Archive through November 17, 2009
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: General Tactics Discussion:
Battle Report Forum:
Archive through November 17, 2009
Robert,
I'm about 90% confident that the K-refit (the one that upgrades the boom phasers to phaser-1s) was never given to D7s that didn't already have the B-refit. So be aware that if you upgrade those phasers without giving the D7 the other B-refit upgrades, you are using a "non-historical" ship that never actually existed in the SFU.
That may or may not be important to you guys, but I wanted to mention it.
You could give him speed M drones for free.
Drone defense is a real weakness for the earlier Feds.
Alan,
Forgot about the B-refit. In any event I may very well just give him the B and K refits. I'm a big 'historical' guy... 
Michael,
I actually did give him Speed 20 drones (though I factored them into his BPV). I definitely pointed out to him how much worse it would have been if I hadn't used 3 phasers on each battle pass on the drones (each pass had a Type I and a Type IV coming at me).
Overall, I'm going to try to switch to another race relatively soon as I don't like playing with the Feds in duels due to the luck factor being so high (in this game it wasn't an issue due to me getting to Range 1 twice). The other people I play with like Hydrans so I fight against them a lot but rarely get to play with them, so after he gets the rules down, I might switch to Hydran.
But for now we'll stick to 'the classic'.
Fight him in a Tholian C class ship without the snare refit. Or 2 PCs.
burt
I participated in a nice little skirmish recently. I was flying a Romulan KRb, my friend was flying a Federation CAR+. He definately had me outgunned. This was a warmup fight so I flew something simple to get used to the cloak and plasmas. Turn 1 was uneventful, I cloaked, we closed distance, coming in at WS3. Turn 2 got lively. On impulse 20, I fired both plasma S as bolts at range 10 and took out the Fed's #2 shield, he fired a full volley of photons at range 8 or so, and they all wiffed. We were both trippin on that one. I turned away to return to cloak. Turn 3, I cloaked, recharged, and crawled like a baby. Kestrel ships are power pigs. I came out of cloak on Turn 4 and fast charged my torps as F torps. This caught the Fed. off guard but he managed to get me into arc as I closed. He fired all photons, 2 OVs hit my #4 shield and took it out, doing light internals. My opponent had a good helmsman, flying it acceptionally well. I had no excuse letting him get on my tail considering I had a KR. I fired off a PlasF late in the turn, and the Fed. phasered it to nothing. Turn 5 and 6 were uneventful as I cloaked and recharged. I am definately rusty with Romulans. Turn 7, I decloaked and Fed. said hello with a drone launch, it was dispatched. I fired two Pl.S, one real, one fake. Fed. fired full spread, all wiffed again. If the Fed. has a soft underbelly, it's dice. Fed. ate the first S torp., it was the fake, gutsy call. Fed. phasered the real torp. to less than half, took the rest of the damage on the #1 shield. Romulan fired the other real S torp. at close range and took out #1 shield and did minimal damage. Meanwhile in all this plasma dancing, the treacherous Fed. captain popped a scatterpack on me, Rom. phasered most of them down with every phaser possible, but enough got to me to do light internals. Turn 8 was uneventful as a I of course cloaked. On turn 9 I remained cloaked until I hit a well placed T-bomb and got flashcubed, he did not obtain lock thank goodness, but I made a dumb mistake. I had my shields set at minimum to save one lousy point of power, and paid for it with 5 internals. I will never, never! do that again. On turn 10 I decloaked and bolted a type S, which hit a well reinforced #1 shield. Late in the turn, Fed. hit me with 4 ph-1 and a photon, took out half of my #1 shield. On turn 11 the Fed. fired 4 ph-1s doing slight damage to the Rom. Later in the turn I fired an enveloping S torp. which sandpapered his shields and did light internals through an already downed shield. The rest of the turn we parted ways, and called it. The Fed. did a little more damage to me, but both ships survived to fight another day. Some lessons learned. Cloaking in a KR and charging torps. sucks. Federation ships have a best friend and a worst enemy, DICE! Federation captains, use scatterpacks, it's a rude surprise to enemies stressing over OV photons and buttloads of phaser 1s. Romulan captains, utilize all aspects of plasma torpedoes, and never set your shields on minimum, as the cloak can only protect you so much. All in all, it was a fun little slapfest, my next fight will be the Royalhawk v/s ISC CC. I will give an after action report on that one. Romulan brothers and sisters, wish me luck. I'll be back in Klingon mode soon, my C7 is getting a new tranny.
Hey Sidney,
Thanks for the battle report, I hope you guys had fun!
A few thoughts. I play the Roms in a long-term campaign versus the Feds, so I have some experience in these matters.
1. The cloak. Kestrels can cloak, but not well. I find they make far better dancers than cloakers. That is, the points they spend on the cloak might be better spent on speed & EW, based on the "power pig" notation you observed yourself.
2. Bolting. My regular opponent, Jeremy Gray, has schooled me on the folly of bolting too much (long running gag of me being "bolt happy"). I've found the best times to bolt are when you have reached firing range and must turn off (due to big drone swarms) OR when dealing with a high-speed, receding opponent.
I was playing the Federation CA. I can honestly say that is the first time I have ever missed with all four photon torpedoes. And not only once, but twice! He suprised me with the bolts, and I gambled that the EPT was a fake...and I lost that gamble. When I beamed the T-bomb, I was going to try something sneaky. It went off and it did flashcube him, I was going to HET, fire overloads, and try to tractor beam him, but I screwed up and decided not to HET expecting him to not set off the T-bomb. Well he did and blew my chance. Oh well. I spent the power to hold two weasels in the bay for the whole game, expecting some torpedoes, and he goes and bolts on me. That EPT might have been a good time to use a weasel as that is where I took most of my internals.
I'll be using the ISC CC in the next fight, so we'll see how that one goes.
I don't think there is such a thing as a fake enveloping torpedo is there? So you know any EPTs are real.
There are no fake EPTs. You know they're real upon launch.
D'oh! See, that's how long it's been since I've played plasma torpedoes.
Hey, maybe that could be what X2 plasma gets, Pseudo-plasma that can match any type of load, including shotgun and EPTs!
Muwahahahaha
Yeah, same here on the how long I've played plasma torpedoes thing. I failed to announce the EPT, that was my bad. The Fed. would have most assuredly launched a weasel with an incoming EPT. Thanks for the advice flying Romulans.
No we told you so folks. Soooooo here it goes. The after action report that was told before it started. The ISC CC is a brute! I was flying the Romulan RH, my opponent, the aforementioned brute. On turn 1 I approached cloaked. Turn 2 got fugly real quick. I dropped cloak and began EM, Imp. 5 ISC fired P S-torp., Imp.6 I fired an EV R-torp., ISC locked on with PPD, Imp.7 ISC locked on with other PPD. In the meantime, the PPDs did a number on my shields. Then came the WW, and there went the EV R-torp. I took an S-torp. on my #4, it held after p-1 fire. On turn 3 we turned and burned and traded F-torps for slght shield damage. on turn 4, I cloaked. Well woopity-doo, on impulse 15, I got flashcubed and the ISC got a PPD lock. On turn 5 I decoaked again with EM, we immediately traded lots of torpedo fire, Rs,Ss,Fs oh my! By this time my shields were junk, the ISC CC bristles with firepower! By impulse 9 I took light internals. I did an overrun with an NSM, and a TB, but I paid for it with a buttload of phasers through a weak shield, more internals, I was getting ready to get the freak out of dodge. The ISC finally moved, had no where to go and took the TB and NSM damage, lots of reinforcement prevented internals. Near the end of the turn I popped a weasel so I wouldn't eat another S-torp. On turn 6 he had a fresh ship, mine was a mess, he fired everything he had, and I went BOOM!, not cool. I will never take a RH against this ship again. The R-torp is not always a kill shot, remember that Roms. I should have took a KH or KCR. Oh well, lessons learned.
Well Sidney a couple things.
You know that under Erratic manuevers you are unable to launch a torp?
When you are going in with equal size hulls and you have 1 Rtorp 2 ftorps with him having 2 Storps and 6 Ftorps plus 2 PPDs yeah it's gonna hurt. As well as you are giving the opponent like 20 ish points in BPV.
Pretty much the game prob revolves into "I reach range 10 uncloak and launch all and recloak if he's stationary. repeat every 3 turns for all his what 6? weasels."
Another decent tactic is the Approach to R10 and bolt everything at him. If just moving it allows you to put up some 10 or so rein to blunt the PPDs and the R hitting is serious damage. This also allows for you to escape his torps easier(as well as allowing for 3-4 shuttles to be set up as a mobile gat you can drag the torps over).
I mean yeah you can run through his kitchen sink, but that's a loosing proposition especially as you are giving him such a large bpv advantage off the bat.
What I was doing was going to EM one impulse after I decloaked so he couldn't hammer me fading in, and then dropping EM before firing torps. I now know the RH isn't the best choice for fighting the ISC "brute". I know I should've bolted more, but you win some you lose some. Thanks for the tips.
I had an interesting little fight last week. I flew Klingons, my friend flew Federation. It was a convoy type battle, just for giggles. Neither one of us had prior knowledge of each others ship compliment. I had a Free Trader with a type B drone rack, Large Ore Carrier(Full of goodies), E4Jb, and an E4Vb w/6 ZV ftrs. The Federation had a FFG, and much to my surprise, an NCL+. I was not looking forward to facing 6 photons. Fixed map, nothing too fancy. Turn 1: The Fed. launched 2SPs early, Klingon launched all ZVs. Imp.22- FT launched SP. Imp.31- Fed. fired 6 standard phtns., 4 hit, FT gets nailed bad, eventually limps away. Imp.32- 3 of 4 disr. hit NCL+, launches SP. Turn 2: Imp.8- Klg. fires 4 OV disr., while Fed. dropped TBs for incoming drones. Imp.11- F-OL fires Ph2 at drone. Imp.13- Klg. E4J beams out TB for Fed. drones, phasered two of them. Imp.15- Klg. TB took out 8 Fed. drones. Fed. beamed out TB, took out Klg. drones. Turn 3: Imp.4- 1 OV phtn. does slight damage to F-OL. Imp.6- F-OL takes heavy damage from Feds., dead in space. Imp.8- first ZV crippled, Fed. ADD fire takes out drone. Klingons respond with 3OV disr., takes out FFG #6 shield. Imp.9- Fed. boards F-OL. Imp.13- Fed. phasers and ADD take out more drones. Imp.14- Klg. fire causes 7 internals on previously down shield used to beam TB. Imp.15- more Klg. ph2 fire causes more internals on FFG. Imp.16- Fed. kills 1 ZV, crippled another. Imp.21- Klg. drones find their mark on Fed. FFG, heavy damage, FFG disengages at end of turn. Imp.32- boarding party actions have no immediate results. Turn 4: Imp.19- Klg. launch shuttle, which is promptly taken out by NCL+. Imp.27- combined fire from both E4s get through one shield on NCL+, doing light damage. Imp.32- Fed. lands shuttle on F-OL, one Fed. boarding party took out by crew. Turn 5: Imp.6- Klg. fires 6 ph2s on NCL+ #6 shield, almost downed. Fed. lands another shuttle on F-OL. Imp.25- Klg. fires 4 disr., 3 hit, damages NCL+ #4 shield. Imp.32- F-OL gives up ship to Feds. Turn 6: Imp.1-3- Klgs. launch two fighters recovered earlier, the only 2 undamaged. Imp.3- Fed. fires phtns. at ZVs, 1 took out, 1 crippled. Klg. fires 4 OV disr., 3 hit taking out weakened #2 shield, and does light internals on NCL+. Imp.5- Klg. fires all ph2 in arc thruogh open #2, 15 more internals. By the end of the turn, Fed. has enough, recovers BPs from F-OL, and leaves. In closing: my friend admitted that trying to steal the Ore freighter took up too much time and resources. The Klingon E4s can turn and burn very well, and 2 together can cause much mayhem if they concentrate their fire, and keep together. This fight was a hornets nest for both sides. It wasn't much of a surprise that the FFG disengaged, but the NCL+ taking damage was unexpected. I like these E4s, then again I would rather fly smaller ships, they are a hoot. My friend is flying his best Fed. ship next time out, a BCJ, ouch. I don't know what to fly yet, but I know the Feds. want revenge. Can they serve it COLD?
Against a BCJ?
Something that can loan it copious OEW.
A D6D with 1/ a couple pfs on mech links?
I made two major and one minor mistake in that game. My first major mistake was boarding the F-OL when I did, I should have waited until later. He managed to fire through my down shield two impulses before it went back up. That led to a severely crippled FFG that had to disengage. My second major mistake was that I got cocky with the NCL vs. two E4s. I roared straight in and gambled that they couldn't get through my forward shield. Sid knows how to handle those disruptors and that led to the NCL taking damage. My minor mistake was towards the end, we were in a turning contest that I knew I would lose. My goal was to turn and put one of his ships just barely in my FA arc. Well, I mistimed my turn and ended up with my target just barely outside my FA.
Even without my mistakes, the game could have gone either way. As it was, both cargo ships were severely crippled, one, the FT, disengaged and the other, the F-OL, was literally dead in space. Both my Federation ships disengaged with heavy damage, the FFG being severely crippled.
I'm looking forward to getting back into my reliable favorite, the BCJ. Hehehe.
Reliable? How can anything with 6 photons be regarded as reliable? This is the Fed TC on steroids.
Last night I had the most bizarre match ever, and I just had to write it up.
Klingon D5K (Jaspar) v Hydran TR (Kahali)
Its a 50x50 map, so we start moving slowly towards eachother. We end up at about 25 hexes apart, maybe a touch closer. I decide to Narrow Salve my 4 Std DIS and miss. Oh well.
Next turn we continue skulking around. I launch an SP (all medium speed drones in this game) and end the turn just inside 15 hexes. I fire 4 Std DIS again and hit with 3, of which a few points is absorbed. But here the fun begins.
The Hydran fires 2 Std HB and a bunch of phasers. Misses with absolutely everything. "WOOHOO !!" I cheer and off I go after him, as he turns away.
Next turn I make it to R8 but only had 4 Std DIS again, so fire them along with 3 Ph-1. I hit for 11 damage through no shift. More awful rolls.
We ended the turn at R4. My SP drones are about 5 or 6 hexes away from him. He decides to go Spd 0, I am going 15/10/15. He then TACs towards me and fires 2 OL HB and 2 Ph-1 through a 1 shift. Hits with both HB and does okay damage with the phasers. Ends up knocking down a shield and doing 2 internals. That's not much, right?
He takes out a DIS and a Warp.
Well fine, I guess I need to charge. So in I go. When Im 2 hexes out my drones are 1 hex away from him, but not moving next impulse so he decides to fire a bit on each. Only 5 drones from the SP so he figures one is a heavy. He tractors 1, labs 3 others and finds the heavy (8/18).
Fires 2 ph-3 at the heavy, and 1 ph-3 at 3 other drones.
On the heavy he rolls 6,1. On the other 3 he rolls 5, 5, 5.
Every drone but the one tractored has taken 1 less damage than is required to kill it !!
Im thinking, well he can always TAC and get his other Ph-G in arc and knock them out. But next impulse he announces speed 10 and moves forward, with the drones moving behind him. I slipped right and moved so we were 1 hex away, shield #1 to shield #1.
He launches 2 shuttles, fires ph-2 at me, a pulse of ph-3 at me, and 3 pulses at drones (leaving 1 type I alive). I fire 3 OL DIS, 2 Ph-1 at him, and 2 Ph-1 as Ph-3 at the shuttles. I blow up an SS and am feeling happy. But my rolls against him are shocking. Hit with 2 DIS and only do enough damage to knock a shield down to 1 point.
Next impulse only the shuttle and drone move. He takes 12 dam to his #4, I take 18 to my #1 from his second SS (sigh). More internals for me, nothing for him. I think at this point he fired more weapons at my downed shield and did more damage to me.
But oh well, an impulse after that we move so that are #5 shields are facing eachother. I launch 2 heavy drones. Sadly it was getting late and I wasnt watching the impulse chart, and they didnt move next impulse. So he tractors one of them (now has a I and IV tractored). The other moves the following impulse and does 18 damage to him. Another of his shields knocked down to 1 point.
But I still have 1 point of phasers left and he has none. So I fire 2xPh-3 and FINALLY get some internals. Couple of Ph-2 but not much else.
Here is where it gets fun. He moves away and I decide to launch my final shuttle. 9 impulses later it blossoms and will hit him before the end of the turn. There is no way he could stop the 66 damage.
After taking 54 (or so) internals, he loses one of his tractors. The following impulse he takes another 12 internals knocking out his final tractor. So 2 impulses later (both he and the drone moved) he took a further 18 internals and exploded.
It truly was the most bizarre game. So many terrible rolls. I think the only reason I won is because drones dont need dice.
Next time, he'll remember to load a weasel.
He was undergunned, so figured 2xSS would improve his firepower. And the TAR has huge amounts of power.
Our next game is starting off equally as bizarre.
Me in the D5K again, this time he's in a Fed CAR (129 BPV Y160 version).
I narrow salvoed at R30 and rolled a '5'. About the 25th or 30th+ '5' in the last 2 games (we've had more '5's than every other number combined).
Next turn I decide Im going to narrow salvo at R15 then run away. I rolled a '1' and did a stack of damage, so rather than turning straight away I decide to fire 3xPh-1 then turn.
I rolled '1','1','1' for another 9 damage. So his front shield is down 17 (he absorbed 4) and he still hasnt fired a shot at me. We ended T2 about 11 or 12 hexes apart and he has a stack of 5 drones (spd 20) right behind him.
We will continue the game in a couple of days, but it is turning out as crazy as the last game, but this time with good rolls for me.
Though, if he ever hits with 3 out of 4 photons Im finished.
You want wierd die rolls? Last game I played, I fired 6 ph-1s...I rolled 1,2,3,4,5,6.
Nice !
Cant really complain about above or below average rolls there.
I have some catching up to do on the battle reports, so I'll try to add a couple of fights a day until I get caught up.
15 Sept. 2009: Fed.BCJ v/s Rom.WE+&SEL.
Turn 1: Uneventful. Turn 2: Fed. launches a couple of shuttles. Rom. bolts Plas.R and Plas.G, R hits, G misses. Rom. then launches two F PPTs. Roms. cloak. Fed. looses WE+, keeps lock on SEL. Fed. damages a Plas.F with phaser fire, yeah waste those phasers. Fed. gets T-bomb happy and beams out 2 TBs. Rom. SEL gets flashed and recieves phaser fire. Turn 3: Uneventful. Turn 4: Fed. gets happy again, and flashcubes the WE+; Fed. drone hits #3 shield. SEL drops cloak. On Imp.18, the Fed. HETs, and breaksdown, HOOYAH! SEL later fires 2 Plas.Fs, Fed. weakens w/phasers, and takes damage on #5 shield. Turn 5: Fed. reverses and fires 2 drones at SEL. SEL fires Plas.G, and wiffs on phaser fire at incoming drones. Fed. takes 14 internals through #5, while Rom.SEL takes 6 internals through#6 shield. Impulse #4, Rom. SEL eats 4OV photons and 10 PH-1s. The SEL goes BOOM! Rom. launches Plas.R PPT and fires 4 PH-1s through Fed.#5 open shield, 17 more internals. Fed. later launches WW for fake Plas.R. Turn 6: Fed. launches a shtle. and a drone. Rom. dropped shield for TB, which takes out drone. Rom. WE+ fires 4 PH-1s on Fed.#2 shield for damage. Rom. launches Plas.R. Fed. phasers down Plas.R, on next impulse R hits weak shield and does 17 internals on Fed. Rom. does overrun and drops NSM. Turn 7: Fed. fires phasers at WE+ for 15 internals. Fed. moves and triggers NSM, takes 11 more internals through #4 shield. Fed. fires additional phasers and does some more light internals on WE. After that, we called it. Both ships slinked away with considerable damage. The scenario here was that the Fed.BCJ slipped through Romulan lines to conduct internal "scans", and the Empire sent what it could to intercept. NOTE: The New Jersey is a tough bugger, but the received damage made the Fed. go home.