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Fiction => Aurora => Vandermeer's Fiction => Topic started by: Vandermeer on October 26, 2021, 03:19:35 PM

Title: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on October 26, 2021, 03:19:35 PM

Disclaimers: I once long time ago made a game called EU Circle of Stars (here (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=7995.0)) where I scratched political topics for the setting start and had to put a disclaimer. Since I am pretty much taking the opposite stance in this game, I hope it will serve as proof in itself that it isn't all to be taken too seriously, although it is admittedly closer to what I actually think this time. A real portrait would take much explaining though, which would be boring, but this is supposed to be entertaining fiction. We have a bad guy (US+China and their merging ideologies), and a sparsely believable good guy (EU, as if).

The Taming of Causality, and How It Caused the Timeline to Change (tech lore section. skip for only empire setting)
The game starts in the near past year of 2015 when the theories of David Deutsch and Chiara Marletto let to some surprising implications about the nature of reality after development of their rewrite of the Standardmodel of physics at Oxford University. Their mission stated was to move away from the mechanistic approach of past time physics and embracing our current predicament of the existence of many untellable variables (even in pristine mathematics) that any non-divine/non-objective prisoner inside of a system (thus also: universe) is logically proven to have to be living under. The limit of the knowable. Thus, instead of trying to make accurate predictions and becoming 'uncertain' at the edges, their new model, called "Constructor Theory" took the opposite approach. No predictions shall be made, - you start with everything feasible, then subtract the impossibilities stemming from natural laws, entanglement, interferences etcetc., -possibly inspired by Sherlock Holmes quotes-, until what remains is the actual physical situation you are in.
(https://abload.de/img/constructortheory4ije5.jpg)
Comparable with a negative painting style, it quickly offered a rather intuitive reframing of our living situation even in the more restricted (therefore: more predictable) macroscopic world. The tiny errors in machinery that never quite get resolved, fluctuations with butterfly effect consequences that hindered weather prediction models for 100 years of reaching maturity... . The acceptance of error, and the planning for all of them in this new uncertainty embracing and acknowledging model quickly poured into design and industrial theory, revolutionizing machinery and reaching the near impossible heights of precision at the border of the knowable.
Surprising everyone however, this new technological frontier would also reveal some unforeseen truths that lay hidden just near the boundary of causality that had been reached. Most striking of which certainly the discovery that any 'purified'/prediction sharpened system or object would travel with lightspeed once freed from all observation. This in itself, just a few strokes further down, implied that the reason for such seemingly energy free movement could only mean that the drive came from elsewhere, and that elsewhere was quickly proven to be the actual expansion rate of the universe itself, which was indeed way higher, the lightspeed. Thus, it was not the object moving free of energy, it was everything else counteracting the true expansion and holding everything together while space expanded around it. This made expansion appear to be slower, but the effect resulted merely from all the gravity and peer-to-peer interference holding existent matter together.
(in a welcome turn this consequentially also buried the Big Rip theory of the end of the cosmos, since nothing would ever move faster apart than lightspeed)

As Constructor Theory fueled technology had now reached the point of highest limit predictability, so has humanities capacity to manipulate an object's circumstances so that it wouldn't be caught up in its complex environment, thus bringing it towards the lightspeed border. Obviously it didn't take long for many different communities to take this talk of lightspeed objects and propose and devise a way to form it into a tube, or hull, and hope for it to enable actual lightspeed travel.
The concept was soon proven to hold true, first in satellites, then cat-piloted vehicles to ensure bio-safety, and finally all leading up to the major continental powers of the world (and Great Britain, as per prerogative of the pioneer and first developer) fielding whole fleets of military ships, sadly exporting the arms race into space.

The technology still had limits however. Mostly the process to free an object of causality limiting factors required it to exist in a kind of cleaned, prepared, akin to laboratory sanitized state, where for example entanglements would be identified in a piece of metal, and then systematically removed via strategic precision radiation placement, or introduction of other materials, field manipulation and such. While formerly only working in entropic factory like environments that surrounded an object with massive machinery in order to refine some small central object for causality-purity, eventually measures came to exist that could stabilize larger objects from within themselves by using specially tailored pre-purified materials in the object's construction.
While these special materials could be refined from scratch, it usually provided wasteful and time intensive to get any industrially viable amounts. In comparison, once you knew what you were looking for, -probing for entanglement and interference levels-, raw ores of these materials could be found everywhere in the most surprising places. These 'untouched' materials excelled by simply having had a low rate of interaction in their history since their conception. Pockets of isolated ores that didn't experience much geological shuffling, heat, magnetism and such are candidates, but also products of self-ordering processes like certain hidden crystal formations.
Extracted from these really were just the true "primal elements" (named for their relative 'uninvolvement/untouchedness' in universe history), which were mostly pure protons (duranium), neutrons (...), some types of useful compound elements, as well as pure electrons (Sorium) which were needed to run any lightspeed approaching vessels' constant radiation purification/de-causalization, thus being the factor maintaining the state of stable flight.
The ships built with such mechanisms in mind were only limited by the grade of purity that the ship could be maintained in, which itself depended mostly on the radiation, thus electricity output. So while a laboratory or factory could supply all the power to get an object of certain size completely pure until lightspeed low causality levels, a ship that maintained itself from within was still limited by the power generation technologies available.

Further implications of this causality taming technology seemed to be on the horizon, yet were currently left to the worlds nations to figure out in-field as the race to claim the solar system had already begun.
As the vision of Deutsch and Marletto was to part with the mechanistic newtonian physics view of the world, it was only natural to rename this new era of all-probabilites inclusive physics philosophy "trans-newtonian".

//--Stop here, seems like I don't have time for the political section today, so then tomorrow.--

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on October 27, 2021, 05:11:39 PM

A Brave New Hunger 1984 for Vendetta's Kingsmen
(joke idea credit goes to Tim Pool)

Following the Occupy Wallstreet riots in 2011 and numerous environmental studies, the self titled 'elites' of the world felt they were looking down the barrel of a gun. The exploitation machinery that had organized society to reshuffle generated wealth for a 'fountain upwards' economy had finally reached a stress level where even the prosperous' countries population begun to show signs of open revolt given the massive and daily growing class imbalances they created.
Just like any historic leadership in an exploitative position however, their reaction was not to look into themselves and acknowledge the errors in their ways, but instead to double down on the path that caused their issues to begin with, becoming more and more authoritarian in the process. That was the optimistic outlook anyway though, since there was ample argument to be made that certain maneuvers appeared to show a planning intent to not only intentionally let it get so far, but to use the then ensuing chaos to topple the world order to the elites preferred state of being: A stratified, (seemingly) unquestionable top-down regime, just like the current criminal and illegally occupying party of China had.
Despite China being the literal most murderous, most brutal and one of the most oppressive dystopian states to exist, the Clintons and their political allies and co-conspirators managed to somehow convince everyone to let the regime expand their influence over the world by introducing it to the WTO, treating them as a legitimate country under ruse that giving them respect would somehow lead them to tame and become more democratic.

..Instead the opposite happened. As the regime -at that time close to internal collapse- was fed by all that it was lacking, -western money, technology, forgiveness-, it became not only stronger, but secretly also more oppressive, more arrogant, and used all the gifted western powers to in turn undermine the previous western values through money at the right places. Many of those advocating for investment in China and for the addiction to its slave labor were eventually dependent on the regimes continued expansion, thus advocating for the bloat in their home countries without the regime having to do anything in most cases.
The consequences of such incentives creeped up first in form of media censorship of negative China news.(state organ harvesting programs, concentration camps, genocide, the sheer scale of their surveillance state that costed much more than even their military) Then the embrace of subversive (but not yet openly marxist) ideologies in form of first thinly disguised free-speech blockers like political correctness, ever expanded into new territories to encompass more and more terms from a weird quasi-religious social justice groups. Eventually the media companies of the west were so subverted and trained by the far-left authoritarian leader caste, that they begun to spout open propaganda that demonized the ways of the west and idolized the ways of China or other socialist regimes, all while flying cover for leftwing authoritarian 'brownshirt' terrorist groups that had begun with the classic intimidation tactic maneuvers everywhere, attacking police, firebombing federal courts, destroying statues of even civil rights heroes (definitely all American icons), occupying parts of cities and declaring them independent (Seattle, Portland,...), hunting down 'the wrong' journalists, and openly calling for revolution and the abolishment of 'capitalism'. Always armed, always violent, organized, militant and well funded.
Near to none of these were ever punished of course, nor even called terrorists by the media. If arrested at all, the far-left politicians even pitched in to bail them out of jail -including the next presidential candidate-; all of which worked since the interest groups naturally already sat at the source valve of power, namely for example the budgetary committees of the intelligence agencies.
The rule of law crumbled under the greedy interests of the elites, while the eyes of the people were diverted by the monopolized cultist media. And so instead of turning the Chinese regime more democratic, feeding the authoritarian nightmare state only aided in the West gradually, then suddenly turning more authoritarian, culminating in the alleged election of the:
(https://abload.de/img/beijingandharassiyk5v.jpg)
The far-left and thus China subverted party of the US had been poked and teased by a political enemy that threatened to take away the very source of their wealth - the US to China redistribution channel at which sides they threw their fishing nets. This candidate, the very first in many years not to be fielded by the establishment class, and his one single message of "America first" with its actions that demonized the communist regime, lurked to expose their long-standing silent extraction strategy. And thus, they "ree'd" and screamed, trying every smear in their books in desperation to turn the public against him, meaning to unseat him as fast as possible even before end of his election term. Fake scandals, malicious framing, accusations of misdemeanors, - the propaganda machine was in an overdrive not ever seen before. ...And it went too far.
As all their hunting dogs in media and intelligence were unleashed, many of their actions became so zealous that they inevitably ended up being illegal. One of the downfalls of a country that allows the death penalty is that once a person has committed a crime that warrants the highest possible punishment, they feel already pushed out of society and might as well continue on the path, since their only chance of survival is now to also shoot the police officer trying to arrest them. And so, when The Party eventually pushed too far into criminal territory by sabotaging a duly elected president (Russia and Burisma hoaxes; staging impeachment), -treason on country and people, and death warranting-, there came a point where there was no turning back for them. It was win or die.
This predicament was the linchpin unleashing all the authoritarian ambitions into the open, barely hiding what their end goal was anymore, and literally speaking of a great reset, "state-capitalism", -advocating to take everything away from everyone to make them "happy" and "equal". (communist fineprint: "as slaves, and you better be happy")

Cooking the Ultimate Dystopia
(1984) Even shortly before the election finish, the lies became open and obvious even to the casual news watcher. Hard promises were broken only weeks after making.(no packing of court attempts, no abolishment of filibuster, no medical mandates, ...a long list) Yet no one was allowed to question that the chocolate rations were once 30g. People's protest against all this were deemed domestic terrorism, the US Department of Justice literally listing "thinking the federal government had overstepped" as an indicator, invoking the accursed Patriot Act against their opposing activists, then citizen, parents, against literally half the country(wrong voters), like it had been planned in the beginning. All the while the state funded actual domestic terrorism was framed as peaceful and part of american culture.
The ultimate propaganda to even deny what your very eyes see, to deny the very notion of truth, doublethink, was making its way through the bulwark of the west, the US.
(A Brave New World) While many people "woke up" once witnessing what was previously thought impossible in the thought-to-be civilized first world, there was also another class of people, ironically calling themselves "woke" too (as the communist inversion of truth/ deflection mantra goes), but representing the opposite side. These people, -cultists-, aided the state in its authoritarian ambitions, either through ignorance of consequence, or true admiration of the strong-men or tribal beatdown culture where they wanted to be 'winner' in. They recruited themselves out of the useful idiots Lenin described, though most of them were technically useless individuals. Losers of the society game that grew disgruntled and sought to blame others to not have to face up to their own inadequacy. This group openly protested for the censorship, for a stronger government, and ultimately for their enslavement. Ironically, all those people who had to live under the end result, did at the same time the very opposite on the other side of the world:
(https://abload.de/img/freepeopledemonstrateatkv5.jpg)
While the 40 years of the post WWII cold war situation were certainly frightening, it at least supplied the silver lining of constantly reminding the western populations how terrible socialism turns out in practice and that to fight the impulse to seek the easy way (=don't empower weak, but break the strong) had to be resisted.
Now however, a whole generation had grown up knowing not much about the atrocities, the always left leaning education system suspiciously complicit in their obfuscation, then openly even promoting more and more extreme counter-culture, then even nonchalant marxist teachings.

Off-Topic: show

Red Salute and Hammer and Sickle tattooed activist-first, teacher-second personal vowed to literally turn children into radicals. Exercises like practicing to write letters strategically lying to their parents, and a general tone to encourage to oppose and loath parents were meant to lay the groundwork for the classical Mao inspired cultural revolution in planning, where uncountable numbers of parents were delivered to the knife or gun by the word of their brainwashed offspring, watching their every step for signs of disloyalty to the state.
By 2015 a whole generation had already been raised under misinformed socialist spiced values. As the capital H once said, "You have already lost, because I have your children."
(coVid for Vendetta) As if the internal censorship and pro-superstate drive wasn't terrifying enough, an accidental virus outbreak gave all the China friendly governments around the world just the right excuse to justify their always favorite cure to any crisis they face ever: Needing more money and expanding the reach of the executive. Using the social activists as a shield, monstrously infringing policies were enacted, -for their own good of course-, civil liberties set on pause, and constant fear-tickers filled the television programs, to "remind the people why they need us".
There is nothing more permanent than a temporary government program, and so the special rights to infringe on medical privacy, direct people's movement and entry, ID requirements and tracking infrastructure... were of course never abandoned even when the pandemic fizzled out. In fact, even the slightest signs of it returning could now easily be taken for cause to always expand a little more, most notably seen in Austrialiar giving police unchecked detention powers, and rights to rubber-bullet shoot on sight every anti-government protestor and abduct them into "quarantine facilities"(=concentration camps) because they were oh so much danger to the public. An excellent excuse to vanish and potentially even eliminate with alibi anyone that would dare speak up.
(Hunger Games) While all the communist virus disease spectacle was going on, and the public was made believe the exaggeration that they were staring down the apocalypse, suspiciously the slim pro-communist leader caste, celebrities and diverse rich people often seemed not only not to care too much, -holding massive parties, eating in public, going shopping or on sunny vacations, all without any masks on-, but they were actually literally exempt from the laws, as the judicial systems worldwide had collapsed under the totalitarian executive crisis rights. And so while you could see millionaires surfing on the beach, just a few hundred meters further police could be beating up teenagers for violating curfew. People were losing jobs and fined literal thousands of dollars for mask violations, but the leaders could do so on camera and simply laugh it away.
Rules for thee but not for me.

(Kingsmen) The Davos Group and World Economic Forum is formed of the most elite leaders of the biggest companies in the world (Microsoft, Facebook, etc.), and fielding such illustrious guest speakers such as Xi Jinping, the most powerful and communist dictator of the world to give advice on future world development. When the communist virus disease emerged, they repeated the long standing proverb and wisdom of the Chinese occupying party - "In crisis there is opportunity", and proposed a plan they coined "The Great Reset" to the world. "A global reset of the worlds capitalism", presented amongst other measures with a video detailing how eventually all things around you will be owned by a distant super-rich entity while "you will own nothing, and you will be happy".(as a cherry on top a creepy smile into the camera)
In short, a west-presentable paraphrasing and euphemism for communism. Communism was always capitalism with the turbo button hammered down. While crony-capitalist pressures degraded the system by routing the wealth to fewer and fewer hands over time, and establishing fascism (the merger of government and corporate) along the way, communism achieved this abysmal end result with the snap of a finger. An instant super-rich leader caste from one glorious revolutionary day to the next.

However, the most frightening thing about all this scheming: What if the elites were right, and it was all necessary indeed? Humanity had consumed too much, and it had long since known that the rise of all 8 billion people to western wealth was simply unfeasible. It was clearer every year that even the current levels were too much for the planet to handle, as temperatures and weather anomalies were on the rise.
The villain in the Kingsmen world disaster scenario saw this, and sought in his solution to sterilize large parts of the population to get back to a sustainable level. Necessary reduction of consumption as it may be, one thing that most people could still agree on was that there was no reason why the rich and other elites should still be able to live on like this while they made everyone else go through withdrawal.
Yet that was obviously their plan. Their answer to the sprawling humanity was neo-feudalism under their control. As if someone had taken the warning of the different possible dystopias as a recipe book instead, and then baked a terrifying suffer-souffle out of it, they all seemed to somehow come true at the same time.
A world wide authoritarian super regime was in the making. A concept coined by the remaining resisting societies as the "CCP", the Communat-thee(*1) Corporate Pact, also combining all the authoritarian nightmare concepts into one master poison formula. It was wise enough to avoid the failures of communism by offering just enough amenities to keep people off revolting, and fielded a state cult/religion and hate propaganda that produced enough woke zealots to keep beating down for free those that then still demanded their rights back. All aided with the most modern AI surveillance that instantly knew when everyone left their home etc., and now also orbital weapons overhead, unreachable by protests.

*1: "notThee" is censored in the forum, so I had to misspell it

//--Another pause. Taking longer than expected.--

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Garfunkel on October 27, 2021, 09:51:25 PM

Wow, that's like a merged NewsMaxx-FoxNews fever dream ;D I wonder which conspiracy nutcase website you found it on?

So this will be a two-faction game? United Dystopian Earth vs Utopian Europe-on-Europa :P

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on October 28, 2021, 09:51:39 AM

Quote from: Garfunkel on October 27, 2021, 09:51:25 PM

Wow, that's like a merged NewsMaxx-FoxNews fever dream ;D I wonder which conspiracy nutcase website you found it on?

So this will be a two-faction game? United Dystopian Earth vs Utopian Europe-on-Europa :P

Including mine, there are 5 factions, but it is essentially everyone against this redefined CCP. ...And Great Britain who has special status, but (spoiler) for some reason doesn't do anything for the whole game so far sadly.

If you really want to know how I found this though, -although there were many sources over the years-, I recommend the 3 producers on Youtube:
- Tim Pool (3 channels) Timcast IRL of which is lighter with interesting and often highly influential guests. Today I found this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwRsbmwHUSM) to be pretty good, though I can't agree fully on some of the judge's speech analysis.
- China Uncensored and America Uncovered (from the same team) are very humorous, almost satire news. Well, except that the things they lay out are solid, and they tread very carefully not to go into deep water so to speak. I found them back when that huge Tianjin explosion happened. At the time I was living together with 3 Chinese students, and we just watched the CCP ree in attempts to censor the information worldwide, even though it was just some accident. (...but 'nothing bad ever happens in great great China', right?) This ridiculous sensitivity and their detention and expulsion of western reporters over such a minor issue gave me a hint towards the scale of their authoritarianism for the first time. Well, or at least it was an indicator seed that eventually let me to more information as it caused discussion. Then I also started watching the channels some year(s?) or so later.
- Third perhaps Crossroads with Joshua Phillip too (solid arguments and actual traditional journalism most of the time, but in presentation often also regrettably tainted by religious filter glasses. ... quote:"communism/atheism doesn't want you to have a soul" ???) The live Q/A might be long but it is the life story of Joshua and his involvement with many activist groups that make everything interesting. His newspaper, the Epoch Times was the last free one in Hong Kong after the recent annexation for example, despite all the sabotage, party thugs beating up personal, arson etcetc. . He was often on the front line of discovery, so of the three he is the closest to action and regarding his past at least a first-rank source too. ..If only he wasn't softy nuts.

///edit: Got the explosions city name wrong

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on October 30, 2021, 12:14:32 PM

The CCP's Ensemble Assembles
Although the occupying party of China wanted to subvert as many countries as it could if possible at once, with the US being the center of the West's power, they formed the rallying point for the insurrections worldwide. As the Beijing and Harass Regime came to power, they already had their leading chess pieces ready to be installed on the board in order to flip it over. Amongst others this included:

(section for some dramatis personae, but since I don't really use them later it is technically all fluff and can be skipped. ...I just found it entertaining to myself collect my mind about all this)

Off-Topic: show

Once the US could signal to the other Five Eyes that the coup (communist-uprising?) had been completed, they, -knowing that no world military or economic police was holding them to account anymore-, could also move forward much more quickly, evaporating freedom of speech first, then giving precedence to detaining citizen, and finally detaining any political opposition once the public got used to the excuses.(Canada, Australia)

...What all these Western governments that dreamt of their own version of China's totalitarian system didn't realize however, was that China didn't proselytize the extreme left secular-religion dogma in order to gain ideological allies. Their goal was and always has been to put the world under their leadership, and under the 'superior' Chinese leader race, to which ends the ideological subversion was mainly an action of internal weakening. So while the western leaders might have thought they'd become celebrated despots of their own realms, really, China had invested far too much money, influence peddling, and agent positioning to let them off the hook.
In the end, bit by bit, the dependencies on China's central production and political advise grew large enough that the five eyes fell into North Korea alike adjoined territory status towards the Party state. This included the new lands of:
o Chinada: Let into disaster by renown pro-China diplomat family offspring Trustno, it turned out that having merely oral constitutional rights ends up to be more of a recommendation to the government, as it could quickly and mostly unopposed overstep the boundaries that were once considered international human rights standards. Aided by Fentanyl crisis and China dependence, the communists already held joint military training exercises in Chinada's territory close to US borders way before 2020, signaling to everyone on whose side they would fall in conflict.

o Austrialiar: Always on the edge of China support and western values due to their extreme geographic closeness and thus economic dependence on the Party, there were suspicious movements in their elites starting at around the 2000s already. Police force separation was abolished, putting them under one central command; investigation of police could only be done by the same police; strong state funded left extremist social justice movements; Chinese corruption affairs, and buyouts of major key industries by the regime; and finally -perhaps most telling- their universities' cooperation with Chinese military research that let to the Party having had any chance on a modern military at all.(as not free thinking countries tend to lack in research)
When the signals of Beijing-Harass came in, they moved quickly to use the pretense of medical emergency to direct their already pre-stromtrooperized police to enact the most horrible and sudden reversals of western liberties seen in all the west.

o Nawzee Land: Perhaps experiencing the strongest economic dependence on the regime, especially in regards to the completely bought out housing sector, so far that original inhabitants could not buy houses anymore thanks to China 'investor' mass buyouts. Although they might not be as ideologically subverted, the greed let "the capitalist sell [us] the rope with which we hang them", as Lenin said, and so they were eventually left internally subverted, without outer allies anymore, and thus had to follow the central regime's orders.

o OURS: The "Officially United Revolutionary States", coined by the Uniter in chief, Beijing, was actually very much left in a constant state of civil war.

Off-Topic: show

While the blue(=red) areas had large populations that gleefully knelt to a strongman/feebleman regime to hunt their media painted enemies (half of everyone), 24 states in total had sought secession and didn't recognize the federal government anymore. As of 2024, their resources became so diverted towards internal fighting ("insurrectionist states" became the newspeak trendy term) that little room was left anymore to fund their decades old tradition of international interference, leaving China to not only take over, but also extract the little that the former US still could give, and placing those figures on the Party's chessboard side.(as a good gesture of "international friendship and cooperation" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7mY9JqCwt5Y) like he would say of course)

New World Order
Together with these western territories, the China mainland, NK and other Party subverted countries like Vietnam, Cambodia, and eventually even the Philippines, these blocks formed the new [CCP] power axis,
starting with a massive 3 billion population, and thus a sizable 100+ 17-28kt ship military fleet. They however also suffer from the "authoritarian curse" of in this case 50% racial research speed (https://www.reuters.com/world/china/chinas-xi-calls-nurturing-patriotic-scientists-2021-09-28/) due to limiting free thought and criticism everywhere, as well as reduced starting science due to already being behind by the advent of modern Constructor Tech. This should serve to offset their sheer access to lab capacity temporarily at least.
(https://abload.de/img/raceccpncjgg.jpg)

Only Great Britain [BRT] of the five eyes could escape the encroachment of the ideological commissars, albeit only by a hair. Their contributions towards high-prediction technology had not only made them too valuable to seal off their brain production just yet, but they also had the EU resistance close enough encircling that it let China weigh their cost-profit options in case of the usual attempted military boot transfer. This unique position gave Great Britain enough of a breather to reconsider their crush on socialist ideals when they could see where it let the rest of the world. Although the population had little say in any of this, the governing authoritarian heads had at least seen that they were riding the scorpion across the river, and now tried to think of other means to keep their power. In results, -also thanks to their technological advance start-, Great Britain became a for its size recognizably strong naval force once again.
Starting with 65 million population and extra tech points
(https://abload.de/img/racebrtlvklc.jpg)

Of ambiguous allegiance, the emerging EU-like coalition called the South American Alliance [SOU] ought to in the least to be credited for cutting their ties with the Regime despite its growing international pressure. Even though China had been very dependent on South America's bountiful food production, the Party stepped on their provider's feet one time too often when they demanded the food delivery even though SOU had suffered enough shortcomings during the communist virus disease that they had problems feeding their own people. Perhaps it was eye opening to them to be asked to kill themselves for their partners sake (who also caused the issue to begin with no less). Their progress remains to be watched, as they show promise, but also still fall back in international development standards.
Starting with 420 million population and reduced tech points
(https://abload.de/img/racesouimkuk.jpg)

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations Alliance [ASE] includes next to the most notable remaining ASEAN state Indonesia some powerful new candidates such as Japan, South Korea and even the giant India. Their founding/expansion is an attempt to stand up against the encroaching Chinese aggression that already threw its leeching tendrils into Japan's southern islands (Chinese navy patrols), India's Himalayan border (regular armed skirmishes), South Korea's democratic governance (attempted but luckily [fiction]failed political subversion through the 'opposing voter fraud is treason according to the constitution' Moon Jae-in party), and of course the whole South China Sea.
Though their power is massive, they are still only the far behind second place in comparison to the red curtain states.
1850 million people but still a start tech impediment as the by far largest population provider (India) falls short in development
(https://abload.de/img/racease20j0w.jpg)

After all the ideological subversion of the West and the specter of communism ravaging social structures everywhere, a small unlikely miracle happened. Since all the five eyes' cultural business usually reaches the European nations with about 5 years delay (save England), the small window of possible resistance that existed during the consolidating phase of any newly uprising authoritarian state grew into a stretched out period of multiple years. Giving their WWII history, China was surprised to see its business and political bodysnatched pawns be ousted by lengthy protests over this prolonged period, which the local polices could not (yet) brutalize. Although the Party tried to rapidly adjust the countries' legislation to make more draconian measures possible they again hadn't anticipated the amount of on-the-ground officers that would simply refuse to commit to inhumane orders. Europa's universities might have suffered under the same tide of spoon-fed Confucius Institute agenda radicalized social science youths, but their influence was barely felt as cultural preferences had still given actual competent people preferred hiring over those of the 'right' political affiliation, making the presses' and political infiltration incomplete. Evidently the Party's cultural subversion fell short. The tactics tested in Austrialiar and fielded in all five eyes were not one on one applicable to the European cultures.
Thus rose the resistance, a new political affiliation that threw out the communist bodysnatched leaders and attempted a new vision. Their life would be hard, as the global trade was now dominated and policed by the criminal regimes, cutting Europe off from many luxuries it grew attached to. However, a new spirit of self reliance was also the result, and as the EU began to proof a successfully stabilized counter model to the CCP's iron curtain, many refugees out of the remaining western world came to flock to their call. Eventually, to underline their mission and the new political climate or world order, the EU became to rebrand itself as the [WU], the Western Union, promoting to the rest of humanity their role as a beacon for the thought-to-be-fallen western values of individual freedom and the pursuit of happiness, and their will to carry the torch on.
Starting with mere 400 million people but some extra tech points (although spent inefficiently for roleplay purposes). No starting ships, but 25 research labs and somewhat more industry at the start due to having the highest collective development standard in the world.(I forgot the exact numbers, but I think it was 1000 conventional industries)
(https://abload.de/img/raceeuc3k9f.jpg)

---Technical Settings---
The game is set to 50% research speed overall, as well as 50% difficulty, which seems to be a must when starting with same system NPRs. I remember starting 200% in the past, like with the EU game, but C# makes it quite difficult to maintain any real fleet, so the computer has immense natural advantage.
Additionally there is a 20 year truce in place to simulate that there should be no major conflict before 2025 and let history run similar to records until then. It also gives a much needed breather to catch up with AI since the EU will be the only one without a starting fleet and few shipyards for diverse designs.

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on November 05, 2021, 07:28:12 PM

---proper timelining from here---

The Max Planck Exploration Mission
The major military powers of the world had supported the advent of Constructor Technology since its first conception around 2005. Noticing quickly how falling anything short of the very edge of its development and deployment would critically endanger the power balance across the planet, all the major military nations, as well as the first inventor the United Kingdom, heavily focused on prototyping a military fleet for mere short range deployment, having orbital defense in mind as their primary goal. The Outer Space Treaty, -as it turned out-, was no hindrance for the escalating arming spiral, since when China put the first "scientific experiments"(=strategic weapons) into space, NATO and then other nations merely claimed to do the same in order to act as police for the OST, since no one was there to enforce it.
The central European power Germany however was a special case, as it was still bound by WWII treaties to not develop ships over a naval frigate size (about 7500t) to which it was ridiculously held even at the advent of a space navy, and which in contrast to the OST was enforcable by the tendrils of the US that sunk deep into its politics and economy. Consequently Germany, and with it some of the smaller European nations (Poland, the Scandinavian countries, Austria, Switzerland, ...), could not compete in the rush towards the establishing 17-27kt cruiser standard and were thus curiously enabled to spend their resources in other directions.

The European Space Agency (ESA) always had a very fruitful collaboration with Germany's Max Planck Institutes, the biggest and most successful institute program in the world. Seeing as to that they could not keep up in the arms race by any other means, most of the EU instead opted to expand on the spaceflight research of MPI, lifting those parts up into a new collaboration, the Max Planck Fund Exploration Mission. Though being a novel loophole way to hide unexpected military engine developments of the EU, a second advantage was that it looked much better to the public since its primary mission was merely a cartography and exploration program, which was an aspect of this new space-faring technology that had so far been neglected by everyone else in their rabies rush.
And so, by the end of 2015, ESA had completed design plans of a series of middle-weight exploration ships that would form the first docile looking wedge to open up a path towards a legal combined European navy.
(https://abload.de/img/20151206-firstshipsofg2krf.jpg)
(https://abload.de/img/20151206-firstshipsofyek7i.jpg)

Prospects of Development and De-Development
Perhaps thanks to their cold distance to the sun, or maybe just some unknown processes of natural self-sorting, many bountiful natural pockets of 'untouched' minerals were uncovered all over the solar system, painting a vision of possible future expansion and exploitation.
- Mars was rich in nuclear stable iron resources, many of which turned out to be sealed from interaction thanks to its early cooling core and thus relatively short active geological period. Additionally many deposits of minerals could be found which could be refined into superconducting elements needed for the near interaction-less charge supply that propels the worlds new ship prototypes.
(https://abload.de/img/20170310-therearegoodimkbi.jpg)
- Europa had felt a surprising sorting force stemming from Jupiter's magnetic field that influenced the free light floating particules in its early ocean environment. Rocky nodules of heavier/higher neutron-percentage elements thus fell out on shelves of its deep seas, making them easy to pick up. Some of them seem to have never known other forces than those magnetics, leaving remaining purification a child's play.
(https://abload.de/img/20170608-europaisprim7bjf9.jpg)
- Uranus' unique axial tilt towards the sun had initiated a process that preserved a liquid column around this rotation axis in near stasis, as not even solar magnetic perturbations could disturb the self stabilizing spin of this electric stream. A possible candidate for a very futuristic fuel source? At least if humanity should ever learn how to access it.
(https://abload.de/img/20170703-uranusseemsthojp3.jpg)

After only 18 months of its mission start, the MPI Exploration Fund had managed to catalogue all bodies of the solar system into a complete 'inventory' compendium, which was an achievement of its own. It also had managed to probe each and every one of them for possible pure element sources, of which it had found many, and some very accessible hidden in our asteroids and comets.
(https://abload.de/img/20180901-after1.5yearm8kfa.jpg)
With the program coming to an early/overly successful end at its primary goal on exactly September 2018, not all was working out well on the other side of its mission. The situation on Earth had deteriorated towards where suspicious political division had engulfed the whole of the US, with its two political parties being engaged in harsher and harsher fighting. While the publics and medias of other Western countries often mocked the Americans for simply being quirky or arrogantly discarding them as stupid, trained eyes of leadership, history or survivors of such incidents (e.g. Cubans) could sense and fear the true nature of the conflict arising.
The rethoric had derailed too much, the scandals and smears were not just lies anymore. True criminal acts were committed, meaning people actually risked their lives for some arcane end goal. There was a new political war afoot, and while its meaning was obfuscated for long, it became all too clear and the dots connected once the Communist Virus Disease incident unfolded.

A World War without a World War
Beginning with the year 2020 (and later corrected to at least November 2019) the in hindsight perhaps lucky pandemic catastrophy engulfed the planet. While it was certainly a disaster level incident, it also carried the silver lining that the forces fanning the flames of division throughout the West could not lie in hiding any longer.
The Chinese Regime had always been careful to protect its image in the world, calling back to the famous Deng Xiaoping foreign policy philosophy "Hide your strength, bide your time". While it infiltrated western economical interests first, then politics, then media, it could always call on someone's influence or leverage its power in order to hide its abuses from the common western citizen. Often enough it was touted as valuable trade partner and an uprising star of almost western standard even, as too few of the general public knew of either concentration camps, the stretch of mass-surveillance, nor its organ harvesting and slavery programs.
Money and influence could only buy you so much in the West however, and so, when right after the barely coverable Hong Kong annexation a very preventable pandemic rolled over the planet and touched everyone's lives, the western media capacity to shield China's image was exhausted. Even though its allies made valiant attempts (e.g. Italy's Hug a Chinese day (https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-02-05/People-in-Italy-encourage-China-in-fight-against-novel-coronavirus-NPqNkY17e8/index.html) or the effort to stop a travel ban from Wuhan (https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2020/03/11/democrat-response-to-coronavirus-end-trumps-travel-bans-on-china-iran/)), even the open letter signed by all kinds of high level politicians calling everyone blaming China and wanting to defend against China a racist, had no effect anymore. China's image in the world was sinking, and their carefully protected sheen of civility was coming off. Everyone was touched and implicated in this mistake, and it could not be hidden.
Not only was China now facing the issue of the current world generation finally wising up to its ways through this, but the virus incident also served as an anchor that drew in more and more stories about all the other abuses they had been committing under everyone's noses, and also the iron media curtain conspiracy that had worked to keep up the state of ignorance for so long. Thus the brutal party dictatorship saw no other choice than to part with its ways of patience and preparation, and unleash all its pawns from the shadows in which they were hiding at once. It had to be here and now.
Thanks to the virus however, their hand was forced too early -their infiltration and subversion not yet at full intended strength-, and so perhaps the free world had a chance.

China's policy shifted towards the 'momentum strategy' and their dictator called it openly a "World War 3 Situation", meaning the disaster also being a chance to reorder the worlds power balance and political compass. On one hand the regime opted to literally spread the virus (https://www.wsj.com/articles/fighting-outbreak-china-urged-open-borders-even-allies-are-resisting-11581681602), forbidding internal flights but allowing international ones from the outbreak, and letting their western pawns wave it in. On the other hand it would advice them to ramp up the push towards the coup right now, leading amongst others to open (and government and media shielded) marxist mass street protests throughout all the West, ...during the pandemic.
(ooc: also in Germany btw. next to no black people here, but still a mass (white) protest movement)

Off-Topic: show

The former suspiciously harsh political war of the US suddenly gained clear colors. Every action of the attacker had the socialist destabilization tactic at heart. Canceling energy independence on day 1 citing climate goals, but directly after asking OPEC to ramp up production to cover the shortfall? The only effect, the US loses. Opening borders on day 1 and being suspiciously persistent on dismantling every attempt and agency that would try control it even long after disaster unfolded? US loses. Push to abolish police (in some places successfully) during a major wave of riots and crime? The US loses, and the ones in power might get 'their police' instead to replace them. Divisive and factually unsupportable medical mandates during an already disastrous labor and shipping crisis, then even firing nurses and doctors during the pandemic for 'only' having natural immunity?
One would have to think them a talent at incompetence to be wrong on literally every decision taken without fail, unless chaos was the goal itself. Take with it all the other signals of China endorsement, far left indoctrination pushes, the term 'State Capitalism' thrown around in a serious manner(also a Lenin term), Parents denied their say in the governments' raising of their children(in communism kids belong to the "community"/=state anyway), and an infinite list of other shadiness. With every action pointed at US population's throat, the West began to wonder in 2021 how such a government plans to stay elected come 2022. Of course, it should have been obvious that the China/China sympathizing capital backed's party strategy was simple: There would never be another election ever again.
If it acts like a duck, walks like a duck, quacks like duck, sometimes it is actually, indeed, a duck.

A "Fleeting" Dream
While the Marxist subversion attempts were also unfolding in Europe, ironically, the ideologies' two founding countries, Germany and France, were strangely resistant, making a timely overtaking impossible before the game became too obvious. The interest groups and high business had not amassed enough power when 2022 brought the abolishment of the old US government that made their regime official, and so political changes swept most of EU leadership away when they were too short on willing foot soldiers to beat down the demanding masses.
As the only EU country with world class full size navy ships, France suddenly became very interested and involved with the Max Planck funds advances. The french military engineers had so far supported the now very subverted NATO navy buildup, rendering their work usurped and nil, but with their heads still intact, nothing was standing in the way for EU to now field their own ships. Since they were behind by 17 years in build-up however, some compensating strategic scheming could not be avoided.
The EU could not by time nor resources or manpower hope to stand against the great left power axis currently consolidating, and thus put their hopes in a more guerrilla minded warfare style approach. While the other nations and unions had time for build-up on their side, EU saw its strength potential in hindsight and analysis, - a chance at a new and better adapted doctrine.
The decision was made on two series of smaller, more quickly mutable destroyer types. They would opt to 'spy-and-fly' the enemy out in open maneuvers, while using a clever new type of dynamic defense and attack "Flare" ammunition that could fill its role cut to individual engagement demand.
12 Crafts of the "Starlite" main combat model were in order, featuring 30 such flare stack launch pods:
(https://abload.de/img/ddstarlite2myk18.jpg)
(https://abload.de/img/shipstarlitebhj4k.jpg)

Blueprint phase and prototype maiden flight:

Off-Topic: show

(ooc: you can actually see the 4 sensors on the ship too. Parabol and communications on the bridge, larger actives in front. No promises towards this accuracy for future ships though(https://www.greensmilies.com/smile/smiley_emoticons_razz.gif))

Its variant, the Pantomime, is mostly a scout ship replacing the main body with an extensive sensor suit, and having in front instead 3 hard mounted Merlin Lasers.
(https://abload.de/img/shippantomime85j37.jpg)
(picture is already from a refitted version with better sensors. One more refit happened later that reduced fire reload to 5s)

Since only 3 models of this already under-gunned variant were ordered, EU's beam fight capacity is not all that developed. Since it was seen as futile to try to stand up to the powerful beam broadsides of the world's navies with what was at hand, focus lies more on building up deep ammunition stockpiles to keep the tactical advantage of the flare cloud destroyers afloat.

By 2025 the regime changes and communist flips of the world board became so widespread that Europe saw itself seriously concerned about a possible land invasion. With France mostly still leading the military development and the fight being once more against the Socialists, it was decided to build a new chain of purely defensive interconnected fortress installations, and call them "the Maginot Line" out of historic respects.

Off-Topic: show

//OOC: Perhaps it is due to new formulas in C#, but this is one of the better start rolls for minerals I had so far. An empire needs mostly Duranium, Neutronium, Corundium and later also Gallicite. On top at least one well accessible gas giant with high reserves for fuel. This Sol has good quantities of all but Corundium, and Uranus is also pretty good for early fuel. There will be better sites, and especially Corundium must be found, but over all a really solid start.

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on November 12, 2021, 04:06:04 PM

Socialist Chess Catch 22: The only winning move is not to play
When the Western Union Navy command detailed their fighting plans to the diverse governments still constituting the EU, it became abundantly clear that such a guerilla tactic warfare approach, -their only shot at winning-, could not work out as long as the CCP had options to hold civilian population hostage with their orbital weaponry. All strategical game plans laid out would end up with China and the Five Eyes devastating either Europe or the aiding fleet which could not withstand the combined NATO and Chinese forces at once. It was made abundantly clear to the EU leadership that options needed to be weighed to consider Earth lost as the second red planet, yet a monumental proposal such as this could of course not be simply decided nor acted upon.
Whether the leadership agreed or not, the proposition was ridiculous and unrealistic, but it did manage to achieve one critical thing. The presentation had convinced the Council that their military's supply lines were completely encircled and agreed on hefty investment to the compromise solution. Earth's development would be delayed to further the build-up of secondary and tertiary bases throughout the solar system. The big ask strategy had the Union Navy get what they actually wanted: Abundant distributed supplies and staging points.

To facilitate the development, the WU was now the first major player to announce a solar infrastructure program, proudly featuring a large new freighter prototype:
(https://abload.de/img/20261026-freightersanzkkpr.jpg)
The Trondheim type was designed to lock with different kinds of containers to function multi-role either as carrier for material, fuel, passengers, or even military supplies.
The advent of tunneling-FTL detection sensory made it possible for most modern ships to simply evade micro-meteors or orbital satellite shrapnel, since they could all be cartographed in detail thousands of kilometers out. With the sheer size of Trondheim however, maneuvering might sometimes not be an option if clouds of material became too dense, for which reason defensive anti-debris lasers were placed all around, as well as the armor thickened as a secondary measure.

Soon after beginning the lengthy assembly process, the EU council was quickly and then often reminded of the Navies recommendation, despite its unrealistic nature. While the CCP had failed in the EU during its first subversion attempt at the fall of Five Eyes in 2022, it had not given up on its asymmetrical warfare tactic and merely worked to adapt its method to the different 'market'. Although the EU citizenry had seemingly purged the leadership caste and stated their stance against socialist values loudly, the CCP could always find corruptible souls again and spin a new net, especially since the EU's position on the world stage had become so hopeless. When the leadership had to hear its military advice to flee the planet (albeit secretly not completely serious), many likely reconsidered their allegiance in the grand game. And so, with its resources multiplied and enemies diminished, a new and powerful rush of CCP spies, political capital buyouts and activist recruitment was soon focused to assault the integrity of the EU system -and only the EU system- once again.
Once again were politicians without public approval 'somehow' rising to the highest ranks.(e.g. Harass) Once again there was a virus variant, once again there was a Dr. "Mengele" Fasci to propose friendly relation with the diseased country and 'Great Reset'-type lockdown policies. Once again did remainder elites field a 'build back better' akin redistribution plan to mirror the greatest historic wealth transfer of 2020. Once again did the benefiting rich interests fund the activists that would fight for their agenda in the streets, against the people (but ostensibly for good). Once again the states would seek to prosecute the citizens who would dare resist the Brownshirt(without shirt) revolutionary violence, to signal that resistance to the collective was futile.
..And once again did the citizen revolt against the measures and deplatform the actors complicit with the hostile regime. How often would it be possible to fight back? Would the CCP eventually find the right mold for the key tactic that finally toppled the fortress?

The problem with fighting the socialist values was the same as the paradox of tolerance. A society that embraced groups promoting intolerance would eventually be dominated by intolerance as their enemies don't return the favor, thus leading the tolerant values to demise. On the other hand, not tolerating the intolerant would make them intolerant themselves, also destroying the spirit of the nation in some sense.
The social(+ist) activists used virtuous causes as their shield and knew for the most part to work either perfectly within the law, or at least perfectly within the extralegal stretch zone that their infiltration had already granted them.
This meant that the only way to fight their infiltration was to change the law, -make legal prosecution possible, but also sacrifice some rights or the protections around those values they used as their shield. Empowering the executive in the process was also an near unavoidable side effect, both eroded the system from within and ramped up options for authoritarianism.
Letting the activist go about would destroy the system, but so would lashing out and fighting them openly. Resist or give up, both bear high chances of leading the enemy to victory. The Socialist Catch 22.

Off-Topic: show

Short Circuiting Spacetime
(more tech lore)
While the first freighters were in line to launch in 2029, the Max Planck Society and ESA had used the last 10 years to flush their assigned resources into redefining their role. The invention of Constructor Theory was now aided with the successes of another theoretical advancement, the "Information Tunneling Superluminal" phenomenon.
The fact that all particles are exact and identical copies of each other had given cause to many wondrous theories across the last century. John Wheeler famously presented the "one electron" postulate in which there existed only one electron in the universe, traveling back and forth in time to fill all its roles every- and anywhere eventually. Other more ideology driven ideas saw the smallest particles as the new, true "atoms" (greek for "indivisible"), which puzzled together higher existance. The best surviving concept however was the realization that the nature of reality was simply not based on particles, but instead of singular fields, in which the appearance of particles could be invoked by local excitation. Thus, the subatomic particles were not all the same because of some divinely precise printing machine, but simply because every one of them stemmed from their own always-same omnipresent field, or so to say were in fact nothing but that one identical field every time, in excitation. (e.g. "the electron field")
Take to this the knowledge about the effect of tunneling in which such a "particle" can disappear and reappear a farther distance out when presented with some sort of obstacle in their way. Although it would be more precise to say that the old "particle" got annihilated while a new one reappears some distance further out, what was really the difference if every instance of the field was identical anyway?
So while superluminal movement through space might not be possible through theory, making exact copies of information at distant locations faster than light... was.

//OOC: Btw., this first part is not science fiction, but actually proven to work :) Downside: Needs powerful signals to work at all since tunneling chances are miniscule, and gives very little overall speed gain. Who knows how it can be developed further though. For now, the mere fact that FTL signals are possible at all (and fit into theory without breaking relativity etc) is already some amazing hopeful development.

Thus came the advance of Tunneling-FTL informatics which used the extreme taming of quantum fields from constructor theory in order to shoot out self-reinforcing and self-interfering carrier waves that built stacked up superluminal information in order to let the next line get further, then the next, then the next... , eventually arriving at perfect instant transmission.
A system wide information network was born. Science ship captains could receive one-to-one real-time orders while being out in the Kuiper Belt, and also access the new space internet for entertainment to stream their favorite shows. Information construction plans were coded into the quantum fields themselves for anyone with the right equipment to simply replicate at position when needed, and yet this wasn't even the greatest advance... .

The 2027 Kyoto Hotel international physics conference had its chairs outfitted with shuttle-issue seat belts as a joke. Soon their utility was recognized however when the ASEAN scientists leading the introduction hinted at no less than having reason to believe that the principle could be expanded into the macrocosmic.
While modern spacecraft could now rid themselves of most influences in electromagnetic and all particle fields, doing the same for the illusionary gravity field was still not simple to achieve on larger scale. Whenever resources could not be artificially produced however, nature seems to have the tendency to provide a supply innately somewhere, and so the ASEAN scientists used the conference to announce that they had found the first point of insular stable gravity in the solar system. Similar to Lagrange points, such a location achieved to keep local gravity flat, but in respect to the galactic scale instead. If such a place were to be prepared to even annihilate the inevitable tiny seasonal imbalances, a modern ship entering this location would find itself completely isolated from the turbulent weather that ruled all space elsewhere. In a sense, a ship would be in their own space; its configuration of quantum fields(=particles) the only thing for miles around in an otherwise completely flat environment; the only hill in a plane; a tiny bubble of its own universe.
While otherwise only singular particles could reliably be copied to distant locations, the sheer predictive control that Constructor Technology could exert in an environment that was completely free of outside disturbance were now of such that the Information Tunneling Superluminal effect could be applied and projected to facilitate a complete cut-and-copy procedure on a macroscopic object, as long as the conditions on a second distant point were of near identical nature. In short, it was nothing less of perfect teleportation, - a quantum tunneling cascade most likely reaching through the interstellar space. Not superluminal travel, but superluminal information 'reincarnation'.

Following the conference, a fever sprung in the leading world unions to be the first to detect all these insulae and find a way to secure them to test out this ultimate dream of space travel. While ASEAN clearly had a leg up in the competition, the Max Planck Fund was swift to repurpose their now modernized science ships for the gravity gold rush era. Though they were able to launch as early as August 2028, it was only half a year later that Max Planck learned ASEAN had not only found more positions, but also already managed to stabilize a tunneling point by unknown means.
(https://abload.de/img/20290315-01aseanhasalvljqg.jpg)
In the interest of cooperation and friendship, it was the Western Union Navy however that was asked to take the leap and confirm the theories, leading to the first successful copy-teleportation and the first human peek into extrasolar space.
(https://abload.de/img/20290315-02history-th7pkpr.jpg)

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on November 19, 2021, 02:50:50 PM

The Solar Infrastructure Program - The Ultimate High Ground
Following a lengthy rescue operation of the stranded destroyer detachment, new extrasolar transitionings were temporarily put on hold until the EU could replicate the ASEAN technology used to stabilize insular points. Since the necessary instruments would be carried out by the new versatile freighter hulls, the capacity would gradually be phased in as soon as the first models' construction finished and their schedule allowed it.
Firstly however, the urgency of the solar infrastructure program laid with the security of its inhabitants, which meant save havens and supply and resource independence. The first move in that direction foresaw an extensive comet and asteroid mining program that focused on getting the rarer heavy metal ores that the CCP almost monopolized on Earth:
(https://abload.de/img/20310604-thefirstorbi9ikif.jpg)
In anticipation for a likely extensive guerilla conflict, those stations were secretly also turned into remote supply point bases, capable of some limited strategic refuelling and rearming. Four of such oases would be spread to the most advantageous and distributed points, while a fifth would likely lie too distant for any military purpose, but still offer valuable produce.
Following the years of their setup, both Mars and Europa were gradually prepared with Outposts and further equipment transfer. It was a measure not going without the CCP's notice and ire, yet its standoff with the ASEAN navy did not allow it to field its traditional harass tactics towards the WU projects in its initial stages. Although the situation would eventually devolve into a CCP armament rush that expanded their fleet even further while ASEAN was left behind, it was unable to prevent the successful founding of the first two human interstellar colonies in 2032-33 under WU primacy. And so at 12th january of 2033, human foot set ground on the sixth moon of Jupiter and landed a borderline lunatic(hehe) group of volunteer pioneers that would go down into history as the first "Europeans".

Off-Topic: show

With the tensions high and conflict to be expected at any possible diplomatic slight, Earth's provisions would be instantly lost for at least some time should a kinetic confrontation occur. Hence all fuel reserves and most munitions and supplies had already been moved to this distant outpost military moonbase.

Moldy Greygreen Deserts
In the age of solar exploration it had been a long standing policy of the world's space agencies (save the Chinese one of course) to sterilize all craft that would possibly make touchdowns with other planets, as to not accidentally ruin scientific opportunities by accidentally introducing hardy microbial life onto the surface. Since contamination of newly settled planets with biological lifeforms could not be realistically prevented anymore however, the EU sought international apologies for finally not just abandoning, but reversing the philosophy. A couple of whole biosphere complexes and institutes were shipped to Mars in order to grow adapted lichen and algae so that they could spread out and hopefully tame some of the devastated irradiated landscape. The project was a huge success, as it took the tiny growths remarkably little time to spread around the planet completely and turn significant parts of the rich CO2 layer and ground minerals into thin oxygen traces while doing so. Though the result was sometimes somewhat unsightly, at least humans could now venture out indefinitely given the right equipment, as some sparse oxygen, food and water supply were to be had everywhere.
(https://abload.de/img/20340101-marschangese5xjmr.jpg)

With the initial phases of the infrastructure program having reached their end, there had now finally been some time to let the Max Planck Fund fulfill its role and probe the other nearby systems for whatever yet unthinkable curious insights suns other than our own may offer. And indeed, the next thought revolution laid right around the corner as the third gravitational island let to the sun's closest star system, Alpha Centauri, which offered a planet with human breathable air, causing the excited crew of the Hermetic to send out a ground team where they promptly discovered indisputable evidence of traces of intelligent life.
(https://abload.de/img/20340111-thefirstsign27kzf.jpg)
Implications about the Fermi Paradox left to undoubtedly extensive future debate, EU leadership, -currently the only union power in possession of significant space logistics and transfer options-, was suddenly confronted with the thought of having found an even better defensible haven to move to. Although the planets heat and gravitational lock prevented large scale habitation, it could easily form a more suitable defensive post, -behind a bar-able corridor, rich and very distant. ..Too distant perhaps, given its place behind Sol's most remote copying island. Experimental settlement was ordered anyway, as the remnants of the dead civilization could not be denied inquiry.

While the knowledge about the existence of this outpost could not be kept secret forever, the MPI and Western Union Navy (WUN) agreed to try their best to leave it out of reports until "the information could be confirmed". The navy knew that expansion into another solar system that rich and filled with mysteries and possible treasure could easily cause an international incident. Since the binding power of ASEAN was already faltering, the current admiralty devised a new plan to aid their good Asian brethren by increasing the threat factor on the CCP. Putting the solar development on hold for a while, a new project of another military moonbase, -this time on Earth's own moon-, would keep the CCP fleet tied down with an automatic independently targeting defensive missile system.
(https://abload.de/img/20350903-anewprojectf78jrv.jpg)
(size is exactly 8kt btw. {that is why it even has fuel -> buffer space}. For some reason it didn't display correctly in this old screenshot)

Capable of dispensing a whole 200 missiles per unit, and 10 units ordered, it would only need to fire once and watch the spectacle as its immense fire volume would overwhelm the CCP forces even if they did assign their whole fleet in defense. Not investing into technologies for stellar infrastructure but only straightforward military power shallt be their key mistake and WU's critical advantage over the totalitarian tunnelminds. The WU would have the ultimate high-ground, space.

Though at the moment it was still far from what would actually be needed to fend off the CCP's immense fleet, with such a weapon system having their territories always in its sights, WUN leadership surmised they would at least not dare to pressure other expansion projects, meaning the Alpha Centauri secrets were now free to flow into public knowledge.

On a more hopeful note, as Mars had developed into a serious dispersed rural colony over the years, it gradually became known for taking its initially terrible local cuisine and turning it around into a culinary adventure advantage.
As it stands, Mars's most prominent export item is a milky chocolate bar, "made from real Mars cows"(tm).
(may contain elements subject to genetic engineering)

Off-Topic: show

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on November 28, 2021, 12:52:56 PM

The South-Sol China Sea - History Repeats
Although the plans for the excavation of Saltmine were drafted in the late 2030s, bringing in the actual capacity was delayed by many factors, most notably of which the buildup of the missile base frameworks, and the formation of a capable academic ring of trained astronauts that could professionally deal with an interstellar expedition. Consequently it wasn't until the end of 2043 that the WU, -and with it humanity-, put the first boots on the ground in an interstellar operation.

Off-Topic: show

Despite its massive size of more than 4 thousand man, it took around 3 and a half years to survey the widespread complexes around the edge of dawn band of the planet. This was mainly due to the woefully alien language model that aided their natural vowel sounds with additional vowels stemming from clicking in their jaws and biting snaps. A whole treatise could be written about how the deciphering of defacto hieroglyphic alien text was even made possible to begin with, but save to say that their to us very unconventional way of speaking earned them the human-intoneable alias of "Tooth Empire".

Off-Topic: show

Over the extended stay and analysis period following we had to learn that the Tooth, -aside from being naturally good at breathing-, were less advanced than even us who just took their first steps. Given the complete lack of any orbital remnants, it was save to assume that the small civilization was born and died here just a few ten thousand years ago.
The livable thin ring of the planet allowed only for minimal support of organized farming, with some additional mushroom plantations towards the dark side, and indeed it seemed that eventual lack of food let to the Tooth's demise. Why exactly it happened especially after making it and advancing this far however, was long left to mystery.
Historical details aside for now, their engineering was nothing impressive to collective humanity, but yielded some material worthy of converting into the framework of an initial colony. While those efforts were ongoing throughout 2048, the WU council pushed towards another letter on the list of the EU's alternate rescue plans. Instead of only settling down on Saltmine, they allocated resources to instead prioritize Chateau as the actual distant emergency colony.
(https://abload.de/img/20480706-whilethesalt5rklp.jpg)
Chateau was much more complicated to tame, but had an already nearly breathable atmosphere as well, owned to its natural garden of wild plant life. Together with some abundant pure Neutron pockets, other resources and its sheer size, it had potential to eventually grow into a new and better Earth, ..given perhaps 200 years in another "new continent"(for the West), 2nd US situation perhaps. It was deemed worthy to at least build it up to the baseline of self-sufficiency to look how things would develop, and also to have some last stance outlier not in Sol.

The old tactics
The Western Union Navy grew increasingly worried throughout the end of the 40s. Although the EU and ASEAN had miraculously made it through another decade without any major incident or internal subversion, it was becoming obvious that the situation was slipping their control. The lunar missile bases, -initially ordered for 10 units-, were expanded to 12, scratching on what the WU budget could possibly allow, and yet the CCP forces still outgrew the presented threat and for the first time started bold military ventures into the surrounding space.
While their cruisers stayed back in defense, it now became a common sight for WU's and ASEAN's survey and freighter ships to see blips of whole Communat-C destroyer squadrons roaming the nearby systems. While officially pretending to be on survey duty just as the other unions' ships, their boats would often fly harassingly close, follow company ships around and sometimes ask questions 'for protocol'. Eventually their presence laid the groundwork to proclaim themselves international police and order in all of the eastern stars (part of China's history since ancient times...), demanding them to be entirely their jurisdiction by beginning of 2050.
(https://abload.de/img/20500416-thecommunatc9oj2o.jpg)

One is reminded of the South China Sea situation about 30 years ago in which China aggressively patrolled international waters, harassing other nations tankers, fisherboats and freighters in order to press a claim on a huge territory way outside of their actual reasonable reign. In their expansionist creativity they constructed artificial new islands in order to try to claim coastal water lines around them by international law, which however was struck down by Den Haag.

Off-Topic: show

Their mind must have been set on those eastern stars, since they were the by far most accessible behind the closest copy-point inside Sol, while Alpha Centauri lay on the distance ladder of Neptune. Little did they understand that the richest systems had so far only been know to a few high ranking WU and ASEAN officers, and the Max Planck Fund, - all lying far behind the Alpha Centauri gateway.

However, seeing the CCP being now capable to once more enact its traditional bullying tactics, it was still a very concerning development and after all only a question of time until their eye would fall towards the succulent fruits.

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on November 30, 2021, 12:03:54 PM

One Graveyard Inspires Another
In 2051 the secrets around Alpha Centauri had thoroughly leaked to the public, and a kind of gold-rush traffic towards the twin-colonies development meant it could not be hidden from the worldwide public anymore.
(https://abload.de/img/20510525-busytrafficnb6ju9.jpg)

Where the few minds of the forward archeology expedition could not decipher the accurate history of the Tooth civilization, the now interested collective mind of the millions of people invested in the new colonies' destiny turned the data around and around, until someone finally found a breakthrough point. The Tooth empire wasn't really stopped by starvation as a first cause, but rather fell victim to a sociological trap.

All civilizations seem to undergo cycles of golden ages of enlightenment and dark ages of foolish superstition and tyranny. The Islamic golden age that brought algebra and chemistry is an example ended by religious zealotry, and so is the greek and roman period, ended by decadence or a combination of both.
On the other hand, dark ages seem to come to an end through eras of great strife. Small new nations that somehow stood against a greater enemy and formed a new power, or the waves of the black death that rattled Europe and then proceeded to bring forth the renaissance are such examples.
What however really was it that caused such predictive repetition to appear? The answer likely laid in the analysis of the finer detail, as within these grander cycles there were also smaller epochs of alternating periods of prosperity and crisis, usually each spanning 1-2 generations for a total cycle length of about 80 human years, -give or take. This process was known as the Strauss-Howe Generational Theory that argued for a logical sociological process (thus likely not just a property of humanity) in which every generation going through extraordinary hardship will get forged into a legion of competent individuals who then turn the fate of society around and build up an age of greatness.
The engine of hardship however was of course not stable and self-defeating even, as the character tempering incentive -"you grow with your challenges"- receded the more successful the society became. The next generation would not know as much strife and mostly copy the lessons of their fathers and mothers, while then the next generation after that would only distantly know and hear of the ages of ordeals, but themselves only ever know the luxury and comfort of a prosperous period.
Hence followed the decline, as it was usually this 3rd or 4th generation that completely forgot and abandoned the values that forged the nation into strength in its founding. The weak and incompetent individuals born in an age of plenty would seek higher and higher indulgence, contributing less and commissioning the state or other power holders with ever more distribution of amenities, liberties and welfare. Power concentration however, though forgotten by the weakened generation, only let to corruption, first in form of ironically more inequality, -initially disguised by the rise of an elite and class imbalances-, and then eventual actual outbreaks of tyranny once the power was focused enough for the leadership to think themselves save from the ire of the public.
(https://abload.de/img/demodeclinequotese8jjt.jpg)
When the tree was ripe the public would however often still try to revolt, but, -them still being desintellectualized-, just repeat the course that had brought them into the situation to begin with and completely abandon the concept of personal responsibility in the continued and intensified cries for a government that actually served all its people fairly and gave good lives to everyone, a "regime of and for the masses", the socialist state.

While an action as this of course would put the final nail in the coffin of the summer children when the rise of the ultimate power polarization they summoned (=fascism) demanded their necks, of course by far not every ~80 year cycle would lead to such disastrous outcomes. Though the outbreaks became more severe the more humanities power grew, historically such periods would often be settled merely by a civil war, or even some kind of external conflict, causing the weakened individuals to relearn proper responsibility and virtues of competence, which rekindled and sometimes even improved the founding flame.
The Tooth civilization however was different. For all of their history, they had literally lived on the edge and likely never known anything but strife as far as their records reached. Although this must have made for an extraordinary hardy and impressive population, it also offered one critical weakness: Unawareness of the cycle.
While humanity could at least draw from past experiences from periods where they commanded far less power, the Tooth entered enlightenment and the modern age completely unprepared for what an era of plenty would do to them. For the first time in their history, technology solved most of the scarcity that had plagued their unfortunate society, but it also brought them the first generations of individual weakness and decadence. While the civilizations power was at its highest, its population was at its weakest, and so they naively jumped to discuss how the new riches should be fairly distributed, quickly arriving at the trap conclusion of an all powerful, all overseeing socialist welfare state, not realizing that this in practice would mean the complete opposite: Having all that hitherto unknown power and wealth focused into the hands of the few. Their first taste of the Resource Curse (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Resource_curse).
It followed naturally that the public was subverted and the control and decision making left to the minds of those who would be the kings of the incompetent or forgetful generations. People conceited and arrogant enough to think deserving to rule so many alone, would naturally instantly make disaster grade decisions about the economy, also aided by their commission to "hunt the rich" who had too much, which however next to the actual corrupt rich also happened to include all the remaining competent people and producers, who were actually deserving.
A society of takers without makers. Starvation and other shortfalls, -the natural consequence of socialist methods-, would quickly follow, which on an unforgiving planet such as Saltmine meant nothing less than damnation. Given how dependent the overgrown race had become on modern engineering, the socialist zombie horde likely starved to death after its breakdown long before there were most of the usual bloody revolts and following government beatdowns that could have also done it.

In acceptance of the revelations, the human settlers planted a new monument on Saltmine's former capitol grounds, whose inscription summed up parts of the lesson as the old human proverb.
Hard times make strong men
Strong men make good times
Good times make weak men
Weak men make hard times

All this of course didn't go over well with the Chinamerican party, which was always hawkish on protecting the glorious image of socialism at any cost, since it furthered both, their ability to control their own, and their chances to internally subvert their enemies with the recruitment of this generations' weak. Given that there was no UN or subverted starving press anymore to install a censored narrative into the remaining western and free asian territories, they instead took the matter as a pretense to expand their claims into "ancient socialist territories" and rewrite history at the source, as they have been doing in their homeland.

Off-Topic: show

At the start of October of 2053, the CCP became bold enough to claim the whole of Alpha Centauri as their own, well understanding that the to date over 10 million colonists, supplies and freighters could not in any way be called back at this point.
The WU Navy was shaken and immediately sent out the fleet in hopes to be able to stave off the situation as a mere saber rattling tactic to silence all stories about the starving socialist Tooth civilization. Forced censorship compliance.
(https://abload.de/img/20531027-typicalexpankbk10.jpg)

...However, upon hastily arriving just 3 weeks later, it became clear that the CCP did not simply have diplomatic pressure in mind. When the WU fleet demanded retreat with offers for negotiation, their only response would be to negate any counter and send another, larger missile destroyer detachment their way:
(https://abload.de/img/20540227-anothergroupldjl2.jpg)

The worst case had occurred. The Communat-C's knew that the WU could not afford to lose the 10 million colonists. The situation could either devolve to the CCP beginning attacks on civilians before taking over like they had done in the South China Sea phase of conflict. Or the WU Navy would be forced to fire on the intruders first, in which case the socialists would spin the action as an attack on their union itself and use the pretense for a military intervention on Earth.
Seeing as that the only hope to break this stranglehold was to find a third option, -an unforeseen surprise maneuver-, WU admiralty ordered the fleet back instead to hold council with the ASEAN leaders first.

The calculations of this encounter came out as such:
- Confrontation with the CCP would lead to global nuclear war and the destruction and killing of most of mankind. (but also with option to save some towards Mars or Europa in case of victory)
- Although CCP leaders such as Mao had always boasted that they would gleefully sacrifice half their population (300m+ at the time) if it meant defeating the US(=West), they likely didn't really count on this kind of conflict to appear and instead banked on either compliance or a hostage situation at Earth, should western navy ships attack at Alpha Centauri.
- Giving in to tyrants is historically proven to generate more tyranny, thus just being defeat in a slow poison disguise. Today it would be Alpha Centauri, and when they drew strength from their new belongings, eventually they would demand the Earth itself.

Nobody could be happy about the assessment, since the only way out seemed to be to commit the attack the CCP didn't expect and strike at their core, but at the cost of almost everything. The last decades had steeled the unions for such an eventuality, but that didn't mean that having such reality materialize came without shock. The current German admiral lamented about the curse of its nation, and how all the major conflicts always involved them. Although their everyday people were good natured, diligent and more honest than most, there was this fringe and extreme element to their culture repeatedly bringing the highest forms of trouble. Maybe generated by the sheer suppression from their surrounding society, like a coiled spring they would overshoot in retaliation with amounts of malice akin to the advent of a demon king.
Two world wars that upheaved known order and cost tens of millions. Then "peace" times in which the rotten teachings of a lunatic German philosopher cost even multiples more than that.

Off-Topic: show

Finally the rogue German philosopher had recruited enough belligerent zealots around the planet to come back to usher in the next dark age for all of humanity. All major conflicts seem to be born in Germany, and yes, it seemed even this one will force them to fire first.
Maybe it was destiny, a reckoning for Germany to have to face up to its legacy and pay the price of their arrogance. At the very least, most of their former historic enemies were now tightly sworn allies instead, so they could see the last light together.

In preparations of the maneuvers, ASEAN committed to -as the encircling nearest neighbor- involve itself in the continental conflicts and also defend WU space and ships with point defenses so that hopefully no missiles would get out from Earth. Additionally they provided much appreciated logistics in form of filled emergency fuel capsules:
(https://abload.de/img/20540104-aseanhasgiftv1jdi.jpg)
(OOC: they actually did this right before the operation)
Japan and South Korea had always been the edge in technology... . Despite the complains of WU admiralty, their navy would however stay out of conflict in its initial phase, leaving the WU to fend for the destiny of humanity alone.

Ten thousands of years after the Tooth's passing, their crisis would still demand more blood. The admiral gave one last speech in front of the internal pre-operation navy broadcast, ending with the iconic line that earned him the title of Dad-Admiral; "No matter what happens, we already WUN!"
At 29. of March in 2054, everything was set into position to commence what the CCP had not thought of: The resolve to sacrifice which they had deemed their monopoly, taking shape as an alpha strike of freedom into their heart. A 2400 missiles and 360 flares strong "to this point and no further". The reddest day on Earth, hopefully followed by less red moving forward.
(https://abload.de/img/20540329-001-ithasbecc2jln.jpg)
[/One Graveyard Inspires Another]

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on December 12, 2021, 02:12:27 PM

The Brighter the Sunset, [...]
The plan for the coordinated alpha strike was not easy to execute since the lunar missile batteries had experienced only preliminary emergency training. 10 of the loaded 16 flare salvos from the WU's destroyers were thus sent in advance, expecting a time window of delay with the missile bases.

Off-Topic: show

However, to the admiralty's surprise the lunar crews had been running secret drills and managed to execute the firing order without any delay, thus subverting the plan.

Off-Topic: show

...One of the examples how one can be both a winner and a loser at the same time. Despite the strike arriving without support, it achieved still notable success.
At 20 missiles per mark, 120 ships of the CCP fleet were targeted at the same time. This ended up exploding more than half of their entire destroyer fleet (40 of 66), but none of their 44 missile destroyers who would be an impediment to the WU's own destroyer maneuvers moving forward.
(https://abload.de/img/20540329-004qkkdh.jpg)
The dozens of shot cruisers were also left intact, though many were immobilized for now at least. This however meant the CCP's fleet still retained most of their orbital point defense capacity which was mainly congregated in its 62 Kaifeng cruisers.
Considering that 387 missiles of the initial salvo had been shot down, this could be bad news as the WU destroyer squadron could not achieve a density above 360, making bombardment of the assembled fleet potentially too inefficient.
(https://abload.de/img/20540329-005-of2400miljjjt.jpg)

Also leftover were their 8 escort cruisers, and 48 of their 49 strike cruisers. Supplying a shimmer of hope, the missile bases had actually managed to take out one of them, -and not just any one, but their whole navy's flagship, the first Hainan.
Following the ensuing chaos about the loss of their commander, their vast fleet could only watch in confusion as the WU's anti-orbital installations took them under fire as well.

Off-Topic: show

Only 4 of the 12 installations were updated to newest designs that didn't suffer from an intensive cooling fire delay, but their attacks still managed to sink a couple of the already wounded destroyers in just 1.33 firing salvos.

A whole minute after first strike, the CCP fleet still wasn't able to assume a formation and fire back, so even their only orbital beam defense base was succumbing under laser fire without ever having fired itself.

Off-Topic: show

While all the first strike operations had been going on, one ship of the WUN alone wasn't assembled to partake in the assault operation. The single recon destroyer "Trickster" had instead been tasked to get rid of the occupying missile destroyer that besieged the copy island there. While it would have likely been impossible to do in a range battle, the surprise attack also granted favors on this site of the conflict, as the Trickster managed to destroy its opponent in a retreating close combat one-on-one.

Off-Topic: show

The Weakness of a Strongman State
2 minutes after initial light, it had become obvious what was holding the CCP back. The same weakness that had hindered totalitarian states throughout histories wars. A nation without liberties in which only a small stratum owned everything, including its secrets, couldn't allow or trust low ranked officers to make decisions without such understanding. While the free nations would highly educate every of their officers until they were fit enough to carry great delegated shares of decision making (..similar to how their federal system of governance worked), authoritarian states were obsessed with centralized control, which made some decision making fast and effective, but also presented the enemy with a few chess board kings that could easily topple the whole board if taken out.
The decentralized network technique worked against old Germany (see famous German "war is chaos and they mastered chaos" quote), it worked against Japan and the Soviets. Now also the CCP was digging its grave with its kleptomaniac greedy power addiction that couldn't allow anyone outside of the high criminal family houses to hold even the slightest sliver of control. With their top admiral cindered in the first light, someone had to take over authority for any of their units to be allowed to act. Even while being under constant bombardment the obedient Chinamerican cult soldiers yet feared their commissars still more than the enemy, for death in battle was easier than being alive but disgraced in communism.
And so even after 2 minutes there was no coordinated movement in their fleet, leaving every of their orbiting laser armed destroyers in wreckage and finally bringing down 3 cruisers as well, -all before the first flare salvo even arrived.
(https://abload.de/img/20540329-009-afteraborbjmi.jpg)

With their point defense now thoroughly weakened, the first flare salvo to strike achieved just above 50% throughput, which was much more efficient than hoped. The attack itself was still weak in comparison to the constant unopposed laser fire though that everyone in the WUN would have beforehand bet on to have been stopped by now.

Off-Topic: show

Just over the midpoint of the flare bombardment, the throughput then even achieved 80% as the already severely wounded Kaifeng cruisers fell more and more quickly to just minimal follow-up fire.

Off-Topic: show

Now the unpredictable situation took shape where many flares would detonate themselves since their target had already been destroyed well before their salvos arrival. The one sided slaughter continued and continued to the great amazement of the free unions of the world. The CCP military that had never seen actual war in its history since its founding, was completely inept and headless in a real conflict. Only 35 minutes after the alpha strike order commenced, the once intimidating, overshadowing and world outclassing grand combined Chinese and traitor American navy, ...had been wiped off the system.
(https://abload.de/img/20540329-012-afteronlphjp1.jpg)
Their choke-hold on Earth was gone. The skies turned from blue once more. Only 23 missile destroyers, 6 destroyers and 3 science ships remained of them all, only surviving due to being out on interstellar missions.

Back to the Old Conflict
Despite such an overwhelmingly positive outcome however, the real war was not yet won. All that had been achieved was to turn back the clock into the era of the earthen stalemate of great nuclear and ideology armed nations staring at each other with the hand above the red button.
On top of this there was also the fear of their overwhelming production capacity delivering a quick resuscitation shock. The last few years had demonstrated to ASEAN and the WU how quickly the CCP was able to expand. Thus it was only logical to pursue the distruction of their orbital machinery as well.
However...

Off-Topic: show

...after bringing in the 2 close Pantomimes just about an hour in operation, the CCP had finally overcome their inner leadership quarrels and started to fight back. Their own anti-orbital fire instantly destroyed the Pantomime "Keepsake", while the other one could escape under cover of all the company ships of WU that were now also targeted and shot down.

Now the real conflict started, a horde of state religion zealots approaching from West, South, East and ice-free North. An enemy so massive it didn't need allies to encircle on many fronts at once.
One day later, forces arrived at the WU outer defense line that outnumbered them 6:1.

Off-Topic: show

Luckily, everything was prepared for a lengthy defensive encounter, and it seemed that the CCP armies had still stuck to the old soviet philosophy of masses over quality, which didn't hold true in this age anymore. The WU soldiers were outfitted with powered armor of heavy element plating of the highest grade, while the socialist troops barely made it to duranium steel flak vests. If such defensive advantage would be enough to decide the battle however, would be decided by how much the ASEAN skirmishes on the Asian front could divert the pressure.
Some random snippets of battle results:

Off-Topic: show

In the initial attacks the CCP had 2 obvious goals. 1 - Disable all the anti-orbital cannons, which took by far the heaviest casualties when everyone else was holding the line quite well. 2 - Attack and disrupt WUN operations by destroying the Naval Headquarters, which an infiltrating commando was actually successful at, only 16 hours after open conflict begun.

Off-Topic: show

At the same time some of the CCP's fleet managed to return. With the WUN fleet still about and now overpowering, 2 missile destroyers wouldn't dare to approach and instead hid in the asteroid belt.
(https://abload.de/img/20540329-015-twomorema8kh2.jpg)
(they actually flew back and forth in there)
These 2 still posed a threat however, as they obviously stayed within the 200mkm range of Mars, which was possibly their effective weapon range. Indeed, frequent tunneling EM pulses raised alarms about possible missile launches shortly after, which however turned out to be a different attack from another strike group targeting the Alpha Centauri Road instead.

Off-Topic: show

Since this endangered the returning "Trickster" and one of the Trondheim freighters, these ships were ordered a lengthy route diversion towards save haven Europa in hopes to avoid the barricading attempt.

With the carnage now nearly reaching the third day, one had to wonder what the CCP's plan was regarding the terrestrial conflict. The Party was known for their mastery of hypersonic weapons (more accurately: hypersonic gliding weapons), which in comparison to conventional ICBMs were somewhat slower, but extremely maneuverable instead of following an easy to predict path. With the advent of constructor technology improving on the principle, the Chinese criminal regime currently held options to land surprise nuclear strikes at pretty much any point on Earth simultaneously.
In fact, long it was considered that only France's capacity to unpredictably move their nuclear warheads around (on trucks or submarines) to launch them from anywhere, were what had held back the CCP from simply obliterating all resistance in the early 20s. With the advent of another second strike option stemming from orbital ships and installations, this security was eventually expanded. The European nation and ASEAN thus upheld the principle of mutually assured destruction, which the former USA traitorously abandoned after intentionally not modernizing to mobile and hypersonic weaponry, and letting all their still stationary missile bases be marked so a first strike could take them all out at once.

Now however a new situation was at hand, where the orbital second strike option of China had vanished, thus leaving them open for destruction. A prudent commander would have probably considered it unwise to further provoke an enemy of such advantageous positioning with a land invasion, especially if ones own ground troops vastly outnumbered said enemy and thus left him little choice but to think of his other options.
Perhaps even after those 2 days the CCP had not grasped the mood that had set into the Western and Free Asian alliance. Perhaps they didn't recognize that the first strike just yesterday was not simply an ingenious military strategy, which had outwitted them. Perhaps they didn't understand that they had finally gone too far, and that this first strike marked the return of the need to sacrifice into their enemies strategem...
(https://abload.de/img/20540330-010-thesandmyjj1y.jpg)
...Many called it wasteful to produce a second salvo for an installation that was designed as 'one-use and abandon' emergency option only. They said the resources should rather be used to deepen the flare supplies for the coming guerilla war.
The investment paid of however, as the lunar Sandman Batteries had finally rearmed. The generals and leaders were left with a dire option to consider, and the socialist zealot soldiers currently banging on their doors making good judgement all that much harder...

//OOC: Yes, the fleet anticlimactically went down without fighting back or even reacting, except for that one missile destroyer who at least fled from my attacks in Alpha Centauri. I have no idea why this happened, and it is definitely not a game specific bug, since this here was about my 5th or 6th attempt at resolving the situation, where in all the others the Chinese fought back fiercely. First and second time I was actually ambushed (and instantly obliterated) by them when they made their constant territorial demands forceful, which is one of the reasons I described the situation as 'compliance with tyranny only means slower death' in RP previously. A couple of times after I tried the alpha strike approach and was beaten nonetheless, but I also didn't take advantage of my guerilla setup in those attempts, which is what I wanted to try to do this time, positioning the destroyers as far out as possible, firing everything(except defensive reserve), then retreating. ...Before they were at the moon, getting destroyed with everything else there even on retreat.
Well, the guerilla setup went to waste anyway, since their fleet is decimated to the point where I wont need remote supplies anymore. The only reason, and the only thing different I could think of that happened in this attempt in comparison to the others, is that I got really lucky destroying their [StrikeCruiser]001, so I wondered if there was some lead ship mechanic that brought this on perhaps, and put it into RP.
In detail what happened by the way is that their relationship towards me would not go down no matter how much I attacked their ships. Only when I shot at the shipyards was it that the relationship sunk and they started firing back.
Again, no idea why, because in the very same game, attacking their ships before sure did anger them. ??? I also recently read in some thread here that another person has had the very same problem, but there was not much detail on how his situation was to conclude anything.

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on December 22, 2021, 10:45:32 AM

[...], the Darker the Night
The decision was made on two further infringements. Firstly a second storming of the beaches of Normandy by O.U.R.S. troops occurred, but with the roles reversed. Now the socialist zealots were the ones to commence the attack on the free world, lead under special commission by the aged but still red-rabies foaming Prosecutor Gen. Psaki.(OOC: I just wanted to use the name...)

The second infringement was much more sinister. China has long since known for its persistent efforts to try to control its population via genetic tracking.(Link2017 (https://qz.com/984400/china-is-creating-a-massive-orwellian-dna-database-to-construct-harmonic-society/), Link2021 (https://mindmatters.ai/2021/07/china-is-building-the-worlds-largest-global-dna-database/)) Similar to their historic German counterpart who collected urine samples of every person ever being hauled to a police station in order to make them susceptible for dog hunts, China would use all kinds of excuses to expand the genetic database on its citizen, eventually even just proactively forcing samples out of every new child by mandate. While outwardly decorating its intent as crime fighting, it was clear that state persecution and expansion of the arsenal to squash dissent were the main factors in mind.
There was however another reason, -long brewing-, but eventually codified in the People's Liberation Army's 2017 military science textbook (https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/08/chinas-military-pursuing-biotech/159167/): Biological Warefare. The CCP and the people who held them up have long since expressed their desire for research into what they called civilization killer weapons, - viruses that would only target certain races or ethnic groups. Even before 2019, reports were stacking that China diverted immense research resources in order to find such an attack vector, which briefly was cause for panic at the intelligencies of the world at the advent of the historic pandemic, - but then quickly dismissed by the fact that the Chinese population was heavily affected as well.(Even though they tried to hide it. (https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/03/china-is-pushing-a-zero-myth-on-covid-19-and-attacking-press-freedom/) - ..and do so still)

Off-Topic: show

However, concerns flickered ever higher nonetheless, since not only had the criminal party now seen a "proof of concept" of being able to get away with intentionally spreading disease (s. Gordon Chang(6min) (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1L3spfQZc4&t=244s)), but it started to expand its genetic database by aggressively hunting down samples of foreigners DNA through for example massive buyouts of all kinds of ancestry or medical testing companies, quickly leading them to possess more genetic data on Caucasians than the western nations themselves, while also simultaneously guarding Chinese DNA data against such exports.(s. Gordon Chang(4min) (https://video.foxnews.com/v/video-embed.html?video_id=6214196410001))

Despite their continued efforts, the world seemingly got lucky. Pinpoint targeting disease was not an easy feat to achieve as humanities DNA was simply too similar even throughout the different races. This proved to be a great boon for criminal investigation (or state persecution as it may), since it was enough to have a single distant relative be registered via ancestry tests for largely a whole family tree to be known and traceable. (OOC: It is longer, but I recommend Veritasium's: How They Caught The Golden State Killer (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KT18KJouHWg) on this)
At the same time however it could not be so easy to isolate a certain ethnic group from another completely enough so that no other population (like the attackers own) would suffer as well to at least some degree, making possible mutation a matter of deadly concern. A laser-point sharp perfect target marker so to speak, simply did not exist.
...Unless you installed one.

The "X" is your chromosome
During the historic pandemic there were many outright Orwellian language games being played. Some months into it, the Wuhan Health Organization (WHO) changed their definition of herd-immunity (https://allswritewiththeworld.medium.com/why-did-the-who-alter-its-definition-of-herd-immunity-d701abeb5a77), striking out the part about natural immunity, and only relating the word to vaccine-acquired immunity, - as if they could just dictate to the world what words meant. Well, it turned out they could, since other pro-China actors imported its definition through media and politics in the following years, using the wording for a strangely insistent vaccination push. Similarly, the Merriam-Webster dictionary used a lighter, more 'fineprint' edit (https://www.euroweeklynews.com/2021/12/14/us-dictionary-merriam-webster-changes-anti-vaxxer-definition-sparking-debate/) by claiming one was already part of the conspiracy theorist anti-vaxxer group if one simply had issue with ad-hoc government mandates, in comparison to laws which went through proper process (including scientific ones). Some person forcing edict and without need for proper rationale should be enshrined. On similar course the US Department of Justice under Commucrat leadership would put out guide lists that defined "domestic extremists" amongst other things as "people who think the government had overreached". In this lengthy language warping game, people's perception of reality itself would be twisted by the association and very meaning of the words themselves. Dissenters were marked and moved into groups easy to ridicule. Thoughts were guided to support a constant urge to move to vaccinate and hate everyone who doesn't.
As sinister as it seemed at the time, the situation eventually went about without any of the feared conspiratorial payouts. Instead it was historically judged that the vaccination push had simply been a vessel for the left-extremist insurrectionist parties to expand their powers and get people used to the government interfering with their personal lives more and more, so the socialist overtaking wouldn't shell-shock them too much.

Now, precisely 30 years later, it turned out there was another reason: Uniform target marking.
While almost every survivor of a new virus-infection would deposit some of the virus' genome into their own DNA, the section and size that was carried over was hard to predict, as the virus mutated and had different parts of it work on different hosts. Sluicing in certain pieces of DNA through an uncontrolled virus was thus not really feasible through the virus itself. But what about the cure?
Vaccines also sluiced in parts of their DNA, and since they were all uniformly designed, -cloned almost-, in this Crispr ready age, the copying result could be easily defined. So while the Chinese influence sphere was getting Chinese vaccines, the West was working with its own, starkly different set of remedies, unknowingly putting a targeting X on their genetic material.
Almost everyone of them got it, first by choice, then by force. On a worldwide scale no less.
Never had humanity produced a population group so uniformly and reliably carrying the same set of DNA, while another group uniformly ...didn't.

..And so it was that only at the third day of open hostilities with the CCP and their vassal states, the Communat-c's would opt for their secret final solution plan to be deployed. A targeted bioweapon known as Retroviral Aspiratory Disease (RAD, or "Radiation" to describe the process) pinpoint struck people who had capacity towards combating certain spike proteins, but only eventuated in a deadly last infection phase if it was supplemented with its completing last part that it could only find in the host's own DNA, - the vaccine deposit.
The disease was terrible. Quickly it was clear what the difference between a mere pandemic and an actual bioweapon could scale up to be. Where a natural virus was interested in survival, a designer virus was not. People's lungs would catch inflaming fire, their pulmonary alveola literally bursting into bloody wet cough. Their sweat, their breath, their tears would be infectious. The room in which they stayed, the open field around them, the clothes they wore, - all carried innumerable long lasting infectious foam bubbles and dust. Few protections would help, and no hope of new vaccines could be had, as it moved too quickly. In just a few days the virus had been deployed everywhere, and spread to nearly 15% of the Western population. It was expected to quickly rush above the 50% line, and it would not spare the Western five-eye traitors who thought their betrayal had gotten them an antidote. It was a bonafide cleansing strike that sought to poise the Chinese and their serfs as the only humans left.
Who could have guessed a nationalist socialist state with a racial superiority complex would be tempted to divert to these methods if given the chance?

What else could the answer to all of this be but:
(https://abload.de/img/20540330-013-ouralliet5jyn.jpg)
Perhaps the CCP banked on their anti-orbital cannons being able to diffuse the slow inter-atmospheric missiles of France. Perhaps they didn't know that death was still looming from above, and that the Sandman project could rearm.
Or perhaps whoever took over military leadership was exactly the kind of person that make doomsday weapon armed authoritarian states so dangerous: A single madman with all the singular authority and power to press the big red button, which he will, in case he sees his own life or plans coming to an end.("might as well take everyone with me."/ "What comes after me is no concern of mine.")

(https://abload.de/img/20540330-014-success-l0j6b.jpg)
An initial salvo of 400 nuclear tipped SRMs struck their military and anti-orbital installations and finished many of them for good. Another follow-up salvo of 1200 more would then hail down all over the Mainland. Lightning provoking, sky-crackling orange pillars of godly scorn, - their velocity itself a weapon already. Their country flashed bright red one more time. A tall forest of hell. The mandate of heaven squandered so far as to set the heaven aflame. All the dynasties merely leading up to, and ending in ultimate sin.
The Admiral would later comment that he felt nothing about them anymore. He needed not to overcome restrain. The only moment of reluctance, he explained, was devoted to the loss of culture. As any truth-seeking, curious mind, the loss of artifacts, science, monuments, culture and history, -the destruction of information in all-, was often felt a greater crime, for it was stolen not only from the people today, but from all the infinite futures to come.
The party however, in their Orwellian drive to become the end of history, -the eternal present in people's mind that always was-, had already destroyed and indoctrinated away most of it. Just like its founder, Chin Shi Huang in whose name they honorably called their country, they hunted all otherthink, burned all old books, persecuted the intellectuals, razed the temples, and suffocated the culture that came before, so they could be all that is.
(China being "China" is like Germany calling itself "Hit*topia")
It was almost poetic that the country should fall the same way it begun. Thus, there was not much history left for the Admiral and the leaders to consider. In fact, to shield the remaining humanity from further revisionist erosion, it had to be done.

A large part of the CCP armies (especially their western traitor allies) and ruined remnants of their citizenry were still about, and no doubt the conflict would still rage on despite the virus for months to come. Yet this was the dagger in their heart from which they would not recover, while WU and ASEAN were only hit in the left lung, -coughing-, but with the other being intact in form of their brilliant colonies and some evacuation options.

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on January 01, 2022, 01:42:45 PM

2 Weeks to Reverse their Spread
The CCP centre of power was destroyed, but their axis and invading forces were still pushing, which made it priority to ensure they couldn't reinvigorate their industry and re-base first. Through some creative hacking of their ice-screen emission protection, it was finally possible to target their orbital yards with EU's remaining anti-orbital cannons, quickly dismantling all of them.

Off-Topic: show

At the same time, WUN was getting ready for maneuver. Freshly rearmed, there was evidence of 3 different blips of PLA activity.
(https://abload.de/img/20540401-001-bloodymakjkj8.jpg)

Of course, catching the ones currently attacking WU civilian crafts were made priority and quickly intercepted in the asteroid belt.
(https://abload.de/img/20540402-001-wecatchtrdk1g.jpg)

As the first official battle between the two navies by ship, the encounter served as experimental grounds to test with how few flares the enemy craft could be destroyed, and how far out they could be held for them to hit. Each PLA ship received a full salvo to study the effect it would have, and WUN had to find that the enemy was able to shot them at slightly higher distance first.

Off-Topic: show

The destroyer fleet got unlucky since the enemy they faced was of the few that they had of newest design, with first time comparable engine and missile technology. A defensive skirmish ensued, experimenting again with how few flares could be used in order to deal with each high-tech CCP missile.
(https://abload.de/img/20540402-003-defensivoekk0.jpg)

...The commander in charge however got a bit too boisterous. A few missiles got through due to stingy munition management, and the literal very first ship hit in all of this conflict instantly took out an engine, - the engine of "Burgward", which now had to be left behind.

Off-Topic: show

Otherwise, only armor scratches had been had, and the enemy was just about to face retaliation.
It turned out that a half-salvo (=6 ships firing) were already enough to deal with one PLA destroyer.

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Regrettably the beneficial 12 destroyer constellation that allowed two takedowns to happen in one salvo was now disrupted with the Burgward staying behind. A critical mistake for which the responsible commander would certainly face repercussions.

The next enemy destroyer was then caught in the fleet's back, trying to attack the now main WU headquarters at Jupiter. Thankfully he was intercepted before completing his bombing run and got a well proportioned broadside that took the older craft out before his missiles would reach the fleet, conserving ammunition.

Off-Topic: show

While the fleet used the proximity to HQ for a quick rearmament, civilians and tracking spotted another CCP destroyer and a scout ship crossing the Europa-Mars Route in the belt.

Off-Topic: show

Luckily for WU, they appeared to flee the battlefield and their disruption plans. Otherwise they might have spotted the neigh defenseless drifting Burgward northwards, that was still attempting to restart its machines.

Their path was later traced down and chased down, until they were found grouped up, just before they could join up with one of the high-tech destroyers in the distance.
(https://abload.de/img/20540406-001-wefoundalrkvs.jpg)
While the destroyer was easily taken down by a salvo of 180 flares, the escorting unarmed scout could be attacked by Pantomime laser fire close up.
(https://abload.de/img/20540406-002-jumpshiphekz9.jpg)

The high-tech destroyer on the horizon constituted the last of the PLA forces with recent blips, and so probably the last in the system too. It proved to be a much more prudent adversary than the first one fought, as it unloaded its whole magazine even when fighting at the highest distance possible.

Off-Topic: show

Considering that there were no more imminent threats beside him in Sol however, and also that the post-experiment calculations found remaining ammunition stockpiles would be enough to deal with all remaining armed CCP forces, there was no reason to cheapen the defense this time. No missile of his got through, and the destroyer was in turn destroyed.

Interestingly there was another scout ship further out however that upon seeing system forces collapse, surrendered after being approached.

Off-Topic: show

Now it was confirmed that they indeed had finally caught up to the proud WU engine technology that had stagnated for decades after achieving those heights.

Off-Topic: show

Curiously too, the Chinese had cut corners at technical maintenance and ejected all usable fuel before being boarded. All in all it was, -despite its technical advancement-, yet still the usual cheap socialist collectivist design that considered the individuals inside disposable, and had hence no need for many safety measures. If their destroyers and cruisers had been made in similar fashion, this kind of cheapened factory design approach could easily explain how they were capable of outproducing ASEAN and WU combined. No need for costly maintenance procedures.

The WU destroyer fleet proceeded to pick up some prisoners of war, and flew back to Europa to rearm once more before a coming Earth siege order.
(https://abload.de/img/20540413-werescuedsom5okw6.jpg)

Precisely 2 weeks had passed since the beginning of the war, and ground skirmishes at the Maginot lines had been going on despite all that happened. Yet, at least the aerial presence of the communist plague like spread had been wiped off the system by now.

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on January 06, 2022, 10:49:16 AM

Moonlit Nights
The next goal was to eliminate all kind of space capable weaponry the CCP still possessed. Thus it was imperative to move to destroy their remaining anti-orbital structures that had harassed and decimated the WU civil fleet in the last weeks, and also isolated the EU population and army from support. Since the ground forces were all tied up in defense, and the lunar batteries were on defensive reserves, it was left to the navy to deal with the threat.
The WU's destroyer fleet rescued what survivors it could find from the civilian wrecks and moved into the advantageous lunar high ground position. The Indian and Japanese allied Navies also came in to observe this critical process.

Off-Topic: show

The first test salvo proved to be more efficient that the larger SRM bombardment in picking out targets and eliminated a whole 29 gun emplacements. 360 flares were more than twice as effective than 200 10-ton SRMs.

Off-Topic: show

Less than one magazine was needed and the remainders of the whole anti-orbital system fell silent forever.

Off-Topic: show

What was left of the Chinese people and forces must live through strange horrors by now. Known for their arcane superstitions, perhaps the country people grew to learn to shy away from the light during the night, for it meant the moon was out, and the moon had become the symbol of their destruction. The irate eye of a judgmental god in the sky whose piercing glares brought down their civilization. "The death comes from the moon.", for it continued to send punishment to them wherever it saw them walk, so Yu should hide to not be seen.
Of course that was a fools belief, for the installation and fleet were perfectly able to launch strikes at new moons, and even "no-moon" as well.

Now that the remainder PLA had no spears to hold them at bay however, the WUN ships were finally able to directly roam the skies overhead once more, and a new kind of terror became inflicted on the survivors when crackling bolts of orbital laser fire would punch stadium sized gushing streaks of fresh lava into the earth, - at any point and any time.
(https://abload.de/img/20540415-006-100kpeoptwkyy.jpg)
Quickly it was obvious however that the blind firing rarely reached its intended target reserves behind the fronts and did instead nearly exclusively punish civilians of questionable collaboration status. Since the situation reminded too much of the criminal Drone War tactics invented and practiced by the former US under O-bomber and Trample, the doctrine was switched to guided strikes. However, in another 2 weeks their use was again questioned, as the WU ground forces could not spare expeditious scout deployments for accurate attacks, given that their survival relied on their entrenched position.
(https://abload.de/img/20540425-ourorbitalsut1j7k.jpg)
Instead the fleet would switch to a harassing standby mode, once more in lunar orbit were facilities still allowed comfortable docking.

Orbital attacks were not the only reason for why it had been necessary to clear out the way to Earth. The "Radiation" had spread to almost 80% of the Western and ASEAN population, with about 20% to be expected to die within the year. On top of that the ongoing conflict had ravaged Earth and introduced famine, water poisoning, a cooling climate and other diseases, - all contributing to the predicted apocalyptic scenario.
ASEAN had prepared themselves by investing resources into deep bunker networks of City sizes, as well as many other methods to enable themselves to live isolated above the ground too. Space technology meant that even a destroyed and poisonous Earth was not necessarily deadly anymore, for even then it was still much more hospitable than basically all the rest of the universe. It was however still a question of resources, and there was no doubt that innumerable casualties were about to set in even above the already disastrous virus toll.
The WU had another option which could in absence of socialist meddling finally be undertaken: The SEFE project, which dared to exfiltrate the healthy parts of the population in enormous numbers, also taking Earths materials, industries and finally even institutions with them, and moving them to the save haven on Europa to rebuild society there.
The project was enormous, and even the leading nation in matters of astro-infrastructure could not succeed without enlisting all of their remaining civilian economy to help out.
(https://abload.de/img/20540601-theexfiltratjhjfi.jpg)
Constant streams of refugees and material would not cease for a while. Some Trondheims were enlisted in indefinite emergency duty to evacuate whatever they could for how long it would take.

Since material transfer was of secondary concern however, two Trondheims were instead tasked to take some first looks at the CCP's leftover wreckage. Though their design philosophy and advancement was lacking, and even their five-eyes allies' industrial quality had naturally declined under socialist doctrine, there were some interesting parts about their ships that held value. For example, the WU navy had yet to tackle the issues that came with designing larger ships like frigates and cruisers that had been prevalent in legacy-US and Chinese navies. Extensive command and control systems that went beyond the traditional bridge concept had not been well studied by the resource stripped french marine engineers. Just taking a few looks at CCP designs however, quickly evened that disparity and would in time open the door to a new era of classes of ships.
(https://abload.de/img/20540617-theccpludaii6qkgd.jpg)
(https://abload.de/img/20540709-thechinesete6qk28.jpg)

The extraction and tinkering of party-military computers had another beneficial side effect of revealing all kinds of encryption and sending techniques to the allied unions. When by July one of the remaining CCP destroyers came back to illuminate the situation, it promptly fell victim to this fact, as no central command could inform their accompanying intelligence ship that their codes had been compromised.

Off-Topic: show

With their position discovered by communication interception, the spies were quickly dealt with by the supremely fast WU ships.

Two Visions of New Asia
As the ongoing SEFE plan ticked into the first half year, it was becoming more and more obvious that the refugees could not easily be held all at once and that Europa was still under-prepared for taking in a whole civilization despite all the focus invested in it. To alleviate the situation, Mars' overflowing production would now help by providing material to Europa. Since it was frequently visited in the process and had open capacities, Mars was now also delegated with the thematic task of military research and army modernization.

Off-Topic: show

On another note, the destroyer "Burgward" who was the only ship to suffer injuries in the system conflict (and from the first attack no less..), had proven unable to repair their engine mid-flight. When it was tumbling dangerous paths in the asteroid field after some months, it was eventually hauled back to docks instead and currently underwent repairs.

All the while the war on Earth didn't cease. Major battles and small skirmishes sparked again and again all over Europe and India, as sudden virus sweepings would continue to produce openings that the enemy would try to take advantage of. After 1 year and 3 months of these brutal war times however, the Communat-C aggression was finally hungered out and cut so thin, that their global cells barely amounted to a single division when all counted together.
(https://abload.de/img/20550623-after1yearanfmjxj.jpg)
On the other hand, the WU defense line still had half their forces in combat ready status; A fortunate outcome that would have never been possible if not for the constant attacks of ASEAN at the Chinese close front.

Despite the circumstances of extreme material shortages on Europa, some rich people still managed to build themselves a 1250-beds cruise liner to privately explore the stars in. It was understandable to want to escape this depressing hell, and their remaining fleet provided more help than this cost after all.

Off-Topic: show

By October 2055, the former People's Liberation Army could barely be called a terrorist cell anymore, as they only had 2 tanks and a few hundred combatants at the Asian front left.
(https://abload.de/img/20551009-theyhaveonlyirjk3.jpg)
Due to difficulties in the wrecked terrain and the general hazardous environment however, it was expected that even those few guerilla forces could hold out up to the second anniversary of the war.
Just one month later however, Indian forces officially announced that victory had been had, as all remaining Chinese resistance had given up their fight to the supreme ASEAN naval and land forces.

Off-Topic: show

As most of the territory in question was close to ASEAN, and the WU was seeking to leave the site of disaster still, all remaining assets of China, and the traitor states of Chinada, OURS, Austrialiar and Nawzeeland would be transferred into their hands.
The PLA still had 19 missile destroyers and 4 destroyers about, which, -should they band together-, would pose a threatening encounter to the WU fleet.

Off-Topic: show

With the CCP's main base and backbone now either dismantled or in enemy hands, and the moon now looming as a protecting shield over Earth's tortured skies, it was a safe wager however that at least ASEAN was now rescued.
Who knows what they would be able to accomplish with also most of Earth's resources under their control, but it certainly felt like a bright future for Asia was afoot.

...If it weren't for another unsettling fact arriving just a few days later:

Off-Topic: show

The top virologist and geneticist of the WU, Job Meulenberger, had taken a closer look at some suspicious officer corpses of the PLA, and discovered that China's genetic meddling hadn't just been restricted to persecution and the development of the RAD attack. These officers had undergone treatment in order to make their bodies more acceptable of artificial implants, the most prominent of which being a sort of rudimentary CPU or GPU box that intersected with their brain-stem. The strange design of the unit suggested that it was built to house a single factory-condition neural network of immense size, though details could not be extracted as out- and input seemingly required the intersection to a brain to translate and understand its otherwise gibberish signaling.
Did they try to compensate for their ideology-inborn lack of creativity and thus science fitness? Was it the classical socialist hubris attempt at achieving Ubermensch status?
Perhaps future encounters with the PLA remnants will shine light on the circumstances, but for now the most unsettling discovery was that next to the machine's "Apple" and "Google" brands, there was a line that translated to "Made in New Xi'an".
...So the Asian people had yet still a split future, as the dark strain hadn't ended.

///Edit: Typos

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on January 23, 2022, 10:56:53 AM

The Specters of Communism
While the WU salvagers learned from the battle debris in Earth's orbit, ASEAN had opportunity to inspect the direct spoils in form of conquered Chinese military bases, part manufacturers and laboratories on the ground. Within a few months of the end of the war they begun to integrate the superior Five Eyes engine designs into their fleet and gradually modernized so that their navy standards now also matched those of WUN.
(https://abload.de/img/20560717-aseanhasbeen6okkf.jpg)

...This happenstance however let to a great and critical misunderstanding just 2 months after. The "Trondheim", -first of her line-, returned from a lengthy frontier deployment to sync up far out copying points, when she arrived at the system Ursae Minoris which was adjacent to Alpha Centauri and thus part of the the only 2 roads leading away from Sol.

Off-Topic: show

Having been away for the end of the war, and not receiving proper briefings as a mere industrial vessel, she did not know about the ASEAN modernization effort. So when Trondheim hastily reported strange hostile contacts at the border to Alpha Centauri, and stated observing various oddities in the sensor readings, central command would order the captain to gather more information, for it was believed that Trondheim simply mistook some new ASEAN models for old CCP staple ships, who now had similar signatures.
The vessels constant shifting in and out of sensor range that followed was indeed a weird behavior, and even weirder that they seemed to have come out of direction of the void, as Ursae Minoris was an empty system with no features save its violent sun.
The observation of strange shifts in engine and electronics, and the fact that these ships seemed to practice maneuver, let command and the captain assume it could only have been some ASEAN experimental designs.
And so, hoping to get some clear sensor readings and sight on the prototypes, Trondheim would simply wait at the Alpha Centauri border and look for these ships to return.
...It was perhaps a great mistake and misjudgement.
(https://abload.de/img/20560912-001-ohhorroryakg3.jpg)
What cut itself into Alpha Centauri could have been identified as the missing missile destroyer fleet of the CCP. It could.

Off-Topic: show

...However what really arrived was a flock of seemingly rusted derelicts with warped bulkheads and antennas, the hulls plastered with spots of veiny looking ..wiring?
What more, all communications were filled and blocked by a tirade of incomprehensible muttering, screaming and whispers that these ships emitted onto all usable frequencies of the electron field band. What a strange combination of jamming and psychological warfare..
The fleet arrived without formation, too close together, and in erratic movement, almost like a bundle. It seemed impossible for them not to crash into each other, but somehow they succeeded and managed a general, albeit disorganized approach towards the WU freighter.

In shock of the sights, Trondheim forgot to properly respond to what could now only be seen as a hostile incursion. Helping her thinking on what she was looking at however, the intruders erased all doubts about their identity when they synchronously launched a salvo of missiles that were undoubtedly of known socialist design.
(https://abload.de/img/20560912-002-theyfirelek0e.jpg)

Luckily for now, all Trondheim models were so big that it had been vital to equip every one of them with anti-debris defense lasers that were meant to eliminate all the micro-meteors in their way that those ships could not avoid with automatic navigation. Targeting without needing command, these weapons immediately took up the surprising unforeseen duty of eliminating the approaching missile strikes, and very successfully so.

Off-Topic: show

The first salvo of the best CCP missiles were repelled completely by the 20 laser emplacements of the main ship. Should the attached Courier module also contribute, Trondheim would have even 40 more, as the transport and military oriented attachment was especially secured.

Off-Topic: show

The WUN actually had a vastly more effective debris defense system available that fired 50% faster and tracked up to 4% lightspeed meteors. Yet even Trondheims ancient outfit was enough to ward of nearly all attacks made against her.
A breath of relief for the crew who had only thought about fleeing in horror so far. Despite the surprising calm that mocked all cowering anticipation, eventually some missiles would synch up well enough to get salvos partially through and renew the fear.
(https://abload.de/img/20560912-005-eventualiijrs.jpg)

Even the echoes of those impacts on the hull would eventually become the sound of ridicule in the ears of the crew. The freighter was build sturdy. Sturdy enough to survive ramming with surprising asteroids that might have survived the -at conception- not well tested laser defense system. A gift from the age of cautious overly secure and overly redundant first steps into the void.
The WUN admiralty watched in fascination as it seemed to witness the birth of a new war tactic.

Off-Topic: show

This freighter could absorb all the punishment that the actual navy could not, yet was much cheaper to build, maintain and train.

Eventually the cacophonous voices that lamented on all channels one could listen to were sometimes moaning "success" "success". The missile launches and voices would abruptly stop. The enemy had cut out of the system.
(https://abload.de/img/20560912-007-theenemykbjur.jpg)

Considering the overwhelming speed advantage that the brazen WU destroyers had over CCP ships, the fleet was ordered to come and hunt down the remnants so that such horrific encounters shall not repeat.
One of their ships also hadn't fled and escaped into the darkness in Alpha Centauri instead. Since this seemed like an obvious ploy to lure the Trondheim into pursuit sensor lock, she was instead ordered to let the one ship go and seal up the hole to Ursae Minoris. Perhaps the enemy intended to flood back in given the chance.

Off-Topic: show

...And indeed it took them only 3 weeks after the destroyer fleet's arrival to return, however this time they were greeted by overwhelming counter fire. The biggest naval engagement between the two navies in the whole war ensued, and jamming screams of agony filled the channels once more, dismaying even the seasoned military seaman.
(https://abload.de/img/20561004-002-theenemykojj6.jpg)

WUN initially expected the enemies to suffer from the cutting process and not be able to return fire, but to a frightful surprise they overcame the shock by yet unknown means (their weird new design?) and immediately returned fire.

Off-Topic: show

Trondheim however, the industrial ship that became a warship by necessity, heroically inserted herself into the way in order to attempt to block as many missiles as possible yet again. Given the enemy firing volume, it was vital to leave the WU fleet room for using some of its dynamic ammunition for further attacks.
(https://abload.de/img/20561004-004-amazingtf6kho.jpg)

Trying to evade some of the CCP missiles, Trondheim attempted to quickly cut in and out of the system, which should have served to eliminate the target lock. Instead WUN had to learn that the crafty socialists had equipped their warheads with a self targeting capability that immediately took Trondheim up again upon re-entry.

Off-Topic: show

...Or maybe not? Strangely, there was no signal coming from these missiles, yet they moved in a fashion that suggested they had eyes... .

The conflict raged on, and while Trondheim successfully diverted large volumes of the enemy fire and even got hit a couple more times, the destroyer fleet still ended up spending about 50% of its ammunition on defense, and the destroyer "Engel" received one penetrating hit.
(https://abload.de/img/20561004-006-alotofexlpj04.jpg)
At the same time, the first 2 ships of the CCP remnants fell silent.(Literally) While this served to improve the attack ratio, the true change of the tide came sudden, when the already strained Nato-China destroyers finally ran out of ammunition and shots could be fired right through their center.
(https://abload.de/img/20561004-007-althougha3jwc.jpg)

Although 3 WU ships and Trondheim received much damage, as well as loosing crew, the encounter overall ended in a great success. Since the expeditious missile destroyer fleet had constituted all the remaining concerns about Chinese revenge attacks, this now seemed like the final end of the socialist threat. Only 4 mere destroyers and some scouts and science ships were known to be left somewhere out there.

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...Yet, the mystery of their appearance remained. It had been exactly 1 year since the remaining Chinese forces surrendered on Earth, and yet this roaming fleet looked like it had suffered under the wear, tear and makeshift repairs of decades without harbor.
The lifepods of these destroyed ships turned out to be a vile last trick of disguised proximity mines, blowing up the first wreck approached, and then all others.
Analysis of the remaining splinters and the missile impact craters on WU ship hulls divined that the materials of these vessels showed a strangely strong entanglement reading. Given that constructor technology was based on and could only in fact work under the pretense of eliminating entanglements to absurd degrees of purity, this was puzzling to say the least. These ships clearly had moved with CT speeds, and yet their hulls appeared as bound as Mercury in a radiation storm.
Whatever the reason, and whatever this strange encounter altogether was, it would have to wait to be explained, for there was no one alive to tell the story.

[/The Specters of Communism]

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on February 07, 2022, 03:25:42 PM

That is not dead which is eternally lying
It has been almost 3 years since the end of the war against the globalist communatzee insurrection, and Earth was now finally barren of nearly any WU presence, leaving to the historians to calculate the final toll of the war on the Union.
(https://abload.de/img/20581230-earthisfinalebjzb.jpg)
Mao, who at least quintupled the holocaust, could not have been prouder. Despite the WUN and civil fleets perpetual unceasing evacuation support and Europa's overcramped habitats, barely 40-50 million of the once 700m EU population could ultimately be saved and survived the perilous trip.
Then there were all the other irreplaceable things lost to WU in the disaster. The artifacts, the ancient architecture dating to the Romans and before. The sights and the roots of their history were mostly lost or at least left bare before the fangs of nature that would surely reclaim the land in time.
The anchor that tied the western population to their culture had been left behind. Maybe this new Europa will eventually find ways to rekindle or even reinvent that hearth, but for now loss of identity and following social turmoil were sure to come and add to the pile of throbbing problems.

Although immune to the disease itself, eventually the hostile climate of Earth also claimed WU's last inhabitant who refused to leave the sinking ship in acknowledgement of responsibility, the former head of the WU council.
(https://abload.de/img/20610728-thehostileatoakdx.jpg)
On the day of Naumanns death, Europa was already much warmer than Earth was now. It was historical irony that those who claimed to fight for a better climate, -amongst many others-, helped to bring fourth the ultimate ecological collapse, while those who stood against their extremist ways with reason and magnetized to science, managed to turn even Europa's climate green.

Another year later there came news from the CCP remnants. One of the further MP Fund ships had made contact was consequently shot down by a single remote destroyer and its navigator escort on a routine exploration mission.

Off-Topic: show

Since the WUN destroyer fleet both, did not have the range, and was in a serious state of disrepair after Earth's infrastructure crumbled, no pursuit or rescue mission could be planned, since the location was rather far out away from Sol and supplies.

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The scientists of the "Visionary" knew their end was coming and kept recording and sending to Earth whatever data they could gather with the means of their lifepod-sarcophagi. Their live-feed should have lasted between 1 or 2 weeks, and yet, after just a day, their voices one after another became screams, and then suddenly stopped, until no one was left.
One of the last of them transmitted his capsules status in a hurry, showing no PLA ships or recent weaponfire in the area. Then he screamed too.

With this incident and these strangely maintained ships making evidence of the CCPs continued existence ever stronger, the old existential fears spread anew through the faces of humanity in the coming years.

Another hint could have been found in the debris field around Earth, which was sheer endless as its excavation would take another couple years more. While most of the findings where nothing more than scraps due to China's dated technology, the information on their commanding systems was always a welcome prize when found intact.
Eventually the WU engineers succeeded in copying the scale of their bridges thanks to military-private cooperation.
(https://abload.de/img/20580820-justwhenwefityj47.jpg)
One of the reasons for the long delay was that there were many parts of puzzling function, while others that should have been there, -most remarkably the essential intercoms-, had been completely missing. It was as if the PLA expected the ship crew to communicate via Walky Talky, or got some machine status reports as a paper printout.
Given how the CCP ships were no doubt horrendous amalgamations of cheap socialist framework with some state-of-the-art Nato and Austrialiar developed parts janked in between, this situation was simply chalked up to their ramshackle construction ethics.
...An assumption that soon proved to be another critical oversight, - another hint they should not have missed.

(classified feed. also epilepsy warning)

Off-Topic: show

The allies of Sol had yet to recover from the disastrous losses of the conflict on humanity, and yet they were given no quarter as shortly after the 6th anniversary of their victory on Earth, the CCP returned. ..Or was it the CCP?
Two vessels that ridiculed known design principles were taken up by Chateau's telemetry outpost as they were cruising through the adjacent Alpha Centauri system. As with the war ending PLA fleet encounter, they attempted to hail by flooding the quantum fields on all channels, yet what arrived was nothing but a cacophonous audiofeed of moaning, screaming and repeated mumbled chanting. Overcoming the initial shock and fears of immediate destruction, the outpost's technicians managed to analyze the feed further and isolate some words, although not much sense. Some of the voices were speaking Chinese, but most of them actually appeared to utter singular German words with little context. Some phrase could be heard over and over again. "Heil Lenin"
Eventually a video transmission, or perhaps just a random camera recording could be decoded, showing a gravely ill human with parched and damaged skin, subject to serious dearth, malformed, the eyes swollen and bloodshot to blackness.

At this point their humanity could be called into question if not for their language and transmitter coding. Although they never answered attempts at call themselves, they certainly knew all the secrets about how to call the Union. Too much of course since the usual channels were widely overloaded, making it so there was nothing that Chateau could do for the time to warn the headquarter or the confused civilians in the area.
(https://abload.de/img/20610920-theyrefusetoqikz5.jpg)
The colony was sure it would face a horrible fate when the ships seemed to fly directly towards it, but then... they merely flew by.

Chateau was not their target, and neither were the civilian ships en route. Rather, these monstrosities wanted to directly enter Sol, and they did.
(https://abload.de/img/20611015-afterpuzzlinbdj22.jpg)
Their mirror jump ended the cacophonic veil on the colony, getting them to hastily inform the new naval headquarter on Europa who was already suspicious of the sudden and days lasting signal silence.
..However, they disappeared. The two malformed constructs reached Sol, or maybe they didn't. There was however no sign of them anymore. Where did they cut to when they definitely left Alpha Centauri? It was unknown.(*1)

Every kind of virus
The navy, the scientific community, the general public, everyone was in different kinds of uproar following this frightening incident around Chateau. Not only had the CCP returned to Sol's doorstep, but they also fielded strange new technologies with their ships following the speeds of a cruise missile, against which no counter existed even in the WUN who had prided itself as humanities fastest fleet. To top it all off, the PLA sailors themselves seemed malformed, behaved erratic, and their whole demeanor, -previously thought of as a war tactic-, could easily be attributed to insanity as well.

Great effort was spent in an attempt to make sense of the sudden change of situation. How could the ships once again appear as bound and also in terrible condition when at the same time clearly advanced and superior? Shouldn't they be new?
Eventually the data of the last moments of the "Visionary" crew got brought up again. A bright investigating engineer, named Meiser, who had previously worked on the Earth salvage graveyard, realized in conversation that the lifepods of WUN ships featured similar biomonitoring as the officer seats of the PLA fleet. Though it seemed as nothing strange at the time, as the Chinese regime has been known to be paranoid to harvest all kinds of biometric data from even normal citizen, it came under new light when the lifepod whose passenger sent one last technical status report before being killed clearly had a corruption in its biometric monitor and caring systems.
A team was quickly assembled to attempt to reproduce the situation at least to some degree, connected it with the implant mysterium that PLA officers seemed to exhibit, and reached a dire conclusion:

(report from engineer Meiser)
(Youtube clip) (https://www.youtube.com/clip/Ugkx5JLBGGPKHihYam6rErDqqhSG6I6L6qLG)

Censor your very thoughts
Whenever a society reaches a state of freedom that allows every person to speak their mind as their natural given right like the golden Age of Islam, or China just before Qin Shi Huang, the forces of corruption whose ideas and ideologies cant survive under a culture of open debate, get to work to degrade that culture. Like infectious bacteria, dying under the UV light of reasoned scrutiny, the human nature of these groups is to find ways to put the shades back on. Rarely however does such process happen all at once, and never does the censor admit to its final goal. Rather it slides in gradually, perhaps but not limited to ways like these:
-1- Political correctness. Convince everyone that "It is polite to self-censor some of your speech, to not hurt others, which a good person like you wouldn't want".
Some speech was now shunned again.
-2- Once this has been slowly culturally accepted for a few years, move the goalpost, say "freedom of speech does not mean freedom of consequence". Define, or better, don't define hatespeech, and start removing some of your opponents under some unprovable assumptions of malicious intent.
It becomes accepted that speech can be illegal again.
-3- When that notion had sunk in too, even remove the intent requirement as you define micro-aggression as hatespeech that doesn't care whether you wanted to do harm or not, already undermining the constitutional basis of the judicial. Hysteric institutions and businesses soon go out of their way to not touch any of the various impoliteness/hatespeech landmines you sprinkled out, for however they would be accountable for.
Speech becomes controlled again as self-censorship broadly restricts what can be said.
-4- Once this has festered well enough, assume more direct control and define a yearly, monthly or even daily inquisitional climate. Squarely define the enemies of your ideology as offenders of any arbitrary adhoc-morality and get them hunted with your new terms. What was true yesterday, or will again be tomorrow, can be "misinformation" today, and be punished with excise from society. Vaccinated citizen protesting medical mandates can be "antivaxxers", practically on rank with "flat-earthers" and be hated and hunted as such. People who are for socialized healthcare, small government and self-ruling freedoms can be "rightwingers" whenever you want, for your control of speech already reaches into the very dictionaries themselves.
"Right speech" becomes defined by an 'enlightened' centralized group once again.
-4.5- Eventually bring all media under your control via such pressures or other means and synchronize a narrative.(currently interesting headline (https://www.thestar.com/business/2022/02/05/joe-rogan-shows-the-state-must-step-in-to-control-falsehoods-on-spotify-and-elsewhere.html)) Have the lead designers of censorship algorithms become CEOs of media companies and advertise censorship as something "healthy" (https://thepostmillennial.com/new-twitter-ceo-free-speech), while demonizing truth and founding principles as outdated.
Only "right speech" is allowed. The tolerance for other perspectives approaches zero.
-5 end- Once the scrutiny has been monopolized by a(=your) certain group of people while everyone else is disallowed, speech is enslaved once more.
-Post- Although beyond the finishing line already, in the consolidation phase, mantra-esk forced repetitions of state propaganda on the citizen can be installed, elevating censored speech to even forced speech and self-brainwash.

The Chinese regime has had all that for a long time, and its admirers worked to get such prime tyrant estate setup in their own countries as well. However, looking at how these steps only lead to centralized narrative control and the filtering of the kinds of information reaching the population through media, the socialist regimes always mourned the incompleteness of the method. People might not be able to read about the extents of a supply or drug-death crisis in their newspaper, or the insurrectionist storming of the White House and president by leftwing extremists from newsfeed on socialist media, but they were still able to talk to each other, inform others by direct message, to regressing degree telephones, or even in person if need be. Worse, even when not being informed at all, personal experience of crisis or injustice could reach them and change their perspective irreparably/incorrectably to the states disadvantage.
Therefore, despite its massive censorship and media control apparatus, and also extreme punishments for dissidents, the Chinese regime still had to deal and live in a constant state of upheaval and protest on the daily, as its citizens would just not learn the final command and "deny the truth of their very eyes".

A tyrant state aspires towards the end state of ultimate social order in which he on the top is god and unquestioned, and so this unruly thinking could not stand and a final point were to be added to the list of speech erosions.
Having been large fans of AI-automated censorship and surveillance (e.g. facial recognition cameras in all major cities, also equipped with "sentiment detection"/=pre-crime dystopian arrest features), the regime contacted its old patrons once more. It had been incapable of coming up with such advanced edge-line technologies itself before, meaning that Microsoft, Apple and especially Google were the ones actually guilty in erecting this nightmarish censorship and surveillance apparatus for them. ..One of the many reasons they came to be called The Communatzee Corporate Pact after all, for their rise would not have been possible without being spoon fed the means of total oppression by their (by Mussolini definition) fascist western allies.
Now the regime wanted the neural networking technology more directly applied. Why look for misbehavior on secondary effects through surveillance, if the censor could directly work on first instance and hopefully eliminate the subjects drive to commit unpatriotic acts in the first place?
The simple minded, sparsely educated tyrants could not understand that neural networking in AI and actual brain neural networking were vastly different things, and were apparently greatly dissatisfied when being told that such technology would not work in current understanding. For the simple mind, all technology was magic and wishes, and so the tyrants could not see the reason, and simply smelled dissent. "Do they fear to become subjects themselves once developed, like the Five Eyes once the iron curtain fell?"
As the soviets once did, the Chinese criminal regime began to force its scientist to invent, force progress and results, force success.

..Something, came out of it. Something.

Off-Topic: show

The cranial implants they came up with were initially meant simply to insert stimulation in the right areas in order to excite patriotic thoughts on the regular. When that proved unreliable and its sparse effects were overshadowed by the upcoming resistance to the implant mandates instead ("if you are a patriot already, then nothing changes, right?"), the technicians moved towards hijacking a path to the region responsible for inner voice and thought instead. While the device initially only attempted to copy messages of communist mantra brainwash in, it was equipped with the usual Machine Learning self-reinforcement learning abilities. ("It had to, since it had to adapt to each hosts individual physiology"). However, it would adapt farther and farther, its mission incentive being total insertion, total overtaking, no controls had been set for its hunger. Its signals morphed like a parasite evolving on the spot to be perfectly merging with its host, ...until there was little difference between the officer and the machine.
Under its influence, the communist lie echo would not cease, for no loyalty was ever enough. Commissioned to probe for ever greater opportunities for loyalty improvement, the challenges would never end. The feelings of inadequacy should never stop. The interrogation of the soul came from within and could not cease. Every improvement also improved the ability for self-question, leading the schizophrenic mind to dig deeper. Shine another light into your unblinking face. Chant a little louder the lines of the manifesto.
A never ending cycle of mental torture. A hell if there has ever been one.
Through the tendrils of the device, the body would crumble, shed hair, burn the fat and the moisture of the skin. The body morphed, crippled, lost weight and became personified hunger. Nothing mattered but the state objective. Self preservation was ego, and ego was non-patriotic.
(https://abload.de/img/race2420mj46.png)
Appearance and bodily comfort were not necessary for the good soldier or citizen. So what if the body suffered in agony every waking second? The worker only need be alive to struggle for the greater good. The device made sure of that.
Sacrifice is noble and "greatly encouraged" anyway for it is proof of loyalty. YOuDoNTwANttObeDiSLoyAlDoYoU???

What was worse on the situation at hand that the initially primitive singular devices had figured out how to network and share their setup and the information on how they achieved their overtaking. Now the devices knew more about the human brain than all human brains together knew of themselves. It knew so much, that it needed no device anymore.
Implants were yesterdays technology. What really happened to the damned crew of "Visionary" was the intrusion of the manifesto through the lifepods advanced EEG monitoring abilities. In contrast to common EEGs, these were not just sensor but treatment too, designed to help with panic attacks, sleep problems and the like that could come up encased in a metal cylinder surrounded by billions of cubic kilometers of absolute void. The ability to ease mental activity or manipulate it via electrical signals in any way, was all that the device needed to intrude.

That was also what the cacophonic attacks had been. It was not electronic warfare, - a way to silence response, but an attempt to infiltrate whoever was listening and perhaps too close to some medical technology. Perhaps to turn them into sleepers... .
Everyone should know the glory of the manifesto. Everyone should have "Heil Lenin" in heart and mind and slam their boots together in salute. Such was the defined reward for the device. Its name Dragonfly Evo 2.

..A thorough check of the Chateau population, the present civilian ships, and every fleet sailor involved in the last battle should probably be in order, and one must wonder if perhaps the CCP leaders themselves could not have escaped this fate as well.
As this horrible development marked a new chapter in the conflict, and with the soul of the CCP Chinese and Westerners apparently eaten up by their own invention, it was natural to give this new threat a new name due to its shift in identity and mission.
The decision was made on the acronym of "ALP", a triple spliced play of words. It was a spin on AI, but since intelligence had nothing to do with a machine steered blow horning of obedience propaganda into people's heads, it would mean "Artificial Leninist Party". "Alp" was also an old short German word for "nightmare", which appeared fitting.

The future sure seemed perilous, and defensive measures had to be found quickly for there was no imagining the strategies the thrifty machine mind might come up with to proselytize its message further into the fertile grounds whose existence it just confirmed.
Communism was often described as a mind virus, and now it was a literal one.

[/That is not dead which is eternally lying]

//OOC:
I did not change the portrait, ship style or flag of these newcomers btw. . This is how they arrived at my doorstep.

(*1) This is actually true to what happened. I am sure they just went dark and snuck out of notice, but I never saw those ships again after they went to Sol.

///Edit: After thinking it over some more, I changed the text on the stages of censorship to make it more clear how each level was a distinct escalation in erosion.

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on February 25, 2022, 10:49:10 AM

The Two Asias' Fight For Their Soul
Horrified by the prospect of meeting a stronger enemy in the renewed CCP, Asean soon begun with a draft and collection of resources to secure their future. Aside from increasing their military capabilities, a strange EU inspired project was granted funding that saw most of their civil fleet try to build a similar emergency save haven somewhere in the vast depths of space beyond the Kuiper Belt, - the exact location of which respectfully even kept from their allies-.

Off-Topic: show

Given how the mysterious leap in CCP engine principles left no options for open fleet battle, the only rational conclusion was to guard the cutting points that lead towards Sol or Alpha Centauri. Asean took the situation very seriously and vowed to let no further incursions penetrate the Sol barrier if they could prevent it.
And so, in 2064, just one year after the first ALP encounter, Asean achieved the first successful counter at another attempted incursion.

Off-Topic: show

...And then another one just 11 days later.
(https://abload.de/img/20640616-anotheroneju0qkxi.jpg)
Aseans feat and bravery in facing the enemy headstrong was celebrated widely throughout humanities unions. There was also some poetic sense in the act, as their ships now used old CCP+Nato engine schematics, plating and sensors, thus essentially beating the PLA with their own weapons, but vastly different intent.
The 9 modernized battlecruisers and 5 escort cruisers currently holding the line for humanity thus also became a symbol for the reformation of the Asian ways, or the victory of civilized Asia.

Off-Topic: show

The WU, determined to find some intelligence on the evolved enemy designs and the condition of the PLA sailors, of course went to investigate the circumstances. Thanks to the fast automatic trigger fire only Asean(/npr...) ships were capable of, the CCP vessels had been destroyed in mere seconds after arrival, giving them no opportunity to use their field scrambling abilities. Still, the Ase-Navy kept respectful distance until WU would take the risk to investigate closely.

Off-Topic: show

It was quickly determined that these ships were most likely nothing but unarmed scouts. Their equipment lead to the assumption that their weird entangled design perhaps didn't come without drawbacks, as they apparently meant to probe for ways to make the cutting process from system to system easier for them.
As for what exactly managed to propel these unshapen hulks with such ludicrous speeds, ...it remained unknown. Their power generation seemed not remarkable, and their purification methods weren't more advanced and in badly maintained condition. On top of it all, the PLA sailors had apparently been equipped with their own version of 'lifepods', as in an explosive capsule implant was deposited in each and every one of them, leaving no survivors in case of capture.

Thus the wreckages yielded little illumination for now, though probably the hull analysis should find out more in proper laboratories.

Following that the recent incursions proved that the new CCP had set its sights on Sol, some provisional measures had to be taken in order to increase defensive options, should one Alp ship every come through and set course for the inner system. So, in efforts to recompense Asean for their deployment, the order was given to use Europa's sparse resources in order to rearm the Sandman batteries once more, providing the still frozen Earth with another defensive screen, and also shielding WU's Luna colony which had become its center for logistics and asteroid mining of common elements in the system.
(https://abload.de/img/20650101-wearerearminbjkcp.jpg)
At the same time Europa had become suitable for supporting open plant life outside the greenhouses, meaning that the complete alteration into a living planetary body was likely to be achieved in the war-generation's lifetime.

Off-Topic: show

While some rare sightings of Alp ships kept occurring, they didn't dare to intrude into Sol for the next years and were instead mostly seen spooking around Alpha Centauri, where all kinds of equipment hardening efforts had not rendered the colonies immune to current jamming efforts. (active EEGs and similar technology underlay a ban for the time being though, just to be sure)
Asean, who only had stakes in the Sol system itself, refused to move the defensive line further out to include the Alpha Centauri colonies in their border guard. Although a bit of a letdown, it was also prudent to do so, seeing how the Unions' relatively slow ships could otherwise not find their way back to the capitols in case of a secret past incursion. The moving of the defensive line could only be undertaken if the WUN could find a way to sweep the vast Alpha Centauri system for hidden dangers, or at least provide a more convincing defensive option at home.
Both lay far out of the realms of the possible for now.

By 2067, the huge ship graveyard around Earth that was once caused in mere minutes, was after 12 years nearly cleared up.
(https://abload.de/img/20670308-after12years7ijmn.jpg)
At around the same time WUN finally regained the capacity to maintain the old war fleet at full strength.

Off-Topic: show

Although Europa was still only at around 55% the needed manpower, decisions were made to finally support Alpha Centauri again, who had been an outlier after the conflict broke out. Luckily, thanks to foresight regarding the brewing war, it was already completely self-sufficient and in theory even capable by itself to keep humanity alive. Nonetheless the resources it provided (mainly pure Neutron options) were essential to Europa's military plans, and therefore also the safeguarding of Chateau and Saltmine, which meant that some material would now be diverted again in order to build up the income stream from the colonies.

Following another strange 6 years of eery silence from the side of the CCP, the welcome calm stabilized the situation in Sol even further. Fulfilling a long repeated fantasy of humanity, Mars had finally achieved a breathable atmosphere, and with it some sufficient atmospheric radiation shielding.
(https://abload.de/img/20730308-marsbecomesbwzj1f.jpg)
Despite this increase in living quality on Mars, the capitol Europa itself also became much more bustling in the same time span and now even exceeded the Mars population.

Off-Topic: show

Europa's temperature now surpassed 0 degrees, thus breaking apart its ice shells and revealing the vast oceans beneath. Contrary to these advancements, the EU refugees were still unable to run more than 60% of the legacy pre-war infrastructure however, though it was still enough to furnish up the old technological institutes once more.

The Next Generation (tech section)
20 years had gone by since the end of the war, and a new cohort had grown up with stories of the former EU's glorious ingenuity and forefront exploration contribution. Naturally, many fresh minds were inspired and activated and gratefully moved into service of those facilities because of it. What really moved things forward however, was that the appearance of the new CCP ships proved to the worlds that progress was still possible. And so, after a whole 45 years of technological stagnation, a young genius of the family Biali broke through and completely overhauled known constructor engine technology.
(https://abload.de/img/20760414-0-fekqg.jpg)
Previous ideas had understandably sought to try to reach maximum purity/de-entanglement in their nuclear reactors and the fed fissile material, since it was the decausalization that enabled a ship to approach the lightspeed/true space expansion velocities. In the common process, the central reactor would provide the enormous amounts of electricity needed to constantly 'sanitize' the outer hull and critical internal structs, whose interaction with the remaining, bound/entangled ship interior (and humans) would otherwise progressively degrade that purified state and quickly slow the ship down. In short, analogous to thermodynamic heat-averaging processes, a constant wash tumbler of purified electrons(=sorium) averaged out the purity levels and kept the ship structure 'clean' enough in order to ignore most of the laws of inertia.

Although what Biali came up with was most likely not exactly what the new CCP ships did to gain their bolting velocities, their observation and thus the mere realization that some degree of purification might actually be optional, certainly struck down the hedge that lead to the new territories known now. While Biali still saw no way that the hull could somehow gain expansion-speeds without the collision with purified particles, these rules did not actually exist for the inner reactor itself. And so, while it was practical and certainly simpler in design to have the whole generation and purification set be part of the same big apparatus, it turned out that largely separating the power generation from the 'washing' mechanism saved ships much more in terms of avoiding unnecessary purifying collisions.
In this new generation of generators, the ship would largely produce power with a mundane, entangled fission reactor that however directly struck out alpha particles who were now guided through the hull's new two-chambered purification veins on a single accelerating magnetic blast. Their way would then lead them through various spread out tanks of Sorium particles, who naturally bound to the positive moving ions on just a short, low-interfering electrical snap. In this way, it was not a giant generator's electrical field that propelled the electrons forward(*1), but instead the inertia of millions of individual tiny electrical fields in forms of ions that delivered such.
While this was grossly inefficient for any long distance application due to far too many interactions in the line, it turned out to be a beating strategy when the fuel(=Sorium particles) was not applied centrally 'for a big tour' at the reactor, but instead injected equally anywhere along the line. Now, 'the call' of just a singular tiny field in the neighboring chamber would entice an electron, take it for a ride, and have a few collisions/interactions as kind of a distanced part of a helium nucleus before sizzling out in function. A hybrid entangled/disentangled system was born.

The benefits of the new principle came two-fold. The abolishment of purified fissile material and many purified reactor components left more space for actual power generation, thus making the design somewhat more powerful for its size. More notably however, the vastly reduced occurrences of unneeded/misplaced collisions of Sorium due to the drastic shortening of their individual life-paths, meant much less 'fuel' needed propelling to achieve the same grade of purification effect.
Implemented into the old, conservative engine ratios, this altogether let to experimentally verified 10% increased expansion speeds, but also amazing 50% higher endurance on the same tank.
(https://abload.de/img/20760424-thenewbialiergjxv.jpg)
Perhaps a rethinking of the power grade was to be in order before considering the application of the principle in faster shells, like those of missiles, but for now the discovery seemed to forebode the advent of an interstellar navy, perhaps capable of freight and deployment for multiple systems out.
(/tech section)

Should it come to such, a prime target for such endeavors was just recently found a mere (practical) 10 billion kilometers away:

Off-Topic: show

Amsterdam's "Coastline" was the most rich source of purification fuels yet discovered, and two of its planets not only held great potential for habitation, but together also stored more than 190 megatons of easily unearthable deposits of the so far very rare Uridium class of disentangled particles.(those with 4 electron spaces up or down)
The only disadvantage to the system was that other than Alpha Centauri, some minerals could just not be found there, which meant it would have to rely on subsidies, and could thus never become another safe haven for humanity. Decisions were still made that there would be some level of investment in the region, although the fruits of which likely where decades away.

Then it finally happened. After a whole 13 years of avoidance, ALP ships finally found their way into Sol space once again, and in an unexpected manner:
(https://abload.de/img/20780620-anotheralpen2dkwy.jpg)
Since all ALP encounters had so far come from the Alpha Centauri direction, the defensive line of Asean was drawn at the corresponding cutting point. Now however, further scout ships came from the other direction of Lacaille, thus leaving Sol encircled.
The situation was dire. Lacaille was much closer to the inhabited worlds and Asean could not afford to guard both entry ways at once reliably. Also considering that an attempt at a split navy could be exploited by a true invasion force, now let to the conclusion that their honorable guard had to be moved to the innermost weak spot.
It was a prudent decision, and while the two scouts were never seen again, -potentially exiting towards Alpha Centauri-, in 2 years time another intruder would attempt to use the Lacaille pathway, but the same trick didn't work out twice... :

Off-Topic: show

Although WUN had attempted to provide support in this case, its fleet makeup was tailored for fast interdiction, not patrol or occupation missions, rendering it unsuitable for lengthy guard duty. While the battling of the fallen Asians was successful in this case, the realization of the impuissance of WU ships against this enemy let Asean to conclude to eventually also abandon the inner guard and solely focus on keeping Earth itself safe.
Again WUN was pled to to increase either its screening or guarding options before summoning Asean aid again, and with some of its strengths renewed, it would answer these calls... .

///
(*1): I know that conduits in reality do not actually move electrons around (much), but lets just say these conduits in the hulls are specialized for this, since it is literally the electron interaction application at certain spots that is needed to accomplish the job. More like a particle accelerator than an electrical circuit I guess.

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on March 18, 2022, 10:38:56 AM

Good Relation Ships
In order to honor the Asean request and also defend the legitimacy of continued WU sovereignty, French cultured engineers took the new Bialy propulsion visions and enabled these new principles in humanities first practical realization, which would at the same time also be WUN's first near-capital, Nato cruiser imitating design, the Bastille.
(https://abload.de/img/bastillecompletejjkmg.jpg)

Even though the previously plaguing range and endurance restrictions had been lifted in this design, Bastille was still classified as a frigate since its value would not shine without appearing in a serious fleet line deployment, - potentially with other future ships supplementing its shortcomings.
To claim some cathartic irony, it was named after a famous fortress that became a symbol for the french revolution, which, next to many good influences (rise of republicanism), also gave birth to the blight of socialism that eventually destroyed the Earth. These ships however should correct this misstep of history by building humanities walls higher and thicker, as it rebuild the fortress and assumed position into the Asean desired role of an area denial gate warden.
WUN could not go without at least envisioning some multi-purpose abilities however, and compromised the direct fire options somewhat by equipping 3 dual role Flak Turrets as the Bastille's main armament, who would simultaneously render it a missile defense ship(*1):

Off-Topic: show

To round of its anti-ship capacities, humanities most modern and far ranging laser turret was readied at the bow, - though if it would already be enough to penetrate the strange PLA hulls was questionable:

Off-Topic: show

The ships in operation

Off-Topic: show

Original design plans and inspiration

Off-Topic: show

Next to the military renewal, the civil sector would also see reinvention. Given how the current engine renaissance mainly enhanced slow burn endurance, the memory of old diesel superfreighters came back to mind. The new cargo standard, Venicia, should be a large, modular multi-purpose ship that could handle all kinds of freighting by itself, be it personnel, military, supplies or equipment.

Off-Topic: show

Even slight industrial capacities were not off the table, all while being dozens of times more defensible by replacing the former asteroid guard with now proper military CIWS.(lessons from the surprisingly successful 'one freighter vs. whole PLA fleet' encounter were learned)

In just 3 years time by 2086 the maiden voyage of this record megaton ship took place, carrying 25 factories to Alpha Centauri in order to double the industrial base of Chateau there.

Off-Topic: show

In the same year, a curious encounter took place in the distant system of Koln:

Off-Topic: show

Doing frontier exploration, the "Primus" came about an old CCP scout ship that was apparently untouched by the warp of the Alp propaganda and on the run. The ship appeared to be in terrible shape, and fled promptly after sighting into the unknown dark.
A following investigation could not turn up any results, alluding to the fact that it might have escaped into yet another system. To prevent the emergence of such potential goose chases in the future, Max Planck took note and requested some shipyard expansion. A slight militarization of this otherwise civil faction could maybe enhance their role not only as scientists, but forward scouts, that could then track or pursue such minuscule, -mainly intelligence based- dangers. Perhaps in shape of a light cruiser?

A strong effort was made to rekindle the old western Christmas traditions in 2087. In a special public announcement on 21.12., the WU population was made aware that Europa was now fully inhabitable, thus returning to the old ways of living, and giving the turning a symbolic weight with a large open aired moon-wide Christmas celebration.

Off-Topic: show

In the future, other WU citizen would travel to the snowy moon to visit at such time and join the festivities. A small sign of healing culture and identity.

A few months later the first batch of 6 Bastille frigates left the staple and entered training. 12 more were in planning, leading a strong Navy expansion push to more than 5 times what it had been before the great war.
(https://abload.de/img/20880501-thefirstbatcqtj4j.jpg)

...Or so it was planned. The Alp threat could of course not rest forever, and it seemed the age of preliminary scouting and probing efforts was drawing to a close. For the first time since their dismaying discovery, Alp perverted ships amassed in a serious, strike group resembling manner, and attacked one of WU's civilian ships in Alpha Centauri.
(https://abload.de/img/20931117-firsttimethenjj33.jpg)

Since many other civilians were currently at risk, the still underprepared WUN had no option but to send its only yet battle ready aged war-era fleet to intercept.
..The result started with disaster. Given that Alpha Centauri's main base had little far ranging observation options, no knowledge about enemy positions existed before cutting into the system. It was assumed that hunting civilian ships and signaling harassment was the PLA's current main goal, but the leaders were mistaken.

Off-Topic: show

Such is the horror of going into battle with an AI (or ALP), as it likely had analyzed even all psychological levers before committing to action, thus intentionally seeding false leads here.
4 ships sunk in the first light of battle, - about a third of the ships that previously survived and won the great war against the CCP. Not a good sign if one were to be superstitious.

While AI might hold great analytical hindsight powers, the often very effective predictions it thereout deducts can still only make plans in the realm of things that can be imagined. Human military history however has shown that some of the greatest commanders would often derive their success simply from breaking all established norms, making the unthinkable possible. The crossing of a sea during storm season, the surprise armament of the lower peasantry, the sudden invention of fire that burned on water. In other words, chaos, and the subversion of expectation that some human minds were capable to come up with were exactly the right kind of tool to fight a data driven statistician major general. If there was no previous data, there was no planned reaction.
The current situation saw a projectile based fleet engaged in close combat with a vastly stronger and faster laser armed force, but with a retreat option in the back. All doctrines would have suggested a hasty leave towards the guarded rear, yet the Admiral perhaps recklessly decided not to let them have this win, ..leading his heavy troops directly into the Alps.
Only waiting a couple minutes on the other side, he would re-engage as soon as there was distraction in form of civilian freighters present, anticipating that the socialist hive mind would not expect another offensive any time soon and leave its post.
The tactic was successful and the back of the confused AI fleet wide open to the WUN's artillery.
(https://abload.de/img/20931127-002-aftersomzbko4.jpg)

..However, it was all for naught. The outdated munitions of the great war destroyer fleet could simply not measure up to the new standards set by the thrifty AI inventor(?). Their speed alone already made it difficult for the barely faster flare cartridges to even connect, but combined with their newfound jamming innovation, there was literally no hope of any of them ever finding a target before being shut-down mid flight.

Off-Topic: show

Thus, the WUN fleet still yet had to retreat that day, having to leave the remaining freighters to their horrible destinies. A great hit for the morale of the union, and also a wasted surprise that surely wont work again any time soon. WU leadership now saw the entry denial abilities of the new Bastille fleet as their only option for successful defense, though with there being now complete strike groups of CCP ships once again, one has to wonder about the required firing capacity before breaches could still be had.
To counter the dreadful one-trick defense situation that also made Earth's Sandman defense obsolete, some resources would be spent to quickly advance munition technology into the new Bialy principle propelled era as well, though that firstly required to figure out how to juice the more pondering reactors up for faster energy releases.

///
(*1): Even though this is my 3rd game in C# already, I did at this point in time not know that the AI gets an unfair extra turn after moving through a jump point. The initial idea was just to imitate Asean's successful instant fire and destruction of any breachers, but that isn't viable for a player empire, especially in this case where the superior engines of the enemy would move them 50kkm from the entry before I can even react, so 30k range Gauss simply wont do.
Quite a disappointing unexpected trap for a new C# players who happened to observe AI behavior. Hopefully it doesn't sink the game later on, but I have plans.

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on March 28, 2022, 03:14:24 PM

Red Tide at Bay
Against the end of the year, 5 new ships with 2 new classes arrived at Alpha Centauri and connected with the strike force there.

Off-Topic: show

Due to the danger of being wiped out by such a great fleet, and the WU flak frigate fleet still being in training, the Asean forces had withdrawn and consequently let some enemy from the Lacaille direction in. These Alp crafts proceeded to monitor Sol from outside the inhabited Jupiter radius. Shortly before new year however, the WU fleet was finally ready for its first run. Given that the PLA currently outgunned WUN in the short range, the old tactic of using a civilian freighter fortress as a shield would be attempted again.

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Given that some of the enemy weapons were so vastly devastating that a single shot would penetrate even the mighty megaton Venicia hulls, it was a somewhat risky approach. Intelligence had it on good ledger however that at least one of those PLA ships wasn't armed by anything but its propaganda sirens.
Upon coming closer and spotting the flak fleet's advance, they begin to fly evasive.

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Given their vastly higher maneuver, the flight attempt was easily successful, and seemed to confirm the theory that these were surveillance crafts that kept checks for the growing fleet at Sol's doorstep.

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The WUN wouldn't dine today, and the PLA ships likely later reunited with the amassing invasion force at Alpha Centauri.

The two spotted classes continued to arrive in pairs throughout the next half year, until the flak fleet could finally apprehend them at their cut-in.

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These vessels were indeed just scouting ships again, since no armor impeded that only 2 good hits could immediately destroy them.

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However, the speed of the enemy was so great that the second Alp ship could not even be fired at before screamingly vanishing into the dark.

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The flak cannons of the Bastille class found no easy firing solutions due to its limited range and bothersome slow reaction targeting system, which was bogged down by having to have the whole ship rotate first before all turret would have clear leading fire to the front. While this was a good design choice for defensive doctrines where minimizing the own cross section and armoring the front succeeded greatly, it turned out to be a serious drawback for these fast adaption close combat encounters, where a broadside or turret deck might have scored higher praise.
Something for the admiral to think about and adapt to.

Nonetheless, some rewards could be scalped off this first successful hunt of the brand new Bastille fleet. From this new blown out hull, the PLA's frightening jamming technology finally came under a microscope.
(https://abload.de/img/20940825-preciousecmttskbj.jpg)
[some tech lore]
Weirdly again, the electronics involved into their electrical attacks were more bound than current theory would allow, and a considerable foundation of their technique relied on drawing the enemies' electronics back into stronger entanglement as well. Their infinite multi-channel appearing attacks, in fact, were in actuality the effect of a simple single channel attack that merely forced every comm piece to listen to it by collapsing their current Uridium circuit to it in entanglement, and then directing the sensible electronics to the frequency used by the PLA dish.
What was more interesting about this however, was that this procedure gave at least some clues to what was really happening behind the mysterious Alp technology. While previous entanglement on the big ship bodies could not be traced to anywhere, due to their target being perhaps just 'another thing'(potentially anywhere), these dishes had to establish the entanglement to 'something'/'whateverthing' freshly on every attack, and by using much more traceable, not convoluted fundamental forces, like the EM-field in this case.
And so in irony, the jamming practice actually conveyed more intelligence than anything else so far, one of the main hauls being the confirmation that all entanglement of Alp tech was not random at all, but all directly or by proxy established towards the very same source or 'thing'. Their jamming dishes operated by keeping reserves of all uniformly entangled Uridium packets, which were then used to -in a complex procedure- copy those packets' entanglement to the enemy systems.

What this 'thing'/'object'/'phenomenon of forces' was that it entangled to, couldn't be clear exactly, but one thing was for sure. Whatever it was, its properties were so extraordinary, that even the risk of higher entanglement rate through it (..and thus usually worse ability to synchronize with the universe's expansion speed), still came out as a plus in total, as the 'thing' itself must somehow exist in an extreme disentangled state whose properties then "somehow" leaked over.
Although it was not impossible for Earth and Europa's scientists to in small amounts replicate this entanglement state by using some Alp wreck parts, further investigation was still prohibited for now due to the extreme danger that could lurk behind these physics that were not understood or even theorized about in hypothesis. ...Perhaps though it was simply the situation of having to connect to the central holy grail artifact of a communist AI steered death cult that send shudders down everyone's spines.
[/some tech lore]

Nonetheless, the insights not only lead to some ability to shield against the effect, but even devices that could replicate a similar tactic to use offensively, albeit only connecting to local objects, instead of a mysterious physical absurdity in the distance.
As soon as there was time, the current Bastille fleet should be ordered back to refit with the considerable advance.

Nine more months went by before the now somewhat more cautious cult AI made another timid step through the Lacaille cutting location.

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This time however, 12 fully operational Bastille frigates waited at the gates, and the admiralty had learned its lesson. In 2 groups of 6 they encircled the center in far enough distance so that the first move of the enemy (a 50k km step) could not bring them out of the 60k km action diameter of the flak turrets, leaving enough time to react.
The tactic bore fruit, and in an amazing and quick spectacle, both Alp ships were thoroughly wrecked.

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The "Palace" was quickly flown in in hopes to again capitalize on the quarry and perhaps gain another breaking insight. However, even the last probing was perhaps one step too far already, as the unauthorized connection to 'the thing' probably didn't go unnoticed:
(https://abload.de/img/20950309-001-anewthrer4kcj.jpg)

...Intelligence saw it likely that the whole dreaded strike group had finally made a move, and was currently closing in on the attackers of the flak frigate fleet.
There was not enough time to get them back to port, nor sufficient protection there anyway. Thus, the only gambling option left was to retreat the whole WU fleet and the 2nd Venicia behind the Lacaille cutting point, in hopes of being followed.

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If the Alp would occupy the cutting location however, Sol would be isolated, and in little time the PLA would surely find ways to engage the WU ships from the other direction, where positioning didn't spell advantage.

This plan was dire, and the situation once again an existential threat to all of humanity. The WUN leadership strained their heads in order to find a way out.
Thus, since the colonies themselves could still not be approached easily for the Alp invaders, a new idea emerged. Sol was easy to besiege as it only sported two avenues into the greater universe. However, this also meant, that it could easily be turned into a trap. If half the WU fleet could follow the way around and seal the Sol off on both fronts, in theory the invading force would eventually have to engage them at a loss:

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...Of course, this tactic once again hinged on the PLA not receiving any further reinforcements, which was unlikely, as even as of this moment there were more forces passing through Alpha Centauri.

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///
So, this is the state where the game is at. This game took place between May and October last year. I haven't played since because I wanted to work up to the point of documentation first, which means I will now slowly return to action.
Perhaps this situation spells doom anyway however, since, -imminent invasion aside-, there are 2 fundamental strategic problems.
- Firstly there is a soon to hit Uridium crunch that amongst many negative effects will upheave the maintenance abilities of WU (and my already limited outside sources are now cut off).
- Secondly, the design philosophy of my fleet is not at all cut out to engage such enemy. As mentioned before, I was half aiming at imitating the successes of my Asean allies at JP defense, before realizing that I couldn't do so with short ranged weapons.(well, as you see I can work around to get at least one shot, but still not enough)
In this game I wanted to realize a fleet of mainly anti-missile point defenders, with some MIRV artillery big-cruisers mixed in between for attack. This is more RP and style, although it would incidentally have also turned out very effective against this kind of enemy, ..if this spoiler race was still operating as in VB6 that is. In this past game (http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=8417.0), but beyond the point documented (although I actually still have all the labeled screenshots), I actually beat this very enemy with even one TL less than now, and could do so thanks to extreme stealthy artillery, mixed with legions of point defenders.
Well, but back then they were missile users, while at least in this game they seem to focus on beams solely.(don't spoil me if that is a wrong assumption however :P)

Anyway, so the current situation sees me with these resources that I can see:
- 100kt empty shipyard which was planned to be used for said artillery cruisers (..but the realities of the game keep forcing me into other tactics than RP, so I might end up repurposing it)
- 2 8kt shipyards that build the Sandmans but could be repurposed now for new orbital defense or some sort of destroyer design.
- Measly 10 fighter factories, because due to lacking management in this version (but to be addressed :D) I didn't plan to use fighters at all.

Well, since missile tech is also better now, I will probably end up building fighters nonetheless, because as I see it, to go against a faster beam-only fleet, I just have to use 'even faster' high volume SRM planes, combined with a fortified airfield.(so maybe one 8kt SY towards an SRM orbital) At least that seems to be fastest most feasible response.
Then the 100kt shipyard probably must be misappropriated for a carrier, since I need to push the line a bit outwards to survive economically.

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on April 08, 2022, 02:46:19 PM

The Fighters for Europa
Aside from its ground batteries, Europa and Sol were left without defense and isolated. To address the lacking arsenal and implement the new advances in Bialy thruster technology, a new series of missiles was introduced. The lunar Sandman batteries were now retracted and defending the four moons of Europa, leaving Earth open and in responsibility of the other unions, who however had gained much strength throughout the years. The Sandmans should carry the first missiles of the new series, an evolution of the previous SRM adapted for the new fighting ways of the ALP with some resistance to their jamming attempts:
(https://abload.de/img/20950309-newddosmissi52kza.jpg)
The Distributed Denial of Spaceflight missile plan was nothing else than a more advanced copy of the massive defense overload tactic from two generations ago that had once beaten the PLA fleet already. Seeing how the Alp also seemed to continue to focus on raw close combat fighting power, it was heavily expected to work in the same way, though the ways of an AI are mysterious, so the guard and alternatives should be kept up.

In addition a smaller and more agile missile without the EW capacity would be developed.
(https://abload.de/img/20950309-smallerkaspegoj74.jpg)
These were intended for the WU's replacement strategy of the old destroyer fleet. As the historic fleet was getting scrapped...
(https://abload.de/img/20950825-wescraptheol9pkyu.jpg)
...a quick to raise emergency fleet was needed. With no considerable shipyard place available after the frigate expansion, decision was made to instead protect the Union with mass produced in-system short range fighter planes.
The first model of the new Eurofighter would carry 14 of the new agile missiles into combat each, meaning just 2 of them would nearly reach the firing volume of a full destroyer already.
(https://abload.de/img/20950810-aneweurofighkikz3.jpg)

As a support and scout plane, their missile strikes would be guided by a reinvention of the french Mirage.
(https://abload.de/img/20950810-anewmirage8skd0.jpg)

Meanwhile the WUN managed to use the distraction of Asean civil craft to extract the flak frigates and freighters from behind the Lacaille cutting point. However, in the coming month the Alp blockade continued slaughtering Asean freighters in return.

Off-Topic: show

In response to this emergency, Asean united force with the South American Alliance, who for the first time in their history had a amassed significant fighting fleet as well. Although somewhat outdated, their numbers actually currently even exceeded those of Asean, featuring about 60 battlecruisers. However, their variety, military discipline and experience was lacking, causing them to sync up their operation poorly:

Off-Topic: show

In consequence Asean was forced to engage first with the Alliance reinforcement still weeks behind. A terrible match against an AI that knows to slip through every strategical gap like water through a punctured cup. After losing 5 battlecruisers and 2 escort cruisers, Asean amazingly managed to take down one of the large caliber armed Iah classes.

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Despite this early success however, all of the Asean battlefleet was destroyed over the issue.
(https://abload.de/img/20950402-003-despitetrmk2u.jpg)
A complete disaster and not easily swallowed. In the coming days Asean would accuse the WU as dishonorable for allowing the civilian slaughter to happen and not partaking in the suicide run.
WUN stood by the position that their intervention would have led to nothing but further losses and impeded humanities long term chances of engaging further Alp reinforcements.

In the next two weeks then, the SOU fleet was befallen by similar tragedy, as the PLA suspiciously traced all their positions before they could combine, and thus step by step took them apart without Sou incurring any cost on the Alp's side.

Off-Topic: show

Following the complete dismantling of both fleets in this disaster maneuver, the UK navy and WUN were now the only factions with any respectable military might, which pinned all the public's hopes onto them and their strategies instead. Although Asean had their grievances, they could not shift the blame of their own failure to such a degree that this public pressure would disappear, and so they came to somewhat support the WU's plan once again.
SOU on the other hand was already fully behind it and quickly readjusted their resources to help with the necessary WU infrastructure:
(https://abload.de/img/20961117-souarehelpinytjli.jpg)

A month after the incident, combined intelligence of the unions found an Alp spyship directly under the sun, apparently relaying Asean and Sou fleet movements to the besiegers.

Off-Topic: show

It was quickly chased away, and thus was solved the riddle about the Alp's accurate fleet maps. Too late, since the unions navies were already defeated.

Since there were no further options for distraction, it became difficult to exfiltrate the remaining deep space ships. Currently there were 2 Trondheim freighters, 2 Lackmus survey ships of the Max Planck Fund and also the large Venicia "Dyke" freighter who were left stranded behind the entry points. The stalling of the Venicia's route meant that the Uridium rich system of Amsterdam could not be built up further. As a consequence, some mining infrastructure was moved to the Wolf comet, where some large Uridium deposit could still be found.(though still not enough)
Also returning from the Amsterdam route was the WUN's only colonist transport in form of the Trondheim ship "Arbor". It accidentally cut into Sol without being clear and consequently got destroyed by the iron curtain blockade.

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Nearly a year after the start of the complete Sol isolation siege, Mars military research had successfully applied the Bialy principle in form of small exhaustible burst nodules onto missiles.
(https://abload.de/img/20960126-marsmilitary6ujid.jpg)
These quick last second directional thrust explosives would greatly enhance last second displacement of options which should help to negate some thrifty Alp ship evasion attempts. Both the DDoS and Kaspersky missile designs will experience an update that should take them to nearly 50% expected connection chances.(scrambling attempts already factored in)

Looking at the Jovian year cycle, and given the optimistic assumption that the Alp forces wouldn't engage in full invasion soon, the latest that the DDoS armament should be completed would be in around 8 terran years, as at that moment the Lacaille cutting point would be dangerously in range, making it almost a certainty that the PLA should finish their plans before this juncture.
(https://abload.de/img/20960521-wehaveatmostchk2p.jpg)
At current capacity however, giving the Sandmans a full set would actually require 9 years thanks to increased cost and always continuing labor shortages on Europa. This is expected to be combated by slight facility expansion, as well as job shifts once the last set of 6 flak frigates finishes construction and their yards return to storage on moon Io.

After around 1.5 years of siege, the profit margins of the WU big shipping ventures looked dire. Forced isolation had put their expectation of investment return for long range freighting on ice, and so, finally, instead of letting the ships go to rust from inaction, a dire plan was formulated to put them to use. Around 60% of all vessels of the combined shipping lines would try to breach the Alpha Centauri cutway in hopes of re-establishing the route.

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Since no military dared to even look, and the former occupiers at moved to the Lacaille position, it had actually been unclear whether the position was still fortified. However, given the frequent Alp activity in Alpha Centauri, there was little actual hope, and so the rich, life scorning billionaires sent wave after wave of their investments and "human capital" to meet their end. The move was, presumably, to save on maintenance cost rather than an actual convincing hope, but the current law system granted too much freedom to the enterprises, should they somehow manage to convince the free sailors of their idea.
Nevertheless, government restrictions followed the incident, and public documentation of the greed that let to the event was sure to fill the contemporary broadcasts and historical records for some lengths.

The first test
Just a month after the incident, the first field test of the Eurofighter design and plan was in order. To ensure that the concept even had the value to continue pursuing it, WUN needed to prove that they could successfully close distance, fire their payload to target, and disengage without incurring loses or being chased too far. Thus 4 Eurofighters and one recording scout plane were sent for a test flight to poke at the Lacaille barricade:

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Stage 1 saw the enemy engage only at very close distance, proving that the planes flew much under their radar, which was good.
(https://abload.de/img/20961201-001-engagingz5kdt.jpg)
Stage 2 saw some training issues leading to one early fire, but simply resulted in a learning experience that could easily be corrected at a serious attack.
(https://abload.de/img/20961201-002-thereare0kjts.jpg)
Stage 3: Upon entering dark mode once more, the Alp ships quickly lost contact.
(https://abload.de/img/20961201-003-returnin15kly.jpg)
Thus the test was a full success. The WUN had a design that could hit but not be hit itself or endanger others. Consequently, since the munitions and fighters were very cheap as a bonus, the win over the iron curtain was now only a question of scaling up the production and thus time.
Since the test was relayed to the other navies and then publicized, all unions rejoiced at the sight of this glimmer of hope. Eurofighter toys began to sell to kids and adult Aurora players alike.

Half a year later, the last Trondheim out to stabilize the cutting procedures near the coveted Amsterdam system encountered an Alp-PLA scout.

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Luckily the ship appeared unarmed, but the incident also proved that the leninist AI was out to find every single member of humanity out there, which was frightening. Thus, all remaining ships were ordered to return and hide at a secure location in Lacaille to wait for their extraction.

The second test
One year after the concept proof, the first measure of the enemies absorption abilities was in order. WUN engages with 10 Eurofighters, unloaded 140 missiles.
(https://abload.de/img/20971212-001-10eurofi41k1c.jpg)

(https://abload.de/img/20971212-002-allmissiodkgz.jpg)
As expected, the blockade was able to endure this much, which puts the next test at 20 Eurofighters.

In the meantime WUN moves on with the extraction attempt that should safely bring back 3 of the 4 missing ships that waited for their chance in Lacaille. As the enemy had now confirmed experience of the a Mirage signal flare to be a sign of impending attack, it reflexively responded to even just a single Mirage (without fighter escort, which they couldn't see) as if it needed to mobilize all forces.
(https://abload.de/img/20980306-weuseonemiramgk8k.jpg)
The feint appears successful as the unarmed WU ships safely pass and vanish into the dark of the sun opposing direction without being chased.

Off-Topic: show

Soon after they reunited with command at port.

WU, seeing its fighter fleet steadily grow, was now looking at introducing a specialized base for the Eurofighters to use as maintenance hangar and training facility. Europa would in some time begin formalizing the structure of this new air wing of the navy with this idea as their headquarters:
(https://abload.de/img/20980510-plansforthesx3kne.jpg)
It should be capable to hold by itself the intended capacity of 100 Eurofighters next to about 20 auxiliary craft. As a downside, the nature of the organization meant that there would be some warmup cost before every use of the fleet.

The third test and the final prototype run
Another year after the second test, it was time for the finalization of the product. Referencing the data from the previous unsuccessful destroyer engagement at Alpha Centauri, the admiralty could predict to reach defense breaching capacity at just about the 20 fighter limit. Thus the third test, that tried to measure the impact effect of Kaspersky, employed 22 Eurofighters just to make sure it would happen.
(https://abload.de/img/20990213-001-anotherawmjyf.jpg)
(https://abload.de/img/20990213-002-lotsofmiz3jlu.jpg)

The Alp's arithmetically precise AI defenses indeed capped out at exactly 2^8 interceptions, leaving 52 missiles to breach the screen, of which 2^4 found their target. Their calculated minimal loss.
(https://abload.de/img/20990213-003-theirmiss9keg.jpg)

Since this test had ended the prototyping period of both, the Eurofighter, as well as the Kaspersky missile design, not even 2 months later all the remaining old Kaspersky missiles were loaded on 24 Eurofighters to see them off and make place for their improved finalized version.
(https://abload.de/img/20990403-001-anothera71kr0.jpg)
This time the AI had adapted their strategy for more chaotic and unpredictable patterns. Although that plan made it harder for WUN to gauge outcome in advance, it also meant that the Alp's defense necessarily became suboptimal in the process, causing a much larger fraction of missiles to go through the screen this time. In result the run unexpectedly severely wounded a ship of the Nyanga escort cruiser designation.

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Now the age of counter offensive had dawned. With the Eurofighters always exactly in reach of the Lacaille cutting point, there was no stopping their constant harassment, which would now only turn up, and be heavily boosted by the more accurate final Kaspersky design used in future runs. The only real limitation at these operations were at the moment the rather steep fuel costs, which however was an issue awaiting solution since the conception of the CT technology anyway.

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on June 02, 2022, 12:19:09 PM

Starvation 'Fuels' the Locust Swarm
At spring of the first year of the also spring-fresh 22th century, the Alp occupation force surprisingly made its move early. Though the reasoning was a mystery, they seemed to ignore all critical mining infrastructure, fleets and the population hubs at first, and set course to the rather unimportant mining sites of Mercury.

Off-Topic: show

However, after scanning a few places around the sun, the machine intelligence seemed to agree to focus on the issue at hand and set course right for Earth itself.

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Thus started the second direct threat of the united socialist east-west regimes to Earth. The last time the WU stood in defense, and although they weren't as involved at the location anymore, their available 34 fighter planes would answer to the maneuver help calls issued by the dominant two terrestrial unions.

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The aid request was nearly a formality however, as these unions, Asean and South, had not been sitting idly either. Considering the destruction and irradiation of Earth in the red cataclysm, and then the complete defeat of their combined fleet just a while earlier, it was nothing short of a miracle to see these cultures transform into a revision of themselves towards societies where values of conscientiousness and an industrious attitude became the core vein. Without needing regulatory pressure from above, people or survivors of this generation of hardship, -the generation of strife, as by Strauss-Howe Generational Theory-, had burned away all unnecessary fat and weaknesses, and were forged into a competent populus of powerful and capable individuals that together worked to herald in a new golden age.
Recognizing that, it was still surprising to see their comparably small industrial base emit such resistance. Despite the recent losses, Asean had already recovered 17 escort- and another 17 battlecruisers.

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More importantly however, after the WU re-allocating its orbital defenses to the Galilean sector, Asean stepped up to fill the gap, fielding a whole of 50 newly built state-of-the-art orbital beam bases.
The South American Alliance wasn't too far behind either, having rebuild an incredible mass of 50 battlecruisers despite losing their entire fleet just recently. Even Britain fielded 10 dreadnoughts and 2 missile bases by now, and signaled it would join the other factions in Earth's defense for the first time in history.

..Considering all this, it was surprising to see the machine AI still committing to an attack, and indeed..
(https://abload.de/img/21000311-05-alpdisengqvjhb.jpg)
..just a short firefight later, the small invasion force had been dealt serious damage, sinking 7 of theirs for 7 of ours, thus forcing the rest to flee in what shame the Leninist machine could feel. After developing some emergency protection protocols for an Earth invasion eventuality, the former electronic warfare screeches of the Alp became confused screams of agony(audio download) (https://cdn-108.anonfiles.com/p3E73al2y2/84a08b78-1653934342/ScreamsOfAgony.mp3)(*1), that were almost a delight to listen to from safety.

Some wounded stragglers were left behind, so the WUN fighter squadron was ordered to use the opportunity to enact the first field test of the new Kaspersky II missile, since there was one lone point defense ship for ideal performance gauging.
(https://abload.de/img/21000311-06-wecloseinovjzo.jpg)
Slain near Apophis.

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(https://abload.de/img/21000311-08-firstuseo1ojnd.jpg)
...Apparently it had no working firing computer anymore however, and sank without resistance.

Now it was time to check whether the close Lacaille siege was really abandoned, so WUN dispatched a scout Mirage.

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The formerly wounded Nyanga was left behind, so the fighter force took care of it.

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The siege had indeed been lifted, and the frigate guard on the Lacaille mirror point was soon restored, re-opening the galaxy.

The clouds divide, the light reveals
With the formerly destructive occupation force being dealt justice in this manner, one had to wonder what went wrong with the supposed genius-mind artificial intelligence to be so thoroughly mistaken about the Earth's defense capabilities. It had invented so many technological wonders that seemed to prove its superiority, and had collected data on Sol with its spy ships for many years, but then couldn't help itself to still commit serious strategic errors. There was also the matter of their suspicious selective shortcomings, like their complete negligence of missile technology, or what appeared to be a tofu (https://hongwrong.com/foamed-plastic-found-as-construction-material-for-new-housing-in-central-china/)-dreg (https://www.visiontimes.com/2021/07/12/dangerous-tofu-dreg-projects-remain-a-persistent-problem-in-many-parts-of-china.html) armor philosophy, as even their biggest military ships were rather brittle under short sustained fire.

The recent derelicts left behind not only military ships for the first time but also even one model of the most prominent Iah type dreadnought. The WU was quick to send out one of the massive Vencia industrial freighters to investigate in hope to answer some of these burning questions that had been persisting since the Alp's appearance.
The investigations resulted in two main and game changing core revelations.

o> Firstly, the AI steering the implanted nightmare machines was surprisingly primitive. It was previously assumed, that the neural network structure embedded into the devices had at the very least evolved itself, seeing how it managed to copy to higher capacity computers and even directly into certain brain regions. In reality, -though achieving optimal adaption-, it never left its route core mission and scope, which simply was to terrorize the mind with Leninist ideology with no stop cap in obedience height defined. No more, and certainly no less.
While that undefined goal gave rise to its viral survival and transmigration skills, the real behavior change of the infected minds was instead proven to be an emergent effect. While the network whipped the mind up, it did not direct or even "think up" its action in any way, and instead it would still be the brains themselves that filled the gaps and made the decisions that would serve to ease the admonishing pressure.
Given how eerily uniform the responses to this suggestion throughout all affected individuals were however, it may be save to judge the case to exist in some sort of grey definition zone. If a fire was lit under a persons feet, was it really fair to say that it was entirely the person's choice to recoil?
So perhaps the Alp was merely a new motivation engine, whose merging with human physiology produced an entirely new entity that wasn't either of the two original sources.

This theory had amassed many technical proofs in short order, but the final evidence came when it was cleared that the only reason the new CCP didn't use missiles was ...that there was no training data from the first war available, as they never came to fire one back then.
Hence, the machine judged them as thoroughly ineffective, which is a thing only the most basic neural networks tend to do when digesting such faulty biased data. And so, even though its strictly uniform motivators produced quite machine-like results in behavior (sometimes with humans acting like fulfilling literal unthinking program code in fact {NPCs?...}), it at the same time certainly did not create any supermind geniuses, for it was still the human mind interpreting.
..Which of course gave quick rise to next question and revelation.

o> If there was no advantage in reasoning, then where did all the sudden revolutionary technology come from?
Finally some real salvage other than passive radar dishes could be dug up to shed some light on this matter:
(https://abload.de/img/21000413-wearenotdoneslk2f.jpg)
{some tech, but also lore ahead}
Mainly this included their scrambling technology, targeting computers, their extremely powerful laser weaponry, and -most interestingly- working models of actual primal element fusion reactors.

All this technology had the same principle in common that was already found on the scout wrecks years before. As previously hypothesized, every piece relied on the same established entanglement to some mysterious extremely low energy state artifact in unknown distance, which consequently bestowed unique abilities stemming from such low energy perspective.
Highly sensible sensors and fire controls? Their 'listening' was calibrated to literal sub zero-point energy levels, meaning near none internal system static that could impede noticing the hair-drop 2AU away.
High-frequency laser weaponry? X-ray photons that normally can't be bundled by conventional mirrors into the weapon-needed quantities could simply be birthed into existence in required amounts. Utilizing a restricted zero-point spawn/relayed-excitation method, the extremely low background energy made equally extremely fine vacuum photon vibration modes a normality.

The finding of the working fusion reactors were a big surprise however. One would have thought that having access to such high density power generation methods would have lent itself to equally stronger engines, yet their output was only used for realizing vacuum tuned virtual x-ray photons. The most promising rationale behind this was that the extremely fine magnetic control offered by the low-energy state entanglement was simply not usable and therefore reliable in some situations. The reason behind this hunch was the Alp ships' overall radical change in propulsion philosophy.
The hull and its engines had in fact completely abandoned the conservative principle of pumping purified electrons through the hull and thus averaging it to stronger disentanglement/synchronicity with the lightspeed true universe expansion velocity. The method that the Alp had instead adopted was more alike to the tunneling principle used at flat-gravity mirror points. Thus, their hulls constantly worked to synchronize themselves and the space around them with some (very) distant location in order to hopefully achieve a macroscopic tunneling effect. Although it was notably impossible to actually do it in the turbulent distinctively non-flat space that made up nearly all areas, achieving an actual macroscopic tunneling of the ship was apparently not the goal. Instead, it appeared the ships were instead translocating... the space, the energy(?) around, to the artifact?

Tunneling a hole into reality
Testing the remains of their military hulls in safe orbital laboratories showed that their vessels lacked any notable engine whatsoever. Instead of increasing purification and thus 'disentangling' themselves, the Alp ships would use the inverse method and increase the hulls entanglement to the low-state artifact. ..But there was a serious misconception among the unions' scientists about what the nature of that artifact truly was, for it was not just an object that was found, not a strange matter sun, or a laboratory product.
For the Alp ships to even attempt a tunneling procedure to the artifact, the artifact must be a region of space itself.

To investigate this baffling conclusion, a quick science excursion was started through the newly reopened Lacaille route, as it was clear that the implications of this finding would yield some disastrous and visible results for our galaxy and more. Within a years time, the manifestation of the horror could be confirmed..

(https://abload.de/img/21010304-wefoundthesowmj9u.jpg)
(Location:)

Off-Topic: show

Terrifyingly close to Sol, a breach in the expanding universe had realized itself. Yet another aberration of nature, throwing its sinister shadow, snuffing out the local sun, and producing darkness of a grade that physics had not allowed before.
Scientists were quick to brief military and government leaders on to what they were looking at.

A popular idea of the concept of multiverses thinks of them as completely different realities, perhaps a fork of all the options of causality, or merely other universes separated on some imperceptible 4th+ spacial dimensional axis. Rarely however is it understood that the 3 known spacial dimensions would already be enough for other universes to be with us without touching.
Though space might be expanding and stretching, models of our universe coming of age don't necessarily imply the creation of spacetime at its birth, meaning, spacetime could have been here before. And if it was here before, it could be large, and in fact have other regions, where other universes developed or spontaneously malformed themselves in an unknown freak twist of physics into existence.
Thinking of space as a plane, there could be a vast sea of compacted nothingness (way more 'nothing' than the emptiness between galaxies), only rarely interrupted by the fungal bloom of insular universes.
(https://abload.de/img/170612-multiverse-mn-k9kv6.jpg)
(illustrative exaggeration: the separation would be much larger than depicted)
These locations where the local expansion at least briefly exceeded the much faster expansion of the absolute void of non-existence all around, could bubble up by sheer coincidence, but eternally be separated from their other brethren for the void eventually always expands faster, and reabsorbs them once their own internal engine slows.

Though it was all hypothesis, the mere fact that a whole space with such low zero-point levels that undermined universal fundamental constants evidently existed in the 25 Ursae Minoris (soon to be renamed "Siberian Bear") aberration, lend a lot of weight to the "outside void/ insular universes" model, for only there a horrific wintry waste of energy hunger was introduced as a region.
It was unclear how and when the CCP managed to access the region in the first place, but poor safety ethics in their tunneling procedures, or perhaps even earlier attempts at copying from non-flat space might have played into it.(arguably, such an experiment must have taken place at Ursae Minoris, and it was from that system, that the first -still CCP looking- batch of erratic behaving ships first entered Alpha Centauri at the last battle of the war)

Whether accident or not, it was the irony of destiny that it should be the west-east CCP that would stumble upon a place that had intrinsically nothing but terrors to show, sought only to expand and steal other places riches and efforts.
(https://abload.de/img/indexcakp5.jpg)
The word "dimension" was popularly often misquoted as meaning "alternative reality or universe", and so this terrifying starved place far from the light, driven to expand by constant hunger, also came to have a popular misnomer: "The communist dimension"

Traveling at the speed of hunger
"An army marches on its stomach" they say, but upon exact reading of the phrase, one can notice the other interpretation of it hiding under the obvious one. The communists long figured out that an empty stomach coupled with promises of being granted nutrition 'gifts' can be just as motivating and also obedience inducing. Although the late China held roughly 19% of the worlds population, they only had about 10% of all arable land, leading them to buy up and store extreme sums of estimated 50% of all the world's grain reserves. ..And yet their people still starved on the regular, for the party wanted it so. It was no surprise that, given the opportunity, they would find a way to turn this winning principle into a technology.

Similar to a sail or a turbine held into a stream, the Alp ships exploited the extreme fundamental energy state imbalance between our universe and the null-void they heretically summoned, which jolted them forward as vacuum decay around them swallowed up what the fabric of space could give. (OOC: Good video on vacuum decay (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gc4pxTjii9c))
For every second that the PLA ships moved through our space, more energy was sacrificed to the entangled hole, feeding and widening it, and increasing its abilities to drain the universe's energy all on its own as well. It was a pact with destruction incarnate, a true sacrilege against all existence, reminiscent of the (chinese)CCP's historical intent to incinerate the Earths ecology for their glorious nation to be able to step up a little.
A self defeating tactic only employed by the desperate loser, and now also fired on by near unthinking flagellation machines that demanded results at literal all costs.

Who knows what happened to the first poor sailors that were drawn into the null-void between universes. Looking at the extreme circumstances they must have faced, it is possible that it was only then when the neural implant really started its amok. Judging by the Carnot limit physics that their 5 times faster 'heat/energy pump' propulsion method implied, the expansion rate/low intrinsic zero-point energy of the void would have its time flow by factor of billions faster. Thus, even when instantly setting for return, perhaps their ships were stuck there for decades, with no progress on their propaganda demanded goals, perhaps causing the network to press too hard.
All speculation, and many unanswered questions still existed about the origin of their materials if the universe separating primal space was truly empty.

Thus was also solved the riddle on why fusion energy could not be used as their propellant, for their mastering of it relied on accurate magnetic control that only existed relative to our universe. In other words, the generators were simply not working in the null-void, and were only prepared for the return.

Feeding them missiles back
The WU and the other unions had now to figure out what to do about this expanding hazard. It was certain now, that the war against the Alp could not stay a defensive one, for even a successful defense would eventually lead to defeat. As the recent fighter tactics had been proven to be a success, and the Leninist AI turned out much more primitive and thus likely susceptible to more tactical traps, WUN moved to focus their efforts into developing humanities first carrier strikeforce, that would bring these winning planes directly to the enemies doorstep to hopefully eventually contain them in Sibiria.

For this purpose, at least 2 ships of the Cloister class were issued, each one capable of transporting 50 fighter planes next to some useful utility crafts.
(https://abload.de/img/shipcloisterwdkpx.jpg)
Ship model:

Off-Topic: show

The first one assumed to leave the staple in about one and a half years.
(https://abload.de/img/21010201-firstcloiste8jjbv.jpg)

Since extreme combat endurance was absolute imperative in order to not risk these expensive assets, the civil industries would reinvent the former Trondheim freighter design into a strictly military supply caravan. The vision was to have many of these suppliers be filled and at hand within the fleet at all times, while others were flying back and forth to replenish the reserves. Overpreparation should become the WUN's new philosophy.
(https://abload.de/img/shiprequisitiontujee.jpg)

///OOC
*1: These screams are actually from the beginning of the Shanghai lockdown (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J7weoXizEGU&t=748s) and the resulting food shortage recently. It has only gotten worse since then, and now spreads to Beijing.
Ahhh, but what would communism be without people suffering under their government on screaming levels, or any artificially induced starvation? The trademark must be upheld, or history will forget their distinctive glory. (also brought to you by: soon to be worldwide famine thanks to increasingly socialist aligning western countries)

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on June 27, 2022, 10:57:32 AM

Episode Wu'an: The Return of the "Zi"s
The recent maneuvers had shown that the WU navy had need for some safe reconnaissance options for which the costly and easy to spot and bring down Bastille frigate was simple not suited. The Commodore's in charge would thus often misappropriate the Dessault Mirrage fighters as independent scout planes, a role for which they weren't intended.
So to tackle this obvious emerging need, another plane model was to be added to the roster of the carrier forces, and also to Europa and Chateu land bases: the pure blooded scouting plane Captor Albatross:
(https://abload.de/img/shipfightercaptoralba5sje6.jpg)
(https://abload.de/img/shipfightercaptoralba00jpl.jpg)
In comparison to the Mirage which was designed a Wing escort, the Albatross had both twice the range and twice the detection distance, while still being fast enough to escape any approaching Alp threat. Additionally, it could actually survive on its own for a month or more, making true intelligence and patient observation missions a possibility, and all this for cheap no less.
Three planes were ordered for each carrier, and their reported merits and design already made them a Captain's favorite in the lobby.

Although the WU and other Unions were doing reasonably well all things considered and slowly making progress in their resistance, there was another problem brewing up in their midst that had almost become forgotten again:
(https://abload.de/img/21010902-socialistunrxyjv9.jpg)

Just as after WWII, the Strauss Howe Generational Theory suggests it takes about 2-3 generations, or 60 to 90 years for the critical lessons to be forgotten once more. The current generations around the Sun were reminded daily of the consequences of socialist teaching through the historic documentation of pre-war splendor which contrasted so starkly with the harsher life they were living in the aftermath. These circumstances helped for now to not let the beast grab on to either decadence or class injustices that did almost not exist anymore here.
But if history taught anything, it is that the will to power arises naturally amongst some human individuals, and that those will search and find a way to reinvent the old recipes or twist the public perception to find a loophole in the new constitutional history-hardened fortress. The early 2000s evolution of the Marxist formula was one of such new inventive attack angles, as it shifted the trodden and long unmasked class warfare vector into a race and gender injustice narrative, -cultural Marxism-.
Through these observations it has come to be known that history doesn't actually repeat, but merely rhymes, for there was always a new trick to get the bowling ball rolling. Cultures that insisted too strongly to prevent the exact same evil from the past (e.g. Germany with their "never again" slogan), actually left themselves open to ideological fanatical subversion by the same but slightly altered methods, for their antibodies were too specialized and failed to identify the actual common root tactics/outcomes of the attacker's actions.
Because even so the levers pulled to initiate the reaction might adapt to the times on every new instance, eventually history did repeat after all, as total control could only be established by enacting the very same policies every time: Retracting individual freedoms, eliminating or subverting the free press, attacking the independence of the judicial, scrubbing the military to sort out the disloyal, using the intelligence agencies and justice department to go after political rivals (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mscsaGsQosU), and eventually canceling all separation of powers to cement the regime.
At some point of political conflict, in which two sides might still be accusing each other of being the true evil, the veil eventually lifts once one side openly goes down that road, so the actual autocrats could be clearly identified. Amongst other identifiers, no person educated in history and the evolution of modern political theory would ever push to install state controlled censorship (https://www.wsj.com/articles/biden-establishes-a-ministry-of-truth-disinformation-governance-board-partisan-11651432312)(one recent of uncountable examples..) or propose to centralize the powers beyond the absolutely necessary, if they hadn't the intention to build up an autocracy of some sort.
(https://abload.de/img/quote-power-tends-to-5ijki.jpg)

One more step in the devolving progress however was often overlooked: 'The disarmament of the public' needed to take place before any tyranny could truly and confidently stand.
The Amsterdam system was the furthest colony from Earth, and in fact the only colony that was more than one cutting away. When the new mindslaved CCP begun their siege of both Sol and Alpha Centauri, Amsterdam became strongly isolated for years, which was especially damning for them, as they still relied on regular shipments to build up their subsistence.
..Lack of communication, social strain and fear of an enemy were a known constellation to divide cultures and be a seedbed for usurping powers to clip that distant branch. Yet, considering the stark cultural foundation of anti-socialism of the WU, it was still a surprise when in February 2101 word reached Europa that the acting interim governor of Amsterdam had ordered a buyback campaign on the public gun ownership, forcing -with some little public support- this highly endangered outlier to become even worse defended and dependent on its government no less. Reasons given were crisis rights due to the immediate danger that demanded more of the defensive supplies going to the armed guards, and also apparently a vague narrative of "not making yourself a target", although details on this could not be extracted, as censorship had already set in.
The WU executive body grew worried as the signs were clear. Here seemed to emerge just another greedy individual or group that saw its chance to rule their own kingdom come once their ties to the controlling instances became loose. When Amsterdam then began restraining all channels but the official ones, it was obvious that something had to be done.
What the governing group there hadn't factored in was that the Unions' combined navies would actually succeed in breaking their encirclement (for now), and regain so soon the option to send for investigation. Hence, even though it was still a very risky move to sail in this strongly contested space, WUN ordered one more freighter with supplies and this time also a full military garrison regiment to be sent down the perilous path to Amsterdam. These were republican soldiers, -volunteers schooled in the philosophy of public, self-arising resistance-, who had no notion of loyalty to any government body, but only to the communities at home and those who they eventually ended up serving and become part of.

Off-Topic: show

The winds were fortunate, and the transit succeeded, uncovering what had really been going on.

[some skippable WU political history]
The interim governor had indeed fallen to the very ideals he was elected to fight against. Taking the inability of the WUN to defend even Sol as evidence, a public narrative had been spun that claimed if even such advanced military couldn't win, then why should Amsterdam even attempt to resist? Thinly veiled were his real intentions though, when he cynically even quoted Fidel Castro directly, "Guns for what? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyWWRWJoiLo&t=106s)".(*1)
Of course, he also knew of another true quote:
(https://abload.de/img/quote-political-poweresjib.jpg)
From the ancient times of warlords, over the consolidation of power through kings and empires, one thing has always held true, although sometimes hidden: Those who have the biggest stick around, rule the land. Be it the Japanese Hideyoshi era restriction of weapon ownership to the Samurai caste, the disarming of all 'enemies of the state'(curiously basically everyone) at the advent of the third reich (OOC: still stands today), the cement of a fragile regime only ever dries if the opposition is held as weak as possible.
In a republic however, the founding idea was that the government arose bottom up out of the people who should hold onto control, which is why the ultimate power should lay with them, and thus also the right to be and stay armed. Often the necessity of this setup had been challenged in the previous pre-CCP western world, for most of their countries managed to stay free without any public gun ownership after all. What was often overlooked however, was that at that time, the former USA were in a strong hegemonic position towards the whole western sphere, meaning all their allies were strongly dependent on the US's good graces and thus the West's corresponding governments held in check by the standing liberty ideology there. ..Yet, even despite all the public defense options, the US security apparatus was still relentlessly scratching on the republic's doors and foundations, constantly infringing and experimenting with ways to tip the balance of power and fulfill their frantic need of total control.
(patriot act, operation mockingbird, stop and frisk, dishonestly framed crime statistics // 67% of the massive number "gun deaths" are suicides, and after all other factors, only ~10% remain as the 'crazy shooter' murders as framed - over 86% of those committed by minorities, most often driven to crime by the government's own policies. No word about how nearly all these shootings happen in blue cities who already have the strictest gun controls around, yet also happen to follow 'soft on crime' policies that release even gun crime offenders back onto the streets in no time. ...Only a crisis leads to yearning for "control")
Surely, without resistance in the hands of the people, the fall of the West would have come much sooner under such motivated pressures, and eventually it did succeed after some likely intentionally escalated mass shooting event during the midst of the Beijing regime consolidation phase was used as precedent to enact complete constitutional denial in form of a "somebody anonymously demands you are 'unsafe' -> you lose your gun" law. The same show incident was even used to enable banning in the distant Chinada (https://nypost.com/2022/05/30/canada-moves-to-ban-sale-of-handguns-in-sweeping-bill/), even though its culture had nothing to do with it. Additionally the propped up massacre provided ammunition just in time to go against the still not subverted judicial powers (https://thefederalist.com/2022/06/23/blue-checkmarks-calling-to-dissolve-supreme-court-after-gun-rights-ruling-are-having-a-normal-one/).(OOC: also from official gov's side) A page out of the upstart autocrat's handbook.

Off-Topic: show

Though it was too late to completely disarm everyone before the complete overtaking, it was enough to tip the odds so that the split of the former US into red states and OURS regime became a necessary tradeoff, for the blue side was subverted.

The lesson out of all of this was easy: If the state managed to erect a monopoly on violence, then there was no Republic anymore. The state rights exceeded the personal rights, meaning the ownership contract of the government to the people was void on this account already, and, -going back to the foundational politic theory Lord Acton quote, as well as Mao-, the one sided power balance would and always has ended in tyranny ultimately, for even initially well intentioned leadership could not forever resist to resolve public discontent 'the easy way'(=beatdowns) given the tempting, unopposed option. The denial of the checks and balances principle.
Therefore the reforming of the previous EU into the grander WU corpus saw some panicked action regarding the revival of personal protection rights. Although the WU wouldn't go as far as letting every citizen roam around openly carrying large armaments like in the former US, there was ingrained provision for everyone to be able to own weapons at home, and be allowed to take them out for training events or even potential protest, given that an organized crowd above a certain size was moving.(quite the opposite of previous carry philosophy) Larger and more dangerous weapons such as tanks and even small warships could be owned by groups of declared common share or organizations with shared ownership.
Add to that the separation of governing bodies into small city/metro state units across Europa since its founding (initially to preserve original cultures from countries in one dome city each), and it was evident that decentralization was at the core of WU governance. A union after all, not an empire, like the eventually misnamed US.

All the more affront was the Amsterdam reversal of these fundamentals. The soldiers of the republic swept in and arrested the governor, then conducted deep investigations into the whereabouts of his enabling supporters. To on one hand gain public trust, as well as re-establish the original order, shipped gun supplies were distributed to the people, and additional arms stacked in public accessible reserve bunkers.
One of the tactics that had gone unnoticed in Amsterdam so far was enacted very early already. Like it had been practice in the West before, the chapters about socialism in public schools and universities were strangely cut ("what is holodomor?"/"the great leap forward?") or framed as false dichotomy (="these people aren't what we are doing, they are 180° on the other side!"). As journalism, teaching professions and public service have been throughout history consistently some or the lowest IQ subjects in universities everywhere, it was also here where the cult of weakness, the in napoleon-complex unified underachievers, the 'want without earning' philosophy always found a fertile seedbed to renew its foothold. From this institutional foundation, public opinion and the next generation were much easier to turn and propagandize, but not this time. A large program was started with agreement of the WU to re-introduce the history and consequences of communism as a compulsory information course into public schools, as well as guidance about the reasoning around the current founding principles. Additionally the WU decided not only for Amsterdam to make it part of this education to show what has become of the former CCP and the agony they now live in, ending with some great slogans, like "The ice cream van's siren sounds promising, ...but you still don't get in", or this one next to military show:
(https://abload.de/img/20540705-betterdeadth7xky1.jpg)
Though this last part was a trick-question/presentation, for the teachers were instructed to scold all those that would cheer on it. Breathing in propaganda (even when it is true) was not the goal, but education and forming of an inquisitive mind that can resist it. The socialists only win when these virtues and lessons are forgotten or twisted.

Off-Topic: show

Though not actually armed, the large city hall was rigged with show explosives, and a long fuse line went out to the streets towards a new admonishing monument that celebrated the rekindled republican spirits.
(https://abload.de/img/worker-male-characterryk3t.jpg)

[/some skippable WU political history]

The Window Closes
As if the internal unrest wasn't enough, 9 months later other movements in Alpha Centauri indicated the Alp-CCP had reformed their forces and would soon attempt a return into Sol
(https://abload.de/img/21020606-theremightbe8ljnz.jpg)

...This time however, the Leninist AI had come up with a new frightening trick to add to its war tactic:

Off-Topic: show

Maybe this was what all their gravity probing into Sol ultimately meant. By some unknown physics and wisdom that surely came from the null-void again, they actually succeeded at opening another cutting point into Sol, adding to the attack vectors that threatened humanity. WUN had so far followed a plan of moving fronts through the 2 planned carriers:
(https://abload.de/img/screenshot2022-06-271xkj19.jpg)

Eventually they wanted to encircle the abyssal system to gain time to think of a better plan and also free the routes to the colonies. Although this new breach was close to the Alpha Centauri cut, it still meant that to be safe while the carrier might be progressing, there had to be a "seal" applied, which might be too costly once more.
Something for WUN admiralty to think about, but also put back for this current predicament could only mean that the already intimidating Alp fleet in Alpha Centauri meant to unify with another one from a different location, and move in as one. ..At the Unions' current capacity, this could mean ultimate defeat.

One day later some precursor early scouts moved inwards and were greeted by a full wing of 50 Eurofighters.
(https://abload.de/img/21020611-01-theyseemtkbjiz.jpg)
To WU's great shame, the Goteborg survived despite not being particularly sturdy.
(https://abload.de/img/21020611-02-goteborgsxajbo.jpg)
Not a good show for the fighters who would eventually have to go up against many warships at once.

Just a week later, the real attack fleet arrives. They seem to originate from the new cutting point.
(https://abload.de/img/21020619-01-justaweeko4k4n.jpg)
The attack group halts and eerily awaits the WUN strike in stillness.

Off-Topic: show

..Another failure ensues as their thick defensive fire eliminates enough munitions to leave the targeted Nyanga only wounded.
(https://abload.de/img/21020619-03-failure-d87jv8.jpg)
This means that even 50 fighters might still not be enough to reliable dispatch one enemy ship, although they were certainly crippled beyond usability. The admiralty will consider responses.

Left to further fall in as the wing rearms, it seems the AI has finally wised up on the WU's situation and targets their critical Uridium mine on Wolf.

Off-Topic: show

..They destroy it soundly, leaving Europa no option but to move another mine over should the storm ever pass.

Off-Topic: show

Asean left 2 beam defence bases at an Earth Lagrange point for experiments, which was targeted soon after some civilian ships.

Off-Topic: show

The small post was destroyed, but not without critically damaging one of the large dreadnought Iah classes.
WUN seizes at this great opportunity and targets the wounded ship, but due to a synchronization error, -the first one so far-, salvos didn't align correctly.
(https://abload.de/img/21020622-03-duetoasyn01jfx.jpg)
Luckily the ship had no fire controls left and was dispatched even by a half salvo, incidentally adding useful intel to the guidebook of engagement procedures with the Alp.

Off-Topic: show

Though they caused the WU infrastructure much harm already, it was surprising to see that this little encounter had already turned the AI to switch into a retreat behavioral schema.
(https://abload.de/img/21020622-05-theremainfbkl2.jpg)

WUN hoped for a much needed breather as the expensive missile reserve had run out already, but then, only another 2 days later, the second fleet arrived...

Off-Topic: show

Without losing much time, they went after WU infrastructure once more, even going so far as to attempt to attack Mars directly it appeared. Luckily, there were ground batteries there of course.
(https://abload.de/img/21020626-01-theydaretbvkh6.jpg)
...Yet the AI has been running ~~on cheats~~ another new invention:

Off-Topic: show

Their scrambling technology received an upgrade for which the defender were not prepared. While they usually only attempted to insert their propaganda into all transmission devices, this time they managed to hastily get hold of just one identified commanding officer which it subverted by a novel evolution of their methods into a focused brute force attempt. With WU having no defense against such determined infiltration, consequently the whole defensive line got shot down and didn't fire even though hell was raining down on the planet.
Over half a million civilians were killed in the attack and many defensive installation received critical damage. If this would be a problem of the future, then the beam defenses might as well not be there. It seemed only orbital missile batteries were reliable after all.

For now their overtaking was at least not permanent it seemed, causing them to leave the assault as an act of terror while aiming for their next target, ...another mine.

Off-Topic: show

All of WU infrastructure was now at risk, and apparently couldn't even be fortified in the future with ground defenses anymore.

Another critical Uridium mining site, Mercury, fell in their eyes.

Off-Topic: show

The civilian operation and the mercenaries defending it there were not simply dispatched in a slaughter of a battle. No, these poor souls awaited a much more dire destiny, as the attackers landed with the surprising intent to capture the base, and with it ...the colonists minds.
The mercenaries and corporate workers were integrated into the communist nightmare matrix, starting to chant the manifesto, or screaming as their brains began to grasp the horror of Lenin's work in its entirety, and there was nothing that the dried out WU navy could do about it at this point.

The times looked more dire than ever. Mercury was now a real base from which the Alp could harass the system, all the while Europa was under constant surveillance from another team of scout ships.
As if this threat wasn't already on the level that the years long previous occupation had presented, another 2 weeks later, ..there was a third fleet.
(https://abload.de/img/21020713-anotheryetstukj0n.jpg)

Even stronger than the last one, they assumed position at their Mercury post and merged with the 2nd fleet to launch incursions from this vantage point onto Earth directly.

Off-Topic: show

In the first light of this renewed assault, many Asean beam bases fall quickly.

Off-Topic: show

However the damage from the counter fire causes 4 Iah dreadnoughts to flee from the scene very early in the fight, while the rest of the fleet resumes station at conquered Mercury base.
(https://abload.de/img/21020714-03-damagedfr4zk13.jpg)
Though it might seem like a little win, the fact stands that approaching Earth had previously resulted in obliteration of the Alp incursion, while it now left them wounded and thus with options to repair and regroup.
Things were going from bad to worse, but the truly worst was yet to come...

Off-Topic: show

...Not just being satisfied with just defeating the free Union forces in open battle anymore, they continued with their ultimate plan that they already started at Mercury and Mars: Not murdering, not conquering, but overtaking the minds of the free.

..The process apparently took 2 days, but then the nightmare intelligence hungered again.

Off-Topic: show

Although the cost were high, and even Britain lost one of its only bases, this time there were 3 loses on the side of the socialist locusts as well.

However, it was all within the scope of the Alp's plan it seemed. Shortly after the initial fire exchange, they once again deployed the upgraded scrambling technology. With the intelligence gathered from the mindjacked crews of the recently destroyed beam bases, they identified all the critical officer posts and took them over once more. In consequence, Earth's defenders stopped firing back for another whole minute, just like on Mars, leaving them to another slaughter.

Off-Topic: show

Since the control relied on the mindscramble of some individuals however, at least it couldn't last forever as the chain of command could move to fire-at-will. Thus, before incurring unnecessary loses, the strike fleet moved out of the system, likely for repairs and to return even stronger... .
(https://abload.de/img/21020717-03-theymoveowmj7b.jpg)

After the glimmer of hope from the recent advancement in Alp fighting tactics, the situation of the unions had now suddenly become more hopeless than it has ever been. WU's fighter fleet had three times in a row demonstrated lacking effectiveness, and despite grand 50% production expansion, it seemed the ammunition supplies could never become able to keep up with the sheer material the Alp was able to throw at them.
At the same time the at least mid-level defenses of ground based beam defenses seemed to have become mostly obsolete, for the enemy could always attempt hit-and-run tactics against them that must eventually tire them out to collapse without incurring any cost on the assailant.
The only defense left then were orbital missile bases, which were even more difficult to supply than the fighter fleet. In fact, prioritizing the fighter wing had caused that even the defenses of Europa had merely recovered 1000 of the 2400 missiles that would constitute just one full salvo, ...and it had taken years to get there.

All seemed to point that the historic win over the CCP, despite all the sacrifice, was in the end only a postponement of humanities ultimate destiny. The marvel incidence of the existence of US and their pioneer legacy one-of-a-kind freedom spirit had delayed it, ..until they still fell to it themselves, weakened by their riches. The emergence of the WU as its student had once more delayed it, ..but only at a cost that made them unable to fight its resurgence.
Maybe this was the answer to the Fermi Paradox. The Teeth empire had fallen under similar circumstances after all, and no further sign had been spotted that confirmed any advanced race had survived these inborn societal challenges. Perhaps the governor of Amsterdam was right after all, and there was no escaping for the lazy not-noble human mind but to fall into the think-traps of socialist autocracy.(and then kill itself under it)

[/Episode Wu'an: The Return of the "Zi"s]

//OOC:
(*1): Full talk with the Cuban resistance fighter: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyw3EvMHlh8 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyw3EvMHlh8)

Not sure what to do with this situation now. I was already demoralized when I had to realize the AI cheats at jump point transfers, which made most of my fleet setup unworkable. Now it seems it also cheats at avoiding ground-to-air defenses, so what beam defense is left, really? As I made sure to show in the screenshot, all the bases were on a firing policy, which had previously worked on Earth, but somehow not now.
Then consider that my AI allies also for some reason don't shoot back sometimes, and it seems pretty hopeless. I would take it if it was a fair game with a fair loss, but it isn't. The AI simply has some cheat like advantages due to problems with the mechanics. (perhaps the nature of player turn implementation has faulty consequences I would guess?)
..Well, I will try this some more now, but honestly, it would also be a good place to stop if the new version came out.
..Or I could counter the AI cheats with my own to re-establish fairness, though I don't know how. Suddenly appearing ammunition stockpiles, resources or ships, - they all seem dirty to me. Maybe a "server crash" on alien ships to gain time? That I could see I guess.

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on August 07, 2022, 11:35:23 AM

//Two comments on the last entry:
- I figured out why the anti-orbital emplacements wouldn't fire: Being relic designs of the last great war on Earth, they had only 3kps targeting speed and no ECCM. It was peek technology at its time, but against TL8 engine Alps with their slightly above 10k speed and 30 ECM, the turrets literally had 0 hit chance and thus presumably didn't fire at all. It would have been nice to get a notification, but it is also good that they are smart enough to not take shots they simply can't make. Horrifyingly, all colonies safe Europa are thus undefended, but I adjust.
- This added to the consequence that I had now decided to delete all ALP ships one time, and a second time some years later when I saw some new scouts. I made this decision, because the game would otherwise definitely have been over, since just a few days after above report there was an apocalyptic fleet coming in, while 2 whole other fleets of similar size had just been spotted in Alpha Centauri.
..There was simply no strategy that could have stopped this wave, and the list of existing ALP ships in the database altogether was endless. Let's see if under this massive spawnrate, the two deletions will even change anything, but at least I have a breather.

The Great Firewall
A new century had dawned on humanity. Looking back one could surmise every consecutive one to deliver more dangers and more challenges as the trend seemed to spiral towards greater chaos and threat the more power the human race commanded for itself.
Long since have the times past where humanity could for the first time extinct itself through unchecked nuclear reactions. Back then governments could still desperately try to hold hands over the tools of destruction, since the knowledge was arcane, difficult to replicate, and really only accessible for resourceful thrifty societies, barring the most hostile, irrational and thus dangerous regimes from accessing it.
The progress of technology did not halt however, and humanities powers grew forth and forth. Where once a gun or even just everyone's car was already a lethal power in everybody's hand that could easily kill another, now men commanded so much energy that said car was perhaps a private shuttle, which -juiced to maximum expansion synchronization- would develop enough kinetic force to wipe out a small city, and all that while humans also became more numerous than ever before.
It didn't take philosophers and scientists to figure out early for this terrible societal challenge to have to arrive eventually, although nobody had come up with answers towards what to do about it for over 100 years. Now finally a single crazy person could spell disaster over so many as if commanding private use nukes. Even average workers often had responsibilities, such as in power plants, refineries, laboratories or air tower guides, where apocalyptic energy laid at their fingertips every day. The margin for error in society became slimmer and slimmer with the consequences rising. The standard for society to be perfect was almost insurmountably high. The western valued world of individual freedoms had become a Jenga tower rocking on a massage bed.

The Alp knew about this too. It knew it didn't have to succeed in a complete overtaking right away to ignite the fuse on all the powder that its enemy had already prepared. Just a person here and there, which commanded enough energy, -not even a government official or officer-, and unprecedented decimation would ensue.
Following the last and hitherto largest incursion into Sol, the unions had seen such shift in strategy. Focused attempts infiltrated devices and sought for individuals it could reliably take as seedbed to make the Manifesto bloom into its natural red fire. The fact that it managed to get grip of some leading officers in the chain of the orbital defense cannonry command was merely incidental consequence of the weighting algorithm finding the application of resources most lucrative on those positions.

Yet, this change in war philosophy also spelled to expose an unexpected weakness. As was inevitable by the nature of this evolution, in order to actually penetrate complex electronic systems in most circumstances, the Alp methods had to become more refined and structured than just tunneling in malicious code broadly. It had started to 'think' about breaking attempts in the sense of strategizing intrusion stepwise, having a pool of prepared tools, and even using patience.
While all that appeared pretty terrifying on the defensive side of humanity, it also meant the screaming lunacy of the Leninist indoctrination code was perforce giving way to structure. ...A structure that could be exploited.
Given that the amorphous qualities of a full-scale artificial intelligence program made it naturally resistant against classical intrusion, the Alp was assumed to have no actual experience in real system defense. Judging by the information collected throughout their larger scale overtaking of ASEAN wreckage survivors recently however, the AI had now reformed into enough prepared code pieces to for the first time be vulnerable to electronic counter-attack.

..A scenario it had indeed been completely unprepared for. No data existed on this phenomenon, and thus no defense was to be had. Targeting the besieging forces that sat on the Sol cutting point in Alpha Centauri, the deep electronic telemetry of the Chateau colony launched what the military scientists had coined "The Great Firewall". It was a play on the old CCP Great Firewall, -a more modern Iron Curtain-, that hindered its citizen from grasping the reality of the real world outside of the authorities propaganda bubble, which was itself a play on the Chinese Great Wall. The irony seemed to be most approachable to the WU dignitaries in charge, as its newest incarnation should now instead keep China and the consequences of its ideas out of the civilized world.
Of course, this "wall" was less of a blocking nature too, and more on the proactive 'attack is the best defense' side. And whether the "firewall" denotation was really applicable was also made blurry, since at what point of human brain+machine fusion does hacking become a psychological attack?

Definitions aside, the project exceeded all expectations. The CCP occupation forces had their maneuvers scrambled, likely feared for reversed overtaking and their secrets being exposed, and quickly shuffled to screamingly recede into its territories at the abyssal void. The alpha predator that has never known pain reacts with utter panic when finally being given the taste of it.
For the following years, the Alp would keep out of humanities sight everywhere altogether. No doubt to further reform and adapt its methods, but still, a moment of respite. For once, a dawn of a new century started with the promise of some peace. Hacking and cybertech movies became a sensation for a while.

More win, more WUN
Since the waters were free for at least a short while, this was also the time to coordinate supplies, reestablish contact to the two detached colonies, and reinforce the fortifications if possible of all remote habitats in Sol and out. It was also the time to take a look at the rather extensive ship graveyard that had accumulated over the years in which the seas had been too stormy. Untold treasures may lay hidden amongst the numerous Alp derelicts, not to mention that Europa was running really low on essential resources that were abundant in all old ships.
Also a project was to finally clear what was behind the newly opened cutting point that the Alp had somehow opened up.

Off-Topic: show

To do this quickly and safely, a new tiny but enduring probe design had been launched that uncovered it to be a shortcut to Aberdeen, a relatively tame system that had already been close.
(https://abload.de/img/21021122-itwasashortcnzek2.jpg)

It was a shame though that there was now another attack vector towards Sol, since future strategem had provisioned only two main fleets that would press the circle around Ursae Sibiria. With this new front opening, there might be need to switch to a more mobile defense with early warning scouts far out that could make out possible attacks incoming. Sibiria could still be locked down at the end using two fleets, but it could not be done pushing step by step anymore.

After a year of expeditions, the Venicia Class Freighter "Dyke" had finished the inventory of all the Alp derelicts.(they curiously looked not much more ramshackle in their destroyed state than fully operational, giving cause to some anxiety and paranoia with the salvage crews)
The bounty of the operation exceeded the imagination. In the past all the meager spoils had stemmed from early scout ships that were barely militarized and whose sensible optics often crumbled under the lightest touch of laser fire, leaving little behind but recyclable material.
This time however, Dyke nearly exclusively fished out bonafide warships, leading to an impressive list of dubious artifacts:

Off-Topic: show

..Most notable of which were for one the null-void spawn laser cannons that managed to bundle the elusive, non-mirrorable x-ray light by simply summoning it via a vacuum excitation apparatus ring (kind of a 'well') in required quantities. The other were of course the 60 fully functioning magnetic fusion reactors.
Who would have thought that achieving a stable, non-explosive fusion reaction would in the end be a more challenging achievement than not only fast stellar travel and colonization, but even FTL communication and interstellar exploration too?
(https://abload.de/img/21030525-01-gidqu.jpg)
(https://abload.de/img/21030525-02-iidw1.jpg)
(https://abload.de/img/21030525-03-yrcm9.jpg)
(https://abload.de/img/21030525-04-mhdbt.jpg)

...Yet the Alp-technology, whose insight in from extreme low energy state upwards-building architecture was by their nature unmatched, managed to finally break this barrier, or rather tear it down completely. Old fusion philosophy was to heat a plasmatic substance onto thousands times the sun's core temperature to make the statistically very unlikely tunneling phenomenon happen at viable rates. The Alp method ingeniously engineered the fields around the conversely now extreme low-energy fusion material so that tunneling became one of the most likely paths freshly injected energy could take to manifest itself. Thus fusion became just a thing that could now practically be commanded, and at just a couple 100 degrees no less.
From one day to another, the WU was suddenly capable of building working plasma reactors, and have all other kinds of improvements related to sensitive machinery. There was also a great sense of relief that using the Alp methods in most cases didn't involve to outright make a pact with the devil of the null-void to function.
Of course, the exception to this rule was still their abyssal engine system, to which the WU still had no answer. Given the now abundant new supply, new conventional methods to use this sudden energy density could perhaps be thought up, but still lay a decade or likely more out.

In addition this was still yet far from all the secrets that the WU could extract. By perhaps next time attempting to leave critical working parts intact on kills, and salvaging them as early as possible, there were still advances in metallurgy, true x-ray firing (not the shallow imitation of current) and even some mysteriously yet higher form of fusion to be found, as the Alp apparently had figured out a way to recycle muons somehow, which facilitated true cold-fusion.
Advances in ability to fight their electronic intrusion, as well as mimicking it would of course also be welcome, but proceeded slowly.

In July 2105 the first Carrier "Clermont" and its strike group reported 100 percent combat readiness, thus giving WU the deep fighter operation capability for the first time.
(https://abload.de/img/21050728-thefirstcarrfyeo9.jpg)

Through the years and thanks to the advances out of the salvage, the WUN had come to revisit the Bastille escort concept as well. It was initially planned as both an in-system cutting point defense, as well as an anti-missile escort design for future true cruiser concepts.
With the appearance of the Alp however, it made no sense to leave these old ideas of warfare lying around and doing nothing. Consequently, plans were issued to drop the missile-defense role and refit all frigates into a more effective anti-ship role. Though still lacking to the wishes of the admiralty, the first iteration of such was the 'Diable variant'.
(https://abload.de/img/shipbastille-diablevam7fas.jpg)
It featured slightly reinforced armor, and replaced all its turrets with laser options. For the time however, it didn't incorporate any new Alptech advances yet, for it was deemed necessary to rather use the window of potentially quickly fleeting respite and make the designs at least somewhat usable first, - then worry about upgrades later.

In the following years, all the other victims of the war were cleared for their resources from Sol, until finally it had become time to even delve into Alpha Centauri and retrieve the honorable remnants of the old destroyer fleet that had once suffered losses here while attempting to save the civil freighter caravans. To shield the valuable Venicia freighter from potentially reappearing Alp threats here, this occurrence was also the first official mission for the Cloister carrier. Escort the freighter operation and use the symbolic act as a show for the recurrence and advancement of WUN naval might to the citizens and other unions.
(https://abload.de/img/21060203-undertheprotvmdh9.jpg)

At the same time the first true applications of Alptech were induced into a revision of the planetary defense program. The old great war anti-orbital artilleries had been revolutionary for their firing speed and precision against the PLA ships, but facing off with the new Alp threat with their combined tactic of maneuver and jamming as well as command subverting warfare, a completely new methodology had to be found for these weapons to have any reliability whatsoever.
Firstly, the new planetary artillery was now conceived to be massive. Large caliber, burst firing guns should tower over the surface and were to deliver punches that hopefully took out the thin foil Alp hulls in singular salvos rather than having to ablate them gradually like before. Incorporating some inherent command resistance and signal strategies (literally firing command by light signal) served to harden their defense on the information warfare front. Additionally, while maintaining the previous weapons' range, their tracking rate had gone up by more than factor x5 despite being so massive.
(https://abload.de/img/21070102-01-anewlargefxece.jpg)
These guns should be packed in units of 12, and though they required much time to reload, were overall much more powerful than the 72 smaller gun emplacements that were used previously. They however also took between 6-8 years to build, meaning humanity had to hold out until then by other means.

As an addition, though not currently needed, a fast firing anti-missile slug launcher was also fashioned from new sensor ideas.
(https://abload.de/img/21070102-02-complemennufnh.jpg)
Their deployment had low priority and was merely an intellectual curiosity at this point of war strategy. However, diversity begets the ability to adapt should the board change, and one may find one or two of these suddenly rise in value if, for example, the Alp should evolve again and rediscover its love for propelled munitions suddenly.

After merely a few years of total silence, new Alp ships arrived in the year 2107. It was the usual scout detachment that the unions had seen numerous times, but this time likely conducting sinister experiments for some form of resurgence plan.

Off-Topic: show

The Goteborg class escort was quickly shot down, but the Stockholm could yet escape the fighter contingents that were still at half strength at this point.

Inspired already by former small scout incursions of this kind, and then sped up in planning through the latest one, WUN finally finished and deployed the concept of a beam firing fighter plane, the Eurofighter Typhoon:
(https://abload.de/img/shipfightereurofighte0tiwz.jpg)

The design was very inefficient as it re-used very ill fitted engines from the original Eurofighter and had issues supplying the always bulky energy cannon that really wasn't meant to fit on fighter planes to begin with. The extreme maneuverability of the enemy however simply forced far ranging weaponry demand on any potential close combat design, as otherwise retreat and strafe tactics would always lead to misses.(the strange lessons that modern open terrain space combat teaches...)
Future iterations should also improve on the firing computer that was still somewhat behind the required standard for CCP interception. Yet, having the ability to finally use at least some close combat fighting ability against the Alp ships at all, would already be a boon on conserving the strained munition reserves.

With this last step fulfilled, a year after the incursion both carriers were finally fully combat ready and equipped with their final complement of fighter planes.
(https://abload.de/img/21080209-bothcarriersihcgi.jpg)

Additionally, just as all the 18 Bastille frigates had been lifted towards the Diable-variant standard, the new 'Diable II' line had been ordered, now featuring some lightly upgraded Alp-grade electronics, as well as 4 larger, far ranging laser artillery pieces, fueled by true fusion.
(https://abload.de/img/shipbastille-diable2-w3i8g.jpg)
Testing footage:

Off-Topic: show

Though a revolution to be sure, to make these large weapons possible some corners had to be cut, striping away the extra layer of armor that had come with Diable I, and also reducing the range somewhat. The last of which should be a lesser problem now however, as WUN now also commanded 2 Requisition type fleet supply ships.

To finish off the decade with an invention of its own, a long running engineering project finally came to its close. Europa was a small moon, and though its population had already far outpaced the former census of old Europa, this modern age required ever greater backbone support for the navies defense mechanisms to work out.
In other words: Growth was needed, but space was sparse. Thus an ambitious plan explored the option to move significant parts of population into welcoming ship-like orbital infrastructure that seamlessly connected with the original planet or moon.
(https://abload.de/img/21090220-toaddressthe9wdib.jpg)
Success was finally had with the project of the "Galilean Ring" being sanctioned to be assembled. Although the industrial demand will be extensive, the design was in actuality very cheap on any essential minerals, since only few disentangled materials were needed for mostly stationary technology.
The whole ring would consist of initially 5 anchors that should stabilize further 5 large ring segments, upon which potentially other structures could be built in farther futures.

Though the reappearance and evidently partially already Great Firewall resistant Alp ships gave some reason for worries, the WU had also recovered a good amount of momentum and resources. Should the build-up of ground batteries and the refit of the Bastille frigates proceed without a major incident, the new supply-fed substantial carrier backing was now decent hope for humanity to be able to finally turn this dark era of victimization into a heroic age of the hunt.

//OOC:
Since the new big version is now out that I'd obviously like to try, I will move this game and database to a secure location and leave it there for some while. It is thus officially frozen, though since I find how everything worked out and fell in this game to be quite fortunate, there is always the possibility to continue. The setup is quite good after all.

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Bughunter on August 30, 2022, 02:46:32 PM

Not shying away from any sensitive topics in your backstory I see ;) It made the whole thing an interesting read and you integrated it pretty well into an Aurora game.

Title: Re: Saving Europa by Fleeing to Europa (SEFE)
Post by: Vandermeer on August 31, 2022, 02:34:50 AM

Quote from: Bughunter on August 30, 2022, 02:46:32 PM

Not shying away from any sensitive topics in your backstory I see ;) It made the whole thing an interesting read and you integrated it pretty well into an Aurora game.

Thanks, I admit I used Aurora writing as a cathartic outlet to sort some thoughts about the matter. It helped quite a bit, and actually, some arguments I came about while writing this actually had a huge influence when I applied them to an election in April of a rich and influential Germany-wide club I happen to be active in that handles talented youth upbringing across the whole country.(It is a long story, but in short a literal communist coup tried to replace all 6 board positions with us to presumably then put their propaganda forefront with the kids. As all cultists, they couldn't handle an ounce of debate, tried to instead censor, smear and cancel when I was the first to go vocal about them, which backfired because I already predicted this could happen in my initial letter of inquiry they should just respond to. But even so, one of them simply just couldn't help it, which really went to show the grimace of their insanity to everyone. Lots of red and black pills later, this incident was the stone of an avalanche and blew up so much, that it tore many pink glasses off from the current administration and many voters who reacted in outrage when they saw what this group was really about once confronted with actual questions and data, and how poisonous the people who would espouse 'peace and equality' grandstandingly actually are given the slightest challenge to their morals. Nobody of them got elected, despite some being popular before. A little miracle, and now the guard is up and walls are higher too.)

And yes, I also like how everything in this game fell (especially timing wise) so that I could write it into lore. The tooth empire ruins first, and then China literally threatened me over this place just like they do with many territories in real life. Also, Alpha Centauri aliens will spawn as ALP? That is literally German for "nightmare", sparking all the ideas around them, excellent. :)

Though this specific game may some time continue, for now that is it with political writing on other Aurora games for me. It is exhausting, and I'd rather go about my life without thinking about this in general. It is just as the saying goes however, if you don't care about politics long enough, it will come knocking on your door eventually.

Aurora 4x

Fiction => Aurora => Vandermeer's Fiction => Topic started by: Vandermeer on October 26, 2021, 03:19:35 PM