I tried the new designs against Steve in two battles.
First: A 6 needle beam ship paired with a Nova Cannon ship, 842 points. I got
too close before making the run in so he sniped a few armor boxes on both
ships. He had a Superior sensor and picked up the NC ships first try, he never
got the needler because I put a jammer on it. But, due to my lack of
nagivational skills, the needler ended up 4" away from his battlewagon but
only his missile throwing frigate was within the needle beam arcs. I fired
them anyway (I had the initiative) and didn't roll a six. The needler barely
survived and my ships warped out. Round 1 to Steve. Boo! Hisss!
Second: I ran an 800 pt C2 ship, another ran a 600 pt ship. Steve had two BBs
and three missilers. On the run in he got initiative and guessed right, I
intercepted 6 missile salvos. I thought I was one cooked goose. He only rolled
19 missiles and my 12 PDS took out 10. Missile damage was poor. His first BB
fired and thresholded me, taking out 6 of 32 C2s. So I got 52 beam dice and
got a threshold on his unfired ship. That fired and got another threshold on
me. Total 12 C2s damaged. My ally's ship almost finished the damaged BB. Next
round that damaged BB was destroyed and my ally had his armor stripped away
(he was double screened). I ran away to do repairs while my ally tried to turn
in to fire his 2 x 180 degree pulse torps. He did some damage to the remaining
BB but was destroyed as I started my run in. I got initiative, landed 5" away
and directly in front of him (my speed=50). All but 2 of my C2s had been fixed
so I shredded the BB but it limped away and warped out. Round 2 to me. Yea!
Next combat I will use SMs. Any suggestion for general design? Lots of small
SM ships? Several medium or 1 large ship? Racks or magazines? Each of his BBs
have about 6 PDS and an ADFC, so if there are two BBs it will be a lot of PDS
to penetrate. And he has
about 4-6 C1s per BB.
Glen
G'day Glen,
> Next combat I will use SMs. Any suggestion for general design?
I prefer magazines in place of racks becuase it usually takes a couple of
waves (for me) to kill so use the space (thus racks = wasted space). I usually
hust go for having them on all my ships (and then having
small-large ships in the fleet) rather than on one mega-ship as a lucky
shot/concentrated fire can't remove them all in one go.
The first few time you use them I'd also put your spread down netlike (so if
you guess wrong hopefully they won't all miss), once you've got the hang of
them you can put them in clumps for bigger effects.
Cheers
Beth
> G'day Glen,
and congratulations, stick with it.
> Next combat I will use SMs. Any suggestion for general
And he has
> about 4-6 C1s per BB.
Beth, who is noted for her use of salvo missiles, said:
> I prefer magazines in place of racks becuase it usually takes a
I prefer SMRs because the beauty of SMs is firing them all off at once. To
take an extreme example, if you fire off one salvo at a time against his BB's,
your chances of doing any damage are essentially nil. On the other hand, if
you lob out 18 SMR's at once, that's 56 missiles on average (assuming you
place them all correctly), his PDS will probably kill something like 10
missiles and his C1's will kill another missile or two. Let's be generous and
say he knocks down 16 missiles, conveniently letting me multiply 40 x 3.5 =
140 points of damage. Big difference, eh?
I picked 18SMR because my Islamic Federation missile cruisers carry, in one
version, 6 SMR's per 60 mass ship. Not much in the way of hull or armor, mind
you, so you'll want to practice
maneuvering beforehand--you'll only get the one chance to shoot,
but if you work it right, that's all you'll need. It is particularly effective
if he doesn't know you're packing
SMR's--and setting out a dozen or so unexpected missile markers
should cause him to pale.
If he's still using Thrust 1 or 2 ships, you should know where he's going to
end up next turn, close enough to let the missiles' seeker heads take it from
there. Again, work out beforehand what his possible ending points are at
different
speeds--and work out a missile placement that will cover all of
them.
first up, Beth is far more of an SM expert than i, so don't take my opinions
too seriously, eh.
> On Thu, 27 Jan 2000, Beth Fulton wrote:
> >Next combat I will use SMs. Any suggestion for general design?
this is true for the standard conditions of battle most people are used to;
however, Glen isn't fighting a standard battle, he's up against two monster
dreadnoughts and a bunch of DDGs. in this case, the primary objective is to
destroy the dreadnoughts, in which case a massive single strike is probably
the best option. thus, go for SMRs.
> I
i'd agree with that; the ft2.5 design system doesn't penalise you for having
lots of mdeium ships rather than one big one, apart from the cost due to ADFC,
which is pretty minor. having scads of tiny ships is not such a good idea,
though, as they die a bit quickly: you may have the same overall loss rate
with big ships, but you get the losses in jumps at threshold points, meaning
that you get full firepower for some time. otoh, if Steve is short on
firecons, maybe a profusion of targets is what he needs.
> The first few time you use them I'd also put your spread down netlike
now, here we can exploit the low thrust of the dreadnoughts; this works
perfectly in vector and well in cinematic (unless Steve has taken a leaf from
Oerjan's book and is zipping about the table and lunatic speeds:)
).
basically, there is a very small region of space where a thrust-1 ship
can end up, centred on the ship's unmodified move endpoint (ie where it would
go if it applied no thrust); in vector, it's a 1-mu radius circle, in
cinematic it's a wedge 2 mu long and with a width dependent on the speed of
the ship (but still small). basically, if you target all your SMs on
the unmodified endpoint of a thrust-1 target, they will hit.
so, build two types of cruisers: missiles cruisers, with a load of SMRs and
little else, and gun cruisers, with beams, torps, whatever, plus good
PDS/ADFC to hold off his DDGs. make 2/3 of your force CGs and one-third
CAs, and go for it. your first step is to get your CGs in range and whack his
DNs, then pull them out of the way and send in the CAs to finish the
job. if you use SM-ER, you can keep your CGs out of range of his DDGs,
which would be useful.
peace, tom
> On 26-Jan-00 at 18:23, Beth Fulton (beth.fulton@marine.csiro.au) wrote:
Against thrust 1 ships make that a small net.:) I think I'll disagree about
the racks vs launchers. It's all about overwhelming the defenses. 12 PDS's
will take out about 3 SM's, so if you fire 6 every time you
lose half of every wave. If you fire twelve once you lose 1/4.
Of course, this assumes hits every time, but with thrust 1's...
G'day guys,
> I think I'll disagree about the racks vs launchers.
You and everybody else!!;)
In my defense I did say: "I prefer magazines.....becuase it usually takes a
couple of waves (for me) to kill"
Maybe I should have emphasied the for me...;)
Either way Glen good luck!!
Cheers
Beth