DARKSTAR CAMPAIGN UPDATE: DUCHESS ANNABEL’S WAR IS OVER

Update – 23:45

GMT Okay, the battle is finally over!

First up, my last Russian heavy cruiser is indeed crippled by that torpedo spreads!

The Kraken and Xu Shan manage to take out the destroyer Oder and finally the pocket battleship Von der Tann.  Return fire forces the Xu Shan to break off … leaving the only Duchess’ Alliance warship still operational on the field is the HMS Kraken … so 182 points for the Duchess’ Alliance … a minor victory from this 635 point battle.

Entry – 21:10 GMT

The battle heats up!  As the heavily damaged Prussian electronic warfare escort frigate KMS Nordwind flees … the way is open for Russian, Chinese, and British torpedoes!  The two Prussian light cruisers move in, hoping to cut broadsides across the stern of the Russian Narva that lost initiative.  But now the Petrograd cuts across the stern POINT BLANK of the two German cruisers, and the battleship Von der Tann cuts across her stern!  Chinese cruisers and destroyers cut across the battleship’s stern!  Dozens of torpedoes sail in!

Message from the Petrograd …

WITNESS ME !!!!

AUGHHH! 21:25 GMT … first torpedoes are impacting! We’ve shot down all Prussian torpedoes coming at us! It’s been a holocaust of Prussian scouts!

WHAT A DAY!
WHAT A LOVELY DAY!

Update: 23:03 GMT –
Long fire phase plus a slight break for dinner –

The fire phase from hell is over!

First, the Petrograd manaced to cripple both the Gustow and the Rossbach, but was of course blown inside out by the huge guns of the Von der Tann (primary guns only).  Secondary guns crippled the Chinese destroyer Hohhot.  The Hohhot and the Xu Shan crossed the Von der Tann’s sterns for point-blank broadsides that did an incredible amount of damage against the pocket battleship’s stern and DAMNED NEAR took her out …  but she’s still clinging to life at the moment.

This thing could still go either way!  I’m pretty sure that Prussian pocket battleship is going down this next turn, but she’s taking out multiple ships per turn, and big ships too … Most of the allied hopes are now in the HMS Kraken … as the Russian CPK Narva is badly damaged in the stern and has lost her aft shielding as well.

Update:  23:10 GMT –

Torpedoes coming in for the round of combat.  My poor Russian heavy cruiser rolled very badly on her point-defense roll here, and is rolling on a penalty because of sensor damage sustained last turned.  I only shot down one of these torpedoes, and the other three pretty much automatically hit because this cruiser also lost her aft shielding (last broadside volley from the Prussian cruisers Gustow and Rossbach).  These detonated in the engines, and have probably knocked out this Russian heavy cruiser as well.

Update:  23:15

Torpedo and missile spreads from Chinese, Russian, and British cruisers that has probably crippled the Von der Tann finally.

Hey, we’re finally getting ready for 640-point megagame in Darkstar, where the new Prussian pocket-battleshaip Von der Tann is getting sent out on her maiden voyage!  Between turns I may start posting pictures and mini-bat-reps … almost like a Darkstar Live Blog!

A Prussian battlefleet faces off against a “Duchess Annabel’s” coalition of Chinese, Russian, and British warships!  No carriers in this one, just a slugging  match of heavy cruisers light cruisers, destroyers, and one pocket battleship!

Who do you think will win?!?!

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Entry – 20:09 GMT

PRUSSIAN FORCE:
KMS Von der Tann (pocket battleship)
KMS Güstow (light cruiser)
KMS Rossbach (light cruiser)
KMS Oder (destroyer)
KMS Nordwind (EW escort frigate)

ALLIED FORCE:
HMS Kraken (heavy cruiser)
CPK Petrograd (heavy cruiser)
CPK Narva (heavy cruiser)
PLN Xu Shan (light cruiser)
PLN Hohhot (destroyer)
CPK K-98 (torpedo corvette

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

Entry – 20:18 GMT:

First weapons fired at 2880 kilometers!

Entry – 20:30 GMT

First fire!  K-98 corvette is horribly damaged, along with Prussian frigate Nordwind, heavy cruiser Petrograd (relatively light damage).   UPDATE:  K-98 corvette is crippled and knocked out of the battle in the opening volley!  Nordwind rolled a 38% … and a 30 or below would have forced her to break off!  so she BARELY stayed in!

Entry 20:45

Yes, Alex and his might battleship and light cruiser task force decided to put a significant amount of firepower on a pitiful little corvette!

Come on, man!  PICK ON SOMEONE YOUR OWN SIZE! 😀 😀

SITUATION:  Having been handed a series of rough defeats in the Cervantes star system (Mu Ara), the Iron Wolves are finally falling back to surrounding friendly systems to regroup and lay new plans.  One such haven is the nearby Japanese star system of Onomoken (“Lord’s Sword” – HD 172051), a yellow main sequence star with no less than six terrestrial planets rich in ores and metals, and three gas giants with heavily-colonized and industrialized moons.  At just 11.5 light-years away from the recently-embattled Cervantes system, it lies within just two weeks’ striking distance of most naval task forces in Cervantes, making it a prime target for resurgent Annabel’s Alliance striking out from these Imperial Russian holdings.

In fact, British, Panasian, and Russian naval commanders have already decided on a different course of action.  With the Franz Josef “Kruezergeschwader” (cruiser squadron) so more or less gutted and Prussian naval forces so badly damaged throughout the Libra-Sagittarius SCS (strategic command sector), it is hoped that the direct path to the Eisenwolf Colonies at Gliese 570 lies more or less open – or at least lightly defended.  Just maybe, Annabel’s Alliance can seize the moment to smash the weakened Prussians out of the Duchess’ War.

To prevent other nations of the Iron Wolf coalition from reinforcing these Prussian colonies, misdirection operations are launched to keep Japanese, New Roman, and Black Dragon battlegroups and task forces pinned down in other areas.  The first of these is intended to reinforce the impression that the Annabel Alliance is indeed making a push in the opposite direction from Cervantes, toward the nearby Japanese colonies of Onomoken.

The mission is given to Captain Pyotr Myshaga and the Lazarev task force.  Although not nearly at full strength after the savage battles in Cervantes, Myshaga’s force is nevertheless deemed fit to at least launch a diversionary raid into Onomoken’s outermost reaches.  After all, the Lazarev and her escorts are hardly invading the system, simply penetrating its outlying regions and engaging the first small force it runs across.

Myshaga and his Russians, however, get a little more than they bargained for as they complete their first high-speed Darkstar wave toward the Onomoken system.  Typically, invading naval formations first make such a fast “approach wave,” usually at ninth- or tenth-magnitude, to cover most of the interstellar distance to a target.  Dropping out of their Darkstar wave just outside the system, they then take new sensor readings and astronavigational fixes (aligning themselves to the relative galactic motions of the target star system, which of course are usually radically different from the star system from which they sortied), and finally set a much slower, more accurate, and stealthy Darkstar course to actually penetrate the enemy star system.

While making preparations for this second jump, however, the Lazarev task force finds it is being approached by a New Roman cruiser-destroyer battlegroup, built around the Foch-Hispania class light cruiser Leclerc.  Myshaga decides this will be the “small force” he will engage to fulfill his mission.  There are no moons or planets nearby, this battle will take place in the whisper-thin electromagnetic bands of the Onomoken star systems helioshock boundary, where the star’s solar wind is piled up ever so faintly against similar solar wind and particles of the interstellar medium.  Put more simply, it’s at the very edge of interstellar space, some 20,000 AU (almost one-third of a light-year) out from the Onomoken star.

REPORT:  What was supposed to be a raid quickly turns into more of a pitched battle, as the Leclerc battlegroup and  Lazarev task force make their initial approaches.

With much longer-ranged weapons, more gunnery, and more accurate sensors, the French of the Leclerc, Calais, and Corsica opt to keep the range open as long as they can, holding back and drilling the Russian corvettes with long-ranged laser fire to lighten the weight of the expected Russian torpedo spreads.  The Russians, for their part, and to close the distance as quickly as possible, but are also using the vast, ionized bands of charged particles drifting throughout this helioshock boundary as “cover,” hoping they will take the edge off superior New Roman electronics.

At first, the tactics of both sides seem to be working reasonably well.  As the Russians hoped, the opening French volley missed at a range of 3600 kilometers, partly due to the EM disruption of the helioshock ion bands.  But as the Russians close, a second French volley engages the torpedo corvette K-121 at 2,200 kilometers, not quite crippling her but forcing her captain to break off the action.

For the French, however, things become unstuck from there.  The Russian return volley, even at this relatively extended range, is devastating.  The Lazarev and Syekyra have upgraded their targeting systems, and even shooting through a dense “pressure wave” of ionized solar wind, enough hits are scored on the starboard bow of the fragile destroyer Corsica to force her to break off.  The damage isn’t actually that bad, but the hits just happen to set up a cascade failure through Corsica’s navigation computers and life support systems.  Then again, perhaps no one is particularly eager to get in a really bloody fight this far out from any bases, colonies, or potential rescue.

The Russians press their advantage, and perhaps get a little too confident, splitting their torpedo spread between both the cruiser Leclerc and destroyer Calais, clearly hoping to wrap up this little raid straight away.  The move doesn’t work, and although both remaining French ships are heavily damaged, they remain operational.  Their return volley, meanwhile, positively mauls the corvettes K-98 and K-109, leaving both burning cripples, adrift in space and already screaming for rescue.

With all three of their torpedo corvettes now removed from the fight, the Russians will have to rely much more on raw gunnery to defeat the weakened French.  But their guns for the moment aren’t doing very well at all, despite the shorter range.  The French commander (Captain Raphael deChalemonde) now has his ships in a solar wind pressure wave, using it as a disruptive screen against Russian targeting while the Russians are barreling at him more or less in the “open.”

Myshaga, however, now has the taste of blood in his teeth.  Shaking off his losses, he continues to press the French, his next volley finally crippling the badly-damaged destroyer Corsica.  But the Corsica has already released her own broadside of 8-megakelvin lasers at the Syekyra, followed up by a volley of pinpoint accurate rail guns from the Leclerc and especially her incredibly powerful (and long-ranged) 12-megakelvin lasers.  These hits slash right across Syekyra’s engines, exposed as Myshaga turned his ships to broadside the French.  The Syekyra lies crippled right along with the Corsica, both destroyers tumbling through deep space.

The battle has now come down to the two flagships, Lazarev and Leclerc.  Myshaga and the Lazarev have a clear advantage, however, as the Leclerc has already been hit astern by five torpedoes and has thus lost two complete engines, along with maneuvering thrusters and perhaps most distressingly, sensors suites that feed telemetry data into her advanced targeting system.  Largely hobbled and half-blind, the Leclerc really has no chance against the undamaged Lazarev, yet for an incredible ten minutes, Leclerc keep hope alive through some great maneuvering and lucky breaks.  The Lazarev just can’t finish her off, all the while taking a steady stream of damage from Leclerc’s rail guns and especially her powerful 12-megakelvin lasers.  The Leclerc can’t win, but if she can just survive, she can force a draw … or perhaps force the Lazarev to break off with a lucky hit.

Just such a miracle almost happens when the Lazarev’s bridge is hit by one of Leclerc’s penetrating high-powered lasers.  Myshaga himself is wounded in the resultant explosions, but the Lazarev’s bridge remains operational and Myshaga retains command.

The end comes with abrupt brutality.  With half her engines and maneuvering thrusters gone, Leclerc can only outmaneuver the Lazarev for so long.  Finally Lazarev cuts behind her for a point-blank broadside across her stern at less than 150 kilometers.  Already savaged by an earlier Russian torpedo spread, the Leclerc’s engines and reactors are positively shredded by close-range Russian plasma and EPC fire.  Beyond crippled, the Leclerc ejects both her reactors with just seconds to spare, it’s really a miracle she doesn’t explode.

The “skirmish” is over.  Although heavily damaged, including a bridge hit that has wounded her captain, the  Russian light cruiser Lazarev remains operational.  Even considering the rescue and recovery operations that will keep her occupied for the time being, she now represents a major threat to the Japanese holdings in the Onomoken star system.  In fact, major Japanese vessels (including in all probability the Konoya carrier strike group) will not be available to help defend the Eisenwolf Colonies against the larger invasion of Annabel Alliance warships already en route.  Although only a diversion, only a “sideshow,” the fact remains that this skirmish in the Onomoken helioshock boundary represents another massive come-back for the Russian Navy in Duchess Annabel’s War, and more bad news for the faltering Iron Wolf Coalition.

SCORING:  The Russians have the light cruiser Lazarev remaining and two scouts (116 points).  With the overall battle only being 208 points in size, this constitutes a MAJOR VICTORY, although only in a small battle.

The actual gameplay warships record sheet for the Scharnhorst-class pocket battleship in snow complete.  Hard copies are printed up and this ship is ready for her “maiden voyage” playtest hopefully this weekend.  😀

Meanwhile, smaller battles between French task forces of the New Roman Alliance and the Black Dragons of the Khitan-Tunguska Free State are hopefully on the cards for tonight, tomorrow, or perhaps Saturday.

Again,  for best results, select the image, then open the image in new tab for full resolution.

Okay, now it’s time to start drawing this baby out (PS14, after concept sketches the old fashioned way just to hammer out ideas).

First, we have the 12-gigawatt rail gun turrets.  As naval historians may have guessed, the Scharnhorst’s three triple turrets are inspired by the 11-inch triple turrets of the historical Scharnhorst in WW2.

Then, the smaller 6-gigawatt rail guns, and the 35mm paint defense arrays.

Okay, no more teasing.  Here is the full ship layout.  Again, she looks huge, not quote three-quarters length of an Imperial II class star destroyer in Star Wars.  But in Darkstar, she is a lightweight for a battleship.  They come much, much bigger than this.  The Scharnhorst class is built for speed, the classic “battlecruiser” that can outrun whatever she can’t outshoot.

FOR BEST RESULTS – CLICK ON IMAGE AND WHEN IT OPENS, OPEN IMAGE IN NEW TAB for best resolution.

A few design features, some “military,” some “game required,” others purely for aesthetics.

First we have the prow.  As you may have seen from other older drawings in this thread, our Prussian ships have that classic WW1-inspired “Kaiser Prow” with the forward-swept bow.  Here, the Scharnhorst has a much more sleek version, but the design concept and influence is still there.  Also note where I’ve tried to give the mass driver batteries the widest possible arcs … fore and aft, port and starboard, ventral and dorsal.  Space combat is in three dimensions, after all.

Next is the stern, where we see her two port engines, more mass driver protection (more on the aft quarters, most enemy commanders like to aim torpedoes at the stern of a ship to get at reactors and engines) , along with maneuvering thrusters to provide lateral movement and turning ability.

Note that in Darkstar, the ion thrust of these engines is managed not through “pipes and nozzles,” but through superconducting containment field magnets.  This allows the thrust to be vented with equally forwards or backwards, so ships can decelerate as easily as they can accelerate (helps with game design/ mechanics when the players apply thrust points in the movement phase).

The round objects you see are the shield generators.  There are six locations for these on most ships, bow, stern, port bow, starboard bow, port quarter, starboard quarter.

The large fin you see (and elsewhere on the ship) are gravity rudders.  By applying a slight bend to the  curved space-time that allows these ships to have artificial gravity, gravitic shielding, and even their limited FTL travel, they can also assist with maneuvering by bending the space they’re actually travelling through, especially important since these ships usually fight battles at 15-30 kps and cruise at 30-100 kps.

Also, this keeps the ships moving and turning in a predominantly “forward” direction, maintaining a bit of a “space opera” feel rather than a strict Newtonian movement system where ships could theoretically move sideways as easily as any other direction.

Top view of the primary forward gun deck, with “Anton” 12GW turret and superfiring 6GW secondary battery turret.  Again, some 40% of the ship’s weapons are mounted on the ventral “underside” of the ship as well, so the ship can semi-plausibly fight in a 3D combat environment.

Note the mass drivers are on large pylons (those are probably about the size of a five-story building) so the guns have the best possible field of fire against enemy fighters, bombers, missiles, or torpedoes no matter which direction from which they might be approaching.

More maneuvering thrusters, more shield projectors (port and starboard bow mountings).

The only thing left now is to see how well this ship does in combat!  😀

So as some of you who are following this project may know, my friend @aras (Alex) had something of a rough afternoon at our last big session of Darkstar.  In a furious battle against my Russians and my girlfriend @gladesrunner (Jenn) Chinese and British, Alex lost two of his very best ships in near-simultaneous explosions.  Of course losing battles is half the game, but normally you don’t lose a ship outright (starships are often “crippled” and can then eventually be repaired) – much less two.

Fortunately, two things mitigated the sting of this outcome.  One, both his captains made their escape and survival rolls, so although the ships are gone, the commanders can continue their careers.  Two, his main commander (formerly of the Prussian Leopold class heavy cruiser Franz Josef) has accrued just enough campaign points to get himself promoted into a new ship anyway.

He’s decided to take the plunge, and get his commander the very first “player-character” earned battleship in the history of Darkstar.

Of course, as the game designer and the guy running this campaign (Duchess Annabel’s War), it’s up to me to get his new class of ship ready for play.  I’ve had this Prussian “pocket battleship” class ready to go for some time now, but I’ve never really playtested it before, and some of the master root math in the Excel spreadsheets that drive starships construction (and calculate scenario point cost) has changed in the years since I first designed this class, so I wanted to tweak this design, dust it off, and get it ready to go.

DESIGN CONCEPT:

The Scharnhorst class is the product of a recent effort within the Imperial Prussian Kriegsmarine to redress its overabundance on super-heavy, super-gunned, and very slow “dreadnought” style warships.  Quite the opposite, the Scharnhorsts are fast, agile raiders, able to easily keep pace with virtually any known heavy cruiser and even older light cruisers.  Its three triple-turreted Henschel-Krupp EGK-5100 12-gigawatt rail cannons give it an awesome punch for a ship its size, their threat further accented by the Atlas Elektronik EG-3000 targeting and sensor array.  While the Scharnhorst’s 6 gigawatt rail gun secondary armament is curiously old, these guns are still more than suitable to finish off crippled freighters or tankers.

Essentially, the Scharnhorst was envisioned as a ship that could outrun anything it could not outfight.  Accordingly, the captain of a Scharnhorst would be very well advised not to engage in pitched battle with a “true” battleship.  At just 349,000 tons, Scharnhorsts are outweighed by at least 35% by even “light” battleships like American Colorado class or the British Repulse class battle cruiser.  Note the scout ships carried to find enemy convoys, and the extended storage to support long raiding cruises and marines for boarding actions.  All the same, the Scharnhorst’s protection is relatively light for a battleship.  Indeed, along its aft sections, the ECM and gravitic shielding are weaker even than those of some light cruisers.

SHIPS IN CLASS:

KS-1201 — KMS Scharnhorst — 2502, New Wilhelmshaven, 61 Cygni
KS-1202 — KMS Gneisenau  —  2505, Moltke Orbital Staryards, Earth
KS-1203 — KMS Graf Spee  —  2506, Kiel Staryards, Vega Epsilon
KS-1204 — KMS Stauffenberg  —  2508, New Wilhelmshaven, 61 Cygni
KS-1205 — KMS Graf Zeppelin  —  2510, Moltke Orbital Staryards, Earth
KS-1206 — KMS Seydlitz  —  2512, Kiel Staryards, Vega Epsilon
KS-1207 — KMS Preussen  —  2514, New Wilhelmshaven, 61 Cygni
KS-1208 — KMS Von der Tann  —  2516, Moltke Orbital Staryards, Earth

So first thing to brush up on is the ship hull and superstructure and engines.  Mass, power, and crew are standard for the “battleship” warship type, and basically gets the design on the “battleship” damage and component chart (which is huge).

Two changes – the engines are now “next gen” which gives a 4% boost in available power (10400 up from 10000).  Trust me, the way these spreadsheets work out this is a massive boost – as it should be since it adds 40 points to the ship’s point cost (the full price for a standard destroyer).

The other change is less fortunate – the armor ratings.  In previous editions in the game, “partial armor” was possible (the game was much more granular to the point of unplayability).  The Scharnhorst class had partial armor which save tens of thousands of tons of weight which allowed her to pack a huge punch and still be freakishly fast (at least for a battleship).

This design feature is no longer allowed, so I had to bump up the Scharnhost to full armor rating, which has admittedly slowed her waaaay down.

ECM and gravitic shielding are pretty standard.  A rating of “4” is pretty usual for a warship, although a little weak for a battleship.  Still, this ECM and shielding suite draws 3600 total power, that’s almost the total power output of a complete destroyer.

Okay, now it’s time for some fun stuff … and some very hard choices.  I’m talking about the weapons load out, where that armor adjustment forced to me to make some very tough subtractions here.  I was hoping the “next gen” engineering upgrade mentioned above would have allowed me to kick these 12-GW rail guns up to 13-GW, but there’s no way in hell that’s happening.  In fact, I had to also remove her two triple-bank of Type IV “Sternjaeger” (Star Hunter) torpedo tubes.

Furthermore, I had to reduce the the mass driver loud-out from 48 total guns to 42 (these are small, 35mm point-defense guns to shoot down enemy fighters, bombers, missiles, torpedoes and the like.

These sacrifices, however, not only allowed me to keep the ship “legal” in the new system, but also add a nice back-up array of 6-GW rail guns for secondary armament, nice for finishing off crippled British freighters and the like.  😀

If there are any data geeks out there, the way these work is in the Type column, data validation drop-downs allow you to select weapons types from a whole menu of over 200 weapons types and calibers from a master root sheet tucked in the back of the workbook.  This way you don’t have to type the name of the weapons.

This is important because the spelling and format has to be exactly right, since it reads off a VLOOKUP and IF/AND function coming off that same root sheet for mass, power, and crew requirements.  These are automatically multiplied out by the number of weapons you select in the Guns column (note each of these turrets have three guns, etc.). which are also pulled off data validation drop-downs.

Long story short, these sheets do all the arithmetic for you.

Secondary systems.  We like scouts, cutters, yachts, and launches so these ships can do business like real warships, there are no “transporters” in this universe and these are the kind of small craft these ships carried in “blue water” navies.

Obviously, on a ship like the Japanese Akagi class, American Lexington class, and British Ark Royal class supercarriers – or Russian Zhukov class planetary assault ships, this part of the ship design sheet gets a lot more complex.

Perhaps most important, however, is the “BB Fifth Gen Sensors (+1)” – note that is a very expensive system.  It gives ALL weapons for this ship a +1 to hit, which is actually pretty serious.  Given that with many engagement ranges, the BTH is maybe 8 on a d10, and you subtract enemy ECM / Gravitic Shielding from that for your final number to hit (usually a 4 or 5), this leaves you with a 3 or 4 on a d10 to hit with each weapon.  If you get a +1 on that, you’re getting an effective 25%-33% bonus to hit with EVERY gun on your ship, which for the Scharnhorst class is pretty important.

These kinds of bonus especially help with long-range shooting, which ships like the Scharnhorst class really prefer, engaging with those long-reaching 12-GW rail guns at 3500+ km, pelting down enemy armor before they even have a chance to respond.

Odd and ends.  Marines (boarding can be very much a thing in this game), passengers, cargo, etc.

Finally at the bottom we have the freakishly expensive 10th-magnitude Darkstar wave for the ship’s FTL.  Usually battleships have a 9th-magnitude Darkstar wave for FTL, because they get geometrically more expensive in weight and especially power consumption as the class gets bigger and bigger (and battleships are of course so very big).

But this helps keep the Scharnhost as a “raider” – able to travel at much faster FTL speeds than any other battleship class on record (she pushes x300 c, most battleships only do x160 c).  So if enemy scouts, corvettes, or pickets detect her in a certain star system, the potential “threat bubble” she poses to enemy fleets, commerce, shipping lanes, and orbital installations is much, much wider.

Finally we get to the “proof in the pudding,” – the THRUST of the ship.  This drives how the ship moves on the table top, how she maneuvers, acellerates, decelerates, turns, rolls initiative, everything.

It’s the the total mass of the ship, divided by the remaining available power.  This comes out to a ratio, which gets rounded to the nearest whole number.  Clearly we’re aiming for a 3.5 here, so we wind up with a thrust of 4.

For context, this is ridiculously fast for a battleship.  This is a “ninja battleship” – which is what we were aiming for in the ship design concept.  Most battleships have a 2.  American “Pacific Pattern” fast battleships have a 3, as do British Repulse class battlecruisers.  This baby has a 4, allowing her to outmaneuver and outrun some heavy cruisers.

And with the “SLD engineering / thrust” upgrade that Alex has with his commander (purchased with xp-style “campaign points) this baby will have a thrust of FIVE.  That’s absolutely nuts for a warship of this class.  She’ll be outrunning heavy cruisers, and keeping up with light cruisers, and with good initiative rolls, even keeping pace with some destroyers.

But again, she’s also a lightweight.  Armor is only standard, shielding is light, and those guns, while scary for a heavy cruiser, are actually quite puny for a battleship.

Still decelerating, the Annabel’s Alliance ships make their dive down into the atmosphere only when they’ve closed the range to less to 1,500 kilometers.  The Requiem leads the charge, peeling off and diving her sleek makes a dive into the lightning and winds of Chernyeva.  The Zhang Jia reacts, s-turning up and behind the Requiem’s stern, even if this allows the whole Chinese battlegroup (light missile cruiser Xu Shan, destroyers Hohot and Shantao) to cut behind the Zhang Jia in turn.  The hatred between these Chinese and the Black Dragons is beyond murderous, remember that it was against the Russians and Chinese that the Black Dragons originally revolted when the Black Dragon War first started way back in 2512.  That war, now entering its seventh year, has not been a pretty one.

Yet the Russians themselves take a more measured approach.  The light cruiser Lazarev and corvette K-98 barely dip into the Chernyeva atmosphere, presenting a roadside to the Prussians and targeting the EW / escort frigate Nordwind.

The opening exchange of fire is intense.  The torpedo spread of the Xu Shan, one of the new line “Greater Xhia” class of light missile cruisers, slams into the stern of the Kesseldorf, who’s mass drivers have been mostly been engaged against the torpedoes fired from the K-98.

Gunfire from the Lazarev, with enhanced targeting on her powerful plasma projectors and EPCs (electron particle cannons) tear apart the bridge of the Nordwind and singlehanded put her out of the battle.  An instant later, however, the pin-point gunnery of the Kesseldorf (Commander Valentin Goeritz) likewise drills 8-gigawatt rail guns into the bridge and CIC systems of the Lazarev, leaving her blinded and adrift as well.

Seconds after that, the Requiem’s advanced lasers and light rail cannon slam into the Kesseldorf’s port quarter, along with the aforementioned torpedoes from the Lazarev, K-98,  Xu Shan, and two Panasian destroyers.  Not many of these relatively low-tech warheads hit, but with so many fired, plus the razor-accurate gunfire of the Requiem, and forward guns of the Xu Shan, hit the Kesseldorf so hard that she actually explodes, killing 198 of her crew, the baslt wave doing tremendous damage to the Franz Jospef’s fo’c’sle and starboard bow.  At the same time, however, the point-blank broadside of the Black Dragon killer Zhang Jia, one of the deadliest ships in Known Space, tears apart the stern of the Requiem, leaving her spinning through the Chernyeva atmosphere … only the gravity acceleration provided by the planet will keep her moving fast enough to not spiral down into the crushing heat, pressure, and gravity of the gas giant’s lower atmosphere.

Yet even this isn’t all … since the broadsides of the destroyers Hohhot and Shantao  likewise tear open the Zhang Jia’s and reduce her to little more than a man-made rocket hurtling straight up out of the Chernyeva atmosphere.  Even so, the mass torpedo strike of the Zhang Jia and the Nordwind, together with the aft guns of the Kesseldorf, is also enough to, in the same instant, cripple the destroyers Hohhot and Shantao.

Just that fast, there are only three ships left, the huge heavy cruiser Franz Josef, the damaged light cruiser Shantao, and the tiny Russian corvette K-98.

The battle now comes down to rail guns vs. torpedoes, size and bulk and hitting power vs. speed and maneuver.  The Xu Shan is fast even for a light cruiser, while the corvette K-98 can outrun some aerospace craft and possibly even torpedoes.  But neither can outgun a rail gun bolt.  Time and again, they manage to stay behind the Franz Josef as Captain Gold takes her up and out of the Chernyeva atmosphere, pinging away with their much smaller guns, hoping to stay out of Franz Josef’s full broadside just long enough for their torpedoes to score a killing blow.  The Franz Josef has very powerful gravitic shielding over her stern, however, not to mention aft gun batteries that are quickly smashing the Xu Shan’s forward sections into mangled, superheated slag.  The Panasians and Russians are also quickly running out of torpedoes …

In the end, however, the Xu Shan and K-98 simply get lucky.  Some of their last torpedoes gut the Franz Josef, again doing enough internal damage that the huge Prussian heavy cruiser detonates, the blast so powerful that it damages the Xu Shan some 540 kilometers away.  The blast also wipes out all the scout aerospace craft on both sides, engaged in a furious miniature dogfight near the Franz Josef as British and Panasian scouts tried to shoot into Franz Josef’s crippled port quarter shielding.

The Battle of Chernyeva is a shocking defeat for the Prussians.  The loss of their two most powerful ships, the Franz Josef and the Kesseldorf, is enough to settle the issue once and for all in the Cervantes system.  If the Iron Wolves want to score any victories in Duchess Annabel’s War, they’ll have to do it somewhere else.  Also, the Prussians have very been badly hurt, the heart torn out of the Franz Josef cruiser squadron.  More ships are ready to carry on the fight (including the light cruiser Rossbach, destroyer Oder, frigate-monitor Dresden), but for now the war effort for the Iron Wolves will have to be borne by the Black Dragons, New Romans, and Japanese.

SCORING:  The Chinese have the light cruiser Xu Shan, (100 points), the Russians have the corvette K-98 (10 points).  No scouts remain on either side.  Annabel’s Alliance wins by 110 points, very solid but still minor victory (25.4%)

“Duchess Annabel’s War” continues between the “Iron Wolf” Coalition (Imperial Prussia, Japan, New Roman Alliance, New Khitan Free State) and “Annabel’s Alliance” (Great Britain, Panasian League, Holy Russian Empire).

SITUATION:  The Iron Wolves aren’t done with the Russians in the Cervantes (Mu Ara) system yet.  Yes, they’ve been checked at the system’s outer debris belt, failing to “kick in the front door” at the Battle of Outer Cervantes.  Subsequently, the Black Dragons also failed to “slip in through the back door” at the recent clash at the twin moons of Chernyeva Twelve.  But the Black Dragons, particularly the Imperial Prussians, are convinced that one more solid blow will finally crack the Russians and their allies in this system and collapse all their holdings here in the “Sagittarius Wing” of the Libra-Sagittarius warzone (that’s the “west” third of the warzone as viewed from Earth).

Confirmation of this presumption comes in the form of continued intelligence reports from the so-called “Red Kitsune,” the deadly Iron Wolf spy that continues to elude the efforts of British Intelligence, the Russian FSB, and Chinese counterintelligence.  The Russians are having a hard time bringing in new ships.  Even their light fleet carrier Komarov has been called away to deal with another crisis in the ongoing war with the Black Dragons in other sectors.  The Russians are not making good their losses, the Lazarev task force remains their only real naval presence in the Cervantes system, and even that is understrength.

All the same, the bloody-knuckled victories of Outer Cervantes and Chernyeva Twelve have also steeled Russian resolve, quashing talk of cutting some kind of separate peace.  Furthermore, the Russians are making the most of their partners in the “Annabel’s Alliance,” leveraging them for reinforcements where their own navy cannot provide the needed firepower.  But whereas the British helped save the day at Outer Cervantes, this time it’s the Panasian Union who are sending the bulk of the reinforcements.

For the Russians, such contributions from their allies are the only thing holding their defense of the Cervantes star system together, a valuable colony along their Second Band trade routes.  For the British and Panasian Union, defending Cervantes is admittedly becoming expensive, but at the same time it’s been keeping the war away from British and Panasian colonies, like Annabel’s Star or Gū Xing (Falcon’s Star, HD 147513).  As with most coalitional wars throughout history, the “allies” are using each other.

The Prussians, meanwhile, have little time for such subtleties.  Amassing an elite force around the heavy cruiser Franz Josef, they enlist the aid of the recently-repaired Black Dragon light missile cruiser Zhang Jia, more or less as a guide, and set a parabolic course around the back side of the Cervantes system.  Again the Iron Wolves will go for the “back door” of the system, but rather than try to “ghost” in behind the outer moons of the Chernyeva gas giant, they bolt straight in, and by the end of December the Franz Josef task force is actually within the ice giant’s wind-swept, lightning-torn atmosphere.

It’s a hostile place to stage a naval strike force.  Winds of methane and helium rip by at 900 kilometers an hour, pelting the hulls with rains of liquid nitrogen at -200⁰ F.  Yet the Prussian commander, the impetuous and headstrong Captain Matthew Gold (hero of the Battle of Zubrin and winner of the Kriegsmarine Knight’s Cross in the Hercules Gate War), is sure that if he maintains his position here, the Annabel’s Alliance counterstrike (when it inevitably comes) will have to set a course down “into the soup” to meet him. That means a slow approach down into the dangers of the Chernyeva atmospheric pressure, winds, lightning, and crushing gravity well (Chernyeva has a mass of 1.19 Jupiters) … giving Gold’s expert gunners and huge 11-gigawatt  rail guns … that much more time to engage and destroy their approaching enemies.

The Battle of the Chernyeva Gas Giant … is on.

REPORT: Largely armed with Russian and Chinese-made short-range plasma projectors and rail guns, the commanders of the Annabel’s Alliance task force (Captain Pyotr Myshaga, Commander Sara West, Commander Chao Chen Fengbao) decide to set a relatively fast course toward the Prussians and Black Dragons.   To do this, they have to remain outside the thicker belts of the Chernyeva gas giant’s atmosphere, skimming overhead at speeds approaching 40 kps.  For their part, the Prussians set a course straight up,  still deep within the Chernyeva atmosphere but maintaining sufficient escape velocity for maneuvers and escape should any of their ships take too much battle damage.  The Franz Josef opens fire with her forward batteries, tearing open holes in the prow of the British light cruiser Requiem, while the Zhang Jia slings out a full spread of her frontal torpedo tubes.

The Chinese and British, meanwhile, are already targeting the Prussian frigate Nordwind.    The tactic is a sound one, only if they knock out this small but vital link in the Prussian fleet’s defense (the Nordwind is a powerful anti-aerospace defense ship and electronic warfare platform), the massive Chinese and Russian torpedo waves will have no chance to counter the huge Prussian edge in sheer weight of gunnery.

As the Black Dragons start to head toward the gap between the two Chernyeva Twelve moonlets, Captain Pyotr Myshaga of the Lazarev hopes to “cross their T” and broadside them as they come through the passage.  But the Black Dragons have anticipated this, and as Lazarev decelerates and turns to port to cross their T, they instead accelerate  and fish-hook to cut across Lazarev’s stern at less than 600 kilometers.  It’s a deadly move, but the destroyers Syekyra and Rusalka counter but looping all the way around the smaller Chernyeva Twelve moonlet and cutting in turn behind the sterns of the Black Dragon battlegroup.

From here, the battle gets very bloody, very fast … as has been typical between the Russians and Black Dragons since the opening of the Black Dragon War six years ago.  The Lazarev’s torpedoes slam into the stern of the Zhang Jia, destroying engines and possibly putting her out of action.  The Lazarev is nearly exploded by the massive wave of Black Dragon torpedoes and close range plasma and rail gun fire, especially the torpedoes of the Zhang Jia (upgraded EW) and the rail guns of her sistership Xin Tian.  Russian scouts of the Lazarev manage to finish off the K-206 with only their light machine guns, while the rail guns and plasma projectors of the Syekyra and Rusalka open fire point blank into the stern of the destroyer Gorokhov and light missile cruiser Xin Tian.

Long story short, at the end of this horrific exchange of gunfire (all delivered at ranges less than 600 km, some of it as short as 150 km), only the damaged cruiser Xin Tian and the destroyer Syekyra remain operational.

After the blistering violence of the initial pass, what follows now is a complex series of maneuvers, a virtual 100,000-ton dogfight between the Xin Tian and Syekyra.  Both ships wheel and turn, pivot and bluff, each trying to get guns behind the other for a shot at the engines.  The Syekyra has the edge (Commander Ekaterina A. Duranov), being a smaller and having undamaged engines, while the Xin Tian has larger engines but more bulk, and her reactors and engineering plant has been badly damaged.  Also, both ships have experience bridge crews (+2 initiative bonus) and the Xin Tian has a huge edge in gunnery.  So if Duranov isn’t careful, Xin Tian can simply blow the Syekyra apart with massed rail guns and torpedo fire no matter where Syekyra makes her approach.

The dogfight lasts another eight minutes, with the Xin Tian doggedly refusing to ever let the smaller Syekyra outmaneuver her.  During this time, both ships almost  exhaust their torpedoes, which is saying something given the Xin Tian’s massive missile load (she carries 152 total warheads in all).  Although the Syekyra never really gets on in the Xin Tian’s stern, she manages to continually present new facings to the Xin Tian’s guns, pivoting and rolling, never letting the Xin Tian’s big broadside hit the part of the ship twice.

In the end it comes down a torpedo spread from the Syekyra.  With her aft shields now knocked down, Xin Tian is completely reliant on her mass drivers to defend from Russian P-500 “Plamya” (Flame) torpedoes, but these mass drivers have also been hammered by successive hits, and are down to 60% their original strength.  More importantly, Xin Tian is almost blinded, with three hits on her sensor suite.  Thus, although Syekyra can only launch five torpedoes in her last wave, none are shot down by Xin Tian’s defenses, or pre-detonated by Xin Tian’s gravitic shielding.  Four of these warheads hit the Xin Tian’s damaged stern, instantly putting her adrift and out of action.

The skirmish at Chernyeva Twelve is a clear Russian victory, but even now the battle is not over.  Since this is a Russian system near a Russian orbital installation, rescue craft and life boats are already descending on the battle site for rescue and recovery of the Lazarev and Rusalka.  This leaves the Syekyra free to chase down Black Dragon cripples.  The corvette K-211 is the first to go down, picked off by a coup de grace salvo from Syekyra’s rail guns.  Next is the crippled destroyer Gorokhov, in fact a Russian’ build Sovnya class destroyer.  Syekyra manages to catch up with the drifting Gorokhov, docking with the wreck and boarding her with marines.  The Russians actually fail in the first boarding attempt, the passageways and compartments of the derelict Gorokhov the scene of a furious small-arms battle between Russian and Black Dragon troops and crewmen.

But the Gorokhov is finally secured after a second boarding attempt, and this old Russian destroyer is re-captured by its original owners.  Commander of the Lazarev task force (Captain Pyotr Myshaga) has Gorokhov towed to the Imperial Russian Navy shipyards at Cervantes Prime, where she will be repaired and eventually join the Lazarev task force, once more as a Russian ship of the line.

SCORING:  Russians have the destroyer Syekyra and two scouts = 68 points.  Black Dragons have six scouts = 6 points.  Russians win by 62, Minor Victory.

Okay, so here’s a very brief primer on how torpedo spreads are resolved in this system.  A total of 28 torpedoes are headed for the Black Dragon light cruiser Zhang Jia.  This is the torpedo spread the Black Dragon player decided to focus on with his point-defense guns.

Each ship takes its shot, rolling a d6 on the mass driver table.  Results are determined by how many guns the ship has, electronic warfare, targeting suites, and EW of the firing ship (after launching torpedoes, a ship can jam enemy tracking as they try to shoot the torpedoes down, if the firing ship has the right upgrades).

Black Dragon ships manage to shoot down 10, 8, 4, and 0 torpedoes (22 total) , leaving six to actually try to hit Zhang Jia.  The target for a Russian Type III torpedo is 7 on a d10, -3 for Zhang Jia’s shields,  -1 for her upgraded shielding, -1 for her EW upgrades = -5 total, for a net chance of 2.  Yet the Russians roll great, and our of 6 d10 torpedo strikes,  4 hit!

The facing of the Zhang Jia that is hit is determined by where the torpedoes were placed by the owning player, subject to restrictions during the torpedo movement phase.  Usually, the shooting player tries to hit the stern, this is where most of the engines, reactors, and other critical components are located that can quickly cripple a ship.

Next, where on the stern?  Each type of warship has a different number of hit columns per facing (light cruisers have 5).  So a d5 is rolled for each hit (d10 / 2).  And the three points of Type III torpedo damage is applied to for each hit, its exact location indicated by the d5 roll.

So far the Russians are getting pretty lucky, with four torpedo hits, all in good spots.  Already two complete engine blocks (red outline) of the Zhang Jia are down, reducing the ship’s available thrust by -2, impacting not only movement but initiative as well.  Engines are also highly explosive, and there’s already a solid chance the Zhang Jia may be crippled here.

Russian Scouts are also getting lucky.  The Black Dragon K-206 has been heavily damaged by Russian destroyer fire and lost one of its shields.  Russian scouts now attack this unshielded facing (port bow) and with some lucky die rolls, actually do just enough damage to hit the bridge and knock out the ship.  This is very rare, scouts are armed basically with machine guns.  To take out the equivalent of a submarine with nothing more than two .50 cals is actually pretty amazing.  Again, the Russians were very lucky here, and this corvette was already heavily damaged (the conn was torn open, this blast of MG fire perhaps killed enough of the bridge crew to cripple the ship).

Black Dragon torpedoes and guns tear into the sterns of the Russian destroyer Rusalka (Commander Alexandr D. Kharechev).   Again, you can see where the Black dragon player aimed his torpedoes at the Russian stern.  Black Dragon (usually Chinese) torpedoes are much weaker and less accurate, but there are a $h*t ton more of them.  Successive hits have knocked out of Rusalka’s mass driver turrets, one of her main armament turrets (aft 0 kg plasma projector), knocked out both starboard engines and starboard reactors, damaged her aft sensors, and knocked down aft shields.

Most importantly, four critical boxes (red) have been hit.  This means the Black Dragon player may have already crippled the Rusalka.  Each type of ship starts with a “cripple number,” from which you subtract the number of critical boxes hit.  Destroyers have a Cripple Number of 7, which after you minus -4 critical hits =3.  Thus, the Black Dragon player has crippled this ship on a d6 roll of 3+.

Even if the Rusalka’s engineers keep the ship running, however (i.e., the Black Dragons miss that 3+), this ship is in very serious trouble.

Not as much trouble as this ship!  The Lazarev is blown almost completely inside out.  Light Cruisers start with a cripple number of 10, and 10 critical boxes have been hit.  This leaves the Black Dragon player with a 0+ roll on a d6, i.e., automatic.  But if this net cripple target ever gets into NEGATIVE numbers, there is a chance the ship can EXPLODE on the spot, killing almost everyone aboard and damaging nearby ships as well.

The Russians continued to claw their way steadily back into this war with another ferocious battle in the continuing  Duchess Annabel’s War, this time against the “Black Dragon” rebels of the Khitan-Tunguska Free State.

First, a setup of the forces.  The Russians have the Katukov-class light cruiser Lazarev (replaced the Suvorov, exploded in the last game), along with the two destroyers Syekyra and Rusalka.  The Black Dragons have a larger but less elite and upgraded force, including two Xhia class light missile cruisers Zhang Jia and Xin Tian, the destroyer Gorokhov, and two K-56 class torpedo corvettes.

The Zhang Jia is a particularly notorious ship.  Through the course of the recent Xi Scorpio and Scorpion’s Tail Wars against the Japanese and United States, this Black Dragon missile cruiser outright destroyed two light cruisers (the famous flagship IJN Sendai and the USS Milwaukee), exploded a Japanese industrial station (killing hundreds of civilians), and has crippled the famous destroyer USS Oriskany at least three times.  The Zhang Jia’s bridge officers have upgraded starship tactics, the ship itself upgraded with enhanced electronic warfare suite and improved gravitic shielding.  She started as a cheap, ugly, disposal Chinese warship, but since being stolen as part of the Black Dragon revolt, has now become an elite and deadly foe, ship and crew sharpened to a razor’s edge, her black hull figuratively painted in the blood of her enemies, including Russians, Panasians, Japanese, and Americans.

If there was ever a ship in Darkstar to have a price on its head, it’s this one.

So here’s  the general situation.  The Russians have recently crushed out a very narrow, very bloody, and very costly win against the Prussians and Japanese defending the outer protoplanetary debris belt (Kupier Belt) of the Cervantes star system (Mu Ara).  Although they won this fight and defended their star system, the Russians are badly weakened.  The Black Dragons thus hope to take advantage, sneaking the Zhang Jia battlegroup in through the other side of the Cervantes star system and capturing a few Russian installations around gas giant moons and the like.

Below, we see the Black Dragons make their approach.  The red markers are massive “Tsing Tao” torpedo waves, 76 warheads in all.  The two K-56 corvettes and the Gorokhov also launch Russian-made P-500 torpedoes (green 12, 12, and x2 5-torpedo markers)

Then, we see the Russians likewise make their approach.  CL1 = light cruiser Lararev (Captain Pyotr M. Myshaga).  DD1 and DD2 = destroyers Syekyra (Commander Ekaterina A. Duranov) and Rusalka (Commander Alexandr D. Kharechev).

This fight is going to get very close, very fast.  There are no carriers here, and with all Russian and Chinese-built ships on the board, everyone is equipped more or less with short- and mid-range weapons.  Or are they?  The Lazarev battlegroup has been upgraded with enhanced gunnery accuracy, so they’re content to open fire at a longer range.  Here we see the immediate effects, Russian forward batteries (especially the EPCs of the Lazarev) open fire straight away, crippling the Black Dragon torpedo corvette K-221.

Movement on Turn 2.  The first ship to move is the K-221 (CV2 – with the black smoke marker on it).  She’s crippled and will thus continue to move at their last heading and velocity until she hits something or leaves the board.  This is why it’s very important to watch out for moons, planets, and asteroids in this game, especially in scenarios where they are moving or exert gravity effects.

Next, the Lazarev, despite her +2 initiative bonus, still loses and has to move first.  She’s still moving very fast, so with most of her thrust being applied to deceleration, she can only manage one hexside turn.  She cuts in front of these two gas giant moons, coming with 200 km of one of them, hoping to broadside the Black Dragons as they move between the moons.

The Black Dragons, predictably, to not accommodate our dear Captain Myshaga.  They decide not to decelerate, thus rocketing through Myshaga’s planned fire zone, cutting between the two moons and with a turn to port, setup a broadside across Lazarev’s stern at less than 600 km (3 hexes), very short range in this game.

The two Russian destroyers, then decide to keep their speed up as well, cutting all the way around the smaller moon, dropping their own broadsides in turn behind the Black Dragon task force.  Everyone’s torpedoes launched last turn also come in, ready to hit their targets.  Things here are about to get very, very nasty.

(apologies in advance, I didn’t get many photos of this battle)

SITUATION:  For the Holy Russian Empire, the War of Annabel’s Star has been an unmitigated disaster.  Not since the outset of the Black Dragon War in 2512 has their navy been beset by such a string of defeats and humiliations.  So far only the United Kingdom and Panasian Union have been winning battles for Annabel’s Alliance, leading some analysts to comment that the British and Chinese are fighting this war “with one foot in a Russian bucket.”

In fact elements of the Russian government (Empress Katarina VII, Patriarch Vladimir the Just, and the St. Petersburg Duma) find themselves under increasing pressure to pull out of this war entirely.  Proponents of such a withdrawal urge that the battered Russian Navy instead be focused on a separate war against the Black Dragons of the Khitan-Tunguska Free State, a desperate effort to save at least some holdings out here in the Libra-Sagittarius SCS (Strategic Command Sector).

Yet even as the Russian government and naval command debate their rapidly-dwindling options, commanders of the  Iron Wolf Coalition prepare to relieve them of the burden of choice altogether. With their footing in the Neu-Bremerhaven system now secured (thus closing down any enemy approach to the Eisenwolf Colonies at Gliese 570), the Iron Wolves feel sufficiently secure to take the offensive against the Russians, perhaps dealing a hard enough blow to force their diplomats to the negotiating table.

Accordingly, their commanders assemble the famous Japanese Konoya carrier strike group, and reinforce it with additional escort light cruisers and destroyers from the Prussian and New Roman navies.  Together this combined task force is sent out for what they hope will be a killing blow against Russian interests in the War of Annabel’s Star.

The selected target is the Russian star system of Cervantes (Mu Ara).  This system the key link between Russian holdings in the Core, the Tsarina Twins system (Gliese 667), and their colonies further out in the Libra-Sagittarius sectors of the Third Band (what few that are left since the start of the Black Dragon War).

The Russians, for their part, know they’re in trouble.  Despite advance warning of the Iron Wolf incursion thanks to a prowling K-56 class torpedo corvette, their bruised and bleeding navy can only muster limited resources to head off the Iron Wolves and defend the Cervantes star system.

But what the Russians lack in numbers, they make up for in composition.  As fate would have it, the only task force in position to meet this threat is the light cruiser Suvorov and her escorts, the very task force that has been handled so roughly by the Konoya battlegroup so far in this war.  The key factor is the careful rebuilding of the Suvorov task force … where lessons of past defeats have been diligently applied to a reorganized military force deliberately built to meet and defeat the Konoya battlegroup. In summary, the Russians have given up trying to match the Konoya battlegroup’s aerospace strike capabilities, instead relaying on a new squadron of K-56 class torpedo corvettes and upgraded gunnery targeting suites on the cruisers Suvorov and destroyers Syekyra and Rusalka.  It is hoped these enhancements will help engage the Konoya battlegroup at a longer range, given the Japanese preference to deny battle at closer gunnery distances with which these heavier Russian ships are typically more comfortable.

More good news comes in the form of British reinforcements.  It’s only one ship, but the light fleet carrier HMS Vigilant, her bays loaded with the elite “Royal Griffins” and “Mad Hatters” aerospace strike squadrons.  This potent force promises to pose a serious counterweight to the equally elite Japanese “Starfox” naval strike squadrons of the light carrier Sagae and light fleet carrier Konoya.

On November 20, the Japanese, Prussians, and French drop out of their Darkstar waves, vectoring toward the outermost planetismals of the Cervantes system’s planetary debris belt.  Their Darkstar wave ripples have been detected by automated Russian sensors, and already the Suvorov-Vigilant task force is vectoring in to meet the invaders.

For many of those engaged, today could be a particularly fateful battle.  The Japanese embassy in St. Petersburg has already prepared a proposal that offers peace to the Russian government.  If these Japanese diplomats receive word of a victory here, as they have so far in virtually every battle in the War of Annabel’s Star, their terms will be submitted to the Foreign Minister of Empress Ekatarina VII.  For the Russians and Japanese, the war could end right here, in near-perfect victory for the Japanese, and bruising defeat for the Holy Russian Empire.

REPORT: The Iron Wolves make their approach very slowly, dropping to less than fifteen kps and making a turn to port, hoping to keep the longest possible distance between themselves and the gun/torpedo-heavy Russian task force.  The Russians, however, have upgraded their targeting suites, all too ready to engage the Japanese carriers at this longer distance.  The presence of HMS Vigilant makes this option even more appealing, as the “Mad Hatter” and “Royal Griffin” aerospace strike squadrons launch and begin their approach toward the Iron Wolf invaders.

Straight off the bat, the Iron Wolves draw blood.  The opening salvo from the light cruiser Kesseldorf, her rail cannons manned by some of the best gunnery crews in Known Space, immediately engage and destroy the tiny Russian torpedo corvette K-109.  Return fire from the Russians is fierce, but not enough to cripple either of the escorting Japanese Akashi-class strike frigates.

The Iron Wolves turn on their wakes, reversing course toward the Russians as they continue to bear down on the Japanese.  Yet the Japanese also keep asteroid debris between them and the Russian plasma projectors, the Suvorov in particular is completely blinded to any enemy targets.  Yet the Japanese carriers also get close enough to the enemy warships for an immediate bomber strike and provide mass driver protection for their bombers (those British aerospace fighter pilots are some of the deadliest anywhere).

The tactic works … mostly.  The Russian flagship Suvorov is left impotent with no targets, the Kesseldorf mauling the destroyer Rusalka.  But this is perhaps a mistake, as the rest of the Iron Wolf fleet doesn’t join this cannonade, instead gunning for the carrier Vigilant.  And while the Japanese B7N “Tenrai” (Heavenly Thunder) bombers indeed are able to launch their ordinance strike from a protected position under cover of the battlegroup’s mass drivers, the A9M “Kataka” (Fire Hawk) fighters can’t reach the same position quite fast enough.  Their missile wave will strike precious seconds after the bombers’ torpedoes, giving the Russian gunners additional opportunity to shoot down the incoming warheads.  This is another fatal division of firepower that will wind up costing the Japanese heavily.

Russian torpedoes don’t have this problem.  Although the loss of the K-109 has reduced their number, enough P-500 “Plamya” (Flame) warheads slam into the stern of the Kesseldorf, followed by broadsides of the Rusalka and Syekyra, to force Commander William Goeritz to break off the action.

The Russians are also in trouble.  Although not quite fatal, the Japanese torpedo strike has smashed the engineering sections of the flagship Suvorov and destroyer Rusalka wide open.  Limping away, they head toward the small planetismal, lobbing out plasma, EPC, and rail gun fire at the Japanese strike frigates while trying to keep their sterns screened from further enemy fire.  It doesn’t work, the valiant little frigate Yurakasu (despite heavy damage to her fo’c’sle and having no forward shields) decides to dive straight for the Suvorov’s exposed fantail. The brave little frigate doesn’t knock out the Russian cruiser, and is predictably shot out of the battle by a strafing run of the “Mad Hatters” Royal Navy Aerospace Strike Squadron, but one of the Yurakasu’s Ki-45 Toryu (Dragon Slayer) torpedoes knocks down the Suvorov’s after shields … a development to have dire repercussions later in the battle.

The carriers Konoya, Sagae, and Vigilant are now frantically trying to recover bombers, while the cruisers, destroyers, and frigates on both sides are trying to cripple these ships while they’re rearming these strike wings in their hangars.  It doesn’t work, and soon enough bombers are relaunched to release a second round of devastating aerospace strikes.  First, the guns of the Suvorov and Syekyra cripple the frigate Tanakasha, sistership to the nigh-suicidal Yurakazu.  Torpedoes from the Suvorov and Rusalka cripple the French destroyer Corsica, on instant before a mass of aerospace torpedoes finally force the Rusalka to eject her reactors, putting her out of the battle.

The rest of those torpedoes go after the Suvorov, still in the fight but without aft shielding to protect her badly-damaged engine rooms (thanks to that final volley of the Yurakazu).  Many of these torpedoes are shot down, but enough get through and explode within the Sovorov’s engineering sections . . .

There’s no saving the ship.  In fact, Captain Pyotr Myshaga barely has time to give the order to abandon ship before a chain reaction of explosions starts ripping its way forward.  Thirty seconds later, the ship goes up altogether, a gigantic fusion explosion that kills 212 members of her Suvorov’s crew and leaves many more badly injured as the shockwave slams into lifeboats, escape bods, and ejected combat compartments of the ship.  Among the wounded is Pyotr Myshaga, Suvorov’s captain.  The nearby destroyer Syekyra and corvettes K-98 and K-121 are also badly damaged in the colossal blast.

That said, the battle is already shaking to a conclusion.  The Royal Griffins have launched a new torpedo strike, slamming into the stern of the charmed light carrier IJN Sagae.  She’s never been crippled or even badly damaged in combat, a lucky streak that is finally broken here.  Although she survives, she’ll be crippled for the better part of a month.  The larger light fleet carrier Konoya fares even worse, hammered by the torpedoes of the dying Suvorov, the destroyer Syekyra, and corvettes K-98 and K-121.  She’s going to be out of action for months, the only reason she’s able to be towed clear of the Cervantes system and back to a Japanese naval base is because the Russians are now scrambling to pick up survivors from the Suvorov.

The Battle of Outer Cervantes is over.  Despite their horrific losses, the Russians have finally crushed out a smoldering, charred, blood-soaked win.  Although the Suvorov is gone forever, the Konoya task force has been handed a severe mauling, her carriers gutted and elite strike squadrons suffering steep losses in aerospace fighters and priceless pilots.  Most importantly, enough Russian and British naval power remains in the Cervantes system to categorically thwart any plans of an Iron Wolf invasion, or thoughts of putting the Holy Russian Empire out of the Annabel’s Star War quite yet.

SCORING: The Russians and British have the destroyer Syekyra, corvettes K-98 and K-121, light fleet carrer Vigilant, and assorted scouts, double-elite fighters and double-elite bombers = 193 points.  Japanese have remnants of the “Star Fox” double elite aerospace strike squadron, plus additional scouts and fighters / bombers from the light fleet carrier Konoya, +3 bank points =  99 points.  Russians and British win by 94, minor victory.

As some people following this project may have seen, some of recent campaigns in Darkstar in the Scorpio, Libra, and Sagittarius coreward sectors have led to the rise of a new faction: The Khitan-Tunguska Free State, more commonly known as the Black Dragons.

In broad summary, these are a series of colonies from that have revolted against the Holy Russian Empire and the Panasian Union (predominantly, China).  Because of their Russian-Chinese roots, they have adopted something of a Mongolian / Manchurian / Siberian separatist culture – their nickname coming from the Black River than runs between Siberia and northern China on terrestrial Earth.

Anyway, these Black Dragons have been engaged in two furious wars against my Americans and Japanese of the “Pacific Alliance” in the Xi Scorpio War (2516-18) and against the Americans alone in the smaller Scorpion’s Tail War of 2518.

These were mostly “playtesting” campaigns, usually run solitaire in MS Excel.  So while there’s a massive amount of backstory, history, and games on record for this new faction (including some ships that  have become really powerful through xp-upgrades), there actually hasn’t really been physical playing pieces made up for them for conventional tabletop play.

Now that the Black Dragons have entered a third war with live opponents and allies (@aras, @gladesrunner, and Jeff P.), it was high time I finally made some pieces for the Black Dragons.

They’ve escaped the Matrix!  They’re now in the “real world!”  😀 😀 😀

Part Five of the Darkstar background and setting material starts to highlights the general technologies of the Darkstar universe, how the ships work, weapons, ECM, FTL, power sources, etc.

Re-uploaded to add some additional / more original artwork, also to correct several embarrassing typos in the text.  😀

More to come!

This fourth part of the Darkstar background and setting material outlines “Naval Life,” what the navies and fleets are actually like – both in the future world of Darkstar and to a certain extent how they are in reality today.  It includes the major divisions of a navy, how they are organized into fleets, task forces, and battlegroups, how one is inducted into either the enlisted, commissioned officer, or warrant officer ranks, how the rank structures are different for fleet, aerospace, and marine arms, what ranks and billets hold what levels of command, and even a sample of the rank insignia (although these would vary from nation to nation, of course.

Also includes the corporate “rank structure.”  😀

Sample page – full doc linked above.

In response to requests from community members who’ve been following this project, I’m continuing to publish the background of the Darkstar universe.

This third part includes an overview of “Known Space,” the general layout of the how far mankind has pushed out into the stars in the Darkstar universe, what the colonies are like, what the fleets are like, and with what general “densities” and command structures they tend to work at in these different “distance brackets.”

Hope you enjoy!

Sample page below, please click on the file above for the full .pdf document to read. 😀

In response to requests from several Beasts of War community members who’ve been following this project, I’m continuing to publish the background of the Darkstar universe.

This second part includes an overview of the “Ten Powers,” the major factions of Known Space that players can fight for in the Darkstar universe.

There are also hints as “sub factions” such as Commonwealth states of the UK, pirates, privateers, several companies of the “Corporate Consortium” and the new “rebel power” of the Khitan-Tunguska Free State.

Re-uploaded to correct a few typos in the text.  😀

Below is just a sample image, please click on the .pdf above for the full document and enjoy!  😀

In response to requests from several Beasts of War community members who’ve been following this project, I’ve started publishing the background of the Darkstar universe.

Apologies it took so long, please understand that these docs were written several years ago for a much more limited audience, before putting them up for general publication I wanted to clean them up just a little.  Furthermore, such efforts were slowed somewhat since I was working on the Kursk article series.

This first part includes a very broad overview of the history of Darkstar – from the present day through the early 2500s.  Future parts talk about the factions, Known Space, Naval Organization, and Darkstar Tech.

These are just some sample pages, click the .pdf above for the full document.  Again, this is just the first section, there is much more to come.