The surprise appearance of sathar forces in the Gruna Garu system were met by the combined forces of the Hargut militia, the Frontier Fighter Corps, and the Yazira Squadron. Sustaining heavy casualities, including the complete loss of the Frontier Fighter Corps squadron, the defenders were able to destroy nearly all the invading vessels.
The final sathar ship, heavily wounded, and in an act incomprehensible to sane minds, rammed the defense station destroying itself and the station in the process. We honor those who gave their lives defending ours.
Rinna Harglot, Hargut Global News
Background
Hoping to draw some of the UPF forces from the spinward side of the Frontier where most of the fighting has occurred so far, the sathar have explored a route into the Gruna Garu system and launch a small fleet to attack that system hoping to overpower the defenders there. They are opposed by the Hargut militia, Frontier Fighter Corps Squadron Theta, and the rag-tag volunteers of the Yaziria Squadron.
Order of Battle
UPF
Militia
2 assault scouts
1 armed station
Frontier Fighter Corps (Squadron Theta)
8 fighters
For this battle, I’m using the game stats in my A Look at Yachts and Privateers post from a few days ago for the Yaziria Squadron ships. I basically picked the ships in that group at random from the ships in the article.
Yaziria Squadron
1 Belvedere Class ship
1 Astro Blaster III Class ship
1 Imp Class ship
1 Nova-AR Class ship
1 Rollo’s Revenge Class ship
1 Condor II Class ship
2 Thruster II Class ships
Sathar
1 destroyer
2 light cruisers
1 heavy cruiser
The Battle
Setup
The sathar are here to do as much damage as possible to attempt to draw forces from the other part of the Frontier. They come in relatively slow (speed 15) in attempt to get the defending forces to spread out so that they can deal with them in waves instead of all at once.
The UPF forces spread across a wide front moving at speed 20 to be prepared to engage the sathar regardless of what path they take through the system. The FFC squadron splits into two flights on the wings and the Yazira Squadron splits up as well with the militia assault scouts above them.
Initial starting positions for the battle. Click for full size image.
Turn 1
The sathar maintain their speed but pull into a closer defensive position. Out of range of any UPF weapons, they take some long distanced shots at the armed station with their proton and electron batteries. The second light cruiser connects with both weapons knocking out the stations laser battery and crippling its damage control system.
The UPF ships race forward applying maximum acceleration but can’t quite get in range of the sathar vessels which get another round of free shots on the station which has now come in range of their cannons as well. They are not as lucky this time and only the destroyer’s laser cannon connects with the station knocking out 9% of its hull integrity.
Closing the distance. Click for full image.
Turn 2
Accelerating to speed 17 and remaining as a group, the sathar turn to go after the lone flight of FFC fighters below the planet. The fire a salvo of torpedoes at the station as they pass and fire their energy weapons at the fighters with each ship targeting a single fighter and the heavy cruiser firing one of its laser batteries at the fighter targeted by the destroyer. The station fires all of its ICMs in an attempt to disrupt the torpedo attack. The heavy cruiser also drops a seeker missile along its path.
All of the torpedoes miss the station but the fighters are not so lucky. The smaller capital ships all hit with their cannons and electron batteries and the heavy cruiser hits with one of its laser batteries on its primary target. The two lead fighters are vaporized by the energy cannons hitting them. The third fighter has 25% of its hull integrity knocked out by the electron battery while the disruptor cannon damages its combat control system. The final fighter has its navigation control system jammed by the hit from the heavy cruiser’s laser battery.
The UPF move to eliminate the sathar vessels. The other flight of FFC fighters continues its maximum acceleration and loops in behind the sathar ships to unleash a volley of assault rockets. The militia assault scouts do the same. The damaged fighters remain at speed 25. The fighter with the navigation control hit spins away from the sathar vessels and never gets a shot but the other fighter maneuvers for an assault rocket shot and then flies up near the station to position itself for its next attack.
The Belvedere and Imp join up 50,000 km away from the sathar ships to remain out of range of their torpedoes and fire their laser weapons at the frigate. The Rolo’s Revenge and Condor II do the same to come up behind the sathar vessels but close to 40,000km so that they are within torpedo range. The Nova-AR and Thruster II vessels make an assault rocket pass and follow the militia assault scouts’ and fighters’ general flight plans. The Astro Blaster II, with its limited maneuverability strafes the sathar ships with its electron battery.
Defensively, the sathar ships fire their rocket batteries at the Astro Blaster II and focus their remaining weapons on the UPF fighters and Thruster II vessels. Their cannons are fired at the two wounded fighters while they fire two energy batteries each at the other 6 vessels.
The partially damaged fighter is obliterated by laser and disruptor cannon blasts from the destroyer and a light cruiser. The other light cruiser connects with its disruptor cannon starting a fire on the fighter with the navigation damage. The Astro Blaster III is hit by two of the rocket batteries knocking out 77% of its hull integrity and taking it out of the fight. In the other flight of fighters two are destroyed by electron battery fire while the other two suffer 88% and 50% hull integrity reduction from laser batteries. The second Thruster II ship is hit by an electron battery knocking out its engines.
The surviving UPF ships open fire. The seven assault rockets are all fired at the heavy cruiser while the ships focus their energy weapons on one of the light cruisers. The Rollo’s Revenge and Condor II fire torpedoes at the destroyer. The destroyer and heavy cruiser fire ICMs at the incoming torpedoes. Six of the seven assault rockets hit the heavy cruiser. On takes out the cruiser’s torpedo launcher while the other knocks out its ICM launcher. The other four hammer its hull reducing it’s hull integrity by 88%. The ICMs do their job and intercept both torpedoes headed for the destroyer. The light cruiser is raked by energy fire with the Astro Blaster III’s electron battery knocking out its ICM launcher, the Nova-AR’s laser battery short circuiting the power system, and a proton battery from the Rollo’s Revenge and a laser and proton battery from the Condor II rake the hull and reduce its hull integrity by 29%.
The battle after the first round of engagement. It got chaotic real fast with all the different ship capabilities. Click for full-sized image.
Turn 3
The sathar heavy cruiser, heavily damaged, just drifts away from the battle. The other sathar ships pull to port and go after the Belvedere, Imp and Astro Blaster II vessels. They also activate the seeker missile dropped last round that activates near the Rollo’s Revenge and Condor II. With the Condor II being the larger ship, it is targeted by the missile. Between the two ships they fire three ICMs at the incoming seeker missile. Unfortunately, the seeker missile evades the ICMs and slams into the Condor II but only knocks out its masking screen launcher.
Defensively, Condor II and Rolo’s Revenge fire at the Heavy Cruiser while all the other ships in range fire at the damaged light cruiser. He heavy cruiser is hit by an electron battery from the Condor II that knocks out its disruptor cannon and the Condor II and Rollo’s Revenge hit with a proton and electron battery respectively knocking it down to just 1% hull integrity (1 HP left). The Light cruiser is hit by the Belvedere’s and Imp’s laser cannons knocking out its disruptor cannon and reducing its hull integrity by 11%.
The sathar fire two torpedoes at the Rollo’s Revenge and two at the Belvedere. The heavy cruiser fires all of its energy weapons at the Rollo’s Revenge as well. The other ships fire their cannons at the Astro Blaster III as they fly by. They fire two rocket batteries at the Belvedere and on at the Imp and divide their energy battery weapons evenly between the two ships. The heavy cruiser deploys its final seeker missile along its path.
The Rollo’s Revenge and Condor II fire ICMs at the incoming torpedoes and both miss. With no ICMs, the Belvedere isn’t as lucky and one of the torpedoes hit reducing it’s hull integrity by 62%. The Rollo’s Revenge is hit by an electron battery from the heavy cruiser that knocks out its power system disabling its defenses. Both rocket batteries hit the Belvedere obliterating it. The rocket battery fired at the Imp misses. The destroyer’s laser cannon connects with the Astro Blaster III destroying it. The Imp is hit by a laser, proton, and electron battery, all of which damage its hull, but amazingly only reduce the hull integrity by 50% (only 10 HP on 3d10).
The fire on the UPF fighter damages its hull knocking out 50% of its hull integrity. That fighter pulls to the left with it’s out of control maneuvering and slows to speed 20 but its path takes it dangerously close to the planet.
The UPF fighters and militia assault scouts loop around the planet and make an assault rocket run on the undamaged sathar light cruiser while joining up and remaining at speed 30. The Imp and Rollo’s Revenge join up to go after heavy cruiser to finish it off. Due to the Rollo’s Revenge’s speed, the come within rocket battery range of the cruiser. The Condor II and Thruster II ships come up behind the sathar vessels and fire at the damaged light cruiser. The Nova-AR starts chasing down the sathar ships as well but is too far away to catch up with its limited acceleration.
Defensively, the heavy cruiser focuses its energy weapons on the Imp and fires a rocket battery at the Rollo’s Revenge. The rocket battery hits knocking out the ship’s maneuvering. A lucky hit by the cruiser’s laser battery destroys the Imp (10 HP on 1d10). The other sathar ships fire on the incoming fighters and Thruster vessels dividing their weapons among those four ships. The two fighters and damaged Thruster II ship are hit by a laser, electron, and proton battery (respectively) and each are destroyed. The other Thruster II vessel is hit by an electron battery which reduces its hull integrity by 60%.
The surviving ships open fire at their respective targets. The Rollo’s Revenge’s electron battery takes out the heavy cruiser’s proton screen just before the torpedo slams into the hull obliterating the ship. The Condor II and surviving Thruster II ship hit with every weapon except one of the Condor II’s laser battery. The Thruster II’s pod laser knocks out half of the cruiser’s maneuvering capabilities while the Condor II’s laser battery induces a navigation control failure. That is moot, however as the torpedo, assault rocket, disruptor cannon, and proton and electron batteries rip into the cruiser’s hull and destroy the ship (98 HP, too bad they didn’t shoot at the undamaged cruiser. The militia ships fire at the other light cruiser. The laser batteries miss but both assault rockets hit reducing the hull to just over 50% integrity (both AR rolled double damage but only did a total of 34 HP).
The battle after the first half hour. I shifted the map to keep all the ships on the board. Click for full-sized image.
Repair Turn 1
The damaged sathar light cruiser repairs 11% of its hull integrity.
The station repairs its laser battery. The fighter tries to repair the fighter but can’t quite get it out (rolled a 34 on a 30 DCR). The Rollo’s Revenge tries to repair its maneuvering but can’t quite get it fixed. The surviving Thruster II tries to repair its hull but the damage will require a shipyard. Finally, the Condor II repairs its masking screen launcher.
Turn 4
The sathar activate the last seeker missiles which chases down the Rollo’s Revenge. With no ICM’s left, the ship’s crew watches helplessly as the missile closes in and slams into the hull reducing the hull integrity by 62%. The two surviving ships turn to port and head back toward the planet, slowing to speed 14.
Defensively, all the ships fire at the damaged light cruiser. The Condor II hits with a laser battery reducing the hull integrity by 13% and an electron battery which starts a fire. The Thruster II’s pod laser scores a critical hit reducing the cruiser’s hull integrity by another 23%
The sathar vessels fire all their weapons at the Condor II. One electron battery hits damaging the Condor II’s combat control system while both torpedoes hit reducing the ship’s hull integrity by 78%.
The fire on the UPF fighter proves too much and compromises the hull, destroying the ship. The Rollo’s Revenge and the Condor II, both heavily damaged, just drift away from the battle as they work on repairs to their hull to prevent the ships from breaking up while maneuvering. The remaining ships loop around and go after the sathar vessels intending to take out the destroyer on this pass.
The militia assault scouts loop around and fire on the destroyer, slowing to speed 25. Like the assault scouts, the Nova-AR loops around, just counter clockwise and fires on the destroyer as well. The Thruster II follows a similar flight plan to the Nova-AR but it’s high speed takes it further away from the sathar ships after if fires its weapons.
Defensively, the destroyer fires at the Thruster II while the light cruiser fires at the lead militia assault scout. An electron battery connects with the Thruster II damaging its engines while the assault scout is hit by a laser battery knocking out the assault scout’s laser battery and an electron battery that reduces its maneuvering by 25%.
The Thruster II’s pod laser damages the destroyer’s engines but then three of the four assault rockets hit the destroyer obliterating it.
Wounded ships are starting to drift away. Had to shift the map a bit again. Click for full-sized image.
Turn 5
Cognizant of the fact that it probably won’t survive the battle with the remaining UPF vessels, the damaged sathar light cruiser turns toward the planet and station. Using the gravity of the planet to assist it’s motion the cruiser barrels straight at the station to ram it. The crew of the station watches in horror as the large sathar vessel barrels down on them. They fire their laser and rocket battery in defense but know it won’t be enough. Both of the station’s weapons miss. The cruiser fires all of its weapons at the station while it approaches. However, only the disruptor cannon actually hits knocking out the station’s empty ICM launcher. The massive ship impacts the station and the two vessels rip each other apart.
Final positions. The Rollo’s Revenge is off the bottom of the map and not shown. I shifted it again because original I was going to have the sathar ship flee and had shifted the map before I realized they would ram the station. Click for full image.
Final Repairs
The militia assault scout quickly repairs its damaged LB and then its damaged maneuvering shortly thereafter.
After about two hours, the Rollo’s Revenge has repaired all of its damage except its hull. It will have to carefully fly to Prenglar to get that repaired not what the Hentz shipyard has been destroyed.
It takes two and half hours for the Condor II to complete its repairs and like the Rollo’s Revenge, it too must carefully limp to a shipyard to completely repair its hull.
After an hour and a half, the surviving Thruster II has repaired as much as it can of the battle damage but is also unable to repair its hull and must head to a shipyard.
Aftermath
The sathar didn’t quite do as much damage as they had hoped. While they destroyed the fighter squadron and the station, they didn’t take out the militia assault scouts. However, they did succeed in showing the UPF that Gruna Garu is now vulnerable. So while they didn’t do as much damage as desired, it will have the desired effect of stretching the UPF thinner in the defense of the Frontier.
If you count the damage done to the surviving ships of the Yazira Squadron, the sathar actually did more damage than they took inflicting a total of 320 HP while losing 270. They definitely took out more ships. Although if you only count the ships destroyed, the sathar only destroyed 249 HP of ships. So it was pretty even.
Lessons Learned
The sathar were doing pretty well until turn 4. Then their defensive fire failed and the UPF ships had a stellar round. The turn before was also a bit surprising when the Condor II hit with everything and obliterated the sathar light cruiser. I was actually expecting the light cruiser to possibly survive that round but it didn’t.
Overall, the privateers and yachts did pretty well. The Condor II and Rollo’s Revenge are formidible ships. I picked the ships for the Yazira squadron fairly randomly. If those two ships hadn’t been part of the mix, it might have gone much worse for the UPF as their torpedos were quite helpful. The Yazira Squadron were “bonus” ships relative to the order of battle for the Second Sathar War game but so were the ships I gave the sathar when I added in the ships at sathar SCC#10 a while back so it evens out.
Playing out this battle was a little slower than some of the others because I was using new ships that I’d not played before in the Yazira Squadron. I have the standard ships etched into my brain from so many battles but I was continually looking up the stats for the yachts and privateers. It also made for a bit more chaotic battle as every ship had unique characteristics.
I was starting to work on the Battle of Hargut (Gruna Garu) that is coming up in the Detailed Frontier Timeline in a few days and had to put together the Yazira Squadron. From the timeline I had created the following details:
Date (FY)
Events
61.299
A small group of 8 civilian privateer vessels, hailing from the yazirian worlds of the Frontier and calling themselves the Yazira Squadron, arrive in orbit around Morgaine’s World (Prenglar) and request permission to assist Starfleet in the fight against the sathar.
61.301
Worried that since the sathar have a route into Prenglar they may also have one to Gruna Garu, Spacefleet sends the Yazira Squadron back to Gruna Garu to bolster the defenses there.
61.310
Yazira Squadron arrives back in the Gruna Garu system where they join up with the local militia to coordinate the defense of that system.
So there are eight civilian privateer vessels and they were sent to Gruna Garu to bolster the defenses there. I did this even before I conceived of the sathar actually trying to chart a route to Gruna Garu. It was just a concern on Spacefleet’s job. But it turned out to be a good idea because if they weren’t there. The incoming sathar ships (1 destroyer, 2 light cruisers, and a heavy cruiser) would probably completely overwhelm the 2 militia assault scouts and Frontier Fighter Corps squadron in the system.
The question is what should the ships be. I figured I’d just pull up the old Dragon article “Fast and Deadly” (p. 78, Dragon June, 1984) that provided stats for some yachts and privateers and use those.
Then I actually looked at the ship stats in the article.
Given the starship construction rules, even allowing for a little “fudging” in the rules for upgraded military technology in some of the ships, they just didn’t make sense to me. The yachts weren’t too bad but most of the privateer vessels were just so far out there that they seemed way overpowered. So I thought I’d work through each of these ships and see if they made sense or not and if my intuition about the ships was correct.
So here we go.
Yachts
We’ll look at the yachts first as there seem to be fewer problems with these ones. I find it interesting that of all the stats for the ships that could be included, the article included the number of lifeboats on these ships.
This one actually checks out just fine with the ship design rules. The minimum hull size (MHS) for all the weapons and defenses are equal to the hull size of the ship which means that it has to loose 1 ADF or MR and it sacrifices the ADF.
It says it has an ICM launcher but not how many salvos, we’ll assume 4 (Note: after looking at the later ships, I think it meant that it had a single ICM salvo. I’d still leave it at four though). The MHS for all of the Astro-Blaster III’s weapons and defenses comes to 12 (EB=6, RH=1, ICM=5). This means that it should be losing a total of 3 ADF or MR. Since a HS 6 ships starts with ADF/MR of 3, again this one checks out. They sacrificed 2 ADF and 1 MR.
Here we run into the first problem. The MHS for the weapons and defenses add up to 5 (LB = 3, AR = 1, RH =1) and so this hull size 5 ship should lose one ADF or MR. Unless you assess a MHS penalty for each assault rocket in which case it would be 2 lost. However, the rules give the MHS requirement on the launcher not the rockets so I don’t think that should be the case. The designers here assigned a loss of both an MR and an ADF point so the ship has ADF & MR of two instead of the default 3. Personally, I think they assessed too much of a penalty.
But that’s not really the problem. The problem is that this ship cannot fire assault rockets. On Page 18 of the Knight Hawks Campaign Book (KHCB), right under the table where the minimum hull size values are listed, it says “Assault rockets cannot be used by any ship that has an MR less than 4.” The idea being that you need to be maneuverable to line these weapons up as they are not self steering. By default, a HS 5 ship, which has a base MR of 3, cannot fire assault rockets. That doesn’t mean we can’t make it work but there needs to be some changes. Let’s look at two variants on this:
For this -AR variant we kept the assault rockets. And I only assessed the single point of ADF loss bringing the ship down to ADF:2/MR:3. We gain the extra MR point by sacrificing hull points. One of the variations on ship design, found in the “Modifying Spaceships” section under “Movement” on page 22 of the KHCB says “Any ship can gain one ADF or MR point by removing 20% of its hull points.” Applying that gives us the stats above. We sacrifice 5 HP for 1 MR.
This variant is basically a slightly larger and half as fast assault scout. It has a few more HP, only 3 AR instead of 4 (although you could bump that up without penalty in my opinion) but only has 2 ADF instead of 5.
The the -L variant, we drop the assault rockets. Now the MHS total is only 4 and we definitely only need to lose one ADF or MR point which I chose to take off the ADF. I would have put two LB on the ship and taken the two points of ADF/MR penalty like the original variant, but the rules say that you have to be double the MHS for a weapon to have two of them. Since the MHS for a laser battery is 3, the ship would need to be hull size 6 to have two. I considered replacing the assault rockets with a rocket battery but the MHS for that is 5 and we would have had to take 3 points of ADF/MR penalty instead of 2. So this variant is a moderate HP laser platform, basically a bigger version of the Imp class with a few more HP.
Again we’ve run into the problem on assault rockets on a ship with an MR less than four. Additionally, while they assessed a 1-point penalty to the ADF/MR for all the weapons and defenses, that is too low. The total MHS score for the weapons and defenses is 5. Half the hull size is 1.5 and 5/1.5 = 3.333. The rules explicitly say to round that fraction up before subtracting 1 so there should be a 3 point penalty, not a one point penalty. Now if you round the fraction for the hull size up to 2 before doing the division you only get a 2 point penalty. The rules aren’t explicit on that step so you could go either way, although given the wording of the rules, I’d lean in the rounding the division of the HS up before doing the second division. I’m going to be generous and say it should only be a 2 point deduction. But we still have the problem of the MR being less than four so we need to reallocate the deduction.
This variant reallocates the full deduction to the ADF so that the MR remains at 4 and it is valid to have the assault rockets. I also bumped up the assault rocket count to two instead of one. If you think each individual assault rocket should have the MHS applied, this keeps us at a penalty of 2. If you subscribe the MHS applies only to the launcher, I wouldn’t have an issue bumping that up to 3. This ship is effectively a slow assault scout.
If you don’t like moving player only (MPO) limited weapons on your ship, the Rim-Song-L class drops the assault rockets and keeps the laser battery. Now the MHS total is 4 and we only have the 1 point deduction on ADF/MR (assuming we round up the fraction dividing the HS by 2) which I assessed to MR like the original stats. So now we have a fast maneuverable laser platform.
The original stats just listed rocket batteries, not the number of shots so I assumed four like the frigate and destroyer have. I assume that if your ship is big enough to hold the launcher, you can have 4 salvos. The original also said “masking screen” so I assumed that meant one charge although per the rules this ship could hold two.
For this ship, the default ADF and MR are 3 so they’ve assessed a 2-point penalty. Let’s see if that makes sense. The MHS total for the weapons and defenses is 14 (LB = 3, AR = 1, RB = 5, RH = 1, MS = 4). Whether we round the HS divided by two up or not, that’s a three point deduction, not two. Plus we again have the problem that you can’t put assault rockets on a ship that has an MR less than 4. And in this case, with all these weapons, there is no way to get the MR up to four. With a three point deduction and sacrificing 20% of the hull points for a +1 MR, we’d have an ADF of 0. Which doesn’t work. The assault rockets have to to.
This version keeps all the weapons except the assault rockets and bumps the masking screens to two charges. That drops the MHS total to 13 and we still have the 3 point penalty to ADF/MR. We apply the deduction knocking the ADF to 1. It’s an armed pleasure yacht so it would never normally be accelerating that much anyway.
Again, if you want a purely laser weapon system, this ship is large enough to have two laser batteries so we drop the rocket battery in favor of a second laser battery. Now the MHS total is only 11 and our ADF/MR penalty drops to two instead of three so our ADF goes back to 2 like in the original.
Privateers
Some of the yachts were fine and the others were close but still needed some adjustments to fit within the rules. I’m pretty sure the Privateers are going to need some serious adjustments. The description of the privateers say that some of them are refitted military vessels. So for these ships, I’m going to allow a few more weapons on them than on the civilian hulls that the yachts were created from. This will be represented by not dividing the hull size in half before dividing the MHS total for the ship but rather multiplying it by two instead, effectively making them capable of carrying four times as much armament. That still isn’t as strong as the military vessels in the game. We’ll see how this goes.
If you want to look at a good system that actually allows you to recreate almost all the existing military ships in the game, you should check out the Military Ship Design articles in Star Frontiersman issue 11, page 5. The variation I’m using doesn’t quite let the ships match the capability of the system in that article but is significantly better than the standard design system for arming ships. I actually think it is still a bit much but I don’t want to tweak the ships too much from the original article describing the privateer ships.
The ships here in the Privateer section are the names of the ships given for each of the miniatures in the Privateers box of ship minis produced by TSR back in the day. I’ve included pictures of each of the minis with these ships.
Okay, the MHS total for this ship is 40. If this was a civilian ship it would have a 9 point ADF/MR penalty and would not be possible. Going with the paramilitary option I described above, it only has a 1 point penalty which was applied to the MR. So we can leave this one as is.
The one is loaded with weapons and defenses. The MHS total for this ship adds up to 71, the largest we’ve seen yet. It’s also the largest ship at hull size 13. Dividing the MHS total by twice the hull size and dropping one gives us a movement penalty of 2 points. There were no penalties assigned to the original ship as it retained its full ADF and MR of 3. We’re going to have to change something.
The goal here was to get the MHS total down to 52 so we only take one point of performance penalty. That was actually pretty easy. I just dropped the electron and proton screens (a total of 22 MHS points) and that dropped us down to 49. So I tossed in another torpedo, another masking screen charge, and two more ICMs. The truth is, in all my playing of KH battles, I can’t remember a time I’ve ever activated any screen other than a masking screen so I (personally at least) don’t feel like this is any loss. I applied the one-point penalty to the MR.
Okay, this is a fun one. If you look at the image of the miniature for this ship, it is the same hull design that they use for the hull size 6 Gullwind from the Dramune Run module although this ship is listed as hull size 9.
That aside, let’s look at the design. First off, this is a missile boat. I probably wouldn’t put seeker missiles (SM) on a privateer but I didn’t design it. The MHS for the weapons and defenses on this ship add up to 33 for this ship. Dividing that by double the hull size gives us a one-point penalty which was applied to the MR for the ship. I’d probably bump the masking screen up to 2 charges and the ICMs to four salvos but we can leave this one alone.
This one is just painful. First up, the MHS total for the listed weapons and defenses is 12. Which doesn’t seem to bad but the ship is only hull size 2, smaller than an assault scout. Using our formula, it should have a 2 point penalty but none was applied. In addition, both the laser cannon and rocket battery have MHS of 5, which means that they can’t be installed on a ship this small. The canon rules bent that a bit putting a laser canon on the Streel Corvette Class, a HS 4 ship but putting it on a HS 2 ship is just too much.
We’ll fix this one by making it a heavy fighter. We will drop the rocket battery but give it another assault rocket and replace the laser cannon with a Laser Pod, a weapon introduced in the article “The Laser Pod” in Polyhedron #19. The game stats for the pod laser are:
Pod Laser: MHS: 1, Type: FF, RD, Range: 5, Damage: 1d10, Attack: 50% against RH, 10% against MS
It’s basically a mini laser cannon that can fit on a fighter.
Now the MHS for the redesigned ship is 3 and there is no penalty to ADF or MR.
This is just a civilian assault scout again but a little bigger. The MHS total for this ship’s weapons and defenses is 9 which is one over the 8 limit we have with the system we’re using for the privateers so we have a one-point performance penalty that needs to be applied. We’ll penalize the MR.
The MHS total for this ship is 15, which gives us a one point penalty which was applied to the ADF so that’s good. The problem is that we have three laser batteries on a ship that should only have one because it would need to be HS 9 to hold three but is only HS 4. If we’re willing to let that slide, this ship is fine. If not we need to do something. But dropping it down to a single laser battery just makes it a Lightspeed Lady class ship so I’m going to let it slide even though even the standard ships don’t violate this rule.
Final Thoughts
Most of these ships are a bit overpowered. And I think the privateers are really overpowered for what I feel should be available to civilian ships but they are not as overpowered as the actual military ships so I’m willing to put them into a “paramilitary” class and let them slide with only a few changes.
The one thing that the original “Fast and Deadly” article didn’t include is prices for these ships. I think it was mainly introducing them for the miniatures game so wasn’t too concerned about that. Plus I don’t think they actually looked at the ship design rules provided with the game to work out the total cost of the systems for each ship. That could be an interesting exercise for a future article or series of articles. But at the very least, I would expect the privateers to be significantly more expensive due to their upgraded weapon capability even though the extra weapons don’t add much to the cost of the ships per the costs in the rules (I feel the weapons costs are way low in the ship design rules.)
All of these ships are buildable with the alternate ship construction rules I’m working on and have posted parts of. The hull sizes might be different and the role-playing details of the ships might vary a bit but it would be easy to design each of these ships and work out their costs, crew sizes, engines, etc. And they probably wouldn’t match the miniatures very well but their Knight Hawks stats would be dead on.
Now that I’ve looked closer at these ships, it’s time to pick some of them to be the ships of the Yazira squadron and get to the Battle of Hagurt coming up in a few days.
Do you agree with the changes I made? Would you do it differently? How would you handle the privateers? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
In an unexpected and horrifying turn of events, the sathar fleet attacked the civilian orbital shipyard around Terledrom in their attack today before retreating from the system. The shipyard was completely destroyed along with all the ships under construction. Many of the crew and engineers were lost as well.
Task Force Cassidine, together with with the new Frontier Fighter Corps squadron and the militia drove off the attackers destroying five major vessels of the sathar fleet. UPF forces lost fourteen of the twenty fighters in the system and the militia lost one of its assault scouts. Luckily nearly all the crew were recovered. The militia frigate was significantly damaged as well and will be heading to Outer Reach in the Dramune system for repairs with the loss of the local shipyard.
Kat’kst’kll, Terledrom News Service
Background
Deciding on a change of tactics, the sathar launch a massive fleet at Fromeltar, larger than any of the fleets seen so far in the Frontier. Despite the increased size of the Fromeltar militia and the presence of Frontier Fighter Corps Squadron Gamma, these ships plus the depleted Task Force Cassidine are outgunned by the incoming sathar fleet. The UPF has more ships, 32 vs 21, but twenty of the UPF ships are fighters with another 7 being assault scouts. The UPF fleet only has 5 capital ships, a battleship, an assault carrier, and three frigates, compared to the 10 capital ships of the sathar fleet including four heavy cruisers.
However, unlike previous sorties into the Frontier, the primary target of this attack is not the ships of Spacefleet but rather the starship construction center in that system. This is only going to be a hit and run on the sathar’s part and they aren’t planning on a major engagement with the fleet. Three hours before the sathar ships reach the planet, the assault carrier deploys its fighters and turns to head home. It looks like the fighters are to be sacrificed.
Order of Battle
UPF
Task Force Cassidine
9 fighters
3 assault scouts
2 frigates
1 assault carrier
1 battleship
FFC Squadron Gamma
8 fighters
Terledrom Militia
3 fighters (manned for UPF)
4 assault scouts
1 frigate
armed station
Terledrom SCC
Sathar
9 fighters
2 cutters
3 frigates
1 destroyer
2 light cruisers
4 heavy cruisers
1 assault carrier (not participating in battle)
The Battle
Setup
Unlike previous engagements, instead of continuing to slow as they approach the planet, two hours out, the sathar forces start accelerating instead of continuing to slow down. Additionally instead of dispersing out to engage the UPF forces, the fleet amasses into a single tight formation bearing directly on the planet. They enter the map at speed 44.
Caught by surprise by the sathar’s speedup, the UPF forces scramble to gain speed and because of this are somewhat out of position as the attack commences. The fighters and assault scouts have matched the sathar’s speed but the frigates have only achieved a speed of 35 while the battleship and assault carrier are at speed 20. The fighters form up into flights of 3 or 4 ships and the assault scout fly in pairs or trios.
Positions at the start of the battle. The sathar are all massed into a single hex with the composition shown in the upper right box. The gray background space station is the starship construction center and the blue background one is the armed station in the system. Click for full size image.
Turn 1
The sathar stay as a group and accelerate with an ADF of 2 to a speed of 46. The armed station, expecting to be obliterated, fires its laser battery and rocket battery at a pair of fighters, hoping to reduce the assault rockets coming at it but both miss.
Surprisingly the sathar do not attack the armed station or continue on toward the UPF ships. Rather they swing around the planet, using the gravity of the planet to get an extra turn for the heavy cruisers and as they pass by, unload all of their firepower into the starship construction center orbiting behind the armed station. Defenseless, the SCC is pummeled by the sathar attacks.
Eight of the nine assault rockets connect with various parts of the shipyard, five of which do double damage reducing the hull integrity of the station by 35%. Six of the ten fired rocket batteries hit reducing the hull integrity by another 15%. Only four of the ten torpedoes connect and amazingly are not very effective, reducing the hull integrity by only another 11%. Four of the six disruptor cannons connect knocking out the station’s DCR, and reducing its hull integrity by another 7%. All four laser cannons hit dropping the hull integrity another 10%. Seven of the ten electron and proton batteries connect, inducing an electrical fire and reducing the hull integrity by another 4%. Finally, fifteen of the eighteen laser batteries connect reducing the hull integrity by another 17% leaving the station with just 1% of its hull integrity remaining. Finally, the heavy cruisers deploy some seeker missiles along their path to activate against pursing ships.
Enraged by the nearly complete destruction of the shipyard, its crews, and the ships inside, the UPF forces swarm after the fleeing sathar vessels. The only exception is the assault carrier which flies to get as far away from the sathar as possible. The battleship is moving too slow to get into range, and the two UPF frigates can’t get to optimal range but are at least able to bring some of their weapons to bear. The fire on the SCC knocks out half of its remaining hull integrity (3 of 600 HP left).
Recognizing the danger of all the fighters, the sathar concentrate their defensive fire on that threat. The defensive fire destroys four fighters and nearly destroys two more. It damages the engines on two fighters, and completely knocks out the engines on another. It knocks out the maneuvering system on one fighter and the assault rocket launcher on yet another. Finally, one of the fighters is hit damaging its combat control system.
The UPF ships return fire with a vengeance. The fighters concentrate on two of the heavy cruisers while the assault scouts focus one of the light cruisers. The frigates focus on one of their counterparts. The more distant frigates miss but the one close in with the fighters connects with its laser cannon and a torpedo. The don’t do as much damages as they could but still manage to take out 67% of the sathar frigate’s hull integrity (the LC only did 3 HP and the T, while rolling double damage, only did 24 HP).
The assault scouts miss with their laser batteries but connect with six of the seven assault rockets on the light cruiser knocking out its ICM launcher and damaging its maneuvering jets before the others slam into it and destroy it completely. The first heavy cruiser is hit by six of the eight assault rockets launched at it. The rockets take out just over half of its hull integrity, knock out its maneuvering, damage its engines, knock out its disruptor cannon, and cause a power short circuit knocking out all of its screens and ICMs. The second doesn’t fare as well. It is also hit by six assault rockets. The first three knock out about 56% of its hull integrity, the next two damage its engines and knock out its maneuvering. But the final assault rocket slams into the cruiser’s torpedo magazine causing a massive explosion that destroys the ship.
Courses and positions after the first round. The UPF ships show in the yellow boxes are positioned at the corresponding letter on the map. Their facing is as given in the boxes. Click for larger image.
Turn 2
The sathar continue to effect their retreat from the system. The wounded heavy cruiser with no MR, accompanied by the wounded frigate accelerate by 1 (the HC’s max) and continue straight and the frigate doesn’t break up from the slight acceleration. The other capital ships make a turn to port, accelerate by two and begin to leave the inner system. The fighters loop back to make a pass at the battleship.
At the same time the sathar activate three of the seeker missiles that they had deployed last turn. The first one starts to accelerate toward the armed station. The second activates among all the fighters and assault scouts and targets the militia frigate in that group. The third goes after the UPF frigate just behind the larger group of ships chasing the sathar fleet. Both frigates fire off all of their ICMs in an attempt to intercept the incoming missile. The missile going after the UPF frigate manages to evade the seeker missile but the militia frigate isn’t so lucky. The missile slams home but mercifully doesn’t destroy the ship. It’s hull integrity is only reduced by 40% (only 16 points on 5d10).
Defensively, the armed station, UPF frigate A, and the battleship fire at the fighters while the other ships focus on the damaged heavy cruiser. The frigate connects with the lead fighter knocking out its AR launcher. The station misses but the battleship hit with 2 laser batteries destroying one fighter and knocking out the AR launcher on a second, and its disruptor cannon vaporizes a second fighter. The other frigates and assault scouts, firing on the damaged heavy cruiser, only manage to land two laser battery hits (from the militia frigate and assault scout) knocking out the cruisers PB and only scratching its hull (1 HP).
Offensively, the sathar fighters fire their assault rockets at the battleship, but the destruction of and damage to their wingworms distract them and only one of the five rockets connect damaging the battleship’s engines.
The fleeing sathar ships focus the energy battery weapons on the fighters behind them, while they focus their cannons and rocket batteries on the fighters in the lower group (C) along their flight path. They fire torpedoes at the frigate and assault scouts behind them as well. The assault scouts immediately start dodging in an attempt to evade the incoming torpedoes but the frigate, having expended its ICMs unsuccessfully on the seeker missile can only watch as the torpedo homes in.
While the torpedoes are only moderately successful, damaging the LC on the militia frigate and destroying one of the militia assault scouts, the energy weapons and rocket batteries are much more effective, completely destroying the fighters along the sathar flight path and destroying four fighters in the trailing groups. In addition, two more fighters are damaged (12% and 88% hull integrity left).
With the battleship too slow to catch the fleeing ships, and some of the assault scouts thrown off track trying to avoid the incoming torpedoes, the UPF cannot safely pursue the larger group of sathar vessels and go after the damaged ships to finish them off. Three of the assault scouts are able to pursue even with their evasive maneuvers and are joined by the four functional fighters. One fighter has its maneuvering damaged and just starts to decelerate. The sixth fighter cannot accelerate and tries to stay with the main group but falls behind and doesn’t come into weapon range. The frigates also pursue the damaged sathar ships but they are still at a speed disadvantage and fall a bit further behind. The battleship starts slowing down and staying near the station while the three militia assault scouts slow down as they are headed off in the wrong direction for pursuit but should be able to start to catch up soon. The assault carrier, now safe, begins slowing down and returning to the planet.
The starship construction center succumbs the fire and is completely destroyed. Defensively, the sathar heavy cruiser and frigate fire on the incoming fighters but all the shots go wide.
The UPF ships fire five assault rockets at the heavy cruiser and two at the frigate. They focus all their energy weapons at the frigate (3 LB from the Assault scouts and 2 LC & LB from the frigates). Four of the five assault rockets hit the heavy cruiser. All of them rip into the hull completely destroying the ship. Of the energy weapons fired at the frigate, only one of the assault scouts score a hit reducing the frigate’s hull integrity by 10%. One of the assault rockets knocks out the frigate’s LC while the other detonates in the core of the ship with a titanic explosion that consumes the entire ship (42 HP).
Upper half of the map. The yellow numbers indicate how many hexes off the map the ship is along the direction they were traveling. Click for larger image.Lower map. The top row of this map is the same as the bottom row of the upper map. Click for the full-size image.
Turn 3
The remaining sathar ships continue to flee the system but activate their remaining seeker missile that they left by the planet. Both the newly activated one and the one activated the previous turn fly at the armed station. Firing ICMs to try to avoid an impact, one of the missiles is intercepted but the other one hits the station reducing its hull integrity by 30% but not destroying it. With the sathar ships now quite far away and retreating, the UPF calls off the pursuit and begins looking for survivors from the starship construction center.
Repairs
The only damage on the surviving sathar ships are damaged assault rocket launchers on two of the fighters which are quickly repaired once they rejoin the assault carrier.
Damage to the UPF ships is only a little more extensive. The battleship quickly repairs its damaged engines and the militia frigate is able to get its laser cannon back online immediately as well. Over the next hour an a half it is able to get its hull back up to 75% integrity but then hits a snag that can only be repaired in a shipyard.
The fighter with the lightly damaged engines also gets that under control immediately can begin decelerating with the rest of the fighter group. It takes nearly an hour for the fighter with the completely knocked out engines to get some engine power back and many hours for it to slow down enough to dock with the carrier where it is completely repaired. After an hour and half of work, the fighter with the damaged maneuvering jets restores some control and begins to head back to the carrier where it arrives a few hours later and is completely repaired. The fighters with damages hull carefully make their way back to the carrier where they are fully repaired.
Unfortunately, the damage to the station from the seeker missile are such that it would take tools and equipment from the shipyard to repair. Those repairs will take some time to effect now that the shipyard has been destroyed.
Aftermath
The sathar lost more ships than they had planned on, losing 34.5% of their hull points that they came into the battle with, 2 fighters, a frigate, a light cruiser and 2 heavy cruisers (286 HP of ships). That said, they accomplished their primary goal of destroying the starship construction center.
The UPF “only” lost 14 fighters (72% of the ships) and a militia assault scout (for a total of 135 HP) but the loss of the shipyard is going to be significant. Additionally, it lost the ships that were in the shipyard including an assault scout that would have been completed the next day, two fighters, and a frigate and destroyer under construction. There were also three civilian ships in the shipyard, a HS 11 ship undergoing maintenance, and HS 10 and HS 11 ships that were under construction and scheduled to be completed in 38 and 76 days respectively.
The remaining six fighters are all assigned to Frontier Fighter Corps Squadron Delta. The assault carrier is detached from TF Cassidine and with the militia frigate heads toward Dramune. The frigate will enter the shipyard there while the carrier will head to Prenglar to pick up more fighters to round out FCC Squadron Delta and replenish its compliment with TF Cassidine. Also, one of the minelayers at Prenglar will be heading to Fromeltar.
The shipyard situation is more serious. Work will begin to build a new shipyard but it will be years before it is back at capacity. Additionally, with the loss of the shipyard here at Terledrom and the one at Hentz (Araks), the UPF is going to start arming the shipyards, adding defenses, and increasing security.
Given that the UPF know the route to one of the active sathar shipyards in OFS019, the remnant of this battle group is headed there for defense while the sathar continue to rebuild their forces.
Lessons Learned
When I first conceived this scenario, I thought the sathar would come in hot, swing by the planet, take out the shipyard and then fly out of the system. And that went just about perfectly as far as destruction of the shipyard went. They did 594 HP of out the 600 HP the shipyard had and left it with a fire that took out the last 6 HP. And that was despite rolling poorly for the damage from the torpedoes.
However, as I was setting things up, I realized that with the limited ADF of the sathar since they were staying together as a group, the small fast UPF ships would be able to boost to the same speed and intercept the sathar. So I set it up that way and the sathar took more damage than they expected. The downside was that the UPF was just barely able to intercept the sathar on the first round which meant that they had to stay close and be subject to offensive fire from the sathar instead of making a run and turning out to be farther away. They could have done that a little bit (2-4 hexes) but I didn’t have them do so as they are new pilots and I chalked it up to inexperience.
I was surprised at how close to exact the damage done to the shipyard was. Since the shipyard as designed didn’t have weapons or defenses, the only non-hull hits possible were the fire and DCR. Equipping the shipyards with weapons and defenses will help to increase their survivability since the damage will be spread around. But not by much.
The sathar could have possibly wiped out the remaining UPF forces completely if they had stayed in the system but that would have been a long drawn out battle as it would have taken them a long time to slow back down. The shipyard was their target so they took it out and left.
So 19 months ago (Dec 2020), I posted the part 1 of this pair of posts with the first decks of the HSS History’s Hope. In that post I was also making videos of how I create the deck plans. This post is just the completed deck plans for the rest of the ship, no videos. I didn’t do the videos for two reasons. Primarily, I just didn’t have the time to sit down and do the recordings. I worked on these 10 minutes here, 15 minutes there, until they were done. The second was that there really wasn’t anything new as far as map creation goes while making the maps for these decks so any videos would have been more of the same. That said, here are the remaining decks of the ship.
The Deck Plans
All of these decks are drawn at 1 square = 1 meter and the full resolution files are at 140 dpi so each square is 1/2″ in size (the size of the chits from the original game) and line up nicely with the grid sizes (70 pixels) of at least Roll20 and possibly other virtual tabletops.
Engineering Deck
First up is the engineering deck.
Engineering deck. Click for full sized image.
There’s actually a lot more there than just the engineering areas but we’ll start with those. Across the bottom of the map (left to right) we have the primary life support machinery that handles air and water filtration and circulation, a robotics shop, robot storage and the astrogation telescope dome, engineering and life support control, a machine shop, and the communication and scanner systems controls. The two little rooms on each end are storage.
The large rooms across the top are all life support food storage. The one on the left closest to the elevator is actually a freezer. At the top is the laser battery turret and on either end of the deck are the access passages to the engines.
Common Deck
Common deck. Not sure how I ended up with an extra row of squares across the top outside the ship. Click for full image.
This deck is the common area for the ship. It contains a theater (right side) for both entertainment and meetings/briefings. Along the bottom are some small offices where crew can study and/or work. This is also the dining hall with the galley and attached pantry.
Airlock & Medical Deck
Airlock & medbay deck. Actually I do know how there was an extra row at the top of this deck and the previous one. I started with the file for the Science Deck (from part 1) that has bays that stick out a bit so the map had to be bigger. Click for full image.
This deck has the ship’s airlock, along with storage for space suits for all the ship’s crew. Also on this deck is the ship’s medical bay with a small office, sickroom, and operating room. Finally, the deck houses the ship’s lifeboat (left) and a small launch (right).
Recreation Deck
Recreation deck. Click for full sized image.
The central feature of this deck is the gym area. That blue area is a mat, not a pool. Off of the gym is a sauna (left) and steam room (right). This deck also house the remaining four staterooms for the crew not housed on the crew decks from the previous posts.
Bridge
The bridge. Click for full size image.
The final deck is the bridge. It houses the main computer and stations for the pilot, astrogagor, gunner, and engineer. Access is by a ladder through a hatch in the floor from the officer’s deck.
HSS History’s Hope cutaway to show deck placement. Click for a larger image.
Deck Order
The decks are arranged as follows on the ship from bottom to top as shown in the image to the right. Most of the decks are 3m tall with 2m between decks although the cargo deck is nearly 5m tall and the engineering deck is 4m tall.
Cargo Deck
Science Deck
Engineering Deck
Common Deck
Crew Deck
Crew Deck
Crew Deck
Airlock/Medical Deck
Recreation Deck
Crew Deck
Officer’s Deck
Bridge
What’s Next?
It took me long enough to finish these deck plans but they are finally done. The next thing I have planned for this ship is to create a full technical manual for it. So the next step is for me to add annotations to each deck and write up the detailed descriptions for each room. There might be some tweaks as I start looking at it for the details but they will be small. These decks, plus the descriptions from earlier posts should be enough for anyone to use the ship in a game if they desire.
Some time soon I’ll be posting an updated map of the travels of the ship as recorded in the Detailed Frontier Timeline I’m creating. They are actually over halfway to their destination but I haven’t published a copy of that map recently.
A sathar light cruiser, detected three days ago by a pair of patrolling militia assault scouts, was engaged today by the full force of the Minotaur militia after a long, high-g boost to intercept the alien vessel. A thirty minute battle ended with the complete destruction of the sathar ship while only one of the militia assault scouts sustained some minor hull damage.
An anonymous source has confirmed that Spacefleet has assets in systems beyond Theseus that alerted the militia to the possibility of the sathar vessel arriving in system. Our thanks go out to those brave souls risking their lives to watch the sathar movements.
Victoria Sorensen, StarPlay News
Background
After the failed attempt by the frigate to chart the course into the Theseus system, the sathar dispatch a light cruiser (the remains of SBF-J2) to attempt to complete the route. Detected after three days of deceleration by two patrolling militia assault scouts, the light cruiser attempts to evade and jump out of the system before it can be attacked.
Unsure of their ability to take on the light cruiser by themselves, the two militia assault scouts report in and begin to trail the light cruiser while the rest of the militia ships begin a high-g boost in an attempt to intercept the light cruiser before it can jump out of the system. After three days of grueling pursuit, the militia ships overtake the light cruiser and engage.
Order of Battle
Minotaur Militia
4 Assault Scouts
1 Frigate
1 Destroyer
Sathar
1 light cruiser
The Battle
Setup
The militia are the attackers in this fight and will move first. The militia deploy in three groups: the destroyer and frigate together in the middle to take the light cruiser on directly while the assault scouts deploy into two pairs on the wings to make strafing attacks with their assault rockets. They start a speed 20.
Out gunned, the light cruiser plans to focus on the smaller faster ships in an attempt to disable the militia ships enough to escape. The light cruiser also starts at speed 20.
Initial setup for this battle. Click for full sized image.
Turn 1
The assault scouts accelerate to speed 25 while the destroyer accelerates to 23 and the frigate only accelerates to 22 allowing the destroyer to catch up to it. The sathar light cruiser accelerates to speed 23 and veers to starboard to go after the upper flight of assault scouts. All ships are out of range this round.
The ships start to close. Click for full size image
Turn 2
The militia ships continue to accelerate and close on the light cruiser from multiple directions with the assault scouts accelerating to a speed of 30 and the capital ships accelerating to a speed of 26. The light cruiser fires all of its beam weapons at the lead assault scout in the upper group. It only hits with the electron battery but induces a fire on the small ship.
The militia ships fire everything they have except their rocket batteries as they are out of range. The light cruiser fires two ICMs at each of the incoming torpedoes both of which are intercepted by the ICMs. The gunners on the destroyer are having a bad day with none of their weapons connecting. The frigate scores hits with both its laser cannon and battery knocking out the cruiser’s proton battery and slightly damaging its hull (6%). The four assault scouts only connect with one of their laser batteries damaging the cruiser’s hull (10%) but three of the assault rockets slam home knocking out 20% of the cruisers hull integrity, it’s electron battery, and a third of it’s engine capability.
Unable to bring its disruptor cannon to bear, the sathar light cruiser pulls a turn to port, accelerates to a speed of 25, and fires broadside at the militia ships. It fires a torpedo at the frigate, a rocket battery at one assault scout, and its laser battery at the other assault scout. Defensively, the militia ships fire their energy weapons again with the destroyer and frigate also firing rocket batteries at the cruiser.
Both militia rocket batteries connect damaging the hull (22%) and its combat controls systems. The frigate hits with its laser cannon knocking out the cruiser’s disruptor cannon while the destroyer with its two batteries, damaging the hull (10%) and knocking out the electron screen. The assault scouts connect with two of their laser batteries taking out the torpedo launcher and scratching the hull (1 HP). The cruiser misses with all of its weapons.
First shots exchanged. Click for full sized image.
Turn 3
The militia ships continue to pursue the carrier with the capital ships slowing to speed 23 and the assault scouts slowing to speed 25. They continue to stay outside of rocket battery range which limits the heavily damaged cruiser to just its laser battery. The fire on the assault scout knocks out its laser battery. The cruiser fires at the scout with the fire hitting it but only slightly damaging the hull (1 HP).
Once again the militia ships fire all their energy weapons and the scouts fire their assault rockets. Given the damaged state of the cruiser, the capital ships elect not to fire torpedoes. With no torpedoes incoming, the cruiser elects to fire an ICM at each of the assault rockets but it doesn’t make any difference as three of the AR impact the cruiser while one goes off course. The militia ships also hit with one laser cannon and two laser batteries. The assault rockets take out the cruisers stasis screen and ICM launcher while the laser cannon takes out the laser batteries take out 13% of the cruises hull (leaving it with only 4% hull integrity and damage its navigation control system.
The navigation control damage causes the cruiser to pull to starboard. Amazingly, the heavily damaged cruiser holds together through the turn but is then obliterated by the laser fire from the militia ships before it has a chance to get a shot off.
Final positions when the sathar light cruiser is destroyed. Click for full size image.
Final repairs
The scout manages to get the fire out immediately but its hull damage will require a day in the shipyard to repair.
Lessons Learned
The sathar cruiser really didn’t have a chance in this one against the full militia roster. Its only real hope was to get lucky and damage the engines on several of the ships to allow it to even the odds a bit and get away but that didn’t happen. Unfortunately, it was detected in the system while it was still decelerating to jump back out which greatly increased the chance that the militia, with their faster ships, could catch it. Had it been detected outbound, it would have either gotten away or, if the militia decided to press their luck, only had to engage to the two assault scouts.
It’s been over seven months since I last posted a miniature. And a month and a half since I posted anything at all. I didn’t get back to posting in May like I had hoped but I have started working on projects again. I just haven’t found time to write up the posts. That will probably continue through mid-July (once I finish the next issue of the Frontier Explorer) but things should start picking up after that.
Which brings us to the Moonbright Stinger model. This is a miniature from the Privateers boxed set. I had mentioned in the past that I had all the miniatures from that set that I had collected loose, but not from a single set. I also mentioned that I had misplaced three of the minis. Several people offered to send me theirs so I could use them to recreate the miniatures. I’m grateful to those that offered. However, during the intervening months when I wasn’t posting, a new, still in shrink-wrap Privateers boxed set came up on Ebay. While I’ve been burned with sealed minis having lead rot, that has only been on the Federation Ships boxed set. I’ve never had an issue with any other ones. I really think it was something in the production run of that particular set of minis.
In any case, I decided to take the chance and exercised the “Buy it now” option on Ebay and purchased the miniature set. It arrived a few days later and when I opened it up, I was happy to discover that the figures were in pristine condition.
Miniatures from my new Privateers boxed set. The Moonbright Stinger with its engine that needs to be attached is there at the bottom left.
I had already started working on the Moonbright Stinger model by then as it was one of the ones I still had, but this gave me a second miniature to compare to. The name Moonbright Stinger is the name of the miniature that is give on the Privateers box. Most Star Frontiers gamers know a much more famous ship of the same class. In fact, after the assault scout, this is probably the second most iconic ship of the game. Of course I’m referring to the Gullwind, which features in the Dramune Run module:
The Gullwind. From SFKH:1 The Dramune Run, p 6.
And while the miniature doesn’t quite have the detail of the artist’s drawings, it’s pretty close.
The 3D Model
Final model
The above is a render of the completed 3D model as seen from the “top” of the ship. The decks are perpendicular to the thrust axis as is true for all ships in Star Frontiers, but the artists like to draw this ship this way so I oriented the image that way as well.
The basic body of the ship
This model was a bit complicated but I think of all of the Privateer models, it’s going to be the easiest to recreate so that’s why I started with it. I began by roughing out the body. The engines were easy as was the fuselage up through the cargo bay (that large cylinder at the back). Forward of the cargo bay, the “underside” (not seen) is cylindrical while the “top” is a trapezoid. It took a little bit of jiggling to get that just right and in the end, I ended up making the top of the trapezoid a bit too wide but not enough to worry about.
The other thing is the nose of the ship is 1) not perfectly round, and b) off-center from the axis of the ship. Luckily my modeling software has a “hull” command that allows you to define a series of shapes at various layers and then the computer will smoothly connect them to form a surface. I used this to do both the nose (below where it became cylindrical) and the transition region from the main body to the nose. The roughed out body is shown in the image to the right. The observant reader may notice that the engines are not lined up in this roughed out version as they are in the final model. I didn’t notice that I did that until I was comparing the printed version of the miniature with the original.
After I had the basic hull done, I added in all the details on the miniature. Adding the positive features was fairly straightforward although those pods on the side of the ship just forward of the cargo bay were a bit tricky. With the easy stuff done, it was time to start adding in the negative details that were cut out of the body of the ship.
Of course life got in the way and there was a five month gap between adding the positive features and when I started added the negative details. I did this in sections, first I added details to the “top” of the ship, working from the cargo bay to the nose. I then went back and added in details on the starboard side and then port side, and finally the the rounded bottom of the ship. While I measured out all the features to get their sizes and positions, the final placement was done by eye to try to match the miniature. In the process, I discovered that I had gotten the length a bit wrong on parts of the ship’s fuselage (the final model is 1mm longer than the original miniature) and had the positions of some of the positive details slightly wrong as well. Positions and sizes (except for that 1mm length difference) were corrected as I went along. That gave us the final model as seen in the images below showing the two sides of the ship.
The “top” and starboard sides of the ship.
The port and “bottom” sides of the ship.
Printing
With the model done it was time to print it out and compare it to the original. Here’s what that first print looked like:
First print compared to the original model.
After putting these next to each other and taking this picture, I noticed a few thing immediately:
I need to get a better camera than just my cell phone for taking close-up (macro) shots. Also, the discoloration on the printed miniature is is probably due to my haste in the cleaning and curing process. I might not have let it dry enough before curing.
This is when I noticed that the engines in the model are rotated 30 degrees from where they should be. I’m not sure how I missed that. The hole in the top of the metal miniature near the back is where the third engine on that mini is supposed to attach when you glue it on.
The positive features are mostly fine, but it turns out the negative feature on the fuselage are not quite deep enough to really make them stand out like they do on the original. I thought that might be the case when I was making the mode and it turns out that I was right. I will need to tweak them all to make them deeper.
The big dome and boxy structure near the nose of the ship are a bit too big. They need to be shrunk down just a tad.
Finally, this is when I noticed that the model is 1mm longer than the original. The discrepancy is in the nose area starting in the transition region down to the smaller nose and the nose section being a bit too long. When I was building the model I noticed I had a bit more space there but wasn’t sure why. I’m not going to fix this.
Observations in hand, I went through and doubled the depth of the negative features, tweaked the size and positions of the positive features, and reprinted the model.
Top and port sideBottom
And then I noticed I rotated the engines the wrong direction so now they are 60 degrees off instead of 30. Oops. But the negative details stand out much better now and I’m happy with the way it looks. After this print I fixed the engine position and that resulted in the model image at the top of the post. I haven’t since reprinted the model but will at some point.
What’s next?
Next up is one of the smaller Privateer models, the Thruster class. It’s the small one in the upper left of the group picture up above. That one will take some work to get the wing features correct as that smoother shape is not something my CAD software does natively. I did it for the Freighter miniature, so I just need to relearn how.
Engaged sathar forces outbound from Snowball. Lucky hit by sathar torpedo detonated magazine on UPFS Singing River (frigate) during initial engagement. Mhemne forces, together with assault scouts (UPFS Dirk and Heron) destroyed sathar frigate but UPFS Dirk lost maneuvering and pursued by sathar light cruiser. Damage to engines resulted in light cruiser overtaking and destroying UPFS Dirk. UPFS Heron remains on station in system.
*** FLASH FLASH FLASH ***
Spacefleet Signal Traffic
Background
With the loss of the single frigate comprising Exploration Group 1, the sathar decide to go with a stronger reconnaissance force and dispatch SBF-J2 (a light cruiser and frigate) to explore the route to Theseus.
Detected departing Snowball by PG Liberty, Spacefleet authorizes them to attack the sathar vessels on their way out of the system. The Mhemne offer some of their ships to help. Although limited in technology compared to the UPF and sathar vessels, the Mhemne ships will be able to make at least a single pass at the sathar vessels.
Three days out from the planet, the UPF and Mhemne forces intercept the sathar vessels.
Order of Battle
The Mhemne ships only posses limited chemical drives compared to the atomic drives of the sathar and UPF vessels and required significant help to boost up to the required speed. For the purposes of this battle they all have 25 HP, 2 ADF, 2 MR, and a laser battery. In addition, they can only use a total of 8 MR and/or ADF before their fuel supply is exhausted.
UPF
2 Assault Scouts
1 Frigate
3 Mhemne vessels
Sathar
1 Frigate
1 Light Cruiser
The Battle
Setup
The UPF are the attackers in this scenario. The sathar ships are flying in formation moving at speed 15 entering from the right of the battle area.
The three UPF ships are in a formation with the three Mhemne ships flying together nearby. They are also moving at speed 15. The plan is for the Mhemne to make a single pass at the sathar vessels firing at the frigate and then continue on while the UPF continue to engage and hopefully destroy the sathar.
Initial positions. Click for full size image.
Turn 1
The UPF and Mhemne forces drift forward maintaining their speed of 15. Perceiving the UPF forces to be the bigger threat, the sathar maneuver to take the UPF ships on head-on while also maintaining their speed of 15. No shots fires as the combatants are all out of range.
Initial maneuvering. Click for full size image.
Turn 2
Seeing that the sathar are tracking them, and hoping to draw them into the firing range of the Mhemne, the UPF forces pull up parallel the Mhemne course and accelerate to speed 19. They turn to face the oncoming sathar vessels in the hope that that will cause the sathar ships to fly up near the Mhemne vessels.
The UPF plan works (maybe too well) and the sathar accelerate to speed 16 and maneuver so that they don’t come into the forward firing arc of the frigate’s laser cannon and move into rocket battery range. However, that brings them within 20,000 km of the Mhemne ships.
Defensively, the UPF and Mhemne all focus their fire on the sathar frigate. Two of the Mhemne ships hit lightly damaging the frigates hull (5%) and knocking out its laser cannon. The UPF forces all miss.
Offensively, the sathar ships fire their energy weapons at the assault scouts and rocket weapons at the frigate. They miss the lead assault scout but the light cruiser its the second assault scout with its disruptor cannon damaging its navigation control system. They do much better against the frigate hitting it with a rocket battery and a torpedo that slips through the ICM screen destroying the UPF vessel.
Positions after initial engagement. Click for full size image.
Turn 3
With the UPF frigate destroyed right off the bat, the UPF forces are now seriously out gunned. The assault scout, its navigation controls system damaged, turns to port and accelerates to maximum to try to get away. It doesn’t have a perfect shot but fires its assault rocket at the sathar frigate. The other assault scout loops around and fires on the frigate from behind before heading off away from the sathar vessels at maximum acceleration. The Mhemne ships continue to drift away reserving their limited maneuvering in case they need it later.
Ignoring the Mhemne ships, the sathar vessels fire all their energy weapons at the two assault scouts. The lead assault scout is hit by a laser and electron battery as well as the light cruiser’s disruptor cannon seriously damaging its hull (60%) and crippling its damage control systems. The second assault scout is hit by a proton battery damaging its hull (47%).
The Mhemne ships fire at the frigate as they pass hitting with 2 laser batteries damaging the sathar vessels hull (33%). The assault scouts both fire everything at the frigate as well hitting with 1 laser battery and 2 assault rockets knocking out the frigates maneuvering (with the laser battery) before destroying it with the assault rockets.
The sathar light cruiser accelerates to chase after the assault scout directly ahead, ignoring the other ships. The assault scout fires its laser battery in defense but misses. The light cruiser fires its energy weapons at the assault scout hitting with its electron and proton batteries damaging the assault scout’s engines and knocking out its maneuvering capability.
Repair Turn 1
Neither of the assault scouts are able to effect any repairs. No other ships are currently damaged.
Positions after the first half hour. Click for full size image.
Turn 4
The UPF assault scout and Mhemne ships continue to drift away from the sathar ship. The assault scout being chased, lacking any maneuvering maxes out its acceleration as it tries to escape the pursing light cruiser.
The light cruiser hits the assault scout with its proton battery knocking out half of the assault scout’s acceleration capability. The assault scout misses the light cruiser. The light cruiser continues to accelerate as it chases the assault scout and maneuvers to come directly astern of the smaller ship. It drops a bit behind this turn but with the assault scout’s engines mostly disabled, it will close on it soon enough. It gets some extreme range shots with its energy weapons but misses.
It’s a tail chase now. The other ships are far enough away that they get away safely and we are just tracking the sathar vessel and its target. Click for full image.
Turn 5
Using what acceleration it has, the assault scout continues to speed up as it tries to get away. The LC hits it with its disruptor cannon igniting a fire. It returns fire with its laser battery but misses. The assault scout’s initial speed advantage temporarily takes it out of range of the light cruiser’s weapons.
To avoid having to draw long trails, and since relative velocity is all that really matters, I’ve adjusted the displayed speeds down. Click for full-size image.
Turn 6
The gap between the ships widen but the light cruiser’s greater acceleration will start closing it once again soon.
Repair Turn 2
Again the assault scouts fail to repair any systems.
Positions of the two ships still engaged after an hour. Click for full size image.
Turn 7
The light cruiser matches the assault scouts’ speed and will begin to overtake it on the next turn. (I forgot to save an image but it was just more of the same.)
Turn 8
The light cruiser starts to close the gap and is just out of range of its electron and proton battery weapons.
The gap between the ships start to close. Click for full size image.
Turn 9
The light cruiser closes to within 90,000 km. The assault scout fires on the cruiser with its laser battery but misses. The light cruiser fires with its energy weapons and hits with its proton battery destroying the small UPF ship.
And the fight is over after an hour and a half. Click for full size image.
Final Repairs
It takes another 8 hours but the damaged UPF assault scout manages to repair its damage control system (7 hours) and its hull (another hour).
Lessons Learned
That didn’t go at all like the UPF planned. They did manage to destroy the sathar frigate but expected their frigate to survive a bit longer. Poor shooting by the UPF and great shooting by the sathar on the first round definitely tipped things in favor of the sathar.
The Mhemne acquitted themselves well hitting with 4 of their 6 shots. Had the frigate survived the first round they might have tried to loop back around for a second pass but the quick destruction of the frigate put survival ahead of damaging the sathar.
The second assault scout almost got away but the long range hit by the light cruiser’s distruptor cannon that knocked out its engines, combined with its failed repair rolls, spelled eventual doom for that ship as it was seriously outgunned by the light cruiser.
The sathar finally won a battle but unfortunately for them it was just a minor one on the periphery of the battle.
After nearly two and half hours of fighting, Task Force Cassidine defeated the invading sathar forces destroying all but a heavy cruiser and fighter which are currently departing the system. The ships of the task force are almost all heavily damaged but only a single fighter was lost in the battle, the pilot of which ejected safely and has been recovered.
Rak’tal-ka, StarPlay News
Okay, I thought the Second Battle of Kwadl-Kit was a long one, this one went even longer. Sorry about the delay in getting it out but it took a while to play out. Task Force Cassidine just seems to like these long, spread-out battles. The map is going to really shift around this time as this fight involves a long chase and at one point it’s happening on two different maps as the battle spreads out. I hope you enjoy the narration. I also think this might now be the longest blog post yet.
Background
Fresh from the battle with the other sathar force in the K’tsa-Kar system, Task Force Cassidine is ready to face this new sathar threat. While the presence of the militia assault scout that recently disappeared trying to probe the source of the sathar fleets would have been helpful, it would not have made a lot of difference in the fight.
After the recently losses in the K’tsa-Kar and Truane’s Star systems, SBF-J1, crewed by veterans of the campaign against the saurians, look to turn the tide and chalk up a victory for the sathar forces. The fleets are fairly evenly matched with the UPF forces leaning more toward the larger ships with the loss of their assault scouts and half of their fighters in the previous engagement.
Order of Battle
This is probably the most evenly matched battle, in terms of hull points and capabilities, of any fight yet in the war. Looking at hull points, the UPF are coming into this with a total of 435 HP of ship compared to the sathar’s 441. Three of the UPF ships are slightly damaged: one fighter only has 5 of 8 HP, a frigate is at 29 of 40, and the battleship has a damaged stasis screen. Those were all battle damage that couldn’t be repaired in space after their recent battle in the K’sta-Kar system. It will be interesting to see how this one plays out.
Spacefleet (Task Force Cassidine)
3 Fighters
2 Frigates
1 Light Cruiser
1 Assault Carrier
1 Heavy Cruiser
1 Battleship
Sathar
7 Fighters
1 Frigate
1 Destroyer
2 Light Cruisers
1 Assault Carrier
1 Heavy Cruiser
The Battle
Setup
The UPF elect to battle near the planet although with no station left to defend, they start far back from the planet at a moderate speed of 15 for all ships, including the fighters. The two frigates form a battle group and the light cruiser and the battleship team up. Those two groups form the center of the battle line. The heavy cruiser escorts the assault carrier toward the bottom of the battle area while the three fighters form a flight near the top. They deploy four of the six seeker missiles available on the side of the planet the sathar will be approaching from. The heavy cruiser and battleship each retain one seeker missile in their magazines for deployment during the fight.
Like the UPF, the sathar come in at only a moderate speed to try to gauge the other side’s tactics and responses before committing. They too are only moving at speed 15 but are split up to go wide around the planet. The sathar heavy cruiser and assault carrier, escorted by a destroyer come in opposite their UPF counterparts with a flight of three fighters just off their wing. The light cruisers, escorted by a frigate, come in opposite the UPF fighters, with a flight of four fighters off their wing.
Initial positions of the ships. The seeker missiles are not shown. Click for full sized image.
Turn 1
The sathar capital ships maintain their speed and advance on the UPF forces. The fighters accelerate to speed 20 and fly farther out on the wings of the formation.
The UPF ships converge toward the lower group of sathar capital ships. The heavy cruiser and assault carrier continue to advance at speed 15. The light cruiser and battleship accelerate to speed 17, the frigates to speed 19, the fighters to speed 20.
No shots are fired this round as the two forces remain out of range.
Positions after the first turn of maneuvering. Also the seeker missiles are shown on this one for reference. Unfortunately, the file was partially corrupted and the bottom of the map was cut off but the three sathar fighters just mirrored the maneuver of the fighters at the top of the map. Click for full size image.
Turn 2
The sathar all begin accelerating toward the UPF. The group centered around the heavy cruiser accelerates to speed 17 and flies straight at their UPF counterpart while their wing of fighters accelerates to 25 and makes a pass at the same group. All the sathar ships fire at the UPF assault carrier. The upper battle group accelerates to speed 18 and turns down toward the UPF forces while the upper flight of fighters accelerates to speed 25 and sets up for an attack run next turn as they are too far away to engage this round.
Defensive, the UPF ships all focus on the flight of three lower fighters with the UPF heavy cruiser taking a long-range shot with its disruptor cannon at the sathar destroyer. They don’t do too well and of the 17 shots fired at the three fighters, only one connects with each ship, knocking the hull integrity down by half on one, inducing a navigation control hit on a second, and knocking out the maneuvering on the third. The disruptor cannon shot at the destroyer also misses.
Offensively, the sathar fare a bit better. Two of the assault rockets hit the assault carrier knocking out half its engine capability and reducing its hull integrity by 17%. The sathar destroyer hits with its laser cannon further reducing the hull integrity of the UPF assault carrier by another 19%. The heavy cruiser’s distruptor cannon knocks out the assault carrier’s masking screen launcher.
The larger UPF capital ships maintain their speeds and converge on the sathar battle group. The heavy cruiser and assault carrier fly right over the group turning up toward the planet at the end of their move. The battleship and light cruiser maneuver down to take point blank shots at the sathar as well. The frigates accelerate to speed 20 and come just in range of their rocket batteries while the fighters accelerate to speed 25 and make an assault rocket pass from below.
Defensively, the sathar ships continue to fire at the assault carrier with their energy weapons while they fire their three rocket batteries at the lead frigate. The frigate is hit by two of the rocket batteries reducing its hull integrity by 28% and knocking out a third of its maneuvering capability.
The assault carrier is hammered by the sathar’s weapons being hit by 2 electron, 2 laser, and one proton battery as wall as a laser and disruptor cannon. All told the damage knocks out all of the UPF assault carrier’s weapons, starts a fire, damages its combat control system, induces a navigation control failure, and reduces its hull integrity by another 13%.
Offensively the UPF focus on the sathar assault carrier and heavy cruiser with the frigates and fighters firing at the assault carrier and the other ships firing on the heavy cruiser.
Only one of the fighters hit the assault carrier but it scores a critical hull hit dropping the carrier’s hull integrity by 40%. The frigates combine to hit with a laser battery, laser cannon and rocket battery knocking out the carriers engines and further reducing its hull integrity by 7%.
The sathar heavy cruiser fares even worse being hit by a barrage of weapons from the UPF battleship, light cruiser and heavy cruiser. All told it is hit by all 3 distruptor cannons, 2 rocket batteries, 3 laser batteries, two proton batteries, and an electron battery. The damage knocks out the sathar heavy cruiser’s engines and maneuvering, ICM launcher, laser battery, proton screen and stasis screen, cuts it damage control ability in half, and starts a fire. Surprisingly, the weapons did little hull damage only reducing the ship’s hull integrity by 25%.
Positions and course after the first shots were fired. Click for full size image.
Turn 3
The sathar fighter and heavy cruiser, both with no MR, fly straight ahead (to the left). The fighter slows down to speed 20 while the heavy cruiser, with no ADF either, just stays at speed 17. The fighter with the navigation control hit slows to speed 20 and spins to port flying up toward the planet while the remaining fighter from the lower group accelerates to speed 20 and goes after the pair of UPF frigates. The other fighters also speed up to 30 hexes/turn and go after the frigates as well, both fighter groups looping around the planet.
The sathar assault carrier, with its navigation control hit, pull to starboard and with no ADF, flies up away from the main battle. The sathar destroyer loops around to go after the UPF frigates as well and the light cruisers and frigate decelerate back to 15 and light up for a shot at the UPF battleship. The fire on the UPF assault carrier damages its hull (5%).
Defensively, the UPF frigates fire their laser batteries at the fighters and rocket batteries at the destroyer while the other UPF ships concentrate all their fire on the lead sathar light cruiser.
The UPF frigates miss the fighters completely but hit the destroyer with two rocket batteries seriously damaging it and deducing its hull integrity by 72%. The other ships hit the sathar light cruiser with 2 laser, 2 rocket, 1 electron, and 1 proton battery knocking out its ICM launcher, engines, and stasis screen, starting a fire and reducing its hull integrity by 16%.
Offensively, the sathar fighters hit the lead UPF frigate with and assault rocket reducing its hull integrity by 43% and the second one with an assault rocket as well reducing its already damaged hull (from the previous battle) by 38%. The destroyer also hits the second UPF frigate with its electron battery and laser cannon knocking out the frigates engines.
The sathar frigate and light cruisers hammer the UPF battleship hitting it with 2 disruptor cannons, 2 proton batteries, 1 electron battery, and 2 torpedoes that slip through the battleship’s ICM screen. The weapons short circuit the battleship’s defensive system, reduce its maneuvering ability by half, knock out its proton battery and reduce its hull integrity by 66%.
The two UPF frigates, now heavily damaged, drift on their current course firing at the destroyer as they leave. The assault carrier also drifts but its navigation control hit causes it to pull to port. Despite its weakened hull, it holds together. The battleship also drifts away from the fight firing all its weapons at the damaged light cruiser.
The UPF heavy cruiser turns parallel to the course of the assault carrier but lines up for a direct shot with its disruptor cannon at the sathar destroyer. It fires its rocket battery and torpedo at the undamaged light cruiser and uses its energy batteries to fire on the sathar fighters. The light cruiser follows a similar path and firing at the same targets. The fighters loop up around the planet and come up behind the sathar frigate firing their assault rockets at it.
The fire on the sathar light cruiser and sathar heavy cruiser damages both ships’ hulls reducing their integrity by 13% and 11% respectively.
Defensively, the sathar ships continue to fire at the battleship, hoping to destroy it before it can fly out of range. The sathar assault carrier makes a long range attack at its UPF counterpart with its proton battery but misses. The sathar destroyer fires at the lead UPF frigate hitting with its electron and rocket batteries knocking out the frigate’s masking screen launcher and damaging its combat control system.
The battleship manages to get off lightly and is only hit by 2 distruptor cannons and a laser battery cutting its damage control capability in half and reducing its hull integrity by another 14%.
Offensively, the UPF battleships hits the lead sathar destroyer with its laser and 2 electron batteries and slips a torpedo through the cruiser’s ICM screen destroying it and scoring the first kill of the battle. The UPF heavy cruiser manages to get its torpedo through the other light cruiser’s ICM screen cutting the sathar ship’s maneuvering in half but otherwise missing.
The UPF fighters hit the sathar frigate with all three assault rockets destroying it completely. The sathar destroyer is hit by disruptor canons from the UPF light and heavy cruiser, as well as a laser battery and two rocket batteries from the frigates. The frigates also manage to get a torpedo through the destroyer’s ICM screen. The combined damage from the UPF weapons obliterates the sathar ship. The sathar fighters get away with only minor damage: one loses 60% of its engine capability, one has its damage control capabilities cut in half, and the third loses 38% of its hull integrity.
Repair Turn
As the ships work on repairs, the lead UPF frigate finds that it’s hull is too damaged to repair in space and must find a way to a shipyard with only 30% of its hull intact. The other frigate manages to repair a bit of its hull restoring 10% of its integrity. The UPF assault carrier puts out the on-board fire while the battleship repairs 3% of its hull.
The two sathar fighters with hull damage find that they need a shipyard to repair their hull as well with their hull integrity sitting at 62% and 50% respectively. The sathar assault carrier restores 11% of its hull integrity while the heavy cruiser gets its fire under control.
Courses and positions after a half hour of combat and repairs. Things are starting to scatter as ships are damaged and lose maneuvering capability and control or are too damaged to risk maneuvering. Ships moving off the map will have a yellow number by them showing how many hexes off the map they are. Click for full size image.
Turn 4
The flight of four sathar fighters all go after the UPF assault carrier hoping to finish it off. They loop around to make a direct assault and then fly off to chase after the UPF frigates. The lone fighter, after firing its last assault rocket at the heavy cruiser loops around and starts heading for its carrier to dock and rearm. The fighter with the navigation control damage loops to port and fires one of its assault rockets at a UPF fighter as it passes by. The remaining fighter, with no maneuvering, along with the sathar heavy cruiser in the same condition, continue to drift away from the fight. The sathar assault carrier, with its navigation control damage, pulls to starboard and passes distantly in front of the UPF cruisers and assault carrier. The remaining sathar light cruiser turns to go after the battleship hoping to finish it off.
Defensively, the UPF cruisers fire at the sathar fighters hoping to take them out before they can fire their assault rockets. The battleship fires at the light cruiser pursuing it and the frigates get a couple of distant shots at the sathar fighters.
The sathar light cruiser is hit by one of the battleship’s laser batteries and both electron batteries which score a critical hull hit (integrity reduced by 26%), knock out its ICM launcher, and damage its navigation control systems. Four of the five sathar fighters are hit by the UPF ships knocking the hull integrity down to half on one, destroying a second and damaging the assault rocket launcher on the other two (including the lone fighter going after the heavy cruiser).
Offensively, the two fighters with working assault rocket launchers firing at the assault carrier both miss while the sathar fighter with the navigation hit firing at the UPF fighter hits with its assault rocket destroying the UPF fighter, the first (and as it will turn out, only) UPF ship destroyed in the fight. The battleship is hit by the sathar light cruiser’s electron battery, proton battery, and distruptor cannon knocking out its proton screen, damaging its combat control system, and reducing its hull integrity by another 12% (only 11% remaining).
The two UPF frigates continue to drift and fire long distance shots at the fighters. The battleship drifts away from the light cruiser firing at it as it goes. The two UPF fighters loop around and take a run at the sathar light cruiser firing their last assault rockets. The UPF assault carrier pulls to starboard and runs parallel to its sathar counterpart while the UPF light and heavy cruisers maneuver directly onto the sathar assault carrier’s tail and take point blank shots with all their weapons.
Defensively, the sathar light cruiser fires at the battleship and the sathar assault carrier fires at the UPF light cruiser. The UPF light cruiser is hit by a rocket battery reducing its hull integrity by 17% while the battleship is hit by an electron battery knocking out its ICM launcher.
Offensively, the sathar light cruiser is hit by one of the battleship’s laser batteries knocking out its proton battery and by both assault rockets from the fighters which damage its combat control system and knock its hull integrity down by 20%. The lead UPF frigate manages to score a long range laser battery shot on the lead sathar fighter knocking out its assault rocket launcher. The UPF cruisers hit the sathar assault carrier with a distruptor cannon and a laser, electron, and rocket battery knocking out the carriers maneuvering, laser battery, and masking screen launcher and damaging its combat control system.
Maneuvering and positions after forty minutes of battle. The UPF are stating to score kills and the ships are really starting to scatter. Click for full size image.
Turn 5
The group of three sathar fighters sets off after the two UPF frigates, the lone fighter, with its assault rocket launcher disabled, and realizing that the assault carrier is probably not going to survive the battle, attempts to ram the UPF light cruiser. The sathar light cruiser pulls to port and slows down, firing at the two UPF fighters. The other ships just continue to drift away with the assault carrier firing at the UPF light cruiser as it drifts.
Defensively, the UPF frigates fire at the remaining fighter with a working assault rocket launcher but miss. The UPF light cruiser fires at the oncoming fighter and destroys it before it can ram the larger ship. The UPF heavy cruiser hits the sathar assault carrier with its laser and rocket battery and reduces its hull integrity by another 36%.
Offensive, the sathar fighter misses the UPF frigate with its assault rocket while the sathar light cruiser hits one of the UPF fighters damaging its combat control system. The sathar assault carrier hits the UPF light cruiser with its proton and rocket battery short circuiting the cruiser’s defensive systems and reducing its hull integrity by 20%.
The UPF assault carrier’s loss of navigation control pulls it to starboard and the fighters, out of assault rockets, start heading back to the carrier to rearm. The heavy and light cruiser stay on the tail of the sathar assault carrier while the frigates and battleship continue to drift.
Defensively, the sathar assault carrier continues to fire on the UPF light cruiser hitting with its rocket battery for another 16% hull reduction on the cruiser. All other ships are out of range.
Offensively the UPF frigates fire at the pursuing fighters but miss. The UPF cruiser open fire on the sathar assault carrier and hit with 3 laser batteries, 2 proton batteries, an electron battery, a disruptor cannon, and two torpedoes completely destroying the sathar carrier.
This is the ships off the top of the main map (UPF cruisers and frigates, sathar assault carrier and fighters). The bottom row of hexes on this map exactly correspond to the top row of hexes on the main map (below). Click for full size image.Main battle map after turn 5. Things continue to spread out. Click for full size image.
Turn 6
With their carrier destroyed and being either out of weapons or their weapon system disabled, the three sathar fighters attempt to ram the UPF frigates. The sathar light cruiser pulls to starboard and accelerates back to speed 16, the lone fighter near the planet pulls to port with its navigation damage and the other two ships continue to drift away.
Defensively, the frigates fire everything they can at the incoming fighters hitting two with their laser batteries, the lead fighter for 75% of its hull and the second for a navigation hit but not enough to destroy them before they ram. Two fighters slam into the lead frigate and despite its damaged hull fail to destroy it only taking out 20% of the remaining 30% hull integrity. The third fighter hits the second frigate for a measly 5% of its hull integrity.
The UPF frigates and battleship continue to drift, the assault carrier pulls to port and the fighters continue to close on the carrier to rearm. The heavy and light cruiser start accelerating and turn to head after the sathar light cruiser. No shots are fired as everyone is out of range.
Repair Turn 2
The lead UPF frigate repairs the damage caused by the two ramming sathar fighters but can repair its hull no further. The other frigate repairs 12% of its hull integrity while the light cruiser repairs 3% of its. The assault carrier gets its navigation control system fixed as well as repairing 8% of its hull. The battleship repairs 5% of its hull and brings is damage control system fully back on-line.
The sathar light cruiser repairs its navigation control system while the heavy cruiser discovers that a shipyard will be required to bring its damage control system back fully on-line.
The upper map after an hour of fighting. The second blue line by the assault carrier should have fighters at the end of it but I forgot to move the tokens. Click for full size image.The main battle map after an hour. The poor sathar fighter can’t get is navigation system under control and is stuck near the planet. Click for full size image.
Turn 7
With its navigation control system repaired, the sathar light cruiser sets off at max acceleration to attempt to intercept the UPF battleship and finish it off. The damaged fighter comes to a stop near the planet as the pilot continues to work on its navigation control issues.
The UPF cruisers continue in pursuit of the sathar light cruiser while the assault carrier, its hull and navigation control fixed, starts to turn around and head back toward the planet. The two surviving fighters pull alongside the carrier and start docking procedures.
We’ve now shifted the map to track the sathar light cruiser pursing the battleship and the UPF cruisers pursing it. The other ships are effectively out of the battle. The planet is some 200,000 km off the left side of this map. Click for full size image.
Turn 8
The chase continues. The sathar light cruiser continues to close on the battleship but the UPF light cruiser, which had a slight speed advantage on the sathar light cruiser, continues to close on it as well as it starts to outdistance the older heavy cruiser that has a lower acceleration. The two UPF fighters dock with the assault carrier.
The gaps between the ships are narrowing. Click for full size image.
Turn 9
Since relative speed are all that matter, I’ve adjusted the speeds shown on the maps down so that the battleship is stopped and the other three ships have been scaled accordingly.
The chase continues as the light cruisers close on their targets. The UPF heavy cruiser is as close as it is going to get to the sathar ship unless the sathar vessel’s engines are damaged as the greater acceleration of the sathar light cruiser has allowed it to match speeds with the heavy cruiser. The UPF fighters are rearmed.
Repair Turn 3
The lead UPF frigate repairs some of its maneuvering while the other frigate repairs 10% of its hull. The UPF light cruiser also repairs 10% of its hull while the assault carrier brings its laser and proton battery back on-line. The battleship, expecting to have to defend against torpedoes from the the sathar light cruiser, gets its ICM launcher working again and repairs another 5% of its hull.
The lone sathar fighter repairs some of its maneuvering capability and starts to maneuver to meet up with the heavy cruiser. The sathar light cruiser repairs 13% of its hull while the heavy cruiser restores half of its engine capability and begins accelerating to out of the system.
The ships have almost come in range of the battleship. Speeds have been adjusted so that they are relative to the battleship being at rest. Click for full size image.
Turn 10
The sathar light cruiser continues to close on the battleship and the UPF light cruiser continues to close on the sathar light cruiser. The two UPF fighters, rearmed, launch from the assault carrier and go after the lone sathar fighter near the planet.
The heavy cruiser is now starting to fall behind. Click for full size image.
Turn 11
The UPF light cruiser continues to close the gap but it is looking like the sathar ship will get to the battleship before the UPF light cruiser can intercept it. The battleship, at relative rest to the other ships, rotates to face the direction it expects the sathar vessel to come from in order to bring its disruptor cannon to bear.
It’s taken nearly an hour, but the sathar light cruiser is nearly in range of the battleship with the UPF light cruiser in hot pursuit and gaining. Click for full size image.
Turn 12
Realizing it cannot quite get into torpedo range this round, the sathar light cruiser remains at its current speed staying at extreme range for the battleship’s defenses although this will also allow the UPF light cruiser a chance to close as well.
Defensively the battleships fires all of its energy weapons at the sathar vessel but they all go wide although one of the electron batteries would have hit except for the battleship’s damaged combat control system. The sathar light cruiser returns fire but also misses.
The UPF light cruiser and heavy cruiser close in on the sathar vessel but the heavy cruiser is still well out of range. The sathar ship fires once again at the battleship this time hitting with its distruptor cannon shorting out the battleships defenses and ICMs. The battleship and light cruiser return fire. The battleship connects with a LB damaging the sathar light cruiser’s hull (11%). The UPF light cruiser is still too far away and its shots go wide.
The UPF fighters hit the sathar fighter with one of their assault rockets knocking out it’s assault rocket launcher.
Repair Turn 4
The lead UPF frigate repairs its combat control system and is now as functional as it can be without getting to a shipyard to repair its heavily damaged hull. The other frigate restores more of its engine capability. The UPF light cruiser repairs 13% of its hull while the assault carrier also gets a minor hull repair restoring 1%. The battleship focuses all of its repairs on its hull, hoping to survive the oncoming attack and restores 13% of its hull integrity.
The sathar fighter under attack by the UPF fighters finally fixes its navigation control system while the other fighter restores some of its maneuverability. The UPF light cruiser fixes its combat control system and brings its proton battery back on-line in preparation for attacking the UPF Battleship.
Shots are fired as the ships once more come in range. Click for full size image.
Turn 13
The sathar light cruiser makes a pass on the battleship firing everything it can at the larger vessel and using its maximum acceleration. The lone sathar fighter, its navigation control issues solved, begins accelerating away from the planet, hoping to surviving the next two rounds of assault rocket fire from the two UPF fighters.
Defensively, the battleship and light cruiser try to take out the sathar light cruiser before it can inflict any more damage on the battleship. The UPF light cruiser, at nearly maximum range misses, while the battleship connects with 2 laser batteries, a proton battery, and its disruptor cannon slightly damaging the cruiser’s hull (8%), knocking out its laser battery and engines, and inducing a malfunction in its navigation control system.
The sathar light cruiser returns fire with all of its function weapons but in the excitement of the moment, the gunner all miss and the battleship escapes unscathed.
The UPF light cruiser closes to torpedo range on the sathar vessel and opens fire with everything it can. The heavy cruiser continues to close and the battleship fires a long range salvo at the now retreating sathar light cruiser. The fighters again fire at the lone sathar fighter, this time hitting it with one of their assault rockets and destroying it.
Defensively the sathar light cruiser now focuses on its pursuer and fires at the UPF light cruiser hitting with both its electron and proton battery inducing a fire and damaging the light cruiser’s damage control system.
Returning fire at the sathar light cruiser, the battleship misses and the UPF light cruiser hits with its laser, electron, and proton batteries damaging the ship’s hull (14%), knocking out its rocket battery, and damaging its combat control system.
The sathar light cruiser gets its shot and fails. It probably should have stayed closer to the battleship to get one more try. Click for full size image.
Turn 14
The sathar light cruiser pulls to port and holds together. The fire on the UPF light cruiser knocks out its laser battery.
Defensively, the battleship and light cruiser fire on the sathar ship. The battleship hits with an electron and proton battery starting a fire and knocking out its stasis screen. The light cruiser hits with its proton battery and disruptor cannon knocking out the sathar ship’s disruptor cannon and electron screen.
The sathar light cruiser fires at the UPF light cruiser but misses.
The UPF light cruiser continues to tail the sathar vessel closing to rocket battery range while the heavy cruiser starts catching up with the other ships. The fire on the sathar light cruiser damages its hull (6%)
The sathar light cruiser fires on the approaching UPF light cruiser hitting with its electron and proton battery damaging its hull (4%) and knockign out a third of its engine capability.
The UPF light cruiser hits the sathar ship with its electron and rocket batteries destroying it and ending the battle.
Final moves of the fight. Click for full size image.
Turn 15
The fire on UPF light cruiser damages its navigation control system.
Repair Turn 5
The UPF light cruiser gets its fire under control, the assault carrier repairs its rocket battery but discovers that any more repair of its engines will require a shipyard, and the battleship repairs another 11% of its hull.
The sathar heavy cruiser fully repairs its engines.
Final repairs
Battle repairs of the UPF ships continue over the next four and a half hours as the ships return to orbit around Ken’zah-Kit. In the end, the second UPF frigate can only get its hull up to 65% integrity, and the battleship can only get its hull up to 58%.
The lone sathar fighter meets up with the heavy cruiser and is attached to the hull of the larger vessel where it will remain until they get back to a shipyard. It’s maneuvering is fully repaired as the ships accelerate out of the ship. The heavy cruiser gets all of its systems repaired over the next four hours expect its hull which it is only able to restore to 81% outside a shipyard.
Lessons Learned
The sathar just can’t seem to catch a break and finish off the UPF ships. I though the light cruiser was going to finish off the battleship but rolled over 80 for every single attack so it missed completely. The battleship only had about 26 HP at that point. (On a whim I rerolled all the attacks and the second time it hit with a PB and RB, the latter did double damage and destroyed the battleship. But alas, that wasn’t the actual roll.) The same with the ramming of the frigates. I thought for sure the UPF frigate hit by two fighters was going to be destroyed, it only had 12 HP left but then I just rolled 8 on 2d10 for the hull damaged sustained. And it wouldn’t have done any good for the third one to hit it as I only rolled a measly 2 HP damage for that ship as well. There were several other times where I expected the sathar to get better hits but the dice were just against them. The UPF had bad spells as well but it didn’t seem to be at those critical, ship-finishing moments.
I considered having the light cruiser ram the battleship but the odds were in the favor of the battleship avoiding the ramming attempt and if it failed, the sathar ship would have been at point blank range for both the battleship and the oncoming UPF light cruiser so it didn’t try. Although it probably should have stayed a bit closer to the battleship as it ended its movement. But I really didn’t expect it to completely miss. This does have me thinking a bit about the ramming rules, however, so there may be a blog post about that when I have time to think on it some more.
The UPF are pretty beat up with the two cruisers and a fighter as the only ships not needing to go to a shipyard for repairs, but they only lost a single fighter. The sathar on the other hand lost everything expect a fighter and a heavy cruiser. Task Force Cassidine has now destroyed two major sathar fleets while only losing 3 assault scouts and 4 fighters.
There is one more battle coming up (in the Liberty system) and then things are going to quite down a bit as the sathar just don’t have very many ships surviving at the moment. They are done to just 9 fighters, 1 cutter, 2 frigates, 1 destroyer 2 light cruisers, 2 heavy cruisers, and two assault carriers but they are spread out all over the Frontier and the starship construction centers (and two are in the battle coming up in the Liberty system and may not survive). Its going to take some time to get them all together and build a few more ships.
In a short, high-speed battle around New Pale today, the invading sathar forces were destroyed or driven off by the militia and the augmented Strike Force Nova.
The victory was not with out cost, however, as both UPF battleships were destroyed in the fighting, along with one of the UPF fighters. While the sathar losses were much higher, we mourn the loss of the crews of those ships
Goolar Nadd, New Pale News
Background
With the arrival of Task Force Relief (battleship, assault carrier, and 10 fighters) and its merger with Strike Force Nova, the UPF and Truane’s Star militia outgun the invading sathar fleet nearly two to one. Despite these odds, the sathar continue on to engage the UPF forces although they aim for New Pale instead of Pale to avoid the UPF Fortress at that world.
Order of Battle
Pale Militia
Armed Station
1 Assault Scout
1 Frigate
Strike Force Nova
17 Fighters
3 Assault Scouts
3 Frigates
1 Destroyer
3 Light Cruisers
2 Assault Carriers
2 Battleships
Sathar
8 Fighters
1 Cutter
2 Frigates
2 Destroyers
1 Light Cruiser
1 Assault Carrier
2 Heavy Cruisers
The Battle
Setup
Expecting the sathar to make a run at the station as they have in other systems (and in the battle here over a month ago), the UPF position the battleships on either side of the planet, one supported by a destroyer and the other a light cruiser. Out from the battleships is a pair of frigates on each side with a pair of assault scouts out and slightly back from the frigates. There are two wings of fighters beyond and a bit back from each pair of assault scouts. The assault carriers, each escorted by a light cruiser, are far back from the planet. The capital ships and assault scouts are all moving at speed 15, the assault scouts are at speed 20, and the fighters are at speed 30. The eight seeker missiles from the two battleships are arrayed in an arc around the planet.
The sathar, recognizing that they are not going to win this fight, are planning a high speed pass hoping to take out the UPF battleships and assault carriers and then escaping the system. They line up in two groups directly opposite the battleships. The upper group is comprised of a heavy and light cruiser, a destroyer, and a frigate while the lower group is composed of a heavy cruiser, the assault carrier and cutter, and a destroyer and frigate. The fighters are divided into two flights of four, one on each wing. All of the sathar vessels come in much faster than the UPF expected and are moving at speed 35.
Positions of ships and seeker missiles at the beginning of the battle. The two main groups of sathar ships are represented by a single marker with the actual ships displayed at the top and bottom of the map. Click for full size image.
Turn 1
The sathar capital ships accelerate to speed 37 and fly straight at and past the UPF battleships. The fighters accelerate to speed 40 turning in to fire at the battleships as well.
Defensively the assault scouts and frigates fire their laser batteries at the fighters and the frigates fire their rocket batteries at their sathar counterparts in each group. The battleship and destroyer in the upper group, along with the station, fire at the sathar destroyer, while the battleship and light cruiser in the lower group fire at the assault carrier.
The defensive fire at the sathar fighters is fairly ineffective, slightly damaging the engines on three fighters and knocking the hull integrity down to 38% on two others. However, none are destroyed and all are able to fire their assault rockets at the battleships.
The sathar frigate in the upper group is hit by a rocket battery knocking out 30% of its hull while the sathar frigate in the lower group is hit by two rocket batteries knocking out its laser battery and slightly damaging its maneuvering.
The destroyer in the upper group is pummeled by the UPF destroyer and battleship being hit with 2 laser batteries, 3 electron batteries, a proton battery, a rocket battery and the cannons from both ships. In the end, it has it defenses knocked off-line, its electron battery and engines knocked out, a hit to its combat controls system, its hull integrity reduced by 68%, and a fire breaks out on-board.
The assault carrier in the lower group doesn’t fare much better. It is hit by 2 laser batteries, an electron battery, 2 proton batteries, a disruptor cannon and a rocket battery. It loses its laser battery and 65% of its hull integrity.
The sathar unload all of their weapons at the battleship they fly over with the battleships firing 3 ICMs at each incoming torpedo.
The Admiral Clinton (upper battleship) is hammered. All 4 assault rockets from the fighters hit knocking out its engines and maneuvering capability and reducing its hull integrity by 22%. The sathar frigate hits it with its laser cannon knocking out the battleship’s disruptor cannon. The sathar destroyer hits with its laser cannon, rocket battery, and a torpedo that slipped through the ICM screen knocking out the battleship’s torpedo and ICM launchers and knocking the hull integrity down another 16%. The sathar light cruiser lands a series of hull hits with its disruptor cannon and electron and rocket batteries reducing the battleships hull by another 28%. Finally, the sathar heavy cruiser hits with its laser, electron, and proton batteries as well as its disruptor cannon knocking out the battleship’s proton screen, damaging its combat control system and reduces its hull integrity by another 28%. In the end, the Admiral Clinton has only 6% of its hull integrity left.
The sathar is the lower group were not as effective firing on the new UPF battleship, the Admiral R’kazk’tar. Only one of the four assault rockets connect knocking out the battleship’s disruptor cannon while the cutter misses completely. The sathar frigate hits with everything but its torpedo knocking out the battleship’s torpedo and ICM launcher and knocking half of its engines off-line. The sathar destroyer hits will everything expect its torpedo inducing an on-board fire and knocking out 35% of the battleship’s hull integrity. The sathar assault carrier scores a minor (<2%) hull hit with its laser battery while the sathar heavy cruiser only hits with it’s laser battery and disruptor cannon cutting the battleship’s maneuvering in half and knocking the hull integrity down another 13%.
Each sathar heavy cruiser deploys a single seeker missile, about 40,000 km behind their final positions where they expect the UPF to end the movement to fire their torpedoes at maximum range.
The maneuvering on this turn was so complicated, that I almost did a sathar movement map and a UPF movement one but in the end I left them on the same map. It’s a bit confusing but so was the maneuvering.
The seriously wounded battleship drifts away from the fight and two frigates join it as escorts. The other battleship, its MR reduced by half, turns and uses the gravity of New Pale to gain an extra turn. The other ships also loop around the planet, accelerating as much as possible to come around and bring all their weapons to bear on the various sathar vessels. The fighters split their fire between the heavy cruiser and frigate in the upper group, and the heavy cruiser and assault carrier in the lower group, assisted by the assault scouts firing on the heavy cruisers as well. The other ships focus their fire on the smaller more maneuverable ships. The assault carriers and their escorts accelerate and cross the sathar battle line hoping to get out of the maneuvering arc of the larger ships. They fire what weapons they can at the sathar fighters. The fire on the sathar destroyer knocks out its laser cannon.
Defensively, the upper flight of sathar ships focus their particle battery weapons at the damaged battleship, hoping to finish it off but they all miss. They use their laser batteries defensively against the fighters destroying one, nearly destroying another, lightly damaging the engines on a third. They fire their rocket batteries at the light cruiser but they all miss.
In the lower group of sathar ships, all the beam weapons are focused on the fighters but only one hits damaging the fighter’s combat control system while the rocket batteries are fired at the UPF destroyer but they all miss as well.
The upper UPF assault carrier connected with its laser and proton battery destroying one fighter and knocking out the assault rocket launcher on the other. The lower assault carrier hits with it’s proton battery and almost takes out a figher but it manages to hold togheter. The carrier’s light cruiser escort hits the same fighter with its laser battery, damaging the fighter’s engines, and a different fighter with it’s proton battery damaging its maneuverability.
The sathar heavy cruiser in the upper group is hit by 5 assault rockets and a laser battery from the fighters and assault scouts which damage its combat control system, short circuits its defenses, and reduces its hull integrity by 98% nearly destroying it.
The sathar heavy cruiser in the lower group gets away fairly unscathed as it is only hit by 3 assault rockets from the fighters and assault scouts knocking out its ICM launcher and maneuvering and reducing its hull integrity by 16%.
The sathar frigate in the upper group is hit by 2 assault rockets from the fighters as well as an electron batter, disruptor cannon, and torpedo from the light cruiser which knock out its defenses before the torpedo destroyers the ship.
The final fighter flight hits the upper sathar assault carrier with four assault rockets destroying it. while the sathar destroyer is destroyed by its UPF counterpart which hit with its laser and rocket batteries as well as torpedo that got through the ICM screen.
The sathar frigate in the lower group is hit by its UPF counterpart with a laser battery that damages its maneuvering and a torpedo that slips through the ICM screen but only manages to take out the frigate’s laser battery.
Maneuvering and final positions after the first ten minutes of battle. Click for full size image.
Turn 2
With the assault carrier destroyed, the sathar fighters are stranded and so continue the attack on the battleships. The flight that lost a fighter loops around to go after the heavily wounded battleship (Admiral Clinton) while the other group goes after the less damaged one. The heavily damaged heavy cruiser just drifts away from the battle while the light cruiser from the upper group turns to make a pass at the less damaged battleship (Admiral R’kazk’tar) as it accelerates away from the battle. The lower group, minus the destroyed assault carrier, just accelerate straight away from the battle at the heavy cruiser’s max acceleration (it has 0 MR), staying in formation. They fire on the UPF destroyer as they fly away. The fire on the Admiral R’kazk’tar induces a navigation control hit.
The sathar also activate the two seeker missiles they deployed the previous round. Unfortunately for the sathar, the UPF did not react as expected and the only ships nearby are the assault scouts. Each seeker missile goes after one of the assault scouts but they both miss.
Defensively, the battleships fire at the incoming fighters as do the assault scouts and the frigates escorting the heavily damaged battleship. They are assisted by the station and the lower assault carrier and it’s escort. Together the UPF ships manage to destroy two of the three fighters headed for the Admiral Clinton and two of the four headed for the Admiral R’kazk’tar, inducing a fire on a third.
The upper light cruiser and assault carrier fire at the light cruiser as it passes. It is hit by 2 laser, an electron, and 2 rocket batteries damaging its combat control system and engines, knocking out its ICM launcher and reducing its hull integrity by 23%.
The lone light cruiser fires at the drifting heavy cruiser connecting with a rocket battery and its disruptor cannon destroying the heavily damaged sathar vessel.
Finally, the group of frigates and destroyer focus their fire on the fleeing heavy cruiser from the lower group connecting with 3 laser batteries, a rocket battery and a laser cannon damaging the heavy cruiser’s combat control system and reducing its hull integrity by 46%.
Offensively, the surviving figher manages to hit the Admiral Clinton with its assault rocket destroying the battleship. The Admiral R’kazk’tar is hit by an assault rocket from the two fighers and a torpededo from the light cruiser reducing its hull integrity by another 36%.
The fire from the remaining ships are focused on the UPF destroyer. It is hit by 4 laser batteries and an electron battery which knock out its masking screen launcher, short circuit its defensive systems, and reduces its hull integrity by 46%.
The surviving battleship, with its navigation control damage and seriously damaged hull, pulls to starboard but manages to hold together. Given the speed differentials, and despite the greater acceleration of the smaller UPF ships, Spacefleet decides to not purse the main surviving group of sathar vessels but the upper two flight of fighters do go after the lone light cruiser. The assault scouts and the frigate and destroyer group go after the surviving sathar fighters. The fire on the sathar fighter induces a navigation control hit. The fire on the light cruiser cause 9 HP of damage.
Defensively, the sathar light cruiser fires at the incoming fighters but only manages to hit one with a proton battery lightly damaging its hull.
Offensively, the UPF fighters hit the light cruiser with all eight assault rockets destroying it while the frigates and destroyer destroy two of the three surviving fighters with the remaining fighter having its combat control system damaged, its assault rocket launcher knocked out, its hull integrity reduced by 38% and a fire started onboard.
Final positions after the second round of combat, the destroyed sathar light cruiser, damaged UPF battleship and UPF fighters are off the top of the map while the fleeing sathar ships are off the left side. Click for full size image.
Turn 3
The fire on the battleship burns through the hull reducing its hull integrity by another 10%. Its navigation control damage causes the large ship to pull to port and the strain on its severely damaged hull causes it to break apart destroying the vessel after only 10 days of active duty. The remaining sathar fighter is obliterated by the combined fire of the destroyer and frigates.
Repair Turn 1
The lightly damaged fighters manage to repair their systems almost immediately and the destroyer manages to repair some of its hull. The sathar heavy cruiser manages to repair some of its hull as well.
Final Repairs
After another hour and a half the damaged UPF destroyer manages to fix as much as it can in space. All of its systems are fixed but the hull is stuck at 66% integrity and it will need to get into the starship construction center at Pale to complete repairs.
After another hour the sathar heavy cruiser has repaired enough of its hull that the surviving ships resume their acceleration out of the system. Another 2.5 hours later, it has repaired as much as it can outside of a shipyard. All of the internals systems are back online but it’s hull is stuck at 75% integrity until it gets back to SSC#5 for final repairs.
Lessons Learned
I knew the sathar were going to lose this one but I expected them to do a little better than they did. They managed to take out the two battleships, part of their primary objective, but didn’t do as much collateral damage as I was expecting/hoping they would. Part of that was the dice were just not cooperative, especially on the defensive fire round of the UPF move in turn one. I rolled a bunch of 80’s on the sathar’s to hit rolls and nothing really connected. Although the same thing happened to the UPF at another point so I guess it evens out.
The sathar misjudged the positions on the first round and were unable to make pass at the assault carriers like they wanted. They managed to get some ships out of the battle but not as many as I was hoping they would. The UPF really cleaned up.
The loss of the battleships will be significant, those won’t be replaced anytime soon. It will be interesting to see how that affects the fights going forward.
What are your thoughts on the battle? Share in the comments below.
As I’ve been working/playing through the Second Sathar War in the Detailed Frontier Timeline, I’ve used a bunch of designations for the various groups of ships that the UPF has created. It thought I’d give a quick overview of how I’m using them and what each name represents. This may evolve in the future, but it’s what I’m using at the moment.
Some Background
In the setting material, there are two designations explicitly given, namely Task Force (Prenglar and Cassidine) and Strike Force (Nova). It then goes on to say there are other patrol groups and strike forces exist. The exact quote from the rules is:
Each of these battleships is the flagship of a fleet task force. Task Force Cassidine (flagship: Admiral Harsevoort) is centered at Triad; Task Force Prenglar (flagship: Admiral Morgaine) is based at the UPF base orbiting Morgaine’s World; and Strike Force NOVA (flagship: Admiral Clinton) has a home base at Gran Ouivera, but spends much time patrolling the travel lanes of the Frontier.
Many smaller strike forces and patrol groups are active throughout the Frontier. The composition of these task forces does not remain constant, as ships are often reassigned from one group to the other. The patrol groups usually consist of one or two assault scouts and a frigate. Small strike forces often contain several frigates, a destroyer and a light cruiser.
p48 -Knight Hawks Campaign Book
From there, I’ve expanded things out a bit. Here’s what I’m currently doing.
Designations
Task Force (TF)
A task force is a large group of ships, centered on a battleship or heavy cruiser, that is organized for a specific purpose. In the case of Task Force Prenglar and Cassidine, I see that purpose as the defense of the two core worlds of the Frontier, which is why these task forces include the UPF minelayers and are named for the systems they defend.
Strike Force (SF)
Similar to a task force, a strike force is a larger group of ships that is centered on a light cruiser or larger vessel (but not an assault carrier, these are always ancillary vessels). The main purpose of a strike force is rapid deployment and offensive action.
The main difference between a task force and a strike force (other than the light cruiser requirement) is speed. In a strike force, no ship can have an ADF of less then two and thus the strike force is capable of risk jumps. The inclusion of a minelayer, with its ion drives and ADF of one, precludes this designation. For example, in the Detailed Frontier Timeline, the group that was going to be Strike Force Meteor initially has a minelayer added to it when the battleship arrives (in a few days from now in the timeline as I post this) so it gets the Task Force Designation instead of the Strike Force as originally intended. When the minelayer leaves, it will probably be reverted to the Strike Force designation.
As I’m writing this, I thought of a related designation that I have never used. That would be Rapid Strike Force (RSF) and would be a group that is all light cruisers or smaller and have a minimum ADF of 3. There would be no fighters or assault carriers in this group. But maybe that’s being a bit to specific.
Patrol Group (PG)
This is the generic designation for any group of Spacefleet vessels but typically carries the connotation of a traveling group that is moving around the Frontier. These groups could be organized for any reason, from pirate deterrence, to exploration, to local militia support, to just showing force around the Frontier.
A notable example of this from the Detailed Frontier Timeline was Patrol Group Virgo. Originally constructed to be a show of force in the Dixon’s Star system to help cool the corporate war heating up between PGC and Streel, it was augmented by some Streel vessels and the Truane’s Star militia to deploy to the Zebulon system to counter the imminent sathar threat there. (Had these ideas been more crystalized in my mind back then, I probably would have changed the designation at that point to Strike Force.) After that fight, and with the events surrounding the militia/civilian Discovery Squadron, they were deployed into the Rim to support the Flight. Thus they took on a number of different roles before finally being dissolved.
Repair Group (RG)
This is one I made up for the timeline. I needed a designation that allowed me to refer to a small group of ships that were currently non-combatants that were traveling to a shipyard for repairs and so the repair group was born. I don’t know that this one would get used much outside of wartime but I’m still thinking through its use.
Shuttle Group (SG)
This is another one I made up for the timeline but imagine that it could be used regularly. The specific use I invented it for was a designation to give an assault carrier that was transporting fighters between the shipyards and the systems (that don’t contain shipyards) where those fighters were going to be stationed.
The thought was that this was primarily for a non-combat role but if an assault carrier with 8-12 fighters showed up, pirates might very well think twice as they are definitely combat capable, especially against small numbers of vessels. But I can also see it being used in other contexts. For example, if you use the Jump Tug (Star Frontiersman issue 9, also a write-up on the starfrontiers.us website) in your setting, I can see Spacefleet having a few of these to move assault scouts and fighters over long distances to save on having to do overhauls every jump. In any case, this designation would be used for any group of ships, military or civilian, used by Spacefleet to rearrange their assets in the Frontier.
A Note on Sathar Designations
If you’re following the Detailed Frontier Timeline, you will have noticed that I’m referring to all the sathar fleets using SBF designations. SBF is short for “sathar battle fleet.” The SBF designation is then followed by a letter-number combination, i.e. SBF-E1 or SBF-J3. The letter designation simply represents the sathar starship construction center the fleet originated from and the number is just incremented for each fleet.
This was just a shorthand to help me keep track of the sathar ships. It doesn’t even reflect how Spacefleet would refer to them. They would probably either refer to them by the system they first appeared in or just give them incrementing some index for them.
Your Thoughts
Those are the designations that I’m currently using. Beyond the three main fleets (TF Prenglar, TF Cassidine, & SF Nova) I see most of the Spacefleet ships grouped into Patrol Groups as this is the generic designation. The others have more specific uses.
What designations (if any) do you use in your game? What other ones do you imagine Spacefleet using? Share your ideas in the comments below.
