Federation Commander (ADB) - FCOL Tournament Scenario

Game: Federation Commander (ADB)
Scenario: FCOL Tournament Scenario
Participants: Jim "HeavyD" D, Myself
Time: Friday, Feb 25th ~ 6.30PM - 9.00PM & Friday, Mar 3rd ~ 6.30PM - 9.00PM

HeavyD is running the 2nd annual FCOL online tournament, so once again I offered to play him in the scenario to help get him some practice with his selected Empire (Gorn). There is also something of a debate going on in the FC Forums about Plasma armed Empires and if Plasma is 'balanced' in FC. Locally, we are leaning towards that it is balanced, as much as things can be balanced in FC that is.

Locally we've been playing FC for nearly two years. I was the only person in our group that had any experience playing SFB, and this experience was nearly 20+ years ago. When we started playing FC, we started with mostly direct fire Empires, only slowly trying out the Romulan and Gorn Empires. Thus we had not gotten a lot of experiance with Plasma Empries. However recently with these various debates at the FC forums we have been playing a lot of plasma empries to get some experiance with them.

I'll say that flying a plasma armed ship requires a very different approach to the game. It took us each a while to come to these conclusions and many a scenario was lost by each of us as we tried various things out with the three plasma empires. Today we are all pretty comfortable with the standard plasma tactics, thus we are also in the camp that thinks they are not as bad as what some fairly vocal people at ADB are saying they are.

Now, the FCOL scenario is a slight modification of the standard Origins scenario that ADB using for their 6-8 person annual tournament. The scenario is a 6 turn game using the standard points based victory system on a fixed map. There are limits on how many ships of any one class you can have (generally no more then two). Each player has 450 points to use to buy ships with. The FCOL version is further restricted by the online clients (which I dislike) only having certain ships available (mostly the newer empires are not all in yet).

So HeavyD had let slip that he had a new twist to the plasma tactics, a variation of the 'star castle'. He had selected a DN and two HDDs for his force. That's a lot of plasma tubes, 1 R, 4 S and 6 F in fact. He was playing against a Fed squadron in the first round so I volunteered to play Fed and took 2 NCLs and 2 DWs, 14 photons total.

The game on the first night was only two turns. He drove to the center of the map on the first turn and at the end of the 8th impulse launched a type R at one of my NCLs. I ended the turn 14-16 hexes from him with the plan of getting to range 12 and firing all my photons and phasers and turning away, while going base speed of 24 to keep the plasma away. Turn 2 went as planed, I went 24, he 0, I came in, fired my photons getting hits with three of eleven and scoring some phaser damage. The net result was one of his HDDs with a nearly downed number one shield. He also fired off two more S torps and two F torps, none of these, nor the R ever hit one of my ships as all I did was make a wide circle dragging the plasma with me. We stopped there for the night.

Last night we finished the scenario. I was pretty unmotivated to even finish but I wanted to play it out for HeavyD's sake. HeavyD continued to castle which is a great anti-Fed tactic. I didn't want to even bother trying to figure out a way of getting into range for overloaded photons, so the game was over quickly the only result was HeavyD scoring some damage with phaser fire on one of my NCLs. No plasma hit any of my ships in the game. The final result was a victory for HeavyD.

Federation Commander (ADB) - FCOL Tournament Scenario

Game: Federation Commander (ADB)
Scenario: FCOL Online Tournament Scenario
Participants: Jim "HeavyD" D and Myself
Time: Friday, Jan 21st ~ 5.45PM - 10.00PM

HeavyD is hosting the 2nd FCOL tournament, so I offered to play him a game of the tournament scenario. Each player has 450 points to buy ships with. He let me know that he'd be trying the Gorns, with one DN and two HDD's. I decided to try Tholian as I've not played them much at all. Also I thought that the combination of Web Casters and Web boxes used defensively would help deal with the Plasma that his ships were going to be dishing out. I selected an NDN, CC and a DD. Only the NDN had web casters while the other two had normal side mounted web boxes.

Turn one found us each in one corner of the map. I selected speed 8 while he went 16. Near the end of the first turn he shot a type R at my NDN. HeavyD had spread his ships out with about 4-5 hexes between them and the DN in the middle. At the end of Impulse 8 we exchanged alpha strikes. These were at around 25 hexes, and one of his HDD was not in range. I put all my fire into the near HDD nearly dropping the shield and doing a little Internal. His shots didn't do anything to me, as he shot at the NDN and I used batteries to deal with the damage.

Turn 2 had us closing again, I was going 16 and he was going 8, already being near the middle of the fixed map. Near the top of the turn I had the NDN shoot off one of its WC and lay a three hex 16 strength web in front of his R plasma, The plasma hit it the next impulse and I turned right. This effectively dealt with the plasma. I turned in on him and near the end of the turn we exchanged alpha's again. My three ships were equidistant from his DN and his undamaged HDD. I came out much better in the 2-hex range exchange as I was able to out maneuver him and two of his DN's plasma's were out of arc. Most of my fire went into the HDD, split over two shield as we were down a hex spine. I also had a good shot go into his #6 shield on his DN. He shot the HDD at my CC, carronading one of the plasma's and bolting the other, both hitting. He did about the same with the DN, opting to direct fire the two facing plasma's, these were targeted at my DN, my shield held but was greatly depleted. I got around 50-60 total internals on the HDD, aiming at power.

Turn 3 started with me making my first mistake in electing to go 16 again. He had one HDD with all three torps loaded, one torp on the damaged HDD and two yet unfired on the DN. I foolhardily turned into him wanting to take out the heavily damaged HDD and go for the slightly damaged one. He went 24 with the far HDD and this proved decisive. At the end of the first impulse when we fired I took out the remaining damaged HDD, but he was able to get off all of his weapons at my NDN, taking out most of the rear shield. The problem that I flew myself into was that I was facing his HDD which was two hexes away and during the launch phase he fired two of his torps (G & F) as did the DN which he HET'd towards me.

Turn 2 Alpha Position

My turn 2 Alpha results (note how close they are to predicted)

End of Turn 3, Impulse 1, when I resigned

I threw in the towel at this point. I could have HET'd away from the HDD's plasma's but they would still impact on the next impulse. I was also being chased by the two torps from the DN. I could have kept playing, taking the two torps from the DD on a fresh shield on my DN and that would have been ok, but his DN was in my six and my NDN now would have been nearly out of shields in the rear as well as two of the three front shields. So I opted to resign as I didn't want the spend the next three turns being mad at myself for playing so poorly. Also, HeavyD had one of his beat games against me to date. Lastly, if I threw in the towel tonight, we could play ASL the next day! ;)

A note about plasma ships and Gorns...I feel like this game really validated our current state of the art on plasma tactics. We used the soon to be released new rules allowing heavy plasma tubes to start with two turns of arming at the expense of available turn 1 batteries. This played a role in the outcome, as had I kept playing, I would have been facing a recharged type R tube on the Gorn DN. But my point was that HeavyD played his Gorns very well, to their strengths and I played very poorly, allowing myself to get hit by seeking plasma, a big no-no. These is a lot of rust one has to deal with when you don't play FC for an extended period.