Re: Two AARs--John Atkinson vs Laserlight

Laserlight wrote:

>Both actions featured John's NRE fleet (which, for those of your
>not familiar, is the New Roman Empire, ie Byzantines-In-Spaaaaace!). 
>URL is www.angelfire.com/va/basileus/Janes.html , CruRon5.

You sure it wasn't CruRon4? According to this page CruRon5 only has 1
CH and no frigates, whereas CruRon4 has 2 CHs and 2 FHs.

A note on the designs used, for those who haven't already checked
John's NRE page: 

NRE designs are heavily based on the FB1 NAC. In the NRE-KV battle the
NRE CHs were Vandenburg-Ts (design-wise at least, don't know what
models he used), the CME was most likely a Furious and the FHs were
Tacomas.  Of course John has renamed them, but these designs are
identical... The other designs differ more;  eg the NRE Thessalonika
CLs are Hurons with 1 extra hull and 2 armour boxes, and the DDs are
variants of the FSE San Miguel rather than the NAC Ticonderoga. (A bit
surprising, given John's opinions about French <g>)

>First action, vs Islamic Federation.  2 Mameluke DDH, 1 Saber
>CL, 2 Qaws missile cruisers, 2 Ifrit CH (1500 points or so after
>adding 10% to account for no FTL).
...
>   Third round, the fleets passed through each other and both
>reversed.  10 SMRs arrived, of which 6 on target among 4 ships.
>PDS and ADFC did their job on two of those, but one Symeon CA
>and one Thessaloniki CL were damaged or destroyed (John says "My
>main opponents all use missiles, guess I should buy more PDS and
>armor instead of shields--look for a redesigned CruRon5 when I
>get a chance to post it.")

Sounds like a good idea, yes :-/ The Furious-class isn't exactly the
best
ship to have as your main anti-missile support, and renaming it to
"Constantine Isoapostolis" doesn't change this.

'Course, if he runs into a Phalon force he'll want both shields *and*
more
point defence <g>

>   Score:  IF retained a Mameluke and an Ifrit, both heavily
>damaged (any damage on an IF ship qualifies as "heavy"), 

I hope you mean "any HULL damage on an IF ship...", since they tend to
be rather heavily armoured?

>plus an untouched Ifrit and the Qaws who had shot their bolt and
>broken off (not "fled", John, thank you very much).  

"Fled"? Why on earth should an unloaded Qaws stay in the battle, when
it only has a single Class-1 battery to fight with...?

>   Second round, Kra'Vak vs NRE.
...
>KV ships were 3 Ka'Tak strike corvettes, 2 Vo'Bok light
>cruisers, 2 Ti'Dak battle cruisers. 
>   We closed for two rounds, just getting within Beam 3 range
>(no real effect).  

Not too surprising with only 2 beam dice fired <g>

>Next turn we closed and the KV strikers shot
>out  ahead.  Striker MKPs destroyed a frigate and a destroyer,
>K5 fire damaged a NRE CH.

Did you roll extremely poorly for the other ships this turn and
extremely well the next, or was there some damage from the bigger ships
to the other DD and FH in the NRE force? If they bought it on the next
turn instead, you inflicted about 50% more damage than average - and
since the next turn's firing was done at range <6 where the KV hit
rates are very high, I'm not entirely sure it is possible roll that
well unless you used eight-sided dice :-/

>Concentrated beam fire polished off one Vo'Bok.

No Pulse Torp fire, or just Kochte-cursed die rolls?

>   Next round, the KV side slipped and the NRE line decelerated
>and reversed facing.  Both sides intended to pass through and
>turn to face, but it didn't quite work out that way, as the
>lines were intermingled--everyone except the two surviving KV
>corvettes was in 6MU of everyone else.

6mu in front of a KV ship is generally a very bad place to be. Even
Indy occasionally manages to hit at this range ;-) 6mu to its side is
*much* better :-)

Was the missing Ka'Tak killed before it fired (in the previous turn),
or
after?

>K5's took a CH through 3
>thresholds and took about half the hull of the other one, both
>CL's were crippled, and the CME was obliterated.  The KV fired
>off all their Scatterguns at this point.  The NRE took one
>Ti'Dak through two thresholds, almost through 3, and bounced a
>torpedo off a corvette.
>   The NRE wasn't very happy with the situation.  Four ships
>survived, but 3 of those were within 2 hull of nebula-hood, and
>the other had damaged engines and couldn't avoid being in
>someone's F arc.  The KV had an untouched battlecruiser and
>light cruiser, plus a BC whose weapons were off line and two
>corvettes which could plink away with K1's.  The KV had a
>convincing win on this one.

>Lesson 1: "You'll lose if you are in the F arc of a KraVak
>ship."

Not if	Indy or Beth are flying the KV ;-) Actually, not particularly
true
even if Indy or Beth aren't flying the KV - see below.

>Lesson 2: "You can't avoid being in the F arc of a Kra'Vak
>ship."

This is very true in Vector. Of course, this applies to engine types
and strenghts in Vector, including thrust-3 or weaker human-style
drives.

>John suggests the quick and easy modification would be to delete
>the provision for KV weapons doing double damage.  

In that case, John would probably suggest that all P-torp damage rolls
be reduced by 2 points if he ever ran into Nik Linnell's Free Orange
Republic fleet. They're more dangerous to an "official FB1"-style fleet
than any screen-less Kra'Vak force can be... it did take the Tasmanian
gang a while to figure out how to beat the FOR, but they managed in the
end <g>

The K guns with the highest damage:mass ratio are marginally better
than a single-arc Pulse Torp (average damage per Mass per hit for the
K2-1 is 0.89, for the K3-1 0.9, and for the PT-1 it is 0.875 - ie, less
than 3% difference). All other K guns inflict less raw damage per Mass
than a PT-1. The NRE ships in this battle weren't heavily enough
armoured for the superior K armour penetration to have any serious
impact, so for the same cost the Ks were probably somewhat overpriced
compared to the (quite numerous) NRE P-torps.

When you look at the average amounts of damage each side in this battle
could dish out to the other at the various ranges, you find that the KV
beat the NRE by just under 25% at range 6mu or less, while the NRE beat
the KV by about 25% in the 6-12 and 18-24 bands. They're virtually
equal between 12 and 18 mu (just over 1 beam dice of difference, out of
almost 40), the KV clearly better at 24-30 (where all the Ks can fire
but the NRE only have 2 beam dice) and the NRE a little better at range
30-36 (where no KV weapons can fire but the NRE still have their 2 beam
dice). All in all, the two sides seem to have been pretty evenly
matched in firepower. 

The NRE had more hull boxes (including some of their armour), but they
were spread out over more units (9 instead of 7). Again the two sides
seem to have been very closely matched.

So, what could the NRE have done to win?

Well, first of all try to stay outside 6mu range to avoid the
scatterguns
and give the K guns at least some chance to miss. OK, each individual
scattergun isn't very scary unless you're a fighter or missile, but
being
hit by 14 of them at once tends to hurt even starships :-/ 
	The KV force in this battle could on average (ie, barring very
hot
dice) inflict just over half as much damage in the 6-12mu range band as
it could (including scatterguns) in the 0-6mu band. The NRE squadron
OTOH would only lose about 10% of its firepower with the same increase
in range, effectively reversing the firepower ratios from one band to
the next.

Second, watch the targetting priorities. When enemy strike boats (from
any race or fleet, not just the KV) begin their attack run it is
usually a good idea to hit them hard before they can fire. It doesn't
matter if they're
armed with SubMunition Packs,  MKPs or Pulser-Cs; if they get to fire
you'll get hurt. Since a St.Symeon or Constantine Isoapostolis has more
than enough firepower to swat a Ka'Tak, at least one and maybe two of
those small ships shouldn't have lived to fire (depening on who won the
initiative that turn, and of course barring extremely low die rolls).

Third, it was just as important for John to keep your ships in his (F)
arcs as it was for you to keep his in yours - about 1/3 of his weapon
mass were (F)-arc only weapons, and all the rest covered the (F) arc as
well (with many cross-broadside mounts, making the (F) arc by far his
most powerful one). Since you played Vector it shouldn't have been any
harder for him to do this than it was for you, but judging from the
damage inflicted on the last turn (the report describes some 25-30 DP
inflicted on the KV, in return for 80-100 points on the NRE ships -
which means quite impressively above-average die rolls for the KV, as I
noted above) he either had the KV ships in his broadside arcs, or lost
over half of his remaining weapons before they got to fire, or - again
- atrociously bad luck with his dice.

Either of poor maneuvering or sub-optimal targetting priorities can do
in any fleet regardless of what enemy they were fighting. Combined,
they are disastrous. Not knowing what good tactics or targetting is
explains why the maneuvering and targetting wasn't very good, but
doesn't make them any better.

Bad dice are harder to do anything about, of course - at least if you
don't want to cheat and aren't too superstitious <g>

>...I suspect it may take a while to develop that. I suspect that the
right >fleet and the right tactics can still pull it off, but I suspect
it may take a >while to develop that.

I suspect that you badly underestimate the FT players.

There are three simple design guidelines for KV-beating (and I mean
"beating", not just "having a chance of maybe winning if they're really
lucky") vector ships:

* Don't use screens. They don't work against any KV weapon, so they're
simply a dead weight.

* Don't use too much armour; big Ks will bypass virtually all of it. A
little armour is OK for keeping K1s and KV fighters from supporting the
bigger Ks, though; the NRE ships in this battle are roughly on the
upper limit of how much you can use before you start losing
performance.

* Don't rely too heavily on missiles.  Scatterguns are extremely
effective
at decimating SM salvoes, and the KV have rather many of them.

(Yes, I know Mike and his friends consider SMs to be the only way to
beat KV, but I honestly don't see how - you need to hit a KV ship with
roughly 1 salvo per 10-12 Mass to have a better than even chance of
killing it. The only way to have that many SMs in a roughly equal-point
battle is to build your entire fleet of Qaws-style ships... and even
they need to hit with every single SM salvo they have, without
overkilling any target. Given the KV maneuverability, I'd be very
impressed if someone manages to do that with 3mu- or even 4mu-radius
SMs.

Mike, I'm still very interested in your battle reports to see how you
pulled
this off... <hint, hint>) 

Although none of the "official four" fleets from FB1 fits these
guidelines
very well, there are quite a few player-designed fleets that fit very
well - eg most New Israeli ships, most Trans-Belt Alliance designs
(some are a little over-armoured, though) and Schoon's FSE "border
patrol refits" (listed in the Ship Registry) to name but a few.

Designs like the newer ESU capitals (strong hulls and no armour) or the
NAC (lots of single-arc weapons (mainly P-torps), and not too much
armour on most units) are able to give almost as good as they get in
Vector. The FSE are in trouble since their main armament isn't terribly
effective, and the NSL cruisers and BB have far too much armour and too
fragile hulls but their other ships work reasonably well in Vector. Not
perfect, but they're certainly no roadkills unless their admirals screw
up.

The fleets that are really in trouble are those that use heavy armour
on Weak hulls - the Free Orange, IF and similar... interestingly
enough, the very designs that are most effective against *human*
weapons <EG>

In your reply to Beth, you wrote:

>>just out of interest were you
>>using the new mechanic or the old for dealing double damage?
>
>New.  I'll also point out that I was using battlecruisers with
>K5's; had it been a greater number of K3's, for example, it
>wouldn't have been as painful.

On the contrary. K3s and K2s inflict somewhat more damage than the same
Mass of K5s, and the NRE ships weren't heavily enough armoured for the
lower armour penetration to make a difference. A greater number of
smaller guns would have been *more* painful, not less :-/

Regards,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

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