Archive through December 07, 2018
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Archive through December 07, 2018
What are some good options for Orion PFs that are mercenaries with a mercenary DW?
What I'm figuring is a merc team of DW+PF+PF. Probably along the Fed/Rom border.
So what are 2 good packages for the PFs to allow them some quick and dirty firepower to take out their enemies?
I figure Photon+Plas-F+Plas-F, Photon+DroneC+DroneC, or Plasma-F+P1+P1.
(Lets discount a P-G because the ship might use the restricted weapon, possibly a Hellbore or P-G).
Depends who they're fighting against.
Against Feds, don't bother with drones: the Feds have lots of G-racks which will overwhelm anything you can throw at them. If you must have drones, use G-racks. Otherwise you may want a few phasers and the rest is your own choice.
Against Roms, drones are OK but arguably better on the ship so it can use an SP though that could just get cloaked off. P1s are good for subhunting but don't let you take advantage of all that power. I quite like the PFF option.
In regards Garth's "Tiger by the Tail" scenario, one of the other problems was going to be coming up with a background that worked. His write up did not discuss how the Federation Cutter knew the Klingon ship was "in trouble." Size class 4 units do not normally "bounce" size class 3 units and expect to survive unless the background provides a valid reason to do so. How does the Cutter know the Klingon D6 is vulnerable? No matter how many restrictions you put on the D6 you still have to explain how the Cutter knew the D6 was under those restrictions so that it would risk the attack.
This is actually a fairly common problem with submissions where the two sides would normally be out of balance such that one side should not be there (it would be suicidal to engage) except that they are aware of some problem the enemy is having. But how did they know the enemy was having that problem?
Scott Tenhoff:
Part of what you have to look at is the Cartel's territory.
You have nine option mounts (three on the DW and three on each PF), and are probably Penzance (Federation Home Territory, Romulan Operating Zone) or Pharoah (Federation Home Territory, Romulan and Klingon Operating Zone).
Thus in both cases 70% (six of the option mounts) of your weapons have to be Federation (G15.44), see also (U7.26) and (U7.28). Note that under (U7.28) Federation plasma-F torpedoes count as "foreign technology" so you cannot use them in any of your 70% limits, but can use up to three of them in your remaining 30% (20% from operating zone and 10% foreign).
Photons, drone racks, and phaser-1s are all, of course, Federation technology and all of your option mounts could be of those weapon types.
SPP said: His write up did not discuss how the Federation Cutter knew the Klingon ship was "in trouble."
I don't know. Perhaps they were watching the fleet and saw the energy spike of the explosion, and subsequently saw the Klingon ship fall out of formation and make a non-graceful turn back towards home base at a very reduced speed.
But I see your point. It's great to have lopsided scenarios, but they have to make sense as to why they happen as they do. I'm sure lopsided combat happened all they time, but it's pointless to try to play them out in a game. A lone E3 caught by a Hydran carrier group isn't much fun to play.
Garth L. Getgen
Garth L. Getgen:
It is not a matter that lopsided battles do not occur, but that they occur for reasons. See for example the Jervis Bay (armed merchantmen and sole escort for a large convoy of over 60 other merchant ships if I recall correctly) versus the German Pocket Battleship Admiral Scheer. The Jervis Bay went down, but her sacrifice was not in vain as most (not all) of her charges escaped to deliver their cargoes. [EDIT: I checked, and the figure given is 41 merchant ships in the convoy of which 36 evaded the Scheer and returned to the harbor.]
So I do not have a problem with a police cutter attacking a crippled D6, I just have problems with the situation "making sense."
In your case the cutter is attacking a crippled D6 (albeit in your initial design not crippled enough in my opinion to not make the attack a suicide mission as I explained), and the background would need to explain how the cutter's commander came to the decision to make this attack. How did he know there was a reasonable chance that attacking the D6 would accomplish something other than the simple destruction of his own ship (the expected result if a cutter attacks a cruiser that is underway and thus not "surprised"). And in your case he is making this decision with the idea that he is going to do "future attacks" in a sort of guerrilla campaign behind Klingon lines which means he has to believe there is not a lot of risk that his ship will be badly crippled by the D6. (Which, given the ship still has just about the full firepower available to it is kind of a poor tactical analysis of the situation).
In some respects the situation would work a little better if your cutter was bouncing a KR, simply because a KR would not have disruptors ready to go on Turn #1, or drone racks available on Turn #1. It would not have plasma torpedoes (two-turn-Fs at that) available until Turn #2, and not even phasers until Turn #2 (assuming Weapon Status 0). You would still need to define how the cutter knows the ship is damaged (and the damage may prevent the use of the cloak). But a disruptor and drone ship has options on Turn #1 even if it is at WS-0 (disruptors can be armed and fired, and drone racks can launch drones). Of course a KR might roll an NSM out of its shuttle bay. And a D6 or KR could use transporters to lay a few T-bombs designed to force the cutter to maneuver in such a way as to lose time. And given enough power remaining either might max out ECM and use erratic maneuvers while running from the cutter to ready their weapons.
So it is a matter of making the scenario workable, and the background plausible, and a cut off cutter trying to be a guerrilla fly in the Klingon rear area is not going to last long if it is challenging cruisers.
One possibility would be that the exhause (ion trail) gave an indecation that something was wrong with the engines serious enough to take a closer look. Negative EW shift plus prolonged observation (plus gutsy skipper?) might allow the start...
Terrain would be against the POL in most cases...
[no books to check for 'extreme' cases or D17 ranges]...
Quote:albeit in your initial design not crippled enough in my opinion to not make the attack a suicide mission as I explained
Maybe I should have written it that the whole engine fell off the D6 ......
Garth L. Getgen
I had a thought regarding a couple of the general scenarios that might be able to breathe a little more life into them, and wanted to toss it out there.
There are a couple scenarios in which a convoy of freighters is attacked by a military group; "Supply Fleet," SG49.0 (in Module S2) comes foremost to my mind in this regard.
The thought was, "How different would this scenario play out if the convoy wasn't supplies, but was, in fact, a Marine force on its way towards a major operation?" Any ship going after the convoy, if it had a downed shield, would be in SERIOUS danger of being captured; a factor that ought to dictate how the attackers actually engage the convoy.
The Tactical Intelligence rules make that a difficult surprise to pull off. Level H, when the difference between a cargo freighter and a troop carrier would be clear, is 12 hexes for ships, just a bit beyond transporter range.
Perhaps extra Marines in the Freighters and Q ships in the convoy, would make it more risky for a ship (with a down shield) going after the convoy.
Okay, I guess I made an assumption that I thought everyone else would make...
The convoy in question? Its attackers KNOW it's a troop convoy. In some ways, I guess it could be considered something like what happened during the Battle for Guadalcanal, where the Japanese were sending in "The Tokyo Express" with new troops to try and take Henderson Field from the Marines.
In one episode of "Battle 360," they detailed a strike by Enterprise bombers against a convoy of transports as the narrarator lectured on the situation being so melodramatically tenuous that, if any of the transports got through, it could spell the end for the Marines on Guadalcanal.
While the analogy suggests that fighters might be the best method to try to kill the transports (or perhaps drone bombardment), even someone as tactically deficient as I am knows that the transports can put out GASes to use their masses of phaser threes for their defense.
Anyway, I only had the basic thoughts and thought it might be fun to toss it out there. 
I have mentioned this before, so I beg forbearance in mentioning it again in light of the above.
Freighters are "ships" and eligible to purchase Commander's Option Items as such.
Back in the '80s, T-bombs cost only a single Commander's Option point, and NSMs were not restricted to just minelayers, minesweepers and Romulans and cost only three Commander's Option points (if memory serves). Hence approaching a convoy (or even a single freighter) that I was running was always with (after the first bad experience) an exercise in caution, as a turn by the merchantmen could be an effort to pull the aggressor over an NSM, and T-bombs could be a certainty to be employed. And I had a tendency to flood the maps with "dummy T-bombs" to help confuse the issue (they were in those dark days unlimited).
There was enough of this that the Orion Merchants Association lobbied to have the rules on T-bomb availability to merchant vessels restricted (leading to the current circumstances wherein civilian ships are completely prohibited from purchasing T-bombs at all, and I have already mentioned how restricted the purchase of NSMs has become).
Denied my chosen early convoy defense system, I responded by filling every freighter with as many boarding parties as their Commander's Option points allowed. This did result in a couple of cases of a ship attacking one of my convoys being itself boarded and captured when the tactic was new, and a few cases of Orion ships having to go back to base empty handed to get "new hires" for openings in their own Marine contingents. (It is somewhat less successful against "raiders" whose object is the destruction of the merchant ships, not capturing them to loot their cargo bays, but still an unwary raider could find himself with an infestation of Marines trying to capture his ship.
It should be noted that SVC has averred as to the expense of keeping all those "bully boys" on my ships would eat significantly into "profit margins," but the rules have so far not been changed to prohibit its use.
I am pretty sure the cartel lord would swiftly put a bounty on every ship destroyed carrying the markings of the Petrick Shipping firm.
One issue I've had with scenarios like this is that it's kind of disturbing when the objective is to kill enemy crew units.
Warship versus warship we can rationalize, and we can handwave away most of the casualties with shields and escape pods and the like. Blowing up troop transports and counting the bodies for victory points is different, and some of it is difficult to handwave away as "just a game".
Gaming out a massacre affects players differently. Some players can find a dark humor in taking or inflicting mass casualties on the defenseless, but I also know players who have been deeply affected when similar situations come up in other games (to the point of not playing that game again).
Steve Zamboni:
War is a horrible business. The fact remains that sinking troopships was a viable tactic for both the Axis and the allies.
Bear in mind that I was an infantry officer, and the scene in "Starship Troopers," the movie, where they are first attacking Klendathu and you see some of the assault landers being blown out of the sky before they have landed their cargos of troops made me ill. Just as reading about Allied fighters downing Me-323s loaded with Axis troops over the Mediterranean made me ill. Just as the often told "Gallows Humor" joke about looking out of the transport windows while flying to Germany and seeing the "Red Stars" on the "escorting fighters" was a reflection on what a lot of us thought would happen if the proverbial balloon went up.
Even if you are just playing a scenario where you are trying to push troop ships into the planet to land the troops while under fire, you are going to see enemy fire obliterate some of them while they are still packed with men, or at the least blast shuttles out of the sky while they are still loaded with assault troops. Even Starfleet Marines sees that issue come up.
It is not any different in the final analysis than the real life slipping into an enemy camp and cutting the throats of sleeping men.
It is not "fair," but it is "war" even if you might think of it as just "murder."
Steve Z., I'm reminded of a line from "Red Storm Rising," in which, when the reporter, Morris, asks the helo pilot, O'Malley, what he thinks about killing Soviet subs, O'Malley tells him that he tries to get into the head of the man he's trying to kill (the Soviet Captain) while at the same time tries to fool himself into thinking that he's just killing some inanimate object. "Yeah," he tells the reporter, "It's dishonest..."
Did our pilots attacking the Japanese transports (as I mentioned in my last post on this thread) think of it as killing other men? Men with families? Or did they think of it as destroying transports to keep the Marines, also men with families, from being slaughtered?
TBH: the main idea I had with all this wasn't the thought of "Killing enemy crew units" (although since you brought it up, I am DEFINITELY thinking of it now, from the point of view of someone who tries, and usually fails, with writing fiction), it was about how the threat of the "Catastrophic Damage/Imminent Destruction" rule can be used to shape tactics to give an old scenario new life.
As far as the Commander's Options go, I hadn't even given them the first thought with regards to this thread idea.
That said, however, the main scenario I mentioned, "Supply Fleet" (SG49.0), it looks to me like the special rules for it don't say anything about whether the freighters should be allowed them or not, but because the scenario (as published) is specifically ABOUT a military convoy, I don't think this minor variation changes anything about T-bombs or other options.
In war, sure, sink them all. (I spent a good chunk of my life building weapons designed to kill mass quantities of people. Running up body counts was kind of the point.)
I did not use the word "fair" or "murder". I was exploring the implications of developing game scenarios that exist only to produce a bodycount on one side.
This isn't a scenario trying to push troop ships into the planet, where the troops be part of the battle and actually have a reason for being in the scenario. This is a scenario to see how many soldiers can be killed in their bunks, in a contrived situation in deep space, without escorts, within range of enemy fighters.
Do massacres happen in war? Sure, but do we need to play them out on a gaming table? We could play the exact same scenario with heavily-guarded cargo ships full of packing peanuts - which actually makes more sense than explaining how those troopships got in that situation - but is that a problem since it deprives players of the chance to cross off Barracks boxes?
Makes me think of the training exercise for D-Day, where E-Boats got into the area and sank an LST.
Steve Zamboni:
My use of quotes around those words was intended only as emphasis for some thought processes by some people, not intended to indicate you had used those words. There is a rather famous (and true) story about a well decorated man who gave a speech about some of his experiences, which in fact did include sneaking into an enemy installation and cutting the throats the of sleeping men inside. At the end of the speech when he was meeting some members of the audience a lady said in essence that she "hoped he woke them up before he killed them."
As too scenarios involving massacres. There was a game about "Custer's Last Stand," and another about the final Mexican assault on "The Alamo." If you look around enough you can find games about other "massacres." And certainly there were computer games like "Strategic Conquest" and "Empire" where sinking the opposing troop ships before they could land the troops was a good thing, and indeed, as those games do not allow the computer to surrender, they came down to "killing" all of the computer's troops (a "massacre") in order to win.
There is a scenario in Module R7 involving a raid by a DNL on an assembling Special Attack Force, and as such among the ships the DNL is trying to kill are troopships.
War is horrible, and decisions are made, and consequences borne as a result. When the Japanese troop transports were sunk in "the slot," the survivors were attacked in the water. What civilians would see as merely "helpless men," but what others saw as men the other ships would pick up and carry forward into the battle. They could be equipped with the weapons of men already in the battle who had become casualties, and it was believed the situation on "the Canal" was too precarious to allow that.
In any case, there are already any number of scenarios involving attempts at "massacre." Raids on civilian colonies by the Klingons, attacks on "Starliner Pods" by Romulans and Orions. There are other instances.
Mark Steven Hoyle:
Slapton Sands, "Exercise Tiger," two LSTs were sunk, and two were badly damaged.
Quote:What civilians would see as merely "helpless men," but what others saw as men the other ships would pick up and carry forward into the battle.
No one gave the actions at Dresden a second thought.
Ethics in war are generally the ethics you can afford without risking losing the conflict or risking too many of your own troops, equipment, and/or civilians.
A massacre of enemy troopships might be an atrocity to a disinterested onlooker but to the Private having to defend a planet the troopship was headed to it might mean their children growing up with a father or mother.
You have a ship full of troops bearing down on your planet. Bent on conquest or pillage.
Do you let them land, and THEN try to kill them? Or do you kill them in the most efficient manner while they are still aboard their ship to spare your own troops and planet?
I think the answer is clear.
Guys:
That is not the point Steve Zamboni is making.
His concern is a scenario that is taking place in deep space where there is no defended locality under threat, and thus the attack is simply all about mass slaughter of otherwise helpless men. While the only real difference from a normal convoy battle is that the "cargo" is "lives" rather than goods, he does not think such an attitude should be promoted.
I spent a part of my life as potentially such a life in such a circumstance,and know quite a bit from history.
But the game already has similar scenarios.
See "Evacuation," or the " Morkedian Death March" scenarios.
War is horror, and the game has not shied away from that fact. No one has to play such scenarios, and I have known more than a few players who enjoyed the game, but would not Mark off crew casualties because they did not want to think about the game mechanics meaning people were being killed.
I enjoy playing war games. I enjoy reading about History. The battles that were fought and why one side are the other won. The tactics and strategy involved. That is why i love SFB so much.
I would not want to fight a real war. If i was in charge of the forces involved. It would be horrible. I would win no matter the cost. Killing there non combatants in there factories destroying whole cities. I would of course after the war was over be tried and convicted of war crimes and executed. We would win the war however and there would not be another vs that foe.