Combat gets underway at Battle Station No.2; Spring Y169

 The powerful Lyran assault force begins to move in towards their traditional Kzinti enemies.

The Kzinti left wing evens up a little. We now have six fighters in advance of a Light Cruiser; an Escort Frigate; an Escort Carrier; and a Scout Frigate. They are facing two Lyran Heavy Cruisers to their front, with a Battle Tug and Destroyer Scout to their right. The Kzinti fighters do the logical thing when faced by a superior enemy force and stay well out of range of point defence phasers and ESG force fields. Basically, this part of the Kzinti fleet is just going to do a little dance to tie up the opposition here, while hoping to survive. Many drone missiles start to be chucked, but these Lyrans have a lot of defensive power against that sort of thing. They also do quite a bit of damage to the fighter wing with phasers and disruptors.

In the main part of the battle, the Kzinti fighter squadrons and Strike Carrier Group have advanced towards their Lyran enemies. You should be able to make out the Battle Station behind them, and the squadron of three Kzinti Battlecruisers. The Lyran force has concentrated, with the three Light Cruisers moving slightly in advance of their Command Cruiser and Fast Cruiser. The Lyrans start shooting up the Kzinti fighter squadrons while their Light Cruisers begin to feel the pain, including medium range fire from the Battle Station and Battlecruisers. In fact, one CL takes so much damage that it loses two of its main front shields and takes enough internals to persuade it to go home before it is reduced to ash - first blood to the Kzinti. However, the Lyrans are able to weather the first main drone wave from the Kzinti due to good force concentration.

There are five Lyran ships with plenty of room to manoeuvre off to the Kzinti right, and they start to turn in to join in the main central fight, loosing disruptors and long-range phasers as they go. The Battle Station's fighters are starting to take a pummelling from this, as does the Strike Carrier's squadron from the central Lyran cruisers.

Back over at the Kzinti left, a nice-looking second drone wave emerges, only to fizzle against the power of the Lyran Heavy Cruisers. With two ESGs, copious phasers and tractors, a Lyran CA can knock out an unfeasibly large number of missiles. The Destroyer Scout doesn't even need to help, instead removing the lock-on from some of the larger drone assault being produced in the centre of the field by all those Kzinti fighters. 

24 fighters plus a Strike Carrier Group can produce a lot of drones! However, half of the CVS fighters have now gone down under a hail of disruptor bolts and phaser shots.

It is all too much for a second Lyran Light Cruiser, which explodes under the pressure. There are now only nine fighters left from the original 24.

The outlying War Cruiser Squadron arrives to help, and the Escort Frigate is blown apart completely. 

Over at their left, the CVE and its Escort Frigate gamely move towards the Lyran Heavy Cruisers. The CVE is being partially helped by electronic warfare from the Scout Frigate. 

The Light Cruiser and Scout Frigate decide to join in the fun. 

Back in the centre of things, the Lyran War Cruiser Squadron is joined by the other two Heavy Cruisers. 

The Lyran Cruisers here are themselves engaged by the three Kzinti Battlecruisers. This whole area is turning into a Battle Royale. 

I pulled back for this shot so that you can see the action as a whole. This is taking place at around range 10 from the Battle Station. All of the fighters have now been wiped, and another Lyran Light Cruiser has gone BOOM, mainly because losing your front shields with a station's Phaser-4s ready to fire is not a good thing to happen to you. Having said that, the Kzinti are beginning to run out of drones, and the larger Lyran ships have been using their ESGs judiciously. They still have some left.

The battle has now coalesced into two separate and rather vicious fights. The Battle Tug gets into the fun on the other side of things, but is rather frustrated against the CVE. The much smaller Kzinti vessel refuses to close, and the Scout's electronic warfare is really helping it. The other problem is that Lyran Combat Tugs only carry Phaser-2s instead of the more powerful Phaser-1s; more of those would be useful here. 

The station's Phaser-4s are, however, much nastier, and a Lyran War Cruiser is forced to leave after losing two shields to the station and the enemy Battlecruisers.

The remaining members of the War Cruiser Squadron move in to help against the CVS Group; they are hoping to get a good chance at taking out one of the hated Kzinti carriers, or at least crippling the thing. This leaves the two Heavy Cruisers against three Kzinti Battlecruisers with support from the Battle Station. There is much jinking about in this part of the field.

Then things suddenly come to a conclusion. The two Lyran Heavy Cruisers in the main part of the battle have a hard time against the superior Kzinti forces here, and one of the CAs is completely destroyed by the combination. However, its sacrifice gives the other cruisers the opportunity they have been waiting for as the two remaining War Cruisers flank the Escort Light Cruiser and the Strike Carrier itself. The Fast Battlecruiser surges forward as does the Command Cruiser, and both Kzinti vessels are crippled by a very close pass, including ESG rams. Both of the larger Lyran ships have had to use one of their two ESGs against all those drones, otherwise the CVS and its escort would have been destroyed. As it is, they are forced into silent running to escape.

At the other end of the battle, the CVE must have seen what was coming, because it has ordered its fighter wing to land - amazingly, five of the original six still remain, although all of them are rather beaten up. This is because the Battle Tug in particular ignored them while it tried unsuccessfully to do more than a spread of shield damage to the CVE - electronic warfare really helped! The Escort Carrier, the Light Cruiser and the Scout Frigate all warp out to the emergency rendezvous point, while the Escort Frigate is crippled and has to go silent.

The Lyrans close in on the lone Battle Station...