Archive through January 28, 2010
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Proposals Board: New Rules: (FD) New Drones: Webcracker Drones: Archive through January 28, 2010
By Jonathan Jordan (Arcturusv) on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 09:38 pm: Edit

And why I don't let players play Tholians in free-for-all style campaigns. Once they attain a foothold you're not gettng rid of them without gutting your fleet and leaving yourself defenseless.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 11:21 pm: Edit

SPP,

Regarding your point that

Quote:

The Klingons have a far larger fleet and are no longe technology behind the Tholians as they were when the Tholians first arrived (with the exception of webs) which means the Tholians cannot defend every base in sufficient strength to save them.

I agree. I thought I was acknowledging that when I said
Quote:

Obviously, the Tholians don't have the resources to make this kind of effort at every base. These drones would enable the Klingons to (comparatively) cheaply pick off the less well defended bases, and weaken the Tholians over time. But the major bases would still be very difficult for the Klingons to take.

in my 7:26 pm post. Where we disagree (and are probably going to continue to disagree) is that I think the Tholians can last a lot longer than you do, and inflict heavier losses on the Klingons. And this might delay the fall of the Holdfast long enough that the Klingons have to start worrying about their Hydran and Kzinti borders again.

Regarding your point that
Quote:

If the Tholian ships are desperately trying to pump power into the webs, the are lacking power to arm weapons, which means easy destruction of those ships.

well, that depends on how much power the Tholian defenders have in aggregate compared to how much they need to expend to reinforce the web. Given multiple ships and a large number of Arachnid-PWs, the Tholians should still be able to do some fighting. And then there are still the base's ph-4s, and the minefield. The latter will be very dense and can be expected to cause substantial damage to the Klingon fleet before they ever get into position to shoot a Tholian ship.

By Jonathan Jordan (Arcturusv) on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 11:35 pm: Edit

Just how many mines do you think a base has?

I mean as I understood it, you can't have THAT many, or normal business that the base needs to conduct would be hampered too much to be worth the extra defense. And command detonated mines are limited, thus you can't depend on them to provide the gaps for normal shipping traffic.

*shrug* But the only example I have of a base assault using a minefield (No one in my group would play it), was the old Ghostlight Scenario, where penetrating the minefield posed almost no problem at all for the Klingons. A few mistakes could have happened but the dice just didn't favor the Federation when it came, or they made a mistake while the Klingons quickly recovered.

Point being the only Minefield+Base assault I've seen says the Minefield isn't THAT effective unless it's really right in the shadow of your base. In which case they can stand off an appropriate range and avoid the minefield. If the minefield is far enough out that they have to deal with it, it's far enough out that the base won't be able to seriously make them pay while sweeping it.

By Terence Sean Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Tuesday, January 26, 2010 - 11:59 pm: Edit

Sure a heavily defended Tholian base (with minefields and the whole nine yards) will still do some damage if the Klingons attack it. In that case, the Klingons would simply blockade the base and attack Tholia. If you look at the Tholian strategic situation, they just cannot be that strong everywhere. You could probably game it out, use the F&E data and take away the Tholian web rules. How long do they last?

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 12:11 am: Edit

Jonathon,

As far as how many mines a base could have, M6.33 allows a base to purchase up to 6 "packages", which would provide a total 90 large explosive, 240 small explosive, 18 large captor, 42 small captor, and 24 sensor mines. I think very few bases would have that many mines. But it is possible.

And Tholian minefields can be more effective than those of other empires, because of some synergies between the mines and the web. In particular, they can cluster the mines in close to the base (always making sure that they have a way through the minefield, covered by command-controlled mines) because they don't have to worry about long range bombardment.

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 12:19 am: Edit

Quote:

I mean as I understood it, you can't have THAT many, or normal business that the base needs to conduct would be hampered too much to be worth the extra defense. And command detonated mines are limited, thus you can't depend on them to provide the gaps for normal shipping traffic



According to M6.2, a "standard" minefield is:

- 15 large explosive
- 40 small explosive
- 3 large captor
- 7 small captor
- 4 sensor

...all for 100bpv (M6.32) in open space, or a mere 50bpv around a base (M6.33). A typical Tholian defense will have at least 2 such minefields (they are dirt cheap, really), although the same M6.33 allows up to 6 such minefields purchased. From even 2 such fields, though (probably the most balanced number), 80 'small explosive' mines are...very effective in drone defense.

Quote:

Point being the only Minefield+Base assault I've seen says the Minefield isn't THAT effective unless it's really right in the shadow of your base. In which case they can stand off an appropriate range and avoid the minefield


Uhhhh...we are talking about Tholians, here.

Of COURSE they are going to be 'right in the shadow of the base'. And why not? The base is invulnerable (literally: it cannot be attacked) until all three rings of web are down. And you cannot take the web down until you run into it and destroy the ships reinforcing it (then wait the multiple turns of it slowly deteriorating until your ship can 'push through')...which obviously requires plowing through said minefield, and taking unanswered Phaser-4 fire from the base (plus, of course, whatever the defenders are chucking at you).

By Jonathan Jordan (Arcturusv) on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 12:27 am: Edit

Though the way he worded it was that the minefields were far enough out that they couldn't attack the ships (Presumably reinforcing the web that is being destroyed by the web break drones), which changes the dynamic.

The minefield would therefore need to be OUT of the web, beyond it to keep the Klingons from getting close enough to toast anything reinforcing. If they're away from the web you can sweep them without dealing with the having to plough through them and take the phaser-4s on the chin.

Meaning that the ships would have to come out to hurt the minesweepers, making them vulnerable or the fancy minefield won't do too much.

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 12:31 am: Edit

Quote:

If you look at the Tholian strategic situation, they just cannot be that strong everywhere



But why not? Their KEY defense is web, and every base everywhere in their empire is going to have at least a three-ring-circus around it (if it has a number of tenders or support ships) or a buzzsaw (if it doesn't), as well as a handful of minefields.

Have you played such a game out? I have - even with no other Tholian unit on the board, a 'buzzsaw' base with 3 minefields can successfully defend against a fleet MUCH larger than its BPV would indicate. And each defender (even lowly PCs) adds a multiplying capability for defense. A Tholian Battlestation with CW, C, or CA and pair of PCs (not much of a stretch for a base defense), along with a web tender and pair of minefields, as well as associated local base attrition units (flotilla or two of PFs), could defeat the better part of a the Klingon Tholian Border Harassment force entirely on its own. And is really not unlikely as a defense of the Holdfast. Larger bases would have more minefields, be Starbases at the core, have external defenses (DEFSATs, etc), perhaps a dreadnought in the defense force, likely SEVERAL webcaster-equipped units, and probably have a number of asteroids dragged into the area to serve as convenient defensive points.

A real nightmare!

The Seltorians, with their web breakers, have a tremendously easier job of it. Indeed, it's almost (ALMOST! Not quite, but ALMOST) no more difficult than the typical 'galactic empire' base assault.

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 12:46 am: Edit

Quote:

The minefield would therefore need to be OUT of the web, beyond it to keep the Klingons from getting close enough to toast anything reinforcing. If they're away from the web you can sweep them without dealing with the having to plough through them and take the phaser-4s on the chin



I would draw your attention to M6.331. Any such set of minefields (from 1 to 6) much be deployed around the base 'as a sector 5 hexes wide and encircling the base at a constant radius'. In a typical 3-ring circus, you have web at radius-1 to the base, radius-3, and radius-5. Thus, your external-to-the-web minefield(s) would be at radius-6 to radius-11 from the base...the smart Tholian sticking these mines almost all at radius-6 or radius-7. The minefield, after all, is put in place to defend the web. Doesn't need to defend the base - that's invulnerable until the web goes down.

Per M8.11, to 'sweep' a mine, you must be at range '0' or '1' to it. So...BEST case, the Tholian gets lazy and has some yummy mines at radius-7 to the base. Your minesweeper doesn't feel like pushing his luck, and starts sweeping at range 8 to the base, then (1 to the mine).

And consider the Phaser-4 chart. At a range of '8', it looks rather better than a Phaser-1 does at '0'. Even WITH the "-4" damage modifier for firing through the web, it still manages to look a lot like a Phaser-1 at range '1'. And a BATS has 6 of them. Every turn. WHILE you are sweeping mines. And THAT is just to sweep the outermost mine you found. And with no defenders helping?

In a full-on Tholian base assault...it's really quite grizzly...

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 01:03 am: Edit

Xander,

A base cannot have DefSats. They can only be used in orbit around a planet or moon (R1.15G).

Jonathon,

It would take a long post to explain how I would deploy my mines, and I'm too tired right now. But I will make a couple of points. Even deployed outside the wedding cake*, this field can be very dense and sweeping it will be a difficult and dangerous process. Among other things, the command-controlled mines can't be swept. I believe I can kill enough web breaker drones (at my heavily defended bases, acknowledgeing again that I can't defend every base heavily) to save the middle ring, though it will be weak. If the Klingons carefully sweep the mines outside the wedding cake, that gives my defenders enough time to bring the middle ring back up to strength. The Klingons then still have to go through a full "two tier" assault and that's still no picnic. The only way they can avoid that is to attack the (formerly) middle ring while it is still weak, and that means they take a lot more damage from the unswept mines before even hitting the web.

*My minefield against Klingons with web breaker drones would be a bit different from my minefield deployment against actual Klingons. In both cases, some mines will be inside the web (though there are some "gotchas" about this the Tholians have to be careful of) but most will be outside. The details would differ, however and I'm basically too lazy right now to examine the wherefors and the whys.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 01:07 am: Edit

Xander,

Regarding your 12:46 pm post (I was typing while you posted it), a Tholioan BATS actually has 8 phaser-4s, not 6. Remember, Tholian bases don't have heavy weapons (unless they have the web caster refit, and in my opinion it's a mistake to give them that refit - their limited number of web casters should be deployed with mobile fleet elements), but do have extra phaser-4s.

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 01:37 am: Edit

Quote:

A base cannot have DefSats. They can only be used in orbit around a planet or moon



Indeed, I presumed a Tholian Starbase would be placed around Something Very Important (planet of some kind). This may not always be true, but given the relatively small size of the Holdfast, seemed probable.

Quote:

a Tholioan BATS actually has 8 phaser-4s, not 6



Ah, my bad. I did forget that. (I believe I mentioned it was a terribly scarring experience, right? I must have been blocking some things out...)

By Stacy Brian Bartley (Bartley) on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 01:46 am: Edit

The heck with Def-Sats. Install ground based defense phaser bases on the anchor asteroids.
regards
Stacy

By Terence Sean Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 02:22 am: Edit

Quote:

But why not?



They don't have enough ships. As the rules stand, the DO have enough ships, but if you remove the web advantage they don't. And if you mass all your ships at the bases to compensate for the degraded web, then who's defending your civilian traffic and colonies?

And I'd like to point out that this drone, as proposed, is vastly superior to the web breaker - and you point out that the web breaker makes besieging a Tholian base much easier.

The WB has a maximum range of 10, and a standard drone with this warhead, even at speed 20, has a far longer range than that. The WB, at range zero or one, does an average of 15 points of damage to the web. This thing does 10. The WB costs two points of power to fire, this thing is free subject only to ammo limitations. Which as SPP pointed out, with the right fleet, are not that much of a limitation. Sure you can shoot down the drones and even set mines to blow them up en masse, but you only need to clear a short path through the minefield to get to the web with the web breaker drones to be effective. And a Selt ship diving into the web to break it at point blank range is going to have the same problem with the mines. Selt ships, even the largest, typically only mount two web breakers (the Battlewagon being an exception, but that isn't in SFB yet).

I agree that Klinks can't beat Tholian webbed up bases in SFB under the current rules. It's hard enough in FC. While this fits with the history, it isn't fun, and something should be done. I don't think this proposal fixes it, but instead, completely hoses the Tholians. Perhaps the FC solution should be introduced, reducing maximum web strength to 30 per hex. But it's post-Doomsday and changes to core rules are a dead horse.

By Sidney G. Kanouse (Konus67c7) on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 01:49 pm: Edit

The idea of Web-cracker drones makes sense to me because I would think the Klingons would find ways of kicking Tholian butt after they parked themselves in Klingon territory to begin with. What an insult. It would be like your neighbor building a tool shed in your backyard and daring you to do something about it. I think that the number of these drones should be limited as they would be expensive. The Klingons have the capability to discover new weapons tech; look at the Stasis Field Generator. Anyhooo; yes give the Klingons these drones, just not alot of them.

By Michael C. Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 02:48 pm: Edit

Actually:

Tholian base minefields are unique in that the Tholian DOESN'T CARE if you know there are multiple corridors through the mines and to the outermost web ring.

What Tholian minefields do is protect SMALL areas of the outer ring where the web reinforcing ships are going to rise up and dump in power.

This is even more so with the alternate web schema I proposed in a CL years ago (the web of Lloth?) with multiple foxholes and such.

A besieging fleet has to be MOVING to get any chance to crash into the outer ring and zork the ships on the outer veranda (the space between the outer and middle ring) before they get back to the inner aisle between the middle and inner ring.

By Terence Sean Terry O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 03:07 pm: Edit

Sidney: The Klingons certainly wanted to find ways to kick the Tholian butt, but wanting to find something and being able to find it are two different things. The history, and the rules, say that the Milky Way powers just never got "extra-galactic" technology.

MCG: If I have these drones and there's a gap in the defenses of the web, I'll concentrate the drone impacts on that point. I could very well be able to deplete the web faster than the Tholians can dump power into it, or just weaken it enough get ships through the outer layer and into the verandah.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 03:27 pm: Edit

The problem is that the Web is one of the few true force multipliers in SFB and, as SPP and stacey said yesterday, it's a multiplier that doesn't scale.

That means it's almost impossible for webbreaker drones to produce partial degradation of the advantages given by the web. It's all or nothing. Ships either penetrate the web in one turn or they don't. if the penetrate the web in one turn the web becomes a speed bump, not a defense.

This is potentially appropriate for a campaign where the tholians compete on a level playing field with everybody else, or as simulator tech for Tholian cadets to play with.

If injected into the "real" SFU, the Klingons suddenly have the means to overwelm and destroy the Tholians.

By Stewart W Frazier (Frazikar1) on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 09:46 pm: Edit

Stacy - Install ground based defense phaser bases on the anchor asteroids.

(Un)Healthy dose of Rocky Road anyone...

Still, as a double-warhead restricted item, with a no SP option...no type-IIIXX (only single space warhead)

Reducing the effects to 5?

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 10:01 pm: Edit

...it either does little more than cost the tholians extra power or demolishes the web as a defense.

A better answer to the problem of assaulting a tholian base is coming up with a good way to calculate the advantage given by the web.

By Stacy Brian Bartley (Bartley) on Wednesday, January 27, 2010 - 11:17 pm: Edit

John
You hit the nail right on the head. SPP did PART of the job in Doomsday when he finally gave a BPV value for standing web, but the sad reality it's a WAG (GUESS is the last word in that acronym). I've yet to encounter anyone who ever beat a standard Tholian web emplacement by any means other than 10 - 1 advantage OR Tholian incompetence.
regards
Stacy

By Mike Strain (Evilmike) on Thursday, January 28, 2010 - 12:03 pm: Edit

It seems that the major objection the Powers That Be have is that this is supposed to be a DRONE.

What if....and this is a big if, mind you....the Klingons, after careful study of the web breaker (and you can't tell me they didn't study it, especially AFTER they waxed the Selts...) managed to modify the Mauler Cannon to affect the web?

Call it....Web Smasher.

Works just like a mauler, but ONLY affects web.

Web Smasher ships replace Mauler ships on a 1:1 basis in the production schedule, cost the same, etc. As far as S8 goes, they are considered a mauler ship.

Say....they began building these ships about 2 years AFTER the Selts arrived.

So, you have a ship that has to get close to the web to smash it, is vulnerable to fire (and trust me, when the Tholians see a Web Smasher ship, they are gonna throw the kitchen sink plus the garage at it...), and by no means ensures the destruction of the Tholians, but at least gives the Klinks a CHANCE to take out a webbed-up base, buzzsaw, wedding-ring, whatever.

*waits for somebody to Push The Button*

By Xander Fulton (Dderidex) on Thursday, January 28, 2010 - 01:51 pm: Edit

The Web Smasher is not a terrible idea - it addresses a lot of the concerns about drones being able to be 'selectively massed', but there a few a few issues with it:

- The mauler is a Romulan weapon, not Klingon. While they use it, certainly, they didn't invent it. It would seem more likely that the scientists who spend decades inventing the device (and may well still be alive - they are long-lived Romulans, after all) would be in a better place to develop new implementations of it. But, of course, the Romulans never had access to Seltorian technology.

- The chief conceit of the module as a drone was that it preserved the caveat that "this is technology galactics cannot understand" - it needed a component provided by the Seltorians to work (the Klingons simply provided/developed the delivery method), and so went away when they did. A mauler is...a fairly different animal, entirely.

Now, that's not to say, of course, that this wouldn't - from a GAME perspective - address most of the complaints. Certainly cannot be 'massed', and as with the Seltorian ships, proper, you need to get •••• close to use it at all. (Although...weren't maulers invented in the first place when one of the Steves noticed some of the problems with Tholian base assaults?)

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Thursday, January 28, 2010 - 02:03 pm: Edit

Mike,

...and when the mauler is trashed (and it will be while the attacking force dismantles the mine field surrounding the base), what happens then? the empire is out an expensive specialty unit to little gain.

The thing is not going to survive long enough to blow through three rings of tholian web, and may not survive long enough to blow through one ring so you're left with the same situation.

The Selt web-breaker works because it weakens web faster than it can be replaced AND does it from distance AND is in common usage on Seltoran ships. and as a result they are a massive threat to the Holdfast. Put the same capbility i Klingon hands and the Holdfast can't deal with it. they lose ground and hulls steadily while the klingons make more faster.

I'm sure they breathed a sigh of relief when the Klingons wiped the local Selts out. I wouldn't be surprised if the Tholians didn't leak the Big Seltoran Secret to the Klinks for just that reason.

"Uh, do you really know what kind of fire you're playing with, there?"

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, January 28, 2010 - 02:04 pm: Edit

Anything along these lines would have to happen after Operation Unity because there is no way the Tholians would participate with the Klingons if they had this device.

I think the Tholians would then have no choice but to ally with the Hydrans and go on the offensive against the Klingons (and some against the Romulans for a buffer zones and provinces for income).

Or they might just say, abandon your web breaker research or we give web to the Hydrans and Feds. That might be enough to make the Emporer puke.

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