The Hydrans against the Enemy's Blood

 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 Rangers. Basically, Hydran attrition tactics are similar to the Kzinti - take most of the grief on your fighters as much as you can because those can always be replaced. In return, anything you do to the enemy ships is effective economic damage due to cost. And Hydrans are very good at hurting people.

On the other side of the station, the Lyran flagship Battlecruiser leads an attack on the lighter Hydran vessels, with a Fast Cruiser and three Lyran Destroyers in tow. They are up against the Hydran Frigate squadron plus three Lancer Destroyers. The Hydrans lead with their fighters, which are completely shredded, while the Lyrans cripple both Hunter Frigates. However, this permits the Lancer squadron to get up close and personal with the two Lyran heavy ships here, forcing both of them to retire with heavy damage. The final act of battle occurs when the Battle station guts and destroys one of the Lancers in response.

I have to say this is visceral stuff. These battles are even faster to play than those on the Kzinti front. Although the Hydrans have loads of fighters, there are hardly any drones to worry about, and this speeds everything up tremendously. From the Lyran perspective, fighting a Hydran fusion fleet is an intense experience: nothing happens for a while and then lots of things go boom. 

In terms of damage dished out, this has to be an overwhelming Lyran victory, with more than sixty Hydran fighters destroyed. The cats will be well satisfied with that. The Hydrans, however, have a different conception of what constitutes a victory, and it is based on hard economic calculation. After all, fighters can always be replaced, while crippled or destroyed ships cost serious amounts of resource. Additionally, although the Hydrans have had a Ranger and two Hunters crippled, they took out almost half the enemy fleet: a cruiser destroyed; two Frigates crippled; and three other ships rendered hors de combat, all of them valuable (a Scout, a cruiser, and their flagship). This means that even with the loss of most of their fleet's entire complement of fighters, next time around the attrition will make circumstances tilt in favour of the attackers. 

Finally, with his Battlecruiser heavily damaged, I rolled for what has happened to the Enemy's Blood Duke, and he is out of action due to wounds. This removes a +1 Admiral temporarily from the scene, which can only help the Hydrans even more. It could have been worse - the Battlecruiser had some electronic warfare support from the Scout, otherwise it would probably have been crippled and the Duke killed.

The Battle Mat looks like this for the second engagement:

They are well down on fighters, but in terms of ships the Hydrans have basically replaced their initial losses like for like, except that in the the case of the crippled Ranger there will be a third Horseman instead. The Lyrans, however, are running out of heavy ships, and are having to fill the line with their lighter vessels. This could be interesting - it makes a real change to see the Lyrans on the defensive against a fighter fleet. There is a single mistake in the Battle Mat - the Lyrans should have another ship on the line, so I have added a second Frigate.

In this battle, the Hydrans take damage across their remaining fighters plus their light ships. Most of the fighters are destroyed; two Hunter Frigates take heavy damage; and their Crusader Frigate Leader is crippled. The Lyrans similarly take the grief on their lighter vessels, but in their case it is something the Enemy's Blood cannot sustain: a Frigate crippled and the second heavily damaged, plus all three Destroyers and the Scout heavily damaged. Both fleets break on morale at around the same time, which basically means that the attackers leave and the defenders evacuate the station and blow it rather than let it fall into Hydran appendages.