This "Tactics Manual" is designed to help players new to the Star Fleet Universe (SFU) better understand Star Fleet Command (SFC). Star Fleet Battles (SFB) is probably the largest, most complex, and most intimidating game ever made. There are well over 2,000 pages of printed material related to SFB, and unlike the few other games that rival it in size (Dungeons & Dragons, Rifts, etc.) SFB is a tactical combat game; not a story based RPG. Those 2,000 pages of printed material are focused into governing the combat between units, with very little story or other bulky non-play related material weighting it down. Don’t let SFB veterans scare you away from Star Fleet Command with these facts; SFC is a highly simplified version of SFB, which in addition to the many simplifications also makes things much easier by having the computer do most of the work for you.

As you might already suspect, there is much more to Star Fleet Command than meets the eye. This document is primarily intended to give non-SFB players a wealth of information that would otherwise not be available too them, but also contains information relevant to players who have experience with SFB. In the following pages you will learn about how Star Fleet Command works beneath the surface, and how to best take advantage of that knowledge. Due to the complexity of Star Fleet Battles, and the devotion of its fans, there is a huge knowledge deficit between SFB veterans and players new to the Star Fleet Universe. While this document can’t address that deficit completely, it will certainly provide non-SFB players with a far better understanding of Star Fleet Command and put them on the right track to someday compete with the best SFB players in multiplayer SFC. Experienced SFB players will find occasional discussions about some of the differences between SFB and SFC, and might learn a few things about SFB as well.

SFB’s followers are, in most cases, both highly intelligent and fanatically devoted to the game. If you are unfamiliar with the board game, it is simply not possible for you to truly understand Star Fleet Command at the same level as an experienced SFB player from the small amount of information provided in the SFC manual. The manual included with Star Fleet Command necessarily focused on how to control the game; this Tactics Manual focuses on how to actually play the game. By reading both, you will have the basic knowledge needed from which to develop an effective style of play and compete in multiplayer SFC with even the most battle-hardened SFB aces.

Note to SFB Veterans: While this document has been written primarily with non-SFB players in mind, you should also benefit from reading it. There are differences between SFB and SFC, and the major ones are discussed.

What is the "Star Fleet Universe"?

The Star Fleet Universe is the name given to the entirety of Star Fleet Battles and its related games. There were several "spin-off" games related to Star Fleet Battles, the most important of which is its strategic companion game, Federation & Empire. By linking F&E and SFB, it is possible to play out the entire General War from the dual perspectives of President/Emperor of a race (F&E) and Admiral/Captain of the fleets in combat (SFB). This has probably never been done (with all F&E battles resolved through SFB), as any reasonable two-player play time estimate would be counted in decades.

As has already been noted in the SFC manual, the history of the Star Fleet Universe is different than the history of the Star Trek Universe. The Star Fleet Universe began to continue the Star Trek Universe before Star Trek: The Motion Picture was released, and the two "universes" begin to diverge where the original series leaves off.

Real-Time "Conversion"

SFC is a real-time game and that real-time nature has been achieved by basing time relative to the SFB turn and impulse system. In reality, SFB was actually the first "real-time" game ever created, so the change to real-time is not as great a difference as some would believe. SFB did have "turns", but those turns were then divided into 32 "impulses", each of which represented approximately 2 seconds of "real-time". Although there was not a name for it at the time, today SFB would be termed a "real-time tactical combat simulation". It was precisely this successful attempt at creating a real-time pencil & paper game that made SFB so complex.

Throughout this document the term "turn" is sometimes used. In SFC, a "turn" can be thought of as "one full unit of time". Within that "full unit of time", certain actions take a certain portion of that time. For example, a disruptor takes one turn (i.e. "one full unit of time") to charge, a photon torpedo take two turns (i.e. "two full units of time") to charge, and a plasma torpedo takes three turns (i.e. "three full units of time") to charge. Similarly, speed 31 is the maximum speed of a starship, and it takes one turn (i.e. "one full unit of time") for a starship to travel 310,000k (or 31 hexes) when moving at a speed of 31. A ship moving at speed 15 would travel 150,000k (or 15 hexes) during a turn (i.e. "one full unit of time").

Game Speed

The speed at which you play the game is entirely a matter of personal preference. The default speed is "7" and most games are played at that speed. Speed "5", however, allows much more time to do the "extra" things beyond moving and shooting. Speed "5" can seem a little slow during the re-arming and approach phases of the game, but allows much more control over the situation when the ships are within effective combat range. If playing people that you have played a lot of SFB with in the past, speed "3" (or even speed "1") is closer to SFB than the faster speeds. Non-SFB players are unlikely to appreciate the game at any speed slower than "5".

Famous Quotes From SFB and What They Really Mean

There are several "famous quotes" from SFB that you may hear while playing SFC online. These quotes actually have very specific meanings to experienced SFB players, and have served as reminders of the most fundamental aspects of SFB (and now SFC) combat. The most important of these are briefly described below.

This is perhaps the best known of the SFB quotes. It is actually a mantra of the Israeli Air Force that was appropriated by SFB players in the early 80’s. To SFB players, it is a reminder that the most important aspect of combat within the game is speed. Nothing will serve you better than going as fast as you possibly can. This is a complicated issue, and is discussed in much more detail in the MOVEMENT section below.

By SFB lore, this quote was printed on a sign above the door to the simulator rooms at Star Fleet Academy. It is a reminder to use all of the systems on your ship. This doesn’t mean that everything should be powered and ready to go at all times, it simply reminds you that your ship has a great deal more options available too it than moving and shooting.

This is probably the most famous quote from the Grand Admiral himself (SFB designer Steven V Cole). This quote serves to remind players that no matter how great your envisioned tactic seems to be, it is worthless until it has been used successfully in an actual game.

This section deals with movement, ship systems, and general tactical advice related to those issues. Weapons, special devices, and tactics specific to individual races are discussed in later sections. Each section assumes that you possess the knowledge presented in the earlier sections, so it is suggested that you read the document in order.

Movement

Movement is a critical element of SFC. How you approach the target, which shield you present to the enemy, and which enemy shield you are able to hit, is all governed by how you maneuver your ship. Many movement related issues are discussed throughout this document, because it is such a broad reaching topic. The basic fundamentals of movement are described in this section.

As a point of interest, the SFC manual contradicts the SFB manual on the subject of the speed at which combat is taking place. This makes no difference in game terms, but there have been debates on the subject within the SFC community. The SFC manual states that combat occurs at sub-light speed. Combat in SFB (and on the Star Trek series and movies) actually occurs at warp speed. The speed of the unit (in multiples of c, the speed of light) is the cube of the "warp factor". Thus, warp 1 is (1x1x1 = ) 1 hex (or 10,000k) per turn, warp 2 is (2x2x2 = ) 8 hexes (or 80,000k) per turn, and warp 3 is (3x3x3 = ) 27 hexes (or 270,000k) per turn. Combat cannot occur at speeds a little higher than warp 3 (31 hexes per turn) because targeting systems are not effective beyond that speed. The maximum speed of Enterprise on the original TV series was warp 8, or 16,777,216 hexes per turn (or 16,777,216,000k per turn).

This is the kind of terminology that scares many people away from the SFB board game, but it really is simple to understand. Mass Based Proportional Movement is one of the foundational concepts underlying Star Fleet Battles (and thus Star Fleet Command). All ships have a "Movement Cost" (also referred to as "Move Cost") associated with them. This cost is the amount of energy that it takes to move the ship 10,000k (one hex, in SFB terms) in a single turn. So, a ship with a Movement Cost of 1 requires 1 point of energy to move 10,000k (one hex) per turn; a ship with a Movmenet Cost of 1.5 requires 1.5 points of energy to move that same distance in a single turn.

Mass Based Proportional Movement is a crucial element of how the game system works and it is important to understand. Smaller ships, such as frigates, have less energy than larger ships but a lower Movement Cost that allows them to still travel at top speed. Larger ships, such as heavy cruisers, have more energy and a higher Movement Cost. This is significant in that it explains why larger ships seem exponentially more capable and resilient to damage than smaller ships. Larger ships can better afford to use power for non-movement related functions such as weapons, electronic warfare, and tractor beams because they don’t need to slow down as much in order to power those systems.

All systems other than movement are not "mass based and proportional"; they cost the same regardless of ship size. Therefore, a heavy cruiser (Movement Cost 1) only has to slow down by 4 in order to use 4 points of energy for ECM. A destroyer (Movement Cost 0.5), on the other hand, must slow down by 8 in order to use 4 points of energy for ECM (or any ship system other than movement). Similarly, damage to engines has a greater impact on smaller ships than it does on larger ones. If a destroyer loses one point of warp power it slows by 2, while a heavy cruiser only slows by 1. This explains why the larger ships seem so much better than the smaller ones, even beyond their additional weapons and systems. They seem exponentially better because, in fact, they are. Pay attention to the "Move Cost" of ships in SFC, it is a very important factor when evaluating a ship.

The Movement Cost (or "Move Cost") is the best way of identifying what "class" a ship truly is. Much as in a real-life navy, the classifications of ships in SFC can be somewhat confusing. Due to Mass Based Proportional Movement, the Move Cost of a ship is the most important factor in determining "how big" a ship is.

Frigate (FF) - .33

Destroyer (DD) - .5

*War Cruiser (CW) - .66

Light/Heavy/Battle Cruiser (CL/CA/BC) - 1

Dreadnought (DN) - 1.5

Battleship (BB) - 2

A "War Cruiser" is a unique class. These are ships that, "historically", were built during the General War as a cheaper alternative to full size heavy cruisers. They are generally smaller than a CA but have similar weapon arrangements. They are efficient ships, and most are faster than the CA of the same race. The lower Movement Cost, however, means that they are less effective at powering ship systems and less resilient to damage than the CA class ships. The Federation NCL, Klingon D5, Romulan SPA, Gorn HDD, Hydran TAR, and Lyran CW are all examples of war cruisers. Basically, any ship with a Movement Cost of .66 is a CW or a variant of a CW.

This is simply the rate of turn, or the speed at which a ship turns. The lower the Turn Mode, the sharper the ship can turn. This is one of the most important abilities associated with a ship, and should always be considered when evaluating a ship. A ship's rate of turn decreases with speed, so slowing down will provide a better rate of turn. This is known as "downshifting".

Note to SFB Players: The turn modes seem correspond to SFB turn modes, close enough not to notice anything "wrong" with them anyway. Due to the nature of the game, SFC uses what amounts to "Directed Turn Modes".

You might hear SFB players use the term "side slip". You can ignore this term. SFB was played on a hex map and the "side slip" was a method of "sliding" to one side without actually turning (i.e. changing the facing of) the ship counter. A ship could "side slip" once for each hex of forward movement, allowing it to "side slip" into every other hex. Side slipping is irrelevant to players of SFC; this section was provided simply to explain a term that may be commonly heard by non-SFB players.

"Speed is life." Hopefully you haven’t forgotten that well-known SFB quote from the earlier section, because it is the single most important thing to remember. More than electronic warfare, more than shield reinforcement, tractor beams, or marines… speed will keep your ship intact. Nothing is a better defense than not being within range of enemy weapons in the first place. Another often heard phrase among SFB players is "speed gives you the initiative". What this means, in simple terms, is that the fastest player will determine when and where the exchange of fire will take place. A small speed advantage, such as 2 or 3 hexes per turn, is helpful and should be sought if nothing else is possible. But a large speed advantage, such as 10 hexes per turn or more, gives the faster ship complete control over the situation. In such a case, the combatants will fire at each other within effective range only when and where the faster ship chooses. There is nothing at all the slower ship can do about it, other than speed up to deny that advantage to his opponent. Ignore this axiom of SFB tactics at your peril; if you disagree, 20 years of actual combat between thousands of people within this same game system says you are wrong. "The only valid test is combat; the only valid result is victory."

If you are at a great distance 30,000k (i.e. 30 hexes) there is no problem with slowing down to charge weapons or perform other energy intense operations. But as soon as an enemy begins to approach, be certain that you are, at the very least, only moving a few "hexes" (i.e. "points") slower than your opponent does. Of course, it would be best if you were moving faster than your opponent, the faster the better, but that won’t always be possible. 20,000k (i.e. 20 hexes) is the critical range, at range 20 you should be accelerated up to speed already and moving at least close to your opponents speed. If you aren’t, you are in trouble.

The most obvious situation in which high speed is essential, beyond the proven axiom of maintaining a high speed in general, is when facing a ship armed with seeking weapons (e.g. drones or plasma torpedoes). If your ship is moving fast (speed 24+) only the fastest drones can even catch it, and you can safely ignore slower seeking weapons provided you do not make too many turns (which allow slower objects to gain on faster objects). Against plasma torpedoes you will find the most graphic example that speed is indeed life. By far, the best defense against a plasma torpedo is to move at speed 31. They pack a huge punch, but they weaken with range. The best defense against a plasma torpedo is speed. Conversely, if you are moving 15 hexes per turn or slower against a plasma armed ship you have no chance what-so-ever of defeating it assuming that a competent player is piloting the plasma ship. (More specific comments regarding plasma torpedoes are found in the WEAPONS section.)

Most of a ship's power should be used for movement. Any time a player needs power to do something, it will come from movement, since that's where all of the available power should be. Any time a captain wants to use power for something, such as readying defensive tractor beams or powering electronic warfare, he should ask himself the question "can I afford to slow down as much as making this power available will require". The answer should usually be "No". A starship has many systems available to it, and each is useful in specific circumstances, but none (with the sole exceptions of movement and phasers) are intended to be powered at all times. The best thing a new player can do to improve himself is to simply never slow below speed 24…ever, regardless of race (Fred will have to slow down temporarily to overload photons). After a while, a couple weeks of doing this, the new captain will begin to recognize those rare times when it is acceptable (even desirable) to slow below that speed.

This maneuver can be quite useful in several situations, but does have a severe drawback. When a ship Emergency Decelerates it must remain motionless for a brief period of time. A full stop is the worst possible situation a ship can find itself in. The enemy can easily choose which shield to hit, seeking weapons cannot be out-run, etc. If "speed is life" then it logically follows that "stopping is death". Of course, there are exceptions to every rule. The most common use of Emergency Deceleration is to launch a "Wild Weasel" (called a "Sensor Decoy" in SFC). This special shuttle can distract all seeking weapons targeted on the ship, and in some cases using a Wild Weasel is the correct decision (see the SHUTTLE section for more specific information regarding Wild Weasels). Another common use is as a last chance method of avoiding an otherwise unavoidable collision with a planet or asteroid.

Note on Acceleration: In SFC ships have an "acceleration curve" based on their turn mode. All ships have the same acceleration at lower speeds, but at speed 20-25 (based on ship class and turn mode) the smaller ships accelerate more rapidly than the larger ships. For example, it takes a DN about 60 seconds to accelerate to speed 31 from speed 0. It takes a FF about 50 seconds to accelerate from speed 0 to 31. It takes both ships the same amount of time, however, to accelerate from speed 0 to speed 20 (20 seconds). The delay to begin moving again after ED is 15 seconds (1/4 of 60). In SFB it takes around 64 impulses to accelerate from speed 0 to speed 31 and the ED delay is 16 impulses, so the relationship is the same. It actually took 50 seconds (13 for the ED delay) on the in-game clock, but I assume that it is coded at 60 and 15.

Note to SFB Players: This acceleration curve changes things a little. In SFB using Emergency Deceleration was very dangerous and would often wind up getting the ship destroyed. In SFC a ship accelerates to speed 20 very quickly, and much more slowly after that. This gives them a much better ability to get out of trouble. Any ship can accelerate to speed 20 in about 20 seconds (just 10 impulses) and then crawl too 31 from there. This makes briefly stopping, to use a WW, for example, much less dangerous in SFC than it is in SFB.

A related point is that the loss of the unrealistic "turn break decel" has been replaced with the ability to decelerate rapidly at any point in time. ED in SFC gives you a much more rapid, in fact, an "emergency deceleration" that is useful only in circumstances where the normal deceleration time will not be sufficient. Two good examples are launching a WW and avoiding a collision with an asteroid or planet.

This maneuver provides 4 points of "Natural ECM" (see the ELECTRONIC WARFARE section) to the ship performing Erratic Maneuvering. It also provides 4 points of ECM to any target that the ship performing EM fires upon. The energy cost is equivalent to the cost of moving the ship at a speed of 6 (after taking the Movement Cost of the ship into account). This can be a useful option when operating in a purely defensive mode, as the ECM provided by Erratic Maneuvering does not count against the limit of "Self-Generated ECM". Using Erratic Maneuvering, it is possible to generate 10 points of ECM rather than the usual limit of 6. However, see the section on ELECTRONIC WARFARE for a detailed description of how ECM and ECCM actually work. Non-SFB players are unlikely to actually understand electronic warfare from simply having read the manual included with SFC.

There is an additional penalty associated with Erratic Maneuvering in SFC that is not present in SFB. When EM is active, the ship gently rocks back and forth. This has the side effect of slightly slowing the ship down (since it is not traveling along a straight path). It is most likely an approximate speed reduction of 1 or 2 (hexes per turn) and this should be taken into account. If you are only able to match a pursuer's speed, the pursuer will begin to slowly close the range if you begin to perform Erratic Maneuvering.

This maneuver is, by far, the most useful of the special maneuvers. After a brief delay (a meter will appear on the bottom of the screen) there is a several second period during which the ship will quickly turn to any facing you direct (by clicking the mouse). This is a powerful ability that can turn the tide of a battle in seconds. Some examples of uses for this maneuver include, but are not limited too:

1. Turning back on a more maneuverable ship that is glued to your tail. This provides an opportunity to fire the big guns at close range while shaking the pursuer at the same time. It is usually best to wait for the pursuer to fire, and then HET back towards him immediately after that.
2. Performing a "snap turn" during a "knife fight" (a close-range turning dogfight) in order to hit a weakened or downed side shield. This essentially "wins" the knife fight.
3. Bringing a different, presumably stronger, shield to bear on a threatening enemy.
4. Avoiding overload range.
5. Avoiding a collision with an object such as a planet or asteroid.

In SFC, you may safely perform an HET whenever the success rate is 100% or higher. There is no chance of a breakdown if the success rate is 100% or higher. The success rate "recharges", allowing multiple "safe" HETs during a single game (for ships with ratings of 100% or higher). Some ships are not capable of performing a "safe" HET; their success rate never reaches 100%. Ships with a success rate of 100% or higher should use this maneuver often, while ships with a success rate of less than 100% should use it only in an emergency. If a ship suffers a breakdown, there is a good chance that it will be destroyed.

Note to SFB Players: The chance of breakdown "recharges", allowing multiple "safe" HETs during a single scenario. I have personally performed six(!) 100% safe HETs during a single scenario. Remember this, there is no need to save your "one free HET", you will have several. It recharges fairly quickly, and there isn’t too big a risk in doing an HET at 90% if it is necessary.

Another important difference is that an HET is a timer-based function in SFC. Once the HET is "active", the ship will quickly change facing to wherever you click. This level of maneuverability lasts for about 2 seconds. The HET ends when the very brief timer expires or when any weapon is fired. There is not currently any energy cost associated with an HET and you can HET at any speed (up to and including 31); this is a bug that will be fixed in a future patch.

This movement function is a convenience of SFC that is not present in SFB. Overuse of this function is a bad idea because it will mean that your important forward shield is usually facing the enemy. It is most useful in an overrun attack where it will keep your ship on course automatically to allow you to attend to other matters such as dropping mines, adjusting electronic warfare, and readying Hit & Run raids. Another useful function of this ability is to indefinitely maintain the tightest possible rate of turn in a close range "knife fight".

Other than using this function in the single player game to automatically stay within range to scan a scenario objective, there does not appear to be a useful function of this ability in ship-to-ship combat. A combination of "Follow" and manual control seems the best choice for controlling your ship in a "knife fight".

This display is vital to success in multiplayer combat. Zoom it out all the way and use it to check your distance from the map edge and to get a better picture of enemy facing and bearing. It is especially important to use this display when playing on a "small map" so that you are aware of where the map edge is. This display is also necessary in establishing a proper approach angle to achieve the oblique and plasma ballet option points (described later). This display greatly improves your "situational awareness" and this window should always be visible when not using any of the other windows.

Electronic Warfare

Electronic Warfare (EW) is a means of reducing the effectiveness of enemy targeting systems. Electronic Counter Measures (ECM) reduce the effect of enemy weapons, while Electronic Counter-Counter Measures (ECCM) negate the effect of enemy ECM. ECM reduces the accuracy of direct-fire weapons such as phasers, disruptors, and photon torpedoes. In the case of seeking weapons, such as drones (missiles) and plasma torpedoes, ECM can reduce the damage caused once the weapons have hit. Note that if a target does not have any ECM in effect, ECCM is useless (the only effect of ECCM is to negate hostile ECM).

The effect of ECM is to produce a favorable "shift" against enemy weapons that strike a ship. The term "shift" is a result of the dice-based combat system used in Star Fleet Battles. A favorable ECM shift affects direct fire weapons by reducing their accuracy (i.e. their "to hit" die roll); a shift of 1, for example, adds 1 to the die roll decreasing the chance of a hit. In SFC, the "to hit" chance is a percentage based system with die roll shifts affecting that percentage by the appropriate amount. The end result is essentially identical to the dice based system used in SFB.

As can be seen from the table above, a "Net ECM Strength" (the amount of ECM affecting a ship which exceeds the ECCM of the firing ship) of 1-3 all produce an ECM shift of 1. Therefore, a 2 (or 3) net ECM strength advantage over an opponent is essentially a waste of 1 (or 2) power. The critical net ECM strengths in SFC are 1, 4, and 9 (a shift of 4 is possible within SFC, but only within a nebula). A net ECM strength of 1 will gain an ECM shift of 1, while it takes a net ECM strength of 4 to produce an ECM shift of 2. So again, a net ECM strength advantage of 2 or 3 achieves no further advantage over a net ECM strength of 1 (and, in fact, is simply a waste of power).

"Hey, Flathead! …this is why you're photons are missing!" A Federation player should always have the EW display up during an attack. It takes time to accumulate ECM points, so the flathead should have one point of ECCM already in effect even if the enemy has no ECM. Photon torpedoes are just barely accurate; any shift at all greatly impacts their usefulness. Never fire through a shift, and always turn ECCM off right after firing photons.

Electronic Warfare affects seeking weapons (i.e. drones, plasma torpedoes, and suicide shuttles) through a possible reduction to the damage caused by the weapon. It can be assumed that the ECM shift caused the seeking weapon to detonate some distance from the ship, rather than achieving direct contact with the ship. The ECM shift is calculated in the same manner as direct-fire weapons, and then the equivalent of a six side die roll is made within the software to determine if the shift has affected the seeking weapon.

As can be seen from the tables above, and an examination of the Weapon Damage Tables provided on the Ship List foldout included with your game, ECM has less of an effect (statistically) on the damage caused by a seeking weapon than it does direct-fire weapons. In most cases, an ECM shift is unlikely to have any effect at all on a seeking weapon. With an ECM shift of 1, for example, only a result of "7" (6, plus 1 for the shift) would result in a reduction of damage. If that reduction occurs it is a 50% reduction in warhead strength, which is a significant penalty. Plasma torpedoes have 3 built-in points of ECCM to combat the effects of ECM.

The energy you put into EW is not the only source of EW. There are several other means by which weapons might be affected by EW. Unfortunately, EW from these other sources is not displayed within SFC (even though it is actually present).

Self-Generated Electronic Warfare: This is the most common form of electronic warfare in both SFB and SFC. When you apply power to ECM or ECCM, you are using "Self-Generated" electronic warfare. There are very few other means by which electronic warfare may affect a ship in SFC. In most cases, it is not possible to achieve a shift greater than 2 since a ship can only generate a maximum of 6 points of ECM/ECCM.

Natural Sources: This form of electronic warfare is used to represent various "natural effects" that are, in game terms, a form of electronic warfare. There only appear to be two forms of "natural ECM" in SFC; the 4 points of ECM provided by Erratic Maneuvering and the ECM effects of a nebula. Note that it is possible to have up to 10 points of ECM with Erratic Maneuvering, which would result in a shift of 3. A nebula has a powerful ECM effect, providing all units within the nebula with 9 points of ECM. All forms of ECM, including "natural ECM", can be negated by ECCM.

Received From Lending: There is only one form of "lent" electronic warfare present in SFC. A Wild Weasel (Sensor Decoy), in addition to decoying seeking weapons, provides 6 points of ECM to the launching ship for as long as it remains active and is not voided (by firing weapons, exceeding speed 4, etc.) This could result in a ship having up to 12 points of ECM without the benefit of any "natural ECM", which would provide a shift of 3. Note that Erratic Maneuvering costs 6 points of movement energy, which would void a Wild Weasel, so it is not possible to receive the ECM benefit of a Wild Weasel while performing erratic maneuvers.

In SFB special "Electronic Warfare Support" ships, known as "Scouts", were equipped with "Special Sensors". An ability of these special sensors is lending ECM/ECCM to friendly ships, or reducing the ECM generated by an enemy ship with offensive "negative ECM". These ships are not present in SFC, so this type of electronic warfare is not possible within SFC and can be ignored. It is mentioned only so that non-SFB players will understand the function of "Scouts" and "Special Sensors" should they hear SFB players discussing them.

Built-in: Most Orion ships, which are not playable in SFC, have 2 points of ECM "built-in". This represents the "stealth" design of their ships. Be aware that even though you don’t see it on your electronic warfare panel, an Orion ship has an additional 2 points of ECM beyond what is reported to you on that display. In order to avoid a shift against an Orion, you must have 2 more power applied to ECCM than the Orion has applied to ECM.

Plasma torpedoes have 3 points of ECCM built-in, and use that ECCM to negate up to 3 points of ECM produced by the target.

The maximum possible amount of ECM that a ship could have in SFC is 19 (a shift of 4). This would be achieved by using the maximum amount of Self-Generated ECM (6), while using Erratic Maneuvering (4), in a nebula (9). This would produce a total of 19 ECM (6+4+9) which would result in a shift of 4 (assuming no enemy ECCM). Note that a shuttle cannot be launched in a nebula, so it is not possible to have a Wild Weasel active in a nebula.

The maximum amount of ECM a ship can have outside of a nebula is 12 (a shift of 3). This would come from Self-Generated (6) plus a Wild Weasel (6). Note that Erratic Maneuvering uses enough movement energy to void a Wild Weasel, so the two can never be used simultaneously.

The maximum amount of ECCM a ship can have in SFC is 9. This would come from Self-Generated (6) plus the built-in ECCM of a plasma torpedo (3).

Note to SFB Players: EW only affects weapons in SFC. It does not affect transporters, tractors, or other systems.

EW is the perfect place to send excess power. Many SFC players do this with shield reinforcement, but EW is far more efficient (and easier to monitor). At the beginning of the scenario, set the EW to 6 (5 ECM and 1 ECCM is a good setting, other way around for Fed). You aren't necessarily going to provide that much power to EW, this will serve mostly as an indication of how much power is available. It also makes using ECM very easy, if a ship slows down a little on the way in its EW will go up. If you are ever wasting power and don't realize it, at least it is doing something useful. With the EW panel as your default screen in the small window, the energy display won't dominate use of the large window.

Shields

Shields are critical to success in SFC. Once a shield is down, the enemy will seek to attack that shield; this is the primary concern during maneuver decisions for both players. In SFB the shields were numbered clockwise; the diagram below shows the shield numbers of a ship that is facing the top of the page.

1

6 2

1. 3

Shields #2 and #6 are used during most attacks. The front (#1) and rear (#4) shields are the most important. Without a front shield, a ship cannot effectively pursue an enemy (and approaching an enemy that is willing to engage becomes more difficult as well). Without a rear shield, a ship cannot effectively separate from an enemy, or run to arm weapons. For ships that prefer to keep their distance, such as plasma and disruptor armed ships, the rear shield is the most important shield on the ship. The side aft shields, #3 and #5, are often used during separation after a firing pass (but the #4 shield is exposed once the range begins to open), or during a "knife fight" (a close range turning dogfight).

The player who preserves the #1 and #4 shields for the longest period of time is at a significant advantage. If the front shield can be preserved until late in the battle, it can be used to close to point blank range to deliver a decisive blow to the enemy while taking little, if any, internal damage in return from the damaged enemy. Keeping the rear shield intact preserves the ability to quickly open the range and to run away for extended periods to rearm multi-turn arming weapons.

Conversely, an attacker should always attempt to hit the #1 or #4 shield during the first attack. This does not mean altering the planned tactical approach, when the planned firing position is attained the player should fire. The player should, however, have been attempting to hit one of the two vital shields. Once a shield is damaged, the player should seek to fire on that shield, but again should fire when the planned firing position is attained regardless of shield facing. Once a shield is down, it should always be fired upon when within effective weapon range. PH1's, for example, should always fire on a down shield within 15 hexes (150,000k).

When power is applied to shield reinforcement without specifying a specific shield, "General Reinforcement" is used. This form of reinforcement costs 2 points of power for each point of reinforcement, but provides that reinforcement to whichever shield takes damage. The power cost of General Reinforcement is very inefficient and experienced players seldom use it.

Note to SFB Players: General reinforcement does not create a weak shield in place of a down shield; it cannot be used to block transporters in SFC.

When a specific shield is selected for reinforcement, "Specific Reinforcement" is used. This form of reinforcement costs 1 point of power for each point of reinforcement, but only the selected shield is affected. If multiple shields are selected, the reinforcement is divided among those shields. In other words, if three shields were selected and 3 points of power were applied, each of the three shields would have just one point of reinforcement.

In almost all cases, using shield reinforcement is a mistake. It would be better to use that power to move faster or to power ECM. In SFC you can enable shield reinforcement on a shield and any extra power will flow to the shield. This can be useful, but it is better to use EW in this manner (see Interface Tip above).

Because power flows in real-time, it is good to have reinforcement on if you intend to slow for a knife fight. Any wasted power (beyond EW) will go to the shield, and there are often times in a close range fight when power is being wasted. It can also be a good tactic to put 2 points of reinforcement on the rear shield when using a ship (such as a plasma ship) that must run to recharge. Often the long-range fire of a pursuing enemy is only causing a few points of damage at a time, and the 2 points will make a big difference in the permanent damage that the shield receives. The 2 points (or 1.6, whatever) recharge very quickly and are thus very effective against long range fire. This is only advisable, however, if an equal or better speed can be maintained while providing the reinforcement.

There are other rare circumstances when reinforcement can be useful, but in most cases the power would be better used elsewhere.

Note to SFB Players: Shield reinforcement is more effective in SFC than it was in SFB. When used, it regenerates very quickly. The tactic described above of putting 2 points on the rear shield is very effective due to this fact. But you'll still lose trying to match the enemy's weapon damage with your reinforcement.

Tractor Beams

Tractor beams are fairly simple in SFC. Each ship has a specific number of tractor beams, and a ship cannot simultaneously use more tractor beams than it has. There are two primary uses for tractor beams, offensive and defensive.

You can set defensive tractor beams on the point defense panel; each one activated will hold one drone and keep it from hitting the ship. Eventually, the drone will run out of endurance and disappear (leaving that tractor beam available to hold another drone). Each tractor beam activated in this manner on the point defense panel will use one point of power (energy is used from the point that tractors are enabled, even if no objects are being held).

Offensive tractor beams are used to hold enemy ships, or to break the hold that an enemy ship has on your ship. There are several uses of offensive tractor beams including:

1. You can hold a ship in place in order to capture it with marines (offline only).
2. You can hold a crippled ship in place while your weapons recharge, which is mostly only useful when the ship is so damaged that it cannot penetrate your shields anyway.
3. You can tow a friendly ship that has power problems, such as a Federation DD, so that ship can use its power on arming weapons rather than movement.
4. A less maneuverable ship (like the Federation) can tractor a more maneuverable ship (like the Klingon) during a close turning fight and thus be able to bring the forward weapons into arc. The tractor locks the target in place, simply continuing the speed and turn will quickly bring the target into arc.
5. A ship being pursued will sometimes try to use an HET to come right back at the pursuer in order to shake the pursuer from its tail. If you grab the ship in a tractor beam as it passes by, you can stay with it while you turn around to stay on its tail. It is usually easier, however, to simply do an HET to stay behind the ship.
6. You can hold a ship in a tractor beam and push it into a planet or asteroid, although this is generally considered to be a "cheap" tactic by most players. This was not possible in SFB.
7. You can hold a ship in a tractor beam and push it off of the map edge, which is looked down upon even more than pushing a ship into a planet or asteroid. This was not possible in SFB.
8. And finally, the most common and well-known use of the tractor beam, you can hold a ship in a tractor beam to prevent it from launching shuttles. This is usually done to prevent the ship from launching a Wild Weasel (Sensor Decoy) so that drones or plasma torpedoes will hit the ship rather than being distracted by a Wild Weasel. This tactic is known as "The Gorn Anchor".

Offensive tractor beams operate in two modes, "Hold" and "Repel". You may hear SFB veterans refer to the "Repel" function as "Negative Tractor", which was the term used in SFB. Negative tractor energy negates positive tractor energy; the negative tractor energy must be overcome in order for a tractor attempt to be successful. Therefore, if Ship A has 3 points of "Hold" energy, and Ship B has 3 points of "Repel" energy, Ship A will fail in an attempt to hold Ship B in a tractor. The "Hold" energy must exceed the "Repel" energy of the target in order to successfully hold the target ship.

Note to SFB Players: Negative tractor requires an operable tractor beam in SFC. What's that? That's insane? Yes, it is. If your tractor beams are destroyed and an enemy establishes a tractor link too you, there is pretty much nothing that you can do about it (which is, of course, the whole reason why negative tractor does not require a TRAC in SFB). Your only hope is to try a Hit & Run raid on the tractor, or fire and hope that you destroy his last tractor beam. Combine this with the fact that you can be pushed into things (like planets, asteroids, or the map edge) that will destroy your ship (which violates an unwritten "law" against such situations within the SFB rules), and you have the worst gameplay flaw of SFC right here. Pay attention to whether your tractors are still functioning, if they have all been destroyed don't get within tractor range. That really is the only defense.

Point Defense

"Point Defense" refers to a ship's weapon-based defense against small threats (such as drones and plasma torpedoes). There are only a few forms of point defense in SFC, generally phasers and defensive tractor beams. SFCs automated point defense targets drones and plasma torpedoes.

Phasers are the ultimate form of point defense within SFC. The Phaser-3 and Phaser-G are both designed for point defense. Your PH3s should always be placed on point defense and not be a part of your primary weapon groupings (so that they don’t fire when you fire on enemy ships). They are only useful at extremely short range (2 or less), and as such should only be used within that range. If the enemy does not possess seeking weapons, it is still a good idea to leave the PH3s out of your primary weapon groups since they are only useful at very short range and it is a waste of power to fire them beyond that range.

Gatling phasers (PHG) are the ultimate point defense weapons. Each PHG is capable of firing four PH3 shots on a single charge, and it costs only a single point of power to arm. A single PH3 costs 0.5 points of energy to arm making each PH3 shot from a PHG half as expensive in energy as a PH3. The PHG is also a devastating anti-ship weapon at close range, at range one or less it is better than a fully overloaded photon torpedo (see PHASERS below).

It is usually a good tactic to set all PH3s to point defense, and allow them to protect your ship from drones (and to damage plasma torpedoes). If there are more drones than the PH3s can deal with, turn on defensive tractors to hold them while the PH3s recharge. If there are more than both PH3s and tractors can deal with, use the "V" key (or the icon on the point defense panel) to temporarily set all phasers to point defense. If there are more drones than that, and your speed is not great enough to outrun the drones, that is when it is time to consider launching a Wild Weasel (Sensor Decoy) to distract the drones.

Note that the Klingon "waist phasers", the 4-6 PH2s that fire to the rear, are often treated as PH3s and used for point defense. They are not nearly as efficient in this role (1 power each, instead of 0.5), but are more effective because they are more powerful. They are also more useful against ships than a PH3 because they are effective out to range 5 and do more damage than a PH3 at closer ranges. This is why they are generally termed "offensive/defensive" phasers. PH2s aren’t particularly well suited to either role, but are adequate for both.

Any drone will automatically kill any other drone. Some Federation players like to use their own drones as a means of point defense. Unfortunately, you cannot set drone racks to point defense and this must be done manually in SFC. The space bar targets the nearest hostile seeking weapon, and makes use of drones in self defense possible in most situations.

Each tractor beam can be used to hold an enemy drone and prevent it from reaching the ship. Any phasers set to point defense will destroy drones held in a tractor beam as they become armed and ready to fire. Each tractor beam used for this purpose costs one point of power to operate (this power is consumed continuously once the beam is readied). It is to your advantage to allow the PH3s to kill the drones held in defensive tractor beams as the cost (in power) of a PH3 is less than a defensive tractor. It will take several turns for a drone to run out of endurance, while the PH3 will cost half the amount of energy and rearm in less than a turn.

By far, the best defense against seeking weapons is high speed (24+). This is especially true of plasma torpedoes, which cannot be held in a tractor beam and are only marginally effected by phasers. For every 2 points of damage scored on a plasma torpedo, the warhead strength is decreased by 1. This is terribly inefficient, and will have little effect on full strength plasma torpedoes (those that will hit within 100,000k of movement). The best defense against these weapons is a speed of 31, to run away from them. After running them out of strength, phasers can then be used to reduce them even further and minimize the damage they cause.

Speed is also the best defense against drones. Most drones aren’t as fast as your ship, so if you move at high speed (24+) the drones will only catch up to the ship when it turns (turning allows a pursuing unit to close the range). Even if the drones are faster than the ship, running away from them at high speed will often buy enough time for phasers to recharge to fire a second (or even third) volley at the drone wave.

Shuttles

Shuttles are highly simplified in SFC. Ships do not come with their full complement of shuttles. In fact, they don’t come with any shuttles at all. In SFC rather than arming shuttles with power, you purchase them for BPV prior to the scenario. If you don’t purchase any shuttles for a ship, the ship will not have any shuttles (not even administrative shuttles). Ships can hold more shuttles in SFC than in SFB, the maximum number of shuttles that a ship can carry can be seen in the "Space Dock".

Note to SFB Players: The way that shuttles are handled in SFC is perplexingly strange (it was probably an effort to minimize the interface). You’ll have to buy whatever shuttles you want to have, raising the ship’s BPV for items that are supposed to be included in that cost. You will also find that you can have many more shuttles than you should be able to have. On the plus side is the small part of the decision that makes some kind of sense. You won’t have to worry about applying power to arm and hold Suicide or Wild Weasel shuttles while doing all of the other stuff you have to do; you can just launch them when the time is right.

This is the standard utility shuttle. All shuttle types are actually just different ways of using this shuttle, although that fact is not entirely obvious due to the way that shuttles are handled in SFC. These shuttles are extremely fast; they can reach speed 20. For you non-veterans, the maximum speed of this shuttle is supposed to be 6 (or 12 with "Warp Booster Packs", which cut the points needed to destroy them in half). SFC does not support the functions that these shuttles were used for in SFB (transporting boarding parties, scientific observation, etc.) so just think of them as weak fighters. Launch them after the enemy has lost 2 or more shields, and launch all of them at once.

Note to SFB Players: Administrative shuttles can go speed 20 in SFC, which is pretty fast for an admin shuttle. This effectively turns admin shuttles into weak fighters, and you should use them that way. If you have any admin shuttles, keep them in the shuttle bay until two or more enemy shields are down. Then launch them so that they can harass the enemy by shooting their PH3s through the downed shields. A "squadron" of six admin shuttles is actually pretty dangerous to a ship with 2 or more downed shields, and it can take a while to target and destroy them all. Point defense ignores shuttles, and they are very hard to see and target, so it is a real pain to deal with shuttles. Alternatively, get the other players to agree to ban the use of admin shuttles, because this really is silly.

This shuttle is essentially a drone (missile) that does 18 points of damage if it strikes the target. These were expensive to arm in SFB (3 points of power over three turns), and were usually only useful as an occasional surprise for an opponent who always fired all weapons (and thus had nothing left to deal with the unexpected shuttle). In SFC, it’s easy to miss (i.e. not notice) a shuttle, and they are very fast, so an SS is more useful in SFC than it was in SFB (especially considering that they don’t take any power to arm or hold).

The usefulness of this type of shuttle depends on the skill of your opponent. If your opponent is an ace who never moves slower than speed 24 a scatter pack is next to useless. The slow drones will only hit if you can tractor the enemy ship, and even then attacker will have to come to a stop (emergency decelerate) to serve as a true "anchor" to slow the target down (or turn toward the scatter pack). The drones of a scatter pack only move at speed 16, no matter how fast the drones in your racks are. If you know your opponent always moves at a high speed, don't waste any points on a scatter pack. Conversely, if you know that your opponent usually moves slowly, buy as many scatter packs as you can.

This is an excellent example of the prime axiom of SFB tactics; "speed is life." The QA department probably made the decision that "scatter packs are too powerful with drones faster than slow". They were playing slow, which most newer players do, and weren't facing anyone that was playing fast, so the best knife fighters were ruling the day. They convinced themselves that the ace SFB players were wrong, as most newer SFB players do, and that you could do well moving at low speeds. They were wrong, and as a result SFC has scatter pack shuttles that are totally worthless against an experienced SFB veteran. At speed 16, they really aren't a threat to any ship moving at speed 24 or higher, which almost all ships do during attacks.

Note to SFB Players: I agree with you, they should be the same speed as the drones in the racks. See… I’m psychic! J

A Wild Weasel (Sensor Decoy) is primarily used to distract enemy seeking weapons (plasma torpedoes, drones, and suicide shuttles). It also provides 6 points of ECM while active, and can be used to provide a large ECM shift (combined with self-generated ECM) against direct fire weapons. The most common use, by far, is to distract seeking weapons. The main drawback of the Wild Weasel is that the launching ship must be at speed 4 or less in order for the Wild Weasel to function. Firing any weapons (or using tractors or transporters) will also "void" the Wild Weasel, and any seeking weapons will revert to tracking the originally targeted ship.

In most circumstances, it will be necessary to use Emergency Deceleration in order to launch a Wild Weasel. Usually there will not be enough time to decelerate by normal means. This leaves the ship at speed 0 for quite some time, which can be a dangerous situation. However, while stopping can still get you killed, in all likelihood, nothing bad will happen too you as a result of using Emergency Deceleration in SFC. It’s just too quick and easy to get back up to speed and out of trouble in SFC. So, although many will warn against the use of the Wild Weasel, you can safely ignore them and use Wild Weasels as needed. In SFB using a Wild Weasel is often simply a means of prolonging your destruction; this simply is not the case in SFC. Just be certain to get back up to speed as quickly as possible after using a WW (or Emergency Deceleration).

Launching a Wild Weasel will automatically emergency decelerate the ship. However, it will not turn off point defense weapons, and if those weapons fire they will void the Wild Weasel. Remember to turn off all point defense weapons (and tractors, transporters, etc.) before using a Wild Weasel or they will fire at the seeking weapons and void the Wild Weasel. Don't just use the "All" function, use the "All" key to turn point defense off and then check the weapons panel to make sure the PH3s aren't still on (sometimes they are).

Boarding Parties

Boarding Parties (also known as "Marines") can be used to capture a ship, or to perform a "Hit & Run" (H&R) raid. Capturing ships is fairly straightforward, covered in the SFC manual, and not a part of multiplayer SFC. This section covers H&R raids.

H&R raids are very powerful in SFC, much more so than in SFB. In SFB players could use their own boarding parties to "guard" specific systems that were important to them. Using guards meant that there were less boarding parties available to conduct H&R raids, which meant they were used less often. It also meant that the raids were less successful when they were conducted, because the guards made enemy H&R raids less effective. On top of those issues, it was also much more difficult to find the opportunity perform a H&R raid in SFB, because the enemy would never miss an opportunity to fire through the downed shield as so often happens in the truly real-time SFC. In SFB H&R raids were normally only conducted after an exchange of fire left both ships with downed shields facing each other.

H&R raids allow you to target specific enemy systems, unlike weapon damage that is governed by the Damage Allocation Chart (DAC). This makes them a very powerful form of attack, since the attacker has the ability to target the enemy’s most precious systems. The best targets for H&R raids are the systems that are most important to the enemy, and which take the longest amount of time to repair. The drone racks on a drone variant, the ESGs on a Lyran ship, the heavy plasma launchers on a Gorn or Romulan ship, the photon launchers on a Federation ship, or the shuttle bay or hellbore cannons on a Hydran ship. These systems are not only vital to the enemy, but also take a long time to repair giving you a longer time to take advantage of the situation while simultaneously tying up the enemy’s repair crews.

There is a danger in preparing H&R raids, because they are automatic. The computer will sometimes decide to lower your shield in order to send H&R raids onto the enemy ship. Due to lag, the enemy doesn’t always see the shield lower when this happens, but he knows to fire when he hears the sound of transporters. Because of this, many players only set up H&R raids after the fight has progressed, to avoid taking a crippling blow early on due to automated H&R raids. Others use them only in specific situations.

Some players prefer to have a "gentleman’s rule" of not using H&R raids. This is understandable because they are so much more effective and common than they are in SFB. If someone asks you if you are willing to ban H&Rs for the game, there is no need to insult them. Some SFC players dislike H&R raids because they are much more powerful than they were in SFB. They will probably be willing to play with them if you want; they just prefer to play without them.

Damage Control

Damage control is a ship’s ability to repair systems that have been damaged in combat during a scenario. A second form of repair exists in the campaign, where all damage may be repaired instantly for a prestige cost between scenarios (i.e. "missions"). This section deals with mid-game repair.

Note to SFB Players: Damage control in SFC uses "spare parts". While spare parts are not a part of SFB, they do closely approximate the "Damage Control Track" used in SFB. There are differences, however, in that spare parts are a representation of SFB’s "Continuous Damage Repair" rules; "Emergency Damage Repair" is not present in SFC, nor is the "Hasty Repair" option associated with CDR. Additionally, power systems repair automatically in SFC; as time goes by, destroyed engine power will "self-repair". You can also have more spare parts than the "damage control rating" of a ship.

Each spare part allows the repair of a single system (a "bank" of weapons is considered to be a single system for purposes of repair in SFC). Some systems take longer to repair than others, the more powerful/useful a system is the longer it will take to repair. The best repair choice largely depends on the ship, and there are too many ships to cover specifically in this document. In general, any system that is vital to the tactics of a given race is usually worth repairing immediately. For example Lyran ESGs, Romulan and Gorn plasma launchers, Hydran hellbore cannons, and Federation photon torpedoes are all good candidates for repair. However, if a lot of power has been damaged, it is usually better to use the spare parts on PH1s. They are much cheaper to arm, repair fairly quickly, and dish out more damage for the power put into them than almost any other weapon. It is usually not worth repairing gatling phasers (maybe if it is the only system damaged in an early exchange) in SFC, because the SFC order of precedence for phaser damage is not the same as in SFB (D4.3221) and PHGs are always hit first.

Drone racks are often not worth repairing. When a drone rack is destroyed, all of the drones that were in the rack are destroyed with it. In SFC, the racks are always full unless the rack is "recharging" (in which case one drone is missing). This means that larger racks will result in a loss of more drones than smaller racks should one be destroyed by damage. If there were only a few reload drones remaining when the rack was destroyed, it isn’t worth repairing. If there were many reload drones remaining when the rack was destroyed, there are probably enough reloads to be worth repairing the rack. Unfortunately, if a rack is destroyed the panel for that rack does not display the number of reloads remaining, so you will have to guess at weather it is worth repairing or not based on how many reloads you think the rack has remaining. See DRONE RACKS in the WEAPONS section for a more comprehensive discussion of drone racks.

When weapons penetrate the shields and cause damage to systems, much more is actually going on than meets the eye. The damage in SFC is governed by SFB’s "Damage Allocation Chart" (DAC). The first three columns of the DAC are reproduced below, to provide an understanding of how the system works. The actual DAC is 13 columns long, rather than three, but three columns is enough for this example.

The first column on the DAC, the "A row", contains many of the most critical systems. Notice that those critical systems are in bold type. The bold type means that once that system has been hit during a "volley" (the damage sustained from a single firing of a group of weapons) that system cannot be hit again during that volley. If the same result is called for a second time, the "A row" is skipped and a system on the "B row" is damaged instead. Any system listed in bold can only be hit once per volley. In SFC a "volley" is all weapons which hit within 1.5 seconds of each other, so if you count "1001, 1002" between firing you will be causing separate volleys. By causing multiple volleys of internal damage, rather than a single massive volley, the boldface "once per volley" systems are reset and eligible to be hit again.

This is one of the more fundamental and well-known tactical concepts of SFB, and is known as "The Mizia Concept" (named after the person who first pointed it out, Walter Mizia). In general, a single massive volley will cause more damage to power systems, while a "Mizia Attack" will rapidly strip a target of weapons while causing less damage to power systems. This can be seen on the chart above where a single massive volley would reach the "C row", where numerous slots are power systems that can be hit repeatedly during a single volley.

Note to SFB Players: All ships in SFC have double strength shields and double internals. This fact has probably driven some serious SFB players away from SFC. There isn’t room here to even begin to discuss the effects that this has on the game, and as an SFB veteran you can probably contemplate many of those effects for yourself anyway. However, you should realize that non-SFB players would never have been able to play with single shields and internals because the nature of an "SFB illiterate" in real-time is to close to point blank range and fire. In SFC this takes down a shield and causes some internals, in SFB this action pretty much ends the scenario. Each turn in SFB is supposed to represent about 1 minute of real time, an average one-on-one duel between CAs generally lasts 6-10 turns. Well, SFB just works and with single internals that same CA duel would take about the same 6-10 minutes with single internals in SFC. Double internals and shields make 30-60 minute duels between veterans possible. It does change the game somewhat, but it does also have its good points.

With that said, SFB veterans should note that double internals are handled in a specific way when it comes to system hits. Each system can be hit twice, so the first hit temporarily "stuns" the system (making it unusable for a few seconds) while the second hit destroys it. This, obviously, creates the tactic of firing some weapons during the approach (at range 4-8) to a target with a down shield in an attempt to stun the targets weapons. When the opportunity present itself, this tactic allows the attacker to make an overrun attack while taking less of a counterstrike at range 0 (due to the weapons that were stunned during the approach). In other words, even though they require two hits to destroy, you can still knock out enemy weapons with pre-emptive fire.

The simple "Hull Integrity" meter present in SFC, the "hit point bar" as non-SFB players are likely to think of it, is much more than a meter showing total damage. It is a representation of all of the systems on a ship, which do actually exist so that the DAC can work properly. Systems like Hull, Lab, Cargo, Transporters, Tractors, and Impulse Engines do exist in SFC; they are simply represented abstractly by the Hull Integrity meter so as not to clutter the ship display. Each ship does, in fact, have the proper number of each system and each is represented on the internal DAC; you just never see any of this.

This meter displays based on the relative BPV value of each system so, for example, if a Romulan Warbird loses its Type-R launcher a significant portion of the Hull Integrity meter would become depleted. If the ship repairs the launcher, a significant portion would be replenished. In other words, the more valuable a system is the larger "chunk" of the Hull Integrity meter will be gone if that system is destroyed (or be restored if that system is repaired).

Energy

In SFC energy is represented as "points of energy". Understanding how energy is used by the ship is very important. The total energy each ship can generate is a "per turn" rate. Each weapon or system costs a certain amount of energy per turn. Energy is distributed by a priority list (shown below). If sufficient power is not available for all desired functions, systems do not receive energy based on the priority list. The "battery" provides flexibility, allowing a ship to briefly exceed maximum energy output without losing power in any active systems. For example, this is particularly useful in preventing a loss of electronic warfare after firing (when the weapons recharge). A full battery will provide several seconds of charge and prevent EW from deactivating.

Note to SFB Players: Reserve power is not present in SFC. There are batteries, which serve as a means of temporarily exceeding maximum power, but reserve power as it existed in SFB does not exist in SFC. The reason is obvious. Reserve power is a source of power that is flexible during the turn. In SFC all power is flexible during the turn, so reserve power is not needed.

SFC uses an automated version of rule (D22.0). When power systems are damaged, systems lose energy in a specific order. In SFC, this also controls which ship systems are left un-powered when there is not enough energy available for everything. The priority list is…

#1 - Battery

#2 - Shield Reinforcement

#3 - Electronic Warfare

#4 - Heavy Weapon charging (power is never drawn out of the weapon)

#5 - Phaser charging (power is never drawn out of the capacitor)

#6 - Tractor

An important point to consider is that the balancing of energy is handled automatically by these priorities. If a ship fires while moving at maximum speed, first shield reinforcement and then electronic warfare will begin to lose power as the weapons recharge. Electronic warfare can be maintained by sliding the phaser capacitor slider all the way to the left, and putting the amount of energy it takes to arm the heavy weapons into the shield that will face during the attack. When the weapons are fired only the heavy weapons will draw power and will take that power from the shield (which was probably already knocked down anyway). Power can also be made available by slowing by a few points just before the attack (with full batteries slowing by just 4 energy points will help them to last much longer to keep the ECM up). As soon as the enemy fires (presumably the reason for maintaining ECM) turn the phaser capactior back on and speed up.

The ship reference fold out that came with your game includes a "Weapon Damage Table". You should reference that table as needed while reviewing this section.

"Crunch Power"

The term "crunch power" is used to describe the "single impulse" (i.e. single firing) damage of a weapon. It is also used to describe the single firing damage of all the weapons of a ship. For example, the disruptor does very little damage, but fires once per turn. The photon torpedo does more damage than a disruptor per firing, but only fires once every two turns (doing the same amount of damage as a disruptor over two turns). Some players prefer the flexibility of the disruptor while other players prefer the "crunch power" of the photon torpedo. It can also be said that Federation ships have more "crunch power" than Klingon ships.

Range

Range in SFC might be a little confusing at first, but is easy to understand. Range 0 - 0.99 is "range 0", range 1 - 1.99 is "range 1", range 2 - 2.99 is "range 2", and so on. SFB players might take a few games to adjust to this. Remember, for example, that a radius 3 ESG will hit you at range 3.99, a tractor is effective out to range 3.99, and overloads may be fired at range 8.99. None of this is a change from SFB. In fact, it solves the old "range 0 firing arc problem".

Phasers

Phasers are the most energy efficient weapons in the game; they do more damage for the energy put into them than any other weapon. Phasers are also the most versatile weapon in the game, able to fire effectively at any target. Electronic Warfare generally has less of an effect on phasers than it does on heavy weapons. The phaser is the most important weapon on any ship.

Phasers draw power from the phaser capacitor. The phaser capacitor is essentially a rechargeable battery that holds enough power to fire every phaser on the ship one time. When phasers fire, their icons show that they are "empty". Individual phasers do not recharge like the heavy weapons do, the capacitor recharges. You have probably noticed that you do not see the phasers slowly refill after firing. This is because with phasers the status indicated is their readiness to fire, not the power level as is the case with heavy weapons. There is a time limit between when any given phaser will be ready to fire again. When the phaser icon brightens, that time limit has expired and the phaser is once again eligible to fire. The status of the phasers has nothing to do with available energy.

The "Phaser Capacitor" on the top of the screen shows the energy that is available to phasers. The amount of power it holds is equal to the amount of energy required to fire each phaser on the ship one time. Any phaser can use the available power in the capacitor. If you fire half the phasers on a ship, and do not recharge the energy drawn from the full capacitor, you can use the other half of the energy in the capacitor to fire those same phasers again as soon as they are "cycled" and ready to fire again. The pointer on the top of the phaser capacitor is the current recharge rate. If it is all the way to the right, the capacitor will draw an amount of power equal to the power required to charge all phasers (e.g. 6 power for six PH1s) in a single "turn". If the slider is at the halfway point the capacitor will draw enough power to charge half of the phasers (e.g. 3 power for six PH1s) in a single turn. The lower the recharge rate, the longer it will take for the capacitor to become fully charged.

This is the best of the ship-mounted phasers, it draws 1 unit of energy from the capacitor when fired. It does a respectable amount of damage out to range 8 (80,000k), a good amount of damage out to range 5 (50,000k), and is absolutely lethal at range 1 (10,000k) or less. The PH1 is also effective out to range 15 (150,000k) for long-range sniping. If you are pursuing a fleeing enemy, this weapon will gradually wear away the rear shield of that enemy. Beyond range 15, the PH1 can still cause damage, but becomes inefficient. Still, it is worth firing PH1s at a downed shield out to a range of 25 (250,000k) if no other threats are nearby.

The PH2 requires the same amount of energy as the PH1, but is far less effective. This phaser is relatively infective past range 8 (80,000k), although it can be worth firing at a downed shield out to range 15. Range 3 (30,000k) or less, is this weapon's optimum range. This is an "offensive/defensive" phaser that is suitable for both point defense and anti-ship roles, but not particularly efficient at either of them. It is often best, especially on rear "waist phasers" present on Klingon ships, to set these phasers to point defense.

The PH3 is a purely defensive weapon that draws just 0.5 energy from the capacitor when fired. All PH3s should be set to point defense and removed from your primary weapon groupings so that they will not be fired at ships. The main purpose of the PH3 is drone defense. If there is no drone threat, these weapons are effective against ships at a range of 2 (20,000k) or less, with range 1 (10,000k) or less providing a significant improvement in damage. Beyond range 3 (30,000k), the PH3 is nearly useless.

This phaser is mounted only on bases. It is the most efficient weapon in the game, causing more damage than a photon torpedo for just 2 points of power. It also requires only a single turn to arm.

The gatling phaser is a viscous weapon and has a well-earned respect among experienced SFB players. A PHG is a single weapon capable of firing up to four PH3 shots on a single charge, it draws only 1 unit of energy from the capacitor when fired. It is the ultimate point defense weapon, and at range 1 (10,000k) or less is as powerful as an overloaded photon torpedo. The PHG at close range is, in fact, better than a photon torpedo because it does not cause feedback damage and is effected by electronic warfare to a far lesser degree (in addition to costing only a single point of power to arm, in one turn).

Holding Weapons

Once armed, most heavy weapons are "held". The "hold cost" is less than the arming cost of the weapon (usually half). A "held" weapon is fully armed and ready to fire. A ship is faster when holding its heavy weapons, as compared to arming them, because the energy cost is less. Phasers do not have a "hold" cost; they use the phaser capacitor (which costs no energy to operate).

Fast Loading

Due to the manner by which heavy weapons draw power in SFC, it is possible to "fast load" most energy-based heavy weapons. This is accomplished by arming the weapon as an overload and then switching it to a normal load once it is half charged. Any heavy weapon except plasma torpedoes, including disruptors, can be armed by this method. The only disadvantage is that overloads require more power than standard loads, so the ship must slow down more to arm weapons in this manner. Obviously, the resulting weapon will not be overloaded, and there is no method of fast loading overloads.

This greatly affects the balance of the game as compared to SFB. It is less useful for photon torpedoes (in most circumstances), where the greatest value of the weapon is the "crunch power" of the overloaded photon torpedo. It is also less useful for fusion beams, which have a "cool down" time of 1 turn which largely negates the usefulness of fast loading (and fusions, like photons, rely on the crunch power of their overload mode). Fast loading is, however, extremely useful for both disruptors and hellbore cannons. Disrtuptors are made even more flexible by allowing "half-turn" standard loads in addition to the standard and overload functions. The accurate hellbore cannon, with its powerful standard load damage, becomes the best heavy weapon in the game as it can fire its accurate, facing independent shot, every turn.

Note to SFB Players: This is the most serious balance flaw of SFC. Unlike SFB, weapons can be "un-overloaded", which is the cause of this problem. Not only does it alter the general tactics of the game at the most fundamental level; it also alters the balance between the heavy weapons. All weapons become more useful, but hellbores and disruptors receive a greater benefit than other weapons (making them better relative to the other weapons than they were in SFB). You have to pay the arming cost of an overload to do it, which means slowing down significantly, but that isn’t always a problem (while the enemy is rearming).

Photon Torpedo

The photon torpedo is one of the most powerful weapons in the game. It is also an extremely versatile weapon, with three modes of operation. Only Hydran fusion beams and gatling phasers rival the photon torpedo in direct-fire damage potential. The plasma torpedo, while more powerful, is a seeking weapon which means that it can be defeated in several ways that a direct-fire weapon cannot be (high speed, wild weasel, etc.) The only drawbacks of the photon torpedo is that it is not very accurate, takes two turns to arm, and requires a fairly large amount of power to arm.

As previously mentioned, the photon torpedo is not very accurate. Due to this fact, and the fact that they take two turns to arm, photon torpedoes are highly susceptible to electronic warfare. When using this weapon, careful attention must be given to the current electronic warfare status of the target. If at all possible, you should never fire if the enemy has a favorable shift of any kind. Adjust your ECCM and wait for it to counter the enemy ECM before firing. A quick look at the weapon table for the photon torpedo reveals just how much of an effect even a small ECM shift will have on this weapon.

The critical ranges for the photon torpedo are 0-1, where it can't miss assuming no ECM shift, but causes feedback damage. 2, where it is very accurate and does not cause feedback damage. 4, where it is reasonably accurate (67%) and outmatches most other weapons. 8, the outer edge of overloaded weapon range (50%). 13, the furthest distance for firing proximity warheads with a 67% chance of hitting, and 30 (50% proximity, where massed firings from a fleet can do serious damage while outside the effective range of most other weapons).

The photon torpedo is unique among direct-fire weapons in that the damage it causes does not degrade with range. At all ranges, 0-8, an overloaded photon does 16 points of damage. A normal photon does 8 points of damage from range 0 to 30, and a proximity photon does 4 points from 9 to 30. It is the only direct-fire weapon with this property.

Standard loads (8 points of damage each) are rarely used in SFB, but are more common in SFC. In SFB photons were normally fired as overloads within range 8, and proximity fuse beyond range 8. In SFC, you can "fast load" normal (and proximity) photons by arming them as overloads and switching to normal (or proximity) halfway through the arming process. This makes normal loads much more useful, as they can be armed faster than overloads. If, for example, an enemy makes an attack run and the torpedoes are only halfway armed, the Federation player can simply switch to normal loads and they will be ready to fire. This is a very useful ability, and should usually be used (unless the opponent is moving very fast).

This is the most common setting for photon torpedoes. Using normal loads gives up the Federation’s primary advantage, the crunch power of the overloaded photon torpedo (16 points of damage each). Whenever possible, overloads should be used. Overloads are most effective, due to the sub-par accuracy, when fired within range 4 (40,000k) with no ECM shift working against them (67%). The accuracy improves at range 2 (20,000k), where they have an 83% chance of hitting and do not cause feedback damage. The range 0-1 "alpha strike" of a Federation ship with overloaded photons is one of the most lethal attacks in all of SFC. The photons don't miss (1-6 die roll, ECM can cause a miss) and PH1s are extremely powerful at range 0 (0-.99) or 1.

The time to not use overloaded photons is when high speed is essential. Photon torpedoes require large amounts of power to arm, and high speed is not an option while arming them. One tactic common when speed is essential is to arm normal photons, and then switch to overloads once it is safe to slow down. If maximum speed is necessary, it will probably be necessary to take one or more photon tubes offline. The energy requirement is the greatest disadvantage of the photon torpedo; it causes Federation ships to move at a slower speed than most other ships. This makes the Federation one of the more difficult races to master. A player who does master the Federation is, however, always a frightening opponent.

This is the long-range option of the photon torpedo (4 points of damage each). The energy requirement is identical to that of a normal load torpedo, but a proximity fuse torpedo does half the damage. A proximity photon cannot be fired at a range of 8 (80,000k) or less, but is more accurate between range 9 (90,000k) and 30 (300,000k). While this option can be useful, it can also be dangerous. If an enemy is approaching at high speed (24+) there is a good chance that the enemy will be able to reach range 0 before the photons have a chance to rearm if the Federation ship does not move away from the approaching ship. A player fighting a Federation ship often sees the firing of proximity torpedoes as an opportunity to charge the Federation ship, so the photon armed player must be wary of this.

Fast loading is not as useful for the photon torpedo as it is for some other heavy weapons because the photon torpedo relies on the crunch power of its overloaded function. It is, however, still a useful function in some circumstances, such as when an enemy closes the range while the tubes are only half-charged.

Disruptor

The disruptor is arguably the most flexible heavy weapon in the game (with the plasma torpedo being its only competitor in that regard). It can be armed in a single turn, providing more firing opportunities and greater tactical flexibility. The price of this flexibility is "crunch power"; the ability to deliver a crushing blow. The disruptor is statistically equal to the photon torpedo in terms of damage, but divides that damage over two firings where the photon delivers it in a single blast. In the truly real time environment of SFC finesse tactics are more difficult than in the semi real-time environment of SFB. It takes great skill to master the disruptor in SFC, with the primary difficulty being the ability to keep your distance from the enemy.

There are three "types" of disruptors in SFC. The type has no effect on damage; it merely denotes the maximum range of the weapon. The largest ships have "Type 4" disruptors with a maximum range of 40 (400,000k). Heavy and war cruisers have Type-3 disruptors with a maximum range of 30 (300,000k). Light cruisers and some destroyers have "Type 2" disruptors with a maximum range of 22 (220,000k). Destroyers and frigates have "Type 1" disruptors with a maximum range of 15 (150,000k).

Disruptors cannot be held. Once armed, the arming cost is continually drawn from power systems until the weapon is fired. When using a ship armed with disruptors, the player must pay close attention to the status of the disruptors. More than any other weapon, the captain needs to switch disruptors between standard, overload, and offline on a regular basis in order to maintain the best balance of speed and firepower.

Disruptor armed ships use the standard load function more often than most other ships. The fact that the weapon arms in a single turn makes the use of standard loads a more attractive option than it is for other weapons. Disruptors are also very accurate, even at long range, which contributes greatly to the value of their standard load function. Standard loads are also much cheaper to arm, which allows the ship to maintain a higher speed, and high speed is very important to disruptor armed ships due to the low crunch power of their weapons.

A good tactic for a disruptor armed ship is to maintain a high speed, keep its distance from the enemy, and fire standard disruptors and PH1s from range 15 (150,000k). The disruptor armed ship will often perform a "looping" turn in order to accomplish this, rearming as it swings around to once again return to range 15 (some players prefer a "figure eight" pattern). This cannot be accomplished without maintaining a significant speed advantage over the enemy. This tactic is known as "The Klingon Saber Dance", and can be very effective. It is very difficult to do in SFC, but not impossible, it simply requires a significant speed advantage (8 or more faster than the enemy) in order to work.

The overload function can be difficult for disruptor armed ships to use effectively. Often a disruptor ship is trying its best to avoid overload range, and doesn’t have the time to arm overloads when it gets caught at close range. On the other hand, a disruptor armed ship performing "The Klingon Saber Dance" will occasionally attempt to catch the enemy off-guard by arming overloads and coming to close range. If the disruptor ship has been successfully staying outside of overload range, the enemy might start arming his own heavy weapons as standard loads in order to return fire. It is at this point that a disruptor ship will surprise the enemy by arming overloads and closing to point blank range. This is, in fact, "the other half" of the Klingon Saber Dance; forcing the enemy to arm standard weapons and forfeit his crunch power advantage so that the disruptor armed ship can outgun the enemy at close range with its overloads against the enemy’s standard loads.

This can be a valuable option for a disruptor armed ship, especially against a slow moving opponent. If the enemy is moving slow enough to maintain the range while paying for overloads, use the fast load bug. With rapid firing disruptors combined with PH1s from range 15 a disruptor armed ship will quickly wear away the enemy’s shields while taking very little damage in return. If, however, the enemy is moving at high speed, the fast loads become less useful as the energy requirement would allow the enemy to catch the dirsuptor ship.

All weapons can be placed offline, but for the single turn arming disruptors (which cannot be held) this is a very important ability. A disruptor ship has little energy invested in its heavy weapons, and they can be rearmed quickly. Disruptor ships are the fastest ships in the galaxy when their disruptors are offline. Speed 31 with 4 points of ECM is not much of a problem for most disruptor armed ships when the disruptors are offline. The ability to simply dump the heavy weapons, make a maximum speed dash while protected by ECM, and then quickly have the heavy weapons ready to fire again is a powerful one. Don’t think twice about wasting the power in the disruptors in this manner, it is one of a disruptor armed ship's greatest advantages.

Fusion Beam

The fusion beam is extremely powerful at short range, but nearly useless beyond that. It is not worth firing fusion beams beyond range 2 (20,000k); range 2 should be considered "long range" for the fusion beam. It is best to fire fusion beams at range 0. Most Hydran ships that carry large numbers of fighters are armed with this weapon, while the ships that carry fewer fighters are generally armed with hellbore cannons. Most ships with fusion beams also have gatling phasers, which are also an extremely powerful weapon at range 0 or 1. The combination of fusion beams and PHGs is a deadly one at extremely close range (1 or less). Due to this combination of weapons, a fusion armed Hydran ship has more crunch power than any other equivalent ship.

Fusion beams arm in a single turn, but have a one turn "cool down" time after firing. This means that it essentially takes two turns to arm a fusion beam. The advantage of the cool down time is that no power is needed during the first turn which gives the fusion armed ship extra power during that turn as opposed to if it had to spend that power arming the fusion beams.

Due to the fact that the whole point of the fusion beam is to deliver a tremendous amount of damage at close range, the standard load function is not very useful. Even more than the photon torpedo, the value of this weapon is in its crunch power. A standard load fusion beam is slightly more powerful than a PH1 at range 0, roughly equivalent to a PH1 at range 1 (10,000k), and less effective than a PH1 at range 2 and beyond (20,000k).

The overloaded function should almost always be used. At range 0 the fusion beam is a lethal weapon. It causes significantly more damage than a photon torpedo and is almost totally unaffected by electronic warfare. Damage drops off significantly at range 1 (10,000k), and is hardly worth firing at range 2 (20,000k). The tactics of fusion armed ships revolve around their fighters, which generally soak up enemy firepower while the fusion armed ship closes to range 0 against an enemy weakened by the fighters.

This option was not used often in SFB. In SFC, the damage caused by suicide overloads is four times the damage of a standard load (rather than two times as in SFB). This makes this option much more attractive. Firing a fusion beam in this mode destroys the fusion beam, and causes 2 points of internal damage to the firing ship.

Note to SFB Players: The double internals kind of make up for this, in a way, so you can’t just incinerate a ship with suicide overloads on the first pass. It does, however, allow you to win if you still have fusion beams and can hit a down shield. If the enemy has several down shields, so that you can be reasonably certain that you will be able to hit one of them up close, the scenario is over. Arm all suicide loads and go blow it up.

The fast load bug is only useful in quickly arming standard loads. Due to the fact that standard load fusion beams are rarely used, and a cool down time prevents them from charging for a turn anyway, the fast load option is not important to fusion armed ships.

Hellbore Cannon

The hellbore cannon is a unique weapon. The damage caused by a hellbore is divided in half, with half the damage applied to the weakest shield (regardless of facing) and the other half divided equally among the other five shields. In addition to this it is very accurate and is only marginally affected by electronic warfare. Another valuable quality of the hellbore cannon is that it is the most powerful standard load direct-fire weapon; no other direct-fire weapon is as powerful when fired in standard mode.

It is usually best to significantly weaken a shield before beginning to wear away at the enemy with hellbores. Taking a shield down is even better. Barely entering overload range to fire phasers, followed by an initial volley of overloaded hellbores, is an excellent way to begin a fight with a hellbore armed Hydran. After that, the Hydran can attempt to remain at medium range (15) and wear away at the enemy with standard load hellbores. Shield facing is irrelivant, and the hellbore will cause internals with every hit once a shield is down, making this a very effective tactic.

The hellbore cannon is the most effective medium range weapon in the game. It is even superior to disruptors at medium range, because it always applies most of its damage to the enemy’s weakest shield (regardless of facing) and has comparable accuracy. The ever-present Hydran gatling phasers also help in deterring an enemy from closing to point blank range. While a Klingon is fairly vulnerable while rearming between medium range firings, the Hydran still packs quite a punch for any enemy that approaches during the rearming cycle due to the gatling phasers.

A standard hellbore is very expensive to arm compared to other standard load weapons. It costs 3 points of energy for two turns in order to arm a standard hellbore. This is the weapon’s only major drawback. Fortunately, most hellbore armed ships have sufficient power to maintain a reasonably high speed while arming standard hellbores.

Like most heavy weapons, the overloaded hellbore cannon causes 50% more damage for 100% more energy. It costs 6 power for two turns in order to arm an overloaded hellbore. This makes the overloaded hellbore cannon the most energy hungry direct-fire weapon in SFC. Even with their excellent power curve, only a few Hydran ships are capable of maintaining a high speed (24+) while arming overloaded hellbores. While this is a serious drawback, the hitting power and accuracy of the standard load hellbore cannon somewhat compensate for this.

No weapon benefits more from the "fast load" bug than the hellbore cannon. The ability to fire this weapon from medium range 9 (90,000k) – 15 (150,000k) once per turn is a significant balance problem. The dominant tactic of a hellbore armed ship in SFC should be to attempt to remain outside of range 15, entering range 15 briefly to fire fast armed standard load weapons. If the enemy speeds up to close the range, simply switch to standard arming and let them arm at the normal rate to free up enough power to maintain the distance. This not a foolproof tactic, but it is an extremely powerful and effective one.

Note to SFB Players: The "fast load" bug is a pretty serious flaw SFC. The hellbore cannon is where it manifests itself in its strongest form. You are probably already thinking of other "fast load" hellbore tactics as you read this. Remember that the Federation can respond with single turn proximity photons, the Klingon with ½ turn disruptors, etc. Still, it would be a much better game if this problem did not exist.

Plasma Torpedo

The plasma torpedo is a seeking weapon. It travels on the map at speed 40 (32 in SFB) which makes its use difficult as compared to a direct-fire weapon. A plasma torpedo can be outrun, reduced by phaser damage, or distracted by a Wild Weasel (Sensor Decoy). Its warhead weakens as it travels through space, which means that firing at a target that is moving away at high speed is inadvisable. Conversely, a target that is moving directly toward the launching ship is the optimal situation (see PLASMA BALLET in the ADVANCED MOVEMENT CONCEPTS section for a more detailed discussion of movement related aspects of the plasma torpedo).

The plasma torpedo is the most powerful weapon in SFC, provided that it strikes its target within 10 hexes of movement (100,000k). Plasma torpedoes take longer to arm than any other weapon, three turns. Plasma armed ships are the fastest ships in SFC while arming weapons because, although they require a great deal of energy to arm, that energy is spread over a three turn arming cycle. Ships armed with plasma torpedoes rely on this speed to stay outside of effective enemy weapon range while rearming their torpedoes, and to achieve a good firing position once the torpedoes are armed.

Note to SFB Players: Due to the truly real-time nature of SFC, most of the deception value of the plasma torpedo is lost in SFC. It simply is not possible to play the "string launch" game in SFC, things move too quickly for that. It is also impossible to maintain range 10 for a significant amount of time. Instead, a high-speed pass while staying outside of overload range is the primary tactic of plasma ships in SFC. PPTs are also far less useful in SFC than in SFB, since the whole deceptive quality of plasmas doesn’t really exist in SFC. You also don't have bolts, so a fast opponent on a large map can be impossible to defeat.

Considering all of that, the change to speed 40 does actually seem appropriate. You don’t have the fine control over the movement of the plasmas that you had in SFB, which makes them much easier to evade in SFC. Plasmas also use "follow pursuit" (rather than "lead pursuit") in SFC, which is obviously a bad thing for the plasmas. Speed 40 seems to compensate for these facts very well. If the plasmas were speed 32, they would be nearly useless. Speed 40 does make them more powerful, however, and very high speed (28+) is essential against a plasma ship in SFC. If there were plasma bolts, speed 36 would probably be a good speed for plasmas in SFC (to compensate for the follow pursuit).

Any plasma launcher can arm any type of plasma torpedo up to and including the type that the launcher is rated for. So a Type-R launcher can arm any type of torpedo, a Type-S launcher can arm any type except an R, and so on. If any launcher larger than Type-F arms a Type-F torpedo, that Type-F torpedo will arm in two turns, rather than three. This is known, appropriately enough, as the "two-turn-eff" and is a part of the design (it is not related to the "fast load" bug). It is not necessary to load a larger torpedo and then switch to an F, simply arming an F in a larger launcher will result in a two turn arming rate rather than the usual three turn rate. It costs 1 point of energy to hold a downloaded Type-F torpedo.

Much like "fast loads" on other heavy weapons, a larger launcher can be switched to an F and the effect of the extra energy required by the larger torpedo will result in a major increase in armed status. Note that since the arming cost of the larger plasma types are very similar, there is little gain to be had from the "fast load" bug by switching between torpedo types; only switching to a Type-F provides a significant benefit. The difference between this and the fast loading of other weapons is that plasma torpedoes are supposed to work this way.

Note to SFB Players: Note that because "reserve power" does not really exist in SFC, "two turn effs" are much more useful as they do not require precious reserve power.

Plasma torpedoes have 3 points of "built-in" ECCM, which will negate up to 3 points of enemy ECM. Any ECCM generated by the launching ship is added to this bonus, so it is possible for a plasma torpedo to have up to 9 points of ECCM.

Plasma torpedoes do not have an overload function. The standard mode is the most commonly used arming of the weapon. Consult the Weapon Damage Table for specifics regarding damage and range (sometimes termed "endurance" or "distance" due to the nature of the weapon). Standard load plasma torpedoes damage the shield they contact upon reaching the target.

While the plasma torpedo does not have an overload function, this mode is sometimes considered to be the overload function of the weapon. Rather than damaging the shield that the torpedo actually strikes, an enveloping torpedo causes an equal amount of damage to all six of the target’s shields. An enveloping torpedo takes a longer period of time to arm, and doubles the warhead strength. However, since the damage is divided among six shields, less damage is applied to any given shield than would be caused by a standard torpedo striking a single shield. Enveloping plasma torpedoes are more resilient to phaser damage due to the increased warhead strength. Because they take longer to arm, the "fast load" bug is not applicable to this method of arming.

A common use for enveloping torpedoes is to use them in order to cause internals to an enemy ship with the hope of hitting power systems, thus slowing it down. Plasma armed ships rely on high speed to keep their distance from the enemy during their long rearming cycle. The slower the enemy is, the easier it is to evade the enemy. A good tactic is to take down two shields with standard torpedoes, and then arm enveloping torpedoes in order to guarantee some internal damage with the hope of damaging some enemy power systems. The more downed shields an enemy has, the more internals an enveloping torpedo will cause. In the case of a ship with no shields, an enveloping torpedo would essentially be an "overloaded plasma torpedo".

Plasma armed ships are notoriously lacking in point defense. The "Plasma Shotgun" (Defensive) was developed in response to the appearance of fighters. Since only the Hydrans have fighters in SFC, the primary function of this torpedo load is less important in SFC than it was in SFB. A shotgun load divides the torpedo into several smaller torpedoes, each of which must have a separate target. Any additional torpedoes, those that do not have targets, are simply lost. A Type-R torpedo will shotgun up to 5 Type-F torpedoes (one per target), a Type-S will shotgun up to 3 Type-F torpedoes (one per target), and a Type-G torpedo will shotgun up to 2 Type-F torpedoes (again, one per target). A shotgun arms the same way as an enveloping torpedo, and you can switch between these two modes without rearming or losing any of the charge.

This mode is not particularly useful in SFC and, in fact, was rarely used in SFB other than when engaging fighters or fast patrol ships. A shotgun can be useful in SFC during large fleet engagements, but only if at close range. The split torpedoes cause more total damage than the standard torpedo would at close range, but only if each has a target. It might also be useful in a "Free For All", especially if enveloping torpedoes have been prepared (since they can be changed to shotguns, and back, on a moments notice).

Note to SFB Players: EPT and Shotguns take longer to arm than standard torpedoes in SFC. This is actually good for the plasma ship, since it can arm these weapons without slowing down to provide the extra energy they required in SFB.

As previously mentioned, the various launcher types are capable of loading any size torpedo that is equal to or weaker than the launcher type.

Type-R: This is the most powerful type of launcher, and is the only type capable of arming a Type-R torpedo. Very few ships possess this weapon, which can arm any type of torpedo. The Type-R plasma torpedo is the most powerful weapon in Star Fleet Command, causing 50 points of damage out to range 10 (100,000k). It costs 9 points of energy over three turns to arm a standard Type-R torpedo. A Type-R torpedo cannot be "held", as most other weapons can. In SFC this is represented by continually charging 5 points of energy after the weapon is armed and ready to fire. This is slightly different than the "rolling delay" system used in SFB, and makes ships armed with this type of torpedo less efficient (and a little slower) than is the case in SFB.

Type-S: This is the standard "heavy torpedo" of the plasma using races. Most late era cruisers are armed with one (or two) of these launchers, along with two Type-F launchers. The Type-S torpedo has a powerful warhead (30 damage out to range 10) and a respectable range. A Type-S launcher is capable of arming any type of torpedo except for Type-R.

Type-G: This is an earlier version of the Type-S launcher. In earlier eras, this launcher will replace the Type-S launchers on those ships that have them. Some late era ships continued to mount Type-G launchers, but Type-G launchers are rare after the introduction of Type-S launchers. The Type-G torpedo is only slightly more powerful than the Type-F torpedo. A very common tactic is to set the Type-G launchers to arm Type-F torpedoes. This will create "two-turn-effs" and allow the ship to arm its torpedoes in two turns rather than three. Consult the Weapon Damage Table, you will see that the difference in warhead strength is minimal, making the faster arming Type-F torpedoes very obviously a superior choice for this launcher.

Type-F: This is the smallest of torpedo launchers. It can only arm Type-F torpedoes, and does so at the normal three turn rate of other torpedoes (i.e. Type-F torpedoes armed in Type-F launchers are not "two-turn-effs"). Additionally, Type-F torpedoes can not be armed as enveloping or shotgun types (in any type of launcher). One advantage to this type of launcher, however, is that the torpedoes armed in this launcher do not require any energy to hold. Most other weapons, including Type-F torpedoes that are "downloaded" in other launchers, require energy to hold ready to fire; Type-F launchers do not have a hold cost associated with them.

PPT: The "Pseudo-Plasma Torpedo" (PPT) is not really a plasma torpedo at all. Each torpedo launcher, regardless of type, has one PPT launcher associated with it. This launcher is capable of firing a "fake" plasma torpedo that resembles a standard load of the maximum type the launcher is capable of arming. In SFC this is mostly useful in causing automated enemy point defense weapons to fire on the PPTs, after which, the real torpedoes can be launched against that enemy before the phasers have a chance to recycle. Naturally, once you have done this a few times, it might be useful to launch the real torpedoes first in the hope that the enemy will allow them to hit (assuming that they are PPTs). In SFC, the PPT launchers slowly recharge (much slower than real torpedoes).

Another, more difficult method of employing PPTs, is to launch half of the PPTs and half of the real torpedoes all at once. This must be done quickly in order to be convincing, so that the torpedoes are all in one group. This could cause the enemy to believe that your launchers are empty when, in fact, torpedoes are still armed and waiting in the tubes.

Note to SFB Players: As was previously mentioned, the quality of deception associated with plasma torpedoes in SFB is lost in SFC. Due to this fact, PPTs are much less useful in SFC than they were in SFB. The ability of PPTs to rearm in SFC is not a big deal, because they are far less useful in this game.

DRONES (Missiles)

In SFC drones are called "missiles". Many SFB players will probably continue to use the term "drone", which is used throughout this document.

Drones are highly simplified in SFC. Even so, they are quite effective due to the truly real-time environment, which makes the detailed defensive measures used against drones in SFB impossible. Drones are seeking weapons, but unlike plasma torpedoes they are relatively easy to destroy (individually) and their warheads are not reduced by range. There are only two types of drones in SFC, which are described later in this section.

The basic drone tactic is to launch more drones than the enemy ship is capable of dealing with. This is, of course, easier said than done. Between phasers, T-bombs, tractor beams, and Wild Weasels the enemy has many defenses against drones. Most ships cannot hope to overwhelm a fully armed enemy with drones, so a common tactic in SFC is to hold the drones and fire them after exchanging fire with other weapons. A scatter pack shuttle was often used in SFB to give drone ships a means of attempting to overwhelm the defenses of an enemy, but in SFC the drones in a scatter pack are so slow as to be totally ineffective against any fast moving ship.

An effective drone tactic in SFC is to begin launching drones at range 50 and continue to launch them as quickly as possible as you approach the enemy. It is fairly easy for a ship with two drone racks to get 6 drones into space this way, which is the maximum that most ships can control. Each time the enemy destroys a pair, launch another. This is an effective way of getting some drone hits in SFC and, even if none hit, the enemy has probably fired many phasers at the drones. Those are phasers that won’t be fired at the attacking ship that is presumably following the drones in toward the enemy. At the very least, the drones will allow the attacker to come out on top in a point blank exchange by creating a phaser advantage for the drone-armed ship.

The most effective drone tactic in SFC is to fire drones at a pursuing enemy. The higher the speed, the more likely it is that the drones will "lag" through the point defense and hit. Speed 32 drones launched toward a pursuer moving speed 31 are closing at 63 (60,000k) per turn, a decent percentage (10-30?) of drones make it through at this speed. This can make it hard to pursue a ship with drones, especially a ship with lots of drones, so you have to account for that. You can chase, but you have to turn too one side when a drone is fired to slow the rate of closure, which allows the enemy to gain distance. So standard load heavy weapons (proximity for Federation) would be called for, aiming for the rear (#4) shield (which will deny the ability to run).

All "D" variants can control up to 12 drones. All ships armed with drones that are not "D" variants can control up to 6 drones. Any ship that does not have drones is capable of controlling 3 drones, although this is probably irrelevant in SFC since it is not possible to transfer control of drones in SFC. Drones exceeding the control limit are lost so don’t launch more drones than the ship is capable of controlling, as they will just be wasted.

Note to SFB Players: "Control Channels" do not exist in SFC. The drone control limit is fixed and does not change as a result of damage to sensors.

This is the basic "single space" drone. It is destroyed by 4 points of damage, has an endurance of three turns, and strength 12 warhead.

This is the heavy "double space" drone. It is destroyed by 6 points of damage, has an endurance of three turns, and strength 24 warhead. Because this drone takes two spaces in the rack, half the number of drones will be available if this type is selected.

Note to SFB Players: There is no mixing of drones in SFC. All drones that are on any given ship will be of the same type. There are only two types of drones, Type-I and Type-IV. There is only one type of warhead, explosive.

In SFC drone speed is determined by "era". Drone speeds are different in SFC. "Slow" drones are speed 16, "Medium" drones are speed 24, and "Fast" drones are speed 32. It is possible to use slower drones than are normal for the era, but it is not possible to use faster drones than are available.

Note to SFB Players: There was a reason why the saying "nobody ever hit anything on purpose with a slow drone" was so well known in SFB. Slow drones were from the earliest days of the design and everybody knows that they were almost completely useless. The SFC team apparently wanted them to be at least useful, and speed 16 works well for making them "just barely useful" within SFC. The increase of medium speed from 20 to 24 is reasonable for many reasons, the easiest of which to understand is that seeking weapons in SFC use "follow pursuit" rather than the "lead pursuit" that was much more commonly used by SFB players. Speed 24 for medium speed is not a senseless ("let’s even out the numbers") decision; it does make sense once you understand SFC.

Non-SFB players might wonder about the "missing drones". Type-II drones were an archaic version of the Type-I drone with "fast burning" engines that increased their speed at the cost of endurance. They were speed 12 drones whereas "slow" drones in SFB were speed 8; and fell out of use with the advent of "medium speed" drones. Type-III drones were special drones ("high-tech" drones in layman’s terms) that were used for various purposes for which standard Type-I drones were not adequate. For example, one version of the Type-III drone was the Type-IIIXX "Long Lance" drone which was the primary armament of most "D" variant ships. It was an extremely long-range drone (capable of firing at targets "hundreds of maps away") with very advanced "waypoint" based movement capabilities. There were also Type-V (fast burning Type-IV) and Type-VI (anti-fighter "dogfight drones").

Note to SFB Players: Drones are highly simplified in SFC. You can’t mix types among racks; it’s either all Type-Is or all Type-IVs. There is no drone construction, no modules, and no advanced drone types. There are just Is and IVs with speed based on era. To an SFB veteran, the drones are kind of boring. There aren’t any opportunities for deception, no multi-warhead drones, ECM drones, armored drones, swordfish, spearfish, slug, or starfish drones. Additionally drone defense is not nearly as detailed as in SFB, in fact, it’s mostly automated.

Drone Racks

Drone racks launch drones. There are several different types of drone racks, each of which are outlined below. Each drone rack has a number of "spaces" and each drone is a number of "spaces" in size. The number of total drones a ship has is based on the size of the racks. A ship has as many drones its racks are armed with, plus a number of "reloads" equal to that number. For additional BPV, the player can purchase additional reloads increasing the number of reloads to three or even four times the number of drones in the rack. So, for example, a Type-A rack armed with 4 Type-I drones would come with 8 drones (4 in the rack and 4 reloads), but could be increased to 12 (x2 reloads), 16 (x3 reloads), or 20 (x4 reloads) drones.

When a drone rack is destroyed all of the drones in the rack at the time are also destroyed, but the reloads are unaffected. If a drone rack held 4 drones, with 12 reloads available, and was destroyed, it would have 12 drones available when repaired. More drones are lost with larger racks, but more total drones were available to begin with due to the larger rack size.

Note to SFB Players: Drone racks work very differently in SFC. They do not have to be taken offline to reload. When a drone is fired the rack immediately rearms and the rack cannot fire until the rack has rearmed. Essentially, the racks are always full. In SFC the only real purpose of the rack is to govern the number of total drones available to the ship.

This is the most common and basic type of drone rack. It holds four spaces of drones.

This is a larger version of the Type-A rack. It holds six spaces of drones.

This is a rapid firing version of the Type-A rack. It holds four spaces of drones, and fires twice as often as the Type-A rack.

This is a special drone rack used by bases in SFB. It has a series of "magazines" that allow it to reload more effectively and makes the rack more resilient to damage. Because of the manner in which drone racks work in SFC, all racks are actually functionally similar to this type of rack. It is likely that bases in SFC simply have Type-B racks, since in SFC there would be little difference between the two types.

This type of rack is an anti-fighter defense used by bases that carries Type-VI dogfight drones. It is not present in SFC because Type-VI drones are not present in SFC.

This is an early type of drone rack used by the Klingons. It is identical to a Type-A rack but has a slower rate of fire. Klingon ships in the "Early Era" have this type of rack instead of Type-A racks.

This type of drone rack is present on most refitted Federation ships. In SFB, it is a very versatile drone rack capable of loading any type of drone including Type-VI dogfight drones and anti-drones. In SFC it appears to be identical to a Type-C rack, which was an odd decision. It would have been much more appropriate had it been made identical to a Type-A rack.

Note to SFB Players: Rule (S8.47) in SFB allows only one "D" variant (i.e. ships designated "DB" on the Master Ship Chart) for each group of three ships. While this does not prohibit using a "D" variant in a duel, you would be hard-pressed to find a group of SFB players who didn’t consider "D" variants "unfair" for dueling. The "spirit" of (S8.47) suggests that "D" variants should be considered akin to a mauler and never used in duels. Any ship in SFC that ends with the letter "D" is a "drone bombardment" ship. For example, the Federation BCG has more drones than most other Federation ships, but is not a "drone bombardment" ship.

The simplification of drones in SFC makes most "D" variants a bad choice for a duel. The D7D, and any other ships which retain their heavy weapons, are notable exceptions, but most "D" variants are armed only with drone racks and phasers. It’s a long and boring process, but take as many of your own heavy weapons as necessary offline and go speed 31. Put enough phasers to guarantee immunity to the enemy’s drones on point defense, and fire everything else you have at the enemy whenever the opportunity presents itself. Your primary tactic during this fight, however, is outrunning drones. Stay near or at speed 31 (slowing only slightly, no slower than 26, to give the arming a push whenever it is safe), outside range 15 (just barely entering 15 to fire when weapons are armed and it is safe), and never head directly toward the drone ship. Keep doing this until he is completely out of drones, and then destroy him. It will take a long time, but you will teach the player not to use "D" variants because they are, in effect, unarmed against the proper tactical response.

Transporter Bombs and Nuclear Space Mines

Transporter bombs (also known as "T-bombs") are a powerful defense against drones. They can also be used to damage ships. The most common use of T-bombs is to destroy drones, and to discourage a pursuer (or at least increase the distance when the pursuer turns to avoid the T-bomb). A T-bomb does 10 points of damage.

T-bombs can be placed by transporter (which requires lowering a shield) or "rolled out the hatch" (i.e. dropped) which does not require lowering a shield. When placed by transporter a T-bomb takes only a second or two to arm (i.e. become active). When dropped, the T-bomb will not activate until the ship that dropped the mine is safely out of the ship’s detection range. Remember this when dropping mines to eliminate drones, there needs to be a good distance between your ship and the drones in order to provide enough time for your ship to leave the detection range and the mine to activate. Obviously, the faster the ship that drops a T-bomb is moving, the less time it will take for the T-bomb to activate.

When an enemy ship drops a T-bomb in order to discourage pursuit it is often useful to ignore it and take the damage. Avoiding the T-bomb will allow the enemy to increase the range. If avoiding the T-bomb will delay an important firing opportunity, ignore the T-bomb. If you are simply trying to stay with the enemy and are not furiously attempting to close the range and fire, avoid it.

Note to SFB Players: T-bombs are used much more often in SFC than in SFB. You get more of them; the limits are higher than SFB, so they get flung around like there is no tomorrow. It is also more common to see T-bombs laid by transporter in SFC, because dropping a shield is easier to get away with in SFC. There are no dummy T-bombs in SFC.

The "old" (also known as "Eagle") series Romulan ships (Warbird, Snipe, Battle Hawk, War Eagle, and King Eagle) each carry one nuclear space mine (NSM). This mine cannot be placed by transporter, it can only be dropped (with "SHIFT-M"). This type of mine cannot be purchased, only the "Eagle" series ships have it and cannot increase the number that they have (one). An NSM does 35 points of damage. If an older "Eagle" series Romulan ship drops a mine, avoid it. If it is an NSM, it will inflict a considerable amount of damage.

"The cloaking device is not a magic carpet ride into firing position." This often quoted SFB saying has long been a guideline behind the design of the cloaking device in SFB. The cloaking device is the most severe form of electronic warfare in the Star Fleet Universe. A cloaked ship is very hard to effectively target and hit with weapons. While a side effect of the cloaking device is that the ship is actually rendered invisible to the naked eye, the targeting systems and sensors of a starship are still able to detect its location. This is consistent with Star Trek, in which a means of detecting cloaked ships has been "discovered" in nearly every episode in which the device appeared. In fact, the SFB rationale behind the cloaking device makes more sense than Star Trek’s (where every encounter with a cloaked ship is as if the technology has never been seen before).

The cloaking device is much more valuable strategically than tactically. In other words, it is far more useful in long distance transit than it is in actual combat. Starship sensors have little difficulty detecting cloaked ships within (or just outside of) weapon range, but cloaked ships are indeed "invisible" at all but the shortest range (in strategic terms "short" range can be considered to be about 100 hexes, or 1,000,000k).

Use of the cloaking device in "tactical" situations (the type of situations represented in both SFB and SFC) is rather limited. The device requires massive amounts of power, requiring most ships to slow to a crawl in order to operate the device and arm weapons simultaneously. Because speed is so important, and cloaked ships can be detected at combat ranges, using the device during combat is a dangerous activity.

There are some situations in which the device is tactically useful. Seeking weapons cannot track a cloaked ship, so if there is enough warning of their approach cloaking will cause seeking weapons to lose tracking (they will disappear). Relatively inaccurate weapons, such as photon torpedoes or other "hit-or-miss" weapons, can be made less effective by unexpectedly activating the device just before the enemy ship fires. Although the "fade-out" time will not have completed (in fact, it will just barely have begun) when the enemy weapons are fired penalty #2 from below will be partially in effect (slightly increasing the range and making the weapon less accurate), and penalty #3 will be in full effect (reducing the damage resulting from a hit). This can be a dangerous tactic, however, as it requires the cloaked ship to greatly reduce speed right in front of a fully armed enemy.

The older "Eagle" series ships are slow even when not operating the device, and must use it tactically to reduce the damage they take from enemy weapons. These ships generally have strong shields on all six sides. The effects of the cloaking device combined with the strong shields give the "Eagle" ships an edge in successfully using the device. These ships usually move very slowly. Many of these ships have a type-R plasma torpedo, which provide the small ships with a big punch when they de-cloak and fire.

With the newer Romulan ships, however, the best option is to leave the cloaking device off and use the power advantage that the newer "Kestral" ("KR") and "Hawk" ("New") series ships possess in order to maintain a high speed. The newer Romulan ships are among the fastest ships in the galaxy, and giving up this advantage in order to cloak is usually just an alternate means of self-destruction. Most SFB veterans use the cloaking device only in specific circumstances, for various "tricks", and otherwise ignore its existence and use their speed advantage and excellent turn mode to outmaneuver their opponents.

Note to SFB Players: Drones and plasma torpedoes can be fired at cloaked ships at close range. This makes the cloaking device useless against any ship armed with drones or plasma torpedoes.

The effect of the cloaking device is as follows:

1. Range is doubled. If the firing ship is at range 5 (50,000k), for example, the effect of the cloak doubles this to range 10 (100,000k). This penalty does not take effect until "fade out" is complete and the ship is fully cloaked, and is lost if the enemy gains a "lock-on" to a cloaked ship. Unfortunately, there is no way for the cloaked player to know if the enemy has a lock-on or not (but the enemy does receive and indication of this). This makes use of the device even more problematic than it was in SFB.
2. 5 (50,000k) is added to the range. Combining #1 & #2, a ship at a "true range" of 5 (50,000k) would fire at a cloaked ship as if it were at range 15 (150,000k). 5 X 2 + 5 = 15. This penalty is phased in over the "5 impulse" (i.e. 10 second) "fade out" time, and phased back in over the 10 second "fade in" time. 1 is added (or subtracted, in the case of "fade in") to the range every 2 seconds. This penalty is retained even if the enemy has a lock-on to the cloaked ship.
3. Finally, after the range penalties are taken into account, the equivalent of a six sided "die roll" is made within the software. In SFC this is a percentage chance that is equivalent to the table in (G13.37) of SFB, which has been recreated below. This chart represents the electronic warfare effect of the cloaking device. It takes effect immediately when "fade out" begins, and is in effect until "fade in" is complete. This penalty is retained even if the enemy has a lock-on to the cloaked ship.

Each individual weapon "rolls" on the above chart independently. For example, if 4 phasers were fired, each would make its own "roll" on the chart. As can be seen, the penalties for firing at a cloaked ship are severe. Fire at a cloaked ship is only advisable at range 0; any greater distance and the penalties make any fire almost totally ineffective. The problem for the cloaked ship is that since the device requires so much power, the enemy can very easily achieve range 0.

The best time to fire at a cloaked ship is…

1. When you are at range 0 and the ship is fully cloaked. If the ship is cloaked and you are at range 0 fire phasers only, keep the heavy weapons ready and waiting in order to encourage the Romulan to remain cloaked, or to blast him should he uncloak. Keep returning to range 0 and firing phasers, but keep the heavy weapons waiting for it to de-cloak. Flying a "figure 8" pattern is an effective maneuver while doing this; the Romulan can’t possibly outrun you while cloaked. Keep your speed up so that you can out-run the plasmas if the Romulan de-cloaks and fires. As you might have guessed, this anti-cloak tactic is precisely the reason why most SFB veterans do not use the cloaking device as a means of rearming weapons.
2. The moment the ship is FULLY de-cloaked. There has been a long-standing fallacy among SFB veterans that the best time to fire at a de-cloaking ship is during the last impulse of fade in. Us Romulans were perfectly willing to let them go on believing this, but I’ll "let the cat out of the bag" on this one. It’s complete nonsense! It sounds really nice, like something out of the movies, but it’s just stupid. Why fire through all of the penalties that are still in effect the moment before you will have a clean shot? If a cloaked ship is fading in, and you are planning on firing, wait until it has completed fade in and the penalties are no longer in effect. If a veteran argues this point with you, just agree with him (and then wait for him to be FULLY uncloaked before you fire).
3. When the ship has already fired and is beginning to cloak and you have missed your opportunity to fire while it was not cloaked. The ship will probably be cloaked for a while, and you will have more than enough time to charge everything before he comes back out of cloak. In this situation you basically messed up, and want to fire as soon as possible because the penalties just become worse the deeper the ship fades into cloak. If the Romulan is using the cloak to re-arm, see item #1 above.

When an explosive force, such as a mine detonation, contacts a cloaked ship, the "double range" penalty is voided. In this situation, the only effect of the device is the +5 range penalty and the damage reduction chart. Contact with an ESG field will also "flashcube" a cloaked ship. T-bombs are useful in achieving this effect, and as long as no other ships are present, dropping a shield to place the T-bomb is safe because the cloaked ship cannot fire. Tractoring a cloaked ship during this period guarantees that the lock on will be retained. The ESG is even more effective, since it causes more damage than a T-bomb (neither are affected by any of cloak penalties in any way) and it is easier to time the attack. Lyrans are a cloaked ship’s worst nightmare.

Expanding Sphere Generator

This Lyran device is a very effective defensive device designed to protect a ship from drones (historically Kzinti drones) and fighters. It is also quite useful offensively, where it is used to "ram" enemy ships. The ESG has four range settings (0, 1, 2, & 3) and is slightly more powerful at shorter range settings. An ESG field causes damage to any solid object that it comes into contact with but has no effect on energy weapons (including plasma torpedoes). The strength of the field is reduced by the amount of damage that it causes to each object, and the field will completely dissipate if an amount of damage equal to the strength of the field is expended.

Note to SFB Players: There is no activation period for the ESG in SFC. This is pretty significant, as the smile on your Lyran face shows. It makes the ESG much more effective in SFC for both offensive and defensive uses. There is also no 32-impulse "cool down" time and an ESG can be reactivated the moment it goes down provided that there is power available in the capacitor… this is even more significant.

The ESG has a "capacitor" that is similar to a phaser capacitor. In SFC, ESGs are grouped into "banks" of two. Each bank shares a single capacitor, which can hold up to 14 points of energy. An ESG uses 5 points of power to operate, but the capacitor can hold 7 points of power for it. This provides the often power strapped Lyran with some assistance in maintaining a power supply for the ESG.

The ESG is the premier defensive system for use against fighters and drones in the Star Fleet Universe. It was designed specifically as a defense against drones and fighters, and excels in that role. Lyran ships are nearly immune to drones, assuming proper use of the ESGs. There are basically two choices. The first is to set the field to radius 0, and put all PH3s on point defense. Any drones which survive the PH3s will be destroyed by the powerful radius 0 ESG field. The second option is to set the field at radius 3, and allow the point defense phasers to destroy any drones in excess of the fields capability to destroy (i.e. any drones remaining after the field has been depleted). The first option seems to be a better choice for a purely defensive posture, since the field is stronger at range 0 and the combination of PH3s and a radius 0 ESG should be sufficient to eliminate the six drones that most ships are capable of controlling.

Against fighters, a radius 3 (or 2) field is the best choice. The fighters are more intelligent than the drones and do not mindlessly head for the ship. The larger radius field will make contacting the fighters much easier.

Note to SFB Players: Much of the flexibility of defensive ESG use is lost in SFC. The standard defensive measure of firing on drones at range one and allowing the damaged drones to contact the radius 0 ESG (thus preserving the field) is not really possible in SFC. The point defense phasers are automatic and will try to destroy drones rather than allowing several damaged drones to survive. This is good except, of course, for an ESG equipped ship.

This use of the ESG is very obvious and straightforward. If an ESG field contacts an enemy ship, it damages that ship. This gives Lyran ships crunch power that the other disruptor armed ships do not possess. The Lyrans are good at medium range (9-15) due to their disruptors and PH1s, and at close range due to their ESGs and PH1s. Of course, notorious Lyran power shortages can prevent them from ever attaining close range, which is the where the difficulty lies in using the ESG offensively.

Note to SFB Players: ESG fields do not damage friendly ships, or other ESG fields, in SFC. This is almost unreasonable, as the smile on your Lyran face shows. As you might imagine having read this section on ESGs, the Lyrans are very powerful in SFC.

Hellbores automatically hit any ship which is has an ESG field in operation. No matter what the range, all hellbores fired at a ship that is operating an ESG field automatically hit. The ESG field, however, acts as a shield against hellbores and absorbs the damage of those weapons (while being reduced in strength). In general, however, the ESG ship gets the worst of this situation, as in an even fight most hellbore armed ships are capable of taking down the ESGs and still cause damage to the ship. This generally takes away the offensive capability of the ESG and thus the crunch power that it provides to the Lyrans, against the Hydrans, the premier crunch power race in the game. When facing a fleet with several hellbore armed ships, it is advisable to leave the "hellbore magnets" off.

Hydran Fighters

Due to problems with the AI of Hydran fighters, "tactics" do not really apply too them. Launch them and they will attack enemy ships. You have no control over their actions, and the limited orders that are available do not appear to work. The fighters are extremely powerful, however, and are certainly not useless. The best thing to do with them is to hold them until the approach and launch them between range 8-12. This will usually prevent them from flying off after a target other than the intended target.

Note to SFB Players: Hydran fighters are very fast (speed 31) and do not lose half of their internals as if they had WBPs. They can also rearm themselves without landing on the carrier. While you have no control over them, they are very powerful. The biggest problem is that a smart player will simply lead them away from your ship and destroy them.

There are many advanced concepts and tactics related to both SFB and SFC. Not all of them are covered in this document as it is primarily intended to introduce SFC players who are not familiar with SFB to the most basic and fundamental concepts in order to help them "catch up" to the SFB veterans who play SFC online. As such, this section introduces players to the most fundamental and basic of the more advanced concepts related to maneuver in the Star Fleet Universe.

Basic Close Range Attacks

A "battle run" is another form of close range attack. This type of attack is used when range 0 is not desired, but close range is still desired. In a battle run the attacker approaches to range 2-4, fires, and then turns approximately 45-degrees facing a new shield to the enemy and heading away. This form of attack avoids range 0 (assuming at least equal speeds between ships), and immediately turns the flank (i.e. side) shields toward the target after firing. As the range widens, the enemy will eventually be on the rear shield.

Basic Medium Range Attacks

In the primitive diagram above, "T" is the target and is facing the bottom of the page while "A" is the attacker and is facing the top of the page. 80,000k separate the two ships. The angle is such that both ships are on the edge of the "FA" firing arc, if they continue forward without turning the "FA" weapons will be out of arc. This is the Oblique Option Point. An examination of Klingon firing arcs reveals that from this position almost every weapon on a Klingon ship can fire at the target (even the "wing phasers" on the opposite side of the ship). No other race in SFC can bring as many weapons to bear from this position as the Klingons. "The Klingon Saber Dance", described in the DISRUPTOR section, is often performed by repeatedly achieving this position (at range 15), but can also be performed by achieving this same position at range 8 (with overloads).

Although the Klingons excel at this form of attack, other races can also make good use of it. Plasma armed ships use a similar form of attack (described below in the PLASMA BALLET section). Hellbore armed Hydran ships can use a similar form of attack to fire their hellbores at medium range (9-15). Lyrans often decide whether or not they intend to ram with ESGs based on what happens at the Oblique Option Point. Federation phaser arcs are not supportive of this position; their firepower is concentrated on the forward centerline.

This form of attack also illustrates the importance of speed. If the target has a speed advantage of 8-10 then the attacker has a problem. If the attacker fires and turns away he will take a close range pounding on the rear shields after the target pursues and closes the range (the attacker is forced to turn toward the target for a close range attack). If the attacker is going faster, the attacker is free to fire, turn away and rearm, and come back to the Oblique Option point to repeat the process. If speeds are relatively equal the attacker is free to fire and turn away, immediately accelerating to speed 31 after firing.

The precise Oblique Option Point, as described in the example, is difficult to achieve in SFC unless both players are seeking to do so (which is sometimes the case). Even so, the facing of the target is mostly irrelevant (the ability to turn away with a slight turn is the greatest value of the position) and the Oblique Attack is just as valuable a concept to understand in SFC as it is in SFB.

Ships armed with plasma torpedoes have tactical concerns that other races do not. The plasma torpedo loses warhead strength with range, the farther it travels the weaker it becomes. It is a seeking weapon, which means that it can be distracted by a Wild Weasel, out run, or damaged by phaser fire. This can make its use problematic against an experienced player. In the hands of an experienced captain, a plasma-armed ship is very powerful. The weapon is, however, difficult to employ. "Plasma Ballet" was the name of a "Term Paper" (tactical tips published in SFB related magazines) written by an SFB National Champion named Frank Gilson. That Term Paper was mostly related to plasma v plasma engagements, but the term has come to be used as a synonym for "finesse", or "modern", plasma tactics.

Due to the fact that plasma torpedoes lose warhead strength with range, the optimal firing position is directly in front of the target. This makes it impossible for the target to outrun the torpedoes because they will hit the target before it can turn around and begin to run away from them. Similarly, the worst firing position is directly behind the target. If the target is moving fast (as close to 31 as possible is best against a ship armed with plasma torpedoes) it can simply continue on its present course and take little (if any) damage from the torpedoes. A plasma-armed ship should always seek to achieve a position directly ahead of the target, outside the range of overloaded weapons. Since the target is moving toward the plasma ship in this situation, plasmas launched from as far as range 12 (up to 14 if the target is moving at a very high speed) will reach the target within 10 hexes of movement (100,000k).

The facing of the plasma-armed ship is also very important. In "finesse plasma" a plasma-armed ship attempts to gradually wear away at the enemy without ever entering the range of overloaded weapons (80,000k). In order to achieve this, it is important that the plasma armed ship attack from an angle rather than pointing directly at the target. If the plasma-armed ship is heading directly toward the target, it will not be able to turn away in time to avoid overload range. The plasma-armed ship should face one of its front-side shields toward the enemy, so that it is already halfway through the turn away from the target when it fires. (The "Tactical Map" in SFC is very useful for achieving a proper approach angle.) After firing, the plasma armed ship only needs to make a slight turn away in order to begin to open the distance. Obviously, high speed is essential and a plasma-armed ship usually moves at speeds greater than 28. The relatively inexpensive per-turn arming cost of the plasma torpedo makes plasma-armed ships among the fastest in the galaxy. Any ship moving slower than speed 20 is completely helpless against a plasma-armed ship using this tactic.

Often, after downing two or more enemy shields, the plasma-armed ship will arm its heavy torpedoes as enveloping types. This will cause internal damage through the downed shields, and hopefully damage some of the target's power systems. This is done in order to slow the enemy ship so that the plasma-armed ship can continue the "finesse plasma" attacks with greater easy. The slower the target is moving, the easier this method of attack becomes. After slowing the target, the plasma-armed ship will revert to standard torpedoes. The loss of just 2 or 3 points of power by the enemy ship will make things much easier for the plasma-armed attacker.

Phasers are often left unfired during the "plasma ballet" because recharging them would force the plasma-armed ship to slow down. Keeping the phasers charged and ready also provides a massive point defense (every phaser on the ship) and a means of striking back should a threat occur while the plasma torpedoes are arming. (But any time a down shield is within range 15, all available PH1s should fire at it.) When two plasma-armed ships meet, the perfection of each captain's "ballet tactics" becomes crucial and whichever player takes the best angles is very likely to win the engagement. In the case of plasma v plasma combat, phasers are usually used to wear away at any enemy plasma torpedoes that catch up to the ship. A plasma v plasma duel can take a very long time to resolve.

Finally, the rear shield is the most important shield on a plasma-armed ship performing this tactic. The plasma ship must run for quite a while due to the lengthy rearming time of the weapon. The most effective counter to "finesse plasma" is to take down the rear shield of the plasma ship. The enemy seeks to pursue the plasma-armed ship, wearing away at its rear shield with phasers and standard load heavy weapons. Once the rear shield is down, the plasma ship can no longer effectively run from the enemy and must revert to "old", or "classic", plasma tactics (coming to close range and using the "Gorn Anchor" to hit the enemy with a crushing blow of plasma and phasers at close range).

To summarize this section, the highest speed possible is crucial to both sides when a plasma-armed ship is involved in the fight. The whole point of "finesse plasma" is to avoid the range of overloaded weapons. The best firing position for plasma torpedoes is directly in front of the target, while the worst position is directly behind the target. The angle of the attacking plasma-armed ship is vital, it needs to be able to turn away and avoid the range of overloaded weapons. Enveloping torpedoes are often used for one or two passes once the target has two or more downed shields, in the hopes of damaging the target's power systems. Phasers are often not fired, since they don't do a lot of damage from range 10-12 and are difficult to rearm at extremely high speeds. The rear shield is the most important to a ship using this tactic, once it is lost the ability to effectively use this tactic is lost with it. These are the fundamental basics of "finesse", or "modern", plasma tactics, as opposed to "old", or "classic", plasma tactics, which revolve around achieving the "Gorn Anchor".

Note to SFB Players: The are no plasma bolts in SFC. This is quite significant on the larger maps. Any opponent that moves at speed 31 and doesn't make any mistakes (such as pointing directly at the plasma-armed ship) can simply wear away at the plasma ship and never give it a shot. The Gorn, with their abundance of PH1s, are better at handling this situation than the phaser-weak Romulans. The lack of bolts makes the plasma launchers useless on a medium or large map against an opponent who maintains maximum speed and stays around range 15. On a small map the plasma ship can force the enemy in a corner.

Many tactics related to specific weapons or other systems have already been discussed. You may wish to review those sections while considering race specific tactics within this section. The discussions below focus on the basic fundamentals of the strengths and weaknesses of individual races, and how each race is generally used to greatest effect considering those strengths and weaknesses. Tactics related to specific weapons, or other systems, used by the individual races are not repeated in this section.

United Federation of Planets

Many new players are likely to use this race first. Captain Kirk didn’t always win because he had the most powerful ship; he always won because he was the finest starship captain of his time and was supported by a legendary crew. In SFB (and thus SFC) Federation ships are, individually, average. However, when those same ships form into a fleet, around a powerful Federation carrier group, they reign supreme. At the strategic level, the Federation is easily the most powerful race in the Star Fleet Universe. Even forgetting the economic superiority of the Federation, they are able to assemble the most powerful fleets due to the excellent support ships (Scouts, AEGIS escorts, etc.), the properties of the photon torpedo, and of course the best carriers and fighters in the galaxy. These aspects of the Federation are not revealed in SFC, but it is indeed the case that Federation fleets are, in general, more powerful than equivalent fleets assembled by other races.

Some slang terms used by SFB players in reference to the Federation are "Fred" (an abbreviation used by some players), and "Flathead" (a derogatory term used by opponents).

Combat with single ships, or small squadrons of ships, is governed by the characteristics of the photon torpedo. The weapon requires large amounts of energy, which means that Federation ships are among the slower ships in the galaxy. The photon torpedo is a very versatile weapon, with three modes of operation. The overload function is quite powerful, and Federation ships outgun most others at very close range (2 or less). The proximity function provides a respectable medium range (9-13) capability, and is even worth firing at long range (up to 30). A Federation player must pay close attention to the EW status in order to avoid firing through an ECM shift. Federation ships are very durable, able to take a lot of damage and remain effective in combat, which is a valuable asset for ships that are good at extremely close range. Federation ships also have a powerful arrangement of phasers throughout all classes, and this is one of their greatest advantages.

The greatest concern of a Federation captain is speed. Their ships are generally fairly slow, which is their greatest drawback. Federation captains often simply accept the fact that they are slow, and seek only to maintain the highest speed that they can, staying within a few points of their opponent. The general strategy here is to maintain a high enough speed as to deny the enemy the ability to fly circles around you, and simply allow the enemy to come to you. In other cases, such as combat against a ship armed with plasma torpedoes, Federation captains will often take some of their photon torpedoes offline and arm standard loads only on the torpedoes that are active. This allows the ship to move at speed 31; both to avoid the plasma torpedoes and to stay on the enemy’s aft shield wearing away at it with phasers and normal load photons during the long plasma rearm cycle.

The more ships are present, the better off the Federation is. A firestorm of photon torpedoes is just about the last thing an enemy force wants to encounter. The photon torpedo does not degrade with range; it does a set amount of damage regardless of range. This property, unique to the photon torpedo, makes the weapon lethal when used in large numbers. Even at range 30 (300,000k) the proximity load has a 50% chance of hitting if there is no ECM shift working against it. 16 proximity photons fired from range 30 should statistically cause 32 points of damage, enough to cause internals to a FF in SFC (enough to cause internals to CA in SFB). At closer ranges, when overloads start coming into play, ships start exploding in single mass photon volleys.

KLINGON EMPIRE

Klingon ships are very powerful in the hands of an experienced player. Their disruptors, capable of firing once per turn, are the most versatile of the heavy weapons. The relatively weak disruptors are, however, also their greatest drawback in that a Klingon ship has very little "crunch power". Klingon ships generally have a large number of phasers, although roughly half of these phasers are the shorter range PH2s which are only effective against ships within range 8 (80,000k). The moderate number of drone racks provide the Klingon’s with a third weapon to complement the phasers and disruptors, making the Klingon’s one of the most tactically versatile races in the game. Klingon vessels are highly maneuverable, but among the least durable ships in the galaxy. Once the shields are penetrated and internal damage begins to mount, Klingon ships begin to lose their combat effectiveness rather quickly.

Some slang terms used in reference to the Klingons by SFB players are "Klink" (an abbreviation used by some players), and "Knobhead" (a derogatory term used by opponents).

Klingon tactics, like those of all other races, revolve around the strengths and weaknesses of their ships. Klingons generally seek to avoid a decisive encounter early in the fight. They prefer to remain at medium range (avoiding overload range and the crunch power of the other races) and gradually wear away at enemy shields with their highly accurate and rapid firing disruptors. The excellent maneuverability of their ships allows them to succeed in this where others would have a more difficult time attempting this tactic. Usually, this involves performing "The Klingon Saber Dance" (see DISRUPTORS in the WEAPONS section) firing normal load disruptors and PH1s from range 15. The PH2s are usually held in reserve for point defense and other emergency situations.

When a Klingon ship does enter overload range, it is usually preceded by waves of drones launched during the approach. Often the Klingon does not expect any of the drones to actually hit the enemy ship, only to empty enemy phasers and lessen the crunch power advantage of the enemy ship during the close range exchange of fire. The versatile disruptors will be overloading on the way in, and the Klingon will be moving at a noticeably slower speed while overloading the disruptors. Because the enemy is often attempting to close the range with the "Saber Dancing" Klingon, closing the range is often just a matter of slowing down and allowing the enemy to close the range. This situation usually allows the Klingon to have a needed electronic warfare advantage. The Klingons are the absolute masters of "The Klingon Saber Dance" and gain more advantage from firing from the "Oblique Option Point" than any other race (due to their weapon arcs). You might consider re-reading both DISRUPTORS and OBLIQUE ATTACK.

Unique among heavy weapons, the disruptor requires only a single turn to arm. This makes the "offline" function much more useful for the disruptor than for other weapons. When a Klingon needs to move at top speed, the dirsuptors go offline. The Klingon still packs a powerful punch with its phasers and drones, should any firepower be required, but weapons fire is not usually required during these high-speed dashes. With the absence of the Kzinti, the Klingons are the premier drone users of SFC. Klingon drones, as mentioned previously, are often used simply to distract enemy phasers. Scatter pack shuttles, however, are a useful item for the Klingons. Due to the slow speed of scatter pack drones in SFC, however, the only truly effective use of a scatter pack is to release it on the way in to a close range pass and tractor the enemy, holding him until the scatter pack's drones arrive. Turning toward the drones will result in their reaching the enemy in the shortest amount of time (but will probably expose the rear shield).

Romulan Star Empire

The Romulan Star Empire has three distinct "series" of ships. The "Old" (or "Eagle") series, the "Klingon" (or "Kestral", also known as "KR") series, and the "New" (or "Hawk") series. The Kestral and Hawk series ships are very similar tactically because the Hawk series ships were modeled after the Kestral (Klingon) ships. The Eagle series ships operate in an entirely different way, they are very old (pre-warp) ships converted to use warp technology and as such are very slow. The Eagle series ships live and die by the cloaking device, which they must used in order to reduce the effectiveness of enemy weapons (since they cannot outrun their opponents).

Some players refer to the Romulans as "Rommies". It is fairly common to insult a Romulan player by various statements intended to portray the cloaking device as cowardly. Some examples are "Hey, where are you going" during fade out, or "Well, I’m here, where are you" while the Romulan is cloaked.

Contrary to popular belief, the plasma torpedo is a cheap weapon to arm. Its energy consumption is spread over 3 turns, so the per turn energy cost is less than most other weapons. Even better, in SFC the energy is equally divided among those "3 turns" eliminating the dreaded "final turn of arming" that plasma ships had to contend with in SFB. This, and the fact that Romulan ships generally have a few extra points of power to balance their energy usage while cloaked, make the newer (Kestral and Hawk series) Romulan ships among the fastest in the Star Fleet Universe. This is their greatest advantage, so use it well. Get above speed 24 the moment the game starts and never slow down below 24 unless damage to power systems forces you to do so (or you are at extremely long range, 30+) and need the power for something specific (such as quickly charging the phaser capacitor). Speed 24 is the minimum speed you should ever use; the closer to speed 31 you can get the better.

The speed of Romulan ships allows them to (usually) stay outside of overloaded weapon range. This is the optimal situation for plasma armed ships because the "best range" for plasma torpedoes is 10 (100,000k) which is 2 (20,000k) outside the range of overloaded weapons. (The PLASMA BALLET section discusses "finesse" plasma tactics in some detail and that discussion is not repeated here.) The newer series Romulan ships have excellent maneuverability and phaser arcs, but few phasers compared to other ships of similar size. The Hawk series ships are generally more durable than the Kestral series ships. In general, the firing arcs of both plasma launchers and phasers on the Hawk series are better suited to plasma tactics than the firing arcs on the formerly Klingon Kestral models (but the Kestral ships generally have more phasers). In single ship combat, the newer Romulan ships (both Kestral and Hawk series) are among the most powerful in the galaxy.

As a Romulan, you have two methods by which you can self-destruct your ship. The first is to use the self-destruct option and detonate the warp core; the second is to activate the cloaking device. It varies from ship to ship, but in general most Romulan ships must slow to about speed 12 in order to activate the cloaking device while continuing to arm weapons. This is an unacceptably slow speed for any race. At speed 12 the enemy can easily fly circles around you, hitting the same shield again and again with phasers waiting for you to de-cloak so that he can finish you off with heavy weapons. To make matters even worse, in SFC (unlike SFB) seeking weapons can be fired at a cloaked ship. They will lose tracking after travelling a distance, but that is irrelevant. You will be going so slow that the enemy can easily come to range 2 or closer where all of the seeking weapons fired will hit. The "double range +5" penalty obviously can’t be applied to seeking weapons, so the chart in G13.37 of SFB (which was recreated in the CLOAKING DEVICE section of this document) is the only protection you will get from the hard-hitting drones and plasma torpedoes. In SFB, most (if not all) "ace" Romulan players almost never used the cloaking device.

Finally, the older Eagle series ships live and die by the cloaking device (mostly, they die). They are generally capable of maintaining slightly higher speeds while cloaked than the newer Romulan ships, but still must move too slowly to evade enemy ships. Some players like using these ships for sentimental reasons but they are, in general, rather weak compared to the ships of other races.

Gorn Confederation

Gorn ships are extremely powerful. They are similar to Federation ships in some ways, but are armed with plasma torpedoes. Gorn ships are extremely durable and have powerful phaser arrangements, but are very sluggish with a horrendous turn rate. The large number of PH1s provides the Gorn with a powerful direct-fire punch in addition to their plasma torpedoes. The firing arcs, while awkward at first, are very well suited to Gorn tactics, which are dictated by their poor turn rate. Gorn ships are more durable than any race other than the Hydrans; they can take a tremendous amount of punishment and continue to fight effectively. The biggest drawback to the Gorn is their moderate speed and poor turn rate. The Gorn ships are not quite as fast as the newer Romulan ships, and have the worst maneuverability of all the races.

Some players refer to the Gorn as "Lizards". Any reference to "boots" is often used to taunt a Gorn player. Some examples are "I’m going to enjoy my new boots" or "Daddy needs a new pair of boots".

The most powerful advantage that a Gorn ship has is its firing arcs. A typical Gorn ship has firing arcs that allow it to generally bring one-third or more of its firepower to bear in any direction. Most Gorn plasma launchers have "LP/RP" arcs that provide a decent arc of fire both forward and aft. Some Gorn ships have Type-F launchers with "LS/RS" arcs, allowing the smaller torpedoes to be fired backwards with little or no turning (thus preventing the enemy from gaining on the Gorn ship). The phasers are similarly arranged, with arcs that provide complete coverage in all directions and typically allow at least one-third of the phasers on a Gorn ship to fire in any given direction. While these firing arcs are highly advantageous to a plasma armed ship (that is often running from its opponent), it does mean that there is usually no firing arc into which all Gorn weapons may be fired.

The versatile weapon arcs are, however, the result of a very poor turn mode. The Gorn need those impressive firing arcs to compensate for their lack of maneuverability. Gorn ships have the worst turn rate in the galaxy. Their ships are faster than many other races but not as fast as their traditional enemies, the Romulans, are. Gorn ships are extremely durable, and able to take a tremendous amount of punishment. In general, only Hydran ships are capable of withstanding more damage than Gorn ships. Gorn ships also possess the worst point defense in the galaxy, and can have a great deal of difficulty dealing with small targets such as drones and fighters.

The Gorn generally excel at two very different, indeed opposite, tactics. The Gorn, obviously, invented "The Gorn Anchor" (see TRACTOR BEAMS) and excel at that tactic. The durability of their ships allows them to survive the close range needed to establish a tractor link, and their powerful weapons arrangement allows them to severely cripple an opponent once an "anchor" has been established. Running right up to an enemy, taking his best shot, and performing the Gorn Anchor is sometimes referred to as "classic", "old style", or "hammer blow" plasma tactics (in which most decisions revolve around achieving a "Gorn Anchor"). The Gorn are also proficient at "finesse" plasma tactics, also sometimes referred to as "modern" or (somewhat incorrectly) as "ballet" plasma tactics (in which high speed and avoiding overload range is the key factor). While the Romulans use high speed and maneuverability in the finesse plasma game, the Gorn use their superior firing arcs in a variation on the Romulan method. When they aren’t just walking right up to the enemy and smashing him over the head with a hammer, the Gorn are running away and firing aft and side arc weapons at the pursuing enemy. Slight turns to either side allow the firing of "LP/RP" plasma launchers and bring side-bearing phasers into arc. The ships with "LS/RS" Type-F launchers are particularly well suited to the Gorn version of "finesse plasma".

Hydran Kingdom

Hydran ships are split between two basic designs. The original Hydran ships are hybrid warship/carriers armed with the short-ranged fusion beam and carrying the deadly "Stinger" fighters. Later, without abandoning their original hybrid ships, the Hydrans also began to produce a line of ships armed with the medium-ranged hellbore cannons that carry only a few fighters or, in some cases, no fighters at all. Both types of Hydran ships are extremely durable, the most durable of all races. Hydran ships can take a tremendous amount of damage and continue on as effective warships. All types of Hydran ships also carry the viscous "gatling phaser", a dual purpose weapon that is both the ultimate point defense weapon and a powerful anti-ship weapon at extremely close range (1 or less). Hydran ships possess, in general, average maneuverability and speed, although some Hydran ships are very fast (rivaling the fastest ships of any race).

Some players refer to the Hydrans as "methane-breathers". A common taunt used by opponents is to refer to the Hydrans as "trash cans" (the result of a description of the Hydran species that was once published in an SFB product).

Hydran tactics are very different depending on the ship type, fusion/fighter or hellbore. The fusion/fighter armed ships must close to extremely close range for their fusion beams and gatling phasers to become effective. They usually either follow the fighters in, or lead the fighters in, depending on the philosophy of the captain. Following the fighters in forces the enemy to either engage the fighters or suffer severe shield damage (if not internal damage) from the fighters. Engaging the fighters, of course, means less firepower available with which to attack the ship. Leading the fighters in encourages the enemy to fire at the ship, leaving the fighters to attack with relative impunity. Fortunately for Hydran opponents, the more fighters the Hydran ship carries the smaller the Hydran ship (assuming an equal BPV fight). The combination of fusion beams and PHGs, however, results in a lethal level of close range "crunch power". Hydran fusion armed ships outgun even the Federation’s powerful combination of overloaded photon torpedoes and numerous PH1s. And, of course, the Hydrans have the durability to take a lot of damage and still strike back which allows them to achieve the close range necessary in order to effectively use the fusion beams and PHGs.

The hellbore armed ships carry few (if any) fighters, but possess perhaps the best direct-fire heavy weapon in the Star Fleet Universe. The highly accurate and facing independent hellbore cannon damages all six shields, and automatically applies half of the damage to the weakest shield (regardless of facing). These ships also carry the lethal (and versatile) gatling phaser, which provides the hellbore armed ships with a respectable close range punch. Hellbore ships are often very fast, provided they arm standard load hellbores, which they can afford to do because the weapon is so effective. Some ships have a combination of hellbores and fusion beams, which in addition to the PHGs make them dangerous at both medium and short range. Just like the fusion armed ships, the hellbore armed ships are extremely durable. All this may sound as though the Hydrans are the "best" race, and many of SFBs top players do consider the Hydrans to be the most powerful race in single ship combat. They are, however, also the most difficult race to use effectively. This difficulty is magnified in SFC, where managing their wide range of weapons can become quite overwhelming at times. It is suggested that you master the SFC interface with less complicated races before attempting to use the Hydrans.

The primary Hydran deficiencies are speed and power. The hellbore cannon is the most power hungry of the heavy weapons and, although a few of the hellbore ships are very fast when arming standard hellbores, most are not. A very high power consumption rate of 6 points of energy per turn means that no ship can maintain high speed (24+) while arming overloaded hellbores. The fusion armed ships, while fast, are only effective at extremely close range. If the enemy is able to avoid that range, the fusion armed ships will have great difficulty. The Hydrans also have very few PH1s in their fleet, most Hydran phasers are PH2s and they have few of those. The PHGs to compensate for their lack of phasers in the areas of point defense and extremely close range attacks, but Hydran ships are sorely lacking in medium range phaser firepower.

In squadron (and especially in large fleet) battles, the Hydrans are very powerful. Their combination of ships with massive close range damage potential, fighters, and medium range facing independent weapons to pick on ships damaged by the fusion ships and fighters make for an excellent team. Much like operating a single Hydran ship, however, all of this teamwork can be very difficult to actually achieve. Even in the far slower paced SFB, it took experienced and well-practiced players to use Hydran fleets to their maximum effect. In general, although the Hydrans are powerful, this is a race that should be avoided by new players until they have achieved an adequate understanding of the game and a mastery of the interface.

Lyran Star Empire

Lyran ships are very powerful designs. They are armed with disruptors, PH1s, and the Expanding Sphere Generator. In general, Lyran ships have a great balance of firepower, durability, and maneuverability. Due to the respectable number of PH1s, the versatile disruptor, and the multi-purpose ESG, Lyran ships have excellent firepower and point defense. Their ships are durable, but not impressively durable like Hydran and Gorn ships. Lyran ships also possess average maneuverability, not sluggish like the Gorn but also not agile like the Klingon and Romulan ships. The primary weakness of Lyran ships is speed, a deficiency caused by a notorious power shortage. Between the disruptors, PH1s, and ESGs, Lyran ships can find it hard to power all of their systems at times. This, in turn, results in slower than average speeds in many situations.

Some players refer to the Lyran as "Cats", obviously due to their cat-like appearance. A common taunt used by Lyran opponents is "Here kitty, kitty".

Lyran tactics revolve around their unique Expanding Sphere Generator. The ESG requires a significant amount of power, but has a capacitor system that makes applying power to the device as flexible as possible. The combination of disruptors and numerous PH1s gives the Lyrans a good medium range (9-15) punch, while the ESG provides them with a level of crunch power that no other disruptor armed ship can rival. The ESG also provides Lyran ships with the best point defense in the galaxy. Only Kzinti ships (which are not present in SFC) can hope to overcome Lyran ESG fields with drones, and the ESG can wipe out Hydran fighters in droves. A few PH3s provide backup to the ESG and, if needed, the Lyran can simply put the PH1s on point defense rendering the ship nearly invincible to small threats.

Lyran ships are capable of performing "The Klingon Saber Dance", but they are inferior to the Klingons at this method of attack. While they do possess more PH1s than the their Klingon allies, their ships do not have the level of maneuverability that is required to perform the tactic to perfection. If the ESGs need to recharge, Lyran ships run into power problems that force the ships to slow down, which is also a hindrance to performing the "Saber Dance". Lyran ships can effectively fight from medium range; they just don’t do it quite as well as the Klingons. At close range, however, the Lyrans are far superior to the Klingons. The ESG, and the large number of PH1s, provide Lyran ships with a crunch power that the Klingons do not possess. Adequate Lyran durability allows them to withstand a moderate amount of damage and continue as an effective combat unit. On the other hand, a Lyran ship does not have the drones that the Klingon uses to distract enemy phasers during a close range pass, so they often take more damage than a Klingon does in a close range pass in addition to dishing out more damage than a Klingon.

The problem with the Lyrans, as already mentioned, is power and speed. The two are interchangeable within SFB/C, insufficient power means insufficient speed. Some Lyran ships have power problems even with fully charged ESG capacitors, but most Lyran ships only encounter critical problems when the ESG capacitors are empty. When it comes time to recharge the ESGs, a Lyran can find itself in a quandary. With no ESGs available, the Lyran has point defense on par with a Gorn (the worst point defense) and has lost its crunch power. In order to charge the ESGs, a Lyran must often either slow significantly or wait for a long time while power slowly trickles to the capacitors. Enemies of the Lyran know of their difficulties in charging the ESG, and it is at this vulnerable stage that Lyran opponents become most aggressive. So, while the Lyrans are powerful, they are a difficult race to master.

Orion Pirates

The Orions are not a playable race in SFC, so there is no need to discuss Orion tactics. Some additional background information, however, will improve your understanding of the Orion Pirates. The Orions are essentially a criminal organization. They are a loosely allied group of "cartels", each of which operates within a specific territory. Orion ships do not have their own heavy weapons. Instead, they have "Option Mounts" in which the player can mount any weapons available to his/her cartel. The available weapons and systems are determined by the cartel's territory. If, for example, a cartel operates in both Hydran and Lyran space, then both Hydran and Lyran technology is available to that cartel. This is why you see Orion ships armed with a variety of weapons in the single player game; they are from different cartels.

Orion ships are, in general, extremely powerful. They receive two points of ECM free due to their "stealth design", and can still generate up to 6 points as any other ship can. Orion ships carry a "suicide bomb" that adds to the power of the explosion when they self-destruct, and will always attempt to self-destruct rather than allowing their ship to be captured. Orion ships can also double the output of their engines, which damages the engine in the process. SFB players call this "the cocaine rule" because "once you start, you can't stop, and it eventually kills you."

While there are nearly 30 races in Star Fleet Battles, only around a dozen of those are considered "major races". Star Fleet Command presents just 7 of those races, and only 6 are playable. You are likely to hear SFB players discuss other races. The following is a brief description of the most important of the "major races" of SFB that are not presented in SFC. Interplay has hinted at the inclusion of some of these races in a future product, and the most likely to be presented in a future SFC expansion/sequel are noted as such in their respective descriptions.

Kzinti Hegemony

The Kzinti are a race of cat-like beings. The Kzinti and Lyrans are mortal enemies and have fought many wars. The General War, the conflict around which the majority of Star Fleet Universe history revolves, was touched off by a Lyran invasion of Kzinti territory. When they are not fighting the Lyrans, the Kzinti spend a great deal of time fighting civil wars among themselves over succession to the throne, which explains why their ships have respectable defenses against drones. The Kzinti are located above the Klingons, between the Lyran Empire and the United Federation of Planets; the "arm" of Lyran space that extends along the top of the Klingon Empire on the campaign map in SFC is actually the location of the Kzinti Hegemony. Just before the General War, the Kzinti signed a treaty with the Federation and were members of the Federation-led "Alliance" throughout the war.

The Kzinti are the premier drone users of the Star Fleet Universe, with disruptors being the "secondary" heavy weapon on their ships. Kzinti ships have few PH1s, but a large number of PH3s (used in defending themselves from drones during their seemingly endless civil wars). Their ships are among the best in the galaxy and some of SFBs top aces favor the Kzinti. Even considering the licensing issues (the Kzin race was "borrowed" from the Larry Niven novels), this race is probably the most likely of all to be included in a future expansion or sequel of SFC.

Interstellar Concordium

This race is very much like the United Federation of Planets. It is a collection of many races that work together as a single political entity. The ISC appeared on the scene in the later years of the General War. They held the opinion that the other races in the galaxy were "raving lunatics" and attempted to force a peace in order to "save them from themselves". This was known to the major galactic powers as the "ISC Conquest" and to the ISC as "the Pacification Program". For two years the ISC succeeded in putting an end to the fighting between the "Alliance" (Federation, Gorn, Kzinti, Hydran) and the "Coalition" (Klingon, Lyran, Romulan). The ISC is located to the east of the Gorn Confederation and the Romulan Star Empire, placing those two nations between the Federation and the Concordium.

ISC ships are armed with plasma torpedoes, with the larger ships carrying a devastatingly long-range weapon called the "Plasmatic Pulsar Device" (PPD). ISC ships operate in a special "echelon formation" designed to protect the PPD armed "core" ships. Most ISC ships mount rear-firing plasma F launchers, which compliment the echelon formation in which they operate. This race is probably the second most likely to appear in a future expansion of SFC.

Andromedan Invaders

This is an extra-galactic race that attempted to conquer the Milky Way galaxy during the ISC's "War of Pacification". The Andromedan Invasion ended the ISC's forced peace, after which the "Galactic Powers" united in order to repel the Andromedan Invasion. The Andromedan Invasion culminated in "Operation Unity" in which the Galactic Powers, working together for the first time in history, destroyed the main Andromedan base of operations located in the Lesser Magellanic Cloud.

Andromedan ships are so different that using them is almost like playing a completely different game. They do not have shields, instead, they have "Power Absorber Panels" which absorb damage and convert it to energy that they then use to supplement their own power supply. Their heavy weapon is the "Tractor-Replusor Beam"; a weapon that grabs a ship and rapidly tractors and repels it, literally shaking the target to pieces. The Andromedans also posses the "Displacement Device", which allows them to teleport their own ships or enemy ships. Andromedan "motherships" carry smaller (destroyer size and smaller) "satellite ships" inside of "hangar bays". The Andromedans posses the fastest ships in the Star Fleet Universe; they are the opposite of galactic ships, often possessing more power than they know what to do with. This race is probably the third most likely to appear in a future expansion of SFC.

Lyran Democratic Republic

This is a breakaway republic that was formerly the Dark Star County of the Enemy’s Blood Duchy within the Lyran feudal system. Dark Star County, later the Lyran Democratic Republic (LDR), is located at the junction of the Lyran/Hydran/Klingon borders. When this county broke away from the Lyran Star Empire they were supported by the Hydran Kingdom; a part of this support was the transfer of gatling phaser technology to the LDR. The combination of gatling phasers and the Expanding Sphere Generator makes any competent LDR player completely immune to drones. The gatling phasers also come in handy against ships at close range.

There is almost no chance of this race appearing in an expansion to SFC. Without the same level of "strategic awareness" that is present in SFB, there would be no reason to use Lyrans if the LDR were available.

WYN Star Cluster

The WYN Cluster is a tiny area of space at the juncture of the Klingon, Lyran, and Kzinti nations. It is an area of space surrounded by an intense radiation cloud. "The Usurper", a Kzinti noble who attempted to overthrow the Kzinti regime and seize the throne, fled to this area of space when that attempt failed. Relations were established with the Orion Pirates, which enabled the Usurper to establish the cluster as a defensible "minor nation". The effects of the radiation cloud surrounding the cluster are severe, and leave any ships attempting to penetrate it immobile for a period of time. This fact, and the support of the Orion Pirates, allowed the Usurper and his followers to defend their stronghold.

Most WYN ships are freighters converted to warships. The WYN also possess ships purchased from the Orions, and later developed their own ships based on Orion designs (which SFB players refer to by the nickname "Fish Ships"). A descendant of the Usurper eventually waged the WYN "War of Return"; a second attempt to seize the Kzinti throne. It is very unlikely that the WYN will appear in a future expansion of SFC.

Tholian Holdfast

Non-SFB players are probably familiar with this race as they appeared in an episode of the original Star Trek series. The Tholians once ruled their home galaxy with an iron fist. Eventually, one of their subject races developed the technology to defeat them and they were driven from their former domain. Arriving in the Milky Way galaxy, they established an enclave at the junction of Federation, Klingon, and Romulan territory. Their "web" technology is a powerful defense, and they fiercely defend their small area of captured territory. Most of the territory they annexed had been a part of the Klingon Empire, and the Klingons continually harass the Tholians. The Romulans tend to leave them alone due to the fact that web is extremely effective against plasma torpedoes. The Federation has made several attempts at diplomatic contact, but the Tholians prefer to be left alone. Tholian ships are armed with disruptors and web generators. Some Tholian ships are armed with captured photon torpedoes. Their fleet consists mostly of smaller ships.

Later in SFU history a second Tholian fleet arrives, known to the galactic races as the "Neo-Tholians". This second fleet is comprised of larger and more modern Tholian ships, which carry a device called the "Web Caster". The web caster is capable of "firing" a small amount of web into a specific location. Neo-Tholian ships are excellent ships, equal to those of the galactic races. For reasons that would take too much space to elaborate upon here, it is highly unlikely that the Tholians will be presented in a future expansion of SFC.

Seltorian Tribunal

This is the race that overthrew the Tholians in their home galaxy. A Seltorian "Hive Ship" and its support fleet arrives in the Milky Way galaxy in the later years of Star Fleet Universe history seeking to eliminate what are presumably the last of the Tholian race. Seltorian "Web Breakers" tear down Tholian web with frightening efficiency, and have an alternate firing mode ("Shield Cracker") which can damage shields but is not capable of causing internal damage. Their rapid firing "Particle Cannon" provides them with a versatile weapon. Seltorian ships are very specifically designed to combat Tholian technology, and have difficulties standing up to the ships of most other races in ship-to-ship combat.

If the Tholians were to be a part of future SFC expansion, which is unlikely, the Seltorians would probably appear along with them.

If you have stayed away from SFC assuming that it won't be any good, or messes with too many rules to work right, you really should at least try the demo. Hopefully from having read this document you will have a greater appreciation for SFC already. Although more than a few changes were made, it does actually work a lot like SFB. The DAC is in the game (transparently) and does govern damage to ships. The Mizia Concept is supported. Electronic warfare, all forms of plasma except bolts, the SSDs of the 250+ ships that are included are accurate, and you can even perform more than half of SFBs "named tactics" (and they work well). Things like speed 40 plasma torpedoes might sound insane, but if you play the game enough to understand it you realize that most of the more radical changes were actually needed for one reason or another.

Download the demo and try it online for at least 20 hours of playing time before making up your mind. At first it seems like it is much more simplified than it is, and that you can't do a lot of the things that you could in SFB. The more you play it the more you realize that it isn't as grossly simplified as it appears at first, and that you can actually do those things that you did in SFB… you just have to know the interface really well in order to do them. They are different games, but not nearly as different as it first appears.

This document is "Freeware". Anyone is free to distribute it in any manner they see fit, providing they do not charge a fee or accept money for it (or any part of it). Re-printing, in whole or part, in a commercially sold product is similarly prohibited without prior permission of the author. The author simply asks non-profit users (who are free to distribute it through web pages, e-mail, US Mail, and other similar means) that you not modify, edit, or alter the document in any way. If you wish to add your own comments, please do so in a separate file and zip the files together.

The author does not claim credit for the tactical concepts and strategies presented within this document. This document is merely a compilation of the most basic and fundamental tactics, strategies, and concepts developed by the Star Fleet Battles "community" over the past 20 years. The author was a member of the "Star Fleet Battles Staff" from 1990-1992 (a volunteer group of "design assistants" who work through the GEnie online service and are still active today) during the design of the Captain’s Edition of Star Fleet Battles.

Marc Michalik, SFB Staff (Retired)