Sirius Business - a C# Aurora forum game. v2.5

[blue emu]

Tactical:

The Gunships have wrecked four enemy ships and immobilized two more.

Nine ships left in Red 2. Maybe a dozen more in small scattered detachments... 4 / 4 / 3 and 1.

 

[randakar]

Time to mop things up it seems.
Do we have any idea how many boarding parties are required to capture one of these? 28 seems like a lot, especially since ship crew isn't marines.

Last time I did anything of the sort a single boarding party wasn't enough but it didn't take dozens of them either.

 

[blue emu]

Time to mop things up it seems.
Do we have any idea how many boarding parties are required to capture one of these? 28 seems like a lot, especially since ship crew isn't marines.

Last time I did anything of the sort a single boarding party wasn't enough but it didn't take dozens of them either.

I was using seven squads of Marines to take a civvie ship and twice that number to take a military ship.

There are only 14 men in a squad, after all, and one of them (the Rocket-Man) has very poor stats.

 

[Wagonlitz]

I was using seven squads of Marines to take a civvie ship and twice that number to take a military ship.

There are only 14 men in a squad, after all, and one of them (the Rocket-Man) has very poor stats.

Seems good.

Cam the boarding parties board new ships once they've taken one?

Each squad has a rocket man?

 

[blue emu]

The Deux-Sevres has been wrecked.

Fire shifts to the first of the Lot-et-Garonne.

Cam the boarding parties board new ships once they've taken one?

Yes, but it takes hours to "re-load" them.

Faster on a planet.

Each squad has a rocket man?

Unless he's been killed already.

 

[blue emu]

Immobilized the last of the three Gards.

The other two were wrecked.

Now firing on the seven Lot-et-Garonne missile cruisers.

 

[blue emu]

The Gard has been immobilized and will be left for the Marines.

The pursuit continues, as our Gunships hammer on the shields of the Lot-et-Garonnes.

 

[blue emu]

Shields are collapsing. First on Lot-et-Garonne 013, then on Lot-et-Garonne 014.

Now our shots are starting to bite chunks out of their armor.

 

[randakar]

Three prize ships we can attempt to capture. Not bad.

I should mention that they still aren't guaranteed. If you're really unlucky collateral damage inflicted during the capture attempt can still cause shipboard explosions. Obviously, that's bad.

And they can repair components but that's less of a problem, we don't actually need them completely immobile.

 

[blue emu]

Three prize ships we can attempt to capture. Not bad.

We might end up immobilizing one of the missile cruisers, as well. Possibly.

 

[blue emu]

Note that unescorted Lot-et-Garonne (we've already killed everybody else) move at 13,610 kps instead of 13,608 kps.

 

[blue emu]

We're starting to get penetrating hits on all three targets.

Won't be long now.

 

[blue emu]

Two of the Lot-et-Garonne have been wrecked.

Five left.

---

Four down. Three left.

 

[RobbieAB]

Yes, but it takes hours to "re-load" them.

Faster on a planet.

Not sure there is a rush though, is there? Hours is plenty at this point I assume?

 

[randakar]

Not sure there is a rush though, is there? Hours is plenty at this point I assume?

To an extend, clearing these paves the way for clearing the rest of the system. Getting to that point would allow is to camp the jump point and push forward towards mechanus.

And the sooner the better, we can't be 100% sure we're completely out of the woods until we reach their home world.

 

[blue emu]

Got one!

Not sure there is a rush though, is there? Hours is plenty at this point I assume?

The only problem is the possibility of repair, but we can just leave a General or a couple of Blazes standing by to kill them if they get back under weigh.

... and as Randakar points out, I'd really like to disentangle myself from our current committments so that we can send the largest possible force into the Mechanus star system to knock out their shipyards.

We can just post a small gunship detachment... a single General perhaps, or a few Sabres... to stand guard over the immobilized vessels.

Something that isn't really all that combat-worthy anyway, but can easily defeat a heavily-damaged ship.

 

[SteveZAX]

Note that unescorted Lot-et-Garonne (we've already killed everybody else) move at 13,610 kps instead of 13,608 kps.

Looking at this picture we learn something about speeds of various ships:

the Deux-Sevres in the small fleet is going 13642 KM/s and has a thermal of a nice round number; 2000
the Deux Sevres in the big fleet (Red 2) is going 13608 (not quite 13642) and has a thermal of not quite 2000 (1995)
yes , as you may have guessed 13608 is 99.75% (1995/2000) of 13642.
If we assume that they have engines that have a thermal of 1000 and ships with 2 of them. (because the Marengo went from 2000 thermal to 1000 and went to exactly half speed when hit)
then we can figure out that the large fleet is moving at the maximum speed of 13608 and is limited by the ships with a thermal of the nice round number:
the VOSGES! not the Sarthe! The Sarthe has a thermal of 3938 It is the FASTEST of these ships! it should be able to go 13822 KM/s !!
The others have a maximum speed of very close to the 13608 that they are currently going:

Lot-et-Garonne 5999 13,610 km/s
Gard 3998 13,615 km/s
Sarthe 3938 13,822 km/s
Vosges 2000 13,608 km/s
Deux-Sevres 1995 13,642 km/s

So not only do we know which ships are slowing them down, we know that the speed difference between their ships is very small, and more importantly:

OUR GUNSHIPS ARE NOTICABLY FASTER!!!!!!!
No guarantees (the ships at 3998 thermal might have 5 or 6 engines instead of 4, letting them be much MUCH faster), but that's the way to bet.

YES!! My speed estimates were 100% correct! yay me!

which also means that if(when) the Lot repairs one engine (of its six) it will max out at 1/6 of its original top speed : 2268 km/s

And the damaged one going 9073 has 2 engines disabled and is operating on 4

 

[blue emu]

... and that's it.

Four enemy warships immobilized (two Vosges Laser PD, one Gard shielded AMM-PD, and one Lot-et-Garonne shielded missile cruiser).

The other eleven warships have been chased down and wrecked.

 

[blue emu]

So our next step will be to clean up the dozen or so enemy warships still present in Harmony singly and in small groups.

Then we can decide whether to immediately push through the Neutral Zone into Mechanus for a raid on the shipyards, or to re-provision first.

Fuel, spare missiles and gunnery repair parts are all holding up well... at least 75% remaining.

 

[SteveZAX]

Hmmm... three of those cripples say 1 km/s and one says 0 km/s. Wonder what that means?