I would be fine abandoning the shuttle penalty if it is very annoying to others. Note the the penalty was to address administrative shuttle buddies draining ESG damage away as much as suicide shuttles. Furthermore, for me this relatively recent change was more a suspension of disbelief thing than anything else. Should shuttles really be that disposable? Fighters in this game are nearly pure attritional plays, but there is at least a VP cost for losing a fighter. This said, I guess I should look at these matches in a tournament as a fight to the death rather than a campaign where I am going to need those shuttles for other things later or would have to answer to the high command for their flivorous use (Heck, we are the Gorns after all!). And maybe I should view my shuttle buddies as Suicide Shuttles with very little antimatter that are being guided to parallel the course of my ships.
My infamous game with Paul from nearly two years ago is probably best described as Paul forcing a draw in protest because I would not let him beat my Gorn squadron like a baby seal with his Hydran crunch squadron
For those not familiar with that tournament, it had 6 Turn limit with the intention of helping to shorten games. I took the Gorns because nobody seemed to want to play them and I figured I would have fun and try to get as much as possible out of them. I did not pick them because of the 6 Turn limit.
The general strategy I developed was to run Baseline Speed 8 (to deal with my poor turning ability and save energy for phaser fire and shield reinforcement) and to send out a continuous flow of large Plasma torpedoes the entire game. In my opinion, Plasma is suboptimal when bolted (unless I have carronades) and launching too much plasma at a time just wastes it since it will just be run out by my opponent. I want plasma out there all the time so that it is either hitting ships or forcing my opponent to use his or her phasers up. Note that I had also worked out a careful timing plan for launching the large torpedoes to help maximize their impact based on how quickly the enemy is closing with my ships.
The use of Suicide Shuttles was the last part of my general strategy. To the extent it was clear I was going to have left over energy on a given turn, I certainly had the shuttles and the energy would just be lost anyways. So, suicide shuttles away! However, I had little expectation they would hit anything and they had a lower priority than phasers or shield reinforcement.
This strategy worked very well against a Fed player who tried to crunch at Baseline Speed 8 and a Klingon Player who tried to Sabre dance me (and got nowhere due to my shield reinforcement).
When I faced Paul I knew I was in for a much more severe risk of a crunch than I previously faced from the Fed squadron. So, the shuttles starting going out a bit faster when it became clear he was going to come in very, very close. I also decided to drop to Baseline Speed 0. I believe Paul finally chickened out when I launched another large torpedo at him and he then turned away with his squadron. We went through this 3 or 4 times. By turn 5 he had exhausted my shuttles, but I still had the ability to at least put out a S or R torpedo every turn. He was hoping I would give him extra turns beyond the regulation six. I would not. So, he forced the draw on Turn 6.
Note that in my opinion Paul had a very good chance of a win if he had forced the crunch in the first place rather than turning away. However, in fairness to Paul, he is from an SFB background where the tactics I used against him have been long looked at as being illegal delaying tactics. He had the expectation of killing a baby seal and I defied that expectation by using tactics that he considered unreasonable. However, what must also be noted is that I come from a completely different background. I have never played SFB. I come from a background of playing Advanced Squad Leader where you use EVERYTHING available in the book when playing because whether you do or not, your opponent will.
This all said, the switch from a 6 Turn limit to a 10 Turn limit has seemed to address the concern that existed with suicide shuttle tactics.
