Fan Council OOC Thread

[Fatebringer]

When the AFFS had its High Command secret forum where we discussed things(It died along with the website that hosted it: today it's a Japanese Author's website.), we had plans and discussion for a lot of things. We never did prepare for a 25 Warship and 4 Galaxy force arriving in our Periphery Boarder. We prepared for a 10 warship fleet at the most with maybe two galaxies of troops. However hindsight is one of those things that annoys everyone.

Yes, and my horrible rolling didn't help. It took me forever just to get those Guerilla's off of Flitvelt even though we had them outnumbered 500 to 1. And me chasing false intel didn't help.

As far as the Alexander Davion went. At the end of the game, it and the Intrepid were part of the fleet protecting the 2 Clan Space stations Stations New Hope Station (CDS) & Transfer Station P9 (ND) which bordered the Homeworld zone where were we were doing the investigations on what was going on in the homeworlds and working on BioAgent Antidotes. Your admiral was at the forefront assisting Star Admiral Asif Cole with releif efforts and planning.

At the end of Turn 45

Ground      2426.25 FP -8 Regiments plus support, 37 RCTs, 26 March Militias, 15 Training Cadres, 6 Resupply Depots, 12 Planetary Defense Forces
Aerospace      378.25 FP
Navy              409.75 FP- 13 Warships (3 Avalon, 9 Fox, 1 Congress), 12 Near Escort Fleets, 5 Independent Wings
Mercenary     681.25 FP- 23 Regiments & A Warship
Total              3895.5 FP

I know the Outback Air Corps (5 x Independant Wings) I created to patrol the periphery were dismantles in favor of adding more foxes for MP after I handed over the sheets. I though having some firepower in case the Dark came back was more important than the MP as you wouldn't need to send the Air Corps far, they were stationed there.

The first thing that happened even before I got the sheet to help manage the FedSuns was the big recalc. There was an audit of the Fed Suns assets in which they went thru and counted the number of Member / Control worlds on the board and reduced the Fed Suns income to about 100 RP a turn. After paying out mercs, there was only about 80 RP left a turn which I'm sure is much less than what the Fed Suns were working with perviously and the MP Pool was very small compared to the militaries size. I dropped some Merc Units just so I had more money to spend and sent a good chunk of the rest to the Clan Front to earn their paycheck.

One of the broken things in the game were IC's. The clanners would invest 12 RP and get 2 FP a turn in revenue and once the clanners had money, it was a whole new ballgame and wouldn't be until the Falcons entered the Lyran agreement and the FWL kicked out their providers that the IS got to benefit from that. No one else really did. By the time the game ended, the New Dominion was getting 70 RP just from their communications network and the Lyran-Falcons were getting probably 3 times that much as Comstar wasn't in the position to do anything about it. The SLDF and Terran forces had been beaten back by the combines Clan Force.

The Lyran turn around on the Clans was unexpected and if they supported the SLDF would have made things interesting, however the FWL didn't like them either so there was a lot stacked against them. I'm sure we would have stopped attacking them at some point, but until they were less of a threat, the beatings would have continued.

[Iron Mongoose]

Speaking of the Hellions and Ravens and Periphery and everything else, one of the things I liked about 3062 was a lot of socal mobility for factions. 

The Mandrills under my controll began life as three Kindraa out of seven, only one under my direct controll.  After Kern left the Sainze in a lurch, we merged them with the Mattila-Carrol.  The fact that the Sainze had lost three Kindraa Leaders and the Mattila Carrols only one was a factor in that, IC, but the OOC player pressure was also key.  Thouse two managed to build up to four galaxies and three or four naval fleets.  Allying with, and eventualy absorbing, the Mick-Kreese Kindraa, gave us five galaxies and another strong fleet.  And that's less than half the Clan.  When I look back on a time when my per turn income was 5.5 RP, it really starts to look like something from nothing when New Caledonia and Star's End each made as much on their own.

The Hellions we've also talked about at bit, comming from a fairly obscure home world Clan, being an Invading Clan for a few turns, being evicted just intime to not make the cut when we cut out the Homeworld Clans.  After spending time as a Mandrill (time well spend in my book) Marlin was able to go back, turn his Hellions back around, and lead them triumphantly back to the IS.

The Adders managed to carve out quite the empire for themselves, how ever ill fated it may have proved.

At the same time, look how the mighty fall.  The Lyrans are the poster child for that, of course, but look at the Wolves, look at the DC losing its fleet over Alshain, look at the FWL getting roughed up by the Terrans (only to roar back stronger than ever under my successors).  And the invincable Terrans becoming mortal shows that, as well, in that even the biggest boy on the block can still bite off more than he can chew.

Yes, some factions were always more or less where they were, and seemed pretty resiliant.  The FedSuns is a good example of that, or the MoC, which always did well but never had the super success that the other Periphery states had through their trade deals.  But, it made the game a lot more dynamic that any faction could always take off, and any faction could be smashed.

[Marlin]

Thanks for the sheets, Harlock.
You know, just going by the MP pool, until I read your summary I was thinking: whao, rather puny for such a big faction, but then I read the real numbers and had to roll back. Yes, the logistics for you were the stumbling block but you surely had a great (and big) team to play with. I never saw the Suns (most of the IS) as IC interest, other than a whetstone mountain to throw my forces at. I was involved in the FWL for a time, well, that had potential with many more players but it was not to be in the long run.

(I was involved with so many Clans, thats not really funny ) Anyway, the Suns were one of my main enemy, even though we had a few direct encounters. No doubt, the Jaguars never threatened you in your core. It was just timing and moving troops around.

But the awesome victory at Morges over 2 RCTs of yours is a nice memory. Despite outnumbering you (by a bit, not by tables), the saKhan did the only right thing in killing them immediately. Any other throw than a 12 would have hurt much more. I guess.

IM, I am also memorizing our short path as Mandrills. That was a good time. I think any faction with players able to do good RP is great. Start of the Ice Hellions for example, the Mandrills and some time the CIH inter Clan. Especially the bits with Cannonshop.

Ah yes, the memory. 

Oh, and one more thing: at the end the CIH had almost as much Navy than the Fed Suns here in T 45.
(Without the ground support.)

Their development was good. The Time jump skewed things of, started by the seemingly arbitrary money the factions got. I know we should not talk about that. But the game is gone anyway, right?

And you know, I certainly said it before: my first pick were the Star Adders, I got the Ice Hellions and I loved them.  Only through the FGC.

[Iron Mongoose]

It was the same for me.  I got the FWL as my first pick in the IS, but I didn't get any of my first three picks in the Clans (I want to say Bears and Ravens and Falcons, but its been like six or seven years).  I got the Vipers, but I don't like them and I didn't know anyone, so I asked for the Mandrills because I knew some people there and they also needed players, and I got that.

The rest is history.  Oddly, Maddy and Kern didn't end up sticking around, or Olive who was a Mandrill on paper too.  But, between Eric and August and Marlin and Tassa and the whole crew, it was the best team I ever had the pleasure to work with (though not by a land slide, since I have worked with some good crews). 

[Fatebringer]

The Hellions we've also talked about at bit, comming from a fairly obscure home world Clan, being an Invading Clan for a few turns, being evicted just intime to not make the cut when we cut out the Homeworld Clans.  After spending time as a Mandrill (time well spend in my book) Marlin was able to go back, turn his Hellions back around, and lead them triumphantly back to the IS.

Don't forget your success in the Niflsmeet First and only winner.

I remember being a new player under Ian Sharpe when I first tried to play the FGC. I got my copy of the orders as back up and then they closed the Clan Homeworlds. I looked at my order and was like ... half our forces in the Clan Wolf Invasion corridor and weren't allowed to play "How come we're getting shut out? We have a huge fleet on Ridderkerk headed to support our Ghost Bear allies! " Since our forces were already on the way to Alshain before the shut down I for one didn't feel bad about how that played out. And we finally got back into the game after that

I was supposed to be back up again when I resigned up, but right off the bat, I got a copy of our orders and my Faction Head dissapeared. But with all the stuff going on it didn't take me long to be assigned Faction Head. I came in about the same time the Homeworlds got the news from the Spirit Cats about the Terrans.

[FoxxItal]

One of my favorite moments was evicting Comstar with an entire cluster of elementals in Megamek..... 

[Fatebringer]

And by Elementals... you mean Ewoks?

[Lord Harlock]

Thanks for the sheets, Harlock.
You know, just going by the MP pool, until I read your summary I was thinking: whao, rather puny for such a big faction, but then I read the real numbers and had to roll back. Yes, the logistics for you were the stumbling block but you surely had a great (and big) team to play with. I never saw the Suns (most of the IS) as IC interest, other than a whetstone mountain to throw my forces at. I was involved in the FWL for a time, well, that had potential with many more players but it was not to be in the long run.

. . . Anyway, the Suns were one of my main enemy, even though we had a few direct encounters. No doubt, the Jaguars never threatened you in your core. It was just timing and moving troops around.

It's nice to have the forces, but the big problem is logistics. And let's face it, I'd probably would have tried to avenge the 42^nd Avalon Hussars and 6^th Crucis Lancers if I had troops to spare and been still in control of the faction. Honestly, I just couldn't support the Star League forces at that point when you attacked Morges. "Honey Bunches of Oats" and her saKhan had to ruffed up at some point for killing General Edwin May. The big question was where I was going to get the forces to do it since I honestly had wanted to pull everything in the Lyran Commonwealth back to the Suns to reinforce the Combine and Capellan boarder.

Though sending a Rabid Fox team probably would have ended up with a failure considering the other time that the Suns tried to use a Rabid Fox team against the Clans. That darn Baby! Anyhow, the best use for the Rabid Foxes was to protect people anyhow.

One of the things that you realize when planning defenses for the Suns with mech forces and warship is that the AFFS leaves a lot of ground under-defended by front line and second line units in the interior of the Crucis March such as Point Barrow Combat Region and Remagen Combat Region. The primary reason is that for the most part there is no reason to place troops there since pirates are stopped at the Periphery Boarder. Though I'd figure that by the time of 3130, the Suns had more troops there in case the Raven Alliance decided to march into the Suns. Otherwise, the worlds in interior probably are defended by independent infantry, independent armor, maybe a couple of independent aerospace naval units, planetary militias, and possible a couple of noble mech guard units.

So if the Suns isn't fighting the Clans, where are the mech forces? They are on the Capellan, Taurian, and Combine boarders, and after 3085, the Raven and Filtvelt boarders are added. Typically, there are two RCTs on New Avalon usually for parade and guarding the federal government, but they are probably not going to face any actual combat on New Avalon.

As for the Dark, their stated goal when they originally arrived in Turn 3 was that they were going to burn New Avalon. And by Turn 41, they were within six hexes of New Avalon. I'm glad that I reinforced New Avalon with Operation Nero. The real problem with the Dark is that they were erratic with where they attacked. They skipped Broken Wheel in the initial Turn 38 invasion, and unlike Filtvelt, they skipped it from then on. The 3rd Davion Guards, Broken Wheel Crucis March Militia, 1st Albion Training Cadre, Hanse Davion Battlegroup, Melissa Davion Battlegroup, & Simon Davion Battlegroup at (128.5 FP Ground, 128 FP naval +20 Fp of marines) would have been a better battle than the Monehagan Planetary Defense Force against the typical 100 FP galaxy plus five warships.

Then again, it allowed me to form Operation Full Frontal over Broken Wheel from all the forces that I had basically defending Tortuga. As for why, I named it Full Frontal was because I love Gundam Unicorn (I own all five Blu-Rays that have been released. Yes, I will pay forty dollars for sixty minutes of high definition animation. It had a Zaku I Sniper, and it was beautiful.) The other bigger reason was that I felt naked after the Dark got into the Suns interior.

Honestly, the Dark made three mistakes if their goal was to destroy New Avalon. The major one was dividing their forces between the Suns, Taurian Concordat, and Randis IV. It meant that if they got bogged down; the Suns would probably be able to reinforce beleaguered defending forces. Fatebringer got that in two cases:  Filtvelt and Panpour. Fatebringer once had a discussion with me over the length of the Suns' boarders. Thus he basically moved defense to certain points as opposed to the standard defend as many points as possible that everyone else practices. So on Panpour, he basically was able to throw troops and a lot of mercenaries from New Syrtis and the Full Frontal Task Force to just bog down the Dark. Though the last mistake of the Dark was that they left nothing behind to defend anything that they took in the Suns.

I've never come to a conclusion on whether the Dark using the false flag attacks on the Taurian Concordat was a good idea or not. As I demonstrated, I was willing to give up worlds that I couldn't defend to the Concordat to prove to them that I wasn't attacking them with the 3rd Davion Guard.

[Arkansas Warrior]

All you oldtimers and your reminiscences.  I joined '62 after the Homeworlds were closed (minor FedSuns player, and GB Loremaster/Spreadsheets guy) promptly got my GBPC and Ragnar Magnusson killed by the Terrans in the evens surrounding the Rasalhague Unification, then jumped ship for the Cloud Cobras when the Homeworlds reopened.  An then left the game not terribly long after when the game migrated here from the big boards.  Would've been the Hasek family in FGC '10, but we all know how that went.  So here I am.  Unfortunately I deleted my old sheets months ago.



I really do wish we could get a post-Reavings Homeworlds/Deep Periphery game going, I miss playing Clan.

[Lord Harlock]

Yes, and my horrible rolling didn't help. It took me forever just to get those Guerilla's off of Flitvelt even though we had them outnumbered 500 to 1. And me chasing false intel didn't help.

I wouldn't say that your rolling was the worst. Other than the Robinson which ship's motto should be, "Doing the Impossible!", I pretty much always somehow got 2 points on average lower than my opponent when I needed it. If the force was a militia, I'd magically get a 12 only for the 1FP to be facing a full galaxy. Those guys were the best militiamen ever.

As far as the Alexander Davion went. At the end of the game, it and the Intrepid were part of the fleet protecting the 2 Clan Space stations Stations New Hope Station (CDS) & Transfer Station P9 (ND) which bordered the Homeworld zone where were we were doing the investigations on what was going on in the homeworlds and working on BioAgent Antidotes. Your admiral was at the forefront assisting Star Admiral Asif Cole with releif efforts and planning.

Ah, the Alexander Davion, I think I'll bang my head some more. At least, Daemonknight built a Alexander Davion II which I should have probably suggested that Alexander Davion II be the First Prince after Yvonne. I really should have put my foot down when Welshman set the precedent of building Avalon Cruisers like the Lucien Davion II. For crying out loud, we could have at the least done a Morgan Hasek-Davion as oppose to the Congress that Fatebringer I think captured. Sigh. 

At the end of Turn 45

Ground      2426.25 FP -8 Regiments plus support, 37 RCTs, 26 March Militias, 15 Training Cadres, 6 Resupply Depots, 12 Planetary Defense Forces
Aerospace      378.25 FP
Navy              409.75 FP- 13 Warships (3 Avalon, 9 Fox, 1 Congress), 12 Near Escort Fleets, 5 Independent Wings
Mercenary     681.25 FP- 23 Regiments & A Warship
Total              3895.5 FP

I know the Outback Air Corps (5 x Independant Wings) I created to patrol the periphery were dismantles in favor of adding more foxes for MP after I handed over the sheets. I though having some firepower in case the Dark came back was more important than the MP as you wouldn't need to send the Air Corps far, they were stationed there.

The first thing that happened even before I got the sheet to help manage the FedSuns was the big recalc. There was an audit of the Fed Suns assets in which they went thru and counted the number of Member / Control worlds on the board and reduced the Fed Suns income to about 100 RP a turn. After paying out mercs, there was only about 80 RP left a turn which I'm sure is much less than what the Fed Suns were working with perviously and the MP Pool was very small compared to the militaries size. I dropped some Merc Units just so I had more money to spend and sent a good chunk of the rest to the Clan Front to earn their paycheck.

Yeah, the Dark and Clan Resurgence ate into all aspects of the AFFS, but honestly, it could have been worse. Though what happened to Arden Sortek after he left Arc Royal? And what happened to the FSS Federation?

And the one thing that I'd probably would have added to the Air Corps was an assigned Odyssey Class Jumpship with four Vengeance Class Dropship since I think the guest shipyard with the Wolves in Exile/SLDF at Kathil should have been still in effect.

As for the income, I think Daemonknight after the leap forward put the finances back in order. Sure, the fleet hadn't been reborn to its former glory, but from what I understand, the balance sheets on the Suns were way in the black. We could have pumped out a Avalon a turn.

All you oldtimers and your reminiscences.  I joined '62 after the Homeworlds were closed (minor FedSuns player, and GB Loremaster/Spreadsheets guy) promptly got my GBPC and Ragnar Magnusson killed by the Terrans in the evens surrounding the Rasalhague Unification, then jumped ship for the Cloud Cobras when the Homeworlds reopened.  An then left the game not terribly long after when the game migrated here from the big boards.  Would've been the Hasek family in FGC '10, but we all know how that went.  So here I am.  Unfortunately I deleted my old sheets months ago.

I really do wish we could get a post-Reavings Homeworlds/Deep Periphery game going, I miss playing Clan.

I was wondering what you were planning with the Cloud Cobras. Oh well.

[Iron Mongoose]

Would've been the Hasek family in FGC '10, but we all know how that went.  So here I am.

Yeah, I still feel a bit bad about my role in that 

[FoxxItal]

And by Elementals... you mean Ewoks?

It was more like watching an entire cluster of clint eastwoods go,"Get off my lawn" One of the Comstar mechs exploded so badly they thought we used WMD's ^__^.

Tho that hardly can compair to the Snow raven Ninja naval star which included a LevII that apparently remained hidden in the void around alshain only to throw a smoke bomb during the Combine naval incursion.  Up till that time apparently I was told it was the largest naval battle in the FC 

I still feel guilty about wrangling in the WiE navy through a rock paper siscors game. 

[Fatebringer]

Though what happened to Arden Sortek after he left Arc Royal? And what happened to the FSS Federation?

The FSS Federation was on Coventry Turn 43 

[Marlin]

Yeah, I thought quite some time about all this.

Problems really began in the beginning of the game. Butler needed a scapegoat and the poor Coyotes had to pay for it. That would not bode well for anything. Those players were very good people, albeit rather weak MMers. We had one of our big successes against them on Londerholm. They took it like real men. And then most left, understandably, as their Clan (The Coyotes, some of the most isolationist Clan) informed the IS about the Clan fleets.. seriously..

Oh, like the Lyrans, the Wolves were in a steady turnover of players. When Alby beat back the Bears in a great MM (I think he repeated that) I thought they could be in better waters then, and they could have done a bounce, but it was not to be. Rather sad. When you think of it, one of their players in the beginning wanted to sell them out to the IS. And later their oldenemy became Lyran. Quite ironic.

There is so much to talk about and discuss. Missing much of the IS RP out, that is even more.

Gonna get some numbers for my little Clan some time for you.

[Iron Mongoose]

Well, Butler probably held (and maybe holds) the record for most ships present, but because it was broken down into so many smaller battles in which only portions of each side fought, its hard to say exactly how big it was.  The Mandrills I know had 450k BV there, which would equate to 40 FP, though it was on average veteran skill units, so 50ish (though skill was not counted the same at the time, which lead to skilled units being undervalued in that system).  Of that, only 25 FP (30 modified for skill) actualy fought.   The Spirits I think had just 75k BV (5FP equivlant) and I think it was regular.  The FWL had... more.  A full Thera group after we recalculated came to be 126FP, so I assume that's what we had, but as I was the primary Mandrill player and only a secondary FWLer, I proposly ignored the FWL side to remain objective (despite having to fight myown self, in the Mandrills vs FWL in that battle, which I still have issues with). 

Anyone else remember what their faction had?