8B102 Refiner's Fire Question

JimDauphinais · Post by **JimDauphinais** » Sat Mar 20, 2010 4:53 am

We tried this with four players this evening and it has left us scratching our heads.

Per the Initial Setup, the map is a"location map" that floats within 50 hexes of the Gorn ship. However, Special Rule 1. states the Gorn Ship cannot leave the map.

How could the Gorn ship possibly ever leave the map if the map is a location map that floats within 50 hexes of the Gorn ship?

We played it that the starting location of the Gorn ship was the location the map floated around and the Gorn ship may never leave the map. However, it quickly became apparent during play that all the Gorn and Feds needed to do to win was to force a high speed (32 movement per turn) chase around the large perimeter of the map (the way we played it effectively had a 50 hex radius around the starting hex of the Gorn ship).

What are we missing? This was rather disappointing for us as this is the second four player scenario we have played that seemed to have broken victory conditions (8RB5 Ceasefire Collapse was the other). We really want to move beyond duel scenarios. So, this has been pretty frustrating for us.

Dal Downing · Post by **Dal Downing** » Sat Mar 20, 2010 6:52 am

This was talked about before it is a artifact of the conversion from SFB to a Open Map in FedCom. If I remember this right, the Gorn ship is the victory condition. Any ship that is more than 50 hexs from the Reptilicon is considered disengaged. Rememeber it doesn't really matter to the Alliance Player (Fed/Gorn) what happen to the Lexington it only matters that the Reptilicon survives. (Yes if you are playing teams with in teams the Fed would like to see his ship survive as well. But the whole point of the scenerio is to keep the Romulians from starting a major war with the unprepared Gorns.

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JimDauphinais · Post by **JimDauphinais** » Sat Mar 20, 2010 2:23 pm

Dal Downing wrote:This was talked about before it is a artifact of the conversion from SFB to a Open Map in FedCom. If I remember this right, the Gorn ship is the victory condition. Any ship that is more than 50 hexs from the Reptilicon is considered disengaged. Rememeber it doesn't really matter to the Alliance Player (Fed/Gorn) what happen to the Lexington it only matters that the Reptilicon survives. (Yes if you are playing teams with in teams the Fed would like to see his ship survive as well. But the whole point of the scenerio is to keep the Romulians from starting a major war with the unprepared Gorns. )

Dal -- Thanks for your response.

I think what you are saying is that you believe the Initial Setup and Special Rule 1. should be interpreted as an open map where ships are forced to disengage per 2E1c when they are more than 50 hexes away from the Gorn Ship. Interesting. I hope Mike West can chime in to tell us what he intended in regard to the map and its interaction with the Gorn ship.

In regard to the victory conditions, the scenario was presented as a four player scenario and the victory conditions for the Romulans and Klingons are completely decoupled from each other. The Klingon player wins if his ship survives and the Fed ship is destroyed. This is the only requirement for the Klingon player to win. Thus, the Klingon player can win even if the Romulan player does not. This is not to say there are not reasons for the Klingon player to work cooperatively with the Romulan player, but if the Gorn ship is destroyed and the Fed ship gets away, the Klingons lose.

toastie · Post by **toastie** » Sat Mar 20, 2010 10:28 pm

I've played this scenario both in SFB (long time ago) and in FC, and recall the SFB battle felt more 'balanced'. In FC, the default KR is the same as the SFB KRB which has reinforced shields and plasma S torpedos. In the SFB scenario the KRs do not have refits, and so have plasma Gs and the weaker shields as found in the Middle Years. As I recall, in both scenarios the Gorn ship is the BC, with 2 plasma S and 2 plasma F.

I ran the Fed ship in the FC scenario. The battle ended after the Fed and one KR were obliterated, with the Gorn BC heavily damaged and unable to continue the fight against the remaining largely undamaged KR and D7.

phul · Post by **phul** » Wed May 05, 2010 6:34 pm

The original question is still unanswered. The way the setup of the map reads, the map is a 'floating' location map centered on the Gorn ship. As that is done, the Gorn/Feds never even need to engage to force a win on turn 11 (fly 24+1 for 10 turns away from R/K forces). Also, as Jim said, how does the Gorn ship leave a map that moves centered on it?

If it was meant to be played as we played this, ie; the hex where the Gorn ship sets up is the center of a 50 hex radius location map, this is still plenty of room to hide for the Gorn/Fed, leaving splitting of the R/K forces the only way to force an engagement on them (a losing proposition). All the Gorn/Fed need to do is fly to an edge and skirt the sides of the map.