The Andromedans do not get to use their initiative on turn 1.
*Flagship
*Fleet Flagship
The route 2 and 3 battles were played simultaneously and the route 1 battle was played the next day. We even went so far as to match turn for turn. This was done at the request of the Andromedan players. This battle marked the return of the dreaded Cobranator (Cobras and Terminators disguised so they can't be easily distinguished from one another.
This was a battle where the two main players were me, commanding the Klingons and Minuteman, commanding the Andromedans. Also commanding GP ships were: Vir and the Lyrans, Cat and the Hydrans, and DaP and the WYN. This was Minuteman's first battle as the Andros in a while and the first with a fleet in a similarly long period. It was our first chance to see how he would implement Andromeda's strategy.
An interesting side note on the Hydran ship selection. Cat chose the Rhino Hunter as the escort for his scout because it was listed as a DWH in the Master Ship Chart. He interpreted that as Heavy War Destroyer when it meant Hellbore-armed War Destroyer. This is Cat's first time playing the Hydrans in Unity and he's only used them a few times in warm-ups so the mistake is understandable. The ship worked out okay in the battle anyway.
The Andromedans started out at speed 20 and kept it for the entire turn. We started at speed 12, bumped it to 18 on impulse 9 and back down to 16 on impulse 17. The X-ships started at 31 and stayed there so at least something on our side moved after his side already did so. The Andromedans deployed in a standard battle line and we setup in an Kzinti-style V formation with the Hydrans on the right flank, the X-ships on the left and the C8 anchoring the V. We pre-launched as many drones as we could and then filled the first impulse with more launches and threw in scatterpacks to get a total of 146 drones on the board.
First contact came on impulse 17 when the Andromedans were surprised to find that we had targeted the MWPs with our first wave of drones. The first two were completely destroyed. Impulse 18 had 6xStinger-IIs engage two more MWPs. Both MWPs and 4 fighters are destroyed. Impulse 19 had my PF flotilla attack the last pair of MWPs. Both were destroyed (barely). Return fire took out a pair of Z-Ys that got too close to the action. It turns out that PFs are superior to MWPs by a significant amount and that 6 fighters roughly equal 2 MWPs when the fighters don't have their drones. It's probably 6 to 3 if you use the drones against the MWPs, maybe even 4 to 3.
My X-ships had been on a flanking run. On impulse 20 they turned to attack the right flank of the Andromedan formation, and two impulses later destroyed a cobra from ranges 5 and 6. The next impulse, the entire Andromedan fleet turned toward my two X-ships. On impulse 25, they fired at the DX with everything they could bring to bear: a Cobra was at range 3 and the Terminator at range 5. Other ships were further away, but fired their TR beams also. 20 damage got through my #1 shield and the #2 let through 2 internals. Fire from every weapon the rest of our ships could bring to bear on them destroyed the leading two Cobras of the Andromedan fleet. On impulse 29, my fighters and the Instigator ended up in the same hex. I lost 4 fighters and put 44 damage on its front panels. It dumped the damage to an energy module. An impulse later, the STT and two fighters fired, getting 48 on the front panels. A Cobra destroyed the fighters with phasers. On impulse 32, my X ships got into position to fire their rear phasers into the rear panels of the Instigator and added 38 points there.
Everybody moved at speed 31. The Andromedans destroyed my last four Klingon fighters on impulse 1. In exchange, the fighters put 31 points in the rear panels of the Instigator. Fire from my other ships puts another 40 into those panels, and the ship took 18 internals. On impulse 2, it displaced itself away from my ships. The Infestor gathered in the surviving satellite ships. My drone launches this turn were at the Satellite base and I managed to launch 39 of them. All of these were destroyed by the Andromedan minefield. The Hydran player disengaged his DWH, the Lyran disengaged the STT, and all Andromedan ships disengaged.
With the minefield somewhat cleared, we picked our way toward the Satellite Base. This continued for a while and we used drones to pull his t-bombs. Our drone launch rate is 30 per turn for nine more turns. On turn 3, he used a t-bomb and his phasers to get our drones. He did the same on turn 4. On turn 5, with no t-bombs left, he relied on tractors, scout sensors and his phasers to defend the base. 10 drones made it through and he dropped down the temporal elevator to fight very quickly. Turn 6, we stayed out of range of his TR beams and let the drones do their work. 8 drones hit the base. It barely survived, crippled and with power to feed its PA panels and nothing else. Turn 7, it was destroyed by drones.
A bad opening round for the Andromedans of route 3. That is to be expected, however as they don't have the firepower on route 3 to match a galactic fleet. The GP learned that MWPs aren't nearly as dangerous as we had been worried about them being., so we wasted a lot of our early drones The Andromedan strategy had been to do everything they could to reach the SCS and destroy it. When the DX presented a good target, it was impossible to resist. X-ships are amazing things and it survived the attack. I lost all of my fighters and most of the Hydran ones. The SCS and Minesweeper for next rounds battles will have to change, but that's no big deal.
I'm really pleased with the diversion created by the X-ships. If he had gotten lucky though, it would have been a costly diversion. I'll be more careful with my turn modes next time. If my other ships had fired on the Instigator on turn 1, I think we might have destroyed it on turn 2.
Andromedan losses: Satellite Base, 6xMWP, 3x MWP (support), 3xCobra. Instigator damaged
GP losses: 12xZ-YB fighter, 4xStinger-II fighter. Klingon DX, Hydran DWH damaged.