Stasis Box

[junior]

Was playing a modified Stasis Box game last night. No asteroids around the potential sites (no one had brought the rules with them). And I'd expected four players (we only had three), so I mixed in four stasis boxes and four mines into the counter mix.

We had two of each turn up in the game.

Things went badly for me...

I was flying a Fed DW. There was a Romulan Battlehawk (I think). And there was a Kzinti CL.

The Romulan and I both found a stasis box six hexes away from each other. The Kzinti found two mines.

For whatever reason (maybe he was bored), while the Romulan and I were both parked on the stasis boxes doing the 'wait 16 impulses' thing, the Romulan decided to launch his two G-Torps at me at the start of my second turn sitting on the box (I'd parked atop it during impulse . So I fired a full volley of overloaded Photon Torpedoes at him, along with my drone. The Romulan came off the worse for it all, and decided to go ahead and cloak. The Kzinti, with only one unchecked marker left, decided that he needed to drive one of us off of ours. Since the Romulan was cloaked, the Kzinti launched a full drone volley at me.

I thought that I was going to be in the clear, and that the drones would arrive during Impulse 1 of the next turn. At that point, I'd have my power back, and might in fact have been able to gun the engines and outrun the drones while simultaneously transporting the stasis box aboard.

I was wrong.

The stupid things hit in Sub-Pulse 4 of Impulse 8. I had no power left (I'd plotted speed 8, and had been decelerating each impulse), so I couldn't pick the drones off. I'd also used my drone rack that turn, so I couldn't use the ADD function on it. And it was literally the last sub-pulse I needed to be parked on the stasis box, so I figured I'd take the hit, grab the box, and limp off the map (the edge wasn't that far away). The Romulan still had to shepherd his box for a few impulses, so I figured the Kzinti would go after him in an attempt to steal his box. Mine would already be on my ship so blowing my ship up wouldn't do the Kzinti any good at that point. All the Kzinti would have to do is hit the Romulan's Transporter.

So, of course, the Kzinti goes after me...

I managed to turn a fresh shield, but my engines were pretty badly shot up and due to the speed gymnastics I was forced to do to get my ship turned I had just enough power for one phaser 3 shot and the ADD from the drone rack. The ADD missed, the phaser killed a drone, and the remaining three drones smashed through my shield. That was then followed up by a volley of direct weapons fire that blew up my ship. Goodbye ship. Goodbye stasis box. Guaranteed Romulan Win. Guaranteed Kzinti Loss.

Strangely, I only lost one Photon Torpedo. And all three of my shuttle boxes were still unharmed.

[Mike]

Hmmm... makes one wonder why you couldn't have launched shuttles and before your ship exploded, transported you and a select few of your crew plus the stasis box to one of the shuttles.

[OGOPTIMUS]

That's an interesting idea, but is site-to-site transporting legal? I don't recall it happening in TOS other than at one point in the episode "Shore Leave" Sulu says "Someone beaming down from the bridge" as Spock materializes.

[Scoutdad]

It wouldn't be classified as "site-to-site" transporting if the shuttle has already been launched... and the launch step comes before transporters in the Sequence of Play.

In SFB, a common tactic is to launch a shuttle as a "Scatter Pack".

For those who haven't played SFB, a scatter pack is a seeking weapon consisting of a shuttlecraft loading with (typically) 6 drones, targeted on a single unit. Once the correct conditions have been met, the scatter pack will release the drones at the target, leaving an inert shuttlecraft sitting in the release hex.
Many times players will transport a pilot aboard the now empty vehicle to serve as a pilot and fly the shuttle back to the launching ship, to a different ship, or as a weapons platform.

since Fed Comm shuttles don't have weapons and can't be used as scatter packs, this situation has never arisen in one of our games.

Rule (5H5) provides the carrying capacity of a shuttle in Fed Comm (10 personnel of 8 yds3 of cargo) and rule (5E5) provides the limitations of a transportor (cannot beam explosive ordnance, can not beam pilots OFF a shuttle, etc.)
While it would ultimately be a decision for Steve Cole (or MJWest) to make, I would think that since there is no specific rules against it just might be possible... but it probably would have been more efficient to simply place the stasis box and the captain on the shuttle before launching it.

[OGOPTIMUS]

I agree with that, but It seems to me that the stasis box wasn't yet onboard. If it was, not problem I suppose.

[junior]

Two reasons that wouldn't have worked -

First, the Kzinti (who at that point was basically blowing me up just to blow me up - destroying my ship offered him no real benefit) could have killed the shuttle quite easily. The last little bit of direct fire was a single phaser in through the shield that his drones took down. He had plenty of firepower still left over.

Second, even if I'd thought of it I didn't have any transporters available. The only reason that I'd been able to transport the box at the start of the turn was because I repaired a transporter at the start of the turn. And the drones promptly wrecked it again.


Just to clarify the sequence -

End of Turn 4, Impulse 8, Sub-Pulse 4 - Drone wave impacts
During the offensive fire phase, the Kzinti fires
Turn 5, Impulse 1, Other Phase - I use the Transporter to pick up the box
Turn 5, Impulse 1, Launch Phase - the Kzinti launches another wave of drones at me (the Romulan is cloaked, and therefore can't be targeted by the drones)
Turn 5, Impulse 3 - Drone wave impacts
During the offensive fire phase, the Kzinti fires a single phaser and blows up my ship