DARKSTAR CAMPAIGN UPDATE: DUCHESS ANNABEL’S WAR IS OVER

Good afternoon, OTT / BoW:

Okay, so here’s the continuation of the Darkstar battle recently played on-line between myself and @davehawes.  In summary, we have my force  – an older cruiser battlegroup of the Holy Russian Empire (flagship CPK Basilov) pitted against @davehawes’ smaller, faster, lighter … more advanced but less “punchy-powerful” aerospace carrier battlegroup (flagship HMS Raven).

So here’s the general situation midway through Turn 02.  The two battlegroups have closed to within 1400 km or so, about the distance between London and Warsaw, and are now exchanging heavy fire.  My Russian ships continue to set a high speed, hoping to close with the British as quickly as possible.  My guns hit much harder close up, and the last thing you ever want to do with “gun heavy” ships is engage enemy carriers at a distance where their fighters and bombers can simply assail you with missiles and torpedoes.  I’ve started to hedge toward the Mars-sized planet in an attempt to cover at least some of the armor and shielding, if I take heavy damage on one side I can always roll my ship and use the planet’s bulk and atmosphere to protect such wounds.

Dave, meanwhile, has been a little accommodating in closing the distance.  He’s not moving nearly as fast as I am, and so is not quite as eager to close to any kind of “slugging distance” (perfectly understandable) but I’m a little surprised he’s closing at all.  No worries, we’re ready to engage.

The bad news for me will come in the aerospace attack phase, shown in progress below.  His four bombers (two counters of “B2”) are at standoff range, the maximum allowed to sling out their torpedoes past the cruiser Basilov, then fishhook around to hit the Basilov in the stern, by far the most vulnerable part of the ship.  To give the torpedoes sufficient reach to execute this maneuver, he has to come JUST close enough to be engaged by Basilov’s mass driver arrays.  We open fire with half our guns (keeping half ready to shoot down actual torpedoes) and manage to shoot down one bomber.  Then my one and only scout from CPK Volkhov zips in and shoots down another.  Aerospace combat is simultaneous, however, so Bomber #2’s ordinance is still launched (each bomber carries 2 torpedoes, so four bombers = 8 torpedoes, one bomber shot down by my mass driver fire BEFORE launch = 6 torpedoes, another bomber shot down by my scouts AS it was launching, so still 6 torpedoes, even though only 4 bombers are left).  None of these aerospace craft can shoot at my scout as they used their fire phase to launch aerospace ordinance at my cruiser.

Incidentally, HMS Singapore,  Raven, or Fergusson could have shot down my scout, but instead they are reserving ALL mass drivers to try and shoot down the swarm of P-500 Class III torpedoes (green counters) streaking in toward the engines of the destroyer HMS Singapore.  Dave also brings in his five scouts, who will take a try at shooting down these torpedoes.

So here’s the Russian battlegroup being hit by the British ordinance package.  This is an extremely important phase of the turnand the overall game, it’s really the best single opportunity that Dave will have to knock out or at least badly damage this heaviest Russian ship.  I have already thrown half my mass drivers at his bombers, hoping to knock them out even before they launch, plus earn victory points for destroyed enemy combat assets.  That worked … partially, but now I only have half of the cruiser mass drivers left to engage the warships torpedoes (blue) the “6T” six aerospace torpedoes launched from those Star Typhoons, or the “8T” lighter eight aerospace missiles launched from the Supermarine Starfire fighters.  I also have the mass drivers from the destroyer Kortik and the frigate Volkhov.

I decide to put everything on the warship torpedoes.  These are by far the most dangerous, with the highest change to hit and largest damage profile.  Even more specifically, I start with those launched from the Singapore, as that destroyer has a +1 CIC / targeting electronics, making her torpedoes in particular even more dangerous.

Meanwhile, the British are doing much the same against my torpedo spread. I have more warship torpedoes, but these are only Class IIIs, meaning they have a lower chance to hit and inflict less damage if they do hit.  Still, 17 warheads are nothing to sneeze at.  In addition, British scouts are able to attack, subtracting their the class of the torpedoes (3) from the scouts’ Base Intercept Number of 6 (essentially their aerospace attack number).  So 6-3=3, giving Dave x5d10 (five scouts) v. 3 … He scores two hits!  So whatever the British mass drivers manage to knock down, these scouts then knock down two more P-500 warheads with their light guns.

My Russian mass driver gunners manage to shoot down all but two of the big Class IV warship torpedoes.  Their chance to hit is an 8, minus my shields of 4 = ≤4 v d10.  One hits, one misses.  Two aerospace missiles hit from the Starfires, three torpedoes hit from the Star Typhoons.  A typical tactic in Darkstar is to hit with your smaller ordinance first, shaving down enemy armor before really hammering home with your bigger weapons that may exploded inside the enemy ship.  So aerospace missiles hit in columns 3 and 4 (two boxes each).  The three Typhoon torpedoes hit in Colum 3 (three boxes), then TWO hit in the same column 4 where that Starfire missile just strike.  So six boxes are marked off INSIDE the Balisov, wiping out one whole engine (starboard), then drilling into the core of the ship (gray boxes up by the aft hangars).  The last big weapon is the that one Class IV torpedo, but its hit location is a little disappointing, a four-point strike that hits column 5.  You can see where the fourth box of damage doesn’t even take place in the ship, exploding harmlessly out into space as this warhead basically “clips the tail light” off the cruiser.

So this is nasty.  But the Basilov isn’t in real trouble yet.  She’s a light cruiser, so her Ship Crippled roll is a 10+ on a d6, -1 off that target number for each critical (red) box marked off.  She’s lost three engine boxes, giving her a new Cripple chance of 7+ on a d6.  Closer, but still not in immediate danger.  She’s also suffered -1 box of gray “core damage.”  Light cruisers have a “break off” chance of 15% per box.  I roll a 93 on 2d10 percentile, so Basilov’s crew isn’t running yet.  However, she has lost one complete engine (starboard), so she’s down -1 in Thrust (this affects her ability to turn and change velocity, as well as initiative).  She’s also lost one sensor box, meaning she’s at a -1 to hit with any and all weapons the rest of the game.  And let’s face it, her weapons weren’t that accurate to begin with.

The HMS Singapore, meanwhile, fares a little better.  Only five of my torpedoes survive British mass driver defensive fire and scout interception.  And of those, only two penetrate the Singapore’s shields.  That’s the bad news.  The good news is that the Singapore is a destroyer and thus a smaller ship.  I only have four columns to hit (d4 hit location instead of d5).

However, the Singapore gets very lucky, and the two torpedoes hit outboard (I roll 1 and 4 on hit locations).  While this knocks out one battery of mass drivers and a sensor suite (note the reduction of Mass driver number and the -1 to hit for the rest of the game), it COMPLETELY MISSES her engines.  If I had rolled 2 and 3 instead of 1 and 4, HMS Singapore would already be in real trouble and well into making critical compartment rolls to maintain power.

Meanwhile, along Singapore’s port bow, the Russian guns of the Kortik and Volkhov have already opened fire.  I knock out the port cargo bay, no effect on game play (the captain just lost the prized tea set and box of Cuban cigars he had in storage, he’s a little irate but otherwise undamaged).

Gunnery now opens up, and suddenly the picture starts to get a lot rosier for the Russians.  Although the Balisov (Konstantine class light cruiser) wasn’t able to get a broadside against the approaching British warships, it almost doesn’t matter.  With three of her four turrets (each a triple mount of 7-GW rail guns) mounted forward, she’s able to blast out a withering fusillade at the hapless little frigate Fergusson.   At this rather extended gunnery range, each 7-GW rail gun hit only causes two boxes of damage, and out of the nine guns I can bring to bear, four of them hit (base to hit at this range is 8, -4 for Fergusson’s shields, note the -1 sensor damage doesn’t actually take effect yet since all combat in a given round is considered simultaneous).  So that’s four 2-point hits, THREE of which hit in sector 3 (1d6 / 2).  Port bow shields are down, two compartments of crew quarters are gone … but the worst is the 7-GW rail gun bolt that smashes completely through the bridge.  No roll, no save, the ship is crippled.

Now after the battle, HMS Fergusson will have a chance to be recovered, towed back to the nearest Royal Navy shipyard for repair and refit, to be brought back into service.  Looking at her damage here, just 6 days (1.5 days per internal component box hit if ship is crippled) … plus whatever tow time it requires to get her back to said dry dock.  But for now, she’s out.

Not to be out done, the HMS Fergusson simultaneously fires back at the frigate Volkhov.  She misses.  The Singapore, however, scores a hard series of broadside hits (remember her +1 CIC / targeting electronics) with her heavy-gauge lasers and Syglex emitters (synchronized, gravitic-lensed X-rays … basically wide-beam, short-burn X-ray “lasers”).  Three of Singapore’s lasers hit, inflicting two boxes of damage (based on Dave’s rolls) in columns 1, 2, and 3.  So the lasers perfectly score off all the armor from Volkhov’s starboard quarter.  Two syglex emitters hit next, punching into the ship and then “dragging” backward like a blowtorch.  The first one hits in Column 2, the second one hist in column 3.  As the damage “drags” backward off the back of the ship (syglex emitters are often not terribly effective against smaller ships, at least on the aft quarters), Dave nevertheless hits one reactor box, as shown.

Okay, Resolution Phase.  Already the Volkhov is down one complete reactor, knocking down available thrust by -1, as well as her starboard quarter mass driver array.

But could it be worse?  Frigates are smaller ships (35,000 tons,180 crew or so), and it doesn’t take much to knock them out.  A frigate’s Ship Crippled roll is a 6+ on a d6, -1 off that target number for each critical (red) box marked off.  This reduces the -6+ to 5+, giving Dave what works out to a 1/3 chance that this ship will power down right now.

He rolls a 5.  So the Novgorod class frigate CPK Volkhov is also crippled, without power, dead in space and out of power.

In effect, the British and Russians have traded frigates.  I’ve slightly damaged the destroyer Singapore,  while he’s badly damaged the larger light cruiser Basilov.  At the moment, the British seem to have the upper hand.

However . . . the aerospace group of the HMS Raven has thrown it’s “Sunday punch.”  Half her bombers are now shot down, and the two that are left are too far from the carrier to land quickly to re-arm.  Yes, they have eight fighters, but these are now only armed with light cannon, not terribly frightening against full-sized ships.  The Russians, by contrast, can fire off those 7-GW rail guns and heavy 40-KG plasma projectors all day …

The advantage may very easily shift back on Turn 3.  This battle isn’t even close to over yet …