CBF: War Chronicles

[kashre]

So, I am kind of interested in keeping track of the campaign we are doing, and I like posting battle reports on the really cool fights... and it seems like most CB fights are really cool So instead of spamming battle reports, I'm going to periodically post them to this thread.

The plan: Using a modified version of the Random Scenario generator from Babylon 5 Wars found in the Showdowns 2 supplement, we are playing out key battles in a war between our factions. The aggressor for the first battle is chosen randomly. Whoever wins a scenario becomes the aggressor for the next round.

We have a chart :

HOME -- SECTOR -- SECTOR -- BORDER -- SECTOR -- SECTOR -- HOME

The first battle starts in the Border section. Each time someone wins, the next battle is pushed one section closer to the opponents home planet. So I were to win 4 in a row, I'd win the war. If we have a tie (pretty easy to do with the Scenario generator we're using) the next battle is a vanilla meeting engagement to determine who gets the initiative back.

The story thus far:

The Empire of Scorpio, lead by their evil Empress Clarita (who hopefully never gets an account here since she's my G/F and calling her evil might be a bad idea) has had their eye on the lucrative trade routes and abundant resources of the nearby Kingdom of the Misty Squirrel for some time, but they had not had a good opportunity to strike an effective first blow. Until the day their scouts reported that CVA-001, Archeopteryx, was transiting from the border fleet back to Home Fleet with a much smaller escort than a Mass 884 capital ship would usually have. A powerful task force was sent to ambush it. The result of that battle is here:
www.steeldreadnought.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=aar&action=display&thread=110

[kashre]

The Second Battle of the Scorpio - Squirrel War

The Kingdom, though still reeling from the attack on their heavy carrier, nonetheless wasted no time in sending their border fleets on raids to test Empire forces, while heavy elements of the Home Fleet towards the Scorpio border. No one knew when the next major battle would happen, only that it was coming.

In the meantime, order went out to evacuate Kingdom holdings on the far side of the empire, as they were bound to be cut off and become untenable. The task of escorting the 8 Freighters of Convoy 0144 back to friendly space fell to the old CABs Gallant and Templar.

In an attempt to sneak past Empire forces, the convoy attempted to sneak through a dense asteroid field to a seldom used jump point. Unfortunatly, once they got there they ran into a pair of brand new Empire CARs which had been sent to evacuate an Empire Forward Listening Post in response to the sudden increase of Kingdom raids in the area.

there are 22 asteroids on the board (map area is 30x25)
-- My task, obviously, was to get the Convoy through the jump point, with a 700 point escort. Because we have even point totals I have to get 6 of the freighters out by the rules.

-- Her task, evacuate everyone from the listening post, or prevent me from identifying it at all. To evac, she has to dock a ship to it and roll 1d10 per turn. If the roll is less than the number of turns the evac has been under way, everyone is out. I can identify the post by getting any ship within 5 hexes of it. She has 700 points.

my forces:
2x CAB (250t) (Hvy Turbo Laser and Disruptors, 1 int each).
2x CLS (2x phasers each).

Her Forces:
2x CAR (348t) (2x plasma torp, 2x mag cannon, 2x interceptor each).

Turn 1:
As usual, nothing happens while I try and figure out how I'm going to get my freighters out, and how I'm going to manage to run around scanning asteroids for her base with no RDF ships. Im expecting the battle to be interesting because we have interceptors on both sides, and the unshielded, un-armored freighters (we used the stats from the CB Convoy Raid scenario) are vulnerable to interceptors.

Turn 2:
I fail to notice that I've blocked myself in two directions with asteroids, causing my Delta 1 CAB Gallant, to turn away from the convoy. DOH! Clarita maximizes on the hole in my formation to run up and splatter one of my freighters with one CAR. She has decided not to try evacuating her base, hoping I never get close to it or she kills all my ships.

The fighters mix it up for the first time... I pounce on one of her squadrons which is seperated from his buddies (no wingman bonus), and initiate the dogfight. I roll 5's, 3s, 2s and 1s, she rolls nothing lower than 6. Yes, my entire squadron, gone in one dogfight.

Turn 3:
I win the initiative for the first time, forcing her to move first. She puts her ships in a T to cover all her blind spots, which still gives me the option of getting my not-out-of-position CAB behind a CAR, which I then pummel soundly. Unfortuneatly one 250 mass CAR against 2 348 isnt a very fair matchup... Just one of them smashes my poor CAB down to 10 hull points. The other one spares a couple of railguns for one of my CLSs, knocking it down to *2* HP.

Turn 4:
Again I get the initiative, and again she has to move first.

I try something risky and turn the convoy away from the warp point, since she is set up between me and the WP. It saved me now, but I'll probably pay for it later. I finally have my out of position CAB turned around, now I'm making an Empire Sandwich out of her CARs and I can't mass my fire on a single shield, leading me to plink away at her hull from different directions. I'm wearing her down, but I can't get a decisive shot.

One more freighter dies at the hands of her interceptors. (note: 2 PD dice from a pair of CLS does not a fighter defense make). She gets a shot at my undamaged CLS with a CAR, and gets double 1s on her mag cannon pen rolls, keeping it in the fight with just a handful of hull damage. All of my warships have 12 or less hull except for that one CAB off in the boonies.


Turn 5: I lose the initiative, which is terrible for me. With nothing better to do, I turn the convoy back toward the Warp Point. At this point I don't think I can pull out a win, but if I can kill both her cruisers and get a ship within 5 hexes of the rock her base is on we can at least have a tie.

I get to fire first, but she has maneuvered away from most of my firepower. I still manage to bag one of her Cruisers with a lucky (like 9 to hit) disruptor shot through a shield that was phasered down by a CLS, but it's not enough. She bags 2 more of my freighters (again with those fighters), killing enough of the convoy I can no longer qualify for a "win".

Turn 6: I win the initiative, and finally stumble onto her base. I finally have my cruisers regrouped and get some decent close range angles on her last cruiser. Her CAR takes my last CLS with it, but that's not enough to save it from my own cruisers, and she goes down. Since she can't evacuate her base and I know where it is, she doesn't qualify for a "win" point. TIE!

Lessons learned: It's a pain in the butt to keep freighters alive. Moving around an asteroid belt with delta 1 non-RDF ships is very difficult. My CLS design kind of sucks.

Next time we're doing a 2600 point meeting engagement (first real battle of the war! Whee!) to see which way we advance on the board.

[unclejoe]

Great report, thanks!

Would you mind posting the modified version of your campaign rules? We are looking at trying to do something similar and it would be great to have a set of rules on hand.

Thanks!

[warchariot]

"The fighters mix it up for the first time... I pounce on one of her squadrons which is separated from his buddies (no wing man bonus), and initiate the dogfight. I roll 5's, 3s, 2s and 1s, she rolls nothing lower than 6. Yes, my entire squadron, gone in one dogfight. "

This result is not that unusual. I hardly ever see a 2 of mine, 2 of yours, 2 tie result, even in even match-ups. I'm sure if I tracked it over time it would come out mathematically, but you always seem to lose those critical ones you just have to have.

[kashre]

Jul 12, 2010 8:54:57 GMT -5 unclejoe said:

Great report, thanks!

Would you mind posting the modified version of your campaign rules? We are looking at trying to do something similar and it would be great to have a set of rules on hand.

Thanks!

I'm not sure I should post the actual system since pretty much I just stole the system verbatim from a copyrighted source. All I really changed was dividing the point totals by three, and inventing some new rules for CB (every ship is assumed to have 1 shuttle per size class).

The way it works is pretty simple though... there is a list of 13 missions for the "intruder" and 13 for the "native" player, which are chosen by chosing a random card from a deck (ace = 1, jack, queen king = 11, 12, 13. Each mission specifies a point total, possible a terrain type, a goal (destroy all enemy ships, rescue crew of asteroid base, Probing Raid - destroy at least 1 enemy ship and espace with most of your forces intact, etc) and special rules if you're outnumbered, (i.e. if it's even you have to get 75% of your freighters out, if you're outnumbered you have to get 50% of your freighters out).

The system can make really lopsided scenarios... like a 700 point "escort" mission vs a 3300 point "KILL EVERYTHING" mission. But life isn't fair.

If you want it looks like you can still get Showdowns 2 used for 7 dollars at Amazon.com.

[unclejoe]

OK, thanks for the tip. I went ahead and ordered it. I'm very much on the lookout for some sort of simple battle generation that keeps variety without exploding my brain or requires massive book-keeping etc etc.

Thanks!

[kashre]

The third battle of the war, and the first serious fleet action:

2600 point meeting engagement:

It happened a while ago and I didn't keep notes, but here's the rundown:

My forces:
1x Mass 884 CVA (11 Strike, 3 interceptor)
1x mass 884 BBB (3 strike fighters, 18 disruptors).
1x mass 250 CAB (1 interceptor)
2x mass 152 CLR
3x mass 90 CLS

Her forces:
1x BBB (with 4 interceptors)
1x BCR (with 4 interceptors)
2x CAR (with 2 interceptors each)
1x DDR
2x CLR

So... I have a total of 4 interceptor squadrons to defend my 13 strike fighters against her 12 interceptors.... this is not good math.

The battle started somewhat in my favor as I was able to snipe her smaller ships effectively before the range closed

Once we got close, fortuitous initiative roles on my part allowed me to get good position with my fighters and get my strike fighter hits in first, leading to heavy damage to her BBB... not enough to kill it, or even cripple it with its AV of 9, but things were still going in my favor. At that point I had lost all of my CLS already (man I hate that design), but thats the worst damage I took.

Of course, then it was her turn and her interceptors murdered my poor strike fighters. At this point things started going downhill for me.

my Delta 1 heavy ships could not bring enough firepower to bear on her plethora of RDF ships, several of whch tucked themselves in behind my BBB and started wearing it down. Through the rest of the game I could not shake them for anything... even if I won the initiative on a turn, I couldn't maneuver enough to get them in front of me again.

I recovered all of my messed up strike squadrons and reconstituted them into full squadrons, but after the second time I did that I only had 2 squadrons left.

At that point the writing was on the wall.. without any 360 missile weapons I could only get a few of my guns to bear on her RDF ships at once. My heavy ships had mostly anti-hull guns, as my main shield breaking power was in my strike fighters. I manage to kill her BBB, and I managed to get my carrier back out through the jump point because she ignored it as no thread once the fighters were gone, but I lost everything else and had to yield the battlefield to her. Boo!

So far, I've not been terribly impressed with my own ship designs My BBB needs wider firing arcs, and I either need more anti-shield weapons or more interceptors. And mass 90 CLS are just waaay too fragile. My RDF designs fair pretty well though.

So the Evil Empire of Scorpio has managed to push the battle back into the border sector. Today we're doing another fight with the random mission generator. We'll see how that works out.