage to escorts), as well as deal additional damage shields of all kinds, thus becoming a dedicated anti-shield/anti-escort weapons. That would bring some sense into choosing lances over something else.

Additionally, in my opinion, lances' damage to hull should be increased. My bold estimation is that such damage boost should be like +10-15% to the current hull damage value (that is WITHOUT decrease of RoF), or +25-30% (WITH signficiant decrease of RoF). Maybe such changes would help to bring these long-dead weapons back to most players' arsenals.

Besides, I doubt that something horrible would happen if Devs would just try it during the 2nd Beta (upcoming in January), before the release.

you have your lore reversed
lances are weak vs shields

great vs armor tho, if necrons whernt so pathetic in this version people would have brought more
besides, lances are pretty good, i tend to mix in atleast a few in my mechanicus and its the practically the same ship
just need to get shields down first

@ashardalon

In my experience, the IN's lances fail even to destroy damn escort ships. Cruisers' (or less) lances are barely scratching enemy (escorts') hulls, whereas macrobatteries reliably inflict a lot of damage. Only superheavy lances seem to be somehow effective, but only as support weapons. So far, I haven't seen a single non-Chaos/Eldar fleet that heavily relied on lances, in Adamantium League. Not. A. Single. One.

Also, I'd rather prefer you not to tell me what I have "reversed" without backing it up by some solid arguments from that particular field (like particular rulebook/Codex articles) - that's the first. Second, I did not call lances "great shield killers", but I suggested to make them better anti-shield weapons, to give them purpose. As you might know, this game is very different from the tabletop game and from the rest of Warhammer 40K, so another mild difference - in favour of better balance and fun, might be a welcome one. In any way, it seems worth a try to me.

@shaftoe said in Imperial Navy's lances are underpowered:

thus becoming a dedicated anti-shield/anti-escort weapons. That would bring some sense into choosing lances over something else.

@shaftoe said in Imperial Navy's lances are underpowered:

Second, I did not call lances "great shield killers"

go ask any old TT player in what order they fired their weapons
and they will all tell you macros first to break shields, then lances to cut into armor
same in any novel, they will use macros to crush voids then cut into the hull with lances
and completely reversing lore is not a mild difference
its shitting on 40k
nor would it add fun to make a weapon good vs armor and shields and just everything

but its such a shocker that lance focused fleet focus on lances and macro focused ones focus on macros
its almost as if thats kindof in the faction
if necrons and marines where scary in any way people would use lances
as can be noticed by a pure overlord fleet that it takes considerable time to kill necrons even in their current pathetic state

Lances are fired after macro battery fire in TT and lore because they are high damage dealers, not because they are bad in anyway at overloading void shields so it makes no sense to fire them at void shields unless necessary. Ghotic class cruisers are renowned as escort ship killers for this very reason because they can kill an escort in a single broadside including their shields.

I wonder why lances reduce the armour to 25% instead of ignoring it completely. Armour now is a % damage reduction so it doesn't make any sense for a weapon that punches through most ships both way in and out to have a 25% damage reduction. Just remove the de-buff and voila, lances are more viable again.

@Ashardalon Actually in tabletop shields had the same armor as the hull of the ship. The reason you fired macros first in tabletop was due to hits on shields making hit markers that lowered accuracy for subsequent hits, but lances always aimed perfectly.

@Drakki I think they are keeping the armor reduction to 25% for lances in the game so that they can keep the changing of ship values to a minimum. After all a lot of the ships and their weapons once you calculate their raw DPS end up close to or exactly the same value as the tabletop equivalent.

Some lances do need a buff, For example the Imp Apocalypse Battleship has 6 Macro and 6 Lance dps.
Guess what also has the same dps but costs over 100 points less?
Chaos BC Archeron also has 6 macro and 6 Lance (and has more range than Apoc!!)

Gothic in general has felt underperforming and simply does not stack up to similar cost cruisers.
My suggestion would be to increase Imperial lance battery (not turrets) damage from 12 to 16
Thus taking the Gothic up to 5.5 Lance dps and Apoc up to 8 Lance dps.
Personaly I would also apply the Lance battery buff to Mechnicus.

@jaheit said in Imperial Navy's lances are underpowered:

@Ashardalon Actually in tabletop shields had the same armor as the hull of the ship. The reason you fired macros first in tabletop was due to hits on shields making hit markers that lowered accuracy for subsequent hits, but lances always aimed perfectly.

I have browsed original bfg rules and the 2010 FAQ to find something about shields having armour and didn't find anything. Could you provide a source? Another matter is, it doesn't matter if they had armour because on a roll of 4+ a lance weapon ignores armour anyway and hits the target as long as its in rage.

@dire_venom said in Imperial Navy's lances are underpowered:

Some lances do need a buff, For example the Imp Apocalypse Battleship has 6 Macro and 6 Lance dps.
Guess what also has the same dps but costs over 100 points less?
Chaos BC Archeron also has 6 macro and 6 Lance (and has more range than Apoc!!)

Gothic in general has felt underperforming and simply does not stack up to similar cost cruisers.
My suggestion would be to increase Imperial lance battery (not turrets) damage from 12 to 16
Thus taking the Gothic up to 5.5 Lance dps and Apoc up to 8 Lance dps.
Personaly I would also apply the Lance battery buff to Mechnicus.

So like I said, make it more true to the tabletop by making them ignore ALL armour. The 25% damage reduction on all lance weapons I don't understand why its in the game while all other aspects mostly try to keep to the tabletop On the other hand someone could say that they did hit on a 4+ in TT and in the game they ALWAYS hit so its kind of a point of debate.

Still "standard" macro gun does 18 dmg per 12 seconds minus armour, while a lance does 12 per 12 seconds -25%.Doesn't reflect the strategic value and incredible destruction power lance weapons in the TT at all.

@drakki said in Imperial Navy's lances are underpowered:

Thank you for insight.

Regrettably, in BFGA 1 and in BFGA 2 Gothic-class cruisers fail to properly kill enemy ships, as they (apparently) did in the tabletop game. I would really like to see it changed. It's a shame when some units are dead by default.

I think that all lances of all fleets need a buff. When I played chaos with 3 Acherons and 2 retaliators, I could do well against players who didn't try to close the distance, but it took so damn long to destroy even a single cruiser and I had 3 battle cruisers focusing fire on it for about 2-3 minutes! Now, whenever I played against an opponent that understood my tactic, I got absolutely slaughtered.They simply walked in and MAYBE by the time they were able to return fire one of their shields was down. If you pick lances right now, you are simply asking to lose the game. They need a big big buff.

@aram_thehead There's a reason chaos are one of the top fleets. Maybe you're just not using them right? Chaos lances murder almost everything.

@Aram_theHead Take your opinion and shove it back down your throat please.

@solaire I am certainly not the best player, I admit it, but to me the damage output of chaos lances seemed really low. What are the ships with lances that "murder everything"? I thought that the acheron was the most cost effective lance based ship but wasn't really useful in practice. For example once I was using (if I remember correctly) 2 acherons against a single necron ship and the necron ship was actually gaining hp instead of losing them. Given how slowly Necron hp replenish, this gives you an Idea of what I'm talking about.

@brohanbroski really? Is it that offensive?

@aram_thehead I believe what you encountered there is a bug. There's a really weird Necron bug about where they convert any damage into HP instead. I managed to make my enemy's Cairn tombship reach 9,000hp by ramming them once. Still not sure exactly what causes it.