Monday, April 03, 2006
SFB: The Planet Crusher
I want to get more time in with Star Fleet Battles, and while that means I'd like to play face-to-face with an opponenet whenever possible, it also means that the monster scenarios attracted my attention. I've been thinking of playing out the first monster scenario (SM1.0, The Planet Crusher) for a couple of months, and on Saturday afternoon, I finally spread out my starmap, set up the scenario and gave it a whirl.
In the scenario, a giant monster (dubbed The Planet Crusher) is heading towards a Class M planet (Sheboygan-III), and the player chooses a ship (or ships) to take on the monster. If the ship can do 200 points of damage to the monster before the monster can reach and destroy the planet (by doing 200 points of damage to the planet), then the player wins. Otherwise, The Planet Crusher destroys the planet, killing who knows how many civilians.
The planet starts roughly central at the top of the map (hex 2502), the monster starts in the bottom-left corner (hex 0230) and the player's ship(s) starts in hexes 4214, 4215, 4216 or 4217 (basically, the far right edge of the map, approximately in the centre).
For beginners, the scenario suggests giving the monster 100 damage points instead of 200, so I did that. I chose to use the Federation Heavy Cruiser (CA) before the re-fit, so perhaps that made it a bit challenging to begin with. The number of SSDs I have to choose from is fairly limited, though, and this one seemed like it was made for the scenario (the calculations for a 200-point monster suggest a 125-BPV ship, and that's what the CA pre-refit is).
Starting out at Weapons Status 0 (making it even more difficult for myself, I'm sure), I spent a good portion of my energy on getting my weapons ready while only going at speed 16 (the monster always moves at speed 6). Boosting my speed up on the second turn to speed 26 (I slipped up and didn't spend enough on my photons here; I thought it only cost two energy to load the torps and then one point to hold thereafter, but it's actually four points over two turns to fully load them, at which point you can fire them or you can hold them for one energy afterwards), I headed towards the monster, deciding to keep it on my right as I passed it and opened fire.
As soon as I got within six hexes (you can't fire at it from more than six hexes), the monster unleashed its weapon and I took a full 35 points of damage from the blast. It knocked down my front-right shield and did a little bit of damage to my internals. I really should've overloaded my torpedoes before firing on the monster, but I didn't, so I opened up with four phaser-1s and all four of my torpedo tubes, doing 28 points of damage to the beast.
While not a bad start, it was far from over. I had one shield down (why didn't I reinforce my shields? d'oh!), and the monster was going to blast me again at the start of the next turn. On turn three, I slowed down to speed 12 to stay near the monster and try to fight it out. Unfortunately, I couldn't fire torps this turn, so I was stuck fighting with only phasers. The next attack from the monster was weaker, but it still did some damage (this time, I started reinforcing shields, but I reinforced the wrong shield and the monster fired right through my downed shield). I took some internals and even lost a torpedo tube, as well as a phaser. Dumb mistake on my part.
Over the next couple of turns, I stayed pretty close to the monster, hoping to wear it down while angling my ship so that the monster couldn't fire into that downed shield again. However, I started losing other shields. I lost my rear shield next, at which point I decided to keep my left side to the monster. It didn't take long before I'd also lost my front-left shield.
At the beginning of turn six, the monster had taken 96 points of damage and I had my torpedoes ready. The beast was 13 hexes from the planet. This was most likely to be the last turn, so I turned right towards the monster (my front shield hadn't taken any damage yet) and opened fire with my torps at a range of three. Boxcars! Both missed. Thankfully, I'd also declared to use all of the phasers I could, as well. I did enough damage to kill the monster there, but it would have been somewhat more dramatic if my torps hadn't fizzled. :p
I like this scenario. I wasn't sure how well SFB would work as a solitaire game, but after giving the first monster scenario a try, I'm looking forward to playing it again, as well as playing some of the other monster scenarios listed in the Basic Set. I'll play The Planet Crusher a few more times before moving on, boosting the damage the monster can take by 25 points with each attempt. At that point, my plan is to move onto the next monster scenario.
In the scenario, a giant monster (dubbed The Planet Crusher) is heading towards a Class M planet (Sheboygan-III), and the player chooses a ship (or ships) to take on the monster. If the ship can do 200 points of damage to the monster before the monster can reach and destroy the planet (by doing 200 points of damage to the planet), then the player wins. Otherwise, The Planet Crusher destroys the planet, killing who knows how many civilians.
The planet starts roughly central at the top of the map (hex 2502), the monster starts in the bottom-left corner (hex 0230) and the player's ship(s) starts in hexes 4214, 4215, 4216 or 4217 (basically, the far right edge of the map, approximately in the centre).
For beginners, the scenario suggests giving the monster 100 damage points instead of 200, so I did that. I chose to use the Federation Heavy Cruiser (CA) before the re-fit, so perhaps that made it a bit challenging to begin with. The number of SSDs I have to choose from is fairly limited, though, and this one seemed like it was made for the scenario (the calculations for a 200-point monster suggest a 125-BPV ship, and that's what the CA pre-refit is).
Starting out at Weapons Status 0 (making it even more difficult for myself, I'm sure), I spent a good portion of my energy on getting my weapons ready while only going at speed 16 (the monster always moves at speed 6). Boosting my speed up on the second turn to speed 26 (I slipped up and didn't spend enough on my photons here; I thought it only cost two energy to load the torps and then one point to hold thereafter, but it's actually four points over two turns to fully load them, at which point you can fire them or you can hold them for one energy afterwards), I headed towards the monster, deciding to keep it on my right as I passed it and opened fire.
As soon as I got within six hexes (you can't fire at it from more than six hexes), the monster unleashed its weapon and I took a full 35 points of damage from the blast. It knocked down my front-right shield and did a little bit of damage to my internals. I really should've overloaded my torpedoes before firing on the monster, but I didn't, so I opened up with four phaser-1s and all four of my torpedo tubes, doing 28 points of damage to the beast.
While not a bad start, it was far from over. I had one shield down (why didn't I reinforce my shields? d'oh!), and the monster was going to blast me again at the start of the next turn. On turn three, I slowed down to speed 12 to stay near the monster and try to fight it out. Unfortunately, I couldn't fire torps this turn, so I was stuck fighting with only phasers. The next attack from the monster was weaker, but it still did some damage (this time, I started reinforcing shields, but I reinforced the wrong shield and the monster fired right through my downed shield). I took some internals and even lost a torpedo tube, as well as a phaser. Dumb mistake on my part.
Over the next couple of turns, I stayed pretty close to the monster, hoping to wear it down while angling my ship so that the monster couldn't fire into that downed shield again. However, I started losing other shields. I lost my rear shield next, at which point I decided to keep my left side to the monster. It didn't take long before I'd also lost my front-left shield.
At the beginning of turn six, the monster had taken 96 points of damage and I had my torpedoes ready. The beast was 13 hexes from the planet. This was most likely to be the last turn, so I turned right towards the monster (my front shield hadn't taken any damage yet) and opened fire with my torps at a range of three. Boxcars! Both missed. Thankfully, I'd also declared to use all of the phasers I could, as well. I did enough damage to kill the monster there, but it would have been somewhat more dramatic if my torps hadn't fizzled. :p
I like this scenario. I wasn't sure how well SFB would work as a solitaire game, but after giving the first monster scenario a try, I'm looking forward to playing it again, as well as playing some of the other monster scenarios listed in the Basic Set. I'll play The Planet Crusher a few more times before moving on, boosting the damage the monster can take by 25 points with each attempt. At that point, my plan is to move onto the next monster scenario.
// posted by Chris @ 9:23 AM 
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