Re: Two AARs--John Atkinson vs Laserlight

>>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>

Actually, John might fit in fairly well in Kosovo.  After all,
he's still irritated at the French for something that happened
nearly 800 years ago (AD1204).

>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.
>
>>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

In John's defense, I didn't calculate all this out either
(although I usually do some figuring with "anticipated damage at
range").  I was trying to get to point blank, but I didn't
realize quite what a difference it would make.

>and your violent reaction to the outcome mirrors Humanity's
>panic in the early stages of the Xeno War quite well ;-)

"Strategos, CruRon4 is overdue by two weeks."
"Very well.  What is their revised ETA?"
"Sir, they haven't reported.  At all."
"Check with the Office of Barbarians."
"I did, sir.  They say the ragheads haven't been acting up
lately, and if they did hit a squadron, we'd know about it."
"You're telling me an entire cruiser squadron has just
disappeared and we don't know why."
"Yes, sir."