EA 10 point battle selections

[Tankdriver]

Here is the deal. In order to save ink on printing out ship viewer sheets, my group and I have decided to laminate certain sheets and reuse them. To save on laminating, we are each choosing 10 Priority Level Battle Fleet Allocation Points worth of ships. Since we have only the box set and Sky Full of Stars, we are limiting our selves to the lists in SFOS.

Here is what I have selected for my Earth Alliance Fleet, and I am inviting comments here. It will not be a campaing, so repairs and replacing loses does not enter into it.

Avenger-Class Heavy Carrier "Arc Royal"
Hermes-class Transports "Express", "Swift", Enterprise," and "Enigma"
Hyperion-class Cruiser "Helios"
Hyperion-class Assault Cruiser "Normandy"
Nova-class Dreadnought "Phobos"
Chronos-class Heavy Frigate "Uranus"
Omega-class Heavy Destroyers "Ajax" and "Hector"
Oracle-class Scout Cruisers "Cssandra" and "Nostrodamus"
Olympus-class Corvette "Sparta"
Sagittarius-class Cruisers "Libra" and "Cancer"
Warlock-class Cruiser "Titans"


I was thinking that would cover me.

 

[Celisasu]

Poor Enterprise. Reduced to being a transport.

 

[Tankdriver]

Not just that, it is a transport missing a quatation mark even!

 

[phoenixhawk]

"The Enterprise should be hauling garbage!"
"What did you say laddie?"
"I meant to say the Enterprise should be hauled away AS garbage!"

:twisted:

Not a direct quote of the lines from the show, but the first thing that came to mind when I saw that he'd made it a transport.

Chris

 

[Abraxas]

Alright gentleman, lets talk about the fleet...

Well, quite a few support ships (Novas, Hermes', Oracles) without many heavy combat ships (Omegas, Hyperions).

What do you plan to do with the fleet? Maybe a small blurb about strategy will help.

 

[Tankdriver]

Most of the games end up being 5 to 8 raid or battle points. My plan was to use the hyperions and omegas to close with the enemy while the sags, oracles, hermes send long range missile fire and scout support from range. I like the idea of long range braodsides from the sag with 6 AD of Missiles.

 

[pwrserge]

I find that Oracles are generaly wasted as long range missile platforms. Let's face it, they are close range brawlers. Load them up with heavy missiles (coincedentaly the same range as the rail guns) and you have a scary scary customer. Use the pulse cannons to wear down interceptors, and watch the explosions when the railguns and heavy missiles strike home. In addition, they are almost as hardy as Hyperions (same damage track 1 less armor), so they tend to live a little longer than people might expect.

SERGE

 

[CZuschlag]

If you're worried about lamination costs, may I recommend using the data from Chernobyl's site? The cards have all the data, but are easily small enough. The work rate is high; the whole procedure below took me about 6 hours, but it's worth it:

1). Go to http://www.epicarmycard.com and select Enter, ACTA, and the fleet you want to fly.

2). I used a printer at my office, but otherwise print out enough sheets to cover whatever you want or need. Remember, each sheet has two ships of each type, so the number you'll need depends on which ship you'll use the most. Alternately, I could have printed out one sheet each, and gone to a photocopier and run color copies. I was working on Drakh, so I needed a LOT of Raider sheets. You get 4 ships per 8 1/2 x 11. I ended up with about 24 sheets (should be about $2.40, or 2 Euro).

3). (Takes lots of time) Go to a copy shop (if you didn't in part 2), use the flat paper razor table, and slice along the card edges into 4 parts, the ship picture on the left, and the damage stats on the right. You may want to be careful about the slice -- measure twice, cut once -- if you want this to come out looking nice.

4). (Takes some more time) Fold each little 4 x 5 card in half -- carefully -- to get the ship one one side and the damage track on the other.

5). You can successfully put 9 such folded ship stat papers on a 8 1/2 x 14 sheet of laminate. Lay them out carefully, oriented the same way as the laminate (well, duh....). I ended up doing 8 such sheets. Laminate. Total cost to me: $4.75 or so (about 4 Euro.).

6). (Takes even more time) Carefully cut the laminate to make the ship sheets like a deck of laminate-protected Magic cards. A pen-style X-Ac-To knife is perfect.

Total project cost for 70 or so ships -- at most 8 Euro. You even get little portable critical charts on the back of the Breaching Pod sheets.

Took lots of elbow grease to make 'em, but I imagine they'd be the perfect way to transport a campaign fleet as a deck in a box. Use something like grease pencil to keep the markings from smudging, or just keep them available and use them to run pick-up games. Very cheap.

As far as the fleet goes? I don't like the Avenger choice or the Hyperion Assault. I do love the Rail Hyperion, however, and suggest that. If you want to play the bombardment game, I'd suggest the Apollo, if not, more Chronos.

Note: doing the above gets you to the Armageddon fleet lists, which do have few subtle changes. Unfortunately, while the site (I'm pretty certain) has an archives section that holds old stat sheets -- Enter > ACTA > Archive ... somewhere, they're full-page sheets, and your laminating costs would go back through the roof again. You can, of course, print one copy of the ship sheets, manually check against SFoS to "undo" the Armageddon changes, and then restart in step 2 at the color photocopier.

 

[Valen is my name]

personally id go for another warlock and possibly another omega instead of some of your support ships, the extra omega and warlock would make up for the loss of them.

 

[Tankdriver]

personally id go for another warlock and possibly another omega instead of some of your support ships, the extra omega and warlock would make up for the loss of them.

That was my first instinct, but then I remembered the need for smaller ships should we roll a patrol level or skirmish level game.

Another Omega would probably be in the works. Like I said, this is a test list. I have time to fine tune it.

 

[Valen is my name]

oh yeah, hadnt thought of that. I kinda assumed it would be at battle level, in that case your probably right about just having one warlock, especialy as its side weapons arent great, omega is probably better in that respect.

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

Rather than laminating a bunch of sheets, why not print out one or two copies of each sheet and then buy some A4 acetate document pockets/acetate sheets? You can write on them with semi-permanent markers exactly the same way as a laminated sheet, and it lets you mix and match ships.

 

[Tankdriver]

Laminating, thankfully, is not the problem. The wife is a student teacher who really likes laminating the things she needs for classes. So, it was her idea to save money on toner and paper by laminating. I had thought of the document protectors as we used those back in the Star Fleet Battles days.

Her is my second option. Less support, more firepower.

Warlock-class Advanced Destroyer
Warlock-class Advanced Destroyer
Omega-class Heavy Destroyer
Omega-class Heavy Destroyer
Chronos-class Attack Frigate
Oracle-class Scout Cruiser
Hyperion-class Cruiser
Hyperion-cass Assault Cruiser (for the Planetary Assault scenario)
Artemis-class Heavy Frigate
Sagittarius-class Cruiser
Olympus-class Corvette
Avenger-class Heavy Carrier (for the Carrier Clash scenario)

 

[Celisasu]

No Hermes? As well as giving you a choice for patrol they make great initiative sinks at higher engagements.

 

[Tankdriver]

I had some in the first group. I think I will try to split the difference between the two and see how that looks. I am starting to think it would be easier to play the Interstellar Alliance!!