Unless we missed it, no scenario was ever written for the loss of the USS stingray behind Romulan lines in Y178. What was its target? why did the raid fail? What romulan forces trapped and destroyed it? What mistakes were made?

Come up with an idea, and Petrick will write the special rules.

Then maybe someone will write the fiction story!

====
The various products of the Star Fleet Universe are full of "hooks" and "seeds" for new scenarios. These historical notes, buried in the craziest of places, describe battles that have never been made into scenarios. Petrick can do that, IF you can give him an idea, a concept, a plot, a story, something for him to get his rules-writing teeth into.

If you cannot think of a scenario idea, and cannot hope to write the tedious special rules, you can still become a published scenario creator. Just help Steve Petrick with a little creative push to show him what special rules he needs to write.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 12, 2012 - 04:42 pm: Edit

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Thursday, April 12, 2012 - 06:19 pm: Edit

By E-mail? (I assume but...)

Or post ideas here?

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Thursday, April 12, 2012 - 08:44 pm: Edit

CL27 Fast Raider Class History

That's it.

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Thursday, April 12, 2012 - 09:15 pm: Edit

Meh. I don't have CL27. Is it a copyright violation if someone types in the entry here?

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Thursday, April 12, 2012 - 10:39 pm: Edit

go ahead, permission is given, I'll do it in the morning if nobody has by then.

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Thursday, April 12, 2012 - 11:05 pm: Edit

I sent it to him via email.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, April 13, 2012 - 12:51 am: Edit

I am not going to pick a writer before Petrick does the scenario, so no more "I volunteer to write the story" posts. More than one writer is interested. No one writer will get to lock up all of the stories; a writer who shows an interest might be assigned one of these and given a strict deadline for an outline, a draft, and a final story.

By Scott Iles (Smrl) on Saturday, April 14, 2012 - 10:32 am: Edit

From the Fast Raider history:

USS Stingray, NCC-1603: Built in Y168, Stingray was assigned to the 6th Fleet and spent her entire career on that front. On the Day of the Eagle, Stingray destroyed two key Romulan listening posts, blinding them to any possible Gorn response. While the Gorns did not join the war until later, the Romulans had to divert ships to watch the tri-border sector. Stingray was lost in a raid behind Romulan lines in Y178, trying to reach the same target that had cost Star Fleet the Gryphon.

The entry for the Gryphon simply notes it was lost in Y177 on a raid behind enemy lines.

By Scott Tenhoff (Scottt) on Saturday, April 14, 2012 - 08:54 pm: Edit

I had submitted a story about the Gryphon's death, in, err, Apr 2010....

I never heard anything from SPP about it, so I don't know if it got forgotten or it didn't interest him.

By Randy Blair (Randyblair) on Sunday, April 15, 2012 - 01:37 am: Edit

I feel your pain, bro.

By John Stiff (Tarkin22180) on Friday, April 20, 2012 - 05:13 pm: Edit

Here is my idea.

The USS Stingray, as the story line goes, went to raid the third LP, the one which the Gryphon attempted to raid. But the Romulans had set a nasty trap (as before).

Romulan:
LP
MS
DefSats
SC
KE
Partial Minefields with small, large, and captor mines.

The Romulan MS and KE start the scenario cloaked. The SC plays keep away for a while. If you want to be really nasty, use the hidden cloak rules!

I envision the Partial Minefields to be like spokes in a wheel, i.e. to invite a ship in but to prevent their escape.

The scout jams the NCC.
The DefSats protect the LP.
The MS cuts off escape with more mines.
The spoked Minefields damage the NCC.
The KE takes its time and kills the NCC.

The Romulans of course know where the intial minefields are.

Historically, the Stingray missed the spokes and was travelling right down the middle thinking to destroy the target before the cloaked unkowns could close. The Stingray turned to out run the plasmas from the DefSats. Having unknowingly entered the heart of one of the spokes, the Stingray struck a bunch of mines, one of them a 35 pointer. The plasma from a capture mine didn't help. The enveloping R from the KE made matters really bad for the Stingray.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Friday, August 10, 2012 - 03:07 pm: Edit

John Stiff:

As I look at your proposal (and I may be misreading it), you are calling on the Federation player to blithely run at high speed into a minefield to make the scenario work.

Why would the Federation player do this?

If you sat down to play a scenario like this as the Federation, would you, knowing from the set up that the mines are there, run into them?

Why would you not, for example, do a high energy turn to avoid the mines and backtrack your route?

Please note that this is one of the problems with writing scenarios in that you have to think about what the player will do in response to your scenario set up.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Saturday, August 11, 2012 - 04:11 pm: Edit

I have gone back to the source data in Captain's Log #27, and there is no mention of what the target of the Gryphon or the Stingray was. While the Stingray did knock out some Romulan listening posts early in the Romulan invasion of the Federation, that does not mean that the target the Stingray (and Gryphon) was trying to reach was a listening post.

That gets us to the question of what the target might have been.

Both ships only mention that they were destroyed, and apparently neither actually reached the target (or perhaps Gryphon did, but was unable to destroy the target before it was destroyed).

So the target needs to be something a single CF could destroy if it got to it before reinforcements could arrive.

But that is mostly just "background" as the Stingray was lost "trying to reach the same target . . ."

So there could be a scenario where the Gryphon reaches the target and fails to destroy it. Or there could be two separate scenarios about the ships being caught and destroyed before reaching the target, but the target has to be something a single ship [whether a CVF (Gryphon) or a CF (Stingray)] could reasonably be expected to destroy on its own WITHOUT SUSTAINING HEAVY DAMAGE. (The flaw in the raider concept is always that if they have to actually fight, they are likely to sustain too much damage to escape back to their own lines, so they have to always be looking for targets that have almost no chance of damaging them.)

By Joseph R Carlson (Jrc) on Saturday, August 11, 2012 - 07:24 pm: Edit

SPP,

I thought I read that the listening post that was destroyed at the start of Operation Remus was the same target that the Federation lost the Stingray and Gryphon to.

By Dal Downing - Rambler (3deez) on Sunday, August 12, 2012 - 04:51 pm: Edit

Okay my thoughts were the target of the 2 raids is a Civilian Base Station controlled by one of the Great House. The Raid actually had a Strategic Goal depriving the Romulans of a Base, albeit a weak and old one, and, to make a Great House appear weak hoping to cause distention and possiable starting a power struggle in the Romulan hierarchy as a new pecking order is established.

Unfortunately the Gryphon had the bad luck of running into picket patrol ships before it could carry out its mission as was subsequently destroyed. The battle with the picket ship keeping the Gryphon from being able to escape using high warp and granted other ships the time they needed to arrive and sealed her fate. The mission was a complete disaster. The Great House in question had a political heyday out of the fact they destroyed the might Gryphon and made the decision to upgrade the base's weapon, replacing the Phaser-1s with Phaser-4s increasing te shields to modern standards and adding Special Sensors to the Base. Though still just a Base Station and not a Battle Station it became a much tougher nut to crack. Politics kept other obvious defense upgrades from the base this is why the base never received Mines or Attrition Units. The above sets out 2 potential scenarios one is what if Gryphon had actually not ran into a picket ship and carried out her attack against a weak civilian base station and, the other is the write up of what was actually in the picket force and the running battle that finally brought about the Gryphon's death.

Many years later conditions appeared ripe to avenge the Gryphon and complete her mission. Planners set up raid which would have the Stingray following on the heels of a Drone Bombardment Raid allowing it to finish off a crippled base station and flee before any reinforcements could arrive. However fate was taking a second turn at the wheel. The Stingray arrive to see a burring crippled wreck but before she could strike a ship commanded by the same Romulan Captain who tripped up the Gryphon arrived. The Romulan commander new he didn't have to win just delay or chase off the Stingray but the Federation Captain would not be denied his prize. Maybe he was acting out of revenge or maybe he thought he was on the verge of losing his command and need a big win regardles he broke the cardinal rule of Fast Raiders, he started a fight that he didn't have to. Once again history repeats itself.

With the Base surviving the Stingray Raid, even crippled it would still be present if this is indeed destroyed during Operation Remus.

By Ryan Opel (Ryan) on Sunday, August 12, 2012 - 04:55 pm: Edit

I like that one.

By Dal Downing (3deez) on Sunday, August 12, 2012 - 07:11 pm: Edit

More musing on the Civilian Base the Gryphon thought she was attack. Looking at the rules since it is a Civilian or House Base I am make a assumption here. It would have the original 21 box non refitted shields. Also borrowing the Orion Base Station as a Template. Each pair of Phaser-4 would be replaced by a single Phaser-1. Instead of Plasma-D Racks it would have a pair of Phaser-3s. Also the Plasma-S mounts would probably be the Weaker Plasma-G Mounts. At the time of the Gryphons attack it would not have any Base Augmentation Modules. It is a coin flip on the Special Sensor but my thought is it would only have 1 not 2. This would make it a pretty powerful civilian target that is just big enough to support military operations.

After the Gryphon's failed attack it would get all the bells and whistles add to it and become a true Military Grade Base Station. The exclusions of Mines, Attrition units, and even Augmentation Modules can be explained away by politics after all it is still a glorified Civilian Base. The House may have been constantly trying to upgrade it but the supplies and equipment were constantly being bleed off to other units on the front. The base may have even had Hanger Bay Modules but, the fighters were stripped earlier that month to resupply a carrier and this was the final tipping point to encourage a second raid against it.

During the Drone Raid any escorting ships assigned to the base could have been destroyed or crippled and the base using it Phaser, Plasma-D Racks and Shotgunning it Plasma-Ss managed to prevent destruction buy not stop it from being crippled.

Question would the Gryphon have been set up with remote controlled Fighters or was she sacrificing pilots in a attempt to get away? I figured she would be using remote controlled fighters but if not her unwillingness to leave her pilots behind might be part of the reason she was destroyed.

Would a War Eagle be fast enough to keep the Gryphon from getting away or would the ship probably be a KR or one of the Hawks? I like the ideal that the Romulan “Hero” would be promoted to a new ship for slowing down the Gryphon but I am just not sure a War Eagle could do it unless other picket ships were a lot closer than the Gryphon thought they were. Maybe while running from the War Eagle she literally ran right over another smaller ship that was testing out her cloaking device and between the Destroyer and the War Eagle they were able to keep the Gryphon Boxed in.

As far as the Stingray goes obviously she is on the clock. There is no way the base got hit be a Drone Raid and is not scream for help. Reinforcements are rushing in from all over. The Federation Commander is very good at his job but, the Admiral in charge has been riding him pretty hard for being to timid (even though he has consistently made the right call) and is making noises about it maybe time to get some fresh blood in his raider force. Because of his recent pep talk when the Stingray runs in to a Romulan ship, the right call would be to cut and run but, instead tries to bull through it. The ship in question my first thought was to make it a Sparrow Hawk but on second thought what if it is the same Romulan in the same ship that has been recently converted to a King Eagle and is on a shake down cruise toward the base in question.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Saturday, July 05, 2014 - 05:57 pm: Edit

(SP49-6.0) DEMISE OF A GRYPHON

(Y177) by Dal Downing, State

By late Y177 the Federation had completed Operation Wedge (in Y176), driving apart the Klingon and Romulan forces and reaching the edge of Holdfast space. The Klingons launched a series of furious counterattacks in an effort to reopen their link with the Romulans, but these were unsuccessful. The Klingons then initiated Operation Nutcracker in an effort to destroy the Tholian Holdfast and thereby reopen their links with the Romulans.
With the Tholians hard pressed, a route through Holdfast space was created which various blockade-runners were able pass through as the Tholians refused to allow the Federation to enter their space even if it was temporarily under Coalition occupation. These blockade-runners delivered vital supplies the Romulans needed to keep their Kestrel class ships in operation (and a small number of Klingon ships trapped in Romulan space by Operation Wedge’s success). The Federation admirals believed that if the principle receiving station for the blockade-runners could be destroyed, the resulting disruption in the delivery of spare parts for the Kestrels would weaken the Romulans and further curtail their capability to launch offensive operations for a few months. This would free more Federation forces to attack the Klingons and thereby take pressure off of the Tholians.
The receiving station was not in and of itself a major installation. It served simply to do basic maintenance on the engines of the blockade runners, which were run hard getting across Holdfast space where there were no other support bases, so that they could then proceed deeper into Romulan space without risk of a major breakdown.
Federation intelligence’s analysis of Romulan operations indicated that the Romulans themselves were unaware of the receiving station’s potential as an Achilles’ Heel. It had, after all, been in operation since before the General War, and then been largely protected by the Coalition’s offensive activities. With the success of Operation Wedge, the station was within striking range of a fast raider, and the Gryphon was available.
The Gryphon was dispatched on its mission, apparently slipping through the Romulan pickets unnoticed.
The ship’s fate would not be known until well after the General War had concluded and the Andromedan War was reaching a fever pitch.