CBF: (Vanilla) missile playtest

[kashre]

So, after the energetic discussion in the main forum about weather or not missiles are too uber when used in "direct fire" mode, i.e. held until range 9 or less and massed in order to gain "automatic" hits, I convinced my G/F to dust off the Colonial Battlefleet counters and play a round with me.

This is in no way conclusive, being just a single game, but it does, I think illustrate certain points about missile use.

I Played the missile fleet.

Also, I Apologize for the crappy picture quality Also, I should mention that the images are mislabeled, they don't match the real turn numbers.

The ships:
i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb184/Kashre/missile%20test/shipcardDF.jpg

i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb184/Kashre/missile%20test/shipcardM.jpg

For the sake of balance, both sets of ships are identical except for their hardpoint loadouts.

Initial setup (from Meeting Engagement):
i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb184/Kashre/missile%20test/setup.jpg


Turn 1: I win the initiative. There is no chance that I can close to missile range, so I accelerate and move to 13 hexes, just out of her absolute max range. We exchange taunts across the table, but that's about it.

i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb184/Kashre/missile%20test/turn1.jpg

Turn 2: I win the initiative again. In an effort to keep her cruisers as shields, she swings wide to one side.

i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb184/Kashre/missile%20test/turn15.jpg

There's no way I can get to her flanks to make massed missile shots on her BCs with my own BCs, but I CAN with my cruisers, which have a slightly higher max speed. Since I don't have to worry about having my own meatshields OR focusing my fire on individual shields, I split my cruisers to her flank to see if I can get a lucky hit, and position my own BCs to take out her screening cruisers. Note: The dice are markers I placed on the hexes I wanted to get missiles into before I moved my ships.

i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb184/Kashre/missile%20test/turn2.jpg

Turn 2 fire: She got to shoot first... given the fairly long range she did ok, knocking down the shield on one BCR and doing a small amount of hull damage (but no crits). Personally, if I had been her I would have gone for a CAR since they're so much more fragile, but that's just me.

I placed 8 missiles from the cruisers lined up on one of her BCRs, and six missiles each from the BCRs against her cruisers. I think that was my biggest mistake during this game... at the time I was thinking that with only 3 turns worth of ammo I wanted to conserve, but 6 was not enough to guarantee kills on both her CARs.

Turn 3:

I considered this the critical turn of the game. If I won the init, even if she accelerated to max and did a 180 to open the range I would have enough speed to maintain a range of 8 and get lines on her battle cruisers, especially if my missiles killed her CARs. Too bad I lost the initiative

Before ship movement the missiles hit. Against her BC, I did all right, although I failed to get any important crits (I got her PD and one shield), and knocked off about 1/4 of her hull points.

Against her first cruiser, her PD failed miserably and 4 of the 6 missiles hit and achieved penetration. One of the critical hits was on an empty hard point, causing extra hull damage and destroying the ship.

Against her second cruiser, 3 of the 6 missiles were shot down with PD... the 3 remaining missiles only got one penetration, which knocked out a shield.

Having lost the init, I swung to port with my BCs and continued to move around her opposite flank with my cruisers. First, that gave me maximum coverage to try and land hits on her if she continued after my BCs, my missiles the bread of a Clarita sandwich, and second, it gave her the option of maneuvering against my cruisers, buying me time to win the init again and take the upper hand... I figured that was worth it since my BCs had 3x the firepower of the cruisers.

She chose to take the bait and crossed over the the cruiser's track to keep the range from my BCs above 9 giving her enough separation to keep my BCs from having missiles shots. My cruisers never even got their missiles off... during the Cap Ship fire phase, she slaughtered them... one with a double zero critical hit which is amazingly enough the first time we have *ever* rolled a reactor hit in all of our games.

i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb184/Kashre/missile%20test/Turn5.jpg

Turn 4:

Again I lose the initiative! This is why I never use fleets like this in most of my games I think this is where I made my second mistake.. I could have done a 180 and opened the range up to 10 or so... but I was worried about her getting shots on my weaker aft shields. So instead I swung down to the edge of the map to keep her from flanking my to my weaker shields.

She very carefully maneuvered herself into a position where her last cruiser was providing a shield for both of her BCs, leaving me no choice but to waste more missiles finishing it off and giving her good shots on my BCs. This was the beginning of the end for me.

i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb184/Kashre/missile%20test/Turn6.jpg

With 8x hvy phazers, 8x railguns, 6x mag cannons and 2x phazers, my already slightly damage BCR didn't stand a chance, and was handily popped with enough hardpoints left over that she managed to knock down two of the shields on my other BCR. I did dump 6 missiles from each BC to take out the USS Cannon Fodder though.

Turn 5:
I lose the initiative, AGAIN. There's not much I can do to get away from them at this point, but I can run straight through her formation and make a 180, forcing her to keep both her ships close if she wants optimal shots on me, which she did. She did very cleverly stuck one of her BCs right in one of my one-hex-wide close range blind spots (see image link at end of report). Because she wanted to focus on a single shield, she decided to take whatever I could dish out with her other BC.

i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb184/Kashre/missile%20test/Turn7.jpg

I dumped 12 missiles aimed at her previously damaged BCR, and she blew me a new orifice just like the last turn.

Turn 6:
This turn raised a question... all of my ships were dead, but there were still missiles on the board... are they autonomous, or are they removed from play? We decided to leave them in play, even though the fact that we can move missiles at will rather than them following a pre-determined course based on target direction (ala drones in SFB) makes me think maybe they should be removed from play if there are no friendly ships to control them.

Anyways, my missiles hit, 9 got through her PD, and 5 of those scored penetrations, causing a total of 70 hull points of damage... enough to kill the ship.

So there it is. My conclusions:

--Missiles *are* extremely powerful when fired up close rather used for long range saturation. Especially when you have shielded ships to protect you a bit more from the close range assault. This is a major difference between vanilla CB and MvM, where there are no shields.

--Missiles are only really that powerful on RDF ships.. you have to have the delta and turn allowance to capitalize on proper positioning, even if you do win the initiative.

-- If you're facing RDF missile ships, having a number of light ships to screen your force is of paramount importance. If I had used more missiles to take her screens out on turn 2 I think I would have won. Of course, if she had had 4 DDS instead of two CARs the huge boost to her PD and all the extra meatshielding would have made it really hard for me to win even if I had won the init I think.

-- You're not 100% screwed with missile ships if you lose the initiative, but your life will get a lot harder.


Missile coverage:
A ship can guarantee hits on any ship in any of the red hexes in a single turn, as long as he has an empty hex to put missiles in and there are no screen ships to be met on the way to the target.

i209.photobucket.com/albums/bb184/Kashre/missile%20test/closemissiles.png

[bubbacleese]

I placed 8 missiles from the cruisers lined up on one of her BCRs, and six missiles each from the BCRs against her cruisers. I think that was my biggest mistake during this game... at the time I was thinking that with only 3 turns worth of ammo I wanted to conserve, but 6 was not enough to guarantee kills on both her CARs.

I'm confused how you can only have 3 turns worth of ammo. Magazines come with five missiles each. You purchase 1 mag and have five missiles; 3 mags and you have 15 missiles. Or am I way off base here?

I briefly looked at your ship SSD and it showed 13,12,12 for the BCR and 8,8 for the CAR. They way I've read the rules those are 13*5=65 missiles times four missile launchers in your Hard Point #1 and 12*5=60 time four missile launchers in your Hard Point #2 and #3. Thus giving you 15 turns worth of ammo for the BCRs and.... (8*5/2=20) 20 turns worth of ammo for the CARs. ...?

By the way, your graphic with the red hexes showing auto hits is beautiful. Truly shows the POW of missiles.

Also, I ran your BCR through my shipyard spreadsheet for the railgun, mag cannon, phazer hvy. I came up with -108 space.

Big spenders are:
Four RailGuns - 107
Four Phazer Hvy - 75
Delta 2 - 218
Shield 9 - 126
Armor 7 - 42
PD 4 - 48
FC 3 - 32
Mag Canon - 38
What I've listed here = 686 and there are still the few little items not listed.

Or...am I using the shipyard tools incorrectly. I'm out here by myself, so I'm sure I'm doing some things wrong. I'm the guy teaching my friends how to play...HA (my poor friends)

Bubba Cleese the very confused

[kashre]

I'm pretty sure it's 5 tons per missile, not 5 missiles per ton on the ammo for launchers. I think the Magazine space is the number of missiles in the launcher, not the amount of tonnage devoted to missiles.

As for the BCR, I think it's your delta calculations. If I enter 2 for "desired engine delta" I also get -108. RDF ships get one free delta, so you're only paying the engine cost for 1 delta and you get 2 to use (which is displayed by the builder as the "value", and on the SSD. On large ships like this getting more than one delta is HIGHLY inefficient. I'll attach the spreadsheet so you can take a look.

Kashre

Attachments:

[bubbacleese]

You are correct for the delta 2. I put in a 2 instead 1 + 1 for being RDF so my numbers were for a final delta of 3 not 2. I told you I was making mistakes, HA!

If you are correct for the missiles weight verse number per magazine wow that changes everything. Serious weight per shot making these missiles not all that attractive during the build.

So can someone confirm the shipyard part of the HardPoint row, column Mag. Is Mag the number of 5 missile magazines your are purchasing or is it the number of missiles you are purchasing at 5 tons apiece?

<I promise I've been taking my meds> It's just sometimes I see things very differently.

Bubba Cleese

[kashre]

Well, think of it this way.

1> If you put one missile launcher with one mag in the ship builder, under the "used" column where the masses of all the systems are displayed an 8 appears. Since a launcher is 3 tons, the 5 must be fore the missile right?

2> If you look at the list of ammo on the master weapons table, the bigger the weapon is the higher the ammo number is. 3 for grape shot, 4 for cluster missiles, 11 for spatial disruption torps... why would you get more ammo per ton as the power of the weapon went up, rather than less?

[toaster]

Yes I read it as 5 tons per missile and that matches for the builder and the sample ships in the rulebook. Remember these are ICBM sized weapons with on board shield penetration equipment and there own point defence etc plus enough fuel to run multiple turns at 100,000 km ranges.

Robert

[bubbacleese]

I see how you are reading both the rules and the shipyard spreadsheet and I agree with your numbers and your idea of weight per item. But I can also see it the other way, where each of the Ammo value in the master weapons chart is the number of shots per magazine and you are purchasing magazines that weight 1 ton per weapon in the magazine.

I would not have used the word Magazine if I was talking about individual rounds of a weapon, I would have been talking about a "clip" or "magazine" which of course holds x number of individual rounds of that weapon.

[kashre]

Well, suffice it to say if you play the game that way you are going to break it horribly in favor of missiles.

[bubbacleese]

I think it was the use of the column headings Mag and Ammo which pushed my thinking towards how many rounds per magazine. I'm betting you are correct and if so I'll recommend they change the column headings to ... Rounds instead of Mag and Tons per Round instead of Ammo would make it more clear. Assuming they have that much room on the spreadsheet / chart.

[talkos]

Here's a relevant Word of God about ASGMs and ammo. And yeah, it definitely makes sense as to why you were having such a field day with flooding the board with ASGMs now.

Anyways, nice write up kashre, theoretical is one thing, but a writeup of a playtest like this is just golden.

[bubbacleese]

Talkos, your link answered all of the questions. My poor really big masses of missiles were really just being seen in a house of mirrors.

But now that I know what is intended by the rules I can move on to misunderstanding something else. But that is just how I am.

[TheDreadnought]

Yeah, cost is PER MISSILE, so yeah, missiles are expensive. . . and I can see why you would have thought them broken if you were playing it X missiles per cost. Because they would be.

That is also why in my opinion missiles are NOT removed when all ships are destroyed. They are basically AI guided autonomous starships of their own, complete with their own defenses and everything. However, in most cases, the question of whether they are removed or not would be moot given that one side has been wiped out. But there are times when it could make a difference.

bubbacleese - You're thinking about 'clip/magazine' in the small arms sense. In the naval sense, warships store ammo in their 'magazines' and you need to know how many rounds the ship has left in its magazine. Hence the column heading.

[TheDreadnought]

kashre - thanks for taking the time to do this, and congratz to your gf on her well played game!

[bubbacleese]

Dread, you are so correct on my definition of a magazine. As I am an Age of Sail man you still stored those round solid balls in a magazine, but since there were just solid lumps of stuff the modern term for protective magazine just flew right past me.