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Post by captainquirk on Mar 2, 2012 16:40:27 GMT -5
I've always played it as needing FC. It's not listed as autonomous in the weapon chart.
Interested in the official answer though.
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Post by captainquirk on Mar 1, 2012 2:44:00 GMT -5
Well, food was slower back in my day...
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 29, 2012 17:32:23 GMT -5
I predict that will make for some REALLY lethal fighters. But it will be fun to see what mahem it causes! Some other people have tried just increasing fighter range to 2 to allow more fighters to attack a single shield facing. If this doesn't work out, that may be something you can try instead. I think you should definitely give the high damage fighters a try though. . . if for no other reason than to throw the disappointed fighter jock from last time a bone. lol So has anyone tried increasing the range of flak batteries? Or does the two hex extended range mean that gatlings are the only way of nailing any fighters which stay our there at two hexes? (sorry, not entirely a thread hijack, I hope)
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 29, 2012 12:37:27 GMT -5
Customs are like a random encounter! Sometimes things pass them by. Sometimes you get hit for duty that makes the whole thing really poor value.
Glad you got smooth transit.
Happy gaming with it!
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 26, 2012 17:31:28 GMT -5
Sounds good :-)
Would be great if you could out-Harpoon Harpoon too at some point. But maybe that's a 2013 project!
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 26, 2012 15:16:52 GMT -5
Software trainer with the challenge of teaching social workers how to use an IT case management system.
Though the best bit is being paid for spending my time drawing pictures and talking about how other people should work ;-)
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 25, 2012 16:12:29 GMT -5
Oh, and by the way... good luck on the campaign!
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 25, 2012 16:01:31 GMT -5
We added variations on the UACS and Corporate Worlds. After all, it's the United ALLIANCE of Core Worlds, so presumably has more than one shipyard. Ditto for the Corporate Worlds. In fact the core rulebook has a sub-faction of the Corporate Worlds. Offers some options for different fleets within the overall two sides.
There's also a possibility of pirate forces, though there's little profit for pirates in participating in a fleet engagement unless they absolutely have to do so.
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 25, 2012 15:54:48 GMT -5
Hmm. We were assuming that humanity was a specific target because the Scourge were tracking the warp point transit signatures and concentrating forces because of the indicators of a significant space-going civilisation.
Re-reading the background fluff though, it does say that the Scourge were spreading out in all directions and seeking to obliterate every race they encountered.
If the latter option, then it makes more sense for Scourge ships to be encountered in smaller numbers.
Either way they are a great foe, and very atmospheric and menacing.
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 25, 2012 15:30:09 GMT -5
Within our version of your universe, we both decided that there was no reason for the Scourge not to apply maximum force; their intention is genocidal, they have no rationale for negotiation, and their focus is upon eradicating the emerging human interstellar civilisation, so it seemed logical that they would concentrate their fleets to do as much harm as possible.
It doesn't make them a suitable fleet for a level and balanced game. That's why we decided to use them as a side factor to our overall campaign, and for the "competition factor" to be which of us can last longer or do the most damage to the Scourge prior to the inevitable human defeat within a scenario.
Have been intending to post the Scourge designs with a view to asking for ideas on how to fight them! About the only thing I can think of so far which might possibly have some effect is to carry enough ion guns to knock out their FCs before they can fire each turn. Miss a FC though, and you'll be on the wrong end of a salvo of SD torps. Pretty much anything can be countered by the Scourge, the SD torps can sweep away standoff weapons too.
I could see humans - if they last long enough - spawning a whole new array of ship designs in an attempt to counter a Scourge incursion.
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 25, 2012 14:04:53 GMT -5
My friend/adversary and I have been playing UACS versus a spin-off Corporate Worlds faction and been fairly evenly balanced. I've just designed up a bunch of Scourge ships though (will post the designs here as soon as I have the Scourge ships finished too so that I can include pics as well as stats).
For the life of me though, I cannot see how either of our human fleets could stop them. Our current intention is to game out the six core rulebook scenarios both ways, and to also play our human fleets against the Scourge for each scenario too. But neither of us are expecting to win against a Scourge fleet. We are both expecting it to simply be a question of how long the human fleets can manage to last against the Scourge in a given scenario.
But that's the point... they are the nemesis which destroys civilisations. They are actually quite scary!
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 14, 2012 2:37:35 GMT -5
We play on 30mm/1,25" hexes. Though we play in "fleet scale" so most of our ships are only 2-3 inches long. Only use the smaller hexes due to not having room for a larger playing surface.
Works OK most of the time. But there are moments when the fleets "furball" and then models can intermingle and be hard to arrange.
If you have the room, then I'd go for the larger mat - I have a Hotz one, and it looks great. Just don't have a big enough area to use it in right now. But nthe smaller hexes will work OK most of the time.
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 10, 2012 14:39:42 GMT -5
Excellent, many thanks.
In some ways this makes a nice balancing factor - The Scourge may need to choose whether to use their SD Torps for anti ship/missile/minefield etc OR to save them for anti-planet. Which hopefully stops them being used repetitively as the ultimate super weapon to sweep all opposition out of the way.
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 10, 2012 13:04:52 GMT -5
Looking forward to the next CBF release.
For the Scourge question though... how much damage is "utterly devastating"?
I'm thinking that if a heavy railgun projectile does 3 damage when it is only a solid piece of metal, an SD Torp should do much more per hit - having a singularity open on your planetary surface has just got to be pretty negative to your ecosphere. For the sake of game balance, maybe 5 points per SD Torp?
That would mean that the designs I came up with for the Scourge would have a 1000ton battleship which could fire five torps for 25 damage, if not blocked/intercepted, within a single turn. By comparison, a human battleship with ten heavy railguns could dish out 30 damage in a turn, so a rating of 5 damage points for a SD is not excessive. Probably rather understates what one would really do, yes?
I'm kind of reluctant to make them TOO powerful though.
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 8, 2012 17:10:46 GMT -5
Hi Robert,
Hmm, yes did wonder about those. What do you reckon on the damage value? Equivalent to the heavy railguns, so 3 points for each one which impacts the planet?
Only thing about using the SD Torps is that they are pretty much the closest thing to a genuine superweapon as you can get within CBF. I was originally thinking of having a dedicated "world killer" capital ship. But a capital ship armed to the teeth with numerous SD Torp batteries just doesn't bear thinking about!
Ken
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 7, 2012 2:37:42 GMT -5
Ah. Thanks. Good to know that I'm not just missing something obvious.
So, for the sake of the Armageddon scenario, perhaps something abstract like "any Scourge ship in planetary orbit may inflict its regeneration rate in planetary bombardment points each turn"?
That would give a large battleship the ability to inflict 10 damage per turn. Actually less than a lot of railgun-armed capital ships could do, but on the other hand Scourge close bombardment with "whatever" wouldn't be intercepted or blocked.
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 6, 2012 17:26:40 GMT -5
No railguns, no bombardment missiles. So The Scourge don't seem well equipped to play out the Armageddon scenario.
What do they use to attack planets? Bio-weapons? Nanotech? Ion /EMP style weapons? Transporter bombs?
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 5, 2012 6:54:53 GMT -5
There's quite a lot of ships available via Shapeways, though I admit that Shapeways are not to everybody's tastes. Still sometimes possible to track down some of the Romando 1/7000th TNG/DS9 era models.
The WizKids Fleet Captains game along with old MicroMachines is probably going to offer the best possibilities as a mainstream source.
Only mention this because whenever I've introduced any of my circle to any of the SFB games they ALWAYS complain about it being set in the original era. There then follows a lengthy discussion about ADB licence boundaries, and then they only play grudgingly and still moaning about TNG.
I guess it's because people want to play what they are used to seeing on TV and film. Which probably means by the time they get Star Trek 12 released, the new reboot original series will take over the general imagination. But that's a very different TOS to 1965.
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 4, 2012 17:42:08 GMT -5
Both?
There's a LOT of people who find the original - of the SFB spinoff - a bit restricting and who do want the TNG era.
Then of course you've now got the reboot "original" era as well...
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Post by captainquirk on Feb 3, 2012 14:00:59 GMT -5
In all honesty, I think if you did a duel game you'd come up with a more playable approach than SFB/FC.
But... SFB/FC do the Star Fleet Universe better than anyone else because its their speciality and licenced area. There are plenty of people out there who feel very restricted by the extrapolated background they pulled from Star Trek TOS and TAS. Full credit to them for creating a consistent universe from a very inconsistent original source material. Lots of people would much rather be playing Wolf 359, or the Dominion War or stuff like that though.
My own vote would go towards another sourcebook for CBF which brings a more Trek-like flavour but which still allows for fleet actions, battles against the not-Borg, "monsters" and suchlike.
If I really wanted to play in the Star Fleet Universe they have plenty of products to allow just that. And if I only wanted to duel with 1-3 ships, well Federation Commander already does that.
I'd rather take a dozen or so ships. There are duels in the TV episodes. But there are also plenty of situations which could produce fleet actions - Klingon Civil War, several Romulan situations, conflict with Cardassia, Dominion War, Klingon attack on DS9
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