[FT]Unbalanced?

IMHO the SV are not unbalanced and nor are the fighters, and my brother and I
squabble over this quite a bit.

Balanced or Unbalanced it is sometimes the player that makes the difference.
In some groups it may be best to use a handy capping system. Giving extra
points to the player who loses too often.

Andy A

[quoted original message omitted]

Great, any particular reason, or just because?

In some cases it is. But that doesn't take into account those cases in which a
player who is usually on the losing side wins overwhelmingly with the SV on a
regular basis, but can't fight his/her way out of a paper bag with any
other fleet.

Mark

> Andrew Apter wrote:

> Balanced or Unbalanced it is sometimes the player that makes the

With the SV, in the several games we have played with them, both the KV and
the PH have defeated them by closing, and in the case of the PH, overwhelming
them with large numbers of small PH stuff. The KV just killed enough mass to
force the SV to retire.

As for the fighters, and as other people have pointed out, I have seen even
10 fighter groups shredded by a good ADFC/PDS net. Mine brother has some

objections to fighter 'cause he likes to run his PH shrouded in until a good
range, and with fighters he cannot do this and thus is vunerable to

combined arms.

> Corey Burger wrote:

> With the SV, in the several games we have played with them, both the

Well, I must admit that I have modified my opinion of the SV somewhat in the
past few weeks, due in no small part to gaining more experience against them.
However, I do think that one point does need to be addressed, and that is the
question of spicules and pod launchers. Allowing the SV player to take energy
for spicules from the attack pool makes them way too flexible, IMNSHO,
particularly if they are subject to a fighter strike before the big ships come
into range to hit them. I was, and will probably always be of the opinion that
energy for these should come from the defense pool, which would require the SV
player to think ahead a bit more about where he wants his power to go. Now, as
far as the pod launchers are concerned, they are very effective in the AD mode
because of their ability to fire continuously (assuming, of course, that the
ship hasn't taken damage), and by virtue of the fact that they have double the
range of any other AD systems in the game. Looking at it from a perspective of
KV vs. SV, if the SV player fired his interceptors for three turns, it would
cost him three biomass boxes, and the total cost for the pods plus the
launcher would be 5 mass and 15 points (9 for the launcher, 6 for the biomass
fired). On the other hand, the KV player would also pay 15 points (5 per
scattergun) and surrender three mass in order to fire AD that had a range of
only six MU, and also had a chance to damage the target. I don't intend to
make this into a purely mathematical exercise, since we could argue about it
for days, but I do have to say that I'd be will to pay an extra 2 mass for a
system that could fire twice as far with no chance of damage to the ship being
protected!

> As for the fighters, and as other people have pointed out, I have seen

I love fighters (if you couldn't tell by what I wrote above!) and I've found
that the best way to use them is to engage the AD ships of the enemy fleet
first to destroy them and leave the remainder of the fleet vulnerable to
followup fighter attacks. Once those AD ships are destroyed, my fighters take
a somewhat more passive role, picking off crippled enemy ships and the like. I
normally do pretty well with them, and have used them successfully against
fleets using as many as four AD ships (Beijing-Bs, Kronprinz Wilhelms,
Furious, etc.). One thing that I have found to make fighters more effective is
to use heavy fighters, due to their ability to wade through the PD fire easier
than other types.

> --- Mark Reindl <mreindl@pacbell.net> wrote:

Mark, I would have the 'S' put into a defensive
situation.   Hold or capture some planet/space
station/ect. this would force the 'S' to have
combat or lose the game.

Bye for now,

But I if you overwhelm to SV with targets, such as lots and lots of little PH
ships, which are very deadly, then you can destroy him. The most stingers I
have seen is 4 on any one ship.

As for fighters, we at our group run all our ships bigger than destroyer

with ADFC aboard, so that become irrelevant about destroying the ADFC ships.
This lesson was even more so pounded in by my brothers PH and their PBL's.

> Mark,

Simple, subtle and sadistic. I like it. FWIW from what little I have read on
web sites and I rather had the opinion initially that failure to fight (and
win glory, heads, whatever) caused a significant 'loss of face' for the FT
aliens. But then I admit to being a DS2 person more then a starship captain
type. Maybe it has something to do with my introduction to SF war games being
Starguard...

Gracias,

> --- Glenn m wilson <triphibious@juno.com> wrote:
XXX
     I do my humble beast///... best.
XXX

FWIW from
> what little I have
XXX Depends on which race you are talking about. XXX
> Maybe it has

Ralnai, and Bugs for me. With colonials for the Human side, Starguard to
stiffen them up.

Bye for Now,