Federation Commander

[paulgenna]

I need a little help in a good tactic to use against the Tholians. My usual method of echelon formation of small to large I do not think will work against a Tholian/Neo-Tholian fleet. I'm thinking I will end up with too many ships stuck in a web.

I expect there to be 1-3 WC's in the opposing fleet. The rest of the fleet will be heavy cruisers. I will have a combination of CC's, CA's and CS's and CL's nothing small unless that is a tactical advantage.

Thanks in advance

[paulgenna]

In our campaign the Federation players has received a couple of Tholian destroyers with webcasters and on the third turn he was able to get the webs blocking my fleet from being able to fire on the Feds at a range of 10 with the ISC PPD's with the webs. I took a serious racking on a CA and was wondering if the tactic of waiting out the web was the right approach.

During the battle I thought of a couple of options and wanted to get some opinions on the best philosophy.

One of the options I could have used was running the ISC ships into the web prior to the Fed ships entering 10 hexes out and then unloading on a couple of them (I had 9 PPDs in my fleet). However, doing this would prevent my Plasma-S's from being able to be launched as a deterrent to rushing in. Since the Feds have a scout in their fleet bolting the S-torps would require a 1 or 2 on the die roll to hit.

Second option was to manuever and see if I could use the web to get out of the Fed FA arc. Since he was doing speed 24 and I was doing 16 I figured he could easily match my moves since he would be moving after me.

Third option, the one I did, was deaccelerate as far back from the webas I could and unload on the Feds when they came through the evaporating web. I unloaded a couple of S-torps at the lead ships trying to time the web evaporating but the Fed player had a second destroyer throw up a Web that got the torps stuck. He then skirted around the end and fired OVL photons at 6-8 range.

Since the Tholians are involved should I just expect a battle of attrition or should I have approached the fight differently? We just abou finished the turn and may have another opportunity to try out another option.

[paulgenna]

Fleet make-up and current status of ships

Feds:

LCC
2 Tholian destroyers
Scout
6 CA's 3 with front shields down and 2 with moderate damage.

ISC
CC No front shields and minor internal damage
5 CA's One CA with 60% damage.
2 CL
1 CS
Scout