Our fleet has arrived within bombardment range of the planet... roughly 95 m-km out. No reaction at all. Not even any turn interrupts. Time to turn on our long-range sensor and take a look.
Crazy but possibly viable suggestion:
Can there be an attempt to bait the PDCs to firing off salvos of missiles at the Rocks before/during the full-fleet salvos, since there is a need to get in close anyway?
That long range sensor is awesome..
When our missiles had closed to about 5 m-km from the planet, we started getting turn-interrupts. Presumably, that's the edge of their detection-range for size-1 missiles.
All of the MIRV missiles don't split until 4 m-kms, if I remember correctly, and the detection range will be longer... That's unfortunate, they're going to be much less effective than hoped.
Edit: So impact is at 3.3 m-km. What speed were those decoys travelling at? And what speed were the PD missiles going? It might work after all, as long as the PD doesn't intercept the slower MIRVs too much earlier. It might even be perfect, if the MIRVs are detected before splitting but hit afterwards.
We've passed through a five-day build-cycle cut-off, and the planet has moved on in its orbit. I'm adjusting our fleet position to keep it in bombardment range. Scientist Bo Mosberg has perfected a Military version of the Magneto-Plasma Drive. It will increase our fleet speed by over +50% (to about 6500 kps), if no major changes are made to the designs.