The next major encounter is probably the best I had so far in any game. But first the up to date starmap for explanation purpose:
As can be seen, the nebula didn't expand so much more after Pharsalos, but the second system was interesting too, as it contained a pre-starfaring NPR which I started sponsoring to work for me until they have about 200 auto-mines. The second and last planet in there then came up with a powerful civil mine too, so a pretty good delivery service.
The Rhodes system was the scene of the last incident, but I only figured out later how nicely it was placed.
Then I have fuel bases with 3200 modules each around gas giants in Delphi, Ephesos (both my main supply delivery for the home world), and then Mytilene, and on fly in currently Massilia. (an amazing 568m giant there - the highest concentration I have ever seen in any resource, but only acc.0.4)
There is a propulsion lab in Pharsalos, a Missile tech lab currently being towed towards Plataea, and two more lab locations planned for energy and defenses. The design here:
Akropolis Sanctum class Orbital Research Station 39,850,000 tons 15975 Crew 177380.7999 BP TCS 797000 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 5-10392 Shields 0-0 Sensors 18/18/0/0 Damage Control Rating 234 PPV 0
MSP 651 Max Repair 60.8 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 3 months Spare Berths 3
Cargo 2500000 Cryogenic Berths 7050000 Habitation Capacity 7,050,000 Cargo Handling Multiplier 2000
Recreational Facilities
CIWS-250x10 (127x10) Range 1000 km TS: 25000 km/s ROF 5 Base 50% To Hit
Thermal Wake Receiver TH-18 (1) Sensitivity 18 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 18m km
EM Wake Receiver EM-18 (1) Sensitivity 18 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 18m km
...or slightly older ones can exactly carry and then run those 5 research labs at 100% capacity at any place.
(here a second lab had just arrived, but not yet unloaded the population and extra labs)
In theory those stations could of course also run 100 factories instead of any kind, but I think I will build something different for that later.
So I traveled around a lot and discovered my surroundings, but besides a couple droids here and there not much to report. I realized that my fighters are useless though, as the only time they get not shot down themselves is when being deployed against helpless troop carriers, which the bombers could take down as well. I stopped replacing them, and consider updates to both designs.
Now, the only system that I avoided for long, even though it is directly adjacent to my home Athens, is Sparta. Sparta is a completely empty system, which is not nice to have in the neighborhood, because it makes it difficult to monitor. I normally like to have a big sensor post in every system next to my capital, to be warned early enough, yet here it didn't work. What you could normally do then, is just placing more outposts into systems behind this one, but Sparta is not only empty, but also has 7 other connections. Too much.
I finally decided to investigate those systems for safety reasons then. And when my second cruiser "Atlanta" was doing his final survey mission in Becvar before returning to the docks, the first cruiser stumbled -also on his last objective- across this beautiful but also dangerously close vicious neighbor, Louisburg.
The system has full 4 suns, which is nice. Three of them have planet satellites, and there is an asteroid belt akin to the Oort Cloud... far too way out.(I think it was 5trillion km...)
Shortly after entering I got unmistakable static of life.
...which was indeed from 3 different races at once.
Well, probably just two, as the first ones share the same characteristica:
The double race is indeed seated on the same planet A I, so it seems to be an offspring or different political region... . We don't know yet.
So this was already very promising, but a split second later it was revealed what hell's kitchen this was. There was an active invasion going on.
So droids were
also present, and they were attacking + being attacked by the other races. So far the Republic only ever found ruins of TL1-3 civilizations with the ancient invaders often still nearby, and the only ones that ever exceeded this level was that Jinza race, which still fought them.
It is natural to assume that also other races like this one would attract the same aggressors. The only reason that the Republic ever was spared after all, was because it wasn't. It was destroyed, but not completely, by another enemy, and then grew up on unsuspicious small population unnaturally quickly advancing in technology thanks to all the TL6 relics from their past they could study.
The droids had been my enemy ever since I saw how they squashed civilizations everywhere they go, so I decided to help the natives out to defeat their ancient nemesis and set course to assist in the assault on the fortified droid base on B II.
There was also some droid ship currently approaching the main colonies.
Since they had survived for so long, the captain was confident however that they would be able to repel the assault. One might only wonder how many ships the three factions truly have, since only those with active sensor could currently be seen, and those were already a lot of ships.
Nothing to the levels of our cruiser or frigate designs though.
The captain sent the bombers ahead to test their conditioning.
The ship of the natives that was in its bombing run was receiving counter fire. That gave us the intelligence that 52 size 1 missiles was likely the capacity of the enemies defences. The CIWS on the cruiser could alone block 48 missiles, or more like 32 after considering boni and estimated speed. To that come 15 shield regeneration per 5 seconds, so it seems the cruiser would be immune and could securely assault the installation.
Then some explosions happened over the installations, leaving me in puzzles.
I thought for some time that there was some sort of FAC assault going on, even though that would be very unconventional for NPR. The fire clearly came from twin turrets of strength 3, and there were anti missile explosions too.
I should have looked for atmosphere on the planet, because that would have made clear that this was actually PD laser fire which completely negated to bombing assault of the natives. Would have saved me a slight mistake later on. (me?...uhhh, I mean "the captain", yes
)
So this attack went for quite a while, and meanwhile my bomber squadron was struggling with two droid ships that had positioned themselves exactly between the colonies and the attack ship of the natives, blocking of his retreat. The droid ships had sizes of 19.5kt and 9.75kt, and they could detect my bombers at around 15m km since the old models still had no thermal dampening. 15m was still times 2.5 as far as the weapons would reach under ecm influence, and they started firing back at around 10m km already. I came to test a similar situation in another system (except against two 9.75kt destroyers), and lost 3 of the 10 bomber squadron in the assault - still winning, but losses are not acceptable in this situation.
This time I tested their range a bit more, let them fire 5 times, and then flew out with apparently superior speed, killing the missiles (which I never saw). The squadron commander hoped to exhaust the targets ammunition supply this way, and flew multiple such fake close ins. Even after quite a couple of those, there was still no end in sight, so a new tactic was derived: Dive bombing. The captain ordered to use supreme initiative and afterburners to get directly in touch with the enemy during the enemies short retargeting window of opportunity, and then use the natural supreme speed to fly away from missiles while deploying the bombing. In short, the complete inverse opposite of what was done before. The tactic worked, and the two enemy ships were destroyed without leaving a scratch on the bombers, so the natives retreat was secured.
Suddenly a new problem unfolded. The two different races were apparently not only afraid of the droids, but also fighting against each other, as they started exchanging broadsides.
Also the larger colony on A I was probably currently blocking inter planetary missiles strikes from the A II race.
The staff has to consider the probability that these sudden attacks were triggered by the Artemis' appearance, which might have seeded mistrust, or even philosophical crisis (aliens..) in a way that can not possibly be guessed.
With the words of the current C.O. in Louisburg. "A beautiful battlefield unfolds". The single ship of 8900 tons managed to destroy one of equal tonnage through heavy missile barrages, despite being severely outnumbered.
Then both sides got to some distance from each others ships, only to start raking each other with smaller missiles shortly after.
This little skirmish was held non lethal, and both parties retreated to regroup after some exchanges. However, somewhere distant yet invisible ships were under fire too.
Strategic intelligence shows so far, that even though the aliens of A II are performing much wiser in battle, and seemed to have slight technology advantage that allowed them tricks like the interplanetary missile strikes, they were likely largely outnumbered. At least if they didn't have a small fleet of yet undiscovered ships in silent running mode.
They leave battles with small victories, outranging the enemy, but eventually that will not be enough.
Only a couple of hours after the war supposedly started, the home world of the A II race started to get bombarded by nuclear missiles. The defenses seemed to stop incoming strikes before they arrived.
Parallel the Artemis was nearly in range of the droids defences, and close enough to attract their attention. The captain send out the bombers in order to probe if they were possible, or those PDCs had up to date ecm too.
It turned out they had ecm, so remembering the Gemini Twin incident, it was better to keep bombers save in hangars until defences had been overrun.
Then the defensive fire impacted, and as expected couldn't dent the artemis. The enemy TL5 niveau technology only allowed a salvo every 10 seconds, meaning advantage for the lasers and in theory a shield regeneration of 30 even between impacts. The lasers however reduced salvos to a mere third by themselves, while the rest would fall on the dense CIWS perimeter, never even reaching the shields.
Eventually the station's ammunition reserves were exhausted, and the Artemis could assume position. Instead of firing from the cruiser's own turrets though, the captain judged that in all this turmoil that happened in the system, it might be wiser to preserve ammunition, and after a small atmospheric analysis decided to move into orbit to threaten the entrenchment with laser fire.
What he overlooked was of course that if he could use lasers, so could the droids, and actually evidently did, following the intelligence of the recent assault by the natives.
Just when he assumed firing position, a huge salvo was fired from the planet, reducing Artemis' shields to 78% in a single assault.
Obviously such heavy fire could not be endured for long, and so the cruiser retreated to respectable distance. Luckily, Artemis was outfitted with larger calibre lasers of double the power, and could thus fire from positions where the enemies defenses were becoming ineffective. Only two broadsides were necessary to destroy the first complex, and another two got rid of the other one too.
The ancient droid threat that these races probably had been suffering under for many years, was thus suddenly ended by an outside force. Since the captain rightfully felt some reward was in order, he phoned in the recyclers, a base barque with expedition troops to deal with the remaining ground forces, and issued a full scan of the planetary facilities to map anything of worth.
--{Juchhee, and that is where firefox crashed, throwing my writing back by a good hour. Of course it happened shortly before finishing, because Muphey is god, and a lunatic jester one in that.}--
After few relatively insignificant skirmishes, the game seemed to change. The defenses of A II had been doing a good job so far in holding of the enemies barrages, and even recently managed to take down two larger ships in the distance. Yet, it appeared their ammunition supply was all too soon exhausted, rendering the planet helpless before the nuclear holocaust that was raining down on.
The race of A II had long since stopped its counter-attacks, being forced to concentrate on defense. Know, only a mere day after the eruption of the war, it was facing extinction.
Even amidst this personal chaos, the aliens did not seem to forget about their ancient enemy, and often tried to approach the remaining straying droid ship in formation.
Due to insufficient engine technology they however always had to abort.
When the ruined droid base had been fully mapped and Artemis was moving in to fulfill its last objective target, it was also found that the alien races apparently maintained further outposts even this far out.
Setting up such bases in proximity to the droids without being noticed is a respectable achievement.
To better apply the new found dive bomb tactic, maneuvers were carried out to get a better contact vector, and bring the bombers in line with the enemy ship's trajectory.
Probing indicated however that the ship was either not capable of longer ranged missile strikes, or had exhausted its ammunition. No risk was taken, and the bombers flew in, but could indeed finish their job uninterrupted.
Now having finished all common objectives, the Artemis was ordered to maintain respectable distance from the alien colonies, but monitor the battlefield at the edge of her sensor range, as well as identify any larger craft around the central two inhabited planets.
Then, while still being relatively far off, the aliens for the first time recognized the Republic openly when a few ships set course on the Artemis.
Reminded of alarmed by the experience of the last incident of this kind, Asuhara ordered the cruiser to retreat as far out as the sensors would barely keep the colonies in sight, and even further should the pursuit continue. Instead, a geo probe should be launched to analyze the other inner planets for potential further outposts.
The Artemis could however not fast enough reposition, so the dominating alien species fired a single warning salvo and retreated right after.
[OOC: I assume that happened because I coincidentally went over a distance of 1.5 billion km to their colony just at this moment, and that is maybe the AI trigger for aggression or not. Just a theory though.]
For a few days Artemis could now rest at position and peacefully observe what was happening. There weren't any battles between the races anymore, as all of the A II race's navy had been defeated, but many strange patrol routes were still being flown - maybe in search of hidden craft.
Then the pattern changed, and a huge part of both of the A I races set course on the Sparta jump point. This behavior was alarming to the headquarters, as the ships might try to seek out the Republic's home world in Athene. Undoubtedly they were at least investigating were we came from.
Though the location of Eden Ende would not have long been hold secret if relations started out, it was preferable to first at least being able to talk to the races and understand the reason behind the alarming genocide they just commited.[..said hero Asuhara] Having the same very same war fleet setting course on another living world would at least be considered strange etiquette, so Artemis was first ordered to cross the path and test the reaction, and after that didn't cause any trouble, peacefully escort the ships to the jump point.
For safety measures though, the captain of Artemis went through some calculations and found out that the for fast reinforcement response order designed destroyers of Eden Ende would make it just in time to the jump point too before the alien fleet could pass. The whole situation would be a lot less tense to handle if there was some backup besides the Artemis as the only current representation of the fleet, so the support was called.
After the cruiser started escort leading the alien fleet, their commanders didn't seem to take the gesture too kindly and fired another warning shot.
At this point their behavior was definitely to be considered rude, but not hopeless, so a bit more distance was given.
The mood and picture of them changed further to the negative however only shortly after, when they used the same warning salvo threatening on our peaceful recyclers by the very distant B II.
They seemed satisfied when the salvage missions were canceled and the recycler fleet turned to retreat from the system. Again a race that seems very ill advised in political matters, trying to intimidate a foreigner they know nothing about and potentially making him an enemy. The wrecks that were salvaged there were the result of the Republics fortunate interdiction, but still one faction just laid claim on them.(One wonders if the other two factions know of this as well)
It can not be known what they truly though of the interdiction with the droid problem, but if the Republic can keep wise distance, then shouldn't they also carry some responsibility?
Then one of the nations finally managed to achieve a breakthrough in the communications that went beyond mere morse and prime numbers, so simple information could be shared. It was the insectoid and more alien looking one, which had all its power destroyed in the recent events. A professional team of translators was assembled to exchange intelligence between us and them. Sadly the first signals indicate message about that they are dying already and may only be saved by evacuating them to another world.
The Republic may now be their only hope, and they know that too.
When the destroyer pairs had just arrived on the other side in Sparta and both Artemis and the Recycler Task Force were nearly evacuated from the system, a detachment of the alien fleet separated itself to seemingly intercept the recyclers. Could they really go after unarmed and unarmored civil ships that were retreating anyway, or do they just intend to escort them too. Bad feelings.
...And indeed they went to attack them. Not only that, but completely mercilessly destroyed them all.
In no jurisdiction or by any sane judgement can such act be seen as a misunderstanding. Not a single shot has ever been fired from our side, despite several provocations. The giant needs to be wise and endure the ill temper of the weaker ones, but everything has its reasonable limit. These aliens was in engaged in fights with literally every faction that wasn't them, first the droids, then their own neighbors, and now we, the passive watching surprise guest alien life forms. They shoot before knowing their enemy, and clearly feel no moral issues in attacking the unarmed just because they can, and even obliterate whole species under atomar fire. - Overall, they have proven to be dangerously aggressive, and in that light their last action was considered to be a declaration of war.
While they further bomb the remaining outposts of their neighbors in their system...
..Artemis and the destroyers have taking tactical position directly behind the jump point, ready and authorized to alpha strike and blast into pieces everything that comes through. Another two days went by, and it seemed like they may have revoked their plans, but then the first came.
//OOC// So far so good. The situation is gold I think. The kind of stuff you wait for to happen. I am really indecisive in how to handle the situation from here. Obviously I have to fend of attackers, and since I can escape nearly every ship that they have, it is no harm trying to get rid of them in relative distance from the planet already. But what after that?
I played with the idea of developing mine layers and secure every of their jump points to trap them (a thing I definitely have to do to avoid the game slowing down). Then I would spy on them with some stealth craft network with passive sensors maybe.
I would just besiege every jump point, but I fear even when the other cruiser comes back, I simply don't have enough military for that, as 5 jump points have already been identified, and every point essentially needs defenses to repel their whole remaining fleet.
I definitely don't want to kite in and weed them out partly or something like that. Only fight back when they attack in the beginning.
The bigger endgame plan looks like that I deploy either my first real carrier or heavy cruiser when they are finished (still quite some research to do here), and then engage in total annihilation if they keep their attitude, which is very likely. No enslaved survivors this time then, 40000 radiation directly to the capital area.
The other guys I will indeed try to rescue though, but I have no idea how yet.(on their planet they will die, but I cannot personally carry them away, so how do I help them to help themselves?)