Suicide frieghters

[wneeley]

What are some good tactics for tholians to use when attacking a base with suicide freighters with or without a aegis escort.

[mjwest]

You are Tholians. The answer is web casters. Basically, just use the web casters to protect their approach. The final web should be at range 1 to the base. That means the base gets one (and only one) shot at the freighters.

Obviously, mobile units will complicate things, but that is the base idea. The more web casters you have, the more options you have on how to get this all done.

[DNordeen]

Use your web casters to cast web in front of your freighter and ships. This will prevent direct fire weapons from being fired at you.

You'll still be able to fire phasers through the web.

Be sure to put the web far enough out that you are still behind it at the end of the impulse.

[wneeley]

Thanks I will try that.
The tholians probably make the base assault scenario because they can easily limit the damage to the freighter.

[storeylf]

Is a generic suicide freighter a 'tholian' ship for purposes of moving through web?

[mjwest]

Well, there really aren't any unaligned freighters. Even though the same ship card is used for a freighter, the freighter is still "Klingon", "Romulan", or whatever. So, any suicide freighters used by the Tholians would be "Tholian". I don't see anything in the rules other than "Tholian ships", so they should be good to go (through the web).

I will double-check to see what SFB says about the different ship types. (At this point I am curious.)

If they can't pass through, the same idea still works, but it has to be timed way better, and you can't prevent the range-1 tractor defense.

[Kang]

<snip>....and you can't prevent the range-1 tractor defense.

Which brings to mind a general tactic involving Suicide Freighters (not just Tholian ones): Use accels and decels on the Suicide Freighter to avoid it reaching Range 1 at the end of the Movement Phase.

This is because the defending base can only tractor a Suicide Freighter at range 1. After impact, a Suicide Freighter can't be tractored; Rule (5D4) specifies that you can only use defensive tractors (i.e. in the Dfensive Fire Phase) on suicide shuttles and drones, in the first paragraph of that Rule.

Rule (4H3) says "You could only tractor a suicide freighter if it ended an impulse in a hex adjacent to the base or some other friendly unit".

So, you deny the base the chance of a tractor defence by timing your approach properly.

Naturally, a counter to this is to use a defending ship uses its tractors to mess up the attacker's approach timing - which takes careful planning.

[m1a1dat]

Suicide Freighters can not use accels or decels because it falls under the seeking weapon rules for that. I don't have the rule book handy so can't cite any rule numbers. So just be sure when you are setting up the map that the suicide freighter is just the right distance so it doesn't end up at range one at the end of an impulse. But, as Kang points out, that can be messed with by the ships defending the base.

[Kang]

I have to respectfully differ on that. Yes, the rule (4H2) says they move as seeking weapons, but they also move as regular freighters do, they use energy allocation, pay for movement etc.

However I can see both sides! We'd better get a ruling on this, whaddayathink!

[mjwest]

Suicide Freighter cannot accelerate or decelerate. When a unit (either shuttles or freighters) operate under the seeking weapon rules, they have to obey the restrictions of BOTH classes. So, freighters have to operate under the base restrictions of a freighter (with slower movement, energy required for movement, no HET) and the base restrictions of a seeking weapon (no acceleration or deceleration).

In fact, (4F3a) is pretty direct in this, and it explicitly lists suicide freighters as operating under that movement restriction.

[Kang]

Thanks for the clarification, Mike m1a1dat, I stand corrected!

It would appear, then, that once the freighter is pulled off its carefully planned speed/distance route as suggested in m1a1dat's post, that its course can't be 'corrected', or at least not by units friendly to the freighter.