The problem with the Hybrid is that the base cannot power the buzzsaw portion. Which is a major feature of the standard buzzsaws.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, May 30, 2023 - 02:14 am: Edit

Mike,

True, but I'm not sure it really makes that much practical difference. For a two-strand buzzsaw (each strand 30 hexes), the Tholians must commit 60 energy per turn (prior to Y160) just to maintain the web at its current strength. That's beyond the capability of anything short of a starbase, and even that starbase will be short of power for other purposes (like EW or using the phaser-4s). So realistically, the Tholians will still need to commit ships to the defense.

They could go with fewer than 60 total web hexes but as you reduce the number of web hexes the defense rapidly becomes less viable, since the attackers will need to traverse fewer mine hexes in order to get a shot at the base.

Once the Y160 improvements take effect, it only requires 40 power to maintain the 60 web hexes of the buzzsaw; a substantial improvement but still beyond the capability of anything smaller than a starbase. Tholian supporting ships still required.

Post Y175, the power requirements drop to 30 energy per turn. This is... theoretically... within the capability of a BATS to manage... but practically, still too much.

Once X-tech becomes available the X-tech battle station can make a stab at maintaining the buzzsaw all by itself. So in practical terms, your minimum requirements for maintaining 60 hexes worth of buzzsaw without supporting ships would be a starbase, post Y160, or a BTX once the Tholians have X-tech. Any smaller (less expensive) base will still require supporting ships or fewer hexes in the buzzsaw, i.e. a weaker defense.

(Tholian YIS for their first X-ships is Y183 but Y182 is listed in Module G3 as YIS for the BTX - not broken out by individual empires.)

One option the Tholians would have for supporting a buzzsaw would be to include a web tender as part of the base defense force. The most basic version of the web tender has a YIS of Y150. It could sit in the same hex as the base and help maintain the buzzsaw, while being safe from attack until such time as the attackers reached a position to fire on the base itself.

One objection I have to this strategy is that the web tender is ultra-specialized. And the buzzsaw would still need a lot of mines to be viable. The web tender could at least be deployed to a different base if the base it had been defending was no longer threatened. But the mines are good only for defending the particualr base around which they have been placed. They can't be "picked up" and deployed to a different base if the original base is no longer threatened.

Compare this to a wedding cake supported by actual warships. They can also be used for patrolling Tholian space and intercepting invading forces, or even going on the offensive. Obviously, the lack of Tholian strategic resources means any such offensive would be of limited duration - perhaps attacking a Klingon logistics node near the border, supporting operations against the Holdfast. But the capability does exist and the Klingons will at least have to commit some forces to protecting that node, reducing the number of ships they have available to actually invade Holdfast space. Web tenders and minefields pose no such threat. As a Tholian, I would prefer to spend less of my budget on things like web tenders and mines, and more on ships (and PFs and, to a limited extent, fighters).

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Tuesday, May 30, 2023 - 07:45 am: Edit

I think the Tholians limits are more on HULLS than cost.

So their automated shipyard can only crank out so many hulls a year. But the freighters are made elsewhere.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, May 30, 2023 - 08:49 am: Edit

Mike,

I'm not so sure about that. Tholian freighter-based auxiliaries can move through web, which captured "Brothers of the Anarchist" ships cannot do. The TK5 is the only listed exception to that rule, and it is specifically because of the Tholian-built portion of the hull, the front portion of a PC grafted onto the rear hull of a captured Klingon F5. But the "Brothers of the Anarchist" rules are explicit for foreign-built ships captured by the Tholians. The Tholians can tune the phasers to fire through web. And the ship itself can have web generators installed to allow it to lay and reinforce web. But unless the hull is at least partly Tholian-built, it cannot move freely through web.

So what's happening with those freighters that allow them to move through web? I don't think it's ever been explicitly stated, but my own personal theory is that someone else (probably the Federation) builds most of the hull and then turns it over to the Tholians for "finishing". The Tholians put the final touches on the freighter, including Tholian weapon systems and life support, and enough of the hull to provide "web pass" capability.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, May 30, 2023 - 09:20 am: Edit

Shoot. I still haven't gotten around to discussing minesweeping against buzzsaws. I don't want to go into detail right now because I want to have access to my rules when I write the longer response, so I'll be able to confirm the correct rules citations. But the quick response is as follows.

As I tried to show above, power requirements to maintain 60 hexes of buzzsaw is a major limitation. Generally, you will still need significant strength in ships supporting a buzzsaw around any base smaller than a star base. (Either that, or go with fewer than 60 hexes in the buzzsaw, which will be a much weaker defense.) But if you have those ships, why not go with a wedding cake in any case?

The situation improves somewhat once Tholians recieve X-tech battle stations. But by that time, the Klingons will also have X-ships. They actually receive them slightly before the Tholian do. This enables the Klingon forces to attack that buzzsaw with an X-squadron in which every ship has minesweeping capabilities, as well as massive anti-ship (or anti-base) firepower.

So by the time the buzzsaw becomes practical from a power-required perspective, the Klingons can hit the buzzsaw with massive minesweeping capability. But even those Klingon X-ships can't move through the outer rings of a wedding cake if it has been brought up to full strength. They will still be stuck there for several turns, targets for the base's phaser-4s.

Sending a Klingon X-squadron to kill a buzzsaw-protected base will certainly be expensive for the Klingons. But I submit that losing some X-ships but killing the base is, in the long run, less expensive than losing standard-tech ships and failing to kill the base. An inexpensive kill against a prepared Tholian base defense just isn't a realistic option... except maybe for the Andromedans.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Wednesday, May 31, 2023 - 07:36 am: Edit

IMHO the freighters are built at a different ship factory than the PC Hull one.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Wednesday, May 31, 2023 - 09:36 am: Edit

Mike,

Perhaps. But even if building those freighters doesn't directly reduce the number of PC hulls, the freighters still require resources that then cannot be used for other purposes. Those freighters still require engines, and fuel. Now, the freighter engines are not warship engines and could not be directly used in that role. But at some level they would use some of the same components, or at least the raw materials used to build those components, which are then used to build the engines themselves. Or what about APRs? Web tenders use enormous numbers of APRs, which require substantial raw materials, which are not then available for other purposes.

So maybe building more web tenders means the Tholians can build fewer destroyers. They still build the PC hulls, but can only deploy them as PCs and not DDs because the resources, including labor, necessary to produce the DDs are instead being used for web tenders. So although the number of PC hulls is the same, more web tenders means weaker mobile forces. A similar situation could apply with the cruisers. The Tholians might have the same total numbers of C-type hulls but building fewer web tenders might mean a higher percantage of those hulls are CCs rather than CAs.

Without knowing the details of these trade-offs at a much "grainier" level, we can't say how all this would shake out. But even if your supposition (plausible supposition, I might add) about freighters being in different facilites than PC hulls is correct; it still might be the case that a lot of web tenders, or other auxilliaries, weakens the mobile forces: the same number of "single-hull" ships but fewer DDs and more PCs, the same number of "two-hull" ships but fewer CCs and more CAs.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Thursday, June 01, 2023 - 07:40 am: Edit

I think there is a special thingy, that is part of the hull build, that allows (with the proper codes) web pass ability.

And the special thingy mustr be built into the hull itself...

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Friday, June 02, 2023 - 10:53 am: Edit

Alan, you're back! I hadn't checked for a while.

2 things. First, I have to give you significant intellectual respect points for integrity in your discussion with Mike.

Second, you need to review (M8.0) Minesweeping. For x-ships to act as minesweepers when attacking a buzzsaw, they're either going to be moving very slowly and using up a lot of drones, or they're going to be stopping a lot to preserve their drones and use phasers.

Even though I like trying to capture hulls with a buzzsaw, I hadn't considered that the captured hulls cannot pass through web after being converted to Tholian technology.

I'll post more later. I'm currently on the clock.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Saturday, June 03, 2023 - 01:17 pm: Edit

John, looking forward to further posts from you.

I still haven't gotten around to a more detailed description of how I think the Klingon minesweeping operations would go, but I did want to reply to your comment:

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Second, you need to review (M8.0) Minesweeping. For x-ships to act as minesweepers when attacking a buzzsaw, they're either going to be moving very slowly and using up a lot of drones, or they're going to be stopping a lot to preserve their drones and use phasers.

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By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Tuesday, June 06, 2023 - 12:40 pm: Edit

I'm working on a good post for you.

Responding to what you said above, when an X-ship has web hexes to the left and right, has a bunch of mines in front, and has a base with no fewer than 8 P-4s no more than 5 hexes away with no more than a -3 web penalty, I don't see how much usefulness the X-ship will receive from improved speed changes. That's 74 points of damage on average from the 6 P-4s that can bear in any one instant at the base's farthest firing opportunity to a target within a channel. I don't think you're going to be spending much time sweeping mines.

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Wednesday, June 07, 2023 - 06:53 pm: Edit

Alan, we did agree that a 2 strand buzzsaw is the best of the buzzsaw options. My comment about spinning a single strand buzzsaw instead of letting 1 strand of a 2 strand buzzsaw go unpowered comes as a response to your comments on May 9 and maybe more. The suggestion wasn’t to mean spin a single strand during combat, however.

Even though the Tholians do not know if a given base will be attacked next week or 10 years from now, they do know if the forces they have "right now" can support a buzzsaw or not and can use their ships to readjust their web patterns accordingly. That's the easy part. It's adjusting the minefield that is more complicated. Doubtless, the Tholians will periodically shift their mobile forces around either as a show of force responding to enemy changes or to keep the enemy guessing. Keeping your forces static allows for better planning on the part of the enemy.

Now you do have a point that the buzzsaw leans heavily on there being nastiness in the channels for unwelcome guests. I see that more as being part of the nature of the beast rather than a deficit.

The above is also true for web anchor bouy asteroids; it's the nature of the beast. As these asteroids are also for available for globular webs, and they can support a single ground base, for 34 BPV the Tholians can have an extra P-4s within a globular web which can expect to have several opportunities to fire before being fired at. Since the buzzsaw player is obligated to buy the asteroid, he'll just see the extra 14 BPV for the base itself. For the 3 ring player, 2 GBDPs and asteroids cost 68 BPV, or a bit more than a PC+, and save the hull. For the buzzsaw player, 4 GBDPs cost 56 BPV, or about he same as a PC, and also save a hull.

As for the placement of any ground bases, the 3 ring player will probably limit himself to 6 maximum and put them on the innermost asteroids. If he puts them on the outermost asteroids, the attacker can destroy the asteroids from afar, destroying the ground bases in the process and minimizing his return damage. If he puts any in the middle ring, he gives the attacker something to shoot at while in the web, and if the attacker positions his ships well, he can shoot at 2 separate ground bases from a single spot in the web (while he lasts). The inner ring bases will have several shots before they can be shot at.

Positioning ground bases within a buzzsaw is a bit more generous. From the inside core, the first 4 asteroids are well protected by the web. The 5th asteroid is more vulnerable, but will likely be behind a bunch of mines making the attacking ships weaker before they can get in a shot at the ground base; they'll need to approach to range 2 before they can shoot due to the web blocking the line of fire. Even without bases on the 2 5th asteroids, a BS or BATS can have its P-4 firepower doubled by ground bases.

As for powering up the strands from WS-1, if the attacker concentrates his ships into only 1 strand, that strand gets the juice. If he splits his forces unevenly, the strand with the greater threat gets more reinforcement than the strand with the weaker force, and firepower goes more to the smaller force as it has a better chance of penetrating the web. If the forces are even, the tactical nuances will determine the Tholian reactions.

One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is the use of web tenders. These can adjust the core base down in the "year, forces, and core base" considerations. A JWT can make a buzzsaw around a base station viable.

Another thing not mentioned is the use of mine laying freighters. Although expensive, they can reinforce the mine traps in a buzzsaw better than around a wedding cake as we know exactly which paths the attacker must choose if he wants to avoib being stuck in the web. The use of mine laying freighters is expensive, however, but knowing which hexes the attacker must traverse makes the investment more efficient.

As I mentioned before, I'm more of an F&E player, and I keep the big picture in mind. In F&E, bases will often require more than one round of combat to destroy, especially if defended. Imagine a Tholian base with 10 defending ships against 30-40 attacking ships, or more for larger bases. This would require multiple rounds of combat and battle forces limited to being within the command rating of a command ship. This would be a mini-campaign (which I'm currently writing when I have time) in which rounds of combat occur so rapidly one after the other that shields may not be able to be fully restored before combat resumes.

During the first round or so against a wedding cake, the attacker isn't going to try to destroy the base outright, but rather try to destroy one or more defending ships to the point in which the outer web fails using (G10.43). After the 7 turns, the outer web would have to be respun and reinforced from 0 ASP. Even if the Tholians do re-spin the outer ring, it will be so weak that the attacker will have no trouble knocking it down again. If the Tholians do not re-spin the outer web layer, they still have to risk their ships to reinforce the middle layer. If the attacker has enough ships left over, the middle web layer will fall like the outer layer did. Then the attacker can take a battle force and dive into the inner web layer and have a close range knife fight with the base.

Now take the same 30-40 or more attacking ships and the 10 defending ships of a buzzsaw. Even if all 10 Tholian ships are power weak PCs (a BS plus 2 command points means all 10 ships can be in the battle force) that means there are 125 energy points available for phasers and web reinforcement without considering the base's contribution (I've deliberately left the type of base vague). If 40 energy points go to the PCs' P-1s, there are 85 energy points left for the webs. That's 1.42 ASP, 2.125 ASP, or 2.83 ASP per turn before web deterioration and not counting the contribution of the base. If the attacker concentrates his ships on a single web strand, double those numbers and put all energy into that strand. (I know ASP numbers are integers. I included the decimals because the fractions are kept.) Any attacker will have to bring his A team for that first assault against a buzzsaw because after the first try, those web strands will be maximized. Against a wedding cake, the word is attrition. The attacker will bring lots of smaller, cheaper ships to the battle and try to outlast the Tholians.

In the two examples above, not only did I leave the base type vague, I left the weapons status vague as well. At WS-3, enough attacking ships can wear down a wedding cake as long as they can keep the pressure on and pop a defending ship once in a while. At WS-3, a buzzsaw with mines is nearly unassailable due largely to the fact that the ships defending the buzzsaw do not need to risk being shot at until and unless the attacker's ships reach the core.

If the buzzsaw defense has a size class 3 ship or larger, that ship can tractor rotate the attacker's crippled ships, one at a time, into the web so they can be systematically disarmed and captured. I like the jumbo web tender for that reason. It's SC-3, has almost as much energy as a BB at 74 units, can win a tractor auction while putting up a shield brick, and can maintain a buzzsaw alone in any year Y121+.

Speaking of rotation, the direction of the base rotation matters with a buzzsaw. Since the webs will be either clockwise or CCW, I think the base should counter rotate in order to get all weapons into firing arcs as often as possible.

As for Minesweeping, there would be more sweeping done near the wedding cake than the buzzsaw. Initially the minesweeper's biggest contribution will being (M7.2) Detecting Individual Mines, so the attacking ships can know which hexes to avoid.

For a buzzsaw, mines will more likely be detected by (M7.34) Automatic Detection as mines will likely be densely distributed between the web strands.

If starting from WS-0, first off the Tholians will likely get clobbered. A buzzsaw won't be powered enough to slow the attackers much, and neither will the outer layers of globular webs. (G10.833) has web strengths maintained at WS-0 conditions between scenarios by generator bouys, so the abstraction and disconnect you mentioned on May, 29 doesn't exist.

There are some items I chose not to address because they require rulings. These include if a wedding cake describes 3 globular rings regardless of the web strengths, and if the "Stadium Defense" with the outer web layer strongest is legal (credit to Douglas Saldana for the name). Basically rulings on interpretations within (G10.83).

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Wednesday, June 07, 2023 - 09:15 pm: Edit

John,

Uhh... just what did you mean by

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One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is the use of web tenders.

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One option the Tholians would have for supporting a buzzsaw would be to include a web tender as part of the base defense force. The most basic version of the web tender has a YIS of Y150. It could sit in the same hex as the base and help maintain the buzzsaw, while being safe from attack until such time as the attackers reached a position to fire on the base itself.

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By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Wednesday, June 07, 2023 - 11:53 pm: Edit

Mike Grafton, that special thingy being part of the hull idea makes sense. Web technology is a "highly developed tractor beam system". Negative tractor is a function of the hull. It makes sense that the thingy is part of the hull.

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Wednesday, June 07, 2023 - 11:56 pm: Edit

Alan, please share your tactical ideas for attacking and defending both types of web patterns. You can describe the actions by numbering the asteroids from the core.

Also, I did miss the reference to web tenders. I'm usually speed reading these posts in cracks of time while I'm working.

By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Thursday, June 08, 2023 - 07:45 am: Edit

Note that with a 2 strand Buzzsaw that the attacker isn't choosing which strand to attack; they are choosing which PATH between strands to traverse

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Thursday, June 08, 2023 - 08:40 am: Edit

Mike, if the strands are weak enough, they may try to blast through a strand to avoid mines in the channel.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Friday, June 09, 2023 - 01:01 pm: Edit

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... please share your tactical ideas for attacking and defending both types of web patterns. You can describe the actions by numbering the asteroids from the core.

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By Mike Grafton (Mike_Grafton) on Saturday, June 10, 2023 - 10:57 am: Edit

A wedding cake with no ships can be taken by a cruiser squadron alone.

Because the station can't power any but the innermost shell

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Saturday, June 10, 2023 - 02:08 pm: Edit

Mike,

Well, yeah. And a buzzsaw without mines can also be taken by that cruiser squadon. That's why my previous post stressed

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... given comparable resources available and comparable warning time...

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By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Saturday, June 10, 2023 - 04:01 pm: Edit

I have searched the database trying to find a BUZZ SAW. So how is one made?

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Saturday, June 10, 2023 - 06:58 pm: Edit

Geez... I must be on drugs...

A full two-strand (30 hexes each) buzzsaw would actually require 450 points just for the asteroids! So add... let's call it... a 4^th PC and a DD to the Tholian defenses!

Vandar,

A buzzsaw is a Tholian defense in which a series of anchored linear webs in a spiral pattern surround the base. To attack the base, the enemy force has to travel down the spiral path between the arms. That path will be heavily mined. the anchor points for the web spirals cannot be ships. They must be stationary units like asteroids or web anchor buoys. The buoys are cheaper but a buzz saw based on them is easily beaten as the attacker just blasts the anchor buoys, causing the web strands anchored to them to collapse. The asteroid-based buzzsaw is a much tougher target. Blasting the asteroid requires far more time/firepower; but more importantly, shattering the asteroid turns it into a "bag of rocks" which is still held together by the web itself, and still serves as a viable anchor.

I've got a drawing of a buzzsaw, labeled to show what I regard as the principle points of attack. I'm hoping someone can provide a link so I can post it and explain how I think the attempt to take down a buzzsaw will actually work.

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Saturday, June 10, 2023 - 09:59 pm: Edit

Alan, there's nothing stopping you from adding asteroids to the wedding cake. Your argument is more accurate to say the wedding cake is cheaper, not stronger. You can also add mine packages to a wedding cake.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Saturday, June 10, 2023 - 10:53 pm: Edit

John,

I can, but I don't have to. It's my option, depending on how I want to conduct the defense. With a buzzsaw, I don't have that option. I have to spend points (a lot of points) on asteroids and mines. This gets back to my earlier point about

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... given comparable resources available and comparable warning time...

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By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Sunday, June 11, 2023 - 12:39 pm: Edit

I think the whole issue of "comparable resources" in the context of buzzsaw versus wedding cake is more interesting from a strategic perspective, but also harded to "nail down", because we don't know asprecisely what the "trade-offs" are. For a battle fought under the (S.8) Patrol Scenario rules, with a defined BPV, we know the trade-offs exactly. For any given buzzsaw configuration, I know exactly how many asteroids I will use, plus how many BPV I will be spending for the web itself. I can then compare that to the cost of a wedding cake defense and calculate what the difference would mean in terms of how many ships, fighters, PFs, mines, whatever I wish to buy.

But the trade-offs at the strategic level are much harder to compute, though we know that some trade-offs must exist. I address some of these issues in my exchanges with Mike Grafton from 30 and 31 May; especially my reply on 9:36 AM from 31 May. And the same issue of trade-offs would also have an impact on mine production. It's very unlikely that the same production facility that produces Tholian mines also produces Tholian hulls. But those mines still require components. They require sensors and other electronics, power systems, weapons. The materiel requirements for a mine are miniscule compared to those of a warship. But if the buzzsaw is my "go to" defense, I will need lots of mines; hundreds and hundreds of them. And the aggregate resource cost may still be considerable, even if harder to calculate exactly.

So instead I prefer to use wedding cakes, and produce moderate numbers of mines for the most critical locations. I will use the resources saved to maximize (to the extent the Tholian economy permits) my mobile forces. This may not mean more hulls, but maybe it will mean better ones. That cruiser, which would have been a CA if I tried to build web tenders and produce huge numbers of mines to support a buzzsaw-based defense, instead gets built as a CC.

One of the advantages of stronger mobile forces, versus massive minefields, is that mobile forces can be deployed elsewhre to deal with a changing situation. Suppose the Klingons have just suffered a major defeat against the Hydrans and have to rush numerous ships to that front to deal with the very real Hydran drive to retake Hydrax, but that the Romulans are unusually aggressive. With the reduced Klingon threat, I can redeploy some of my ships/fighters/PFs to hold off the Romulans. But minefields around BATS on the Klingon front? They ain't helping against the Roms.

More later.