Manta Ray fast cruiser
- Thread starter Tinfish
- Start date
What I like about manta is how easily you can concentrate 8AD of phaser's. Lot easier to cruise around raking phaser slightly to your left. With wolvering you need to have it either on your front arc or straight to your left. I prefer somewhere like 45 degree to your left.
Turreted phaser-1's are great.
Now if only it had smaller turn circle and it would be perfect!
Turreted phaser-1's are great.
Now if only it had smaller turn circle and it would be perfect!
[Fluff Talk] I brought the Fast Cruiser Fluff Talk over here to keep the announcement thread fairly streamlined.
In the SFU Setting Fast Raider are expensive to build, expensive to maintain, and usually held in reserve to long as a deterante to the other guy raiding you raer supply lines with his Fast Warships.
Yeah the Feds only built 4 CFs and one of those was a Strike Carrier. They lost 2 I think of those and built a single Manat Ray to replace it. Other Fast Ships coming out are the Light Dreadnaught and Fast War Cruisers.
As far as DNLs I tghink they built 5 once agaon losing most of those and about a dozen Fast War Cruisers. Those were found to weak to raid with but were more than adequette to be used as a Anti Fast Warship Picket because they were as fast as the CFs and DNLs. They just had to get close enough to force the Raiders out of high warp.
When i say raid I mean one ship is sent after one specific vital target hoping its speed will get it in and out before anyone can manuver/react/pin it and ultimately destroying it.
Of course ACTASF doesn't care about that here it is just another warship. =p
In the SFU Setting Fast Raider are expensive to build, expensive to maintain, and usually held in reserve to long as a deterante to the other guy raiding you raer supply lines with his Fast Warships.
Yeah the Feds only built 4 CFs and one of those was a Strike Carrier. They lost 2 I think of those and built a single Manat Ray to replace it. Other Fast Ships coming out are the Light Dreadnaught and Fast War Cruisers.
As far as DNLs I tghink they built 5 once agaon losing most of those and about a dozen Fast War Cruisers. Those were found to weak to raid with but were more than adequette to be used as a Anti Fast Warship Picket because they were as fast as the CFs and DNLs. They just had to get close enough to force the Raiders out of high warp.
When i say raid I mean one ship is sent after one specific vital target hoping its speed will get it in and out before anyone can manuver/react/pin it and ultimately destroying it.
Of course ACTASF doesn't care about that here it is just another warship. =p
When I was playing a mid-late War scenario in F&E as the Kzin, I used my DNLs as raiders, but mainly used the BCF as a ship to guarantee pursuit when the enemy retreated (you have to roll in F&E to successfully pursue.
I had accumulated 5 BCF/NCF and 2 DNLs, and planned to use them to accompany the faster X-ships when they appeared (making a nasty fast reserve squadron that could move 7 hexes instead of 6).
I had accumulated 5 BCF/NCF and 2 DNLs, and planned to use them to accompany the faster X-ships when they appeared (making a nasty fast reserve squadron that could move 7 hexes instead of 6).
AdmiralGrafSpee
Mongoose
The Manta Ray is one nice looking ship. I'll have to get one despite the points oddity with the CF.
-Tim
-Tim
nekomata fuyu
Mongoose
That was the reason I got mineAdmiralGrafSpee said:
Well. I had one on my latest game and I fell in love with the bugger.
Fast and packs healthy amount of phaser-1's. Speed allows to get within 8" more easily and when you are unloading 8 or 10 phaser's at kill zone that's just brutal.
Only thing that kept bugging me was the turn 6. Took quite a while to turn around but then again if I could keep enemy at side it was fine too because I was able to fire 8 phaser's anyway.
Only got to shoot photon's once and then didn't have moment where I could be bothered to reload them but that wasn't issue,
Lovely ship. Got to buy model or two of these. Wonder what 2 or 3 of these in tandem could accomplish?
Fast and packs healthy amount of phaser-1's. Speed allows to get within 8" more easily and when you are unloading 8 or 10 phaser's at kill zone that's just brutal.
Only thing that kept bugging me was the turn 6. Took quite a while to turn around but then again if I could keep enemy at side it was fine too because I was able to fire 8 phaser's anyway.
Only got to shoot photon's once and then didn't have moment where I could be bothered to reload them but that wasn't issue,
Lovely ship. Got to buy model or two of these. Wonder what 2 or 3 of these in tandem could accomplish?
nekomata fuyu
Mongoose
I can't help but feel though that if you had taken a Wolverine instead it would have done just as well, and the points savings would have gone a long way towards replacing one of the DWDs with a NCL. In fact, you would only be 5 points short, which is easily achievable by taking the DNF instead of the DNG.
nekomata fuyu said:
Wolverines would have been packing less phaser goodyness against enemy constantly. 2 extra ph-1's is nice to toss around.
Also ortega -> NCL wouldn't really have been much of a upgrade since the whole point of ship in the fleet was to have pair of drone 4 ships. NCL has drone 1...It wouldn't have been upgrade but change of ship style. Not saying NCL is bad ship but I wanted couple long range TURRETED heavy weapons to use. DWD's are great initiave sinks since they don't really care which way they are going, drones attack enemy anyway. Albeit they kinda underperformed in the game but when opponent is rolling 17 anti-drone dices without single 1 that is kind of a bummer
Next alternative for DWD's keeping their role in mind would be Kirov and that TOO would be massive change of style seeing we are now talking about 240 pts ship with heavy weaponry and survivability. It would not be init sink with 4 drones. It would be plain fighting ship.
Nah. DWD's are very nice ships with no real upgrade as in "role stays same, just does it slightly better".
nekomata fuyu
Mongoose
Whilst I only had a chance to skim your AAR, I seem to remember you were having turning problems with your Manta. The Wolverine is much less prone to turning issues due to a better layout of the flank phasers - instead of needing to boresight forward to get the full AD, the Wolverine is quite happy to have its target anywhere in the front 90 degrees or boresighted to either flank.
nekomata fuyu said:
Umm. FH(4), F,P and F,S(2). Compared to FH(4), PH(2), SH(2), T(2). That T is killer. I don't have to have enemy at my front to fire 8 phaser's. Very nice as keeping enemy at your front is pretty hard. You point at enemy, enemy tends to point you, next turn he can be behind you. When you can toss in serious fire to your flank you don't need enemy at your front.
Yes maximum ph-1 amount is harder but manta can maintain more easily solid 8 phaser's. Most of the turns I was shooting at roughly 70 degree to one side or the other. I'm tossing in more phaser's there.
(oh and also drone 2 was nice bonus too seeing I was already having quite a lot of chone tossers. 4+4+4+4+2. That's enough drone's that they can wear enemy down from drone defensives(though albeit not if opponent keeps rolling 2 or better))
Turret AD2 ph-1 + drones is what makes manta so appealing to me.
Most of the game wolverine would have been firing only 6 phaser's+1 drone. Decent but less than wolverine.
Also where to spend the saved points? DWD's would stay as DWD's as they don't have just slightly more expensive choise _that performs the same role I had intended for them_. Couldn't upgrade kirov to 2nd dread either which would be notable upgrade. So basically not much the points WOULD save me.
edit: Where I might consider swapping them for wolverines would be if I would also downgrade dread to another kirov. This would give me 125 pts to play around with giving me third DWD, reqular ortega or ramius. Ramius least likely as compared to standard ortega it has less damage point, no benefit and I would have the 10 points to spare.
