Does the arborec-GF can produce other units than Ground Forces?

On the race sheet stands "units"....

Arborec GF units are not limited to produceing only GF units they can produce any type of unit.

Ok.

The Strategy Production (and the second ability) allows to built in systems containing a space dock.

Does that include the arborec Ground forces?

I would say no....

Dogma's question has been submitted for FAQ-age.

I'd agree, they'll probably say no.

How do you "submit for FAQ-age"?

Yehoshua said:

They can only produce GFs, how would they grow ships? Makes no sense.

read the fluff on back of the race sheets. think of the ground forces as representing the biosphere slowly taking over the planet(the race is an intelligent biosphere...not a single species...a BIOSPHERE....neat )

anyway floating elements in the ionosphere release spores int low orbit over the planet...so in effect the "ground forces" which indirectly represent the entire alien biosphere are able to "grow" space ships near the planet

this interpretation of ground forces fits with their ability to add a new GF to any planet they control once every status phase..it makes sense they never actually "build" GFs.....the GF's reproduce them or they grow naturally over time.

Its important to remember that the biosphere is intelligent..the things the other races interact with are simply the highest forms within that biosphere and can be thought of as microcosms of the whole thing.....except for the corpse puppets that are dead members of other races being controlled by fungus attached to thier brains....yea....i love this race and fear them

seriosly guys..read the fluff

also...why wouldn't they specify that they could only build ground forces.

it says that a gf has a build(obviously someone forgot that there was no such thing as build capacity and meant to say production...i just checked the card and the tech card increases the build capacity so at least they erred consistently) capacity of one .......if this build capacity was restricted to ground forces then their would have been wording to that effect...I am forced to infer that it s meant that any GF's on any planet are fully capable of producing..they are all fully functional biospheres and a spacedock simply represents a planet wholly dedicated to this process...this is a powerful race...all three are to some extent . I'm hoping the new race techs and flagships balance out the older races.

ryolacap said:

How does A PLANT develop space-faring technology in the first place? This is sci-fi, you have to suspend your disbelief a little bit to keep things going. The Arborec GFs can produce seedlings (or whatever) that grow into new units. Letting them grow new fighters or carriers makes as much sense as letting them grow new GFs, if you ask me. They produce a seedling that grows into whatever unit they need it to be.

A. Why does everyone assume a cellulos base lifeform can manipulate plants to create fully fuctioning machinery?!?! Comon people it makes no sense.

B. Not a single racial decription says anything about building stuff out of plants, it DOES talk about GFs (in fact about 80-90% of the fluff talks about the races ability to grow and take over planets). Dont you think if intended, such a unique ability would have in some way been covered?

C. Gamewise it would be completly unbalanced to allow them to produce 2 dreadnaugts (2 Warsuns for that matter) on any planet they owned. (not to mention multi planet systems, give me a break!)

D. They are a plant like lifeform meaning they grow and spread easily and constantly, last time I looked out into my yard, my grass was growing and spreading but not growing a giant grass rocket ship.

ryolacap said:

Where does it say they can only produce GFs? Certainly not anywhere on the race sheet.

ryolacap said:

Who says their ships are "fully function machinery", and not large, biological entities? (similar to the Zerg "ships" in Starcraft).

ryolacap said:

Considering the back of the sheet is 100% pure fluff and spaghetti sauce, it doesn't matter WHAT it says; it has no bearing on the game rules.

ryolacap said:

Oh? How so? They still have to PAY for it. All this does is give them flexibility in where they can build.

ryolacap said:

D. They are a plant like lifeform meaning they grow and spread easily and constantly, last time I looked out into my yard, my grass was growing and spreading but not growing a giant grass rocket ship.

Last I looked into my yard, my grass wasn't sentient, either.

I like to compare them to the Yuuzhan Vong from Star wars. Everything they used from space travel to personal armor was a living being or product thereof. Early on, the Arborec pretty much stole human bodies to use for communication with other races. What says they can't take the ships too? Don't think of the single "plant" GF as the only thing producing the new unit/ship, think of the entire planet listening to the will of the Arborec and creating what they want. At first, they can only get the planets to create something the equivalent of a ground force, then, as they gain control they can build ships and such. I believe the Yuuzhan Vong ships were byproducts of asteroids combined with a lifeform that could seal out vacuum.

Personally, I think while it's VERSATILE, it's not really THAT strong:

- new GFs can only come from existing GFs; that means at least some of the GF building will have to be from other GFs anyway.

- You are still limited by your system's Fleet Supply, which is usually what caps me out when I'm building capital ships anyway.

- You still have to pay for everything, so you'll still have the same resource management issue.

Periculum said:

you dont understabnd..the planet doesn't listen to the will of the arborec..the arborec are products of the will of the boiosphere of the planet...the fluff calls it the symphony of the ecosystem and they are life forms within that ec osystem that are capable of taking some of this 'symphony' with them away from the ecosystem but in no way are they seperate......the whole ecosystem is the sentient creature..this isnt a race that controls ecosystems its a race OF ecosystems....uhm..buit otherwise I agree with your point.

edit: i'm sorry...the lentani is the name of the elephentus sized creatures that can carry the symphony.....but it says their knowledge is downloaded back into the symphony upon return.....thier basic representatives are dead bodies with a fungus controlling them.....but otherwise my point stands....basically every plant/fungus in the ecosystem is part of an intelligent whole is how I perceive the race... to me it makes sense that any planet they controlled could be capable of building anything it wants.

I don't really care if they can build space units or not. To me, the real question is their build limit. Is it 1 build limit for all the gf's or 1 build limit for each? Ex. If I have 5 gf's, do I have a build limit of 1(or 2 with the tech) or 5(and 10 with the tech)? If it's 10, I don't see them being able to build space units. I could have 15 gf's and a build limit of 30. That would be absurd. Imagine the fighter builds!

I was of the impression that each GF had a production capacity of 1, so 5 GFs could pump out 5 plastic (10, apparently, with this racial tech you mention.) It does sound a bit crazy when you put it that way, but remember that FT still need to be supported and as far as I know, the Arborec don't have any special rules concerning FT support. So they still need carriers and SDs like everyone else, or all those FT will just explode and waste resources.

I was also assuming each GF would have a separate build limit...like with multiple space docks in a space.

And still you can produce in ONEsystem at a time...

But ok, you are very flexible. Good race. We need some playtest-reports by the users!

Also remember that the race still has to use thier ground forces to build ground forces as they cant build them anywhere else. This means that the amount of ship building should be kinda limited.

TheDarkGeneral said:

And they can't build and move in the same turn, so cranking out 30 plastic worth of anything requires your 15 GF to sit on their duffs and not do anything else for a whole turn.

Now mentioned in the german forum:

But the flagship has a build capacity of 5!!!

So building all units???

Dogma79 said:

They have a mobile space dock, so what? Clan of Saar has three of those and it's never been a problem.

So, the Arborec version can fight back and not be automatically destroyed if left alone with enemy units? It's also (I assume) a fairly expensive ship to build and there can only be one at a time.

5 plastic is not uncommonly high compared to the build capacity of most SDs. If that gets doubled to 10 with the racial tech mentioned above then that's a little more impressive. Not broken, but worthy of a unit as powerful and as central to one's strategy as a flagship is supposed to be.

And let's not forget, I'm assuming the same rule about "can't move and build in the same turn" applies to this ability just as it applies to the GFs (and the Saar.) So actually using this build ability means the flagship isn't attacking anything that turn, and it - along with anything it builds and anything that was already in the same system - will be locked down until next turn afterwards.

Edit: Don't get too carried away with the whole "OMG THEY CAN BUILD STUFF WITH OTHER STUFF!" idea. Remember, they're still bound to fleet supply, support and transport limits, and available plastic limits just like everyone else. They also still have to pay full price for any unit they might want to build. So these special options just give them more places to crank out units from , it doesn't make it any easier to actually build things. They can expand faster, but the same upper limits on how much stuff can be in a given system apply to them just like everyone else.

For "real world" practicial experience, I played against them. They are cool, but not really anything special. The tribes are still head and shoulders above them, The warsun race and Sol give me more concern in the game, they are better then races like the Sardak Norr and Mentak, and turtles, but just barely, and are certainly not better then the other new races.

As others have mentioned, they still need to PAY for stuff, they still got fleet limits, and not being able to build GF in there space docks means a lot of build turns get used making more GF. Also untill they have a planet with a bunch of guys in a usefull spot, there is hugh ineffiecnies in building in multipel systems, our Arborc player stuggled at times for command counters. The nature of this race makes them heavy command counter users, and they have no quick and easy way to get more. Counter counter use is a cost that often gets overlooked. I think they are a very cool race, but havign played againt them I felt nothing overly stood out.

one more point that players appear to be missing regarding the flagships, its not obvious in the rules and I see write ups that make believe it gtes missed, but flagships also have a special rule that they can only get build in yuour homesystem. There flagship moves one, and they are NOT building one till the thrid or fourth turn unless they have a really good start.

Oh, and the flagship can't build if it moves.....

Cool race, but nothing scary.

Of the new races I think the Ghosts are the most dangerous, AND we played them as if there flagship could not jump to any space on the board, we felt the warmhole int he destination system applied for other ships that wanted to go there after the flagship moves first.

The germ race can be very good and there destroy everythign flagship is a nice feature that keeps fleets small arround it, but there appear to be a situational race.

Mobilty, especialy late game, can be game breaking. If I had to pick a race out of the new races only in big game and wanted my best shot to win, I would take the ghosts, not the arbourist.