Archive through November 14, 2020
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: SFB Proposals Board:
New Ships:
R10: ANDROMEDAN PROPOSALS:
New and variant Satellite Ships?:
Archive through November 14, 2020
"COMPUTER: STORE VERBAL CONFESSION AND EVIDENCE FOR FUTURE RETRIEVAL DURING COURT PROCEEDINGS. MAGNIFY, MULTIPLY, ENHANCE, EXPAND, CORRELATE, ANALYZE, SCAN, VERIFY, AND THEN ARCHIVE WITH MAXIMUM OMNI-ECHO-MEGA-GIGA-POLYMORPHING ENCRYPTION."
Darn, I am getting old. My mind is slipping. Sigh.
Darn, I am getting old. My mind is slipping. Sigh.
Darn, I am getting old. My mind is slipping. Sigh.
Darn, I am getting old. My mind is slipping. Sigh.
Darn, I am getting old. My mind is slipping. Sigh.
Darn, I am getting old. My mind is slipping. Sigh.
Darn, I am getting old. My mind is slipping. Sigh.
Darn, I am getting old. My mind is slipping. Sigh.
Darn, I am getting old. My mind is slipping. Sigh.
Darn, I am getting old. My mind is slipping. Sigh.
Darn, I am getting old. My mind is slipping. Sigh.
Darn, I am getting old. My mind is slipping. Sigh.
Darn, I am getting old. My mind is slipping. Sigh.
Darn, I am getting old. My mind is slipping. Sigh.
Darn, I am getting old. My mind is slipping. Sigh.
Darn, I am getting old. My mind is slipping. Sigh.
Norman Dixon:
I am not a lawyer, but as a uninformed lay person... it would seem to me that S.P.P. Confession (see above post) is useful in mitigation for sentencing, not (necessarily) a confession of a crime.
(Well... unless S.V.C. Decides that Petrick’s mental decline justifies a charge of betrayal or deriliction of duty...)
Not sure what the penalty in that case is... we haven’t had a situation like that come up.
Also - 'The game is vast with many cross-references ... '
[The rulebook can be used for intimidation just for its size when stacked!]
As promised, I spoke today at lunch with Steve Petrick about Andro escorts (and fast tholians) and pointed out that even if "stupid and impossible" and "unworkable within the context of their mission" that players were actually willing to give money to us for them.
It was noted that "most players did not want any conjectural ships" but that "most players wanted what they wanted even if conjectural was the only way it could be done."
He was in a good mood (I bought lunch, paying off a bet on a non-SFU matter) and seemed to tacitly agree to think about it one more time.
Andro CVs and Escorts.
I think SPP makes a reasoned argument against dedicated escorts, using PAMs against Pl-Fs or smaller is usually a waste of limited resources. Pl-Ds need to be stopped by killing their carries first, or by sacrificing your own attrition units,allowing Andro fighters to ram Pl-Ds could be an interesting Andro idea, but would likely open up to many issues in other areas.
Given the history, I suspect that you would see gunboats, and fighter/bomber pods being used on units like the Infestor, to produce a SCS type unit, the remaining hanger space being used by Cobras or Mambas to protect the Infestors. I suppose an AEGIS refit could be added, but given their spares weapon suites, I doubt that it would be worth the cost.
Stewart:
"[The rulebook can be used for intimidation just for its size when stacked!]"
The rulebook can be used AS A WEAPON because of its size....
The weapons option is HOW it was put together (or the height from which it is dropped) ...
[7 binders so far, about ready for the 8th ...]
I have never claimed to be the smartest person.
So when trying to come up with an escort I am stuck with:
Technology:
Weapons Available: Tractor Repulsor Heavy, Tractor Repulsor Light, Phaser-2 analog (not actually phaser-2, but enough like phaser-2 that phaser-2s stand in for them and they can be repaired as phasewr-3s),
Systems Available: Tractor Beams, Transporters (for laying of T-bombs and power absorber mines), Displacement Devices (to displace the ship away from a swarm of seeking weapons).
Limitations:
Size of hulls puts limits on adding weapons. Limit of no more than two disdve ships operating in a given volume of space. (While Module C3A had the concept of basically ignoring the limits on the number of disdev in a given volume of space, if you are ignoring that limit for the escorts you are not really mimicking Andro operations.)
So, what would an escort version of an Andromedan ship look like?
And what would the escort groups look like for each Andromedan mother ship?
A Conquistador would (theoretically) have a Python as an escort, but then as a carrier group it could NEVER have a Scout.
An intruder might have a Conquistador as an Escort, and the conquitador in that case could have a Cobra as an additional escort, and the Intruder could carry a scout in addition to the carrier pod and one additional Cobra variant .... but what?
I am sorry, but I cannot work this out. The Andromedans simply do not have enough weapon selection or ship selection to me to make this work.
SPP;
You keep pointing out the two Displacement Device limit, has the following portion of (G18.82) been revised?
(G18.82) ARRIVAL RESTRICTIONS: ... Note that a Python, which has a
displacement device, can be carried inside a larger unit to the site of
the scenario, although it could not use the device (or even power it) if
two other Andromedan units used them during that scenario
(including using them to arrive in the scenario). By this means, it is
possible that three DisDev-equipped ships could appear in a scenario
(e.g. an Intruder carrying two Pythons) but only two of these ships
could use the device in combat.
Could an all-phaser variant with Aegis work?
Well, let's look at a Cobra. It has two TRL and four not-Ph-2s. How "big" is a TRL? I assume it is the same size as a not-Ph-2, so that gives a ship that has a total of six not-Ph-2s. Does that move the needle?
A Python has two TRL and six not-Ph-2s. Will giving it a total of eight not-Ph-2s make a difference? Aegis certainly helps, but is spending a valuable SC4 independent ship as a weak phaser-boat really going to provide value?
Also, this is all ludicrously conjectural. Would it be possible for these imaginary Andros to use not-Ph-3s? If they can stick in two not-Ph-3s for each lost TRL, that potentially gives more options and makes the ships a little more interesting. But, is that even a possibility?
Going in a different direction, why not just use MWPs and MMPs? Replace that Cobra with three MWPs and an MMP, you get six not-Ph-2s, two transporters, and four T-bombs.
How about, instead of an "escort" ship, any Andro with Hanger would have the option of replacing one small satellite ship with a "basket of mines"; say 40 T-bombs or Power Absorber Mines in any combination. This would be a very different approach from the galactic powers. But Andros are very different.
The cost and the effect on play balance would have to be considered carefully. The sheer number of mines might make the idea unworkable, though the Andros could only do this at the cost of one fewer sat ship. But given that the Andros can store entire ships in these Hangers, and then move them by transporter, the technology doesn't seem that farfetched.
I'm not an Andro player, but I can't imagine an Andro escort being anything but a satellite ship sized unit. It's too specialized for a mother ship design, but a large mother-ship could carry MWP and an escort, or one mother-ship could carry MWP while another carried escorts. So a satellite escort could work.
But, this leads to the problem of "just what is the escort's role here?" For galactics, the escorts cover the carrier/tender while it rearms and repairs fighters or PFs because the carrier has fewer weapons and can't move at full speed while servicing and supporting attrition units. None of this really applies to an Andro. ALL mother ships are carriers in some sense, they're designed to work as such, and pick up and offload their MWP/Satellite ships at speed and don't spend significant power rearming such units.
If the andros can build a satellite ship that's particularly good against attrition units (Aegis say), then why is it being assigned to MWP carriers rather than to other units? How does it help the MWP force more than it would help any other andro force?
What I could see is maybe some satellite ships with a very small repair bay able to hold one MWP and a special sensor able to lend to an entire squadron of MWP, and their purpose is to support the MWP, not the mother ship. That's not really a conventional galactics' escorts' job, but it makes some sense as a role for an Andro since the MWP is a lot less capable than a PF.
A. David Merritt:
I am not ignoring.
If you had Module C3A you would see that the Carrier Pod is a medium satellite ship in its own right. It takes up the one (1) hangar slot on the Conquistador. So to have an escort at all, the Conquistador needs to be accompanied by another ship with a displacement device. So start with a Python (or if you prefer a Reconnaissance Cobra or a Bull Snake, or a King Snake, or an Anaconda so that you have the scout instead of the escort).
A Conquistador can be a carrier, it can carry the fighter pod, It can have as many as 24 fighters, or as many as 12 size-1 fighter and 6 size-2 fighters (P-HV instead of P-V), or as many six Medium bombers (P-VM), or as many as Six Heavy Bombers (P-VH). But it it is operating as a carrier, it canNOT have a satellite ship, which means either its escort has a displace device and the two ships are all there is, or it is strategically slow because its accompany ships do not have displacement devices and why in such case should it have one? So that it can abandon its escorts to run away?
I have mentioned that an Intruder could carry something with it in addition to the Carrier pod (either two Viper class ships, or two Cobra class ships, or one of each, or one Mamba class ship) and be accompanied by another displacement device equipped ship.
You should also consider a few things.
A Dominator can launch and recover six medium satellite ships.
It cannot recover eight small satellite ships, although it could carry them. It takes it two turns to launch and recover eight small satellite ships.
A Dominator can launch and recover four large satellite ships.
A Dominator can launch and recover four small and two large satellite ships.
If the Dominator has a Carrier Pod (P-V), it can launch 24 fighters, and five medium satellite ships in one impulse (five because the carrier pod has taken one space), but it will take it FOUR (4) TURNS to recover them all. (If bombers, it would take it two turns to recover fight satellite ships and six bombers.)
The only way to recover craft aboard is by transporter. It does not matter if they are in the hex and moving as fast as the carrier, they cannot land aboard. They cannot land aboard escorts. Pretty much once the Andromedan launches his fighters, the fighters are committed. Either you win, or you abandon them. There is not much choice.
A Conquistador can carry 24 fighters. It can launch them all in one impulse, but it will require it SIX (6) turns to recover them all. (It would take two turns to recover six bombers).
(NOTE: The above accounts for the fact that the Carrier Pods include two transporters which are added to the Mothership).
I am trying real hard to visualize what an escort variant will bring to he Andromedans. But if you describe it and how you imagine it will accomplish the task I will create it.
Quote:I am trying real hard to visualize what an escort variant will bring to he Andromedans.
Which is why I was musing in my 4:58 PM post that maybe the Andros wouldn't use escort ships per se. Really, the essense of an escort is that it is good at killing large numbers of small targets. The unique Andromedan technology suggests a way to accomplish the same goal with T-bombs and/or PA mines.
I can visualize something by going strategic and looking at the big picture of the whole Andro War.
Andros relied on the RTN to perform lightning-fast raids on targeted hard points (BATS, SB, planets, even homeworlds). I suppose they could target specific fleet elements, but militarily you are better off NOT engaging the enemy's force and instead destroying the underlying support infrastructure for the force. The force then becomes less dangerous. Optimally, once you conquer, you force the enemy to attack you on your terms while relatively unsupported or with limited support.
All of the Galactic Powers used fighters, and later PFs, extensively for their hard point defenses. Indeed, in F&E, one of the things that makes those hard points so dangerous was the relaxed constraints on the number of squadrons of attrition units that could be deployed. Instead of a mere 3 or 4 squadrons for a fleet, there might be double that or more (fleet plus fixed defenses). At a homeworld one could even counter in excess of 26 squadrons of just fighters (20 on 20*PDU, 4 for the fleet (assuming an oversized squadron), 2 on the starbase, and possibly more on FRDs to which fighter modules are attached. I, personally, have played F&E games where I faced or mustered 30 squadrons of JUST fighters over a capital planet (that's 360 fighters).
Of course, F&E is not a fair comparison because it is abstract and thus does not translate very well directly into SFB. However, the point I'm making is that the Andros would have encountered situations where they had to face MANY MANY attrition units.
Against the Federation, Klingons, and Kzinti, they would have also been facing huge waves of drones - and in Y180+ (when the worst part of the Andro war was in swing) said drones would have been speed 32 - and thus dangerous even to the wily Andro technologies. Additionally, the late war fighters can often manage speed 30 with cheap booster packs (in exchange for vulnerability).
Having played in fleet battles where Andros assault fixed defenses like this, in Y180+, I can say that the Andros can have a hard time dealing with fixed defenses having very large numbers of fighters, even with a pair of Dominators.
While the Andromedans have some outstanding defenses and tricks to avoid damage, their damage output is very weak compared to an equivalent BPV galactic powers force. When faced with overwhelming waves of fighters and drones, it can become difficult for them to compete (i.e., you don't have enough weapons to deal with the attrition units and their seekers AND the fixed defenses you are there to destroy - even with a major maneuverability advantage).
Thus, I could easily envision an Andromedan response to this problem by creating "escort" versions of satellite ships. While they do not "escort" anything (any more than any other satellite ship does) they provide critical anti-fighter and anti-seeking weapon defenses that will make assaulting the equivalent of galactic forces PDUs significantly easier to accomplish.
In other words, there is a mission need: Anti-fighter and anti-seeking weapon work. T-Bombs and displacement devices alone are sometimes not enough to deal with the kinds of massive attrition units and seekers that the GP forces can field at their hard points - hard points the Andromedans were keenly interested in attacking.
Such anti-attrition unit satellite ships would have more phasers and possibly Aegis, at the expense of heavy weapons (TR beams). The additional weapons, and the improved fire control, could be used to punch a hole through the GP attrition units and seekers so that the motherships can reach the valuable support targets and attack them with the heavy TR beams.
I could also envision the mothership launching large numbers of of anti-fighter units that it does not expect to recover. Just as the GP forces had no problem expending cheap fighters in attrition warfare, the mothership would expect to deploy and lose small, cheap, anti-fighter satellite ships in combat.
I would not call such ships "escorts" because they do not fit the paradigm of the traditional carrier group in SFB and F&E. However, a set of anti-attrition units would be very useful to support the Andromedan assault missions.
My thoughts based on live play. Take them or leave them.
Apart from EW as Douglas suggests, the Andros might want a faster way to recover fighters. Which suggests that the escort needs fighter bays in the same way that a Galactic escort has fighter bays: only a couple, empty, but able to repair and reload fighters. It has its own transporters which add to those of the carrier to speed things up.
How many fighters it might accommodate depends on size, but I'd expect each bay to take 1 standard box. So a Python might take 2 instead of 2 APR; a Conquistador might take 3 instead of 2 cargo and an APR.
But as Andro fighters don't need to be reloaded, the value of this is limited to repair and running away. Not sure if it's really worth it. Add the EW and it might be.
Alan Trevor:
See thread starting By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Tuesday, November 10, 2020 - 04:04 pm: Edit
Andromedans have proposed being allowed larger mine totals in the past, The answer has always been "no" because such would be very bad for the game. The "mine sled" proposal involved NSMs and it would leave an NSM in any hex it was beamed out of. The mine sled was just letting a mothership have lots and lots of extra T-bombs on hand. Those are the two I can remember, I honestly do not recall any others, but am fairly certain such proposals have been made.
Well, I understand the problem of it being bad for the game. In fact I acknowledged that possibility, or attempted to, in my 4:58 PM post. The problem is that their technology kind of leads to that as a solution. So by not allowing it (justifiable for game play reasons) you are left with a complimentary problem; WHY (for "in universe" reasons) don't they do it?
I think there's a similar problem with Jindo asteroid ships. Since their rock armor enables them to drop shields to beam out T-bombs without really compromising their defenses, why don't they carry huge numbers of T-bombs? Again, I recognize the game play problem. But "in universe" - what are they thinking, that they don't do this?
Why do ships not carry more mines?
We do know that it unbalances the game. I know how powerful is just having 1 NSM on my Romulan. Give me 2 WE, KE and 2 BH. 5 NSM, 16 t-bombs and 16 fake t-Bombs. I can lay out a nice mine field. With the ability to get as many mines as I like? That would be very unfair.
In a more realistic view. Why would the ships not carry a dozen mines or more? How big are the mines? Small mines can be placed by transporter. Larger captor mines have 6 type 1 drones. Small has 2 type 1 drones. DEF SATS are treated like mines in some cases. So how big are the explosive type mines?
Mines are explosive ordinance. Hard to set up and place. Modern Navy ships did not carry mines. They use mine layers for that purpose. In SFB it is done the same way. Why is it that way?
A long time ago I thought about a depth charge type weapon. Acts like a mine for damage out put and area effect. Is launched during the drone launch phase. Range 3 hexes with a launch arc of R,RR or L,LR. Place the marker and right down impulse of detonation. On the proper Impulse it explodes area effect like a mine. 4 per rack..
A lot of problems with such a thing.
From Annex G3A:
(R10.0) THE ANDROMEDAN INVADERS
All data on the Andromedan strike carriers, patrol carriers, heavy carriers, medium carriers, fleet carriers, mobile carriers, and escort carriers is curiously missing.
Well well well, I take this as a hint that these things do exist (just haven't been designed yet).
To me the solution is simple - create Andro FTR transporters on the carrier. It would have enough to beam them aboard all at once. One GP transporter can beam out 5 TB's (.2 power). Make the Andro FTR transporter similar to this. The mother ship carrier would have "fighter hanger bays" for each fighter, in addition to the satellite ship hanger bays. I would make the "fighter hanger bay" have a built in fighter transporter! It would simplify the SSD.
I like SVC's idea of "all phaser with Aegis" for escorts.
ANDROMEDAN ESCORT
Well, screwey as this may sound, my first thoughts for such a ship were to take a Gun Sled (R10.61) and give it the engines of the Viper, the basic hull upon which I've always felt the Sleds were based.
The bank of APR amidships suggests (at least to me) the potential of refitting her with some other systems. I did mention Transporter Bombs or Mine Racks and, given the existence of the Mine Laying Sled (R10.35), that seemed not unreasonable to me at the time.
That idea has, however (most rightly), been rejected.
Still, the Gun Sled does have two transporters and, as a size class 4 ship, is authorized to be able to purchase two transporter bombs (and their corresponding dummies). She can also be recovered aboard the mothership and have some of that vessels transporter bombs transferred to her.
As far as carriage goes, I did admit early on in this thread to have never pictured a Conquistador operating carrier pods; I reserved them for ships with a larger hangar capacity. As such, I pictured an Intruder carrying one carrier pod, two fast gun sled escorts, and still having a half space worth of hangar left for a pair of SSUs; either cargo SSUs (to allow the carrier to use the Federation Carrier Cargo rule, perhaps), or more likely a decoy SSU (or two?) to help protect her and her fighter group from seeking weapons.
HOWEVER, SPP has posted that he has considered Andromedan Carrier Escorts and rejected the idea, and I was satisfied. 
I remind everyone of the company motto: "We will accept money for games." As I see if, if people will buy these Andro-Aegis things (which would be "impossible intelligence failures" that existed only in the drug-blasted brains of star fleets so-called intelligence section) then I would be willing to see my way through to taking your money.
As I see it, take any sat ship, replace the TRs with phasers including 2Xphaser-3 or maybe some kind of goofy AndroGat thing) add Aegis, and move on. Does it really take more creative juice than that?
Uh, hypothetically speaking, what weapons would the Andro FTR's carry?