Vudar escort!

storeylf · Post by **storeylf** » Wed Apr 24, 2013 8:33 am

Just got Reinforcements attack, and saw the Vudar ecort.

The obvious question is why, as in why would Vudar even have an escort, or certainly the design they have???

The Vudar are practically immune to drones, and scythe through stingers. The blurb says they made the ship to help against stingers, so why did they change 2 Ion Cannons to 2 Ph1s? why didn't they change to IPG as it does both anti drone and anti stinger far far better than 1 Ph1s.

It seems to be a candidate for the most pointless ship design around.

pinbot · Post by **pinbot** » Wed Apr 24, 2013 5:11 pm

I wondered about that too. For shooting plasma? But yeah, it doesn't seem like there could be many situations where you'd want to pay the surcharge for its Aegis.

terryoc · Post by **terryoc** » Thu Apr 25, 2013 12:56 pm

Well, in SFB the escorts are carrier escorts, and if you are protecting a fighter while it waiting to launch or land, you really don't want to be using IPGs in ionic wave mode... In situations where the Vudar are supporting a Klingon force, you may not want to knock down friendly drones, either. I agree, it is a rather specialised unit.

storeylf · Post by **storeylf** » Thu Apr 25, 2013 4:03 pm

Vudar have carriers?

Even if they did it wouldn't make much sense, the place for Vudar escorts is in front of what they are protecting using IPG, not sitting in a place where IPG can't be used and trying to use a couple of Ph1s.

The Vudar escort with lots of IPG could have been an interesting ship. instead of the cookie cutter, and somewhat bizarre, version that we have.

mjwest · Post by **mjwest** » Fri Apr 26, 2013 12:02 am

Well, the ship design originates from SFB. In SFB, escorts are really only used with carriers, not the way they are in Federation Commander. (And, yes, Vudar do use fighters and gunboats.) Also, when firing on drones, heavy weapons have negative modifiers not seen in Federation Commander, so phasers are a more appropriate weapon.

And, to add on top of it, IPGs don't work that way. They are much more complicated than just a "two box" system, so it isn't possible to replace ion cannons with IPGs. (Granted, that is a back-system thing, but that is why Vudar ships have such a regular number of IPGs per hull type.) So, the escort could never have "lots of IPGs".

So, the Vudar escort does make more sense than it would appear purely in Federation Commander. Sorry if the ship doesn't work for you.

storeylf · Post by **storeylf** » Fri Apr 26, 2013 8:48 am

No need for apologies, it is what it is, and I thought it might be more to do with some SFBism that are meaningless in FC, Vudar were not around when I stopped playing SFB.

From a FC perspective it is, though, a pretty pointless ship design, even with carriers. Vudar are just that good at what escorts do that there is almost no reason for them.

mjwest · Post by **mjwest** » Fri Apr 26, 2013 1:24 pm

storeylf wrote:From a FC perspective it is, though, a pretty pointless ship design, even with carriers. Vudar are just that good at what escorts do that there is almost no reason for them.

Yes, but if the Vudar were the only empire with no "escort", ADB would likely never have heard the end of it. Kinda a no-win situation, so they defaulted to the "inclusion" side.

Monty · Post by **Monty** » Fri Apr 26, 2013 1:32 pm

If they don't need escorts but can specialize in other designs because of their unique weapon system, I don't understand why fans would have problems with that.

I'm not a big proponent of the cookie-cutter design philosophy.

Mike · Post by **Mike** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 1:42 am

It is puzzling to me how many times the emphasis is given that FC is a different game from SFB and how many times the emphasis is given that FC must carry over many of the same background concepts as SFB. The same is not said for any of the other plethora of games that are being set in the SF universe.

mjwest · Post by **mjwest** » Sat Apr 27, 2013 4:59 am

Mike wrote:It is puzzling to me how many times the emphasis is given that FC is a different game from SFB and how many times the emphasis is given that FC must carry over many of the same background concepts as SFB. The same is not said for any of the other plethora of games that are being set in the SF universe.

The other games are the SFU adapted to a completely different game system designed by someone else. Federation Commander is different as it is completely developed by ADB. As such, it is going to be expected to maintain a higher adherence to the ADB developed SFU.

On the other hand, regardless of how they implement the Vudar CWE, it will still be based on the SFB/FC version of the ship, and not be a totally new design, regardless of the underlying game system.

Post by **Steve Cole** » Wed Nov 12, 2025 7:50 pm

SFB and FC (and ACTA and Starmada) are different games but reflect the same reality. In theory, the same battle fought in each game would give the same result. It's not a perfect system, and FC was designed to ignore or simplify a lot of the extremely picky (but realistic) rules from SFB. One classic example is that the shields don't cost anything in FC giving you a little more power. Same for life support and fire control. FC is just easier, more relaxed, loosier-goosier so to speak. Ultimately, they all reflect the same background, so if Romulans have maulers in SFB they will eventually get them in FC. The two games are exactly the same.... except for the things I decided were going to be different.