Sunday, August 31, 2014

Federation Commander First Missions AAR




In my last post, I gave an overview of how Federation Commander works, now I'm going to play out the First Missions scenario that can be downloaded for free from the ADB website. For those of you who didn't read my review, you can download First Missions for free which contains basic rules so you can try out Federation Commander before purchasing the complete game.



The scenario in First Missions is called The Duel and like it sounds it is a simple duel between a Federation Heavy Cruiser (The Enterprise from Star Trek The Original Series) and a Klingon D-7 (The Klingon ship from Star Trek The Original Series). When playing Federation Commander you have the option to play at Fleet scale or Squadron scale. Squadron scale is the same as in Star Fleet Battles, Fleet scale ships have about half the amount of weapons, shields, energy, etc which allows you to play a larger battle without the game taking too long to play. The ships included in First Missions are in Fleet scale.

Your mission in The Duel is to control the sector (the game map) by either forcing your opponent's ship to disengage  (leave the map) or by destroying their ship. You must complete your mission within 10 turns if there isn't a clear winner within the 10 turns you use the Victory System to calculate the winner. If you score internal damage on your opponent's ship you receive points equal to 10% of your enemies ship cost, forcing an opponent's ship to disengage gets you 25% points, crippling your opponent's ship gets you 50% points and the destruction of your opponent's ship gets you 100% points.

To begin the game I setup up 6 map panels and set up the Federation ship in the one corner and the Klingon ship in the other. At the beginning of your first turn, you determine your energy and set your speed, both players do this in secret, your energy and speed are not to be kept secret during play only your speeds are secret until the turn begins.

There is a lot of room to cover so both ships spend all 8 impulses moving closer without firing. I wanted to keep away until next turn when my photons would be armed so I turned away when we started to get closer and the Klingon turned to come up from behind.

This is what the map looked like at the end of impulse 8 of turn 1 right before we fired.

I only had one phaser 3 that had a 360 firing arc so that's what I fired. I rolled a 6 at range 5 so I missed. My opponent fired what he could, 2 phaser 1's, the first roll was a 1 which damaged 5 shield boxes and his second roll was 4 for 3 damage. Since the damage could be applied to either shield 4 or 5 I took the damage to shield 5. On the 5 point volley, I used 2 points of energy to boost my shields so the 5 became a 3. So 3 and 3 gave me 6 damage to shield 5.

The Klingon also fired both of his disruptors and paid 2 extra energy each to overload them. He rolled a 5 and a 6 which are both missed at that range which was very good luck for me. That left him with 3 energy left so he put 2 into his batteries for the next turn.

My ship also had 3 energy left so I put 2 into my batteries. Since neither one of us had scored internal damage no repairs were made. That ended our first turn.

My ship at the end of turn 1.

                          
On turn 2 we both set a base speed of 8 and I paid to fully arm my photons. My plan at this point is to skirt around the map as far away from the Klingon until near the end of the second turn where I would unload my photons and the rest of my weapons on the Klingon. I'm not sure of my opponent's intentions but he paid 1 energy to accelerate each turn.

Here is the map at the end of Impulse 4 of Turn 2
My opponent decided he was close enough and unloaded his weapons. He paid to overload his disruptors and rolled a 5 and 6, the six was a miss and the 5 dealt 8 damage to shield 4. Next, he fired his two forward phaser 1's and rolled a two 3's for 5 damage which did 6 internal damage. For the first volley, one went internal and I rolled on the Damage Allocation Chart and lost a phaser. The second volley did 5 internals and I lost 1 lab, 1 transporter, 1 rear hull box, and 2 forward hull boxes, overall not too bad.

My opponent knew what was coming and decided to save his last 7 energy even though he still had 3 phaser 2's to fire. On the next turn, we both paid to accelerate and we both performed a high energy turn. Even though. Even though that would expose his weaker rear shields it would give him more distance from me and my photons.

The Klingons on the run from the Federation
I realized at this point he had enough energy to accelerate away from me and if I wanted to keep up I would sacrifice energy I set aside for phasers so it was the time to attack. I double overloaded both of my photons and rolled. I rolled 2 4's and did 24 damage. I had 2 energy left and fired 2 phaser 1's, rolled a 6 and a 3 for 7 more damage.



Those shots took out pretty much crippled his ship. He lost his disruptors, all but 2 of his phaser 1's, 6 of his engine boxes. He had only 1 more Frame Damage box to go so I graciously allowed him to disengage and end the game. My opponent scored internal damage on me so he received 8 points as well as his ship's cost was 11 less than mine so he gets 11 additional for a total of 19 victory points. I scored internal damage for 10%, forced him to disengage for 25%, and crippled him for 50%. To determine victory points you only use the highest category and since I crippled him I get 50% or 35 victory points.

It was a quick but fun game for both of us. If we had been using the full rules we would have been using drones, suicide shuttles, transporters, and boarding parties. The full rules have many different elements that greatly enhance the strategy as well as the fun of the game.

2 comments:

  1. Now I want to pull out the game and play it!-Excellent writeup!

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm glad you liked it and definetely break out Fed Com and enjoy!

    ReplyDelete

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