05-06-2011, 07:34 PM
<static>
...the damn shields up, you idiot! put them up NOW!"
"They ARE up, Captain! We've been at battle stations for over an hour, with the flux capacitors at 113%! Except now they're all offline. All of them."
"Nevermind them, then! Divert all power to plasma beams! We've still got a few of those pumping! Just make sure we HIT the buggers!"
"... Charge complete, sir. But the targeting computer is not getting a lock. 'Granny' is too far away!"
"Then how in hell are THEY hitting US?? Nevermind, you idiot! Turn fire control over to me! I'm going to widen the beam and try to 'use the force' or whatever. Now where's my cowboy hat? If we're gonna go down, I'm gonna need that hat..."
<static>
"That's the feed, my fellow council members. That's all we got from the black box recovered from the wreckage of the AntiVirus."
The room fell into a stunned silence for a moment.
The Communications Minister spoke first. "Perhaps they were trying to communicate? Perhaps they use energy beams as a form of greeting?"
The Chair jumped out of his seat, turned around, and picked up, well, the chair he was sitting on. It was heavier than he thought, and bounced once on the conference table, but it did land more or less on the bridge of the minister's nose, causing a fair amount of bleeding. "GREETING?!?! You can't be SERIOUS! I have HAD it with you hippies! Those mutant freaks were FIRING at us! We fired at THEM! This is a WAR, gentlemen! WAR! A HOT MESS of a WAR! The question is, what are we going to DO about it?"
The Science Minister cleared his throat. "I think we need to analyze the situation, just to make sure we understand how we got to this point. Let's be logical, let's be focused, and let's make sure we advance towards a new common goal -- nuking those green bastards back to glass."
This was met with general approval, and the meeting kicked into high gear...
* * *
So, here are the factoids that must be filtered in to our planning:
1. Darkseid invaded our system. He visited the system with a scout ship, then left, then returned with an escort-class warship. There is no other way to interpret such an action, other than war. He even had his ship there an extra turn, during which we did not fire. If this had been a mistake, he would have left promptly. But there can be no mistake.
2. On around turn 9, we sent Darkseid a message, alerting him to the fact that we laid claim to this system. We also sent him a communication frequency with which to reply if he wished to talk privately. There was never any reply.
3. Last turn we warned him to leave the system immediately, and placed our fleet on high alert, though we did not fire a shot.
4. This turn, we engaged, seeing this invasion for what it was.
5. Our ship was the same size -- Escort class.
6. We fired twice and missed. Granny Goodness fired twice and hit. End of combat. We have not put an especially high investment into military tech, but our Life Support tech is fairly strong. Or so we thought. Life Support is what powers shields, and I had thought our shields would be enough to win the day in an evenly matched battle. Clearly I was wrong.
So much for the Darkseid situation. Now we ALSO have quite a surprise on our hands, with the unexpected visit of a Tilkatian colony ship! This is not actually threatening, but it would seem either risky for them to move a big fleet into our system unannounced, or presumptuous on their part that they go ahead and pick through the planets in our system without so much as a 'by your leave'. Still, the Tilkatians HAVE communicated friendly intentions with us in the past, and this is not a military incursion, and we basically welcome the integration of the star cluster. But still.
So we are left with how to respond to this horrible defeat. While we dare not telegraph our plans through the aether again, I will pose the following questions, to log our options:
1. How can we defend OfflineCache, our small colony in that system? With AntiVirus gone, we have no defenses and he's got an Escort class warship without so much as a dent in the fender.
2. Will we be able to extract SystemBus before she meets a similar fate?
3. How can we reach out to the other species? What level of cooperation can we hope to achieve? Information gathering? The location of Seidian systems? Economic support? Tech swaps? Fleet maneuvers?
4. How best to remedy our apparent deep deficit in military tech?
5. How, indeed, to deal with our tech deficit in general? I got a message from the NeoHumans suggesting that our Gravitics tech was unusually primitive, and that some other species he had been communicating with had very high levels of certain other tech! We are way behind. I am beginning to suspect that even in our most developed area - the economy - we are only just keeping our head above water. We may be playing with some experienced FH hacks, and might just get clobbered soon, even if Darkseid gets taken down.
It is probably not helping to keep a public game log going, but this is what makes it all fun for me and I can't imagine cutting back. I very VERY much like reading everyone's related threads. Cheers to the new posters, and a special invitation to the mysterious Tilkatians, who seem to be on EVERYONE's radar. And a tip of the bloody captains hat to Grim, who has succeeded in giving me the first Finger...
...the damn shields up, you idiot! put them up NOW!"
"They ARE up, Captain! We've been at battle stations for over an hour, with the flux capacitors at 113%! Except now they're all offline. All of them."
"Nevermind them, then! Divert all power to plasma beams! We've still got a few of those pumping! Just make sure we HIT the buggers!"
"... Charge complete, sir. But the targeting computer is not getting a lock. 'Granny' is too far away!"
"Then how in hell are THEY hitting US?? Nevermind, you idiot! Turn fire control over to me! I'm going to widen the beam and try to 'use the force' or whatever. Now where's my cowboy hat? If we're gonna go down, I'm gonna need that hat..."
<static>
"That's the feed, my fellow council members. That's all we got from the black box recovered from the wreckage of the AntiVirus."
The room fell into a stunned silence for a moment.
The Communications Minister spoke first. "Perhaps they were trying to communicate? Perhaps they use energy beams as a form of greeting?"
The Chair jumped out of his seat, turned around, and picked up, well, the chair he was sitting on. It was heavier than he thought, and bounced once on the conference table, but it did land more or less on the bridge of the minister's nose, causing a fair amount of bleeding. "GREETING?!?! You can't be SERIOUS! I have HAD it with you hippies! Those mutant freaks were FIRING at us! We fired at THEM! This is a WAR, gentlemen! WAR! A HOT MESS of a WAR! The question is, what are we going to DO about it?"
The Science Minister cleared his throat. "I think we need to analyze the situation, just to make sure we understand how we got to this point. Let's be logical, let's be focused, and let's make sure we advance towards a new common goal -- nuking those green bastards back to glass."
This was met with general approval, and the meeting kicked into high gear...
* * *
So, here are the factoids that must be filtered in to our planning:
1. Darkseid invaded our system. He visited the system with a scout ship, then left, then returned with an escort-class warship. There is no other way to interpret such an action, other than war. He even had his ship there an extra turn, during which we did not fire. If this had been a mistake, he would have left promptly. But there can be no mistake.
2. On around turn 9, we sent Darkseid a message, alerting him to the fact that we laid claim to this system. We also sent him a communication frequency with which to reply if he wished to talk privately. There was never any reply.
3. Last turn we warned him to leave the system immediately, and placed our fleet on high alert, though we did not fire a shot.
4. This turn, we engaged, seeing this invasion for what it was.
5. Our ship was the same size -- Escort class.
6. We fired twice and missed. Granny Goodness fired twice and hit. End of combat. We have not put an especially high investment into military tech, but our Life Support tech is fairly strong. Or so we thought. Life Support is what powers shields, and I had thought our shields would be enough to win the day in an evenly matched battle. Clearly I was wrong.
So much for the Darkseid situation. Now we ALSO have quite a surprise on our hands, with the unexpected visit of a Tilkatian colony ship! This is not actually threatening, but it would seem either risky for them to move a big fleet into our system unannounced, or presumptuous on their part that they go ahead and pick through the planets in our system without so much as a 'by your leave'. Still, the Tilkatians HAVE communicated friendly intentions with us in the past, and this is not a military incursion, and we basically welcome the integration of the star cluster. But still.
So we are left with how to respond to this horrible defeat. While we dare not telegraph our plans through the aether again, I will pose the following questions, to log our options:
1. How can we defend OfflineCache, our small colony in that system? With AntiVirus gone, we have no defenses and he's got an Escort class warship without so much as a dent in the fender.
2. Will we be able to extract SystemBus before she meets a similar fate?
3. How can we reach out to the other species? What level of cooperation can we hope to achieve? Information gathering? The location of Seidian systems? Economic support? Tech swaps? Fleet maneuvers?
4. How best to remedy our apparent deep deficit in military tech?
5. How, indeed, to deal with our tech deficit in general? I got a message from the NeoHumans suggesting that our Gravitics tech was unusually primitive, and that some other species he had been communicating with had very high levels of certain other tech! We are way behind. I am beginning to suspect that even in our most developed area - the economy - we are only just keeping our head above water. We may be playing with some experienced FH hacks, and might just get clobbered soon, even if Darkseid gets taken down.
It is probably not helping to keep a public game log going, but this is what makes it all fun for me and I can't imagine cutting back. I very VERY much like reading everyone's related threads. Cheers to the new posters, and a special invitation to the mysterious Tilkatians, who seem to be on EVERYONE's radar. And a tip of the bloody captains hat to Grim, who has succeeded in giving me the first Finger...