Federation Commander

Ok title says it all. Ok Not really.
So I have been having real trouble with my plasma game but I think I finally figured out why. I HAVE BEEN PLAYING ROMULAN. Whew, what a difference a Gorn makes all be it I was flying 2 superior Gorn vessels, A CL and an CM (or is it MC?). Played with a buddy who was flying an LDR Jaguar CW and a Tiger CA. I thought I was going to get absolutely hammered, but I was pretty hot on the dice rolls and got lucky with my allocation, destroyed all 4 ESG's (over the course of the game without any major strikes, all less then 20 internals at a time). Basically with the Gorn you get the option for the carronade which gives you a chance to still be lethal if your opponent tries to close. The thing's I did this game:

1) Bolted 1 P-F
2) Launched three P-F's and one 2 turn P-F
3) Launched 2 P-S's
4) Fired 4 Carronades (Two seperate range 2-4 passes on seperate turns)
5) Would have launched one more P-S and P-F but we called it

When we called the game my CM had 1 Internal and 4 nearly down shields while my friend's CW was pretty much gutted an the CA was about to take 50 points of Plasma. My CL was clean.

The extra phaser's on the Gorn was extremely helpful and the Carronade ability was nice. All in all I found that if you use plasma in everyway possible in a game, you stand a good chance of winning. Also as my friend Dave put it "You have dinosaurs fighting cats, what do you expect...?"

Saved

Two things I forgot:

6) The fear of always having a P-S loaded (plus the two turn F)
7) I never went over speed 16 (in fact First turn I went speed 8 while my opponent went 24, which cost him cause he had to turn away or eat 4 P-F's).

Saved

I've found things to be very similar in my own games. I've only played the Gorn once and the Romulans a few times, but had much more success with the Gorn ship (oddly enough this was also against the Lyrans).

I think it may be partly because point-for-point, the Romulans tend to have inferior ships. They do get a cloaking device, but that isn't always as useful as you'd think - especially against the Lyrans . Also the Gorn's extra phasers really do come in handy. You can't fire them all at one target at once, but they're very good for long-term damage to your enemy, and after a few turns of phaser pumelling the enemy starts to feel the plasma a lot more. Also having phasers firing at every angle allows you to keep good shields on the enemy.

Saved.....so I guess that's why you've changed your avatar too

FoTW FTW...

It seems the Gorn don't rock so hard against the Kzintis after cruiser duel game I played last night . Those drones really can cancel out any advantage you have in phaser firepower when they're deployed right, and the Kzintis are usually quite fast which makes hitting them with launched plasma tricky.

Also while the Gorn have got excellent all-round phaser arcs, they can't bring any big amount of phasers to bear at once. This can be a problem when the enemy is closing to medium range only for a single firing opportunity, unloading everything and then getting out of range before you can turn to get your other phasers to bear (and chucking drones at you to tie these phasers up and/or force you to turn how he wants you to).

The Romulans can cloak, giving them the ability to bolt plasma, cloak, and run.

The Romulans can cloak, giving them the ability to bolt plasma, cloak, and run.

No you can't just uncloak, bolt and run as direct fire phase comes before the uncloak procedure is complete (other functions phase) --- Opponents also get a shot before you declare your cloaking in other functions phase ---

You will just "love the taste of drones" in the morning against most other races, even with loss of damage due to cloak, you have no defense vs them, if their launched before or during your phase out period ---[/quote]

I know it takes time to do both, but most races can't fire too many weapons behind them. That was my point the whole time.

I know it takes time to do both, but most races can't fire too many weapons behind them. That was my point the whole time.

Nothing in your post mentioning being behind them ---

With that on the table, the range and your opponents propensity to run or fight, there is always the HET which would bring you under their weapons also ---

As I just said in the cloak thread - if you can get behind someone in a meaningful way, and stay there whilst uncloaking then you probably didn't really need the cloak in the first place. Restricted to speed 16 whilst cloaked, with no meaningful acceleration allowed, plus the fade in period would imply a pretty poor opponent for him to still have his rear to your front at close range.

I'm sorry, I thought I did mention being behind them. Checked and turns out I was wrong.

ON a second note, yes there's always the HET but its expensive and only useful once without risk.

If a player restricted themselves to a speed of 8 or 16 when fighting a plasma user, the risk of a HET (even a second use) is the least of their problems ---

Depends on how late in the turn or how damaged you are, what if i've only got 9 boxes of life left.

If it's that late in the game... does it really matter? Unless your opponent only has 1 box left.

Which is why we like to play campaigns as opposed to stright-up duels. If you're playing in a campaign - you have to think about whether you really want to charge straight in... or do you want to hang around until thereare only 9 boxes left? Any ship that is massively damaged in this campaign turn - you have to allocate resource next turn to repairing it that could have otherwise gone to purchase new units, upgraded units, system defenses, reaserch and development, etc.