Federation Commander

I noticed that the FC Klingon E5E published in Captain's Log 35 is most prominently armed with four Federation-style combination defensive/offensive drone racks. The problem I see with that is that anti-drones can't be used to defend another ship under FC rules. What's the use in this ship escorting something else? The modest number of phasers could indeed come in handy, but the drones would for the most part only be useful 'offensively'.

With FC, I would think an escort would be served well by a few Federation-style combination defensive/offensive drone racks, but what you would really need would be phaser-3s.

Am I missing something?

"In Star Fleet Battles" things work differently... So yeah it makes no sense in this system. Kinda like the sensor/drone rule that allows special sensors to double the drone control of the ship with the sensor, except there are no special ships with sensors and more then 2 drone racks

Wait a minute! What happened to the Kzinti Scout Frigate or the Kzinti Drone Frigate?

dptaylor3: An interesting point. The ADD rules changes in the port from SFB to FC have effectively instituted a role change for that ship, and others of its class.

BTW, welcome to the game and to the forum!

Savedfromwhat wrote:"In Star Fleet Battles" things work differently... So yeah it makes no sense in this system. Kinda like the sensor/drone rule that allows special sensors to double the drone control of the ship with the sensor, except there are no special ships with sensors and more then 2 drone racks

For me, a simpler solution for the seeking weapon control thing has always been this: you simply say that each side can control six seeking weapons per ship - but you don't need to know what ships control what weapons. Seeking weapon 'control' can be transferred between ships on the same side instantaneously. I say 'side', not 'fleet/squadron' - so a Gorn ship allied to a Romulan ship in that scenario can control a Romulan suicide shuttle - keeps things simple.

Ships giving increased seeking weapon control - like starbases or some bigger Kzinti ships - simply add their six extra seeking weapon numbers to the total that can be controlled at that point.

Ships that can't control seeking weapons - because they are destroyed, under cloak, evasive maneuvering or whatever - simply have their seeking weapon control 'contribution' temporarily suspended and therefore subtracted from the total seeking weapon control limit for that side at that time.

This could be adopted as a house rule to allow Scouts to control others' seeking weapons.

You could also invent a House Rule to allow ADDs to be fired in support of other ships - say at drones that have been tractored at range 0 or 1, as long as the ADD fires only once per impulse. Oops, looks like I've just invented one....

I think there was talk in another thread or on the other forum about escort ships being able to use their phasers and ADDs to fire at impacted drones on a ship they were escorting, but since this would be more complex that standard FC, it would put into the realm of Borders of Madness.

If memory serves, do the direct-fire drone rules take something like this into account?

I can see where this is a problem, as an escort ship. Yeah, we give up some of this in FC, it seems. However, in this case, I would probably still use the drone racks in the drone mode to fire at the other drone. There aren't as many drones in these racks, but it can still help out quite a bit. It would take a lot of drones to get through that kind of screen.

Under standard FC rules, the E5E is plainly inferior to the E5D, *unless* it's a scenario in which you can be *sure* the ship will be targeted by large numbers of drones. Which is almost never. Unless drone-armed escort ships get some kind of special "aegis" rule to let them use ADDs to protect other ships, drone empires are better off using either standard warships or drone variants as "escorts".