Re: [FH] Battle report

> on 6/20/00 2:20, stiltman@teleport.com at stiltman@teleport.com wrote:
> --->8--- (snip)
 
> > And he died by it... I lured his superior fighter force numbers into
a
> > close-up fight and then plasma bolted the whole zoo after one round
of
> > fire exchanged between my fighters and his first wave of 48 normals.
 This
> > left him with four heavy fighters and eight torps as his whole
striking
> > power.  He had level 2 screens and thrust-4 advanced drives on the
two
> > front-line ships that were torpedo-armed, but that wasn't near
enough...
> > within about a couple or three plasma barrages his heavy fighters
(which
> > had been hoping to screen for the dreadnoughts) and his main AND FTL
drives
> > were gone with both ships at triple threshold.  The two dreadnoughts
struck
> > their colors, his carriers (which hung back a good 70 MU away while
the
> > DPR stopped to spin on the SDN's) split up and FTL'ed out untouched.
 I
> > lost my whole fighter contingent and took a whopping eight points of
damage
> > to the DPR (four on armor).
 
> Just curious...did you saturate the area the fighters were in leaving
no
> area within 12" of the fighters open for them to dodge into with their
> secondary movement?  Did he try to shoot at the PBs with the fighters
if
> they couldn't get out of the area of effect?

I'm not sure what his reasoning was behind the first 48; he basically
just
let me roast all the survivors from both sides after the first round of
fighter-to-fighter fire.  Judging from his general requests for a
cursory
scan of the DPR itself, I think he was GROSSLY overestimating how much
PDS
I had on that sucker and so he let his first batch of fighters go
because
he didn't expect they'd do any good anyway.  Since this is literally the
first
time in about two years that he's tried to out-fighter me I think he was
a
little out of his element and wasn't thinking things through too
carefully
about how he ought to be handling his fighters -- in particular, he's
pretty
much never had a position of fighter superiority over my carriers, so it
probably didn't occur to him that I don't tend to stack both fighters
_and_
PDS in the same fleet.

In the case of the last 4, he just regarded them as expendible point
defense,
again probably figuring that I had about five to ten times as much PDS
as I
really did.

>> My fighters and missiles were useless, and with no screens against
his plasma
>> though I was eventually worn down.  It came down to two of my ships
against
>> three of his, I decided I didn't like those odds, so I went for (and
got) the
>> "FTL bomb".	Ironically, the only survivors for either side were five
and a
>> half squads of my (utterly useless) heavy fighters... my ships both
dumped
>> core within 6 MU of his (individually smaller) three survivors, so
now there's
>> this gaping hole in the lines of both sides where we took the mutual
fleet
>> annihilation.  However, he was happy enough with how that ship design
came out
>> for him (this is the first time in quite a while that he's even
managed to
>> make me force a draw) that he commented that he'd keep that design
for the
>> books... so I made sure to draw up a copy of it for myself and
cogitate about
>> what I'm going to do against it.  I know that his gaming circles in
Seattle
>> have come to really like pulse torps, and I imagine that once they
get hold
>> of FB2 they'll probably go with plasma cannons and lots of point
defense mixed
>> in with the pulse torps, just like he did this time... though it's
half likely
>> that their games will have less fighter emphasis than when he plays
with me.
>> Hard to say.

> Each playing group has it's own preference on rules.	However, this is
one
> of the reasons I hate the FTL spoilsport rule (as I call it), it makes
for a
> lot more suicide tactics by the person that's on the downside of the
> exchange.

Yeah... FTL bombings don't tend to be all that common in our games,
though.
Usually the ships don't live long enough to get that close to each other
in
enough numbers to do a lot of damage, nor is it too common that EVERY
ship
in the fleet explodes like that.

> Hmmm...there's another way to make the with the Dread Planet
> Roberts quake with fear bring in a large number of FTL suicide vessels
that
> have a drive value of 4 or more, then FTL out near the planet killer. 
Half
> will cause a d6 damage while the 2/3 of the remaining ones go "boom"
doing
> their DP in damage.  Of course this depends on how your group
determines if
> all FTLing ships do so simultaneous or whether the kill each other
before
> some have the chance to FTL.	I haven't done the math but I'll bet one
can
> purchase enough FTL suiciders in under 2500 points.	What am I
suggesting
> here?  ACK!

A few comments on this (amidst a bit of respectful amusement):

1.  We've thrown together a house rule that says that every ship does
the
original damage points they'd have if they had _average_ hulls, in
reasoning
that it's the drive size, not the hull strength, that inflicts the
damage
(and that this wasn't an issue in FT because all the ships have the same
ratio of hull strength).  This didn't help him, my ships are larger than
his,
but it _does_ prevent people from exploiting unclarities in the rules
and
throwing together a pile of super-hulled suicide bomber merchant ships
or
something. :)

2.  The number of times you're really going to get an FTL bomb to go off
where it can actually do damage isn't enough that it's really a
particularly
good idea to rely on this too often as a backup tactic.  You have to fly
in
a straight line, you only get half your movement, and you have to land
within
6" of your opponent for there to even be a potential fuse... which
basically
says that you have to make a beeline for your enemy in order to try it
in the
first place.  If you do that, your opponent has an easy time shredding
you
before you get there.

That said... yeah, it's occured to me.	:)
-- 
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 The Stilt Man		      stiltman@teleport.com
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