Near the end of the Early Years period, the Klingon Deep Space Fleet was in the grip of massive political turmoil. This turmoil was caused primarily over the fighting about which new, advanced cruiser would lead the DSF into the New Era. The 2 competing designs were the conventional-but-superb D5, which was the ultimate evolution of the D4 design (and could be built NOW), or the radical (and more expensive) D6, which was still having teething problems and was going to take at least another few years to produce.

In Y120, the DSF built seven ships of the D5 class 'for evaluation purposes' and placed them on independent patrol on the various borders, supported by other ships using the new technology, such as the E3/E4 series.

In Y121, the IKV Bloodletter met the USS Texas, and history was made.

Set up:
Large asteroid in 2215. Fed GSO located on asteroid, facing hexside A.

Federation forces: Fed CL (USS Texas) and 2 GFF's (USS Sherman, USS Grant) enter 42xx map edge, speed any, WS-3.

Klingon forces: D5 Bloodletter, E4's Duty and Defiant enter 01xx map edge, speed any, WS-3.

Length of scenario: Until all forces belonging to one side have been destroyed,captured, or have disengaged.

Special Rules:
The map is fixed. Federation units may only disengage from the 01xx map edge, Klingon units can disengage off the 01xx map edge. Any unit disengaging in any other direction is considered destroyed.

Units may not disengage by sublight evasion.

Each ship is allowed 10% of its Combat BPV for Commanders Option items.

The D5 is NOT an EY ship; it can overload its disruptors and is in all ways a regular (Middle Years) vessel. However, this battle happened near the end of the EY period, and so all transporters are range 4 maximum, admin shuttles are Y-models (speed 4, no phaser-3, limited SS warhead), drones warheads are 50% strength, and T-bombs have a trigger range of ZERO.

The Klingon forces, being the absolute cutting edge of the Deep Space Fleet, are all equipped with Type-II/V drones (moderate speed) in their racks at no cost to the Klingon player. He may use regular type-I/IV (slow) drones at his discretion, but he gets no points for doing so.

Victory Conditions: Use the Standard Victory Conditions. The Fed player gets an additional 5 point bonus for each crew unit rescued from the GSO (and which survives the battle). The Klingon player gets a 50 point bonus for crippling the Fed CL, and 75 point bonus if he destroys/captures the CL.

Variations: Replace the Fed ships with their Lyran/Kzinti/Tholian equivelants. Delete the asteroid and bonus VP conditions.

Historical Outcome:
The Bloodletter engaged the Texas near a Federation scientific outpost just inside Federation space; the Klingons claimed the 'science base' was used to spy on Klingon ship deployments. The battle that followed educated both sides.

While the D5 was faster and more power efficient than the Federation cruiser, technology won the day for the Federation, as their more advanced phasers (and the power of overloaded photons) cut through Klingon shields like the proverbial knives through butter. The Bloodletter self-destructed to avoid capture when a Federation photon strike crippled her, while both E4's escaped with nominal damage. The Texas, while hurt, wasn't crippled, and both Federation frigates suffered moderate damage (mainly from being too close to the D5 when it blew up).

This battle affected both Klingon and Federation design patterns. For the Klingons, it convinced them that the new cruiser needed more firepower; specifically, more disruptors. Unfortunately for the D5 series, the engines were unable to mount any additional weapons whatsoever; they had been specially designed for the hullframe to achieve the high warp speeds required by the new style of ships being built. Even the refitted D4's were able, with their older and more robust engine nacelles, to double their disruptor banks; the D5 could not. Experiments showed that D5's using the older, bulkier D4 engines lost their warp efficiency, and were no faster than the D4, tactically OR (more important to the DSF) strategically.

Eventually, the D6 faction won the day (and D6 production began next year), and the D5 was shelved, declared a 'successful failure' due to 'balky engines' (which worked just fine, according to Star Fleet Intelligence...).

Also, the E4 had shown that it could not stand up to the Federation's refitted frigates. A heavier design was needed, and the F5 series (eventually) resulted.

As for the Federation, the battle had shown that the new Constitution-class heavy cruiser was going to need more powerful engines, and that only 2 photon torpedoes on a cruiser 'simply is not enough', as the captain of the Texas stated in his battle report. Given that the refitted D4's and the rumored new 'heavy' Klingon battlecruiser (the D6) had 4 disruptor banks, it was decided to increase the photon bays on the new cruiser to match.

The performance of the frigates was troubling, as well. Initially, the Federation was simply going to use the older refitted ships, since they were envisioned to be defensive in nature. The battle showed that the smaller ships often couldn't keep up with the larger ship they were supposed to be protecting...also, they were very vulnerable to damage. The battle also showed that the new photon torpedo technology gave this ship a punch far above its fighting weight. The new design increased shielding (and phaser power) to unheard of levels for a ship of this class, and helped cement its reputation as one of the mainstay's of the Star Fleet.

Of the D5 series, 2 more were lost in combat on the Tholian border shortly after the Bloodletter was destroyed. The remaining 4 were mothballed until much later, when they were reactivated and used as local defense ships for the Warrior Colonies.

Note to Jean: Could you please change the year in the scenario title to Y121? Thanks.

By Mike Strain (Evilmike) on Monday, December 31, 2007 - 06:37 am: Edit

Working on a fiction story for this one.....

By Mike Strain (Evilmike) on Monday, December 31, 2007 - 04:35 pm: Edit

In case it isn't blazingly obvious, the D5 class in this scenario is from R8 (the LD5). It ISN'T the D5 war cruiser from the GW.

By Douglas E. Lampert (Dlampert) on Monday, December 31, 2007 - 04:37 pm: Edit

The map is fixed. Federation units may only disengage from the 01xx map edge, Klingon units can disengage off the 01xx map edge. Any unit disengaging in any other direction is considered destroyed.

Shouldn't that be 42xx for the Feds?

By Mike Strain (Evilmike) on Tuesday, January 01, 2008 - 02:30 am: Edit

Argh.

Fed units can only disengage off the 42xx map edge.

Basically, you have to disengage in the direction that you arrived.