Archive through October 24, 2011
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: General Tactics Discussion:
Specific Scenario Tactics:
Archive through October 24, 2011
...all I gotta say is, you HAVE to be suspicious of a weapon that is more energy efficient than a phaser...
meh. Cloak is still the bomb, turn mode is the bomb, 5 batteries is the bomb. Me thinks the Roms doth protest to much. ;-)
I will remind you guys that you can submit valid term papers about specific scenarios.
Although this isn't a specific scenario aside perhaps a variant of a duel and Hijacked, but what would be a good opponent of:
Federation CA with Outstanding crew and a full complement of legendary officers & 1 MRS, 4 Tbombs BUT has one warp engine deactivated, shields 1, 2, 3, and 4 are down, half of the crew onboard is dead, including all but 1 prime team and 1 boarding party.
About 15 points of internal damage.
(Can anyone name this ship?)
Got into a scrap with a space dragon while being boarded by xenomorphs (Aliens).
I have deck plans for the Fed CA by FASA and used it for an RPG situation and used SFB for combat resolution.
Ok, back to the question. Since I'm having the characters go back to the CA, because it's under attack by a Klingon _______, what do y'all think would be a good match given its damage.
I'm thinking an F5 or a G1. (If a G1 then I'll buy the G1 deck plans and have the characters beam over with the Prime Team and whup some ass. Otherwise, I'll have to whip me up some deck plans for the F5 on the Cad program.)
Any suggestions for this bizarre question?
Given the damage and low crew?
An E3/LF4.
Maybe an E4, but that's pushing it. I'm pretty sure I could kill that CA with an E4.
*looks again*
Wait, only ONE boarding party left?
*blinks*
A G2/E3, for sure.
Maybe an F-AL?
They're PCs. How much leeway are you giving them to bend the rules? The more you are letting them get away with, the bigger the opponent you can throw at them.
Everything changes if they can get the down shields working faster than is allowed for in the EDR rules, if they can temporarily double the remaining warp engine Orion-style, possibly get the remaining engine working...The possibilities are endless.
It depends only on how long a leash you are giving the PCs, their familiarity with SFB and what precedents you are willing to set which will be used against you later. 
There's a 50-50 chance that the Captain will bluff and the Klink will go away.
They might be able to negotiate with the Klink too.
You could throw a Klink D6/7 at them that also had a run-in with the same dragon and pulled a Sir Robin...
Maybe it's infested with the same Xenomorphs and the Klinks are looking to take the presumably morph-less Fed ship because the klinks are losing the battle for their ship.
There's lots of fun you can have at the PCs' expense here.
While this failed as a term paper (too specific and too long) when first submitted, this does fit in as a specific monster scenario tactic.
Here it is (slightly edited)
Giving the Eel both barrels
When battling a Moray Eel, timing your weapon strikes with the creatures movements is a careful dance all races must deal with. However, with plasma users there is a unique opportunity to have one of their special tactics give them an advantage that would not be there under other circumstances. The Plasma Shotgun.
Typically, when drone and plasma users engage the Eel, they launch their seeking weapons just prior to firing a phaser to entice the Eel into a biting frenzy next impulse. The Eel charges the ship and bites while running over the seeking weapons, some of which are destroyed by the creatures MCIDS before any damage can be done. Plasma races have a more difficult time of it because their heaviest weapon tactic , the enveloping torpedo, is reduced in damage to that of a standard one due to (FP5.36). There is one way however to regain all of that lost potential damage by instead launching the torpedo as a plasma shotgun. Following the games Sequence of Play and order of Precedence in movement, a shotgun can have all of it's "F shells" strike the same target.
Here is the general procedure broken down in steps:
1) While approaching the Eel, the ship should slow down to a matching shuttle speed and begin launching a number of suicide shuttles (armed or dummies) until the number would equal that of the number of F-torps the shotgun will produce. This will take a number of impulses to set up.
2) (impulse X - 2): on the impulse just before the ship and shuttles are suppose to move, the ship must launch three other torpedoes (at least strength F) targeted on the Eel, this will have all the shuttles, torps and ship in the same hex.
3) (impulse X - 1): next impulse the ship should launch the shotgun with all of the torps targeting the shuttles and fire a phaser so as to attract the Eel. Again, all of the torpedoes will be in the same hex with the shuttles and ship. The shotgun Fs will not have destroyed the shuttles yet until next impulse when it is their turn to move.
4) (Impulse X): Based on Order of Precedence (C1.31), the Eel will move first, charging the hex containing the ship in order to bite it (SM3.46). while engaging it's MCIDS on the three torpedoes targeted on it, ignoring the shuttles because MCIDS will always target the strongest threat (E6.42) and more importantly the shotgun torpedoes because they are targeted on the shuttles and not on the Eel itself, following that the Eel will bite the ship. Under (C.1453) the shuttles will strike the eel and the shotgunned Fs will also wind up striking the Eel (F2.54) as the shuttles are crashing into it. All of this occurs during the Eels movement of the impulse. (6A2) in the Sequence of Play
For the same amount of energy it takes to arm a enveloping torpedo, a shotgun will do double the amount of damage to the monster.
Restrictions:
In most cases, the ship will need a number of control channels for BOTH the shuttles and the "shotgun" Fs. Unless the ship has both a type-R/multiple type-S and double it's sensor rating in control channels or has another ship/MRS to take up the additional load, the best a plasma ship will do is to use a single Type-S torpedo for the shotgun. This is because all of the fore mentioned action occurs prior to when a ship can release the "shotgunned" Fs to their own self-guidance system.[See (F3.42) and (6B6) of the Sequence of Play]
I thought that all the F torps from a plasma shotgun had to be vs seperate targets...
That's what makes his tactic so brilliant. By targeting the submunitions on your suicide shuttles, you get them all to impact one target (if you time it right). And by (D1.53), suis are a valid target for friendly fire.
Randy - depends a lot on range and weapon status. If the Fed can load phasers and photons and hide behind its #6 shield, even a D6 is going to have trouble. On the other hand, if it's WS-0 and the Klink WS-3, an E3 could kill it quite handily.
The same method can also be applied using drones and drogues (both plasma and drone types). The original (long and unedited) tactic can be found in in CapLog Supplement #41.
@John - I love those ideas!
Basically here's the background.
It's a D&D 3.5e group from the Greyhawk campaign setting. They are pawns of a powerful wizard that has them find and pick up strange artifacts. Unknown to the party, this wizard needed a warp core and a Mark VII computer, and Enterprise just happened to come by (engaging in yet another temporal violation).
The party unwittingly teleported to the ship, and was immediately captured. In the meantime, a meteor (yeah, a really hard one) breached the secondary hull and deposited the aliens.
The "aliens" were of the Sigourney Weaver type, a passel of eggs and facehuggers galore, with a few adults sprinkled in for good measure. The facehuggers made short work of many red shirts and ensigns, while the party languished in the brig.
Then a few hours later, chest bursters appeared, and the aliens managed to knock out the warp drive by busting up the dilithium chamber.
(Did I mention that I had Enterprise Deck Plans by FASA?)
Although the party was interrogated by a security officer, a facehugger came into the brig and nabbed him, too, leaving the party to watch helplessly.
Finally, the power went out in the area, knocking down the containment fields that held them hostage, and they grabbed their weapons just in time for a fight with four facehuggers. Three (yeah, three!) characters got impregnated, but they had no idea.
Then, with no warp drive, a Space Dragon showed up and beat the crap out of the ship. Impulse tacticals were all that kept fresh shields on the "beastie".
One of the party members had a backpack full of dilithium (worthless rocks on their world) and suffered from "dilithium poisoning" which made her go insane as the "rocks sang to her".
Anyway, the party managed to get the dilithium to Scotty, who replaced the dilithium chamber and got the warp engines back online.
The dragon was wounded from a previous encounter, and Enterprise blew it away with overloaded photons and all phasers that could bear.
With the xenomorph situation nearly under control (they had basically taken over the secondary hull) the Wizard showed up and negotiated with Kirk for one of the two warp cores (port side) and the computer in the saucer section (Aux Con computer was damaged).
Then the wizard took the party and left.
Now it's round two.
I have deck plans for the D7, so your idea of having a whupass fest with the dragon lines up perfectly. The D7 would also be infested with aliens, but since the Klingons have bladed weapons (the aliens are immune to energy based attacks), I'm gonna have to increase the number of them on the D7.
I'm going to give the D7 about twice (or maybe three times) the internals but only knock down one or two shields. Enterprise will have to pound down a shield to send the Prime Team, the PCs and the boarding party over there. Objective? Knock out the D7's warp drive so Enterprise doesn't get destroyed.
What do you think?
We're kind of drifting out of SFB and into RPGs so we may want to move this thread or take it to e-mail. But to give you an answer now:
Sounds like a plan.
Even with bladed weapons, the Klinks are going to have a tough time with the Xenomorphs. Sure you can cut them, but the first thing that gets on your Ba'thlet is molecular acid-blood, which kind of dulls the edge. A good fighter will get few strikes out of one (using different parts of the blade) before it's a glorified club. What the Xenomorph does to the good fighter while in melee range is a whole 'nother matter.
I can see the Klinks having a bigger problem with them simply because they'd get too into enjoying fighting the things and not enough into recapturing the ship until they start getting overwhelmed. They're kind of like Predators that way.
For two different ships to face both the same space dragon and Aliens in a short span of time, suggests it's no coincidence and that another intelligence is at work here. Now try convincing the Klinks of this.
If you go this route, there needs to be evidence that's obvious to the PCs but wouldn't be obvious to the Enterprise or Klinks. The player's magical background seems a good fit here since it's unique to the PCs. The PCs are the stars, but your NPCs are decisive action-hero types too. The PCs need to be central to whatever plot you run.
A good GM doesn't repeat himself straight away, so if Our Heroes have fought tons of xenos already, you don't want just throw more of the same at them. The Klink xenomorphs are going to need to be different in some way. Given that alien lore often has the xenos absorb some traits from their gestation host, you may want to play with that. What dangerous animals would a klink keep on his ship just for fun? A Capellan power-cat comes to mind.
As an aside, the notion of a tribble-xenomoroph is amusing as hades (and just as dangerous--a xeno that reproduces without needing a host!) but I'm not sure it fits for the klink ship given the way tribbles and klinks fail to get along.
Magic could be an advantage against a technological-origin sort of enemy like the xenomorphs, or at least present options for synergy with technology. Suppose molecular acid doesn't affect a magic weapon? You've probably set precedence on a lot of this but if you haven't, think about it. Maybe xenos are immune to technological energy but not magical energy? Maybe a fireball still works? Certainly a magic missile should still poke nice holes in a xeno and a 3.5E mage with enough levels can send a good cloud of them. Since your players aren't going to be McGyvering Federation tech into super-tech, you should give them some room to run with their unique abilities.
Have you ever played the old game "Awful Green Things from Outer Space"? Well, you are playing it right now.
Yeah, we did drift from what would be a good Klingon opponent against a damaged Enterprise.
I will use the D7 because that makes the most sense.
Thank you for all your ideas John!
you're welcome.
Has anyone played the Kongo in SH1.0 and actually won?
Yup.
How? Crash start on turn 2? Or by victory conditions?
Have done it both ways.
I'm new to the StarFleet universe and SFB, with my regular opponent patiently teaching me while painfully kicking my butt. Thought I could turn here for some ideas on how to get revenge.
In the scenario Towtruck Travails, Early Years SH267.0, I played Lyran and my opponent the Hydran freighter and transport. My immediate thought is, why doesn't he just sit on top the freighter, turtle and wait out the ten turns. He outguns me in phasers, can prep suicide shuttles in case I try an ESG overrun, which doesn't do all that much damage, and by sitting still can put power into ECM, shield reinforcement and speculative long-range phaser fire.
This is exactly what my opponent did. I tried running in to range 3 to tempt him to fire so I could turn in for an ovverun. When he didn't take the shot I took mine and moved away, seven damage to a freighter shield and only 2 to mine from the range 4 return fire.
But as he can keep tac warping to present fresh shields, it seems like a non-starter to get enough damage by turn 10 using this method, so I tried an ESG overrun which I botched badly. He did 5 internals and one of them popped the ESG, at which point we called it.
Any ideas here about what I could have done differently. My opponent, who is much more experienced than me, seemed stumped as well.
Grab the freighter with a tractor beam and pull it away?
Not familiar with the scenario, what are the ships involved?
Prep DUAL suicide shuttles (almost all Lyrans have 2 shuttle bays).
Cruise up so as to be able to perform an overrun, oblique or battle pass attack.
Announce the release of your ESG so that it will be coming up right as you get range 3. OL disruptors on the turn of the attack. Refill the phaser caps on the turns you are setting UP the attack to follow.
Then when you get range 3 ram him with the disruptors added in (vs the freighter) and see if he commits to shoot back. If so, turn in an perform a zero energy anchor attack with your suicide suttles and phasers.
If he holds fire slip out, and maneuver to get another shot next turn with your phasers not needing refilling and holding the prepared suicide shuttles.
If he is going speed zero you know where he will be, then it's just a matter of cruising past at range 3, circling, and plinking through the freighters shields.
This is Mike S, his opponent in the above mentioned duel last weekend.
[I just realized this is a VERY heavy "Mike" discussion at the moment!]
@ Mike G.
Your tactics, though normally sound, don't work as well in this particular case. A look at the ships explains why.
A Lyran YDT (Early Years III SSD book page 66) hosts very little in the way of firepower. It has two Ph-2, two Ph-3, and one ESG. The only way to get all phasers to bear in one go is to shoot down the spine. There are no disruptors. The ESG is limited to two power and a range of one max (early years restrictions).
The Hydrans, when combined, host 4 Ph-2 and 2 Ph-3. They outgun the Lyran. They also have two shuttles (just like the Lyran).
If the Hydrans opt to go turtle and sit in the same hex, they make themselves a porcupine I don't see the Lyran being able to penetrate.
I simply did sublight and warp tactical maneuvers. I could put any shield I wanted to face the Lyran and keep changing them out as they got hit. He could bring a pair of Ph-2 to bear at range, and if I fired, I could hit him with double that each time. If he made a run in on me (which he eventually did), I could wait until he was at range two and then let him have it. Assuming I rolled 4s on everything (and saved the Ph-3 for his shuttles), I could still pump 16 damage against his 12 facing shield and then get internals. He doesn't have much padding. I then could take his ESG (with a max 8 damage) and spread that among two ships. (so 4 each) If I launched a shuttle or two, the ESG was neutered even more and I still out phasered him. My simply sitting gave me extra power to play with, so I could save some for tractor beams to hold his shuttles in the overrun while my own two went toward him as suicides.
(In the actual final run he made, I slapped one suicide shuttle in a tractor and used my freighter Ph-3 to kill off the other while one of my own hit his shield and then I finished him off with internals from my own phaser banks.)
From what we saw, there was no incentive whatsoever for the Hydran to move or do anything but wait for the Lyran to get short of time and make his dash in.
@Mike Strain
Sure, he could grab the freighter, but to what end? It slows him down, sucks up power, and still gets him a load of return fire on the way in with his range-1 limited tractor.
We spent four hours looking at this thing and playing it. It's our third early years fight, and we're not sure there is any way the Lyran could be able to pull out a win if the Hydran player does this.
(I challenged Michael U. to bring it here since I knew there would be plenty of things we might be missing.)
I don't have Y3. What are the victory conditions?
In uneven match-ups like this, there's usually something to fight for that makes it balanced. In "Sitting Birds" for example (EY Klink v Rom), the Romulan has no chance of killing the Klingons, but he doesn't have to. Just disengaging is enough to win the scenario outright.
Sounds like the scenario is broken. Adding a special rule to prevent starcastling would help I think, something like requiring the freighter to move in a particular direction, or towards a map edge.