This was a playtest for an upcoming scenario that I am hoping to release soon… a very large upcoming scenario.
This was a small version of the actual scenario!! mainly because I don’t yet have enough ships for the full scenario 😢
The fleet was docked at the space stations with most of the crews either resting or sleeping, a couple of destroyers and two flights of fighters were on patrol and everything was quiet… and then they came, bombers, hundreds of them, ok maybe not hundreds but there was a lot 😉
The diplomats and the politicians from New Hope Colony and the Corrollonus Colony had been talking about the possibility of war for months, but now the Corrollonus military had decided to try and end this war before it even started by attacking the New Hope battle fleet while they were not expecting anything.
So the Corrollonus carrier fleet sent all their fighters and fighter bombers ahead to try and destroy the New Hope fleet, the carriers and their escorts would deal with whatever remained ( if anything remained! )
As the battle goes on I have a small table to roll on for each ship still docked at a space station to see what it and its crew can do… some of the results on that table are not nice.
One of the results is that the ship stays docked for up to 7 turns!!!! Oh dear I know which one I will be rolling.
Set was fairly simple all of the New Hope ships were docked with either the sentry space station or the refuelling station or the repair station with two destroyers patrolling with two fighter stands, all of the Corrollonus fighters start at the other end of the table with all the carriers and their escorts coming on in turn four.
Turn one saw all the Corrollonus fighters streak towards the stations and the docked ships, the small patrol of New Hope ships looks hopelessly out numbered, what could they possibly do to stop that wave of fighters?
Nothing, so they decided to move back…
The three space stations launched all their fighters to try and help stop the oncoming bombers.
Turn two saw the Corrollonus fighters pour forward again and they were now almost within striking distance, things were going to get messy next turn.
The New Hope fleet started to respond to the attack and the light cruiser pulled away from the repair station and turned to face the oncoming fighters followed by the heavy cruiser, one destroyer docked at the refueling station was frantically calling back its crew so that they could get underway and all the rest were not aware yet of the attack so were still sleeping, not a great start for the New Hope fleet.
Turn three saw the Corrollonus attack lose 12 fighter bombers and 6 fighters to the New Hope defenders, I don’t think that will be enough to weaken their attack by much but it felt good, the New Hope defenders lost 9 fighters in the hectic fighter combat.
I know the scenario is all about the defender getting as many of their ships off the table as possible but I had to move the two patrolling destroyers in to hit the fighters with their PDS to try and slow them down a little giving the bigger ships a chance to get away, sacrificial lambs and all that.
Both of the New Hope battleship’s crews were still off the ships or sleeping, the fighter carrier was starting to get the crew back but it would be a while before they were ready to be able to move.
Systems on board the Dreadnought were starting to come on-line but it would also be a little while before they were ready to move off from the station.
Turn four and the Corrollonus carrier fleet arrives, two fleet carriers plus a fighter carrier and their destroyer escorts, oh dear the New Hope fleet was running out of time!
And in come the bombers!! First they destroy one of the destroyers and fly towards carrier docked at the sentry station and explosions erupt all along one side of the big ship as the bombers missiles hit home, then the rest of the bombers swoop in on the heavy cruiser and huge explosions split the big ship apart and the broken hulk spins off into space ( that was a big mistake I should have moved it away and run towards the end of the table, I thought it might help slow the bombers!! )
Damn those bombers hurt!! Unless I can get my ships moving this is going to be a very quick battle.
The New Hope destroyer moves slowly forward with the engineers desperately struggling to get the ships comm’s back online after receiving a critical hit to its vital systems.
The sentry stations PDS takes out two Corrollonus bombers that had got too close.
The Colloronus carriers move steadily forward closing the gap between them and the doomed New Hope fleet ( this wasn’t 100% but it did feel like it was doomed )
The light cruiser turns tail and moves off and FTL’s away, the lone destroyer finally gets its comm’s back and turns away from the bombers and heads for safety as well, although I think the crew already knew their fate…
Turn five and the two New Hope battleships have now managed to get all their crew back on board they just need to get their systems up and running before they are destroyed by all those bombers coming towards them, the dreadnought finally managed to get away from the sentry station and starts to turn for safety, launching it contingent of fighters first to go and help the remaining ships.
The Corrollonus fighters and bombers moved in and took out the destroyer and then ripped the fighter carrier apart in an explosion that was quickly extinguished in the vacuum of space, that was a painful blow for the New Hope fleet as all the fighters on board were destroyed as well…
The bombers then swooped in on the dreadnought and the battleship docked with the repair station, the dreadnought fired off its PDS and took out the first flight of bombers but six more bombers made it in and ripped huge chucks out of the big old ship, the battleship didn’t fare any better as it took several hits as well.
Turn six and well I think I will give up rolling dice!! I have missed so many fighter shots you would not believe, I must have missed 10 this turn alone, I think last turn I must have missed 12 or more.
The New Hope fighters have to be able to stop the Corrollonus bombers or they will lose, it is as simple as that and apart from the first turn of fighter combat I have been complete rubbish at stopping them, even my PDS on the sentry station and the one or two ships that I have had has also been rubbish.
The bombers then take out the refueling station and the docked destroyer with a mass of missile hits, the lone New Hope fighter can do nothing about this now.
The final blow for the New Hope fleet is the death of the dreadnought, eight Corrollorun bomber tore it apart!!
Well that’s it all over! What a terrible defeat for the New Hope fleet, they struggled right from the beginning with their awful fighter combat, and then I could only get one or two ships moving because I could not roll high on the activation table so most of the ships crew stayed asleep or took too many turns to get back on board their ships.
I knew this was going to be a hard scenario ( I don’t like easy scenarios ) but if you have some bad luck with your dice it quickly falls apart and becomes a massacre!
The only ship I managed to get off the table was a light cruiser so not great for the New Hope Colony fleet.
Oh well I will have to try it again and see if it was just my rubbish dice rolling that lost the game or if the scenario needs a little tweak!
I also want to try it again with the full amount of ships and fighters, that will be so much fun, I had lots of fighters on the table today but in the full version of the scenario there are so many more!! 😊
After playing with this many fighters today I think there is a need for an all-round fighter, one that has anti-big ship attacking abilities and also anti-fighter abilities… mmm I think that would be easy to do 😉
Hi Mac,
Woah – that looked pretty awesome! When I tried my smaller scale playtest of the scenario after I initially wrote it I think I had much better rolls for my PDS & fighters AND managed to get some of the big ships active sooner – it was still really rough for the defenders but not quite as bad as that looked!
The Gods of Dice are fickle and cruel – they gift you with a few bad rolls & all your plans go down in flames or up in smoke!
Only very occasionally do they favour my dice! My normal rolls with D6 (when needing to roll high) is to roll nothing but 1’s or 2’s … I roll 8D6 needing 4+ … and get five 1’s, two 2’s and a 3! Not one hit …
I once had a friend who got so fed up with his abysmal dice rolls he micro-waved the offending dice to death! He swore the other dice rolled better after that! 😀
NOT one to recommend now – dice are too expensive (for what they are) to be doing that! 🙂
Vic
Hi Vic,
It was still fun and very exciting, seeing all those fighters move forward towards your almost defenceless ships really gives a bit of a buzz!
My dice rolling for ship activation was horrendous, both battleships were asleep for two turns then both rolled a 5+1 for the number of turns to get ready so couldn’t do anything.
The carrier never woke up at all just died in its sleep
The only real mistake I made was to move the heavy cruiser towards the bombers in an attempt to use it as a speed bump! but they just moved over it like it wasn’t there…
I will try this again to see if it was just my really really bad dice rolling and I will definitely try the full version as well once I get the rest of my fighters based and see how that plays.
A few of my friends actually got me a complete new set of dice one year from Salute because they were so fed up of seeing me roll 1’s all the time… it didn’t really help
Mac