Federation Commander

CJ is off to the pain booth, then the head butting contest called a de brief .

Lee could you kindly either pm or post the oob for the next two games. My paper work an bloody mess .

Its a few posts above - I posted the 3 battles and the lineups. The only thing I'm not sure on is the Q-ships in the other convoy match.

Targ - With all the hurry to get things going so we could get in a game with Neil, and all the things you were forgetting to do at the start of the round, you may well have missed the fact that the 'lost convoy' (convoy 1) could in fact have been fully pointed without any risk to your OOB. Simply buy a lot of Q-Ships/freighters. That of course ups the amount of cargo that I get to score on, but you can fit 7 Large Q-Ships in that battle (210 cargo). That is actually quite a disgusting amount of fire power (28 disrupters/drones/phasers + all the other phasers).

Given we were rushed and it may not have been clear what you could or could not deploy that scenario I'll be happy to allow you to switch to 7 large q-ships instead. That will certainly make for one hell of an interesting battle. Look at it as the klingons trying to lay a massive ambush for my main attack force.

Capt jack will love that of course, given his love of all things Freighter.

Approach battle: The attacker is preparing to attack a base, suicide freighters have been spotted being moved up, and the defender moves to engage them long before they arrive. If the attacker gets them through there will definately be a BATs assault as one battle next campaign round with the same attacker.

How will the forces be chosen? You use high card to determine attacker, but in this scenario attacker is predetermined.
I take it the defender is required to count the BATS as part of his point total, and that he must choose a card that is at least high enough to cover this cost.
The attacker gets whatever suicide freighters survived the previous scenario as 'freebies'?

Simply buy a lot of Q-Ships/freighters. That of course ups the amount of cargo that I get to score on, but you can fit 7 Large Q-Ships in that battle (210 cargo).

Is there a campaign rule that prevents a player from just stuffing their convoy fleets with nothing but Q-ships in every battle?

JonPerry wrote:How will the forces be chosen? You use high card to determine attacker, but in this scenario attacker is predetermined.
I take it the defender is required to count the BATS as part of his point total, and that he must choose a card that is at least high enough to cover this cost.
The attacker gets whatever suicide freighters survived the previous scenario as 'freebies'?

The BATS scenario is normal force size (average of the cards played) but both players then get +300 pts, the defender for his BATS and the attacker for extra force. Yes, if the attacker gets the suicide-Ships through they will be freebies for him.

This is currently the largest possible battle, both players play 800 pts meaning 800 + 300 = 1100 pts battle.

If the Approach battle is won then the attacker in the resulting battle is the attacker from the approach battle no matter who plays the largest card for the BATS attack, the card at that point are purely to determine size of battle.

Is there a campaign rule that prevents a player from just stuffing their convoy fleets with nothing but Q-ships in every battle?

I'll probably add an extra scenerio rule to cover that, probably say no more than half points on cargo ships, and 1 normal freighter per Q-ship or something.

Yah did get a bit harassed before the last game, soz.

The Captain and my self were talking about some thing similar using lots of Q ships last night and wouldn’t mind giving it a go; we’ve only got the 800 card to lose.

Still think the normal convoy scenario needs working on as the examples we’ve had up to now are more like encounter battles with freighters present and don’t seem to me like the types of convoy actions that are portrayed in the SFU history or earths wet navies encounters through history. I now there are the exception like operation pedestal but thing like this were not the norm, at lest from my understanding. Any way we’ll talk about it on Friday.

Think we may be looking at more than one type of merchentile scenario.

Game 2 of Round 2 was played plast night. I I didn't play well - too little sleep recently and I was like a zombie by the end of the game at 1:00am. To think I was meant to have been playing Mr Doyle in the tourney straight after last nights game, boy I'm glad that was postponed (Daughter needs 'Dads taxi service' early in the morning, though that was cancelled this morning due to snow!). I'm struggling to remember the fine details, especially at the back end of the game.

Any way, as per previous posts, we are going to redo the convoy scenarios to make them a little less like big battles (although that might occassionally happen still). For last night though we went with the Klingon D6 and E4 that were allocated plus as many large Q-Ships as could fit in (5). It looks a hideous battle with all that heavy weaponary with 360 degree coverage, but in theory it is an even points battle, so I was quite happy to have a go and see just how bad it really was.

Whilst the game is more like a masive Q-Ship ambush, it is still a convoy carrying stuff that the klingons need, and they still suffer the VP consequences of lost cargo and campaign effect of a lost card next round potentially.

PS posting this and next few posts quickly, as I have to go out soon. I'll check for all my usual typos later.

Q-Ship Ambush AAR

So my DN, CA, CA, FF have found a convoy. Again the setup for the game means I preload photons, and then approach. Maybe not unsurprisingly the enemy slips away from me, with the warships heading even further away from me, I decide that Targ and Jack have preplanned to keep the warships out of the fight due to the losses thay have suffered to their OOB. Realising that I'm not actually going to get that close I EM just outside 15 at the back end of the turn and carry on in. I'm going to get one good shot with photons, which will be turn 2, and don't want to give an easy turn 1 shot to the klingons. Drones are fired at the FF. The larger ships carry on in and towards the back side of the convoy, the FF pulls to run parellel with the convoy at range 9, partly to avoid drones, partly to tempt fire at it rather than the other ships pulling in behind, the enenmy warships by the end of the turn can only bear on the FF. The klingons fire at the end of the turn and score zero damage, EM range and batteries protect the FF, and the DN is hit by the Q-Ships but again EM and batteries keep him covered. Right at the end I dump power to photons, I don't have enough for overloading everything, but enough to get a reasonable amount of partials.


Turn 2. I drop EM and put on speed 24 to get close, there's no question that the Q-Ships are going 16+, they have oodles of power even after powering weapons. The enemy war ships again take a very wide arc out in front of the convoy and start coming back round on me. I get to range 4 on the back 2 Q-Ships, keeping the other 3 at range 5 and open up with CAs on them. They score some great hits and both Q-Ships are left teetering on the brink of collapse. The DN however takes a bit of a hammering fback from there fire. The CAs start manouvering to try and bring remaining phasers into arc on the knackered Q-ships downed shields, I'm sure they won't take much more to frame kill. The DN and FF move to target other 3 Q-ships, and the DN unloads, at range 2. 6 photions at 1 and a decent suite of phasers at another. My photons roll mass 6's and fails to even take down the Q-Ships shield!!!. The phasers damage the other 1 but not that well. The 3 freighters fire back at the DN, but I have achieved a split boundary and manager to absorb pretty well, taking 2 down shields though. I then goof up a bit, and find my DN about to get clobbered by al 5 freighters with their other side weapons at point blank range, and have to HET out of that position. My tactical officer reports a HET from an inconsequential E4 some where on the horizon that we ignore.

At some point my FF must have got hit losing a shield, but I can't remember how, I remember the FF slipping away from the friegthers to put range against their yet to fire weapons, and goofing up again, failing to turn a new shield and getting pretty well hammered, he then turned across the convoy whils they were weaponless and sped across to my disengagment side. The CAs finally finshed off the 2 knackered frieghters.

Turn 3 - I don't remember much beyond the disastrous bits. Everything went wrong. The CAs turned to try and get another Q-ship bfroe they got away, the damaged one. The Q-Ship were likely to disengage this turn, so I didn't bother to start photon arming. All I remember is that there was a lot of tight manouvering between the CAs and Q-Ships, the remaing damaged Q-Ship just wouldn't die, it was really bad knackered, but I just couldn't seem to get that last frame hit. It ended having to turn into an edge it couldn't disenagage from and ED to avoid going off and being 'killed'. I made an uber goof and failed to take into account the scenario boundary as a pristine CA turned and then went off map where it was not allowed- dead CA! turn 4 rolled over and the other CA by now slightly damaged was tying to run for disengagement, the Q-Ships had stayed on map to get in another shot at it, and given we were still too close the CA got well raped and blew up. The DN and FF disengaged.


OK that was pretty (by which I mean utterly) disasterous. I lost 2 CAs, and took a damaged FF and DN away. The klingons lost 83 cargo and 2 Q-Ships.

I made a few mistakes due to tiredness early on that I could live with, but that last 15 minutes at the end was a night mare. It has prompted one change we will make to that scenario, and others that are similiar. The distance covered by the map was 50 hexes, but that was not a panel edge, whilst not concentrating I had totally missed where the 50 hexes ran out. In future for that sort of fixed map we will make sure that the edge is a proper map panel edge so it is clear to everyone at a glance.

The game itself was, however, quite interesting, up to that last slip up it was very tight and did feel like a pretty even battle. That may to some extent have been due to the klingon D6 and E4 not really taking much part (and the usual disgreements between the 2 klingon commanders), although they were hovering just out of the fight ready pick off stragglers. The E4 did at one point force my DN to manouver away from the main fight as it came over it at range 0, and I had to avoid showing a down shield, which is why it effectively missed the last half of the battle.

Game end:
Fed: CA destroyed * 2, DN damage (5), FF damage (10).
Klingon: Q-Ship destroyed * 2

VP:
Fed +332Vp for cargo, -147 for lost CA, -147 for lost CA. total = +38
Klingon -95 for lost Q-ship, -95 for lost Q-Ship. total = -190

Campaign: The klingons lose 400pt card next round (so they are now missing 2 cards next round).

Scores on the doors:

Fed: 9892
Klingon: 9353

Fed OOB (damage status)
DN (5)
BC
CC
CA (6)
3 * CL
DD (cripple)
2 * DD
FF (10)
FF
CVS [12* F-18]


Klink OOB (damage status)
C8 (cripple)
D7C
D7 (cripple)
D7 (11)
D6 (5)
2 * D6
F5 (cripple)
2 * F5
3 * E4
Rom SPH-B [16 fighters (8 + 8 )]

Q ships sound very strong...

Perhaps they shouldn't come so free. What if the players have a limited supply of them (they can buy some more) they can choose to add as a replacement for convoy mission for free (they just risk losing them).

They are quite strong - mainly due to the 360 coverage.

We have discussed a way of limiting them, but it won't be via a pool. I'd prefer the campaign be based around the military fleet each commander has, and general ships are something that you are assigned to look after or control for a fight.

We are going to keep 1 mission card that allows this sort of big Q-Ship group, it was actually quite an interesting fight, and not as one sided as I thought it might be.

The more general convoy misson (of which there are multi cards in the deck) will be modiified something more like:

Lower card determies who is attacker/defender (so big incentive to play a small card).
Lowest card determines basic size of battle, modified in some way by larger card (to provide an incentive for a big card)

That should make the convoy mission smaller and therefore more likely to be more along the lines of 1 raider meets convoy with smallish escort. Half your points at least must be from your own OOB. Q-Ships will be allowed but only at a rate of 1 per normal freighter. Between smaller fights, minimum points on your own ships and a need to take normal freighters it should mean q-ships are bit less common in normal convoys.

We are also going to add a couple of the odd balls, the 'convoy vs convoy' mission, and a 'catch the pigeon' (aka the fast trader) type missions.

This first run through is essentially a play test campaign, and things like this are what we are expecting to pick up on and change on the fly.

storeylf wrote:Lowest card determines basic size of battle, modified in some way by larger card (to provide an incentive for a big card)

May be the larger card (or more lightly the difference in the cards)dictates the amount of cargo boxes the convoy has to field.

Do Armed Freighters (see resources, ships cards, general) count as Q or normal freighters?

Mobile Base AAR

The final battle of this round saw my small Fed group of 2 DD and 1 FF attack a mobile base being used for front line repairs defended by a D7c, F5 and E4.

Funny - as ever we were both thinking before hand how hard this was going be, it always looks more dificult from your side of the hill. The base is fairly chunky, though as a base without much reactor it can do down fairly fast. I had come with 10 photons and just planned on moving up to the 26 range line on turn 1 and then charging in on turn 2 past the defending klingons to hit the base then try and escape as best as possible, there are big VP for taking it out and the klingon will pay double for front line repair this round if he loses it, so I was prepared to lose small ships to kill it. My main concerns with such a strategy was the klingon ships swinging in on me and tractoring me from behind (or the side) and/or them hitting with good aimed at weapon volleys whilst I was still about 9-15 from the base. Being caught in a fight against ships in front of the base woudn't be good. It may not be that heavily armed but it is still extra firepower I don't want to take whilst fighting the ships.

We are playing on a 4 *3 (large hexes), location map around the base. I have 1 disengagement side (the one I enter from). The other 3 sides are klingon disgengament sides.


Turn 1 sees me finish arming photons and moving up to the line that is 26 from the base. The klingons are moving out to meet me, though from the chatter between Targ and Capt Jack it appears that they have decided that they do not want to stray too far from the base. I take shield damage on 1 DD at the end of the turn and see drones and suicide shuttles launched that the other DD, whilst I launch drones at the F5. I withhold direct fire, putting what remaining power I have into photons, giving me partial overloads on the DDs (power starved as ever) and full overloads on the FF.

Turn 2, I start pondering a change in plan, it appears that the klingons have moved further out than they may have been intending, if they continue to look at getting another good volley in they will have strayed quite far from the base, and I might possibly be able to take on the ships at its extreme range. I plot speed 16 to retain weapon power (and any other stuff I might need), those DDs pack a punch but boy do they feel the power shortage. Imp 1 sees the klingons move to range 8 and withhold fire, good, it does look like they are tunnel visioned - forgetting their 'don't stray far from the base' talk earlier on and thinking I'm going straight for the base. More drones are launched at the DD, who now has 8 incoming drones. I accel and plot a move that should avoid the drones this impulse but hopefully put me at range 4 to the D7C. Unfortunatley the D7C and F5 decel on a subpulse to keep drones from impacting and I end at range 5 to the command cruiser, what's more I have mis-calcultaed and can't out manouver the 8 drones the following impulse without a HET. I open up with all photons on the D7C, but hold back on phasers. Even an average hit should see the D7C take 30-40 internals through its front shield. As ever with Feds I have that horrible feeling of relying on the streaky photon volley, but my dice rolling is very nice, as only 2 miss and the D7C goes straight to cripple status. In return the D7C does some minor internals to a DD. The other Klingons withhold fire. I then HET from the drones and the rest of the turn sees me expend lots of ADDs trying to take them out as they chase me slipping along the map egde. My ADD fire, however, is no where near as good as the Photon fire. The F5 and E4 obtain good positions and close to deliver significant damage to the DD that was hurt by the D7C.

Turn 3 I'm a little concerned that whilst I have nobbled the big klingon ship that I'm going to be picked off by more manouverable klingons behind me. I plot speed 24 to avoid the drones that I still haven't dealt with even though I have used up all ADD rounds! My FF starts rearming photons, but the DDs cannot really afford to. The klingons have gone 16 for some odd reason. After a couple of impulses and the F5 just behind me, I see an oppotunity to launch shuttles that will force him to give up the slot just behind me (or take the hits). The F5 HETs away at that point, as I try to pull round with the usual poor Fed turn modes. My speed allows me to catch the F5 at he end of the turn with the good DD and FF in a reversal of situation as it runs out of power. I'm unable to deliver much damage though due to power. He declares end of turn EM.

Turn 4 the DDs start arming some photons, but not all. I slow down to 16 as the F5 goes EM and 24. The E4 is getting close to base by now, along with the D7C (limited to base speed 8 ). The F5 successfully outmanouves me to avoid the point blank shots, and realising I'm drifting into the base as I follow, I settle for whatever aimed phasers into its rear shield that I can get at a slightly longer range. Those shots more or less seal the game, as the F5 is stripped of all but a disrupter. I spend the remainder of the turn pulling back round away from the base to give my ships time to rearm photons, and importantly to regroup, as by now I'm split all over the place.

Turn 5 I finish arming what photons I had started last turn and spend the turn regrouping at the range 16 line from the base.

Turn 7 I head in at speed 16, so I can get to point blank range for certain on the base. The E4 is still largely pristine, the F5 and D7C are positioned on the far side of the base going speed 0 in reverse - so they can fire what weapons they have whilst still slowly moving to disengage. I head in and the E4 sweeps around me to come in behind, the klingons have given up on the base, but they are determined to take down my crippled DD in response, which is attacking as I'm not sure that I have the fire power to kill the base in 1 go without it. I reach range 0/1 at impulse 7 and stick every weapon into the base, which blows up nicely with a lot of overkill as it happens. All klingons fire at the DD, but it somehow hangs on. Realising it lacks power to even go 8 the FF slaps a tractor on it to pull it out.

Turn 8 - We agree to play a couple of impulses to see if the klingons can nobble the DD. My other pristine DD could in theory have moved against the other Klingon ships, but it was very late and I was happy to just disegage. The DD counts as a large ships for tractor purposes, which is quite amusing, so the FF goes 24 ( 8 ) and accels to get away from the E4 just a couple of hexes away (but not facing well), the other DD facing the wrong way slips to keep its rear centerline discouraging the E4 from turning at the crippled ship. In the end the klingon E4 is unable to turn on the cripple and the last shots of the game fail to get through the 3 points of shield the cripple DD had facing them.



A pretty big win for me, largely stemming from that single photon volley at the D7C. I certainly got lucky, I can't deny that, but the klingons definately made the mistake of getting so far out from the base and then letting me take that shot. Of course they couldn't afford to take long range shots that would just let me then speed in on the base either. Even after taking out the D7C though I wasn't thinking I was neccessarily going to win. The 2 other klink ships seriously out manouver mine, and with 1 crippled DD it was to a large extent a 2vs2 for a couple of turns. If they could hurt me enough I was concerned I wouldn't be in a state to take out the base. I enjoyed playing the 3 ships I had, the FF is a great ship power wise, whilst the DDs have massive fire power but really struggle for power if they want to use it all.



Game end:
Fed: DD crippled
Klingon: D7C crippled, F5 damage (12)

VP:
Fed +1000Vp for base, +300Vp for not forfeiting any VP = +1300
Klingon -100 for losing base. = -100

Campaign: The klingons pay double for repairing damage ships this round (not cripples).