Glen
I play with Steve too. I think I know a few things that have worked on him.
1: Beam 4s left side and rear and make like a horse archer. Run around him and
shoot at range. He will die or get bored and FTL. 2: Fighters and wave gun, or
missile and wave gun mix. 3: A very large barge similar to his designs. 4:
Have a small child roll your dice. 5: We have not tried mines yet. 6: I think
it might be fun to try vector. 7: Make him chase you so you wind up in his
Forward arc and he can not use his RX weapons. 8: Change ships and tactics
every time you play.
Andy
my rebuttals to various repliers...
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From: "Andrew Apter" <apter@prodigy.net>
I play with Steve too. I think I know a few things that have worked on him.
1: Beam 4s left side and rear and make like a horse archer. Run around him and
shoot at range. He will die or get bored and FTL. 2: Fighters and wave gun, or
missile and wave gun mix. 3: A very large barge similar to his designs. 4:
Have a small child roll your dice. 5: We have not tried mines yet. 6: I think
it might be fun to try vector. 7: Make him chase you so you wind up in his
Forward arc and he can not use his RX weapons. 8: Change ships and tactics
every time you play.
Andy
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1. yeah, I got some designs like this. Maybe next time I'll use them, and use
them, and use them, until he makes faster ships. 2. I tried WGs several times,
last Tuesday night also. One out of 4 WG boats lined up a shot before getting
squished.
His newest "BB" designs have about 6-8 PDS and an Area Defense. So if
playing against two of these I expect about 12-16 PDS in effect.
Fighters don't live too long against that. 3. I got several of these, but he
still rolls better than I. 4. sorry, the cost of obtaining a small child is
way too many points
(both in real life and FT terms). :) btw, what is the FT cost?
VBG 5. I don't want to try mines. 6. I tried it once at home as a "race"
around some "space cones". It is tricky and not sure I like it. 7. Hmm, so
have rear firing class 3s and stay ahead of him. Hmmm. 8. I do this all the
time. Okay, maybe except for tactics (get close and
die).
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From: "Robertson, Brendan" <Brendan.Robertson@dva.gov.au>
Increase the speed of your firing passes. Burn in at velocity 14-18 &
he'll only get 1 long range turn.
Using 5-arc class 3s are costing him weapon mass, so for every one of
his
class 3s you get 4 3-arc class 2s. (I can't believe I'm saying this...)
How about sending in 2 separate waves from opposite sides? Multiarc weapons
can only fire in 1 direction at a time, so 1 wave will get free shots. Another
option is to increase the number of destroyers you field. Mount
them with 5-6 submunition packs each & send them in at velocity 20+. 15
beam die ignoring screens is a lot of re-rolls & damage...
Or try removing all your offensive weapons & load your ships with nothing but
torpedo & attack fighters.
In a 1500 point game, you should be able to get about 10-15 squadrons on
the board, which not even the best point defence can stop them all.
Or the last option is easy: stop playing against him in design-your-own
battles. Only play him with FTFB ships.
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I'll comment first on that last suggestion: NO WAY. The NAC suck. I hate slow
moving tubs like the NSL. Not that crazy about missile salvos and don't like
the no-armor FSE ships. The ESU also lacks armor, although I like the
Voroshilev. Besides, I have Fed and Klingon minatures and my designs have
similar arcs and pulse torps. Against each other they would probably be fairer
fights.
I'm usually moving at speeds from 14-20. It's not his long range
firepower that
worries me, it's his medium (12-24) and short (1-12) range firepower.
He has several 2s and a plethora of 1s (yes, plethora). Try going against
28-32 beam
dice at range 11. And his propensity to roll more than average number
of 6s. Yes, almost all of my ships have double screens. Which makes them more
expensive in the defensive department, although that is made up by bigger
drives. I've tried narrow arc weapons. So while he's not in my arc of fire
he's still shooting at me. That was a losing situation from the get go when we
first started many months ago.
Divided forces means divided deaths.
I have this aversion to one shot weapons. Submunitions have to get within 6 to
get maximum effect and also in arc. I'm terrible at maneuvering.
If I had 1500 points for a CV force. Usually there's two of us against him. So
I get 750 points. I have to talk the other player into CVs, not always easy to
do.
Glen
Quoting GBailey@aol.com (Thu, Jan 20, 2000 at 07:33:42AM -0500)
> Divided forces means divided deaths.
I point here is that with many smaller ships, you either overload his number
of fire controls, or he splits his fire so much that the ships actually have a
chance of survival. Manuevring isn't hard with this lot.. since he is
slow - point roughly at him and plan to arrive at high speed within 6"
of him.
Splitting your force in the classic 'pincer' will overload his
multi-arced
weapons, he can't fire both ways at once. If he has two ships, approach on
both flanks and the front.
If you don't like this option, the SML/SMR option (tactics for and
against) has been heavily discussed in the past few weeks. Take a look in the
archive.
All this advice is of course theoretical, since I don't play that often.