Battle Report: Terrans Vs. Dindrenzi, Round 2

[Ruckdog]

Just put up a new Batrep on the blog!

http://www.manbattlestations.com/blog/2016/02/24/firestorm-armada-terrans-vs-dindrenzi-round-2/

[Quickdraw]

That is definitely one of my favorite scenarios in the book.
Great pictures for the battle report too.
One note is that I don't think the Dindrenzi force is kosher. For an alliance your minimum requirements have to come from the "parent" race, in this case Dindrenzi, which would mean there would have to be a Dindrenzi tier 2 choice.
I think your tactics went well though. I can see where you're going with shunt entry of the battleship. At least you brought it on in decent flanking position.
The list seemed to work better for you too. Except for those silly Terran cruisers. They fall apart like paper maché.

[Ruckdog]

Yeah, I had completely forgotten the force construction rules for alliance fleets. To be honest, though, I would have let CDR-G run his list as-is even if I had; this game was sort of an extended demo!

[Quickdraw]

Hey, when you're playing at home there is nothing saying you have to use the rules as is! Especially with something benign as a natural alliance.
By the way, how did the full escorts in the battleship work out? Did they save you at all?

[Ruckdog]

Well, I didn't really get a chance to find out...CDR-G focus-fired on them once he realized the amount of PD they added to my battleship, and they were all dead by the end of Turn 3! That in itself was a lesson though, considering I'm contemplating shunting in with my BB.

[Ulric the Grey]

That is definitely one of my favorite scenarios in the book.
Great pictures for the battle report too.
One note is that I don't think the Dindrenzi force is kosher. For an alliance your minimum requirements have to come from the "parent" race, in this case Dindrenzi, which would mean there would have to be a Dindrenzi tier 2 choice.
I think your tactics went well though. I can see where you're going with shunt entry of the battleship. At least you brought it on in decent flanking position.
The list seemed to work better for you too. Except for those silly Terran cruisers. They fall apart like paper maché.

At a thousand points, the Gunships count as a Tier 2 choice not a tier one choice. So it looks kosher to me.

Tier one:
Carrier
Tier two:
Gunship Squadron
Tier three:
2 or more frigate squadrons

For his alliance he had
Tier one:
Battleship
Tier two:
Spooks

[Quickdraw]

[quote author=Ulric the Grey link=topic=1144.msg7491#msg7491 date=1456324306

At a thousand points, the Gunships count as a Tier 2 choice not a tier one choice. So it looks kosher to me.

Tier one:
Carrier
Tier two:
Gunship Squadron
Tier three:
2 or more frigate squadrons

For his alliance he had
Tier one:
Battleship
Tier two:
Spooks
[/quote]

If a tier 2 cruiser accompanies a tier 1 it is effectively a tier 1 squadron. It doesn't fall into tier 2 anymore. There weren't any gunships in the list.

I haven't found the escorts to be completely useful, in this case they were because they took some shooting instead of your battleship. I've found that if I take full escorts the opponent doesn't even bother shooting torpedoes at the battleship, which means more torpedoes at something squishy. But with one escort it's more likely that they will consider it and waste some fire.

I don't know, haven't gotten the hang of escorts yet. Definitely a balancing act.

[Ulric the Grey]

In the picture above....

In the far right corner in the background, those are gunships....

Also I did not see what the fleet list of the dindrenzi player, but it looks like a:

Carrier plus 2 cruisers
squadron of 3 gunships
squadron of spooks
2 squadrons of frigate.

[Ruckdog]

In the picture above....

In the far right corner in the background, those are gunships....

Also I did not see what the fleet list of the dindrenzi player, but it looks like a:

Carrier plus 2 cruisers
squadron of 3 gunships
squadron of spooks
2 squadrons of frigate.

Nope, no gunships. Here is another picture after the carrier squadron activated:



CDR-G's list was:

RSN BB + 2 Dindrenzi escorts
Dindrenzi CV + 2 Cruiser accompaniment
3x Spook Cruisers
3x Frigates
3x Frigates

[Ryjak]

Yup, no Dindrenzi Tier 2.

Taking the Terran Escorts does a few things:

1 builds a huge PD+Shield Mountain no one wants to waste Torpedos on.
2 makes you an extremely hard boarding target
3 creates a zone enemy SRS do not want to approach

Of these, #1 is the least important to Terrans.  And as pointed out, it just forces the Torps elsewhere.  Now, if you make elsewhere a PD mountain (which is what I did against you) then it works well.

 Finally, there is one benefit to all escorts: another small target. If you're opponent has to choose between shooting Escorts and 3 Frigate Squadrons, he's more likely to make the wrong choice.