Garibaldi said:
Well, Since I play Vree 99% of the time I can tell you one thing about this battle. It's a bad day to be a fighter jock!
Indeed, anal probes for the EA all around.
I ended up going with 2 Omegas to emphasize fighter superiority. Here is initial setup:
Omegas on the flanks move in, Heavy Laser Cannons blazing away - and missing. Poseidon spews out fighters in the center while Hermes' move up and CAF Vree support ships. The squadroned Zakks move up and proceed to decimate the Hermes, despite their skeleton crewing a Skirmish Vree ship. For whatever reason all but one of my crits resulted in crew losses for the Vree. Nice to kill lots of little grey aliens, but not helpful in trying to win the game.
With the Hermes out of the picture, the Omegas barrel forward, trying to take out the lead Zakk. The Poseidon and her 2 Chronos escorts move forward.
Fire in the hole! Or not...
The Zaaks move past the Omegas, scratched by Omega secondary weaponry. The Omegas however manage to take out some of the smaller ships in the Vree backfield. At this point the Omegas are doomed to Boresightedness, with the Hermes (i.e. initiative sinks) taken out.
Also at this point, EA fighters have moved in to swamp a Zakk and try to set up attacks on the smaller ships.
After 5 rounds, we concluded the game. EA had the Poseidon and an Omega both relatively fresh - and a large contingent of fighters. Vree had lost a handful of Raid and Skirmish level ships (Ripple will have to chime in on what those were - the names/ships of the darned aliens confuse me!)
We went into this game testing the effects of fighters firing first on fighter-weak races such as the Vree. As you can see, the fighters were overall not as effective as we - or at least I - thought. My fighter mix was 50/50 T-bolt/Fury. Post game, we thought most or all T-bolts would probably be the way to go, what with the Fleet Carrier bonus to dogfight and all (net +2 EA vs. +0 Vree). Additionally, even with dogfight supremacy, Vree ships and their mountains of AF were able to clear the skies of Furies/Bolts. After decimating Xills via dogfight, my fighters were then sitting ducks to retaliatory Vree AF guns. Also, towards the end of the game when the Poseidon was launching recovered fighters (think I recovered roughly half of those lost), since they can't move in the same turn they've launched, they were subject to severe muggings from surrounding Vree ships. The 1 War point invested in the Poseidon certainly did not have a positive return. In retrospect, Marathons and Apollos would probably be in order (in place of the Omegas as well).
Granted, deployment was an issue (Hermes deployed too close, Poseidon and Chronos too far); Omegas beams missed completely on two salvos, maybe even a third; and target choice of the Omegas could have been an issue (my approach was for them to try and take out a Zaak whereas Ripple thought they should've focused on the Raid of Skirmish PL ships instead). Although due to deployment, launching, etc. the fighters only mobbed a Zakk (ineffective due to it being hull 6) and one other Raid (?) level ship. Even with the Raid level ship, the fighters managed to hurt but not kill it. All of the other juicy targets my fighters would have enjoyed remained way back in the Vree backfield. Maybe I should have moved fighters upon launching but I wanted to mass them first, then go after targets.
Despite all of these issues, the use of fighters and their new mechanic - to my mind - did not become a huge factor either way. In fact, depending on how we score it, they were a huge liability. The big factors in this game would be fleet selection, unfamiliarity with the Vree (is it even spelled Zakk? Zaak? Xaak??) and strategy. I've always been pro-fighters-move-and-fire-first as a mechanic and still feel the same. Ripple?
