From: "Jamie Coleman" To: babylon5-wars@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU Date sent: Thu, 6 Aug 1998 18:46:44 -0400 Subject: [B5W] Battle Report: Narn vs Centauri (kinda long) Send reply to: babylon5-wars@CSUA.Berkeley.EDU 1 Dargan Attack Cruiser, 1 Darkner Fast Attack Frigate, 12 Rutarians (1997 pts) vs 1 Ka'Toc Battle Destroyer, 1 Dag'Kar Missile Frigate, 1 Sha'Kos Police Cutter, 6 Gorith (1990 pts) Rules: roll individually for fighters, blind initiative & EW (announce locks & defensive, but no numbers). Also, on system hits, we rolled to see which system got hit rather than choosing. Adds a little spice. Fighters are suppressed if they take a crit, drop-out at end of turn on D10 vs remaining structure. Starting: Narns all at speed 4, Centauri ships at 6, fighters at 10. Turn 1: Narn's stay at 4, Centauri accelerate to close the range (and avoid e-mines). Dag'Kar launched 2 ion torps at Dargan, 4 e- mines. Nothing hit. Turn 2: Mostly jockeying for position. Narns at speeds 4-5. Centauri running around 10-12. 3 more torps at Dargan (all hit), 1 e- mine launched (missed). 2 Battle lasers at the Dag'Kar, 1 Ion Torp and 1 e-mine taken out. Turn 3: Sha'Kos accelerates to 8, charges Darkner. Rutarians slow down some and get to decent stand-off range against Dag'Kar. Gorith speed up, get advantage over one Rutarian flight. Centauri taking shots, all at Dag'Kar. Ka'Toc fires a Hvy Laser at Dargan, Sha'Kos unloads at Darkner. 5 E-mines (the well placed ones scatter or fizzled, and the ones that needed to scatter hit dead one. *SIGH*), 2 Ion torps at Dargan (hits). Gorith tickle one Rutarian. Dargan suffering some weapon hits. Darkner has both front thrusters damaged (no crits). Dag'Kar losts one more ion torp and one more e-mine. Front structure about 2/3 gone. Turn 4: Pretty much same speeds. Rutarians slowing down more, Gorith speed up a smidgen (all at 9 now). Everyone else pretty much stays at speed. Dag'Kar ended out of position last turn, so nothing bears, but it protects the front while everything charges. Sha'Kos decides to go play with the Dargan (picked a semi-blind spot which was covered by 1 twin, 1 ex-twin, and 1 damaged twin). Ka'Toc start-stop pivots, fires Mag Gun at Darkner - finishes off one front thruster, gets the other to one point remaining, good structure damage, damages both matter cannon. Sha'Kos demonstrates a remarkable ability to hit the structure with its burst guns. Dargan picks on the Sha'Kos (scratched a retro, but got an efficiency crit) and the Ka'Toc. Darkner fires matter cannons at Ka'Toc and Dag'Kar. Rutarians split between the Ka'Toc and the Dag'Kar. Ka'Toc is hit on two thrusters (both crits *sigh*), and some structure. Gorith score on the Rutarians - 5 hits, that flight is down to 2 fighters. Turn 5: It's getting late, but we decide to go one more - should be one last shot for the Dag'Kar before it gets hosed. Sha'Kos maintains the weak spot on the Dargan. Ka'Toc start-stop pivots again to bring it's one charged Hvy Laser to bear on the Dargan. Dargan can't escape position. Ends up with e-mine right next to it, but it scatters (of course). Rutarians and Gorith all end up in same hex with Dag'Kar. E-mine in adjacent hex.. you guessed it, fizzles. Gorith take out one more Rutarian. Darkner, Dargan, Rutarians unload everything on the Dag'Kar. Let's see.. how to explain the luck... 13 point matter cannon hit.. Primary! HANGAR!! BWAHAHAHAHAHA!! Peppered the engine, a couple thrusters (finally blew one off), a couple more weapons, some primary structure... until finally the Rutarians managed to disconnect the front of the Dag'Kar from the main hull. But not before its 4 ion torps crashed into the Dargan. Summary: Sha'Kos police cutter - crit on one retro. No Gorith casualties. Ka'Toc had crits on two thrusters (1 main & 1 port), and some structure damage on front, port, and rear. Dag'Kar was... well, it was brave. :) Still alive, but useless other than as a shuttle. 7 Rutarians were still around. Darkner had lost one front thruster, another with 1 point left, some damage to front structure and matter cannons. Dargan had lost a battle laser, a number of twins, a thruster, and miscellaneous other damage. Final outcome was a toss-up. ANALYSIS: Luck: First, both sides had bad luck with the dice. 14 e-mines, 3 or 4 would have done damage if they'd hit, but they scattered or fizzled. A number more could have worked if they'd scattered, but they hit. Centauri were having trouble with hits on the Dag'Kar - they were going all over the place, piecemeal. Narns had one turn where they were very lucky on initiative, which helped a great deal. Usually the Gorith split the two Rutarians on init. The Rutarians seemed to roll average to poor on to-hits, until the final run on the Dag'Kar. Tactics: Dag'Kar should not have split its fire over turns. that's OK with the e-mines in some situations, but the full saturation would have worked better. Ion torps need to inundate the target. Also, should have fired everything at the Darkner first turn, as it had no point defense weapons. The Centauri focused pretty much everything on taking out the Dag'Kar. One of the Rutarian flights should probably have pounced the single Gorith flight when they had initiative. The Mag gun is nice, but the range sucks. Very good weapon to inflict crits, or to finish of lots of partially damaged system. The Sha'Kos is slick.. it's like a low-power Whitestar. :) the Burst beams are awesome - 1 turn recharge, no armor, about a 50/50 chance of being wasted on structure (no damage). Dag'Kar is tough.. different tactics, because it only has weapons which fire out of sync with normal movement-fire sequence. But it's got a lot of them, is tougher than it looks. Rutarians.. well, what can one say. Regardless of the 5-hex limit (or because of it), you essentially can't put any EW on them. If they're 5 or less away, you can, but then they fly away. If they're beyond that, you can't, and then they fly in. And without EW, the Narns had ***NO*** weapons which could touch them beyond range 4. So it was solely up to the Gorith. The only reason the Gorith did so well was the Rutarians decided to ignore them. After being in a battle with them, my opinion is renewed that these puppies should be affected by DEW when firing their big gun, and give it some positive fire control to offset, like +2/+2/-4 instead of +0/+0/-4. Goriths actually are very nice. But they were never shot at, so that horrendous profile was never abused. They handled well against the Rutarians, but in a true dogfight.. dunno. Jamie Coleman jcoleman@a2t.com