My 2cr. Apologies for the length, but I analysed Lenats fleet a few years back. I think I have a pretty good grasp of it. Call it a mis-spent youth.
In practice, most fleets gave up after the first turn. Who wouldn't if you just saw six of your 100,000 ton plus BBs scrubbed of weapons. Read on if you are curious and are interested in my analysis.
At the time of the tourney, the rules were still new. Given the prep time requires, days to create good fleets, weeks if you were really keen and the lack of live opponents except at tournaments like this, the numbers of attendees that will have played more than a couple of games will have been minimal. This is reflected in Lenat's observations of fleets built using preconceived, flawed ideas. A couple more games and some number crunching would have seen more competitive fleets attend. Lenat still would have won and did the following year, but there would have been more of a challenge.
FWIW I believe his AI was a scam. One that gained him a lot of US govt defense money. I believe he had a combat simulator that was capable of fighting fleet combo's to the death. In the day this would have been a heck of an achievement, but it is far short of an AI. Basically using his simulator, he had played hundreds, maybe thousands of games before turning up, versus everyone else's handful of games, if they were lucky.
I speculate that he also would have had access to the university wargames club. University wargames clubs in the 70's and 80's were very strong. This was the hey-day of strategic level board war games and where MM and co got their start and passion for the industry. Wargamers would have been all over this Euresko project like a hot rash. Using their help would have allowed Lenat to 'truthfully' say he barely knew the rules (a claim he made at the time).
Lenat's fleet essentially uses missile volleys to scrub weapons from the opposition. This works well against spinal mount armed ships which only get one turn firing at full strength, on turn two plus and they are far less of a threat.
The Eurisko ships are essentially the only front line ships. The only flaw is that they cannot destroy ships, for that you need spinal weapons to destroy or immobilise the opposition, plus boarding parties (the fleet caries over 3000 marines). The Lenat fleet will only deploy its spinals in a safe environment, typically during a breakthrough. This way the mesons are always at full effect and will target large ships of size Q+. Similar with the PA spinals which will look to take out ship less than size Q with the extra criticals gained by the spinal size being greater than the ship size.
The risk of Lenats fleet is that the opponent fields the paper to his rock. In this case fast ships nearly unhittable by factor 3 missiles. Fortunately there will not be many of these and the Euriskos can absorb a lot of damage. Joining the Euriskos will be Garter and Wasp class with 34 #9 missile bays, using emergency agility 6 to minimise return damage.
The Wasp class has a +1 size modifier, giving it a +7 defensive bonus (including agility) making it un-hitable by most weapon systems including Mesons after their first turn in combat when they will drop from #D to requiring double sixs to hit at long range followed by 9+ on two dice to penetrate the configuration. No meson shields, but not a lot of need either.
The Garter class only get the +6 defensive bonus (agility) meaning they only get hit by mesons after the first turn on 11+, configuration is penetrated on 8+.
Basically the Wasp and Garter class will target small fast ships, like fighters with their +8 defensive modifiers. Most opponents will make the mistake of targeting Eurisko class cruisers, slow, fat, rocks that are easy to hit. The longer this goes on, the better it gets for the Lenat fleet.
Missile #9 x 34 will hit fast fighters on 10+, meaning 5 or 6 fighters dead per turn (9 criticals). This might take a while, but in the 1981 tournament only 200 pilots were allowed.
Against fast ships over 2000 ton in size (+6 defensive bonus), each of the 75 Euriskos are firing 29 #3 missile batteries taking up 58 turrets. Note that the Euriskos are not maxed out for weapons, they only use 61 turrets of 111 turrets possible.
75 x 29 = 2175 missile batteries, hitting on 11+, that is 181 hits (less defensive fire) against the fastest, hardest to hit ships. About a third to a half of these will result in weapon hits. Recall that fast ships are typically not well armored ships. Forget nuclear weapons unless the other side failed to get dampers. And of course after turn one there will be somewhat less than 2175 #3 missile turrets left.
Turn those 2175 batteries on an agility 2 battleship of 100,000 tons plus and they score (no defensive modifier, hitting on 5+) 1812 hits, less defensive fire. Enough to scrub maybe 6 battleships of weapons to the point of OMG. Say 300 hits per BB and a third are weapon hits, say 100. Of those, assuming 7 weapon types until they run out, that is each weapon type losing 14 factors or batteries. No more meson spinal mount.
Those six BBs were basically one shot wonders. In return, the six meson #D in turn one, would hit on 6+ (2 defensive bonus) and penetrate on 9+ achieving (6 x 0.7222 * 0.2777) 1.2 hits, lets be generous and call it 2 hits. With those two hits, you need to basically roll 5+ to kill the ship. Most other results are not nice but survivable. Lets be really generous and assume two 5+ results, mission killing two Euriskos. There are 73 left. Of course the other weapons on the BBs will do damage, but the 'main' weapon is gone. The battle is going to the slugger, not to precision meson targeting.
What about the Bee, the 99 ton so-called lifeboat that sits between the two fleets while Lenat's fleet repairs. On the surface it is not unhittable, even though it has a +8 defensive bonus (agility 6, size bonus 2). However at the point it is needed, both sides are expected to have taken significant damage, making the odds of hitting it very low. Non-the less there are three of them. If the other side gets really lucky, it is vanishingly unlikely they will get x3 lucky.
So, the basic plan is weapon scrubbing. The slower the opposition, the faster it happens. For fast fleets, chuck your #9 missiles forward as well and target them on hard to hit fighters. In all cases, wait till they practically cannot return fire (a safe environment) then use your meson and PA ships to try to destroy ships.
Sorry about the long read, the Lenat fleet though is interesting. If you made it this far I will assume you think so as well. It isn't anywhere near as games lawyery as people assume, it is however well designed. I believe the main (only?) rule enforced for the following year was no jump tanks.
On the subject of destroying ships in 1982. First the why. The fleet with the fastest ships gets an initiative bonus. Abandon your crippled ships and hit the self destruct on the way out and you may regain this bonus. Second, the how. Most of the gamers there would have been roleplayers. In roleplaying hitting the self destruct button is always a viable tactic to screw over the 'bad guy', the consensus on the day would have been 'odd, but ok'. The last point is that keeping your ships only matters in a campaign, otherwise why bother. I doubt the edge gained was critical, more an interesting quirk he was allowed to do and subsequently highlighted in interviews. A bit like he never needed his lifeboats in 1981, but it was an interesting quirk he could exploit.
Damn, did it again. I promise I'll stop... Cheers.
