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The second operation went as smoothly as the first. Another Listening Post captured from the Prix. We will take over the last moon... and then it might be wise to overhaul the fleet before our next dePrixification operation, since they've been out for several months and I've recently been experiencing quite a few equipment malfunctions.

Another free tech found on El Dorado... again boosting our Construction efficiency.
 
Our Naval architects have designed a new, heavily armored version of the Bayonet Assault Boat, with six layers of armor instead of one. Fortunately, the two designs are so similar that they can be built in the same shipyard without retooling. After the tenth Bayonet, production is being shifted to Bayonet-IIs.
 
Our Naval architects have designed a new, heavily armored version of the Bayonet Assault Boat, with six layers of armor instead of one. Fortunately, the two designs are so similar that they can be built in the same shipyard without retooling. After the tenth Bayonet, production is being shifted to Bayonet-IIs.

I like armor.
 
During the Pacific Campaign in WW-II, the early tracked Marine Amphibious Landing Craft... LVT's?... were unarmored, and armored versions were gradually introduced, especially after the Tarawa invasion illustrated the vulnerabilities of the unarmored versions.
 
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I have just finished reading through the 342 pages. A great game, I am now seriously tempted to start playing myself. Would I be able to join the glorious Emucracy, preferably a decoy ship, given the conventional warships are all fully manned?

I hereby move that Napoleon Come-Late-To-The-Party here be given a decoy missile to ride... Then if he survives he can move up... to an asteroid miner... Har, har, har! Let him earn his space legs!

Hope you don't mind some hazing by the old salts. :)
 
The third assault, on the fifth moon of the tenth planet:

G119_Assault.jpg
 
How fast are those armored assault boats? If they're not too lacking in performance, they're probably better as the standard rather than an extra. I strongly suspect single armour layer assault boats would make the D-Day para-drops in BoB look like a picnic if opposed. Six armor layers should see them survive to make the drop, given their speed and small TCS, since they'd only take a few volleys before reaching the planet. Whether they survive to return to base is largely irrelevant :)
 
How fast are those armored assault boats? If they're not too lacking in performance, they're probably better as the standard rather than an extra. I strongly suspect single armour layer assault boats would make the D-Day para-drops in BoB look like a picnic if opposed. Six armor layers should see them survive to make the drop, given their speed and small TCS, since they'd only take a few volleys before reaching the planet. Whether they survive to return to base is largely irrelevant :)

Yes, I'm planning to use the armored versions (armor = 6) as the standard. They are 8,800 kps instead of 11,000. That can be improved when we tech up engines.

The reason that we have two models:

Our Mountain-IIs have 4,000-ton hangar capacity. A standard Brigade of ground units is five units, four combat units plus a Brigade HQ unit. That requires five Assault Boats, which in turn... if carried in Mountain-IIs... requires the boats to mass a maximum of 800 tons each, in order to fit five of them in a hangar.

Hence the unarmored Bayonet-Is.

We are currently upgrading the Mountain-IIs to Mountain-III Assault Carriers. This upgrade includes an expansion of the hangar capacity to 5,000 tons. That increased capacity will in turn allow us to use 1,000-ton Assault Boats instead of 800-ton Assault Boats.

... so I've built just a handful of Bayonet-Is (ten of them, just enough to fill two Carriers and carry two Brigades) to support operations while the Mountains are being refitted. All the rest of our Bayonet production will be the armored model, to be adopted as soon as the Mountains are refitted to hold five of them.

In other words... the unarmored Bayonet-I is intended as a temporary stop-gap.
 
Our missile scientists have completed their project to create three-stage nuclear weapons. This allows us to mount a new and more powerful (x8) warhead on our missiles, which in turn allows us to re-balance the missiles to gain greater range, speed and to-Hit while retaining the strength-9 damage.
 
How would opposed planet landings work? Is it actually worth having armor if the ships are likely to be slaughtered by PDCs anyway? Or can they "combat drop" them in capsules from far away, bypassing the PDCs?
 
How would opposed planet landings work? Is it actually worth having armor if the ships are likely to be slaughtered by PDCs anyway? Or can they "combat drop" them in capsules from far away, bypassing the PDCs?

They need to buzz the planet. Small target size (res-20 instead of a ship's res-100 or more), high speed and thick armor all help, as does the fact that several of them will be zooming in at the same time, probably overloading the enemy FCs. In any case, the Bayonet-IIs are not quite as vulnerable to ground fire as you seem to assume. It would take a strength-49 warhead (!) to get any internals with the first hit. A strength-4 warhead would wreck a Bayonet-I.

New missile:

Missile Size: 6 MSP (0.3 HS) Warhead: 9 Armour: 0 Manoeuvre Rating: 19
Speed: 34800 km/s Endurance: 29 minutes Range: 60.0m km
Cost Per Missile: 5.9577
Chance to Hit: 1k km/s 661.2% 3k km/s 209% 5k km/s 132.2% 10k km/s 66.1%
Materials Required: 2.25x Tritanium 4.5083x Gallicite Fuel x3000
 
The 82 Eridani system has been sterilized, and is now safe for colonization.

The fleet is returning to Earth for maintenance and overhaul, and will then strike another Prix-dominated system. This pattern will continue until all the refits are done... six or seven years from now.
 
if you have time, put my marines back into combat. We like fighting.

I can send them back to El Dorado, to help repel the last few dozen robot attacks... or I can hold them on Earth to help assault the new Prix systems that we will be attacking as soon as the Fleet is out of overhaul (a few months).

It would take you over a month to get back to El Dorado anyway... those Troop Transports are slow. I really must build new ones.
 
Another free tech found on El Dorado... Internal Armor Rating 2. That's dozens of techs that this dig has given us. About 400 sites still to go.
 
I can send them back to El Dorado, to help repel the last few dozen robot attacks... or I can hold them on Earth to help assault the new Prix systems that we will be attacking as soon as the Fleet is out of overhaul (a few months).

It would take you over a month to get back to El Dorado anyway... those Troop Transports are slow. I really must build new ones.

ah, ok. Send us with the fleet then. Instead of ferrying troops back and forth, much better to have a battalion with you when you go.
 
Our first Orbital Habitat has been completed, massing more than a quarter of a million tons. It will be dragged... very slowly :( ... into the Ross 248 system, and set up in orbit around the eighteenth moon of the fifth planet, to act as a maintenance and refueling base for passing ships, and to validate Humanity's claim to the Ross 248 system. Once it is in position, colonists will be sent to occupy it.

Venue class Orbital Habitat 253550 tons 140 Crew 888.4 BP TCS 5071 TH 0 EM 0
1 km/s Armour 1-356 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control 1 PPV 0
Maintenance Capacity 5002 MSP
Habitation Capacity 50,000

Fuel Capacity 900,000 Litres Range 0.0 billion km (0 days at full power)

Active Civ Search Sensor MR30-R100 (50%) (1) GPS 2800 Range 30.8m km Resolution 100


This ship is classed as a commercial vessel for maintenance purposes

EDIT:

:rofl: Slowly is correct... it's going to take ten weeks just to drag it out from Earth to the Sol => Ross 248 jump point.
 
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Scientist Bo Mosberg has finished researching Tokomak Fusion Reactor technology, opening the way for a research project to give us even more powerful engines for our ships and missiles.
 
I like this. Crushing Prix fleets left and right and me not nearing my death like the previous times Ive run into alien forces. 2 out of 3 ships have been nearly destroyed under my command. I am Lucky Bob!