The First Chronicles of the Star League

[WKE235]

Some of the more interesting findings from this battle

 

0) Pete does write the text summaries at the end of battle reports, they aren't automated. That can be a lot of work. And as the description shows in this one, he's not to bad at it.

 

1) You have limited control over the order your ships jump through a Warp Point in. IE... The Vindicator was in Deploy location 1, all the other ships in Deploy location 2. But, the Vindicator did not jump first. I was under the impression that that Deploy Location drove the order. Nope. It may influence it ... but you can't control your jump order.

 

2) According to Pete, in each battle round, "the enemy picks a target and then tries to beat that pick by picking again, hoping for a more interesting target (typically one closer to the front)". In other words, pick a random target, pick again, fire on the closer one. There is nothing about size or threat factor or anything else. Hence the defender had the ability to place 45 1000 ton ships in deploy location 1. That skewed the random chance so most of the time (until they were whittled down), these screen ships were fired on instead of at actual ships with dangerous weapons. As Pete put it in an email... "mostly Dog Meats were killed early on". Or as he stated in this thread, "the Dog Meats absorbed a ton of firepower early in the fight".

 

3) Again according to Pete, one way to defeat this screen effect is to have high enough Fire control so you can fire on multiple ships in a round. Now, the FOB gives the Vindicator a Fire Control Rating of Phenomenal. My thought ... a Phenomenal rating with 4000 weapons should mean I won't concentrate all my fire on one ship, I would spread it around a lot. And as a result, all those tiny ships would go "POOF". Apparently not. While it was spread about ... it wasn't as big of a spread as I might have imagined. Just imagine the Vindicator targetting that Type B Plasma Torpedo on a little ole 1000 ton Dog Meat. What a waste!

 

 

What was most frustrating about this battle? They way in which ships are selected for firing on takes nothing into account for size or threat, and, there is no way you can set your orders to influence your target selection. I can just imagine the brief set of battle orders on that first Dahak entering the system (with it's Fair FOB Fire Control so likely it could only fire on one ship) "Ensign -- Entering the Diocles system Sir. Detecting multiple targets. Nearest ships are 45 1000 ton Dog Meats. The dangerous cruisers and heavy cruisers have been detected behind them. Captian--Fine. Target all weapons on oh say, that one 1000 ton ship there and fire. Ensgin -- But sir, what about all those cruisers, the ones with weapons starting to fire on us? Captain -- Hey, I saw that Dog Meat first, and there are a lot of them close by, so blast that one".

 

I had a good understanding of what was waiting for me (though more ships could have moved in) as I had sent in a 1000 ton Gnat trader to garner what was a waiting the previous turn. If there was some order to set target priorities, I would have set the Heavy Cruisers (as the NSI ships with most of the fire power due to adequate weapons) very high, and the Dog Meats at near zero. But we lack that ability.

 

Let me put this another way. Imagine this battle is taking place in the Galactic Arena with todays contestants, the Concordites and the NSI. I'm up in the stand rooting for my team of course watching the action. And as the battle develops, I'm up there jumping up and down screaming like a madman. "Damn you, you stupid &^$&, why are you firing on that 1000 ton Corvette while that Heavy Cruiser pummels you! Stop firing on the little ships and fire back at the big ugly ones! Are you ships so stupid that you can't see those big ships are the danger!!". Haven't you all played a computer game like that, one where YOU take over controlling your ships in battle since you know how to make a difference while the computer doesn't? Similar?

[PhaseDragon]

Still, it was an awesome battle description.

[Lord Xaar]

1)  You have limited control over the order your ships jump through a Warp Point in.  IE... The Vindicator was in Deploy location 1, all the other ships in Deploy location 2.  But, the Vindicator did not jump first.  I was under the impression that that Deploy Location drove the order.  Nope.  It may influence it ... but you can't control your jump order. 

 

2) According to Pete, in each battle round, "the enemy picks a target and then tries to beat that pick by picking again, hoping for a more interesting target (typically one closer to the front)".  In other words, pick a random target, pick again, fire on the closer one.  There is nothing about size or threat factor or anything else.  Hence the defender had the ability to place 45 1000 ton ships in deploy location 1.  That skewed the random chance so most of the time (until they were whittled down), these screen ships were fired on instead of at actual ships with dangerous weapons.  As Pete put it in an email... "mostly Dog Meats were killed early on".  Or as he stated in this thread, "the Dog Meats absorbed a ton of firepower early in the fight".   

 

3)  Again according to Pete, one way to defeat this screen effect is to have high enough Fire control so you can fire on multiple ships in a round.  Now, the FOB gives the Vindicator a Fire Control Rating of Phenomenal.  My thought ... a Phenomenal rating with 4000 weapons should mean I won't concentrate all my fire on one ship, I would spread it around a lot.  And as a result, all those tiny ships would go "POOF".  Apparently not.  While it was spread about ... it wasn't as big of a spread as I might have imagined.  Just imagine the Vindicator targetting that Type B Plasma Torpedo on a little ole 1000 ton Dog Meat.  What a waste!

WKE,

 

I suspect this battle would have looked quite different if it had not been a warp point assualt. Your "phenomenal" fire control was due to the Battleship which didn't warp in for several pulses (it seems). Since it wasn't there to coordinate target selection, well... all those 1000 ton ships are good targets....

 

We know also that ships' systems are negatively affected by warping, that it takes a round or two to operate at full efficiency. So the ships that warped in would try to select the most sensible target shown on their static-beset electronics, and having a picking rubric that selects ships closest to your own seems fairly logical. Unfortunately, for your Dahak's there were very large ships training fire on them one by one, while they in turn were cooking Dog Meat. Frustrating, sure. But it does seem reasonable given what we know about the combat system at this point.

 

How would this have looked if the battle occurred over a planet? It seems given the number of weapons and the bridge control rating you had that you would have been able to spread fire very effectively, knocking the 1000-tonners out in the first round or two. It's likely that many more of your Dahak's would have survived.

 

Now, perhaps there is a way to get the targeting done more intelligently. It probably could be set up so that your ships would target based on ship class. However, an opponent could still try things to "trick" whatever scheme was set up.

 

I think the 1000-ton screening ship strategy is a valid one, and it did what it should. This is not a particularly efficient strategy though, and I think Pete pointed out a good portion of the trouble with it in his post. It will be useful (and more easy to implement) in some cases more than others, so I don't expect everyone will be rushing to crank out Dog Meat... Just one more tool in the tool box, as they say.

 

 

 

Looking forward to the next installment of the NSI/Concordium saga.

 

 

-LX

 

 

and, yes, that was an awesome battle description...

[Locklyn]

We know also that ships' systems are negatively affected by warping, that it takes a round or two to operate at full efficiency.

 

Last I heard it wasn't so, has Pete changed this?

[Locklyn]

Pete,

Any chance of us getting the battle reports to also show:

 

1) Effect of Leaders

2) Effect of Installations in system

3) Racial Comparison effectiveness

 

?

 

Cheers

/Locklyn

[Ur Lord Tedric]

[Very illuminating, thanks Ken...]

 

Did this battle contain the newly added bit of range stuff at the bottom that we've seen from someone else's? We ask, because we just don't get it at the moment - Pete, can you elucidate?

 

In addition, is there any indication of what the fighters and drones did, or what their effect was? Or is this not added yet.

 

One thing does make sense, though, from the questions posed. The WP order of transit is not dependent on the DepLoc, but the ship class (A, B, H, etc). That detail isn't shown on the report and perhaps it could/should be? Only WKE can comment on whether it makes more sense due to that factor?

 

Thanks again,

 

Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric

[Lord Xaar]

We know also that ships' systems are negatively affected by warping, that it takes a round or two to operate at full efficiency.

 

Last I heard it wasn't so, has Pete changed this?

Was something publically posted to the contrary? I must have missed it.

 

Mea culpa.

[Locklyn]

This is a common misconception, actually the rules say nothing at all about this being so apart from the fictious blurb in the beginning about the assault.

The rules say this though:

 

Ships defending a Warp Point arrival location are at a significant advantage. The width of the Warp Point from the aggressor’s point of view severely restricts

the number of ships that can traverse the Warp Point during battle conditions. Note that the width can vary for the same two-way Warp Point, depending on

which way your ships are travelling. During times of peace, ships appear at their leisure, reform and move on. Battle conditions change everything. Only so

many ships can fit within the confines of the Warp tunnel at any given point, restricting the number that can materialize in the target system at the same

instant. Several seconds, at the very least, will often pass before another wave of attacking ships can materialize and make their presence felt in a battle. The

defenders are all on station, however, and will undoubtedly be pouring massive firepower into the poor outnumbered attackers who happen to be unlucky

enough to materialize first. To counter this, attacking ships are sequenced by their battle formations, with Assault ships up front. The following chart shows

where each battle formation lies when it comes time to see which ships make their jumps first. Assault ships try to appear first, followed by Battle Line

vessels, but ships from other Battle Formations may very well appear before them

 

 

The Naval Combat supplement says this

When appearing through a warp point, a fleet has been placed in an unusually risky position. Each combat round, a certain number

of ships can appear on the other side of the warp point. This is dictated primarily by the warp point Class and can be determined

from a successful Survey mission.

You might consider using Assault ships—those designed to take severe punishment—and assigning them to Deployment Location #

1. If they happen to appear through the warp point first, they would suffer massive enemy firepower. That’s why you designed them

to take the heat. If they can survive, your remaining ships, which might be assigned to Deployment Location #’s 2-12, have a chance

to arrive and begin contributing to the fight. Eventually, enough of your ships might show up to turn the tide.

 

So basically the one advantage of being one the defending side of a WP is that the attacker can only get that many ships through at one time depending on his warp bubbles

 

I also forgot earlier to say Kudos to Ken for sharing this information! The GGT are routing for your victory over the nefarious NSI!

 

Cheers

 

/Locklyn

[RTGPete]

Fire Control is a fleet rating, calculated by adding up the value of the bridge items in the fleet and dividing by total tonnage. It's by tonnage and not by # of ships on your side. The Dahaks probably added enough tonnage to drop the attacking force's Fire Control rating.

 

I'll definitely provide the exact bridge #'s to allow for precise determination of fleet Fire Control ratings. This would be a good thing to add to the FOB results.

[WKE235]

Lord Xaar --

 

If this was a fleet on fleet battle over a planet, things would have gone differently. All of my fleets firepower would have been there from round 1. With multiple targets to shoot at, the NSI ships firepower would have been spread out instead of concentrated on single Dahaks like early in the warp battle. And the Dog Meats would have been dispatched more quickly. The net result would be more fire power directed to enemy capital combat ships and they would be hit earlier. Just a guess, but I suspect that it would mean several of the Dahaks would have survived, perhaps even with little damage, along with less damage on the Vindicator.

 

Interestingly, this type of screening strategy has a big weakness -- Fire Control. As races advance techs and the fire control rating of fleets and ships go up and up and up, multiple ships can be fired at and a screen like this can be blasted away in the first round. That is unless there is something in the techs from the defense side which helps counter increasing fire controls?

 

Another item: FOB's may give the Fire Control Rating of a ship. But the Fire Control rating of a Fleet is related to all the ships in the fleet ... and the FOB does not give out the Fleet FOB. Hence I did not realize my Dahak's, the oldest ships in the fleet and lowest in tech, drug down the Phenomenal Fire Control Rating the Vindicator had to something less effective for the actual battle. I wonder if similar things happen with Sensors or other ratings? When you design a ship you may have to overdesign some aspects, if you want to get the most out of the ship once placed in a fleet with lesser / older units.

[WKE235]

[Very illuminating, thanks Ken...]

 

Did this battle contain the newly added bit of range stuff at the bottom that we've seen from someone else's? We ask, because we just don't get it at the moment - Pete, can you elucidate?

 

In addition, is there any indication of what the fighters and drones did, or what their effect was? Or is this not added yet.

 

One thing does make sense, though, from the questions posed. The WP order of transit is not dependent on the DepLoc, but the ship class (A, B, H, etc). That detail isn't shown on the report and perhaps it could/should be? Only WKE can comment on whether it makes more sense due to that factor?

 

Thanks again,

 

Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric

According to Pete, Formation and Mission Class are the same thing. The Vindicator was built with Mission Class A (Assault). The Dahak's were Mission Class B (Battle Line). I selected Standard Line for the Force Battle Plan as that meant the "A" ship would be in deploy location 1, and the "B" in location 2. Now, if the transit through the WP was dependent on deploy location, the Vindicator would have gone through first. But that did not happen. If the transit was dependent on Ship Class (Mission Class), then the "A" ship, the Vindicator, should have gone through first. But that did not happen. Pete has stated that basically you can't predict or control the order of your ships through a WP. It is influenced by ship classes and deploy locations and the like. But...

 

 

1200 Interceptors, 1200 Light Drones, and 800 Standard Drones entered the battle. These are great weapons in that they keep fighting as long as any friendly vessal remains, until they are destroyed. Though it doesn't say it in the battle (I got from something else on my turn sheets), 374 Interceptors, 146 Light Drone, and 211 Standard Drone were alive at the end of the battle. And this despite the 15000 Laser CIDS on the War Cruiser and all the other CIDS on the other ships. Think of it this way. 10 Dahak ships entered. A good chunk of their firepower was drone/fighter related. And even as those ships were destroyed, some of the firepower remained on the battle field chasing and blasting the enemy to the end. I think I can see why MM and the Eyre have done so well with this branch of tech.

 

 

(One note: I asked Pete if there was a way to reclassify the mission of ships. Sorry, there is no way. Once a "B", always a "B". I would have loved to reclassify the oldest Dahaks as class "D" for drone for this battle. Long ago they were top of the line and "B" made sense. But as the ship gets older, you cannot reclassify them to other duties as their tech becomes obsolete. Stuck with Battle Line, they faced obliteration on the battle field proudly. Still, I wish there wasa reclassify order).

[General Miles Avatar]

I took particular intrest in that aspect of the battle. There are some very nice space fighters down that particular tech tree. The Interceptors we start with so they can be considered gen 1 weapons. the drones are a little further up the tree but not much. Even against that amount of massed CIDS some survived. I would say a decent percentage. Imagine what thousands of 3rd or 4th gen fighters such as attack fighters and bombers can do? If they are sufficiently backed up with other weapons such as missiles beams torpedos etc etc then they will become a force to be reckoned with.

[Ozboym]

[snip]

Side 1: Napatha Solarum Imperium # 3535 Fire Control: 1

[snip]

**DESTROYED** [61st] TR Gnat (Trader - 1,000 tons) [integrity: 600] (Green, Resolute)

200 Cargo Bay, 200 Fuel Tankage, 1 Mk I Computer System, 1 Mk I Medium Range Sensor, 1 Mk I Nuclear Jump Drive

1 Mk I Space Mine Scanner, 2 Mk II Nuclear Engine

Maneuverability: 1.000, Point Defense: 300.005, Sensors: 1.000

[snip]

A very interesting battle report, thanks for sharing it.

 

It raises some questions like:

 

1) Is the 1 being reported for each fleets fire control accurate? It seems rather low.

 

2) How does an unarmed frieghter manager a point defense rating of 300?

[RTGPete]

One note: I asked Pete if there was a way to reclassify the mission of ships. Sorry, there is no way. Once a "B", always a "B". I would have loved to reclassify the oldest Dahaks as class "D" for drone for this battle. Long ago they were top of the line and "B" made sense. But as the ship gets older, you cannot reclassify them to other duties as their tech becomes obsolete. Stuck with Battle Line, they faced obliteration on the battle field proudly. Still, I wish there wasa reclassify order).

 

No order for it right now, but I will definitely add a way for you to reclassify your ships.

[Ur Lord Tedric]

According to Pete, Formation and Mission Class are the same thing. The Vindicator was built with Mission Class A (Assault). The Dahak's were Mission Class B (Battle Line). I selected Standard Line for the Force Battle Plan as that meant the "A" ship would be in deploy location 1, and the "B" in location 2. Now, if the transit through the WP was dependent on deploy location, the Vindicator would have gone through first. But that did not happen. If the transit was dependent on Ship Class (Mission Class), then the "A" ship, the Vindicator, should have gone through first. But that did not happen. Pete has stated that basically you can't predict or control the order of your ships through a WP. It is influenced by ship classes and deploy locations and the like. But...

Thanks Ken,

 

That's a bit disappointing as I thought the rules were pretty explicit:

 

Ships defending a Warp Point arrival location are at a significant advantage. The width of the Warp Point from the aggressor’s point of view severely restricts

the number of ships that can traverse the Warp Point during battle conditions. Note that the width can vary for the same two-way Warp Point, depending on

which way your ships are travelling. During times of peace, ships appear at their leisure, reform and move on. Battle conditions change everything. Only so

many ships can fit within the confines of the Warp tunnel at any given point, restricting the number that can materialize in the target system at the same

instant. Several seconds, at the very least, will often pass before another wave of attacking ships can materialize and make their presence felt in a battle. The

defenders are all on station, however, and will undoubtedly be pouring massive firepower into the poor outnumbered attackers who happen to be unlucky

enough to materialize first. To counter this, attacking ships are sequenced by their battle formations, with Assault ships up front. The following chart shows

where each battle formation lies when it comes time to see which ships make their jumps first. Assault ships try to appear first, followed by Battle Line

vessels, but ships from other Battle Formations may very well appear before them.

 

Jump Order (Battle Formation)

 

1 A (Assault)                7 D (Drone)            13 Y (Special #2)

2 B (Battle Line)          8 V (Carrier)          14 Z (Special #3)

3 H (Heavy Screen)      9 S (Standoff)        15 P (PDC)

4 L (Light Screen)      10 T (Transport)        16 K (Orbital Command Group)

5 E (Escort)                11 O (Auxiliary)        17 N (Non Combatants)

6 G (Missile)              12 X (Special #1)

 

Now it does indeed say "try".

 

Whilst more than happy to support the defence aspects of the game and the WP Defence has to be the best example of this, we have to comment that this particular instance doesn't seem to be in the attacker's favour at all.

 

Surely it would at least be reasonable that the attacker could determine the order in which ships jumped through the WP?

 

Pete - would you consider fixing the Jump order by Ship Class permanently? - We're just thinking back to those great books by Weber & White!!!!

 

It would allow at least some control vis a vis the Force Battle Plans where you can at least try and fix the formations and DepLocs to keep those weak ships in the rear areas - albeit not completely safe....

 

Chief Warmaster to Ur-Lord Tedric