Dice are still favouring the Alliance.

In one single Combat, Alliance rolled a 10 to get 5 casualties (best result so far I think) against a D6+cripple E4A force killing both.

Elsewhere, dice ensured 2214 was captured by the Federation rather than being held...


...but in truly shocking event...after only 6 battle rounds - the Coalition finally outrolled the Alliance (previous 'series' of dice, it took 7 battle rounds for the Coalition to win a round!).

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Wednesday, October 09, 2019 - 01:57 pm: Edit

With +2 against them, I'd just have the e4a fight and not the D6 unless unusual circumstances exist.

By chris upson (Misanthropope) on Wednesday, October 09, 2019 - 02:33 pm: Edit

what was the alliance force, just outta curiosity?

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Wednesday, October 09, 2019 - 03:17 pm: Edit

It was a NCL & FF v D6 and crippled E4A.

The 'issue' was that if the D6 retreated before combat it was going to be fighting retreated over by another large Federation force and probably would have died on a 3+ (10% would have only crippled it, 12.5% might have killed it depending on how the initial fight with the Federation attack force against a weakly defended BATS went).

So by fighting with both - if I won the ESSC, it would be able to stay and live.

William has got more 'I need an X+ roll' than I have, so even a 1/3rd chance of living wasn't good odds.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Thursday, October 10, 2019 - 06:55 am: Edit

Slight correction - would have been an normal retreat over the D6 - so would have died.

Dice continue to favour the alliance - about the only success (which was non-dice based) was a Klingon reserve saved both a Minor planet and a BATS from being killed (I was able to retreat to the BATS and WIlliam then couldn't retreat there).

Looks like the Klingons will lose 2-4 BATS, but no home planets.

Dice so far, with 23 normal combat rolls, have averages of (game average to date)

VBIR 3.34 (3.39)
Coaliton 3.217 (3.408)
Alliance 3.478 (3.416)

Not significant, but turn 8 and 9 were pretty much one way, it would be good to win some key dice rolls!

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Thursday, October 10, 2019 - 08:50 am: Edit

Whats it like to be lucky with dice?

In a key battle in 1701, William has rolled 3.875 v 3.25 (over 8 rounds)…

…. but is capturing rolls it have been unbelievable with another D6M and BC captured

So - that's I think 6 (including a BC and 2 D6M) v 2 on captures.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Thursday, October 10, 2019 - 09:24 am: Edit

Well Williams luck continues (4/4/6 for him v 1/1/1 for me) so after finishing 1701, I will need to take a break.

Alas watching the dice come through, it is again destroying my enjoyment of the game.

Whatever plans I do gets destroyed

Why should one side get all the luck?

The more the irrelevant the roll.... the better I generally roll.

The more the roll is crucial - William gets the better roll (although he did miss a good pursuit roll this turn - I think I have missed 3 good pursuits over the game!)

HMS Grumpy.

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Thursday, October 10, 2019 - 03:11 pm: Edit

I think you only comment where the dice do well for you.

Perhaps F&E isn't for you. Perhaps try something not dice based like 1830. :p

By Ted Fay (Catwhoeatsphoto) on Thursday, October 10, 2019 - 04:18 pm: Edit

---

Quote:

Alas watching the dice come through, it is again destroying my enjoyment of the game.

---

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Thursday, October 10, 2019 - 04:49 pm: Edit

Richard - I have tried to highlight all the dice - and certainly in turn 1 and other points to turn7 say, I did get some good rolls (just like William did).

Over the game, the dice are fairly close (although William is marginally ahead), but the quality of the dice at key times alas does vary!

I don't mind a bit of luck/or being unlucky.... but it seems to be a trend I get stuck in


Ted - I love chess - haven't played it for ages though.

By Stewart Frazier (Frazikar2) on Thursday, October 10, 2019 - 06:34 pm: Edit

Alas watching the dice come through, it is again destroying my enjoyment of the game.

Whatever plans I do gets destroyed

Why should one side get all the luck?

What all do, prepare for the worst and hope Murphy doesn't …

By Richard B. Eitzen (Rbeitzen) on Thursday, October 10, 2019 - 08:24 pm: Edit

Don't make plans that rely on luck unless you must or it's a real game-changer if you succeed.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat2) on Thursday, October 10, 2019 - 11:15 pm: Edit

As the Alliance, I find that I am constantly putting the Coalition in a position of making SB assaults that depend on luck. A failure hurts the Coalition more than a success hurts the Alliance. This game, it has happened 7 times that I can think of. By "likely", I mean probably 70%. By "very likely", I mean probably 80-90% but less than 95%.

Where	When	guesstimate	success?
Count	C5	likely to fail	no
Duke	C5	about even	no
Duke	C6	likely to cripple but could just fail	SB crippled
Marquis	C7	likely to succeed	yes
Hydran 2nd	C9	likely to succeed	yes
Hydrax	C9	very likely to succeed	yes
Fed 3rd	C10	very likely to fail	no

The results simply don't seem out of line. The only weird thing is that normally one would expect to see upsets, but we haven't.

I imagine it did not look the same to Paul.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Friday, October 11, 2019 - 08:05 am: Edit

Like, I can't remember the last time I had a SB assault that was decided by dice; either I have overwhelming force and will win through attrition (generally pretty quickly) or a planned 9 round SIDS destruction. And if I'm not certain that I can kill the SB, I don't attack it. It isn't like the SB won't be there next turn.

How the dice fall generally determines how many cripples I end up with, and what important ships get vaporized, but the big picture (i.e. will the SB go down or not) is determined before I get in there.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Friday, October 11, 2019 - 08:35 am: Edit

I think only once has a SB assault been decided by the dice in the Empires of the Dead game. It was early, and Bill got a little help when the order of the battles favored him so that I couldn't retreat on the starbase itself to make it more of a 50/50 thing. All the others have been pin battles or overwhelming force so far.

Even the battle over the Hydran capital would have been won by the Klingons and Lyrans had the dice been more even between both sides. Remember I rolled 3 or 4 ones in a row with the Hydran compot in the 250 range.

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Friday, October 11, 2019 - 08:35 am: Edit

Deleted by author. Duplicate post.

By chris upson (Misanthropope) on Friday, October 11, 2019 - 09:26 am: Edit

i think the influence of the defender over whether a starbase assault is close or not is being sold short here. especially early in the game, when reserves are relatively much larger compared to total fleet size.

and it's not like paul's aggressive-slash-risky approach hasn't borne any fruit; the alliance owns one fewer shipyard than in many another general war, and the hydran navy is pretty freaking ragged.

maybe we're starting to see a snowball form where the cripple backlog makes the coalition choose between delaying their timetable still further and taking yet more cripples because of the inability to project overwhelming force. but maybe also, william's atypical priority- accepting brutal damage on his fleet to extend the life of fortifications destined "to die anyway" has more significance than is being acknowledged by the commentariat

By Thomas Mathews (Turtle) on Friday, October 11, 2019 - 09:53 am: Edit

That may have something to do with it. Also keep in mind that other factors come in to play. I knew I was I going to lose the Count's SB to the Carnivons in the Empires of the Dead game. Knowing that I stayed as long as I had fighters. I also used up my CDR repair capacity as well. The cost at the end of the battle was overloading the Carnivon's ability to repair everything in a single turn. Truthfully, I don't think they have the money to repair everything. (I haven't looked as I just got Bill's Econ sheets to check.) I did force him to cripple half of the Carnivon fleet to kill the starbase. In return I crippled 6 escorts and a couple of other ships along with losing 60+ fighters in the process. Yes, I could have stayed longer. In the end my decision to retreat once the base was crippled was, in my opinion, a better one. Those defending ships helped to put the Klingons in Kzinti space out of supply. Thus they can't attack the Kzinti capital this turn. Granted that is a temporary thing that I know Bill will correct this turn. He can easily correct it by taking over some minor planets that are Kzinti controlled but in range of the Kzinti capital but, it saves the Kzinti fleet for a turn and should allow them to build nearly a full schedule of carriers and some escorts as they have extras available. The remaining ships to be built will be needed battle group ships.

By Peter Bakija (Bakija) on Friday, October 11, 2019 - 11:32 am: Edit

(Moving this to General)

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Friday, October 11, 2019 - 12:18 pm: Edit

Totally accept what people are saying, it's just annoying that

1) In key battles, William generally outrolls me and in this battle was nearly +1 (3.2 v 4.1) over me on the dice. It's like saying 'do 10% more damage each turn than you should'.

2) Capture wise - William is massively up - 120-150 dead Coalition ships should be say 3-4 captured hulls, William is on 6.

3) Captured Quality wise - probably 30 BC/DN/D6M's have been killed - and so with modest luck, you will capture 1 - 3 have been!

(On Maulers, 12 have probably died - so capturing 2 is massively above average).

At least I did out roll by 1 on the final round (so it's taken 8 rounds, 7 rounds and most recently 6 rounds to out roll William) and he failed pursuit - 5 6's rolled for pursuit over 21 pursuit attempts.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Saturday, October 12, 2019 - 09:29 am: Edit

Well, the dice started to get better towards the end (actually won 4 rolls in a row - shame there were all small battles!).

I'll let WIlliam give specifics...

William used the Fighting Retreat rule well and towards the end a TGB died (was 3+ needed I think).

Overall - a very successful Alliance turn I think - 3 BATS killed, Kzinti got back into full supply and Hydrans got back onto the map.

The icing on the cake is the capture of the D6M and Lyran BC.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat2) on Saturday, October 12, 2019 - 12:43 pm: Edit

Yes, 3 Klingon BATS killed on the Fed border -- the two Southern corner BATS in 2416 and 2517, and also the Northernmost one at 1809. Four BATS remain in the middle of the Fed/Klingon border.

The Hydran and Kzinti fleets are both about 2/3 crippled. This is a big problem for the Hydrans and perhaps less of one for the Kzinti. The Feds have maybe 15 crips, mostly FF.

Romulan turn 11 is always difficult for the Feds, and it certainly will be this time.

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat2) on Sunday, October 13, 2019 - 12:14 am: Edit

Alliance turn 10 is done.

The uncrippled portion of the Hydran fleet elected to stay on the map. It's not a big fleet and the Coalition can attack it. But their fleets are also weak.

The Kzinti have a full battle line on their surviving uncrippled BATS (1803), and a kinda-full battle line on their crippled BATS. The latter is missing an escort and would have to feed fighters forward from unescorted CVE to fill all its other slots. There is also a small force in 1701. One of the Barony reserves is a single CVL group, and the other one is two small ships.

The Feds have sent three reserves to face the Romulans. The fourth is in 2610, where it can oppose various Klingon and Romulan attacks. The Feds also have a 200+ DefPot fleet on the 6th fleet SB, 150+ on the 7th, and small fleets at four Romulan-facing interior BATS and planets. I'm still not sure the Feds have enough on the Romulan front.

The Feds in the 4th fleet region are therefore not covered by any Fed reserves. The two small Kzinti reserves in the Barony are in range of two of the three Fed SB up there. And a lot of the Fed fleets in that region can support each other by reaction movement.

By Paul Howard (Raven) on Monday, October 14, 2019 - 02:52 am: Edit

And on to Coalition Turn 11.

Lyrans
Starting Balance 1.3
Income 115 (Basic)+28 (Captured)+ 10 (New Off Map) = 154.3

New Ships 52.5 Eps (BC, TGC, 3 x CW, 3 x DW, 3 x FF)
Conversions CL and BATS>SB 1401

Repairs 59.5 Eps

Balance 0.3 Ep's

Command Points 8

Klingons
Starting Balance -8.7
Income 142 (Basic)+ 34.2 (Captured)+ 6 (New Off Map) = 173.5

New Ships 101.5 Eps (D7C, TGA, D6M, D6V, AD5, 7 x D5, 5 x F5. F5E, F5S)
Other
B10 (2,29 total)
2 x D6 from Mothball

Repairs 64.5 Eps

Balance 0.5 Ep's

Command Points 5

2nd IWR Squadron Released

Romulans
Starting Balance 2.5
Income 104 (Basic)+ 4.8 (Captured) + 0 (New Off Map) = 111.3

New Ships 82.5 Eps (Con, FH, 3 x SP, SPF, SKE, SKB, SKF, FAL, BHE)

Conversions SPB, 2 x BHE, 7 Ep's (6 FFF used)

Repairs 15 Eps

Balance 6.8 Ep's

Command Points 6


On to movement!

By William Jockusch (Verybadcat2) on Monday, October 14, 2019 - 07:44 am: Edit

Letting the SB happen is a blunder on my part. I assume Paul will be able to defend it during the upgrade.