Fought this battle today. Cinematic movement on a floating table, but
speeds were still fairly low - my NSL opponent didn't dare flying
faster than speed 20 with his thrust-2 ships, and I had to conform to
his speeds to avoid overshooting him.
Alan and Roger, I hope this report answers some of your questions about
dealing with BJs :-/
NSL fleet: 1 Von Tegetthoff SDN, carrying 1 Interceptor sqdn 1 Szent Istvan
BDN, carrying 1 Interceptor sqdn 1 Maria von Burgund BB
2 Kronprinz Wilhelm/E CLEs
3 Waldburg/M DDGs
16 Stroschen CTs
Total: 2999 pts, 752 of which (25.1%) were used to buy banzai jammers. The BJs
were deployed 4 to each capital and 2 covering each CLE, but they moved around
a bit during the battle. The plan was to disrupt any FSE fighter attacks by
dogfighting them with the interceptors, dilute the SM barrages with the CTs
and pound the weak FSE ships to dust with massed beam batteries. It didn't
work.
The fleet mix isn't ideal (see the end of this post for our post-battle
reflections on it), but it was a bit too long since the last time we used the
NSL This battle reminded us of exactly why we haven't used
them :-/
FSE fleet: 1 Bologna CVL, carrying 1 standard, 1 Interceptor and 2 Heavy
Attack sqdns 3 Roma BBs
2 Jerez CAs, each with 2 SM-ER and 1 normal salvo
9 Ibiza FFs
2 Mistral/A SCs (the /A variant replaces 1 C1 battery with 1 subpack).
Total: 3000 pts. This fleet was explicitly designed to beat a
BJ-protected fleet. It has rather too many capitals for the number of
cruisers and it felt very odd not to have *any* DDs, but I wanted the
rear-shot ability and large magazines of the Romas. The plan was to
send in the fighters and small fry first to remove as many BJs as possible,
and then hit the remaining NSLs with massive SM salvoes. It worked.
Deployment saw the NSL in a tight formation, heavies in front, CLEs in the
middle so all ships was covered by at least one CLE, and the DDGs bringing up
the rear (about 6mu behind the heavies). Each CT was
deployed 0.5mu from the ship it protected - it was physically
impossible to get it closer than that.
The FSE deployed in two groups: one consisting of the FFs and CTs moving
slightly to starboard, and the other of the heavies which veered off sharply
to port.
The FSE small fry accelerated as hard as they could towards the NSL, who
turned their entire fleet to meet them. The FSE interceptor group managed to
engage both the NSL squadrons in a furball, and although it was wiped out
itself only 4 NSL fighters survived the experience. The other FSE fighter
squadrons nailed one BJ each, while the Ibizas and Mistrals did in another
three and crippled two for the loss of three Ibizas and both Mistrals.
Meanwhile, the FSE heavies had swung around in a wide arc and now closed in
from the NSL's starboard side. The germanics launched missiles in their path,
but only one salvo hit a BB and all its missiles were shot down. The other
salvoes locked on to the withdrawing Ibizas instead, and killed two more of
them. Once again, the FSE managed to lock both the NSL squadrons in a
dogfight, this time with their own standard squadron, while their attack
fighters nailed another two BJs. The FSE battleline also concentrated all
their guns at the
BJs, killing three; now only five BJs remained in action - three of
them covering the Maria von Burgund. NSL return fire was fairly ineffective
since most of their weapons were out of arc, but they managed to inflict two
threshold checks on one of the Jerezes. Unfortunately the only important
damage was one of the SMLs, and it was repaired almost immediately.
The NSL turned as hard as they could (which wasn't very much) towards the FSE
in an attempt to keep them in arc, and launched another missile spread at
them, hitting one of the Romas badly and hitting, but failing to damage, the
Bologna. This time the FSE returned the favour, and threw 11 SM salvoes at the
NSL: 6 hit the BDN, 1 hit a BJ, 2 hit the CLE covering the BDN, and 1 hit the
SDN; the last one missed entirely. (Clumsy of me!). The other CLE tried to
protect its sibling but failed miserably; the CLE under attack was so unnerved
by the danger that it only managed to shoot down one of the missiles attacking
the BDN, and the BDN itself didn't do much better. When the explosions had
died down the CLE and the BJ had disappeared completely and the BDN was a
burning wreck (62 pts of damage left it with 1 lonely C2 battery working...
but no FCs).
While the missiles were flying, the FSE battleline tried to cut in behind the
NSL. The BBs managed just fine, sitting between the NSL heavies and their
DDGs, pounding both the DDGs and the remaining BJs (only one of which survived
the turn), but the CVL cut it a little too
close - and ended up just in front of the Von Tegetthoff and the Szent
Istvan :-/ Fortunately the latter had no weapons, but even so the poor
Bologna took a frightful pounding. The FSE cruisers had turned to port to
attack the Waldburgs, but overshot a bit. They did manage to maul the DDs, but
didn't contribute much more to the battle.
The NSL was in trouble, however. All the three Romas were now sitting in their
blind spots, and there was basically no way they could be shaken off (except
by slowing the NSL ships to speed 0, which would have taken much longer than
it would have for the FSE to destroy them). The last two turns of the battle
saw the Romas pound the Von Tegetthoff with their remaining missiles and
killing the last BJ and CLE and two of the DDGs. The only real revenge the NSL
got was when the remaining FSE FFs tried to close for a second attack run;
four of the remaing five FFs died that turn.
In the end the NSL managed to hyper out with one Waldburg/M (had just
taken its first threshold check), the Von Tegetthoff (which had five hull
boxes and the FTL drive remaining, but very little else) and the Maria von
Burgund (which had only taken two thresholds and was in comparatively very
good shape). They left behind the wreckage of sixteen corvettes, two
destroyers, two light cruisers and a battledreadnought. Only one of the
corvettes was killed by SMs, and it only drew a single salvo off the capital
ships.
The FSE lost all but one of their light ships (though four of those losses
were entirely avoidable and thus completely unnecessary). In addition the
carrier, one battleship and one cruiser were badly mauled; the other two
battleships and the last cruiser were undamaged.
So, what happened to the "impregnable" BJ defence? Well, basically the FSE
used their superior maneuverability to limit the number of weapons the NSL
could bring to bear. This allowed them to cut back the BJs before launching
their missiles, without taking too much damage from the NSL capitals in
return.
In hindsight the NSL should have taken a Der Theuerdank-class carrier
instead of the Von Tegetthoff and replaced the Waldburg/Ms with two
more Kronprinz Wilhelms; this would have provided better firepower against
both missiles and ships. The NSL missiles did damage a battleship and killed
four Ibizas, but I think beams and particularly more PDSs would have had a
greater effect.
Tactically, the NSL were in trouble from the outset. If they had turned to
face the FSE heavies, they would've allowed the FSE FFs and SCs to inflict a
lot more damage to their BJs (since less than half their weapons would've been
able to engage the frigates, instead of all of them). They'd probably have
inflicted more damage on the FSE heavies in this way, but OTOH the FSE heavies
would've been able to launch missiles earlier than they did in this battle.
The Stroschens did all you could ask of them, which was to die horribly, but
they didn't live long enough to stop the missile
onslaught. Falkes would've been worse still, though - they take exactly
half as much damage as Stroschens, but cost more than half so you get fewer
hit points of them. FC capacity was not a problem problem for the FSE in this
battle.
Had this been a Vector battle, things would've been different - the NSL
would've been able to turn to face the FSE heavies instead of having them
hanging off the rear side quarter, for one thing. The battle would
have been a lot closer, but I don't think it would've been a walk-over
for the NSL.
Regards,
> Oerjan Ohlson wrote:
> Alan and Roger, I hope this report answers some of your questions
Indeed it does, very useful.
> NSL fleet:
Try the same thing with 3 Marias, 4-5 Wilhelms, maybe a CA or two or
Waldburg/Ms, and 15 or so Falkes as BJs.
> Total: 2999 pts, 752 of which (25.1%) were used to buy banzai jammers.
Seems a bit high. In fact very high. I'd use smaller, with the points being
used to get CLEs. Yes, the BJs can be taken out by fighters: but if you have
more than a very indequate number of CLEs, the fighters get taken out instead,
and the BJs remain.
> The BJs were deployed 4 to each capital and 2 covering each CLE, but
2 per big fella's enough. The rest should cower behind, using their great
movement factor to zip in front in the next movement phase to
replace losses from plinking. Any marauding FF/DD must therefore run the
gauntlet of great numbers of beams before getting within 12". While
fighters, who don't have this problem, should face 4+ ADAF PDs on each
fighter group.
> FSE fleet:
4 Bolognas would have done it better though! The NSL fleet was very very
under-escorted.
> It worked.
Try it against double the number of CL(E)s and slightly fewer (and smaller)
BJs.
> Deployment saw the NSL in a tight formation, heavies in front, CLEs in
Faultless. Except that the BJs should have been covered by 4 CL(E)s and I'd
forget about the fighters, but the latter is a minor issue. Oh yes, and BJs
are "ablative armour", you keep most in reserve (6mu behind), not all up
front. Remember that by the sequence of play, you can strip off every BJ
around a heavy, but before your SMs reach the target, more can arrive. Usually
by accelerating 6 and 5 from 6 MU behind while the big guy decelerates 0.5
(and maybe turning). Don't know about you, but I find it very difficult
getting enough missiles within 0.25 MU of the target consistently. I have done
it once vs this type of defence, and a Maria ate 6 SMs. Which made it very
ill.
> The FSE deployed in two groups: one consisting of the FFs and CTs
> The FSE small fry accelerated as hard as they could towards the NSL,
Par for the course. One reason I have either Lots of fighters, none at all, or
keep em in the bays until enemy fighter strength is comparable.
> The
How many fighters did you lose to the CL(E)s? Would twice the number of PDs
firing have made a significant difference (ie if the BJs had been Falkes,
would the Mistrals etc have killed many more) Also remember if
using Falke/S that they get to shoot back pretty nastily, and could
easily take out the (damaged) small fry sent against them, should they get a
chance to fire before evaporating (unlikely, I'll admit)
> Meanwhile, the FSE heavies had swung around in a wide arc and now
ie Banzai Jamming (just a note).
> Once again, the FSE
There were surviving fighters? Oh yes, only 2 CL(E)s. And you weren't using
Morale, fair enough.
> The FSE battleline also concentrated all their guns at the
> So, what happened to the "impregnable" BJ defence? Well, basically the
I've found this to be nearly impossible: by "weaving", ie having half the
force turn port 1 pt while the other half turns starboard, at least half the
weapons get to bear on one target, the other half aren't
wasted, they just have to plink at the other. Speed 2-4 is about right,
to give you the option of spinning in place.
> In hindsight the NSL should have taken a Der Theuerdank-class carrier
I'd delete the fighters altogether, and just triple the firepower for
the same points. Keep the same number of Waldburg/Ms, but have Falkes
instead of Stoschens, and double the number of Wilhelms.
> The Stroschens did all you could ask of them, which was to die
Their one and only aim in life is NOT to die horribly, but to stop the
missiles! In this case there were not enough ADAFs to stop maraunding fighters
from taking em out.
Now try the same battle, but with all the Waldburg/Ms replaced by
Wilhelms and see what happens.
Summary: A very sub-optimal NSL fleet, with slightly sub-optimal
tactics. Enough in either to invalidate your main point, since I'm sure
similar tweaking could have been done with the FSE? Not sure. The idea was to
prove whether the BJ tactic is invincible or not. It appears not.
OTOH....
Though do try it with a few more CL(E)s. I should have made this a bit
clearer, you need enough in any fleet vs any opponent to keep the flies
away. 2 CL(E)s in a 3000 pt battle isn't enough - supposing the FSE had
taken, say 4 Bolognas? Heck, if I was taking NSL vs an unknown FSE
fleet, I'd take 4-5 of em, just in case I hit a Carrier group. But then
again, no fighters of my own if playing NSL.
Another point: Any reason why the NSL didn't just annhihilate the Ibizas at
12" with their massed class 3s on their Big Platforms before the
Ibizas could fire? No point in long-range plinking if the opposition
still has missiles in the mags and you don't have any BJ protection.
Expendable doesn't mean Disposable. The BJs are there to absorb missiles, and
should be protected adequately to do that job. Fortunately, this is not
difficult. Without effective SMs, it doesn't matter if the FSE big stuff is
cherry and your big stuff slightly plinked.
Summary: NSL fleet severely, even fatally, unbalanced as it had nowhere near
enough ADAFs against any carrier fleet (whether said carrier fleet used SMLs
or no).
NSL tactics should be to keep the BJs in a reserve behind the main
fleet, and to zap any charging FFs/DDs that attempt to strip away BJs,
and not plink the FSE big guys. After the FFs are disposed of, THEN go after
the main force. And if they don't close, then by all means plink away as you
have "Plink Superiority".
FSE tactics were superb: The left-right split like this makes keeping
the BJs in reserve (as above) problematical at best. Not merely that,
but the use of Ibizas as Banzai Jammers against the Waldburg/Ms was very
good tactics (though maybe a bit wasteful, try to absorb more than one SM
salvo next time <g>)
> Alan wrote:
> > Fought this battle today. Cinematic movement on a floating table
Will do when time permits. I don't think it'll be that different,
though - Falkes die much faster than Stroschens, allowing the FSE
heavies to knock some of the cruisers out instead before launching.missiles.
Besides, MvBs are *much* easier to kill than Szent
Istvans or Von Tegetthoffs :-/
> > Total: 2999 pts, 752 of which (25.1%) were used to buy banzai
> Seems a bit high. In fact very high.
The "25% for BJ" figure came from your "what-if" scenario (75% NSL
force, 100% FSE force with empty magazines), and IIRC you're also the one who
talked about using Stroschens instead of Falkes for BJ duties.
We merely assumed you meant what you had written :-/
> I'd use smaller, with the points
but
> if you have more than a very indequate number of CLEs, the fighters
In this battle, only 5 of the 15 BJs were killed by fighters. With more CLEs
but fewer and weaker BJs, the BJs would've died much faster to other threats.
> > The BJs were deployed 4 to each capital and 2 covering each CLE,
Wouldn't have mattered much in this battle. The rear Stroschens - those
covering the CLEs - were the first to die, in spite of being 6mu behind
the battleline.
> Any marauding FF/DD must therefore run the
You're flying your anti-BJ ships *way* too slowly, then :-/ I've never
had any problem getting strike units from outside C3 range to within their own
weapons range of their chosen target in one turn. The NSL heavies opened fire
at the FSE small fry at the same time as the small fry opened fire on the
Stroschens.
> While fighters, who don't have this problem, should face 4+ ADAF PDs
As I said above the fighters only killed 5 BJs. If the BJs had been Falkes
instead, I'd've been very tempted to throw the fighters at the
CLEs instead - the Ibizas wouldn't have needed any help from the
figthers to kill the BJs. Particularly not if the BJs had been Falke/Ss
:-/
> > FSE fleet:
Yeah, sure. 4 strike-loaded Bolognas would've left me with a grand 392
points to spend on other ships (assuming I didn't buy any Attack fighters,
that is!), and not nearly enough missiles to make any impression on anything
whatsoever. If I had wanted to fight with fighters only, I'd've played NAC
instead.
Indeed, the Bologna was mainly there to counter any *NSL* fighters (since the
FB1 FSE don't have any ADFC ships at all), but I didn't
expect to need more than 1-2 anti-fighter groups - thus the two attack
groups to fill the remaining hangar bays. Had I known the NSL wouldn't bring
any offensive figthers at all, I'd've bought another Roma and one more Jerez
instead.
> The NSL fleet was very very under-escorted.
Yep.
> >It worked.
See above. In this battle, only 2-3 CLEs would've been in action when
the first FSE missiles went in - the rest would've been knocked out by
FSE beam fire, along with the Falkes.
> > Deployment saw the NSL in a tight formation, heavies in front, CLEs
Oh yes,
> and BJs are "ablative armour", you keep most in reserve (6mu behind),
That assumes that the reserve BJs haven't already been killed :-/ In
this battle they were already dead and another 2 mu of distance between the
reserve BJs and the heavies wouldn't have protected them.
> Usually by accelerating 6 and 5 from 6 MU behind while the
Assuming you allow fractional accelerations. We've actually never thought of
it, but I guess that comes from measuring in cm rather than
".
> Don't know about you, but I
That's why you kill *all* the jammers before the missiles go in <g>
> I have done it once vs this type of defence, and a
It would <g> The 6 SMs that hit the Szent Istvan made *it* very ill,
and it has 60% more hull and armour than a Maria :-/
> > The FSE deployed in two groups: one consisting of the FFs and CTs
The big NSL mistake was to keep the two squadrons too closely together
- I was able to get my single squadron into a dogfight (ie,
base-to-base contact) with both of them at once; if he'd withdrawn one
of them I would've gotten a "free" shot at it (and therefore probably would've
wiped it out). If he hadn't done that mistake, the fighter numbers would've
been quite comparable since half of my fighters were useless in dogfights.
Unfortunately for him, I lost the initiative on
both turns - ie, my fighters moved first :-/
'Course, since my fighter tactics only aimed at keeping his fighters of my
attack fighters, I'd've been quite happy to see him keep his own
fighters unlaunched! Unfortunately I've inflicted too many high-speed
needle beam strikes on his carriers in the past for him to keep any
fighters unlaunched one second longer than necessary :-(
> > The
The first turn? 2 (lucky) and 3 (more normal for heavy fighters),
respectively.
> Would twice the number of PDs firing have made a significant
No and yes, respectively - with twice the number of PDSs the fighters
would most likely have killed about as many Falkes as they now killed
Stroschens, but the Mistrals and Ibizas would have killed about 8 BJs
instead of 3 killed + 2 crippled (which were polished off by the FSE
heavies and fighters on the next turn).
> Also remember if
Falke/Ss die even faster than standard Falkes; adjust to 10 BJs killed
by the Ibizas in this case. The Stroschens we used aren't entirely toothless
either, and most of them did get to fire at least once before
dying - but unfortunately most of them only had unloaded Ibizas left to
shoot at.
> > Meanwhile, the FSE heavies had swung around in a wide arc and now
Of sorts. The Ibizas started the turn more than 30mu away from the FSE heavies
and ended it roughly 10mu away from them, moving in the
opposite direction - hardly optimal BJ tactics :-/
The NSL admiral had assumed that my heavies would make a 1-point turn
instead of a 2-point turn, and placed his salvoes accordingly. Of the
four NSL salvoes only two were in range of FSE heavies, and each would've hit
a different Roma. The other two salvoes would've been
clean misses if the Ibizas hadn't blundered into their path :-( I lost
2 Ibizas and had a third one badly damaged without drawing any serious
pressure off the Romas.
> > Once again, the FSE
I was using fighter morale, yes. 3 and 4 heavy attack fighters remained,
respectively, after the tender attention of one CLE each on the previous turn;
I lost another 4 the second turn; due to the loose NSL formation only one of
the CLEs was able to engage them. The other was just outside ADFC range (by
0.2 mu).
The standard squadron hadn't suffered any casualties at this point (thanks to
the lack of more CLEs), but since their only goal this turn was to dogfight
the NSL interceptors it wouldn't have mattered how many
there were left of them - one single standard fighter would've been
enough for their job.
> > The FSE battleline also concentrated all their guns at the
> > was repaired almost immediately.
On the contrary - the other half would've been wasted. While the FSE
small fry were closing the FSE heavies were completely out of weapons range,
and when the FSE heavies had closed the range the FSE small fry had already
passed through the NSL formation and were on the same side of it as the
heavies. IOW, the NSL never had targets on both sides of
their ships, so there was nothing for the out-of-arc weapons to plink
at.
> Speed 2-4 is about right, to give you the option of spinning in
Speed 2-4? That *would* have allowed me to place my missiles with
0.25mu precision :-/ More seriously, it would have let me set my attack
runs up much better than I did now. I wouldn't have put the Bologna
just in front of the SDN, for one thing - that was the only launcher I
lost during the entire battle.
> > The Stroschens did all you could ask of them, which was to die
Same end result :-/
> In this case there were not enough ADAFs to stop maraunding
"Marauding"? Only 5 of the 16 BJs were killed by fighters. 10 were killed by
beams or subpacks.
> Now try the same battle, but with all the Waldburg/Ms replaced by
Not enough in either, at least not by using the NSL tweaks and tactics
you've suggested - the only way to protect the BJs would have been to
keep them at least 10 mu away from the battleline, and that would've defeated
their purpose entirely (and allowed me to concentrate on the CLEs instead,
which is definitely a Bad Thing for the NSL).
Getting a better optimized NSL fleet would make the battle more even, but I
don't think it'll be enough to change it from the current FSE
cake-walk to an NSL cake-walk.
> OTOH....
If the FSE had taken 4 Bolognas, they wouldn't have had *anything* else. OK,
maybe a single Jerez and an Ibiza, but that's it.
> Heck, if I was taking NSL vs an unknown FSE
> Another point: Any reason why the NSL didn't just annhihilate the
Because there were only three NSL heavies, they were unable to bring all their
batteries to bear in spite of turning to face early on, and they didn't get a
chance to fire until the instant before the Ibizas themselves opened up. They
also had some problems with optimizing their fire patterns; the first few FSE
ships to die were badly overkilled (8 points on a Mistral... though admittedly
that damage came from only 4
dice :-/), and at least four of the surviving Ibizas hung on with a
single damage box left at the end of their attack run.
The FSE heavies were outside C3 range of the NSL (range 40 to the nearest
Jerez IIRC) when the small fry went in, so there were no distractions at all.
> Expendable doesn't mean Disposable. The BJs are there to absorb
By keeping them back a few more mu? It wouldn't have helped them in this
battle, though. Keeping them 10 mu behind the NSL battleline would've
protected them, but OTOH that would've left the battleline
mother-naked against the missile storm.
> Summary:
This FSE force wasn't exactly a "carrier fleet". Without any ADFC units of
their own they need at least rudimentary fighter cover just in case the *NSL*
decides to bring their own fighters, so I had to choose between a Bologna and
a Foch. The only way to get the two I squadrons
(Interceptor + Standard) I wanted without having to buy a third or
fourth squadron as well is to take two Bonapartes, and, well... I can think of
a lot of better things to spend 1062 points on than two
Bonapartes :-/
However, the NSL brought their fighters for pretty much the same reason as I
brought mine, and given their ADFC units they shouldn't have bothered. IMO
they also shouldn't have bothered with the missile units; there were too few
of them to be effective.
> NSL tactics should be to keep the BJs in a reserve behind the main
They tried to zap the charging FFs but didn't do it fast enough, and
they were too far away to fire at the FSE big guys at all :-/
> After the FFs are disposed of, THEN go after the main force.
This is exactly what the NSL tried to do. Except that the FSE were
doing most of the closing, roughly perpendicular to the NSL course :-/
> FSE tactics were superb: The left-right split like this makes keeping
Very problematical, yes :-/
> Not merely that, but the use of Ibizas as Banzai Jammers against the
The accidental use of Ibizas as banzai jammers was extremely *poor*
tactics, and will - together with the completely insane order to send a
bunch of damaged frigates with empty sub-packs back into the fray to
get killed - probably inflict at least a court of inquiry on the
commanding FSE admiral. Six frigates destroyed for no return whatsoever...
> (though maybe a bit wasteful, try to absorb more than one
More to the point, try not to run your small fry into SM salvoes which
don't have any other targets :-/
Regards,
> On 11-Dec-99 at 18:19, Oerjan Ohlson (oerjan.ohlson@telia.com) wrote:
> Roger Books wrote:
> > Fought this battle today. Cinematic movement on a floating table,
Which cannon fodder - the FSE small fry or the NSL CTs?
Without the FSE small fry, it is unlikely that the FSE would've munched
the NSL at all. While the light wing didn't kill that many CTs - the
FFs and SCs only killed 3 Stroschens and crippled 2, out of 16 - they
forced the NSL to choose between facing them (and allowing the FSE heavies to
make *their* attack run from the rear quarter of the NSL force), or facing the
FSE heavies (which would have allowed the FSE small fry to kill far more of
the BJs).
The first attack wave needs to be armed with non-SM weapons only, have
a high number of FCs per weapon (due to the small size of their
intended targets) and be fast - thrust-6 or better - and the FF and
smaller are the only official FSE designs which fit all three of those
requirements. Had there been an FSE CL with beam/sub-pack armament I
would've been sorely tempted to use it instead - eg something like the
Huron, but with the broadside C2s replaced with 4 forward-firing
sub-packs.
Without the NSL corvettes, well... depends on what they'd used the
points for instead :-/ More CLEs or CEs would've been very nice of
course, but they tend to take take less damage than the same points
worth of CTs to mission kill (ie, reduce their PDS battery and/or
knocking the ADFC out, as compared to destroying it completely in the BJ
case), so they'd've been about as vulnerable to the FSE tactics as the CTs
turned out to be.
> Could the NSL
The FSE could've swung their own small fry - the fighters in particular
- across to attack the NSL CTs had these charged ahead, and the
Stroschens (those that lived long enough, that is) got to fire at the FSE
heavies before the first FSE missiles were launched (as well as at the FSE
small fry the turn before).
All in all the NSL CTs might've inflicted some more damage on the FSE heavies
by charging ahead of the battleline than they did in the present battle, but I
don't think it'd've been decisive. Far more of the CTs would've survived the
battle though, which could've been important in a campaign.
> Note I'm not saying your use of the jammers was not valid,
Our use of the jammers clearly *wasn't* valid - it didn't work! <g> Or
did you mean my way of dealing with them?
> I'm just curious because nobody here would play NSL ships because of
Same here. Indeed, we rarely use Fleet Book designs at all; I used the NSL and
FSE mainly because Alan had used those two forces in his examples <shrug>
Later,