|
Gnoman posted:The D6 alone is almost a match for both Federation ships put together, and there's a time crunch. The upside is that the F5 is a fairly pathetic little ship with low firepower and no damage sinks to speak of. I will admit, running this thread has already exceeded the number of turns of Star Fleet Battles I have played out in all other contexts. So If my scenario design is a bit wonky, you will have to be forgiving. However to craft this one I did use the "Battle Points" listed on the SSDs I have. Are these wildly inaccurate? This scenario is currently stacked 222 Federation to 184 Klingon. wedgekree posted:Yeeowch, thsi is gonna be a mess. Uhm, presuming that we're allowed to set weapon conditions at scenario start? Theoretically we can have photons already loaded, if we have any shuttles load them as suicides. Reinforce frontal shields, go at max viable speed to the Klingons. Use the drones as cover/strip off defending phasers, max ECM as availble, go for alpha strike with the overloads, then the suicides. ECM is very much available, as are all the fun flavors of shuttle. I will have to go and re-consult the rules to get the exact details but the idea is you allocate energy to ECM, and then compare that to the energy your opponent has allocated to ECCM and if you come out on top you count as further away when resolving attacks. Also I will try to come up with a better way to represent available and loaded drones in my spreadsheet, I just kind of shoved them in there. VendoViper fucked around with this message at 16:15 on Aug 2, 2017 |
#
?
Aug 2, 2017 16:13
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 18, 2024 15:27 |
|
|
VendoViper posted:I will admit, running this thread has already exceeded the number of turns of Star Fleet Battles I have played out in all other contexts. So If my scenario design is a bit wonky, you will have to be forgiving. However to craft this one I did use the "Battle Points" listed on the SSDs I have. Are these wildly inaccurate? This scenario is currently stacked 222 Federation to 184 Klingon. Battle Points are a pretty good measure, but they're primarily a totaling of system values, which does not (and can not) take into account all factors of a design. The simple fact of the matter is that the D6/7 is one of the better base chassis in the game, and the Old Light Cruiser is one of the poorer ones. On strategy, I've had a chance to sit and plan it out. I see two basic plans. Turn 2 attack If we go full ECM, warm up the phasers, and put full overload on the photons on turn 1, we can make a speed of 10. For turn 2, we'd then drain all batteries, allocate the two points a tube to complete arming, put energy into the phasers, and move at a speed of 19. Hopefully this will be enough to get into overload range of the D6, punch through a shield, and do enough damage to delay them significantly. Turn 3 attack. If we go full ECM, warm up the phasers, and put full overload on the photons on turn 1, we can make a speed of 10. For turn 2, allocate the two points a tube to complete arming, put energy into the phasers, and move at a speed of 13. On Turn 3, we would then only have to expend 2 points of holding energy and the phaser capacitor would be full. Along with draining all batteries, this would allow us to make our attack run at a speed of 29, giving us a much better chance of getting into point-blank range and crippling the D6 The Turn 3 plan makes it much more likely that we'll get into a good shooting position as long as we avoid major damage, but the Turn 2 plan potentially lets us get our shot off faster. This is important because we'll be eating 6 disruptor bolts every turn. We could focus on the F5 instead, as it is much more fragile. Normally I'd recommend deleting it right away, but in this case I'd much rather face a virgin F5 and a heavily damaged D6 than just a virgin D6, especially since our crusiers are not going to come out of this run unscathed. However, there is an alternative strategy that just occurred to me after checking what rules are in the Basic Set. We could send one CL+ on an attack run to tie up the Klingon force. Then the other rushes to the freighter (which would normally have a maximum speed of 16) and slaps a tractor beam on it, towing it at speed 31 across the board. We'd be almost guaranteed to lose the attacking ship, but there's a pretty good chance that the other one would get the freighter far enough ahead that the Klingons couldn't kill it. EDIT: On second thought, I'm not entirely sure how well that would work. The tractor rules are hideously complex. Gnoman fucked around with this message at 05:22 on Aug 3, 2017 |
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2017 05:14
|
|
|
Yeah the D6 has about as many weapons as both of the Federation CL's put together. And on a much more combat capable chassis. I'm leaning towards Plan 2 Gnoman. Speed is life. The faster we go the less time we have to spend under Disruptor bombardment. We have one pass to do this right and for overloads you need to be close to it. I think we can max ECM and put shields in front and just hope we can give them enough damage to let us loop around. Given how the dice are with overloads, the closer we are the better. Presuming we survive the exchange, I'd vote we can start readying shuttles for suicide sled runs.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2017 07:26
|
|
|
I'd only suggest arming suicide shuttles if we lose photon tubes without losing too much warp power. We just don't have that much power to spare, and photons are an overall better means of delivering damage with said power, especially against Klingons and their superb anti-drone phaser complement.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2017 07:32
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:I'd only suggest arming suicide shuttles if we lose photon tubes without losing too much warp power. We just don't have that much power to spare, and photons are an overall better means of delivering damage with said power, especially against Klingons and their superb anti-drone phaser complement. Point. Forgot that. Like your plans - I vote for the second one, if only as getting to point blank range gives us a higher chance of inflicting mission killson the Klingons. If we get shot up, we fail. If we don't shoot them up, we fail. We -need- to maximize our chances of inflicting enough damage on them, and the closer we are the better.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2017 07:48
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:However, there is an alternative strategy that just occurred to me after checking what rules are in the Basic Set. We could send one CL+ on an attack run to tie up the Klingon force. Then the other rushes to the freighter (which would normally have a maximum speed of 16) and slaps a tractor beam on it, towing it at speed 31 across the board. We'd be almost guaranteed to lose the attacking ship, but there's a pretty good chance that the other one would get the freighter far enough ahead that the Klingons couldn't kill it. Short answer: Each ship takes the energy applied for movement, and uses the total movement cost of both ships to determine its new speed. One of the ancillary products has a chart of move costs all the way up to 3 in order to help people with the math. I think it was A? Ships would move at the new speed, but if both ships are applying energy to movement, they push/pull at their respective modified speeds. If both ships would move, then the slower ship has their movement delayed an impulse so you don't get a double move. The Long Answer is, as Gnoman says, hideously complex. Problem is, we are only told that this is a "Heavy" Civilian Freighter. Does that mean it's a Heavy Freighter with a move cost of 1? Or a Large Freighter with a move cost of 0.5? I
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2017 13:32
|
|
|
berryjon posted:Problem is, we are only told that this is a "Heavy" Civilian Freighter. Does that mean it's a Heavy Freighter with a move cost of 1? Or a Large Freighter with a move cost of 0.5? I Based on the OP stating that he only has the Basic Set, I assumed that it would be a Large Freighter with a .5 move cost. IF I did the sums right, with the freighter using all 8 warp power for movement, a CL+ could get the ship going to the speed limit, although the combined move cost might impose a hard cap on the amount of power it could use. I also think I can get the speeds in the attack plans one or two higher across the board. I just realized that the spreadsheet I use for energy allocation is hard-set to use 1 Impulse for movement, which is suboptimal for a .66 move cost ship unless it runs out of Warp Power. I'll fine tune that when we nail down the details and issue orders.
|
|
#
?
Aug 3, 2017 17:33
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:Based on the OP stating that he only has the Basic Set, I assumed that it would be a Large Freighter with a .5 move cost. IF I did the sums right, with the freighter using all 8 warp power for movement, a CL+ could get the ship going to the speed limit, although the combined move cost might impose a hard cap on the amount of power it could use. My first thought is that this seems off. Let me talk myself through the math. The CL and F-L are tractored to each other, and are headed in the same direction. The F-L has 8 warp, and a move cost of 0.5, while the CL+ has 24 Warp and a move cost of 0.75. The total move cost of the group is 1.25. The F-L could then use ... 7.5 Warp to move 6 hexes in a turn, while the CL+ would apply 23.75 Warp to move 19 hexes. This means that off of warp power alone, the CL+ and F-L would move 25 hexes on a turn. If each uses a point of impulse, then the total would be 27 hexes moved, with one of those hexes carried forward onto impulse one of the subsequent turn in order to avoid a double-move on the last impulse of the turn. 27 is a hella lot faster than the 16 the F-L can go, that's for sure.
|
|
#
?
Aug 4, 2017 00:38
|
|
|
So, do folks think it's more effective to go for an alpha strike with overloads or try and hang defensively till the reighter gets in then tractor yank it and have the other CL be a screen?
|
|
#
?
Aug 4, 2017 07:32
|
|
|
If one of the captains volunteers to be a suicide ship, then maybe. Otherwise it makes more sense to take our chances.
|
|
#
?
Aug 4, 2017 17:57
|
|
|
Kavak posted:If one of the captains volunteers to be a suicide ship, then maybe. Otherwise it makes more sense to take our chances. This is a Starfleet ship, we can just tell the Captain that one of the Klingon ships is made of candy and that if he eats it he can be promoted to Admiral.
|
|
#
?
Aug 5, 2017 07:28
|
|
|
 Are the mighty Federation captains afraid to do battle! If all Federation captains are as timid as you the Imperial victory will be swift! Neckbeard Klingon says choose your orders!
|
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 17:38
|
|
|
I think we should go for the "send both ships on a Turn 3 death ride" plan. Drone loadout 100% Anti-drones Energy Available: 24 Warp Engine 4 Impulse 2 WARP Reactor 3 Battery Energy Allocation: Drain 0 Batteries 1 Life Support 0 Fire Control (No weapons, no need for shooting) 2 Shields 1 Point to warm up the Phaser Capacitor 6 Points to Photon A (Creating a full overload when two points are allocated to finish arming next turn) 6 Points to Photon B (Creating a full overload when two points are allocated to finish arming next turn) 6 Points ECM 7.92 Points Movement (all Warp) for Speed 13 .08 Points remaining Move Plot 13A EDIT: Also, if you email me at the address I set up for my previous game (sasfblp at gmail), I may be able to help you with your asset creation. Gnoman fucked around with this message at 21:04 on Aug 7, 2017 |
|
#
?
Aug 7, 2017 21:00
|
|
|
I'm with Gnoman on this. BLOOD FOR THE REDSHIRT GOD!
|
|
#
?
Aug 8, 2017 04:45
|
|
|
Quick clarification, I understand 13 A to mean moving "north" on the map. VendoViper fucked around with this message at 20:24 on Aug 9, 2017 |
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2017 19:21
|
|
|
On The Klingon Border - Turn 1 SSDs USS Vienna  USS Oslo  IKV Fang  IKV Bastion  Both Klingon vessels loose drones and accelerate forward. Entering the scenario at speed 8 maximum acceleration limits them to speed 18 on heading E. The Federation vessels (retconned to entering the scenario at a speed of 3 or greater) accelerate to speed 13, dumping maximal energy into photons. Both cruisers turn to the left and set out on heading A. With an ECM rating of 8, the USS Oslo imposes a shift of +3 on the D6’s die rolls. Although the Oslo is in range of the Bastion’s Disruptor batteries, their ECM would make all attacks guaranteed misses. The captain of the Bastion knows this since ECM ratings are announced at the start of the turn after energy allocation. map 
|
|
#
?
Aug 9, 2017 21:19
|
|
|
At present, I see no need to alter the plan, with the exception that the geometry makes a turn 2 attack more likely. With that in mind Energy Available: 24 Warp Engine 4 Impulse 2 WARP Reactor 3 Battery Energy Allocation: Drain 3 Batteries 1 Life Support 1 Fire Control 2 Shields 7 Points Phasers 2 Points to Photon A 2 Points to Photon B 6 Points ECM 11 Points Movement (all Warp) for Speed 19 .08 Points remaining Move Plot 19B, sidesilpping at every opportunity to merge with Oslo Oslo should do the same, but keep the batteries in reserve (or put them into shield #1 Reinforcement) and move at speed 14. That will allow us to get into position to fire through the same shield I'd like to request a turn break when either of our ships are within 3 hexes of one of theirs.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2017 00:03
|
|
|
Like things so far Gnoman. Great plan so far.
|
|
#
?
Aug 10, 2017 07:30
|
|
|
VendoViper posted:With an ECM rating of 8, the USS Oslo imposes a shift of +3 on the D6’s die rolls. Although the Oslo is in range of the Bastion’s Disruptor batteries, their ECM would make all attacks guaranteed misses. The captain of the Bastion knows this since ECM ratings are announced at the start of the turn after energy allocation. An ECM rating of 8 is a +2 shift. You take the square root of the total amount of ECM to get the modifier and round down. You get +1 at 1, +2 at 4, +3 at 9, +4 at 16, and it continues but I have never seen anyone get to 25.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2017 05:18
|
|
|
Also a persnickety point but the Federation CL has a Type G drone rack. That drone rack comes standard with a full load of whatever drones you buy plus a full set of reloads plus a full set of ADD reloads. Unless the scenario is in Y175 or later in which case they get another reload. The CLs probably should have loaded a scatter-pack shuttle each to distract the Klingons.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2017 05:27
|
|
|
Xenocides posted:An ECM rating of 8 is a +2 shift. You take the square root of the total amount of ECM to get the modifier and round down. You get +1 at 1, +2 at 4, +3 at 9, +4 at 16, and it continues but I have never seen anyone get to 25. Yup, my bad, weapons were still auto miss. Not to mention it was 6 points to ECM, not 8. Don't fly drunk. Xenocides posted:Also a persnickety point but the Federation CL has a Type G drone rack. That drone rack comes standard with a full load of whatever drones you buy plus a full set of reloads plus a full set of ADD reloads. Unless the scenario is in Y175 or later in which case they get another reload. That is how I had read it at first as well. These Old CLs have been given the plus refit a few years early. Rack had two reloads prior to Y175, three thereafter. One reload is entirely ADDs. The only confusion is if a "Reload" of Drones can be construed to include the Drones that are already loaded into the rack. VendoViper fucked around with this message at 22:21 on Aug 13, 2017 |
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2017 22:18
|
|
|
The drones in a rack are not a reload. FD2.31 quote:All drone racks are presumed to be loaded with Type-I-Slow drones. The ship has one set of reloads (enough to reload all of its racks one time) on board. (Any exceptions will be noted in the ship specifications) This is included in the BPV of the ship. FD3.72 quote:RELOADS Type-G drone racks have two sets of reloads, one of which is entirely anti-drones and the other of which is identical to whatever is loaded in the rack itself. I refrained from pointing out this error because I had decided to go with all ADDs anyway, and the chances that we will need more than 16 anti-drones per ship are extremely slight, so I decided that I would bring it up later. We may, however, need more than 8, and the rules don't allow two ADD reloads and one drone reload. I could have specified a mix of drones and ADDs, but I was concerned about Klingon scatter-packs and didn't want to spend the time needed to unload drones and load ADDs.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2017 22:34
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:You just have "2 reloads" shown for the Drone-G racks. Barring very unusual circumstances, Type-G Drone Racks (which are the only standard drone rack that can fire Anti-Drones (E5.0) ) either have 1 reload of drones and 1 of anti-drones, or else 2 reloads of drones and one of anti-drones (if the Y175 refit is present) as per (FD3.72). See could this get more confusing. There are four lights okay. You have ADD's in your tubes, 8 of them. You have 8 more drones to pull in during whatever the rules for reloading are. Both sides will not be alive for 16 turns.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2017 22:42
|
|
|
VendoViper posted:See could this get more confusing. There are four lights okay. You have ADD's in your tubes, 8 of them. You have 8 more drones to pull in during whatever the rules for reloading are. Both sides will not be alive for 16 turns. First, the racks are loaded with 8 anti-drones. Anti-drones can fire every impulse, meaning that you can easily shoot them dry in a single turn as long as there are enough drones or shuttles (you can't fire an ADD at anything else) to shoot them at. Second, you still seem to not be getting it. The drones in the rack are not reloads, as per the rules I just posted (with cites so you can double check them yourself). A normal drone rack has four drones with one reload. That means that there are EIGHT drones allotted to that rack. A type-G rack is special, because it is the only drone rack that can fire anti-drones, which normally require their own dedicated rack. It has two reloads, and one of those has to be all anti-drones. That means that the default load of a Type-G rack is four Type-I-S drones loaded in the rack, one reload of 4 Type-I-S drones, and one reload of 8 anti-drones. This is explicit in the rules. Even if it wasn't, the English definition of the word "reload" (to load again) should have made it obvious. To use an analogy, imagine that you are holding a loaded pistol, and have two spare magazines in your pocket. The gun is your drone rack, and the two magazines are your reloads.
|
|
#
?
Aug 13, 2017 22:53
|
|
|
VendoViper posted:See could this get more confusing. There are four lights okay. You have ADD's in your tubes, 8 of them. You have 8 more drones to pull in during whatever the rules for reloading are. Both sides will not be alive for 16 turns. As others have said ADDs get shot out a lot. They can fire once per impulse. You can also use the reloads for scatter pack. That could be another six spaces used quickly. You can also load a G-Rack with Type VI half-space dogfight drones for anti-drone or anti-fighter work. You could also load double space Type IV drones and then you can empty the rack in two turns. Usually a game does not go 16 turns but there are exceptions. Also, if you are playing a campaign in which you cannot get resupplied every turn it matters a lot more. You can reload up to two spaces per turn but you cannot use the rack on a reload turn. And yes, it is confusing. 
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 03:06
|
|
|
So you just have 24 anti drones then, that's easy.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 03:07
|
|
|
VendoViper posted:So you just have 24 anti drones then, that's easy. Not necessarily. You could though. If the base loadout is 8 antidrones then you would have a total of 24 (with 8 in the rack as they are a half-space each). For example, if your basic loadout was 1 two space drone (Type IV), 1 one space drone (Type I), and 2 anti-drones then you would have 2 Type IVs, 2 Type Is, and 4 anti-drones in your identical reload sets plus 8 anti-drones for the antidrone only reload for a total of 12 For some backstory only the Federation uses this drone rack extensively (and the Federation was late in adopting drones). The Kzinti use only pure drone racks and use phaser 3s for drone defense. The Klingons use fewer drone racks but many of their cruisers have a dedicated antidrone rack. The Federation use this rack because they need antidrones on the Klingon and Kzinti border but on the Romulan, Gorn, and Tholian borders antidrones are almost useless. This way the Federation can shift their ships to different borders and alter their loadout without having to change out the drone racks. The Federation is also the only empire to have two sets of carrier escorts for the same reason. The escorts for the Klingon and Kzinti borders have drone defenses and the Romulan and Gorn escorts instead include additional phasers to weaken incoming plasma torpedoes.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 03:40
|
|
|
Xenocides posted:Not necessarily. You could though. If the base loadout is 8 antidrones then you would have a total of 24 (with 8 in the rack as they are a half-space each). That is the loadout for this scenario - as mentioned, I was afraid of Klingon scatterpacks, and even if this works there's a fair chance that we'll be lamed enough for single-drone launches to be a threat.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 03:45
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:That is the loadout for this scenario - as mentioned, I was afraid of Klingon scatterpacks, and even if this works there's a fair chance that we'll be lamed enough for single-drone launches to be a threat. Then you are good to go. Sorry for any confusion I brought in. I wasted most of my Saturdays in High School playing SFB. Good times. I think I probably spent more time reading SFB rulebooks in school then I did textbooks.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 04:01
|
|
|
Aye. You wound up ending my LP, if you recall. I've been toying off and on with restarting that, probably will if this one doesn't make it.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 04:20
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:Aye. You wound up ending my LP, if you recall. I don't think I ended it. I played Federation in one scenario of your thread and won due to my shuttle swarm including suicide shuttles hitting the Klingon fleet. A little cheesy but it worked. You did another scenario or two but I did not have time then to play so just watched. I remember someone getting upset in a later scenario but do not remember who.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 04:23
|
|
|
Gnoman posted:Aye. You wound up ending my LP, if you recall. Xenocides posted:I don't think I ended it. I played Federation in one scenario of your thread and won due to my shuttle swarm including suicide shuttles hitting the Klingon fleet. That was me. There is something else about the G-rack to note, just to make things more confusing. It can fire in ADD mode and normal launch mode on the same turn - but not within 8 impulses of firing in the previous mode.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 05:02
|
|
|
Having fun watching this chatter. Have nice memories of watching people play/plyaing some in middle school at the local bookstore.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 05:45
|
|
|
This is why I play the A Call To Arms remake. Less nuance, but waaaaay fewer arguments.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 17:24
|
|
|
At the least, a play by post is better for rules debates than a live game.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 17:56
|
|
|
In this case, the problem was merely lack of practice using the rules. The issue wouldn't have been a problem during the game, and would probably resolve itself quickly with a little more playtime. SFB does have a few horrendously complicated rules, but those are mostly the result of several moderately complicated subsystems interacting. The problem is exacerbated by the number of expansions the game has, leading to a lot of references to rules you might not have. This is one reason why a Master Rulebook is a good investment.
|
|
#
?
Aug 14, 2017 18:42
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 18, 2024 15:27 |
|
|
Loxbourne posted:This is why I play the A Call To Arms remake. Less nuance, but waaaaay fewer arguments. How is that? I will probably never lose my love for regular SFB but am curious how that game plays.
|
|
#
?
Aug 15, 2017 05:23
|
|