Planetary Assault

[emoadam]

just hope they turn out to be good, cant wait for the fleet to be released

 

[Rorschach]

I have a couple point to make here... The 1st point is for the Shadow Cloud... It moves 4" per turn so in a 10 turn scenario it will never reach the planet to destroy it.. (Bad news for the Shadows).... Is this correct??

Hey, I never thought of that! Chalk another "problem" with the scenario.

2nd thing is Fighters with the Atmospheric Trait can attack the troops on the ground... So a huge "Fleet" style force can send in waves of fighters to kill troops... The rules say that the fighters attack as normal and every 5 or better rolled on their attack dice kill a troop... So you attack the defending fleet while your fighters and troops storm the planet... This is how I read the rules... Am I completely off base here???

It might be feasible to empty some carriers, and have the Fighter squadrons rush past the enemy fleet to start on the ground troops. I'll have to look at the sheer numbers later, buuut those fighters would have to contend alone against the planets defense grids. And I *think* they actually only get Troops on a 6, not a 5+. i could be wrong there...
Of course, the Defender tactic is then to take some dogfighters of their own, or park some Antifighter weapons in orbit and just shred every flight as it comes in range. A Centauri Maximus or any Vree fleet could do that all day...
And at the end of the day, you still have to get your troop carriers past the defenders and unload 1-2 troops per ship at a time.

 

[tactician]

Well you have 10 turns to deal with enemy ships and planetary defenses before attacking the planet... and remember you have 7 fleet points to the defenders 5... and the fighters kill troops on a 5+ not a 6... with the combination of fighters and troops attacking the defenders I think the scenario can be successful... Its not an easy task... but I think it can be done... protect the fighters at all costs... I would suggest not launching them all until you deal with enemy ships and some planetary defenses first...

 

[Lorcan Nagle]

'the Planetary defence grids are represented by the Orbital Defence Satellites and ground Emplacements. SFOS mentions that the massive Surface to Orbit batteries of some sci-fi series are not present in B5.'

Well, that could be wrong, especially taking into account the episode where a combined Drazi/Narn battle fleet bombarded Centauri Prime, which could only go ahead as the temporary Centauri Emperor had switched off the Planetary Defence Grid, which included ground based weapon systems!

I don't recall them ever saying the Centauri defence grid had ground-based weapons. The only grid we see in any detail is the Earth one in the episod End Game, which is made up primarily of Bellerophon/GOD satellites.

 

[Rorschach]

Well you have 10 turns to deal with enemy ships and planetary defenses before attacking the planet...

Actually its 10 turns TOTAL. Get past the defenders, who you marginally outnumber, bombard with guns and fighters for enough turns to knock down the Troop and Emplacement numbers, then land enough troops of your own in ONE turn to get a foothold on the planet. Then its however many more turns you'd need to wipe out every defending troop, which is the attacker's victory condition.

EA *might* be able to do it at War or Battle PL against a weak defending fleet, largely because they have the best Assault-friendly ship and LOTS of fighters. But in general, I don't see the Turn limit allowing it.

I'm working up a list of each race's ships suitable for Assault, but the almost all are specialized into one category: Dropping troops, Bombarding emplacements, or delivering Fighters to hit troops. Since you can't do any of those three in the same turn anyways, it may seem not to matter. Buuut, this also means that to achieve each, that's one more ship you need to deliver more or less intact to Planetary orbit. With only two extra PL points...
I'd really like to see some more smartly designed Assault ships, that can spend a couple turns shooting emplacements or launching fighters against ground troops. Then once defences are softened, they have 10+ Troops and 3+ Shuttles to start the drops. Maybe the Dilgar will make sense that way. ;-)

Add to that the aformentioned troop drop problem. I figure you need at LEAST 10 troops to drop in a single turn to have a chance of a foothold, AFTER the fighters and bombards have thinned the emplacements and native troops. Even with shuttle capable ships, that's going to be 4-6 ships doing nothing but Troop Dropping that turn.

If someone HAS won a Planetary Assault, even at an innocuous PL, I'd love to hear the specifics.

I used to love the Planet Assault scenario under BFG, so I really want to figure how to get the B5 version working...

 

[Ren'Sur]

In one of the TV episodes which has a 'flash back' to the bombardment of Centauri Prime (its not clear whether its by the Drazi/Narn fleet or the retributive strike from the Drakh), there is clearly pulse weapon fire rising up from the ground. The fortresses attacked in the 'Gropos' episode also had ground to space weaponry.
There is another facet to take into account with planetary warfare- the length of time it takes to conquer a world, and then to keep it conquered. The Earth/Minbari war was two years in length, yet the closest Minbari worlds are only weeks/months away from EA space. The reason it took so long for the Minbari to reach Earth itself was due to having to conquer each system along the hyperspace beacon route within EA space, something which is stated in the film 'In the beginning'.

 

[Uganda_hornplayer]

You can't win it, by the looks of things (unless you're playing in a campaign against an opponent is already sufficiently weakened as to be unable to field a full fleet, which could be how it's meant to work). Therefore you're probably best off just doing as much damage to the enemy fleet as possible while taking as little as possible yourself - tactically, you could view it as having sucked in the opponent's fleet to defend a planet they had no option of leaving alone. OK, so they get 5 RRP for winning a battle and get to keep the planet another turn. Hooray for them. If you wipe out their fleet successfully, your remaining ships will be swimming in XP and your opponent will be in serious trouble in later turns.

On the basis that this tactic should be pretty valid in theory (admittedly, I've never actually played a planetary assault, and the disparity in the fleets is somewhat compensated for by orbital defenses and patrol boats), I'd suggest that any house rule tweaks anyone fancies devising be applied to the stand-alone scenario only.

 

[prelude_to_war]

Wow - old thread resurrection...

When attacking emplacements with a beam weapon, can you you split AD between several of them? So if you have 6AD beam, does that mean you can hit 6 emplacements? Do successive hits from beams transfer into additional emplacement hits? Or is it one emplacement destroyed per weapon system (additional emplacements killed via double and triple damage)? I hope it's the former as the scenario is already incredibly difficult for the attacker.

Also, although ships cannot CAF emplacements on a planet, can misses be rerolled via a scout ship?

And has anyone won this scenario as the attacker?!?

 

[Target]

Can't say i've even played it. Looks impossible. Maybe all races need unarmed troop transports on top of the 7pts.

 

[sidewinder]

Actually I did play it once against a minbari player. The only reason he won is because the guy running the campaign said he could start with all his fighters on the planet. I killed all his emplacements with the first shot from a shadow omega I had drop out of hyperspace next to the planet. That TD beam killed em all. I even had a scout to let it reroll but didnt need it. But his nial's beat the hell out of my fighters and troops. Would have been nice to be able to shoot at them with my anti-fighter weapons but we ruled that since the fighters were on the planet I couldnt since particle beams cant shoot at the planet. We werent playing with standard rules though. we had a special campaign going so I had him outnumbered buy a lot.

 

[prelude_to_war]

I killed all his emplacements with the first shot from a shadow omega I had drop out of hyperspace next to the planet. That TD beam killed em all.

So more than one shot/one kill...in other words each successful beam hit took out an emplacement (times three with TD). Good to know.

I even had a scout to let it reroll but didnt need it.

This is legal then...

Thanks for the info!

 

[meglos]

thats how we use them two dd causes two destroyed emplacements td does three iv played this scenerio twice my dilgar v abbai dilgar victory although in fairness it was turn 7 and my friend surendered as his planet had 3 wahants 1 kahtrik and 3 mankhats in orbit for two turns mass drivers ahoy id taken all his emplacements out in one turn even at war lvl [we had a house rule virus bombs only effect troops ] so had dropped a few of them too

then we played ea v his minbari at war lvl i was very lucky to get a draw after turn 10 i had a delphi left i had dropped all my figthers [thunderbolts ] onto my own planet his helped until i got nial ed to death in turn nine but i had saved provented them shooting up my ground troops but being fair it had been a total bonehead victory i only destroyed 4 of his raid level ships if i remember correctly

atmospheric fighters are a real help i think in defence and assault now my dilgar get them i think this makes even more deadly in assault :twisted:

 

[Shadow Queen]

shadow death clowd moves a bit faster now in Armageddegon

 

[sidewinder]

Well, using the scoutship was more of a 'the book doesnt say you cant' type of thing. The book said you cant CAF, said nothing about using the scout ship reroll ability. And the rules say DD and TD work. And fighters get all their attacks so thats pretty big. taking a lot of atmospheric fighters is important. 10 thunderbolts on the planet is 40 attacks each round and they go before the troops.