Your Favorite Class in Star Fleet Battles...

[Robert Simmons]

I'm interested in how many Trek fans on this board played Star Fleet Battles and the race / class / tactics they preferred.

Mine in order are....

1. Federation BCG. Loved the Dreadnought firpower on a Heavy Cruiser Hull. I liked pressing a close in attack with drones from the G-rack or a scatterpack. The fun was making the oppoent choose between firing at my weapons on the map closing on him, or firing at me. Either way he get's hit. Point blank tractoring drones when phasers were depleted before recycling was often a tactic when there was nothing left in the toolbox.

2. Klingon D7 with refits. With this hull I liked to close with pushing as many drones out in front with the ship tucked in close behind. The fun is watching his ADD's run out and then watch the opponent be forced to fire Phaser III's at a diminished point blank range, while trying to hoard his phasers to fire at my ship instead of the drones.

3. Fed Tug with battlepod. Love those 6 photons. Crappy sluggish turn mode.

4. Klingon Tug. I personally thought the Tug by itself would make a beautiful replacement for the Klingon Light Cruiser. But with combat pallets this hull was excellent in ultimate flexibility. ( Carrier pods, battle pods, cargo pallets. ) What was good was mixing pods like one carrier pod and one battle pod. Firepower and fighters.....best of both worlds.

5. Romulan Sparrowhawk. A cruiser with small interchangable role pallets. A cruiser and in essence some flexability of a Tug. Loved it. Launching plasma and coming right behind the torp to press a 2 pronged attack.

Also liked tractor auctions when trying to get the upper hand at the tail end of a close in knife fight.

T-bombs rolled out of a shuttlebay were good for creating a improvised minefiled on the fly.

Any favorites anyone?

 

[Anachronus]

Back when I played the Sparrowhawk and Skyhawk series were some of my favourite ships. The K7r being a good follow up.

 

[MarianLH]

I haven't played many games, and I don't even have SSDs for any Federation BCs yet, but I like the New Jersey. It looks cool and it's named after my state.

The only ships I've actually played s far are the D7 and the Romulan War Eagle. I like Romulans, so I wanted to like playing them in SFB, but the WE makes for a slow, dull sub hunt of a game. It's accurate to what was depicted in "Balance of Terror", but it was a little tedious.

The D7, on the other hand, was fast and maneuverable, and gave me drones to play with. In my second game I kicked the crap out of a CAR+ with a D7K.

Because I like drones so much I'm planning to try the Kzinti in my next game.


Marian

 

[Robert Simmons]

Back when I played the Sparrowhawk and Skyhawk series were some of my favourite ships. The K7r being a good follow up.

I played the K7R early on when I first began learning the game. I liked having the robustness of a Klingon heavy hull merged with Romulan plasmas. The hard part for me was learning to play it not like a Klingon since you are not using drones, and have to fight differently. The only real big complaint I had about the D7 hull was that it was not the damage sponge that the Fed CA was. But that's the tradeoff for being leaner and having that tighter turn mode. Maulers were somewhat of a passing curiousity in that all that obscene amounts of battery was good for general shield reinforcement defensively. But these things don't play well on their own and are more intended for use in a fleet to protect them.

I haven't played many games, and I don't even have SSDs for any Federation BCs yet, but I like the New Jersey. It looks cool and it's named after my state.

The only ships I've actually played s far are the D7 and the Romulan War Eagle. I like Romulans, so I wanted to like playing them in SFB, but the WE makes for a slow, dull sub hunt of a game. It's accurate to what was depicted in "Balance of Terror", but it was a little tedious.

The D7, on the other hand, was fast and maneuverable, and gave me drones to play with. In my second game I kicked the crap out of a CAR+ with a D7K.

Because I like drones so much I'm planning to try the Kzinti in my next game.

Marian

I LOVE the Fed BCs. Something about sporting 50% more firepower than a Fed CA I find more compelling without spending the points on a dreadnought and roll the leftover BVP into drone upgrades. The main thing why I like the BCG instead of the other BC variants is that cursed breakdown when firing more than 4 heavy weapons. With the G-rack on the dorsal you bypass that limitation automatically. If the breakdown wan't there on the other BC hulls, I would opt for a New Jersy due to I like photons in full overload. Imagine trying to successfully loading and hitting someone with a full alpha strike of 6 overloads and centerline phaser-1s within range 8. I doubt even specific shield reinforcement would save the opponent's ship.

The big gripe I had when I first learned to play was the Romulan Warbird was just like it was in "Balance of Terror" and was sub-light, and you needed to upgrade to the War Eagle to match the CA's warp speed, and more power for charging while moving cloaked. The big drag for me was the rate of charging for the R-torp. Well any plasma torp for that matter being 3 turns, the Fed is 2 turns for photons and 1 turn for Klingon disruptors. It took awhile for it to sink in that the trade off was a graduation scale in the amount of damage each had as a result of their charging rates. Faster charging meant weaker damage potential, and longer charging meant having the meanest weapons on the map, but you were screwed till you could pay for charging and wait the blasted 3 turns before you could fire your "wonder weapon" again.

 

[MANT!]

After I collected all the expansions, I simply went with a Fed CVA...the fighters (much more fun than drones) often made up for the lack of firepower in the hull..and they could take a buttload of punishment and keep on fighting..

 

[Robert Simmons]

I liked the Fed CVA, but I had a nightmare early on comprehending how to use it properly, since my intital learning / entry point of the game was forged exclusively with Heavy Cruiser tactics desiring to forgo drones or anything else not seen in TOS Trek so as "in vain" stay pure as possible to the show. Didn't work. ( I was 16 in 1982 and was exclusively focused on trying to replicate the combat as seen in "Elaan Of Troyius" seen in TOS Trek...) Going from a workhorse cruiser mentality to a carrier mentality took some time for me to adapt to where I could accomplish anything with a CVA. ( I kept trying to use it offensively like a CA trusting exclusively in the photons and phasers, which is a huge no-no instead of just letting the fighters press the attack and letting the carrier hang back till the end of the fight. It took me a while to learn that something like that is not designed for close in point blank engagements...given how precious / rare / expensive a heavy unit the CVA is to squander in a frontal assualt. ) Fortunately...in time....I had some guys who liked playing carrier battlegroups to show me how to quit embarassing myself. ( I was fresh out of high school and hard strapped for the cash to buy all the rules. So I hung around guys who did have the rules...I still lost out since I did not get alot of alone time with the rulebook to understand it like all the other guys who were much more read up and comprehended the rules and what to do...) The thing I hated was having to upkeep ALL the drones and fighers every impulse in the logging and book keeping. It was in learning this hull that I began to have a better appreciation for the Fed Scout thanks to it's special sensors. A heavy cruiser has 6 on it's control rating as far as how many drones it can control, but the Scout with it's special sensors could juggle 24 by itself. And after that in how a REAL SAVVY Scout player can screw everyone's day with ECM. I lost how many times we just threw in the towel at the outset realizing that even at almost point blank we couldn't get any decent weapon's locks or rolls. It was with fighting in carrier groups that I began to SEVERELY hate ECM / ECCM fleet engagements. In making it so much more complicated and threatening to wasting alot of power sapping anything that you were plannig on using in pressing your attack. So much effort to amount to....Nothing.

The last time I ran a Fed CVA was 1996. Alot of the old players have moved on to other things or have moved away. It's kind of nice to talk to others here who at least know something about the game to make some prety interesting discussion. Around in my local are.... they seem pretty non-existant.

Hopefully goldbug you had an easier time in getting a feel how to properly use this hull than I did. It took me a while to understand it's proper role and use since my brain was almost exclusively hung up in TOS Trek combat.

 

[ElScoob]

Hmmmm. Haven't played genuine pencil-and-paper SFB in a long, long time... a little SFC here and there is as close as I've gotten for probably a good ten years or more.

Still. I'll echo the love for the D7 lineage. Once you get the hang of Klingon tactics, you can do a lot of harm with those ships. The C7 series is perhaps my very favorite, especially the C7V. With a C7V I like to start things off with a nice fighter/drone based standoff attack, before moving in for the kill at close range (a good old-fashioned knife fight has a personal touch that other methods lack...). I got to be pretty good using that ship and that basic tactical approach.

I think the thing I like about Klingon ships is the instant gratification. You just get in there and start fighting, rather than having to wait around forever while torpedoes load.

Conversely, flying Fed ships, you can play rope-a-dope. An old buddy of mine was a hell of a Klingon captain (I learned everything I know from losing to him a lot)... we used to have plain simple D7 vs. CA (or variants) fights that went on for hours on end. I was good enough to use the CA's damage-sponginess to survive about anything he could throw at me, and then stand off and do jury repairs when things got too hairy. I could keep him at bay pretty much as long as my patience (or my consciousness!) held out. Once I started getting tired or bored I'd get impatient and sloppy and he'd gut me.

 

[Robert Simmons]

Yeah..that sounds familliar. I think I learned the game more when I lost than when I read the book. Cause after the game the other guy was kind enough to do a tactical discussion...kind of of a "here's how I won and where you messed up".And I think I've been blessed in that the vast majority were actually happy and wanted to offer tactical criticism / instruction after each game. It was the only real time early on where I think I got traction learning before being able to afford buying the basic set. IT was hard till then knowing who was honest and playing by the rules and who was breaking the rules playing off of your ignorance as a beginner. It was the really good honest ones who weren't afraid to tell you how to be better.....since they were wanting us newbies then to get better.....so that they could get better at the game themselves.....by beating us later after we got better from what they taught us the last time they beat us newbies.

Kindof worked out well when you found an honest player back when the game was still young, and what few experienced players back then were trolling for fresh meat to play. If it wasn't for the honest ones wanting to have group fleet games....I may have never survived as a player to want to play after my first couple of games. I learned pretty fast that in large group fleet games with other experienced players, that it is nearly impossible for any player to cheat in front of everyone and get try to get away with it in front of everyone. It was a bear trap for cheaters, and I loved fleet games early on cause of that. Odds strongly were not everyone around the table wasn't stupid and ignorant of the rules. Chances were that most of the guys who frequently played together endeavored to stay on top of the current changes. That for me was one of the more positive sides of the old addage of "Star Fleet Rules Arguments" in the middle of a game. Not arguments over addenda or revisions, but over a player getting dogpiled for not staying current to the rules to try to pull a fast one. Learning in large fleet games helped to weed out learning out what was fact and what was fiction as what was....the "rules."

It also made it VERY HARD for me to want to apply myself to commit to reading the rulebook after they changed from the basic set with the expansions, to Volume I - III of the Commander's Rulebook boxed set. ( and all the other addenda confusing as all get out trying to remember what was currrent or finding out that your interpritation was outdated due to some new piece of addenda just released that I didn't know that was out. After having decided things settled down near the end of the 1980s to figure it was a safe bet that I could read the rulebook...they released the Captain's Edition. Oh boy...dropping cash all over again and trying to figure out what had changed while trying to read as little as possible due to time constraints and little time for games. The good thing in fleet games...the otehr competitive players were up on the rules and were very informative how in what to watch for asd to where the changes were and how it affected gameplay. It's been so long.....I don't think I even remember what things we had to do differently after the captian's edition came out.

 

[dayxday1000]

I don't really have a favorite class but I find this discussion fascinating.

 

[Nerroth]

I wonder if Icy's favourite will have the words "Andromedan" and "Dominator" in its description...

...or maybe even "Devastator"!


For my part, I can't speak from an in-game perspective - more from a background one.

And so, um...


...well, there is something about those Iridani ships that really appeals to me.

A species of knightly space-otters from a globular cluster orbiting the Milky Way, building ships intended to remind them of the wet-navy warships from Iridia's Age of Sail (even down to having pennants and stuff hanging out of them!) sailing around the universe, running knightly Quests to hunt space monsters, take part in duels, bring down pirates, make contact with alien cultures, and have massive parties along the way!


Oh, and when the Andromedans had the temerity to take over their home worlds, there were so many of their ships on Quests that they were able to assemble a task force big enough to not only liberate their home space, but to sail back to the galaxy in massive Crusade fleets!


Most of their ships have broadsiding weapons - wide-angle phasers, focussed energy beams, and target illuminators - but there are forward-firing variants, too.


(There are plenty of other factions I am interested in, but in terms of the actual ships, the Iridani stand out for me.)

 

[Solariabsg25]

Well, my fav Klingon ship has to be the D7D - a drone bombardment ship designed for direct combat.

And yeah the words "Andromedan Devastator" are enough to strike fear into many a Galactic Powers player! But, still much fun to be had with the smaller Andros - the look on someone's face when they unload their alpha-strike into an Intruder, then to find a Terminator materialise in space a couple of hexes away from them!! Or to displace ten hexes away from their carefully-timed drone/plasma swarm.

Just got R11, and looking forward to trying out the Andromedan monitors.

 

[jolau]

I like the DNF and BCF because they have photon torpedoes, drones, AND Plasmas.

 

[MarianLH]

And one very overworked tac officer.


Marian

 

[Robert Simmons]

Doesn't it bite royally though on the BCF that you still have that breakdown roll if you fire the plasmas in conjunction with the photons? That's why I favor the BCG as a means to sidestep that drawback totally. If it wasn't for that, the BCF would be on my top 10 list of ship to want to play. It's that friggin threat of breakdown that straighjackets my feeling to fight unrestrained. And self imposed limitations stink in the middle of a fight.You should be able to let it all hang out at once when needed without consequence. CLEARLY one of the drawbacks of playing an OVERGUNNED hull trying to cram Dreadnought firepower into a heavy cruiser hull. With drones on the G rack on the BCG you don't have launch recoil shock introduced in addition to the hull shock of launching the photons. Problem solved. But the bonus of your choice in the BCF is that your seeking weapons go speed 32 and you don't have to pay additional BVP for speed upgrades like you do drones. That's already built into the BVP of the hull when you select it for play. And having a mix of direct fire and seeking weapons as your main armament is a good bonus in that all your eggs are not in the same basket, thus giving you a flexability in the variety of options in what to use next in a fight.

Don't get me wrong...the capabilities of the BCF hull are AWESOME!!! But my not feeling free to use it all at the drop of a hat....kind of ties my hands when backed into a corner or when pressing an attack and need to bring more to bear in an alpha strike. A ship breakdown in the middle of a point blank engagement is the LAST thing I want happening in front of an opponent. Just what i need is to give him something to laugh his butt off over.

 

[MarianLH]

How does the Federation Strike Cruiser play? I'm leery of buying a $20 module to get one single ship, but the miniature is sooo cute.


Marian

 

[Robert Simmons]

You play a Strike Cruiser as a inbetween a CAR+ and a CVA. So you play it more like a carrier and less like a cruiser. Except that the CVS carries more of a self-defensive role able to fend more handiliy for itself....unlike a MacArthur CVA which is more "stand-offish" from the enemy with a more robust battlegroup escort. The CVS has less defensive escorts so it has to be more engaged in the fight than a CVA. But the best defense is to play the ship more agressively OFFENSIVELY! That translates into letting standard workhorse cruiser tactics take a backseat to letting the fighters take the lead first, and then let the cruiser come in from behind as close support. We're talking a cruiser hull and not a preciously nearly impossible to replace MacArthur CVA hull here, so you can afford to be less cautious in hanging back with the ship in the fight like you would with a CVA letting the fighters do most of the work off the bat. The main weapons on a CVA unlike a heavy cruiser are more for defensive fire, and for collective fleet grouped offensive fire on a target from a standoff distance and not in close in cruiser dogfighting at point blank. So the heavy weapons on a CVS are more tasked for defense than offense than a Fed CAR+, but as well more offensive in their multi-role use than those on a Fed CVA. You can still do cruiser dogfighting with a CVS with a cruiser turnmode to make that more plausible than a CVA which is stupid in a point blank turn and manuveur fight better suited for a lighter and more nimble hull. So to boil it down....it's like on a D7 launching drones and following in right behind the drones tightly to press an attack. Same with a Strike Cruiser but instead of drones to press a two pronged attack, you have fighters to do that instead.

That answer your question? I would spend the $20 just so to have the material onhand. You'll never know when the situation may come about when you may need that obscure ship SSD and rules that you normally NEVER Fight with. And as a bonus you can read the rules and study the SSD and become intimately familliar wit hit so that you are better prepared if soemone wants to use that ship against you. So it's still worth buying the module. Even if you never use that ship to play with. But it sure helps knowing how to fight to counter that ship if you excercised the oppurtunity to become intimately familliar with it.

I haven't seen the miniature. Can you post a picture of it please?

 

[MarianLH]

The miniature.

The SSD is in Module R9, "The Ships That Never Were".


Marian

 

[Robert Simmons]

Thanks for the picture. To me it looks just the same as the BCH mini they offer.

I think I may have confused the ship in question that you were asking about. I am not familliar with the module that you mentioned since I stopped collecting SFB stuff in 1996. Odd enough it was the BCH miniature that was the final straw that broke me wanting to continue collecting anymore since it was moving away from TOS Trek. I made my own BCH mini years ago based off the cover of Captain's Log 14 which I thought was the official version of the ship up till that point and converted a Zocchi Fed CA mini lowering the engines for improving the turn mode and opening up the side rear phaser arcs on the saucer and detailing it to match the 11 foot TOS Enterprise shooting model. I have a pict here somewhere. I'll post it later today when I find the hi-res digital files on my hard drive and upload them to photobucket. It's what I consider what the Fed BCH mini should look like.

Edit: Here are the photos. I reduced them down in AOL's insert picture. I didn't like how the quality came out and they are darker than they appear on my Mac moniter before posting them on my wife's PC. I'll try to upload better resize versions that are cleaner. They were 2.7 meg each and won't fit in the free service of photobucket.

 

[MarianLH]

Thanks for the picture. To me it looks just the same as the BCH mini they offer.

It uses the same engineering section, but the saucer is the smaller CA/CC saucer. Specifically the one from the new CC miniature with the heavy grid, which I can't decide if I like or not.

Yours is even cuter, with the warp nacelles being slightly raised instead of flat.


Marian

 

[Robert Simmons]

Thanks. I sanded off the grid and did some serious research of the 11 foot TOS filming model and how to mix the paint. Odd enough it is the same color that Dennis Bailey woulnd up with on his CGI footage of the Exeter in "The Tressarian Intersection."

I'm half way finished uploading the high res files. I'm having to let photobucket convert them just under their upper file size limit. So the conversion time is killing me on this upload on a 56k modem. They should be done this evening.