There are so many ways to go in response to this post, to Storyelf's points (not implying you don't see them).DirkSJ wrote:The problem, at least with Rom, is that this tactic leads to the other side winning. They say, ok, you don't want me to close? Fine I'll fire at range. Pretty much every race has a better phaser suite than Roms and their heavy weapons work perfectly well at range.storeylf wrote:Phul, like you I tend to see the plasma less as a killing weapon and more as a means of 'encouraging' enemy ships to move away from me, in a way that I can take adavantage of. I agree that waiting to fire plasma at range 1 or 2 (or generally overload range) is just asking for trouble. The idea isn't to exchange volleys, where the enemy clobbers you and them you hope your plasma hits. You shoot slightly earlier and force the enemy to be hit by the plasma if he wants to get to overload against you.
The plasma will never hit as they never get close enough and never commit to taking one on a shield to make an overload run. You scare them away to stay at range and they just shoot you with their better ranged weapons until you die. With disruptor races it's particularly nasty.
Thinking about it, strangely the decel rules are just as big of a problem for plasma as the accel rules. In SFB you could fire a leading shot at someone at moderate to long range going very fast. If you planned the shot right they wouldn't be able to turn in time. In FC they can grind power into decel and turn in place to avoid closing with the plasma.
Speaking from a Rom perspective, as I said I don't care for the gorn and am not really familiar with their ships, a late war fleet is perfect for chasing a runner (even a saber dancer). The fleet I described above had 5 batteries per ship, and 4-6 phasor 1s per ship looking FA. They also had a pretty large energy pool. Most direct fire ship, dont' have enough looking back to make running from a late war Rom fleet viable (Klingons are pretty horrible out the RA facing at range, and barely notable in the middle range). Lyrans are abit more problematic in this situation (running/saber dancing) as they tend to have more LS/RS P1s than klingons... I'd give even odds on that. In either case, realize that if you're running at 24 / 24+1, you're not doing much else in the class sizes we're talking about. It's cheaper to fire phasors at you and battery the difference than it is to fire disruptors back (not to mention shield disparities).
If talking a tourney map, Saber/Runners are going to run out of space in t2, and then they lose the option of running, with a plasma fleet chasing them. A situation that imo is to the plasma players advantage.
As a side note, I've put most the ships into spreadsheets to have a look at their direct fire potentials. You'd be surprised what the damage curves look like in certain arcs for some races.
