The energy activation requirements of late-war fighters armed with four plasma Ds or an F and two Ks with sabot refits poses a serious challenge for plasma carriers. Because FP11.153 does not allow sabot arming before a scenario, even at weapon status three, most plasma carriers are still in a bind.

In some of my scenarios, to allow the carrier to have enough power to handle other tasks, I will start the scenario by launching a few fighters and having them immediately land on the escorts. The escort then provides the power for the sabots. At a lower weapon status, I might use the same maneuver to assist with the initial loading.

What if a rule were enacted that allowed this transfer to occur before a scenario began? Since weapon statuses two and three assume pre-scenario arming has occurred, a carrier commander could use one of the turns of pre-arming (or perhaps a portion of a turn - maybe 1/2 a turn?) to move a few fighters to the escorts. Then the escorts could assist in getting the plasmas and sabots fully energized as part of the pre-scenario preparation. For example, suppose you have a Sparrowhawk-B and two Skyhawk escorts. At weapon status three, plasma Ds are loaded and waiting to be energized to sabot level. However, the commander has used this rule to move four G-Ds to the Skyhawk escorts (two to each). Thus at the beginning of the scenario, the Skyhawks provide the sabot energy to these four fighters, and that's 16 plasma Ds that the Sparrowhawk itself no longer needs to energize.

The same option would be available to carriers with drone fighters since the large number of drones late-war fighters can carry poses a similar issue. However, it's not as critical an issue for drone carriers because loading drones requires no power. The carrier can just play keep away for a turn or two as it completes arming the fighters with drones. In contrast, a plasma carrier has to spend so much power energizing the fighters' plasmas that it has to remain comparatively stationary. In addition, for drone carriers, the issue disappears at weapon status three whereas plasma carriers will still have large power expenditures to manage at that status.

Thoughts?

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, March 12, 2021 - 02:36 pm: Edit

John M. Williams:

If the scenario is set before Y180, you are slowing your carrier group to Speed 6 to accomplish this, or expending power for tractors to make Speed 12. The problem is that the escorts have to clear their bays by launching their admin shuttles, because they cannot service the fighters in an "overcrowded bay" (J1.643).

In Y180 you do not have to slow to six or expend tractors as the shuttles can have warp booster packs to make speed 12, or might be advanced shuttles and can make Speed 8, be dragged by tractors at Speed 16, or go Speed 16 without using tractors if they have warp booster packs, but the issue remains you have to launch the admin shuttles of the escorts to avoid the prohibition on arming your fighters in (J1.643.

Sp of if it is before Y180, you are probably better using the power for going so slow (or for tractors) to arm the fighters.

By John M. Williams (Jay) on Friday, March 12, 2021 - 04:15 pm: Edit

Hi Steve,

I agree that this strategy probably isn't necessary before Y180. It's primarily intended for late-war situations when plasma D fighters can carry four, plasma F fighters can add plasma Ks, and you're trying to figure out how to energize them all to sabot level. That's when the plasma carriers really find themselves in an energy crunch. So much so that it may be worth sacrificing an escort's administrative shuttle to help offload some of the energy requirements to the escort.

Which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Most tactical decisions require some form of trade off. In this case, the value of an administrative shuttle (which may vary depending on the number of shuttles on the escort) vs. assistance loading and energizing the plasma fighters.

By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Friday, March 12, 2021 - 05:13 pm: Edit

Forget letting the escorts do some pre-scenario arming of fighters, this would allow for having some of a carrier's fighters start "hidden" in its escorts.

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, March 12, 2021 - 08:07 pm: Edit

I would like to point out that energy allocation for fighters is not the only or most complicated requirement for Star Fleet Battles Scenarios.

Depending on the fighters (and whether they are based on a carrier or a base), the full drone load out for each squadron and drone using ship (particularly escorts with fighter ready racks) needs to be completed in order to determine just what kinds and types of drones are available for the initial drone salvo.

Players new to fleet battles with one or more drone fighter squadrons often make mistakes that, with experience, they will never ever repeat.

My personal shame was to launch a carefully timed and structured salvo, (within the fleets seeking control limits) only to discover that the opposing fleet simply moved beyond the endurance limit of the speed 8 drones (24 hexes, given a 3 turn endurance at speed 8 hexes per turn.)

Wish I could tell you that the follow up salvo of type 1 ATG drones launched from the scatter pack shuttles was a carefully devised trap... knowing the enemy would leap into the opening once the AAS fighters had expended their weapons loads... but that would be a lie.

I was darned lucky it worked out.

The enemy fleet got bloodied a little, and it allowed me time to land the fighters for reloads. But the remainder of the battle was bloody, long and costly for both sides.

Towards the end, I was forced to search for drones in the ships racks to get the final sorties fully loaded.

(The Kzinti CV had 12 AAS (no two seater electronic warfare fighter) with, IIRC, each fighter had 2 type Is and 2 type VI dogfight half space drones, needed 36 spaces of drones for the first attack. There were 3 scatter packs with 6 spaces of type 1 ATG drones, or a total of 18 more drone spaces, plus the other carriers in the fleet (a CVL and CVE) plus scatter packs from the escorts and other regular warships in the fleet.

The AAS were reloaded with 24 spaces of type I drones, so at the point the enemy fleet stopped running and turned back into combat, the CV had issued 78 drone spaces of drones, and the drone stockpile (because of the drone load out on the fighters), started with a full 1/3 of the available drones being type VI dogfight drones.

At the very end the surviving AASs were going into battle with only dog fight drones (Type VIs) or nothing.

We even broke out the phaser 3 pods so the fighters could get off an extra phaser 3 shot.

Just suffice to say, some times things get complicated.

By John M. Williams (Jay) on Saturday, March 13, 2021 - 11:05 am: Edit

Hi Alex,

If you're concerned about hidden fighters, that can be solved by saying that this maneuver is detectable by long-range sensors, and that the opposing fleet would be aware of any fighters that had been transferred to the escorts.

Hi Jeff,

I agree that drone selection/load out for fighters is an important part of planning, but it doesn't really have anything to do with my proposal. It's a different topic.

By Alex Chobot (Alendrel) on Saturday, March 13, 2021 - 01:18 pm: Edit

John, fighters are distinguished from shuttles) under TacInt (D17.4) level C, which is a range of 40 hexes for ships and 60 hexes for scouts. Past that, out to 200/300 hexes, you could tell that there are shuttles being launched and landed, but not what type they are (and past 100/200 hexes you can't determine which ships are launching and landing them), so that rules out the enemy having positive knowledge of which specific shuttles are on which ship.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Saturday, March 13, 2021 - 02:50 pm: Edit

This is not going to happen.

By John L Stiff (Tarkin22180) on Saturday, March 13, 2021 - 05:34 pm: Edit

Playing a plasma carrier is a pain, especially with sabots. Non-carrier ships also have trouble charging all of their sabots (but not as much as the carrier). Never-the-less, I have a plan.

1) start the scenario at range 70.

2) Charge half of the fighters on turn 1 and circle back.

3) Charge the rest of the fighters on turn 2 and complete the circle.

4) You will find that your speed is slow on turns 1 and 2, but not so slow. You can generally give your fleet a decent speed on turn 3.

My problem is deciding what to do with my S torps. Do I sabot, sabot and envelope, or do a rolling delay for a possible enveloper sabot next turn? I like to mix things up with an enveloper or two.

By John M. Williams (Jay) on Saturday, March 13, 2021 - 10:01 pm: Edit

Hi John,

I've used variations of what you described. It works, but I'm not a big fan of stalling for a turn or two if I can avoid it. It's makes for a pretty boring start to a game. We even had one game where we decided to just create a "weapon status four" in which all the fighters started fully charged to avoid having to play the keep away turn(s).

However, my much more common approach is to leave out the plasma Ks. It doesn't solve the energy crunch, but it makes it more manageable.

By John L Stiff (Tarkin22180) on Sunday, March 14, 2021 - 10:41 am: Edit

Yes, players find a way. In years past, my friends played out the paying for plasma and sabot because it was new. We evolved to moving 8 impulses at once to speed things up for the first two turns. Our final evolution was to just start at your "weapon status four".

Seems we were preparing for "the turn" where everybody launches weapons. The mere act of recording launches, assigning targets, and moving all of the now many units on the board each impulse will take the rest of the day. The initial time saver of "weapon status four" was welcome by both sides.