Re: Game 667 has finished

[Oerjan Ariander <oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx>]

Mark Oppenheim wrote:

>I fear I'm in bad need of guidance on how to do better in this scenario
>(apart from not making silly mistakes, and Bruce not being quite as good
>at working out exactly in which direction to point his K-guns).

Fly faster. The faster the NI fly, the harder it is for the KV to predict 
where they'll end up,  and the easier it is for the NI to keep the range open.

>The way I see it, The NI's advantages are their stealth, wider fire arcs
>and their additional initial movement turn.  The Kravak out-gun them,
>have more hull points, have better range

No, the *NI* have better range in this battle until they take thresholds 
(and thus start losing stealth levels). Against fully-stealthed NI ships 
the KV have a max range of 20mu. The NI's beams all have a range of 24mu, 
and are a lot more likely to hit anything at max range than the K-guns are. 
(IIRC FTJava doesn't actually tell the players what the real range bands 
are against stealthed targets, but it does implement the correct hit 
probabilities - so the KV can't hit a fully-stealthed NI ship outside range 
20mu.)

>I strikes me that stealth is generally more useful against
>shorter range weapons

K-guns (and P-torps) *are* "shorter-ranged weapons". In their outermost 
range band they need to roll '6's to hit anything, and against level-2 
Stealth that outermost range band is 16-20 mu...

>What have other people done on their initial free turn? I split to two
>groups and turned like crazy in the hope of getting into the sweet spot
>where the Kravak were in my range band 1 but I was in their range band
>2.

Since you were Stealthed, that particular "sweet spot" allows you to be in 
their range band *3* while keeping them in your range band 1 - but an even 
sweeter spot is to hammer them from outside their range. Stay out of their 
range until you've built up some speed - that'll allow them to destroy the 
base, but since the KV's primary task is to *capture* the base they might 
refrain from doing that anyway. (OK, I didn't when I played this scenario - 
the base fired at me from an ambush, so I did what any self-respecting KV 
commander would do and blew it up with my first salvo - but other players 
might try to spare it <g>)

>In hind sight the split was a silly move as it close to doubled the
>chances of being in the Kravak fire arcs.

Agreed.

Regards,

Oerjan
oerjan.ariander@xxxxxxxxx

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
-Hen3ry