Bring on the Serial Attack Challenge. No longer does it matter that your fleet can beat paper, rock, or scissors - now it’s time to beat all three!
How it works is this: Each successive challenge has to beat the ones that come before it. The author of #2 has to beat #1, the author of #3 has to beat #2and#1.
I will post a fleet on a custom map named SAC-1, so it will be easier to find on the browser. 30,000 credits, 150 pilots.
It is called “SAC 1 - see forum for details” 02/26/10.
When you make a fleet that you think beats the last numbered challenge, save the deployment. Deploy the same fleet (no moving of position!) against the three previous challenges to yours. If your fleet succeeds, congratulations! Post this fleet as the next number.
That means that if there are 4 SAC challenges, you must beat #2, #3 and #4 with the same fleet in order to post it as SAC 5. You only need to do the previous three for now, to demonstrate the concept and to keep it from getting too tedious to test your fleets. If it needs to be harder, later we can extend the count.
Please keep this naming convention so there’s as little confusion as possible.
#1 will be a straightforward fleet to set the tone. It will be easy to counter, but consider the next challenger that comes after you!
To ensure games move quickly along and to prevent inordinate tanking, all ships must be capable of 0.15 speeds or greater. Between this and the fact that your fleet can beat the three previous, we will have to be on an honor system.
First is a fairly standard fast cruiser fleet with some AA.
Second is a fast cruiser fleet, no AA, but with a fast tank out front… I’m still tuning that one a bit. Getting the tank to hit the opposing line right as the rest of the cruisers engage is the trick there.
As per usual, I do my best to ignore fighters, cause fighters are lame. :o)
I have an idea for a 3rd that can do it… I’ll mess with that a bit…
Threw some missle defenses on the Fens… luckily they still have enough firepower to deal with the rest of the SAC fleets also.
This is really fun in that it starts to answer the burning question:
What is the “ideal” fleet?
We keep having to adjust our designs to be flexible. Since I don’t use fighters, there will be a fleet with fighters at some point that I can’t really defend against, which would take my fleets out of the running. In the meantime I think we’re having a sporting extravaganza of Gratuitous destruction!!!
I need to get the Order expansion up and running. I’d really like to see how they fight.
The Order are very interesting. It looks like they might have some good custom weapons. They’ve got some good fighter hull designs, and some interesting bonuses/penalties on their other hulls.
I think you might put in a rule about expansions that some people might not have. I suppose how people are handling that right now is good - beating the previous three that they can play.
I was wondering about that too, but did put together an Order fleet which defeated SAC 1-6, so uploaded it as SAC 7.
It’s probably no big deal if non-Order players skip over the Order entries; or maybe the Order entries could be deleted.
There don’t appear to be any Tribe challenges in this yet. What about the Tribe?
The Order appear to have a couple of serious custom weapons. They’ve got an improved rocket launcher, and an atomic cannon.
They’ve also got an atomic missile (expensive), and something to replace the tractor beam against fighters. The atomic missile is supposed to cause more damage - from previous hits - as the battle goes along.
The tractor-beam-replacement fires off weights which attach themselves to enemy fighters, making the fighters slower because of the extra weight. It’s called a “Limpet Mine” if memory serves.
They’ve got one nice fighter hull, and a couple which appear to be questionable.
They’ve got some nice cruiser hulls. At least one of them has something like a 17% shield boost.
There are a lot of Order hulls with hull integrity penalties.
They seem fairly powerful. Beating challenges 1-6 here was done with stock Order cruiser weapons.
This is a challenging contest. Kudos to Yurch for the idea.
My first two attempts lost out to Follick’s SAC-2. My third attempt beat 1, 2, 4, and lost to Follick’s SAC-5 (Follick’s turning into my nemesis!). My fourth attempt beat 1-2, 4-5, and when I download Hexes SAC-6, the game says it has content that I don’t have in it, but it’s a Rebel fleet. I have vanilla GSB and the Tribe, but not the Order.
Does Hexes SAC-6 use a Mod or The Order in it somehow?
No, no mods or the Order. I have been struggling with the Order expansion because I bought initially through Steam and bought the expansion via direct download from Cliff.
SAC 9 posted. Uses my current cruiser design (a cheaper version of my BlackFleet5 cruiser). I threw it together as my first attempt on the SAC series and it defeated all of them.
We should consider a rule that you have to set up in the middle of the map. The offset deployments throw the balance off, and I think we should be able to trust our captains enough to line up properly on the enemy.
