Peter,

Do we have enough information to see about getting the Andro changed for Council of Nations?

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, May 13, 2012 - 04:29 pm: Edit

I don't know that we do. SPP indicated that he still wanted to see more playtesting; more development of Andro tactics using this ship as it stands.

I'd suggest that more people should play the Playtest Andro and send in (or post) reports. Once my summer opens up (see: Teacher in Summer--No Class!), I'll do more playtest games in the thing, certainly.

I'd suggest *not* trying to use the playtest Andro for Council (as it might be too good in some fights and might be too weak in others), but it would be a good place to generate some playtest games, certainly; I'd happily organize some of that.

By Geoffrey Nokes (Chaotic_Cobalt) on Thursday, May 24, 2012 - 03:37 am: Edit

I am fascinated by the Andro tech. And what better way to study something than trying to blow it up? I am always willing to try new things (get blown up in novel ways) so if anyone wants to play test against a Gorn opponent feel free to drop me a line.

By Jonathan Biggar (Jonb) on Thursday, May 24, 2012 - 12:36 pm: Edit

Heh. Sounds like we need an incarnation of Mythbusters for the SFU.

By Matthew Potter (Neonpico) on Wednesday, May 30, 2012 - 08:48 pm: Edit

Not part of the playtest tourney, but it was an attempt to playtest the Andro. GFB (GRN) over Neonpico (AND).

The run-down is that he ran away right off, and I took a range-8 shot on his #1. He chased me with plasma, that I usually let hit me after the warhead was down to acceptable levels. Turn three he pierced the rears with some phaser fire and some nice bolting shots. He killed a panel and a TR then, both of which I had repaired before he killed me.

We sniped at eachother a bunch, usually by me running out the plasma while taking phasers on the rear. Down a TR, I never did get a good shot on him.

T6 the second TR was repaired and it was charged by T7. By then I was looking to get some of my own back. He had given me a turn to empty the panels just before then, so I used the full batteries and charged weapons to do a combat run on him on T8.

It failed horribly. He got on my rears, where I had miscalculated my EA and not left enough in batteries to raise the panels to reinforced. The same impulse I was going to Disdev behind him (and show him my empty front panels), he managed a two-impulse phaser/bolt shot that killed my rear bank entirely and both the TRs. The Displacement, however was successful and the DisDev survived.

With only 4 Ph-2s to show him, I conceeded.


Conclusion:

Needs power badly. I was into the batteries on turn one, and there was never a time in which I didn't use battery power. I took his Mizia fairly well, though.

On any given turn, your arming the TRs, the DisDev, your panels at Standard, and your HK. That's 15 of 28 power. Good enough to move 19 (without batteries). That's probably the slowest TC, since even the Fed can manage 21 while holding overloads. 2 APR would bring that speed up to 22 and mean you aren't into your batteries as much, every turn.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Thursday, May 31, 2012 - 07:47 am: Edit

As Matt said we played an Andro playtest game, trying to figure out ways Plasma ships can combat the unique technology of the Krait.

Turn 1

I plot 16 for the turn, rolling both S torps and make for the corner. The goal here for me was to get him to start into his battery power.

Turn 2

I enveloped both S torps, it was a wild plan somebody suggested to me. Didnt work great, but didnt get me killed either. I plotted 16 again and did a speed change off reserve power to 24 midway through the turn. The EPT's I launched imp 1, and again on imp 32. The Krait was happy to take a range 8 shot on my 1, which did no internals displacing away from the first EPT. I knew I was packing a second EPT and needed a good launch position near the end of the turn.

Turn 3

I was rearming both S torps, but hadnt fired a single phaser in the game so was able to go speed 24 then shift down to 16 late in the turn. The first enveloper he ran out to nothing, and was low on battery power. He chose to let the second EPT hit after only 11 moves. I was shocked and did my best to get into phaser range on his aft panels before he could consume the power.

It worked I got range 4 or 5 on the aft panels, hit with phasers and at least one of my F torps bolted. I think I got 9 internals the first volley, and they probably sealed the fate of the Andromdan. One torp hit took out half his heavy TR beams, and both RS ph 2's. Over the next 5 turns I seemed to always hit the aft panels on the RS, which of course got me alot of warp hits. Matt was buisy repairing the TRH, and later one of the PA panels that popped on a lucky internal.

Turn 4

With phaser capacitors empty and reloading all plasmas I was crunched for power. I plotted 15 all turn, and did a SC off reserve to 17 around the middle of the turn. Matt knew I was rearming and was able to force me into firing off a fast loaded F, but he was never able to get a good shot at me, having only 1 TRH he wasnt able to get internals. His first shot was on my 1, the second took down most of the 6.

Turn 5-8

With the Krait having suffered engine damage I was able to outrun him and get all plasmas rearmed. I used the psuedo's to try to get him up against a map edge. Thats where the game concluded. If Matt had the energy to bring the aft panels to reinforced he would have taken internals but nowhere near what he took.

I think Matt needed internals on me early, force me on the defensive and get energy in the panels to start supplimenting his power systems.

We hope to do a few more playtest games changing the plasma ship each game. I think the Gorns advantaged in this fight, its phasers and bolts can really chew into the aft panels of the Krait if it gets r4 or r5.

I dont think 2 APR would be unreasonable to add to this ship, but I think Matt and I need more practice in and against the new Krait before we can be sure. What effect would that have vs Disruptor ships who may be feeding the Krait more regularly and power may not be the big issue it was. But when I wasnt feeding it energy from run down plasma, it would have brown out turns where it would just slither across the map at low speed praying for a little range 8 phaser love.

It was a fun game and I look forward to our rematch sometime with the KR, or Firehawk. I think it would be funner with a slightly stronger Krait, but one game doesnt mean much. The DAC helped me, and getting no internals on me didnt give Matt a chance.

Thats why I said to him denting a forward shield isnt enough, if the andromedan does a battle pass it needs to drop the shield and get at least a few internals. Repeat that 3+ times and you've probably won.

By David Zimdars (Zimdarsdavid) on Thursday, May 31, 2012 - 11:02 am: Edit

Two EPTs in the same turn! That wizard is just a crazy old man. Or better yet, who is more foolish? The fool? Or the fool who follows him?

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Thursday, May 31, 2012 - 11:48 am: Edit

As I said it didnt kill me, but getting him to hop the first EPT and take the second in the face was harder than expected.

Instead he slipped into the second for power, which did make transfering power after my phaser and bolt shot very hard.

So in a way it did work, but it was up to him when to take the hit, 44 power is alot with me hot on his tail.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Friday, June 01, 2012 - 04:41 pm: Edit

Matt wrote:
>>On any given turn, your arming the TRs, the DisDev, your panels at Standard, and your HK. That's 15 of 28 power. Good enough to move 19 (without batteries). That's probably the slowest TC, since even the Fed can manage 21 while holding overloads. 2 APR would bring that speed up to 22 and mean you aren't into your batteries as much, every turn.>>

Yeah, the ship needs to run off batteries a lot, although I think that on T1, it can hold both TRs (6), turn on panels (5), the rest of the ship (2), hold the disdev (1), and still move, like, 16/30 or so and only use 1 battery power.

The trick is that you really need to successfully move power from your PAs into your batteries at some point in the game (i.e. The Dump), which generally involves getting far enough away from your opponent at a point when they have few weapons to fire at you, and then either turn off one bank of panels to let energy fill up the other bank and slosh extra into the batteries (if, say, your panels are at reinforced and your fronts are at, like, 12/48 and your rears are empty, you turn off the fronts, put 40 in the rears, and 8 go to batteries) or drop your panels from reinforced to standard, releasing the excess, balancing out front and back, and hopefully having some slosh into the batteries (which really only works when both front and back are fairly full).

If the Andro in general, and this version of the Andro in particular, doesn't ever successfully perform The Dump to regain a significant amount of battery power, it is generally going to get killed.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Friday, June 01, 2012 - 04:43 pm: Edit

Josh wrote:
>>I dont think 2 APR would be unreasonable to add to this ship>>

So far, the general consensus seems to be that the ship needs a bit more static power (like 2xAPR) and maybe a couple more hull/cargo boxes. But the ship still needs more playtest games for folks to really figure out how to fly the thing as it is.

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Sunday, June 03, 2012 - 09:14 pm: Edit

Peter,

So you are saying that to be successful with this ship you need to be proficient with the being able to get power from the panels to the batteries.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Sunday, June 03, 2012 - 11:08 pm: Edit

Ken,
Yup. That is the key to win with the Andromedan. And that is why if the opponent can fill the panels of the Andromedan that he is in for a big bag of hurt.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Sunday, June 03, 2012 - 11:45 pm: Edit

Playtest game Report Romulan KR vs the Andromedan (Neonpico).

Turn 1

I enveloped Tube A, plotted 28 till imp 8, then 21 for the rest of turn 1. The Andromedan went 15 till 16, then 27 till impulse 24 when it accelerated to 29.

He took the EPT for full strength to get his r2 shot on my number 1 shield for 58. My return fire of a bolted S+F and phasers did enough to get 9 internals past the front panels. I was lucky and got a TRH, 2 warp, and a phaser. I lost Torp C, a phaser 1, and 2 phaser 3's.

Turn 2

I went speed 15 all turn refilled the phasers and 3 remaining batts, the andromedan started to consume the energy from the turn 1 exchange. Both sides were content to withdraw and lick there wounds and rearm. I deployed 3 manned shuttles which were destroyed as I ran to finish my repairs. I repaired 2 phaser 3's on turn 2.

Turn 3

I went speed 15 till 21 then speed 21 for the remainder of the turn. I had room to run and didnt want to repeat my mistake from the last game of launching off a fast loaded F. I started repairs to my destroyed phaser 1. At the end of the turn the andromedans TRH came back online. He was also repairing degredation using powered repairs, power I was nice enough to give him turn 1.

Turn 4

I thought my power situation was as good as it would get with filled capacitors and batts. I rolled both S torps planning to launch a Pseudo S. His power in the panels was about gone from earlier, and he surprised me when he displaced over the Pseudo and into I believe range 4 or 3. It was around mid turn this happened, I had the choice between bolting and launching to drive him off, I chose to launch torp B and D both standard. I also turned to get a shot on his rear panels at r3 with phasers, these didnt do internals and the plasma didnt catch him till impulse 1 of turn 5. My final repair was the plasma F completed at the end of turn 5.

Turn 5

I had planned to run and reload and could only make speed 15 for the entire turn. But for some reason the Andromedan could only make speed 9 which he kept the whole turn. We ended the turn at range 13 Andromdan in 3708F, and my KR in hex 2816C.

My shield 1 is gone no boxes repaired, and im out of CDR systems. Leak points have claimed the last of the Andromedans hull and 1 cargo. He's still down 2 warp and a phaser 2. He has 10 degredation front and 8 rear. Front panels have 6 power and rear 9.

Looking at turn 6 he will be able to go speed 19 and displace and will probably finally at long last have two armed TRH's again. I only have one ready torp the A tube, B and D are on there second turn, the repaired C tube is just now starting to arm.

To be continued soon.

By Matthew Potter (Neonpico) on Monday, June 04, 2012 - 07:33 pm: Edit

Neonpico (AND) vs GFB (TKR)

Turn 1:
He plotted 28/21 and I plotted 15/27. We ran at eachother until he launched an EPT on impulse 19 (probably to keep me from closing too much). It didn't work. Once it was apparent I'd get my shot, he popped off his facing F as well. I accellerated to 29 off of batteries to run out the EPT (the F never hit me). He turned into me, putting us on eachother's #1 centerline at R2. I announced Disdev and we clobbered eachother. I alpha'd him, doing a handful of internals including all his impulse and an F. He Alpha'd me as well, including bolting his other F and S. The S missed, but he still pierced the front panels, netting him 2 warp and a TRH (jeez those always seem to get hit). My Disdev worked, and I hopped over him and his plasma.

Turn 2:
He started dropping out shuttles out the hatch right off. Early he cut loose with a bunch of phasers at range 12, doing some damage to my rear panels. But generally we spent the whole turn giving eachother alot of room. Late in the turn I started killing the shuttles.

Turn 3:
We still gave eachother alot of room. I finished killing the shuttles. By the end of the turn my panels were mostly empty and partially repaired. I fixed up the TRH and began reloading it.

Turn 4:
I burned through most of my batteries to begin an attack run at him. He popped out a pseudo S, hoping to blunt the attack or convince me to hop it so he could give me the real S in the face. It sorta worked, since I did hop it. He launched the S and the F together, but I had set myself up to run them out after Displacement. I fired some phasers at the S, ran out the F, took the S on the rear panels. That set me up for another attack run (now that I drew out half his plasma) but low on battery juice.

Turn 5:
Without battery power, I was creeping along at speed 9. Fortunately, he left me alone. So the turn was spent maneuvering without any real fire.

Turn 6:
He fired an EPT at me to keep me from performing an attack-run on him. It worked, as I ran it until I was on the wall, and then took it for 30 on mostly-cleared panels. By the end of the turn, I had positioned myself for an attack on him for the next turn. Maybe it would work this time?

Turn 7:
Full batteries allowed me to make a fast run at him. He fired another EPT at me, which I hoped over. He launched an F to trap me between his plasma. Once my FC came up, I got a R3 shot on his #4, scoring some real power hits. I HET'd to avoid the plasma, and set up to run them into exhaustion. he conceeded here, since he was down on enough power to make peircing the panels very difficult.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Monday, June 04, 2012 - 08:46 pm: Edit

Ken wrote:
>>So you are saying that to be successful with this ship you need to be proficient with the being able to get power from the panels to the batteries.>>

Oh, absolutely. The relationship between the panels and the batteries is the most complex (and consequently, most difficult to figure out) part of the ship, and the key to what makes it win or not.

Like, you *can* play the ship without ever taking advantage of the ability to aggressively move power from the panels to the batteries; just keep them on, radiate and absorb power the standard ways, and some of the time, you'll do ok.

What made the old Andro such a monster, however, was that it could swap initial alpha strikes, do, like, 30 internals to an opponent, take less in return, and then run off and empty the panels quickly while, at the same time, recharging your 30 battery capacity. Which was nuts.

The current playtest ship, with only 3 batteries, has a *lot* more trouble emptying the panels into the batteries, but given that the ship needs to burn batteries most turns just to fight normally, it inevitably needs to get a significant amount of power from the panels to the batteries, both to clear up defense and recharge the power supplies. It is a lot harder to do this with the current ship, but still possible--you generally need to do a series of "mini dumps", where you drop or reduce, slosh some power around the panels, absorb some into the batteries, clear the batteries by refilling phaser capacitors or something, then turn off a bank and absorb more power.

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Sunday, December 02, 2012 - 01:29 pm: Edit

Peter,

How is the playtest going? There is only 10 months before the next Council

I would like to be able to run a new ship for the next council.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Monday, December 03, 2012 - 04:44 pm: Edit

Unimpressively. I tried to re-organize the round robin tournament over in the SFBOL Tournament thread, and I don't think anyone has played a single game to completion yet (one was attempted but nullified due to a massive rules error). I have e-mail my opponents a couple times fishing for games, but no responses, and none of my opponents have e-mailed me to try and set up games.

I suspect that between the various existing, ongoing tournaments and general tournament fatigue, I things are kind of a stand still.

By Mike Kenyon (Mikek) on Monday, December 03, 2012 - 05:31 pm: Edit

Peter, I'm sorry. Tournaments and such have been a time demand, but I agree that this is important. I got one email from you for a weekend I was out of town. I may have missed others. Glad to schedule something for next week, mid-week.

By Stephen McCann (Moose) on Monday, December 03, 2012 - 05:41 pm: Edit

I have been trying to play, getting online and looking for an opponent, but maybe I need to e-mail them instead and try to set up times to play.

By Josh Driscol (Gfb) on Monday, December 03, 2012 - 05:44 pm: Edit

Ill try to find the time this month to get more of the games played.

By Peter D Bakija (Bakija) on Monday, December 03, 2012 - 06:05 pm: Edit

Oh, I'm not like, blaming anyone for anything. I'm just pointing out to hopefully Ken that things are kind of at a stand still.

By Stephen McCann (Moose) on Monday, December 03, 2012 - 06:07 pm: Edit

NeonPico and I are going to play next Monday night at 9 pm eastern.

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - 08:28 am: Edit

No problems with the progress but Council will be here before we know it and having an new Andro would be great.

By Matthew Potter (Neonpico) on Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - 12:57 pm: Edit

The current (playtest) Andro is also not available for RATs and such, right? Effectively, the Andros have no Tourney ship (at this moment), right?

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Tuesday, December 04, 2012 - 06:03 pm: Edit

There is a Andro tourney ship.

http://www.starfleetgames.com/sfb/tournament/tourn_down.shtml#SSD

You have to download the PDF.