Federation Commander

[Kang]

Closing the Gap

When fighting in an asteroid field as the Tholians, and you have a Web Caster-equipped ship, look for opportunities to trap an unwary opponent in the gap between two asteroid hexes.

Here's how it works. Since, in an asteroid field battle, ships tend to avoid asteroid damage by staying out of asteroid hexes and remaining in clear space, often they will fly through single-hex gaps between the asteroids.

If your opponent finishes his movement in such a gap, you can exploit this with your Web Caster by throwing a three-hex web of 16 strength per hex (at up to ten hexes' range), with the ends anchored in the asteroid hexes to each side of the enemy ship, and with the middle Web hex in the same hex as the ship. This will trap the enemy ship immediately, and at worst will ruin his plans for the turn, at best may well trap him for long enough to hit him with a seeking weapon or two. Since Tholians are not big on seeking weapons, this trick is best performed when fighting alongside allied ships which do have such weapons, such as the Gorns. A Web hex forms a perfect anchor situation and makes the enemy ship a sitting target for plasma/drone strikes from hexes off to the side of the Web strand. The trick still works with larger gaps but will not slow up your opponent as much of course.

The counter to this is of course for the target ship to avoid single-hex gaps. Use maneuver, speed and accel/decel to make sure that you finish the movement sub-pulses a hex or two away from such gaps, and then dash forward to clear the gap in a single impulse. This works because of course the Web Caster can only fire after the movement is completed for that impulse. If your ship has already been trapped in a web, and has just broken out of it, it can sometimes even be worth decelerating upon release in order to avoid a similar gap and being trapped again. Then move forward in a burst of speed as above.

As this is taking place in an asteroid field, you will need to maneuver carefully to avoid entering asteroid hexes at the sorts of speeds required to break out of Webs of that strength; unfortunately these are also the same speeds required to avoid those gaps in the first place. Still, the increased speed will likely give you the initiative, since the Tholians will not necessarily want to be moving at that speed in an asteroid field either - and it can also put your ships into some interesting attacking positions!
_________________

[Scoutdad]

Great tactical advice, Tony.

Our group instinctively plays this way when using Tholians in asteroids... but I've never thought of codifying it as a tactical submission. Good call.
_________________
Commander, Battlegroup Murfreesboro
Department Head, ACTASF

[Kang]

[Scoutdad]

but being from the UK - I'd have thought a better name for the tactic might be:

MIND THE GAP!

forthose of you who get the humor...
For the rest of us, there's always Google .
_________________
Commander, Battlegroup Murfreesboro
Department Head, ACTASF