Fed DDL (and DNF too) and Plasma Fs
Posted: Sat Feb 02, 2008 4:41 am
I'm betting this has been said sometime before in the history of the Star Fleet Universe, but I haven't seen it for Federation Commander yet, so here goes.
Last week I tried out the Federation DDL (from Communique) in a small fleet engagement; the details aren't that important, but in this game, and one I played previously, the following came up:
After turn 1 with both photons and Pl-Fs loaded and fired, the DDL then fell into it's SFB state of being anemic, with not enough power to arm all its weapons. Several ships were still close to the DDL, and it became clear that the DDL needed to still punch back since it was going to be fired upon.
So, I decided to skip loading the photons and instead allocate one unit of power to each of the plasma torpedoes. This gave me the flexibility of using them as carronades or using the energy as the first turn of loading if a good firing opportunity did not present itself. Using them as carronades also gave me guaranteed damage every turn as long as the enemy was within 5 hexes, which was easy enough to maintain. With just 5 points of power 7 points of damage could be generated guaranteed. While this is more expensive than photons, there is no die roll to see if they hit, and the damage is given each turn, not every other.
In a previous game I played using a DNF, much the same thing happened, however, there was enough power to load some photons and the plasmas and use them, but it became better to guarantee damage using plasmas rather than take two turns loading photons.
These ships can be used to help keep an enemy at arms length and not swoop in on the alternate turns between photon firing, which is often felt with ships using multiple turn arming weapons.
Last week I tried out the Federation DDL (from Communique) in a small fleet engagement; the details aren't that important, but in this game, and one I played previously, the following came up:
After turn 1 with both photons and Pl-Fs loaded and fired, the DDL then fell into it's SFB state of being anemic, with not enough power to arm all its weapons. Several ships were still close to the DDL, and it became clear that the DDL needed to still punch back since it was going to be fired upon.
So, I decided to skip loading the photons and instead allocate one unit of power to each of the plasma torpedoes. This gave me the flexibility of using them as carronades or using the energy as the first turn of loading if a good firing opportunity did not present itself. Using them as carronades also gave me guaranteed damage every turn as long as the enemy was within 5 hexes, which was easy enough to maintain. With just 5 points of power 7 points of damage could be generated guaranteed. While this is more expensive than photons, there is no die roll to see if they hit, and the damage is given each turn, not every other.
In a previous game I played using a DNF, much the same thing happened, however, there was enough power to load some photons and the plasmas and use them, but it became better to guarantee damage using plasmas rather than take two turns loading photons.
These ships can be used to help keep an enemy at arms length and not swoop in on the alternate turns between photon firing, which is often felt with ships using multiple turn arming weapons.