Gratuitous Federation & Empire

 This is really a miscellaneous musing, based on my feelings from the games played so far. It's something that has been bubbling under the surface of my mind for a while now, and I suppose it has crystallised with the arrival of the Hydrans in the campaign. Basically, I am somewhat dissatisfied with carrier escorts. What is the point of them? Yes, they carry extra defensive weaponry which can be quite useful in protecting the main ship itself, but that just detracts from the overall offensive combat power of the fleet. Also, and this is what I think has mainly been bugging me, this early in the war the escorts are falling like flies, especially the smaller ones. Why would anybody bother with them? Why would the Klingons, say, have E4E Escorts and then have them uprated with Aegis fire control, when instead they could just stick a couple of F5 Frigates with the carrier instead? My rationale is going to be that there must be a logical reason for having dedicated carrier escorts of th

 It looks as though the Kzinti are about to have a bad time: There are two main battle hexes this time around, one each against the Lyrans and Klingons. The smaller cats are about to hit an important Kzinti planet, while the Klingons are going for the Duke's Starbase. Things are somewhat more fluid on the Hydran Front: On this front, the main weight is being delivered by the Klingons, who are attacking three Hydran Battle stations. The Lyrans have yet to complete their own build-up on this front, so they have combined the Far Stars and Enemy's Blood and gone for one of the two Hydran fleets facing them. At the top centre left of the map you can just about make out a large stack that has moved in this direction from the Lyran capital. They'll join in next time.

 This time, the Klingons elect to meet the approaching Hydrans in open space just to make sure the vicious little sods take longer to get anywhere near a Battle Station: The Battle Mat shows just how powerful is the Hydran fleet - and how relatively brittle. They don't exactly have much in reserve, while the Klingons do. In the event, this took a whole hour and a half to play to completion, including set-up and pack away time. I got the chance to roll for some space terrain, but this time it's in the open. I'm looking forward to dust zones, asteroid fields etc. because they will add a bit of extra spice to a battle, but it doesn't happen on this occasion. There are three main actions in this engagement. On the Hydran left,  their Lancer Destroyers go in as the initial wave, followed by the Ranger Cruisers. They meet the F5V Light Carrier and its E4 Escort, and vaporise the smaller of the two craft. At this point a Wing of D7 Battlecruisers intervenes, and each damages a

 Astyanax is the name of the Hydran character I'll be following through the General War, and his story begins rather auspiciously. I am Astyanax, son of Hectax, son of Priax Troiax. My grandfather is something like 100th in line to the Hydran throne, depending on which day of the week you are on, which makes me a typical Hydran officer: minor aristocracy with a touch of royal blood in here somewhere. I am Heavy Weapons Officer on the Knight Destroyer Inevitable , so I am Second Officer and third in command overall. Like everyone else, I have been watching the vidcasts of the Coalition attack on the Kzinti with mounting trepidation. We always knew the smaller cats and the boneheads would eventually attack either us or our erstwhile allies, and the big cats drew the small straw. They are giving up territory very grudgingly, using fighters in ways similar to us at fixed installations to make the invaders pay, but they are slowly losing ground. It is only a matter of time before we are

 This is the first battle between the old enemies in what is going to become the General War. For no reason whatsoever, though, Blogger is refusing to include images at the moment, so there's no Battle Mat this time. The Hydran force is extremely powerful, while the Klingons have more ships overall. In the event, though, something I haven't seen yet occurs: the defending fleet breaks on morale, allowing the attackers (the Hydrans) to destroy the station. This is because an attacking Hydran fleet is very strong; it is also because I rolled the lowest possible score on Klingon morale. Serious ship losses aren't much across the two fleets, but the attrition works in favour of the Hydrans. They only have a Knight Destroyer crippled and the usual slew of destroyed fighters, while the Klingons lose an E4 Carrier Escort destroyed, plus an F5 Frigate and an F5 Scout crippled; several other of their light ships are heavily damaged and forced to disengage, while the Hydran fighters c

 Now that the Hydrans have made their appearance in the campaign, it is worth some thought as to how they play in my solo fast fleet rules. This is because I had no idea how they would work out in practice, simply because their ships are so radically different from anyone else's; consequently, so too is my feel for their overall combat doctrine. It's made even more complicated by the fact that not only do they have three different kinds of ships (fusion, hellbore and command ships that carry both), they also have their fighters. These again are different from what has gone before because they use heavy direct fire weapons instead of drone missiles.  So far I've played with a fusion fleet and a hellbore fleet; it will be interesting to see how things develop as the war progresses, probably with mixed fleets starting to appear as the losses start to bite and tidy formations and organisations become a thing of the past - well, that's what happens when you are fighting for

 The second Battle Station combat of the Hydran attack is a real grudge match: their Home Fleet against the Enemy's Blood: Both fleets are very powerful, the Hydrans because of the sheer number of fighters they are carrying (this is a fusion fleet) and the Lyrans because of ship quality. And it gets nasty. There are two main points of engagement. First of all, it is worth noting that the Hydrans simply ignore the Battle Station's fighters, concentrating instead on the Lyran ships. The majority of their fighters, backed up by the three Ranger cruisers, take on three Lyran Heavy Cruisers; three Light Cruisers; and the two Frigates plus the Destroyer Scout. The Paladin and Horsemen stay out of the fight, content to feed fighters forward into the action. Every single Hydran fighter in this part of the battle is destroyed, but they wipe out an enemy Heavy Cruiser, cripple the two Frigates and scare off the Scout (heavy damage). In return, the Lyrans manage to cripple one of the Rang

 It is now time to have a Lyran hero in the campaign. Meet M'rrr'shann, the rather evenly-tempered (for a Lyran!) Weapons Claw of the War Destroyer Dark Fury  (Far Stars clan): I am M'rrr'shann, scion of a minor aristocratic family from the Far Stars colonies of the Lyran Star Empire.  Recently commissioned, I have been assigned as Weapons Claw (i.e. First Officer) of one of the first of the new generation of vessels to be assigned to our Duchy. The War Destroyer Dark Fury  caused some comment when it first arrived along with a companion War Cruiser, mostly because the tri-hulls are under-powered when compared with our older, well-trusted vessels. However, the addition of a battery pack has helped solve this problem, and our leadership is curious to see how the new designs fare in combat. We warp towards the southern part of Lyran space, to work in concert with the Enemy's Blood fleet. Now that the joint Lyran-Klingon Coalition has started to make inroads against th

...and then just as quickly vanish again. In other words, the Hydrans have made their first appearance in the campaign, with lightning thrusts towards a couple of Lyran Battle Stations and two that belong to the Klingons.  I played the fist game today; Battle Mat here: The Hydran Second Fleet is making a demonstration towards one of the Lyran border stations, so the cats have reacted with the Far Stars fleet. They have been half-expecting the Hydrans to make their presence felt now that the invasion of Kzinti space is well under way, and had already moved the Far Stars towards the Rimward part of their domains to act as a strategic reserve. As you will probably realise from the force compositions, the Hydrans really only have enough ships to make a single pass. But then that's all they need to do, because the plan is to force the Coalition to pay attention and take some of the pressure off the beleaguered Kzinti. This is an interesting battle in comparison with what has got before.

 ...but not on the Southern Front as the Hydrans make their move. The Coalition offensive for Autumn Y169 has finished, with the highlights being the destruction of the Kzinti Count's Starbase and the successful (albeit desperate!) defence of Zamyan against the Klingons. This is what the map looks like like after the Coalition retires to regroup, and the Kzinti try to shore everything up as best they can: Although the Kzinti border areas are now looking rather sparse, their economy is still in reasonably good shape. That will change, though, once the Coalition makes more inroads. In the meantime, the big cats have been busy, with a second Starbase almost ready to come online in their capital hex, and a Mobile Base being set up in readiness for further upgrading there too. Realistically, that one will probably end up as a Battle Station rather than a full-blown Starbase. Many of the crippled lighter Kzinti ships have been moved off-map to the Barony for later repairs, while the heav

 Since we are on the strategic defensive, any lulls in the Coalition offensive are filled with logistics, re-organisations and refits. So far we in the domain of Count R'rorash have fought every clawnail of the way as we are forced inexorably back towards the homeward, and the same can be said of what is happening on the Klingon Front. Having lost our border Battle Stations and, most recently, the Count's Starbase, we are now in orbit around the major planet Zamyan. The steady trail of crippled vessels returning home to await repair demonstrates that we are in no fit state to mount a counteroffensive. Count R'Rorash oversees the minutiae of every tiny detail, while we pilots get a chance to try tune up our replacement fighters, as well as getting to know one another better. The destruction of our old Escort Carrier has saddened us, as has the lost of her crew complement, but we have now been assigned to the larger CVL Light Carrier Tempest , ably commanded by Captain M'

 Containing the remaining Kzinti forces at their last three border Battle Stations has given the much larger Klingon navy the opportunity to mount one major attack. The chosen target is quite deep into Kzinti space and will be an important staging point for the Klingon drive towards the Kzinti home world. The big cats are of course determined to defend Lumien and, in conjunction with their overall strategy, even if they don't succeed in holding it, they will make the boneheads pay dearly: As usual, the Battle Mat shows the power the Klingons are bringing to bear. Their individual attack forces will not be as strong as the Kzinti defenders, but the Klingons are well able to outlast their opponents when it comes to attrition. So this will be yet another exercise in dancing with disruptors. And fighters. Oh, and planetary ground-based phaser-IVs.  One peculiarity worth noting here is that the demise of a previous Klingon admiral in the wreckage of his C8 Dreadnought has meant drawing