hull 4 aint so bad

[katadder]

Played a fun game tonight and almost my entire fleet was hull 4, but still won.
was 5pt call to arms scenario, I took early years EA and my opponent took minbari, the fleets were:

EA: Explorer, Nova, 2 Olympus, Sagi, Oracle, 4 hermes (all missiles flash).
Minbari: Tinashi, 2 Teshlans, 2 Torothas

was very fun game, although I lost an oracle and hermes to 6,6 crits at least the hermes damaged stuff when it exploded. the Nova never got to fire once, died by turn 2. fighters were my saviours though with 10 starfuries mobbing the teshlans and causing 4,6 crits. altho in seperate turns. the last teshlan exploded (under the oracles beam) and took out 7 flts though. and the explorer is quite fun when it gets the enemy under those DD TL weapons.

final survivors: Untouched explorer, slight damaged olympus, crippled oracle. the minbari had a torotha left but decided to flee rather than stick around.

 

[Abraxas]

What is with the sudden resurgence of the Explorer?

I saw it once or twice being mentioned as a pretty good ship. Katadder, would you use it again?

Am I just losing my mind :? ?

 

[Target]

Hull 4 is only bad if you have no hits eg Haven,Kutai + various crap ships or there is Primus or Sharlin firing 6 AD beam weapons at you which bad no matter your hull.
The Olympus is done right for hull 4 ship.

 

[katadder]

sure would use it again. raid level with 140 damage, 6 fighters and gives +1 command. and it has a TL DD weapon to boot, plus turns on a dime (due to being very slow).

 

[Ripple]

Also helps that your opponent spends some time killing the higher hull ships. One reason hull 4 is usually not like around here is we pick targets based on our ability to blow them up in a shot. In your battle the Nova would have been fine for a while while we hunted for everything else. (Plus by your own admission you 4-6 both his teshlans ...that's whole lot of hull 4 crushing hurt not doing much.)

Your point is taken though...hull 4 in and of itself is not life ending. Combine hull 4 with less than adequate damage/crew and/or decent secondary defense (say stealth)and issues can emerge, espescially against an opponent with SAP beams (that aren't shut down by nasty starfuries).

I've always found the Olympus was the example of a well done hull four ship. Secondary defense (interceptors) and enough damage/crew that it took a very serious beam to just pop it. The Vaarka is similar from a different perspecetive (stealth 5 being important here).

Ripple

Ripple

 

[Swiss Tony]

I just had my first few games today and found that the Explorer wasn't as tough as it looks, it has hull 140 but only 65 crew so it is taken out of action after 65 points of regular damage the vast amount of extra hull just seem a waste to me.

However overall an excellent game .

 

[Tank]

Yeah, played against a fleet that included an explorer in todays tourney, with notheing else to fire my main weaponry at I unloaded a Teshlan & Veshatan that skeleteon crewed it whilst it still had loadsa damage left, they are nice damage sponges if people fire at them and they do bring EA a cheapish +1 command bonus but otherwise Im not really convinced.

 

[Morakas]

Only seen an explorer on the table once. Opponent put it on the far flank behind some astroid fields and it never seen any action. He kept using all power to engines and come about to try and get it in the fight but the slug never made it. Olympuses are used a lot by our EA players. They die a lot but normally kill a ship before they go.