Full Thrust: The End of the World

Introduction

Star-rimed space whale,

Cosmic nomad, absolute alien,

Devourer of planets, eternal wanderer, 

Beware!  The Kraken approaches!

I created a scenario for Full Thrust some time ago in which an uneasy alliance of starships attempted to destroy or divert a space monster that was intent on destroying a rich planet: http://colgar6.blogspot.com/2013/01/full-thrust-its-life-but-not-as-we-know.html .  Astonishingly, this was over 5 years ago and I haven't reprised it since - until now!

The Scenario

In short, 2 factions are rivals for influence at the neutral planet of Trondacolmakus.  The Magister of Trondacolmakus has made it clear that he will not be happy if either force should attack the other.  Peaceful negotiations are well advanced when an urgent message is received from a scout: a space monster is approaching and making directly for the planet.  Its intentions are unknown, but if it tries to siphon off the atmosphere, lay eggs on the surface or take a bath in the oceans then it would be a disaster for the planet's population.

The Magister begs the visiting navies to drive the monster away.  Together they have more than enough firepower to defeat it - but clearly the side with the most surviving forces will have an advantage in the continuing diplomacy.  Can the Ferengi and the Federation cooperate well enough to defeat the monster?  Or will narrow self-interest cause either side to hold back and give the monster its chance to ravage the planet?  Read on...

The Battle

The Kraken advanced steadily, only to be stung by early long-range phaser fire from a Ferengi vessel.  Infuriated, the monster launched a huge plasma bolt at the gap between two asteroid fields, hoping to catch 4 assorted cruisers in the huge explosion.

Sadly (for the Kraken, at least), only the Federation escort cruiser Phoebe was caught in the blast; the other targets were moving slower than anticipated.  Phoebe's shields did sterling service and saved the ship from total destruction; instead she was just badly damaged.

A smaller, but still potent, plasma bolt was fired from the monster's side at the Ferengi ships which were attempting a wide flanking move.  The opposing player was having none of that; he dissipated the threat with a handy Torpedo Malfunction event card.

The Kraken plodded on, swatting the occasional frigate without even really noticing them.  It reloaded its prow plasma and spat out a bolt at the collected cruisers in front of it at very short range.

This time, there was no mistake in its aim; all 4 of the enemy ships would be hit.  "All power to the shields!  Brace for impact!" roared the captain of the Ferengi battlecruiser Krayton [courtesy of a "Reinforced Shields" event card.  Honestly, the Ferengi player seemed to have all the good cards this game!].

It helped, but the shock wave from the class-6 plasma bolt was immense.  Endeavour disintegrated under the force, both Krayton and Danube were heavily damaged, while the already-hurt Phoebe only survived through a superb piece of damage control [a "Legendary Engineer" event card caused the warp core to be damped down instead of going supercritical and exploding].

The Kraken had a clear run between the asteroids now.  One of the cruisers in front of it was so heavily damaged as to be combat ineffective and the other two were facing the wrong way; they would have to turn laboriously before they could pursue the beast.

There were a pair of Ferengi warships (a light cruiser and a destroyer?) and several smaller ships hovering around in the distance, but these would need to move quite quickly if they were to engage the creature.

Of course, nothing is ever a certainty.  As the Kraken passed the Ferengi battlecruiser, a few weapons from the latter were able to bear.  A short volley hit the Kraken right up the backside and caused it to shudder with pain. [In game terms, the shell armour was penetrated and the damage caused triggered a threshold check.  This damaged the creature's "engines" and therefore reduced its available thrust]

A swift calculation revealed that with its reduced thrust, the Kraken was travelling too fast to be able to slow down before it hit the planet.  If its roll for damage control failed to repair its engine then it would have to turn slightly and skim past the planet at too high a speed to enter orbit - and therefore it would be unable to complete its mission.

The game therefore turned on this single roll.  Fortunately for the Kraken [not so much for the humanoids], it was able to repair the damage, or at least to overcome the pain and use the damaged system normally.

Now that it could decelerate as originally intended, the Kraken performed a 6" microjump straight forward [via a "Picard Manoeuvre" event card.  Hah - the Ferengi weren't the only ones to hold some interesting cards!].  This opened up the distance between the monster and its pursuers nicely, which was especially important now that it had its back to them [and therefore couldn't bring any of its weapons to bear].

The event cards were coming thick and fast now [indeed, I don't think I've ever seen a game of Full Thrust where so many cards were used!].  Firstly, the Kraken played an "Organian Peace Treaty".  A bunch of super-beings from another dimension turned out to be whale-lovers; they forbade anyone to fire at the injured animal.

This respite allowed the Kraken time in which to position itself near the planet's upper atmosphere ready for spawning.  The Organians soon lost interest in protecting the space beast, but before the monster could do anything else the Federation played a "Static Warp Bubble" on it, thus causing it to be time-stopped for a complete turn.

Initiative on the last turn was critical!  If either the Federation or the Ferengi beat the Kraken then they still had ships which could hurt it badly [especially as the Kraken was a mere 2 damage points off a further threshold check].  On the other hand, if the Kraken won then all it had to do was to "fire" on the planet to win the game.

This time, the monster won.  It spawned in the upper atmosphere and the thousands of eggs caused havoc on Trondacolmakus.  Large areas of the planet were rendered uninhabitable, whilst many others required a constant border watch to prevent infestation from the new badlands.  The resources needed to protect the population dragged the economy down to poverty levels unimaginable to the previously wealthy citizens and neither Ferengi nor Federation were particularly interested in trade deals with the inhabitants any more!

Conclusion

Sometimes you kill the monster and sometimes the monster gets you!  This was a very close-run game, where early losses didn't matter too much because the defenders could just bring in more ships.  Mind you, it wasn't really a place for corvettes or frigates; such small vessels had virtually no chance against such a huge attacker.

Had the monster been defeated then the Ferengi would probably have won, as they looked to have the larger of the remaining fleets.  But the monster wasn't defeated...

"Not-Star Trek" Ferengi Fleet

Introduction

Amongst the major races in Star Trek, the Ferengi probably have the least known military capabilities.  Indeed, there are almost no canonical named spaceships and only 2 classes of vessel have been commonly mentioned in the shows, as far as I know.  One of these is a cruiser and the other is a tiny shuttlecraft, so there's not much data there from which to work out what the Ferengi's military capability!

D'Kora class marauder

2-seat Ferengi shuttle

Design Philosophy

I'm going to have to extrapolate a very long way from the limited amount of canonical data for this fleet.  Firstly, I will assume that they do indeed have a fleet, if only so they can protect their trade interests robustly.  So, let's see:

• The Ferengi are clever (cunning?) and ruthless merchants.  Everyone in their society is always looking for a way to improve their wealth, so there's the first element of my philosophy: all ships will have at least some cargo space.  Either this is designed in from the start, or else the captain of each vessel has sacrificed some other system in order to make room for his trade goods.
• In The Next Generation, a Ferengi cruiser is described as a near match in capabilities for the Federation ship Enterprise.  I imagine that, through trade or espionage, they have complete access to any of the common technologies present in the Star Trek universe.  This includes phasers (beam weapons), disruptors and shields (screens), but not the more exotic stuff such as cloaking devices, plasma torpedoes or fighters.

The Ships

I don't know of any manufacturer who produces a range of Ferengi ships!  It's possible to find the D'Kora marauder from some sources, though these tend to be toy manufacturers rather than games companies.

For my Ferengi fleet, I've used Quellaris Federation ships from Kallistra's "Space Dreadnought 3000" range.  These have a vaguely "Ferengi" look to them, though note that I've cut off the oversized "cannon" protrusions from the nose and/or wings.  They will do fine for my purposes, though this might not suit a purist.

If you are interested, I've made my Ferengi SSDs available to download.  The file is in OpenOffice Draw format (.odg).

Manufacturer's Designation	Picture	Full Thrust SSD
Q1 Quellaris Patrol Ship
Q2 Quellaris Destroyer
Q3 Quellaris Cruiser
Q4 Quellaris Battlecruiser
Q5 Quellaris Dreadnought
Q6 Quellaris Super Dreadnought

Games with Ferengi

To be true to Star Trek, Ferengi shouldn't be interested in concepts such as honour or self-sacrifice.  They can and will fight ruthlessly to protect their interests, but their values are most definitely not the same as those of other races such as the Klingons or Federation.  I feel that this is best handled by the use of appropriate victory conditions in a scenario, rather than by race-specific special rules.  In other words, it's really up to you how to use a fleet such as this in your games!

Full Thrust: Never Trust a Ferengi!

Introduction

Lat weekend I played a small game of Full Thrust with my eldest son, primarily so that we could try out my Romulan fleet and see how the cloaking devices worked.  I took an amended version of the same scenario to the last night at the games club; that will be reported in due course.  In the meantime, here's how the tester went.

The Scenario

3 Ferengi warships are escorting a small merchant convoy through a dangerous region of space.  Their goal is for as many of the freighters as possible to escape (by reaching an edge in the furthest 1/3 of the board).

3 Romulan warships have just appeared (they can setup on any table edge in "their half" of the board) and are determined to stop the convoy.  Let battle commence.

How did it play?

In the very first turn, the Romulan ships fired a couple of plasma torpedoes at the convoy and then cloaked [scenario adjustment needed: start the 2 sides a little further apart!].  Many ships fired on the smaller torpedo and it was successfully dispersed.  However, the larger weapon detonated with full force, inflicting minor damage to the destroyer Bractor and crushing the medium freighter Marie Celeste.

Nothing much happened for another turn, as the Romulans were hidden.  The remaining ships in the convoy continued to accelerate in their attempt to reach safety, but that was about all.

Then, the Romulan ships uncloaked and, sadly for them, each was virtually on top of their opposite number in the Ferengi fleet.  The surprised captain of the heavy cruiser Krayton immediately opened fire, with devastating results.  The Romulan cruiser Dragon was hit in the engines and, just as bad, lost her torpedo launcher, while the light cruiser Decurion took hits to engine and cloaking device.  Ouch!

In return, the best the attackers could do was to inflict minor damage on the large merchantman Empress of Orion and to cripple the light freighter Ivanhoe [she lost 3 of her 4 holds.  Oddly, all of these were determined to be carrying personal grooming equipment - I guess those Ferengi really love their ear-lobe polish!  Ivanhoe also suffered a non-critical hit, which came out as "make it up yourself".  I decided that her robotic loading system had malfunctioned and was busy unloading the contents of the 4th cargo hold - desk lamps - into space].

To add insult to injury, the Bractor then gutted her opposite number - the Lorica - leaving the Romulan destroyer just a drifting, lifeless hulk.

Things just continued to get worse for the Romulans.  The next turn, the damaged Dragon attempted to fire on a merchantman, only to discover that it couldn't lock its phasers on target due to scanner damage.  At least the cruiser's damage control parties had managed to repair the plasma torpedo launcher...

...or so they thought.  However, when the Dragon attempted to fire another torpedo, the weapon malfunctioned and flew off in completely the wrong direction.

In desperation, the cruiser's captain ordered his chief engineer to push the damaged engines to the limit.  This gave him just enough thrust to turn round...

...and come straight into the sights of 2 Ferengi warships at close range.  The Romulan flagship didn't even manage to shoot before she was torn to shreds by fire from the Krayton and the Bractor.

Conclusion

The cloaking device and the torpedo use up a lot of the mass in these Romulan ship designs.  That means they really cannot go head-to-head with an enemy warship of about the same size; they just don't have the same number of phasers and the like.  Instead, they must rely on hidden movement to position themselves where they can shoot without much return fire.  That's not what happened here!

[scenario adjustment - in hindsight, the convoy escorts should have had less firepower.  Perhaps 3/4 or 2/3 of the points value of the attackers rather than parity with them.]

Romulan status:

• Dragon (CA): destroyed
• Decurion (CL): limping away, engines damaged, warp drive and cloaking device inoperable.
• Lorica (DD): lost.  Drifting, bridge smashed beyond repair and all decks open to atmosphere.

Ferengi status:

• Krayton (CA): undamaged
• Letek (CL): undamaged
• Bractor (DD): minor damage
• Empress of Orion (large freighter): minor damage
• Marie Celeste (medium freighter): destroyed
• Ivanhoe (light freighter): destroyed - warp core breach.

The really sad thing is that the attackers even had a Romulan Ale event card.  My son chose not to use this, in case it gave me new cards that were more useful than those I held, but this wasn't likely.  When fighting against Romulans, is any card more useful than a Torpedo Malfunction?!

[Update: we ran this scenario again, with minor differences.  Will it turn out any differently?  See here: http://colgar6.blogspot.com/2013/07/full-thrust-klingon-honour.html]

Full Thrust: It's Life, But Not As We Know It!

Introduction

2 off-world trade missions were visiting the rich, independent planet of Gomeisa Prime.  Both Federation and Ferengi negotiators were vying for favourable terms and exclusive contracts with the natives.
Although suspicious of each other, neither side was prepared to open hostilities.  Mainly this was because the Gomeisan Maharajah had made it clear that his people wouldn't trade with anyone who started a war in their system.
All this became moot when a large, spacefaring creature was detected approaching the planet.  The monster, tentatively identified as the "Kraken", would surely wreak havok on the planet and its inhabitants.  At least, that's what the Gomeisans claimed when they pointed out that no treaties could be signed until the intruder was driven off.
The ships of both trade missions together would probably have the combined firepower to defeat the Kraken.  However, each knew that the fleet which took less damage would be in a better negotiating position thereafter.  Could they work with each other to save the planet?  Read on...

This game would act as a further test of my Full Thrust event cards, as mentioned before here and here.  Each side would be dealt 3 cards at random; these could be held and played as desired (though any one side could not play more than 1 event in a single turn).

The Kraken

The Kraken is a large, space-faring life form.  It does indeed intend to eat the planet, or at least to suck off some of the atmosphere or something like that.  Or perhaps to lay eggs - who knows?
Whatever it did would cause harm to millions of the local inhabitants, though the Kraken either doesn't know or doesn't care.  It's not inherently aggressive, though; it will ignore spaceships unless they attack it (though the Ferengi and Federation commanders don't know this).

In Full Thrust terms the Kraken has been designed as a Phalon battleship, albeit a very large one.  Since my playing group doesn't normally play with 'xeno' technology, this should give them a bit of a surprise!
Its most notable features are the huge, level-6 plasma bolt launcher at the front and the very thick, 4-row shell armour.  For such a large 'ship', it's surprisingly nimble with a thrust rating of 4.  Oh, it also has a couple of smaller plasma bolt launchers facing side and rear.  Yes, this creature really can shoot flames out of its arse!
I'll be in command of the Kraken myself, as well as acting as gamesmaster.

The Federation

The Federation fleet consists of the following:

• USS Danube.  Heavy cruiser
• USS Los Angeles.  Light Cruiser
• USS Antelope and USS Ibex.  Large destroyers.

The Ferengi

The Ferengi trade delegation has:

• Krayton.  Heavy cruiser
• Letek.  Light cruiser
• Bractor.  Destroyer
• Gosbok and Taarbok.  Corvettes

The Game

The Kraken approached the planet at a leisurely speed of 8, passing between a couple of small patches of asteroids.  Initially, both the Ferengi and Federation fleets barely moved; it looked as each was waiting for some sign of commitment from the other.

After a couple of turns, the captain of the Danube tried a long range shot at the monster despite the explicit orders of the Federation admiral to hold his fire.  This immediately brought about some retaliation from the Kraken: it launched a large plasma bolt ahead of the Danube.  Both the Danube and the Los Angeles took significant damage from the blast, but due to the extremely low speed of the Federation ships the bolt missed the destroyers completely.

The Ferengi fleet had approached a bit faster, though without shooting.  They now opened fire half-heartedly and even managed to scratch the Kraken's shell.  At the same time, their admiral took the opportunity to play a Plasma Fire event on the creature.  This could have done some damage, had it burnt out of control.  However, the Kraken's equivalent of damage control parties (antibodies? white blood cells?!) put the fire out immediately.  All it felt was a little indigestion.

The enraged Kraken turned on the Ferengi just as they attempted to veer off.  First, it launched a lesser plasma bolt right into the middle of the cluster of yellow ships.  This was reduced from strength-3 to strength-1 by defensive fire, though both corvettes were badly damaged by even the small shockwave.  Pulsar fire from the Kraken wasn't particularly effective, so it was just as well for the creature that most of the Ferengi ships couldn't retaliate: their largest batteries were of forward facing weapons.

To add insult to injury, the Ferengi then played another event card.  This time it was Tribbles, thus infecting the Kraken with a particularly obnoxious space parasite.  Again, the creature's internal damage control systems took care of this menace before anything bad happened to it.

Before the Kraken could take any other action, the Federation player announced a further event card.  This was getting annoying!  How come the opposition had all the cool cards, when all I had was a useless Atmospheric ionisation?!  The Federation's Static Warp Bubble event froze the Kraken in a separate plane of reality for a turn (though on re-reading the card now, I realise we played it incorrectly.  It should have affected a random ship on any side, not just the enemy of the card's owner.  Oh, well).

When it returned to reality, the Kraken found that the Ferengi ships had all moved away.  On the other hand, the Federation fleet was now much closer and the monster had reloaded its prow launcher.  It fired a huge plasma bolt at the annoying white ships...

...with devastating results!

Reinforcements

Many players had lost their ships by now, either destroyed outright or crippled and out of the fight.  Consequently, as gamesmaster, I allowed some reinforcements to enter play.  For the Federation, the light cruisers USS Phoebe and USS Callisto came streaking in from the right.  On the left, the Ferengi battleship Hoex approached more sedately.

Just as the Kraken was about to turn back towards the planet to do whatever it needed to do, the Ferengi played their last event card.  Romulan Ale is intoxicating enough to affect even the largest life form, though how the Ferengi managed to make the monster partake is unknown to me!  Perhaps they beamed a fine mist of the drink into the path of the creature?  Anyway, the result was to force the woozy Kraken to repeat its previous movement orders - a hard turn to the right!

The drunken turn took the Kraken in exactly the wrong direction and left it face-to-face with the Phoebe.  Despite being severely outclassed, the brave Federation light cruiser landed a punishing volley of phaser fire on the monster, breaking through its shell and causing enough internal damage for a threshold check.
At this point, the befuddled Kraken destroyed a couple of the smaller Ferengi ships that were tailing it (the light cruiser Letek was completely atomised by a massive overkill), but its smaller plasma bolts failed to inflict serious damage on the heavily-shielded Federation cruisers.
Finally, the newly-arrived Ferengi battleship Hoex fired.  Its opening shots also delivered an improbably large amount of damage, but more importantly it stunned the Kraken for 5 turns (In Full Thrust terms, another threshold check yielded a command bridge critical hit).  Since the beast was now out of action and also because we'd run out of time, I declared the game over!

Aftermath

With the Kraken drifting away from the planet, stunned and helpless, the inhabitants of Gomeisa Prime were clearly saved, though at a terrible cost.  Both trade missions had lost a number of ships: the final count was as follows:

Federation

• USS Danube.  Heavy cruiser: moderate damage
• USS Phoebe.  Light cruiser: no significant damage
• USS Callisto.  Light cruiser: no significant damage
• USS Los Angeles.  Light Cruiser: destroyed
• USS Antelope.  Large destroyer: destroyed
• USS Ibex.  Large destroyer: destroyed

Ferengi

• Hoex. Battleship: no significant damage
• Krayton.  Heavy cruiser: heavy damage
• Letek.  Light cruiser: destroyed
• Bractor.  Destroyer: destroyed
• Gosbok.  Corvette: heavy damage
• Taarbok.  Corvette: destroyed

At the time of the game, I felt that the Ferengi had come out better.  However, looking at these results I'd say it was pretty even after all.

Many event cards were played in this game.  The Ferengi admiral was particularly lucky to have a full hand of useful events, though the Federation didn't do badly either.  As it turned out, quite a few of these cards didn't have much effect on the game, other than to unsettle the Kraken, that is!  However, one or two had much more significent consequences and these certainly added to the narrative.
On the other hand, the Kraken (i.e. me) didn't have any cards that were useful during this game.  Humph!