Archive through September 08, 2003
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Tholians as a major race-- can they be beaten?:
Archive through September 08, 2003
Also, in a hypothetical EY tholian race, what limits should their be on WEb? I'm going to consult the tech tree in the campaign book to check, but I wanted other peoples opinion.
One thing would be to make long duration maitenance of web impossible-- thus preventing the tholian player from simply forting up all bases all the time with heavy web defenses.
Charles:
There's already a substantial EY limit on web. Note the G10.3 and G10.4 rules on Strength Of Webs and Deterioration Of Webs. Essentially, the standard rule requires that to maintain the middle and outer rings of a wedding cake at constant strength, Tholian ships will need to put a total 48 points of power/turn into them (30 points into the outer ring, 18 points into the middle ring, the base itself maintains the inner ring, so no ships need power it). If the web is not at full strength, the Tholians can increase the strength by puttimg in power over and above the 48 points necessary for basic maintenance. Starting in Y161, improvements to technology mean that 32 points of energy will suffice for basic maintenance. By Y175, this becomes 24 points.
But rule YG10.41 specifies that in the Early Years webs deteriorate by two energy points per hex of web (improving to the standard rate in Y121). This means that in an Early Years web assault the outer ring would require 60 points of power/turn for basic web maintenance and the middle ring would require 36 points. Thus a full three-tier wedding cake becomes effectively impossible except in VERY large scenarios since it's very difficult for EY (historical, i.e. minor race)Tholians to accumulate sufficient ships to pay the 96 points/turn necessary even to maintain the middle and outer rings. This might happen at the homeworld, but I suspect almost everywhere else the Tholians will have to use only a two-tier defense.
This penalty is quite sufficient for a historical Tholian, but for your major race Tholians you might consider an additional limitation, a more restrictive limit on maximum web strength. The standard maximum strength for a web is 35. This means that after the (non-Seltorian, Non-Andromedan) attackers have forced the Tholian ships behind the middle ring, they still must wait about 5 turns, taking Phases-4 and Phaser-1 fire the whole time, before they can advance to the middle ring. It frequently turns out to be longer than five turns do to engine damage during the waiting period. The typical W-series ship has a theoretical maximum speed of 17 while the typical Y-series ship has a theoretical maximum of 25. And unlike typical GW-era ships, EY ships can not even maintain their theoretical maximum while paying housekeeping costs. Against a strength-35 web, attacking EY ships would be trapped so long as to make the assault an even worse proposition than during the GW. I therefor suggest that in your campaign you consider setting a maximum web strength of about 18-20 during the "W-ship" period, increasing this to about 28-30 when Y-ships appear.
Charles:
Addendum to the previous message - my recommendation assumes your EY Tholians still have Phaser-4s on their bases. It may penalize the Tholians too much if the phasers are reduced to Phaser-1s like everyone else's bases.
Well, I was thinking that if you want to keep the Tholians close (and allow one to use "modern" SSDS), make the Tholians a "phaser" race, where they have P-1's and P-IV's, but no other special weapon.
Ken:
Just a few minor points to make.
Ken: As I've stated for a long time, and as is stated in Early years, The Tholians can produce partical cannons if they want to but basicly (historicaly at least) choose not to in favor of disruptors. If this has changed though someone please inform me.
Rest: One of the major problems with running Tholians as a major race, using whatever tech they had in their home galaxy, is that the Tholians start out at a level beyond X1 (Check Prime Directive to confirm this; Standard tech is TL12. Tholians at home are TL14).
The other problem is that web breakers are drasticly over rated in effectiveness vs fixed web. All it takes is a single Tholian ship to counter-act alot of work that the Web-breaker equipped units have done.
Probably the best example of this that I can think of is when we ran a BATS assault as part of a campaign game.
The bugs attacked it with a full fleet lead by a DN. The Tholians had the BATS (no attrition units), a NBB, and a PC.
After a long drawn out engagement where one ship or the other could power the web to delay the Seltorians the base eventually went down.
Now before you say something about effectiveness let me tell you the final tally.
Tholian Survivors:
NBB (Undamaged)
PC (Undamaged)
Seltorian Survivors:
FF (Crippled)
All of the remaining Seletorian ships were destroyed.
Now imagine what would have happened in that battle if a fleet had been defending the base instead of just one (admitadly huge) ship and a corvette?
The bugs lost 11 of 12 ships in that engagement to take out a single BATS. Including a DN and BCH. Not exactly a practical trade.
PS: I'm glad you guys like my heavy Tholians 
Hehe.... now if Cole and Co. just would show you the X version of the NCH....
Daniel, remember that tech levels are not absolutes. the tholians were post X1 for some things, but in ship designs and weaponry they were only the equivalent of the GW-era ships.
remember that they had control of the galaxy for a LOOONG time and had no need to research weaponry becouse they had no competition
How in the heck do the Selt's lose 11 of 12 ships against a BATS, NBB, and PC? 12 ships should have (rough guess) 20 WBs, which at range 1 will average 15 points each, or 300 points of web strength gone. For the outer layer of a wedding cake that translates into a reduction of 10 strength points (30 web hexes) each turn, which should get them through the web (counting the moves their making) in two turns or so. Even if the ships are putting all of their power into reinforcing the web they can't come up with more than 88 power for reinforcement, which begs someone to fly over to that side of the web, dive in and blast the shieldless ships. Two turns at 220 points of strength each turn will reduce the web by 14 strength, so maintaining speed 24 after impact will get them through that layer easily, while allowing for a well-timed reduction in speed to avoid breaking down on the next layer. The Selts should be ramming the inner layer in about 5 turns, 6 max, with enough ships to manage the BATs handily.
A Tholian BATS has eight Ph-IV. Being stuck at range 5 from eight Ph-IV is not healthy. Acccepting five turns to go through the web, the BATS will kill or cripple five cruisers in that time. This doesn't count the seventeen Ph-1 that the NBB and PC carry.
or the many P-3 mounted on the ships and more importantly the shuttles (lots of those and their damage adds up)
the tholians don't need to cripple the Selt ships, just drop the facing shield and miza the shieldbreaker away (all those P-3 I just mentioned and that ship is zero threat for a while
Frank: There are 3 layers of web and it's 18 or so hexes across. You can power the web from anywhere. Remember that it's 2 web points per point of power. And it's not 14 web strengh gone. it's only 9. And thats assuming the web has exactly enough power in it to be 35 all the way around. Andrew is correct in the phaser 4's. It added up very quickly against the Seltorian ships. Target the larger ships first and the smaller ones can be taken out without being much of a threat.
Also remember that the Seltorians have something of a problem covering every side of the web. They have no seeking weapons aside from the mass shuttles to park in the web. And the Shuttles can be taken out reletivly eaisly to make a gap if needed. The defenders don't have to put alot into speed. Any ship that entered the 1st layer of web was subject to massed phaser strikes, every turn, from the NBB, PC and BATS (who's phaser damage gets better as less web is in the way)
David: I don't really buy that much. I think it's far more likely that they just took the cheaper, faster route to maintaining their fleet. Ie; the non-X ships are easier to build and cheaper to maintain. Without a threat to their power there isn't much reason to have a more expensive set of ships in mass production.
And overall I'm sorry but as it stands I don't see how the Seltorians could have won anything. The BATS example I gave above was probably their most successful opperation that we have played with them. The Neo's just wipe the floor with them.
Basic observation seems to say that the Seltorians are designed to fight the limited amount of web that the arachno's can field. Against the Neo's, the ones they supposadly defeated, they get mauled so baddly while inflicting so few casualties to the Tholians that I don't see how they could have won at all without something much more drastic to back them up.
Pretty much they either need a supporting race with differnt weapons, or they need many more web breakers to be considered a threat to the Neo-Tholian Fleet.
Edit: I don't know where I got 14. Must be getting late.
If you want a truely frightening base assault put ground ph4s on anchor points in the web. It's expensive but perfectly legal and almost expected of the asteroid happy tholians.
Not to mention the minefield Daniel had when we hit his base, and he is right we died like flies, and I don't know what we could have done significantly better. He had some luck early on when our DN hit two NSMs on its approach, other than that the luck ran our way on good roles etc.
ADM
....
o.O I had a minefield?
ooooh... that one. Hmm...were you there for the BATS assault? I only remember you playing during the starbase assault.
Andrew Harding, et al:
Tholian BATS in THIS galaxy has 8 Ph-4s, no heavy weapons. In their home galaxy, the SB (and I believe the BATS also but don't remember for certain) loses some Ph-4s for webcasters. I believe the home galaxy BATS only has 6 Ph-4s. By the way could someone explain this to me? Why do Tholian bases have a webcaster refit? Why does the SBX have webcasters? AAAAUUGGGHHH!!! (Sorry about that ... I'm better now.) But webcasters can not fire through webs. Tholian bases are meant to fight from behind webs. Placing webcasters on bases reduces the Ph-4 firepower, increases the cost of the base, and (in this galaxy) reduces the number of webcasters available to the fleet. Why do Tholian bases (including the SBX) have webcasters? AAAUUUGGGHHH!!! If there were any one thing I could change about the Tholians, I would move all Tholian bases back to max-possible-phaser-armament and no non-phaser weaponry. (They would, however, retain their web generators since those don't reduce Ph-4 armament and allow the base to maintain the innermost ring (or the strands of a buzz-saw if you prefer that set-up) by themselves.)
P.S,
While I'm in rant mode - the CAN and CPN from module R-10 gain mass but no warp engines so they have a maximum possible speed of 25. It is stated that these ships were intended for local defense so the low speed wasn't a problem. But if that's the case, why were none of them converted to all-phaser armament. Swapping the heavy weapons (both in the pack and on the CW hull itself) for Ph-1s would give the ship 11 Ph-1s and would make it a much more useful ship for fighting behind webs. At least some of those CAN/CPN conversions ought to have been to all-phaser ships, given the stated mission.
As you can probably surmise from this post and my previous one, I firmly believe that if anything in the entire SFU shoud have VERY heavy Phaser armament, it would be Tholian bases and ships specifically intended for base defense.
Daniel Knudtson Thompson:
"I'm glad you guys like my heavy Tholians" - Actually, the one I like best is the NCH, and that includes the heavy dreadnought (can never remember off the top of my head whether it's NDH or NHD). Between the NDN, NCA, and NCL I always thought the NCA was the most power-hungry. The NCA always reminded me a little of the original (pre + refit) Fed destroyer or some of the Lyran ships prior to the power-pack refit; a great weapon suite but inadequate power to fully exploit it. Of course, the NCH also picks up 2 Ph-1s, but nothing says you have to arm them on any given turn. The way I see it, the NCH can use the identical weapon plot of the NCA but have 2 extra points of generated power, 2 extra points of reserve power, and 2 extra points of Phaser capacitance. If the extra power isn't needed elsewhere, then it can arm up the extra phasers. Of the NDN, NCA, NCL, and NDD; I think the NCA-to-NCH conversion actually improves the ship the most.
That being said, the NCM is also an exceptionally nice ship.
Welcome back Dan!
On the Seltorian capture of the home galaxy, I seem to recall (a vague statement if there ever was one) that the Tholians had relatively few ships, depending on the subject race Seltorians as the main fleet.
So, if there were 40 or so Seltorian fleets out there, and only 10 Tholian ones, the Tholians would be hard pressed to defend everything. Of course, the Seltorians would eventually have to hit the "hard" points - but perhaps by then, they'd built up an overwhelming force.
Dan: Just how far out is the last layer of web? A standard wedding cake will be 1, 3, and 5 hexes out, which means the outer layer has 30 web hexes total.
I missed that later efficiency increases for web reinforcement. That will make a difference. OTOH, I still don't see what difference being Neo-Tholian's makes for the base assault. Did the NBB actually use the WCs for something, or just fist with them?
And a passing note on the PIV bases on large asteroids: Any such asteroids in the outer layer should be destroyed by long-range fire before the attacking fleet comes anywhere close. This will destroy any bases or troops on them, though they will continue to function as web anchors. So, don't waste time putting bases on anything in the outer layer.
Frank: It takes a rather considerable amount of damage to reduce an asteroid to rubble (something liek 400 points). Considering the bases can do more damage to you, than you are probably doing to the asteroid, that isn't nessicarily a bad trade off.
Sorry Dan, I didn't realize you managed to talk anyone else into trying this.
ADM
The Seltorians won in the home galaxy because the Tholians had to go on the offensive. If the status quo reigned, 1) additional planets would revolt. 2) the Seltorian fleet will grow much faster than the Tholians (they have very fast population growth). The correct measure is a Tholian assault on a Seltorian SB and fleet. In this case, the Seltorians do have enough WB.
A NBB as the defending ship for a BATS is extremely unrealistic. It eliminates much of the danger it would otherwise suffer in trying to reinforce the web (CA, CL and the smaller ships are much "crunchier").
Note that the Tholians regularly have to defend locations without web established web. They have to get the assets in place to establish the web. And the Klingons, in particular, felt this was the right time to hit Tholian forces. Thus they need ships with heavy weapons. Without preestablished web, ships phaser only ships (larger than the PC) tend to lose battles.
I belive it is stated in several places that the Tholians never had the ability to manufacture particle cannons. They could (barely) maintain the ones they arrrived with (the original time, not the 312th), but not build new ones. Thus when the ships with PC were gone they had to find a new heavy weapon.
In peacetime it is common for techology to not be applied to weapons. Thus I can believe their ships are the same level of technology as the Alpha quadrant, overall.
Daniel Knudtson Thompson:
But there's no way to protect the asteroid if it's outside the web or on the outer ring. The shields from a GBP-4 protect the base, not the asteroid itself. Likewise, you can't loan the asteroid ECM. (We're not talking about Jindo asteroid ships.) The Seltorians can take up station 75 hexes from the asteroid and bombard it with Ph-1s. one out of every six shots will do a point of damage to the asteroid with no way for the Tholians to mitigate, reduce or repair that damage. The base will do no damage to the ships at that range due to the damage reduction from shooting through non-adjacent webs. Any Tholian ships behind the web will be 76 hexes from the Seltorians - out of Ph-1 range. Unless the Tholians have deployed an enormous number of asteroids, the Seltorians can easily reinforce their shields sufficiently to prevent damage from the asteroid GBP-4s. The only way for the Tholians to prevent the asteroids on the outer ring from gradually being battered to pieces is to send fleet elements to fight the Seltorian fleet away from the web/base. The process of destroying the outer asteroids will take the Seltorians about 35-40 turns each for 400 point asteroids, assuming a fleet with about 60-70 Ph-1s. The Seltorians can put together fleets with this many Phaser-1s quite easily. 35-40 turns per asteroid makes for a very long SFB scenario but in the context of a strategic campaign it's a hiccup.
Actually, I agree with what I take to be your main point - the difficulty of the Seltorians beating the Tholians in their home galaxy, even with web breakers. The only way I can see it happening is if the Tholians, excessively confident in their webs, allowed the Seltorians to build a fleet much larger than their own. All I'm arguing here is that asteroids with GBP-4s do need to be inside the webs.
Alan,
IIRC, the webs will hold the asteroids together until/unless the web is broken.
John Trauger:
They will certainly hold the asteroid together for purposes of acting as a web anchor, but I believe any ground base on the asteroid would still be destroyed. The relevant rules sections seem to be G10.1314 and P3.45 and re-reading both of these I'm a little less sure that my previous interpretation is correct. Nor am I certain it's wrong. G10.1314 describes an asteroid that has taken sufficient damage to be otherwise destroyed as "a sack of rocks" held together by the web and I'm dubious this "sack of rocks" could support a functioning base. We've always played asteroids that way, but we may have been wrong.
My bad.
I didn't read closely enough.
John:
Well, as I said, I think you're wrong, but I'm definitely not certain of it.