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STARFLEET COMMAND 2
Tactics Guide
Version 0.2 (organisational update with a few new sections)
What is the point of this guide? The Starfleet Command 2 manual provides an
excellent tactical overview for each race. However, this overview is
necessarily brief and assumes familiarity with the game. There are a couple of
tactical guides for Starfleet Command 1, but none of them quite do what I'm
trying do. The manual recommends that you make notes of successful/unsuccessful
tactics as you play the game. This guide is, essentially, my notes. However, I
welcome comments/criticisms (no flames, please) on jonlhlea@hotmail.com. You
may also find me on-line under the names of PandaLord or GFL-I-Mediator.
Ideally, I would like to develop this over time into a general tactical manual
for SFC2, to serve as a guide for novice players and a source of ideas for
veterans. If there is sufficient interest (ie mail me), I could set this up as
a web site and include a forum for tactical discussions.
Oh, and I must make it clear that at present this guide only really applies to
the off-line portion of the game. The on-line game is very different as you are
suddenly playing against real human beings with real battle plans and a real
ability to work as a team. They will, during your early games, simply kill you
as they simply killed me. Find a good partner, play 2-on-2 duels and STICK
CLOSE TO YOUR WINGMAN (thanks go to GFL-I-KnightTime)! Further advice may
follow if I get better at playing online.
Index
1. Changelog
2. Introduction
2.1. Mindset
2.2. How it all began: the evolution of Energy Management
2.3. AI: the revolution of Energy Management
3. General
3.1. Winning the Game
3.2. Energy
3.3. Fighters
3.4. Pseudo-Fighters
3.5. Weapons
3.6. Shields
3.7. Electronic Warfare (ECM/ECCM)
3.8. Special Tactics
4. Federation
5. Gorn
6. Hydran
7. ISC
8. Klingon
9. Lyran
10. Mirak
11. Romulan
1. Changelog
Version
0.1 Initial release
0.2 Added numbering
Added initial section on Fusion Beams at 3.5.2
Added initial section on Missiles at 3.5.4
Added to the section on the ISC (7)now that I'm starting to play them
properly
Changes to general advice on Romulans (11)
Expanded section on fighters
Expanded section on Plasma Torpedoes
2. Introduction
2.1 Mindset
The first piece of advice I would give to total novices (ie those who have
played neither SFC1 nor SFB) is this: Starfleet Command 2 is a game of naval
battles. It is not a top-down version of ... well, there are relatively few
decent space combat games these days. Let's say Starlancer, or going back a
little further, Wing Commander Prophecy or X-Wing: Alliance. This is a game of
combat between capital ships, not starfighters. The scale is wholly different.
To give another analogy, think of the battle at Endor. If this were Star Wars,
we would be looking at the combat between the Corellian Frigates and Nebulon-Bs
against Star Destroyers, rather than the X-wing versus Tie-Fighter duels (though
those do play an important part in SFC2, especially for the Hydrans). In fact,
since the game is two-dimensional, think combat between ship groups during World
War II.
This difference carries over into all aspects of gameplay. Although combat is
in theory carried out at ludicrous speeds using high-tech weapons, the game as
played deals with two (or more) ships, slowly jockeying for position, trying to
stay out of range of the worst broadsides while being able to fire their own
guns as often as possible. If you remember this fact, the style of the game
will make far more sense and you will be more successful.
2.2 How it all began: the evolution of energy management
The game is complex. It deals with use of shields, a wide variety of weapon
systems, mines (standard or nuclear), tractor beams, cloaking devices,
electronic warfare, transporters and boarding parties, shuttlecraft, fighters
and PFs. Knowing how to use all of these is important. However, the single
most important aspect of the game is the management of energy. Without energy
you have almost no weapons, you can't reinforce your shields, can't use
transporters or tractors. There is no point manouvering into an ideal position
for an alpha strike if all your energy has been spent on shield reinforcement
and engines and you cannot fire your weapons.
A long, long, time ago, before some of you were born (the 1970s), there was a
board game called Star Fleet Battles. It was designed to represent the kind of
combat that fans saw in the Star Trek (Original Series) TV programme. It had
everything - shields, weapons, the lot. And it had energy. In fact, the game
was all about energy management, to such an extent that the plotting of each
impulse was a complex task requiring you to juggle all the different power
requirements of your ship in order to end up with the correct balance of speed,
shield reinforcement and weapons available for firing. Then, over time,
complexity was added. And the game was played by people all over America and,
later, all over Europe (your humble author is a Brit). Amendments were made to
the game and new 'modules' incorporating better ships, fighters, Pseudo-
fighters, new races and the like were added. The game became very good,
although it did perhaps suffer from an excess of rules and options.
My next statement is controversial, and will doubtless lead to a great many
flames, but I'll take the risk. Eventually, the game waned in popularity.
People stopped buying it, so there were no new players. Then came Starfleet
Command. A bizarre little company by the name of 14 Degrees East decided to do
something radical. They took the board game and made it into a computer game.
Some people cried "Boo!", thinking that translating the game to the computer
would compromise its purity. Others cried "Hurrah", thinking that the computer
would do the maths for them.
2.3 AI: the revolution of Energy Management
What the little company that could, did, was far more radical. Instead of
producing a safe, turn-based game that did the calculations for you and differed
from the board game only in its pretty graphics, they made the whole thing real-
time. This single change had far-reaching consequences. In particular, it was
no longer possible for the player to calculate his energy requirements and
allocation for each turn. This meant that the computer now had to do a large
part of this work, it now had a system of priorities and allocated available
energy to meet the player's requests according to its priorities. This meant
that the player had a very different job to do. He had to plan ahead much more
effectively and only request a reasonable amount of energy.
Instead of sitting down and thinking:
"My engines and warp drive provide a total of 16 points of energy. I shall
charge weapon 'a' (which won't be ready till next turn), charge weapon 'b', move
at speed 'c' and reinforce my front shield by 'd', which will leave 'e' points
of energy free should I need them later in the turn"
He now needed to think:
"OK, there are 16 points of energy available. The computer is going to try to
charge all weapons that are currently on-line, the current turn spped is 30
seconds per turn, I won't have weapon a available for another turn, but weapon b
will be ready soon, the computer always tries to give me the speed I request,
that will cost c energy, if I reinforce my front shield that will cost d energy
and I should have e energy left over."
In other words, he no longer has total control, which makes it far easier to
request more energy than the engines can actually provide. The 2 points of
energy that you have asked the computer to set aside for tractoring incoming
missiles suddenly work very differently, as they may prevent the computer from
allocating the energy you need to charge your disruptors for a final strike or,
alternatively, if you've if you've set your energy priorities differently, they
may simply not be available as the missiles hurtle in towards your already-
weakened aft shield. Both situations are bad and it is therefore vital only to
request the energy that you need. This, along with positioning and timing, is
one of the three great skills required to win at SFC2.
3. General
3.1 Winning the game
There are three primary skills required to win a game of SFC2:
Positioning
Timing
Use of Energy
The only way you can win the game (barring a few specialised scenarios) is by
knocking down the enemy's shield and scoring enough internal damage to destroy
his ship. Ideally, you should suffer no more than the minimum level of damage
while doing this. How is this heroic act achieved? By balancing the three key
elements, positioning, timing and energy
3.1.1 Positioning
You must be in the right position to fire. You must fire against an enemy's
weak shield while only presenting him with your strong shield.
3.1.2 Timing
There is no point being in the right position at the wrong time. If you're not
ready to fire yet, if your shield reinforcement hasn't come on line, if it's
less than a turn since your phasers last fired, your damage potential will be
lessened. Equally, it doesn't matter if your approach vector is perfect if you
fire at range 4.01 rather than 3.99 and so reduce your damage.
3.1.3 Use of energy
In order to time things correctly, you must make sensible use of the available
energy. The weapons you want to fire must have enough energy to charge, there
must be enough energy to achieve the shield reinforcement that will prevent you
from taking serious damage, there must be enough energy to allow you to travel
at the right speed to be in the right place at the right time ... energy is the
key to the triangle and so merits further discussion.
3.2 Energy
It is a given that unless you are commanding a Starbase (a respectable promotion
for a starship captain, but not terribly interesting from the viewpoint of
exploring the universe and getting into scraps), you will never have enough
energy to do everything you want to (see How it All Began, above). You must
always achieve a balance between the different systems which drain your engines.
The most practical advice for a beginning player would be the following: if your
speed is high, it is likely that you are not recharging your weapons at anything
like an optimum rate. In fact, anything requiring more juice than a phaser may
well not be recharging at all.
3.2.1 A little experiment
Try the following. Take the basic Lyran ship (2 phaser-2s, 2 disruptors, 2
phaser-3s and an ESG). Get into a fight, preferably not with something that's
going to destroy you on the first pass. Fire everything at your enemy. Then
set your speed to 25. What is happening to your weapons? The phasers and ESG
are probably recharging very slowly because both use a capacitor system. The
disruptors, on the other hand, are not recharging at all. Occasionally the
'ready' bar will creep up slightly, but it will then probably drop back down
again.
Now set your speed to 10. Watch your disruptors race towards a full recharge
(provided they are on 'normal' rather than 'overload'). In about one turn (30
seconds on the standard time setting), you are ready to fire again.
Repeat the exercise, this time watching the 'energy' panel of the multi-function
display in the top left very carefully. Play around with the priority settings,
see which settings give you optimal performance for your ship. Do you want to
prioritise your engines and ensure that your ship can always do any speed that
you ask of it? Do you want to prioritise your weapons and ensure that they
always recharge as quickly as possible, even if this means that sometimes your
ship's acceleration is a little more sluggish than you'd like? Or is shield
reinforcement top of your wish-list? Whatever your eventual strategy (which
will almost certainly vary from ship to ship), you will want to spend some time
playing around with settings and watching the energy panel to get a feel for the
capabilities of different vessels.
3.3 Fighters
Unfortnately, the manual does not list the different types of fighter and you're
left simply assuming that more expensive = better. If anyone would like to
submit a list of fighter types and armaments I'd be happy to include it. In the
meantime, it's up to you to know the armaments of your fighters, and vary them.
In many cases it will be better to have a couple of groups with close-attack
weapons and one other that can attack from a greater distance. If a group has
taken heavy damage, decide whether to leave it there to fight to the bitter end,
or recall it. Remember that a lot of thetime you won't be in a convenient
position to recall your fighters, but recalling it may well cause it to break
off its attack, so not only will it be destoryed, it also won't be doing
anything useful.
DO NOT launch fighters on attack against ships armed with AMD. The results are
most definitely not pretty and as a proud Hydran captain I have been caught out
by this on a couple of occasions. This is perhaps an object lesson in why you
should always use probes and know what an enemy ship is capable of before it
gets anywhere near you.
DO NOT recall fighters when there is a space mine directly between you and them.
Again, this is not pretty. I've only seen it happen once, but that was enough.
Surprisingly, the Federation has the best variety of fighter types. On the
other hand, the Federation are not the Hydrans and most of their ships are not
carriers...
3.4 Pseudo-fighters
What a wonderful addition to the game. Anyone who has played Starfleet Battles
will have bemoaned their absence from SFC1.
Like fighters, they cost no energy to launch. Better still, they can provide
the energy to recharge their own heavy weapons. Essentially, they are small,
free-standing, armoured, zero-energy-cost cannons using a wide range of
weaponry. However, they are not without their disadvantages, particularly in
the campaign game. Firstly, while they do have shields, these are not
overwhelmingly powerful. They will resist light phaser-fire, but if the enemy
targets anything heavier on them he will quickly break through the shields and
start causing internal damage. A couple of pseudo-fighters may bring down a
small ship on their own, but don't launch them to keep a large ship off your
back for an extended period and expect to get them all back.
Also remember that it takes several seconds after launch for the pseudo-
fighter's shields to come on line. I have, on more than one occasion, seen
enemy ships take advantage of a PF's shield-less status to get in a couple of
sneaky phaser shots. This means that if you are launching the PF's on your
initial approach towards an enemy, it is best to launch them at a distance of 10
or more so that their shields are on-line before the enemy can do any
significant damage.
Let us consider the economics of the situation. The basic pseudo-fighter costs
110 prestige to replace. The loss of a PF+ is even more painful and will cost
you most of the prestige gained during the encounter. Consider setting them to
harass rather than attack, particularly when playing against a human enemy who
will target them the minute you get too far away to pose a threat. Also, do
remember to recall them for repair etc when their shields start to drop or if
the enemy seems to be concentrating a little too much fire on them. When they
are off-screen, watch their damage bars and call them back if anything is
happening that you don't like. If you are feeling particularly protective, you
may even wish to store them as targets in order to be able to obtain a quick
update on their situation.
Remember also that while pseudo-fighters are piloted quite intelligently, they
are guided by the AI and are not privy to your tactical thinking. They will do
their best, but their firepower is not directly under your control and may not
be aimed as you would wish. Ultimately, however, a full complement of pseudo-
fighters does allow you to attack from up to three directions at once and makes
it much harder for the enemy to manoeuvre. Multiple ships armed with pseudo-
fighters limit his opportunities even further.
3.5 Weapons
3.5.1 Expanding Sphere Generator
The manual states that the delay between 'firing' the ESG and its actually
coming on-line is short. This is more or less true, but if circumstances are
appropriate to an offensive use of the ESG you are charging an enemy ship at
speed 28, ready to ram them, do not activate the ESG at a range of 2 and expect
it to be up in time for you to beat down the enemy's front shield. Worse still,
don't fire it up as the Mirak ship launches 6 missiles from range 2 and hope
that it's going to protect you. The activation delay is several seconds long,
about five seconds on the standard game speed, so get a feel for when you should
switch the ESG on. Be aware of the capacitor and range settings on your ESG.
In particular, if you jump to another ship which has previously been controlled
by the computer, be aware that the capacitor level may well be set to zero.
There is nothing more frustrating (or dangerous) than trying to fire up an
apparently-ready ESG only to realise that 'you dinna have the power'.
Also beware the loud bleeping noise that the ESG makes just before coming on-
line. As a rule it won't give your enemy enough warning to get out of the way,
but it's always best not to activate it till he can't avoid it.
3.5.2 Fusion Cannons
These were made to be overloaded. As the Orions are not officially a playable
race, only the Hydran use of Fusions need be considered in depth. When playing
against the Orions, it is simply worth knowing that they have a nasty habit of
firing overloaded fusions on the first pass. As a rule, they then don't have
the energy to recharge them for a very long time.
This weapon is extremely short-ranged. So short-ranged in fact that there is
almost no point in firing them on standard load. The standard load only does
slightly more damage than a Ph-1 at range 0 and falls off quickly even at range
1. was designed to complement use of fighters - release your fighter swarm on
harrass or attack and then swoop in, fire overloaded fusions at point blank
range and watch your fighters pick up the pieces. While they're doing this,
head off and recharge the fusions.
3.5.3 Hellbores
Hellbores are wonderful weapons. They recharge relatively quickly, have a
decent range and inflict damage on all shields while concentrating on the
weakest shield. They also look very pretty as they swirl around an enemy ship
and make for some great combat recordings. Better still, they are DIRECT FIRE
weapons. There's a nasty thought for any cloaked ships ...
What, therefore, is their weakness? Simply this: the high level of damage
inflicted by the hellbore is spread across all shields, so inflicts a relatively
low level of damage to each individual shield. If fired against an undamaged
shield which is even all around, the hellbore will inflict one-sixth of its
total damage on each shield. This is all very well, but does not greatly
contribute towards the normal approach of weakening and destroying one shield
and then scoring internal damage through the breach. Worse still, if the enemy
is using a high level of general shield reinforcement, this may only knock down
the reinforcement and do no harm to the shields themselves.
However, if a shield is weaker than the others, the damage done by the hellbore
will be concentrated on the weakest shield; in fact one-half of the damage will
be done against the weakend shield with the other half being spread amongst the
other shields. If facing an enemy with even shields, the solution to inflicting
valuable damage is therefore obvious. Provided you are not so far away that
your other weapons are simply not going to do any harm, fire one of your other
weapons first. Even if it only does a little damage, that will be enough to
establish a weaker shield and allow the hellbore to be more effective.
It is worth noting that ships with uneven shield distributions (ie klingon
vessels) are treated as having weaker shields, no actual damage needs to be
inflicted. Of course, with the Klingons, all you will be doing is simply
encouraging them to use their standard tactic of never turning their back to you
Once one of the enemy's shields is down, however, the hellbore comes into its
own. It continues to do some damage to all shields but now, no matter which
angle you fire from, some damage is going to go through and hurt the ship. This
is a truly useful ability, particularly when you remember that at range 8 a
hellbore has a 72% chance to hit and does a total of 13 damage, ie 6.5 damage
against the weakest shield.
Is it worth overloading hellbores? Generally, unless you have more energy than
you know what to do with, the answer appears to be no. Although it doesn't
extend the loading time (which, to be honest, at two turns is pretty
reasonable), it does require six points of energy which is pretty damn huge for
any but the largest ships. If you must overload something, overload your fusion
cannons instead. That's what they're there for.
On the other hand, while overloading decreases the range, it doesn't decrease
the chance to hit. If you've got the spare energy and intend to fire at close
range (for example, to help your fighters as they swarm an ISC ship), it does
pack an extra punch Equally, it may be worthwhile on your first pass against an
incoming enemy ship. If you intend to close to less than range 8 and fire, and
have the energy available, you may as well overload your hellbore and do a
little extra damage with the first shot.
To sum up, you won't often see a hellbore shot taking down an enemy ship (or at
least, I don't see that too often and I enjoy playing the Hydrans)*, but it will
help chip away at their shields.
* I do have a couple of very pretty screenshot selections where it has happened,
though. If only SFC2 offered the opportunity to save little animation sequences
linked to a particular ship ... hellbore stirikes, its deadly coils race around
the badly-weakened enemy ship to find its weakness, impact against the
unprotected hull and the ship shudders once before tearing itself apart. I
could watch it again and again ...
3.5.4 Missiles
Missiles, like plasma torpedoes, are a complex weapon to use and can be
frustrating for the novice when compared to the obvious effectiveness of the
direct-fire weapons. You cannot choose how a missile approaches its target and
you cannot choose which shield it will impact.
Ships have lots of options for getting rid of missiles - mines, phasers set to
point defence, tractor beams, speed (see below), wild weasels and fighters or
PFs set to defend. However, the reason for the wide number of possible defences
is that missiles are actually a very dangerous little weapon. One missile is
rarely a problem, but four can start to pose serious difficulties - the enemy
won't have enough tractor beams to catch them all and may not want to fire
enough phasers to shoot them all down. So he will have to use one of his
limited-charge options (ie wild weasel or space mine). The idea with missiles,
unless you're firing at point-blank range, is usually to have more missiles in
the air than the enemy can properly keep track of, let alone deal with.
Having said that, the first thing you should do at the beginning of each
scenario is set all of you missile launchers to single-fire. Putting out 6 or
more missiles with each shot is very pretty and may make a novice adversary
flinch, but if he keeps his wits about him it is unlikely that he will take too
much damage (unless, of course, you are very close to him, in whch case it may
constitute a rather fun surprise.) You can fire, for example, 6 missiles in
rapid succession rather than firing six at once - this will increase your
chances of doing damage.
Essentially, if you want to behave like a scatterpack, use a scatterpack.
One of the biggest problems for missile-armed players is that slow missiles
travel at speed 16, even Medium missiles only travel at speed 24. This means
that it is very hard to hurt a phaser-armed ship which is travelling at high
speed. If you're playing during the late period, you'll get fast (speed 32)
drones and this does help a great deal. If you're playing during the earlier
periods, enemy ships are likely to have greater energy-management problems and
if they're putting everything into speed to outrun your missiles, chances are
that they're not arming their heavy weapons.
3.5.5 Phasers
The manual states that you should not neglect phasers. This is not sufficiently
strong. What it should say is that YOU SHOULD NOT NEGLECT PHASERS!
Unfortunately, phasers (with the exception of the Hydran phaser-g, which is
moderately interesting, and the phaser 4 which is just nasty) are the plain
vanilla-flavoured standard weapon of SFC2. This often leads people to under-
rate them and use them as secondary weapons. This is a huge mistake. Phasers
are amongst the most versatile weapons in your arsenal, have one of the fastest
recharge times and use very little energy. They may not be the most powerful
arms available to you, but they should not be seen simply as a weapon of last
resort, or as something that you fire while waiting for your real damage-
inflicters to recharge. However, if you want to do any real damage, their range
is quite limited. Ranges 0-2 are ideal for phaser-3s and 1-4 for phaser-1s.
A ship armed solely with a large number of phaser-1s (and a decent energy
source) would be limited in its tactical applications, but would be very
dangerous at close-medium range. One of the early ISC ships (which?) is in fact
solely armed with phasers. Its shields are unfortunately not too good, but it
is otherwise a surprisingly dangerous ship for its class. Equally the smaller
Hydran ships, even those without fighters, can take down a shield with their
phaser-Gs.
Phasers have two great advantages - low recharge time (only disruptors can match
them) and low energy cost. Many people distinguish between phasers and heavy
weapons; this is flawed thinking and could lead to problems, it suggests that
'heavy' weapons will do more damage than phasers in most circumstances. It
would be more accurate to think of phasers and 'special' weapons, capable of
doing increased damage in certain situations.
3.5.6 Photon Torpedoes
When you play the Federation for the first time, you will find yourself asking
how on earth the UFP ever survived so long while using these as their primary
special weapons. They don't always hit, they take two turns to fire and they
'only' do 8 points of damage. What's the point?
As is so often the case with the Federation, the point is versatility. Ordinary
photon torpedoes are (percentage) accurate up to a range of (check range). If
the enemy is too far away (and you don't want to get any closer), you can set
the torpedoes to proximity fuses. If it's a knife fight and you can spare the
energy (unlikely, but you never know), you can overload the torpedoes and
surprise your opponent with a quick 16-point shield-breaker. In fact, it will
often be worthwhile, in close-range combat, taking other weapons off-line to
achieve overloaded photons as they are likely to simply remove an enemy shield
and leave you with some excellent firing opportunities.
There's also the fact that a photon torpedo does constant damage. As long as it
hits, range has no effect, a proximity torpedo does the same damage at range 30
as at range 10. It may not be the biggest damage-causer in the game, but it's
more than most weapons at that range.
Remember that photon torpedoes are extremely sensitive to electronic warfare and
always check the electronic warfare MFD before firing if at all possible. Many
players complaining about the reliability of their photons don't realise that 1
unopposed point of ECM is enough to seriously restrict their chances to hit.
3.5.7 Plasma Torpedoes
When you first look at them, plasma torpedoes are lovely weapons. Against
relatively stupid AI players and novice human players, they are devastatingly
effective. Large amounts of seeking damage home in on your enemy and often take
down a shield with one hit.
But they are subject to the same problems as missiles and also suffer from two
additional problems of their own. You cannot often choose which shield you will
impact against and wild weasels are staggeringly effective and highly annoying
(see Missiles, above). In addition, plasma torpedoes degrade with distance,
doing progressively less damage. This means that plasma torpedoes are of
limited effectiveness against a fast enemy (unless he is heading straight
towards you and turns like a Gorn). Finally, ECM does not reduce the torpedo's
chance of hitting but instead reduces the damage of your torpedo. Fortunately,
torpedoes automatically have 3 points of built-in ECCM and will also take
advantage of any ECCM generated by your ship.
Always make use of your pseudo-plasma torpedoes, but never in a repetitive
manner. If your enemy knows that you always fire a fake torpedo and then a real
one, he will have no hesitation in ignoring the first torpedo and shooting down
the second. Of course, if you follow this pattern twice and then reverse it,
firing the real torpedo first, you may well catch him out. Psuedo-plasmas rely
heavily on having a psychological advantage over your opponent. This is
particularly true on-line but also seems to work against the computer.
Never fire a plasma torpedo against someone heading away from you at high speed.
The reason should be obvious.
Small Ships
If you are fighting a ship of equal size and your enemy has not spent all of his
energy on shield reinforcement, it is likely that your single torpedo, fired at
close range, will take down one of his shields and perhaps even do a little
damage beyond that. Your next step will of course depend on what race you are
playing, but your aim should be to cause as much damage as possible through the
breach you have just created. If you have other weapons that you can
conveniently fire, so much the better. However, there are a number of other
manoeuvres that you may wish to use.
You have just punched a hole in your enemy's defences, right at the start of the
game, and you're still at close range. If you are in your enemy's forward arc,
it is probable that your forward shield has also taken some damage. You will
not be able to use plasma again for a while and you may have already fired your
other weapons or wish to keep them in reserve (particularly if your opponent
also has seeking weapons). How do you hurt your enemy further? With secondary
systems, namely transporters and mines.
A mine could do serious damage to a small ship without its shield. If you are
prepared to drop a shield you could teleport one into your enemy's path
Otherwise, you can drop a mine from your bay, remembering that you need to be at
a range of 2 before it will activate.
Equally, does your enemy have a weapon that is likely to cause you difficulty
(eg a single heavy weapon)? If so, given that he has probably already fired and
cannot hurt your further, now is most likely an ideal time to beam a few marines
aboard his ship and take the system out. With it being a hit-and-run raid, you
might even get at least some of the marines back. It must be remembered,
though, that unlike in SFC1, marines on board a ship now automatically act as
guards, so this is less likely to be successful than it was in the first game.
Whatever the size of your ship, remember that a plasma torpedo is not like a
missile or a photon torpedo; the damage of a plasma torpedo degrades with
distance travelled. Firing at ships which are far away or travelling in the
wrong direction is therefore likely to be a bad idea, as if the torpedo catches
them at all it will do much less damage.
3.6 Shields
Set up a skirmish game. Give yourself the biggest, most powerful ship you can
find. Set the enemy up with the weakest and most pathetic frigate available (or
the ship that his race starts the campaign game with, for amusement value).
Charge all of your weapons, fly close to the small ship (ignoring its fire) and
alpha strike it. Its shield will go down and it will die. It will not have
succeeded in damaging you.
This is the only time at which you can show such blatant disregard for shields.
In any kind of real fight, you must always pay attention to relative facings.
3.6.1 Your shields
You must never present a weakened shield to the enemy unless the damage you can
inflict on him in so doing outweighs by far the damage he can do to you. Even
then you should always try to reinforce the shield in question if at all
possible.
Remember to click on the reinforce button when reinforcing shields, otherwise
you have not actually done anything.
If one of your side shields has been weakened, always turn in that direction
relative to the other player, eg if your front left shield has been weakened
then always turn left relative to the other ship as this will present him with
your undamaged right side.
3.6.2 Their shields
Never fire without having an eye on the diagram showing the targeted enemy ship
on the bottom left of the screen. It is a much clearer indication than the main
screen. If there is a weaker shield, you should always try to fire when you are
lined up with this.
To be continued
3.7 Electronic Warfare (ECM/ECCM)
Again, a lot of novice players simply ignore EW. There is a lot to concentrate
on in SFC2 and this particular area tends to slide. When you consider, however,
the effect that a few points of ECM can have on the chance to hit or the damage
done by heavy weapons, it becomes obvious that EW is a vital consideration.
There is no point husbanding the energy to fire your photon torpedoes if the
enemy has 4 points of electronic warfare in play and they are horribly unlikely
to hit.
This is a complex subject and will be developed in a later version of this FAQ
when I have the figures to hand. For now, it is worth bearing in mind that
ECM/ECCM come low down on the list of 'power priorites' for a starship, so it is
almost certainly always worth sticking points into them at the start of each
game. Much of the time, you won't have the spare energy for them to be
activated, but they will not harm you by drawing power from more immediately
vital systems. Them when you do have the energy, they will be ready.
3.8 Special Tactics
3.8.1 Dealing with cloaked ships
The flash-cube
Cloaked ships are a real pain. You can't target seeking weapons on them, your
direct-fire weapons suffer a large penalty unless you're prepared to spend a
silly amount of energy on ECCM and while your enemy is cloaked he's recharging
his shields and weapons. Worse still, the only ships that can cloak are Klingon
and Romulan. Both of these races produce fast, manoeuverable vessels which are
capable of decloaking behind you, firing all weapons and recloaking again.
How do you deal with this problem? Well, you keep your weapons charged and make
sure that cloaked ships spend all of their time in your main firing arc. Then,
when they decloak, you hit them with everything while they're vulnerable. This
is much harder, however, when you're facing multiple ships.
Wouldn't it be helpful if you could force a cloaked ship to decloak at your
convenience? Fortunately, you can. A cloaked ship caught in the radius of an
exploding spacemine will become visible and, more importantly, target-able for a
short space of time. This is known as the flash-cube effect. You can then fire
your seeking/heavy weapons and do lots of damage. Your enemy will recloak
again, of course, but at least he will be hurt. Once your weapons are ready to
fire again, if he still refuses to decloak, repeat the process. Of course, it
is important not to get so caught up in waiting for an opportunity to flash-cube
that you fail to notice him decloaking off your front starboard shield, weapons
primed.
Rather than firing, you could take the opportunity provided by the flash-cube to
tractor the enemy ship, as a tractored ship cannot (re-) cloak. This is all
very well, but don't do it to a Romulan ship with twin plasma torpedoes ready
for firing. The author has, and it's not pretty. I still won, but it was a lot
more difficult after losing all of the weapons on the left side of the ship.
Thank god for pseudo-fighters.
When using this technique against a single ship, it is worth remembering that
cloaked ships cannot fire and that it is therefore not dangerous to drop one of
your shields in order to beam out a mine.
4. Federation
4.1 General tactics
4.1.1 The problem
The Federation are the basic race in SFC2, the standard by which the others are
judged. As such, they are good all-rounders. They have better staying power
than the Mirak (though who doesn't), turn faster than the Gorn (!), have better
shields than the Romulans and Klingons ... they really are the middle of the
road. This does not mean that a Federation battleship is not something to be
feared, simply that a Federation captain has to be much more careful about his
use of weapons. The combat that we see so often in the TV series, where
Federation ships destroy their opponents with one or two phaser shots and a
volley of photon torpedoes, is somewhat misleading if you're using anything less
than a constitution-class.
To give an example, let us consider a simply battle against an Orion pirate ship
armed with a single bank of phaser-1s and a missile launcher. Now let us
imagine that a small Gorn vessel has been dispatched to deal with this menace to
civilisation. The Gorn vessel will have at least a plasma-f, he can therefore
adopt very simple tactics. He reinforces his front shield and flies straight
towards the other ship, giving his plasma torpedo time to charge, then fires
everything he has at the enemy's front shield. The enemy loses his front
shield, takes some internal damage, the Gorn player sails over him, doubtless
having nearly lost his facing shield, carries on a bit, turns and comes back,
firing his phasers. As his manoevraibility is low, he may attack the enemy's
rear shield or he may try to get round to the front again using, for example, an
HET.
The federation player probably has a couple of photon torpedo tubes and a
mixture of phaser-1s and phaser-2s. This means that he lacks the 20-point punch
of the Gorn's heavy weapon. Worse still, his torpedoes are not guaranteed to
hit. Assuming that he goes for a frontal assault, he may well not break down
the enemy's shield. On the positive side, his torpedoes recharge more quickly
than the Gorn's plasma. He is going to have to move much faster than the Gorn
ship and snipe. He can head round to the rear of the enemy ship and fire all of
his weapons at close range, knowing that if he's not using too much energy
elsewhere he will soon have another shot. As long as he is patient and
reinforces his facing shield, he will wear the enemy down and start scoring
internals.
Ultimately, the Federation aren't the most exciting of races to play. They have
no cool weapons/devices and lack the stopping power of most of the other races.
However, they have extremely efficient ships. They have a reasonable amount of
energy, can as a rule fire all of their weapons fairly frequently. They have
decent shields, can bring damaged shields back up quite quickly (they often have
four or more labs, which allows them to regenerate damaged shields at 2 points
per turn rather than 1), and have perfectly good turn rates. They have no
particular weaknesses but, equally, no great strengths.
4.1.2 The solution
Versatility.
Versatility.
Versatility.
The Federation player must always adapt his tactics to the situation. While a
number of the other races are limited in their tactical options by the very
nature of their ships, the Federation player is extremely flexible. No matter
which opponent you are facing, you will always be better than him at something.
The other races tend to have a particular strength that they must always play to
- speed for the Klingons, missile barrages for the Mirak, fighters for the
Hydrans and so on. The Federation does things differently; they are reasonably
competent at everything. This means that no matter what enemy you face, either
your weapons will recharge faster, or your shields will be better, or your ship
will be more manouverable. The Federation player, perhaps more than any other,
must know his enemy and play to his relative strengths. You are not going to
outmanoever a Klingon, but you have better shields and longer-range special
weapons. You are not going to outblast a Gorn at close range, but you are much
more manoeuvrable, so he need never get to close range.
4.2 Small ships
The comments above on the middle-of-the-roadness of Federation vessels generally
applies particularly strongly to small Federation ships - they definitely lack
punch. Most of them are without missiles or plasma launchers and must rely on
at most a couple of photon torpedo tubes and a number of phaser-1s backed up by
phaser-3s. This means that your initial campaign battles will be particularly
hard as even an Orion can give you a run for your money. He can't beat you, but
he may well seriously damage a couple of shields.
You cannot, in most cases, simply stand and fight. Your shields will go down
and then you will die. You need to take advantage of your relative strengths:
If fighting a slow enemy, manoeuvre around (and away from!) them. Head off to
recharge, avoid dangerous firing arcs, run away from plasma torpedoes (using HET
or Wild Weasels if necessary - a single hit could do you a lot of damage so
don't be shy about using resources) and snipe at them. If you are familiar with
their firing arcs, you could perhaps try to take down the shields covering their
heavy weapon firing arcs first, so that in order to launch anything nasty at you
they have to leave themselves open to serious damage. If you don't want to get
too close, remember that photons can be set to proximity and that doing a little
less damage per hit doesn't matter if it means not losing one of your own
shields to a single shot.
If fighting a fast enemy, take advantage of his weaker shields. Try to keep
your distance if at all possible, and don't give him the opportunity to get
repeated shots against your weaker shields. Only close with him when you're
charged and ready to do damage, but be careful not to make suicide runs against
his heaviest armament. Equally, don't fire your photon torpedoes from too far
away - you want to be almost guaranteed a hit. Ifyou can overload your photons
for the first pass of the combat and lose him a shield, so much the better.
In both cases, remember that energy management is vital. Most of your weapons
don't take too much energy, so there's no excuse for not making use of
electronic warfare or shield reinforcement. If fighting a missile race, always
have at least one tractor beam set to catch incoming missiles, and keep your
phaser-3s to shoot them down if at all possible. Similarly, if fighting the
Hydrans, keep your phaser-3s (or your phaser-1s, but not both) in reserve to
take out his fighters.
Also remember that your photon torpedoes are, as mentioned above, versatile. If
you're far enough away from your enemy, they should probably be set to overload
for the first pass in order to do extra damage. If you're enemy stays at a
distance, consider setting them to proximity fuses.
5. Gorn
5.1 General tactics
5.1.1 Turn speed
Your turn speed really is not good. Gorn ships are cumbersome. You need to
bear this in mind. Romulan and Klingon craft can fly circles around you, and
pretty much everyone else is more manoeuvrable than you are. This makes it
particularly difficult to use your most terrifying weapon (multiple plasma
launchers) as these frequently have a narrow arc of fire. How do you deal with
this? See "Use of Phasers" below and "Fighters/PFs" above.
5.1.2 Use of phasers
Gorn plasma torpedoes are wonderful. However, they are of course subject to
serious limitations, primarily their long recharge time and their damage which
degrades over distance. The Gorns, unlike the Romulans, have no other heavy
weapons. They are also without gimmicks (cloaking device, ESG etc). However,
most Gorn ships have mutliple banks of phasers with excellent firing arcs. As
mentioned under the "General-Weapons-Phasers", phasers are a much-maligned
weapon in SFC2, but the Gorn player, like the Federation player, will find
himself relying on them heavily. Your phasers have, for the most part, an
excellent angle of fire which will help to compensate for your terrible turning
speed. Your phasers can be used in a much wider variety of circumstances than
your torpedoes. A few suggestions are listed below:
To take shots at a longer distance than your plasma-Fs.
If you fire a torpedo hoping to hit a weakened/downed shield, but the opposing
ship turns before impact to present a new shield, you can fire your phasers
immediately to maximise the damage
You can use your phasers to protect your flanks/rear.
As followup to your plasmas. Your plasmas will frequently knock down a shield,
but will then require a long recharge time. In the meanwhile, you can get
several shots through the breach with your phasers and hopefully score some
internal damage.
5.1.3 Anti-Wild Weasel
As with the Miraks, the Gorns are a seeking-weapon-heavy race. Unlike the
Mirak, the Gorns do not need to spend all of their prestige points buying new
seeking weapons between each encounter. Because the Gorn rely so heavily on
their plasma torpedoes, you must pay close attention to the enemy's use of wild
weasel shuttles. It is often tempting to fire off all of your torpedoes at once
as the result is usually one downed shield plus internal damage. However, if
the enemy is far enough away to stop and launch a wild weasel, your torpedoes
will instead be wasted against this and you will be left with only your phasers.
Not only is this embarassing, you will also be forced to head off and recharge.
If, instead, you fire a single torpedo at a time, this will suffice to destroy
the shuttle, and your enemy will be left moving very slowly, an easy target for
your other torpedoes ...
Equally, remember your pseudo-plasmas. A full salvo of pseudo-plasmas may seem
wasteful, but if that doesn't encourage your opponent to drop a wild weasel,
nothing will. You then have the choice of firing a single torpedo to destroy
the wild weasel while your opponent is stationary or waiting for him to
accelerate beyond a speed of 4/move beyond a range of 30 and lose the protection
of the weasel. Either way, he has used up a valuable resource and you haven't
wasted your firepower.
5.2 Small Ship
It is probable that at the lower BPVs your ship has a single plasma torpedo and
a few banks of phaser 2s/phaser 3s. It is therefore obvious that most of your
firepower is concentrated into that single plasma launcher (see "Plasma
torpedoes - small ships"). It is important, however, that you should not
neglect your phasers. You are likely to have a number of phaser banks with wide
firing arcs. You should group these separately to give yourself as much
flexibility as possible.
5.3 Mid-range
Assuming that your ship relies on the standard Gorn construction model, ie
forward-firing plasma torpedoes backed up by a large number of wide-arc phaser
banks, the most effective tactic against an enemy of equivalent size is to sail
in close, fire all the plasma torpedoes you've got, fire half your banks of
phasers (keeping two wide-angle mounts in case of missiles) and either bank and
turn or sail right on over him depending on how much damage you take on the
approach. Structurally, the Gorn ships are very tough, and they tend to have
good forward shields, all of which makes this particular tactic far more
survivable than it would be for, say, the Romulans. It is certainly,
nonetheless, worth reinforcing your front and rear shields before this kind of
pass. You then go far enough away to mostly recharge and finally turn and head
back in. Repeat until enemy dies.
Of course, if you're being swarmed by multiple smaller ships it's less
effective. However, unlike certain other races, the Gorns can afford - if they
have enough plasma banks- to attack a number of smaller ships at the same time
rather than concentrating on one until it dies. When faced with a swarm of
small ships (but not fighters), you have three options.
You could slightly modify the standard technique of taking on one ship at a
time. Target a full plasma battery against each ship in turn. This should
cause significant damage and give you some breathing room. You can follow up
with phasers if an opportunity presents itself, but you may well prefer to keep
them to deal with the other ships. That way, while you are recharging, you
still have phasers shots in case another ship gets too bold.
Equally, you could split up your plasma batteries and fire off individual
torpedoes at ships that get too close. This should encourage them to back off.
Once you've breached their shields, follow up with phasers. The advantage of
this method is that one or more plasma banks can be recharging while you wait to
fire the others.
Weaken their shields with close-range phaser fire. Only use plasma at close
range against weakened shields. This should mean that you are never without
charged weapons for very long. Your shields are sufficiently strong, and your
weapons sufficiently frightening, that the other ships should not be able to
swarm you.
5.4 Cloaked ships and the Gorn
Cloaked ships are a pain at the best of times, and even more so for the Gorn.
Your only heavy weapon is a seeking weapon and so, of course, cannot lock onto a
cloaked ship. Given that your ship probably has a large number of phasers,
patient use of these at very close range should eventually wear down one of your
enemy's shields and allow you to score internal damage. Standard anti-cloaked-
ship tactics also apply (tractors, preventative hit-run raids - see the section
"Dealing with cloaked ships").
However, when your plasma batteries are fully charged and the Romulan/Klingon
refuses to decloak and allow you to wipe that sneaky grin off his face, you are
likely to want to use the Flash-cube trick. As explained under "Dealing with
cloaked ships", this consists of placing a mine in the path of a cloaked ship.
When the ship triggers the mine, not only will it take damage, it will also
become visible for a short time, enabling you to get a lock-on.
This presents a particular problem for Gorn ships due to their very slow turn
ratio. Your plasma batteries mostly only fire forward and your turn speed is
dreadful. This simply means that you must plan ahead and only use the flash-
cube when you are already facing towards the enemy ship.
6. Hydran
6.1 General
The Hydran player often faces one significant psychological problem. He doesn't
want to send his fighters out into the cold hard universe in case they get blown
up. This is an odd attitude; if a Mirak refused to use his missiles everyone
would agree that he was wasting one of his most powerful weapons. Fighters ARE
disposable.
This doesn't mean that you should throw your fighters away, but if you're not
using them, you are wasting a large part of your offensive and defensive
capacity. Fighters serve a dual purpose, they can both attack the enemy and
protect their mothership. It is important to treat fighters as a resource which
is expended then bought back with prestige, rather than as something to be
hoarded. Send 'em out, watch 'em blow up and then replace 'em. Otherwise
you're just reducing your fighting power. Admittedly, this means that you will
spend a little more on maintenance than most other races, but at least you'll be
alive to repair and re-arm. In fact, provided that you use your fighters
judiciously, other ships should do you much less harm and as a result you will
spend less on repairs to your own ship.
7. ISC
7.1 General
At the lower end of the BPV range, most ISC ships do not come equipped with PPDs
but instead rely on plasma torpedoes as their heavy weapons. This is
unfortunate when starting a campaign as may of these torpedoes only fire to the
rear (see below).
ISC ships also tend to have fairly heavy shields for their size.
7.2 Weapons
7.2.1 Plasma Torpedoes
The manual explains that the ISC's rear-firing torpedoes were introduced as an
anti-fighter measure. This is understandable to a certain extent, given the
ISC's general lack of rear-firing weapons, but there are plenty of ships of
other races who simply have to improvise and turn to bring other weapons to
bear. In addition, the plasma-fs that most ISC ships appear to be fitted with
are of relatively little use against large groups of fighters as they cannot
shotgun.
This must be seen as a strength rather than a weakness - most races have no
rear-firing heavy weapons. There are two ways to use these banks. Either:
You can weaken two banks of shields rather than one. Fly over your enemy, fire
phasers at his front facing shields and then, once past him, fire your plasma at
his rear facing shields. There are now two sides that he will be reluctant to
turn to you, this seriously hampers his mobility.
Or:
Fire your phasers at the front facing shield. Take any necessary shots to your
reinforced front shield. Then high-energy turn and fire your plasma at
(hopefully) the same facing shield. Any further shots the enemy takes will be
made against a fresh shield. Obviously, due to the limitations of high-energy
turns this cannot be used too often, but it can be highly effective.
However, after the first pass, a small-medium ship will often find that it does
not have enough energy to charge all of its plasma banks as often as it would
like. In this case, it may be better to take the rear banks off-line (unless
you're primarily running away from your opponent, in which case they continue to
be very useful and you should instead disable other systems). Remember, plasma
takes energy to charge and hold, and this energy may well be more valuable
elsewhere if you aren't going to get the opportunity to fully charge and fire.
7.2.2 PPDs
These are lovely weapons, especially if all 4 pulses hit. However, they do take
an age to charge, even on mid-range ships of 160-200 BPVs, simply because the
energy balance of ISC ships strongly suggests that you will rarely have enough
energy to charge them. It is more common to see an ISC ship whittle his enemy
down with repeated ph-1 fire interspersed with a very occasional PPD shot than
to see him regularly firing this particular heavy weapon.
Range, as with so many weapons, is vital. PPDs change their firing
characteristics at various ranges. I seem to recall that they cannot fire at
range 3, so this is most definitely a range to avoid. Unfortunately I'm writing
this at work and cannot check this, so confirmation will be given in version 0.3
:-)
7.3 Fighters
Don't forget that ISC ships come with fighters. ISC carriers are available from
about 130 BPV upwards and, although they lack the specialised fighter-support
weapons available to the Hydrans, ie Fusion Beams and Hellbores, they're pretty
darned effective with plasma torpedoes (note to self - check whether any ISC
carriers also have PPDs. This would be a fun combination).
7.4 Small ships
The combination of good shields, decent turning and plasma launchers means that
low-BPV ISC ships are comparatively powerful, but they do not recharge quickly.
Staying out of range while recharging (or "running away") is going to be
important. Fortunately, since your only plasma launchers are likely to be rear-
firing, this is not a problem. Use pseudos to keep your enemy guessing, or fire
only one torpedo at a time, keeping the other in reserve. If you can weaken
your enemy's front shield with your phasers on your initial pass and leave him
thinking that you have at least one torpedo left, he is unlikely to wish to
follow you. This gives you a lot of room to manoeuvre and you can either
continue with phasers or wait and pick your moment to turn around and launch the
remaining torpedo.
8. Klingon
8.1 General
Turn Speed
Klingons have, on average, the best turn speeds in the game.
8.2 Shields
Oh dear. The Klingons do not believe in defence. Worse still, they believe
that you can only be shot in the back while running away. It is clear that the
writers of Klingon military doctrine have never been in anything other than a
one-to-one duel. Out in space, on convoy patrol or while trying to defend a
shipyard, even if the numbers of ships are even on both sides, it is all too
common to find yourself facing off against two or even three enemies at a given
moment. Or a ship breaking off from a dogfight with one of your companions may
find itself with an opportune shot against one of your weak rear shields.
If there is a solution to this, it is simply to keep your distance. Be aware of
as many of the enemy ships as possible and try to avoid having your back to
them. Failing that, reinforce your rear shields and to hell with the High
Command. Just make sure to keep enough energy to fire your disruptors.
8.3 Weapons
8.3.1 Disruptors
These are the fastest-firing special weapons in the game. Their effective range
is extremely limited, but they can get off shot after shot and are perfect for
the highly-manouverable Klingon ships. Dart in, fire, dart out, recharge
quickly, repeat. You are fast enough that you should be able to launch your
disruptors frequently against the shield of your choice.
9. Lyran
9.1 General
These can be a hard race to play for a beginner, particulary with the less
powerful ships. The ESG is impressive and has the largest area of effect of any
weapon in the game, but can be very hard to use. A lot of novice players fire
up their sphere generator, hoping to charge another ship and crush his shield,
but instead wander through space without touching anything as their enemy
accelerates to speed 31. And without the ESG, what weapons does the Lyran have?
Disruptors and phaser-2s, like a watered-down Klingon. Lots of phaser-2s,
admittedly, but the lack of horrible megadeath weaponry can put the Lyran player
at a psychological disadvantage
9.2 Weapons
9.2.1 ESG
The ESG is not (just) a battering ram. If you are playing against a Gorn, or a
Romulan, or a Mirak, or a Klingon, or any vessel of any race that uses any
number of seeking weapons, you are going to want this as an additional shield.
Historically, the ESG was developed to counteract traditional Mirak tactics, ie
the use of an overwheliming number of missiles. This holds good against any and
all seeking weapons - the ESG is your best friend.
When playing as a fleet, remember that the ESG is an area-effect weapon.
Anything trying to pass through it must first interact with it. In the case of
Hellbores this is likely to be bad news, but with regards to other weapons, it
means that the ESG can also be used to protect other ships. If one of your
companion ships is being pursued by a missile/plasma torpedo/fighter/PF, you may
well be able to interpose the ESG and deal with the threat. You won't always
want to do this, but it has saved the author's fleet from serious harm on
several occasions.
One other weakness of the ESG is that it is often poorly-protected. Lose a
shield and you will often lose the ESG. Without, unless you've got PFs, you're
left with ph-2s and Disruptors as mentioned just above. This is not necessarily
a losing combination but can be hard to use effectively given the lack of ph-
1s..
9.3 Pseudo-fighters
The Lyrans were the first race to develop pseudo-fighters. Better still, they
are also the inventors of the mechanical link, a system which allows relatively
small ships to transport the relatively large pseudo-fighters. These mean that
a low-BPV vessel (name) costing only (?) prestige at the shipyard comes equipped
with 2 basic pseudo-fighters which can be upgraded to pretty damn lethal killing
machines. Remember, however, that those 2 fighters represent a significant
proportion of the ship's damage-capacity. Once they are gone, you are suddenly
flying a slightly underpowered, underarmed smallish ship.
When fighting the Mirak, also remember that a pseudo-fighter set to defence may
well shoot down an incoming missile or two. Given the Mirak's propensity to
have at least 6 missiles in the air at any one time, this could well be a good
thing. If you're feeling truly paranoid, 2 PFs set to defence, plus a fully-
charge 0-range ESG, should deal with most missile salvos, leaving your
convential weaponry free to shoot large holes in the filthy feline's shields.
This means that the Lyrans, unlike a great many other races, can actually wait
for the Mirak to run out of missiles.
10. Mirak
10.1 General
The Mirak are a lovely race to play. They do take a lot of getting used to as
you have to learn how to use missiles as your primary weapon (though a number of
their ships are also armed with good secondary weapon systems), but the
investment of time is well worthwhile.
Apart from their other advantages, Miraks almost always have enough energy to
keep those weapons which do require energy charged, since their primary weapons
need none. It's good to know that your disruptors and phasers will always be
ready (or that you'll have those extra points you need to reinforce your front
shield. Take your pick).
10.2 Weapons
10.2.1 Missiles
Much of this section will be repetition of what was said under the section on
weapons-missiles, but it is worth repeating for the Mirak.
Even more so than the other missile-using races, you must learn not to waste
missiles. Once they're gone, you've lost one of your primary weapons. Most
important of all, you must learn to fire single missiles at regular intervals
rather than firing all six at once. As was said above, the first thing you
should do at the beginning of each scenario is set all of you missile launchers
to single-fire. There simply is no point firing a group of missiles all at
once. You can fire just as many missiles at short intervals and greatly
increase your chance of actually hurting something.
The speed of your missiles is probably a more important consideration than the
damage that they do - there's no point having a high-impact warhead if it never
hits the target. Missiles can travel a surprisingly long way (if you don't
believe me, fire a salvo of missiles at range 30 ... provided that your target
isn't heading directly away from you at speed 31, they'll get to him.) but
slower missiles will go less far before they use up their fuel. They will also
turn less well and may, in many cases, simply not catch up with their target.
This is not to say that slow missiles don't have their uses. A number of
missiles following a player round will make him decidedly nervous and affect his
concentration. It is likely that sooner or later, one of them will catch up
with him. If the range is not too long, they may well overwhelm his defences as
all of his phasers fire and all of his tractor beams are used, leaving you with
a clear field of fire for that one extra shot. They may still force a computer-
controlled player to use one of his wild weasels.
Fast missiles are expensive, but it's almost always worth upgrading at least to
medium speed. It's better to have one reload of missiles that will hit than two
reloads of missiles that won't.
10.3 Fighting the Lyrans
A difficult proposition, but far from impossible. The problem when fighting the
Lyrans is posed by their PFs and their ESGs. It is probably better to deal with
the PFs first.
11. Romulan
11.1 General
There are two views on how the Romulans should be played. While I tend to the
former view, I will list both:
1. If SFC2 is a game of naval battles, the Romulans are a fleet of submarines.
Your ships and shields are weaker, their damage potential is less constant, you
are forced to rely heavily on your plasma torpedoes and these are very slow to
recharge given your less-than-optimal energy configuration. So be patient.
Fire. Cloak. Wait. Decloak. Fire. Cloak. Wait ... the procedure is simple.
Unless you are desparately short of energy there is no reason to be decloaked
unless you are about to fire/ have just fired.
2. The cloak is a waste of time in a fight. It may be a great plot device for
the television series, but it should not be used in ship-to-ship encounters.
Charging weapons while cloaked limits you to a maximum speed of 12 and given
that speed is vital to survival in SFC2, this is simply not acceptable. Don't
cloak, run.
11.2 Small ships
Your cloak should provide you with a huge advantage against enemy ships of
equivalent size. You have plasma torpedoes, so simply hide until you are ready
to fire them. Then glide in , decloak and fire. Then get out of the way and
cloak again. Remember, however, that a single miscalculation on decloaking
could cost you your ship. Cloaking/Decloaking leaves your ship extremely
vulnerable and you must take great care. Always approach a ship along one of
its rear shield facings if at all possible. Alternatively, decloak a little
further away than usual with a reinforced front shield, fire a pseudo torpedo,
watch your enemy waste phasers trying to shoot it down, move in closer and fire
the real torpedo. Then recloak. Watch your enemy grind his teeth.
Do not, as I have seen several inexperienced Romulan players do, become so
intent on the ship you are attacking that you decloak within close range of a
second enemy ship. Its captain will bless the fates and alpha-strike you.
Tactics Guide
Version 0.2 (organisational update with a few new sections)
What is the point of this guide? The Starfleet Command 2 manual provides an
excellent tactical overview for each race. However, this overview is
necessarily brief and assumes familiarity with the game. There are a couple of
tactical guides for Starfleet Command 1, but none of them quite do what I'm
trying do. The manual recommends that you make notes of successful/unsuccessful
tactics as you play the game. This guide is, essentially, my notes. However, I
welcome comments/criticisms (no flames, please) on jonlhlea@hotmail.com. You
may also find me on-line under the names of PandaLord or GFL-I-Mediator.
Ideally, I would like to develop this over time into a general tactical manual
for SFC2, to serve as a guide for novice players and a source of ideas for
veterans. If there is sufficient interest (ie mail me), I could set this up as
a web site and include a forum for tactical discussions.
Oh, and I must make it clear that at present this guide only really applies to
the off-line portion of the game. The on-line game is very different as you are
suddenly playing against real human beings with real battle plans and a real
ability to work as a team. They will, during your early games, simply kill you
as they simply killed me. Find a good partner, play 2-on-2 duels and STICK
CLOSE TO YOUR WINGMAN (thanks go to GFL-I-KnightTime)! Further advice may
follow if I get better at playing online.
Index
1. Changelog
2. Introduction
2.1. Mindset
2.2. How it all began: the evolution of Energy Management
2.3. AI: the revolution of Energy Management
3. General
3.1. Winning the Game
3.2. Energy
3.3. Fighters
3.4. Pseudo-Fighters
3.5. Weapons
3.6. Shields
3.7. Electronic Warfare (ECM/ECCM)
3.8. Special Tactics
4. Federation
5. Gorn
6. Hydran
7. ISC
8. Klingon
9. Lyran
10. Mirak
11. Romulan
1. Changelog
Version
0.1 Initial release
0.2 Added numbering
Added initial section on Fusion Beams at 3.5.2
Added initial section on Missiles at 3.5.4
Added to the section on the ISC (7)now that I'm starting to play them
properly
Changes to general advice on Romulans (11)
Expanded section on fighters
Expanded section on Plasma Torpedoes
2. Introduction
2.1 Mindset
The first piece of advice I would give to total novices (ie those who have
played neither SFC1 nor SFB) is this: Starfleet Command 2 is a game of naval
battles. It is not a top-down version of ... well, there are relatively few
decent space combat games these days. Let's say Starlancer, or going back a
little further, Wing Commander Prophecy or X-Wing: Alliance. This is a game of
combat between capital ships, not starfighters. The scale is wholly different.
To give another analogy, think of the battle at Endor. If this were Star Wars,
we would be looking at the combat between the Corellian Frigates and Nebulon-Bs
against Star Destroyers, rather than the X-wing versus Tie-Fighter duels (though
those do play an important part in SFC2, especially for the Hydrans). In fact,
since the game is two-dimensional, think combat between ship groups during World
War II.
This difference carries over into all aspects of gameplay. Although combat is
in theory carried out at ludicrous speeds using high-tech weapons, the game as
played deals with two (or more) ships, slowly jockeying for position, trying to
stay out of range of the worst broadsides while being able to fire their own
guns as often as possible. If you remember this fact, the style of the game
will make far more sense and you will be more successful.
2.2 How it all began: the evolution of energy management
The game is complex. It deals with use of shields, a wide variety of weapon
systems, mines (standard or nuclear), tractor beams, cloaking devices,
electronic warfare, transporters and boarding parties, shuttlecraft, fighters
and PFs. Knowing how to use all of these is important. However, the single
most important aspect of the game is the management of energy. Without energy
you have almost no weapons, you can't reinforce your shields, can't use
transporters or tractors. There is no point manouvering into an ideal position
for an alpha strike if all your energy has been spent on shield reinforcement
and engines and you cannot fire your weapons.
A long, long, time ago, before some of you were born (the 1970s), there was a
board game called Star Fleet Battles. It was designed to represent the kind of
combat that fans saw in the Star Trek (Original Series) TV programme. It had
everything - shields, weapons, the lot. And it had energy. In fact, the game
was all about energy management, to such an extent that the plotting of each
impulse was a complex task requiring you to juggle all the different power
requirements of your ship in order to end up with the correct balance of speed,
shield reinforcement and weapons available for firing. Then, over time,
complexity was added. And the game was played by people all over America and,
later, all over Europe (your humble author is a Brit). Amendments were made to
the game and new 'modules' incorporating better ships, fighters, Pseudo-
fighters, new races and the like were added. The game became very good,
although it did perhaps suffer from an excess of rules and options.
My next statement is controversial, and will doubtless lead to a great many
flames, but I'll take the risk. Eventually, the game waned in popularity.
People stopped buying it, so there were no new players. Then came Starfleet
Command. A bizarre little company by the name of 14 Degrees East decided to do
something radical. They took the board game and made it into a computer game.
Some people cried "Boo!", thinking that translating the game to the computer
would compromise its purity. Others cried "Hurrah", thinking that the computer
would do the maths for them.
2.3 AI: the revolution of Energy Management
What the little company that could, did, was far more radical. Instead of
producing a safe, turn-based game that did the calculations for you and differed
from the board game only in its pretty graphics, they made the whole thing real-
time. This single change had far-reaching consequences. In particular, it was
no longer possible for the player to calculate his energy requirements and
allocation for each turn. This meant that the computer now had to do a large
part of this work, it now had a system of priorities and allocated available
energy to meet the player's requests according to its priorities. This meant
that the player had a very different job to do. He had to plan ahead much more
effectively and only request a reasonable amount of energy.
Instead of sitting down and thinking:
"My engines and warp drive provide a total of 16 points of energy. I shall
charge weapon 'a' (which won't be ready till next turn), charge weapon 'b', move
at speed 'c' and reinforce my front shield by 'd', which will leave 'e' points
of energy free should I need them later in the turn"
He now needed to think:
"OK, there are 16 points of energy available. The computer is going to try to
charge all weapons that are currently on-line, the current turn spped is 30
seconds per turn, I won't have weapon a available for another turn, but weapon b
will be ready soon, the computer always tries to give me the speed I request,
that will cost c energy, if I reinforce my front shield that will cost d energy
and I should have e energy left over."
In other words, he no longer has total control, which makes it far easier to
request more energy than the engines can actually provide. The 2 points of
energy that you have asked the computer to set aside for tractoring incoming
missiles suddenly work very differently, as they may prevent the computer from
allocating the energy you need to charge your disruptors for a final strike or,
alternatively, if you've if you've set your energy priorities differently, they
may simply not be available as the missiles hurtle in towards your already-
weakened aft shield. Both situations are bad and it is therefore vital only to
request the energy that you need. This, along with positioning and timing, is
one of the three great skills required to win at SFC2.
3. General
3.1 Winning the game
There are three primary skills required to win a game of SFC2:
Positioning
Timing
Use of Energy
The only way you can win the game (barring a few specialised scenarios) is by
knocking down the enemy's shield and scoring enough internal damage to destroy
his ship. Ideally, you should suffer no more than the minimum level of damage
while doing this. How is this heroic act achieved? By balancing the three key
elements, positioning, timing and energy
3.1.1 Positioning
You must be in the right position to fire. You must fire against an enemy's
weak shield while only presenting him with your strong shield.
3.1.2 Timing
There is no point being in the right position at the wrong time. If you're not
ready to fire yet, if your shield reinforcement hasn't come on line, if it's
less than a turn since your phasers last fired, your damage potential will be
lessened. Equally, it doesn't matter if your approach vector is perfect if you
fire at range 4.01 rather than 3.99 and so reduce your damage.
3.1.3 Use of energy
In order to time things correctly, you must make sensible use of the available
energy. The weapons you want to fire must have enough energy to charge, there
must be enough energy to achieve the shield reinforcement that will prevent you
from taking serious damage, there must be enough energy to allow you to travel
at the right speed to be in the right place at the right time ... energy is the
key to the triangle and so merits further discussion.
3.2 Energy
It is a given that unless you are commanding a Starbase (a respectable promotion
for a starship captain, but not terribly interesting from the viewpoint of
exploring the universe and getting into scraps), you will never have enough
energy to do everything you want to (see How it All Began, above). You must
always achieve a balance between the different systems which drain your engines.
The most practical advice for a beginning player would be the following: if your
speed is high, it is likely that you are not recharging your weapons at anything
like an optimum rate. In fact, anything requiring more juice than a phaser may
well not be recharging at all.
3.2.1 A little experiment
Try the following. Take the basic Lyran ship (2 phaser-2s, 2 disruptors, 2
phaser-3s and an ESG). Get into a fight, preferably not with something that's
going to destroy you on the first pass. Fire everything at your enemy. Then
set your speed to 25. What is happening to your weapons? The phasers and ESG
are probably recharging very slowly because both use a capacitor system. The
disruptors, on the other hand, are not recharging at all. Occasionally the
'ready' bar will creep up slightly, but it will then probably drop back down
again.
Now set your speed to 10. Watch your disruptors race towards a full recharge
(provided they are on 'normal' rather than 'overload'). In about one turn (30
seconds on the standard time setting), you are ready to fire again.
Repeat the exercise, this time watching the 'energy' panel of the multi-function
display in the top left very carefully. Play around with the priority settings,
see which settings give you optimal performance for your ship. Do you want to
prioritise your engines and ensure that your ship can always do any speed that
you ask of it? Do you want to prioritise your weapons and ensure that they
always recharge as quickly as possible, even if this means that sometimes your
ship's acceleration is a little more sluggish than you'd like? Or is shield
reinforcement top of your wish-list? Whatever your eventual strategy (which
will almost certainly vary from ship to ship), you will want to spend some time
playing around with settings and watching the energy panel to get a feel for the
capabilities of different vessels.
3.3 Fighters
Unfortnately, the manual does not list the different types of fighter and you're
left simply assuming that more expensive = better. If anyone would like to
submit a list of fighter types and armaments I'd be happy to include it. In the
meantime, it's up to you to know the armaments of your fighters, and vary them.
In many cases it will be better to have a couple of groups with close-attack
weapons and one other that can attack from a greater distance. If a group has
taken heavy damage, decide whether to leave it there to fight to the bitter end,
or recall it. Remember that a lot of thetime you won't be in a convenient
position to recall your fighters, but recalling it may well cause it to break
off its attack, so not only will it be destoryed, it also won't be doing
anything useful.
DO NOT launch fighters on attack against ships armed with AMD. The results are
most definitely not pretty and as a proud Hydran captain I have been caught out
by this on a couple of occasions. This is perhaps an object lesson in why you
should always use probes and know what an enemy ship is capable of before it
gets anywhere near you.
DO NOT recall fighters when there is a space mine directly between you and them.
Again, this is not pretty. I've only seen it happen once, but that was enough.
Surprisingly, the Federation has the best variety of fighter types. On the
other hand, the Federation are not the Hydrans and most of their ships are not
carriers...
3.4 Pseudo-fighters
What a wonderful addition to the game. Anyone who has played Starfleet Battles
will have bemoaned their absence from SFC1.
Like fighters, they cost no energy to launch. Better still, they can provide
the energy to recharge their own heavy weapons. Essentially, they are small,
free-standing, armoured, zero-energy-cost cannons using a wide range of
weaponry. However, they are not without their disadvantages, particularly in
the campaign game. Firstly, while they do have shields, these are not
overwhelmingly powerful. They will resist light phaser-fire, but if the enemy
targets anything heavier on them he will quickly break through the shields and
start causing internal damage. A couple of pseudo-fighters may bring down a
small ship on their own, but don't launch them to keep a large ship off your
back for an extended period and expect to get them all back.
Also remember that it takes several seconds after launch for the pseudo-
fighter's shields to come on line. I have, on more than one occasion, seen
enemy ships take advantage of a PF's shield-less status to get in a couple of
sneaky phaser shots. This means that if you are launching the PF's on your
initial approach towards an enemy, it is best to launch them at a distance of 10
or more so that their shields are on-line before the enemy can do any
significant damage.
Let us consider the economics of the situation. The basic pseudo-fighter costs
110 prestige to replace. The loss of a PF+ is even more painful and will cost
you most of the prestige gained during the encounter. Consider setting them to
harass rather than attack, particularly when playing against a human enemy who
will target them the minute you get too far away to pose a threat. Also, do
remember to recall them for repair etc when their shields start to drop or if
the enemy seems to be concentrating a little too much fire on them. When they
are off-screen, watch their damage bars and call them back if anything is
happening that you don't like. If you are feeling particularly protective, you
may even wish to store them as targets in order to be able to obtain a quick
update on their situation.
Remember also that while pseudo-fighters are piloted quite intelligently, they
are guided by the AI and are not privy to your tactical thinking. They will do
their best, but their firepower is not directly under your control and may not
be aimed as you would wish. Ultimately, however, a full complement of pseudo-
fighters does allow you to attack from up to three directions at once and makes
it much harder for the enemy to manoeuvre. Multiple ships armed with pseudo-
fighters limit his opportunities even further.
3.5 Weapons
3.5.1 Expanding Sphere Generator
The manual states that the delay between 'firing' the ESG and its actually
coming on-line is short. This is more or less true, but if circumstances are
appropriate to an offensive use of the ESG you are charging an enemy ship at
speed 28, ready to ram them, do not activate the ESG at a range of 2 and expect
it to be up in time for you to beat down the enemy's front shield. Worse still,
don't fire it up as the Mirak ship launches 6 missiles from range 2 and hope
that it's going to protect you. The activation delay is several seconds long,
about five seconds on the standard game speed, so get a feel for when you should
switch the ESG on. Be aware of the capacitor and range settings on your ESG.
In particular, if you jump to another ship which has previously been controlled
by the computer, be aware that the capacitor level may well be set to zero.
There is nothing more frustrating (or dangerous) than trying to fire up an
apparently-ready ESG only to realise that 'you dinna have the power'.
Also beware the loud bleeping noise that the ESG makes just before coming on-
line. As a rule it won't give your enemy enough warning to get out of the way,
but it's always best not to activate it till he can't avoid it.
3.5.2 Fusion Cannons
These were made to be overloaded. As the Orions are not officially a playable
race, only the Hydran use of Fusions need be considered in depth. When playing
against the Orions, it is simply worth knowing that they have a nasty habit of
firing overloaded fusions on the first pass. As a rule, they then don't have
the energy to recharge them for a very long time.
This weapon is extremely short-ranged. So short-ranged in fact that there is
almost no point in firing them on standard load. The standard load only does
slightly more damage than a Ph-1 at range 0 and falls off quickly even at range
1. was designed to complement use of fighters - release your fighter swarm on
harrass or attack and then swoop in, fire overloaded fusions at point blank
range and watch your fighters pick up the pieces. While they're doing this,
head off and recharge the fusions.
3.5.3 Hellbores
Hellbores are wonderful weapons. They recharge relatively quickly, have a
decent range and inflict damage on all shields while concentrating on the
weakest shield. They also look very pretty as they swirl around an enemy ship
and make for some great combat recordings. Better still, they are DIRECT FIRE
weapons. There's a nasty thought for any cloaked ships ...
What, therefore, is their weakness? Simply this: the high level of damage
inflicted by the hellbore is spread across all shields, so inflicts a relatively
low level of damage to each individual shield. If fired against an undamaged
shield which is even all around, the hellbore will inflict one-sixth of its
total damage on each shield. This is all very well, but does not greatly
contribute towards the normal approach of weakening and destroying one shield
and then scoring internal damage through the breach. Worse still, if the enemy
is using a high level of general shield reinforcement, this may only knock down
the reinforcement and do no harm to the shields themselves.
However, if a shield is weaker than the others, the damage done by the hellbore
will be concentrated on the weakest shield; in fact one-half of the damage will
be done against the weakend shield with the other half being spread amongst the
other shields. If facing an enemy with even shields, the solution to inflicting
valuable damage is therefore obvious. Provided you are not so far away that
your other weapons are simply not going to do any harm, fire one of your other
weapons first. Even if it only does a little damage, that will be enough to
establish a weaker shield and allow the hellbore to be more effective.
It is worth noting that ships with uneven shield distributions (ie klingon
vessels) are treated as having weaker shields, no actual damage needs to be
inflicted. Of course, with the Klingons, all you will be doing is simply
encouraging them to use their standard tactic of never turning their back to you
Once one of the enemy's shields is down, however, the hellbore comes into its
own. It continues to do some damage to all shields but now, no matter which
angle you fire from, some damage is going to go through and hurt the ship. This
is a truly useful ability, particularly when you remember that at range 8 a
hellbore has a 72% chance to hit and does a total of 13 damage, ie 6.5 damage
against the weakest shield.
Is it worth overloading hellbores? Generally, unless you have more energy than
you know what to do with, the answer appears to be no. Although it doesn't
extend the loading time (which, to be honest, at two turns is pretty
reasonable), it does require six points of energy which is pretty damn huge for
any but the largest ships. If you must overload something, overload your fusion
cannons instead. That's what they're there for.
On the other hand, while overloading decreases the range, it doesn't decrease
the chance to hit. If you've got the spare energy and intend to fire at close
range (for example, to help your fighters as they swarm an ISC ship), it does
pack an extra punch Equally, it may be worthwhile on your first pass against an
incoming enemy ship. If you intend to close to less than range 8 and fire, and
have the energy available, you may as well overload your hellbore and do a
little extra damage with the first shot.
To sum up, you won't often see a hellbore shot taking down an enemy ship (or at
least, I don't see that too often and I enjoy playing the Hydrans)*, but it will
help chip away at their shields.
* I do have a couple of very pretty screenshot selections where it has happened,
though. If only SFC2 offered the opportunity to save little animation sequences
linked to a particular ship ... hellbore stirikes, its deadly coils race around
the badly-weakened enemy ship to find its weakness, impact against the
unprotected hull and the ship shudders once before tearing itself apart. I
could watch it again and again ...
3.5.4 Missiles
Missiles, like plasma torpedoes, are a complex weapon to use and can be
frustrating for the novice when compared to the obvious effectiveness of the
direct-fire weapons. You cannot choose how a missile approaches its target and
you cannot choose which shield it will impact.
Ships have lots of options for getting rid of missiles - mines, phasers set to
point defence, tractor beams, speed (see below), wild weasels and fighters or
PFs set to defend. However, the reason for the wide number of possible defences
is that missiles are actually a very dangerous little weapon. One missile is
rarely a problem, but four can start to pose serious difficulties - the enemy
won't have enough tractor beams to catch them all and may not want to fire
enough phasers to shoot them all down. So he will have to use one of his
limited-charge options (ie wild weasel or space mine). The idea with missiles,
unless you're firing at point-blank range, is usually to have more missiles in
the air than the enemy can properly keep track of, let alone deal with.
Having said that, the first thing you should do at the beginning of each
scenario is set all of you missile launchers to single-fire. Putting out 6 or
more missiles with each shot is very pretty and may make a novice adversary
flinch, but if he keeps his wits about him it is unlikely that he will take too
much damage (unless, of course, you are very close to him, in whch case it may
constitute a rather fun surprise.) You can fire, for example, 6 missiles in
rapid succession rather than firing six at once - this will increase your
chances of doing damage.
Essentially, if you want to behave like a scatterpack, use a scatterpack.
One of the biggest problems for missile-armed players is that slow missiles
travel at speed 16, even Medium missiles only travel at speed 24. This means
that it is very hard to hurt a phaser-armed ship which is travelling at high
speed. If you're playing during the late period, you'll get fast (speed 32)
drones and this does help a great deal. If you're playing during the earlier
periods, enemy ships are likely to have greater energy-management problems and
if they're putting everything into speed to outrun your missiles, chances are
that they're not arming their heavy weapons.
3.5.5 Phasers
The manual states that you should not neglect phasers. This is not sufficiently
strong. What it should say is that YOU SHOULD NOT NEGLECT PHASERS!
Unfortunately, phasers (with the exception of the Hydran phaser-g, which is
moderately interesting, and the phaser 4 which is just nasty) are the plain
vanilla-flavoured standard weapon of SFC2. This often leads people to under-
rate them and use them as secondary weapons. This is a huge mistake. Phasers
are amongst the most versatile weapons in your arsenal, have one of the fastest
recharge times and use very little energy. They may not be the most powerful
arms available to you, but they should not be seen simply as a weapon of last
resort, or as something that you fire while waiting for your real damage-
inflicters to recharge. However, if you want to do any real damage, their range
is quite limited. Ranges 0-2 are ideal for phaser-3s and 1-4 for phaser-1s.
A ship armed solely with a large number of phaser-1s (and a decent energy
source) would be limited in its tactical applications, but would be very
dangerous at close-medium range. One of the early ISC ships (which?) is in fact
solely armed with phasers. Its shields are unfortunately not too good, but it
is otherwise a surprisingly dangerous ship for its class. Equally the smaller
Hydran ships, even those without fighters, can take down a shield with their
phaser-Gs.
Phasers have two great advantages - low recharge time (only disruptors can match
them) and low energy cost. Many people distinguish between phasers and heavy
weapons; this is flawed thinking and could lead to problems, it suggests that
'heavy' weapons will do more damage than phasers in most circumstances. It
would be more accurate to think of phasers and 'special' weapons, capable of
doing increased damage in certain situations.
3.5.6 Photon Torpedoes
When you play the Federation for the first time, you will find yourself asking
how on earth the UFP ever survived so long while using these as their primary
special weapons. They don't always hit, they take two turns to fire and they
'only' do 8 points of damage. What's the point?
As is so often the case with the Federation, the point is versatility. Ordinary
photon torpedoes are (percentage) accurate up to a range of (check range). If
the enemy is too far away (and you don't want to get any closer), you can set
the torpedoes to proximity fuses. If it's a knife fight and you can spare the
energy (unlikely, but you never know), you can overload the torpedoes and
surprise your opponent with a quick 16-point shield-breaker. In fact, it will
often be worthwhile, in close-range combat, taking other weapons off-line to
achieve overloaded photons as they are likely to simply remove an enemy shield
and leave you with some excellent firing opportunities.
There's also the fact that a photon torpedo does constant damage. As long as it
hits, range has no effect, a proximity torpedo does the same damage at range 30
as at range 10. It may not be the biggest damage-causer in the game, but it's
more than most weapons at that range.
Remember that photon torpedoes are extremely sensitive to electronic warfare and
always check the electronic warfare MFD before firing if at all possible. Many
players complaining about the reliability of their photons don't realise that 1
unopposed point of ECM is enough to seriously restrict their chances to hit.
3.5.7 Plasma Torpedoes
When you first look at them, plasma torpedoes are lovely weapons. Against
relatively stupid AI players and novice human players, they are devastatingly
effective. Large amounts of seeking damage home in on your enemy and often take
down a shield with one hit.
But they are subject to the same problems as missiles and also suffer from two
additional problems of their own. You cannot often choose which shield you will
impact against and wild weasels are staggeringly effective and highly annoying
(see Missiles, above). In addition, plasma torpedoes degrade with distance,
doing progressively less damage. This means that plasma torpedoes are of
limited effectiveness against a fast enemy (unless he is heading straight
towards you and turns like a Gorn). Finally, ECM does not reduce the torpedo's
chance of hitting but instead reduces the damage of your torpedo. Fortunately,
torpedoes automatically have 3 points of built-in ECCM and will also take
advantage of any ECCM generated by your ship.
Always make use of your pseudo-plasma torpedoes, but never in a repetitive
manner. If your enemy knows that you always fire a fake torpedo and then a real
one, he will have no hesitation in ignoring the first torpedo and shooting down
the second. Of course, if you follow this pattern twice and then reverse it,
firing the real torpedo first, you may well catch him out. Psuedo-plasmas rely
heavily on having a psychological advantage over your opponent. This is
particularly true on-line but also seems to work against the computer.
Never fire a plasma torpedo against someone heading away from you at high speed.
The reason should be obvious.
Small Ships
If you are fighting a ship of equal size and your enemy has not spent all of his
energy on shield reinforcement, it is likely that your single torpedo, fired at
close range, will take down one of his shields and perhaps even do a little
damage beyond that. Your next step will of course depend on what race you are
playing, but your aim should be to cause as much damage as possible through the
breach you have just created. If you have other weapons that you can
conveniently fire, so much the better. However, there are a number of other
manoeuvres that you may wish to use.
You have just punched a hole in your enemy's defences, right at the start of the
game, and you're still at close range. If you are in your enemy's forward arc,
it is probable that your forward shield has also taken some damage. You will
not be able to use plasma again for a while and you may have already fired your
other weapons or wish to keep them in reserve (particularly if your opponent
also has seeking weapons). How do you hurt your enemy further? With secondary
systems, namely transporters and mines.
A mine could do serious damage to a small ship without its shield. If you are
prepared to drop a shield you could teleport one into your enemy's path
Otherwise, you can drop a mine from your bay, remembering that you need to be at
a range of 2 before it will activate.
Equally, does your enemy have a weapon that is likely to cause you difficulty
(eg a single heavy weapon)? If so, given that he has probably already fired and
cannot hurt your further, now is most likely an ideal time to beam a few marines
aboard his ship and take the system out. With it being a hit-and-run raid, you
might even get at least some of the marines back. It must be remembered,
though, that unlike in SFC1, marines on board a ship now automatically act as
guards, so this is less likely to be successful than it was in the first game.
Whatever the size of your ship, remember that a plasma torpedo is not like a
missile or a photon torpedo; the damage of a plasma torpedo degrades with
distance travelled. Firing at ships which are far away or travelling in the
wrong direction is therefore likely to be a bad idea, as if the torpedo catches
them at all it will do much less damage.
3.6 Shields
Set up a skirmish game. Give yourself the biggest, most powerful ship you can
find. Set the enemy up with the weakest and most pathetic frigate available (or
the ship that his race starts the campaign game with, for amusement value).
Charge all of your weapons, fly close to the small ship (ignoring its fire) and
alpha strike it. Its shield will go down and it will die. It will not have
succeeded in damaging you.
This is the only time at which you can show such blatant disregard for shields.
In any kind of real fight, you must always pay attention to relative facings.
3.6.1 Your shields
You must never present a weakened shield to the enemy unless the damage you can
inflict on him in so doing outweighs by far the damage he can do to you. Even
then you should always try to reinforce the shield in question if at all
possible.
Remember to click on the reinforce button when reinforcing shields, otherwise
you have not actually done anything.
If one of your side shields has been weakened, always turn in that direction
relative to the other player, eg if your front left shield has been weakened
then always turn left relative to the other ship as this will present him with
your undamaged right side.
3.6.2 Their shields
Never fire without having an eye on the diagram showing the targeted enemy ship
on the bottom left of the screen. It is a much clearer indication than the main
screen. If there is a weaker shield, you should always try to fire when you are
lined up with this.
To be continued
3.7 Electronic Warfare (ECM/ECCM)
Again, a lot of novice players simply ignore EW. There is a lot to concentrate
on in SFC2 and this particular area tends to slide. When you consider, however,
the effect that a few points of ECM can have on the chance to hit or the damage
done by heavy weapons, it becomes obvious that EW is a vital consideration.
There is no point husbanding the energy to fire your photon torpedoes if the
enemy has 4 points of electronic warfare in play and they are horribly unlikely
to hit.
This is a complex subject and will be developed in a later version of this FAQ
when I have the figures to hand. For now, it is worth bearing in mind that
ECM/ECCM come low down on the list of 'power priorites' for a starship, so it is
almost certainly always worth sticking points into them at the start of each
game. Much of the time, you won't have the spare energy for them to be
activated, but they will not harm you by drawing power from more immediately
vital systems. Them when you do have the energy, they will be ready.
3.8 Special Tactics
3.8.1 Dealing with cloaked ships
The flash-cube
Cloaked ships are a real pain. You can't target seeking weapons on them, your
direct-fire weapons suffer a large penalty unless you're prepared to spend a
silly amount of energy on ECCM and while your enemy is cloaked he's recharging
his shields and weapons. Worse still, the only ships that can cloak are Klingon
and Romulan. Both of these races produce fast, manoeuverable vessels which are
capable of decloaking behind you, firing all weapons and recloaking again.
How do you deal with this problem? Well, you keep your weapons charged and make
sure that cloaked ships spend all of their time in your main firing arc. Then,
when they decloak, you hit them with everything while they're vulnerable. This
is much harder, however, when you're facing multiple ships.
Wouldn't it be helpful if you could force a cloaked ship to decloak at your
convenience? Fortunately, you can. A cloaked ship caught in the radius of an
exploding spacemine will become visible and, more importantly, target-able for a
short space of time. This is known as the flash-cube effect. You can then fire
your seeking/heavy weapons and do lots of damage. Your enemy will recloak
again, of course, but at least he will be hurt. Once your weapons are ready to
fire again, if he still refuses to decloak, repeat the process. Of course, it
is important not to get so caught up in waiting for an opportunity to flash-cube
that you fail to notice him decloaking off your front starboard shield, weapons
primed.
Rather than firing, you could take the opportunity provided by the flash-cube to
tractor the enemy ship, as a tractored ship cannot (re-) cloak. This is all
very well, but don't do it to a Romulan ship with twin plasma torpedoes ready
for firing. The author has, and it's not pretty. I still won, but it was a lot
more difficult after losing all of the weapons on the left side of the ship.
Thank god for pseudo-fighters.
When using this technique against a single ship, it is worth remembering that
cloaked ships cannot fire and that it is therefore not dangerous to drop one of
your shields in order to beam out a mine.
4. Federation
4.1 General tactics
4.1.1 The problem
The Federation are the basic race in SFC2, the standard by which the others are
judged. As such, they are good all-rounders. They have better staying power
than the Mirak (though who doesn't), turn faster than the Gorn (!), have better
shields than the Romulans and Klingons ... they really are the middle of the
road. This does not mean that a Federation battleship is not something to be
feared, simply that a Federation captain has to be much more careful about his
use of weapons. The combat that we see so often in the TV series, where
Federation ships destroy their opponents with one or two phaser shots and a
volley of photon torpedoes, is somewhat misleading if you're using anything less
than a constitution-class.
To give an example, let us consider a simply battle against an Orion pirate ship
armed with a single bank of phaser-1s and a missile launcher. Now let us
imagine that a small Gorn vessel has been dispatched to deal with this menace to
civilisation. The Gorn vessel will have at least a plasma-f, he can therefore
adopt very simple tactics. He reinforces his front shield and flies straight
towards the other ship, giving his plasma torpedo time to charge, then fires
everything he has at the enemy's front shield. The enemy loses his front
shield, takes some internal damage, the Gorn player sails over him, doubtless
having nearly lost his facing shield, carries on a bit, turns and comes back,
firing his phasers. As his manoevraibility is low, he may attack the enemy's
rear shield or he may try to get round to the front again using, for example, an
HET.
The federation player probably has a couple of photon torpedo tubes and a
mixture of phaser-1s and phaser-2s. This means that he lacks the 20-point punch
of the Gorn's heavy weapon. Worse still, his torpedoes are not guaranteed to
hit. Assuming that he goes for a frontal assault, he may well not break down
the enemy's shield. On the positive side, his torpedoes recharge more quickly
than the Gorn's plasma. He is going to have to move much faster than the Gorn
ship and snipe. He can head round to the rear of the enemy ship and fire all of
his weapons at close range, knowing that if he's not using too much energy
elsewhere he will soon have another shot. As long as he is patient and
reinforces his facing shield, he will wear the enemy down and start scoring
internals.
Ultimately, the Federation aren't the most exciting of races to play. They have
no cool weapons/devices and lack the stopping power of most of the other races.
However, they have extremely efficient ships. They have a reasonable amount of
energy, can as a rule fire all of their weapons fairly frequently. They have
decent shields, can bring damaged shields back up quite quickly (they often have
four or more labs, which allows them to regenerate damaged shields at 2 points
per turn rather than 1), and have perfectly good turn rates. They have no
particular weaknesses but, equally, no great strengths.
4.1.2 The solution
Versatility.
Versatility.
Versatility.
The Federation player must always adapt his tactics to the situation. While a
number of the other races are limited in their tactical options by the very
nature of their ships, the Federation player is extremely flexible. No matter
which opponent you are facing, you will always be better than him at something.
The other races tend to have a particular strength that they must always play to
- speed for the Klingons, missile barrages for the Mirak, fighters for the
Hydrans and so on. The Federation does things differently; they are reasonably
competent at everything. This means that no matter what enemy you face, either
your weapons will recharge faster, or your shields will be better, or your ship
will be more manouverable. The Federation player, perhaps more than any other,
must know his enemy and play to his relative strengths. You are not going to
outmanoever a Klingon, but you have better shields and longer-range special
weapons. You are not going to outblast a Gorn at close range, but you are much
more manoeuvrable, so he need never get to close range.
4.2 Small ships
The comments above on the middle-of-the-roadness of Federation vessels generally
applies particularly strongly to small Federation ships - they definitely lack
punch. Most of them are without missiles or plasma launchers and must rely on
at most a couple of photon torpedo tubes and a number of phaser-1s backed up by
phaser-3s. This means that your initial campaign battles will be particularly
hard as even an Orion can give you a run for your money. He can't beat you, but
he may well seriously damage a couple of shields.
You cannot, in most cases, simply stand and fight. Your shields will go down
and then you will die. You need to take advantage of your relative strengths:
If fighting a slow enemy, manoeuvre around (and away from!) them. Head off to
recharge, avoid dangerous firing arcs, run away from plasma torpedoes (using HET
or Wild Weasels if necessary - a single hit could do you a lot of damage so
don't be shy about using resources) and snipe at them. If you are familiar with
their firing arcs, you could perhaps try to take down the shields covering their
heavy weapon firing arcs first, so that in order to launch anything nasty at you
they have to leave themselves open to serious damage. If you don't want to get
too close, remember that photons can be set to proximity and that doing a little
less damage per hit doesn't matter if it means not losing one of your own
shields to a single shot.
If fighting a fast enemy, take advantage of his weaker shields. Try to keep
your distance if at all possible, and don't give him the opportunity to get
repeated shots against your weaker shields. Only close with him when you're
charged and ready to do damage, but be careful not to make suicide runs against
his heaviest armament. Equally, don't fire your photon torpedoes from too far
away - you want to be almost guaranteed a hit. Ifyou can overload your photons
for the first pass of the combat and lose him a shield, so much the better.
In both cases, remember that energy management is vital. Most of your weapons
don't take too much energy, so there's no excuse for not making use of
electronic warfare or shield reinforcement. If fighting a missile race, always
have at least one tractor beam set to catch incoming missiles, and keep your
phaser-3s to shoot them down if at all possible. Similarly, if fighting the
Hydrans, keep your phaser-3s (or your phaser-1s, but not both) in reserve to
take out his fighters.
Also remember that your photon torpedoes are, as mentioned above, versatile. If
you're far enough away from your enemy, they should probably be set to overload
for the first pass in order to do extra damage. If you're enemy stays at a
distance, consider setting them to proximity fuses.
5. Gorn
5.1 General tactics
5.1.1 Turn speed
Your turn speed really is not good. Gorn ships are cumbersome. You need to
bear this in mind. Romulan and Klingon craft can fly circles around you, and
pretty much everyone else is more manoeuvrable than you are. This makes it
particularly difficult to use your most terrifying weapon (multiple plasma
launchers) as these frequently have a narrow arc of fire. How do you deal with
this? See "Use of Phasers" below and "Fighters/PFs" above.
5.1.2 Use of phasers
Gorn plasma torpedoes are wonderful. However, they are of course subject to
serious limitations, primarily their long recharge time and their damage which
degrades over distance. The Gorns, unlike the Romulans, have no other heavy
weapons. They are also without gimmicks (cloaking device, ESG etc). However,
most Gorn ships have mutliple banks of phasers with excellent firing arcs. As
mentioned under the "General-Weapons-Phasers", phasers are a much-maligned
weapon in SFC2, but the Gorn player, like the Federation player, will find
himself relying on them heavily. Your phasers have, for the most part, an
excellent angle of fire which will help to compensate for your terrible turning
speed. Your phasers can be used in a much wider variety of circumstances than
your torpedoes. A few suggestions are listed below:
To take shots at a longer distance than your plasma-Fs.
If you fire a torpedo hoping to hit a weakened/downed shield, but the opposing
ship turns before impact to present a new shield, you can fire your phasers
immediately to maximise the damage
You can use your phasers to protect your flanks/rear.
As followup to your plasmas. Your plasmas will frequently knock down a shield,
but will then require a long recharge time. In the meanwhile, you can get
several shots through the breach with your phasers and hopefully score some
internal damage.
5.1.3 Anti-Wild Weasel
As with the Miraks, the Gorns are a seeking-weapon-heavy race. Unlike the
Mirak, the Gorns do not need to spend all of their prestige points buying new
seeking weapons between each encounter. Because the Gorn rely so heavily on
their plasma torpedoes, you must pay close attention to the enemy's use of wild
weasel shuttles. It is often tempting to fire off all of your torpedoes at once
as the result is usually one downed shield plus internal damage. However, if
the enemy is far enough away to stop and launch a wild weasel, your torpedoes
will instead be wasted against this and you will be left with only your phasers.
Not only is this embarassing, you will also be forced to head off and recharge.
If, instead, you fire a single torpedo at a time, this will suffice to destroy
the shuttle, and your enemy will be left moving very slowly, an easy target for
your other torpedoes ...
Equally, remember your pseudo-plasmas. A full salvo of pseudo-plasmas may seem
wasteful, but if that doesn't encourage your opponent to drop a wild weasel,
nothing will. You then have the choice of firing a single torpedo to destroy
the wild weasel while your opponent is stationary or waiting for him to
accelerate beyond a speed of 4/move beyond a range of 30 and lose the protection
of the weasel. Either way, he has used up a valuable resource and you haven't
wasted your firepower.
5.2 Small Ship
It is probable that at the lower BPVs your ship has a single plasma torpedo and
a few banks of phaser 2s/phaser 3s. It is therefore obvious that most of your
firepower is concentrated into that single plasma launcher (see "Plasma
torpedoes - small ships"). It is important, however, that you should not
neglect your phasers. You are likely to have a number of phaser banks with wide
firing arcs. You should group these separately to give yourself as much
flexibility as possible.
5.3 Mid-range
Assuming that your ship relies on the standard Gorn construction model, ie
forward-firing plasma torpedoes backed up by a large number of wide-arc phaser
banks, the most effective tactic against an enemy of equivalent size is to sail
in close, fire all the plasma torpedoes you've got, fire half your banks of
phasers (keeping two wide-angle mounts in case of missiles) and either bank and
turn or sail right on over him depending on how much damage you take on the
approach. Structurally, the Gorn ships are very tough, and they tend to have
good forward shields, all of which makes this particular tactic far more
survivable than it would be for, say, the Romulans. It is certainly,
nonetheless, worth reinforcing your front and rear shields before this kind of
pass. You then go far enough away to mostly recharge and finally turn and head
back in. Repeat until enemy dies.
Of course, if you're being swarmed by multiple smaller ships it's less
effective. However, unlike certain other races, the Gorns can afford - if they
have enough plasma banks- to attack a number of smaller ships at the same time
rather than concentrating on one until it dies. When faced with a swarm of
small ships (but not fighters), you have three options.
You could slightly modify the standard technique of taking on one ship at a
time. Target a full plasma battery against each ship in turn. This should
cause significant damage and give you some breathing room. You can follow up
with phasers if an opportunity presents itself, but you may well prefer to keep
them to deal with the other ships. That way, while you are recharging, you
still have phasers shots in case another ship gets too bold.
Equally, you could split up your plasma batteries and fire off individual
torpedoes at ships that get too close. This should encourage them to back off.
Once you've breached their shields, follow up with phasers. The advantage of
this method is that one or more plasma banks can be recharging while you wait to
fire the others.
Weaken their shields with close-range phaser fire. Only use plasma at close
range against weakened shields. This should mean that you are never without
charged weapons for very long. Your shields are sufficiently strong, and your
weapons sufficiently frightening, that the other ships should not be able to
swarm you.
5.4 Cloaked ships and the Gorn
Cloaked ships are a pain at the best of times, and even more so for the Gorn.
Your only heavy weapon is a seeking weapon and so, of course, cannot lock onto a
cloaked ship. Given that your ship probably has a large number of phasers,
patient use of these at very close range should eventually wear down one of your
enemy's shields and allow you to score internal damage. Standard anti-cloaked-
ship tactics also apply (tractors, preventative hit-run raids - see the section
"Dealing with cloaked ships").
However, when your plasma batteries are fully charged and the Romulan/Klingon
refuses to decloak and allow you to wipe that sneaky grin off his face, you are
likely to want to use the Flash-cube trick. As explained under "Dealing with
cloaked ships", this consists of placing a mine in the path of a cloaked ship.
When the ship triggers the mine, not only will it take damage, it will also
become visible for a short time, enabling you to get a lock-on.
This presents a particular problem for Gorn ships due to their very slow turn
ratio. Your plasma batteries mostly only fire forward and your turn speed is
dreadful. This simply means that you must plan ahead and only use the flash-
cube when you are already facing towards the enemy ship.
6. Hydran
6.1 General
The Hydran player often faces one significant psychological problem. He doesn't
want to send his fighters out into the cold hard universe in case they get blown
up. This is an odd attitude; if a Mirak refused to use his missiles everyone
would agree that he was wasting one of his most powerful weapons. Fighters ARE
disposable.
This doesn't mean that you should throw your fighters away, but if you're not
using them, you are wasting a large part of your offensive and defensive
capacity. Fighters serve a dual purpose, they can both attack the enemy and
protect their mothership. It is important to treat fighters as a resource which
is expended then bought back with prestige, rather than as something to be
hoarded. Send 'em out, watch 'em blow up and then replace 'em. Otherwise
you're just reducing your fighting power. Admittedly, this means that you will
spend a little more on maintenance than most other races, but at least you'll be
alive to repair and re-arm. In fact, provided that you use your fighters
judiciously, other ships should do you much less harm and as a result you will
spend less on repairs to your own ship.
7. ISC
7.1 General
At the lower end of the BPV range, most ISC ships do not come equipped with PPDs
but instead rely on plasma torpedoes as their heavy weapons. This is
unfortunate when starting a campaign as may of these torpedoes only fire to the
rear (see below).
ISC ships also tend to have fairly heavy shields for their size.
7.2 Weapons
7.2.1 Plasma Torpedoes
The manual explains that the ISC's rear-firing torpedoes were introduced as an
anti-fighter measure. This is understandable to a certain extent, given the
ISC's general lack of rear-firing weapons, but there are plenty of ships of
other races who simply have to improvise and turn to bring other weapons to
bear. In addition, the plasma-fs that most ISC ships appear to be fitted with
are of relatively little use against large groups of fighters as they cannot
shotgun.
This must be seen as a strength rather than a weakness - most races have no
rear-firing heavy weapons. There are two ways to use these banks. Either:
You can weaken two banks of shields rather than one. Fly over your enemy, fire
phasers at his front facing shields and then, once past him, fire your plasma at
his rear facing shields. There are now two sides that he will be reluctant to
turn to you, this seriously hampers his mobility.
Or:
Fire your phasers at the front facing shield. Take any necessary shots to your
reinforced front shield. Then high-energy turn and fire your plasma at
(hopefully) the same facing shield. Any further shots the enemy takes will be
made against a fresh shield. Obviously, due to the limitations of high-energy
turns this cannot be used too often, but it can be highly effective.
However, after the first pass, a small-medium ship will often find that it does
not have enough energy to charge all of its plasma banks as often as it would
like. In this case, it may be better to take the rear banks off-line (unless
you're primarily running away from your opponent, in which case they continue to
be very useful and you should instead disable other systems). Remember, plasma
takes energy to charge and hold, and this energy may well be more valuable
elsewhere if you aren't going to get the opportunity to fully charge and fire.
7.2.2 PPDs
These are lovely weapons, especially if all 4 pulses hit. However, they do take
an age to charge, even on mid-range ships of 160-200 BPVs, simply because the
energy balance of ISC ships strongly suggests that you will rarely have enough
energy to charge them. It is more common to see an ISC ship whittle his enemy
down with repeated ph-1 fire interspersed with a very occasional PPD shot than
to see him regularly firing this particular heavy weapon.
Range, as with so many weapons, is vital. PPDs change their firing
characteristics at various ranges. I seem to recall that they cannot fire at
range 3, so this is most definitely a range to avoid. Unfortunately I'm writing
this at work and cannot check this, so confirmation will be given in version 0.3
:-)
7.3 Fighters
Don't forget that ISC ships come with fighters. ISC carriers are available from
about 130 BPV upwards and, although they lack the specialised fighter-support
weapons available to the Hydrans, ie Fusion Beams and Hellbores, they're pretty
darned effective with plasma torpedoes (note to self - check whether any ISC
carriers also have PPDs. This would be a fun combination).
7.4 Small ships
The combination of good shields, decent turning and plasma launchers means that
low-BPV ISC ships are comparatively powerful, but they do not recharge quickly.
Staying out of range while recharging (or "running away") is going to be
important. Fortunately, since your only plasma launchers are likely to be rear-
firing, this is not a problem. Use pseudos to keep your enemy guessing, or fire
only one torpedo at a time, keeping the other in reserve. If you can weaken
your enemy's front shield with your phasers on your initial pass and leave him
thinking that you have at least one torpedo left, he is unlikely to wish to
follow you. This gives you a lot of room to manoeuvre and you can either
continue with phasers or wait and pick your moment to turn around and launch the
remaining torpedo.
8. Klingon
8.1 General
Turn Speed
Klingons have, on average, the best turn speeds in the game.
8.2 Shields
Oh dear. The Klingons do not believe in defence. Worse still, they believe
that you can only be shot in the back while running away. It is clear that the
writers of Klingon military doctrine have never been in anything other than a
one-to-one duel. Out in space, on convoy patrol or while trying to defend a
shipyard, even if the numbers of ships are even on both sides, it is all too
common to find yourself facing off against two or even three enemies at a given
moment. Or a ship breaking off from a dogfight with one of your companions may
find itself with an opportune shot against one of your weak rear shields.
If there is a solution to this, it is simply to keep your distance. Be aware of
as many of the enemy ships as possible and try to avoid having your back to
them. Failing that, reinforce your rear shields and to hell with the High
Command. Just make sure to keep enough energy to fire your disruptors.
8.3 Weapons
8.3.1 Disruptors
These are the fastest-firing special weapons in the game. Their effective range
is extremely limited, but they can get off shot after shot and are perfect for
the highly-manouverable Klingon ships. Dart in, fire, dart out, recharge
quickly, repeat. You are fast enough that you should be able to launch your
disruptors frequently against the shield of your choice.
9. Lyran
9.1 General
These can be a hard race to play for a beginner, particulary with the less
powerful ships. The ESG is impressive and has the largest area of effect of any
weapon in the game, but can be very hard to use. A lot of novice players fire
up their sphere generator, hoping to charge another ship and crush his shield,
but instead wander through space without touching anything as their enemy
accelerates to speed 31. And without the ESG, what weapons does the Lyran have?
Disruptors and phaser-2s, like a watered-down Klingon. Lots of phaser-2s,
admittedly, but the lack of horrible megadeath weaponry can put the Lyran player
at a psychological disadvantage
9.2 Weapons
9.2.1 ESG
The ESG is not (just) a battering ram. If you are playing against a Gorn, or a
Romulan, or a Mirak, or a Klingon, or any vessel of any race that uses any
number of seeking weapons, you are going to want this as an additional shield.
Historically, the ESG was developed to counteract traditional Mirak tactics, ie
the use of an overwheliming number of missiles. This holds good against any and
all seeking weapons - the ESG is your best friend.
When playing as a fleet, remember that the ESG is an area-effect weapon.
Anything trying to pass through it must first interact with it. In the case of
Hellbores this is likely to be bad news, but with regards to other weapons, it
means that the ESG can also be used to protect other ships. If one of your
companion ships is being pursued by a missile/plasma torpedo/fighter/PF, you may
well be able to interpose the ESG and deal with the threat. You won't always
want to do this, but it has saved the author's fleet from serious harm on
several occasions.
One other weakness of the ESG is that it is often poorly-protected. Lose a
shield and you will often lose the ESG. Without, unless you've got PFs, you're
left with ph-2s and Disruptors as mentioned just above. This is not necessarily
a losing combination but can be hard to use effectively given the lack of ph-
1s..
9.3 Pseudo-fighters
The Lyrans were the first race to develop pseudo-fighters. Better still, they
are also the inventors of the mechanical link, a system which allows relatively
small ships to transport the relatively large pseudo-fighters. These mean that
a low-BPV vessel (name) costing only (?) prestige at the shipyard comes equipped
with 2 basic pseudo-fighters which can be upgraded to pretty damn lethal killing
machines. Remember, however, that those 2 fighters represent a significant
proportion of the ship's damage-capacity. Once they are gone, you are suddenly
flying a slightly underpowered, underarmed smallish ship.
When fighting the Mirak, also remember that a pseudo-fighter set to defence may
well shoot down an incoming missile or two. Given the Mirak's propensity to
have at least 6 missiles in the air at any one time, this could well be a good
thing. If you're feeling truly paranoid, 2 PFs set to defence, plus a fully-
charge 0-range ESG, should deal with most missile salvos, leaving your
convential weaponry free to shoot large holes in the filthy feline's shields.
This means that the Lyrans, unlike a great many other races, can actually wait
for the Mirak to run out of missiles.
10. Mirak
10.1 General
The Mirak are a lovely race to play. They do take a lot of getting used to as
you have to learn how to use missiles as your primary weapon (though a number of
their ships are also armed with good secondary weapon systems), but the
investment of time is well worthwhile.
Apart from their other advantages, Miraks almost always have enough energy to
keep those weapons which do require energy charged, since their primary weapons
need none. It's good to know that your disruptors and phasers will always be
ready (or that you'll have those extra points you need to reinforce your front
shield. Take your pick).
10.2 Weapons
10.2.1 Missiles
Much of this section will be repetition of what was said under the section on
weapons-missiles, but it is worth repeating for the Mirak.
Even more so than the other missile-using races, you must learn not to waste
missiles. Once they're gone, you've lost one of your primary weapons. Most
important of all, you must learn to fire single missiles at regular intervals
rather than firing all six at once. As was said above, the first thing you
should do at the beginning of each scenario is set all of you missile launchers
to single-fire. There simply is no point firing a group of missiles all at
once. You can fire just as many missiles at short intervals and greatly
increase your chance of actually hurting something.
The speed of your missiles is probably a more important consideration than the
damage that they do - there's no point having a high-impact warhead if it never
hits the target. Missiles can travel a surprisingly long way (if you don't
believe me, fire a salvo of missiles at range 30 ... provided that your target
isn't heading directly away from you at speed 31, they'll get to him.) but
slower missiles will go less far before they use up their fuel. They will also
turn less well and may, in many cases, simply not catch up with their target.
This is not to say that slow missiles don't have their uses. A number of
missiles following a player round will make him decidedly nervous and affect his
concentration. It is likely that sooner or later, one of them will catch up
with him. If the range is not too long, they may well overwhelm his defences as
all of his phasers fire and all of his tractor beams are used, leaving you with
a clear field of fire for that one extra shot. They may still force a computer-
controlled player to use one of his wild weasels.
Fast missiles are expensive, but it's almost always worth upgrading at least to
medium speed. It's better to have one reload of missiles that will hit than two
reloads of missiles that won't.
10.3 Fighting the Lyrans
A difficult proposition, but far from impossible. The problem when fighting the
Lyrans is posed by their PFs and their ESGs. It is probably better to deal with
the PFs first.
11. Romulan
11.1 General
There are two views on how the Romulans should be played. While I tend to the
former view, I will list both:
1. If SFC2 is a game of naval battles, the Romulans are a fleet of submarines.
Your ships and shields are weaker, their damage potential is less constant, you
are forced to rely heavily on your plasma torpedoes and these are very slow to
recharge given your less-than-optimal energy configuration. So be patient.
Fire. Cloak. Wait. Decloak. Fire. Cloak. Wait ... the procedure is simple.
Unless you are desparately short of energy there is no reason to be decloaked
unless you are about to fire/ have just fired.
2. The cloak is a waste of time in a fight. It may be a great plot device for
the television series, but it should not be used in ship-to-ship encounters.
Charging weapons while cloaked limits you to a maximum speed of 12 and given
that speed is vital to survival in SFC2, this is simply not acceptable. Don't
cloak, run.
11.2 Small ships
Your cloak should provide you with a huge advantage against enemy ships of
equivalent size. You have plasma torpedoes, so simply hide until you are ready
to fire them. Then glide in , decloak and fire. Then get out of the way and
cloak again. Remember, however, that a single miscalculation on decloaking
could cost you your ship. Cloaking/Decloaking leaves your ship extremely
vulnerable and you must take great care. Always approach a ship along one of
its rear shield facings if at all possible. Alternatively, decloak a little
further away than usual with a reinforced front shield, fire a pseudo torpedo,
watch your enemy waste phasers trying to shoot it down, move in closer and fire
the real torpedo. Then recloak. Watch your enemy grind his teeth.
Do not, as I have seen several inexperienced Romulan players do, become so
intent on the ship you are attacking that you decloak within close range of a
second enemy ship. Its captain will bless the fates and alpha-strike you.