Lord Cameron and I had an AeroTech dogfight today.
Lyran space. Near a border world. 3025. An unknown DropShip is heading to a Lyran planet and refuses calls to identify itself. The Lyrans scramble a trio of fighters to intercept. The DropShip is not military-grade and slows down but launches a quartet of its own fighters. The Lyrans must defend their world from these unknown raiders.
I am playing the Lyrans which include an R20 Lucifer, a K5 Stuka, and a D36 Thunderbird:
Lord Cameron's unknown raiders include a D36 Thunderbird, a SL-15A Slayer, a SL-17 Shilone (proxied by a Lightning), and a SB-27 Sabre:
Here's our starting deployment and we used all this space and more:
We used advanced vector movement. Here we are out of range and the next turn...
...missiles are flying:
The Lyran Stuka and T-bird squared off with the raider Slayer and T-bird while the Lyran Lucy fly off on his own to take on the Sabre and Shilone:
The raider Sabre and Shilone, however, break off and want to play with the big boys:
The 100-ton Lyran T-bird has some choice words with the 25-ton Sabre about that:
The gutted and chastised Sabre breaks for home and leaves the bigger boys to play:
Next, the Lyran Stuka finishes off the Shilone (Lightning) that the Lucy was pounding on. The raiders are suddenly down two fighters:
...but the raider Slayer evens the odds by blasting apart the Lyran T-bird:
It's now a two-on-two fight with the Lyran Lucy and Stuka versus the raider T-bird and Slayer:
The Stuka strafes the T-bird:
There are several turns of mixing it up with lasers and missiles flying:
Initiative is everything. Losing initiative is bad! My Lyran Lucy is out of position and my Stuka is mauled from both ends!:
Winning initiative redeems the situation and turns the tables on the raiders:
It is not enough for my Stuka, which is destroyed by the T-bird, leaving my Lucy alone against the T-bird and Slayer:
The raider's T-bird and Slayer, however, are battered by this time while the extremely heavily armored Lucy is barely scratched. When the Lucy finishes off the T-bird, the badly damaged Slayer burns for home, leaving the Lucy the victor:
The raiders' DropShip recovers the returning Sabre and Slayer and turns back to its JumpShip, which then leaves Lyran space. The Lyrans recover their two ejected pilots, capture the two ejected raider pilots, and salvage what they can from the wreckage left tumbling through space.
It was an enjoyable battle. I was really impressed with the R20 Lucy. Though its only real firepower was two large lasers, its incredible armor laughed off virtually all enemy fire and rarely even gave the chance for a crit. Other fighters were faster, more maneuverable, and had more firepower, but the R20 had the staying power to bide its time, shrug off enemy fire, and slowly wear the enemy down.
If I was the Lyran AeroSpace Fighter Command CO, pre-Eisensturm days, I would make the R20 Lucifer the mainstay fighter throughout Lyran space!
