Post by kashre on Jul 5, 2010 23:38:55 GMT -5
Having been following the discussions on balance in the forums, my G/F and and decided to trash our current fleets and put together new factions using a number of playtest rules that have been discussed :
Armor in the orbital construction tech tree,
strike fighters get 3 damage,
fighter phase at the beginning of the shooting phase
Flagship gives +3 initiative
The scenario:
Ambush, 1700 points for the defender (me), 2550 for the Aggresor.
Her forces:
The Empire of Scorpio
1x BBF
1x BCB
2x CAR
2x CLR
2x DDR
2x DDT
Me:
The Star Kingdom of the Misty Squirrel
1x CVA - 14 strike fighters (I cant bring myself to call a heavy carrier a BBC... too much Star Fleet Battles I think)
2x CAR
2x CLS
My plan: start lined up with the warp point, spin up my carrier, and jump ASAP. If I get just the carrier out at 884 tons, that will be enough victory points to win.
Her plan: "kick your #$%", in her words.
Turn 1: Pretty quiet as we feel each other out. A little bit of long range sniping fire which doesn't breach any shields. I try to flank her with my CARs, which was pretty silly against a fleet with 6 RDF ships to my 2 RDF ships. I start spewing strike fighters all over the board, and discover that she has 3 interceptor squadrons which I didn't expect her to take. Oops.
Turn 2: Ranges drop to 4-6 hexes between most targets. She wins init and chooses fire first. All hell breaks loose. Her interceptors slaughter my strike fighters. Luckily I have her outnumbered 3-1 in fighters, and the rest of my strike fighters mash up her light ships, half killing 3 of them and getting 4 different hardpoint hits between them. Her BBF also had pretty weak shields, only 24 points in F, which I mostly stripped off with a strike fighters squadron.
Then I find out why her BBF had weak defenses, cause it was full of Spatial Distortion Torps. 4 of them land on my carrier, obliterating my front shield, followed by a bunch of torps that leave me at about 50% hull and without PD. Then her BC kills both my screens.
her cruisers and destroyers add even more fire against my CVA, until I'm down to only 27 hull points. But then my CARs put 10 plasma torps up her BBFs down shield, with *just* enough damage to pop it. Whee!
Turn 3: I'm still panicking, but I win the initiative and she has to move first. She spreads out to the left, right, and front of the Warp Point. I go up the middle, which causes her to have to engage my carrier on 3 shields. Which is good, cause she pretty much strips all 3 of them, but only manages to get a couple more hits. She was planning on missiling me to death with close range auto-hit launches, and I was a little panicked, but my fighters manage to take out 3 of her 6 remaining launchers on her DDs and CLs.
Turn 4: The moment of truth... if she can do 27 hull points with the 3 missiles she has coming for me, my carrier is toast. I have not been spinning up the drives on my CARs to preserve their mobility... so if the carrier dies I have to survive against a BC, three cruisers and 3 destroyers with two CAs until I can jump. the missiles hit.... and the carrier jumps out, with 13 hull left.
I was chewing on the tables edge at the end of that fight
my 2 cents: the fighter changes are perfect. They make them quite viable, even when your flagship is a carrier and not a gunboat... but you still have to have heavy direct fire weapons to back em up. Having them fire first gives them the opertunity to effect the outcome of a battle before they get slaughtered with gatling lasers.. which are pretty scary effective as AF weapons.
Armor in the orbital construction tech tree,
strike fighters get 3 damage,
fighter phase at the beginning of the shooting phase
Flagship gives +3 initiative
The scenario:
Ambush, 1700 points for the defender (me), 2550 for the Aggresor.
Her forces:
The Empire of Scorpio
1x BBF
1x BCB
2x CAR
2x CLR
2x DDR
2x DDT
Me:
The Star Kingdom of the Misty Squirrel
1x CVA - 14 strike fighters (I cant bring myself to call a heavy carrier a BBC... too much Star Fleet Battles I think)
2x CAR
2x CLS
My plan: start lined up with the warp point, spin up my carrier, and jump ASAP. If I get just the carrier out at 884 tons, that will be enough victory points to win.
Her plan: "kick your #$%", in her words.
Turn 1: Pretty quiet as we feel each other out. A little bit of long range sniping fire which doesn't breach any shields. I try to flank her with my CARs, which was pretty silly against a fleet with 6 RDF ships to my 2 RDF ships. I start spewing strike fighters all over the board, and discover that she has 3 interceptor squadrons which I didn't expect her to take. Oops.
Turn 2: Ranges drop to 4-6 hexes between most targets. She wins init and chooses fire first. All hell breaks loose. Her interceptors slaughter my strike fighters. Luckily I have her outnumbered 3-1 in fighters, and the rest of my strike fighters mash up her light ships, half killing 3 of them and getting 4 different hardpoint hits between them. Her BBF also had pretty weak shields, only 24 points in F, which I mostly stripped off with a strike fighters squadron.
Then I find out why her BBF had weak defenses, cause it was full of Spatial Distortion Torps. 4 of them land on my carrier, obliterating my front shield, followed by a bunch of torps that leave me at about 50% hull and without PD. Then her BC kills both my screens.
her cruisers and destroyers add even more fire against my CVA, until I'm down to only 27 hull points. But then my CARs put 10 plasma torps up her BBFs down shield, with *just* enough damage to pop it. Whee!
Turn 3: I'm still panicking, but I win the initiative and she has to move first. She spreads out to the left, right, and front of the Warp Point. I go up the middle, which causes her to have to engage my carrier on 3 shields. Which is good, cause she pretty much strips all 3 of them, but only manages to get a couple more hits. She was planning on missiling me to death with close range auto-hit launches, and I was a little panicked, but my fighters manage to take out 3 of her 6 remaining launchers on her DDs and CLs.
Turn 4: The moment of truth... if she can do 27 hull points with the 3 missiles she has coming for me, my carrier is toast. I have not been spinning up the drives on my CARs to preserve their mobility... so if the carrier dies I have to survive against a BC, three cruisers and 3 destroyers with two CAs until I can jump. the missiles hit.... and the carrier jumps out, with 13 hull left.
I was chewing on the tables edge at the end of that fight
my 2 cents: the fighter changes are perfect. They make them quite viable, even when your flagship is a carrier and not a gunboat... but you still have to have heavy direct fire weapons to back em up. Having them fire first gives them the opertunity to effect the outcome of a battle before they get slaughtered with gatling lasers.. which are pretty scary effective as AF weapons.