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The Klingons dispatched an F5S scout-frigate to the ringed gas giant Wyskoon to see if the Hydrans had set up a base there. The frigate launched probe drones toward the planet, but departed (to avoid contact with a Hydran patrol) before it received their transmissions. The probe drones collected the information and ejected their memory canisters at various pre-selected locations for later pickup….

As luck would have it, a Hydran freighter, visiting the the system to scoop gas from the giant’s atmosphere, detected the approach of the Orion ship and summoned the local police patrol.

Patch and I have been playing this unusual SFB scenario from S1 on line for the last few weeks. An Orion Light Raider is trying to pick up three probe memory canisters while dodging a Hydran Gendarme (police ship/coast guard cutter) around a ringed gas giant. If he fires on the Hydran, he’ll get a second police ship to fight in a couple turns. The Hydran has no such compunctions.

The LR is definitely a superior ship, but not by much, as they’re effectively the same size. Also, the first Gendarme has two fighters on-board to help even things out.

The LR went straight in, grabbed the first canister, and zipped through the ring, to grab the second one (floating in the atmosphere of the gas giant) and ducked around the giant one way, while the Gendarme went the other to try to head it off. This lead to a confrontation at the end of turn 3 just outside the rings (with the Orion headed for the third canister). The Hydrans lost both fighters before they could fire (bad habit of mine), but no internals (though my #1 was gone from ring damage, the Orion had been a bit luckier). The Gendarme managed to knock down two shields and do a couple of meaningless internals.

Turn 4 was pretty quick. He dashed off after defeating my tractor attempt, grabbed the last canister, and left. I shot at him as soon as the phasers cycled, but he was already out of effective range. Everything I could throw at him generated one point. Absorbed by reinforcement.

So, the Orions win with a full set, giving him the highest level of victory. This is actually somewhat better than historically, where the LR blew apart the GEN and left before the second one arrived.

With this out of the way, the year is now Y145 and we’re all set for a big battle this weekend!

Well, after a long gap, we finally had another face-to-face SFB session yesterday. We’re up to Y143, which is when the Federation and Klingons introduce their command cruisers, so this was intended to show them off. The general idea was to have a CC, along with it’s normal CA version soandcould see the differences between the two classes. On the other hand, the two races I’m current playing don’t really work out for that. The Kzintis don’t have their CC yet, and Hydran BPV ranges are so far off from other races, that I ended up with a Ranger cruiser, and a Lancer destroyer.

Y143

In our continuing exploration of terrain types, we agreed to use an asteroid field. In the interest of simplicity, I pulled out the map that came with S1. This may have been a mistake, as that is more of an asteroid belt, than a full map field. Considering there were three of us, a two-sided belt wasn’t the best thing, and the bulk of the fighting happened on one side of it. But we all did maneuver through it, and we have a working knowledge of the rules now, which will be a definite help. (Of course, we’re getting down to some of the really dangerous environments for what we haven’t used in Basic Set now….)

After the first couple turns of maneuvering, I ended up somewhat in the middle. The Feds did a moderate range volley, crashing the #5 on the RN and doing a few internals, and then they did an HET. I swaped back and forth on targets a couple of times thanks to these antics, and I let my fighters (13 of them from my two ships) loose their ship cover. The Klingons promptly killed almost all the fighters while only taking a few hits on two front shields. It certainly showed off what the D7Cs ADD racks can do….

Unfortunately, I was also out of position for a quick return to the asteroid belt, so I ended up tangling with the Klingons some more on the next turn as the Feds stayed away and reloaded. The Ranger got a steady stream of shots through the down shield while the Lancer got crippled from a nice volley. Meanwhile, I got through a shield on the D7C, and started doing some serious damage back.

I finally reached the edge of the asteroids around when the Feds came back and pumped five overloaded photon torpedos into the D7. Or tried to. The Federation Lottery decreed that only one hit. The phaser-1 barrage still caused some good damage. However, with the two or three hits, he should have gotten the D7 could very well have been dead in space. The Klingons fired back as they went by, and got some decent hits on the CA. Meanwhile, I sniped at moderate range whenever a down shield presented itself.

After that, it was obvious that both the Hydrans and Klingons were going to have to leave in the face of the still nearly-intact Federation ships. But, he who laughed last did not last loudest, as the Feds hadn’t really done enough to pick up any victory points. So, the Klingons win, with two battered, but decent ships, and the Hydrans barely edge out second for the amount of damage they did do.

The next face-to-face meeting is to be a big three-sided historical Lyran civil war scenario. Time to read up on ESG interactions!

And as an aside note, last night,and I went to a friend’s to finally see the Narnia movie! Wow! A very good job all around, and it’s very nice to see this continuing trend in Hollywood of, you know, actually trying to tell the same story as the book?

Okay, I’ve been seriously behind on game reporting (and anything else online, really).

The Klingon cruiser Attacker was the testbed for phaser-1 technology. It was rushed to the Hydran front just in time for one of the last battles of the Third Klingon-Hydran War.

Back in the middle of March, Patch and I got together online to play this historical scenario from CL13. It isn’t much, just a fight between the D7Z Attacker and a Hydran Lancer Destroyer, intended to show off the new Klingon ship.

As the Hydran player, I was at a disadvantage (even with four fighters, the DD is no match for any kind of real cruiser). So I made the twin mistake of not going in with a real plan, and spending too much of the first turn on auto-pilot. Towards the end of the turn, we ended up at closeish range, and the D7Z killed three fighters while I rolled poorly from just outside effective range. The beginning of 2 saw the last fighter crippled in return for a little shield damage. A few impulses later, the fighter was eliminated and the Klingon arranged a range-2 pass behind the LN. The gatlings knocked down a shield, while taking 6 internals. The Klingons then decided this was grand fun, and tractored the LN to hold it while the rest of the weapons fired. The LN managed 3 internals through that downed shield while taking another 13. On a ship that small, that started knocking out the critical systems. Further weapons fire knocked out both ship’s #1 shields, but didn’t penetrate (good tractor and drone timing by Patch guaranteed I ran into one).

The Klingons had to release the tractor to cause the drone hit. After that, I maneuvered to disengage, I was out of padding, low on power, and would have to wait two turns to get two of my heavy weapons back. Without fighters, this was not a winning proposition, so left and reported to the King that the Klingons now had ph-1s…. And with that out of the way, the clock has advanced to Y143.

Last week, Patch and I got together (online again), for a simple duel between a Kzinti CL and a Klingon F5C. Technically, we shouldn’t see an F5C alone (being a squadron command vessel), but it’s too nice a ship not to give the Patch a chance to try it out.

Sigh. I’m finding that Kzinti ‘stack’ well, that is they do decent in groups, but in this era, they just don’t duel all that well. Compounding this is bad instincts. I keep wanting to forget that I’m still dealing with limited arcs and getting into trouble. Anyway, we did two turns, and I’m getting the short end of the stick, but not embarrassingly so like last time. He’s dinged up three shields, I’ve dinged one. However, he is behind me, and is more maneuverable. I’m having a difficult time shaking him. We’ll see how it goes….

Patch says he’s having problems with the maneuvering game, but frankly he’s doing very well. Certainly, I need to start doing better, if I’m going to win much. ^_^

Continued in what was originally a comment:

So we last left our hero with steadily eroding shields and an F5C behind him that he just couldn’t shake.

I decided to go slow in the hopes that a better turn mode might be some help, and that the speedy F5C might end up sailing past me if nothing else. (If he broke off to avoid that, then he’d give me the room I’d wanted to get last turn anyway.)

Not to mention the CL is a power hog. It’s kinda zippy – right up to the point where you try to do anything with it.

The F5C slowed down slightly too, which made my plan a bit harder. We danced around for most of the turn, and he started getting internals on me, while I whiffed what volley I could manage. I refused to blow batteries on it and got relatively lucky. At the end of the turn, The F5C finally committed itself to a close run, and I HETed to get pointed in the right direction, ending the turn at range 3.

Two minutes later I was wondering if that was really the direction I wanted to be pointed in. It cut across his path, which was good. It headed towards the Klingon drone swarm, which was worse than it initially looked. >.< And I probably could have gotten ‘close enough’ with better weapon arcs if I’d gone one hex-facing counter-clockwise.

I’ll figure this out some day.

So, for the next turn, I went even slower as I sucked every erg of power possible into critical systems. The F5C cracked another shield and did another handful of internals, hitting nothing more critical than a ph-3. I slipped into range 2, unloaded, downed a shield and did a single hull box.

But now for the tricky part: I HETed again with the plan of barely outpacing the now-adjacent drones for the rest of the turn. With most of my sheilds down, and internals mounting, it was time to make an escape. But before I went, I’d unload two more range-2 ph-3s through the down shield. If I got really lucky, I could knock out the 3 ph-2 RX, a disruptor and drone rack, at which point I’d see what I could do against a ship with fewer weapons than I.

That was the plan.

Breaking down on my second HET to be a sitting duck for all the drones wasn’t.

Unfortunately, the latter is what happened. When all the drones finished hitting I had 5 power and a ph-1 (still charged). Picking me off when his weapons reloaded would be a cinch.

*sigh*