• Registered: 2010-03-09
  • Posts: 630

Topic: KA Comments

Today, I played with a newbie (never played starmada nor even any other space op game), and he did like that. It was easy to teach, the biggest difficilty was about writing correct move orders using 3.0 rules, which are IMHO very realistic.
As my friend was a newbie, I designed two fleets, a fed including a CC, CA, CL and FF, and a Klin including a D7, 2 D6 and a F5.
I played first the Fed, and the battle was very one sided. We played on a small surface, with less than 20 hexes between us at deploiement. At the end of turn 3, after making some stupid maneuvers, the Klins were destroyed and I lost only one ship. We forgot to use drones, and IIRC, my friend and I forgot to multiply ROF of its phasers.
As the game was very short, we swapped sides.
Again, the blood was drawn during first turn, and two of its ships were damaged whilst one of mine ( a D6) was destroyed before launching drone.
6 drones were launched and impacted next turn, with great effect. Fed drones were... awful and almost inefficient.
I lost a second then a third ship, whilt he lost both its CL and FF.
But, his CC had lost all its warp nacelles and impulse power and was moving wuickly toward a planet, which it impacted after two turns of desperate moves.
I only had an almost intact D6, whilst he had a damaged CA.
We played cat and mouse during two turns, then I lock my phasers and disruptors and killed it.
A much better game.
Some comments:
I wasn't aware at first, but the ranged-based rof trait of phasers 1 and 2 is VERY powerful!!!
At short range, a fed CA can litterally cut down in two a similar ship. I feel that's much too powerful for my taste.
Drone works OK, albeit in a very different manner than SFB/FC. We didn't try to shot them down, and their damages were low for the number of drones that impacted their target. All in all, that's good.
Torpedoes (photons and dirsuptors) were OK, very good and very different in the end.

I am ready to play again KA...

Marc

  • Registered: 2008-03-27
  • Posts: 24

Re: KA Comments

The second game sounded like a lot of fun.  I'm going to have to break out my copy of Klingon Armada to try out soon.

With regards to this comment:

"At short range, a fed CA can litterally cut down in two a similar ship. I feel that's much too  powerful for my taste."

Sounds like SFB to me.  A Klingon D7 that's at Range 1 to a relatively undamaged Fed CA is pretty much toast.

  • Registered: 2010-03-09
  • Posts: 630

Re: KA Comments

The second game sounded like a lot of fun.

Mainly because we fought to the death. If we hap stop the game when one of us reached half its budget in losses, it would have been dmuch shorter.

"At short range, a fed CA can litterally cut down in two a similar ship. I feel that's much too powerful for my taste."

Sounds like SFB to me. A Klingon D7 that's at Range 1 to a relatively undamaged Fed CA is pretty much toast.

Well, a fed CA has 4 photons and up to 6 phasers 1 frontally (easily 4 can bear at a front target).
That means that at short range (up to 5 hexes), photons can inflict in average 6.5 damages (about 11 if overloaded), and the four phasers 1 can inflict 4 damages, if my comptutations are good.
In average, that means that such an alpha strike will produce about 5 hull damages. Not enough to kill a D7 (9 hulls), but enough to cripple it.
On the other side, aside drones, a D7 will have 3 ph 1, at least 1 ph 2, and 4 disruptors. At short range, the damages inflicted to the fed CA will be lower (the ph 2 being of course less powerful, mainly because its range is slightly shorter and its ACC is 5+ instead of 4+, buit otherwise the same), and that the disruptors are less powerful too.

BTW, during our games, we had to decide if photons or disruptors had to be fired overloaded. Both are treated differently, photos becoming slow-firing, whilst disprutors lose accuracy.
Usually, at short range, go for overloaded photons. They are almost garanteed to hit, and at this range, your ship will usually be crippled or worse. Also, it happended that that ship was already destroyed before firing, thus there was no reason to fire non-overloaded ones.
The disruptors are more delicate in this aspect. They don't become slow-firing in overload mode, but lose ACC.
Ironically, when I decided not to fire them in overload mode at short range (thus hitting on a 4+), the miss were due to 3 or less DR results. smile

Marc

  • Registered: 2008-03-27
  • Posts: 24

Re: KA Comments

Your post actually convinced me to give the game a shot (I've always planned to, just never found the time).  So I tested it solitaire and had a lot of fun.

The Feds slaughtered the Klingons.  I believe it was:
Feds: DNG, BCJ, CC
Klingons: D7C, D7, D6, 2xF5, E4

The one big mistake I made was forgetting I intended to have 2 F5's in the battle, only had 1 until Turn 4!  It only missed one firing opportunity and I also realized that I hadn't fired the GHI arc phasers from one of the Fed ships, so it probably evened out.

The second big mistake from the Klingon's point of view was missing with almost every weapon on the first turn (ie, missing the accuracy rolls.. never even got to most of the impact rolls).

Lessons learned:
Ranges are a bit expanded.  I think this is what you were getting at.  The Klingons coasted way too close and saw their ships get shredded by the Phaser 1's and Photons.  But I also didn't use the drones well (or at all until after the first exchange of fire).  Looking back, I probably would have launched as much as possible on Turn 1 or 2, moved fast enough to stay close to the drone wave and launch another wave the turn before I expected direct fire weapons: hoping to force the Feds to turn off, or else use most of their weapons on the drones on the first battle pass.

Favorite moment was when the E4, down to 1 hull and no shields, but with full engines and weapons, timed its movement to end up 1 hex in front of the slightly wounded Fed command cruiser.  It actually did nice damage and survived the CC's weapons (4 hits, no hull) that were fired at it, leaving it up to the Fed DNG to take it out.  Another 'wow' moment was one Fed overloaded torpedo taking out an F5 (all 5 damage hit the hull).

It has a good SFU feel to it, but will definitely require unlearning assumptions from Star Fleet Battles.

  • Registered: 2010-03-09
  • Posts: 630

Re: KA Comments

gambler wrote:

The one big mistake I made was forgetting I intended to have 2 F5's in the battle,

Compared to the remainder of the fleet, one F5 is not much. For info, I forgot to use the faceted shield correctly (all shield hits were decided by the defending player, instead of rolling a die for every one to determine if the targeted shield was hit or not) and I thought that drone hit on a 5+...

The second big mistake from the Klingon's point of view was missing with almost every weapon on the first turn (ie, missing the accuracy rolls.. never even got to most of the impact rolls).

That mistake is usually corrected by killing the weapon officer. :twisted:

It has a good SFU feel to it, but will definitely require unlearning assumptions from Star Fleet Battles.

Sure, like drone being used in a manner completely different, Ph 1 & 2 being much more powerful (in fact, as all weapons compared to the way ships absorb damage), the way shields are working, etc.
I prefer the starmada way than the SFB/FC way, personnally.

Marc

  • Registered: 2008-03-27
  • Posts: 24

Re: KA Comments

I still prefer SFB as my game of choice in the SFU, but nothing will beat Starmada for massive battles in the SFU. smile

I do like Starmada a lot, great system.

  • Registered: 2010-03-09
  • Posts: 630

Re: KA Comments

I've played a lot of SFB games, since the release of the first ed (about 28 years ago), and enjoyed it a lot, until I got fed up with the system. Don't worry, it happened to me with many games.
And as I grew older, I tend to prefer simple games, especially if you want to introduce new players. I remember a time where my favorite games were using hundred of pages of rules. Now I prefer a game that use no more than ten pages of rule to begin with.
I surely lost a lot of neurones... :cry:

Marc

  • Registered: 2022-11-15
  • Posts: 1,424

Re: KA Comments

Madpax, I still HAVE all my old SFB materials.....

Here's a thought - for those of you that prefer the old SFB-style ships, why not drag out the SSD's and use the ship builder? I'm sure that the Basin has lots of room....