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[kisame12794]

So we are up against a space fairing race of Zerg-like organisms? Aurora is weird.

[LostCosmonaut]

Of course, the real question is whether the super ultra happy fun time aliens will show up.

[Flying Dice]

Better question: does he have them on yet? Because if we get wormholes popping into Sol any time soon, this could end rather abruptly.

[Bremen]

Analysis of battle recordings show that the enemy beam weapon was completely unaffected by armor. They are clearly an enormous threat to the navy in its current form, and it seems that plasma weapons are particularly unsuited to dealing with them. New designs using coherent laser weapons have been proposed.

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Starburst class Jump Point Defence Base    2,000 tons     296 Crew     440 BP      TCS 40  TH 0  EM 0
1 km/s     Armour 1-14     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 4     PPV 23.2
Maint Life 20.53 Years     MSP 619    AFR 7%    IFR 0.1%    1YR 3    5YR 42    Max Repair 144 MSP

Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres    Range N/A

Single Laser Cannon Turret (5x1)    Range 240,000km     TS: 8000 km/s     Power 6-3     RM 4    ROF 10        6 6 6 6 4 4 3 3 2 2
Anti-Gunboat Fire Control (1)    Max Range: 240,000 km   TS: 8000 km/s     96 92 88 83 79 75 71 67 62 58
Small Fusion Reactor (5)     Total Power Output 15    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Deployed near a jump point by a Lexington class carrier, the Starburst (or ideally, a large number of Starburst class) could fire on any ship attempting to enter the system with powerful laser cannon on fast tracking turrets.

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Everest class Cruiser    15,000 tons     1925 Crew     2978 BP      TCS 300  TH 400  EM 0
1333 km/s     Armour 1-54     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 23     PPV 148.48
Maint Life 11.65 Years     MSP 2854    AFR 78%    IFR 1.1%    1YR 39    5YR 580    Max Repair 144 MSP

Civilian Magneto-plasma Drive (2)    Power 200    Fuel Use 6%    Signature 200    Armour 0    Exp 1%

Single Laser Cannon Turret (32x1)    Range 240,000km     TS: 8000 km/s     Power 6-3     RM 4    ROF 10        6 6 6 6 4 4 3 3 2 2
Anti-Gunboat Fire Control (8)    Max Range: 240,000 km   TS: 8000 km/s     96 92 88 83 79 75 71 67 62 58
Fusion Reactor (8)     Total Power Output 96    Armour 0    Exp 5%
Designed with an eye towards using the same shipyards as currently produce the Lexington and the Zeus, the Everest is a large cruiser that bristles with laser cannon. It is slow, using civilian drives that are considerably less likely to explode when damaged, and mounts many redundant systems to ideally stay in the fight. Unfortunately, it risks catastrophic failure if one of its 8 fusion reactors is hit and unable to safely eject.

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Pikeman class Gunboat    900 tons     115 Crew     254.5 BP      TCS 18  TH 184  EM 0
10222 km/s     Armour 1-8     Shields 0-0     Sensors 1/1/0/0     Damage Control Rating 0     PPV 5
Maint Life 0.48 Years     MSP 18    AFR 64%    IFR 0.9%    1YR 37    5YR 558    Max Repair 144 MSP

GB Magneto-plasma Drive (1)    Power 184    Fuel Use 780%    Signature 184    Armour 0    Exp 36%
Fuel Capacity 5,000 Litres    Range 1.3 billion km   (34 hours at full power)

Light Particle Projector (1)    Range 240,000km     TS: 10222 km/s     Power 5-3    ROF 10        2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2
Anti-Gunboat Fire Control (1)    Max Range: 240,000 km   TS: 8000 km/s     96 92 88 83 79 75 71 67 62 58
Small Fusion Reactor (1)     Total Power Output 3    Armour 0    Exp 5%
The Pikeman is an attempt to fit a particle weapon onto a gunboat hull while still keeping a faster speed than the enemy gunboats, which it only just accomplishes. The Pikeman has little room for fuel and must stay near a mothership regardless, as once launch its experimental systems will begin to fail within days. The combination of speed and range should enable it to chip away at the enemy vessels from beyond their observed range.

Better question: does he have them on yet? Because if we get wormholes popping into Sol any time soon, this could end rather abruptly.

I do not.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm not fond of invaders. They're simply missile sponges; they can't match the range of missile craft, but your ships will never get to beam range, so whether you win or not is only dependent on how many missiles you have. Considering one of my goals with this LP was to get away from boring missile warfare I thought it would be kind of missing the point.

[Sheb]

Why lasers? I don't want lasers. I hate lasers. Why not use a Plasma defense satellite?

Also, I'd put the defense bases on the Ross128-WX Ursae Majoris Jump Point. We don't want to loose the whole chain. We can cycle them using carriers for overhaul on Earth.

In the meantime, stations the 2nd Fleet on the Jump Point.

[Flying Dice]

The ideal use of lasers against Swarm is to use them against Queens on vessels that are slightly faster than the Queens. If you can kill the Soldiers and get laser ships inside of their maximum range, but outside the Queen's maximum range, you can put on a follow order to keep your ships there and grind away at their shields. If you're using a shorter ranged EW, you have to get in range of the Queen's you-know-whats, which is typically fatal, or use up large amounts of missiles to batter the shields down and keep them down while killing it, which we are apparently trying to avoid.

[majikero]

You could try to board the queen.

[Flying Dice]

I'm pretty certain that bug was fixed.

[NRDL]

I really don't know much about the ships, the laser capable ones seem nice, so +1 for that. 

Also, do we have marines?  Will our Spartan transport be useful against both alien types? 

[Flying Dice]

Technically, we're not supposed to be able to board Swarm "ships" at all, as they're entirely biological in-universe, but have to have normal components to allow them to function properly...

[Korbac]

Surely you could simply land "in" the Queen and chop her up from the inside? (ala Riftworm in Gears 2, even if that was incredibly unrealistic)

[Flying Dice]

Well, what happens with boarding is that your assault shuttle shoots droppods full of marines at the enemy ship. The marines cut through the hull and attempt to capture the ship. There are only two results from this: failure, with the death of all the marines who managed to successfully board; success, with the surviving marines capturing the ship. There isn't a mechanic for them to attempt to damage the ship from inside, so if we did decide to take advantage of that

 

bug, we'd either lose our boarders or end up controlling a Queen that, from a gameplay perspective, is just a large ship, which would be remarkably difficult to reconcile with what the Swarm actually are. That, and boarding them isn't supposed to be possible, and would fall into the same area of "yeah, it's pretty much cheating" as the pre-5.54 money generation ships.

[Bremen]

Why lasers? I don't want lasers. I hate lasers. Why not use a Plasma defense satellite?

Also, I'd put the defense bases on the Ross128-WX Ursae Majoris Jump Point. We don't want to loose the whole chain. We can cycle them using carriers for overhaul on Earth.

In the meantime, stations the 2nd Fleet on the Jump Point.

The problem with plasma is that they are shorter range than the swarm meson weapons, and nothing lives long inside the range of 67 swarm soldiers.

We might be able to hold the warp point indefinitely by stationing a big chunk on it, but if we ever want to take the system we're going to need either laser or missile armed ships.

[kisame12794]

So the ships are actual ships, but are infested with an alien organic thing, which uses the ship like a hermit crab uses a shell?

[Sheb]

Well, those lasers ships aren't designed to bring the fight to the Swarm anyway. And Plasma Carronades works great for JP defense.

See, I know you can beat the Swarm easily. You just need something with more range and more speed than the Soldiers. I've once killed over 140 Soldier with a dozen gunboats (took me HOURS).

No fun. I want us to struggle, to have an epic fight against an unknown threat to humankind, not just crush an enemy because we know its weaknesses from previous games. I want wings of FACs pilots giving up their lives to protects their loved one on Earth, not knowing they are in fact serving the Swarm by feeding him. I want a marine company to be sent on a mission to destroy the Queen from the inside (You can delete the ship once you take it over), and I want its commander to stay behind to detonate the charges, wanting nothing but death since he had to kill the animated remains of his brother, taken over by the aliens.

I want tears. I want blood. I want sorrow and fear and joy. I don't want lasers.