Welcome to Gaia! ::

Basic combat will allow you to fire and attack your enemy, but more Advanced Combat options will allow you to make better use out of your ship and its weapons in order to better defeat your opponent. Movement in the RP is very wide open, allowing a vessel to fly around almost however it pleases while in combat. Using movement in order to jockey your ship for position to fire its more powerful weapons is important when dealing with Advanced Techniques.

The first deals damage with motion, and is what I like to call "Swooping", or a "Tactical Flyby".

Swooping and the Tactical Flyby
This particular technique allows a ship to fly straight towards an opposing vessel, fire all of its forward firing weapons, speed above or below them and unleash their dorsal/ventral weapons, and then as they complete the pass they can fire their aft weapons. This technique gives an opposing vessel a massive blow, dealing large amounts of damage, but often resulting in your ship's aft section being targeted afterwards where it has less defensive power. This technique is best used against slower maneuvering vessels so that you will be able to get back into a good position before they can turn and follow your ship.

Another advanced technique involves Rerouting Power to your ship's systems in order to get better performance from them.

Rerouting Power
Only a few stats can have energy rerouted to them, however, by doing this, it decreases the effectiveness of some other systems. Only one system can have power rerouted to it at any given time.



And lets not forget about cloaked ships! A cloaked ship doesn't have any shields, but can evade detection through normal means. A cloaked ship can even warp away from combat to escape, and if you really must attack them to defeat them, you'll want to try and find them! Well, here's how you do it.

Detecting Cloaked Vessels
There are two ways to do this. Both involve what kind of ship you are fighting, and what kind of cloaking device the enemy ship has equipped for use in combat.





Ramming
Every Star Trek fan knows that ramming an enemy ship is a tactical decision that's open if all other methods of attack are impossible, and their engines are still functioning. The same is true in the New Frontier. Ramming damage is calculated by adding the remaining hull points of your ship, plus the remaining engine points. This combines acceleration with the actual damage of the strike. But ramming is a two way street, and the ship doing the ramming is also badly damaged by the strike. The ramming ship takes 70% of the damage it gives, making this an attack of desperation. It is important to note that Ablative Armor and Regenerative Shielding do NOT assist in protecting a ship from a ramming attack due to the nature of their construction and purpose.

Self-Destruct
This IS the absolute last resort for any Starship captain. The countdown sequence lasts three posts, but does damage equal to the ship's basic engine stat times 5. The Danube Class Runabout's Self-Destruct would do 2500 damage. However, this tactic can be avoided by a ship retreating from the ship for one post. This allows retreating vessels like escape pods and shuttles to leave the ship safely before it explodes, but gives very little time for an enemy ship to realize what it going on before the ship detonates. If used carefully, this tactic can take you AND the enemy ship out at once.

Tractor Beams
Tractor beams allow a ship to pull an object behind them, or hold an object in front of them. It allows ships to tow injured or crippled ships, as well as move objects out of the way. And, in some cases, it can be used as a weapon by grappling and holding a smaller ship to prevent them from attacking you, or can be used to throw objects at other ships.

Simply locking onto an opposing ship, even during battle, does not require a dice roll, as you are using a tractor beam within its normal operational parameters. For the caught ship, you must roll a d4 (and get a 3 or 4) to successfully break the beam's hold with a feedback pulse or tractor inversion. This action prevents the caught ship from returning fire that turn, even if they manage to escape, unless the ship tractoring your vessel happens to be within the arc of your weapons. This rule goes for the entirety of the ship's captivity by the beam. In other words, if you're caught by a tractor beam, and your opponent is not within your weapons range, you are unable to fire on them. This makes Borg tractor beams very deadly...

However, any improvised attack using a tractor beam, like throwing an asteroid, has a success chance of 25% (Get a 4 on a 4 Sided Dice Roll). Also, no ship may tractor beam an object more than 1.5 times its size. This prevents things like a Runabout towing a Galaxy Class Starship. No attack using a tractor beam, that does not involve regular weapons, may do more than 1000 damage to an enemy vessel. Also, spamming of this tactic and constantly making it do 1000 damage WILL bring the Mod Squad down on you. Or you might find yourself in a battle with a Borg Armada, or a battle with the USS Ragnarok. Neither of which you will enjoy very much. Please don't abuse these tactics.

Transporters and Boarding Parties
If an enemy ship has its shields taken down, transporting things to and from the ship is possible, which allows for pirates to steal objects from your cargo bay, or for them to transport boarding parties aboard your ship for the same reason. Of course, you can fight back by beaming them off your ship. Also, if they are transporting to and from your ship their shields must be down, making attack on them all the easier... However, some pirates may try to use strange and ingenious tactics to take over your ship or steal your cargo that you may not plan for. So be wary... Transporters can also send people or objects to and from the surface of planets for use in Away Missions or Cargo Delivery.

In addition, transporters can be used to transport individuals from their current area on their ship to another without having to enter the transporter room. This is called a "Site-to-Site Transport", and can be used in a number of ways. However, one cannot transport an individual, or group of individuals, to another location if they have already left the ship without first having them return to the transporter pad of your ship, before being sent to their new destination. This process does not require re-materialization onboard your vessel, but it takes quite a bit of time to recalibrate the transporters before sending the patterns to their new location. This action requires the ship's shield to remain down until the process is completed (1 turn bringing back, one turn for sending, for a total of 2 turns), making the transporting ship vulnerable to weapons fire for the duration of the process.

The Maximum number of persons that your vessel is able to transport, in this manner, at once is determined by multiplying the number of expense of your ship times 3. The Danube Class Runabout would therefore be capable of transporting a maximum of 3 people at once. The only exception for this is the Federation, which has one additional ship that throws off the scale. The Valiant Refit is considered to have the same transporting capacity as the Miranda Class, which fixes the scale of increase for the rest of the ships. The most expensive ships should therefore be capable of transporting 30 people at once. In times of emergency, this number can be increased by utilizing all the transporters onboard a ship (this number varies depending on the ship), but only for rescue operations were large scale evacuations are needed, and not for battle purposes.

At the same time, any beaming of an object, or persons, to another ship during combat will require two posts. One post states what is to be done. The second post would then state the ship or crew carrying the action out. So, if someone wanted to transport a torpedo into the engineering section of another ship, they would first have to state what they were planning to do, and in their next battle post, they would then attempt to carry it out. This gives the tactic a chance at failing, and evens things up a bit more for both sides. No "Out of Character" information may be used to block one of these attacks before they happen. Any tactic used to circumvent one of these improvised attacks must have a good reason. "Lucky timing" isn't a good excuse.

Using your Environment
Space is a very big place, and as such, there are plenty of places to hide. Asteroid Fields, nebulae, and small planetoids can all be used to hide from your opponents and their weapons. By running your ship in "Silent Running Mode" all nonessential systems and power is turned down to a minimum, making your ship even harder to find among these formations.

Making Repairs
As blowing up your enemy isn't something that is smiled upon in this guild without first getting permission for such a thing, repairs will often be needed after a battle. One day's worth of work will bump up a stat from 0 to 100, and the same goes for each day worked to repair something subtracting 2 Credits for each point repaired. This means that repairing 200 damage out in the field costs 400 Credits. So, instead of simply repairing battle damage, it might be a good idea to post a Distress Call in the Quadrant Communications thread stating your position so some person can find you and help you out.

Once you are towed back to a Starbase, you must quickly pay for repairs to your ship. To completely repair your ship at a starbase, you MUST wait two days in normal, OUT OF CHARACTER TIME before you can set out with your ship again. You may not lose credits, but you lose ship playing time. But this doesn't mean you can't Roleplay on Deep Space 12 or whatever other station you are docked at to pass the time.




This concludes the most basic advanced tactics for starship combat. As new tactics are though up, more will be added to this section, so keep a look out, and even try to create you own (with Mod Approval for use of course). Just like the universe, tactics and battle situations are open and endless. So explore them often.