The power of…err….6: Why defence is broken and how to fix it.

There were many reasons why the Borg were so good for so long -the high PWV at 360 degrees, the best manoeuvre dials in the game, their high hull and shields- but perhaps the most significant of their advantages could actually be seen as a disadvantage –their low agility.

“Hold on Dave; that makes no sense, why would you want them to have low evade?!” I hear you cry. The answer is perhaps one of the less spoken about truths of ST:AW – Defence sucks. A single green evade dice has 3 evade side, 3 blanks and 2 Battle Stations. A 37.5% chance of rolling an ‘evade’ compared to a 50% chance of rolling a hit (or crit) on an attack dice. Added to this simple statistical fact is a cavalcade of additional unfortunate facts that make defence a much more costly investment to get right than attacking.

Let’s take federation as an example (since it is by far and away the easiest faction to min-max in fleet pure), 5 attack dice with both TL and BS is easy done - Prometheus, Captain Spock, job done…Picard, Sovereign as an alternative, or additional ship with the same benefits - even when paying for the extra captain and the costly 5 PWV space-frame, you can still manage it on a budget (32 points). Dominion can do it even cheaper (Keldon and Dukat – 29 Points), even Klingons manage similar (Kargan, Vor’cha and Drex – 34). Target Lock re-rolls and BS conversions are about 94% efficiency, meaning that more often than not, you’ll be hitting with 5 out of 5 shots.

Defence, by comparison, is much more expensive, to get up to 5 dice you are having to either cloak (and that comes with it a whole heap of issues that I’ll go into another time) or rely on upgrades. No ship currently available in the game has an agility value higher than 3 – and even then they are invariably low hull/shield ships like the NX-01, Bajoran Interceptor or RIS Vo (combined hit points of 3, 3 and 4 respectively). The most survivable 3 evade ship in the game at the moment is the Prototype 01/Romulan Drone ship, and even then it has only 6 hit points. So to get up to 5 (or better 6) defence dice you are spending points that you could have spent elsewhere – unless you are a cloaker.

So how does one boost their defensive abilities? The first way is to increase the volume of the dice being rolled and (bearing in mind my earlier post on the need for a 4/4, or as close to it, split on hull and shields) often the ships that you are using as a base aren’t going to have a defence that is that high. Let’s take the Cardassian Galor class as a base, since the 3 named versions (Trager, Reklar and Kraxon) have 4 hull and 4 shields, you are looking for a way to increase the number of dice that you are rolling on defence. The most obvious choice in faction is Amat’Igan, who gives you an extra defence dice and helps you to protect other, potentially more important, crew. Shove Amat’Igan onto your ship and you have reached a mighty 2 green dice. That, as should be obvious by now, isn’t going to really make any difference, and the second (and expensive) option to boost defence using an upgrade is Cloaking Device, which lowers your shields thus reducing your durability to 4. There is another option in faction though – Tetryon Emissions. There are massive issues with this (it is an action/disable and takes a valuable tech slot) but putting it onto your Named Galor will boost your evade, along with Amat’Igan to 5. There is also Sar, a Breen Captain who, in faction, will increase that total up to the all-important 6. The Dominion faction fleet captain resource will add 2 to your CS (bringing Sar up to a *mighty* 4) and allow you to take Tetryon Emissions as a free action each turn (you can use your ship’s action to re-enable it each turn if needs be). So there you have it, a 4-6-4-4 ship; and all for 38 points. That’s 9 points more than Dukat’s 5 attack dice with TL and BS from earlier – and it is nowhere near as worth the points.

Perhaps more than attacking, defence relies upon quality rather than numbers. Let’s take that last ship and then change the captain from Sar to Gul Evek. Gul Evek’s (passive) ability is to re-roll blank defence dice each time. This takes the 6 dice that Sar’s ship had, reduces them by 1 and allows re-rolls. This means that on those 5 dice you are likely to have around 2 blank dice, when re-rolled, they are more likely to produce an extra evade result rather than the extra dice without a re-roll. Sar’s ship averages 2.25 evade results (for sake of ease let’s call that 2) whereas Evek’s ship, with the re-rolls, averages 2.625 evade results (again, for ease, let’s call that 3). Fewer dice with better quality results in better results.

Taking this paradigm a little further, let’s imagine that instead of tetryon emissions and Dominion Fleet captain, you take the ship action of the Reklar. This allows you to roll one additional defence dice and to place a BS token beside the ship. With Evek as captain and Amat’igan on board, this ship only rolls 3 dice, rather than the 6 that Sar’s ship in the above example was rolling. The difference here, is that you get a BS conversion on one of the occasions that you defend. This averages out at 2.8 evades a turn. Sar’s ship was 38 points, the Reklar with Gul Evek and Amat’Igan is 31 points. You save 6 points and get a better return in terms of defence, and you can still use your resource elsewhere. The problem that this version creates, is that it can only spend the BS token once, and once it has gone, the ship’s evade drops down to an average of 1.55.

So perhaps the Reklar isn’t the answer, but BS conversions certainly seem to help. Another thing that helps with defence is any ability that helps to cancel opposing attack dice. This can range from cancelling an entire attack (Feedback Pulse, Varel and Conditional Surrender) to reducing the effectiveness of an attack without cancelling it entirely (Improved Deflector Screens, the ship ability of the Trager or Bellerophon). Abilities like this are key to surviving in ST:AW. A single, automatically cancelled Red Dice is the statistical equivalent of 3 extra Green Dice (and so is an evade token too, although it can only be used once). The Trager, for Dominion, has an ability whereby it can cancel one hit or Crit result by disabling a shield. This does reduce the 4/4 shield/hull approach from its optimum value, but is essentially the same as having rolled an extra 3 Green Dice once a turn. Even with only Amat’Igan and Evek on it, taking an ‘evade’ action, the Trager averages out at 2.25 evade results if it is only defending against one attack a turn.

The truth is, throughout this little thought experiment, nothing really offers a concrete answer to the problem of defence. Even when stacking as many dice as possible, with conversion and cancellation, you are going to struggle to come out unscathed from a 4 dice attack with quality, since most of the time this will mean that you are suffering 4 points of damage. That’s why the 4/4 standard is so important; the defence just helps you to survive even longer.

That is unless you consider the Federation, who do defence better than anyone.

U.S.S. Defiant                                                                 2

Jean-Luc Picard (Enterprise E)                                     +1

Cheat Death

Independent Fleet Captain (Klingon)

Elizabeth Shelby                                                            Re-Roll (Re-rolls and +1 vs. Borg)

Hikaru Sulu                                                                    +2, 1 BS Conversion

William T. Riker (Hood)                 +1, 1 BS Conversion (+2, 2 BS Conversion w/DA Captain)

Multi Adaptive Shields                                                  +1 (Defence vs. Mines)

Specialized Shields                                                         Re-Roll

Systems Upgrade

This ship rolls a mighty 7 green dice, with 2 BS Conversions and a minimum of 2 Re-rolls. The efficiency that this provides means that you are averaging out at around 6(!) successful Evade dice per turn against non-borg, and 7 vs. the Big Bad Borg themselves (although not so big or bad at the moment, I’ll post about that later). That’s worth the investment of points itself, since the ship comes out at 50 points with all of those upgrades on it. Add in Cheat Death, for when it all goes wrong, and systems upgrade for a reasonable 3/5 damage balance and you have an extremely survivable ship, that causes almost no damage to you opponent!

Therein lies the crux of the problem: Any ship with reasonable defence upgrades, within the 50 Point limit, will struggle to also maintain a reasonable damage output, especially if BS tokens are spent on defence rather than offence. So how does one ‘solve’ the problem of defence? It’s a relatively straight forward answer – The best defence is a good offence.

The best way of ensuring the lengthy survival of your own ships is to kill your opponent’s ships before he gets chance to fire back. With federation this is easy (I’ll take Picard 9, Kirk 9 and fighters please) and with Dominion it is also relatively easy done (Dukat + Madred, Weyoun 8 and Fleet Captain) it’s also becoming easier for Klingons (Old Kor and Martok). Manouevre into position, fire your 4+ dice of modified goodness onto an enemy ship and then don’t worry about defence since you have destroyed the enemy ship.

So this bring me back to the start of this (now particularly long) diatribe – the Borg. The Borg have high primary weapon value, high hull and shields (in some case doubling the 4/4 balance) and no agility. This means that the Borg’s ship cost is not paying 2 extra points for an ultimately superfluous stat. Before the Borg errata, Borg were the absolute masters at manoeuvring into a position where they would suffer no return fire and could make the most of their high PWV (admittedly Borg do not, in fleet pure play at least, benefit from both TL and BS, so that 6 dice primary attack is only likely to average out at 4.5 hits assuming a Target Lock). With the Borg Queen and Locutus, the Borg have access to two high CS captains, meaning that they can also do the tactic described above, manoeuvre into position, concentrate fire and avoid return fire.

So to summarise my main points about defence here I’ll say the following:

1.      Defence is an expensive stat to boost,

2.      Efficiency is almost always better than extra green dice,

3.      A good offence is the best defence,

4.      High hull and shields are better than high agility.

As always comments are most welcome, and I’m sure that there are dodgy maths in there somewhere,

I’m still not Picard,

D

The Power of Four – Hull and Shields

I’ll start this post by admitting that 4 isn’t really the magic number here, 8 is, but at least on average, 4 hull and 4 shields are a nice balance between the two. I’ve seen a post on BGG (BoardGameGeek.com) that argued that shields were better than hull and I do somewhat agree with that, but there are situations where it is better to have the hull than it is to have the shields.

So 8 is the magic number when it comes to damage and the reason is pretty simple – Outside of a build deliberately designed to boost attack beyond the realms of normality (Archer, Tactical Station, Malcolm Reed, for example), the most attack dice you are likely to face at range 2-3 is 7 (note: The Queen Vessel Prime’s ship ability could be used to boost a range 1 attack to 8 dice, but is unlikely to have any quality in fleet pure play, maybe a target lock but even then, that’s only 75% efficiency). Even with boosted attacks, 7 seems to be the top end of damage production you are likely to face on a regular basis.

If you do suffer 7 damage, after evading and spending tokens and cancelling attacks, then 4 hull and 4 shields is a sweet-spot because that means that, barring the double damage critical hit, you will survive to get a shot back. I put quite a lot of value on having high captain skill, and part of the reason is that I’d hate to have my ship shot out from underneath me before I get a chance to shoot. The other way around this problem, is to never be in a position where you can take more than 7 damage before you are capable of returning fire. The trick is to make sure that you are in a position where only 1 enemy ship can shoot at each of your ships when you can respond with at least 2 ships back. All of this must make sense, and seem like good tactics, but what does it have to do with the Number 4?

4 hull 4 shields is a good balance between the two stats to get you to 8 simply because of the number of shield ignoring weapons currently flying around. Just for the sake of completion, Proton Beam, Phased Polaron Beam and Chroniton Torpedoes all ignore shields and go straight to hull. Usually, shields are a better investment than hull simply because a critical hit and a hit have exactly the same effect on shields – but with the shield ignoring secondary weapons going around, you want to be able to avoid these weapons Having 4 hull means that you can avoid the worst that these weapons have to offer without dying in one shot (disclaimer: there is a 4 dice Phased Polaron beam that would cut through this entirely, but this is only range 1 and if you are in range to be shot by this, you’ve probably been taking 6 or 5 dice primary weapon attacks from the Jem’Hadar Battleship or Cruiser on the way in, at which point the 4 hull becomes moot).

So when I’m building a fleet, I always look at having ships with a 4/4 balance between hull and shields, sometimes this means that you have a 5/3 ship (the Maht’h’a) or a 3/5 ship (The Defiant with systems upgrade). Anything less than this is a support ship, which needs to be kept safe by other means than just hull and shields alone, anything more than this is good, but it means that you are paying 2 points per stat more than I think is absolutely necessary.

Defence is a different matter of course, defence doesn’t really follow the power of 4, 6 is a much better number, but even then, 12 or 18 would be better. With defence it is less about the number of dice you are rolling and more about the abilities you have to modify those dice, add to those dice or otherwise reduce the impact that the dice would have on whether or not you survive an attack. More later, so if you are interested, then please check back then!

I’m still not Picard.

D

The Power of 4: Attacking

Four is a key number in ST:AW because in most situations, 4 is what you want to achieve in terms of attack dice, hull or shields (Not evade, since 6 is the magic number here – I’ll write more about this later). Attack (red) dice in STAW are split 1 crit, 3 hits, 2 Battlestations and 2 blank, so when you roll four attack dice, just based on basic probability, you are likely to roll 2 hits (which may or may not be critical hits) 1 BS and 1 Blank. If you have dice efficiency of any type, this means that 4 attack dice, more often than not, result in 3 hits. (If you have both re-rolls, from whatever source, and BS, you can almost guarantee 4 hits, since the average on 4 dice with both TL and BS is 94%, or 3.9ish hits). The more dice that you have on an attack, the less useful the increased efficiency becomes, primarily because you have more dice to re-roll. Certain cards like Dimitri Valtane and (young) Kor, allow you to re-roll a specified number of dice, (2 in Valtane’s Case, more often than not 2 in Kor’s Case). These limited re-rolls allow you to increase the efficiency of a 4 dice attack to around the same level as a full re-roll would, as long as you don’t have too many dice. It’s one of the reasons I like 4 dice Photon Torpedoes, since the one BS to Crit conversion that it allows you is functionally the same as a BS on 4 dice anyway (You just need to find a way of getting the benefit of re-rolls too, since the TL is used to fire the torpedoes in the first place). A 4 dice Photon Torpedo roll would hit or crit twice (on average) with the BS being converted into another Crit, thanks to the torpedoes’ written ability. When you go to 5 dice on Photon Torpedoes, you would ultimately be better off with a standard attack with BS rather than the no BS crit conversion that Torpedoes offer. There are other issues with Torpedoes (the main on being action efficiency on every turn after the Torpedoes are fired) but in terms of damage output, a 4 dice attack with Photon Torpedoes is a little better than a 4 dice Primary Weapon attack with BS conversions. As soon as you get beyond 4 dice this advantage disappears, and you would be better off just firing primary weapons, also, the lack of a BS token means that such an attack would not be able to benefit from Boheeka and his ilk. A 4 dice Photon Torpedo attack on a ship that has a primary weapon value of between 1 and 3 is a tactic that many players eschew given the cost of the torpedoes themselves as well as the action economy cost of using them multiple times, but for that first alpha strike, they shouldn’t be discounted out of hand. A tactic I’ve considered using is a small Federation ship (think the Pegasus, Equinox or similar) with 4 dice Photons and Malcolm Reed. In the first turn of an engagement, use the Photon Torpedoes for on average 3 hits (including 2 crits) and then in the second turn of your engagement use Reed’s ability to discard the disabled Photons to add 2 dice to your PVW, and take a BS as the ship action for a similar quality attack. Depending on captain (I’d suggest Sisko, for the extra re-roll per turn to add even better efficiency) this ship is a potent, manoeuverable little ship that doesn’t cost all that much.

For example:

U.S.S. Equinox [U.S.S. Equinox] (20)
Benjamin Sisko [U.S.S. Defiant] (4)
Malcolm Reed [Enterprise NX-01] (3)
Photon Torpedoes [U.S.S. Excelsior] (3)
Total (28)

Fleet total: 30

For 30 points you get a 4 attack Photon Torpedo attack with the BS-Crit conversion the first time that you fire (with a re-roll from Sisko), a 4 Dice Primary Weapon Attack the second time that you fire, with a BS action and a re-roll for Sisko and hopefully by that point you are in range 1, so you get a 3 dice Primary Weapon attack with a re-roll from Sisko and BS. If someone shoots this ship then they aren’t shooting something else in your fleet, meaning you have a relatively reliable 4 dice of damage each turn – It’s great for taking on Borg, since they don’t generally roll any evade dice or have the evade action. It also pairs well with the Yaegar Torpedo boat that gives you similar efficiency:

U.S.S. Yeager [U.S.S. Yeager] (22)
Mr. Spock [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (4)
Photon Torpedoes [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (4)
Total (30)

The torpedoes used on this ship are not disabled and are of the 5 dice variety. Since they don’t disable and Spock gives you the free TL every turn, you can fire torpedoes every turn (as long as you keep in range 2-3) and take a BS Action. These two ships together pack a good punch for 60 Points, meaning you can fill the rest of your build out with 60 points of tougher, harder to kill ships (or a single ship if your meta allows) or even a carrier and some fighters. I’ll try the second option for now:

U.S.S. Enterprise [U.S.S. Enterprise] (22)
Christopher Pike [U.S.S. Enterprise] (4)
Fleet Captain: Independent (Klingon) [Fleet Captain Resource] (5)
Cheat Death [U.S.S. Enterprise] (0)
Phil Wallace [U.S.S. Pegasus] (0)
Elizabeth Shelby [U.S.S. Yeager] (0)
Kyle [U.S.S. Reliant] (0)
Hikaru Sulu [U.S.S. Enterprise (Refit)] (1)
Redshirt [Red Shirt Crew] (2)
Redshirt [Red Shirt Crew] (2)
Type 8 Phaser Array [U.S.S. Hood] (2)
Total (38)

Federation Attack Squadron [Fighter Squadron 6] (20)
Coordinated Attack [Fighter Squadron 6] (3)
Total (23)

The Enterprise is designed to survive, and the Fleet Captain resource along with Redshirts, Shelby, Pike and Sulu means that you are going to take a lot of damage before you do die. This is exacerbated by Cheat Death. Type 8 Phasers means that you are rolling those all-important 4 red dice each turn, and Phil Wallace and Kyle provide some flexibility to heal and manoeuvre. With all the reductions in play, you actually get the Equinox down a point and can still afford to take a set of Federation fighters, with coordinated attack, so they also benefit from BS conversions. It’s an interesting little fleet that I may have to try out sometime and it’s all based on the power of 4.

I’m going to come back to the power of 4 again, to look at hull and shields, but for now, I’m still not Picard.

D