Klingon Battlecruiser, Well Loved – $65,000

by on March 27, 2006 at 12:28 pm
Posted In: News

Yeah, you read that price right. Right now on eBay is one of the filming models from the original Star Trek series.

AMT constructed two 29-inch long models out of composite materials and wood and then shipped them to a soundstage in Hollywood for filming…. When filming ended, Matt Jefferies was allowed to take one of the two filming models home as a souvenir, and Gene Roddenberry took the other…. Mr. Jefferies donated his example to the Smithsonian Museum, where it resides today. Mr. Roddenberry gave his filming model to his longtime friend, Stephen Whitfield (who by now was using the pen name “Stephen Poe” – he wrote one of the Making of Star Trek books). Mr. Whitfield retained the Roddenberry model until 1998, when it was sold to a private collector in Beverly Hills, California.

This superb miniature is mounted on a custom stand, and accompanied with a signed letter of authenticity from the late Matt Jefferies.

First comment on the SFB site: “Let’s hope the Romulans don’t buy it.”

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Romulan Incursion

by on March 12, 2006 at 11:10 am
Posted In: SFB

In Y140 the Romulans instituted the latest in a series of upgrades to their fleet. To test the new designs, they conducted a recon in force along the edge of Federation space, heading towards the Klingon Empire. In one of the increasingly rare cases of amity between the two governments, they sent a small joint force to halt the incursion.

Well, not really, if the Enterprise is to be mystified by Cloaking Devices and Plasma Torpedoes in about 16 years, but I wasn’t going to have two entirely new races in one battle (the Romulans still occasionally fight the Gorns in this period). The point was a tactical exercise with plasmas and sub-light ships (which I’ve never used before).

Y140

Romulan Fed+Klink
VUL 77 CL 98
WB 51 FF 71
WB 51 D6 113
H-S 47 F5 71
H-S 47
SNS 40
SNS 40
Total 353 353

With 10 heavy plasmas (4 Rs), the Romulans had a lot of ability to cause hurt. It may also be that the Romulans ‘stack’ well in a fleet action in this case. But when things go wrong there’s just not much they can do.

On the first turn the Klingons did a range 15 pass (to get the F5 in range), and the VUL bolted an R, hitting and knocking down a shield on the D6. I really hadn’t expected the hit.

Two volleys of proximity torpedoes from the Feds hit 4 for 4, which combined with the Klingons started seriously eroding the front three shields on the VUL. This forced me into the expected tactics with Romulans: cloak most of the time to force the enemy close, and maintain flexibility with Impulse Tac. I initially avoided this, I think from instincts learned on the KR, which only cloaks in emergencies.

Our final close pass of the day ended up with the CL taking internals (another bolted R hit and went right through the shields and armor), and light damage to the F5 (a pair of Gs), vs. three internals (taken on armor) on a Hawk. I got lucky on the internals and did good weapon damage.

It was fun, different, and interesting, but I think that’s enough of that. Probably should have gone for a lower-BPV fight, but I wanted to make sure that everyone had something to work with, which made it hard to keep the Klingon/Fed force total down. Technically I won, and the Mark and Patch think that it was weighted in my favor. Maybe it was. But more effort on getting same-shield, same-ship shots would probably be worthwhile. These ships do not have many internals for their size, once you get through some excellent shielding.

Mostly, the Romulan ships do very well with the options they’ve got. Fire, cloak, turn off fire control to recharge batteries (needed for the R on the War Bird), and do some shield repair. Even the diminutive Snipe does very well at this.

Not the Vulture. With 18 power, it needs 1.5 for life support, 4 for shields, and 6 to cloak. This leaves 6.5 to pay for two Rs (4) and everything else. If it repairs a shield box and charges both Rs, it has 0.5 to trickle back into the battery. About the only way I can see to keep it from eventually running out of battery power is to wait a turn on starting one of the Rs, which means the VUL is flirting with a 4-turn arming cycle. Or maybe decloak it for an entire turn when it fires. (An option denied to me by my attempt at running mostly uncloaked at first.)

There’s a couple of one-on-one actions at this point in the history that we’re going to try to do on-line. So right now we’re in Y141 and the Klingons are field-testing ph-1s. We figure our next face-to-face meeting will be set in Y143 and will be a fight to show off the new Command Cruisers that the Klingons and Federation get in that year.

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Tactics….

by on March 8, 2006 at 3:30 pm
Posted In: SFB

In the last battle I went toe to toe with both opposing forces and came out ahead. How did this happen?

All the ships had three heavy weapons. With only speed-8 and -12 drones available, a drone rack isn’t as good as a disruptor, and the Z-FF has two drone racks and one disruptor. With four phasers, the Z-FF had fewer phasers than most and no more than the E4. The E4 at least doesn’t waste two of them as ph-3s. The only advantage was that they had the only ph-1s there, and one on each ship was a 360.

So with this in mind, my plan was to stay fast, try for good ph-1 ranges and look for an opportunity. Mark then made two mistakes. First, he split his force after one FF was damaged. Second, he fired off his disruptors at long range before I had made any commitment to staying at range. Even without his disruptors I didn’t really want to deal with his ESGs, and probably would not have gone close if all three Lyrans were present. With 3-to-2 odds, this was obviously the best deal I’d get, and I went for it.

The pass against the Klingons was much iffier. They were still in a group, and I was damaged. It came down to firepower again. Thanks to their spacing, I could come in on the rear of the formation and largely cut the E4s out of the deal. I’ll also admit to expecting to take a lot more punishment coming in.

I guess the moral of the story is that once you fire your main strike, you eliminate the main reason why the other guy shouldn’t get closer to you. So when you do, make sure one of the following is true: a) you have an escape plan. b) you can do decent internals that should take out weapons. c) he’s already fired.

I’ve been fairly successful with [c] lately.

A little more Klingon-specific: There are two rules that tend to favor the Klingons that we aren’t using. One is Scatterpacks (which are in Advanced Missions), which make up for the low launch-rate of Klingon drones. The other is Hit and Run Raids (Klingon ships usually have more transporters than anyone else, and they’re energy cheap to operate), which is something I’ve been moving us towards.

But, ph-2s and weak shields. With anyone you need to emphasize your strong points. Disruptors have one of the flattest damage curves in the game, so Klingon ships need make sure these are causing concern to the other fellow. Most Klingon ships have a superior number of phasers. Most of them can fire down the hex spines 60-degrees off the center, and all (? need to double-check wing phasers) can fire down the hex-row directly behind the ship.

So… a D7 vs a F-CA: You do an oblique pass (this is the term for doing a battle pass where you put him on one of those off-center hex-spines instead of centerlining him) at range 5 making sure you have the speed advantage to get away [a]. At range 5 photon torpedoes aren’t so nasty, and you probably trade your #2 for most of his #1. You turn away, he chases. Next turn he’s reloading photons and is on your weak #4 and you’re on his weak #1. 6xph-1 vs. 9xph-2: who wins? Possibly you, if you can get him back on your #5 or 6 by turn 3.

Moral: Shield #1 is the most important one on the ship. If you can trade one of your off shields for his #1, you’re ahead. This is especially true for ships that like to centerline. In the long run that’s almost everyone other than the Klingons.

Problem: what if he doesn’t fire, and waits to see your rear shield? Don’t give it to him. Slideslip out and turn in, use your maneuverability to try and keep that #2 on him as long as he can keep FA arc you. Better yet, do that anyway. The disruptors and phasers can take down another shield next turn. You’ll have to get fancy on the shields, but rear arc coverage of a CA is minimal.

Or drop a T-bomb out the hatch. The CA is four points more than the D7, and you don’t have to spend it on drones.

So there’s some thoughts, applied to the ‘classic’ duel.

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And a Ding!

by on March 8, 2006 at 8:36 am
Posted In: MMO

Went to Silithus Monday night. Two quest turn-ins were well rewarded:

From left to right: Dejek (behind horse… T_T), unknown person who zipped in for a quest turn-in at the last moment, Dunain, Lance, Gottesfaust, Blanc.

Oh, and front-center would be Blanc’s war-bunny.

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Blackrock Reboot

by on March 5, 2006 at 1:00 pm
Posted In: MMO

So… after a delay for real-life events… we finally made it to Blackrock Depths. It’s huge, huge instance, and is central to many later events and quests. I’ve been hearing of it since I started playing WoW a year ago, and well… it is so very odd to be going into that place that was so full of awe and dread 50 levels ago.

Thanks to the nice GameSpy Level 60 Guide, we were all loaded up with BRD quests… and looking forward to freeing up some of those nine slots in the allowed list of 20. It was the usual list of suspects: Blanc (60), Blondiewood (60), Dejek (59), me/Dunain (59), and Gottesfaust (55).

Things went pretty well. We started down the line of cells in the Detention Block, checking for prisoners as we went. Thankfully, the doors can be picked, so we started getting quests done without the key….

One fight went a bit bad with some adds, and then I managed the classic Hunter mistake. I selected a distant target that happened to be in a direct line with my intended target and told Lance ‘Get ‘im!’ As usual, I was slow trying to correct the problem, and we got another group. One wipe….

Almost.

Gottesfaust recently went Holy and picked up a talent that causes the entire party to get healed when he dies. With that shot in the arm, we lasted long enough for Blanc and I to be able to finish off the fight, and wait for the other three to get back.

Very nice, but let’s try not to use that too often, shall we?

A second near-wipe happened further in when Dejek got surprised by some hounds while scouting the next room. I feigned and made my way back to the entrance while everyone else ran back.

So, Hunter 1; Rogue 1. Bleh.

And then the server decided to take a hand in things as we were all summarily booted out to the select character screen. Upon going back in, we were all given message along the lines of ‘not your instance, will be ejected in 30 seconds’, even the group leader. And yeah, we were all in separate instances.

So… we did the two quest turn-ins we had and went back in. We almost immediately got a Crumpled up Note that restarted a quest chain that had dead-ended. We went in and took care of that, and proceeded on. Found, confronted and killed Incendius. Drooled over the Dark Anvil. Pity the Dark Forge is much further back in the instance. (Three of us had the materials on-hand to get Dark Iron Smelting, just in case.) Heading across the chamber, we confronted Fineous Darkvire and got Ironfel. We headed up the ramp and back to Franklorn’s statue and completed that quest, so we all have the Shadowforge Key.

After that, the server decided to dump us again. We called an hour-and-a-half break for people to fix and eat dinner. During that, Blanc and I mucked around some in Searing Gorge, figuring out what we needed to do to get our Thorium Brotherhood rep moving (What the Flux seems to be what stalled us). I also picked up three Dark Iron nodes, so my stockpile of ore is growing, and is probably going to get out of hand soon at this rate.

After dinner, we went back in, and started trying to get Coffer Relic Keys (need 12, the party had only managed 7 to this point). We got to the outer part of the bar and paid a little more attention to it this time. Blanc noted a scroll marked “Blacksmithing Plans”. We defeated the group in front of it, I trotted over and was just clicking on it….

Boot to character selection screen.

ARRRRGH!

Sigh, after that we decided to go do something outside of an instance. The chosen venue was farming Blue Dragonscale in Winterspring. Blanc and I have done a little of that, but this time we went into a big, big cave that has a goodly number of Dragonkin. And in the back, was a Dragon, Manaclaw. Nice little fight, not bad.

Behind him is another dragon, Scryer.

Nope, nuh-uh, not even close after four tries and a terrific respawn rate on Manaclaw. (Kill him, spend a couple minutes clearing and getting ready, get killed by Scryer, run back, Manaclaw is already back.) He came back during our last try at Scryer.

Final judgment: We need better equipment.

Which was part of the reason for going there. Dunain is now sporting a pair of Blue Dragonscale Shoulders. (And wishing he could turn them off, they’re not ugly -that comes later- but they look kind of silly on him.)

Final tally: Hunter 1, Rogue 1, Server 3, Scryer 4.

Dejek hit 60 during the first run into BRD. Dunain saw his bar move pretty far, but it is currently 1 and 1/3 segments away from that magical land where it’ll never move again.

Until the expansion. -_^

We spent a lot of time in BRD, and did what seems like a lot of stuff. But a glance over some of the guides show we’ve barely gotten anywhere, and haven’t hit the hard stuff yet. A look at the quest log supports this… 0.0 Geeze….

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