Uses for speed 0

By chilligan, in Star Wars: Armada

So, has anyone found any suitable situations to use speed 0?

It felt important in one game where I placed my Nebulons too close to his Star Destroyers, and wanted a slower approach (even though I had speed 1 set). So I stopped, got a Nav token from Garm Bel Iblis (yes that was the one game where I tried him) and restarted the engines the following turn.

I know there was a thread a while ago regarding the ethics of sitting at speed 0 for 3 turns, I'm not interested in that. Does it make strategic sense in some situations you encountered to drop to speed 0?

It does make sense to avoid a crash or flying off the table. I can't see another use. Without defence tokens, you are a sitting duck.

In my last tournament I did speed 0 on both of my VSD IIs to camp a pair of Fire Lanes tokens. It sucked not being able to use defense tokens, but I raked in enough victory points to offset my losses (one Motti'd VSD) and his tokens, so accounting for his losses (2 corvettes IIRC) I won 8-2.

And it wasn't a speed 0 in my deployment zone. I was far enough forward that he was able to circle all the way around me.

I used speed zero to keep a heavily damaged VSD out of range of any rebel ships for the final turn of the game.

In a "Most Wanted" game as the rebels I have seen the CR90 with Raymus Antillies Start at speed 1 and immediately use a maneuver command to drop to speed 0. That means that it took until turn 3 before any enemy was close enough to take a shot so of course with a maneuver dial and a token the CR90 then sped up to 2 and 4 on the next turn. It effectively only had to survive one turn of fire before managing to evade everything for the rest of the game.

In a "Most Wanted" game as the rebels I have seen the CR90 with Raymus Antillies Start at speed 1 and immediately use a maneuver command to drop to speed 0. That means that it took until turn 3 before any enemy was close enough to take a shot so of course with a maneuver dial and a token the CR90 then sped up to 2 and 4 on the next turn. It effectively only had to survive one turn of fire before managing to evade everything for the rest of the game.

With the maneuverability of the Corvette, I could easily see it going away from the enemy at speed 4. The board is quite large in this respect, but a Corvette could come around in 2-3 turns, achieving the same effect but with no Navigation commands needed.

I use it about once every three games or so.

The last time - I had a ship out of range of one of his. If I moved, he would be in range for his activation. If I stayed, he would have to make another forward move to be in range, get no shot this turn and put me in range on my activation when I could up speed after I shot him and turn my tokens back on.

Should be interesting once we get the tractor beam.

But yea, it is useful to prevent movement into range.

I think it can absolutely be useful. especially since you shoot, then move. as mentioned above, waiting can cause the enemy to move into range without firing, so that next turn you can then fire. I also think it could be useful in certain objectives, and might be useful against ships with more limited range when you have long range armament (neb-b vs gladiator comes to mind) however, it would definitely depend on the ranges involved.

Zero is really strong, let's say your opponent has few hp and you want him to bounce off the side of your ISD, or if you are really close to your fighter swarms and want them to stay put.

I used it once to hit the brakes against an oncoming VSDI with expanded launchers. Gave me two extra turns before he got into range. (I was using a VSDII myself, so moving out of the way wasn't an option!)