Comments on "Star Trek: Dominion War Walk Thru"

[PolarisGL]

Please direct all comments regarding the "Star Trek: Dominion War Walk Thru" article at The Art of War.

[Cal]

Okay...

WHAT Star Trek: The Dominion War article? There's no article like that on the AoW...

[PolarisGL]

Aren't we a little touchy today.

You will see.

[PolarisGL]

http://aow.apolyton.net/

I think it is the top one there.

[Cal]

Touchy? I'm just surprised you'd post something asking to comment on a strategy you haven't got around to placing on AoW...

[PolarisGL]

I had to post a topic for it to link to the "Discussion" button and text on the site while I was doing that part of the site.

[Chris 62]

For the most part, I agreed with it, but not all of it. I found the smaller designs useless, and built only Soverigns for most campaigns. The movement factor of the Norways is a hindrance, I thought, and I found that using Intrepids to scout ahead, and then fortifying a Soverign if any fighters are in the area worked quite well. I also believe in holding the minefield and DS9 indefinately, as it slows the Dominion down, and their timetable completely off. With the data the android wonder, and all the factory improvements, Earth can turn out a Soverign every other turn. With null-space catapults, they can be deployed quickly. The best early strategy to hold the frontier is to send all Photon torpedoes toward DS9 and Bajor. It can be done, if you count the distances between planets carefully. Build Excelsiors in every city early, and shields as soon as possible, but don't rush build shields, as they are to costly. As you begin your counter-offensive, you will have many Excelsiors left over from the early days, and they can also take on fighters, so they are still useful to bring along in the couter-offensive stage. Dominion BBs are quite powerfull, but can be destroyed by two or three Norways, or two Soverigns. Since I know where the triggers are for events, I won't comment on that. BTW, I was the chief Playtester for this great scenario, so I played it quite a bit.

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All knowledge begins with the phrase: I don't know.

[PolarisGL]

Yes, cpoulos. I found myself in the same situation in that the article helped me overall, but in details I found myself doing different things.

Overall, though, I loved it. If I still had the Editor's Choice thing (taken out because I don't like "grading" the articles), this one would get my choice.

[our_man]

I've got to disagree with Kobayashi about it being impossible to hold Bajor and DS9. I've played the scenario 3 times, and each time I've managed to hold onto Bajor and DS9. By sending most of your ships and torpedos down there you can give the Dominion a bloody nose. The AI usually stacks his Dominion ships and presents a tempting target for photon torpedos to wreak havoc. By having a few Ambassador's inside Bajor and DS9 any Dominion ships that break through the photon barrage can be dealt with in short order before retreating the ships into the relative safety of the planet.

[kobayashi]

Needless to say, there is more than one way to skin a cat. Being the designer, I was simply writing the walkthru according to how I designed the scenario. There is a natural bias because of that I suppose.

The walkthru assumes you are playing for the first time and don't want to do anything reckless. In a way, it is a sure thing if you follow it exactly. Let me give an example. You could try to hold Bajor and load up again each time if you failed until you managed to. Then you would be in a good position. However, if you were playing ironman style, you could well have lost everything at Bajor and then fail to hold Vulcan in the process.

Another thing that influenced the conservativeness of the strategy was the way the game evolved. It was just impossible in the first iteration and cpolous and I would start again after I made it a bit easier. Then we would get creamed again and I would makeit easier again. We did this many many times until we just managed to survive the dominion battleship onslaught.

Thanks for your comments.


[This message has been edited by kobayashi (edited May 19, 2001).]