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Crossposted from the SFU blog on BGG.

One of the basic principles of Federation & Empire is the ‘supply grid’. This is a network of bases that provide supply to all friendly units in range. In the General War era of most scenarios, this range is six hexes. Two friendly bases out of range of each other, with no intermediate stops in between will form two ‘partial grids’ (or, more likely, a partial grid, and a ‘main grid’, which will include the capital or off-map area).

When invading, you need to eliminate his bases to restrict supplies and operational range. Also, you will need to extend your supply range, as most powers are larger than the area existing bases can reach.

Convoys and Tugs can work as limited supply points, extending supply range six hexes from their location, as long as they are in supply. However, they are not a part of the supply grid, so you cannot simply chain them together for further reach, nor can you join two partial grids together with them.

New bases are not that hard to set up and integrate into the grid. However, the beginning bases are not that hard for the enemy to kill, unless you have such overwhelming superiority that you can prevent the enemy from even reaching the location of the new base for at least two turns. (The first turn, while the Mobile Base is being set up, the enemy just needs to get past the approach battle, and use direct damage on the Tug. The second turn—if the MB is immediately upgraded—it just requires passing the approach battle, and using direct damage on the MB, which is no tougher than an average cruiser.) And even once upgraded to a BATS, it is still fairly vulnerable.

Planets are another matter entirely. The planets notable enough to be  on the F&E map are worth taking for three reasons: 1) They produce a fair amount of the enemy’s economy. 2) With a little time, they will produce some economy for you. 3) Again, with a slight delay, they can act as a part of your supply grid (or the enemy’s, if they take it back). Since it is impossible to destroy a planet in F&E, planets are harder to deal with. It is possible for the side on the strategic defensive to gain a local superiority and force you to retreat off the planet, losing control of it, but that requires a lot more effort than is needed to just kill a new base. Therefore, strategic reach depends in large part on controlling planets.

The above image is a map showing the supply grid connections available just from planetary sources. The Orion Enclave is left out because it is generally easy to force it neutral when it matters, and cannot be counted on. Likewise the permanent neutral of the LDR is excluded. Shorter connections are lighter, and longer ones are darker.

A few things should be fairly obvious: Most of Romulan space is dependent on bases for a supply grid. There is no easy way to hook Hydran space into an external supply grid. There is no easy way to hook the Klingon and Romulan supply grids together through Federation space.

Examination of this grid can also reveal where critical bases are.

There are two Klingon and three Lyran at-start bases that are in supply range of Hydran planets. One of the Lyran bases is a SB, but it is not nearly as hard to keep the Klingons from having easy access to the Hydran capital. On the other hand, once the Hydran base network is taken down, their range is limited, and some Coalition players do not even worry much about containing them.

The ‘historical’ route the Klingons took in invading the Federation, was the ‘southern’ route, which leads directly from the Klingon capital to the Federation capital. As you can see above, this is a difficult route, as the Klingons are at the end of their supply ability by the time any further supply points are reached, meaning that it relies on the ability to set up and protect new bases within the Federation.

The ‘northern’ route is the one that always catches my eye. The initial planets are in easy reach of pre-war bases, and the density of the potential supply grid is high. To say nothing of taking a larger bite out of the Federation economy. The Klingon border BATS in that corner are often popular for upgrading to a starbase.

At the same time, the only Federation planet south of the Orion Enclave is in range of the Romulan border, and with the Enclave itself to hold the flanks of the Klingons and Romulans, it is a very important location for holding the Coalition together, instead of allowing the Romulans to become isolated.

Crossposted from the SFU blog at BGG.

Expansive wargames like Federation & Empire often present the player with too much to do when first learning the game. This is normal, but still creates a very steep learning curve when first getting into the game. In F&E, like in most such games, the biggest burden is figuring out what you should be doing with your forces. There’s a lot of ships out there, and six hexes of operational movement gives them a fairly good range. Making things worse is the fact that at the beginning of the game there are a lot of targets out there for the Coalition, who is on the strategic offensive, to hit.

The bulk of the initial targets is the line of battlestations (BATS) along the borders. These are small, but quite capable of cutting lines of supply, holding provinces for the original owner, providing limited repairs, and acting as a forward base for staging counter-raids into your territory. They do need to be taken down, and this should be done as efficiently as possible, as there is likely to be stubborn resistance over the more capable starbases, and possibly the more valuable planets, which will need the attention of as much of the fleet as possible.

Given the number of BATS, and the Alliance’s need to defend more important targets, it is helpful to have a good idea of what exactly needed to take out an undefended BATS with minimum effort. I’ve always been disappointed that I’ve never seen an article discussing this subject. While it is something relatively easy to work out, the number of things that need consideration is still overwhelming for a beginning player.

A BATS has an offensive and defensive Combat Potential (ComPot) of 12, and 6 fighter factors. From worst case (50%) to best case (10%) this permits damage anywhere from 9 to 2 points. On the other hand, it takes 21 points to kill. 12 points to cripple, 3 more to force it to be killed (at least 50% of the smallest available defense factor—middle of 302.61), and the six fighter factors, which are sure to be given up in preference to actually killing the base.

Planning for the worst possible result (rolling a ‘1’ at 0 BIR, giving 10% damage) shows that it would take 210 ComPot to ensure a one-round kill a BATS, an impossibly dense line, and a waste of resources even if available. The opposite extreme (50% damage on a ‘6’ at 10 BIR) would only need 42, a much more realistic force. However, you can’t count on getting that.

What can you count on? Well, at an undefended base, you get to control both halves of the BIR equation (304.41), leaving only the Variable BIR and the final result outside your control. Assuming you pick BIR 8, the worst result is that the VBIR goes down two, and you roll a ‘1’. This is 25% damage, indicating a need for 84 ComPot, which is possible, but a pretty heavy line at the beginning of the game (that would take something on the order of a DN leading an entire line of CWs).

In fact, that’s too good a line to be putting on a limited secondary mission, and is completely impractical. What can be done? Well, the question becomes, why kill the BATS in one round? The reason is to give it less opportunities to fire back and cause damage to the fleet that will then need to be repaired. However, the only way to do high damage is to pick a high BIR, which allows the BATS to do more damage in return. Lowering the BIR will lower the damage done in a round for both sides, it doesn’t actually help with the ratio of damage done, which is what we really want to maximize. So, given that a smaller force will need to spend more time taking damage from the BATS, what can be done?

The magic number is 8. That is the maximum amount of damage a BATS can take before it’s ComPot is degraded on the next round. 8 damage or less can be taken as one or two SIDS which have no effect on the BATS’ performance (308.83). The ninth point would be a plus point, which would have to be resolved on a fighter, lowering ComPot to 17 for the second round. Around about 12-14 points is best; at that point the BATS must either cripple to preserve fighters (lowering ComPot to 6+fighters), or it must lose extra fighters over what the crippled side can hold (and absorb damage with).

At max BIR, the minimum result (25%) demands ~36 ComPot to get a minimum 9 damage (say, a CA, and 4xDD). A more average result would be in the middle of BIR 8, or around 35%, and would generate 12 damage, right into our sweet spot.

Now, the BATS should be doing 5-7 damage at this point (more at higher BIR, but I’m sticking with the BIR 6 and 8 examples I’ve been going through). That’s crippling a ship, or two if the force is mostly FFs. This could turn into a noticeable drop in ComPot if you hold the cripple off the line in hopes of not having to damage anything on the second round (thanks to a high smallest defense number). It should still be enough to take the weakened BATS in one round, however.

However, it needs to be noted that we’re looking at a total of about 6-12 total incoming damage. Most BATS-busting in the early game falls upon the Klingons. The early D6V/TGV and FV carrier groups are given short shrift because of their low density (because there’s no large escorts) and the not-quite-a-ship-equivalent 5 fighter factors on the large carriers. The low density tends to make them ill-suited for large base battles, where damage needs to be poured out to wreck the enemy fleet as fast as the attacking force takes it. This makes them available for missions like this. A [D6V+E4A+E4A] and [FV+E4] is 25 ComPot, which, at max BIR will do 9+ damage 50% of the time, and can aborb 9 points of damage itself before taking any permanent harm.

Adding a free scout (to get rid of the EW penalty) will make it 2/3rds of the time. Making sure of 9 damage at max BIR without a scout needs another 13 ComPot—say two D5s. With the scout lowers it to 9 more ComPot; if you put a F5S on the line, this drops to 7—one D5.

This is great in theory, but there’s generally not enough carriers at the beginning to cover all the targets. All that can be done is to make do with what there is. However, it does provide motivation to use the Klingon’s free fighter factors filling out the carrier force until the better escorts and carriers show up.