Federation Commander

[Kang]

[rulesjd]

I did not see listed two other considerations.

A) In FC, the target of your plasma (and drones) is open knowledge. In SFB, targetting is secret. In a ship to ship duel this is largely irrelevant. However, when you have squadrons, or deploy fighters, this becomes more important.

B) In FC, if you are not the target of a plasma, you cannot shoot at it in the defensive fire phase. This means that any escort or allied ships will have to fire phasers in the activation impulse prior to the plasma hitting. This can mean sub optimal shots with phaser's at ranges of 3 or more. A real reduction in phaser III performance.

In SFB, any ship can fire at plasma's during any of the 32 impulses. Therefore, you can maneuver your ship to give your escorts the BEST possible shooting opportunities.
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"Damn the torpedoes, full spe........[squarrk]"

[Kang]

[terryoc]

I think the Aegis ships in HA only get bonuses vs drones, as plasma isn't such a problem as massed drones.
_________________
"Captain" Terry O'Carroll, fourteen papers published including six best of issue
"Man, Terry, you are like a loophole seeking missle!" - Mike West

[Kang]

[pmiller13]

It seems to me that most of the advice here has been along the lines of getting a alpha strike of plasma to land on target. This is as hard in FC as it was in SFB. Very rarely have I ever seen a 100-point plasma blast in either game. There are simply to many ways to avoid it in both systems. There have been a number of good articles written about this topic but IMHO I think the key to handling plasma is to not fire the entire load at any one time unless you have a 100% chance of getting them to land. Playing a plasma race (Romulan or Gorn) is all about having patience. Remember that in FC your best weapons are you phasers. Use your plasmas to either crush a shield and then follow-up with phaser fire or to get the target to keep giving you the same shield to keep shooting at. This is accomplished by chucking enough plasma at a target to get it to turn off and run away. This will always expose the rear shields to your phaser and/or bolted torpedo fire. Remember that plasma torpedo’s can be run away from but it is very hard to destroy them. If a target wants to just phaser them and fly through them the 2-1 damage to warhead reduction ratio means the target of the plasmas is still going to take a lot of damage, arrive with little or no phasers of their own or both.

[rulesjd]

[mjwest]

The Aegis ships in HA can fire their phasers at any impacted seeking weapon, including plasma. Now, they can only fire their ADDs at drones, but that is a function of ADDs, not Aegis.

[terryoc]

The Kzintis in a fleet can throw out ridiculous numbers of drones even without drone ships. It should also be noted that getting a range 0 shot isn't as easy as it would be in SFB, because of the one-shot-per-four-impulses bit, shorter tractor ranges, and the limit on three ships firing. And if I can set up a situation where one ship (say, your dreadnought) is forced to hang back a few hexes, I should be able to shoot up a different ship with my whole fleet's overloads without eating your DN's overloads, giving me an advantage.
_________________
"Captain" Terry O'Carroll, fourteen papers published including six best of issue
"Man, Terry, you are like a loophole seeking missle!" - Mike West

[rulesjd]

[Mike]

[rulesjd]

[Mike]

Ok, now I understand. I thought we were talking about the FedCom game mechanics.
_________________
Mike

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Sandpaper gets the job done, but makes for a lot of friction.

[terryoc]

[rulesjd]