[FT] Battle report - Dreadplanet vs KV

Took us a while longer than expected to finish this battle - first my
opponents got double-booked, and then I was abroad this week :-( (Due
to the trip abroad I still haven't finished going through the recent
PDS... discussion, but I haven't forgotten it either :-/ ) Anyway.

The battle featured the Dreadplanet Roberts Mk.1 (ie. with needle beams
- not that it would've mattered much if they had been B1s instead) for
5000 pts against an FB2 KV fleet consisting of 17 Si'Tek escort
cruisers and 1 Ko'Tek strike cruiser (5001 pts). 

We tried to adhere as closely as possible to Stiltman's house rules as
posted on May 30th and onwards, particularly for the fighters.The
playing area was 100*100 mu, with fixed edges, and measured in inches
rather than the standard (for us, that is) cm. We did however decide
not to use the "fleet must withdraw after taking 50% losses" rule,
since applying it to the number of ships would've penalised the KV only
and applying it to the hull boxes would've given the victory to the KV
pretty easily (and besides Stiltman's own reports from his DPR/KV
battle suggested that it should be applied to the number of ships
rather than the hull boxes).

The fleets deployed 15mu from their respective table edges, almost
directly opposing each other - the DPR on the exact middle of the edge,
the KV a few mu offset in a very tight formation. KV starting speed was
10; the DPR started at speed 3 (again because Stiltman wrote that he'd
done so in his battle). The first six turns saw the DPR launching its
full brood of fighters and slowly crawling further onto the table,
while the KV flew in a slowly expanding circle and built up their speed
to 34 (which BTW is the first time in several years I've seen my
opponent fly that fast, and the first time ever I've seen him do it on
such a small and fixed gaming area). The DPR braked to a standstill
31mu from the "table edge" (unintentional - I had planned to move at
least 40mu from the edge to avoid taking unfair advantage of said edge,
but the KV began their attack run some turns early and I didn't dare
moving further since it'd give them much too much time to move into my
weak arcs). The KV movement on turns 5 and 6 forced me to start lobbing
4 PBs per turn onto their potential attack positions - they could've
struck at either of those turns had they wanted to.

On turn 7 the KV were forced to attack or run off the table due to
their own impatience. Only 3 PBs were able to meet them (they moved
into what was my (AP) arc at the start of the turn, and one of the port
PBLs had fired on the previous turn), but the DPR turned to face the
onslaught. The fighters moved away to avoid being gunned down early on
(the scattergun rule suggests that scatterguns may be able to attack
fighters within 6mu whether or not they actually do attack, but I
couldn't remember, nor find my playtest notes to check, whether or not
that was intended). The scatterguns reduced the PBLs to a single
strength point in total, and the DPR's beams narrowly failed to kill
their targets (the B3s reduced one Si'Tek to 1 hull box while the
needle beams inflicted 5 damage points and destroyed 1 FCS on another
Si'Tek (rolling 5 sixes on 8 dice against one FCS, then rolling 4 ones
and three threes on 7 dice against the other... ARGH!). The rest of the
KV ships were only lightly scratched by the plasma bolt (total damage
on all KV ships this turn, including that from the DPR's beams, was 77
points), and hit back *hard* - 146 damage points, taking the DPR
through the first threshold check and halfway to the second (ouch!).

On the next turn (8), I expected the KV to overfly the DPR - they were
moving at speed 36 by now, so they'd almost be able to get outside the
range of my beams if they went to full thrust - so I turned around to
face where I thought they would end up. To be on the safe side I also
dropped a PB barrage where they would end up if they did a 180-degree
turn. Unfortunately they did neither; instead they made a *150*-degree
turn and ended up in my (AP) arc again... with the nearest ship at
range 37mu. This was a *very* serious mistake on my part, since it
allowed the KV to move an attack position in the middle of my blind
spot on turn 9 - ie., my blind spot at the *start* of turn 9, right
where I couldn't launch a single plasma bolt >:-( I could and did turn
to fire my beams at them, but since they ended up at range 13-18 my
needles were all useless. Again the fighters stayed out of it (the KV
had some 70+ scatterguns left), and the DPR took another 90 points of
damage, pushing it halfway to the third threshold. It did manage to
destroy the two crippled Si'Teks, but the threshold rolls were unkind:
the least useful systems (fighter bays and PDSs) took virtually no
damage, but it lost its engines, six B3 batteries, a PBL, 10 (!) FCSs
and its life support. Fortunately the KV didn't press the attack but
broke off again, this time to circle around my starboard side - they
didn't know that I'd just lost my engines, and neither of us could know
how long it'd take me to get the !"#¤#" things back into operation!

It took the Kra'Vak three turns to reach an attack position of their
liking (sort of, at least). The DPR *still* hadn't managed to repair
its engines (though most other systems were back up), but the Kra'Vak
were met by 3 PBs (though unfortunately only 1 was on target, the other
two - from the FP/F/FS-arc PBLs - both missed narrowly) and all the
fighters. Yes, I fully well knew that the KV still had some 70+
scatterguns, but I simply didn't dare to wait for the KV to expend them
on my plasma bolts. If I had waited for that, I would've ran out of DPR
long before the KV ran out of scatterguns :-( Only 10 of the KV ships
could fire their main guns at me, and the fighters attacked the four
closest ones (the only ones within 12mu). Scatterguns tore down the PBL
and together with some K1s killed 195 fighters (OUCH!), but the
surviving fighters destroyed one Si'Tek outright and crippled another
two badly (and scratched the back of the fourth - but with only 3
fighters surviving to attack it, it was a very shallow scratch indeed).
The DPR only had 2 beam batteries to follow up the fighter strike with,
but polished off one of the two cripples. KV return fire pushed the DPR
past its third threshold, but their scatterguns were badly depleted and
I was profoundly grateful for those 12 K3s which were out of arc! If
the KV could get just one more successful attack run the DPR would most
likely be dead, but with only 11 scatterguns left against my PBLs and
(few) remaining fighters it'd be touch and go... particularly since the
DPR finally managed to repair its sublight engines.

The KV once again turned away, as usual followed by plasma barrages on
their potential attack positions. This time however they split up into
two groups, so when the attack finally hit home (on turn 16) they had
*three* possible attack positions. This spread my PBs rather thin; one
KV group (which ended its attack run between 0.5 and 3mu away from the
DPR, directly in front of it) was hit by two PBs while the other (~12mu
away) was hit by one PB and the remaining fighters. The last
scatterguns fired along with some of the K1s, reducing each plasma
barrage to 2 points (the group closest to the DPR managed to tear down
6 points of plasma with 5 scatterguns, which annoyed me quite a bit)
and killed another 25 fighters. Of the "close group" the Ko'Tek lost
its bridge to the plasma bolt and the other ships were more or less
badly crippled as well, while the "far group" lost one ship to the
fighters and had the rest take at least one threshold each. The DPR had
won the initiative and fired first, and since I didn't know how that
the Ko'Tek had just lost its bridge and I wanted to get rid of as many
K3s as possible I killed it and reduced one of the near Si'Teks to 3
hull boxes. The few remaining needle beams (5 left by this time - they
had had rather low priority for the DCPs) targetted FCSs, but didn't
manage to blind any of their target ships.

Time for the KV return fire. The DPR had only 72 hull boxes left, but
the KV had lost quite a few weapons in threshold checks... and they
only inflicted 73 points of damage. The DPR was dead. The KV were
flying at speed 36-37, so accellerated as hard as possible to outrun
the fighters and escape - without their carrier the remaining fighters
would soon be dead anyway. 

Kra'Vak losses were 5 Si'Teks and 1 Ko'Tek destroyed, with 5 Si'Teks
having taken 2 thresholds and the remaining 7 suffering 1 threshold
check each. Had they been forced to make a fifth attack run, they
would've suffered badly from PBs; they would have been unable to make a
sixth attack on the DPR.

Comments:

* The KV flew at speed 30-40 throughout most of the battle (except for
the first six turns when they were accellerating!), and had no problems
staying on the fairly small, fixed playing area or indeed to end up
almost exactly where they wanted. While they were close to the edges at
the mid-points of their moves on several occasions, they never *ended*
any of their moves less than 10mu away from the edges. (I must admit
being impressed by this; while I often fly this fast myself my
opponents very rarely do so even on larger and/or floating tables.
Perhaps they're finally beginning to see the joy of being a Speed
Freak... no, no, don't worry - so far I don't have any bright red ships
<G>).

* The DPR took unintentional but still advantage of the table edge by
stopping where it did (cutting off a 60-degree arc). This limited the
KV's maneuver choices quite a bit, and made my job of pointing the DPR
in the right direction a lot easier - which didn't prevent that...

* The DPR made a serious mistake with its 180-degree turn on game turn
8, effectively giving the KV one "free" attack run with no PBLs to
worry about :-( OTOH it would have been just as disastrous if I had
expected them to turn as they did and they had instead overflown me...
I had a 50% chance to get it right, and I didn't. If the DPR had been
sitting in the middle of the "table" (as I had originally planned)
instead of within its weapon range of one edge I would've faced this
type of choice rather more often than I actually did. Of course, this
mistake wasn't that much worse than when...

* The KV slightly misjudged their attack run on turn 12, and had 6
ships point a total of 12 K3s a fraction of an mu to the side of the
DPR. Had they been flying 1 mu/turn slower (ie., speed 35 rather than
36), the DPR would've taken an additional 40-45 points of damage during
the 3rd KV attack <shudder>

* The DPR's inability to repair its engines on turns 9-11 was
irritating, but  the KV didn't really take advantage of it. Losing the
life support was a lot scarier (but was repaired much sooner), and I
was *very* glad that it wasn't the power core or bridge that got hit!

* The fighters attacked too late due to my attempt to wear the KV's
scatterguns down with PBs first. As it was they took horrible losses
from scattergun fire when they finally did attack, but they would've
been no worse mauled had they attacked during the second KV attack run
instead of the third... and they would probably have reduced the early
damage to the DPR by some 20-30 points. Ah well.

All in all it turned out to be a very close fight, and one which could
fairly easily have gone the other way (or at least cost the KV
considerably more). I'd expect custom-designed anti-DPR Kra'Vak ships
(considerably fewer but much sturdier (reducing the PB hazard), and
with somewhat more scatterguns) to do a bit better than the
published/"official" designs, though :-/

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