Archive through July 08, 2022
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Star Fleet Battles: The Academy:
Term Papers:
Archive through July 08, 2022
If I had to guess at a "physics" difference between tractoring a B10 and an asteroid I'd guess that the asteroid tends to come apart under the stress of being tractored by a warp speed or near light speed starship.
Even iron asteroids aren't forged masses of metal, but rather are a bunch of stuff that stuck together.
Your tractor grabs on with enough force to stop your ship, and it hardly slows you as a few tons of asteroid actually in the beam rip loose and come flying at your ship due to the far too powerful for that little mass tractor beam.
But that's just making up technobabble. The point would be that we CAN make up technobabble for how something with positional stabilizers is different from an asteroid is different from a B10.
The biggest rocks out there that can tractor are Jindarians:>
Mike Grafton's paper published here:
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By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Sunday, September 27, 2020 - 07:16 pm: Edit
Scatter Packs to the Defense.
Mike Grafton, USS New Mexico
Often when playing a Fed/ Kzinti/ Klingon/ WYN you will be closing to use your direct fire vs your enemy...
One neat trick is to launch a scatter pack at an appropriate range loaded with a single III ECM drone and a fast release timer targeted on yourself.
So you drop it at range, close at medium high speed and when the SP pops out comes a III ECM drone that will close up with you to give you protection.
Why bother? Because you want to preserve your racks for shooting at the enemy!
This is probably best combined with a regular SP at the same time, so you get maximum usage of your drone stocks.
If the enemy shoots at this SP when it is at range with a narrow salvo, even if they bust it, you have reduced their direct firepower for the turn considerably for just the cost of a shuttle plus the drone...
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Is partially invalidated by (FD7.12) which prohibits the use of type-III drones on a scatter-pack. It does not prohibit ECM modules, so that concept remains valid, but Michael Grafton may want to add extended range to the drone body and should probably add ATG so that the drone is self-guiding.
version number dos.
Scatter Packs to the Defense.
Mike Grafton, USS New Mexico
Often when playing a Fed/ Kzinti/ Klingon/ WYN you will be closing to use your direct fire vs your enemy...
One neat trick is to launch a scatter pack at an appropriate range loaded with one or two type I or IV ECM drones aboard, (with extended range and ATG on the drones) and a fast release timer targeted on yourself.
So you drop it at range, close at medium high speed and when the SP pops out comes an ECM drone that will close up with you to give you protection.
Why bother? Because you want to preserve your racks for shooting at the enemy!
This is probably best combined with a regular SP at the same time, so you get maximum usage of your drone stocks.
If the enemy shoots at this SP when it is at range with a narrow salvo, even if they bust it, you have reduced their direct firepower for the turn considerably for just the cost of a shuttle plus the drone...
Note that while you can only benefit from one ECM drone at a time, having two makes the enemy kill BOTH of them before they get rid of their EW.
BTW, SPP, I thought that prohibition was only vs type III two space, long range drones...
Mike Grafton:
The rule says "type III," it does not say "two space type III" or "type IIIXX."
Got it. Corrected in the version #2
When I posted a casual thought that I thought was an obvious, someone suggested that it might be a term paper.
If, on the (less than?) 1% chance nobody has yet submitted the idea, here it goes... 
Escort drone wave for Assault Fighters Jeff Anderson, U.S.S. California
Assault fighters that have drones as secondary weapons, including Federation A-10, Klingon Z-D, Kzinti DAS, most double space fighters for those three races, and most bomber shuttles, should always precede their target runs with a drone launch at their targets.
The target will have to engage the drones; it's suicide not to. This will reduce the amount of defensive fire available when the fighter wave comes in. Weaseling is also not an option, because the limits imposed on a ship during the post-weasel period will made it an unopposed target for the fighters.
Even Type-VI drones (Klingon Z-D, Kzinti DAS) are useful in this role. While they can't do near as much damage as Standard Drones (Type I), the psychological effect of an incoming drone wave can even lead experienced players to fixate on the need to eliminate the incoming drones.
(Especially if the intense fight at that point has led to them not properly identifying the incoming drone types.)
Question on appropriate topic for a term paper:
The Tholians never had mauler technology. But in Module R4T they did get a couple of "Conjectural" maulers; one based on their (Archeo) CA and one based on their CW. I had never previously given much thought to maulers in web defense because, well, because the Tholians didn't have them. But with R4T I started thinking about how I would use them if I had one in a base defense scenario. Would this be a legitimate topic for a term paper, now that there are conjectural Tholian maulers?
You would basically note that the paper is based on a conjectural unit.
How about one how to use a Mauler in the web assault.
Jeff:
A freebie for your paper, but something that bears mentioning with your term paper is that if your fighters carry a mix of drone types, mix up the salvo. If a player gets lazy and randomly IDs 3 as Type VI, they may assume that the wave is of low priority, disregarding the majority of Type I or IV to their detriment.
Conversely, if they select 3 drones, and by some random luck are all Type IV, they may panic and weasel.
Finally, if he gets a mixed result, he will never be too certain what he gets if he ID's 3 and gets one of each, it forces them play much more conservatively .
Gregory,
As someone whose favorite empire is the Tholians, I've never been that worried about maulers* in a web assault. Yes, they can be useful. But their usefulness is more a consequence of their enormous reserve power than the mauler weapon, at least as far as the outer web rings are concerned. The problem is the narrow mauler arc of fire. If a mauler has entered the outermost web ring, the Tholians can often (unless the mauler is in the web vertex - an inefficient location for other reasons) get a clear line of fire to it (allowing the use of overloaded disruptors or photon torpedoes, rather than just phasers fired through the middle web ring) from a hex the mauler can't hit. This is generally impossible against more conventional heavy weapons. So, for example, if a D7M is in the web, the Tholians move a defender to hit it with phasers and overloaded heavy weapons, but the D7M can respond with phasers only. If it were a standard D7, it would have its own disruptors as well.
Once the defending Tholian ships are eliminated and survviing Klingons can reach the innermost web and assault the base itself, any surviving maulers would come into their own. But for the key problem of getting through the outer rings in the first place, I'm not convinced (though certainly willing to consider counterarguments) that a D7M, for example is as useful as a standard D7. If it is, it's only because of the huge amounts of reserve power (for shield reinforcemnt or tractors), not the mauler weapon.
*The exception is the Andromedan maulers. Andromedan ships with DisDevs can jump over one strand of web, and can place satellite ships by tractor beam into or out of web, though not across web. So a mother ship approaches a three-tier wedding cake and self-displaces across the outer web ring. It moves onto the middle ring and as soon as it is able to, uses transporters to place satellite ships on the innermost ring, adjacent to the Tholian base. Unlike everyone else, a well-coordinated Andromedan attack can hit the base, even if surrounded by a full strength three-tier wedding cake, on the first turn. They don't need to go through the long "onion peeling" process. Combine this with the mind boggling damage an Andro monitor, with all those Andro batteries, can do, and you have a terrifying threat compared to which the Seltorians are a minor nuisance.
One correction to my previous post: When I said
Quote:If a mauler has entered the outermost web ring, the Tholians can often (unless the mauler is in the web vertex - an inefficient location for other reasons) get a clear line of fire to it (allowing the use of overloaded disruptors or photon torpedoes, rather than just phasers fired through the middle web ring) from a hex the mauler can't hit.
I was careless. The Tholians can do this even if the mauler is in a web vertex. It's slightly less effective, however. If the mauler is in a vertex, the Tholians are either hitting it from three hexes away, or they have to move out into the ring of open hexes between the middle and outer web rings, which increases the chances of some other Klingon attacker being able to hit it. If the mauler is in a "side" hex of the outer web, the Tholian can hit it from two hexes while remaining on a hex of the middle ring.
Sorry, but did I miss the change of topic...
Tholians using Maulers, to
Tholians fighting against maulers....
Mark,
I assumed that Gregory Flusche's 5:39PM post from 3 September was prompted by my 1:03 PM post about Tholian maulers in web defense, but was addressing a related issue; someone else (Klingons, Romulans, maybe Lyrans in support of Klingons) using maulers to attack a web. My reply to him was my explanation of why, except for the Andromedans, I don't regard maulers as a particularly scary threat to a base with an established wedding cake. And to the extent that it is a threat, it's mostly due to what the attacker can due with all that battery power. If it were possible to build such a thing (I'm pretty sure it's not), a cruiser with standard D7 weaponry and a mauler's batteries would be a much bigger threat to the Tholians than a D7M would be.
So it's not a change of topic. It's two related, but distinct, topics running in parallel.
That was that.... I have used Maulers vs Web. The problem is I can only have 1 in most patrol battles. As I like Romulans. Every on knows that plasma and web just suck.. for the plasma.
Been over a year since someone (me) posted a term paper... Sad
Lyran ECM Drones
Mike West
USS Texas
(I just say Lyran, but this applies to the Lyrans, LDR, and Seltorians.)
One disadvantage that the Lyrans (and LDR and Seltorians) have is that their ships don't have drone racks, and thus they do not have access to ECM drones. But, since they use Klingon fighters, their fighters *do* have access to drones. And so, any Lyran (or LDR or Seltorian) force that includes fighters *does* have access to ECM drones and can use them to protect their ships. Just looking at this from the surface, this isn't really an important point because even taking the smallest carrier, and FFV, requires the purchase of two ships (the FFV and its companion FFE) and the fighters required to implement this. However, there is a work around: HDWs.
By default, an HDW carries two fighters and its drone stores and reloads. It doesn't require an escort and doesn't require a huge investment in fighters (having only two that are required). However, it is a full combat ship and, while expensive for its combat potential, is no where near as expensive as an FFV carrier group. And is probably more combat effective than that FFV carrier group, too. (Outside any time you actually need a carrier group.)
The other thing the HDW provides is flexibility. An HDW that carries eight fighters is forced by rule to bring an escort. That means that an HDW that carries seven or fewer fighters does NOT require an escort. Therefore, for this purpose, the HDW can carry anywhere from two to seven fighters without any extra expense other than the fighters.
(This could also apply to survey ships converted to carry fighters, but there are other restrictions to their use and they are generally more expensive. HDWs, on the other had, do not have those other considerations and are highly flexible. So flexible, in fact, that they can include two special sensors in their weapons options boxes and accomplish the same thing!)
(Thanks to Alan Trevor in a different topic to bring up the use of ECM drones by the Lyrans and Seltorians. This term paper uses that to highlight the unique utility of the HDW for those empires.)
Mike,
Could a JGP be used in a similar fashion?
--Mike
In retrospect, I really wish the Lyrans, LDR, and Seltorians had not been given drone-armed fighters in the first place.
Sure, things can get awkward in their absence - as shown when efforts were made to give the "lost empire" Carnivons droneless fighters in Module C6 - but then, perhaps that speaks to a larger issue of just how prevalent drone use has become across the Alpha Octant.
Of course, I'm a few decades too late to make this complaint for SFB. But perhaps there's still time for the "Fighters Attack" concept in FC to go in a different direction.
Gary I highly doubt it. The mentioned Empires are not suppose to be heavy fighter users. They simply bought a few fighters to tide them over until Gunboats show up.
None of these Empires have the resources or time to develop and build a whole new domestic fighter line or 2. Using the small number drone platforms they have works just fine for what there needs are suppose to be.
On the other hand, when the Gorns imported Federation fighter designs, they adapted them to use plasma rather than drone armament.
Even if (from a logistical perspective) these "western" empires still had to source their fighter frames from the Klingons, I still would have preferred (from a game design perspective) that they had been modified to be either all-phaser types, or perhaps have a Carnivon-esque mix of phaser and ADD armament.
But, again, it's far too late to make such a thing happen in SFB - if (I hope) not quite so for FC.
>> In retrospect, I really wish the Lyrans, LDR, and Seltorians had not been given drone-armed fighters in the first place.
From a flavor perspective, I think it might have been cooler to have Lyran fighters carry some type of tiny ESG-like weapon. I think that would have also been tactically more varied and would have allowed the Lyrans to be completely drone free.
I'm not sure if such a thing was ever proposed, or perhaps it was and it was found to be undesirable and/or unworkable?
From an F&E perspective, having the Lyrans use identical Klingon fighters and drones does allow for a really tight level of Klingon-Lyran integration. Their carriers can share fighters with each other, which allows even a small Lyran carrier fleet investment to be disproportionally useful as it can directly support or be supported by the larger Klingon carrier fleet.
--Mike
Gary,
I am pretty sure that ship has sailed. I don't see how FC can make a whole new fighter from nothing. The Lyrans and Seltorians will use Z-Ys in FC, just as they do in SFB. I just don't see how it could work otherwise.
Mike,
In theory, I don't see why not. While it doesn't have the two fighters to start with, it does have the NWO boxes and it otherwise operates under the HDW rules, so it should be fine. In fact, the ship description explicitly lists it operating with fighters. And, unlike most HDWs, these fighter bays don't join the other group or the standard shuttle bays, so that's kinda cool, too.
So, ... yes.
Gary, don't forget that the LDR have the Snapper fighters (with Ph-Gs and Disruptor charges) from Captain's Log. I made FC ship cards for LDR carriers with the Snapper-2 that I use in my home games, they're fun to fly.
As for Lyrans and Selts, I'd imagine it's a bit tougher to capture their particular flavour in fighter form while staying balanced, but it sounds like a fun design challenge. Have there been any proposals in the past for unique fighters for those empires?