| By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Sunday, March 05, 2023 - 06:34 pm: Edit |
The last-to-move advantage is real and significant. We are doing four SB assaults this turn, because why not?
Of course it would be better for me if there were a turn 35.
The Romulus campaign obviously achieved its goals. But the late-game advances vs. the Klingons have me wondering if it could have been a strategic error. As of turns 27-28, the feds held NZ planet 1910. They pulled out to focus on the Romulan front. This led to the capture of Remus on A29 and Romulus on A31. But I find myself wondering if we could have achieved more by going after the Klingons. I have no idea if that choice might have led to the recapture of Kzintai and/or Hydrax.
I'm sure a direct push against those hexes would have failed. But I don't know about the indirect results of a push against Klingon space.
| By Paul Howard (Raven) on Monday, March 06, 2023 - 03:00 pm: Edit |
First SB has died.
First three rolls was (VBIR/All/Coal) : -
6 1 1
4 6 4
4 4 1
....so it started as all Big battles seem to have gone.
Dice did slightly improve - Alliance Average ended at 4 and Coalition Average at 3.2 after 5 rounds, when I ran, leaving a crippled Star Base.
Didn't even get to kill more ships (the 3rd round was at BIR 2 and 15% wasn't enough) than I lost - both sides lost 4 ships.
Lyrans have also lost the minor planet 205 (Hydran Expeditionary Tug got to do something aggressive for once) and Coalition reserves also missed 1 RN*, but did kill another one.
(I never seem to get 50/50 pursuits!).
Economic Damage (and so loss of VP's) for the Coalition on the final turn will be huge - with only 1 other published game getting to the end, I don't know if thats normal or not.
I think maintaining a large ship advantage for the Coalition was crucial* - and the dice didn't allow that to happen (Cloaks and ESSC, which I will expand on in the post game report).
* - Due to ability to go where the enemy isn't, the Alliance can really out manoeuvre the Coalition on the final turn!
| By Paul Howard (Raven) on Tuesday, March 07, 2023 - 02:31 am: Edit |
Well the dice gods really toyed with the Coalition last last night.
Small but partially relevant ESSC combat in 3415... (-2 v -3 on the dice)
Coalition needed to roll 8+ and the Alliance to roll 6 or less...
Round 1 - 3 v 7
Round 2 - 3 v 7
Yep - missed it twice by 1!
Round 3 - 6 v 5
Round 4 - 7 v 9
So - had to retreat in the end (was no point in crippling the 1 uncrippled ship I had to risk a 5th round - as 3415 would have rebelled!).
So even when William rolls low.... it has no effect!
| By Paul Howard (Raven) on Saturday, March 11, 2023 - 02:10 am: Edit |
Hurrah - finally rolled above above in a Star Base battle.
After 4 rounds, Coalition stand at 3.75.
Alas, after the same 4 rounds, Alliance stands at 5.25.
William in relevant battles continues to roll enough - and I don't,
Another 2 Vp's for the Alliance following an ESSC combat - -4 (Alliance) v +2 (Coalition).
A Third 1/36 chance (double 1) in a dozen or so rolls for me meant I did no damage and William rolled 11 (needed 9+). I only needed 3+ on 2D6 to get a causality and to probably win (William could have risked a round possibly on -1 v +1 if we both took a causality as being crippled).
I felt luck would eventually arrive and so as it was worth 2 Vp's for the province, I crippled and stayed. And it didn't - second round, I rolled the highest number again to fail (8) and William rolled the lowest number to kill me (7) - second round was +1 v -1 - to kill me! So in effect a 2.2 Vp swing to the Alliance.
So right rolls at the right time for the Alliance remains an Alliance trait of the game.
Thank goodness this is the last turn.
| By Paul Howard (Raven) on Saturday, March 11, 2023 - 02:28 am: Edit |
Quick look at just the SB assault dice....
Average for turn so far is 4 (Alliance) v 3.56.
So, Alliance has rolled modestly better.
In the 9 SB assault rounds - average is 4.56 (Alliance) v 3.44 (Coalition).
Thats a pretty large out rolling in high compot battles?
| By Paul Howard (Raven) on Saturday, March 11, 2023 - 04:03 pm: Edit |
I think it's fair to say, ESSC in this game for the Coalition has been an absolute disaster.
Another -2 (A) v +2 (C) fight and rolls are 6 v 4.
What was also relevant, if the Alliance ship died, I could have Fighting Retreated over a FFS (which would have been -3 v 0).
"Maximum ESSC roll to still fail" is pretty much the Coalition Tag line for the game.
On normal combats - the dice on the face of it, is pretty close.
On relevant dice though- there is a clear margin for the two sides.
On normal combat dice, Coalition is now actually ahead, 3.91 v 3.83.
But on relevant dice rolls it's now 3.6 (C) v 4.4 (A).
On non-relevants (smaller battles where things will not die in a single round) it's 4.4 (C) v 2.89 (A).
So the Alliance Tag line for the game I think would 'Timing is Everything'.
| By Paul Howard (Raven) on Monday, March 13, 2023 - 03:42 am: Edit |
Well, the Western Map has been completed.
About the only success was the Klingon reserves, which saved 2 BATS .
Dice - well what can I say
.
ESSC stands at 6.57 (Coalition) v 8.14 (Alliance)
It stand at 5.3 v 9 earlier - but William did roll a couple of low dice and 2 Coalition ships magically didn't die.
What is clear - in ESSC roll high or go home.
Coalition has rolled 1 9 and 1 12.
Alliance has rolled 1 9, 2 10's, 2 11's and 1 12.
One Alliance ship has died in ESSC - but timing is everything - the Alliance roll of 10 meant it was still a mission success for the Alliance.
The Western Front campaign ended with a double capture for the Hydrans too.
The Coalition sacrificed a previously crippled D6 - which was captured and the Hydrans caught the crippled D5 in persiut - and captured that too.
So, 20 odd Alliance hull destroyed - zero captures.
Marginally loess Coalition hulls destroyed - two captured.
So both are valid for the Alliance
"Timing is Everything" or "What is mine is mine and what is yours is mine".
| By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Monday, March 13, 2023 - 02:51 pm: Edit |
What you always say?
Quote:Dice - well what can I say
| By Paul Howard (Raven) on Monday, March 13, 2023 - 03:11 pm: Edit |
Just being honest.
Normal combat dice are annoying - but ESSC and Captures are so lopsided, it just crazy.
| By Paul Howard (Raven) on Tuesday, March 14, 2023 - 05:34 pm: Edit |
Well, A34 is nearly over - a few small side battles to finish on.
The last Romulan SB chance of living started badly (4 A v 1 C) - but did gradually improve over the next 3 rounds which I won (2 v 4, 2 v 3 and 1 v 4) - but round 5 it was gone - 5 A v 1 C.
VBIR didn't help - 2.67 (so lower than both of the averages of 3 for both sides) and coupled with only rolling a 5 in the final round meant the super high compot (which started at 182) only hurt William once on round 2 - every other round is was handled well (i.e. 60+ damage would have self killed some good ships as his CVBG took the bulk of the line up!).
So, 5318 died. I had marshalled some modest forces to allow a hugh Fighting Retreat over a very battered force in 5317 (I had 91 compot - what was annoying was the SB probably could have had a modest chance of another kill on it's own if I had left the PF and Fighters with it, but I took them with me to add another 24 or so compot to my force) - 50/50 chance of killing 3 or more ships (a 6 would have got 4, 3 would have killed 2) and I rolled a 2 v Williams 5 - so we each lost 1 ship.
SSC finished at 8.07 for William v 6.45 for me.
Once more, failed to kill in SSC with a +4 (which may be relevant as it allowed his crippled ship to retreat into another battle hex).
(Being 8 or over is very good, as often, one side will be on +2, and so it gets you to three casualties - rolling a net 9 or less means you never kill)
Only 1 Alliance hull died in SSC (when there was several +2 and a couple at +4.
Statistical comment is 'I more often than not, missed the required by 1, and William got the required roll.'
Relevant Battle rolls are so far at 3.68 for William and 3.45 for me (on just SB battles, it's 3.89 v 3.44)
About the only battle which was above average for me, helped ensure a Romulan BATS to live (although I think with average dice on both sides, it would have lived, but would have been crippled, as a small reserve did turn up to help save it).
So on relevant dice
Williams hit the 33% chance to Devastate a Planet in 1 round rather than 2 rounds (so saved a hull).
I missed the 3+ chance to kill more ships in a Fighting Retreat.
The Bigger the Compot - William rolled better.
William got the 2/3rd chance of getting a key SID on a BATS.
So, bigger the compot - the better the roll for William (although the dice imbalance did narrow, early on it was truly horrible, first 10 rounds was 4.1 v 3.1!)
So, can't roll well when I have high compot.
Can't roll in average in battles where a 6+ is needed in SSC.
And captures are just 1 sided!
| By Paul Howard (Raven) on Wednesday, March 15, 2023 - 11:54 am: Edit |
And the game is over.
All combat has been concluded and the Peace Treaty signed in Cicrle Trigon.
A major win (almost certainly, the actually counting needs to be done) - so I would guess the poor Hydrans get the short straw and are forgotten about, but the Kzinti reclaim the bulk of the space and the Federation and Gorn make significant gains in Klingon and Romulan space.
Trajanus is the new Romulan Capital!
Full report to follow
| By Mike Erickson (Mike_Erickson) on Wednesday, March 15, 2023 - 12:14 pm: Edit |
Congrats on completing your game! That is quite an accomplishment.
--Mike
| By Paul Howard (Raven) on Wednesday, March 15, 2023 - 12:57 pm: Edit |
Well, first full analysis of the normal combat dice - and it actually sounds not alot, but is actually a meaningful sum.
There was around 2.226 normal combat dice rolls - and William pips totalled 7,839 and mine totally 7,651.
Thats only 188 pips, which does sound nothing.
The Averages show the effect of it though - Williams average was 3.52, mine was 3.44.
Which over 2,226 battle rounds with an average of say 80 compot a side, that translates into 1,235 more damage done (at a BIR of 5, VBIR was 3.51 as an average) by William.
Even if 50% of that damage (and 50% is probably generous) was 'wasted' in one of battles which kills fighters, which are replaced (and both sides at times lost out on modest numbers of replacements fighters, for being out of supply), that still over 600 extra damage done.
Thats probably 90 to 100 Ep of Damage - assuming CA/CW/DW's are crippled to resolve it - but +I would guess probably 66% permanent damage is probably more realistic and so 130 Eps of additional damage is more accurate.
No wonder the Coalition always had a huge back log of repairs and why the ship numbers tide turned so quickly.
| By Paul Howard (Raven) on Wednesday, March 15, 2023 - 03:16 pm: Edit |
Mike
Thanks - just over 4 years - we had three short breaks - two due to the dice were that bad, mentally I couldn't take it and one due to a rules question.
Only second game om the Bulletin Board to get to turn 34
| By Paul Howard (Raven) on Thursday, March 16, 2023 - 01:44 pm: Edit |
The following is my various ramblings and thoughts .
Tactic Wise – I think early on, the Coalition did better, but as the game progressed the Coalition did start to make mistakes (under-estimating what would be needed to capture a planet or killing a SB for example).
Capturing the Gorn Shipyard I think was the greatest single tactic either side came up with. Alas, the dice and capturing (which I’ll go through in the second post) in the end very much made it a pyrrhic victory.
Getting a SB up over 1401 was probably the second best tactic I did.
Not sure ‘which’ worst tactic I did was – but the great encirclement of the Federation 6th Fleet area in theory should go down as a good tactic – but the number of cripples I then lost (over 50 that turn), with the supply problem being resolved by spending a few Ep’s meant the offensive was a huge failure I think.
I think turn 20-21 the high point of the Coalition tide, but various things meant it was only one way after that.
Tactically, I did start to make mistakes when assaulting some of the SB’s – either should have stayed well away from them – or sent more to kill them.
Fair to say sending enough wasn’t always possible, but I did underestimate what was needed to kill some of the SB’s. The dice then just punished me for my poor planning.
Strategically, I think the Coalition did very well, but tactically, William edged it – he did some really good retreats and changed combat orders to maximise the effect of those retreats.
Over 34 turns – I think I pulled off ‘2’ good retreats – one killed a SB and one saved 1001!
We did get two rules wrong – the Kzinti early on was granted full supply when on a Federation base – when it should have been hex supply only – which did allow the Alliance to perhaps counter attack more successfully for several turns, until a series of Q&A questions revealed the Captains Log ruling.
I think the Alliance did gain - as it massively slowed the Coalition down in Federation space - which wouldn't have been offset by more numerous forces in Kzinti space.
The other rule was PF’s re-supplies and for 1 turn, we played it PF’s got replaced under Fighter replacement rules (i.e. in Supply) and not Strategic Movement rules (in effect, it’s very difficult to replace PF’s unless the PFT is 1 or more hexes behind the front line, as enemy forces next to the hex will cut the Strategic Movement path) - but the PF's certainly made killing a SB easier than it would otherwise have been.
Ep collection and VP creation at the end of the game, might also be wrong – but certainly the Coalition was playing from around turn 30 (when we asked the question) that territory was less valuable than bases.
The Alliance ability to claim large areas of the map on turn 34 is perhaps why 605.31 suggest rolling from turn 31 (but with no modifiers, the game could always go on and on - -unless an upper game turn was agreed, but the Alliance would still get the final turn which could generate lots of Vp’s).
Several suggestions was made in how to ensure neither side can game ‘the last turn’ and that ending after a Coalition turn might not be ideal (the one extra Ep phase) – so perhaps having a modified last turn allowing the Alliance just an Ep phase might reduce that effect?
(Something like, A31 ends on a 1, C32 ends on a 1, A32 ends on a 1 or 2, C33, ends on a 1 or 2, A33 ends on a 1, 2, 3 etc – so smaller chance of ending after the Coalition turn – and it goes go up to 1 to 5 to end).
But – the Alliance won and I think for most of the game, we did have a lot of fun.
From my point of view, the Dice was an enjoyment issue throughout though - which part 2 will cover
| By Paul Howard (Raven) on Friday, March 17, 2023 - 01:25 pm: Edit |
Although the normal combat dice was only slightly in William’s favour - numerically, that higher rolling did have actually a large effect, but , in four areas I think William did get all or most of the luck.
1) General dice rolling – right roll at the right time.
Over various turns, I have mentioned William seemed to get the ‘right roll at the time same time’ – for example on the Hydran front, 3 battle rounds in a row, William rolled the lowest number required to still kill the key target and I rolled the maximum to still fail (I think 4+ for William and 3+ for me was fairly common – and so with rolls of 4 foe the Alliance and 2 for the Coalition were terrible for the Coalition).
The turn 20 raid on Sol turned into a right disaster – even though I was only outrolled by 1 (and I think most BIR lines meant on most results, +2 was needed),2 and 1 meant a single approach round turned into 3 rounds – that probably saved 2 minor planets from devastation (as William only had 19 uncrippled ships defending – and over 50% were FF’s and so really a maximum of 2 weak lines could be done.
In other words, the ships the Coalition had to cripple over the 2 additional approach rounds (while Williams burned PDU fighters from the Major planets), meant a strategy or good plan fell apart, purely due to the dice.
William might say the B10 should have been crippled on chances (and he did build lines to get to key Compot thresholds), but he did have two chances to cripple it – and chose something else to kill or let if fell (1 Gorn SB probably would have died if the Gorns dropped 60 Damage on the B10 to cripple it), so overall probably not ‘unlucky’ there.
Gorn were also fairly lucky in that 42 was often missed by 1 or 2 damage due to a low roll when defending SB’s and the Capital planets (and so the Gorn’s got a very heavy DN line easily, which I was only able to hurt once).
On specific rolls (that I can remember) – the Fed SCS lived when a 4 or 5+ would have killed it and the Lyran BATS over 1401 (when it was being converted to a SB) wasn’t 1/36 chance crippled.
1903 I think did live though to a double 1/36 chance (VBIR going up +2 and William rolled a 6 for the two key rounds over the SB) as the extra damage (than what a normal roll would have done) was around 18 damage for each of those two rounds.
From my notes though, I think other than ‘RNs living when 3+’s needed’, the Kzinti and Hydrans (and Lyrans to some degree) rolled pretty much average most of the time in combats.
On the final turn - 1 Romulan BATS lived due to the Coalition rolling better (+2, -1, +2), but the BATS had a much better than 50/50 chance of living due to a reserve helping and on average dice, the BATS would have lived.
The Gorns in normal combats rolled generally well – and the Romulans generally poorly. In effect, with the poor Romulan and phenomenal capture rolls against the Romulans, the line differential only got bigger.
The final Capital Assault stripped the Romulans of their remaining large hulls and the Gorns were left with some of theirs still (so net, the Romulans still ended down).
What massively hurt the Romulans though was perhaps the near constant inability to do 28 or higher damage in normal battles, and the Gorns constantly achieved 28+.
So the Romulans was losing generally 10 compot hulls and the Gorns was losing an Escort.
So small differences, but a huge effect.
2) Cloak Rolls.
Fair to say – Offensive and Cloaked Withdrawal rolls have just been a total disaster for the Romulans
Combined with SSC – the Romulans have probably been on the short straw for pretty much everything.
Several turns 66% of the rolls failed (when it should 66% success).
I did review the rolls and 74 out of 122 rolls was successful – or 60.6%.
In the most basic assessment, 81 ships should have cloaked, but only 74 did.
The double whammy was due to a higher than average failure meant the pairing of ships next to each other increased my losses where retreat priorities allowed the force to then be retreated onto (i.e. Ship A reacts in the hex where Ship B is - Ship A withdraws and Ship B then cloaks - Ship A and Ship B then get retreated onto and Ship B withdraws and Ship A cloaks - which keeps more provinces captured or Romulans, so more Ep's for them).
So, not a huge difference, but something.
What increased this though was Williams SSC rolling – in effect almost all failed cloaked rolls meant the ship died (even on a +4, there is modest chance the failed cloaked ship should live and better than 50/50 on a +2) - but no ' right roll at right time meant a failed cloak roll was a dead ship'.
That constant drain on small and medium sized Romulan ships perhaps explains why the Romulans ran out of ships to guard all the Star Bases after the Gorn Shipyard was back on line.
3) Small Scale Combat
Again fair to say – for a lot of the game, SSC only resulted in Coalition ships being killed - I couldn’t hit a barn door and 95% of the time William couldn’t miss.
A small difference in rolls and the right the right result at the right time, made huge differences.
On turn 21 for example, we had a 4 ship swing due to purely SSC being nice to William and nasty to me and the more recent Coalition turn 34 showed what rolling an average of 5 or 6 on 2D6 does in SSC - and the other side is rolling an average of 8 or 9.
4) Capture
If you thought 1 to 3 might be ‘remembering the poor rolls and forgetting the good rolls’, I think Capture rolls was very very very one sided as it's one of the few things we do have 34 turns of evidence off.
Coalition captured : -
Lyrans captured a Kzinti CV and 4 x Z/H FF’s – plus 1 ex Lyran BC was recaptured.
Klingons captured 4 x FF’s – scrapped 4
Romulans captured a NCL and 3 x FF’s – all scrapped
So 14 ships captured, 2 good, 1 OK (it’s 2 Ep’s) and 11 poor.
Basically – 1 every 2 to 3 turns.
Alliance Captured -
1 x Con, 2 x Lyran BC, 2 x D6M, 1 x FAL, 6+ x FH**, and had on average 2 or 3 Ep’s a turn in captured ship salvage.
** - I can’t believe how many FH’s the Gorns did capture. (only 28 FH started or was built over the course of the game!!)
So well over 45 ships captured , 12 being good ships and 40% of the being OK (it’s 2 Ep’s) and the rest poor ships.
On turn 34 - the Alliance captured a D6 and D5 - when the Coalition captured nothing (and the Alliance lost more ships).
Well over 1 ship a turn was captured by the Alliance.
Averages roll would have seen similar numbers captured (as although more Coalition ships might die in an average game, the Coalition gets double capture attempts with maulers in pursuit) – so Coalition is running at about 40% of average and Alliance +140% (but probably 200%+ up on Good hulls!!)
The real killer though was the turns that followed the Gorn Shipyard being captured – the Romulans should have increased the difference against the Gorn by 2 or 3 CR 10 ships – and actually fell behind by 1 (I could only 2 build and the Con and 2 x BC’s were captured).
The extra compot of all those captured 9 compot hulls (and inability to outside the Romulans using a Mauler or defending a SB, to get 28 damage) meant the Romulans gradually was taking more and more damage and the Alliance was taking less and less.
William also got the double double.
Do you put 2 cripples ships in a normal battle and lose both (and they enemy has a single normal capture attemept) or do you put 1 cripple in the battle (and lose it) and try for the minimum 1/6 chance the pursuit fails and the other cripple gets away.
Gorns caputured a ship and a Condor that way - and the Hydrans captured the D6 and D5 on the last turn.
You succeed on the first capture, succeed on persuit and succeed on the second capture.
5) Survey
Klingons the big losers – down 17 Ep’s on either late or not found provinces. Lyrans ended up 1 Ep and Romulans up 2 Ep’s.
Alliance generally rolled poorly – but all ended up with the correct number of provinces by the end of the game (but could have been up Ep’s or Down Ep’s during it).
Gorn probably did lose an Ep or 2 though due to a relatively low average of 3.22.
So Survey wasn’t the Coalition friend – but the Alliance might not have done much better (although the Hydrans were certainly up by turn 7).
The summary : -
So pursuits – were pretty even.
Outside the invulnerable RN’s and SSC’c – the Western Map I think was close enough to be called ‘fairly even’ (although the Alliance still rolled slightly better on numbers and timing).
The Eastern Map had one side rolling generally very well and one side rolling very badly (the first Romulan Homeworld assault, the poor Romulan dice saved the Alliance around 60 damage!) – and that is what broke the Romulans.
I honestly thought with the capture of the Gorn Shipyard – the Alliance would remain behind the curve (i.e. the Klingons would remain deep in Federation space the Romulans deep in Gorn space)- but the constant losing of an extra ship here or extra two ships there (and the Alliance capturing them regularly), I think translated that into probably a 7-10 Ep economic swing each turn – which got bigger and bigger and bigger.
i.e. those ships could have captured 2 Alliance Provinces – and hold 1 on the Coalition turn (plus the extra Salvage for the Alliance).
Lack of hulls meant less provinces could be garrisoned (and more gaps in Coalition defences) and eventually those numbers became telling on the Romulan front.
The Tholians had been brutally used -as they are pretty much use it or lose it (totally within the rule, but perhaps the rules should require them to be used normally, as they don’t want to be the Federations cannon fodder just as much they don’t want to be killed by the Klingons?).
That broke the Klingon/Romulan link between the two and that gap was never fully repaired post Tholians going home and so it wasn’t possible to send more ships to help boost the Romulans.
In effect, the dice just destroyed the Romulans – who I don’t think got a lucky roll the entire game* – and in most battles just rolled horribly. The first Romulus assault should have brought the Romulans a turn to rebuild – but Alliance Field Repair and not doing the average 60 more damage they should have done (so that’s probably 8 more large ships crippled), meant there was no breathing space for the Romulans – and the dice meant it was only going to get worse from there.
The key perhaps was that where the Coalition should have done well economically – the dice conspired to allow the Alliance to do more Ep damage – and where the Alliance should have done well economically, the dice allowed that to happen.
Hence the constant destruction on Romulan 9+ Compot ships (with some being captured) and the Alliance losing generally just light Escorts in large battled and in Small Combats Cloak and SSC being the Alliance friend , is how we got to where we are today.
With three or four fewer Star Base assaults (and some of them was against weakly held SB’s) and a but more on even dice rolls for both sides, the Coalition win might have been possible but a draw probably more likely.
With the noted Coalition dice issues, a Win was therefore probably unlikely – but William did play well – but equally with the overall Coalition Strategy (capturing the Gorn Shipyard should have been a game winning event), I did deserve at least a Draw I think (The Map didn’t look very good for the Alliance after the Gorn Shipyard fell).
Final comment for this post -
Strategically, I think the Coalition played the better game, but tactically the Alliance played the better game.
And dice destroyed the value of any good Strategies.
| By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Friday, March 17, 2023 - 09:32 pm: Edit |
The final turn was brutal. Way more battles than usual. The Alliance basically "went for it" everywhere. We killed 4SB and 3 BATS. We should have killed 5 BATS, but I screwed up some moves. The only planet with PDUs we captured was a Hydran capture of 205! We also captured several PDU-free planets; for example, the Kzinti retook 1502.
As one would expect, casualties were brutal. At one point, the Feds self killed an NVS group when I felt an SB assault was in danger of failing. In retrospect, it probably wasn't.
Fleet preservation was obviously no longer a priority, and it shows in the dead ship counts:
F 29
G 7
Z 2
H 1
total 39
K 22
L 10
R 3
total 35
VP count to follow
| By William Jockusch (Verybadcat) on Friday, March 17, 2023 - 10:55 pm: Edit |
VP count is based on two assumptions about Q&A. I know Paul disagrees with one of them:
1) I assumed that province econ counting is based on the board position only. For example, if the Coalition earned EP for a province on C34, but the Alliance held it as of the end of A34, I counted the province for the Alliance.
2) I assumed that planets captured on A34 were NOT supply points for purposes of the final economy counting.
Based on the above, what I see is:
Coalition economy:
L 132.6
K 125.6
R 24
Total 282.2 EP; 564.4 VP
bases:
L 7SB, 4BATS
K 3SB, 5BATS
R 4BATS
Total 10SB, 13BATS, 265VP
Enemy capitals:
held Kzinti and Hydran for 200VP
Coalition ships:
L 146
K 266
R 64
Total 476 ships; 95.2VP
Alliance economy:
Z 54.2
H 45.4
F 275.2
G 113.2
Total 488EP; 976VP
bases:
Z 1SB
H 1SB
F 7SB, 5BATS
G 5SB, 2BATS
Total 14SB, 7BATS; 315VP
enemy capital:
R for 100VP
Ships:
Z 35
H 50
F 318
G 130
Total 533 ships; 106.6VP
Grand totals:
C 1124.6VP
A 1497.6VP, for a major victory (the middle level, +200-400VP)
If the assumptions at the top of this post are wrong, it would change the victory point totals, but it would likely still be a major victory.
I still wonder if my capture of Romulus could have been a strategic error. The alternative would have been an earlier push into Klingon space. Without trying the experiment, I may never know if that would have been better or not.
| By Paul Howard (Raven) on Saturday, March 18, 2023 - 05:21 am: Edit |
To add to what William said - and indirectly it's a continuation of the value of fighters reducing - other than a single ship (which could be crippled!) to capture or contest an enemy province - VP wise, it's better to self kill 99 ships and kill (or preserve) a SB.
A BATS is worth more than 24 ships.
Clearly, during the game, other than key bases, ships are more valuable than bases - but that flips at the end of the game.
An interesting question perhaps, is should ships be worth more than 0.2 Vp's each?
| By Sam Benner (Nucaranlaeg) on Saturday, March 18, 2023 - 11:09 pm: Edit |
This would add a lot to the counting, but if I were redoing the scoring I'd want to value ships more depending on their SC. So SC2 ships would be worth more than SC3, which would be more than SC4. Maybe 0.4/0.3/0.2, but if you wanted to value ships more in general, you'd naturally want to do it differently.
| Administrator's Control Panel -- Board Moderators Only Administer Page | Delete Conversation | Close Conversation | Move Conversation |