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Tactics and damage allocationTactics and damage allocation
Author: TOC_Bearslayer (Fleet Captain)
Posted: 01/08 08:57 PM
It has recently (as in this evening) come to my attention that some, if not a majority of STOC members, don't know about a type of attack called the Mizia Attack.
From what I understand, Mizia was a player, who found a way to 'spread' damage around with an attack instead of doing massive 'alpha' strikes. I am not sure if this player was a SFC or SFB player since I have never met him.
I have been using this since I learned it from the Taldren boards during SFCI and I thought others knew of it. Since I was wrong, I would like to correct that mistake.
First, in order to measure how to do this, I would ask you all to download this program, install, and then run it.
http://www.khoromag.org/taldren/setup-ezini.exe
This program will allow you to 'see' the amount of damage you do everytime you blow thru someone's shields and do internals to the enemy.
I know some of you have this already, but please bear with me....
Once installed, play a game, look at the target reticle in game, you will see:
Above your target reticle. This will keep track of the last 3 shots taken by that ship. If the ship took no internals on a shot, it will show a 0.
Now, go blow thru a shield, if you do internals, the '3' will now show how many 'internals' were done.
Now, back to the tactics part....
Due to the damage allocation chart used by Taldren, and based on SFB, if you do a lot of damage in an attack, the amount of damage will determine how far up the 'scale' you go to determine what is damaged.
Engines are far up the scale, so if you do one large strike, you are more likely to damage the enemies engines and hull.
But sometimes, you want to do something different, this is where the Mizia attack comes in.
Weapons systems are in the first part of the DAC (damage allocation chart) and if you do a few internals (about 3-8 internals per 'firing' ) you will have a very good chance of hitting weapons systems instead of other systems like engines.
So, when you drop the enemy's shields, fire 1 phaser at a time. (I usually do 'fire, 1 Mississippi, fire, 2 Mississippi, fire, 3 Mississippi, fire, 4 Mississippi, fire, 5 Mississippi, fire until I am out of phasers) You will see on your tactical display that the enemy's weapons systems will light up like a Christmas tree. Some will just be 'shocked' others will darken out as the systems are destroyed.
This is the beauty of the Mizia attack as it allows for you to declaw your enemy.
Try it, practice it, the results can be amazing....
Author: TOC_Bearslayer (Fleet Captain)
Posted: 01/08 09:54 PM
One additional thing on the EZini program... unless you change it, this program will max out your screen size to 1600X1200, if your computer can't handle this, please make sure you change it!!!!!
Damage, Mizia and explanations
Author: Spikeas (Captain)
Posted: 01/11 09:28 PM
Damage Allocation, Mizia effect, and explanations
As they apply to SFB
TOC-Spikeas
Introduction
This thesis is intended to bring forth the “hidden” knowledge of damage and how it is applied to your ship. Hidden, that is, for most not familiar with the board game Star Fleet Battles (SFB) from which SFC originates. To those of you with the desire to calculate damage spread and its effect on your ship, this may be a valuable introduction. Those others with a passing interest may find the summaries of use and little else. All information contained here, of course, relates only to SFB and may not directly apply to SFC and its revisions, due to programming requirements. However, it has been explained before that the designers of SFC foster “purist” SFB principles wherever possible, so the similarities may be more than expected considering the huge difference between a rather simplistic board game and a programmed, real-time computer simulation.
Scenario resolution
Most ship battles required pretty cut and dry victory conditions. Enemy ships were either destroyed, captured, disengaged (via distance, exiting the field of play, or sub-light evasion), or possibly even surrendered. Surrendering was a role-play contingency and not necessarily honored universally (depending on the race, the players, and the overall scenario). Other victory conditions offered more complex solutions, again depending upon the scenario. For example, in specific scenarios a certain amount of research was required before the starship could disengage…damaging or firing upon anything could void victory. Remaining in a certain location for a certain period of time might suffice. Or simply surviving to disengage might have been enough…perhaps even convincing enemy/neutral forces to make certain decisions. With the more complicated multi-scenario “campaigns”, a method of tracking overall victory conditions was arbitrarily defined as Victory Points, awarded by successfully completing various criteria within each scenario and tracked throughout the campaign. Prestige as known in single player SFC campaigns probably originated from SFB’s Victory Point scale.
SFC is much more limited than SFB was, in many ways. While there are a number of different scenarios available, they are harder to sub-define with a preprogrammed game than with a group of interested players. Multi-scenario campaigns were easily designed, refined, tested and played throughout many groups…some of which were popular enough to become known nationwide. These scenarios modified the evolution of SFB and besides, they were fun enough to spur interest on a number of different levels…thus the popularity. But to continue:
Destruction. A starship was destroyed only if one more excess damage hit was accrued than the ship had. Since all systems were portrayed in groups of “boxes” on the SSD, and each “hit” to a system destroyed one box in its grouping, suffice it to say that a solid majority of systems would be completely destroyed before the ship would sustain even one excess damage hit. However, it would not be impossible to destroy a ship while leaving a number of systems untouched…study the Damage Allocation Chart (later in this document) for further insight.
Capture. Marine boarding parties were commonly used to capture an enemy starship, vice using them for hit-and-run raids. Great amounts of prestige and victory points could be had if you captured (instead of destroyed) an enemy vessel…even more so if you captured, say, a good number of pirate vessels. While there were no penalties for simply destroying an enemy (except with some advanced scenarios), players rarely had complete success throughout any multi-scenario campaign. Thus, capturing an enemy or two might significantly defer some of the setbacks previously encountered. Or might offset some unknown failures in the future.
Typically, in order to capture a vessel, those “control boxes” (Bridge, Aux. Control, Emergency Bridge, Flag Bridge) left undestroyed must be taken by your boarding parties. With some races, this is easier to accomplish or defend against than others. There are certain risks in attempting to capture an enemy vessel…the risk that the attempts will be unsuccessful, the risk that it will be only partially successful but you must disengage (and leave good boarding parties aboard an enemy vessel, to be captured themselves and most unpleasantly interrogated). Or even the risk of the defender turning the tables by concentrating on certain tactics while you’re worried about winning those boarding actions. However, the less damaged the captured ship is, the greater prestige typically awarded to the capturing captain. Throw in Klingon security stations resulting in possible mutiny, the effects on an uncontrolled ship should attempts be only partially successful, and any number of local phenomena…and you have a dynamic game to which capturing ships is merely one possible road to victory.
Disengage. Typically, a set distance from all opponents moving away at maximum speed…as well as an announced intent to disengage, were all the requirements to accomplish this desire. However, some scenarios allowed one to disengage much like SFC allows now (via crossing a pre-set border, typically the edge of the board). You could also disengage by manually dropping your warp nacelle and attempting a “sub-light evasion”…moving to ultra slow speeds and effectively disappearing from the field. The chances of this were highly variable, depending upon your opponent and overall locations…however, dropping warp engines were permanent so this attempt wasn’t made lightly. Of course, the many-decades trip home is also an unpleasant side effect even if successful.
But disengaging is hardly the worst of all options. Every Admiral realizes that one ship cannot win every battle, no matter what the skill of its crew. In fact, many players utilized disengagement to good effect…consider the mechanism of gaining and losing Victory Points as described above. When sufficiently outnumbered, damaging or even crippling enough enemies while cutting your losses by disengaging could result in a net gain so much better than fighting to the end. Those commanders with the skill and savvy to employ such tactics would invariably propel their careers to heights unattainable by other methods. The scenario Surprise Reversed is a good field exercise for effective disengagement. So long as your empire’s agenda is satisfied by your efforts, keep in mind that disengaging under appropriate circumstances can be planned much more effectively than simply running away to avoid complete destruction.
Surrender. Generally considered the worst of all options, there are redeeming factors to this tactic. First and foremost, it could salvage a career if no better option exists. You will save the lives of many crewmembers by doing so, and depending upon your race this can be an important mitigating factor. Legendary officers aboard have been known to turn a surrender into victory through subterfuge…in fact, with some role-playing groups, an officer cannot achieve Legendary status without having surrendered his vessel at some point (while successfully salvaging his career through other methods). Subsequent scenario’s pertaining to the recapture or destruction of surrendered vessels capitalize the role-playing aspects of SFB campaigns, especially multi-ship campaigns.
Starship Damage
Everybody knows, or should know, the method to which you may damage your opponents. By utilizing weapons or other offensive systems (not to forget terrain), tactics, a knowledge of the enemy to a point where you can maximize your offense AND defensive systems against his own efforts…victory can be achieved. However, victory can be achieved in more than one way…as somewhat described above. In fact, not knowing what thresholds of damage may be required could hamper your own effort. A lack of understanding your damage distribution could “snatch defeat from the jaws of victory” to paraphrase. The more you know your enemy, how your hard-earned damage is applied, and your own weaknesses…the better chance of success in simple ship-to-ship combat. This becomes especially important as the quality of competition increases.
Some subtleties may remain unappreciated, or you may capitalize upon them if you so choose. For example, most don’t understand or care about the fact that your typical Federation CA has 8 lab “hits” or boxes. However, when you study the Damage Allocation Chart (DAC), you might find that beyond a Mizia-spread salvo, those Lab hits protect the Left Warp engines to some extent. “Soft armor” is a valid term to describe this effect, and it applies to any non-critical system that can sustain damage during battle that would save power, weapons, or control.
Each point of damage sustained in combat will be applied to your ship in various degrees. First, general and specific shield reinforcement. Second, by damaging your facing (in most cases) shields. Third, hits on armor. And finally, damage to various systems which not only reduce your effectiveness, but the loss of which may allow your ship to become destroyed. Each “damage point” past armor will destroy one box in any system. The number of boxes in those systems, and the spread to which systems get damaged, will affect you greatly. In SFB, all such damage was applied arbitrarily by using the DAC below.
To understand this DAC, consider the following: 2d6 were rolled for each “point” of damage applied, resulting in a number from 2 to 12. Those items bold underlined can be hit only once per volley. All other systems would continue being hit until completely destroyed, and then you would move to the next system designated for the number rolled. Read down.
Damage Allocation Chart
{inset, seperate. see next post}
Some abbreviations are necessary, above. Using this chart is rather simple. If, for example, 2d6 resulted in rolling 4’s repeatedly: you would accrue 1 phaser hit, 1 transporter hit, continual Right warp hits until none remained, impulse hits until none remained (etc), and then on through Forward hull, Aft hull, Left warp, APR, lab, transporters, probes, Center warp, and finally block M where you hit excess damage boxes until the ship is destroyed. Since we’re repeatedly using 2d6 and applying each die roll on this chart per point of damage, probabilities will generate a bell-curve that stagger toward the center values. Thus, rolling a 6, 7, or 8 will occur more often than rolling a 2, 3, 11 or 12. Over large amounts of damage applied via this chart, certain systems have a tendency to take damage more often.
Mizia effect
The Mizia effect attempts to utilize the quirks of our DAC to good effect. Instead of requiring a crushing amount of damage to bludgeon a ship into submission, small “chunks” of damage will be more effective and much easier to apply. Remember, there are many “once-per-volley” hits on our DAC. If you were to take the same amount of damage, say 15 points, and apply it either as one volley or 3 volleys of 5 points, you will notice more power and weapon hits using the latter option.
Lets take a random DAC result from that 15 points of damage:
2d6= 8, 7, 8, 10, 5…3, 8, 7, 9, 12…9, 7, 5, 8, 6. In numerical order, that’s 3,5,5,6,7,7,7,8,8,8,8,9,9,10,12. We’ll apply this result in two ways; single volley and mizia with 3 volleys of 5 (as rolled).
Single volley.
Our hits are:
Drone
Right Warp
5 Aft Hull
2 Forward Hull
3 Cargo
Left Warp
Phaser
Auxiliary Control
Assuming our ship has no cargo:
Drone
Right Warp
5 Aft Hull
5 Forward Hull
Left Warp
Phaser
Auxiliary Control
To sum, 2 weapon’s hits, 2 power hits, 1 control hit, and 10 hull hits. This results in 5 useful damage, and 10 damage applied to soft armor. More to the point, all the useful damage occurred via once-per-volley resolutions on our DAC.
Multiple volley (Mizia).
Per volley of 5 damage (again, a ship without cargo):
Aft Hull
Forward Hull
Aft Hull
Phaser
Right Warp
Drone
Aft Hull
Forward Hull
Left Warp
Auxiliary Control
Left Warp
Forward Hull
Right Warp
Aft Hull
Forward Hull
With this same 15 points of damage, we have 2 weapon hits, 4 power hits, 1 control hit, and 8 hull hits. Or, 7 useful damage and 8 soft armor damage. Note again that all the useful damage resulted from once-per-volley hits. So even with only 15 damage scored (hardly a worthy accounting of probabilities) our “useful damage” went from 1/3 to nearly ½ the hits by use of the Mizia effect. Apply this throughout a protracted battle, where hundreds of damage points may be applied, and you will invariably strip your opponent of power and weapons much sooner…giving yourself a huge advantage as the battle wears on.
The benefits of using Mizia are applied on more than one level. Not only does it provide you with a superior combat effectiveness, but it forces your opponent into a position where other means of victory become available to you. Stripping his ship of all weapons and most power, you may quite easily capture him and thus improve upon your Victory conditions for the scenario.
Starship design
Arguably, certain races have ship design tendencies that allow greater exploitation of the Mizia effect…or that minimize the ill effects of DAC. Generally, the later “era” design of a ship, the more attuned it is toward minimizing catastrophic damage due to allocation. ISC ships of any era are reportedly quite superior in minimizing adverse DAC, rivaling late-era ships of other races. Supposedly design theory has generally improved such engineering techniques from empire to empire by varying degrees.
The Disruptor (considering its design with Klingon ship capabilities in mind) and ISC PPD seem to have been made for just such an advantage; while Plasma Torpedoes, ESG’s, and other large-yield weapons fall short of optimum effectiveness. Even so, while certain weapons or ships may seem designed more effectively, their use between opponents will be the deciding factor. A design advantage is only as effective as the captain who uses it.
More information on Scenarios, Damage Allocation statistics, Mizia and related effects (etc) may be found within SFB reference materials (such as the Tactics Manual) and numerous other websites. Invite your curiosity on this subject to more than one source, and by no means should this thesis be considered definitave as there are many more aspects to investigate. I encourage you to do so.
Damage Allocation Chart
Author: Spikeas (Captain)
Posted: 01/11 10:38 PM
Die Roll.....Result
2].... Bridge FlagBridge Sensor DamCon A.Hull L.Warp Trans Trac Shuttle Lab F.Hull R.Warp ExcDam
3].... Drone Phaser Impulse L.Warp R.Warp A.Hull Shuttle DamCon C.Warp Lab Battery Phaser ExcDam
4].... Phaser Trans R.Warp Impulse F.Hull A.Hull L.Warp APR Lab Trans Probe C.Warp ExcDam
5].... R.Warp A.Hull Cargo Battery Shuttle Torp L.Warp Impulse R.Warp Trac Probe AnyWeapon ExcDam
6].... F.Hull Impulse Lab L.Warp Sensor Trac Shuttle R.Warp Phaser Trans Battery AnyWeapon ExcDam
7].... Cargo F.Hull Battery C.Warp Shuttle APR Lab Phaser AnyWarp Probe A.Hull AnyWeapon ExcDam
8].... A.Hull APR Shuttle R.Warp Scanner Trac Shuttle L.Warp Phaser Trans Battery AnyWeapon ExcDam
9].... L.Warp F.Hull Cargo Battery Lab Drone R.Warp Impulse L.Warp Trac Probe AnyWeapon ExcDam
10]... Phaser Trac L.Warp Impulse A.Hull F.Hull R.Warp APR Lab Trans Probe C.Warp ExcDam
11]... Torp Phaser Impulse R.Warp L.Warp F.Hull Trac DamCon C.Warp Lab Battery Phaser ExcDam
12]... AuxCon EmerBrg Scanner Probe F.Hull R.Warp Trans Shuttle Trac Lab A.Hull L.Warp ExcDam
Once-per-volley hits are bold/underscored. Read this chart across for effect.
Author: TOC-TrollStomper (Fleet Captain)
Posted: 01/11 11:59 PM
Not only is the Mizia Tactic a good idea, Ir's a requirement in SFC2.
I reported a concern over the lack of overall effectiveness of an Alpha Strike to the team at Khoromag after a patch or two ago, and they told me that it was the intent of the programmers that it work this way.
Scenario:
Hydran DNH approaching Enemy Heavy Cruiser (AI).
Alpha strike fully overloaded, after firing at range 0, volleyinfo recorded that 135 internals were scored. For reference, few, if any cruisers in SFB have 135 damage boxes (including the facing shield), let alone internals of that magnitude. The damage display for this ship not only survived, but it only showed 2 systems destroyed.
This is because, in thier wisdom, Taldren has doubled the "hit points" of each SFB internal from 1 to 2. But apparently not changed the damage allocation mechanic to allow you to hit the same system twice with one volley. So it is entirely possible... perhaps likely... that a massive volley will do little or nothing to hamper the actual fighting effectiveness of a ship. This may have been tweaked in later patches. It may just be my imagination. But at the time I was a bit put off to realize they had no problem with a ship taking 135 internals, and only losing two weapons as a result.
Author: tocdaveye (Fleet Commander)
Posted: 01/12 09:34 AM
<S!>
sob :cry:
I,m confused :(
Author: Spikeas (Captain)
Posted: 01/14 09:52 AM
Easy enough, Davey. The Mizia effect is STILL in effect, but even more drastic as each system on your ship requires -two- hits to destroy instead of only one. This deviates from old-school SFB, and was created solely for SFC gameplay purposes.
Consider our hypothetical volley, above. 15 damage say, from 3 phaser-1's...you can either fire them as an alpha strike or fire them one at a time.
As an alpha strike, they did:
Drone
Right Warp
5 Aft Hull
5 Forward Hull
Left Warp
Phaser
Auxiliary Control
Considering that in SFC right now you require 2 hits per system...you'll notice that only 2 Aft Hull and 2 Forward Hull are completely destroyed. Two weapons were flashed, and two seperate power and one control system received some damage but not enough to destroy anything.
Would you like a guage to determine how much damage most starships can take, perhaps? I can't really do that, not without giving you some SSD's to view. But I can breakdown your typical Fed CA for reference.
Fed CA damage breakdown (SFB):
Shields #1(30), #2&6(24), #3,4&5(20)
Left Warp 15
Right Warp 15
Impulse 4
Battery 4
Torp 4
Phaser 6
Bridge 2
Aux. Con 2
Emer. Bridge 2
Transporter 3
Tractor 2
Probe 1
Lab 8
Forward Hull 12
Aft Hull 4
Shuttle 4
Sensor 6
Scanner 6
Dam. Con 6
Excess Damage 6
112 internal hits plus 20-30 shields given any facing. Doubled in SFC, that would mean 224 internal hits after shields. Not that every last one of these systems would have to be destroyed before the ship explodes, but a majority of them would.
Now lets consider everything but power, weapons, excess damage and one control box as "soft armor". That means 168 damage via SFC can be taken without significantly affecting the performance of that ship in battle as compared to 56 hits that would really hurt. You want to capatilize on those once-per-volley results to maximize your damage in that "really hurts" category, and leave the soft armor for when you already have him at your mercy.
Effectively, between using your marines and the Mizia effect, you can do that. Consider fighting somebody who dosen't use Mizia like fighting someone who dosen't employ marines for hit and run raids...but YOU do. There's a tactical advantage to exploit.STOC O Club Forums!