5/6/895
Observatories on Strug Home see definite signs of a mild ?nuclear winter? on The Sister. In addition, there are unmistakable signs of civil unrest across The Sister. Several cities are in flames, and it is clear that the population and the planet?s industry are suffering from the effects of radiation.
11/16/898
The Valles Marinaris II is launched from the orbital yards of Strug Home. The second Strug attempt to survey their home system is launched one day later. As before, all Strug military bases go on alert before the launch. Unlike last time, though, this time the Valles Marinaris II heads out on a course directly away from The Sister, so that it is shielded by the defenses orbiting Strug Home. There are planet-wide celebrations when it becomes clear that the alien colonists on The Sister are not going to oppose the launch.
12/3/898
Gergen Orbital Defense Network Training Center, Strug Home
(Note: A Kadar is a low to middle level officer in the Strug Defense Forces. Dwar is a upper-mid level officer.)
Kadar Henan stiffened with his claws bent, wondering what he had done wrong now. His experience at the Training Center had not been the best one so far. In fact, it had been bad enough that he had almost decided that the Defense Command was not the career for him. This training was required for advancement to the next rank level, and he had screwed up pretty much every exercise so far.
While he waited, Henan went back through the last exercise. It was a replay of the Five Minute War, with the trainee controlling the alien forces located on The Sister, and the training staff controlling the home world?s defenses. He had thought he was doing pretty well, actually, when the trainers had called off the exercise and ordered him to wait here, in the throughway. He was doing better than the aliens had, anyway.
Kadar Henan waited for another ten minutes, growing more and more nervous, until finally Dwar Gergol herself came and got him. Her brusque attitude in ordering him to her office did nothing to allay his fears, unfortunately. He scuttled into her office, where he saw two of the senior instructors waiting for him. Dwar Gergol moved to her wall mounted monitor and set it to display a tactical map of the recent exercise, which began playing. With that set she turned to Henan and spoke. ?Kadar, I?ll be honest, in reviewing your performance on the recent exercise we started with the assumption that you somehow corrupted or otherwise changed the conditions of the test.? Before Henan could say anything, she continued. ?As you know, that would have been a very serious situation. However, in reviewing the exam, we realized that that is not the case. Therefore, I?d like you to explain just what your strategy was in this engagement.? She waived her fighting claw at the display, which was showing alien missiles closing in on Strug Home.
Nervous and afraid that he had somehow violated the regulations, Henan hesitated. The display behind Gergol showed the alien missiles, his missiles; streaking right through Strug defenses and impacting Strug bases without suffering any attrition from Strug laser bases. As he watched his successful strategy play out again, he got angry. He decided that if they were going to penalize him for being right, then that would tell him everything he needed to know about the organization he worked for. ?Dwar, during the set-up for the scenario, I was told that I could modify certain parameters, within the constraints of known Colonist technology. Modifying the number of launchers was not allowed, as was deploying Colonist laser defense bases, as they did not possess any at the time of the War. I know from discussion with others in my class that changing or ?souping-up? the Colonist?s anti-missiles has only met with limited success because of the extremely short flight times in between Strug Home and The Sister, so that was out. I thought I might try changing the Colonist?s heavy missiles so that they were faster, so that they?d be harder for our defenses to shoot down, but it was then that I realized that there was a better strategy. Making the missiles harder to shoot down would still mean that some of them got shot down, but if I could armor them to the point that our lasers couldn?t affect them, then they would all get through the defenses. I did some poking around in the intelligence files on our capabilities that are made available to the students, and sure enough the performance specs of our 10 cm lasers is in there. From there it was easy to design a missile with armor heavy enough to stand up to a point-blank burst from one of our lasers and which still had enough range and speed to reach Strug Home from the Sister even at the maximum separation.?
Henan stood there and watched as the other three senior officers swiveled their eyestalks towards each other. It was apparent to Henan that something was going on, but he still had no idea what. After a few seconds Gergol dipped her eyestalks. ?Thank you, Henan, you may return to your class. We will be in touch. You need not worry about this, you?ve done well.?
A thoroughly confused junior officer left the room, leaving the three senior instructors behind. Once the room was secure, Gergol swiveled her eyestalks towards the other two. ?We should be ashamed. Truly, we have fallen into a rut. To have our inadequacies so blatantly shown to us by a junior officer!?
The other two were just as upset as Gergol, if slightly less open about it. ?The armor trick was tried before, but it was back before we developed nuclear pulse engines, and we just couldn?t design missiles with enough power to make it to The Sister, so the concept was dropped. I guess no one thought of it after we developed the new engines.?
?That could be the epitaph for our entire species! ?No one thought of it!? If the Colonists thought of it, we are in a very bad position. As Henan said, their missiles will cruise right by our defenses, and nothing we have would stop them.? Gergol held up a claw as both of the others looked like they were going to respond. ?This is an institutional failing. We failed to look at things from a fresh perspective. This must be remedied immediately. I want full reports on Henan?s sim from both of you, and I want an entire battery of new sims run looking at every aspect of the War. Immediately!?
As soon as the instructors left, Gergol sent a message to Heltoh, the CINC of the Orbital Defense Network. The message ignited a firestorm that ultimately caused several resignations and resulted in the diversion of large amounts of resources and research capability.
Update as of 12/30/898
Strug Home
Population: 534 million
Shipyards: 3/4
CF: 550
Ord. Fac: 100
Fuel Ref: 300
Mines: 650
A. Mines: 100
RL: 15
Fin Cen: 12
GFTF: 3
Nav. Academy: 3
DSTS: 7
Military: 6xSyria Planum PDC, 12xOlympus Mons BS
Survey Command: 1xValles Marineris (5,900 ton GeoSurvey ship)
The Strug have launched a second survey ship to replace the one lost in what is now known as the ?Five Minute War?. That ship has completed geo-surveys of about a third of the bodies in the system, and is now moving on to the outer gas giants and their moons. So far the only interesting discovery was on Home A-V, a terrestrial class planet with four moons. The planet and one of its moons have cost ratings of ?2?, and the planet has significant deposits of duranium, boronide, and uridium. Of the three minerals, only the duranium is present at high availability levels. On the one claw, this is encouraging because duranium is the most useful mineral, but on the other claw, the home world has run out of corbomite and vendarite.
Current production priorities are as follows:
1. Build up stocks of automated mines for the eventual establishment of an off-world mining colony.
2. Build up stocks of infrastructure for the establishment of an off-world population.
3. Increase the number of research labs.
4. Increase the home world?s construction and mining capacity.
As for shipbuilding, the Strug have constructed a third shipyard, which is currently being enlarged to handle the construction of Olympus Mons class bases. The orbital yards currently building the bases are being retooled to build Freighters. Finally, the yard that constructed the Valles Marinaris II is being retooled to build the new Tharsis Montes class escort cruiser.
For the last several years Strug research has been focused on increasing construction, research, and mining capabilities, but that is about to change. Orbital Defense Command (ODC) has identified a major weakness in their defensive capabilities, and has succeeded in convincing the Leader and the Assembly of the importance in remedying that weakness. As a result, all research capability will be diverted to developing better point defense weapons so that ODC can continue to defend the planet.
To date the Colonists on The Sister have been quiet. Continuing surveillance has verified that the radiation and dust levels in the atmosphere are greatly reduced. In addition, while there are still unmistakable signs of civil unrest, that unrest has been reduced greatly over the last year. ODC (Orbital Defense Command) Intelligence believes that the Colonists have rebuilt several of their missile bases, bust as of yet this is unverified.
Currently, the Allied Principalities of the Strug have no purpose-built warships. The Tharsis Montes class escort cruiser is intended to be the first step in the creation of a true space-going navy. In essence, the Tharsis Montes is an Olympus Mons class base grafted on to an engine section. The Tharsis Montes class escort cruisers are intended to escort valuable ships into and out of the Colonist?s missile envelope, and will augment the home world?s defenses should another missile exchange occur.
Originally, research was scheduled to begin immediately on a new weapons system for a full-fledged warship capable of taking aggressive action against hostile alien warships; however, this project has been delayed while upgraded point defense weaponry is researched.
New Ship Designs:
Colony Ship class Freighter 4800 tons 228 Crew 776.6 BP TCS 96 TH 200 EM 0
2083 km/s Armour 1 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/0/0/0 Damage Control 0-0 PPV 0
Colonists 50000 Cargo Handling Multiplier 5 Replacement Parts 5
Nuclear Pulse Engine (5) Power 40 Efficiency 0.80 Signature 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres Range 56.2 billion km (312 days at full power)
This design is classed as a freighter for maintenance purposes
Freighter class Freighter 4800 tons 203 Crew 326.6 BP TCS 96 TH 200 EM 0
2083 km/s Armour 1 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/0/0/0 Damage Control 0-0 PPV 0
Cargo 25000 Cargo Handling Multiplier 5 Replacement Parts 5
Nuclear Pulse Engine (5) Power 40 Efficiency 0.80 Signature 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 50,000 Litres Range 56.2 billion km (312 days at full power)
This design is classed as a freighter for maintenance purposes
Tharsis Montes class Escort Cruiser 8000 tons 741 Crew 1142.4 BP TCS 160 TH 320 EM 1140
2000 km/s Armour 1 Shields 38-400 Sensors 32/0/0/0 Damage Control 0-0 PPV 27
Replacement Parts 10
Nuclear Pulse Engine (8) Power 40 Efficiency 0.80 Signature 40 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 150,000 Litres Range 101.3 billion km (585 days at full power)
Gamma R400/16 Shields (19) Total Fuel Cost 304 Litres per day
Twin 10cm C3 Visible Light Laser Turret (3x2) Range 60,000km TS: 12800 km/s Power 6-6 RM 2 ROF 5 3 3 2 1 1 1 0 0 0 0
PD Fire Control (3) Max Range: 96,000 km TS: 12800 km/s 90 79 69 58 48 38 27 17 6 0
Pebble Bed Reactor (2) Total Power Output 18 Armour 0 Exp 5%
Missile Sensor, Small (1) GPS 12.8 Range 128k km Resolution 0.2
Ship Sensor, Small (1) GPS 2560 Range 25.6m km Resolution 40
Thermal Sensor, Small (1) Sensitivity 32 Detect Sig Strength 1000: 32m km
