Well, not every minute busy, but Sunday came close.
Sunday was gaming. Or so me and Mark thought, with the various reschedules going on for the last couple months, I’m not too surprised something got dropped, and we didn’t have the usual week-before emails on it. Patch? You were missed. Wanna check your calendar and tell us what you have? (And email me your number again, I just can not find it, and something interrupts me every time I try to ask when you’re over.)
So… after dithering around for a while in case Patch was just running late, Mark and I settled on a simple SFU scenario, The Stasis Box. This made me happy, as I’m on a SFU-kick at the moment…. A Federation ship and a Kzinti ship show up at an asteroid field at the same time after both noticing signs of a stasis box being hidden in it. The asteroid counters are on the map upside down, with a chance of some of them hiding a stasis box… or a large mine. The winner is the one who can get a stasis box off map, with a chance of both winning if there’s two. There could also be none, in which case the ship that does the most internal damage looses for provoking an incident. Oh and the ships? A Federation DD and a Kzinti CL – not exactly the shining examples of either fleet.
This lead to unusual play. We both cruised along at low-moderate speeds checking out asteroids and trying to keep the front shields intact in the process. I was having bad luck, with a fair amount of asteroid damage causing me to have to fight to keep my front shield intact, and the discovery of a mine, which caused emergency deceleration until I could tiptoe away next turn. Mark, naturally, found a stasis box.
The trick is you have to spend two turns sitting still before you can pick it up. I surveyed one more cluster (just in case) and turned towards him, building up a minor drone wave as I closed. When Mark weaseled away one pair, but had to void it before the other pair hit it, or spend the turn after picking up the box at speed four. So, since I was staying outside of overload range (get close to a Fed DD that’s been sitting still? Forget it!), he fired a couple of overloaded torpedoes at the pair – and missed. So, I turned in and chased, finally getting a halfway decent shot, and missing with nearly everything at range 8.
Mark decided to get cute and try to make sure there wasn’t a second stasis box for me to “win” with later. This involved turning about, and a range-2 pass on odd arcs. I fired the port-side works into him and forced him to blow batteries to keep the shield up. The next impulse I snagged him with a range-3 tractor beam.
At this point I got greedy, and tryed to keep weapons in arc for the next turn. I should have just pointed myself opposite him for maximum drag. (You think I’d learn on these long-distance anchors….) So, the last pair of drones in my rack didn’t quite get to him, and the suicide shuttle was about three hexes out at the turn break. At a 3-1 power ratio, there wasn’t any hope on the tractor auction, and the DD went running for the border.
After that, me and Baron and Smudge went to see Ratatouille. Short review: Pixar does it again. I learned to stop doubting them after Monsters, Inc. Anyway, despite a premise that seems like it couldn’t possibly become a great film, the visuals are great, the characters make the movie work with a deft charm, and the plot drives the film forward very cleanly. Go see this film. ^_^
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