Frank, I just looked at the rebuilt HCW, the warp were removed, but it seems that the number of batteries were also changed incorrectly without the refit it should be 3 not 2, and with the refit it should be 4 not 3. The base ship is still incorrect.

By Frank Lemay (Princeton) on Tuesday, March 25, 2025 - 02:37 pm: Edit

Ed,
You are correct.
I will let the powers that be be aware of this.

Good catch and thanks !

Cheers
Frank

By Eddie E Crutchfield (Librarian101) on Tuesday, March 25, 2025 - 08:08 pm: Edit

Ok solutions for what is seen as a drone vs plasma issue???
1. map size, 40 years ago the group I played with decided for some scenarios we needed a larger map, so we tried a 60X42. the furthest you started was 73 hexes apart. It worked fine for almost everything we did, and we did a lot.
2. if that was not enough, terrain. An object in the center of the double maps, for fleets planet, moon, whatever or what was popular was to put a standard asteroid covering the bottom of one map and the top of the adjoining, it penalized almost everything.
3 start date, used 178/178. Drone speeds and types are limited by rule. to include ships and other items use a proto type rule ships, allow 1 or 2, or how ever many you want for the period after 178/179, again as a prototype allow a percent of the BPV for any refits allowed from 178/179 on Sabot, XP or any that I cant remember.
4. break the rule for escorts.
5. Any of the above are possible, if necessary for our own enjoyment and what we think is balanced maybe change % to meet our needs.

By Geoffrey Clark (Spartan) on Tuesday, March 25, 2025 - 11:04 pm: Edit

Hey Frank, just reposting the Round1 results and Round2 matchups.

Game	Race	Player A	Race	Player B	VP, Player A	VP, Player B	Ratio
1.1	KLI	Madman	GRN	Bakija	275.25	259.5	106%
1.2	FED	librarian101	LYR	Mightiest Mouse	ended by	agreement	n/a
1.3	FED	MetalDog	ROM	Princeton	446.25	70	638%
1.4	SEL	Andromedan	FED	orgyockbo	323	218	148%
2.1	KLI	Madman	FED	librarian101
2.2	FED	MetalDog	SEL	Andromedan
3.1		Winner 2.1		Winner 2.2

By Dana Madsen (Madman) on Tuesday, March 25, 2025 - 11:21 pm: Edit

I took a few days off and lots of comment on my game with Peter, I'm responding to a lot of previous comments here.

Thank you for saying I played very well Peter, but I know I made some mistakes during the game. I did intend to put the E4's in harms way and draw some fire, but I got a little sloppy with it as well. I also got a little sloppy with the D6D when you caught it. EOT 9 I think, we were short of time and I didn't launch any drones. I really needed to have launched that turn and put some drones on the board, it probably would have saved the D6D some damage. I only had one decoy drogue which you had to watch for, but it didn't really come into play until the last turn.

The map size is workable, but it is a little big. If it doesn't change, I'm ok, but I'd be ok if it got a little smaller ass well. Or had a terrain feature or two added.

I've never played a fleet this size with fast drones before, most fleet games for me have been Y172 to 177ish. They don't stop coming. I used a lot of I-xF drones early, D6D probably should have launched more special drones, including swordfish earleir, it had a lot left when it got hurt. A general note, my first bunch of SP's had 2 drones removed to only launch 4. I figured no sense getting 6 drones t-bombed if 4 were likely to draw one anyways.

On sabot, I think it's definitely worth the cost, my chances of running S-torps out to 21+ hexes was reduced significantly, even getting to 15+ was tough, and I sometimes needed batts for speed change, so that's 7 pts of damage for getting a hit on a better range bracket, that's a pretty efficient conversion for 2 power. But I think there were also one or two launches where I wondered why you paid to upgrade the torp when it seemed likely to me I was going to eat it inside 10 whether it was sabot or regular.

The swordfish drones were great, the gorn didn't have enough labs to id all drones, so a number of times he shot a drone at range 1 just as it shot him, or he tractored a drone at range 1, then watched it go inert after shooting and he still needed to shoot the I-xF next to it. I believe the D6D pulled 16 I-xF drones from cargo before they were destroyed. Also, unless I have it wrong, I assumed all 200 spaces of drones in cargo were I-xF drones, I never considered it was 50% special drones.

Having a heavy in each rack is good, but having 3 heavies in each rack, not as much. I need the type I's mixed in so I can sustain launches across 4 or 5 turns.

My force is really designed around fighting with the C7 with D6D support. The E4's are just there to add a couple drones and provide drone control channels if a C7 needs to weasel.

On carronades for drone defense. Maybe once he's launched the 20pt torp at me, then using them next imp is ok. Giving up 6 torps for drone defense early would drop his launchable torps at me too much.

Ted, on the early damage, I did take a lot more early damage running through torps. But after T4 I think the CCH had used half of it's t-bombs and both pseudo S's, so it was running low on tricks. Once the C7 got a few turns to EDR, it was back to near fully functional, missing 1 disr and a few batts. Then it still had it's tricks.

On the death of the BDS. I almost started that turn with the C7 at spd 31 all turn driving for the BDS, but Peter would have certainly seen that and turned off. I counted from where we were I could have run it into a wall and killed it no matter what he did, but I would have left the D6D behind and it probably would have been caught by the CCH/HDD and killed. So I tried tricksy and plotted 20, and tried not to look dangerous but with a mid turn to 27. Pete I think was concentrating more on how his CCH/HDD could hurt the D6D then the BDS and I think the BDS was moving 30 so he thought he could turn across the C7's bow and get away with it. My speed change was well timed there, once that happened the only thing that could have saved him was if he had contingently allocated to HET as the BDS doesn't have enough power to HET from battery.

Peter and I also had a very friendly game. If something got missed on announcement and we realized at a later phase, we were pretty cool on letting the other go back, we also had some interface issues. Doing that makes things a little faster, otherwise, if we're sticking hard to the exact ia I may need to write or record more notes, and double check them frequently before saying Ready. Peter generally finished EA before me, probably 10 or 11 turns out of 13. Generally I think I completed EA in the time limit, but I often needed another few minutes after that to reload drone racks, write down notes on drones, etc.

By Geoffrey Clark (Spartan) on Tuesday, March 25, 2025 - 11:25 pm: Edit

Justin,

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I just want to state again, that I strongly disagree that this map size somehow favors any race or weapons.

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This is over-analysis of a single battle and the conclusions drawn are deeply flawed. There is no issue with this map size or with plasma vs drns.

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I am not trying to flame anyone, I am speaking purely from a logical, strategic, and tactical perspective.

Simply put IMHO this is much a do about nothing. The format is perfect ...

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... and I like the idea of 600 bpv with standard 20% COs. If you want to put a planet or a planet with a small moon in the center for some flavor and something to fight over, great! Other than that this is all just over analysis IMHO and should not be used as any sort of measuring stick for plasma vs drns.

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By Dana Madsen (Madman) on Tuesday, March 25, 2025 - 11:32 pm: Edit

Oh, I forgot, on splitting the gorn force to pin the opponent with different plasma launch angles, I assume this means they need to be 10 to 15 hexes apart to get different angles at a range 10 to 15 launch point. Maybe on another force that works, but I think against my force that wouldn't have worked out well. I probably would have picked a ship to kill, say the HDD, then launched every drone I could and SP available at the CCH to force it to weasel or turn away from the HDD. Then the C7 would have ran through any damage the HDD could have done, forced it against a wall and killed it. Unless by separating you only mean 4 to 6 hexes, in which case I don't think that's big enough separation for plasma to really be coming from different directions. His ships started in a stack of 3, so at the start he had max labs, max ph-3's and all his ph-1's available. When his BDD died he lost 25% of his drone defense. Then when the CCH/HDD had to turn different directions due to shield damage on opposite shields, that left them isolated.

By Geoffrey Clark (Spartan) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 04:53 am: Edit

Hey Dana,

Thanks for addressing this tactical question. First, I'm not sure that Peter's force was all that well designed to operate as two separate forces, separated by 20-24 hexes, let's say. Maybe Gorn BCH, CM and BDS+, or indeed go without a scout with just plain BDD. Peter's force can do this, CCH, BDS on one side, and HDD, BDD on the other, it is just not optimized for this approach.

But anyway, trying to get a force with at least two heavy plasma on both sides, and approach to like 12 hexes to the C7, on either side. I think having a single strong opposing unit makes this a bit easier. D6D and E4s ... are nowhere near as scary as the C7, so have to make the C7 the primary target of plasma.

As you said, launching a drone wave at one Gorn side, and then pursuing the other side, this gives the opening for the pursued Gorn side to get the head-on plasma launch, and then run like hell. Gorns want to do this at range ~12, well outside range 8. The speed plot needs to accommodate this approach (i.e. high in the second half, at least). If you eat it and keep coming, the Gorns waddle around to give you the other side plasma, and keep running. It does generate a lot of fluidity, with its own challenges and risks.

Anyway, I've clearly got a plan with plasma on a big map, so maybe I'll get a chance sometime to put it back into action, like the 1990's, but with sabot torps!

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 08:23 am: Edit

From Dana:
>>EOT 9 I think, we were short of time and I didn't launch any drones. I really needed to have launched that turn and put some drones on the board, it probably would have saved the D6D some damage.>>

Ah, ok. I figured you were reloading racks at that point.

>>I only had one decoy drogue which you had to watch for, but it didn't really come into play until the last turn.>>

Yeah, I knew there was only the one, but it was always a thing to be concerned about. The one time it got used was huge, and knowing that the C7 had that get out of jail free card always was an issue in what I was doing. Those things are nuts :-)

>>I've never played a fleet this size with fast drones before, most fleet games for me have been Y172 to 177ish. They don't stop coming.>>

Yeah, I think that the relentlessness of fast drones might be getting underplayed in some instances here--having a dozen+ fast drones coming, followed by another potential dozen+ fast drones coming, all the time, is *very* significant. And that some random cripple 20+ hexes away can just lob a few more fast drones every turn that will hit something this turn is also very significant. Trying to fly through incoming fast drones is very difficult, as you can't possibly identify them all, you often need to shoot them at R2, you need to account for unidentified drones having armor, and there is a *lot* of opportunity for just accidentally getting hit in the face by a type IV, and then having more drones still coming. And unlike speed 20 drones, you can't *ever* get around them and continue going forward with them trailing you.

Like, there certainly are forces that can deal with this many fast drones effectively (Kzinti, Hydrans, Tholians can cast web, etc). The Gorn? Not so much.

>>But I think there were also one or two launches where I wondered why you paid to upgrade the torp when it seemed likely to me I was going to eat it inside 10 whether it was sabot or regular.>>

It was generally just a matter of utility. I was arming the thing, and wasn't sure what it was going to do, so it ended up a sabot. Like, the first enveloper that hit the D6D was a regular torp, as I knew it was just going to hit regardless of sabot or not. But a lot of the time, what the torp was going to be launched at wasn't clear when I was arming it, so sabot it was!

>>Also, unless I have it wrong, I assumed all 200 spaces of drones in cargo were I-xF drones, I never considered it was 50% special drones. >>

I looked it up, and the ship description doesn't articulate this. I was assuming they were proportional reloads (this might be in the drone section maybe?), but don't really know.

>>On the death of the BDS. I almost started that turn with the C7 at spd 31 all turn driving for the BDS, but Peter would have certainly seen that and turned off.>>

Yeah, you starting at speed 20 definitely skunked me, as I turned across your bow, and thought I could get by, but then you sped up to 27, and I was cooked. As noted elsewhere, I considered decelling and throwing out weasels to avoid getting vaporized, but then was all "Well, of I keep moving, I can get R15 from my ships that are firing on the D6D for EW support that I need, and *maybe* I won't get incinerated?".

If I hadn't turned to monkey with that dumb E4 on my tail the turn before, I probably would have been fine. Could have been shot up some, but probably would have escaped instant death.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 08:31 am: Edit

Geoff wrote:
>>Thanks for addressing this tactical question. First, I'm not sure that Peter's force was all that well designed to operate as two separate forces, separated by 20-24 hexes, let's say.>>

It wasn't, so doing that was probably a terrible idea :-)

Like, I don't think that designing a force to attack from two directions is a terrible idea in general, if you have a force designed to make it work, and you are working against an opponent that it can work against. But, as Dana pointed out, in this instance, if I had split fy force in two (assuming I had the ships to do it with), one side gets droned until it stops, and then the other side gets killed piecemeal.

Like, again, this game was close. If I hadn't got my BDS killed by being dumb, I probably could have pulled out a win. But in a general sense, still, I feel that plasma is a little behind the ball on a giant, open map (which, well, everyone already knows, and has been the case since day one of this game). And the answer in this particular scenario setup is just "don't be Gorn".

By Jack Taylor (Jtaylor) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 09:11 am: Edit

How many speed 32 drones did the Klingon have available in total?

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 09:46 am: Edit

Geoffrey,

To be precise, it's not just "break escort rule" for Gorn. It's to allow them to buy *one* escort ship in violation of S8.0 - whether that's a CLA, HDA, BDA, or DDA is up to the player. The point is, if there's one ship with Aegis in the group and a bunch of Pl-D, it's a lot easier to 1) break up a heavy drone swarm while moving towards the enemy, and 2) If you miss a few drones at r1-2, then Aegis gives the escort multiple firing opportunities to finish off close range drones before they hit.

Escorts have much more limited utility against ships, so letting the Gorn have 1 shouldn't break the overall balance.

Most other empires don't need this with a well-designed force.

ISC PPDs can be used at range, giving that empire more options.

ROM can cloak, breaking lockon.

FED, KZI, KLI have ADDs and counter-drones.

LYR have ESG.

HYD have... scads... of ph-3.

THL have web.

It's just the Gorn that needs a bit of a break when fighting D&D. Adding 1 escort permitted to their force would mitigate that a lot.

The solution also has the added benefit of being a small nudge - rather than a large or weird change to tourney format.

Make of it what you will.

By Geoffrey Clark (Spartan) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 09:58 am: Edit

Well, with racks and reloads, this is what Dana's Klingons had:

I-F	140
IV-F	8
ECM	23
SWF	16
ARM	13

Add to this the ~20 from the C7's MRS and also the 200 drones (50 per cargo box) on the D6D, which BTW are proportional to what was in the racks.

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(FD2.445) In cargo boxes. Some drone-armed ships have cargo boxes to store extra drones. Unless otherwise specified a cargo box will hold 50 spaces of spare drones. It does not have them automatically, however, unless specified in the ship description. These drones are lost when the cargo boxes are destroyed. See (G25.3). These drones come at no cost, and are proportional to the loading of the racks.

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By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 10:07 am: Edit

>>How many speed 32 drones did the Klingon have available in total?>>

As noted, a *lot*. We went through 105 total drones in 13 turns. They still had more than 100 drones left--they had 200 in racks and rack reloads, then 20 from the MRS, then the 200 in cargo, which mostly got destroyed, but I think Dana said he got 16 out of the cargo bay before they went up.

So in 13 turns, using multiple scatter packs and drogue deployments, the Klingons used less than half their available drones.

By Geoffrey Clark (Spartan) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 10:32 am: Edit

Hi Ted,

Yes, thanks, Aegis are certainly useful. Gorn escorts are actually pretty good, retaining their heavy plasma, just trading in their F-torps for D-racks.

I'm still not sure the Gorns are broken enough that a HBD with plasma Ds (and maybe a few fighters) could not solve without changing the rules list to include Aegis as an exception for one race only. There was already a special rule written to permit Heavy War Destroyers for every race, even if they were not available in Y180.

The only solution that might help, which many have mentioned is terrain, and so far no one is against it. This gives any race, including Gorn some reprieve from endless drone waves at long range.

I also think that some flexibility on casual fighters and PFs in the forces of all races could help offset drones, as this was the natural progression of the SFB universe of weapons. Just limited to avoid too many counters.

By Jack Taylor (Jtaylor) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 10:51 am: Edit

How many did t-bombs did the Gorns have? How many drones could the Klingon control at once?

By Geoffrey Clark (Spartan) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 11:25 am: Edit

Klingons had C7 (12), D6D (12), plus two E4s (6*2=12), so 36 drone channels total. Some of those channels were needed for their ECM drones, since they did not use Type-III, or use ATG.

Gorns had 11 T-bombs total.

By Frank Lemay (Princeton) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 11:46 am: Edit

Geof,
According to your R2 chart, looks like Ed will be flying his Feds vs Dana's Klingons.
Most excellent and thanks Ed for doing this !!

Frees me up for lots of battles in our campaign !

Good luck !

Cheers
Frank

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 12:36 pm: Edit

>>How many did t-bombs did the Gorns have? How many drones could the Klingon control at once?>>

As noted, 11 t-bombs (I used my COs for an A-MRS and 11 total t-bombs, of which 12 was the maximum I could have. CCH had 4, HD had 3, BD had 2, BDS had 2; 2 were killed on the BDS. The BD used both effectively before being crippled. I had a single t-bomb on the CCH when the game ended).

T-bombs are effective for drone defense when moving away from drones and when your opponent is generally lackadaisical about drone placement (i.e. the SP drones all stay in the same hex the whole time; drones are launched in groups of 4-6, and aren't spread out). When your opponent is very on top of spreading out drones, t-bombs generally can get 3-4 drones a t time, which is helpful, but when killing 4 drones means that you still have 8-10 incoming, the effect is modest.

I did pretty well killing drones with t-bombs in situations where I was moving away, and the targets had been identified (by virtue of movement). A couple times, a t-bomb ended up only killing a single drone, as I miscalculated what was happening, and was at a weird angle.

The Klingons could control 36 drones. Plus a scout channel if needed for another 6. Plus at least some of the drones had ATG on them (i.e. self guiding if needed). A crippled ship can still control drones, as long as it is inside of 35 hexes. Drone control was never an issue. Especially given that the Klingons never had, IIRC, more than 20 drones on the map at any given time (I think the maximum was 19 at once?).

They didn't need to put 36 drones on the map at once. They only needed to have 12-18 of them on the map (early on, when we both had largely undamaged forces; this number dropped as the number of viable ships dropped for both sides), when they could always launch 12-18 more if I decided to try and bull through them. They generally were always in a situation where there were 12-18 drones on the map and they could put another 12-18 on the map if I tried to go through the first 12-18 to get to the Klingons in a situation where I had a possibility of catching them. But as long as they had 12-18 on the map, going through those first 12-18 drones was possible, sure, but the next 12-18 were the problem.

By Justin Royter (Metaldog) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 01:03 pm: Edit

Geof, your assertion that somehow I would benefit from more BPV and COs as compared to any other player or race and that somehow a planet or other terrain would benefit me as a fed player specifically, (I have a bunch of SWs that are essential to my forces capabilities) is inaccurate and a flawed assumption.

By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 01:44 pm: Edit

>> some flexibility on casual fighters and PFs in the forces of all races could help offset drones

The PTERODACTYL-E or PTERODACTYL-D PFs might be useful to the Gorn players? They are on page 82 of the Gorn MSSB.

--Mike

By Eddie E Crutchfield (Librarian101) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 02:38 pm: Edit

Dana and Geof, I will email you on Monday were we can set up times, I am gone this week-end to Adepticon so may or may not be able to communicate.

By Carl-Magnus Carlsson (Hardcore) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 02:56 pm: Edit

it is no surprise that if Fast drones are too good for standard tournament maps they are still to good for a bigger map.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 04:26 pm: Edit

I don't think they are necessarily too good in an absolute sense. I think they might need some scrutiny (and possibly some limitations?) in a situation where you are tying to make a balanced, playable, manageable tournament style environment. 'Cause I think some empires are way better at dealing with them than others, and assuming matches are randomly assigned, sometimes you'll just be hosed from the get go.

Which, again, it's fine if the answer is just "don't be a force that can't deal with tons of fast drones", but that will likely result in forces generally being "lots of fast drones" or "anti-lots of fast drones", which is limiting.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Wednesday, March 26, 2025 - 04:51 pm: Edit

I fear I find the enthusiasm for his refit suspect after all the purported inferiority of the Gorns is flown in the face of their apparent standing in tournament play, including the defeats of more than one drone chucker and despite those ships being allowed a few of the dreaded fast drones and on a fixed map and being robbed of two of their shuttles while their opponents gain two shuttles. (Klingon gains two, Gorn loses two) Fed Kept four, Romulan gained two, etc. The Gorns seem to have adequate phasers to defend themselves. I have to admit I was waiting for the Plasma-K to make its appearance in this topic.