#231031 on Leviathan 1.
I'm taking the fleet I described
here on it's maiden voyage, having just pulled together all the DLC earlier today. And who do I face? Of course, none other than the fabled and prestigious Elarma!
Complications arise before the game even begins, as the fleet I had designed was a medium fleet, and I had no large fleet prepared. I hastily slap on an extra scrapper and bugger before starting, knowing that I'm running a fleet miserably low on firepower for a large fleet. I immediately deploy my strategy: Scrappers in the front, ready to charge and let loose the railguns, while the Enforcer covers from behind. The buggers... I don't know what to do with, so I send one to patrol the flank and put the other with my Scrappers.
By turn 3-4, I stop my Scrapper charge. I saw replay #109947, and I'm not going to make that same mistake. If my Scrappers dash right into a railgun shelling, I'm done for, so I park myself at the corner and wait for my foe to come to me.
Turn 7: enemy sighted, and they're facing to the side! I charge, hoping to get the jump on them before they turn to face me with their Railguns. Parking myself earlier led to one of my Scrappers taking artillery damage I would have preferred to avoid.
Elearma takes his railboat around my blockade and goes straight for the Enforcer, taking it out with little issue because I don't actually know what I'm doing. At this point, I realize I'm flanked by two atlas boats with ships that have no business ever being attacked from behind; i.e. I've lost. The next 2-3 turns are a tidy trouncing, where I do more damage to my own bugger than any enemy ship.
At first, I'm ready to never quit, resolving to fight to the last breath by ramming Elarma's ships with my weaponless buggers (I'll smack you with my vision probes!
I'll bite your legs off!), but then I realize continuing any further is just wasting Elarma's time, so in the name of courtesy I concede.
On the one hand, it was nice to see my Scrappers actually holding out in a firefight; despite only having the prow armored, things didn't really go south until I let myself get flanked like an idiot. On the other hand, if I'm sacrificing armor for better movement, maybe it would be a good idea to actually move. Even when I saw the enemy and had an opening to charge, I opted to just sit there and shoot my railguns from afar. Elarma managed to outmaneuver and flank me with Atlas ships, which is a sound damnation of the whole concept behind my scrappers. I also never used the smoke grenades. Forgot I had them, really.