From: Indy Kochte <kochte@s...>
Date: Wed, 26 Aug 1998 09:44:08 -0500 (EST)
Subject: Indy hits with Pulse Torps!! A mini game report... (long)
(oh, damnation, I forgot those bloody email tags; amend subject line to read: [GZG: FT/FB] Indy hits with Pulse Torps!! A mini game report... (long) thanks - Mk) The other night I finally got an opportunity to head down to Wash, DC, and get involved in some FT gaming going on down there at the Game Parlor outside Fairfax. There turned out to be three of us that night playing: our list-member John Atkinson, another guy named Jason, and myself. Due to traffic in B'more, and having had to take a co-worker home because his car was in the shop, AND because I only learned that day my schedule was free to play so had to dash home to get some ships and ship sheets in case whomever was running things didn't have any extra, I ran a little late (okay, an hour :-/ ). Met the infamous John Atkinson. John and Jason were just setting up a 1500 pt reinforced cruiser squadron encounter (each side had 1500 pts of cruisers and escorts). They were using the FleetBook rules, and had ships designed by John (John's fleets were a curious mix of FSE and NSL minis; we already know John likes the FSE minis, but we also know his, oh, stance when it comes to the FSE nation ;-). I had a haphazard collection of ship sheets I just grabbed from my extras pile from the 'aftermath' of Origins (one of these days I may actually clean up/out my living room - we'll not talk about the rest of the apartment!). John came up with the thought that if I could take 3000 pts worth of ships, he and Jason would combine forces and we'd just have a larger encounter. So I started wading through my ship sheets. I managed to come up with a 3002 pt force, a NAC and NSL mixed fleet (I used all FB standard designs; no modifications or sub-classes; no time to make anything else up). Had a mix of destroyers, cruisers, and heavy ships. One carrier (NAC light carrier), one super-D (NSL), a NAC BB and BS, an NSL CA and CE, a NAC CE, and a pair of destroyers from each (I think that was it; I had 11 ships to their 15-ish). We used Vector Movement (I need a LOT more practice before I get into any fancy maneuvering that one can do in Cinematic) and while John typically uses the Core System Rules, we opted not do (I really personally don't like them much, think they tend to unbalance things; a friend of mine, Daryl, in Colorado came up with a set of rules for 'lighter' core system his (such as 'Bridge' meant you had to write your movement orders 1 or 2 turns in advance, or 'Sensors/Scanners' making targets 'move' one range band further away for targetting and weapons fire purposes), but I didn't bring his write-up, so we opted not to use any). In games I run/play I generally have a starting speed set between 8-12 (granted, it's very arbitrary and I could not give you guidelines or concrete reasons as to why I'll have starting speeds set to 8 one game, and somewhere else in another game or scenario starting speeds set to 10 or 12; just one of those subliminal things with me *shrug*), but John said typically they do double the max speed of your slowest ship. For me, that was the NSL super-D, Thrust 2 (God, it's slow!!). My starting speed at the far end of the table was 4. John's was I think 8. We began closing (me bein' pokey), and soon John & Jason were flying towards me at speeds between 16-19. I was coming at them at speeds 7-9. Fighters were out. I had opted to take 2 Interceptor squadrons and 3 Standard squadrons. I had toyed with taking a torp or attack squad, but not knowing the capabilities of the ships I was facing (just how MANY area defense ships were in there, for example), I opted to be a bit more conservative. Thus also my relatively low speeds, too. Basically the battle was a 'classic' run up, smack your opponent as you closed, smack 'em again as your momentum carried you away from each other, then either slow to re-engage, or speed up to break off. No finesse in this pick-up scenario. So we closed. John got first shots on my lead destroyers, but failed to take one out. Then the next turn we were close enough for me to start using my medium and long range weapons...plus a few pulse torps (I was just waiting for the joke rolls to come up: "You need a 3+ to hi", and I would roll nothing but 1s and 2s...or I would get a 3+ and roll crappy on damage). My NAC BB got a chance to fire his torps at a cruiser, so I did. I needed a 4+ I rolled a 5 and a 6! TWO hits in ONE try!! WAHOO!!! Then I rolled the damage die: 1 and 2. Gah, geez oh pete, 3 whole points. Ting! Ting! Jason looked at me as if I were high for thinking these things were going to destroy him. While John was concentrating all his fire on my NSL CA, I fired my NAC CE's pulse torp (in a desperate attempt to HIT something!). And...it hit! That's THREE in a row!! The damage die...came up 6! Wa-hooooo!!!!! My NSL CA finally died, but I didn't care - I hit with 3 pulse torps in one turn! :-) Then my one NSL destroyer fired into one of John's heavy cruisers with a couple of Class-2 and Class-1 batts. I then proceeded to roll a small metric tonne of rerolls (what I term as 'teskes' as Aaron Teske was doing this to me almost regularly during the playtest stages in life). I inflicted somewhere around 15 pts damage from that lone destroyer! That hurt his cruiser.:) > From there the game devolved momentarily into a clash of titans. The During that turn and the following I managed to hit with approx 60% of my pulse torp fire. That was very satisfying. In the end as John and Jason's ships broke off (while I tried to brake to '0'; the super-D had suffered a significant number of threshold hits after 2 checks which left it with no engines so it kinda drifted backwards away at a speed of 5), I had lost ~4-5 ships and had a couple others moderately or lightly damaged (the super-D was heavily damaged). John and Jason had lost a few cruisers (my fighters were harassing Jason's one escort cruiser) and a couple of destroyers. I'm not sure what shape their ships were left in by this point. But they conceded that I took the victory)and moving away from me at speeds upwards of 19, no way in hell I was going to ever catch 'em!). Felt more like a draw to me; the super-D would be in spacedock for *months*! But I did 'control' the board in the end. Dont' know when I'll get time to get down there again and play. Hopefully hook up with some of the other DCers and see what happens. Next time I'll remember to grab my starmat to play on.:) Indy