A little bit ago, Patch and I finished our play-through of Y161 scenarios. The finale was a fleet battle of the Four Powers War. Patch initially looked at it and refused as it had far too many ships for what he wanted to handle. Then, I started reading off the terrain effects going on, and he changed to, “I gotta see this.”
Basically, the Hydrans attempted to hide a fleet concentration with the emissions of an unstable star. The Lyrans find out anyway, and send in a fleet, and just as the battle begins in earnest, the star goes supernova. This simplifies the scenario, as the blast wipes out all the fighters. On the other hand, supernovas are a combination of terrain types: nebula, radiation, heat (which we did wrong, as it only extends 20 hexes from the wave front…), pulsar, and asteroids (representing stellar debris flung out by the star). The Lyrans have the bigger force (eight ships, ranging from a pair of CAs down to three DDs and a SC—that last is nearly useless here), but the Hydrans have some hellbores and can take a hit (six ships, LM command cruiser, RN and DG, and three Lancers).
The scenario specifies that the initial pulsar burst (with an assumed base strength of 60) happens on impulse 0 (or impulse 32 of turn 0, if you prefer), so you resolve that, and then do EA for turn 1. It does not say if the nebula rules should be in force at that point, or if that’s supposed to follow right after the initial blast hits. I kind of suspect the latter, but what language there is more implies the former, so shields were at minimal levels (thanks to the nebula) when the initial blast hit, and rolling the damage on fourteen ships took the entire first session. The three Hydran cruisers came out of that in relatively good shape thanks to the unified hull and Hydran ability to take the first hit.
I still lost two out of six hellbore torpedoes on that first round, and they’re the ones with the best reach thanks to their 2d6 to hit roll, and the nine points of ECM caused by the nebula (+3 shift, easy to lower to +2, but getting down to +1 is hard). The Lyrans were hit a bit harder, and all the smaller ships had trouble, including one of my Lancers being Out of Control (all three one-box control spaces were knocked out).
Once that was resolved, this is what we were looking at over the next turn: Impulse 4: heat and radiation damage, Impulse 5: random movement from the nebula, Impulse 12: heat and radiation, Impulse 15: nebula, Impulse 16: supernova wave front advances, Impulse 20: heat, radiation, and pulsar burst, Impulse 26: nebula, Impulse 28: heat and radiation. In addition, every impulse two new seven-hex asteroid clusters are generated at the wave front (in a bit of ‘neat game physics trumps reality’, these move across the map at speed 20, warp 2.7). Patch managed from speeds 14 to 16 with his ships, while I was going speeds 11 and 12 (largely with reinforced #4 shields, planning on turning them to face the pulsar blast on impulse 20).
The fleets start about 20 hexes from each other, so terrain worries were uppermost in both our minds. The heat damage on 4 (since the first blast had helpfully knocked down a shield for everyone) largely hit weapons (or a battery on each of the three Lancers as the initial volley had taken out all hull). Then the nebula movement on impulse 5 caused havoc. This always moves a ship one hex in a random direction, and will often turn the ship 60° (leaving turn mode status where it was, so you can turn back immediately if it’s already satisfied). Most of my ships did not turn, but largely got shoved backwards, while Patch’s ships ended up pointing all over the place, including the two CAs pointed back towards the wave front, who then started turning further in that direction to keep the down shield away from me.
Turn 1, Impulse 5 after all movement.
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Book two of John Gill’s continues straight on from the first volume, with the Austrian army in strategic disarray after Eggmühl and covers up to the end of the Battle of Aspern-Essling on May 22, 1809.
