A gathering of gamers from New York, Missouri (formerly) and Maryland gathered
this past Monday night at Noam Izenberg's house to partake of some explosive
decompression action. The game featured Mark "I've discovered fighters are
easier to use than pulse torpedoes" Kotche and Noam playing the NAC and NSL,
respectively and Nick "if there aren't any FT gamers in Missouri I'll move to
Virginia" Caldwell and Jon Davis playing the ESU and FSE, respectively.
We were too tired to play a real scenario (Jon and I having braved two
hours of Interstate 495 / I95 traffic just to get there), so we all took
600 points or so of ships from the fleet book, set them at two edges of the
"board" (Noam's floor) and went at it.
> From the ESU/FSE side, there were two points of note in the ensuing
The other moment of glory came when Jon managed to land three missile salvoes
dead onto a previously damaged NSL battlecruiser. The exchange went something
like this:
Noam: "Just tell me if the damage is greater than..."
Jon: "15. . .20. . .28. . ."
Noam: "Never mind"
Despite this, the ESU went down to defeat, losing the entire squadron. The
FSE fared slightly better, with one mission-killed ship ending the game
> A gathering of gamers from New York, Missouri (formerly) and Maryland
And a good time was had by all.:)
> From the ESU/FSE side, there were two points of note in the ensuing
Blast you, Nick Caldwell!!
> The other moment of glory came when Jon managed to land three missile
That was a very unpretty sight. ;-)
> Despite this, the ESU went down to defeat, losing the entire squadron.
The
> FSE fared slightly better, with one mission-killed ship ending the game
The FSE had two heavy destroyers and one battlecruiser, and lost only one
heavy destroyer.
I've written up the scenario (mostly because I found it to be a potentially
tactically interesting situation:) and you can find it for now at:
http://scivax.stsci.edu/~kochte/s11.html
> Thanks to Noam for hosting us. Next time, Indy goes down in flames --
An all-p-torp fleet, eh? I've heard something to the effect that if you
get a million monkeys at a million typewriters one of them will unleash a
Shakespearean script, so be careful - I may hit with one of the p-torp
ships multiple times over (of course the others will miss, but...:)
Mk
Indy said:
> Thanks to Noam for hosting us. Next time, Indy goes down in flames --
> An all-p-torp fleet, eh? I've heard something to the effect that if you
What, you're going to ram?:)
> http://scivax.stsci.edu/~kochte/s11.html
The usual high quality AAR, plus this is a good quick game scenario with lots
of tactical depth. One for the bookmarks.
> Tim Jones wrote:
I agree. A very nice writeup and scenario design. There is a minor difference
with the game we played Monday and the current scenario and that is the
elevated victory conditions for the destruction of the NAC Light Carrier. With
this change, there would have been a slight change in tactics for both sides.
The FSE would have concentrated the salvos on the CVL and ignore the NSL ships
for the first pass, and the NAC probably would have held back one or two
squadrons of fighters for missile defense. ADFC were sorely lacking in both
FSE and ESU squadrons.
> An all-p-torp fleet, eh? I've heard something to the effect that if you
Indy, Indy. What am I to do with you? You put this Iain Banks' quote in your
subject line instead of the obvious literary reference:
"Ford, there's an infinite number of monkeys outside who want to talk to us
about this script for _Hamlet_ they've worked out."
THHGTHG, of course!
However, your quote did remind me of another quote from the game, as your
fighters descended upon my poor cruiser. I believe it was you who said,
"What's that on our sensors? It's an, um, cloud of dice. I know it's not a
strictly correct military term, but..."
Nick
> Mk
> An all-p-torp fleet, eh? I've heard something to the effect that if
Or the other comeback: "For this story: three monkeys, twenty minutes."