You can learn more about the virtual map here:
vtt.mikezekim.com/learn
No purchase necessary, we will make time to teach you to play!
Thursday, 23 April, 1:00 PM EDT
Traveller with the Brits! We had a rematch with revised versions of the Ghalak and Beijing, this time with a Ghalak and a Sloan versus two Beijings, with the Imperials interposing themselves against Solomani Scum (tm) set on hitting commercial shipping!
Our now regular Thursday evening (6pm GMT) game saw another Imperial versus Solomani matchup…
The Imperials had been hunting down Solomani convoy raiders. They received a tip-off of where they may strike next – the Imperials got lucky and engaged the Solomani.
I was flying the Imperials this week and had a Ghalak CA and a PF Sloan, I was tasked with stopping two Solomani Beijing Strike Cruisers, flown by my nemesis, Paul. This was the second time we had flown these ships and we both knew their capabilities.
The Ghalak CA is a solid SI-17 ship with a good variety of weapons including a huge array of banked laser – more on them later… The PF Sloan which most of you will know if you have played through the Traveller tutorials.
The Beijing CS is an interesting ship to pilot. It has a spinal meson with a single window firing arc and two turn cool-down. The meson is supported by a large missile battery and a few turret lasers. It has three points of nose armour which can stop all Ghalak's 24 banked lasers at all but very close range.
The battle
A cautious approach from both sides was taken, both of us realising that range was the key to our success. The Imperials had slightly better thrust, which was enough to ensure the first pass was at around 10 hexes. The Solomani targeted the smaller PF Sloan and severely damaged it. The Imperials concentrated on one of the Beijings and with the mighty firepower of the Ghalak took it down, in no small part from the shredding of all its sand by multiple banked lasers. Both sides launched significant missile salvos. The Ghalak had to help out the Sloan by intercepting as many missiles as it could that were targeting the smaller ship, however it was not enough and the PF Sloan was crippled with few systems still functioning. The Sloan tried to open the distance from the remaining Beijing, and with only a single functioning laser had to pivot to throw sand out from its last remaining caster. It wasn't enough and the PF Sloan went down under a hail of missiles. In retrospect I should have kept it closer to the Ghalak so it could have been covered by its banked lasers.
The ships separated but not before the Beijing's meson tore through the Ghalak taking out its main Spinal Particle beam and meson screen – with only one hull substitution available I kept the meson screen hoping I would be able to repair the particle weapon – which I later did. Paul tried to tempt me into a chase, which I wasn't tempted by at all considering his 25-range meson weapon! Eventually we began a second pass but again with the Ghalak's greater thrust the Beijing could not keep the range open enough to give it an advantage. The Ghalak survived the Beijing's spinal attack without taking too much damage and then as the range closed to two hexes the might of the Ghalak was shown as it destroyed the last remaining Beijing.
Aftermath
Both Paul and I have now had a chance to fly both the Ghalak CA and the Beijing. The Imperial CA is everything you would expect it to be; big, tough, weapons everywhere. It does take quite a few APs to fight effectively and Paul was unlucky that his mesons did not take out any of its bridge. I was on the receiving end of the Ghalak's power last week and its ability to shred sand with its banked lasers makes it a most formidable foe.
I flew a Beijing last week and realised how important its 3-nose armour was – it is enough to deflect most laser shots from anything over range 6. However, Paul was unlucky with his first ship I hit as there were many hits on his SSD 10 section that stripped away most of the nose shielding. With the armour gone a Beijing finds it very difficult to fight effectively.
These are great fun sessions – it would be great to see some of you join us.
Thursday, 23 April, 7:30 PM EDT
We're content with the way torpedoes seem to be working in Mode 1, now we're trying in Mode 2, using the RocketPunk ships. In RocketPunk, we're facing down an alternate history where the US developed the Orion nuclear pulse drive in the 1960s, and the Soviets copied it and went to the moon in the 1970s. This resulted in the treaty of Luna, and armed peace inside of Lunar Orbit.
There is, however, no truce outside the line.
In his 1982 State of the Union Address, President Reagan said that America couldn't afford to let Mars go Red…and national rivalries erupting into nuclear conflagarations are easier to ignore when they're 1.5 AUs away.
In this scenario, two Luna-class BCs and a Philadelphia class CG were en route to Mars and were intercepted by the Soviet "Brute" class BB and a "Crowfoot" CA.
We used the new aphysical torpedo rules with Mode 2 torpedoes, using the thrust and endurance of the torpedoes already designed. No torpedoes actually hit their targets, but the targets had to spend fuel and resources to get by them. The American's experimental interceptor particle beam never got fired, because dodging looked possible. What murdered the American ships was the Soviet's guns -- the Philadelphia got mauled, along with one of the Lunas, and the Russians got a crippled "Crowfoot" out of the exchange. The Soviet "Brute" lived up to its name, and overall, people had fun with the designs.
We probably need to tweak the thrust and endurance numbers on the torpedoes to make this full fun, and there's a discussion with designer Will Minsinger about whether this setting should use torpedoes, use missiles, or use Mode 2 torpedoes, which might be retained as an option for Mode 2 universes.
Friday, 24 April, 5:30 PM EDT
This was a scenario called Nutcracker, for Exile's Stars. A Karthian Willawaw and a pair of Fury-class escorts have stumbled across one of the systems the Interstellar League is planning to colonize; Kilkea Station saw their FTL transition at the system primary, and sent one of the Crockett class frigates out to collect the other Crockett on patrol to defend the base.
The Karthians, unaware that reinforcements were on the way, parked at a decent distance from the planet and tried to bombard the Kilkea into submission; and were patient as the Kilkea's orbit brought it around the limb of the planet.
The Crocketts were coming back on a timer driven by a deck of playing cards; they showed up at the end of Turn 9, which happened to be pretty close to when the Karthian's assault was due to show up; in retrospect the Karthians should've hung out over the planet's north pole and bombarded for multiple turns; as it is, the Kilkea and Crocketts prioritized killing the assault landers to take the boarding option away from the Karthians.
As of turn 12, the outcome is still in doubt and we'll be resuming on Friday.
Sunday, 19 April, 7:00 PM EDT
I'd been approached by Matthew Kent and Chris Nuzzi to teach them Squadron Strike, and built a scenario that would do so with the Axanar ships with Ken Watanabe helping on the teaching side Matt had to drop out, we gained Bob Slaughter, Leslie Richardson and Stephen Harris later in the process, so I had the expected number of players, but not the players I was expecting.
Chris, Leslie and Stephen flew Constitution-class CAs, and Ken and Bob flew a pair of D5 CLs each.
This was my first opportunity to use the new Observer mode with the game, and we were alpha-testing the ability to display SSDs and mark them manually within the application. We discovered that Firefox doesn't support a web standard we're using, and Mike is muttering under his breath about cobbling together a workaround. It *does* work in Chrome.
We had some technical difficulties, and a slow teach-through of the game, getting to the end of Turn 3 by the time 11:30 had hit. Once other players had left and I could focus on one student, I walked Chris through some of the conventions of Squadron Strike (how to write down an attack order to eliminate questions from your opponent, how to read an attack order to give an opponent all the info they need to mark an SSD.)
Repeating the trend from last week, where the new guy seems to get horrible die rolls, Chris had *utterly miserable* attack rolls with Photon torpedoes. Once he got the conventions and why they're there, we practiced with a lot of die rolls until he was calling them out like a pro.
paints and individually bases some 6mm sci-fi infantry.
