Round 1, Match 5: Fast Heavy Cruisers vs Anti-Missile DestroyersLadies and Gentlemen, The Battle for Barnard's Star presents the FINAL battle of Round 1, featuring a pure overpowered anti-missile fleet included by popular demand pitted against a new, arguably improved, varient of the fast-railgun strategy that proved effective in the Alpha Centauri Arena.
The date is June 5th, 2025. Entering from the north via the GJ 1002 jump point is the AntiMissile fleet displacing 60.7 kT and armed exclusively with size-one missiles, the majority of which are anti-missiles. From the south entering directly via the Sol jump point is the Fast Heavy fleet displacing 56.4 kT and armed with a mix of railguns and high power microwaves. At 10,000 km/s these are also the fastest ships of the line, outpaced only by the beam fighter scouts and FAC missile boats.
Both task forces detach their non-combat vessels and proceed at full speed down the middle toward an inevitable clash.
June 6th, 17:38 - First contact by the Anti-missile fleet when they detect the R100 active scanner of the Hurk-100 just over 133m km out. Active scanner contact follows at 19:48, and when the fleets cross the 37.5m km mark the anti-missile fleet opens fire with tripple waves of 162x S1-ASM missiles, targeting one and a half waves each on the Hurk-100 and Hurk-1 001. Once the missiles cross the point at which the fast heavy cruisers could have turned and outran them the fleet turns back toward their entry point to maximize the engagement time.
Impact! With a combined closing velocity of 58k km/s the missiles be a stroke of luck skipped completely over the Heavy Cruisers's detection range. All damage was absorbed by armor, so first blood doesn't occur yet.
Momentarily uncertain the cruisers cancel movement orders and remain in place to weather the missile storm. The second wave impacts, and breaks through to destroy an active scanner, crew quarter, and maintenance bay. The third wave breaks through on the Hurk-1 001 to destroy a single fire control. The storm ends, and the cruisers resume their advance.
For their part, the Anti-missile fleet takes a few minutes to finishes cross-loading ammunition to compensate for the small magazines on the Abasolo and launches a fourth and final wave of dedicated ASMs split evenly against the two damaged targets and reverse course to close for offensive anti-missile operations.
Impact! The fast heavy fleet saw this wave coming and engaged, but enough leakers struck true to destroy the engine on the Hurk-100 knocking it out of formation. By this point the Hurk-EM has picked up the Res-9 scanners on the Anti-missile fleet, and elect to leave the crippled Hurk behind while racing onward to their foe.
The Anti-missile fleet concludes two full waves per target are necessary, and begin launching one the fleets are 3.5 million km apart, with orders to follow at 2.5m km.
However, the anti-missile fleet neglected to consider that while the ASMs were striking with less than 55% accuracy the ASMs would strike with 100% perfection. The result was overkill. More missiles are believed to have self destructed for lack of a target than were shot down by opposing point defenses.
The only survivors were a single ship the destroyer fleet had neglected to target plus the previously wounded ships the anti-missile fleet was saving for later. When all was said and down every fast heavy cruiser was destroyed and the anti missile destroyers still had 552 anti-missiles in magazines, enough to have potentially taken down an additional cruiser.
Winners: Anti-Missile Fleet
Decisive VictoryRound 1 Result Summery:
Missile Artillery vs Beam Fighters - Beam Fighters win [Marginal]
Stealth Missiles vs Fast Rail Frigates - Fast Rail win [Decisive]
Missile FAC vs Tractor Module Beams - FAC win [Decisive]
Mine Layers vs Beam Leviathans - Mine layers win [Decisive]
Anti-Missiles vs Fast Heavy - Anti-Missiles win [Decisive]
Round 2 Bracketing:
Fast Rail Frigates vs Missile FAC
Mine Layers vs Anti-Missiles
Beam Fighters vs Stealth Missiles
Missile Artillery vs Tractor Module Beams
Beam Leviathans vs Fast Heavy
I intend to play out Round 2 over the coming weeks. I am not yet sure if there will be a conclusive Round 3 or if I will be ready to switch over to Aurora vs 7 at that time.