Blue Stars, and how they measure up

[Zeru]

Since I ended up steering my own thread away from Armageddon ships, and towards patrol ships, I thought I might as well make it a seperate post.

What counters Blue Stars? They are suprisingly tough (AA, and Dodge 3+)
Very fast and manueverable, and their weapons are quite powerful.

I don't think I have seen much that can counter a swarm of them, I do know that Energy Mines and Accurate weapons are good, but not every race has them.

Not to mention that Accurate means fighters can be shredded pretty quickly, as long as you cover some of your Blue Stars with others.

So how do other races deal with these Wasps of space?

 

[Voronesh]

Well trying to kill some of the better fighters out there, Starfuries of most types come to mind, can be pretty hard. 8" just do not cut it when a fighter can move 12"+ in any direction. Thats just too much space you need to cover, without actually being aboe to shoot at a ship.

If your own fleet does not possess Energy mines or lots of accurate weapons, pouring fire into a single one can help, creating explosions. Yes they arent as perfect as with Thethys, but its lots of extra ships hit, if the swarm stays together.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

I reckon a good, solid gun line will counter Blue Stars and other patrol-level swarms. Dodge can keep a lot of fire off, but the AD numbers coming off some ships, like the Nova, Primus, etc, should get enough hits through to knock the little devils down fairly quickly. Given the disparity in ranges for these ships the patrol swarm could be severly reduced in numbers before they get into range to fire back.

 

[Silvereye]

Breaching pods could be very useful - Bluestars have no Troops. However getting the pods into contact could be the issue.

The Abbai fleet comes to mind too. All arcs covered in twin-linked arrays. Not the best weapons in space but many of them and they out range you. Also the big guns in every arc works for select ships from the EA (especially with high hulls and interceptors)and Brakiri too.

Vree could be interesting as they are even more manoeuvrable then you and pack some big guns and cheap scouts. Also Shadow Scouts.

Drazi and Drakh could be funny as you'll be trying to run rings around each other.

Gaim could just swamp you in fighters, breaching pods and Photon Bombs.

 

[Zeru]

Let me see if I can argue the point (I personally agree with alot of the things said so far)

Blue Star's short range is not much of a problem due to their speed and manueverability, you could also have Blue Stars cover for other Blue Stars easily enough, and they are faster then most fighters.

The gun line is rather unreliable, as you have to throw alot of dice to have a decent shot at killing a single Blue Star, the 3+ Dodge can negate a huge amount of fire, and the fire they take is halved by AA.

The Gaim I can see outmanuevering them, the Drakh and Shadows both have small vessals with accurate weapons, and E-Mines are quite good for those who have them, but other races simply do not seem to have what they need to deal with the little devils effectivly.

The Centauri "Anti-White Star" Battle level ship (whose name escapes me) can easily be overwhelmed by the 8 Blue Stars that are fielded from 2 raid points. Although the ship is great against 2 White Stars, they seem to pale in comparison to the 8 Blue Stars.

 

[Sulfurdown]

After playing the Drakh Raiders and looking at the Bluestar, I get the impression that the 8" range is about as big of a hurdle as boresight is. Unless you're dealing with a large, slow ship, the only way you can reliably fire on targets is to target them after they've moved. It makes fighter hunting silly unless you come with enough ships that you can cover the board in those little 8" quarter circles.

 

[Frohike]

I have played against Blue Stars quite a bit, but only a few times now in 2e.

I think what is being missed here is that if that Blue Stars can shoot they can also be shot at - by secondary weapons (which may not have anything else to shoot at anyway) . Most larger ships are surrounded by a ring of firepower, even at raid or skirmish level so should be able to throw a few die at them.

Also ships can be loosley grouped together to provide mutual protection - again the Blue Stars 8" range brings it right in close to allow this.

Fighters can get them too, sometimes a difficult task but since I play Brakiri it isnt too tough.

Have a few games against them and you will see what I mean.

 

[Zeru]

The only problem is, unless they are facing another patrol swarm (which, in most cases, the Blue Star owns) they out active their opponent, and thus a good amount of the enemies' ships will be forced to move after your forces do.

Edit: Hehe I usually field them myself, and it is my opponents who complain about them, claiming they can basically win the game unless you build a fleet around countering them, I don't agree with them entirely, but I can see where they get that idea.

 

[Frohike]

what race are your opponents - the ones who complain?

 

[Zeru]

The Centauri player is the one who complains the most about them, and the Gaim (who actually owns a Brakiri fleet, but insists they suck) player complains about the power of the Blue Star as well. The Shadow player thinks they are powerful, but nothing he cannot adjust to (I wonder why :roll: )

 

[Frohike]

The Centauri player is the one who complains the most about them, and the Gaim (who actually owns a Brakiri fleet, but insists they suck) player complains about the power of the Blue Star as well. The Shadow player thinks they are powerful, but nothing he cannot adjust to (I wonder why :roll: )

I am surprised by the Gaim and Centauri being listed tbh.

The Gaim can chip away at them with emines and swamp them with fighters easy enough (if they hate the blue stars so much anyway), they also have plenty interceptor die to keep the fire down.

The Centauri have plenty of multiple die firepower in all arcs along with resonable fighters - plenty to go Blue Star hunting.

As for the Shadow chap, yeh, I can imagine 8).

Maybe your just annoyingly succesful with those 3+ saves :wink:

 

[Zeru]

My bad, he is Vree, not Gaim, I guess I wasn't thinking clearly.

The Centauri player is pretty adamant about his inability to defeat my fleet (despite the fact I have yet to beat any of the 3 players listed, we have been playing 2v2 games, and the only one I have beaten is the shadow player when he was using Vorlons in a 1v1 game)

 

[Frohike]

Tell them to put their money where their mouth is and have some games before moaning about it! lol

Sounds like they are just concerned that they will have a good fight on their hands!

 

[Iron Knight]

Well we have played a few large games and every time it comes down to those little buggars. In our two large 2v2 games the ISA's Blue Stars out did most other ships point wise. The only reason they lost in both the battles was their ally's poor luck (My Xaak Command Saucer smote a full strength Hyperion one game and a full strength Laiti in the other, both having yet to fire). Blue Stars just seems to be really good at surviving because of their combination of adaptive armor, dodge, self repair, and decent firepower.

 

[Zeru]

I wouldn't go so far to say that they did most of the lifting, the White Star Carrier scored alot of the kills, and damaged several of the ships that the Blue Stars finished, infact their were only a few ships that the Blue Stars killed that were at full health before they started shooting at them, and the Blue Star's were tag teaming them, while using "Concentrate all Fire-power!" and a good portion of those were patrol level. (the Vree patrol Saucer)

 

[Iron Knight]

Yes but the CV is a War level ship, so it should Kill a good quantity of smaller ships (4 raid worth I'd guess), but for 4 patrol ships, Blue Stars generally rank up more than a Raid point in kills. Then again we have been playing in a target rich environment.

 

[Zeru]

Yeah, considering it was a 6 point raid, and we had 4 players.

and those 8 Blue Stars were on clean up duty more then anything else, as I said; most of the big ships they finished off (around 2 raid and 1 battle) were injured before they got there, and all the others were patrol or skirmish.

 

[Voronesh]

I guess this seems to be more of a case of inflation on the distribution on which ship got a "kill".

Apparently (Wasnt part of the game):
Sure the Blue Stars killed alot of the ships, but since the big guys smashed the targets down to size its more of an assist and mop up job. And personally i think thats just a job small little skitters like these are really good for. Clean up the targets that are hanging in there by a few damage points, so the big hitters can concentrate on something else far more juicy on damage ^^.

 

[Twin-Linked Aldades]

Well, can`t say I agree on all of it.

Sure rule technical wise, but if a player plays a fleet full of Blue Stars... isn`t it then more the player then the ship that needs a serious tweek.

I mean, c`mon, is it the ISA that attracts that kind of things all time, there have been more versions of the White Star then their have been editions of Warhammer, and now the Blue Star seems to be the next `target`...

5 hull points, adaptive 3+ dodge, they really aren`t THAT uber survivable nor are they armed with a Lightning Cannon as some like to make it look...

I know this sounds a bit harsh, but like the example above, players moaning before fighting it and all... it is only a game after all.

 

[Zeru]

I could not agree more, I don't think I would ever personally field more then 8 in a 5 point raid, and that is just because I prefer to have a small bit of mass on my side. I have a hard time imagining rolling around with 20 of those things.

But as you can see, some people remain adamant about it :lol: