John and Vandar;

As frequently happens, it took me longer to get to this then I had expected. But I still intend to continue the discussion about "wedding cake versus buzz saw" here. Since the discussion in the A proposal for generator buoys and anchor asteroids thread mostly centered on establishing the web in the first place, I intend to discuss tactical differences between the two web defense set-ups, once they have already been established.

More later, but I just wanted to confirm I hadn't forgotten.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Wednesday, July 30, 2025 - 05:54 pm: Edit

is all good

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Saturday, August 02, 2025 - 03:50 pm: Edit

OK, wasted too much time already.

One reason I believe the wedding cake is inherently superior to the buzz saw, is that the buzz saw needs lots of mines to be viable. Mines will strengthen a wedding cake defense, to be sure. But the defense is still viable without them as long as the Tholians have adequate ships for web support. This reliance on mines has both strategic and tactical consequences.

As was pointed out in the A proposal for generator buoys and anchor asteroids thread, we don't actually know the "true" cost of mines. The listed costs vary depending on whether they are bought individually or as part of a "standard package" and also whether the standard package is deployed as part of a base defense or as a border minefield. So these costs are obviously "combat" BPV. But (M6.0) MINEFIELDS does state in the "background text" that mines are "expensive" and that "Further, minefields cannot be left in place for decades (or even months) without many individual mines suffering mechanical breakdown (or enemy snooping)." From the latter, I think we can reasonably infer that a Tholian Holdfast which relies heavily on minefields will also need more specialist units like minesweepers and MLS shuttles in order to sustain the minelfields.

So I claim that a Holdfast that bases its overall defensive strategy on buzz saw webs, will have fewer mobile units, whether ships, PFs, or fighters, than a Holdfast that bases its defensive strategy on wedding cake webs. And one very important strategic consequence of this is that mobile units can be redeployed if the strategic situation changes. Hypothetically, if the Romulans have suffered some severe reverses against the Gorns and/or Federation and stripped most of their ships from the Tholian border to shore up their defenses against the greater threat, and simultaneously the Seltorians have arrived and are cooperating with the Klingons against their mutual enemy, the Tholians could transfer ships from the Romulan frontier to strengthen their "western" defenses. But minefields around bases on the Romluan border provide no help whatsover against the increasing Klingon/Seltorian threat.

A more "tactical" redeployment might see Tholian ships and/or PFs that were part of a base defense force "scrambled" to intercept a Klingon raid against some nearby Tholian convoy or perhaps some small mining colony with only minimal defenses. Again, the base's mines provide zero help for that convoy or mining colony. The ships/PFs would return to the base for repair and refueling once the Klingon raid has been dealt with.

Of course, the Klingon raid might be a diversion to strip the base of its defenses preparatory to an attack on the base itself. Presumably the Tholian commander is aware of this possibility and will not scramble all his resources. As a precaution, the Tholian base defense forces may start powering up the web as soon as a decision to send some of the ships away. If the Klingon purpose is really a base assault, the forces must loiter at a significant distance, outside of Special Sensor range, to avoid alerting the Tholians as to their intentions. Once the Klingon assault force starts to move, the Tholian commander can assess the situation and decide whether to recall his forces. Because the Tholian started powering the webs even before the base assault force began its advance, the Klingons will still be facing a pretty strong defense that will take time to get through. Or if the Tholian commander assesses the threat of a base assault as high, he may not send away any ships in the first place. This of course means the convoy/colony will be destroyed or at least badly damaged. But if the Tholians relied on buzz saws, they would have fewer ships available in the first place and that colony or convoy would be dead regardless of anything the Tholian commander decided.

Given the extremely limited Tholian economy and small fleet size, I regard tying up too many resources in static defenses, at the expense of having as many mobile assets as the economy plausibly allows, to be a strategic blunder. Wedding cake defenses (fewer minefields, more ships) are clearly superior to buzz saws in this respect.

There's also a significant tactical weakness with buzz saws; their susceptibility to a well coordinated minesweeping attack. I describe such an attack in my July 16, 2025 - 03:02 AM post in the previously mentioned A proposal for generator buoys and anchor asteroids thread. I will have more to say about that later (probably not today). But for now I just want to say that I believe such a minesweeping effort would be quite costly for the Klingons but much less costly than an assault on a Tholian wedding cake-defended base with comparable Tholian forces (base, ships, PFs, fighters, mines), but which spent less BPV on mines and more on ships, even ignoring the cost of asteroid anchors, which was, I believe the point of John's A proposal for generator buoys and anchor asteroids.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Saturday, August 02, 2025 - 06:48 pm: Edit

I set up a wedding cake witch I am very familiar with and a buzzsaw. I did not know what the heck the buzzsaw was until I was e-mailed what it looked like.

The buzzsaw is harder to set up and costs more than the wedding Cake. The 3 string buzzsaw even more so.

The first thing I saw was the base can power all the strains of a buzzsaw but only the inner ring of the wedding cake. With the wedding cake you can stick into the web and stop ships from reinforcing the outer layers of web.

You can fly down the spiral of the buzzsaw and get to the base. You do not need to get stuck in the web to do so. There will be a lot of mines in the spiral to get thru. As well as being fired at by Tholian phasers.

My second thoughts were that thing a legal web. All I can say seems so, but it must have anchors at the corners.

With out mines the buzzsaw is worthless other than channeling ships one way. Taking out a Buzzsaw is how do I get rid of the mines. With out damaging to many ships. The wedding cake forces you to stick ships in the web and close point-blank combat.

The fact that a full-strength web will stop mine blasts from damaging ships in the adjacent hexes can be exploited.

That said I think it is the cost that hurts the Buzzsaw. Anchor points 12 for the wedding cake. 18 for a 2 strained buzzsaw and 24(27) for a 3 strained buzzsaw. 300 BPV wedding cake. Buzzsaw 450 and 600 (675) and the wedding cake does not need the anchors. Then 0.25 points for each web hex. 54 for the wedding cake. The 2 strained is 60 and the 3 is 90.

Then there are the mines. 50bpv per package.
• 15 large explosive
• 40 small explosive
• 3 large captor
• 7 small captor
• 4 sensor

I think the buzzsaw is great except the cost. The other problem being the mines. When they are gone I think the attacker will still have ships left to kill the base and if they fail there will be no ships left in the web as may be the case of the wedding cake.

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Saturday, August 02, 2025 - 08:59 pm: Edit

Alan,

The first thing I'm planning on doing with these posts is to try to keep each focused on a single aspect of the discussion. I would rather make 3 or 4 shorter posts than a single long one. Our posts tended to get very long when going back and forth on multiple subjects.

In this post, I'm focusing on energy.

I'm not going to agree that the wedding cake is superior to a buzzsaw, but I will admit that there are times, perhaps a lot of times, when a buzzsaw is inappropriate to use. Although I will admit that it is never really inappropriate to use a wedding cake, I still believe that under the right circumstances, a buzzsaw is superior.

The ideal core of a buzzsaw is a base with enough power to pay for active fire control, life support, recharge its P-4s each turn, and pay the maintenance energy of the web strands. 100% of the burden of powering the webs being carried by the base is ideal, but there are some cases in which less than 100% is workable, such as a web tender with a battle station. The idea is for the central core to carry the lion's share of the effort to maintain the webs while firing its weapons, leaving the ships free to aggressively defend the base with the full amount of their power available. 

Regardless of the year, the ships defending a wedding cake have 89% of the responsibility for powering the webs. The base can power only 6 hexes, while the ships have to power 48. Granted, the base and available ships can quickly bring the inner web to maximum strength, and any base can maintain it at that level, but once the web is at the maximum capacity the rest of the base's energy is for the most part useless. Even after Y175, the ships have to spend 15 points of energy to maintain the outer web. That is not an insignificant amount of energy. Add the energy for the middle web ring, and you may be spending 25-30% of your mobile units' energy on web reinforcement. Also, the ships have to put themselves either into or adjacent to the outer web jeopardizing their safety. An enemy won't enter the outer web unless there's either a chance to tractor a Tholian Web unit or a chance to do some real damage to a Tholian web unit to lessen the Tholian's ability to strengthen the web.
 
In the case of a buzzsaw with the base able to maintain the web strands by itself, the ships may help strengthen a less than strength 35 web, but then are free to move and fight with their fullest capacity. The energy they don't spend on the webs can be used for negative tractors, shield reinforcement, overloads, speed, or any other use. The base's energy capacity is maximally utilized even if it is not totally utilized. It is not underutilized while the enemy fights his way to the core. 
 
Any enemy ships that enter the buzzsaw webs are stuck until they are rescued from a maximum-strength web. This makes 2 or more ships the targets for the Tholians. All the Tholians have to do is reduce the available cumulative power of the enemy ships so that the rescue is no longer possible. It sounds simple, but that doesn't translate into easy. There is no reason for the stuck ship to hope that the web will weaken to allow an escape. The rules for friendly fire (D1.521) and the "but not through" aspect of webs make any stuck ships more vulnerable to capture because they cannot be fired upon using friendly fire. Self-destruction is also far from assured. If the Tholians are successful in driving away the attacker's ships not stuck in the webs, they have time to coordinate the capture of the enemy ships still in the web using every transporter on every ship on the same impulse. Additionally, as we agreed that multiple attempts are required to defeat an adequately defended Tholian base, the ships stuck in the web will count against the command rating of the command ship during subsequent rounds of combat, limiting how many fresh ships can enter the battlefield. While the turnaround is happening, the stuck ships will be pounded into impotence and then monitored but otherwise ignored. They may even be pulled deeper into a buzzsaw's webs by a large enough Tholian ship. Any rescue ships will be fired upon as primary targets until their energy is too low to succeed in the rescues.

There is one more aspect under this umbrella of energy which we touched upon before that brings in another subject: mines. You once pointed out that a Tholian base that is Surprised (D18.0) and has the wedding cake pattern will be better able to generate a defense due to the very few hexes of the inner ring. Although this is true, I don't think it is as significant as you think it is. An attacking fleet that rushes through your outer 2 layers is trying to get to that inner ring anyway. The Tholians will get only a couple shots in at the incoming fleet before it becomes a range 1 slug fest. In the case of a buzzsaw, the mines that are scattered throughout the channels are still there for a surprised base, and the attacker will not have time to map out the minefield before making his plunge. His entry will be much more dangerous because the Tholians will get off those same shots at the attacker and the attacker has to just take the added minefield damage. With the mines concentrated, it is more than likely that there will be more than one attacking ship affected by single explosive mine explosions. Additionally, the Tholians could voluntarily use ships to drop the anchor status of selected asteroids making the strands of the buzzsaw much shorter and faster to power up, or voluntarily shorten the web strands from the outside inward to the next anchor to both make the web faster to strengthen and retain the energy already applied. This will jeopardize the shortening ships to the attacking forces. 

I'm not finished, but I wanted to get this started.

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Saturday, August 02, 2025 - 09:39 pm: Edit

Gregory, in my researching things for this conversation with Alan and other things I found that the two scenarios written by ADB with webs around a base, both had asteroid anchors. This told me that anchored webs were thought of by ADB as being the norm. All of the other scenarios having webs were written by players and omitted anchors.

I also noticed that within the 2012 master rulebook there were references to small asteroids and standard asteroids, and 1 scenario had references to asteroids intended for anchor use requiring only 100 damage points for their destruction. Beyond that there is no further definitions.

Low power Generator Buoys are mentioned in passing seemingly as a way to justify the existence of spun webs.

My "A proposal for generator buoys and anchor asteroids" is meant as a simple was to make asteroids cheaper for use and required by utilizing references already in the rulebook.

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Saturday, August 02, 2025 - 09:54 pm: Edit

Alan,

One thing I don't understand is your lack of understanding about what static defenses are and do. Are you equally concerned that bases larger than mobile bases cannot be strategically redeployed over yonder where the current need is more pressing? When you said that the minefield stays put, that also means that it cannot be lured away from the base by clever maneuvering and feints. Mobile forces can be lured away. In conclusion, your argument that mines cannot be redeployed is less a viable critique of mines and more of a gross conceptual error of what they are and what they are supposed to do.

You did, however, come upon a great point: the economic costs of mines.  I did some quick AI searches for the costs of some current naval ships and the costs of some types of mines.  The least expensive frigate-type of ships are the light or patrol frigates with a cost range of about $100M-$300M each.  This ship is an approximate equivalent to a Tholian PC, and the PC is on the lower end of frigates, so let's call it a $100M ship.  Small and large influence detonated explosive mines have ranges in cost.  I chose influence-triggered mines because they can tell the difference in hull size and count targets.  Small mines range from $50,000 to $250,000 each so $100M could buy from as many as 2000 to a lower amount of 400 small mines.  For the large mines, the numbers are $500,000 to $1,000,000 each or 100-200 for the cost of the ship.   I brought this up because I believe you hung your hat too readily on the word "expensive" when discussing mines.  Expensive compared to what?  Additionally, there are operating costs to consider.  Mines don't really have operating costs.  There's no maintenance or resupplying an active mine.  It's there and it will stay there waiting for either a triggering event or a failure of it's systems requiring a sweeping for safety reasons, and maybe a replacement.

There weren't any good equivalents for sensor mines that I found in my cursory search. I only found a little bit for captor mine equivalents, and those weren't up to the standards I was looking for. It only could fire 1 torpedo before being useless.

Mines won't stop a determined enemy, but they can damage him and slow him down. Arguably, the more mines that are at location "A", the more ships that can be relocated to location "B" without excessively jeopardizing location "A" should there be a need for redeployment.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Saturday, August 02, 2025 - 11:26 pm: Edit

John,

You place me in a somewhat difficult position. You state in an earlier post:

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Quote:

The first thing I'm planning on doing with these posts is to try to keep each focused on a single aspect of the discussion.

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By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Sunday, August 03, 2025 - 12:35 pm: Edit

Alan, you may choose. You my do as many on one post as you wish. I will do my best to answer, but will try to keep my posts focused on one subject.

For the moment I'm trying to understand your thoughts when you wrote this statement, "But minefields around bases on the Romluan border provide no help whatsover against the increasing Klingon/Seltorian threat." Bases are static defenses, so are mines. If you have a problem with mines lacking the ability to relocate to another location, it is logical for me to infer that you have that same problem with bases not being able to relocate or be relocated (other than mobile bases or operational bases).

Basically, I'm using a reductio ad absurdem form of argument. I'm taking what you are putting forth as an argument and following your idea to its logical conclusion. You don't like that mines cannot move or be moved, therefore you do not like mines. Bases with positional stabilizers cannot move or be moved, therefore you logically do not like bases.

Let me put forward another reductio ad absurdem form of argument. You argue that mines cost money and consume resources that may be used to build ships; if one foregoes producing mines, one can produce more ships. Bases cost even more money and consume even more resources that can be used to build ships; if one foregoes producing bases, one can produce more ships.

It basically forces you to accept that your original argument is flawed. You cannot be (in favor of/against) one side of the logical argument without also being (in favor of\against) the other side of the argument. There is a "conceptual error" in your argument. I'm pointing out the contradiction of your argument. Because you seem to think or you expect mines to move from here to there, I added the word "gross" to it.

I learned about Gross Conceptual Errors, GCEs for short, when I was in the Navy, specifically Nuclear Power School. There we encountered CEs, GCEs, and GFCEs. You figure the last one out.

In short, mines do not move. Expecting them to move and using their immobility as an argument is a conceptual error, a big conceptual error. Nothing else you said about mines was a conceptual error at all.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Sunday, August 03, 2025 - 01:43 pm: Edit

John.

I would not want to build a wedding cake without the asteroids for anchors. With my limited math skills. I can see maybe a CA more for the Wedding cake over the buzzsaw. Truthfully, I would buy a PH-IV or a few of them on the asteroids. placing them in the second ring.

Also, asteroids mean you can drop a section of the web. I am sure in the home galaxy there would be asteroids. There would be huge cargo ships that are not crewed by Tholians. Unable to pass thru the web.

The mine field around a base has to have a free corridor for ships to pass thru. Using command-controlled mines to cover that point. Easy to do with a wedding cake very hard with a buzzsaw.

However, those are logistic points. Not things we really concern ourselves with while playing battles.

Alan

You are using logistics as part of your reasoning. Yes, mines cost and cannot be easily moved. I do not think that mines are building ships would be the problem. I think crews for the ships would be a bigger problem. Static defenses such as mines may be better in that case. A small mine laying freighter has a small crew and cost.

Logistics is cool for a discussion of why something is this way but for whether I would use a buzzsaw are wedding cake for a battle not so much.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Sunday, August 03, 2025 - 02:45 pm: Edit

Think about this.

A 12 ship Klingon fleet attacking a Tholian battle station with Web.

DN flagship, D6D as the scout.
Battlegroup. 3D5 and 3 FF.
battle line. 5 size 3 class hulls.

you would need minesweepers. They cannot be part of the battle group. So may want to ditch the battle group.

Now this is just base BPV no drones. (pardon my math)

DN C9 232 D6D 136 CR-10
2 D5M 200 a D5S 100 to protect the minesweepers. (would only take 1 D5M vs a wedding cake)
D7C 139 2D7buim 280. (3ships)
1 D6M 125 (D7A 131?)
3 more D7 or D5 hulls. 420/

gross total 1,213 BPV rough will be more I am sure with drones and other options. (not a big Klingon player)

Web asteroids as above post 300 for wedding cake 450 for a two strand buzzsaw (600 for 3) Then at start web strength Ws-1 3layer web 960 str points at 0.25 240 BPV (math again)

wedding cake 540

2 strand buzzsaw 690

3 strand buzzsaw 840

Mines 50 pts per package. can save some points by reducing web strength at start.

So, we say 1,500 for a 12-ship fleet attacking the base.
wedding cake 540 2 mine packages. 900 BPV for ships.
2 strand buzzsaw 790 2 mine packages. 700BPV for ships.
3 strand buzzsaw 990 3 mine packages 500 BOV for ships.

Please check my horrifying math

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Sunday, August 03, 2025 - 06:19 pm: Edit

I forgot the cost of the base. So even less for ships.

By Robert Russell Lender (Rusman) on Sunday, August 03, 2025 - 09:14 pm: Edit

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Quote:

Think about this.

A 12 ship Klingon fleet attacking a Tholian battle station with Web.

DN flagship, D6D as the scout.
Battlegroup. 3D5 and 3 FF.
battle line. 5 size 3 class hulls.

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By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar3) on Sunday, August 03, 2025 - 09:36 pm: Edit

The math checks, the scout is 'free' and the battle group allows one ship more over the CR … CR10 = DN + 10 + battle group [+1] + free scout [+1] = 13 ships.

Question, how does one drop only one segment (unless using more than one anchor per asteroid) ??

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, August 04, 2025 - 01:32 am: Edit

John,

I'm afraid I got distracted by other things today and didn't respond to your post. I can give a precis now, with a more comprehensive answer tomorrow.

Bases are more than just "static defenses". They provide repair, refueling, provisioning, etc. for the ships. The ships (and PFs and fighters) are what actually project power. And bases are the backbone of the logistics infrastructure that enables ships to operate effectively. The ships need the bases. But bases do not actually need mines.

At least, they don't need them to perform their logistics function, or to monitor immense volumes of space with their special Sensors. But because bases are so important in this logistics infrastructure role, an enemy will try to destroy them if he can do so without suffering excessive losses. And mines can help protect the base against enemy attack.

But a base defended by a wedding cake web arrangement is extremely powerful even without mines, or with a very limited (therefore less expensive) minefield. A buzz saw with an extensive minefield is still formidable. But a buzz saw with few or no mines is not that much stronger than any other empire's base. Given the small size of the Tholian fleet, that's a losing proposition.

Or here's another way to look at it.

Build a ship or fighter squadron or PF flotilla, and it can operate anywhere in the Holdfast as the need arises.

Build a base and it can defend its immediate vicinity with its weapons. But it can also... influence... what happens in a much larger volume of space; both by providing logistics support for the mobile elements and by monitoring space and providing early warning and other information through its Special Sensors.

Build a minefield and it can help defend its immediate vicinity, and... that's it. That's why a minefield's immobility is different from a base's. The base supports the ships that can control space at a distance.

Finally, I want to point out that in my previous arguments for wedding cake defenses, I did not say the Tholians should never deploy minefields. I said they didn't need them, which is not the same thing. They could still deploy them if appropriate, but would probably deploy fewer and spend the quatloos saved thereby on... other stuff.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Monday, August 04, 2025 - 02:03 pm: Edit

Some additional comments concerning bases versus "mobile" units.

Even for the point defense role, bases generally need mobile support, whether ships, PFs, or fighters, in many cases. Consider a BATS defending some economically valuable planet. A raiding force, even one far too small to take on a BATS in a fair fight, could approach from "behind" the planet and devastate the half the planet shadowed from the BATS, if that BATS were all the planet had. Realistically, other defenses besides the BATS will be required; whether ground-based defenses, or fighters, PFs, and ships.

Even worse, consider the case of a mineral-rich asteroid belt. Each indiviidual asteroid can support one ground base and that is going to be a mining base. The asteroids may be hundreds, even thousands of SFB hexes apart and while the asteroid field as a whole may be quite valuable, any individual asteroid is very unlikely to be worth enough to justify a space base dedicated solely to it. Protecting the asteroid field will, again, require mobile forces. Even an SBX, by itself, couldn't do the job. There may well be a BATS assigned to the asteroid field, to act as logistical support for the ships, PFs, and fighters that will really defend the field. But the BATS itself can only directly defend a single asteroid; an asteroid that, by itself, doesn't justify the cost of the BATS. But the value of the entire field, containing dozens or even hundreds of "economically significant" asteroids, may justify defensive forces coordinated and logistically supported by that base.

I continue to maintain that "overbuilding" static defenses, for any empire, not just the Tholians, is a mistake if the overbuilding results in too few mobile assets. That doesn't mean you don't build bases (which might have minefields). It means you strike a balance. And I maintain that, specifically for the Tholians, a defense based on wedding cake defenses strikes a better balance than one based on buzz saw defenses.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Monday, August 04, 2025 - 06:33 pm: Edit

Stewert

A ship takes over anchor status for the web. From an asteroid. Moves away 1 hex and drops anchor status. The Web unanchored must collapse to the other asteroid.

You could also anchor both ends of a section with ships shorten it and let it dissipate to the points ships can Easly pass thru. When done build it back up and re-anchor to the asteroids and the rest of the web.

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Monday, August 04, 2025 - 06:55 pm: Edit

Greg, that's not correct by the rules. There is no way for a single ship to separate a segment of web into two pieces.

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Monday, August 04, 2025 - 07:31 pm: Edit

Alan, everything you said in that last post was on point, with maybe the exception of the last paragraph. The last sentence is a non-sequitur. I still believe that you overestimate the resources and economic costs of mines. Think about it, 3 NSMs and a T-bomb, with their packaging materials, can fit inside of an admin shuttle with a cargo space left over. Mines just are not that big, and as such don't take up very much in the way of resources.

For that asteroid belt, if it is being actively harvested, I wouldn't expect there to be any mines as they would be a safety hazard. If it isn't being harvested, but will be in the not-so-near future, I could see some mines scattered about to punish interlopers who would be scouting the turf and, not seeing any security patrols, might not have shields up to save the power.

Also, if that asteroid belt was being actively harvested and was close enough to hostile territory, I would expect a fair percentage of those ground bases to be armed versions other than mining bases. Ground bases can be picked up and moved which would keep the enemy guessing.

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Monday, August 04, 2025 - 07:41 pm: Edit

Alan, a minefield would help protect the base so the base can do its functions for the mobile forces. If those mobile forces are elsewhere at the time a base is attacked and cannot return quickly enough, the base alone may still have the time to power up its web(s) before the enemy arrives. With a buzzsaw, you have the minefield and the webs powered by a central core that can handle the job. The enemy will have to deal with the minefield and the webs while the base pounds the enemy for all it's worth. With a wedding cake, you have a single 6 hex ring powered by the base with the enemy's fleet 1 hex away preparing to use the strength of the web to help protect their ships from the inevitable explosion.

You obviously need to hold some ships back to power the outer layers of web. Mines are a defensive bonus.

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Tuesday, August 05, 2025 - 08:23 am: Edit

Alan, here's a completely neutral question for you. What is the make up of your hypothetical fleet that will be defending the base, and what is the size of the base in question?

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Tuesday, August 05, 2025 - 12:12 pm: Edit

Alan, how do you measure whether static defenses are underbuilt, sufficiently built, or overbuilt? There is no available yard stick on which to base that opinion.

By Gregory S Flusche (Vandar) on Tuesday, August 05, 2025 - 06:06 pm: Edit

John

The outer ring of a wedding cake has 30 web hexes. With 6 anchor asteroids. If a ship takes over anchor duties at one asteroid. Then moves 1 hex along the web. separating that section from the web. The Globel web does not collapse as the anchor asteroids are there. If the ship then drops anchor status. That section of web must collapse. As it is not anchored at both ends. The rest of the web is unaffected as it is anchored at the corners by the asteroids.

Now if this is wrong then a buzzsaw would be illegal.

By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar3) on Tuesday, August 05, 2025 - 07:27 pm: Edit

OK, (G10.1331) allows ships to take over anchor status from an anchor point, so dropping one segment seems possible … but dropping the anchor would drop two segments (G10.1333) …

By John Christiansen (Roscoehatfield) on Tuesday, August 05, 2025 - 09:48 pm: Edit

Greg, no and no. Sorry. You're misunderstanding the different types of anchors. read (G10.133) more carefully to understand corner anchors, intermediate anchors, and end anchors.

Stewart, you can drop one hex if there's an anchor ship on either side of the asteroid and one with the asteroid. The two on the sides take up anchor status as intermediate anchors. The one with the asteroid takes up the anchor duty, then when able it drops anchor status. The web immediately dissolves towards the nearest anchors, which are the intermediate anchor ships which then are end anchors.