Re: Two AARs--John Atkinson vs Laserlight

John M. Atkinson wrote:

>Yeeps.  As near as I can figure, I was thinking 15, not 10.  Too tired
>to think--much driving, followed by much drinking in too small a time
>frame.

I hope you don't do that in the field (drink too much, that is)...
'Course, if the Kosovars and Serbs offer you as much plum (brandy?
liquour? whatever) as they've done to some of my KFOR-deployed friends,
not drinking too much might be difficult without upsetting the locals
<g>

>>>Gee, that's easy with a higher thrust for the KV AND an objective to
>>>defend.
>> 
>>Attempting a salvage under fire, without first driving the enemy off?
>>You've only got yourself to blame, then <shrug>
> 
>Went for the K'V to try to whack them--leading them a merry chase "at
>range" would result in leaving the salvage undefended.

And in doing so, you got a little too close. You couldn't've known that
since you had never fought the FB2 KV before, but the difference
between the *average* damages the remaining KV could dish out at 0-6mu
and 6-12mu ranges was roughly equivalent to the damage it took to
cripple both your CLs (or kill the CME). OK, good enemy die rolls can
easily throw all statistic probabilities out the airlock, but those few
mus increased the risk of your getting badly mauled quite considerably.

>>OK. IOW; bad luck with your dice while Laserlight rolled quite hot. A
>>really good basis for objectively evaluating a new weapon, don't you
>>think?
> 
>Hrm. . . I guess you win--so-so tactics and poor (though not
>spectacularly so) dice combined to give bad first impression.	

Yeah. Quite a few of our initial playtest results went like this too,
but once the players started figuring out counter-tactics the battles
were a lot more even - indeed, some of the playtesters expressed
worries that the KV were too *weak* and would be road-kills once the
opposition learned to handle them.

Your battle sounds like a pretty historical result, too - an NRE
commodore engaging an alien squadron with unknown capabilities gets his
head handed to him by an alien with at least some experience of human
designs, and your violent reaction to the outcome mirrors Humanity's
panic in the early stages of the Xeno War quite well ;-)

Later,

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