Re: [FT] Savasku Pods

G'day David,

 >Therefore, I was trying to see if there
 >were any established tactics that really changed
 >the balance of power.

Well we've thrown out a few suggestions so far, but its just harder to
say 
for SV than humans that X is a sure in tactic because of the flexible 
nature of the SV. There's a number of things which work, but you might
have 
to try a few of them. Apart from the specific examples given earlier to 
counter the "mega-ship" problem I'd suggest you try some of the
following 
more general tactics (by the way I play vector so don't know how well
these 
hold for cinematic):

1. Don't close to slowly, I know the SV can zip about, but if they're 
moving they're not shooting as much so don't give them an opportunity to

just sit in place and react.
2. Use combined arms against them, with the suggested changes to 
pods/spicules this can really make them sweat over whether they've
guessed 
their allocation right. Combined arms can also see them diverting more 
energy to their equivalent of shields so once again less punch back.
3. Really concentrate your fire power, SV ships are brittle compared to 
human ships so make them lose a power generator or two and they'll start
to 
feel the pinch bad.
4. Use fighters and missiles against them, in fact if possible fool them
in 
to big fighter battles. I know they don't worry about morale etc, but it

way weakens the ships that launched them... any ship that has launched 
fighter groups should be a fire target as they'll usually pop very
quickly 
and won't have the biomass to try and effect repairs. People who custom 
design may have caught on to beefing up biomass to compensate for loses
due 
to launches, but so far the temptation to match the human force has
almost 
always overwhelmed the caution of ship structural integrity (I say this
as 
both someone who plays with and against SV...it can be hard holding back
on 
those drones).
  5. If you allow fighters/drones to start launched make sure they cross

off "used biomass" on the mother vessels don't let them sneak in extra 
biomass that way, or you could just restrict them to having to grow and 
launch in game, that means humans will have an edge in this area as they

can launch all at once but the SV can't. Something else which makes the
SV 
player have to think.

I haven't had the chance to game this last month, so I'm a little rusty
on 
some things, but this should be a good start.

 >I've just refused to play
 >Savasku recently because the customized ships with
 >their huge numbers of pod launchers, or heavy
 >long range beams, or huge numbers of non-morale
 >dependent fighters made the game not fun.

Have you had a chance since the suggested changes were mentioned or
since 
the counter-tactics were brought up? Are these "normal" sized ships by
the 
way or "mega-ships"? (I have a feeling I'm getting to people mixed up
here 
sorry).

 >It sounds from what I've heard that the book ships
 >aren't near as bad, though I'd still wonder if the
 >larger ones aren't a little too cheap for their
 >point value.

We haven't found them to be over the top, if anything sometimes they
don't 
feel strong enough when you're "carrier" crumbles on you ;)

Cheers

Beth

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Elizabeth Fulton
c/o CSIRO Division of Marine Research
GPO Box 1538
HOBART
TASMANIA 7001
AUSTRALIA
Phone (03) 6232 5018 International +61 3 6232 5018
Fax 03 6232 5053 International +61 3 6232 5053

email: beth.fulton@marine.csiro.au