Subtopic	Posts		Updated
	Archive through November 26, 2008	25		11/27 04:49pm

Glenn Hoepfner:

No, not so.

Phasers can be available in as little as 33 impulses to as much as 65 impulses depending on the availability of reserve power.

You have to remember we are talking about "small ground bases". With the exception of a small ground power station, the only small ground bases that have batteries are Advanced Technology Ground Bases.

So if I do something that makes you suspicious as the Commandant of the Civil Guard of Hibernia II on Impulse #1 of Turn #1, none of your ground bases can begin warming their phaser capacitors as none of them have batteries and it is after Energy Allocation. During Turn #2 Energy Allocation you can have all of your ground bases warm their phaser capacitors, but none of them will be able to take a phaser shot until Impulse #1 of Turn #3.

Now that changes if you have Ground Power Station and a power grid (and why anyone would have a ground power station but NOT have a power grid is a matter of great mystery to me I admit). At that point two of your small ground bases can start shooting in 33 impulses (the Ground Power Station has two batteries), but only two.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Wednesday, November 26, 2008 - 03:13 pm: Edit

So, with 1 admins and 2 HTS you have:

2 BPs in the admin, 4 BPs in HTS #1 and 2 BPs and a militia squad in HTS #2.

NINE BP equivalents?

But yes, there are issues.

(no ssds in front of me) Do any of the small bases have batteries? If not, they can't fire until imp 1 of turn 3!

So, turn 1 close, pop shield, crash aboard and fight.

Turn 2 Hopefully you are in control. Power to get out of the base LOS (speed 3 would do it).

Else you finish Bp combat.

Turh 3 fly away... If you failed to take the ship on turn 1 you will get hit by the planet and boarded but you only need speed 3, rest to uncommitted reserve shields (to raise vs boarding attempts...)

NOTE, I am ASSUMING Spetrick didn't choose to try this over a large base or one with Phaser 4s...

Like I wrote, the assumption is One tiny base. On a tiny colony how many bases would there be?

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Wednesday, November 26, 2008 - 05:23 pm: Edit

Michael C. Grafton:

Sorry, but with an Admin Shuttle and two HTS shuttles carrying eight boarding parties and one militia squad on the turn they crash land aboard you only have EIGHT boarding party equivalents. The Militia Squad cannot fight on the turn it arrives (D15.833). You could give them up as a casualty, but then you have no one to operate the ship.

Again, on the turn you arrive, you only have eight boarding party equivalents. If you do not take the ship on that turn, you have nine on the next turn.

On Turn #2 you could add two boarding parties (this assumes that you had two admin shuttles as well as two HTS shuttles, and is sort of necessary to have the phaser firepower to down a shield in one shot. One phaser-3 cannot down a minimum shield. You have to have two.

As I noted, if you wanted to do this, you more or less want to do it over a colony so small that it pretty much has no bases, and no shuttles of its own, so there are no phasers or anything else. Your only risk is the freighter using its own transporter and shuttles to bring up help from the colony (militia, maybe a few organized boarding parties).

But basically if the freighter is over a colony with only a "casual fighter base" level of technology (i.e., just a landing pad for shuttles to deliver and pick up cargo) you might be able to take the freighter with two admin shuttles (one carrying two boarding parties, the other a militia squad). Depends on what the colony has that the ship's transporter could bring up. Eventually three points of firepower is going to take both of the control stations, and your militia squad can convert to crew and fly the ship away.

By Paul Stovell (Pauls) on Thursday, November 27, 2008 - 06:25 am: Edit

With such a small colony if you have 2 AS and 2 HTS you might be able to capture the entire colony!

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, November 27, 2008 - 04:49 pm: Edit

Paul Stovell:

Do not assume that "infrastucture equates to size".

You could very easily have a colony that is agricultural with a relatively large, if centrally located, population. No ground bases (as noted, you need a Agricultural Station if the crop you are raising is particularly valuable, so there could be lots of housing and warehouses and barns and etc., but no ship sized phasers or shields or other structures). The Colony could still easily mass a militia force (that might include some "professional elements", i.e., regular boarding parties) that could easily annihilate your shuttle born raider force.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Thursday, November 27, 2008 - 09:03 pm: Edit

Paul:

1) well pirates might IF THERE IS SOMETHING worth the time and effort (you'd have to hunt the remote areas a lot...)

SPP. Note, if you score 2 BP casulties on the freighter you have automatically captured the ship. You direct on the militia and with no remaining BPs the control boxes fall...

But yes this is not exactly a sure thing. But the rules allow a colony to go from "peacetime operations to BPs on the pad and ready to be transported into combat in one impulse.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, November 28, 2008 - 06:59 am: Edit

Michael C. Grafton:

Check rule (D16.52), it requires you to use (D7.36) to actually capture the control stations. You have to take the control stations by (D7.36), which means you have to score two casaulty points on each one to capture them. Think of it as the process of actually breaching the doors to gain access.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Friday, November 28, 2008 - 10:54 pm: Edit

SPP, I thought if there was NO crew to form a militia then that was that.

I mean, the small freighter has 1 crew unit (even if some of them are on I& I leave).

Ship gets boarded and crew unit automatically becomes militia to defend bridge.\

Boarders Kill militia unit.

Who is left to oppose?

AND IIRC, SVC has mentioned more than once that without INFANTRY BPs you forfeit any control stations. But when I get home from the 'rents I will check 16.52...

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Saturday, November 29, 2008 - 10:38 am: Edit

Michael C. Grafton:

You still have to defeat the ship's computer.

It is reasonable to assume that the ship has a proximity alert system (once your shuttles got that close, the computer starts taking action unless over-ridden by non-computer intelligence), and the computer automatically locks out access to the Bridge and Emergency Bridge. Members of the crew ("the watch") could override the lock down (as noted), but your bully boys are not members of the crew.

If you were playing Prime Directive you could define that someone among your merry crew has access to the computer security system and can override the computer, or has already disarmed such security protocols.

Note, the crewmen on the freighter might be only superficially aware of the security systems (how many freighters actually get boarded by hostiles?), but as such would have no reason to have tried to previously over-ride them or permanently "shut them down for our convenience".

So such a program would still be in the computer's system and would be triggered by your attack. Understand, this is a reasonable extrapolation of the way such a ship's computer would operate in response to such violent activity (crashing shuttles aboard the ship).

I am pretty sure the "control stations" SVC was talking about were those in "Ground Combat Locations", and as they represent "key terrain" rather than a "locked bulkhead door" there is a difference. Even so, the reality is that if there are no defending troops, eventually you would take the ship and if there is no way to get more defending troops there (or some other outside agency in play), no reason to continue rolling die until you score the needed casualty points.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Saturday, November 29, 2008 - 10:51 am: Edit

Control Stations (D15.11)

By Jonathan Jordan (Arcturusv) on Monday, December 01, 2008 - 07:51 am: Edit

Found out it does work a lot better (And can require fewer parties involved), if perhaps your would be pirates had a Crime Team as one of the crew units/boarding parties involved. Though the Prime Team Rules (As I've read them in SFB) suggests there is about zero chance such highly skilled individuals would be in such a backwater, remote place, rather than using their skills on something like a BR or better. But I suppose everyone's gotta start somewhere. And using the Crime Team angle does mean it'd dovetail into PD fairly well, I'd think. That way rather than needing a militia squad to start out with, you get one Boarding Party equivlent who can also serve as a crew unit, can also unlock weapon controls, and all those other nifty little things that can happen in a scenario.

Sort of a neat solution at first glance. Wonder why I didn't think of it before. Crime Team gives you a natural group to base the story around. Gives you added utility. The ability to do something like unlock phasers means you could have a more combative scenario without it being completely unbalanced. Also fits in with the storyline reasoning (Skilled Naval Officer who is desperate, hunted, and needs an out can easily become Team of Skilled Naval Officers I reckon).

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Monday, December 01, 2008 - 11:52 pm: Edit

Yah, I should have thought of it myself.

GOSH knows I have been nagging SVC to put the prime team rules in a CL forever...

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Monday, December 01, 2008 - 11:56 pm: Edit

Just as well CL38 has (G32.0), then...

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Tuesday, December 02, 2008 - 03:08 pm: Edit

Man, I think this is almost like my own personal issue!

1) fiction
2) Finally nagged SVC into the prime team rules publication
3) Class history for the Lyrans
4) Plasma superiority fighters...
5) Term Paper

I have been doing pretty well lately (F101 and klink/ kzin drone heavy fighters, light pfts and lots of term papers)

Now I can start scheming for CL 39...

By Jonathan Jordan (Arcturusv) on Tuesday, December 02, 2008 - 03:42 pm: Edit

Nothing can stop you now!

Other than that rag-tag band of do gooders with a strong moral compass but a lack of any truly defined goals.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - 11:55 am: Edit

As noted, there are non-SFB ways to capture a freighter, and these are all more in the Prime Directive Role Playing Game Milieu.

Family owned freighter and you take the captain's daughter hostage.

Your group of rowdies hires on as ground crew for the colony, and siezes the the freighter's HTS shuttle.

Your computer wizz hacked the freighter's computer system while it was flying from where he boarded the ship to where the rest of your team will board the ship.

You are blackmailing a member of the crew, or a member of the crew has thrown his lot in with your merry band.

It is easy enough to think up more or less workable plots for roleplaying that can largely circumvent the rules for Star Fleet Battles.

That can include, of course, your shuttle attack (creating role play actions to help it succeed), but flatly doing your shuttle attack without the roleplay aspects (that would amount to a "special scenario rule" that the attack automatically succeeds at which point there is no real point to the scenario) would have to deal with the rules of Star Fleet Battles. And while such an attack could succeed on its own merits, the circumstances for it to happen at the end of Turn #1 are pretty extreme.

To even try you need a minimum of two armed shuttles. [Less than two armed shuttles and you are not dropping the shield on the freighter on Turn #1, which would guarantee the freighter at least one Energy Allocation Phase to react. Your problem then becomes that on Impulse #2 of Turn #2, assuming you fired on Impulse #32 of Turn #1, the freighter will go to erratic maneuvers, and under (C10.53), you are not going to crash land aboard even if you do down the shield on Impulse #8 after your one phaser-3 has recycled. So Turn #1 you fire your single phaser-3 doing 3-4 points of damage. On Turn #2 the freighter allocates 0.5 impulse for shields, 0.5 impulse for life support, 2 warp for erratic maneuvers, one warp for speed 3 (maximum acceleration), and one warp to battery. The weakest shield has 2-3 points on it (assuming a point of battery to reinforce it on Turn #1), with the shift of two on your second shot you might only score a single point of damage, but even assuming you scored 4 points both times (a total of eight points) you only score one point of internal damage. (Shield 5 plus one battery is six minus 4 from the phaser shot leaves 2 shield boxes. Second shot also scores four, but again there is a point of battery so you only score one point of internal damage.

The PROBLEM is that you are flying a "shuttle", and sad to say a Freighter might actually out maneuver a mere shuttle. Yes, I know, you are looking at me like I am crazy. The problem is that a Shuttle is not a fighter, it cannot do an HET. The freighter can look at the direction the shuttle is approaching from, AND ACCELERATE IN THE OPPOSITE DIRECTION. If your shuttle is heading in direction A facing the freighter's #4 shield, the freighter simply accelerates in reverse, your shuttle cannot back up and so passes over the freighter and winds up taking its second shot at the freighter's intact #1 shield. By the time you turn around to start chasing him he has accelerated to your speed in reverse, and then accelerates fast enough to leave you behind.]

The upshot of all that is that you have absolutely no choice on the number of armed shuttles. You HAVE To have two phaser-3s or your attack will likely fail before it even begins. You have to fire the phasers on Impulse #31 of Turn #1 to crash aboard on Impulse #32 of the same turn that you drop the shield as otherwise the freighter will go erratic and accelerate in the direction opposite the shield you fired on.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Wednesday, December 03, 2008 - 04:30 pm: Edit

Yah, I had accounted for the problem of downing the shield.

And basically my plan depends on coming around the planet AFTER EA on turn one (so the freighter only can react with his battery and is stuck at speed 0, WS 0), dropping the shield and crashing aboard.

So it basically depends on some HTS and it would be MUCH MUCH more likely to succeed with a prime team.

By Mike Strain (Evilmike) on Monday, January 12, 2009 - 04:50 pm: Edit

I suppose you could embark on your life of piracy in a skiff or modular cutter. It's big enough to carry a crew of cutthroat scalawags (lots of BP's), (usually) outguns a freighter, and can run away from the cops/navy when necessary.

Has the advantage of being cheap and disposable (for a starship, that is).

Of course, when that Orion Cartel LR catches up to you....aheh.