Federation Commander

This is my first attempt at posting a battle report. Me and friend of mine played our first squadon scale game last night. We set the points at about 350 each. Brandon took a Fed CA, CL and FF. I went with a Rom KE and a pair of Orion CRs with Ph-1s in all the option mounts. We played on a location map using the large hexes.

We both gave up batteries to preload heavy weapons on game start. On turn one, he set his fleet to speed 16. I paid for speed 16 on the KE and 24 on the CRs, which I kept in the same hex. The first half of the turn was us both closing on each other. He launched 3 drones at one of my CRs, and at the end of Impulse one I started cloaking my KE. On impulse 4 my CRs were range 8 from the CA, just off centerline, and I shot with 6 ph-1s from each. I targeted power and took out half his #1 shield and scored a couple of burnthrough points on his R Warp engine. On the next impuse his CA ended up at 5 hexes from my CRs and he launched 4 torps and 6 phaser shots at one. He missed all but one torp and scored enough damage to drop my #3 shield and take out 3 of my phaser banks on one CR. In the meantime, my cloaked CR and his two other ships had been getting a lot closer to each other. It looked like next impulse I might get a range2-3 plasma launch at speed 16 ships, so I started my fade in.
The next impulse proved interesting. For some reason he turned his CA toward my KE. I responded by turning left and slipping toward him. The end results was my KE with a full load of plasma was 2 hexes away centerlined on a CA that had fired ALL bearing weapons AND was missing half a shield. In the direct fire phase his CL and FF burnt most of their power in launching +16 overloaded torps and shooting ph-1s at my KE, but the +4 range from the fade in and some bad rolls on his part kept me to about 13 damage total to my shield. I lost a ph-3 to burnthrough, nothing major. On the Launch phase, my newly un-cloaked KE launched a volley of plasma death. I did make a mistake. I targeted one F and the R on the CA, and put the other F on his CL. I should have put both F's on the CA instead. Anyways, the next impulse the CA took 59 points of Internals after reinforcement and the loss of the sheild. The impulse after the CL took a 13 point F to it's #6 shield, and lost a lab. It's ph-3s did some weakening and it batteried some of the damage. The rest of this turn and the entire next turn was spent reloading heavy weapons and manuvering for a second pass. My CRs did get a range 9 shot on FF, but couldn't breech the shields. We called the game at this point, due to the fact it was 2100 and he had an early moring appointment.

Lessons learned:

He discovered that letting plasma close while going slow is not good.

I learned that I need to better plan saber dancing techniques, and to try and close one the Fed has no torps.

Phaser armed Orions can be a nightmare for the Feds, because they can power all of their weapons and maintain a high speed without doubling their engines, and so remain stealthed, which can be a serious issue for his photons. In his case, I might have relied on speed and standard loads. You really don't need overloads to wreck Orions. The KE has excellent sheilds, but once they go down, what's inside is basically tinfoil. And speed 16 leaves you a sitting duck for an R torp. I would also have gone after the KE first, and concentrated my fire on it. It's a big chunk of your firepower.

I agree that in general, I would want to use both F torps on the Fed CA to finish it off. But it depends on the geometry of the shot. If he's facing you, give him both Fs. But if he's facing away, and moving at speed 24, you might hold fire on the Fs. F torps degrade pretty quickly, and he may be able to run them out. R torps are persistent, and will chase him for quite some time. Getting within two hexes of your KE was suicidal. Any ship with a live R torp must be treated with respect.

To be honest, we are both rather new. Our last couple of games have been me controlling one or more feds and he has used equal points of klingon or kzinti. Unfortuanetly, he likes going head to head, which almost always is a loss when fighting feds. This game we tried to mix it up. I would have used a full Rom fleet, but I only own Academy/Graduation, and I didn't have my printer set up to print out the cards I bought off of e23 at the time.