From: felixh@p... (Felix Hack)
Date: Thu, 19 Mar 1998 09:10:57 GMT
Subject: First EFSB game was great! A few questions
I really enjoyed my first game using the EFSB rules. It played very quickly, the rules were clean and elegant, and the results felt right for B5. As background, I have experience in most major tactical SF ship combat games, including SFB and B5 Wars. I had a Narn Battle Dreadnought and my opponent took two Centauri Light Cruisers. In retrospect I think I had an advantage. He split his ships, escorting each ship with its single fighter squadron. I kept my four fighter groups together and engaged each of his ships in turn; my primary beam weapons never fired. We learned that unengaged fighters are extremely dangerous; they almost blew away one CL with their first volley before starting to tear apart the second CL. The outcome? Both CL's attempted to flee through jump points generated by damaged jump drives. They had a 1/3 chance each of making it, and both succeeded in getting away. Rats. We did encounter a few questions, nothing major. It is my gaming style to keep things moving along during play and avoid drawn-out rules discussions (I hate rules lawyers), so we made some quick mutually agreeable decisions and kept on playing. 1. Can anti-fighter weapons shoot at fighter groups that aren't engaging your ship? We ruled that they could, but this approach encourages the "gamey" tactic of stacking all ships in one place. (This is a result of the geometry of having the fighter and anti-fighter weapons have the same range. If the ships aren't in the same spot the fighters can always find a place from which they can engage a ship without counterfire from other ships). 2. Fighter engagements are resolved when the target ship becomes active. Is damage by fighter weapons resolved before the target ship has a chance to shoot at its targets? (This happened in our battle when a Centauri CL was attacked by 21 fighters, and lost all fire control. We ruled the damage was not simultaneous, so it couldn't fire on my Battle Dreadnought). 3. We couldn't find any rules describing the effects of energy mines on fighters. We ruled there was no effect. 4. This question is about catastrophic damage. First, the rules contradict the example (the example's die rolls shouldn't be causing catastrophic damage). We followed the rules, as we felt the example made chain reactions too likely. Next, in our game the first Centauri CL almost lost three whole rows of damage boxes to fighters in a single attack, requiring two Threshold checks. If it had required three Treshold checks from a single attack, should I have rolled once or twice for catastrophic damage? If in the same gameturn it lost yet another row to weapons fire (not catastrophic damage) requiring a new Threshold check, would I roll again for catastrophic damage? I guess I'm asking if you should roll for catastrophic damage just prior to every Threshold check after the first in a gameturn. We observed that the Centauri liked moving really fast, partly to avoid energy mines, and partly to take advantage of its better pivoting. It moved faster than fighters can normally move (speed 10). They could take their fighters along, however, by using escort mode. It did mean my fighters couldn't chase their ships down. I didn't feel this was a real problem; it was inevitable that our ships would get close together to exchange fire, and when they did my fighters got close enough to paste him.