The Republican Seeker attack was BRUTAL! But my BC survived with little damage to her weapons so she was able to return the favor and, it appears, finish the job it should have all-but-finished last turn. I sent the file to my opponent for review but the return fire seems to have sunk both the Gale and the Medusa. :twisted:
I have to say, this battle was heavily influenced by terrain. We decided the defender gets to place any terrain generated for the battles. Because of the size of this black hole, I placed it in the middle, assured it would influence maneuver throughout. It did. The Republic positioned its ships on either side, allowing me to put my first squadron on one side to prevent it being ganged up on before reinforcements arrived (in this scenario my fleet had to be split with the second portion arriving randomly after the first turn).
It really, really, really helped, too, that my reinforcements arrived on turn 3 and not later. I was able to accelerate into the attack just as the Republican Cruisers were arriving to do battle. (The cruiser flip on turn 5 was crucial, as well, since the written orders turned her the away from the enemy, so none of her big missile launchers faced my ships. You can bet Erik and I will be reviewing our move orders carefully the rest of the game :!: )
In other words, the Black Hole upset the premise of the scenario. Instead of having half my fleet have to stave off the entire enemy fleet for a number of turns -- it was half a fleet against half a fleet and then both reinforced at roughly the same time.
At the end of Turn 6 (see image below) both the Gale and Medusa have received (just barely) enough hull damage to finish them off. The Gorlev won the battle with point totals of 850 to 160. Huge victory?
However, the Republic will get a number of resource points (up to 600) to repair its fleet while the Gorlev Battlecruiser, with only 5 of 13 hull remaining, is too valuable to risk in combat until repaired. And the Gorlev will have to lose a battle before they can repair it. My other ships were largely unscathed. The light cruiser has 6 of 7 hull, so is not fully repaired either. The Republican Wendigo heavy cruiser has 6 of 8 hull remaining so will need expensive repairs.
). I will try to post AARs as the games progress. The campaign is basically a best-of-seven series between MadSeason's Gorlev and my Republic forces. The games will be played via the Vassal engine. The couple of times that these two factions have skirmished, the fights have been bloody and fairly even, so I am expecting it to be exciting. We are also playing with relatively short ranged weapons, limited to range 12, to see if that makes things more interesting.
