I like the idea of the Void Stalker, and being a wannabe Eldar player I want more ships to field. But I think the best way to do it is to make sure each new ship fits in with the old. This will keep there from being a kind of 'inflation' where everything new is better than everything old. If a player wants to field the VS they should pay an adequate amount for it. In an earlier post I gave the point costs for Eldar weapons (slightly off as some sort of warp phenom truncated my torpedo listing, quickly corrected by Pavel). I will list them again, with the costs of each Eldar hull type :
The Hull values are just a combo of speed and hits. Either take the "standard" escort hull, or apply the hits/speed values, not both.
Back to the VS : The point values for the 45 cm battery should be more expensive than 30 cm guns. (I don't have to argue that with anyone, do I?) Therefore just applying my numbers to the values of the VS will give a cost less than the proper cost. This is because I am counting the 45 cm guns as 30 cm guns.
Just for the sake of the discussion, I propose to raise the cost 20 points for the additional range of the guns. This brings the cost to 430 + 30 = 450 points.
I think this is a more reasonable cost for the VS.
One commented on my earlier post brought up Chaos Theory as a determinant of value. I cannot answer this argument because I don't understand Chaos Theory except in 'pop science' terms. I think the writer meant that the writers playtested the ships to develop costs for each ship. This is all well and good. But the fact is that the ships came out with perfectly reliable mathematical models for their costs. This may mean that the playtesters did a great job, or that they just worked from a table of costs. Either way seems to imply that just using the point costs modeled will give a good cost for a ship.
I recommend giving Eldar Escorts a maximum value of 70 points of weapons, as this is the largest value shown. I really wanted to make the value 75 points to create a Pulsar Lance/1 launch bay escort (and I mean I _really_ wanted to do this). But looking at the Aconite I believe they would have put an extra battery in (for firepower 6 : cost 77). Greed makes me postulate that the points must come out to a value evenly divisible by 5, which would allow my pulsar/bomber combo, but I am less of a powergamer/munchkin/twink/jerk than I used to be. I hope. Please comment, I like to think about this stuff.
By the way, I got some good numbers for Imperial ships, but they are not 'nice' numbers. Nothing as rounded as the Eldar came out, with lots of fractions. I am going to try to work an easier system.
Pat Estes