Next Star Fleet Battles Game

[MarianLH]

My next SFB game is scheduled for tomorrow. I'm going to be fielding a Kzinti drone bombardment squadron--two drone frigates and a scout frigate. Year is Y168, so I'll have the C refits and medium speed drones.

This'll be a number of firsts for me: first time playing Kzinti, first time commanding more than one ship, first time using a scout, and first time using something smaller than a cruiser. I don't know what I'll be up against, beyond equal BPV in Federation ships.

I need to review the rules, especially on scouts, before making firm plans, but for now I have the vague idea that I'll launch offensive drone salvoes from the DFs, while the SF provides the squadron with ECM drones. If I launch near the end of a turn and then fire again on the next, the two DFs could put 24 drones in space at once.

The scout could devote one EW channel to controlling extra drones, but I don't see the point in that. The DFs can already control 12 drones each, which is twice as many as they can launch in a single turn. Instead, I plan to use the scout to provide ECM to the DFs and itself, and/or ECCM on the target ship.

I'm trying to decide whether to stagger the drone launches, and I'd love to hear from the other SFB players on this score. If I send a single launch of six drones from each DF, I can seed an ECM drone in each salvo and give it some extra survivability (I sometimes wonder if David Weber was a big SFB player back in the day). But then the whole salvo can be taken out by a T-bomb. OTOH, if I stagger the launches, I lose the ECM benefit. Do ECM drones work on T-bombs? I'll have to look that up.

From the Tactics Manual I got the idea of sending a single drone ahead of the salvo to prematurely detonate a T-bomb. The SF's two drone racks could be used for that. But the Tactics Manual also says T-bombs can be set to ignore the first target, precisely to defeat this tactic. And my opponent also owns a copy of the TM. In fact, when he was grumbling about facing so many drones, I specifically reminded him that the TM had a section on drone defense. I even looked up the page number for him.

He might do it, in which case I can just not use a pathfinder and the drones can sail blithely on by. Or he might not get around to reading the TM, or forget. Or I can reduce the salvoes from 6 to 5, and send two pathfinders. I doubt he'd set a T-bomb to ignore the first two targets.

One thing I'm not going to do is the Kzinti Anchor. My frigates are not going to survive the pounding they'd take in tractor beam range.


Marian

 

[Robert Simmons]

So far sounds good. Plan on your opponent doing what you said. If not then it should work to your favor.

Pay attention.

Watch the impulse chart like a hawk for movement, and weapon's recycling between turns noting the 8 impulse rule. And DON'T CUT HIM ANY SLACK.

I'm rusty. I'll need to go back and look to see if Active Terminal Guidance Drones were available to you at that time. If so buy some with any spare points as a means to bypass your sensor rating control rating when your drones close to within 8 hexes of him. The more you can saturate him, the more he will be forced to try to deal with the drones, so scatterpacks may be wise to avoid so not to loose them all at once if he breaks your lock on him . Expect him to pull something like ECM. Plan on devoting the lion's share of the Scout's free power to ECCM the snot out of your opponent. Target his largest ship. Let the drone's lead the spearhead, and keep the Scout to the rear of your group beyond his effective close range weapons. Phaser-1's start to get really crappy beyond range 5 before playing with ECM, so hopefully he shouldn't get a clean shot a the Scout.

If you are playing a Fed force, overwhelming him with drones may be dicey. If he is using electronic warfare with the scout, you could loose everything dronewise on the map if he breaks your lock. Expect him to make your life a living hell by trying to degrade your hit and damage rolls by outspending you in ECM. Plan to spend as much free power to spare for the ECM / ECCM fight. If you can acchieve a stalemate negating his ECM by your ECCM, I would consider that acceptable to press a drone attack. Anything less than that more than likely could potentailly make it near impossible to do any decent damage even at point blank.

Another thing to consider is that if you are planning to close to point blank, you will have to plan on strongly considering splitting your surplus power between ECM / ECCM and sheld reinforcement. DO NOT allocate the spare power to the shields until the last allocation phase right before the both of you acchieve final cosure so to wait till the lat moment to put the power into Specific sheild reinforcement. Otherwise you will have to eat the 2 to 1 power loss in general reinforcement through your firecontrol allocation.


Good Hunting.

 

[MarianLH]

I hadn't considered the possibility of losing a target lock. Thanks for mentioning it. On the other hand, from what I read this morning it's not an all-or-nothing thing. Each of my ships gets a separate roll to retain the lock, so it's unlikely all three will lose it. And if one of them does lose the lock, control of the drones can be handed off to a friendly unit that still has it. Here's where the scout's ability to control extra drones might come in handy.

Active Terminal Guidance was introduced in the third Klingon-Kzinti war, so I can use it. But the availability rules prevent me from equipping all my drones with ATG. I've decided to go with the following load-out.

Both DFs:
Racks A-E: 1x Type I-MH, 3x Type I-M
Rack F: same as above, but with ECM payloads instead of warheads

SF:
Racks A-B: 2x Type I-XH with ECM payloads, 2x Type I-M

The scout's ECM drones have extra endurance because these are the ones that will be tacked onto my ships, while the ECM drones carried by the DFs are included in the attack salvoes.

9 restricted drone types out of 24 falls within the 50% availability for Kzintis. I'll send the ATG drones first, after the pathfinders, which will free up control slots for a third salvo, or for handing off an existing salvo if one of my ships loses the target lock. 36 drones will eat a dreadnought for breakfast, ADD or no ADD.

My roommate's copy of the Tactics Manual is right where it's been since our last game, buried under a pile of Hero Clix on the hall table, so I don't think he took my advice.

Now, what do I do if he drops a wild weasel?


Marian

 

[Robert Simmons]

Now, what do I do if he drops a wild weasel?


Marian

Rush him since he'll be tied to a slow speed of 4 to prevent voiding his own weasel. Anything launched prior to him popping the weasel will be lost. Check the rules, but I seem to remember that anything launched after popping the weasel will not be affected and you should be able to target him with any drones after he pops it and drops to speed 4. Anytime an opponent goes at a slow speed, that's the time to press and attack. Popping a awild weasel is a tactic of desparation to spare one's hide fro man overwhelming onslaught of seeking weapons. Try to not have too many on the board in case he does pop and drop. That way you don't loose to many. That way you can save them for after he pops his weasel. And then you'll have spared the ramainder of your drones and then can clean his clock since he'll be chained to a slower movement till the next allocation phase. If you are using mid-turn speed changes, then he may be able to bring his speed up some before the end of the turn if he pops the weasel early in the turn. But even if he does he'll still be bound to the rules to acceleration limits and then still he is waiting to be picked to death while you hit him wit ha 2 pronged atttack with drones and ships simulantiously.

Good Luck...

 

[MarianLH]

The game has been postponed until tomorrow because we both aren't feeling well. =P

I think I'm going to need to keep a drone salvo in reserve in case he pops a weasel. Weasels may be a desperate tactic, but I've only got one disruptor and two phasers on each DF. I'm sure I'll need more firepower than that, no matter how slow he's going.

And the Tactics Manual is gone from the hall table, so I may be in for a fight after all.


Marian

 

[MarianLH]

We're about to begin. My friend's surprised me. Not only is he not playing Federation this time--he's playing Klingons--but he's bringing a dreadnought to the party. I guess my boast upthread is going to be put to the test!


Marian

 

[Robert Simmons]

It will be intersting to see how he fights, given that Fed and Klingon ships are designed to fight differently. I guess this is one of those "let's throw heinz 57 into the mix just to see what happens."

DN? or DN+? Or DNG? Already I can think...crappy turn mode for close in combat. A DN is great in a fleet action, but lowsy against a smaller tighter turning ship at point blank given his 1 1/2 movement cost and a much more sluggish turn mode. This can play to your advantage if you rush him, in that if you can keep out of the DN's FH arcs...you can have an easier time dropping a shield to do big damage. Plus avoiding the his FH arcs you can avoid the majority of his direct fire weapons. Milk the turn mode hard in staying out of his FH and you could do some decent damage with your little ships. This is where the scout and your ECM drones will come in handy.

EDIT: I realized just now that you meant that he dumped playing Feds outright in favor of playing Klingons. This will be still about the same advice, except that he will have disruptors every turn like you. So he won't be caught naked without heavy weapons due to single turn recyling unlike the Fed 2 turn recylcling on photon arming. Since he is playing Klingons expect him to agressively jockey for your #1 / #6 and #1 / #2 shield boundries leading into implementing the "Klingon Hook". Since he is leaner than a Fed, that means he'l be turning tighter. But the plus side of that is that he is not as absorbant to damamge as a Fed equivalent hull would be. This is good in that he'll be able to degrade easier to "combat ineffective". Don't waste firepower trying to kill him. Focue on measuring your weapons in steps to just hurt him badly enough that he is no longer a serious threat and can't put up a decent fight. At that point you will have the upper hand even if you don't kill him, and you as a result will have more drones and direct fire hjandy to follow up if he refuses to throw in the towel. It's all about economy in juduciously using your weapons. I know that it may sound wird hearing htis for a duel as tactical advice. But it really makes a difference in a campaign if you use up all your drone in one battle and have none left over for the next battle...or the rest of the campaign for that matter.

Ka'Pla....

 

[Solariabsg25]

Could be an interesting game - if I were playing Klingons vs Kzinti I take as many Type VII or MW drones as possible, and use them just to target incoming drones, which cuts a big slice out of Kzinti attacking power.

A C8 dreadnought can be a nasty peice of work to deal with, having an extra reach of disruptor range sniping away to keep you honest.

Or, come barrelling in to try to take out one of your larger ships, closing to overload range while just using the smaller ships as drone defence. 6 overloaded disruptors will tend to make a mess of most frigates (hell and most cruisers for that matter!!).

 

[MarianLH]

Well, I won, but my opponent conceded pretty early, so I didn't really get to see if I could trash the dreadnought.

He brought a C8 with a single F5 as an escort, both with the K refits and and no Commander's Options, not even T-bombs. As I planned upthread, I launched a salvo of six drones from each DF near the end of the first turn, then followed up with another salvo on the second turn, all targeted on the destroyer.

I also launched a shuttle from each frigate and sent them around his flank. I've used scatter packs a lot in the past, and I was hoping he'd assume they were more of the same and avoid them. In fact, they were just plain administrative shuttles.

It took almost all 24 drones to do it, but I killed the destroyer by turn 3. Between phasers, ADDs, and his own drones, he managed to completely wipe out my first salvo, and thin down the other three. In all, 9 of them hit, not including the ECM drones I put in each salvo. The dreadnought was close enough to take explosion damage on a shield, too.

Sticking an ECM drone in each salvo worked pretty well, especially at close range when the small target bonus no longer applied.


Marian

 

[Solariabsg25]

Well done.

Obviously not seeing the map I can't comment fully, but seems odd to concede so quickly. In my mind, the F5K did it's job - drawing firepower away from the C8.

The C8 should still have been able to trash at least one of the DFs in an alpha strike, reducing your drone power by at least 50% - still allowing you an impressive drone-strike power, but possibly not enough to completely overwhelm the C8. Plus of course, by this time you're looking at having to start reloading drone racks, to ensure you can get a massive wave without suddenly having an entire turn with empty racks so the C8 can close with almost impunity.

I suspect it may have been your opponent's lack of experience using Klingons that played a factor, missing the Fed's massive single-turn firepower of the photons. Even so, trashing an F5K in a couple of turns is impressive.

 

[MarianLH]

In retrospect, he could have dropped a wild weasel on Turn 3 if he'd had one prepared. I spent turn 3 moving away from him and reloading my expended drone racks, so I wouldn't have been able to take advantage of it. Which I guess means running away to reload was a mistake, even if he was too inexperienced to take advantage of it.

Or maybe not. I'm wracking my brain trying to figure out how I could have countered a weasel without getting creamed by the dreadnought. Getting my DFs into disruptor range of the weasel would expose them to the full weight of his return fire. And if I stayed out of range and shot another load of drones at him, he could've just popped out another weasel before they hit, while I'd be left with empty drone racks for the next two turns.

Maybe it's just that the drone bombardment squadron is too specialized to be operating by itself. The lack of direct fire weapons and the inability to absorb much damage means it can't take advantage of the weasel's disadvantages. Given the gobs of reloads the DFs carry, a real squadron commander could've just kept sending drone salvoes until the Klingons ran out of shuttles, but that would take forever in game turns.


Marian

 

[Solariabsg25]

Personally I wouldn't have taken a C8, it is to be honest too tempting a target. You of course ignored the temptation which was the right way to go.

Of course, personally I'd have taken Andros

Playing Klingons though, perhaps a D7K and F5S, maybe if could fit it in an E4 just for extra drone defence phasers.

God, I've gotta get back into playing SFB again!

 

[MarianLH]

Of course, personally I'd have taken Andros

Who weren't around in Y168. And we don't even own any of the C modules.


Marian

 

[Solariabsg25]

Oh they were around - just didn't leave many survivors to report them!!

Actually, the first recorded encounter with an Andromedan Intruder was Y166 - I assume it did not go well cos the fighter pilots on a Kzinti CV apparently mutinied rather than going up against one a few years later.

All I can say is, just as well they weren't ready for the full invasion until Y190, cos without the General War build-ups and tech advances, woulda not been fun!!

 

[dayxday1000]

I've never played this game but I bet it would be fun.