no

and no

(thankfully!)

as David has already said:

A fleet performing EJ's will effectively be scattered over a range of fairly predictable locations.

Why try to hit the main fleet where you know they will no longer be, when you can probably hit a fragment of the fleet where you are fairly certain they will end up?

David said you can only EJ into systems you know about

Do not patronise me Gandolph!

I am saying that the whole EJ system is flawed due to the easiness of the get out quick clause. I am neither shouting about or complaining about anything, I am using this forum to air views and opinions, which is what I thought it was for!

The only reason you like the whole 'Rules' thing is because it suits your style of play, whilst I understand that unpredictability is a good element, and the need to change to suit the varying styles I still say there should be a greater chance that you blow your jump engine up prior to the jump and thus rendering you to stay in the fight and allow me to enjoy my style of play, that of annihilating the Imperials who cant run.

Brett

Now that would be an interesting twist - a chance per attempt to specifically destroy your jump drive (whether or not you are successful)....

Dan

Yes I'd like to see that - Say a 25% chance of overloading the jump drive and therefore destroy it and the EJ failing

If you fail, you don't jump and you are still in combat (otherwise thats a bug). The whole situation with them working 100% of the time was based on being in ring 15. Its not a tactic thats viable in ring 10 cos you lose 1/2 your fleet to mis jumps. Each EJ does take 50Tus so you can not get many retries and you take the damage every retry.

EJ are in the game to provent the 'all or nothing' situation that we had previously. Taking them out would only spark the thread, 'Need special action to break pin - its not fair'. You pay for an EJ with real damage to the ship - sure the fleet escapes but they pay the price.

If you're not stuck for ships then could you not send some mini-fleets with good sensor ships into x15 of the 2 or 3 systems that the EJs would land them in?

If you ever catch them in darkfold system then there is only one system they can EJ to :-)

Theres no reason for an unpinned ship to make an EJ - they can move out normally.

Pinned ships however either make the EJ or fight it out - they can't move to a 'safer' ring to make the EJ: If the battle takes place in A10 then the EJ's have to take place from A10.

Lets also make it clear - in the major battles so far, the vast majority of IMP/FET/GTT ships have not been pinned - so if you have the impression that the whole of the fleet are making EJ's then you are mistaken. Most ships leave battle normally.

In my opinion you should only be able to d one emergency jump a day and retry the next day (Is this the case now?)

You should only be allowed to have a go after the full 4 rounds of battle. Your dodge should also be set to zero.

Andy

This supports:

the most massive affiliations with huge armadas that can stay day after day.

skirmish attacks in the outer orbitals where EJ's are guaranteed to work.

Nobody with any sort of sense will commit a fleet to an attack in the inner orbitals unless they have overwhelming odds.

I hadn't considered the implications of all the scenarios so can see that if you set 1 EJ a day it would be disastrous for the game.

However I'm still going to maintain that EJ should be calculated after the 4 rounds of battle.

Let's take the situation of Straddle.

Imperials send in the fleet that outnumbers the DTR by almost 3 times. They decide to run and as such should face the consequences of leaving behind their pinned ships.

Delaying the EJ until after the 4 rounds of battle makes sense.

Andy

...but in doing so you make it more likely that the Imperial bloc - or indeed perhaps the DTR/Confederacy should they ever find themselves in the reverse position, be less likely to make an attack

If ships that are pinned have to go through 4 rounds of battle before they can EJ then it simply adds another reason *not* to make an aggressive move. Taking the Straddle example even with a 3:1 ship advantage we quite frankly did not cause enough damage to justify losing the additional ships.

The EJ gives an option to avoid toe-to-toe combat.

Don't be silly now.

I think what Andy is suggesting is that it seems increadiably inplausable that a ship could be in combat one minute, then out of combat via emergency means without the other side getting a hit in. I guess in reality there must be some kind of delay between the ship's crew concentrating on attacking, and performing an EJ.

Personally I'm all for the option that if you fail the EJ, your jump engine gets destroyed. As previously stated it makes carrying a backup jump drive more important.

I think if the system remains as it is. The DTR/Confederacy will be more likely to attack non-movable assets (platforms, bases, outposts, etc) than moving assets (i.e. Ships).

Ships are easy to replace, and less of major problem when lost. Platforms and colonies however are much worse too lose.

I think it will make affiliations think and plan more carefully than they have been doing when attacking, particularly if there is a chance they will get hit by 4 rounds of fire before they can EJ. Perhaps 4 rounds is too stringent, however there needs to be some fire directed at the fleeing ships. There must be some manourvering being done to prepare for an emergency jump hence the ship will be a target for enemy ships for at least a couple of rounds of battle.

Currently the EJ is just being used as a get out of jail free card.

Andy

Hit and run tactics are vital for small affs and also pirates I'd suggest.

Think about what you would be attacking though. The reason for the hit and run is to hit 'em hard before reinforcements arrive. You are not going to pick a target bigger than yourself. You are going to choose your target with care.

So you attack with 10 ships against a hostile force of 10 ships. 2 get pinned and have to EJ (You are unlikely to attack something where you know you are going to get all your ships pinned!). In my example 10 ships direct fire against 2 ships, which are highly unlikely to get much damage even on 4 rounds of battle as long as you've configured your ship right. However it does make it fairer that the fleeing ships take damage.

If you look at the larger scale such as Straddle, if you are going to commit that many ships with 3 : 1 odds then you face the consequences of large fleet actions. The IMPerials lost some of the ships that could not jump out. I'd expect that to be a few more as they were pretty much all pinned. If you leave behind your comrades in arms then you face the consequences.

Andy

Well in that case you may as well say that a ship that leaves battle under normal conditions should undergo rounds of battle because there would be manoevering involved in trying to get away in that instance too!

If you look at it the other way, I could argue that in theory if on round 1 an Admiral scans that he is moving into battle and is horribly outnumbered he wouldn't wait until four rounds of combat before he tried to make an exit.

You also imply that the Imperial bloc didn't have to plan the Straddle attack carefully. Well it did - and whilst the DTR may have been miffed that the majority of the Imperial fleet escaped before reinforcements came in, well I was miffed that the 3:1 advantage in ship numbers didn't cause more damage to the DTR fleet.

Now you could say that that is down to DTR ships being better - but surely sheer weight of numbers *should* have bridged that gap. Instead a smaller fleet not only managed to survive three times their number, but they also managed to pin ships from the larger force (Captain "don't worry about the three ships on our tail, we can get a lock on this one...".

It was pretty disheartening that when we had spent the time co-ordinating and planning the attack that the damage done was pretty much reparable.

Yeah I take your point if a targetted ship can leave battle when it chooses then a pinned ship should also be able to EJ without receiving any more damage. I agree with you on this one as the consequences of extending my idea to targetted unpinned ships is just not right and therefore should not be applied.

Your second point raises an interesting discussion. In BSE we had options such as flee on round / flee on hulls etc. If an admiral sees he is heavily outnumbered then perhaps he would flee before the full 4 rounds are applied or are we saying that 4 full rounds is the time it takes to extract himself from the situation.

Hmm yeah reread my comments, didn't mean to imply that you hadn't planned it, what I meant was that the tactic didn't work. I think we all learnt something from the engagment to be used next time. (Andy rubs his hands together eagerly).

Comparing the fleets Imperials generally use mki hulls and are generally slower wheras DTR use mkii hulls and are generally faster. The speed of the ships accounted for the number of pins. But what made the real difference was the tactics we used.

Andy

It appears that this tread is getting very tiring...

Oh well, as Brett says, perhaps we will have to use these tactics (even though it is against our mandate).

Lets just hope this thread doesn't start up again 6 months down the line.

Ho Hum

I like that how deep within a system a base is placed has tradeoffs. Beyond ring 10 its much easier to EJ, but its also easier to get reinforcements and theres a saving on TUs for shipping.

Base % chance of escaping ring 10+ is:

10: 50%
11: 60.5%
12: 72%
13: 84.5%
14: 98%
15: 122.5%

Seems okay to me.