Topic: Ships going in reverse!

[Nemesis]

Bah! Forget about reverse. Just HET and give' er at spd 31. If it is implemented, I'll never use it anyway.

And this, my friends, is one reason retrograde isn't as big of a deal in SFC.

Two more reasons are:

1/ No floating maps

2/ No narrow salvoes.  So a lucky roll with your photons does not knock out the opponents #1 shield at a range they can't effectively strike back. 

[Beeblebrox]

Edit which brings me to my fav quote: Did the chicken simply cross over the road or did the road merely pass under the chicken?

That depends on which direction and speed the mass the road is on is rotating in space, and which direction and speed the chicken is moving.
 

It also depends on whether you're smoking Christmas Tree, Black Gunjee, or Maui Wowie.


Maybe, to make reversing costly, it could cause damage to the ship.  The OP manual mentions that manoeuvres like high energy turns and all stop are stressful on the structure and engines--hence breaking down on HETs.  Why not penalize the reversing player with some hull damage or possibly some loss of engine power?  To me at least, that would sort of fit in with what I've seen in TOS. 

Captain:  Full reverse!  All engines astern!  Emergency power to the engines!!

[Cue sharply decreasing engine howl.  Bridge crew is slammed about the bridge.  Cue sharply increasing engine howl.]

Chief Engineer:  Captain, the engines can't take this kind of stress for long!

[CUT TO:  Security Chief]

Security Chief Beeblebrox swiftly unholsters disruptor and vaporizes the whining Chief Engineer.


While I'm here I have a couple of questions.  What is a narrow salvo?  I know what each individual word means but I'm unclear on what they mean in this particular combination.  In OP, do the starships engage at impulse or at warp?  I ask for two reasons:  1.  Unless phasers move faster than light they're essentially useless at warp speeds.  2.  When you cross the map border one of your officers tells you that you're going to warp speed. 

 

[Nemesis]

While I'm here I have a couple of questions.  What is a narrow salvo?  I know what each individual word means but I'm unclear on what they mean in this particular combination.

In SFB whether a weapon hits is based on a die roll (for most weapons the roll of one normal 6 sided die).  The narrow salvo option allows all weapons fired at that time to use the same roll.  So if you need to have a set number of weapons hit to have a useful effect (say all of your photon torpedoes) you could fire them as a narrow salvo and if the single die roll is a hit then all your weapons hit and you get a useful level of damage. 

One of my friends who played Fed always wanted to use a floating map (no borders) in SFB and thenwould retrograde and do narrow salvos until he got that lucky 1 on his die roll and knocked down your #1 shield at a range where only photons in a narrow salvo could do so.  He didn't like scenarios with a non floating map or a requirement to defend/attack a fixed location which removed his ability to do so. 

It was also good for bombarding starbases with photons.  Sit at maximum range and do either maximum damage which could overwhelm the shield reinforcement or no damage while sitting at a range which allowed you to reinforce your shields to cover all potential damage from starbase weapons.

For weapons with variable damage such as phasers that die roll establishes the damage for all the phasers not just 1.

In OP, do the starships engage at impulse or at warp?  I ask for two reasons:  1.  Unless phasers move faster than light they're essentially useless at warp speeds.  2.  When you cross the map border one of your officers tells you that you're going to warp speed. 

The documentation says it is at impulse speeds. 

OP is based on SFB which is based on TOS and TOS clearly has episodes of combat at warp speeds.  In the Corbomite maneuver (TOS) the Enterprise is moving backwards at maximum warp and firing phasers at the "buoy".

I think the "impulse only for combat" comes from the TNG episode with the "Picard maneuver".

[KBFLordKrueg]

While I'm here I have a couple of questions.  What is a narrow salvo?  I know what each individual word means but I'm unclear on what they mean in this particular combination.  In OP, do the starships engage at impulse or at warp?  I ask for two reasons:  1.  Unless phasers move faster than light they're essentially useless at warp speeds.  2.  When you cross the map border one of your officers tells you that you're going to warp speed. 

 

1) Narrow salvos come from the original StarFleet Battles game, when firing in narrow salvos (you must announce first) you rolled a single dice for all your weapons of the same type that you fired, rather than a dice for each weapon. So, you hit with everything, or missed with everything. Some weapon have varying amounts of damage depending on range also.
Narrow vollies could be devastating or a big nothing...

2) As far as the speed, combat takes place at sub-warp speeds. According to AFB (the designers of SFB) that is the reason for speed 31 being max. Beyond that,  Weapons and battle computers can't lock on due to distortion of space around the starship at warp speeds.
Of course, I have Star Trek episodes where they ignore this theory, so...


Hope that helps.

[marstone]

While I'm here I have a couple of questions.  What is a narrow salvo?  I know what each individual word means but I'm unclear on what they mean in this particular combination.  In OP, do the starships engage at impulse or at warp?  I ask for two reasons:  1.  Unless phasers move faster than light they're essentially useless at warp speeds.  2.  When you cross the map border one of your officers tells you that you're going to warp speed. 

 

1) Narrow salvos come from the original StarFleet Battles game, when firing in narrow salvos (you must announce first) you rolled a single dice for all your weapons of the same type that you fired, rather than a dice for each weapon. So, you hit with everything, or missed with everything. Some weapon have varying amounts of damage depending on range also.
Narrow vollies could be devastating or a big nothing...

2) As far as the speed, combat takes place at sub-warp speeds. According to AFB (the designers of SFB) that is the reason for speed 31 being max. Beyond that,  Weapons and battle computers can't lock on due to distortion of space around the starship at warp speeds.
Of course, I have Star Trek episodes where they ignore this theory, so...


Hope that helps.

Speed in SFB was at low warp speed, not truely sub-warp.  Old sublight romulan ships moved at a speed on 1 in SFB.  The speed max of 31 I agree with, it was the max speed that weapon fire was able to be done.  Going to above 31 was a disengagement (same as running off the map).  IIRC each speed number is one multiple of the speed of light.  Thus speed 3 was three times the speed of light (I think about warp 2).  I believe it maxed out at under warp 4 (but not sure)

[KBF MalaK]

In SFB (mine was made in 1982) the rules state that speed 31 was actually warp 9 (emergency power), and the ST:tech manual (also from the early 80's) said that warp 9 was the fastest possible speed reachable by a starship.

A long time has passed between the TOS era and the TNG era (400 years or so), so maybe it possible to fight at warp speeds (warp 10 is NOW possible with Transwarp drive), AND they've prolly miniturized the type 4 phaser so it can me mounted on a shuttle.

<Man, the TNG sure messed up 'canon' trek.

[Roychipoqua_Mace]

I remember the author of the Multiplayer Tactical Manual (the awesome SFC1 one) said that the warp speed in Starfleet Battles was the cube root of the speed unit.
Warp 1= speed 1.0
Warp 2= speed 8.0
Warp 3= speed 27.0
It seems like Starfleet Command is more based on speed 32.0 as being Warp 1, like how planets and ships are scaled.

[FPF-DieHard]

It was also good for bombarding starbases with photons.  Sit at maximum range and do either maximum damage which could overwhelm the shield reinforcement or no damage while sitting at a range which allowed you to reinforce your shields to cover all potential damage from starbase weapons.

This still works, with proxies.

Reverse would be cool, but I'd put this way low on the priority list of modifications.

[Dizzy]

Reverse would be cool, but I'd put this way low on the priority list of modifications.

Yup, the poll numbers just arn't there to make it a priority.