General tactics discussion

[Ripple]

How did we get to comparing 12 TL DD dice vs 4 SAP DD Beam dice? Isn't the comparisson in Secundus vs Tertius a 6 ad beam not a 4?

On twin-link vs beam, I do this most battles with my drazi. The sap beam usually hits about the same number of times as my twin linked on my warbird against hull 5. We were often surprised by this in the beginning but we have gotten used to it. Of course that is eight dice to three. So yes if I can have twice as many twin links I would like to take a chance on them. Does this mean twin linked is better than beam (or precise), um no...certainly not the second best trait in the game. The trait your looking for there to call wonderful is 'lots of dice'. If I have enough dice the traits attached to them are not that important to the outcome.

One thing I have noted in game after game, not just ACtA. If I can force an opponent to walk through any form of cross fire I tend to win. We call it walking through the valley of death around here, and it the first lesson you have to learn to be considered good. Don't walk through the valley of death, god at your side or no you should have fear.

Ripple

 

[Twin-Linked Aldades]

How did we get to comparing 12 TL DD dice vs 4 SAP DD Beam dice? Isn't the comparisson in Secundus vs Tertius a 6 ad beam not a 4?

Ripple

Came from `my` sort of tactics post, not relevant to the Centauri thing but a point of which i build my fleets round

 

[CZuschlag]

Aldades cited it, and it turned out in net effect the comparison is interesting, swapping out hits for crits. The 6 AD thing you're thinking of, Ripple, is in the Sunhawk variants thread.

 

[Majeh]

Worth bearing in mind that you can CAF with your beams (as long as they're not boresight) to get re-rolls. CAF is pointless with TL.

Thought you could CAF with boresight beams? CAF beam rerolls on the intial misses, not the ones that come after. TYoo bad for the guy that moves ito your boresight if you CAF.

 

[Ripple]

Ah...I see...threads blurring together...

As to boresights CAFing, you can under some limited conditions. The problem is that with boresights only being a single line you almost always have to turn to bring the boresight to bear. This means you can not use any special action that reduces your turns to zero and still expect to use the boresighted weapon. The most important are CAF, APtE and All Stop. The lack of all stop in particular limits how long you can keep a boresight on an approaching enemy ship.

Now if you can line up directly opposing another ship along it's axis of movement you can CAF the following turn if it only moves forward (ie CAF's itself) or is Speed zero'd by a crit. These rare moments are much celebrated by the bore saddled races.

The other odd momemt when you can utilize these orders is when you are in position to utilize gravity well movement. In that instance you do not consider the gravity granted movement in your restrictions on what orders you can use.

Ripple

 

[Geekybiker]

Worth bearing in mind that yoedqredqru can CAF with your beams (as long as they're not boresight) to get re-rolls. CAF is pointless with TL.

Thought you could CAF with boresight beams? CAF beam rerolls on the intial misses, not the ones that come after. TYoo bad for the guy that moves ito your boresight if you CAF.

Sure you can CAF with boresight weapons. Its just hard to do. However you can redirect with a scout on them too. The point is that beam will benefit from a reroll is available, while a TL weapon will now.

 

[locarno24]

I'm not claiming a battery of quads is out-and-out superior to a laser, but it's certainly equal. The range is the main killer - there are few long ranged twin-linked guns.

However they are very, very dangerous; the fact that you don't need to initiative sink them to aim, the fact that you're not using up precious scouts to reroll their shots (allowing you to compromise that bloody stealth system....) means that people who think you only win with the
big-gun-o-doom usually get a nasty surprise. Two seperate critical hits is better than one double damage critical hit because whilst the damage is the same (average of about 7.2 damage I think), you get two systems knocked out and a greater chance of one of the real "screw-you-over" criticals. (weapons out, immobilized or ka-blammo)

And I find the bimith does do well - it will always concede the first shot, but it's a superb ship, especially in larger games (the concept of
shadow-dancing around arcs and weapon ranges is fine for a single opponent but falls appart very quickly with a large number of ships on the board). The scariest battle I've seen them in, thee of them were literally thrown down the throat of an EA squadron at full engine power - after getting past the boresights, they were laying about them with 2, 3 or even all 4 arcs every turn, and brought down 2 hermes, an omega, a hyperion and finished their pass by destroying a warlock with the critical hit of the beast (6-6-6)....

 

[Burger]

Worth bearing in mind that yoedqredqru can CAF with your beams (as long as they're not boresight) to get re-rolls. CAF is pointless with TL.

Thought you could CAF with boresight beams? CAF beam rerolls on the intial misses, not the ones that come after. TYoo bad for the guy that moves ito your boresight if you CAF.

Sure you can CAF with boresight weapons. Its just hard to do. However you can redirect with a scout on them too. The point is that beam will benefit from a reroll is available, while a TL weapon will now.

The one chance in my entire ACTA history that I've nearly had the opportunity to pull a CAF boresight, a Bin'Tak took a speed 0 crit and so did my (already boresighted) Strikehawk. Unfortunately I also had no special actions It is extremely rare, and not even worth factoring into equations.

 

[Nightmares about Minbari]

On beam vs twin linked batteries:

The big gun beam weapons typically also have the range advantage, so you will be getting one, two or maybe even three additional shots with them before the shorter ranged twin linked batteries come into play. Not something to be ignored.

However there is also the psychological factor of picking up massive handfuls of dice to roll against your opponant. Last nights battle a single G'Quan rolled 81 attack dice in one turn, putting on such a pyrotechnical display that it must have looked like the 5th.

OK, another question for you all:

Do you hold the big capital ships with the powerful, long range firepower at the backs of your fleets where their fire is virtually unanswered, or throw them forward into the "valley of death" to fire off as many secondaries as possible? Thinking more about ships like Sharlin, Octurion, Victory that have the forward arc beams, as they don't need to be lining up boresights the way a Bin'Tak or Warlock has to.

 

[Silvereye]

Again it kind of depends on what race you are playing, and what race your opponent(s) are playing.

I tend to bring in the big beam ships, Sharlin, Bin'Tak, Primus, Omega etc. slowly. I'll take a few turns to get them into range with their secondary batteries - It's not like you have much choice with a Bin'Tak. I tend to finish a game with these ships in the middle of the battle where they can just dominate the space.

Others like the Warlock, G'Quan/G'Lan I like to get into the thick of things quickly, they have lots of good all round firepower in secondary and tertiary batteries which is a shame to waste. Often I'll forgoe lining up a boresight if it means that I can get some targets into a third or fourth arc. I find a waste of the ship if your just limiting yourself to one or two weapons a turn. I find that I end up using these ships to hunt down stragglers at the end of the battle

There are a couple of odd-ball types, the Tinashi, Neshatan Octurion and Hyperion. These have superb primary and rather good secondary weapons. So I am torn between getting them into the thick of things quickly to add their powerful secondary batteries to the fight or hanging them back and utalising those big beams with impunity. I like to use a Hyperion to run perpendicualr across the line of engagement where the fleets meet. They tend to fill either of the end-game roles. They can hold and dominate space, or can hunt fleeing ships.

 

[Voronesh]

I play Narn, so the G'Quan gets thrown into the fray.
The 3AD beam is pitiful and the secondary batteries are sometimes just downright scary, the weak is wonderfully meaningless against Hull6. Plus i have taken a liking to Ship Breakers.
The Bin'Tak has no other chance of taking it slow.... generally i focus it on the enemy heavy, until it is destroyed. All the forward arced weaponry is so nice.

With Centauri (I have a single Octurion ^^) I generally try to get as many CAFs off before the furball actually starts.

 

[Slightly Norse John]

As far as big guns vs. little guns goes, to some extent the devil is in the details- I've had opponents so mesmerised by the twin boresights on the Ka'Tan that they forgot about the eight dice pulse cannon in each arc. Personally, I'd go for the special weapon most of the time, except against damned odd enemy fleet setups. I've done a little EA vs. Abbai, and I have to say large parts of it were actually very dull. The huge handfuls of dice that mostly miss and most of what doesn't is intercepted- our brains started to melt and we gave up. The return grudge match was a 5 point Battle which was essentially won by one ship. I like odd names, and at this point I was in the middle of a string of famous, mostly fictional, cowards; the Delphi EAS Harry Flashman, for instance- anyway, the Warlock EAS John Yossarian did something upwards of three hundred points of damage in that fight and eight kills. So score one firm vote for the big guns. As far as hanging back goes, it depends on the ship- some, I reckon, can give out punishment well enough to be worth the risk, represent enough of an investment that you need to get their worth out of them; others need more protection. I'd take risks with a Warlock or Victory that I'd never go for with a Tashkat or Mishakur- and I've handled every Octurion I've ever deployed with kid gloves, partly because of the two Primus or tertius it should have been.

 

[Lord David the Denied]

To my mind, the damage potential of the Octurion means you should be brazenly charging into the fray to bring your extended-range twin arrays and massive batteries of matter cannons into the fight. A 6AD battle laser is nice but it's just the icing on what is, in every possible respect, a true battleship. Those secondary weapons aren't just for show...

 

[Slightly Norse John]

Somehow they get filed as 'too expensive to take risks with'. Which is probably wrong- the Mankhat is a lot like a stripped down Octurion and I happily surge those forwards- but just is, and a lot of the time I find them too expensive to deploy at all. Partly it's that I'd say that the Warlock is worth two Omegas, and the Bin'Tak is worth two G'Quans, so they get hurled in aggressively and asked to do their full share of the fighting, but the Sharlin isn't a match for two Shantavi, nor the Octurion for two Tertius- so they get as far as possible sabre- danced with, protected abnd used conservatively as support fire.

 

[lastbesthope]

There's discussion of tactics for League races in s&P 36 wargamer, now available to download on the main site.

LBH

 

[Voronesh]

I concou there.

The Bin'tak is worth 2 G'Quans, so it gets thrown into the fray, well as fast as it goes.......

The Octurion i prefer to keep with my fleet. Cause 1 Octurion and 2 Primus (tourney, so tertius....) can put much CAF on the enemy. If you surge forward, the Primus will just be useless at close range, and you lose maneuverability, cause the Primus only likes stuff in its front arc.

Once i had an Octurion unsupported against 1 Omega and 2 Hyperions, it performed adimrably, actually it got a -4 speed crit, making it BETTER, cause it was allowed o turn on a dime all of the sudden, huge advatage against 2 hyps. But the sweating you get, when those ships start firing......NOT GOOT. Its too many egss in one basket compared agaionst 2 Tertius.....

 

[CZuschlag]

Well, we know about the Tertius' balance. :x

I think with the fighter changes in Armageddon, what you do with these capital ships now depends a lot on whether or not there's a fighter swarm on the table. If there is, you're going to have to move more as a block. Something left behind can and will get picked off.