Stars & Lasers, hit them where it hurts!!

The mission was simple, take my attack group deep into enemy territory and destroy the two enemy repair stations this would seriously damage the enemy’s ability to get their ships repaired quickly and sent back into battle and would go a long way to winning this war.

All we had to do was survive long enough to complete the mission…

The commander of repair station alpha three had received intelligence that an enemy attack group was on its way to destroy the two repair stations he controlled, so he had requested that a battle group be sent to protect his stations as soon as possible.

The battle group had arrived only a few hours before the enemy struck…

Well that was the scenario, we had our ships and it was time to battle.

My list was using some of my 3D printed ships, the force was led by a big powerful Battlecruiser armed with a railgun turret and it had two extra teams of engineers to help get the shields back up.

With this ship I had a Fighter Carrier with three flights of fighters and three flights of bombers, a Light Cruiser, two Destroyers, two Frigates and two Corvettes.

My opponent had his lovely ships ( I think they are Brigade Models ships ) and for his points he went for a Fighter Carrier with the same load-out of fighters as my carrier had, two Heavy Cruisers with turreted pulse lasers, two Light Cruisers, four Frigates, oh and the two Repair Stations.

This was going to be hard for both sides, the defenders would have a hard job setting up as they had no idea where my ships would be entering the table ( I didn’t know either!! ) and there would no way of blocking my ships from shooting at the stations, they could of course try and stop any missiles that I fire but that’s all.

It would also be hard for me to get close enough to the stations with all the enemy ships in the way, I needed to get close to make sure any missiles I fire get through, also it would make it easier to hit with my lasers if I was in close range.

The slight advantage my opponent would have is that he knew where my ships would need to be to do the most damage, it wasn’t as if the targets were hidden!

So once he had set up all his ships I rolled to see which table edge I would be entering the table on, I ended up getting the long table edge close to me.

I put the Battlecruiser, Light Cruiser and the two destroyers almost in the middle of the table edge very close to one of the stations and put my Carrier and the rest of my ships to their right, I was hoping to get around and come at the far repair station from the right, hopefully avoiding most of the enemy ships.

My opponent started to move a few of his ships trying to turn them around and get as close to my ships as he could.

I moved the other group of ships further around to the right hoping to move around and attack the other Repair Station in the next turn or two, I had one enemy ship on that section of the table but it was a Heavy Cruiser but I had five ships including a Carrier with three flights of Bombers so it should be ok…

Turn one saw me move my Destroyers in towards the repair station closest to them and they fired off their missiles, two got through plus a couple of laser hits, that was a good start some good early damage.

I moved my Light Cruiser towards the station as well with it getting a few more hits in, I then moved my Battlecruiser slowly forward carefully aiming as many lasers as it could on the station, it also fired its railgun causing more damage. ( I had made a mistake moving my big ship slightly to the right of the station, but I didn’t notice this until the next turn )

I had two more missiles still flying towards the station at the end of this turn, so things were looking good for my attacking force.

Oh dear, I hate dice!!!!

If my engineer teams lived through this battle I would have them flogged!!!! I failed all of my shield rolls including the roll for the Battlecruiser which had the extra engineer teams on, that was not great, this meant that except for the Carrier almost all of my ships were defenceless against the enemy lasers.

My opponent sent in a flight of fighters to take out the two missiles that were heading for the Repair Station, after seeing both my missiles destroyed, I sent in a flight of fighters to take out some enemy bombers destroying one of the three.

The two remaining enemy bombers flew at my Battlecruiser to try and do some damage on the big ship, but its PDS easily destroyed the bombers before they could make their bombing run.

I then sent in a flight of bombers to attack the lone Heavy Cruiser over on my right, hoping that the ships PDS would not take them all out.

Well I lost two bombers so the remaining one flew in and hit the Heavy Cruiser but only managed some light damage, well that was not good, I would have hoped that my bombers had been able to take out the Heavy Cruiser or at the very least ripped big holes in it, but luck was not on my side at the moment.

Then my opponent decided to really rub some salt into the wound and he flew a Light Cruiser around an asteroid to attack my Battlecruiser from behind, its lasers ripped into the undefended big ship, then the Light Cruiser fired off two missiles which impacted the defenceless ship blowing huge sections from the its hull.

The Battlecruiser was in a bad position and defenceless, so it put all its power into its engines and moved between the Repair Station and the enemy Carrier, if it was going to die it was going to hurt the enemy as much as it could.

I fired off every laser I could bring to bear on a target, the big ship pounded the station and the Carrier and an enemy Frigate, but nothing was destroyed!!

The station had taken a real pounding so far but just didn’t want to die, the Carrier had also taken some damage and the little Frigate had a few extra holes in its hull that weren’t there at the start of the battle!

But I feared the end was in sight for my Battlecruiser.

Well I wasn’t wrong, every enemy ship that could fire at it did and the big ship went spinning off into the asteroid field dead with all hands lost!

I knew that the near repair station was almost destroyed, it had taken a pounding so it wouldn’t take much to destroy it, so I decided to try and get to the far Station with my two Destroyers to see if I could put some damage on that one as well, but on the way they would be dealing out some damage on three enemy ships.

I flew one Destroyer in between two Frigates and fired off missiles at them and then fired off my front lasers at an advancing enemy Heavy Cruisier, the missiles were destroyed by enemy PDS but some of my lasers hit home on the Heavy Cruiser, I then moved my second Destroyer into a similar position and did the same thing again, this time all my missiles got through as the enemy PDS was recharging, but somehow my missiles only managed some light damage on the two Frigates, my forward laser hit the Heavy Cruiser again which at least did some more damage on the ship.

I then moved all my ships that were on my right around the asteroids and towards the far Repair Station, hitting that enemy Heavy Cruisier on the way, but still it held on.

The Heavy Cruiser reeled from all the laser shots it had just taken, but it still managed move forward and pound one of my Frigates Destroying the small ship.

My two Corvettes moved towards the far station firing off their missiles at long range in a last ditched attempt at doing some damage on the repair station.

Turn three and again I failed one or two shield rolls on my ships, my opponents flights of fighters took out my two missiles that were heading for the far station.

On the right of the table there was a big mess of fighters fighting each other but my bombers managed to slip through and finally take out that damn Heavy Cruiser!

Then I moved one of my Destroyers in to attack the far station and well its missiles hit home and caused huge internal explosions and ripped the Station apart!!!!

I moved in one of my Frigates to attack the badly damaged station, it had no missiles left so its captain decided he was going to ram the station in a mad attempt to destroy the repair station, but the small ship was destroyed by enemy missiles before it could complete its suicidal plan!

My opponent’s ships then took my remaining ships apart, all except my Carrier which was too far away from the remaining repair station to change the outcome of this battle, so the captain recalled his remaining fighters and FTL’ed away…

Well that went horribly wrong!

I had some bad luck with my shield rolls on turn two which left most of my force defenceless, that didn’t help me much, they all took lots of damage from enemy lasers.

But I made a couple of mistakes which I think cost me the game, one was going past the first repair station before I had actually destroyed it, that I believe was my main mistake, who would have thought that I would have taken out the other station with just two missiles, I could have won!!! 😢

The second was panicking and moving my Battlecruiser in too close to the enemy ships after being attacked from behind, I think it would have been better to swing around to the left and gone around the repair station away from his Carrier and supporting ships, that way I could have got some support from my smaller ships.

I do not want to take anything away from my opponent, he had a hard job right from the start, but managed to keep calm and take my force apart, a well-deserved victory for him.

It was a great battle and lots of fun.

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2 Comments

  1. Vic

    Hi Mac!

    I love it when a plan … oh drat! 🙂
    Great batrep though – especially when your 2 DD got into perfect missile launch positions – it’s a shame their missiles were less efficacious than might have been.

    Are your engineers on the right pills?
    Maybe you should execute their trainer?

    Better still, hire Scottish engineers, the kind that wear red shirts but don’t die, drink Saurian brandy & always multiply their repair estimates by a factor of 4 – that might work out better for your ships!

    And for the science guy … tIn ghIch vulqangan! And pointy ears too …

    😀

    • Mac

      Hi Vic,

      Oh I was robbed!!! 🙁

      No I just made a couple of mistakes, silly ones!
      In the heat of the moment if you know what I mean, after I had moved my Battlecruiser I realised I had made a mistake but it was too late, and to not finish off the first repair station before moving on to the second one, that was very very silly, but who would have thought the second one would have blown up so easily… you have to love those critical hits 🙂

      Don’t mention my engineers!
      I am not sure what to do about the engineers on board my ships, they always fail to get the shields back up at the worst possible times, it has nothing to do with my dice rolling honest.
      I may have to get a shipment of Saurian Brandy on board before my next battle 😉

      Mac

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