From: Mikko Kurki-Suonio <maxxon@s...>
Date: Sat, 3 May 1997 03:57:12 -0400
Subject: MechaZone 556 Campaign report #1
If you're not interested in lengthy campaign/battle reports, press SKIP now... You're still with me? Ok, here goes. These were the first clashes in my MZ556 campaign. You can find more info on MechaZone at http://www.swob.dna.fi/rpg/mz223/ Some basics The campaign area is the solar system. Theoretically all of it, but in practice I don't expect anyone to go beyond Jupiter -- there's just nothing out there. There are currently four competing fleets, all with different goals. Some more may enter play later on. This is NOT a PBeM game! Sorry. This is fairly vanilla FT/MT. I decided to leave in the FTL drives as "dead weight", simply to allow people to use vanilla designs if they didn't have the time to do their own. One nation (Norwegians) has a secret weapon in cloaking systems, others have nothing special. We use MT fighter (panzer) movement, and simultaneous fire. We do not allow premeasuring anything. Fighters are allowed to attack missiles at PD odds, interceptors getting their bonus. Lots of aces around... Strategic movement The solar system would be pretty boring without moving planets, don't you think? Ok, so I made a simple Newtonian strategic movement system, where 4 Thrust equals 1 g constant acceleration. Notes: At these thrust levels, the gravity forces are minimal except very close to the sun. Might have ignored them all the same. Ok, now that I've done it, I can chuck in the occasional comet... First try. No one wants to do movement by hand. None. Nada. Zip. Not a single soul. And that's in a player base 50% technical students and 75% computer experts. So much for the perceived simplicity of Newtonian movement. Ok, so I made a small program for plotting out moves. Slightly better results: Half the players use it, the other half give various excuses why they can't use it and still refuse to do very basic math by hand. I end up entering rough moves for them myself. Strategic Moves GUGES, Norwegian and AEUG fleets all approach Mars, from different directions. PanMa gets a distress signal from a freighter on a Mercury-Mars shipping lane, and sends a fast squadron to investigate. Said squadron passes GUGES fleet, but evades. PanMa sends out a striking force to intercept Norwegian fleet, about 30 million klicks away from Mars. GUGES assaults the other half in Mars orbit. AEUG is still about 100 Mkm outsystem of Mars. Note: PanMa had twice the fleet anyone else has, so this is not a major problem -- yet. They also have to protect Mercury and shipping between the two planets, which *should* result in splitting their fleet. First Contacts We play Norway - PanMa first. Norwegians decide to leave half their fleet outside the battle, engaging with a light carrier force consisting of a CVL, 3 CA, 1 CA (Strike), 3 CA (Cloak) and a dozen escorts (cloakers) or so. All ships are Vanilla designs from the books, except the cloak ships, which as secret weapons were designed by me. PanMa has 2 BB, 1 CVL, 2 CA, 2 CE. All custom designed and extremely heavy for their class. They're also painfully slow. The points are actually fairly even because the cloak cruisers are so #%$&T#%"& expensive. Turn 1: Norway's normal ships enter play. The cloak ships enter cloaked to give a surprise edge -- no one else know they have the tech. PanMa bluffs about a vast missile volley. The bluff actually works: His missile boats are elsewhere, but this scares the Norwegian player into entering the table too slow, which will prove to be a major mistake. The Norwegian CVL deploys interceptors, which will prove to be unusable. A sound defensive measure though. PanMa, OTOH, has no designs to stay and fight and enters at max speed allowed (10+thrust). He doesn't deploy panzers, because they'd be left behind. I think something needs to be done about this. Early gunnery duel gives PanMa 1 point of damage (count 'em: ONE). Meanwhile, PanMa destroys a Norwegian escort. Notes: This early gunnery duel shows painfully how undergunned the vanilla designs are against custom ships. A vanilla CA can muster 1d beam attack at long range, while the optimized CAs put out 5d (AND they have two screens to the one in the vanilla). Luckily for the Norwegians, PanMa does not try to maintain range. A gunnery duel would spell annihilation for the Norwegians. Turn two: Forces close. Norway loses another escort. The cloaked force uncloaks. The move hits the PanMa flank, but not rear. Norway loses another 2 escorts. But the pulse torps in the cloaked squadron tell their grim tale -- one PanMa CA is sunk. Notes: The Norwegian player had not had any opportunity to practice with cloaked ships. He also entered the table too slow, giving the plodding PanMa force too good shots. The cloaked escorts are too vulnerable to stand a slugging match. They don't seem to be worth the points unless the player is very experienced and can maneuver into enemy blind spots before uncloaking. The one turn close range hit is not worth it if the enemy counterattack annihilates you. Turn 3: PanMa fleet blows past the Norwegians, who turn to pursue. Relatively little fire results in just one Norwegian escort sunk. Note: Norwegian player does not recloak. I think this will prove to be a mistake. Turn 4: Norway concentrates fire on one of the PanMa CEs. It is sunk, but the counterattacks sink yet another cloak escort. Note: PanMa formation is spread, and their greater range allows them to cover each others' vulnerable rears. Turn 5: Lacking good targets, the Norwegians cannot concentrate heavy fire against anything. This results in no losses for PanMa (a CE is heavily damaged, though), but Norway loses a CA and a cloak CA... bad. Notes: The cloak cruisers can't stand a slugging match either. They should have recloaked. Turn 6: The PanMa CE is finished and telling damaged against the remaining CA is inflicted. However, the return fire gets a bit lucky and drops the remaining two cloak cruisers... very bad. Notes: The Norwegian strike cruiser can't turn fast enough to bring its torps to bear. While this saves it from counterattack, the more expensive cloak cruisers eat space dust. Pointswise, this is bad. Turn 7: The PanMa capitals hit FTL and escape. Norway finishes off the crippled CA. Aftermath: After the dust settles, it turns out the losses in mass are fairly equal (all PanMa cruisers just happen to be Mass 36...), the Norwegian CVL escaped unharmed while the PanMa capitals took some damage (not enough for threshold rolls, though). But in points, Norwegians lost TWICE what PanMa did... In retrospect, while the Norwegian player failed to fully utilize his cloaking devices, the minmaxed PanMa designs were just wayyyyy over the heads of any vanilla ships. It's a good thing I gave the cloakers pulse torps, or the superior PanMa shielding would have probably saved them any significant damage. The PanMa player was too cautious... he could have annihilated the Norwegian fleet if he had stuck around... maybe at the cost of a wounded BB. Next up: PanMa vs. GUGES The setup immediately tells me I should invent some sort of a mid-range, abstract, pre-battle system. PanMa deploys his fleet across the board, GUGES takes one corner. Looks like he's going to run for it. The fleets are larger, numbering six capitals for PanMa, five for GUGES and gobs of lesser ships. This will turn out the be inconsequential, however. Turn 1: Yup, GUGES turns to run, immediately exiting table with half his force. Some long range sniping costs PanMa a DDG. PanMa deployes his interceptors, which will total 14 (yes, FOURTEEN) groups. Turn 2: GUGES exits, PanMa missile boats turn to pursue. We think about it, and missile boats look like lousy pursuit ships... something bad about them. Turn 3: GUGES trap closes. His missile boats enter the opposite corner and get a good flank shot at PanMa heavies before turning and exiting in the other direction. 15 missiles begin their flight. PanMa returns fire and kills the rearmost DDG. Turn 4: No GUGES forces are left on the table. PanMa decides not to pursue, foiling part of GUGES plans. The missile volley enters striking range of two gigadreadnoughts (mass 100 monstrosities), one fleet carrier and some smaller vessels. The interceptors move in. The interceptors easily dispatch all the missiles. The battle is over, neither side lost anything important but GUGES expended his missile volley. He is still in Mars orbit, though. Note: I feel a bit divided about this. The interceptors totally defused the well-executed missile attack. OTOH, if they hadn't been allowed to do that, the attack would have gutted 1500-2000 points worth of capitals. Considering that PanMa did have a huge force of interceptors just for this purpose and that this kind of "drop missiles and run" battle is just the kind I do not wish to see on my tabletop... I guess I'm satisfied with the result even though placing 50 ships for a three turn "battle" is kind of dull. Maybe this result will discourage others from trying cowardly missile tactics and we'll see some real battles. The PanMa fleet designs are perhaps overoptimised. They are very, very powerful as long as they can work together in coherent groups, covering each others' weaknesses. It remains to be seen whether the strategic situation can divide their fleet into bite-sized chunks...