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Battle Report - Derelict Recovery

 
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junior
Captain


Joined: 08 May 2007
Posts: 803

PostPosted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 9:45 pm    Post subject: Battle Report - Derelict Recovery Reply with quote

A report on a four-way game over an attempt to recover a derelict.

Basic setup - a derelict ship (represented by a Large Freighter counter) floating in the middle of the map. Each player starts in a different corner of the map. The goal is to tractor the freighter and pull it off of the map within five hexes of the corner that you started in. The map is fixed (technically illegal if a plasma race is involved, but since the overall goal is to get off the map anyway...), and I'd recommend ignoring the "substitute damage against last system box as frame damage" rule with regards to tractor beams (we actually tend to forget about that rule) since it means that you don't have to completely destroy an opponent's ship to get them to release their tractor beam. Also note that since one of the players was new we weren't using transporters (thus no Hit and Run raids).

I played a Hydran Dragoon without fighters (technically not allowed, but it was the first time any of my opponents had seen a Hydran and not only did this allow me to squeak in under the 150 point cap, but I also was able to limit the number of new systems introduced). The player on my right played a Fed CC. The player on my left had a fleet scale Kzinti DNH (all of the other ships were squadron scale). And the player opposite me was running a KR.

We've tried this once before, and the first time was a three-way game where one of the players ran up at speed 24+1, grabbed it, and ran off before the other two players (who had been moving at 16+1) were able to catch up. Everyone heard about that last game, so everyone set their speed to 24 for the first turn.

I burned my batteries and started the game with my Hellbores pre-loaded.

At the end of the first turn, the Dragoon, CC, and DNH were all sitting pretty much right on top of the derelict. The KR was about half a dozen hexes away. I went ahead and targeted the CC with both Gatling Phasers and one Hellbore. DNH also fired at the CC. The CC fired at the DNH, and fired a couple of phasers at me. And the KR fired at me. The net result of that was that the CC lost the #4 (actually, he still had one box left) and #5 shields and took some interals. The DNH lost the #4 shield and took some internals. And I lost about half of my forward shield and took a couple of points of burn-through damage. The DNH split the drone fire between the KR and the CC.

On the second turn, the DNH and the KR announced a speed of 8. The CC and I both announced speeds of 24 (I was eyeing that KR, which would have the plasmas armed this turn...). During the first impulse the CC came about, grabbed the derelict, and started making a run for it. The DNH was able to keep up initially due to the CC's slower speed and how close the two ships started, but the CC's acceleration allowed it to pull away. The KR was out of range. I spent a couple of sub-pulses decelerated in order to tighten my turn radius as I swung around, but my base speed was equal to the CC's accelerated speed, so I had no trouble catching back up again.

At this point, of course, a huge bullseye was painted on the CC. The Kzinti was the first to fire with a decently sized volley while I was still coming about. It did some internal damage (and wrecked what was left of the #4 shield), but failed to hit the tractor beams. The Kzinti also fired his four drones at the CC, which meant that I wouldn't need to worry about saving my gatlings for drone defense this turn. As I was moving at a base speed of 24, I was able to quickly close the distance and at a range of four hexes I went ahead and overloaded two hellbores, which I then fired at the CC. The resulting internal damage still didn't touch his tractor beams. The KR then contributed some long range phaser fire, and finally got one of his tractors. In a mad dash, I closed the range to 1 hex during impulse 6. At this point the DNH announced that he was firing the last few weapons that he had energy for, I announced that I was firing my remaining hellbore and a gatling phaser, and the KR added a few phasers for good measure. We resolved the DNH's fire first, and the tractor beam survived the volley. Then we switched to my fire and belatedly realized that the resulting incoming damage was greater than the number of system boxes remaining. It was an unfortunate miscalculation on my part (and the Romulan's), but at least the Fed didn't have a tractor beam anymore...

The derelict was once again free, and I was only one hex away from it. I promptly grabbed it using my last point of energy. The Romulan launched both of his Plasma-S torpedoes at me. I turned and started to make a mad dash for my corner.

At the start of the next turn, both opposing ships announced speed 24, as did I. Of course, I was hindered by the need to drag the massive derelict, so my actual speed was only 16. The Kzinti pulled in behind me as I made my run. On Impulse 2, the two plasma torpedoes impacted. I fired phasers at both of them, which turned out to be a mistake on my part. The warheads had a strength of 22. The Gatling Phaser I fired at one did 15 points of damage, while the 2xPhaser-1 and 2xPhaser-2 that I fired at the other did 17. So I reduced one by 7 and the other by 8. But if I'd combined my fire I would have reduced one by 16. The damage knocked down the #2 shield, but the internal damage turned out to be nothing serious for what I needed to do. Most importantly, none of my tractor beams were hit.

On the following impulse, the Kzinti entered my hex through the #3 shield hexside. He then proceeded to fire a volley at me. He knocked the shield down, but didn't achieve anything noteworthy (all four tractors were still intact). He finished the impulse by flushing his drone racks at me. He then turned to match my course and remain in the same hex as me.

By carefully NOT maneuvering during sub-pulse 2 of the following impulse, I was able to get the drones to impact on my #4 shield, which meant that the gatling phaser on the side of the ship opposite where my opponents were was able to fire at the drones. Unfortunately, my defensive fire die rolls came up 1, 5, 6, and 6. At an effective range of 1 (for defensive fire), this meant that I'd only killed one drone. I briefly railed against the unfairness of it all, and decided to tractor only one of the surviving three drones. The other two impacted my rear shield and knocked it down. But even with some prior damage to the shield, 24 points of damage wasn't enough to do more than cause a handful of internals. I then checked the Kzinti's remaining power and discovered that he only had four power left. So I decided not to accelerate on the next impulse. This forced him to choose between saving his point of power and taking a shot against a shield that still had a few boxes left, or spending a point of energy to decelerate and only being able to fire one disruptor instead of two against my downed shield. He decided to move in front of me instead.

During the Offensive Fire Phase, he used half of his remaining energy to fire four phaser-3s. My forward shield was still partially intact, so between that and the two points of reinforcement (all the batteries I had left) I was able to avoid most of the damage. Unfortunately, I had no transporters left, and when he rolled that on the DAC, the alternate option was a tractor beam. One down, three to go... On a side-note, shortly afterwards I belatedly realized that I'd missed three extra boxes of shielding on my forward shield.

Realizing that it was his last shot at this, the Romulan fired everything he could spare at me even though he was still seven hexes away. But even after he was done, I still had the two tractor beams left that I needed to both hold the drone and drag the derelict. And a couple of impulses later, I limped off the map.
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djdood
Commodore


Joined: 01 Feb 2007
Posts: 3412
Location: Seattle, WA

PostPosted: Tue Nov 06, 2007 10:58 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sounds like a really fun scenario for conventions.

BTW - this is one of the best-reading battle reports I've ever seen on this board. Well done!
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