From: markiel@callisto.pas.rochester.edu (Andrew Markiel)
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek
Subject: AS: How useful is it?
Date: 14 Dec 92 00:53:11 GMT
Organization: U(r) AstroTheory Group

Well, I see my set-up post solicited a lot of response (as expected),
enough for its own subject line :)

A quick summary seems to be:

an assault ship is great for heavy bombing (of course)
is good for detting (I'd agree)
is good for taking planets in one's own backfield

is rather easy to og,
runs out of fuel rather easily (I'm not so sure this is a huge problem)


I'm surprised that no one has mentioned the thing I don't like about
assault ships, and the reason that I have completely given up on
carrying armies in an assault, unless I'm not planning to go on the
same screen as an enemy. That is, in almost all of the last 50 or so
times I've tried to go for a planet with any sort of defense, I've
been hit by a phaser on the first shot. I've tried going slow, going
fast, tricky spin moves, and I always get zotted. Generally what
happens is a few oggers come in cloaked (I'm cloaked, of course), and
one of them gets through, uncloaks right on top of me, and starts
phasering me down as soon as he uncloaks. There's nothing me or my
escort can do. The assault is just so slow, and it's turn radius so
large, that when cloaked it's trivial to gun down with the phasers.

This is why I think 8 scouts would beat 8 assaults: the scouts see you
pick up, and run over to og. You can't kill all of them: 1 or 2
uncloak right on top of the AS, match speed, and start phasering. So
much for the AS detting capability :) If you shoot at them, the
explosions get you: if you don't, the close range phasers (75 maximum,
if I remember correctly) cut down as assault in 4-5 shots. Splat.
Also, there's no escape: the scout easily matchs any manuver that
an assault can do.

Destroyers are different: the are fast enough, and agile enough, that
you can't predict their position so easily, and you can't sit right
on top of them (they slip away too fast). Thus, I find they are
much more useful for carrying, even if they can't take as much damage,
because they have a much better chance of getting to the planet: it's
very much harder to kill them en route. This means that you get to choose
your battlefield (on top of the planet), instead of the enemy choosing
(anywhere along the trip). Ask Sun Tzu which is better :-)


The reason I opened the discussion is that I suspect that originally
this wasn't considered a problem. I'd bet that when playing on the
hosed machines at Berkeley, phaser locking is rather difficult.
However, with UDP, and at places like CMU where there's 1 user on a
Dec3100, it's not uncommon to see first shot phaser hits more than
50% of the time. In such an environment, the assault just loses,
IMHO, because I think it's far too easy to pin the assault's position
down and just blow it away.

For a while, I've been considering proposing either that the turning
ability of the assault be improved, or that the randomness in cloaker
position be increased. I haven't decided if either is appropriate,
which is better, or what actual values would work.

Comments?

-Grey Elf

P.S. all this IMHO, of course.

P.P.S. Since I'm leaving town on Monday, I'll probably never see your
responses (unless you want to email), which is sort of a bummer since
I won't get to defend my position. Oh well.
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek