Popular topic from the old forum. One of my favorites to read.
Currently the Terra Victa empire is building up a force to deal with hostile aliens discovered 2 jumps away from Sol system. The limited survey of the system prior to the disappearance of the Tellus Explorator survey vessel was showing promising results. The Janus gravitational survey vessel made quick haste to leave the system after her sister ship reported weapons fire upon them.
Shortly after it’s destruction there was no trace of any of the wreckage appearing on the Janus’ sensors.
2 Likes
My battlefleet has been sitting around for months waiting for orders while I twiddle my thumbs making cool graphics for an AAR that will probably never be published.
But hey, at least we have cool propaganda swag?
6 Likes
Only 6 Armor? I guess over that tonnage it’s probably fine. But one decent sized torpedo…
It’s a bit light for this size, but there are also 2 shield generators providing 142 shield points, so one or two stray torpedoes aren’t a fatal threat. That, and a torpedo would need to have 36 or more damage to open the armor, which isn’t super practical until much higher tech levels and torpedo sizes.
Without the shields, I’d be more worried about particle lances than torpedoes.
I’m a few years behind in working on my internal-to-me AAR which maybe I’ll publish one day, but.. you know.
Anyway - the context is a ‘human diaspora’ context. I figure invaders destroyed a massively expanding and undermilitarized human polity. A couple offshoots survived for various reasons (player race happens to be at the end of a long chain of systems, so there’s “physical isolation” working in their favor). These days, about 80 years after TN rediscovery, there’s almost 2 dozen colonies and maybe 40-50 known systems. Two other human offshoots have been discovered - one is slightly technologically superior and hostile (the Acheron Despotate) and the other (Venezia Commonality) seems not quite as advanced and more happy to coexist with us.
Within the past couple of years we’ve finally found Sol again (spoiler alert, renaming Sol’s solar bodies is a pain in the neck). Of course, the weasels of the Acheron Despotate have previously colonized humanity’s cradle. This is reasonably intolerable, so we’re created space-superiority and have rebuffed a number of attempts for them to retake the system and am working on division-scale dropships which can drop a bunch of groundtroops quickly onto earth, as the enemy has something like 60-70 Gauss and 60-70 35cm Laser STOs. So mostly, we’re building up ground troops and working on the dropships necessary to take back Earth…
If you open the System Generation and Display window in SM mode, there is a “Name Sol Bodies” button that I believe does what you want. I’m not sure why it’s SM-only.
1 Like
The “Altar Shadows” are a highly advanced, heavily shielded alien force that presents the most significant existential threat to the Eternal Court’s expansion. The Altar Shadows attack with nearly inconceivable laser-warheads, providing a huge challenge to point defense theory. Unlike the biological Zaqqumi, scholars and skeptics at the Spire of Gibraltar theorize that the Altar Shadows may not be biological at all. Instead, they are believed to be an automated defense system left behind by an ancient civilization.
This theory stems from their behavior: they maintain silent, stationary blockades and seem to “ascend” directly from planetary surfaces to vigilantly defend “Jewel” worlds or systems containing ruined xeno-colonies (as observed in HIP 82775 and Gamma Scorpii).
The Eternal Court is blockading the systems as shipyards churn out new, shielded Claymore-class heavy cruisers and their laser point defense Gunto-class destroyer escorts. Strategists are optimistic, but know that the inevitable 3rd Battle of Gamma Scorpii will be an uphill battle.
It has been almost thirteen years since we first encountered the raiders.
They first appeared in the Garoo system, and the X-241-1 system two jumps away.
While the ship in Garoo vanished after some time, the one in X-241-1 attacked and destroyed one of our survey ships there.
When the ship in Garoo re-appeared on our sensors, two Brannigan destroyers were sent to investigate, though the raider ship is twice their speed.
They fail to even approach the alien ship, and never manage to get a target lock on it with their missile controls.
During this time, communication attempts are made, but these are either ignored or answered with nonsensical sounds.
Over the next years, more raider ships seemingly appear at random, first of one type we call the Nemesis, later with more varied designs.
They attack civilian transports, and on one occasion a raider fired upon the surface of Ukonvasara in the Ukko system, killing thousands.
We are not defenceless though, and our first kill came in the orbit of Vulcania Prime in Wasat, as the raider strayed too close to our STO platforms and was destroyed by railgun fire.
After developing a new missile, the Sword rocket, and new engines, we began building Marauder Missile Destroyers. The first of six are launched in 245AI.
Unlike the Dakota and the Gracili, the Marauder is a fully new design, with the singular goal of catching up to alien raiders and destroying them with rockets.
Twin ‘Afterburner’ engines give her an edge in speed, while her small sensor suite is focussed on detecting the raiders.
Reeunk NPE 150.432.7 ‘Afterburner’ (2) Power 864 Fuel Use 101.67% Signature 432 Exp 15%
Fuel Capacity 409,000 Litres Range 12.1 billion km (19 days at full power)
Brannigan Arms Missile Launcher S02.5/0.6 (8) Missile Size: 2.5 ROF 230
Brannigan Arms MFC S019 R23 (1) Range 23.3m km RES 19
Sword Rocket (40) Speed 10,240 km/s Range 9.3m km WH 4 Size 2.5 TH: 1,024 / 2,048 / 4,096
Civilian R019-12 Sensors (1) GPS 228 Range 11.7m km RES 19
Civilian TH1.0-5.0 (1) Sensitivity 5 Detect 1000: 17.7m km
While her speed is impressive, it is clear we had to sacrifice a lot to get a ship able to overtake the raiders. Engineers are complaining that the ships are held together by their paint jobs, and the crew has to endure cramped conditions with little to distract them.
Even before a Marauder has taken out a Nemesis, the Weak Problem Solver, a Vulture-class salvager, processes the Nemesis wreck near Vulcania Prime.
“A closer look at the ship reveals its shape, a central core with two thin beams on either side, rather like a thick ‘H’. Presumably these housed the engines, since the beams are heavily damaged, and we did not recover any.
This suggests that it was in fact the engine or engines that exploded when the STO’s opened fire, since we did recover the ship’s reactor.”
Tenoch pauses for a moment to read incoming messages. “Yes, I can confirm that the technology of the ship is more advanced than ours. I’ll send a list of major recovered components now.”
Another pause. “I agree, that is indeed a large amount of Gallicite. Even our new high-power engines do not use this much. And yes, the railgun is superior to ours in every way, though by my estimate not that much.”
“We have also recovered an abundance of minor components, and fragments of components and hull that shed light on the alien’s armour and power distribution systems. Although one of the railguns is shredded beyond recovery, its connection to the reactor survived, and my engineers have learned much from it.”
After letting her camera drone pan over the recovered components and materials, Tenoch switches her feed to the remains of the alien wreck, now little more than a bent skeleton.
“We have learned all we can here, and we’ll leave the remains of the wreck for civilian salvagers.
Once we finish securing our cargo, we will drop it off at Child of Garoo. The components we recovered are too valuable to risk losing to another raider.”
Before she can end the call, she is interrupted by a question on the other side that seems to take her off guard.
“Naming the ship? I’m being given that honour? Very well, let me think for a moment.
‘Nemesis’. That seems appropriate. I see the class of ship has already been set to ‘Raider’. Understood, Tenoch out.”
This becomes the norm for future salvages. Nemesis wrecks appear to be a treasure trove of advanced technology, offering railguns, hull plating, capacitors, and a multitude of sensor systems.
Over the following years, several raider attacks are repelled with increasing success, especially when two alien salvagers are destroyed by small Archaeopteryx corvettes.
During those years, no meaningful messages were ever received coming from raider ships, until Marauders are following the lone survivor of the latest raiding force in late 255AI.
They had run out of rockets, a common problem, yet the Nemesis still fled from them.
On the bridge of the Mom-Joking Remodeler, acting sensor-officer Quetzalli is paying only some attention to the fleeting Nemesis and the surrounding empty space, when the comms unit begins to crackle.
She leans closer, not expecting anyone to contact the ship by this method, and as the speakers begin to activate she realizes that the signal is coming from the alien ship.
“Hello extremely! Do you like to party?”
Quetzalli swallows, hesitates, then taps the ‘response’ switch.
“Who am I talking to?”
The speakers crackle, falls silent, then begin to play the next alien message.
“We are happy energy people from the outside. Here is warm and smooth.”
“What do you want from us? Why do you attack us?”
“Orz play spicy games, too friendly.”
“Orz? You call yourself Orz?”
“Silly camper, many bubbles, no more stories.”
“What do you want from us?”
Quetzalli preens herself in nervousness, waiting for a response. The speaker remains silent though, and she can see that during the conversation the Nemesis has not changed her speed or course.
Shaking, she reaches for the internal comm system to alert her commander and report the exchange.
1 Like
I’ve found that when posting ship summaries, the forum software will set each line as a paragraph. You can change that with Shift-Enter to force a new line, but I’ve found the easier option is to just paste a screenshot. Use snipping tool in Windows to select the class summary, click copy and then use ctrl-V to paste the screenshot directly into the post.
You no longer need to upload files to use screenshots.
In fact, I should probably just add a Copy Summary button to the Class Window, so you click that in Aurora and then ctrl-V in here.
EDIT: I added an option within Aurora to generate class summary images, for pasting into the chat
You can also paste them into a code block by surrounding with triple backticks (```):
Sword class Frigate 20,000 tons 542 Crew 2,987.4 BP TCS 400 TH 2,000 EM 2,130
5000 km/s JR 3-50 Armour 4-65 Shields 71-426 HTK 113 Sensors 18/18/0/0 DCR 24-12 PPV 60.64
Maint Life 3.40 Years MSP 2,540 AFR 133% IFR 1.9% 1YR 334 5YR 5,012 Max Repair 500 MSP
Hangar Deck Capacity 250 tons
Commander Control Rating 2 BRG AUX
Intended Deployment Time: 24 months Flight Crew Berths 5 Morale Check Required
Nova Pattern Class 8.1 Warp Drive Max Ship Size 20000 tons Distance 50k km Squadron Size 3
Jovian Pattern Class 12.2 Plasma Drive (2) Power 2000 Fuel Use 21.21% Signature 1000 Exp 10%
Fuel Capacity 1,260,000 Litres Range 53.5 billion km (123 days at full power)
Delta Pattern Mark IV Void Shield Generator (1) Recharge 426 seconds (0.2 per second)
Mars Pattern Mark IV Macrocannon (4x4) Range 160,000km TS 5,000 km/s Power 12-4 ROF 15
Mark III Twin Defence Turret (2x6) Range 30,000km TS 16000 km/s Power 0-0 ROF 5
Trajan Systems Mark IV Battery Fire Control (2) Range 256,000 km TS 4,000 km/s ECCM-0
Trajan Systems Mark IV Turret Fire Control (1) Range 64,000 km TS 16,000 km/s ECCM-0
Vulcan Pattern Mark VI Plasma Reactor R8 (2) Total Power Output 16.6 Exp 5%
Ultima Pattern W-36 Warning Array (1) GPS 36 Range 8.3m km MCR 746.3k km RES 1
Ultima Pattern X-36 Augur Array (1) GPS 4320 Range 40.9m km RES 120
Ultima Pattern E-18 Passive EM Array (1) Sensitivity 18 Detect 1000: 33.5m km
Ultima Pattern T-18 Passive Thermal Array (1) Sensitivity 18 Detect 1000: 33.5m km
Strike Group
1x Aquila Lander Speed: 6001 km/s Size: 5
This design is classed as a Military Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as a Warship for auto-assignment purposes
However, this can run off the fairly limited text width Discourse limits us to, so pasting images may be more robust (if less quotable).
One of my fleets reduced the speed of an enemy ship to 1 km/s, and then it continued to follow the rest of the enemy fleet. I sent a couple of boarding ships to capture that ship, but, in the meantime, I lost contact with it, as I have no active sensors in range. Now, the boarding ships are just over the enemy (see image1), it is shooting to me (see event in image2), but it continues to be a “LOST” contact!!
The visual identification isn’t it possible?
Image2
My PDR campaign is on hiatus as I just reached a new engine tech level as well as sensor tech level, so now I need to update all my ship designs with new engines, sensors and fire controls. Sometimes that’s the best part of the game but right now I’m not feeling it - but I also don’t want to move the timeline forward and ‘waste’ time since the upgrade process will take a lot of it. Oh well, I guess it’s a good problem to have!
‘Lost’ is the last known location of a contact, if you can’t detect it right now. Do your boarding ships have any sensors?
Danebola IV, an important planet-base from my mortal enemy, the Gutierrez Clan, the Home Fleet will try to distract the enemy STOs while the drop ship will launch 4 infantry brigates, hoping to survive the enmy fire.
1 Like
The UEN has decided that it’s been a little poorly organised with it’s expansion into space and hasn’t really been considering the future beyond one off projects.
As such it’s in a period of reorganisation and development of more specialist vessels. Having found ruins in 2 of the 3 systems connected to Sol, space seems to be a lot more dangerous than originally expected.
Exploration has been placed on hold until the UEN is better organised, is actually making use of the resources already found and can actually defend it.
I know in theory I could just keep exploring and be largely fine but ive decided to refine how I exploit systems. The plan is not to just dump a bunch of automines on everything before moving on.
After a brief scare when the 36 Ophiuchi Aliens, as they refuse to communicate with us we shall hencforth call them the Ophiuchi Aliens. discovered several jumps away suddenly appeared on sensors in Sol system. They had previously proven hostile when destroying the survey vessel’s shortly after discovery, yet the Terra Victa Imperium had not officially flagged them as such.
The aliens made a close pass to the Venus orbital colony and were tracked but not engaged by planetary defenses.
However the Caesar determined that this threat could not be allowed to roam freely in sol and ordered the Cohors Astralis fleet to engage them.
The fleet was found to be lacking as they could not catch up to the alien ships. Even though they appeared to be within missile range, sensors were unable to get a lock on them.
The day was saved by the brave crews of the Accipiter class gauss fighter squadrons. Many fighters were lost but were ultimately able to destroy the invading alien ships.
An in depth review of the battle and sensor records have shown the weakness in the fleet doctrine and designs. Namely the discovery that these aliens seem to be using some kind of sensor jamming technology. The theory of this type of warfare had been explored, however there were no sensor systems currently employed using defenses against this.
A complete overhaul and redesign is currently underway on the main fleet.
edit: Cleaned up and added more details.
2 Likes
A TugLife Scenario
About a year ago, an NPR began suggesting that we leave Bega.
We have no intentions of doing so.
Therefore we began assembling a force in Bega sufficient to back a counter claim on the system, hoping to convince them to leave the system without a fight.
But it takes time to produce and assemble such forces 23bkm from the HW.
And it seems we are out of time–the NPR is now demanding that we leave Bega immediately.
There is literally no way we could do that, short of giving them our colony there–which we are absolutely not going to do, because we are still excavating the ruins.
We have enough of a proper military fleet in place that we can make things unpleasant for the NPR. But not enough that we could push them around.
In particular, we have about 150 Oaf class boarding pods–500t ultra-fast boarding ships with very short range (160mkm).
These are stationed at our colony in Bega, along with the four 20kt carrier barges that are used to transport them.
The Oafs are very well suited for ambushes via LP transits, but those ambushes require the use of tugs to pull the carrier barges.
The medium tugs that brought them to be stationed here a couple years ago immediately returned to the HW for other work.
So right now, these Oafs can’t project any threat; they can only defend Bega colony at very close range.
Clearly I need to send some tugs to provide force projection with the Oafs.
Medium tugs (Octant class) are in heavy demand around the empire, and none are nearby.
And regardless, while Octants were a natual choice for bringing this force to station, they don’t pull the carriers with nearly enough speed for operations in an active theater.
Large tugs (Horse class) are also in heavy demand.
While there are a few somewhat close by, they are an older generation.
The speed they would provide would be inadequate if the enemy detects and pursues them.
LP ambushes do allow me to attack from outside of detection range, but in the time needed for a complete boarding sortie (closing to the enemy, breaching the armor, and winning the combat), the hostile ships can reach the LP and make their own transit.
If I get unlucky with my guess and the bad guys transit to the same LP I ambushed from, I likely lose the tugs and the carrier barges.
So I would rather use extra large tugs (Ox class).
Oxen, even if a generation or two old, would give me zip-zoom-fly speed with the carrier barges, providing positional flexibility of significant tactical value.
Demand for Oxen around the empire is less constant; usually, several are idle at the HW, and that is the case right now.
Four Oxen dispatched from the HW would arrive at Bega colony in 46 days.
But I might not have 46 days before this conflict goes hot.
What to do?
Oh look: I have a freighter group inbound to Bega–four Oxen pulling 500kt freight stations (Doad class).
Detaching the Doads allows these Oxen to arrive at Bega colony in 7 days.
I can dispatch four Oxen from the HW to pick up the Doads and resume the freight run.
Problem sorted.
2 Likes
Know this, by royal proclamation of King Dagstyrr II Luftar, protector of Sogash and ward of the Hame: Captain Lunik, commanding officer of the cruiser Javelin has accomplished a deed worthy of entry into the Sagas! Alone he stood against a lance of four Aminon II heavy cruisers of the detestable Empire of Zelos. One by one, he slew them under heavy laser-fire, which pierced his shield and hull but did not bring him down. Three of the Heavy Cruisers he felled, and one slunk away in contemptable and shameful defeat. His helm, broken in battle, shall be reforged and forever after shall be an artifact of DWARVENKIND. Long shall he be known as Captain Lunik Broken-Helm, one of the great defenders of Sogash in this, our Corbomite Age!
4 Likes
What is the interaction with the boarding pods during jump assault? Do you just warp the carriers across the JP and dump the boarding craft to whatever is on the other side? Turn a void battle into a ground battle?