Federation Commander

[phul]

(8RA1) Surprise Reversed

So I wasn't sure which forum to place this in and I did do a search to see if this scenario had been discussed before. I wasn't able to find anything. This scenario is out of the Romulan Attack module, and as I was showing a friend how to play FC, this is out of one of the early modules and I came across it while looking for scenarios. After setting this up, I was unable to see how the Romulan player ever wins.

VC: are PVVS (8B2), and the Federation player must disengage the map by the end of Turn 6 in a specified direction.

Romulan player has 5 ships KR-132, War Eagle-103, Battle Hawk-88, K5R-84, Snipe-75 for a total of 482. The Fedeation player by comparison has a CC-151.

So, before the scenario even begins, the PVVS looks like this (as far as I understand them), Romulan player 0/151; Federation 331/151. This tells me that there aren't enough points in the game for the Romulan to ever win via PVVS. What stops the federation player from just leaving the board and winning a 200%+ victory?

Setup has the Romulans "powered down, unable to opperate shields" adjacent to an 'anchor point', and unable to do anything except once per turn they may accellerate. At the end of every turn each ship rolls a 1d6 and "wakes up" on a 1/2. No pre-game arming for the Romulan. So fully charged plasmas aren't available until turn 4 for the ships that wake up first (turn 3 for 2 turn F arming).

Ignoring the issue I think we saw with the PVVS application for VC above, we played this to see how the actual battle as laid out would unfold. The result was a CC that flew in to the middle of the Romulans at speed 8, that put criplling damage on the KR, the BH, and 8-15 internals on the other 3. At the end of the turn the KR and the K5R came alive (2 of 5, which is above average). Only 1 plasma was alive on the KR, and only 1 plasma on the K5R. Both flew at max speed out of the mix on turn two to start the 3 turn charing process. Turn 2 saw them fly out to ~20hexes, and the CA finish off the remaining 'sleeping' romulans. Beginning of turn 3 has a critical KR with only a 2 turn charge on a single S plasma and a 2 turn charge on a single F plasma. Together these two are no match for the still fresh (and fully reloaded photon armament) CC. Unless there are some horrible rolls for the Federation and an amazing roll for the Romulan wake up (3/4 ships 'wake), I see no way in the ship engagement that the Romulans ever win this scenario.

Thoughts? Would appreciate some input. Firstly on the application of the PVVS system to this scenario, and then any thoughts on the actual engagment.

[mjwest]

Yeah, there probably should have been a different victory system used for the scenario.

Regardless, though, it is intended to be a one-sided affair. Another such example is the "Hood" scenario where a Fed CA is jumped by a Klingon D7 and two D6s. Sometimes the real objective is simply to survive.
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[pmiller13]

There certainly is an issue with the PVVS being used in this scenario as both you and Mike pointed out so enough said there.

However in your description of the battle you seem to have forgotten your main weapon, to point your phasers. Rather than scattering from the other ships the two that activated should have turned into the federation CC and phaser hosed him, preferably on a shield that they could stay on for the next turn. Then stay engaged while bringing up your torpedoes. You got slightly better than average odds on the first turn and got two ships active. Yeah one was a cripple but the other was a tough little destroyer. Between them they should have had enough phasers to take down a shield on turn two. Remember that while the KR may have been cripple on the first pass that was with your shields down, now your shields are up and he has to take them down to do damage and he will not have photons till turn three. The CC then has to decide to try to take out the other inactive ships or deal with the two that are banging away on his shields knowing that the KR is going to be able to put a fast load into him on turn 3 as well as the phasers on the two ships plus the possibility of a survivor activating and joining the fight. Don't get me wrong it’s a tough scenario and its weighted in favor of the Federation player. However a really aggressive Romulan player can take down that CC with just a little luck

[phul]

[phul]

[OGOPTIMUS]

There is always the option of running the scenario in a matching style. Play the scenario once, then switch sides. The winner is the one who does more damage to the CC, has more undamged ships, or gets a higher score using the PVVS.

It's not the perfect solution, but reframing it can help.

IIRC, The Mighty Hood Goes Down was played at Origins a few years back in this style.
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[Scoutdad]

As the one who converted this scenario from SFB to FC... I have to put my two Quatloos worth in...

You are correct in that the Romulan player doesn;t have a chance at winning using the PVVS, but sometimes that's not the only measure of success. We [Battlegroup Murfreesboro] have played the SFB version several times, as well as the Fed Comm version. Both version place the Romulans under similar restrictions -with, as anticipated; similar outcomes. Much as with "The Mighty Hood Goes Down" and "Giants in The Playground" - we play these scenarios round-robin style. We play once, then swap sides and play again. The ultimate winner is the one who does a better job as the underdog, not necessarily the one with the biggest point total at the end.

I'd hate to see you put the game on the shelf simply because one or two sceanrios are, as you put it - "broken". In real life, not every battle is an even proposition. One side almost always has an advantage - either real or perceived, or bot sides would endeavor to avoid conflict until the parity could be overcome.

Most of the scenarios in the game and it's expansions are more evenly balanced (although some are less so), but if balance is the ultimate goal - one can always play pick-up style, set-point space battles with the empire of your choosing. Or even a "Civil War" style scenario with both sides having identical forces. It can't get much more even than that.
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Commander, Battlegroup Murfreesboro
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[phul]

[storeylf]

I have to agree with Phul here, the scenarios in the core books (at least) should have balanced victory conditions with a good chance of either side winning when playing the scenario as written. Anything else just gives the impression of a badly thought out/play tested/proof read product. New players shouldn't be getting dismayed because they happen to choose a bad scenario to play and perceive the game as being seriously unbalanced.

For the good of the game one would hope that not everyone playing will be old SFB players, references to SFB are irrelevant, this isn't SFB nor an expansion to SFB but a seperate game and should stand on its own.

There is a difference between a scenario where one side is going to get wiped out (or similar) and an unbalanced scenario where one side simply can't win. Wargames have always had to deal with the former, usually by setting victory conditions to balance out such a battle - 'can you better the historical outcome'. They are often the the best sorts of scenarios as they present challenges beyond simple combat. The spartans are going to die, but if they hold out for 3 days they win, The french are not trying to beat the prussians - just stop them getting to waterloo. The defenders of the Alamo are as good as dead, they just need to go out in a blaze of glory. The british just need to evacuate enough men and material from the beaches of dunkirk to win whilst getting plastered. I'm sure something similar could have been presented for this scenario.

[rulesjd]

Sure, the scenario is not balanced. As suggested , have each player try both sides. Or in a tournament compare the relative scores among players who played the Fed and the Romulan. The players who performed best on each side can resovle 1st place with a straight up duel.

Even if this scenario isn't balanced, most of them are fairly well balanced. Play some of the others or tinker with house rule changes to suit taste. Frankly, if I was teaching new players I wouldn't choose this scenario for quite a while.

As to tactics, I would point out that you cannot "target" weapons/enginges with overloaded photons. They either must fire at normal strength to target or accept the fully random chart. Even then targetting isn't guaranteed nor is even hitting with photons at close range.

At the end of the day, SFB/FC scenarios came into being over many years and they are not all well balanced/playtested. You make a good case for attention to this going forward and perhaps modifying some of the existing published scenario victory conditions. SFB/FC tends to be a commmunity based game and player submissions are usually fairly well accepted.
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"Damn the torpedoes, full spe........[squarrk]"

[phul]

[Mike]

[dreamingbadger]

I think in the Captains Log (#5) version of the Surprise Reversed the Modified Victory conditions gave the Romulan player a 200 point bonus, which would sort of balance the game.

In many ways though this is an excellent scenario for learners, but they really need to play the Cruiser rather than the Fleet.