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Arm Yourself!
61 Plays16 days ago
Truthi and Biggs talk about the essential elements of ship to ship combat: moving, shooting, and repairs
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Transcript
Introduction and Core Set Acquisition
00:00:38
Truthiness
Welcome back to the Unknown Podcast, everybody. I am your host, Truthiness, and with me is our lovely EMH, as always, Biggs.
00:00:47
Biggs
How's it going?
00:00:48
Truthiness
How you doing, man? I heard you finally got your first full game.
00:00:52
Biggs
I finally managed to pick up the Core set from my friendly local game store and
Supporting Local Game Stores
00:01:01
Biggs
actually got it on the table.
00:01:03
Biggs
so
00:01:03
Truthiness
Ooh, ooh, plug the store, plug the store.
00:01:05
Biggs
Oh yeah. Uh, drawbridge games out in the South Hills of Pittsburgh.
Basics of Ship-to-Ship Combat
00:01:10
Biggs
Um, Rico's the owner. Great place. Uh, probably going to be the hub for Star Trek into the unknown in the Pittsburgh area. If for the only reason that, uh, I'm there.
00:01:26
Truthiness
Yeah, there you go. And it's all about you, isn't it, Biggs?
00:01:31
Biggs
It always has been.
00:01:32
Truthiness
Always will be. All right. Well, you got to hear for here, folks. Always support your friendly local gaming store. That is the official stance of blissfully ignorant gaming.
00:01:43
Truthiness
And now that
Understanding Warp Mechanics
00:01:44
Truthiness
we're done sounding like an infomercial, what are we talking about this week?
00:01:47
Biggs
This week we're talking about the Rudy Tutti point in shooty. ah
00:01:58
Truthiness
True me of freedom bigs is nothing but firepower.
00:02:03
Biggs
Darn straight.
00:02:04
Truthiness
So today we're going to be talking, I kind of originally had this labeled as our basic training episode. Um, we obviously are coming up with cheekier titles every time just so we can find a fun little sound clip. So today we're going to be talking about the very basics of ship to ship combat, uh, into the unknown. So it's a yo.
00:02:22
Truthiness
It's a spaceship game. We all came here to shoot our so shoot each other a little bit, even if that's not the entire focus of the game. It's definitely a fun part. So we're going to be talking about moving, shooting, and then regen and repairs for today's episode. Sound good?
00:02:39
Biggs
Sounds good to me. So how do we move so that we can get into sweet, sweet weapons range?
00:02:46
Truthiness
Yeah, I'm going to make you do most of the talking in here, since I'm sure people are tired of listening to me. So for moving, we got we we talked about this in a previous episode already a bit. And we'll probably go through moving pretty quickly. But warp, let's warp.
00:02:59
Biggs
Warp. um You have on in the very middle of your ship card you have a warp number it's the it's the arrow pointing to the right and underneath it is a speed and your ship goes when you do warp up to that distance times two in inches so for example if you've got a Defiant class escort it has a warp
00:03:31
Biggs
factor of 9, so you can go up to 9 times
Impulse Movement Tactics
00:03:35
Biggs
to 18 inches. Straight ahead, your only option is straight ahead, no turning. ah Warp is also the only way that you can go into and out of systems.
00:03:52
Biggs
ah With that in mind, just because you're doing a warp maneuver doesn't mean you have to leave a system or even enter a system with warp. but you have to But if you cross that threshold, you either have to be warping into the system or not be warping into the system. You can't like straddle the edge.
00:04:13
Truthiness
Now I know I've done that to GTFO a few times. I ah heard you may have run away in a similar fashion this weekend.
00:04:20
Biggs
Yes, um so I was playing the good ol' Jem'Hadar and I had a Jem'Hadar fighter staring down a galaxy class and defiant class and um that Jem'Hadar fighter decided that ah once it accomplished the objective that it needed to in that system that it only made sense to open fire on the galaxy class launchy torpedo and then after it ah took shots back towards it, it immediately jumped into warp and got the heck out of there.
00:05:02
Truthiness
So let's, let's make this one really clear. You ran away with a jam had our fighter.
00:05:09
Biggs
correct this i should have that's okay they didn't have anybody important on them anyway
00:05:10
Truthiness
Did you win the game?
00:05:14
Truthiness
Well, you know what makes victory is life. And, um, I'm sorry to say your entire crew has been executed anyway, because they failed.
00:05:28
Truthiness
Oh, yeah you could i just got to kill it in a good, proper way. Come on, man. That's that's how you're supposed to play the Demiyan.
00:05:36
Biggs
i got I got some good shots in.
00:05:36
Truthiness
to
00:05:38
Biggs
i got some good shots and It's not my fault he was ah he was a coward and didn't let my torpedoes slam into him. He warped to get away from the torpedoes.
00:05:47
Truthiness
ah ha Well, there you go. Yeah, it's it's a surprisingly helpful maneuver because of the distance. I mean, you're covering like half the board with some of these ships, like the Defiant and the Galaxy, both are Warp 9. Actually, I think what, every Federation ship is Warp 9? Yeah. um The only thing that isn't is the fighter actually so far.
00:06:12
Truthiness
Yeah. So yeah, I mean, it's just a giant chunk change. That's half the board and, or almost half the board and no, it is half the board, right? Three by three. Yeah. I'm getting, been playing too much drop lately.
00:06:22
Biggs
Yeah, 3x3, 18 inches gets you exactly halfway across the board. it's
00:06:29
Truthiness
I've been doing, I've got four by four in my head.
00:06:32
Biggs
It's just not quite enough on a helix or on a trinary map to go from um one of the corner systems to the other corner system unless you're lined up perfectly.
00:06:49
Truthiness
Nice, very nice. So yeah, warp, very important. You already kind of hit the the main thing I want to do is that you're mainly using warp to jump between systems, but there is a hundred percent a very valid reason to just kind of do it in an alleged dish effort.
00:07:02
Truthiness
I know I've saved ships that way, um especially so especially on your capital ships that you want to make sure you're not giving away points at the end of the game since most, of I think both the directives have um bonuses for disabling capital ships compared to smaller.
00:07:20
Biggs
disabling or killing yeah dominion is Dominion is kill, Federation gets points for disabling ships but not killing them
00:07:21
Truthiness
Or killing, yeah, I think it's what, Dominion kill, Federation, rome yeah.
00:07:31
Truthiness
Yeah. So absolute reason to just get the heck out of Dodge with a very, very strong maneuver. So second thing we want to talk about is impulse. So what what are we doing with impulse here? This is dependent on the alert dial, right?
00:07:48
Biggs
Yeah, so what a better question is what can't you do with impulse? the The basics of impulse is looking at your alert dial, you have um under the red a symbol that looks like an arrow pointed forward, you have a number and then a smaller number in a circle.
00:07:52
Truthiness
That's true.
00:08:12
Truthiness
This is by far the hardest part of the dial to read.
00:08:12
Biggs
oh
00:08:15
Truthiness
Like my brother absolutely hates this.
00:08:18
Biggs
a very small number in a circle. But the basics of it is that your the number is your impulse speed, um and then the number in a circle below it is how far you can turn um while going that speed.
00:08:43
Biggs
And you can turn before or after you make your maneuver, but not totaling in excess of your um of how many clicks you can do.
00:08:57
Biggs
So I say clicks, but it's a it's there are no there's no place to click it in.
00:09:02
Truthiness
yeah it's Yeah, it's a little dashes.
00:09:05
Biggs
and you can Yeah. And you can you can be a little fiddly with it. it's not It's not nearly as precise as maybe some of the other games that you're used to, Armada. So there is there is that. That's your that's your basic thing. ah put the Put the maneuver tool down.
00:09:31
Biggs
slide the measuring tool into that maneuver tool, move the maneuver tool forward to where you want to go, move your ship to where that maneuver tool now is, and um use the hash marks up to your turn radius a number to go turn how you want to before or after um you actually make the the maneuver forward. So that's moving forward. There are two other options.
00:10:09
Truthiness
Oh, right. I always forget about these when I'm playing. I always just kind of go straight at something.
00:10:14
Biggs
you can do reverse impulse which is like going forward but you go backwards instead and that one you can move up to half of your impulse value ah but you can still turn it ah the same amount
00:10:30
Truthiness
And then the last
00:10:30
Biggs
And for that, you just slide the maneuver tool backwards along the measurement tool instead of forwards. So ah make the little beep, beep, beep sound while you're doing it as as well you should.
00:10:44
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:10:48
Biggs
um That's option number two. Option number three, you can move from side to side. ah So for that, again, it's half your impulse value you can move. So if you've got a nine, you can move four and a half inches. And for this, instead of putting the maneuver ah tool on the side of your ship, you put it on the front or back of the ship.
00:11:18
Biggs
and then you move along to the side, like ah like a strafing run.
00:11:25
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:11:25
Biggs
So that's number three. Number four is you can say, hey, um I said three additional ways.
00:11:28
Truthiness
Wait, wait, wait. You said three. You said three. You only said three. You lied. You lied.
00:11:34
Biggs
I said three additional ways.
00:11:35
Truthiness
I'm pretty sure.
00:11:36
Biggs
the Number four,
00:11:36
Truthiness
Hold on. Roll back the tape. Roll back the tape.
00:11:39
Biggs
number four the third ah additional thing that you can do
Encountering System Edges
00:11:43
Biggs
is you can just spin in place. You just, you don't, spinning, it's a neat trick, let's try that.
00:11:46
Truthiness
spin Spinning's a good trick, right?
00:11:51
Biggs
um And you just, ah all you do is you kind of hold the the center post and just kind of spin along that center axis.
00:12:03
Biggs
um In all situations you're not allowed to overlap any other ships or solid objects. But as long as you don't do that, yeah, you can just spin however you want. Spin a complete 180. I've definitely spun in place 180 degrees to go back the other way in warp.
00:12:26
Truthiness
Yeah, no, that's actually a really great use of impulses. Just basically are doing the and impulse move is just turn around and stand by action, move, boom, go.
00:12:32
Biggs
Turn.
00:12:36
Biggs
Mm-hmm.
00:12:36
Truthiness
Or you can even do it as a Commodore action. Just turn around and get that count.
00:12:42
Truthiness
So I mean, have you encountered, um have you ever have you bumped into the edge of systems yet with ah with impulse?
00:12:50
Truthiness
Do you even know?
00:12:50
Biggs
I have not run myself into the edge of the system with Impulse, ah but I've had some fun of not quite being able to get fully into the system and warp and having to back myself up.
00:13:07
Truthiness
So actually, I think you may have played that one wrong. um um I gotta check my memory. Yeah, well, I thought it was as long as you got part of the ship in the system and you declared it in the system, you were okay.
00:13:19
Biggs
i I had read, and I could have read it wrong, but I had read that ah if you overlap the system edge or any ship, you have to back up out of the system.
00:13:33
Biggs
Or or it's it's you have to move yourself along the maneuver tool within your maximum speed until you are either complete and until you don't overlap anything, is I think how it was worded.
00:13:41
Truthiness
and
00:13:46
Truthiness
guys system System Yeah there won't go back and check it again later I can't remember which one it was um I do No, no,
00:13:54
Biggs
read the People read the rules. ah the the the long and The
Shooting Mechanics Overview
00:13:59
Biggs
long and short of it is it wouldn't be it wouldn't be blissfully ignorant gaming tradition if we weren't hilariously wrong about something immediately after release.
00:13:59
Truthiness
no Everything
00:14:12
Truthiness
What? No, we never do that. That's that's crazy talk. I remember there's something about declaring in or out of the system, but I do also remember that if you're in the system and you're on impulse, you basically just hit an invisible barrier. If you try and leave, you can't go beyond the system at all. You just kind of stop.
00:14:31
Truthiness
little Little weird um just from a thematic standpoint, but I mean, it's just one of those things that just how game mechanics have to work to to kind of force you into that use warp to leave system that they're going for.
00:14:48
Biggs
Which, you know, fair enough.
00:14:48
Truthiness
All right, have you found any particular alerts or alert you're favoring, especially with maneuvering?
00:14:56
Biggs
ah So I don't really have ah have a favorite for maneuvering. I found that I am using the first couple rounds of standby actions to increase my alert.
00:15:14
Truthiness
yeah for sure yeah that makes sense because it's you really don't want to um you don't want to end up uh it shields down when it's go time and yeah the first cue green alerts on any ship is not gonna have a whole lot of defenses
00:15:15
Biggs
um to try and set myself up for later parts of the game. But... Yeah.
00:15:31
Biggs
um
00:15:37
Biggs
No, not so much.
00:15:41
Truthiness
And God, especially the, uh, especially the galaxy class, it takes a long time to get through that things alert dials.
00:15:50
Truthiness
It's got what one, two, three, four, five, six.
00:15:52
Biggs
Three yellow pip.
00:15:53
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:15:54
Biggs
It's got a three yellow.
00:15:54
Truthiness
and
00:15:55
Biggs
It's got a two green and ah To get to the to get to I don't even I don't necessarily know that I'd want to go to two red for any particular reason but if you'd if you do want to go to two red, that's Quite a that's quite a walk to get there
00:16:09
Truthiness
yeah
00:16:14
Truthiness
I mean I Mean there's really only one reason to go to that high of a railroad alert and that's just a dump a ton of shooting into something Which will obviously get into later actually, I think we'll probably get into now unless you have anything else you want to talk about with maneuvering.
00:16:33
Biggs
uh nope those are those are the ways to maneuver you've got your you've got your impulse you've got your warp and warp is always the same and impulse is determined by your um by your alert and dear god can some of those numbers be different
00:16:37
Truthiness
I
00:16:54
Truthiness
Yes, they can. Oh man. So yeah, we just spent 15 minutes talking about two things. We're definitely, definitely quality podcast material here.
00:17:04
Biggs
Well, I don't know what to say other than, yeah.
00:17:10
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:17:10
Biggs
Well, let's get let's get to the fun part. I mean, sure, you're doing all this maneuvering, but why are you maneuvering? Is it to complete objectives? No, it's to shoot the other ship.
00:17:31
Truthiness
I definitely didn't just hit the wrong button.
00:17:39
Biggs
No, I think you hit the right one the first time.
00:17:45
Biggs
ah
00:17:45
Truthiness
You're welcome. You're welcome.
00:17:46
Biggs
Oh, ah that's beautiful.
00:17:47
Truthiness
I'm here just for the memes.
00:17:52
Biggs
ah Okay, so the Rudy Tutti point and shootie.
00:17:52
Truthiness
I'd like to enjoy it.
00:17:55
Truthiness
Okay.
00:18:00
Truthiness
Rudy, Tootie, Point, and Shootie.
00:18:03
Biggs
So, first off, how do you shoot? Well, you have to take the fire weapons action, and of all the actions in the game, it's the only one that, it's the only action that you can take only once a turn. Now, it still has the option of either using it with the tactical station with a priority action from one of your officers. And this is the way that you can add additional ah black dice to the attack, but only the first weapon that you attack with.
00:18:49
Truthiness
Yeah, and it's really important to distinguish between the fire weapons action and shooting a weapon. So the fire weapons action is the overall encompassing action, you may get to shoot multiple weapons during that single action, it can be It can be a little confusing at first, but the general idea is you're using as much of your weapons power and reserve power as you want. um The big catches, and unfortunately this one's buried a little bit in step four of the attack process, which is determined dice. You can only use as much reserve power as you have weapons power. So say you have three weapons power available, you can only dump
00:19:35
Truthiness
three additional reserve power into that attack if you are only at three weapons power. Make sense?
00:19:43
Biggs
It does, and I had not caught that in my read through.
00:19:48
Truthiness
Very, very easy.
00:19:48
Biggs
So this is very important.
00:19:51
Truthiness
very easy to miss step four under determined dice. like This is one that I think I even missed until like my last play test game. I don't think it ever came up, um i but I couldn't tell you because I just ah just did not see it.
00:20:06
Truthiness
So just be aware that
00:20:07
Biggs
So what I'm hearing is, let's say you've got, I don't know, let's say a galaxy class starship ah and you want to fire the phaser arrays and you're at green alert one. No, you can't.
00:20:26
Truthiness
Nope, no weapons, no weapons available whatsoever. You're really fast and you got some some good ah get some good sensor power, but um yeah, don't don't stay there.
00:20:42
Biggs
Yeah, good good to know. um So anyway, that is the main difference between using an action, the fire weapon's action, and
00:20:56
Truthiness
Yeah, so then you take all
Energy Management in Combat
00:20:58
Truthiness
that that the equivalent it's all on your your ship your ah ship cards It just tells you how many dice you get per weapons power and energy power in addition to how many weapons you have so I'm as always gonna look at the Defiance just because it's kind of a nice easy one to go with since everyone's had it the most amount of time um you've got phaser meters you got three of them one to the front and One to the rear, one all around. And then you have phaser cannon batteries, one to the front left, one to the front right. And then three torpedo tubes, one to the four, two to the four, one to the aft. You can shoot any and all of those weapons up to as much power as you can dump into it. So we say we've got the Defiant on, let's say it's on its yellow or it's got three weapons power, which means that we can dump
00:21:46
Truthiness
three energy from the weapons power and three energy from reserve power to give us a total of six. You get one blue die for actually pretty much both the phaser cannons and the emitters. ah You get one die per that energy spent. Now, they these every weapon is capped at the number of the number of power you can put into it. So the phaser emitters, you only get to roll three dice maximum. But because you have multiple phaser emitters, you could fire them twice. You could fire them once with just your weapon power and the second time with your reserve power.
00:22:20
Truthiness
um I really love saving at least some energy for a torpedo ah because the torpedoes are super cheap. They are only one energy apiece. um And shoot the defying machine.
00:22:31
Biggs
the key The key phrase though is, save one energy because um remember you get ordinance dice on your first attack if you're using if you're using an officer to do the tactical ah to do the tactical action.
00:22:43
Truthiness
Yeah, and that's the big one.
00:22:47
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:22:52
Biggs
And ah if you fire a torpedo, that is your first attack, and that torpedo has now been fired and you aren't rolling any dice yet.
00:23:04
Truthiness
Yeah, don't don't don't fire the torpedo first. Just don't. that the The standby action, the priority action gets really no benefit from shooting the torpedo first because your officer, the torpedo does not hit immediately.
00:23:19
Truthiness
It moves later. So your officer cannot add their ordinance. ah Trait to that attack just so always do an energy weapon for your first attack and you get to add Ordnance black dice equal to the ordinance value of the officer leading an attack.
00:23:35
Truthiness
These are the black dice They're much more reliable. The blues are very streaky um Yeah, so and also you probably want to you want to even out the amount of energy you're spending on these weapons because you got to make sure you hit that that evasion value of ships this really only comes to play with
00:23:53
Biggs
Speaking of... Speaking of which, what's the evasion value?
00:23:57
Truthiness
It's the minimum number of damage you have to do in order to do damage. Yay. So kind of the bigger ships and the the slower ships, the constellation, the galaxy, and the battle cruiser, you just got to do one damage. That's the norm. And this is what will actually stick. But the gem hadar and the defiance, they're not really subject to plank damage. You got to do two damage minimum to these ships in order to get any kind of damage to stick.
00:24:26
Truthiness
Has that really come into play for you?
00:24:26
Biggs
makes Makes sense to me.
00:24:28
Truthiness
Have you seen that on the table yet?
00:24:29
Biggs
and And you'll note that the USS ah the uss Defiant i believe a title, which maybe I'm getting a little into the weeds here, ah but it actually increases the evade um by one if you commit a readied officer at the ah Helm station. So that's a way to increase your evade stat.
00:25:04
Truthiness
OK, so and then the other thing to note is that both the success results, which are just kind of a solid trick symbol um and the breakthrough success results, which is kind of the. hollow trek symbol with the two hash marks on either side. um Those are called breakthrough successes. um There are two ways to use those two those breakthrough successes. um They can be either applied as damage. So if you're trying to push through shields um and you need to just to get to the hull, you can use those as just damage. Your other option is in the post outcome effects. And that's to attempt to apply
00:25:44
Truthiness
I used to call them critical effects, but in this game, it's just called a damage card. um So you you have to actually choose between the two. um But this is where that damage dial or that hull dial comes into effect, because you can only bring it down one step per weapon. um So if you're at a full hull Defiant class, you can get it no lower than four hull unless you have the breach characteristic, which is on the torpedoes. so Say you catch a Defiant on, let's say, catch it on green alert, and you're shooting it in the aft. It's only got one shield. And you you know have a really great roll of four damage, which includes a critical effect. Actually, I really shouldn't use the Defiant for this, because this was a really bad example. But say you wanted to try and apply a critical effect. That fourth damage,
00:26:38
Truthiness
isn't going to do anything. You've already gotten through a shield, you've already done two hull, that last damage is kind of a wash. In this case, it might be better just to spend it and try and force the damage guard.
00:26:50
Truthiness
The reason choosing the Defiant for the example is that there is a minimum number of those results you need to deal with.
00:26:54
Biggs
you Yeah, you should you you should use like the constellation as a better that would probably make a better example
00:27:01
Truthiness
Yeah, that would've been a better example. Or the Geminar Fighter, because yeah, that was a really bad example to pick. Because the Defiant needs at least four of those results to draw a damage card.
00:27:16
Truthiness
The Defiant's a tough little ship, as everyone knows. The Constellation, you only need two of those results. So say you catch the Constellation, let's say on green alert as well, you do five damage at a whole ship.
00:27:29
Truthiness
those last two damage are not gonna do anything. But if you have two critical effects, you can force a card draw as well. um So in addition to just how the drawing cards as the hull dial goes down, you can also force additional cards.
00:27:41
Truthiness
And most of them are really, really bad. Nevermind when they just, nevermind.
00:27:46
Biggs
Yeah, they can they lock out a um one of your ah locations on the ship.
00:27:53
Truthiness
Yeah.
00:27:54
Biggs
as you just You can't use that now.
00:27:54
Truthiness
and Yeah, unless you do some kind of test that's at the station. Um, and then you can also, you know, there's some teams that can help with that as well. Uh, but yeah, car damages are really, really, really, really bad.
00:28:07
Truthiness
Um, especially if they hit you in the engineering section, you're just so screwed if you had hit the engineering section. Um.
00:28:14
Biggs
Because that locks you out of the ready step regaining energy, right?
00:28:20
Truthiness
yeah ye ye Yeah. Yep. Yep. Yep. It's bad. It's really bad.
00:28:24
Biggs
That sounds real bad.
00:28:26
Truthiness
That's really bad. um And then, of course, there's as you go down the hull dial as well, you have the the crew injuries. So this reduces your crew dial. um So you can recover this with ah depending on where you are in the dial, inspiration or medical care from the med bay. um But all of this stuff progresses with the icons on the hull dial as the ship goes down.
00:28:51
Truthiness
All right, so we talked about Oh, one thing we didn't talk about shields. This kind of came up in the discord recently shields are not optional. um You have to spend the reserve energy of your current alert dial shields.
00:29:06
Truthiness
So
00:29:06
Biggs
assuming you have the energy.
00:29:08
Truthiness
assuming you have the energy. you can You have to spend the energy of your reserve energy until it hits zero. um So say you've got your constellation on yellow alert um and you're only at one energy and you're like, you know what?
00:29:22
Truthiness
I'd rather just take hold of the image. Noob can't do it. You got to spend that energy until it's gone. um Not an optional thing.
00:29:29
Biggs
so
00:29:30
Truthiness
It's a great way I find it it is a great way to immobilize a ship that you think is trying to um to try and do a standby maneuver to get out of Dodge. What were you trying to say, Biggs?
00:29:44
Biggs
I was going to say, yeah, that sounds about right. that you're it yeah It may make sense for you to shoot at a ship that you are not going to damage specifically so that you can strip its energy away.
00:30:01
Truthiness
Yeah. And I love doing this, um, in combination with torpedoes. Like I usually have a really hard time justifying, um, the, the sensor lock to try and, you know, uh, to try and allow torpedoes to maneuver a little bit. Um, it's a difficult action to justify with your officers, especially since it's what is it an aggressive act or is it a hostile act? I can't quite remember.
00:30:27
Biggs
I don't know off the top of my head. I'm guessing it's probably aggressive.
00:30:36
Truthiness
You want to do your data your son there some
00:30:36
Biggs
It's that, it's that time. Dead air time. The time of truthiness looks up the rules. We're supposed to be cutting out all the dead air time, but if I sing, then truthiness can't cut it automatically.
00:30:53
Truthiness
Big Sates AI. All right, you know what? I'm just giving up on this. I can't cant remember if it's an aggressive rostolact and I am not. My Google Fu through this PDF file is not working right now. So.
00:31:03
Biggs
We leave it as an exercise to the listener to look it up themselves.
00:31:08
Truthiness
We're doing that a lot tonight.
00:31:10
Biggs
ah ah the game The game is new. well more potentially
00:31:14
Truthiness
OK. Yeah, so I have a hard time justifying the sensor lock. I, and if you can knock somebody down to no energy for the turn, you can shove a torpedo right up their butt real easily.
00:31:32
Truthiness
Just, you know, shoot all your weapons in a zero, land a torpedo up, and that maybe it'll hit home nice and easy. And torpedoes hurt, especially quantum torpedoes.
00:31:42
Biggs
We'll work eventually.
00:31:44
Truthiness
Oh my God, do quantum torpedoes hurt.
00:31:47
Biggs
that That breach keyword. m Yeah.
00:31:51
Truthiness
Yeah, oh man, so if you don't know what we're talking about with the breach keyword, um this is the the special rule that allows you to ignore that that pesky step rule with hull points.
00:32:03
Truthiness
Let me actually pull up the thing. If the target has hull during the resolve damage step, the defender does not stop reducing their hull value after their dial or track changes to the next hull status.
00:32:15
Truthiness
Its hull can be droosed up to an additional X steps. It bad, it real, real bad.
00:32:20
Biggs
So if you've got Breach 2, you can knock it down two additional numbers below where you would normally hard stop.
00:32:31
Truthiness
Yeah, and that's also why it's I absolutely love it if you can knock a ship down to no energy um because it just can knock a ship out real, real fast ah with ah with a solid thing. you know you're They're not gonna have shields left on standby um when the torpedo moves and it's just gonna hurt so, so much. So for that reason, I actually found that being at Red Alert in particular,
00:32:59
Truthiness
can be almost disadvantageous. Have you noticed that?
00:33:04
Biggs
I mean I was looking at it and if if your only goal is to like sit in one place and become a, ah effectively like a stationary gun emplacement, oh yeah, oh yeah, Red Alert's gonna do the trick and you're gonna have plenty of um free weapon energy.
00:33:19
Truthiness
yeah
00:33:28
Biggs
But ah you might be running out of shields pretty quick if you're um if you're taking shields to energy the entire time.
00:33:42
Truthiness
Yeah, I just look at like the galaxy class in particular like I look at that yellow alert three pip and compare it to the red alert pip and You lose to energy regeneration in exchange for going slower Getting a little bit of weapons power and then adding more shields to drain your energy faster um I guess
00:34:05
Biggs
but on the other But on the other hand, you can launch a four a for phaser array a fourd-dice phaser array shot and and launch a torpedo without using any energy whatsoever.
00:34:15
Truthiness
twice.
00:34:22
Biggs
Or you know two and two if you just really want to like reach out and touch something.
00:34:27
Truthiness
yeah
00:34:29
Truthiness
Yeah, I don't know. I find myself a lot more times on the yellow lurch with these ships. At least initially, although the gem had dark battle cruiser. I do like that riddle art. You get a lot. You get a good amount of weapons power without too much for trade off.
00:34:45
Truthiness
in energy regeneration um So you're you're yeah going from the the two yellow to the red it seems worthwhile um Depending on what you want to do though.
00:34:56
Truthiness
It can it seems pretty happy on that yellow alert one But man, that is a ton of weapons power on that battle cruiser at red alert. Whoo, Nelly
00:35:04
Biggs
my My good, the the red alert too seems like a great like last turn. I'm not gonna regenerate any more energy, so who cares? Let's go.
00:35:14
Truthiness
Let's go Yeah, who 12 12 energy. It'll be dumped into the weapons. Can you even use that many on this ship?
00:35:23
Biggs
ah
00:35:24
Truthiness
yet Yes, yes Yeah,
00:35:25
Biggs
technically Technically, yes if something is both in front of and behind you.
00:35:30
Truthiness
yeah, oh that's nasty All right, um let's start talking about some of the tactics of shooting. So we've talked a little bit about both trying this in both priority and standby. um but What are some of the advantages? Well, why don't you talk us through the advantages of of doing it as a priority?
00:35:51
Biggs
Okay, so one the advantage of doing it in priority is first off, you get the bonus ordinance dice. um And depending on which officer you have sitting in that tactical seat, that can be a considerable addition of dice to your attack. Especially if you're doing like a four dice phaser attack or ah or just trying to get a 3 Phaser attack to do something useful. um That could be what allows allows you to like get that hit in that knocks them down to that next tier, that next color in their hull.
00:36:43
Biggs
um And that's primarily why you'd be doing it or you're doing it as like the first thing ah that your very first activation so you know where everything is. You've got the you spent the last turn either lining up the shot or you know you've got that shot lined up from last turn and you need to do it before they get away. So those are your those are the situations where you'd want to do it.
00:37:12
Biggs
from the, with a priority action from the tactical seat.
00:37:18
Truthiness
Yeah, makes sense. So and then I can't really think of anything extra. um But standby, um there's a few things actually here that that are might not be easy to see right off the bat, but standby can have some good advantages for waiting for your standby action to do the weapons attack. um So our reactions, they're prized like you don't.
00:37:41
Truthiness
don't You want to save those officers um for the critical moments since you only get the refresh three a turn. And on top of it, since standby actions are limited to one per ship, it can be a bit easier to project where a ship's going to be in order to shoot it. You can use your priority actions to get yourself in a good position and then save that standby action for the actual firing so that you've now that you've got the ranges more or less honed in.
00:38:07
Truthiness
the
00:38:07
Biggs
especially as um as the standby player of that turn, you get the first standby action, but you're at an advantage in potentially using the last priority action to move your ship into position and effectively getting that like to getting that yeah that that two action at once.
00:38:28
Truthiness
Last first-ish.
00:38:32
Truthiness
Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And then the thing I like about it the most is that you don't actually have to use any reserve energy if you don't want to. um That's very unique in most of the in most of the ship actions. So if you were at to warp on, say, the Defiant, you're going to use three energy to go to warp. If you're going to go to impulse, you use two energy to go to impulse.
00:38:55
Truthiness
if you're going to do any of the actions in um in the and some of the other bays as well. like You're going to be using energy to do those standby actions.
00:39:08
Truthiness
um So weapons can just be used out of weapon energy. You do not have to dip into reserve energy to do this during the standby phase. So I think that right there is probably my biggest selling reason for doing a shooting action in in the standby. um is yeah There's some maneuvering advantages, but I think the biggest thing is I don't want to use energy. So if you're on an Energy Star ship um or an Energy Star alert, you can wait until later in the, in the turn to use your standby action and save that energy for other actions you might need to do such as, such as shield.
00:39:46
Biggs
more importantly save those officers for doing the actions that cost more energy if it's not an officer doing them.
00:39:47
Truthiness
yeah
00:39:52
Truthiness
Yes. Yeah, exactly. like the defiant The defiant can do impulse without spending any energy on a priority action. ah They only use one energy on a warp action if they have the right officer in place. You know you can use a lot more energy efficiency using those priority actions um for the officers that match those stations. Okay, I think we are done with shooting.
Repair and Regeneration Mechanics
00:40:17
Truthiness
Anything else?
00:40:19
Truthiness
buler
00:40:20
Biggs
yeah all i can All I can think of is ah how do I fix things?
00:40:20
Truthiness
youler
00:40:26
Truthiness
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm gonna surprise you with that constantly. Okay.
00:40:34
Biggs
it's It's wonderful and it only gets funnier.
00:40:38
Truthiness
I'm sure no one will in any way get tired of it, just like this one.
00:40:52
Truthiness
No one's gonna get tired of our memes, ever.
00:40:54
Biggs
ah I'm slightly tired of that one, but...
00:40:57
Truthiness
Already? Aw, it's already worn out, it's welcome.
00:41:01
Biggs
Never gonna get tired of Moopsie. Moopsie is adorable.
00:41:05
Truthiness
Moobsie is adorable, as long as it's not drinking your bones. So ah so anyway, repairs in region. um So we've talked about this in our places, and you kind of got in the impression, as we were talking throughout this episode, energy is the most important resource available to a ship.
00:41:21
Truthiness
just everything functions off of it and you stay alive based on your your energy value. um So as such, you really want to pay attention to that engineering section, um especially on ships that you Expect to be in the center of the fight. I find like, especially the galaxy class and the battle cruisers, they're generally the ones that need to be in the thick of things, getting objectives resolved. I love having a officer in that engineering section explicitly for that ready action. And that's regaining energy equal to your energy recharge on your, your alert dial, plus their highest, um,
00:42:04
Truthiness
What is that thing called again? Mechanics.
00:42:07
Biggs
mechanics oh yeah the the highest tricorder not mechanics it's although although whoever has the highest mechanics probably has the highest tricorder thingy
00:42:08
Truthiness
Tricorder thingy.
00:42:11
Truthiness
So the the highest tricorder value, yeah.
00:42:20
Truthiness
and command, officer, whatever the hell. Anyway, you you really, really want an officer there that can can just, you don't even necessarily need to do any standby actions or priority action. What I mean is priority actions. You don't necessarily need them to do anything there. You just need them sitting there to just recharge your energy. um And the Federation, surprise, surprise, has some of the best officers for doing that.
00:42:49
Truthiness
um Good old miles O'Brien got technical area technical.
00:42:54
Biggs
i believe believe I believe it's called the technical.
00:43:00
Truthiness
Look at you Google viewing.
00:43:03
Biggs
I pulled open my um my spreadsheet that I made for constructing lists and saw what it it was called, which you can find on our Discord.
00:43:13
Truthiness
Yeah, that was pretty. That was very pretty.
00:43:19
Truthiness
What? Why would anybody follow the link in our Discord?
00:43:23
Biggs
It won't be shared anywhere else.
00:43:27
Truthiness
I'm sure nobody is going to copy and paste that link anywhere else.
00:43:31
Truthiness
Anyway, highest technical value at that engineering station is very important. You know what's really weird? You know who the second best officer is in this station for the Federation?
00:43:42
Biggs
ah Would it be a Jedziah Dax?
00:43:47
Truthiness
No. It's Julian Bashir.
00:43:52
Truthiness
yeah yeah So because he's got biology three, um he's obviously best yeah know that biology thing comes in, but it's three, it's the highest value.
00:44:00
Biggs
Oh dang Hey, I'm not I'm not gonna complain
00:44:04
Truthiness
So somehow Julian is accidentally a really good officer to have an engineer, which
00:44:17
Truthiness
I guess it's a little weird, but you know, he is a genetically enhanced super genius MacGuffin master. um What were we even talking about? I've lost my train of thought entirely.
00:44:34
Biggs
ah It doesn't matter. Let's move on. um But let's say stuff gets through our energy because we only have so much and it's splashing against our shields and now we're taking actual damage to the hull. How the heck do we fix that?
00:44:54
Truthiness
Right, so you are gonna want yourself some engineering teams for the Federation and damage control teams for the Dominion. um So these guys have unique emergency repairs, um which allow you to test um for a difficulty of one ops plus engineering to repair um either a orange level damage or red damage damage unit at that location.
00:45:22
Truthiness
um And Biggs, what does the repair do? Oh, never mind, it's right there.
00:45:28
Biggs
good Good question.
00:45:29
Truthiness
Success. Success, repair the unit 1 per success or breakthrough success. um And that's that's just as simple as you increase the hull dial. So the this is an interesting question I've seen come up is if you roll well enough, you could take yourself actually beyond where you could even start repairs, if I'm remembering correctly. um Yeah, so you can get all the way back up to full hull if you roll well enough.
00:45:58
Truthiness
um with these these engineers. um Especially since you know the Starfleet engineers, especially if this is an action led by an officer, um and we'll get into the team's episodes another time, but but all you really need to know here is that it can be a priority or a standby action with an officer. um So you do potentially get to add engineering value, black dice.
00:46:22
Truthiness
um And the the Federation repair teams are really good. They've got three ops value. So they're rolling three blue dice right off the bat for a difficulty of one. And so it's really advantageous to have that engineering team i in you know on board.
00:46:41
Biggs
Led by every everyone's favorite chief, Miles O'Brien.
00:46:44
Truthiness
You know what the fun part here is, though? You can also kind of cheat your way into a um into kind of a freebie officer that sits in engineering with one of these repair teams. You know what I mean by that?
00:46:59
Biggs
um Because the repair teams have themselves some ah some mechanics all by themselves.
00:47:08
Truthiness
Yeah, so they have the technical skill on their own. And all the station says is that the highest technical value there is what you add. So if you have an engineering team in engineering, and you use one of your teams to do that, you're actually getting yourself some decent energy back.
00:47:28
Truthiness
So like, especially for the Starfleet engineer, yeah, like mechanics too.
00:47:30
Biggs
Not too shabby.
00:47:33
Truthiness
um So technical value of two for the for the Federation engineering team. One of those ships, you could just have one of those teams sitting in engineering, just ready and raring to recharge energy and then make repairs as needed.
00:47:48
Truthiness
Like I think it's a really great thing to put on like a defiant that that you expect to be in combat a lot, but you don't wanna spare a bunch of officers for. Um, like I love, I love hoarding the officers on the galaxy quest collection galaxy quest.
00:48:03
Biggs
you you only ah never give up never surrender
00:48:04
Truthiness
Oh my God. that's like wow yeah Oh, never surrender. Galaxy class. Um, I like having all the officers on there because it has the best all around for, um, doing objectives, but the defiant, the defiant wants to fight. And as such, you know, I like to have that.
00:48:26
Truthiness
technical value in engineering to kind of keep it keep it going. um Engineering team is a great way to kind of to kind of use that a little bit.
00:48:35
Truthiness
All right. I think that's all we have for tonight. Unless you had any other repair talks you want to talk about.
00:48:41
Biggs
um The only other thing is ah about what happens if I start to lose some a crude ah some of my crew dial from like
Crew and Medical Bay Management
00:48:53
Biggs
taking the damage and to my ship and getting a skull.
00:48:58
Truthiness
Alright, so that just means you the skull is going to reduce your crew dial. If your crew dial goes all the way down, it's basically the same thing as having the ship disabled. like It's the same symbol even.
00:49:11
Truthiness
um So, like, we'll start, I'm staring at the constellation class right now. If you go one, two, three, four steps below the starting value, the ship's disabled. um And there is at least, yeah, there's one of those results in the holdout itself. so Even if it's just a little bit damaged um and you say you find yourself raided by a boarding party, it's a way to lose stuff.
00:49:37
Truthiness
Forming teams reduces this dial as well. So you just want to make sure you manage your crew dial carefully. I don't think I've ever seen a ship disabled this way, but it is.
00:49:48
Biggs
But how do I heal him?
00:49:50
Truthiness
We are stuck with that med bay. Due to med bay.
00:49:53
Biggs
All right, that's that's so i that's all I had, wanted to make sure that we explicitly covered that.
00:49:57
Truthiness
um You wanted to. Yeah, yeah, i put put Julian where he is supposed to be, not where he's apparently the most effective.
00:50:08
Biggs
ah Medical holograms can do can do double duty, even real doctors can.
00:50:15
Truthiness
All right, I think the final word for tonight is gonna be