Author Topic: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?  (Read 263553 times)

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Offline ExChairman

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1770 on: November 02, 2017, 04:23:12 AM »
The Terran Empire had a bad time last day!!! Our battle fleet, what remained of Carrier group III and all planetary defense installations defected to my enemy... :o ???  My 2 division of armored divisions were slaughtered from their old comrades in arms when they started bombarding them with heavy anti ship missiles. The empire is in chock (That's me in this case  ;D) But on the other hand I only need to build a new fleet, one that is a lot faster than the defected one, and using lasers instead of railguns... But that will take years, so I have to use my remaining ships wisely, 2 carriers and 5 escort destroyers... :-X
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Offline ExChairman

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1771 on: November 08, 2017, 03:18:29 AM »
Hmmm, I was planning to invade a opponents homeworld... My 7 armored and 1 mechanized division is not going to survive long, I think... Enemy ground troops are at: C5146  :o Must bee the biggest number I ever seen. Oh well I got several thousand of my Anti fighter missile. strength 3 should be OK at ground targets...  ::)
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Offline GodEmperor

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1772 on: November 08, 2017, 12:05:21 PM »
Hmmm, I was planning to invade a opponents homeworld... My 7 armored and 1 mechanized division is not going to survive long, I think... Enemy ground troops are at: C5146  :o Must bee the biggest number I ever seen. Oh well I got several thousand of my Anti fighter missile. strength 3 should be OK at ground targets...  ::)

Why would yo invade a HOMEWORLD with such meager forces and not even pound it first ?
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You have just pushed me."
 

Offline boggo2300

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1773 on: November 08, 2017, 02:51:59 PM »
What is this invade thing you speak of? surely theres only glass the surface from Orbit
or have I been doing it wrong all these years?
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Offline Tree

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1774 on: November 08, 2017, 03:39:36 PM »
What is this invade thing you speak of? surely theres only glass the surface from Orbit
or have I been doing it wrong all these years?
That's certainly what I'm going to do in Aurora C#.
Nuke from orbit until they surrender, dodging the new ground combat, and just relocate survivors.
 

Offline ExChairman

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1775 on: November 08, 2017, 03:48:42 PM »
Yep I know I have a small army.  Planed to recruit it up to around 25 divisions, going to take time... Need to increase my ground building power... Usually I try and not bomb them... But sometime I have to soften them up... Oh well I could send my Interceptors and bomb them, but first I need to kill those point defence bases... 8 of them firing 58 AMM each, with a range of around 15 M/km...  ;D None of my missiles have reached their planet and the 9 other bases is probably Gauss armed ones... ::)
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Offline Hazard

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1776 on: November 08, 2017, 05:18:32 PM »
Yep I know I have a small army.  Planed to recruit it up to around 25 divisions, going to take time... Need to increase my ground building power... Usually I try and not bomb them... But sometime I have to soften them up... Oh well I could send my Interceptors and bomb them, but first I need to kill those point defence bases... 8 of them firing 58 AMM each, with a range of around 15 M/km...  ;D None of my missiles have reached their planet and the 9 other bases is probably Gauss armed ones... ::)

If you are patient? Have your interceptors hand around the 15Mkm mark and see when they start firing at the trailing end of their orbit, then run when they approach. It'd sink a lot of their AMMs.

They'd also have a lot of AMMs, and be building more, but you should be able to limit their ROF eventually as stocks deplete.
 

Offline obsidian_green

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1777 on: November 09, 2017, 08:12:50 PM »
In the past week I've finally run into an NPR that looks like it's able and willing to fight. They destroyed the unarmed (offensively at any rate) survey ship Yuri Gagarin (after it detected a population w/ a thermal contact larger than I have back on Earth) with WH 27 anti-ship missiles and they have 7000-plus ton ships moving at better than 15,000 km/s.

I dispatched a carrier battle group to the other side of their JP and dropped a recon craft through ... enemy has assembled quite the fleet on the other side of the JP. I'll be rotating my two modern battle groups in and out of guard duty until I can build and train another two battle groups and their complements, but that'll take at least a couple of years. I will likely build modern fighters for my two older carriers as well because I'm expecting real losses from this battle. (RADM Geraldine Spriggle is planning as I type, but she's getting up in years and might retire before the show; she'll be disappointed, as she pulled off a Minbari at the Battle of the Line-style stomping of the House of Monkey some twenty years earlier.)

So far I've only lost major armed ships to exploration and missteps: I didn't replenish the ordnance on a survey cruiser and it ran into trouble in the very next system that a full magazine could have handled; I sent a pair of laser frigates against a Swarmer mothership and somehow the order to follow at distance stopped working after they took out its shields. But I'm in for a real battle now and I think I'm going to lose ships without making an unforced error.

I'm considering sacrificing the two older carriers and maybe four old destroyers (think of my destroyers more like cruisers, a classification I reserve for long endurance warships) in order to get 48 ASM strikecraft through the JP with shorter jumpshock, but I'm thinking I might fare even better if I jump everything: all six carriers and four dreadnoughts for a total of 192 strikecraft, plus the twenty escort destroyers (with their small ASMs) and frigates. If I didn't have to worry about longer jumpshock, I'd leave all carriers on the other side of the JP and just attack with all combat craft. The scout I dropped through did not come under fire despite jumping right into the middle of the enemy fleet, so I'm wondering if any of the ships in the enemy fleet are capable of resolving small targets. I may have to drop a larger interceptor through to test the waters before I decide whether the capital ships need to make the jump to get the shortened jumpshock.

When it eventually happens, this will be an important battle, since I'll be committing every warship I have---excepting my seven survey cruisers---to the enterprise. Good times!
 

Offline clement

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1778 on: November 09, 2017, 09:07:31 PM »
Exciting, I have really enjoyed your write ups of your other encounters and look forward to this one.
 

Offline Detros

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1779 on: November 10, 2017, 03:46:21 PM »
I may have finally found the home system of my ally NPR:
Off-Topic: show

350ish new alien ships of 40 new classes plus 350 messages about New Allied Transponder Found @_@


 

Offline obsidian_green

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1780 on: November 12, 2017, 03:05:00 PM »
Exciting, I have really enjoyed your write ups of your other encounters and look forward to this one.

Thanks.  :D

As it turns out, the Coucil of Iwakuni decided to force the issue, so no multi-year, in-game wait for the action. I'm currently fighting what might be a decisive battle, but no telling how long it might take and I have to make sure it's actually over before the write-up can pass for an encyclopedia article. Looks like I'm looking at their homeworld, so anticipate some turn-increment slowdown, although it feels like turns have been resolving fairly quickly even though I can't use the "spacetime bubble" because I'm fighting across a jump point.
 

Offline Haji

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1781 on: November 21, 2017, 06:23:06 PM »
I finally returned to Aurora after a break and I have a battle to fight. A battle involving nearly nine hundred and fifty ships and some fifteen hundred fighters. After over an hour the opening salvo (which was launched by fighters only) was finally detected by the other side. However since the first anti-missile launch twenty minutes ago, the game have not progressed at all- the first 5 sec increment is still being processed.
It remains to be seen if I will see the end of the battle before the end of this year.
 

Offline Barkhorn

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1782 on: November 21, 2017, 06:49:12 PM »
VERY interested to hear more about this battle.  If it ever progresses beyond the opening volley.
 

Offline Haji

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1783 on: November 21, 2017, 09:59:07 PM »
I don't mind giving updates, but there isn't much to write about right now as only seven or eight anti-missile volleys have been fired so far (over three hours after my previous post). However a warning for those who actually read my campaign, there will be spoilers here, which I will properly tag, but if you don't want to know too much before the write up (which may or may not come before Christmas) don't read anything marked as spoiler.
Anyway, here's a quick overview of the situation. The campaigns is happening in the future after Sol and its colonies were wiped out by a single alien ship. Humanity has survived in a distant area of space where they arrived using story only unstable (as in temporary) jump points, so they can't go home again anyway. The race is divided into three factions - the Federal Republic of Phoenix which is essentially a federalised European Union and while aware of the threat and having a respectable military, they are also very hesitant to use that military. They are also very peaceloving and judgmental. The second faction is the Commune, which is a somewhat communistic state using AI to ensure human failures (like corruption or totalitarianism) won't enter the scene. If you are socialist, the Commune is essentially your Utopia, but they are also very ready to use their military to deal with potential threats, which is why they don't really have a proper alliance with the Republic, despite common interests.
The third human faction is the Hegemony of Man. Their main purpose is to deal with the alien threat, which is still there, and they believe in doing everything they can in order to do so. They are basically a total free economy society, but taken to the unpleasant extremes. Their logic is that USA which they consider the best symbol of such a system, had at one point a military budget almost as large as the rest of the world combined, so clearly their system is the best suited for this dangerous times, but it must be taken even further due to the danger. They are essentially a capitalist dystopia. They also consider the other two nations criminals engendering the whole of mankind with their pointless social spendings. They didn't have direct contact with the Federation, but they did fight two wars with the Commune, and lost both of them. However they did win against an alien race, conquered them and by now integrated them.
In 2406 the Hegemony encountered another alien race. Two problems quickly arisen. First both powers explored several of the same systems before they became aware of each other (space is big). Second the Hegemony was very insistent on immediate creation of an alliance to combat the other alien threats. As in very insistent, to the point the alien race - the Kinharan Confederation -  became suspicious that humans were merely setting up some kind of takeover. Eventually the negotiations broke down and the war started. Officially this was due to territorial dispute (both nations were claiming the same systems) but in reality this was a Hegemony attempt to bring the aliens into the fold in order to create unified front against other alien threats.
It should be noted that the same race which wiped out Earth has found the humans and killed several millions of them before they were stopped. Another attack is expected in the future.
The first battles were fought in 2407. Three Hegemony carrier groups (each carrier massing over two hundred thousand tonnes) confronted a much larger alien force. Thanks to technological advantages the battles were a tactical victory for humans, who destroyed a couple of dozen ships without losing a single spacer and suffering only minimal armour damage. However the battles were a strategic victory for the Kinharans as their heavy point defences have run the Hegemony out of ammunition and forced them to fall back. The systems of Amarillo and Albuquerque were lost to the Confederation, although neither was inhabited.
Seven years later, in 2414, the Hegemony launched a jump point assault on Amarillo. They lost over eighty ships but they destroyed a much, much larger enemy force. As picketing jump points is maintenance intensive, only part of the enemy force could be deployed at any given time and much larger enemy fleet was encountered later, but withdrew. Unable to launch a second jump point assault against an enemy even more powerful than before, the Hegemony was forced to halt. Amarillo, Albuquerque and several previously unexplored systems connected to the latter were taken over, which included a small enemy colony, but another stalemate has developed.
In 2420 the Hegemony finally assembled another invasion force, led by eight carriers and three jump battleships, some massing three hundred thousand tonnes. Those were supported by three hundred and sixty cruisers (30kT), destroyers (20kT) and frigates (10kT) and carried 1290 fighters. However the enemy was not defending the jump point. As only part of the force could be present at any given time and the attacker could amass his entire force, the attacker effectively had the advantage in such a situation and the Kinharans could not afford another defeat. So the Confederation was waiting in the inner system, orbiting their colony with a force consisting of over five hundred and seventy battleships, cruisers, destroyers, frigates and corvettes. I don't remember the sizes and can't check as the game is processing auto-turns but in general the Kinharan ships are smaller than Hegemony ones. Overall the humans had about ten million tonnes of shipping while the Confederation had about thirteen million tonnes.
The Hegemony missiles mounted on their bombers and major warships, while different, have the same speed to allow mixed salvoes. This was done due to the difficulty of penetrating enemy point defences. As such the humans could have launched a massed strike, but the Hegemony commander decided to send the fighters first to test the enemy defences and to start running him out of interceptors. Once the enemy detected the missiles, he sent his own fighters - of which the humans were not aware - to destroy the invading small craft. The bombers can't possibly retreat fast enough and will likely be completely destroyed, but that is in the future. Right now the game is processing anti-missile launches against the Hegemony strike of 16 350 missiles
 

Offline Haji

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Re: What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?
« Reply #1784 on: November 23, 2017, 11:47:51 AM »
Sorry for the double post, but it's been two days since the last one, so I think new one is in order.

After two full days of computing mostly automated turns, the first part of the battle is over.

The Hegemony missile strike failed to penetrate Kinharan point defence. However as the alien interceptors were slower than the shipkillers, in some cases the anti-missiles were running a stern chase. This is actually a problem in the game as that means I can either try to delete those missiles (which is hard to do when you have to pick the right ones from a couple of hundred individual salvoes) or allow the stern chase to continue in which case the missiles being chased are not being engaged by new ones. Because of that some of the human munitions managed to get all the way into energy weapon range but the hundreds (actually it may be thousands, can't be bothered to count) of gauss cannons and lasers picked them off with ease.

Now I'm going to simulate the destruction of the Hegemony bombers. I say simulate because I can't be arseked to actually play this within the game. The bombers are now unarmed and too slow to escape so I'm just toing to delete them. This means no survivors (which is reasonable) and no wrecks (so no tech to analyse for the Confederation, if they hold the system) which is fine as that many components (1290 potential sets of them) would likely give them instant technologies.

The next part of the battle won't begin until next week, when I'll have my next days off work. It will be another missile exchange, this time between the main bodies of the two fleets and I'm not even sure I'll be able to compute this. One good thing is that I will likely go for a short range engagement which means less anti-missile launches to simulate.

The reason for that is twofold. The Kinharans, having more primitive technology, would have trouble penetrating Hegemony anti-missile defences from full range. In fact in previous battles the Confederation failed to even reach energy weapon range with their missile strikes. As such, despite having greater reach, they need to fire from short range in order to actually score hits. On the Hegemony side, they could do a lot of damage with missiles fired from maximum range, but due to the sheer size of the Kinharan force and their new, improved defences, the damage would not be so great. They could attack and then withdraw for re-armament, but it will take time to get enough ammunition for their next strike, they no longer have their fighters and it would allow the Confederation to mount a jump point defence with their entire force. An attack from short range would be a bloodbath, but the Hegemony has several more carrier groups guarding their territory, while the humans suspect they are facing the vast bulk of the Kinharan military, in which case even a very costly victory for the Hegemony could end the war.

I'm still thinking about that part, but the computing time may mean I'll go for short range engagement just so I don't have to spend five days waiting for the battle to resolve.