Federation Battlecruiser Drone Racks

droberts441 · Post by **droberts441** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 6:24 am

Sorry if this has already been answered before, but I couldn't find it.

On the Federation Battlecruiser Ship Card, there are four (4) drone racks in Squadron scale. It appears that two (2) are regular drone racks (IE 4 drones), and two (2) are regular Federation drone racks (IE 2 drones/4 ADD). Is the ship card correct? I saw no exception for the Battlecrusier in either the special Federation rule (4G9), nor in the ship description in (7C).

Thank You

Magnum357 · Post by **Magnum357** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 8:59 am

I may be wrong on this, and others might be better suited to answer this, but if I remember correctly in SFB the BCG has two type-B Drone Racks (which would be equivelent to the Drone Racks used by the Kzinti and Klingons in FC) and it also has two type-G Drone Racks (which is similar to the Federation Drone Racks in FC). This is part of the reason why the Fed BCG is fairly good as a Drone Launcher ship for the Feds, the two different Drone Racks give it some flexibility.

So to answer your original question, no the ship card for the BCG is right.

Kang · Post by **Kang** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 1:17 pm

It's right.

Across the FC product range, there are three basic types of Fed BC: one armed with two extra photons for a total of six, one armed with two plasma-F's in place of the two extra photons, [therefore 4 photons and 2 Pl-F] and one with two extra drone racks in place of the two extra photons [for 4 photons and 2 'Klingon-type' drone racks]. The extra 'Klingon-type' drone racks on the latter Fed BC are intended to be primary heavy weapons, whereas the 'standard' Fed racks of 2 drones and 4 ADDs are not, just like on the other classes of Fed BC which also have two Fed-type drone racks.

The different designs are supposed to give the Feds the right 'type' of heavy weapons to fight the specific bad guys on whatever front they are stationed on. Thus, the plasma-armed version lives on the eastern front against the Romulans, and so on.

Hope this is clear....

droberts441 · Post by **droberts441** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 1:28 pm

Thanks for the fast responses!

junior · Post by **junior** » Thu Aug 07, 2008 5:25 pm

Magnum357 wrote:but if I remember correctly in SFB the BCG has two type-B Drone Racks (which would be equivelent to the Drone Racks used by the Kzinti and Klingons in FC)

Not quite. The Type-B is the six-space drone rack. While the Klingons and Kzintis do indeed have lots of them (except that iirc some Kzinti ships use the Type-C, which can fire twice per turn), it's not featured in FedCom. All of the FedCom drone racks - with the exception of the "Federation" drone racks - are standard four space Type-A racks.

Magnum357 · Post by **Magnum357** » Sun Aug 10, 2008 1:23 am

Ah, thanks for the correction. As Junior pointed out, basically all Federation Commander Klingon/Kzinti drone Racks are similar to the Type-A (not Type-B) Drone Racks of SFB. My mistake.

Davec_24 · Post by **Davec_24** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 2:58 am

Yeah, it's similar to the Type A drone rack, but it's better than a SFB Type A in that you don't technically have limited reloads, since you can reload racks with repair points. I'm not sure as the number of drones you can fire before reloading has much in common with SFB because of this. Plus, the special Federation racks can launch only two drones before they must reload. Correct me if I'm wrong (it's a while since I've dug out any SFB stuff) but couldn't the Type G rack chuck more drones than that before reloading?

The impression I got was that the drone racks in Fed Com (apart from the special Federation ones as these retain the anti-drone capability of the old Type G racks) are meant to be of one type that's a sort of "average" or "standard" rack that's somewhere between the capabilities of the SFB drone rack types, eliminating the complexity resulting from the many types of drone racks that you had in SFB, whilst keeping the advantages and disadvantages of the drone rack as a weapon fundementally the same.

mjwest · Post by **mjwest** » Tue Aug 12, 2008 5:09 am

droberts441 wrote:On the Federation Battlecruiser Ship Card, there are four (4) drone racks in Squadron scale. It appears that two (2) are regular drone racks (IE 4 drones), and two (2) are regular Federation drone racks (IE 2 drones/4 ADD). Is the ship card correct? I saw no exception for the Battlecrusier in either the special Federation rule (4G9), nor in the ship description in (7C).

No, the card is not in error.

Just to specifically answer the question, the "Federation Drone Rack" is the type of drone rack that is most commonly used by the Federation, and not used by other empires. That said, there are the occasional Federation ship that uses "normal" drone racks (e.g. BCG, NCD) and the occasional non-Federation ship that uses "Federation" drone racks (e.g. Kzinti BCH).

Davec_24 wrote:couldn't the Type G rack chuck more drones than that before reloading?

If you loaded it with two drones and four ADD shots (as is the arrangement used by FC), no. They end up being identical.

However, you do pretty much nail the issue pretty well in your second paragraph.