Author Topic: The Gliese 876 incident  (Read 2181 times)

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Offline Defacto (OP)

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The Gliese 876 incident
« on: April 30, 2013, 05:34:06 PM »
I am a noobie at this game.  I am currently playing my second game, this time from a conventional start.  I find this game to be greatly enjoyable, and I am now producing lots of notes as the ingame spreadsheets aren't enough.  Since I enjoy reading about other peoples' adventures, I figured that i'd have a go at telling mine.  So, here is a short summary of the events that occured in the Gliese 876 system.  Sorry for any grammar problems, it's pretty late, I'm not a native speaker/writer. . .  I'll see if i can edit out eventual spelling/grammar errors later.

The Gliese incident

Some 15 lightyears, or two jumppoint travels from Sol lies Gliese 876, a red dwarf star.  Exoplanets were detected around this star as early as ~150 P. t. f (prior to foundation), and while the system first was thought to only harbour gas giants within its habitable zone, additional scans during the time around year 30 P. f (Post foundation) using the newly developed artificial gravity lensing technology indicated that the two jovian planets in fact was one huge jovian with several jupiter-masses, and that there was two rocky planets in close proximity to the sun, of which one was on the outer edge of the habitable zone.  During that time, Gliese 876 was selected as one of several possible targets for a future ''slowboat'' interstellar travel.  However, these plans were stalled with the development of the Jump drive during the 50's P. f, as nobody was willing to spend millions of credits and kilotons of transnewtonian minerals only to be beaten by a cheating jumpdrive-using ship.

That is the story behind how the Jumpdrive-equipped ISS Leif Ericsson, a Rodney-class Astronomical Vessel, entered the outskirts of Gliese 876 in the Autumn of year 58 P. f.

The scientists aboard the Ericsson could soon confirm the gravity lens survey data, the system did indeed contain a planet which was classed as an arctic near-habitable, the second planet from the star.  The science instruments also picked up strange readings from what appeared to be a dense ring orbiting Gliese 876 II.  The Ericsson spun up its three VABIS-M Electric-Thermal engines and started moving closer.

The distances in this small Dwarf-system were short, and within 36 hours, the Ericsson entered orbit around Gliese 876 II.  A closer investigation revealed a thing about the planetary rings which perhaps could have been realised at a distance, but the notion seemed so absurd that it was discarded.
However, there it was.  These were not Rings, they were wrecks.  The crew of the Ericsson counted to six wrecks, altough this was a hard task since the parts, and in some cases, large chunks of the ships had been blown off ages ago, and had now laid themselves in a ring orbiting the planet.  These ships were found to be of varying size, some only a few kilotonnes, barely classed as Corvettes, and some were larger than the Rodney-class ship with its nineteen kilotonnes.
As Post Captain Yeremi Numitor, the commander of the Ericsson, was relaying back his data to Sol through the jumppoint relays, a contact appeared.  The Rodney, while equipped with a vast array of scientific instruments, didn't have any combat sensor capability, and so, the crew was caught entirely off guard when eight small thermal contacts suddenly appeared on the starboard side of the Ericsson.  The data here is very unclear-the missiles could have been launched from the planet itself, behind the planet, or the sensor data from the Ericsson simply wasn't capable of detecting the source of the launch. 

Post Captain Numitor chose to quickly abandon ship, and 63 crewmen made it into the pods before what appeared as several shaped nuclear charges impacted the ship, rupturing the fission reactor and causing critical damage on the ship infrastructure, causing the entire hull to implode shortly afterwards.  The surviving crew could do nothing but relay back the imagery of how the charges impacted the ship, vaporizing the ceramic armor layers of the starboard hull side, with huge pieces of superheated metal tearing trough the ship bulkheads like a hot knife through butter, and causing the port side to shatter and spread glittering flakes of spall, like a ´´Thermonuclear bomb contained in a tin can´´, as one of the crewmembers compared it to.

Knowing that no ship was near enough to rescue them in time, the crewmembers chose to bravely record and send all data they could, before the 15-day supply of oxygen, water and nutrition ran out.  The Council woved to take revenge on this unknown party for their deeds.  Fearing the worst, they ordered the Imperial Militia Corvette fleet to immediatly be dispatched to the Sol-EZ Aquarii jumppoint, making sure that these unknowns would not enter into the Imperial Foundation's space.

9 months later, the Imperial Fleet entered Gliese 876.  The Imperial Militia had been left in sol to maintain order, but the rest of the fleet, the Main Squad, 1:st Frigate Squad, and the newly constrcuted IMS Vancouver, which was equipped with modern sensor equipment.  The Two Navy squads together sported 8 Wolverine-Class 10kT Combat Frigates, of 53 year's model, 2 Wolverine-Command Units, which has some of its armaments replaced with command and control equipment, aswell as a large Search Sensor to direct Fire control in the fleet.  One of these, IMS Vagabond, housed Admiral Joelle Beckford, head of the Imperial Navy, altough she wasn't actually in command of the ship.  Finally, Two Caravan-class Frigate Tenders was part of the fleet.  These tenders are not like later models, whose purpose solely is to aid in Jumping and supply.  These ships would also play an active role, as they are equipped with extensive Point Defence and also carry additional Search Sensors, should the ones on the command Frigates get taken out.

First, there is only silence.  However, soon after entering orbit around Gliese 876 II, thermal contacts appear.  The crew on the ships scramble to get an active lock, in order to launch AMM's.  Lock is aquirred. . .  the Sparrow-class AMM's are launched.  There is a few seconds of tense waiting before hits are scored, and reports of destroyed targets are coming in.  The ships are taken off guard, and make several mistakes, as this is the first sharp combat situation the Navy ever has been in.  Several enemy missiles gets dangerously close, before a few lately fired AMM's and a salvo from one of the Frigates' Tharsis Armament 150mm Railguns takes them out.

Then a new thermal contact.  A single one.  Standing still, a few million kilometers away from the planet.  Reaction is quicker this time, and the Projectile Tubes on the frigates all fire two Albedo-III-Type VI ASM's.  Shortly afterwards the explosions of the NSC warheads on the Albedos are registered by the sensor array of the Vancouver and all track of the target is lost, presumably as the target ship is destroyed.  However, no wreck is found.  For all we know, the bogey might still be out there, lurking somewhere in the Gliese system.

In march 59 P. f the Jumpgate Utility ship ICS Wasp arrived in Gliese 876 and started constructing a jumpgate to the EZ Aquarii system, allowing the Imperial Navy to return home.  A settlement is also being established on Gliese 876, as removing the chlorine from the atmosphere and heating it up a bit will make the planet perfectly habitable.  Still, this story might be far from over. . .
 

Offline Defacto (OP)

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Re: The Gliese 876 incident
« Reply #1 on: May 23, 2013, 04:23:54 PM »
Aw, can't I have one response? I would like to know how i am doing, if I maybe should try to document more of the events that occur.
 

Offline xeryon

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Re: The Gliese 876 incident
« Reply #2 on: May 24, 2013, 11:07:46 AM »
Don't judge a lack of response negatively.  It is reasonably common for forum users to read without comment.  Judge your success by the number of views your post receives.  Right now you have 180 some views.  Each time you update take note of the before and after views.  It will give you a better indication of your readership from the silent masses.

Otherwise, your story is starting out fine.  One post isn't sufficient to really make a judgement on your skills though.  When you have a new content update I will read on to see how you build this.
 

Offline Minarin

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Re: The Gliese 876 incident
« Reply #3 on: May 24, 2013, 03:36:26 PM »
In my opinion you are doing ok.  I enjoyed reading it.  I'm not usually a commenter though.
 

Offline ollobrains

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Re: The Gliese 876 incident
« Reply #4 on: May 24, 2013, 09:24:40 PM »
well keep playing and give daily updates sooner or later someone will respond
 

Offline Defacto (OP)

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Re: The Gliese 876 incident
« Reply #5 on: June 18, 2013, 08:27:07 AM »
Oh, sometimes it is hard to judge how a forum responds to your posts, it depends a lot on the community you are in, if a lack of replies means they don't like you, don't feel inclined to respond, or just haven't had enough time.  I think that I've made many people irritated by expecting them to act like the community on another forum.

I am contemplating if I should start over, as I've learned a lot more about the game, but at the same time I haven't really fully explored everything, and the Gliese incident still is my only taste of combat (it was rather chaotic too, and it didn't help that i accidentaly played the time forward 5 days in the middle of the fight).

Also, Real Stars and Realistic promotions, should i enable those? I had them in this game, and while i really like the idea of Stars actually having those ingame parameters (luminosity, location, etc) that they have in real life, I'm not sure what I am missing by having them on, and realistic promotions makes my command chain look really weird, with random Corvette captains being Commodores, and such.
 

Offline Black

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Re: The Gliese 876 incident
« Reply #6 on: June 18, 2013, 09:18:50 AM »
Well real stars means that your first visited star systems will be some of those:
Code: [Select]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_nearest_stars most are red dwarfs and those are not really interesting, at least that is my experience. I believe it also means that you will most likely not encounter black hole or nebula. Personally i like to play with real stars so I can actually explore Alpha Centauri and other well known stars.

As for commodores commanding a corvette, you can easily prevent that in class design. You can set a lowest rank, that can command your designs. It is set to captain by default and if you have only few captains you will soon have commodores and admirals in command of small ships. If you set lowest rank to commander it will help with your problem.

I for example create a new lowest rank in my games: lieutenant commander, all new officers will start at this rank and they will became fighter pilots and commanders of civilian designs. Commanders then command destroyers and light cruisers, captains command heavy cruisers and bigger ships. Thanks to that it is unlikely that flag officers will be in command of some small  patrol ship.
 

Offline Defacto (OP)

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Re: The Gliese 876 incident
« Reply #7 on: June 18, 2013, 10:41:57 AM »
Oh, the problem is that they start out as a lowly Commander/Captain/Post Captain (I use commanders for Gunboats and ´´Shore Installations´´, Captains for Corvettes, Frigates and such, Post captains for Independently operating warships, and commodores to command Squads), but during the 20 years this Commander or Captain serves on Generic Militia Corvette nr. 28 he/she becomes a veteran of epic proportions and earns several rankups, while still maintaining the old position, and i can't change how everything works with every promotion, which seems to happen once every week.  This would be much easier if I could handle all promotions msyelf, I think, but I haven't tried it, maybe i'll do that now. . .

The problem is that of all my officers, the ones piloting the ships are the ones who promote, since they gain more points by training their abilities and doing deeds i give them medals for.