Captains Blog

768-05-09 23:40

Dear Diary,

Failed to capture two Shuri-class carriers since my last entry, but learned a few things from it.  After capturing the Agamemnon, I cruised around the pirate sectors near Loomanckstrat’s Legacy, doing missions, generally just relaxing.  Tried a patrol mission over in Black Hole Sun with a Thresher… discovered the Thresher is absolutely terrible at killing corvettes with the loadout I’ve got – can’t hit them with the ion cannons due to the cannon placement and spread, and the flak weapons aren’t really strong enough.  Anyway, the pirate base closest to my booze and weed complex offered to hack one of the Loomanckstrat stations for cheap, so I can buy incendiary bomb launchers from them now, and they had enough in stock to fill up all of the IBL mounts on my Agamemnon.

I’ve also built a new complex in Spring of Belief and picked up a Hyperion.  I’ll eventually build Paranid equipment there, but for now it’s just making crystals.

Anyway, building a new complex always puts a big dent in my account, so I decided to go hunt some Yaki Shuris, and to try out my Agamemnon.  I had a Mistral collect a bunch of Phased Shockwave Generators, a special Paranid capital ship weapon, which the Agamemnon can use in every single gun mount.  I had enough to fill every one that didn’t have an IBL in it, so I thought I’d try using it. I figured the PSGs, which are short range area effect weapons, would clobber the fighters once I got close enough, and the IBLs would knock down half the Shuri’s shields before I had to retreat.

Well, this is what happened:

I didn’t notice at the time because I was lining up on the fighters, but the Shuri hit 50% shields before it moved past my forward view. So, failed to catch that one because it got obliterated. Eight forward PSGs are way, way overkill on any kind of fighters… two to four is probably all that I’d need to one-shot most fighters. I swung north and took on a Yaki destroyer with this set up, and killed it in a single pass with the IBLs and forward PSGs. Crazy.

Shortly after pulling out, I got a notification that another Shuri took out my satellite in Weaver’s Tempest. I still wanted to catch one, so I reconfigured the Agamemnon to use PSGs in all turrets. I didn’t have enough to completely fill the turrets, so I put two in each turret, three in the main battery, and a pair of flak artillery arrays in each turret that supported it. That would give me maximum fighter killing power (though I could still probably waste the Shuri by accident if the fight went on too long), with all turrets set to ‘attack fighters’ to minimize the chance of killing the Shuri.

At 1:25 you can watch how quickly just three PSGs turns fighters into scrap. And then disintegrates the scrap.

As you can see, it all worked quite well, except that when I got around to scanning the Shuri, I saw the dreaded Internal Sentry Lasers show up. I switched to the Hyperion to see how it performs against a carrier, and I must say it does quite well. The HEPT in the forward turrets combined with CIGs in the main battery makes for a colorful and effective anti-capital, anti-fighter, anti-everything loadout. I didn’t really want to spend the rest of the night burning away with Ion Disruptors hoping the sentry lasers would short out, so I just blasted away. Between the two carriers and the destroyer I did come away with several million credits worth of capital ship weapons (including more IBLs), so it wasn’t a waste of time by any stretch.

The Aggy is definitely my best brawler; none of my other ships come close to its destructiveness at close range, and it has the thickest shields of any ship I own, too. In an actual fleet battle, I probably would not use the PSGs, though – too likely to destroy my own ships. Not sure what I’d use in the gun mounts that can’t use flak or IBLs, though. Probably just missile defense in the back and HEPT or something in the front, and replace IBLs with flak as needed to repel fighters.

768-05-09 16:58

Dear Diary,

I’ve spent the past hour or two searching for one of the elusive Paranid Hyperion Vanguard prototypes, cruising through Paranid space and deploying additional satellites to get better sensor coverage of Paranid sectors.  And dealing with the occasional pirate attack on my complex in Heaven’s Assertion.  I think I annoyed them when I rampaged through that last pirate fleet.  I must have encountered a Hyperion before; my Encyclopedia has recorded its stats.  It is one of the fastest and most maneuverable corvettes I’ve encountered.  It has the heaviest shields, at a full 1GJ, nearly frigate-class.  It has 18 total gun mounts, 8 in the main forward battery and 10 divided between four turrets.  I has a big 625 MW laser generator.  It has up to 3333 cargo space – I don’t think I have any corvettes that break 1000.  Amazing ship.  Add to that its ability to dock two fighters, and I’m thinking I could use this not just as a fantastic combat corvette, but as a replacement for the Pleco as my personal yacht.  The only advantage the Pleco has is that is can hold four fighters instead of two, but I generally only use the Kestrel and Mamba myself, occasionally the Blastclaw to pick up cargo, and I can use the Pleco itself for that, separately!

Apparently, the money intended to start mass-production of the Hyperion was diverted to some jumpgate project, so only the prototypes exist, and they’re not for sale.  Obviously, I’m going to have to steal one.

It took me a while to track one down.  Eventually, while flying west through Perdition’s End, I spotted one moving through Paranid Prime on my satellite network.  Although stealing a Paranid corvette from under the noses of a pair of destroyers and the whole Paranid homeworld defense fleet might make for a good story, if I were still around to tell it, I probably wouldn’t be able to get my prize out of the sector in one piece.  I ordered my Dragon to follow it so that I wouldn’t lose track of it.  It appears to be on a patrol route heading for a jump gate, so it may eventually get to a more lightly defended sector.  While I’m checking that region of Paranid space for good ambush locations, I notice a Paranid Agamemnon frigate in front of me, headed for the pirate sector of Desecrated Skies.  Now, the Agamemnon was another casualty of the Paranid jumpgate project; only prototypes exist.  It isn’t as amazing compared to other frigates as the Hyperion is to other corvettes, but it is a very solid frigate with strong shields and good turrets, if I can get enough of the appropriate weapons together to fill it.  And it only has a single Paranid Medusa heavy fighter as escort.

I ordered my frigates and Skiron ahead into Desecrated Skies, while I followed the Agamemnon in my Kestrel to make sure it goes where I expect.  After that was a fairly standard boarding op, made somewhat easier by the fact that the target’s captain was not expecting a huge barrage of missiles and boarding pods from the rear, and that almost all of his turrets were filled with heavy weapons not suited for shooting down boarding pods.  My Paranid reputation did take a small hit, but we were in a pirate sector, so it’s likely that no one in the Paranid government really knows what happened.  I judged the firepower needed to allow a successful boarding op closely enough that the ship wasn’t damaged from the outside, and since my marines are all highly trained in engineering, there was no damage on the inside, either.  If anyone asks, I’ll just tell them that we found the ship drifting, and when we boarded it, found all the crew dead due to a shipwide contamination of the air supply from the ship’s fuel system.

The ship is now heading back through the north gate to the equipment dock in Perdition’s End.  I’ll have some gear delivered to it there.  Once I buy a Split Panther, which is a frigate class carrier that can hold over 30 fighters, and maybe a Split Tiger, which is a very powerful though not heavily shielded frigate, I’ll have covered pretty much all the major capital ship roles frigates can manage.

768-05-09 Later that day

Dear Diary,

Took my thresher out to engage the Zeus defending Duke’s Citadel.  Unfortunately, Duke had launched another four corvettes to defend it, and hitting a corvette with a bank of ion cannons that a couple corvettes could fit between is, well, hard.  The Thresher’s shields are only average for a frigate, and I jumped it out before all those high energy plasma throwers, concussion impulse generators, and photon pulse cannons from the Zeus could get in range.

The Vidar is pretty much my most effective corvette against heavy fighters and up, thanks to the EMPCs and MAMLs and its all-round good speed, maneuverability, and shields, but the heavy nemesis was still close by and is also very effective against corvettes.  I ripped up the pirate corvettes out of the carrier’s effective heavy weapon range, running west from the gate, and gave the carrier a good strafing run as I jumped back out to switch to the Thresher.  Not that the strafing run did anything significant.

I flew the Thresher in, followed by my Skiron.  The Zeus was heading straight for the gate.  I closed with it, coming to a stop at the edge of Ion Cannon range, and cut loose.  The Thresher only had enough energy to fire one fully charged blast followed by a few more uncharged volleys, but this was enough to completely obliterate the Zeus’s shields and bring its hull down to 80%.  The Thresher was also quick and nimble enough to swing around and accelerate up to full speed and get me over to the Skiron.  And incidentally take out the surviving fighters with its turrets.

After a few strafing runs with hepts to knock the shields back down (and to knock out a corvette that had come from somewhere), I found a place behind that tower on the Zeus where I could slide my Skiron where the Zeus could only hit me with a couple bits of flak.  Its job was to fry all those nasty anti-boarding systems off with its ion cannons, and ideally enough weapons to give my boarding pods a clear shot, then keep the shields low enough so that the marines don’t get fried by them.  All the ship systems and its right side flak turrets went down, so I got my Sirokos in and lured the Zeus around to face its right side towards the gate.  It never had a chance to shoot down my pods, and one more strafing run brought the shields low enough long enough for the marines to get in.  They fought their way through all five decks with no casualties.

The carrier is heading towards the shipyard to be sold.  It’s not a bad ship, but repairing the damage from my Thresher would be very expensive, and I want to build a factory complex in Spring of Belief that will cost about 150 million.

768-05-09 14:31

Dear Diary,

I left a satellite above the Yaki shipyard a ways to keep an eye on things and went off to pirate some more pirates – Duke’s Buccaneers, in this case.  Duke’s HQ has two Paranid Zeus carriers defending it, which would be tempting targets to board if not for the hull polarization, sentry lasers, and core encryption systems which would make boarding them virtually impossible without frying those systems off with ion weapons.  I’d hate to get interrupted in the middle of that and have to spend a bunch more missiles battering down its shields, and while I suppose all of my corvettes together could do a reasonable job of it with hit and run, that seems risky with just AI controlling most of them, what with the lack of self-preservation programming in Commonwealth combat routines.

Engaging the defending corvettes in Duke’s with my heavy nemesis was excellent though – they went down in about ten seconds each to my concussion impulse generators.  Drains my whole weapon battery taking one out, but the turbo booster gives me plenty of time to recharge between targets.

Anyway, I purchased a Boron Thresher to give me some real ship-killing power.  The Thresher is an unusual M7 frigate.  Most M7 frigates are more like minidestroyers – armed with heavy frigate-class weapon turrets all over.  The Thresher is more like a megacorvette.  It’s turret coverage is kinda poor and mostly hold anti-fighter weapons or corvette weapons, but it has a massive forward battery with ten weapon mounts that hold destroyer-class weapons, including Photon Pulse Cannons and Ion Cannons.  I’m undecided how I’m going to split it – might go with ten ions and just keep a few PPCs in the hold.  They waste a lot of space, but work much better than Ions against hull.

No sooner do I get its defensive turrets filled from my Ore Belt complex than Yaki heavy fighters emerge from the north gate and head right for my factories!  I wasn’t sure how well it would handle fighters, especially without being at full shields yet (my 1GJ shields are at the Boron complex).  I underestimated the thing, though, and realized something about the Thresher I had overlooked – it is actually pretty damn fast for a frigate, and turns pretty well too.  Before I could get into effective range with my corvette, the Thresher had swung down from my complex, turned its flak arrays towards the three Yaki fighters, and beat the shit out of them.  I guess it probably can’t handle a big swarm of fighters all that quickly, but I don’t think I have to worry about any fighter wings smaller than a half dozen heavies.

768-05-09 11:56 AM

Dear Diary,

I’m still cruising around Yaki space, picking fights.  Destroyed the other IBL forge.  Captured another Shuri, shown here near an Argon shipyard, ready for sale.  Ugh, ugly.  I’ve got an Akuma class destroyer hunting me now… not a bad destroyer for fighter shredding, much better than a pirate brigantine… a little ugly, but kinda neat looking in its ugliness.  A tempting target, at any rate, though I would hate to have to find that many IBLs to arm it for anti-capship duty.

P.S.:   I couldn’t seem to find any vulnerable spots to sneak boarding pods in on the Akuma, at least not without getting REAL close – much closer than I want to bring any of my ships to a destroyer.  It worked out though – after I destroyed the Akuma, I was able to recover five of its Incendiary Bomb Launchers!  That’s a pretty good start towards arming a frigate.  Got four of some kind of medium Ion weapon, too.

768-05-09 09:48 AM

Dear Diary,
It’s been a few days since I made an entry, hasn’t it? I’ve added more TLs to my construction fleet, a few new factories scattered around manufacturing trade goods, a new megacomplex operating in Ore Belt, and several new ships to my fleet. I’ve even maxed out my reputation with the Terrans, followed the clues to track down the XPerimental Shuttle, discovered the lost Aldrin colony, and saved an ancient Terraformer vessel beginning to awaken to sentience from transforming into a Xenon.
I’d like to include some images of my new factories and capital ships, but I’m currently occupied in Yaki territory. You see, I’m planning to add a couple frigates of the pew-pew variety to complement my corvette wing and missile frigate, but I don’t want to have to rely totally on pirates to arm them with Incendiary Bomb Launchers, which, for most frigates, is the most powerful anti-capship weapon they can mount. The Yaki pirates can build the things, but they only seem interested in using the weapons on me, not in selling me any. So I cleared the immediate area with my Mamba and jumped in a wing of corvettes to attack one of their IBL forges, with the idea that I when they send a ship to rebuild it, I can board that ship and put the forge in one of my own complexes – probably the booze and weed complex in Avarice. This was working well up until a Yaki carrier showed up with a few dozen fighters, many of which were sporting plasma burst generators. I didn’t like the odds of four corvettes against tons of fighters and an IBL-slinging M1, so I sent most of the corvettes home and called in the frigates to deal with this new problem. I kept the Skiron around, flying it manually, since it has good anti-fighter turret coverage and can mount ion disruptors in the forward battery in case I needed to fry some weapons off of the carrier. My Kraken missile frigate arrived first, wiping out most of the fighters around the jumpgate and the biggest cluster at the carrier immediately. A small barrage of hammer torpedoes at the carrier got its attention and I sent the Kraken east to lure the carrier further away from the gate while I cleared out the remaining fighters. Meanwhile, my Sirokos boarding frigate had been collecting marines from around the galaxy that had been training up their engineering skills. With everything in place, I jumped the Kraken back to the gate, jumped the Sirokos in, fired a couple more volleys of hammers to knock down the carrier’s shields and swung in with my corvette to knock down the rest, while the Sirokos launched boarding pods straight in the teeth of the thing, out of the firing arcs of the side and top turrets. A few minutes later, and I had a new carrier with no casualties in my boarding party.
Now, I didn’t really want an M1-class carrier, particularly not an ugly Yaki carrier, but I didn’t want the Yaki to have it either, and it seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up with a bunch of freshly engineering-maxed marines. It would have been quite a bit easier to just pulverize it with hammers, or maybe with my Vidar, Skiron, or Heavy Nemesis corvettes, but I was able to sell the Shuri for about 65 million credits, which was totally worth it. Buying all those corvettes and the factories in Ore Belt and Avarice had drained my credit account to almost nothing. Now, with the IBL forge obliterated in a barrage of hammers, I’m cruising around Yaki space in my Skiron keeping an eye on a Ryu that seems to be headed towards their shipyard, hopefully to pick up an IBL forge that I can swipe.
In other matters, I have control of one pair of HUB gates, and I’m working on the second. I moved it over to Ore Belt, which has my biggest surplus of crystal production… about 1900 per hour, and I need another, oh, 140,000 or so. I can still increase it’s crystal production – somewhat – but I think I’d rather set up another complex elsewhere first. It’ll be better that way when I finish and retrofit the complexes to do something else.

Oh, and I do have one little picture, showing my construction fleet enroute to the Avarice asteroid field to construct the first batch of factories and mines there.