Aftermath of the Campaign for the Count's Starbase: some thoughts

 It took eight battles to complete the first major assault on a Starbase in the campaign. Losses are as follows, although I have probably missed some of the details:

Lyran ships crippled: an Escort Frigate; four Destroyers; a War Destroyer Leader; three War Destroyers; six Heavy Cruisers; a Battlecruiser; a Battle Tug; and a Scout Tug.

Lyran ships destroyed: three Frigates; two Heavy Destroyers; a War Destroyer; four Light Cruisers; a War Cruiser; two War Cruiser Leaders; and a Command Cruiser. 

Kzinti ships crippled: an FFK Improved Frigate; a Destroyer; an Escort Light Cruiser; three Light Cruisers; a Fast Battlecruiser; three Battlecruisers; and a Carrier Tug.

Kzinti ships destroyed: a Light Cruiser; an Escort Carrier; two Medium Cruisers; a Battlecruiser; and a Command Cruiser. Plus, of course, the Starbase itself (eventually).

Another way to look at it is that the Lyrans have had five light ships crippled to two Kzinti; five Lyran medium ships crippled to five Kzinti; six Lyran cruisers crippled to four Kzinti; and three Lyran major vessels crippled to one Kzinti. Permanent losses are three Lyran light ships to no Kzinti; seven medium Lyran vessels destroyed to two Kzinti; and four Lyran cruisers destroyed to four Kzinti. 

In the abstract, therefore, the Lyrans have had three more light ships, two more cruisers, and two more major ships crippled than their opponents. And the Lyrans have lost three more light ships destroyed than their enemy and five more medium ships destroyed than the Kzinti. This is very reminiscent of the attrition rates across the frontier Battle Stations as a whole. The Kzinti are trading fixed installations and fighters in return for heavier losses to the Lyran invaders. 

The two sides feel as though they operate with different tactical doctrines. Lyran ships are generally more heavily armed than their Kzinti counterparts, but the bigger cats make up for it with drone missiles and lots of power. Plus they are defending around fixed installations with lots of fighters, both from the bases and planets, and from their plethora of carriers. This is what I thought it would be like in theory, but what surprises me is how it works out in practice. Star Fleet Battles is a great game when played with small numbers of ships per side - say, up to a cruiser squadron or something like that. But it becomes almost literally unplayable once the numbers start to climb. This is a direct result of the game's strengths as a rendering of tactical space combat. Individual starships have many options in the game, but those detailed tactical possibilities become more and more unworkable if you add more ships. This is exactly what I remember when I first tried to use Federation and Empire as the strategic level battle generator for the tactical game.

However, I am really enjoying my fast play fleet version of the rules. Not only has this given me back my gaming mojo, but it has made SFB fun again. I find myself wondering what will happen when I see the semi-randomised deployments, and almost nothing turns out the way I think it will. This keeps the games fresh. Also, one of the side-effects of playing such a long mini-campaign like the attack on the Count's Starbase is that it makes the various battles feel different after perhaps the first two with fleets at full power, and it is interesting to see how the campaign plays out across several, or indeed many, different engagements. This is a direct result of the way attrition affects the fleets, with different combinations appearing as the attacks progress simply because of availability of ship types.

I can play one of these games from start to finish in around two and a half hours, including deployment and packing away time. I don't think I have ever seen any conventional game of Star Fleet Battles take place so quickly, never mind full fleet engagements. And using the Vassal module makes the whole thing pretty much self-generating, as well as meaning I don't have to leave it all permanently set up. I did consider playing a mini-campaign with a permanent table, so that ships would constantly be warping in, getting damaged, crippled or destroyed, and warping back out again only to be replaced, but to be honest these individual battles are so quick that it would seem superfluous to do it that way, not to mention quite a bit of hassle.

This is exactly what I want when I move to the UAE. Now I just need to get on with collecting and painting the fleets!