The Daedalus, after surviving a Hishen ambush coordinated by the
betrayal of someone on board the Free Company Ship Smuggler, has jumped
into the closest system to access the Quantum Communication Net only to
discover that the planet is under seige by a Hishen Overseer cruiser!
(The corvette from Scenario 1 has a chance of returning but failed to
make an appearance this playthrough).
TURN ONE
The Daedalus and Overseer start at Range 23 (technically the Overseer is a PEF but when Daedalus launches her fighters
it immediately converts, so I didn't bother). Both ships are at Speed 0
-- the Daedalus because she has just jumped in and the Overseer because it's at a Lagrange point.. Both accelerate to 1/3 Speed.
Both ships launch fighters
successfully -- the Daedalus launch bay doors jam but the EXCELLENT
FLIGHT CREW is able to force them open quickly. (Would have only passed
1d6 without the excellent flight crew attribute).
The Hishen Overseer launches a flight (3 ships) of light Hellbat fighters and Medium Reaver fighters.
Daedalus launches:
Gargoyle flight - Gargoyle and Hunter - light Wasps
Maverick (Blue) flight - Maverick and Neutron - medium Dragonflies
Iceman (Green) flight - Iceman and Jeeter - medium Dragonflies
TURN TWO
Initiative: Star Navy - 4; Hishen 1
Hunter taunts the Light fighter,
trying to draw them out so they can be destroyed. Silence in reply.
These guys are professionals. Or so we think at first. Then...
2
Hishen lights apply afterburner and move to withing visual of Gargoyle
(Moving 15"!) This was the stupidest thing they could have done as
Gargoyle gets a free FF missile shot which takes down the lead fighter's
shields and obliterates the cockpit. First kill (hmmm, need to keep
track of my kills and put together a leaderboard! Gargoyle +1)
The
Reavers follow suit and one ends up within visual range of Hunter.
Another In-sight automatically won by Hunter (I do make him roll to make
sure he gets at least one success) and Hunter blows the first Reaver to
oblivion. (Hunter +1)
The Star Navy goes to active fire and clears the board with a volley of FF missiles:
Iceman - Reaver shield and cockpit. The Pilot goes OOF.
Jeeter - Kills the second Reaver with doubles (Jeeter +1)
Maverick - Kills the remaining Hellbat in range with doubles (Maverick +1)
Neutron - Kills the Hellbat that Gargoyle hit earlier with a second cockpit hit. Ouch! (Neutron +1)
NOTE
1: NONE of the Hishen managed to pass more than 1d6 on the Counter
Measures test (partially due to the -1 to Rep since they were FF
missiles). Bad luck and it would be fun to replay this scenario and see
what happens.
NOTE 2: Somewhere in here the remaining Reaver got destroyed. The exact details are lost in the fog of war.
TURN THREE
SN: 5 Hish: 4
With local space superiority established, the high initiative roll by the SN doesn't hurt in the slightest. The Ready fighters get ready to RTB (return to base) and Daedalus launches the bombers:
Angel flight (Basilisk is her wingman) and Ozone flight (wingman Porkins).
Both
capital ships are now at Speed 1 and the range is closing -- range 21!
Next turn the capships will fire as both have Beam weapons.
TURN FOUR
(Whoops, forgot to take a final picture)
Doubles
for activation! Random event --- Maverick suffers a cockpit system
failure! hmm. What exactly does this mean? I decide this means an
automatic Out of the Fight result as if he had passed 1d6 on the Recover
from Knock Down table. He has to roll each turn to see if he can get
the systems back up (and does so succesfully the next turn, so there was
little impact since there were no enemy fighters on the board at this point
SN: 2 on the reroll
Hish: 4 on the reroll
Daedalus advances -- range 20 to the Overseer. Cajun and Dagger launch in the heavy fighters just in case.
Hishen
advances. The Daedalus and Overseer both have Rep 5 so we roll off and
the Hishen fires first. It's a BVR (beyond visual range) shot, so
apply a -1 to the shot. The Overseer still gets 2 solid hits but no
damage (Impact 1 gives only a 16% chance to damage).
Daedalus
takes Received Fire and passes 2d6. Change course and fire. 1 hit, no
damage. Overseer takes received fire and passes 0d6. She goes to max
speed.
Daedalus takes her active fire. 2 hits, no damage.
Overseer fires in response and moves forward. No damage.
Daedalus fires. 2 hits, 1 damage! Overseer engine hit and she drops to Speed 1.
Overseer
fires in reaction. The capships are at range 14 now and with all the
movement Daedalus is about to pass the bombers she launched 2 turns ago!
Rnage 14, so the Overseer's plasma guns kick in. Hmmm, this is
starting to look bad for Daedalus. 2 beams hit, 1 plasma. No damage.
But worse -- the second plasma near misses and causes a shield check.
Luckily the shields hold as the Engine Crew on Daedalus is also Rep 5.
Daedalus
fires in reaction. This could go on all night. At this point I
realize the Overseer only has Medium Phase Shields - oops. This does
mean that it suffers 1 more damage -- Thrusters.
Overseer
gets in a devastating salvo. 1 near miss from the Beam weapon takes
the shields down for 2 turns. This is followed by a plasma hit which
automatically damages. The Daedalus Bridge is hit and suffers -2 to
rep. I use Star Power to reduce the OOF to Stunned for the Captain.
At
this point I realize I am in imminennt danger of losing Daedalus. I
choose my reaction and stop firing at Overseer. I send the bombers in.
The 2 flights launch at range 10. I've really no idea how to do this
-- do all 5 AA get to fire at each missile? That's how I read it. And
then they roll impact to see if they kill it? Again, that's how I play
it.
(NOTE
for other players: I totally missed the rule on page 37 that says
Torpedoes only target the Hull of a CapShip -- this would have changed
the game substantially. It also brings up another question -- is that
only for FIGHTER launched torpedoes? Because it is in the Fighters
Firing at Capships section. (Which is why I missed it. For version 2
of the rules, this should probably be repeated in the torpedo section.
I'm working on a "cheat sheet" index card to help out with this for
now)
Nevertheless,
with torpedoes being difficult to hit and the low impact of AA guns, 2
still managed to get through. This causes 2 damage. (Which I now see
should have killed the Overseer and ended the game. Oh, well. We
continue...) I'm excited to roll doubles because that would blow up a fighter
-- but then I see that cap ships relocate damage down one space on the
track for sections hit twice. The thrusters (initial roll) have already
been hit, so that means one transfers to the Hangar Bay and the second
transfers to Shields Down. At least she's wounded.
TURN FIVE
SN:
3 Hish: 2 -- a critical win for the Star Navy here as the Hishen
Overseer could have finished off Daedalus in her wounded state
I
also realize here I should have fired HARMs first to take out the AA
batteries...but no matter. The Sabres carry 2 torpedoes each and
another salvo resuults in two more hits to the Overseer. Even Bracing
for Impact can't help her now as the damage locations are 1 and 2 ---
relocating them still results in a section that has already been
damaged, which means both relocate to the Hull and the ship explodes
before it has time to fire on Daedalus. Phew!
After Battle Thoughts
This one was a grinder. I was very satisfied with my inital response to the Hishen fighters
and was planning to follow up with a second wave like the first. But
the Hishen afterburner into visual range made that totally unnecessary.
It was kind of sad watching them rush into the storm of missiles from
the Ready fighters (my first launch -- it's SOP
for my version of the Daedalus). I can see creatiing a more
sophisticated decision tree for the NP -- based on range and whether the
ship has missiles. It would make sense to afterburn into visual if you
had no missiles -- but if you have FF missiles that is a total waste.
I actually like this idea and I think I will develop it further. (I'm
taking a class on neural networks so I'm thinking a lot about how to
create "smart" systems.)
Back
to the scenario -- the game length was about right. It took a good 3
hours -- mostly because I felt like I was making a lot of mistakes.
For instance, after the Hishen fighter rush I
looked at whether they should have used the "Defend" chart instead of
"Attack". I think they should -- they are trying to complete their
objective of bombing the planet. And then I wasn't sure about the
movement when the cap ships started trading shots.
But
overall I think the scenario worked well -- it was actually at my limit
of keeping track of everything -- and the Daedalus suffered some
serious damage which is going to hurt in the coming scenarios. (I'll
have to re-read the campaign rules - I'm not sure of the long term
consequences of the Bridge hit)
After Battle Questions
Should
a solid hit also cause a Phase Shield check? The absolute best result
a capship could hope for would be for one of its first shots to only
pass 1d6 so that the target has a chance to lose its shields. I haven't
done the math, but it actually looks like a lower rep is better because
once shields are down a capship is going to take damage from every
solid hit. With a higher rep, you get more solid hits and never have a
chance to take down the shields. A Rep 5 ship and a Rep 3 ship would
make a great Hunter-Killer team -- the Rep 3 brings down the shields and
the Rep 5 pours on the damage.
Did I do afterburners right? Yes Should the Hishen have had a chance to fire? No (From author)
Should
the capital ships also move with every Change Course? This got weird
because my capship went from speed 1 per turn to moving over 10" in
reaction (and passing up fighters it had just
launched). This is right, but you could also play it as you only move
once. (from author) I'm torn about this. As the report shows, 2 high
rep cap ships with Impact 1 weapons can fire at each other for a long
time without ever causing damage. On the other hand, it felt really
wrong for my carrier to go racing across the board and blow past the fighter
defence that I had set up to shield it. I'm actually thinking the
simplest solution would be to adopt the rule already in place for Fighters -- cap ships don't react to reactions, so you get one back-and-forth of movement and firing and stop.
Do
all ships take the afterburner test individually? I think so, but that
means that the NP is going to have a very hard time putting together an
effective attack. (Official response: 1 roll which is then applied to each fighter. This makes more sense than rolling individually, but I need to think about it some more. It can still lead high Rep fighters to go high-tailing off after the enemy while their wingmen lag behind -- and that is NOT how one gets to be high rep!)
