From: hill@norman.VI.RI.CMU.EDU (Robert Hill)
Subject: Re: AS: How useful is it?
Reply-To: hill@norman.vi.ri.cmu.edu
Organization: School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon
Date: Mon, 14 Dec 1992 03:11:27 GMT

Andrew Markiel writes
> 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)

AS is good on cloaking.  Its easy to ogg in big ships (BB and CA).  DD's  
have a hard time ogging AS's...scouts have a REALLY hard time ogging them.

LPS break, anyone?

> 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

That's the point.  You don't go for a planet if a defender is there.  I'd  
say you have the best chance in dropping armies in an AS than anything  
else, however, if a defender is there.

> 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.

Its my experience that AS's are very difficult to kill with phasers.  If  
your escort lets a cloaker get on top of you, then he's made a mistake.   
Its not the AS's fault.  AS's are slow and turn poorly, but the have a  
large hull, good bombing, large army capacity and good cloaking.  This is  
needed for balance.

> 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.

I think 8 scouts would probably beat 8 AS's.  The major reason is because  
you can't ogg or dogfight in an AS.  Never try to kill a scout in an AS  
when you are carrying.  Just cloak and det their torps.  Its rare that a  
single one would kill you.

> 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 :-)

Depens on the ogger's ship type.  I'd bet a scout ogger would kill a DD  
taker (in transit) 2 to 3 times as often as he'd kill an AS taker.

> 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.

I'm not so familiar with the early berkeley history, but i'd say that its  
probably due to the fact that NO ONE phaser locked (or almost no one :)  
until the last year or two.  Before that, I only saw 1 or 2 people do it  
regularly.

> 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.

Easier to catch, but takes more damage.  Its a hard call.  It depends the  
MOST on the ship type of your opposition.  If your oponent flies big  
ships, i'd fly small ones.  If your opponent flies small ones, i'd fly big  
ones.

> 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.


You want to reduce phaser locking?  Hmm...I don't like that...:-)  Spoken  
like a true planet taker, elf...:-)

Rob
aka Spaceace!
Newsgroups: rec.games.netrek