SM battle report - "Death of the Decoys"

Fought this battle today. Cinematic movement on a floating table, but
speeds were still fairly low - my NSL opponent didn't dare flying
faster than speed 20 with his thrust-2 ships, and I had to conform to
his speeds to avoid overshooting him.

Alan and Roger, I hope this report answers some of your questions about
dealing with BJs :-/

NSL fleet:
1 Von Tegetthoff SDN, carrying 1 Interceptor sqdn
1 Szent Istvan BDN, carrying 1 Interceptor sqdn
1 Maria von Burgund BB
2 Kronprinz Wilhelm/E CLEs
3 Waldburg/M DDGs
16 Stroschen CTs

Total: 2999 pts, 752 of which (25.1%) were used to buy banzai jammers.
The BJs were deployed 4 to each capital and 2 covering each CLE, but
they moved around a bit during the battle. The plan was to disrupt any
FSE fighter attacks by dogfighting them with the interceptors, dilute
the SM barrages with the CTs and pound the weak FSE ships to dust with
massed beam batteries. It didn't work.

The fleet mix isn't ideal (see the end of this post for our post-battle
reflections on it), but it was a bit too long since the last time we
used the NSL This battle reminded us of exactly why we haven't used
them :-/

FSE fleet:
1 Bologna CVL, carrying 1 standard, 1 Interceptor and 2 Heavy Attack
sqdns
3 Roma BBs
2 Jerez CAs, each with 2 SM-ER and 1 normal salvo
9 Ibiza FFs
2 Mistral/A SCs (the /A variant replaces 1 C1 battery with 1 subpack).

Total: 3000 pts. This fleet was explicitly designed to beat a
BJ-protected fleet. It has rather too many capitals for the number of
cruisers and it felt very odd not to have *any* DDs, but I wanted the
rear-shot ability and large magazines of the Romas. The plan was to
send in the fighters and small fry first to remove as many BJs as
possible, and then hit the remaining NSLs with massive SM salvoes. It
worked.

Deployment saw the NSL in a tight formation, heavies in front, CLEs in
the middle so all ships was covered by at least one CLE, and the DDGs
bringing up the rear (about 6mu behind the heavies). Each CT was
deployed 0.5mu from the ship it protected - it was physically
impossible to get it closer than that.

The FSE deployed in two groups: one consisting of the FFs and CTs
moving slightly to starboard, and the other of the heavies which veered
off sharply to port.

The FSE small fry accelerated as hard as they could towards the NSL,
who turned their entire fleet to meet them. The FSE interceptor group
managed to engage both the NSL squadrons in a furball, and although it
was wiped out itself only 4 NSL fighters survived the experience. The
other FSE fighter squadrons nailed one BJ each, while the Ibizas and
Mistrals did in another three and crippled two for the loss of three
Ibizas and both Mistrals.

Meanwhile, the FSE heavies had swung around in a wide arc and now
closed in from the NSL's starboard side. The germanics launched
missiles in their path, but only one salvo hit a BB and all its
missiles were shot down. The other salvoes locked on to the withdrawing
Ibizas instead, and killed two more of them. Once again, the FSE
managed to lock both the NSL squadrons in a dogfight, this time with
their own standard squadron, while their attack fighters nailed another
two BJs. The FSE battleline also concentrated all their guns at the
BJs, killing three; now only five BJs remained in action - three of
them covering the Maria von Burgund. NSL return fire was fairly
ineffective since most of their weapons were out of arc, but they
managed to inflict two threshold checks on one of the Jerezes.
Unfortunately the only important damage was one of the SMLs, and it was
repaired almost immediately.

The NSL turned as hard as they could (which wasn't very much) towards
the FSE in an attempt to keep them in arc, and launched another missile
spread at them, hitting one of the Romas badly and hitting, but failing
to damage, the Bologna. This time the FSE returned the favour, and
threw 11 SM salvoes at the NSL: 6 hit the BDN, 1 hit a BJ, 2 hit the
CLE covering the BDN, and 1 hit the SDN; the last one missed entirely.
(Clumsy of me!). The other CLE tried to protect its sibling but failed
miserably; the CLE under attack was so unnerved by the danger that it
only managed to shoot down one of the missiles attacking the BDN, and
the BDN itself didn't do much better. When the explosions had died down
the CLE and the BJ had disappeared completely and the BDN was a burning
wreck (62 pts of damage left it with 1 lonely C2 battery working... but
no FCs).

While the missiles were flying, the FSE battleline tried to cut in
behind the NSL. The BBs managed just fine, sitting between the NSL
heavies and their DDGs, pounding both the DDGs and the remaining BJs
(only one of which survived the turn), but the CVL cut it a little too
close - and ended up just in front of the Von Tegetthoff and the Szent
Istvan :-/ Fortunately the latter had no weapons, but even so the poor
Bologna took a frightful pounding. The FSE cruisers had turned to port
to attack the Waldburgs, but overshot a bit. They did manage to maul
the DDs, but didn't contribute much more to the battle.

The NSL was in trouble, however. All the three Romas were now sitting
in their blind spots, and there was basically no way they could be
shaken off (except by slowing the NSL ships to speed 0, which would
have taken much longer than it would have for the FSE to destroy them).
The last two turns of the battle saw the Romas pound the Von Tegetthoff
with their remaining missiles and killing the last BJ and CLE and two
of the DDGs. The only real revenge the NSL got was when the remaining
FSE FFs tried to close for a second attack run; four of the remaing
five FFs died that turn.

In the end the NSL managed to hyper out with one Waldburg/M (had just
taken its first threshold check), the Von Tegetthoff (which had five
hull boxes and the FTL drive remaining, but very little else) and the
Maria von Burgund (which had only taken two thresholds and was in
comparatively very good shape). They left behind the wreckage of
sixteen corvettes, two destroyers, two light cruisers and a
battledreadnought. Only one of the corvettes was killed by SMs, and it
only drew a single salvo off the capital ships.

The FSE lost all but one of their light ships (though four of those
losses were entirely avoidable and thus completely unnecessary). In
addition the carrier, one battleship and one cruiser were badly mauled;
the other two battleships and the last cruiser were undamaged.

So, what happened to the "impregnable" BJ defence? Well, basically the
FSE used their superior maneuverability to limit the number of weapons
the NSL could bring to bear. This allowed them to cut back the BJs
before launching their missiles, without taking too much damage from
the NSL capitals in return. 

In hindsight the NSL should have taken a Der Theuerdank-class carrier
instead of the Von Tegetthoff and replaced the Waldburg/Ms with two
more Kronprinz Wilhelms; this would have provided better firepower
against both missiles and ships. The NSL missiles did damage a
battleship and killed four Ibizas, but I think beams and particularly
more PDSs would have had a greater effect.

Tactically, the NSL were in trouble from the outset. If they had turned
to face the FSE heavies, they would've allowed the FSE FFs and SCs to
inflict a lot more damage to their BJs (since less than half their
weapons would've been able to engage the frigates, instead of all of
them). They'd probably have inflicted more damage on the FSE heavies in
this way, but OTOH the FSE heavies would've been able to launch
missiles earlier than they did in this battle.

The Stroschens did all you could ask of them, which was to die
horribly, but they didn't live long enough to stop the missile
onslaught. Falkes would've been worse still, though - they take exactly
half as much damage as Stroschens, but cost more than half so you get
fewer hit points of them. FC capacity was not a problem problem for the
FSE in this battle.

Had this been a Vector battle, things would've been different - the NSL
would've been able to turn to face the FSE heavies instead of having
them hanging off the rear side quarter, for one thing. The battle would
have been a lot closer, but I don't think it would've been a walk-over
for the NSL.

Regards,

Oerjan Ohlson
oerjan.ohlson@telia.com

"Life is like a sewer.
  What you get out of it, depends on what you put into it."
- Hen3ry