Scatter packs, Anti-Drones, and Overloaded Photons

There is a lively Star Fleet Battles group starting up in a nearby city. I bit the bullet, made the drive and dove in. (I’ve owned this game since I was in high school and have always wanted to play it more– and if I turn 40 without filling a map full of fighters and drones in a nasty eight hour fleet battle, then I’ll not have done my gaming duty.)

I showed up at the game store and was glad to see tons of gamers. There were a couple of Warhammer tables, some Magic people, and some Euro-gamers. I just can’t get over the Warhammer people. They have these beautiful miniatures of futuristic hover-speeder things… and they just sit there on the crowded tabletop… hardly moving. Don’t these people have a desire to turn, dive, and whoosh… risking death with insanely violent high-G turns? It looks like they just line up their units and start rolling dice…. Argh! Their miniatures look really really good, though… as do their nifty matched six sided die sets marking various units for damage and so forth. Sigh.

We had a good crowd of SFB people. The grizzled veteran was extremely well prepared with his giant maps, rules binders, and whole cases of counters and ship displays. Two young ladies had arranged for a tutorial in advance. Another grizzled veteran showed up to help out with them. I ended up playing a fellow IT professional who had brought his teenaged son along.

We let the teenager pick any ship he wanted: he chose the really cool Federation BCG which is rated as being worth 180 BPV points and is armed with four photons, a pair of extra drone racks, and a killer phaser suite. My ally agreed to go with drone and disrupter armed Kzinti ships. I picked out a 110 BPV medium cruiser for him while I took a 70 BPV heavy frigate.

The game was fairly straight-forward. We agreed in advance to not use electronic warfare rules or mid-turn speed changes. This was partly because we were collectively new and/or rusty, but mainly to keep the game moving.

The Federation ship stayed at speed six for the entire game. He launched scatter packs every turn and recovered the shuttles as he went. He had heavy shield reinforcement and (as I expected) held overloaded photon torpedoes.

I went speed 19 in my frigate so I could have a good turn mode. My ally in the medium cruiser went speed 21. Because the fed was moving so slow, this meant we could easily stay in range 9-15. I took pot shots at the fed’s #1 shield each turn and then turned away so that I could stay alive. My ally danced in much more closely.

The game mainly turned out to be a training lesson on how to defend against drones. The fed would be swamped with anywhere from six to ten drones each turn. His G-racks were loaded with enough anti-drones that he could easily shrug them off, though. In spite of that, one of my drones just barely squeaked past his defensive phaser fire on the first turn to damage the shield that I’d already scored disrupter fire against.

The Kzinti medium cruiser was armed with two anti-drone racks. Due to his ability to turn away at about the same speed as the fed’s drones, my ally was effectively immune to the Federation scatter packs. After the ADD-rack demonstration– and after getting stung on that first turn– the Federation captain decided to use his turn 2 and turn 3 scatter pack launches to neutralize the Kzinti medium cruiser scatter packs. (This father-son pair really liked scatterpack shuttles. I imagine the shuttle contractors of the Star Fleet Universe appreciated this fact a lot– especially given how stressed the economy is…!)

There were a few times where I had to be what I called “the SFB nerd.” It was a friendly game and all– and we were training up the next generation of wargamer– but I had to point out that we have to declare all of our fire before resolving it. If you can check for the success of your anti-drone fire before declaring your phaser fire, then you’re effectively operating under the Module J Aeigis fire control rules!

During the third turn it became critical for us to know how much ADD ammo the Federation had left… and just how exactly reloads work for those complicated type-G drone racks of his. I tried looking up the rules on the that, but was couldn’t figure it out with confidence under time pressure– most other rules I could look up faster than the other players could ask a veteran, though. Another point of confusion was how many drone reloads the medium cruiser had. I wasn’t explicit about the ship’s refit status and the drone rack display can be confusing if that’s up in the air. After launching three scatter packs, he very well could have been out of drones.

During turn three, my ally lowered his rear shield and transported a crew over to his empty scatter pack shuttle. This took him dangerously close to overload range. Other SFB fans were coming over to the table to comment on the tactical situation. I proudly pointed out how we could stay at range 9-15 all night as long as the Federation continued to stay at speed 6. I also gloated over the fact that the Federation was just about out of anti-drone ammunition! Ha ha!

I’m not quite sure what happened in the final impulses of the turn. Maybe we were tired and distracted. Maybe I called impulse #32 twice by accident. Or maybe it was due to the fact that the Federation battle cruiser moved after the Kzinti medium criuser instead of the way that the sequence of play dictates. Anyhow… the medium criuser was suddenly at range seven from the Federation vessel. The teenager fired… and all four overloaded photons blew the Kzinti ship to scrap! Argh!

The teenager was thrilled. During our scatter pack exchanges, he’d already been saying that this was the most fun they’d ever had playing Star Fleet Battles… but now he was talking about promoting his tactical officer and putting the medium cruiser into his kill file…. He joked that he was afraid his dad was going to make him walk home, but they seemed to leave the game store in good spirits….

Here are my observations about the game:

1) The caller needs to be a sequence of play Nazi. He needs to have a solid procedure that prevents goof-ups from occurring. An air-tight procedure is essential for the point of the game where you’re getting drowsy. The old cadet training manual had a pretty good impulse procedure chart that you’d step through marking each sub-impulse step with a counter as you moved through the list. I will make sure to have something like that for the next game.

2) In my opinion, maneuver is what starship combat is all about. How close do you come in? When do you fire? We didn’t really get to that sort of thing in this game, so we really weren’t doing much better than the Warhammer guys at the next table. I think every cadet training program should emphasize what’s going to happen if the enemy can control the tempo. The fact that we had a major goof-up on the “saber dancing” side doesn’t change the reality of this.

3) The obsession with scatter packs turned the game into a war between competing accountants. If we’d agreed not to use scatter packs, the tracking of ammo would have been basically irrelevant to the game and we’d probably have done a little more shooting and maneuvering. In my opinion, if you’re going to outlaw mid-turn speed changes and electronic warfare in order to “speed up the game”, then you probably want to outlaw scatter packs as well. (I really think that the “Commander’s Level Rules” should be taken all together or not used at all.) That said, people really enjoy launching scatter pack shuttles!

4) One thing that did not happen is that we Kzinti’s did not follow our scatter packs into overload range. We also did not launch drones at point blank range. Anti-drones made large drone waves effectively impotent in this game… and I’d really like to see drones do something in a game besides eat up a few points of phaser energy. Maybe some day….

5) We really need to be clear about refit status, reload rules, and drone rack capabilities before we start another Kzinti game!

Ah well. A good time was had by all, though. If we can set up a rematch, we should be in position to have a pretty good game now. The teenager was already fluent in movement, energy allocation, overloads, weapon status, and so forth. With just a little tiny more attention to detail… we can be playing “real” SFB!

Now about that G rack…. The Fed player has several choices. He can start the game with eight anti-drones loaded in the rack. In that case, he’ll have sixteen anti-drones available for reloads. Alternately, he could start with four regular drones in the rack– in that case, he’d have four drones for reloads and also eight anti-drones. He could also start with four anti-drones and two regular drones already loaded into the rack. In that case he’d have twelve antidrones and two more regular drones available for reloads. (In every case, one set reloads matches what is in the rack at the start of the game and one set of reloads is entirely made up of anti-drones.) If it is Y175, then the rack gets one more set of reloads that are identical to what the rack was loaded with at the start of the game– so don’t let your Fed opponents play in Y175!! Also… to reload a rack during a game, it must not be fired for an entire turn. (You declare it out of use in advance.) This can reload two spaces of “stuff”– ie, either two regular drones or four anti-drones.

SO… what this means is… that it is unlikely that the Federation BCH could have launched three fully loaded scatter packs and at the same time fired his ADD’s as much as he did. If he had so many drones available, then I’m pretty sure those racks would have at least been taken down for reloading at least once during those three turns…. (The BCG’s only got two drone racks, right…?)

Ah well…. We’ll get this…!

Promising Duelist Meets Fiery End In Climax of “Best American Duelist” Season Finale

Ever since I was in the third grade– back when I bought the original Car Wars black plastic “pocket box”– I’ve always wanted to have a legitimate ongoing Car Wars character that worked his way up from nothing, through a series of Amateur Night events, and into a career as a professional duelist. I can now finally say that I have achieved this life long dream. Almost.

After playing 11 “team amateur night” events consisting of two teams of 4 cars each duking it out at the Armadillo Autoduel Arena, the Amex Proving Grounds, Southtown Autoduel Arena, the Rubberway, and the Waco Double Drum, we were ready for the season finale of our special American Idol style campaign. We’d each started 32 Car Wars characters in each of 8 Killer Kart events. We then played our best 8 characters in a Stinger round. The best four of those graduated to a Joseph Special event. Finally, we played a couple of side games to give some border lined characters a chance to squeak ahead– in each of a 3 player Stinger game, a 3 player division 15 game, and a special 2029 “Rush Hour” Firehawk scenario. Our continuing characters in the Division 15 event drove vehicles pieced together from their salvage– they took their heavily damaged Joseph Specials, removed the destroyed ATG and RL, and retrofitted 5 Killer Kart and Stinger MG’s into their place. Both of our characters damaged their hard earned vehicles and had little to show for it, but our best characters were now aces, just on the edge of getting new skill levels in Driver and Gunner, and ready to pick up their first corporate sponsorships for the pro duel circuit. All they had to do was survive the next event and they’d be tooling around the freeways in a nice easily modified luxury sized death machine!

So finally, eight Hot Shot’s rolled into the Double Drum and began firing at each other. I made an incredibly stupid tactical error. I focused my fire on my opponent’s tough front armor where he fired mainly against my weak side armor. I also fired MG’s more often than FT’s. In three seconds, Buck Lescinsky was knocked unconscious with a clean shot through his right side armor. In four seconds, Tanaka found himself with no right side armor and wide open to easy attacks. He jerked the wheel in order to get fresh armor facing his opponent, but lost control and rolled into the wall. After five seconds, Fernando’s power plant caught fire and all his vehicular weapons burned up along with what was left of his power plant. Finally… after six seconds, my best character took a double blast of flame thrower damage through the right side… and using an off-the cuff application of the fifth edition fire rules, we declared that she’d taken four or five fire markers as a result. We checked for explosion… and in the final second of our campaign, Yahoo McScandle’s care exploded in the most cinematic moment of our 15 games.

I was stunned. Not only had I been completely shut out of the final event (I’d hoped to pick up at least one Hot Shot as a salvaged kill) but my best character in all my years of gaming had literally just gone up in smoke.

I tried to be gracious, pointing out that my opponent had clearly outplayed me… and also… that for the characters to matter, death had to be a factor… and also… that so many of the characters had survived other near death experiences up until now. The exceedingly dramatic nature of the death was epic enough to make it worth it. (Wasn’t it?)

So long, Yahoo. We had a good run.

Yahoo McScandles
Pres 16 (Career high of 21)
Dr 10
Gn 9
HG 3
Kills 5

Background:
———–
4/24/09 Team Amateur Night Game 12: Hot Shots at the Double Drum: Took a double blast of FT damage with at least four fire markers and then died in a massive fireball explosion.
2/14/09 Division 15 (3 Car Event): Custom Cars at the Double Drum: Drove a MG armed Joseph Special built from salvage. Narrowly survived driving over an Iron Horse’s mines, but was killed by a lucky shot while out of control.
1/17/08 Team Amateur Night Game 11: Stock Joseph Specials at the Double Drum: Yahoo crossed the Drum with Cornelius on his tail. Put paint sprayer on automatic. Ducked into the hideaway and stopped to take out a pedestrian shooting his SMG. Fired all RL ammo into Cornelius. Got out of reverse and slowly accelerated… finally killing Cornelius with an ATG shot. Cornelius’s car still got the head-on collision to take Yahoo down to exactly zero DP.
1/16/08 Team Amateur Night Game 10: Stock Stingers at the Rubberway: After a pass, her first opponent turned to go up a ramp, but because we came at each other from the left side of the map, we were both set up for such a turn. Because he rolled really poorly for his reflex roll, he went second… and Yahoo was able to turn with him—but on the outside! Yahoo turned in a little more to close the distance—at first just to try to get his target in arc for hits without the risk return fire. But then Yahoo rammed his opponent, knocking him off the ramp for a 12.5 foot drop with a 40 mph ram against the central platform to boot! It took him forever to cross the arena. Pastor Halfix had lost his power plant in an early pass and had coasted back into the action by cutting underneath the overpasses. Yahoo sped in, slowed down, and took him down with a final coup de gras.
12/29/08 Team Amateur Night Game 8: Stock Killer Karts at the Rubberway: Tailed an opponent early on… shot through the back to make a clean kill on the driver. Went up top as the last cars exchanged their weapons/vehicles. Slowed down to get back in control and was tailed by a weaponless opponent… rear ended and pushed across the board at 90 mph. Across the arena killed that the tailgating idiot, causing him to ram the wall at high speed in a spectacular crash.

Salvage:
——–
Killer Kart salvage: 4 points armor damage (2 back, 2 left), 10 MG shots left. [Salvage Value = $3848 - 50 * 4 - 25 * 10 = $3848 - 200 - 250 = $3398. Cash value = $1699.]
Stinger salvage #1: No front armor, one MG destroyed, 3 power plant hits, and 11 shots left in his MG. [Salvage Vale = $5268 - 460 - 1500 - 250 - 9 * 25 = $2833. Cash Value = $1416.]
Stinger salvage #2: 6 hits front, 10 hits left, one hit to power plant, tire damage: (5, 3, 2), and 36 shots left. [Salvage Vale = $5268 - 460 - 50 - 4 * 25 - 3 * 100 = $4358. Cash value = $2179.]
Stinger salvage #3: One MG destroyed, 1 DP damage to remaining MG with 13 shots left, power plant destroyed, front armor destroyed, 1 hit to right armor. [Salvage Vale = $5268 - 460 - 1500 - 100 - 7 * 25 - 500 = $2533. Cash Value = $1266.]
Joseph Special salvage: No weapons or armor left. (A good power plant, though!) Tire damage: 3, 4, 5, 5. [Salvage Value: $10340 - 2024 - 2500 - 1350 - 650 - 400 = $3416. Cash Value = $1708.]
(Total Salvage Value = $3398 + $2833 + $4358 + $2533 + 3416 = $16538.)
(Total Cash Value = $8269)

Yahoo McScandal’s Customized Joe
(This car was built from the above salvage and somewhat damaged in the Division 15 event.)
Mid-Sized, Standard Chassis, Large Power Plant, Improved Suspension, Puncture-resistant Front & Rear Tires, Driver (Targeting Computer), front: 3 linked MGs, back: 2 linked MGs, right: PS, Armor F35, R20, L20, B20, T4, U10, Accel. 5, HC 2, 4797 lbs, $ 14994