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00:00:01
Smells Like Potential
67 Plays3 months ago
Fleets Assemble! Biggs and Truthi finally get to every nerd's favorite pre-game activity: fleet building.
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction & Podcast Theme
00:00:38
Biggs
Hello and welcome back to the Blissfully Ignored Gaming's Unknown Podcast. It's me, your emergency medical hologram, Biggs.
00:00:49
Biggs
And with me, as always, is our intrepid captain, the captain, captain, captain.
00:00:54
Truthiness
Nappin? Cappin? Cappin? Nappin? Cappin? God damn it, I'll have that boiler quote pulled up.
00:01:01
Biggs
ah Truthiness. What's up?
00:01:04
Truthiness
What's going on, man? How you been?
00:01:06
Biggs
Oh, it's good right up until I flubbed the open.
00:01:09
Truthiness
No, you just did a Boimler. It's okay. yeah
00:01:14
Biggs
Oh, ah yeah, I think we did.
00:01:15
Truthiness
ah We had something to talk about tonight, right?
Fleet Building Fun & Challenges
00:01:20
Biggs
um We're talking about the best part of any spaceship game. No, not putting things on the table. The thinking about it beforehand, the fleet building.
00:01:34
Truthiness
Yeah, yeah we took ah ah we ah we had a hard time coming up with a quote to use for an audio byte for this one. Because we just there's tons of you know team coming together ones.
00:01:45
Truthiness
I actually thought about Avengers Assemble.
00:01:46
Biggs
Avengers Assemble.
00:01:47
Truthiness
And I thought about that one too. um And then in a bit of completely unrelated news to Star Trek, um are Star Wars Armada's final update dropped today.
00:01:58
Truthiness
And I was typing back and forth with our our a fellow big content creator geek. And um I'm talking about this CIS squad heavy fleet that I'm working together. And I end with a quote from Ted Lasso ah that I went, oh my God, that's it.
00:02:21
Biggs
That's the one.
00:02:25
Truthiness
There you go. Smells like potential.
00:02:26
Biggs
That's it. That's the one.
00:02:28
Truthiness
And it was, it was rather funny to watch him, uh, try and follow along. Cause I'm just talking about Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars. And I just say, wait, that's it. That's the name.
Star Wars Armada Update & Podcast Naming
00:02:37
Truthiness
No whatsoever.
00:02:39
Truthiness
He's like yeah the fleet name. No, the podcast. Come on, follow my insanity.
00:02:45
Biggs
Well, anyone that's followed Blissfully Ignoring Gaming for any amount of time knows that we love ourselves some Ted Lasso.
00:02:52
Truthiness
Of course he's he's the best.
00:02:58
Truthiness
Ah, all right. So shall we get into it?
00:03:01
Biggs
Yes, yes we shall.
00:03:09
Truthiness
I'll never stop with this lovely, lovely audio bite. All right. We're going to actually do this now. So today we're going to talk about ah technically what is called task force creation, I believe in the rules.
00:03:20
Truthiness
Um, but you know, we call it fleet building colloquially. Uh, and I think, um, the really interesting thing here are, I think that deviates significantly from a lot of mini games is you don't actually make the fleet.
00:03:36
Truthiness
until you know what the scenario is. that's That's
Task Force Creation & Strategy
00:03:39
Truthiness
quite a bit different than what I'm used to walking into. like You might go into a tournament and like for 40K and other similar games with ah with a scenario pack, but you don't necessarily know which ones are going to get picked. um This one, you know the mission and get to select your crew and your task force of ships going into the mission, you know fully aware, fully cognizant.
00:04:07
Truthiness
I know it's something that I'm not sure they can implement in an eventual matched play, organized play setting, but
00:04:17
Biggs
probably
Competitive Gaming & Strategy Adaptation
00:04:18
Truthiness
I'm excited to see if they can.
00:04:18
Biggs
not easily just because of the the i'm the time and decision paralysis that you'd be dealing with.
00:04:27
Truthiness
Right, but what if that's part of the competitive environment as you are rewarded for thinking on your feet and evaluating and knowing your crew and your available options and you're able to adjust on the fly?
00:04:38
Truthiness
like What if that's part of it? like i It's a pipe dream. I'm probably in the minority for finding that exciting, but it's definitely something potentially there that I think is is something that could be mined to be very unique about this game.
00:04:45
Biggs
Hmm.
00:04:54
Biggs
Possibly. Or there's there's steps in the process where you could um where you could kind of freeze things and say, this is where you're forming the task force for a specific event.
00:05:19
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:05:19
Biggs
And then this is going to be your task force for that event. And further on from that, your task, ah you know different things will change.
00:05:33
Biggs
And i'll I'll go into where that is as we go on.
00:05:33
Truthiness
Yeah. Yeah, and they've got tons of design space. They could make like a matched play mission deck that are yeah scenarios that are more friendly to faster play um and matched play, don't have things like mutual losses. I'd really love if they came up with faction-specific complications that just play into a faction's character and strengths.
00:05:58
Truthiness
May really make that overture influence matter a lot
00:05:58
Biggs
Mm-hmm
Match Play Setup & Scenario Design
00:06:02
Biggs
Yeah
00:06:03
Truthiness
but this is all stuff down the road that Honestly probably won't even happen um just things that I would love to see happen um from an organized place perspective and and I guess we should copy I hear we're Talking mainly from that match play mode.
00:06:19
Truthiness
We're not really talking campaign mode here. A lot of the stuff does carry over, it's all very similar in how you construct things, but we're not really talking campaign right now. As usual, we're kind of staying in that single game night match play kind of outlook.
00:06:29
Biggs
Yeah.
00:06:37
Biggs
Right. So that brings us to here I am. I'm showing up at game night. We really haven't been getting a campaign going. It's just some random other guy that that shows up. what How do we get things started? What do we do?
00:06:57
Truthiness
All right, so we've already decided match play mode, um which means we go into game mode
Officer Roles & Gameplay Impact
00:07:02
Truthiness
selection. That's number one on the tech, the game setup list. Yay. We did that. So then we select mission. You can do this either by mutually agreeing or you can, you can randomize it.
00:07:11
Truthiness
Um, I'm a big fan of just completely randomizing the overture. Just, you know, that way, you know, they don't have to agree on anything. You just shuffle it up to something new. You know, you're going to get some repayability out of, out of this quite a bit.
00:07:24
Truthiness
Um, so.
00:07:24
Biggs
Well, you've got you've got seven, what is it, seven total overtures with five um five different,
00:07:38
Biggs
what's that next thing called? the the Not the complication, but yeah, the situation.
00:07:40
Truthiness
Oh, the ha the situation, the hazard, yeah. Yeah, and then you've got how many complications that go into this as well?
00:07:45
Biggs
So, ah eight, I believe.
00:07:51
Truthiness
Yeah, so and then yeah you're gonna generate the scenario, you're gonna, um you know in which case you'll you know have also generated the complications that you know about in your hand ah based on the scenario. So you'll have a general idea of what you're walking into and then,
00:08:10
Truthiness
That's when you get to select your fleets. So this is where you choose your ships and your units. And you've got this is where you have to go up into the task force selection, which is a little higher up in the rule book.
00:08:24
Truthiness
So that's when you first start with choosing directives. Yay. There's only one of each right now, which how they have this written is interesting. It looks to me there's going to
00:08:33
Biggs
Mm hmm. Like there could be other directives you could choose from.
00:08:36
Truthiness
Yeah, yeah, which is another thing I think they could add in for like organized match play um is you have additional objectives that might be more combat ah forgiving, like, you know, I don't know, Klingons eventually get something fun or whatever. um So once you choose directives, which are set for you right now, you then choose your core officers. You wanna go over what that means?
00:09:01
Biggs
ah Yes. so choosing when you're going to choose your core officers that you use the point value that's on the backside of the officer, the the committed side. Now, I think the standard way of playing is going to be with 50 core points that lets you choose a variety of of good officers as well as
00:09:31
Biggs
um your more generics and lets you kind of make ah reserve um some extra points for your upgrade cards and your maybe some extra defiance when you're going to when you're going to play the Use Flex Points bit at the end.
00:09:55
Truthiness
Yeah, so it's also, did you mention that you yeah have to choose exactly five?
00:10:00
Biggs
Oh, no, I did not. So you have to choose exactly five and there has to be um three of them have to fit a specific role.
00:10:02
Truthiness
Yeah, you have to use it.
00:10:14
Biggs
The specific roles that you have to choose from are you have to choose a command liaison. You have to choose a chief of operations.
00:10:27
Biggs
and you have to choose a head of science. And then the remaining two are called your specialists and they can do anything you want them to.
00:10:38
Truthiness
Yeah.
Commodore Selection & Tactical Strategy
00:10:39
Truthiness
Yeah. And that's, so what what do you generally look for in those roles? Like if I remember correctly, command liaison tends to match up with the Commodore, right?
00:10:49
Biggs
Yeah, your command liaison is probably but does not have to be the Commodore.
00:10:57
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:10:58
Biggs
um the There is a bit further on where it says your command liaison has to be and in the captain's chair of a ship, but it doesn't necessarily have to be the Commodore of your fleet.
00:11:17
Truthiness
Okay. Are you finding, are you finding any specific traits or values you generally like out of that command lazy on?
00:11:26
Biggs
um I would say what you want out of a command liaison is going to be somebody who is going to want to be sitting in that captain's chair.
00:11:40
Biggs
ah
00:11:41
Truthiness
So what probably social skills like the top tier one that led the little person with the inside the window. Um, do you find any much technical or field craft?
00:11:54
Biggs
Probably, you want at least a little bit of text so that you can go to warp.
00:12:00
Truthiness
Yeah, I think that's pretty consistently cost all of them, isn't it?
00:12:04
Biggs
ah Security not as necessary, although if you're picking out someone who you're intending to be your Commodore as well,
00:12:18
Biggs
You really want a well-rounder, someone who's going to be able to effectively hop into whatever chair you need them to be in and make it so.
00:12:21
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:12:33
Truthiness
Yeah. I mean, we might as well talk about the Commodore now. Like, um, I think I have it further down in the outline, but, um, this feels like a good place to talk about, you know, what the Commodore can do from that flagship chair and why you want something well-rounded.
00:12:43
Biggs
Mm-hmm.
00:12:48
Truthiness
So do you want to talk about what the Commodore can do?
00:12:51
Biggs
Yeah, so the Commodore can, when the Commodore uses,
00:13:01
Biggs
back it up, what the Commodore does is you can ah commit them, select any unit in comms range and have that unit perform
00:13:02
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:13:17
Biggs
in action as though the Commodore was sitting at a station on that unit.
00:13:25
Truthiness
Yeah, so it's kind of nice to be able to, you're literally commanding another ship that you're not on to go do an action.
Core Officer Responsibilities & Selection
00:13:32
Truthiness
Something we should mention is you have to have the command role, even though they don't have to be in the command liaison slot, um and they must be your highest ranking eligible officer. So while you can put them in that specialist slot, like if you have say Picard and Cisco,
00:13:52
Truthiness
in the same task force, Picard has to be the Commodore. um You can choose when you're tied, ah but otherwise it goes to the highest rank.
00:13:56
Biggs
this This also means that it's entirely possible that you could accidentally wind up with a line officer as your Commodore if you accidentally take a bunch of ah Ensign's chiefs and lieutenants for your Federation.
00:14:12
Truthiness
Yes, that is...
00:14:24
Truthiness
Yeah, you could whoopsie daisy right into that one Hey, hey don't be knocking lower decks Look he's a zero point generic.
00:14:25
Biggs
ah oops Oops, your reliable commander is now um the Commodore.
00:14:38
Biggs
I don't know if a commander qualifies as lower decks at this point, but.
00:14:42
Truthiness
He counts his lower decks. He might be in charge of the lower decks, but he's still lower decks I
00:14:50
Biggs
Well, anyway, that's the that's the Commodore. So really, you're looking for your command liaison. You're looking for a potential Commodore candidate, um someone who's going to be able to fill in anywhere, someone who's got a good spread of skills, someone who's going to be as comfortable jumping to warp as they are.
00:15:20
Biggs
um doing emergency repairs as they are um telling a team to that lacks an officer to shoot another team really quickly right now.
00:15:35
Truthiness
Yeah. I feel like this is also a good, your your main source of like diplomacy if a, you know, for like your hails, which can be fairly important and a bunch of missions that yeah require diplomacy.
00:15:48
Biggs
Mm hmm.
00:15:51
Truthiness
I feel like this is the main one you can get that skill in.
00:15:55
Biggs
Exactly. Especially for the Dominion.
00:16:00
Truthiness
Yeah, yeah, and well, yeah, you can get in a lot of different places for the Federation, I suppose, but yeah, it's definitely where the minion tends to need it. um
Specialists & Game Strategy Enhancement
00:16:10
Truthiness
Okay, so what about that chief of operations?
00:16:12
Biggs
a Chief of Operations um is more along the lines of your ah security ah personnel. You're looking for someone who is going to be leading your teams on the ground or maybe ah maybe giving ordinance to your ships in orbit.
00:16:40
Truthiness
Yeah, so you just your primary shooter almost
00:16:44
Biggs
Mm hmm. You're you're Worf, your guy who's going to be um getting beat up so that everybody else knows how serious the problem is.
00:16:55
Truthiness
yeah and I feel like this is also some of the fieldcraft missions This is where your your main fieldcraft guy like yeah the away missions guy feels like this slot um I wonder if Do we have Riker yet?
00:17:08
Truthiness
I can't remember
00:17:08
Biggs
We do not have Riker yet.
00:17:10
Truthiness
OK, I'm going to shut my mouth then.
00:17:12
Biggs
I wouldn't even know what Riker would look like in this game because he's not in the game yet.
00:17:20
Truthiness
I'm going to just back right off of that comment, and we're going to pretend like it didn't happen.
00:17:26
Biggs
Yes. Moving onward.
00:17:30
Truthiness
Yeah, so Chief Obziad, I think Worf in particular is a good example of somebody who's both good at
00:17:32
Biggs
if
00:17:37
Truthiness
at field craft type away missions, as well as you know he's really good in that ordinance slot. I think he is one of those exemplars that's good at both. I feel like a lot of the ah the ops officers, the ops eligible officers are either one or the other.
00:17:51
Truthiness
They're either good at field craft or good to ordinance and not generally both.
00:17:56
Biggs
Unless you're, ah unless you're Talak Talan menacing third.
00:17:56
Truthiness
Unless you're Moog and you have, yeah ah but but man, I kapla on wharf. It's so good.
00:18:07
Truthiness
It's so good. I love that keyword. I'm so excited to see more of it, because you know, klayans are going to have it. like It's got to be there.
00:18:15
Biggs
I mean, are there going to be any Klingons that don't?
00:18:19
Truthiness
That's a good question.
00:18:19
Biggs
I think that's like a core Klingon mechanic. like ah almost like Almost like glib is for the Dominion.
00:18:27
Truthiness
ah yeah for the vorta in particular yeah yeah i mean we'll see um but yeah it definitely feels it feels right it feels very right like to do something awesome to get better um all right so head of science
00:18:42
Biggs
Head of Science. Now this is where it gets tricky because you're scientists that are out there. um This one's the the most rare one that you have to choose from. And you're looking at either getting a scientist that is high on like medical stuff or like like your biology or you're looking at.
00:19:17
Biggs
um
00:19:20
Biggs
I don't even I don't even know what else, but like that there's only so many selections for science officer, and some of them are very high ranked ah characters.
00:19:33
Truthiness
Yeah, they're pretty limited. um Just looking over, just looking over my Federation correct collection real quick, like you got Dax Bashir and, um my God, Picard can do it too.
00:19:42
Biggs
you
00:19:46
Biggs
Picard. And then you've got the redoubtable engineer and scholarly doctor as generics. That's it. That's five choices.
00:19:56
Truthiness
Yeah, and I'm actually kind of so surprised surprised not to see O'Brien in that.
00:19:56
Biggs
um it's It's Yeah, he can only be operations or a specialist.
00:20:03
Truthiness
you are I mean, i do suppose he is I do suppose he is a chief of
Officer Role Flexibility & Adaptation
00:20:09
Truthiness
operations.
00:20:09
Biggs
So you would expect it. But
00:20:11
Truthiness
and
00:20:12
Biggs
you're here's the Here's the thing, it gets even worse with the Dominion. yours Your science officers are a founder, the female changeling,
00:20:26
Biggs
Henok Sanctimonious Minister, and Karima Researcher. those are Those are it. That's it. You got to take one of them.
00:20:35
Truthiness
Yeah, I think like I tend to default to the researcher to be honest.
00:20:40
Biggs
I mean, the researcher is just probably an auto-include just for that mechanical skill.
00:20:48
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:20:48
Biggs
but But yeah, if you're not taking the researcher, what are you doing? Are you taking a changeling of some sort as the scientist?
00:20:59
Truthiness
Oh, are you taking two changelings?
00:21:00
Biggs
and Mm hmm.
00:21:03
Truthiness
Because they are generic.
00:21:04
Biggs
And then, yeah, and then who's who's your commander? And oh, dear God, now you've got to protect two changelings.
00:21:09
Truthiness
Changely. Oh, right. Yeah, that's ooh.
00:21:14
Biggs
Two founders to protect.
00:21:17
Truthiness
Don't don't explode.
00:21:19
Biggs
Mm hmm.
00:21:20
Truthiness
Okay, and then I guess we're getting into the specialist. So that's more or less where you just start covering down.
00:21:24
Biggs
Mm hmm.
00:21:26
Truthiness
Excuse me on anything you don't have so far.
00:21:30
Biggs
Cover your weaknesses or play to your strengths.
00:21:33
Truthiness
Yep. Yep. I think this is where you, like the minion will see like second Gemadar officers constantly. Um, and you know, maybe you take an extra founder cause man, they are useful even if you have to protect them.
00:21:46
Biggs
And relatively inexpensive for the...
00:21:48
Truthiness
Yeah, they're pretty cheap for January. So we're we're getting ahead of ourselves for a later episode. But um yeah, the special is just really where you, I feel like that's where you can really play to the scenario more than anything.
00:21:53
Biggs
yeah
00:22:00
Truthiness
Like you've got an odd keyword that's not really universally seen everywhere. And like, oh, hey, Dex has one that works there. Or I but You use her special rule to try and um you know, she she gets that extra expertise dice um For tests. She doesn't have skills in um Which is nifty And yeah you know an extra weapons officer one of the things I think you really got to think about is how you're gonna split those officers and I feel like that's where your specialists really come in like I don't know about you, but I Think I prefer to have like
00:22:38
Truthiness
Well, we're getting ahead of ourselves here, but I think when you've got three ships, I like to have weapons officers dedicated to every ship just so they can use that extra ordinance dice.
00:22:39
Biggs
Mm hmm.
00:22:51
Truthiness
That's, I don't know.
00:22:51
Biggs
Well, only if you're going to be shooting, what if you're what if your plan is peaceful exploration, then maybe you'd want
00:22:57
Truthiness
Biggs, you are fired from playing Dominion ever again. how How are you letting Loki play the Federation and you're playing the Dominion?
00:23:04
Biggs
see
00:23:06
Truthiness
What is wrong with you?
Ship Selection & Strategic Impact
00:23:08
Biggs
I'm just holding off until my Klingons arrive.
00:23:11
Truthiness
Victory is life. Come on. Embrace the Klingon. Go to the next best thing.
00:23:17
Biggs
ah Besides, he he seemed like he wanted to play Federation.
00:23:22
Truthiness
ah Okay. Loki, the God of Mischief, wants to be a peace nick.
00:23:29
Biggs
a
00:23:31
Truthiness
Yes, Loki. I'm talking about you. I know you're listening.
00:23:35
Biggs
We know you're listening.
00:23:37
Truthiness
We're watching you.
00:23:40
Truthiness
All right, now that we've creeped out a listener ah sufficiently, I'm sure we'll get teased about this relentlessly.
00:23:46
Biggs
Probably.
00:23:46
Truthiness
What were we talking about?
00:23:48
Biggs
ah we were We were talking about specialists.
00:23:48
Truthiness
Initialists.
00:23:50
Biggs
So yeah, use your specialist for a variety of things. um Maybe start thinking of what else you need on your other ships to make those ships work once you've you know put the generic line officer on them.
00:24:06
Biggs
like Which ships need a second ah ah second officer on them? Which need a third?
00:24:15
Truthiness
Yeah, actually, maybe before we do that, yeah, maybe before we get to that, let's let's talk about the next step in it, because you've now, you've chosen your core officers, then you create your transfer pool.
00:24:16
Biggs
What those officers should be?
00:24:22
Biggs
Yeah.
00:24:28
Truthiness
So that's when you, basically you take any officer who is not part of, or who is not in, yeah.
00:24:36
Biggs
any officer in your collection and that is, that is much further down.
00:24:40
Truthiness
You get to consist of six officers, and it's shuffled. So there's a difference in how you select these, but is that further down? Is that after a determined unit pool?
00:24:53
Truthiness
Okay, so you know first you create it.
00:24:53
Biggs
You, you actually, you actually select ships first and there's a reason, there's a reason for this.
00:24:57
Truthiness
Yeah, okay, that's what I thought.
00:25:00
Biggs
That's not immediately apparent.
00:25:02
Truthiness
Yeah, so next thing, next step is after you've created your transfer officer pool, which we'll get into some ways you can kind of gimmick around that if you have a robust collection um or friends willing to loan you cards.
00:25:14
Truthiness
But the next one is the actual ship selection. So it doesn't give you a core, ah in the core rules, what kind of ships you have to take. It's all scenario dependent, but they're all the same.
00:25:27
Biggs
Fortunately, you don't have to think too hard because the current scenarios only have one thing and that's one capital ship and two of something else.
00:25:42
Truthiness
Yeah, two mediums or smalls is how I like to call them. mean I think scout ship and support ship are the technical terms.
00:25:47
Biggs
ah there's There's actually three different
00:25:51
Truthiness
There's another one. It's like the specialist.
00:25:52
Biggs
There's three different ones that one that we haven't even seen yet. Yeah, but it's a yes scout escort and specialist.
00:26:01
Truthiness
Specialist. Yeah.
00:26:04
Biggs
I could be wrong.
00:26:05
Truthiness
No, scalp, support, and specialist.
00:26:05
Biggs
I'm i'm just.
00:26:08
Biggs
Scout support and specialist.
00:26:09
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:26:10
Biggs
I want to say. I want to say the constellation is a support ship.
00:26:16
Truthiness
Correct. And the defiant is the scout ship.
00:26:17
Biggs
And.
00:26:19
Biggs
And so is the Jampadar Fighter.
00:26:22
Truthiness
Yep.
00:26:23
Biggs
And we don't have any specialist chips yet.
00:26:27
Truthiness
Yeah. So Dominion. Yay. Congratulations. You're taking a battle cruiser and two Jammin are fighters. Your decision making is done.
00:26:33
Biggs
Yay!
00:26:35
Truthiness
The Federation can, especially if you are say someone who happens to have a demo kit, you can have a little more flexibility here because you
Equipment Selection & Auxiliary Strategy
00:26:49
Truthiness
actually can choose between two constellations, two defiance, or a defiant constellation as your support ships.
00:26:55
Biggs
Mm-hmm. So if you have a second core set or stole the stars demo kit You can ah Well, I definitely didn't so there's no need to there's no need to worry about any such things I
00:27:03
Truthiness
You know your store was identified in an earlier podcast, right? Well, that's good.
00:27:15
Truthiness
Okay, excellent.
00:27:19
Truthiness
So yeah, we're here is a ship selection. This will get a lot more interesting as we get more ships in here, because I think they've already confirmed some of the ships for the next wave, right? Like I think there's more Federation ships coming.
00:27:32
Biggs
I think I read somewhere that there is going to be more Federation ships in the Klingon expansion whenever that shows up.
00:27:41
Truthiness
Yeah, so I yeah, so the Federation will start to get spoiled for choice. I'm sure there's a billion freaking Federation ships and lore anyway, so it's that's inevitable. um But this will get more interesting, I think, is the game gets bigger, um especially as we get into sway, which we actually currently don't know how it works.
00:28:00
Biggs
Don't know the rules about
00:28:02
Truthiness
um It says ah not something relevant to the core set, and it will be in the living rules document. So ah waiting on that living rules document.
00:28:08
Biggs
But there is something there is something in there about ah using Sway to select ships.
00:28:15
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:28:16
Biggs
So there's there's something in there.
00:28:19
Truthiness
Yeah, so um I'm be curious to see how many like joint Klingon Federation strike forces you have. I have almost no doubt there'll be like Cardassian and Dominion and you'll need officers with Sway to get one or the other.
00:28:33
Biggs
Mm-hmm.
00:28:34
Truthiness
and That feels pretty inevitable too.
00:28:37
Biggs
that feels That feels reasonable.
00:28:37
Truthiness
So. Yeah. So what are we, what are we looking for in, I guess our current crop ships with the Federation? Cause you know, dominion is dominion. They're going to do what they do right now. Um, but like, what, what are you looking at between the defiant and the constellation?
00:28:53
Biggs
So you've got you've got really three options. ah The Defiant costs three points. The Constellation refunds you three points. So if you have two core sets,
00:29:05
Biggs
your options are as follows. um Breaking even with a Defiant and a Constellation. Making sure you have six points left over out of your core points to spend for two Defiants. And then the final option is getting yourself a lot of FlexPoints by choosing two Constellations.
00:29:35
Biggs
Note, you cannot spend 56 core points on officers and then try to make up the fact that you overspent by taking constellation classes. It's not allowed.
00:29:50
Truthiness
No, good thing you have flex points.
00:29:52
Biggs
Good thing you have flex points.
00:29:55
Truthiness
Yeah, so yeah, that's an excellent point is you can't go over 50 on your core officers before anything because the fleet selection is next after those points are allocated. So you basically spend your 50 and then you get refunded six from the constellation to spend on your
Task Force Assembly & Deployment
00:30:11
Truthiness
flex points and your equipment.
00:30:13
Truthiness
So flex officers, I think that's probably the next thing to talk about.
00:30:17
Biggs
Yeah, that is that is the next thing. So in this match style game, what you do is you take your transfer pool officers, you shuffle them, you select two of them at random, and you now have the opportunity to pay for them out of your flex points, because all your core points have converted over into flex points.
00:30:46
Biggs
And they cost a combined amount equal to the social security and technical skills on that officer, which is weird, which is weird.
00:31:06
Truthiness
Yeah. So instead of the points that are, yeah. So instead of the points that are printed, you're totaling up their highest values in those different skill levels. Uh, so like the example here in the rule book in front of me, Miles O'Brien may cost 12 points, but if he's a flex officer.
00:31:22
Truthiness
He's got one in the social one in in the tactical or one in the option tactical and one in and three in the technical um So one plus one plus three is five so you get you could get O'Brien at a very very significant discount of seven points Yes
00:31:40
Biggs
You want to know the best discount? Uh, the best discount that you can get is the female changeling goes from 10 points down to three.
00:31:52
Truthiness
Oh, that's nice.
00:31:53
Biggs
That is a, that is a spicy seven point savings.
00:31:55
Truthiness
Oh, who's the winner?
00:31:57
Biggs
And that's your runner up because the true best, the true best winner is if Jean-Luc Picard decides to show up on deep space nine for the day.
00:32:06
Truthiness
ha
00:32:09
Biggs
which is 14 points down to six, giving you a eight point savings.
00:32:13
Truthiness
Yeah, that's pretty good. Oh, he's so good though. I have a, such a hard time putting him in the transfer pool and, and hoping for that one in three chance he pops up.
00:32:24
Biggs
ah Yeah, and though the worst, so the other problem that you run into is that even if you're buying them for their flex cost, they don't just,
00:32:38
Biggs
come in for free. They replace your line officer on one of your ships.
00:32:39
Truthiness
Yeah. Yeah. So bye bye reliable commander. Hello, Miles O'Brien.
00:32:46
Biggs
Which I'd say is an ah a ah modest upgrade.
00:32:52
Truthiness
Yeah, yeah and and I think the nice part here is that you know it keeps activation it keeps activation counts less of an issue, which is always a problem in alternating activation games is you know somebody gets more activations, they try and juice their list to have more ah because just more getting to do last and then first is a big deal in a lot of alternating activation games. So they can very tightly control the activation counts in this game, which is Good, very good in my opinion.
00:33:23
Truthiness
But yeah, it makes for some not great investments on the reliable, like chain trading out your generic officer. um But you get some excellent trades in some cases, like I think.
00:33:35
Biggs
Some ways to specialize instead of ah instead of being an all rounder.
00:33:40
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:33:41
Biggs
The Dominion, especially the board of supervisors are fine, but they can be better.
00:33:48
Truthiness
They're very good at handing out Catcher So White.
00:33:50
Biggs
Mm-hmm. But they can be better is my point.
00:33:52
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:33:54
Truthiness
Without a doubt. All right. So once you've done your transfer officers, you go over to whatever points are left for your equipment. So this is where you'll want to have the whole, Oh, sorry. We forgot to talk about how to goose the transfer officers.
00:34:06
Truthiness
If you have one that you absolutely positively have to have, you could theoretically stack this entire deck with one generic.
00:34:08
Biggs
Yes.
00:34:17
Biggs
Mm hmm.
00:34:17
Truthiness
ah You got to find six copies of them, but you could do it.
00:34:19
Biggs
That is that is a lot of copies of the ah that's that's a lot of copies of the core set.
Advanced Task Force Strategies
00:34:27
Truthiness
Just a bit.
00:34:29
Biggs
But oh, boy, if you um if you I don't know, let's say you just really love that for to diplomat and you want.
00:34:39
Truthiness
Yeah, for cheaper.
00:34:40
Biggs
A lot of for to diplomats. um just find six copies of the vorta diplomat and your vorta supervisor's guaranteed to be better.
00:34:52
Truthiness
Mm. All right, so back to equipment.
00:34:54
Biggs
well ah well well in in the future ah In a future couple of episodes, we'll talk about who we'd goose up like that.
00:35:02
Truthiness
Yeah. Yeah. Oh, I think that's our next episode. No, we're not spraying a spill of that one, though. OK, so equipment selection. I feel like this is mainly just going to come down to missions know i I'm not in love with like things like escape pods, but I could also see this is where like the titles come in.
00:35:27
Truthiness
Like if you like the enterprise, this is where you select your your enterprise title. um Yeah, it's all part of the same spend flex points. You got equipment, you then go down to auxiliary units.
00:35:38
Truthiness
So if you wanted those runabouts instead of the mark, the mark four shuttle or mark six shuttles, this is where you buy them here. And yeah, it comes.
00:35:46
Biggs
get those quantum torpedoes on the Jem'Hadar fighters.
00:35:49
Truthiness
Exactly, exactly. And that's it's a spicy upgrade that's tempting, very tempting. Especially since I feel like the Dominion tends to have more points left over than the Federation does.
00:36:02
Biggs
Yes, just looking at just looking at core points cost, um there is no way out of a 50 core point buy that you can fill up all 50 core points just taking officers that are available to you. The most expensive way you can do it is do dupe
00:36:33
Truthiness
Oh, Metaclon and like four founders.
00:36:36
Biggs
Yeah, basically.
00:36:37
Truthiness
Oh, wait, a Metaclon.
00:36:38
Biggs
um Yeah, ah you you get 46. You get to 46 points. So even if you choose the most expensive options, you're ah you've got four points left over.
00:36:43
Truthiness
Wait, hold on. A Metaclon. Yeah. 48.
00:36:52
Truthiness
48. So Metaclon. Female Changeling, that gets you to 21. Founder, which gets you to 30. And then two more founders. So 48.
00:37:05
Biggs
who am i Who am I missing?
00:37:07
Truthiness
Ometiclon.
00:37:08
Biggs
A Mediclon, yeah, a Mediclon, female changeling, and but founder, founder, founder, that gets you, that gets you, oh yeah, that does get you to 48.
00:37:10
Truthiness
Female Changeling. And then three founders.
00:37:20
Biggs
How did I wind up, what did I type in wrong to get me to, what did I do wrong to get me to 46?
00:37:24
Truthiness
Bad math, bigs, bad math.
00:37:29
Truthiness
Well, I mean, do we want to talk life and why you're on a podcast with some random nerd in the middle of the night.
00:37:35
Biggs
Hmm, how did I,
00:37:36
Truthiness
Are we talking very, okay.
00:37:38
Biggs
How did I get to 46? I must have i mustve clicked on ah mustve clicked on a seven-pointer or something.
00:37:45
Truthiness
Yeah, whatever. Um, so what are the, what are some of the other considerations you would have in making your fleet, bringing, bring your team together?
00:37:46
Biggs
Oh, well.
00:37:53
Biggs
oh so yeah um The big question is, how are we going to split our officers between the ships?
00:38:05
Biggs
and that it more importantly like which ships are making teams and which officers do we want to attach to those teams will also determine where we how we want to split the officers between the ships so every ship is going to have at least a line officer on it but you've got your other five officers to spread around doesn't make much sense to have you know, six crammed onto one ship and just one on the other two. So,
Competitive Play & Future Episode Teaser
00:38:43
Biggs
you know, do you go, do you go two, two and four? Do you go three, three, two?
00:38:53
Truthiness
Yeah, I ask you to really come down to preference more anything like how you like to do your ships. Like I feel like um when I played Dominion, I really like to go 422 so that, you know, you get your one named and one generic on each of the fighters and then you kind of have the bulk of your your officers on that that battle cruiser, since that's going to be your main objective ship anyway.
00:39:02
Biggs
Mm hmm.
00:39:17
Biggs
Heck, you might even want to go 521 and just have one of those ah one of those ships just be a less effective trailing ship.
00:39:29
Truthiness
yeah Yeah Yeah, just use the generic to do you have to sign officer sir to every ship? I think it's just the one Yeah Yeah, that's true.
00:39:34
Biggs
ah I don't believe so. You've got your line officer and that's good enough.
00:39:40
Truthiness
And that's right because if you get reinforcements That's what you get anyway is just you know ship with line officers So you use the line officer to navigate into position and then you use the standby to shoot weapons if you need to and I may think a little too combat heavy.
00:39:55
Truthiness
Cause yeah, you got to cover like a range of complications on this stuff. Like I feel like that's also a big part of a fleet of roster building and and task force creation. And why it's, I think it'd be really interesting to see how they do matched play in kind of like organized play fashion.
00:40:12
Truthiness
Uh, because I feel like so much of the task force creation.
00:40:13
Biggs
Yeah, being able to being able to identify the potential complications is going to be a huge advantage when it comes to finalizing your list building.
00:40:21
Truthiness
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. want to And yeah I think it would really make the, the influence in the overture but big deal. Like, you know, Federation comes rolling in stacked up with science officers and you're like, Oh God, they're going to scan me to death. Dear God. No, not their complication. I need to shoot things.
00:40:43
Biggs
Please, please God, let there be let there be at least one ground thing for me to land my teams
00:40:55
Biggs
oh
00:40:57
Truthiness
Yep.
00:40:58
Biggs
Yep.
00:41:00
Truthiness
All right. I think that concludes it for tonight.
00:41:04
Biggs
Yeah, we this we talked about this a little longer than I thought we were going to.
00:41:07
Truthiness
Yeah. Yeah.
00:41:08
Biggs
but
00:41:09
Truthiness
Decent episode. Decent episode. All right, folks. Join us next week or actually probably in two weeks at this point because, yeah, Biggs is going on vacation to some place a little warmer than where we are right now.
00:41:15
Biggs
Two weeks. Oh, yeah.
00:41:24
Truthiness
Um, and when we come back, we'll finally begin to full on roster discussions, starting with the dominion where victory is life.
00:41:25
Biggs
yeah
00:41:33
Biggs
And more and more importantly, the we'll start talking about the lower decks.
00:41:44
Truthiness
Finally, get our segment going.
00:41:47
Biggs
We've been waiting.
00:41:49
Truthiness
All right, man. Have a good night.
00:41:52
Biggs
You too, take care.