The adventures of Ea Nasira, winner of the golden ticket lottery
Cycle 206, Month 1. Lady Ea Nasira wins the stardust ventures promotional lottery. The prize is a stormseeker ship, a golden luxury passenger liner equipped with modest armaments, carrier modules and ample living space. With this ticket to the heavens acquired, Lady Ea Nasira determines to live a life where she never need work again.
Her first recorded fleet action took place at the defence of Eventide station against a pirate flotilla. Despite being hopelessly outclassed, Lady Ea Nasira helmed the ISS Stellarian to great success, scoring a kill on an enemy vindicator cruiser and numerous frigates. This goes to some length to explain why the Hegemony later allowed Lady Ea Nasira to roam free, despite numerous complaints from station masters of irregular transaction patterns indicating illicit trades and tax evasion wherever the Stellarian docked.
Deciding it was best to give the station masters time to cool off and forget her face, Lady Ea Nasira traded the relative comfort of civilisation for the adventure and profit of the great beyond. The ISS Stellarian proved adequate for bullying the many stray derelict probes the Hegemony claimed were extinct, and Lady Ea Nasira claimed many an automated explorator beacon bounty booty for sponsors both legitimate and unsavoury alike.
But then... There were the neighbours to contend with. Pirates, salvagers and space bandits plying the stars made short work of the VIP golden luxury ship. Though Ea Nasira was able to escape on an shielded emergency shuttle pod - one of the great benefits of the Stellarian, all hands on deck were lost and her precious ship became the plaything of filthy miscreants. Not one to let misfortune go unexploited, Ea Nasira limped back into Eventide station claiming the insurance on her own apparent death, purchasing the contracts of fifty men and the humble hull of "the 2301" - a warp diver class destroyer.
Cycle 207, Month 3
Unable to find or afford anything better, Lady Ea Nasir was forced to equip the 2301 with three plasma flamers and four light machine gun turrets. It was... An unseemly and cheap assortment of weapons, yet it was better than nothing, and certainly light on logistical overheads.
[Worth noting I was running this under the realistic combat mod, which vastly exacerbates existing combat balance strengths and weaknesses. The rock paper scissors elements become HARD counters. Ballistic weapons become the kings of close range, but energy weapons have perfect accuracy and twice or even thrice the range of ballistic weapons. The plasma flamer isn't bad if you can actually get into range. The only problem is
everything vastly outranges you. Fortunately, the sheer speed and mobility of stardust ventures means this disgusting build somehow works].
Taking part in the second defence of Eventide, Lady Ea Nasir piloted the 2301 into the thick of battle, annihilating one frigate and one destroyer. Filled with bloodlust and a desire to seek vengeance against anyone who would rob her of luxury, she sailed towards the competition and engaged her plasma flamers on the burn drives of an Atlas MK.II the pirates were using as a capital ship.
The Captain steered and turned, desperately trying to shake off the vengeful Ma'am, yet her fury burned hotter than her guns.
OPEN COMM LINKS
BITCH
In the aftermath of this great engine kill, Lady Ea Nasir set about making amends with the pirates by doing some odd jobs, roaming around the cosmos collecting explorator packages.
There were many stellar dangers, but her shielded hull and fast engines kept her well ahead of any stellar phenomenon, luddic pathers or pirate raiders.
Renting out her services to Tri-Tachyon and Sindria, Lady Ea Nasir was able to replace some of her plasma flamers with a phase lance and a pulse laser. She kept one plasma flamer for the rear ship mount - it proved to be an excellent and firm way to reject suitors who pursued her ship's wake. Under the glare of Askonia's radiation, the Sindrians made profitable use of any hull equipped to withstand their sun's gaze. As such it became a good source of Lady Ea Nasir's custom, as her flagship the 2301 was soon joined by
the Lamentite, a humble frigate equipped with four salamanders to utterly frustrate the ambitions of anyone who dares to pursue her with intact engines.
Whilst depositing some treasures in the abandoned station in Jangala, her fleet of two became four, as she [legally] acquired a starlight destroyer and a highly expensive fleet support ship, the HSS Star Witch. Using the experimental field modulation drive aboard the Star Witch, her fleet of star voyagers now had a base burn of 12 - far beyond any system patrol or raider's ability to contend.
Alternating between mercenary work, smuggling drugs and pilgrims, or exploring beyond the stars, Lady Ea Nasir's flotilla grew to a half dozen shady ships. Yet she could not help but shake the feeling that all of her hard work to never work again, was making her work harder than ever before...
Okay so reaching a cool point in my stardust ventures-only run. Finally reached the point where I can start surveying planets whilst doing exploration runs, as I picked up one of the cruiser civilian hulls. Still not quite large and wealthy enough to fund my own exploration and survey missions, and there's a lot of supply caches I've just had to pass over because I can't deal with the remnants on a one to one basis yet.
But I've been having great fun with these guys. The realistic combat mod makes the fast speed and fragility of the stardust hulls even more important. If I just let the AI do whatever they want they fly straight into enemy guns and just disintegrate. But if I use a series of chained escort commands, I can get my ships to all fly in a tight V formation with my blessed 2301 at the tip of the spear. This is fine for dealing with small pirates & derelicts, but we're not yet at the point where we can deal with superheavy high techs. But when fighting alongside Sindrians or Perseans, I've had great success even in massive pitched battles. I just hang back with my formation whilst the midline ships smash into the enemy line. Identify a weak outlier (usually a carrier ship) and ZOOM towards it faster than their screens can react.
Rinse, repeat. Before the enemy knows it, the formation has wiped out all of their screens and carriers and the main battle line can surround the remaining heavy cruisers whilst we burn out their engines. It does make me think at some point I'll have to consider breaking the "stardust ventures only" rule and add some low tech dominators or something if I want to have a meaty frontline independent of allied fleets. But maybe that'll all change when I finally get my hands on one of those stardust battlecarriers...
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Topic: Starsector [TopDown Sandbox RPG on Space] (Read 369928 times)