| By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Thursday, May 02, 2024 - 11:59 am: Edit |
The listed cost for the Tholians to buy an asteroid to use as a web anchor is 25 BPV. I can find no reference that allows asteroids to be purchased in other circumstances than as an anchor.
Question: If another empire wamts to "buy" asteroids and place small ground bases on them, as part of their base defense forces, is that legal? How about for the Tholians buying asteroids for the same purpose, but not using them as anchors for their globular web wedding cake.
Recommendation: For other empires; yes. I can see no reason why the Federation, for example, would be unable from a technical standpoint to tow an asteroid to a critical battle station and then place a phaser-IV, or some other small base, on it.
For the Tholians; I think the answer has to be no, for game balance reasons. A small ground base isn't that hard to kill. So if the Feds (or Klingons or Gorns or whoever) bolster their base defense in this way, the base probably won't last long. If the Tholians create a wedding cake with asteroid-anchored hexagaonal web for the middle web, any ground bases on them are safe until the attacker actually enters the web. But then they probably die quickly. But if the asteroids are not "genuine anchors" and are instead placed in the ring of empty hexes between the inner and middle rings, the bases on those asteroids are safe until the attackers are through the outer ring and enter the middle ring. Thus, unlike the asteroids used by other powers, or Tholian asteroids anchoring the middle web ring, they would get many turns of fire rather than only a few.
For the same reason, perhaps asteroid anchors should be disallowed (or prohibited for handwavium reasons from supporting small bases) for the innermost web ring.
| By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, May 02, 2024 - 01:18 pm: Edit |
The Tholians had a reason for asteroids around their bases. Other empires do not and have no listing scenarios other than a random rock for supporting asteroid mining. A case could also be made that being unable to anchor webs that the asteroids around a planet simply become available rocks to bombard the planet with ("Coming of the Meteor" scenario).
| By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Thursday, May 02, 2024 - 03:33 pm: Edit |
SPP,
I confess I had not thought about the attacker using asteroids supporting the BATS (or whatever base is being supported) to bombard a nearby planet. But that issue would only apply to some bases. An empire might construct a BATS that wasn't near any inhabited or economically significant locations simply because that was a good spot for the base's sensors to monitor enemy activities; or the location was approptiate for a logistics node, to support multiple other locations in the sector.
| By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, May 02, 2024 - 04:43 pm: Edit |
Alan Trevor:
The Scenario about the coming of the Meteor establishes that you can guide a meteor into a gravity well to fall on a planet, but by the same token establishes that it is possible to harvest asteroids. But it left much into question. The rock being guided in the case of that scenario may have been convenient (was floating near the planet anyway) and not located in the asteroid belt. (Lord knows we have a few near miss rocks floating by, including closer than the moon's orbit). The Tholians seem to engage in a great deal of effort to collect rocks for an anchors [(SH95.0) I think] which establishes the use some form of their webs to tow the rocks (even though they cannot normally move their webs). And of course there are the Jindarians. The gist right now is that the general capability to "reposition" asteroid for use as additional supporting bases may be more trouble than it is worth except for the Tholians. Where does your proposal end if repositioning rocks is the standard? Does every Starbase have six rocks in the surrounding hexes, and more rocks surrounding those, and even more surrounding those? Those each hex have six rocks in it due to the game scale so there are more? From a simple game point of view this has to be rejected. I am sorry.
| By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Thursday, May 02, 2024 - 05:28 pm: Edit |
Additional note. In the scenario Asteroid Operations (SH95.0) the Rocks being hauled by the Tholians are not large asteroids, and thus could not have bases built on them. Large asteroids take 400 points of damage to destroy (P3.45) and you cannot build bases on smaller asteroids. The asteroids being hauled for potential use as anchors can be destroyed for 100 points. While large asteroids can be used as anchors, this gets one into the discussion of the Tholians just happened to have a large asteroid in a convenient place. (SH95.0) only has rules for a small asteroids.
| By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Thursday, May 02, 2024 - 05:35 pm: Edit |
Personally, I think it's probably more trouble than it's worth for the Tholians as well. If I were Grand High Poobah Big Cheese of the Tholians, the standard Tholian defense would be globular web, protecting bases with maximum phaser armament and no non-phaser weapons except web generators (which are color-coded as weapons on the colored SSDs). Other deployment schemes might be considered for very rare special cases, but in my opinion they are almost always inferior to the very simple, straightforward, globular wedding cake surrounding a phaser-armed base.
Quote:The gist right now is that the general capability to "reposition" asteroid for use as additional supporting bases may be more trouble than it is worth except for the Tholians.
| By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Thursday, May 02, 2024 - 05:39 pm: Edit |
I actually asked this question in the first place primarily because I wanted to know whether the Feds, Klingons, Hydrans, et al could use this to bolster their defenses. The Tholians don't actually need the help. That's why my suggestion from my 11:59 AM post was "yes" for empires but "no" for Tholians.
| By Douglas Saldana (Dsal) on Thursday, May 02, 2024 - 05:41 pm: Edit |
You could always build a base in an asteriod field which would reduce or eliminate the need to reposition asteriods.
| By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Thursday, May 02, 2024 - 05:58 pm: Edit |
Douglas,
But would the asteroid field have other effects that might hinder the base's mission? For example, if a base is established in a certain location because it is ideal for surveillance of possible enemy approach paths, might burying the base in an asteroid field limit the range at which the base could detect enemy movements? I'm not sure.
On the other hand, if there were valuable mineral-laden asteroids and an empire wanted to mine them, a BATS might be established as a focal point for supporting forces defending the mining outposts.
| By Jeff Anderson (Jga) on Thursday, May 02, 2024 - 10:41 pm: Edit |
Just another 0.02 Quatloos from the peanut gallery, but I would respectfully disagree with the idea of using a BatS in a full fledged asteroid field.
Perhaps I'm off base on this, but I would think that BatS would tend to be used as command locations and as major logistics and communication hubs for whole theaters.
Sure, valuable mineral-laden asteroids are just that, "Valuable," but are better exploited by dedicated mining assets. Again, and this is just my view on things (if we disagree, it's better than 50/50 odds you've got the wiser view on things 
), the folks wanting to exploit the space rocks would most likely utilize the various asteroid mining freighters or, at most, a commercial platform. Those seem to be a far better utilization of resources than a BatS.
I would also worry that the mass-shadow of the asteroids MIGHT reduce the strategic sensory capability of the Special Sensors aboard the BatS, reducing its ability in one of its key functions; the command and communications hub for a sector.
For these reasons, I would suspect that the Tholians would prefer to use Web Anchors, only using rocks on the rare (?) occasion when they just haven't made enough of the specialist devices.
| By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, May 02, 2024 - 11:32 pm: Edit |
Having reviewed this question (i.e., can you "buy" an asteroid big enough to have a base or bases on it and position it, let alone several of them, around a planet or a base or something else) with SPP, and the answer is "no". You cannot magically invent an asteroid big enough to have a base on it and place it around a location that is, or is not, inside a planetary system. Assuming it would be theoretically possible to find an asteroid of convenient size that just happened to be in the perfect (easy to move) location, it would be an event so rare as to be noteworthy. So the answer is YOU CANNOT DO IT, PERIOD, END OF SENTENCE, DEAD HORSE, DO NOT BRING IT UP AGAIN. ADB could publish a scenario which reflected one of the uber-uber-uber-rare cases, but trust me, you'd be much better off buying some kind of SAM base and parking THAT in the location in question.
LIGHT HEARTED MOOD ENGAGED: Alan Trevor, if you bring this up again I will personally increase the cost of small asteroids around Tholian bases commanded by you to 10,000 BPV per asteroid. Test me, if you feel lucky.
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