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 Welcome cadets, to Starfleet Command. This is the video game of the oldest, greatest, and onliest hex-based Star Trek war game Starfleet Battles. Starfleet Battles was created by Amarillo Design Bureau in the dark days between Star Trek: The Animated Series and the feature films. The game, which featured cheap cardboard chits and appallingly poor-quality rulebooks and supplements, limped along until the mid 1990s when it finally died at the height of Star Trek's cultural resurgence. ADB had a shaky hold on the rights to the series and quite a few ship designs to fill in, as the original series had featured a grand total of three hero ships on screen. For this reason Starfleet Battles takes place in an ever-more-divergent setting in the same era as the original series movies. You know with the cool red tunics and bomber jackets.  Starfleet Battles is a game primarily about doing an enormous amount of paperwork to keep track of the energy management on board your starship. There's also an enemy ship and tactics, but the main focus of the gameplay is paperwork. This meant that Starfleet Battles lent itself very well to computerization, since the computer can handle all the energy management record-keeping and all of a sudden there is a fairly accessible grognard starship game underneath.  Starfleet Command is the uneven, buggy, and occasionally excellent 1999 Interplay version of Starfleet Battles. It featured cutting-edge 3D graphics alongside a deep menu system and procedurally-generated galaxy populated by random missions and event chains. There are six playable races, and at least four of them have main mission arcs that don't bug out and end the single player campaign.  These are the six playable races. Four are canon, one is a Larry Niven rip-off that found its way near Star Trek canon through a series of events too complicated to go into, and one is a pure invention of ADB. The race descriptions are as follows, read by none other than George Takei:   These race descriptions are pretty accurate. Federation ships place a premium on being Just Better, but have no standout qualities. They are durable, have well-balanced shields and powerful phasers, and a strong but unremarkable heavy weapon in the photon torpedo. Federation ships tend to have good reactors and auxiliary systems as well. They are strong but not exciting. Federation ships are good in all eras, but get more gimmicks and gizmos as the years progress. The Federation main story focuses on their cold war with the Klingons.   The Klingons take a little bit more skill to play than the Federation. Klingon ships have relatively poor shield and phaser technology, but are highly maneuverable. Their disruptors are the fastest-firing heavy weapons in the game, as long as you can keep them powered and shooting. Klingon ships tend to fight best at high speed, using their maneuverability to make quick passes into and out of medium range where volleys of disruptor fire can wear down a slower opponent. Klingon ships get notably better over time, and get access to cloaking technology after the early era.    The Romulans are tied with the Lyrans for the second-most-difficult campaign. Romulan ships have a huge variance in technology level from the early era to the late era. Early era Romulan ships hew closely to their TOS depiction: they have good cloaking devices and powerful weapons but awful engines. These limitations make captaining an early Romulan ship a real challenge. You have your one gimmick to rely on, and if you're caught with a broken cloaking device or in any kind of chase you're hopelessly outmatched. As time progresses the Romulans start to build more TNG style double-hulled warships that combine their powerful plasma torpedoes and cloaks with real engine and generator technology. Late period Romulan ships are actual contenders on technological parity with their counterparts across the border. The Romulan campaign focuses on inter-service rivalry and backstabbing, of course.   The Gorn appeared only once in Kirk's Star Trek, as a large man in a ludicrous lizard outfit, but they have always been a fan favorite. In Starfleet Battles they were portrayed as a race that, like the Romulans, favor plasma torpedo heavy weapons. But in other respects, Gorn ships are more like Federation ships. They are slow and heavy to maneuver, have good shields and good hull strength, and have sparse but powerful phaser banks. The Gorn campaign focuses on something about eggs, I think? Really leaning into the lizard theme.   The Hydrans are a non-canon species straight from the 1970s disco-addled minds of Amarillo Design Bureau. They are a three-legged, three-sexed species of unrepentant monarchists who worship space-borne alien whales. But otherwise they seem ok! Hydran ships have not one, not two, but four special weapons. They are kind of their authors' darlings. They have a lot of fighters, which especially in the early era are unique to the Hydrans. They have the Fusion Gun, which is portrayed as a low-tech short-range weapon that they keep around because it's so effective. They have the Hellebore anti-shield weapon, which is pretty cool. And they have the Phaser-G or gatling phaser, which is like a defensive phaser that can hold four charges before having to recycle. The Hydran main storyline is bugged and cannot be completed.   The Lyrans are a real canon clusterfuck. They are an ADB rip-off of the Kzinti, who appeared in Star Trek: The Animated Series but were originally from Larry Niven's Known Worlds series of novels. Niven just wrote them into a TAS episode that he wrote, and now they are canon. They were also featured in Starfleet Battles and Starfleet Command II. But Interplay, for whatever reasons, only left in their arch-rivals the Lyrans. Lyrans are ADB created and are not canon, unless they are the Kzin, in which case they are canon. Anyway, the description of the Lyrans is accurate. They have a cool heavy weapon in the Expanding Sphere Generator and also have disruptors. Unfortunately their ships tend to be underpowered, making them slow and giving them weapon recycle issues. The Lyrans are the hardest game outside of Early Era Romulans.  The main game screen looks like this. As you can see it is dominated by a profusion of menus on the left side, with the finest in 1990s 3D graphics on the right side. The menus do a good job of replicating the visual design for each species. There are a total of 17 different menu windows, for controlling everything from extreme maneuvers to electronic warfare to jerry-rigged shuttlecraft. And now onto the LP: SPACE: The Hex-Based Frontier. These are the voyages of the Starship $ship. Its mission: to seek out a new $captain and new $species, to boldly go where no wo/man/third sex has gone before! Choose a SHIP NAME, CAPTAIN NAME and SPECIES within the next 48 hours to complete the opening monologue and start the campaign.
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Oct 28, 2019 00:30
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Nice. I really loved this game and its sequel. Both are really fun and also really frustrating, in a "this could have been so much more" way. I recommend Captain Jerk of the Starship Broke, the pride of the Federation.
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Oct 28, 2019 00:44
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ARE WE NOT WARRIORS IN THIS THREAD?! WE WILL FIGHT FOR HONOR, AND FOR THE EMPIRE! WE KLINGONS SLEW OUR GODS FOR THEY WERE WEAK! NOW WE MUST SLAY OUR ENEMIES, FOR THEY TOO ARE WEAK! AND SHOULD WE FIGHT AN ENEMY STRONG AT ARMS AND RESPLENDENT WITH HONOR, THAN TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE! OUR WARRIOR'S NAME SHALL BE K'OHK, OF THE IKS D'K TAHG! Q'APLA!
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Oct 28, 2019 01:47
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Oh man, I didn't think an LP of this would ever be done. Spent so much time on these games as a dumb kid and was so bad at them.
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Oct 28, 2019 01:56
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I wish the Hydran plot wasn't bugged because they rule.
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Oct 28, 2019 02:14
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F'in watched. My very first LP, before I even came to SA was SFC2, so this is all nostalgia for me. But for a first run, Captain Joe of the Federation Starship USS Average would be a good place to start.Arglebargle III posted:The Lyrans are a real canon clusterfuck. They are an ADB rip-off of the Kzinti, who appeared in Star Trek: The Animated Series but were originally from Larry Niven's Known Worlds series of novels. Niven just wrote them into a TAS episode that he wrote, and now they are canon. They were also featured in Starfleet Battles and Starfleet Command II. But Interplay, for whatever reasons, only left in their arch-rivals the Lyrans. Lyrans are ADB created and are not canon, unless they are the Kzin, in which case they are canon. Nooooot quite. The Kzinti showed up in the Larry Niven penned TAS Episode "The Slaver Weapon" which was basically Niven rewriting a story by the same name set in his own universe with some serial numbers changed. Now, because the Amarillo Design Bureau has a separate contract with the Nivien estate for the use of the Kzinti - something that Paramount/CBS/Interplay do not have, they show up there thanks to SFB drawing from TOS and TAS, but not the movies or later. In SFC 2, they were replaced by the Mirak, which are the 'Zin with a name change to write around copyrights and trademarks. The Lyrans served as a counterbalance to the Kzinti on the strategic scale, much like the Hydrans do on the Klingon side of things. They were both created whole-cloth by ADB, and are unique to the SFB Universe. They are allies to the Klingons, and are probably the most solid Alliance in SFB. So the Lyrans and the Mirak/Kzinti are completely separate empires, and should not be conflated with each other. Also, the Hydrans are not the developer's favourite race. They've gone on record as saying that the Klingons are.
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Oct 28, 2019 03:39
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Sure, sure, but the Lyrans are very obviously Kzinti to the point that the second game lampshades their conflict by suggesting that they are the same species or recently diverged. In-universe they may be the sworn enemy of the other cat people but it's blindingly obvious where ADB got the idea.
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Oct 28, 2019 04:18
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I actually only ever played SFCII but I loved that one so I'm very excited to see SFC.
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Oct 28, 2019 04:19
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I played the futz out of this and Starfleet Command II. I miss the Dynaverse. I also wish all these games would work on Win 10 without sacrifice to gods. I'll go with Captain Krueger Andorian USS Mizia
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Oct 28, 2019 06:30
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e: TheGreatEvilKing posted:Romulan, a lady Captain named Aurelia commanding the Howling Demon +1 works for me By popular demand fucked around with this message at 13:47 on Oct 28, 2019 |
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Oct 28, 2019 07:21
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SF1C was rather better put together than SFC2. An excellent game once you get past the idiosyncratic Star Fleet Battles take on Trek, and Interplay's writers tamped down ADB's uglier tendencies (like, yes, Klingon superiority in all things). I always wished someone would backport the SFC1 campaigns into SFC2. One note: Starfleet Command was part of Interplay's big sweep of huge high-budget Trek games in the early 00s. Star Fleet Battles is actually set in the original series era, but SFC moved this forward a little to the Kirk movies so they could share assets between this game and Klingon Academy. Knowing this fact (and that the ship models were designed for KA's own take on Trek, which was closer to the shows) will explain a few of the idiosyncrasies we find along the way. Particularly why one of the big Klingon ships has a huge gun on the prow that it never uses. Incidentally Steve Cole of ADB loathes these games and rails on his private forums about how Interplay cheated him out of his rightful royalties. Decades of grog rage have rotted ADB and their fanbase somewhat, and anyone who sees these games and decides.to check them out should be warned about this going in. That said, for our first campaign I vote Federation because I remember the Federation secret ops campaign and it was darn cool. Romulans should I think wait for the second or third campaign once everyone has gotten their heads around the game's mechanics. Also for a first game I vote Middle Era if you're taking votes on that, again because it shows off most of the game's stuff without disappearing too far up ADB's colon (something SFC2 had real problems with).
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Oct 28, 2019 11:28
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Romulan, a lady Captain named Aurelia commanding the Howling Demon
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Oct 28, 2019 13:43
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poo poo yes these games both owned and I miss them *terribly*. I'll throw in another vote for Romulan, a lady Captain named Aurelia commanding the Howling Demon Because I want to see suffering almost as much as I want to see backstabbing. Plus, a successful decloak-alpha strike is a thing of beauty.
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Oct 28, 2019 16:39
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T'Rex, Gorn captain of the R'okl'obb'ah
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Oct 28, 2019 17:08
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mercenarynuker posted:ARE WE NOT WARRIORS IN THIS THREAD?! WE WILL FIGHT FOR HONOR, AND FOR THE EMPIRE! WE KLINGONS SLEW OUR GODS FOR THEY WERE WEAK! NOW WE MUST SLAY OUR ENEMIES, FOR THEY TOO ARE WEAK! AND SHOULD WE FIGHT AN ENEMY STRONG AT ARMS AND RESPLENDENT WITH HONOR, THAN TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE! OUR WARRIOR'S NAME SHALL BE K'OHK, OF THE IKS D'K TAHG! Q'APLA! I'll never say no to Gowron. +1 for this.
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Oct 28, 2019 23:39
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Centurium posted:Nice. I really loved this game and its sequel. Both are really fun and also really frustrating, in a "this could have been so much more" way. That describes 90's Interplay pretty well. Captain Brian Cohen of the Federation Starship Bij which was built in a space dock adjacent to its much better known sister ship USS Excelsior.
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Oct 29, 2019 00:39
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mercenarynuker posted:ARE WE NOT WARRIORS IN THIS THREAD?! WE WILL FIGHT FOR HONOR, AND FOR THE EMPIRE! WE KLINGONS SLEW OUR GODS FOR THEY WERE WEAK! NOW WE MUST SLAY OUR ENEMIES, FOR THEY TOO ARE WEAK! AND SHOULD WE FIGHT AN ENEMY STRONG AT ARMS AND RESPLENDENT WITH HONOR, THAN TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE! OUR WARRIOR'S NAME SHALL BE K'OHK, OF THE IKS D'K TAHG! Q'APLA! +1 for this too!
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Oct 29, 2019 00:46
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In fairness Klingons in SFC 1 are ToS Klingons. No ridges. Less about honor and more about brutal, cunning soldiers. Ships are primarily crewed by slaves of conquered races in Klingon territory. Captives can easily be forced into slavery, tortured, etc. Also one thing about the Star Fleet Battles liscence is that they were not allowed to 'use' anything beyond the TOS series, TOS Technical Manual, and TAS. But I believe Paramount was allowed to, so we sometimes see SFB designs in other media or in background things in Star Trek (Ie, the Dreadnaught design from SFB is in the background of a monitor in a scene of The Motion Picture). So Starfleet Command 2 has movie era ships statted up and usable which SFB never could do.
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Oct 29, 2019 02:39
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Adding my vote for Romulan, a lady Captain named Aurelia commanding the Howling Demon. I love the Romulans because of their ridiculous levels of back stabbery. Back when I played I was upset that in STO being Romulan didn't mean fighting as a third faction.
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Oct 29, 2019 03:10
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wedgekree posted:Also one thing about the Star Fleet Battles liscence is that they were not allowed to 'use' anything beyond the TOS series, TOS Technical Manual, and TAS. But I believe Paramount was allowed to, so we sometimes see SFB designs in other media or in background things in Star Trek (Ie, the Dreadnaught design from SFB is in the background of a monitor in a scene of The Motion Picture). The Dreadnought and Destroyer from the Franz Joesph Manual were used in the source you mention. And in the Harbinger series of books, a Ptomely-class Tug is one of the secondary ships. It's less using SFB stuff, and more both using the same source material.
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Oct 29, 2019 03:25
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How was the Hydran campaign bugged? I'm not sure if it was this one or the sequel, but I ran into a nasty... I'm not sure if it was a big or just poor mechanics, but there was a mission where you had to destroy one of the Doomsday Weapons from TOS, but nothing ever worked. Weapons did nothing, ramming it did nothing, towing the disabled ship into its maw was apparently supposed to work like in the actual eoisode, but it didn't. I'll be curious to see how this LP goes.
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Oct 29, 2019 03:35
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mercenarynuker posted:ARE WE NOT WARRIORS IN THIS THREAD?! WE WILL FIGHT FOR HONOR, AND FOR THE EMPIRE! WE KLINGONS SLEW OUR GODS FOR THEY WERE WEAK! NOW WE MUST SLAY OUR ENEMIES, FOR THEY TOO ARE WEAK! AND SHOULD WE FIGHT AN ENEMY STRONG AT ARMS AND RESPLENDENT WITH HONOR, THAN TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE! OUR WARRIOR'S NAME SHALL BE K'OHK, OF THE IKS D'K TAHG! Q'APLA! We fight for honor! TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE
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Oct 29, 2019 04:06
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wedgekree posted:In fairness Klingons in SFC 1 are ToS Klingons. No ridges. Less about honor and more about brutal, cunning soldiers. Ships are primarily crewed by slaves of conquered races in Klingon territory. Captives can easily be forced into slavery, tortured, etc. WHAT ARE YOU, A SNIVELING DURAS? LOOK AT THE MIGHTY RIDGES OF THE KLINGONS IN THE OP! THEY ARE WARRIORS, PURE ENOUGH OF HEART TO MAKE KAHLESS HIMSELF WEEP IN THE HALLS OF STO'VO'KOR!
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Oct 29, 2019 05:08
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mercenarynuker posted:ARE WE NOT WARRIORS IN THIS THREAD?! WE WILL FIGHT FOR HONOR, AND FOR THE EMPIRE! WE KLINGONS SLEW OUR GODS FOR THEY WERE WEAK! NOW WE MUST SLAY OUR ENEMIES, FOR THEY TOO ARE WEAK! AND SHOULD WE FIGHT AN ENEMY STRONG AT ARMS AND RESPLENDENT WITH HONOR, THAN TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE! OUR WARRIOR'S NAME SHALL BE K'OHK, OF THE IKS D'K TAHG! Q'APLA! K'ohk has my vote! 
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Oct 29, 2019 06:00
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Ahh, I do have fond memories of the Klingon campaign in SFC1. I however like the Federation one more story-wise. I also like captaining Fed starships more but that's just as thier playstyle suited how I did the game. No matter who wins looking super forwarsd to it!
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Oct 29, 2019 06:17
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Oh man, I loved this game. I was so bad at it though.
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Oct 29, 2019 16:39
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mercenarynuker posted:ARE WE NOT WARRIORS IN THIS THREAD?! WE WILL FIGHT FOR HONOR, AND FOR THE EMPIRE! WE KLINGONS SLEW OUR GODS FOR THEY WERE WEAK! NOW WE MUST SLAY OUR ENEMIES, FOR THEY TOO ARE WEAK! AND SHOULD WE FIGHT AN ENEMY STRONG AT ARMS AND RESPLENDENT WITH HONOR, THAN TODAY IS A GOOD DAY TO DIE! OUR WARRIOR'S NAME SHALL BE K'OHK, OF THE IKS D'K TAHG! Q'APLA! This has my vote
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Oct 29, 2019 16:45
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Fabulousity posted:Captain Brian Cohen of the Federation Starship Bij Pity Federation vote here too. My memory of playing these games was using the advanced strategy of charging directly over the enemy and alphastriking everything at point-blank range, then running away - rinse and repeat until victorious or dead, usually the latter. Also missiles, all the missiles! But maybe that was SFC2? It's all a blur these days.
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Oct 29, 2019 18:47
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mercenarynuker posted:WHAT ARE YOU, A SNIVELING DURAS? LOOK AT THE MIGHTY RIDGES OF THE KLINGONS IN THE OP! THEY ARE WARRIORS, PURE ENOUGH OF HEART TO MAKE KAHLESS HIMSELF WEEP IN THE HALLS OF STO'VO'KOR! Yes, that is because the game was made by Interplay, who had the actual Star Trek licence as well as the Star Fleet Battles one. Thereby allowing them to reunite the two (and use movie-era ships). That was probably a smart marketing move on their part. This game and Klingon Academy actually do a pretty decent job of backporting Star Fleet Battles' stuff into mainstream Trek. SFB is set during the original series so the Klingons there have no forehead ridges and are basically a metaphor for the Soviet Union. They are cranked up heavily by ADB because ADB's owner was a huge fan of his own specific take on them. I think the thread is in for a shock when it sees what this game's take on Trek's antagonist races is actually like.
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Oct 29, 2019 21:04
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The vote is 6-5-4 for the Klingons over the Federation and Romulans.
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Oct 29, 2019 23:17
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:Romulan, a lady Captain named Aurelia commanding the Howling Demon This
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Oct 30, 2019 00:17
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Putting my vote in for team Klingon.
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Oct 30, 2019 00:19
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48 hours are up and the vote is over. Commander K'ohk of the Klingon Empire is the winner by two votes.
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Oct 30, 2019 00:30
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QAPLA!
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Oct 30, 2019 00:38
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Starfleet Command S1 E01: Shakedown (in an extremely Tony Todd voice) *THESE* ARE THE *VOYAGES* OF THE KLINGON *WAR*SHIP D'K TAHG. IT'S CONTINUING MISSION: TO DESTROY NEW LIFE, TO *ENSLAVE* NEW CIVILIZATIONS AND TO BOLDLY CONQUER WHERE NO KLINGON HAS CONQUERED BEFORE! (cue main theme) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3o-b4NbWecE   GLORY TO YOU, COMMANDER K'OHK!  YOU ARE A KLINGON WARRIOR! ONE OF MANY IN THE SERVICE OF HOUSE KOR!  THIS HOUSE HAS SEEN FIT TO PLACE THE GREAT! HONOR! OF COMMAND ON YOUR SHOULDERS! GO FORTH AND CONQUER! FOR THE GLORY OF KAHLESS! QA'PLA!  ok no more Kligon shouting The D'k Tahg is a Bird of Prey, but a larger and more modern version than the famous hero ship of Star Trek IV. It is designated an F5B by the game, meaning it is on the second refit of its life. This is its current configuration above. It has reasonable shields in every direction, a pair of forward-facing Phaser 2 emitters and a pair of forward disrupters. It has three Phaser 2 emitters and a Phaser 3 emitter in all-round defensive emplacements. These are fairly typical weapon arcs for a Klingon ship in SFB. If you ask me it's a little odd. Phaser 2 are older, less powerful main phaser banks than the Phaser 1. The Federation typically does not use them, but mid era Klingon ships and a number of Lyran designs are stuck with them. The Phaser 3 is a short-ranged defensive weapon, designed more for point defense than combat. Of course it often sees use against ships as well. The D'k Tahg has a tight turning radius and the minimum warp movement cost. This makes it a very fast and agile ship, as a frigate should be. The D'k Tahg should have no trouble making speed 31 (about Warp 8 on-screen) with all its weapons active.    Captain K'ohk's first trip is straight down to the spacedock, where supplies can be scrounged for influence points. As an unblooded Commander there is very little to be had. I load up on spare parts and spare bodies. Shuttles are an un-Klingon concept and Klingons don't have much use for them or large shuttlebays so I skip them.    The stardate is 7403.6. The Empire is at war on two fronts, but K'ohk doesn't have the prestige to get a transfer to the front at the moment. The D'k Tahg will have to cruise around looking for pirates in the core sector.  On patrol, sensor officer Krelaq detects a pirate vessel on the starboard quarter.  K'ohk orders action stations and gives chase! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fg58hVEY5Og&t=30s Let's spin the big chair and take a look at the bridge stations and crew.  Quazurr is at the helm. The J indicates that he is a Junior officer, rather than a Rookie or one of the higher levels. The buttons at the top of his panel control violent maneuvers and high energy turns. More standard maneuvers like entering orbit, following, and steady helm are at the bottom. In SFB canon, and to be fair also in The Original Series canon, all combat is conducted at warp speeds. High Energy Turns were conceived of as using the warp engines and warp field to turn rapidly. This runs the risk of a catastrophic warp system breakdown that leaves the ship a sitting duck. Quazurr and the D'k Tahg have a good HET chance because Klingon frigates are inherently maneuverable. A Federation ship would be more likely to break down in a HET.  Kalosh is at the damage control console. Right now nothing is damaged, and our stack of spare parts scrounged from the dockyard is piled up on the right. Krotaq is on sensors. All of these buttons are self-explanatory. Deep Scan puts three points of energy into the sensors, expanding the ship's sensor range and performing scanning operations for mission objectives.  Dace coordinates security and raiding parties. At this distance we do not have an internal configuration on the pirate ship.  Keim is weapons officer. This screen shows weapon status, weapon groups, firing arcs, and controls nuclear space mines. The weapons officer also has cloaking control, but the D'k Tahg does not have a cloaking device.  Defense station. Point defense, emergency stop, point defense tractor beams, and sensor decoy shuttles are controlled from here. No self-respecting warrior would actually man this station, so it's up to the captain to punch it in on the big chair. (I forgot to take a shot of communications. The comms panel is pretty much only used for scripted missions, and doesn't do anything in randomly generated scenarios.)  Tactical display. Not as cool as General Chang's  but good enough.  Command console. Commander K'ohk is not General K'ohk yet!  This is the energy allocation console. This was the rustling paper heart of Star Fleet Battles, and though thankfully that pencil and paper notekeeping has been computerized in Starfleet Command this is still the most important screen in the game. The D'k Tahg has 20 power points available each game turn, from the warp engines impulse engines, and a small auxiliary fusion reactor. Just after sounding action stations, the weapons are drawing 9.5 power in total. Those 9.5 energy points are going into the phaser capacitor, the orange bar at the top of the screen, and the disruptors, seen charging on the Master Systems Display at mid left. The phaser capacitor is a shared pool of energy for every phaser emitter on the ship, and is usually the largest power draw in combat especially for Federation ships. Emitters still take a game turn to recycle, but if the phaser capacitor is ever empty no phaser emitter will be able to fire. Phaser recharge speed can be controlled, and on some Federation ships you may want to limit phaser capacitor recharge speed, but otherwise you will rarely touch the slider. Heavy weapons do not have a shared energy pool.  On our first cruise, I underestimated the energy required to charge the weapons and turned away to buy some more time to charge the disruptors.  The first enemy volley collapses the aft starboard shield sector. In this game, each shield sector protects 1/6 of the ship. Shooting through shields that are downed is an important part of strategy.  The weapons are now nearly charged and I come around for our first attack pass. Since I was unfamiliar with the ship I incorrectly believed the engines needed repair, and wasted a spare part here.  The enemy's forward shields have collapsed, and now we are both taking damage.  The defensive phasers are out, and my attempt to make passes is foiled by the enemy's high speed.  I swing around to bloody their nose and... no forward weapons are ready. Again, I'm not familiar with this design and think the aft phaser 2 bank should be firing forward.  Because of this mistake I get in no damage and the enemy nearly collapses the port quarter shields in return. Also the enemy lays a space mine to prevent me from swinging around behind him.  "Redirect auxiliary power to shields!"  I finally remember to launch missiles and the pirate catches it with his tractor beam. This is why I don't like missiles on small ships.  Victory is near! A close pass takes the enemy's weak forward shields through all my weapon arcs. I am finally getting used to the ship. The damage control station remains busy. I'm glad I got all those extra spare parts.  Not sure why I laid a space mine here, it makes no sense. He's not coming after me.  The disruptors are recharged for the next attack run.  I slip behind him and fire, but his aft shields are still up. It was the forward shields that had collapsed earlier. A simple mistake.  Coming around for another pass, I'm starting to find the sweet spot. This speed lets the ship recharge its weapons and do attack passes.   The enemy's aft shields collapse.  This is what phasers look like when they miss.  You don't need to be accurate when the enemy is completely at your mercy...  I cut out the weapons officer missing, A LOT.  My unfamiliarity with the ship and the weapons officer's incomptence has let this enemy get close to the map edge. If they reach the map edge they will disengage.  The pirate escapes.  Destroying or capturing the enemy would be better, but beating a peer enemy and forcing them to disengage is still a win. QA'PLA Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 01:33 on Oct 30, 2019 |
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Oct 30, 2019 01:23
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"We've had those shallow-ridged nerdlingers in the back crunch the numbers and it turns out 57 is more than 56! Good job, bloodwine for all!"
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Oct 30, 2019 01:38
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(SFB/SFC tactics in spoilers) The F5 and in this case, the F5B's primary weapons first consist of two Disruptors that fire into a 120' arc centered on the forward of the ship, called the "FA" arc. It also has a pair of Phaser-2's that can each fire into the same FA arc, but also one each can fire into the "L"eft 60 degree arc and the other into the "R"ight 60 degree arc. The remaining 3 Phaser-2's are mounted in the RX ("Rear Arc E"X"panded") arc, which is to say that they can fire into the rear 120' "RA" arc, in addition to the L and R arcs. Now, because of the hex-based origin of the system, this means that every offensive weapon can fire into the hex rows that are forward-left and forward-right of the ship, and because for some godaweful reason that probably made sense back in the 70's, the Shields are offset from the weapon arcs by 30'. This means that all your offensive firepower shoots right out the middle of your #2 (Forward Right) and #6 (Forward Left) shields and not your #1 (Forward) shield. Traditional tactics for this class of ship, therefore, are to approach under the protection of your relatively thick #1 shield, then turn off to one side or the other and make a firing pass where all your weapons bare, bringing the fresh off-side shield to bear at the closest point for additional protection. You can fight out the side shields fairly effectively, allowing you to circle around your opponents and hit them with your four of the five phasers if you're willing to forego the use of the Disruptors.
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Oct 30, 2019 01:45
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Berryjon, can you tell us the stories of how one does a saber dance[/b] In SFB, each race has a primary tactic and style that thier technology primarily orbits around the effective use of Romulans primarily use [spoiler]Plasma Torpedo Fakeouts Kzinti/Not Kzini use Macross Missile Massacre Gorn use the species-named Gorn Anchor The Hydrans and Lyrans each have thier own tech that I cannot recall as of the moment as I never tended to play them in SFC2. Other races in other games/SFB use other things, like the Andromedons who use YOU'RE ALL GONNA DIE RIGHT NOW Learning how the races use these tactics and how to counter them is very much an important part of the game. Know how a Klingon ship fights. Know how a Federation ship counters a Klingon ship. Know what the strengths and weaknesses of y9our ships are - moreso than the enemy's even.
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Oct 30, 2019 05:08
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Starfleet Command S1 E02: Nisshin Maru https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTpPJm6fouE  Commander K'ohk's luck has continued to sour. A transfer towards the Hydran front comes through just as the Hydran war ends. And in defeat, no less!  The area near Hydran space is full of nebula to patrol. K'ohk draws the short pipius claw and the D'k Tahg sets course for the nebula.  Nothing but miserable gas and dust. There are no battles to be fought here. The ionized gas of a nebula restricts shields to minimal, interferes with sensors and fire control, and makes shuttles and certain weapons inoperable.  "ADDITIONAL POWER TO SENSORS!"  Lt. Kreloq discovers one of the Hydran "gods" lurking in the nebula. This is hardly a worthy opponent... but perhaps it is a worthy prey!  The crew of the D'k Tahg launch a probe as part of their legitimate and legally protected research activity.  yibaH!  Even at 650 km (each distance tick in SFB and SFC is 10,000 km) it is difficult to hit the animal. Attack shift refers to the difficulty hitting. In a nebula natural attack shift is three. Relative velocities, ECM, and maneuvers contribute to attack shift.  The spaceshell doesn't stand much of a chance here. It is an SSS-class monster, meaning it is the smallest possible category. Its return fire has not even managed to penetrate the D'k Tahg's severely weakened shields.      One final pass and it is over.  Cook's mate, report to the transporter room!  News of K'ohk's exploits in battle against a fierce Hydran star-beast spread through the stars and up the chain of command!   There are no transfers to other ships available in this sector, but the D'k Tahg could put in for an upgrade.  The F5C refit improves the auxiliary generators and the forward phaser banks. Also, two missile launchers might occasionally score a hit where one could be shrugged off by point defense. The forward shield grid will also be slightly stronger. Warriors, there is a choice to make! Upgrade the D'k Tahg or Hold out for a transfer to a cruiser? Arglebargle III fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Oct 31, 2019 |
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Oct 31, 2019 01:34
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Hold out for a transfer! So what did that critter actually do, if anything?
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Oct 31, 2019 01:48
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