After- Action report: Treasure Ship

[Kang]

Scenario: Treasure Ship [8C8] in Briefing #1

Players and Ships: Me with a Lyran FF, my son Dave with a Kzinti FF

For the benefit of those readers who do not have Briefing #1, the objective of the scenario is to capture a WYN small freighter [neutral] using boarding parties and/or to clobber the enemy ship. However I wanted also to try ESGs out and to have fun, of course!

Also, we used Dave's home-made miniatures at a very approximate 1:15,000 scale - his Fed CA's are approximately 2cm long. Pictures of the ships involved in this battle are available via the links in this report; I have left them full size so you can get some idea of what they look like. File size is approx. 1.5-2Mb per picture.

Turn 1

Lyrans speed 16, Kzintis speed 24. I also added 3 energy to my ESG to top it up.

The Kzinti FF has six marines as opposed to my four, and more transporters too - three against my one. For this reason my initial battle plan had to be to clobber the Kzinti ship and make it no threat, then capture the freighter. Any attempt to capture the freighter by boarding combat against my hated Kzinti cousins must be doomed to failure. Also, neither of us was willing to risk losing shuttles, and any boarding parties they could carry, at this stage in the game.

Both ships headed towards the freighter, although I was of course heading towards the enemy.

Pictures of the ships at this stage from different angles:

http://www.virtualcolditz.com/fc/1.jpg
http://www.virtualcolditz.com/fc/2.jpg
http://www.virtualcolditz.com/fc/3.jpg
http://www.virtualcolditz.com/fc/4.jpg
http://www.virtualcolditz.com/fc/5.jpg

At the end of Impulse #3, the Kzinti transported three marine units to the freighter. Impulse 4 he turned away to make sure his dropped shield was facing well away from me. I fired 2 disruptors and 2 P-2's for 9 damage on his #3 shield, reduced to 6 by reinforcement. Bah.

http://www.virtualcolditz.com/fc/6.jpg

Impulse 8, we'd closed the range and so I fired 2 P-3's for 4 damage reduced to three by reinforcement. Then the Kzinti launched his four drones to finish the turn with the ships 2 hexes apart.

http://www.virtualcolditz.com/fc/7.jpg
http://www.virtualcolditz.com/fc/8.jpg

Turn 2

We both selected Speed 16, and the freighter was now under Kzinti control so he raised shields and selected Speed 16 for the freighter as well. During the rest of the game, the freighter effectively played no further part in the game as he maintained speed 16 and moved it generally away from the warships. He was hoping to get it to 35 hexes from my ship which would have allowed it to disengage.

On the next turn I had to ESG the drones, and knew I'd then have to cope with a second wave launched soon after, so I couldn't spare enough phasers or power for a really good alpha strike on the first impulse. The
Kzinti alpha strike did 12 internals on me ["Serious damage across all decks!!"] - a coupe of weapons and quite a lot of power - more than I could afford - whereas I got only one internal from mine. Lab. Bah, again.

His drone alpha was duly launched and I destroyed three of the drones with ESG and phasers, tractoring the remaining one. We then moved apart to a range of about 5 hexes for the rest of the turn.

Turn 3

Kzinti, speed 16, Lyran, Speed 8. Impulse 1, I charged my ESG to sufficient levels to catch his next drone wave [not launched yet], dropped the tractor and ESG'd the drone. The Kzinti closed with me and alphaed again, with my ship so short on power [the ESG] that any reply would have been futile. Ten internals including the ESG!! and then another four-drone wave inbound saw me concede the game as I had no way of stopping the drones. And there was no way I was going to let my crew be captured by the Tigermen....

Lessons learned:

1) The ESG is a very, very effective anti-drone system but the superior drone firepower of the Z-FF means that you can only use it on five of his eight drones [2 waves].

2) Using turn-in-place tactics at close range can seriously limit your options in certain positions, because sometimes you really need a sideslip and turning-in-place resets the slip mode.

3) Miniatures - once bitten, forever smitten! This game was so much more immersive because it was played with minis....

4) It's very difficult to fight the L-FF against the Z-FF effectively. In hindsight I should have chosen the LDR-FF which is just about the same point value as the Z-FF. The L-FF is short on power and this makes effective use of the disruptors difficult. In addition, the excellent, nearly cruiser-sized battery array of the Z-FF makes it difficult to score any permanent damage.

5) The best way to deal with the Z-FF for the Lyrans would probably be to saber dance until he's used all his drones and then run in. Other suggestions are welcome!

6) The Kzinti drones seriously reduce the direct-fire capability of the L-FF when used in two close waves of four drones each. The drawback is that once the drones are gone, they will take aaaaages to reload. Patience is
therefore a virtue when fighting this ship. I will know next time.

[pinecone]

I like the pics, and have to say "Yeah, Kzinti!" (Sorry, but the Allies are my favorites, and I got my Federation CF mangled by a Jaguar and mobile base in one scenario I played. Though I played it badly...)

[Mike]

Kang, I enjoyed your write-up of the battle and the pics of the ships.

[Scoutdad]

Great write up. I like the inclusion ofthe minis photos as the battle progressed. Those were a great touch.

[djdood]

Indeed. Great write up and having it illustrated was a real boon.

I totally love the homemade minis. That's so cool to see folks getting creative and making their own versions of stuff!

[DNordeen]

Yeah, the Z-FF is a tough little ship with a huge drone load. If you can wait him out and manage to avoid significant damage, those drones are hard to reload and he's left with only a single disruptor.

[malleman]

Love the minis they are very creative and add to the report. Especially the freighter with the stripe (yeah mon ).

[Requete]

Love the minis they are very creative and add to the report. Especially the freighter with the stripe (yeah mon ).

So that's your hypothesis about the nature of the treasure?