FULL THRUST/B5 SCENARIO #5:
                             "Shon'Kar!"

The Narn-Centauri was beginning to wind down. The Narn were losing, steadily. Many ships from the Narn fleet had been scattered to the 4 winds, and then isolated and destroyed by superior Centauri forces. Very few Narn ships escaped the clutches of Centauri traps.

Returning from a reconaissance/combat mission, the Narn battlecruiser K'sha D'tan, members of the K'sha's task force, came home to find the colony they were based out of razed by the Centauri. The Centauri had all but wiped out most of the civilian population. The commander of the K'sha D'tan was outraged to learn that a Narn military cruiser led the decimation of the colony. Issuing the Blood Oath, he chased down the traitorous Narns and their Centauri bed partners. He caught up with them in the Centauri system of Delogh. There was no deft strategic maneuvering; the Narn boiled into the system and immediately pounced upon the Centauri forces. The Narn group was clustered about 65 units away from the Centauri base, approximately in direction 7 from the base, with the various Centauri elements scattered to headings of 9, 4, and 6 from the base. The Narn have a battlecruiser, two heavy cruisers, a missile cruiser, an escort cruiser, two destroyers, and four lancers. The Centauri have a 100-mass base, a heavy cruiser, three light cruisers, a missile destroyer, two 'normal' destroyers, and two escort frigates. Plus a Narn light cruiser.

TURN 1: The Narn, for the most part, come straight forward and begin to accelerate. No weapons fire from the Narn, they are on average 53 units away. However, the base reaches out and touches a Narn Lancer, which vaporizes. The Narn aren't real happy and work hard at coming up with a different plan of attack. The Centauri base and the T'Gor (Narn heavy cruiser) launch their fighters.

TURN 2: 70% of the Narn elements suddenly veer off. The battlecruiser, the missile cruiser, the escort crusier, and one of the heavy cruisers lumber on towards the base, in an attempt to draw some fire away from the smaller ships. The lancers begin to accelerate and perform a tight turn. Their plan: to crank up the speed as high as possible, so when they hit the range of the base weapons they will only suffer one turn of fire before they will be right on top of the base in order to unleash their armaments (each carried 3 sub-munition packs). The destroyers it's not clear what they were doing; either they were to escort the lancers, or they were just trying to stay out of range of the base themselves; not sure. The other heavy cruiser (T'Lon) went wandering off in another direction. I wasn't entirely sure what his plan or agenda was. The Centauri were concerned about the Narn energy mines, so while they were trying to get their forces closer to the base for mutual support and protection, they were working out plans to get close but not be too close together. Their frigates and destroyers started coming in, as were the light cruisers. But the light cruisers began to turn slightly, as if to get set up for an interception of the heavier Narn elements coming in. The Narn battlecruiser popped the base with an energy mine. The Centauri heavy cruiser launches its fighters.

TURN 3: The forces that were closing continue to close. The Centauri lights sharpen their attack vectors and begin their attack runs against the Narn battlecruiser and supporting elements. The Narn fighters from the T'Gor get into a tiff with the Centauri battlecruiser's fighters. 3 of the Narn fighters (which are heavy fighters) walk away; only 1 Centauri fighter (which are fast fighters) escapes the fray. One of the Centauri light cruisers falls under the attention of the Narn weapons, and the Narn battlecruiser fires a second energy mine at the base. The base and other Centauri elements decide at this point the T'Gor is to be rechristianed the T'Toast, and begin concentrating their fire. The Narn Lancers continue turning and accelerating, as do the destroyers. The T'Lon tries to correct it's current heading and rejoin the fight (but it's turning factor is half that of the Lancers, so it might take a bit). The base launches all of its missiles. One Centauri destroyer accelerates to help out the light cruiser elements, and the other kinda hangs out. The escort frigates adjust their heading and overshoot the base.

TURN 4: The Narn battlecruiser comes under the attention of some significant Centauri fire and loses an energy mine. It fires the last remaining one at the base, with total damage being slightly above average. The T'Gor suffers grievous fire. The T'Gor's fighters find themselves behind a Centauri fighter squadron, but don't do as well this time around. The T'Gor and the Narn light cruiser on the Centauri side get real close, but do no damage to each other. The Narn missile ship finally launches missiles. And speaking of missiles, two Centauri missiles are in range of two ships: the Narn battlecruiser and escort cruiser. The escort cruiser plucks off the missile attacking it, but is too far out of range to protect the battlecruiser, who tries to shoot the missile homing in on it down, but fails. Fortunately for the battlecruiser the missile only does minimal damage. One of the Centauri lights thumps on the Narn escort cruiser.

TURN 5: Finally, ships begin to blow up. The Narn battlecruiser receives a LOT of attention - but by G'Quon somehow survives, although looks in sorry shape. The T'Lon finally gets lined up and plinks from extreme range. the T'Gor goes head to head with the base. Let's just say the base took less than it dished out. Two of the Centauri lights blow up, and the last takes some serious damage. The Narn Lancers finally get lined up but note a Centauri light cruiser in their sites - and obliterate it (mentioned above). One of the Lancers buys it from concentrated Centauri fire and a Centauri missile. One of the Narn destroyers knocks down the remaining Centauri missile moments before it itself is destroyed by the Centauri light cruiser that also blew up this turn (mentioned above). The Centauri missile destroyer releases her brood.

TURN 6: The Narn light cruiser on the Centauri side finally takes it in the chin (the remaining Narn heavy fighters get close), but hangs on. The Narn battlecruiser's luck finally gives out and it dies. The two remaining Lancers plow into the base; the base hangs on, and appears that it won't die this game. It even gets a successful repair roll, too. The Narn are down to three ships by the end of the turn: the missile cruiser, the T'Lon heavy cruiser, and the last destroyer. All other ships are toasted. The last Centauri light is destroyed, also. The latest batch of Centauri missiles seem to be out of position to nail anything much. The Centauri lose their heavy cruiser to concentrated fire and missiles (the battlecruiser is able to shoot two of them down, but the escort frigate fails to get in the fray, so two hit, removing the battlecruiser as a threat). The Narn missile cruiser opens a jump point to depart.

TURN 7: Never really got this turn underway as the Narn light cruiser on the Centauri side decides to end the scenario, once and for all. So he opens a jump point at the exact same spot the missile cruiser did, and...everybody dies in the resultant explosion. However, with the status of each side at this point, it was a pretty clear Centauri victory (although a bloody one).

I also thought the Centauri lights were wobbling between getting closer to the base for support, or going in for an all-out attack against the battlecruiser and escorting cruiser ships. I personally would've sacrificed them on a frontal assault against the Narn heavies, and if they survived (and hopefully did some damage), sent them onward to do a blow-by on the smaller units circling out on the fringes. Failing that, circle around and come up behind the Narn heavy and destroyer floating up the side of the playing field. Then again, I personally would've stopped the Centauri escort frigates near enough to the base to support the base and any nearby ships (eg, the Cent heavy cruiser) in anti-missile/anti-fighter roles. Also, I would've wanted to get the remaining Narn fighter squadron out into play, too. Fighters didn't do too much in this game but beat on each other and a little on one ship. Missiles proved more devastating, but I don't think they were over-balancing; each side had adequate anti-missile protection systems to deal with it.

The ram attempts on the base by the two lancers was unexpected, but then again, they were Narns. I should've figured they'd do that if they could.

The final turn in which the Narn light pulled the bonehead maneuver with the Narn missile cruiser merely meant, for me, the game/scenario was over, and things wouldn't get dragged out for another couple turns. I know a couple of people were less than happy about this (and I perfectly understand). Given the situation at that point, I have to say it was clearly a Centauri victory overall. Ignoring the bonehead maneuver the Centauri would've been able to terminate the remaining Narn forces (they had the firepower), although they might've gotten a bit more hurt themselves. Probably not much; they likely would've kept the base going, although it was grievously wounded (8 pts out of 50 remaining).

I think communication between teammates proved to be a contributing factor to any mistakes that were made. The Narn had a couple turns of good communications, but other turns it seemed very quiet on their end, or had limited participation (unless they were talking and I wasn't getting copies of the messages). The Centauri seemed more cohesive in their plans and decisions, though communications began to fall apart a bit towards the end, also, I think.

Speaking of mistakes, I made my share in the detection reports. I had hoped I would've done better, and thanks to all those sharp-eyed ones who caught my goofs and corrected me. I can only try and do better in future scenarios.

Was the scenario balanced? I'm not sure. I think it was possibly under balanced for the Narn, but I am extremely hesitant to give them another ship. Or take away a ship from the Centauri side. With the mistakes made on both sides, it's difficult to tell. Maybe the mistakes balanced each side out some; not sure. Also, it might have been that this was a PBeM game, and not a live action game. Things might have gone very different had we been playing this live, in person.

I hope the time-length between when detections came out and due dates for next set of orders was reasonable. With only one exception, no one spoke up any, so I assume these were okay. I could've gone a little faster, but wanted to give you all time to assimilate things, and I know you guys have other things to do in life besides sit by your terminals waiting for detection reports to come out. I tried my best to get them out asap, I think I only slipped once from when I hoped to have gotten it out to when I did get it out. Fortunately the weather sucked enough around here that i wasn't out doing other things, like climbing or something. ;-)

If it were possible I would've had the range table shrunk to an 80-column format, but with the number of ships involved, it wasn't going to happen. That made keeping detection reports on the web easier for those with access to read (do you guys without web access have lynx, by any chance???).

Well, that's my $0.02 worth. Thanks again for all who played, and for the feedback I've gotten. I'm sorry for those who didn't enjoy it as much as they might have. Maybe in a future scenario things will be different? And thanks for those of you who got creative with dialogue and stuff. That was fun. :-)

I also wanted to publically thank Adam Delafield for the awesome maps he supplied for the Centauri side (and allowing me to grab and link them into my webpages for everyone else to peruse). Plus I wish to thank Mike Wikan for the neat battlescene he came up with early on, and the deluge of counters he created (those shadow ships redone yet, Mike?? ;-).

Now to go get the next scenario prepped. If you're curious, it'll be an Earth- Dilgar War scenario, Scenario #2, "Rocky Road". You can read the summary over on my webpage (http://scivax.stsci.edu/~kochte/scenario-summary.html). Any slots left over after the lurkers grab them will be given to those players from this previous scenario, in order that I got messages from people.

I'll keep the info, detection reports, etc from this past scenario on my website until the end of March (I had trouble getting some of the last few maps to translate properly from various systems, so those didn't link well; you can try them, but if they fail on you, this is why). Apologizes to those of you who don't have access; if you want, I can email you any of the files.

Mk