KickStarter Let's die a burning death in Highfleet [Done]

[spectre]

I haven't done an LP in a while, and I'm having this itch to start something, then run into unspecified technical difficulties or IRL issues, then eventually abandon the whole thing...you know the drill
So, any of you esteemed homosexuals interested in some Highfleet?
I've been playing it on and off recently, and it strikes me as rather let's playable.

For those of you not knowing what the game's about, you could fuck off to google, but ehh, I'm in a good mood today.

Essentially, it's about dieselpunk airships shooting high caliber rounds at each other over a blasted desert, if you squint really hard, it looks a bit like Afghanistan. Here's some screenies from within the game:

See those chemtrails up above? This is us.
We assume the role of (the guy even has a bunch of stats, so it's totally an RPG) a prince and heir to the throne of the Romani Empire (probably not to be confused with Gipsies, but who knows), out in to the desert province of Afghanistan Gerat on a special operation(tm) to quell the locals. In the meantime, our capital city supposedly got hit by a nuclear strike which reduced the palace reduced to a pool of radioactive glass. All communications were severed.

We are now stuck in the desert with a handful of ships and crew, during a rather frantic staff meeting it is decided that our best shot in this situation is to head north and capture the nuclear reactor at the capital city of Khiva, forcing the locals to the bargaining table. With the fate of the Emperor uncertain, we assume full command and proceed as if we were to succeed our father.

The political situation on the ground is a bit complicated. Historically speaking, the land was always caught up in local quarrels, until the local king swore allegiance to the Empire. Seven years ago, the Lord Governor of Khiva overthrew the kind and rebelled against the empire. Our main beef is with this guy, as well as something called The Gathering, which are responsible for the strike against our capital. The local population isn't openly hostile to us, but some will happily snitch on us to the Governor. There are also marauders, local warlords and assorted riff-raff scattered all over the desert which we can persuade to join our ranks.

That's what the prologue tells us in a nutshell, so I'll take the liberty of skipping it entirely for this LP.

So here's some opening thoughts:
1) I'm inclined to skip the story, other than the basic bacground from the prologue, and instead produce something of my own,
so that even those of you who don't want to be spoiled too much can follow this LP.
On the other hand, some in-game events will tie to the gameplay, so not sure how practical this ends up being in the end.

2) The game's designed as a roguelite, where you are expected to build up resources over several playthroughs, unlocking bonus cash and new ship designs. That said, to keep it a somewhat untarnished experience, I'll be firing up a brand new save and diddle around in the workshop to give us some some starter ships to work with.

3) The game pretty much enforces an ironman. Theoretically, we will hit milestones along the way from which we can restore the game's state, but I won't be using them unless there's a game-breaking bug.

4) In-game combat is twitch-based, can't be bothered to record videos, especially not for every encounter, so you'd have to settle for an AAR write up, with some screenshots IF I'm quick enough on the print screen to get any.

5) I make no promises about being able to beat the game, or even play it competently, though I believe by now I know my way around most systems. Let's just try an have fun.

6) I don't really have much experience with navy tactics; I mean, I played a bit of Silent Hunter in my formative years, but didn't get the right vaccination to enjoy Harpoon. I therefore reserve the right to misname shit and make all kinds of blunders.

7) I plan to do some audience participation. More details will follow in the coming updates.

So, without further ado, on with the show:

 

[spectre]

CHAPTER 1: OF THINGS THAT NEEDED TO HAPPEN.

We are welcomed by the glitchy menu screen. The game uses a lot of post-processing to make the graphics look better and more atmospheric than they really are.
I had to turn off dithering, because it makes some of the in game text unreadable.

There you go, my credentials, issued and signed by the old man emperor's own hand.
Any mentions of "nepotism" will be rewarded with an opportunity to test your personal aerodynamics after being kicked off the main deck.

Speaking of which, behold.

The Sevastopol, sometimes affectionally referred to as Syeba, the flagship, the headquarters and the workhorse of Romani fleets.

The in-game description is as follows:

Strategic Heavy Cruiser: The flagship model in the Romani heavy cruiser range, envisioned as the core of a large strike group.
With unparalleled standalone cruising capacity and the best armaments in the Imperial Fleet, this vessel is formidable even on its own.

The cruiser was sent into battle as soon as it was built, so it is still missing many of the non-vital systems it was designed to carry.

Let's start with the good bits.
Massive firepower, courtesy of the 6-barrel 180 mm Squall battery, with three 2x 180 mm emplacements on the other side.
Complemented by six 57mm batteries to fend off light craft, maybe provide an aiming reference for the main guns with tracers.
Eight short range heat seeking missles near the bow.
And let's not forget the two cruise missle launcher tubes near the aft, currently equipped with nuclear payload.

What a fucking load of junk.
Huh? You heard me right. Where do I even start?

Those four gargantual fuel tanks obstruct the ships main batteries. Not to mention the smaller autocannons.
From certain angles, our firepower might be cut to 50%.
There's plenty of expensive electronic equipment out in the open, with no protection and no thought given to
optimize the outputs. The main radar dish isn't obstructed by anything, but the rest...
Anything comes at us from above, we say byebye to all the fancy radar dishes, missles, fuel tanks.
The 1.0 thrust to weight ratio means the engines can barely keep this thing in the air.
Not only will it constantly tilt to one side, it's impossible to keep a high altitude in combat,
it barely has the thrust to keep it where it is... which is a darned shame cause the intent behind
the overall design seems to be keep a height advantage over its targets.

Cruising range is respectable, but 90 kmh is a snail's pace when it comes to aerial warfare.
There's a long way ahead of us to Khiva, and this craft will take its time getting there.
Probably half of the time will be spend refuelling. Y'see, these fuel tanks are massive,
but it also guzzles up gas like mad, and fueling up these 10800 tons of methane can take half a day.
Not to mention, refuels don't come free hereabouts.

It is as if I was being set up to fail.

I close my eyes and know what needs to be done.
XO, bring this hunk down for landing. Be gentle.

Welcome to the landing minigame, trannies and gentlemen. Here we control the ship, currently in a casual freefall, reaching 365 kmh of vertical speed, in order to manually bring it to the ground. Landing gear slowly begins to extend...

So, reverse thrusters are go, I hear the metal structure calling out in agony as the 35 thousand tonne monstrosity begins to slow down.
I hear an officer giving the altitute readout: - four hundred meters. His voice is completely calm.
Give it some more juice.
- Three hundred meters. a certain tension is barely heard in the man's voice?
Still dropping like a brick. More reverse thrust, engage afterburners!
The engine roar is deafening, I can barely make out the voice:
- Two hundred meters! Engines overheating.
The damned thing.
- One hundred meters! The officer's voice is an odd mix of panic and relief.
It's all out of our hands now.

And there she comes, crashing down. The aft-side extended landing arm is the first to connect.
After a brief struggle, the metal gives in.
The underbelly is reasonably armored, with reinforced hull sections to keep it from collapsing under its own weight.
And it just might have...
However, some wise guy thought it practical to put two large ammo compartments in the lowermost spot...

An explosion rips through the air, tongues of flame begin licking at the massive methane-filled tanks.
The spectacle leaves me completely transfixed. A faint whisper brings me back to my senses.
- Romani korabl, pashou nahuy.
That's one of the locals. A stern reminder that we're a long way from home.

Be as it may. I turn my back on the blazing inferno. Around me, there's pure chaos of barked out orders, curses and
fire hoses unwinding. I close my eyes and let it all come to me, the sounds, the smells.

Like the Hindenburg, a thing from another time and another world,
it needed to burn down to mark the coming of a new era.
It was inevitable. All that was needed was a little push.

A new way of warfare is coming to Gerat and we are bringing it.

Spoiler

Late edit note:
This is usually how I being my games. Most of the Sevastopol goes to scrap to give a much-needed cash injection,
with as many systems as possible being cannibalized by other craft to save a bit of money.
As you can see on one of the screenies, our starting money is a measly 2020, yeah that's not the in-game year, barely enough for refuel, not to mention anything serious.

As you can probably tell, I have a bone to pick with the flagship's design,
the biggest gripe being that you're basically forced to take it as part of the starter fleet,
cause it's the only one with the "flagship" tag. Sure, I could edit the files to try and fix this,
but for the purpose LP I decided to stick to the rules and went for something more dramatic.
Hope you enjoyed the fireworks.

Funny thing is, I wasn't really trying to crash the bloody thing, it's quite possible lose it like this on your first landing attempt, giving you a gameover screen like this:

The game is quite generous with this minigame, allowing you unlimited replays, even letting you abort the whole attempt with no real penalty.
From a practical standpoint, the main use of landing is to speed up the repairs. A lot of people seem inclined to believe that you need to land your craft in every city, and that's in fact what the tutorial forces you to do. No such thing needed in the actual campaign.
Not all landing spots are created equal, and towns usually have different infrastructures. Landing on a flat bit of sand won't help us much, but a dedicated dock can significantly cut down on repair time... if we can squeeze in there.

Damaged ships, especially if they're missing engines, can become unbalanced and difficult to land, spinning out of control.
This creates a bit of a dilemma because you want to bring them down for repair, but sometimes some rudimentary repair work needs to be done up in the air, e.g. to bring the landing gear back to order.

 

[spectre]

CHAPTER 2: FROM THE ASHES OF OLD
Once the fire is put out, keeping up with the traditions, the locals begin to dutifully pick up all the bits and pieces.
Nothing on the desert goes to waste. Quickly they are done.

Time for us to get busy as well.

I start by inspecting the wreckage, looming ominously in the background.

Astonishingly, even with the entire underbelly gone, the thing is till holding together.
Make no mistake, the ship is done for and best I can do it is take an angle grinder and finish the job.

Spoiler

Editor's note: those in the audience who successfully passed their [PER] checks will notice the the money value is different.
That's basically our starting allowance for a new game. It took me a few re-tries to get a good looking crash footage and post-crash photo, and I had to do it on another save... because enforced ironman.

For those curious, clicking the repair button allows us to get roughly 90% of the ship back together like so:

Had a bit of a chuckle seeing how the flight characteristics are now slightly better, with better top speed and reduced consumption.
That's one way to fix the Sevastopol.

All right, we've spent enough time already wanking over this hunk of scrap, so before we move to more important things, here's the essentials:

The bridge itself is still intact and will prove useful in the future, because it's the required component for building a ship.
For the time being, I'm cutting the remains down to a more compact size, slap a pair of engines on it so it can still move around as a mobile HQ of sorts. This will lets us rework it into something useful when we get to it.
=============================================================

A'ight, time to show you the toys.

I had to pick them clean of all armaments, ammo and armor to get it through in my diplomatic bag starting budget limitations,
with the starting allowance at only 125 000 what I was able to take are fixer uppers.

=============================================================
First up is the Echo class Frigate slash Heavy Corvette.

The game autogenerates the ship's designation primarily based on weight and selected parameters.
It is a bit fuzzy and sometimes classifies it as a Frigate, other times a Heavy Corvette. I guess armor is the deciding factor.
So, what can I tell you about it?

Its default roles on the unit card (you can see this when you buy stuff at the very start of the campaign)
are Interception and Air Superiority, which sounds about right.
We'll be using those to raid convoys for money, liberate cities and bring down strike groups.

The Mk.I is a stripped down configuration with no weapons yet. I downgraded the engines to save a few thousand shekels,
so that 500 kmh is nowhere near its top performance. It's got geat maneuverability, respectable cruising range and doesn't break the bank when we fil 'er up.

I left some vestigal plating so I remember where to armor it up. It's possible to fully encase the top and sides, or just the sides.
No plating was planned on the bottom.

We have five of those to work with.

Now, as to the armaments, I will give you a more detailed discussion of the guns in a later update,
suffice to say, we have a bit of room to work with. Basicall, the four 2x2 hull pieces above the bridge is usable for guns,
and the two empty sections immediately to the left and right were dedicated for ammo compartments.
We also have a few hardpoints for short range missles.

=============================================================
Next up, the Emerald class Auxiliary Frigate

Classified as a heavy corvette for the time, but will be a frigate one fully specc'd out.
I like to think it looks like a grinning skull, or an ant's head, or a set of balls with a tiny pecker... you decide.

Its final intended configuration will be looking something like this:

There, officially a frigate.
Using some scrap from the Sevastopol, I kitted out two small decks for aircraft, slapped a medium-range fire control radar on top,
and filled the remaining free spots with anti-air missles.

So, what we have here is a fast-moving tanker slash pocket aircfart carrier slash AA vessel with radar capability.
It's designed as a backbone for an independent strike group, going really fast, it'll keep up even with a dedicated interceptor, but will provide fuel for extended range and radar to keep us out of trouble. It also gives AA cover in a pinch.
The aircraft (which we still need to get) aren't exactly there to win us battles, but they can be used for scouting and can help in the AA role by shooting down incoming fast movers.

We have only two of those to spare.
=============================================================
Finally, we have one Whisper class light corvette.

You will notice this craft has no landing gear. Like a hummingbird, it stays airborne or it dies.
But what does it do? Boy, what doesn't it do.

Here's the final configuration of the EWR (electronic warfare) light corvette.
The top mounts the MP-404 ELINT sensor. This thing picks up radar emissions.
The in-game description says the range is 1500 km, but in reality this depends on the type of radar.
If it's a 500 km range radar, we'll see it from 1000 km away, because physics.
(after bouncing off things, the radar signal needs to travel back to the dish to give a readout on its position,
hence detection range is half the distance in which radar emissions are actually detectable).

The bottom mounts an IRS-1 Mars infrared sensor. This way these two pieces of equpment won't interfere
with each other and we get perfect detection range. Max detection range on infrared is 300 km,
but in reality it depends on a bunch of factors as well. Best part about IR sensors is unlike radar,
they're undetectable.

The 2x1 empty hull section under the ELINT is reserved for jammer. I never used them much,
but it's something we can play with. We could also put a missle there.

First thing to notice is the top speed of 950 kmh. If we paint it red, I expect it to push the 1000 kmh mark.
We just might do that, but it's a bit of an overkill. We're already fast enough to outrun any craft out there,
but we won't outrun missles or planes.

It also has a rather impressive crusing range and is very cheap to refuel. If paired with a less capable ship, it should extend its range a bit.

This is our scout craft. We'll use it for early warning and running all kinds of errands between towns.
It is also very cheap, below 7000 credits for the bare hull, and most of the price being electronics, we can actually try and build a few of those in the field.
=============================================================

I inspect the fleet 7 frigates, one light corvette. Now we need to arm them.
First, let's park. No happy accidents this time.

Reverse thrusters are go. Begin final approach.
You will notice the terrain here is mostly flat, giving a measly 5% bonus to repair speed.
There are two recessions, sheltering us from the desert sand which are a bit better for our purpose.

Touchdown complete. The officer sighs with relief. I pretend not to hear it.
Managed to fit it right in the hole with only minimal damage to the landing gear.
If you squint really hard, it does look like a grinning skull.

I'm parking the Echo next. Unfortunately, it's a few meters too wide to fit into the other dock.
It's very agile and I can easily move it to the side with no drama. This is a good sign for its combat performance.
I hit the two 5% spots and the game tells me that's a 10% bonus. I take what I can get.

So there we are, all parked. You can see the cut down Sevastopol near the left edge of the screen.
Let's hit the town. Not too many options, just SHIPWORKS and SUPPLIES. Let's check the latter.

Okay, so this guy is sitting there all day in a E-014 gas mask. I bet he's got a great personality.
But we're here to talk business. This is where we buy fuel, there's a helpful map in the background
showing us the cruising range of our fleet here. Looks like we can go a places with what we have.

Filling us up to 100% eatsh pretty much all our funds. Not that we need to, but it's something I need to address
straight away. But, lookie yonder. Well hello there pretty...

No, I'm not talking to you, elephant man.

So it's true what they say about houses in Afghanistan Gerat.
That's quite the arsenal here. I can see incendiary rounds, 100mm armor piercing, 130 mm armor piercing, 130 mm laser guided. We're totally getting those.
There are also unguided rockets and 100 kg bombs for the aircraft.
Feels like I'm in a candystore. Wait up, Elephant man. I'll be back with the money.

***

So here's what I bought later:

This is how we keep stock of our special munitions. The way it works in the game is this:
Regular ammo is free for all guns. If you want something extra, you need to buy it or scrounge it,
and the game tracks each individual piece.

Might be a good moment to talk about the ammo types.
Incendiary is available for all calibers. Does what it says on the tin. If it hits an exposed spot, it starts a fire.
If not put out, the fire will spread to the neighboring systems.
Sounds like fun and it totally is, which is why I bought the shole stock of 57mm. It was also pretty cheap, 4 shekels a pop.

Armor piercing bypasses armor plating and will damage coponents underneath. It also flies much faster than regular rounds. I figure we might need that at some point. Not available for 37 and 57 mm, only big boy calibers.

Proximity rounds explode near targets, this can be triggered by aircraft, missles and even large caliber rounds.
You almost don't have to aim it. Totally ineffective against armor, but that's not what we use it for.

Laser guided rounds follow the laser beam with pinpoint accuracy. It's sometimes hard to pull od when dodging enemy missles because we need to lead it all the way in, but this is the future of warfare.
They are also expensive as hell, so these are for special occassions only.

Rest of the stuff is used by aircraft. Normally, the planes only use their default 37mm cannon which does fuck all. So we need to buy each and every bit of ordnance to feed them.

Ok back to SHIPWORKS

Since we have a bit of a funding problem, I need to unload some crap from our inventory.
It doesn't slow us down or anything and there's no such thing as in-game economy - the buying and selling price is the same. If we sell something, we can get back later and get it.

Here's a quick list of the most important stuff:
================================
2x Kh-15N - Yes, that's the "nukular" symbol right there. We nave two tactical nukes from the start.
7x R-9 Sprint - while the icon makes them look a bit like ballistic missles, these are guided AA missles.
We'll be using these a lot. Need to be paired with a fire control radar for guidance.
6x R-5 Zenith - this is a short range heat seeker usable in dogfights. We need to equip then re-equip them manually on ships after each use though the shipyard screen.
===============================
Guns:
6x 57mm Vympel - Not the best gun, but it's what we have. Will shoot down unarmored enemies, and missles, but will fail against any sort of armor.
3x MK-2 Sarmat - This is a twin 180 mm battery. 180 mm is a bit like a sniper rifle - big round, devastating, difficult to aim and slow to reload. These won't be of much use early on against garissons, but will shine against slower targets and when we get some special munitions.
1x Squall - six barrels of 180 mm fun. Sadly, it takes up ridiculous space. For starters, it needs to be placed on a large hull piece, it also needs a whooping 8 ammo. Costs 6000 shekels, so it's an easy sell.
===============================
Electronics:
MR-700 Long range radar. That's the big dish from Sevastopol. 700 km detection range.
Costs 10 000, so I' m tempted to sell, but these are quite rare.
2x Infrared sensor - that thing we put on Whisper. Means we can outfit two without buying anything.
2x MP 404 ELINT sensor - the other thing we put on Whispers.
2x MP 21 ELINT sensor - a smaller variant with lower detection range. I'll sell those.
2x MR-12 a FC radar, 400 km range. I'll put them on the Emeralds.
2x MR-2M smaller FC radar, 250 km range. For sale.
===============================
Other assorted junk:
Generators, crew quarers, landing gear, fire extinguishers, fuel tanks,
hull pieces. These are easy to get most of the time, so I'll sell them.
Yeah, I have to click off each individual piece, and last time I did so many clicking was to explode sheep in Warcraft.

I sense you're getting bored with all this housekeeping. Time for some action.
One last thing to do is refit the ships. As you can see on the screenshot, let's get it here again:

As you can see, I took the liberty to refit one of the Echoes for personal use.
I seem to have developed a bit of a gemstone fetish, but that can be fixed when I hand it over for you to use.
All the vestigal armor plating was stripped for extra speed and I was able to remove some fuel tanks while still maintaining respectable cruising range. This gained me some space to add two additional thrusters, resulting in a top speed of 680 kmh, which will be even higher after a full overhaul of the engines. This much speed will be needed for interception and raider duties.

Armaments are 3x Vympel and 2x Zenith missle.

This somewhat extensive refit will take 10 hours. I also queued up a refit for the emerald. The 4 hours on the sevastopol is to install the engines, generator and a small fuel tank which is the minimum to keep it airborne.

Now, I realize all this housekeeping migh bore you out of your skulls, but it was all necessary background information.
That's the army gents, four weeks of boredom and wanking yourself to sleep, four hours of action.

Time to get some air.

 

[Andnjord]

Carry on gentleman, carry on

 

[baud]

I'd like to command one of the frigate
Can't wait to get blown up in the middle of the desert!

 

[Andnjord]

The five echoes are up for grabs

I'll get my grubby hands on one of those, thank you very much.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

I'll take an echo pl0x.

 

[tindrli]

Ill take one as well. Thank you

 

[spectre]

Thanks for your interest. I'll tell you what I need from you in a bit.
I unfucked the previous update, so happy reading. Though it appears it might need a bit more unfucking because the stats look unreadable.

 

[spectre]

CHAPTER 3: GETTING SOME AIR

This here is the strategic view, where most of the fun will happen. As you can probably not see, we're at the max zoom and can't see fuck all.
The game really goes above and beyond to simulate the charm of operating rugged military equipment.

Given how unreadable this shit is, I might shop together something we can use for the LP.

We're currently stationed in the city of UR, our fuel stocks are at 79% and all scheduled repairs will be done in 24 hours which is just about the
time needed for the locals to get fed with our presence.

The lines connecting to other towns are trade routes between them. Since we're in an aircraft, we're not in any way obligated to follow them,
but it is the shortest route between cities. The icon denotes the type of the city. Ur has no type cause it's the starting point of the campaign.

The small yellow line is our detection range. This depends on the type of equipment we have.
The bigger cyan circle is the maximum operating range of our fleet. As you can see, the world is our oyster.
Now, about our immediate surroundings:

(o) QUIVA (not to be confused with our objective) with the jerry can icon is a FUEL DEPOT. Which means we can buy fuel for cheap and refuelling is a bit faster.
(o) SAIDY with the cent icon is a MERCHANT town. The shipyard will have some intresting stuff to buy. Weapons, aircraft, electronics.
(o) DEIR with the radar dish icon is a COMMUNICATIONS array. If we capture it, it will let us get some intel about the surrounding traffic.
(o) ASHDOD with the sword icon is a MERCENARY town. We can buy reinforcements there which is a randomized selection of ships.
(o) MARI with the wrench icon is a SHIPYARD. It has the infrastructure for a much faster repair and refit.

And this is our objective, way up in the north:

This takes me way back to my Silent Hunter days. We even have a ruler, pencil, compass and an eraser (no crayons though)
to make all sorts of doodles on the map. As you can see, Khiva is directly above us, bearing 358 degrees, over 19 000 kms to go.
I'll let you do the math how long would it take with a Sevastopol.

The repairs will take a bit. As time passes, the radio suddenly starts beeping.

Hello? What are you wearing?

So, this is another minigame in which we intercept enemy communications.
They can be quite chatty at times.
It's basically written all over the radio equipment, we start by picking the bandwidth, then tune in to the signal,
then use the direction finder to locate the source.
We have limited time to do it, as indicated by the Session time bar.
If you're too lazy (and it's easy to get fed up with this), there's always the auto-intercept button, but this will only recover parts of the transmission.
Here's what we get:

Looks like useless garbage, but let me walk you through it.
It's a transmission from a convoy, codename OZONE. We have their coordinates, speed, we know they're going northwest.
Let's look them up on the map for context.


The coordinates point exactly to MARI, so that's where they are at the moment, the only route northwest is to SHEKH
I use the ruler to measure the distance, 900 km, so their ETA is 9 hours.
So, with just a bit of work, we have the location of a convoy to raid for some extra cash. We'll get to it later.

10 hours are up, SAPPHIRE heavy raider corvette is good to go.
This is our cruising range. First one is for the raider alone:

1772 km in 2.2 hours. That's when we send the ship alone.

Paired with an Emerald, we can go nearly all the way to UZ. This is another type of town I haven't covered yet, a fleet HQ.
This will be one of our milestones along the way.

As you can see, we can also use the Whisper if we're short on range. We can also send it out if any of our craft is stuck with no fuel in the middle of the desert.
These little buggers are handy, and we will be building a few more of them.

Right. I primised you some action before the day is done, so let's get to it.

I set the course for ASHDOD. Sapphir goes all alone. Do or Die.
No more radio chatter, so I expect to see just the basic garisson.

I zoom in as much as I can. We can see Ur, some roads and our majestic craft spreading autism to Gerat kids through its chemtrail.

Approaching ASHDOD


And we're within visual range of the city (the yellow circle, it's about 60 kms).

Contact spotted. Stationary. On the ground.
The game helpfully marks it with the red diamond. This is the garrison.
Now, let me direct your attention to the lower right corner of the screen, SUDDEN STRIKE PROBABILITY.
This is our chance to carry out a surprise attack, depending on what kind of equipment they're packing.
Since it's a simple garisson, with no radars or IRST, by the time they'll see us, it'll be too late to sound the alarm (that's the shrinking yellow bar above them).

This is it.

My hand motions to the General Alarm lever. I take a deep breath.
It's happening. No turning back now.


This is the battle planning overview.
Not a lot of planning to do at the moment, but it shows us the us vs them.
This is also where we pick the special munitions for our craft and decide in what order we want our ships to join the battle.
The fight is always 1 vs 3, so one of our ships vs. three enemies. If our aircraft retreats, the next one comes in.
If there are more than three foes, once we drop one, next one's up.

I take a quick glance at our foes. Light corvettes, no armor, barely any weapons. Should be easy enough.

Well, the weather is shit, but so much for the better.
The enemy is taken completely by surprise, they've yet to strat their engines.
As the SAPPHIRE slowly swoops towards them. I hear the clinkclinkclinkclinkclink of the autoloader feeding our guns
with 57mm rounds. A distinct sound tells me the cartridge is fully loaded.
I thighten my grip on the stick.


The enemy craft launch, sluggishly they approach to meet us.
I snap out of this weird torpor as suddenly their guns come to life.
That's what we're here for.

I touch the controls and the aircraft quickly jolts to life, engines behind erupting in a fireball.
The massive g-force pushes me into the seat. I nearly black out. All I can see is the bright dots of enemy fire whizzing past.

My turn.

The three Vympels quickly expends their clips, first enemy courageous is hit, the 57mm tears at its engine, throwing it into a spin.
The autoloader goes clinkyclinkclink again. I whizz past the opponents and send a short burst towards the underbelly of the other corvette.
A massive explosion rips through the air. Was that a bomb?
The foe is blown completely to bits i watch the remains fly towards the ground, trailing fire and smoke.

The other courageous regains control, but is unable to stabilize its flight to get a good shot.
Instead, it sprays its ammo all over the place and I am able dodge it with very little effort.
I move closer and finish this with a short burst to the damage engine. With it gone, the aircraft spins out of control, unable to maintain its flight.
It is done. The first blow of this war.
I look below to admire the handiwork.
And then it strikes me. There were no escape pods.
The grim smoke nearly covers all the ASHDOD.


To the victor the spoils. What's a good fight without the looting?
Highfleet knows this, so we're introduced to another minigame.
What we have here is an aerial view of the battlefield with stuff that can be picked from it.
It's quickly burning down, so time is of the essence.
Certain things marked with (!) like the fuel tanks and ammo will explode if we don't get to them,
blowing up something else with them. The skull and bones icon means the component is hazardous
and can blow in the face of the recovery crew. This is where the CREW PROTECTION option becomes useful,
as it eliminates the risk of our crew dying, but takes precious time.

Here's our options:
DISMANTLE 2A37 - this lets us keep the gun. Not terribly useful, but can be sold for a good 3000.
the other one is most likely done for. Not enough time to recover it.
SEARCH FOR SURVIVORS - let's us recover some of the enemy crew. We don't have much use for them,
but not doing it reduces our KINDNESS stat (we'll get to that later). Not a high priority.
SEARCH THE CREW CABINS - we can find all kinds of valuables in the cabins, though we need to wear protection first,
there's a joke to be made about the local sanitary standards.
SECURE THE AMMUNITION - gives us a bunch of random special ammo.
SECURE THE FUEL TANKS - gives us a bunch of fuel.

So, what I did here was go for the fuel and ammo, then the 2A37. There wasn't enough time for protective gear, so nothing from the cabins.
With that out of the way, we can land.

I go to the shipworks first to inspect the damage. Turns out that minigun dinged us a litte, but that'll take seconds to fix.
Turns out I also forgot to retract the landing gear during combat, but that's fine too. At least the extended arms will protect the engines a bit.
So, what else is there?
I heard there were mercenaries around...


This is actually great. Two Yars Mk.2 and a Skylark.

Yars is a long range missle carrier with 4x launcher tubes. Two of those is all we'll ever need to play around with missles.
Skylark is somewhat similar to our Whispers, but less min maxed. It'll come in handy as well.
As you can see, selling junk managed to get us to 72 000, but we'll quickly blow through this once we go to serious shopping.

Ok, time to move the rest of the craft here and decide what to do next. In the meantime, I'll do some work on the ship.
The repairs are minor, so I will spend the next few hours upgrading the engines.
Swapping out two D-30s for two MK-25s should give us a bit more oomph.


Spot 5 differences between these two.
Landing the ship (I'll be sparing you this for now) reduced the overall refit time by this much.
Back to strategic view.


So, it looks like this. SAPPHIRE is parked in ASHDOD with 2.1 hrs repair time.
4 remaining ECHOS 1 EMERALD and 1 WHISPER are en route to ASHDOD, ETA: 2.3 hrs
EMERALD and the HQ are finishing their refit in UR, 8.5 hours to go, the locals will be fed up by us by then, so we'll fuck off to somewhere else.

So, ladies and gentlemen, that's the first 16 hours of this campaign.

 

[spectre]

All right, so first of all, let me welcome everyone aboard.
Hope you'll enjoy yourself. Four frigates are taken, which will keep us occupied for some time, bringing them up to speed and all that.
Now that I've drawn first blood, I'll be ceding control of the SAPPHIRE to the first volunteer,
so baud that's you. First come, first served. Unless you strongly object to driving a souped-up, high-speed, lightly armored engine of death,
badly in need of some higher caliber toys.

The rest will have to wait a bit, but you should soon see some action.

You have enlisted as Tarkhans to the Romani fleet, see below for an instructional video giving an artist's rendition of what being a Tarkan is all about:

Or at least that's what a quick google search would lead someone to believe.

More seriously, feel free to grab the game's manual directly from Steam, it's a decent read and might help you get in the mood:
https://cdn.cloudflare.steamstatic.com/steam/apps/1434950/manuals/HighFleetManual.pdf
Or don't. What am I, your mother?

Your privileges include:
1) Make some basic decisions pertaining to your ships and their loadout.
You will obviously get to name yourself and your ship in game.
I tried to make these things reasonably versatile, and I'll be showing you some examples shortly.
You already saw the raider configuration, we'll get more once we get our hands on more stuff.

2) I'll try to keep an individual tally for each of your commanded ships, number of kills, cities liberated, etc.

3) Die a burning death in the name and glory of the Empire. Escape pods are for pussies.

Now that this is out of the way, let's do some strategizing. It's a fucking strategy game after all.

(o) We have one "quest" open, meet with the tarkhan. The guys' probably holed up in SHEKH (I will be shopping up some sort of a working map when time permits)
which we will be visiting anyway and I'll show you the minigame involved in recruitment, but we have plenty of our own ships to work with, so his ride will probably
immeiately go for scrap and spare parts, unless it's something like an aircraft carrier

(o) Our first pressing objective is refitting the ships, apart from the frigates, we still need to finalize the scout craft and the second EMERALD.
The plan is to hit SAIDY and see if they have anything in stock, then take the whole parade to MARI to get the repairs done without wasting too much time.

(o) Intel is equally important, so we'd need to hit SHEKH and DEIR to get some information about the local traffic, probably both so we won't run into anything blind.
What we know already is that there's a convoy on the move between MARI and SHEKH, so we can try hitting that as well, but I'd much rather we don't attract too
much attention while our pants are not completely up.

All our ships have decent cruising ranges, and the force is flexible, so instead of blobbing together, we should be able to spread out and grab as much land as we can.

As always, comments welcome and see you in the next update.

 

[Kev Inkline]

This game looks awesome, thanks for the well-thought LP!

 

[spectre]

CHAPTER 04: ON THE IMPORTANCE OF DELEGATING

My father used to say, what sets apart great leaders is their ability do delegate tasks.
With that in mind, I hereby cede command of the SAPPHIRE Heavy Raider Corvette
to the newly appointed COMMANDER baud

May the ship serve you well and win many great victories for the Romani empire.

The brief ceremony is interrupted by the phone:


So, that's the convoy calling again. The ETA, which would habe been the interesting part of this message is unfortunately garbled.
The message is coming from the direction of SHEIKH. Seems to be according to schedule.

The strategic screen is getting a bit messy, what you can see is the Fuel 331 thing under ASHDOD,
that's the fuel we secured from the wreckage. The SAPPHIRE has filled its tanks, and the remaining amount
will be used by our forces currently en route.

Where was I? Ah yes. Delegating.

CMD baud, your objective is to carry out a sudden strike on SAIDY, ETA 1.8 HRS. Godspeed.
And off he goes.


Pictured above: our main force chemtrailing over the landscape.
The ALT 5400 thing usually appears when a craft is taking off or landing.
The game means well, but sometimes fucks up the course plotting. The crafts were meant to go directly to ASHDOD,
but instead the game set them to randezvous with SAPPHIR as it left the city, so I had put them back on course manually.
So yeah, always double-check the thing, and don't always trust the range indicators.
I've been left stranded in the desert more than once, because bingo fuel turned out to be more of a guesstimate.
But I am rambling again.

As STRIKE GROUP SAPPHIRE approaches its destination, our stripped down MK.Is arrive at ASHDOD.
I bring one of them down for some quick work. Best I could get was a +20% repair parking spot.
Not the best place for it, but idle hands and all that:

I added back the ammo compartments and rebuilt parts of the plating, that's nearly 12hrs total with bonuses.
A word about the inventory in this game, working with it can be problematic, but doable once you figure out the quirks.
You can't really split it or assign it, it sorta decides to stick with one aircraft and moves along with it.
This time everything we had at UR is stuck on the flagship, which is why you're not seeing any guns to mount.

In the meantime, STRIKE GROUP SAPPHIRE comes into contact with the enemy.

Three against one. The poor bastards.
The COURAGEOUS we already know, it's our first encounter with the NAVARIN. It almost passes for a legit combat vessel.


From what we've seen so far, the COURAGEOUS is a poor combatant, it's rather agile despite having only two engines,
but has poor stability. High caliber shots toss and spin it round like a dreidel. When it comes to armament,
the single 2A37 is only good for giving the opponent a good tickle and becomes compeletely inaccurate if the aircraft is out of balance.
It probably will land some shots, randomly flailing around, but the holes are easily patched.
It sports bombs strapped to the bottom. Perhaps a cultural thing in these parts. Useless when they're on the ground,
if they get above, they can try and drop them on our heads, but they're not too difficult to dodge. Also, stray shots from below can detonate them and the entire craft will be done for. Another vulnerable part is the engine, taking out one means puts COURAGEOUS out of the fight.

About the NAVARIN, we'll se how it performs. We can see more reasonable armaments, a pair of 57mm VYMPEL,
two ZENITH heat seekers, it's really similar to our current configuration. I can also see two bombs, so yeah, might be cultural.
Despite having more engines, these are the low power ones, so it will probably underperform.
I also see sections of reinforced hull on the sides, but no real armor otherwise.

CMDR baud decides to test out incendiary rounds for this fight.
Zenith missles will be kept as an option to dispatch the NAVARIN.


At least it's not raining this time.
Almost immediately, the ship is greeted by a hail of gunfire, baud veers to the side, dodging most shots, but not all.
This probably looks worse than it is.
baud casually sprays the incoming craft with incendiary rounds. They do the job well.
Multiple fires erupt all over the closest courageous.

It is quickly done for. You can see the triangle indicating escape pods.
I was told these were more Geneva Suggestions than anything else, but we let the poor buggers fall to the ground unmolested.

More incendiary fire on the two other ships. Both are now on fire.
Alarm suddenly bleeps, the Navarin launched a missle at point blank, no time to shoot it down, so the SAPPHIRE narrowly avoids it.
Below, the Navarin actually tries to drop a bomb on us. Not even a near-miss, but the motherfucker has some guts.


The two foes are almost completely consumed by the raging flames. They slowly descend towards the ground.

Fighting is done. Three enemy fighters down. CMDR baud inspects the wreckage.

Nearly everything was burned out. There's no ammo or fuel to loot. Might be the incendiaries.
We can grab one minigun for sell. Then there's this RADIO ROOM, wonder what's inside.


So what do you bring us, commander? A burned out scrap of paper? Looks official.
Eh, just fucking with you, it will be useful in good time.

Smoke is cleared. Time to head to town. What interests us the most is the market, cause that's what we came for in the first place.



So, first things first, damage assessment. Nothing major, will take 3 hrs to fully repair, in a pinch, we could carry on as we are.
The shop has some aircraft, a shitton of rockets and guns we can use, as well as a good selection of electronics.
I remember telling you last time that the MR-700 is a rare find, well serves me right, cause it's the first time I'm seeing two of them.
All in all, a good place to go shopping and we just might spend some cash here.

The elephant man has Aircraft Missles which pleases me - these are used on aircraft to shoot down enemy cruise missles.
In the previous encounter, baud expended ~120 incendiary rounds, so we might restock on those,
though I'm not sure if it's economical in the long run. I like free refuels after a fight
and burning out the whole ship seems to lose us a lot of goodies, unless that was just an RNG fluke.

Our XO interrupts our shopping,

seems the locals at UR haven't mustered the courage to collect their pieces of silver;
nonetheless, that's our cue to haul ass once the repairs are done.

I think I misplaced an intermediary screenshot, but here's the current situation:

Repairs are progressing in ASHDOD, most craft randezvous here but will spread out to different locations.
We should still have the time to fit some guns and it should all pick up from there.
Unfortunately, we can only repair one thing at a time in each town.
SAPPHIRE is joined by Whisper at SAIDY.

I began using the pencil thingie to mark our time of arrival at each ship to get some idea for how long we can loiter
before we become unwanted. Doing so also leaves a marker showing how long ago we wrote it which is useful to keep track of time.
Also makes it look more profeshionalistic.

 

[spectre]

Now that the first frigate commander has assumed command, you have some vague idea what's expected.
baud, if you'd like to be referred to differently in the write ups, or you'd want to change or rename your ride,
holler at me.
Same goes for the rest of you, Andnjord @ERYKFRAD @tindril
Feel free to suggest how to drive you around and what you want to shoot.
I'll give you a quick, hopefully sufficient, run-down of the available toys below.

So far, the opponents were easy, but it does get progressively harder as we move due north.

For starters, here's an in-game artwork showing off your workplace:

And here's what else we can do with our trusty Echoes. Hopefully you can read this shit now.

You've already seen the raider pattern in action. We still need to upgun it with triple AK100 or DT80.
I also used this opportunity to showcase the possible mounting points for flares.
While the craft already demonstrated the ability to dodge heat-seekers, flares can still be useful against
missle swarms, it's also more convenient just to drop the flare and have the missle out of the picture.


This one's an oddball. I stripped the entirety of the top armor to mount that ridiculous zenith battery.
To compensate, side skirts were reinforced as we plan to keep the sides towerds the enemy, top and bottom being rather squishy.
The plan is to swoop in, expend the missles, then fuck off or mop up with the guns.
However, each Zenith is 600, so this quickly becomes an expensive pastime, so this is not a priority build at the moment.

Another form of active defense seen on the screenshot is the Palash, I don't have much experience with those, cause for a long time they were outright bugged so I never bothered using them. The theory is that it shoots down incoming rounds with limited capacity. It also shoots at missles, but doesn't have the punch to destroy them. They're also rather expensive. Not sure if they're worth it, but it's not like we're not in the position to test them out.


This is the most balanced design using four identical gun mounts.
Not very quirky, but will get the job done.
You can see the two missles tucked away under the armor so we don't easily lose them.


Another fully armored variant, features dual Vympels together with a MK-2 dual 180 mm battery.
The vympels are mostly there to shoot down incoming missles, but can also be used as tracers, to help guide the big guns.
With such a loadout, the game lets you operate the guns independently, LMB fires the 180 mm battery, RMB is for Vympels.
It is intended for bringing down heavy craft using specialized munitions.

Ask away, if you have any questions regarding the loadouts, parameters, possibilities, etc.
These are rough drafts and nothing's set in stone. As you probably notices, your ships are WIP
and changing from one design to another only requires a few dozen hours of downtime at the docks.
If something stand to the trial by fire, I'll change it. If we need to make a 4x minigun CIWS to shred incoming missles,
that can be done too.

Next up, the armaments:

R-5 Zenith - fire and forget heat seeker. Can still be evaded or shot down by enemy fire, so it's important to time the shots.
Since we're using fast and agile craft, it's important to let missle gain some distance, cause it's rather embarrasing to bump into our own.
Regarding performance, I think the best policy is not to expect too much. It can drop a small craft on a good hit, or shear off some armor and let us get to the juicy bits. Best used in pairs.
They are 600 shekels a pop and need to be manually replaced in the shipyard.

2A37 Minigun - we've seen this used by the enemy. It can brrrt away the entire magazine in under a second, then we're stuck reloading for the next twenty. One is good for a tickle, as seen in our encounters with the courageous, two I'd use for CIWS. Quadruple for CIWS overkill. For serious ship-to-ship combat, only if you want a challenge.
It's fed with 37 mm rounds, also available in Incendiary.

AK-725 Vympel - our current gun. Lower ROF compared to the minigun, but still god enough for CIWS duty. Gets things done, but takes it sweet time killing light targets.
Uses 57 mm rounds, available in Incendiary

AK-100 - we're entering big boy calibers here. Fast firing, tends to fan out, kinda reminds me of heavy gauge buckshot.
I've heard people shot down aircraft without proximity rounds, but was never able to replicate the stunt.
Uses 100 mm rounds, available in Incendiary, Proximity, Armor Piercing
Proximity and Incendiary aren't terribly useful here. Triple or Quad arrangement should let us bitchslap unarmored opponents.
I'll be stocking up on AP rounds for special occassions.

D-80 Molot - My personal favorite. A bit more controlled and packs a meaner punch.
Uses 130 mm rounds, the full buffet: Incendiary, Proximity, Armor Piercing, Laser Guided.
Three of those are great weight to value to money proposition. AP isn't terribly useful here, as it already slapps well.
Proximity helps with pesky fast movers and laser guided is our pay-to-win, big game ammo.

Now, up to this point, I consider the below calibers more or less interchangeable on a ship.
What I mean by that is, we can pull a Vymper and directly replace it with a Molot, then downgrade it to 2A37,
because they have the same ammo and space requirements.

I think it's nice to keep a healthy mix od calibers, so we don't get overly reliant on one kind of consumables.

MK-1-180 - So, we're entering 180 mm territory. These guns have double the ammo requirements compared to smaller rounds, which means that while an AK-100 only needs to be fed by one 1x2 autoloader, or one big 2x2 autoloader could feed two, the MK-1 now gobbles up all this ammo for itself.
This battery kinda behaves like a sniper rifle, only one round goes in the chamber, so some trigger discipline is required.
Obviously, we get the full selection of Incendiary, Proximity, Armor Piercing and Laser Guided.
Each special bullet is a whooping 500, so it's a bit like shooting Zeniths.

MK-2-180 - two barrels, double the fun, double the ammo requirements. Doesn't necessarily translate to double firepower,
but that second round makes it so much easier to do follow-up shots.

On the difference between MK1 and MK2 - while the MK-1 has slightly lower space requirements and can be used on some minimalistic long-range builds, I find the MK2 much more handy to use. As regards using two MK1s vs one MK2, the former shoot both projectiles at the same time, and then we're stuck waiting for a reload.

MK-6-180 Squall, same thing, but six barrels. We had that on the Sevastopol, but sadly it takes a shitton of space,
so we'll use it in another life perhaps.

A-220 - reminds me of the nebelwerfer. Loads up six unguided rockets, then sends them off in a volley.
In theory, looks like the most fun thing to use, but is utterly useless against fast targets and uses its own
weird ass crosshair which for the life of me I can't get used to.

Enough for the theory, time to wage war.
Awful lot of writing going on and we've only got two liberated cities to show.

The bulletpoint plan for the next update or seeral is as follows:
1) Arm four frigates so that everyone has something to do. Fifth one can stay in reserve for the time being.
2) For the time being, we don't need too much armor, but that might change once the enemy starts packing serious guns.
3) Test out the new toys AK-100, DT-80 and MK-2 in the field.
4) Spread out, gain some ground.

I also keep thinking about some kind of a strategic map, but due to all the atmospheric glitching, it looks like ass when I want to stitch something together. I've noticed, there's a much simpler map on the refuel screen. Not perfect, but I just might use that.

 

[baud]

Unless you strongly object to driving a souped-up, high-speed, lightly armored engine of death,

No objections! Glory or Death!

But yeah, I'd like some more big guns

Now that the first frigate commander has assumed command, you have some vague idea what's expected.
baud, if you'd like to be referred to differently in the write ups, or you'd want to change or rename your ride,
holler at me.

Let's continue with Baud, that'd be easier to follow that way. Though if you could rename the ship to "Incline Cometh", that'd be swell.

 

[spectre]

CHAPTER 05: THEY'RE CALLED COURAGEOUS FOR A REASON

CMDR baud requests upgrades and the fleet delivers.

Three vympels are removed and sold at the SAIDY shipyard, replaced with 3x DT-80 Molot 130 mm batteries.
Two ASO-70 flare launchers, barely visible on the screen, are installed in the recess above the side thrusters.

As you can see, just swapping out guns doesn't take too long. Everything's done in just under 3 hrs.

I've already played out this update yesterday, so the requested name change will apply for the next one.
Unfortunately, I think there might be some kind of a character limit, I'll check for the exact values in a second,
but as you might see on the previous screenshots, the interface even cuts off the last letter in "sapphire",
surprisingly, the entirety of "echo mk.1" is displayed, no probs.

On with the show.

======================================================
CMDR baud, standby for orders:
Your next target is the communications array in DEIR, ETA 1.5 HRS from current position
1. Remove enemy presence from the array
2. Gather intelligence regarding enemy forces in the area
3. Carry out in-field testing of new munitions
Godspeed.
======================================================

So, what else can we do in these 1.5 HRS?

1. one ECHO mk.I is relocated to SAIDY for a quick refit. I took a nice screenshot of the landing.

The dock says MAX 70m, the Echo specification says it's 64x52m, so it fits like a glove.

Serious uparmoring of the sides and 4x AK100 are bought and installed from SAIDY stores.
It eats up a bit of cash.

2. Whisper craft takes off to ASHDOD, bought 2x FLARES and the last remaining 1x DT-80 MOLOT.
Perhaps we can find some more later. I also grab a bunch of ZENITH missles.

3. the ECHO mk.II at ASHDOD gets a quick refit:

a MK-2 Sarmat battery is installed, with 2x VYMPEL auxilliary guns.


Now, if you're trying to follow our funds from the screenshots, that might be problematic.
All in all, that shopping spree leaves us at ~24900 shekels.
We're not in the red or anything, but we should start thinking about earning some money.

So, back to CMDR daud, approaching DEIR as we speak:


Oh dear...

A pair of COURAGEOUS isn't much of a challenge, but that's okay, I can focus on taking purdy screenshots.

Fine weather to go a-killing.
The game actually starts to deliver what was promised on the screenshots.

Daud waits for the autoloader to feed the shells. This time, it goes: clunk, clunk, clunk, clunk.
Four rounds in.
The foes are sitting ducks. Daud let's rip with the triple 130mm.
Death comes out.

First Courageous gets ripped apart by HE. Cause of death: destroyed engine.
You send the remaining shells in the general direction of the other enemy craft.
Glancing hits, but they still send the aircraft spinning. It gains altitude...

and as it somersaults above, baud fires another salvo.

BOOM.
The the explosion clouds the surrounding landscape.
I even got lucky and caught the victory screen, so enjoy.

======================================================
CMDR baud, post battle report:
Successfully engaged and dispatched enemy craft.
No significant own damage. Enemy casualties, two light corvettes.
Troposcatter array captured intact, fleet HQ standby to receive intel.

No context for testing ASO-70 flare dispensers.
DT-80 molot battery proved extremely effective against soft targets
on the ground and in the air.

Suggest to assign "threat rating: minimal" classification to COURAGEOUS class light frigates.

Post battle salvage: secured fuel tanks, no other salvage possible.
See attached photographic material.
======================================================






The XO steps in, dutifully pointing fingers at things as he explains:


So, as the raider craft gobbles up the salvaged fuel, I'll be giving you a quick run down how this all works.

On capture, each array has 5 intel points. We can spend these points as follows:
(o) Identify the position of the closest STRIKE GROUP (3 points)
(o) Identify the position of the closest TACTICAL GROUP (2 points)
(o) Identify the position of the closest CONVOY (1 point)
The station will then slowly recover these points, so we can get back at them and learn more.
We need to have a craft actually parked there. That's one of the jobs for our Whisper.

Now, regarding the difference between SG and TAC,
strike groups mobile forces which will move around and investigate whenever we stir up some trouble.
Currently, we've silently dispatched all the garissons, so the enemy doesn't really know we're here,
and for the time being the strike groups are following their current patrol patterns.

Tac groups come in two flavors - aircraft carriers and missle carriers. Most of the time they're stationary
and will send their love in our direction if we come in range and they get alerted about our presence.
IIRC that's 2000 km for aircraft and about 1500 km for missles.

A question to be asked at this point is how reliable is this information.
From experience, it's generally reliable, but every now and then, especially with convoys,
shit's not exactly where it was supposed to be.
Could be bugged, could be by design, can never tell with this game.

I'll start with the SG first.

It's up there in the north, codename OCEAN, currently stationary.
That's all we get.

Next, I'll check the convoys.

Interesting, codename OSPREY, we have its route and it's actually coming our way.
This means the other OZONE convoy we heard from earlier is also somewhere out there.
I leave one point to spare for later.

The next few ours are spent refuelling, and shipyards reports refitting is done on one of the echo frigates.

We're slowly running out of time in ASHDOD, the ARRIVAL marker is at 17.2 HRS,
and the locals usually start getting restless at around the 20 HRS mark, 3 hours will be just enough to slap
the ELINT + IR combo on the whisper, giving us 100% early warning capability.

All right, since second frigate is done Andnjord , you're up. This is your ride:

411 kmh crusing speed is "lumbering" by our fleet standards, but still gives 99% sudden strike probability.
Also lets you outrun pretty much any standard craft found in this blasted desert.
1500 km operating range is enough to fly between towns, but time to time you will rely on tankers for serious repositioning.
When it comes to armament, an opportunity for field testing should present itself soon.
Engine upgrade will be carried out at the earliest convenience to accomodate full armor plating on the top.
There is also free space for 2x Zenith missles on the sides.

No time to dally:

======================================================
CMDR baud, standby for orders:
Your next target is fuel depot in GILEAD, ETA 1.1 HRS from current position
1. Secure the fuel supply
2. Continue performance assessment of current ship loadout
Godspeed.
======================================================



======================================================
CMDR Andnjord, standby for orders:
Your next target are the shipyard facilities at MARI, ETA 2.1 HRS from current position
1. Secure the shipyard
2. Carry out in-field testing of new munitions
Godspeed.
======================================================



Baud arrives first at GILEAD, such are the perks of ~800 kmh top speed.


The fighting is brief. The first courageos is blown to bits while still on the ground, the other one soon follows.

For salvage, we start by disassembling the hull, followed by the fuel tanks and the 2A37. 3000$ isn't bad money.
No detailed post-battle report necessary.

Also, CMD baud, your exploits haven't gone unnoticed and the Empire recognizes your contribution to the war effort.

Told you this game is an RPG.

So here's how it works, each fight you gain some amount of "honor", I'm not 100% clear how it works,
but the general idea looks as follows, honore gain seems to be based on the size difference between ships,
so dropping light corvettes with a fully armored frigate won't give you much.
Conversely, a light craft dropping a strike group ship might gain a lot of exp.
All logical so far.
The game shows gained honor by displaying stars on the combat screen.
I didn't see any in the previous battle, so it might be bugged, or it simply adds up with each fight.
It also seems somehow tied to crew size, because if we get shot up and lose crew,
the honor gain appears to be is reduced.
I have no idea if it's possible to lose honor.

So, on each promotion we get to pick a bonus, these are randomized. Our current choice is:
VETERAN PILOT - increases in-combat agility by 20%
VETERAN ENGINEER - increases cruise range by 30%
EVER READY - start combat with your guns fully loaded

I took the liberty of picking ENGINEER, we'll see what it does. You're quite far away from the rest of the fleet, so it might be useful.
The other options looked equally pickable, but the ship is already quite agile, so veteran pilot can wait for the next promotion
(I know, this kind of optimism is what gets you killed in the field).
The DT-molot doesn't take too long to load up, so the ever ready bonus isn't as significant.


Moving on to the next fight:

CMDR Andnjord reports arrival at MARI

You see the defenses are puny.
Guns all loaded up. Like shooting fish in a barrel.

The interface shows two separate ammo counts now, one for the MK-2, another for the Vympels.
Unfortunately, sniping isn't exactly easy when you're trying to take screenshots at the same time.
Also, that straight line protruding from our craft is the biggest aiming reticle we can set in the menu.
This doesn't help either.

Yeah, after shooting 130 mm all day, 180 mm takes some getting used to.

Andnjord takes them for a little dance, let them tickle us with the puny 37 mm.

It's not easy hitting a fast mover with standard 180 mm, but the results are always enterining.

That's what happens Larry. That's what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass.


======================================================
CMDR Andnjord, post battle report:
Engaged enemy craft at MARI, minor resistance, took the cunts for a little dance.
No significant own damage. Enemy casualties, two light corvettes.

Preliminary damage inspection:
minor damage sustained on the landing gear, no damage to armor.
Current craft mobility sufficient.

Munitions assessment:
AK-725 - performed as expected, no opportunity to test CIWS capability.
MK-2 battery - reduced performance vs. fast movers. Might need further calibration.
Eager to test special munitions.

Suggestions: R-5 Zenith missles might improve combat efficiency vs. fast movers.

Post battle salvage: secured 2A37 gun emplacement. During attempted hull disassembly,
ammo compartment exploded destroying the remaining salvage.
See attached photographic material.
======================================================


At the same time, we finish with the salvage at GILEAD, hull disassembly is successful and it gives us a few spare parts,
the XO steps in with more well-meant finger-pointing.


Daud lands at GLIEAD, it's a fuel depot, so cheaper fuel is all it provides, no other frills in regards to the infrastructure.
For those of you asking: how cheaper exactly, I'll check this out at the next opportunity.

Let's have a look at MARI:

Ah, so that's where the first Tarkhan is.
The Motherlover is driving an aircraft carrier. Can't believe our luck.
We also get to examine the extensive shipyard facilities in the backgrund.
Those docks will be seeing some traffic in the next 20-ish hours.

On a closing note, here's the overview of our current situation.
We're 33 hours into the campaign. Good progress has been made.


1. Third Frigate will come online in the next 6 hrs at SAIDY, so @ERYKFRAD get your ass ready.
2. Andnjord I'll be needing a name for this craft of yours, also feel free to give any other input.
3. Daud fucked off quite some distance away, so I'm thinking about pulling him back;
on the other hand, that's a raider craft doing raider things.
4. Predictably, ASHDOD lit up as DANGEROUS the moment we hit the 20.0 hour mark post arrival, Whisper's refitted, so we'll be fucking off.
5. You can see a star above MARI indicating a Tarkhan is present. I'll show you what this shit's about in the next update.
We will also be doing a lot of landing, refitting and repairing there, hopefully achieving 100% combat effectiveness.
6. You will also notice that the more shit we install on our ship, the more crowded the interface becomes. In the shot above, I have Emerald + Whisper group selected, which has got the full package, Radar + ELINT + IR, the sticker (no doubt left by our XO) helpfully points out that the only thing we're missing is the ECM.
I'll be giving you more details about what some of this shit does once we get to it, but if you're interested, you can always Read the Full Manual that I linked some time ago.

 

[spectre]

Ok, I sharted out some serious walls of text, post update banter time.
Hope y'all can more or less follow what's happening and all the screenshots are clickable.
I'm trying some stuff with the structuring so it doesn't get too confusing.
For some reason, can't tag ERYFKRAD, so I hope he gets his ass over here here.

This game looks awesome, thanks for the well-thought LP!

Thanks. I have a sort of love-hate relationship with this game. Loving it enough to do an LP, loving how it pulls no punches (while it may not look like so from the LP, we're still the the early early game),
loving the aesthetics and all the little details.

On the other hand, the interface can be a struggle, some parts feel unfinished, and the way recent patches ham-fistedly approach the balancing problems.
Previous updates changes a whole lot of parameters on the ship components... but didn't update the in-game designs.
I would happily go back to version 1.12, but I want these bug fixes that came with 1.151
Not sure if there'll be further updates or fixes, the dev is Russian, and the current global situation is what it is
All in all, it's a gem in a rough, and I think it might really get better with mods that would go over and fine-tune all the stuff piece by piece.
It seems to get its own dedicated page on Nexus, but last time I went there I was assaulted by animu shit and instinctively hit the back button on the browser.

It's a weird mix of gameplays, people who would enjoy Harpoon style overmap probably aren't the same audience for the twitch based minigames
(though they are reasonably forgiving if you can be bothered to get decent at them).

Though if you could rename the ship to "Incline Cometh", that'd be swell.

Right, so here's how it works in the game,
in the shipyard screen we have two fields to fill with text, project name on top, which will also be visible on the campaign screen,
and project description directly below, the only place where this one's visible is this screen (also appears on the miniature ship above).

At first it looked like there's not character limit on the project name, but as it turns out it cuts down to 20 characters.

And cuts down even further on the campaign screen, sometimes it's 7 chars, sometimes 8, depending on text width.
It's funny line that.

Now, when it comes to bottom text...

There doesn't seem to be any limit, but it looks like ass when it floods out of the frame. Being an aesthete, I can't have that.



I think BAUD should go on the project name, looks best and might be easiest to find yourself on the screenshots.
The PROJECTNAME field is used by the game to track ship designs for repairs, but you needn't worry about that.

Our current kill tally is like this. Shout out if you're interested in some other stats.
so I'm thinking of dividing it by weight class, perhaps only count total tonnage, like they did on submarines.
We'll see.
If you think baud has an unfair headstart, the Courageous basically don't count.
Also, harassing early game garrisons is what that ship is for.
====================
CMDR baud
HMS "Incline Cometh"
Hv. Raider Corvette,
3x DT-80, 2x Zenith

Kills: 6x Courageous 1x Navarin
Cities liberated: 3 [SAIDY, DEIR, GILEAD]

HONOR: 1 [ENGINEER]
====================

====================
CMDR Andnjord
ECHO MK.I -> to be named
Frigate
Sarmat MK2, 2x Vympel

Kills: 2x Courageous
Cities liberated: 1 [MARI]
====================

 

[ERYFKRAD]

For some reason, can't tag @ERYKFRAD, so I hope he gets his ass over here here

Well if you try swapping the f and k around it might get us someplace.

That said I'd be fine with Molot punching your enemies to smithereens.

 

[spectre]

Shit mang, never thought myself to be fucking dyslectic. Sometimes life just gives you melons.
You're currently manning quad AK-100s, these are fun as well, but I'll see if we can get our hands on some more DT-80s.
You're getting dibs on them when we do.

 

[baud]

Three vympels are removed and sold at the SAIDY shipyard, replaced with 3x DT-80 Molot 130 mm batteries.

I like big guns. And I like when they're use to explode shit

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Shit mang, never thought myself to be fucking dyslectic. Sometimes life just gives you melons.
You're currently manning quad AK-100s, these are fun as well, but I'll see if we can get our hands on some more DT-80s.
You're getting dibs on them when we do.

Belay that last call boss. I see baud has them so if you want me to put the bomb in Tom Bombadil, or anything else that's jake too. No need to all run the same guns and all that.

 

[spectre]

I like big guns. And I like when they're use to explode shit

What a darn coincidence then, what we have here is a game that's all about big guns exploding shit.
I mean there are some small guns too, pussy stuff that go brrrt!, like a fart after prison love.
But we won't be getting near any of those. We want stuff that's properly thunderous.

Belay that last call boss. I see baud has them so if you want me to put the bomb in Tom Bombadil, or anything else that's jake too.
No need to all run the same guns and all that.

Roger. I'm convinced that the AK-100s are impossible not to love... but let's not spoil too much of the next update.
bombs in Tom Bombadil is also giving me some ideas. You just wait.

You'll see that combat is getting increasingly more frantic, so I'm seriously reconsidering recording some of this.
I could then post it on youtube, get monetized, totally abandon this LP and go get some groupies...

Seriously though, what's the current-day tech for gameplay vids? I remember FRAPS from back then,
but I see it's gone all abandonware.

For the time being, just letting you know that the next update is all screencap'd.

 

[Azira]

Interesting. I'll just watch like a silent stow-away. Pretend that I'll die ignoramously in whatever first casualty you take, trying unsuccesfully to hide in the landing gear.

 

[spectre]

CHAPTER 6: GAINING GROUND
Okay, Gentlemen, today we will be fighting and nothing else. Simple as.
Orders will follow shortly.



======================================================
CMDR Andnjord, standby for orders:
Your next target is the merchant hub in SHINAR, ETA 2.2 HRS from current position
1. Remove the enemy garrison
2. Inspect the shipyard for equipment of strategic importance
Godspeed.
======================================================


======================================================
CMDR ERYFKRAD, standby for orders:
You will hereby assume command of ECHO class Frigate stationed at SAIDY
Your first assignment is the fuel depot at QUIVA, ETA 2.1 HRS from current position
1. Secure the fuel depot.
2. Gather any useful intelligence regarding enemy forces.
3. Evaluate performance of the newly outfitted AK-100 fire delivery systems.
Godspeed.
======================================================


======================================================
CMDR baud , standby for orders:
Your next target is the merchant hub in BOCHIM, ETA 1.4 HRS from current position
1. Remove the enemy garrison
2. Inspect the shipyard for equipment of strategic importance
Godspeed.
======================================================


Not sure if this map is any better, I'll try shopping some markers on next time round, but at least you'll maybe have some idea where the fucking towns are at.

We will have secured the bottom part of the map, and while the objective isn't really about liberating 100%
of the map, it's good to have free reign over an area and that's the luxury we can afort in the beginning.
In any case, we are gaining ground and slowly moving northwards, which means better resistance.

The long-term plan here is to confront the enemy strike group (currently at DORUT).
We have no information about the size nor capabilities of their force, so I will advise caution.

Go and do the Emperor's work.


I'll start with Andnjord, cause it's the simplest.


Well, the party was over really fast, so nothing to write home about here.
First courageous immediately blew up on the runway, the other immediately afterwards.
Not even scratched paint on your end. Flawless Victory, Fatality.

The only exciting part was rummaging through the wreckage:

Also recovered a 2A37 for immediate selling.

So what's even this thing? It's a gift which we can use to curry favor with the locals.
I'll be telling you a bit more bout that in the next update.

After landing, the shop turns out to have a rather interesting selection of guns.

That thing next to the RD-51 engine is a Jammer.
It's been bugged for as long as I can remember and doesn't even have an in-game description.
We might grab it for later, se if we can have some fun with it.

Next up,


New enemy encountered. Designation SLOGGER. Visible armaments - 2x DT-80s 2x Zenith missles.
Commander, you are NOT cleared to deploy specialized munitions. I wan't a detailed AAR for this one.
And by the almighty, watch those guns.


So, ERYFKRAD's first fight will be in the dead of night, against a previously unseen enemy.
Two of them to boot.
Not a good time to be taking any chances.
You train all four guns, eight barrels loaded up with 100 mm of the nearest slogger.
When in doubt, empty the clip, or so they say.

Bullseye.
The entire volley hits... or did it? Can't really tell. The enemy is dead before they know it.
You shift your eyes to the other Slogger, its guns now pointed directly at you.

The sound of 130 mm is unmistakable. You expertly swerve out of their way.
The 'clunk' of the autoloader is sobering. It's your turn to deal death again.

The volley shreds through the entire enemy ship destroying both missles, the landing gear and landing pods.
Only thing left standing is the armor plate that was supposed to protect it. You can't help to chuckle at the irony.
Not long after, you put the craft down.

The final courageous soon follows.


======================================================
CMDR Andnjord, post battle report:
Engaged enemy garisson at QUIVA, full strength. New enemy vessel pattern encountered,
designation SLOGGER

No significant own damage. Enemy casualties, three corvettes.
No special munitons expended.

Munitions assessment:
AK-100 - field performance exceptional against unarmored targets.
May need armor piercing munitions to defeat heavy armor plating
Unable to evaluate vs. enemy missles.

Post battle salvage:
Hull disassembly impossible; Fuel tanks secured at first priority to avert risk of explosion.
Radio room successfully stabilized, secured sensitive materials, handover to intel officer.
Forced with a dilemma - to stabilize FAB-100 bombs or look for survivors.

See attached photographic material.
======================================================

So what did you choose then, commander? Men or bombs?
The thing that's more difficult to make more of.
Also, you asked for this:

Fleet command, standby to receive:
======================================================
Special post-battle addendum. Clearance level 2:
Codename SLOGGER, post-combat analysis.

The craft is essentially a gun platform, with firepower slightly above its weight class.
Dual 130mm guns shouldn't be underestimated, nor should the missles.
Armor plating is crude, a single, large plate was bolted down to fix the obviously exposed bridge.
Both engines are exposed and are the obvious weak spot.
Observed maneuverability low, craft unstable and prone to spinning out of control.
======================================================

The final battle is BOCHIM


So, slogger is a regular new thing on the menu, or so it seems.

No time to get funnly, baud is immediately greeted by a heat seeker. Deploy flares.

Flares deploy, the Zenith follows dutifully and detonates far away.

You can see the 130 mm salvo coming from miles away.
Enemies move closer, you narrowly avoid the burst, but you're not yet in the clear. Another heat-seeker incoming.

With flares, dodging this one is a no-brainer.
Since the enemies are all spent, a well placed salvo dispatches them quickly one after another.



======================================================
CMDR baud, post battle report:
Engaged enemy garisson at BOCHIM, two light corvettes, COURAGEOUS and SLOGGER
No significant own damage. Enemy wiped out.

Munitions assessment:
ASO-75 - the flare dispenser proved very effective in confusing enemy
ZENITH missles.
Sideways placement so far satisfactory, suggested to adopt for all craft.

Post battle salvage:
Secured MOLOT gun emplacement, munitions and fuel tanks.
Highly hazardous environment, protective gear deemed necessary for salvage teams.
See attached photographic material.
======================================================


The salvage is interupped by a transmission:

OCEAN, that's the strike group at DORUT, they're flying towards SHILOH.
One new piece of information is flight speed of 130 kmh.
I won't try and make too much out of it, but I'd say that's above average speed for a strike group,
meaning it's probably not the heaviest craft.

Baud lands. Turns out, it's not the end of surprises for the day.


Someone's been pilfering Romani weapons for sell?
Then write it off as lost-in-combat?
Bunch of fucking sons of goatsuckers. What do you think this is? Afghanistan?

Of course we'll do an investigation, but the men obviously don't like it much.

And it seems like baud will now be facing morale issues.
What is the cure for such disorders? Beatings! The proven way to improve morale.

 

[spectre]

Post update comments:
ERYFKRAD opens up with a bang. You even got that bomb to put on the bombadil. I think it's got a nice ring to it.
We'll try and find some worthy opponent for Andnjord.
We also got an event not related to the main quest, so why not, I decided to post it.
This is also the first time when morale becomes a factor, so let me elaborate a little on this.

Each ship started at 10 morale, it slowly recovers when you park in towns (that REST 00% thing, it goes of with each hour of R&R, when it hits 100%, you gain +1 morale.)
You lose morale by fighting and through events like that one. Once it drops to 0-1, the crew will refuse to fight and might even defect to the enemy.
Each ship on the Battle Prep screen automatically gets -1 morale each combat, you also lose morale when replaying battles.
Yeah, again the game is quite generous with its twitch minigames, and you can start over the whole fight from scratch at the cost of 1 morale.
So, in the end, your morale pool becomes sort of like extra lives, and something that limits your expansion somewhat.
We did a lot of hopping with baud, and the men begin to feel it.

In the next update, I'll show you how we do negotiations.