F&E Strategy of the Month
THE BEST LINE OF DEFENSE
- Lieutenant Commander Chris Fant, USS Texas

    When defending the Hegemony in the early war, post most of your cruisers, combat tugs, and your auxiliary drone ships at the capital. This will free your carrier arm to form reserve forces and to defend the outlying starbases and planets.
  When defending the capital, you want your biggest, most menacing battle lines. In front of the capital starbase and its planetary defense units is the place to put ships like carrier-tugs, battle-tugs, drone cruisers, dreadnoughts, all the really big ships. The Coalition is there to take the planet, or at least hurt it. If the Coalition uses directed damage on your cruisers and important ships, your planetary defense units and starbase live another round.
     When defending the outlying starbases and planets, a mobile force capable of repair is the better option. Carriers are perfect. They can defend, then use carrier retrograde to another location for repair if the base falls, or they are needed at another location.
(End of F&E Strategy of the Month)


Mini of the Month
Every month we will feature one or more of our miniatures that has been painted by a fan. If you paint miniatures, submit pictures of your minis and they may be selected for the next Mini of the Month!

"Welcome aboard, Captain Jeppe," the master of the trader said. "Was your voyage successful?"
     "Very much so," Jeppe said, coming through the airlock. "We bagged two freighters in Kzinti space, and a third on this side of the border. We got that one on the way out, and have been carrying that stuff ever since. I'll be glad to unload."
     "Just the Klingon stuff?" the trader's master asked.
     "I've categorized it on this datapad," Jeppe said. "What I want to offload, and what I need to keep. What I can be caught with and what I can't be caught with. We're ready to start the transfer."
     "By all means," the trader's master said.

Frigate Axe Wielder, on patrol, Northern Fleet
7 August, Y177

     "Message from Battle Station Z9, Priority code," the communications technician said. "On your screen."
     Captain Kross studied the message. "Tigermen are sending a squadron toward one of our mining colonies. All ships in the area are to get there at maximum speed.
     "Communications, acknowledge the message and include our position. Tell them we are en route.
     "Helm, take us to bearing 117 mark two and go to your best speed. Use your discretion until we have a real course.
     "Navigation, plot a medium-risk course, give it to the helm. Then calculate our time of arrival at the mining colony and give that information to me and to communications.
(Continue reading here)


Ask Admiral Growler
FIGHTERS

      Gary Bear asks: Does rule (J10.111) allow you to freely trade two single-space fighters for a single double-space fighter? In any quantity and on any ship type (frigate carriers, DW carriers, etc.)? (I, personally, feel that enough SSDs have been released using heavy fighters that this rule should only be used for carrier escorts assigned to one of those carriers.) Does it allow a player to circumvent the fighter types normally carried by the carrier? (Example, a Hydran CVE normally carries six fusion-only Stinger-2s, but converted to three Stinger-Ts gives it three fighter-mounted hellbores it never operated or had the reload boxes to arm. Another example is trading 12xF-18s for 6xA-20s.)
      ANSWER: Rule (J10.111) [and (J4.893), for that matter] allows you to substitute fighters not normally carried.

      Hugh Bishop asks: The spare shuttle listing for ships gives two numbers. I know the overall numbers are how many shuttles are available, but what do the number arrangements mean? For example; 2+3.
      ANSWER: Such an arrangement usually only occurs on ships that carry fighters. The first number is the number of spare "admin" shuttles and the second is the number of spare fighters. (See the entry "Shuttles" Explanation of Terms at the end of the Master Ship Chart.) On some ships, the number means shuttles and GAS shuttles. This is shown as 1+1G, and there will be a note explaining this in the empire section (see the notes on Seltorian ships for example). Some carriers operate heavy fighters, and the annotation "H" may follow the number for fighters to denote spare heavy fighters (or spare heavy shuttles in some cases). Some ships operate both standard fighters and heavy fighters and will often have three numbers, the first being shuttles, the second being fighters, and the third heavy fighters. See the ISC ACS for an example. This three-number arrangement is used for carriers that have two kinds of fighters. Spare fighters are usually not delineated, allowing the players some latitude in what the spares are, but they do not allow the players to break other existing rules. A Hydran Monarch-V might decide that all eight of the spare fighters are Stinger-Hs, but if he lost eight Stinger-2s, he could not break any of the spare fighters out as he can only operate six Stinger-Hs at a one time. In Module G4, ADB, Inc. might standardize the spare fighters, but for now has left that up to the players as long as the basic deployment rules are not violated.

      Stephen Brackett asks: When taking a carrier that has two different fighter types, which of the fighter types are the escorts configured to service? In this case, I have a C8V with Z-YBs and Z-HBs.
      ANSWER: The escorts will be configured for drone-armed, plasma-D-armed, or fusion-armed fighters (as appropriate to the empire), but not for photon-armed, plasma-F-armed, disruptor-armed, or hellbore-armed fighters (J4.897). There are, however, some exceptions. One of these is Hydran escorts, the other is escorts for carriers with heavy fighters.
      Hydran carrier escorts cannot be configured for hellbore fighters unless the escort ship, itself, operates hellbore fighters [currently only the Mohawk-E (R9.101) has this capability], and in that case cannot be fitted to arm more hellbore fighters than its SSD shows in accordance with (J4.8931).
      The other exception is heavy fighters. Module J2 included rule (S8.318-A) which said that escorts could not be configured for heavy fighters, but as at least one previously published scenario already allowed this, an errata item was listed for Module J2 that superseded (S8.318-A). Rule (J10.111) in the Master Rulebook includes text allowing this, but stated that such conversions were rare. What this means is that if the carrier group operates both heavy fighters and superiority fighters, the escorts will be configured to support the superiority fighters. In cases where the carrier is designed to only operate heavy fighters, e.g., scout-carriers, the escorts will be configured to support the heavy fighters. Romulan WarHawks were originally intended to operate as carriers in their own right, but were later amalgamated into groups combining one WarHawk with superiority fighters and a second with assault fighters. A WarHawk section operating independently with Gladiator-I fighters would not have an escort (BHE, SNE) that could service them due to (J4.897); such escorts could only be configured to service Gladiator-F type fighters.
(End of Ask Growler)

F&E Q&A
ENHANCED SMALL-SCALE COMBAT