This is part 3. Part 2 can be found here.
TURN 4
Initiative - The Colonials regain the Initiative against the Cylons for this turn.
Rycon launches the last of its Missile Salvos, aiming for where they believe the Cylons will end this turns movement. The Cylons don't have any more Heavy Missiles and so do nothing at this stage.
Missile Salvo launch by Rycon
Both sides move, the Cylons moving as per the scenario rules.
Missile Attack Phase
After movement, Rycon's Missile Salvo ends up being within attack range and so activates its secondary thrusters and sends a swarm of smaller missiles at the Cylon Basestar.
The Cylon's Point Defence Systems take out 2 missiles in the Salvo. However, when the Rycon determines how many missiles actually attacked the Basestar, only 1 missile locked on target. As such, the Cylons manage to destroy the only missile in the salvo that managed to lock on.
Ship Fire Phase
Rycon is able to bring 3x Beam 2's to bear on the Cylon's, whom happen to be at Range 1. The Cylon's however can fire 4x Beam 2's and 2x Beam 4's at Rycon, also at Range 1. This is going to get nasty as Rycon's shield is down and the armour of both Cylon and Colonial ships is all gone.
Lazer beams crack across the intervening void of space, vaporising hull plating on both ships.
Rycon scores 4 hits against the Cylon Basestar, who returns fire for a total of 14 hits on Rycon. Rycon is mercilessly hammered with beam fire. As a result, Rycon has now lost three whole rows of her Hull. This means her Threshold Check is going to be heavily penalised with negatives to the die roll !
Threshold Checks
Rycon has to make her Threshold Checks after such a beating. She looses a System now on a roll of 3+, with a modifier of 2+ for loosing two rows of hull in a single turn. That's pretty nasty stuff. She doesn't fare very well as a result, ending up as a burning hulk that can only manoeuvre at half speed, with all offensive weapons lost. Ugly!
Conclusion - Cylons win!
Final Thoughts - in hindsight, the design of the SSD for the Battlestar was flawed from the beginning. Its hull was too thin (i.e. rows were too short) and thus left itself open to suffering greatly with any Thresholds Check once a few rows of hull were lost.
As a result, the naval architects from Colonial Fleet are brought in to re-watch the simulation before being soundly smacked across the back of the head and sent back out to their drawing boards to redesign the schematics of the Battlestar.
Rycon will rise from the ashes for a rematch once the Naval architects get their collective acts together.
