18th of January, 14:35:1624 missiles are launched at the Eilat.
The fleet speed is set to 1000 km/s... Just in case...
Less than five minutes later, the missiles reach the Eilat. Only 5 of the 24 missiles actually survives the hail of point defense fire.
The speed of the Thor battlegroup is set to a minimum again.
18th of January, 16:28:21As the Eilat is almost in laser range, the Thor battlegroup slowly accelerate to keep it over the 100 000 km mark, then starts to open fire...
Only to notice that ECMs works in many way.
Despite the size of the behemoth, the laser turrets fire control can not track the Eilat.
The fleet slows down a bit again, hoping that reducing the range may prove useful...
18th of January, 16:31:01At 90000 km, a lucky shot manage to hit the Eilat, but one shot won't be enough.
At 70000 km, the hit chance seems to be a ridiculous 20%.
After several minutes with no obvious progress, a drastic decision to close the range to 61000 km is taken.
The damage is still a measly one per hit, but the hit ratio is now an almost impressive 25%.
Commander Payne wonder if he should petition for tankers or for some ECCM equipment for the fleet...
18th of January, 16:36:21The Eilat is following the battlegroup for quite some time, its shields slowly depleted by the lasers. One of the bridge crew of Thor-005 starts whistling the now classical tune Yakety Sax.
He is immediately reprimanded by his captain and scheduled for "turret oiling duty".
18th of January, 16:40:01After nine minutes of almost constant laser fire, the shields of the Eilat are down to 300, half of their original strength.
Still 300 to go, then the carapace of the thing, then some internal damage... perhaps...
Yawn.
18th of January, 16:46:06Shields finally down, time to sandblast some armor...
Yawn again.
18th of January, 16:52:46All the Thors are focusing their fire on the Eilat when, suddenly... The mess staff brings a round of hot coffee for the bored bridge crew.
Guess what? If you said 'Yawn', You won!
18th of January, 17:00:11At last, the monstrosity is showing signs of weakening. A trail of fluid is spotted on its port side, right next to a pseudopod.
18th of January, 17:04:01After more than half an hour of boring repetitive one-sided shooting, the bleeding of the Eilat is now consistent. Now every volley lead to new leaks.
18th of January, 17:04:06One of the laser hits a weird antenna, turning it to ashes. Seems like it was a vital part of the biological ECM of the Eilat, as the fire controls of the Thors are now working as intended.
In the later minutes, the fact that some explosions are sighted, as well as the reduction of thermal and EM signatures, are a giveaway : one by one, the various organs of the strange beast are failing under the volume of the now accurate laser fire.
On Judas/FS, SensOff Xiong Tian Liang mutters "
Ni yi jing su le" before sipping some tea, hoping for his unexpectedly long shift to end.
18th of January, 17:06:16The tiredness of the various crew is starting to show, and in a ruthless way.
Some mistake were made when recomputing the required speed to stay at the same distance of the target.
Result is that the battlegroup fell under the 60000 km range...
Thor-6 was immediately hit by several meson beams, piercing a rack of fuel tanks, destroying two shield generator and hitting the turret - fortunately with no significant damage.
Emergency devices immediately set the fleet to full speed again. No casualties are reported.
Twenty seconds later, the dead Eilat falls off the sensors.
The rest of the operation is a trivial sweeping of the workers, which proves indeed unarmed, and not very interesting to add on the report
And the fuel shortage leading to the stranding of the fleet in the Sirius system is too shameful to add on the report... Wait, did I wrote it? Doh!
**********************************************************
***The nice and friendly space butterflies***
Name # of ships t/ship tonnage
Romat/Soldier 44 800 35200
Eilat/Queen 1 60000 60000
Geoula/Worker 5 5760 28800
Total offensive 45 95200
Total 'support' 5 28800
Total 50 124000
All destroyed
***The evil expansionistic aggressive Terran Federation***
Name # of ship t/ship tonnage
Thor 12 4000 48000
Protector 12 4000 48000
GB-1/M 30 1000 30000
GB-1/S 2 1000 2000
Judas 2 4000 8000
MilJump 8k 1 8000 8000
Total offensive 54 126000
Total support 5 18000
Total 59 144000
Two ship damaged, 6 crew dead
So...I think it was a very smooth operation, especially for a ion-tech level fleet.
The advantage in ship tonnage may have played a bit.
The alpha strike from the missile boat was actually not really significant - The bugswatters worked wonderfully by themselves.
the laser wielding Thors proved a bit lacking however.
Trying to compromise by using 12cm lasers was not a good idea - the next version of the Thor will have a quad 10cm laser, far enough for AM duty, allowing the housing of a single hull-mounted 15cm for some real (for this tech level) punch.
The reactor should be able to provide for both at the same time, so the 10cm might be used offensively if no counterfire is expected.
ECM is annoying for missile ships, but is really crippling for beamships. ECCM research is planned ASAP.
Jump-capable tankers are ALSO planned ASAP. the new fuel model is very demanding. And those ships does not use ludicrously overboosted engines (x1.5 for the MS3, x1.25 for the MSes3).
EDIT : After emergency refuelling from the carrier group, and complete refuelling once back on good ol' earth, I noticed that my fuel stockpile dropped from 110M to 80M. Ouch. The good ol' R. H. Goddard shipyard will resume its building of fuel harvesters...