Here's the recap of the Kzinti Strike Cruiser vs. Orion Raider Cruiser match. One thing that I didn't take into account is that the Kzinti Cruiser only has 24 points in its #1 shield, compared to 30 for a normal cruiser. Not that the small Orion ship could really do anything with that fact, but it could have made the battle a little closer.

Turn 1. Range is some 50-odd hexes. Weapon status 2 so phasers are armed, multi-turn arming weapons are in their last turn of arming, and one special shuttle can be readied, which in the Cadet Training Handbook can only be a suicide shuttle. Kzinti strategy is still to overrun and use its drones for the dirty work, so speed 31 which leaves no power to arm the Disruptors. Orion strategy is less certain at this point, so speed 27 and see what happens.

Both ships head towards each other. One strategy against a seeking weapon opponent is to move fast and skirt them. Make him commit the seeking weapons then go the other way and speed up some more. Run until the weapons run out of fuel, which for a drone is three turns which is a very long time. Easier to do with a plasma torpedo as those only last less than a turn. Orion ship tries to stay near the edge of the map, the Kzinti ship wisely heads for the center. At these speeds it takes a lot of space to turn, although in SFB, it takes the same amount of time to turn around at each turn mode bracket. Hence ships try to stay at the highest speed on a turn mode bracket, rather than the lowest speed of the bracket.

Kzinti ship makes a small mistake by firing a drone barrage at the start of the turn. Normally you can fire a weapon only once a turn, and not within a quarter of a turn from the last firing. This makes impulse 25 (of a 32 impulse turn) the "impulse of decision", as that is the last impulse when a ship can fire and still be able to fire those weapons on impulse 1, when you've done another energy reallocation. Since the ships were so far away, firing the drones early means that they'll run out of fuel earlier, although in this game it didn't matter. In retrospect the Orion should have immediately gone into "run" mode and tried to stall until the drones burn out.

Towards the end of turn 1 the Orion charges the Kzinti. At range 5 he fires everything, hoping for maximum damage and maybe taking out a couple of Kzinti weapons. 25 points of damage is enough to punch through the Kzinti #1 shield, which he forgets to reinforce with battery power (to stop the extra point of damage from scoring an internal). The internal is a warp hit, inconsequential this early in the game.

Turn 2. Bad news for the Orion, as he decides to run. The first four drones will hit the Orion and he doesn't have the phasers to stop them, so he charges the tractor beams and hopes that his two drones will stop two of the Kzinti drones, then his two tractor beams can stop the other two drones. The Kzinti barrels in, using battery power to charge the Disruptors.

Orion launches drones. Kzinti shoots them down. Kzinto fires at the fleeing Orion, punching through the #5 shield and scoring 11 internals. Orion uses his rear phaser-3s to try to shoot down the two Kzinti drones, but only destroys one. The other drone hits the #5 shield, scoring 12 internals. Photon torpedo is hit, as are all but 2 phaser-1s and a drone. Eight power hits add insult to injury. At this point the Orion is running with the Kzinti in pursuit, he doesn't have enough power to outrun the Kzinti and at this point a moderate Kzinti overrun will cripple the Orion. I call the game as the Orion has clearly lost.