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Federation Commander
A NEW fast paced board game of starship combat!
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Blammo
Lieutenant SG
Joined: 01 Mar 2011
Posts: 170
Location: Barnesville, GA
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 Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 2:49 am Post subject: Federation Commander AAR |
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I thought I would share this AAR I wrote up for a battle I moderated last Saturday. I don't go into great detail (and I may have omitted a few things), but it was an enjoyable duel and it generated a lot of interest at the store we were playing in. I hope everyone here will find it interested as well.
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AAR: Federation Commander - 16 APR 2011
LOCATION:
Treefort Games, Fayetteville, Georgia
TURNS PLAYED:
Seven
TIME TO COMPLETE:
About three and a half hours (including introduction to the game and explanations)
SIDES:
Klingons - John
Federation - Rick
SETUP:
John flew a Klingon D7 Battlecruiser and started out in the middle of the South edge of the map about two hexes from the map edge. He chose to face in direction A (Due North).
Rick took a Federation CA Heavy Cruiser and chose to start in the Northwest corner of the map about two hexes from the edge. He made the facing of his Heavy Cruiser direction C (South-Southeast).
The map used large hexes and was three panels wide and three panels long with the 'long' orientation being North to South.
The victory conditions of the battle were as follows:
- One side is destroyed
- One side if forced to disengage
- One side concedes
- One side scores more points worth of internal damage against the other side
Both players were new to Federation Commander. For that matter, both players have never played Star Fleet Battles.
TURN 1:
Rick decided at the beginning of the game to not pre-load his Photon torpedoes. This meant that the earliest he would be able to fire his heavy weapon would be turn two. While risky, it allowed him to have his batteries full so gave him more power to work with initially.
Both John and Rick chose to start the turn out at a speed of 16. There was very little maneuvering at first as both sides closed on each other. However, as they moved closed, John worked to get a better firing angle and Rick maneuvering to buy time for his photons torps to become available.
About the middle of the turn they had closed the range to the point where John felt he could begin releasing drones. He launched two targeted on the FED CA.
Near the end of the turn they were still outside of solid gun range. John threw some power in for some standard disruptor shots. He landed a couple of hits, but not enough to get any damage passed the shields of the CA.
TURN 2:
John and Rick Continued to close. Rick's photons were online and so it looked to be a serious shootout at close range. Knowing that Rick had his heavy weapons online, John tried to maneuver to avoid a center-line shot from Rick. John turned off to starboard to try and keep the range open. Rick launch a single drone at one of John's drones and John released two more drones. Both sides also released Suicide Shuttles at each other.
Rick chose to decelerate and cancel some movement in order to keep John in his forward arc and maintain an optimum firing solution.
At a range of three, Rick poured extra power into the Photon Torpedoes to overload them. He paired them with four Phaser-1s. Three of his four overloaded torpedoes hit the D7 and all but one of the phasers scored very well. The damage sliced through the number six shield of the Klingon battlecruiser (even after reinforcement) and did twenty-three points of internal damage.
John returned the favor and shot four overloaded disruptors, three phase-1s and two phaser-2s at the Fedration cruise. Unfortunately, two of the disruptors missed and the phaser-2s did not score well. The damage he did was not enough to down the shield of the Feds, but it did burn through for some damage.
John tried to turn off before Rick could get another shot in, but Rick was able to keep facing on the down shield. He let loose with two more phaser-1s and two phaser-3s doing another nineteen internals to the D7.
Rick broke away at this point and John kept going to keep from getting hit by the Suicide Shuttle. Rick grabbed a couple of drones with his tractor beams and carried them along for a while.
TURN 3:
Both sides rotated some shields to put themselves in a stronger position to fight it out.
With John's D7 badly damaged, he had to maneuver carefully to avoid allowing the FED to get anything more through his shields.
Both sides payed a few points to repair some shield damage.
John let loose with a couple of drones while Rick chose to send another suicide shuttle John's way. Rick was able to through more Phaser-1s at John to beat up his shields and get some more burn through. Rick took off at high speed while John came around to put good shields toward Rick.
Rick killed one of the tractored drones, killed another and was hit in the number 4 shield by yet another.
John was able to shoot up and destroy every suicide shuttle so the board was pretty clear.
Rick had not loaded his photons so he was looking to avoid a face off against the Klingon.
Both sides seemed happy to take a breath at this time, but near the end of the turn Rick decided to finally destroy the drone he still had tractored.
TURN 4:
Rick spent power to repair shields, fixed a couple of internals and took off at speed Twenty-Four. He put no energy into his Photons.
John put some power into shield repairs and repaired some internals, but due to the amount of damage he had suffered previously he had to choose a move conservative speed of sixteen.
TURN 5:
John continued to work on repairs and getting more power back. John plotted a speed of eight.
Rick, on the other hand, continued to repair shields and moved at a speed of eight as well.
Both ships ended up entering the same hex and each, in order to avoid showing a weak shield to the other side, declared an emergency deceleration. John pulled a Tactical Maneuver to bring weapons to bear and Rick pulled a High Energy Turn (HET) to bring a good shield facing John. John scored enough damage to get a burn through on Rick's FED Cruiser, but not enough to drop the shield.
TURN 6:
Both sides spent energy to repair shield with John moving away at sixteen while Rick plotted speed of twenty-four. Rick also began loading his Photon Torpedoes again.
As the ships moved apart, John launched his last two drones at Rick.
Rick ran in a wide circle around the map which ended up putting in just outside of overload range of John's ship while John, unfortunately, was not in a position to face with his strongest weapons (and did not have the power to HET).
TURN 7:
At this point, with Rick's cruiser in great shape and his Photon's fully loaded, John decided discretion was the better part of valor. He told Rick that if Rick had his photons, John was putting everything into speed and would disengage. Rick let him know that not only was he ready to shoot, but he was going to maneuver for a shot within the first impulse or two. John conceded and the duel was over.
SUMMARY:
Both captains fought extremely well, used every facet of their ships and maneuvered deftly. The telling items from this contest were two things:
- Rick scoring more hits with his overloaded heavy weapons than John
- Rick getting a second shot through a down shield on John's ship
While the first strike from Rick was powerful, John was still in good shape. However, the follow up did enough serious weapon and power damage to put John in a defensive posture. Even so, had John been able to get on Rick's weak shield on Turn 5, it might have evened the fight up. Unfortunately, it wasn't to be.
The skill each showed, even being new to Federation Commander, was inspiring. By the second turn both Rick and John were comfortable with the way things worked and we making decisions on their own. By the last few turns of the battle, each had developed their own strategy and tactics.
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NOTE: Please excuse my spelling and grammatical errors |
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Kang
Fleet Captain
Joined: 23 Sep 2007
Posts: 1976
Location: Devon, UK
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| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 6:20 am Post subject: |
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Nice report, thanks! Captured the flavour very well, I thought....
I noticed this little snippet:
"He told Rick that if Rick had his photons, John was putting everything into speed and would disengage. Rick let him know that not only was he ready to shoot...."
This suggests that you were keeping the weapons loading status secret? However, in FC, (unlike in SFB), everything is in the open. There are a very few 'secret and simultaneous' declarations, speed and *exactly* simultaneous movement being the only two I can think of at the moment, but weapons status is not one of those few things. All power, ammo, drones, Marines, everything is kept in the open. Just thought I'd point that out! 
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Blammo
Lieutenant SG
Joined: 01 Mar 2011
Posts: 170
Location: Barnesville, GA
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| Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 11:54 am Post subject: |
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Kang: Thanks for your positive feedback. I am glad you enjoyed it. It was really fun to see two totally new people get into it and fight so well.
Concerning:
| Quote: | | "He told Rick that if Rick had his photons, John was putting everything into speed and would disengage. Rick let him know that not only was he ready to shoot...." |
and
| Quote: | | This suggests that you were keeping the weapons loading status secret? However, in FC, (unlike in SFB), everything is in the open. |
Everything was open and John had already been told the weapon loading status of Rick's ship. This is kind of just how John is I think it was more he was so into it he sort of slipped into 'role-play' about the current situation. That and rather having to play out the remaining turn while he ran for the map he wanted to be up front that, given the circumstances, he was putting everything into speed and running off the map.
I probably could have worded it better.
Anyway, thanks again and I am glad you appreciated it.  |
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Brazouck
Lieutenant JG
Joined: 03 Jun 2010
Posts: 78
Location: France
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| Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 12:47 pm Post subject: |
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Cool AAR, so sad my gaming group doesn't like starhip combat, thanks to FCOL I can still play.
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