Persei-Aries War Resumes
Darkstar Returns (It's baaaaack ...)
It’s true, it’s true … after eight months (I think) since our last game, and I think about a year since the official end of the Third Hercules War, we’ve dusted off the Darkstar rules and played another game! It takes place vaguely in the Third Hercules War timeline (we don’t really have a full campaign going yet), but of course that war is already over and decided so this won’t affect the conclusion of that war in the Darkstar timeline.
The basic background of this engagement has to have the two forces CLOSE, because both players wanted to try out a battleship, and such star-dreadnaughts don’t exactly lend themselves to fast, long-range strikes … especially when under-escorted (as they will be here). Also, both sides have to make MAJOR operational and strategic assets nearby and under threat, or else a battleship wouldn’t be committed to combat in its defense.
So I used the old “Redemption” star system (99 Herculis), a UN Mandate along the Hercules Rim where several regional naval powers have colonies and installations orbiting terrestrial worlds or gas giant moons. We can imagine the US Navy (despite their loss to the British Navy earlier in the war’s timeline, scraped out a new lease here in Redemption thanks to another campaign against the Spanish, French, and Italians of the New Roman Alliance) setting up their new base on one of the dozen or so moons of an outer ice giant’s moon, only to find the Japanese have a moon here as well (Farukon Kosuto, or “Falcon’s Coast”). As so often happens here in the colonial world of Darkstar, misunderstanding compounds distance-delayed communication compounds old grudges compounds corporate greed compounds, compounds, compounds …
Long story short, an American destroyer-frigate battlegroup strayed too close to Faukon Kosuto, Japanese corvettes slung out a salvo of torpedoes. The Americans turned hard about and withdrew, vowing a response to this “militant act of war, blatantly violating the guarantees of (insert half a dozen out-of-date treaties here). Perhaps flush with overconfidence after their recent thrashing of the New Romans, the US Navy sends out a full battleship with heavy cruiser escort. There’s no hiding such a deployment, so the Japanese have plenty of time to respond in kind … and the match is on!
I had the Americans, and Rasmus had the Japanese. Rasmus’ force included his new Sengoku-glass battlecruiser Nobunaga, along with his veteran light cruiser Sendai Byo. I have the Colorado-class “fast battleship” USS Michigan, along with my semi-NPC Gettysburg class heavy cruiser USS Shiloh. Rasmus’ battlecruiser has better shields and more accurate guns than by battleship (his ship is also SLIGHTLY more expensive) 
Both sides set relative high-speed approach vectors, since both these capital ships have available thrust 50% higher than most battleship-sized vessels. USS Michigan is perhaps the boldest of all, the only ship NOT firing full retros, instead pouring every once of power from her huge Pratt & Whitney / GE reactor plant into a high-speed turn to port, thus presenting an opening broadside at over 4100 kilometers. Nine 16-gigawatt rail guns open up, but not a single round hits. The Japanese have fewer guns at these ranges and angles, and they also largely miss. But the first hit is finally landed by the two forward turrets of the heavy cruiser USS Shiloh, doing a single point of damage on the massive Nobunaga (one point of armor, she carries 240 points in all). :D 
The Michigan finally starts to decelerate, her course carefully plotted LAST round (when exactly she made her portside turn) because her commander (Rear-Admiral Jamison Marcus) knew the Michigan would have to avoid that asteroid patch AND decelerate on Turn 2. The Shiloh falls in behind the Michigan, both American warships presenting a broadside to the oncoming Japanese battlecruiser. One curious move is the course-break of the Sendai Byo, opting for a longer-ranged barrage while Nobunaga continues to close the range. This second American double-broadside hits the Japanese battlecruiser much harder, now that the range has closed to where the less accurate American guns have a batter chance of hitting. But it’s right on Nobunaga’s prow, so actual system damage remains very light. 
The Michigan swings her 420,000 tons around the asteroid cluster at 21 kilometers per second, the Shiloh dutifully cutting the same turn on an inside track to keep herself between the enemy and the flagship she is escorting. The Nobunaga welcomes the move, decelerating to just 12 KPS and making a turn to port, so both battleship and battlecruiser are lined up on each other’s broadsides, each targeting the other’s starboard bow. The key difference here is the that the heavy cruiser Shiloh (armed with three triple turrets of 10-gigawatt rail guns and ranging at just 1200 kilometers away) is hitting Nobunaga on the same starboard quarter … while the Sendai Byo is 3200 kilometers from the Shiloh and 4100 from the Michigan. Also, Lady Luck takes a hand here … not only does the Nobunaga take very hard hits on her starboard bow, but they also hit one of her sensor arrays, partially blinding her gun crews. Disaster greater still comes a heartbeat later, when the Shiloh lands two rounds on Nobunaga’s bridge (one 10-GW rail gun and one EPC). The bridge and CIC remain operational, but they are badly damaged and will have a noticeable effect on Nobunaga’s response time. 
Fate has simply dealt IJN Nobunaga a cruel hand here. She’s designed as a fast battlecruiser with highly-accurate guns, but with a damaged bridge and sensors, she’s lost exactly those two qualities … her enhanced agility and her sharpened gun accuracy. Now she’s CLOSE to the big-gun American battlewagon, whose less-accurate (but much heavier) guns are no longer a drawback due to the near point-blank range. On top of all that … Nobunaga is ALONE. She rolls on her back to hide her less-damaged portside, but the Americans aren’t showing any mercy. The Michigan can’t quite maneuver behind Nobunaga, but the Shiloh, closer and faster, is able to land close-range rounds on the battlecruiser’s stern and set the first fires in her starboard engine room (Game terms: the two battleships actually TIE initiative this round, but thanks to the bridge damage, the Nobunaga loses and thus has to move first, allowing the Americans to maneuver behind her to set up salvos into her fantail next turn).
The end comes swiftly. The Nobunaga heaves hard to port (remember, she’s inverted so the turn is effectively to the right), diving straight at her merciless assailants. The maneuver ALMOST works, by diving toward enemies you can sometimes cause them to overshoot. In fact the Michigan’s final attack course is far from ideal, she crosses Nobunaga’s stern at less than 100 kilometers (game terms: in the SAME HEX), which of course exposes her to point-blank fire in turn from the Nobunaga’s after batteries. The Sendai Byo also finally closes the range, likewise drilling into the Michigan’s starboard quarter (by now Michigan is inverted as well). But the Michigan hasn’t taken VERY serious damage on this quarter yet, and despite hard hits at point blank range, she largely weathers the storm. Still, a cascade of decompressions starting in the medical bay forces her to break off from the action. Meanwhile, Michigan’s main 16-GW rail gun cut loose into the Nobunaga, absolutely blowing her stern apart, ripping one starboard engine clean out of the hull and hurling the semi-molten 20,000 ton wreckage into space. She damned near explodes, only the instant order by Commodore Seizo Yamamoto to eject the starboard reactor keeps the ship from detonating into a tiny man-made star. Secondary guns go into the Sendai Byo, along with the full broadside battery of the Shiloh. The bridge it hit and explodes into space, crippling the light cruiser and killing her captain, Commander Kaneo Tani. 
This battle is well and truly over. Honestly, the American Navy is my preferred faction and I just like their ships and know them pretty well. Conversely, this was Rasmus’ first game in almost a year. Simple, tight, conservative play is usually the key, and keeping both of my ships close together so they can focus on the same target, on the same facing, turn after turn, usually gets the job done. Even more importantly, my luck in this game was incredible. I won initiative 3 out of 5 turns, after Turn 1 I didn’t have a single volley of fire that wasn’t above projected hit averages. The hits I did score were in JUST the right place, quickly taking away the Nobunaga’s two key advantages – agility and long-ranged accuracy, huge traits for which she paid dearly in design and construction. With those advantages removed, she just became underpowered against a simpler, more “brutish” Colorado class that outgunned her broadside about 2-1 … ESPECIALLY as the range closed to absurdly close distances.
Here is USS Michigan after the battle. You can see where Nobunaga’s aft guns drilled into her starboard quarter. If the Nobunaga had instead landed those big hits further aft … or if she’d been able to get her broadside into this instead of just her aft batteries, or if Sendai Byo’s hits had landed in the same place, if… if… if… 
The Nobunaga after the battle. I won’t lie, Lady Luck didn’t just blow me a kiss in this game, she didn’t just flutter her eye-lashes at me, she straight-out mounted me in a full-frontal lap dance. :D :D :D I’m just glad all my dice rolls were on camera, by the end my dice were so hot I needed welders’ gloves to pick them out of the tray. I mean, I did play well and in Rasmus’ shoes I might have done a few things different, but I freely admit fortune was ALSO well and truly on my side this time. 
Great game and great to see Darkstar back in action.
Thanks very much, @gremlin . Yeah, Darkstar fades into the background for a while now and again … but always returns strong! 😀