Federation Commander

Stay under EM if he is sabre-dancing you. Indeed, there is no real reason not to be in EM until you are approaching point blank range (but watch carefully).

Use hellbores to negate ESGs.

Keep hellbore ship at range.

He has to spread out (or give up on a lot of ESG damage) so you should not. Try ...

Fighters vs cloaked Roms.

Stay on top of him while cloaked, but use your move priority to be one-hex directly behind him on the fade-in impulse when he could launch. Most Romulans have RP/LP/FP/FA plasma which means that is their blind spot. On a ship with RS/LS the hexes right off the #3 and 5 ...

Scoutdad's answer to the original question and secondary question are both correct.

Also, please note that the S8 requirement for two "follower" ships is in order to take the *second* CC, not the first. So, these squadrons are all legal:
CC
CC, CA
CC, CA, CA, CC
So, you need the 2xCA to go with ...

Also, in SFB, there are no speed restrictions at all on the cloaked ship, apart from the die modifier to regain lock-on and whatever power restrictions may exist. To be clear, a cloaked ship can go as fast as it wants and never void its own cloak.

Thank you for posting the synopsis. And the lack ...

For my two cents on this I feel that having seeking weapons drop against cloaked ships is not the way to go, and my thoughts on that are below.

If the seeking weapon is controlled by the launching ship. Why would the launching ship still retain any target lock at this point (i.e. No direct damage ...

And, from a game play perspective I kinda like the idea that a cloaker might have to Emergency Decel in the middle of the turn if too many seekers are too close. Being forced to sit still is not as big of a deal as in SFB, but it seems a reasonable punishment for bad planning :)

I don't think ...

Under that proposal what would happen at start of next turn? There are more ways to alter your speed in SFB and hence have the ability to keep tweaking to shake seekers (as I understand anyway). The only times a cloaker will be able to alter speed is via ED or Start of turn.

If I activate cloak on ...

In SFB, the opposing ship must roll for "lock on" to the cloaked ship. If the lock on is lost, then all seeking weapons from that opposing ship are removed from play. Keeping a "lock on" has varying degrees of difficulty to it. But basically, keeping the "lock on" is easier the faster the cloaked ...

What's wrong with plasmas?

It really depends on the skill of the players. The existing plasma rules are probably okay for the casual "average" player that FC seems targeted at.

The frustration occurs when veteran players with a strong understanding of plasma tactics play each other. Too often ...

KE are not CCs, by the tournament rules at least, but are just upgrades to the WE.

Also, this scenario shows, once again, how ridiculous point values are in Fed Com. At some point we need a large group effort to actually balance the points (probably will never happen, but it is badly needed). A SB ...

We've played a lot of base games over time, and always with extra defending forces. They are good games. A base makes a good backup for a well played defender, especially now they have sensors as well. On the other hand get it wrong and a (usually) larger attacking force will nobble the static ...

How differently would you handle assaults on Andromedan bases?

(Given the nature of the Andromedan invasion, the need to go after RTN nodes is far more critical an aspect of the war effort than base assaults against other Alpha Octant-based empires.)

Dramatically I would suspect. I've not ...

Sensors are not a sole answer unless the base chooses to go total self-defense. If they choose to use sensors defensively then they will not get to use their phasers or offensively in any meaningful way because the fleet will either be back in cloak or under evasive before the sensors can be used ...

Thanks for the comments.

First my presumption was a larger fleet combined and the tactical challenge is "when I am presented with the tactical opportunity to make an assault run at the base, how can I minimize my losses when I do it?". I probably should have mentioned this as a caveat up front.

In ...

All Starbase/BATS assaults are going to prove costly for the attacker. However there is a way to limit the damage taken by the Romulan fleet by taking advantage of the cloaking device to launch plasma from close range without facing overloaded heavy weapons in return.

[Note that the size ...