Getting Inside An Opponent's Head

This is Steven Petrick Posting.

One of the ways to be the "better gamer" is to keep track of the seldom used rules, and to understand not just your opponent's ship (in Star Fleet Battles), but your opponent. An example was a tightly fought duel between my Federation heavy cruiser and my opponent's D7. We had been savaging each other for a while, and both of our ships were badly shot up. Easy to access repairs were gone, and neither of us could afford to divert what power remained to Emergency Damage Repair.

With my ship crippled, and no photon torpedoes remaining, I allocated warp power to being preparing a probe for the following turn. My opponent was maneuvering for a strike on a shield that was not in arc of my remaining phasers.

Neither of our ships were refitted, and had a disruptor and several phasers remaining, while I had just a few phasers. The damage to our ships being so heavy, any additional damage was likely to be critical.

Having finished the probe, I now needed to figure out how to use it.

Probes are wildly inaccurate and short-ranged with very restricted firing arcs. I needed my opponent to present himself voluntarily at the optimum range.

Since my opponent's phasers were phaser-2s, it was obvious to me that he would not want to fire outside of Range 3, and I could obviously hold my fire to that point. But, again, probes are not very accurate, and even if the probe hit I was not likely to survive his return fire. My own phaser-1s would score some damage even at range 4, but without the added damage of the probe, it would not be enough, and the odds of the probe hitting were just too small.

So, I decided to give my opponent a seeming opportunity to win outright. By inviting him to close to range zero. (Bear in mind that there is no "me too firing" in Star Fleet Battles). I accomplished this by executing a Tactical maneuver to face my opponent and bring my last phaser-1s into battery, while he was at Range 4 and, to his surprise, fired them. He had been (as I had intuited) expecting I would fire them when he reached Range 3 and would fire his own weapons, but at least my phasers would score a couple extra points of damage at that range.

With my ship now bereft of any weapons, he decided not to waste his own remaining firepower at Range 3, but to go ahead and close, right down my throat, to Range 0, where his own disruptor would not miss and the damage his phaser-2s would do would be increased on average over what they would do at Range 3. He could survive two points of feedback damage from his disruptor through his down #1 shield, but my ship would not survive the ten points of damage the overload would inflict on me plus his phasers.

With those thoughts in mind, he closed for the killing shot, then at Range 1 I fired the probe, though there was still a chance of a miss, it was minimized at that range, and the surprise blow caught him unprepared to return fire. With the heavy damage his ship had already sustained the mere eight points of damage the probe represented was devastating, stripping him of his weapons before they could fire.

Had he not gone right down my throat, the probe would not have been in arc. He had forgotten that probes could be armed as weapons by crippled ships and assumed the phasers I had fired before were all I had. That let me prepare a golden trail of defeat before him, and he obligingly walked right down it.