Turn 15 - The Second Battle of Griffin’s Roost or When Deathapotamusaurus Attack
It’s frustrating, incredibly frustrating. You are safe and sound, you and your family, deep beneath the waves while above you battle rages. You have a SATCOM link via a trailed buoy connecting to the orbital surveillance system, but there is nearly nothing you can do to affect the outcome of the fighting.
You are confident as the battle starts, you outnumber the enemy significantly after all. But then it starts to fall apart. The Dracs obviously know what they are doing when it comes to a dropship assault, with the three dropships just close enough together to provide mutual supporting fire while being far enough apart that your Rocs are forced to pick only one to attack.
You wince as the rocket attack appears to be almost completely ineffective, the return fire sending debris flying as armor struggles to stand up to the punishment. If the Rocs had been any less well built you’d have lost a number of them in that first pass.
Meanwhile the Falcons are mixing it up with the enemy fighters, and despite outnumbering them it appears that the battle is far more even than you’d thought it would be. Your birds are faster than most of theirs, but crucially there are faster birds in the enemy formation that are able to tie yours up and set them up for attacks by their comrades. It’s a sprawling, chaotic mess in the orbitals.
The Dropships continue burning closer, only the huge aerodyne showing any damage at all, and that seemed almost all cosmetic. Your shoulders slump, the ASF force that you’d been so proud of was clearly not succeeding as well as you’d hoped.
Closer and closer they come, angling to come down near the Huế mới drop port. Thank God for small mercies at least, a traitorous part of you whispers. Prosperous as the port was, it was a fraction of the size of Griffsport.
The fighting continues, you have a brief moment of excitement when it looks like the laser satellites might swing the battle, but the Dracs compensate smoothly and all they suffer is more scratch damage, with the Rocs looking extremely worn around the edges.
It’s just not working out the way you’d hoped, you’d wanted to stop the enemy dead in space, but it’s not happening. The Falcons are fast enough to dance with the enemy ASFs, but too weak to damage them enough for it to matter, while the Rocs are tough enough to handle the incoming fire from the Dropships, but can’t seem to damage them in return, again, at least not enough to matter. You’ll need to reconsider your plans...
You pound your fists on the table in frustration as a dozen mechs spill out of one of the incoming Union class dropships, dropping down to assault and secure the drop port, even as your fighters struggle to accomplish anything at all useful against the combination of Drac ASF and Dropship defense.
Your fighters continue to get savaged, constantly coming out on the losing end of the exchange against the enemy. The power of the dropships clearly swinging the tide in the enemies favor.
The Mechs touch down, and the Rapid Reaction Force swings into action. They aren’t able to do much more than cosmetic damage to the mechs despite getting in a very large number of hits. The mechs are taking armor damage, and the RRF vehicle are barely getting scratched in return, but then your blood starts to boil… the DCMS mechs start ignoring the hovercraft and simply begin lobbing inferno SRMs into the city itself, obviously bent on causing massive property damage and destruction rather than fight an actual battle.
Your eyes tear up, but then Willis grabs your shoulder and points at the screen… one… no two… of the massive gates used to close off the spaceport from the surrounding wilderness is open… and you see a sight that you never thought would be this comforting coming over the horizon on the satellite display.
One of the largest herds of deathopotamusaurus that you’d ever seen. Stampeding straight towards the now grounded enemy mechs.
It takes the DCMS a crucial half hour to notice the incoming stampede, time in which the mechs continue indulging in blatant war crimes and destruction. It’s obvious on the display when they do notice it, as the mechs suddenly abandon their incendiary ways and race back to the dropships as the just disembarked vehicle battalion hastily starts reboarding.
It’s too late. The stampede thunders through the gates. The two Unions are able to lift, incinerating dozens of the massive beasts, but the giant aerodyne is trapped. The weapons fit on board lashes out in a desperate defense, but it is completely futile. The aerodyne might have been the largest of the dropships present, but it crumpled under the onslaught of stampeding wildlife. You can see Grifftigers around the periphery of the stampeding herd, roaring and making feints at it, steering it towards the other opened gate and away from the city itself.
Air combat continues, but your birds are nearly out of fuel, and it looks like the Dracs are now just planning on going home. Combat breaks off, and the Dracs retreat off world, leaving a smoking ruin where the space port once was, out of control fires throughout Huế mới, and a frustrated and angry monarch behind.
FINAL RESULTS -
DCMS LOSSES - 1 Triumph Dropship trampled by deathopotamusaurus.
1 Vehicle Battalion (Galleons, Vedettes, and LRM Carriers) trampled by same.
1 Union w/12 mechs escaped, scratch damage to the mechs
1 Union-CV with the ASFs escaped, scratch damage to the ASFs
Griffin’s Roost Losses - Scratch damage to AeroForce (worst to Rocs) and RRF. No units reached CLG.
QM notes - Whew, first time blues and plenty of things it turned out I didn’t account for. Thank you to Jarow, Decim, and Yellowhammer for their assistance as the dice-rolling brigade. We actually had to restart when we realized that the laser defense satellites were far too overpowered. I’ll be prototyping and considering ways to account for fuel points in ASF combat, as well as explicit rules about strafing, non-direct combat actions, etc. This was a learning experience for sure!