Re: [FT] Battle report - Dreadplanet vs KV

stiltman@teleport.com wrote:

>>The battle featured the Dreadplanet Roberts Mk.1 (ie. with needle
>>beams - not that it would've mattered much if they had been B1s
>>instead) for 5000 pts against an FB2 KV fleet consisting of 17 Si'Tek
>>escort cruisers and 1 Ko'Tek strike cruiser (5001 pts).=20
>  
>> * The KV flew at speed 30-40 throughout most of the battle (except
>>for the first six turns when they were accellerating!), and had no
>>problems staying on the fairly small, fixed playing area or indeed to
>>end up almost exactly where they wanted.
> 
>Yeah, my test with my wife involved ships with only thrust 3 rather
than
>thrust 6, albeit with far more scatterguns than usual and class 5 K's
>rather than class 3's.

Thrust-3A explains why she didn't attempt to maneuver. My main problem
was that I constantly had to choose between aiming my beams where the
KV would be if they decided to attack *this* turn, or pointing my PBLs
where the KV would be if they decided to attack on the *next* turn -
and thrust-3A ships wouldn't have given me this particular headache.
OTOH

You earlier wrote that your wife was going to have 90-100 scatterguns
(IIRC 96; can go back and check if you like). My opponent had 87 with
published ships - selected ships to be sure, but selected primarily for
their thrust-6 engines and K3 armament. OK, he *could* have taken more
Ko'Teks, but they're the the FB2 design which would've given him the
*lowest* number of scatterguns possible (37 in a 4994-point fleet, the
last one carried on a Lu'Dak scout) which made the Ko'Teks look like a
generally bad idea :-/

Why did she use K5s, BTW (ie., why did you give her K5s, since IIRC you
designed her ships)? K5s have several advantages over K3s: being easier
to repair due to being only about half as many for a given mass (and
thus a given number of DCPs), being better able to hurt ships with
heavy or multiple-layer armour, and the psychological impact of ripping
an entire hull row off a cruiser or light capital with a single hit.
However, none of these apply against the DPR - the two last ones
because the isn't heavily armoured and have 90 boxes in each hull row,
and the first is mostly negated since the KV can take any amount of
time they like for repairs between their attack runs... all that
remains is the *K3*'s advantage of a higher damage:Mass ratio <shrug>

>>* The fighters attacked too late due to my attempt to wear the KV's
>>scatterguns down with PBs first. As it was they took horrible losses
>>from scattergun fire when they finally did attack, but they would've
>>been no worse mauled had they attacked during the second KV >>attack
run instead of the third... and they would probably have reduced >>the
early damage to the DPR by some 20-30 points. Ah well.
> 
>My own tactic probably would've been to put the PBs in greater
>concentration and take the gamble.  Yes, it probably would've meant
>that I would've cleanly missed a fair amount but it also would've
meant >that one good hit would've decided the battle (by reducing
scattergun >count to ineffectually low levels).

This has been tried but found wanting. In our group the standard KV
response to such a gamble is to wait until the PBLs fire a heavy
barrage, then attack on the next turn when they know that most of the
PBLs are recharging... that way they don't have to burn very many
scatterguns :-/ This KV tactic is reasonably effective against moving
PBL ships; against a stationary target it is trivial if the KV engines
are thrust-4A or better. I haven't tried it with thrust-3A or weaker
engines, but I suspect such slow will have problems.

The fact that I took advantage of the fixed table edge (stopping 31mu
away from it instead of 40-50 mu away as I had planned) would've
hampered this potential KV tactic, but, well... I didn't actually
intend to hug the table edge, and my opponents *could* have invoked
your suggested "fuzzy edge" ruling where ships accused of edge-hugging
can be declared "off-table" and thus removed :-/

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