Author Topic: The Battle for Jubilee III Sigma  (Read 5559 times)

Landlubber

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The Battle for Jubilee III Sigma
« on: March 18, 2018, 11:12:04 pm »
Lord of the Fleet Ruta ‘Vogamee studied the holographic star system model in silence, mentally calculating jump points, logistics problems, and orbital ellipses. He did not hear the other being quietly glide into the chamber behind him.
“Something troubles you, Fleet Lord?” The prophet’s gravelly voice echoed from the curved metal walls of the planning chamber as he joined the tall Sangheili at the projection table.
“No, your grace. I just…” ‘Vogamee’s voice trailed off in silence. “Why this system? The humans couldn’t possibly know, could they?”
The prophet waived a shriveled arm dismissively. “Whether they do or not, it is no matter. Our scouts tell us they are not sufficiently advanced to use the technology, even if they could find it. They would be as an Unggoy contemplating a supernova; they would discern it, but have no idea of it’s significance.” He was silent a moment. “Our agents tell us they call the system ‘Jubilee Three Sigma’, whatever that means in their abominable tongue.”
‘Vogamee grunted. “Indeed, but what if they damage it? Or worse yet, destroy it? They may not understand, but their weapons are crude, and they could yet cause us trouble.”
“That is why we are sending you, Fleet Lord. Find what we know--what we believe--is there. And do not return empty-handed.”
The prophet glided back out of the chamber as silently as he had entered, leaving ‘Vogamee to his contemplations.

Light-years away, Vice Admiral Michael Stanforth hurried into the executive briefing room aboard the UNSC Olympus Mons. He found Lord Hood scanning over a tablet, while his intelligence chief fidgeted a few chairs away.
“Sorry for the delay, sir”, Stanforth said, rubbing at the moisture on the back of his neck. He’d been forty-three decks below in one of the flagships many gyms, grinding out his daily routine on the elliptical, when Hood’s runner had found him. Stanforth had barely had time to wipe the sweat off and put on a fresh uniform before he rushed up to the senior staff levels of the mighty ship.
Hood waived absently at the seat beside him, not taking his eyes off the tablet. “It’s ok, Mike, have a seat. Commander Rollins here was just telling me that the last piece of the puzzle has finally dropped into place.”
Rollins shifted nervously in his chair, arranging the papers and charts in front of him. “Lord Hood, sir, we think it’s fallen into place, but we-”
Hood cut him off with a wave of his hand, putting the tablet down in the process. “It’s okay, son. We pay you for your best estimates, and that’s what we’ve got. Please explain it to Admiral Stanforth.”
Rollins cleared his throat. “Well, sir, we’ve been monitoring Covenant fleet signals for weeks now through our system of deep-space listening posts. Based on the traffic we’ve deciphered, to include high-grade Covenant orders and logistical directives, combined with fleet movements over the past eight days and pre-positioning of-”
Hood cut him off again with a more impatient hand wave. “Cut to the chase, son. Admiral Stanforth has a fleet to prepare.”
Rollins shifted again in his seat. “It’s Jubilee Three Sigma, sir. That’s where they’re headed. And they have at least one assault carrier with them.”
Stanforth sat back in his seat, tapping his lips with his forefinger. Jubilee Three Sigma…”You’re sure, Commander Rollins?”.
“As sure as we can be, sir. It is highly unlikely they are heading anywhere else.”
Stanforth looked at Hood. “It must be the Forerunner artifacts. I saw the science team’s debriefing on that system. One of the highest concentrations of Forerunner sites in any system we’ve encountered thus far.”
“Agreed,” Hood rumbled. “Better get over to your ship. Beowulf will be happy for some action, I think.”
“He’s never happy, sir,” Stanforth said, smiling as he thought of his curmudgeonly AI. “Do you have any SPARTAN assets to spare?”
“I might be able to chop a couple over to you. I know that’ll make Colonel Holland happy.” He tapped the screen of the tablet. “Just sent your orders over. Defend that system at all costs, Admiral. We need a win, and we need to make the Covenant bleed. I know you’re the man for the job.”
“Thank you, sir,” Stanforth managed. “We’ll do our best.”
“That’s all I can ask for,” Hood said as the two men stood and shook hands. “You move out at 0400 tomorrow. Good hunting, Admiral.”

==================

After much planning and discussion, forum member Quickdraw and I have finally started a combined Halo Fleet Battles and Halo Ground Command campaign! We're fighting for control of the Jubilee III Sigma system, which contains several planets with Forerunner sites and a few abandoned Forerunner stations in various orbits around the system's star. We've already found a few tweaks to make to the main campaign document and I'm sure we'll find more, but when we both feel it's straightened out I'll post it in the Downloads section of the site for people to take a look and use themselves if they'd like. I'll also upload the system map that I drew up to keep track of how things are progressing. We'll be using this thread to report progress in the campaign. The basics:

-we are fighting for control of the planets in the system. When one player has won a ground engagement at the majority of the Forerunner sites on a planet, the planet is considered controlled by that player and no more ground combat can occur on that planet. When one player controls the majority of the planets in the system, the campaign is over (not wanting to throw good money after bad, the overall commander will choose to cut his losses at that point and pull out of the system).

-Forerunner tech can be scavenged from the various Forerunner sites both in space and on the ground. Some of these have immediate effect, some have persistent effect throughout the campaign. Sometimes the sites literally blow up in your face, however.
 
-we've both built 5000-point lists for H:FB and H:GC, and have named or otherwise designated all individual elements and units. After each engagement, we make saving rolls for all units/elements removed from play during that engagement (I've built a "saving roll table" that shows the rolls needed for each unit/element type); if the saving roll is made, the unit/element is considered "damaged" and cannot be deployed again until repaired. If it fails its saving roll, the unit/element is considered "destroyed" and cannot be used again in the campaign.

I imagine it will take a us a few months to go through this campaign, as we can only get together a couple times a month to play, but that's ok. Keep an eye here for campaign updates!
« Last Edit: March 19, 2018, 12:03:00 am by Landlubber »
"Sometimes, you gotta roll the hard six."--Commander Adama

Landlubber

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Re: The Battle for Jubilee III Sigma
« Reply #1 on: March 19, 2018, 12:00:00 am »
Quickdraw and I met the other night for our first game in the Jubilee III Sigma campaign. Per the campaign rules, the first engagement had to be a space battle, so we both built 1000 point fleets. Also per the campaign rules, we are able to field up to 25% more or fewer points than the agreed-upon point value, so I was actually running around 1080 points, a little higher than Quickdraw.

We made our initiative rolls and I rolled more command icons than he did, giving me initiative in the campaign. I chose to hold a meeting engagement at the Forerunner Station Complex Rho, near the edge of the system (per the system map, there are two main Forerunner station complexes in the Jubilee III Sigma system, designated Rho and Gamma). I was hoping to board the station before the Covenant could and salvage some Forerunner tech. This turned out to be MUCH harder than we both initially thought.



I rushed a Cerberus Battlegroup up as fast as I could and attempted to board, but I was not able to gain a foothold on the station.



Meanwhile, the Covenant were moving up on the other side of the station, intent on attempting their own boarding assault.



These Forerunner station complexes are tough nuts to crack. They have a security detail of 8 with a Firepower Rating of 5, although they have no point defense. In the boarding assault, a score of 13+ on the boarding assault table means that the boarding teams were able to successfully penetrate the station's defenses and get onboard. On a result of 11 or 12, the boarding player places the number of countdown tokens per the boarding assault table; these tokens remain in place, but the boarding teams must return to their parent ships. On results of 10 or lower, the boarding teams make no headway and must return to their parent ships. Any countdown tokens placed by either side remain in place; when the total gets to 6, whichever teams are on the station gain access--so it is possible for one side to do all the heavy lifting, and the other side to swoop in and grab the prize!





Once on the station, the controlling player rolls a Halo die; on a result of a 2 or a 1, there are Forerunner technology bonuses that are gained. On a Miss, the station's defenses are activated and it begins shooting at the closest element to the station. On a Failure (skull), the station self-destructs in a critical core breach.

After a couple of failed attempts by both fleets, the Covenant were finally able to successfully board the station. Unfortunately, they woke the station's defense grid! With one of the Reinforced Marathon cruisers near the station, Admiral Stanforth ordered an element of frigates to close with the station in order to draw its fire:



After the station defenses started warming up and firing on the closest elements, both fleet commanders had to make a choice: stay and fight, risking further loss, or spin up their slipspace drives and live to fight another day? Further combat did ensue, with the UNSC getting the worse end of the deal.



At the end of the engagement, only the UNSC Kilimanjaro was still in the fight.



The Covenant won this scenario based on the number of victory points scored for destroying UNSC ships. If the UNSC loses the next engagement, strategic initiative in the campaign will go to the Covenant, giving their fleet lord the ability to choose where the following engagements will take place (initiative switches after two consecutive losses). The Covenant scored 11 XP for this engagement (3 for participating in the engagement, 5 for winning, and 3 for beating a force with a higher point value); the UNSC scored 3 XP. XP can be spent in this campaign to repair damaged units/elements and to upgrade units/elements after their participation in a certain number of engagements.

In the saving rolls after the campaign, the UNSC lost the Valiant cruisers Chester Nimitz and Heihachiro Togo, along with the reinforced Marathon cruisers Shiva and Oro. The Marathon cruiser Mixcoatl was damaged and will need repairs before she can get back in the fight. Covenant losses were not as heavy, although they did lose at least one capital element.

That's all for now...thanks for reading, and keep an eye on this thread for updates!


« Last Edit: March 19, 2018, 12:05:31 am by Landlubber »
"Sometimes, you gotta roll the hard six."--Commander Adama

Covertwalrus

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Re: The Battle for Jubilee III Sigma
« Reply #2 on: March 19, 2018, 07:07:40 pm »
Fantastic AAR!

The Covenant seem to be highly effective here and their tactics seem to more than balance the advantages of the UNSC fleet here though that was a minor advantage at best.  And indeed, Forerunner statsiosn are well-defended even if the rewards of taking one are considerable :)

 Looking forward to more action!

Quickdraw

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Re: The Battle for Jubilee III Sigma
« Reply #3 on: March 19, 2018, 11:08:37 pm »
Good stuff good stuff.
Like Landlubber said, as we get into this campaign I’m sure we are going to find stuff that needs to be tweaked and modified, so bear with us while we stumble through it.
The first game was eye opening for both of us. We discovered pretty quickly that our forces are going to suffer pretty mightily. I think we both got the sense that we are going to want to be much more careful with our ships in the future.
A big thing for me was boarding the station and activating the guns, my initial thought was of pretty serious frustration as I didn’t get anything fun or useful out of it, but after thinking about it I got over that. It’s all a part of the fun of the campaign and creating a thematic story.
The Covenant definitely came out of this game on top, both in experience and with losses. They only lost one capital element with two other elements damaged, as well as only losing one of my rather large force of zealots.
Hopefully they can take the initiative after this next engagement!

markymark1970

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Re: The Battle for Jubilee III Sigma
« Reply #4 on: March 19, 2018, 11:29:26 pm »
Looking very forward tohow this progresses.

Easy E

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Re: The Battle for Jubilee III Sigma
« Reply #5 on: April 18, 2018, 04:40:36 pm »
Very cool.  I am sorry I was so slow to read this. 

I look forward to more battles in the campaign.
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Landlubber

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Re: The Battle for Jubilee III Sigma
« Reply #6 on: April 18, 2018, 11:14:12 pm »
Very cool.  I am sorry I was so slow to read this. 

I look forward to more battles in the campaign.

Thanks! No worries. We've been having some difficulty scheduling the next game--too much Real Life stuff getting in the way. We hope to get the next game played soon though.
"Sometimes, you gotta roll the hard six."--Commander Adama