Second Battle of Kawdl-Kit (K’tsa-Kar) – FY61.347

Earlier today, in the space around Kawdl-Kit, Task Force Cassidine engaged the invading sathar forces. After nearly an hour and a half of fighting, the last of sathar forces were destroyed.
While almost all of the Spacefleet vessels sustained serious damage, battle losses were light with the Task Force only losing three fighters and three assault scouts.
Hours after the battle, repair work for the heavily damaged assault carrier and battleship are still ongoing.
Vah’zen’rk – Kawdl-Kit Global Reporting

This one was a doozie. This was the longest lasting battle as far as number of turns of play go. Although that’s partially because the combination of speeds, damage, and lack of maneuverability caused everything to get spread out. You’ll notice the maps shift around a bit, especially toward the end as I shifted the view to keep the main part of the battle in view. I might have to shift to a larger map grid. As always this fight held a few surprises, not the least of which was the final outcome.

Background

Reinforced with some additional ships from SCC#10, veterans of campaign against the saurians, SBF-B2 reenters the K’tsa-Kar system with the intent to wipe out Task Force Cassidine. The UPF forces, while somewhat outgunned, are determined to hold the line here.

Order of Battle

Task Force Cassidine

6 Fighters
3 Assault Scouts
2 Frigates
1 Light Cruiser
1 Assault Carrier
1 Heavy Cruiser
1 Battleship

Sathar

7 Fighters
1 Frigate
6 Destroyers
1 Assault Carrier
2 Heavy Cruisers

The Battle

Setup

Task Force Cassidine elects to hold the battle around the planet, hoping to use the planet’s gravity well to their advantage even though there is no longer a station there. With no station to defend, the UPF form up in a broad line far back from the planet and the oncoming sathar forces to give them time to study the sathar deployment before committing. The capital ships are moving at speed 15 while the fighters and assault scouts are moving at speed 25. The six seeker missiles (from the battleship and heavy cruiser) are deployed in an arc on the side of the planet the sathar are approaching from.

The sathar, also cautious for this major battle, come in relatively slow, with their capital ships moving at speed 10 and fighters at speed 20. The assault carrier, escorted by the frigate, take the center position with a heavy cruiser on either side which is in turned flanked by a trio of destroyers and a flight of fighters.

Deployment at start of battle with seeker missiles shown for reference (they will only show up later when activated). Click for full size image.

Turn 1

While the sathar destroyers all accelerate to speed 13, the rest just drift forward at their current speed.

Closing ranks to defend against the expected oncoming flights of fighters, the light cruiser and assault scouts join the battleship while the frigates join up with the heavy cruiser and assault carrier. The fighters slow to speed 20 to remain out of range of all of the approaching sathar ships except possiblly the lower flight of fighters.

No shots are fired as everyone is still out of range.

Both sides approach the planet. Click for full size image.

Turn 2

Yhe upper flight of sathar fighters accelerate to speed 25 and make a pass at the upper group of ships, firing on assault rocket each at the assault scouts and light cruiser. The lower flight make a pass at the UPF fighters and fire an assault rocket at three fighters in that group. The sathar destroyers accelerate to speed 16 and fly out to the flanks with the upper group turning to head back into the fight while the lower group keeps their forward firing weapons aimed at the UPF fighters. The heavy cruisers accelerate to speed 12 and turn to cross in front of the planet while the frigate and assault carrier remain at speed 10 but turn to pass below the planet.

Defensively, all of the UPF ships fire at the upper group of incoming fighters, while the more distant ships don’t connect, it adds to the crossfire and shots from the closer ship manage to destroy three of the four fighters while almost destroying the fourth (it has 1 HP left).

The surviving fighter fires at the light cruiser and knocks out its engines, it will be stuck at speed 17 until it can get those repaired. The lower flight of sathar fighters all hit with their assault rockets destroying three of the UPF fighters (half the flight).

The UPF activate two of the previously placed seeker missiles. Upon activation, each of them detects the nearby heavy cruiser and accelerate, driving home into the ships. Both cruisers fire 3 ICMs to attempt to intercept the missiles but they fail. The upper cruiser has its ICM launcher knocked out while the lower suffers a devastating hull hit (76 HP – double damage) nearly destroying it.

Ignoring for a moment the fighters and the upper group of destroyers, the UPF ships focus on the other capital ships. The remaining fighters, the assault scouts, and the frigates and make a pass at the lower group of destroyers. The heavy cruiser and assault carrier go after the severely damaged heavy cruiser and the sathar frigate, while the battleship and light cruiser go after the other heavy cruiser.

Defensively, the frigate, upper heavy cruiser, and assault carrier focus their fire on the UPF light cruiser damaging its maneuvering, taking out its laser and proton battery, slightly damaging its hull, and starting an on-board fire. The heavily damaged heavy cruiser fires at the UPF assault carrier knocking out its engines (stuck at speed 16) and severely damaging its hull (a little over 1/3 of hull integrity lost). The lower flight of destroyers focus their fire on two of the assault scouts. One is lightly grazed suffering a 20% hull integrity reduction while the other is destroyed.

Under combined fire from the UPF light cruiser and battleship, the upper sathar heavy cruiser has its maneuvering and proton battery knocked out, and suffers a 43% hull integrity loss from multiple hits. While the UPF assault carrier misses, the UPF heavy cruiser finishes off the heavily damaged sathar heavy cruiser with it’s pair of laser batteries. The shots by those ships at the frigate are much better. The frigate manages to intercept the heavy cruiser’s torpedo with its ICMs, but the sathar vessel is hit with the cruiser’s disruptor cannon and rocket batteries from both vessels damaging its damage controls system and reducing its hull integrity to only 8%.

The lower flight of sathar destroyers doesn’t fair much better. The lead destroyer is hit by an assault rocket and laser battery inducing a navigation control hit and suffering 28% hull integrity reduction. The second is hit by an assault rocket from one of the fighters which scores a critical hit and the laser cannon from one of the frigates and is destroyed by the damage inflicted. The last destroyer is hit by two laser batteries and an assault rocket knocking out 54% of its hull integrity.

First shots fired. Click for full size image.

Turn 3

The surviving heavy cruiser, having no MR, accelerates to speed 14 to come in range of the assault scouts and frigates. The seriously damaged frigate just drifts forward at speed 10 and the assault carrier follows it but accelerates to speed 12 and turns to cross its path near the end of its move All three ships fire at the UPF assault carrier. The upper flight of destroyers swoop down and are joined by the surviving fighter from the upper flight. They unleash everything they have at the UPF battleship. The lower flight of fighters loop around and fire on the UPF frigates (2 AR at one and 1 at another) while one of the destroyers loops around to fire at the lead assault scout with everything but it’s torpedo which it fires at the second frigate. The destroyer with the navigation control hit loops away from the fight but fires at the remaining assault scout as it passes by. The fire on the UPF light cruiser damages its combat control system.

Defensively, the frigates and assault scouts fire their laser batteries at the oncoming fighters destroying one and lightly damaging another. The frigates fire their other weapons at the damaged destroyer making the attack on them knocking out another 30% hull integrity and short circuiting out its screens and ICMs.

The UPF heavy cruiser and assault carrier fire their laser batteries at the sathar frigate (short circuiting its screens and ICMs and inducing a navigation control failure) and all their other weapons at the passing heavy cruiser. The battleship and light cruiser fire their disruptor cannons at the heavy cruiser, which combinded with the fire from the heavy cruiser and assault carrier, destroy that ship. They fire 2 laser batteries at the incoming fighter but miss and concentrate the rest of their weapons on the lead destroyer damaging its damage control system, inducing a fire, and nearly destroying it with a critical hit (only 8% hull integrity left).

The lone sathar fighter fire a salvo at the battleship. While most of the shots miss, the ones that hit are significant. The fighter’s assault rocket knocks out the battleship’s ICMs, the lead destroyer’s torpedo scores a critical hit knocking out 25% of the battleship’s hull, and the second destroyer scores a critical hit with its rocket battery taking out another 22% of the hull.

The UPF assault carrier is hit by both the sathar frigate and assault carrier knocking out its proton and laser batteries and multiple hull hits knocking another 40% off of it’s hull integrity. Shots at the surviving assault scouts destroy the lead assault scout while completely missing the other one. The lead UPF frigate is hit by an assault rocket damaging its engines while the other is hit by an assault rocket and torpedo knocking out nearly half its hull and acceleration ability.

The UPF light cruiser, with its engines nearly completely off line, turns to starboard and drifts down toward the lone sathar destroyer at the bottom of the map. The battleship turns hard to starboard and flies down over the wounded sathar frigate and flying past the assault carrier. The surviving UPF fighters and assault scouts loop around and make a run at the sathar assault carrier. The two frigates go after the lone sathar destroyer at the bottom of the map and loop back toward the main fight. The UPF assault carrier, severely damaged and with its engines disabled, drifts away from the fight escorted by the UPF heavy cruiser. The fire on the sathar destroyer rampages through the ship knocking out its engines and damaging its combat controls system

Defensively, the upper flight of sathar destroyers once again concentrate all their fire on the battleship, hoping to do better defensively than they did offensively. Their hope is in vain however as only one hit does hull damage (reducing it by another 10%) but they also induce a navigation control malfunction, knock out its stasis screen, and damage its combat control systems.

The lone sathar destroyer in the middle of the fight fires at the UPF assault carrier short circuiting its defensive systems and reducing its damage control capabilities.

The lone destroyer at the bottom of the map with the navigation control malfunction focuses its fire on the more damaged frigate knocking out it’s laser cannon.

The sathar frigate and assault carrier fire their energy battery weapons at the incoming UPF fighters (one is hit for a 38% hull integrity reduction) and the frigate fires its rocket battery at the assault scout (critical hit destroying the scout) and laser cannon at the battleship as it flies by (that’s the shot that induced the navigation control hit mentioned above).

The UPF fighters fire at the sathar assault carrier but only connect with one assault rocket knocking out the carrier’s maneuvering. The frigates work to finish off the damaged destroyer with the navigation hit but only manage to hit with a single laser battery inducing an onboard fire.

The light cruiser fires at the second destroyer in the upper group as it flies away hitting with its laser, proton, and electron batteries damaging it’s hull and weapons before the light cruier’s torpedo slips past the ICMs launched by the destroyer and scores a critical hit, destroying the sathar ship.

The battleship fires it’s disruptor cannon and a laser battery at the frigate hitting the laser battery and destroying it, two laser batteries at the damaged destroyer in the upper group, one of which connects destroying that ship, and the rest of its weapons at the third destroyer connecting with the electron battery and torpedo and knocking out 70% of the sathar vessel’s hull integrity.

Finally, the assault carrier and heavy cruiser fire at the damaged destroyer in the middle of the map destroying it with multiple hits.

While the UPF ships are fairly damaged, they are definitely in control of the fight at this point.

Positions after the first half hour of battle. This is the first of the map shifts (moved up slightly this time for that destroyer at the bottom to stay on the map). Click for full size image.

Repair Turn

On the UPF side, the damaged fighter fails its repair attempt on its hull which will have to be repaired at a shipyard, luckily it is still over 50% hull integrity and doesn’t have to worry about breaking up. The second UPF frigate and the battleship both manage to repair some of their hull while the battleship also effects repairs to its combat control system. The light cruiser gets its fire under control while the assault carrier repairs its damage control systems.

On the sathar side, the two damaged fighters repair their hull while the surviving destroyer from the upper group fails its hull repair, leaving it permanently damaged below 50% hull integrity. The other surviving destroyer gets its fire under control while the assault carrier repairs its maneuvering and combat control systems.

Turn 4

Recognizing that they can’t win, the sathar attempt to at least finish off the already damaged ships. To that end, the upper destroyer and 3 fighters go after the assault carrier. Though severely damaged, the destroyer manages to hold together (rolled 37 with a 30% breakup chance). The assault carrier turns away from the battleship and accelerates as much as possible. The other sathar destroyer, although it put its fire out, still has a problem with its navigation control system and pulls a turn to port. It also accelerates.

Defensive fire:

The UPF assault carrier and heavy cruiser fire defensively at the sathar fighters, using their ICMs to defend against the incoming torpedo, managing to destroy two of the three fighters. The battleship fires everything it can at the assault carrier causing significant system damage (all maneuvering, navigation control damage, half engine capabilities, and knocking out its ICM launcher) and some minor hull damage (20%). The UPF light cruiser and frigates fire long distance shots at the other destroyer but the shots all go wide.

The sathar fighter fires its final assault rocket at the UPF assault carrier knocking out that ship’s masking screen system. The sathar destroyer hits the assault carrier with its laser battery and a rocket battery but only causes minor hull damage (15% hull integrity reduction). The sathar assault carrier hits the UPF battleship with both of its energy weapons inducing a loss of navigation control and some minor (~6%) hull damage. However, that is enough to put the battleship below 50% hull integrity and with the navigation control damage, it could break up

At this point, I really thought we were going to loose the battleship. Especially when it takes even more damage as part of sathar defensive fire phase of this round. But that same destroyer saved the battleship as well. This is where the damage to all the ships combined with their high speed, really started to spread things out. Any of the ship staying in the fight (mainly the UPF light and heavy cruisers) I tracked on separate maps so they could loop around and come back in if the fight lasted that long.

The battleship, with its navigation control damage pulls a turn to port. Luckily its damaged hull holds together (rolled 24 on 14). The frigates, unable to reach the assault carrier, go after the destroyer at the top of the map. The light cruiser, with its limited maneuverability turns to try to come back around to the battle area. The UPF fighters make a final run at the sathar assault carrier before turning to return to their assault carrier. They also activate two more seeker missiles, one accelerates and slams into the remaining sathar fighter destroying it. The second starts to go after the battleship but as the battleship flies away, turns its sights on the sathar destroyer.

Defensively the sathar assault carrier misses its shots at the UPF fighters while the sathar destroyer hits the battleship for another 5% hull integrity loss and knocks out all of its maneuvering. The sathar destroyer connects with the damaged UPF frigate knocking out some of its engines and nearly destroying it.

Two of the three assault rockets from the UPF fighters connect with the sathar assault carrier, one of which scores a critical hit and between the two of them reduce the carriers hull integrity by another 64%. The UPF frigates, assault carrier and heavy cruiser all fire at the remaining sathar destroyer at the top of the map connecting with multiple weapons and destroying it. The battle ship hits the destroyer at the bottom of the map with a laser and electron battery reducing its hull integrity by another 24%.

Start of the cleanup phase for the UPF. Click for full size image.

Turn 5

The two remaining sathar ships are heavily damaged. The assault carrier just drifts away while the destroyer, with its navigation control system damaged pulls a hard turn to starboard and accelerates to speed 19. It doesn’t break up from the strain.

Defensively, the battleship is the only ship in range and it opens fire on the destroyer hitting with all of its battery weapons damaging its combat control system and short circuiting its defensive systems, knocking out its torpedo launcher, reducing its maneuverability, and slightly damaging its hull (6%).

Offensively, the destroyer fires back at the battleship and hits with both its rocket battery and a torpedo (the battleship’s ICM launcher is damaged) which both damage the battleships hull and nearly destroy it. It has only 6% hull integrity left.

The seeker missile reverses course and heads after the battleship and sathar destroyer, the undamaged UPF frigate turns and accelerates to speed 24 to chase after the sathar assault carrier. The UPF heavy cruiser (off the top of the map) with no foreseeable danger to the damaged UPF assault carrier, turns and starts to pursue the sathar assault carrier as well. The light cruiser (off the bottom of the map) continues to slowly turn back to the combat area and the damaged battleship, frigate, and assault carrier just drift on their current course. Finally, the fighters start to close with the assault carrier to board and rearm.

Defensively the assault carrier fires at the oncoming frigate but misses. The destroyer takes its final shots at the battleship hitting with its laser battery. Unfortunately for the sathar, it only damages the battleship’s engines instead of damaging its hull.

Offensively, the battleship fires its final salvo, including a torpedo at the destroyer but only hitting with an electron battery damaging its engines and a proton battery knocking it out its rocket battery launcher . The UPF frigate fires at the sathar assault carrier but doesn’t hit at the extreme range.

Chasing down the stragglers. Click for full sized image.

Turn 6

The sathar assault carrier continues to drift while the destroyer’s navigation damage causes it to pull to port and fly up toward the planet, its reduced maneuverablity reducing its chance of breaking up and spreading out its movement. Defensively the frigate fires once again at the assault carrier, this time dialing in the range and hitting with both the laser battery (damaging the combat control system) and the laser cannon (16% hull integrity), nearly destroying the ship. The assault carrier returns fire but misses.

The UPF frigate chases down the assault carrier and surviving the defensive fire (laser battery hit for 18% hull integrity), hits the carrier with its laser cannon for 20% hull integrity and a rocket battery knocking out is proton battery and destroying it. The seeker missile continues to pursue the destroyer.

Main battlemap after an hour of combat. Most of the surviving combatants are off the map which has shifted down to keep the sathar assault carrier in view. Click for full size image.

Repair Turn 2

The two UPF frigates, assault carrier, and battleship all repair some of their hull while the assault carrier also repairs the short circuit in its defensive systems and the light cruiser restores complete maneuverability.

The sathar destroyer manages to repair 18% of its hull

Turn 7

The destroyer’s navigation control damage causes it to turn to port toward the light cruiser and it accelerates to continue to stay away from the seeker missile. The light cruiser, its maneuvering repaired continues a wide turn to avoid the seeker as well, otherwise, it could have closed on the sathar ship. The frigate turns after destroying the assault carrier, accelerating to chase after the destroyer. No shots are fired.

The map has shifted up again and the UPF light cruiser is back in view. It would have been visible last turn except for the map shift. Click for full size image.

Turn 8

Continuing to accelerate, the sathar destroyer’s navigation damage turns it to starboard and it passes within 40,000 km of the light cruiser. Defensive fire from the more distant frigate misses, but the light cruiser connects with its electron battery knocking out the destroyer’s masking screen. The destroyer returns fire and hits with its electron battery knocking out the cruiser’s ICM launcher.

The seeker missile continues to chase the ships but can’t catch them at their high speed. The light cruiser turns to run parallel to the sathar destroyer’s path. The frigate loops around and comes up directly behind the destroyer and the heavy cruiser completes it large turn and comes in directly at the destroyer.

Defensively, the destroyer fires at the frigate as it closes but misses with everything.

The light cruiser can only fire it’s EB and misses. The frigate fires its energy weapons (everything else is expended) and scores critical hits with both knocking out 52% of the sathar destroyer’s hull integrity (it only has 6% left). The heavy cruiser opens up with all of its energy weapons but misses as well.

Final positions of the ships still in view at the end of the end of the fight. The UPF heavy cruiser, has managed to turn around back to the battle area. Click for full sized image.

Turn 9

Now severely damaged after the hits from the frigate, and with the navigation control damage causing it to pull to starboard, the strain on the sathar destroyer’s hull is too much and the ship breaks apart as the crew tries to save it.

Task Force Cassidine has won the day, and while most of the capital ships are damaged (the heavy cruiser is the only one unscathed), they have only lost 3 fighters and three assault scouts. The crews get to work immediately upon field repairs.

Final Repairs

The frigate still in the fight completes its repairs in another half hour and just needs a reload to be fully operational. An hour an a half later the light cruiser finishes its repairs. An hour after that the other frigate completes as much repair as it can, its hull is only at 73% integrity but the rest of the work is going to need to be done at a shipyard. Another hour and a half (4.5 hours after the battle ended) the assault carrier completes all of its repairs. Finally, 6 hours after the battle is over the battleship completes the repairs of all its systems except for its stasis screen which is going to require a work in a shipyard.

Lessons Learned

I was really surprised the UPF did as well as they did. I really thought the sathar were going to win this one or at least leave Task Force Cassidine gutted. From a purely hull point perspective, the sathar had the advantage 631 to 518. Some lucky damage rolls, like the seeker missile doing 76 HP to the heavy cruiser on round two, and bad rolls on the sathar’s side, definitely helped tip the scales in their favor.

The other problem was that the sathar just couldn’t manage to finish off the UPF ships. The UPF battleship, one of the frigates, and the assault carrier were all nearly destroyed. They all were down to single digit hull points during the fight. The sathar just couldn’t manage to get the killing blow in. Those low hull points were late in the battle (expect for the assault carrier) so eliminating the ships would not have made much difference in this fight but eliminating them would have definitely helped the sathar’s war effort later on. As it is, Task Force Cassidine is almost completely intact. They will have to replace some fighters and assault scouts, but that’s relatively easy compared to having to replace a battleship and assault carrier.

What did you think of this fight? What should either side have done differently? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Battle of Theseus – FY61.346

A lone sathar frigate, detected three days ago shortly after it entered the system was engaged today by two militia assault scouts. While one of the assault scouts was heavily damaged in the encounter, the militia ships eliminated the enemy vessel in a single assault run.
Speculation rages as to the origin of the sathar vessel. There are unconfirmed reports that Spacefleet has established routes outward from Theseus toward the Great Void. Could it be that the sathar are coming in along those routes?
Victoria Sorensen, StarPlay News

Background

A lone sathar frigate jumped into the Theseus system as part of an effort by the sathar to chart a route to the Frontier from the Liberty system. Due to an alert that the ship was headed in that general direction from the forces of PG Liberty, the Minotaur militia was on alert and patrolling the system. The frigate was detected by two of the militia assault scouts and they vectored to intercept. Unable to jump out of the system before being caught, the frigate turns to fight the oncoming militia ships. This battle occurs in deep space.

Order of Battle

Minotaur Militia

2 Assault Scouts

Sathar

1 Frigate

The Battle

Setup

The opposing forces enter from opposite sides of the map. The militia are moving at speed 30 while the sathar frigate is moving at speed 20. The militia are the attackers in this scenario and will move first. The sathar are not necessarily trying to destroy the militia ships but rather escape the battle.

Initial positions of this fight. Click for full size image.

Turn 1

The two forces close with each other but no shots are fired. The militia ships swing wide to flank the sathar and maintain their speed. The sathar frigate changes course to go after the upper assault scout and uses its maximum acceleration but remains just out of laser canon range.

Initial closing movement. Click for full size image.

Turn2

The closer assault scout turns to avoid flying into range of the frigates laser cannon and loops around, remaining at speed 30 and ends in a position to fire its assault rocket at the frigate. The farther assault scout accelerates to speed 34 and makes a pass at the frigate firing its assault rocket from the same position where the other assault scout ends its movement but flits out of torpedo range to end its move.

The frigate focuses its fire at the closer assault scout while firing all of its ICMs at the incoming assault rocket from that ship. The laser battery hits for 8 HP of damage. The ICMs are ineffective and both assault rockets slam into the sathar frigate. The laser battery from the second assault scout also hits the sathar vessel. The combined damage from both ships obliterates the sathar frigate and that quickly the fight is over.

Final positions when sathar frigate is destroyed. Click for full size image.

Repairs

Unable to repair the hull damage, the wounded assault scout heads carefully back to Minotuar where it will enter the starship construction center for repairs.

Lessons Learned

The sathar should have matched the militia ships’ speed. Or at least started at speed 25. If it had, it could have brought at least its laser canon and laser battery to bear on the lone assault scout on turn 1 and possible even its rocket weapons (if it had started at speed 30). That would have significantly changed the outcome of the fight as it would have had another salvo at the militia and could have possibly eliminated one of the ships right away.

Once again this went faster than I expected. The damage rolls for the attacks were 18 and 20 HP for the assault rockets and 10 HP for the laser battery. While I rolled well for the damage effects (all of the hits did hull damage which I wasn’t suspecting), I actually rolled really low on damage for the assault rockets as both of those were double damage rolls! They should have done more on the order of 30 HP each. But it was still enough.

The sathar have part of the route to the Frontier from Liberty mapped, but because of the misjump the frigate made, the route in not complete.

HSS History’s Hope Deck Plans – part 1

This is going to be a two-parter, mainly because I haven’t finished all the deck plans. The reason is that instead of just drawing the deck plans, I decided to record myself doing so and make a set of how-to videos about how I make the deck plans, similar to what I did for drawing the Rosegard maps (part 2, part 3, part 4) a couple of years ago. But because of that, I haven’t had a chance to record all the videos with everything going on. This post will provide links to the maps and videos I have finished, and the next one (hopefully sometime next month, I hope to record the rest over the Christmas break) with provide the rest of the decks.

All of the maps are drawn at 140 DPI or 70 pixels per grid square which is exactly the size needed for Roll20 and most virtual table tops.

Getting Started/Cargo Deck

The first video shows the set up of my drawing environment and then we draw the first/lowest deck on the ship, the cargo deck, which is also the simplest. Here’s the video:

Here’s the final map for the Cargo Deck.

Cargo Deck map. Click for full-size image.

This map is fairly simple, there is the elevator and ladder well, the main cargo bay, and two smaller sealed cargo bays on the right side. These smaller rooms have secure doors that can be locked. There is the main cargo bay doors at the bottom of the map. These open downward to form a loading ramp to get into the cargo bay if landed on a planet’s surface.

Crew Deck

There are two videos for this deck. The first one fixes some minor issues with the cargo deck and then gets to work on the crew deck. The second one adds in the portholes for the deck.

This is actually the deck plan for five different decks on the ship as they are all the same except the Officer’s Deck which has a ceiling access to the bridge deck. Here is the final map for these level.

Officer Deck. The only difference between this and the other decks is that the dashed square (which represents the access to the bridge) is absent on the other decks. Click for full-sized image.

Once again the deck is fairly simple, consisting of four nearly identical cabins, with one being slightly smaller due to needing to access the ladder well.

Each cabin has a bed, desk, table, several chairs, wardrobe and private bath.

Science and Exploration Deck

This is the final deck for this installment. This is the deck that houses all the exploration equipment (atmoprobes, remote probes, landing drones), the ships laboratory, a small lifeboat and workpod, and the hydroponics and life support system.

And here’s the deck plan.

Science and life support deck. Click for full-sized version.

You may notice that this deck looks a bit different than the end shot in the video. As I mentioned in the video, I forgot about the life support machinery when I was drawing it. I’ve gone back and fixed that mistake.

The missile silhouette is the atmoprobes, the are two of them, one on top of the other, The two bays on the left with nothing drawn in them are the landing drone (top) and remote probe (bottom) bays. The area on the right is the laboratory and the large area at the bottom is the hydroponics bay (left) and life support machinery (right).

This deck changed the most from my original sketches due to the creation of the 3D model. You may notice that the three bays at the top “stick out” from the the basic shape of the ship. As I was making the model and working on the hull, I found that there was more space available given the angular shape I gave the hull. So I was able to extend these bays out instead of having them take up space from the hydroponics and life support area and still be within the sloped edges of the hull. You can see the cutouts for these bays doors on the model.

Final Thoughts

There are only three maps here but they actually represent 7 of the 12 decks in the ship so on some level, I’m over half done. This is a short post, although if you watch the videos, you’ve got a bit more than an hour and a half of viewing ahead of you.

I had hoped to finish all of the deck plans but I’ve been crazy busy this month (among other things I start my new position as a computer science professor today) and just haven’t had the time to dedicate to this project as I’d like. So I decided to do this post for today and finish up the other ones in a future post.

Battle of Ken’zah-Kit (K’aken-Kar) – FY61.296

Arriving from the recent engagement in the K’tsa-Kar system, the local militia ships, together with elements from Spacefleet arrive back at Ken’zah-Kit just as the sathar arrived at the planet. Arriving just too late to prevent the destruction of the fortified defense station in orbit, the militia and Spacefleet vessels made quick work of the sathar invaders, destroying all five ships in just twenty minutes of fighting.
While several ships will need time in a starship construction center to complete repairs, the only loss, beyond the station, was one of the militia assault scouts which was lost with all hands.
With Task Force Cassidine in-system and only three days out, it feels like Ken’zah-Kit is secure for now.
Rak’tal-ka, StarPlay News

Background

The UPF forces had wanted to engage the sathar in deep space, but having jumped in on the opposite side of the system, they were only able to intercept the attacking forces as they approached the planet. The frigate UPFS Flying Cloud, which has been on a continuous high speed transit from the Liberty system before the fighting started, finally joins up with the rest of PG Meteor just a day before the sathar are engaged. Task Force Cassidine is also in the K’aken Kar system. However, they just jumped in a day ago and are too far away to participate in this fight.

With Task Force Cassidine coming in behind them and the militia and PG Meteor ahead of them, the sathar have to fight and intend to take on the smaller group first, hoping to defeat them and then join up with SBF-B2 that is currently en route from the K’tsa-Kar system before taking on the UPF task force.

While the UPF have more ships, the sathar have a slight hull advantage in this fight. It was supposed to be a tough fight for the UPF forces.

Order of Battle

K’aken-Kar Militia

2 assault scouts
1 fortified station

UPF – PG Meteor

3 assault scouts
1 frigate
2 destroyers

Sathar

1 frigate
2 destroyers
1 light cruiser
1 heavy cruiser

The Battle

Setup

The station is on the side of the planet facing the invading sathar forces and orbiting counterclockwise. With both fleets racing to intercept and coming directly from jumps into the system from opposite directions, they are starting on opposite sides of the map. The K’aken-Kar militia and PG Virgo are coming in fast on the left side of the map moving at speed 30. The K’aken-Kar militia assault scouts are high above the planet with the UPF assault scouts are below the planet. The frigate and destroyer are flying in formation in the middle and come in just above the planet.

The sathar, moving fast at speed 25, appear in their standard diamond formation headed straight at the station and planet. They intend to make a fast run at the station before engaging the smaller ships.

Initial positions for the battle. Click for full size image.

Turn 1

The sathar maintain their speed making a full frontal assault on the station, veering off just 20,000 km away to avoid colliding with the planet and turn toward the UPF capital ships and the militia.

Defensively, the stations fires all of its weapons at the closest sathar destroyer hitting with its laser batteries knocking out the destroyer’s masking screen launcher and causing an electrical fire. It also fires all of its ICMs at the salvo of incoming torpedoes.

Offensively, the sathar fire every weapon they have at the station. The UPF and militia forces can only watch helplessly as 17 of the 26 weapons fired, including 3 torpedoes that made it through the ICM screen, connect with the station and obliterate it.

Angered by the destruction of the station, the Frontier forces swoop in to exact their revenge. The UPF assault scouts use their maximum acceleration and swing up from below the planet to fire at the lower destroyer. The militia assault scouts line up for an assault rocket run at the sathar frigate and then veer off behind the planet, accelerating to speed 34. The frigate and destroyers slow to speed 29 to just come within rocket battery range and fire on the sathar heavy cruiser; they turn away from the planet at the last moment to prepare to fire at the sathar ships as they fly by.

Defensively, the sathar frigate and light cruiser fire their energy weapons at the militia assault scouts, each targeting a single ship, and their rocket batteries at the UPF frigate. The other three ships target the lead UPF destroyer. The sathar frigate misses completely but the light cruiser connects with its laser battery and electron battery damaging the assault scout’s engines and causing a loss of navigation control. It also hits the frigate with the rocket battery knocking out its laser cannon. The other sathar ships don’t do much better with the far destroyer and heavy cruiser missing completely while the closer destroyer only hits with its electron battery shorting out the UPF ship’s defensive systems.

While the gunners on the sathar vessels were not very effective, the same cannot be said for the gunners on the Frontier ships. The militia ships hit with one laser battery and both assault rockets destroying the sathar frigate. Similarly, the UPF assault scouts hit the lower destroyer with a laser battery and two assault rockets destroying that vessel. The UPF capital ships fare nearly as well. While the torpedoes didn’t make it through the screen of ICMs fired by the heavy cruiser, the large ship was still hit by a rocket battery from the frigate and each destroyer hit with their laser cannon, laser battery, and a rocket battery. Combined, the damage from the weapons disabled the cruiser’s distruptor cannon, damaged its engines, knocked out its maneuvering, and seriously damaged it, leaving it’s hull integrity at a mere 26 percent.

Courses and positions after the first round of combat. Click for full size image.

Turn 2

Seriously damaged, the sathar heavy cruiser just drifts away from the battle firing at the UPF frigate as it passes. The light cruiser and surviving destroyer loop around the planet (speed 25 and 26), buzzing the UPF capital ships and firing their torpedoes at the lead destroyer. They then train all of their energy weapons on the militia assault scouts and fire their rocket batteries at the UPF assault scouts.

Defensively, the UPF frigate fires at the heavy cruiser and connects with its laser cannon, cutting the large ship’s remaining hull integrity by over half but not quite destroying it. The UPF destroyers fire at the remaining sathar destroyer only missing with a rocket and laser battery. The weapons that do hit knock out the destroyer’s electron battery before ripping its hull to shreds. The assault scouts all fire at the light cruiser and two of the UPF assault scouts hit knocking out the light cruiser’s laser batter and causing significant hull damage with maximum damage laser battery hit (20 HP).

Of the weapons brought to bear, only the heavy cruiser’s electron battery misses the UPF frigate with the torpedo slipping through the ICM screen. The frigate has its damage and navigation control systems comprised and its hull severely damaged, knocking its hull integrity down to just 32 percent. The torpedo from the light cruiser misses the UPF destroyer, but it hits the trailing militia assault scout with it’s proton battery and distruptor cannon destroying it. It also hits one of the UPF assault scouts with the rocket battery knocking its hull integrity down to less than half.

The 3 UPF Assault scouts chase after the Heavy cruiser while the destroyers and surviving militia assault scout go after the light cruiser. The UPF Flying Cloud (frigate) with a damaged navigation control system, pulls a hard turn to starboard, looping around the planet. It manages to hold its damaged hull together and not break up from the strain of the maneuver.

The heavy cruiser fires at the incoming assault scouts but only hits one with a laser battery knocking its hull integrity to just 33 percent. The light cruiser fires at the militia assault scout hitting with an electron battery knocking out half of the small ship’s hull integrity. It fires its rocket battery at the lead UPF destroyer but misses.

The UPF assault scouts hit the heavy cruiser with 2 of their assault rockets finally destroying the larger vessel. The other ships combine their fire on the light cruiser hitting with 2 laser canons, a laser and rocket battery, and an assault rocket and torpedo. The torpedo took out the cruiser’s proton screen but the other weapons all ripped into its hull destroying it.

Final moves and positions. The heavy cruiser and assault scouts are an additional 8 hexes off the map with the assault scouts veering of at a range of 4 hexes after making their assault rocket attack. Click for full size image.

Repairs

The UPF frigate manages to hold together after another hard turn to port and then gets its navigation control issues fixed despite its reduced damage control capabilities. Over the next 3 hours it repairs the rest of its systems but can only get its hull to 75% without spending time in a shipyard. The militia assault scout repairs some of it’s hull but only gets it back to 66% before running into issues that will require a shipyard. The UPF assault scout hit by the heavy cruiser repairs most of its hull but has a little (13%) that needs attention in a shipyard. The other assault scout and the damaged destroyer get all their systems back online in under an hour.

Lessons Learned

This one didn’t go anything like I expected. With the ships staring out on the opposite sides of the map, I knew the sathar would get a free round on the station. I expected them to take out the station (it was a primary target) but maybe not as spectacularly as they did (170 of 140 HP with three weapons, including 2 torpedoes, doing double damage).

From there everything went pear shaped for the sathar. Their tactics were actually pretty sound but their gunners couldn’t hit to save their lives (literally). The sathar light cruiser gunners did just fine, constantly hitting their targets but the other ships, beyond hitting the station, were not so accurate. This really didn’t help the sathars’ cause as they were unable to eliminate the assault scouts and suffered a few more assault rocket hits than they would have liked.

That, combined with the absolutely amazing firing from the UPF, both just in accuracy in hitting and also some well-placed double-damage rolls on the first round (two AR for 34 HP each on the frigate and destroyer, a LB hit for 14 HP on the destroyer, and a RB hit for 34 HP on the heavy cruiser), destroyed two of the sathar ships and seriously wounded a third right off the bat shifting the balance of power to the UPF. Had those ships survived that first round, the UPF would have probably still won but the casualty list would have been much higher. The rapid destruction of the ships on round one allowed the UPF to focus their fire on round 2 and keep the engagement short.

The incoming SBF-B2, being a just slightly larger version of the fleet destroyed here (an extra destroyer plus an assault carrier with 7 fighters) doesn’t have a chance against the combined forces of Task Force Cassidine (which is roughly the same strength, substituting a frigate, 3 assault scouts and a battleship for the three sathar destroyers), PG Meteor, and the surviving militia assault scout. The sathar are going to have to reasses their strategy.

Battle of Kawdl-Kit (K’tsa-Kar) – FY61.285

Due to the amazing skill of the Clarion and Ken’zah-Kit militias and UPF Spacefleet crews, the sathar invaders were quickly overwhelmed but not before they managed to destroy the armed station orbiting the planet.
Rescue operations are ongoing for the station’s crew and the hearts of the people of Kawdl-Kit go out in sympathy to the families of those who lost their lives and gratitude to the militias of the neighboring systems who came to their defense.
The CMS Osprey is the only ship that experienced lasting damage and will be returning home to effect repairs due to the lack of a starship construction center here in the K’aken-Kar system.
Vah’zen’rk – Kawdk-Kit Global Reporting

Background

While K’tsa-Kar doesn’t have any militia of its own, the K’aken-Kar assault scouts, under the ZKKDA, risk jump into the system to help defend it. From the other direction, the available ships of Patrol Group Meteor, along with the Clarion Royal Marines, arrive from White light. Both groups make a high speed risk jump to get there in time. The UPF have many more ships than the sathar but only a slight hull point advantage (and that’s only if you count the armed station) as most of the ships are small assault scouts. This might be a tough battle.

While the sathar were only expecting to fight the armed station, they are confident that they can handle the swarm of small ships.

Order of Battle

K’aken-Kar Militia

2 assault scouts
1 armed station

White Light Militia

4 assault scouts
1 frigate

This is +1 assault scout compared to the Order of Battle in the Knight Hawks Campaign book due to events occurring in the timeline.

UPF – PG Meteor

3 assault scouts
2 destroyers

Sathar

1 frigate
2 destroyers
1 light cruiser
1 heavy cruiser

The Battle

Setup

The militia ships deploy above the planet with the Clarion frigate and a single assault scout taking the inner position, the other Clarion assault scouts (lead by the CMS Osprey) out from there and the two K’aken-Kar assault scouts on the wing. Below the planet the two UPF destroyers form a flight with the three assault scouts on the wing. The assault scout groups are moving at speed 30 while the capital ships (and the single assault scout) are moving at 20. The station is orbiting counter clockwise.

As they have done in the other systems, the sathar are formed into their diamond pattern with the frigate, LC, & HC in the middle and the destroyers on the sides. However, unlike in the other systems, the sathar are moving at a speed of 15.

Initial positions at the start of the battle. Click for full sized image.

Turn 1

The sathar frigate, light cruiser, and heavy cruiser accelerate to speed 17 and at the last minute, turn to head toward the K’aken-Kar assault scouts. The destroyers accelerate to 18 and 16 respectively to remain in the diamond formation. Unknown to the UPF forces, the sathar heavy cruiser deploys its seeker missiles along its route. The sathar ships all fire at maximum range at the station.

The station returns fire defensively with its laser battery but given the extreme range misses. The sathar, on the other hand, have a good maximum range shot with both the light cruiser and closer destroyer connecting with their cannons and a laser battery each. The station has its laser battery knocked out and nearly half of its hull integrity destroyed.

With the sathar turning toward the militia ships, the UPF vessels loop around and hit the heavy cruiser from behind which fires ICMs at the incoming torpedoes. The Clarion militia ships maneuver to stay out of the forward firing arc of the sathar vessels and unleash everything at the sathar destroyer closest to the station, which fires ICMs at the torpedoe from the frigate as well. The Kaken-Kar militia ships pass in front of the sathar ships but out of range of their canons and loop around to hit the destroyer on the far side of the formation. With its laser battery damaged, the station deploys a masking screen.

Defensively, the sathar light cruiser, frigate, and destroyer further from the planet fire at the K’aken-Kar assault scouts hoping to take them out of the fight before they can engage. The destroyer closer to the planet fires at the Osprey, and the heavy cruiser fires at the lead UPF assault scout. The lead K’aken-Kar assault scout is hit by two laser batteries damaging its hull while its sister ship is hit by an electron battery knocking its laser battery off-line. The CMS Osprey is hit by an electron battery damaging its hull and the lead UPF assault scout is hit by another electron battery causing serious hull damage and reducing the hull integrity to less than half.

The training of the the UPF and militia forces is evident as they press home their attack. All three assault rockets connect with the heavy cruiser along with two laser batteries and two electron batteries knocking out various weapons and other systems and doing some hull damage. But the gunnery award goes to the torpedo gunner on the second destroyer. They threaded their missile through the ICM screen and impacted it right above what must have been the heavy cruiser’s torpedo magazine. The resulting explosion ripped the ship apart. The destroyer targeted by the White Light militia was hit by three of the four assault rockets and four of the five laser batteries knocking out it laser cannon and masking screens before ripping the ship to shreds. The K’aken-Kar militia, not to be shown up, hit the other destroyer with both assault rockets, each scoring critical hits and between the two of them destroying the sathar vessel.

Positions and maneuvers for the first 10 minutes of battle. Click for full sized image.

Turn 2

The two remaining sathar ships loop around and bring everything to bear on the station, the light cruiser accelerating to speed 18. The station fires a screen of ICMs at the incoming torpedoes. The sathar also activate the seeker missiles laid down by the heavy cruiser which both go after the UPF destroyers.

Defensively, the UPF ships focus their fire at the sathar frigate. Most of the fire is ineffective with only one of the UPF destroyer connecting with a laser battery damaging the frigates engines and the CMS Flitter scoring an amazing maximum-range laser battery shot that takes out a quarter of the frigate’s hull integrity.

The sathar ships manage to hit the station with a disruptor cannon and laser battery from the light cruiser and the frigate hits with its missile weapons. The hits sabotage the station’s damage control systems and reduce its hull integrity to almost nothing. Between the two UPF destroyers, they fire a massive swarm of ICMs at the incoming sathar seeker missile and manage to catch it before it can impact one of the ships.

All of the UPF and militia ships loop around and converge on the sathar vessels firing everything they have at them with the assault scouts focusing on the light cruiser while the capital ships focus on the frigate.

As the station pulls away, the sathar ships fire at it once more and while the frigate misses completely, the light cruiser hits with every weapon except its laser battery, destroying the station which begins to break apart.

Angered by the loss of the station, the assault scouts, while only hitting with one of their laser batteries, connect with eight of the nine assault rockets fired doing enough damage to destroy the light cruiser two times over. The sathar frigate is hit by two laser canons and a laser battery causing an electrical fire and damaging its hull. Then one of the torpedoes slips through the defensive screen of ICMs slamming into the ship and destroying it.

After twenty short minutes, the battle is over.

Positions and maneuvering at the end of the battle. Click for full sized image.

Repairs

Over the next hour and a half, most of the ships are able to repair their damage. However, part of the hull damage to the CMS Osprey is beyond a battlefield repair and will need to be handled in a ship yard. With the system secured, the Osprey begins acceleration and calculations for a jump back to Clarion.

Lessons Learned

This didn’t go anything like I expected. Defensive fire by the sathar on the first round was not all that great. When I rolled the attacks and damage results, I thought the lead K’aken-Kar assault scout was going to be destroyed as both laser batteries did hull damage and one of them was a double damage roll. But when I rolled the damage, I rolled a 2 for the double damage die and a 1 for the regular damage so instead of suffering the 15+ HP of damage I was expecting and being destroyed, it only suffered 5.

Then there was the UPF fire that turn which was the exact opposite. At first I thought the heavy cruiser was going to get off easy since none of the assault rockets did hull damage and only one electron battery did (although that was for 10 HP, the maximum). I thought it was going to get off with a bunch of ancillary and weapon damage but then I rolled a hit with the torpedo, rolled double damage, and then rolled 35 on 4d10 for a total of 70 HP from that single hit. That combined with the 10 it had suffered from the electron battery was enough to destroy it.

The other ships did just as well with two double damage laser battery hits on the first destroyer (one of which did 20, the maximum possible) and both assault rockets by the K’aken-Kar militia at the other destroyer doing double damage and just enough (52/50 HP) to destroy it. With 3 of the 5 sathar ships destroyed on the first turn, the UPF victory was assured. The only question was if the station would survive as the sathar were gunning for it.

I was amazed at how well I rolled for the UPF attacks and damage. Had they not rolled so well, this fight might have gone very differently. I think the UPF would still have won, but they would have suffered significantly more losses.

Sathar Starship Construction Centers

I had planned to do an article on an alternate set of astrogation rules, but as I started looking at it, it was going to require more time than I had to get it done properly. So that one will come at some point in the future.

If you’re following the Star Frontiers Twitter feed, you know that yesterday started the main events of the Second Sathar War. A lot of my free time has been spent working on that and staying far enough ahead that I can get the battle posts up, track the ship movements, record and schedule repairs and new ship construction, and figure out strategy and tactics as they shift after each encounter. In fact, if I hadn’t posted it early to get some feedback, the Battle of Stenmar post I did a while back would have been today’s post as the tweet about that battle will be going up at some point today. Tracking all the ship movements and playing out the battles is keeping me busy. Who knew that managing a Frontier-wide battle for both sides would be so much work! 🙂

Given that the Second Sathar War narration is where my focus is right now, I thought I’d do a related post and talk about the Sathar starship construction centers (SCCs) in my version of the setting.

Some Background

Placing the SCCs

If you have looked closely at the Extended Frontier Map, you already know the locations of these SCCs – they are marked on the referee version of the map. And as I mentioned in the posts about the creation of that map, the sathar worlds and jump routes were originally laid down decades ago. I modified them slightly to account for the Zeb’s Guide data and fan material that I included in the map as the latter hadn’t been produced and I didn’t own a copy of the former when I made the original map as a teenager.

On that original map, only the first five SCCs were marked. I had originally created the map to help track the exact project I’m doing now as part of the Detailed Frontier Timeline, namely track the Second Sathar War from a ship construction and movement perspective with the RPG rules rather than the board game rules in in the Campaign Book. It was also made for a exploration campaign where the PC would go out to expand the borders of the Frontier and look for the sathar worlds but that’s a different set of posts. Because of that, I only included the five SCCs that I envisioned participating in the conflict and which is why those five, closest to the Frontier, have the first five numbers and not the ones deeper in sathar controlled space which arguably were created first. If I ever go back and rework everything, I might change the numbering.

When I was setting up the Detailed Frontier Timeline project and making the Extended Frontier Map, I realized that I needed to add in a few more SCCs in the other parts of sathar-controlled space to handle all the other ship construction needed by their empire. That got me up through the ninth SCC. I then realized they needed one to manage the fight against the Saurians and so added in the tenth one. So while they are numbered in order of creation, it was their creation in my head for the setting, not their creation dates in the timeline.

Sathar Ship Hull Sizes

Another item of note relative to the SCCs is the hull sizes I use for each of the sathar ships. These are slightly different than the values I use for the UPF ships but all fall within the range of sizes given for each class of ship on page 5 of the Knight Hawks Campaign Book. The sizes I use for the sathar ships are:

Fighter – HS:1
Cutter – HS:4
Frigate – HS:5
Destroyer – HS:6
Light Cruiser – HS: 14
Assault Carrier – HS:16
Heavy Cruiser – HS: 18

In the timeline the cutter is a new ship type that will see action first in the Rim and later in the Frontier. The specs for the ship can be found on page 6 of Frontier Explorer issue 2.

It’s my take that the larger sathar ships are a bit bulkier than the corresponding UPF version. So sathar light cruisers are HS:14 while the UPF ones are HS:12, the sathar assault carriers are HS:16 while the UPF ones are HS: 14, and the sathar heavy cruiser is HS:18 compared to the single UPF heavy cruiser which is HS:16. Even the sathar destroyer is actually HS:6+ being just a bit larger than the standard HS:6 volume but not enough to actually be HS:7.

The reason for this is the role I have for these larger ships. In addition to being mainline fighting ships, the larger capital ships also double as troop transports. You can see this in the Sathar Destroyer Technical Manual. Someday I’ll detail out the light and heavy cruisers similarly. In any case, this makes the sathar ships a bit bulkier and take a bit longer to produce. They aren’t being used for the troop transport role at the beginning of the war but the capability is there. While this doesn’t have any impact on the actual battles, it does impact the starship construction centers and so needed to be spelled out.

The Starship Construction Centers

In this section, we will look at each of those starship construction centers in turn to talk about their capacity, production queues, and main focus.

If you’ve been following along with the Detailed Frontier Timeline and playing close attention, you could probably reconstruct the production queues of SSCs two through five as I’ve been posting the ships that were produced there as part of the timeline. SCC#1 has just come online and only produced a single ship (a light cruiser) so it’s full queue hasn’t been revealed and SCC#10 will soon be shifting from the Saurian conflict, which has ended, to the Second Sathar War. The first ship out of that SCC (a fighter) to participate in the SSW will complete construction in early December (FY61.304).

The production queues for SSCs one to five were specifically set up to try to produce the sathar Order of Battle from page 55 of the Knight Hawks Campaign Book at the time I started up the war in the timeline. I started with an initial semi-random “seed” of ships, modified for the encounters in the Detailed Frontier Timeline (like the fight a Volturnus), and then allowed the SSCs to crank out ships. I came pretty close with only a few more fighters (most of which I destroyed in the fight in the Liberty system) and one extra destroyer. I have a small computer program that allows me to run the production queues and add (and remove) SCCs as needed to produce the ships so I don’t have to do it by hand.

Okay, let’s look at these construction centers. Directions for the locations of the SCCs are given on the Extended Frontier map assuming the top of the map is “north.”

SCC#1

Location: OFS203 (“S” of Prenglar)

Capacity: 48 HS worth of ships

Production Queue:

42 HS of capacity dedicated to the production of light cruisers (3 under construction at any one time), staggered to produce a new LC every 140 days
6 HS of capacity dedicated to the production of destroyers, one every 180 days

Notes: This is the newest of the starship construction centers with its first ship being produced on FY61.208. It is at the far end on the sathar jump routes (without passing through the Frontier). It was constructed specifically to be a jump off and repair point to strike right into the heart of the Frontier at Prenglar.

The recent loss of SSC#2 and the Liberty system has actually isolated this SSC from the others. Ships produced here (or headed here) will have to pass through the Liberty system. This will give the UPF a chance to detect these ships if they try to get into the Frontier anywhere other than Prenglar.

SCC#2

Location: FS30 – now Liberty (“SE” of Theseus)

Capacity: 46 HS

Production Queue:

16 HS of capacity devoted to production of assault carriers, one very 480 days
24 HS of capacity devoted to production of destroyers (six under production at any one time), staggered to complete one every 45 days
6 HS of capacity split between production of fighters and destroyers. Produces 6 fighters in 30 days, then a destroyer 180 days later, than back to fighters.

Notes: This SCC has been operating for a while and is responsible for the production of most of the destroyers seen in the Frontier recently and present in the fleets in the initial attacks in the Second Sathar War and produced some that were used against the saurians. It was also the driving force behind the exploration that established the sathar jump routes over to SCC#1 and in to S’esseu space.

In the notes in the SFKH4 module The War Machine (the Beyond the Frontier series), it said that this SCC was responsible for about 20% of the ships in the second sathar war. This is why I went with five SCCs when creating the original map.

This SCC was lost just recently along with a large number of fighters in the events of the SFKH4 module which wrapped up on FY61.40, only 40 days before the first sathar ships appeared in the Frontier to start the Second Sathar War. It will be interesting to see how things play out with the loss of this system, but that was always intended from the start.

SCC#3

Location: OFS138 (“NE” from Kizk-Kar)

Capacity: 59 HS

Production Queue:

54 HS of capacity devoted to heavy cruiser production (three under production at any one time), staggered to produce one HC every 180 days
5 HS of production dedicated to frigate production, one completed every 150 days

Notes: This is an older SCC as well and originally fueled the sathar exploration on the eastern side of the Frontier that resulted in the discovery of the saurians and the Mhemne.

Now focused on the battle with the Frontier, this SCC is responsible for the construction of the majority of heavy cruisers present in the early days of the conflict.

SCC#4

Location: OFS111 (“N” of Fromeltar)

Capacity: 49 HS

Production Queue:

16 HS of capacity dedicated to assault carrier production, one every 480 days
28 HS of capacity dedicated to light cruiser production (two under production at any one time), staggered to produce one every 210 days
5 HS of capacity dedicated to frigate and fighter production, completing 5 fighters in 30 days, then a frigate 150 days later and then back to fighters.

Notes: This is a older SCC established after the First Sathar War to explore more into the Frontier sector and the Rim. The route to Zebulon has been known for hundreds of years but most of the other routes are fairly new.

SCC#5

Location: OFS019 (“N” of Truane’s Star/Zebulon)

Capacity: 50 HS

Production Queue:

28 HS of capacity dedicated to light cruiser production (two under production at any one time), staggered to produce one every 210 days
18 HS of capacity dedicated to heavy cruiser production one every 540 days
4 HP of capacity dedicate to cutter production, one every 120 days

Notes: This is a newer SCC set up to provide ships for fighting in the Rim and the Frontier and built as part of the preparation for the Second Sathar War.

The cutter is a new ship that the sathar have developed partially in response to the UPF’s assault scout. It is not battle tested and at the start of the Second Sathar War, only 4 have been produced. They will see first blood in the Second Battle of Stenmar (coming on FY61.293).

SCC#6

Location: OFS117 (upper left center of Extended Frontier Map)

Capacity: 200 HS

Production Queue: Random, mostly non-military ships

Notes: This SCC is located in orbit around what in my game is the sathar homeworld. It is larger than even the largest SCC in the Frontier but is not currently involved in the SSW conflict, although that may change. This SCC primarily is responsible for producing “civilian” ships that the sathar use for non-military purposes.

It did, however, supply the ships that comprised SBF-F1 and SBF-F2 that attacked Stenmar (in the Kazak system) in the Detailed Frontier Timeline. Since those battles were outside the scope of the simulation I was working on (I’m ignoring the Rim), I had the ships for the fight in the Rim come from somewhere other than the five main SCCs.

SCC#7

Location: OFS101 (upper right of Extended Frontier Map)

Capacity: 75 HS

Production Queue: random, “civilian” ships

Notes: This is a new SCC and is currently focused on producing “civilian” ships and ships for exploration to the “NE” of the sathar homeworld. Not currently involved in SSW production.

SCC#8

Location: OFS097 (“N” of OFS117)

Capacity: 75 HS

Production Queue: random, “civilian” ships

Notes: This is another SCC that is producing civilian ships for the day-to-day operation of the sathar worlds. Not currently involved in SSW production.

SCC#9

Location: OFS064 (upper center of Extended Frontier Map)

Capacity: 75 HS

Production Queue: random, military and exploration vessels

Notes: This SCC is focused on an active campaign to explore the upper left corner of the Extended Frontier Map. It was ships from this system that many years ago discovered the Tetrach complex on OFS070 that the Discovery Squadron went looking for and which was contacted by the complex on Laco (Dixon’s Star) back at the end of FY59. It was actually this signal, plus the events of Volturnus, that kicked off the Second Sathar War.

The sathar are currently trying to find a way through the large nebula in this region as they have detected signals from another race on the other side of the nebula that they intend to conquer. It is not currently producing ships for the SSW and probably will not be used for that purpose at it is focused on a different threat.

SCC#10

Location: OFS174 (“E” of White Light)

Capacity: 60 HS

Production Queue:

18 HS of capacity dedicated to heavy cruiser production, one every 540 days
16 HS of capacity dedicated to assault carrier production, one every 480 days
14 HS of capacity dedicated to light cruiser production, one every 420 days
6 HS of capacity dedicated to destroyer production, one every 180 days
5 HS of capacity dedicated to frigate production, one every 150 days
1 HS of capacity dedicated to fighter production, one every 30 days

Notes: This SCC is producing some of every type of main-line sathar warship. For the past several years, it has been focused on the war with the saurians and is responsible for producing most of the ships that destroyed their worlds.

Being already focused on military production, and with the campaign against the saurians now ended (finished on FY61.282) and the loss of the SCC in the Liberty system, this SCC will shortly be added to war effort against the Frontier (officially on FY61.296).

Last Thoughts

Those are the sathar starship construction centers scattered about. All told, there are 737 HS of capacity across the 10 SCCs. It’s about 45% more capacity than in the Frontier, although more spread out. It is also more focused on military ships. The UPF has 430 HS of capacity that can produce military vessels and another 80 HS of capacity that can produce civilian ships and do maintenance.

As the battles play out, the sathar may shift the production queues to different mixes going forward (e.g. they have lost most of their destroyer production) but we’ll have to see how the upcoming battles play out. Look for the first play report later this week and running into next week as the initial battles occur around the Frontier.

How do you see the sathar starship construction being set up and handled? Have you every attempted anything like this for your game? Or have you been more sensible and just hand-waved it? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

HSS History’s Hope – The 3D Model

Not much has happened in the way of progress for the HSS History’s Hope in the Detailed Frontier Timeline. The crew decided to go back to the Frontier for maintenance after their radar system failed during a jump. They were surprised to meet ships to escort them in YS01, the last system they had reported the jump route for and they and their escorts were attacked on the way home to the Scree Fron system. After maintenance was completed, they started on their way back out and have just arrived back in YS01. The adventure continues.

However, as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I’ve been working on the 3D model of the HSS History’s Hope. This is now completed. I’m still working on the deck plans, which I’ll save for a future post. The reason I held off on doing those was because I suspected they would change slightly when I made the model. And I was correct, based on the hull design, there was a little more room for some of the ship bays which I expanded.

I’m making a series of videos showing my process while creating the deck plans, much like I did for the Rosegard maps. Once that is all done, I’ll post the deck plans and videos and start working on the Technical Manual for the ship.

But for now, let’s look at

The 3D Model

This is the front/top of the ship. I started the model by building the “skeleton” of the ship, namely putting in all the decks as I had sketched them out. I then wrapped a smoother hull around that skeleton to get the outline you see here.

I played a little with some different shapes to smooth out the profile but in the end decided to go with this simpler model. It’s a ship that while capable of planetary landings, isn’t really designed for it. There is some streamlining and thought given to atmospheric travel, it’s not a lot.

The ship stands 61 meters tall and is 30 meters wide (ignoring the engines and struts) and 13 meters thick (plus another 3.5 meters for the astrogation dome – this side, and the laser battery – far side) down where the engines attach.

Let look at some of the features.

Already mentioned, the big dome on this side of the ship is the astrogation dome. The ship has a deluxe astrogation suite so there is a 2-meter diameter telescope inside that 4-meter diameter dome

All the little circles are portholes, mostly in the crew cabins and common areas of the ship. Each of those are 1 meter in diameter. The row of what look like holes in the hull above and to the left of the astrogation dome are small cutouts in the hull to allow for portholes in the dining/lounge area of the ship.

Below the astrogation dome is the main cargo bay doors of the ship. These open, hinged at the bottom to lay down and form a ramp up into the ship.

The other noticeable feature on this side of the ship is the bit at the bottom of the upper wide section of the ship, This is the airlock, which sticks out a bit from the ship and has a bit of hull built up around it to reduce drag when flying through an atmosphere. I’ll admit that this was probably more of a cosmetic addition rather than a necessary one. I had a nice airlock structure from the UPF Light Cruiser model that I wanted to reuse so I did. I could have made it more flush with the hull but decided not to.

Looking at the other side of the ship we see the laser battery on the widest part of the ship.

Below that are the bays for the ships’ launch, the work pod, atmoprobes, and landing drone. There is a remote probe bay door opposite the landing drone bay (on the other side of the ship) but it doesn’t show up in either of these projections.

The feature sticking out on the right of the upper wide portion of the ship is the lifeboat bay.

Astute observers will notice that I used the same engines from the assault scout. I’ve decided that after their introduction for the assault scout, this model design for Class A atomic engines has become fairly standard, at least on ships that want to be able to operate in atmospheres.

And that’s it for the model.

Printing

With the model in hand, it’s time to print it. I created the model, as usual at 1/1000th scale with 1mm on the model representing 1 meter on the actual ship. Normally I then export the final STL at 1/3000th scale which is the scale I’ve decided to use for my ships. However, this time I forgot to scale it down in the final model. But that’s not a big deal as I can do that in the printing software.

I started by printing a 1/3000th scale version of the ship. You can see it here with a pair of hull size 6 ships printed at that same scale, the sathar destroyer and the CDCSS Nightwind, a freighter. The other ship I have at that scale, the hull size 10 agriculture ship, is nearly twice the size of the destroyer so I left it out of the image (There is a picture of the Nightwind and sathar destroyer next to the ag ship in the linked post).

To scale comparison of the HS:6 CDCSS Nightwind (left), HS:4 HSS History’s Hope (middle) and a HS:6 sathar destroyer (right)

After printing that one, I printed one at 1/2000th scale, which is the scale I use to print the small assault scout miniatures. You can see the History’s Hope next to a Swift assault scout in the following image.

To scale models of the HSS History’s Hope (left) and a Swift Class Assault Scout (right)

You can see that the engines are the same size (although they are rotated 90 degrees on the History’s Hope). Also if you look closely at the left side of the History’s Hope model, you can see the cut out in the hull for the remote probe launch bay that I mentioned above that wasn’t visible in the renders.

Looking at these small models, I’ve noticed that I need to put a few more supports on the undersides of the engines as they are not printing as clean or as straight as I’d like. But you only really notice on these zoomed in image. You have to remember that that assault scout is just 1″ tall.

What’s Next?

I’ve sent out the model file for this ship to may Patreon supporters. I’m planning on getting this one, along with the agriculture ship, UPF Freighter, and sathar fighter models, uploaded and available on DriveThruRPG with the rest of the models already there sometime later in the month. I really just need to sit down and upload them.

For the History’s Hope, I’m working on making digital deck plans as I’ve already noted. I have them all sketched out in my notebook, I just need to make the files. Then I’ll be doing a complete technical manual write-up for the ship with all it’s details. Which means I need to make a full color render of this ship like I did for the Swift Class assault scout. Any suggestions on a color scheme?

On the modeling front, it’s probably time for me to tackle the Privateer models. I’m getting the itch to do some more modeling so that will probably be where I scratch it to start.

What are your thoughts on the model and the ship? Let me know in the comments below.

SSW – Battle of Stenmar (Kazak) – FY61.281

I originally had a different post, the write-up of my players’ venture into the GODCo bio-lab, scheduled for today, but decided to bump it to next week in favor of getting this one up and getting some feedback.

Some Background

The Detailed Frontier Timeline project has reached the point where the events of the Second Sathar War game presented in the Knight Hawks Campaign Book play out in the timeline with the sathar’s main assault on the Frontier. The whole timeline project was originally conceived as a way for me to track, in a “realistic” manner the movement and construction of ships for that event (i.e. using the ship construction rules and rules for void jumping.).

As such, the initial round of events will look very similar to the opening of that game. But after that, things will start to diverge from the way the game plays in a number of ways.

First, I’ll be using the Void Jumping rules for travel times instead of the times portrayed on the Frontier Deployment Map this is part of that game.

Second, the Order of Battle for both sides is slightly different from what was presented in the rules. Although not by much. The timeline events have tweaked things so that the White Light and Truane’s Star militias have an extra assault scout or two, the UPF unattached ships are a slightly different mix, and the sathar have the cutter class ship. I tried to set up the ship construction so the sathar had the ships listed in the game and I came pretty close. They ended up with a few more fighters and an extra destroyer.

Third, reinforcements for both sides will come from the various starship construction centers around the Frontier and in sathar space rather than the arbitrary rules presented as part of the printed game. The sathar have a fully functioning ship construction pipeline that will continue to churn out ships, although they did just lose the starship construction center in the Liberty system. The UPF have a few ships already under construction (2 battleships, 1 light cruiser, an assault carrier and 6 fighters) but otherwise are going to need to get a production pipeline going.

Finally, I’ll be factoring in my take on various political situations across the Frontier as well as involvement of civilian and megacorp ships that may get involved in the conflict. This will also affect the ship construction to some effect.

The Second Sathar War game rules as printed are actually a good balance for a game to be played out over a short period of time but probably don’t represent how things would play out in “real” life in the Frontier. For one thing, a more realistic ship construction system will probably make it a much more drawn out affair, which is what I wanted to explore with the timeline project.

As the battles occur across the Frontier, it was always my intention to play them out with the tactical battle rules to see which side won and have the sides react accordingly. The results of those battles and the basic reactions will be the entries you see in the timeline.

Last week, I posted the question to the Star Frontiers Facebook group if they would like to see more detailed summaries of the battles more than just who won, what ships were lost, etc. There was definite interest and so this series of posts was formed. The format may evolve as I do more of these but here I’ll be posting write-ups of the battles, probably in a couple of different formats, but at the very least with turn by turn synopses (and maps) to show how it went.

Except for this one, which is coming out nearly a month early, the plan is for each of these posts to come out on the same day as I post that day’s timeline update to Twitter. Although when I have several battles the same day, I might just post one a day to spread them out. It is my intention that these are going to be “off schedule posts” that probably won’t count as one of my regular weekly posts (expect for this one and maybe the 4! for the battles that will come starting the Saturday before Thanksgiving in the U.S.). After the first few battles that open the conflict, they are going to start to spread out as ships begin to repair and maneuver.

Posting on the day the battle occurs, this battle wouldn’t show up until November 17th, but I’m posting it early to get feedback on the format and what people would like to see in the posts going forward. Please share your thoughts in the comments. You can consider this a “sneak peek” into some of the timeline events.

In addition to just being a “play report” of how the battles went for me, each one will include the order of battle for the various sides that you can set up and play at your own table. They won’t always be balanced encounters, but it would be interesting to see how you and your groups handle the various tactical challenges.

Anyway, we’ll see how it goes. On to the first battle.

Battle of Stenmar – FY61.281

While I had not planned on figuring in fighting in the Rim as part of this project, and haven’t really been tracking (or even really thought about) Rim ships and the organization of the Flight, part of the Timeline has dealt with events in the Rim and the Kazak system as it pertains to the discovery of the sathar construction center in OFS019 and the trip to Kazak by Strike Force Nova. As such, I had a list of Rim ships that were in the Kazak system. Plus, it’s a natural entry point into the Rim and is traversed by the sathar to get to Zebulon on my star maps. So it makes sense that the sathar would send ships to control this system. And since I already knew what ships were there, I designed some sathar fleets to attack this system. This is the write-up of the attack on Kazak that opened the conflict for the sathar. Plus using this as the first trial write-up doesn’t spoil the events of the conflict in the Frontier.

The ships for this scenario are not part of the order of battle for the Second Sathar War game presented in the Campaign Book but are extra to that. So what happens here doesn’t exactly impact the playing out of that larger scenario. Maybe at some point I’ll go back and work out the details of the fighting in the Rim.

This battle occurs on FY61.281 in the timeline, the day after sathar ships are detected entering the Frontier systems.

Order of Battle

Here are the ships on each side. I did not really plan this (I built the sathar fleet before I went back and looked to see what Rim ships I had placed in Kazak) but it turned out the sides were fairly even.

Rim Forces

10 Fighters
3 Assault Scouts (AS)
2 Frigates (FF)
2 Destroyers (DD)
1 Light Cruiser (LC)
1 Fortified Station

All told there were 18 ships plus the station with a total of 515 hull points. Definitely weighted to the smaller ships.

Sathar Forces

8 Fighters
2 Frigates
4 Destroyers
1 Light Cruiser
1 Heavy Cruiser (HC)
1 Assault Carrier (AC)

The sathar had 17 ships with a total of 569 hull points and more capital ships.

The Fight

Setup

The Rim forces arrayed in a line slightly behind the planet and station and divided into several groups according to ship type. From top to bottom there was a flight of 5 fighters, the 3 assault scouts, and the light cruiser above the planet and then the 2 destroyers, the 2 frigates, and the remaining five fighters. The fighters were moving at speed 25, the assault scouts and frigates at 20, and the light cruiser and destroyers were moving at speed 15

The sathar’s main battle group was arrayed to directly approach the planet in a flying diamond. The middle row was the light cruiser, the heavy cruiser, and then the assault carrier. Outside of those ships were the four destroyers, 2 on each side, and then a frigate on either side forming the tip. All of these ships were moving at speed 10. The fighters were arranged into two flights of 4 fighters and positioned further out on the wings. They were traveling at speed 20 The setup looked like this:

Setup for the Battle of Stenmar. Click for full-sized image.

Turn 1

The main sathar battle group began decelerating toward the planet (slowing to speed 8), looking to make a concerted attack on the station as it came around from behind the planet. The sathar fighters accelerate to speed 25 and swing out further on the wings to prepare to swing in on the next turn and make their attack while staying out of the forward firing arc of the Rim forces.

The Rim forces decided to ignore the fighters and focus on the main battle group. The fighters accelerated to speed 30, flew in to make a maximum range attack with their assault rockets on the two frigates on the wings and then sweep back out of range of the capital ships’ main weapons. The assault scouts accelerated to 25 and executed a similar maneuver but aiming for the lead destroyer on their side of the formation. The frigates, with less maneuverability than the smaller ships accelerated to speed 23, swept past the main sathar formation, and then doubled back to attack the tail destroyer on that side of the formation. The remaining ships (LC & 2 DD) accelerated to speed 17 and turned in to attack the light cruiser. All the Rim ships stayed at least 4 hexes away from the sathar ships to remain out of range of their rocket batteries.

The sathar decide to ignore the smaller ships and focus on the Rim’s capital ships. However, the longer range and apparently poor training of sathar forces result in little damage to the Rim ships with the LC only sustaining 11 HP of damage and one of the frigates taking a hit to its combat controls system. All the other shots at the Rim ships, including several shots at one of the destroyers, missed completely.

The Rim ships were much more effective. The results were as follows:

The sathar frigate on the left flank (“top” of the diamond) is hit by 3 of the 5 assault rockets (AR) taking 14 HP of damage, losing 2 ADF, and having it’s masking screen launcher knocked out
The sathar frigate on the left flank (“bottom” of the diamond) is hit by 4 of 5 AR taking 28 HP of damage, losing 1 MR, and having it’s torpedo launcher knocked out.
The sathar destroyer on the right flank fires two ICMs at each of the incoming torpedoes (which miss) and is hit by 2 laser batteries (LB) for 8 HP and has its masking screen launcher knocked out
The sathar destroyer on the left flank is hit by 3 LB and 2 AR from the three AS and is completely destroyed with one of the LB and AR each doing double hull damage.
The sathar light cruiser fires two ICMs at each incoming torpedo (only the one from the Rim LC hits) and is hit by a number of weapons resulting in a loss of 2 ADF, a navigation control hit, a combat control system hit, its disruptor canon damaged, and a loss of 60 HP (the torpedo did double damage for a total of 52 points)

At then end of the turn, the ships were arrange as shown in the following map (with their movement marked). Destroyed ships marked with a red X.

Result. after the first turn.Click for full-sized image.

Turn 2

The sathar fighters on the left wing swoop in and unload into one of the UPF destroyers and then fly out of range to line up for another run. The frigate on that same flank, not expecting to survive the round, given the damage it sustained, turns and attempts to ram one of the destroyers. The rest of the ships turn and take on the Rim’s light cruisers.

Defensively, the assault scouts score a single hit on one of the fighters near them taking out its AR launch, effectively neutering it. The destroyers, seeing the frigate coming in for a ramming attempt, fire everything they have at it. One of the rocket batteries connects and the frigate flies apart before gets too close. The Rim frigates continue to fire at the destroyer they had already damaged doing 7 more HP of damage, and knocking out its MR and electron battery. The Rim light cruiser attempts to eliminate the damaged frigate before it can fire. It only causes 9 HP of damage but does knock out its MR and causes an electrical fire on board.

The sathar fighters firing on the destroyers unload all 4 AR at a single destroyer which all hit doing 65 HP of damage, destroying it. They caused a power short circuit as well but it was moot at that point. The rest of the ship unloaded all their ordinance in to the Rim light cruiser. It survived the 3 AR that hit from the fighters (knocking out its LB, all its MR, and 7 HP), the shots from the frigate (knocking out is combat control system), the shots from the destroyers (knocking out 1 MR and 22 more HP), but the sathar heavy cruiser finally overwhelmed it (knocking out its PS, a power short circuit, and a final 39 HP).

One flight of Rim fighters make a pass at the sathar heavy cruiser while the remaining Rim ships converge from various directions to make a pass at the sathar assault carrier. The fire on the sathar frigate causes another 7 HP of damage.

The sathar heavy cruiser fires at the incoming fighters with its EB doing 2 HP to one of them and a LB hit triggers a fire on another. All of the other sathar ship fire at the Rim destroyer doing 35 HP, -2 ADF, and a combat control hit.

Offensively, all 5 AR fired at the sathar HC hit knocking out 1 MR and the combat control system and doing a total of 85 HP of damage destroying it. Between the fighters and assault scouts, the sathar AC is hit with 6 of the 8 AR fired knocking out a LB, the ICM and masking screen launchers, and doing 83 HP of damage, destroying it. The Rim destroyer’s EB started an electrical fire and the LC from the frigate did an additional 26 HP of damage but the assault carrier was just scrap at that point.

Here are the ships at then end of this turn:

Positions after turn 2. Click for full-sized image.

Turn 3

The sathar fighters all converge on the station to fire their assault rockets. The sathar frigate with the fire, and the destroyer that has had its MR knocked out drift forward toward the station. The destroyer accelerates slightly to bring it’s torpedoes in range this round. The undamaged sathar destroyers turn and go after the remaining Rim destroyer. The Rim fighter with the fire suffers 2 HP of damage.

Defensively, the station fires at the three closest fighters with working weapons systems. all three shots hit knocking out the AR launcher on one of the fighters and destroying the other two. The assault scouts fire their laser batteries at the other flight of sathar fighters as they fly by but all the shots miss. The Rim frigates and destroyer fire at one of the sathar destroyers knocking out its LB and EB and doing 12 HP of damage.

Only the 4 distant fighters can fire at the station but 3 of the 4 AR hit doing 82 HP of damage. The ICMs from the station neutralized the torpedo from the destroyer and frigate and all the rest of those ships’ weapons miss. The shots at the Rim destroyer as less effective than hoped. They knocked out 2 MR, the MS system, and caused a power short circuit but only did 7 HP of damage.

The Rim frigates and one flight of fighters go after the sathar destroyers, the other flight of fighters go after the two damaged sathar ships near the station, and the assault scouts split their attacks firing their AR at the destroyers and their LB at the undamaged flight of sathar fighters. The station fires at the two fighters closest to it. The damaged Rim destroyer, unable to maneuver, drifts of the map hoping to slip away and survive the battle.

Defensively, the sathar destroyers fire their energy weapons at the retreating Rim destroyer starting a fire that is snuffed out when the other weapons do a total of 16 HP destroying the damage vessel. The fire their RBs at one of the frigates and both hit knocking out its MS and doing 14 HP of damage. The sathar ships near the station fire at the station but all miss.

The Rim forces have another stellar round with their assault rockets. The flight of fighters fire at one of the undamaged destroyers hitting with 4 of the 5 AR taking out the destroyers ADF, MS, and doing 16 HP of damage. The assault scouts fire at the other destroyer and hit will 2 of the 3 AR doing 24 HP of damage and knocking out 1 MR. All of the LB shots at the fighters miss, however. The Rim frigates fire at the same destroy targeted by the assault scouts and hit for 18 more HP and knocking out 2 ADF. The station manages to destroy one of the nearby fighters (leaving a single fighter with no AR in that flight). The fighters going going after the damaged sathar frigate and destroyer split apart momentarily to line up their shots with 2 fighters firing at the frigate and 3 at the destroyer. All 3 AR hit the destroyer doing 22 HP and knocking out 2 ADF. One of the AR hits the frigate doing 14 HP and destroying that ship.

At the end of the turn, the ship were here:

Positions after turn 2. (I forgot to move the station forward). Click for full-sized image.

Repairs

Several of the ships were able to enact repairs with the Rim fighter putting out its fire, the Rim frigate repairing 9 HP, and the station repairing 3 HP. The sathar destroyers were able to each repair some of their hull damage (10, 4, and 7 HP respectively).

Turn 4

At this point he Rim forces know they have a victory, as all the of the sathar ships (except a few fighters) are heavily damaged. It’s just a matter of cleaning up and protecting the heavily damaged station.

Only one of the sathar destroyers can maneuver and it loops back to fire on the Rim frigates, the other two just drift along on their current course. The fighter with the damaged AR launcher (it couldn’t get it repaired) loops around and attempts to ram the station. The other sathar fighters fire their last ARs at the station and loop away.

Defensively, the Rim assault scouts fire at the undamaged fighters but only one LB hits doing 5 HP of damage. The station also fires at these fighers (judging that the AR are more deadly than the ramming fighter). The Rim frigates fire at the destroyer closing on them and knock out all it’s MR and do 31 HP of damage, just 1 HP shy of destroying it before it could fire.

The lone sathar fighter rams the station for 4 HP of damage and 2 of the 4 AR from the other fighters hit doing 43 more HP of damage. The damage destroyer drifting by manages to hit with its LB causing a power short circuit and knocking out the the station’s screens and ICM launcher. The destroyer firing at the Rim frigate hits with its LB and EB knocking out 1 ADF and half of the frigates DCR.

Out of assault rockets, the Rim fighters start decelerating to dock with the station and execute some big loops away from all the capital ships. The assault scouts split up to each go after a damaged destroyer with their last AR. The frigates, suspecting that the sathar fighters might attempt to ram the station, pursue those ships in an attempt to eliminate them.

Defensively the sathar destroyer drifting off the bottom of the map is the only one to hit, its EB causing a fire on the assault scout.

The Rim assault scout firing at the destroyer now closest to the station hits with its AR doing 28 HP and destroying the sathar vessel. The assault scout targeting the destroyer drifting to the left also hits for 23 HP and destroys. it. The last assault scout, gunners distracted by the fire, miss completely. The frigate are not as successful as they had hoped, only hitting two of the fighters but both are obliterated (20 HP from a LC and 24 from an RB – both did double damage).

At then end of the turn, the battle looked like this:

Battle map after round 4. Click for full-sized version.

Turn 5

The remaining sathar destroyer continues to drift away and the two remaining fighter loop back and attempt to ram the station (which only has 14 HP left). The fire on the AS damages its DCR cutting it in half.

The Rim frigates fire at the two remaining sathar fighters and destroy them before they can ram the station. The burning assault scout fires at the drifting destroyer doing 8 HP.

The Rim fighters continue to decelerate and approach the station. All the other ships set off in pursuit of the last destroyer, only two of the assault scouts coming in range this round.

The sathar destroyer fires at the non-burning assault scout and hits with its EB knocking out 1 MR point but both AS hit the destroyer with their LBs doing a total of 14 HP and destroying it.

With the battle over, the ships positions were:

Map at the end of the fight. The counters were shifted to pursue the drifting destroyer. Click for full-sized version.

Wrapping Up

The fire on the assault scout continued to burn while repairs were attempted but caused a disastrous fire knocking out the assault scout’s ADF and MR and damaging its combat control system. Unable to put the fire out, over the next 20 minutes the assault scout succumbs to the fire as it eventually burns through the hull destroying the ship.

The other damaged ships manage to repair the minor damage they sustained. After 3.5 hours of work, the station manages to restore 33 HP before running in to a snag that will require outside assistance to get past and repair more.

Aftermath

The sathar tactics for this fight was basically “go for the heavies,” ignoring the smaller ships and going for the larger ships first. With all the Rim fighters and assault scouts flying around with their assault rockets, this was probably the wrong idea. We’ll see if any of the lessons learned were able to be transmitted out before the sathar were destroyed.

The Rim forces, capitalizing on lessons learned at the two fights in the Zebulon system over the past year and half, used the maneuverability of those smaller vessels to stay out of range of the sathar’s heavier weapons and inflict punishing damage. They Rim forces also heavily concentrated their attacks, preferring to focus on only a few ships each turn instead of spreading everything around. This resulted in a bit of over kill a few times (especially on the sathar assault carrier) but payed off in the end.

The sathar lost all 17 vessels totaling 569 HP. While the Rim only lost 4 ships, they were mostly capital ships totaling 185 HP. Plus the station only has 47 of its original 140 HP left. If the sathar had paid just a little more attention to the station (going after it earlier with the fighters or the one maneuverable destroyer going after the station instead of the frigates) they might well have destroyed it as it was down to only 14 HP at the end of the fight.

Speaking of the damaged station, the rules for the Second Sathar War game don’t give any guidance on how you repair station hull points if they fail a DCR roll. I’ve decided to apply the following rule throughout this write-up. A station (in a system that doesn’t have a starship construction center) can repair 10 HP a day after failing a DCR check for hull repair after a battle starting on the day after the battle occurred. If it is in a system with a SCC, the full repair ability of the SCC can be applied to the station. We’ll see how that goes.

News of the victory against the sathar was quickly broadcast across the Rim and Frontier as fast as subspace radio messages could traverse the intervening distances.

Sathar forces were engaged today by elements of the Flight around Stenmar in the Kazak system. After nearly an hour of fighting, the Rim forces were victorious destroying all the sathar ships but suffering serious losses themselves.
Sources within the Flight say that the sathar fleet consisted of single heavy and light cruiser, four destroyers, two frigates, and an assault carrier with eight fighters. It is believed that they originated from the recently discovered sathar occupied system OFS019.
The Flight lost a light cruiser, two destroyers, and an assault scout in the battle. Additionally the fortified station orbiting Stenmar was severely damaged and almost destroyed in the fighting. Repairs to the station are on-going but may take some time to complete.
Flight forces across the Rim are on high alert for other possible sathar activity.
Kaarln Duggart – Stenmar News Syndicate

Details of tactics used by both sides and the outcomes were transmitted to Flight and Spacefleet forces as well. Spacefleet and militia vessels across the Frontier, especially those facing an imminent fight with other sathar fleets in just a few days, eagerly studied the data and updated their plans and tactics.

The first battle in the Rim was a success for the Flight but who knows what else the sathar have in store. The first fights in the Frontier are only days away as the sathar ships decelerate into four of the UPF’s systems.

Last Thoughts

This is probably the longest post I’ve made yet on this site. And it was only a medium-to-large fight. The battle at Prenglar (in a few days in the timeline) is going to be a doozie as it involves Task Force Prenglar, Strike Force Nova, and a sathar fleet even bigger than this one.

What do you think of this style of write-up? Too technical and too much detail? Not enough? What would make it more interesting or enjoyable? Would you rather just see a narration of the fight instead of the details of each bit of combat? Please share your thoughts in the comments below.

Maps and Counters

It has been a crazy week and I’ve not had any time to sit down and work on anything new. That should change starting today (although I have the next Frontier Explorer next looming over me still). But that doesn’t help for today’s post.

As such, I thought I’d round up all the Star Frontiers maps and counter scans that I have and make them available at one central location (namely this post). Some of these were up before and I took off-line a couple of years ago when WotC had us put the Frontier Explorer on hiatus. Others are ones I’ve done for myself or others over the years. Many of these are linked from various places around the but I’ve never really made a centralized directory.

Counters

Let’s start with the counters. I have scans of both the Alpha Dawn Counters and the Knight Hawks counters at a number of different resolutions. You can download the ones you want to use. Most of these are saved as .PNG files which is a lossless compression format, as opposed to JPEG which is lossy. That means that the files are going to be fairly large, especially at the higher resolutions, and that you get all the detail from the original counters.

AD Counters

I’ve never really scanned in the AD counters. I found a good scan of them years ago and have always just used those. One of these days I’ll get around to making my own scans from like-new, unpunched counter sheet that I have. But until then, this one is quite good.

An older scan (by someone else) stored in JPG format (400 DPI – 2.7MB)

KH Counters

I’ve also made a zip file (1.1 MB) with all of the KH counters (and a few of the AD ones) cut out at 100 DPI that you can download. Additionally, you can get the individual counters from that zip file (and a link to the file as well) on this page.

Maps

That’s all the counters. Over the years I’ve done a number of maps as well. Some of them are already linked and shared here on this blog. Others, mostly recreations of the original maps from the game, I’ve posted in various locations around the web as I’ve created them.

Scans

First, let’s look at a couple of scanned maps. Namely the cover maps of SF0: Crash on Volturnus that give the deck plans of the Serena Dawn and the surface map of Volturnus. I have both of these as either PNG (full resolution) or JPG (smaller size).

I have scans of the Port Loren map from the Alpha Dawn rules and the station map from the Knight Hawks rules but I’ve also created remastered versions of those which are much better. We’ll look at those below.

I also have a scan of the Frontier Deployment Map which is the outside cover of the SFKH1: Warriors of White Light module and is used in the Second Sathar War strategic game from the Knight Hawks Campaign Book. This one is just saved as a JPG.

Frontier Deployment Map – JPG (360 kB) – Roughly 100 DPI

Finally, I have the two halves of the Zebulon’s Guide to Frontier Space map of the Frontier. I never actually stitched these two together. These are stored as BMP (bit map) files, another lossless compression algorithm. I don’t think I did the original scans and don’t remember where I got them from.

Zeb’s Guide map – left half (5.5 MB)
Zeb’s Guide map – right half (5.5 MB)

Remastered

Let’s look at my remastered maps. These are maps that I’ve recreated as original digital creations. Most of these maps were created as scalable vector graphics (SVG) files and then exported as PNGs at 100 DPI which was more than enough resolution for what was drawn. I can always re-export them at any resolution I want.

Let’s start with the big maps. These are all 50 pixels to the square and two squares to the inch. These are faithful recreations of the original maps matching colors, fonts, shapes, etc. as close as I could get them.

Port Loren map – (990 kB) – This is the big poster map from Alpha Dawn
Station map – (1.68 MB) – This is the big station complex on the back of the space map from the Knight Hawks set.
Station Commercial – no cut (1.7MB) – This is the left half of the station map including the bit of the zoo area cut off by the diagonal zig-zag.
Station Residential – no cut (175 kB) – This is the right half of the station map including the bit cut off by the diagonal zig-zag.
Port Loren Starport map (539 kB) – I created this remastered version to match the same colors and styling as the original Port Loren map, but the design of the map was done by someone else, whose name I can no longer find. If anyone knows the original creator, let me know.

Those are the main maps on the two posters. I’ve also done some of the smaller maps from the posters as well

Town map – (16 kB) – this was used for “Slave City One” from the module SF1: Volturnus, Planet of Mystery. I actually recreated it for an adventure we published in issue 1 of the Frontier Explorer.
Assault Scout Deck Plans – green (26 kB) – This is from the Knight Hawks poster map and is a remastered version of the original assault scout deck
Assault Scout Deck Plans – blue (29 kB) – The same as above but blue.
Knight Hawks battle map – black on white (40 kB) – A computer generated hex grid matching the KH battle map, including hex numbers. This one is black lines on a white background
Knight Hawks battle map – white on black (40 kB) – Same as above but with the colors inverted.

Finally, I have a set of maps that were created by Tom Verreault. One is a remastered version of the mountain terrain map from the back of the big AD poster map. The others are an expanded area that connect the first one and then a big map of all four together as a single file.

Mountain A map (31 kB)
Mountain B map (39 kB)
Mountain C map (45 kB) – this is the original from the AD map
Mountain D map (32 kB)
Full map (81 kB) – The four maps above combined

Final Thoughts

I hope you can find these useful. I probably have a few more that I’m not finding at the moment. If I do find others, I’ll update this post or make another one. I do have a number of other image and logos I’ve created over the years. I considered adding them here but decided they really deserve their own post so look for those in the future.

Some day I plan on remastering all the terrain maps from the back of the AD map but I’ve just never gotten around to it.

Void Jumping, Acceleration, and Other FTL Nuggets

This post is going to get a little bit math heavy toward the middle. Just warning you now.

The idea for this post stemmed from a recent discussion on the Star Frontiers: Alive and Well Facebook group talking about the accelerations involved in faster than light (FTL) travel in that game. I’ve written about this many times over the years on forum posts but since I can’t seem to find those posts (I think some of them at least are on the now defunct forums at starfrontiers.org), I’m going to do it one more time here on this blog as a permanent reference. But before I dig into the details of the math and physics, I’m going to share some links to other posts I’ve made that I do still have.

Void Jumping

The concept of the Void Jump was introduced with the Knight Hawks supplement in Star Frontiers. In the original rules (renamed to Alpha Dawn when the Knight Hawks rules came out), there were no spaceship rules and it just said to treat interstellar travel at the rate of 1 light year per day.

So how does it work? According to the rules, you make a jump by leaving your starting point and accelerating until you reach 1% the speed of light. At that point you “jump” into the Void. To get out of the Void, you just have to slow down slightly. While you’re in the Void, you travel amazingly fast, on the order of 1 light year per second (The rules don’t actually so but imply something close to that so that’s the value I use). Once you jump into your destination system, you swing the ship around and start decelerating. Remember, there is no artificial gravity in Star Frontiers so this acceleration and deceleration is what provides gravity in the ships. Most ships make these trips accelerating at 1g.

So how long does this take? For these calculations, we’ll take 1 g to be equal to 10 meters per second squared (m/s/s) of acceleration. On Earth we define 1 g to be 9.82 m/s/s but rounding up to 10 just makes everything easier and its less than a 2% difference.

Okay, here comes the math.

If you start at rest, your velocity at any given time is just:

v(t) = at

where v is velocity (in m/s), a is acceleration (in m/s/s), and t is time (in seconds). Technically v and a are vectors but we’ll just worry about speed, not direction.

Now, the void jump occurs at 1% the speed of light. We’ll take the speed of light to be 300,000,000 m/s. It’s really 299,792,458 m/s but we’ll again round up to make the math easier. The difference is less than 0.07%. Good enough for this discussion. 1% of that is just 3,000,000 m/s. That’s our target velocity.

Since our acceleration is 10 m/s/s, dividing 3,000,000 m/s by 10 m/s/s gives us 300,000 s of acceleration needed to reach jump speed. That works out to 83 hours and 20 minutes of acceleration. Given that a standard day in Star Frontiers is 20 hours long, that is 4.17 days.

That’s the time to get up to jump speed. It takes that much time to slow down on the other side as well. Which means at a minimum, an interstellar jump takes 8 and 1/3 days, assuming everything lines up perfectly (see the Exiting the Void Jump article for things that might lengthen that).

That’s the time required. What about distances covered? The equation for position is just the integral of the velocity equation above. Again, for starting at rest, and assuming that you measure the distance from your starting point, your position at any given time is given by:

x(t) = \frac{1}{2}at^2

where x is your position in meters. We know what t is from the velocity equation above is 300,000 s. a is just 10 m/s/s. Plugging these in gives us a distance traveled of 450 billion meters or 450 million kilometers. (A lot of people forget that factor of a half and end up with the wrong number.) Now the distance from the Earth to the Sun, called an Astronomical Unit (AU), is 150 million kilometers (again I’m rounding, the actual value is 149,597,871 km so the rounding is less than 0.3%).

So in those 4.17 days of acceleration, you traveled 3 AU. If you started at Earth and headed straight out from the sun, you’d be 4 AU from the Sun. That’s most of the way from Earth’s orbit to Jupiter’s orbit (at a distance of 5.2 AU from the Sun). That distance puts you well beyond the main asteroid belt which ends at 3.3 AU.

Now, these numbers all change if you use a different acceleration. Doing those calculations is left as an exercise for the reader.

ADF and the Board Game Rules

The above all works just fine. The problem comes when you start looking at the rules for the spaceship combat board game and try to rationalize those rules with the math above.

From the board game, we have that one hex is 10,000 km and one turn in the game is 10 minutes of time. Added to that is the ship’s statistic, the Acceleration/Deceleration Factor (ADF) which is described as the number of hexes that a ship can speed up or slow down in a given turn. The fastest ships (fighters and assault scouts) have and ADF of 5.

Let’s look at some numbers. First, what is Void jump speed on the game map. Well, jump speed is 3,000,000 m/s or 3,000 km/s. Since a turn is 10 minutes or 600 seconds, that works out to 1,800,000 km/turn. Given that a hex is 10,000 km across, that works out to a speed of 180 hexes per turn. Since the game map is only 54 hexes wide, you’ll never get to that speed in the game.

The problem comes when people start looking at ADF as acceleration in gees, i.e. that 1 ADF = 1g of acceleration. If you make that assumption, then accelerating at 1 ADF per turn, it would take you 180 turns to get to jump speed from rest. 180 turns at 10 minutes per turn means that it would take just 1,800 minutes, or 30 hours, significantly faster than the 83.33 hours calculated above. Obviously 1 ADF cannot equal 1 g.

So let’s work that out. 1 ADF represents a change of velocity of 10,000 km per 10 minutes in 10 minutes (or 100 km/min/min). That’s an acceleration, just not in the normal units of m/s/s. So lets convert them:

\frac{10,000 km}{10 min * 10 min} = \frac{100 km}{min^2} = \frac{100,000 m}{60 s * 60 s} = 27.778 \frac{m}{s^2} = 2.78 g

So we see that 1 ADF is really 2.78 g of acceleration. You’re not going to sustain that for 30 hours and have anyone in any sort of condition to function unless severe precautions are taken. Heck, even sustaining that for 1 turn (10 minutes) is going to be rough. It’s doable, that amount of acceleration and duration is roughly equivalent of a launch to low Earth orbit with modern rockets, but you wouldn’t want to keep it up for a long time.

That also raises another issue. 5 ADF is actually 13.89 g of acceleration. And Star Frontiers doesn’t have any sort of artificial gravity tech. Pulling those kind of maneuvers is a little unrealistic. (There are discussions about using interia screen tech to help with this but that’s a different article.)

There are a couple of solutions to this. One, which is the one I use and which is probably the simplest, is a willing suspension of disbelief. The board game rules are just that, rules for a board game that simulates (sort of) spaceship combat. There are other issues with the board game physics besides this one, so I don’t expect it to represent “reality”. It’s a fun way to approximately simulate spaceship combat.

Another option, which immediately removes the 1 ADF not equaling 1 g issues, is to change the size of the hexes in the board game. Simply saying that they are 3,600 km in size instead of 10,000 km, makes 1 ADF = 1 g. If you keep the range of weapons the same (measured in hexes as they are described in the game rules, the only thing that really changes is that any planet counters you put on the map have to take up 7 hexes instead of just 1. And it might tweak the gravity rules a bit, but not significantly. This doesn’t solve some of the other problems, however. That’s a whole different post as well.

How I Apply This In Game

So how do I use this?

Basic Application

For most ships, I assume that they have two astrogators that can work in alternating shifts around the clock to do jump calculations. Since the rules say it takes 10 hours of calculation per light year traveled. And since it takes over 80 hours of travel time to get to jump speed. This means that any jump of 8 light years or less takes the same amount of time, namely 8.5 days, which I typically round up to 9 for maneuvering around the station and slight variations in arrival location (see my linked posts). And actually, since I round this up to 9 days, it play it that jumps of 9 light years or less all take 9 days, regardless of distance. Each light year beyond 9 adds a half of day of travel time to allow for the calculations. This is how I calculate the travel times for ships in my Detailed Frontier Timeline.

Again that assumes that they have two astrogators. If not, jumps take significantly longer, namely one day per light year traveled, plus 4.5 days to slow down at the destination, with a minimum of 9 days total travel. So in this case, jumps of five light years or less take 9 days, and each additionally light year adds a day on to the jump time.

Now I do allow the jump calculations to be started before the ship leaves it’s berth, assuming the crew knows when they plan to leave (to within a day or so). But because the planets and stars are always in motion, and the jump calculations have to be done for each specific jump, no more than half the calculations can be done in advance. The rest must be done “in flight.” For me this represents the tweaking and refining of the ship’s course in preparing for the jump that I discuss in the other articles I linked. But that means that even for a ship with a single astrogator, they can reduce the flight time if the astrogator gets started before they leave on the longer jumps.

Traversing multiple systems in a single trip

Another aspect of this is what I like to call the “high speed transit.” This occurs when the ship wants to traverse several star systems but doesn’t need to stop in each one. In this case, the first jump starts as usual, but once they traverse the Void the first time things change.

In each system after the first, until they reach the final system that they want to stop in, they don’t decelerate, at least not appreciably. But rather remain near jump speed, either drifting or, if they want gravity, decelerating for a few hours, flipping around and accelerating, and repeating until they are ready to jump. During this time the astrogators work on the jump and the engineers do any needed engine overhauls. The amount of time spent in system is just the longest of those two activities. Once that’s done, they nudge into the next system and repeat until they arrive at the destination system where it then takes 4.5 days to slow down.

Let’s look at an example: The UPFS Stiletto, an assault scout, is on patrol in Truane’s Star and has orders to get to Dramune as quickly as possible. This route has 4 jumps:

Truane’s Star to Dixon’s Star – 5 light years
Dixon’s Star to Prenglar – 5 light years
Prenglar to Cassidine – 7 light years
Cassidine to Dramune – 4 light years

Using normal jumps, these are all less than 9 light years so each jump would take 9 days for a total of 36 days.

Rather than do this, let’s look at what this takes using the high speed transit option. According to the rules, engine overhauls take 60 hours minus 1d10 hours for each engineer level. The rules also say that Spacefleet ships typically have level 4 engineers. That means that on average, it will take 38 hours to overhaul each engine. We’ll assume that there are 2 astrogators and 2 engineers onboard the Stiletto. This is what a high speed transit looks like in this scenario:

Accelerate out from Truane’s Star – 4.5 days – plenty of time to do the 50 hours astrogation calculations
Transit Dixon’s Star – astrogation calculations take 50 hours (2.5 days of round-the-clock work), engine overhauls only take 38 hours of work, but since there is only one engineer per engine, they have to sleep. So these are the slow part, taking 4 days – so after 4 days, they jump to Prenglar
Transit Prenglar – astrogation will take 70 hours (3.5 days of round-the-clock work). This one is closer but the 4 days of engine overhauls is still the limiting factor. After 4 days they jump to Cassidine.
Transit Cassidine – Here the astrogation calculations only take 40 hours (2 days of round-the-clock work) and the astrogators get a bit of a break while the engineers finish up. After 4 days, they make the jump to Dramune
Decelerate in Dramune – it takes 4.5 days to slow down and arrive at Inner Reach.

All told, this trip takes only 21 days instead of the baseline 36, saving 15 days of travel. The crew might be a little tired, but they made it without taking any risks.

If you only had 1 astrogator and two engineers, one level 3 and one level 2 (more likely on a merchant ship or PC ship), the transit looks like this:

Accelerate from Truane’s Star – 4.5 days, same as before. We assume the astrogator got started before they left.
Transit Dixon’s Star – Astrogation takes 5 days, engine overhauls take 43.5 for the level 3 engineer and 49 for the level 2 engineer. The level 3 engineer can help the other engineer once they are done so the total time to do the overhauls is five days – Time in system 5 days.
Transit Prenglar – In this case the limit is the astrogation which takes 7 days. Time in system, 7 days.
Transit Cassidine – This time the astrogators win and the jump is waiting on the engineers – Time in system, 5 days.
Decelerate in Dramune – 4.5 days.

Total time: 26 days. Takes a little longer but still faster than the base 36 hours. If there was only one engineer, it would actually take longer than 9 days per system as one engineer just can’t do engine overhauls on two engines in each system that fast (unless they are level 5 or 6). You might as well stop over in the station each time unless you have a reason not to go into a system.

Final Thoughts

That’s it for this post. There are other aspects of the travel that I could talk about such as vector movement, the process of lining up for a jump, what happens to your calculations and alignment when you have to maneuver for a combat or something else, and a discussion on how long those alignment efforts take anyway. Some of those ideas I touched on in the posts I linked. I might look at these again in a future post or two as well.

What are your thoughts? What questions do you have? Share them in the comment section below.