Full Thrust AAR

With my move upcoming, myself and C had got together today to play a last game of Full Thrust before I go.

We had agreed on 2000 points and more or less just a straight up fight scenario on C's large round table. This was the source of my Secret Project mentioned the other day. I decided not to go with the Light Carrier I was working on, and instead went with a 'Battle Wagon' lineup.

These guys form the 'heavy hitting' part of my NAC collection (along with a few older ships and escorts)

This group consists of a Farragut class Battledreadnought (BDN, on the left), two Thunderer class Battleships (BB, left and right rear), one Achilles class Heavy Frigate (FFG, smallest ship to the front), two Tallahachie class Destroyer's (DD, right front) and a Suffolk class Escort Cruiser (CE, far right). This group (along with an interceptor fighter squadron carried by the Battledreadnought) made up my force - around 2000 points. 

Given past experience, we decided to split the fleets up into sections and bring each part on as 'reserves'. The logic being that detecting an enemy force in the vastness of space requires spreading your fleet out. Once combat was joined the various elements would make for the fight. We randomized the arrival turn and location of each element, using a 12 sided dice to establish where on the table the ships arrived, as well as the starting velocity. This prevented the usual 'line up and joust' style of combat that straight up games can turn into. 

I split my force up, having one Battleship with the Heavy Frigate, one with a Destroyer and the Battledread with a Destroyer and the Escort Cruiser. I did configure my fleet for anti fighter defence, thinking the C might field fighters and that this could be these ships vulnerability. The Heavy Frigate (FFG) being an Escort version (with an area defence anti fighter fire control and a load of Point Defence systems) as well as making the Escort Cruiser (CE) the anti fighter variant (similar to the FFG, just with more point defence systems). 

C split his force into similar segments. I'm afraid his ships are all custom designs, so I've no idea what their fits were (other than running into some nasty weapons loadouts...).

Some of C's ships, from the Brigade British range

The game started with us both rolling for random entry - and both rolling the position on the table we were sitting at! The first few turns were slow as we closed the distance and manoeuvred for position. We were using centimetres for movement and shooting, so the distances were actually quite big. 

After a quick pass, the next groups arrived:

These also started closing the range, by two BB's converging on the new arrivals. 

One of my BB's took a bit of a pounding passing through the new group, with little damage done in return. Most of C's flee have very weak hulls but with two shields (and in one case, 2 advanced shields). 

The ships continued to manoeuvre a bit, trying to line up shots. C managed to get two of his ships round behind my two (bottom right above). Some poor choices by me saw him able to stick on their tale in the aft blind spot - doing a lot of damage and eventually causing the BB to lose it's bridge and have it's power core overload. The power core was fixed but not before the loss of the bridge caused the ship to leave the table. The DD acting as it's escort was destroyed a turn later. 

Our final two groups arrived - my BDN being quite far away from the other ships. C's ships started to converge on it. 

A little later and one of his capital ships was leaving the table (top right) with significant damage and no bridge (it's power core may also have been damaged - a recurring theme!). My remaining BB and the BDN started converging on the remaining big ship. We eventually got it to half damage and took out the bridge on the last turn. In the process I lost another Destroyer. 

At the end of the game I had lost one BB off the table, had 2 Destroyers blown up and had various other damage on other ships. C had a Heavy Battlecruiser (Pocket Battleship?) leave the table along with two Destroyer (or smaller?) size ships. I killed another 2 Destroyer size ships. One of C's remaining big ships was crippled but the rest of his fleet was largely untouched. We ended on a draw, with both forces heading off to rescue their damaged Battleships.

A good game, shame it could be the last for quite a while. The random entry certainly worked! Hopefully these Battleships and the BDN will get added to the to do pile!