Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 050 – Feb 19th

We spend an hour flying to the military base. We are detected and get a result of e003. We are attacked by 3 Tech level 2 tanks and 6 with infantry men with TL-2 heavy side arms. The tank guns count as boat guns. They have heavy armor, which reduces each hit by two dice. Skimmers take 2 hits to destroy. This encounter takes an hour.

Now, since we are in a ship and move far faster than any tank, we could escape at the end of the first round but they would get to shoot at me. We are going for it because if I am going to take damage, I want to some back.

To recap, skimmers take 2 hits to destroy, a hopper takes 5 and a starship takes 10. These tanks count as skimmers and are disabled on the first hit and destroyed on the second. Starship guns do 10 hits or 1d6 hits and a critical. In this case, they do one die less due to the atmosphere and because of the armor, they do 2 dice less, for a total of 2 dice. Boat guns do one point of damage on a hit to a tank, which is reduced to by 2, they are ineffective. Against a ship these guns do one hit, which may be a critical.

Those heavy hand weapons have no effect on a starship, so we can ignore them for the moment.

The Antelope fires first because of it’s speed. We roll a 2 and 5. One tank is disabled.

The tanks return fire. They have 2 due to Tech level, a plus 3 due to skill and a -2 due to movement. They must roll under a 3 to hit. They get a 4 and 5, both are misses.

Next round. The tanks stop so they can shoot better. I now get to roll 3 dice because they are stationary.  I get a pair of sixes and a 1. The second tank is disabled. The last tank returns fire and hits with a 5, which does one point of damage to the Antelope.

I disable the last tank with a roll of 1, 4 and 5.

Everyone else is fleeing. I can gun these guys down from the ship with no risk. There are 15 of them and if they roll 4 or more, they escape after I get a shot at them. The event does not say that I will be wanted if I kill them or let them flee, so there are zero consequences. I pretend to shoot at them in the next round while 11 of them make their escape roll. In the next round 2 more escape, and in the third, the last guys make their rolls and get out of dodge. This is an exercise in dice rolls, I didn't shoot and let them have their rolls out of curiosity as to how fast they could get away. Three rounds. Not bad, but if this had been timed to a number of rounds, I would have been in trouble.

The tanks take up 45 CU inside the ship, so taking them is out of the question. I use a loophole in the rules and take their guns. The loop hole is, installing guns takes a day of RRR, removing them isn’t mentioned in the rules, so it takes no time.

On to the military base with 8 hours left. The military base has only 6 contact types, each taking 4 hours so we roll 1d6 twice. We get a 4 and 4, which is only buy boat guns. I don’t need those, so we are done for the day. 

1 Antelope starship with TL-5 Guns. I owe 117,000 secs. in principle. It has one point of damage.
1 TL-1 Ship’s Guns.
1 Hopper with boat guns, TL-3.
3 Boat guns, TL-2.
2 CU Status unit in Cockpit and Engineering, 8 1 CU Status units in Crew Quarters and 1 1 CU unit in Gunnery.
10 Fuel Units in the Ship’s Boat.
9 Repair units,
5 Life Support Units in the Ship’s boat.
7 PS-bots, 1 per character,
6 Heavy Hand Weapons for sale, 4 for characters use,
7 Side Arms TL-1, 1 Side Arm TL-3, and one TL-4.
5 Doses of pheromones (e009) in Duke’s pocket.
and the ship is fueled with 6 hypercharges.

10 empty CU in the ship’s hold, plus 10 in the Hopper.

I have 22,071 secs. We are wanted in the Palatek system.