Saturday, January 28, 2012

Starfleet Wars: Avarian Ships, Part 2

This installment will cover the bigger ships in the Avarian Fleet, along with the transports. A future third post will then cover the Avarian fighters, Star Armored Pursuits Ships, Starbombers, and space stations. This is timely as the first battle of The Chancellor Campaign is about to get under way, with a Terran Super Galactic Dreadnought hunting down an Avarian convoy, whilst an Avarian Cruiser wing (six Stellar Cruisers and a Galactic Dreadnought) attempt to intervene.


"Nest" Class Galactic Attack Carrier (GAC)


The Galactic Attack Carriers are pretty much what you'd think; the spacegoing equivalents of Aircraft carriers. They are designed to carry a large quantity of fighters, which can be configured in several different ways, through the void of space, for use in fleet actions, commerce raiding, planetary bombardment, and scouting duties.



As such they have limited offensive power and decent defensive power in their own right, as well as respectable anti-fighter capabilities.



Statistics for the Nest Class Galactic Attack Carrier:

Power    Max Beam    Max Shield   CIDS Factor    Attack Craft    PW Factor  PW reloads
  125            5                    9                 54%                  36                 2                 6




Somewhat contrary to what one might expect, the Avarians make less use of fighters than the Terrans, but more than the other races.



As the Epoxy seal broke on the base of this ship (easily repaired), this bottom view shows you just how detailed even the underside of these models are. Impressive!






Vulture Class Galactic Attack Carrier (GAC)



This variation of the Galactic Attack Carrier for the Avarians was released later in the history of the line. According to the background material, the introduction of this class indicates a potential shift in the Avarian doctrine towards greater use of fighters and Carriers.



The Vulture class GAC represents a modest improvement over the older, Nest class.



Here are the stats for this upgraded GAC:

Power    Max Beam    Max Shield   CIDS Factor    Attack Craft    PW Factor  PW reloads
 130              7                   9                 54%                  36                 2                 8




This Carrier is a very nicely detailed model indeed!



Once again, a shot of the underside shows the lavish attention to minor details and sculpting characteristic of the Starfleet Wars (now known and avaiable as Galactic Knights) ships.




Ventral view of the Vulture from the rear, showing the detail associated with the ship's engines






Condor Class Galactic Dreadnought (GD)



The Galactic Dreadnoughts were the strongest (and largest) ships in the original release of the Starfleet Wars series. Here are a pair of Avarian Condor class GD's.



Once again, according to the background materials, until recently the Avarians had focused much more on their powerful Galactic Battlecruisers, but have started to produce more of these bigger ships recently.



Here are the stats for the Condor class Avarian GD:

Power    Max Beam    Max Shield   CIDS Factor    Attack Craft    PW Factor  PW reloads
 257             14                 15                 76%                   4                 2                 10




As you can see, these ships are at least  twice as powerful as any lesser craft... Battle Stations!



An underside view once again reveals the wealth of detail not even seen during usual game play!


"Gryphon" class Super Galactic Dreadnought (SGD)



Among the last releases in the Starfleet Wars series were these immense ships (the model itself is 6" long by 3 " wide). Truly in a class by themselves, the Super Galactic Dreadnoughts are literally capable of defeating an entire enemy fleet all by themselves! One of the last ships I bought, you can see that I only started painting it. I will have to return to it and finish the job... maybe later this year?




Here are the stats for this Behemoth of space, the Gryphon class Super Galactic Dreadnought:


Power    Max Beam    Max Shield   CIDS Factor    Attack Craft    PW Factor  PW reloads
 475             21                 21               100%                  28                 7                 33

As if that wasn't enough, these ships also get a "free" additional Offensive and Defensive factor that doesn't have to be powered, and is only knocked out when the ship has suffered 75% or more damage. In the case of the Gryphon, this is 7 for the Beams, and 8 for the shields!  Ruffle my faathers!




Turkey Class Galactic Transport (GTP)



At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have the lowly transports. These Turkeys are essential to move troops and resources along the spaceways of the Avarian United Worlds.



Because of the need to optimize the space devoted to cargo, these ships have less capable engines, and are limited to a speed of "4", whilst all warships have a maximum speed of "5". Thus, they are incapable of out running warships unless their pursuers have suffered significant damage to their engines.



The upcoming battle in the Chancellor Campaign, fought on the approaches to the Vertex system, will feature a large number of these Transports. Perhaps "Sitting Ducks" might have been a more appropriate name for the class, LOL?




Here are the woefully poor stats for the Turkey class Galactic Transport:

Power    Max Beam    Max Shield   CIDS Factor    Attack Craft    PW Factor  PW reloads
  21              0                   1                 13%                 none                 1                 1






A view of the underside of a Turkey; the epoxy makes it look almost as though the base is impaling the ship and causing it to bleed. Sadly, it is likely that quite a few of these ships will be in a similar attitude after the coming battle!


Soar high, and may your aeries welcome you at journey's end...

Peter

10 comments:

  1. Once again, thanks for sharing pictures of your SfW fleets. Can't wait to see how they perform against the Terrans.

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  2. Great stuff Peter, I know you're just doing this to encourage the rest of us locals....hmmm, where is that Credit Card?

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  3. Thanks for explaining the rules along with the pictures.

    Does anyone have all the pages for the original Starfleet Wars rule book they can post?

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    1. I have the two rule books, I don't think posting them would be appropriate (without permission) as the Copyright is now held by the producer of Galactic Knights. I've pretty much decided to order their new rules at this point to look them over.

      OTOH, on a one to one basis I'd be happy to scan in the two (quite short) booklets in for the personal limited use of select interested parties.

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    2. I'd be interested on those, if you don't mind! :)

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    3. OK, I'll see if I can scan them in for select use... may take me a few days to a week or so depending upon real life!

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  4. I scanned in all my SFW rules and related stuff, and will send it out to the you, Matgc. I'll need an email for you THE HESSIAN, though.

    Peter

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    1. My email address is: lyman_007@hotmail.com

      I did buy all three of the Galactic Knights rules. But after browsing through them I decided that I want to stick with the original Starfleet Wars rules.

      I played a heavily modified version of the rules when I was kid back in the early 80's so the even the SFW rules is a little foreign to me.

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    2. I will email the SFW rules to you shortly!

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