Federation Commander

Looking at the official Origins tournament rules, I noticed that it's on a fixed map. This should tend to favour empires with lots of seeking weapons. I'd therefore expect Kzintis and Gorns to be very competitive. Roms pay a big premium for the cloak, and I don't really know how useful it would be.

Crunch should do OK, so Federation would be a reasonable choice. Hydrans & LDR would have the gatlings to deal with drones and plasma. Tholians have web snares and the webcaster, although I'd expect their one webcaster-equipped ship to be a fire magnet.

I see the least competitive empires being Lyrans, Klingons and Seltorians. Lyrans have plenty of anti-drone defense, but the ESG isn't that useful offensively in a squadron battle because ranges tend to be longer. Klingons are rather fragile and do better on a location or floating map. Selts have poor turn modes, lack crunch, and have little defense against seekers. (Although I'd probably play Selts anyway, because of my quixotic affection for the bugs.)

Orions are the wildcards, as usual. I'd expect to see drones, plasma, gatlings and hellbores.

Lyran ESG's should make them worthwhile, defensively or offensively. Selts have enough phasers to provide decent defense, and plenty of extra power for increased speed.

This does sound scary for races like Klingons. There's only so far on the map to go until someone with more crunch can get to range ~4 or so. Would the Klingon's best bet be to turn in with overloads instead of trying to do the standard saber dance?

In previous years we played Fleet scale at the tournament, this year will be the first at Squadrn scale.

The Klingons are a little tough to play with in the tournament. There is a restriction that you can only bring two of the same ship, so that rule prevents the Klingon from bringing 3 D-5Ws (148 each). Max is 450 pts. The next option for the Klingons is a C-7 and 2 D-5s. This force is a little fragile, but good.

If I were Klingon on a fixed map, I'd probably abandon Saber Dance, or at least the traditonal type, and try using drones to force out Phasers, before Ducking in to exchange overloads. However, in this case, I should just use the Kzinti. Or is empire selection random.

Nope you choose your empire and the ships that you want in your fleet. 450 bpv. 3-4 ships. No more than 2 of the same type except, you can only have 1 DN or BCH.