Full Thrust: Arachnophobia!

Introduction

At the weekend, I finally received the finished version of my Full Thrust event cards from the printers.  That being so, there was only one choice of game for this week's club meeting!  [For my ATZ fans, I know it's been a long wait, but good things are coming.  Soon...]

Sa'Vasku bioships entering human space

So, I thought it was high time to bring out my Sa'Vasku alien fleet.  Normally, I don't use these at the games club because they're tricky to control.  In Full Thrust, these space-dwelling creatures have their own energy allocation rules and this makes them much more complicated to manage than any of the other fleets.  Still, I thought I'd give my older son the chance to learn how to use them.

The Scenario

Right, I'm not a great fan of "line 'em up and shoot until everyone bar me is dead" games, so I needed to come up with a scenario for the game.  Here's how this one goes:

The setting is near the Federation planet 'Caledon'.  This is a fertile, M-class planet, sparsely populated with a total of about 10 million humans, mostly farmers.

In distant orbit around Caledon there is a large space station, home to a zero-G manufacturing facility and owned by the M.D.B. corporation.

Further off, the bulk freighter Pride of the Orient is in trouble.  She's supposed to be delivering raw materials to the M.D.B. factory, but one of her holds has ruptured and she's shed 8,000 of ore into space.

So far, this is just a regular day in the Caledon system, but sensors have picked up the rapid approach of some alien vessels.  The good news is that the Federation have a significant squadron of assorted light cruisers and heavy destroyers present; these were due to take part in the "Solar Freedom XXVI" exercises next week.

The bad news is that the Federation have no idea what the alien creatures want.  Are they just passing through (migrating)?  Are they trying to make contact?  Or are they planning to attack?

Special Rules

• Federation forces may not fire on the Sa'Vasku until either they approach within 12" or until the aliens make a hostile action.  To compensate for this, the Federation have a larger force than the biofleet [by a ratio of about 5:4 in points].
• Sa'Vasku have 3 possible objectives; they must secretly choose just 1 before the game and that will set their victory conditions.  The Federation win if the Sa'Vasku fail to meet their chosen objective.  Note that the Federation player(s) don't even know what the possible objectives are, let alone which one has been picked by the Sa'Vasku.
• Objective A: It's spawning time!  To win, at least 3 out of the 4 alien ships must release spores into the planet's atmosphere.  They may accomplish this by entering planetary orbit; the ship may then spawn [release spores] in place of firing on any subsequent turn.  Note that this will probably render the planet unsuitable for human habitation thereafter, though it might make a good scenario for a ground-based battle.
• Objective B: Curious!  The space factory has been emitting some strange radiations; the Sa'Vasku wish to find out more.  To win, they must board and capture the facility, then take away at least some of the crew as prisoners.  Captive human factory workers may be moved to a nearby Sa'Vasku ship at the same rate as boarders, so if the ship has 4 boarding parties then it may transport 4 "items" per turn, either boarding parties, groups of captives or a mixture.  Bonus points for capturing all the workers from the factory!
• Objective C: Hungry!  The Pride of the Orient has spilled some of its cargo; the Sa'Vasku can consume this to win.  Initially, the spillage is clumped into 2 x size-4 "asteroids" or chunks.  These may be fired upon; 4 points of damage will split a size-4 into 2 x size-2 asteroids, each placed 3" in a random direction from the "parent".  Similarly, 2 points of damage will split a size-2 into 2 x size-1.  A size-1 chunk may be consumed by a Sa'Vasku ship that flies over it; the ship may repair 1 lost biomass box when it does this.  If either a Sa'Vasku hits a size-2 or larger chunk, or a Federation ship hits any chunk then the ship must dodge or take damage as normal for an asteroid field.  To win, the aliens must consume at least 4 x size-1 chunk.

The Game

For the first couple of turns, the Sa'Vasku approached slowly, not making any use of their advanced drives and potentially incredible maneuverability.  Indeed, they did possibly the worst possible thing at this time: the outnumbered bioships opened fire on the central group of cruisers!  This clearly signaled their hostile intent and the Federation commodore immediately ordered all his ships to return fire.

Damage was taken by both sides over a couple of turns of shooting.  In particular, one of the 2 Sa'Vasku "cruisers" was badly hurt and the smaller Sa'Vasku "destroyer" lost all maneuvering and shooting ability.  On the other size, the Federation cruiser Callisto was damaged significantly.  Indeed, Callisto and her sister ship Phoebe, along with the destroyer Sable all took hits from leech pods - a particularly pernicious bio-weapon that clings to the hull of its target and continues to gnaw its way through in further turns unless it is killed.

 

On turn 3, the 2 damaged small Sa'Vasku vessels drifted forward, but the other pair of bioships suddenly accelerated.  Their battlecruiser turned towards the planet at high speed and ended up face-to-face with the small (and trembling!) scout cruiser Endeavour.  Endeavour gave her best shot and certainly hurt the beast that was bearing down on her, before she took 11 points of damage in return out of a possible 12.  With life support failing and the command bridge in disarray, the gallant ship was abandoned and left to drift.

Despite being troubled by a leech pod, the destroyer Sable and her undamaged sister Oryx threw down some massive salvos on the monster and caused it a lot of injury in return.

As the other undamaged Sa'Vasku ship accelerated, the ship's counselor on the Phoebe had a premonition.  "Captain, it's going to fly right past us!" she exclaimed.

The captain immediately ordered "Hard a port!  Full stop!" - but even then the Federation cruiser couldn't turn tightly enough to bring most of its weapons to bear on the enemy.

The leech pod attached to the Callisto chewed its way into the engineering section and accidentally caused a warp core breech.  Panic ensued, though in the end the ship's structural integrity was compromised by the leech: she fell apart before she blew up!

At the same time, the leech attached to the Sable also ate its way through the hull and destroyed the smaller ship.

Meanwhile, the leech that was attached to the Phoebe was running rampant!  For 3 turns in a row, mixed teams of security and engineering tried to contain the thing and flush it out into space, but it just kept on dissolving its way through deck after deck.  It even managed to destroy the navigator's manga collection!

Now, here's the good part: the Federation commander was holding a "Makeshift Repairs" event card and could have used it to stop the leech pod at the cost of one of his ship's systems (a point defence, say - not needed in this scenario).  For 3 turns he agonised over whether to play the card for a guaranteed success (minus a ship's system) or whether to roll the dice for a 50% chance of success, but keeping all systems.  Each time, he chose to roll and lost!

With only 1 cruiser fully operational, the Sa'Vasku gave up their plan of capturing humans from the space station.  Instead, that ship made a screaming high-speed turn past the M.D.B. facility and fled into outer space.  The other Sa'Vasku cruiser was hurt, but was still able to out-accelerate the defending ships quite easily and escape.  Of the 7 initial Federation vessels, 3 were now lost; the remaining 4 took out their anger on the heavily damaged Sa'Vasku battlecruiser and destroyer.  Neither of these bioships survived.

Result

Federation:

• Los Angeles: survived
• Toronto: survived
• Phoebe: moderate damage
• Callisto: destroyed
• Endeavour: drifting hulk
• Sable: destroyed
• Oryx: survived

Sa'Vasku:

• Battlecruiser Cisplantin: destroyed
• Cruiser Zoloft: badly damaged
• Cruiser Carboplatin: survived
• Destroyer Zofran: destroyed

Mission: capture subjects for experimentation - failed

Overall: Federation Victory!  The Sa'Vasku player was not familiar with their special rules; had he understood their capabilities better then this could have been a very different game!

[Update: a second game using (almost) the same scenario is available here: http://colgar6.blogspot.com/2013/07/full-thrust-return-of-spider.html]