SF - Question About Fed Combined Drone Racks

AdmiralGrafSpee said:
Agreed, and that will be the way I'd play it, unless of course another deathly salvo of drones comes your way!

-Tim

Indeed - it does seem as though the Feds can have ADD-of-neverending, but that does presume you have a nice, clean Kirov, not one wreathed in flames and fighting for its life!
 
Depends on the battle as well. A 2000 point game with a drone squadron chucking 12-18 drones at you in one wave makes it well worth using that last 1ADD because you will not be around to fire drones later on anyway :lol:
 
Captain Jonah said:
Depends on the battle as well. A 2000 point game with a drone squadron chucking 12-18 drones at you in one wave makes it well worth using that last 1ADD because you will not be around to fire drones later on anyway :lol:

Ooooh, a squadron of 3 D6D throwing 18 AD drones at you in one wave would be unpleasant.
 
I believe that in fleets of 2000 points and over, ships can be formed into squadrons and fire as a single unit.

Fear the D6d Drone bombardment squadron :twisted:
 
It'd still be "just" 2 or 3 waves of drones. Squadrons don't combine their attacks although they get to fire at the same time, so even a "wolf pack" of frigates can be deadly.
 
Captain Jonah said:
I believe that in fleets of 2000 points and over, ships can be formed into squadrons and fire as a single unit.

Fear the D6D Drone bombardment squadron :twisted:
It's a good thing I wasn't drinking coffee while I was reading that....

Iain is correct, I believe, in that it's still 3 waves of 6AD drones each not 1 wave of 18AD drones :shock: which is still impressive considering that's 3 ships attacking in one go before your opponent gets a chance to return fire. Of course, your opponent has squadrons of his own. :mrgreen:

I really want to try a 2000+ point game now.
 
Keeper Nilbog said:
To be fair, that's what ActA rules are designed for - Fleet Actions which are managable on the tabletop.

Squadron firing is a joy to inflict and a horror to be targeted by.

the glory days of massed squadron fire from Centauri, Dilgar and White Star Squadrons 8) much devestation...........
 
Against a target with ADD 3 waves of 6 drones is worse than one wave of 18. Gives you two chances to run out of ammo before the last ones hit!

-Tim
 
So Matt, just to confirm my understanding:

1) A Kirov, for example, has 4 AD of Drones. It uses ADD mode repeatedly during the turn and is reduced to ADD 0. At that point the G-rack is out of ADDs and cannot fire ANY type of drone for the rest of the battle?

The description for G-racks in the Federation ship listings section says that if the G-rack fires in ADD mode that it gains "ammo" equal to the number of Drone AD the ship has. If the rack runs out of ammo while in ADD mode, then the ship cannot fire drones for the rest of the battle. It also cannot then later use the rack in ADD mode because the ship is out of drones (ammo 0) and trying to use ADD mode gives the "0" ammunition level?

2) If said Kirov loses some ADD ammo during a turn but is not reduced to 0, at the start of the next turn it may then again fire ADD with a ammo value of 4 (the lost ammo is magically replaced).

It seems to me that if #1 is false and #2 is true, that it's going to be really hard to knock the ADD down to 0, and then score enough hits to destroy the Kirov. Because if you don't then next turn you have to start all over again beating down that magically restored ADD ammo of "4". For sure, one had best concentrate a ton of drones on it to make sure you kill it.
 
billclo said:
It seems to me ... it's going to be really hard to knock the ADD down to 0, and then score enough hits to destroy the Kirov. Because if you don't then next turn you have to start all over again beating down that magically restored ADD ammo of "4". For sure, one had best concentrate a ton of drones on it to make sure you kill it.

Or use your drones to kill off everything else and hit the Kirov with phasers and disruptors.
 
1 is true, if you reduce the ADD to 0 zero ammo by fightiung off a huge number of drone waves (or your dice are having a bad day) you can no longer fire ADD OR Drones.

2 Seems to be true also, several quotes and comments from Matt support this, he directly quoted the comment about each turn your ADD is based on your Drone score of 4 each turn.

Now that makes the bigger fed ships almost imune to Drones except as the target of an entire fleets firepower since you cannot wear down the ADD if it resets each new turn.

Though that still leaves, heavy weapons and phasers and with IDF being a bit crap the BC or DN is unlikely to be defending anyone else with its ADDs of never ending.
 
msprange said:
If your ADD reaches zero, you can no longer use any drones.

That is the _only_ thing the rule says. Anything else you are making up!

Put it this way...

ADD >0, you can use drones.
ADD =0, you can't.

_Nothing_ about reducing AD on drones.

Erm I don't want to sound petulant but the rule for Combined drone racks doesn't clearly state "if your ADD reaches zero, you can no longer use any drones". (If it did there wouldn't have been any confusion)

What it does say is:
"However, if it RUNS OUT OF AMMUNITION while using the Anti-drone trait, then it may not use any drones for the rest of the battle."
While the Anti-drone trait says:
"If any die rolls a 1, an Attack Dice of drones will be destroyed as normal but the system will then RUN OUT OF AMMUNITION, reducing the anti-drone score by 1".

This is what's lead many people (myself included) to link the reduction of anti-drone trait to a reduction of weapon AD.

So I would suggest re-phrasing it to "However, if it COMPLETELY runs out of ammunition etc etc"

Sorry rant over, I'll shut up now.
 
The problem is that you have to go back up a sentence or two to find out what "it" is. In this case, the "it" is the ship itself, not an individual drone rack.

But, hey, thanks to Bill Clinton, we all know what the meaning of "is" is. :mrgreen:
 
I had a thought about criticals and Fed G racks.

With Fed ships such as the DW. The ship has Photon 3AD on one line and Drone 1AD on another line. Each is a seperate weapon system.

When it is converted to a DWD does it then have Drone 3AD on one line and Drone 1AD on another line so it could have some but not all of its drones lost to a critical hit to weapons or does it have one weapon system Drone 4AD?

This applies also to its G-rack being used as an ADD since it could lose Drone 3 and be left with an effective ADD1 which would then become useless on rolling a single one.

Also for Orion ships with option weapon mounts.
 
I think a 3AD line and a 1AD line. Just because losing all of your non-phaser weaponry to a single critical seems a bit unfair. From a logical point of view I would say that as the new 3AD of drone you get are where the photons were and so use their power relays etc. so a hit in this area wouldn't affect the other drone system.

Having said that the official answer is probably a single line with 4AD of drones :) .
 
I am almost positive the text for the DWD say increase Drone to 4 and remove Photons. If that it is right it is one weapon system with 4 drone so it is all or none.

The New Jersey on the other hand has 2 lines of Photons because it says replace to drones with Photons not increase Photons.

Edit: Added the word has to New Jersey's line.
 
In the case of the New Jersey, the two extra photons are being put into the gun house beneath the neck; the Kirov has drone racks, the Bismarck two plasma-Fs, and the (unbuilt) BCP variant has a pair of phaser-1s in there instead.
 
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