Ed,
Correct.
I was unaware of the R12 update.

It will be corrected for the 2nd round !

Thanks.

Cheers
Frank

By Frank Lemay (Princeton) on Wednesday, March 05, 2025 - 11:46 am: Edit

Ed,
DH tells me you are interested in replaying the battle for JFF.

As luck has it, I am free for the next 2 weeks [and then some time afterwards !] and can play the Lyrans vs you if you wish ?

Let me know.

Cheers
Frank

By David Hanson (Glimaash) on Wednesday, March 05, 2025 - 12:24 pm: Edit

Technically, no internals had been scored. The damage was a theoretical if they turn had been played to conclusion. In terms of play, the Federation sent a message in 6.10 or 11 saying they were leaving and the Lyrans let them go. A six Federation shuttles (I think all unmanned though 2 could have been manned, none were in position to be recovered for a few turns with his units moving away from the shuttles. The Federation MRS was destroyed. This may be the only true personnel lose. Since we did not play it out, I think this is the proper way to score it is no internals, all ships disengage, 6 shuttles and 1 MRS lost for the federation (2 crewman reported as MIA). No damage to the Lyrans.

Even playing to the end of this turn, the CLC was not going to be damaged to the point of being crippled. He would have been moderately damaged with 45ish internals. With a full distribution of hits (36+) he would likely lose 2 photons and 1/2 his power.

This Lyran had maneuvered to an advantageous position (the federation force was split) and the Federation had mostly shot their bolt with nothing getting through. The probable damage would have given the Federation a steep climb to get back into it and Tournament time constraints would ultimately not allow this.

By David Hanson (Glimaash) on Wednesday, March 05, 2025 - 12:58 pm: Edit

Post Mortem. The Federation had gambled that the Lyrans were going to dive in on them. He overloaded his photons and deployed the readied SP from his ships. The Lyrans opted to saber dance which left the Federation wrong footed to start.

Three turns of saber dancing allowed the Lyrans to damage a different shield on all three Federation shooters. This ultimately lead to them having to break up their formation at the point of contact. A few T-bombs took care of the SP drones. This, coupled with bad rolls left to an ineffective alpha strike. The Lyran, with weapons hot, move to go to Close Quarter Combat. The BC had 3 ESG ready and the HCM still had 2 ESG. The Scout used 1 ESG to eliminate the T5 drones, while the BC used 1 ESG to eliminate the T6 drones. I likely would have need 1 or 2 to clear any mines dumped to hamper my chase.

The Lyran won the battle of battlefield shaping and positioning. The Federation was running low on drones and down to the last of his ECM drones; had turned away but was at R6 to the Lyrans; with the Lyrans increasing speed to give chase and the Feds schedule to drop theirs.

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Wednesday, March 05, 2025 - 02:15 pm: Edit

---

Quote:

The Lyran won the battle of battlefield shaping and positioning.

---

By Eddie E Crutchfield (Librarian101) on Wednesday, March 05, 2025 - 03:05 pm: Edit

Sometimes it is easy to Sabre Dance when you have the extra power. How well would the HCW Sabre dance moving 4 or 5 slower and trying to arm weapons. Interesting to note that on the end of turn 2 we were 22 apart and on the end of turn 3 14, how does the extra power impact the HCW, the BC is probably the out standing ship of its class. Can go where it wants when it wants with power to spare. I made 2 serious mistakes, first used the SPs too soon, did not really take into consideration the full size of the map we were on, and the second was on I think it was turn 3 firing phasers at the scout, a waste of power, that slowed the chase across the board. It is a shame that the overpower of the HCW does put an asterisk on it. Did it save the Lyrans from being caught earlier, or did it save the Lyrans when the extra 4 power came into play preventing the CLC from firing? And yes I would play it again in the future after I have practiced more on SFBOL.

By Frank Lemay (Princeton) on Wednesday, March 05, 2025 - 03:14 pm: Edit

Ed,
Since the Lyran win is tainted, I am quite ok to concede the battle to your Feds !!

I am about to get busy in a week or 2 with the next turn in our campaign so please accept my offer and play in the next round.
It will give you more practice with the client and fleet etc.

Let me know please.

Cheers
Frank

By Eddie E Crutchfield (Librarian101) on Wednesday, March 05, 2025 - 04:52 pm: Edit

Frank neither of use knew it was, we discovered it by accident, Dave played an excellent game and won, thats all that counts. It was a great learning experience for me. he deserves to play in your place if you cant. I would like to play some pickup games for a while with some of the other ships. Its been a while since I played, about 8 or 9. I have to do some practice at x-wing and battletech right now since I will be going to Adepticon at the end of the month. Plus I have to work at getting my efficiency down to a reasonible level, 4 hours for a turn is not what I consider an effective time, and that did not include EA

By Justin Royter (Metaldog) on Wednesday, March 05, 2025 - 07:42 pm: Edit

my opponent's work has taken over his life and he can no longer participate, I need a new opponent OR someone to take his place in the current battle.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Wednesday, March 05, 2025 - 07:46 pm: Edit

1.1 bakija (GRN) vs madman (KLI)

T8 done.

At start of T8, the GRN are in the SW corner of the map still, facing B; BDS is 8 hexes behind the other two ships. GRN have an MRS on the map.

C7 and D6D are about 20 hexes to the NE of the GRN, facing B also. The E4s are 30+ hexes away from the GRN ships.

T8: GRN cruisers move 17 for a few impulses, and then 24 all turn (23 moves). BDS is 10/20/19/20 for 18 moves. C7 is 20 all turn. D6D is 23 all turn. One of the mostly crippled E4s move 8/15 for the turn, the other moves 21 all turn.

On impulse 1, the CCH lands it's R1 A-MRS. One of the E4s lands a shuttle it is in a hex with as they are both speed 8. Ships move NE in direction B a lot. Late in the turn, the Klingon cruisers turn North and start moving A. The GRN just move in dir B all turn, slipping North a few times.

At the end of the turn. the GRN cruisers are pretty much in the middle of the map, South of the center some hexes, facing B. The BDS is about a dozen hexes directly SW of them. The D6D is 18 hexes North of the GRN cruisers facing A; the C7 is 17 hexes NE facing A; one E4 is 13 hexes North, facing D; the other E4 is 24 hexes NE, facing B.

In the repair phase, the GRN HD fixes a AWR from a warp engine with CDR; the D6D fixes a drone rack with CDR; an E4 fixes a warp box after 5 turns of CDR; the C7 fixes a shield and 3xP1s with successful EDR rolls (missing a 4th P1).

It turns out that EDR is kind of absurd on a giant map with sizable ships. The C7 crossed off 2x DamCon 4 boxes (and still has a 6 and 4 left), and repaired 2xWarp, 1xDisruptor, and 3xP1 (i.e. pretty much all the damage that the GRN BD got basically destroyed to inflict) over 2 turns of just running away. This cost the C7 12 power a turn over 2 turns, but in a situation where it was basically at zero risk of losing anything at all in exchange. If the Klingons are so inclined, they can basically do the exact same thing on T9 (as they have more than 30 hexes before they get close to the other map edge), and if they GRN move speed 30 all turn on T9, they *still* won't get inside R8 by the end of the turn.

This turn also took about an hour, but most of that was EA and record keeping. The actual turn took, like, 20 minutes.

By Dana Madsen (Madman) on Wednesday, March 05, 2025 - 08:56 pm: Edit

Yeah, I'd agree, EDR should be considered in the rules along with map size. On the other hand it's also a bit unique here. We were in the exact corner of the map when I turned to run so I had a long way to go. The gorn was doing speed 4 so was limited the first turn in how fast he can chase me which gave me a little flexibility in my speed. Then the C7 was hurt enough to want to do it without being hurt too much. If it was down 3 to 5 more power, I couldn't sustain speed to keep out of range and do everything I'm doing. The D6D couldn't afford EDR this turn or the Gorn CCH/HDD would have ended the turn about range 10 and I would have been speed limited to 24 or so. There could be a lot of games where this never applies, but I've done ok with it.

On the turn, I think we're both doing EA within the 20 min. Peter definitely is, I'm often taking a little longer. On some of these turns, writing down and recording rack reloads and then reloading drones into racks and SP from storage is taking me another 10 min. Oh, and Peter waited while I spent 5 min answering my kids grade 10 math problem.

By Geoffrey Clark (Spartan) on Thursday, March 06, 2025 - 04:30 am: Edit

Hey Peter, Dana,

Its great to see your battle progress, since you two are very experienced players, it gives a good sense of what can be expected.

Yes, I hear you on EDR. Frankly, it is a hidden strength of the BCH class ships (we saw the C7 be more effective than the D6D). And, it is also clearly related to map size. I was expecting this might happen, when I read those CL15 rules, saw the map and EDR on the permitted rules list.

This is our first try for this tournament on SFBOL (at least that I'm aware of), so I think we'll try to find a better balance, and one that reduces the time needed, but still gives some freedom in tactics. Once we're done, we'll take a kind of vote, with those that played having a much bigger weight, while those that just observed getting to at least cast a vote.

Hey Justin,

Regarding a replacement player, I've posted on the Facebook SFB group:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/STARFLEETBATTLES

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Thursday, March 06, 2025 - 07:44 am: Edit

>>Yes, I hear you on EDR. Frankly, it is a hidden strength of the BCH class ships (we saw the C7 be more effective than the D6D). And, it is also clearly related to map size. I was expecting this might happen, when I read those CL15 rules, saw the map and EDR on the permitted rules list. >>

Like, it didn't even occur to me that we were using EDR rules (as, well, I kind of forgot they even existed as I haven't played a game with EDR since, like, 1987...) until Dana mentioned them once he started running away, and then I went and looked up that we were, in fact, using them.

Like, this is a moderately corner case situation--giant map, I had to slow down in one corner of the map that I was pushed into by a billion drones (and couldn't avoid slowing down too much by virtue of a cloak to deal with the drones), I have nothing but plasma to shoot at my opponent (an ISC would have PPDs to punish fleeing opponents), my opponent can run basically forever, and they are Klingons who can just forgo powering weapons to pay for EDR without losing anything. If, say, I were using Kzinti, Lyrans, Hydrans, or Feds, if the Klingons ran away for 3 turns while repairing, I'd at the very least be able to fire multiple volleys of guns at range at the fleeing ships, which would be *something*, and they'd need to power EW or something to avoid getting mangled, reducing their ability to use EDR.

By Justin Royter (Metaldog) on Thursday, March 06, 2025 - 12:13 pm: Edit

EDR is not a problem and for me at least all the complaining about rules and the frequency of those complaints has really killed my desire to participate.

EDR is not the issue, allowing your opponent to use EDR is the issue. Not going to respond to the frequent fliers here, really should go make your own tournament that is just perfect for YOU IMHO.

EDR is a great rule and a non-issue.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Thursday, March 06, 2025 - 12:54 pm: Edit

>>EDR is not a problem and for me at least all the complaining about rules and the frequency of those complaints has really killed my desire to participate.>>

Great for you. You seeming personally offended by people providing the judge the feedback that he is specifically asking for has also really killed my desire for you to participate.

>>EDR is not the issue, allowing your opponent to use EDR is the issue. Not going to respond to the frequent fliers here, really should go make your own tournament that is just perfect for YOU IMHO. >>

Geoff is specifically asking for input to the rules set. I am providing him the input that he is asking for, as a result of actually playing the game and seeing what happens.

>>EDR is a great rule and a non-issue.>>

I'm glad you feel that way. I really wish you would not feel personally attacked by people providing the judge the input he is specifically asking us to provide. How has EDR impacted the game you are currently playing? No wait. Don't answer that. I know the answer. It hasn't.

By Frank Lemay (Princeton) on Thursday, March 06, 2025 - 02:37 pm: Edit

Justin,
I do not see any complaining of any kind going on.

I do see a lot of input, insights, observations and comments as requested by our Judge Geof.

In our campaign, we use EDR but it is trickier as our map is only 60x60 with a death wall and that is fun doing EDR while under fire if you want to live dangerously !! [insert smiling emojii]

Cheers
Frank

By Jack Taylor (Jtaylor) on Thursday, March 06, 2025 - 04:20 pm: Edit

Deleted by me

By David Hanson (Glimaash) on Thursday, March 06, 2025 - 08:34 pm: Edit

EDR has a lot of constraints.
1) You have to mark of a damcon so you are limited to the total number and risk a drop in damcon level as you usually only have 2 top boxes.
2) You need power and labs. Both of these are often in short supply on a badly damaged ship.
3) Then you have to roll the die and hope it gets repaired.
4) You are prevented from using CDR that turn, which is a much more reliable, though slower method of repair.

EDR are regularly available in campaign games I have participated in, though, it is used pretty infrequently because of the restraints. I think its also a bit of a balance for ships with bvp tied up in labs, which are of limited use except for drone identification.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Friday, March 07, 2025 - 01:16 pm: Edit

EDR certainly has a lot of constraints. But I think the main issue here is trying to make a set of rules that are manageable for playing in a reasonable amount of time. I don't think that EDR is a problem in and of itself in any way. But I suspect that having some extra limits on it probably is a good idea, in the name of keeping these games manageable.

Given the current map size, it is not at all impossible for there to be a situation where someone has to slow down/stop (see--I'm caught in a map corner and someone just launched 2 sabot enveloped R's), allowing their opponent to turn off and run for upwards of 3 turns towards the other side of the map (as, well, the map is that big). Someone doing 3 turns of EDR is likely to fix, what, like, 9 important boxes (SC3 BCH's generally have a 6 and then multiple 4's to burn), which, well, is close to just resetting the game back to where it was 4 turns earlier (or whatever).

Some empires are certainly better at doing EDR than others--disruptor/drone ships can easily just not put energy into guns for a few turns while running away; Everyone else likely is putting themselves in hole by not arming weapons for a lot of EDR (as, well, eventually they'll need the weapons that they aren't arming, where the disruptor/drone ships reload drone racks for zero energy and they don't need to arm disruptors till the turns that they want to fire them).

Some empires are better at punishing folks for running away and spending energy on EDR--again, disruptor ships can just keep shooting the fleeing opponents; Hydrans can Hellbore through down shields as they run; Feds can fire prox photons through weak rear shields.

Gorns and Romulans are likely, very susceptible to their opponents running away on a giant map to do EDR, as plasma is difficult to employ on a fleeing opponent on a giant map.

I don't remotely think that EDR should be done away with. But I think that it isn't outside of the realm of possibility to, in the name of keeping games manageable, placing a limit on EDR (much like there is a limit on heavy drones and SC2 ships and fighters for the same reason here) so that it is harder to just basically reset the game to an earlier state in the middle of a game when the goal here is to have a system that is manageable to play in a reasonable amount of time (see: Dana and I have been playing this game for more than 15 hours so far, the game seems not particularly near a decisive end, and we are both fast players who tend not to dilly dally and have been playing consistently for a few weeks now).

Maybe "ships are allowed to cross off one DamCon box per game to use for EDR" or something. Which very likely is about average use of EDR anyway. But also avoids situations where someone runs across the map for 3 turns and fixes 10 weapon and power boxes.

By Frank Lemay (Princeton) on Friday, March 07, 2025 - 02:30 pm: Edit

A smaller map will make the use of EDR a bit more dicey.
Or keep combatting empires neighbourly, no plasma vs disruptors etc.
This would require us to build 2 fleets.

I think trying these 2 options will not require restricting the use of EDR.

Cheers
Frank

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Friday, March 07, 2025 - 04:58 pm: Edit

EDR should is just one more consideration when building a fleet. A BCH is great at EDR, but that fleet of 5*DD (Federation) realistically won't get much use out of EDR, as their dam con maxes out at 2.

From my point of view, this is a regular SFB, and so should not feel like tournament play.

The fleets will not be equal - not like tourney ships are balanced. Some fleet builds will be inherently superior to others.

I don't have a problem with that, not for this kind of tournament. To me, the process of building the squadron is part of the tournament itself. Kind of like that wonderful show "Battle Bots" (that show is a real blast - but a major part of the tournament is the months-long engineering process before the bots fight).

IMO I wouldn't whittle down specific rules in the full game to balance this tournament without a major compelling reason. That way lies madness, as there are just too many variables in a squad built using the full rules with the full game.

I don't advocate a "Wild West" approach either. There have to be some boundaries. But those boundaries should focus on things like map size, year in service, excluding X-tech ships, etc., and not so much on nitpicking at specific rules.

Given that I'm not a tournament participant at the moment, I suppose my opinion isn't worth much, in a sense. But I've played regular SFB for a loooooong time, so I have a sense for how the full rule games realistically get played out.

I think the biggest problem, really, is map size. That's a tricky decision. Too small, and the plasma ships with sabot may have an advantage. Too large, and the DF ships may have an advantage.

However, it seems the Gorn/Klingon battle is going OK. The Gorns seem ahead, despite the large map size. (@Peter or Dana, please disabuse me of this notion if it is not correct).

Anyway, all good discussions here. It's fun to kibbitz about the game (even if I don't have time to play it ATM).

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Friday, March 07, 2025 - 05:12 pm: Edit

Ted wrote:
>>I think the biggest problem, really, is map size. That's a tricky decision. Too small, and the plasma ships with sabot may have an advantage. Too large, and the DF ships may have an advantage.>>

Yeah, I think the size of the map is the biggest issue, one way or the other. Suffice to say, if I were to play this format again, I definitely would not take Gorn or Romulan. ISC, maybe (leaning heavily into maximum PPDs).

>>However, it seems the Gorn/Klingon battle is going OK. The Gorns seem ahead, despite the large map size. (@Peter or Dana, please disabuse me of this notion if it is not correct).>>

The Gorn are doing ok, primarily by virtue of Dana deciding early that he didn't want to play a 20 turn game, so he aggressively launched drones, pushed the Gorn, ran into plasma to gain position, and so the plasma hit things. The Gorn then slowed down to speed 4 to avoid being killed by all the drones, which let the Klingons run away for 2 (or more turns), and the C7 used EDR to repair a lot of significant damage it took, while all the Klingon ships reloaded racks and SPs and drogues, and now we are starting a fight phase again (possibly), with the Klingons back in fighting shape. So we shall see what happens. But I don't know that the Gorn are necessarily in the driver's seat or anything at this point.

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Friday, March 07, 2025 - 08:44 pm: Edit

On map size, something to keep in mind is that SFBOL supports custom map sizes. Instead of 2 regular SFB maps of 42x30, it's easy to have a 42x42 map, for example, or a 50x50.

Prolly worth experimenting with in a future setting.

By Dana Madsen (Madman) on Saturday, March 08, 2025 - 11:22 am: Edit

Peter and I got another turn in early this morning (he waited patiently after I slept in a little). T9 is done in 1 hr 15 min.

The Gorn CCH/HDD are maintaining formation, started at speed 24, later slowed to 17. BDS was a dozen hexes behind moving a couple hexes slower. Gorns are chasing Klingon ships generally NE, he turns N mid turn and launches 2 x S at C7 as it crosses his bow, then turns NE again late. BDS is about 18 hexes behind his other ships #4 shield so it's now outside of lending range. Gorn has no repairs.

Klingon 4 ships started generally 15 to 20 hexes N/NE of Gorns, but all moving different directions and speeds, but generally 20+. Close E4 dodges inside 8, turns off when torps are launched, turns back in, speeds up to 30 and ends up closing to range 3 on the BDS which tried to maneuver to the E4's weak #4 but BDS was faster and didn't let it happen. Second E4 meant to swing around in 6-8 range band but I took my eye of the ball and ended up at 4, could have maintained 5 with a slip but couldn't stay at 6. Gorns rolled 6 ph-1 at +1 shift and got great rolls for 23 damage. 13 points in which leaves the E4 a wreck. It has 3 wp, 1 imp, 1 tran, 2 control left. So it can get speed 9 and head towards a board edge, but it may not make it.

C7 crossed the #1 of the gorn ships and turned off N with 2 torps chasing it, C7 sped up to 27 later, could have run torps to 21 hexes and phasered them but decided to take them after 16 impulses for 15 each on a back shield and turn SW to get to gorns left side. Fired 7 ph-3 into torps taking 7 off a pseudo and 5 off a real, so 10 pts shield damage. Ends turn 12 hexes from CCH/HDD almost on #5 shield spine, heading SW. C7 fixes 3 batteries with CDR and a 2 pts front shield.

D6D lands a shuttle early(maybe another SP starting) starting slow and speeding up. Turns NE turns N, turns NW ends turn 9 hexes from CCH/HDD off their #6 shield 11 hexes behind C7. D6D fixes ph-2 (last CDR) and 2 shields on #6.

By David Hanson (Glimaash) on Saturday, March 08, 2025 - 11:31 am: Edit

Personally, I like the bigger map and am ok with the 84x60 map. I like that there is space to manuver so you can use a variety of tactics which are not options of a fixed small map. I do think that the side should start about 35 hexes from each other so the shooting can get starting in turn one. WS III already allow for a lot of prebattle things to occur.

I have played a lot on a 60x60 map. This is a good size but still somewhat restrictive once someone controls the center (In our campaign, one player usually attacking a system with the defender starting in the middle, which is a huge advantage). For a tournament play, 60x60 would likely be a good alternate size. You can dance a little bit but while run out a space pretty quickly.

Smaller maps will start to heavily favor the empire with high crunch power.