After-Action Report - Fed NCL vs. Kzinti CMD
Posted: Tue Apr 22, 2008 10:38 pm
Just myself and one other player showed up for Monday Night FedCom at my Friendly Local Game Store. Since Briefing #1 had only arrived within the last week or so, he picked up a copy of it. And since he plays the Kzintis, he wanted to take their new drone cruiser for a spin. I'd only brought my Fed ships with me for some odd reason, so I picked out an NCL (which is several points less).
End result? It appears that the drone cruiser is a very poor dueling ship. He conceded during the fourth turn. Nearly all of his yellow boxes were gone, he had no hull or cargo space left, all of his phasers were disabled, his impulse engines were off-line, and his warp engines had lost roughly half a dozen boxes. All of his drone racks were on-line, though that was in part due to the fact that he'd repaired a couple of them. And his #6 and #4 shields were completely wrecked.
The entire amount of internal damage that I took was a single point of burn through damage on turn 2 (against the labs). The game was played on a location map (using a custom map that's roughly the same size as a 4x3 layout using the large hex maps that come with FC), but we didn't have to shift the map at all.
Turn 1 - We started in opposite corners with a planet in the middle (our "location" for the map). He picked speed 16, while I picked speed 8 and dumped power into my photon tubes. At the end of the turn, we each fired two phaser-1s at each other at range 23. He inflicted two points of damage (which reinforcement dealt with), while I inflicted three (which meant that one point got through the reinforcement).
Turn 2 - We both picked speed 16 this turn. His reluctance to engage in a head-on pass against overloaded photon torpedoes meant that he slid over enough to engage in a "parallel pass" at range 3. I dumped my photons into his #6 shield, while he fired his phasers (2xph-1, 2xph-3) into mine. Three of my photons hit and did 22 internals (including two drone hits), while he did just enough damage with his phasers to earn a burnthrough point (which disabled a lab). He launched five drones at me, but I was able to whittle them down using phasers. It helped that I was able to get his drones lined up with my rear centerline, and bring my off-arc phasers to bear on them.
Turn 3 - He repaired one of his drone launchers, while I repaired the lab. I dropped to speed 8 to rearm my photons, while he continued at speed 16. He launched another salvo of drones at me, which I once again got onto my centerline and destroyed with the exception of one drone which ended up held in a tractor beam. He spent most of the turn swinging around to my rear while I moved my ship about to attempt to get him in front of me.
Turn 4 - He repaired his other drone launcher, and I finished rearming my photons. I selected speed 16 while he selected speed 8. His extra drone was destroyed at the end of the first impulse. I moved to close the range, and while doing so, he fired a full salvo of seven drones at me. I was able to catch them in my front firing arc and thus bring all six phaser-1s to bear on them (anti-drone fire from the drone rack got the seventh drone). I closed the range to two hexes, and fired a salvo of photon torpedoes that did enough damage to convince him to concede.
The drone cruiser's primary problem is the lack of direct fire heavy weapons. Disruptors don't do much damage individually, but when massed they're respectable. And you don't have to worry about your opponent using phasers to cancel out your disruptor fire. To counterbalance that, the drone cruiser needs to mass enough drones to overwhelm the opponent's defences. My opponent was never able to do that. A good chunk of that, I suspect, is my well-earned reputation for outmaneuvering drones fired at range. So my opponent held his drpme fire until he got closer. But that did cost him somewhat. For instance, it caused him to not launch any drones during the first turn, whereas I think launching them during Impulse 8 of Turn 1 would have been a good idea. Because of the lack of heavy weapons, the drone cruiser is forced to rely on its phasers as its direct-fire weapons, and Kzintis tend to be short on offensive phasers.
Another mistake that my opponent made (and that I see far too often in duels) is that my opponent got too far away from my ship. Federation ships basically turn like bricks, and it's possible to get into their rear section and stay there (unless they HET). The problem is that if you get too far away from the Federation ship, then it can turn to face you before you can adjust your position in relation to the Federation ship (which is what basically happened on Turn 3). If you get too close, then you risk a sudden High Energy Turn putting you at point blank range of the Fed's Photon Torpedoes. So you need to figure out what the optimal distance is when attempting to stay behind a Fed. My opponent didn't do very well in this.
Finally, if you're using seeking weapons, then you should be VERY careful about which shield the weapons impact on. The centerlines of a ship are very dangerous locations for seeking weapons because they allow the targeted ship to bring more weapons to bear than they would otherwise. On turn #4, I managed to ensure that his drones struck my #1 shield instead of my #2 shield. As a result, I was able to bring to bear not only the FH and RS phasers, but also the LS phasers which would otherwise have been out of arc. The end result was six guaranteed kills from phaser-1s.
End result? It appears that the drone cruiser is a very poor dueling ship. He conceded during the fourth turn. Nearly all of his yellow boxes were gone, he had no hull or cargo space left, all of his phasers were disabled, his impulse engines were off-line, and his warp engines had lost roughly half a dozen boxes. All of his drone racks were on-line, though that was in part due to the fact that he'd repaired a couple of them. And his #6 and #4 shields were completely wrecked.
The entire amount of internal damage that I took was a single point of burn through damage on turn 2 (against the labs). The game was played on a location map (using a custom map that's roughly the same size as a 4x3 layout using the large hex maps that come with FC), but we didn't have to shift the map at all.
Turn 1 - We started in opposite corners with a planet in the middle (our "location" for the map). He picked speed 16, while I picked speed 8 and dumped power into my photon tubes. At the end of the turn, we each fired two phaser-1s at each other at range 23. He inflicted two points of damage (which reinforcement dealt with), while I inflicted three (which meant that one point got through the reinforcement).
Turn 2 - We both picked speed 16 this turn. His reluctance to engage in a head-on pass against overloaded photon torpedoes meant that he slid over enough to engage in a "parallel pass" at range 3. I dumped my photons into his #6 shield, while he fired his phasers (2xph-1, 2xph-3) into mine. Three of my photons hit and did 22 internals (including two drone hits), while he did just enough damage with his phasers to earn a burnthrough point (which disabled a lab). He launched five drones at me, but I was able to whittle them down using phasers. It helped that I was able to get his drones lined up with my rear centerline, and bring my off-arc phasers to bear on them.
Turn 3 - He repaired one of his drone launchers, while I repaired the lab. I dropped to speed 8 to rearm my photons, while he continued at speed 16. He launched another salvo of drones at me, which I once again got onto my centerline and destroyed with the exception of one drone which ended up held in a tractor beam. He spent most of the turn swinging around to my rear while I moved my ship about to attempt to get him in front of me.
Turn 4 - He repaired his other drone launcher, and I finished rearming my photons. I selected speed 16 while he selected speed 8. His extra drone was destroyed at the end of the first impulse. I moved to close the range, and while doing so, he fired a full salvo of seven drones at me. I was able to catch them in my front firing arc and thus bring all six phaser-1s to bear on them (anti-drone fire from the drone rack got the seventh drone). I closed the range to two hexes, and fired a salvo of photon torpedoes that did enough damage to convince him to concede.
The drone cruiser's primary problem is the lack of direct fire heavy weapons. Disruptors don't do much damage individually, but when massed they're respectable. And you don't have to worry about your opponent using phasers to cancel out your disruptor fire. To counterbalance that, the drone cruiser needs to mass enough drones to overwhelm the opponent's defences. My opponent was never able to do that. A good chunk of that, I suspect, is my well-earned reputation for outmaneuvering drones fired at range. So my opponent held his drpme fire until he got closer. But that did cost him somewhat. For instance, it caused him to not launch any drones during the first turn, whereas I think launching them during Impulse 8 of Turn 1 would have been a good idea. Because of the lack of heavy weapons, the drone cruiser is forced to rely on its phasers as its direct-fire weapons, and Kzintis tend to be short on offensive phasers.
Another mistake that my opponent made (and that I see far too often in duels) is that my opponent got too far away from my ship. Federation ships basically turn like bricks, and it's possible to get into their rear section and stay there (unless they HET). The problem is that if you get too far away from the Federation ship, then it can turn to face you before you can adjust your position in relation to the Federation ship (which is what basically happened on Turn 3). If you get too close, then you risk a sudden High Energy Turn putting you at point blank range of the Fed's Photon Torpedoes. So you need to figure out what the optimal distance is when attempting to stay behind a Fed. My opponent didn't do very well in this.
Finally, if you're using seeking weapons, then you should be VERY careful about which shield the weapons impact on. The centerlines of a ship are very dangerous locations for seeking weapons because they allow the targeted ship to bring more weapons to bear than they would otherwise. On turn #4, I managed to ensure that his drones struck my #1 shield instead of my #2 shield. As a result, I was able to bring to bear not only the FH and RS phasers, but also the LS phasers which would otherwise have been out of arc. The end result was six guaranteed kills from phaser-1s.
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