Renegade Legion: Leviathan - Planetary Defence

 To try out my scenario generator, I decided on three cards each for the belligerents. So here's what I drew:

Terran Overlord Government:

1 frigate (3 fighter flights)

1 destroyer

5 corvettes

5 missile platforms

4 fighter groups

Renegade Legion:

1 cruiser (1 fighter group)

1 carrier frigate (5 fighter groups)

1 destroyer (1 fighter squadron)

From scenario cards I pulled planetary defence and from special conditions it was asteroid belt.

So after some random and some deliberate placement of terrain and units, the map looked something like this:

Note: I don't use the stat sheets that come with the game. Instead, I favour the ones produced by Jape77 on Boardgamegeek (visible at top right). I like the changes the author made, but I also find them more visually pleasing than the originals. The fighter groups sheet comes from my own Excel tool (which I uploaded to BGG as well). Bottom right are some sheets I made up for small craft, like corvettes, based on some discussions I read in different forums that discussed this very thing (I'll likely post these to BGG as well).

My feeling was that the RL force would have a pretty easy go of things. The cruiser's stats alone look very intimidating compared to the entire TOG force. Then again, doesn't a commander want every possible advantage when they are attacking?

I fashioned the following narrative from my card picks. 

RL forces sent a decoy group through the TOG planet's sensor range. Having succeeded in drawing of a number of the vessels stationed there into a pursuit, the RL command sent a small carrier force to raid the planet with the mission of destroying the orbital defences - five missile platforms capable of firing 2 F-class missile salvos each - as a precursor to a full planetary invasion (or liberation, as the RL prefers to call it). 

The Legion ships approached the planet from behind the nearby asteroid belt to hide their signals. But the interference is a double edged sword and they will have to traverse the belt in order to target anything with the capital ships' weapons. This means they will be in range of TOG missiles from the orbital platforms.

Turn 1: 

Fighters deploy. Everyone closing. The first losses are to the fighters that met in the middle, both dishing out exactly what they received. I found a more planety-looking planet to replace the pail lid.

I had trouble trying to figure out how fighters were supposed to do damage to each other, I came up with a simplified process for dogfight attrition. Thinking on my younger days of playing Chuck Yeager's Air Combat on PC, my hit accuracy with that game's WWII fighters averaged around 20% (unless I was shooting down bombers). Based on that, I decided to roll a d3 for each group and multiply the result by 10 for a percentage (10%, 20%, 30%). Multiplied a group's CRA (or LRA) value by the percentage, using the result rounded down as how many boxes to cross off the enemy group's strength boxes, and vice-versa, treating it as simultaneous fire. 

Example: Red Group A (CRA 108) vs Blue Group B (CRA 122). 

Red rolls a 2. 108 x 0.2 = 21.6. Blue Group B crosses off 21 boxes.

Blue rolls a 3. 122 x 0.3 = 36.6. Red Group A crosses off 36 boxes.

Each side then crosses out CRA values if reduction thresholds were reached.

If fighters have a choice between fighter opposition or targets for their missiles, they could only chose one line of attack. In this case, if fighters wanted to target an orbital missile platform, they could not impose casualties on any attacking interceptors. Missile strength is also reduced in to CRA values as they decline with attrition.

Turn 2:

The heavies are still too far away to do much of anything. Fighters meet and start start duking it out with each other. I should have had the RL fighters (red) attack the platforms right away... Also, I didn't realize the RL cruiser is in range of one of the platforms (both to fire missiles and to be fired on).

Turn 3:

The RL cruiser is now in range to fire missiles at the platforms, but they are in range to fire on her as well, so she takes some damage, losing a large portion of her fore and forward right armour sections. Lucky missile placement destroys her silos so the cruiser's second salvo cannot be fired. The two left-most platforms were hit and destroyed by the RL cruiser and destroyer salvos. We start to see some fighter groups go missing. The RL destroyer races in to launch missiles at the topmost platforms.

I couldn't find any info on orbital installations having missiles, so I made up my own stats: shield factor 3, 50 armour, 8 systems that could get damaged (rolled a d10 for each hit past the armour to damage systems, no systems hit on 9 or 0). 

Turn 4:

Realizing her vulnerability to the platform attacks, the cruiser slows and turns to stay out of missile range and just try to weaken their shields for fighter attacks. The bottom platform's reactor is hit; I decide it can explode if I roll a 1 and it does! I roll a d3 to take out percentages of the near-by fighters. Red fighters also take out the right-most platform. The RL Ajax destroyer (sitting between the cruiser and the planet) is crippled, having lost its left-side thrusters last turn, she is also now out of missiles. Only the top-most platform remains and it's up to the fighters beside it to take it down next turn.

Turn 5:

More red fighter groups are eliminated as they try to make their way back to the carrier. The cruiser is flipped around to put armour on the side of the TOG destroyer bearing down. The small TOG ship fires its spinal mount and does a little damage to armour, same as the Ajax destroyer aiming at the TOG frigate. Most importantly, the RL fighters can send just enough missiles into the final platform (already weakened by the cruiser's long range shots) to put it out of commission.

Unfortunately, I cleaned everything up after that turn, figuring there couldn't be much more done to the RL force, totally forgetting about the fact that the TOG fighters that remained all had missiles. It's possible that some of them might have been able to get close enough to retaliate somewhat effectively, and the RL ships could have come away a little worse off than they were. Even so, I think they took more damage than I was expecting, having lost practically all their fighters and two salvos hitting the cruiser with enough punch to damage systems.

The two most heavily damaged ships of the game.

Leviathan is perhaps the most complex game of any type that I own and while I do like it, it takes a lot out of me to play it solo. This was the largest number of units I've fielded in a game. The turns averaged an hour each, setup was a couple of hours (including making the corvette sheets and statting missile platforms).

Take-aways:

1) Check better for firing opportunities - a missed chance at firing could be crucial

2) Stay on target with fighters - RL wasted a turn dogfighting when they could have been firing missiles at the platforms and getting out of Dodge.

3) More spinal mount attacks? - I played with the thinking that only one spinal weapon attack was possible in a game, but can't find that limitation in the book. If more can be fired, one might use maneuverability of destroyers to stay in front or rear arcs of larger ships and come at them with spinal mount attacks (and missiles, of course). 

4) I really should try getting Full Thrust to the table.

Renegade Legion: Leviathan - Making a Scenario Generator

It's been a couple or three years and I've made my way back to Leviathan again. Boy, just seems to be one of those games that always needs a few years to pass before the desire to play it overcomes the mental inertia that resists the pre-game set-up. I like the idea of the game, I like the marking off boxes of armour in the shapes created by different weapons and watching systems go down once the armour is penetrated. I just feel like I don't know where to start to make a scenario. Consider the last time I played, I used a scenario I found online.

This time I did things a little differently and I think I'm mostly inspired by the host of the YouTube channel "Joy of Wargaming" and how he sets up a mini game of moving armies around on a map to figure out how they meet and what the force strengths are...very interesting stuff (Link to series here). What his series following a Napoleonic style campaign has helped me realize is that it's ok to play a non-balanced game. Just the fact that one side is stronger can contribute to a more engaging story and can point you toward a more easily contrived scenario: side blue is stronger on paper, so perhaps side red is staging a fighting retreat, hoping to lose as few units as possible.

Well, I didn't really care to run a whole campaign map, but I had the thought of what about a scenario generator that uses a deck of cards. I got to work.

One suit had types and quantities of ships assigned to each card for the TOG forces and another suit with an identical set-up for the Renegade Legion forces. To the third suit I assigned certain scenario types: planetary defence, escort mission, or an all out fight among others. The fourth suit was assigned special conditions of the battle: asteroid belt bisects the play area, solar flares from a nearby star send damaging beams across the map at intervals and other things that could cause interesting changes in the course of a battle.

My scenarios have the potential to be massively unbalanced! I could decide that each side draws two cards. Maybe one side gets a battleship and a frigate and the other gets a frigate and a cruiser. So, depending on the scenario card I pick, the smaller side is trying to get away, but maybe theirs is a suicide mission to try and bring down that battleship! Or maybe the special condition does something that disables the battleship. I don't know. 

It was actually pretty easy to come up with and I hope it will reduce the amount of resistance I feel about setting up a game. I feel like there's a nice amount of potential and maybe I can tweak things a little as I find parts I don't like.

Now, my Leviathan box has 11 ship counters per side for the capital ships - from destroyer on up - but dividing them up, they only took up 9 or 10 of the cards (some have multiples of the smaller ships on them). So I started adding corvettes, since there are a large number of smaller ship counters that are too big to be fighters. The rule book kind of presents them as corvettes, but it's unclear how to stat them out for a game. Some online searching led me to a couple of old discussions on how to insert the smaller ships. Following some of these suggestions, I made up status displays for these small vessels.

I also added orbital missile platforms as one of the card options. Of course, there seems to be no info about something like that. There seem to be orbital platforms mentioned in some rulebook or something, but they are more on the mostly harmless side of things. So, I'm making up my own stats for missile platforms as well.

Good thing I spent that time to make up some stuff because both corvettes and missile platforms made it into the first scenario I drew. But that's a story for another post.

Renegade Legion: Leviathan - Recon gone wrong

First off, the following scenario came from a blog called SFSCT's Scifi Gaming Blog. The scenario is here.

The author starts the scenario thusly:

"A reconnaissance element of two RL Destroyers entered the Shorta System on 9 SEP 6833 with the goal of assessing TOG military strength.  Last report had the TOG operating a Naval Raiding Sqdn (98790th) an Interceptor Group (44244th).  These assets operated in and around a Orbital Station orbiting the only planet in the system (Skate). 

                As a precursor to a future RL incursion, these destroyers were detached for a high speed pass through the system to obtain critical information and pinpoint defensive systems.  As luck would have it, the two RL destroyers exited T-Space and immediately began to experience mechanical complications.  Whether due to poor maintenance or just the age of the RL ships it did not matter, they were forced to stop and abort their high speed pass of the system on the outer edge of the system.  Although initially caught off guard, TOG forces immediately dispatched its destroyer on patrol, along with two others from the Naval base along with some fighters for protection.  Wary of a RL feint, the system Prefect chose to hold his heavier ships and fighters in reserve, anticipating a subsequent T-Space event closer to the planet.  Only a small spike had registered on the T-Space Doppler prior to the RL Destroyer's entry into the system and the fact that there was no indication of any follow T-Doppler waves was a bit nerve racking as this was the tactic for invasions.   Ships would make long jumps to points near systems, exit into N-Space shed some of their shimmer and then make the quick jump into the target system, giving the defenders little to no time to react.  So the TOG Prefect sent his sacrificial lambs to investigate..."

Please follow the link above to see the rest.

So RL: Leviathan is a game I acquired maybe 9 years ago. Using the original rules, I tried one of the scenarios laid out in the rule book: a battleship vs. 72 fighters. The fighters wiped the floor with the battleship. Then I used the hex mats to try out Wooden Ships and Iron Men. Finally I used hex mats and ship counters trying out the conversions of the ships to Full Thrust, but I found it didn't work too well.

While searching Leviathan scenarios, I stumbled on the SFSCT scenario and it looked easy enough to try. On top of that, I downloaded modified ship status displays from BGG, meant to make ship strengths more comparable to ship sizes, though this scenario only uses destroyers.

My random rolling for position actually placed the RL ships facing away from where the TOG ships came in. However, the TOG ships came in facing the same direction. I rolled for TOG starting speed and they got 5. I decided not to have them deploy fighters, though I probably should have.

Turn 1:

Both RL ships rolled clean to accelerate their full thrust rating to speed 4. Accelerating to speed 9, TOG ships close the gap. Only the TOG Serpens class, Cannae, and the RL Ajax class, Longula, are able to fire and only at each other and only missiles.

The RL ship turrets reduce the TOG salvo to almost nothing and the Longula's shields absorb the rest. The return fire from Longula is reduced to half strength by TOG point defense turrets and Cannae's shields, leaving a gaping hole in the destroyer's armour.

Turn 2

The pursuers close even more. Longula experiences difficulties in Engineering (rolled a -1 reduction of thrust) and falls behind her partner, Prometia. Longula receives another salvo of missiles, some of which get through this time, but nothing penetrates her armour. Having fired her only salvo, Longula can't return the favour. Prometia, however, sends some over to Cannae. Cannae loses all frontal armour a salvo of missiles, her spinal mount weapon, and other non-combat systems. The other TOG destroyers' missiles are a different type and are still out of range.

All ships then fire beam cannons. Cannae is ravaged and suffers severe structural damage and losing life support systems. She is effectively out of the fight. Longula suffers minor damage as most of the fire is absorbed by her shields and armour.

Turn 3

Prometia makes speed 12 and jumps away from the system into T-space, meaning Longula is left behind at only one speed point away from doing the same. The twin TOG Fulgur class destroyers close to missile range and let loose a salvo each. Tapae's salvo is reduced to 40% strength by turrets and shields and is absorbed by rear and port-rear armour. Massada's salvo is also reduced to 40% strength and takes a small chunk of the starboard plating. Tapae's front beam cannons carve out more armour from Longula's rear. Massada, though, is able to train port side weapons on the RL destroyer, obliterating armour and damaging her power plant (thrust points reduced to 1/2), destroying some point defense turrets, rear beam cannons, a flight deck and damaging FTL drive.

Turn 4

Longula barely manages to jump into T-space to escape the system, but only just. This ends the game with a RL victory as all they had to do was survive. Had I had TOG fighters out, Longula is not likely to have made it out.

Damage reports

Prometia (RL), Tapae (TOG) and Massada (TOG) did not take any fire.

Longula (RL)

I realized afterward that I marked Massada's beam damage on the wrong side of the ship and with that chunk of armour missing where I should have been marking, she would likely not have survived to make the jump out of the system, giving the Terran Overlord Government a minor victory.

Cannae (TOG)

A very bad day for Cannae.

I think I have to try a couple more times before I'll get the hang of this game. But I don't know when I will play again. Looking back at pictures from the WS&IM posting is making me think about running some Full Sail again. I guess we'll see where I actually go next. 

A side note: I laminated a bunch of the sheets (not Cannae's though). The pen I tried to use did not stay on too well, but I read that using a wet erase pen should work really well, so trying to get one of those.