>>I think Paul Scott won Council of Five Nations about 6-7 years ago in the G rack Fed. He was headed for a loss against bakija's Gorn, but got the second tractor and was able to weasel off a passel of plasma...>>

100% correct. I lost my second tractor on, like, my 60th internal, 'cause I was out of facing phasers. Gah.

By Paul Franz (Andromedan) on Thursday, October 15, 2020 - 08:01 pm: Edit

Ted,
That sounds awfully close to the 10-phaser Seltorian from back in the PBEM days. I remember losing to it in the Andro (you know before it was nerfed) that is why I remember it and I am sure the Mr. Petrick probably remembers it because it was the last time he made a change without having people playtest it first.

By wayne douglas power (Wayne) on Friday, October 16, 2020 - 06:23 am: Edit

I think I remember the Fed TCC at one time the talk was to remove it from tournaments (because it was winning at range two with Photons and Phasers, followed by more Phasers)

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Friday, October 16, 2020 - 12:25 pm: Edit

Problem with the Fed is that it's literally a one-hit wonder - and if you miss you're hosed. Also, photons are extremely vulnerable to WWs.

Meh, it is what it is. All I know is that I will not play Feds in tourney any more. The ship is just a lousy ship and a serious under-performer.

Which is sad, given that the Enterprise-class vessel is the poster child for the whole game.

The fact that the very best players in the game (Paul Scott and Bill Schoeller) can win in it speaks more to their skills and less to the viability of the ship.

By Gregg Dieckhaus (Gdieck) on Friday, October 16, 2020 - 04:51 pm: Edit

@seth
Yeah somehow the speed change interface came up with the current impulse 1 impulse prior to the one we were on, so the power it charged me as well as the moves were totally wrong. We were at range 5 and I was trying to go to a speed that didnt move next impulse (because u didnt) so I could jump from 5 to 3...

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Friday, October 16, 2020 - 04:56 pm: Edit

Perhaps it is not that the FED TCC is bad but the other tourney ships are to good? I myself think that the Great black shark is over powered.

The FED TCC was one of the first ships. The others came latter. Just bring them down to the FED TCCS level.. or let the FED have a scatter pack

By Majead Farsi (Devil) on Saturday, October 17, 2020 - 09:50 am: Edit

I think the problem is within the Photon! Its power and multi turn arming requirements is unbalanced when considering the hit ranges as compared to other weapons. I think this is where the problem is. Need to reduce the luck factor that is needed for the Fed! It is much higher than other races!

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Saturday, October 17, 2020 - 10:55 am: Edit

I agree with Majead that the problem with the Fed TCC is the very nature of the photon torpedo. The photon torpedo is *excellent* and well balanced in fleet and squadron levels. However, it is *inconsistent* in duels - which is a problem when having to go through many duel opponents in a tournament setting.

Changing the photon makes no sense and is a non-starter. Changing all of the other tourney cruisers is too much work and won't solve the problem - and is also a non-starter.

So the solution is to reduce the luck factor for the F-TCC, as Majead indicated. Hence the TCF (pick your flavor).

By Ronald J. Brimeyer (Captainron) on Saturday, October 17, 2020 - 11:42 am: Edit

I would like to try a Fed TCF with 38 power, 3 Photons, 8 p-1s, 4 p-3s and a G-rack. You give up 1 Photon for 2 p-3s and a G-rack. Make the p-3s RX so they do not add to the centerline shot, but gives the ship better drone defense and secondary shot through the #2 and 6 shield. Just a thought.

By Ken Kazinski (Kjkazinski) on Saturday, October 17, 2020 - 11:46 am: Edit

I can't find it at the moment but there was an analysis of all the Tournaments, by ship and player level and I believe ship vs ship.

I think you have to refer to the analysis to show if a ship is too strong or weak.

Does anyone have the link for the analysis?

By Ronald J. Brimeyer (Captainron) on Saturday, October 17, 2020 - 12:39 pm: Edit

I think the Fed may come out as a 50/50 ship in a large scale analysis. Because the dice will equal out in the long run. I believe what we are discussing is making the Fed slightly less dice dependent while still maintaining a 50/50 balance overall.

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Saturday, October 17, 2020 - 12:43 pm: Edit

Robert Schirmer has done academic-level mathematical statistical analyses on SFB tourney play.

http://rwschirmer.weebly.com/

He has many reports. The most useful for this discussion is results for all players/ships. He also has an "ace versus ace" analysis.

For ace-versus-ace, the Fed ranked 14th out of 18 - ahead of only the RKE, RKR, THN, and LDR.

For all players, the Fed ranked 15th out of 18 - ahead of only the THA, LDR, and THN.

He also has a ship-by-ship RPS statistical analysis. Again, all players is probably better because of a higher number of games (making the statistics slightly more reliable). It's average win rate is 43% - a poor showing. It's best win rate is against the LDR at 60%, it's worst against the WBS at 31%. It has several other opponents that it has very low win rates against, which will be of no surprise to veteran players.

Note these statistics are for a SINGLE game. When you have to fight MULTIPLE sequential games in a sudden death tournament, your odds tank because of all of the bad RPS scores.

By the way, saying that Bill Schoeller or Paul Scott can win in the Fed is not helpful to the statistical analysis. Robert Schirmer's data also show them to be the #1 and #6 players out of 283 ranked players, respectively, with impressive win rates of 81% and 68% respectively. (By the way, for kicks I checked myself, I'm ranked #37 - so while I'm hardly in the same league as those greats, I don't suck at the game either.)

The Fed TCC has an average MPE rating of roughly -65 for all players. Per Schirmer's rating histogram on page 36 of the all-players chart, that puts the Fed as a bottom third tier contender. I also checked Ace-versus-Ace; it's MPE is only slightly higher at -34 - still in the bottom third.


It is a proven *fact* that the Fed TCC is a weak and inconsistent performer in tournament play. This fact is true for both the ace-versus-ace data, as well as for the all players data. Unless you are in the top 5% of players, if you fly Federation Spaceways in tournament play you are likely to lose (again, unless your skills are simply stellar).

It is my opinion (not fact) that the above conclusion is a travesty. The poster child for the game should not be a loser in tournament play.

There is no fix to the Fed TCC unless you deal with the photon's chart. Since you can't change the chart without changing the weapon, you have to change the ship so that it's less reliant on the photon.

There's plenty of room for debate on what changes are needed, but if you want the Fed TCC to be a 50/50 performer, then changes are needed and should be play tested. Preferably multiple variants to collect more data at once.

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Saturday, October 17, 2020 - 12:50 pm: Edit

By Ron Brimeyer:

---

Quote:

I think the Fed may come out as a 50/50 ship in a large scale analysis. Because the dice will equal out in the long run. I believe what we are discussing is making the Fed slightly less dice dependent while still maintaining a 50/50 balance overall.

---

By Ronald J. Brimeyer (Captainron) on Saturday, October 17, 2020 - 03:14 pm: Edit

Fine the numbers do not make the current Fed 50/50. I think my suggestion still makes sense. By dropping 1 Photon and adding 2 p-3s and a G-rack it makes the ship less reliant on dice and may bring it closer to the 50/50 range.

By Graham Cridland (Grahamcridland) on Saturday, October 17, 2020 - 03:17 pm: Edit

We have a Fed in the finals of a four round tournament. And the Feds overall did fine. Sometimes the photons are good, sometimes they're not.

I agree the Fed is mildly subpar (mildly!) in RWSchirmer's numbers, and I think that is consistent with the ship.

Is the TCF supposed to be 2/3 move? If so no way it gets 38 power... I think the Fed with the G-Rack is probably close to a 50-50 ship, thought more testing would tell. If something more were needed, 2 AWR to give it 40 power like the other power hungry DF ships (Lyran, Hydran) makes sense as a try but would of course require testing.

I don't think we know if the G Rack Fed is good or not yet, really. Needs data. Early returns (Schoeller win, this tourney) are that it is at least a 50-50 ship and maybe a good ship.

By Ronald J. Brimeyer (Captainron) on Saturday, October 17, 2020 - 07:48 pm: Edit

the TCF is a 1/1 movement cost.

By Jack Taylor (Jtaylor) on Saturday, October 17, 2020 - 08:52 pm: Edit

Ok so let's say we all sing kumbaya and all agree we would like to see a CF Fed get sanctioned. I haven't so far read anyone to say it sounds like a terrible idea. So great, we all want one, and we all think it will make tournaments better.

Fantastic. Now what?

All the spirited and excited conversation in the world by us players won't get the ship sanctioned.
We need agreement by the powers that be we should pursue this course of action. And if the answer is yes go chase it, what will it take in the way of playtesting to get it sanctioned.

What would we need to do? 20 games, 50 games, 200 games, 1,000 games, what will do it?

I personally appreciate other players passionately making their cases. But honestly, it is a waste of time, heart, and energy if we can't get a road map to sanctioning established.

Peter- can you help with this? Petrick- you see this?, can you comment?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, October 17, 2020 - 11:23 pm: Edit

I think it's a terrible idea and that given we have a fed CC we don't need a Fed CF.

However, I have almost nothing to do with tournaments. Not zero, but almost. Petrick decides.

I think we do need a pathway to a sanction, and I think Petrick is the man to establish one. As company owner, what I would want to see is going to be closer to 50 games than 20, involving at least ten opponent ships and at least that many opponent players.

The problem with the whole pathway to sanction thing is we did this twice before. Once, the pathway was set but the games were never played and the proponents still wanted it approved. The second time, years later, collapsed when it became obvious that people were deliberately throwing games to rig the process.

By Graham Cridland (Grahamcridland) on Sunday, October 18, 2020 - 02:24 am: Edit

For ace players, the rwschirmer stats give a 47% likelihood of victory for a non-g-rack Fed. (I presume that in the Fed's case, the stats are borked for non ace players because people play the Fed a lot for reasons that have nothing to do with it's likelihood of winning).

It is 10th of 18 ships in that regard, within the margin of error, it is equivalent to the Orion, RKR, RFH, Andromedan (on a tiny sample), and Lyran.

Page 6 here: http://rwschirmer.weebly.com/uploads/5/6/7/3/56735785/sfbtrv4.pdf

I think without the G rack, 47% sounds kind of sensible. With the G rack, I assume that all the D&D matchups get meaningfully better, so 50% isn't out of the question.

That 3% bump would put it functionally equivalent to ships like the Gorn, and within the margin of error for very respected tourney ships like the Klingon and the WAX.

Maybe test the G rack some more before we reject that version?

By wayne douglas power (Wayne) on Sunday, October 18, 2020 - 02:53 am: Edit

I am not looking to have the CF Fed. I think the Fed TCC is capable of winning tournaments.
I think adding the the G rack would be fair. (more play testing is a good idea).

By wayne douglas power (Wayne) on Sunday, October 18, 2020 - 03:41 am: Edit

Quote: In this instance, Brian pointed out that there is, in fact, a way to note reserve power used like this with a secret, impulse marked note in the "log" function. Which completely solves this issue *if* everyone knows this is a thing that they can and should do, and know how to do it. But I've been playing on SFBOL for a long time, and this is the first time I ever discovered that you could add entries to the "log" function. So it seems likely that it'll be hard to get everyone to do this. end quote

The how to record reserve power in the log could be noted with the next tournament. along with the designations used in EA (like w for reserve warp, i for Impulse, r for plasma rolling delay).

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Sunday, October 18, 2020 - 08:20 am: Edit

Yeah, I think the G-rack Fed plan is a reasonable one; yes, I know the photon chart is problematic in one on one play, and it is difficult to win a single elimination tournament ladder due to the odds that once and a while, you'll completely get whacked by the dice.

But the ship is, mostly, a sound one. And the big hammer it wields has a significant, ahem, impact on the game field overall that some kooky Fast version (with 3 or 2 photons) just wouldn't have.

It is hard to do well with a Fed, but it is certainly possible; my games against Ed Slusarek over many years of Council of 5 as the Gorn vs his Fed saw him come out ahead of 50-50; I've been killed by many a Fed in both the Gorn and the Zin. That the Fed exists in the 4 photon form makes it risky to play the generally very strong Archeo Tholian and Orion (and Andro if the Andro gets okayed in the current playtest version).

Like, if the G-rack Fed can end up in the roughly 50-50 win zone, it's probably fine.

By wayne douglas power (Wayne) on Sunday, October 18, 2020 - 09:00 am: Edit

This play test version of the Andromedan is a good one.

By Richard Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Sunday, October 18, 2020 - 09:09 am: Edit

I don't think CFs are representative of an empire's ships and tactics; they should not be used.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Sunday, October 18, 2020 - 01:15 pm: Edit

As soon as the Feds get the CF, the Klingons will want the DF, and then the Gorn or the Romulans will demand a fast ship. Do you REALLY want to go down that rabbit hole?? I think not.


Garth L. Getgen