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7 Jul 06
With the Tarka finished, I now had to complete the conquest of the Humans. I had already taken over about six of their worlds. There were only six star systems left. I had the reconstituted Death Fleet. I had a second Death Fleet about to go operational. Then since I had cornered the Humans into one small section of the galaxy, I had shrunk my front lines. This opened up a number of cruisers for assault duty. I was able to move some of the older cruisers to defensive duty so only recent model cruisers would be part of the assault.
The Hivers don't really excel at blitzkrieg tactics, but I was going to try. I had back fill fleets ready to move forward as soon as the gates were constructed and planets cleared so a Death fleet could immediately move on to the next target. So I had two Death fleets and a cruiser assault fleet lead by a command dreadnought. Six planets, two waves, simple, game over.
When the first Death fleet arrived at Pollux, I found six cruisers, a dozen destroyers and a handful of satellites. Clearly my previous assaults and conquests had hurt their economy badly. Compared to the Tarka, the Human destroyers were brushed aside. I had replaced the assault cruiser with a minelayer. I put down mines in a slight zig zag pattern behind the dreadnoughts. This meant that if ships overshot or tried to circle the dreadnoughts, they'd run into the mines. Given that my mines were pretty powerful by this time, it worked even better than expected. The destroyers were damaged on the first pass and blew up in the mines. The dreadnoughts engaged and destroyed two cruisers en route to the planet. The size six planet didn't last long. Neither did the mop up. The next turn the fleet swept the system of satellites and one damaged cruiser.
The second Death fleet arrived at Avalon. What was this? Six ships and no satellites. Three cruisers? The entire defense force was wiped out on the way to the planet. I might have taken pity and spared the planet, but they kept shooting missiles at me. It was cleansed.
After that I didn't see a single cruiser. One planet was uninhabited. The rest were sparsely defended. Only Alpha Centauri, a size ten planet, had one ring of small defensive satellites. It was defended by eight destroyers. They were swept aside. After the last satellite was destroyed and planet silenced, the Humans were no more. The Queen's peace had begun.
Jason
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6 Jul 06
The Death Fleet swept through another small Human system. It was only a lightly defended size three planet. They put up a little fight, but they couldn't stand up to the dreadnoughts. They did take out the last of the spare assault ships. I'd either have to wait for reinforcements or press on using support ships in that role. Since I was pressing up against one edge of the galaxy with only a planet to go on that side, I sent the fleet on.
I was mildly surprised when the fleet arrived at Ke'Saak to find not another Human colony, but the Tarka I had been searching for. I was more than mildly surprised when I saw they had less than ten cruisers, but more than eighty destroyers defending the planet. Apparently this was the remnants of the empire. They must have pulled back here when they started losing worlds to me and the Humans. I could see why the Humans were having trouble finishing them off. Now it was my turn.
I could see the Tarka battle plan immediately. They had one command cruiser holding back near the planet. Then they hoped to overwhelm me with wave after wave of destroyers. As before, the Tarka ships closed at surprisingly high speed. The dreadnought guns opened up on them. Soon they were on me and past me and turning around. Only three or four had been destroyed on the first pass. It looked like their replacements were already closing in on my dreads. This could be bad.
Trying to focus dreadnought fire against specific high speed destroyers is pretty much pointless. About the same number of guns will hit as if you had done nothing, but you will have a lot more guns missing. I kept the dreadnoughts powering toward the planet. If I could take out the planetary missiles and the command ship, this battle would be mine.
The Tarka had no intention of complying with my wishes. The command ship kept turning and moving to keep behind the planet. The destroyers kept streaming in from all vectors. I concentrated on taking out the planet. Once the big guns were in range, the pounding began. It didn't actually take long for the planet to die, but it seemed to stretch out as the destroyers kept pounding on my dreadnoughts. They seemed to be concentrating on the most heavily damaged dreadnought. I tried to start pulling it back, but turning the big dread and accelerating that close to the planet was like moving in molasses. It was not only taking damage but losing weapons. Then I heard the scream I didn't think I'd hear. The big ship killer was breaking up. Dreadnought down. My ships pulled back as time ran out. Looking at the battle stats, they had lost fifty ships to take down my dreadnought. They had inflicted pretty good punishment on the other two as well. The Tarka had done what the Humans couldn't. They had seriously injured the dreadnought death fleet. The repair ships would be working nonstop until the opportunity came to make them pay.
I knew the Tarka had nowhere to run since I controlled all the nearby stars. I deployed the gate and set out to defend it. Since I had lost a dreadnought, I could bring most of my support ships into the battle. This hurt the Tarka in two ways. They had to spread out fire across more targets, and most of my support ships were shielded so much of the initial damage would be negated.
As expected they sent everything after me except the command ship. Some of the smaller ships seemed to have an easier time tracking and hitting the destroyers. The gate ship was the only one that had its shields go down. Without the huge numbers and the distraction of the planet, they were overwhelmed. I had to chase down the command ship, but after the battle, I received the pleasant message that the Tarka had been defeated. Now I just need to finish off those pesky Humans.
Jason
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5 Jul 06
Except for the media, I got all the site updates done. Please let me know if you have any problems. One of the other things I did was get the updated version of Sword of the Stars from the kind folks at Kerberos. Unfortunately, the new version didn't like my old saves. I'm probably close enough to the end to just finish this one, so I'll carry on. If we have another story like this, it will be with the updated game.
Back to the game. My technological limitations made planning somewhat easier. Human terraformed worlds were outside the ability of my engineers to make suitable for the Hive. That lead to the simple strategy: Smash, Cleanse and Move on. Smash the initial defenders, Cleanse the Planet, and set up a gate, repair, and move on to the next world. It meant that I wasn't gaining resources, but I also wasn't wasting resources trying to build up and defend vulnerable new colonies. I was weakening the enemy both militarily and economically.
So what was the implement of destruction. It was a new version of the death fleet. The heart of this fleet was three dreadnoughts. One was a command ship. One specialized in ship destruction. One specialized in planetary destruction. The periphery of the fleet was made up of support ships, torpedo boats, and assault cruisers. The lighter attack craft would take heavy casualties, but they would maximize the punch of the dreadnoughts.
The first target was Cygnus. I had cut off this size ten world earlier. As best I could tell, a relief fleet would have to jump through two defended systems to bail out Cygnus. When my fleet arrived, the planet was still lightly defended. There were about ten cruisers and an equal number of destroyers. They were supported by two rings of satellites.
Since the goal was to take out the planet, that's where the dreadnoughts were ordered. The torpedo boats shot ahead to engage the defending fleet. The dreadnoughts would just unleash their guns as they powered by. Dreadnoughts may be slow to get going, but it's not like a cruiser or two is going to stop them once they get a head of steam. My torpedo boats only fired a few rounds before being vaporized, but they softened up the defense. Four cruisers exploded as the dreadnoughts swept in and out of range.
The sheer firepower of a dreadnought is inspiring. When three open up on a planet, the whole planet shakes. If the dreadnoughts could take out a size ten planet before taking too much damage, the remaining Human fleets wouldn't stand a chance. The planet provided not only the heavy missile firepower, but also a large pool of resources to repair fleets and build more ships, not to mention the money each planet generates. I didn't want to lose one or more dreadnoughts to take out the planet, but it would still be worth it. I needn't have worried. The dreads weren't even to the point of medium damage when the planet went dark. Mop up actually was easy since all the rats were scurrying off the sinking ship.
I was hoping that might have cowed the Humans somewhat. No. They had build up a death fleet of their own. They had a fleet of sixty ships about half cruisers. They sent it out to probe my defenses along their node lines. That would have been devastating, but I had some advantages. I had more guns per ship. I had better technology. I had planetary defenses, and I had dreadnought command ships that let me field more ships at a time than they could. They only took out a handful of my ships, but they did rattle me when that fleet attacked three of my fleets in rapid succession.
I might have been significantly worried if my death fleet wasn't ready to strike again. It was ready to strike the second biggest Human world I could find. They had a couple more cruisers this time, but the result was the same. I lost some supporting firepower, but the dreadnoughts arrived in range of the planet with only light damage. Once again they were able to turn from their completed task before one of the ships was in danger. This time the Humans pressed the attack, but the dreadnoughts had enough firepower to keep the Humans from being able to concentrate their fire. In short, the Humans took heavy casualties while only putting the planet killer in danger before time ran out. With no relief and limited repair, the Humans ran to reinforce another of their planets.
So far the plan is working like a charm. I also have another death fleet under construction using even better technology. The galaxy will soon be mine. I just have to find where those pesky Tarka are hiding.
Jason
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3 Jul 06
Forgive me, I'm taking my "holiday" to do background work on the site. I have some upgrades to do. I've got some more media to put up. I just put up a couple more movies. I have a bunch of stuff I've been meaning to do around here.
I may or may not update tomorrow. I may or may not get back to the story tomorrow. It all depends on time available and how things go. Think of me as a kid on the web. I crash around doing stupid things. Then I figure a few things out. Then I get a few more. Eventually I do less stupid things and more ok things. Occasionally even a good thing will pop up. I appreciate your patience. If you have any problems with the site, it's probably the crashing and learning bit.
I hope everyone in the USA is enjoying their freedom on Independence Day. Maybe for one day, everyone else around the world can focus on the good things the United States has done. To all my friends still serving in harm's way, be safe and thank you.
Jason
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