Hello, Everyone.
We've found that a ship carrying the Nova Cannon operates best like a
WWI single-seat fighter. Don't try to hit the enemy with the cannon's
second or, worst yet, the third turn... Get close enough and smash them with
the first turn.
Firing from a range where the blast takes more that one turn to get there
simply makes the enemy break formation (great, if that's what you want) and
turn quickly out of the way.
Triangulating on your targets is harder than you would think... Plus you have
to look out for the blast from other Nova Cannon ships.
Finale note: veer off on the turn after you shoot... It's not fun overrunning
the blast template when it expands and touches your ship.
Nova cannon tactics? There's quite a few different ways you can go about it.
(Before I say anything, let me clear up that as a house rule, we allow nova
cannons to be scaled up in a linear fashion similar to plasma bolts, so that
there's a reason to mount them on larger ships... read, you won't have to
leave quite as much offensive hardware dormant in order to use them.)
One method is to arm more or less all of your "ships of the wall" (to borrow
an HH term) with the things, fire them early and often, and force your enemies
to spend most of their movement playing dodgeball rather than bending their
maneuvers to a more coherent, aggressive end. When your enemy's movements are
dictated by an urgent wish to not be annihilated in bulk, that makes it that
much easier to gun them down with whatever else you may have. Any fighter
elements you have will appreciate this as well, since
the phalanx/wall formations that make life most dangerous for them are
also most vulnerable to nova cannon fire, and frequently they'll have to
divide their task force or see at least some of their ships get hit.
The other method is to equip a few ships as "artillery support" and keep them
well to the rear of the formation to fire from a distance while your wall of
battle is engaging them at closer range. These ships would probably stay
largely stationary, so that they can simply rotate and shoot wherever they
want. Yeah, this makes them basically sitting ducks if the enemy task force
decides to go after them, which is why you deploy them in a fashion that your
front line ships will have nice clean shots at their backs if they try it.
On a related note, as a weapon to support fighter assaults on a point defense
phalanx, plasma bolts are probably at least as deadly as nova cannons. Not
only can you direct them in a far more flexible fashion, but they also can
serve together with the fighters to oversaturate basically any
practical amount of point defense. Sure, a shameless min/maxer might
get tempted to go overboard on the point defense to stop it, but if they do,
it takes very little in the way of reserve forces of ships armed with
direct-fire weapons to give them a crushing reminder to keep it honest.
;)
E (aka Stilt Man)
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