Re: [FT] Not quite an AAR

----- Original Message -----
From: John Crimmins <johncrim@voicenet.com>
To: <gzg-l@csua.berkeley.edu>
Sent: Sunday, April 22, 2001 4:44 AM
Subject: [FT] Not quite an AAR

> While discussing the game afterwards, the Alphan players insisted
that,
> despite the equality of the point values, their ships were decidedly
> inferior to those of the Betans.  They felt that speed and screens
were of
> far less importance than heavy hulls and armor, and that their pulse
torps
> were nowhere near as good as Class 4 and Class 4 beams.  They were all
> impressed by the PBLs, though, which nearly reduced the Betan's
> Superdreadnought to a gutted hulk with a single shot.
>
I have found that for inexperianced players that hull/armour is more
important than speed. When you have placed marker weapons, the balance
changes. But these are weapons that are normally not used when
introducing
someone to the game. Sheilds I find are manditory on larger ships. The
new
players will agree when the averages catch up with their terrible die
rolling, and they mannage to gut a non sheilded ship with rerolls.

>      A failure to concentrate their forces.  They had four ships on
one
> side of the board (which caused the single Betan loss), facing two
Betan
> ships, and the remaining two ships were far enough away from each
other to
> provide mutual support.  Each of these ships was destroyed by a
different
> pair of Betan ships, which were then able to concentrate fire on the
> remaining ships.
>
A common rokie fault, that is only done once usually. Staying within
support
range of each other and concentrating fire on one target is one of the
most
important leasons in FT, especially against missiles/fighters.

>      And just plain *terrible* dice rolling.	Not so much on their hit
> rolls, but the threshold rolls were terrible to behold.
>
Averages will mean their next game they will roll amasingly high, and
wipe
out everything <G>.

>What's more important, speed or durability?
For beginners, durability. Against place marker weapons or on a large
table
to allow a run and high speed flybys, thrust.

> And are beams really that much better than pulse torps?
Depends what your opponent has. Against screens, p.torps are better
(especially if the enemy has x2 screens).

>  Do the forces we used seem particularly unbalanced to anyone out
there?
I wanted to make the forces
> as distinctly different as I could when I designed these ships, and
it's
> more than possible that I just went too far and made the Alphan ships
just
> too damn fragile..
Not in my oppinion. I like the escort BC (with the huge amount of B2`s,
that
will shread anything trying to get a point blank suicide charge on your
ships).

>
> I should add, by the way, that everyone had a good time and there were
> really no serious complaints about the game itself.  Everyone is
looking
> forward to playing again, although it's likely to be a bit of a while
> before we are able to do so again, since we already have games planned
for
> the next few weeks.
>
Thats all that matters. In the second game, give one side SML`s and/or
fighters. Probably best for the ones that have mastered the vector
system.

> John X Crimmins
> johncrim@voicenet.com
>   "...is one of the secret masters of the world: a librarian.
> They control information.  Don't ever piss one off."
>   --Spider Robinson, The Callahan Touch.

BIF
 "yorkshire born,yorkshire bred,
 strong in arms, thick in head"