I propose a defensible variant on FRDs. Let's call them DefRDs. Factors maybe 1-8 with a 0-4 crippled step, but also more expensive -- maybe 15EP instead of 10.

And lastly:

A crippled DefRD cannot repair ships or other units. It can, however, repair itself to uncrippled status at a cost of 2EP. The following turn, it can repair ships normally.

By Douglas Lampert (Dlampert) on Saturday, March 09, 2019 - 02:57 pm: Edit

If I were emperor of F&E I would not allow DefRDs without a rule that they can't be used by the owner to voluntarily resolve damage. They've got nothing to make the enemy shoot at them, so they class with RDU as something that gets shot when there's nothing else to shoot or directed if the enemy really wants to kill it.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Saturday, March 09, 2019 - 03:09 pm: Edit

Crippled bases cannot repair themselves, I don't see why this unit should be able to when crippled.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Saturday, March 09, 2019 - 03:22 pm: Edit

>>I propose a defensible variant on FRDs. Let's call them DefRDs. Factors maybe 1-8 with a 0-4 crippled step, but also more expensive -- maybe 15EP instead of 10. >>

While I'm not particularly opposed to such a unit, what does it actually accomplish?

The issue with FRDs is not that they only have 4 defense and are easy to kill. It is that you put them places, and either the enemy can get them, or they can't ('cause they are far away or you can pin the enemy out). An 8/4 FRD would be marginally harder to kill (for the Alliance; the Coalition still have maulers which can attack slow units at 50%, so it would only take 26 damage to kill one of these in formation with a D6M, which is certainly regularly doable), but only if there is only one in the hex. And even then, if you can force the enemy away from the hex, you get to kill it anyway.

It seems like a thing that just makes the general Alliance pipe dream of raiding an FRD camp to snipe out a few FRDs vastly harder, but not really harming the Coalition at all, and generally not changing much overall.

By Timothy Linden (Timlinden) on Thursday, March 14, 2019 - 04:15 pm: Edit

FRD's can use power modules, so perhaps you could just pay for those when they become available and have those add 1 defense each (making the FRD 1-6).

Not sure anyone would bother really, though.

I stopped using FRD parks near borders ages ago. The original ones park on the capitals mainly and just wait for cripples to reach them. I don't build any either.

Tim.