The Solari Empire, update:
The war against the Beta Virginis aliens has begun. To set the scene:
Beta Virginis is about 10b km from Sol. It's five jumps away. (Sol->Ross->Midway->Solomon->Okinawa->Beta Virginis)
There are two alien factions there, of the same species, based on the same planet, of comparable size and strength. The Solari perceive no meaningful distinction between them, and regard them as, for all practical purposes, a single entity, henceforth called the Betas.
At the start of the war, we've got no good information about their capabilities.
We Solari have got six modern 16,000-ton cruisers with a total of 200 size-5 ASM launchers, four 8,000-ton frigates with a total of 80 AMM launchers, and two Antimissile cruisers each with a pair of quad gauss turrets with tracking speeds of 20kps. Also, we have a great many 8,000-ton colliers and tankers which move at the same speed as the fighting ships. This is unorthodox, but it's our way. We've had bad experiences with support ships getting isolated and picked off, so we think the safest place for them is right up on the front line with the fleet.
Our missiles and sensors permit us to engage large ships and FACs out to around 50mkm.
We've got a base in Okinawa, the system right next to Beta Virginis. Our colony in Okinawa is about 250m km from the BV jump gate. Their colony in BV is about 3 billion mk from the Okinawa jump gate.
The war plan is simple: Push into the system. Destroy every ship, station, and PDC. Then land the 2nd Infantry and 4th Armored divisions on the homeworld and conquer it.
Our initial push made it about about 1.5B mk from the homeworld before being turned back. We destroyed about 150,000 tons of warships, while losing the 16,000-ton antimissile cruiser and half a dozen 8,000-ton support ships. We learned:
- The enemy has vastly superior weapon and sensor range.
- We have much better missile defenses and (generally) better speed.
- They have some freakishly fast FACs armed with long-range missiles
- Our tankers and colliers need warship-grade armor if they're going to travel with the fleet. They get shot at a lot.
- Our gauss cannons need greater tracking speed before they're going to be a serious defense.
- Our modest shields are useless. When a ship gets hit at all, it gets hit big and quick. Pound for pound, the space spent on shields would be much better spent on more armor.
We've withdrawn to the Okinawa system, where we keep a fleet parked about 1m km away from the gate. Every several months, the Betas try to come through. We destroy these ships without difficulty. Their superior reach doesn't do them any good under these conditions.
We're making several adjustments:
- We're no longer bringing tankers with us into BV. With our base in Okinawa being only 3.5b km or so from the enemy homeworld, the 20b km fuel loads on our warships is plenty.
- We're adding a ton of armor to the colliers. We can't leave these behind because the fighting ships just don't carry enough ammo, so we're giving them the same armor that the bruisers have got.
- We're upgrading our search radars and fire controls, so that we have significantly better reach than the enemy. We used to see and hit out to 50m. Enemy is doing about 200m. So we're upgrading to 300m.
- We're swapping our our warhead-16 Harpoon with a range of 44m km and a speed of 48000km/s in favor of the new warhead-9 Lance missile with a range of 350m km and a speed of only 28,800km/s. These things are slow, and easy to shoot down, but we use box launchers on our cruisers and the enemy point defenses just aren't able to deal with salvos of the size that we employ. We defeat their missile defenses with sheer numbers, rather than agility.
Better gauss-equipped ships are in the pipeline, but won't be ready for another year and a half, so we're pushing ahead without them.
The next push begins within the week.