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[Blood_Librarian]

Elysium Command Arms Race of Conquest: Open Communications

Welcome to Elysium Command: Arms Race of Conquest

   

This is an arms race which primarily revolves around spaceships and their legendary exploits. Combat on the ground does not have as large of a focus, and the design teams are focussed on making spaceships that sometimes carry ground units.
[link to Spacebattle core thread]
[link to discord]

Below are links to each team's private threads where actions are drawn up, you can peek at the first post for starter designs and such, but I would advise going no further without joining a team.
[link to Bay12 Elysium]
[link to Spacebattle Elysium]

I stand on the shoulders of giants, a once-failed arms race overlord who once again wishes to see the equipment of a battle designed. I’m gonna do what I did last time and plagiarize the boring stuff from Madman198237’s interplanetary arms race, which credits chief waffles and NUKE who ran the predecessor systems. I am also borrowing elements from the GURPs Spaceships books, mainly terminology. Without a further ado, here is the introduction to the system.

Introduction

LONG AGO,
A BOUNTIFUL EPOCH OF CONSTANT EXPANSION PROPELLED MANKIND ONWARDS AND EVER UPWARDS TO AN ERA OF UNPARALLELED MASTERY OVER 100,000 STARS
THE DISSOLUTION WARS RIPPED MANKIND APART. THE ERA OF 100,000 STARS WAS NOT MEANT TO LAST AS THE HIGH ECONOMY COLLAPSED, AND THE SURVIVORS WERE BANISHED FROM THE STARS.
 WORLDS WERE PROPELLED INTO ANARCHY AND VIOLENCE AS THE GATE NETWORK DIED. A DARK AGE PLUNGED YOUR PEOPLES ELYSIUM INTO DARKNESS, AND FOR A LONG TIME IT TEETERED IN THE BRINK OF TOTAL COLLAPSE.
TODAY, YOUR COUNTRY HAS FINALLY FINISHED ITS UNIFICATION WAR, AND YOUR ELYSIUMS BOUNTY IS READY TO PROPEL YOUR PEOPLE TO THE STARS ONCE MORE.
THE GATE NETWORK CAN ONLY HAVE ONE MASTER, AND ONE FINAL FOE MUST BE UNIFIED UNDER YOUR GREAT NATIONS CONTROL BEFORE DOMINION IS SETTLED OVER THE STARS.

It's a beginning of a new era. With tens of millions of people on each torus structure, the gateway to the stars has had their slipways ignited after centuries of decay. You and your enemy's Elysium was unique in its fall from grace, and how it rose back up (you will come up with the details.) With massive complexes of autonomous Indo-Tech, your Elysium is fully spun up to forge wonders again, and fed with the glut of materials from your surrounding solar system, there is only one issue that consistently plagues your production: the Forges of the Elysium need more. The other Elysium holds the gate network hostage, hoards resources and materials that your factories need to kickstart mankind into another transcendent state, and they must be stopped before their ineffable plans to create “utopia” are put into action.


Note: Starter equipment can be found in each side's core thread post. This thread is a place where both bay12 & Spacebattle members can discuss events and hackle each other as well as get introduced to the arms race.

Spoiler: Turn Rules (click to show/hide)

Every turn will be composed of three parts, that is a bit different but based upon Chiefwaffle’s Planetary Arms Race (which is dead), or NUKE’s Battle for Aljadid (which is maybe not dead yet), and Madmans interplanetary arms race (which is not dead yet.).

Design phase
You will write proposals and vote for the two proposals that you want built. Anything from ship components to ground units to widespread societal change to industrial equipment and gigantic building projects will probably be viable. I will warn you if something is actually outside the scope of the game before you design it. Attempting the same design without either modifications or a justifiable change in  circumstances is forbidden. Once a set of designs are voted on, it will be sent to me and success rolls will be made.

Quick note on infrastructure: Generally, each piece of infrastructure requires a full design of its own and has steeply diminishing returns. You can replicate the same infrastructure across four different systems, but you’ll need a design for each one (representing the difficulty in setting up logistics and constructing it in the unique environment of each new planet). New techs can be revised into pre-existing infrastructure designs if you can justify it being simple enough, while using more designs to build more of the same infrastructure on a planet is generally not even going to be worth your while. Your Elysium is a structure whose art of fabrication is long lost. Any design which produces infrastructure would have generally better results and an easier time overall if it is built on other systems.

Operationalization phase
The Operationalization phase consists of two sub parts. Which occur in parallel.
Revision Phase
Two revisions are written and proposed. You can make new things during this part of the turn. However, it’s going to be a lot more difficult to do new things on this part of the turn. Generally you will make proposals to produce incremental improvements or fix the results of your last design and such during this time. Once the revision is voted upon, It’ll be sent to me and a success roll will be made.
Prototyping Phase
The second part of the Operationalization Phase is when the Starship Engineering Division (S.E.D) accepts proposals for prototyping ships.
You must have enough resources to reasonably sure that the prototype can be made. Shortages are allowed to occur, but parts of the ship will be missing until resources are spared.
You can propose as many individual variants as you like, on the contingent that you must have enough resources to produce at least one prototype per new variant.
Revisions and Operationalizations closely interact, and one's success sometimes affects the other if Operatalizations include a component in the process of being revised.
The S.E.D know how to do their jobs to the letter, and prefer that a template be filled out.  However. The S.E.D is perfectly capable of automatically generating a prototype  proposal if one is having trouble with the specifics.
Excessive proposals and thus unique variants decrease the morale of the engineers of S.E.D and the nations book keepers.
Consider your vote carefully, you can vote on an unlimited number of prototypes, but it may backfire if you really want to mass produce one design and locked all your resources on inferior prototypes. The S.E.D will accept a prototype when it has popular support which varies depending on how many people are active in the arms race.

Strategy Phase
This is the phase where progress is made. Prototypes are finalized, ships are ordered into production, deployed into fleets and sent into the brink with orders.
Finalization
The Prototypes from the last phase are realized into ships. You have a few options regarding the final verdict on these ships:
Accept prototype for mass production.
Add last minute modifications and either delay mass production until the next turn or ship it out to mass production without ship-berth trials.
Dismantle the prototype for resources, which negates it's maintenance cost, The design schema may be pruned from the archives if no additional units are produced up until the next turn.
Allocation
Resource points are allocated into the grand war machine. From the well-spring of your country, an armada is formed, and deployed, turn by turn.  A report is given to you in terms of how many resource points are available and if any are earmarked. Once a templated allocation form is filled out the turn ends and a new one begins after the combat report is put out.


Templates will be provided for all applicable situations.

Spoiler: Difficulties and Rolls (click to show/hide)

Roll (probability): Result
2 (1/16): Utter failure. While you gain experience, you don’t get anything workable.
3 (1/8): Buggy mess. Whilst you managed to make something, it isn't really usable.
4 (3/16): Below average. It works. Not especially well, but it works.
5 (1/4): Average. You get what you asked for, more or less.
6 (3/16): Above average. It works, and somewhat better than might be expected. Not a lot better, mind.
7 (1/8): Superior craftsmanship. It does its job and it does it perfectly. Its performance is exceptional and it is as reliable as clockwork.
8 (1/16): Unexpected boon. Not only does it work, but it does things you never even expected it to. If no 'bonus features' make sense, then you just get experience with some related field.

Designs of other difficulties modify the roll value like so: Trivial (+2), Easy (+1), Normal (+0), Hard (-1), Very Hard (-2), Ludicrous (-3). Designs harder than Ludicrous are Impossible and will never yield a successful product. At best, they will grant you experience in the relevant area. You will be warned when a proposal is made that is impossible as according to the in-game rules of balance and technological consistency. Similarly, if the result of your roll would be less than 2 after modifiers, you will get the results of a 2 as well as a disastrous event that may result in casualties or the loss of certain assets.

Also note that the results above are guidelines. Results may not exactly match, but the 'value' will be the same, roughly. Remember: Nothing is as clear-cut as we’d like it to be, so you’ll have to bear with me. Remember, your suffering is my suffering, except for when it’s just your suffering

Spoiler: Resources and Cost (click to show/hide)

Each planet or body generates resources when infrastructure is assembled on them. By default, very little resources are generated by systems, as no mines are built, and noone knows where any resources actually are. The constraints of extracting them and how to get them to your Elysium are significant, and usually require a design to fully set up.
Some infrastructures produce Resources that are earmarked for specific purposes. A gas giant produces plenty of high energy compounds and gasses, but it cannot be used to create the hulls of starships.
Resources are the catch all term for an abstracted unit of value that represent literal tons of materiel assembled by your Forge of Elysium. Resources are used in deploying Infrastructure, maintaining and assembling Starships and is can be used as a stand in for governmental spending. Resources are not used in the research of designs and revisions.

Spoiler: designing hulls & components (click to show/hide)

Components and Hulls make up the construction of ships. Components can be designed and revised upon, and they produce and consume values, and may require or generate tags.  An example of a component that consumes a value would be a laser gun that requires power from a power generating object that can handle high power loads over short bursts. This is handled by the Pulsed Power Container value.

Hulls are a little bit more complicated. they can also generate values and tags. Slots can be pre-filled with components with the integrated tag, being specialized for the task. They can also have some abstracted machinery that cannot be accurately represented by  components, eg AI crew, automated repair systems etc. Designing a hull is as simple as specifying your preferred hull plan(which can be any shape you want), the amount of armor it has relative to other ships or what can handle, as well as any special features that it might have.

Spoiler: Ship design (click to show/hide)

You have three options for Operationalizing ships. You can
A: copy the template image of a hull, and paste in the pictures of components, and then send it to me.
B: fill out the operationalization template specific to the hull and post it in the forum. They are the open and close brackets with letters and numbers in them sometimes. Put in the 3 letter code that is attached to each component into each slot until it’s all full.
C:Fill out the Generic Operationalization Template, where the GM will fill out the template and present it during ship-berth trials. Impossible requests will be met with erratic configurations..

Designing a ship is as simple as opening the drop box link I post, opening a hull file and the library file, and copy pasting components into the empty slots until they are full, bearing in mind the values that are required and produced by individual components, and the tags they add to the hull. I recommend using the paint.net program to do this for windows users. I literally don't care how badly done the image you give me is as long as I can parse what components are in each slot.
https://www.getpaint.net/index.html
There are a couple assumptions built into the system that abstracts away complicated problems.

By default, components are assumed to be designed to be self-sustaining. This can be superseded by purpose built components that interact with each other, but otherwise the absolute minimum of secondary systems are assumed to be installed.

An example of this methodology is ship A with 2 slots filled in with guns versus Ship B with one slot with a gun & one with a sensor system. While Ship A has just enough sensors built into the components to fire, there is a deficiency that will be noted by the ship-berth trials.

Components can also be designed to require Tags or Values. A fusion reactor can generate power while requiring an internal slot, and the power can be consumed by engines and guns.
Weapons of mass destruction(not reactors) cannot be miniaturized underneath a certain point. See Setting Switches for more info.Expect a 12-14 slot requirement for first generation nuclear warheads.

A quick note on component design: some components (sensors, fire control  systems, bridges, small scale weapons, etc may not require an entire slots worth of systems: In this case, one of two outcomes occur: The component might have a secondary effect, or it has an adjacency bonus.
Slots are spaced 20 pixels away from each other component, and 9 pixels away from ship borders.

CHECKLIST ON CREATING A PROTOTYPE.
1.Pick a Hull.
2.Slot Components in.
3.POST

A hull determines the ships overall characteristics and component slots. The first part is picking a hull. Finally, you slot components in. This can be done either using an in-forum text based template or utilizing a drawing program to drag and drop premade photos of components into the provided picture.

Once a ship design/variant is proposed, and accepted, it goes through Ship-berth trials. Essentially, I return it to you with the possibility of three different quirks that a ship may have, as well as it’s overall performance profile.

In more complicated terms, This represents turning experimental prototypes into a mass producible design and removing any flaws caused by malfunctions, inefficiencies, and generally optimising the ship.  I roll as per Difficulties and rolls for the possibility of three quirks on the ships functional capabilities. The difficulty may be adjusted depending on how new or old the hull & components are, if there are any resource shortages in the prototype, but is otherwise not expected to be anything but a normal difficulty roll. I convert these difficulty roles into malus’s or positives and call it a day.

This repeats a gain if a ship variant gets modified  and goes through ship berth trials, as well if it is modified and sent to the field without ship-berth trials. The only difference is, the ship sent out with ship berth trials  has both more pronounced quirks, as well as a higher likelihood of negative quirks.

Setting Switches
Beginnings are Beginnings: Three or four turns are allowed to pass before combat begins. Ship Production will continue as normal, but are not allowed to move beyond the core system.
Bulky Nuclear Weapons: In this universe, the miniaturization of nuclear weapons is almost impossible. This is further compounded by hither-to undiscovered issues that the lack of gravity has on weapons of mass destruction. Simple fission based weapons of mass destruction are bulky, but it does get slimmer for every technological leap. What does this mean? Using Nuclear weapons requires significant mass requirements that are expected to take at quite a few slots just for your nuclear warhead for only one nuclear warhead. A ship with nuclear weapons will probably only have one, and maybe look like this. They will have yields expected of their weight class however: They will deliver megatons of firepower. Nuclear weapons are meteoric hammers with a lethality shrouded in myth. Expect dire consequences when these machines are deployed on the surface of worlds, and alot less in their orbits.
Malleable, Mutable Physics: This is soft sci-fi. If you cannot write techno-babble, I accept descriptions of what the research proposal accomplishes and I’ll weave it into previous iterations of technology.  I do prefer proposals that have some following real life physics, but it is secondary to the coherent set of rules or guidelines that your equipment creates and follows as it is successively designed and revised by you and your peers. It can be as simple as “Electricity going into this thing creates a [unqiue effect] or something about magnets as a sacrificial altar to the dark gods. I don’t mind, just try and make it interesting and fun for others.

Faster Than Light: This setting’s FTL systems require the invocation of Gates. Their decrepit state necessitated the usage of Gate Keys, representing the components and systems that burned out from the Gate due to it’s age, as well as the computational engines to calculate the destination. Gate Keys can take multiple forms with radical changes capabilities and drawbacks. Some examples are listed below.
One ship can have a gate key that opens the way for other ships.
Every ship in a fleet element has a gate key.
A infrastructure can be set to install a replacement “gate key” into the gate. (This is a one way trip for ships without a gatekey.)

The Rocket Equation: is simplified away in the sense that the starter engine is both relatively slow and a marginal maintenance cost, representing the logistical train required to keep them refueled. High-efficiency engines would have less or no maintenance costs compared to Hydrogen engines, while providing a higher "strategic" speed with a weakness to fighting in a tactical sense. It is completely possible to reduce the maintenance costs of ships with these components, or create high efficiency logistic trains that manifest mechanically as a flat reduction to maintenance cost on resources per turn. Focussing on low-speed propellant systems (proton sail, ramjets, propellers, and ram drives) may compromise tactical combat in exchange for superior strategic positioning which will be reflected in the battle reports and ship-birth trials.

Spoiler: Map (click to show/hide)

The map will be current in the core thread as well as the latest post of the arms race. For historic images, please refer to either side's thread.

Spoiler: Templates (click to show/hide)

DESIGN TEMPLATE

Design: //The name of the item being designed
[Description]
Theorized Tags: //Tags that you think should be put on the component or hull. May or may not actually be put on the item in question.
Est. Cost://The estimated cost of the component in the designers educated guess.

Code: [Select]

[quote=DESIGN NAME]
Design: //The name of the item being designed
[Description]
Theorized Tags: //Tags that you think should be put on the component or hull. May or may not actually be put on the item in question.
Est. Cost://The estimated cost of the component in the designers educated guess.
[/quote]

DESIGN VOTEBOX

DESIGN NAME (0): //put your name after the colon and increment the number in parentheses to vote for a design.
DESIGN NAME (0):

Code: [Select]

[quote]
DESIGN NAME (0): //put your name after the colon and increment the number in parentheses to vote for a design.
DESIGN NAME (0):
[/quote]

REVISION TEMPLATE

Revision://The name of the project/revision.
[Description]
Item being Revised://Component or hull being revised here, if not applicable remove this entry.
Theorized Appended Tags: //Theorized tags that may be added to or removed from the component or hull in question. If none, remove entry.
Est Cost: //The Designers guess at the estimated cost of the component after revision. May or may not be accurate. If not applicable, remove entry.

Code: [Select]

[quote= REVISION NAME]
Revision://The name of the project/revision.
[Description]
Item being Revised://Component or hull being revised here, if not applicable remove this entry.
Theorized Appended Tags: //Theorized tags that may be added to or removed from the component or hull in question. If none, remove entry.
Est Cost: //The Designers guess at the estimated cost of the component after revision. May or may not be accurate. If not applicable, remove entry.
[/quote]

PROTOTYPING TEMPLATEs
You have three options for Operationalizing ships. You can
A: copy the template image of a hull, and paste in the pictures of components, add in how much armor it has in each facing, fill in the armor picture, and then call it a day. Depending on the hull template, there might be more to do.
B: fill out the operationalization template specific to the hull and post it in the forum. They are the open and close brackets with letters and numbers in them sometimes.
C.Fill out the Generic Operationalization Template, where the GM will fill out the template and present it during ship-berth trials. Impossible requests will be met with erratic configurations..

GENERIC OPERATIONALIZATION TEMPLATE

VARIANT NAME:
BASE HULL:
COMPONENTS REQUESTED:
GENERAL ROLE

Code: [Select]

[quote]
VARIANT NAME:
BASE HULL:
COMPONENTS REQUESTED:
GENERAL ROLE
[/quote]

OPERATIONALIZATION VOTEBOX

PROTOTYPE NAME (+0):
AGAINST ABOVE (-0):
PROTOTYPE NAME (+0):
AGAINST ABOVE (-0)

Code: [Select]

[quote]
PROTOTYPE NAME (+0):
AGAINST ABOVE (-0):
PROTOTYPE NAME (+0):
AGAINST ABOVE (-0)
[/quote]

STRATEGY TEMPLATE

Finalization Voting:

//Copy this for each new Prototype. Append the end of any modification with a variant name/letter/number and HOLD if you want to wait on deploying it until next turn for deployment in exchange for another round of ship-berth trials or DEPLOY IMMEDIATELY to put it to the field without testing.

ACCEPT (0):
MODIFICATION “A” HOLD (0):
MODIFICATION “B” HOLD (0):
MODIFICATION “B” DEPLOY IMMEDIATELY (0):
SCRAP (0):
ALLOCATION SECTION

Allocation Voting::

[INSERT PLAN NAME] (0):
[INSERT PLAN NAME] (0):

Code: [Select]

[quote=Strategization]
[b]Finalization Voting:[/b]

//Copy this for each new Prototype. Append the end of any modification with a variant name/letter/number and HOLD if you want to wait on deploying it until next turn for deployment in exchange for another round of ship-berth trials or DEPLOY IMMEDIATELY to put it to the field without testing.

[quote=PROTOTYPE NAME]
ACCEPT (0):
MODIFICATION “A” HOLD (0):
MODIFICATION “B” HOLD (0):
MODIFICATION “B” DEPLOY IMMEDIATELY (0):
SCRAP (0):
ALLOCATION SECTION
[/quote]

[b]Allocation Voting[/b]::

[quote]
[INSERT PLAN NAME] (0):
[INSERT PLAN NAME] (0):
[/quote]

ALLOCATION PLANNING TEMPLATE

]
[PASTE IN RESOURCES AVAILABLE FROM ARMS RACE MASTER’S POST]

Ship Production list:
[FULL SHIP PREFIX DESIGN NAME -- SHIP NAME]
[EXAMPLE: STAR DESTROYER VINDICATOR -- DARKK]

Misc Manufacturing Agenda:
[INPUT ANY MISC. PROJECTS THAT YOU WANT TO BE INVESTED IN HERE. MOST LIKELY WILL BE INFRASTRUCTURE.]

Current Assets:
[COPY PASTE THE CURRENT ASSETS LIST FROM THE A.R.M’S POST, THEN ANY SHIPS PRODUCED FROM YOUR ALLOCATION PLANNING. APPEND EVERY SHIP WITH A CURRENT GOAL & DESTINATION.]
[PUT SHIPS FROM THIS TURNS SHIP PRODUCTION LIST HERE PUT AN ASTERISK IN THEIR NAME SIGNIFY THAT THEY ARE FRESHLY BUILT..]
[SHIP VARIANT -- ABR. SHIP PREFIX SHIP NAME]

Code: [Select]

[quote=Allocation Plan [NAME HERE]]
[PASTE IN RESOURCES AVAILABLE FROM ARMS RACE MASTER’S POST]

Ship Production list:
[FULL SHIP PREFIX DESIGN NAME -- SHIP NAME]
[EXAMPLE: STAR DESTROYER VINDICATOR -- DARKK]

Misc Manufacturing Agenda:
[INPUT ANY MISC. PROJECTS THAT YOU WANT TO BE INVESTED IN HERE. MOST LIKELY WILL BE INFRASTRUCTURE.]

Current Assets:
[COPY PASTE THE CURRENT ASSETS LIST FROM THE A.R.M’S POST, THEN ANY SHIPS PRODUCED FROM YOUR ALLOCATION PLANNING. APPEND EVERY SHIP WITH A CURRENT GOAL & DESTINATION.]
[PUT SHIPS FROM THIS TURNS SHIP PRODUCTION LIST HERE PUT AN ASTERISK IN THEIR NAME SIGNIFY THAT THEY ARE FRESHLY BUILT..]
[SHIP VARIANT -- ABR. SHIP PREFIX SHIP NAME]

[/quote]


[Blood_Librarian]

Design votes for Turn -2 are locked.
Designs for Turn -2 are out.

[Blood_Librarian]

Part of the pre-turn's process is making a fleet fir the first conflict. To do this, ships will need to be operationalized. This essentially means that the templates are filled out with components from the library and posted onto the thread. This can happen both right now and on any operationalization phase., I ask that you please try and make some from either
A. The little bracket "template" attached to each hull, and then filling each bracket with the three letter codes that correspond with a component, substituting the letters inside if required or
B. Opening the drop bucket link in the designs tab of the core thread and using a image editing software to copy paste pictures of the component into a selected hull.

Once this is done, please post it so that way I can feel at least a little vindicated on my newly created ship-design system.

[Blood_Librarian]

Elysium Command Arms Race of Conquest: Battle Report of Turn 00

Elysium Command: Arms Race of Conquest

RESULTS:
SKANZAT UNITED CONSTITUTIONAL KINGDOMS RESERVE FORCES AND SEND SCOUTING VESSELS WITH A LIGHT FIGHTING RESERVE
ELYSIUM DE LA 12TH SOCIÉTÉ DEPLOY ASSAULT FORCE ACROSS THE SYSTEM

ELYSIUM DE LA 12TH SOCIÉTÉ GAIN CONTROL OF THE SYSTEM BATTLESPACE


INTEL REPORT: ROSES STAR
TO: ALL SOCIETY NAVY STAFF
FROM: Department of Interior Naval Affairs of Skanzrat United Constitutional Kingdoms

Attached is a processed dataset of Roses Star, named by our ancestors after a legendary individual who was instrumental in creating terraforming techniques. It is a system with thick envelopes of man-made structures and objects that dot the entire system, including the presence of active automated systems that churn to some forgotten purpose. Sensor officers will have to be wary and continually catalog and database all objects in the system as we move throughout the system. Two immediate objects in the system require immediate security to further our Elysium's future:

Of the twelve misbegotten worlds and gas giants that circle this system, only one has any importance: Ranachuri, a world, perhaps it once was a jewel of a terraformers cabal or it was a true treasure and was made by the galaxy for mankind: It is now a world tortured and burned by steel rain. The massive orbital structures -- we can tell, the sheer scale of the debris clouds even after so long signals a truly massive structure -- fell from orbit, no longer kept up by automata sometime after the gates went dark.

The air is breathable, if just, judging from spectral analysis. People live in this world, huddling in small communities and living in a totally uncivilized state with only the sputtering low-level EM emissions indicative of primitive technology. The augers of the human intelligence division estimates the world has an estimated population of the 10^5 scale at most. The massive clouds of industrial debris around the orbit as well as the skeletal frame of what could’ve been a gate in it’s high orbit indicates that his world had been the center of industry before the collapse, carefully chosen due to its low but existential gravity and scoring just enough on habitability index to be worth colonizing and not lament in case of it’s ruin.

The second “object” is a large structure with a strong EM emission on many frequencies. It takes a position in the inner corona of the star, orbiting along with a significant number of satellite stations that appear to make up a proto-dyson swarm. The state of affairs for the swarm is dire indeed if it was once complete: Less than one percent of the star’s total lumosity is harvested by the satellite stations. STRATCOM is already coming up with boarding operation plans for entering the structure: Expect brave soldiers of our glorious nation to return with secrets forgotten since the collapse. The exact nature and purpose of this structure will become known to us!

It is a risky endeavor to maneuver ships inside the system, and all fleet operations must be wary of the significant amounts of active signatures in the system, as any one of them may be an enemy starship. Constant vigilance!



MOVEMENT OF THE STARS:THE DESTRUCTION OF NMEMOSYNE

Gates are easy to find, but are hard to actually determine when they are active. While the proud voyagers of the Skanzat’ Nmemosyne went out knowing that this system almost certainly held vessels of the enemy, it wasn’t a sure thing on how many ships the enemies of Skanzrat Unified Constitutional Kingdoms royal navy had out in play. Thus, it was the Nmemosyne’s duty to venture into the abyss, its sensor sending out megawatts of power down into its auguries and peer into the darkness, a flash of blinding radiance that revealed the depth and mysteries of the system, one seconds-long flash at a time.

“Commence scanner flash, all systems go.”

The Augury was pointed towards the misbegotten asteroid field of some gas giant whose name was unimportant, it’s rings as majestic as they were irrelevant to the rough, splotchy return of an dense and solid unknown that was roughly three times as large as the Nmemosyne. Drinking in every detail from so far, the sensor officer noted the reason why sensors were not able to make an exact shape report: it was re-orientating. Passive sensors drunk in the pin-point pricks of light from the object and the sensor officer ran a spectrometer analysis: rarefied water vapor, probably from a hot thruster of a combat-grade maneuvering system.

In a snap, the captain of the Nmemosyne ordered the main augury be cut from power, an emission of the data package to it’s sister ship the Starfarer and the immediate turn and ejection burn from the sector of space. Six heart beats passed, the temperature of the bridge began its rise as the dull thrum from Nmemosyne’s engine hard burn, an ashy hard-carbon smell settling in. The figurative temperature of the bridge was ice cold, everyone was at least well trained enough to come to terms with the situation.

Rearwords sensors witnessed the oncoming plume of “fire” kilometers long, angling for an interception. Range finders were spotty, no one could tell if it was gaining for a dozen seconds.
Communications came from the persuer, and at the captain's behest, brought to the primary screen. Old Pre-Collapse protocols were mangled and caught by the communications system and a human appeared on the primary screen of the bridge. His words were nonsense, but the tone was a deadened and stilted baritone that accented his singsong language with a menacing undertone until he stopped talking, and cut signal with an icy glare. The message was short, mystifying and utterly demoralizing to the bridge officers with anything less than an iron will.

The count down to interception was estimated to be less than a couple minutes. The Nmemosyne was built for long burns -- it was slow, designed to extract every ounce of thrust from it’s fuel. There wasn’t any way for Nmemosyne to escape. The captain requested a status on the communication systems and came to the hard decision of revealing it’s ally: A constant stream of information was now being sent to the IRC Starfarer.

As the IRC Starfarer watched the death of the Nmemosyne. The ship later known as the Fleet Transport “Venus” Venus Class burned bright, all the way up to it’s opposing craft. It opened fire with it’s dozens of turreted autocannons. The fuel tanks of the ship collapsed, hydrogen and oxidiser belching out in equal measure along with dozens of other systems in an explosion of shrapnel. It was a careful, precision strike. Satisfied with it’s maimed prey, it turned and burned towards the IRC Starfarer.

The Starfarer had sent some of its data to OPCOMM at the gate while it was still held, the transmission incomplete as the directional antenna needed no undue acceleration to be operational.

The IRC Starfarer’s intervention point was four hours, but was ultimately never to be as the CCS-2S(Combat Capable Shuttle - 2 (S) variant) "Earth Bringer" Earth Bringer Class fortuitously arrived, being in the spearhead of the irregular recon ships in a protective role, and the sole warship that strayed beyond the gate for the Skanzat people.

Little more than a gigantic sensor bulb attached to a thrusting block, the Irregular Reconniance Vessel Starfarer wasn’t fast enough, it’s engine of the same type as her murdered sister ship. In its wake was the enemy with three streaks of bright-engined tails miles long, burning the fuel mix of a blooded warship.

The veneer between human living conditions and the requirements of a starship bled into each other more deeply on the Starfarer.  It’s communications desk was little more than a terminal screen welded onto the captain's workstation, and it chimed softly in the report of  a terminal handshake from an ally ship.

 In as many words as a conversation between curt subordinates, the EarthBringer had cut through the sheen of stellar detritus and noise, and spoke with text and navigation plans from their makeshift  but bright antenna arrays.The Starfarers role in this delicate dance was an observer, a watcher to keep the beat even as warships plotted around the gyre of stellar phenomena.


COMBAT RESULTS: MINOR SOCIÉTÉ VICTORY

After Action Report:

Ships involved


Skanzat Unified Constitutional Kingdom Royal Navy
CCS-2S(Combat Capable Shuttle - 2 (S) variant) "Earth Bringer" Earth Bringer Class
Status: MAJOR SYSTEMIC DAMAGE, OUT OF COMMISSION UNTIL 02
IRC (Irregular Recon Craft) Starfarer
Status: STANDING BY
IRC Nnemosyne
Status: TOTAL LOSS; CAPTURED BY ENEMY.

De La 12th Société Royal Navy
FT (Fleet Transport) “Venus” Venus Class
Status: SALVAGED
CC (Combat Corvette) “Griffon” Griffon class
Status: MINOR DAMAGE


The FT Venus was not the largest warship in the system. In between it’s engine blocks and it’s wall of guns were hangar bays and crew quarters slabbed in between bulkheads. In these hallowed grounds, killers wearing the skin of human beings are armed and armored up, inside vac-suits driven by motors that awkwardly react to their users' own movements. Each “unit” weighed more than fifteen hundred pounds, and had the hulking weapons to match.

Heading this group was legendary column leader Frank Kilgrave. Fierce, lethal in combat and one of the few individuals who rated the latest generation combat augmentations, a pair of cybernetic eyes that hooked directly into his suit from his eye sockets.

The team was briefed, and the bridge was intent on engaging the enemy ship despite the state of the fuel reserves and it’s almost equal engine signature. Stars and gates know why.

Gravity was robbed as the primary engines stopped burning, and maneuvering thrusters plunged the ship into a deep clockwise spin.



“Enemy contact ‘Charlie’ has fired low-volume long-range fire. Continuing evasive maneuvers.”

The captain of the Venus, Éliane Rey was brave to a fault, interested in bringing glory to his Elysium above all else. His blood quickened as he witnessed the projections, algorithmic predictions from computational engines on when and where his ship will clash against the enemy. The enemies ship was slower but it’s thermal signature was similar in volume as his dear Venus, and while active sensors or optic systems had not entered into a range to precisely determine its size, it was assured that it would happen at least a little after they entered firing range of their guns. Turning from his display to the greater bridge, he spoke, “Arm Station two, time until effective firing range?”

The woman on the station spoke with a curt reply, “ Two minutes Captain.”

Ahh yes, he was going to enjoy this sortee. He can practically feel the sword on his wall back at his tiny little quarters, calling it be whet stoned to a sharp point, so he can knight his prize ships as something ridiculous after this fight.


Venus burned all the way up to the Earth Bringer, right into its wall of guns. The Venus had better guns with longer range, but it’s crude sensor package meant that it couldn't get an exact profile of the enemy ship until it felt it’s many times more guns. The EarthBringer was burned, but not shattered.

Both sides picked up a rough exterior scan of the enemy ship.

Combat Capable Shuttle - 2S: “Earth Bringer” Variant
The Earth Bringer is a craft with a quarter of its mass and volume dedicated to it’s engines. [UNKNOWN]. Respectably gunned with many primitive kinetic guns pointed to the front. Large portions of it’s surface area consist of solar panel and radiator emplacements, [UNKNOWN]. [UNKNOWN]. It is durable due to its increased size, hull and internal systems. It is armored against primitive kinetic guns.

No components scanned appear to be significantly changed from “starter items”, excepting the thick belts of armor. Large sections of it’s interior appear to either be relegated to support functions or is utilized in an unknown manner. It has several hangar bay points most likely used for troop operations. The Earth Bringer of the CCS-2 hull line is perhaps the most well armored and structured craft made so far, with thick belts of built-in armor and many structural vertices.

[HeE][?][SBP][EAC]
[HeE][Trp][?][EAC]
[HeE][?][SBP][EAC]

Gate Capable Shuttle - 2: Fleet Transport “Venus” Variant
The Venus is a very high maneuverability & speed craft, capable of advanced maneuvers and techniques owing to the fact that about a third of its mass is dedicated to it’s powerful engines. It’s interspersed between core systems with troop quarters and autoloaders for it’s relatively many guns. It is heavily gunned with primitive kinetic turreted weapons. Fabrication Techniques have increased it’s aerodynamic capabilities. It has an above average engine output.

[HeE][Trp][nAC]
[HeE][Trp][nAC]



Combat Corvette Rubik: Assault Gunship “Griffon” Variant
The Griffon is a heavily armed gun-ship dedicated to assault-and-fade tactics. Heavy thrusting grid’s that are simplistic and reliable for combat maneuvering. The interior consists of [UNKNOWN]. It is set with dozens upon dozens of turreted autocannons equipped with explosive shells. It is bespoke with a set of four 160mm cannons on its front that fire high-speed large bore kinetic rounds utilizing primitive high-energy propellant.

It’s guns are more accurate than projections expect, possibly the result of superior fire control or computational systems.
Format
[HeE][nAC][MGS]
[HeE][?][nAC]
[HeE][nAC][MGS]


HeE= Hydrogen Engine, ?=Unknown Component, SBP = Solar Battery Plant, EAC = Elysium Autocannon Special, Trp=Troop compartment,  MGS=Main Gun System

Brownouts on the Venus was constant, power sputtering from it’s mangled systems as it limped away from the last bout of combat against the Earth Bringer. In the hangar bays, Kilgrave had spread his men across the ship, their heavy spacesuits providing a bulwark between the unkind environmental conditions while they assisted the crew in the action.

‘Listen up! Secondary life support was just knocked down, we’re down to the air in the pipes, which is normally five minutes before being hazardous, but we were behind the maintenance table on the cans, so we got half that! Move, move, move!” shouted Kilgrave, whipping junior officers and crewmen into putting on void suits in the EVA storage.

Things were not looking good for Venus, a line from the bridge reported that the enemy ship had gained enough courage to push into the gunline again and finish the job.

Roughly shoving a crewman towards an EVA locker, he deftly helped the woman put on the suit despite the armored gauntlets.


Michael Kirkov, Chief Engineer of the FT Earth Bringer watched his full crew closely, smoothly responding and deploying deck teams wherever they were needed in this long sortee. A junior officer called out ,“Bulkhead Six on direction 175 collapsed, seismometers report a full buckling and as well as an electrical fire report in the section corresponding to impact, deck Six.”

With a snap decision, the Chief Engineer responded, “Acknowledged, Deploy Atmospherics Team Rumba into the area, we have to keep the batteries from detonating in that sector.”

It was going to be a long bright-burn indeed. His reverent machine meditation was interrupted by the direct line from him to the captain, who was otherwise two or three dozen meters away from him in the bridge. A crackling noise accompanied his voice, “Mike, we’ve got another incoming, prepare thrusters for a hard ejection burn.”



“Sensors report that object Epsilon Six has the IFF of Venus. No luck on getting a handshake, their communications are out only. ”

The captain of the AG Griffon was a senior member of the navy whose name was Elize Shard, a hardened individual who climbed up from the first combat-capable shuttles that lanced between her home Elysium in its unification war. Taking one last gulp of fine wine from the vac-canister in her hand, she slid it down into the chair’s side and took one heart-beat long survey of the bridge deck.

Holographic interfaces lit up the terminal stations of the bridge deck, new and exciting tech brought in by the R&D division. Two rows of terminals lined both sides of the captain, with Interior Engineering,  Communion, and weapons command lining up immediately left, right, and front of him with their own specialized stations. The rest of these terminals sat a comradery of junior officers, each manning some terminal or another. With two hundred souls aboard, it was fresh from the naval yards with the latest in weaponry and amenities.

“Continue hard burn, It seems a warship emerged from the irregular’s. What's the status of the Venus?”

A status report blinked into existence on her screen, showing a bright point of light connected to a series of spectral analysis: it’s life support was probably shot out from the volume of air ejected from the craft, and it’s thermal emission was dimmed to one hydrogen engine’s output. Irregularities and spikes came as the ship was pot marked with the furious sparks of detonations brighter than any engine made after the collapse.  Already filling out the details on the picture in her head, Shard saw the Venus burning into this warship's guns expecting something completely different. She wouldn’t be so careless.

“Object Alpha One re-designate as “Mystic” and continue the interception vector: let's try and relieve Venus from the fires.”


The Griffon arrived as reinforcements to the conflict. It witnessed the enemy, the CCS Earth Bringer doing lancer runs on the Venus as it attempted to limp away,  which amounted to spiraling around it while peppering it’s hull with thousands of rounds even as the opponent tried at first to return the favor.  The Venus was a burning wreck,  But the Griffon was not unscathed in the fight, and was venting atmo. A tense pursuit with the Griffon occurred: With a larger and more adept sensory system owing to the many times redundant gunnery systems, it determined that the Earth Bringer was bearing both damaged guns and power systems for a gatekey, and made pursuit to the craft. Several small engagements occurred as the Griffon was faster, but it ultimately could not force a decisive battle without leaving the survivors of the Venus to die.

It watched the Earth Bringer, with its shattered hull and broken subsystems burn towards her home gate. With a determined look, Eliza Shard ordered the ship to turn and assist the survivors of the Venus.


Docking against the Venus was tricky, as all it’s airlocks were targeted by enemy gunfire and rendered into sharp maws of ruin. Ship engineers welded on bracketing points to the cold hull to mount the ships together. It took hours, but entry points were cut into the hull, and survivors were pulled out from the sealed compartments of the Venus.

“ECON 2, this is Salvage six, we are entering the bridge, no atmo sigs on the auger.”

A flash of the cutting laser, and an airlock became a gateway. This maulosium of the dead held few survivors and far in between, but inside the bridge rested the most survivors out of any one compartment, including the unconscious form of the captain sitting safe and snug in a emergency void suit, who would come to a full recovery and be available for a reassignment in less than a cycle.


Despite the loss of the Venus,  Elysium De La 12th Société high command has successfully deployed reconnaissance and warships across Rose’s Star. Recon platforms as well as makeshift orbital stations have been deployed over Ranachuri and other major artifacts of the system. They will have the home field advantage in the form of sensory platforms across the system as well the deployment of a solidified logistical train across the system. Neither Ranachuri or the stellar object’s secrets will be accessed for perhaps a few turns.

Spoiler: map (click to show/hide)

The map will be current in the core thread as well as the latest post of the arms race

[BS12]: Home of Elysium De La 12th Société, the Elysium sits in the orbit of a red dwarf star with little in the way of other orbital bodies: A single gas giant with a small lunar system around it. The Elysium requires Aerodynamic 0 to operate in.


[RS]: Roses Star is a large system with 12 orbital bodies, including Ranachuri, a garden world scoured by de-orbiting debris from the massive industrial complex that had fallen apart in it's orbit. Evidence of a massive project of some kind is left behind in it's orbit. In the corona of Roses Star is a proto-dyson swarm with a leading facility of unknown purpose. Currently the center of the conflict between Elysiums. Close operations on Ranachuri can benefit from ships designed to operate in atmospheric conditions, with 5 levels of the Aerodynamic tag being optimal.



[SB]:Home of the Skanzat United Constitutional Kingdoms Elysium. The Elysium is in the orbit of a large gas giant, which orbits distantly from a yellow star. Several small bodies orbit around the inner lanes of the star. The Elysium Requires Aerodynamic 0 to operate in.

[Blood_Librarian]

Elysium Command Arms Race of Conquest: Battle Report of Turn 01

Elysium Command: Arms Race of Conquest

ROSES FIRE


Close to Roses Star, in between the vast fields of debris, a set of four ships burned deeper into the system. The first of many hurrahs into the night, de la societe’s transport vessel was escorted by a pair of “Griffons” as well as the newly completed Fleet Transport Terra, still hot from the Forges of Elysium. Each shipment of infrastructure made by the freshly set Merchant Marine Fleet made it easier to control the field. The transport held dozens of communication satellites, and enough modular components to assemble a monitoring station around a close orbit of the sun. the deeply insulated components were theoretically durable enough to survive the hellish climate for many months.

It was imperative to install the station.

Deeply inset into the Assault Gunship “Griffon” , the C5 deck was set to a low, steady thrum of activity. Sensor nets and the crudest, dirtiest EM hexes that could be emitted burned into the void. Two sortees with automatons ended with no real victor, only depleted ammunition stores, but the transport made it through the belt of iron. In The open space, between the second and first ruin-belts of the system, late into the graveyard shift of the warship's sleep cycle, two candles of fire was detected on an intercept course. Without a flicker of hesitation,safety interlocks were defeated and the ship went on a combat footing, and a flurry of inter-comm’s occurred with its sister ship, the Briard. A few moments later, the FT Terra was given a quick commune that summed up the situation.

The enemy was slower than Griffons, but faster than the transport. Thus, the three warships  burned towards the interception group, they couldn’t allow war materiel to be burned by enemy fire, so the navigation team put a counter-interception course that put as much distance between the fight and the transport.

communication reports echoed between the ships. Scanners, primitive and undeveloped tools tried to make heads or tails of their respective foe. The Griffon lineage is already a known factor, but the Skanzrat United Constitutional Kingdoms vessels were unknown. Energy signatures  indicated a fully wrought vessel that outmassed the Griffin by 33%, like all Rubik-base vessels. It had fewer, or weaker engines than the previously seen Earth-Bringer, as evidenced by its lower thermal signature and longer acceleration profile. It’s electromagnetic profile had the sharp sintering sort of tonal frequency that in the analysis long after the fight was over, indicated the roar of barely contained transformers waiting to be released.

The wolfpacks accelerated into eachothers gun ranges.


Primary Gunnist Palus Mannus calmly observed from the observation room. Dozens of technicians scurried away from the first weapon battery of the Light-Bearer. A Senior rating hunched over a console and picked out pertinent details from the read out. He was the operator of the weapon, and while it was not his duty to aim and fire the weapon, his was every bit as important as the Gunnists, as he held the burden of making sure that the weapon's many functions did not fail.

His voice was light, and with a musical lilt, a sign of his pedigree and stock from one royal house or another. “Diode arrays are primed for sequential fire, Gunnist.”

“Acknowledged, Sensors are sharpening the image. Ready Suppression sequence.”

The captain had already released the safeties in the Light Bringers Primary weaponry, a set of four Diode-pumped infrared Laser Emitters, each engineered by the higher researchers to have small optics, cheap components and optical systems such that it would fit physically and economically in the ship. They were still absolute monstrous systems, with a range that beat out the enemies main guns by about twenty percent.

Staring at the screen of the slowly focusing probabilities, the terminal happily pinged that the enemies ship has reached range probability eight, the farthest an enemy ship could be and still be effected by the gun provided it repeatedly strikes a chink in the armor or a sensor.

Each ILE began to pour a ship's worth of capacitive power through transformers and into massive banks of diodes. Each Diode fed into a complicated array of optics that ultimately shot a focussed burst of infrared energy at the enemy.

The hum of machinery kicked into high gear, and the entire ship felt the electrons flow.

A dozen seconds of optimal function passed by, and then the enemy started counter fire. Evasive manuvers began, skewing the Gunnists complete mastery of his emission grids fire control system.  Mounted directly into a hardpoint on the Rubik’s hull, it had difficulty firing on askew targets, and the Navigator was inept, or perhaps desperate. Whatever the cause, Mannus’s weapon disengaged, coolant seeping into the array and forcing a ten second delay before the suppression fire could begin again.

It was almost, but not quite like the training simulations. An undercurrent of dread filled the air.

Thunk. Thunk. Thunk.

It was a sound that he would never forget. It brought to mind the very picture of an angry god, pinching  thousands of tons of alloys and machines and people into debris, but first tapping on the ship. The lights flickered as the reverberated from the series of detonations.

Ears ringing from the cacophony of noise, ten seconds had passed, and the ship was on point again, so his gun would fire, so it will until either the batteries, the enemy, or the gun wore out.


“Navarch, Sensor Nacelle Zero-Six-Sentinel is down. Computational engines are reporting a 30% loss of confidence.”

The Briard was burning. Lances of thermal energy burnt at the hull of the ship. First it was only shattering sensor bulbs and only  occasionally burning soft internals on critical hits, but now it was gouging and vaporizing chunks of the ship at a hundred times minute for each to their guns. Such was the burden  of leadership in the face of this awesome, terrifying weapon, that Navarch Driard Boroughs seriously considered ordering a full retreat. It almost materialized into orders, until a sensor report came into his terminal.

The enemies ship was firing laser weapons at his pride and joy. He dabbled in ship-engineering, long ago, and such weapons absolutely required horrific amounts of energy, delicate components and drawbacks built into the hull to field such weapons. Perhaps the famed Rubiks durability would fail them, if their starship engineers couldn't or wouldn't engineer some miracle to change this fact.

“All speed forward, close the distance, continue fire-ranging orders.”

His order was marked by the main gun system firing off another cannon shell at the enemy. Sensors witnessed its acceleration, trajectory and witnessed a trio of detonations upon the hull of the unknown variant of the Rubik.

Visual systems were white-washed out, the blow pierced through the hull and detonated in the guts of a hypergolic hydrogen engine rocket line. Guttering out clouds of gasified fuel, the enemy ship was rocked and quaking for seconds, before doggedly returning to its course and continuing to fire.


“Damage report.” ordered the captain of the Light Bringer, to everyone who could listen.

Returning fire, one officer stated, “Primary Hydrogen line to Engine Four has detonated, Engines Two and Three are guttering from pressure loss, they are being shut down per Chief Engineers orders. Pulse Power Container Array eleven is severed from data links, signatures indicate detonation.”

This was not quite a death blow. There would definitely be casualties, though it wouldn't be wise to commit to a more aggressive footing until personnel checked the damage. The enemy ship had already ceased fire, moving to expose fresh plates to his guns  and hope that they would accept the skirmish ending in a draw without further pursuit.

“Break pursuit from the target, We’re falling out of the battle line.”


The original Griffon engaged its duel against her designated opponent a little later than the Briard

The enemy was aware of its weapon complement, and thus the Terra and the Griffon maneuvered such that the enemy would face a 40 degree angular difference between both craft. The Fire Bringer ignited it’s  weapon when the range bands closed, and the Griffon was struck with lances of light.

The Captain of the Griffon is Elize Shard, an officer with a battle under her command and the attention to detail and fine tuning to make the ship engines walk the fine line between disaster and perfection perfectly. An understandable preference of De La 12th Société’s officer corps was to place aggressive officers at the spear of combat missions, and the notion has not failed them yet. With the Terra nipping at the heels of the warship before them, She ordered her ship to dive deep into the range tables of the enemy.

Her guns failed to make the mark until it made the optimal range. Both ships slugged each other, with battery banks, munition bunkers and dozens of other systems vaporizing from the will of captains and Elysiums manifest. Each ship left the short sortee with a dozen casualties, though the griffon was worse off. Bands of armor plate sloughed off the frame in molten globs,and more than half the internal compartments showed damage by the time they burned past each other's danger-close range and putting an end to the high-tempo battle. Interestingly, the Light Bringer fired lasers from a set of emitters emplaced into it’s rear on its exit from the fight.

Despite the ruinous wounds, the Griffon still had functioning command and motive systems.The Terra and the Briard prevented it from being pursued and burned. The Fire BRINGER followed her sister ship on an adjusted maneuver that let them slink into the noise of the system.

The skirmish went to SUCK,if only slightly.  The griffins that took part in the battle were severely damaged, and had reached the end of their rope in engineering time to get back to functional capacity to fly another sortie in the turn.

In contrast, the light bringer and her lineage fared better. The damage was less than crippling, provided the ship had an environment and battle conditions to compensate for the weakened engines.

The transport fails to install the station as it uses its supplies to repair the griffins.

Three weeks pass by after the last skirmish, and SUCK navy forces prepare a bold strike, but first, a prelude.

THE HUNT

Loud, loud classical rock music echoed throughout the hull of the MS Starbolt. Her captain was a verifiable maniac,and the ship's three dozen crew suffered for it in the form of four-G acceleration burns that weaved the warship through the dense belts of anomalous materials that made up the asteroid belts of one of the gas giants.

The second loudest noise was of the nuclear reactor screaming, NTR (Nuclear Thermal Reactor) fuel rods rattled in their cages, jamming against the assembly as they were accelerated beyond their expected tolerances as they were inflicted with forward and angular velocity by her captain.

At the head of this ship, captain Aiza Nassim was hooked into the machine, no navigator required as each bolt of thrust was outputted by the complex semi-autonomous intelligence that Aiza custom-developed with association of the racing circuits on the Elysium over several years . Noone needed to know that the ship was inhabited by such a system, so it took quite a bit of finagling with its computational engines before routine scans would only pick up a nominal software architecture with a couple of quirks, rather than a non-standard system architecture that bordered on a volatile status, especially if it’s sensors were damaged or it’s circuits were burnt.

This computer system was monitored and ultimately controlled by Captain Nassim, naturally.

Currently, her target was in the depths of this asteroid field. A Type two logistics craft owned by the enemy, it was a surveyor vessel, shedding its cargo of processed samples and reagents and hoping against hope that help would come before the tidings of weapon ranges closed upon it.

The ship navigator was working with few kilonewtons and many kilograms, the cargo-ridden vessel couldn't move fast enough in a conventional space race, so they took a risk, and entered deeper into the belt, avoiding radiation belts and dense clouds of debris as they came. It was close, the ships frontal plating was savaged by thousands of micro meteors in its pursuit of skirting oblivion.

It wasn't enough. A single communication echoed from the Starbolt, “Prepare to die.”

The rear of the logistics craft was peppered with a constant transferral of thermal energy. The bells of its thrusters were rated to stand such energy, for a little while. The navigator didn’t know what was happening until he took a hard sixty degree turn, angling the thrustor so that the machine would eject them out of a sudden stop against a thousand tons of anomalous, structurally sound material.

The reactor ceased rattling and began to purr. With no more angular acceleration, it was dead set on an interception course, the range lowered down dramatically as the ship accelerated 30 meters per second towards where its query would be.

The Starbolts guns fired, laser and cannon making an impact.

The logistic craft slammed into the rock, and crumpled like a tin can against the material. The “rock” shattered into three pieces, but most of the energy reverbated back into the impactor and ejected it into a spiralling path that took it vertically upwards out of the debris field.

The computer network even predicted it’s path up to thirty seconds into the future with a wireframe projection on the system map. With a shrug, Aiza Nassim flicked the General alarm off, and the nuclear reactor attempted to move out of its combat state. The intelligence was gentled out of it’s unfolded state into a neat little metaphorical box and the navigator replaced it in the duty of getting them the hell out of this place  Damn the hulk they made, the nuclear reactor rods were jammed open and it was running hot!

CONFLAGURATION
Open space, almost equidistant between the two gates, in conditions that allowed solar-powered systems to recharge quickly, Two fleets approached each other, guns unlocked and sensor blisters enlightening the gunners of their oncoming targets.

Both fleets had wounded vessels, crafts that had gone through sortees without repair at an Elysium. Nonetheless, the battle was important. It would decide the initial victor over Roses Star. The gates were changing, moving through dimensions and adjustments would have to be made:  New theaters of warfare would open at the end of this cycle.

A rough scan of all engaging vessel types was had by all sides.
De La 12th Société Royal  Navy designs

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Combat Corvette Rubik: Assault Gunship “Griffon” Variant
The Griffon is a heavily armed gun-ship dedicated to assault-and-fade tactics. Heavy thrusting gridis simplistic and reliable for combat maneuvering. The interior consists of a heavily armored command and control station with luxurious settings for the deck officers. It is set with dozens upon dozens of turreted autocannons equipped with explosive shells. It is bespoke with a set of four primary cannons on its front  that fire high-speed rounds utilizing primitive high-energy propellant. It has a very high logistical footprint with many ships that supply its munitions in between sortees.

Format
[HeE][nAC][MGS]
[HeE][C5D][nAC]
[HeE][nAC][MGS]
Thrust 3, Aerodynamic 1
[C5D] = Distinct inner chamber, most likely housing bridge staff and advanced computers.
[MGS] = 160mm Cannon, fast-firing and large bore, utilizes  hgih-explsoive rounds.
[nAC]

Combat Corvette Rubik:  “Aura” Variant
The Aura is a very high maneuverability & speed craft, capable of advanced maneuvers and techniques owing to the fact that about a third of its mass is dedicated to it’s powerful & primitive engines. The interior compartments are interspaced around the Gate Key, internalized fuel tanks and autoloader systems, which make up the center of the craft. It is set with dozens upon dozens of turreted primitive autocannons. Large portions of it’s surface area consist of solar panel and radiator emplacements, which drink greedily from the sun to fuel the Gate Key it holds.
Format
[HeE][SBP][nAC]
[HeE][GA2][nAC]
[HeE][SBP][nAC]
Thrust 3/9, Gatebearer, Aerodynamic 1
Combat Corvette Rubik: Flak Corvette “Slayer” Variant
The Slayer is a very high maneuverability & speed craft, capable of advanced maneuvers and techniques owing to the fact that about a third of its mass is dedicated to it’s powerful & primitive engines. The interior compartments are interspaced around the Gate Key internalized fuel tanks and autoloader systems, which make up the center of the craft. It is set with dozens upon dozens of turreted primitive autocannons interspersed to shoot down incoming ordinance and very close ships. Large portions of it’s surface area consist of solar panel and radiator emplacements, which drink greedily from the sun to fuel the Gate Key it holds. Higher than expected sensor emission & lower than expected sensor capabilities.
Format
[HeE][nAC][SBP]
[HeE][GA1][nAC]
[HeE][nAC][SBP]
Thrust 3/9, Aerodynamic 1

Combat Capable Shuttle Aero: Fleet Transport “Terra” Variant
A troop transport shuttle. It has an extensive hangar bay system that is able to handle large amounts of ground troops, including heavy weapon emplacements, and medium sized vehicles. With a component-thrust ratio that varies depending on the situation, it is most suited for fights around planets with atmospheres. Its light armament of Elysium Autocannons are secondary to its purpose of entering worlds and dropping off its many warriors.

It has a modified engine then the rest of the ships, and a portion of it’s itnernals have been dedicated to making the craft aerodynamic.
Format
[HeA][Trp][Trp]
[HeA][Wng][nAC]
Thrust 2/6, Aerodynamic 4
[HeA] = Modified Hydrogen Engine, purpose unknown.

Skanzat United Constitutional Kingdoms Institutional Navy Ship types

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Combat Capable Shuttle - 2S: Autocannon Shuttle “Earth Bringer” Variant
The Earth Bringer is a craft with a quarter of its mass and volume dedicated to it’s engines. The interior compartments are interspaced around the Gate Key, which make up the center of the craft. Respectably gunned with with many primitive kinetic guns pointed to the front. Large portions of it’s surface area consist of solar panel and radiator emplacements, which drink greedily from the sun to fuel the Gate Key it holds. Empty space is otherwise filled with fuel for the tanks and internal structural systems. It is durable due to it's increased size, hull and internal systems. It is armored against primitive kinetic guns.
[HeE][][SBP][EAC]
[HeE][Trp][GA2][EAC]
[HeE][][SBP][EAC]
Thrust 3/12
Tag: Gate Bearer

Combat Capable Shuttle - 2S: Laser Shuttle “Light Bearer” Variant
The Light Bearer high-power throughput craft with a set of 6 infrared laser emission systems designed to constantly put down high-power bursts of infrared light at the enemy. It has an “average” speed owing to its 1/6 thrust ratio. It consists of about 60% of it’s internal volume is dedicated to solar-battery power plants, and is capable of sustaining long-duration fights with it’s battery systems. It has a set of 4 infrared laser modules on the front, and two on the back. It has a special system in which the diodes of the front lasers may feed into the beefed up foci of the rear, allowing for the ships gunnery systems to have enhanced operations all the way to black-line capabilities. Almost all of it’s surface consists of collapsible solar and radiator paneling that may be damaged after a fight. It lacks a gate key.
Format
[HeE][SBP][SBP][ILE]
[ILE][SBP][SBP][SBP]
[HeE][SBP][SBP][ILE]
Thrust 2/12

Combat Capable Shuttle - 2S: Mixed Weapons Shuttle “Starbolt” Variant
The Starbolt is a well armored warship which utilizes modern engines to reach high speeds. Equipped with a set of four Infrared Laser Emitters, it barely meets the power requirements to sustain them for extended combat. It is equipped with a gate key. It has extensive solar battery systems, which cannot recharge without exposing the craft.sensors indicate that it’s central engine module emits thrust far beyond hypergolic hydrogen engines, most likely indicating it as a nuclear thermal rocket engine. It is equipped with a series of ball-turreted 40mm autocannons. Its thick bands of collapsing armor is further augmented by a well designed room planning which takes advantage of this to further protect its most vulnerable internals. Odd, extravagant and higher dimensional emissions indicate a flaw in it’s gate key, though unclear exactly what it is.
[HeE][SBP][SBP][ILE]
[NTE][GA3][SBP][IAA]
[HeE][SBP][SBP][ILE]
[ILE] Infrared Laser Emitter
[GA3] gatekey v3
[NTE] = Thrustor, Most likely nuclear.
 Thrust 5(6)/12

Aboard the AG Griffon, Elize Shard witnessed the projections count down. The Summary of the hundreds of crew members and thousands of tons accelerating each other was thus:
De La 12th Société had the better hand when it came to close range slug matches, their guns shot down many times more rounds down the range without failure or risk of damage from massive battery stores. Though their ships were smaller than their counterpart, they vastly out gunned them, with almost two third of the entire industrial might of the Elysium dedicated to building, maintaining and supplying the guns of her ships.

Five Griffon class Assault gun-ships as well as the Terra class Troop Transport, and the Aura class Gateship and Slayer class Gateship burned towards the oncoming fleet. Ton per ton, they were outnumbered. On a ship basis, they outnumbered the enemy, it was an interesting dichotomy that allowed Grand Navarch Ella Tourous’s master plan to be implemented by the Navarch of the fleet.

The vectors were direct, though it was obvious that the next step of both parties would be to begin a gate camp -- Warships would sit in the vicinity of the enemy's gate and have the tactical advantage on anyone entering.

“Sensor plot has clarified,  we have details on enemy approach, three Light Bringers, one Earth Bringer, and one unknown in Englobement formation.” stated the sensor technician of the Griffon.

Looking away from the projection, shaken into reality by the statement, Captain Shard snapped a few orders and buckled into the acceleration couch that served as her throne.

With a  flip of a switch, all the governors and restrictions on the rocket engines of the Griffon were released: it shot forward with the full power of a half dozen thrusting units.

It would be a heroic knight's charge, and the plan was simple: Make a pass by them, turn the ship around before they hit-knife fighting ranges and burn so that they would keep up with the ships. Repeat until either side breaks. The Griffons had the decisive thrust advantage, provided that the unknown wasn’t some type of nuclear rocket, and they excelled in the knife fighting ranges. This plan would keep them in that magic range where the enemy could only briefly keep their vaunted laser arrays on point while  leveraging the small scale guns on the sides of each griffon. This would make the MGS less than useful, but it was a worthwhile sacrifice.

Klaxons began to drone as thermal energy began to seep from the whisper-soft strikes of laser systems upon the melted prow of the Griffon. The alarms were silenced by the captain, already well aware of the danger, and the ship's engines continued to burn.

A set of four low thunks of metal on-metal echoed through the ship. “Main guns have fired, Reloading now...” the engines sang their ancient song, filling the air with a low, gravely hum.

In a flat tone, the sensor operator spoke “Two hits, Light Bringer Two is off kilter.”

It was time to face the butcher's bill.


The first pass by was fast. The weapons only had forty seconds to empty out before the fleets passed each other totally. However, The light Bringers had a surprise.

What was initially thought as some type of non-combat module on the rear of the Light bringer class turned out to be a pair of infrared laser emitters. Worse still, their energy output was almost double the output of the frontal units. With the thrust of the enemy fleet cut and the rears and sides of the ships exposed, gouts of invisible light gashed into  the Griffons.

A magazine detonation shook the Komodor deeply, and one of her engine nacelles grew dark. Thermal energy bled deep into the Picard, and her INDENT beacon went dark. THe Griffon herself was reporting internal compartments that were compromised-- a quarter of her guns were offline, one of four 140mm cannons included. All ships excepting the Terra had sustained damage, but the enemy was worse off, in the minutes where the ships with unharmed engines caught up with the enemy fleet, the intense operational “scans” of the Earthbringer was held, and the rough location of its gate key was determined and marked as a target priority for the next pass.


Michael Kirkov,  Chief Engineer of the Earthbringer, of the same class lineage that its name suggests, broke into a cold sweat. With a snuck in data cable from the sensors division, he got a glance over  to the read out and the summary meant to be delivered to the captain, and the results made his blood run cold.

The enemy was burning towards the ship, with bright scanners lighting his ship up in totality.

Oh sure, the captain of this ship could commit to a full burn and leave the light bringers to dust, but then they would be in a rout, with the Light bringers being blown out by the enemies guns. The captain knew this, and elected to stay in the formation without complaint.

The engines were humming a soft, inaudible tone that only he could hear. It sang. The enemy had entered into  the maximum engagement range for the guns, and the captain ordered a flank speed on the engines, and thus, the engine song’s dipped into the high-frequency hums that indicated that their hidden faults were burgeoning to to break free.


The Earth Bringer shuddered, a cacophony of metal twisting and groaning just as it’s guns began to fire: the combined fire of the Aura, Slayer and the Terra[i/] was placed with precision in a small area, and it’s starboard plate collapsed, rocketing into the interior and sending the hulk into a extreme and fast spin out of the formation. Chunks of metal gouged off of the hull were rocketed off and pinging her sister ships. The crew was forced into a high-G turn that mission-killed the craft. Most of her crew were dead or unconscious in the crash seats.

 THE FALL OF THE FIRE BRINGER


De La 12th Société Royal Navy closed out of the most effective zone for the guns of the Light Bringers,  and entered into optimal ballistic slugging ranges, and were projected to keep to this range for a few more minutes. The relative velocities were lower, which allowed for more effective manuvers. They braved through the kill zones and it was their turn to deliver fire.

The Fire bringer's main thruster naciles were blown apart by a dozen cannon rounds, with only maneuvering thrusters left to keep the ship moving, and more importantly, oriented towards the foe. Captain Jamison Koniig had already yellow lined his ships rear IFE’s, and knew that his final pyre would be here, Just as two ships broke off from the enemy wolfpack to persue.

“Black-line the rear armanants on my mark.”


Aboard the Griffons C-5 Deck, emergency power had kicked in: the primary power conduit to the command area was cut by enemy fire power. Just in time for sensors to pick up enemy damage reports to be relayed by the technician, “Lightbringer Indent 003 has lost it’s engines, thermal output is down to nil.”

“Acknowledged, Picard, Komodor will move in to eliminate, the rest of the fleet is to  continue the pursuit pattern.” spoke Grand Navarch Katheryn Arroyo, whose word was followed as law. The ships broke off from the formation, thrust cutting once the ships reached a desired velocity.

The Fire Bringers captain simply oriented it’s prow towards the Picard, and continued to fire.

It’s prow shuddered upon impact, and half the thermal output died, then both of it’s sides were strafed by unholy amounts of fire power as the pair of griffon class gunships emptied magazines and fire power down into her hull.

As they finished their pass, the rear guns of the Fire Bringer shone with an impossible, burning heat. It’s thermal output rose with occasional spikes as battery elements and transformers detonated, the ship straining as every mote of power was drained: the transformers were flash welded open, and every available diode fed into the carefully designed network of optics and fed out into the rear of the ship. The fragile channels couldn’t, wouldn't handle the strain for very long, not with the previous usage of those channels, but it was enough.

The Komodor burned.  Four of it’s six engine mounts detonated in series from the astonishing output of fire power, spinning out of control and nearly colliding with the Picard were it not for the quick thinking of the would-be victim. The bubbling roar of thermal energy bloomed through the entire rear of the ship, and a dozen engineering crew broiled inside molton compartments, and promptly then flung into and sealed against wrents in the breached compartments.

One by one, each of the Fire Bringers electrical transformers detonated, and the tomb-ship couldn’t bleed the thermal heatfast enough: her radiators were clipped, and it’s empty coolant lines meant that the ship would turn into an crematorium in it’s drift.

The Komodor was hit badly, falling out of the network until backups kicked in and warbled out terrifying noises, the captain fell unconscious at their terminal,  transmitting the chaos that occured in the C-5 Deck. until the Grand Navarch inside the Griffon used administrative privileges to cut the noise in the command line.

The Picard herself was still combat capable, her prow was runny with streaks of molten metal and rendered to back up communication systems. Thus, it turned and burned back to catch up with the rest of the fleet, leaving her single foe and ally as shattered, dark hulks tumbling end over end in the void.

The Starbolt, Light Bringer,  Storm Bearer flipped around and burned towards the rapidly escaping enemy formation. Wreckages of the Earth Bringer, Fire Bringer, and the enemy Komodor were left to drift. Infrared Laser Emitters fired upon the rear of the enemy, and the relatively unscratched Slayer received a scouring strike, removing a dozen of weapon emplacements on it’s side. The Terra received a collapsed hangar bay from a burst of autocannon rounds. The Aura was targeted by any enemies, and escaped unharmed, aside from empty magazines.

The Picard had maneuvered into a bad position, and paid for the price, having been broken off the fleet along with the Komodor to ensure the fire bringer’s demise.

The full fleet had focused on the ship and rendered into a fuming, melted hulk..

Both sides had faced severe casualties. Although  the Skanzat Navy had lost an Earth Bringer and a Light Bringer, each 9 slot craft with dozens of crew, De La 12th Société Royal Navy had fared worse: their ships were by far more damaged as the fire power was spread equally rather than focussed onto individual ships, which resulted in two otherwise repairable craft left behind in enemy territory.

Skanzat navy's decisive doctrine of heavily ballistic weaponry and faster (if only due to the tonnage in play rather than any engine advancements) slammed into the veritable brick wall of long range fire power and durability. Ultimately, the fight was relatively even, which resulted in the heavy casualties that may have been half as bad as what was predicted had the engagement prior to this one been a full tilt assault by both sides..

The Grand Navarch aboard the Griffon Was rendered unconscious as the ship had been rocked by the fire power of the Earth Bringer's final staccato, Thus, the flotilla of captains collectively decided a retreat was in order. Having circled twice, both sides were closer to their own gates, and the Griffons put their thrust and collectively left into the Gate

Skanzat forces allowed the enemy to transition out of the system, and they had taken tenuous control of the system. 12th Société assets were abandoned across the system, including merchant marine vessels and sensor platforms, which would be a boon in retaking the system if a counter attack occurs.


COMBAT RESULTS:

After Action Report
Ships involved
Skanzat Unified Constitutional Kingdom Royal Navy
LS “Light Bearer” Light Bearer Class
Status: Major Damage, Will recover by next Cycle combat
LS “Fire Bearer” Light Bringer Class
Status: Destroyed by  CT “Picard” Griffon & CT “Komodor” Griffon, Salvaged.
LS “Storm Bearer” Light Bringer Class
Status: Minor Damage
CCS-2S "Earth Bringer" Earth Bringer Class
Status: Destroyed by massed fire, Salvaged.
MS “Starbolt “ Starbolt Class
Status: Minor Damage




De La 12th Société Royal Navy
CC “Aura” Aura Class
Status: Standing by
FC “Slayer” Slayer Class
Status: Light Damage
CT “Griffon” Griffon Class
Status: MAJOR SYSTEMIC DAMAGE, Operational by 2->3 Fight
CT “Borzoi” Griffon Class
Status: Minor Damage
CT “Komodor” Griffon Class
Status: KIA, Salvaged by Enemy forces
CT “Picard” Griffon Class
Status: KIA, Salvaged by Enemy forces
FT “Terra” Terra Class
Status: Minor Damage


Gate Key Changes
I am unsatisfied with how Gate keys are handled. Thus, I added another factor when developing the new map: Jump distance. All things equal, Thrust and your gate-keys ability to cycle through gates allows your ships to get to the line faster, and pick and choose where to fight. This can include fighting in systems that are not “on the map” but in between them.  Major systems, that is systems on the map with a name attached to them, will act as “screens' ' when fully controlled: enemy warships cannot slip past a controlled major system unless it is decisively in conflict with major fleet battles occurring. This mostly allows “sneaking” around major fleets and further allowing skirmishes. I will try to have about 50~ percent of the fighting, most of all the major fights occur in the special systems, with skirmishes occurring outside of them. As of now, most commanders are unaccustomed to commanding anything but monolithic block formations, so skirmishes will be one or two ships against each other, favoring ships with high thrust, equipped with gate keys and are adapted towards hit-and-run tactics.
Major fighting will favor durable and armored or many ships, each with as many guns as possible.

As a side note, more advanced armors will put “slots” worth of weight onto a ship when designed, and will factor into thrust ratios.

Spoiler: map (click to show/hide)

[BS12]: Home of Elysium De La 12th Société, the Elysium sits in the orbit of a red dwarf star with little in the way of other orbital bodies: A single gas giant with a small lunar system around it. The Elysium requires Aerodynamic 0 to operate in.
Abyss Watcher: A Massive array of sensory systems that allowed the old empire to utilize faster-than-light sensory systems to keep track of an entire sector, the one we fight in. Currently inhabited by an active artificial intelligence that neither side have managed to make contact with. It is damaged, and is on the verge of falling apart if not for the efforts of the hostile artificial intelligence to keep it together in the long dark after the collapse.
The Bottle: A large structure the size of a gas giant, continually emitting exotic, powerful energies that make it almost impossible to approach: the structure periodically rips itself apart and releases a burst of what is theorized to be universe-ending true vacuum, before folding back together again in a most unnatural manner.
Vorpal Gun: in the orbit of a barren moon suits a massive skeletonized dry dock around one of the superweapons utilized by mankind before the collapse.  A hundred years ago, a society of space-bound human beings lived here until they ran out of things to cannibilize in the ship, and died out, leaving the Vorpa guns looted remains as a tomb.

[RS]: Roses Star is a large system with 12 orbital bodies, including Ranachuri, a garden world scoured by de-orbiting debris from the massive industrial complex that had fallen apart in it's orbit. Evidence of a massive project of some kind is left behind in it's orbit. In the corona of Roses Star is a proto-dyson swarm with a leading facility of unknown purpose. Currently the center of the conflict between Elysiums. Close operations on Ranachuri can benefit from ships designed to operate in atmospheric conditions, with 5 levels of the Aerodynamic tag being optimal.

[SB]:Home of the Skanzat United Constitutional Kingdoms Elysium. The Elysium is in the orbit of a large gas giant, which orbits distantly from a yellow star. Several small bodies orbit around the inner lanes of the star. The Elysium Requires Aerodynamic 0 to operate in.
An Agonized Thinker: An old warship, unfathomably large, the apex of mankind's dominance had been brought low in this system: estimations put it at a little over two hundred kilometers in length and an unfathomable amount of mass, it had plunged into the atmosphere of a once-habitable world and destroyed it. Something churns in its depths, building things from the burnt hulk.
Universe Ignition Array: A large spider web of particle accelerators and energy collectors orbiting a binary pair neutron star and blue super giant star, once roughly every cycle it activates, and releases an exotic emission of energy that continually stumped the top minds of mankind before the collapse. THis alien artifact is almost impossible to approach due to the extreme energies that it soaks in, as well as its unpredictable and constantly changing orbit.
War Simulacrum:: A carefully terraformed system such that it would be the perfect training ground for makinds warriors and navy, along with the thickest debris belts of the sector: This system is a treasure trove and deathtrap, as it was meant to put the paces to the most powerful warships mankind ever had at their disposal, and the wrecks are as numerous as the stars.

[Blood_Librarian]

Elysium Command Arms Race of Conquest: Battle Report of Turn 01->02

Elysium Command: Arms Race of Conquest

In the silent drifts of stellar gasses of the heavens, Haut Squadron( De la 12th societe Navy CT Briard, CC Aura, FC) Slayer approaches the Abyss Watcher. The trip to the system it currently resides was a new path, the logistic line still mapping out cycles-long delta-V maps to get to every object in the system as well as it’s gateways. Far cycle survey vessels danced among the rings of debris around gas giants, scattering surveyor lasers across the solar system, searching, finding, and cataloging.

The Squadron’s goal was simple, and as prideful as the stars: Take control of the Abyss Watcher. Sure, the process was codified into a gentle process, but the goal was the same. The approach vector was short, a product of many tons of fuel and good providence in the orbitals.

On their approach, thermal signatures lit up from the debris fields surrounding the Abyss Watcher, INDENT codes of unknown make burst out on a few frequencies. Without a proper response, the trio of warships attempted to no avail of trying to speak to the six unknown contacts using alternate methods, but they did not respond, thrusting into a fly-by maneuver.  As they approached, webs of ECM and disruptive emissions ruined any real chance of higher targeting in outer ranges. Estimates of the approaching vehicles put them as a two slot craft with a wide dish-shaped frontal mounted system and some kind of fission based thrust system.

Computer systems started failing in the equivalent of the range gyres of “long range”, the interceptor craft were using microwave based  weaponry to disrupt the electronics of the craft. By the time Medium range was reached, multiple systems were running on redundant backup computers or offline entirely..

The engagement went to it’s closest short range lengths, with three of the enemy craft eliminated by cannon fire. The remaining three craft left the engagement with no detectable damage from  De La 12th Société fleet firepower.

The insertion was aborted with a yellow-lined burn upon the detection of 36 more equivalent sized thermal signatures vectoring for an interception course. After two minutes of exit burn by 12th Societe forces, The enemy broke off and returned to stable orbits in the extreme high debris fields in orbit of the Abyss Watcher.

Damage was significant, though not extensive enough to warrant a retreat to the Elysium. Space lanes to the Abyss Watcher and beyond are mapped out, but access to the machine is not possible for the time being. Observation outposts as well as logistics facilities will allow access to the surrounding stellar material from adjacent systems, allowing for increased materials from designs that explicitly rely upon them to increase our production. First generation permanent bases may expect around 10 resources per sub-cycle from a permanent presence in Ranachuri and as a whole Roses star. A design cycle will not be required to harvest these resources, however, this resource flow will be disrupted by enemy operations if given the chance, it may be wise to design fixed defenses or hardened systems for stellar objects and bases. If nothing else, assigning ships to patrol the area will help.

The resource intake may be further increased once the Abyss Watcher is pacified.

The approach to the Vorpal gun by both Bas and Haut Squadron was uneventful. Signatures of the Vorpal gun show that it is abandoned, a cold hulk with a bleached hull from centuries of abandonment. Fleet Transport Terra docks to the hulk without any real fanfare.

There are monsters on the Vorpal Gun. Skittering things that cut and chitter.They die by the silent roar of machine gun fire in the cold vacuum. Deck by deck, the brave marines of De La 12th Société pay the blood debt to these ethereal, graceful killing things. By the end of the Sub-cycle, the Vorpal Gun is mostly safe, and the surrounding system is ready for further development. The Vorpal gun is in a system with plentiful volatile materials and rich belts of material. Designs that explicitly rely upon these materials will allow for increased materials and more powerful logistic supply lines. First generation permanent bases may expect around 25 resources per sub-cycle from a permanent presence in around the Vorpal Gun A design cycle will not be required to harvest these resources, however, this resource flow will be disrupted by enemy operations if given the chance, it may be wise to design fixed defenses or hardened systems for stellar objects and bases. If nothing else, assigning ships to patrol the area will help.



In a dimly lit room, a half dozen senior command staff floated in the null-grav of the Merchant Marine Vessel Hurricane Strider, one of the few merchant marine vessels with a main gun taken straight from the scrapyard, a 160mm cannon with a service record. Astronavigators mingled with the command staff. THe mission was risky, unsupported by any official naval elements for their mission was filled with guesswork and unsanctioned by the higher powers.

Their goal was nothing less than rescuing the escape pods of the fallen Fleet Transport Venus, although half a cycle had passed between it’s fall and this recovery operation, the pods were durable, and were equipped with salvaged stasis pod systems. ISO(In Search Of) simulacrums run on ELysium computational engines indicated little over a dozen possible capture orbits that the pod computers would have chosen to enter after burning away from the ship.

The only reason it was possible was that eight out of eleven of these orbits were to align very closely with the final gate that aligned to the Vorpal Gun

Captain Omar Hurricane leaned into the table, elbows down flat with a gleam in his eye.

“The plan, from the top everyone.”


High command over Roses Star of SUCK forces were set up in low orbit over Ranachuri, a small station and command center with a hundred crew, including a hydroponics system to reduce the logistical overhead. Dozens of sensor nodules dotted the system, feeding long lines of data to diligent operation centers.

It was in one of these operational centers that a sensor report came in, a seven minute long recording of a gate-way activation followed by ship moving to a direct burn to the probe before the feed cut from the primary sensor of the gateways that lead to the Vorpal Gun.

Holding forces in the Roses star were ordered to intercept

The engines were running hot, and so the rest of the Hurricane Strider ran hot as well. THe command team poured over the sensory terminals in their sweaty coffin sized stations and watched, witnessing the oncoming engine burns indicative of Skanzat warships.

Omar sat down, looking upon his own terminal, and quietly waited while his staff modeled and predicted acceleration profiles.

The tempo was set, and the gliding dance of orbital interception vectors begun, and warships danced to the tuneless hum of torch drives.


In a room mounted in between cavernous cargo bay’s, A pair of sensor operators were attuned to the radars of the Hurricane Strider. One spoke out, “Sensor burst out. We got one on the chart, Radar pings out a cross section of about five meters, matching objective one profile.”

The Superior looked over from his duty, looking at the terminal and nodding once. “Command probably already spotted it, but go send it up Turk.”


The interception burn was art, precision made manifest from degraded and yellow-lined engines, and one by one, the cloud of six pods were spotted and caught by the maw of the Hurricane Strider. Once the last one was caught, the engine was put to the task of accelerating the ship back to the gate.

The enemy ship, the MS Starbolt burns bright, it’s approach in a long form engagement that would result in matched orbits for a full thirty minutes before the Hurricane Strider slices through the heavens and the gate network.


One of the few technicians versed in waking up stasis pods in the merchant marines waited nervously,  the wake-up command running through each of the computers and the low sloshing of a dozen different processes was heard throughout the cargo bay, competing with the sound of the rocket engines running.
.
One of the pods shook, and then end-chimed. It was not assured for someone to wake up from these things, especially if the run cycle lasted more than two sub cycles. The casket’s door opened, and out rose a humanoid figure in a heavy space suit. It rotely sat up, rotated it’s head to survey the hangar bay with it’s  mean looking large bore pistol ready to snap up, before settling down and the figure removed it's helmet.

“Damn fine rescue, what's the sit-rep?” spoke Frank Kilgrave, cybernetic eyes twinkling in the light as the mirth and relief radiated off of his voice.


Meanwhile, Skanzat United Constitutional Kingdom navy forces englobed the world of Ranachuri. Earth Bringer and a as of yet previously un-encountered variation of the Combat Capable Shuttle lineage whose lineage name was referred to as the unimaginative (deservedly so, ground pounders deserve nothing less.) “Marine Ship” and christened as the “Tenacity” dropped the Elysium's finest warriors on the ground.

The Earth Bringer's de-orbit burn caused the elegant craft to cut through the atmosphere, riding on its belly through the surf of plasma, it and it’s fellow drop craft landed upon the world of Ranachuri the first of many times, as the first footholds were established.

Armed with automatic rifles, mortar weapons and the lightest of ground vehicles, the oldest form of warfare was played straight upon the denizens of a new world. It was a non-contest. The enemies firepower an eclectic mix of scavenged weaponry and black powder muskets or bolt actions.

Orbital station keeping sectors, geosynchronous orbit as well as insertion vectors to viable surface bases have all been cleared, and Skanzat forces may now extract resources from the world and its orbit. First generation permanent bases may expect around 50 resources per sub-cycle from a permanent presence in Ranachuri and as a whole Roses star. A design cycle will not be required to harvest these resources, however, this resource flow will be disrupted by enemy operations if given the chance, it may be wise to design fixed defenses or hardened systems for stellar objects and bases. If nothing else, assigning ships to patrol the area will help.


The C-5 Deck of the Griffon class Borzoi was tense. Being sent on the heels of a wayward merchant marine ship into enemy territory  was a  frightful affair of slow pursuit. The lanes were not tally mapped, the systems churned with a low burn of EM activity that made each pass through a dicey affair, but it was one final jump with the help of the newest ship in the fleet, the Gateship Frigate “Seine”, first of its lineage of the newly minted Sabalier line of warships. The only ship equipped with a fast-churn gate key in the three ship fleet, it would be last into the system.  Comm-shakes with the FT Terra went out well, they were waiting in line for the jump.

A few short minutes later, and the Borzoi lept across the heavens, upon the gateway network.  Ejected out of the network with streamers of ethereal and ghostlike extra-dimensional material streaming off of it’s hull, sensors came up to higher awareness as the mass evaporated off in strange globs.

Within extreme range, it detected the outplayed battlefield, seeing the two oncoming bright signatures, it did nothing to intervene, her captain knew too little and couldn’t hear the distressed calls of the Hurricane Strider.


The bridge of the Hurricane Strider was calm, but underneath was an anxious cauldron of barely restrained waiting. “What's the sensor report on the Gateway arrival?” spoke the captain.

“They are holding position, spectral analysis indicates heavier than usual material outgassing. They likely can’t hear or see us.”

“Fuck. What’s STAN 1’s approach time?”


“Two minutes until they enter extreme range engagement threshold.”

“Continue hard burn, IN-COM station, Move ship alert status to Red line.”


The entrance to combat was gradual. The thermal rise in the thruster bells of the Hurricane strider was just as gradual. The switch from economical to combat thrust levels was first started by the Hurricane Strider, and it consumed fuel at ten times normal levels to increase the distance b a few hundred meters. The Starbolt gladly followed shortly after.

The entrance to long-range engagement was marked by the slow cascade of failing components in the rear section of hte HUrricane Strider. Then, to the surprise of the Starbolt, a large explosion blinded the sensors of the warship, and after secondaries kicked in, it witnessed a spinning and damaged vessel. Accelerometer estimates put the crew at the outer edges experiencing over ten G’s of acceleration from the centrifugal force. It assumed a mission-killed vessel, and moved to engage the now pair of warships hanging at the gate.


“Prepare to experience exit rotation burn in T minus five, four… “

The Hurricane Strider fired off it’s maneuvering thrusters, and it’s death spin slowed down with much more force than expected, the Starbolt broke off from its initial velocity to turn away from the now medium range craft. The Hurricane strider stopped it’s spin with it’s cannon oriented towards the Starbolt, and fired once, the autoloaders jammed and the seats uncrewed. The round splashed upon  the engine bell of a hydrogen engine and did significant damage to the component. The Starbolt moved to long ranges and station kept at that length while keeping it’s laser weapons on the Hurricane Strider until  it entered extreme range of Squadron Bas, at which point it did an exit maneuver to regroup with incoming fleet elements. Scans of the Seiline were uploaded to navy intelligence, but no pursuit was made once the squadron and the merchant marine ship exited the Rose System.


Sabalier  Hardened Spacefaring S variant ”Seine" Gateship Frigate
The Seine Lineage utilizes the Sabalier lineage of vessels. It inherits a hourglass shape, medium thickness armor that is markedly more dense than average with an unknown protection specialization. The vehicle is equipped with extensive communications equipment and anomalous internal systems that do not match known component systems.

Format
[HeA]     [SB2]
[HeA][???][???]
[HeA][???][???]
[HeA]     [nAC]
Values: Thrust 4(8) [[Thrust to Slot Ratio:4/17 | 8/17]]



COMBAT RESULTS:

After Action Report
Ships involved
Skanzat Unified Constitutional Kingdom Royal Navy
MS “Starbolt “ Starbolt Class
Status: Minor Damage


De La 12th Société Royal Navy
MM “Hurricane Strider”
Status: Mission Killed, Salvaged by friendly forces. Will not be recorded in the kill list due to civilian status. Captain Omar Hurricane KIA, Marine Captain Frank Kilgrave rescued from hulk.

Spoiler: map (click to show/hide)

[BS12]: Home of Elysium De La 12th Société, the Elysium sits in the orbit of a red dwarf star with little in the way of other orbital bodies: A single gas giant with a small lunar system around it. The Elysium requires Aerodynamic 0 to operate in.
Abyss Watcher: A Massive array of sensory systems that allowed the old empire to utilize faster-than-light sensory systems to keep track of an entire sector, the one we fight in. Currently inhabited by an active artificial intelligence that neither side have managed to make contact with. It is damaged, and is on the verge of falling apart if not for the efforts of the hostile artificial intelligence to keep it together in the long dark after the collapse. 10 resource base extraction output.
The Bottle: A large structure the size of a gas giant, continually emitting exotic, powerful energies that make it almost impossible to approach: the structure periodically rips itself apart and releases a burst of what is theorized to be universe-ending true vacuum, before folding back together again in a most unnatural manner.
Vorpal Gun: in the orbit of a barren moon suits a massive skeletonized dry dock around one of the superweapons utilized by mankind before the collapse.  A hundred years ago, a society of space-bound human beings lived here until they ran out of things to cannibalize in the ship, and died out, leaving the Vorpal guns' looted remains as a tomb. 25 resource base extraction output.

[RS]: Roses Star is a large system with 12 orbital bodies, including Ranachuri, a garden world scoured by de-orbiting debris from the massive industrial complex that had fallen apart in it's orbit. Evidence of a massive project of some kind is left behind in it's orbit. In the corona of Roses Star is a proto-dyson swarm with a leading facility of unknown purpose. Currently the center of the conflict between Elysiums. Close operations on Ranachuri can benefit from ships designed to operate in atmospheric conditions, with 5 levels of the Aerodynamic tag being optimal. 50 resource base extraction output.



[SB]:Home of the Skanzat United Constitutional Kingdoms Elysium. The Elysium is in the orbit of a large gas giant, which orbits distantly from a yellow star. Several small bodies orbit around the inner lanes of the star. The Elysium Requires Aerodynamic 0 to operate in.
An Agonized Thinker: An old warship, unfathomably large, the apex of mankind's dominance had been brought low in this system: estimations put it at a little over two hundred kilometers in length and an unfathomable amount of mass, it had plunged into the atmosphere of a once-habitable world and destroyed it. Something churns in its depths, building things from the burnt hulk.
Universe Ignition Array: A large spider web of particle accelerators and energy collectors orbiting a binary pair neutron star and blue super giant star, once roughly every cycle it activates, and releases an exotic emission of energy that continually stumped the top minds of mankind before the collapse. This alien artifact is almost impossible to approach due to the extreme energies that it soaks in, as well as its unpredictable and constantly changing orbit.
War Simulacrum:: A carefully terraformed system such that it would be the perfect training ground for makinds warriors and navy, along with the thickest debris belts of the sector: This system is a treasure trove and deathtrap, as it was meant to put the paces to the most powerful warships mankind ever had at their disposal, and the wrecks are as numerous as the stars.

[Blood_Librarian]

Elysium Command Arms Race of Conquest: Battle Report of Turn 02->03

Elysium Command: Arms Race of Conquest

The Roses Star has lit under the fires of war with an intensity not seen since the dying spats of the fall of civilization long ago. I would reccomend reading it on the SB 12 side since I put the most effort into nicely formatting it.


For thousands of years, great leaders planned their strategies on great tables. Today was no different, the ultimate mastery and defeat against the 12th Society was planned by Great Navarch Ella Tourus stood in a spartan, metal room of computer screens built into tables, and angry men whose tactical bearing was forged in the dichotomy between the horrifying, deadly warfare of uniting the bloody ring and the cold, mostly theoretical teachings of long dead navarchs of the last era.

Maps of the Gateway Network unfurled from the screen that held everyone's attention, depicted routes often ending dead or sealed off due to their danger. The Merchant marine exploration forces took the brunt of that blood price, getting this map. More often than not,  dead ends had the skull-and-laurel iconography that represents a gate which any ship sent will never return. Such was the danger of this new era, ships sent through this network would oftentimes never return.

The enemies presence was thick in Roses Star. The Angry Men in the room suggested doing as the old navarch's do and go for the Low War, where warships were sent to battle with infrastructure, instead of High War, where warships shattered themselves against military targets.

And so the Low War began.


The War Simulacrum  is a system where Mastery Era ships of war were put to the test. Hundreds of millions, or perhaps even billions of unidentified objects whiffle across the system. Thermal signatures as uncountable as drops of rain in the storm fret to and fro from hulks, asteroids and worlds. At first it is questionable if anything at all could survive the millions of autonomously fabricated drones that play their own war here. But their desolation, wear comes apparent in the first few engagements, signaling them and their backing as terracotta armies. These machines stay away from the newcomers, a pair of 12th Societe Starbolt class Mixed Weapon Shuttles along with its support craft. Just behind, the aforementioned Merchant marine vessels run hard scans of the entire area, and stable debris fields are mapped by computational engines and beamed to the rest of the small fleet net. It is long shifts, constant vigilance with the full crew deck required. But in between the swarms of drones and massive, desolate battlestations were small chunks of debris. These debris pieces are the long destroyed remnants of engines of war, and they still weigh in the hundreds of tons.

The debris is marked, and a future of scavenging in this place could be had. At first, it will be the debris, then the battlestations, and then the drones whose cannibalization procedures have looted the battlestations. It is a supply of 25 Resources per turn, currently for S.U.C.K Forces.


The time in between the skirmishes and battles between the Elysiums was filled with plane, mundane tasks. Tens of thousands of tons of warships heavedtheir bulk through the heavens, themselves trailed by ever more complex logistical trains, supply bases and even infrastructure. Worlds, asteroids and planes of space were colonized, and resources fueled the forges of industry that ran the Elysium. It was a fresh breath of air for the citizens of the Elysium, whose fruits of labor were previously fueled by the equal destruction and prompt transmutation of another part of the Elysium. Shuttles were built from Elysium bulkheads, Gunpowder fueled from the volatiles stolen from hydroponic bays, and the collective drain from the growth brought each Elysium near to her breaking point.

The machines of war docked with the Elysium were fueling for war, and every ounce of industry the Elysiums had were poured first into these star-ships.

Elize Shard stood in the precipice of the domain that the premier quartermaster of the Elysium inhabited.

The Clerk was an ancient woman, carefully crooking her fingers with each tap into the terminal before her. After a few moments, she inhaled smoke from a finely lacquered cigarette holder before focussing on Shard with a measured stare.

They held this stance for a second, then another, before Shard broke the silence, “Will my ship be fueled or not?”

“Absolutely not. The Wildcats need this supply line first and foremost, You should know this, captain.”

Such detestation, Shard thought.

“You don’t understand. My ship is delving for the greatest action up until this point in this war. I am slated for the tip of the phalanx point, I simply need to be at the forefront so the crew drills can get started with the fresh crews.

The Quartermaster was unyielding “No.”

The terminal made a sharp burst of static and elegantly shut down per the prerogative of the Quartermaster, who then stood up and moved to a wall mounted data terminal to begin sme different terminal entry work. The conversation was all but over, and Shard had the tact to leave.


The ranges of Rose’s Star were civilized and patrolled. Warships plied through the gate lanes to Roses Star from the Skanzat Elysium.The first outposts of mining systems were laid down, and so the extraction of tens of tons of material was shipped back to the gate by the Merchant Marine forces.

In the brink of Rose's Star, out between the inner planets and the cold space that held the gates, warships trolled in between the gates, sometimes jumping forth in and out to explore the apertures beyond for a short while.

A half dozen thermal signatures erupted from the gate facing the 12th Societe.  Dim engine patterns that signify low tech chemical engines,  glimmered on the sensor net.

The warships scattered, each group burning to fill out a Navarch's grand plan

Spoiler: ROSES STAR ENGAGEMENT MAP (click to show/hide)

A low, droning alarm echoed throughout the CT (Unknown acronym, Possibly Combat Transport?) Griffon, as it has droned for the past half hour. Along with the Fleet Transport Terra, they were being intercepted by the First of her class, the CCS-2S Laser Shuttle “Light Bearer” and an unknown warship which, as an element, outtonned the 12th Societe force by a full 60%.

The Griffon and the Terra turned 90 degrees, and burned to out maneuver the oncoming warships. When the light-lag allowed the enemy forces to react, the unknown contact put a full burn, and it left the Light Bearer behind, it was a little faster than 12th Societe standard.

The interception would occur in dead space, with the unknown contact committing to an extended combat with aggressive burn maneuvers that defeated an attempt to make the fight into a fly-by. The Light Bearer would follow after two hours after the initial point of contact, if the engagement ended with the ships being set to drift.


Inside the bridge of the Gate Capable Combat Pinnace [GCCP] Wildcat,(First of her lineage and hull design, praise be to the high citizen-engineers of Skanzat) a rare sense of quiet, yet determined peace was cultivated in the bridge. Free of the roar of the engine and the hellish drone of the nuclear reactors spinning drums,  The bridge design was afforded the mass to reduce combat-situation noises from almost, but not quite unbearable to a few steps away barely noticeable.

Captain Yvette Sebastian floated just behind the helmsmen, and inwardly as nervous and afraid as the crewmembers around her, but she didn’t show it. She kept her facade up over the few hours as the interception course was weaved and divined from enemy movement. Closer, and closer, a battle approached.

Finally gaining the heart to remove her face from the main console, she turned to a navigation station, piloted by a young officer who was constantly tracking the maneuvers of their enemy, maybe he discovered something new.

Sightlines filled the projection table, “Any change in maneuvers?”

The reply was in a bleak, resigned tone, “No Captain, They are continuing their ascent burn  to the outer edge of the system.”

“It’s inevitable, then. Keep the course, Adjust heading by zero point two…


The engagement would take place  from the onset as a meteoric rush to medium range whereupon both sides would attempt to return it to their preferred range settings, being that the Wildcat would prefer extreme long ranges while the Griffon and the Terra would maneuver it as close as possible. The Terra and the Grifon would maneuver to put the Wildcat in between each other, thus exposing its rear to one ship until one side was cleansed or the engagement  was mutually ended.

Although the Wildcat had superior combat-rated speeds,  the doubling up presented a tactical disadvantage, and it was outtonned, albeit it was equally gunned as both ships combined due to the Terras status as a combat transport.

Demiurges of creation directed vast machines of war,
Pinnacles of war approached each other
with fiery broadswords, thousands were fed into the gyres of battle.


Crew members of the Wildcat ran out from the damaged section that once held the latest evolution of Skanzat’s nuclear engines, each second the air became thinner and thinner, one moment closer to the emergency locks closing never opening again, and no one wanted to be the one left behind in the vacuum.

Crewmember Darren ltica was loyal, cautious and studious to a fault and caring of others. It was only natural that he found the love of his life in this war. Column Leader Hannah Aries was his foil, and happened to reciprocate the love despite the unofficial stance against it all by the Interior Naval affairs Office. Her suit was breached, the right arm tourniqueted to staunch the bleeding from the spear of shrapnel that broke the seal and shattered her Humeris close to the elbow joint. It was an obvious, brutal wound and it hurt Darren upon Hannah’s insistence that she could make it out without being carried on her own because of the painkillers in her blood. Darren trailed five meters ahead, sliding doors open and holding them open for them both to move through, and sealing them behind.

It was this situation that led to them being stranded. An intercom blared the Executive Officers smooth staccato, “Warning, General Alert, incoming ballistic projectile, brace. Brace for impact.--”

Both crewmembers braced against the cramped corridor walls, an airlock separating them. A great cacophony of noise roared as a number of things happened almost simultaneously to human perception. Metal made a terrible rumble of being ripped apart, armor plating blasted apart and ripping through two bulkheads to perforate the corridor that Itica stood. His body sprayed blood as an innumerate amount of shrapnel ricoheted dozens of times in Darren Itica’s current room, only stopped from scything down the Column Leader by the one ton slab of metal that fell down to seal the corridor and to ensure the integrity of the ship.  “--Impact confirmed, Approximate location is the rear engine systems starboard.”

The fall of the Emergency Vacuum Seal Automated Bulkhead echoed in concert with six other EVSAB’s that isolated damaged sections, to keep the ship functional. Each slammed into carefully engineered materials that reduced the screech of metal on metal to a long, roaring boom that just barely prevented ringing in the ears while also creating a vacuum proof seal.

The four inch thick slab of transparent aluminum that allowed Aries to watch Darren-- her Darren- weep blood from his eyes and try to staunch the bleeding for a couple seconds before taking one concerted step forward, and then another. He took one last, full, deep exhale into the vacuum before putting his head against the door intercom, with his cheek pitted solidly against the microphone surface.

Aries heard the clicking of teeth, as loud in her head as the bulkheads slamming down in her mind. The word “GO”  was spelled out with morse code into the comm, and Aries failed to tear herself from the slot that contained the window. She watched as the man-- Stars and autocannons, he was bleeding so much -- stood tall, leaned himself against the door  and painted a heart upon the window with his own blood. He looked into her eyes one last time, a gentle, sad smile given freely, before slumping out of sight.

With a heart of steel, Hannah Aries threw herself back into the mindset of a naval officer. “This is Column leader Aries, Hall Section 7-S is breached. Crewmember Itica is down, He is critically wounded, requesting a vac recovery team ASAP to Hall Section 7-S. I am moving to Rear section hard-shelter. I have sustained a severe wound on my right arm, vac-suit is breached. Over.”

They would pay for this.

The Wild cat’s engines were being systematically stripped by the Terra. It was a lucky shot by the Griffon that crippled her further. It just couldn’t be helped, as the absolutely withering firepower was focused on the Griffon,, and it won’t stop. It will not stop until it drifted as a crematorium for the 12th Societe’s honor in the vacuum. Captain Yvette Sebastian saw good men die at their posts, and Yvette decided that it was a good place for a decisive battle.

“Keep the focus, They can’t keep this up.”

It kept on for a few moments, but it became clear the Griffon would die in this fight, and both the Terra and the Griffon turned, and burned towards the inner system, towards an outpost of the 12th Societe.

Leaving Medium Range, the Griffons engines roared into the heavens in notes of hydrogen and oxygen atoms coming together in a fiery union as old as the first stars. And then, it screamed as a critical malfunction occurred, a thermal radiance that briefly outshone the thermonuclear plumes of their enemy, and died in a flutter of candle fire whose oxygen was sucked out by vacuum.

It sang a white-flag signal from the old union, and the Wild Cat approached with a slow gait due to its crippled maneuvering. It went, and took the motions to rescue the remaining crew of the Griffon, taking measures to take the first-named craft as prize vessel, leaving the Terra to exfiltrate the system as it was unable to complete the mission due to an interception course by the LS Light Bearer. There were few survivors of the CT Griffon overall, notable entries are listed below:

Elize Shard, captain of the CT Griffon  survived the engagement with only a collapsed lung, and was taken prisoner into the brig of the GCCP Wildcat. Her traits are revealed after recursive heuristic automated interrogation techniques to be:Senior, Engine Pusher
Senior:She is a veteran of both space-ship combat as well as the legendary brutal space-assaults that occurred in between factions of her home Elysium in their unification war.
Engine Pusher:She is a master of on-the-fly manipulation of engine systems, and was likely the reason the ship was not lost with all hands on board.

Column Leader Hannah Aries of the GCCP Wildcat successfully reached a hard-shelter and was treated for her severe wounds. Will be promoted into a captain position upon availability due to a hitherto unexposed talent in ship combat and drive to succeed.


Days of thermal emissions, low-level engagements and fruitless attempts to secure an engagement occurred in the Roses Star System. It was not an all-out attack, but a raid.  By and large unable to group up due to their on average slower-in-strategic movement, the 12th Societe had parity in choosing their engagements, quickly clotting up and lancing movements of material in over a third of the system, and reducing the systems resource output from 50 to 25 for the turn!

The 12th Society's ships were outnumbered 5 to 6, and all of their ships received scouring damage from long range laser fire.

It wasn’t until a month after this engagement began that something changed. It was at this point that both sides' warships were at the end of their service lines, with engines on the verge of failure and crews at the lowest morale.

The gate from the Vorpal gun activated, and the scoured hulls of the Metador Squadron arrived. Their hulls were warped and burned from the treacherous journey of exploring the gate network, they had nonetheless succeeded in reaching their goal of arriving to the fight, though late instead of not at all due to their prestigious and powerful jump-keys. The Seine class Gate Ship Frigates were powerful warships that did not quite reveal their potential in the last engagement due to unique circumstances.

As one, the GF Seine and GF Marne burned towards their brothers in arms, while the associated warship, the FT Mundus went to strike at an undefended fleet resupply base, it would join the gyre engagements roughly at the same time due to its superior strategic speed if the raid went to plan.

(It did.)

Spoiler: PRIMARY ENGAGEMENT (click to show/hide)

The fires rise.

It was early in the third shift, the captain was retired and the third officer in command had helm. of a month of on-and off engagements. Sensory operations of the LS Storm Bearer were long, and difficult. Dozens of different course corrections had to be done on a constant basis to prevent the major maneuvers of the enemy.

It was during these hard times that the warship's ultra cooled thermal sensor picked up the distant roar of an oncoming engine over thirty minutes of light travel away.

The third officer chose to awaken the Captain, and her choice was to inform the rest of the fleet.

The enemy fleet they had fought all that time started to look like an anvil, and the very, very bright oncoming signatures looked like a hammer.

It took a week of thrusting, a logistical supply line of the majority of the ships involved in the Metador squadron. It was do or die, as  they had to fight their way to their gate, and following them was the logistical supply line that were once a dozen ships. Only six have made it through all this perilous jumping, the rest had been lost with all hands. Three were scuttled as they couldn’t ever jump again, their crews and supplies spread to the other ships. It was a humanitarian crisis that brewed aboard these vessels, as their life support was stressed to the limit.

Their approach mirrored the quickest possible burn that their engines allowed, a veritable sword of the stars in a hohmann transfer. The final maneuvers of the had resulted in a situation of the 12th Societes favor. Picador Squadron successfully engaged the GCCP Lynx and forced the rest of the fleet to fully engage or risk a total loss of the vessel, and the bomber wings of Metador flew in a ballistic trajectory into the fight.


Fleet comm of the Skanzat Navy was hectic, “it’s god damn raining MEGATONS down here!” yelled captain Forellia Dominus, captain of the GCCP Lynx, her point made solid by the shudder of the warship as another round from a Grifon class pinged off of the ship's armor.

The Fleet Navarch, lower than the grand Navarch Katheryn Arroyo, was firm in her orders, “Continue holding position, We’ve identified the CT Briard as leaking atmo: With crippled engines we have a chance of shattering two vessels in a single long engagement.

“Not if MY ship gets shattered as well!”

“That is enough, captain.  As long as we continue to commit to a long range pressure we will win this. Keep holding. Fleet Nav--. . . Rescinding the previous statement, You are on your own, Godspeed.”

The voice line cut dead.

A few short seconds later, the communications officer spoke out, “Captain? We’re detecting dozens of T-signatures blooming off from Enemy Sablier one and Sabalier two, I think it's around fifty of them. Estimated time until extreme range is seven minutes. It's a ballistic insert, likely missiles?”

The silence of the bridge was disrupted only by the pitter patter of autocannon fire splashing on the Lynx’s armor, “...Well, I’m glad our ship isn’t the one in the coals right now-- PAY ATTENTION TO THE BATTLE, THAT SHIP’S CLOSE ENOUGH TO THROW A STONE!”


Forty eight  Fléchette parasite craft burned with the might of the stars behind their hydrogen engines. The ships were dangerous, put at the maximum acceleration that human and machine could handle, they had a ballistic trajectory that would put their effective combat vectors at a minute.

Everything shook in the cockpit, even the blood of the pilots. The primary of his 24 craft wing whose wing name was “Crown” felt the blood rush as the miniature dashboard spoke in crude terms that his entrance into extreme range was almost soon.

With no hesitation at all, the man behind the cockpit of Crown Primary spoke in a smooth, flat tone, “Crown Primary to Crown Squadron, Affirm on Readiness?” 

A chorus of affirmatives spoke into the radio comm. “Alright. Crown Wing, our priority is Warship marked as “Light Bringer '' along with Scepter Squadron which will be ejecting out of the ship to assume formation with us in screaming eagle pattern shortly. The other target of the run by our sister ships, squadrons Zeus and Apollo, will be on target Storm Bearer.”

A low klaxon sounded itself, and the sight of the mothership left his peripheral vision as it went into a full burn to slow down and insert itself into combat ranges. The Scepter Squadron had already ejected, and were accelerating to meet up.

The clock struck one second closer to midnight.

A callous, cold Navarch of a damned patrol fleet watched a new set of thermal signatures bloom out of the enemy pair of warships, synchronizing into perfect formation for what her eyes told her on a low, instinctual level was a bombing run. This doubled the number of incoming targets.

“Will the Light Bearer be finished in it’s turn around, Captain?”

“Yes Navarch, all guns are pointed towards the oncoming ballistic craft. We are estimating that we will have thirty seconds before they complete the trajectory.”

“Godspeed, All sections, evacuation for all tertiary personnel is now in effect for the Storm Bearer and lIght Bearer.”

Her orders echoed through the few halls where personnel not directly associated with fighting right now lived and worked. It was an order that did not break the combat strength of the ship, only its ability to fight immediately afterwards.

It was a callous order, one that saved only a dozen lives.


The squadron’s had entered extreme ranges. In its approach, it had caught the eyes of every ship in the entire engagement, to be a pilot of a flechette at that point in time was to be rendered immortal , to be emulsified under the baleful eye of laser systems and rendered into the stuff of legends.

Legends they were, but the transmogrification required that they would die. Of the 96 strong set of four squadrons of Flechette  Parasite craft, four craft had felt the heat of the infrared laser after twenty seconds, burning into the point where a component exploded and caused a millisecond long chain reaction that dazzled watching sensors. As the range band closed, ten seconds passed after they entered long range into short range. Evasive maneuvers evaded the poor tracking software of the infrared laser, unused to such agile foes, but another six craft died.
  The Flechettes burned with the full might of their power, but before they did, their payloads were released.

Of the eighty six surviving craft, twelve, three on each squadron had failed to launch their payloads due to mechanical or pilot error. A dozen more had missed their shot, or were juked by the massive craft by an absolute prime navigator, whose exploits on the Storm Bearer would be enshrined in song. Two missiles collided mid-air.

A hundred and twenty two heat seeking explosive charges struck the Light Bearer class warships, whirling into the hottest parts of the craft front and sides, being it’s laser optics first, radiators second and hull a distant third. Two fighters from Scepter squadron maneuvered incorrectly, and struck the Light Bringer as kinetic projectiles, a shaky mis-step due to the inexperience of pilots in flying formation relative to the realities of space combat.

The warheads were small, anemic, roughly engineered to put as much explosive power through a narrow cone of bulkhead as possible. Despite all those short-engineering conditions and crude refining, it worked, and the front half of each warship was rendered a shattered mass of metal and exploding batteries, each of their bridge crews killed in their entirety. The Fleet Navarch aboard the Light Bearer died with her bridge crew, faithful to the end.

As the fighter jockeys flew past the wrecked warship, cheers were held on the radio for a split second before another craft of Crown Squadron  died, fuel tanks igniting as the rear laser burned with baleful irradiance. Before they left the range of the fight, another six fighters died from the rear mounted guns of the Light Bearers.

The Prime of Crown Wing, Benjamin Maunu, shook in place as the battle klaxon ticked off a short minute later. A third of his brothers and sisters in arms, those he had trained and bled for, died in two short minutes, idly noting that his squadron had taken the worst casualties of all the squadrons, his heart lurched in his chest in a painful way, wondering if it was his fault that they all died. How many more would die?


“Light Bringer and Storm Bringer are out of the tactical network, assuming that their bridges are dead, and the Patrol Fleet Navarch is dead.” spoke the not-quite-believing ranking officer of the fleet left alive, Forellia Dominus , Captain of the GCCP Lynx. Though they appeared to still hold rear weapon capacity and engines,  it had gassed nearly two third of its battery reserves in fiery explosions, and wouldn't be able to sustain fire power any more.

 To her fleet were the ancient designed  CCS-2S Earth Bringer class warships, two of them. Equipped with the last era’s autocannons, damn those bureaucrats who gave her these damned warships! Next was the SMS Trespasser, a bloody jumped up marine hauler!

She took an observation of the entire battlefield.

Although her side was now equal in number to the enemy with only the light bearer class warships in the killed list, the truth was anything but. Almost all of the remaining warships  in her field couldn’t keep up anymore, and it looked like that if the battle continued, the entire fleet would be pursued and run down.

The burning of the Borzoi did not change the calculus.

Her mind's eye turned to the enemies warships. The nearest to her own ship was the CT Borzoi, in a crematorium drift, a slow spin as the autocannons and laser of the Lynx had ignited secondary explosions in the craft. The enemy ship, the CC Aura was null-gunned judging from its rapid exfiltration of the area. The CC Slayer was under approach by her Lynx, its anemic first generation engines wouldn’t let it get away from the nuclear power of the Wildcat design.
If the captain was smart, then it would turn to fight once it reached the medium range, which would occur within a few minutes.

It was a hard decision to come to, one that would almost certainly lose her position. She sent a commlink to the enemy her ship pursued, and it acted as a proxy to the enemy fleet's navarch.

The thin stilted man on the opposite side of the network waited in between the translated texts to reach his opponent. It was like this for a few moments, demand and condition, condition and request. So it was that the first draw of Roses Star was had. His face was twisted into an alien, thunderously victorious grin as they reached the same conclusion that  Dominus had come too.

DRAW

The Lynx very well could’ve, with the help of the stone bringer and Pocket Rocket, butchered every single one of the support craft outside of the  Briard, of Picador Squadron. It’s armor was only down a third of its condition, and the exhausted fleet wouldn’t have been able to survive the turning tables of the Lynx on an assault-and-fade.  It could've then easily burned out of range bands and be the only survivor of the engagement.

This would’ve meant that the  FC Slayer, CC Aura, FT Terra would’ve been lost, and although the spec’s put the Flechette as a surety on nullifying the power of the Lynx, they were in a ballistic trajectory out that would’ve taken eight minutes to correct, a purposeful choice on the part of the  Seine class captains to immediately hammer-blow the enemy and reduce the chance of losing their fighter craft. It left them exposed.

The calculus won out in favor of humanity today.

A short while later, the backups of both the Light Bringer class warships came online, and they connected with the battlenet. They still had just enough integrity to use their engines at the gentlest settings, and so the crippled Skazat fleet combined into a section, burning out of the engagement towards their home gate.

COMBAT RESULTS: DRAW
After Action Report

Skanzat United Constitutional Kingdom Navy Patrol Fleet
Ships involved
LS “Light Bearer” Light Bearer Class
Status: Salvaged by S.U.C.K
LS “Storm Bearer” Light Bringer Class
Status: Salvaged by S.U.C.K
CCS-2S “Pocket Rocket” Earth Bringer Class
Status: Light Damage
CCS-2S "Stone Bringer" Earth Bringer Class
Status:Light Damage
Skanzat Marine Ship “Tresspasser”
Status: Operational
GCCP “Wildcat” Wildcat Class
Orders: Damaged, will be operational before turn 03->04
GCCP “Lynx” Wildcat Class
Orders: Damaged, will be operational before turn 03->04

De La 12th Société Royal Navy Picador, Metador Squadrons
CC “Aura” Aura Class
Status: Light Damage
FC “Slayer” Slayer Class
Status: Light Damage
CT “Griffon” Griffon Class
Status: Recovered by S.U.C.K
CT “Borzoi” Griffon Class
Status: Salvaged by 12th Socite
CT “Briard” Griffon Class
Status: Damaged, will be operational before turn 03->04
FT "Terra" Terra Class
Status: Light Damage
GF “Seine” Seine Class
Status: Operational
GF “Marne” Seine Class
Status: Operational




Ship Analysis:

Sabalier  Hardened Spacefaring S variant ”Seine" Gateship Frigate
The Seine Lineage utilizes the Sabalier lineage of vessels. It inherits a hourglass shape, medium thickness armor that is markedly more dense than average with an unknown protection specialization. The vehicle is designed to field a massive array of 48 flechette fighters, designed to be launched in 2 waves with a 6 minute time between each wave. Each Parasite craft is equipped with 2 high explosive shaped charge payload heat seeking missiles and dual front mounted dual 40mm cannons with 20 degrees of gimballing. The missiles have roughly engineered payloads and weak electronics. They are unusually hardy, and can operate in multiple sortees without being refitted at an Elysium.

Format
[HeA]     [SB2]
[HeA][GA3][FLE]
[HeA][C5D][FLE]
[HeA]     [nAC]
Values: Thrust 4( [[Thrust to Slot Ratio:4/17 | 8/17]]

Gate Capable Combat Pinnace “Wildcat”
The GCCP “Wildcat” is an arrowhead shaped armored corvette. It is capable of extended atmospheric operations. It is heavily armored, with a focus on armoring the front and sides, utilizing average thickness collapsing armor for its size that is designed to defeat specifically large bore explosive rounds through specialized engineering. Overall, the armor blend defeats second generation explosive weaponry, and is somewhat resistant to large caliber(40mm~) machine gun fire. It is built with a sharp sensor net that utilizes radar and radio detectors and emitters, though the Gate Key interferes with its operations. It is equipped with infrared laser emitters and auto cannon arrays.
Values: Jump 6 Thrust 5(/13
Tags:
Template:
[IH2][SBP][IAA]
[NT2][GA3][IL2]
[IH2][SBP][IAA]


Technological developments
Both sides have specialized and favored the development of one specific technology over the past few turns. This "maturation" of technologies, being mechanically represented as stable generations of tech having reduced maintenance costs, as well as a reduction of current generation technological costs.
Enginseers, thermonuclear engineers and masters of the thrust equation have come together over, and over for the people of Skanzat to assure their victory. These peoples have dedicated themselves and developed mature, powerful, safe, thermonuclear second generation engines. These engines will be easier to work with, and will have a reduced maintenance cost.

Massive iron-work projects have begun all over the Elysium of the 12 Societe. In The pursuit of the most powerful cannon, these weapon forgers have begun the path to creating the perfect ship-gun. Though they have only just breached the surface of second generation weapons, the pursuit of bigger, more powerful, and exotic weapon schemas (ETC guns, railguns, CLG guns, liquid propellent guns, etc.)  are within their grasp. These second generation designs will be easier to work with, and will have a reduced maintenance cost. In addition, current generation weapon schemas have reduced maintenance cost.

These numbers will be edited into each side's newest Elysium sideposts.

Spoiler: map (click to show/hide)

[BS12]: Home of Elysium De La 12th Société, the Elysium sits in the orbit of a red dwarf star with little in the way of other orbital bodies: A single gas giant with a small lunar system around it. The Elysium requires Aerodynamic 0 to operate in.
Abyss Watcher: A Massive array of sensory systems that allowed the old empire to utilize faster-than-light sensory systems to keep track of an entire sector, the one we fight in. Currently inhabited by an active artificial intelligence that neither side have managed to make contact with. It is damaged, and is on the verge of falling apart if not for the efforts of the hostile artificial intelligence to keep it together in the long dark after the collapse. 10 resource base extraction output.
The Bottle: A large structure the size of a gas giant, continually emitting exotic, powerful energies that make it almost impossible to approach: the structure periodically rips itself apart and releases a burst of what is theorized to be universe-ending true vacuum, before folding back together again in a most unnatural manner.
Vorpal Gun: in the orbit of a barren moon suits a massive skeletonized dry dock around one of the superweapons utilized by mankind before the collapse.  A hundred years ago, a society of space-bound human beings lived here until they ran out of things to cannibalize in the ship, and died out, leaving the Vorpal guns' looted remains as a tomb. 25 resource base extraction output.

[RS]: Roses Star is a large system with 12 orbital bodies, including Ranachuri, a garden world scoured by de-orbiting debris from the massive industrial complex that had fallen apart in its orbit. Evidence of a massive project of some kind is left behind in its orbit. In the corona of Roses Star is a proto-dyson swarm with a leading facility of unknown purpose. Currently the center of the conflict between Elysiums. Close operations on Ranachuri can benefit from ships designed to operate in atmospheric conditions, with 5 levels of the Aerodynamic tag being optimal. 50 resource base extraction output.



[SB]:Home of the Skanzat United Constitutional Kingdoms Elysium. The Elysium is in the orbit of a large gas giant, which orbits distantly from a yellow star. Several small bodies orbit around the inner lanes of the star. The Elysium Requires Aerodynamic 0 to operate in.
An Agonized Thinker: An old warship, unfathomably large, the apex of mankind's dominance had been brought low in this system: estimations put it at a little over two hundred kilometers in length and an unfathomable amount of mass, it had plunged into the atmosphere of a once-habitable world and destroyed it. Something churns in its depths, building things from the burnt hulk.
Universe Ignition Array: A large spider web of particle accelerators and energy collectors orbiting a binary pair neutron star and blue supergiant star, once roughly every cycle it activates, and releases an exotic emission of energy that continually stumped the top minds of mankind before the collapse. THis alien artifact is almost impossible to approach due to the extreme energies that it soaks in, as well as its unpredictable and constantly changing orbit.
War Simulacrum:: A carefully terraformed system such that it would be the perfect training ground for makinds warriors and navy, along with the thickest debris belts of the sector: This system is a treasure trove and deathtrap, as it was meant to put the paces to the most powerful warships mankind ever had at their disposal, and the wrecks are as numerous as the stars.

[Blood_Librarian]

Elysium Command Arms Race of Conquest: Battle Report of Turn 03->04

Elysium Command: Arms Race of Conquest

In the darkest hour of mankind, lives beyond counting were extinguished as the final evolution of the war machine, the Star Ship, was directed by the swords of Navarchs against each other. This war was waged to secure peace by any means, a peace by cutting the heels of their enemy, to prevent mighty warfleets from resupplying by eliminating the worlds they declared as tributaries. And so, the last great Navarchs huddled in the cold, darkening hulls of their warships, and starved.


The Guns of Elysium

Without all the twisted games, all the  confrontations that the 12th Elysium's noble lineages liked to play, there was the hardened exterior of a nascent naval doctrine forming  aboard the 12th Societe’s Royal navy. Aboard the newest ship, the bridge of the Chartreux was quiet. A timer was ticking down, and the Captain was not the maestro in the impending situation.

A navigator, the man with his hands on the ship's systems in directing its course, turned to look at the officer of the organization known as NAV-INT. They were both stereotypical navy men in their respective departments, being nerdy and lanky little things. They met eyes, and the Intelligence Officer moved his head up and down a degree.

The dark symphony was about to begin. A burst of data chirped out of the Intel-Agent, and it was carried across the hard network.


Elysium de la 12th Societe today had a momentous occasion, one that came up with a sobering increase in frequency. The ship-yards had finished the test run-operations of the  first of the Bouillon hulls, a second generation warship whose name was Chartreux, first of her line. It was being gently carried away from the Elysium by a tug drone, it’s nuclear engines too much of a risk to ignite, something Empereur Alfonzo the Great would not suffer to have his Elysium at risk of irradiation again, if he could help it.

Sipping upon a fine wine-- Chardonnay, something brewed in the beginning of the dark ages of the Elysium, so it was a historical sort of wine and had a rich, borderline fruity taste --he pondered his post.

Sometimes… Sometimes he felt like he should dispense with these frivolous things, to discard the wine, the women, and drugs, and put all of it and put every artisan, every engineer to forge starships and damn himself to a century of whining.

Nah. Maybe later.

The thousands of tons of metal and manpower had reached its zenith, and it’s engine flare was, to his eyes, anemic. It didn’t burn with the heat per ton than of a billion moles of hydrogen and oxygen reacting, but of a far more powerful force.

A sycophant applauded, and the rest of them caught up. He looked, gazed among the halls, and noted the curious dirft of NAV-INT staff. Sure, there were a couple of his attachments and uninteresting folk, but the sharper ones were missing. On a whim, he called over a Navarch, the right hand of the High Navarch if he remembered correctly (damn that woman and her borderline treasonous pining for his second daughter), and asked for a tablet with an observatory's scope pointed at the ship. Just as in tradition, These observation rituals utilized no special optics to view the ship leaving the ship-berths until long after the engines had ignited. The tablet that was in his hands would show him the ship in detail. The ship's engines had ignited, and the tablet made a curious, discordant tone rapidly alternating between pitch and tone, reminding him of a violin at play. The maneuvering thrusters had sparked a second after the main engines. After a moment, it became clear that the warship was orienting towards the Elysium.


A muffled, suppressed gunshot rang out through the tight, metal corridors of the ship. No alarm rang out. The Column Leader of the Gunnery section slumped over, dead in his small little office. Gently pushed out of his chair, the body was laid out, rivulets of blood spattering the ground and the uniform of the killer. The killer promptly sat down, and connected his brain to the computer while the broadcast speakers began to echo with a soft, distant preparation, a prelude to the performance of the funeral march from Beethoven’s Third Symphony.

He would stay connected to this computer as the composer until he died, his associates would make sure of it. In a moment its systems were taken over, and the hard-lines to the bridge were severed. The man's brain was being split apart, the data streams were too much to last forever, but he could handle it, just for a little bit. Mise en place, a term from the culinary tradition of the oldest of Earth restaurants, came to mind. Everything in place.

The flutes, oboes and Clarinets had moved to position. Autoloaders began to roar. The Bassons, horns, and the trumpets lit up green on the sensors. Optics scythed through the space to the Elysium, and dozens of ballistic trajectories were formed in his mind.  The Violinists  played a long, scintillating tone, a signal of their readiness in the theater. Cannons whirred softly in their baskets, motors pushing them to the perfect position.

The first shot was like ambrosia to the man's mind, despite the lancing agony from the primitive connection.


“Captain Aries,  we have lost hard-lines to Gunnery.” reported a sensor officer.

This was too much. Aries felt the maneuvering in her stomach, and her ears. The ship was maneuvering in a way that did not reflect what her console was telling her. With the loss of Gunnery Control, her blood ran straight through absolute zero and into the roar of a blast furnace, taking in the fact that the NAV-INT agent had started pulling a gun out of his jacket, and was moving the gun to fire it at her. She began to dive down, and her vision was flashed by the brilliance of gunfire.

Blooms of hot, magmatic pain burned at her shoulder, and Aries was surprised at the arterial spray of blood that painted the screen in front of her, the hollow point round from the over-bored pistol had devastated her arm at the shoulder joint, and she screamed as she fell to the ground from her seat, and she was shielded from the gun by her console.

The small arms alarm bleated out, and the bridge descended into violence as officers and crewmen pulled out their own pistols and had a shootout like in the movies.

The Captain fought through the pain, and entered into a state of focus as she heard the deck rumble from the ship guns firing. Dread filled her form for a moment before evaporating into the focus.

Her Console was equipped with overrides for every part of the ship, she could shut the life support off, black line the engines and take manual control of the guns, if only she had the will to move her stiffening form and the connected hardlines to do it.

Her head rose up above the console, barely able to stand, noting that all the colors had lost their vibrancy. The NAV-INT agent was on the ground, his head blown to pieces by another crewman, but shooting was still happening at her peripheral vision, she was deafened by the gunfire and couldn't spare a glance to confirm it.

The main guns had fired four times since the hard-lines had been cut. As rivulets of blood leaked out of her savaged arm, she took an agonizing moment to finish keying an override, and the deck shuddered again.  Working around her own spattered blood wasn’t something that was easy, and it took time.

A few more keys, and everyone was thrown off their feet, the main engines and all thrusters maneuvering to heave the ship away, away from its current point in space to avoid a missile that would never come, and throwing the ships main guns off their aim.

As she fell onto the ground, she slipped into a bumpy, shallow unconsciousness, satisfied that she did all she could to save her Elysium.


It was only a little while after the ship heaved it’s guns from pointing at the Elysium. A pair of Space Marines in second generation lighter power armor stomped their feet against the deck in loud foot falls as they moved their collective ton of armor down the corridor. With quickness and guise, they arrived at their destination at the Gunnery section, in particular the Gunnery lieutenants office. The first one attempted to key the door open, and was killed on the spot by a shaped charge trap, mulching the woman despite the layers of composite and metal that moved with motors.

The other marine survived due to being behind the first marine, and took this in stride. The lone warrior readied his autocannon. The door was compromised, and the two inch wide shells punched through both the door, the compartment and the bulkhead behind it. After two shots, the marine stopped, letting his suits radar system map the interior of the compartment, before putting his wrist-mounted flamethrower against one of the holes and bathing the entire room in fire, and cooking the three traitors inside alive.

The war for the Chartreux was over. The betrayal by NAV-INT had culminated in the main guns had fired 5 times each, targeted towards the elimination of two noble lineages heirs scions and leaders, the Interior services department heads, and ending with the attempted assasination of Empereur Alfonzo the Great, who is currently in a coma with severe wounds, as well as the assassination of the Empereur’s wife and first heir.

 Martial law descended upon Elysium. The Chartreux, after a thorough examination by Interior services had determined that the betrayal did not prevent it’s operation in the field, and it was sent out to Roses Star with an added detail from the interior Services department. NAV-INT as a department is no more, with the royal guardsmen having taken the initiative to purge the department. The Captain was absolved of any possible guilt due in part of the need to get the ship straight the fuck out of the system so that the Elysium’s automatic defenses wouldn’t blow it apart.

Stars and Autocannons, God save the Empereur!


It took cycles of planning, but today was the day that Ranachuri would receive its first permanent presence from the stars in a long time. The SMS “Trespasser” was in the throes of an orbital insertion, its marine complement seated deeply into the crash webbing from the violent affair.

The Captain of the ship was on a compact, small bridge. In a few moments, their descent into the atmosphere will become less blind, as the plasma that sheathed the ship's hull would dissipate.

An alarm sounded off.

“Radar indicates oncoming objects-- three of them, speed is… 800 kilometers an hour.”

The ship put its engines to the redline and disabled all active sensors,  pulling its entire mass to dodge the oncoming cruise missiles. Its frontal laser systems burned bright, the first missile was shot down, the second only damaged, and detonated against the hull of the craft.

The third weapon was four to five times as large as the previous missiles, closer in size to an ICBM than anything else, and exploded with a magnitude more force; it was the one the navigator attempted to dodge the most.

The explosion was proximal, as the shot almost missed, and it tossed the craft upwards, riding upon the shockwave of the blast. It tumbled end over end, One of the shuttles got ripped out from its mounting and fell to the ground, systems were shutting down from the shock of the explosion. More than half of its components were damaged in some way or form.

Fortuitously, back-ups kicked in, and the craft managed to right itself, and despite the destruction of  most of its sensors, a fourth signature had been spotted before the detonation.

On the ground was a caravan of ground dwellers, large trucks that carried a makeshift battlegroup, a militia that was probably backed by a local successor state of the world. The SMS Trespasser recovered from the terrible energies it had been inflicted with, moved to the last known location of the group, and tracked them down through visual observation. Automatic cannons roared, spearing trucks and people alike with many pre-war autocannons. Return fire was anemic, as it appeared that the missiles they fired were their only weapons that could threaten a flying warship.

After an extended engagement, the craft landed its thousands of tons of bulk onto the soft, ashy soil. Marine forces took over the operation at this point, and laid the groundwork for the first permanent base on the ashy wastes of Ranachuri. The Trespasser would be trapped upon the world, it’s engines and hull ruined enough to the point of preventing a safe orbital insertion.

Skanzat forces gain a temporary 50 Resources for use next turn.




The approach to Roses Star has been secured by Skanzat forces. The sum total of Skanzat navy forces have been tasked with keeping the area secure. To that end, they had extended their presence to systems in between the Elysium of the enemy and Rose’s star. Far ranging elements traveled down the lanes between the two major points and a troubling lack of equipment came to be.

They had no way of communicating with each other! The only way they could communicate was through light-speed communication methodologies. In the era of 100,000  stars, FTL communication systems were not developed, resulting in the engineering of courier drones, sometimes equipped with FTL drives if the incredible expense could be stomached to skip having to enter a gate to enter the network.

Patrols between each system scoured through system after system, lights in the dark to oppose the advance of  the 12th Society into Roses star.

It was in a dead system, a warbling white dwarf, that the first engagement between the 12th Societe and the Skanzat United Constitutional Kingdoms first skirmish outside of Roses star began.

[Pavel G. Chesnokov - Тебе поем Op.27 №6 (To Thee We Sing)]

The greats were singing, their voices collected by machine and translated into sound after so many era’s was an astounding feat of preservation through time.  Sadly, in the coming battle, it was not fitting, and Captain Aiza Nassim of the fastest combat speed warship of Skanzat, the Wildcat (a recent reshuffling which sent Captain Yvette Sebastian onto the Flare), turned the curio off. Such an artifact was one that  had long lost any meaning, though it was said that it carried the message that would isolate a prophet, one who would save humanity.

The compact wiry software unfurled itself upon the end of the song . The engines of the Wildcat were reigned in to the control of the machine intelligence that Nassim had brought. The fires were optimized and trajectories were predicted, it was not a pursuit, but a brawl.
 
Though on a strategic level, the starbolt was slightly faster with a speed of 5 over it’s weight of 12, the smaller warship, the Wildcat boasted catalyzed hydrogen engines, in combat, its model was the fastest in the fleet.

The Wildcat and the flare split off from the Starbolt, engines bright as the enemy burned closer.

The starbolt was outdated, it’s gun relatively unimproved and was markedly slower in long and short maneuvering, but it still held forty percent of the firepower that was in the laser band! It would be the hammer to the fleet’s anvil.

Maneuvering warfare began.


The Navarch who lived on the CT Briard was nameless, a miserly bastard who thought the nascent cruiser doctrine that the enemy was fostering would forever and always triumph over carrier strike group doctrine. In this battle, the two wings of bombers were given the same level of care as a piece of cover in a tactical airlock assault. The dozens of bombers, up-gunned and slowed down by a respec that changed its armament considerably was set to slam into the main force, equalizing the disparity in output potential by the variant of the Light Bearers. An unknown element that would burn in a baptism of bombs

 the silent roar of the bombers on a normal insertion run signified the entrance to extreme ranges as the first half of the bomber team launched from the gateships. The enemies guns held silent until the bombers had reached the long range bracket, and instantly a difference inbetween previous intel was noted as the firepower against the wing was no less powerful, but much more pin-point in nature.

The vast accuracy caused the bombing run to be immediately aborted, with the bombers recalled and promptly sent into a run onto the lone warship, though the run would come late.

The ships gnashed at each other, burning in and out of extreme ranges in an attempt for the 12th Societe to encapsulate and engage one sub-task force and demolish it while it either wanted too commit a anvil-and-hammer maneuver that would demolish the fleet, but the enemy was too quick in strategic maneuvering to let such a fate happen.

In the end, the approach of the bombers against the Starbolt necisistated the engagements beginning.

By and large, the majority of the advantage that the Skanzat forces had in speed were extinguished as the enemy had brute-force engineered the massive engine blocks with completely new nuclear engines at a massive expense. The structural compromises and long-term endurance of the craft was deemed with it in space by fleet command , and they burned towards the enemy. The ships moved with speeds that transitioned out of fuel-conscious trajectories and into intensive direct insertions and transfers, though it was a long shot from the direct-burns of the previous era.

12th Soceite forces prepared for a direct assault with  the bombers of the fleet being delayed in insertion due to manuvering and isolation of the Starbolt.


The Flare PD corvette rumbled with the slow, careful movement of tons of defensive projectors.  A electrostatic, high thrum invaded the ears of every close person, and the captain heard the click of electro-mechanical systems enabling the instant activation of the system's first line of defense.
To his right, on his table was a screen that slowly counted down the enemies approach.

“Laser 1 has reached heat index two, decreasing intensity and duration of output.”A moment later, “Enemy primaries one through four has fired, brace, brace.”

The captain pressed down upon the ignition button for the dimensional sheathes, and the energies inherent to the dim projectors roared out, draining from the hull of the ship and immediately releasing the suppression of its crew.

Exotic energy/matter/plasma analogue was pulled out from higher realities into sub-infrared planes of barely realized effect. The ship was thoroughly covered , save for small gaps in between the wedge shaped front that allowed for the laser systems to fire out.

Moments later, four 140mm shells were caught, three in the upper fore plane and one in the starboard plane. Each of these shells were armor piercing depleted uranium sabots, designed to pierce through armor as much as possible to deal kinetic damage to the craft. The rounds were going incredibly fast, and had overcome the odd capture effect of the shield after only a good five seconds, spiraling out layers of hardened penetrator as burped out clouds of plasma in the time that it was caught, sanded down by the shearing and destructive effect of the energy field.

The round returned to its original speed, missing a tenth of its mass and the proper shape to penetrate, and was defeated by the armor, collapsing to rob it the rest of its kinetic energy. This repeated four times,  and the ship began streaming dangerous waste energies in the form of a hazy purplish cloud that ate at the armor that was aft to the ventilation ports for the brief few hundredths of a second that the ship's accelerating frame allowed it.

Fifteen seconds later, another set of four rounds struck, the ship had rotated so that different panes would be exposed, and the same effect had occurred. The Briard was really feeling the incredibly precise effect of the VEET-enabled warship, and the lack of any E-WAR systems from preventing the sharpened sensors of the Flare resulted in the destruction of half of its primary weapon before it entered medium range. It’s secondaries -- previous generation main guns as well as turreted autocannons had begun to fire in bracketed effect.

The Briard, without any type of high tier second generation armor, had numerous weak points which were pin-pointed by the Flare, though some-what nullified by the evidently weakened through-put of the main guns for some inscrutable reason as per the maniacs in the enemies design departments, it suffered against close-in close combat because the enemies superior defenses. Coolant systems barely kept up and prevented widespread damage on the Briards part.

The Flare class Frigate, with its blackened armor that was collapsed in many places, kept in the fight from volley after volley of 140mm cannon rounds, though its interior had received some damage, all of its main guns were still capable of firing.

The Briard’s primary guns were gutted, and it turned to disengage from the fight while wafting clouds of atmosphere and caustic chemicals from on-board fires and vaporized guns. It was allowed to retreat, and the Flare turned to support the Starbolt.

The starbolt was stilted, it’s hull broiled with the after-effects of multiple detonations as it was the target of a bombing run by the enemy fleets entire force. It was built upon the same lineage as the  Light Bringers, and though the bombing run against it had faced inordinately more casualties due to their slower nature, the ballistic insertion methodology still worked. The remaining parasite craft  were strafing across the Starbolt, gutting sensory nodes and engine nacelles with each pass all the way up until the Flare approached into long range of the craft, and forced the fighter craft to retreat or be vaporized.

A few moments later, commlink between the captains of the respective vessel and the Navarch of the three-ship squadron opened up.

The members of the Starbolt’s bridge were in vacuum suits, the ship had been breached from the shock of all the ordinance that had landed on its hull, and there were fewer and fewer survivors as time went on as the incredibly complex warship sputtered.

“Captain Yvette Sebastian, What is the status of your ship?” spoke the captain of the Flare, a man with a pair of dull, analytical eyes that expressed very little emotions.

“Most of the ordinance has splashed the front, guns are down. Sensor-net is down to about 3-5% overall integrity and our radiators are slashed. We’re  reduced to running on batteries and our engines cannot fire without cooking us until emergency repairs can be done.”

“Acknowledged, stand by.” said the captain, his eyes glancing towards another screen, and he spoke again, “The Wildcat is running interference against the remaining enemy task force elements, it seems we have won this engagement, they are peeling off.”


The Universe Ignition Array.

Such an immense, proud sounding name belies the absolute power of the relic. It lies in a deadly system, which has what is jokingly referred to by astronomers as a heavenly aura. A killing aura of belts of hard radiation. Ships had to be careful, navigators ever vigilant to watch, enter and plod through the razor thin margins between immense bursts of hard radiation or risk being sterilized by terrible energies.

Barreling through these radiation belts was an immense structure. The Universe Ignition Array. Billions of tons of particle accelerators and energy collections siphoned power from this precarious, short lived star system, and periodically powers a immensely powerful exotic energy reaction. Attached to it is a Pre-collapse fire base, as well as a couple unknown objects and modifications. The scans were sure of this, and the structure was  approached by Squadron Kelly, consisting of the Seine class Gate Frigate “Marne”,  and Terran class  Fleet Transport “Mundus”. Their travel had been arduous, passing through many systems and their gate keys were pushed to the limit upon trespassing into this system.Upon reaching the halfway point in their journey, a immense heat signature flared, a storied event that has not been seen by ELysium sailor eyes for millenia.

A warship broke off from the immense structure and ignited it’s torch drive.  The warship was a machine with a central sphere of reactor built in it’s center section. It was a bubble of clockwork surrounding something unknowable: odd, mishmashed sets of exotic gears and mechanical systems churned, abruptly expanding and contracting with bursts of hard radiation. It was massive, with an equivalent volume of two dozen destroyers in its internals judging from scans, as well as frightening, powerful guns.

The bridge of the Marne was quiet as the scans began to increase in resolution. “It’s… Navarch, that ship is fielded with an angular momentum engine.”

Angular Momentum Engines are a brute force methodology of generating power and are capable of fueling torch drives to reach a significant speed of light. Fueling the massive Gate Haulers of the previous Era, these massive affairs are perfect for monitoring long, brutal affairs in war and exploration due to their incredible durability once the interaction between realities became self-sustaining.  They utilize odd interactions between higher and lower phases to acquire terawatts of power in several accessible formats, though this precludes them from using gates, it doesn't prevent the long, slow travel in between the vast voids that took decades or centuries that took place before the creation of high technology that allowed FTL method that did not require a gate.

Details clarified, and data emissions from its open beacon were translated.

The approaching warship was old. Unimaginably so, for it was built during the expansive ages before the age of 100,000 stars, its hull was commissioned in the ramp up that led to it. Such a ship was designed to not only carry a gate, but carry it to space in which human elements had shut down a previously installed gate, notwithstanding rumors that it was designed to carry its gate into the territory of now shattered alien empires.

This particular model does not have a gate affixed to its hull, but it's scoured hull appears to hold the same patterning and function of the original design. It still reads the story-laden words of its name, which is also it’s class, as it is the first model to have been built:

Gladius Ad Astra Semper Ligatus, Interstellar Siege Gate Hauler, ᴰᵉᶠᵉⁿᵈᵉʳ ᵒᶠ ᴮᵉᵍⁱⁿⁿⁱⁿᵍˢ
A heavily armored interstellar vehicle designed to make long trips through the space between stars and to expand the Gate Network in hostile territory. The Gladius is a brute force weapon that nonetheless presents a difficult decision to deploy into combat due to its massive support infrastructure dedicated to incredible endurance and its relatively delicate sensors, it is nonetheless very well armed.
It is equipped with an primitive fusion torch drive [ENG] with a massive electrical intake, it is designed for fuel efficiency, and is capable of emitting thrust for decades at a time before requiring servicing at a drydock. Also included in this section are systems that supply the rest of the ship with all the resources to continuously operate provided it is fed with raw materials.
It is equipped with a massive self sustaining Angular Momentum Engine [REA], a high technology that is unknown to the current powers that be. It is common knowledge that such systems are hellishly durable and are prone to regeneration from all but the most thorough destruction. It can continuously operate to generate power through siphons from higher dimensional activity. It cannot enter the Gate Network and prevents the installation of Gate Keys.
Massive empty structural points are designed to hold a gate are entrenched into the structure of the ship, denoted by the [GAT] symbol.  They heavily reinforce the structure of the ship while weighing it down significantly.
It is equipped with an interior structure set of structures that is incredibly well reinforced, and according to pre-collapse restricted data is supposed to be the bridge[BRI]. Anomalous signatures indicate large scale modifications in this zone.
 Massive hangar bays [HAN] stretch across from it’s  fore section’s flanks, which was once the deployment and storage zones for all the materials needed to both deploy a gate, service and build a war fleet, and field strike lances of primitive fighters. It is unknown what these hangar bays actually hold besides a singular instance of a boarding pod
A primitive, massive spinal mount coilgun [GUN] makes up a significant portion of the ship's frontal volume. The weapon is geared towards launching projectiles that are accelerated inside a basket, it is essentially a very large mass driver. Apocalyptic is its power, it can render a civilization bearing world into an ash-choked ruin in just a month of strategic bombardment. Its accuracy is weak, it requires guided munitions to fire against ship-entities, and is useless in close ranges.
Massive batteries of chemical  laser systems protect  the frontal flanks of the ship from oncoming ordinance and fighter craft as well as close-up firepower (PDS)
Entropic Shield projectors[SHI] line the front of the ship, protecting a 45 degree arc with infrared curved bubbles projected by entropic shield projectors. Unstable, dangerous batteries keep the shield up through hellish fire, but are likely to detonate if the crew is inexperienced in managing them or it is suddenly breached. They can also act as ram jet scoops in interstellar voyages.
A massive framework of Armatures [ARM} sit on the front of the ship, which cradle a pair of great nuclear Siege Missile Spears.  The missiles are designed to fire a continuously detonating thermonuclear reaction towards an enemy ship and send a penetrating spearhead through massive warships; such weapons were feared for their devastating anti-ship capabilities at strategic ranges. The missiles are exposed, jutting out from the hull and weighing down the ship. It is barely secured by the shield.
Primitive, massive frontal sensor installations (SEN) are built into the craft, which use radar and thermal systems for guided weapons and the Siege Missiles.
A dedicated Fire Control Section (FCS) with massive supercomputers run in the ship, providing structural and predictive analysis on enemy warships. It is geared for supporting the PDS as well as working with sensory systems in guiding the Siegle Missile Spears towards enemy ships at strategic ranges.
It’s rear and front sections are armored with many layers of primitive composite alloy armor, its middle section is completely unarmored due to the exotic nature of the Angular Momentum Engine, the armor is designed to defeat  near light speed micro-impacts first and battle damage second and is made out of armor materials that are equivalent to second generation cheap armor in massive belts that create a hard to destroy and enduring ship.
Values: :Cost: ??, Thrust 60(600)  Weight 160, Slots 80 (240 total mass)  [[Thrust to Weight Ratio:Out of combat 5/1  In Combat 3/4 ]],
Tags : Size 5 (Multiply all values  by 5 to get true values. TWR stays roughly the same.)
...  ...  ... [REA][REA][REA][REA] ...  ...  ...  ...  ...
[ENG][ENG][GAT][REA][REA][REA][REA][GAT][HAN][HAN][PDS][SHI]
[ENG][ENG][REA][REA][REA][REA][REA][REA][HAN][HAN][SEN][ARM]
[ENG][ENG][REA][REA][REA][REA][REA][REA][BRI][GUN][GUN][GUN]
[ENG][ENG][REA][REA][REA][REA][REA][REA][BRI][GUN][GUN][GUN]
[ENG][ENG][REA][REA][REA][REA][REA][REA][HAN][HAN][FCS][ARM]
[ENG][ENG][GAT][REA][REA][REA][REA][GAT][HAN][HAN][PDS][SHI]
 ...  ...  ... [REA][REA][REA][REA] ...  ...  ...  ...  ...

[Blood_Librarian]

Continued due to forum limitations.


It was too late to turn around. The radiation belts were closing in, and the only way was forward past the guns of the oncoming warship and either moving into an exit orbit or committing to a docking attempt on the particle accelerator. Active scanners ran across radar bands, steadily collecting more and more data on their own ships.

“Sensors, Do we have an idea of what kind of passive scanners are on that ship?” asked the Captain of the Gateship Marne, nervous at the prospect of some ultra-scanner thoroughly running on his ship without a chance of hindering it.”

“Yes. Light flashes reflected  from solar activity indicate presence of optics, most likely in the thermal and optical bands. Antennae  appear to operate in the broad radio bands, and active sensor systems appear to just be the radar systems.”

“...Good…Good… Continue heading.” The Captain muttered, eyes glued to his screen.

THe bridge was quiet. After a moment, the navigator adjusted the heading, edging away from a radiation belt, and keeping a steel grip upon the ship as it moved through a three dimensional nightmare that only he could picture in his head. The sensors of the ships were not high technology, and the navigator and the sensor operator worked hard to gain a picture of what their surroundings were. It was a canyon , a lull in the fires that was between two bursts of hard radiation that could scour worlds.

The fleet entered extreme ranges, and the Gladius’s shields systems ignited, a thick 60 degree arc of fiery infrared exotic energy formed in the front of the ship. THe ship did not fire as the ship approached into long ranges, but the open comms became blasted by incomprehensible dead data, which was dutifully recorded to the black box.

The enemy did not fire. No incredible shot across the void came, and the ships moved in their evasive course to no avail. A commune was launched at the ship eleven separate times, but the torchship did not respond until medium range arrived. The 12th Societe was reluctant to fire at that point, as they were outgunned by just the pair of nuclear missiles at the front. but it became increasingly apparent that the craft was attempting to splash the Marne against its shields, and   a heavy burn took place. Rapidly, several events happened.

Number one, the ship finally responded with a message, a broken message stitched together from what it received recently as well as bizarre auto-generated partitions of text to speech data formed into a demand to heave too and power down engines and guns with a background of screams of the damned as well as someone begging for help.

The ship's main gun fired, and in an instant, a slug of magnetically accelerated metal glanced the Marne, sending tremors and shocks into the ship as it twisted the surrounding armor plates and collapsed them down from just a fraction of the energy being delivered.

When the fleet was at its lowest, a hope came. The enemy's torch drives died, and the ship was flying in a relativistic course, but its course correction thrusters still burned.

The Mundus received another message, of a long dead captain of the Gladius, who spoke in dead-tone language of the 100,000 stars. His message was simple, in that he had manipulated the “Defender of Beginnings” to give one chance to escape for any future Human explorers, and urgently requested that they not return to this accursed system, and cut the transmission  promptly.

The ship entered short range with the Marne gateship, and was unable to keep pointed on it, yet  its point defense system kicked in, and its hull was splashed with infrared laser fire, which burned deep gouges into the hull from dozens upon dozens of close-in systems. The Marnes hangars shook, the fighter complement held in as it was deemed a waste to deploy the fighters into such a meat grinder, Then, it closed past the front of the ship and nearly impacted the ships expanded reactor, before flying by the  enemy ship. The Mundus burned it’s drive, and a partially open hangar bay disgorged a rapidly moving object later identified as a tactical assault vehicle, which successfully crash-boarded into the Mundus on it’s more distal fly by.


The TAV had landed on the wing of the Terra class Troop transport. In a moment, mechanized infantry began to disgorge onto the ship, clinging to the hull with sharp blades while heavier war machines began to unfurl themselves from the vehicle. Nearby autocannons were disabled by the pods' short range rockets, and slowly, The Mundus was infiltrated.

Klaxons roared in the internal troop compartments, marines in the war-ready first generation  powered armor and sleek second generation armors armed up. The head of the spear point was Frank Kilgrave, Primary of his squad, equipped in a second generation of power armor that was an officer variant, in his armored hands was an automatic 50. caliber rifle. His 5 man squad was equipped with a 8 gauge automatic shotgun, a  light machine gun, and two large bore rifles like his own. The assembly was equipped to take down opposing marines in heavy armor, while still being capable of slaughtering crewmen with the flechette rounds of the 8 gauge as well as providing suppressive fire with the machine gun. The equipment was not delicate to the hull of a ship, but it was better than letting the ship fall to the enemy!

 The section was exposed to vacuum,  hydraulic plumbing for the canards boiling away  in flashes of thin mist in corridors as it streamed from internal reservoirs, and the marine team moved to intercept forces breaching an airlock. “Orator Squadron, covering the break point.”
The team set up behind a checkpoint in the corridor, heavy bulkheads jutting out a foot to act as cover, over viewing the ominous closed sealed bulkhead that was slowly being cut apart by a breacher.

A few moments passed. The door was blown apart by a bomb, and a swarm of insectoid shoe sized drones swarmed across the ceiling, floor and walls, more than a hundred units moved inbetween the thudding foot falls of larger automations which had already begun firing the same type of weapons that the marines head.

Every one of the marines stood their ground and fired. The rest of his squad wore first generation armor that was much heavier, and took the heavy calliber rounds with some damage, but not enough to kill.

The swarms of cutting machines were upon the first armed soldier in an second, and began utilizing their tools to pry into the joints , seals and gun of the soldier, skittering up the soldier's form by the dozens.

Kilgrave ordered, “Orator 2, fire on Orator 3.” In a moment, the 8 gauge wielding warrior turned, and fired the 8 guage gun at the overwhelmed soldier. A wide cone of flechettes was flung into the brink, shredding dozens of the machines and giving the front warrior a chance.

It was too little, too late. Kilgrave held back a sense of nausea, noting that the bio-monitor on Orator 3 was spiking. The soldier in the suit was thrashing, thrown into a panic from being swarmed by such a fearsome opponent, and the suit computer reacted by breaking his bones.

Kilgraves rifle barked again and again, each round tearing into the enemy bipedal units until something else emerged from the corridor of the entry point.

A large, bulky and mag-threaded machine whirred forward, a Behemoth of metal and steel with internal guns that roared with the fury of the stars. HIs armor clanked as a round splashed against the plate, and the leader of Orator squad moved into cover

Orator 3’s last functional magboot disengaged with a arc of electricity courtesy of a cutter drone and it began to rise, slowly moving upwards And the bulk of Orator 3 drifted while its occupant strained against his dying suit, the machines were using the poor soldiers living body as cover while they dug deeper, Kilgrave noted a front plate was ripped off and began to tumble in the vacuum.

The rest of the machines were mostly held back, crushed as they got too close or blown apart by the combined arms as well as the constant, silent roar of the 8 gauge shotgun Orator 2 wielded. Flechettes constantly bounced throughout the entire room, and the suits did their job in preventing the warriors from being shredded by the rebounding pieces of metal, reducing it to a constant pitter patter of metal on metal on Kilgraves part.

The battlesuits held the breach point, a war that reflected itself a half dozen times across as many fronts. Never without casualties, however.

Squadorn Kelly glided past the Gladius Ad Astra, and did not have the hope of getting past the exterior defenses of the Ignition array, and maneuvered to exit out the outer reaches of the system. The  Siege Gate Hauler did not pursue. The Mundus received heavy casualties from the pervasive infestation of drones, but was able to survive with enough internal systems to ride back towards the Elysium, if only after running a survey of some rocks on the way towards home.

Map updated with resource count. 12th Elysium has gained a weak control and thus complete control to all resources not controlled by the Guardian of Beginnings. In addition, the 12th Society can now plan assaults on the Guardian of Beginnings to garner access to the treasure it guards.


Squadron Nietzche, which consisted of Gate Frigate Seine, Fleet transport Terra, and the hastily added Assault Corvette  Chartreux approached the anomalous artifact of the Abyss Watcher System


The fleet was small, but a daring plan was set up to land troops on the interior of the Abyss Watcher. An analysis on the enemy forces was made, and a startling fact was discovered.

It was likely that the remaining defenses of the Abyss Watcher had fallen in the long dark. The three strong fleet would doa  direct insertion burn, a suicidal charge if the defenses were fully onlined, and then take begin operations against the Abyss Watcher.

The Chartreux led the flight in, it’s main guns fired  semi-guided rounds that , although originally meant to steer into engine bells of S.U.C.K warships, did an admirable job of proximity detonation near the enemy drones. The battle did not last long, and by  the time the fleet had traversed the outer defensive wall, they had incurred some damage to their interior electronics, which was largely due to the main gun systems as well as the presence of fighter craft, which had to be picked up by support craft after the engagement ended.

The assault teams of the Fleet Transport Terra began their attack upon the  AbysWatcher after a docking with the monolithic station.

The assault faced heavy casualties, but succeeded in establishing a permanent presence with the 12th Societe’s  Fleet Transport Terra staying in order to sustain the momentum against the AI’s defense systems while the rest of the fleet withdraws under fire.



COMBAT RESULTS: AGGRESSIVE EXPANSION OF 12TH SOCIETE
After Action Report

[No Warships have been destroyed.]
SNS TRESSPASSER is unavailable for tasking for the next turn.
The TERRA transport is unavailable for tasking for the next turn.

Note: I had accidentally low-balled the cost of 12th Society Nuclear Engines as I based off the cost of their MK2 engines rather than their MK1 engines for comparison purposes. 12th Societe Navy has solid core nuclear reactors that were supposed to be something of a fuel efficient economy engine to S.U.C.K’s gascore high-yield engines. The difference is about 30% off, and they should have been a cost of 10 rather than 7. To compensate, A new component will be given to S.U.C.K that is equivalent to their latest engine but 30% cheaper. (I don’t want to redo the math of bay12’s side due to their systemic rehaul of all their craft.)

Naval Inteligence has compiled all known fleet components of both sides into this handy dandy document.

Spoiler: map (click to show/hide)

https://imgur.com/FObZkEI
[BS12]: Home of Elysium De La 12th Société, the Elysium sits in the orbit of a red dwarf star with little in the way of other orbital bodies: A single gas giant with a small lunar system around it. The Elysium requires Aerodynamic 0 to operate in.
Abyss Watcher: A Massive array of sensory systems that allowed the old empire to utilize faster-than-light sensory systems to keep track of an entire sector, the one we fight in. Currently inhabited by an active artificial intelligence that neither side have managed to make contact with. It is damaged, and is on the verge of falling apart if not for the efforts of the hostile artificial intelligence to keep it together in the long dark after the collapse.
10 resource base extraction output.
The Bottle: A large structure the size of a gas giant, continually emitting exotic, powerful energies that make it almost impossible to approach: the structure periodically rips itself apart and releases a burst of what is theorized to be universe-ending true vacuum, before folding back together again in a most unnatural manner.
0 Resource base Output, Guardian of Endings present.

Vorpal Gun: in the orbit of a barren moon suits a massive skeletonized dry dock around one of the superweapons utilized by mankind before the collapse.  A hundred years ago, a society of space-bound human beings lived here until they ran out of things to cannibalize in the ship, and died out, leaving the Vorpal guns' looted remains as a tomb.
25 resource base extraction output.

[RS]: Roses Star is a large system with 12 orbital bodies, including Ranachuri, a garden world scoured by de-orbiting debris from the massive industrial complex that had fallen apart in its orbit. Evidence of a massive project of some kind is left behind in its orbit. In the corona of Roses Star is a proto-dyson swarm with a leading facility of unknown purpose. Currently the center of the conflict between Elysiums. Close operations on Ranachuri can benefit from ships designed to operate in atmospheric conditions, with 5 levels of the Aerodynamic tag being optimal.  Ranachuri has an active local presence that is capable of fielding weapons that frustrate dominance over the world. Ranachuri is the only known world which has human life.
50 resource base extraction output.



[SB]:Home of the Skanzat United Constitutional Kingdoms Elysium. The Elysium is in the orbit of a large gas giant, which orbits distantly from a yellow star. Several small bodies orbit around the inner lanes of the star. The Elysium Requires Aerodynamic 0 to operate in.

An Agonized Thinker: An old warship, unfathomably large, the apex of mankind's dominance had been brought low in this system: estimations put it at a little over two hundred kilometers in length and an unfathomable amount of mass, it had plunged into the atmosphere of a once-habitable world and destroyed it. Something churns in its depths, building things from the burnt hulk.
10 resource base extraction output.

Universe Ignition Array: A large spider web of particle accelerators and energy collectors orbiting a binary pair neutron star and blue supergiant star, once roughly every cycle it activates, and releases an exotic emission of energy that continually stumped the top minds of mankind before the collapse. THis alien artifact is almost impossible to approach due to the extreme energies that it soaks in, as well as its unpredictable and constantly changing orbit.
0 Resource base Output, Guardian of Beginnings present.

War Simulacrum:: A carefully terraformed system such that it would be the perfect training ground for makinds warriors and navy, along with the thickest debris belts of the sector: This system is a treasure trove and deathtrap, as it was meant to put the paces to the most powerful warships mankind ever had at their disposal, and the wrecks are as numerous as the stars.
25 resource base  Output

[Blood_Librarian]

Elysium Command Arms Race of Conquest: Battle Report of Turn 04->05

Elysium Command: Arms Race of Conquest

Spoiler: Strategic Deployment (click to show/hide)

Elysium De La 12th Société Deployment Strategy

Summary: Squadron Nietzche continues mission to exploit the Abyss Watcher.  Bulk of the Fleet is split into two other Squadrons, patrolling & hopefully pushing our two boundaries towards/into Rose's Star.

Squadron Nietzche
FC Slayer
FT Terra
Orders: Continue/complete exploitation of Abyss Watcher.

Squadron Lafitte
GF Marne
AC Chartreux
CC Aura
FT Mundus
Orders: Conduct operations on the front between the Elysium and Rose's Star.  Use Marine support from Mundus to seize land as appropriate.  Use new EW Squadron from GF Marne to screen movements, and generally lay false contacts as appropriate.

Squadron Carroll
GF Seine
AC Birman
CT Briard
FT Earth
Orders: Conduct operations on the front between the Vorpal Gun and Rose's Star.  Use Marine support from Earth to seize land as appropriate.  Use new EW Squadron from GF Seine to screen movements, and generally lay false contacts as appropriate.

Skanzat UNited Constitutional Kingdom Deployment Strategy
[X] Putting the Pressure On
-

• Deploy All Earthbringers and Wildcats to Vorpal Gun to Assault Societe Holdings. If Hostile Fleet spotted, engagement is priority over assault.

→ Admirals designate squadron as “Fire Starters”
-

• Deploy Flare and All Starbolts to Rose on defensive patrol in a single group.

→ Admirals designate squadron as “Gate Watchers”

Operational deployments result in two fronts with active combat.

Roses Star - 12th Societe Elysium Border Action
Squadron “Lafitte”

GF "Marne" Seine Class - UNDAMAGED
AC “Chartreux” Chartreux Class - HEAVY DAMAGE
CC “Aura” Aura Class - LIGHT DAMAGE
FT "Mundus" Terra Class - LIGHT DAMAGE

Vs

Squadron “Gate Watchers”
SCP "Flare" Flare class PD Corvette - HEAVY DAMAGE
MS “Sunbolt“ Starbolt Class - MODERATE DAMAGE
MS “Starbolt “ Starbolt Class - LIGHT DAMAGE


Roses Star - Vorpal Gun Border Action

Squadron “Carroll”
GF "Seine" Seine Class - UNDAMAGED, DEPLETED PARASITE CRAFT
AC “Birman” Chartreux Class - HEAVY DAMAGE
CT “Briard” Griffon Class  - MODERATE DAMAGE
FT "Earth" Terra Class  - LIGHT DAMAGE

Vs

Squadron “Fire Starters”

CCS-2S “Pocket Rocket” Earth Bringer Class - UNDAMAGED
CCS-2S "Stone Bringer" Earth Bringer Class - UNDAMAGED
GCCP “Wildcat” Wildcat Class - MODERATE DAMAGE
GCCP “Lynx” Wildcat Class  -HEAVY DAMAGE
GCCP “Cougar” Wildcat Class - UNDAMAGED

Roses Star - 12th Societe Elysium Border Action

Katheryn Arroyo, Grand Navarch of Skanzrat United Constitutional Kingdoms sat, hunched over the holograph table with the other High Navarchs of the admiralty. Some of the most important people in the entire Elysium, backed by Royal houses with investiture by the highest agreements of the ring, this was something of a meeting of the who's-who of the high navy community of S.U.C.K.

The hours were getting long and the cafe was getting low. All for the planning of the next assault. It was during these moments that Katheryn found to be the most conducive to providing the future of naval doctrine.

Maintenance Tables, Refit plans, War Doctrines, Crew assignment, and above all a thunderous preparation for the movement of warships.

The arguments between the lesser Navarchs were winding down, a solution was close, to the question of just how the fleets would move to shatter the enemy, to secure the future for the people of Skanzat. As it was, only the Highest and most Grand Navarch Of the Kingdoms had the crystallized vision of the next offensive.

Leaning forward, Arroyo gestured at the holograms, which dutifully responded to begin a simulation.

“All of the solutions so far are flawed, but with the new technology made by the Skunkworks --what if we do this …”


12th Societe Merchant Ships began to stop returning back home from their trips to Vorpal Gun's associated systems. It took a solid sub-cycle before one ship on red lined it’s rocket engines and barely made it back with the details.

Primitive sensor systems picked up the solid thermal signature of an assault shuttle massed vehicle with nuclear engines on a direct approach before the sensor jumped with the rest of the ship. Tactical analysis on the pattern of missing vehicles indicated that there was more than one actor in play. This coincided with the deployment of 12th Societe Assets, who were sent for the unrelated operation of taking an offensive to Roses Star.

Newly promoted Captain Hannah Aries sat at her command throne of her warship, fresh from the ship forges and as of yet unblooded in combat, the Assault Corvette Birman of the Chartreux class burned at the tip of Carroll Squadrons envelope across many systems at a time.

The bridge space was quiet, focussed, The helmswoman spoke in a clear, light articulation, “Arrival to the next system will occur in T minus twenty minutes.”

Sensor bulbs were ready to be extruded from their holdings, and the ship felt light and almost electrified.  The equipment that was designed to protect the ship from gate travel crooned with stress as the gateway at the other side began the careful movements to translate the Birman back to reality.

“Captain, Gateway relativistic movement has been detected, we are being pushed out from the our original landing spot by about two million kilometers.”

“Dark tidings, Raise combat readiness from priority two to priority one.”

Then, Aries turned and spoke into the broadcast terminal to the rest of the ship, “Action stations, action stations, Relativistic drift has been detected, prepare for close-in by enemy vessels.”

Her mind itched, and she opened up a tactics manual on the console, flipping over to the section on relativistic drift by a smart use of the table of contents and its smart linking.

Relativistic drift occurs when the original destination that the ship will land in, or a radius around the gate, is intruded by spacecraft undergoing maneuvers. The Gate will push the jump destination to a different area to prevent unwanted interactions that would risk the gate’s integrity, and as a by-product, put jumping craft into an extreme distance away from any non-static defenses on the other side.

Such adjustments to the gateway travel schema is detectable by craft in transit, so while the gate-side forces will not know if a craft arrives until the final few moments, the approaching craft will know of the presence of maneuvering vessels close to the gate. This does not totally nullify the disadvantage that freshly jumped craft have, as the energies from the jump mal-linger well into any immediate combat operations.

As the clock ticked down, the heavy clunking footfalls of crew members across the ship were heard, but not in the C5 deck, the command crew held extra still and even put away the leftover drinks and special products, it was all business now.

A jerk was felt as a improper movement in the realization process, hard enough to send anyone not bolted down into a wall or the cold hard floor, and the ship was frighteningly blind, deaf, and dumb in the first few seconds.

The gunnery sensors opened up first, by an insane form of luck, the fore of the Birman was facing an approaching thermal signature at the edge of becoming Long range.

“Ignite engines, full acceleration on the outbound, battle stations.” said Captain Aries, punching in a series of command sequences into the ship’s computer.

“Forward hull ablating, going from four sources, indiscriminate, heavy infared laser cannon, long range.”  In a quick one two of data, the damage control officer spoke, followed by a willowy and bright eyed young man that acted as the column leader for engineering, “Nuclear team has reported the full-up reactor sequence, all systems are go for operations, Captain.”

“Chief Engineer Hallowitz, status on the Gate Systems?”

A moment passed, and the man spoke, “The passage was particularly light on the hull, expect full recovery in three minutes.”

The turning of the ship had finished, and then acceleration by the ship's main engine became immediately and overbearingly uncomfortable,  personnel on the eddies of the C5 deck would hear its thrum, but inside the bridge, only the stomach sensation of acceleration could be felt.

In tandem, two reports came in, “Energy received from enemy fire power is fading.” “Gate Operation detected, the, Briard just arrived.”

A full sensor report of the system came onto the Captains console. There, in this bleak, unnamed system was a full battle line of warships, Counting One Earth Bringer and two Wildcat vessels in immediate range as well as a Wildcat and Earthbringer outside of the range band  allowing them to immediately assist.

EarthBringer craft were second generation hulls, overlaid with a gatekey and armament that were kept up to date, but it didn’t change the intrinsic characteristics.. They had a somewhat weak hull, and even with overhauled engines, the ratio was too low to keep up with 12th Societe Standard for assault vessels. It was one to one equivalent to the Griffon class Briard that flew with her Birman

The Wildcats were different, they had two thirds of the weight in armor as well the Chartreux class warship that she flew, though undergunned due to the incorporation of a gate key in its hull.

The Briard, a Assault Gunship Griffon class, turned and burned away from her pursuers.  A few moments passed, and the Earthbinger class Stone Bringer  fell behind as the two pursuing wildcats engaged full thrust to catch up.

The range bands expanded. Aries turned to her left, viewing a telescreened image overseeing the hangarbay, a bakers dozen or so bombers flying out through the hangar door.

Looking at her approaching foes, she came to a decision and snapped some marching orders out, “Iso squadron, you will split off from the hull and accelerate on a deviated path, ending up to attack enemy vessel Lynx, giving the enemy the choice of either taking the Briard’s guns or your bombing run head on. We’ve got the privilege of eating the fire from the Wildcat, Godspeed, pilots.”

When the second wave would finish its preparations to launch, the  Birman had cut its thrust, pitched a 180 degree turn and burned towards her chosen opponent, igniting its engine once again just as the last of her parasite craft launched.

With a forlorn look, Aries pondered the fate of these brave… 18 craft? Having shrugged off the mis-count between a baker's dozen and the eighteen that actually left the hangar, Aries looked, focussed upon the approaching dot on the screen that represented an enemy warship.


Out of the Frying Pan

The Earth class Transport ship has arrived into the system just as the range bands of the four warships in combat closed to long range. The event was marked initially by the ignition of laser arrays pointed towards 12th Societe forces. The overall output was a fifth weaker, though more precisely placed, Settling into smaller affect cones then recorded from previous generations of laser technology.

The fight wasn’t entirely one sided, and the Griffon class Birman’s Vorpal Guns fired out a salvo of APDSDU (Armor Piercing, Discarding Sabot, Depleted Uranium) “Hammerhead” rounds across the vast gap of space. Hurtling for a tenth of a second, the predicted path was true for two of the four rounds, each of which pierced a dozen decks with a self sharpening and immolating shard, and half of it’s port autocannon network went dark, secondary explosions shaking the Gate Capable Combat Pinnace Wildcat class Wildcat

Voluminous turbo coolers  on the Birman whirred to life as ammonia heat sinks were brought from sub-zero temperatures with heat taken straight from the impact sites of the enemies laser cannon’s fire. A technician tapped on one of the mechanical monitors, turned to his column leader and said, “DAMN! We’ve got less than two minutes before the coolant vaporizes at this rate!”

The Column leader, a veteran from the Borzoi silently remembers his maiden ship's finest hour and shakes his head, “Less, always less, prepare emergencies now.”

Damage control teams in hard-vac suits ran down the corridors of the Lynx, metallic foot falls the sign of active mag-boots keeping them gripped to the crosswalks. In mere seconds, they had arrived at the breached sections of the hull, preparing hull patches, or igniting tools to repair the less than destroyed mechanisms for the autocannons. Damage control duty was one of the most casualty prone occupations on a fighting ship, a fact written in blood with each flat-line on the biomonitor.

Elsewhere, a squadron of 12th Societe’s finest in Intrépide class bombers flew. The ships were heavier than the parasite fighter Flechette, losing almost a third of their speed in exchange four cheaply made, TV guided missiles with enhanced payloads and the coup de grace: Centerline Unguided Bomb.

The Wildcat class Lynx had entered dog fighting danger close ranges with the AC Griffon class Briard, and it was savaging the 12th Societe heavy corvette like it’s namesake, neatly cutting the telescoping structural elements of three out of four primary cannons before the bombers entered into long range. The Captain of the Lynx dismissed the wounded Briard and turned it’s baleful irradiance towards the bombers.

Partly through the Lynx’s turn, the Briard preyed on the partly exposed engine to fire a thermal proximity detonator shaped charge “Slicer” round, that cut true and close to the primary engine bell of the enemy craft. The shaped charge promptly detonated, pointing at one of the ship’s engine bells. Thermonuclear exhaust is sent rocketing back up into the nuclear engine’s plumbing with a cloud of hypervelocity shrapnel, and the concussive force shatters the heat shielding of the struck engine bell. Said heat shielding is sent out of the engine assembly along with miles of metallo ceramic guts from secondary detonations as tanks of hydrogen and nuclear fuels rupture.

“Godspeed,” spoke the Captain of the Briard, as he ordered his ship to burn the hell out of the range bands while he had an opening. He watched, through rearward sensors to witness the final approach of the bombing run by the Intrépide bombers of Iso squadron.


Iso Squadron

The thrum of the engines was intermixed with the quiet, clear and crisp beeps and boops of the squadron bio-monitor as it depicted the conversion of pilot to legend with each of flightwing mates dying one by one. Benjamin Maunu was barely holding himself together, memories unspoken overlaying tactical details and blurring together in his operational reverie. There wasn’t much to do now except for the final approach, all four of his missiles had been launched at the short range band and the ship was due to enter into the danger close bands to drop the final bomb, with the rest of his squad.

The squadron radio chimed, a voice came out, “Prime. My ship, it’s not gonna make it back.”

Prime of Ios Squadron turned, sweat bearing down his neck, and underneath his flight suit as he observed the diagnostics of his flight-mates bomber, “No, it will, have heart.”

Crumbly, almost to tears, the scared pilot on the other side spoke again, “It’s getting too hot -- the life support module is gone, and my back up air tank is reading 200 C. I think… It has to be a goodbye, Prime.”

The world was falling apart again, one by one his squadmates were dying, “NO! God damn it, listen to me, you will -- Stars above -- Léon, you have two kids at home!”

This time, the pilot on the other side spoke clearly, “That was all a lie to keep the higher-highers off my back, tell Albert I loved him all my life, okay?” The digital connection was cut shortly after, he spotted in the corner of his eye a speckle of light reflected off a bombers hull for a moment before it detonated in a conflaguration.

All of the remaining bombers but one had diverted off, steering to exit the cone of death in front of the Lynx spreading across multiple directions across the port, while this one lonesome craft held to a collision course all the way to the end, dying in a conflaguration of stardust that whited out sensors along with the three other unguided bombs that made it all the way to the hull of a enemy warship.

The primary laser cannons of the ship were blasted, the entire front of the Lynx’s hull riddled with holes and bent into useless shapes. The damage had set deep, reaching into the periphery of the command deck and stealing its wisp of air, and the ship was paralyzed.

As the remaining six or so bombers peeled off of the target on a outbound trajectory back to the mothership,  Benjamin Maunu wondered: How many more would die?


Thunder and Swords

The Birman was suffering under the firepower of the opposing warship, the venerable Wildcat, The 12th Societe corvette had moved to disengage from the conflict but the captain of the Wildcat did not allow it without extracting its pound of flesh. The Wildcat had a higher speed thanks to its lighter armor and thermal systems compared to the Birman despite the stronger engines on its part.

Eventually, Captain Aries of the Birman decided to stop pussy footing around in the long ranges and ordered her ship to turn around and end it once and for all by reaching her warship down the baptism of fire that the Wildcat offered. Unable to stop the close-in without turning her guns away, the Wildcat continued its irradiance. Wisps of ammonia vaporized off of the radiator systems of the Birman, its guns waiting for the Wildcat’s heat tolerance to build up, for its radiators to unfurl so they can be snipped off.

The Wildcats autocannons began to fire as the range closed to medium, and the shots of the vorpal guns got more accurate. With each strike, more subsystems were shattered, and true to the prediction, the wildcats radiators unfurled as the heat threatened to stop the output of firepower..

The telescoping tubes that pointed the Birman’s cannons were far more durable then the Birman’s, and only one gun was cut by the time the range bands closed, marked with the collapsing of armor segments of the Borzoi as the heat drove higher and higher. The hangar bay doors for the bomber squadron melted, and the compartments inside were scorched black, a third of it’s nuclear thrust broke down as a choked radiator segment cooked everyone and everything foolish enough to stay in the doomed engine compartment.

The return fire against the Wildcat was hellish,shattering its exposed radiator and gouging out its autocannon emplacements along with a  lucky shot that had destroyed the connection between the bridge and the rear section. It was a testament to its durability that the chief engineer in the engineering section had managed to maneuver the ship to pass by the Birman and disengage from the fight.

The skirmish was a prelude of things to come, as the rest of the 12th Elysiums fleet arrived into the system and the wounded ships on both sides returned to the greater collectives.

But first, a status report on all combatants in the skirmish, starting with S.U.C.K Navy.

The Lynx was a dead man walking, with guttered engines and a shattered prow, it’s only hope was for an escort to safe space or it was certainly going to be scuttled rather than mission killed. However, the hull was not totally turned into a hulk yet, and damage control engineers predicted that it would be repairable at a dockyard, if luck was on their side.

The Wildcat had the entirety of its autocannon network down along with its radiator equipment. Most critically, the bridge had survived the damage, and had returned to functional capacity with damage control elements fixing the cut data links. Some repairs were put into effect on the radiators, and the heat sinks had its heat vented for the proper engagement, though it is with crippled engines and must be a fixture in the coming battle.

As for the 12th Société, they had survived the battle on a higher note.

The Birman had lost only a third of its spare coolants, and the Vorpal 160mm cannon emplacements damaged telescopic systems were fully replaced for the second engagement in the system. Thermal stress on the weapon barrels will necessitate a replacement of its cannons upon return to the elysium, and a lowered fire rate in the meantime. One third of its thrust was disabled, unable to be repaired in time for the second engagement, and hte compartments were left in vacuum. It’s battleworn hull and radiators can be described as moderately damaged, visually looking like a hodgepodge collection of welded-on patches and black cratered holes where the laser had impacted against the hull to cause a detonation.

The Briard was in a terrible shape. Almost all of its sensors and autocannons were shot out, and only two of its four vorpal cannons were able to be repaired. It had bled almost two thirds of its spare coolant from the makeshift coolant reserves that were installed, and the datalinks to the bridge computer were cut, and the makeshift solution was a 60 m extension cord that snaked through the halls of the ship. It was ready to fight, however, even if it meant aiming the guns by hand, De la 12th Société crewmembers would make damn sure the guns would fire.

The last of the 12th Société’s “Carroll” squadron had arrived, including the navarch of the fleet aboard the Seinge class Gate Frigate Seine, the full fleet included the aforementioned Seine, the AC Birman, the CT Briard, and the FT Earth.

The fleet was in dire straits, out tonned and only barely even numbered against S.U.C.K forces. The saving grace was the overall excellent flight characteristics of the fleet due to the focus on maximizing thrust in strategic operations. In order to escape from the engagement, the Seine gateship had to recharge her batteries by getting within feasibly harvestable range from the sun for its solar panels.

The Skanzat United Constitutional Kingdoms Navy squadron “Fire Starters” squadron regrouped, re-armed and finished damage control. Thermonuclear engines re-ignited as they burned towards the sun bound fleet. Among its ranks were the Pocket Rocket and Stone Bringer class Earth Bringer warships, and  the Wildcat, Lynx and Cougar class Wildcats, though the Lynx was more of a hulk-in-waiting, as it were.


The captains and the Navarch of the 12th Société’s “Carroll” squadron had met together in a holocomm meeting. The Navarch, was a legendary individual who had been once a contender for High navarch of the royal navy, the one Desmond Horrigan. His thickset form hid wholebody and extensive augmentations that plugged him into the gestalt computational engines of the Seine gateship.

In the center of the digital conference room was a simulacrum running two parallel operations.

Both were stark, darkly lit battles of where every 12th Societe warship would burn, an animate nightmare of Horrigan.

One depicted Carroll squadron making it to the sun bands, charging the Seine’s gate key and making it to the next system. This would repeat for around 5 or so systems until either the Seine gets burned out by enemy forces and leaving the fleet to be exterminated or theBirman drops out of formation so that the rest of the fleet might be able to escape.

The other depicts one last great engagement before the Seine makes it to the sun bands, with a priority target marking over the Seine. The battle was naturally, almost hopeless.

The mood of the room was somber, of brooding men and women in the face of looming annihilation. Aries wondered if this is what the High Navarchs of the old world felt, so long ago. She turned and looked at the only other member who had been blooded in this system, the new captain of the Briard, Successor whose previous CO had succumbed to a collapsed lung shortly after the engagement procluded.

The Navarch stopped both simulations, and outright declared, “We have one hope, and that is the enemy acts exactly as we predict, until they make the move, let us prepare for  the coming battle.”

It took a few short moments until all the small details to sort themselves out, and the navarch cut the meeting for all but the captain of the Birman. Horrigan watched, looking at  Hannah Aries with a flat stare.

Then, he carefully picked up a clipboard, looking at the singular piece of paper that had been clipped, and said, “Thrust output of the Birman has been reduced by a full third. Is it by your estimate that your ship must be abandoned for the fleet to have a chance  at escaping?”

“The enemy unilaterally beats us in the gate department. Even with the coming deception we are banking on, we-- the fleet, demands a thrust parity for there to be a chance to escape.”

“A pessimistic view, most simulacrum actions indicate that there is only a 16% chance of them being able to catch us if they fall for the evasion.”

“If you put my ship with that diverting force, then it will almost certainly be followed through.”

“True, but I value a newly welded Chartreux hull, and our status in the war would drop considerably if I do not draw blood and fire to keep it out of the annals of the fleet memorials.”

“I see, then I don't see you changing your mind on the course?”

“No, Captain Aries, The enemy wants a second battle, and they will either get one or nothing at all, not a turkey shoot, Anything else, or are we dismissed?”

“No, Good bye, Navarch.”

The hologram cut, and Navarch Horrigan was left to think about the coming days, before sighing and pouring himself a  (small) drink.


The S.U.C.K fleet broke off  from pursuing the wounded 12th Societe fleet, intent on savaging the several mining outposts and logistic sites  to prevent a possible splitting of the fleet to strike a rear target, before continuing the pursuit after 8 hours.

The fleet jumped through the gate as one, passive sensors peering into the night to read for nuclear exhaust signs.

In the system were four gates, and there were two fleet sized grouped signatures burning, each going to a different gate.

Ultimately, they decided to burn towards the one going to a direct route towards their home elysium. After they had approached, the burn estimates would put them at arriving just before the fleet would arrive at their gate. When the range bands closed, close-in radar sensors detected no warship hulls, only parasite craft sized vessels, The barely operational  members of Mimicry Squadron after ten straight hours of manned flight, the craft were essentially waiting to die, with no fuel, and little in life support..

One spoke, on the open comms meant for two polities to speak to each other before unsheathing broadswords and hacking each other to death, and said to one of  her fellow legends-in-waiting, “I am scared. All day I see the closing of doors, and I think I'm at my last door. When are we going home?”

Fifth Mimicry squadron member Arnold Hayes spoke, “I don’t know. I sit here, in my cockpit, a million, steps away from my home-ring. I know that when I die, I will be entombed in a sunward coffin, and I will become what I originally was. I will never breathe, or laugh, or twitch again. So won't you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity? The universe has spared us this moment.”

The range band closed, as the fires from the Wildcat burned to the long ranges. Her captain spoke, clear into the bands with a megawatt transmitter and in the odd sing-song language of the ancients, “Attention Enemy Forces, you are beaten. Surrender or die.”

Of the 12 individual craft, only one did as requested, dousing her engines and ceasing the high energy output that had tricked the enemy

The rest turned and burned onto a kinetic impactor trajectory. Before the range band closed, a scything laser immolated half of the inbound craft, with the remaining 5 craft continuing the approach. Two had a mechanical failure, turning to drifters while the remaining three ships closed to medium range before they too were destroyed.

The remaining intact craft were precisely gutted of their engines by a autocannon and then captured by onboard troops of the Wildcat. Only one intact craft was recovered as the rest had been destroyed by their pilots after being rescued through a deadmans-esque switch and a makeshift installed explosive. The intact craft’s ECM software and hardware were scrambled by the pilot, but are still fodder for analysis in some form.

The firestarters did not manage to catch Caroll squadron, who had retreated down the narrows of the gate network, escaping the certainly heavy casualties that would've followed. Fire starter Squadron retreated back to the Elysium to resupply.


Roses Star - Vorpal Gun Border Action

“Attention , move to action stations, we are entering the approach to enemy forces, action stations, action stations…” Fresh from the refit yards, the Military Shuttle Starbolt of the starbolt class burned towards the fleet of the enemy along with a sister ship Sunbolt and the Point Defense Corvette Flare

From this revamped and (in her opinion) hellish mockery of a bridge, Captain Yvette Sebastian frowned as the tactical display showed the sordid details of the closing encounter.

The squadron of three strong ships had been under refueling and rest operations at Roses star when the alert had come down from the merchant marine forces, a gate crasher fleet was approaching.

The dark eagles of the 12th Societe were swooping down the gate network, burning down each of the ships they had caught while quickly moving in to engage with the arteries of war materiel movement towards the Skanzat Elysium. If the assault was not stopped, Rose’s Star would once again be under the fires of war.

Thus, the three blooded warships burned to intercept the fleet in a desolate system a few scant gateways from Roses Star.

The final count on the enemies numbers was imprecise due to the discovery of the new ECM they had deployed in the direct approach that the 12th Societe had committed to Roses star, and it was fortuitous that for whatever reason this fight was delayed by the enemy as otherwise the approach by the three warships would have never been considered.

Eight burn signatures with warship grade nuclear isotope tinged emissions burned towards the fleet.

Set deep within the guts of the Starbolt the bridge was running well, with the sensor officer giving out callout, after callout, trying to isolate which signature was a real warship and which was a five or ten ton fake. Eventually, the range bands closed to the final strategic maneuvers, and the fact of whether or not they were besieged by the full fleet of the enemy was not known. Morale in the bridge fell at the prospect of taking an entire royal navy with only three warships.

The individual ships flowed around the offensive of the Skanzat navy in an encapsulation formation, perfect for negating the inherently superior fixed laser weapons by requiring the fleet to choose either thrust or  engaging with firepower in the event of a close-in situation.


The gunnery sections of the Chartreux class Chartreux was cramped, and hot, though less so than her sister ships due to be a newer vessel. Barrel chested men in power suits - Loaders lifted the heavy caseless munitions up and into the breach of the full bored cannon, -- an event that occured in concert with three other loaders across the ship.

The barrel of the weapon sat in a massive cradle, a twitching thing of hydraulic cabling and motors sandwiched in between bulkheads and many times redundant layers of thermal shielding and liners.

The man who loaded the round in the chamber sealed the bore, pulled a compressive lever and spoke back to his sectional Leader, “Gun one is ready to fire!”

Up one level in a balcony that over viewed the entire gunnery section for the vorpal cannons through thick slabs of transparent aluminum, the column leader listened to reports from the section leaders, relayed thels  detail up to the bridge, and turned to observe the trickling stream of data that was translated into guidance for the cannons.

Loaders for the guns turned away, and all four of the guns fired. Depleted Uranium sabots went hurtling through the void before impacting against an ignited pane of otherworldly energies that sheathed the hull of the Flare

This shielding material was denser, and stronger than anything previously fielded by Skanzat, and the caught material sloughed off layers of substance as if it was caught in an over engineered high energy wood chipper.

The Skanzat mini fleet known as the “Gate Watchers'' were caught off guard,  As the targets that they had oriented towards were up-sized and manned ECM platforms which were promptly evaporated when they had reached the long range bands before turning to collectively fire upon the confirmed warship Chartreux.

Up in the bridge, damage control officers watched the indicators of thermal stress steadily rise across the ship. Outside, fist sized craters detonated in the sacrificial liners of the hull every second or so as the ship closed into the cusp of medium range. It was the tip of the spear, the warship with the strongest hull, and it led the wolf pack.

The firepower of the enemy fleet had not dropped one iota, shielding systems had covered the front of the hulls of the Flare, and although ECM was in play, the light lag of the weapons meant that very little actualized effect would occur in medium or shorter ranges. At any moment, clouds of uranium gas or plasma were venting off the enemy warship shielding in great, toxic gouts as they maneuvered to dodge enemy fire power.

The Starbolts were not left unmolested, but by and large the majority of the firepower was laid upon the altar of the Flare: its shattering would mean that the bomber squadron of the Chartreux would have a chance at outright crippling one of the vessels, but it was not to be.

In the span of the entire engagement up until the medium range, the Chartreux’s hull outgassed a majority of its ammonia reserves

[Blood_Librarian]

Continued due to forum limitations.

Strike While the Iron is Hot.


It was a slow burn aboard the Chartreux, and from the bridge, the captain watched as all indicators pointed to a foregone conclusion: The ship was going to be disabled.

He turned to his executive officer, tapped his shoulder, and said, “Our finest hour,” and promptly returned to observing his most loyal and determined crew labor in the face of imminent, if unknowing, annihilation.

The shield panes of the Flare were by and large predicted to be knocked out when the bomber squadron from the Chartreux arrive on a assault manuver towards the one of the flying Starbolt class nuclear assault frigates, but the Flare manuvered into interdictor flight resulting in the bomber squadron chose to retarget instead of arcing around the ships autocannons and lasers.

The bombing run had gone poorly, not because of the (usual) heavy casualties of the run in question, but because of how the ship reacted to take the oncoming ordinance. Fresh dimensional sheathings were presented, or the shielding module was disengaged so that the fresh hull underneath took the incredible ordinance. Collapsing hull segments distributed the powerful kinetic energy across the hull, and only moderate damage was faced across many sections instead of a deep wound.

The Starbolt and the Sunbolt continued their facing against the Chartreux despite the total encirclement by the enemy as their engines were now the target of firepower from the Seine Aura and Terra, being a gatekey hangar ship, a gatekey assault ship, and a marine barge.

Another lancing bombing run was launched, this time by the Seine, and it was unmolested as it arced towards the Sunbolt

40mm ball autocannons turned and began to fire, but only a third of the oncoming bombers were caught. Its somewhat compromised starboard hull was blasted with two tons of ordinance , and small secondary explosions from the detonating transformers and capacitor banks further rocked the ship. After a few long moments, the people in the hull woke up, and the hull was induced into a gentle rotation while it’s autocannon network forced the bombers to peel off: it woudl fight at a third of its normal capabilities.

Elsewhere, the Chartreux ceased fire, its coolant reserves in the bottomed out as it turned a hundred eighty degrees to escape the engagement. Before it finished its turn, a munition magazine in the fore of the hull detonated from a critical heat bleed.


The space around the Skanzat fleet was crowded. Even as the Chartreux was sent into a drift, the rest of the warships were twisting the screws down. Compartments in the Flare were breached as the coverage of the remaining active Dimensional sheathed could not protect the ship. The helmsman of the ship could not angle every shot perfectly on the hull, and sacrifices were made as more and more of the autocannon network died, maneuvered to be hit in place of wounds that would reach into the ships battery internals.

The Terra had entered danger close ranges with the ship,  almost nose to nose with the warship, autocannons spearing with intent to disable the lenses of its forward laser emplacements, when the commanding intelligence inside the troop transport had made a mistake in assuming that the helmsman behind the Flare was not a maniac, who promptly preyed on this weak assumption to turn the danger close engagement into a collision with a ramming maneuver. The Navarch of the small fleet had seen it coming seconds too late, and the order landed on deaf ears.

One of the Flares last few remaining active projectors had made contact with the hull of the Terra. Bulkheads screamed as burps of plasma bent and tore the prow of the Terra, autocannon emplacements sanded down along with a solid 30 centimeters ( 1 foot) of the rest of the hull from the terrifying energies involved. Then, the plane cracked as the projector could not vent any more of its waste energies and shut down, and the momentum of the ships were “restored”: a actual impact occurred, with fresh Skanzat hull crashing into the now bare compartments of the Terra, pancaking a solid tenth of the ship down thanks to the mass advantage.

The ships were stuck together, and such a calamity was neatly abused in favor of the 12th Societe marine forces aboard the Terra, who began the process of boarding the ship and preventing engineers from cutting the ships apart.

Tides turned quickly when the captain of the Flare sent a wireless message proclaiming the intent to kill anyone, and everyone aboard the two vessels if the ships were not allowed to part “amicably”, attached with the message was the finished simulacrum data depicting the Flares remaining thrusters going in a full burn to push the two craft into a spin with a centrifugal factor of dozens of G’s.

The Seine pushed away from the drifting hull of the S.U.C.K navy Sunbolt to regroup with the Aura and the rest of the 12th Societe fleet, allowing for a reprieve on both sides, in the medium ranges with the 12th Societe forces preparing to retreat.

12th Societe forces aboard the Terra held back as the captain had balked at the thought of death, and engineering forces aboard the collided craft worked to extract themselves from being embedded together, and a sort of white peace was held, ships maneuvering around the linked craft.

Eventually, the ships separated with the detonation of a cutting charge, and the Flare moved under her own motive power to extract from the situation. The 12th Societe Fleet, having lost the majority of its fighting capabilities and the Skanzat navy being unable to offer an effective pursuit, were allowed by the enemy forces to depart Societe Elysium-wards without further engagement.


Marine Operations

The Abyss Watcher, the stellar object consisting of unfathomably advanced (and ruined) faster than light sensory systems built across a kilometer of scaffolding. Inside it’s guts, where corroded silver and fiber optic channels lined desolate halls, 12th Societe Marines marched.

The halls were huge, 12 feet in height and capable of supporting the weight of two marines in heavy powered armor, side by side.

In between the power armored hulks was a tall, wispy scientist in a hard-vac suit. Antennae and equipment modules were slinking close to her form, singing to the deadened halls. Eventually, she spoke into her comm, “Stop. I have a reading on something up ahead, electromag, tactical radio bands.”

The soldiers stopped, the foremost warriors raising their guns and slinging low to allow the persons directly behind them a chance of fire as well.

Nothing popped up. The vacuum in the corridors gave no tells.

A choked, wet gasp echoed over the comms, and a biomonitor line on a rear marine spiked.

A child sized raptor shaped drone had jumped down from the ceiling of the war walker, a thumb analogue blade plunged into a intersecting plate in between the abdomen and chest, deep enough to puncture the suit, shallow enough to not cause any damage to the person and for the auto-seals to patch it, unless it were to twist.

A blast door fell down, the ground shook, and compartment doors opened up, revealing autocannon wielding turrets pointed down range towards the marines while a man sized figure emerged from the only opening

A slicing, electric motion cut through the computational engines of the marine team, and a coy, feminine voice spoke into their comms, “I think it is time we talked.”

A short while later, 12th Societe operations against the Abyss Watchers local polity ceased. Resource extraction operations around the primary system would begin, coinciding with the movement of vast amounts of industrial material

Summary
COMBAT RESULTS: HARDFOUGHT SKANZAT VICTORY
Wew, that was a lot of stuff going on. Starfields worth of fire power being thrown around, tales of brave heroes going down the gullet of fire, etcetera, etcetera. What happened was this:

12th Societe forces went to attack S.U.C.K occupied Roses star through both of the available avenues. The first, being to attack via the Vorpal Gun lane and they were beaten back at heavy cost.

S.U.C.K  had gone forward to attack at the direct route to the 12th Society's Elysium, and were intercepted by the attack fleet  that the 12th Societe had sent. S.U.C.K won, but with a heavy cost.



The results?

The 12th Societe got lucky with their engagements.

12th Societe resource extraction around Vorpal gun will be vulnerable for attack on the next turn, but no direct effects yet. And, the corridor towards the 12th Societe’s Elysium is inched ever closer in favor towards Skanzat forces.

As for ship losses, none. No ship in the engagement had received a terminal damage report,

Spoiler: A alternative reality where a different set of events occurred (click to show/hide)

 
Funny story, I wrote a good thousand or so words, realized i was doing it wrong, wrote another thousand or so words and realized I was writing of of incorrectly read plans, and terminated that again, so I pasted the results in this spoiler as nonsensical but good reading.

~

A little less than half a dozen warships drive-burned through the hurtling void. Flying the colors of the Skanzat Navy, the “Fire Starters'' squadron's goal was nothing less than igniting and broiling every enemy warship in the zone

The fleet’s formation in inter-system travel was loose, kept across the minimum amount of volume required to not impede on another ships operation, and with the freshly forged Gate Capable Combat Pinnace  of the Wildcat class, fourth of her lineage and named the “Cougar” to scout out the preceding system while keeping in case of a emergency on the other side.

Sent down the gullet of the gate network, the GCCP Cougar translated through the gate, and a good thirty minute later, it had returned, hull wafting streamers of exotic energy from the quick transition back. A durable data stream slipped out from the hull, barely receivable from all the high and exotic energies in play. The message, repeated a thousand times, stated, “𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐄𝐍𝐄𝐌𝐘 𝐀𝐏𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐀𝐂𝐇𝐄𝐒”

The fleet fell back, falling through the systems gateway just as the enemy arrived, a full five warships, three wildcats and two Earth Bringers. Their transition between gates was ultra fast, as each ship had been equipped with a gate key, and they immediately pulled into a pursuit.

There, the skanzat forces were at a crossroads. If they were to doggedly pursue the enemy, they would risk the enemy having snuck a warship into their backlines, and risk losing the supply train that kept the warships alive in the assault of Vorpal Gun.

A warship was running to her origin gate, to bring back reinforcements, and it would take that long  for it to chase it down to its gate to prevent it from gathering information.

The Gyres turned as the prelude to a battle grew closer.


EVERYTHING BELOW HERE IS WRONG.

Interstellar maneuvers  spanning across a dozen systems in the form of cat and mouse, with  the Skanzat forces successfully preventing the enemy from knowing her squadron's exact composition by the time the fleet had entered into  an enemies major logistic system on the periphery of the Vorpal Gun. The star was a dim red dwarf with ancient gas giants and terrestrial worlds as her backdrop.

It was here that the fleets would battle, for this system was an artery in the 12th Societe’s  logistic network of the sub-sector, where massive magnetic drivers equipped with bucket launchers would deliver and receive the life blood of interstellar civilization, material, from the surrounding systems.





“Captain Aries,  Final count on Enemy Gate Ignitions has reached eleven separate events indicative of a warship arrival.” spoke in a crisp, clear tone of the sensor officer, to the captain of the GCCP Cougar

The enemy had gone through the effort of cloaking how many warships they had, inflating the gate ignition count to hide their numbers through pointlessly igniting the gate over and over. Or, they had sent their entire fleet to burn the Vorpal gate assets to cinders. Information parity was difficult, but the enemies exact upper band had been hidden, all the way up until eleven full, nuclear-speckled drive flares lit as one on the approach to the 12th Elysium home-bound gate. We were outnumbered by almost four to one, The captain bleakly thought.

“Tactical analysis on enemy ship drives?”

A moment passed as the analysis engines ran esoteric calculations at the behest of the masters of Tactical. “Drive plumes are all nuclear bar two, tentative identification includes Four …” He paused for a moment, then used the enemies odd pidgin and it’s identifications for their ship classes, “Wildcat’s, Two unknowns, two Earth Bringer’s, A Flare, and Two Starbolts. Estimates put the enemy as having expanded their navy by two warships.”

“Tactical, Send it up to the Navarch, we have done our duty. Navigation, turn the ship and burn us back to the forward section.”

The thrum of the ships cold gas thrusters were preceded by the stomach deep low roar of the main engines igniting, away from the approaching enemy fleet.


The final approach Between the Fire Starters and Carroll Squadron with the gate-station they jealously guarded was a textbook example of the beginning of a fighting retreat. The Gate-way Station was in a short interplanetary distance from the Gate itself, far enough to allow two consecutive combat engagements in a short time. The three vessels were accelerating in a tight formation so that when the enemy would catch up it would not be able to destroy them one by one.


The Gate-way Station was  massive, in the sense that it was the center of kilometers of scaffolding, industrial equipment and container gantries. It was also the home to two sets of rails hooked into turreting systems to orient it towards any other object in the solar system for receiving and shipping.

It was evacuated, with only a skeleton crew to run its final outbound package, inside its magnetic acceleration bucket was ninety nine tons of magnetic iron and a one ton slug of osmium with a diamond tip. The bucket would be ripped out from the guidance rail from the added inertia of the extra magnetic material, but the launcher would send this payload down range at speeds similar to that of a Pre-Collapse warship's gun. Massive sensor fixtures designed to detect inbound payloads pointed towards  the approaching fleet, and the tentatively named “Meteor” round sat on the rails ready to go.

Sensor resolution increased in fidelity, and more passive sensors finally caught more distinct details of the enemy: ripping apart the deception they had.

The enemies deployment of it’s first generation of ECM based parasite craft had been successful, and more than half of the numbers deployed by the 12th Society in this engagement were simulacra, fakes.

It was too late for the station to be saved, but it would still adjust from the five ton parasite craft it was aiming at to the ship that burned brightest: The Wildcat first of her lineage, and one of the warships that brought the deception upon all 12th Societe forces.


Heavy clad spacesuit boots thumped against the metal grated halls of the gateway station. Crew moved across the station, moving supplies and equipment to prepare for combat conditions.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LwmnYjRcwQ]

A siren roared, signaling the oncoming driving of a payload, the final payload. Inside the (again cramped) command module of the station, a dozen men and women sat at their posts.

One in particular was hooked to his computer with a set of implants designed to translate mental movement into the low-set machine code to drive the exacting precision instruments that caught hundred ton payloads day in and day out. This man had all the appearance of a dullard with a big, wide set frame, a bald head and the type of scrunched up eyebrows you would see on a confused chimp. He was also actively calculating a million different variables and experiencing time five times slower than an average human with the help of a super computer's worth of tertiary processing power.

The room was quiet, no one spoke except for the constant thrum of electrical transformers feeding power into quick discharge capacitors.

Eventually, the man spoke, “Target has reached the onset of long range, Ready to fire in five marks.”

A damage control computer made a shrill alarm, laser fire was already starting to dance across the station's hull. Sensors reported the close-in of parasite craft, doubtlessly legendary pilots of the same lineage as the Crown, Sceptor, Zeus, and Apollo squadrons who had done the same a cycle ago.

The Column leader, the highest ranking military official in this logistics facility gave the five marks.

In two seconds, the sensation of a charged air disappeared, at first with the booming sound of the payload riding the newly electrified rails, followed by the scream of metal that echoed throughout the entire station. The bucket of metal launched the payload and careened through the priceless heavy equipment and launching out along with tons of metal viscera.

The walls and floor shook for a few more seconds, and then general alarms began to run in the aftermath of the broken station

The trajectory of the projectile rang across the plotted line, and in a few seconds, it had crossed the distance of space to hit the target.


The Wildcat was a venerated vessel, first of her ship lineage as a fleet vessel equipped with hangar bays and all the operational capacities required to commit war.

In the bridge, Captain Aiza Nassim sat at her post, observing the standard battle trance of the ship.

“Captain, the station is reading some high energy actions across its hull.”

Taking a glance at the output from the ship sensors, she was curious as to what this stations real purpose was. She glanced over the two sets of outspoken sections that looked unsettlingly like  the barrels of a gun.

Then, the sensors whited out from the terrible output of a mass driver shooting a round directly at her ship’s way.

Autonomous  programs yanked control from the navigator, sending the reactor powering the engines to its red-line in order to dodge the oncoming firepower. The human components were driven with a half dozen G’s of acceleration for the tenth of a second it had to react.

Fortunately, the shot had only glanced against the hull of the Wildcat.


“What the fuck was that!” screamed out the Navarch of the fleet, aghast as his pretty holotable reported the Wildcat dropping out of the comm-network along with a set of two flashes of high energy particles from both the station and the Wildcat herself.

After a second, a sensor technician reported, “The Wildcat is recovering from a up-down spin, slow, scans indicate a glancing blow on its starboard, leaking atmo, it is returning to formation”

A comm request was sent by the Wildcat, and in a moment, the Captain of the vessel was on screen, her nose broken and bleeding terribly. She gave a salute to the navarch, “Navarch, the Wildcat is on recovery right now,-- she stopped, tapping a bunch of commands at the speed of thought into a blood spattered terminal before nodding, “The reactor is still within yellow-lines, We’re good to keep the assault.”

The Navarch took one look at the digital diagnostics and said “Like hell you are! Your ship's reactor was five steps away from the terminal, Move into rear broad arrow formation. We will make those Bastards pay.”


A bombing run ran across the gutted logistic station’s hull, and hundreds of bomblets burned and scorched the remaining functional equipment. Magnetic railways were blown apart, electrical transformers blew apart with high-density electrical capacitors. Then, baleful laser arrays ran and burned everything that moved, along with every escape pod the warships could trace across on their trajectory towards the remaining enemies.

Captain Yvette Sebastian of the Mixed Weapons Starbolt of the Starbolt class Corvettes fumed silently as the enemy commited everything they had to kill twenty people and a priceless asset of her people.


[at this point, the plot is terminated as I realize I was writing for the wrong set of events.]

CONTEST: What made peace among worlds? GUNS! What made low the dirt eaters and traitors to mankind? GUNS! What was the great era of darkness caused by? GREAT GUNS! High command demands new, great weapons to be built and deployed to the front, and a contest has been created. Details are specified in individual private threads.

Spoiler: map (click to show/hide)

[BS12]: Home of Elysium De La 12th Société, the Elysium sits in the orbit of a red dwarf star with little in the way of other orbital bodies: A single gas giant with a small lunar system around it. The Elysium requires Aerodynamic 0 to operate in.
Abyss Watcher: A Massive array of sensory systems that allowed the old empire to utilize faster-than-light sensory systems to keep track of an entire sector, the one we fight in. Currently inhabited by an active artificial intelligence that one side had managed to make contact with. It is damaged, and is on the verge of falling apart if not for the efforts of the hostile artificial intelligence to keep it together in the long dark after the collapse.
10 resource base extraction output.
The Bottle: A large structure the size of a gas giant, continually emitting exotic, powerful energies that make it almost impossible to approach: the structure periodically rips itself apart and releases a burst of what is theorized to be universe-ending true vacuum, before folding back together again in a most unnatural manner.
0 Resource base Output, Guardian of Endings present.

Vorpal Gun: in the orbit of a barren moon suits a massive skeletonized dry dock around one of the superweapons utilized by mankind before the collapse.  A hundred years ago, a society of space-bound human beings lived here until they ran out of things to cannibalize in the ship, and died out, leaving the Vorpal guns' looted remains as a tomb.
25 resource base extraction output.

[RS]: Roses Star is a large system with 12 orbital bodies, including Ranachuri, a garden world scoured by de-orbiting debris from the massive industrial complex that had fallen apart in its orbit. Evidence of a massive project of some kind is left behind in its orbit. In the corona of Roses Star is a proto-dyson swarm with a leading facility of unknown purpose. Currently the center of the conflict between Elysiums. Close operations on Ranachuri can benefit from ships designed to operate in atmospheric conditions, with 5 levels of the Aerodynamic tag being optimal.  Ranachuri has an active local presence that is capable of fielding weapons that frustrate dominance over the world. Ranachuri is the only known world which has human life.
50 resource base extraction output.



[SB]:Home of the Skanzat United Constitutional Kingdoms Elysium. The Elysium is in the orbit of a large gas giant, which orbits distantly from a yellow star. Several small bodies orbit around the inner lanes of the star. The Elysium Requires Aerodynamic 0 to operate in.

An Agonized Thinker: An old warship, unfathomably large, the apex of mankind's dominance had been brought low in this system: estimations put it at a little over two hundred kilometers in length and an unfathomable amount of mass, it had plunged into the atmosphere of a once-habitable world and destroyed it. Something churns in its depths, building things from the burnt hulk.
10 resource base extraction output.

Universe Ignition Array: A large spider web of particle accelerators and energy collectors orbiting a binary pair neutron star and blue supergiant star, once roughly every cycle it activates, and releases an exotic emission of energy that continually stumped the top minds of mankind before the collapse. THis alien artifact is almost impossible to approach due to the extreme energies that it soaks in, as well as its unpredictable and constantly changing orbit.
0 Resource base Output, Guardian of Beginnings present.

War Simulacrum:: A carefully terraformed system such that it would be the perfect training ground for makinds warriors and navy, along with the thickest debris belts of the sector: This system is a treasure trove and deathtrap, as it was meant to put the paces to the most powerful warships mankind ever had at their disposal, and the wrecks are as numerous as the stars.
25 resource base  Output

[Blood_Librarian]

Elysium Command Arms Race of Conquest: Battle Report of Turn 05->06

Elysium Command: Arms Race of Conquest

Spoiler: Strategic Deployment (click to show/hide)

Elysium De La 12th Société Deployment Strategy

Summary: All forces proceed via Vorpal Gun on a full offensive of Roses Star.  All effort should be placed that newly deployed Remora-fitted ships be used to remove costly SUCK vessels from the battlefield.  If fierce resistance is encountered, Marines shall be prioritize destruction of enemy warships vs planetary operations.

The following vessels will delegated to "OPERATION VERDUN:"
CC Aura - Assistant Gate Ship + Bomber Squadron
FC Slayer - Assistant Gate Ship + Bomber Squadron
CT Briard - Legacy Gunship
FT Terra - Remora Assault Transport
FT Mundus - Remora Assault Transport
FT Earth - Remora Assault Transport
GF Seine - Gate Ship + EW Squadron + Bomber Squadron
GF Marne - Gate Ship + EW Squadron + Bomber Squadron
AC Chartreux - Gunship + Bomber Squadron
AC Birman - Gunship + Bomber Squadron
MFC Corsair - Remora Heavy Assault Transport + SciTac
MFC Jean Bart - Remora Heavy Assault Transport + SciTac

Orders: Assembled forces will advance through Vorpal Gun onto the destination of Roses Star.  Tactical emphasis will be placed on high risk Marine Forced Entry Operations to eliminate high value enemy hulls.  Full Sci-Tac support is provided to this end.  EW resources should continue to be used for military deception (MILDEC), and Merchant Marine should be briefed on personnel recovery for those Pitre pilots.  While Marine landings on Ranachuri may still be possible based on the paucity of enemy defenses, the primary objective of the Marines remains the attrition of the adversary's high value warships.  Recommend use of specialty Slicer munitions to degrade enemy maneuverability prior to Marine operations.

Skanzat UNited Constitutional Kingdom Deployment Strategy

[X] Filling the Back
-

• Authorise Rainbow-class

-

• Refit Flare with Power Refit

-

• Construct Torch to Flare-class Power Refit Specs

-

• Deploy Flares, Rainbows, and Starbolts to Rose on Group Patrol

-

• Deploy "Pocket Rocket" to War Simulcrum on Scouting and Development Mission

-

• Deploy "Stone Bringer" to Agonized Thinker on Scouting and Development Mission

-

• Deploy Wildcats to Vorpal Gun on Harassment & Raiding Operations

Operational deployments result in one front with active combat, and one undefended front.

Roses Star - 12th Société Elysium Border Action
Operation “Verdun” Offensive, De la 12th Société Stellaire Nationale
CC “Aura” Aura Class
FC “Slayer Slayer Class
CT “Briard” Griffon Class
FT “Terra Terra Class
FT “Mundus Terra Class
FT “Earth Terra Class
GF "Seine" Seine Class
GF "Marne" Seine Class
AC “Chartreux” Chartreux Class
AC “Birman” Chartreux Class
MFC "Corsair" Corsair Class
MFC "Jean Bart" Corsair Class

Vs

Squadron “Gate Watchers”
SCP "Flare" Flare class PD Corvette
SCP "Torch" Flare class PD Corvette
MS “Sunbolt“ Starbolt Class
MS “Starbolt“ Starbolt Class
SCP “Rainbow” Rainbow Torpedo Frigate
GCCP  “Wildcat” Wildcat Class
GCCP  “Lynx” Wildcat Class
GCCP  “Cougar” Wildcat Class

COMBAT RESULTS: SKANZAT DEFENSE OVERRUN, 12th Société VICTORY

Roses Star - 12th Société Elysium Approach Skirmish

In the 12th Société’s Elysium, mothers and fathers said goodbye to their sons and daughters, Wives and husbands, sisters, brothers, kin and kith, all were parted to the greater purpose of service to the Elysium.

It was a given that not all of them would return. Furiously proclaiming domain over the stars required crews to man the ships. Ships to be fed into the hungry gullets of the war, to secure the future of the 12th Société’s Elysium.

Tens of thousands of people, citizens of the Elysium prepared. In the gullet of the Elysium's deepest strategic departments, the concern for the Verdun Offensive met up for the most critical meeting of them all.

Which star systems would they use for their approach.

The first half of the approach from the Elysium to Roses star  through the Vorpal Gun Zone was firmly under the 12th’s control, but anything after was not, control wrested by the enemy. Each gate on the way had to be re-tuned so that the tailing vessels could jump quickly.

There was potential for reach around attacks, the mighty tail of the interstellar fleet cut and options for retreat dashed like a raft against unforgiving rocks in the sea.

If a patrol or surveillance satellite was tripped early, they would have more time then expected to prepare. Orbital defense networks were seeded across many systems, and it would be a risk to not take them out.

There were other concerns, but ultimately, it was distilled into just two routes, one with more star systems on the journey, but less likely to be intercepted, safer on the approach, but longer. A retreating action would be devastating.

The other would be a more direct journey, but it was more heavily monitored, the initial approach would be shorter, the enemy would have had more time to prepare, but a retreat wouldn't be the end of the fleet.

Naturally, Ella Tourus, High Navarch of the state opted for the long run up to things.The Royal Navy departed from the Elysium with little fanfare, the open question was if they would return, would it be with a celebration? It was very possible that this offensive could be the end of Tourus’s tenure as the High Navarch if it goes wrong.

Two thirds of the way to Rose's Star, in a system around a blighted black dwarf, (the result of mankind's ambition), A warship lies in wait. Something big had happened, the crew had been witness to a half drive signatures pinwheel from one gate to another, an active gate connection made by advanced, military grade drives.

Weaker, older drives on cargo ships were bound to follow, alongside warships and driveless things, difficult or impossible to decipher if it was a warship or a cargo vessel. It was a careful maneuver, interfacing with the gate key and cutting the enemies sync at the right time. The goal was letting through bright signatures and shutting it down to catch slower ones, or as few warships as possible and as many cargo vessels as possible.

Down in the section that held the faster than light drive-- more accurately the “key” that interfaces with the stellar rings that do all the hard work, a man, jacked into a machine with quick silver blood and an intimate connection to an approximation of a knife that purred, waited.

Scanning the electromagnetic bands of radiation for peaks and valleys that emitted from the gate. These emissions carried tail-tell information that had to be more or less  deciphered by hand for this kind of work after it was fed to a computer. Each gate was different, and these types of interceptions were more of an art then a science, one backed by a prestigious amount of computational power. Stars bless the fact that the great cypher key generators of old had died with the era of 10,000 stars, and that the old cypher was more or less built into the gate now, forever and onwards until one Elysium had gained complete domain over the network.

All the lines were coming up together. It was like watching the inexorable march of time on a spectrum analysis report and mathematically derived cryptographic cipher combined. Only, the changing and moving of the lines signaled the movement of ships, faster than light. It was kind of magical when you thought about it.

Eventually, it came time to cut the carrier wave function-- not between two transceivers that used electromagnetic bands either, it would be cut with the quote blade unquote that the navigators ship had fastened on a proverbial stick. And it was cutting something that was scarcely imaginable, only surely known by computers fed a billion lines of code and skewed, gibbering madmen long dead.

Speaking with the quiet certainty of overconfidence, the Navigator of the ship said, “Initiating Vorpal Blade.”

Just like that, with the press of a button and a hellish moment where his implants had to guide the unfathomably strange vorpal blade towards cutting the strings of a gate just so, over six or seven ontological months or about a tenth of a second in real-time, half a dozen ships were yanked out of their jump program and into the long ranges of the GCCP “Wildcat” Wildcat Class first of her lineage of gateships.

Then the vorpal blade moved upwards, getting out of the way of the Gates’ massive higher dimensional machines that reconnected the strings that the remaining ships rode on. Just in time, any later and the most obscenely difficult to repair part would’ve been crushed under the weight of a Gate’s worth of higher-dimensional matter.

The nuclear rocket engine ignited, burning them closer towards the star-struck enemy fleet, the glory of the Navarchs were behind them that day.


Alarms rung out on the Combat Corvette Aura, gateship and warship in one, it’s gatekey was now strong and bright in the network, but the hull was old and small for the warships, thus it’s contingent was the one extracted out of the convoy.

The Aura was fleeted with two cargo vessels, the venerable Terra and Munda class Terra troop transports, along with two irregular vessels, old guard, the navy that braved the stars before the regulars burned out of the star yards.

The klaxons warbled down, muted by the command of the vessel's captain: Fídi Toussaint, wet behind the ears with a fresh captainship picked off from being an executive officer behind some legendary figure or another.

The battle was to come. From his bridge, he observed the battlestate of the field ahead. The enemy burned towards the fleet in an aggressive high-G burn, and the short distance meant that they would still be wreathed with the after effects of the gate-traversal until part way through the battle.

“Well men, we got our butcher’s bill, let us revel.”

The range bands closed. The enemy warship, the GCCP Wildcat burned closer. First to enter its range was the irregular warship Make My Day, and the baleful irradiance of a laser array ignited. The thin hull breached in seconds, and it fell out of formation just as the other irregular Evil Begets Evil and the CC Aura entered the range bands. Evil Begets Evil rolled its hull, taking twice as long before it was forced to break off the approach as its engine went dark.
The two troop transports followed, entering into long range as the CC Aura closed the range gap to begin firing with its own weapons. It’s bombers deployed, going on a bowed approach to land blows on the Starbolt’s rear sections, to force the ship to turn it’s hull to aim it’s primary weapon down range come the close bands.

Despite the valiant efforts of the fighter wing, all of the inbound craft had been scythed down. The sacrifice of the CC Aura’s ensured that it had more time to enter into the short range bands, close enough for its autocannons to be effective. The enemy Wildcat was cladded with an effective defensive solution of thick bands of armor forged in the finest of Elysium fabricators. The captain of the Wildcat knew something was amiss with the movement of warships in the gyre. To the command of her captain, the Sunbolt disengaged its primary beamers from the Aura to lase down the Terra, which had closed into the medium ranges along with its sister ship. Both troop transports were derived from the earliest of interstellar warships, and even though retrofitted heat control systems did their best, it wasn’t enough.

The Terra was clipped first, the majority of it’s radiators and it’s radiator working fluid evaporated until it was forced to cut thrust and coast or risk boiling, The Munda was next, which closed into the short ranges as well, before being cut out of the fight by radiator-kill.

At this point, the fight was nearing its end. Wafting atmosphere from its thousand-shot filled hull, the arrow shaped vessel of Skanzat turned, and burned away from both of the damaged troop transports while under pursuit from the Aura Gateship. A calculated risk was held, and the Wildcat trajectory was made to intersect the two outbound cargo vessels. Both cargo vessels had unfortunate ends: popped cryogenic fuel tanks and skewered life support systems. The Aura could not keep on interstellar ranges without a maintenance tail, and had retreated to within the gun ranges of the two troop transport vessels. The end of the strategic maneuvers came with the Wildcat burning to the gate interface, programmed a jump towards Roses star and rode its way home through a side passage that the 12th Société did not control.

This pattern of fighting would follow up all the way to Roses Star, all but a fighting retreat played out by the Wildcat raiding forces against 12th Scoeite’s overwhelming fleet operations.

Roses Star - 12th Société Elysium Main combat

[Xenonauts Main Menu Theme]

There, aboard the highest port station of Roses Star, constant vigilance and vast sensor networks fed reams of data to The Keep. There, built in that unfinished hull of a Gate, a facsimile of life aboard Elysium churned out. They didn’t build, manufacture or grow at the Keep, the operation was purely an administrative and militaristic complex. A sub brain of the divine apparatus for the king and people of the Skanzat Elysium.

Statarch -- if one was retentive about using old era titles -- of Roses Star, Thenodyne Archelegos observed from the command deck of his Elysium-from-Elysium, or however the euphemism can be butchered to fit the situation. Here, he sat at his desk in the operations bridge, oversaw the movement of a dozen or so warships, tug cargo vessels and other such things coming in and out of his domain. Then, he would take a more grandiose role, tasking the monitor corvettes to watch the adjacent systems as well as attempt to pull out information from the Navarch's own fleet attache’s on the day-to-day.
All of that had changed a few days ago.

Enemy immortal of the Skanzat way of life, the 12th Société had prepared a great offensive. A fleet was sent down the gate network, and the edge of their wake had reached the crude sensory systems that the Skanzat people had engineered and hooked to the 12th’s Societe’s approach to Roses star.

And now, the violence would begin. Overtures were detected, of the delicate keening electromagnetic emissions that gates emitted just before expelling ships.

The first warship out the gate was a feeder vessel, a militia vessel bolted with steel and armor to slough off the first-strike wave of fire that the defensive installations put around the gate would pour out.

A half dozen automated blue spectrum visible lasers systems (themselves attached to vast battery manifolds and solar arrays to absorb the pinholes worth of electromagnetic radiation from the closest, yet so distant star) fired off, The first vessel had no outward reaction outside of small flashes of light -- localized flash detonations as metal vaporized-- , all the way up until more vessels arrived. The first “real” military craft, the Griffon class Briard escaped out of the gullet of the gate, its thrusters immediately igniting along with its active communication systems tuning in for sensory data from the craft that it followed.

It turned towards the nearest satellite,  its cannons oriented and fired upon the satellite a short thirty seconds  from arriving.

The rest of the fleet arrived with little fanfare, the Briad taking the brunt of the damage from the laser systems and coming out with a scorched hull, casualties and one of its four guns downed for good.

STRAT-COMMAND analysis indicates that these laser systems that the enemy deployed were deployed much more often in the inner system due to their solar powered nature. In addition, the laser optics they utilized had a higher frequency optical focus, emitting blue light. They had an almost twice as effective range comparatively to infrared systems, almost certainly at the expense of being more expensive and having a lower efficiency ratio of power fed to power out. The net change was that more power was poured on 12th Société royal vessels, more power over a longer period.

Just how many of them were out there in the system? It has been a long time coming since the fleet had been in Rose’s Star proper, and the level of industry had increased dramatically. Each pinprick of E-mag radiation would be another speed bump they would have to navigate around.


Aboard the AC Chartreux first of her lineage, tired bulkheads held together by dulled rivets contained a microcosm of life. Men and women in cramped quarters rose to meet the day from the berthings, manned the stations, ate and complained about life, and fell back to sleep. It was a blur, a blur of an operational deployment like any other.

There was a cackle in the air. A sort of finality to it, of this grand assault. The charged air coming from the Gateship had brought them here to Roses Star. Fídi Toussaint Captain of this vessel who had gone down with the CT Aura so long ago pondered this divine piece of a puzzle he couldn’t fathom but knew was there. This cycle was made to drive a warship forward, onwards and ever upwards to secure his Elysium, and the vessel would break for that future if need be. His scars  from the Aura’s finest hour pulsed from the memories of the fires that rose. This cycle broke with each engagement, the blur fading away for the sharp lines of an engagement.

The enemy had staged one hell of a delaying action. For  the Sub-cycle long movement up to the star, they had put what analysis indicated to the entirety of their mobile assets in the area to setting up ambushes, catching supply transports and making awful, short, dirty scrapes against 12th Société guns.

It left the Verdun Offensive with leaky ships and scorched hulls. It was hard to tell with the opposite side, They made up for the extensive gate usage by having far too many gate keys in their ship line up. Was it for this type of raiding action? He didn’t know.

Here, sitting in the pilots cabin and looking through the port through the side of the ship for docking procedures and so much stargazing, Toussaint pondered the truths and pieces to his own private mystery.

Then, the fog cleared up in Toussaint’s head, he turned and looked at the nav projection, the way for spacers to look out the window as a wet navy would so long ago. Through screens, as was natural in the order of things.


[Xenonauts OST -Geoscape Music 2]

Divining truth from the dull thrum of electromagnetic hexes was a hard task, a rigorous discipline of science unlike any other. However, sometimes the truth was delivered by a dozen all-spectrum emission sig’s of nuclear drive flares.

The full fleet of the 12th Société arrived at the Rose star. Battered survivors of a defense-in-depth campaign, their ire turned towards the jewel of the system, Ranachuri, and its orbital’s, which was reflected in all of the Verdun Offensives planning. The fleet approached the world in a classic dagger formation towards the largest orbital structure, the Keep. The plan, after that structure was shattered and it’s escorted scattered among solar winds, was to englobe the world, and to destroy anything and everything that dared to fly up, and that which sang down.

Defending against the 12th Société was almost the full force of the Skanzat navy, from battleworn Wildcat hulls to proud Starbolts, the full and proud… eight vessel strong fleet. When the time came, the fleet would undock from the Keep and use it for the singular purpose of preventing the burning of a system's worth of assets-- or to be more accurate, the burning of Ranachuri.

Surprisingly, the offensive forces had opted for a strategy of forcing an engagement against enemy military forces rather than economic and industrial concerns of the system, and only took particularly opportune moments to thrash infrastructure on the way to objectives. Such a way of warfare was considered outmoded by the end of the Era of the 1000 stars, however, as victory by Skanzat’s forces will mean that only a momentary disruption of resource extraction efforts rather than an inevitable prolonged loss..

In the end, it was as straightforward of an orbital maneuver as possible.


He couldn’t help it. Captain Fídi Toussaint looked upon the pale flickering flames on the screen that represented the Enemy and shivered. Couldn’t help but show off nervous ticks. Itching, anxious glances down at the operations details, a cracking of the facade.

His was the honor of leading the formation, the pinnacle, the spearhead. And as he looked up and to his crew in the tactical command bridge, Toussaint saw this twisted never before seen cycle, he realized that he didn’t want it to break.

Unbidden, the line to the command net said, “Fleet command to all units, pitch alert to highest readiness, we will be entering combat in T-30 minutes.”

The time on the counter ticked down. Twenty minutes, ten, five, and the read outs of his crew continued all the while.

Then, roughly a dozen seconds before the countdown zero’d out, a report came. “reading thermal intake from enemy optics.” spoke damage control one, in her recessed station.


The englobing formation stacked up. It was a slow, burgeoning affair that forced the fleet on the other side to either abandon their static point or be surrounded on all angles. Just as the range brackets closed to the first shots fired out, the fleet of Skanzat forces moved.

At first, all ships of the 12th Société had taken the blows from the relatively protected Skanzat vessels to break the heavily armored ring of the Keep, but as the englobing progressively exposed more angles, Royal Skanzat forces broke out into three rough clumps, engaging in a trilateral pattern forwards towards the enemy; As well as away from the Keep, minimizing the risk of running engine wash on allies.

Roughly, the Flare, Torch, and Wildcat engaged the enemy ships Birman, Jean Bart, Mundus, and the Marne. The second engagement occurred with the Starbolt, and Cougar standing against the Seine, Cartreux, and Briard.
Finally, the Sunbolt, Rainbow, Lynx fought against 12th Elysium ships Aura, Slayer, Terra, Earth and Corsair for the first bout of fighting.

The amount of firepower sent out far outstripped the previous rounds of combat due to the sheer numbers involved. This includes firepower delivered from the Keep’s great, baleful laser emitters parred from satellite systems.


The Wildcat of the Wildcat class was a tough warship, it’s guts interspersed with the odd threading required to run a gatekey, but a warship nonetheless. Her captain, Aiza Nassim, had the ship running hot. Or to be more accurate, the navigator had stepped away, and in her place was a black box of Nassim’s own making -- a racing AI, just as it always did in these tense, terse situations, and it worked out, this time, and everytime. Hopefully.

The ship shook, guttering pipe songs as precisely controlled and voluminous thruster columns belted out nuclear fire.

The battle started at a slow pace. First the Wildcat  burned at the approaching fleet just as every other ship. Now it was time to get to the flanks, in position to cut radiators -- she just had to get there.

Engine Tech’s had a propensity for calling such maneuvers a “die run”, for in the sims, such high tempo, repeated, rapid maneuvers would end typically in self-inflicted mission kills for all but the most skilled of navigators, and would vehemently curse at captains under their breath who would allow such a thing with star-dimming venom.

Active sensor locks had been placed on the Wildcat by the enemy Chartreux, which it  sent down cannon rounds with gusto. Along with the Chartreux was a troop transport Earth-- altered like a muggy life support with new filters, judging from the altered thrust and exterior profile along with the Briard, a Griffon class gunship.

The cannon rounds sent by the Chartreux and the Griffon -- their ships of the line, with a heavy emphasis on gun systems -- were going wide, no splash downs, but it couldn’t keep the guns deadset forever.

Nassim’s old command, the Starbolt flew on a direct interception angle on it from a wide angle due to  a brief detour in the interstellar maneuvers to menace upon an oncoming bomber squadron from the Earth and the Seine off from their original gun run towards the .Wildcat

The bombers pushed through regardless, and took casualties on their approach. Then, they were upon the Wildcat. Missiles flew and bombs were sent down range, but the damage was not totally crippling, the ship’s maneuvers and armor had prevented a mission kill.  It continued to stand in the close ranges, committing to maneuvers while damage control rushed to prevent degradations in combat effectiveness from the fires that were burning on the ship.

The Chartreux burned to intercept, with the supporting vessels pulling behind to support the ship in the dog fight.

While the Chartreux closed the gap, the Starbolt drifted out of the short ranges into medium ranges, and took on an interception role, gunning down oncoming bombers from the second wave, interspersed with long range fire support against the Chartreux.

The Chartreux’s hull, cut and broiled from the wrath of Skanzat forces, continued the fight, closing into ultra close ranges along with the Earth. It was attempting a maneuver kill by allowing it’s ally to fire on the Wildcat Thrusting grid, but the maneuver did not fully connect before a critical element in the Chartreux’s gunnery systems failed from the combined fire of the lasers and autocannons the enemy used; all four of it’s cannons had been gutted by fire power, and it had ultimately made the decision to try and fall out of the fire ranges. It failed to exit the range bands, as both remaining Skanzat ships focussed on the Chartreux, firing until the vessel splintered. All the while, the Earth and the Seine burned out of the local area, and into the gunnery bands of its ally ships. The Skanzat ships Starbolt and the Wildcat beat a hasty retreat out of the AO back to their home Elysium

While this particular shard of battle was victorious for the Skanzat United Constitutional Kingdoms, it was not so for the rest of the battlespace.


While Skanzat forces had claimed victory in one section of the battlefield, a starkly different affair brewed with the Engagement involving Sunbolt (Starbolt class Mixed Weapons Shuttle), Cougar( Wildcat  class Mixed Weapons Shuttle), Lynx (Wildcat class Gate Capable Combat Pinnace) against the Aura (Transport), Slayer (Gateship Frigate) , Terra (Troop Transport),  and Corsair (Assault Frigate).

The range band closing mirrored the engagement’s prior, but as soon as the distance between the two forces minimized so that conscious, decisive dodging maneuvers would not have as much of a role in the fight, Royal 12th forces had a vastly more successful interdiction.

A vast network of active sensors driven by parasite craft from the Corsair and its sister ship penetrated what few ECM hexes that the Skanzat forces could summon. The lack of turreted laser defense systems in this section of the assault was punishing for Skanzat forces as it couldn't afford the seconds worth of burning to track and burn out a far-off sensor bulb, not when the Slayer, Terra, Corsair and Aura were making close-in burns.

The Lynx was focussed by the regiment, and before the medium range closed to short ranges, it fell out of line, venting atmo, along with plumes of nuclear fuels and hydrogen gas from the fuel blisters.

The Aura burned from the counter fire, glittering globs of metal sloughing off of it’s hull amidst clouds of ammonia-- coolant and laser concealment -- before an extra-dimensional interaction shook the ship-- the moorings of it’s Gate Key was cut away by a critical strike.

The world became weird on the ship, and it narrowly avoided a guillotining cut as a mountain of extra-dimensional matter snapped into reality -- remnants of the vorpal blade flying away, clipping off a chunk of the vessel’s engine grid on its way to sail out of the battlefield. The Aura’s autocannons entered range and fired, headless of the burners on its aft, sending armor piercing 40mm rounds (whose design lineage could be traced to old Earth) down range.

 Hard cut radiators on the Cougar severely handicapped the vessel. The captain played a dangerous game, gambling on victory by contaminating the life support systems and using the very air of his ship as a coolant sink: primordial gouts of terrible chemicals leached the oxygen out of the ship air and into acrid black sludge. The rooms of the ship heated to near 100C, and anyone with a compromised suit died, all to keep the massive turbo-transformers, optical systems and weapons within operating temperature for just a little bit longer.

It wasn’t enough. At a certain point laws of thermodynamics mandated that something had to give, and the superheated conditions of the ship gave way to vulnerability: the nuclear reactor began it’s spiral into a run-away reaction, thanks to jammed control rods courtesy of 40mm rounds from the Aura into critically breached sections.

Engineers attempted damage control to save the doomed ship, meanwhile, the Lynx effected enough damage control to return to the battlefield, which it did with gusto to fire upon the Terra. The terrible energies emitted by the Lynx’s laser projectors affected the Terra with a serious malfunction that resulted in superheated, corrosive air entering the bridge and paralyzing the ship’s maneuver command long enough for the Lynx to run around and fire on the Terra’s rear, removing it from the battlefield in any serious maneuvering capacity. However, before the end of the Terra, it had returned enough fire to blow out all but one of its laser projectors. Before the Lynx could disengage, the Slayer entered into a flanking side maneuver and struck the Lynx’s nuclear reactor, powering down the craft.

The Corsair was locked in battle with the Sunbolt, both of their front’s locked with each other and thrusting grids at full burn in a delicate, rotating dance.

Terrible energies from the Sunbolt were first absorbed by the thundering clouds of ammonia coolant the Corsair outgassed, then the empty hangar bay welded into the front of the ship. These energies did terrible things to the delicate launch bays, repair equipment, and other systems of the hangar and ruined any chance of keeping the grid of sensor ships after this engagement. The sensor grid of the fleet fell in power as communication arrays broke, leaving more and more of the battlenet to take up slack for the Corsair.

The Sunbolt lost half of its laser complement during the hellish exchange of blows during this time, localized transformer detonations like cracking ribs in a bare knuckle fight between spacers. Until the Slayer, finished with its other battles, moved to pincer strike the Sunbolt.

The Sunbolt entered into danger close ranges of the Corsair, intent on spearing the enemy and splintering both hulls as an end to its finest hour.

It was a near miss. Hull ground against hull, followed by harpoons firing off from the Corsair to anchor the ships together to more secure the two ships together, while the Slayer braved the fires of the battle to gut the engine grid of the Sunbolt, taking enough damage to then fall out of the battle sequence due to its own engine grid gutted from irregular G-forces and enemy fire during a turn. On its path out of the battlefield, it oriented towards the Keep, sending off a parting gift of more firepower.

The Cougar had affected damage control on it’s radiators, and the contaminated coolants siphoned straight out from the interior compartments and heat sinks flew in and out of the metallic feather-like constructions just in time for it to close in towards the Corsair and Sunbolt.

However, a different kind of battle was raging on.


Klaxons roared in the marine compartments of the Corsair. Marines in hardsuits, powered armors, exosuits and small scale mechatronics all fully geared up and ready to go waited for the hellish forces occurring on the dragons-fly mated ships to finally cease, waiting for the Slayer to do it’s gun run and free the battlefield for operations.

And so it happened, and interlocked boarding systems deployed all at once. An EVA spindle shot across space and struck the enemy vessel, the Sunbolt. The spindle carried dozens of marines who stormed across, inside and outside the spindle. Some warriors would skitter across the surface of the vessel with the dreaded work of peaking over the crests of the ship, to gut weapon emplacements and sensor bulbs before they could turn on the englobing marine force, and to secure additional entrances and reduce uncontrolled factors.

The real work was done at the cutting site where the spindle had landed, as heavy repurposed industrial equipment had a hell of a time cutting through the composite spaced armor of the Sunbolt with plasma torches, drills, and precision explosives.

It wasn’t long before first contact was had.

[Blood_Librarian]

Continued due to Forum Limitations.

[Imperial]


A hellish roar of twisting metal and the impact of giants sounded through the hull.

In the outer sections of the MS Sunbolt crewman moved to armories and geared up. Engineers settled autocannons into hardpoints in the intersections of the ship while a battle raged in the middle, port central section. Soldiers in powered armors had established their toehold on the surface, but all of their armor could not save them from the judicious use of high explosive, armor piercing weapons that more often than not pulped anything and everything inside a corridor with the concussive blasts inside the solidly built ship sections. Every part of the ship was used, from life support canisters used as impromptu bombs, to Emergency Vacuum Seal Automated Bulkhead’s used as multi-ton guillotine’s.

The 12th Société paid their blood price with each corridor. A few minutes, and the first squads had entered into the junctions closest to the ship’s primary reactor. In each engagement,It wasn’t a guaranteed thing to see a 12th Société armored breacher fall in battle, but it almost invariably resolved with the death of the Skanzat crew, no matter how much of a home field advantage was had.

This became apparent, even so far away from all the battles, here in the Damage Control Command area.

The Chief Engineer of the MS Sunbolt broke out into a sweat. He oathed, glanced down at the damage control console. The nuclear reactor’s heat gauge slowly ticked up, approaching the dreaded red line. The integrity of the hull was in question now, and with a heavy heart, he engaged the heat exchangers to the radiators of the life support systems.

They would either fight off the enemy in the reactor zone or cook alive.

He was so safe here, up in the monitor pit. Just two dozen meters, behind bulkheads and metal and paneling, a battle wore out. Then, received the message he was waiting for from the captain. He stood up, steadying himself as the vessel unpredictably accelerated, RCS vernier thrusters sputtering to twist and break the hold the enemy had.

He carefully pulled out the chunky-as-hell mechanical key, slotted it into the sequencer built into his computational engine and when the light on it flashed, he turned in sync with the captain.

Elsewhere, men and women in radiation hardened EVA suits bunkered down against their intersection's defensive emplacements. It was no longer a question of holding back to protect the hull here, as the gun sighted down this hull would only break third priority support infrastructure, nothing that would endanger the ship if it were gone. The armored maniacs on the other side couldn’t push right away, or the hellish, up-calibered autocannon would rip them in half. Six of their number were scythed down this way, and they were psyching up their seventh goon now.

This wasn’t a stable game. One lucky shot, and they would be free to storm the reactor room as slaughter demons. There the chief machinist ground her teeth down and watched as another foolish engineer turned soldier got torn up by one of the enemies own light caliber auto guns before the enemy paid their blood price again.

“Reactor Technician Jamison! Status of the reactor’s visitors on the other side?” asks the Chief Machinist, out across the room to Jamison, hunched over the manual controls that were directly hooked to the reactor.

“It is capital FUCKED!” The enemy is attempting to dig through a bulkhead to get at the radiator connections!”

A hellish whine crackles throughout the air from across the hall. Noone on their side knew, but it was the sound of death, a linear particle accelerator going through the motions of speeding up a packet of neutrally charged particles to significant-C percentage speeds, all in the form factor of a shoulder mounted launcher hooked to a backpack module with a tube as thick as a good spacers hardsuit suit leg. Two, seconds, three seconds of stunned silence.

Gently, the Chief Machinist flicked a dozen switches. “Low Technician Invictus, Turn the suicide valve to the right, we are going to commit a grave sin today.”

Without complaint, the man he ordered punched through the glass case containing the suicide valve, gloved hands in an EVA soft suit doing as ordered.

There were… certain… preparations, made by the designers of this vessel, made from a cautious ideal. An alternative, to the horrible prospect of having a 12th Société vessel fall out from the fleet due to… certain dispositions. The captain and the Chief Engineer had already swiped their interlock keys on this mechanism earlier, and final steps had just been offered to her. Her crown of thorns, her sacrifice to make.

Secondary plasma field loops had snaked through the ship, a touch of the sunshards warmth to be leached out through direct heat exchangers for various utilities in the ship. They were rated to handle the full brunt of the reactor's fury, regardless.

And here, everyone in the reactor room, along with the connecting halls, through every breached firelock and broken seal would be consigned to death, some would be spared. These secondary loops were cut off from some very important rooms holding defensive positions that have not yet fallen thanks to the switches she flipped. The machinist could’ve flipped some more, maybe she could’ve saved this room had she not manually triggered a E.V.S.A bulkhead to crush one of the enemies. All that was left between this room's destruction was one final digital switch.

The machinist looked up, her vision and hearing seared through the visor of her helmet by thunder and lightning. White, then black.

In the bleary moment after being thunderstruck, the machinist was not in the right mind to do anything but watch the after images of the slaughter. Large bore scatter guns, long and thin lancing magnetic railguns, baleful and chunky grenade launchers all roared as the finest warriors of Elysium marched forward, shooting and killing everyone in the room.

A moment of observation of this charnel house was held by the victors. A moment, and the legendary marine, Frank Kilgrave spoke to his comm:

“Strike Command, Kilgrave, Sunshard control has been taken.”

And lo, Marine Kilgrave witnessed the deadened consoles and the mechanical instruments reading off the steadily decaying nuclear reactor and decided it was his technician member’s problem now.


[Song of Despair - Remix of Frenzied Flame Merchant from Elden Ring]

The captain of the MS Sunbolt stared at the bio monitor screen. Each red pinprick on the ship diagram indicated enemy territory, marked by the death of one of his crew.

His revere was interrupted by the approach, the movement of the XO to his side. Then, the executive officer quietly turned, and spoke to the captain's ear, “You should say something, Captain Ameri. Anything, if you have anything at all, I think,” he added as an afterthought.

Thus, the captain of the MS Sunbolt looked. All eyes were upon him, he could feel it through the reflective visors of the emergency hardsuits and helmets that everyone wore.

And he didn’t have anything to say. All counter boarding procedures had been committed, the self-destruct sequence had been followed all the way up to a fault somewhere outside of his control, and there was nothing he could do to correct it. It was all he could do to ponder the black mirror of his bricked operations console for something to say that followed the manuals and the schooling, until he spoke, “Continue as you were, men.”

Damn him. Damn the executive officer for looking away.

Atleast, the executive officer looked away long enough to gather his courage, turning heel with a closed fist that caught the captain on the neck. Hard. It was all the man could do but slump down in his command throne. While delivering another strike, the XO shouted, “As you were!? You crazy bastard! You doomed us all with that finest hour ideology! All hands with the ship ramming --GUTTER SHIT!”

He was shouting over the man, punctuating each sentence with a strike on the captain who protected himself with his arms, to no avail. This beat down in the making had everyone enraptured. Everyone was paralyzed, the only thing they could do was watch the cracking facade of the normally very calm XO. Eventually, the Safety head gave a pointed, scared look to the ship’s first Lieutenant, who was about to move when the XO stopped the beating of his own accord to listen.

A few short moments later, and the thundering footfalls of 12th Société soldiers in powered armor approached the sealed bulkheads of the bridge.

The roar of guns followed. A short while later, the MS Sunbolt had fallen into enemy hands, with all priority objectives taken and secondary operations beginning. The Corsair would not be mobile for the remaining time of Operation Verdun.


[Xenonauts OST - Air Combat]

A high technician stared at a readout to his missile launcher, the Torpedo Ship Rainbow’s first of two launcher systems. After a moment, he turned and looked at a bulkhead. Buried deep behind it, was a terrifying set of warheads. In an ammunition magazine, a rack of monstrously huge missiles sat, ready to be fed into the tube through a voluminous autoloader.

These were titan slayer missiles, each one capable of committing a grave amount of firepower out into knife fighting ranges, where no  second gen point defense system can hope to react in time thanks to its sheer speed.

Elsewhere while a technician pondered a great weapon and the death of all things, Captain Mimi Lombardi of the Torpedo ship Rainbow observed the changing of the battlestate. A dim, violent and eclectic understanding of the battlefield was hers, but that was all she needed. To her flanks was the Flare, and the Torch. The Flare was rebuilt, its shield generation schema was expanded massively.

Her forces were allayed against 12th Société vessels Birman, Jean Bart, Mundus, and the Marne

A shard of the fleet, three great warships, were arrayed against bombers, E-war systems, and the most advanced sensors that the enemy could bear. Torches in the night would flicker on, active sensors emitting piercing bands of radiation on their approach until they were menaced away by a gout of infrared energy from the turrets on her Rainbow. It was the first ship to be equipped with turreted laser systems, but it couldn't hold them on target with the ECM hexes in the space, not unless they dared to get much closer. The other ships, the Flare and the Torch were rebuilt from their original design in the shipyards, nuclear reactors expanded and plasma siphons feeding into modernized energy shield generators all installed to create the most enduring warship possible.

A thrum in the ship began, thruster arrays sounding as if they were slowly rising to the challenge of bringing the ship closer to its target rather than reaching set limits and falling ever closer to breaking apart.

The Marne would die today to her ship-weapons. Its engines were weak, non-nuclear things that slowed the fleet down. When it falls, the rest of the enemies attack, its sensor and E-war nodules would fall. Anything that tried to intercept would die too. Already, the Birman and the Jean Bart were in the long ranges, but the nuclear burner of the Rainbow minimized the damage through angling the striking surface of the enemies weapons.

The ship's hull shrieked, low and far away, with each strike, but it wasn’t enough, not at the ranges that the enemy fired at, and they closed into the short range. To both starboard and port, trailing behind a few hundred meters were the Flares, synchronized in  the formation without complaint. A wave of bombers splashed over the Flare class frigates, massive amounts of energy and mass buffered off from the flash forged protective planes, initially a dim, sunset orange color, they had fallen all the way down to the near infrared spectrum from the first volleyed wave. Each focussed on their targets, the Jean Bart, and the Birman.

The Mundus had put down an interception maneuver, a course that would end in a ram if nothing changed. Captain Lombardi pondered for a moment, and asked her helmsman when they would enter optimal range against the Marne, and the answer she got was satisfactory.

Her missiles would be ready to fire again after shutting down the Mundus Her course was unchanged, and when the assault shuttle entered that critical phase where it couldn’t hope to dodge the missile, the Rainbow shuddered.

The “teardrop” Bomb Catapult is an incredibly complex weapon for space warfare: A close range missile for all intents and purposes, guided through a simplistic set of sensors and a baleful rocket engine filled with the spittle and hate of a lost era. In a very specific set of circumstances, these missiles are the absolute king of warfare: When the enemy is up close, unable to fully control the gyre of EMAG warfare, and are committed to a maneuver that disadvantages further dodging: it works. It works less when the enemy deploys ECM, rapidly maneuverable vessels and Close-in Weapon Systems (CIWS).

In an instant, the Mundus was gutted prow to stern with exit wounds that blew out all of its engines , and ending with a quickly expanding shotgun blasted cloud of mechanical debris out of its aft. It was tin-canned with a twin set of silver streams, which were superheated into a plasma. Then, the hulls of the spent missiles collided with the hulk’s spent prow, collapsing for one final measure. The Rainbow’s hull shook with the reverberated pitter patter of its prey’s gore, as it continued its burn towards the Marne. To the enemy prey, it had dropped out of the sensor net, obscured by the highly energetic cloud of it’s slain ally, only to separate and emerge like a pair of aerospace fighters exiting a convergence in a show.

All at once, both enemy vessels turned and disengaged from the Torch and the Flare, their prestigious tactical thrusters allowing them the ability to abandon the turtle some vessels at the expense of exposing their thrusting grids to laser fire. The Marne continued its exit burn, but it wouldn’t make it, no nuclear core integrated into its propellant schema meant that it would spend its strategic propellant reserves long before it could escape the inevitable fate. A moment passed, and the tactical situation was re-observed.

The sum total of the enemies remaining fighter force was on the inbound. Every orphaned craft, every outdated fighter, loaded-to-bear bomber and craft was burning for intercept, quicker and closer vessels slowing down to synchronize the approach. A thousand eyes were on the Rainbow, for it had become a legend.

There were two ways of allowing parasite craft or missiles to strike a foe. The first was to fire inside the enemies PD arcs, close enough that there would be no reaction time, like what had killed the Mundus. The second, is to oversaturate the point defense grid, which seemed to be inevitable for the Rainbow with the hundreds of incoming craft, who would arrive in about thirty seconds, coinciding with the arrival of the enemies on her rear into the medium ranges.

Captain Mimi Lombardi leaned back in her chair. Was she going to die in this room?

It was nice enough, she supposed, and waited for the inevitable, a captain who had given all her orders to make for her ship's finest hour.

A couple seconds passed, and the ship shuddered again as its missiles fired off. Off-handedly, she noted the missile's guidance activated a half second later then they should’ve and an autocannon on the enemies side had nailed one missile, deforming its hull and causing it to spin off in a lame arc. The other one had struck true, the Marne’s inner most racks of hypergolic plumbing for its thrusting grids detonated in secondary explosions.

The craft was made of sterner stuff than the Mundus, and RCS verners kept the ruined rear of the craft facing towards the Rainbow as it sailed by. The ruined guts of the thrusting block was used as a shield to protect its incredibly valuable, delicate hangar bays and sensor systems.

And then, the enemies first wave of bombers struck as one on the Rainbow, laser turrets overwhelmed by the target-rich environment. Bomber squadrons needled through the firing arcs to land unguided bombs onto the magazines for the catapult, and they promptly detonated in secondary reactions, killing everyone inside the bomb catapult’s operational deck. Blast-proof bulkheads kept the pressure waves inside the section, ensuring the total lethality for the poor spacers trapped within.

Intense, thorough structural damage ripped the ship's rear trusses in half, causing the ship’s outward thrusting grids to bend outwards, looking more like feet under a woman's ripped empire dress. The blow sent the ship into an uncontrolled roll, with the mis-alligned vernier thrusters only worsening the issue for the crew with odd, unpredictable spurts of acceleration as software tried to determine the new way of things for the RCS systems.

The two enemy interstellar vessels fired as well, cannon rounds flying through ruined and gutted hulls to savage internals.

Inside her helmet, Mimi noted the exterior pressure of her room drop sharply, wondering if there was silence beyond her helmet, or if there was a continuing cacophony of screaming metal that had deafened her an instant ago.

Regardless, she turned to damage control panels and began her orders to save the ship, her responsibility did not end if she was merely deafened.


AI War Ancient Shadows: Imminent Annihilation

Flare, Torch, Rainbow vs Jean Bart, Birman, Marne, Earth, Seine, Slayer

As the Rainbow drifted out of the battlestate, the remaining Skanzat and 12th Société ship forces turned towards each other. Both the Jean Bart and the Birman had been somewhat lamed due to melted engine bells courtesy of Skanzat laser systems.

Both of the Flare class vessels Flare and Torch all had  mostly unperforated barriers, though a section on the Torch had failed to materialize, a product of the still shaky grasp on the technology that Skanzat science had.

The greater battlefield was slowing down, ships drifting away from the Keep, bomber squadrons regrouping and 12th Société Stellaire nationale outside of the direct engagement ranges of the Flare and Torch.

De la 12th Société’s royal navy had paid their blood price for the victory. Initial casualty reports put one out of three spacers aboard their hulls to be on the casualty lists. Coolant reserves were spent, vast sections on every ship relegated to twisted no-man's land from internal detonations and laser flashpoint sites. Trails of burnt chemical products trailed from these leaky vessels, but the mandate from the home Elysium was clear.

Minimize survivors. The proverbial red flag was raised on these vessels of the 12th Société, and the hagrid, wounded vessels burned forward without hesitation, to save the Marne and to destroy the Rainbow along with the incumbent, re-combined fleet of the Skanzat forces.

Were it not for the early departure of the Starbolt and the Wildcat, the battlefield may have resulted in a more favorable outcome for the Skanzat stellar navy, but the inclinations of the navarch onsite had preemptively ordered the ships to fallback to allow for something to reach their Elysium above all else.

The acceleration profiles of the 12th Société forces were across the board due to the remarkably varied success at repairing mobility-killed vessels earlier in the fight, as well as the other vessels that had faced structural and engine damage that degraded the ability for the ships to move by a dramatic amount.

In comparison, Skanzat forces were largely hulks-in-the-making, with the notable exceptions of the Flare and the Torch, all vessels involved had went through the trials and tribulations of a veritable underdogs desperation.

The Jean Bart and the Birman exited the immediate area of the Skanzat forces, and despite the urgency that the 12th Société placed in interception their enemy, a reprieve was had as collier craft on both sides had enough time to unload some supplies, with Skanzat forces quickly abandoning hte slower vessels as they became liabilities.

However, the fight was inevitable.

The Birman was the first to enter the long range bands. Vast sections of its rear hull had been blown away from prior battles, but its nuclear reactor had survived the trials before, and the plumbing was dangerously delicate and fickle, so its burner was the brightest-- first into the fray, first to fall out was the captain's idea. Dim active sensor arrays prodded out, setting the pace for the ship to make restrained maneuvers to slow down its degradation, but it was no good. The enemy waited until it came closer, holding their fire until it wouldn’t be able to escape, and the rest of the fleet moved in.

The Birman broke under the fires of the enemy forces, one subsystem failing after the other until it dropped out of the approach, but the rest of the fleet sped on.

The Slayer was freshest of them all, and along with the Jean Barte and Seine broke through the long ranges into the medium ranges. No main cannons barked out from the 12th Societe vessels, The enemy only feeling the pitter patter of hundreds of autocannon rounds against the shimmering panes of iconic energy. The remaining bomber squadrons, less than a hundred in total, swooped into  the flanks of the vessel, and the shielded vessels did not divert their firepower out, holding steady to strike down at the enemy.

The sword, the lance of bombers flew over the Flare and guided their payloads over the Torch’s wide sides. Panes flashed out of existence, projectors barely able to push out the flux into the hardstorages before catastrophic failure.

The Seine’s autocannon array was cut apart, one ball turret at a time, until it was de-gunne well into the short ranges.

The Torch shook from the oncoming fire, rupturing compartments outgassing their contents; atmosphere, equipment and crew. The Flare took an interdictor route, entering into knife fighting ranges with its strongest panes facing towards the Jean Barte. The captain was not brave enough to shave meters off his ship in a ramming maneuver against those strange, exotic fields, and took an extreme maneuver to back off, exposing its rear to a brief moment of fire.

Despite it all, half of the laser projectors on the Torch continued their output, holding it’s baleful burn on the Slayer

The Earth class  combat transport burned past the engagement, intent on cutting up the hulks that the two Flare class vessels were dying to protect.

Despite all the hellish firepower placed on the Torch, it lasted long enough to break all but one of the Slayers main gun’s, with massive parts of it’s hull perforated and burning from the damage, which would’ve been mitigated had it’s coolant reserves been refilled earlier. But it wasn’t enough, and the Torch’s final battery systems detonated, leaving the ship effectively gunless. And then, like a mad lamprey, the Jean Barte moved in, quickly and effectively committing a ram maneuver and successfully starting a boarding operation on the vessel. After approximately 80 seconds of rapturous attack later, the Torch ignited its main drive to its maximal state. The Jean Barte’s EVA spindle along with a large portion of the internal module designed for interfacing in boarding operations was separated from the craft, blown off by explosive separators that sent both vessels tumbling away from each other. 12th Société  Marine forces were unsuccessful in preventing the craft self-destruct, as the nuclear reactor was set into a run-away state that caused the ship to melt, then break apart and splinter.

The Flare, along with the Rainbow and the Lynx ( which had managed to effect just enough damage control to utilize emergency power systems to make a burn to the gate.) went through a series of complex maneuvers that ultimately used up Skanzats other forces as sacrificial flotsam, and joined up with the  other fleeing Skanzat fleet. The survivors proceeded to burn towards the gate and began the harrowing journey to their Elysium.

The 12th Société were under much more dire straits.Their logistics train was far from established here, and the operations and procedures to save any of the ships were time limited. Ultimately, few 12th Société vessels would be recovered as priority was made to rescue stranded spacers and ensure that the functional craft would be able to make it to the Elysium over wasting effort on potentially hulked vessels.

new clouds of debris from shattered warships criss-cross the orbits of Ranachuri. A dirt eater on the ground would have seen the flashes of light and maybe even the primordial terror that they should feel, to witness the fights of a warring pair of Elysiums.

Summary

[​-273 Degrees​​​]

The 12th Société great Elysium debuted their newest vessel. The Corsair class Marine Assault frigate. They also produce a second ship of the Corsair class.  It consists of hangar bays for sensor craft, as well as reinforcements and adjustments for mid-combat quick boarding operations, it is a fearsome craft that ensures that any craft it docks against are at the very least unrecoverable by the enemy, as well as the potential of recovering a prize vessel for reverse engineering and putting to work against the enemy. They also rework their Seine class gateships into a more fearsome form, with modern autocannons and parasite craft.

Skanzat’s great Elysium produced a new marvel, the Rainbow class.  It consists of a heavily armed hull with many engines, laser systems and a set of two “torpedo” launchers specialized towards ultra close knife fighting ranges. It’s effective.

Skanzat deployed their forces along Roses star and the entrance corridor that the 12th Société will inadvertently use to assault Roses star, thus allowing for a large portion of their forces to defend from the massive Verdun offensive. Forces part of the Verdun offensive faced issues as they approached Roses star due to raiding elements that were originally meant for commerce raiding.

On arrival, Skanzat forces clustered around a massive defensive structure in orbit of Ranachuri and fought 12th Société ships until they had taken too many losses and were forced to take a harried retreat.

Both sides faced hither-too unheard of casualties during the engagement.

Previously, a contest involving the creation of a new weapon system was made. Ultimately, I believe that although the 12th Societe’s entry was very strong in its approach, I am going to say that the Skanzat’s entry wins the contest, and their team will get a third revision on the approaching turn.

CAS LIST
Operation “Verdun” Offensive, De la 12th Société Stellaire Nationale
Functional Ships
GF "Seine" Seine Class - DAMAGED - RETREATED
MFC "Corsair" Corsair Class - DAMAGED - RETREATED
MFC "Jean Bart" Corsair Class - DAMAGED - RETREATED
AC “Birman” Chartreux Class - DAMAGED - RETREATED
FT “Earth Terra Class - DAMAGED - RETREATED

Ships lost in Action
FC “Slayer Slayer Class - DEAD - ABANDONED
CC “Aura” Aura Class - HEAVY DAMAGE - ABANDONED
GF "Marne" Seine Class - HEAVY DAMAGE - ABANDONED
FT “Terra Terra Class - HEAVY DAMAGE - ABANDONED
FT “Mundus Terra Class  - DEAD - HULK
AC “Chartreux” Chartreux Class - DEAD - SPLINTERED
CT “Briard” Griffon Class  - HEAVY DAMAGE - SCRAPPED


Vs

Squadron “Gate Watchers”
Functional Ships
SCP "Flare" Flare class PD Corvette - DAMAGED - RETREATED
MS “Starbolt“ Starbolt Class - DAMAGED - RETREATED
GCCP  “Wildcat” Wildcat Class  - DAMAGED - RETREATED

Ships lost in Action
SCP "Torch" Flare class PD Corvette - DEAD - SPLINTERED
MS “Sunbolt“ Starbolt Class - HEAVY DAMAGE - CAPTURED
GCCP  “Cougar” Wildcat Class - HEAVY DAMAGE - ABANDONED
GCCP  “Lynx” Wildcat Class -  (tired) - HEAVY DAMAGE - SCRAPPED
SCP “Rainbow” Rainbow Torpedo Frigate - HEAVY DAMAGE - SCRAPPED


Contest:

Spoiler: map (click to show/hide)

[BS12]: Home of Elysium De La 12th Société, the Elysium sits in the orbit of a red dwarf star with little in the way of other orbital bodies: A single gas giant with a small lunar system around it. The Elysium requires Aerodynamic 0 to operate in.
Abyss Watcher: A Massive array of sensory systems that allowed the old empire to utilize faster-than-light sensory systems to keep track of an entire sector, the one we fight in. Currently inhabited by an active artificial intelligence that neither side have managed to make contact with. It is damaged, and is on the verge of falling apart if not for the efforts of the hostile artificial intelligence to keep it together in the long dark after the collapse.
10 resource base extraction output.
The Bottle: A large structure the size of a gas giant, continually emitting exotic, powerful energies that make it almost impossible to approach: the structure periodically rips itself apart and releases a burst of what is theorized to be universe-ending true vacuum, before folding back together again in a most unnatural manner.
0 Resource base Output, Guardian of Endings present.

Vorpal Gun: in the orbit of a barren moon suits a massive skeletonized dry dock around one of the superweapons utilized by mankind before the collapse.  A hundred years ago, a society of space-bound human beings lived here until they ran out of things to cannibalize in the ship, and died out, leaving the Vorpal guns' looted remains as a tomb.
25 resource base extraction output.

[RS]: Roses Star is a large system with 12 orbital bodies, including Ranachuri, a garden world scoured by de-orbiting debris from the massive industrial complex that had fallen apart in its orbit. Evidence of a massive project of some kind is left behind in its orbit. In the corona of Roses Star is a proto-dyson swarm with a leading facility of unknown purpose. Currently the center of the conflict between Elysiums. Close operations on Ranachuri can benefit from ships designed to operate in atmospheric conditions, with 5 levels of the Aerodynamic tag being optimal.  Ranachuri has an active local presence that is capable of fielding weapons that frustrate dominance over the world. Ranachuri is the only known world which has human life.
50 resource base extraction output.



[SB]:Home of the Skanzat United Constitutional Kingdoms Elysium. The Elysium is in the orbit of a large gas giant, which orbits distantly from a yellow star. Several small bodies orbit around the inner lanes of the star. The Elysium Requires Aerodynamic 0 to operate in.

An Agonized Thinker: An old warship, unfathomably large, the apex of mankind's dominance had been brought low in this system: estimations put it at a little over two hundred kilometers in length and an unfathomable amount of mass, it had plunged into the atmosphere of a once-habitable world and destroyed it. Something churns in its depths, building things from the burnt hulk.
10 resource base extraction output.

Universe Ignition Array: A large spider web of particle accelerators and energy collectors orbiting a binary pair neutron star and blue supergiant star, once roughly every cycle it activates, and releases an exotic emission of energy that continually stumped the top minds of mankind before the collapse. THis alien artifact is almost impossible to approach due to the extreme energies that it soaks in, as well as its unpredictable and constantly changing orbit.
0 Resource base Output, Guardian of Beginnings present.

War Simulacrum:: A carefully terraformed system such that it would be the perfect training ground for makinds warriors and navy, along with the thickest debris belts of the sector: This system is a treasure trove and deathtrap, as it was meant to put the paces to the most powerful warships mankind ever had at their disposal, and the wrecks are as numerous as the stars.
25 resource base  Output

[Blood_Librarian]

Elysium Command Arms Race of Conquest: Battle Report of Turn 06->07

Elysium Command: Arms Race of Conquest

Spoiler: Strategic Deployment (click to show/hide)

Skanzat Deployment plan “Take it Back”
[X] Take it Back
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• Approve All Designs

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• Build Gust - Wind-class Raider (30r)

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• Build Nimbus - Cloud-class Raider (34r)

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• Build Sleet - Hail-class Raider (31r)

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• Begin Spot - Flare-class (9/97r)

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• Send All Ships to Rose - Dedicated Assault to Reclaim System

CCS-2S “Pocket Rocket” Earth Bringer Class
Jumps 6
CCS-2S "Stone Bringer" Earth Bringer Class
Jumps 6
MS “Starbolt “ Starbolt Class
Jumps 6
Skanzat Marine Ship “Trespasser”
Jump 6
GCCP “Wildcat” Wildcat Class
Jump 6
SCP "Flare" Flare class PD Corvette
Jump 6 Thrust 5(8)/16
Wind-class Raider
TWR 4/5
Luster-class Raider
Shielding 3 TWR 4/5
Cloud-class Raider
TWR 4/5, Aerodynamic 4
Hail Hail-class Raider
TWR 4/5, Aerodynamic 4
Gust  Wind-class Raider
TWR 4/5
Nimbus  Cloud-class Raider
TWR 4/5, Aerodynamic 4
Sleet  Hail-class Raider
TWR 4/5, Aerodynamic 4

Summary: Following reinforcement, fleet advances from beachhead in Roses Star to assault the Citadel protecting Ranachuri.  Objective is to seize, or at the very least deny, SUCK further exploitation of Ranachuri.

Order of Battle:
FT Terra - Remora Assault Transport
GF Seine - Gate Ship + EW Squadron + Bomber Squadron
AC Birman - Gunship + Bomber Squadron
AC Dosnkoy - Gunship + Bomber Squadron
AC Manx - Gunship + Bomber Squadron
MFC Corsair - Remora Heavy Assault Transport + SciTac
MFC Jean Bart - Remora Heavy Assault Transport + SciTac
GC Pont Neuf - Gateship + EW Squadron

Orders:  Continue advance within Rose's Star, consolidating gains from Operation Verdun.  Remora equipped vessels should assault the Citadel guarding Ranachuri.  SciTac analysis of the Citadel should be made to identify weaknesses and breachpoints.  EW squadrons should be used to mimic an additional force further from the Citadel, to delay the response of the enemy fleet.  All other vessels should escort and screen the assault on the Citadel.  Final objective is to seize, or at the very least deny, SUCK further exploitation of Ranachuri.

[/quote]

COMBAT RESULTS: SKANZAT REPRISAL  BROKEN, 12th SOCIÉTÉ VICTORY

Roses Star - 12th Société De la Royal Navy VS Skanzat  United Constitional Kingdom Navy
Pablo Vega/ AI War Fleet Command - Inquisition of the Stars
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALs8zdyeT-4

It was tough, surviving. In the small hours of the shift that hopefully still mimics the Ring Standard as ordained by the barely functional timekeeping systems, A man strained against all of his world. His world, which was the burning wreck of the Marne a Seine class gateship of the 12th Elysium’s most royal navy.

His world. Noone else lived in it, either picked up and rescued by 12th Societe’s navy on its way out of the system or killed in good order by the unforgiving, varied rigors of space war. Not him, missed out by a cruel turn of the ring of fate.

It was a cruel irony, to be a captain of a ship with no crew, thought Ellis Orion, First and only captain of the royal vessel Marne.

How many days has it been? A trickle of power fed the two rooms that he had rescued from the black, but it wouldn’t last, Just like the air filters, food, and water. Not without another EVA excursion -- suicide, with how broken the airlocks are, it would steal all of my air-- the thin wispy moles I had left.

There, inside my little office, all I could do was watch the terminal, to see what the passive sensors saw and hope that any inbounding burners -- any at all, if they didn’t abandon this system to the guttering ruin once more -- would be from my Elysium.

Four 12th Societe vessels floated in the vacuum of space, placed in a stable orbit so that they could be properly recovered in a brighter time. Steel cabling linked them together, a sort of web of steel that made it so very difficult to look out past all the debris from the one window that could be safely unshuttered.

That was always there, a constant reminder of my failures as captain, and as a member of the fleet. This place felt like purgatory. One prodding moment after another. Watching as life support ticked away, not that I could do much about it -- no engineering certification or real knowledge behind how things really worked meant that my survival was essentially linked to the resources given to me  by the virtues of the ship-engineers who built the Marne.

So, I did what I always did when I couldn't stand the window.

I looked back to my terminal, just in time to see the flickering representation of oncoming drive flares.


The sum total of the Skanzat’s active militant navy had made their way to Roses Star. It added up to a baker’s dozen vessels, bright drive flares of nuclear engines in each of them.

Experimental, small vessels with new generations of lasing technology were deployed, still in the processes of fine tuning by the naval engineering divisions of the Elysium, some would say that some of these ships that were deployed were faulty to a core.

The Wind, Luster, Cloud, and Hail class vessels of the Raider Lineage were deployed.

The Wind class Raiders were equipped with a nuclear reactor, autocannons, laser turrets, and a nuclear engine.


Just like the Wind,all the other vessels were equipped with nuclear engines, but their roles differed. The Lusters was equipped with a energy shield and laser turrets, The Clouds equipped with a gate key and reactor, and finally the Hail was equipped with a blistering array of autocannons and a teardrop bomb catapult.

Thanks to their numerically superior gateships they had arrived onto the battlefield days before the OPFOR fleet could, and were well on their way to securing the orbitals of Ranachuri and the previous battlefield when 12th Societe forces arrived.

Just as the Royal Skanzat Navy had brought forth their all, so too did De la 12th Société Stellaire Nationale brought their striking irons. Eight fully operational vessels were brought forth, it was apparent that they were outnumbered on a purely numeric basis, but it wasn't quite as bad as it looked.

Ton per ton, 12th Société had more tonnage dedicated to combat hardware, concentrated in larger vessels.  Fission torches drove their vessels forward too, and they drove in a spearhead pattern with a singular goal:

To strike Skanzat forces.

Screening elements were pushed forward by both sides to catch oncoming ordinance, scan and sus out new vessels and for both sides to stop and initiate englobing maneuvers against each other.

And it was thus, that these vessels were the first to contact each other.


Lances of 12th Société fighter craft riding along the eddies of the Corsair class Corsair and Jean Bart -- Purely strategic analysis and intelligence vessels in this current arc of the fight, with high grade computational engines and scientific-tactical operations officers whose insight was fed by its deployed scouting craft.  They were also the fastest craft of the 12th Société navy on par with the Assault Corvette Chartreux class  Birman. Their role in the fleet was a heavy one -- to blunt the oncoming screening forces.

On the other side of the stellar field were a quartet of vessels that share the same lineage -- Raiders. The response to 12th Société micro scale forces in the forma of a corvette with a measily four modules worth of space. As each of them were never before seen, 12th Société  analysis engines were hard at work, analyzing thermal and EM levels to figure out which ones would be the greatest threat

Down in the C4 section of the Corsair, Captain J'accuse Kasumi-Toussaint spoke with the low navarch of the fleet through the holocomms, the fleet network already projected into its hardiest and enduring transmission methodologies to break through the EM-Hexes that every vessel threw out.

“We are going all in Navarch.” sigils indicating the enemy macro-vessels flared, outnumbering 12th Société own forces by a significant margin.

Motes of dust flickered as the focus of fleet command changed to what they had, and the Navarch spoke, “We have to commit everything to blunt the screening force: Our fleet's parasite craft projection needs to get into the close quarters fight of the battle. Do everything in your power to make it so.”

The discussion puttered out to a chorus of agreements, and the orders were set like burned Delta-V. The enemy sub-fleet had a long ranged vessel that they wre using to cut out  the approaching parasite craft along with the bevy of point defense that would begin as soon as the range bands close.

The parasite craft pulled in, shallow arcs intending for a sortee followed by a retreat against the screening craft, and were hailed under the fires of point defense laser weapons.

The whole of the fleet had put their tactical reserves of fighter craft against this screening force. Even if it meant that these craft would have to traverse the very carefully placed firing arcs of the entire fleet, The fires of 12th Société De la Royal Navy’s forces would only be blunted from the casualties they sustain.

Predictions from the Corsair’s analytical engines came true, Hundreds of  parasite craft arced onto the enemy, dozens were scorched or burned out of existence and then the claws and teeth of the fleet were upon them. Three of the four vessels continued their trajectory, making it into the medium-short ranges of the sub fleet while the Gateship Cloud turned and burned away, shaking under the incredible fires that  it was going under.

12th Société strike forces exerted themselves, and the Cloud found itself withering under the fires of being a priority target. A bombing run found it’s mark, a quarter dozen center-line fired barely guided bombs fell onto the ship, pressure waves causing chained detonations across the craft, culminating in the destruction of its gate key. The hulked vessel tined and reverberated like a struck bell, and would continue to vibrate and shear itself into a useless hulk until the pseudo high dimension filaments are all finally unwoven hours later.

Captain Kasumi-Toussaint looked at the approaching vessels and his eyes couldn’t help but look upon the marker of the Hail. It’s thermal signature was half the yield of the other vessels, but it moved with the same amount of speed -- The engine flare was just as bright, and it was moving the same amount of tonnage as it’s sister craft -- But what was hiding underneath its hull?

A gesture, not even a shout or phrase, and  a half-wing of scout craft began their swoop inward as ordered by the parasite craft command chair to his side. They would die, a blood price to learn what would enter the short ranges with his Corsair, but it would be worthwhile.

Thirty anxious seconds pass, just in time for the short range between the forward fleets to occur, as well as the long ranges to be reached for the rest of the engagement. Kilojoules are sent down lasers, flung down range from Skanzat craft, and the real hurt is beginning to play out on the massive parasite craft contingent.

Composition scans fed out, and the nature of the Hail came evident, and he looked just in time to see the barreling craft on a trajectory to kill him and everyone on this vessel in the danger-close range bands--

“Engines full rearwards! Ready Evasive Maneuvers!”

The ship rumbled into high gear, fission reactions heating the tank of ready gas medium to the very tip-top of the acceptable bands in preparation for putting out enough energy to break the ship’s spine if it was handled wrong, literally.

The oncoming enemy craft --- not quite a burner, its engine wasn’t physically large enough to leave a visible trail in space -- had everything to put it perfectly on the bead to destroy the Corsair, were it not totally lost in the Information war.

“Now or never Captain!” yelled out the chief engineer, hands right on the button that would release the dumb analytic engine the permission to move a ship like it was a toy in a stellar gambit. The Hail was inching ever closer, thermal and E-mag signatures swirling about from the best hexes that the enemy could conjure, but it wasn’t enough, hopefully. The enemy had us painted dead to rights, and in this deadly short range it was waiting for the perfect angling to fire the payload it had with it, but my ship wasn’t disadvantaged in this manuver war, actively keeping itself ready to commit the maneuver to save itself--

”Commit.”

Pulsed emissions of thrust from the Corsair’s reactor burned, and Captain Kasumi-Toussaint’s whole world changed, and not very pleasantly. Nailed to his command throne, squeezed under the vice grip of thrust-gravity for a half second was enough to knock him out, coming ahead in a dizzy state of affairs to a bridge that lost primary power.

A heart beat passed, and secondaries kicked in. There was air, so the ship was not mission killed quite yet, and I listened to the verbal report from damage control “--Repeat, Glancing blow, starboard, Thrusting Grid two, six down, Communication subnet six down and out.”

He continued his shout, listing off damaged partitions as the thrusting grid re-onlined itself.

The ground, the world as apparent, was askew, the nip of acceleration was felt as off kilter, and it would be vomit inducing to all the new spacers, for which Captain Kasumi had to suffer a few in his bridge

.The hull was compromised, but the battle had just begun…


Aboard the Skanzat Royal Navy Vessel Wildcat (a fast, second generation vessel primarily equipped with fixed forward mounted laser cannons), captain Aiza Nassim practically ground her own teeth as she watched the fires of war begin anew. Now it was time for her ship, and the rest of the fleet to be tossed in. Bomber and fighter wings of the enemy were entirely preoccupied with chewing the sub-fleet ahead of her Wildcat

The Hail broke apart, the enemy fleet acting as an anvil to its parasite contingent. Front escort craft Jean Barte broke off from the forward assault, its hull broiling and cracking under the immense powers of the Skanzat fleet rapidly collapsing on the skirmish.

The power was blunted quite a bit, however. Massive tonnage deployments of ECM craft meant that Skanzat forces, which are wholly reliant on sensor driven targeting solutions in the long range bands were impacted immensely.

Even now, targeting solutions were sporadic and vapid, the result of immense burning signatures outputted by the enemy ECM craft

They would have to close the gap to fire for effect. Nassim’s vessel was driven at the very forefront of the main fleet, weaving unpredictably to avoid oncoming fire, assisted by powerful incognition engines and a fully unfurled Artificial Intelligence.

It was fortune and the sacrifice of the sub-fleet ahead of them that the enemies bombers were busy, and they closed upon the Corsair, turned around fully on a escape burn; It couldn’t shake the pursuit fast enough, even as both fleets officially entered the medium range.

Skanzat firepower was primarily concerned with wiping out the enormous amount of parasite craft in the air as per doctrine, to which it had some effect, but not as much as it would’ve if it had went for targeting the larger independent vessels instead, something for which the high command would note in the AAR.

The Corsair’s engines were cut, The ablation of its rear thrusting grid reaching its plumbing and causing secondary detonations resulting in the craft being effectively mission killed.

The enemy had a vote in this deadly dance. The first generation vessel Stone Bringer was struck dead on with six salvoes of rounds from the Assault Corvette Dosnkoy (A chartreux class vessel with 4 cannons) that sliced through it’s armor belt and left it bleeding mechanical entrails and atmosphere from explosive decompression.


The Nimbus, Sleet, Gust, Cloud exchanged an incredible bout of fire with 12th Société craft Assault Corvette Manx (Chartreux class), and Assault Corvette Birman. The Gate Corvette Pont Neuf entered the fray, igniting it’s cutting edge, enemy tech-derived thermal management system in the form of long extra dimensional structures that convected heat into higher dimensions, giving the ship a odd look with glowing hard-light equivalent radiating “feathers”.

The Birman was the second casualty of the enemy, three of it’s four cannon’s support rods cut and unable to properly maneuver it’s weapons, combined with it’s cut radiator lines and a shattered bridge meant certain death by crematorium burn if it attempted a full burn out of the field -- It was dead either way, so it went down swinging. Heavens farcasted death in great droves as Captain Hannah Aries of the Birman strived gave the ship her finest hour: It was not to be, the ship was left to drift, no radiator, all it’s guns cut, spacers trapped in what amounts to a coffin. Any crafty spacer that walked out to restore functionality faced a certain death by the broiling flash-energies of laser weapons.


Both fleets entered into a furball at this point, a gnarled mash of guns and lasers blasting away, with the short range bands invoking a friendly fire event as a cannon round by the Manx, whose new crew was not acclimated to the fires of war, shot off course and struck a Sci-Tac sensor craft in a one in one billion chance affair, extinguishing the last functional ECM parasite of the Corsair

However, the luck ran out for Skanzat forces, as desperate parasite elements finally regrouped and made bombing runs against the fleet, despite the hardships they faced.

Bombing runs against the Sleet and the Flare were let off. The Flare braved the fires and exited the approach with breached hulls and compromised fission corridors -- it’s staying power was reduced. The Sleet was found wanting and its core was struck -- the ship broke in half, both sides hurtling away from each other in a cork-screw.

The Gate Corvette Pont Neuf shook as grand, voluminous turbo coolers interfaced with higher-dimensional fluids-- the ship rumbled as hellish firepower directed against it was turned away, but it wasn’t enough.

The enemy had gotten close enough to target the “feathers' ' of the vessel, and the convective processes that made the ship so effectively immortal suffered immense pressure from enemy firepower. The very nature of the radiative systems as a partially transdimensional system meant that it was monstrously resistant to damage, but everything had limits.

The thermal ramp outpaced the heat that normal and emergency means -- Outgassing thermal medium and low-running the reactor -- and was severely affecting the action of the ship. Its guns went dark, compartments were blown out as the ceramo-metallic hull of the ship superheated compromised compartments before the automated life support made the action to isolate and vac-dump those chambers. Worst of all, the immense amounts of laser power had cracked the bases of the feather-like convective radiators, the projectors shutting down and the transdimensional material fading away like sparklers, leaving behind poles of slag that jostled in the wake of maneuvers. The Pont Neuf cut all maneuvers and drifted -- dead in the vacuum, but still entirely within the realm of an in-battlefield repair to return it to some functionality.

The enemies took the drift as an effective mission kill when the slugging it received came apparent that it would not react no more, at least not immediately, and turned their fleet priority on another vessel.


Deep inside the recess of the Assault Corvette Birman, in its front section, two pairs of high yield triple digit millimeter magnetic accelerator cannons proudly pointed forward. Of the four cannons, only one had functional telescoping pistons to push the extended barrel around to precisely and broadly aim, the rest’s linkages were cut, limply drifting across the mounting and only rarely do the firing teams had a chance to “drift” into the right position for a shot, however it went.

Inside the firing pit of cannon two, was a gunner -- the connection to the bridge had been severed, it was a big question if the ship had any leadership at all at this point from all the damage. Above and behind him was the commander of the wing, his eyes firmly planted on the sensor read out from the sensors onboard data package. Every ten seconds, the commander's job was to shout.

“MISS, LOAD HAMMERHEAD! AIM CENTER MASS AFT!” The target was  the enemy vessel Luster was a hell of a vessel, with a compact, maneuverable frame attached to nuclear engines and topped off with laser cannons and  star-bright transdimensional interfacing shielding systems, it was difficult to engage it in the close ranges as whoever kept the ship’s nose pointed at the enemy, despite their star-encompassing efforts, couldn’t sync up with the efforts of the gunner behind the seat

The gunner didn’t shout at all, his voice was the ship grumbling from the recoil absorbed into the hull, newton's law putting an equal reaction into the round hurtling out to land dead center into the Luster’s starboard plate. Second’s passed, and the craft straightened out, then on queue, began another maneuver to weave out the Birman’s sole cannon

The man at the autoloader shouted, signaling the gun was ready to fire

“DOUBTFUL! FIREEE!” The gun roared again, the commander steeling himself as the round took that half second to sail.

“TARGET!” shouted the commander -- that was a mission kill shot, the commander was looking at the devil's handiwork for a second, keeping a battlefield awareness and spoke again, “LOAD SLICER! ENGAGE FRIGATE.  275 CONICAL LEFT LEFT LEFT--
“ The loader shouted distal, on the fringe of awareness, “LEAD-- FIRE!”

The gunner audibly gasped at how close the enemy ship Pocket Rocket was, a forty degree full burn to get into the danger close zone with the Birman, and his vision was whited out for a moment, returning just in time to miss the fire-effect of his handiwork,

“GOOD HIT! LOAD HAMMERHEAD AIM FRONT.”

Inside the Pocket Rocket, the situation was the same mirrored across a dozen still operational autocannon arrays,  -- Manned guns fought this battle, dark mirror reflections onto each other.

“THEY’RE LOOKING R I G H T  A T  U S ! KILL THEM!”



And so it went, big damn heroes, slugging it out while directly tons of fire power projectors as it was meant to be, true war, the battle of the stars. In the end, both sides had beaten the pulp out of each other. Every ship that returned home carried a coating of irradiated, nuclear ash stricken from the ships that had splintered apart in the field.

Skanzat forces were ultimately forced to retreat. Despite the mass of point defense fire, the 12th Société De la Royal Navy deployed more varied, effective solutions against the enemies systems. The new fighting vessels were pound for pound more effective in countering the massed bomber weapons, but could not stand up to the realities of the mixed arms that the enemy deployed. It was the cannon that won this fight, put forward by the thick envelopes of layered survivability that 12th Société De la Royal Navy weaved into their ships. Messy, violent overkills were what it took to eliminate the ships effectiveness through thick armor belts, triply redundant cooling systems and hardened C&C systems -- by comparison, Skanzat forces had put their money into impressive, performant engines, reactors and weapon systems, and focussed them into defeating enemy parasite forces -- at the expense of varied weapon packages that could defeat the specialized defensive systems of the enemy.

And so it was that 12th Société forces took over the system -- with a catch. The next step in the cycles is to complete dominion, where ground forces will land on Ranachuri, and while technically, they should not derive any income this turn from the system, they successfully salvage or even recover the rest of the vessels that they had abandoned the previous turn.

The GF "Marne" Seine Class, abandoned after taking hellish damage from the last cycle, was improperly scuttled, to say that it was not scuttled at all. This error was quickly rectified, in the sense that the hull was returned to 12th Société’s Elysium, and the ship would be recovered and returned to operations.



12th Société De la Royal Navy
Summary
12th Société De la Royal Navy threw their fleet into the fires of the Skanzat fleet, and pushed the enemy back, with a terrible cost. Wings of faster vessels intercepted eachother, before the ships with the big guns arrived, and everywhere was turned into killing fields.

CAS LIST
Operation “Infraction" Point, De la 12th Société Stellaire Nationale
Functional Ships
GF "Seine" Seine Class - Damaged - Standing by
MFC "Jean Bart" Corsair Class - Damaged - Standing by

AC “Dosnkoy” Chartreux Class - Damaged - Standing by
FT “Earth Terra Class - Damaged - Standing by

Ships lost in Action
MFC "Corsair" Corsair Class - Badly Damaged - Scrapped
GC “Pont Neuf” - Pont Neuf class - Badly Damaged - Scrapped
AC “Manx” Chartreux Class - Badly Damaged - Scrapped
AC “Birman” Chartreux Class - Badly Damaged - Scrapped
Vs

Skanzat Deployment Plan “Take it Back””
Functional Ships
CCS-2S “Pocket Rocket” Earth Bringer Class - Damaged - Retreated
MS “Starbolt “ Starbolt Class - Damaged - Retreated
Skanzat Marine Ship “Trespasser” - Damaged - Retreated
GCCP “Wildcat” Wildcat Class - Damaged - Retreated
SCP "Flare" Flare class PD Corvette - Damaged - Retreated
Luster-class Raider - Damaged - Retreated
Gust  Wind-class Raider - Damaged - Retreated
Nimbus  Cloud-class Raider - Damaged - Retreated



Ships lost in Action
Cloud-class Raider - Destroyed by Fey Apparitions
Hail Hail-class Raider - Splintered
Sleet  Hail-class Raider - Hulked
Wind-class Raider - Splintered
CCS-2S "Stone Bringer" Earth Bringer Class - Badly Damaged - scrapped

Spoiler: map (click to show/hide)

https://imgur.com/FObZkEI
[BS12]: Home of Elysium De La 12th Société, the Elysium sits in the orbit of a red dwarf star with little in the way of other orbital bodies: A single gas giant with a small lunar system around it. The Elysium requires Aerodynamic 0 to operate in.
Abyss Watcher: A Massive array of sensory systems that allowed the old empire to utilize faster-than-light sensory systems to keep track of an entire sector, the one we fight in. Currently inhabited by an active artificial intelligence that neither side have managed to make contact with. It is damaged, and is on the verge of falling apart if not for the efforts of the hostile artificial intelligence to keep it together in the long dark after the collapse.
10 resource base extraction output.
The Bottle: A large structure the size of a gas giant, continually emitting exotic, powerful energies that make it almost impossible to approach: the structure periodically rips itself apart and releases a burst of what is theorized to be universe-ending true vacuum, before folding back together again in a most unnatural manner.
0 Resource base Output, Guardian of Endings present.

Vorpal Gun: in the orbit of a barren moon suits a massive skeletonized dry dock around one of the superweapons utilized by mankind before the collapse.  A hundred years ago, a society of space-bound human beings lived here until they ran out of things to cannibalize in the ship, and died out, leaving the Vorpal guns' looted remains as a tomb.
25 resource base extraction output.

[RS]: Roses Star is a large system with 12 orbital bodies, including Ranachuri, a garden world scoured by de-orbiting debris from the massive industrial complex that had fallen apart in its orbit. Evidence of a massive project of some kind is left behind in its orbit. In the corona of Roses Star is a proto-dyson swarm with a leading facility of unknown purpose. Currently the center of the conflict between Elysiums. Close operations on Ranachuri can benefit from ships designed to operate in atmospheric conditions, with 5 levels of the Aerodynamic tag being optimal.  Ranachuri has an active local presence that is capable of fielding weapons that frustrate dominance over the world. Ranachuri is the only known world which has human life.
50 resource base extraction output.



[SB]:Home of the Skanzat United Constitutional Kingdoms Elysium. The Elysium is in the orbit of a large gas giant, which orbits distantly from a yellow star. Several small bodies orbit around the inner lanes of the star. The Elysium Requires Aerodynamic 0 to operate in.

An Agonized Thinker: An old warship, unfathomably large, the apex of mankind's dominance had been brought low in this system: estimations put it at a little over two hundred kilometers in length and an unfathomable amount of mass, it had plunged into the atmosphere of a once-habitable world and destroyed it. Something churns in its depths, building things from the burnt hulk.
10 resource base extraction output.

Universe Ignition Array: A large spider web of particle accelerators and energy collectors orbiting a binary pair neutron star and blue supergiant star, once roughly every cycle it activates, and releases an exotic emission of energy that continually stumped the top minds of mankind before the collapse. THis alien artifact is almost impossible to approach due to the extreme energies that it soaks in, as well as its unpredictable and constantly changing orbit.
0 Resource base Output, Guardian of Beginnings present.

War Simulacrum:: A carefully terraformed system such that it would be the perfect training ground for makinds warriors and navy, along with the thickest debris belts of the sector: This system is a treasure trove and deathtrap, as it was meant to put the paces to the most powerful warships mankind ever had at their disposal, and the wrecks are as numerous as the stars.
25 resource base  Output