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After finishing up the latest adventure in Hatten, Patch and I turned to Star Fleet Battles. For our look into Y163, we went with “The First Carrier”, which is the demo scenario for the Kzinti DDV. They started fielding tactical warp fighters in the second half of the Four Powers War, and now that it’s over, they’ve built a special destroyer just to carry the improved AAS fighter.

The main action is reminiscent of SG33 “Treasure Ship“; an unmanned freighter has come out of WYN nebula, and both the Kzintis and Lyrans are trying to grab its cargo for themselves. This time, it’s a large freighter, and is completely dead (no fuel/power). The Lyrans have a CL and FF, while the Kzintis have the DDV and a FF. Interestingly, the scenario rules restrict the frigate’s drones to speed-8 and the DDV’s speed-12.

My initial plan as the Kzintis was to get to the middle of the board at speed 8 (so the fighters could keep up) and try to control the area around the freighter with the fighter squadron while I started towing it. I was thinking purely in terms of carrier operations and controlling a portion of the board. This was a mistake. Patch came in at speed 21, and was nearly to the freighter at the end of turn 1. We were both surprised to realize that a large freighter is still only MC 1/2, so that going speed 30 on turn 2 only slowed him down to speed 17. Drones and fighters couldn’t catch up to him, and even if I had boosted speeds to overtake that, the DDV and FF couldn’t do that much without the backup.

So… we reset to start the game again for the next session.

And the second time, I did not start with any fighters deployed (I had the four allowed by WS-III out the first time), and both ships went speed 18. The first turn was of course spent on approach to the freighter, and on impulse 21 the DDV launched a scatterpack. On 23, I started launching the fighters. On 25, the CL opened fire, hitting my FF with a disruptor, which I absorbed with batteries. The next impulse, I hit back with the FF hitting the CL with its disruptor. His FF returned the favor on 28, but missed with both. Finally, the scatterpack got to launch range, and bloomed on 32.

With both sides 3-5 hexes from the freighter at the start of turn 2, speeds dropped, with the Lyrans going 15, while the DDV went 10 and my FF went 12. With Patch closer, I thought he might grab the freighter and try to at least shift it towards his side before I could get in. Since I was already pointed in that direction, I figured I’d still intercept, and possibly force him to drop the tractor to get speed back up. However, Patch instead danced around it, leaving me the chance to grab it with the DDV, and start towing at speed 5. I was also spending more on EW, including loaning to the fighters so they were at 4/4 as long as the DDV was nearby.

My real surprise was the Lyran FF turned away from coming in right behind the CL on impulse 5, which announced an ESG during impulse 6. When it came up on 10, it was at radius 2, and a couple hexes away from my FF. On 11, the FF moved adjacent and launched drones. It also fired the disruptor and the forward ph-1 for 10 damage, 8 of which registered on the CL’s #2 shield. The drones moved on 12 to hit the ESG and reduce it, while the FF launched a shuttle. On 13, the CL slipped in, with the ESG killing the shuttle and doing damage to the FF in the midst of more direct fire (this was a partial mis-read of the ESG damage rule; the shuttle should have had one damage point left, and the FF take one more point), which did 9 more to the CL, but one overloaded disruptor, and a pair of ph-1s did 16 damage to the FF on terrible rolls, ending up with five internals; which was hull plus one warp hit.

Patch turned off (the stack of scatterpack drones was getting close, and the DDV tractored the freighter on impulse 17, while still launching fighters (in fact, #12 was launched on impulse 20). The FF tried to turn in to start circling around while the CL was going the other way, but was constrained by three scatterpack drones being right on its tail. Bad phaser rolls kept him from killing more than one until the next turn.

For turn 3, the CL sped up to 21. The Lyran FF stayed at 15, and my FF sped up to match it. The DDV put a little more power in, going speed 6 while towing the freighter. The fighters tried to keep themselves between the DDV and the CL, but with its speed, they were eventually outdistanced and put out of position, but it took nearly the entire turn to do. The FF shot down the remaining drones following it and turned in, and my frigate launched a pair of drones at it to try and make it sidestep. The fighters also launched nearly half of their drones (well, they can only launch one per turn) at the CL, which helped, but it outran those as well. The CL’s second ESG went up on impulse 30 at radius 3, which knocked out the lead three drones, and AAS #1 launched a drone just to clear the remaining field strength.

This was at the very end of the turn, and Patch’s FF fired disruptors at the DDV, hitting with one to do three damage, with none registering on the shield. The three closest fighters also fired on the CL, but could only do one point at range 3.

Seeing what was coming, the DDV dropped 2 ECM loan to the fighters (maintaining 2 ECCM) for a couple points of shield reinforcement, while still towing the freighter at speed 6 (and rotating it into the DDV’s hex). The FF slowed to 9 for a tighter turn while overloading the disruptor. The Lyran FF went 12, and the CL slowed to 15. My FF had gotten well ahead of the DDV (partially to protect the down #2 shield), and launched a pair of drones on impulse 3, so they’d fly back towards the DDV while tracking the CL. On impulse 8, the fighters were clear to fire again, but AAS #1 (the closest) merely did one point from range 2.

The CL announced an ESG on 9, which came up at radius 0 on 13. The DDV launched two drones at each ship on 11, generally to damage ESG fields, so the two at the FF were type Vs. These latter were shot down by the FF sadly, and it’s ESG came up at radius 0 on 15, but the two at the CL impacted the ESG to weaken it. The DDV fired everything it had right after this, doing 18 damage on really bad rolls (thankfully, damage is fairly flat at range 1), reducing the #1 to seven boxes.

As of Impulse 19, both Lyran ships were adjacent to the DDV, and they fired disruptors, which all hit for shield damage. The CL moved in on 20, with the ESG doing 6 damage each to the freighter and DDV. I fired the remaining off-side ph-3 at the FF, but the CL hit with all its phasers, and even with slightly bad rolls, at range 0, this did 39 damage, with 32 of them as internals. This took out about half the warp engines, and all other power. Most of the phasers were taken out, one drone rack, two shuttle boxes, and one tractor beam. Thankfully, there are four tractors for fighter recovery. The next impulse, the FF fired ph-2s at range 1, breaking the #5 shield and doing three more internals for a shuttle (fighter) box, and two more warp.

I sideslipped on 22, and the FF came in to hit shield #4. The ESG was still at full power (20), but half of that went to the freighter, and the shield could take the rest. My FF finally got turned around and fired on 29 at the L-FF, hitting with the overloaded disruptor and good ph-1 rolls, to do 18 damage, 12 of which got through the #3 shield, getting the once-only warp hits and a disruptor.

We didn’t bother playing turn 5, but I did enough EA to see that the DDV could still tow at speed 5, which is just enough to get off the map. Patch knew he’d spend most of the time turning around for another pass, and would be struggling to recharge everything. So, we called it a Kzinti victory, even with a smashed ship.

Afterword

I should say a couple words about the DDV. It’s a very atypical Kzinti design (on purpose). Their regular carriers are very large for their type (most empires put a full squadron of 12 on a heavy cruiser hull; the Kzintis only put 9 on theirs, instead using an enlarged hull for the full 12), which lets them be good direct combat ships and carry fighters. The DDV is small for a regular carrier, and guts a lot to fit the fighters on board. It loses three power and a battery, as well as both disruptors, and the 360-phasers are downrated from ph-1 to ph-3s. As long as the fighters are close, it’s dangerous, and four tractor beams for landing fighters made it good for the towing job.

Patch did a good job getting around my fighters and the swarm of drones they were generating, but it did cause him to loose time and opportunities. I think he should have tried engaging some of the fighters just to get them crippled, at which point they become less dangerous, as they go to speed 4 and drop any drones, just leaving the FA ph-3. He didn’t need to sweep the entire squadron (which would take entirely too much firepower), but just getting 2-3 would make a big difference.

The automatic speed-12 extended endurance drones for the DDV was also an interesting touch, and we might need to spend for extended duration on drones more often. At least until speed-20 comes in.