The Lyran CC also gets 3 extra power (6 IMP vs 3). Still wonky though that the CC gets rated as 9 offense vs 8 for the CA solely on the basis of a ca 8% increase in available power. I'll buy the defense increase on the basis of 20-some extra shield boxes, but increasing offense with no improvement in weapons?

By Kevin Howard (Jarawara) on Monday, January 22, 2018 - 09:43 am: Edit

Yeah the Fed CA (full refits) to the CC is only 2 Flag, 2 Phasers and two APR to power it. An increase to firepower, but hardly worth the defense going from 8/4 to 9/5.

Unless we're talking about Heavy Command Cruisers, in which case, I don't know the details - what is the Lyran CCH got?

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Monday, January 22, 2018 - 11:55 am: Edit

For the Lyran CC, you're comparing the CA+p to the CC+. F&E is more abstract, so really should you should compare the typical Lyran CA in Y168 to the Lyran CC in Y168, when the general war began. We pick this date, because F&E explicitly subsumes continuing refits among the various empires to be roughly equal in the abstract sense - meaning that while a Y185 CA is more capable than a Y168 cruiser, they both remain compot 8 because they are comparable across the empires.

Per the Lyran "R" rules in SFB, "many" CAs had the + refit. However, only the first CA had the p refit by Y168 and this refit wasn't in general service until Y170. Thus, realistically, we should compare the CA+ to the CC.

The + refit adds 12 shields to the rears (4 to each). That's it.

Over the CA+, the CC+ has these extra shields PLUS 22 additional shields in the front, 6 extra shields in the back, 2 extra phaser-1's, 2 shuttles, and 3 extra impulse. So, overall, something like 20% increase in firepower, almost 30 total shields, two more shuttles, and 8% more power. This is a very substantial increase in capability over the CA+.

So, yeah, I think the CC being 9 is totally justified over the CA being 8. As for the P refit, sure, it narrows the gap some, but F&E simply does not track small changes in ship firepower, preferring to choose simplicity in an already complex game.

By Timothy Linden (Timlinden) on Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - 04:25 pm: Edit

I'd rather convert all my Lyran CA's to DN. A lot more expensive, but a lot more useful. And the coalition can afford to do so if they want.
CC's are easy to direct kill, DN's much less so. Once the coalition starts fielding 6+ DN's on combat lines all over the place, the Alliance has significant problems dealing with that. The Lyrans can end up with more than 40 DN by late game. The last one I played they finished (T25) with 29, after losing some 17 odd by direct damage over capitals and better defended starbases.

Tim.

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - 04:51 pm: Edit

I personally find that strategy takes too long to show results. My good CAs are going in to the yards to become DNs and my main battle line ships are CWs and CLs with fewer and fewer CAs and that is just not strong enough in the early game in my experience. I generally take my less useful CLs and build BCs instead. Not sure now though, the dividends late game from your method might be worth it.

By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar2) on Tuesday, January 23, 2018 - 06:43 pm: Edit

Personally, I split the difference, when building a DN, convert a CL (build BC, convert DN), so all reserves leave with both a DN and BC. Changes after Y180 building BCPs and converting CVs to SCSs...

By Timothy Linden (Timlinden) on Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - 04:22 pm: Edit

It is slower, but not a lot, especially after the Lyrans build a major conversion shipyard. You also only need to rotate back 1 or 2 CA's a turn for the conversions.

The real benefit does come later when lines of DN's and either a battlegroup or some carriers/fighters leave any open space type battles for the alliance as having no good targets. Minimizes counterattack/attrition options for the alliance.

Battle tugs and Klingon C8's and battle/drone tugs can speed up the deployment of those sort of lines, as those fewer and more vulnerable ships can take the protected command slot. And you can get one such line fairly early - and then just deploy more as you mass the DN's.

Such lines also tend to help take and hold more territory a bit faster than weaker lines do, which also helps speed up the return on the investment and catch up on any earlier gains you might have lost out on. Such lines pretty well much guarantee you can take both the Kzinti and Hydran homeworlds by turn 10, which also makes a large difference mid game. The game is a 34 turn game after all, with the Coalition having the initiative assured for pretty well much the first half. Getting a better position for the start of exhaustion can easily mean the alliance is too far behind to successfully come back and win.

I just generally found doing this worked a lot better than I expected, and generally better than the other options for me.

Tim.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Wednesday, January 24, 2018 - 04:51 pm: Edit

Tim

Whats to stop you converting the bulk of the CA's to CC's over the first turn or two.... and using them.

And when you want to convert 1 or 2 to a DN - you send the non-converted couple of CA's or CC's later in the game back to 408 as normal?

(i.e. Keeping say 6 CA's is probably sufficient to cover 3 turns of conversions and over 3 turns, 1 Ep's might not be 'recouped' - but 4-6 turns is probably the break point and then you are in profit).

If the CC is crippled 4 times - the cost of the conversion is paid for through better damage capacity taking.

I would also say a CC is a lot more difficult to kill* than a CC (28 v 24) - and if it does die - you save the equivalent of 1 Ep in repairs (4 damage not being taken) AND get the extra Salvage.

* - Kzinti compot seems to drop with every expansion...so unless your over a SB - 28 is not easy for the first half dozen turns!

And the extra potential damage you do is 'free'.

So that 1 Ep spent seems very good value - even if the CC is converted to a DN.

By Timothy Linden (Timlinden) on Thursday, January 25, 2018 - 04:46 pm: Edit

There is no real reason not to, I suppose. It does cost that 1 ep more, when you are already doing a reasonably expensive amount of conversions. But it can be done. I did actually do some of that one game. But you already have some Lyran CC's anyways. And can use D7C's too for that purpose overall.

How valuable does depend on how much you can get CC's crippled and repaired instead of dead CA's (or the CC's). Overall I have usually found the 28 needed to pop a CC (or mauler) happened too often to make this pay off. So I mostly avoided losing CA's when I could and used the DN's instead. As the 36 to pop a DN on the line is lots harder than 28. Or 30 for a BC, which is a little too easy to me, which is also why I generally don't do CL-BC conversions until I'm out of CA's.

Metagames vary, so CA-CC may just work better than I found in my games. Especially as the rules have been tweaked over the years.

If I ever get around to playing another game I was thinking of trying an alliance compot superiority challenge strategy again. I.e. build the more expensive better fleets, try to wreck the good coalition ships and see if it works better under the current rules. I think it may from the last time I tried that. Where it worked fine for a while, but then the Kzinti Hydrans fleets ultimately were essentially destroyed (and it stopped working...)

Tim

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Thursday, January 25, 2018 - 05:27 pm: Edit

Tim

CC and D7C's - never enough and another than 1 D7C a year - the Klingons always seem to find better things for their money.

Well, the Kzinti can't get a compot superiority over the Coalition - 24 Compot 3 Ships groups (CV's) were pretty good in 1980's - but with the add ons, they just don't give the same punch now.

Battlegroups, stacks of Lyran CC's and extra BC/DN's (second Major Conversion etc) v CLE's- which would you prefer?

I have seen Kzinti players try and direct kill CA's/CC's on sight....and generally it doesn't work.

Hydrans can do it and have superior line - but not for long - although Hydran Hybrid Fighter costs do atleast marginally reduce of those nice ships blowing up - the Hydrans can't replace the losses in the short run - never mind long run!!

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Thursday, January 25, 2018 - 08:46 pm: Edit

For the most part the Kzintis and to almost the same extent, the Hydrans, should be letting the damage fall. Make the coalition cripple or better, self kill, ships.

There are occasions where one should use directed damage against the Lyrans and Klingons. Usually those involve battles with a limited number units for empire or the other to include the big command ship(s).

One round pin battles can go either way. Most of the time it is better to let the damage fall, unless the enemy puts a juicy specialty target on the line without it being in the formation slot. (That's how I killed a Klingon C5 in the Empires of the Dead game.)

By Jon Murdock (Xenocide) on Thursday, January 25, 2018 - 10:47 pm: Edit

Well, you also need to factor in attrition units. If letting the damage fall is only going to hit fighters you might as well go ahead and direct on the E4 instead.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Friday, January 26, 2018 - 10:20 am: Edit

Yeah, I'm deeply unsure about the "the Alliance should always let the damage fall" plan. Especially if the Coalition is following a strict "kill the biggest thing you can instead of fighters" policy.

Like, yeah, if you are fighting a protracted battle over a capital or a SB, and you can do significant damage over the fighters on the line every round, drop damage, let the Coalition cripple huge swaths of units and self kill when you roll up. But most of the time, you are going to be seeing short fights (pinning, whatever) where if you drop damage, you'll kill a bunch of fighters and cripple an interior escort or two. And if the Coalition is directing the biggest thing they can every round, you will *rapidly* fall very far behind on the pincount war. Which is very significant.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Friday, January 26, 2018 - 10:39 am: Edit

When does the coalition have a lot of carriers to take to take damage on fighters?

I'm not advocating let the damage fall every single combat round.

I'm just saying that you can force the coalition into helping you by making them self kill stuff, or by overloading their economy's ability to repair everything in a given turn. Either way the number ships they have available tends to be kept in check. Rescue Tugs are not your friend here.

Even using the Depot Level Repair doesn't completely resolve the dilemma. And in some cases it will take 2 turns to get the ship(s) into Depot Level Repair location.

I have used directed damage on a single FF defending a BATS or as a province raider just to eliminate the DLR roll for that unit if I have done enough damage.

The most amount of directed damage I have used in a single round in any game so far was the 62 points to kill a D7V+AD5+F5E group over the Hydran capital. Every other carrier in the hex was a D6V of FV. I got a C5 on the cheap (34) because it wasn't in the formation bonus. A Klingon TGA with a BP and DP was, and the battle was a single round pin battle. I have directed on various other specialty ships at times. I have directed a SAV in the support echelon just remove it's fighters from the game permanently.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Friday, March 30, 2018 - 05:21 pm: Edit

A few years ago Dale Fields did a detailed analysis of adding survey ships to a given empire's existing survey fleet. I don't recall if he did the Feds or not. I took his work and looked the benefit of adding a Prime Team to the existing survey fleets of the western empires. Today, I looked at doing that to the Federation. While using the original 7 survey ships for standard survey duty with a single Prime Team, You gain 12 extra EPs over the course of the game from Turn 7 to Turn 34. This assumes an average roll of 3.5 per survey ship and you are lucky that the PT is not injured or killed.

The PT has a much greater effect on smaller survey fleets because of the province break points.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Friday, March 30, 2018 - 06:31 pm: Edit

---

Quote:

You gain 12 extra EPs over the course of the game from Turn 7 to Turn 34.

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By chris upson (Misanthropope) on Friday, March 30, 2018 - 06:41 pm: Edit

an EP in turn 27 is not remotely as good as an EP on turn 7. you gotta get away from this idea that adding up EPs over time represents a meaningful number. discount rates are **high** for a polity at war. ain't for nothing that coalition players are known to immediately max out their ADS limit.

yes, the feds definitely want to put a PT on survey. it's a slam dunk, not because of the number of EPs generated, but because the cost is very nearly zero. the feds get all the PTs they need for free, in a timely fashion.

L and K may or may not have a free PT to spare, but anyhow its appealing to pay for one each for the task. The call is a little more interesting to make for Z and H because funds are tighter and the PT's military application is better when you have a higher proportion of carrier groups in your navy.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Friday, March 30, 2018 - 06:51 pm: Edit

Chris, I did the analysis for a Tac Note that was published in Captain's Log #39. It amounts to 40+ EPs for the Klingons*, Lyrans, Hydrans and Kzintis depending on PT survival rolls assuming the same average 3.5 per die roll.

* The Klingons are required to up their survey fleet from 2 to 3 in order to gain the full benefit of the PT on survey duty.

By chris upson (Misanthropope) on Friday, August 31, 2018 - 01:02 pm: Edit

OK, hypothetical situation:

It's an economic phase, you have enough resources to squeeze out a CVA in addition to a lean but not emaciated build schedule. The CVA is funded by free fighters, that is to say not competing with non-carrier upgrades.

my question: broadly speaking or specific to a faction or even a common GW circumstance, which carriers (if any!) would you build in preference to a CVA?

this is all byron's fault; he's not building zin CVAs and i have far too much critical stuff to do and can't stop thinking about ***-**** cardboard starships

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Friday, August 31, 2018 - 01:28 pm: Edit

Interdiction carriers come to mind due to their oversized fighter squadrons. Carriers with heavy fighters accomplish the same thing. That way you get more fighters on the line.

Also, generally speaking, CVAs can be run off the line by killing just a few escorts (like 2-5 battle rounds depending on your FCRs and risk tolerance). So, CVAs just don't have a lot of "staying power" for those long duration starbase assaults. So, in some ways, having an ordinary DN is preferable to a CVA, and spend your free fighter factors on cheaper carriers.

That being said, CVA groups (especially the Fed and Rom) can have nice high density, and are particularly useful in pursuit). So, I would say each empire should have at least one CVA, and maybe a few for the Fed and Roms.

YMMV

By Timothy Linden (Timlinden) on Friday, August 31, 2018 - 03:54 pm: Edit

CVA's for me:

Kzinti, Hydran - need/want one per admiral ultimately. DN's are too easy to lose even in form to coalition fleets. While you can rebuild them, they are much too expensive to have to do so. Then build interdiction carriers or similar other good CV's instead.

Federation - You want a decent number as above, probably 1-2 per major fleet area? Which will be 2-3 areas? But then interdiction carriers, then A20 carriers late game.

Klingons - I only ever built one CVA for them once, and regretted doing so.

Romulans - pretty well much as many as you can afford (which won't be too many), especially late game when they are density 12 with the best escorts. Plus you don't get interdiction carriers.

Lyrans - Can't, but likely would if they could!

Gorns - Can't, but likely would if they could!

You do not really want too many CVA's, as they are expensive and you cannot put more than one on the line, effectively. You can get better use out of more other carriers.

Tim.

By Byron Sinor (Bsinor) on Friday, August 31, 2018 - 05:58 pm: Edit

CVAs are great, but if you have enough good ships, hulls become far more important. Because hulls will allow those good ships to be applied where you need them to capture critical hexes. Federation CVAs are special, they are the best density you are going to get for the Federation, and the Federation needs that density in more places than anyone else. So, I make the Fed CVAs until A20s are available.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Friday, August 31, 2018 - 10:00 pm: Edit

Hydrans can use a couple of CVA groups to make a line (use one at half fighters) that the Coalition simply can't direct a group, even with a DNL. I wouldn't do more than two.

Really, I feel that the Hydrans should not build UHs or CAVs, use the carrier pods and GRV and aux's earlier, then supplement with the free PGVs and build your 2 LNH as carriers (they are cheaper because the 3 hybrid fighter factors dont have to pay to be upgraded to carrier fighter factors and you can build them in the old colony shipyards (and use the 1.5 FFF a turn for them too).

Other than the CVAs, I would suggest using FFFs for SD upgrades, hybrid ships or escorts (love those NACs and MHK-Es) and possibly overlord variants.

By Karl Mangold (Karlsolomon) on Sunday, September 02, 2018 - 08:45 am: Edit

Hey all, new poster here, longtime (20+ years off & on) F&E player. I was hoping to start a discussion about movement and target selection strategy here, something I don't often see in these threads. I consider F&E more akin to Chess than your average strategy/war game, in that early decisions on fleet movement and outcomes of battles early on have a profound impact on gameplay later on. Also, the number of potential moves and targets in this game is so large as to be almost incalculable. However, setups are generally the same, and in chess there are a variety of standard starting strategies that are common enough to have names. I haven't seen that much in F&E discussions, unless it is grand, overarching strategy like the Mudslide strategy, or maybe the Hydran expedition. If there is some thread on here that covers this, and I haven't found it, so please direct me. (Incidentally, I have seen some of what I'm talking about here in Captains Log issues, but given that it is a publication there is no discussion.)
As an example, when playing the coalition I focus much of my energy as the Lyrans on taking a nd holding Kzinti planet 1001 in the opening turns of the game. I can expand as to my rationale if indeed I've found the right thread here, and as I said would be interested in discussing a number of other small-scale strategies if so.
Anyway, I might be posting in the wrong place, but I would find it strange if this kind of topic was not located in a thread entitled "strategy discussions." Anyway, thanks for reading this long and rambling post. I look forward to hearing back from y'all.
Karl

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Sunday, September 02, 2018 - 12:17 pm: Edit

It's somewhat complex, but I have found that it is a bad idea to commit enough forces to take 1001 on turn one.

After that, the Coalition usually take 1001, possibly on turn 2, perhaps later. While the Kzinti can devote significant force to defend it, this generally leads to more important targets to have less defense (ie Count's or Duke's SB, Klindai, Zimdars and 1401 itself), so generally the Kzintis do not commit significant force to its defense.

Generally, as it generally isn't needed to maintain supply lines (for the Coalition) - usually the Lyrans in my games set up a supply line through Klingon space to 1407, the Coalition doesn't commit siginifcant forces to defend it, as they are better used blocking Kzinti forces from 1407 (usually where Coalition logistical assets gather). I try to put such forces at 1403 from where they can cover the path to 1407 from 1401 while potentially being able to defend at 1504 or 1202.