Archive through May 10, 2010
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: General Tactics Discussion:
General Tactics:
Archive through May 10, 2010
David a few things:
For the ISC or plasma in general launching torps at the end of a turn is mainly preferred to launching them an imp later. ie launching on imp 32 so you can start recharging them a turn early is better than waiting an imp and launching them the following turn.
This does not mean that it is more advantageous to launch from a bad position, but delaying a couple impulses usually buys you very little.
Launching torps against a weasel capable ship is normally bad, but drawing weasels with a minimum amount of torps is normally good so mixed bag on his first weasel. By this I mean after your HET with a Ftorp incoming only launch the psuedo from the other launcher pretty much ensures the weasel anyway while giving you a real G to smack him with.
A fed missing with all 4 means a dead fed against 90% of the opponents out there, but good job in coming in against him.
If you know you are going into R0 then fire all phasers at that point. R0 has much better dam on p1's then at R1 so hitting him with your entire phaser hose would work great there.
I guess this game comes down to is if the FED can tractor you next turn. Depending on the fed though you could pretty much die on imp 2-3. ie if the fed originally kept 2 suicides and charged 2 WW starting T1 your current FED would have 2 suicides and his full phaser allottment(minus 2 p3s that he's repairing next turn).
Whenever his FC becomes active means he can pump 36 from 2 suicides plus 51 from 8 phasers at R0. Which leaves a pretty big hole in you althuogh you still shuold be in fighting shape. As well if he tractors you then you'll be hurting almost as badly ie your allocation looks like 4 HK 4 PPD 5 torps(could drop the f and go only 4) 8 phasers and lets say 5 for movemetn plus 1 tac. Which leaves you around 10 for tractors.
Feddie is prob like 36 power so 6 for photons+ 4 HK+ 2 shuttles + 2 tacs means 24 for tractors. If he grabs you its his 8 p1's vs your 6+4 until next turn when he gets to auto hit you for 48.
So overall you have a good lead but the game still has some play left in it. Still good job on capitalizing on the Feds shortcomings.
I'd be sorely tempted to use impulse 1 hit & run raids to make sure he couldn't weasel again, for one thing. You ended the game at range 0, facing his down #5, right? He couldn't have too many phasers facing & reloaded.
I think I would rather have speed going forward, than stopping and backing out. He's at a dead stop, so you don't need much speed, but I would definitely want to get back out of R8 very soon. The Fed could sit & spin using TACs, so staying close to him seems risky.
Kerry,
I appreciate the advice in regards to launching plasma near the end of the turn rather than at the beginning. This makes sense. This is why I fired the PPD on I32, I need to apply that to the plasma when possible as well.
In regards to firing that last G along with the F and PPT, is see your point as well. I should have saved the real G for later use.
I'll put this advice to work in the next game, thank you 
Lee,
Your right about the initial Fed phaser strike, at our start position he'd only have had 4 Ph-1's in arc. But I also agree with getting out of dodge quickly. If he TAC'd he could eventually bring all 8 ph-1's into play. I was too close for the PPD so his 8x1 vs. my 6x1/4x3 wouldn't have been the best trade off with his 3 photons coming back on T4. If I could have done a phaser strike on the down #5 then it would have made sense to plot 0 and TAC as well, but he would have been able to TAC a fresh shield before my phasers were ready to fire on T3. If he reinforced I might not have been able to breach a new shield.
All in all your probably right in getting out of R8 before T4 photons. With just moderate speed I could have continued the overrun, lauching the F on the way out to either draw out any other prepared WW or tie up phaser fire a bit on the way out. He couldn't have gone more than 10 on T3 so I probably could have gotten some range and then brought the PPD back into play again.
That is probably the best option. I got a very favorable first run on him with his torps missing and then taking out a torp and a couple of small phasers. Better to get out, reload and then hit another pass when fully armed again and him getting low on shuttles.
Thanks for both of your inputs.
David,
Just as a point of BBS advice--if you are discussing tournament rules games (such as this one :-), posting the discussion over in the Tournament Tactics section is probably a better plan than in the General Tactics section. There are a lot of tournament players who don't read the General Tactics discussions but would rabidly respond and discuss anything that shows up in the Tournament Tactics section.
Thank you
So I've been re-reading the Far Stars Campaign again, and ran across the time period where it seemed like they were talking about 'Silly Tractor Tricks' every other battle report.
The biggest example I could see was one where two MC 1 ships each expend 17 power for movement and 2 for tractors and by careful tractoring and release of tractors could move 22 hexes over the course of the turn and at the same time, for those impulses when they were tractored, decrease their turn mode!
So, effectively they were able to save enough warp energy by using these tractor tricks to allow both ships to save enough warp energy for an HET (or if a Fed, 5 points for charging photons). Overall energy gain was 3 points for each ship.
My motivation for posting this here is that I'm bringing a new guy 'up to speed' (pun intended) on more and more of the SFB rules, and while we both agree that the above is pure cheese, it would be hard NOT to use it now that we're aware of it. Yes, I'm aware of the disadvantages in place when tractoring a friendly ship, but under some circumstances these disadvantages would be minimal or almost non existent.
So, what I'm curious about is, what tactical implications are there of tractoring a friendly ship that have nothing to do with the above tactic. In other words, what other reasons are there for tractoring a friendly ship?
I can think of a couple:
1. Get a ship in a bad position, out of said position faster than it could do so on its own.
2. Keep it from being tractored, or break the tractor, of an enemy ship.
I'd like to hear more, since I'm debating various house rules (something like only being able to tractor a friendly ship if the target friendly ship is speed 0 - or perhaps speed 10 or less, or something along those lines; or only being able to tractor a friendly ship if it's crippled; or only being able to tractor a friendly ship if this is the only way to prevent its obvious and unavoidable destruction - for instance, by black hole; or some combination of the above). There's also a house rule listed on the forum which I could use instead, but it adds more complication than any of my thoughts.
Note that I don't really intend to discuss a house rule here, I just want to get a sense of how many valid tactical opportunities not related to movement I would lose by a house rule preventing tractoring of friendly ships except in very restrictive circumstances.
The power savings isn't as good as it appears. Each hex of movement gained probably cost one ship or the other a point of power for the tractor beam. The ships saved 5 points between them, not 5 for both ships.
John,
My comment is based on the post in the Far Stars Campaign by Kerry Mullen, May 26, 2009, 3:02 AM.
(Warning: If you don't know about tractor tricks and don't want to "see the cheese", then look away ).
To be clear, each ship saves a total of 3 points of power (6 between them).
So each ship spent 17 power for movement + 2 points for tractors, and moved 22 over the turn.
So, what you end up with is 5 WARP power saved (enough for an HET - or arming photons) and 3 overall points saved for each ship. Each ship goes 3 hexes more than it would have had all the above power been in movement and no tractoring had gone on. And while tractored, they can better their turn mode.
Now, admittedly, it's SciFi so you could use technobabble to explain why alternating tractor beams at specific times could increase the ship's overall speed, but...
robert, i represent the opinion of nobody important. but, at a guess, few people think of the "stupid tractor tricks" as a desirable feature of the rules, but the cures available seem worse.
not being able to tractor friendly units in circumstances where you could tractor enemy ones, seems a bit fishy, ignoring the question of what "legitimate" uses you just paved over.
i wish you the best of luck in finding a fix for the loopholes. Back In The Day (TM) i was in a play group that instituted a blanket +1 power cost for tractoring any unit larger than SC5. i imagine many groups would find this intolerable, but maybe you find it worth considering.
Well, at least as far as a good reason to trac a friendly ship, pulling out of web is a good one.
Well, one could say that tractoring has the potential to create stress on the tractored ships and therefore races have restrictions on doing so except in dire or 'safer' situations.
Tractoring a unit in a web would still fall under most of my potential house rules regarding speed, if I change the restriction to 'effective speed' (which would handle the web situation).
Wasn't sure where to put this question, and since I didn't see a dedicated topic to it, I figured here would be a good start.
Does anyone have experience playing the Qari, especially in small squadron battles? From the looks of the ships, and the fact that the main weapon cannot fire more than once per four impulses, it would seem that I'm supposed to fire as I close with the opponent, then again when I'm near them, and then again on the way out, using the rotating turret to keep them in arc no matter where I am moving.
However, looking at the actual ships, it would seem that the CA is a terrible ship. Unless I missed some boxes, it only have 36 power (not counting batteries) and it has four KKHs, each of which take 3 points of power to charge each turn. By comparison, hellbore-armed Hydran ships (which come the closest in power requirements for its heavy weapons) has 40 power without the plus refit and 43 power with. I know not all ships can be equal, but is there a specific reason or trick as to why the ship just seems completely horrible, something that would justify even its fairly low BPV when compared to other heavy cruisers in the same price range?
Umm... I have a question about the "Moray Eel of Space" scenario andhow it interacts with fighters and PFs. In the scenario's "variations" section, it says, "This monster can be easily defeated by fighter squadrons and PF Floatillas. Do not use those system against this monster. (There is no point in doing so. Just say you won and go on.)"
Tell me, am I the only one who thinks this to be utter bullcrap when it comes to direct-fire based PFs?
Think about it, if I have a floatilla of Thunderbolts, G1s, Needles, Freedom Fighters or Buccaneers with drones in their option mounts, the method for defeating the Eel is obvious... Fly into the Eel's hex and swarm 11 drones (or up to 16 for Buccaneers with all-drone loadout), completely overwhelming the MCIDS and causing massive damage to the Eel that the Eel cannot return in kind. Repeat until you can start rolling to kill the Eel, then use remaining drones (firing in smaller salvos) or DF weapons to get the die-rolls you need to kill the Eel.
For Centurions, Starhawks, Pterodactyls, ISC PFs and Buccaneers with plasams in their option mounts, the tactics are similar except that you have to be careful of launching plasmas in the same hex as the Eel because of the feedback damage.
Fair enough, all the above PF types can defeat the Eel easily... But where does that leave Bobcats, Harriers, Hellions, Howlers, Arachnids and Buccaneers with direct-fire weapons in their mounts? Because I'm rather fond of the Lyrans, not so fond of the Hydrans and neutral on the Tholians and Orions, let's take the Bobcats and examine the possibilities of a Bobcats vs Eel scenario...
OK, first of all, how strong is the Eel in such a scenario? According to the balancing system, a Moray Eel facing a standard floatilla of Bobcats (that is, four Bobcat-As, one leader and one scout, total BPV 248) has an initial strength of 397 (248 / 125 x 200 = 396.8) and will require 20 points of additional damage to get another dice roll to kill the thing (248 / 125 x 10 = 19.84).
Now let's say the Bobcat's decide to close in and hit the Eel with everything they have at range zero (a sensible tactic given that anything else will simply result in them recieving the same bites for less damage dealt to the Eel and the Eel is way too far away from the planet in the standard scenario for that aspect of the scenario to matter). At range zero, the Eel is going to take 10 damage per OL disruptor, an average of 5.5 damage per PH-2 and an average of just under 4 damage per PH-3 for an average of about 39 per PF, or 195 damage for the four standard PFs and the leader, plus another 19 damage fromt the scout for a total of 214. We can add four to this from the leader's T-Bomb (note that buying the T-Bomb will add six damage points (4 / 125 x 200 = 6.4) to the Eel, so whilst buying the bomb does result in a net "profit", it's only four points rather than the ten points of damage that the bomb actually does).
At this point, the Eel is then going to bite all six PFs. After some experimental dice rolls, I was honestly shocked to discover just how often warp-packed Bobcats would have at least one and somtimes both warp engines bitten clean off as, because of how the PF DAC is set-up, half the damage points beyond what is needed to kill the four hull boxes go into the warp engines. A couple of unlucky die-rolls later, and that's one Bobcat out of the action, with no warp engines remaining, another with only four boxes left and still another with three or four boxes gone. And yet the PFs are only about half-way to killing the Eel... If they get bitten again without dropping their packs, any remaining warp engines are practically doomed and if even one PF was taken out of the action by the first series of bites, the PFs will be unable to score enough damage on the Eel on the second pass to force even the first die-roll to kill it...
So what are they to do, drop their packs? If they did that they wouldn't have enough power to use OL disruptors on the Eel AND keep up with it without burning their batteries, making scoring enough damage to kill it before the Eel's bites cripple them even harder. Even if we assume that every disruptor is fired at range 1 and hits (and not all of them are going to), each regular Bobcat is down to an average of 29 damage on the first pass, for a total of 164 (including the average 19 damage from the scout), or 168 with the T-Bomb. Again, the PFs need to score 397 damage just to START rolling to kill it... Taking an average of 7.5 damage points from the Eel's bite per pass, the PFs (even without their warp packs) will be well-and-truly crippled after the second pass, which either way probably won't cause quite enough damage to force a roll...
Overall, I think the position of the Bobcats is a hopeless one, but I will playtest it at some stage, using both the pack and non-pack strategies. However, I think I've demonstrated that some PFs don't have the Moray Eel scenario as easy as the scenario seems to think that they do...
Have I got this right? Or is there something I'm missing?
John Swift:
The Moray Eel is a very predictable target, don't fixate on your PFs doing battle passes by their own maneuver, use the Moray Eel's own maneuver to set up your "battle passes".
Maneuver your combat PFs such that all five of them will be in the same hex as the Moray Eel on Impulse #32 with full overloads, centerlined, three points of allocated reinforcement on the #1 (facing) shield (no, I am not forgetting the Moray Eel's bite ignores shields, keep reading) and your shuttle already detached and maneuvering to be clear of the MCIDs, but it will not fire, you are just avoiding losing it early.
Fire everything on Impulse #32. The Moray Eel will not bite your PFs until the following turn. At the start of that turn drop the packs, and power all weapons, dumping half the battery into the phaser capacitors, and the other half to power minimum shields. You may lose some of the powered weapons, but the ones you do not lose are powered for the whole turn.
On Impulse #1 of the second turn the Moray Eel will bite the five PFs, and you will be able to take stock.
The Scout PF should be three hexes behind the Moray Eel. On Impulse #1 it will fire a phaser-2. The Moray Eel will move to its hex and bite. On Impulses #3, #6, and #8 the Moray Eel will move until it is again at Range Zero from your five combat PFs. Less any weapons they lost, they will be fully armed (well, okay, the four standard PFs will be a half point of power shy in their phaser capacitors) with overloads despite any damage to their power systems from the previous round of bites.
The problem is that this time, in addition to the bite damage, you are going to take disruptor feedback damage (two or four points depending on whether your PF has one disruptor or two). You will not take that damage on Turn #1 because you will have had power for the shields, but the first shield boxes lost would be the minimum shields. This is why you used three points of reinforcement on Turn #1, the result of firing your overloaded disruptors is you only lost one box of minimum shields on your #1 shield, so you can use a half point of power (diverted from fully recharging the phaser capacitors) to raise your #1 shield at minimum, and it will block all disruptor feedback damage on Turn #2. You are probably going to lose part of the capacitor anyway, so the half point of power will not be wasted.
Note, your standard PFs have six warp, two impulse, and two APRs, plus the battery for a total of eleven points of power (no packs since you dropped them at the start of Turn #2). Six warp and two impulse overloads the disruptors, two APRs and a half point of battery goes to phasers, and a half point of battery for minimum shields. On Turn #1 your phaser capacitors were full, so five warp, two impulse and an APR overloaded the disruptors, an APR powered the shields, three Warp Pack power reinforced the shield, leaving you four points of warp to move Speed 20 (or at least twenty hexes of movement) to get into position. The Scout PF will have more power to get where it has to go as it has no disruptors to arm, and no need to power or reinforce its shields.
At this point it is two rounds of bites, and two range zero salvoes with overloads.
None of your PFs will have blown up (the Moray Eel will not attack a PF that has not attacked it the previous impulse, and the non-leader PFs generally take about thirty damage points to destroy IF they do not manage to use their damage control to fix a few boxes (max of three including EDR), adding even one repaired box would allow a PF to survive a third ten-point (i.e., maximum damage) bite, I am not saying it would be combat capable.
At this juncture you have to assess the damage, use what damage repair you can, and move to get ahead of the Moray Eel again. Basically repeat the process, i.e., arrange as much as possible to get two shots in succession at the Moray Eel with your surviving PFs that are still capable of getting there. (Shoot on Impulse #32, use a phaser-2 from the scout to pull the Moray Eel back away on the next turn, and then shoot him again at Range Zero on Impulse #8.)
Remember, your cripples (and your shuttle, which should have booster packs) can try to delay by taking shots from behind the Moray Eel, forcing it to run back and bite them.
Remember that the PFL has a tractor, and extra power, and might be able to haul a PF that only has APR or impulse power remaining forward to the next battle position.
Yes, the above is a combination of first response, and some subsequent revision as other thoughts have occurred to me (like using shield reinforcement power to provide for minimum shields to block the second salvo's feedback damage). And, yes, if the Moray Eel rolls well on its damage (rather than just average) things may not turn out well. But bad luck is always a factor.
Odd . . . I thought surely someone would have commented by now. I know I am out of practice, as I have since figured out how to squeeze two more hexes of movement out of the Combat PFs on Turn #1 (not that you need it), but that was because I was extemporising and not really looking at the scenario. A look now says the Moray Eel will end Turn #1 in hex 2203 heading A, so the PFs only need to move Speed 3 on Turn #1. (Enter hex 2201 on Impulse #11, drop the T-bomb in that hex, move to hex 2202 on Impulse #22, ending the turn by moving into hex #2203 on Impulse #32 with a heading of D, at which point the T-bomb will arm.)
The Scout will have to move faster (in order to circle around the Moray Eel, necessary only to fullfill turn mode requirements so it will enter the map separately from the other PFs), and finish the turn in hex 2206, headng A.
The shuttle will move to keep more than three hexes from the Moray Eel, but able to move in behind it when the time comes. With the warp pack, the shuttle is as fast as the Moray Eel, and at some point, it may have to buy you half-a-turn's delay. It will do this by following six hexes behind the monster and firing its phaser-3 on Impulse #16. If it hits, the Moray will rush back and kill it (combination of even its poorest bite and its MCIDS means the shuttle will die when it scores a hit), but that will cost the Moray Eel half a turn's movement since it will have to retrace the six turns of movement it lost when it went back to bite the shuttle.
The delay caused by the shuttle will help your damaged PFs get ahead of the Moray Eel (if it is needed) to set up the second round. You will probably have lost a phaser-3, make sure each PF loses the same facing phaser-3, because when you set up for the next round of fire you are going to be setting up to do it through either your #2 or #6 shield. Only pay for minimum shields when you fire the first shot. When the scout pulls the Moray Eel away again, ships that are able to spend a point of power for minimum shields and two tacs (and still have an overloaded disruptor ability) should tac their opposite FA arc shield to face the Moray Eel for the next shot. Do not take feedback damage unless you have no other choice.
Maybe people were too busy thinking of tactics with the Qari to think about the Moray Eel.
Probably not though.
However, I will say that your description of the Moray Eel vs. the PFs is pretty cool.
I will add that it demonstrates the diffence in the average SFB player, and the great ones, of which surely Petrick belongs... the shield trick alone is nice, and even if he thinks that may be readily apparent to most players, I do not believe he is correct. We just charge in and gut stuff. :-0 This also illustrates one of the difficulties in writing for the SFB universe. You have to assume that a fictional Captain will know all the capabilities of his (or her or it) ship and the opponent's ship, and each and every counter that should be employed at each stage of the battle, and that no mistakes in employment of tactics will be made. However, as a so-so player, I find it difficult to come up with each and every tactic and counter that applies in each, unique situation. Indeed, I find myself rationalizing that since very experienced starship captains are so knowledgeable about the capabilities of their ships, they will likely have a good idea of whether they can/should win the upcoming fight. In which case.. if I had a good idea I would lose the upcoming engagement, I would withdraw if at all possible, and come back with bigger friends with bigger sticks.
What if the moray is fired on from MULTIPLE hexes?
Can the Moray rush to multiple hexes and bite in all of them on one impulse?
Michael C. Grafton:
Yes . . . see "Biting Frenzy" in (SM3.45). Quite literally by the rule if you had one unit in each of the 127 hexes that encompass the six hex range at which you are allowed to fire at the Moray Eel (including the hex the Moray Eel itself occupies) it would, under the biting frenzy rule, bite each unit one time (in a random order), which may entail it effectively moving at a speed that I do not have the math to calculate during that period.
Randy O. Green:
We do not require that. We just do not want senior officers who are utterly and completely incompetent, doing things they just should not (like trying to bull through a minefield at Speed 7 in a police cutter). Or who are just too knowledgable (even if you write a special scenario rule that says all of the enemy drones are type-I, no opposing captain would make the assumption that his "intelligence report that the enemy has only type-I drones" is 100% accurate. The ship he ran into might be the one that still has a type-IV (maybe acquired from an Orion, maybe taken from captured stores of the "enemy"), so he is still going to have his science guys identifying what drones he can, and sweating anytime drones leak through his defenses (even if only on "the inside" as he tries to present a mask of confidence to his crew).
People do make mistakes, and a story might hinge on a captain making a mistake at a critical time, but the whole battle cannot be a captain who just constantly makes mistakes, or photons that "always hit" even at Range 30, or disruptors that fire at a rate that is obviously slower than the photons (we have had stories submitted where the Fed ship was firing photons twice as often as the Klingons were firing disruptors, and the photons hit all the time, while the disruptors constantly missed).
There can be luck, but luck should not be overbearing (like, again, the photons always hitting). A story might use the critical hit rules if it was needed.
But overall, the choices of captains need to be "beliveable", including their mistakes.
Randy O. Green:
An example from a real game.
Joe Oliver learned to play against me (this is not claiming I was the greatest player, only that Joe learned his tactics from me).
One day we were engaged in a duel between a Hydran Lancer and a Lyran CW. Joe danced expertly as I had basically taught him, and I finally realized that he had learned too well: I was not going to be able to get close to hammer him with my fusions and fighters.
So I decided to disengage.
The sight of the Lancer moving to run excited the Lyran Captain's blood, and he sought to close.
The Hydran captain hunched his shoulders (metaphorically), expecting the last Lyran salvo on Impulse #25.
The Lyran did not fire. His blood was up, and he had decided to take the shot at as close a range as he could manage.
The Hydran captain, watching the impulses slide by, saw an opportunity. On Impulse #31 he launched all four Stingers and the admin shuttle.
On Impulse #32 he dropped the batteries for a HET directly back towards the Lyran.
On Impulse #32 the Lyran fired, downing the Hydran's #1 shield and doing some internals.
During Energy Allocation the Lyran re-armed and overloaded, but continued forward at the maximum speed he could manage after doing so, raising his ESGs for a ram.
Too late. The Lancer's speed let it get inside the radius of the spheres before they came up, and the Lancer submitted its "rebuttle" at Range 0.
Mizia damage (phaser-Gs are fun) stripped most of the weapons off the CW, even if the Lancer had to eat the second ESG (the one that survived) through its down shield.
The CW found itself desperately trying to turn away from the approaching Stingers with insufficient weapons to stop them. Their fusions and phaser-Gs gutted the CW. It may even have been the phaser-3 from the shuttle that finally put paid to the CW.
The mistake was Joe Oliver's desire to do maximum damage before the Lancer escaped, he should have fired on Impulse #25, and then taken a second shot on Impulse #1 of the next turn. But he knew he could get closer by Impulse #32, and it just did not dawn on him that the Lancer was "still dangerous". He saw a fleeing opponent (I would not complete disengagement until the end of the next turn, I was not moving fast enough to disengage at the end of the current turn, obvious from the fact that I had reserve warp power in my batteries, i.e., even though I was running, I still cycled the batteries to retain my tactical options), but it was obvious to Joe that I was "running", and indeed I was, it was not an attempt to lure him into a mistake. Once I saw the mistake, however, I grabbed it. A case of snatching "victory from the jaws of defeat".
Joe, just before his ship blew up, uttered the famous last words "This is what I get for playing with my food."
@Petrick - PRICELESS!
Indeed.
Many a hunter has become the hunted by chasing too closely....