This article and its companion Lone Wolf ( also by David),
are in my opinion the best Star Cruiser add-ons to ever appear
in Challenge magazine, or in print. My thanks to David for
granting permission for me to host it on my web site. - Kevin Clark
- Nov. 19th, 1996.
by David C. Nilsen
( dnilsen AT interactive DOT net ),
Stutterwarp Chart designs created by Devon Nilsen
Copyright ©1989, 1996 David C. Nilsen. All Rights Reserved.
Originally published in Challenge magazine #37.
HTML entry/layout/editing by Kevin Clark
( kevinc AT cnetech DOT com )
Please report errors to me.
Disclaimer required by Far Future Enterprises: This item is not authorized or endorsed by Far Future Enterprises ( FFE) and is used without permission. The item is for personal use only. Any use of FFE's copyrighted material or trademarks in this file should not be viewed as a challenge to those copyrights or trademarks. In addition, this item cannot be republished or distributed without the consent of the author ( David C. Nilsen).
King's a lousy enough place to live without people getting kidnapped and having potshots taken at them. At least that's the way I look at it. So when it turned out that the authorities wanted some Space Force support in hunting down the trouble, it made sense for me to get involved. It also helped that I was in command of the only ASF Patrol Cutter in system at the time. The next thing I knew I was up to my elbows in AmeriCo smugglers - nothing new around here, except that thiis time they had some Provolution buddies along. Apparently the DNAM program on King had attracted the Proves' attention, and AmeriCo figured there was some money in it. Not this time there wasn't. By the time it was all over, I'd had to destroy a couple of AmeriCo blockade runners, kill a half dozen of their people, and take 14 into custody. What counts is that I brought my crew through intact, not a scratch on em. Pretty good week's work, I thought. Made all the papers, and got me two weeks' furlough.
I was only into my third day of vacation on Ellis when a recall signal came over my computerized valet. I punched through to the front desk, and the guy who answered told me there was already an ASF officer down there with my orders. When I got there she handed me an envelope with "Lieutenant Rendell Barrett" on the front. I'd lost the "j.g." after my rank; that was a start. Have to send AmeriCo a thank-you note. Orders were to report to Earth, Britain to be exact, some place called "High Wycombe." Neat.
On the fast courier home the liaison officer explained to me that Fleet Command had circulated a requirement for the hottest small ship commander on the American Arm. My commodore recommended me, and as the dispatches on my little escapade had just hit the admirals' desks back at Fleet, they stamped me approved right away. Apparently I was off to the Frog Arm. I get the feeling that the higher levels are unhappy with the way things have been handled out there lately, pants gettin' caught down and things like that. So they're putting together a force of personnel with small-command experience, get some new blood out there I guess. Just hope they don't spill too much of it.
We didn't even go through Gateway. They just rammed me through the abbreviated and even more painful version of the disinfection procedures on one of the OQC satellites, shoved me into a space plane, and dropped me to the ground. Showed up at the British Exospace plant - I guess that's what's in High Wycombe.
Eventually I shake the hand of Angus Gordon, chief designer of BE's small ship division. I learn more from him than I've learned from anyone else so far. Since the Kafer invasion they've been looking for vessels to conduct clandestine operations behind the Kafer lines: hit and run, signals collection, recce. British Exo had been working on a small scouting vessel, but it was over a year away from completion. They found, though, that if they installed some off-the-shelf components like French engines and American guns and electronics, they could get the design up in only a couple months. Problem was if they did that they'd have to put French and American crews aboard a couple of them. That explained my being there. They've got three of them at the moment.
"Killiecrankie," Gordan said, making it sound Scottish, "is the lead craeft. Shae'll be yours." That got my attention. I figured they'd be giving me a new ship, but you know what they say about assuming. The same thing they say about volunteering - which I'd already done.
He took me across some open green fields past some old medieval-looking buildings. Gordon said it used to be an abbey. We headed for a modern hangar, set off by itself. They led us through the security perimeter to the rolling door of the hangar. Gordon punched a button on the wall, and the door began to open.
"Nae inna she a piece o' work?"
I looked at him. Normally I'd've thought a remark like that from a ship's designer was nothing but absolute arrogance. But that didn't show on his face. Instead there was just this kind of wonder, like a father might get when he looks at a beautiful, graceful woman who happens to be his daughter. Then I turned back to look at the ship and I knew he was right.
It's funny, the thing I still remember most about that moment is the way the word "swan" fell into my mind. Killiecrankie was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. She had a cockpit stuck way out on the end of a long neck that made it look like she was already flying, and big, broad, short-span wings that made the whole ship look like she was flaring out to land in some lake. She had a real fat aft fuselage, but that was pretty much concealed by the wings and the taper into the neck. They must have packed a lot of gear in there because the rest of the ship was surprisingly free of protrusions. Really smooth skin. The tail held three great big combustion bells, and I noticed a pair of forward vectored nozzles on her belly. Wow.
And she was mine.
I was introduced to two other officers. Southby-Talyour, the Brit, had Bannockburn, and the French officer, Lieutenant Lacombe, commanded Aubaine. Apparently my government declined the option to rename Killiecrankie with a more American flavor.
Talyour grinned around his pipe at Lacombe and me.
"So, it looks like we're the three men in the tub."
Lacombe laughed politely. "Or perhaps the three musketeers."
They looked at me expectantly. "You know we don't even know what we're supposed to be doing, why, how, with what or whom. But I'll bet it involves a whole lot more Kafers than I'd ever like to have a beer with. The way things stand right now, what we look like is three blind mice."
What d'ya know? It stuck.
"Three Blind Mice" is a 2300 AD and Star Cruiser scenario for three players and a referee. It is based on a campaign system first presented in "Lone Wolf" (Challenge 33). Necessary for play are copies of 2300 AD, Star Cruiser, Invasion, Kafer Sourcebook, Colonial Atlas, and issue 33 of Challenge. Many new charts and tables are included in this article. Occasional references will be made to information appearing in "Lone Wolf," which cannot be reproduced here simply due to space requirements. Also of possible interest but not necessary for play is Mission Arcturus, which details an American Marine company.
Humanity is finally involved in a full-scale war with an alien opponent. Losses have been severe, and not just in casualties: Man has been completely thrown out of several star systems. Refugees trickle in almost daily to remaining human systems with their tales of the Kafer's ruthless efficiency and wanton violence. Listeners cannot deny that these stories touch upon a primal panic hidden deep within their soul: the instinct for racial survival. Men have killed men before, and the results were unspeakable and unthinkable evil. But the threat of destruction at the three-fingered hands of repulsive, incomprehensible creatures adds a dimension of terror that can turn understandable fear into shuddering, skin-crawling catatonia. This fear is not unknown at the headquarters of humanity's naval forces, but these officers have found that they are struggling with another form of nameless dread. While engaged in the classic task of any military force at the outset of a war - purging the deadwood that accumulates inn the officer corps during peacetime - they are assembling data on their enemy and coming up with nothing. No creative, effective military operations are possible without accurate intelligence. But the Kafer War proper, as differentiated from the bloody skirmishes of the previous three years, began on 4 June 2301 with an attack by an unexpectedly large enemy force from a completely unforeseen direction. How many more of these surprises will the war hold? Will the Kafers continue to appear from supposedly safe quarters like bugs swarming from a crumbling wall? Or can their homeworlds, naval bases, and supply lines be discovered, exploited, and destroyed to preserve the future of humanity?
Three officers - Lieutenants Rendell Barrett ASF, Bruce St. John Southby-Talyour RN, and Raoul Lacombe IFN - have landed smack in the middle of this controversy. As commanders of the new Killiecrankie-class Intruder Scouts, specially constructed to answer these questions, they will find themselves on the sharp edge of intelligence-gathering in unknown space. While "Lone Wolf" concentrated on the international rivalries that prevailed in the prewar period, this campaign takes place when these barriers are breaking down in the face of the outside threat. The players in this scenario, often finding themselves a very long way from home with no one to depend upon but each other, will see these barriers breaking down much more rapidly. Victory points for certain accomplishments will still be awarded individually to the players, but "Three Blind Mice" relies more on a sense of common cause.
The campaign begins in late August/early September 2301 with the players and their ships at the secret human base in DM +35 2436. They will remain based here for the duration of the campaign. It is here that they must return to receive supplies, repairs, and the operational orders that will create the framework of the campaign. The referee will want to pay close attention to the events related in Invasion, but key events of the war are reproduced here for handy reference.
The Primary/Secondary and Tertiary Master Boards (( figure 1, fig 2, fig 3), and fig 4, respectively) are still the heart of the game mechanics - controlling and displaying how the players move through space to discharge their assignments. The master boards (figure 3 and fig 4) from "Lone Wolf" will not be necessary for play of "Three Blind Mice," as the charts are revised and expanded for this article. Some slight errors and omissions are evident in the previous master boards. All of these errors are minor and can be easily rectified by observant players, but they can be a cause of confusion. For this reason, those who are intending to play "Lone Wolf" are advised to use the master boards which are presented in this article instead. As before, these boards are abstract representations of the connections between star systems, and they are not scale maps. While the attempt has been made to reflect actual positions as much as possible, these charts actually distort and reverse many spatial orientations to fit all the information into a small space.
As soon as a ship reaches a system, it is transferred to the System Tactical Display ("Lone Wolf" figure 5). Calculate the scale of each ring and square in au. Then consult Colonial Atlas or Kafer Sourcebook for the number of planets and their orbits, and place them and the relevant G gradients on the map. Table 3 of "Lone Wolf" will help with this. Once on the STD, ships will be vulnerable to detection by grav scanners. As defending vessels possibly respond to evaluate this threat, their deep-system scanners and tactical sensors come into the fore. Bear in mind that a stutterwarp trace can be masked by tucking in close to a planet or other large gravity source, but neutrino emissions and the like from a functional power plant cannot. Table 1 of this article is set up in the same way as tables 1 and 2 of "Lone Wolf" but is of less utility in the framework of this campaign. The referee already knows where the human ships are at any given time, so having the Kafer ships that he controls conduct searches on the STD for our heroes is a little ridiculous. Remember that Kafers have little enthusiasm for boring, repetitive search patterns and are much more likely to leap at the last observed position of an unknown vessel. The signature values used to calculate the active and passive portions of the "Lone Wolf" tables were chosen for their particular value in simulating portions of that scenario. The same standards are retained here in order to allow direct comparisons of the sensors performance of the various craft.
Here we see that while the Kennedy is still the premier sensors platform in space, the Beta class is running a close second for active scanning, followed by the new Delta battleship. A look at the lower passive figures for these same Kafer ships shows them not performing as well, for their large search patterns are a result of brute sensor power and not decent speed. This chart also shows that fighters have the role of passive search in the Kafer fleet, as both Foxtrot and Golf surpass any Kafer ship and rival the human Suffren. For purposes of "Three Blind Mice," the passive signature of 2 used for table 1 corresponds to the Killiecrankie, and the reflective signature 3 is the same as the Scout Junior when her active systems are on. Killiecrankie is vulnerable to DSS for localization, if not fire control, at ranges much longer than these, however. The figures presented in the table, then, serve more to give an understanding of the proximity of vessels on the STD and also to indicate when it is time to move to the Star Cruiser map. The search vessels are more likely to engage in searches for unknown targets.
If the "Three Blind Mice" ever separate, allow the players to make arrangements for such things as stutterwarp recognition codes and standard doglegs. They will probably want to use the 0.272 light year minimum defensive dogleg as standard procedure. The MD Dogleg is so named because the mid-course deviation is mid-course separation of 150 au, the extreme range of a grav scanner, between courses only a degree apart along the surface of the double cone. The double cone describes the three-dimensional maneuver envelope of the MDD. It is impossible to detect a stutter trace at one au while stutterwarping, much less at 150. This separation also guarantees security at the narrow vertexes of the cones near the systems. Use of the MDD adds distance, therefore time, to passage over various distances according to the following pattern: over one light year, + 14%; over two light years, + 4%; over three light years, +2%; four light years, 1%; five light years, + 0.6%; six light years, + 0.4%; seven light years, + 0.3%.
Table 2, Departure Angles, is a continuation of table 4 from "Lone Wolf" which includes the data from Arcturus through the upper lobe of Kafer space to Gamma Serpenti, the choke-point of travel in the Kafer sphere. This is to assist human players in springing ambushes along departure angles of known Kafer communications routes.
Unlike in "Lone Wolf," players in "Three Blind Mice" will have little or no opportunity to command other ships. One chance alone exists, in which the players "rent" human cruisers for use on operations, as detailed in the Assignments and Victory section. The players are considered to be in command of (while actually just directing) these forces. They must always travel together and cannot split up except on the STD or in minor ways (like arriving in a given system from different directions or at slightly different times for tactical purposes). Naturally if one of these ships is disabled so it cannot move, the players can leave it behind to escape. The referee will allow them to receive information from human forces they meet up with (for example, news of the conduct of the war as noted in the chronology above, or notification of Kafer units that have just retreated or departed toward a certain system).
Supply and repairs are conducted at DM + 35 2436. All routine items, such as life support and replenishment of expended missiles, submunitions, etc., will be free of charge. Repairs and crew replacements, including marines, will also be free. Certain items, such as missile packs or marine combat walkers are considered additional to their standard outfitting. They must be purchased and replaced, if destroyed or damaged, with victory points at the rates listed in the Assignments and Victory section. It is also possible to draw "field supply" from other human units at other locations. Human commanders will be aware of the Blind Mice and the importance of their mission: They will be favorably disposed to handing over a missile, submunition, or crew replacement or two if these are available. Naturally cooperation will be higher if the officer happens to be American, British, or French. This interaction is handled by the referee and should be role played. Perhaps the Blind Mice have something of value to offer the officer - information, or captured Kafer personnel and technology?
Assignments are what make the campaign run. As rare and valuable fleet assets, the Blind Mice cannot be allowed to run around as they wish. They are instead committed to places and actions of their commanders' choosing, hence the term "blind." Each time the Mice return to DM +35 2436 and resupply and repair, they will be given another assignment. They will have little time to plan for their mission, load special-purpose cargoes and purchase items they feel will be useful, but they should depart in a timely manner. Victory points are also assessed and awarded when assignments are handed out. On occasion, optional assignments will be offered. As the name indicates, the choice is entirely up to the player, as it calls for one of the Mice to operate singly for a limited period of time. Under these circumstances, the other Mice will be given an assignment of similarly short duration so that they can soon be reunited for missions as a unit.
The referee will find his hands full running the Kafer forces for "Three Blind Mice." Significant preparation is required before the beginning of the scenario in order to make Kafer space real. This article does not contain any random tables for the appearance of Kafer forces. Under that kind of circumstance, the players would quickly feel that they were flying their ships through a matrix of random numbers, encountering opposition for no convincing reason. If players return to their base to report a certain activity in system X, it should be for a valid reason, not simply because the dice happened to fall a certain way while they were there. Players will be able to find Kafer refuel/resupply posts in certain systems. With this they can infer things about Kafer supply routes and can also assume that the post will probably still be there when they get back, as long as their reconnaissance was undetected. Similarly, players should be able to discover if Kafer patrol forces follow certain reliable schedules that they can use to their advantage in future ambushes. The space behind the Kafer lines must be a living, functional system, not a series of random encounters. While this will place a certain work load on the referee, this system can be the basis of unlimited future campaigns not only until the defeat of Kafer invasion forces in 2302 but also on through the human counteroffensive that is sure to follow. Rest assured that the work will be well rewarded with player enjoyment as well as future utility.
While much of this article describes carefully considered intellectual responses to military exigencies, the referee must be careful to play the Kafers as Kafers. Only an extremely rare and talented Kafer like "Triumphant Destiny" is able to combine leadership and shrewd tactics over time. Almost any Kafer can do these things when aroused, but to carry complicated military reasoning through periods of boring, nonstimulating, operational routine is something that most Kafers cannot do. "Triumphant Destiny"'s offensive dogleg into Beowulf notwithstanding, most Kafers are unable to bring off such shrewd maneuvers when not in the heat of battle. It is to be expected that no Kafer will dogleg except when breaking off from combat, as at Arcturus in 2295.
In addition, Kafers do not take such rudimentary precautions as escorting supply convoys behind their own lines. Such duty would be boring, routine, and degrading to any Kafer military vessel, which would rather be in combat. Similarly, the numerous Kafer garrisons, refueling stations, and outposts left behind in the wake of their advance will only be staffed by the most incompetent of Kafer forces. These are second-class troops, the high-quality troops having been taken along with the battle fleets. Also, these already low-quality troops will be bored out of their feeble Kafer minds and, therefore, will be at the lowest ebb of their intelligence and resourcefulness. At best, these troops will be somewhat aroused due to mutiny, and will be engaged in destroying their own equipment and tearing down their command structure. Both make hospitable candidates for detailed human scouting. There is an even chance that a grav scan is not being conducted except intermittently, and any kind of aggressive patrolling is out of the question.
However, should the Blind Mice be noticed, it is a sure bet that the Kafers will fall all over themselves in their haste to get out there and annihilate the unknown contact.
Placement of forces in Kafer-occupied space is up to the referee but should always include at least six Foxtrot-, Golf-, or Hotel-class fighters and a refueling station. Larger forces are possible, especially in systems with planetary troop garrisons. These are indicated in Invasion. Larger ships are often damaged vessels left behind, and Kafer repair seems to be drastically slow as a rule.
The fighting at the front consumes large amounts of missiles, repair parts, fighters, personnel, troops, and life support equipment. All of this must be supplied by starships filing in from Kafer space. Standard supply routes are sure to be established, and scheduled departures are likely to be attempted, if not maintained in practice. The mainstay of these transports is the Oscar class, although the referee should feel free to experiment with hasty redresses of human designs to maintain variety, as with the ersatz Shenyangs of "Lone Wolf." Invasion lists these supplies as routed through Arcturus, but that's just the sort of thing the humans shouldn't be able to assume, isn't it? The odd replacement Epsilon-or Beta-class should also wend its way from the Kafer shipyards and may even have orders to make a defensive sweep through the occupied systems on its way to the front. Permanently assigned patrol forces would probably consist of a fighter group with a modified Oscar-class mother ship, shuttling back and forth on an assigned route, carrying news and miscellaneous packages between the outposts.
In Kafer space proper, the situation should be a little different. Here Kafers with cargo freighter occupations who are not trained fighters will be responsible for tracking down unknown bogeys. As Kafer and human stutterwarp traces are completely indistinguishable, a busy Kafer system full of civilian trade will provide a good opportunity for the human ships to just blend in with the traffic.
A brief overview of the important points in Kafer space follows. This shouldn't replace a reading of the appropriate section in the Kafer Sourcebook but will be a checklist of the key areas on which to concentrate.
DM +18 2776 and Arcturus each contain secret bases which wandering human vessels might encounter, and DM +17 2611 is a planet which will see Kafer expansion, but not until they are able to bring the war to a conclusion.
Ross 52, DM +16 2708, and DM +19 2881 are homes to significant fleets, as they are the gateways to the Kafer sphere. They are all sites of military bases and refueling stations. DM + 19 2881 has a planet of great interest to humanity, visible to a complete life scan. Behind them are Ross 508 and AC +18 1890-112, both extensively fortified as the choke-points of entry to Kafer space. Fleets are present at both these worlds. However, the needs of the war have resulted in stripping down the fleets in all five of these systems. But the reductions to the fleets-in-being at Ross 508 and AC +18 are less severe than the others. All of these should be considered military systems for the purposes of handling an attempted human transit, and their readiness will be higher than the garrisons in captured human areas.
Lambda Serpenti is a major base and ship-building center, although home to a disenchanted Kafer leader.
The loop of DM+19 2881, DM +25 2874, DM +24 2786, DM +24 2733, and DM+16 2658 belongs to "Triumphant Destiny," and one should expect that it has taken the vast majority of its fleet to war with it.
Gamma Serpenti, the home system, will be busy with trading traffic from the huge industrial centers. As it is the only path between the two lobes, it presents some danger to humans attempting to pass back and forth. The Kafer Sourcebook neglects to list the number of moons of the two outermost planets of the system; to give transmitting humans more of a chance to hide themselves, consider the number of moons to be 10 and 11.
BK+00 2334 and HC -24 1124 are two of the most important centers of the Kafer sphere; the former is a very popular colony and industrial center, and the latter is a large agricultural and manufacturing hub. BK -5 8045, BK +7 5675, and BK -5 9201 are all major sources of minerals and should also have fairly high traffic levels.
The systems HC -4 9701, HC +3 1919, Oneil 723, HC -24 1124, DK -26 2485, BK -5 9201, and HC +25 1902 are involved in the lengthy conflict with the Ylii. They are more likely to contain military forces than other systems of the lower Kafer lobe but will also have some Ylii traffic to confuse the issue.
The Ylii themselves currently rule DK +32 2390, DK -33 1023, and SS -27 6854, their homeworld. The systems BK -1 1423, BK -2 0075, HC -6 2111, BK +00 2334, HC +3 1919, Oneil 723, and HC +23 1902 will show signs of former Ylii habitation, in addition to the Ylii-controlled worlds. Any human ship that has already scanned typical Kafer cities and is able to do a complete cartographic analysis of these worlds will easily see that these dwellings were constructed by a different race. Furthermore, a complete life scan of the last three worlds listed above plus the Ylii worlds will reveal a new race. If any Ylii ships are observed from close up, they will also clearly be of different design than Kafer craft.
The possibility of contact with the Ylii and civilian Kafers inside the sphere will have to be role played. Players should be encouraged to realize the tremendous importance of the discovery of the Ylii as well as the discovery of the nuances of Kafer internal politics. The latter can be ascertained by eavesdropping on Kafer signals within a system. The players will not be able to fully analyze this material themselves, but upon return to their base they should have the gist of their discoveries explained to them. This will permit them to make decisions on how to concentrate their future intelligence-gathering efforts.
Naval combat is characterized by ships slipping unobstructed through interstellar space to fight large battles over certain contested points or star systems within that vast space. It is not only axiomatic but is also true that it is impossible to go out into interstellar space searching for an enemy ship and expect to find anything. The distances are too great; the speeds (actually stutterwarp pseudovelocities) are too high; and the speed of light, at which all sensor information propagates, is too slow. However, it is not enough militarily to simply wait in the contested system for the enemy to arrive and do battle. The catastrophic curtain-raiser to the Kafer War at Hochbaden has buried any objections to that until a recently under-appreciated theorem. Data must be obtained for certain questions: Where is the enemy coming from? What paths does he use? Where does he go for repair? Replenishment? Can any of these paths be interdicted? The impossibility of finding an unknown ship in interstellar space is a given. But the impossibility of following a known ship in interstellar space is not.
Shadowing a starship through interstellar space is a very difficult and technologically demanding undertaking, particularly considering that it is almost always an enemy starship being shadowed. So many calculations need to be performed to make a starship follow in the wake of a target that is "moving" faster than light (actually disappearing and reappearing a little farther away many millions of times each second) that this task can only be accomplished by the onboard flight computer. Fortunately, as moving via stutterwarp at all is complicated enough to require truly remarkable electronics, these computers are generally up to task. While the practice of shadowing is complex in terms of the vast number of small acts that must be conducted, the actual mechanics of the phenomenon are fairly simple.
Space is strained by manifestations of gravity in a way that is quite evident to certain ship-mounted sensors. Gravity sources - such as planets, stars, and other large bodies - distort or "bulge" the otherwise "smooth" fabric of space. The stutterwarp process, being a gravitic phenomenon, also distorts this fabric in a fashion that appears as a line or crack on gravitic sensors. It is actually a series of sharply defined points, each corresponding to where the starship "dove through" the fabric of space to tunnel "around" it or reappeared after tunnelling. These points are linked by a line of strained space. The connecting lines have been compared to ripples in that they are a reaction by the spatial fabric to its violent, repeated piercing and seem to reflect elastic properties. Unlike ripples, they do not spread outward but instead vibrate or oscillate between the points of disturbance. Nevertheless, when viewed on a gravitic scanner from most likely distances, this phenomenon appears as a thin line, or "trace," on the otherwise unstrained or "flat" fabric of space. However, the stutterwarp, unlike a planet, does not remain to continue exerting this influence: The perturbation on space does not remain but instead "heals" in only a few moments, generally 280 to 320 seconds, depending upon the strain already on the area. Thus any ship wishing to detect a stutter trace had better find it quickly before it is wiped out by the elastic tendency of space to spring back to its previous state and "smooth out" any disturbances. The trick, then, of shadowing is to remain closely behind the target to pick up its stutter "wake" before it fades out. As noted in the "Lone Wolf" article, the key phase to any shadowing operation is the transition phase, when the shadower attempts to gain position immediately on the heels of the shadowee as it crosses over the 0.0001G threshold and leaves the system proper. Once the shadower has achieved this position, its ability to maintain the shadow is facilitated by several conditions.
The first is known as the "baffles": the zone behind a stutterwarping ship that is not viewable by its own gravitic sensors. Any stutterwarping ship that attempts to look directly behind itself to see the stutterwarp trace of a pursuing ship cannot do so. Its sensor is distorted by looking through its own stutterwarp wake, which, because it is so close to the sensor, completely invalidates any but the largest and most unmistakable gravitic signatures. These signatures include stars and planets, but certainly not stutterwarp traces. The effect can be compared to looking for something through the disturbed air around a hot fire or to a watercraft using sonar to probe the turbulent water of its own wake.
The second condition which facilitates a shadow is the fact that the shadower is flying directly up the enemy's stutterwarp trace. Detection is thwarted at FTL pseudovelocities by the fact that sensors rely on data propagated at the speed of light and are easily overwhelmed by a target travelling away at many times this speed. Also, the shadower is actually flying on the line of his opponent's wake, which makes confirmation of the enemy trail instantaneous with each reappearance of the shadower into normal space. This advantage is, unfortunately, lost if the shadower is unable to maintain position on the stutterwarp trace, which sets the stage for the third point.
The stutterwarp field is a linear directional field, coincident with a ship's lateral axis. This creates stutterwarp pseudoinertia by forcing a ship to change its heading in real space in order to change its direction of stutterwarp travel. Given the huge ratio of stutterwarp speed to the time taken to turn a ship, maneuvering under stutterwarp consists of stiff responses and wide-sweeping turns: "She steers like a boxcar, Cap'n!" This is to the advantage of the shadower, as the gradual alterations in course available to the target are easily detected and corrected for by the following vessel. A trace beginning to slide off to either side of the shadower's course is spotted quickly because of the differential intensity of the warp disturbance to either side of the vessel's centerline: The trace is not a line in the mathematical sense but has a width on the order of a few dozen meters, depending upon the mass of the warping ship and the power of its drive. Additionally, a starship operating in shadowing mode has a fail-safe feature: Its computer will only cycle the stutterwarp as long as the ship is driving over the trace. As soon as the sensors stop indicating the turbulent trace close by, the computer momentarily stops cycling the stutterwarp for the fraction of a second necessary for a stutterwarp signal to come in from another direction. (For this reason, military vessels built with the shadowing mission in mind, including the Anglo-French-American Killiecrankie-class, American Retief-class, and certain other warships, have their stutterwarp cycling circuits, flight control computers, and grav scanners located immediately next to each other, connected by parallel rather than sequential circuitry. This is to reduce the time for the speed-of-light electrical messages between these systems to an absolute minimum and thereby cut down the "light-speed lag" present even in the vessel's own electronics.) As it only takes one three-millionth of a second for light to arrive from 100 meters away - the distance of a single stutterwarp cycle - the shadower can rapidly find the new direction of its quarry and resume pursuit. While the enemy will have made 600 cycles and moved 60,000 meters in those 300 nanoseconds, the trail will still be fresh, and a shadower's speed advantage over the target can be helpful. However, only speed parity is essential for shadowing, as the trace does persist for five minutes, allowing the shadower to squander a few microseconds without losing the scent.
A speed advantage is desirable, however, and can be used in other ways as well. During the last few moments of the transition phase described above, the shadower will take advantage of the target's slower-than-light speed compared to its light speed sensors to analyze the pattern and frequency of the enemy's stutter cycles. This is similar in concept to the dynamic data bursts used in intership communication (see "Stutterwarp Technology in 2300" in Challenge 30). By knowing how frequently the opponent's drive is cycling, the shadower can set his drive to match the lower speed of the target and still have time left over each second. This tactic is called "sprint and stop." For example, if the target has a warp efficiency of 2 and the shadower has one of 3, it only takes the shadower two-thirds of a second to cover his target's per-second distance. He can then use the remaining third of a second to sit and watch the target's next moves. The light speed images that reach him in one-third of a second will show him his quarry's next million cycles, which he can easily cover when he resumes moving. But rather than this simple example, the shadower will actually sprint and stop several thousand times each second, allowing him to update his views of the target's next moves more often and thereby increase the efficiency of his pursuit.
If, by some chance, he loses his quarry, the shadower can take advantage of the speed of light to find him again. By jumping away from the axis of pursuit for just a cycle or two, the vessel can overtake the image of the moment when he lost his target, then wait for the signal to reach him. When it does so, he can in effect watch a "movie" on his grav scanner of what transpired moments before, with his own and his opponents courses shown. If he watches long enough, the image of his own stutter trace will approach and meet him. In any event, he can find his enemy's new course and follow it or, better yet, "cut off the corner" to reach the new enemy vector without backtracking. As the trace of a warp-efficiency 2 ship is 439 au long, there is no chance of losing the opponent, barring equipment failure.
Sometimes a shadow mission will reach "the point of no return." This is defined as the point where the shadowee has expended enough of his 7.7-light-year range that he cannot change course for another system but must continue toward the only system for which he has the range. See Figure 6, a hypothetical star system A which is less than 7.7 light-years fron four other systems, B, C, D, and E. A ship departing from this system could, if it chose, seek to deceive its enemy by departing on an angle toward another star than its intended destination. If its opponent did not pursue it with a shadower, then the maneuver would be a successful deceptive dogleg as the enemy would have no way of knowing where it went. If, however, the opponent chose to shadow the departing ship, certain courses would force the vessel to commit itself to its real destination when it is only part way to its false destination. By looking at the table accompanying the figure, we see that a vessel seeking to arrive at system B could only head 3.8 light years toward system C or 2.58 light years toward system E before reaching the point of no return and having to change course for its real destination. If a shadower follows an enemy toward system C it would know that after 0.36 light years its quarry could no longer change course for system F. After 3.8 light years its quarry could no longer attempt to make system B, so it would be committed to either system D or C. Therefore, 3.87 light years marks the point where the vessels can only proceed to a single destination: system C.
Upon reaching this point the shadower has three choices. It can continue to follow the enemy as before. If it has a speed advantage, it can now pass the enemy and arrive in the target system first, perhaps to set up an ambush or reconnoiter. Or, if the point of no return comes at less than 3.85 light years, it can return to system A to inform its superiors where the enemy has gone. This would be possible if the enemy were being shadowed to system E. This, however, would also allow the enemy to turn back at the same time. For this reason, two shadowing vessels are sometimes dispatched, one to follow the enemy all the way and one to turn back at 3.85 to inform the fleet.
Unfortunately, the point of no return does not always exist. Numbers on the table marked with an asterisk are those in which a ship can actually pass the given system with enough range left to turn for another system. These systems, of course, already have a stutterwarp route between them (in our example systems B and D). Note that systems C and D are not connected in this way: A ship could go to D and still have range to reach C but not the reverse. Charts like Figure 6 can be made for all of the systems in 2300 AD.
Such charts are highly complicated, and there is not room to include even a fraction of them in this article. For the purpose of play, however, this is not important. It is enough to remember that a shadower can successfully track a target to any destination (given speed parity) and, in many cases, can beat it there with a speed advantage. The figures above are only valid if the target vessel proceeds directly to a false destination. Any attempts at maneuver to throw off the pursuit will only waste precious stutterwarp range and bring the point of no return that much closer.
It should be noted that the art of shadowing is one that is effectively unknown among the Kafers. An unaroused Kafer does not have the patience to engage in nonstimulating and tiresome interstellar pursuit, and their Ylii computer experts are only carried aboard battleships - vessels singularly unsuited for these tactics. The Kafer genius comes about in a developing combat situation. The kind of long-term cleverness and tactical acuity required for shadowing operations is still a human preserve. Remember also that precious few Kafer warships have the kind of speed to make an effective shadow and that the Killiecrankie-class ships used in this scenario have a speed advantage over every Kafer vessel thus far constructed.
Countermeasures against shadowing are few and of limited utility. The most effective is to not let an enemy gain position during the transition phase. But, as noted in "Lone Wolf," the waiting would-be shadower holds the advantageous position higher in the well. It is also futile to refuse to leave the system as long as an enemy pursuer lurks at the 0.0001G threshold - he can wait as long as you can; longer if he is in a friendly system and you are a raider in enemy territory. To prevent targets from attempting to wait him out, a shadower attempts to anticipate his quarry's departure angle and sit with his stutterwarp disengaged until the last moment, thereby preventing his enemy from detecting him with his grav scanner.
If a space force is present in strength (more often in a friendly system), it can use one or more light vessels to flush and screen away the pursuit from the departing main body. This is the best method, but it does split the fleet's forces. The best consolation is that very few vessels are available for shadowing. Most human couriers do not have the combination of speed, endurance, and sensors to make it possible, and the small number of ships like the Killiecrankie and Retief makes the threat more manageable.
Attempts have also been made to drop objects from the shadowed ship to hit the pursuer. This is made difficult by the tendency of the stutterwarp field, a "stupid" field, to carry along anything within the field as if it were part of the ship. It is also highly unlikely that the object will hit the pursuer as the pursuer is warping and not passing through the intervening space (a smart pursuer will synchronize his cycling to minimize being in phase with the target, thereby reducing the likelihood of running over some garbage). Even on the minute chance that dropped ordnance and the pursuer ended up next to each other for a few nanoseconds, this is not enough time for any weapon to fuse and detonate before the target disappears into warp again.
( Ship Status Sheet)
Original Date of Design: 20 June 2299
First Example Laid Down: 10 July 2299
First Example Completed: 15 August 2301
Originally envisioned as a new scout/courier for use with the British Fleet, the Killiecrankie design was suspended and recast as a result of increasing uncertainty about the Kafer threat. The danger of an all-out Kafer offensive made it imperative that the human battle force not be diminished by sending valuable fleet units off on dangerous scouting forays. At the same time, expendable couriers had neither the long legs to get behind Kafer lines nor the armament to survive there. British Admiralty officials evaluated a number of designs and found that the partially completed hulls of the Killiecrankie class would provide an excellent basis for conversion to a new type of unit, the armed deep scout, or intruder scout as they came to be called. After a several-month delay, work began again on 12 June 2301 according to the new design. Six days later, word reached Earth of the surprise Kafer invasion of Hochbaden. The fact that this attack came from an unknown direction without passing through human forces dramatically demonstrated the need for the kind of scouting for which the Killiecrankie-class was intended. British Exospace, the manufacturers, informed the Admiralty that it would be impossible to complete the first vessels in less than six months without outside help. In a move that would have been unthinkable only a few days before, the Admiralty contacted the American and French space forces to request assistance in outfitting the vessels. The answers received from the two nations were equally surprising: "Yes." French and American technicians were poring over the British blueprints and swarming over the incomplete hulls within hours of the exchange. Miraculously, French manufacturers were able to quickly modify a developmental fission plant to fit into the vessels and mate with the British stutterwarp system. At the same time the Americans were tearing up old wiring and laying the foundations for the sensor, fire control, and weapons systems that were being prepared for shipment across the Atlantic. It was only after the hybrid conversions were well underway that the three nations began to discuss compensation for the involved participants. As all three nations' high commands agreed on the necessity of the intruder scout type in upcoming operations, it was decided that each nation's space force would receive one of the three vessels approaching completion. The French Command additionally requested that the third hull, originally named Culloden, be renamed to reflect her French manning.
Sensor Package: Gravitational scanner, deep-system scanner, advanced
cartographic, advanced life, and passive sensors.
Crew: Bridge: 14 Tactical Action Center: 12 Engineering:
20 Ship's Troops: 27 Medical: 3
Performance Characteristics
Warp Efficiency: 3.58 (3.55 loaded) Power Plant: 25 MW
new military fission Fuel: 260 tons reaction fuel sufficient for
one round trip to surface of 1.09 G world plus 15 tons set aside for drone
refuel (1.14 G landing if drone not refueled) Range: 7.7 Mass:
2925.24 tons (2985.74 tons loaded) Cargo Capacity: 99.89 cubic meters
(limited to 60.5 tons; see below) Comfort: 0 Total Life Support:
76 for 120 days Ordnance Carried: 4 SIM-14 missiles, 1 HD-9 sensor
drone Price: Lv9l,006,000 (price includes sensor drone; does not
include full load of missiles, Lv3,360,000 or submunitions, Lv3,570,000)
Movement: 10 Radiated Signature: 1 Radial Reflected
Signature: 3* (1)
Lateral Reflected Signature: 3*, (2) Radial Target Profile:
- 3 Lateral Target Profile: - 2
>
Hull Hits: 1/2/3 Power Plant Hits: 6/2 Armament: None
Active Sensors: 7 (redundant array) Passive Sensors: 10 (redundant
array)
*Signature used only when active sensors functioning; otherwise use parenthetical
value.
Performance Characteristics
Warp Efficiency: 4.98 Power Plant: 3 MW new military
MHD turbine Propulsion: 2 MW new military stutterwarp Fuel:
15 tons (for 8.33 hours) Mass: 86.8 tons Length: 6 meters
Diameter: 6 meters Volume: Internal Bay: 170 m3 Surface
Area, External Sling: 72 m3 Price: Lv24,105,000
The Killiecrankie-class ships reflect a number of compromises made necessary by the numerous roles they are expected to fill.
The choice of power plant was dictated by the unacceptability of MHD drive in terms of endurance behind enemy lines. Autonomous fuel cracking technology is insufficient to support an MHD plant with any real performance. Fusion plants however, are far too massive for a light vessel, leaving only a fission plant with its regrettably high crew requirements. A 25MW stutterwarp fit seemed the smallest drive the capabilities demanded for the class. Fortunately it proved possible to modify the new technology fission plant to double as an atmospheric re-entry thruster. Scramjet inlets allow high-speed air to be passed over the heat exchange coils, where they are heated and expanded to provide sufficient thrust at high altitudes. At low altitudes, when taking off or landing, additional reaction mass is needed. This is provided in the form of liquid hydrogen which is mixed with the air at the heating coils - they combine explosively and provide the additional thrust needed, leaving only water vapor as a waste product. The fission reactor requires no hydrogen fuel for simple functioning, while the MHD gulps fuel to continue operating in addition to needing extra reaction mass during atmospheric operations. This allows the Killiecrankie class to conduct planetary surface operations with only half the reaction fuel needed by the MHD thruster, using almost all of this allotment during the take-off and landing phases.
As befits their high-lift configuration, the Killiecrankie-class ships are equipped with all manner of aerodynamic control surfaces but are additionally outfitted as STOL craft with large flaps, spoilers, and leading-edge extensions. The three large thrust chamber bells are Gimbal-mounted to swing down to 45 degrees, and two additional forward-vectored thrust nozzles are fitted ventrally forward to shed velocity for short-field landings. Their landing gear is considerably beefed up over conventional courier types, the weight being spread over 22 large tires in three trucks. This low ground pressure allows operations from the rough, unprepared fields that the STOL fittings make possible.
The weapons fit is a compromise between lethality and the high tactical speeds required. While an armament of nothing but submunitions and remote objects is unusual for a craft this size, the more traditional fixed weapons would make unacceptable drains on available power, hence speed. The three Big Clips are Killiecrankie's heavy punch; the Grape Shot serves as her antimissile defense or last-ditch armament when the nine Big Clips are used up. Four SIM-14s, three of which can be controlled at a time, are a considerable reach weapon, allowing the light ship to keep her distance from an enemy, especially when the HD-9 Sensor Drone is deployed. The "Scout Junior" is a response to numerous complaints about the HD-5 "Scout." While America's big HD-5 is certainly the standard by which all other drones are measured, it is, unfortunately, "too much of a good thing." One of a family of three developed to rectify this difficulty (the others being the HD-7 "Mini Scout" and the HD-10 "Snooper"), "Scout Junior" retains the high-speed, passive sensors and much of the endurance of the original, while at a lower cost and much-reduced displacement, with slightly greater staying power.
The "Dash 9" (see game statistics above) can hold a position with a pair of SIM-14s several million kilometers forward of a Killiecrankie as its sensors inform the mother ship of its surroundings. The mother ship can then strike with the forward-deployed missiles. Successful holding actions and ambushes can be fought in this way, although the missiles are in too short a supply to be expended in ambushes when there is a cheaper way. When preparing an ambush across a known avenue of travel - such as toward a frequented gravity well, departure vector, or to slow down the attack of pursuing enemies - the Killiecrankie can drop several submunitions and leave them behind with the sensor drone. The Killiecrankie is then free to depart beyond sensor range from the submunitions: The drone will relay data from the ambush site, being at a point B intermediate between the Killiecrankie and the ambush with the edge of its sensor footprint just covering the "killing ground" (see Figure 5). This allows the valuable drone to minimize the chance of its being detected and gives it a head start to escape the ambush, its higher speed letting it catch up with the Killiecrankie.
As the enemy vessels approach and the drone achieves a firing solution, it relays this information to the Killiecrankie, which remote commands the firing of the submunitions. This ambush firing takes place during the detonation phase of the turn as a missile attack. It allows the defenders a pre-emptive fire to attempt destruction of the submunitions. This firing takes place at a -2 to hit, reflecting that the munitions are being fired via the drone's sensor information without a direct fix by the ship's time-lag (caused by the distance travelled by the fire command). Positive DMs for crew quality are allowed, reflecting greater proficiency at this difficult operation with more experience. Although the ambushees do receive a chance to fire first at the about-to-detonate submunitions, they are unlikely to see them in time to alter course to avoid them: The submunitions, with a radiated signature of 0, are immune to passive sensors, and unaroused Kafers are highly unlikely to wander around with active sensors going. Even more cautious humans would not do so. Detonation command telemetry and the submunitions' thrusters firing to bring them on target provide sufficient warning to allow the defensive fire.
One drawback to the Killiecrankie's armament suite is the rather large resulting reflected signature. Submunitions dispensers are rather more reflective than gun turrets, and the TTAs required for maximum effectiveness also add considerable reflectivity. (UTES, aside from being more expensive, are limited to certain bearing aspects, while all-aspect TTAs are better able to utilize the ability of submunitions, dropped away from the ship and not masked by its hull, to fire in any direction.) This reflectivity was deemed acceptable in view of the high tactical speed thereby allowed, even though the final vessels have a rather higher reflected signature than their raw size might suggest.
Indeed, once the decision was made to thus compromise on reflected signature, a number of other tradeoffs were made possible. It was reasoned that active sensors are generally only used once committed to combat (even by Kafers, owing to their lack of precautions when unaroused, rather than to a commitment to stealth). Therefore, the Killiecrankie-class ships, intended to avoid toe-to-toe combat with the enemy, would not be too handicapped by this shortcoming. The passive signature was intended to be low enough to minimize routine or accidental detection; if a Killiecrankie-class ship were in a position where the enemy was already taking active measures to detect her, then she had already failed in her mission. Therefore, while massive advanced hull masking systems were installed, she was fitted with an external mount for her American sensor drone and retained her more reflective but stronger advanced composite hull. It is actually the drone's berth that affects the ship's signature the most. The drone itself would rarely add to the ship's reflected signature as it is always deployed for impending combat and frequently used for routine patrolling. It is also always left in orbit when a Killiecrankie enters atmosphere, thereby allowing the ship to retain its streamlining and also maintain observation of events within 100 quintillion cubic kilometers of space.
Each Killiecrankie's crew includes 27 troops, which allows a group of three vessels to carry a complete company of 80 American marines for long periods. However, the marines' quarters on each ship are designed to carry a full company for a few hours, as long as it takes to enter a planetary atmosphere and land. This allows two ships to act as top cover while one brings the troops down. It also prevents more than one of the ships at a time from having to burn reaction fuel, the ships being limited to one round-trip to the surface each. This requires the ships to lay alongside each other for a moment before approaching the planet in order to transfer the marines to one vessel. They will often transfer fuel to the vessel about to land in order to top off its fuel load: Some of the fuel may have been used to refuel the sensor drone, or the fuel load may be insufficient to make planetfall on a body with greater than 1.09 G. For the latter case, one vessel of the trio can set aside a portion of its cargo space for use as an auxiliary fuel tank and thus become the designated landing vessel for the group. Fifty-four tons of fuel in cargo (displacing 89.1 cubic meters) allows two landings on worlds with 1.2 G, although this requirement is rare. Of the embattled human colonies on the French Arm, the average surface gravity is .86 G, while only one of these worlds has a gravity higher than 1.05 G. Landings on worlds with higher surface gravity will require planning, including possibly filling the missile bays with auxiliary fuel bladders, etc.
A Killiecrankie might find itself with no reaction fuel carried in the tanks, instead using this space for carrying extra marines. The antisurge baffles which are built into fuel tankage have been found to make excellent bulkheads to be used for temporary quarters. However, the lack of spin gravity in these areas will house the troops at a comfort of -2. These troops can rotate their quarters with those of the regular marines in the spin habitats, resulting in both groups having a comfort level of - 1, hence subtracting from their combat efficiency. A good compromise is to carry replacement troops at -2 in the fuel tanks and move them into the spin hab as needed when the marine company takes casualties. There they will quickly re-acclimate to the better comfort and regain their efficiency. The spin habs for the 75 permanent crewmembers are divided into two "hamster cage" systems which are counterspun in the 18-meter-diameter after-hull. All possible precautions are taken to ensure that their spins entirely cancel each other out (for example, the habs must be spun at different rates to allow for the fact that one is farther from the center of mass than the other). But it is impossible to do this completely on the Killiecrankie or on any other vessel with simulated spin gravity. The simple act of one crewmember entering his stateroom in one of the habs is enough to throw the system into minute imbalance, thus inflicting a small gyroscopic tendency on the ship's movement. As gyroscopic precession converts any force acting on a gyro into a force acting perpendicularly to it, this could create severe problems were the ships not controlled by sophisticated automation. As it is, the onboard computers are more than able to monitor the spin habs and their gyroscopic effect upon the ship. They thereby allow for it by offsetting by 90 degrees certain reaction thrust impulses. This is simply another example of the absolute impossibility of operating modern technology by hand. Not only the stutterwarp systems and fire control systems but even the basic steering of a starship cannot be handled by a pilot with a control column alone.
The cargo space provides 99.7 cubic meters for storage but is limited to 61 tons in order to preserve performance. Various cargoes can be carried, including certain mission-related equipment (see following Assignments and Victory section). Extra SIM-14 missiles and submunitions are likely candidates, but these would all have to be manually reloaded following combat. Sixty-one tons can be exceeded, but warp efficiency would then need to be recalculated.
The Killiecrankies' sensor suite is as comprehensive as any package installed aboard a survey ship. This allows the Killiecrankies to adequately scan, categorize, and record any Kafer territory they penetrate. As they carry no scientific staff, this data is simply to be recorded for analysis by experts following their return to base. No active sensors are fitted as the ships are intended for clandestine operations, and active sensors only serve to broadcast the user's presence. An active sensor is present on the sensor drone for use in whatever unusual circumstances might require it.
"Three Blind Mice" is a framework for people to put their ships down on the Star Cruiser map and perforate some Kafer hulls. This fact should not dissuade anyone from landing marines and playing out the combat with the 2300 AD personal combat system. However, there isn't room to detail ground encounters here, so the referee will need to flesh that out. For those who can't take that kind of time or simply prefer blasting through the vacuum to slogging through the mud, here's an abstract combat system which you can use to resolve the marine landings and boarding actions.
Divide each force into four groups:
Calculate a total force die modifier as follows:
The human force will always get the first round free, with no return fire, to reflect Kafer initial sluggishness. In each round after this "zero round," both players roll 1D10 and add their DM. The number resulting is the number of casualties inflicted on the opposing force. The player with the higher die roll is allowed to decide how his opponent's casualties are distributed: One half of his roll (rounding down) can be applied to enemy forces as he sees fit. Casualties versus non-troops and guerrillas are one-for-one, but two points are required to neutralize an elite human or Kafer troop, and five points to destroy an AFV. Fractions of these figures cause no effect to these types. The remaining points are distributed by the owning player.
DMs will have to be recalculated each round with the following addition: To reflect arousal, the Kafer player will add +1 to his die roll for each turn after the first. Thus, on turn four the Kafer will have an automatic + 3 before calculating numbers of personnel. This cumulative + 1 is good as long as any non-casualty Kafer troops are in the force.
Guerrillas and nontroops will break off combat after reaching 50-percent casualties. They will melt away from around the Elite core (if any remain) and escape without firing a shot, or will make a hasty rear-guard if they are all that survive. Forces composed exclusively of Kafer troops and elite troops will not break, but the humans may elect to withdraw all or some of their force. The withdrawing forces may elect to take its casualties with it or leave them behind. If they take them along, they must allocate two men for each three casualties to carry the wounded. The DM for that round is calculated on the remaining troops. If not evacuating casualties, their DM is normal. Guerrillas and nontroops breaking off are assumed to be routing. They figure their DM at one-half value and still leave their casualties behind.
If the withdrawing force wins the combat die roll, it has broken off contact, and no pursuit is possible. If it loses, it is being pursued, and combat continues, although with the pursuit DM being reduced 30 percent each turn. At any point that the withdrawing (or routing) force wins the die roll, the pursuit is ended, and the survivors escape. If a force is left behind to cover the withdrawal of another group, its full DM is added to the DM of the withdrawing force. It will have to withdraw normally later, although if it does so immediately its handicap for carrying casualties will be lower.
Escaping marines make it to the ship; other forces are assumed to disperse across the countryside. If combat is taking place aboard ship, Kafer nontroop forces that take 50-percent casualties break and have their DM halved. As they have no place to run, they will be exterminated in detail. If Kafer crew abandon Kafer troops in this fashion, the human troops must first eliminate the troops before hunting down the crew (only human Elite troops will be aboard Kafer ships; they will, therefore, fight to the last man or withdraw to their ship).
The mission assignment will list the details of the Kafer force, as well as the defensive modifier of the Kafers' position. This number is subtracted from the human die roll each turn (after victory is determined; this is only to reduce numbers of casualties) and is in force for as long as a single Kafer survives. The modifier for boarding actions aboard ship is considered to be -1 in favor of the Kafers.
After combat is over casualties are tallied. One-third of all casualties are assumed to be dead (round up). The remainder are wounded. Marine casualties evacuated to the ship can be treated: Half can return to duty in a week, and the other half will have to be replaced upon return to base. Kafer casualties left on the battlefield for victorious humans can be taken prisoner, although half of those still living will die of their wounds because of their unfamiliar biology. For each Kafer prisoner aboard a human ship, there is a 1-percent chance that they will make an escape from their holding area. The marines will have to put this attack down, but there will be a +2 for all human rolls and a - 2 for all Kafer rolls. Casualties to Kafers will be one-for-one, not the one-for-two points of combat-equipped troops. The referee will have to decide what happens if the Kafers win. Possibilities are that the other human vessels will have to recapture the lost human vessel, or that the crew will have to back up the failing marines (as nontroops).
If the players purchase pluses in quality for their marine company, this functions as a + (whatever level) on all combat rolls for the troops, even if only one marine remains. Any time the marines lose members due to death or replacement of wounded at the base, their quality will drop. This drop is equal to -1 per 20 percent of the unit lost. Quality will not drop below zero. These quality bonuses are cumulative (for example, if the three companies combine in combat and are each +1, the group gets a +3).
Troops in combat are under the control of the player whose ship transported them into combat. He makes the decisions about their employment. However, in the case of negative victory points for leaving marine casualties behind, all players split the penalty.
Ships attempting to land on or take off from a world take a number of minutes equal to the formula (ship tonnage x G of world/MW of power plant x lift value). Use current tonnage when figuring, and do not count the mass of fuel used (mass of ship divided by 12) in the current attempt. Killiecrankies have a lift value of 1 when not encumbered by external stores. One-third of this time is considered to be in atmosphere. Atmospheric effects severely degrade the performance of weapons designed for use in space. Star Cruiser weapons fire at a ship in atmosphere at -5 to hit.
Each time the Blind Mice bring their ships home to DM + 35 2436 they will receive a new assignment. These assignments create the flow of the campaign as well as control the awarding of victory points, which are the currency for players to assess their performance relative to each other and relative to that big, cruel universe out there.
While each player is nominally serving the navy or space force of his own nation, the cooperation that brought the Killiecrankies into being lives on in the form of the Three Blind Mice Directors' Staff. The TBMDS is the means for the three nations involved to use the Killiecrankie assets as a group to their greatest benefit. As long as the arrangement remains productive and beneficial to the group as a whole it will be maintained. This does not rule out occasional requests by one member nation or another for the use of its vessel for a proprietry mission when the mission is not within the framework of the Blind Mice's primary mission. These occasional missions will be referred to here as optional missions. The player will be presented with the description of the solo mission and may accept it or reject it in favor of a standard assignment with the rest of the trio.
When assigning missions, the referee can decide whether to generate them randomly or to create a mission list beforehand. The former method, while reducing the temptation to make each mission a glory mission, can be troublesome in that a given mission might not always fit in with the historical chronology as presented in the Overview section. The premade list suffers from not allowing missions to seemingly build on and respond to recent developments. However, this is how bureaucracies realistically function. A good compromise is for the referee to assess the current historical situation along with the state of recent missions and discoveries, and make a short list of missions he can randomly choose from.
The following section describes the missions, including a listing of their likelihoods (Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare, and Unique), a brief description, and victory point value. Unless otherwise noted, victory points are always split up evenly among the surviving vessels if the mission is accomplished successfully. If victory points are listed as "x VP each," then that number of VP are awarded to each vessel on the mission rather than the total being split by the number of vessels. It is left to the referee's discretion whether missions are considered successful when assessed against the descriptions below.
The following are bonus VP that can be gained if certain conditions are fulfilled while conducting a mission. Discovery bonuses are only good if discovery occurred as part of an independent operation. If discovery came as part of assigned deep survey, no additional VP are awarded.
*If any marine casualties are left on a battlefield: -9 VP, divided among the group members.
Note that credit for ships destroyed by rented cruisers goes to the player whose VP was spent to rent the cruiser.
*There is an additional 15 penalty if a cruiser is lost.
If at any time in the campaign a player loses his ship and crew, he will receive a new ship, crew, and character when the group next returns to DM + 35 2436 and will start over with a 0 VP balance. If, however, his character can be rescued from a disabled ship by the other players, he takes a 10 VP penalty and receives a new ship upon the group's return to base.
Whenever players bring data from scouting, recon, or survey missions back to base they will be briefed on what they have discovered. (Finding out these things while in the system will require role playing, as questions need to be asked, hypotheses tested, etc. The briefing rule assumes intelligence experts at the base can help players learn what they might not have known.) The referee should tell them whatever can be reasonably inferred from the data. For example, if the week-long recording of grav scanner data shows a lot of enemy vessels going to and from a certain point, that is sufficient to assume some sort of outpost is there, although it is not necessarily enough to know what type.
As with "Lone Wolf," the "Three Blind Mice" campaign is not so much a play-balanced wargame as it is a framework for an extended role-playing adventure. Despite the fact that both contain victory points, the purpose of the games is to allow the players to enjoy themselves by playing out a really interesting, exciting story starring themselves. The victory points are only a way to try to get a handle on progress being made and to quantify the character's ability to get the things he needs as his reputation grows. Unlike the Star Cruiser scenarios available in Invasion which let the players replay some legendary commander's role in a historical event, "Three Blind Mice" is a vehicle to get them in on some history-making of their own. While the large events of the Kafer War are pretty much set in stone, small operations not tied to the plodding, glacial historicity of the battle fleets can take on a life all their own. The players cannot change the fact that Henry's Star will fall on 27 February 2302, but this campaign allows them to open up the Kafer frontier and put their own mark on it, exploiting the opportunities they've made. They have a stake in the developing events that they can't usually get when replaying the historical scenarios.
What this article also does is create a hospitable environment in which role playing can grow. There is no reason why players cannot capture Kafer ships and masquerade their way into Gamma Serpenti, but such acts of initiative are far too numerous and variable to handle in an open-ended article like this one. The "Three Blind Mice" scenario nails down the basic who, what, where, when, and why, and leaves the players to run off in search of how. While the campaign is designed to function on its own with the material presented, it certainly should not be limited to what has been set forth here. - David Nilsen
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