MZ Campaing Report

Another week, another skirmish:

Norwegian elite cloak cruisers waylay a PanMa group of 2 BBs and a CVL 
returning to Mars.

PanMans immediately adopt a hedgehog defense -- stopping completely and 
deploying panzer screen. Norwegians enter cloaked and start to circle
the 
prey. PanMans try to anticipate their movements and bring the heavies to

bear.

A few circlings later, one BB is critically wounded, but none of the 
cloak cruisers have escaped damage. The CVL starts to disengage. The 
critical blow comes when Norwegians miscalculate their cloak movement
and 
pop out in the firing arcs of the undamaged BB. One cruiser loses its 
cloaking device, which spells its doom.

The damaged cruiser is put out of its misery, but the two remaining ones

start to pursue the CVL. Overoptimized, as PanMan designs tend to be,
the 
CVL has no guns and only interceptors -- it is utterly incapable of 
engaging enemy ships. It executes a very wide circle while the undamaged

BB tries to come to help. Luckily, the Norwegians again miscalculate 
their 6-turn cloak movement and miss the CVL, so they can only score 
minor damage before the BB is in AA-battery range. Norwegians cloak
again 
and skip past the BB to destroy its crippled sistership.

PanMans decide to stop and form hedgehog again. Looking at the sorry 
shape their ships are in, Norwegians decide to disengage, ending the 
battle.

Notes: This was the longest, in terms of turns, FT game I've ever
played. 
It went on for over 40 turns. It also spanned several gaming tables, 
roughly a 300"x300" area. Luckily there weren't any more ships, or this 
would have been impossible to play.

This battle really made us think about switching to centimeters. I just 
need to paint smaller ships... And I'm a bit worried about the extra
care 
needed with such a small measurement. With inches, if you knock over a
mini 
and replace it a base length away from the real position, it's not such
a 
big deal. With cm, the displacement is half the optimal range of many 
weapons.

The hedgehog defense is nasty. If the opponent has screen and gunnery 
supremacy, it almost completely negates any maneuver advantage you might

have. Apart from the nova&wave stuff I don't allow, missiles seem the 
only good way to break it -- but an attached CV with decks full of 
interceptors makes short work of that idea. You'd have to have panzers
of 
your own, kill the panzer screen first, and then hit with the missiles.

In fact, I'm beginning to think this may be the most effective way to 
deploy the Thr2 behemoths for defense.

-- 
maxxon@swob.dna.fi (Mikko Kurki-Suonio) 	  | A pig who doesn't
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