PBeM Summary, part 2

PBeM “First Contact: First Blood” Game summary, part 2

This is pretty quick, as I’m running short on time, but here goes.
Thanks to
everyone -- both players and lurkers -- for making this game work!

SUMMARY:

The first 6 turns had the humans scanning madly for cloaked ships, while
the
Rahni tried to get behind them. Most of the Rahni were using a fair
amount of
thrust, and thus made themselves pretty easy to detect, which reduced
their
advantage. But they were still able to get behind the humans and on turn
7
half the Rahni fleet decloaked and fired, almost destroying the human
CM, and
damaging two other ships. 

Turn 8: Each side loses an escort. Several Rahni ships recloak (doing a
hit-and-run), but the humans manage to get off several shots before they
disappear and a Rahni CL takes a threshold check.

Turn 9: Another Rahni CL is destroyed before it can recloak, and two
cloaked
Rahni take damage from exploding missiles.

Turn 10: The Rahni capitals enter the fray, finishing off the human CM.
A
Rahni corvette decloaks and puts 2 sub-munitions into the human
battlecruiser
forcing a threshold check, but gets vaporized in the return fire.

Turn 11: Both Rahni DTs are destroyed (one of them taking 15 hits from
the
human DN!), but take a human FM down with them. A Rahni DD destroys a
human
corvette. The human CH and CL get thumped by the Rahni SDN.

Turn 12: The alien SDN finishes off the human CL and puts a torpedo into
the
BC, but takes a threshold check itself from several human ships. The
human BB
destroys an alien DD with beams, but can’t quite get the alien SDN in
it’s
wave gun template.

Turn 13: Two human escorts are vaporized by the Rahni BB and CH. The
lone
remaining human corvette, having repaired it’s FTL drive, makes a run
for the
edge of the system to escape. The humans all fire on the Rahni SDN, but
only
manage to scratch it. And for the second turn in a row, the Rahni SDN is
1”
outside the wave gun template!

Turn 14: The human DN pounds the alien SDN and vice-versa, but no ships
die.

Turn 15: The DN and SDN again pound each other, and both take threshold
checks.

Unfortunately, we had to call it at Turn 15 due to my RL commitments.
(Anyone
know what’s the record for longest-running PBeM?) At that point, the
humans
had:

1 x DN: damaged but functional
1 x BB: barely scratched
1 x BC: damaged but functional
1 x CH: badly damaged
2 x DDs: each with 2 damage points left
1 x CT: 1 point left, but effectively escaped
Total damage points left: 68

The Rahni had:
1 x SDN: pretty shot up, but not dead yet
1 x BB: unscratched
2 x CHs: both about half-damaged
2 x CLs: one unscratched, one with 1 point left
1 x DD: barely scratched
Total damage points left: 77

Still fairly close, but considering that the humans started out with a
10%
advantage in mass, I think the Rahni clearly had the upper hand. Had we
continued, they had a good chance of crippling/ capturing the human DN.
OTOH,
odds are that the humans could have finished off the Rahni SDN before
they
went down. Had we continued, I expect the Rahni would have won, but had
only
a few ships left at the end.

MISSION OBJECTIVES:

Humans:

>Primary Objective: Make peaceful contact with the aliens, if any are
found.
   OK, they never had a chance at this one and we all know it. But they
get
points for role-playing this one as well and as long as they did.  :)

>Secondary Objective: If attacked, capture *at least* 1 enemy ship.
    Unlikely

>Tertiary Objective: Have at least one IDF ship survive to inform IDF
HQ.
   Accomplished. (Thanks to that awesome repair crew on the INCHON!)

Rahni Objectives.

>Primary Objective: Allow no human ships to escape after learning of the
Rahni’s existence. 
  Failed.

>Secondary Objective: Capture *at least* one human ship and as many live
humans as possible.
   As I said, I think they had a very good chance of capturing at least
one.

>Tertiary Objective: Have at least 1 Rahni ship survive to inform
Central
Command. 
   Almost certainly accomplished.

Overall, I’d call it a Rahni tactical victory: they beat the human
fleet, but
got pretty badly beat up themselves. The humans now know there is a
hostile
alien race out there, but they have no idea where they come from (they
never
even learned the name “Rahni”). The Rahni, meanwhile, have a human ship
to
study and lots of prisoners to interrogate.

COMMENTS ON TACTICS:

Human:

Their original plan was to work in three groups, with one coming “up the
middle” while the other two cris-crossed back and forth in a series of
X’s,
covering each other’s sterns, but they abandoned this about turn 2. Had
they
stuck with this plan, it would have been much harder for the Rahni to
get
behind them the way they did. As it was, since Rahni ships averaged
about
1-Thrust more than humans, once they got behind them the humans were in
trouble. Their capitals in particular had a hard time bringing their
front-arc weapons to bear (right Aaron?), and that was a major factor.
OTOH,
once the shooting started their actions were pretty well coordinated.

Aliens: 

The initial volley on turn 7 was pretty deadly, but if they’d had either
of
their capitals firing torpedoes that turn as well, it might have been a
shorter game. The human’s high speed made it hard for the alien capitals
to
bring their guns to bear (which was the idea).

COMMENTS ON WEAPONS: 

I was surprised at how ineffective the “mini-missile” were, since I had
used
similar weapons before with good effect. I figured that the big,
low-thrust
capitals especially would be easy to target, but only 2 ships took
damage
from missiles the entire game.

I thought the “advanced” cloaks worked pretty much as I designed them:
good
for attack, not so good for escape. On the turn a ship decloaked, it
could
only be targeted by ships that had detected it (sensor sweep) the
previous
turn. (To keep the turn sequence simple for PBeM, I did scans at the end
of
the turn.) Had the Rahni been a little more careful about keeping their
speeds down and using less thrust, I think their “sneak attacks” would
have
been even more effective.

Poor Jon Davis never got to fire his wave gun.	:-(   This was due
mostly to
bad luck and game artificialities: on one turn the SDN was one inch
“left” of
the template; the next it was one inch “right” of the template. In
reality,
it could have fired in between turns, or turned 10-degrees one way or
something. In a “no map boundaries” game like this, the wave gun
template
seems a whole lot narrower than it does on the table top. If I did it
again I
think I’d give the wave gun maybe a 45-degree arc of fire instead of
fixing
it straight ahead to account for artificialities like this. Oh well.

Overall, I think both sides played a great game -- as I said, it was
still
fairly close at the end -- and more importantly, it sounded like
everyone was
enjoying themselves. I know I sure did! Thanks to everyone for a great
game!