Just a thought on the overall 'Taming of the Klingons' purpose on the thread. My friend and I sat down this weekend and play tested a few things. Overall, we did four games. Two 'demo games' and then two variable games.
1st Demo: I played 2 D7s & he played 2 CAs. Neither of us had ever played the others fleet and had only seen them in action. We did change up one thing, which was a major point. We changed up the D7s. Instead of A,S & A,P Phaser-2s we made them SH, PH. We liked the turret so it split them up giving the vessel a nice additional punch of short range fire. Our justification was that it made it feel more like the backbone of a fleet.
1st Turn: the Federation moved ahead 12' and boosted shields. Relying on their phasers. Klingons advanced only 4' to keep out of phaser range and enter disruptor range.
Klingons won initiative and plugged away with Disruptors, focusing on CA-Alpha Drones went in as well. Of the four that went, due to long range, only 2 hit and only one got through the tractor beams. (Of note, this was the ONLY drone damage all game. the rest of the game was completely nullified by Federation dual rack anti-drone).
->Note: My friend regrets boosting shields and losing anti-drones for this round. In retrospect, he feels the only time federation should go on power drain is when they have no other choice or are recharging photons. (in small ball games.) This has always been SOP for me.
2nd turn - Federation again move forward 12' and attempt evasive fire. CA-Alpha fails, CA-Bravo does not. Klingons back off 4' to stay out of phaser death range but keep Disruptors in range.
Firing exchange takes place, more steady damage. At this point Im getting decent shield damage and leaks but nothing to write home about. Forward Arc imp. shielding weathers the storm except for the CA-Alpha's long rang torp attack. One gets through, cause hull damage only ( I believe).
->At this point, CA-Alpha is pretty banged up but not out of it. However, I pounce, trying to drop one and then skirt away to regroup.
3rd turn - Federation begins maneuvering. Im on short end of the board and I close on CA-Alpha with both ships. It does not have any photons and is isolated. At close range, pound away with all Phaser-2s, Phaser-1s, and Disruptors and deal a healthy amount of damage to CA-Alpha, but not crippled. In return killzone fire, CA-Alpha does a fair bit of damage to D7-Cha'. CA-Bravo outside my forward arc, carves D7-Cha up, shields gone, photons pass right through, along with drones. one D7 is down.
4th Turn - Federation finally win initiative (of which Klingons won all previous rounds). Ultimately, D7-Wa manages to cripple CA-Alpha. At this point, the game is already over. Two CAs abeam of my D7, even with Hard shields, gets hammered by 12 kill zone Phaser-1s
-->It may have been 5 turns, but it a sound Federation victory. Though, I did have a chance. I believe I pounced to soon and should have danced away for another round of Disruptor fire.
Demo Game 2:
Im not even going to lay this one out. My friend was playing Federation, my brother who has never played before took Klingons. It was no contest. Granted, my brother was less determined then I to win and was more or less going through the motions, it was over before it began. Klingons closed to soon and Federation carved him up starting on the second turn. We called it after 3turns. Federation Sound victory.
Test Game 1: This is where we sat down and tested the drop agile or drop hard shields. For game one, we dropped agile. D7 modified vs. CA.
Was a joke. Granted, first turn, an extremely lucky long range strike of Phasers penetrated the Klingon shields. Two crits, one to Dilithium Chamber and the other to shields. After 1 turn, the D7 had 6 shields left, and a max of 8. minimal damage to the CA, though a weapons system crit. In the end phase, Federation repaired their weapons, Klingons did nothing.
At this point the game was out of hand and the Federation just floated around. (seriously, just floated about) keeping the klingon either abeam or directly aft and stayed within phaser-1 range. By the end of the second turn, Phaser-1s had destroyed the rest of his shields and dealt an additional 2 weapon crits. He lost his drones.
The CA moved behind an asteroid field, recovered its own shield damage to full, leaving it only with 3 hull damage. Klingon player had to give chase. This is where it turned into a rinse repeat. Klingon player would close, unload, CA would return fire, dropping their shields to null and more internal damage. Followed by boost shields, and repeat. We called this game after 5 turns because it was futile.
Ultimately the Klingon Ship could not move like it needed to. Couldnt bring its shields to bear like it has to and the CA was able to just move enough to keep out of the forward arc. The superior firing arcs of the federation Cruiser just meant that the CA didnt really give a #$% which direction it was heading. Photons were never needed nor did I feel they were important after the first two crits.
the 2nd test game we didnt even actually play out. We got a taste of it in here. Without Agile it is difficult 1v1 for a Klingon Cruiser to bring its forward shields to bare. Without it, the shields are insufficient and get dropped way to easily. Unlike the Klingon Player who can not do enough damage to the beastly CA (which I can not understand why people hate this ship.)
Granted, these were 1 on 1 but we figured, on a fleet level, it would be even more of a joke given that Federation ships BARELY need to 'maneuver' and would just destroy the Klingons with cross, out of arc firing.
All in All it was a bad night for the Klingons.
--->Two final notes.
1. This was with the d7 modified to have more versatile firepower.
2. All ships were Military Grade.
My friend took a couple of things away from all this. I believe we will keep the D7s with that new fire arc on the Phaser-2s.
Can others try this. The D7s are the only ones we adjusted because we feel it moves in line with their fluff. Mind you, neither of us has placed FC or SFB. So, that is just our thoughts.