Shoo t'Rgt: Honour and Reason [DiD]

[Master of the Blade]

tho how the bloody hell do u pronounce discotheque?

Just, 'disco tek'. Looks harder to pronounce than it is, silly French words.

I keep forgetting to take screenshots. I've had some amazing battles, but been so intent on not dying that I forget to press F9.

Chapter 34: The Boomstick

You'd think I'd be fine flying around at 120m/s in a nice safe frigate just like before. Well, nope. What with corvettes whizzing around at 200m/s nowadays, I decide I want one of those for my normal activities. I've always wanted a Heavy Nemesis... Just got to find a shipyard that sells them.

Fortunately I don't have to scour the Universe too much - the Paranid Prime shipyard turns out to sell them, and I buy my new main command ship. Damn, they look so good. Shame the cargo bay's a bit on the small side, but I can manage with 975 units. Looks like the Paranid don't have a corvette class artillery weapon, so I'll have to go with Fragmentation Bomb Launchers in the main array, which are somewhere between fighter guns and heavier weapons. And apparently work like shotguns, complete with reloading noise after firing. Well, this'll keep me amused for hours. 'Boom! Chk-chk. Boom! Chk-chk.' Eheh.

After I pick up a jumpdrive and energy from Terracorp, I move to map out the universe. But first, a station owner needs protection and I want to see what this thin can do. Bring on the pirates!

It's not a large group that comes through the gate, and is all fighters, so I lay into them. M4 ships go down with a single volley of my ten main guns. M3s lose shields with two shots and die in two more. This thing's really fun to fly, and its HEPT turrets help keep enemies who're too fast for my FBLs on their toes. Actually, that is a bit of a downside - it's a slightly sluggish turner considering its turrets aren't especially powerful. Ah well. Time to remap the Universe. Damn Argon. Why do they need my stuff, anyway? Probably all scrap now, or destroyed while fighting the Terrans. Speaking of which, the few Terran ships I've seen about are all flagged hostile. After all I did for them.

After a bit of wandering, I find myself in Ocean of Fantasy. How? A very useful sector called, 'Venturer's Sentinel' which forms a gate connection between Ringo Moon in the West with Ocean of Fantasy in the East. Great for jumpdrives and just bog standard flying. I travel North to see how Getsu Fune is doing, maybe kill some Xenon. Turns out Menelaus' Paradise does need some tech support and I oblige, finding that the FBL works rather well agains corvettes too, though I also discover that the Paranid do in fact have a corvette weapon called the Fusion Pulse Disruptor which is rather more powerful than the FBL. I decide to stick with my current armament because it justifies my choice of name for the Heavy Nemesis, 'Boomstick'. Hey, it goes, 'boom' and sweeps away enemy ships. OK, terrible I know. The name stays.

There's another Boron sector to the North called Aquata. Very pretty, but a bit badly defended considering it's got another gate into Xenon territory. Apparently that one surprised the Boron something awful. It's peaceful here for now, so I refuel my jumpdrive at the local military base and head for Getsu Fune.

Where it is also peaceful. Hm. Either the Xenon put all they had into that pathetic invasion I fended off in Menelaus' Paradise, or they're planning something. To X534!

Back to Getsu Fune! That's a lot of missiles! The Xenon have a missile frigate and they're deploying it with most of their battlegroups. When I nearly get taken out by a barrage of Shadow missiles I decide it's not worth the gauntlet to get to the far away West gate. I also saw another frigate, set up sort of like my Cyclops with lots of firepower at the front and heavy shields. Both have a new hull design with a distictive red 'eye' at the center which looks... sort of cute, actually. Maybe it's just me.

Anyway, I can't do much here so I move South to go to Grand Exchange via Zyarth's dominion and X598, but find that Family Zyarth has been taken over by another family and is now called Circle of Deceit and the East gate has deactivated. Well, I never liked the Zyarth, but doesn't this mean they're pretty much locked in by the Xenon sector? I wonder how much they'll grovel for me to help them when I pop by to see how they're doing...

[Nathancros]

standard military tactic jump in, eyes opened wide by missle stream, panicked jabs at the jumpdrive while crying and running the opposite direction

seems the world has changed around u MOTB

[Master of the Blade]

seems the world has changed around u MOTB

Yeah, the first time I saw one of those Xenon missile frigates I nearly had a heart attack.

Chapter 35: Through the Laser Fire and the Missiles

After much circumnavigation because I apparently can't remember where I left Grand Exchange, I'm ready to make a run up to Zyarth's Dominion through X598. I stop off at a SPP for jump fuel should I encounter another nasty surprise (no sign of invasions here, either...), and head forth. The gate area's clear, but I do get the, 'missile closing' alert which means there's probably a missile frigate outside my scanner range. Actually, that's another new thing: Duplex and triplex scanners have been obsoleted in favor of 'advanced' and 'military' models. Advanced scanners are more or less equivalent to triplex and are mountable on ships with M size cargo bays while military scanners are very bulky and only available to capital ships (and some specially modified scout ships), but have something like a 70km range. Most capital craft come with them built in, which is why the Xenon can generally see me before I can see them.

As the missiles approach to scanner range, they're revealed to be a barrage of Shadows - Terran make, if I remember correctly, so more potent than their commonwealth counterparts. As they close, my turrets open up and a quick ninety degree turn buys enough time for them to destroy the remaining torpedoes. Which are then promptly replaced by the still out of sight missile frigate. This is going to be a long trip... I think I should try to get a lock on the East gate so I can use the jumpdrive to avoid the worst of attacks - there're a few fighter groups headed my way which I won't be able to avoid or beat, what with the missile frigate attacking too.

A couple of minutes of missile dodging later, the first of the fighter wings has arrived and are barely being held back by my turrets, but I've mapped the sector's East gate - meaning I'm halfway there. Unfortunately, it's the wasy half that I just managed, since all the sector's battleships are up north. I jump out to get the fighters off my case, then back into the fire for the second leg of my journey. Looks like my long-range tormentor's run out of ammo though, since it's just one volley which greets me as I jump in, then nothing. I can see the missile frigate now, classified, 'G' it's not particularly awe inspiring compared to other ships in the M7M class, but still perfectly formidable enough for me. A couple of other frigate class ships have noticed me too, one 'C', the heavy frigate from before, and a bog-standard Q. They're firing off the occasional Firestorm but are otherwise fairly harmless, being half as fast as the Boomstick. The North gate comes into range just as those damnable fighters get back on my tail, so I just hit the jumpdrive and do a 180 into Zyarth's Dominion, straight into a fairly major scrap between Zyarth ships and the Xenon...

On the Zyarth side is a Krait light destroyer, two Wolf antifighter frigates, a few bombers and some fighter wings. The Xenon have a C class heavy frigate, half a K, a couple of Ps and PXes and some of their own fighters. The K goes up in a swarm of Tomahawks shortly after I arrive, not before it takes out a Wolf with some sort of beam weapon from its upper turret. The fighters evaporate under the remaining wolf's PALC arrays, and the Krait takes out the C's shields with Plasma Burst Projectors - the new Split capital weapon which deals colossal damage at the expense of some range. The C gets a bead on the Krait and returns fire with the same beam weapon as the K was using, but can't defeat the destroyer before the Zyarth bombers get through its defenses and finish it. The last Wolf gets ripped apart by a pair of Xenon corvettes, which in turn get taken out almost simultaneously by, yeah, the bombers. The Krait mops up the fighters which managed to avoid the Wolves' attention and the local defense fleet returns to its patrols as if nothing had happened. Maybe they won't grovel before me after all. Shame.

The sector's a mess - no trading port, no shipyard, not really anything except an ore mine full of people who want to leave. If I had any space left in my ship I'd probably offer some of them a lift for a quick cash injection, but I don't and most of them are too snooty to hitch a ride in a well-fortified military corvette anyway and would rather evacuate in the comfort of an unarmed, slow and weakly armoured luxury cruiser. Well, they want to rot on a besieged mining station, let 'em. There seems to be a gate to the North, but I want to check on that unknown sector. Maybe there's something left of my complex to salvage.

Nope! The sector's been claimed by the Zyarth after the Argon dismantled my stations for scrap to fund their damnable war and now houses the Zyarth family shipyard and equipment dock facilities. There's also a sector to the North called Twisted Skies which seems to have been claimed for its resources and is mostly energy and mining stations. There're a few untapped asteroids left over, so I mark it as a point of potential interest, but not worth developing right now. Not a lot interesting around here, but I'd like to explore Xenon space a bit better. That East gate in 598 leads to a large chain of Xenon sectors, including a mysterious core region. With the recent surges in Xenon activity, it begs the question of what's going on behind the scenes. I want to find out.

A quick jump into X627 gets me barraged by some more Gs so I abandon that approach - I'd need to get all the way across a rather large sector to progress, and I'm not fighting my way through the missiles and fighters just for the sake of a recon mission. The only other way is to blaze a path with force. Time to see if my fleet's ready to take on the Xenon...

[Nathancros]

i just got an image of a big bulked up muscled guy walking through a cloud of mosquitos*the real life mosquitos not the game version*

even with all your power.. there was nothing you could do to stop the irritating mozzies XD

anywayz invading xenon sector? sounds like fun

[Master of the Blade]

i just got an image of a big bulked up muscled guy walking through a cloud of mosquitos*the real life mosquitos not the game version*

even with all your power.. there was nothing you could do to stop the irritating mozzies XD

The worst thing is, the Xenon fighter weapons hurt like hell, since they're basically the antifighter weapons for the entire fleet up to and to an extent including the capitals. I can't last longer than thirty seconds when a good-sized swarm of Xenon fighters decides to harass the H. Nemesis.

I'm going to spend a lot of time butting heads with the Xenon. And this time, it's fleet battles, not just me lolpwning them with a frigate, because that can't happen anymore.

Chapter 36: Battle Royale 2! Now with NO SCREENSHOTS AT ALL BECAUSE I FORGOT TO TAKE ANY!

First, I jump my fleet (who've been chilling at the Seizewell shipyard in the absence of a homebase) into Zyarth's Dominion. Probably not the safest place to keep my invasion force, it itself being under siege, but close by. Since I suspect the missile frigates will rip my own frigates apart should I lead with them, I hop into the Pteranodon and enter X598. Sure enough, I immediately get the barrage warning. Because the Pteranodon comes with a Military scanner, however, I am able to see the missiles and the ship that launched them. It seems missile ships conserve ammo by firing just the right amount of missiles to rip the target apart, but not going overboard. They probably should have gone overboard though, as my GCs pick off most of the incoming barrages before they reach me. Good thing no Xenon capitals were there to ambush me, or I might not have shot down as many as I did. After a while the barrages stop coming, signalling the end of the G's reserves. I've taken about 40% damage to my 14GJ shielding, so I can probably keep fighting for a while. The nearest enemy of significance is a C which is headed straight at me, so I align my ship for the best turret coverage and wait for it to close to firing range. My shields are already recharging pretty quickly.

The 'boom' when 24 Gauss Cannons fire in unison is unbelievably satisfying, you know. The damage they do when they smack a heavy frigate is also pretty satisfying, as are the little fires that start on the target ship's hull at the impact points. The C opens up with some sort of PPC ripoff at 8km, but I manage to evade some of the shots using the strafe drive. Not all though, and I'm at 80% shields when the Xenon frigate's heavy armour succumbs to my pounding and a heavy chunk of metal travelling at two and a half kilometres per second tears a hole straight through its hull.

A small group of fighters has arrived and is plinking away at my behemoth, but they can't even beat the recharge on my shields so I leave them to be taken out by my flak turrets. One strange thing about the Xenon now is that they very rarely seem to use the Q anymore. Not so much a bad thing as just strange. Eh, whatever. As I bulldoze through the sector, my next capital target is a J, accompanied by its fighter wing and another C. This time might be a bit trickier. I decide to take out the C first, as it has a weaker hull (though the same shielding) so I can remove one source of damage more quickly. By the time it goes down, the J has reached a range where I can't evade its attacks and I'm taking rather a thrashing, shields falling slowly but noticeably. My heavy cannons can still out-damage the J though and I try to manouver for a favourable angle on the carrier to avoid misses.

Unfortunately, this puts me in the arcs of three of its turrets - its front, side and upper arrays, the first two being equipped with the PPC like projectile weapon, the top one using those beam weapons, apparently called, 'Dark Matter Beam Cannons'. Cool, I suppose. They hurt quite a bit and I'm floundering a bit, the Pteranodon's abysmal turn rate making it a battle in itself to get it pointing in the right direction. I'm halfway through the J's hull, but it's getting dangerously close to breaking my shields, so I decide to jump back to the North gate to buy some time.

Doing so pays off, and I'm at 75% when I engage the J again. It's recharged some too, of course, but this time I manage to finish it off with a volley of GC shots, ripping the carrier in half. The only capital contacts left in the sector are a couple more Cs, a K and the toothless G, which is nevertheless advancing on me. Actually, it's the closest capital contact, so I decide to go after it. As expected, it goes down almost immediately, its thin shields and hull crumpling when faced with the prospect of a heavy destroyer's barrage. The J's fighter swarm is still attacking and is actually managing to get some damage on me. Well, I have a ship for this!. I move my cumbersome destroyer closer to the North gate and tell E'Den to jump to me. The Discotheque quickly covers the distance between the gate and my ship, and lays into the Xenon fighters. Scouts and interceptors die almost instantly, but as she gets the attention of some of the heavier fighters, the Wolf's weak shielding starts dropping alarmingly fast, and I tell E'Den to retreat. As it is, she takes 15% hull damage when a corvette opens up on the already weakened Wolf, but escapes fairly intact with only a minor performance hit. Took out most of the annoying fighters, so she did her job.

The K I could probably take alone. The K with escorts, not so. Time, I think, for the Trollmeister. I first try pulling its frigate escorts away to take them out individually, which brings some success - I hit one of them, jump to the East gate and it pulls away from the group for me to kill, but the other won't fall for the same trick. In jumps my Sturgeon and I point it at the K, while I try and get it to shoot me to keep its attention away from Trollmeister. I go for the other C. It's not long before the K can't shoot and I've taken out the C, and as hoped Trollmeister didn't take too much damage. As a bonus, the K's shields are pretty nonexistent by the time I start focusing on it thanks to the Ion Cannons. And with that, I finish the last threatening ship in the sector and head off for the command station.

[Master of the Blade]

Chapter 37: Retreat... For Now,

I have the Trollmeister attack the station too, since they have such massive shields. This pays off and the Ion Cannons nibble away a good 2% of the station's shielding with every shot, as do my GCs when I close to firing range. I have E'den clear up the remaining fighters while we work on the Xenon's only remaining command-capable asset in the sector. This'll take a very long while, though. The pounding of the GCs is quite relaxing in a chunk-of-metal-accelerated-to-incredibly-high-speeds way. It's a good few minutes of thumping the station before the inevitable heavy reinforcements arrive and I tell E'den to jump away in case of stray torpedoes, not that they'd have much luck getting past the PALCs. It's a J and a C, plus a couple of corvettes so I point the Trollmeister in the general direction of the C and head off myself to take on the J.

The ICs drain the C's weapon energy quickly as expected and I place myself between the J and my own support frigate to keep it safe. The J stops dead for some reason, though it keeps on firing. I think nothing of it until cloud upon cloud of red boxes begin shooting out of its docking bays. Oh dear. Guess I should have expected a carrier to bring fighters to the party. Well, they can't do that much dama- wait that's quite a lot of damage. The Trollmeister is holding up fairly well against the lesser numbers of fighters attacking it, but I'm swamped under a pile of the buggers. I reckon I can take out the J, at least. I keep my Sturgeon in for as long as possible, but have to jump it out before I finish the J, unfortunately. I still manage to take out the carrier, but make the jump out with 5% hull damage. Well, apart from that little failure, I think we're doing pretty well. The further into Xenon territory we go, the harder it is to keep going, though, and I'd like to be able to field my own swarms of fighters - and possibly some bomber wings - before I take on the core sectors, whatever they're like. Probably chock full of the insane microwave ovens.

With the fleet all safely taking up docking space at the Seizewell shipyard, I decide that while it's fairly lucrative taking combat contracts, it'd be good to have some passive income, like my trade ships from before. This time, however, I think I'll think a bit bigger. I survey a few likely looking sectors and decide Antigone Memorial would make a good location for a tech complex, with its asteroid of 90% ore and some decent silicon 'roids. I still have a good 250Mcr to throw at this project, so I can think fairly big. After playing around with a complex simulator, my shopping list ends up as:

2x Boron SPP XL
5x Boron L Crystal Fabs
6x L BoFu Labs
7x L BoGas facts (these food factories I always have extras of, just to be safe. It's nice to have spare stuff to cart off to other plexes, too)
2x Silicon Mine L on yield 64 asteroids, 1 on a yield 26. All Teladi.
6x 1MJ shield fab (Argon)
3x Quantum tube fab (Argon)
2x Cahoona Bakery
3x Cattle ranch.

A fairly modest venture clocking in at about 120Mcr, it earns about 1.5Mcr per hour with tech wares in good demand, and has large excesses of pretty much everything. The main reason for this setup is its repurposability. When I've got plenty of cash, I can shut off the fairly useless 1MJ and quantum tube production in favour of missiles, guns and heavier shields. It's also a decent staging base should I decide the Argon's dishonourable and cowardly attack on the Torus deserves punishment, producing 30000 ecells every hour for me to use as jump fuel. The Pirate base nearby my build site looks a bit ominous, though.

I actually bought a Mammoth a while ago. My or may not have mentioned it in these logs, but I did. Now to put it to use, with my new and innovative complex architecture plan! There's no way this can end up as spaghetti. Might turn out as a hairball, though...

[Master of the Blade]

Is it just Nathancros reading? Anyone else, PLEASE POST. I want to know if I have more than one audience member.

I'll put a chapter of sorts here later, but the game has got so far ahead of my typing it up it'll mostly be screenshots of stuff that I've done.

Chapter 38: Shown My Work

After only half an hour or so of work, I am finished.

The whole thing

It kicks out a good million and a half every hour, is permanently sold out and makes quantum tubes for use in my repair pod's repair beams. Oh yeah, I have a repair pod. It's an OTAS invention to make repairing larger ships viable, with massively more powerful repair lasers than the suit version. I've already used it quite a bit to patch up combat damage to my spiffy new Enhanced Heavy Hydra, which I bought when the Boomstick started taking too much damage from Xenon fighter wings. How I managed to get an enhanced model is a longish story...

So I was exploring the Universe. It was in the Thyn's Abyss area that I picked up a Drake class corvette. These things are FAST nowadays. Like, 350m/s fast. That's faster than most M4s. I got it for 5Mcr, slightly used. The hull was easily patched up, and I upgraded the ship. Being the (albeit rich) cheapskate I am, I didn't buy it any hardware, so it sat around gathering dust for a long time. Then I bought a second hand Boa. It had 8 ISRs onboard, enough to fit out that Drake. At that point I was getting a bit bored of the Boomstick's speed and poor cargo so the Drake was the perfect replacement for any scenario except fighting. Strange for a Split ship, but the Drake has a better use than fighting: Scout extraordinaire. Its deadly accurate and quite powerful 2xISR turrets can one shot M5s, the only ship class with a chance in hell of catching it, and maim the few M4s with enough speed. This also makes it more or less immune to missiles. Those Xenon core sectors were looking a lot more accessible...

So, I jumped to X627 and blazed across the sector making rude hand signals at the interceptors I was leaving in my wake of blood red engine emissions. Then, in Xenon Core 023, I spotted something very, VERY interesting. The #EFAA. Now, what the hell is going on? I thought this thing was self aware, all for peace between Terraformers and the biologicals. It took the #CAFE away to help it develop in peace. Now I find it obstinately hostile, refusing communication and very much gearing up for war, with a 30GJ shield array and its turret mounts Dark Matter Beam Cannon compatible. Definitely a point of interest, and I fired a spy drone at it. These tiny, nigh undetectable machines attach to a ship, broadcasting its position data to the owner. They cannot stream real time shield and hull statuses though, as that would require complex scanners, too heavy for the purpose of stealth. They link to the monitor systems of most ships, so I have a red box saying 'Xenon EFAA' following me around. Anyway, I couldn't stop to take holiday snaps - the locals were starting to get pissy.

The next sector, just classified, 'Xenon Sector' I did manage to take pictures of the ungodly huge numbers of Xenon I'd be facing should I choose to attack but moved on to the Unknown sector to the South. Turned out this was a good choice - the Boron Waverider corp had hidden one of their elusive research bases there, and the station was selling some very powerful - and very expensive - ships. The Enhanced Heavy Hydra immediately took my fancy. An 8xIPG main array deals as much shield damage as a destroyer turret array. This is standard on any H.Hydra model, so why does this one cost 22Mcr? Because it can use Teladi Fusion Bomb Launchers, devastating frigate/corvette class weapons which have a low fire rate but incredibly powerful projectiles. Where a standard H.Hydra would rely on weak PRGs for hull damage, this thing can use what basically amounts to heavy artillery. Instant Buy. And then, on with the exploring while my Pteranodon jumps in to extract my new corvette.

Turns out this is a back door into Terran territory. Unfortunately, after the Argons' 'generosity' the Terrans weren't too chuffed with me, calling me renegade and acting all huffy. Killing the steady flow of Xenon fighters from that sector didn't seem to help my case much so I went in search of missions. Their combat missions are all, 'go kill this Argon' which while tempting won't be tactically viable until I piss the Federation off. Anyway, my main passive source of income is in Argon space and until it outlives its usefulness I'm not risking its safety. They had a few taxi missions for a scumbag like me, which brought me back up to semi friendly 'Citizen' status. I left, because some of the border patrols who remained annoyingly hostile started looking at me in a pointedly hostile way.

After that little escapade, I start searching for somewhere to settle down. I have a destroyer - not to mention a small fleet of frigates, and parking it at a Teladi shipyard isn't really good practice. Convenient, though. A weird sector called Xi catches my eye, mainly because the Teladi could claim it but haven't meaning they don't particularly want it. It has a broken gate at the centre, which is a cool defining feature (and the Teladi's excuse for calling it a site of scientific interest and stopping the major races claiming the sector) along with usable but unremarkable asteroid yields. The asteroids were originally in a ring shape, but I pull a few out to use in a missile complex, building Tomahawks for me to use in a possible future bomber wing. Again, it can be repurposed for more or less any tech production role, and after I stockpile a couple of thousand missiles I can plug in some Silkworm fabs or something for possible future interceptor wings. I also purchase an asteroid base from the Teladi to use as a storage and resupply point, with a freigher running back and forth to keep the plex from filling up. I gladly move my fleet in to defend the place.

Now, the Terrans have a lot of new stuff, and they seem to be in desperate need of taxi drivers. There are these new corvette-TP hybrids flying around which seem very good. I've wanted an excuse to buy one at the extortionate price of 10Mcr for a while, but now I have a reason. One Teladi Bat luxury transport, please.

[Nathancros]

Is it just Nathancros reading? Anyone else, PLEASE POST. I want to know if I have more than one audience member.

I'll put a chapter of sorts here later, but the game has got so far ahead of my typing it up it'll mostly be screenshots of stuff that I've done.

what aint i good enough for ya bahaha im sure theres others. i've actually got a freind reading atm, no wait. 2 freinds. one hasnt a clue bout x3 but im teachin her. the other introduced me to it and he is still learning the game


so u have 3 readers in one atm

still im sure there are others around

[Master of the Blade]

To be honest, I'd probably just stop if you didn't post. It feels horrible to tell a story when nobody's listening. Updating previous post now with promised chapter.

[Zaitsev]

*raises hand* I'm reading too.

[Buck_Rogers]

And me. Keep it up mate!

[Master of the Blade]

Wow, sorry for leaving the thread so long, especially after saying what I did. It's getting to the point where I have enough homework from college that I actually find it hard to get any time to myself. Buying Galactic Civilisations 2 from steam certainly didn't help, either.

Hero Taxi

I'd never realised just how profitable taxi work is. It's only been a couple of hours and I'm something like fifty million credits richer, and a Hero of Sol. This for essentially no risk whatsoever. I know what I'm doing if ever I need cash. There was one slightly hairy moment when I visited Earth, where armies of ships are working to salvage what's left of the torus, under the protection of a sizable ATF fleet. On the upside, I think I found the next ship I want to buy, a Kvasir class heavy frigate. The downside? That entire fleet's hostile, and I needed to get to one of the bases in the sector to drop off a passenger. I tried the autopilot because I don't trust myself to use those tiny little internal docking units in such a large ship, but it took too long and I nearly got nuked. Good thing I've got PBGs in the turrets for missile defence, or whatever that torpedo was could've killed me. I think it came from the Odin. Either way, fighters were catching up and I didn't want to shoot anyone for once, so I turned off the nav computer, called in for docking permission and gunned it for the little black rectangle. Somehow I managed it.

Either way, now the Terrans like me. I'll put off getting a Kvasir for a while because I've more or less used up all the compensation money I got off the Argon. Another frigate would probably destroy my funds completely, even after that 50Mcr taxi spree. So, with nothing else to to, I wander the Universe. For a while I'm using the Drake, then I realise I finished oufitting the Hydra and meet that, not before chasing off a few Xenon invasions in the Southern regions.

The Hydra turns out to be a good choice. The weapons aren't really designed for use against fighters, but are powerful enough to one hit kill most M3 ships, so although I'm not accurate against them I only need to be accurate once. The IPGs rip through the shields of pretty much anything and the FuBLs (abbreviated such in order to distinguish them from the FrBLs on Boomstick) blow holes in the hull of anything up to heavy frigate size. I can fairly safely take on Cs in this ship. Unfortunately, I'm very vulnerable to missiles. Not good when missile frigates and bombers are getting so powerful.

Anyway, it seems the Kha'ak aren't as dead as you'd expect, after I took out their hive system. They have nasty new ships, just dubbed 'advanced' versions of their approximate class. The corvettes have 1.4GJ shielding, a 10 cannon main array and two 3-cannon turrets. Kyon emitters have been upgraded to pose a massive threat, meaning the Adv. Korvette is more like a miniature frigate than a true M6. They have military transports with 12 ship capacity, typically flying around with wings of new heavy fighters (6 BKyons, 125Mj shielding, look like evil bats. I want one), heavy interceptors (either 4 or 6 AKyons, 25MJ shielding, also look like bats) and heavy scouts (4 AKyons, 10MJ shields, look like miniature bats). Together, these little monsters are entirely capable of taking down frigates. The old ships are still around, deployed in moderately scary fleets, though their outdatedness is clear when I let E'den rip into them. It's about ten seconds before they're reduced to dust. Back to the adventurin'.

Wait. What the hell is tha-

[Buck_Rogers]

Ooooo! A cliffhanger! *Bites nails*

[Nathancros]

ALL HANDS BRACE FOR CLIFFHANGER!

[Master of the Blade]

Chapter 40: Leviathan

-t?!

I don't think the Kha'ak can say 'we're back' any more emphatically than this. It's terrorising the shipping lanes in merchant haven, and just blew off 20% of my shields in one hit when I strayed too close. The local response fleets are nowhere to be seen, probably torn apart by this abomination. It is as heavily shielded as the Pteranodon, almost twice as fast and armed with 30 Gamma Kyon Emitters. The new and improved kha'ak heavy weapon has a 10km range, and though I can't say for sure it has something like one and a half times the power of the Gauss Cannon (the only weapon with comparable range and accuracy). I quickly fly out of range and watch as a mercenary Shrike moves in to attack. By the time it reaches its IBLs' firing range it has lost over half its shielding and the captain clearly realises his ship is a lost cause and rams the destroyer, taking out most of its shielding.

There won't be a better opportunity. I issue the order to have the Pteranodon battle ready and jumped to me within the minute and position my corvette at the nearest gate so I can transfer to the bridge as fast as possible. This foe is more than formidable enough to destroy any of my other ships, so the only option it to face it with my own dreadnought. The Pteranodon enters the sector and I haul the bough around to bring my cannons to bear. The Advanced Destroyer had locked onto my H.Hydra, so I command it to jump out. Thirty seconds to firing range...

We clash. Even though it was already severely damaged by the Shrike captain's sacrifice the Kha'ak battleship is effortlessly outdamaging my cannons' output and levelling the discrepancy. A more thorough tactical analysis shows it to have a somewhat weaker hull than me, though I'd rather it didn't get down to that level. The battle rages for almost ten minutes, the booming of my gauss cannons meeting a sickly electrical sound which resounds through my battleship's superstructure every time the enemy's beams connect. Both ships have many superficial fires burning on their shields, renewed every time a shot is absorbed. Even though its hull is weak for a superdestroyer, whittling it down takes agonisingly long as my own shield counter ticks ever closer to zero.

At long last, victory is in sight. Even if my shields do succumb, my enemy is weak enough that there is little chance of losing the pride of my fleet. As a beam barely misses a turret in my frontal battery and goes wide, my pounding further weakens the destroyer until the regular beams cease and explosions can be seen beginning to rip through what's left of the Kha'ak ship's battered hull. I'll admit that was terrifying.

As I survey the now dead-quiet battlefield I spot a severely damaged freighter in line with where the enemy titan's upper turret array would have been. I'd seen it firing into space and assumed it was swatting fighters, but it turns out it was trying to finish off this hapless Boron trader. If it had been using that turret against me, I could well have taken serious hull damage. And that's when most of its shielding has been neutralised beforehand. I'd hate to be the commander who has to deal with a full scale invasion using these things.

[Nathancros]

0_0 blooddy close there!

[Buck_Rogers]

Phew!

You took a huge risk there. Even if the Kha'ak was badly damaged.

[Master of the Blade]

I actually had no idea how dangerous they were until I attacked that one. Now that I know better, I'll be more careful.

How are the screenshots turning out? On my screen they're rather difficult to make out, but that's because I have the monitor settings at a compromise between visibility and oh-god-it-burns brightness.

[Buck_Rogers]

I actually had no idea how dangerous they were until I attacked that one. Now that I know better, I'll be more careful.

You had better be! lol Don't want to be the only 'active' DiD going.

How are the screenshots turning out? On my screen they're rather difficult to make out, but that's because I have the monitor settings at a compromise between visibility and oh-god-it-burns brightness.

They're not bad. Maybe could be better though. Just looked at the one where the Kha'ak began to blow up. I can't see any explosions ripping across it's hull.

Although, maybe that's just me. lol

[Master of the Blade]

OK, thanks for that. I think that particular screen is just me being a bad cameraman. You can kind of see an explosion in the middle of it.