Federation Commander

[JimDauphinais]

Let me take a look at the numbers. If Paul's squadron only works at 0.92, I'll drop the Gorns to 0.92 as well. If it works at 0.96, we'll leave things as is.
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Jim Dauphinais, Chesterfield, MO

St. Louis Area Fed Comm Group: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/STL_Federation_Commander/

[Patrick Doyle]

Off the top of my head here are some basic ways to cope with with plasma.
Paul's post is more succinct and to the point, I'll elaborate a little.
Because I am travelling, I haven't picked out my force yet.

First, and foremost, move at a speed of 24. If you travel any slower you will die no matter how weak I tend to claim that plasmas are. Keep the pressure on the plasma ship.

Type S, G, and especially F torps are easy to run out. R torps are actually dangerous because you may not have enough room to run out the torpedo to the point where it doesn't do much damage. Romulans will have a lot more R torps since they will likely bring King Eagles and War Eagles.

If you get tractor beams by one of us you'll die, or at least that specific ship will.

The basic problem the plasma player has in the tournament is that they tend to fire either too much plasma or not enough. What this means is that if I fire enough plasma to scare you simply turn around and run out the torpedoes. If I do not fire enough plasma to penatrate your shield and cause damage , you keep coming at my ships, either phasering down the torps or taking the plasma hit on a shield that doesn't face my ships during direct fire. By not firing enough plasma, you, the direct fire ship, may get into overload range and wreck one my ships. By firing too much I leave my ships vulnerable on the following two turns.

Since we are on a fixed map, we may try to corner you before launching so that you have no where to run and the plasma will cause damage. This often requires us to lead the Target so that the plasma hits. Your only recourse may be to HET. But, for the price of a HET, you will have avoided our best shot and again the plasma shooter is vulnerable. Also, in the process of cornering you I may use up too many plasma torpedo to have a real killing blow.

Bolting. Next there is bolting. If you allow us to get to range 5, bolting becomes a real threat. At range 10, its a possibility. Keep in mind that with the cloak, the Romulans can bolt, run and cloak. The strong shields of the Eagle series ships makes damaging them difficult. Bolting is of course a gamble that may not pay off.

Next thing to watch out for is when the plasma force launches all its plasmas at 2 out of 3 of your ships. You may be tempted to charge in with the third ship to FINALLY get in an overload attack. Keep in mind that the lone ship will be facing all the phasers of our plasma force. Even if it gets in a decent attack, it may be wrecked, by ships using all phasers and directed targeting....targeting your engines so you can't run from future plasma torps.
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Once again I have proven that even in the future, your photon torpedoes are built by the lowest bidder.

[The_Rock]

As an aside, and I am good either way since plasma sucks and I don't actually expect to do well anyway, but it is not obvious to me that the Gorn and Roms should have the same modifier. The Gorns will have more torps, a lot more phasers and cloak is pretty worthless in Fed Com whereas carronade is actually very good. The Gorn ships will be much bigger as well. In exchange for that, the Roms will have R-torps. My gut feeling is that at 1x or 0.96x I'd rather have the Roms (assuming equal points) but that at 0.92x the Gorn is probably a lot better.

It is a matter of the granularity of the points. The Gorns have two nearly identical very good ships and one not good but not terrible ship at 160 points. So at 0.92x they get 3 big cruisers with 24 p-1s and 6 S and 6 F plasma. At 0.96x and higher they get stuck with at least 1 non-cruiser.

The Rom force, otoh, does not change much going from 1x to 0.96x to 0.92x. It starts with a Vulture and a KE then at 1x adds a KE, at 0.96x adds a K7R and at 0.92x adds a FH.

Hard to say for sure, but that is the analysis you need to work. Is having 3 R torps worrh losing 1 S torp, 5 p-1s, carronade and about 40 internals? Maybe, but my guess is no, but maybe we will find out.

[storeylf]

450 / 0.96 = 468.75.

Obviously there are no ships with fractional costs, so is that 468 or 469 points?

Just looking at a possible Gorn squadron (on the off chance I enter this time) and came to 469 pts.

[The_Rock]

I never asked, but I can tell you that I always just interpretted tje limit as 450. So I took the cost of my fleet multiplied it by the multiplier and that number, without rounding, could not exceed 450.

So, for your method, divide by the multiplier and drop any fraction.

[storeylf]

That makes sense, I just found it easier doing it the other way when I wasn't sure what I was taking to start off with, work out the adjusted limit and then look at ships.

[JimDauphinais]

I know Lee was just using his approach to roughly size out a legal squadron, but, to be clear, I have been a stickler with regard to drawing a bright line in regard to squadron size. Grey lines are slippery and can easily get a tournament judge into trouble.

So, participants need to sum the printed values of the ships selected for the squadron and then multiply that sum by the applicable multiplier. If the result, including fractions, is greater than 450 (or less than 425), it is not a legal squadron.
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Jim Dauphinais, Chesterfield, MO

St. Louis Area Fed Comm Group: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/STL_Federation_Commander/

[terryoc]

When do you begin taking signups for this?
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"Captain" Terry O'Carroll, fourteen papers published including six best of issue
"Man, Terry, you are like a loophole seeking missle!" - Mike West

[JimDauphinais]

The announcement will be up by Monday (US time).
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Jim Dauphinais, Chesterfield, MO

St. Louis Area Fed Comm Group: http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/STL_Federation_Commander/