Race to the Stars - Comments Thread

[StarshipCactus]

Nice

[Zap0]

F to the Russian combat tugs:

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11945.msg146964#msg146964

It looks like any engagement where they get shot at is going to require GM interpretations of what damage they should be taking.

[nuclearslurpee]

Several years ago a Callistoan explorer detected an alien fleet blockading a jump point. The location is revisited, and the alien fleet is still there. This time the ship gets closer and gets a thermal image. If the internal temperature of the alien vessels is similar to our own, the hull readings suggest ~600k tons of ships to be present - more than the entire PRL navy, and several times more than the expanding Callistoan navy. The aliens send emissions towards the explorer which are judged to be an attempt at communication. The explorer retreats again without incident. In light of their overwhelming strength establishing communications sounds like a good idea, and an envoy vessel is being prepared.

Uncomfortable amounts of warships near Novokuzneck.

Some time later a pair of their ships is detected orbiting two moons a few systems further out. No alien populations are detected.

Quite curious behavior from these aliens. What is most confusing is that there is not just a fleet on the JP but also other ships milling about suggesting activity. Callisto must send their best communications expert to establish relations quickly before they get too annoyed with human presence at their JP picket.

Contemporary fiction is full of enigmatic elites living on the moon or another close-by but unreachable body, either in hiding or not, with those elites secretly manipulating events on Earth and other places to follow some morally ambiguous master plan.

In this distant future, Captain America comics will feature him punching Moon Commies instead of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterparteis.

Earth, or the Terran Primacy, aren't seen as a power with a war fleet and extrasolar outposts yet, still having much of their grassroots movement character that defined them during the struggles on Earth. They are planning to make themselves known to both the other powers and the common man in the coming years.

The smart move would be to remain under the radar until they were capable of standing in the upper tier of human powers. Once again, the old story of national history repeats itself as pride gets the better of good sense, it seems.

The Martian Consortium holds much economic and military power and military strategists have long been aware of them as a threat or factor, but due to not being a government per se they aren't put on the same level as the other powers in people's minds. The absorption of the civilian administration on Mars actually lends them a decent amount of credibility when it is advantageous to appear like a government for some purpose or another. Their navy is still somewhat famous, but is typically seen as the Martian navy, fighting for the freedom of the colony. Even with the awareness that the Consortium controls much of what goes on on Mars it wouldn't be strange for the average person to think the fleet is an arm of a civilian Martian government.

This seems an interesting cultural quirk since the old USA was one of those nations that originally pushed the principle of civilian control of the military in their government system. Perhaps that image has remained attached despite their evolution over time - certainly for the average Martian it is a more pleasant thought.

Across the board, nice to get a glimpse of how the common people perceive the various entities involved in this little stage drama. Their opinions may not matter very much, but it can't hurt to know what precisely is not mattering to those in charge. 

Possibly the most curious thing I've seen lately. A CIWS station in empty space, not even along any orbital path? Up until I noteiced that I was wondering if one of the other human powers had killed off some Qian and I'd forgotten, but that's quite a curious finding indeed.

This is honestly just hilarious to see.

Internal disputes and power struggles in the Martian Consortium have left supply levels dangerously low. There is no reason to speak of a shortage yet, but upon completion of the latest cruisers it was discovered that insufficient supplies had been delivered to fill ship stores. The split focus of the ordnance industry also leaves missile racks empty, as was to be expected. The Consortium's shipbuilding capacities seem to outpace their ability to arm them.

Not the worst problem to have, but arguably one of the most annoying. "Where's the button to force the factory workers to pull double shifts so I can go kill things already?!" 

After escalating the incident up the chain of responsibility, speakers for the Terran Primacy reiterate the view that the Republic of Taíno and the Interstellar League are illegitimate governments, and that no INL traffic will be tolerated in Sol.

I suspect I know what the next little flare-up in Sol will be about... Frankly this seems to be an overstep from the Terrans, the casus belli is rather thin here and it feels like they are just trying to find a "little guy" to pick on to make themselves look stronger than they are. Someone in their government should ask the Italians how this works out in the end...

Terran intelligence, using the old EU observation post in Salto, have detected the transit of an INL task group into Sol and correctly surmised that they would be in Aguascalientes to escort their ship out. A trap is set, three ships are sent to ambush the ships when they jump back into Sol. This, in turn, is detected by Martian observation stations, who inform their allies.

Welp that was fast.

With one of their own down the shocked Terrans lay in a reverse course, quickly ending the engagement as the Adana class escorts of each side fall out of each other's short range.

Yup.

Faction Profile: EU
European Union (Historical)

Ooh, this is a neat concept. Historical faction profiles, very cool!

Modern successor states of the EU are the Interstellar League, the Martian civil government and the Terran Primacy.

This is helpful to keep track of the rather messy path of international relations and the various entities involved.

The disparate nature of the Union, giving voices to every minor nation contained in it, and failure to adapt political representation to a model suited for interplanetary governance, eventually led to paralysis and the downfall of the EU.

Quick, one of those Italians being consulted pass this bit on to the Terrans! 

The Hambach Mining Complex is a series of large mining platforms constructed in the 2080s. Designed to mine small moons and asteroids, the complex has operated in Sol, Santa María and the system of Bremen where it remains to this day.

Which power took control of this after the EU collapsed? I don't remember.

F to the Russian combat tugs:

http://aurora2.pentarch.org/index.php?topic=11945.msg146964#msg146964

It looks like any engagement where they get shot at is going to require GM interpretations of what damage they should be taking.

I wonder if it is a divide by zero error, since usually ship speeds are set to 1 km/s when idle presumably to avoid such errors but in this case the tugged ship might not be getting the speed set to 1.

[Zap0]

This is honestly just hilarious to see.

The one time I forget to take a look at a newly discovered system. Most "new discoveries" are discoveries already made before by other powers, so I just fiddle with the map and let the explorer go wild without taking another look, but this one was new and I didn't peek in. Seeing a bunch of wrecks would have definitely saved that poor survey ship! *cough* I mean, they failed to recognize what these readings were, of course.

The disparate nature of the Union, giving voices to every minor nation contained in it, and failure to adapt political representation to a model suited for interplanetary governance, eventually led to paralysis and the downfall of the EU.

Quick, one of those Italians being consulted pass this bit on to the Terrans! 

The new Terran Empire is much more centralized than the EU ever was. Both the INL and the Terrans are trying to avoid the mistakes of the EU, just on opposite ends of the spectrum. The INL wants to be a much more flexible representative democracy that is made with interplanetary and interstellar constituents in mind, the Terrans are heavily centralized to avoid any of the internal bickering that paralyzed the EU.

The Hambach Mining Complex is a series of large mining platforms constructed in the 2080s. Designed to mine small moons and asteroids, the complex has operated in Sol, Santa María and the system of Bremen where it remains to this day.

Which power took control of this after the EU collapsed? I don't remember.

It remained under the tenuous ownership of some of the ex-EU member states which were eventually conquered or absorbed into the Terran empire. Last week they sent the fleet there to ensure loyalty. Large-scale organized resistance on Earth against the Primacy has largely ceased, but to prevent the ships or the complex from falling into the hands of potential terrorists or enemies, or even the INL, it was necessary.

I wonder if it is a divide by zero error, since usually ship speeds are set to 1 km/s when idle presumably to avoid such errors but in this case the tugged ship might not be getting the speed set to 1.

From what I can see the speed of a tugged ship gets set to 300k km/s, on a 5k km/s ship being tugged I saw a 6000% engine modifier in the ship description. I assume that is so that the tugged ship does not slow down the convoy.
I plan on calculating a rough hit chance manually and SM-applying the damage to the ships in question if the battle is small enough. Either way, it's going to make fights with the new Callistoan navy much more annoying to play. Another one for the #AuroraWoes. Did I ever tell the tale of how one NPR shot another NPR's shipyards and every empire's yard tasks got deleted?

[nuclearslurpee]

The one time I forget to take a look at a newly discovered system. Most "new discoveries" are discoveries already made before by other powers, so I just fiddle with the map and let the explorer go wild without taking another look, but this one was new and I didn't peek in. Seeing a bunch of wrecks would have definitely saved that poor survey ship! *cough* I mean, they failed to recognize what these readings were, of course.

Rule number one of Aurora is "Always blame the ship captains".

The new Terran Empire is much more centralized than the EU ever was. Both the INL and the Terrans are trying to avoid the mistakes of the EU, just on opposite ends of the spectrum. The INL wants to be a much more flexible representative democracy that is made with interplanetary and interstellar constituents in mind, the Terrans are heavily centralized to avoid any of the internal bickering that paralyzed the EU.

The thing that sticks to me about the Terrans is that they are trying to be Terra Prime yet concerning themselves with "breakaway colonies" and trying to dominate them by the same centralized government structure, which was half the reason the EU collapsed in the first place (so the, uh, commentators of the day say). It's a massive ideological overreach, to say nothing about their capacity to back it up as we see.

INL has the right of it in that they're by nature built around respecting the membership of their "colonials" on account of being made up entirely of colonies.

From what I can see the speed of a tugged ship gets set to 300k km/s, on a 5k km/s ship being tugged I saw a 6000% engine modifier in the ship description. I assume that is so that the tugged ship does not slow down the convoy.
I plan on calculating a rough hit chance manually and SM-applying the damage to the ships in question if the battle is small enough. Either way, it's going to make fights with the new Callistoan navy much more annoying to play. Another one for the #AuroraWoes. Did I ever tell the tale of how one NPR shot another NPR's shipyards and every empire's yard tasks got deleted?

That sounds truly horrifying...maybe for the Halloween special?

[StarshipCactus]

In this distant future, Captain America comics will feature him punching Moon Commies instead of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterparteis.

Would he still be Captain America? Or would he be Captain Mars? Or Captain Consortium?

[nuclearslurpee]

In this distant future, Captain America comics will feature him punching Moon Commies instead of Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterparteis.

Would he still be Captain America? Or would he be Captain Mars? Or Captain Consortium?

Captain Space Capitalism

[Zap0]

The thing that sticks to me about the Terrans is that they are trying to be Terra Prime yet concerning themselves with "breakaway colonies" and trying to dominate them by the same centralized government structure, which was half the reason the EU collapsed in the first place (so the, uh, commentators of the day say). It's a massive ideological overreach, to say nothing about their capacity to back it up as we see.

The EU didn't have a centralized structure. Although in this universe it was somewhat more unified than in reality, in particular in regards to foreign politics and the military, they were still a by then old federation of more or less sovereign states.
Terra Prime could well have gone the isolationist route of concerning themselves only with Earth, but they do actually espouse Earth as the dominant and capital world of the whole of the Human race - a unified Human race, which the colonies should be subservient to. There is also much bitterness against the colonies for having caused the economic collapse on Earth that came with the fall of the EU.

Did I ever tell the tale of how one NPR shot another NPR's shipyards and every empire's yard tasks got deleted?

That sounds truly horrifying...maybe for the Halloween special?

Let's just say the cool moment of coming across an alien homeworld with tons of wrecks in orbit came with a price to pay

[Zap0]

Comments on this installment:

Today I bring some Precursor adventuring and more inner Sol skirmishing.

The Encke summary box picture I got from an eve blog while searching for sci-fi missile. It shows Phoenix-class dreadnoughts, who can only fire three (massive) missiles at once with a long delay between firing, but I thought looked cool enough.
Sauce of the Smolensk box picture

Fun fact: The Callistoan flag is actually that of the Nara Prefecture in Japan.

#AuroraWoes: AMMs only fire onto specifically hostile incoming missiles, not neutral ones. Also, they only fire from fire controls set to open fire, but the "open fire all" button only works for fire controls that have a target set! So you have to manually click on each and every AMM fire control in the fleet to set them to open fire. Or you can manually assign targets to each, I guess.
This is why I play with low number games (4 instead of 40 ships), and save often.

[StarshipCactus]

Ahh, the worst Dreadnaught. That reminded me of this post https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/c20w9n/eves_cruise_missiles_are_goddamn_terrifying_heres/

I used to play EVE a bunch, never really used capitals, but if I had, I would have cried "
V
E
R
T
I
C
A
L

S
U
P
R
E
M
A
C
Y
"
and get myself a Naglafar

[nuclearslurpee]

Update posted

Oh joy! With my internet stable and some time on my hands, it's time for the next insta--

Update posted

Good God man. 

Anyways, getting caught up here...

The alien frigate moves at a speed of 8k km/s, faster than any known Qian vessel, faster than the PRL navy and definitely faster than the scout squadron.

That's a bit frightening. The Qian I think were operating somewhere north of 5000 km/s, which places these guys at least two tech levels advanced over them. Given that human ships are still not quite up to parity with the Qian (the PRL is close with the Jack Rabbits but not on a fleetwide basis just yet) this is concerning, particularly if the "BNV" aliens are hostile rather than meerly, hmm, "armed and curious".

Yay! A new map connection that doesn't require large rearrangements of the map!

Truly such things are worth their weight in gold gallicite.

Japan still has a bone to pick with Callisto over Venus. [...] The operation is a gamble, but the prevailing notion is that this opportunity with the CAL main fleet away must be seized.

This seems to be almost entirely politically/nationalistically driven rather than by any good sense. But it's okay, since when has starting a war they weren't prepared for against a superior power with a surprise attack while low on minerals with amorphous goals at best and for largely moral gains ever gone badly for...Japan? Oh. Oh no...

Their exact travel time is 65 hours, with a 370m km distance and 1576km/s speed. The distance from Callisto to Encke is 1150m km, but the thrust modules loaded up with missile launch modules have a speed of 7922km/s - 40 hours. That leaves an entire day for preparation, and that will be needed as the missile launch modules are only partially loaded with ammo.

"Missiles? $10 billion. Fuel? $25 billion. Being able to anticipate the enemy plan, intercept them, and have over 24 hours advance preparation time besides? Priceless.

"Some things in space are priceless. For everything else, there's SpaceMasterCard."

And so it is done, the distance is closed to 19m km and the ships Metis and Thebe unleash the ordnance loaded into their missile modules, then retreat back towards Callisto.

This strikes me (heh) as a major miscalculation. While it would have been more costly in life to wait, not waiting for the Japanese to fire first (or at least issue a threat) cannot look good for international relations. Callisto is likely to be seen as an aggressive neighbor here, which given their relative stature is not a position they want to be in.

In any case, it is not expected that another strike will come in the next two days, as the enemy would have to return to Callisto and reload, so the task group will lay siege to Encke. Little do they know that this was only a quarter of the Callistoan fire volume.

"Surely we got them all. What could possibly have happened, we somehow missed an entire carrier fleet that will come back to haunt us in six months?"

There may have been some screaming when the second strike came on sensors.

The Great Encke Turkey Shoot.

The Callistoan side also attributes the survival of the Japanse fleet to them opening the distance, highlighting again that speed is key, in both warships and missiles. They begin their trek back to Callisto to reload for an eventual third strike, but that does not seem necessary as the Japanese task force makes no further movement towards Encke, staying in position only until a tug can retrieve their most damaged ship. As far as Callisto is concerned, the mission is accomplished, their outpost safe.

Good thing no one decided to start a world war or something this time around, eh?

The destroyer Ryujo will be scrapped as it has lost all it's engines, and the budget is too tight to restore last-generation ion drives.

I was almost tempted to say that this could be cheesed handled by using MSPs instead of shipyard repairs, however MSPs cost Gallicite so this is probably not ideal anyways, though it might have been cheaper depending on the exact engine details.

Smolensk Operation Sol Operation Smolensk Operation

 

A bit of overkill, perhaps, but better than embarrassingly failing to achieve a kill.

There is no "overkill." There is only "open fire" and "reload."

Okay, is this just a bug where they move at 1km/s, thinking they're ships?

What the actual frell is wrong with your game??

Seeing how the Krivak missile frigates have no armor to speak of, they don't dare to go any closer.

Not sure I understand the thinking of Callisto's commanders here. Whatever the enemy weapon range is, the only recourse is going to be a missile barrage until the entire STO battery lies in shambles, as Callisto does not really have any other weapons of comparable efficiency. Thus, the call is either to bombard them now, or call home for a fleet of size-1 missiles to do the job instead.

----

2146 - Mining Comparison

Oh, good, just a short one here, I can catch up. 

But Gallicite, the mineral required for the construction of engines, is considered to be the gold of the 22nd century

Called it!

The INL has a relatively high income of secondary minerals, but a low Gallicite flow at the moment. They have established no less than five distant mining outposts on various Gallicite-bearing bodies, some of which are still ramping up production.

These guys seem to have a good handle on the economics side of things, though of course they are only a secondary power militarily. This bodes well for their continued ascension.

The arms race is considered to have been won by the PRL, who now have 600k tons of military ships in service compared to the Consortium's 457k. The Consortium's ascendence to a great power in recent decades was bought with stored up minerals and potential and seems to have reached it's zenith, while the PRL's industrial investments into mines, more mines, and even more mines is paying off exponentially.

One candidly wonders whether the PRL can be held in check or if they will simply run away with things as their lead lengthens.

----

#AuroraWoes: AMMs only fire onto specifically hostile incoming missiles, not neutral ones. Also, they only fire from fire controls set to open fire, but the "open fire all" button only works for fire controls that have a target set! So you have to manually click on each and every AMM fire control in the fleet to set them to open fire. Or you can manually assign targets to each, I guess.
This is why I play with low number games (4 instead of 40 ships), and save often.

Does "Open Fire Fleet" work? I swear the last time I used AMMs I had the opposite problem, entire fleets would be popping off their AMMs before I remembered to tell them not to! 

[Zap0]

Ahh, the worst Dreadnaught. That reminded me of this post https://www.reddit.com/r/Eve/comments/c20w9n/eves_cruise_missiles_are_goddamn_terrifying_heres/

I used to play EVE a bunch, never really used capitals, but if I had, I would have cried "
V
E
R
T
I
C
A
L

S
U
P
R
E
M
A
C
Y
"
and get myself a Naglafar

We used to have a Phoenix doctrine in our group, the idea was to make use of the insane range of the cruise missiles and drop 200k away from an enemy dreadball. The killer was that we all would have capital sized microwarpdrives, so before sieging we'd get up to speed, and then drift parallel to the enemy. If more dreads got dropped on us we'd just drift out of their range in a minute, and then be free to shoot them too. Of course in three years we only pulled that off once or twice and never when I was around for it. :-(
For more general dread usage I was a conventional Rev-man. Can't beat big fat lasers!

The alien frigate moves at a speed of 8k km/s, faster than any known Qian vessel, faster than the PRL navy and definitely faster than the scout squadron.

That's a bit frightening. The Qian I think were operating somewhere north of 5000 km/s, which places these guys at least two tech levels advanced over them. Given that human ships are still not quite up to parity with the Qian (the PRL is close with the Jack Rabbits but not on a fleetwide basis just yet) this is concerning, particularly if the "BNV" aliens are hostile rather than meerly, hmm, "armed and curious".

The PRL has 6 Cruisers and 8 Escort Destroyers going at 6.6k km/s now, 216k tons. They sure were dismayed to have built a fleet meant to outspeed aliens only to find faster aliens!

And so it is done, the distance is closed to 19m km and the ships Metis and Thebe unleash the ordnance loaded into their missile modules, then retreat back towards Callisto.

This strikes me (heh) as a major miscalculation. While it would have been more costly in life to wait, not waiting for the Japanese to fire first (or at least issue a threat) cannot look good for international relations. Callisto is likely to be seen as an aggressive neighbor here, which given their relative stature is not a position they want to be in.

Perhaps, but Japan was virtually on top of their mines with a whole bunch of military hardware already, their intentions were clear.

The destroyer Ryujo will be scrapped as it has lost all it's engines, and the budget is too tight to restore last-generation ion drives.

I was almost tempted to say that this could be cheesed handled by using MSPs instead of shipyard repairs, however MSPs cost Gallicite so this is probably not ideal anyways, though it might have been cheaper depending on the exact engine details.

I considered it, but Gallicite is tight for the Japanese. That said, when I later looked at their income numbers I wonder if a slightly older ship restored for half the Gallicite wouldn't have been something they want, because stocking up to at least six escorts again (their goal) and also building dropships is just not in the cards anytime soon with their economy.

Okay, is this just a bug where they move at 1km/s, thinking they're ships?

What the actual frell is wrong with your game??

Hell if I know. I haven't heard anybody else report this, and I haven't spend any time trying to reproduce it in 1.12, so for now I'm just going to leave it a mystery. Will still shoot the stations before they become a navigational hazard, or actually end up arriving somewhere.

Seeing how the Krivak missile frigates have no armor to speak of, they don't dare to go any closer.

Not sure I understand the thinking of Callisto's commanders here. Whatever the enemy weapon range is, the only recourse is going to be a missile barrage until the entire STO battery lies in shambles, as Callisto does not really have any other weapons of comparable efficiency. Thus, the call is either to bombard them now, or call home for a fleet of size-1 missiles to do the job instead.

True, but that information could be useful for future Qian encounters or trying to land a dropship.
Size 1 missiles to reduce collateral damage? I meant to clobber them with big ones, but now that you mention it, with lots of Qian Interceptors captured they do have a large number of now obsolete AMMs sitting at home.

One candidly wonders whether the PRL can be held in check or if they will simply run away with things as their lead lengthens.

One does wonder. Either they'll really become the hegemons of humanity like they want to be or any combination of hubris, aliens and bad luck will change the situation

Does "Open Fire Fleet" work? I swear the last time I used AMMs I had the opposite problem, entire fleets would be popping off their AMMs before I remembered to tell them not to! 

Quickly checking, no it doesn't. I also remember AMMs firing sometimes surprisingly without needing extra input, much like how you don't need to set a final fire bfc to active for it to shoot. But the last time I used AMMs was years ago and things may well have changed in C#.

[nuclearslurpee]

Hell if I know. I haven't heard anybody else report this, and I haven't spend any time trying to reproduce it in 1.12, so for now I'm just going to leave it a mystery. Will still shoot the stations before they become a navigational hazard, or actually end up arriving somewhere.

June 27, 2753: Mysterious floating weapons batteries arrive in orbit of the planet Laughalot III. The terrified population laughs at how woefully outdated they are and blast them out of the sky with a pair of Mk LXIX AMMs before continuing on with their day.

Size 1 missiles to reduce collateral damage? I meant to clobber them with big ones, but now that you mention it, with lots of Qian Interceptors captured they do have a large number of now obsolete AMMs sitting at home.

Yes. I believe any hit on a STO by an "orbital" weapon will take them out, however I may be wrong and it may be that you need to do 3 damage (as STA have 3 HP). Even so, 1-damage interceptors should still do much less damage than, say, 9-damage ASMs even if you fire three times as many of them.

Quickly checking, no it doesn't. I also remember AMMs firing sometimes surprisingly without needing extra input, much like how you don't need to set a final fire bfc to active for it to shoot. But the last time I used AMMs was years ago and things may well have changed in C#.

Last time I used them was in 1.12, but I abandoned that campaign fairly quickly and haven't used AMMs since. I plan to eventually in the current campaign if it has legs...

E: Per a random comment in another thread, MFC auto-fire in PD mode was added in 1.12. I recall you're still in 1.11 so that would be it I think.

[StarshipCactus]

We used to have a Phoenix doctrine in our group, the idea was to make use of the insane range of the cruise missiles and drop 200k away from an enemy dreadball. The killer was that we all would have capital sized microwarpdrives, so before sieging we'd get up to speed, and then drift parallel to the enemy. If more dreads got dropped on us we'd just drift out of their range in a minute, and then be free to shoot them too. Of course in three years we only pulled that off once or twice and never when I was around for it. :-(
For more general dread usage I was a conventional Rev-man. Can't beat big fat lasers!

Nowadays, the counter to that would be supers, since their fighter bombers can keep up with anything, especially a Tokyo drifting dread
I believe my alliance had sniper Phoenixes as one capital doctrine, but that never really worked as intended, because any fight where you would drop sniper Phoenixes would tend to be one where you also dropped other dreads to threaten their other capital ships, so you would almost always see TIDI. Missiles and TIDI do not get along, so the doctrine was dropped. Also not enough people trained into them, so it was hard to get the numbers to volley enemy capital ships or supers as intended.

[nuclearslurpee]

It's baaaaaaaack!!! 

It's been a while since I touched this - blame RL. Had most of the update written out already after the last update, but wasn't quite satisfied with it as things repeatedly failed to take a dramatic turn. Two more peaceful years it is

I know the feeling, although it's my case it's less that nothing dramatic is happening and more that too many undramatic things happen which slow down the arrival of dramatic happenings. Such is Aurora. 

The ships move into position on the LP under radio silence, but the plan fails. Calculations for the arrival time of the PRL freighter were off by a bit, not more than 10 or 15 seconds, and the black ops unit enters the LP at virtually the same time as the freighter on the other side. As the target is now in the inner system and and a mere 200m km from Concordia and the busy civilian traffic there, the operation is aborted. Although it is unlikely they ever saw the frigates, another attempt won't be made in case they noticed something was up and increase security for the next run.

Crew members reported hearing the Pink Panther Theme playing in the background.

San Rafael First Contact Situation

Seems like the Solway do not mind too much if you follow them back home, which is rather curious. Likely they don't realize the JP they just stabilized was hidden and assumed the INL would find them anyways? Although they'll likely need a grav survey ship to actually find the Solway home world anyways. At any rate, the aliens didn't shoot, so this may be a good opportunity for trade and technology sharing behind the backs of the other human powers.

A seperate expedition will come to clear the ground weapon on planet B-III and then there is nothing standing in the way of full exploitation of the system.

Given the rather rash decisions made previously in the fight against the Qian by the PRL, this show of careful patience is a sharp difference, what with sending multiple expeditions instead killing everything all at once.

hand-holding party on Procyon's Rest

That's one way to describe it, I suppose.

Not two weeks later the alien task force identifies itself as belonging to a polity called the Sukabumi Alliance. They don't divulge any details about their mission. This is the same species that the Japanese made contact with after one of their ships popped up next to Neo-Kobe twenty years ago. Naturally, they had never shared the communications codes they used to communicate with the Sukabumi or the location of the JP leading back to their space, and given the current bad relations with Japan, it's unlikely they ever will. So be it, should the Japanese decide to exploit this only-known-to-them connection and anger the Sukabumi, Callisto will not warn them of their overwhelming military strength encountered here.

This is just hilarious. Of course the only powers which met these aliens just happen to have a mortal hatred for each other. It won't be long before each side starts trying to pit the Sukabumi against their opponent, though I imagine the Sukabumi are not terribly eagerly to be so trifled with.

----

With more discoveries of alien races it has to be only a matter of time until the various human powers begin to forge alliances with their non-human neighbors to try and leverage against their human opponents. It remains to be seen how this might upset the balance of power in the galaxy...