Federation Commander

[JonPerry]

I'd posted here that I was going to be the defender in a convoy battle.
http://www.starfleetgames.com/federation/phpbb2/viewtopic.php?p=45507#45507
The scenario turned out to be 8PA5 Conflict of Interest.
My SkyHawk and four freighters versus a LR/SAL player, a DW/DBR player, and a BR player.

It wasn't pretty.

They came at me from three corners, so I tried to run to the fourth corner. Of course running doesn't work so well with freighters, but I was hoping that as the trailing Orions got closer to each other in their pursuit of me, they might decide to get a little frisky and blaze away on each other. No such luck. Range 8 fire at the end of the turn stripped all of the power from one of my FS.

I cloaked out toward the end of the turn.

2nd turn I knew I was going to get run down, so I declared speed zero to give me power for SS and phasers and neg tractor. LR/SAL threw six drones at other FS. I kinda figured that meant he was here for kills, not cargo. Turns out I was wrong.

The DBR/DW player overran my SeaHawk and sped for the powerless FS. He ended an impulse one hex behind my convoy. Surprisingly, he then opens fire on some of the drones launched by the LR/SAL group. That was nice of him.

It's only at this point that he remembered that his DBR has a genuine science officer on board.
"Hey, do you have a Q ship in that convoy?"
"Why yes, yes I do."
At range one my newly revealed Q-S dented a shield on the DW with phasers. The DW then grabbed my powerless F-S, which lowered its speed for the 2 x PL-Fs the Q-S then launched. Going through the damaged shield, my plasma crippled the DW, taking out its tractors. His DBR soon screamed over, grabbed this same F-S, and both Orions of that player started to run for it.

I "scatter" my remaining Q-S and 2 x FL, just as fast as Speed 0+1 can.

The LR/SAL player came creeping in quite slowly and headed for one of the FL. They open up on it, damaging its power systems and sweating the fact that my SkyHawk is only a few hexes back. They also damaged the Q-S. I'd have decloaked and launched against the now defenseless (and slow) pirates were it not for the 3rd player finally getting into the fray. Seeing that BR only 5-6 hexes out, I felt compelled to stay under cloak. Turns out that HE was the one that was here to blow up cargo, and he later declared that he'd not have shot at me if i had decloaked, but I couldn't take that chance. He ended up blowing away my other F-L.

When we called it, we had the crippled DW/DBR player winning, having secured an uncrippled (though powerless) freighter and was well away from the rest of the scrum.
The BR had destroyed one F-L and would have to destroy the other F-L in order to satisfy his victory conditions.
The LR/SAL player needed 11 cargo boxes to win. As the Q-S was damaged below that threshold, that meant they had to have the F-L alive. This is the point where those two players would have had to turn on each other.

My SeaHawk never uncloaked after turn one. I felt that it was better to hold it as a threat. In such an pirate-heavy environment it would be nothing more than a one shot wonder. With one player leaving, and the other two forced to fight each other, I might have had the chance to make an impact. Shame we had to call it.

I think this was the best scenario we've played so far.

(I know some will say that the DW/DBR player should have been informed of the Q-S as soon as he got within 4 hexes of it. I simply forgot about the lab rule, and so did the Orion until he'd perfectly set himself up. Worked out more fun for everyone this way, deciding that his science officer was too busy calculating his share of the profits to notice that blinking light on this sensor display).

Playing again next Tuesday. No idea what that scenario will be.