Outpost station Gamma-59-Alpha was positioned towards the far reaches of human controlled space, they had a very boring existence, nothing happened from one day to the next… then the aliens arrived!!!
A force of Bio-ships had arrived and wanted the station to feed their ever-growing ships, the problem was a Reformer force with its controlling Hive Mind has arrived at the same time and it wanted the station and the Bio-ships to increase its ever-growing force…
The fight was on, which alien fleet would survive? and could the station survive long enough to find out?
Well that was the basic scenario and all I needed now was the fleets.
The Bio-ships had the following –
1 x Battleship with extra turreted Electro-pulse batteries
1 x Fighter Carrier with extra turreted Electro-pulse batteries, carrying 6 x flights of Fighter Bombers
1 x Light Cruiser
3 x Frigates
4 x Corvettes
The Reformers had the following –
1 x Hive Battleship with Meta-disruptor
2 x Hive Light Cruisers with Meta-disruptors
4 x Splinter “Hammer” ships
5 x Splinter “Dart” ships
4 x flights of Fighter Bombers
And in the middle an Outpost Class Space Station, with a Railgun turret as well as its normal weapon load out.
The station would not have an activation dice, it will activate automatically at the end of each turn and will attack any targets within range and within arc ( targets would be allocated by the closest first and the next closest etc while the station was still working )
I set up the Bio-ships in one corner and set up the Reformers in the one opposite and put the station in the centre.
Turn one and both fleets moved towards the station with the Bio-ships moving off slightly to their left keeping their bigger ships behind their frigates and corvettes.
The Bio carrier spat out two flights of bombers as it moved alongside the battleship.
The Reformers headed straight towards the station hitting it as they flew in stripping away its shields and managing a small amount of damage, then the big hive battleship hit with its Meta-disruptor and damaged its shield generator and missile launcher systems, the stations engineers would have to work quickly to get those fixed or the station would be in serious trouble.
Turn two and the engineers on the station managed to get the shield generator repaired but not the missile launcher systems, they would need to get that sorted soon.
The stations PDS took out two of the attacking missiles which meant one got through to hit the station, the explosion rocked the big structure!
The Reformer Darts started to use their superior speed and powered past the station to try and get close to the Bio-ships.
The Hive-mind sent its two light cruisers around to intercept the Bio-ships heading that way then turned the big battleship to go around the other side of the station, firing a broadside of micro-pulse lasers at the station, but only managed to take down one of its shields!
The Bio battleship turned slowly and moved in behind its screen of smaller ships, while the light cruiser and carrier turned back towards the fast-approaching Reformer Darts, with the carrier spitting out two more flights of bombers.
The big Bio battleship was wondering how it would cope with those fast little ships with all those micro-pulse lasers, they could really strip away the big ships armour really quickly if they all attacked together.
The Reformer Hammers all moved around in front of their Hive battleship and turned towards their two light cruisers to give them some support, the Hive mind was working hard trying to cover all approaching Bio-ships, at the moment it was confident that it would survive and add plenty more ships after consuming all the raw materials after this battle was over.
Turn three and the stations engineers finally repaired the missile launcher systems so hopefully this time they could maybe show that they have some teeth and can bite when they need to.
Two Darts screamed by some of the Bio bombers and hit the Bio carrier stripping away some of its heavy armour, two Bio corvettes and their light cruiser turned around and flew back and attacked those Darts taking down their shields but didn’t do much damage.
One of the Hammers rammed into a Bio frigate and taught it a lesson about those tiny ships, if they ram they can hurt!! That attack stripped all the frigates armour away leaving it defenceless for the rest of the battle.
The Hive battleship continued on past and around the station hitting it again with another broadside, this time managing to do some light damage.
Two of the Bio corvettes moved in to attack one of the Reformers light cruisers, they stripped away its shields and did some heavy damage also taking out the ships comm’s causing confusion as the ship was cut off from the Hive Mind.
The other Reformer light cruiser tried to manoeuvre in between the two Bio corvettes but didn’t get it exactly right and rammed into one of the corvettes taking out its own PDS!! But then the light cruiser opens up with a broadside into both corvettes ripping away huge lumps of the alien ships bodies.
Two of the Darts used their extreme speed and got around to attack the Bio corvettes as well, one of the corvettes shuddered after taken several hits and then slowly drifted off into space, dead.
Two Bio frigates moved in to destroy the badly damaged Reformer light cruiser, the Hive Mind screamed at the loss, it sent a command to its bombers to seek the two Bio frigates and destroy them.
The Bio carrier moved slowly towards the station spitting out its last two flights of bombers and the hit the station with its massed electro-pulse batteries but only managing to do light damage.
The Bio battleship turned slowly bringing all its weapons to bear on one small Reformer Dart, the small ship was almost turn apart from the number of hits from the huge monstrous ship!
The controller of the station saw the damage the big ship poured into the alien ship and hoped the creature didn’t target the station next!!! ☹️
Turn four and none of the Reformer bombers could reach the enemy frigates this turn so they moved closer ready to strike next turn.
Two flights of Bio bombers moved in to finish off the badly damaged Reformer Dart and to attack a Hammer, they successfully destroyed the Dart but didn’t do any damage to the Hammer.
Two more flights of Bio bombers took out two more Darts, but they might have been a bit over zealous with their attacks as the resulting explosions blew the ships apart throwing lumps of hot molten wreckage into their own ships causing considerable damage!!!
( The reformers are getting hurt by the Bio-ships, the Hive mind needed to do something about this soon or it was going to lose and lose badly! )
This turn saw some very fast manoeuvring by the Reformer small ships, all trying to get away from the advancing Bio-ships.
The Bio carrier moved in closer to pound the station causing more damage destroying the stations shield generators, the Reformer battleship seeing this moved in and fired off a broadside stripping off all the remaining armour from the Bio carrier, the Hive Mind was pleased with that as it now saw that the big carrier could be hurt.
The Bio battleship saw that the carrier had been hit bad and decided to move in to try and give it some support, as it moved in it poured more shots into the station causing severe damage.
The crew on the station were now starting to panic, they couldn’t see it lasting much longer while coming under such heavy fire from both of the alien fleets, they would at least try and hurt a few before they were destroyed.
They fired off a single missile at the very close Bio carrier which managed to get through and do some damage, and hit it with a laser shot as well, the crew on the station cheered when they saw their missile had hit.
It was again time for the weapons team to fire their railgun as they had a big target really close now, so they turned their railgun to bring it to face the Bio carrier, the control room was silent while they programed the targeting system for the shot… and again it missed!!!
The weapons team looked around in total confusion, “there must be a problem with the railgun targeting system Sir!!”
Turn five and the bombers on both sides move in for the kill, the Bio-ship sends in three flights of bombers to hit a Reformer Dart, they eventually took it out, but there was some awful shooting by the bombers to need three flights for one little ship.
One flight of Bio bombers got a little too close to the Reformers battleship, the big ships PDS ripped them apart before they had a chance to do anything.
The Reformers battleship turned slowly and moved behind the Bio carrier and opened up with a full broadside destroyed the big ship almost cutting it in two!!! Then it fired its opposite broadside at the Bio light cruiser slicing huge chunks of bio-matter from the strange alien ship, then it hit the Bio battleship which was coming towards it.
The meta disruptor and the micro-pulse lasers hit the Bio battleship causing it to real in pain confusing the thing slightly.
Now that the big Bio ship was confused every Reformer ship that could poured fire into the big ship, also they fired as many missiles as they could in front of it trying to take advantage of this temporary loss of control.
Even the station joined in hitting the big Bio ship, they hit it with a missile and their laser fire again, but still the big ship didn’t die…
Turn six and the Bio bombers started their attack run on the Reformer battleship, but when the big ships PDS stopped firing only two bombers remained.
The Reformer bombers had slightly more luck with their bombing run which saw one of the three bombers falling to the Bio battleships PDS but the remaining two did enough damage to finally kill the huge alien ship – that has got to have settled this battle, the remaining Bio-ships can’t possibly come back from that loss.
Another flight of Bio bombers swoops in and attacks the now defenceless Reformer battleship and internal explosions almost rip the big ship apart, the Hive Mind is truly shaken by that, it instantly puts out a call to all of its remaining Darts and Hammers, to come back and repair it, it just needs to survive long enough for the small ships to get to it.
The remaining two flights of Reformer bombers move in to kill the bio light cruiser and the last frigate… the frigate survives but the cruiser is not as lucky.
Turn seven and two Darts respond to the Hive Minds call and instantly fly into the battleship repairing its hull and many of its damaged systems… at this point I call it a night, there is no way the remaining Bio-ships can win this battle against the Reformers.
The few remaining Bio-ship FTL out of the area leaving the station to the Reformers which they easily destroy… well more Reformers will be built from all the materials salvaged from this battle, the Hive Mind is pleased.
Wow that was ridiculously close at the end, even after the Bio battleship had been destroyed, the Bio bombers in that last attack needed just one more point of damage to make this a draw with neither side having enough ships left to realistically be a clear winner of the battle.
The Bio ships again started off incredibly strong and looked like they were going to walk away with an easy victory, but those Reformers are tough when they start to get fully engaged and of course the ability for the Hive Mind to repair the biggest ship helps a lot, it was lucky that two Darts were so close and between them they repaired twelve hull points!!!
I normally make the mistake of getting all my Splinter ships destroyed so they are not available to help repair the big ship, but this game I kept one or two always close and it worked perfectly.
The station got a real pounding from the reformers before the Bio ships even got close and its Railgun didn’t hit a single target all game! ☹️
I don’t think the space station would have survived much longer considering the pounding the Reformer battleship could hand out, especially as the station had already lost its shield generators.
The other thing that was crazy in this game was the number of critical hits I rolled, the Bio battleship took four critical hits during the battle, and the two Darts that were destroyed by the bio bombers took five critical hits between them and both exploded!!
Lots of exciting combat and some silly dice rolls and loads of critical hits!
I can’t wait to try that again sometime… Aliens are a lot of fun to play 😉
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