Despite the seemingly intelligent tactics from before, the allied forces on the jump point were left by their smarts and decided to move back a bit in those 5 days. A very poor decision, as it prevented them from getting another preventive and decisive strike on what was to come.
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Another 4 ships entered, identifying themselves as 2 FAC-Killers, 1 Colossus, and 1 Deadly Reaper. They were also large, but not quite as much as those ships from the first wave. Technically they posed about an equally big threat.
As it quickly became evident, these, or some these ships were mainly armed with missile weaponry, and of such grade and range, that there was no hope of efficiently intercepting their trajectory. Thus, the huge beam armed fleet who managed to shoot through superior armor of large ships in just one turn, could still not hope to repell even a single salvo.
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The enemy used two types of ammunition so far, - a standard sized missile of strength 20, and a large torpedo of incredible range and a yield of even 35 sylvester units. The later he already intelligently deployed against only further out flying targets, while the narrow ones were decimated by the standard ordnance.
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Even the small jump gate service force at another point in over 1 trillion meters distance was not spared from the touch of the torpedoes.
The four ships then continued further inwards in slightly loose formation, bombarding mining bases and some more disorganized sub-fleets on the way
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Yet even their big ships must feel exhaustion when dealing with so many targets, so like bees swarming on the bear, the overwhelming mass eventually managed to close in and succeed a couple hits back.
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One definitely positive thing happening here is that I could also never make out who was firing missiles and how often by just watching the timer. In 7.x it seems now that the launches are finally hidden inside other intervals (as long as they aren't yours of course). Much needed and good change. No more jedi disturbance in the morse sensing.}The separation of the 4 enemy ships worked in our favor, as it allowed to swarm them individually and so reduce losses from their deadly 2.7% lightspeed ramming maneuvers.
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In this way, the Colossus and the 2 FAC-Killers were successfully dispatched, and retroactively identified as the torpedo and 2 missile ships. Then the Deadly Reaper closed in, and it should not be such an easy target, as it unveiled sheer apocalyptic laser broadsides.
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Not only that, but its anti-missile defenses were strong enough to absorb around 75% of all ordnance thrown at him, resulting in mere scratching ~200 hull damage before the complete annihilation of the remaining Illuminati standing fleet.
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Now all that was left was the hope of the close range defense FAC formations. Illuminati and Technocrazy smartly bundled together their forces and set up a flanking attack to pummel the Reaper from two sides at once.
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This fight already took place in earths solar orbit. The missiles of the FACs were much weaker than those of the ships however, so even in their combined effort and higher hit rate, the whole maneuver did not amount to much more than another 150 michael bay standard transformer points of damage.(and without gaining any results in weakening the intruder)
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With all military fleet eliminated mostly to the hands of the Reaper, there was now only the final defense perimeter of the installations of Earth. Luckily, Imperium had been putting special emphasis on this one, and had many years ago managed to hide a powerful ground to space precision shooting platform behind Earths atmosphere, which no other faction had accomplished. For all intends and purposes, this essentially made Earth invulnerable in this situation, as the enemy ship, -being only armed with energy weaponry-, could not hope to reach these installations without the aid of real bombing capacity.
Hence, Imperium had been very relaxed from the point on where it was clear that the enemy had lost its ammunition stamina. All that was needed now was to wait for the Reaper to fly inside the 30 million meter kill-zone they established around the planet.
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However, the enemy was not as stupid as hoped for, and actually stopped just a bit outside the range of this weapon and started shooting at the orbital defenses and yet not evacuated civil fleets of Imperium's allies.
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Seeing that the confidence of Imperium was not completely thought through, the allies started to firing their own defenses, though to little effect, as the enemies vast computer technology fooled our missiles into pursuing ghost targets instead.
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Owned to the sheer mass of the assault, some missiles still made it to their destination, but only again to scratch on the Reaper's mantle without any noteworthy effect.
Terrified and finally acknowledging that Earth was not a safe haven either, the remaining civil ships finally started to flee as well.
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...But the Reaper comes to everybody, so just after finishing the orbital earth defenses and the lunar base, even the civil fleets were pursued and both destroyed.
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Finishing this endeavor, the invading ship returned supposedly to take aim on the shipyards or just besiege Earth with its presence. The research staff of Imperium had already anticipated this potential outcome and began looking for longer ranging ground weaponry, though that could easily take a decade.
However, the Deadly Reaper flew reckless this time, and crossed the kill-zone on its way back, giving the Chimney base a short window of firing opportunity that was not missed.
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A lot of hope was put into that lighting a ship up with 150 direct internal damage would finally be enough to even down this monster, but instead it appeared as only half crippled. Everybody was now hoping for just another shot opportunity, but then the unspeakable happened:
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...The Reaper's
laser based weaponry somehow shot directly through the atmosphere and exploded the last defense the life on Earth had. Experts mumbled something about the mastery of quantum tunneling in advanced fusion ages, but no one was interested listening anymore. Who could have predicted that this perfect turtling weapon could be bested against what all tests had shown to be impossible.
The attacker needed no bombardement to win, and leaving only the defensive ground base left after destroying everything else had just been a form of mockery. He sensed the confidence, and decided to make the loss complete by first finishing all other objectives before finally crushing our last and biggest hope. Why else would he have left this base as the only target to survive?
Losing this way was soon not as gruesome anymore, as it was quickly seen that the alliance could only have been defeated. Just after the enemy managed to deal the killing blow to ground installation and shipyards, a third wave of ships passed through, and took formation with the Reaper for a final assault. ..Those were planetary bombardment ships.
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The density of their ordnance was so high and elusive, that it would have taken approximately 9 defensive installations in order to counter them completely; - something that had been impossible at the Earth's budget in any case.
They first took out most mining bases, and the Venus colonies, then proceeded to earth. It was the end times.
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The final state after the bombardment stopped - "evernight":
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-------OT-------
So, this was the first game I legitimately lost since my actual first game, and definitely the first one to be lost despite me knowing what to do. Also the first game for me to really see invaders in action.(the only other time I didn't even see them shoot because my TL12 Ha'tak was just too good at finishing them from a distance)
These here were only TL7, which is a bit underwhelming. The Astral Republic guys would have wiped the floor with those, but at such a low tiered start, it is of course a doomsday scenario.
Interesting that it might have just been that first maneuvering mistake in the beginning, -leaving the jump point position-, that made all this disaster possible. Appears technology is still not the greatest winning factor, but an effective jump point defense/ or siege strategy can win out even much more.
However, I was legitimately shocked that the laser strikes through atmosphere are possible for spoilers now (or is it all NPR, or maybe just Invaders?). In all my games, a good powerful beam ground base had been the center of my defense, because they are just so powerful in their PD density, and made beam ship advance foolish.(at least so I thought)
In the EU stars game I tried to count on that one too, but maybe good that I pulled back that investment.
Anyway, seeing those escorts come in relieved the bitterness about the unfair tunnel-lasers, as it was impossible of winning against those without the allied fleet anyway.
