2009 PBEM Trillion Credit Squadron Tournament

[Jeffr0]

Pursuit Turn Two:

Dagger rolls 10 against a fighter... [The Fire Control officer will keep his job after all…]

Dagger rolls 9 on surface table... DM +6 for armor (dropping due to last turn’s critical.) 15 = a useless Weapon-1 Result.

Dagger rolls 10 on radiation table... DM + 6. 16 = a useless Weapon-2 result.

Dagger rolls 9 on critical table... Power Plant disabled.

...

Enemy fighter captured!

 

[Ron Gianti]

Enemy fighter captured!

"We will now discuss the location of your hidden Rebel base"

Ominous whine as floating needler floats in behind the captain...

 

[far-trader]

"We will now discuss the location of your hidden Rebel base"

Ominous whine as floating needler floats in behind the captain...

:rofl:

Cool. So round two will be the Imperium attacking my hidden base will it

I'm liking this, it's almost campaign building in scope.

(the fighter pilot talks... )

 

[Bob Weaver]

Can I get in?

Gentlemen, I've been away from the boards for a week or so (RL keeps calling), but I just finished reading through this thread. I would very much like to get in on this. I've been using AMV's little HGS program for years now, but sadly lack any local opponents (give my kids a few years, though . . . ). So should I design a fleet and submit it to Jeffr0 for my assignment of opponent? If I read correctly, the specs are:
Max TL 12
Min Jump J-3
Min M-Drive 3G
Maximum Pilots 30
Gas Giant refueling required

By-the-book HG designs using HGS.

Did I miss anything?

Cheers,

Bob W.

 

[Jeffr0]

Welcome, Bob.

Now that we've run a test event, we are ready for a bigger/uglier round-robin to the specfications that you outline.

You can see in the notes here for the test-match what minimum requirements you'll need to meet in order to be competitive. (In other words, get at least a model 4 or 5 in your fighters/riders.... Possibly get multiple batteries to fire in your big ships....)

We should probably nail down the "fog of war" bits we were improvising: if someone shoots it at you, then you know what it is. If someone uses a defense, then you know its specs as well. Otherwise, all you know is the tonnage and the configuration. If a ship of yours can't hit a particular enemy vessle, you won't know for sure that it is impossible until the end of the second turn that you fire at it. (I made this stuff up. Completely.)

All die rolls will be recorded for analysis in the post mortem.

I don't see us starting this until early January. I'll be pleased to run this with three players-- assuming Ron Gianti and far trader are back in. More would be welcome-- it is not a big deal to referee these games, I don't think....

 

[far-trader]

I'm still in for sure, but as you note it will be in the new year. The holiday pace is picking up and I'm so far behind on some of that.

The Christmas countdown is into single digit days!

 

[far-trader]

...

We should probably nail down the "fog of war" bits we were improvising: if someone shoots it at you, then you know what it is. If someone uses a defense, then you know its specs as well. Otherwise, all you know is the tonnage and the configuration. If a ship of yours can't hit a particular enemy vessel, you won't know for sure that it is impossible until the end of the second turn that you fire at it. (I made this stuff up. Completely.)

It seemed mostly good to me. I figure performance specs would be known in short order as well. Powerplant on the first turn just from energy signature. Maneuver drive and agility (of the line anyway, so the lowest of all ships in combat) as the fleet maneuvers.

Depending how you read the rules many stats would be known from a hit. The attacker getting to choose damage allocations seems to suggest fine data of the various areas.

 

[far-trader]

...By-the-book HG designs using HGS.

Did I miss anything?

A couple clarifications and expansions of the HG rules in TCS maybe, if you don't have it. Minor stuff, nothing to lose sleep over, but I do have a half done list of them put together from when I was going through them. Drop me a PM if you need it and I'll forward it once it's polished a bit.

 

[Bob Weaver]

My BCS fleet

OK, here's my first fleet entry. I took a stock Type-C merc cruiser, stretched it to 900 tons, took out the carried craft & replaced them with six custom fighters, also pulling out the "ships troops" staterooms to make space. Couldn't find a way to make a nuclear damper fit, though.

Spoiler:

6 x Tactical Class Fighters

Ship: Skirmish
Class: Tactical
Type: Fighter
Architect: Weaver

USP FF-0306A41-100000-00002-0 MCr 65.455 30 Tons
Bat Bear 1 Crew: 1
Bat 1 TL: 12

Cargo: 0.200 Fuel: 3.000 EP: 3.000 Agility: 3
Fuel Treatment: Fuel Scoops
Architects Fee: MCr 0.655 Cost in Quantity: MCr 52.364

1 x Strategist-C Class Mercenary Cruisers

Ship: Zhukov
Class: Strategist-C
Type: Mercenary Cruiser
Architect: Weaver

USP CC-95333F2-100000-34003-0 MCr 662.469 900 Tons
Bat Bear 31 1 Crew: 29
Bat 31 1 TL: 12

Cargo: 1.500 Frozen Watch Fuel: 351.000 EP: 27.000 Agility: 0 Shipboard Security Detail: 1 Pulse Lasers
Craft: 6 x 30T Fighter, 1 x 4T Air/Raft
Fuel Treatment: Fuel Scoops and On Board Fuel Purification
Backups: 1 x Model/4fib Computer
Architects Fee: MCr 6.625 Cost in Quantity: MCr 529.975

Squadron requires 8 pilots
Squadron cost: Mcr 997.023
Squadron Tonnage: 1,080.000 Td
Squadron consists of: 7 Vessels (1 Starships, 0 Spaceships, 6 Small Craft)
Total squadron crew: 35

Total squadron ships troops: 1
Total fuel tonnage: 369.000 Tons
Percentage gas giant capable: 100.000%

No idea if this fleet will work. Are we going to use the common "relative agility" house rule or the HG2 rule as printed?

Best Regards,

Bob W.

 

[Bob Weaver]

It seemed mostly good to me. I figure performance specs would be known in short order as well. Powerplant on the first turn just from energy signature. Maneuver drive and agility (of the line anyway, so the lowest of all ships in combat) as the fleet maneuvers.

Depending how you read the rules many stats would be known from a hit. The attacker getting to choose damage allocations seems to suggest fine data of the various areas.

I've never tried using "fog of war" intelligence in an HG game, but I'm fine with including that. I tend to go for the biggest ship first, or whoever has the meson guns and worry about the rest later.

Bob W.

 

[Jeffr0]

Bob... you might want to hide your stats there before the other guys see them.

You can email them to me at autoduelist AT gmail DOT com when it's about time to start.

 

[Jeffr0]

No idea if this fleet will work. Are we going to use the common "relative agility" house rule or the HG2 rule as printed?

Hmm... never heard of this...

 

[far-trader]

Bob... you might want to hide your stats there before the other guys see them.

The easiest way to do that (hide the info but allow others to look) is to use the sblock code. Just add (contents of quoted without spaces ) "[ sblock ]" at the start and "[ /sblock ]" at the end.

You should see something like this:

Spoiler:

shhh, secrets here...

And then we simply allow that anyone playing won't peek until after it's been played out, but anyone just following the games can have a look.

 

[Bob Weaver]

Bob... you might want to hide your stats there before the other guys see them.

You can email them to me at autoduelist AT gmail DOT com when it's about time to start.

Done,
Thanks for pointing that out, and thanks to you, Far-Trader, for giving me the code. I'd never tried that before.

Cheers,

Bob W.

 

[Bob Weaver]

relative agility

Hmm... never heard of this...

It works in the same way that you compare attacker/target computer ratings. So instead of your AGL-6 ship always getting a defensive DM of -6, an attacker's agility cancels out some of your DM. I suppose this could weasel out into an Agl-6 ship shooting at an Agl-0 ship with a +6 DM. Never had that situation come up.
I didn't invent this house rule, I probably saw it on this board somewhere. I think the generating idea was a way to make fighters more viable at higher TLs. Agl-6 fighters are very doable, and mitigates somewhat the massive disadvantage of having small computers. I'm not tied to using this rule, I just put it out there for consideration.

Cheers,

Bob W.

 

[OIT]

Like Bob, I have also been an infrequent frequenter of the boards of late, but I too would like to play. I could probably have a "fleet" done by this weekend. Are we staying at 1BCr or bumping the budget up to something like 10BCr (squadron of small ships)?

OIT

 

[Jeffr0]

We're staying the same just so people can have a clue of the dynamics before we start (thanks to the test match).

Wow... with 4 players, that'd be almost a real tournament!

With a round robin... that'd be everyone playing three games simulataneously. Is that okay with everyone?

(Also... we'll probably wait until after the holidays to start the shooting, etc.)

 

[Ron Gianti]

It works in the same way that you compare attacker/target computer ratings. So instead of your AGL-6 ship always getting a defensive DM of -6, an attacker's agility cancels out some of your DM. I suppose this could weasel out into an Agl-6 ship shooting at an Agl-0 ship with a +6 DM.

I've been running through my own simulations and looking at all the hit charts, etc for weeks. I think that fighters are just about useless unless we come up with something like this rule.

However, I hate to start implementing "House Rules" right off the bat, especially for us newbies. Its bad enough to have to learn something new, then have someone tell you about a house rule before you even understand the need for one. It makes you feel like you're hopelessly behind.

I suggest we play with the rules as written, then come up with house rules for round 2, but I'm happy to do whatever the group decides.

jm .02

With a round robin... that'd be everyone playing three games simulataneously. Is that okay with everyone?

Sounds good to me. Maybe we could all take turns being the GM for someone else's match?

 

[aramis]

Realize, Ron, several of the players have been playing TCS since the 1980's.

 

[Ron Gianti]

Realize, Ron, several of the players have been playing TCS since the 1980's.

Ahh, yes. I am a little late to the party