What's going on in your empire/planet/battlefield?

[Anarade Relle]

Won my first major battle against hostile xenos trying to conquer Nova Sol system.

Little background ( i know that no one gives a frakk about it but i enjoy writing that ):

Terra Nova in the trinary Nova Sol system was settled by the humans who arrived by the sublight colony ship "Ulysses" as a part of "Diaspora" project, desperate gambit to escape overpopulated and polluted Earth. Initially planet was very close in term of atmosphere to Earth with only vastly higher average temperature ( almost 40C ) and only 31% hydrosphere ( albeit already liquid ). Terraforming after landing was slow and colonists had to endure many hardships while they adapted to live on this planet. Fortunately planet was abundant in minerals, food and drinking water with relative lack of dangerous patogens, viruses etc.
Initial pre-TN visual survey discovered 12 rock planets, 8 gas giants, 121 moons and 88 asteroids somewhat equally divided between each of the three components of the star system. Component A and B were close to each other ( less than 700 m km ) while component C was more than 2.3 TRILLION km with orbit period of 1.5m years.
Newly founded society adopted kind of human-centric mindset with very distinct "manifest destiny" overtones in its basic principles and was aptly named the "Neo Terran Supremacy".
NTS calendar starts not at the day that Ulysses landed on the planet but at the day the humans made two most important discoveries in their history.
Scientists at the Site-01, planets most revered University made a breaktrough into Trans Newtonian technology at the same day the Marcus Levitus geology team sent into the northern hemisphere largest jungle found a partially intact alien city buried in the nearby mountain range.

Initial xenoarcheology survey determined that there were 848 instalations to recover, sadly the civilization that left them there, the Mojokerto Hegemony was only slightly more advanced than humans at the time of discovery ( TL 1 ).

It took almost 17 years to launch first two geo survey ships - the Gemini and Voyager. Any kind of space construction was slowed substantialy because economy was occupied with survival in the planet semi-hostile enviroment ( had to built a lot of infra during those years ) and social-ground military costs of running the excavation of the alien ruins.
Fortunately budget allowed the NTS to build a single class of military ship : the Vanguard guided missile destroyer, short ranged multi purpose ship that acted as mobile anti missile defence platform and attack ship.

Cash spent on Gemini and Voyager was returned tenfold when Gemini, in less than two months since launch, made a contact with alien race in the Nova Sol system - small automated beacon/outpost on the planet named Pollux, one of the B star rocky planets.
Year later, even before humans established full contact, Voyager transited trough one of the La-Grange points, into the orbit of Behemoth, gas giant orbiting C star, that made Jupiter look like Mercury. There, on one of the rocky planets called Hesperius was a homeworld of said alien race. They even fired at Voyager before it hauled ass but ships CIWS system protected it.
Eventually normal diplomatic relations were established with the aliens who therefore are named Hesperius Khanate as their own name is incredibly difficult to pronounce.

Voyager Incident and First Contact War ( 5.05.29 - ?? )

After performing a full system JP survey, Voyager refited from civilian geo-ship to grav survey vessel, transited into the system that was later named Aquitaine. Visual survey showed a lot of promise - nine rocky planets, one of them in perfect range for human habitation. Before Voyager could even move from the jump point, alien ships showed up. Many different types ranging from 8.5k tons to even two reaching 41k tons.
Captain of Voyager, not wanting to betray the location of jump point leading to Nova Sol, ordered ship to hold position and to engage transponder and first contact protocol.
This went for over two months with some major progress on the way.
Finally on the fifth of May 29, entire alien fleet opened fire on Voyager, killing its captain, first contact team and almost entire crew.
Following the destruction of Voyager, aliens entered the Nova Sol system and set a course to Terra Nova.
Rear Admiral Isador Agemman, senior officer in the Supremacy navy, realized he is outgunned and outnumbered.
Navy had only nine Vanguards in service and those ships were obsolete as hell with first of them being constructed more than 10 years ago. There were no anti missile defences, no fighters, no orbital weapons of any kind...
Luckily aliens underestimated humanity capacity to fight and showed up with only missile attack ships, at least in the first wave. Vanguards managed to avenge Voyager by destroying each and every ships with zero casaulties.

Then the second enemy battle group showed up with Scorpion and Viper class vessels who provided complete and utter anti-missile protection that nothing could break...
Again luckily for humans alien inexperience made them break formation with slower Scorpions and Vipers lagging behind.
Agemman parked his fleet in orbit, requested whole fleet of cargo shuttles to ferry ammunition and started shooting. After using up almost 75 % of the planetart missile stockpiles only alien presence in the system was that of spinning wrecks venting atmo and vast net of lifepods.

Third attack was almost laughable with two Tarantula class ships who luckily managed to get some shots at my fleet with two salvos of five size 5 missiles each. One missile even managed to break the SNS Valiant EM Disruption field and caused some minor armour damaged before Tarantulas shared the fate of the rest of the fleet.

Situation is still tense - i have no idea how industrialized the enemy planet is, what are there industrial capability is etc.
My navy have grown to 14 Vanguards - obsolete or not, that ship is the only quick solution to our low numbers.
I also designed Colossus class Orbital Defence Monitor and Hammer class Missile Base, both using Vanguard level tech so my planet wont be so defenseless.
I'm kinda like Space USA during WW2 - i have the capability, i just need some time..

P.s. I would love to upgrade my military tech, i have researched Nuclear Pulse engines not so long ago but my only prop/power scientist just kicked the bucket
Most obvious thing would be to design some cheap fighter and just spam it ..

Sounds like a fun time.

What are the stats on those Vanguards?

[Mulisa]

I just got an officer who is both optimistic and pessimistic, both at the same time.   

[Drgong]

The Year is 2100

The North American Union, Russian Confederation, and the Free State Alliance are all just discovered Trans-Newtonian technologies.  Spent a ton of time setting up the community game.  Still it is fun. 

[83athom]

I just got an officer who is both optimistic and pessimistic, both at the same time.   

He tries to see the best in seeing the worst.

[boggo2300]

He tries to see the best in seeing the worst.

Thanks,  that's completely done my head in

[sloanjh]

I just got an officer who is both optimistic and pessimistic, both at the same time.   

I fear it's going to be a wonderful day

John

[xXKageAsashinXx]

Ever had that moment where your ship is slower than a planet's revolution around a star or planet, and thus will never reach their destination if you progress time in too high an increment? Apparently, Venus is making my tugs eat its space dust as they try to lug a large terraformer over to the blasted thing.  Fun times.

[Iranon]

Transnewtonian physics: still looking for any excuse to bite you in the ass.

[xeryon]

Ever had that moment where your ship is slower than a planet's revolution around a star or planet, and thus will never reach their destination if you progress time in too high an increment? Apparently, Venus is making my tugs eat its space dust as they try to lug a large terraformer over to the blasted thing.  Fun times.

Go the other direction of the orbit!

[GodEmperor]

Sounds like a fun time.

What are the stats on those Vanguards?

Well i deleted that save after a major snafu so i dont have the exact stats but irrc they had 3k km/s speed, 10 lvl armour, 8 launchers, 2 railguns, 9.6bn km range .... ASM pulled 8900km/s , had 90 m km range and 5 str warhead.

Generally low level stuff but got the job done.

[xXKageAsashinXx]

Go the other direction of the orbit!

I posted after I fixed the problem, but at the time all I was thinking was "My tug pilots must have heart eyes and be knee deep in drool. . . " since I didn't notice until a few months after I gave them their orders.

On another note, I started from scratch a new game, literally from scratch as I made a new system and empire and everything.  Tried to make them robots that are fueled by minute amounts of airborne methane and freeze every colonizable planet they see, but that didn't work out as well as I'd hoped.  Good news is though, there's almost never a system I can't colonize with minimal effort since they can survive in next to no atmosphere with mega cold temperatures basically, which maxes getting on asteroids and comets without underground infrastructure super easy.

The main point is that before I got past my own system, as I only explored that first jump from the home system, I get aliens popping up at the 21 year mark.  My record for aliens is well over 150 years, and I'm the one to find them.  So worth it to have one pre-made at the game's start. . .

[Viridia]

-Snipped-

It's great, isn't it?

On another note, I've finally come back to Aurora. Restarting the old TATO v TEU game with a slight twist, and decided to write it up like I did with the Struggle of Survival.

[Garfunkel]

Started an AAR for a game with minimal starting stuff - small population, little industry, few research labs. Thought it would be a challenging and an interesting premise, having to utilize all tricks and actually using Gen 0, Gen 1 and Gen 2 extensively. Turns out that instead it became extremely boring - a century of snail-pace expansion with nothing happening, so there went my interest in writing about it too. Oh well, it's not like the Fiction sub-forum isn't already full of promising starts that fizzled out - what's one more? 

[xeryon]

The key to early starts are automated 30 day increments.  Time flys when you skip most of it.

[Garfunkel]

True but I was aiming for a character-driven story. Having nothing happening for over sixty years made that exceedingly difficult.

Oh well, I think I'll start a new one and try my hand at multi-race Earth start.