Star Fleet vs The Colonial Fleet
For this game we decided to play the Secret Mission scenario from the Skunkworks Full Thrust Scenario Pack.
link
What's unique about this scenario is each player rolls secretly for a mission and then chooses their fleet.
My Colonial opponent rolled the convoy mission and had to protect 4 freighters. I rolled Holding Action meaning I had to keep at least one ship alive until turn 9.
The Federation Fleet
The Colonial Fleet
The big ship in the center of the colonial fleet is a 120 mass missile ship that can launch 4 salvos per turn and has enough ammunition for three turns. The rest of the fleet was mostly Caracol cruisers mounting K-Guns of various types so my shields would be pretty useless.
Set up was pretty straight forward
Turn 1
The colonial player decided to keep his cruisers and freighters together and set up his missile ship on his far left. My guess was he wanted my fire divided or was going to try and slip in behind.
I chose to keep a very tight formation so each ship could provide point defense coverage for the others.
The federation ships mounted pulse torpedoes and Phasers. Phasers are dual purpose weapons and can be used in the PDS role if necessary. The down side is if they are used as PDS they cannot fire on a ship during the same turn.
Right off the bat the colonial missile ship launched a full spread of missiles. Three salvos locked onto my heavy cruiser and one locked onto the heavy destroyer. Every single phaser and PDS in the fleet was focused on this threat. They managed to shoot down all but one missile. I realized if I had to do this every turn my offensive firepower was going to whittled down to almost nothing.
The torpedoes on the cruiser and destroyer fired on one of the Caracol cruisers causing minor damage.
Turn 2
I poured on the speed trying to close as quickly as possible and maybe mess up his missiles firing solutions.
Unfortunately he guessed where I would be with pretty good accuracy. Three of his salvos locked onto the destroyer with the fourth being just out of range. Again I had to target every phaser and PDS I had in the fleet just to keep the destroyer alive and it still wasn't enough.
The damage was considerable but luckily the ship was still very much in the fight.
All of my ships fired their torpedoes at the Caracol they had damaged before and completely destroyed it. The colonial return fire was more accurate than I would have wished and unfortunately all targeted on the heavy cruiser.
A threshold check was caused resulting in one torpedo knocked out as well as one shield generator and a fire control.
All repair attempts on the damaged systems failed. There is never a Scottish engineer around when you need one!
Turn 3
The colonial missile cruiser continued to slowly close. With only one salvo left now he wanted to make the shot count. I accelerated the fleet again and so did he. Both fleets ended up practically on top of each other and I had over shot his missile salvos a little but not enough. All the salvos locked onto the Battle frigate at the rear of the formation.
I fired every PDS and phaser that would bear but to no avail. The ship was completely obliterated. In retrospect I shouldn't have tried to save it and saved the phasers for offensive use.
Both fleets exchanged fire. My heavy cruiser took the brunt of the damage but only lost one PDS. Not a big deal now that the colonials were out of missiles. I put most of my fire power into the freighters including putting ‘Red Shirts' on board one of the freighters.
Turn 4
Both fleets picked up speed and flew past each other.
With the moon in the way I had only one good target, the trailing freighter.
The freighter was destroyed though just barley. The Red Shirts on the other freighter (the red disc on the models base) continued to fight their way to the ships bridge.
Turn 5
The fleets turned into each other trying to get the best angles on their opponents. The Colonial freighters poured on the speed to get clear of the battle zone.
The only good target I had was the caracol in from of me. As luck would have it most of his weapons missed.
Unfortunately the now depleted missile cruiser didn't miss. The ships secondary weapons are 4 class 1 K-guns that normally wouldn't be much of a threat. However with the amount of damage my heavy cruiser had taken, and the colonial player doubling two of his guns, my cruiser was torn apart.
The game was supposed to go for one more turn but there was no way the Federation ships were going to catch and destroy the freighters in one turn, especially not with the damage on the destroyer. The result was a clear Colonial victory!
All in all this was a great and somewhat nerve wracking game. His continued missle barrages, while not particularly damaging, kept my fleet on a totally defensive stance for half the game. As a result I never could bring my fire power to bear.
Any and all comments welcome!
keeps a convention promise.
