After-action report: H-Dragoon+3 Stingers vs. R-Firehawk
Posted: Wed Apr 22, 2009 9:07 pm
This was a short and bloody encounter between these two non-historical opponents, with Jon playing the Hydran and me playing the Rom. Curiously, I was inspired to play the Romulans because I’d only that day seen a bloke in Torquay who was a dead ringer for a real live Romulan. Large [nearly] pointy ears, heavy brows, thick fringe, the works. All that was missing was the quilted jacket. But then it was a hot day….
On Turn 1, the Jon chose speed 16 and I chose speed 8; I chose this speed so as to get my plasmas armed before the first major pass, and to have plenty of power in reserve to reinforce against potential Hellbore shots at the end of Turn 1. By the end of the turn the ships had closed to just within overload range – the Hydran had the Romulan centrelined at 7 hexes, and the Rom had the #2 shield facing. The Hydran’s four phaser-2’s and 2 phaser-1’s were combined with two overloaded Hellbores, whereas my reply was all seven phaser-1’s. The #2/#5 hex spline on the FHK is not a healthy place to be if you’re the target. The Hydran rolled badly; one of his Hellbores missed and so did most of his Phaser-2’s. Light damage was scored to my shield #2, and the Hellbore scored most of its damage (5 points) on the #4 shield; much of the damage from the entire volley was taken on reinforcement. If you’re at the end of the turn and have kept your batteries, fired your weapons and everything else, there’s no point in NOT doing this. My return fire scored well and halved his front shield. Each of us scored one burn-through which was of course instantly repaired at the end of the turn.
Because our group does not have much experience in fighting plasma chuckers, I held off launching any plasma at this point so as to not remind him to pick speed 24 next turn.
This seemed to have worked; by luck or design, he picked speed 16, as did I. (Despite the Hellbores, I couldn’t really afford to even up my shields by repairing a few boxes because we were approaching knife range where every point of power is vital.) At the end of Impulse 1, I launched a Plas-S at four hexes’ range, and in Impulse 2 the plasma impacted his front shield having been reduced to fourteen points by the target’s phaser-G’s – he’d rolled well for once
while I took another Hellbore hit for some minor burn-through damage. After a couple of impulses, the ships were at one hex range [I closed the range once he’d fired his Gatlings] the Rom off the Hydran’s #2 shield and the Hydran off the Rom’s #3 shield. The resulting exchange of fire resulted in us both having downed facing shields, but I had more phasers in arc than he did and had targeted power too. I tweaked reinforcement so that his ‘targeting weapons’ fire scored only five or six damage, and thereby not reaching the second batch of weapons later in the damage table. This is a useful tactic; where practical [ie when receiving about 7-10 internal damage through a freshly downed shield] look at the damage table to see how far you want your opponent to get, and reinforce accordingly. Of course, if the shield is already down, then you can’t reinforce it so it becomes moot. Anyway I got ten targeted internals on power and so the Hydran lost five power boxes including a battery. Again, a useful tactic when fighting a Hellbore ship, because these weapons tend to be power-hungry and reducing his power is a good way of reducing his future options. It’s a sort of double-mission-kill; you reduce his power anyway so he has less options, but it also effectively kills one or two Hellbores because he can’t power them as easily.
Jon briefly considered tractoring my ship to hold it for the Stingers, but I had much more power left than he did, so that idea was abandoned. And I didn’t want to tractor him because then I’d be easy meat for the Stingers. However, in the hit-and-run raids that followed out mutual shield dropping, I got lucky and hit his remaining loaded Hellbore, which was greeted with the usual dismay
In the launch phase, Jon launched his Stingers and I launched the right-side plas-F towards the downed shield – remembering the tactic of the ‘zero-energy anchor’ where a plasma launched from one hex range can’t be avoided. And he didn’t have enough power for a HET, so the torp went in through the downed shield for a further 20 damage.
Next impulse, I accelerated and managed to put some distance between my ship and the pursuing Stingers, although not much – one was at 1 hex range off my #5 shield. But the important thing was that I’d managed to turn better shields to the fighters through proper use of sideslips. Two fighters were at two hexes’ range and on a split shield 4/5 boundary, and the other one was off my undamaged #5 shield. Because of the rules for split-shield boundaries, I was able to accept the damage from the two fighters at two hexes range on two different shields. Anyway my #5 shield got dropped for about 10-13 internals; nothing too serious. Spending a point of power to accelerate and another to death-drag the closer Stinger, [a point of power well-spent!], I turned left as the Hydran turned right in a kind of horizontal scissor. We ended up with me centrelined by the Hydran at range 1 off my undamaged #6 shield, but with him short on enough power to use it, but with me about to launch my left-side F torp and my S-torp at his nearly-downed #1 shield, at which point we decided that the Hydran would be gutted and so we called it a day.
Lessons learned:
Several notes are already in the text above.
Jon felt that when flying against a plasma-chucker, there was not enough power to maintain a decent defensive speed [ie speed 24] AND arm his Hellbores to the required levels. The conclusion was that perhaps next game he’d arm only two Hellbores.
Once again, running out of power is lethal at close range.
If there’s any chance that you will be subjected to a ‘zero-energy anchor’, keep enough power for a high-energy turn. This has been submitted to Steve Petrick as a Command Note.
Where possible, tweak reinforcement to allow targeted damage to ‘progress’ only so far along the damage track. Of course this means that you have to assume that he will hit the targeted damage he wants, but it can be a worthwhile precaution.
On Turn 1, the Jon chose speed 16 and I chose speed 8; I chose this speed so as to get my plasmas armed before the first major pass, and to have plenty of power in reserve to reinforce against potential Hellbore shots at the end of Turn 1. By the end of the turn the ships had closed to just within overload range – the Hydran had the Romulan centrelined at 7 hexes, and the Rom had the #2 shield facing. The Hydran’s four phaser-2’s and 2 phaser-1’s were combined with two overloaded Hellbores, whereas my reply was all seven phaser-1’s. The #2/#5 hex spline on the FHK is not a healthy place to be if you’re the target. The Hydran rolled badly; one of his Hellbores missed and so did most of his Phaser-2’s. Light damage was scored to my shield #2, and the Hellbore scored most of its damage (5 points) on the #4 shield; much of the damage from the entire volley was taken on reinforcement. If you’re at the end of the turn and have kept your batteries, fired your weapons and everything else, there’s no point in NOT doing this. My return fire scored well and halved his front shield. Each of us scored one burn-through which was of course instantly repaired at the end of the turn.
Because our group does not have much experience in fighting plasma chuckers, I held off launching any plasma at this point so as to not remind him to pick speed 24 next turn.
This seemed to have worked; by luck or design, he picked speed 16, as did I. (Despite the Hellbores, I couldn’t really afford to even up my shields by repairing a few boxes because we were approaching knife range where every point of power is vital.) At the end of Impulse 1, I launched a Plas-S at four hexes’ range, and in Impulse 2 the plasma impacted his front shield having been reduced to fourteen points by the target’s phaser-G’s – he’d rolled well for once
while I took another Hellbore hit for some minor burn-through damage. After a couple of impulses, the ships were at one hex range [I closed the range once he’d fired his Gatlings] the Rom off the Hydran’s #2 shield and the Hydran off the Rom’s #3 shield. The resulting exchange of fire resulted in us both having downed facing shields, but I had more phasers in arc than he did and had targeted power too. I tweaked reinforcement so that his ‘targeting weapons’ fire scored only five or six damage, and thereby not reaching the second batch of weapons later in the damage table. This is a useful tactic; where practical [ie when receiving about 7-10 internal damage through a freshly downed shield] look at the damage table to see how far you want your opponent to get, and reinforce accordingly. Of course, if the shield is already down, then you can’t reinforce it so it becomes moot. Anyway I got ten targeted internals on power and so the Hydran lost five power boxes including a battery. Again, a useful tactic when fighting a Hellbore ship, because these weapons tend to be power-hungry and reducing his power is a good way of reducing his future options. It’s a sort of double-mission-kill; you reduce his power anyway so he has less options, but it also effectively kills one or two Hellbores because he can’t power them as easily.Jon briefly considered tractoring my ship to hold it for the Stingers, but I had much more power left than he did, so that idea was abandoned. And I didn’t want to tractor him because then I’d be easy meat for the Stingers. However, in the hit-and-run raids that followed out mutual shield dropping, I got lucky and hit his remaining loaded Hellbore, which was greeted with the usual dismay
In the launch phase, Jon launched his Stingers and I launched the right-side plas-F towards the downed shield – remembering the tactic of the ‘zero-energy anchor’ where a plasma launched from one hex range can’t be avoided. And he didn’t have enough power for a HET, so the torp went in through the downed shield for a further 20 damage.
Next impulse, I accelerated and managed to put some distance between my ship and the pursuing Stingers, although not much – one was at 1 hex range off my #5 shield. But the important thing was that I’d managed to turn better shields to the fighters through proper use of sideslips. Two fighters were at two hexes’ range and on a split shield 4/5 boundary, and the other one was off my undamaged #5 shield. Because of the rules for split-shield boundaries, I was able to accept the damage from the two fighters at two hexes range on two different shields. Anyway my #5 shield got dropped for about 10-13 internals; nothing too serious. Spending a point of power to accelerate and another to death-drag the closer Stinger, [a point of power well-spent!], I turned left as the Hydran turned right in a kind of horizontal scissor. We ended up with me centrelined by the Hydran at range 1 off my undamaged #6 shield, but with him short on enough power to use it, but with me about to launch my left-side F torp and my S-torp at his nearly-downed #1 shield, at which point we decided that the Hydran would be gutted and so we called it a day.
Lessons learned:
Several notes are already in the text above.
Jon felt that when flying against a plasma-chucker, there was not enough power to maintain a decent defensive speed [ie speed 24] AND arm his Hellbores to the required levels. The conclusion was that perhaps next game he’d arm only two Hellbores.
Once again, running out of power is lethal at close range.
If there’s any chance that you will be subjected to a ‘zero-energy anchor’, keep enough power for a high-energy turn. This has been submitted to Steve Petrick as a Command Note.
Where possible, tweak reinforcement to allow targeted damage to ‘progress’ only so far along the damage track. Of course this means that you have to assume that he will hit the targeted damage he wants, but it can be a worthwhile precaution.
