From: Eric Foley <stiltman@t...>
Date: Tue, 18 May 2010 18:48:48 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: [GZG] [AAR] Aventines v Sopovar, playtesting new FT3 fighter rules (long)
Okay, caveat time. This was just one playtest, with me up against a player who had a lot less experience at Full Thrust than I do. We used the new point defense system that Indy posted to the list a couple weeks ago and, with a few house rule tweaks, the new turn order. The main house rule deviations we used were as follows: 1. Salvo missiles were fired and moved in two parts on the same turn similar to how fighters go in the new system. They moved their full movement minus 6 MU in the first phase, and the final 6 MU in the second phase. This was an adaptation of mine, intended to help a bit with high speed maneuvers and making banzai jammers a little less perfect a defense, while still requiring the missile user to at least get it close to right. 2. Fighter overkill from one group always spills over to the next in a close area engagement of whatever sort. Old rule from my groups, have always found it to be good for large numbers of fighters, kept it. 3. Point defense weaponry has to fire at an entire swarm of fighters, and cannot cherry-pick which groups it wants to hit first. Another old rule from my groups, which became necessary to make bombers something other than useless whenever somebody was bringing over a hundred PDS (which they always did). 4. Fighter speeds and armor were taken as modifiers to cost, as I've laid out in previous emails. 5. Minimum 6 mass for lightning shield/CIDS. With those in place, we ran a one-off 5000 NPV game. My opponent played as the Aventine, who were vaguely FSE-inspired with a little over twice as much PDS as the fleet books and hull integrity swapped out for lightning shields (a name we will probably always like better than "CIDS"). I played as the Sopovar (pronounced "SOAP-oh-vahr", with the intentional emphasis on "soap"), who were built around a variety of fighter-exploiting ships. Each of us knew the range of designs the other could pick from, but we went in blind as to what the other side would actually bring to the game. The actual order of battle went basically like this: SOPOVAR: - Two basestars, mass 320ish, hull 48, thrust 1, armor 12, level 1 screens, 15 fighter bays, 3 SMLs, 3 SMR-ERs, magazine with 1 ER and two normal salvoes, light B2s (all arcs) and B1s suite, 5 PDS. - One attack cruiser, mass 160, hull 48, thrust 2, armor 10, level 1 screens, 3 SMRs, 2 B3s (3 arcs), 4-5 B2s (all arcs), 2 fighter bays, 5 PDS. - Ten twin podships, mass 23, 2 fighter bays. (In short, optimal soap bubble carrier.) - One solo podship, mass 12, 1 fighter bay. (The classic but not quite optimal soapie that I went with because I was up against the 5000 NPV limit instead of another twin.) - 43 standard fighters, 10 slow heavy torpedo bombers (at 42 NPV per group) (Options not taken: cloaking mass 40ish cruisers with two SMRs and four needle beams, thrust 6.) AVENTINE: - One fleet carrier, mass 270, hull 52, thrust 4, level 1 screens, level 2 lightning shield, 8 fighter bays, B2 (3-arc) and B1 suite, 8 PDS. - Two dreadnoughts, mass 262, hull 52, thrust 4, level 1 screens, level 3 lightning shield, 3 SML (magazine 3 normal each), B3s and lots of B2s all at 3 arcs, 11 PDS. - Three missile-escort cruisers, mass 62, hull 14, thrust 4, level 1 lightning shield, 1 SMR, 3 B2s (3 arc), 8 PDS, 2 ADS. - Six pure escort cruisers, mass 62, hull 14, thrust 4, level 2 lightning shield, 3 B2s, 6 PDS, 2 ADS. (Same as missile escorts but with missiles and a couple PDS swapped for an extra level of lightning shield.) - Eight heavy interceptors. (Options not taken: either or both dreadnoughts were allowed to swap either two or three SMLs with their magazine space for two or three fighter bays.) The Aventines deployed with the two dreadnoughts and six pure escort cruisers in front, the fleet carrier and missile cruisers slightly behind, all still close enough for mutual defense. The heavy interceptors were in a fighter screen around the carrier, where they could easily deploy to assist point defenses in the area against anything that attacked the other ships. The Sopovar had the attack cruiser in front with the intent that by the time if/when a direct firefight broke out its firepower would draw fire away from the basestars and podships, the basestars forming the other two points of a triangle behind it as the core formation, with the podships arrayed around them as missile soaks. I had their fighters out immediately but held the heavy bombers in reserve to start the game. The two fleets started out roughly 100 MU apart. They came in at 12 MU, I started at 4. I started out offering the fighters in a line ahead, seeking to confront the interceptors away from the rest of the ships while my heavy bombers (launching in turn 2 or so) came in behind them to strike, but the Aventines were having none of it. Realizing that they weren't going to come out and play, I held back the fighters for these early turns to keep them out of the range of the Aventine main guns until I was ready. I kept it slow at 5-6 MU per turn, the Aventines stayed at 12. By about turn 3 or 4, I had come to the conclusion that I was going to want to not commit my fighters unless they had a missile strike going in to support them, it was probably going to have to be all ER missiles from the basestars, and I probably didn't want those interceptors to still be there when I sent in the bombers. So I detached 16 of my fighters and sent them into a dogfight with the interceptors so that the rest of the fleet around him couldn't help them, and they accepted the engagement. I lost almost 10 groups while killing all the interceptors, and estimated that the big hit was going to have to come on the next turn. I sent in the 10 heavy bombers along with the remaining 33+ fighter groups as point defense soaks, together with the basestars' ER alpha strike of 12 salvoes. I hoped to get the missiles into the dreadnoughts at the heart of the Aventines' front part of the formation, but he decided to accelerate the fleet carrier and its escorts forward to compact the formation while leaving the dreadnoughts and theirs at 12 MU, and I didn't have _quite_ enough range to hit the dreadnoughts. So with my secondary move I committed the missiles four salvoes each to the front three escort cruisers, which (without further adjustments) would leave the dreadnoughts uncovered in front from follow-up strikes. The attack cruiser didn't commit its missiles in this part, it was out of range. I had contemplated sending it ahead so that it could add to this big first strike, but decided that it wasn't going to be a good idea to send it against the larger dreadnoughts and their escorts by itself and it was going to be more valuable staying behind to draw fire away from the basestars. I knew that whatever was going to happen, I was going to lose a _lot_ of fighters to get it, so I put the whole swarm of them on the two dreadnoughts, because they were the only things in there that were worth losing the bulk of my fighters for. I had 199 fighters and 60 heavy bombers coming in on them (splitting roughly 50-50) along with 12 salvoes of ER missiles on the front three escort cruisers (none of them being missile guys). The Aventine player had 109 total PDS/ADS to defend plus the level 3 lightning shields on both ships. Partly from unlucky rolling on his part and partly because the fighters drew most of the PDS fire, 37 of the 60 bombers made it through both PDS and lightning shields, which was enough to destroy both dreadnoughts outright by themselves, which basically wasted the fighters' strike. However, the fighters seriously paid to get those things into play, as only 55 of the 199 survived the amassed point defense and the lightning shields. One dreadnought was barely in B3 range of my attack cruiser, but missed with both dice before it died. So now I had killed most of their ship-to-ship firepower but had lost the bulk of my fighter wing to do it. They still had 63 PDS against my less than 63 surviving fighters (and 37 surviving but now depleted bombers), and their remaining ships continued undaunted straight into my formation. They were still at extreme ER missile range at a mix of 12 and 16 MU, so I knew if they slowed down my next missile strike (which would have to be normal range) might miss altogether, so I held off firing it. Without the missile support, I also didn't want to have the fighters in there, and with them coming right at me this also meant I couldn't yet recover the torpedo bombers either without exposing them to enemy fire. So I flew them out wide, held my missile fire and gritted my teeth for a beam exchange. They accelerated to 16 MU across their whole force and plunged straight in to do so. The basestars and attack cruiser picked out the front two missile cruisers to shoot at, while t he two in question fired their missiles at me (somewhat ill-advised, all they got was a podship and I had enough PDS to kill just two salvoes and preserve it). My attack cruiser took one threshold from beams, losing two SMRs and half drives. I destroyed one missile cruiser and did two points of damage to the other. Due to their speed and that they were close enough that they'd likely overshoot me if they sped up further, my missiles were now no longer in play at all, as what I could put out through side arcs wasn't enough that it would get through their defenses, so I held my fire to wait for a shot where I might actually do some damage. I turned towards the fighters to recover the bombers, while they sped up in order to overshoot me outright -- as it turned out, to intentionally get off the board at high speed. Most of their beams were 3 arcs while mine were all 6's, so this actually gave me the beam firepower advantage. The two basestars both fired at point blank and destroyed the undamaged missile cruiser, while my attack cruiser miraculously managed to roll six 6's out of 8 dice to kill off the damaged missile cruiser before rerolls. Their fleet carrier was the only thing with back-arc firepower, and popped one podship for spite out of intent to at least kill _one_ of my ships. The bombers were still out but I was in position to recover them the next turn if the Aventine changed their mind; they didn't, and flew off the board at 24 MU to withdraw with their fleet carrier and three escorts still alive. The total losses for the Aventine were two dreadnoughts and six escort cruisers (three missile, three pure) along with the eight heavy interceptors for a total of 3392 NPV of materiel. The total losses for the Sopovar were one podship, 23 heavy bombers, and 203 fighters for a total of 857 NPV destroyed, plus the armor and single threshold on the attack cruiser; neither basestar took any fire in the game (i.e. the attack cruiser did its job of presenting a better target once it got to close range). On paper, it was a pretty disastrous defeat for the Aventines. Off paper, it _felt_ a lot closer than the bean counters would have called it. The Sopovar fighter fleet was all but annihilated and was a complete non-factor after the first strike -- with a lot of cleverness they were still able to get their first hit in, but didn't have enough left to make a second or even to hang around afterwards. If the Aventines had had just a _little_ bit more ship-to-ship firepower that would've survived, or if they'd come with just a few more heavy interceptors (either by taking a battlecarrier option on the dreadnoughts or maybe having a second fleet carrier) they could've dampened my fighters a lot more. For my part... if I'm playing for keeps with fighters, I don't think I ever want any non-heavy fighters trying to attack ships with the new PDS and especially not the lightning shields. If I hadn't had the bombers, or if I hadn't made them heavies (even if I cheaped out on them by making them slow with Sopovar assurance of fighter superiority to cover them), I would've lost this game, and badly. We're pondering continuing this campaign partly to explore this and partly to see how the tactics evolve (and whether or not further refinement on the Aventines' part would utterly annihilate the Sopovar eventually or not). The Sopovar might be forced to depart from the doctrine I'd envisioned for them of cheaping out on every fighter they can get while still giving enemies a _little_ reason not to just rush down their basestars, maybe with either fast needle battlecruisers to blast away some lightning shields in advance or going to a doctrine of three fighter lines -- cheaper (and maybe fast) fighters in front to force dogfights with interceptors, heavy fighters in the middle to support the first line if needed and survive a ship strike better, and the slow-heavy bombers in back to be the main antiship hammer. Anyways... thoughts can be sent on or off list. I'm interested in what people think of this so far. E