Suicidal Ships?
 

Grrr. So I'm moving a small fleet to attack the Sergetti homeworld in a PBW game. I don't expect to win, but my ships can't escape and the idiots glassed the real target instead of capturing it.

However, one sector from the homeworld they are intercepted by number of fighter Groups. Not a lot of anti-fighter weapons in this fleet, so they get badly hurt. Good so far, I remove the cripples and task the others to move the one remaining square onto the HW. The fleet had 5 movement points and the ships remaining in it were undamaged.

What do they do? They sit in that sector and let the fighters pick them apart! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif

Proportions 2.4. More relevently, Gold 1.67.

Phoenix-D

Re: Suicidal Ships?
 

Can you even ram planets? I've never tried.

Re: Suicidal Ships?
 

I was trying to INVADE, not ram http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif They weren't even in the same sector as the target yet.

Phoenix-D

Re: Suicidal Ships?
 

Simultaneous movement or turn-based?

You say you left ships behind, so I suppose the turn ended with your ships one sector away from the homeworld, ordered the speed-5 fleet to move to the homeworld, and the result was another combat in the intercept sector?

If it was simultaneous mode, it may simply be that the simultaneous event resolver decided there should be another combat round before your speed-5 ships were able to move to the homeworld.

PvK

Re: Suicidal Ships?
 

They sat there and took it for *7 combats*. getting picked off one-by-one. Simultanious game, and I gave them a move order, not attack.

Phoenix-D

Re: Suicidal Ships?
 

Is it possible one of them took a hit in the first combat of the new turn that slowed the whole fleet down to a crawl (bridge, life support, or crew quarters)?

PvK

Re: Suicidal Ships?
 

It would have to have taken out all the ship's engines to do that, given that they were only one sector away.possible though.

Oh well. If this wasn't a Proportions game, I think I'd go back in with a bunch of planetary napalm and PDCs..

Phoenix-D

Re: Suicidal Ships?
 

I think if you lose your bridge, speed drops to one, which would mean the fleet would have to Last practically the whole strategic turn before it moved to the homeworld. I think losing life support and crew quarters each halve speed, as well. (Each condition either halves or slows to 1, but I don't remember which does which.) So, that would be my guess.

PvK

Re: Suicidal Ships?
 

Losing Bridge:
1/2 movement.

Losing all crew quarters:
1/2 movement.

Losing all lifesupport:
1/4 movement.

Being able to decimate a fleet because you crippled the leader's movement:
Priceless. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Suicidal Ships?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">ROFLOL Oh that's classic SJ. I love it. Someone should make a whole list of stuff like that for the SEIV universe. That'd be great. I'll if I can come up with some myself.

Re: Suicidal Ships?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">There's your problem. In a simultaneous game, you have to use the Attack order to enter a sector containing hostiles; ships with the Move order will just stop (or sometimes "dance" back and forth between two adjacent sectors). The only exception I can think of is when you move through a warp point and run into defenders which the moving ships didn't know were there.

Re: Suicidal Ships?
 

<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">No, this can't be right. I use the "move to" order all the time when attacking planets in simultaneous games. More out of habit than any particular reason really. But move to works just fine when attacking stationary targets.

Geo

Re: Suicidal Ships?
 

"There's your problem. In a simultaneous game, you have to use the Attack order to enter a sector containing hostiles; ships with the Move order will just stop (or sometimes "dance" back and forth between two adjacent sectors). The only exception I can think of is when you move through a warp point and run into defenders which the moving ships didn't know were there."

No.. they only do the dance when you don't SPECIFICALLY tell them to move to that square. If you give a move-to order to a square with enemies, they'll go there.

Phoenix-D

Re: Suicidal Ships?
 

I think this is how it happened. The key elements are your fleet's speed of 5 and 7 attacks by the fighters. This means the fighters have speed of 7.

Your fleet will move on days 6, 12,18, 24 and 30.
The fighters will move on days 4, 8, 12, 16, 20, 24 and 28.

The fighters first move is to attack you! And it happens before you can move. As long as ONE ship has its speed reduced to 3, it can again attack before you can move (Speed 3 move on days 10, 20 and 30). Once he has the speed of one ship down to 1, you can't move till day 30! That slow ship probably won't even be able to get into the battle so it won't be destroyed; in fact if it has no weapons either, it will move off to a neutral corner.

As long as your fleet has speed of 1 on day thirty, it should then move onto the planet. If speed is zero, you will stay put.

Hope this helps.

Kim

Re: Suicidal Ships?
 

"Being able to decimate a fleet because you crippled the leader's movement:
Priceless."

Hmm. Begs the question- what happens if you hit the leader with a Wormhole Beam? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Phoenix-D

Re: Suicidal Ships?
 

Can you spell disaster? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

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