Cold War Comments Thread

[Paul M]

Ahhh...starslayer and I use pulsed movement but not for warp point transits where we use the standard rules where you can get as many ships through as the speed.   I have to admit I never thought of using the pulsed movement for warp point transits in that way.  I have to admit it is nice to be able to get like 6 ships and then send the SBMHAWKs through with their 7th MP.  I sorta do use the pulsed movement chart for determining when the ships show up but not limit them to only 6 transit impulses.  Given the fact we are fighting 2 bug races who can simultaneous transit I'm a bit leery of limiting ourselves too much.

[Kurt (OP)]

Ahhh...starslayer and I use pulsed movement but not for warp point transits where we use the standard rules where you can get as many ships through as the speed.   I have to admit I never thought of using the pulsed movement for warp point transits in that way.  I have to admit it is nice to be able to get like 6 ships and then send the SBMHAWKs through with their 7th MP.  I sorta do use the pulsed movement chart for determining when the ships show up but not limit them to only 6 transit impulses.  Given the fact we are fighting 2 bug races who can simultaneous transit I'm a bit leery of limiting ourselves too much.

Simul-transits can be dangerous, but on the strategic scale, if done multiple times the guaranteed losses will inevitably drain the attacker's fleet. In my opinion, using simul-transits works very well if your opponent has little or no strategic depth.  If he does have depth, and can force the bugs to do simul-transits repeatedly, then their fleet tends to get depleted after three or so ST's. 

In the Phoenix Campaign the bugs had a large superiority in fleet tonnage, and ST assaults worked very well for them.  But then I noticed that it worked so well because they generally were fighting races that had no strategic depth, and only one very large population.  The bugs could literally sacrifice tons of ships, suffer a massive and totally unfavorable loss ratio, and if the battle ended with their ships in orbit over the defender's planet, bombarding it, then they won, game over.  It didn't matter that the defender fought valiantly, and inflicted three to one, or even better, loss ratios on the bugs.  When you lose your homeworld, you lost the game.  However, once the bugs ran up against the larger polities in the game, the Gorandans and the humans, the situation changed.  The bugs could still force almost any warp point with a simul-transit attack, but could they do it again and again and again, against a civilization that could set up a defense in depth that covered multiple systems along a long warp chain?  The campaign was at this point when I shut it down, and I was beginning to suspect that the bugs were going to have to find a different strategy if they wanted to avoid getting bled dry. 

[Paul M]

So far I don't think the bugs (red or black) have STed capital vessels but they use it with gunboats, armed pinnaces and DDs.  The last battle the latter didn't work so good as the losses were almost entirely on their anti-fighter DDs rather than the anti-mine ones.  So far the bugs and the seals have been fighting for a long time, much longer than we expected they would hold.  Unfortunately for the seals they have lost a lot of their depth and right now are struggling to hold on to some critical systems.   But the fighting is also costing the bugs, starslayer would have to comment here as I don't know the details.  One difference in our game is that the bugs are the highest tech aliens around excepting the RM.  The attempt by the SCN to get some buffer ran into this problem as my HT9 ships hit HT11 ones and only a massive application of SBMHAWK and the Drakes kept the battle from being a rout but as the SBMHAWKs had been intended for the follow on attack...

But yes I think you are right, but the idea to ST was to send in disposable ships rather than dumping in 100 SDs and at least in our game this seems to be working, but as you say...100 SDs becomes 70 SDs becomes 49 SDs becomes 35 SDs and this is completely without combat losses.  One fairly amusing note is that while playing the stars at war scenario "Wall of Fire Wall of Steel" I had the rigillian escort force ST out of the system after the attack got decisively broken as by the time the last ships got out they would have been obliterated, they rigillians got very lucky and lost no ships.   

Still our biggest issue at the moment is the number of 100 HS WPs in the galaxy.

[DIT_grue]

Month 111, Day 22, Earth
The Coalition’s Minister for Foreign Relations met with the USSR’s Minister for Foreign Affairs on this day.
<snip>

Month 112, Day 24, Earth
Marshal Kosygin looked up in annoyance as his chief aide, Polhovnik Turgenev, burst into his office.  “What?!?”

I suspect the month on the second segment is a typo.

[Kurt (OP)]

Month 111, Day 22, Earth
The Coalition’s Minister for Foreign Relations met with the USSR’s Minister for Foreign Affairs on this day.
<snip>

Month 112, Day 24, Earth
Marshal Kosygin looked up in annoyance as his chief aide, Polhovnik Turgenev, burst into his office.  “What?!?”

I suspect the month on the second segment is a typo.

You are correct.  I'll fix it.  thanks!

[Starslayer_D]

What the red bugs are doing currently is simultransiting in the pgb and armed pinnaces from the auxiliaries wicha re too fragile for the fight, and some expendable cheap DDS. The rest of pgb gets carried through in the racks.

What is holding them up though is that gunboats die in huge amounts in each battle, and are neitzher cheap with 80 MCr nor quick to replace at 3 HS each. So its win battle, rebuild gunboats, pinnaces and two to three BCs damaged and a few lost ships, adn come back to trounce the allies agan. But as they don't have a mythical incredible reserve of mothballed sips they have to replace their looses to advance again and can't push continuously. Maybe I should get two fleets onto one contact point, but that'll leave somwhere else uncovered.

Gunboats are so much easier to kill than fighters, you need either a huge amount fo them to overwhelm the enemies capacity to deal with them in time or you'll throw them away for very little gain.

[misanthropope]

do the D'Bringi have any evidence that Sol is a cul-de-sac?  Even without that knowledge, they would have to have a pretty big blind spot to not evaluate a big old minefield on that particular WP as being of at least equal value to an iffy treaty with the Coalition.

stuff is ROUGH for the humans, holy cow.

[StarshipCactus]

What a waste by the Soviets, they had a defensive advantage and threw it away for nothing.  I guess that is the price you pay when you put an idealist in charge of your military.

[Paul M]

Well Kurt, could not happen to a nicer person in my view... and when I said that gave them a fleet I didn't think in terms of offensives!   Though maybe it buys them time though usually when I am in bad way I got for damaging as many as enemy ships as possible to win time due to repairs...or force them to fight with damaged ships.

The system you are using is the same as what is used in Galactic Starfire without the adjustment of the ships size based on technology...the example in Galactic Starfire doesn't match the game though (not adjusting the ships size and using an not possible warp point capacity).  I have to admit I don't understand why the WP size chart in Imperial Starfire is the way it is...any playtest would have revealed it is a major pain in the rear, without adding anything much to the game. 

The D'bringi should have been able to survey Sol but regardless mining that WP makes sense...even if they leave the mines deactivated.

[Kurt (OP)]

do the D'Bringi have any evidence that Sol is a cul-de-sac?  Even without that knowledge, they would have to have a pretty big blind spot to not evaluate a big old minefield on that particular WP as being of at least equal value to an iffy treaty with the Coalition.

stuff is ROUGH for the humans, holy cow.

The humans don't know if the D'Bringi ever surveyed the solar system.  The D'Bringi didn't, but have captured enough general information from conquered soviet colonies that they know that the solar system only has one warp point.  At this point that information is considered "high confidence" information, but not confirmed. 

The Soviets are indeed in a bad spot. 

Kurt

[Kurt (OP)]

What a waste by the Soviets, they had a defensive advantage and threw it away for nothing.  I guess that is the price you pay when you put an idealist in charge of your military.

Well, Kosygin knew he was only one step ahead of being either removed or sidelined, and he hadn't had enough time to secure his position yet.  He needed something big to give him enough status within the shaken Military Space Service to allow him to challenge the leaders of the Politburo. Unfortunately, for him, he wasn't up to the challenge, and also didn't have the fleet he needed.  If he had been a stronger leader, he might have been able to cast this venture as a victory, and rode that to the top, but that likely would have ended in nuclear war with the Coalition when they went with plan B. 

Kurt

[Kurt (OP)]

Well Kurt, could not happen to a nicer person in my view... and when I said that gave them a fleet I didn't think in terms of offensives!   Though maybe it buys them time though usually when I am in bad way I got for damaging as many as enemy ships as possible to win time due to repairs...or force them to fight with damaged ships.

If he had a few more ships, or if he had managed to bring back at least some of the destroyers, he could have claimed a victory based on the number of large D'Bringi ships damaged and destroyed.  Both Kosygin and I had a revelation fighting this battle.  The Soviets keep getting forced into battles where they are at a disadvantage, usually not an overwhelming disadvantage, but a disadvantage, and they keep losing as a result.  Hopefully they can get the Coalition in with them now and have the advantage for once. 

The system you are using is the same as what is used in Galactic Starfire without the adjustment of the ships size based on technology...the example in Galactic Starfire doesn't match the game though (not adjusting the ships size and using an not possible warp point capacity).  I have to admit I don't understand why the WP size chart in Imperial Starfire is the way it is...any playtest would have revealed it is a major pain in the rear, without adding anything much to the game.

 

I agree, which is in large part why I use the house rules.  I think you are right, the house rules I use were the seed for the rules in the later editions.  For me, I just really like large ships, and rules that limit their usefulness are bad as far as I'm concerned. 

The D'bringi should have been able to survey Sol but regardless mining that WP makes sense...even if they leave the mines deactivated.

The D'Bringi only have one, fairly small, exploration group, and it never had time to revisit the solar system after discovering humanity.  Their economy was very limited in the early game, and they focused on building up their cruiser fleet rather than exploration ships.  Now that they have a larger economy, they feel like they can't divert the shipyard resources towards exploration ships at a time when every yard is needed to repair, refit, and enlarge their fleet. 

Kurt

[Migi]

Given the poor performance of the explorer ships in a ramming role, is there going to be some re-thinking about their usage?
Could they be re-fitted as point defence platforms to protect the larger ships or given faster engines to increase their hit chance?
Also the soviet destroyers got hammered, is that because they were so badly out-matched or is it just how things go with beam engagements?

[Kurt (OP)]

Given the poor performance of the explorer ships in a ramming role, is there going to be some re-thinking about their usage?
Could they be re-fitted as point defence platforms to protect the larger ships or given faster engines to increase their hit chance?

They can't protect any other units with point defense until the Russians develop datalinked point defense, which is a ways away at this point.  Additionally, they have run out of explorer class craft for now.  It was a good lesson, though.  The explorers would have performed better as rammers if they had military engines, as they would have at least been faster than their prey.  The ramming thing was only ever an emergency stopgap, though.  The original plan was to us them as rammers at the warp point to stop the D'Bringi if they tried to enter the Solar System, and in that situation, supported by the asteroid forts and laser buoys, and the remnants of the fleet, they might have done okay.  If enough time passed, the USSR planned to refit them to mount plasma guns, which are the only weapon small enough to fit on an explorer class hull.  Unfortunately, the Pg's aren't developed yet, and Marshal Kosygin decided to waste them on a desperate attack to which they weren't suited.  Although they did do well as a distraction that kept the D'Bringi beam cruisers away from the Russian missile ships, at least for a short time. 

Also the soviet destroyers got hammered, is that because they were so badly out-matched or is it just how things go with beam engagements?

A bit of both.  The destroyers had green crews, as they had just been launched a month or two before, and that didn't help.  They were outclassed by the D'Bringi beam cruisers, which were bigger, better armed and armored, and mostly had crack crews at this point.  And finally, Marshal Kosygin sacrificed them to ensure his cruisers got back.  Some, of the DD's might have got out if the Marshal had ordered them to retreat at the same time he ordered his cruisers to return to the solar system, but if he did that, and the D'Bringi fleet wasn't under pressure from the DD's, they might have concentrated their fire on the retreating Russian cruisers.   

[Paul M]

On the whole "a little disadvantage" thing...one thing that all naval officers learned somewhere near the turn of the century was that a little disadvantage turned into a big loss, it is one of the reasons I think there was so few naval engagements in WW2 for example and just thinking on it why carriers were so big a change, because you can't avoid a fight when carriers are present.  Anyway, as the saying goes...as an exercise to the reader to illustrate this: take two sides; A had 3 ships, B has 4 ships, each ship takes 4 damage to kill, each ship does 1 hit damage.  Line them up so each ship of A is engaged by 1 of B except ship 3 which has 2 attackers.  See what happens, feel free to change how the ships fight but it doesn't change the fact that A is destroyed for far less cost to B then 3:4 odd would intuitively indicate.

Probably the hardest thing I had to learn in starfire battles is that they are naval and not land engagements and the above applies.  Getting caught by a substantially larger force in one Bug-Seal battle was particularly painful as I had thought from the pre-battle banter I had a good chance of victory and then what showed up...I'm pretty sure Starslayer detected my discontent!  A lot of our recent battles have been to be blunt "inconclusive" simply because neither side felt they had an advantage big enough to tip the scales in their favour sufficiently to avoid major losses even in a victory.