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KickStarter Let's die a burning death in Highfleet [Done]
- Thread starter spectre
- Start date
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2012
- Messages
- 28,370
Frigate's reserved for tindril. You're next though, I bet.
- Joined
- Sep 25, 2012
- Messages
- 28,370
So, incendiary explosives?
spectre
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2008
- Messages
- 5,427
I think we can start him off with quad miniguns just for shits and giggles. Then slowly convert him to the glorious way of the AK-100.
Yep, next ship I refurbish is all yours. Do you like going fast tindrli? Cause we need you to go fast to fuck up some convoys while baud puts his men to work with the local populace of women and chickens... to extract valuable intelligence, obviously.
In the meantime, let me give you a small update on how we do rat diplomacy in this game.
As you'll recall we've discovered a rogue Tarkhan at MARI. We should pay xir a visit.
That thing is quite valuable. I'm also curious about the balanced specs.
So, this is Omar Khan the Shikh audophile. Let me give you a quck overview of the shit that's on the screen.
As you can see, the game has handy wiki hyperlinks to look up all those weird proper nouns.
And dialogue options that put Falout 4 to shame. This one's got a thumbs up option, meaning our troops will
like what they're hearing, resulting in a minor boost to morale.
There's three icons to the left:
Worldview, the fleet's stats as it were. The way we conduct ourselves during story events
can shift these values in any direction and These will be useful in later dialogue.
For example, if later down the line we find ourselves facing a morale crisis,
we could apply to the officer's sense of duty as the emperor's subjects, to their Faith of the sense of Order,
but it'll only work if we have the stats.
Next to the right is our allies, the guys we picked up in the prologue and rogue tarkhans go here.
Their loyalty can go up or down during events, and high loyalty allows us to ask them for favors,
though it's not something I'm planning to do during this LP.
Also: I don't have a goddamn clue who the fuck is this IMLAN HARISH. He wasn't there last time I checked,
and Omar Khan the Tarkhan is the first one I've met so far. Might be a bug, or is it this stowaway Azira mentioned?
We'll keep this in mind on the next opportunity to test strategic missle tubes.
But I'm getting carried away here.
Final screen shows our fleet overview.
Funny thing is, this screen would be pretty fucking useful to have somewhere in the main menu,
but as far as I can tell you can only view it from the talking screen.
Ok, so I pick the "In the name of the Empire, I welcome you".
This gives us a nice +1 to fleet morale, and the guy responds positively. Looks like he's one of our people and proud of it.
The objective of this minigame is to butter the guy up enough so he'll join our crew. This also let us take his ride.
The second option is a follow up from our starter quest, we got some pot from one of our crewmembers and we can give it to this guy.
His eyes go all wide as he sees the pot and he gladly joins us, with no need for rat diplomacy. I don't know, am I reading too much into this shit?
Anyhoo, we'll do this as Lord intended.
It goes like this, the game draws speech "cards" at random, and we decide what to say to best butter the guy up.
The goal is to get the LIKE bar sufficiently high so he'll join us.
Each guy has a randomized set of traits, we already discovered the first, that he responds favorably
when we say good things about the empire.
We don't know what's his attitude to wards war is, so the leftmost option is a gamble.
He's a proud Romani, so probably no sense running our mouth about the glorious future for all towelheads.
We won't be talking about the coming decline of our empire, because Duh.
So, it makes sense to pick the last option, it's got a -1 modified, because what we said in the introduction,
so the argument won't be as effective. That's the game preventing us from blabbing about one thing all day.
Final thing to notice is we got limited amount of "rounds" to convince the guy, you can also thing the "good speech"
indicating he liked what he heard when we greeted us.
We don't get to ask for his preferred pronouns, the game's not that progressive.
He likes what he hears, and the game draws another hand of topics.
We raised the like-o-meter sufficiently, so we could end the talks right now.
Still, I want to talk about the necessity of war, se what he thinks.
A man after my own heart it seems. We discover he also appreciates force and the argument is super effective.
Using the same argument a second time doesn't do much, but doing so draws our affinity towards FORCE,
as you can see in the worldview.
I blab some more about how great is the empire, no effect on him, but raises our sense of national pride.
Time to conclude the talks.
He also snitches on another guy we can grab along the way.
[PER]: So it appears this shit was recorded before the attack on Quiva?
This is what's under the intercom part of our interface. That's the guys we have on board.
Like a party. In an RPG.
We can ask each of these guys for favors.
One will give intel, another will get us some spare parts for faster repairs, another will lend us money,
this guy provides emotional support.
All right, allow me to sperg a bit about the ship designs in the editor.
Because that's like half the fun with this game.
This is the guy's ride.
Basically a landing deck all filled with aircraft.
You will notice there are two types in the game, the left ones are LA-29 turbojets, the bigger ones are supersonic T-7s
That's what you immediately glean from the in-game description. Thanks game, super-helpful as always.
The differences between the two are small, but not insignificant. Immediately you'll notice they take up a different amount
of flight deck real estate. Flight parameters are also slightly different, but honestly, not big enough to bother.
Biggest difference is the T-7s are proper multirole, and they take up more munitions per flight, and has more loadout options.
(e.g the LA-29 picks up two 100 kg bombs, and the T-7 picks up four. The T-7 can use air to air AMRAAMs, while LA-29 can't use them at all).
Straight off the bat, 143 kmh is unacceptable, cause this thing will only slow us down.
Not a terribly big deal, cause its intended role is long range support, but still, I want more mobility.
As you can see the big tank is really good at obstruct the firing arc of both guns.
It's also armored like a brick shithouse. Completely unnecessary if we use it for its intended role,
which means staying the fuck out of immediate combat.
So, stripping it all down and the speed is still borderline unacceptable.
Let's take it down to the parking lot.
This is a dedicated shipyard, so you can see the landing pads offer much higher bonuses.
Sadly, that 5555 isn't a +5555% repair speed motherfucker, it's basically two 55% 55% pads close together.
You can also see the carrier tilts to one side because the flight deck is unbalanced.
This is why you want fucking symmetry when you design shit.
I dinged the flight deck on the way down.
Slap a bunch of engines on this bad boy and 309 kmh is something I can live with.
Removing the miniguns means I can also remove one ammo compartment,
means one more engine can fit in the nono area.
As you can see, repairs and refits get done really fast with proper facilities.
Yep, next ship I refurbish is all yours. Do you like going fast tindrli? Cause we need you to go fast to fuck up some convoys while baud puts his men to work with the local populace of women and chickens... to extract valuable intelligence, obviously.
In the meantime, let me give you a small update on how we do rat diplomacy in this game.
As you'll recall we've discovered a rogue Tarkhan at MARI. We should pay xir a visit.
That thing is quite valuable. I'm also curious about the balanced specs.
So, this is Omar Khan the Shikh audophile. Let me give you a quck overview of the shit that's on the screen.
As you can see, the game has handy wiki hyperlinks to look up all those weird proper nouns.
And dialogue options that put Falout 4 to shame. This one's got a thumbs up option, meaning our troops will
like what they're hearing, resulting in a minor boost to morale.
There's three icons to the left:
Worldview, the fleet's stats as it were. The way we conduct ourselves during story events
can shift these values in any direction and These will be useful in later dialogue.
For example, if later down the line we find ourselves facing a morale crisis,
we could apply to the officer's sense of duty as the emperor's subjects, to their Faith of the sense of Order,
but it'll only work if we have the stats.
Next to the right is our allies, the guys we picked up in the prologue and rogue tarkhans go here.
Their loyalty can go up or down during events, and high loyalty allows us to ask them for favors,
though it's not something I'm planning to do during this LP.
Also: I don't have a goddamn clue who the fuck is this IMLAN HARISH. He wasn't there last time I checked,
and Omar Khan the Tarkhan is the first one I've met so far. Might be a bug, or is it this stowaway Azira mentioned?
We'll keep this in mind on the next opportunity to test strategic missle tubes.
But I'm getting carried away here.
Final screen shows our fleet overview.
Funny thing is, this screen would be pretty fucking useful to have somewhere in the main menu,
but as far as I can tell you can only view it from the talking screen.
Ok, so I pick the "In the name of the Empire, I welcome you".
This gives us a nice +1 to fleet morale, and the guy responds positively. Looks like he's one of our people and proud of it.
The objective of this minigame is to butter the guy up enough so he'll join our crew. This also let us take his ride.
The second option is a follow up from our starter quest, we got some pot from one of our crewmembers and we can give it to this guy.
His eyes go all wide as he sees the pot and he gladly joins us, with no need for rat diplomacy. I don't know, am I reading too much into this shit?
Anyhoo, we'll do this as Lord intended.
It goes like this, the game draws speech "cards" at random, and we decide what to say to best butter the guy up.
The goal is to get the LIKE bar sufficiently high so he'll join us.
Each guy has a randomized set of traits, we already discovered the first, that he responds favorably
when we say good things about the empire.
We don't know what's his attitude to wards war is, so the leftmost option is a gamble.
He's a proud Romani, so probably no sense running our mouth about the glorious future for all towelheads.
We won't be talking about the coming decline of our empire, because Duh.
So, it makes sense to pick the last option, it's got a -1 modified, because what we said in the introduction,
so the argument won't be as effective. That's the game preventing us from blabbing about one thing all day.
Final thing to notice is we got limited amount of "rounds" to convince the guy, you can also thing the "good speech"
indicating he liked what he heard when we greeted us.
We don't get to ask for his preferred pronouns, the game's not that progressive.
He likes what he hears, and the game draws another hand of topics.
We raised the like-o-meter sufficiently, so we could end the talks right now.
Still, I want to talk about the necessity of war, se what he thinks.
A man after my own heart it seems. We discover he also appreciates force and the argument is super effective.
Using the same argument a second time doesn't do much, but doing so draws our affinity towards FORCE,
as you can see in the worldview.
I blab some more about how great is the empire, no effect on him, but raises our sense of national pride.
Time to conclude the talks.
He also snitches on another guy we can grab along the way.
[PER]: So it appears this shit was recorded before the attack on Quiva?
This is what's under the intercom part of our interface. That's the guys we have on board.
Like a party. In an RPG.
We can ask each of these guys for favors.
One will give intel, another will get us some spare parts for faster repairs, another will lend us money,
this guy provides emotional support.
All right, allow me to sperg a bit about the ship designs in the editor.
Because that's like half the fun with this game.
This is the guy's ride.
Basically a landing deck all filled with aircraft.
You will notice there are two types in the game, the left ones are LA-29 turbojets, the bigger ones are supersonic T-7s
That's what you immediately glean from the in-game description. Thanks game, super-helpful as always.
The differences between the two are small, but not insignificant. Immediately you'll notice they take up a different amount
of flight deck real estate. Flight parameters are also slightly different, but honestly, not big enough to bother.
Biggest difference is the T-7s are proper multirole, and they take up more munitions per flight, and has more loadout options.
(e.g the LA-29 picks up two 100 kg bombs, and the T-7 picks up four. The T-7 can use air to air AMRAAMs, while LA-29 can't use them at all).
Straight off the bat, 143 kmh is unacceptable, cause this thing will only slow us down.
Not a terribly big deal, cause its intended role is long range support, but still, I want more mobility.
As you can see the big tank is really good at obstruct the firing arc of both guns.
It's also armored like a brick shithouse. Completely unnecessary if we use it for its intended role,
which means staying the fuck out of immediate combat.
So, stripping it all down and the speed is still borderline unacceptable.
Let's take it down to the parking lot.
This is a dedicated shipyard, so you can see the landing pads offer much higher bonuses.
Sadly, that 5555 isn't a +5555% repair speed motherfucker, it's basically two 55% 55% pads close together.
You can also see the carrier tilts to one side because the flight deck is unbalanced.
This is why you want fucking symmetry when you design shit.
I dinged the flight deck on the way down.
Slap a bunch of engines on this bad boy and 309 kmh is something I can live with.
Removing the miniguns means I can also remove one ammo compartment,
means one more engine can fit in the nono area.
As you can see, repairs and refits get done really fast with proper facilities.
yes.fast it is
spectre
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2008
- Messages
- 5,427
CHAPTER 07: ON THE NUANCES OF ELECTRONIC WARFARE
45 HRS into the campaign
We start by relocating Andnjord back to the main force. Pick up the goodies and get your ass out of this dump.
baud will be doing R&R until the morale situation improves. I will be dispatching the WHISPER to give you some eyes, so you won't run into trouble.
ERYFKRAD you sit tight for the time being, I'm fixing you up with EMERALD for radar support. If there are convoys in the area, there's no sense in ramming blindly into them.
tindrli I'm fixing your ride as we speak.
So, I'm thinking, something like this?
Reasonably fast, plenty of dakka, Quad Zenith missles and it's about time we start playing with them.
You will pair up with Andnjord for the time being, so behave.
Whisper zips around pretty fast, can go directly to BOCHIM in ~4 HRS straight line,
but I decide to take the scenic route and grab one of the auxiliaries in ASHDOD.
So, here's what we got, a SKYLARK "interceptor" corvette
Not sure what the fuck it'll be intercepting with no guns on board.
Functionally, it's equivalent to our Whisper, but about half its speed.
Probably owing to the big ass fuel tank. The thing with those tanks is you can't run power through them,
so if you want electricity for your sensor package, you need to build some hull around it.
Suffice to say, it's not too suited to compact designs. The landing gear also slows it down a bit.
We need this sort of capability, but I'm not satisfied with the performance.
Therefore, I'll be taking this to MARI to remake it in our image.
Before we proceed, I need a radar sweep of SHEKH.
If there's convoy activity, I don't want to just slam into it.
EMERALD radar range is 400km, so here's how we do it, with compass and ruler, yo.
A neat trick you can do with the radar is directional sweep. I set it between 300 and 240,
so nothing can pick it up from other directions.
There are other tricks too, we can set it to run all the time, or just send out one ping.
It also as a ground search mode, it displays the local roads and infrastructure, which has a rather nich use.
EMERALD reports no contact on rarar, I slowly move towards the target...
And it's clean.
This doesn't mean there is no garrison, what it does is verifies there's no other traffic going on.
Makes sense for grounded craft not to show up.
Time to roll.
======================================================
CMDR tindrli, CMDR Andnjord standby for orders:
Your next target is the communications array in SHEKH, ETA 2.3 HRS from current position
1. You will form up together with Axiliary Frigate
2. Eliminate all enemy presence
3. Be on the lookout for enemy convoys
Godspeed.
======================================================
by the way, tindrli, congratulations on your formal assignment.
Go make us proud
On arrival, we encounter the garisson.
The dish of the day is quite varied, NAVARIN, SLOGGER, COURAGEOUS
Since we can actually decide on the order of battle here, let's do so. First on the left goes in first.
As you can see, the Emerald is all kitted out with AA, radar and aircraft. We'll play with those sometime later.
I don't expect them to see combat at all and I could theoretically send out dedicated strike craft first and leave it behind.
Can't be arsed to do the logistics at the moment. Funny thing is, EMERALD is much faster than the two of you,
so it would arrive first unless I set its speed to loiter.
Anyways, let's have tindril earn his spurs.
It starts with the gentle chime of the autoloader. tinktinktinktinktink.
It takes a good 20 seconds, but soon they're good to go.
You unload on the closest target, happens to be the NAVARIN.
It fires a missle.
The air is saturated with lead and it blows up right in his face. He's all shot up, but no major damage.
You notice another missle tailing smoke from the direction of the SLOGGER. The guns make short work of it.
As the guns reload, you take the fight higher into the air.
The NAVARIN hopelessly fires another one, it explodes in a shower of fragments right next to it.
You hear Andnjord on the intercom:
How about you start killing these things?
First one to go is the SLOGGER
Next comes the COURAGEOUS.
"- Structural damage received!" - the Officer's voice is like a bucket of cold water.
You lose the lower portion of the landing gear to enemy fire. No biggie.
You spray the remaining NAVARIN with 37mm. Still doesn't die.
Screw this, you decide to end this game with a well placed Zenith. BOOM!
You also gained an honor star, as seen on the screenshot.
One more is needed for a promotion.
Post battle salvage nets you a DT-80 Molot. Perhaps it's the world giving you a sign?
Damage examination:
So yeah, that'll take a bit to fix.
Here comes the chicken and egg dilemma,
Landing the ship should reduce this, but I need to fix the landing gear first.
Part of this is on me, the miniguns require full attention, which I can't give them and keep the finger on the PrintScreen.
Another question to ask is, is the lack of armor to blame? Well, yes and no.
Due to the way Sudden Strikes happen, with the opponents starting below us, it would make more sense to armor up the bottom,
but that goes in the way of thrusters - the fixed ones need open space to do their thing, and this would fuck up the entire design.
Another factor is the miniguns take their sweet time doing the killing, more time to kill means more opportunity to get shot at.
So, for a nimble craft, it seems it makes more sense to go for lower rate of fire, but more boom.
However, there's no doubt they're amazing at shooting down missles. Everything exploded the moment it left the mount.
So, with this in mind, I think I'll keep the quad missles for the time being, and fix you up with 100 or 130 mm,
we'll see what we have in stock.
In the meantime, ERYFKRAD forms up with the auxiliary frigate.
======================================================
CMDR ERYFKRAD, standby for orders:
Your next target is the communications array in SHAYBAD, ETA 2.0 HRS from current position
1. You will form up together with Axiliary Frigate
2. Eliminate all enemy presence
3. Be on the lookout for enemy convoys
Godspeed.
======================================================
Pretty much the same drill as before, the radar sweep shows nothing.
Turns out there's a touch of new flavor in this otherwise bland dish.
ATTENTION new anemy craft spotted, designation: FLOWER
Also, the game sometimes rearranges our craft in the most inane fashion.
If I were to eagerly click the big red button without double checking, that EMERALD would be fucked.
So, new enemy type, people.
Preliminary examination shows 2x VYMPEl and a big ass missle rack on top.
I am counting 6 Zenith missles in total. Also looks reasonably armored on the sides.
Suggested approach: attack from topside, blowing away that missle rack should cripple its attack ability, and once we're done, it's just a bit of drilling time away from the juicy cockpit.
It starts pretty wild, the enemy immediately sends out a missle, then another. Flares are deployed.
First missle is fooled, but the other one isn't impressed.
It blows up, really close, rocking the entire ship. Seems like it got caught in th crossfire from the two Courageous.
Bullet holes begin to appear. It's getting pretty tight, but ERYFRKRAD needs to keep his focus. That missle rack is the bigger threat.
A few well placed shots and looks like its gone.
You pull up, let the autoloader do its thing.
First courageous does what courageous typicall do, i.e. die in a fireball.
The second one soon follows. Pictured above, the FLOWER now completely deflowered.
You put it out of its misery.
Post battle damage report, turns out it wasn't really all that bad. Less than three hours of downtime.
Well, I promised you bombs. The game's pretty anal about good mounting spots for those, so this is pretty much the only place where they'll fit. I heard it's traditional in Gerat.
So, in between all this fighting, I bring the skylark down.
I will strip the whole thing down to the bridge, then rebuild it as a Whisper pattern vessel.
The whole ordeal will only take 16.9 hours. Not bad for what's basically building a ship from the ground up.
This might be a little bit past schedule and the locals might be pissed, but nobody really said anything about winning hearts and minds.
Also, what's that shit in the hold?
Have you been buying cruise missles behind my back, son of Sayadi?
No wonder we're this short on cash.
As salvage operations continue, we intercept a message.
Okay, yet another convoy, designation BAIKAL. There's a lot of traffic hereabouts, but we've yet to bump into any.
We also have an opportunity to pilfer through CAPTAIN'S QUARTERS. This is what we find.
A note about possible locations of a Tarkan, not terribly useful.
And some bling.
With daud on R&R, I can't help but notice we've got some intel to process.
So, DEIR has recovered up to 3 points, and we have fresh 5 points of intel at our recent captures.
Let's see what they say about TAC groups.
Nearest one is way up north, codename MONSOON, missle carriers.
Let's try nearest strike group,
codename VARYAG, currently on randezvous course with MONSOON.
I try to trace one more strike group, but it only gave updated the position on the one that we already know about.
Good news is, once we kill the closest one, we'll pretty much have free reign over the area, letting us grab land
and chase convoys with relative impunity.
I look up the convoys.
So, OZONE and BAIKAL, these two we've heard from on the radio. RENEGADE is new.
There was one other convoy, iirc. OSPREY which was supposed to be around GHAZM and crash into our positions.
Absolutely no clue where that one went. This intel is not 100% reliable, so we'll need to cross reference with other data.
Baud reports crew morale at acceptable level. Formed up with Whisper and good to go.
Fine, let's put you to work. Go get us MITZPA.
More liek BAR MITZPAH amirite?
But then, suddenly!
Pyotr Ignatyevich, you get that booger-hook off the ELINT panel, that's expensive equipment.
All right, time for a crash course on ELINT, or electronic intelligence.
What it does is go loud when a radar beam hits it. We get a rough bearing and a rough estimation of signal strength.
This one says ELINT 1 (goes up to 5) and bearing 30, but no way of telling if it's exactly 30, between 30 and 60. How about 25?
Not terribly accurate, but that's what we got.
Let's whip our our ruler.
So, 1000 kms at 30 degrees is roughly in the direction of SHILOH, which is where we expect to find the strike group.
That more or less checks out.
Now, gauging distance is tough, our elint catches radar emissions at 2x their range, so depending on the type of radar,
ELINT 1 maximum range can be anywhere between 1500 and as low as 500 km for fire control radar.
Probably somewhere in the middle, so I'm sticking with 1000.
We let baud cover some ground, then we take up measurements again.
ELINT 3, BEARING 0 degrees (it's constantly flashing so I didn't catch in on the screenshot).
We're at 600 kms away from SHILOH, so yeah, most definitely something's there.
Final measurement, just as we arrive at the destination.
ELINT 1, BEARING 300 degrees.
The triangulation isn't perfect, cause that's just one craft and we can't tell if the enemy isn't moving,
but seems to confirm our intel, strike group OCEAN is present in SHILOH.
Well, that was fun and all, but it's time for a to fight.
Slightly disappointing.
Not much to write home about, except for baud managed to shoot down a slogger missle with one of the 130mm's.
That's a slogger escape pod next to a courageous, trailing smoke and spinning out.
ERYFKRAD is ready to do some more fighting. Next target is GHAZM.
We had a report on OSPREY transport along this route at some point,
that report is 29hours old, so it's long gone, but we're running with the radar on just in case.
Anyways, what's up at GHAZM?
ATTENTION, new enemy encountered, designation: SARMA
++CUE DRAMATIC CLIFFHANGER++
It took me a bit longer to edit due to irl issues(tm).
Stay tuned, there's a bit more to come.
45 HRS into the campaign
We start by relocating Andnjord back to the main force. Pick up the goodies and get your ass out of this dump.
baud will be doing R&R until the morale situation improves. I will be dispatching the WHISPER to give you some eyes, so you won't run into trouble.
ERYFKRAD you sit tight for the time being, I'm fixing you up with EMERALD for radar support. If there are convoys in the area, there's no sense in ramming blindly into them.
tindrli I'm fixing your ride as we speak.
So, I'm thinking, something like this?
Reasonably fast, plenty of dakka, Quad Zenith missles and it's about time we start playing with them.
You will pair up with Andnjord for the time being, so behave.
Whisper zips around pretty fast, can go directly to BOCHIM in ~4 HRS straight line,
but I decide to take the scenic route and grab one of the auxiliaries in ASHDOD.
So, here's what we got, a SKYLARK "interceptor" corvette
Not sure what the fuck it'll be intercepting with no guns on board.
Functionally, it's equivalent to our Whisper, but about half its speed.
Probably owing to the big ass fuel tank. The thing with those tanks is you can't run power through them,
so if you want electricity for your sensor package, you need to build some hull around it.
Suffice to say, it's not too suited to compact designs. The landing gear also slows it down a bit.
We need this sort of capability, but I'm not satisfied with the performance.
Therefore, I'll be taking this to MARI to remake it in our image.
Before we proceed, I need a radar sweep of SHEKH.
If there's convoy activity, I don't want to just slam into it.
EMERALD radar range is 400km, so here's how we do it, with compass and ruler, yo.
A neat trick you can do with the radar is directional sweep. I set it between 300 and 240,
so nothing can pick it up from other directions.
There are other tricks too, we can set it to run all the time, or just send out one ping.
It also as a ground search mode, it displays the local roads and infrastructure, which has a rather nich use.
EMERALD reports no contact on rarar, I slowly move towards the target...
And it's clean.
This doesn't mean there is no garrison, what it does is verifies there's no other traffic going on.
Makes sense for grounded craft not to show up.
Time to roll.
======================================================
CMDR tindrli, CMDR Andnjord standby for orders:
Your next target is the communications array in SHEKH, ETA 2.3 HRS from current position
1. You will form up together with Axiliary Frigate
2. Eliminate all enemy presence
3. Be on the lookout for enemy convoys
Godspeed.
======================================================
by the way, tindrli, congratulations on your formal assignment.
Go make us proud
On arrival, we encounter the garisson.
The dish of the day is quite varied, NAVARIN, SLOGGER, COURAGEOUS
Since we can actually decide on the order of battle here, let's do so. First on the left goes in first.
As you can see, the Emerald is all kitted out with AA, radar and aircraft. We'll play with those sometime later.
I don't expect them to see combat at all and I could theoretically send out dedicated strike craft first and leave it behind.
Can't be arsed to do the logistics at the moment. Funny thing is, EMERALD is much faster than the two of you,
so it would arrive first unless I set its speed to loiter.
Anyways, let's have tindril earn his spurs.
It starts with the gentle chime of the autoloader. tinktinktinktinktink.
It takes a good 20 seconds, but soon they're good to go.
You unload on the closest target, happens to be the NAVARIN.
It fires a missle.
The air is saturated with lead and it blows up right in his face. He's all shot up, but no major damage.
You notice another missle tailing smoke from the direction of the SLOGGER. The guns make short work of it.
As the guns reload, you take the fight higher into the air.
The NAVARIN hopelessly fires another one, it explodes in a shower of fragments right next to it.
You hear Andnjord on the intercom:
How about you start killing these things?
First one to go is the SLOGGER
Next comes the COURAGEOUS.
"- Structural damage received!" - the Officer's voice is like a bucket of cold water.
You lose the lower portion of the landing gear to enemy fire. No biggie.
You spray the remaining NAVARIN with 37mm. Still doesn't die.
Screw this, you decide to end this game with a well placed Zenith. BOOM!
You also gained an honor star, as seen on the screenshot.
One more is needed for a promotion.
Post battle salvage nets you a DT-80 Molot. Perhaps it's the world giving you a sign?
Damage examination:
So yeah, that'll take a bit to fix.
Here comes the chicken and egg dilemma,
Landing the ship should reduce this, but I need to fix the landing gear first.
Part of this is on me, the miniguns require full attention, which I can't give them and keep the finger on the PrintScreen.
Another question to ask is, is the lack of armor to blame? Well, yes and no.
Due to the way Sudden Strikes happen, with the opponents starting below us, it would make more sense to armor up the bottom,
but that goes in the way of thrusters - the fixed ones need open space to do their thing, and this would fuck up the entire design.
Another factor is the miniguns take their sweet time doing the killing, more time to kill means more opportunity to get shot at.
So, for a nimble craft, it seems it makes more sense to go for lower rate of fire, but more boom.
However, there's no doubt they're amazing at shooting down missles. Everything exploded the moment it left the mount.
So, with this in mind, I think I'll keep the quad missles for the time being, and fix you up with 100 or 130 mm,
we'll see what we have in stock.
In the meantime, ERYFKRAD forms up with the auxiliary frigate.
======================================================
CMDR ERYFKRAD, standby for orders:
Your next target is the communications array in SHAYBAD, ETA 2.0 HRS from current position
1. You will form up together with Axiliary Frigate
2. Eliminate all enemy presence
3. Be on the lookout for enemy convoys
Godspeed.
======================================================
Pretty much the same drill as before, the radar sweep shows nothing.
Turns out there's a touch of new flavor in this otherwise bland dish.
ATTENTION new anemy craft spotted, designation: FLOWER
Also, the game sometimes rearranges our craft in the most inane fashion.
If I were to eagerly click the big red button without double checking, that EMERALD would be fucked.
So, new enemy type, people.
Preliminary examination shows 2x VYMPEl and a big ass missle rack on top.
I am counting 6 Zenith missles in total. Also looks reasonably armored on the sides.
Suggested approach: attack from topside, blowing away that missle rack should cripple its attack ability, and once we're done, it's just a bit of drilling time away from the juicy cockpit.
It starts pretty wild, the enemy immediately sends out a missle, then another. Flares are deployed.
First missle is fooled, but the other one isn't impressed.
It blows up, really close, rocking the entire ship. Seems like it got caught in th crossfire from the two Courageous.
Bullet holes begin to appear. It's getting pretty tight, but ERYFRKRAD needs to keep his focus. That missle rack is the bigger threat.
A few well placed shots and looks like its gone.
You pull up, let the autoloader do its thing.
First courageous does what courageous typicall do, i.e. die in a fireball.
The second one soon follows. Pictured above, the FLOWER now completely deflowered.
You put it out of its misery.
Post battle damage report, turns out it wasn't really all that bad. Less than three hours of downtime.
Well, I promised you bombs. The game's pretty anal about good mounting spots for those, so this is pretty much the only place where they'll fit. I heard it's traditional in Gerat.
So, in between all this fighting, I bring the skylark down.
I will strip the whole thing down to the bridge, then rebuild it as a Whisper pattern vessel.
The whole ordeal will only take 16.9 hours. Not bad for what's basically building a ship from the ground up.
This might be a little bit past schedule and the locals might be pissed, but nobody really said anything about winning hearts and minds.
Also, what's that shit in the hold?
Have you been buying cruise missles behind my back, son of Sayadi?
No wonder we're this short on cash.
As salvage operations continue, we intercept a message.
Okay, yet another convoy, designation BAIKAL. There's a lot of traffic hereabouts, but we've yet to bump into any.
We also have an opportunity to pilfer through CAPTAIN'S QUARTERS. This is what we find.
A note about possible locations of a Tarkan, not terribly useful.
And some bling.
With daud on R&R, I can't help but notice we've got some intel to process.
So, DEIR has recovered up to 3 points, and we have fresh 5 points of intel at our recent captures.
Let's see what they say about TAC groups.
Nearest one is way up north, codename MONSOON, missle carriers.
Let's try nearest strike group,
codename VARYAG, currently on randezvous course with MONSOON.
I try to trace one more strike group, but it only gave updated the position on the one that we already know about.
Good news is, once we kill the closest one, we'll pretty much have free reign over the area, letting us grab land
and chase convoys with relative impunity.
I look up the convoys.
So, OZONE and BAIKAL, these two we've heard from on the radio. RENEGADE is new.
There was one other convoy, iirc. OSPREY which was supposed to be around GHAZM and crash into our positions.
Absolutely no clue where that one went. This intel is not 100% reliable, so we'll need to cross reference with other data.
Baud reports crew morale at acceptable level. Formed up with Whisper and good to go.
Fine, let's put you to work. Go get us MITZPA.
More liek BAR MITZPAH amirite?
But then, suddenly!
Pyotr Ignatyevich, you get that booger-hook off the ELINT panel, that's expensive equipment.
All right, time for a crash course on ELINT, or electronic intelligence.
What it does is go loud when a radar beam hits it. We get a rough bearing and a rough estimation of signal strength.
This one says ELINT 1 (goes up to 5) and bearing 30, but no way of telling if it's exactly 30, between 30 and 60. How about 25?
Not terribly accurate, but that's what we got.
Let's whip our our ruler.
So, 1000 kms at 30 degrees is roughly in the direction of SHILOH, which is where we expect to find the strike group.
That more or less checks out.
Now, gauging distance is tough, our elint catches radar emissions at 2x their range, so depending on the type of radar,
ELINT 1 maximum range can be anywhere between 1500 and as low as 500 km for fire control radar.
Probably somewhere in the middle, so I'm sticking with 1000.
We let baud cover some ground, then we take up measurements again.
ELINT 3, BEARING 0 degrees (it's constantly flashing so I didn't catch in on the screenshot).
We're at 600 kms away from SHILOH, so yeah, most definitely something's there.
Final measurement, just as we arrive at the destination.
ELINT 1, BEARING 300 degrees.
The triangulation isn't perfect, cause that's just one craft and we can't tell if the enemy isn't moving,
but seems to confirm our intel, strike group OCEAN is present in SHILOH.
Well, that was fun and all, but it's time for a to fight.
Slightly disappointing.
Not much to write home about, except for baud managed to shoot down a slogger missle with one of the 130mm's.
That's a slogger escape pod next to a courageous, trailing smoke and spinning out.
ERYFKRAD is ready to do some more fighting. Next target is GHAZM.
We had a report on OSPREY transport along this route at some point,
that report is 29hours old, so it's long gone, but we're running with the radar on just in case.
Anyways, what's up at GHAZM?
ATTENTION, new enemy encountered, designation: SARMA
++CUE DRAMATIC CLIFFHANGER++
It took me a bit longer to edit due to irl issues(tm).
Stay tuned, there's a bit more to come.
Andnjord
Arcane
You can name it CSS Roger Mills, in honour of the famous Battle Cruiser turned aircraft carrier of the Confederate Fleet .
spectre
Arcane
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- Messages
- 5,427
+++END OF DRAMATIC CLIFFHANGER+++
We've got ERYFKRAD staring down enemy craft at GHAZM.
Motherfucker looks wide, like a sumo wrestler. Makes a good impression of a proper combat craft, or so it seems.
I'm counting three Vympels and four Zeniths, so loadout-wise, it's like what we've started this LP with.
Looks properly encased in armor, at least from the top side. The bottom is all squishy and juicy.
Once the bottom gun mount is out of the picture, the bridge comes right after.
And they're not fucking around either, few seconds in and there's a missle coming in.
I know we've mounted some, but I'm having a hard time dodging shit to play bomber.
Pictured: the zenith refused to get of our ass despite flares. The dumb mothrfuckers actually shot it down themselves.
ERYFRKAD decides the courageous need to go first. They are gone within moments.
In the meantime, we get a bit of tickling from SARMA's vympels.
Managed to peel off some of the armor, but it's still quite a bother. Managed to rip off the left-side engine,
but it stays surprisingly stable.
Follow the original plan, move below it.
Yeah, that works. One honor star for ERYFKRAD.
As we begin the salvage, baud reports to be good to go, morale just ticked up to six.
En route, we get one last ELINT readout, bearing 270
So yeah, pretty much confirmed.
Combat went as expected, no fuss, nothing special. Two easy kills.
With hindsight, rather than skipping those nothingburger fights, I might use them as an opportunity to test special munitions.
Just a thought.
However, the salvage is rather good, we get a minigun and a molot, so that's an easy 7000 profit.
Also another scrap of paper.
ERYFKRAD's got a Vympel. The damage is also quite minor.
Upon landing at GHADJAR, we discover a Tarkhan.
His ride is rather meh, will strip the missles of it and sell it. Here's the detailed view, for reference:
It's rather well armored, and is all covered in flares. Top speed is average (red: terrible by our standards).
Also, yeah, got bombs.
What I can't get is the logic behind putting reinforced hull over armor and THEN putting fragile shit like missles and flares on it.
Not only it slows the whole thing down, you're still going to lose it.
A few updates ago, reinforced hull used to be worth something (to the point that people built ablative armor out of it and the developer somehow took issue)
now all it does is slow you down.
Also, rest of the mercs at GHAZM. I see a longbow, just like the one we have,
There's a meteor, which is basically a very light interceptor
and a scarab, similar to that Tarkhan ride we just sold.
At the same time, we also get a radio transmission
OCEAN is heading southwest, so if I'm interpreting this right, they're going towards BOCHIM.
This means two things, they still don't know we're here and SHILOH just might be up for grabs.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Okay, that's the end of this big ass update. I might have overextended a bit, but
I had good fun playing it out. You know, that, eeeeh, just one more town, feeling.
We need to do some sitdown and I need a proper map for it.
All in all, the plan is to get the drop on that strike group.
First one is always the easiest, cause it doesn't have any aircraft or long range missles,
but that only means we can skimp on the AA. It's still a bit of a nut to crack.
We'll also start actually using our aircraft.
See you in a few.
We've got ERYFKRAD staring down enemy craft at GHAZM.
Motherfucker looks wide, like a sumo wrestler. Makes a good impression of a proper combat craft, or so it seems.
I'm counting three Vympels and four Zeniths, so loadout-wise, it's like what we've started this LP with.
Looks properly encased in armor, at least from the top side. The bottom is all squishy and juicy.
Once the bottom gun mount is out of the picture, the bridge comes right after.
And they're not fucking around either, few seconds in and there's a missle coming in.
I know we've mounted some, but I'm having a hard time dodging shit to play bomber.
Pictured: the zenith refused to get of our ass despite flares. The dumb mothrfuckers actually shot it down themselves.
ERYFRKAD decides the courageous need to go first. They are gone within moments.
In the meantime, we get a bit of tickling from SARMA's vympels.
Managed to peel off some of the armor, but it's still quite a bother. Managed to rip off the left-side engine,
but it stays surprisingly stable.
Follow the original plan, move below it.
Yeah, that works. One honor star for ERYFKRAD.
As we begin the salvage, baud reports to be good to go, morale just ticked up to six.
En route, we get one last ELINT readout, bearing 270
So yeah, pretty much confirmed.
Combat went as expected, no fuss, nothing special. Two easy kills.
With hindsight, rather than skipping those nothingburger fights, I might use them as an opportunity to test special munitions.
Just a thought.
However, the salvage is rather good, we get a minigun and a molot, so that's an easy 7000 profit.
Also another scrap of paper.
ERYFKRAD's got a Vympel. The damage is also quite minor.
Upon landing at GHADJAR, we discover a Tarkhan.
His ride is rather meh, will strip the missles of it and sell it. Here's the detailed view, for reference:
It's rather well armored, and is all covered in flares. Top speed is average (red: terrible by our standards).
Also, yeah, got bombs.
What I can't get is the logic behind putting reinforced hull over armor and THEN putting fragile shit like missles and flares on it.
Not only it slows the whole thing down, you're still going to lose it.
A few updates ago, reinforced hull used to be worth something (to the point that people built ablative armor out of it and the developer somehow took issue)
now all it does is slow you down.
Also, rest of the mercs at GHAZM. I see a longbow, just like the one we have,
There's a meteor, which is basically a very light interceptor
and a scarab, similar to that Tarkhan ride we just sold.
At the same time, we also get a radio transmission
OCEAN is heading southwest, so if I'm interpreting this right, they're going towards BOCHIM.
This means two things, they still don't know we're here and SHILOH just might be up for grabs.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Okay, that's the end of this big ass update. I might have overextended a bit, but
I had good fun playing it out. You know, that, eeeeh, just one more town, feeling.
We need to do some sitdown and I need a proper map for it.
All in all, the plan is to get the drop on that strike group.
First one is always the easiest, cause it doesn't have any aircraft or long range missles,
but that only means we can skimp on the AA. It's still a bit of a nut to crack.
We'll also start actually using our aircraft.
See you in a few.
spectre
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2008
- Messages
- 5,427
Missles are its main threat. Funny thing is, its dumb fuck assist kept shooting down their own missles.
Once its spent, that's just down to three vympels... and they can't do shit agains armor.
On the other hand, it's quite durable if you can't get to the sweet spot.
Yeah, we picked up a few of those. First we patch you up, then it's quad-hammertime.
I'll be fucking around with FreeCam this evening.
People say it's good, but the site looked a bit dodgy, like one of those software that quietly installs fucking
Avast in the background. If it does, I'm gonna pop a fucking vein.
Now, if it actually works as advertised, at the very least, this might mean more quality screenshots.
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Andnjord
Arcane
spectre
Arcane
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- 5,427
Thanks. Had a slow ass week at work and needed something to occupy my mind with.
If you feel like you're lagging behind, don't be. Until we hit the first Fleet HQ town, it's still basically extended tutorial area with weaksauce enemies.
The game gets you like this, you get complacent, and then fucking BAM, you overextend yourself, missles start flying from all directions, you start getting morale problems, then suddenly everyone's fucking dead.
Also, that 180mm was meant for special kind of work.
If you feel like you're lagging behind, don't be. Until we hit the first Fleet HQ town, it's still basically extended tutorial area with weaksauce enemies.
The game gets you like this, you get complacent, and then fucking BAM, you overextend yourself, missles start flying from all directions, you start getting morale problems, then suddenly everyone's fucking dead.
Also, that 180mm was meant for special kind of work.
Andnjord
Arcane
Yeah, I was gonna ask what's the lethality like in the game. Should we expect UFO: Terror from the Deep rate of turnover?
spectre
Arcane
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Hard to say. Given my track record with this game, you totally should...
On the other hand, I can already tell that the introspective style of this LP makes me much less gung-ho.
You are also driving frigates, and frigates don't die to lucky one-shots, but they do die in a series of fatal mistakes.
To say it even more vaguely, for me the game can be like TFTD in that when shit hits the fan, it sprays like a motherfucker,
however, in the aftermath, it always feels like I did it to myself, and it wasn't the RNG crapping on me.
What I can promise is this - the game gives plenty of opportunity to redo fights, so the temptation is always there
to try one more time and get it right, but I won't be using this. If it feels like the AI got a drop on me fair and square, ships's going down.
On the other hand, I can already tell that the introspective style of this LP makes me much less gung-ho.
You are also driving frigates, and frigates don't die to lucky one-shots, but they do die in a series of fatal mistakes.
To say it even more vaguely, for me the game can be like TFTD in that when shit hits the fan, it sprays like a motherfucker,
however, in the aftermath, it always feels like I did it to myself, and it wasn't the RNG crapping on me.
What I can promise is this - the game gives plenty of opportunity to redo fights, so the temptation is always there
to try one more time and get it right, but I won't be using this. If it feels like the AI got a drop on me fair and square, ships's going down.
Commander Krraloth reporting for duty Admiral.
I'd like a dual 180 supported by brrrts for aiming/shooting down missile setup.
Ship name: SIROCCO in honor of a retired Italian Frigate
FOR THE GLORY OF THE EMPEROR!
Inviato dal mio A80S utilizzando Tapatalk
I'd like a dual 180 supported by brrrts for aiming/shooting down missile setup.
Ship name: SIROCCO in honor of a retired Italian Frigate
FOR THE GLORY OF THE EMPEROR!
Inviato dal mio A80S utilizzando Tapatalk
Andnjord
Arcane
Excellent, it wouldn’t be a Codex LP without a high rate of casualties.
spectre
Arcane
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Noted. I'll start removing that armor plating for the next updates.
Welcome Krraloth, I'll hitch you up at the earliest convnience.
Anyone else wants to apply, you can man some of the auxiliaries. Say, the carrier?
Things aren't that exciting for AA crews at the moment, but they might be once shit starts flying at us.
Good news is, I dicked around with this FreeCam thing, and while it's pretty crap (doesn't cover my entire monitor and records at something like fricken 15 fps?)
So, all the hopes and dreams of youtube stardom go down the drain, but otherwise it looks sufficient for my purposes,
I should be able to get more dramatic screenshots capturing the exact moment of those juicy explosions.
More importantly, my hands are free to drive.
I need to do the writeup and some photoshoppery for the next update, will drop something later today.
Welcome Krraloth, I'll hitch you up at the earliest convnience.
Anyone else wants to apply, you can man some of the auxiliaries. Say, the carrier?
Things aren't that exciting for AA crews at the moment, but they might be once shit starts flying at us.
Good news is, I dicked around with this FreeCam thing, and while it's pretty crap (doesn't cover my entire monitor and records at something like fricken 15 fps?)
So, all the hopes and dreams of youtube stardom go down the drain, but otherwise it looks sufficient for my purposes,
I should be able to get more dramatic screenshots capturing the exact moment of those juicy explosions.
More importantly, my hands are free to drive.
I need to do the writeup and some photoshoppery for the next update, will drop something later today.
Last edited:
spectre
Arcane
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- Messages
- 5,427
Ok, so I lied, couldn't do any shopping, and I probably won't cause the weekend's fucking crazy.
I barely had the time to post this. so if it looks a bit rushed, it was.
Let's do some fighting instead.
=============================
@CMDR baud, standby for orders
We need to secure access to mercenaries at NIMRUD
You are also cleared for use of laser guided munitions, proceed with field testing if convenient.
=============================
Minimal resistance. Looks like a good opportunity for target practice.
baud is greeted by a barrage coming from the ground.
Fuck off missle.
With the help of flares, the Zenith detonates harmlessly on the side.
Laser guided ammo all loaded up, ready to unload.
As you can see, we get a laser beam to guide the round, they will try to follow the marker under limited maneuvering capacity.
The enemy ship narrowly dodges the first salvo.
Second one connects in a magnificent explosion. The slogger is still able to send a love package in our direction.
Baud narrowly dodges it, it follows a wide arc just above us and explodes harmlessly to the left.
Pictured above: final laser-guided salvo quickly brings the other craft down.
==============================
CMDR baud post damage report:
Field testing of laser guided munitions completed successfully.
Observed higher destructive potential compared to standard issue HE warhead.
Potential pinpoint accuracy achieved with Laser guidance system.
Observed difficulty in course correction vs. mast movers at long range.
Suggestion: shorten engagement range against such targets.
==============================
You also earn yourself a promotion.
Turns out, that veteran engineer thing from last time is a dud. I compared the operating ranges,
and there's absolutely no difference before and after. Guess that's one more bug.
VETERAN PILOT - we already know this, 20% better maneuvering. I think we have enough maneuvering for now.
ROYAL GUARD - the description says the crew is "more resistant to hardships," probably something to do with morale, but vague as it is, I decide to skip it.
VETERAN GUNNER - promises quicker gun reloads. I'll take that.
Post combat battle inspection shows minimum damage.
And here's the a auxiliaries
If the local towelheads detest something, it's probably decent.
The Fenec pattern needs a bit of unfucking, two more engines, but it's a decent AA ship after a few hours of refit.
Lightning is one of the few designs that are decent straight out of the box.
All the positions for a fast interceptor are closed, but since its cheap I can just buy it and
remake into a third Whisper.
So, for a small sum of 42 000 and we get a strategic missle carrier with a set of nuclear missles to go with it.
What a country.
Next thing, we put ERYFKRAD to work.
TAFET is a shipyard facility, we don't have any pressing work to be done at the moment, but it's there up for grabs.
Minimal resistance met.
Commander, you are cleared to carry out testing of proximity munitions.
(I also keep forgetting you have bombs equipped)
It's all over really quick, the enemy takes off...
You dodge some ordnance,
The proximity round goes off
And the craft goes down.
Time to feed the other guy:
And that's that. New technology allowed me to capture the loading screen, it only shows for half a second.
Commander, your efforts haven't gone unnoticed.
EVER READY means you enter combat with guns fully loaded, so I'm picking it.
ROYAL GUARD we already know about, benefits are uncertain
VETERAN MEDIC reduces crew casualties. These happen when we get hit
in crew compartments. So far this hasn't happened.
Also, I'm not even sure if it does anything. The crew counts are all kinda there,
but I've yet to have any problems keeping the ships manned, or see any consequences for an undermanned ship.
Same goes for escape pods, no point in having them as far as I can tell.
Seems like it's one of those underdeveloped systems.
You can probably see the unfortunate pattern, some of the game's system seem a bit...vestigial.
Still, getting medals&recognition is cool, so...
In the meantime, tindrli was moved to a shipyard.
Dedicated facilities let us cut down from ~8 to 2 hrs repair time.
Standby to receive actual instruments of war, You'll soon be ready to fuck shit up, son.
All those sloggers we've been dropping earned us some molots, I think I can get my hands on four of those.
I'm contemplating adding those side thrusters. We'll see.
I sold the quad miniguns for the much needed +12 000 cash.
As you remember, we have enemy strike group OCEAN closing in at BOCHIM.
Let's do a bit of eavesdropping:
We have an ELINT 1 contact bearing 300
Then next one, bearing 330, the ELING blares out a DANGER CLOSE.
Our ETA at at BOCHIM is 0.6 HRS, I recall OCEAN reported speed was 130, means it'll be here in 4-5hrs.
I mark its current location.
baud's all restless, repaired-up and morale is just back up to seven.
so I'm sending you to do some more raiding.
Two sloggers, bah.
Cleared to test cluster munitions.
What luck, two missles incoming.
However, 130mm cluster failed to shoot them down.
Well, there's still flares.
Fight ends as predicted, however 130mm proximity are not nearly as good as 100 mm proximity.
Further testing required to be conclusive.
Rummaging through crew quarters yields us some more bling.
So it seems that the gifts coresspond to all the different affinities.
Minimal damage reported.
Going back to our strike group...
Lo and behold, 4.3 hours after we get an ELINT 3 readout directly at 270 degrees.
Implications are as follows - radio intel is confirmed as trustworthy.
Second thing, this means SHILOH is now open for attack.
Third thing, since we have them cornered, with no support from friendly forces,
time's good as any to bring this thing down.
I'm thinking, three frigates should be more than sufficient, but first we need to form up.
SHILOH is a good randezvous spot, being a fuel depot means we can get filled up, so I'm sending in Andnjord to clear it out.
Due diligence means we confirm no radar emissions with the second Whisper.
And that's Andjnord moving in.
It looks a bit weird, cause the map still marks the old data for OCEAN.
As far as I know, it's not possible to update it manually, it'll go away once we get a visual confirmation.
Anyways, it's just the garisson.
Not a lot of resistance, but that flower makes it a bit more interesting.
CMRD Andnjord is cleared to have some incendiary fun.
Quite a bit of ordnance going your way.
Vympels prove themselves decent at shooting down the missles.
You let incendiary to its job. It's taking its sweet time.
But the end results are rather pretty.
Yeah, that was fun, but you decide to put them down with 180mm. Nice and easy.
Nothing noteworthy in the salvage, minimal damage to hull.
I pull all the forces together
Final triangulation of the strike group location using two craft.
It's probably a bit off, but they're still here.
So, the plan is as follows, ERYFKRAD is a bit too far away to take part. You'll have your fun with the fleet HQ.
This leaves us with trindrli, baud and Andnjord to hunt the strike group.
Andnjord is the most armored, so he'll do most of the heavy lifting.
I check the stocks first:
17x 180mm laser guided isn't a lot, but will have to do.
Overall, not a lot of special ammo for the MK-2 battery.
But there's plenty of armor piercing for the AK-100, and still quite a bit of incendiary for the Vympels.
Since I took the LONGBOW carrier on this, let me show the aircraft interface.
It's pops up once you hit that arrow thing, a lot of folks don't even know it's there.
This is why you RTFM.
We have 6 light aircraft and 2 heavy aircraft. As you can see, the panel lists the number of "full loadouts"
for each weapon we have, rather than individual bombs and rockets.
The numbers are a bit different, because the bigger T-7 planes carry more.
Also, the light aircraft do not have the mounts for air-to-air missles at all.
Cannon is crap, not really good for anything, so our options are limited to unguided missles and 100kg bombs.
We'll check them out, but I'd rather not have the planes took our glory yet.
So, with sphincters all clenched, 'ere we go!
...
I barely had the time to post this. so if it looks a bit rushed, it was.
Let's do some fighting instead.
=============================
@CMDR baud, standby for orders
We need to secure access to mercenaries at NIMRUD
You are also cleared for use of laser guided munitions, proceed with field testing if convenient.
=============================
Minimal resistance. Looks like a good opportunity for target practice.
baud is greeted by a barrage coming from the ground.
Fuck off missle.
With the help of flares, the Zenith detonates harmlessly on the side.
Laser guided ammo all loaded up, ready to unload.
As you can see, we get a laser beam to guide the round, they will try to follow the marker under limited maneuvering capacity.
The enemy ship narrowly dodges the first salvo.
Second one connects in a magnificent explosion. The slogger is still able to send a love package in our direction.
Baud narrowly dodges it, it follows a wide arc just above us and explodes harmlessly to the left.
Pictured above: final laser-guided salvo quickly brings the other craft down.
==============================
CMDR baud post damage report:
Field testing of laser guided munitions completed successfully.
Observed higher destructive potential compared to standard issue HE warhead.
Potential pinpoint accuracy achieved with Laser guidance system.
Observed difficulty in course correction vs. mast movers at long range.
Suggestion: shorten engagement range against such targets.
==============================
You also earn yourself a promotion.
Turns out, that veteran engineer thing from last time is a dud. I compared the operating ranges,
and there's absolutely no difference before and after. Guess that's one more bug.
VETERAN PILOT - we already know this, 20% better maneuvering. I think we have enough maneuvering for now.
ROYAL GUARD - the description says the crew is "more resistant to hardships," probably something to do with morale, but vague as it is, I decide to skip it.
VETERAN GUNNER - promises quicker gun reloads. I'll take that.
Post combat battle inspection shows minimum damage.
And here's the a auxiliaries
If the local towelheads detest something, it's probably decent.
The Fenec pattern needs a bit of unfucking, two more engines, but it's a decent AA ship after a few hours of refit.
Lightning is one of the few designs that are decent straight out of the box.
All the positions for a fast interceptor are closed, but since its cheap I can just buy it and
remake into a third Whisper.
So, for a small sum of 42 000 and we get a strategic missle carrier with a set of nuclear missles to go with it.
What a country.
Next thing, we put ERYFKRAD to work.
TAFET is a shipyard facility, we don't have any pressing work to be done at the moment, but it's there up for grabs.
Minimal resistance met.
Commander, you are cleared to carry out testing of proximity munitions.
(I also keep forgetting you have bombs equipped)
It's all over really quick, the enemy takes off...
You dodge some ordnance,
The proximity round goes off
And the craft goes down.
Time to feed the other guy:
And that's that. New technology allowed me to capture the loading screen, it only shows for half a second.
Commander, your efforts haven't gone unnoticed.
EVER READY means you enter combat with guns fully loaded, so I'm picking it.
ROYAL GUARD we already know about, benefits are uncertain
VETERAN MEDIC reduces crew casualties. These happen when we get hit
in crew compartments. So far this hasn't happened.
Also, I'm not even sure if it does anything. The crew counts are all kinda there,
but I've yet to have any problems keeping the ships manned, or see any consequences for an undermanned ship.
Same goes for escape pods, no point in having them as far as I can tell.
Seems like it's one of those underdeveloped systems.
You can probably see the unfortunate pattern, some of the game's system seem a bit...vestigial.
Still, getting medals&recognition is cool, so...
In the meantime, tindrli was moved to a shipyard.
Dedicated facilities let us cut down from ~8 to 2 hrs repair time.
Standby to receive actual instruments of war, You'll soon be ready to fuck shit up, son.
All those sloggers we've been dropping earned us some molots, I think I can get my hands on four of those.
I'm contemplating adding those side thrusters. We'll see.
I sold the quad miniguns for the much needed +12 000 cash.
As you remember, we have enemy strike group OCEAN closing in at BOCHIM.
Let's do a bit of eavesdropping:
We have an ELINT 1 contact bearing 300
Then next one, bearing 330, the ELING blares out a DANGER CLOSE.
Our ETA at at BOCHIM is 0.6 HRS, I recall OCEAN reported speed was 130, means it'll be here in 4-5hrs.
I mark its current location.
baud's all restless, repaired-up and morale is just back up to seven.
so I'm sending you to do some more raiding.
Two sloggers, bah.
Cleared to test cluster munitions.
What luck, two missles incoming.
However, 130mm cluster failed to shoot them down.
Well, there's still flares.
Fight ends as predicted, however 130mm proximity are not nearly as good as 100 mm proximity.
Further testing required to be conclusive.
Rummaging through crew quarters yields us some more bling.
So it seems that the gifts coresspond to all the different affinities.
Minimal damage reported.
Going back to our strike group...
Lo and behold, 4.3 hours after we get an ELINT 3 readout directly at 270 degrees.
Implications are as follows - radio intel is confirmed as trustworthy.
Second thing, this means SHILOH is now open for attack.
Third thing, since we have them cornered, with no support from friendly forces,
time's good as any to bring this thing down.
I'm thinking, three frigates should be more than sufficient, but first we need to form up.
SHILOH is a good randezvous spot, being a fuel depot means we can get filled up, so I'm sending in Andnjord to clear it out.
Due diligence means we confirm no radar emissions with the second Whisper.
And that's Andjnord moving in.
It looks a bit weird, cause the map still marks the old data for OCEAN.
As far as I know, it's not possible to update it manually, it'll go away once we get a visual confirmation.
Anyways, it's just the garisson.
Not a lot of resistance, but that flower makes it a bit more interesting.
CMRD Andnjord is cleared to have some incendiary fun.
Quite a bit of ordnance going your way.
Vympels prove themselves decent at shooting down the missles.
You let incendiary to its job. It's taking its sweet time.
But the end results are rather pretty.
Yeah, that was fun, but you decide to put them down with 180mm. Nice and easy.
Nothing noteworthy in the salvage, minimal damage to hull.
I pull all the forces together
Final triangulation of the strike group location using two craft.
It's probably a bit off, but they're still here.
So, the plan is as follows, ERYFKRAD is a bit too far away to take part. You'll have your fun with the fleet HQ.
This leaves us with trindrli, baud and Andnjord to hunt the strike group.
Andnjord is the most armored, so he'll do most of the heavy lifting.
I check the stocks first:
17x 180mm laser guided isn't a lot, but will have to do.
Overall, not a lot of special ammo for the MK-2 battery.
But there's plenty of armor piercing for the AK-100, and still quite a bit of incendiary for the Vympels.
Since I took the LONGBOW carrier on this, let me show the aircraft interface.
It's pops up once you hit that arrow thing, a lot of folks don't even know it's there.
This is why you RTFM.
We have 6 light aircraft and 2 heavy aircraft. As you can see, the panel lists the number of "full loadouts"
for each weapon we have, rather than individual bombs and rockets.
The numbers are a bit different, because the bigger T-7 planes carry more.
Also, the light aircraft do not have the mounts for air-to-air missles at all.
Cannon is crap, not really good for anything, so our options are limited to unguided missles and 100kg bombs.
We'll check them out, but I'd rather not have the planes took our glory yet.
So, with sphincters all clenched, 'ere we go!
...
Last edited:
Andnjord
Arcane
spectre
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2008
- Messages
- 5,427
EPISODE 10: ON THE THRILL OF THE HUNT
As we're closing in on the target, I send two T-7s to scout. Good opportunity as any to test out some aircraft munitions.
Target located, they're parked right inside the city. As expected, there's some inherent inaccuracy to ELINT readouts, but it doesn't matter.
For those interested, aircraft speed iw 1260 kmh.
T-7s are closing in, we get some sneak peek at the targets. Two ships parked in the desert. Hard to make out the scale.
Rockets away.
And here they come for another pass.
Having expended their munitions, the aircraft withdraw.
Can't do a damage assessment through all the smoke, all I can say for certain is we did not have a kill.
As we move up, the strike group launches to the air to meet us.
They're ringing the alarm like mad.
(The picture says Krraloth because I have another group selected.)
And we clash...
ATTENTION: new enemy craft identified. Designation BOREY.
We have two such light cruisers, one damaged.
Preliminary analysis: heavily armored craft with big central fuel tank.
As far as armaments are concerned, I can see triple 130 mm, CIWS and at least two Zenith missles.
Weak points, speculative: approach from the bottom protected by single 130 mm cannon, massive fuel tank should obstruct the arc of fire.
However, all vital systems are located topside, protected by heavy armor plating.
The order of battle is decided.
tindrli goes in first, one of the boreys was damaged in the attack, with a bit of luck you can sneak a shit in the ammo compartment and blow it all to hell.
Andnjord is ready to step in with laser guided munitions if it becomes to hot. Cleared to use incendiaries, because why not.
baud is our third and final fighting line.
Tindrli spots the first BOREY lumbering at a distance. It's slow and wounded, yet stubbornly keeps to the high ground.
Where is the other one?
Proximity munitions incoming!
Dodged.
We also se some rounds coming from the other BOREY. There you are.
tindrli opens up with the quad 130mm.
Holy shit, missle!
A "helpful" popup appears.
I totally missed that Zenith, it came from the edge of the screen.
So, slowly burning up, 1/4 of the ship blown off, the officers give you a nervous glance.
Well, are we abandoning ship, commander?
Not today!
I said, not today!
What you probably can't see, the upper borey hovers close to the retreat marker,
tindrli needs to get close to it in order to withdraw and save the ship.
If that motherfucker doesn't move, it'll be eagint 130mm for breakfast, ram it if need be.
Through skillful piloting, he pulls the banged up frigate from the fight.
Andnjord steps in.
Vympels shoot down incoming missles, he sends off a 180mm care package towards the bottom BOREY.
But you need to eat your veggies first. get to the wounded one.
We have a well placed hit...
With which he drives the stake through its heart.
Now the other guy.
Damn, punching a hole in this thing takes work.
Pictured - the first borey slowly slumps towards the ground. I can see the ammo explosion took out the bridge, just as planned.
The other one managed to shoot down our guided munitions with proximity rounds.
Slowly the plating begins to yield...
And we drill towards the sweet spot.
Also, shit, I forgot to crop the next three. Can't be bothered to reupload.
Andnjord is up for a promotion. VETERAN GUNNER it is, cause I'm almost convinced this one works.
Would have to compare the videos
There's plenty of salvage to be had afterwards.
Post battle, we examine the destruction of SINAN.
20 hours to fix, we're gonna need some dedicated facilities.
Miraculously, the explosion didn't hurt the crew compartment, so actually there were no losses on our part
other than the engines.
Commendations are in order for excellent flying, commander.
Andnjord reports minimal damage.
Also, we have gotten something like 16 000$ worth of salvage out of this.
On the whole, that was a good hunt gentlemen.
Since baud is fresh, I relocate him up north to sate his bloodthirst.
You will notice- we made some noise. There's a red flag near BOCHIM, meaning the strike group reported out position and called for help.
There's also a general alarm on, which prevents us from doing silent strikes.
We could wait it out, or keep the ball rolling.
Sending in ERYFKRAD to capture the fleet HQ. Everyone deserves to have some fun.
En route, he encounters the BAIKAL convoy.
The game helpfully plots an intercept route.
It tries to turn tail and run, 423 speed vs. 117 means this race is pretty much decided.
ATTENTION new enemy craft encounter, designations: KASTOR, METEOR MK.3
So, that's a transport ship protected by a small escort. The meteor is a small, unarmored interceptor with dual AK-100, some missles and not much else.
I expect it to be rather agile, so not to underestimate it.
The kastor is basically a big armored tanker, but it does have some armaments. It's designated as a PRIZE SHIP, meaning once we take out the escort it's going to immediately surrender.
CMDR ERYFKRAD, that's a civilian vessel, try not to bump it too hard cause it's worth money.
Civilian craft my ass, straight off the bat the kastor unloads two missles...
One gets shot down by AK-100, the other detonates close by, the extended landing gear protects the engines from shrapnel.
And the Fucker launches yet another missle.
Evasive maneuvers!
Finally, you manage to nail the Meteor, killing the bridge.
Guess that's the equivalent of: boom, headshot.
More missles coming in, thankfully this combat is done and the screen fades to black.
The RIOT DANGER thing is due to the captured transport being at 0 morale.
Keep an eye out for him.
ERYFRKRAD reports minimal damage, it is decided to continue the assault on the fleet HQ in UZ.
The fucker slows us down to 117 kmh. Hauling ass back to TAFET would take too much time.
Turns out zero morale ships automatically join the enemy side.
Slightly disappointing for a fleet HQ, but an okay fight nonetheless. Almost fair.
The AKs drop a wall of lead, the missle won't get past.
The courageous is quickly dispatched and so is the slogger.
Time for a little Dances with Zeniths...
Shit, engines overheat. There's no dodging this.
One missle connects.
The fire alarm blares out, the entire section is quickly flooded with extinguishers.
Crisis averted.
And soon it's just us and the transport.
And there's plenty of shit to pick up afterwards.
But the most important part is...
Oh my.
So there actually are WMDs in Gerat.
That's quite a haul.
Also, only 5 hours of downtime for Tom Bombadil, I think you got off rather easy.
Also this:
As we land, the convoy is sold for 20 000$
The notification only appears for like half a second, so I didn't catch it on screen.
Well this one was a long fucking day, and it's not really done yet.
We managed to drop a strike group and liberated a small nuclear arsenal.
Now, all those long range missles are fun, but they won't do us much good without a launcher.
With this in mind, I'm getting us some auxiliaries, with all the goodies we scavenged, we should be able to afford it.
So, four launcher tubes, already filled with KH-15s. Cruise speed is terrible. This needs some work.
Not sure what was the reasoning here. It's long range artillery, it's not supposed to duke it out with other ships.
Still terrible even with all the armor stripped. I need to slap some extra engines on it, so that it at least matches the speed on the LONGBOW
cause I'm grouping them together as a long-range support group.
Hopefully you can appreciate that strike groups fights get rather intense, even against such a small one.
Convoy hunting is also good fun, but it works a bit better with a faster ship - the faster we go, the less time they have
to sound the alarm. It didn't matter this time, because everything's on high alert.
As we're closing in on the target, I send two T-7s to scout. Good opportunity as any to test out some aircraft munitions.
Target located, they're parked right inside the city. As expected, there's some inherent inaccuracy to ELINT readouts, but it doesn't matter.
For those interested, aircraft speed iw 1260 kmh.
T-7s are closing in, we get some sneak peek at the targets. Two ships parked in the desert. Hard to make out the scale.
Rockets away.
And here they come for another pass.
Having expended their munitions, the aircraft withdraw.
Can't do a damage assessment through all the smoke, all I can say for certain is we did not have a kill.
As we move up, the strike group launches to the air to meet us.
They're ringing the alarm like mad.
(The picture says Krraloth because I have another group selected.)
And we clash...
ATTENTION: new enemy craft identified. Designation BOREY.
We have two such light cruisers, one damaged.
Preliminary analysis: heavily armored craft with big central fuel tank.
As far as armaments are concerned, I can see triple 130 mm, CIWS and at least two Zenith missles.
Weak points, speculative: approach from the bottom protected by single 130 mm cannon, massive fuel tank should obstruct the arc of fire.
However, all vital systems are located topside, protected by heavy armor plating.
The order of battle is decided.
tindrli goes in first, one of the boreys was damaged in the attack, with a bit of luck you can sneak a shit in the ammo compartment and blow it all to hell.
Andnjord is ready to step in with laser guided munitions if it becomes to hot. Cleared to use incendiaries, because why not.
baud is our third and final fighting line.
Tindrli spots the first BOREY lumbering at a distance. It's slow and wounded, yet stubbornly keeps to the high ground.
Where is the other one?
Proximity munitions incoming!
Dodged.
We also se some rounds coming from the other BOREY. There you are.
tindrli opens up with the quad 130mm.
Holy shit, missle!
A "helpful" popup appears.
I totally missed that Zenith, it came from the edge of the screen.
So, slowly burning up, 1/4 of the ship blown off, the officers give you a nervous glance.
Well, are we abandoning ship, commander?
Not today!
I said, not today!
What you probably can't see, the upper borey hovers close to the retreat marker,
tindrli needs to get close to it in order to withdraw and save the ship.
If that motherfucker doesn't move, it'll be eagint 130mm for breakfast, ram it if need be.
Through skillful piloting, he pulls the banged up frigate from the fight.
Andnjord steps in.
Vympels shoot down incoming missles, he sends off a 180mm care package towards the bottom BOREY.
But you need to eat your veggies first. get to the wounded one.
We have a well placed hit...
With which he drives the stake through its heart.
Now the other guy.
Damn, punching a hole in this thing takes work.
Pictured - the first borey slowly slumps towards the ground. I can see the ammo explosion took out the bridge, just as planned.
The other one managed to shoot down our guided munitions with proximity rounds.
Slowly the plating begins to yield...
And we drill towards the sweet spot.
Also, shit, I forgot to crop the next three. Can't be bothered to reupload.
Andnjord is up for a promotion. VETERAN GUNNER it is, cause I'm almost convinced this one works.
Would have to compare the videos
There's plenty of salvage to be had afterwards.
Post battle, we examine the destruction of SINAN.
20 hours to fix, we're gonna need some dedicated facilities.
Miraculously, the explosion didn't hurt the crew compartment, so actually there were no losses on our part
other than the engines.
Commendations are in order for excellent flying, commander.
Andnjord reports minimal damage.
Also, we have gotten something like 16 000$ worth of salvage out of this.
On the whole, that was a good hunt gentlemen.
Since baud is fresh, I relocate him up north to sate his bloodthirst.
You will notice- we made some noise. There's a red flag near BOCHIM, meaning the strike group reported out position and called for help.
There's also a general alarm on, which prevents us from doing silent strikes.
We could wait it out, or keep the ball rolling.
Sending in ERYFKRAD to capture the fleet HQ. Everyone deserves to have some fun.
En route, he encounters the BAIKAL convoy.
The game helpfully plots an intercept route.
It tries to turn tail and run, 423 speed vs. 117 means this race is pretty much decided.
ATTENTION new enemy craft encounter, designations: KASTOR, METEOR MK.3
So, that's a transport ship protected by a small escort. The meteor is a small, unarmored interceptor with dual AK-100, some missles and not much else.
I expect it to be rather agile, so not to underestimate it.
The kastor is basically a big armored tanker, but it does have some armaments. It's designated as a PRIZE SHIP, meaning once we take out the escort it's going to immediately surrender.
CMDR ERYFKRAD, that's a civilian vessel, try not to bump it too hard cause it's worth money.
Civilian craft my ass, straight off the bat the kastor unloads two missles...
One gets shot down by AK-100, the other detonates close by, the extended landing gear protects the engines from shrapnel.
And the Fucker launches yet another missle.
Evasive maneuvers!
Finally, you manage to nail the Meteor, killing the bridge.
Guess that's the equivalent of: boom, headshot.
More missles coming in, thankfully this combat is done and the screen fades to black.
The RIOT DANGER thing is due to the captured transport being at 0 morale.
Keep an eye out for him.
ERYFRKRAD reports minimal damage, it is decided to continue the assault on the fleet HQ in UZ.
The fucker slows us down to 117 kmh. Hauling ass back to TAFET would take too much time.
Turns out zero morale ships automatically join the enemy side.
Slightly disappointing for a fleet HQ, but an okay fight nonetheless. Almost fair.
The AKs drop a wall of lead, the missle won't get past.
The courageous is quickly dispatched and so is the slogger.
Time for a little Dances with Zeniths...
Shit, engines overheat. There's no dodging this.
One missle connects.
The fire alarm blares out, the entire section is quickly flooded with extinguishers.
Crisis averted.
And soon it's just us and the transport.
And there's plenty of shit to pick up afterwards.
But the most important part is...
Oh my.
So there actually are WMDs in Gerat.
That's quite a haul.
Also, only 5 hours of downtime for Tom Bombadil, I think you got off rather easy.
Also this:
As we land, the convoy is sold for 20 000$
The notification only appears for like half a second, so I didn't catch it on screen.
Well this one was a long fucking day, and it's not really done yet.
We managed to drop a strike group and liberated a small nuclear arsenal.
Now, all those long range missles are fun, but they won't do us much good without a launcher.
With this in mind, I'm getting us some auxiliaries, with all the goodies we scavenged, we should be able to afford it.
So, four launcher tubes, already filled with KH-15s. Cruise speed is terrible. This needs some work.
Not sure what was the reasoning here. It's long range artillery, it's not supposed to duke it out with other ships.
Still terrible even with all the armor stripped. I need to slap some extra engines on it, so that it at least matches the speed on the LONGBOW
cause I'm grouping them together as a long-range support group.
Hopefully you can appreciate that strike groups fights get rather intense, even against such a small one.
Convoy hunting is also good fun, but it works a bit better with a faster ship - the faster we go, the less time they have
to sound the alarm. It didn't matter this time, because everything's on high alert.
spectre
Arcane
- Joined
- Oct 26, 2008
- Messages
- 5,427
CHAPTER 10 CONTINUED: MAKING NOISE
Baud's out raiding, we'll see if there's anything interesting at ISA.
Just a NAVARIN and COURAGEOUS. Small fry.
Good enough for an honor star.
Well well, so the crew are playing slavers?
Outrageous as it may be, it's a local custom. Who are we to judge.
I mean, how can we tell if we don't try it. Who knows, we might win some hearts and minds after all.
Picking up the third option drops our ORDER affinity, but we earn a good 10 000.
Let's examine the auxiliaries.
So this is basically an expensive, big ass radar ship.
These are useful. I'll get us one of those.
And a big ass tanker. Why they armor up these thigs is beyond me.
Mileage's so bad, half a fuel will be lost in transport.
More raiding by baud, he moves towards TUSHHAN
Similarly unremarkable fight.
Morale's getting low again, so time to let the men rest.
==========================
CMDR Krraloth, get ready to assume command.
Your objective is to secure the radar ARRAY in TARSHISH for our advance.
Your craft is not 100% functional, the MK-2 battery was installed, but
arranging dual vympels was problematic. Make do with one AK-100.
Fucking army half-logic. You wanted dual 57 mm, they don't have, but they think one 100mm will suffice,
because the math more or less checks out.
As you approach, you wander what awaits you during the first fight.
ATTENTION, new enemy craft spotted, designation BALLISTIC.
Looks like a souped-up NAVARIN, but with an unguided rocket launcher. Could be trouble.
CMDR Krraloth, you're cleared for incendiary fun.
They immediately open up, 6 rockets per salvo. Caught in a crossfire, you're forced to eat some,
but the armor still holds.
One goes down.
The courageos tries to get the high ground, but you teach it not to mess with 180mm.
Another rocket salvo headed your way...
Everything burns.
The BALLISTIC drops to the ground belching smoke and fire. You notive you're all out of incendiaries.
Something important just exploded.
As the rest of the force arrives at TARSHISH, we hear incoming contact on IRST.
I fucking dare you to read that circular dial in the lower left corner.
"Supposedly" the peaks indicate the location of the infrared signal, but it's all the same to me.
Well, at least we know something's coming.
I turn on the radar. Yep, it's there.
Convoy incoming, speed 95, must be something big. (unfortunately, I misplaced its designation)
No good options here, a fast craft would be ideal for this job, but best I can do is Andnjord.
Well well, actual combat craft this time.
You are cleared to use specialized munitions.
Knowing that Ballistic can be a pain in the ass, Andnjord sends it a care package.
Kill confirmed.
That INTREPID is pretty armored, so no sense wasting proximity rounds on it.
It's coming down, but it also left us with a rather sizeable hole.
Dangerously close to the bridge, but we can rebuild him!
TARSHISH will serve as a meeting point.
We need to discuss what to do next.
First, let's use some intel.
Aircraft carriers are reported up north.
And a bit more pressing thing, we have strike group VARYAG en route to UZ.
Baud's out raiding, we'll see if there's anything interesting at ISA.
Just a NAVARIN and COURAGEOUS. Small fry.
Good enough for an honor star.
Well well, so the crew are playing slavers?
Outrageous as it may be, it's a local custom. Who are we to judge.
I mean, how can we tell if we don't try it. Who knows, we might win some hearts and minds after all.
Picking up the third option drops our ORDER affinity, but we earn a good 10 000.
Let's examine the auxiliaries.
So this is basically an expensive, big ass radar ship.
These are useful. I'll get us one of those.
And a big ass tanker. Why they armor up these thigs is beyond me.
Mileage's so bad, half a fuel will be lost in transport.
More raiding by baud, he moves towards TUSHHAN
Similarly unremarkable fight.
Morale's getting low again, so time to let the men rest.
==========================
CMDR Krraloth, get ready to assume command.
Your objective is to secure the radar ARRAY in TARSHISH for our advance.
Your craft is not 100% functional, the MK-2 battery was installed, but
arranging dual vympels was problematic. Make do with one AK-100.
Fucking army half-logic. You wanted dual 57 mm, they don't have, but they think one 100mm will suffice,
because the math more or less checks out.
As you approach, you wander what awaits you during the first fight.
ATTENTION, new enemy craft spotted, designation BALLISTIC.
Looks like a souped-up NAVARIN, but with an unguided rocket launcher. Could be trouble.
CMDR Krraloth, you're cleared for incendiary fun.
They immediately open up, 6 rockets per salvo. Caught in a crossfire, you're forced to eat some,
but the armor still holds.
One goes down.
The courageos tries to get the high ground, but you teach it not to mess with 180mm.
Another rocket salvo headed your way...
Everything burns.
The BALLISTIC drops to the ground belching smoke and fire. You notive you're all out of incendiaries.
Something important just exploded.
As the rest of the force arrives at TARSHISH, we hear incoming contact on IRST.
I fucking dare you to read that circular dial in the lower left corner.
"Supposedly" the peaks indicate the location of the infrared signal, but it's all the same to me.
Well, at least we know something's coming.
I turn on the radar. Yep, it's there.
Convoy incoming, speed 95, must be something big. (unfortunately, I misplaced its designation)
No good options here, a fast craft would be ideal for this job, but best I can do is Andnjord.
Well well, actual combat craft this time.
You are cleared to use specialized munitions.
Knowing that Ballistic can be a pain in the ass, Andnjord sends it a care package.
Kill confirmed.
That INTREPID is pretty armored, so no sense wasting proximity rounds on it.
It's coming down, but it also left us with a rather sizeable hole.
Dangerously close to the bridge, but we can rebuild him!
TARSHISH will serve as a meeting point.
We need to discuss what to do next.
First, let's use some intel.
Aircraft carriers are reported up north.
And a bit more pressing thing, we have strike group VARYAG en route to UZ.
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