You're amazing, whats our plan for the reconquest of earth though?
Hahahaaha. Um, I could be wrong, but I don't think retaking Earth will be in the cards for a very long time, if at all.
Although... I have to admit, Loud Whispers has surprised me with how magnificently well he's doing. I'd have died off a long while ago. So take what I'm saying with a heavy dose of skepticism
Nah you're right, Earth is a distant dream, not an objective right now.
The plan is largely to sit tight on Olympia and like our namesake, keep researching energy and kinetic weapon damage, to the point where we're firing Zeus's thunderbolts from our peacekeeping armada. When we're at the point where a tachyon lance or psionic blast's minimum damage is equal to the health of a swarmling or even a warrior, we'll be bloody well close to the point where we can attack the scourge directly.
Our second try was more successful. We sent 11 Corvettes of the Special Void Squadron to go distract the Prethoryn before launching a raid upon Earth, this buying us enough time to cleanse it before retreating. The Peacekeeping Navy managed to retreat and regroup with the SVS for a second raid, which yielded no strategic success.
Our third raid went horrendously poorly when our psionic avatar was wiped out, severely debilitating our ability to raid, as our avatar was the only psi-jump drive equipped unit. Fortunately Admiral Mira Petrenko was based on Earth this time, so we did not also lose our chosen one, but this was a major setback.
Olympia is our heaven amongst the stars: A verdant Gaia world of lush beauty, rich in nitrogen and oxygen, composed of an incredibly resilient ecosystem at once at peace with all of its inhabitants, possessing the optimal conditions for all known higher forms of life. Even the non-adaptive Belmacosans could thrive here, and at size 25 this easily makes Olympia the most valuable planet in the galaxy. Needless to say the happiness of all on Olympia is unlimited.
10 years after the failed raid which cost us our avatar, the Special Void Squadron returned to their nefarious prethoryn raiding to make way for the Peacekeeping Fleet's return to action.
48 Agincourt battleships, 29 Carrier-cruisers for close void support, the Olympian Admiralty was beginning to pool the expertise and resources needed to field a mixed fighting force to maximize prethoryn squashing capabilities.
One thing we learned at once was that the cruisers would perish very quickly, as it seems the scourge would focus fire upon them first. Despite heavy AA batteries and fighter squadrons, they could not eliminate enough missiles and strike craft to remain alive, thus the cruisers were not as successful as had been hoped. The Agincourt Battleships however served effectively, their long-range batteries and lances eliminating whole swathes of the scourge with every salvo. Thus the battleships retreated with no cruisers surviving, ready to launch a second raid the following year with massed Agincourt Battleships.
It was a fight to the death. For starters the Peacekeeping Fleet had been bolstered beyond its supply limits, thus retreat would have been most uneconomical. For seconds, it was tiring always retreating. Centuries of retreating! We now had the materiel capability to sustain our losses, thus we would choose to fight: Save the border worlds some time, collect some valuable data to improve our fleet.
65 battleships lost. 54 swarmlings, 2 queens, 23 warriors & 45 brood mothers eliminated. This was no victory by any stretch of the imagination, the prethoryn could easily replace those losses. But it was a very useful defeat, as it helped the Olympians by proving disproportionate casualties could be inflicted upon the prethoryn despite being outnumbered 1000 to 1.
Admiral Ilya Komarov and his battleship would be amongst the only crew surviving that battle, with his ship the UNS Endeavour V limping into the dockyards above Olympia barely void-worthy. 99.99% of the ship's vital systems and hull was damaged by the prethoryn and the emergency jump, and it is likely that if Ilya Komarov was not a skilled engineer, everyone on board would have perished.
2581: Psionic jump drive technology is stolen from the minds of some extra-galactic xenos while entering the shroud.
2585: Proposals to field fleets of destroyers were aborted after it became apparent there was no number of destroyers in the world capable of shooting down the mass of strike craft the prethoryn could deploy. Admiral Haruna Haguchi would lead a fleet of over 200 destroyers and her flagship - the same UNS Endeavour V into battle, and only her flagship would return.
She suffered depression upon returning as the only survivor, and was honourably discharged from service to rest and recuperate. The UNS Endeavour V would be repaired and put back into service. The UNS Endeavour V would be led into battle by Admiral Ilya Komarov once more for the last time, with the Admiral going down with the ship in the second battle for Saidainope.
The Adnori State would be extinguished.
The UN of Olympia rebuilds its fleet after the loss at Saidainope, this time seeking to apply all of the lessons learnt into the first mixed combined arms fleet. 52 battleships with tachyon lances, plasma cannons and kinetic artillery, 27 cruisers with strike craft and AA batteries, 50 destroyers with artillery and plasma cannons.
Admiral Bao Miroslav set forth to eliminate all of the fleets attacking the Belmacosan state, swiftly eradicating the broods with a speed & efficiency not seen in 200 years.
However, as soon as one system was cleared and the Peacekeeping Fleet set off for another, a new prethoryn brood would invade.
The only consolation was that it validated the cleansing power of the Agincourt Battleship.
The Sentinel Order is extinguished. Their last message to us was as always, to not give up, to have hope, to know the Prethoryn can be defeated.
The galaxy as it was in 2605.
For the first time in a 187 years UN controlled territory comes under attack by Prethoryn forces. The scourge had at last found our refuge in the stars.
The star system in question was the Sallax system, crewed by a ring of early-warning Fortresses surrounded in minefields - nothing fancy or intended to stop the swarm, just significant enough to give us the warning we needed. The Sallax system is uninhabited, but borders Olympia and our Star Prism in Tram Bodon. Of note is that more Fortresses and habitats have been constructed in Tram Bodon, ensuring we have more room for the last call of refugees (we've thus far only had Belmacosans arrive, it seems too late for everyone else), and ensuring we won't be cut off from the Star Prism and have all of our Fortresses run out of power mid-Prethoryn invasion.
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Topic: Stellaris: Never leave Earth (Read 90826 times)