A seasoned Klingon? I thought the Klingons did the seasoning ... with sea salt and black pepper. Methane calamari ... yum.


Garth L. Getgen

By Jeff Wile (Jswile) on Friday, January 24, 2020 - 04:47 pm: Edit

Garth:

You got that right. We Kzinti like our Klingons fresh. It’s the old gnarled veteran Klinks that have to be stewed.

By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar3) on Friday, January 24, 2020 - 06:23 pm: Edit

Don't forget that you can plot the D7/CA power as well to see what they can offer to you (like the Lyran can go speed-20 until its time to reload both the phasers and disruptors, the Klingon has a similar plot) …

SPP, the gatlings are RA not RX (refitted to LS/RS) ...

Expect the rear shields to have some reinforcement on them for as they ARE the weakest just to spread you hellbores a bit more …

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Saturday, January 25, 2020 - 01:24 pm: Edit

Stewart Frazier:

I was probably thinking of the war cruiser. I have not run a Hydran Ranger or Dragoon in a long time (much less a Horseman or a Traveler, or etc.). I just remember that prior to the refit a hellbore cruiser could make an overrun and not risk losing the phaser-Gs to pummel an unrefitted Klingon's rear shield after it was dropped by the hellbores even if his return fire on my #1 shield took out some of my phasers (which usually wound up being expended on Klingon drones and shuttles. That age old problem that if you do an overrun on any empire that has shuttles, and he pops out a shuttle in your face, you kind of have to assume it is a suicide shuttle, and you best be prepared to deal with it, or to break off the attack.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Saturday, January 25, 2020 - 05:38 pm: Edit

Using a suicide shuttle of your own, or perhaps even a PSEUDO Suicide Shuttle, may come as an unexpected surprise.

On the subject of shuttles, though, you should be mindful that the Klingon can put out a scatter pack. Also, in the overrun situation, the Klingon could launch a Type IV drone at the last moment.

By Ginger McMurray (Gingermcmurray) on Saturday, January 25, 2020 - 06:33 pm: Edit

I've had great results with pseudo suicide shuttles. Usually as a prelude to the real one(s) to soak up phasers.

If you're overrunning and using hidden deployment, be sure to side slip on your way out. Your front shield is going to be weak or down. Taking another 10 through it isn't pretty.

By John L Stiff (Tarkin22180) on Sunday, January 26, 2020 - 12:31 am: Edit

Year 160 eh? I am assuming 4 Disruptors vs 2 Hellbores. (It has been a while for me.) Fighting at range 9 - 15 favors the Disruptor. They fire every turn with 1-4 to hit (67% chance). The Hellbore fires every two turns with 2-7 (on 2 d6) to hit (50% chance). Even assuming all weapons hit, the Klingon does 24 damage and the Hydran does 20 (with 10 on the weakest shield and 10 spread around) every two turns. The Hellbores will miss more often than the Disruptors. NOT GOOD.

So, the Hydran has to close.

At range 2, the Hydran has the advantage. The 2 Gatling Phasers become equivalent to Photon Torpedoes. Not counting each players other phasers*, and assuming all weapons will hit, then the Klingon does 32 from disruptors and the Hydran does 50 from Hellbores (25 on the weakest shield with 25 spread around) and the 2xGatling Phasers do between 8 and 32 damage. *It is likely that the facing shield will be down when the other phasers are counted. So as Hellbores usually fire second, two volleys (Gatlings and other phasers) followed by Hellbores does internals. At range 0-1 the Hellbores do 5 more damage but give feedback damage. Probably not worth it.

Yet Fusion Beams can do even more damage at range 2. Assuming (a big assumption of course) that the 4xStinger-1 survive, their 8xFusion Beams do between 16 - 48 damage. The ship's 4xFusion Beams (I think this I correct) do between 8 - 24 damage (standard) or 12 - 36 damage (overloaded) or 64 and 104 damage (Suicide Overload). So using FTRS and the Ship's Fusion overloads your get 28 - 84 damage. Adding in the 2xGatling Phasers gives 36 - 116 damage. (The other phasers have not yet been counted.) This is better than the Hellbores can do.

Fusion Beams have no feedback! The range 0 damage is as follows: Ftrs do 64 - 104 and the ship does 48 - 76 overloaded. That gives 112 - 180 damage. The 2xGatlings do 24 - 32. That is a grand total of 136 - 212. KBoom! (Not counting the other phasers.)

The Stinger-1's pose a problem. Speed 12, 2 Fusion Beams (only 1 charge), and a P3. With 1 charge, their Fusion Beams are limited to range 0 - 3. Realistically they can only do significant damage at range 0 - 2. I think at Y160 the ship's Fusion Beams cannot be held. UGH. That limits tactics.

Clearly a charge with tractor beam anchor at range 0 is needed. Be patient. Dance around your opponent around range 20 at speed 15. Wait until he fires. You want him to use power so that he has to slow down. Your Fusion Beams will not be charged. You might alternate using Erratic Movement (to reduce damage to your ship) and normal movement to keep him guessing. At some point (turn 2 or later) you will have to plot a mid-turn speed change to catch him at range 0 by the end of the turn. Then tractor him. On the way in, launch your FTRS so that they will be armed by the time you catch him. You might consider speed 11 and Erratic movement. Launch your shuttles for good measure. The impulse before your fighters are in position and can fire, drop Erratic Movement.

If it works, next turn, power your Fusion Beams (standard costs less power and still does significant damage, overloads are better, and suicide overloads are possible but they will be destroyed. If everything is in position you can alpha. Or if not, keep him tractored to the limit of your available power with a tractor auction (he will have to spend power to beat your tractor). You do not have to move after all. This will allow your FTRS to close. He has a choice of an alpha on you or shooting 4xST-1's and shuttles. You will take damage, but the chances are that your alpha will get a kill.

Knowing this, your opponent may not take the bait. Then again he might get frustrated and allow you to close. As you must get close to win, the Fusion Ship with FTRS is a better option than the Hellbore Ship in my opinion.

Lastly, Gatling Phasers are a Hydran's best friend!!

By Ginger McMurray (Gingermcmurray) on Sunday, January 26, 2020 - 11:52 am: Edit

John, the Dragoon has 4 hell bores.

By John L Stiff (Tarkin22180) on Sunday, January 26, 2020 - 01:47 pm: Edit

Thanks Ginger, that evens thinks up a lot. It shows that I do not have the SSD's in front of me. So double the HB damage, etc.

So 24 damage for the Klingon and 40 (20 on the weakest shield and 20 spread around) for the Hydran if all weapons hit. The Hydran needs to roll really well at 50% to get ahead of the Klingon.

Here is my range 8 breakdown:
Klingon with overloads - 48 over two turns.
Hydran with overloads - 76 (38 and 38) over two turns.

The Klingon has 80% chance and the Hydran has 58% chance of hitting.

It is a match! Good rolls means internals for the other guy.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Sunday, January 26, 2020 - 11:20 pm: Edit

EW favors the Hydran due to their "2 die" weapon.

By Daniel Eastland (Democratus) on Monday, January 27, 2020 - 08:39 am: Edit

We are using EW and, I believe, U2.0 uses "The Duel" as the scenario for the ship battles. This means it will be an open map.

I'm thinking I need to lean on my power advantage (40 power) to use heavy ECM, letting the "2 die" nature of the hellbores compensate for enemy ECM.

By Andrew Dederer (Druster) on Sunday, February 02, 2020 - 02:28 am: Edit

UIM isn't available til 165 so the Klingon is hitting on 1-4 with OL (66%).

Range 8 Hellbores hit on 8 or less. That's 72%. You have a slight accuracy advantage (at range 4 your accuracy goes to 83% and his stays the same. But early on, that may be too dangerous)

You are not going to afford 4 OL on one turn so you may need to go 2+2. Which is still probably better than 2 per turn, which would give him 2 chances to hit with OLs.

Biggest issue is that with 1 point specific reinforcement, he can burn the batteries to get 3 15 box shields. Which your OLs would do 5 points to each of (normals do 3 each). Which means it'll be the second pass before you do internals (granted, it WILL mean that once you get internals, you'll get them in big bunches).

Once you've done some internals, he won't have drones, and his phaser suite will be a mess. THEN you can close and finish him. The game is to trade damage on 3-4 shields to wreck his #4 (or all 3 rears if he draws it out).

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, June 04, 2021 - 04:58 pm: Edit

I could not find the right topic, so I will post it here since it involved a Hydran. But really it should be in "playing SFB badly" or some topic of a name similar that we had.

Hydrans who have hellebores love their hellbores. And sometimes their opponents can make very bad mistakes (especially when playing with plotted movement). A case in point was a Hydran Dragoon that was dueling a Klingon D7. To make a long story short, the Klingon's plot when compared to the Hydrans plot drove the D7 to Range 1 of the Dragoon, who happened to have four, yes all four, overloaded hellebores.

The Hydran quickly announced he was firing, and smuggly that he would going to use a narrow salvo. It must be admitted that the Klingon player started to suggest to the Hydran player that this was not a good idea, but decided not to because, after all, what he was warning about was only a 1 in 36 chance.

It was hard to tell who was more surprised as that 1 in 36 chance appeared, and four overloaded hellebores flew off into the depths of space. It was worse for the Hydran, as the Klingon had launched what was obviously a scatter pack and the Hydran had decided not to fire on it, pour every weapon into the Klingon, and so had no weapons to engage the scatter pack before it opened.

A ship blew up that turn, but it was not Klingon, and this is why not even Hydrans should risk a Narrow Salvo unless it is absolutely required.

By Ginger McMurray (Gingermcmurray) on Friday, June 04, 2021 - 08:50 pm: Edit

Why would anyone narrow salvo that!?!?

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Saturday, June 05, 2021 - 08:42 am: Edit

If it worked it would have been game over, that's why.

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Saturday, June 05, 2021 - 10:18 am: Edit

Failure to understand statistics would be my answer, most people are pretty bad at it, especially for relatively low odds events, and I've met plenty of people who treat 1/36 as the same odds as winning the lottery jackpot. (Which also explains how many people treat that as a vaguely plausible event.)

So, if missing with a narrow salvo is like winning the lottery odds, and missing with one or more of four 1/36 chances (over a 10% chance) is reasonably likely, why then you narrow salvo, because it will effectively never miss, and firing normally has a real chance of missing.

Obviously, the problem is the fallacy of thinking that there's no real chance of SVP's story happening.

By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Saturday, June 05, 2021 - 11:43 am: Edit

I've met Federation players who live and die by narrow salvo of fully overloaded Photon Torpedoes at range 8 as their sole tactic.

AAAAND have always had the bad luck of them making their die rolls.

Always.

Annoying.

By Zac Belado (Pixelgeek) on Saturday, June 05, 2021 - 11:50 am: Edit

Its not a bad idea if it always works

By John L Stiff (Tarkin22180) on Saturday, June 05, 2021 - 12:51 pm: Edit

Uh plotted movement? It has been years since I experimented with that. How the two ships using plotted movement got to range 1 is unbelievable.

It is best to roll the four OL Hellbores. While I am not a statistician, the chance of all four Hellbore rolls missing is very very rare, way worse than a 1 in 36 chance.

The best time to use narrow salvo in my opinion is when it doesn't matter. One's opponent will be deader, dead, or less dead.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Saturday, June 05, 2021 - 01:19 pm: Edit

Jeff Anderson:

When I was introduced to Star Fleet Battles, plotted movement was the way the local group played. Given a lot of the games were on a modified (as in use two maps and mirror things) "The First Round" asteroid field (there were a lot of surprises. This incident involving the Hydran however was played on an open space map.

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Saturday, June 05, 2021 - 07:13 pm: Edit

The chances of hitting with 3+ out of four hellbores on a 2-11 hit chance is 99.554+ %, if 3 hits will win, you should not narrow salvo.

You narrow salvo when even one miss is bad.

But people are usually pretty bad at statistics, the rule of thumb should be, "Only narrow salvo when an average hit loses or an average hit bounces off shield reinforcement". There are other times to narrow salvo, but those two are the most common.

By Mike Dowd (Mike_Dowd) on Saturday, June 05, 2021 - 09:00 pm: Edit

Or only a full salvo will penetrate the PA panels....

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Saturday, June 05, 2021 - 10:59 pm: Edit

Or you are shooting a scatter pack and need 6 or well it will go off.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Monday, June 07, 2021 - 04:30 pm: Edit

In the particular case, there was pretty much no reason to use a narrow salvo, a phaser-G could have been held to deal with the scatter pack should the Klingon survive all the other firepower, but three overloaded hellebores, a phaser-G, two phaser-1s and four phaser-2s would have otherwise gutted the D7 (assuming the fourth Hellbore missed). There was only a 1-36 chance of a miss, which made missing with two unlikely (but how many of us can recall whiffing with four overloaded photons at Range 2?). As I noted, I started to tell him he should not use a narrow salvo, but the fact that there was only a 1 in 36 chance stopped me and I just let him roll the dice.

By wayne douglas power (Wayne) on Wednesday, June 09, 2021 - 01:38 am: Edit

Plotted movement was how I played in the early days of SFB (makes it a different challenging game).