Starbase Docking During Raid Phase

When a raid is launched against a hex with a starbase in it, the defending player declares which ships are docked inside the base. Units docked inside the base may not be targeted by the raid.

Any crippled ship may be docked inside up to the docking limit of the starbase.

Up to 1/4 of all other ships may be docked inside the starbase up to the docking limit of the starbase.

Battleships, FRDs, convoys and SAFs may not be docked inside the starbase.

Docking cost equals the defensive value of the ship in its undamaged state.

Docking capacity available for use is 80 points.

Docking is only available during the raid phase.

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Thoughts behind the concept

All crippled ships (up to the limit) are allowed to dock inside as they would likely be there already being repaired or waiting repair.

Only ¼ of other ships are allowed to be docked as most of the rest of those ships would be moving patrolling, protecting local assests, etc. Auxilaries, APTs, FEX, PTR, etc. are currently in this category, but could be assigned a different percentage if desired. This number could also be set at zero to reflect that a player doesn’t have control of which intact units are docked internally at the moment the raid occurs.

Battleships and FRDs cannot dock as they will not fit in the modules.

Convoys, SAFs, (and others that I might have missed) cannot be docked as they represent multiple units

Docking capacity is defined by defense factor for simplicity. While the numbers on some ships are slightly different from their SFB docking values they are close enough that it minimizes impact and avoids having to add another line entry to the SIT.

In SFB a starbase has a docking capacity of 156. 80 points was selected to reflect that the player doesn’t always have control of everything and the rest of the space in the bays might be committed to other activities (freighters offloading/loading supplies, couriers transferring VIPs, etc). This number can easily be increased to decreased to reach a desired balance. If a lower number is desired, it could be set to 32, which is roughly what can be repaired by the starbase.

Docking is only available during the raid phase as the ships would undock when an enemy fleet approaches to either fight or withdraw.

By Paul Pease (Theghost) on Monday, February 11, 2013 - 01:08 am: Edit

Additional detail of why the proposal was made

The idea was to provide a way for a starbase to protect cripples and some of the key units in the starbase hex from drone raids.

By Garth L. Getgen (Sgt_G) on Monday, February 11, 2013 - 03:52 am: Edit

If allowed during Raids, why not during normal combat?


Garth L. Getgen

By Kevin Howard (Jarawara) on Monday, February 11, 2013 - 10:36 am: Edit

Generally not needed during normal combat. You just choose to not put the cripple on the line. It might very well be in the dock at that point.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Monday, February 11, 2013 - 11:22 am: Edit

I think this has merit and should be investigated/developed further.

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Monday, February 11, 2013 - 12:11 pm: Edit

To avoid record keeping and mathematical drills why not just allow abstraction where the starbase player may exempt up to a dozen units from the raid? These units are presumed to be docked internally.

By Paul Pease (Theghost) on Monday, February 11, 2013 - 03:23 pm: Edit

I like the idea of abstracting as it keeps the rules simpler while still allowing the player to protect a number of units at a starbase, which was the idea behind the proposal.

Something along the lines of

If a raid is declared against a starbase hex, the defender may exempt up to 12 units from being the target of the raid. Battleships, FRDs, convoys and SAFs may not be selected as exempted units. The exempt units are declared after the attacker has committed to raiding the starbase hex.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Monday, February 11, 2013 - 06:53 pm: Edit

Why not allow it for Fighter and PF raids as well?

I'm not so sure I like this idea. There are some players who don't understand the SFB docking point system either because they have nevered played a starbase assualt scenario or never played SFB to start with.

My gut says this might not be a good idea, but if it is, it should be more limited to say total crippled compot of ships equal to the repair capacity of the starbase or stellarfortress in question.

Along those lines why not allow ships to be protected by Sector Bases, or Battle Stations, or Base Stations? they can dock ships externally and the SFB rules allow for the transfer of power which can be used to help repair the ship, or power other base systems.

By Paul Pease (Theghost) on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 - 01:54 am: Edit

Challenges with drone raids were the genesis of the proposal, but I wrote it generically so that it could cover raids in general. I missed putting that in the second post (mei copa). The proposal should be looked at in the larger context of protecting ships (exempting them) from raids, fighter raids, PF raids and drone raids as the same argument apply of how do you target a ship with weapons when it is docked inside the starbase/stellarfortress.

How many ships can be sheltered could range from a max of the docking capacity of the base down to a single ship. The capacity should probably be quantified as a number of ships, a number of size class equivalents or based on the undamaged defensive value of the ships instead of crippled compot as the proposal would allow undamaged units to be docked inside. I tossed out two possible numbers, one being approximately half the docking capacity, the other being approximately the repair capacity. Either number or a different number works for me as long as it improves the game and is balanced.

I left the bases that dock ships externally out as the docked ships can be targeted as they are outside the base. Its not the transfer of power or ongoing repair that exempts the ships from the raids. Its the fact that they are inside the base (starbase/stellarfortress) and cannot physically be targeted. I don't see ships at locations where they dock externally being exempt as they cannot "hide" inside the base.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 - 05:54 am: Edit

Paul, the ability to transfer power to the base is just one of the things that can be done by ships docked to bases. The assigned attrition units of said base should be able to contribute to the defense of the base. Just being able to hide inside a base shouldn't be the only thing to protecet a ship.

Here's my main reason for not liking this proposal as it currently is. Raids can only target the outer most escort of anything escorted, so I chose to protect my outer most escorts. Unless you have more carrier groups than the number of allowed units to be proected you can't remove an escort. You can't target FCRs in the middle of CVE groups as they aren't the outermost escort even when the group in question is a Kzinti CVE+FCR+CLE. Uncrippled ships with a defense of factor of 8 or better will be immmune to raids until fast drones double the drone raid attack factors. Which the best raid that can currently be mustered is 14 before fast drones, and 28 after. The best fighter raid that could be mustered is the Hydran IC with a group of 14 and 16 with a Mega Fighter Marker, which beats any PF raid which is only 12.

The current proposal just makes it way to easy to protect too many good units making the raid worthless.

By Lawrence Bergen (Lar) on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 - 06:47 am: Edit

I still like it. It will not be the 'end all be all' fix to raids either. It will add depth to the SB and up bases. It will add only a limited amount of record keeping done only at the point in the raid where required. This should not lead to conversations of "My ships can land on planets so..."


1. There are not that many SBases and zero SFortress's so in reality this has a underlying limit as to what is protected.
2. This will (and should) be further limited by the bases capacity to bring units inside.
3. By giving players another reason to take SB down vs passing them by promotes war and death (it is a wargame afterall).
4. I will say in the early historical game this is pro-coalition because they have the ships to hit a SB outright while the Alliance uses the raid to strike back. They will have to look elsewhere to strike...

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 - 09:16 am: Edit

What is the correlation of F&E uncrippled defensive values to SFB docking points? Can someone run the numbers for a DN/BCH/CA/CW/DW/FF/LAV/SAV units?

If the correlation is close (and I think it is) then we can swag this at 72 defensive factors. But that involves a little more work and time then just counting 12 units.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 - 11:59 am: Edit

For whatever it may be worth, SFB already has Docking Point Costs for various units and ships (C13.3) this may serve as a starting point.

By Paul Pease (Theghost) on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 - 12:02 pm: Edit

Thomas - I'm not sure I am following you. If only the outermost escort is docked inside the base how is it performing its escort function? It's not available to fire defensively or interpose itself between the target and the raid. It may as well be destroyed or be in the next F&E hex for all the good it does inside the base if the ship it is escorting is outside.

If the outermost escort is placed inside the base, the group would effectively be broken as it has been split up. Since the escort is missing, the next escort in would be a valid target or if there is no next escort, the ship/unit being escorted would be a valid target.

An alternative to treating the escort(s) as missing would be to require the player to shelter the whole group or none of it.

The intent was not to make raids worthless. The thought was to provide players with a location where they could protect a few key units from raids, with the limit being it must be at a starbase/stellarfortresses. Currently the raiding player can more or less look across the map and pick the "optimum" target to be attacked by the raid. This would provide the defender the ability to limit that if he is willing to take those units back to starbases/stellarfortresses. I think it can be tweaked by setting the docking limit such that a player can protect some of his forces, but not all of them.

I think this is only a small piece of the raid discussion as it only addresses starbases/stellarfortress hexes and then only partially. The ships remaining outside should probably have some benefits from being in the base hex (inside its sensor network and protected by its "guns"), but I think that would be a good topic for another thread.

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 - 12:53 pm: Edit

ADM:

If something like this is going to be successfully proposed it needs to be abstracted. We can't ask players to refer to yet another chart/table as it adds a level that really isn't needed. Unit count is the simplest followed by adding up defensive factors.

By Douglas E. Lampert (Dlampert) on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 - 01:35 pm: Edit

Defensive factors may make it too easy to shelter auxiliaries. Low defensive compot, high value, easy target since they're slow.

I'd rather go with ship count. Simpler, and if someone WANTS to shelter 7+ DN from a raid then I'd tend to say there's something really badly wrong with the raid rules.

By A. David Merritt (Adm) on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 - 02:08 pm: Edit

Hence my comment about a starting point. A Starbase has 156 DPs in SFB, but that space will also have various tug pods, ships being repaired, serviced, etc.

Klingon ships for examples

Ship	DPs	Factors
B10	36	20
C8	12	12
C7	8	10
D7	7	8
D6	7	7-8
D5W	7	8
D5	6	7
F5W	4	6
F5	4	5
E4	3	4

Note that except for the B-10, DPs and Combat Factors are very close together, for simplicities sake, assume they are one and the same. If you wish to dock a dozen or so ships, take the D5's 7 Combat Factors multiply it by 12 equals 84. Round this up to 85, and state that SBs have 85 DPs, and use the uncrippled combat factor of the base hull to determine how many ships they may hold.

Edit, Auxiliaries comment posted while I was trying to figure out how to format a table.

Simply state that Large Auxiliaries have a Combat Factor of 8 for docking purposes, and Small Auxiliaries have a Combat Factor of 4.

By Paul Pease (Theghost) on Tuesday, February 12, 2013 - 02:08 pm: Edit

Overview of the seven main combatants in the GW. Caveats 1) the docking points came from the early Capt Edition Books as I do not have G3. 2) I don't have a listing for the Hydran DW or Klingon F5W docking costs as I don't have those.

There are three general goupings. The Gorns are the outlier at an average of +2 over docking cost, with one ship being +4. Four of the empires (Fed, Klingon, Rom and Kzin) are averaging around +1 over docking cost and two of the empires (Lyran and Hydran) are averaging around docking cost.


Federation/ Defense/ Docking/ Delta
DNG/ 12/ 11/ +1
BC/ 10/ 9/ +1
CA/ 8/ 8/ 0
NCL/ 7/ 6/ +1
DW/ 6/ 5/ +1
FF/ 5/ 4/ +1

Klingon/ Defense/ Docking/ Delta
C8/ 12/ 12/ 0
C7/ 10/ 8/ +2
D7/ 8/ 7/ +1
D5/ 7/ 6/ +1
F5W/ 6/
F5/ 5/ 4/ +1

Romulan/ Defense/ Docking/ Delta
Con/ 13/ 12/ +1
NH/ 10/ 8/ +2
FH/ 9/ 8/ +1
SP/ 7/ 7/ 0
SK/ 5/ 4/ +1
SEH/ 4/ 4/ 0

Gorn/ Defense/ Docking/ Delta
DN/ 14/ 12/ +2
BCH/ 12/ 8/ +4
BC/ 10/ 8/ +2
HD/ 7/ 6/ +1
BD/ 6/ 4/ +2
DD/ 5/ 4/ +1


Lyran/ Defense/ Docking/ Delta
DN/ 12/ 14/ -2
BC/ 10/ 11/ -1
CA/ 8/ 7/ +1
CW/ 7/ 7/ 0
DW/ 6/ 5/ +1
FF/ 4/ 4/ 0

Kzinti/ Defense/ Docking/ Delta
DN/ 12/ 12/ 0
BCH/ 10/ 8/ +2
BC/ 8/ 7/ +1
CM/ 7/ 6/ +1
DW/ 6/ 4/ +2
FF/ 4/ 4/ 0

Hydran/ Defense/ Docking/ Delta
Pal/ 12/ 12/ 0
OV/ 10 10/ 0
RN/DG/ 8/ 9/ -1
HR/TR/ 7/ 7/ 0
DW/ 6/
FF/ 4/ 4/ 0

Aux/ Defense/ Docking Delta
AxCVA – LAV/ 6/ 6/ 0
AxCVL – SAV/ 3/ 3/ 0

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - 04:41 am: Edit

I'm saying that if a total unit count is allowed to be protected by a SB then the most likely targets of drone raids will be protected. This makes the drone raid worthless in my opinoin. A dozen ships sounds pretty high and cheesey to me. I'm not totally against this proposal because in the abstract I actually like the concept. My issue is with the execution of it. Just because you have 30 or 40 ships in a starbase hex doesn't mean you 20 of them located directly at the starbase all the time when your at war.

By Paul Pease (Theghost) on Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - 01:06 pm: Edit

The starting proposal allowed all cripples to be docked inside up to the docking limit, which was proposed as being at 80, with the identification that it could be set lower to 32 to approximately match the repair limit of the base. The second part of the proposal was to only allow 1/4 of the non crippled units in the hex to be eligible to be sheltered again, subject to the docking limit.

I think allowing all the cripples to be eligible to be at the base is appropriate as why would you have them anywhere else. 1/4 of the other units seem appropriate as it would reflect that many of the ships would be doing other things away from the base. Under the original proposal, if there were 40 uncrippled ships in the hex, 10 of them could be eligible to be sheltered inside the base subject to docking limits

Players are players, the defender like a real life admiral is going to try to protect his most valuable units. The attacker also like a real life admiral wants to destroy the most valuable unit.

I don't know how I can answer your concerns as most of the comments are variations of this doesn't work because it will destroy raids. That is a hard comment to resolve in a vacuum without some counter ideas of what might keep raids viable while preserving the proposal.

I'll draft up a revision to the proposal with various options that I can see and post it later today.

By Chris Upson (Misanthropope) on Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - 02:20 pm: Edit

i don't see at all the validity of the argument "if you can't drone raid into the most fortified location in the galaxy, drone raids aren't any good". nobody advances that argument about military raids, do they?

but even accepting that syllogism provisionally, if drone raids only work because catastrophic defender stupidity is hard-coded into the rules, then drone raids SHOULDN'T work. stupid races don't build starships!

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - 02:21 pm: Edit

Paul, I'm not saying your idea is invalid or without merit. What I'm asking for is a reasonable limit to the number of units that be protected. I disagree with 12 being a reasonable limit. I believe that the current proposal of 12 is too high.

I know that the special raids currently published are broken. I have no problem with a solution to protect some units. What I don't like currently, is I see this as a way to protect almost all of the vulnerable units all the time from drone raids. And that is not possible either.

By Chuck Strong (Raider) on Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - 03:13 pm: Edit

Turtle:

In SFB a SB has an internal docking capacity of 156 so even with 12 units at 12 DP each your going to be fine. Most units are in the 6-8 DP range so 12 units protected is not unreasonable.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - 03:27 pm: Edit

It is unreasonable when it takes all the good legimate targets of a drone or fighter/PF raid and protects them all.

Atleast the Klingon SBA or STBA requires the oppurtunity cost of putting a SFG kit on a ship. Yes, I know the SBA or STBA can literally protect everything in the hex. But you still pay for that by using the SFG Kit.

The most likely place I see someone having more than 12 good raid targets is the in the capital hex, and the capital hex itself means most people won't launch a raid there because of the increased chance of interception under the current rules.

By Paul Pease (Theghost) on Wednesday, February 13, 2013 - 03:59 pm: Edit

I am brainstorming a variation to the proposal in an effort to address what I think is Turtles concern (that the defender can pick all the key units/viable targets and hide them). I don't have time to finish it at the moment, I will try to get it up tonight.