The Truth Is Out There... an Aurora 4X C# Forum game, version 1.13

[blue emu]

Actually based on that last sentence I think landing troops is our best bet. Life is cheap, Gallicite is expensive.

I tried bringing in the beam-armed Laser PD vessels. They only have a to-Hit of 1 or 2 percent. They'll run out of spare parts before they destroy much.

Mmmm... the way I see it, it will cost me around 7000 Gallicite to completely destroy them. (That's five Gallicite per missile, times 46 missiles per wave, times a maximum of 30 waves).

The comet mines in Lalande 21185 and NN 3353 (just counting those two mines) make more than that in a year.

As you say, I'm going to need to rebuild my military... I've done some reading on the Aurora forum (including your own in-depth thread) and there are several things that I could have done better.

But for role-play reasons, I'm reluctant to commit hundreds of thousands of troops to a battle that they will probably lose.

We're going to need to make new missiles anyway... Avernite is working on the next engine tech and an nPC scientist is working on the next warhead tech.

 

[blue emu]

So far, my bombardment has brought the enemy force down by about half... from roughly 21,000 tons to 10,800 tons. This should reduce their battle-winning ability by a factor of four. Unfortunately, since their force is mostly Mechs and my own force is Infantry, I suspect that their initial advantage was larger than that.

I'll keep hammering on them.

 

[blue emu]

It has just now occurred to me that I should have been using our older, obsolete ammunition (Scimitars instead of Falchions) for planetary bombardment, since it isn't required to hit a moving target or penetrate a PD screen.



Oh, well... it will all be obsolete once those two weapon techs are done.

 

[blue emu]

Interesting... recall that we initially detected 23,700 tons of ground units on this Rascal planet.

We have bombarded them until the number of visible units has dropped to 10,400 tons.

So we've destroyed about 13,300 tons of defenders... according to what we can DETECT.

BUT...

Checking our individual ships one by one (and being careful not to allow double-claims), and adding up the "Ground Unit Tonnage Destroyed", we get 59,423 tons.

So we've destroyed nearly five times as many ground units as our figures based on DETECTION would indicate.

That, I assume, is because the enemy is dug-in and hard to detect.

... and it implies that those 10,400 tons of remaining units are actually more like 50,000 tons worth, with the bulk of them hidden.

 

[blue emu]

The reinforcement Ground units (six more Battalions and two more HQs) are en route from Earth, and I've ordered our remaining Earth-side Ammo Tenders to bring us a few thousand of those obsolete Scimitar missiles, just in case we need them.

 

[blue emu]

The third wreck (of eighteen) has been dismantled, yielding a Beam Fire Control of tech level equivalent to ours, and a bunch of minerals.

The fourth wreck yielded another Auxiliary Control station and more minerals.

It seems pretty clear that the Rascals are at parity with us in Naval construction, but have better ground units.

 

[Avernite]

Starting to look like those rascals were really not all that, killed with no casualties so far, no superior techs...

 

[blue emu]

Starting to look like those rascals were really not all that, killed with no casualties so far, no superior techs...

Their Navy had no advantage over ours, but their Ground Units are mostly Armor, and well dug-in... while ours are 100% Infantry.

They would have massacred us if we had just dropped on them.

But once they lost the Naval battle, we could sit back, pick off their STO (Surface-to-Orbit) weapons, and then just pound their Armor to scrap.

... and speaking of pounding them to scrap... that load of obsolete (Scimitar) missiles from Earth has arrived!

 

[nuclearslurpee]

I think you would be surprised if you landed ground forces against the Rascals, as weight of numbers makes up for a significant tech differential. Probably not against the initial force as based on the numbers it sounds like they probably had 4x or 5x as many troops as we observed on sensors, pushing up to the 100k tons range, but certainly with their force now reduced to 30k or 40k victory by human wave would be attainable. Of course in this RP setting that would likely not be tenable, but it's worth consideration mechanically.

 

[blue emu]

I think you would be surprised if you landed ground forces against the Rascals, as weight of numbers makes up for a significant tech differential. Probably not against the initial force as based on the numbers it sounds like they probably had 4x or 5x as many troops as we observed on sensors, pushing up to the 100k tons range, but certainly with their force now reduced to 30k or 40k victory by human wave would be attainable. Of course in this RP setting that would likely not be tenable, but it's worth consideration mechanically.

Yes, it's quite possible that I could beat them now... but the reinforcing troops are still en-route (now one star system away) and our obsolete Scimitar missiles have just arrived, so I might as well keep pounding them until the extras troops are in position.

 

[blue emu]

The bombardment resumes, using obsolete Scimitars.

 

[blue emu]

Expending most of our on-hand obsolete ammunition (there are still thousands of rounds of it back on Earth) has reduced the Rascal defense to a manageable level. If the observed 4.5-to-1 ratio between actual forces and spotted forces holds true, the opposing force should now be about 16,000 tons, mostly composed of Armor.

We could almost certainly take this force down with the troops on hand, but the reinforcements from Earth are only two weeks away, so we'll wait for them. We still have months of work ahead of us dismantling wrecks anyway.

 

[blue emu]

We have recovered a missile fire control from an Agrippa wreck... a FC41-R5 missile fire control, to be precise.

This is NOT good news.

It means that the Rascals (and potentially, other NPRs as well) do indeed build Fire Controls calibrated to shoot down Fighters (the "R5" part means that the FC is most sensitive to 250-ton targets). This also implies that they build active RADARs in the same calibration, since the MFC would be useless without them.

 

[blue emu]

With our forces fully assembled, the invasion begins!

The Rascal-held planet... christened Nergal after the Akkadian God of Death and Destruction (although there are rumors that it was named after commanding Admiral Hyme's pet hamster Nergal)... has been subjected to literally thousands of bombardment missiles, then pounded by Laser fire from orbiting Frigates. It is now a seething stew of dust, smoke, blowing snow and radioactive fallout... and it is into this Hellish environment that we are dropping our Space Marines.

We have enough Drop Ships to drop 18 Battalions of Space Marines and four Brigade HQs in the first wave. The drop ships streak in, grazing the upper atmosphere and releasing the drop pods as they cross the von Karman line at 100 km above the scarred, blasted surface of Nergal, then they boost frantically to drag themselves back out of the gravity well.

No shots are fired at them.

Once on the ground, the first wave quickly reorganizes, establishes a defensive perimeter, and assigns fire support from its organic Artillery and from the Laser Frigates orbiting watchfully overhead.

Then it digs in to wait for the rest of the troops, who will be landing by more conventional means... ferried down to the surface by shuttles from the Troop Transports parked in orbit.

 

[Capt. Kiwi]

We do need to see how our ground forces do, and this is the only way to learn.

In the FC notation, 41 means 41 million km, right? Assuming ECM is a non-factor.

That would mean our current missiles are well sized, but does mean beam FACs would be in trouble if we wanted to go that way. It's going to be all about missile defence and closing speed.

 

[blue emu]

Within a week... even before the Rascals have reacted to the landing and organized a counter-attack... our ground forces on Nergal have doubled. With over 200,000 tons of ground troops and equipment on the spot, our planners feel confident that they have all the assets they need for a reasonably quick victory.

With eight of our sixteen Space Marine Battalions holding a defensive line, the other eight launch an attack!

As contact is made with the Rascal ground forces, information starts to come in about the troop numbers, types and capabilities.

As we suspected, the Rascals have more units dug in on the planet that were spotted from orbit. The typical Rascal Infantry is a bit less well armored than our Space Marines, but is harder to kill (50% more Hit Points) and is armed with more powerful weapons. Worse... a very large proportion of the Rascal force is composed of very heavily armored Mechs, equipped with powerful ordinance. Against these mobile armored colossi, the Space Marine weapons are of limited effectiveness.

Calling down support from the Medium Artillery batteries in the rear and from the Laser Frigates overhead, the Space Marines attempt to bypass some of the heavily armored Mechs and punch a hole in the enemy lines. If we can focus our attack on the enemy supply chain, the Mechs will become far less effective as their supplies start to run short.

A break-through! Now we can focus our assault on the comparatively vulnerable Rascal Infantry and Supply echelon.

A large part of the enemy Infantry has been wiped out in our break-through. The Mechs remain a tough nut to crack, however.

The battle continues...

 

[blue emu]

We do need to see how our ground forces do, and this is the only way to learn.

In the FC notation, 41 means 41 million km, right? Assuming ECM is a non-factor.

That would mean our current missiles are well sized, but does mean beam FACs would be in trouble if we wanted to go that way. It's going to be all about missile defence and closing speed.

Yes, exactly... I wanted to arrange a ground battle under controlled conditions. Since it is nearly impossible to extract a ground force once it's committed to action, I wanted to make sure that the battle could be won before committing our troops.

Hence the protracted preparatory bombardment.

 

[blue emu]

Encouraged by the success of their comrades, the eight Space Marine battalions that had been holding the perimeter leave their entrenchments and join the assault!

They succeed in expanding the breakthrough! Only 74 enemy Mechs remain... but with their thick armor and heavy automatic weapons, each one has the fighting capacity of a dozen Space Marines.

 

[blue emu]

Our intelligence now estimates that the enemy is down to 42 Mechs still in fighting condition. A few more days of combat should do it...

 

[blue emu]

Intel reports that the 2nd Mobile Infantry battalion has succeeded in destroying the Praetorian Leader's Mech.

This might be the last nail in the Rascal's coffin.