Just had my first real battle with wormholers...
Tensions had been mounting for the better part of a year ever since the first survey ship transited into Sol from an unexpected jump point. The main fleet was off in another system blockading a wormhole, so all that was in Sol were the fighter reserves and some exploration ships with 2000 tons of hangar space. Since they were probably only surveys, I decided 2000 tons worth of fighters should be enough to deal with this "threat", so I packed some fighters into the hangar of one such exploration ship and sent it off. Due to the survey ship being over 3 times faster than my psudo-carrier, I had to predict which survey point the spoiler would head to next and lie in ambush there, but once I got within strike distance the fighters proved sufficient in dispatching the survey.
Two further waves of survey ships as well as a pair of gate builders (?) transited into Sol over the next few months and were intercepted and destroyed in similar fashon. However, each time Fleet command had to dispatch forces that were based on Earth, which is around 5.5 bkm away from the jump point. To shorten response times, it was decided that a forward base of operations would be established on the asteroid 2008 KV42 which was a mere ~250mkm from the jump point.
The plan was to first set up a few hangar PDC's on the asteroid so that fighters could be on station perpetually, and maybe eventually set up some missile defense stations as well. Due to insufficient gravity on that rock, orbital habitats were required to kickstart the project until sufficient underground infrastructure could be produced on site to support the construction workers.
The pre-fabricated sections of the first hangar PDC were shipped to the asteroid and assembly began with the assistance of two orbital habitat units. The three available exploration ships and their fighter complements were on station to defend the works after ferrying over a few fighter wings from the reserves on Earth.
At this stage, I had:
32x 250 ton interceptors equipped with 17%acc gauss cannons, no actives
26x 500 ton heavy fighters equipped with small caliber lasers, actives
2x 500 ton new generation, experimental heavy fighters equipped with microwaves and actives
It would be several years before assembly of the first hangar is completed at the current rate of construction, so further orbital habitats were laid down back at Earth to bolster the workforce.
Then came the spoilers.
Based on the impressions I got from other people, this is only a recon-in-force fleet, but it seemed like it would crush all resistance at first.
1x 59700 ton "Juarez" cruiser?, purpose unknown.
1x 39800 ton "Tritao" destroyer, discovered to be beam combatant with 13x 65-damage lasers.
2x 39800 ton "Zarco" destroyer?, purpose unknown.
At the very least, these guys were 2-3 times the tonnage of my standard carriers and moved at a blistering speed of 9684 km/s, almost as fast as my older generation fighters.
The interceptors went in first to absorb any anti-fighter strikes, but surprisingly no AMM's were launched. In fact, the only ship which retaliated was the Tritao which fired all 13 of its main guns at a single 250 ton interceptor. I wouldn't be too surprised if the laser beams were larger than the fighter they were shot at. Then the rest of my fighter force was upon them, but Fleet Command soon discovered that the strength-70 ECM mounted by the wormholers reduced effective fire down to ~10 points worth of damage every 5 second increment.
This is where the experimental microwave-armed fighter got its place in the spotlight. In the absense of any serious anti-fighter armaments, the microwave fighters were able to chew through the electronics of the wormholer ships while bypassing their monstrous armour. As soon as ECM went down, the rest of the fighters redoubled their attacks and scored some consistent 60 damage per increment from lasers and another 10 or so from the gauss cannons. It still took a while, but soon those juggernauts bled atmosphere and eventually exploded from several internal secondary detonations.
And so my fighter force which totalled just under 15 000 tons defeated the wormholer incursion of 179 100 tons worth of fiery annihilation while taking only 10 casualties among the 250 ton interceptors. All things considered, Fleet Command were quite overcome with this result, however they are wary of further incursions which may feature ships fielding the dreaded AMM spam.
When missile systems are finally installed on the soon-to-be asteroid fort, hopefully there won't be as heavy a reliance on the fighters to absorb hits and repel attacks. Now that this jump point has been identified as a definite threat axis, an early warning ship will be deployed on the other side until sufficient force can be mustered to create and defend an outpost in the adjoining system.
