Starfleet Battles....

[Velociryx]

Nawww...forget those cheesy computer games that try to simulate SFB. Forget ADB's "Federation and Empire" which attempts to make a tactical game into a strategic one....pound for pound, the best pen and paper game ever created is the original Starfleet Battles.

::sigh:: Damn, but I've had some good times with that game.

For my money, NOTHING beats the ragin' Kzinti in the modern (post refit) era. The Kzin live and die by their small ships, no doubt. Their cruisers and larger are only average (and generally slightly inferior to) all other races, but in a squadron level action, a trio of Kzinti Drone frigates can LAY WASTE to anybody else's trio of Destroyers.

Even the might Gorn don't have enough shuttles to run a fully armed Frigate squadron out of ammo, and thanks to having almost no DF weapons, the Kzin FFD can put in flight enough drones to simply implode any DD of any race, without breaking a sweat OR worrying over control.

Plasmas? Useless. The FFD (Kzin) won't be going anything less than 30 anyway. (nothing else to do with their available power).

Photons? Ha! There's no Fed DD that can maintain battle speed while charging its photons!

Disruptors? ::shrug:: Disruptor armed ships generally have painfully thin shielding and no internal fortitude, and the Kzin shielding is sufficient to withstand a few long range snipes before blowing the enemy up.

Weasle? Heh...sure, go for it. And once you're out of shuttles, you're moving too slow to escape the NEXT wave of drones.

Got a second weasle? That's okay, we got plenty more drones where those came from. You'll run out of shuttles AND be going too slow to escape the final wave.

No....when you see a group of little Kzinti Battlecats in the 'hood, the best thing you can do is fire off a warning shot to make yourself feel better, and turn the other way....

-=Vel=-
(formerly known as Cajun Cat)

[ravagon]

I'll take on that dinky little FF squadron of yours and make mincemeat out of it. Me and my Andromedan Dominator.
Comes complete with satellite ships too btw.

Damn I used to love that game but it was just sooo hard finding people to play against.


...Oh yeah, er, hi Vel.

I had actually been planning to grab a copy of Starfleet Command (I or II) one of these days if they ever got all of the bugs out in the hope that it had the same feel as SFB. Heard it was a bit of a let-down for the diehard SFB fans but I'd hoped to find out differently...

I actually rather like F&E too and even went so far once as to try and run the combat portions of F&E thrpugh SFB.
I think I got about 8% of the way through the first round in a couple of weeks ...

Enough wool-gathering, back to your post.

I noticed that a number of the major races were *cough* "conveniently" *cough* left out and I feel the need to rectify that situation

The little matter of the main Kzinti rival with their ESG's. Very handy against all those drones - although their carrier commanders really do have to be more careful about their own fighters when firing the things off (Nexus somethingorother).

One of my personal Favs - those methane-breathing tripeds from Hydra. Almost as many fusion-armed fighters as the Kzin have drones.

The good old Rom's have their fancy schmancy little cloaky thingummys to break any locks.

And I'd stack up your Kzin against my Neo-Tholians anyday


Many of the Kzin opponents had begun mounting ADD's and more Phaser III's on their escort class ships during the refitting era. And try launching drones against a Fed SWAC shuttle or something with Special sensors boosting the defending ECM. Ouch.

I think I've forgotten most of the rule specifics but there must've been a ton of things one could do to counter a tactic (and counter the counter) in almost any situation. Attention to the details. And there are just sooooo many details. One of the things I really love about this game.

Darnit Vel. Now how am I gonna get through work for the rest of the day?

Oh the memories ...

PS: Cajun Cat? I have a vague memory of that name. You weren't in any of the tournaments by any chance were you?

[3rd attempt to post - Hope the servers not going down again ]

[Urban Ranger]

Starfleet Command sucks.

Okay, with that out of the way, the real trouble with playing a bunch of Kzinti FFD's are points. You have to pay points for fast drones and more points for restricted and limited varieties. Soon your squadron of FFD's won't be facing up other races' DD's but heavy battlecruisers

Of course, as noted you'll have serious problems against the Hydrans and the Tholians.

Drone using races tend to fare well against plama races because drones don't take up power so their ships can zip around at high speeds.

Klingons and Feds have an easier time, because they can use their drones, ADD's, and phasers to take out the incoming drones, while their heavy weapons take out the Kzinti ships. Then there are the Lyrans. Oh, you don't want to play against the WYNs either.

One more thing you need to keep in mind: t-bombs. Roll one of them out of the shuttle hatch and a whole swarm of drones eat it.

The beauty of Starfleet Battles is there really is no one dominating tactic, race, or ship design. The really gross imbalances [Lets say I take a swarm of interceptors (precursors to P/F's) against your squadron of FFD's You're deadmeat]have been taken out over the years.

.

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by ravagon
The little matter of the main Kzinti rival with their ESG's. Very handy against all those drones - although their carrier commanders really do have to be more careful about their own fighters when firing the things off (Nexus somethingorother).

The Lyrans had only one heavy carrier, the Red Claw Fury.

[DinoDoc]

Am I the only one here that actually likes Starfleet Command and realizes that there will be some differences between a turn-based game and a real-time one?

[General Ludd]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
Am I the only one here that actually likes Starfleet Command

Yes.


Deffinately one of the biggest wastes of money in recent history - not only was it released in Alpha Condition, it's only been patched to Beta quality, and still lacks any depth or variety to the game.

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Osweld
Deffinately one of the biggest wastes of money in recent history - not only was it released in Alpha Condition, it's only been patched to Beta quality,

Which version of the game are we talking about? Starfleet Command II was an excellent game for the time I played it especially after they got the metaverse up and running. Of course, I've never played the original table top game so I don't have a basis for comparison on that point.



In fact, I think I'll reinstal the game to night and play it again.

[Urban Ranger]

The problems with the game are many. The quality of the game is low, the interface is worthless, and the "Dynaverse" is a complete joke. The most important thing is the game failed to capture what the original game is about.

It doesn't help that the computer controlled ships (the "enemies") cheat like usual.

[Velociryx]

Oh...I know it....I mostly wanted to couch my post in that manner cos I KNEW it'd draw a reaction/start discussion!

And yep...I intentionally "glossed over" the races I'd have a tough time against! LOL

Tho....'member, post Y-180 drone upgrades were automatically factored into the ship cost (IMO, making the Kzin overpowered, especially their smaller ships).

-=Vel=-

PS: Cajun Cat - Rated Ace, Kzin.... (second fav race - A tie between Gorn and Neo-Tholian...gotta love that Web-Fist...OUCH!

[korn469]

The problems with the game are many. The quality of the game is low, the interface is worthless

urban ranger thinks the same about windows

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by korn469
urban ranger thinks the same about windows

No, Windows is worse

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by Velociryx
Tho....'member, post Y-180 drone upgrades were automatically factored into the ship cost (IMO, making the Kzin overpowered, especially their smaller ships).

-=Vel=-

Well, don't you forget that some ships have different economic and combat BPV's. The FDD is one of them IIRC. You are supposed to use the higher value for "build your own fleet" scenarios. That means a fixed amount of BPV is going to buy you a lot less FDDs than you expected.

I think a squadron of Hydran Hellions are going to be deadly against ya. Damned things got 2 gatlings and a hellbore each

[ravagon]

Well, I have to say that my favourite games were always campaign-based where you wound up facing whatever your opponent threw at you with whatever you had handy.
None of that evenly-matched bpv stuff. (Although I know which end I preferred to be on ).
That way those DD's of yours ended up facing off against more powerful ships - which was after all the way things happened for the Kzin in the general war, with the Kzinti-Hydran forces completely outgunned by the Klingon-Lyrans until the entry of the Feds.

*Does some quick brushing up in a vain attempt to out-Vel Vel *

As UR pointed out, T-bombs were a good defense against a closely packed swarm - although I'd guess there wouldn't be too many Kzin who would pack em that tightly a second time.

Tractors are also rather handy vs drone swarms as a final close-in defense - especially for the overpowered Gorn ships - which also brings up a Kzin version of that Gorn ("anchor" I think it was called?) tactic. Although they don't have the same power/shielding they don't need as much either - Kzinti ships closing the range and locking an opponent with tractors to neutralize a weasel can be very effective. An opponent almost certainly can't hit you with phasers knowing they'll be needed to defend against a point-blank drone swarm.
Other drone-using races, although not as adept as the Kzin, also had the scatter-pack shuttle option - launch an SP shuttle just as you would a weasel, wait until the cats close to try and shoot it down and give them a nasty surprise when they wind up fighting what they thought was another weasel. (One has to either have another weasel ready/ a lot of PD weapons or a very sturdy ship with this tactic though )
My favoured tactic using my favourite race though would have to be using the Andro's Displacement Device (also useful against the Tholians/ISC ). No better way of avoiding drone swarms than to be somewhere else.

The Kzin OTOH also had their "special option" payloads - multi-warhead, armoured and several that ended in the word "fish".
I used to enjoy firing off combination armoured/MW swarms - not too closely spaced to see an opponent gape in awe as he failed to kill an armoured drone and have it slam into his shields - then think he could ignore the other "low-bang" "armoured" drones which then turn out to be MW.

[Edit: Doh! Can't spell for peanuts today]

[Urban Ranger]

Originally posted by ravagon
Well, I have to say that my favourite games were always campaign-based where you wound up facing whatever your opponent threw at you with whatever you had handy.
None of that evenly-matched bpv stuff. (Although I know which end I preferred to be on ).
That way those DD's of yours ended up facing off against more powerful ships - which was after all the way things happened for the Kzin in the general war, with the Kzinti-Hydran forces completely outgunned by the Klingon-Lyrans until the entry of the Feds.

That's what we did one summer with F&E - use it to set up scenarioes to resolve in SFB. I was playing both the Kzinti and the Hydrans. It was fun for a while, then it became more like work. We didn't get very far since a lot of these battles were huge. Not as big as Meeting of Giants [2 Andro Doms vs a Fed SCS and a Klingon B10 ], but ususally involved at least half a dozen of ships on each side, plus battlestation or planet, plus fighters, etc.

It was fun to trade fighters and drones for Coaliton ships. The battlestation was great for EW against any Coalition fleet that did not have a couple of scouts (Klingon and Lyran scouts are wimpy ).

I kept knocking off their scouts and tugs that, after a while, they were scared to bring them in , which was quite an interesting dilemma for the Bad Guys.

[ravagon]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger

[2 Andro Doms vs a Fed SCS and a Klingon B10 ]

A fed SCS and a Klingon B10 versus 2 Dominators!!!

Yikes! Did the Andros not have sat ships or something? I wouldn't have wished to be in the Fed/Klingon players shoes.
Don't think I've seen that scenario before (As one who always liked the Andro's I think I'd remember it if I had ).

I agree about the BS/SB matchups. In F&E you can use directed damage but playing that sort of match-up in SFB could be rather problematic at best.