Federation Commander

I finally had a chance to commit to paper the Stinger tactic that's been running through my head for the last month or so. I've written and rewritten it a couple of times, but I'm sure it still needs more polishing before it hits the CL 41 grading pool, so comments are welcome.

Follow Me, Little Brother!

Tony L. Thomas, USS Tennessee

Much has been made about the proper dispensation of your Hydran Stingers in Federation Commander... Do I launch them early? Do I hold them in the bays? Do I keep them in the same hex? Do I split them up? Do I lead them in? Do I follow them to the target? And so on...

Many of these questions are situationally dependent and the answers can not be addressed in a single Command Note. One of these however; often has a single, simple straight-forward answer: Do I lead the Stingers, or follow them to the target? All other things being equal, it's most often beneficial to lead your Stingers into battle. In any battle involving both Stngers and Hydran ships, the Hydran's opponent must make some hard choices about how to allocate his fire. Do I target the ship or the fighters? A standard counter tactic when facing Stingers is to fire at the phasers early enough to produce seven points of damage before they reach effective fusion beam range. If the Stingers can be crippled before the fusion beams are fired, you will typically have a significant firepower advantage over the Hydran as his ship is most likely smaller than yours.

By leading your Stingers into the fray you can often times force your opponent into a more desirable firing solution. With the ship two to three hexes in front of the Stingers, your opponent can either let an undamaged enemy ship roll over him and fire at the squadron of Stingers bringing up the rear; or he can unload on the Hydran ship and take his chances with the squadron of Stingers bringing up the rear. And if you can time the approach to have the Stingers in a reasonable firing range on Impulse 8 of one turn - even better. Your opponent can either ignore the ship and fire at the Stingers at a longer range and hope to cripple enough of them to survive or he can expect to take two consecutive impulses of Stinger based fusion beams.

Yes, the lack of Warp Booster Packs and a base speed limit of 16 makes this a sometimes difficult postion to acheive, but there are other Command Notes that address many these issues and playing on a fixed or location map will go a long way towards making this tactic easier to employ.

Also once you have completed the battle pass, you might want to decelerate once or twice and land your Stingers back on the ship. If they're at two or three hexes' range, this will be so much easier to achieve.

Hey, I sent in a Stinger tactic recently too! Think they'll have a 'Stinger Special' tactics page in CL#41?

It was reading and commenting on your tactic that caused this tactic to coalesce...

I do need to add a bit about the decel/land maneuver.
Thanks.

I agree with leading the fighters in if the opponent cooperates with this strategy. From a pure damage/effectiveness ratio, every point of damage done to a stinger (provided you do at least 7) is far more effective than a point done to a ship. 28 pts of damage will cripple 4 stingers and remove about 80 pts of point blank damage whereas it might just take down a shield from a ship. You generally want your opponent to fire at your ship instead of fighters IF you can expect a good shot from the fighters that turn.

mojo jojo wrote:I agree with leading the fighters in if the opponent cooperates with this strategy. From a pure damage/effectiveness ratio, every point of damage done to a stinger (provided you do at least 7) is far more effective than a point done to a ship. 28 pts of damage will cripple 4 stingers and remove about 80 pts of point blank damage whereas it might just take down a shield from a ship. You generally want your opponent to fire at your ship instead of fighters IF you can expect a good shot from the fighters that turn.

and that's the whole point to this tactic...
Does he allow your ship to get to point blank range and fire an unanswered alpha-strike in order to do that 28 points of damage to the stingers and save 80 more... or does he concentrate on your ship, intending to out run/out last/out play the little brothers?
While no one can ever "know" what his opponent will do - you can sometimes urge him to take your chosen path by providing a tempatation too great to resist and nothing says, "Quick! Shoot me!" like a cruiser bearing down on top of you, waiting for you to blink...

The other thing is that I wouldn't fancy going head-to-head with a bunch of Stingers, having just gone head-to-head with big momma ship. Kind of a double-whammy.....

The trouble with shooting the Stingers is that it's a bunch of targets. You could overkill some and underkill others. On the other hand, the same fire directed at the ship is unlikely to reduce his firepower by as much...

One caveat: if I can destroy the ship, I will. Any shuttles, including fighters, left behind when all the ships are dead or gone are considered kills. A Lyran ship firing a perfect alpha at range 1 or 0 can just about always destroy an equivalent-sized (roughly same points without fighters) Hydran ship.