Archive through April 15, 2003
Star Fleet Universe Discussion Board: Federation & Empire: F&E PRODUCTS:
F&E Future Products (Far Term):
F&E Andro War:
Archive through April 15, 2003
All that not needing to stop means is that a ship using a DISDEV should not be itself penalized (ie no 1:1 directing etc). At most fleet ranges, offensive disdev use is only around 20% successful (per use), and the effect is generally only about 20 extra damage to the target. Remember Andros have very limited control over enemy ships when displacing them, nor can they displace a target more than 6 hexes (at best one range bracket). Now it will get used a few times per battle, but I would feel any major offensive use with an success rate of signficantly more than 50% to be unrepresentative. Scott's table that had the minor effect more frequently looked reasonable, if the 4-5 result were only a penalty to the offensive compot (disrupted formation less optimal range).
How about representing DISDEVS by the following (in addition to the current interactions with web and ISC echelons) :
No pursuit of Andro forces
No formation slot
Scouts in the free scout box can be directed at 2:1 (they still receive the mauler protection and they scout defensive bonus).
The main defensive effects would then be reflected in the damage absorbtion/dissipation (as described in the current scenarios--see way back at the beginning of this discussion).
DAS is right. The Disdev works out of any arc, at various ranges, and the Andro doesn't have to stop. The SFG requires the ship to be stopped (and not blown up incidentally) within range 5.
The Disdev is much more effective than a SFG.
Also, sure - all motherships have disdev, but a given fleet can have a maximum of 4 rolls (assuming 2 DOMS) but more likely 2 rolls would be common. Given that they may want to use 1 or more for defense, that's not so overwhelming.
failure rates are much higher for Disdev tehn for SFG, but it also used a lot more and the ship is usually not nearly as vunerable as a SFG ship is
Edward, I don't have a problem with Dom's being almost impossible to get, after all we have otehr ships (B-10) in the same catagory, they can be hit over significant defenses.
re: andros really clearing all PA panels between battles.
if we really want to have that then we also have to recognise that galactics repair all shields between battles as well. this would help explain the low damage % that is scored and one possible way to work this is to have the galactis all get -3 DIR or something like that with the extra damage vanishing into the PA panels.
re: PA panels.
1. SIDS when we started talking about SIDS on andros we got thinking about the fact that the SIDS scored on the PA panels should be easy to repair but the ones on the ship should not be. (and even a ship that has taken some 'internal' SIDS should still be able to clear it's panels which becomes VERY hard to track. also small ships can't take 4 point SIDS but do have PA panels. I made one post that did 2-point SIDS steps which would work on all the andro ships, but it was just more confusing then tracking individual points. SIDS have the same problem as my PS clearing proposal about the length of battles.
- they add the problem of figuring out what to do after the battle (repair all SIDS, convert then to crippled, or?? none of these is really right with some SIDS representing PA panels and others internals).
- we don't have SIDS on other equally large ships (BB of any race) so why should the andros have them? the argument about PA panels works for why you need something beyond cripple/kill steps, but tracking various levels of crippled is an issue.
- repairing 1 SIDS per round isn't really right for all sizes of ships. a Dom may have 6 4-point SIDS before being crippled, but a COQ would only have 2. letting each of these ships repair 1 SIDS/round is very uneven, clearing 1/3 of PA panels adjusts to ships of all sizes.
2. PA panels are fully cleared between rounds and it becomes damage absorbsion
- no way to drive large motherships out of a battle
- fleets below a fairly high threshold are no threat to a mothership. at this point the mothership doesn't even have to deploy the sat-ships, just keep fighting until the galactic fleet runs.
+ simple, no recordkeeping
3. PA panels are partially cleared between rounds if the ship remains in combat, fully cleared if the ship stays out of combat. (the fully clearing eliminates the need to track the points for all but a handful of ships)
- fleets with several backups can cycle ships in effectivly turning this into #1, but requiring many more andros in one place (my understanding is that the andros didn't have that many ships, so while they can overwelm a few locations it's at the cost of letting the galactics win in the other locations)
- some recordkeeping needed for ships in combat (or all ships in the hex if panels aren't fully cleared outside of combat)
+ ability to wear large ships down over time and force them out of combat
re: displacement device chart.
if it's impossible to loose a Dom without it useing it's Disdev then the andro would never use it.
make a chart something like (side getting the advantage picks one of the options on a given roll)
1. mothership can be directed on at 1:1/all galactics get formation bonus
2. ship in the support echalon can be directed on at 2:1/mothership gets formation bonus
3. ship in formation looses it's formation bonus./all sat-ships get formation bonus
4-5. andro can direct on a random galactic ship not in formation at 1:1/random ship has it's O-compot reduced to 0
6. andro can direct on a galactic ship of it's choice at 1:1/ship of the andros choice get's it's O-compot reduced to 0
the andro can roll 1 time per round for every 2 DD in the fleet (2xdom would get 4 rolls) even if a 1 is rolled it's still fairly hard to direct on the large motherships
Would it be best to keep the rules vs. Andros as simple as possible?
Some (no claim on merit) simple ideas:
Andro Defensive abilities:
1. No Direct Damage on Andro Ships. Ever.
2. All damage pre 185 (or some such date) is halved.
Andro Offensive abilities:
1. Andro can Direct Damage multiple ships. Always.
2. Any ship in battle can be Direct Damaged at 1:1. Increase to 2:1 at above date.
3. Any ship in the battle HEX can be targeted by Andro at 2:1 for Direct Damage. Increase to 3:1 at above date.
[Note: These suggestions imply no intelligence on the part of the author]
Kent, the key problem with your ideas is that without taking the PA panel into account in some special way the andros just don't have staying power to fight galactic fleets.
useing the example that was posted a couple archives ago, a late war galactic fleet will have a carrier or two, with 20-30 fighters around as backup and over a dozen small ships (CW/DW
or such that are efficiant to repair)
meanwhile the andros will have a handful of motherships with the sat-ships they carry, no spares
without some attrition capibility the andros can only take damage on the motherships or sat-ships, both of which will need to be replaced before they can be used again.
the only way to make this work is to giv eextremely cheep (or free) replacements for sat-ships and a lot of missionary type FCR motherships to carry spare sat-ships around for the medium or larger battles
You know, we need this 'absorbtion' ability (somehow)
Or
To have each individual Sat-Ship (isntead of just Factors) and a self-repair for the Sat-Ships.
For the Andro's to have the "Depth" they need to compete with GP fleets.
Just an observation.
Scott, exactly.
I'm not sure self repair of the sat-ships would do it by itself, if I the galactic admiral know that any sat-sips I damage will get repaired and come back I will just direct on them and let the remaining damage do what it will. this will kill one sat-ship per round and the leftover daamge may kill more (it will definantly kill more as sat-ships run low)
consider the Dom+6xCobra against a 100 compot fleet (32 damage/round)
no damage absorbion, free repairs of sat ships each round
Dom 24/12
Cobra 6/3
round 1 kill one cobra for 18, two self cripple and get repaired for 12 (leaving 2 plus points
round 2 don't direct, the 34 points of damage will cripple all 5 cobras for 30 and kill another one with 1 plus point left
round 3 don't direct the 33 points of damage will cripple all 4 cobras for 24 and kill 3 of them
round 4 don't direct, the 32 points of damage will kill the ramaining cobra for 9 and be enough to force the Dom to self cripple (with 1 minus point)
a smaller galacic fleet that only does 24/round would have to spend an extra two round directing on sat-ships before letting the damage fall to finish them off quickly, it will take 5 rounds for the 75 compot fleet to cripple a Dom instead of 4 rounds for the 100 compot fleet
even free full self repair of all sat-ships isn't enough to really make the andros work. and it still doesn't solve the problem of driving the large motherships off the line
A couple of random thoughts:
* Remember that Andro motherships have Repair boxes and can use these on SatShips during combat. This would allow some SatShip damage to be repaired between combat rounds.
* Units defending a planet under attack by the Andros have one HUGE threat to watch out for: being displaced into the planet.
I like the use of SFG-type rules for the DisDev!!!
now if you add another mothership as backup then it takes significantly longer before the primary fleet falls apart becouse you have to blow up all the other sat-ships as well, but if you have an intruder with your Dom you then have two choices
1. put only the Dom on the line, but fight for an additional 3 rounds before retreating.
2. put both on the line and risk a good roll crippling the intruder, still gaining the extra three rounds of combat, but also doing more damage in the process.
in many cases I wouldn't risk the intruder and would just retreat after 6-7 rounds with basicly no risk to my mothership, pickup new sat-ships and repeat next turn
and remember that while the andro is running through sat-ships the galactic is running theough fighters for a round or two so for the 6 rounds a intruder/Dom stay and fight it's probably 2-3 rounds on fighters and 3-4 rounds of crippling BG ships that are cheap to repair. if the intruder isn't on the line the Dom only has 60 compot for the first 4 rounds and then drops further.
Greg,
1. even free repair of all sat ships isn't enough
2. if you are defending a planet you just don't get really close to the planet while the andro is close.
remember the andro only displaces you the direction he wants to 1/3 of the time and the distance he wants to 1/6 of the time (IIRC both are 1d6 rolls with the andro picking a prefered direction) so you have a 1/18 chance of getting displaced into the planet, with a very small chance of being displaced into a situation where you can't avoid ramming the planet before you can sideslip/turn. it's something to watch for, but hardly a significant threat to someone catching for it.
My take on Andro abilities inF&E:
I could go either way on treating the sat ships as fighters - it's clean and neat, but doesn't let the galactics run them out of sat ships as can occur durng the SFB Op Unity campaign.
Andros would be single-sided ships with appropriately increased defence factors (the few that survive a substantial SFB hit past panels are accounted for by the salvage rule).
On the flip side, print an identical mark on all motherships (plus the Python and bases). This is the side used on the map, only the Andro player may look at the counter outside of combat. They also have a largish quantity of dummy counters which will reduce as Galactics find parts of the RTN and gain experience fighting Andros.
They have a movement allowance of just 4, but cannot pin or be pinned. Galactics can react and reserve to fight Andros, but won't know what they're fighting until the combat phase.
Andro presence of any kind in a province at the start of a player turn indicates the RTN is in that province.
Andro's in the cloud can deploy to anywhere in the RTN before moving; return to the cloud by strat move from a RTN province.
Andros can withdraw before combat without pursuit even when the attacker, but may have to reveal an actual base in the province to do so (dependent on die roll and number of withdrawing ships).
Andros can also reinforce an ongoing combat from the cloud between combat rounds, with a similar chance of revealing the RTN.
Andros get partial income from any province where they have a presence, full income if they are the only presence. Similarly, Andro raids on enemy territory can earn them EP.
OK
Another try at Andros.
Suggested Factors.
attack-defence (PA) / degraded attack-defence (PA)
DOM
20-15 (13) / 16-10 (8)
INT
12-10 (8) / 9-7 (6)
VIP
5-3 (4) / 4-2 (4)
COB
8-5 (4) / 5-4 (4)
MAM
11-7 (6) / 7-6 (4)
Wierd? This is what I'm thinking.
Andromedan ships cannot be crippled in the normal sense of the word - they are simply combat degraded.
Andromedan motherships are always in the form bonus box as long as they have one satship left which is not in the hanger. Any mothership with 5 or more Satships out can only be directed on at a 4:1 ratio.
To kill an Andromedan ship (not in form box) by dirdam you simply need to do double its current (PA rating + defense rating). The factors on the other side of the counter do not matter. You cannot use non-X mauling. You may subsequently direct damage on a second Andromedan ship at a 3:1 ratio. This second ship cannot be a mothership.
Likewise, the Andromedan player can self-destroy ships by taking the (PA rating + dafense rating) in damage. Again, the factors on the other side of the counter do not matter.
Otherwise, the Andromedan player will normally elect to take damage on panels. Each Andromedan ship can take damage up to its panel strength. If it does so, or takes damage up to any fraction of its panel strength, it is flipped to its degraded side (which has lower attack factors, and uses the rear SFB panel rating). If a degraded Andromedan ship takes panel damage, it is destroyed on a 5 or 6 (one dice) at the end of the battleround. An andomedan can only take one batch of panel damage per battleround (i.e you cannot take panel damage on a fresh ship, degrade it, and take panel damage again on the degraded ship).
Dominator class motherships can spend 1EP between battlerounds repairing degraded satships.
Other motherships can spend 0.5 EP
(alternatively, this could be based on number of bays - 1.5Ep for 9, 1EP for 6, 0.5Ep for 3, 0EP for 1).
Disdevs - loose suggestions.
Each 2 Disdevs on a mothership gives the following options. (first two after combat resolution)
1) Instead of losing a degraded ship on a 5-6 when you take panel damage on it, you only lose it on a 6.
OR
2) On a modified roll of 6+ (one dice), any ship the galactic powers direct on is degraded instead of destroyed. Each extra Disdev option used gives a +1 modifier. If the ship was degraded, you need a modified roll of 7 or more.
OR
3) Some way of reducing (?halving) a GP ship compot not in the form box. on a 4-6? this would take place before combat resolution.
It should be easy to integrate energy modules here somewhere.
Andromedan motherships are cheap to repair, but need to get back to a base. Satships would be simply repaired by using a few EP; the mothership would not need to get back to a base (as it has its own repair facilities for its satships, just needing some resupply).
COuldn't we pleaase have the Andros easier to use in F&E than they are in SFB? Just give them large defensive factors.
Chris.
Well, I can simplify the above without too much difficulty. Miss out the Disdevs for one, and simply say a degraded ando that takes panel damage must be then be self-destroyed.
Once I've done that, it's not really any more difficult than GP ships - just different.
The following would result.
You take (panel) to "cripple" or (panel + def) to destroy. If your ships is already "crippled" and you want to take damage on it, it must be destroyed.
Otherwise, this simply means that Andros can repair satships between battlerounds, and in general are very cheap to repair (2.5EP to repair a DOM, 0.5 EP for any satship).
See, most things in F&E are abstracted, much for the point of staying simple.
If we increase the Andro ship's defence factors, then all we have to worry about is, healthy, crippled, or dead. This can be an abstraction, as Andros take a lot more to cripple, but once crippled are easy to kill. So, the healthy side has a larger then normal defense factor, the crippled side has a smaller than normal defense factor. So, maybe the DOM is 20-24(24)/10(24).
Make them exempt to non-X mauling.
Give them the ability to perform repairs up to X number between rounds.
Also, Andro attirion factors should be exempt from the X-ship attrition, as they are not fighters but actuall ships.
I have a thought on the satellite ships. Maybe this will fly with Steve maybe not.
Print on the mothership counters the number of SS bays the ship carries. Then allow the players to decide if they want to play with satellite ship counters (that they make themselves) or use SS factors equal to 6 times the number of bays. This way the players that want SS counters can have them and nobody else needs bother.
Dom = 24(6)
INT = 15(3)
Coq = 9(1)
hehh heheh
DAS, your Attack factors of the Sat-Ships are way to high, considering a Viper has like 1 TRL, Cobta 2 TRL, and Mam 3 TRL.
So more realistic Attack factors of sat Ships are:
Viper 4
Cobra 5 not 8
Python 6
Mamba 7 not 11
I don't know what your justification of formation bonus at 4:1 for Motherships of 5+ Sat Ships is, but to kill it by your method it'll take 56 damage (15 defense+13 PA * 2=28). Possibly quite do-able with a "Super Quality battle force" that has an X-Cruiser.
Personally, I'd rather have a higher Defense and no special rules for a 4:1 formation bonus.
To repeat, high uncrippled, low crippled defense factors make self kills of Andros unlikely (i.e. it will NEVER happen), yet the claimed goal of such a change is more kills and fewer cripples.
Thus the high uncrippled/low crippled defense as a model of easily killed Andros is dead wrong.
If you want a fleet that will NEVER suffer an actual kill; low crippled defense is half of what you need to do. (The other half is effective imunity to Directed Damage, which some of the Andro proposals come close to.)
Make a Cobra a 6-5/3-4 unit and you will see units that fight as if they rarely crippled but often blow up (i.e., sort of like real Andros), make it a 6-8/3-1 unit that is imune to persuite and the only time one will be killed is by Directed Damage.
I still like my earlier proposal that Andros who are crippled but not killed in a round roll a d6 and are killed by panel cascade on a 1 or 2, while the crippled defense factor is increased to 3/4ths the uncrippled defense factor. This makes Andros very hard to Direct on for a kill, and encourages the Andro player to kill his ships (for the extra crippled defense factor) rather than cripple them and risk the cascade.
DougL
the problem with giving the andros a high defense value is that it would require a large number of FCR type motherships to be around to feed sat-ships forward to the combat motherships
make cobras be 6-12 ships and have a Dom+6xCob fight a battle against a 75 compot fleet (~24 points of damage per round)
each round the andro will suffer 2 sat-ships crippled. the andro has 6 sat-ships so in 3 rounds he will have to start killing sat-ships and will have to start taking damage on the Dom on round 5.
meanwhile the galactic fleet will be taking slightly less damage per round (the andro only has ~60 compot to start will and goes down each round as it suffers cripples) but will be taking the damage on fighters that get replaced for free or battlegroup ships that are cheap to repair
so even if you make a cobra take as much to kill as a DN (something that is definantly not in line with SFB) the andros will need backup sat-ships to fight for any length of time.
now the problem listed above can be counered by giving the andros more motherships, but this will also mean that the weaker motherships that you give them will seldom, if ever, be on the line to be targeted. a galactic carrier group, say the F-NVH is a nasty group, but it can be driven off the line for this battle by directing on the outer escort to make the entire group vunerable to directed damage. with the andros the only way to do this is to manage to damage the mothership (damageing the sat-ships will just mean more fed forward from the backup motherships)
Also a long series of battles with low-compot/low-BIR should result in no damage at all to the andros (long range sniping is perfect for the PA panels) but by just raising the D-compot of the ships you end up just accumulating plus points and crippling and killing ships.
these lead us to look for ways to have the andros ignore some of the damage each round without making them immune to damage in the process.
David S.
your degraded proposal is interesting. I think you give the sat-ships to high a compot, and I think you have the chance of crippling/killing a ship that takes PA panel damage is to high. with PA panels you may not need to repair sat-ships in combat, but just allow the repairs to be done without needing to go back to base or useing a repair ship. Does your proposal have the PA panels cleared completely between rounds?
I didn't mean to stop conversation here 
for those joining us late the CL proposal for the andros was to have the motherships only as counters with satships as factors (Dom being 24(32) for example)
there are a couple problems with this that we are trying to figure out answers for.
1. fleet depth (see post above) in short, the andros take damage on ships while the galactics take it on fighters
2. while making sat-ships into factors makes for far fewer counters nobody has been able to figure out how to represent the different capibilities and sizes of sat-ships (at least not to the general satisfaction of those here). for size you have FF/DD/CA. for type you have normal, scout, trooop, mauler, energy module, MWP (essentially PF)
this is why we are talking about sat-ship counters and PA panels for motherships. if aa simpler answer can be found without adding rules that make it even more complicated then great!
along the way we have talked about races that tend to do unusually poor against the andros (seeking weapons against high-speed targets) and possible ways to represent the RTN
Edward,
That's what I have done in Cyberboard: I started with the already published factors and replaced satellite factors with the number of hangar (fromm SSD) between parenthesis:
Thus a DOM is 24(6H)/12
Note: it was before the introduction of AO which use the letter H for F111 or heavy fighters. We could replace it with the letter S (for satellite ships)
While doing my counters I felt upon some other problems:
- Do we want the MWP seen in J2 ? If yes how do we do without too much recordkeeping ?
I think an MWP could be 1.5/None (similar to a F111) and 4 MWP would fit in a Hangar. Thus 4xMWP is still 6 factors, but they give more flexibility than Satellite ships.
- Do we want Energy modules ? If yes what can they do ?
- Do we want PSS ? If yes what can they do ?
Tony,
Great minds encounter: I thought VIP 4/2 COB 5/3 PYT 7/4 MAM 8/4
I’ve had some more thoughts on the Andros, another development of my previous ideas based on ppl’s comments. This is a long post again, but it is mainly semantics.
There are no extra rolls or procedures involved in this. Extra rolls could be introduced for Disdev effects (but are not really necessary).
This is *much* simpler. [x] = hanger (y) = Disdevs.
DOMs have four damage steps, INTs three. As there will be relatively few motherships left in a highly damaged state, this will not be too onerous on counters.
Viper factors 4-5 / 3-4
Cobra factors 6 / 5
Mamba factors 8 / 7
COQ factors 9-8 [1](1) / 7[1]
INT factors 11 [3](1) / 9[3] (1)/ 7[3]
DOM factors 16 [6](2) / 14 [6](2) / 12 [6](1) / 10 [6](1)
Dirdam Execution.
Two directed damage attacks are allowed against Andromedan fleets.
1) To destroy.
To destroy an Andromedan ship by dirdam, you need to do double
(current defense + defense of next lower step)
Ignore the effects of any more steps the Andromedan may have left.
If an Andromedan ship is already on its last step, you need to do triple its current defense (only) to destroy it.
e.g. A viper takes 18 to destroy by DD, 12 if it is “crippled”
Motherships that have any satships left require triple and quadruple damage in the same situations respectively. (form bonus)
e.gs A Dom takes
90 to destroy by DD if it’s fully intact. (60 no satship)
78 if it is crippled-1, (52 no satship)
66 if it is crippled-2 (44 no satship)
40 if it is crippled-3 (30 no satship)
(PS this may be a bit much - could lower DOM factors a little).
2) To reduce by one step.
This requires double the current defense of the Andromedan ship, triple if it is a mothership with satships left.
Normal Damage execution.
For satships, damage is taken exactly as for galactic power ships.
On taking a second damage step in the same combat round, a mothership is then immediately destroyed.
Repair
For every 3 hanger bays a mothership has, it has 1EP worth of field repair it can use between battlerounds on any of its satships. It can repair another mothership’s satships if both itself and the owning mothership are witheld from combat in the next battleround.
Note:
These factors and rulings reflect that the andros very rarely get “crippled” in SFB. Instead, they take small numbers of internals from PA panel leaks, and have significant PA panel degradation. Successive damage in F&E on an Andro ship reflects this. The extra damage steps for a mothership and repair between battlerounds reflect the ability of PA panels to take and dissipate a tremendous amount of damage over a long battle. However, the Andros are still vulnerable to Directed damage.
So, the damage steps on an Andromedan ship do not truly represent a crippled state, more a panel degraded state. As such, their defense still remains high. While their weapons will be more or less unaffected, there are reductions in compot because the panel degraded state will force the Andromedan ship to stay out at a longer range.