From: leonard@mimsy.umd.edu (Leonard Dickens)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: Re: sunscreamer's How to be a Scoutbomber, part 2.5
Date: 9 Nov 92 22:04:56 GMT
Organization: Deep Thirteen, Gizmonics Institute

Joseph E. Beck writes:
>
>>  I'm a big 
>>disbeliever in the "anti-scoutbombing" practice of sitting on
>>an army-holding planet and waiting for the scoutbomber to walk in;
>>the strategy of the scoutbomber is to wait patiently for her
>>compadres to come with larger ships, to harrass and threaten the
>>anti-scoutbomber
>Well, it's our backfield.  I hope that if we want the armies I can at
>least get a teamate to come over and help me out.  It's more likely
>that the anti SC bomber will get help quickly as a killed teamate
>rushes to the armies.  The ASCB then crashes on the SCB and the
>teamate picks up.

No, the scout should never let an ASW (anti-scout warfare) player kill
him.  Just dance away... remember the huge advantage that the scout
has: ability to always run away.  The only time you should not be able
to run successfully is when you have expended your fuel on a mission
of importance... (probably bombing)... and even then about the only
ship that can get you is another scout.  (Larger ships often do get
SCs if they close while the SC is busy on its mission.)

So, then the defending team has TWO people sitting near some pop
looking foolish.  Not good.

This all assumes that the ASW player has no kills... if that is the
case, then it can indeed be useful to charge to the planet when you
are reborn to push away the SC so that the carrier can get the armies.
Watch for the SC to ogg in this situation.

>> -- thus sticking him to the planet -- and to
>>use the fact that the enemy isn't being directly useful to 
>>coordinate efforts at the front line, where the scoutbomber's
>>team now often has a numerical advantage.

>Um...run the math by me again.  8 players on each team, each team has
>1 person at the planet.  7 on 7 is a numerical disadvantage?

Well, if the enemy team is not doing ASW, and your team is SC bombing,
then they will have an advantage.  

But beyond that: it is generally a bad thing to be in your own
backfield, because you are least useful to your team there.  (Assuming
the frontline is more or less at the midline, anyway.)

The reason for this is not simple... I think it has to do with the
utility of various missions you can carry out.  Your goal as a player
is to take planets, which almost directly implies the subgoals of
preserving your armies and killing the enemy's; also, in killing
real/possible enemy army transports and preserving your own.  Your
utility as player will thus be determined partly by where you are: the
nearer you are to one of the above missions, either in reality or
potential, the more valuable you are to the team.  Note, however, that
generally the aggressive goals here (bombing and ogging) are more
valuable because they have an endpoint which YOU control, beyond which
you can do other missions.  Even escorting has an endpoint which your
TEAM controls...  But guarding may last indefinitely.

In your own backfield, you can be very close to guarding a planet...
maybe 2 or 3 armies, from enemy bombers.  However, you are thus far
away from being able to ogg OR bomb, and you cannot guard armies on
frontline planets either.  (You are midway close to escorting.)
Contrast this with the mission of the enemy scout bomber: he can bomb,
ogg, AND escort, merely by moving a relatively short distance.  The
only thing he cannot directly do is preserve his own armies.  But he
is fulfilling 3 potential missions at once, whereas you are fulfilling
only 1 potential mission by protecting your armies from him.

-Wreck