Daidalos Fleet is enjoying some R&R around Aerilon, the calm and toaster-free rural countryside helps bolster morale of both the crews and the locals.
Meanwhile the toasters engage Scorpia Fleet around Ophion, again.
Azira prepares for his second battle around the gas giant. Preliminary reports suggest the toasters are at a major disadvantage.
OPERATION OPHION
The enemy force consists only of Nemeses.
They are of course no match for the raw firepower of Azira's fleet. Our Manticore chases some cowardly Nemeses which are hacking it.
The chasing won't do much, Cylon hacking has rendered the fire control of the Hesley non-operation. The Virgon commander of the corvette curses this toaster treachery.
Running did them no good anyway, they can't outrun Vipers or missiles. Azira is now ready for promotion.
The battered Picon Fleet is too weak to engage most Cylon forces in Alpha. However Caprican DRADIS sensors detect a weak Cylon squadron approaching from the direction of Gemenon. Knowing all to well that these Cylons might later join-up with their much larger forces, MercantileInterest orders the fleet to engage.
While Picon Fleet prepares to jump to Gemenon, which BTW is an absurd waste of Tylium as Gemenon orbits a barycenter with Caprica so they could just fly there for free, I order a new Adamant.
Also Azira is promoted, Scorpia Fleet will now be capable of increasing its tonnage.
RAID AT GEMENON
This Cylon force is laughable.
Rapid toaster removal.
It seems now MercantileInterest can be promoted again.
The minor damage is quickly repaired at Caprica's orbital facilities.
Forgot to repair Scorpia fleet. Ophion is an uninhabited gas giant so the repair bill is higher.
Libran is a hive of scum and villainy, by which I mean this tropical world full of swamps is inhabited mostly by lawyers and bankers working for intercolonial institutions such as the Colonial Court or the Colonial Bank or the tax-dodging corporations that moved their HQs here.
Scorpia fleet got a free jump again so the lawyers and banksters of Libram will be reassured of Colonial Fleet's capability. Azira and the crew of his flagship are set to hit some snob bars and liven the place up with good old crude humour and bar brawls between naval officers and the locals.
While Azira's diplomatic skill proved to be effective against the suits of Libran, the toasters used this occasion to besiege Scorpia with one of their bigger fleets. For now we will ignore them, every bit of tylium not spend on jumps is tylium we can use to pay for Battlestar construction.
Time for our first Broken Alliance expansion mission.
BROKEN ALLIANCE I - CELESTRA
"
Even the warhawks from Boskirk and Luminere didn't want to pick a fight over Aquaria. It was far, cold, and with barely any landmass at all. What was the point in controlling a frigid ball of water when even random debris floating around between the colonies contains more useful resources than Aquaria? So it was left abandoned and empty, just like that, despite the habitability. Then some utopian scientists got an idea, since everyone else considers it worthless they can do whatever they want there with no risk of subjugation from Virgon and Leonis. Now you have 75 thousand scientists, delusional idealists and plain nut-jobs living in or around Heim. They have no currency relying on barter and the people vote on everything, including the banishment of undesirables."
- "The Cold Summer: a tale of Summerfest and Aquarians", an article published in "The Caprican" prior to Kyros Summerfest
Apparently there is some corporate asset that's getting unwanted Cylon attention.
The eggheads of Aquaria seem to be concerned more with tourist numbers than toasters. In any case the ship might be useful.
This is our target. Why it is here is a mystery, maybe we will find out later in the BA campaign.
Apparently faced with murderous robots the Quorum did not bother to ban AI yet. Politicians are useless as always. Either that or it is another spat between Caprica which is to blame for the Cylons and the rest of the colonies.
This is a fairly important bit story-wise because it shows you how early in the First Cylon War we currently are in. This and the presence of effective electronic warfare show you this is before the colonials ditched advanced computer tech due to fear of Cylon hacking.
The Celestra is floating around to the right of our position. The cyclons are more or less equally distant from our fleet and it.
The ship itself is something we will be able to build later on. It is a support ship, it can add extra plating to a ship using its drones or it can restock missiles. Only guided missiles it seems, maybe we can outfit it with other munitions later? There is now an extra 8th support slot (normally the max is 7 ships in a fleet) which the Celestra or the Daidalos can occupy. Without it the Daidalos was even more of a liability than it is (due to being a torp magnet made of paper) as it took one slot from a proper warship. The devs seemed to have fixed that and also made the Daidalos bonuses (when anchored at a Colony) better/more varied to give players incentive to use it in fleets.
Previously as Cylons also stopped deploying small fleets very quickly, having the Daidalos at anywhere but Ragnar was just suicide as it would attract a doomstack which would pound it with missiles or guns. Cylons can't jump to Ragnar as its radiation interferes with their electronics, so it is a safe haven to park Daidalos later on.
This is the first defend mission we get and the course of action is simple - boost thrusters and cut off the Cylons from the target. Focus anything that gets too close to the Celestra. There are also secondary missions that have similar objectives.
I knew 3 contacts seemed to be little, turns out two of the frakers are Revenants. Load the missile tubes!
Frak! Of course the toasters send more ships while we engage those already present.
The first Revenant lost all frontal armor and is about to get hit with some guided missiles. Now we have that other Revenant and the Talon to worry about.
The toaster reinforcements seem to be two ships, one of which is a carrier. Of course they're going after the Celestra so I send vipers away from strafing Revenants and after the unknown squadron.
The firepower of the remaining Revenant takes its toll on one of the Adamants.
tindrli orders it to pull back. The Talon will go down it seems.
At the same time the Manticore which was sent to support the Celestra and scout the contacts discovers they are just a Talon and a Cerastes.
Two other Adamant start disengaging from the Revenant. Without a missile salvo ready for launch it takes Adamants a lot of time to destroy these Cylon warships with their light guns.
Meanwhile the one that got hit too much first is in range of the Celestra, lets use those drones for some ad hoc repairs.
The drones need to fly to it first though, the toaster vessel is very close to finishing off our Adamant.
Luckily the fire from Berserk medium guns solved that problem. The Celestra is also safe now and if I recall correctly the Cerastes starting running while our fleet started pounding the Talon. The Raiders which were sent after our objective were shot down.
A very close call, drones will reinforce the side facing the remaining cylons, although they are far.
The drones to their job and we more plating. I guess the real boon of this is that they also repair it back to +20 when it is being attacked, acting like regeneration. Not sure how fast they do it, but it could be useful for tanking in multiplayer and also in this campaign.
Also I wonder if the Celestras grant free repair points like the Daidalos.
On the same turn the Cerastes and the Talon get blown up. A great day for freedom from toaster-initiated apocalypse.
The 3 adamants took a beating, especially the Kirthar. This a taste of what will happen once Cylons start deploying revenants regularly, it will hurt and we will lose ships. Assuming the devs did not frak up the difficulty when giving the Cylons production limits and changing the fleet caps.
We get the resources, some new ships finish building (guess which) and a new secondary mission appears at this dead rock to the left of Aerilon the name of which I forgot.
Aquaria Fleet is formed,
lightbane takes command.
An enemy fleet is stationed at Aerilon, our new ships can jump for free and lightbane needs experience. Guess what we do next?
Unlock viper mk. II squadrons.
Spend the new cash on new ships including our third Artemis.
And now we strike.
STRUGGLE FOR AERILON
lightbane gets the honor of commanding our first two battlestars in this live fire test in addition to the new Adamant. The targets will be some cylon buckets floating around.
The toasters don't like the idea so they fire torpedoes at us.
Frak, shit is close and we can't shoot down all those torps even with the 5 viper squadrons I assigned to defend this Admant.
Missed!
Here you can see just how fast are torpedoes. The Cylon guided missiles launched at the same time are one turn behind. Our vipers will deal with them, hopefully.
New shiny toasters jump in.
It is another Nemesis, it executes its hack and run program. Hacking is very good against battlestars in particular. Firewall strength is independent of ship size. The problem the Cylons have with using it is that the Nemesis dies very fast unless it stays out of the battlestars firing arcs.
Without support from larger ships Cylon hacking is not that much of a threat.
Guess who earned a promotion about which I forgot. Shit skill, unless it also affects boarding parties the flagship can send out on Raports.
Azira has had it with these motherfraking toasters around motherfraking Scorpia. He breaks the nose of one last Libran banker in a bar brawl and takes a raptor ride from Themis back to his flagship. The fleet prepares to jump.
First however lets look at the current status. We cannot help Beta anyway, Alpha looks surprisingly good considering how many toasters fly through there.
Azira has some advantage, lets see what the cylons have.
BATTLE OF SCORPIA
The toasters have 3 carriers, 3 wings of strikecraft and 4 unknown other ships. By the pointpool we can guess those are talons with either more nemeses or cerasteses. Can the toaster field something heavier finally?
The Hesley scouts the cylons with some support from vipers.
The Hesley retreats not to draw fire from talon broadsides. Its commander is once again cursing at the toasters hacking his systems.
Azira's fleet is farily fragile as he only commands two Adamants. Berserks as you already know have little armor, so they need to avoid drawing fire. Still, by using Adamants defensively and with good positioning we should be able to avoid losses.
That nemesis chased the Hesley quite fiercely. Well, it can't chase it now can it?
Free of his nemesis *badum tish* the Hesley's commander, unfazed by the pounding his ship received to its side armor and internal structure, issues a command. "Alright chaps, lets make use of that frontal armour we have. Aim straight for that chrome bugger, full speed."
"Oh no you bloody bucket, either you go down or we both go down. Keep firing men! I can see the fear in its eyes!"
Also one of our Adamants took a beating. The other one is the flagship Bern, so I need to be careful now.
"Tally ho to robot hades you go!" - the commander cheers.
As you can see it was not easy and the damage is considerable. I am still shocked the Hesley survived.
Azira gets another level up.
Despite being stationed at Scorpia the damage is expensive to repair. Still better than building new ships.
Azira gets a meh flagship skill. If it applied to all ships, it would be better. I guess it is useful if we need to dodge torps.
And now for some major regrouping. We need to reinforce Picon Fleet, Alpha is crawling with more toaster than a kitchen appliance store. The new ships just built and a Battlestar from Aquaria fleet will join Picon fleet.
First however we need to jump them to a rendezvous point.
Frak! I feared this might happen. Of course both dead rocks are crawling with Cylons we don't see (they are after all far between the stars of Cyrannus). Gortyn has one fleet, Knossos to which Picon Fleet jumped has two!
ACTION STATIONS! SET CONDITION ONE THROUGHOUT THE FLEET!
STRUGGLE FOR GORTYN
Of course Aquaria Fleet has two Artemis class battlestars so this should go smoothly.
Vipers launched, time to scrap toasters.
Aboard Codexia lightbane is staring at the DRADIS screens looking for more easy exp gain.
Very boring battle, I did not need to retreat anything.
Flawless victory.
Luckily for us it was our fleet jumping to an enemy position so we only have to face one fleet this turn and by pure luck it is the smaller one.
SKIRMISH OVER KNOSSOS
Picon Fleet has seen the biggest losses so far in the war. Despite the multiple repairs, its flagship "Eos" has a scorch-marked hull which the crew likes to jokingly call "ship make-up".
The cylons fire their missiles, but it seems something has gone amiss.
From the replay:
Yeah, that Cerastes got lightly sodomized by friendly missiles. Unfortunately that side is unlike to face Picon Fleet's guns and the internals are still intact.
The toaster fleet is a pair of nemeses and a pair of cerasteses. These get really boring now...
All of this has happened before and all of this will happen again.
Begone bore-ship.
That other larger Cylon fleet at Knossos is just chilling there near our own fleet.
In any case we need to repair our ships.
Considering how piss easy those fights were, I am not sure if that would warrant a promotion.
We don't want to wait around with just 4 adamants against what is probably a 7 ship Cylon fleet. Picon Fleet pays the tylium fee and jumps to Gortyn.
The Codexia is transferred to Picon Fleet.
Luckily for us a mission appears at Saggitaron in Gamma. One of the fleets will engage it after FTL drives finish spooling. Missions are a much better way of earning tylium than babysitting colonies. Also we need more RP for Rangers and future ships.
That Cylon fleet from Knossos is not willing to let Picon Fleet go, it jumps to Gortyn.
"If they want Picon Fleet they shall have Picon Fleet" - says MercantileInterest.
Action stations!
ATTACK ON GORTYN
Actually it was a 6 ship fleet. Still two more than Picon Fleet had.
This time the Cylon fleet is all about broadsides and firepower. Then again the toasters should know better than to to bring a Cerastes to a Battlestar fight.
Speaking of which some Cerasteses are disengaging. Instead of stupidly chasing them the fleet focuses on the slower Talons.
However the Osiris also needs to disengage, or it will be its last battle (I honestly wonder how long will that ship live in this LP).
The Cerasteses try to stay at long range, their small guns are annoying but not as deadly as those on the Talons. Osrisi makes a 180 degree turn to face the toasters with its yet undamaged plating.
Apparently the Codexia lost a full viper wing, and those were Viper mk IIs I paid for. Frak.
Meanwhile the situation onboard the Osiris looks grim. Fires rage in some sections while others are exposed to the void of space. The commander of the Osiris orders a retreat at full speed away from the Talons.
The toasters smell blood (or Tylium, who knows) and chase the Osiris. The Codexia along with the rest of the fleet move to intervene. Bros don't leave bros for toasters to kill bro.
Picon Fleet protects its own
The Osiris flees in time. The crew losses are heavy but the ship will continue to fly and fight.
MercantileInterest can now command more ships.
With supply lines so long and the damage so extensive, the cost of repairing the Osiris while still near Gortyn is extremely prohibitive.
A decision is made to only repair the other ships. The Osiris will join Aquaria fleet and jump back with them to Daidalos in Delta for repairs. An Adamant from Aquaria Fleet joins Picon Fleet in its place.
A weak Cylon fleet besieges to Saggitaron. Azira needs more exp, he goes after them.
But of course once Scorpia Fleet could jump for free the toasters jump to Gortyn!
RAID AT GORTYN
A laughable trio of toasters shows the Cylon tactical code is shit. Picon Fleet sends Vipers directly after them and forms a wall of fire.
Goddamn shitty easy battles! I could swear the last time I played this also on Admiral difficulty I had Cylon fleets 50% larger than mine spawn all the time, with Revenants and one other ship I hate to face.
Meanwhile the traitorous government of Canceron becomes the third Colony to currently resign from the quorum going as far as to host Cylon guests in their parliament. The other traitors, Picon, use this event to bolster their nefarious "pro-peace" narrative via the Picon News Service state media corporation.
Cain is furious, we are ordered to deal with this mess. We go after the second BA mission, which happens to be on Canceron.
Daidalos Fleet is ready.
By pure coincidence the plot around this mission revolves around dubious Canceran activities, which is kind of awesome.
The rewards are just tylium and RP, but I think I need to do this mission anyway to have the next story mission appear. Also RP is good to have anyway and there are at least two other blueprints that are made available via BA missions, one of which we really want to get (hint: its something both the vanilla version of this game and of the BSG board game was missing but expansions added it).
The fuckers let toasters do gods-know-what in Canceran orbital prisons. Either that or those Celestra deckhands were the Canceran equivalents of rural america billy-bob johnsons claiming the greys anal probed him.
Intel still tells us that Cylon ships have been in the area while Cancerons government did not inform Colonial Fleet of any such events.
Of course in light of Canceron actually leaving the quorum this makes sense. But the writers assumed that would not be the case as you will see soon.
"
You take a tour of Argentum Bay Harbour City district or of the Prommos Casino Street, you think this place is paradise. Then you take a taxi through the slums and you see what Canceron really is, a place where the rich imperialists rule and the poor die."
- "Revolutionary's Memoirs" by Adam Veste of the Saggitaron "Tawa Tigers" rebel group.
BROKEN ALLIANCE 2 - PRISON STATION
This mission requires raptors. Well, one raptor squadron, but I will deploy two just in case. We have Daidalos here so we have two extra squadrons anyway. Raptors are used in the campaign to board objectives. Also we will use them for some new offensive action they are capable of as of the last patch.
Apparently a Canceran Adamant guarding the prison is stranded here. This is actually an extra ship for use in this mission, it also comes with a raptor squadron just in case.
The other reason why Raptors are recommended, minefields. Mines were added in the first DLC, there are multiple types. Raptors can disarm them. I think they only work against capital ships, not sure how. I never used them as I only got that DLC along with the expansion on Tuesday.
The prison adamant already found some mines. I launch the raptors. There are two ships between it and the prison.
Daidalos Fleet fields our new battlestar (not yet renamed) in this mission. It also finds more mines. Four toasters are on approach including one carrier.
The raptors of Daidalos fleet were also launched, as there is no Cerastes in sight and we definitely have (or will have) space superiority over Cylon strikecraft, I send them to disarm some mines so we can better manoeuvrer around these toasters.
The toasters deployed Heavy Raiders. Heavy Raiders are boarding craft and they will no doubt try to board our battlestar or some other ship. If the boarding party is not repelled by marines on board, they will destroy all the ships subsystems after which they can damage the CIC. Once they take over the CIC they trigger a self-destruction of the ship.
Obviously we want to shoot these frakers down.
Also two can play the boarding game now. Colonial raptors, since the last patch, can board hostile ships. Unlike Cylon centurions, Colonial marines come with EMP charges and disrupt Cylon electronics, which means that just boarding the Cylon ship makes it less effective even without doing any subsystem damage. This is probably because when colonial ships are boarded you are forced to set posture to defensive, otherwise the boarding party will win. Cylons do not have posture, they have processing power which works differently (to be honest I never quite got how it worked).
It seems we go the attention of the Canceran defense ministry.
For once Cain bitches at somebody else, it seems to have worked.
Turns out the first unidentified ship our marines boarded was a talon. Its broadsides get an accuracy penalty. They have more centurions on board than we do marines, but hopefully the ship will be blown up before our marines are killed.
This time around the toasters seem to have just one Revenant and nothing as heavy, odd. I would expect this mission to have tougher toasters. Also it turned out it was an unidentified contact the other raptor was going to board. Lucky us!
However the ships positions are all over the place and essentially we have no formation. tindrli tries to make sense of this chaos and splits his ships to fire on 2 targets while the missiles are focused on the Revenant.
It seems the phone call latency from orbit to the ministry is rather high. In any case Wenutu seems to want to get rid off us. Shit smells more foul than a Canceran slum.
I think I know why Wenutu let go of the issue. We will see if we see more of her in the campaign.
Facing broadside fire from our sole Artemis in this engagement and with colonial marines wrecking havoc aboard it, the Revenant was destroyed.
The prison adamant is under attack from the two cylon ships to the left of the engagement zone (this game really needs a compass). Armor is holding. Also it needs to dodge a mine, I avoided it by lowering elevation and doing a hard turn right.
With the Revenant gone Cylon opposition was easily destroyed. Vipers saved the prison Adamant from a Nemesis and Cerastes.
I am eager to hear what the toasters were doing with those prisoners...
So these two have history, I guess that makes Quaid Canceran.
Really easy, I guess the devs were hoping the mines will be more challenging but there is no need to rush in.
In other news morale is falling across the colonies because the bulk of the fleet is stationed in interstellar space.
Tauron is likely to defect, I am shocked it did not to so sooner. SIGINT bitches about the Osiris. Also there is a new story mission available at Aerilon (finally).
For dealing with the shady dealing of Canceron our war chest got a sizeable increase of tylium. Time to spend it on another battlestar.
Technically we could unlock the Celestra but I rather get the Ranger first.
Picon Fleet will jump back to Alpha by going through Gamma and Cocalus. Its first stop is saving Saggitaron from Cylons. The saggitarans might be backwards yokels but at least they are not chrome.
A few turns worth of Tylium is always good.
STRIKE FLEET - HELIOS GAMMA, SAGGITARON
Six ships with two wings of strikecraft versus our Battlestar Codexia and 4 Adamants. The Cylons better have brought something heavier.
Of course they didn't. Vipers engage the Raiders. The Talon eats some missiles.
They manage to damage the Selene but it disengages and our wall of fire has sights on the closest talon.
FRAK! The last of the toasters is going for a ramming attempt directed at Codexia!
Codexia barely dodges it, MercantileInterest orders missiles to be fired.
Hostiles down, Saggitaron can now sleep safely knowing its citizens will die not of cylons but of basic curable diseases because they believe in faith healing, the ingrates.
The Selene was badly damaged but because the Cylons keep fielding light ships they lack the long range firepower to finish off the Adamants.
Delta and Gamma seem to be under control, with Canceron retuning to the quorum, officially. I have no idea what Wenutu is plotting. Alpha will go to hell without intervention and I should get back there soon. It has four colonies after all. At the moment only Picon sucks up to the toasters so overall the situation is ok. We need more fleets.
Aquaria fleet meets up with Daidalos. Either the presence of the Daidalos or the fact it is orbiting a Colony makes the Osiris' repair cost go down by 75% it seems.
Finally we get the Ranger. I just realised adamants are frigates not cruisers, derp.
Still, thanks to the recent completion of the Saggitaron mission, Colonial Fleet can afford another Artemis.
Meanwhile the new Artemis which was involved in the Canceran Prison mission get a new name. It will serve as Azira's flagship, as his fleet is the only one lacking a battlestar now. tindrli will get the Artemis currently being built.
tindrli also gets a promotion. I think CIC buffs give more maximum posture which makes them actually very good.
MercantileInterest meanwhile is better at drilling marines. Maybe he should start fielding raptors.
Cylons seems to have shifted gears up. There is a 4600 point fleet at Tauron. The plan is now to move Picon Fleet to take care of those toasters in Alpha. At the same time Daidalos will go after the next story mission as soon as the new Artemis finishes and FTL drives are spooled. Scorpia fleet will meet midway between Gamma and Delta with their new flagship.
Battles were rather shit but I picked one anyway, that would be our elimination of the Cylon strike force at Saggitaron:
(but not doing anything
). 
for this LP!
That fleet was a pushover although the Codexia did get hit a bit.
