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While boarding is possible I'd kinda advise not to given that there's still one live Gorn ship that can make a mess of us, and we have to drop shields to transport. Tentatively if plasmas are available I agree - launch a psuedo from each launcher to soak up phaser fire, then volley plasmas into the undamaged Gorn. Would suggest reserving phasers to engage shuttles or if the Gorn launch their own plasmas at us at short range/PD. This of course presumes our plasmas are up and aimed for this volley. At that point, I think we should try and loop around. Gorn ships turn slowly, so after our exchanged strike goes we can maneuver around a bit to get a better shot, or if we have to fall back and cloak to stay at long range to recharge plasmas and then go for another pass. I don't think boarding while one Gorn ship is still very much alive is going to end well, at least not when we have to drop shields to send boarding parties over and htey have plasmas too.
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Jun 25, 2017 09:28
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 11:15 |
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Holy hell, the Gorn crossed their T. What a maroon.
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Jun 25, 2017 09:41
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DivineCoffeeBinge posted:Holy hell, the Gorn crossed their T. And the Romulan hasn't even used plasmas yet.
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Jun 25, 2017 10:12
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wedgekree posted:Wow, that's a pretty brutal first exchange and haven't even firred the plasmas yet. Maneuvering out of sync cost them - one ship is nearly crippled, and the two can't support one another effectively now. Think it's worth it to when done put all plasmas on the fresh ship to try and cripple it quickly so can kill both Gorn ships or go for a guaranteed kill on the nearly disabled one? Generally two crippled ships are better than one fresh ship and one dead ship. The Gorn DD has lost half of its phaser firepower and its power is not in great shape, crippling the cruiser will probably reduce the amount of incoming damage further than attempting a guaranteed kill. Something to note is that plasma torpedoes have travel time-they move 1 hex per impulse (they actually move at Speed 36 but as I vaguely remember the rules those moves are on Impulses 33-36, which ships don't act on anyways). They also lose damage with range and can be attrited down via phasers, so they're actually pretty tricky weapons to use. What is important is that plasma torpedoes are fire and forget. This means that if you fire your plasma torpedo, the other guy has time to fire his own plasma torpedoes back at you.
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Jun 25, 2017 11:17
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VendoViper posted:I only own the Captains Basic Set. So unless we switch over to Federation Commander (I have the Klingon Border). We will need to wait for me to get at least a SSD book to make the Tholians interesting, as mine only has a Corvette. The Tholian web device does look neat. What is up with Hydrans? If Starfleet Command is correct, Hydrans are all about Fighters and their special weapons are gatling phasers (4 phaser 3's strapped together), Fusion Beams (short range, hard hitting and they've got a special suicide overload that is guaranteed to knock out the weapon, but massively boosts the damage) and Hellbores (long range torpedo style weapons that envelop by default but focus most of their damage on the weakest facing). At least in SFC1 the secret star of their gear was the phaser-G - hellbores and fusion beams are flashy, but point-blank phaser-gs are deadly. They were pretty loving awesome in SFC1 when they're the only ones with proper fighters but when CIWS Aegis ships showed up in SFC2 they were a little more balanced. DatonKallandor fucked around with this message at 17:18 on Jun 25, 2017 |
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Jun 25, 2017 17:10
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Ok. Cut the cloak, power weapons, divert all spare power to speed, use three points of battery to finish charging the torp. Head towards the cruiser. At closest approach (min range 2), fire one psuedo and then the real torp at the cruiser then break to port around them. Reserve phasers to fire on shuttles or gorn torps.
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Jun 25, 2017 23:58
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That DD is effectively crippled. Smaller ships in this game are extremely vulnerable to Warp damage due to the proportional move system - because the move cost of a Gorn DD is 1/2, each Warp box destroyed is the same as destroying 2 on a cruiser-sized ship such as a War Eagle. With the ship's current power of 14 Warp 1 Impulse 0 APR 0 Battery and the normal upkeep cost of 2.5 points (1 fire control, 1 shield, .5 life support, going from memory), it has 12.5 units of power remaining. Because it is more favorable to the ship, assume that the Impulse power has already been used. The ship will need 4 points of energy to arm weapons (It will need 3 points to finish the torpedo and 1 to reload the phaser) next turn This limits the speed of the ship to (12.5-4)*2, or 16. If you can get even one solid Plasma-R hit on the cruiser, you've won. That said, IIRC you probably have to wait until turn 3 to fire plasmas. Unless I've forgotten a rule (my rulebook is currently in another castle, you can't "fast-arm" plasmas with battery power.
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Jun 26, 2017 00:44
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Luckily for the Romulans next turn is turn 3. Unfortunately for me that means I will need to handle like five plasma torpedoes and four ships. I really need to figure out how to automate the impulse chart. On the bright side though plasma torpedoes move every impulse.
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Jun 26, 2017 01:20
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VendoViper posted:Luckily for the Romulans next turn is turn 3. Unfortunately for me that means I will need to handle like five plasma torpedoes and four ships. I really need to figure out how to automate the impulse chart. On the bright side though plasma torpedoes move every impulse. I copied the entire chart into Excel and used conditional formatting to have the cells change color based on ship speed and impulse. I marked each column on the chart with the number of ships moving that speed, and kept updating the impulse number. Whenever a ship was scheduled to move, that square would turn green. It worked quite well.
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Jun 26, 2017 01:30
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Yeah, this game has a bunch of weird, self-negating rules. Some things can only use warp power - but warp engines are 90% of your power supply and this is never a problem. Sure you can teleport over boarding parties - but they'll only work if the target is basically scrap anyway. You can do scientific analysis - but this is just a skill gate for pre-made missions.
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Jun 26, 2017 01:30
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Added Space posted:Yeah, this game has a bunch of weird, self-negating rules. Some things can only use warp power - but warp engines are 90% of your power supply and this is never a problem. Sure you can teleport over boarding parties - but they'll only work if the target is basically scrap anyway. You can do scientific analysis - but this is just a skill gate for pre-made missions. Warp-only systems can be a huge problem. A lot of ships have quite decent Impulse or APR banks to charge weapons from, reserving their Warp Power for movement, but photon-armed ships can't do that. The Federation DD has the theoretically impressive battery of 4 photons - except it is almost impossible to charge all 4 photons off of a single 15-point Warp Engine. Later versions of the DD experimented with swapping a couple of photons for Drones or Plasma-F torpedoes (acquired from the Gorn in limited quantities) or upgrading their APR to Auxilary Warp Reactors (AWR), but this only helps so much. Edit: Also, the scientific analysis rules are also a critical part of tactical intelligence if you're using those cumbersome optional rules.
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Jun 26, 2017 02:01
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How does firing a pseudo torpedo affect the ship? We don't lose the real plasma torp charge?
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Jun 26, 2017 02:25
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Tagichatn posted:How does firing a pseudo torpedo affect the ship? We don't lose the real plasma torp charge? Every plasma torpedo tube has a single Pseudo Plasma Torpedo, or PPT in any given scenario. It costs no energy to fire, does not need to be armed, does no damage, and otherwise behaves identically to a real torpedo in every way, including the loss of apparent strength due to phaser damage. There are many uses for them, the most common being to disguise the arming cycle of your weapon (reducing the effect of the Plasma's long charge cycles) or to fire it along with a real torpedo to draw fire (the target ship knows there are more incoming then there should be, and thus knows that there are fakes, but has to decide which one to shoot at and risks disaster if the guess is wrong). The only effect on the firing ship is that they no longer have a PPT for that tube, and thus cannot fire any more fake torpedoes from that tube.
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Jun 26, 2017 02:33
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Alright, sounds like there's no reason not to use one at this point then. Same plan as Added Space then except cut to starboard, fire rear phasers if any ships get in that firing arc.
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Jun 26, 2017 06:07
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The war Eagles have their defensive phasers on their right arc. They always want to break to port to screen anything coming at them.
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Jun 26, 2017 06:10
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Added Space posted:The war Eagles have their defensive phasers on their right arc. They always want to break to port to screen anything coming at them. Are you sure? The description above says they're both RA.
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Jun 26, 2017 06:16
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Oh right, RS is right side, RA is rear. Derp.
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Jun 26, 2017 06:17
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Yeah, both War Eagles should close, fire plasmas and one psuedo at the undamaged ship, reserve phasers for defensive fire if the Gorns launch plasma or shuttles. All weapons if they fire should prioritize the intact Gorn ship. Pending that, loop around to keep our rear phasers covering them. Presuming on how we do next turn after can possibly cloak to cover our rearming cycle and then go in for the kill. If both ships are crippled can try and board them but that should be completely optional and not prioritized.
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Jun 26, 2017 07:25
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Playing With Plasma - Turn 3 An indicator light comes on the weapons terminal of the Cathex, Plas-R charged. The warning light flashing, reminding the weapons officer that if he doesn’t release the immense charge of plasma towards the enemy soon, his ship will be consumed. The Commander has given orders to fire at the last possible moment however, so he waits. “Sir!” The sensor operator exclaims, “Gorn Cruiser has launched a Class S plasma torpedo, heading strait for us!” SSDs Added Space  Tagichatn  Gorn CA  Gorn DD  Impulse 2  Impulse 3  Commander Tagichatn dismissed the officer with a curt wave, “Continue our attack!” knowing full well that with concentrated Phaser fire his ship would remain unharmed. Impulse 4  As the Gorn Plasma Torpedo reached point blank range Commander Tagichatn gave the order to fire all forward Phasers at the incoming torpedo. Tagichatn rolls 3 for 5 Damage on the Gorn Torpedo. Tagichatn rolls 6 for 4 Damage on the Gorn Torpedo. Tagichatn rolls 1 for 8 Damage on the Gorn Torpedo. Tagichatn rolls 5 for 4 Damage on the Gorn Torpedo. The full forward battery of Phaser Is converge on the incoming torpedo reducing its strength from 30 to 9. The next moment the torpedo slams into the Cathex’s shield arc number 1 dealing 9 points of damage. Impulse 5 Commander Added Space, realizing the Gorn Cruiser is about to leave his Plasma-Rs Forward Arc gives the order to Fire. Impulse 6 With the Gorn CA about to leave his forward arc, Commander Tagichatn gives the order to Fire! Impulse 7  With 100 points of Plasma Torpedo one Hex off the starboard bow, the Gorn Captain gives the futile order to fire a Phaser I. Gorn Commander rolls 6 reducing Added Spaces torpedo by 4 points. Impulse 8  Impulse 10  The Gorn Cruiser is slammed with 96 points of damage on shield arc 3. His shields absorb 16 points of damage, leaving 80 points of internal damage. When the bright flash subsides nothing remains. “I am not even picking up debris on sensors sir, we’ve atomized them.” Impulse 15 Commander Added Space ordered his Helmsman to break and attack the fleeing Gorn Destroyer. But as soon as he turned and committed to his new course, the Destroyer turned back away from the pair of War Eagles. “No matter, now he will be trapped between two fires.” But before allowing the Destroyer to leave his Forward Arc, he orders the full bank of Phaser Is to fire.  Commander Added Space declares a volley of four Phaser Is firing on the Gorn Destroyer at range 3 against shield arc number 4. Commander Added Space rolls 2 for 5 Damage. Commander Added Space rolls 4 for 4 Damage. Commander Added Space rolls 2 for 5 Damage. Commander Added Space rolls 3 for 4 Damage. The Gorn Destroyer takes 18 damage in arc 4, the strength 7 shield quickly collapses under the onslaught, allowing 11 internal damage to rock the ship. The Destroyer takes yet more severe damage, critically struck in the emergency bridge, the ship is without a command center, and its senior leadership are dead. Unable to re-route remaining power fully to the engines to make an escape, the Gorn on board have no hope, as the pair of War Eagles move in for the kill.  (I forgot to turn off the rear shield on the DD in this image, it is in fact down from the last Phaser volley from the Esemer) VendoViper fucked around with this message at 06:27 on Jun 28, 2017 |
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Jun 28, 2017 04:48
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How long is an impulse in real seconds? I remember there was a lot of talk about relativity when I tried to learn how to play this game.
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Jun 28, 2017 05:13
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If we want to maintain the concrete of the captain and crew being human(oid) beings communicating with their voices and pressing buttons to make everything happen, an impulse would have to be at least several seconds. According to the rule book though each hex is 10,000 Kilometers and moving 10 hexes in a turn means you are moving 10 times the speed of light. So traveling 10 hexes at 10 times the speed of light take 0.03 seconds, if you ignore relativity, which of course you can't.
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Jun 28, 2017 05:24
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I'm gonna imagine them as 6 seconds like a D&D round.
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Jun 28, 2017 05:28
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That is about how I am thinking of them when I get distracted and write lovely Star Trek Fan Fiction during the turn updates.
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Jun 28, 2017 05:36
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VendoViper posted:That is about how I am thinking of them when I get distracted and write lovely Star Trek Fan Fiction during the turn updates. I like the little narratives, it'll keep things interesting.
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Jun 28, 2017 06:12
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It's not like Star Trek doesn't prioritize drama when it comes to things. Also voting to switch fire to disable on the Gorn ship that's left. Get to the rear arc of it, use phasers to disable it and then start transporting boarding parties over. Make sure that frontal shields are reinforced and slow down and stay at range of transporters. Then start on capture. I think we're in a position now where it can be mission killed and then seized. It's a derelect so using phasers on disable setting should mean we don't accidentally kill it. When rear weapons ar edisabled start boarding operations.
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Jun 28, 2017 06:24
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I'd board it, but that dinky little thing isn't worth Romulan blood. All non-essential power to speed and weapons. Given them one chance to surrender. If they refuse, blow them away. I thought torpedoes diminished pretty quickly, like a point every 1-2 hexes they moved.
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Jun 28, 2017 07:36
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The mission here is to get the Gorn to scramble a lot of extra resources alon this front to open up their border for an assault. Sure, the ship is tactically worthless, but a captured destroyer is a coplete humiliation to the Gorn Space Navy. Honor essentially demands they get it back. In this case, the more ships they have in this sector for us for virtually no loss is bette for the overall strategic mission, which is to spread them thin. Two destroyed (but minor) patrol ships have them send a reinforced patrol out to this area while we play cat and mouse with the next group. A crippled ship captured and under tow back to our home sector will get a LOT more sent for nothing as ew can withdraw after.
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Jun 28, 2017 10:39
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Added Space posted:I thought torpedoes diminished pretty quickly, like a point every 1-2 hexes they moved. So did I, but I think that comes from Star Fleet Command, turns out that Type-Rs do full damage out to 10 hexes!
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Jun 28, 2017 14:00
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VendoViper posted:Impulse 4 These are both wrong. It takes 2 points of phaser fire to remove one damage point from a Plasma torpedo (FP1.611). The Plasma-S took 21 hits, so it would have been reduced by 10 points, hitting for 20. The Plasma-R took 4 hits, so it would have been reduced by 2, hitting for 48. In this case the difference is minor - the Gorn ship didn't survive either way, and the Romulan one can still tank the hit. Added Space posted:I'd board it, but that dinky little thing isn't worth Romulan blood. All non-essential power to speed and weapons. Given them one chance to surrender. If they refuse, blow them away. Plasma Torpedoes (absent phaser fire) degrade annoyingly quick, but not that quick, having a certain number of range bands before beginning to quickly deteriorate for the last few hexes of their run. Plasma-R torps degrade at 10, 15, 20, and 25. Plasma-S degrades at 10, 15, and 20 , G at 10 and 15, and F at 5 and 10.
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Jun 28, 2017 17:02
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Holy poo poo, our torps do 50 damage? That cruiser got vaporized. Although I guess one of us would be in similar trouble if the cruiser fired both torpedoes. But yeah, offer surrender. If not, pursue and destroy. The destroyer can't do much at this point even with a torpedo.
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Jun 28, 2017 19:30
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Tagichatn posted:Holy poo poo, our torps do 50 damage? That cruiser got vaporized. Although I guess one of us would be in similar trouble if the cruiser fired both torpedoes. The Gorn cruiser carried two Plasma-S torpedoes. Each does 30 damage max, so two of theirs is only slightly more than one of yours. A War Eagle has 25 shields and 5 armor, so a full-strength Plasma-S can't even break into internal damage on a virgin WE. Two of them would do a fair bit of damage at full strength - but after getting through phaser fire they'd be weakened to the point where the damage would be relatively minor. War Eagles are fairly tough ships.
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Jun 28, 2017 21:17
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I told you these ships should have surrendered or run first round. This was an absurd mismatch.
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Jun 28, 2017 21:56
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Kavak posted:How long is an impulse in real seconds? I remember there was a lot of talk about relativity when I tried to learn how to play this game. Each turn is 1 second, because in combat situations apparently warp power accelerates the ship's timeflow relative to the rest of the universe? Added Space posted:I told you these ships should have surrendered or run first round. This was an absurd mismatch. The War Eagle is a bad heavy cruiser, but that's still in comparison with heavy cruisers and therefore is pretty nasty against a CL and a DD, especially non-refit Gorn ones. But it's still a bad heavy cruiser. The tournament-balanced new-era Romulan version (which IIRC is actually inferior in many ways to some of the better CAs), is listed below: http://starfleetgames.com/sfb/tournament/ssd/2005_Tournament_RFH.pdf It has 2 plas-S and 2-plas-F versus a single Plas-R (which means its peak output at close range is 80 points rather than 50), 37 power to the War Eagle's 26, the same shields, an extra Ph-1, and 2 extra Ph-3s. It's also significantly more maneuverable (Turn mode C rather than D).
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Jun 29, 2017 00:12
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Now that the fight is done (except for the screaming), I just want to agree with people here. The War Eagle is a fine Light Cruiser for it's time. It's a peer opponent for the Federation Light Cruiser used last game. But it is not a full and proper cruiser. It was meant to operate as a wolf-pack ambusher, often in groups of three which would allow each ship to fire a torpedo, then have the other two fire theirs during reload turns. This match showed off its strengths admirably. Good job to everyone! The King Eagle is it's upgraded, near-Heavy Cruiser Counterpart. From the same source as MJ12's post above mine, http://www.starfleetgames.com/sfb/tournament/ssd/2005_Tournament_RKE.pdf is a link to look at it. It's a bad ship in the tournament scene, and I fly it because I love it.
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Jun 29, 2017 01:05
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Yeah, good match! The Romulans had the edge in quality ships and also got the Gorn out of position and were able to in turn salvo each of them separately. Focused fire works. Lesson from this tactically is keep your ships together so they can support one another and hit the same target. Ships should try and maneuver together, keep the same speed, and otherwise be in range to lend PD to one another.
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Jun 29, 2017 09:32
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I think we also learned that Plasmas are standoff weapons, despite their damage fall off. Things might have gone better for the Gorn if they had simply skulked out of range until turn three, and then gotten 3 plasmas into space at about range 10.
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Jun 29, 2017 17:48
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The way for the Gorn to win here would be to present a possible target at the start of Turn 3 to entice the Roms into finish arming their plasmas, then break off. Plasma-R torpedoes can't be held, so if you finish arming them at the start of the turn they become a "use it or lose it" weapon. Then there would be another long charge cycle in which the Gorn could strike. Even then it would be dubious - the Gorn were ludicrously outgunned in this scenario.
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Jun 29, 2017 17:58
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The Gorn could do a 'fighting withdraw' in thsi situation, but that's dpeendent on them staying at long range and thus being able to avoid being plasmaslammed or being able to decoy the plasmas with a Wild WEasel and then make a break for the map edge to escape. Also still voting for setting phasers to 'disable' and go for rear mount weapons disabling on the Gorn DD then sending over BP's from both ships to capture her and tow her home. Crapship or not, it's still a humiliation to the Gorn, accomplishes our mission objective of drawing more ships into the area, and is a nice feather in the cap of our patrol captain.
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Jun 30, 2017 08:54
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The only downside to avoiding boarding parties is that they might trigger the self-destruct and cost us our prize. (Speaking OOC, don't know if that's a thing in SFB)
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Jun 30, 2017 08:57
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| # ? Apr 28, 2024 11:15 |
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Again, just not worth it. The Enterprise, sure, but not for some half-melted DD. Send a fake distress signal, use cloak and hide in the asteroids, now that's a plan.
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Jun 30, 2017 09:25
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