Star Fleet Battles Campaign: Turn 9 Movement, And Part 1 of the Big Fight

Last weekend, we completed strategic movement for turn 9 in our SFB campaign.  The Lyrans are finally nibbling at Kzinti space, while the Klingons are getting serious.  Here is the map showing movement in the "North".

Lyran space is to the left, Klingon at the bottom of the photo, 

click on it for a larger version.

The Lyrans are going after another Kzinti battlestation in hex 0703, which has a couple of ships protecting it (this might be a miniatures battle), and the Klingons will attempt to assault a Kzinti starbase in Hex 1304 with about 50 ships from four different fleets.

Down south, the Klingons are flittering about just inside of Hydran space (off map to the right below), but haven't actually done anything yet, and the big battle between the Lyrans and Hydrans has started in Hex 0710.

Hydran space is at the bottom, Lyran to the left, 

Klingon to the right.

The huge battle at Hex 0710, involves two Lyran fleets, the huge invading Hydran fleet, and the small, but lethal Kzinti fleet, that needs to make contact with the Hydrans this turn or become un-supplied and dead in the water.

Here is the battle part way into the first turn:

We're playing on Craig's huge table, which is something like 6'-6" x 14', using three Hotz Matt's, hexmaps.

In the foreground of the photo is the northern combined Lyran fleet of 33 ships, featuring a newly built Dreadnought,  a battle Tug,  a Command Cruiser, 9x Heavy Cruisers, and 7x War Cruisers.  they are chasing the 15 Kzinti Battlecruisers near the middle of the table.  The Kzinti have laid a minefield (orange markers)  and dropped what I expect are scatter pack shuttles.

The Kzintis are engaging the fleeing Lyran southern fleet, which consists of 37 ships, but mostly small vessels.  There is a single Command cruiser, and a few  War and Light Cruisers, and everything else are destroyers or smaller.  

The Lyran southern fleet has laid a chaotic minefield (white markers in the distance) in front of the pursuing Hydran fleet of 45 ships.

My hope was that my Lyran fleet of midget ships could smack into the Kzinti battlecruisers and somehow mostly eliminate them, and that the northern Lyran fleet and, hopefully, some southern remnants could then exchange with the Hydrans.

The situation at the end of turn 1.

It took about two and half hours to get through the first turn with 130 ships, and for the most part, the battle has progressed about as I expected.  Unfortunately, I didn't get several of my Lyran ships close enough to the Kzinti to do reasonable damage, so currently, two Kzinti BCs are badly hit, and the Kzinti have blown up 5 Lyran Police Corvettes, and done light damage to a Frigate and a destroyer.

We're meeting in a week to continue the battle, which I expect to last around four to five turns, though if something goes particularly wrong for the Hydrans tactically, they could disengage early, which would be unfortunate for the Lyrans. 

I need to stick out and take my losses, as I need to at least greatly reduce the Hydran presence in Lyran space.  Otherwise, they could split up and cause absolute chaos in Lyran space, or go after the Lyran homeworld proper.