The next set of battles from my learning campaign.
******Warning! All action is taking place against spoilers! If you don't want to know anything about them, stop here!****
As we join the campaign, the Earth Commonwealth has sent a fleet to engage the STO's on Abyss, and a ground force composed of two division and elements of a third to engage the ground forces once the STO's are neutralized. Orbital sensor readings show the aliens to be present in divisional strength (50,000 tons), and Earth has sent approximated 120,000 tons of ground units to engage them.
July 19, 2095: The Assault Fleet was poised two million kilometers from The Abyss. So far there had been no ground fire. The Fleet was divided into three groups. The Battlecruiser Assault Group consisted of three 20,000 ton Palanhi class battlecruisers. The escort group consisted of two FFE’s, and the carrier group consisted of two motherships, six interceptors, and twenty-two fighters. After raising shields and activating their sensors, the battlecruiser group moved towards the planet.
The battlecruisers came under fire at 538,000 kilometers range, consistent with the last attack. They continued forward, attempting to reach 150,000 kilometers range, as that would put them within their own range of the ground batteries.
One minute later the ground batteries attack again, but the two targeted BC’s shield are holding at 93 and 99 percent. A minute later and the battlecruisers have reached their range. Before they can fire they are hit by another salvo, this time by more ground based batteries, but again their shields shrug the incoming fire off.
The Eather BC’s open fire, but the STO’s are hard to hit and they do little or no damage. To improve their odds, Captain Seelig orders the battlecruisers to close on the planet. Finally, twenty-five seconds later, one of the battlecruisers destroys an STO with a lucky hit from one of its 8 inch lasers. Over the next ten seconds the battlecruisers destroyed several more STO’s, but then the ground batteries launched an incredible onslaught of fire, including several salvoes from what had to be heavy plasma weapons that cut right through Captain Seelig’s shields and destroyed the command battlecruiser. The second battlecruiser was reduced to fifty percent shields, and the third lost her shields and took a hit to her armor. The two remaining battlecruisers turned away from the planet and began retreating, and Captain Balint ordered a missile strike from the interceptors.
The battlecruisers quickly retreated out of range while the interceptors prepared to fire. By the time the battlecruisers were out of range sixty Standard III ASM’s were on their way towards the planet. Just as the leading missile salvo passed the retreating battlecruisers they were hit by one last salvo of long range fire from the ground batteries, but they hit the BC that still had shields, doing no real damage.
The leading missile strike lost eight missiles to the ground batteries, but the remaining four destroyed three STO’s. The following waves of missiles did additional damage. There were still active STO’s on the planet, so Balint ordered a second strike by half of the fighters. This strike does the trick and all identified STO’s have been destroyed. Captain Balint orders the BC’s, which have recharged their shields, to return to the planet. The BC’s reach orbit without being attacked. Captain Balint orders the motherships to recover their squadrons to rearm and refuel them, and then settles in to wait for the transports with the ground troops. The transports arrive on the 7th of August, and begin dropping their troops from orbit. Within an hour two full armored divisions and elements of a third are on the ground.
The assault and armored brigades went on the attack as soon as they were on the ground, and the two remaining BC’s and the two motherships in orbit began supporting them with orbital fire support. The assault was a complete disaster. The alien’s armor was too heavy to be penetrated by all but the heaviest human weapons. Only the Rapier Heavy tank had any success in penetrating the alien armor, but the aliens were not having the same problem with human armor. The alien weapons were taking horrible tolls of the human troops, killing hundreds at a time.
After sixteen hours it was clear that the invasion was a failure, with the humans having suffered over thirty percent casualties and the aliens having lost two tanks, three APC’s, seven armored troopers, and two supply vehicles. The result is unavoidable, and in a matter of days the human divisions are wiped out. Captain Balint orders a missile strike from the two remaining battlecruisers, before the fleet departs for Earth.
Note: I noticed during the battle that my artillery and orbital ships were not contributing to the battle. I have since discovered the problem, and remedied it. Basically, I did not know how to assign higher level units to support lower level units, and missed that part in the reading I had done. My HQ units had quite a bit of arty capability, but none of it was used in this battle. Wouldn’t have made a difference, though, I lost badly.
August 26, 2095: As the Assault Fleet is passing through the Washington system en route to the Solar System, the colony on Washington I sends a contact warning. The colony’s sensors have detected a single alien ship just inside the orbit of Washington II, moving at 4,067 kps. The fleet is diverted to support the colony but is in the outer system and too far away to affect whatever is going to happen. It soon becomes clear that the alien ship is moving towards the colony. The colony is defended by two older STO laser batteries containing a total of fifty-eight emplacements, and five interceptors mounting older missiles. The batteries are placed on alert and ordered to fire only in defense of the colony, and the interceptor group is ordered to hold their fire. The Assault Fleet is still over a month away at this point.
The contact approaches to eight million kilometers from the colony and then turns away, much to the relief of the colonists. Unfortunately, after moving away from the colony for a bit, it turns back. When it reaches 500,000 kilometers it becomes clear that the ship is very small, massing around 707 tons, again much to the relief of the colonists.
At 0937 hours on August 26th, the alien ship moves to point blank range and opens fire on one of the interceptors, completely destroying it. The STO’s are ordered to open fire, and the interceptors are ordered to open their range to the alien. The STO’s begin engaging the alien ship, scoring some hits, but the alien ship fires again, taking out another interceptor. The commander of the remaining interceptors orders his remaining ships to open fire. There is some delay as the interceptors ready their weapons, during which the aliens continue to pound one of the interceptors, but now that they are beyond point-blank range the alien’s weapons are doing reduced damage and so far, while the interceptor has sustained serious damage, it is still moving. Finally, one of the interceptors manages to launch its missiles, which race towards the alien ship. Eleven of the twelve missiles hit the target, completely destroying it. It is clear at this point that the alien ship mounts some sort of jamming or cloaking tech that obscures its actual size.
Captain Balint orders one of his frigates to proceed directly to Earth with a warning, while the rest of his fleet proceeds to New Washington.
Note: Obviously, this ground force was way too small to effectively engage the aliens. Worse, they were lower tech as well, making the result a foregone conclusion. I learned a lot from the battle, though, as this was really my first ground-force engagement in Aurora.
