April 13th

Another week with a three man crew. This week we had Capt. Jim Grindrod, Cmdr. William Feil, and Lt. Larry "Chiquita" Arellano.

Our meal was nothing big or fancy this time. Just a dozen cheeseburgers. Yay for meat.

This week we decided to try mission mods instead of doing the usual invasion,siege, repeat.
What we picked to start off with was Kralien Pass.
Larry had the helm. Jim took triple duty doing Engineering, Science, and Comms. Will rounded things out with the weapons console. The ship we took out of dock on this mission was the UES Phoenix, a Battleship
The mission started out fine until we ran across a group of Skaarans. They were dealt with extremely but that left our munitions almost completely depleted. With only a torpedo left and a few ECMs we made our way into nebula and through an asteroid field to track an anomaly. When we got to the anomaly we used it to repower our ship and plotted a course back to the pass. We followed the direction the enemy convoy had been moving and engaged it from behind. It was all Kralien and Torgoth ships. Taking our ECMs and boosted quad energy weapons we made short work of the bad guys. Mission completed.

The second mission saw us sticking with the Phoenix but changing our stations. Lt. Chiquita took his usual spot as chief Engineer, he also took science. Capt. Jim had our weapons and comm. Cmdr. Will took helm.
Our new mission was Wayward Son. We got instructions from the comms to only move forward a certain amount. We had no idea how far that was so we kept going... until we hit a minefield and exploded.

For the next run we realized the nebula in the mission are hiding more mines then imaginable. We went the proper way through minefield but were ambushed by a large number of Skaarans. After using every weapon on board the Phoenix we bought some breathing room and ran to a place away from the patrols to hide. We went from less then 50 energy and waited until we had 800 energy. Will took the ship out and contact was made with Explorer 09. Explorer 09 moved with us and we got them pretty far before we once more ran out of energy and were destroyed.

That failure still on our minds we changed missions. This time we took the mission: The Rabbit Hole. We did this mission in the Phoenix but our crew was changed around. Lt. Chiquita manned weapons and comms. Capt. Jim got in the pilot chair. Cmdr. Will did double duty on Science and Engineering.

The Kraliens attacking in this mission were wildly outgunned by the Phoenix. With boosted power to energy weapons and front shield, each Kralien vessel fell to heavy fire. The last few Krailen ships were clustered together and destroyed by a ECM/Nuke combo. For the last objective comms related instructions to get close to the black hole to scan it. After a few close passed by the black hole with nothing happening our Captain took us through the black hole at warp 4. Once this was done the scan finally took place and science got a good read from the black hole. Mission completed.

With three missions tried and two completed it was decided to play invasion. The crew kept their stations from the previous outing but a new ship was taken. A jump driven Dreadnought, the UES Alicorn. To add to the challenge the captain ordered only energy weapons be used and a sensor limitation for 33k be taken into account.
Things started much the same as they usually do, with the Alicorn successfully defending DS3. Two Skaarans were the next to fall after one ran from the Alicorn's onslaught. Finally the crew sat and watched as a fleet of Torgoth and Kralien ships flew into a minefield. Most ships were destroyed but the largest two vessels didn't have to mourn for long before they were put out of their misery.

Once more a repeat of the same invasion but this time a sensor range of 8k.
The challenge to the crew was great. With only a range of 8k our Captain on helm needed constant input from science to avoid enemies and obstacles. One of our destroyers was taken out by a Skaaran craft after an intense pounding. Another folly on for the ally ships was a transport flying into a minefield. Several missions were completed and anomalies researched to provide the energy for jumping our Alicorn Dreadnought around. One combined Arvonian/Torgoth fleet attacked full force. Engineering boosted maneuverability and energy weapons to keep up with the Arvonian fighter craft. All but one was destroyed. Cmdr. Will in engineered didn't want any survivors so impulse was boosted 300% to over take the fighter and allow energy weapons to obliterate it.