Andro Mauler suggestion:

If an Andro ship equipped with a Mauler makes its roll to avoid being crippled by enemy damage on the next round of combat in that battle hex its AF and mauler capability are increased by 2.

By Christopher E. Fant (Cfant) on Wednesday, February 04, 2004 - 02:32 pm: Edit

hmm, interesting....showinf the mauler sucking up the energy and dishing it back out.

I like something along those lines.

Soomething simple tthough, like after tthe first round of combat Andros get a +1BIR. while everyoone else is loosing power, the Andro build a steady reserve.

By Douglas E. Lampert (Dlampert) on Wednesday, February 04, 2004 - 02:42 pm: Edit

Sucking up energy and spitting it back is tactical, it takes place within a single battle, rounds of F&E combat are entire battles in SFB, thus the mauler sugestion makes no sense.

Just adjust their ComPot up on the assumption that a mauling andro is going to fill the panels at least once.

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Wednesday, February 04, 2004 - 04:07 pm: Edit

What about seriously increasing the Andro's defense factors?

The basic (SG?) scenario in C2 with the Intruder vs. Galactic is 450 BPV verses a fully loaded Intruder. Figure 450 is about a CC+3DW (??, no time to figure it out right now). Can't remember the exact BPV from the scenario too.

So if an Intruder has 15 Attack by itself, 18 Sat Factors (which can be either EW factors, Attack, Marine, or Mauler), and it's defense is a constant (lets say '30').

So an Intruder would be:
15-30 (18)/5-10 (they are fragile once pounded on).

With Sat-Factors changable to (upto 3 can be chosen):
2 Factors->1 EW pt
2 Factors->G Factor
2 Factors-> 2 Mauler factors

That way, even in a big battle, to maul-cripple it with a CCX, it'll take 50 damage (something that'll be hard to accomplish in smaller battles)

By Douglas E. Lampert (Dlampert) on Wednesday, February 04, 2004 - 05:50 pm: Edit

Low crippled defense factors do NOT necesarily make the ships fragile in this case.

If the Andro wins the hex (or is immune to persuit based on his raider like nature), then a 15-30(18)/5-10 Andro will hardly ever be killed. It is too big to direct to death given formation bonus and there is no incentive for the Andro to self kill to absorb a lousy 10 extra damage.

If Andro mother ships are supposed to die more often then what we need to do is give a LOW uncrippled defense and a HIGH crippled defense, say 15-5(18)/5-35(18), which takes the same damage to kill, but will die a lot more often since the andro will be forced to self kill to absorb damage (repair cost is left as an excersize for the game designer). Or we could give no crippled side at all. Or there could be a mandatory roll when an andro is "crippled" to check for survival.

I rather like the idea of no crippled side and roll for survival, modifiers can be discussed, but that feels much more Andro like to me.

By David Kass (Dkass) on Wednesday, February 04, 2004 - 10:10 pm: Edit

Random Andro thought (I have a vague recollection this was discussed before in this topic, but a quick search didn't find it).

In the SFU history, the Andros were the ultimate raiders (capable of tackling raiding against even squadrons--3 or 4 ships). But in F&E, independent squadrons are almost never seen (especially by the time of the Andro invasion), primarily due to the scale (time and distance). Thus the Andros will always find themselves against a full fleet and not the squadrons they're optimized to hit (since the only thing in a hex is a single pile of ships).

What if Andros had the ability to "raid" a hex and single out a "squadron" as the target of their attack instead of everything in the hex. For example, the Andro chooses x ships (call it 1 to 6) and then the player picks the specific ships to use. Perhaps add a random component to the number of ships. Perhaps allow the Andro to specify the size class of one or more of them.

Sure the player could chose the 3 BCH in the hex, but then what is he going to take damage on? And what if the attacking force is really the tricked out DOM capable of defeating 3 BCH?

By Tim Losberg (Krager) on Friday, February 06, 2004 - 03:33 pm: Edit

interesting idea, how about if the Andros raid a hex, all units in that hex have to be broken up into valid fleets (that big pile of counters really only represents many fleets and squadrons over a large area of space, rarely will 100 ships be moving in a single foormation) and then the andro can select which of the groups he wants to attack. Allow a means of reinfocements arriving (roll a D6 after each battle round, a 1-2 indicates that another group has responded to the threat).

By Jimi LaForm (Laform) on Friday, February 06, 2004 - 03:52 pm: Edit

How about this. The Andro's attack a hex. From that hex the Andro will find a small squad patrolling the theatre. The owner gets to choose any 3 of his/her choice, the Andro player then chooses 3 ships. Battle will then commence between that squadron and the Andro player.

By Robert Cole (Zathras) on Friday, February 06, 2004 - 04:03 pm: Edit

Here's what I proposed in April of last year (it's in the Archives):

Andromedan F&E Proposal

It's been said (many times) that the Andromedans are great in duels and single ship combat, but don't do well in fleets - something I can agree with.

It has also been said that the Andromedans can / could / should do most of their combat during the Raid phase. An idea I like.

In addition, some have mentioned that a good goal would be to force the Galactic powers to spread out - so as to avoid the "killer lines" that will decimate and Andromedan force. I concur as well.

Andromedan Raids:

1.) Andromedans may raid as much as they want in any given turn.
2.) Andromedan raids follow all the raid rules (no more than 1 raid per province, etc.) except: they may send up to 2 motherships on any given raid.
3.) Andromedan raids add EP to the Andromedans in addition to denying those same EP to the owning race.

After the Galactic powers see these raids getting larger and larger (not to mention the increasing threat of the Andromedans in general) they begin forming "Raid Reaction Forces" (or "Raid Reserves", or whatever). Assume each race has 1 (2?) “Raid Reaction Force” marker for each Reserve. These would be available in Y181 (the year after the Dominator appears)?

4.) "Raid Reaction Forces" were made up of 1 Flagship + 5 ships (BGs could be used) + 1 free scout.
5.) "Raid Reaction Forces" could only react to raids within 3 hexes of their current location.
6.) Ships formed into a "Raid Reaction Force" cannot move during Op Move.

Notes:

1.) Obviously, this makes the Andros the king of raids (as they should be). Perhaps (due to the RTN) Andro ships used in raids may still move in OpMove as well (just a thought).
2.) This makes Andro raiders stronger, but they will only face the ships there + the Raid Reaction force... meaning they don’t have to fight a fleet they don’t want to.
3.) This was mentioned by someone else, and makes good sense.

4.) Smaller forces makes the Andros not have to fight the killer lines (at least, not as often).
5.) The smaller reaction radius reflects the speed of raids, AND forces Galactic players to spread out.
6.) This limits the Galactics to even fewer ships for offensive operations. The Feds would have 4 Reserves AND 4-8 Raid Reaction Forces to fill out. No reaction forces, and the Andros steal your money for free.

Now... this is rough, but (being biased as I am) I still like it, and think it has potential.⁴²

By Douglas E. Lampert (Dlampert) on Friday, February 06, 2004 - 09:15 pm: Edit

I would limit Andro Raids to a single mother ship, two motherships is a maxed out andro fleet, and it is wierd to let them use that on a raid.

There are lots of historical scenarios with one mother ship vs. a squadron, if you allow the Andros two and raid rules that will never happen against a strong enough force to have a chance of killing or crippling a mother ship.

I would allow any galactic ships within one hex to react to an andro raid, two hexes with a scout or fast ship, and then allow additional ships from 3 hexes away to react if the Andro fights a second round (rather than your raid reaction forces). If an andro fails to destroy the defending forces the Andro raid has no economic effect.

By Ahmad Abdel-Hameed (Madarab) on Thursday, August 12, 2004 - 09:21 pm: Edit

I've been thinking. The Andro SB is unique, but they still had to build the thing. (I don't know if this happened before, during or after their extermination of the LMG races.) The SB gives them certain advantages and is the only worthwhile target for the Galactic fleets during Unity. Still, this SB had a some cost to make. What if we specified it's capacities and gave the Andromedans the opportunity to make further SBs (either in the LMG or the galaxy itself) if they are able to accumulate somehow (by conquest, raiding or forgoing production) the necessary EPs to do so and these extra SBs necessarily further complicate the lives of the Galactic player(s).

One of the issues is that I think that an Andro SB is going to have to have some kind of unique capabilities to make it worthwhile. A typical SB is a repair center, a supply point and a really tough defensive position. Is there more that needs to be added in the Andro case to make their's worthwhile? If so, what?

By David Lang (Dlang) on Friday, August 13, 2004 - 12:12 am: Edit

we know that the andros were building very large ships there so it's in effect a shipyard as well (capible of building a BB IIRC)

By Ahmad Abdel-Hameed (Madarab) on Friday, August 13, 2004 - 03:15 pm: Edit

True. Would they gain any benefit to building a second (satellite?) shipyard in the galaxy proper? Could they possibly build the dreaded two SB complex and doom any possible Galactic attack? (Steve, please don't beat me for referring to the dreaded 2-SB controversy.)

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Friday, August 13, 2004 - 03:22 pm: Edit

As all Andro sat ships can be built on-planet. Any captured planet can do.

They don't worry about launching, just beamed to a hanger.

So the only real "shipyard", would be for Dom's, Int's, and Coq-hulls.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Saturday, August 14, 2004 - 04:15 am: Edit

also in F&E andro sat-ships are factors like fighters.

By Steven Rossi (Steverossi) on Wednesday, August 18, 2004 - 06:50 am: Edit

Is it correct that the Andromedans cannot make use of minor shipyards because the only classes they produce via shipyard are much larger than any minor shipyard is allowed to produce?

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Wednesday, August 18, 2004 - 11:20 am: Edit

It hasn't been defined yet.

The Andro Conquistador is called a "Light Cruiser".

Geesh, lets finish hashing out Minor shipyards and ISC wars before worrying about what the Andro's produce.

By Steven Rossi (Steverossi) on Thursday, August 19, 2004 - 03:03 am: Edit

Scott: Point taken.

We should probably ask about Minor Shipyards for ISC classes. None were listed. The ISC FF should at least be a possibility, although by the time the ISC would build minor shipyards, they would probably prefer to add larger ships to the production that FFs.

By Daniel G. Knipfer (Dgknipfer) on Thursday, August 19, 2004 - 09:33 am: Edit

Module R9 added DW and CW classes to the ISC that where designed but not built by the ISC until after the Andro invasion trashed their supply lines. Rules to let the ISC build DW & CW minor ship yards could be included in Andro Wars.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, August 19, 2004 - 09:43 am: Edit

Those rules aren't needed as they'd be covered by the rules in PO.

By Ahmad Abdel-Hameed (Madarab) on Thursday, August 19, 2004 - 06:50 pm: Edit

In the "did not really happen but we have a bunch of data from this non-future" timeline, there's talk about how the Galactic Powers had pooled their technology in the face of the overwhelming Andromedan presence. About the only part of it that I really remember were Alliance maulers. Could we include "emergency" rules in AndroWar, similar to those in other products like the Hydran slush fund and the Federation emergency rules to reflect the kinds of things the Galactic Powers might start doing if the war was going really badly for them?

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Monday, October 25, 2004 - 01:02 pm: Edit

One question regarding the GP ships against the Andros:

Apparently the Federation weapon systems work best against Andro ships (they must really hate photons, wonder if this holds true for FRA in Omega but how and ever...), is this advantage enough of one to grant Federation ships or fleets any kind of bonus against Andro ships?

If so, would it be better to allow 1 addtional factor per Fed ship unit when fighting an Andro, or instead grant a Fed force the same bonus in battle intensity an ISC Echelon force recieves against non-Andro fleets (so Fed picks BI 3, Andro picks 3, Andro gets 6, Fed gets 7)?

Also, there is a discussion going on in another part of the boards regarding a possible Omega map and book for F&E, if such a module existed would an FRA ship get the same or similar advantage against Andros that a Federation ship or fleet would have?

Gary

By Tim Losberg (Krager) on Monday, October 25, 2004 - 02:27 pm: Edit

Not really, remember disrupters have their oown advantage against the andros that would have to be factored in as well, overall they would balance out to so no adjustment is really necessary.

By Douglas E. Lampert (Dlampert) on Monday, October 25, 2004 - 03:33 pm: Edit

The disruptor bonus is there to partially compensate for the fact that without it the disruptor races were doomed vs Andros. They are still weak.

OTOH Hydrans work quite well against Andros IME, hard to do a dump when the other side has hellbores.

Feds and Hydrans have an edge, but not a really hugh one, I would probably allow Andros to ignore the ISC Eshelon bonuses OTOH.

By Daniel G. Knipfer (Dgknipfer) on Monday, October 25, 2004 - 06:08 pm: Edit

Gary and Douglas,

Disruptor armed ships do quite well against the Andro. The Klingon/Kzinti Drone Disruptor combo is very effective. I admit that the Lyrans would have problems without their PFs, but how often in Y190 will you find Lyrans without PFs?