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Looking things over, I had noticed there were a few ‘general’ SFB scenarios that are geared to around the current play date of our group (instead of ~Y175) shortly before Patch suggested a Star Fleet Battles game. I put together a package of possibilities, and we went with “Treasure Ship”, where a freighter on robot controls emerges from the WYN cluster, and two of their neighbors fight over who gets to take the prize home. (One of them paid for the valuable resources on board, but the WYN are not above promoting fights by sending the freighter out in range of two ships.)

Of the options, we kept the scenario as small as possible, with Patch taking a Lyran FF and me taking a Kzinti FF, with a small freighter (F-S) up for grabs. (Patch called it ‘two kids fighting over a candy bar.’) Effectively, it’s a frigate-duel, but the freighter is worth two points per intact cargo box to whoever ends up with control of it. The two ships set up on opposite sides of the board, with the freighter in between, running in a straight line at speed 4.

I decided to make a fast grab for the F-S, and try to steer the fight away from it, and possibly disengage (which it can only do by distance), and went speed 28, while Patch went a more sedate 18. Most of the turn was spent running up, and on Impulse 23 I came adjacent and tractored the freighter, then launched a drone, fired the disruptor at Patch, and fired a phaser-1 at the F-S for five points of damage. Which would be perfect for knocking down the shield, except the robot controls put up one point of general reinforcement, and the battery as a second reinforcement, leaving two boxes of shields up. Patch fired both disruptors back on the next impulse, and hit with both for six points on my #6 before turning off. I turned the opposite direction, and Patch turned back a few impulses later. I then fired a Ph-3 into the freighter for three points to knock down the shield, and do one cargo (doh!) internal, and then transported a boarding party and crew unit (prize crew) aboard the next impulse.

Patch stayed at 18, while I boosted to 30 (halved, since I kept the F-S in tractor). This meant skipping the disruptor, and skimping on battery and phaser charging. I ran for half the turn, while trying to figure out how I wanted to get more boarding parties on to the freighter. On impulse 15 I dropped the tractor, and launched a second drone, and then turned the F-S and sideslipped the FF so that it could drop a shield and beam three more BPs onto the freighter through its down shield, with nothing pointing Patch’s way. (Some of this was delayed because I allocated a box of General Reinforcement on the F-S, which blocked the transport, and/or a shuttle, and landing a shuttle aboard was the original plan. Half a turn gave me some time to look things up and realize I could drop the reinforcement for a bit without having to announce it.) Once that was done, I realized I  only had one boarding party left on the FF. Hopefully, I wouldn’t give Patch any chances to board me….

On impulse 18, I launched another drone, this time going speed 12. Patch continued towards the freighter/me, with range to the drones dropping fast, and on 22 he fired both disruptors and a phaser-2 at range three to the F-S to do 8 points (one disruptor missed), for two internals (the general reinforcement had recently come back up), one of which was a cargo box. Patch turned off to avoid drone #2, and I turned the opposite way (now that the shield was back up). On 32, he turned back towards me, and fired on drone #3, which had closed to one hex… rolling a 6 with a phaser-3 to let it live.

Patch stayed at 18 again, while I dropped to speed 19, which allowed me to charge the disruptor, get the phasers fully charged, and start shield repairs, but only trickle a little power into the batteries. The F-S picked up to speed 5, while it finished charging its battery. Both frigates ran with one point of ECM. Patch finished off drone #3 on impulse 1, and I spent the first few impulses finishing a turn back towards Patch, hoping to keep him distracted from the F-S, and get the ESG to deploy so I wouldn’t be facing it and all the phasers in what I hoped would be a main battle pass later. On 8, he turned in, somewhat to my surprise, given how cautious he’d been earlier.

Sadly, I once again forgot to save a log, so I don’t have a direct record of what happened for the rest of turn 3. However, as ranges came down, and I carefully sideslipped for a slightly off-center run, the ESG was announced on impulse 9, and I had a very tense time of trying to get close while being able to maneuver around it… at whatever range Patch set it at. On 13 it came up at range 2, while I was at 3. I fired my disruptor and turned off, while Patch fired the following impulse. On 17, I dropped a (fake) transporter bomb out the shuttle hatch to discourage him from pursuing me while I got a little distance and turned myself back around. Patch sideslipped the opposite way to keep away from it while the two drones shortcutted near it. Patch turned wide around it (thanks to the ESG), and headed for the F-S, ending the turn with the ESG one hex from it.

The F-S, seeing it coming, dropped to speed 3, and put up three reinforcement on shield #4. After that, and blowing the battery, it lost two hull, the phaser (never charged), two cargo, and three out of four warp (ironically, after losing all but two power, it still doesn’t count as crippled, as that requires only having 10% warp power left, not 25%), on impulse 2, when the ESG hit. Oh, and combined with our earlier shots, it had no rear shields left.

Meanwhile, I’d kept at speed 19, overloading the disruptor and putting a point each into ECM and ECCM (the batteries were still getting a trickle of power, and were finally over 2 energy again). Patch stayed at 18 and also had a point each in ECM and ECCM. He turned away on impulse 6, while I was still turning around (Patch mentioned that he had nearly turned in, which would have been a better decision at this point, though I’m not sure how it would have gone). Patch wondered about the mine, as I went by it while turning after him. I pointed out that I could just set it to explode on size classes that weren’t present (say SC 2 dreadnoughts), so that an ESG collision would be the only thing to set it off (“Evil!”), or it could just be a fake (“Also evil!”).

On impulse 12, I got to range 8 and fired the disruptor, hitting to do five damage to his #4. On impulse 21 I fired the forward phaser to do another 4 points (rolled a 1!), getting through the shield, and doing a single forward hull. Patch started fighting to get me off his #4, which left me with the problem of possibly getting too close to him this turn, as I started cutting inside. Drone #1 quietly ran out of endurance on impulse 23… the first time I’ve seen that happen in quite a while.

Turn 4, Impulse 12, showing movement for the full turn.

For turn five, I kept to speed 19, with much the same setup as last turn, but dropping ECM to recharge the one phaser I fired. The F-S continued to crawl off at speed three while starting repairs on a warp engine. Patch went speed 12 with 1/1 electronic warfare, indicating preparations for a close-range pass with two overloaded disruptors, and possibly pumping all he could back into the ESG….

I launched another speed 12 drone (#4) on impulse 1, and Patch turned on 3, with me just outside the forward arc. I turned in, and on impulse 7 got back onto shield 4, doing three points (lousy roll) with the 360 phaser-1 to get a ph-3, a disruptor and a warp. On 8 the new drone got to range one and Patch fired the remaining RS phaser, and a poor roll let it live with three points of damage again. On 9 he finished it off with a downfired ph-2, but I turned to get my FA arc to bear and fired the forward ph-1 and overloaded disruptor to do thirteen internals, at which point Patch conceded.

Afterword

The addition of the freighter does certainly add interest to an otherwise standard small duel. Also, the small ships are always interesting to work with, as they can maneuver, but just don’t have a lot of guts.

I rattled Patch by going fast and grabbing the prize early, but it could have easily backfired. I burned 1.2 battery power on those transporters, and was only putting 1/6 point back into batteries each turn. Also, I inadvertently left myself open to a boarding action if Patch had ever gotten a good pass to knock down a shield. And I largely broke up his best chance with a fake T-bomb.

If things had gotten serious from there, I would have dropped the real one (I only bought one). They’re an extra thing for Lyrans to be wary of, since an ESG will set them off on contact, and apply its damage to the field… or straight to the facing shield (even from three hexes away) if there’s not enough in the ESG to take it. But, it is only 10 points, and it often won’t get past the ESG at that point, though it does compromise its drone defense.

It turned out that Patch had missed the ESG power storage from the WS-III start, so he’d been blowing power on it it he didn’t need to. I was mostly worried we’d have a close range pass, where he had twice as many disruptors (…and similar power, so maybe he couldn’t overload them, but I can miss with one overloaded disruptor a lot easier than he can miss with two standards), just as many main phasers (2s instead of 1s, admittedly), twice as many ph-3s, and could use his ESG to knock down my drones with strength left over (or use the ph-3s for that and hit me with a full ESG ram).

I took half of my drones as type-IIs, and the mix served me well. The two speed-8 drones made good terrain, and the speed-12s got in close and forced him to kill them.

As for what did happen, thirteen internals would have gutted many of his systems, and the next impulse I’d probably follow up with the RS ph-3 for 1-4 more damage. Then I’d go sailing off past him, before lining up for a shot at the near-cripple next turn. Patch gets 6 points for the drones and T-bomb I took, while I get 42 for intact cargo and 15 for forcing a disengage (if not 32 for crippling him, but I don’t think I would have quite gotten there). 57:6 is deep into Astounding Victory territory. If things had lasted longer with the same end result, that could have been chipped away at as the F-S got shot up further.