Archive through March 28, 2012
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Tournament Zone:
Tactics Discussion:
Archive through March 28, 2012
Jean: Thanks!
Jon: regarding ZIN vs HYD, my take on it is this. Both have CWARP, so most often it's unlikely that either will start losing shuttles along the 7 row of the DAC. It's going to be the 8 row of the DAC (i.e. after AHULL and APR). While it is true that the HYD has more hull total, it's all CHULL while the ZIN has more AHULL than FHULL. That is, by the time the HYD has lost the CHULL, the ZIN still has AHULL (although lost all FHULL and starting to take impulse and batt hits). So, it's not surprising to me that the ZIN shuttle bay lasts longer.
Dave: good idea! Easy to do, I'll post later tonight or tomorrow.
Number of internals to generate 1st shuttle hit:
| SHIP | 5th% | 20th% | 50th% | 80th% | 95th% |
| FED | 30 | 36 | 41 | 46 | 52 |
| KLI | 22 | 27 | 33 | 39 | 45 |
| RFH | 34 | 40 | 47 | 55 | 66 |
| ZIN | 37 | 43 | 52 | 63 | 76 |
| GRN | 33 | 37 | 42 | 47 | 54 |
| NTC | 32 | 37 | 44 | 53 | 62 |
| ORI | 13 | 16 | 21 | 27 | 34 |
| HYD | 39 | 44 | 50 | 58 | 68 |
| ISC, LYR, SEL, WBS | 30 | 36 | 41 | 47 | 53 |
| WAX | 42 | 47 | 53 | 61 | 68 |
| RKE | 14 | 17 | 23 | 28 | 33 |
| RKR | 24 | 29 | 35 | 41 | 46 |
| ATC | 25 | 28 | 33 | 38 | 43 |
| LDR | 31 | 36 | 42 | 50 | 61 |
| JIN | 37 | 43 | 49 | 55 | 62 |
|
Number of internals to generate 4th shuttle hit:
| SHIP | 5th% | 20th% | 50th% | 80th% | 95th% |
| FED | 41 | 45 | 51 | 57 | 63 |
| KLI | 33 | 38 | 44 | 51 | 58 |
| RFH | 47 | 55 | 63 | 74 | 87 |
| ZIN | 53 | 63 | 73 | 84 | 96 |
| GRN | 41 | 46 | 52 | 58 | 64 |
| NTC | 43 | 50 | 59 | 67 | 76 |
| ORI | 25 | 31 | 36 | 42 | 47 |
| HYD | 53 | 61 | 71 | 81 | 91 |
| ISC, LYR, SEL, WBS | 40 | 46 | 52 | 58 | 65 |
| WAX | 50 | 56 | 64 | 72 | 80 |
| RKE | 25 | 29 | 33 | 39 | 44 |
| RKR | 35 | 40 | 46 | 52 | 60 |
| ATC | 33 | 37 | 42 | 48 | 54 |
| LDR | 46 | 54 | 63 | 73 | 83 |
| JIN | 48 | 54 | 61 | 68 | 75 |
|
As a tactical puzzle in a tournament game:
Consider a RFH or RKE (or possibly ORI) vs HYD. Game evolves such that HYD has mostly shield damage by start of turn 3, oppoenent has expended plasma torpedoes and other weapons, and HYD has retained fighters. RFH, RKE, or ORI cloaks in order to avoid HB. HYD launches fighters and now has 3 units to hunt cloaker. Fighters can easily match speed of cloaker, and HET, etc. In absence of HYD cooperation or incompetence; is there any combination of tactics (ww, reverse, speed changes, HET, something, recloaking) whereby the cloaker might have a shot of coming out of cloak and achieving, if not even, some sort of result better than instant death?
****
More broadly, what do you think are good opening moves for a plasma ship vs. a HYD, particularly one who retains his fighters? A challenge, that I see, is dealing with a heavily damaged HYD who launches fighters after your own heavily damaged ship has expended weapons, and will take 3 turns to recover heavy weapons.
A challenge, that I see, is dealing with a heavily damaged HYD who launches fighters after your own heavily damaged ship has expended weapons, and will take 3 turns to recover heavy weapons.
This particular tactic has won me most of my NetKills when I fly the Hydran. So it's worth figuring out. The TLM really is simply a fusion ship with a nice first-turn punch.
Matt:
With regards to defense against the retained fighter launch; perhaps the ship attacking the Hydran should always strive to fire phasers (and other 1 turn / 8 impulse delay weapons) between impulses 25-32. Phasers fired during this period will be available 8 impulse later (and since the fighters did not launch yet) always 1 impulse prior to the impulse at which fighters may fire.
Any other ideas are welcome.
I think the the Gorn tends to do generally pretty well against the Hydran--opening with an enveloper and chasing the Hydran into a corner for a follow up plasma and phaser/bolt shot tends to do fine. But then, the Gorn never cloaks, either...
Indeed, the Gorn's 8 phaser 1's are much more suited to suppressing the fighter launch; as the Gorn may choose to retain some phaser 1s even after shooting a few. A RFH or RKR has only 5 ph1; sort of in trade for the cloak in comparison to the GRN - but as my puzzle suggests the cloak may be a deadly trap.
Even at 6-8, with some moderate allocated reinf. + bats, a HYD is unlikely to get internals even with 2 overloaded HB hits. An attack which attemps a R6 EPT off a reinforiced oblique, later in turn 1 with moves every impulse, might do what Peter suggests (he might suggest a different launch point, for example).
You escape the Hydran fighters by setting up a burst. Your maneuvering is set to either have the fighters on top of you (or preferably a hex or two away) and you use your batteries to generate extra power for that turn. Then you plot a 13/26 such that at the end of the turn you drop the fighters back a few hexes. Really getting them to R2 is all you absolutely need, but I usually find I can get them to R4+ using that.
Good idea, Paul.
Would you suggest uncloaking at the end of the turn so you were out on imp x.1? Or is it better to give yourself the few impulses on the following turn (when you presumably have more power) - that is out on imp x+1.6? Like everything, is a good idea to have this plan worked out and not fumble around under cloak for 5 turns trying to devise it.
Thanks.
Additional thoughts are welcome too.
Dave wrote:
>>but as my puzzle suggests the cloak may be a deadly trap.>>
I've always been under the impression that cloaking when the Hydran still has fighters is a super way to just get killed. So you play without the cloak until the fighters are dead. Given that the fighters are going to live as long as they are in the bay, and if the fighters are in the bay, you don't need to worry about them, that is a good trade off--you don't cloak, he doesn't launch fighters. If the Romulan can't do ok against a Hydran who doesn't ever launch fighters, even without a cloak, I don't know what is going on in the world.
@David
Peter has the right of it. As soon as the Rom goes under cloak, the fighters come out. Once the Rom is one impulse from being out from under the cloak, the fighters kill him. There might be some fiddling in there from the 8 impulse delay of the fighters, but a cagey Hyd might be better off landing the fighters with tractors when that happens.
@Peter
A Rom who plays without the cloak is analogous to a Hyd without fighters, true. But where the fighters are 20 of his BPV (say, 1/8th his BPV), the cloak is 1/3 of the Rom's BPV. And a Rom without the cloak is just an undergunned Gorn. This sounds like a fight the Hydran could take to the bank.
As far as the line of thought that says "Just save some phasers for when the fighters come out":
A) So you reduce your alpha strike to honor the threat. The fighters are doing the same thing as drones; less damage to me, no other headache: win for the Hydran. And the fighters are still available for a late-game-launch.
B) You don't honor the threat, blast away. In theory, the fighters come out and blast you away while you're out of phasers.
This can be mitigated by firing the phasers late in the turn, so the phasers come back one impulse before the fighters can cut loose.
This is counter-mitigated by doing a late-game-launch of the fighters. This is where both ships are well and truely beat up. Both might be crippled. The Hydran is probably out of weapons (except maybe a fusion or two and a gatling or two) and the opponent is down to about a third of their phasers and half their heavy weapons. The fighter bays are still untouched, though a shuttle or two might be gone, because (as noted in the shuttle tables above) you generally have to kill the ship to kill the fighters (about 60 internals will get the first fighter). Usually at this point, the opponent has blasted with everything or is in the middle of a reload because there isn't otherwise enough to punch through the tattered shields of the Hydran. THEN the fighters come out.
Speaking as a Rom who generally killed every darn methane breather ...
1) Kill the fighters! T1 is the best turn for discretionary energy. I'm in favour of shotgun(S) against this foe. But, even if you have to use all your P1s on them, rather than the ship, do so. They do screw up your cloak ability. You're Rom - think long-term!!!
2) For those individuals who chose to keep them on board till later, maul the sucker. Feed them as much plasma as you possibly can. Cause you can't let that gat + fusion armed beastie on top of you. And every internal volley - no matter how small - will take out a HB 
3) I have managed twice in tourney to land more than 100 pts of plasma on an obliging opponent. Shotguns are involved. And the opponent landing his fighters. As is getting your own a$$ shot to heck and gone. The trade-off, generally, comes out in your favour. But it isn't pretty.
There is little to compare to landing 130 pts of plasma. The only question is how much of your own ship is left?
@David
The 26 is always 28-32 and basically adds an unavoidable +2 to the range. If the Hydran was particularly obliging, then sure, uncloak so that you can fire on 32 (at range 2 or 3 of the fighters). Normally, though, the 13/26 is followed by a 26/14 the following turn, and uncloaking starts on impulse 1 (you did not pay for cloak). This puts an unavoidable +4, with a likely +5 to the range of the fighters at impulse 28 of the prior turn.
@Peter (and @Leslie)
I could not agree less. If I can do substantial damage to the Hydran ship, even if the fighters are there, I use my weapons on the ship. The Hydran needs to force me to use the phasers on his fighters by putting them between me and him. Shaking fighters while cloaked is so easy I will call it trivial. The only difficult thing is coming out of cloak against a mostly undamaged Hydran with fighters available - but how would that ever happen (or if it did, somehow, then most likely the cloak bought you some chance when you otherwise had none)? I have often cloaked without killing the Hydran's fighters. The Hydran almost universally thinks that is the end of the game and has been invariably correct, though not with the result he expected.
I find it far more difficult to uncloak against well played Kzinti's than I do Hydrans.
In short, I think all of this discussion about the Hydran fighters effectiveness against cloak has it completely wrong. They are not a concern and should not be treated as such. They are a much bigger threat against someone who can't cloak because the cloak is almost a 100% damage reduction device against the fighters.
I certainly think Paul's idea for shaking the fighters has good merit. As he says, the next, not unimportant factor is the HYD ship itself. Obviously, you probably don't come out of cloak unless you are at least R4 from the HYD, otherwise you risk being tractored; or a R2 encounter with the HYD, either one gets into the fatal territory again (recall the fighters are still out there). If the fighters stay at R4+, I don't have to shoot them. This gets riskier depending on the clocker's shied situation and the number of HB's remaining.
If the cloaked is running from the HYD and FTRS , all these targets may be in clocker's RA, and probably out of arc of some to all of this plasma torps. Do you think moving in reverse for this plot is preferred? or an HET? The RFH isn't a great fish-tailer. A launch could happen prior HB fire. Of course, a damaged torp could be launched later. It seems like you just have to suck up the incoming HB fire as you come out of cloak.
With regards to using cloak to escape a HYD who has yet to suffer internals, as Paul said, this really makes it much more difficult. On the other hand, using cloak and the method described to surface to escape otherwise retained fighters might be OK.
This brings up an interesting point of cloak doctrine. Suppose, through bad bolt rolls, or similar, cloaker fails to get internals on HYD (or perhaps any ship). Should cloak be avoided prior to the point of internals? That is, is cloak a preferred method of maximizing the chance of cloaked winning once the opponent is compromised - but not before?
Matt wrote:
>>A Rom who plays without the cloak is analogous to a Hyd without fighters, true. But where the fighters are 20 of his BPV (say, 1/8th his BPV), the cloak is 1/3 of the Rom's BPV. And a Rom without the cloak is just an undergunned Gorn. This sounds like a fight the Hydran could take to the bank.>>
Cloaks were rated (back when we knew how much things costed) at 15% of a ship's BPV. So for a 150 point CC, the cloak accounts for about 20 points as well, so not using the cloak is about a wash with not using the fighters, point wise.
Paul wrote:
>>Shaking fighters while cloaked is so easy I will call it trivial.>>
If you say so. I have only ever played a Romulan very rarely, and usually under protest, so my experience with this is completely hypothetical. Most folks seem to worry about it, so calling it "trivial" is probably an overstatement. But ok.
Peter,
Put two fighters and the Rom anywhere you like on the board. For 10 impulses, move the fighters 4 and the Rom 9 hexes. Play with that as long as you like, in any configuration you like, and tell me you have found any situation in which you cannot put the Rom 3 hexes away from any fighter.
That is the situation that the fighters face. On impulse 28, the Rom is cloaked and starts moving 26. By Impulse 32, the fighters moved 2, the Rom moved 4. Next turn, everyone misses on 1. There is no speed/combinations of speeds where the fighters can get more than 2 moves by impulse 6 (the impulse the Rom comes out of cloak). The Rom moves 26/16 to start the turn (or 26/25 if it wants to go fast) and moves all 5 of the next 5 impulses. The Fighters move 2, the Rom moves 5. So, starting from Impulse 28 of the prior turn, the Rom moves 9 hexes, while under cloak, to the fighters moving 4 hexes.
Thus, escaping the fighters is completely, without exception, trivial.
The problem is the ship. That is why it is important to deal with the ship effectively on the first engagement, so that these options are not so limiting. If you have a situation where the Rom is cloaked, the fighters are alive and the Hydran ship has taken minimal damage, then, sure, the Rom is in big trouble. But, it is not the cloak causing that problem. A Gorn in that same situation is not in trouble; it is dead.
Well, its probably no mystery that I asked the question because I recently cloaked in an ORI and then a RFH vs. a HYD with retained fighters who then launched. I was unprepared with any particular strategy on how to escape the fighters and resurface. In my RFH game, my opponent was convinced that it was impossible. However, I was 85% of the way towards Paul's solution, moving fast with bats. But I otherwise had bungled the reloading under cloak - I hadn't plotted the speed change, but wondered if I should have. It was late, a JFF game, and spending 5 more turns cloaked as I fixed my energy and loadout wasn't appealing. Now I still would have had to face a R5 or so HB shot, with a weakened shield, but otherwise intact ship. Maybe 15 or so internals. I would have been hurt, but not *dead*. Now the game wouldn't have been predisposed to my victory as they HYD had no internals yet (missed bolts, divided fire). If there is ever a next time, I'll be a bit more prepared.
@Paul
We must be assuming that the Rom is the Hawk, since I don't think the Eagle or Kestrel can manage those speeds under cloak without other serious power/move problems.
Are we assuming the Rom has been under cloak to reload? Seems to me the fighters have probably been banging on a shield with gatlings for two turns during this time, making the third turn shot particularly effective.
1. I was assuming the FH. The KE would be able to go even faster and really, for such short periods of time, the KR would have no problems either.
2. The Fighters "pounding away" with Gatts against a cloaked ship will do negligible damage. 8 p-3s at range 4+ will score 1 to 3 hits of 1 point each, 33% of which will be reduced to 0 points. So even if their "banging" was all on the same shield, there is nothing significant going on. More importantly, of course, is the effect those fighters would be having if the cloak was not on.
@David,
So it seems to me the real problem had nothing to do with the cloak, but with the fact that after your first engagement the Hydran had no internals. Use EPTs or standards even, not bolts.
Paul: It was a JFF game and I was experimenting on turn 1. I anticipated that the HYD was going to launch fighters, so I loaded 2(!) shotgun S's. The HYD was running from 2 pseudo S's, but had not yet launched FTRs. He had a weakened rear shield, and I bolted the 2S's and an F as launching them as F's would be ineffective. IIRC i missed with all 3 bolts. Hitting with an S and F would have given him 10 internals at least. "Shotguns?" you say? Well, I was experimenting.
Paul, 8 P-3s at R4-15 will score 0 to 8 hits of 1 point each, not 1 to 3. Of the hits that do score, 0 to all of them will be reduced, not exactly 33% as you state.
There's a world of difference between average damage and real damage. Though of course most of the time in THIS case not really.
Paul wrote:
>>Put two fighters and the Rom anywhere you like on the board. For 10 impulses, move the fighters 4 and the Rom 9 hexes. Play with that as long as you like, in any configuration you like, and tell me you have found any situation in which you cannot put the Rom 3 hexes away from any fighter.>>
I understand the theory, but given that the Romulan may very well be down a couple points of power (from P1s/HBs) and was probably stopped at some point in the recent past (i.e. the "I'm moving speed 0 so the Hydran loses lock on), I find the notion of the TFH moving 26 while cloaked for the end of the turn not super duper likely to be happening all the time. I mean, yeah, if you can pull it off, it'll work. But most of the time I see a TFH cloaked, it is having trouble moving speed 26 (even just for the last 4 impulses). But I can certainly see the theory here.
@richard: yes, of course, it is 0 to 8, not 1 to 3, but look at the statistics on that. There is a 4% chance that 0 will hit, so I started my range at 1, rather than 0. There is a 25% chance that 4 or more will hit, so I ended my range at 3. Not happy with that, then 1-4 (encompasses 90% of all outcomes). Not happy with that? 1-5 hits is 95% of all outcomes. Given that you are actually talking about 16 separate die rolls over two turns, suggesting that a reasonable range is 0-16 is nonsense. A reasonable range, in total, is 2-8 (so I should have used 1-4, not 1-3). That encompasses 90% of all outcomes. 16 of 16 happens , for example 2.3 in 100,000,000 times.
Also, you are misreading the cloak chart rounding rules:
(G13.371) A result of less than one is considered to be one. [A shift could be caused by (G13.62).] Round fractions of 0.5 and more up, of 0.499 and less down. ...
When (G13.371) states "A result of less than 1 is considered to be 1." It is not referring to damage done, it is referring to the roll on the chart. So 1 damage x 0.25 = .25 damage = 0 damage. So, as I said, 33% of the time, when you do score a point, that point will be lost.
So 1-4 hits (90% of all cases) will result in 1-3 damage (99% of all outcomes, 81% of those outcomes that started with 4 hits).
Either way, you are not looking at appreciable damage. More importantly, as I keep saying and people prefer to ignore rather than refute, whatever damage it is is insignificant compared to the damage taken while not cloaking.
To clarify Richard's numbers:
Each Ph-3 will do an average of 1/3 a point of damage while at range 0 or 1 to the cloaked ship (translates to range 5 or 7 on the chart). Since there are 8x Ph-3s, that's 2 2/3 damage on average.
The fire adjustment table (G13.37) will reduce each hit from 1 point of damage to 0 damage 1/3 the time (reducing it by half has no effect, since 0.5 is rounded up). This means that an average damage from 2 gatlings is about 8/9ths
Most of the time the Fighters will do one whole point of damage, so make sure it's on a down shield! (unfortunately stingers aren't so effective at punishing a submarine until the submarine surfaces)
Speaking of surfacing. I have been advocating the fighters alpha-striking the cloaked ship one impulse before the cloak is fully off. this means that the adjusted range is *merely* a +1 and the above-mentioned fire adjustment chart is still applicable. If the fighters are at range one still, this translates to about 14 damage from gatlings and about 9 more from fusions (23 total). Not as scary as the 54 damage the fighters get if they wait an impulse (and then die), but killing phasers before they kill something else can be important.