Peter,

By "Voldemort" I mean that which shall not be named. I may have meant...uh... "giving your opponent the opportunity to throw himself on your spear with low risk to yourself" but turn 1 of a "plasma ballet" is a pretty good synonym for that.

The Romulan TKR, and TFH make up 2/3s of the "big plasma" ships, the Gorn is only 1/3 of that mix. A cloaking device is likely to be in the mix of one of these long games. Correlation does not prove causation.

The cloaking device has a lot of drawbacks, chief among them is that the cloaker is slow. You say that the "threat of cloak" makes the game longer (rather than the actual act of cloaking). How does that force the opponent to play longer (I guess by being more timid?). How does that work?

Consider if the Romulan TFH slows down from runout speed, say from 26 to 16 at the beginning of the turn. For the first 1/3 of the turn or so at that speed, he might cloak, OR he might speed up. If he is cloaking for sure, you might close in to phaser or bolt him, or just launch and make him cloak. But maybe he isn't cloaking and he might charge you, or he might just run away. To me, the threat of the cloak is like the cloaker pretending that maybe the game could be shorter, then suckering the guy onto his spear, and then reverting to the longer game. If you knew for certain it was a cloak, then maybe a quicker sub hunt would ensue.

Perhaps that isn't what you mean? I think a specific example of "no cloak threat = short" vs. "cloak threat but no cloak = long" would help me?

By Chris Proper (Duke) on Friday, August 19, 2011 - 05:57 pm: Edit

If I cloak for a turn my enemy expects to do a lot less damage. He is then less willing to pay the price of admission. So instead of diving through a torpedo for an anchor attempt that may never materialize he lobs an enveloper.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Friday, August 19, 2011 - 11:04 pm: Edit

David wrote:
>>By "Voldemort" I mean that which shall not be named. I may have meant...uh... "giving your opponent the opportunity to throw himself on your spear with low risk to yourself" but turn 1 of a "plasma ballet" is a pretty good synonym for that.>>

Huh. Ok. I guess that makes sense.

>>The Romulan TKR, and TFH make up 2/3s of the "big plasma" ships, the Gorn is only 1/3 of that mix. A cloaking device is likely to be in the mix of one of these long games. Correlation does not prove causation.>>

Well, again, the issue, for my money, is the cloaking or possibility of cloaking, that makes the game go longer than not.

>>The cloaking device has a lot of drawbacks, chief among them is that the cloaker is slow. You say that the "threat of cloak" makes the game longer (rather than the actual act of cloaking). How does that force the opponent to play longer (I guess by being more timid?). How does that work? >>

The cloak is a get out of jail free card. Having a cloak means that you have an extra out, in case things go badly or someone is excessively aggressive and catches you at an otherwise vulnerable point. Yes, actually being cloaked means you are slow, but it also means you are taking very little damage when cornered.

The most concrete example of how the existence of a cloak makes people play more conservatively is the obvious one--if my opponent is a Gorn, I can (in whatever ship or situation) afford to, at some point, take some damage if it means cornering the ship; eat an enveloper or a couple F torps or whatever, lose a shield, take a dozen in, if it means I am going to end a turn on top of the Gorn and be able to even things up before his plasma reloads. You can't do this to a Romulan. As you take the damage, it cloaks, and reloads in relative safety.

As a result, playing risky to get a leg up is a losing position. Not 'cause the Romulan is cloaking. But 'cause it *can* cloak. So you end up playing more conservatively than otherwise necessary. Which slows down games. The plasma ships can't take hits to corner and anchor the Romulan. As it might cloak. The drone ships can't take hits to corner and smother the Romulan with drones. As it might cloak. So all games vs a cloaked opponent encourage the non cloaked opponent to play conservatively when in other games (vs non cloak enabled opponents), conservative play isn't so incentivized. Which means quicker, more exciting games.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Saturday, August 20, 2011 - 08:02 am: Edit

this is, of course, just in the mind of the opponent. it is not necessarily a good tactical assessment of the situation, however. it can be argued that running through the second Ept at least lead to a situation were the non-cloaker can hurt the cloaking ship during its reload turns. Disruptors in particular are good for this.
On the third turn the

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Saturday, August 20, 2011 - 11:21 am: Edit

Carl wrote:
>>this is, of course, just in the mind of the opponent.>>

Well, that, and years and years of examples of Romulans winning games 'cause their opponent ran through all their stuff and then they cloaked out and reloaded.

>> it is not necessarily a good tactical assessment of the situation, however. it can be argued that running through the second Ept at least lead to a situation were the non-cloaker can hurt the cloaking ship during its reload turns. Disruptors in particular are good for this.>>

Sure. But usually it is a very lopsided trade--eating the second enveloper for, let's be conservative, 40 damage (and then the F torps...) is not really going to balance out with the average damage at an opponent under cloak, let alone the damage that you end up with when the !#?!#? cloak chart totally hoses you.

Which comes back to the basic point at hand--the existence of a cloak on your opponent incentivizes conservative play. Yeah, if you eat the enveloper and the F's and overrun the cloaked opponent and roll really well on the !#?!#? cloak mitigation chart (unlikely), you *can* come out ahead. But the odds are that you won't. 'Cause on average, the !#?!#? mitigation chart will make your return fire a bad trade. And rolling bad on the chart makes it really bad. Could you roll up? Sure. But it isn't likely. So you play conservative and don't risk losing at the hands of bad dice.

When the cloak isn't a factor, you can play less conservatively and gain advantage, which makes games go quicker. When the cloak is a factor, playing less conservatively gives you, generally speaking, a small chance of winning and a large chance of losing.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Saturday, August 20, 2011 - 03:52 pm: Edit

Paul Scott had an observation that in serious tourney play players tend to be conservative.
IOW not running through 2 Pl-S on turn one.

By David Zimdars (Zimdarsdavid) on Saturday, August 20, 2011 - 03:56 pm: Edit

Peter,

I tend to agree with Carl, although with the caveat that the time to engage the Gorn or the Romulan close in with a ZIN or GBS is after the 3rd or 5th EPT launch (turn 4 or turn 7). The KLI or LYR might be able to acclerate this as they are more of a threat at range 8 (and LYR can ESG overrun - See Ken Lin's victory at origins article). The goal is to patiently avoid anything but token damage from the EPT barage while shrewdly sabre dancing with standard disr and a few phasers to do some damage to the 1,2, 6 on the RFH and any shield but the 4 on the GRN and RKR. The ship attacking the BP ship has to have sufficient shields to take 1 EPT and an F or even 2 F without getting anything but a token internal. Choosing to take anything but token damage from the EPT voids this as time is no longer on your time and you become a "walking dead man". A Romulan cloaking with highly compromised shields is horribly vulnerable to the Mizia effect, is unable to attack in any way, and the fade in process can get darn ugly. In any case, it is prudent to wait to let your own saber dance damage build up (hence it is a long game).

The threat is not so much of the cloak, IMHO but of the S-EPT. a) you can start taking EPT damage too early before the opponent is primed; b) once your shields are compromised closing and taking an EPT guarantees internals; c) once you are out of weasels your only chance is to run from the EPT --- in each case better keep your distance. And regarding an cloaking RFH or RKR. Do you fear a single standard S? Close in take it down by 36 phaser damage and it hits for 12, a few points of reinforcement and big deal. The Rom is going to need a few more torps - he has to stay under longer to build these up. But of course what he really fires to drive you off is the EPT. 60 pts - 18 from phasers - 12 reinforcement - that still is 30 all around. And he might have an F. Much much scarier. You don't want to wait around an uncloaking Rom because of the threat of the S-EPT. Gotta weasel it at least, but those are scarce - so you got to run. Its the EPT that makes the cloak scary.

Consider your recent game (GRN) with Ron Brinmeyer (GBS). Ron took the turn 1 EPT. His turn 2 strategy was neither fish nor fowl, I think because of the threat of a turn 2 EPT, which you may have launched (say if the S had been a pseudo instead of a real).

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Saturday, August 20, 2011 - 04:10 pm: Edit

The Romulan have problem of his own. It cost energy to arm the torps, even to normal level.
If you uncloak and launch an EPT you are waving a banner that reads "no power allocated to cloak!"
Hk 4pts, EPT 8pts, other S 2pts, delay the Fs 2 pts, two weasels 2pts some tacs 2pts = 20pts.
Energy for tractor none, no speed either.
If you want that you can't afford to cloak.
That is why think getting close to a romulan could be worthwhile.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, August 21, 2011 - 10:46 am: Edit

David wrote:
>>I tend to agree with Carl, although with the caveat that the time to engage the Gorn or the Romulan close in with a ZIN or GBS is after the 3rd or 5th EPT launch (turn 4 or turn 7).>>

Well, sure. That is totally reasonable. And doesn't contradict the idea that the cloak is the problem. Sure. If you want to corner a ship on T4 or T7, that is totally reasonable if that ship doesn't have a cloak (i.e. T4 or T7 isn't indication of an excessively long game). If it is T4 or T7 and you eat the enveloper and go corner the Gorn, the game will come to a decisive conclusion not long after that. If it is T4 or T7 and you eat the enveloper and go corner the Romulan, it can/will cloak, and the game goes on and on. So eating that T4 or T7 enveloper is a bad idea.

>>The threat is not so much of the cloak, IMHO but of the S-EPT.>>

The EPT is certainly part of the equation here. But still, the cloak is what makes the games go super long, not the EPTs.

I play Gorn all the time. Games (against not Romulans) rarely go longer than 7-8 turns. Even when I launch a lot of EPTs (which happens some times). Win or lose. Once and a while, games go to, like, 10-11 turns. But not that often. The longest games I can remember I have played as a Gorn were:

A) Against Romulans, Which regularly go 15-20 turns.

B) One game I played against Jason Gray's Klingon went to, like, T21 (probably the longest game I have played in my life). Which he won. Jason Gray's main strength in SFB is that he is endlessly patient (he is a pro poker player) and will play a game for a 100 turns if it works to his advantage (he doesn't play intentional stalling games, but he is apparently never motivated by "man, I just want to get this game over with.")

I win a lot, sure, but games where I lose also tend to not go longer than 7-8 turns (often a lot quicker than that, as my opponent busted through plasma and mugged me by the end of T3, generally ending the game by T4). 'Cause I don't have a cloak.

>>Consider your recent game (GRN) with Ron Brinmeyer (GBS). Ron took the turn 1 EPT. His turn 2 strategy was neither fish nor fowl, I think because of the threat of a turn 2 EPT, which you may have launched (say if the S had been a pseudo instead of a real).>>

Sure. And he could have won that game on T3 by tractoring me and shoving me into the wall (which he had the capacity to do but chose not to capitalize on, instead saving his batteries for an OL disruptor shot)--I stop, he ends the turn at R1, mangles my shield with phasers, blasts through the hole on impulse 1 with OLs. All of which was certainly a possibility given the game being the same in all other ways.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, August 21, 2011 - 10:55 am: Edit

Carl wrote:
>>The Romulan have problem of his own. It cost energy to arm the torps, even to normal level.
If you uncloak and launch an EPT you are waving a banner that reads "no power allocated to cloak!"
Hk 4pts, EPT 8pts, other S 2pts, delay the Fs 2 pts, two weasels 2pts some tacs 2pts = 20pts.
Energy for tractor none, no speed either.>>

Yes. All of this is true. But it doesn't negate the fact that the cloak is a significant factor to consider in all instances vs the Romulan. And this consideration makes fighting a Romulan a game that is more conservative most of the time. Which means a longer, slower game, which is the point at hand.

Yes. On a tactical level, cloaking is often difficult. And sometimes puts the Romulan in a bad spot. But that is all completely situational. In general, if your opponent is a Romulan, you have to consider that the cloak is an advantage and that it will be used when it hoses you most, and that firing on a cloaked opponent will be less advantageous than not. Even if it isn't always. And as a result, you end up playing more conservatively (i.e. a longer and slower game) than you would if your opponent didn't have a cloak. 'Cause the cloak exists. Not 'cause it is the perfect solution to all problems.

Yes. The cloak has tactical problems and isn't a perfect solution all the time. This is why Romulans don't win every game. They are reasonably balanced, in terms of win-loss statistics. They are not, however, reasonably balanced* in terms of long-short game statistics (i.e. games against Romulans tend to lean heavily in the "excessively long" direction). And all I'm discussing here is the tendency for ships equipped with cloaks to make games go much longer than they would otherwise.

[* by "balanced", I mean "their games tend to tilt towards super long" rather than "they are unbalanced and too powerful"]

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, August 21, 2011 - 03:47 pm: Edit

So here is a totally new subject:

Yesterday, I tried out the Neo Tholian TC, winning 3 games in a row (to be fair, the matches were vs an ISC, which the Tholian has a leg up on from the webs; the Bubble Pig WAX which the Thlian has a leg up on from the webs, and it being a Bubble Pig; and the LDR which is certainly not a horrible fight for the LDR, but in terms of the two ships slugging it out, the Neo takes damage a lot better while being able to hand out about the same amount). I picked the Neo because:

A) I wanted a ship with a good turn mode.

B) I wanted a ship that doesn't care about its opponent weaseling.

C) I wanted a ship that could control/constrain opponent movement (i.e. something other than a pure DF ship).

D) The Neo is, for most purposes, just plain less good than the ATC.

After playing 3 games with it (for the first time in, like, 10 years or so), I found it fun and interesting. So I'm trying to continue justifying why I should fly the Neo over the ATC (which is, for all intents and purposes, just better at doing things that make being a Tholian good due to the 2/3 move, better weapon arcs for web shenanagins, all that C hull, strong flank shields, two snares, etc.)

-FA Disruptors. Well, kind of an advantage? I only ever managed to fire 4xOL disruptors an an opponent yesterday a couple of times (mostly, I couldn't afford to arm all 4 disruptors as standards, let alone as OLs), but in all the situations where I got to do that (and as I think about it, I think the *only* time in 3 games I did this was the one shot against the LDR's rear shield that resulted in the rules question currently ongoing over in rules questions; the rest of the time, it was either 3xOL or 4xStd at long range).

-Lots of phasers. I like the 13 phasers, of which 10 can shoot directly backwards. I think the Neo has the most phasers of any non all phaser option mount ship in the game (?). Which is nice. And considering that the ship spends a lot of time neglecting the disruptors, all those phasers are handy.

-Realtively Beefy. 6xF hull and 8xA hull is less total hull than, like, the Kzinti, but that one extra F hull box helps keep batteries alive a while longer. And with 8 total impulse, it take a long time for it to not be able to impulse TAC.

-40 power. The ship is still incredibly power hungry all the time. Even with only ever arming the WC with, like, 3 power (which is what I did most of the time after firing it the first time), the ship has trouble arming disruptors. But 40 power is a lot of power. It is easy to have, like, 9-10 reinforcement on T1 if you want to arm standards and set up for a T2 exchange.

The real major downside (other than, ya know, not being the ATC) compared to the ATC is that it only has the 1 snare to protect the WC. And after taking a snare hit last night and looking up what it took to repair, and seeing that it costs NINE (?!?!?!?!) points of repair (Nine? really? Nine?) to fix the snare, I nearly passed out. Seriously? Nine repair. For a stinking snare? For reals? Like, ok. I could see 8. 6 would be, for my money, completely reasonable and good. But 9? Man alive.

Anyone have handy tips/tricks/advice on how the Neo is better than the ATC (and by "better", I mean "kind of worth flying instead of for purposes of entertainment rather than pure tactical advantage...")

By Andrew J. Koch (Droid) on Sunday, August 21, 2011 - 04:13 pm: Edit

I posted this last year on in the archived Proposed Ship Changes through July 21:

"I think the Neo needs to be added to the list of the ships needing a slight upgrade. Funny that no one ever mentions it in these discussions. It's like it's been rendered irrelevant by the Archeo.

I think it could use any of the following or combinations thereof:
-fx phaser arcs for the forward 3 phasers
-another snare; not so much for utility as for padding the Caster
- a couple more forward hull boxes."

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, August 21, 2011 - 06:52 pm: Edit

So apparently, you can fix the snare as a web generator for 6 points, which is much better than 9, but giving it a second snare certainly would be good.

FX P1s would be nice, but I don't know how necessary that is--at R2 (i.e. from the other side of the web) on the side, right off the #2, you got 5xP1, 3xP3; the same on the spine at R2; off the #3 you lose the 3xP1 but get 2 more P3 which is a drop, but still pretty good (2xP1, 5xP3).

A couple more F Hull would be awesome as well.

Of all of these, I think the second snare would be best.

By Bill Schoeller (Bigbadbill) on Sunday, August 21, 2011 - 10:27 pm: Edit

David -

Sorry for taking so long to respond to your posts. After our game the family and I went on vacation and were out of touch for the weekend.

I will respond to the game file more thoroughly in a few days, when I am more with it, but

Key Points:
1) My post of ready was to say I had nothing planned unless it was in reaction to anything you did. If you put out a drone I would deal with it. If you fired an alpha, I expected my shield to hold, then I would close and shoot.
2) Your speed 4 on turn 2 really flumoxed me. I had planned to het into you and get a point blank shot before you could fire phasers. If you had been moving 14 I would have gotten to range 3 by impulse 4, and really walloped you. Then I would have to survive your retal, which may not have occurred. I did have a radical spd change down to 3. When you went 4, you could have ww'd. I would not get close enough before the weapons cycled, and I tried to run for it. Then you accelerated to 14 right when my decel was about to happen. I could have het into you later, but that is when I decided to ww your 4 drones when you only had 4 left. I really thought I was at a disad here. It was a good game and I will analyze it fully later this week.

By David Zimdars (Zimdarsdavid) on Sunday, August 21, 2011 - 11:17 pm: Edit

Hi Bill,

No problem. I went to all that effort to see what I could learn. After I typed it up I thought why not share it? As I said before, the "ready" bit got a bit overemphasized in discussion afterword. While you might have felt puzzled in turn 2, I felt you had the initiative due to my phaser cycle, uim, extra p1. Other than rely on miserable luck for you, I thought how i might have done turn 2 slightly different. I didnt want to think the game comes down to the Klingon missing at R4.

Good game and good luck in round 3.


Dave

By Andy Vancil (Andy) on Monday, August 22, 2011 - 12:05 am: Edit

The biggest advantage the NTC has over the ATC (and I agree the ATC is generally superior) is that at speeds below 21 it has more power. You can charge up those disruptors, fully load the WC, or reinforce. Disruptors, phasers, and the WC are all pretty flexible, so it can afford to be reactive, surrendering some initiative by going slower but having more power.

This also makes the ship less of a finesse ship. The ATC is very rewarding to someone who plays perfectly, but misplace a web by one hex and things can fall apart. The ATC is more of a slugger, and more forgiving of mistakes in some ways.

By David Zimdars (Zimdarsdavid) on Monday, August 22, 2011 - 09:38 am: Edit

The NTC predates the ATC by several years. I think few were interested in playing the NTC when first introduced because the tactical implications of the web were little understood (the notion of "W" web and sticky on/off would have elicited blank stares in the late '80s by most). To a degree, the NTC benefits from the improvement of doctrine as the ATC does, but perhaps a good fraction of modern web tactics do have to do with the power at speed that the ATC posesses. Furthermore, back in the day when the ATC was introduced, some conventional wisdom would have been that the war cruisers were disadvantaged due to slightly fewer internal boxes and the lower power at (slower) speeds that Andy mentions. Contrary to this "old-school" thinking (with aplogies to Ken Lin) ships like the WAX and the ATC really benefit from their war cruiser power curve (whereas the LDR suffers from being paper thin, not so much the power). Anyway, when I first saw the ATC it seemed doubly "sweetened" vs. other tournament cruisers 1) to overcome the burden of the web; and 2) because it was a "inherently weak" war cruiser - so therefore maybe attracting players to the Tholian. The ATC has (had) reasonably good popularity because of its good characteristics. Long way around, is there a chance that improving the NTC to ATC standards isn't inflating a (similar) ship to a a somewhat over-inflated stablemate? Does the ATC really need that 2nd snare?

By Andrew J. Koch (Droid) on Monday, August 22, 2011 - 10:57 am: Edit

We had this conversation in July of 2010 over in the Ship Changes thread. I brought it up. I was advocating for a change or two per the above list. Basically, the consensus was that the Neo will never be the ATC, so why bother with the Neo, and also that the ATC is a little too good and could use a nerfing. I don't really agree with either assessment, and would still like to see some minor upward tweaks for the Neo, because I kind of like it.

By David Zimdars (Zimdarsdavid) on Monday, August 22, 2011 - 11:53 am: Edit

I don't disagree that in comparison the NTC looks less attractive than the ATC.

A similar comparison can be made between the ZIN and the WBS (all variants, but especially the BB, which most closely mirrors the ZIN). Paradoxiaclly, the WBS can generate 8-14 more damage in its range 1 to 2 alpha strike (more and better phasers in arc); and it has more hull and takes damage better than the ZIN. This is a little odd, as the "strength" of the ZIN supposedly as a knife fighter and in being supremely durable. In some regards the WBS out ZINs the ZIN (in same way the ATC out Tholians the NTC). The ZIN has 8 fast drones, and screwball disruptor arcs,1 extra heavy,and a scatterpack, and 1 extra phaser - all of which have some value. However, since the ZIN last won the tournament, I think most of these advantages have been mitigated by tactical doctrine - and both winning percentages and popularity favor the WBS over the ZIN. The ZIN, for example, was nerfed itself in '87 by dropping 2 rear hull and the 4th heavy drone. Compared to the WBS, it could safely have these things. I think it is desriable to have the core ships - read older-(FED, ZIN, THN) attractive. The question is do they need improvement or do the newcomers need change? Or is there enough reason to bother?

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Monday, August 22, 2011 - 12:00 pm: Edit

The Fed has been endlessly debated. I don't think it is changing.

What Fed tourney players need is a new Fed design altogether that will add to the tournment flavors - a TCF. Take a CF and make a few minor modifications (to be debated) and then you have a very interesting Federation ship that will have to be flown quite differently.

By Andrew J. Koch (Droid) on Monday, August 22, 2011 - 12:10 pm: Edit

Well, I suppose the question is, does the mechanism by which these changes would be made still exist? If it does not, then this will never be more than an interesting discussion.

By David Zimdars (Zimdarsdavid) on Monday, August 22, 2011 - 12:20 pm: Edit

Droid has hit the nail on the head. The Andro is kind of in purgatory, for example. Pending a renaissance, there issn't ever going to be enough playtesting to fix it.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Monday, August 22, 2011 - 01:39 pm: Edit

I saw PS go speed 10 in the NTC vs a Shark (Krieg?) a few months ago. Not sure it would count as turtling or not, but it did give him maneuverability and power.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Monday, August 22, 2011 - 04:45 pm: Edit

To be clear here, I'm not actually looking to see the NTC get changed (although I certainly wouldn't kick a second snare out of bed...), I'm really just looking for insight as to what possible advantages it might have that would justify playing it over the ATC.

-Slightly more robust, internal-wise.

-4xFA disruptors (which is, as noted, a protracted advantage, at best).

-More discretionary power when moving slower than 21.

-5 batteries instead of 4?

-An extra total phaser hit, and more total phasers shoot backwards.

Anything else?

By David Zimdars (Zimdarsdavid) on Monday, August 22, 2011 - 05:38 pm: Edit

Additional advantages of NTC over ATC

-A big weakness the ATC has is that all of his P1s and none of his P3s are hit through the #1 shield, and a Mizia strike through the 1 can grind off his P1s in entirety really quick. The NTC has several restricted arc P1s and at least 1 P3 protecting his P1s.
-opponents may never have seen a NTC
-center warp is usually more survivable (though NTC does not have this like RFH)
-faster when tractored
-neo tholian comes with cool poster of Keneau Reeves in black leather
-archeo tholian comes with coupons to Old Country Buffet and a map to Atlantic City