PP: Fleet is looking like the fall sometime. The author has a day job and a life so 'Fleet' gets worked on when time permits.
My gaming group has played 'A Good, Clean Fight' several times and the Imperial player generally gets his hindquarters handed to him. The fight generally lasts about 3-4 turns with the
Zdiak light destroyer's ability to absorb damage usually carrying the day for the Joes.
I'm no grizzled veteran but there some things I've learned:
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- Laser pumped bombs are vicious at range, especially if detonated outside of the enemy's PD range. Use them for long range strikes out to range 40 or for same turn strikes out to range 20.</font>
- Sand is your friend - use it early, use it often. Try and plan your sand dumps so that they will provide cover for several rounds. You will need *lots* of sand counters.</font>
- Enemy ships with decent acceleration have a suprising capacity to be somewhere besides where you wanted them
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- Unless your target has nuclear dampers, nukes HURT, but don't waste them on ships with dampers if your nuke supply is limited.</font>
- For the Escort class ships (i.e. two hull boxes): these things are EGGSHELLS: so if you have it - shoot it - chances are it's not going to be there next turn - but always save a little something for point defense if there is a missile threat.</font>
- Keep your ships together and use the escorts to... escort. The ability of escort ships to provide PD and sand cover for the bigger ships is key if you want your destroyer to survive long enough to deal some serious damage.</font>
- A threshold check at '4' (i.e. the last row before 'kill') has a really good chance of mission killing a ship. It may still be there afterwards but it's not going to be much of a threat.</font>
- Closing within range 10-15 will finish the fight - one way or the other.</font>
- If you're thinking about issuing a 'jump' order because your ship is damaged or you are losing the fight it is already too late. You'll need to think further ahead next time.</font>
- The frozen watch always buys it (frozen watch has died on every single threshold check we've rolled).</font>
Yes - most of these
seem pretty obvious - getting blown to bits will reinforce the lesson.
Some war stories:
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- First turn. Parties have closed to range 29 or so (just inside laser range) - sand has been deployed. Zho 'hail-mary' laser shot through the Imperial player's sand cloud hits a Chrysanthimum class destroyer escort and forces a threshold check. The bridge is destroyed and the Imperial player rolls a six for the duration - permanent. The 'mum is out of action - one shot extreme range with sand.</font>
- End of the same game - like turn two or three. The Imperial player has been routed and is trying to jump out. His remaining ships are being picked off one by one. The last ship is a Fer-de-Lance class destroyer escort. The jump-1 order was issued this turn and if the Fer-de-Lance does not fire energy weapons she will jump at the begining of the next turn and survive. If she does fire energy weapons she will have to endure another round of Zho fire and will surely perish. Her captian opts to withold point defense on the two incoming missile salvos - reducing his chances of surviving each from 1/3 to 1/6. First salvo misses. Second hits but the threshold check does not destroy anything necessary for the jump. Ship and crew live to fight another day.</font>
For the curious, we are using ink jet printed counters on medium cardstock from the colour .pdf's on the
Power Projection website. I've run one batch each of the ships on the thickest stock I could get through the printer and about four additional batches of sand on slightly thinner stock. We've also made some ten inch rulers out of folded oaktag (file folder material) and are using as tailor's tape measure for longer distances.
The Power Projection website also has some nice turnsheets someone ran off in excel.
PP:E is a great game - many thanks to the gents at BITS for putting together an excellent product. Very much looking forward to PP:Fleet.
That said, I will note that PP:E is meant to be used to simulate military engagements of ships in the 1000+ dton category. Out of the box it is *not* suitable for playing out rpg session engagements of PC type ships vs ships in the same class.
