- Location
- Wherever I feel like being
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Or maybe it's just that some of us aren't finding reading about how NOD is pulling off massacres entertaining.
Attempting to Fulfill the Plan: GDI Edition
Just a guess, but one hinted at last turn, I think Bintang's masterstroke is this turn, and involves a naval application of Nod's stealth tech. Also not sure if the Caravanserai's declaration of independence counts as a masterstroke, especially considering it was in a response to Mehretu's attack on them.
- Location
- Washington DC
On the one hand, considering the state of the world right now, I can see why you might not want to read about the bad guys wrecking face sometimes. On the other...this is a war story. It's based on a series called Command and Conquer, for crying out loud. What in the world were you expecting? It's a war. Some times the good guys lose a battle. It's not like the news is all bad, or anything. We won a lot more than we lost this turn.
- Pronouns
- He/It/Argh!
That is kinda close to that thing where we keep saying we just need to develop X before we do the deployment, and suddenly a year has passed...
Infernium lasers are a rather new technology. If we want the SADN operational, we want it done now, as we are in a war. Trying to generate new technology for something that you want built now is never a good idea.
If this is on the table, then the project is already viable.
Mr. Mica
Capitalism cannot fix Global Warming.
- Location
- Earth
It is the reverse 'for a lack of a horseshoe'-problem that have been brought up a few times in thread, most recently by you and, I believe, Derpmind.
Instead of one crucial needed thing, it is the belief that holding back for just one more project/development/technology, this one thing will be so much better.
And the worst part is, is that it is probably not exactly wrong, but the actual thing that happens is something like decision paralysis. Where things that would be okay now, might be fantastic later, therefore it is better to wait.
Alas, if the horse had shoes, surely it would ride faster.
Also I had a thought.
Would the A-EVA in bureacracy help the intelligence service with their workload, @Ithillid? Or can something like that be done, a dedicated system for them, maybe.
Karachi and food reserves as a minimum. I'm sure some people might want other things too
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
If we can cut the overall project cost by several dice just by building a better laser cannon, it's well worth it- it just means that developing the better laser becomes more urgent.
Furthermore, it is incredibly misleading to think of this is a binary choice between "do we want the SADN operational or not." We want a lot of things operational. Just talking about Plan commitments and critical priorities alone (e.g. shipyards and drone fighters), we've got something like 30-40 dice worth of military projects to think of. All of those things are important to the war effort, so we've got an inevitable time horizon of a year or two of effort just to finish all this stuff.
At which point the idea of delaying one particular project for one quarter, and meanwhile doing other important things, while a supporting tech gets researched... Yeah, I'm not seeing the argument here.
The thing discouraging us from doing SADN isn't that we need to put it off until we've done the lasers, it's that it's a huge project among a bunch of other huge projects, all of which have urgent military implications too.
So for the Erewhon dice I'm thinking we put it in orbit. This is for several reasons.
1. Orbital is one of the sections we're putting free dice in for the plan. An extra non free dice a turn could mean fewer free dice required.
2. Space core from portal 2. Nuff said
3. It has the potential to make it happy. I honestly think contributing getting humanity off earth might do Erewhon some good, earth is kinda shitty after all.
4. I don't know exactly how Erewhon will help but I can certainly see Orbital being something an AI could help with, lots of computers/computing being done for it.
5. I just don't feel comfortable using our first AI directly for military gain. How we treat Erewhon has an impact on our relationship with AIs in the future. Let's not make them weapons
1. Orbital is one of the sections we're putting free dice in for the plan. An extra non free dice a turn could mean fewer free dice required.
2. Space core from portal 2. Nuff said
3. It has the potential to make it happy. I honestly think contributing getting humanity off earth might do Erewhon some good, earth is kinda shitty after all.
4. I don't know exactly how Erewhon will help but I can certainly see Orbital being something an AI could help with, lots of computers/computing being done for it.
5. I just don't feel comfortable using our first AI directly for military gain. How we treat Erewhon has an impact on our relationship with AIs in the future. Let's not make them weapons
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Space is pure, uncorrupted by Tiberium and mankinds conflicts (Lets forget the hostile aliens for a second). A bright new frontier for humanity etc etc:
I support the Erewhon space proposal.
Perhaps a bit, but we probably want to do the HSLs next turn or the turn after, to ensure our initial tranche of frigates have improved point-defense. And SADN is lower-priority than shipyards and at least one more Wingman Drone factory.
Frigates, Carriers, Wingmen, ASAT and OSRCT are current on our list of top priority. focus on these not small things, or the supposedly needed things, as is, we have little time for continual rehashing of either, renegotiating, Karachi Loop, "we failed" loop, or some other BS, as it is, we do have the MILITARY dice to properly clean up this massive mistake we made, however I am not going to either want FD on Military, or a renegotiation until the major parts are done, small things can be done later when we're NOT continually fighting a grease fire everywhere with only water.
I think Erewhon is probably best used to polish off civilian projects that are close but not quite done, at least until it gets some more practice. If there's nothing that fits that bill then put the die on space or Heavy Industry or whatever, but I definitely agree with the idea that we should not have Erewhon work on projects that directly kill people. Not because muh Skynet or whatever, just that getting its hands bloody with constructing machines purpose-designed to kill human beings is a bad introduction to having adult responsibilities and work. It's not even a year old, remember, even if AI childhood doesn't last quite as long as human childhood we shouldn't make the one year old help murder people.
Yeah, things like lasers and SADN can come after our plan goals, frigates and wingman. Even then I'd rather put the dice towards Zone Armour
So through the end of the plan, we are looking at:
~1 mil die on merchantmen conversions
~11 mil dice on CVEs
~8 mil dice on frigates
~2 mil dice on shells
~3 mil dice on urls
~1 mil die on railgun munitions
~2 mil dice on ablatives
~3-5 mil dice on mastodons
~3 mil dice ASAT phase 4
~10 mil dice ORSCT phase 3+4
~44-46 total mil dice
With 48 mil dice left, and no cushion for bad rolls. So any additional military projects will require free dice (42 free dice left), which means that they need to be evaluated against not only other military projects, but non-military ones. Current free dice usages are very tempting in heavy industry (cap goods + energy for the mil projects), orbital (all dice currently needed to fulfill plan goals), and infrastructure (provide logistics/defenses for the war). That is also not accounting for the massive refugee wave that we are expecting.
We can still grab a couple of other military projects (and some, such as wingmen, are of very high priority), but we'll need to be careful going forward.
~1 mil die on merchantmen conversions
~11 mil dice on CVEs
~8 mil dice on frigates
~2 mil dice on shells
~3 mil dice on urls
~1 mil die on railgun munitions
~2 mil dice on ablatives
~3-5 mil dice on mastodons
~3 mil dice ASAT phase 4
~10 mil dice ORSCT phase 3+4
~44-46 total mil dice
With 48 mil dice left, and no cushion for bad rolls. So any additional military projects will require free dice (42 free dice left), which means that they need to be evaluated against not only other military projects, but non-military ones. Current free dice usages are very tempting in heavy industry (cap goods + energy for the mil projects), orbital (all dice currently needed to fulfill plan goals), and infrastructure (provide logistics/defenses for the war). That is also not accounting for the massive refugee wave that we are expecting.
We can still grab a couple of other military projects (and some, such as wingmen, are of very high priority), but we'll need to be careful going forward.
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- Location
- Wall Gazing
Erewhon being used in Orbital sounds like a good idea, both for their development and for the Plan, as Orbital doesn't have much slack.
To that end I've run some numbers for Orbital, assuming the Erewhon die does act as an AA die.
GDSS Enterprise (Phase 5) 102/1535: 1 E + 14 dice 300R 2%, 1 E + 15 dice 320R 11%, 1 E + 16 dice 340R 30%, 1 E + 17 dice 360R 56%, 1 E + 18 dice 380R 79%, 1 E + 19 dice 400R 92%, 1 E + 20 dice 420R 98%
Orbital Cleanup (Stage 11) 32/85: 1 E die 10R 63%, 1 E + 1 die 20R 99%
Orbital Cleanup (Stage 11+12) 32/170: 1 E + 1 die 20R 54%, 1 E + 2 dice 30R 95%
Conestoga Class Development 0/60: 1 E die 30R 56%, 1 E + 1 die 60R 98%
Outer System Survey Probes 0/190: 1 E + 1 die 30R 14%, 1 E + 2 dice 45R 71%, 1 E + 3 dice 60R 97%
Lunar Rare Metals Harvesting (Phase 1) 0/160: 1 E + 1 die 40R 34%, 1 E + 2 dice 60R 87%, 1 E + 3 dice 80 R 99%
Lunar Rare Metals Harvesting (Phase 1+2) 0/305: 1 E + 2 dice 60R 4%, 1 E + 3 dice 80R 44%, 1 E + 4 dice 100R 85%, 1 E + 5 dice 120R 98%
Lunar Regolith Harvesting (Phase 2) 50/330: 1 E + 2 dice 60R 12%, 1 E + 3 dice 80R 60%, 1 E + 4 dice 100R 92%
Lunar Regolith Harvesting (Phase 2+3) 50/650: 1 E + 5 dice 120R 1%, 1 E + 6 dice 140R 17%, 1 E + 7 dice 160R 51%, 1 E + 8 dice 180R 81%, 1 E + 9 dice 200R 95%
Lunar Heavy Metals Mines (Phase 2) 145/385: 1 E + 2 dice 60R 35%, 1 E + 3 dice 80R 82%, 1 E + 4 dice 100R 98%
Lunar Heavy Metals Mines (Phase 2+3) 145/760: 1 E + 6 dice 140R 12%, 1 E + 7 dice 160R 44%, 1 E + 8 dice 180R 76%, 1 E + 9 dice 200R 94%
To that end I've run some numbers for Orbital, assuming the Erewhon die does act as an AA die.
GDSS Enterprise (Phase 5) 102/1535: 1 E + 14 dice 300R 2%, 1 E + 15 dice 320R 11%, 1 E + 16 dice 340R 30%, 1 E + 17 dice 360R 56%, 1 E + 18 dice 380R 79%, 1 E + 19 dice 400R 92%, 1 E + 20 dice 420R 98%
Orbital Cleanup (Stage 11) 32/85: 1 E die 10R 63%, 1 E + 1 die 20R 99%
Orbital Cleanup (Stage 11+12) 32/170: 1 E + 1 die 20R 54%, 1 E + 2 dice 30R 95%
Conestoga Class Development 0/60: 1 E die 30R 56%, 1 E + 1 die 60R 98%
Outer System Survey Probes 0/190: 1 E + 1 die 30R 14%, 1 E + 2 dice 45R 71%, 1 E + 3 dice 60R 97%
Lunar Rare Metals Harvesting (Phase 1) 0/160: 1 E + 1 die 40R 34%, 1 E + 2 dice 60R 87%, 1 E + 3 dice 80 R 99%
Lunar Rare Metals Harvesting (Phase 1+2) 0/305: 1 E + 2 dice 60R 4%, 1 E + 3 dice 80R 44%, 1 E + 4 dice 100R 85%, 1 E + 5 dice 120R 98%
Lunar Regolith Harvesting (Phase 2) 50/330: 1 E + 2 dice 60R 12%, 1 E + 3 dice 80R 60%, 1 E + 4 dice 100R 92%
Lunar Regolith Harvesting (Phase 2+3) 50/650: 1 E + 5 dice 120R 1%, 1 E + 6 dice 140R 17%, 1 E + 7 dice 160R 51%, 1 E + 8 dice 180R 81%, 1 E + 9 dice 200R 95%
Lunar Heavy Metals Mines (Phase 2) 145/385: 1 E + 2 dice 60R 35%, 1 E + 3 dice 80R 82%, 1 E + 4 dice 100R 98%
Lunar Heavy Metals Mines (Phase 2+3) 145/760: 1 E + 6 dice 140R 12%, 1 E + 7 dice 160R 44%, 1 E + 8 dice 180R 76%, 1 E + 9 dice 200R 94%
One of the reasons we prioritized ASAT was that during the planning phase, orbital laser weaponry was gated behind ASAT 5. Since then, we've unlocked modern Nod laser weaponry, obviating that need somewhat.
Using Erewhon as our floating minor space project die is probably a pretty good idea, put it to work on some important but low-stakes stuff like orbital cleanup and the outer system probes that we won't have the base dice to allocate to. Since there's no roll bonus, just an unmodified raw die, the most optimal place to use Erewhon is cheap low-progress projects instead of spending 20R+ for 7 progress points on a 500 point project or whatever. Space has a few of those that would be too low priority to bother with otherwise, it's a good look to the public, and it's meaningful work that Erewhon can feel actually contributes to the GDI project.
The Regency War: Part 6 - Masters and Commanders
- Location
- The Underdark
The Regency War: Part 6 - Masters and Commanders
Mehretu
The African theater could be easily divided into three fronts. First and most significant is the South African theater, focused primarily on the long patch of land in the southern savannah regions. Then there is the West African theater – while GDI there controls the coast, there is a long inland strip still controlled by the Brotherhood. This was at one point the territory of the Ten Rings, a group of minor Warlords who held themselves to something resembling the traditions of the Barbary Coast of old. Third and last is the Horn of Africa. The Somali Coast has long been a source of piracy but it was also a center of trade and one point along a long route that circumnavigated the Indian Ocean.
Mehretu had not let up on his efforts to leverage the Caravanserai and the Arabian Warlords to his cause. When assassinations did not bring him a war against the "Invaders" in Mecca, Medina, and Jeddah, he turned to more direct options. The Horn of Africa loomed large in this scheme; once the land where he and Kane had sabotaged some of the earliest of GDI's attempts to build the massive Mammoth Armored Reclamation Vehicles, now it is a means of leveraging combat assets against the Initiative. While the coastline itself is heavily patrolled, with both naval infantry and warships making a position there completely and utterly untenable, it is in the inland territories where Mehretu could make his move. While out of range for tactical ballistic missiles due to the ASAT network's presence – putting a stop to nearly anything that crests at over a hundred kilometers up – a conventional strike via a depressed firing angle is more than feasible, able to hit GDI infrastructure in Jeddah and everything short of the core of Mecca itself. This attack itself would be compounded with a full-thrust naval landing on the calm yet scorching coastal plain of the Tihamah, allowing Mehretu's forces to make an ingress point south of Jeddah.
The Caravanserai were not about to allow the strike to occur. Allowing a launch or an attack on Jeddah would end in Mecca ruined as well as shattering the still-fragile truce. However, this did not mean that the Caravanserai forces would brook GDI involvement. Though they have acceded to the Initiative their civil victories and allowed them to peddle GDI's ideals in this manner, the Caravanserai would have to – and must – prove the legitimacy of their cause. That they are Amir al-Mu'minin, – 'Commander of the Faithful' – instead of GDI and that it is their remit to protect the remaining holy cities against fellow Brotherhood aggression.
For their part, the GDI acceded to this rationale, withdrawing most of their garrison barring those needed to man the Jeddah posting with an equal draw-down on technical experts. Notwithstanding the tenuous peace, the manpower needed to otherwise press Mehretu on the coasts could be used to fuel offensives elsewhere, joining the reserves for the full-court press on the South African theater properly. More cynically, the more the Caravanserai bleeds, the better odds it is for GDI to integrate them with less fuss.
GDI's military theorists and spies have marked the Caravanserai as a force composed of 'light metal' forces, using a combination of Carryalls and Reckoners to transport troops and firepower. This led to some assumptions that against GDI's own 'heavy metal', they would flounder once forced to an engagement. That even against peer opponents, they would take significant casualties and vehicle kills, in the same way that Brotherhood forces favored their strikes against GDI's own armored columns. To the disappointment of these self-same analysts, however, the scenario above did not manifest.
What the analysis missed is the fact that though the Caravanserai always relied on the goodwill and patronage of their fellow Warlords to ferry Hajj pilgrims, they still retained a considerable industrial base focused on servicing their vehicle pool and committing to abatement prior to GDI's arrival. Though their diplomatic posture ensured that nothing more than minor skirmishing occurs between fellow Brotherhood factions, the tour of duty of Caravanserai soldiery is one inseparable from their vehicles. Deployed along the cardinal east and west routes, Caravanserai soldiers fight against some of the more treacherous terrains a Post-Tiberium Earth has to offer. In contrast to some of the more schizophrenic operational security employed by Brotherhood forces elsewhere, the nature of their assignment meant that these Hajj Protection Cadre are extensively trained in all aspects of their vehicle pools, from basic maintenance to operational limits. And not unlike their Ghazi predecessors, this made them maneuver warfare veterans, if focused on the logistical aspect more than the operational one.
As the First Commander of the Hajj, it was Al-Rashida's duty to face off against Mehretu. More than duty even, for the aging man nursed a black grudge on the Warlord for the death of his grandson. More than motivated and with nothing to lose, he had repelled the attack on Jeddah with a timely missile barrage of his own, driving Mehretu's cruisers and semi-submersibles back to Port Sudan and the outlying ports in the first quarter of the year. In this second quarter, right around the Islamic Sacred Months and the Hajj, Mehretu showed that he did not care for the observances, and attempted to make his strike. Al-Rashida had predicted this, keeping his forces at high readiness for such an occurrence while resting those troops that he could spare, and prioritizing them for cycling through Mecca.
With the Red Sea mostly held by GDI, including multiple hydrofoil squadrons sitting at Jeddah, and even more in the gulf, both sides had to be careful. While a short sprint from the Horn of Africa to the coast is certainly possible, it would be a very difficult strategic play, leaving Al-Rashida little choice but to take the offensive, and destroy the launchers himself. In total, Al-Rashida had some sixty thousand fighters to work with, although not all could be deployed immediately. While the Caravanserai have few dedicated landing ships, they certainly had a large number of air assets, enough that, assuming the beachheads were secure, they could surge their entire force to the beaches and support them in a matter of hours.
Late in the second quarter, Al-Rashida made the critical call to move forward, using GDI's constant naval presence as a screen to bring his landing ships within a kilometer of the intended beachheads, before making a final sprint to the landing sites.
With Northern Somalia being relatively mountainous there were few really good landing sites. While the ideal would have been near Bosaso, to take advantage of a road through one of the few mountain passes available, the only really practical area would be to the west of Maydh, where a soft open beach was available for invasion.
The initial landing was near uncontested, Mehretu's forces having been held behind the hill lines, tucked away in deep complexes of earthworks, avoiding the worst of GDI missile and naval bombardments. With Al-Rashida putting forty out of his sixty thousand men ashore by the end of the first day's transit, he quickly pushed inland, engaging Mehretu's forces amid the foothills of Mount Shimbiris, and driving them back.
Unfortunately, while the original period was highly coordinated, much of the internal operations were significantly less so, with the Caravanserai driving deep into the territory, and GDI only getting the occasional glimpse into the depths of the operation, partially because while it is one thing to take significant offensive action against a fellow member of the Brotherhood of Nod, it is quite a different thing to do so with the aid of, and in coordination with, GDI.
What is known is that Al-Rashida managed to conquer or convert significant parts of the territory to the Caravanserai's cause, and raiding operations in the western half of the Indian ocean have dropped significantly, with only the occasional Indian raider or submarine asset making its way into that theater. While Mehretu certainly has operational control of raider groups operating out of Southern africa, it is facing significant problems from Madagascar based defensive networks.
Elsewhere, in the north, near Oslo, something very different was occurring. Deep in the Blue Zone, the Bogatyr had been landed in soft ground, and had been quickly surrounded by a base. Six companies of the Talons – two of Titans and four of Havocs – plus an array of supporting arms surrounded the site as engineers and scientists turned the ship into an anthill, tarps and scaffolding rising around it, and the whole vessel began to be examined from the bolts and welds to the reactor core.
The Order of the Remembrancer was certainly not about to allow this affront to Krukov (and by proxy the rest of the Brotherhood of Nod) to stand.
Sweeping across the moonlit swamps north of the city, the Order, led by Kemal, approached the outer defenses: a small outpost manned by a pair of Havocs, their night vision far superior to anything that could be found on a human – but with only two of them, there were gaps in the sweep that could be exploited.. Kemal approached, relying on his technopathic abilities to blind the Havocs, until he could get close enough to leap. One of the weaknesses of the Havoc is its dorsal-mounted emergency escape hatch – a 'weakness' that nearly anyone would agree is generally inaccessible to saboteurs. Kemal proved them wrong; the hatch clicked open as he placed his hand beside it, and in one smooth motion he slid out a silenced pistol and shot twice. As the other Havoc twitched and began to call out, Kemal's partner (one of the other members of the order) had clambered up. The other hatch clicked open, but not before the second pilot had managed to jam down on the mech's firing triggers, sending a wave of explosions and a screaming hail of railgun fire out into the night – blindly trusting that the noise would alert the camp as he died.
In camp, some two kilometers away, the sound of explosions and weapon-fire had awoken a hornets' nest. Pilots sprinted towards their mechs, carefully laagered around them so that the armored bows would protect the camp. At the same time the infantry complement (many of them only in environmental suits) rushed towards entrenched positions and mounted weapons. It had been expected that the Brotherhood would send a force to try and keep their secrets. The only question had been 'when.'
With the known unreliability of targeting systems, the reaction was a resurrection of an idea from the Second World War. Known as the Canal Defense Light, it was a carbon arc light mounted on a tank, and used to dazzle foes by presenting an extremely intense light source cranked up to a near-blinding intensity. In the modern day the approach was somewhat simpler: a strip of LEDs, cranked up to maximum output. At the same time, most vehicles and other systems had been set up with manual control and manual targeting in mind. While so-called 'glass cockpits' have substantial advantages in everything from tanks to walkers to rifles (for example the GD-2's digital optic, which significantly reduces laser blinding effects), the ability to do things manually like they had been done in the 20th century had never been removed. It was still quite possible to fire over open sights.
Discovered, and with GDI mobilizing to defend, the vastly outnumbered team cut their losses and circled north toward the broken, mountainous terrain that acted as the long spine of the country. While they were able to dodge GDI patrols and go to ground, it is likely that they are still in GDI territory and slowly picking their way towards friendly space as they avoid orbital surveillance and local patrols.
Finally, there is the conventional war. While Mehretu certainly prefers to operate on a smaller scale and far from his borders, the war itself has still been dragged to his doorstep. Conflicts have so far been relatively small scale, and Mehretu – although far weakened from his height before the Third Tiberium War – has husbanded his forces carefully, avoiding direct confrontation while bloodying the Initiative's nose for poking too far into his territories. So far, most of the operations have been little more than skirmishes – dogs circling before the fight – as GDI and Mehretu both give each other a wide berth. For the Initiative, it is a matter of practicality. Mehretu, while dangerous, is unlikely to launch grand, sweeping strokes into the Blue Zones, allowing for resources to go elsewhere – either reinforcing successes in Europe and North America, or following up on failures in South America and beyond. However, this quarter has seen a number of major battles.
The largest of these was at the Shashe River, north of where it merges with the Limpopo. A GDI mechanized brigade was preparing bridges across the river, part of a series of operations to push forward potential routes to seize new defensive lines forward of the current positions – to create salients where Mehretu's territory can be broken up into pockets, much like Gideon.
The brigade was laid out in a defensive laager up against the river as they began driving posts to build a semi-permanent bridge across the river. While pontoons and the like certainly can and do work, even with the seventy-ton-and-greater behemoths found across GDI's armored complement, they are not permanent structures, and are easily cut or destroyed by even relatively lightweight munitions. More permanent bridges are significantly more resilient to the kind of attacks favored by Mehretu, and every one of them erected (even if later destroyed) is a new angle of attack for GDI to push deeper into his territories.
At the Shashe however, Mehretu had decided that enough was enough, and had dispatched a mobile stealth force to push GDI back. Arraying on the ridge opposite, above the riverine depression, Mehretu had deployed a series of stealth tanks and Spectre batteries. At the same time a mobile force had deployed to the west positioned to hammer GDI into the river, pincering them against terrain features and multiple Brotherhood forces.
The GDI force was not without its own resources and scouting assets. Spotting the incoming offensive, it began to take rapid steps to extricate itself from the trap that it had been placed in. While maintaining an external laager, it began to rapidly pack. However, a construction battalion does not pack fast, especially not with multiple deployed bridge constructors and the robot swarms that do much of the work.
By the time the Brotherhood forces were ready, GDI had nearly managed to pack up for a retreat; skirmishing began around noon, and GDI began to push southward by around 1300. The battle became a running fight, with GDI battalions finding good ground and holding it while the convoy passed by. Unable to disengage with the need to defend the comparatively slow column, the Initiative forces were harried every step of the way,
On the long retreat back to the cover of Green Zone bases, GDI losses were heavy; an entire battalion became trapped as they held for too long, and the others faced heavy losses from rear-aspect shots taken by their Brotherhood pursuers. While the construction battalion escaped effectively intact, it was at the cost of significant forces – and with GDI not currently planning major offensives in South or West Africa, it is a slight that will likely go unanswered in both the immediate and more distant terms.
Bintang
Bintang has been allowed to run wild and fight where she willed before disappearing under stealth fields or the waves, leaving even Auroras unable to respond in time. A clear example of this is convoy H-795 – H for heavy, and 795 being a three-numeral random code for that particular convoy. Originating in Comodoro Rivadavia and traveling to Christchurch, it is one of several convoys that have been hit. Fifty Initiative cargo ships, plus an escort of one carrier, two Governors and a battleship were making their way to New Zealand, carrying a cargo of heavy industrial supplies – primarily computer chips and robots. While land-based air could cover the vast majority of the route, there is a 1.5 thousand kilometer gap in the roughly 8.5 thousand kilometer path between the Blue Zone air bases that were providing cover, where neither side has much (if any) ability to loiter. While Initiative aircraft are long-ranged, flying low enough and slow enough for ASW patrols is fuel-hungry, and effective antisubmarine warfare takes a significant amount of persistence.
The convoy, despite its accompanying aircraft carrier, was ambushed by a pair of Brotherhood submarines as it passed out of range of effective cover from Puerto Montt, deep in the mid-Pacific. The two submarines launched a combined salvo of low-flying cruise missiles; of the dozen launches, six were intercepted by a combination of missile- and laser-fire from one of the Governors, and three more were intercepted by the carrier, while a final loss slammed into the ocean – missing its target by roughly seven meters off the stern. But the surviving two missiles slammed into one of the convoy ships, detonating in an orange-green flare. While the crew survived and evacuated, the ship most certainly did not, and sank to the bottom of the ocean with its cargo.
The Orcas operating as the anti-submarine patrol began to converge on the launching submarines, as an ASROC from each of the Governors leapt from their tubes. However, damage estimates are minimal. Even when followed by a further eight torpedoes from the Orcas, only two hits were registered, and neither seemed to do critical damage to the vessels as they popped canisters of SAMs and dove for the deeps.
There are three main weapons in the Initiative's anti-submarine arsenal: mortars, rockets, and torpedoes. Mortars are the smallest, simplest, and most prolific weapons system available. Essentially a series of small spigot mortars, the basic system fires an array of 20-kilogram charges in some pattern. While there are dozens of systems, they are all basically intercompatible, with reconfigurations depending on location and role. The most common of these are various forms of grid-firing systems, usually laying a barrage some six to eight kilometers out. While these have extremely limited effect – with less than one submarine being sunk or significantly damaged by these systems per year – it is a useful means of providing the basics of self-defense for merchantmen, and a system that can be mounted in place of other things (such as the Governor's point defense systems) in areas where the Vertigo is a relatively managed threat compared to missiles and submarines. Most of these can also fire barrages of sonic charges or use sonic submunitions to increase effective kill radii, although this severely limits acceleration and therefore range. These munitions primarily serve as close-range (within a 1.5 to 2 kilometer radius) defense against torpedoes.
Rockets are a somewhat more recent addition to the arsenal. The basic mechanism is simple: a standard torpedo is strapped to a rocket booster and then flung out in the general direction of the enemy (far enough away that friendly ships can be assumed to be safe) and then parachutes down into the sea before commencing a spiral search pattern. These are the most lethal devices in the initiative arsenal, primarily through sheer volume of use. As they are found on everything from coastal defense rings, shore artillery batteries, and nearly every ship the Initiative operates, they are often launched in great numbers – even if the average torpedo does nothing more than kicking up some Tib from the sea floor.
Finally, there is the torpedo. A standard, universal system, the torpedo is the same device as launched from the anti-submarine rocket system. However, there are significant speed and altitude limitations where it can be launched – ones that are easily outsprinted by Firehawks, Orcas, and the like. This means that under normal conditions, they are primarily launched from V-35 Oxen and Hammerhead attack helicopters when the craft are configured for ASW work. Although they can be fired from many ships using either built-in torpedo tubes or (far more often) deck-mounted torpedo launchers or gantries, this is relatively rare, as VLS cells are more multiuse. While deadly, it has limited aspects – primarily with the Orca, as it is typically flying too fast at too low an altitude for good torpedo functioning.
Almost as soon as the Brotherhood launched its strike, the submarines dove from their barely-subsurface launch positions and went deep, cold, and quiet, working their way out on a slow arcing evasion pattern that took them north and east under the edge of the effective range of the South American air bases, but then out again before the V-35s could arrive.
Over the course of the next twenty four hours Bintang's forces made repeated attacks, often pincering Initiative ships between salvoes of cruise missiles while other ships (running deep and quiet and using the cover of the attack) made their way into range to lay spreads of torpedoes into the path of the convoy. These attacks hit time and time and time again, with each one having leakers punching through the defense network to sink ships. Two hit the Governor GDIS Monterey as it put itself between the incoming missiles and the transports. The first hit the stern, blowing off the rear defense mounts and the aircraft hanger. The second, as it had begun to limp, slammed into the main tower in a green-orange flash of its own.
Approximately eighteen hours in, as the troops on board had begun to be worn down by strike after strike, Bintang's surface fleet (a trio of cruisers, and one larger heavy cruiser) sailed into range, vanguarded by a hailstorm of missiles that hammered into the group. Two of the Brotherhood ships were later identified as Beludak and Nantaboga, a pair of what Bintang called Ular-class cruisers – the name translating to 'snake' in both Brunei Malay and Indonesian. The other two ships have not been identified yet; one was another Ular, and the last, larger cruiser was a Naga. The Naga-class is a severely shrunken version of the Rajanaga, with a similarly scaled-down armament and about four-fifths the displacement of an Initiative Governor. The Ulars comparatively are primarily missile ships, designed to support the Nagas from long range and neutralize GDI air superiority.
While many of the supporting aircraft were grounded due to pilot exhaustion, damage, or the need to refit and refuel, the attack raised against the small fleet was still substantial. Over two squadrons of Firehawks fitted out with antishipping munitions – a mix of guided bombs and missiles – flew forth to deal with the intruders. Some sixty missiles rained down from the group and the ships in turn lit up, laser point defense systems blazing away and detonating missile after missile, the three Ulars weaving a defensive net before the Naga's advance. As the strike closed to bomb range, the Ulars returned fire with a barrage of their own missiles – sending two to four SAMs against each of GDI's fighters, in turn forcing drops at longer range and worse angles than the pilots were trained for as they broke to avoid the missiles; the ships' point defenses again scythed through the incoming munitions. This time however, the seas around the ships erupted in a storm of water as bombs missed by mere meters, and one slammed home into one of the Ular class cruisers, leaving it limping.
As the ships closed on the convoy, the remaining Governor and the battleship sortied towards them, leaving the convoy with only the carrier's element to protect them as they raced towards New Zealand and safety. The first shots were fired well over the horizon, an endless rain of railgun fire as the battleship and Governor both dropped a constant barrage of low-powered, high-angle shots towards the flotilla attacking them. Taking hit after hit with yet more rounds splashing around them, they closed until the bulk of the battleship began to rise over the horizon; the Naga's guns belched out ribbons of hate, blasting into the superstructure of the battleship with abandon – stripping sensor masts and tearing away point-defense emplacements – as the GDI ship brought the first salvo of direct-fire, high-velocity railgun rounds to bear. While two of the six shots missed (one fifty meters off the port bow, and a second whipping less than fifty centimeters off the starboard hull), four slammed into the Naga – one tearing off a plasma gun, a second ripping through the radar, and two more penetrating the hull. While secondary detonations rippled through the Brotherhood ship, the surviving plasma guns retargeted and opened fire on the Governor, slamming one blast into the B turret, and another into the port hull – a stream of molten metal and screaming atmosphere ripping into the cruiser, with the water pressure from its speed splitting the side of the ship open and slewing it to broadside.
With the convoy limping into effective strike range of GDI ground based air, the raiders slunk off, vanishing into the mid-Pacific vastness. The battleship would take until the next day to arrive at its port, and would see a significant number of repair crews allocated to its needs.
As GDI offensives into the interior of Australia launched off in early May however, Bintang was forced to act more decisively. Gathering together her major surface combatants, she took a convoy of her own south, towards the northern end of the Australian Yellow Zone. Eight Ulars, a pair of Nagas, six submarines, and the Rajanaga sailed south with a group of cargo haulers, to meet GDI in battle and bring relief to the embattled Australian Brotherhood.
To oppose the Rajanaga, the Initiative had a relatively rag-tag force. Two carriers (the Kunetsov and the badly damaged Ntwadumela), a pair of battleships (the Rinjani and the Etna, the latter with only half of its weapons systems surviving), twenty hydrofoils, and a handful of obsolescent escorts were all that were available to meet the onrushing combat group. However, that was backed by a much larger force of land based aircraft, including two squadrons of Aurora bombers and three wings of Firehawks. While more was present on the continent, much of it was to the south, assisting in the conquest of Adelaide.
Bintang's fleet took a land-hugging route, using the island of Papua New Guinea and a series of major ion storms to hide themselves from view; they curved around the north of the island to position themselves a mere thousand kilometers from Townsville at the edge of the Australian Red Zone – and the largest settlement within reach. While within range of GDI anti-shipping missiles, many batteries only had a relative sliver of their angle, as the north-south axis of the Blue Zone blocked many of the batteries and those that were not blocked would only be able to cover a few kilometers of ocean with their fire.
The fleet broke into three components. The Rajanaga and the cargo vessels (mostly salvage that she had hung onto from raids against GDI forces) were the first element, sailing on a dogleg course from the tip of Papua New Guinea to the northern peninsula of Australia some eight hundred kilometers away, before turning to the southeast and the Yellow Zone. The second was the screening element, taking a more open-water route a few hundred kilometers east, sailing more or less directly south from the separation point. Finally, the submarines began to fan out into a barrier between the Blue Zone naval bases and the screening force.
First detected shortly after dusk, the ships of the second element had been running dark and quiet, but were picked up by a patrol of hydrofoils running interdiction operations against the north of Australia. While the hydrofoils ran for port, the response was immediate. The carrier at sea and every available land-based aircraft immediately launched into strike operations, with just under a hundred and fifty Firehawks – loaded to the gills with anti-ship missiles – lumbering into the sky less than an hour after first contact. Each Firehawk carried three such missiles, for a total launch weight of well over four hundred.
Shortly thereafter the screening group found themselves in the middle of a somewhat problematic position as hundreds of missiles screamed in. The Ulars maneuvered to cover the Nagas as lasers flashed out, shredding through the incoming storm of missiles. Hundreds were shot down, but with the unending storm of fire many slipped through the defense network, and some managed to make hits. Missiles slammed into the Ekakapak (one of the Nagas), and the ship began to make a long, gentle starboard turn as its propulsion on that side came to a standstill. On the other side of the task group, another missile had found its way to one of the Ular's VLS pods, and flames erupted as fuel and explosives combusted and blew out the side of the ship.
The battleships, moving closer to bring the ships within effective range of their railgun batteries, placed themselves in a crossfire. To their stern lay Bintang's submarine fleet, to their bows the still-oncoming battlegroup of Ulars and Nagas. As the two groups closed to range, the Ulars began bombarding the two battleships with a hailstorm of missiles. In response, the battleships began their own sequence of maneuvers, tacking port and starboard to both throw off some sliver of the missiles, and allow some of the crystal beam lasers a few seconds to cool as they were masked by the bulk of the ship.
From the stern however, all six of the submarines unleashed their own barrage. One that paled in comparison to the Ulars, but critical – the point defense system was overwhelmed. As the missiles closed, the secondary point defense battery – electrolasers, micromissiles, flechette swarms – opened up, flares streaking from the upper works of both ships as they tried to distract some portion of the incoming munitions. It was not nearly enough.
The two battleships were savaged by the barrage – even the missiles damaged or destroyed by the secondary point defense battery spewed sprays of shrapnel across the ships, riddling the outer hull with pockmarks at best, and shredding sensor systems and communication arrays at worst.
However, a battleship is a tough creature. So long as they do not take a hit to the below-water citadel, or lose the relatively small crew compartment, even direct hits from anti-shipping missiles are far from lethal. As they closed to range with the Nagas, and the direct fire gunnery of the Ulars, they were able to begin exchanging blows. Two Ulars were hammered into scrap by a hailstorm of railgun fire. At the same time, they were pelted with fire; bolts of plasma screamed in, with blast after blast hammering into the Rinjani's port batteries, melting railguns and penetrating interior compartments. One screamed skywards as its capacitor banks detonated, the pent up energies unleashed in all directions.
Swarmed by the cruisers, pelted with gunfire and savaged by missiles and plasma, the two battleships had little choice but to ride out the storm, especially as a second massed air strike was inbound. As another wave of Initiative airpower reached out, the cruisers broke for the north, attempting to escape from the incoming forces – but by the time the Brotherhood flotilla detected incoming fighters it was too little, and far too late as another barrage of anti-ship missiles launched towards the cruisers. Once more lasers flashed in a brilliant storm of light, and missiles burnt by the dozens and hundreds, with yet more missing the maneuvering cruisers as they fled. Some however found their marks, and Nod ships rippled with secondary explosions.
It was too late for the battleships however. The Etna was already slipping beneath the waves, too damaged for the still-functioning pumps to keep her afloat. While the Rinjani was able to limp home, the ship would later be found not only to have severe damage across some sixty percent of her surface, but key structural members had extensive microfracturing, as well as multiple places where they had cracked outright from being flash-heated.
At the same time, the Rajanaga had completed its objective, delivering the cargo group safely into the hands of the Australian Brotherhood, and had begun to head north, withdrawing beyond the range of GDI's forces, as did the submarines and surviving other assets
Assessing total losses for Bintang's force is somewhat difficult. While one of the Nagas and three of the Ulars can be considered confirmed kills, savaged by the guns of the battleships, it is far harder to tell what the state of the other ships is. While the second air strike did make a substantial number of hits, damage assessment was spotty with the strike being launched from long range in an attempt to save the battleships from destruction.
Minor Raiders
Merchant convoys are often a matter of security through obscurity. The oceans are vast, and the eyes of the Brotherhood limited. Keeping as much as possible to deep-water mid-oceanic routes maintains a significant degree of safety for most Initiative convoys. However, this does not apply everywhere. In places like the Caribbean and a number of other straits and archipelagos, there is either no choice (or no efficient choice) to go around. These are the favored ambush positions, where raiders can simply sit behind radar cover of the islands until opportunity strikes, and attack at relatively close range and high speed – getting in under the missiles and railguns of the defending ships before unleashing their preferred close-attack missiles and torpedoes.
Elsewhere, things get substantially more difficult. Even with a semi-submersible cheesebox on a raft, an Initiative ship can reliably see it well before it sees them. A proper submarine can get much closer, but in turn has limited visibility, and oftentimes significantly limited speeds.
There are many tactics that the Brotherhood uses to hunt merchant convoys, ranging from the large and obvious to the small and discrete. The largest is commonly known as the 'stampede method.' While Initiative convoys are quick, they can be herded. Using large mosquito fleets, a convoy can be herded into a minefield or prepositioned submarine assets as they try to avoid engaging a seemingly overwhelming number of targets. While a somewhat risky play, especially when the Initiative is supplying air cover in the form of a carrier or ground based aviation, there are a number of areas (especially in the Pacific) where such protection is somewhat difficult at best.
Another approach uses the Wing in Ground Effect to make rapid missile and laser attacks. While not particularly stealthy, WiGE vehicles can be hard to spot up until they begin vectoring in an attack run, and can break contact relatively quickly – although only by conducting oblique attacks.
In this quarter's operations these small-scale raiders have been overwhelmingly successful, in many cases as a result of the Initiative not being able to supply nearly enough escorts. While more risky convoys – such as those to Australia and New Zealand, or between South America and West Africa – always have a GDI naval presence, others often have to make do. For example, the North Atlantic route is patrolled and ties down about ten modern warships at any given time, but it is still routinely raided – with submarines using the arctic ice shelf or icebergs for cover until they can break out and do damage before vanishing. Elsewhere, strikes have been daring and aggressive, with boarding parties being a common feature of operations where the Initiative has not been able to provide escort. So far these operations have not reached a point where most day-to-day operations are substantially impacted, but losses are high and unsustainable. While not an immediate choke on the Initiative's ability to wage large-scale offensives, if these rates of loss are maintained (let alone increase) the ability for the Initiative to supply long-range logistical support will begin to rapidly decline.
While the Regency War is a global conflict, it is not a place of uniform supply consumption. While the materials needed to supply large-scale operations, like GDI offensives in Europe or the Americas, are measured in kilotons and megatons, other fronts are far more quiescent. These range from places where the local warlord is carefully not making offensive maneuvers, like China, to areas where GDI has treaties and agreements like the Arabian peninsula. Even in these locations there is some demand for consumable supplies beyond those needed to refresh the stockpiles and for training, but it is far lower than what is consumed by even a relatively quiet open front like, for example, the Siberian operations theater, where distances are long enough and populations low enough that neither side has managed to move the front line significantly.
With other areas needing the supplies much more than, for example, the Arabian Peninsula, GDI has been shipping those supplies to other Blue Zones – in that case primarily to South Africa and Australia, although some have been shipped as far as South America to supply Escoffier's drive.
The Australian Campaign
With the Australian continent beginning to cool, GDI launched into a wave of sweeping offensives. With much of the continent covered by Red Zones and the short but brutal bloodletting initiated by the execution of Killian Qatar, the warlords remaining were fragmented and low on resources, trapped between GDI and the deep Red Zones. The remainder fell rapidly under the influence of Bintang, as the only remaining warlord in the region with enough influence to seriously oppose GDI.
Much of the region is simply inhospitable. Even with modern life support technologies to draw moisture from the air, stillsuits, and a wide variety of other technologies, there is simply not nearly enough water to support large inland populations. This means that the vast majority of the population is on the coastal extremes, where they can make use of desalination plants to ensure sufficient water for both farming and their own needs.
The big remaining strategic target was the city of Adelaide. While the Brotherhood had spread the population all throughout the region, the city itself was still an important civilian population center, and an infrastructural core. Traditionally, it had been protected by ASM and coastal artillery batteries spread across the islands and peninsulas south of the city, and protected from GDI offensives by the strength of the Yellow Zone warlords. With the rapid and massive expansion of the Australian Red Zone, and the death of Killian Qatar, the strength of the Australian warlords was not what it once was.
The earliest proper defenses came with the rise of Brother Marcion, who envisioned Adelaide as the site of a glorious stand, a place where his battle brothers could fight GDI head on and emerge victorious as desert warriors and buried airbases invaded the Blue Zone. In pursuit of this, the original network comprised a network of hidden marshaling points, defense towers, and battery after battery of artillery hidden beneath disruptor fields.
However, as Killian rose to power, the defensive network shifted. No longer was it a place for a grand battle, but something rather more prosaic: a tar-pit to slow GDI advances – heavily automated, with few of the elements of the glorious defense remaining. Arrays of laser and shredder turrets controlled from networked hardpoints served just as well, and were far less wasteful of manpower that could be moved to other points.
Now, the defenses are still primarily Killian's work, but maintained without her resources. Many sections have been abandoned entirely, while others have seen shortenings, rationalizations, and increased networking, further reducing the number of men needed to man the works. One of the topics that GDI had discussed with those who came into the Initiative's arms was the state of the defenses. However, that information is now a decade out of date, and much of it has changed – in detail if not on the macro scale. While significant parts are still the same, others have changed drastically – often simplified, with less sophisticated devices and systems replacing hardpoints. By GDI's best estimates, roughly one in eight of the Obelisks of Light no longer function, nor do about one in sixteen of the antiaircraft sites.
The offensive launched in early May, with initial drives conquering hundreds of kilometers a day, but that would not last. The most major of these conflicts in the early phase was the center of population and the port city of Adelaide.
General Alfred Dorne – a veteran of campaigns across the Australian continent – established a rapid offensive, with flying wedges of light vehicles driving across the open desert north of Adelaide, taking on the Brotherhood's methods. While risky, the attack cut the supply line to the north, while fleets of hydrofoils and constant air patrols maintained a blockade from the southern approaches – leaving the city and the majority of the Yellow Zone's population trapped in a GDI pocket. At that point, it was only a matter of time and siegeworks. Recognizing this, many of the Brotherhood forces in the city chose to surrender rather than fight to the end, with the lines collapsing as local commanders took their own initiative to raise white flags. The campaign turned to refugee operations as GDI's armored units shifted north, beginning a slow march across the desert.
This northern campaign rolling up the Brotherhood faced severe logistical challenges. While the Brotherhood's tiberium power sources and mobile units could effectively flit from hardpoint to hardpoint – many times using disruption fields or more conventional camouflage to mask their movements – GDI had to ship everything in, across road networks that were never particularly good or comprehensive.
With Adelaide on the edge of a vast Red Zone, and effectively cut off from GDI logistical networks, it was the job of the civil engineers to build rails to the city – cutting through minefields, entrenchments and bunkers to lay a straight and level path back to the Blue Zone cities. While many in the city refused to leave, tens of thousands more took GDI's offers to move back. With much of the city's infrastructure effectively intact, there are many proposals of what to do with it, but all will have to wait for the end of the war, with the logistical infrastructure tied up in other operations at this time.
After savaging GDI naval assets in the northern Australian theater, Bintang managed to deliver masses of weapons, primarily RPG-59s, but also a wide array of other modern weapons, including Stahl-pattern laser sniping devices, advanced combat armor, Mantis drones and numerous other systems.
However, even before the delivery of kilotons of new hardware, the offensive was already running into trouble, primarily due to logistics. For both sides, it is a relatively simple equation. For any given logistics truck and crew, they have ten to twelve hours a day of operations. A load in one such truck takes an average of an hour to turn around at each point. Exceptions do exist: for example, water trucks (which can be drained in minutes), versus bags of rice, which can take significantly longer. That means that the primary limitation on throughput is actually transit time. Assuming an average speed of 45 kilometers per hour, a single truck can take about four loads of material to the front line a day at 45 kilometers from depot to the front. Increasing the distance to 90 kilometers drops it to two to three loads per day, and at 150 kilometers or more, it is, at best, one load a day. Now, this is usually less of an issue. On well built and maintained roads, or even the decades-out-of-maintenance roads of Europe or the Americas, 45 kilometers per hour is noticeably pessimistic. During the BZ-2 Counter-offensives in 2047, convoys maintained an average road speed of 90 kilometers an hour (and some runs were substantially closer to 135 kilometers per hour) due to having clear roads, straight lines, and orders to move quickly to minimize the threat of stay-behind units and pockets of resistance that had not been completely cleared. Even in the Yellow Zones across most of the world, where there is substantial legacy infrastructure, 45 kilometers per hour is pessimistic – sixty or seventy is more average there. In Australia however, the territory being fought over never had the level of development to make that possible, with even the major highways being two lanes across hundreds of kilometers of bare scrubland at best.
Additionally, there are severe problems in the shape of the infrastructure. The vast majority of the transport links are north-south, adding substantial length to try to use them for military efforts. Even with GDI adding a number of east-west rail lines, and the rapid construction of fortress town hardpoints, there are simply too few across far too much territory to significantly cut the length of the supply line, especially as the front continued the northern push. This left Dorne's offensive running into significant problems, especially as the arms delivered by Bintang's run began filtering to the front. With Brotherhood resistance stiffening rapidly, leading elements began to face increasingly effective ambushes, with prepositioned ATGMs, minefields, artillery and entrenchments proving increasingly lethal as units ran short of ablative plates and shells. Even with a series of bands of new east-west rail and fortress town lines, Dorne made the decision to slow his offensive and find good terrain, allowing the offensive to stall across most of the line in mid-June, after one of the single largest terrain grabs in the war.
The Siege of the Himalayas
Blue Zone 18 has often been a relative backwater for the broader Initiative. While certainly important, and an outpost in the deepest regions of the Yellow Zones at one time – and now a narrows between Blue and Red Zones – it has not been a site of major industrial development. While not autarkic, the Himalayan Blue Zone is highly self-sufficient.
The siege, however, has more in common with that of storied Troy, rather than something more modern. It is not a thing of vast artillery barrages, strategic bombing, or, for that matter, grand victories and defeats. It is a slow, creeping thing. GDI held tight in its mountain keeps, the paths to them covered with battery after battery of railguns, entire fleets of artillery, and a near constant overflight of ion cannons standing ready to blast troop concentrations out of existence. It is a war of will and persistence, with the Brotherhood picketing the valleys and forming outposts on the hills, cutting the men and women who call the mountains home off from material supply. From the high watchtowers, observers can see Gana march and mill. The air warning radar sees raid after raid, but none come to give battle.
The Himalayas, barring some paradigm-changing developments, will be able to hold out for four to six years without problems, then facing increasing problems for much of the decade following that – as systems begin to break down due to a lack of specialized parts, skilled labor, and other tools. However, this will be a slow process, and one that can be slowed to a crawl with existing technologies so long as they are deployed.
Overall
In terms of overall progress, the most recent quarter has been far more successful than the first, with major ground gains and the Initiative running rampant around the world. While marred by major defeats as the Warlords turned their eyes towards particular goals and forced issues that the Initiative would have rather remained unsolved, these have involved the personal attentions of the very highest ranks of the Brotherhood, and the most elite of their forces. Elsewhere, the rank and file have been decisively outmatched, and in some cases overmatched by GDI's ability to strike rapidly and decisively deep into their home areas.
Similarly, around the Brotherhood, the severe localism of the warlord era has been problematic for them. Localized commanders (sometimes down to the level of companies and battalions) are used to operating independently, and so often break from their orders when given commands that would lead to their destruction, even when it would have saved far larger units elsewhere.
Even with numerous major defeats and the Brotherhood able to continue striking severe blows against GDI, GDI has seized vast stretches of territory, and is expecting to continue the progress found this quarter. Even if the offensives have to be called to a halt, and the forward elements called back, there are likely to be significant shifts in territory and population held for six months to a year after the end of active conflict.
Beyond the major active battlefronts, GDI has not so far attempted to bring vast new territories under its direct control. Rather GDI's forces have focused on destroying the Brotherhood's core weakness: its trained and equipped manpower. By bringing the Brotherhood to battle time and time again, it has managed to break many of the best the Brotherhood has to offer.
Mehretu
The African theater could be easily divided into three fronts. First and most significant is the South African theater, focused primarily on the long patch of land in the southern savannah regions. Then there is the West African theater – while GDI there controls the coast, there is a long inland strip still controlled by the Brotherhood. This was at one point the territory of the Ten Rings, a group of minor Warlords who held themselves to something resembling the traditions of the Barbary Coast of old. Third and last is the Horn of Africa. The Somali Coast has long been a source of piracy but it was also a center of trade and one point along a long route that circumnavigated the Indian Ocean.
Mehretu had not let up on his efforts to leverage the Caravanserai and the Arabian Warlords to his cause. When assassinations did not bring him a war against the "Invaders" in Mecca, Medina, and Jeddah, he turned to more direct options. The Horn of Africa loomed large in this scheme; once the land where he and Kane had sabotaged some of the earliest of GDI's attempts to build the massive Mammoth Armored Reclamation Vehicles, now it is a means of leveraging combat assets against the Initiative. While the coastline itself is heavily patrolled, with both naval infantry and warships making a position there completely and utterly untenable, it is in the inland territories where Mehretu could make his move. While out of range for tactical ballistic missiles due to the ASAT network's presence – putting a stop to nearly anything that crests at over a hundred kilometers up – a conventional strike via a depressed firing angle is more than feasible, able to hit GDI infrastructure in Jeddah and everything short of the core of Mecca itself. This attack itself would be compounded with a full-thrust naval landing on the calm yet scorching coastal plain of the Tihamah, allowing Mehretu's forces to make an ingress point south of Jeddah.
The Caravanserai were not about to allow the strike to occur. Allowing a launch or an attack on Jeddah would end in Mecca ruined as well as shattering the still-fragile truce. However, this did not mean that the Caravanserai forces would brook GDI involvement. Though they have acceded to the Initiative their civil victories and allowed them to peddle GDI's ideals in this manner, the Caravanserai would have to – and must – prove the legitimacy of their cause. That they are Amir al-Mu'minin, – 'Commander of the Faithful' – instead of GDI and that it is their remit to protect the remaining holy cities against fellow Brotherhood aggression.
For their part, the GDI acceded to this rationale, withdrawing most of their garrison barring those needed to man the Jeddah posting with an equal draw-down on technical experts. Notwithstanding the tenuous peace, the manpower needed to otherwise press Mehretu on the coasts could be used to fuel offensives elsewhere, joining the reserves for the full-court press on the South African theater properly. More cynically, the more the Caravanserai bleeds, the better odds it is for GDI to integrate them with less fuss.
GDI's military theorists and spies have marked the Caravanserai as a force composed of 'light metal' forces, using a combination of Carryalls and Reckoners to transport troops and firepower. This led to some assumptions that against GDI's own 'heavy metal', they would flounder once forced to an engagement. That even against peer opponents, they would take significant casualties and vehicle kills, in the same way that Brotherhood forces favored their strikes against GDI's own armored columns. To the disappointment of these self-same analysts, however, the scenario above did not manifest.
What the analysis missed is the fact that though the Caravanserai always relied on the goodwill and patronage of their fellow Warlords to ferry Hajj pilgrims, they still retained a considerable industrial base focused on servicing their vehicle pool and committing to abatement prior to GDI's arrival. Though their diplomatic posture ensured that nothing more than minor skirmishing occurs between fellow Brotherhood factions, the tour of duty of Caravanserai soldiery is one inseparable from their vehicles. Deployed along the cardinal east and west routes, Caravanserai soldiers fight against some of the more treacherous terrains a Post-Tiberium Earth has to offer. In contrast to some of the more schizophrenic operational security employed by Brotherhood forces elsewhere, the nature of their assignment meant that these Hajj Protection Cadre are extensively trained in all aspects of their vehicle pools, from basic maintenance to operational limits. And not unlike their Ghazi predecessors, this made them maneuver warfare veterans, if focused on the logistical aspect more than the operational one.
As the First Commander of the Hajj, it was Al-Rashida's duty to face off against Mehretu. More than duty even, for the aging man nursed a black grudge on the Warlord for the death of his grandson. More than motivated and with nothing to lose, he had repelled the attack on Jeddah with a timely missile barrage of his own, driving Mehretu's cruisers and semi-submersibles back to Port Sudan and the outlying ports in the first quarter of the year. In this second quarter, right around the Islamic Sacred Months and the Hajj, Mehretu showed that he did not care for the observances, and attempted to make his strike. Al-Rashida had predicted this, keeping his forces at high readiness for such an occurrence while resting those troops that he could spare, and prioritizing them for cycling through Mecca.
With the Red Sea mostly held by GDI, including multiple hydrofoil squadrons sitting at Jeddah, and even more in the gulf, both sides had to be careful. While a short sprint from the Horn of Africa to the coast is certainly possible, it would be a very difficult strategic play, leaving Al-Rashida little choice but to take the offensive, and destroy the launchers himself. In total, Al-Rashida had some sixty thousand fighters to work with, although not all could be deployed immediately. While the Caravanserai have few dedicated landing ships, they certainly had a large number of air assets, enough that, assuming the beachheads were secure, they could surge their entire force to the beaches and support them in a matter of hours.
Late in the second quarter, Al-Rashida made the critical call to move forward, using GDI's constant naval presence as a screen to bring his landing ships within a kilometer of the intended beachheads, before making a final sprint to the landing sites.
With Northern Somalia being relatively mountainous there were few really good landing sites. While the ideal would have been near Bosaso, to take advantage of a road through one of the few mountain passes available, the only really practical area would be to the west of Maydh, where a soft open beach was available for invasion.
The initial landing was near uncontested, Mehretu's forces having been held behind the hill lines, tucked away in deep complexes of earthworks, avoiding the worst of GDI missile and naval bombardments. With Al-Rashida putting forty out of his sixty thousand men ashore by the end of the first day's transit, he quickly pushed inland, engaging Mehretu's forces amid the foothills of Mount Shimbiris, and driving them back.
Unfortunately, while the original period was highly coordinated, much of the internal operations were significantly less so, with the Caravanserai driving deep into the territory, and GDI only getting the occasional glimpse into the depths of the operation, partially because while it is one thing to take significant offensive action against a fellow member of the Brotherhood of Nod, it is quite a different thing to do so with the aid of, and in coordination with, GDI.
What is known is that Al-Rashida managed to conquer or convert significant parts of the territory to the Caravanserai's cause, and raiding operations in the western half of the Indian ocean have dropped significantly, with only the occasional Indian raider or submarine asset making its way into that theater. While Mehretu certainly has operational control of raider groups operating out of Southern africa, it is facing significant problems from Madagascar based defensive networks.
Elsewhere, in the north, near Oslo, something very different was occurring. Deep in the Blue Zone, the Bogatyr had been landed in soft ground, and had been quickly surrounded by a base. Six companies of the Talons – two of Titans and four of Havocs – plus an array of supporting arms surrounded the site as engineers and scientists turned the ship into an anthill, tarps and scaffolding rising around it, and the whole vessel began to be examined from the bolts and welds to the reactor core.
The Order of the Remembrancer was certainly not about to allow this affront to Krukov (and by proxy the rest of the Brotherhood of Nod) to stand.
Sweeping across the moonlit swamps north of the city, the Order, led by Kemal, approached the outer defenses: a small outpost manned by a pair of Havocs, their night vision far superior to anything that could be found on a human – but with only two of them, there were gaps in the sweep that could be exploited.. Kemal approached, relying on his technopathic abilities to blind the Havocs, until he could get close enough to leap. One of the weaknesses of the Havoc is its dorsal-mounted emergency escape hatch – a 'weakness' that nearly anyone would agree is generally inaccessible to saboteurs. Kemal proved them wrong; the hatch clicked open as he placed his hand beside it, and in one smooth motion he slid out a silenced pistol and shot twice. As the other Havoc twitched and began to call out, Kemal's partner (one of the other members of the order) had clambered up. The other hatch clicked open, but not before the second pilot had managed to jam down on the mech's firing triggers, sending a wave of explosions and a screaming hail of railgun fire out into the night – blindly trusting that the noise would alert the camp as he died.
In camp, some two kilometers away, the sound of explosions and weapon-fire had awoken a hornets' nest. Pilots sprinted towards their mechs, carefully laagered around them so that the armored bows would protect the camp. At the same time the infantry complement (many of them only in environmental suits) rushed towards entrenched positions and mounted weapons. It had been expected that the Brotherhood would send a force to try and keep their secrets. The only question had been 'when.'
With the known unreliability of targeting systems, the reaction was a resurrection of an idea from the Second World War. Known as the Canal Defense Light, it was a carbon arc light mounted on a tank, and used to dazzle foes by presenting an extremely intense light source cranked up to a near-blinding intensity. In the modern day the approach was somewhat simpler: a strip of LEDs, cranked up to maximum output. At the same time, most vehicles and other systems had been set up with manual control and manual targeting in mind. While so-called 'glass cockpits' have substantial advantages in everything from tanks to walkers to rifles (for example the GD-2's digital optic, which significantly reduces laser blinding effects), the ability to do things manually like they had been done in the 20th century had never been removed. It was still quite possible to fire over open sights.
Discovered, and with GDI mobilizing to defend, the vastly outnumbered team cut their losses and circled north toward the broken, mountainous terrain that acted as the long spine of the country. While they were able to dodge GDI patrols and go to ground, it is likely that they are still in GDI territory and slowly picking their way towards friendly space as they avoid orbital surveillance and local patrols.
Finally, there is the conventional war. While Mehretu certainly prefers to operate on a smaller scale and far from his borders, the war itself has still been dragged to his doorstep. Conflicts have so far been relatively small scale, and Mehretu – although far weakened from his height before the Third Tiberium War – has husbanded his forces carefully, avoiding direct confrontation while bloodying the Initiative's nose for poking too far into his territories. So far, most of the operations have been little more than skirmishes – dogs circling before the fight – as GDI and Mehretu both give each other a wide berth. For the Initiative, it is a matter of practicality. Mehretu, while dangerous, is unlikely to launch grand, sweeping strokes into the Blue Zones, allowing for resources to go elsewhere – either reinforcing successes in Europe and North America, or following up on failures in South America and beyond. However, this quarter has seen a number of major battles.
The largest of these was at the Shashe River, north of where it merges with the Limpopo. A GDI mechanized brigade was preparing bridges across the river, part of a series of operations to push forward potential routes to seize new defensive lines forward of the current positions – to create salients where Mehretu's territory can be broken up into pockets, much like Gideon.
The brigade was laid out in a defensive laager up against the river as they began driving posts to build a semi-permanent bridge across the river. While pontoons and the like certainly can and do work, even with the seventy-ton-and-greater behemoths found across GDI's armored complement, they are not permanent structures, and are easily cut or destroyed by even relatively lightweight munitions. More permanent bridges are significantly more resilient to the kind of attacks favored by Mehretu, and every one of them erected (even if later destroyed) is a new angle of attack for GDI to push deeper into his territories.
At the Shashe however, Mehretu had decided that enough was enough, and had dispatched a mobile stealth force to push GDI back. Arraying on the ridge opposite, above the riverine depression, Mehretu had deployed a series of stealth tanks and Spectre batteries. At the same time a mobile force had deployed to the west positioned to hammer GDI into the river, pincering them against terrain features and multiple Brotherhood forces.
The GDI force was not without its own resources and scouting assets. Spotting the incoming offensive, it began to take rapid steps to extricate itself from the trap that it had been placed in. While maintaining an external laager, it began to rapidly pack. However, a construction battalion does not pack fast, especially not with multiple deployed bridge constructors and the robot swarms that do much of the work.
By the time the Brotherhood forces were ready, GDI had nearly managed to pack up for a retreat; skirmishing began around noon, and GDI began to push southward by around 1300. The battle became a running fight, with GDI battalions finding good ground and holding it while the convoy passed by. Unable to disengage with the need to defend the comparatively slow column, the Initiative forces were harried every step of the way,
On the long retreat back to the cover of Green Zone bases, GDI losses were heavy; an entire battalion became trapped as they held for too long, and the others faced heavy losses from rear-aspect shots taken by their Brotherhood pursuers. While the construction battalion escaped effectively intact, it was at the cost of significant forces – and with GDI not currently planning major offensives in South or West Africa, it is a slight that will likely go unanswered in both the immediate and more distant terms.
Bintang
Bintang has been allowed to run wild and fight where she willed before disappearing under stealth fields or the waves, leaving even Auroras unable to respond in time. A clear example of this is convoy H-795 – H for heavy, and 795 being a three-numeral random code for that particular convoy. Originating in Comodoro Rivadavia and traveling to Christchurch, it is one of several convoys that have been hit. Fifty Initiative cargo ships, plus an escort of one carrier, two Governors and a battleship were making their way to New Zealand, carrying a cargo of heavy industrial supplies – primarily computer chips and robots. While land-based air could cover the vast majority of the route, there is a 1.5 thousand kilometer gap in the roughly 8.5 thousand kilometer path between the Blue Zone air bases that were providing cover, where neither side has much (if any) ability to loiter. While Initiative aircraft are long-ranged, flying low enough and slow enough for ASW patrols is fuel-hungry, and effective antisubmarine warfare takes a significant amount of persistence.
The convoy, despite its accompanying aircraft carrier, was ambushed by a pair of Brotherhood submarines as it passed out of range of effective cover from Puerto Montt, deep in the mid-Pacific. The two submarines launched a combined salvo of low-flying cruise missiles; of the dozen launches, six were intercepted by a combination of missile- and laser-fire from one of the Governors, and three more were intercepted by the carrier, while a final loss slammed into the ocean – missing its target by roughly seven meters off the stern. But the surviving two missiles slammed into one of the convoy ships, detonating in an orange-green flare. While the crew survived and evacuated, the ship most certainly did not, and sank to the bottom of the ocean with its cargo.
The Orcas operating as the anti-submarine patrol began to converge on the launching submarines, as an ASROC from each of the Governors leapt from their tubes. However, damage estimates are minimal. Even when followed by a further eight torpedoes from the Orcas, only two hits were registered, and neither seemed to do critical damage to the vessels as they popped canisters of SAMs and dove for the deeps.
There are three main weapons in the Initiative's anti-submarine arsenal: mortars, rockets, and torpedoes. Mortars are the smallest, simplest, and most prolific weapons system available. Essentially a series of small spigot mortars, the basic system fires an array of 20-kilogram charges in some pattern. While there are dozens of systems, they are all basically intercompatible, with reconfigurations depending on location and role. The most common of these are various forms of grid-firing systems, usually laying a barrage some six to eight kilometers out. While these have extremely limited effect – with less than one submarine being sunk or significantly damaged by these systems per year – it is a useful means of providing the basics of self-defense for merchantmen, and a system that can be mounted in place of other things (such as the Governor's point defense systems) in areas where the Vertigo is a relatively managed threat compared to missiles and submarines. Most of these can also fire barrages of sonic charges or use sonic submunitions to increase effective kill radii, although this severely limits acceleration and therefore range. These munitions primarily serve as close-range (within a 1.5 to 2 kilometer radius) defense against torpedoes.
Rockets are a somewhat more recent addition to the arsenal. The basic mechanism is simple: a standard torpedo is strapped to a rocket booster and then flung out in the general direction of the enemy (far enough away that friendly ships can be assumed to be safe) and then parachutes down into the sea before commencing a spiral search pattern. These are the most lethal devices in the initiative arsenal, primarily through sheer volume of use. As they are found on everything from coastal defense rings, shore artillery batteries, and nearly every ship the Initiative operates, they are often launched in great numbers – even if the average torpedo does nothing more than kicking up some Tib from the sea floor.
Finally, there is the torpedo. A standard, universal system, the torpedo is the same device as launched from the anti-submarine rocket system. However, there are significant speed and altitude limitations where it can be launched – ones that are easily outsprinted by Firehawks, Orcas, and the like. This means that under normal conditions, they are primarily launched from V-35 Oxen and Hammerhead attack helicopters when the craft are configured for ASW work. Although they can be fired from many ships using either built-in torpedo tubes or (far more often) deck-mounted torpedo launchers or gantries, this is relatively rare, as VLS cells are more multiuse. While deadly, it has limited aspects – primarily with the Orca, as it is typically flying too fast at too low an altitude for good torpedo functioning.
Almost as soon as the Brotherhood launched its strike, the submarines dove from their barely-subsurface launch positions and went deep, cold, and quiet, working their way out on a slow arcing evasion pattern that took them north and east under the edge of the effective range of the South American air bases, but then out again before the V-35s could arrive.
Over the course of the next twenty four hours Bintang's forces made repeated attacks, often pincering Initiative ships between salvoes of cruise missiles while other ships (running deep and quiet and using the cover of the attack) made their way into range to lay spreads of torpedoes into the path of the convoy. These attacks hit time and time and time again, with each one having leakers punching through the defense network to sink ships. Two hit the Governor GDIS Monterey as it put itself between the incoming missiles and the transports. The first hit the stern, blowing off the rear defense mounts and the aircraft hanger. The second, as it had begun to limp, slammed into the main tower in a green-orange flash of its own.
Approximately eighteen hours in, as the troops on board had begun to be worn down by strike after strike, Bintang's surface fleet (a trio of cruisers, and one larger heavy cruiser) sailed into range, vanguarded by a hailstorm of missiles that hammered into the group. Two of the Brotherhood ships were later identified as Beludak and Nantaboga, a pair of what Bintang called Ular-class cruisers – the name translating to 'snake' in both Brunei Malay and Indonesian. The other two ships have not been identified yet; one was another Ular, and the last, larger cruiser was a Naga. The Naga-class is a severely shrunken version of the Rajanaga, with a similarly scaled-down armament and about four-fifths the displacement of an Initiative Governor. The Ulars comparatively are primarily missile ships, designed to support the Nagas from long range and neutralize GDI air superiority.
While many of the supporting aircraft were grounded due to pilot exhaustion, damage, or the need to refit and refuel, the attack raised against the small fleet was still substantial. Over two squadrons of Firehawks fitted out with antishipping munitions – a mix of guided bombs and missiles – flew forth to deal with the intruders. Some sixty missiles rained down from the group and the ships in turn lit up, laser point defense systems blazing away and detonating missile after missile, the three Ulars weaving a defensive net before the Naga's advance. As the strike closed to bomb range, the Ulars returned fire with a barrage of their own missiles – sending two to four SAMs against each of GDI's fighters, in turn forcing drops at longer range and worse angles than the pilots were trained for as they broke to avoid the missiles; the ships' point defenses again scythed through the incoming munitions. This time however, the seas around the ships erupted in a storm of water as bombs missed by mere meters, and one slammed home into one of the Ular class cruisers, leaving it limping.
As the ships closed on the convoy, the remaining Governor and the battleship sortied towards them, leaving the convoy with only the carrier's element to protect them as they raced towards New Zealand and safety. The first shots were fired well over the horizon, an endless rain of railgun fire as the battleship and Governor both dropped a constant barrage of low-powered, high-angle shots towards the flotilla attacking them. Taking hit after hit with yet more rounds splashing around them, they closed until the bulk of the battleship began to rise over the horizon; the Naga's guns belched out ribbons of hate, blasting into the superstructure of the battleship with abandon – stripping sensor masts and tearing away point-defense emplacements – as the GDI ship brought the first salvo of direct-fire, high-velocity railgun rounds to bear. While two of the six shots missed (one fifty meters off the port bow, and a second whipping less than fifty centimeters off the starboard hull), four slammed into the Naga – one tearing off a plasma gun, a second ripping through the radar, and two more penetrating the hull. While secondary detonations rippled through the Brotherhood ship, the surviving plasma guns retargeted and opened fire on the Governor, slamming one blast into the B turret, and another into the port hull – a stream of molten metal and screaming atmosphere ripping into the cruiser, with the water pressure from its speed splitting the side of the ship open and slewing it to broadside.
With the convoy limping into effective strike range of GDI ground based air, the raiders slunk off, vanishing into the mid-Pacific vastness. The battleship would take until the next day to arrive at its port, and would see a significant number of repair crews allocated to its needs.
As GDI offensives into the interior of Australia launched off in early May however, Bintang was forced to act more decisively. Gathering together her major surface combatants, she took a convoy of her own south, towards the northern end of the Australian Yellow Zone. Eight Ulars, a pair of Nagas, six submarines, and the Rajanaga sailed south with a group of cargo haulers, to meet GDI in battle and bring relief to the embattled Australian Brotherhood.
To oppose the Rajanaga, the Initiative had a relatively rag-tag force. Two carriers (the Kunetsov and the badly damaged Ntwadumela), a pair of battleships (the Rinjani and the Etna, the latter with only half of its weapons systems surviving), twenty hydrofoils, and a handful of obsolescent escorts were all that were available to meet the onrushing combat group. However, that was backed by a much larger force of land based aircraft, including two squadrons of Aurora bombers and three wings of Firehawks. While more was present on the continent, much of it was to the south, assisting in the conquest of Adelaide.
Bintang's fleet took a land-hugging route, using the island of Papua New Guinea and a series of major ion storms to hide themselves from view; they curved around the north of the island to position themselves a mere thousand kilometers from Townsville at the edge of the Australian Red Zone – and the largest settlement within reach. While within range of GDI anti-shipping missiles, many batteries only had a relative sliver of their angle, as the north-south axis of the Blue Zone blocked many of the batteries and those that were not blocked would only be able to cover a few kilometers of ocean with their fire.
The fleet broke into three components. The Rajanaga and the cargo vessels (mostly salvage that she had hung onto from raids against GDI forces) were the first element, sailing on a dogleg course from the tip of Papua New Guinea to the northern peninsula of Australia some eight hundred kilometers away, before turning to the southeast and the Yellow Zone. The second was the screening element, taking a more open-water route a few hundred kilometers east, sailing more or less directly south from the separation point. Finally, the submarines began to fan out into a barrier between the Blue Zone naval bases and the screening force.
First detected shortly after dusk, the ships of the second element had been running dark and quiet, but were picked up by a patrol of hydrofoils running interdiction operations against the north of Australia. While the hydrofoils ran for port, the response was immediate. The carrier at sea and every available land-based aircraft immediately launched into strike operations, with just under a hundred and fifty Firehawks – loaded to the gills with anti-ship missiles – lumbering into the sky less than an hour after first contact. Each Firehawk carried three such missiles, for a total launch weight of well over four hundred.
Shortly thereafter the screening group found themselves in the middle of a somewhat problematic position as hundreds of missiles screamed in. The Ulars maneuvered to cover the Nagas as lasers flashed out, shredding through the incoming storm of missiles. Hundreds were shot down, but with the unending storm of fire many slipped through the defense network, and some managed to make hits. Missiles slammed into the Ekakapak (one of the Nagas), and the ship began to make a long, gentle starboard turn as its propulsion on that side came to a standstill. On the other side of the task group, another missile had found its way to one of the Ular's VLS pods, and flames erupted as fuel and explosives combusted and blew out the side of the ship.
The battleships, moving closer to bring the ships within effective range of their railgun batteries, placed themselves in a crossfire. To their stern lay Bintang's submarine fleet, to their bows the still-oncoming battlegroup of Ulars and Nagas. As the two groups closed to range, the Ulars began bombarding the two battleships with a hailstorm of missiles. In response, the battleships began their own sequence of maneuvers, tacking port and starboard to both throw off some sliver of the missiles, and allow some of the crystal beam lasers a few seconds to cool as they were masked by the bulk of the ship.
From the stern however, all six of the submarines unleashed their own barrage. One that paled in comparison to the Ulars, but critical – the point defense system was overwhelmed. As the missiles closed, the secondary point defense battery – electrolasers, micromissiles, flechette swarms – opened up, flares streaking from the upper works of both ships as they tried to distract some portion of the incoming munitions. It was not nearly enough.
The two battleships were savaged by the barrage – even the missiles damaged or destroyed by the secondary point defense battery spewed sprays of shrapnel across the ships, riddling the outer hull with pockmarks at best, and shredding sensor systems and communication arrays at worst.
However, a battleship is a tough creature. So long as they do not take a hit to the below-water citadel, or lose the relatively small crew compartment, even direct hits from anti-shipping missiles are far from lethal. As they closed to range with the Nagas, and the direct fire gunnery of the Ulars, they were able to begin exchanging blows. Two Ulars were hammered into scrap by a hailstorm of railgun fire. At the same time, they were pelted with fire; bolts of plasma screamed in, with blast after blast hammering into the Rinjani's port batteries, melting railguns and penetrating interior compartments. One screamed skywards as its capacitor banks detonated, the pent up energies unleashed in all directions.
Swarmed by the cruisers, pelted with gunfire and savaged by missiles and plasma, the two battleships had little choice but to ride out the storm, especially as a second massed air strike was inbound. As another wave of Initiative airpower reached out, the cruisers broke for the north, attempting to escape from the incoming forces – but by the time the Brotherhood flotilla detected incoming fighters it was too little, and far too late as another barrage of anti-ship missiles launched towards the cruisers. Once more lasers flashed in a brilliant storm of light, and missiles burnt by the dozens and hundreds, with yet more missing the maneuvering cruisers as they fled. Some however found their marks, and Nod ships rippled with secondary explosions.
It was too late for the battleships however. The Etna was already slipping beneath the waves, too damaged for the still-functioning pumps to keep her afloat. While the Rinjani was able to limp home, the ship would later be found not only to have severe damage across some sixty percent of her surface, but key structural members had extensive microfracturing, as well as multiple places where they had cracked outright from being flash-heated.
At the same time, the Rajanaga had completed its objective, delivering the cargo group safely into the hands of the Australian Brotherhood, and had begun to head north, withdrawing beyond the range of GDI's forces, as did the submarines and surviving other assets
Assessing total losses for Bintang's force is somewhat difficult. While one of the Nagas and three of the Ulars can be considered confirmed kills, savaged by the guns of the battleships, it is far harder to tell what the state of the other ships is. While the second air strike did make a substantial number of hits, damage assessment was spotty with the strike being launched from long range in an attempt to save the battleships from destruction.
Minor Raiders
Merchant convoys are often a matter of security through obscurity. The oceans are vast, and the eyes of the Brotherhood limited. Keeping as much as possible to deep-water mid-oceanic routes maintains a significant degree of safety for most Initiative convoys. However, this does not apply everywhere. In places like the Caribbean and a number of other straits and archipelagos, there is either no choice (or no efficient choice) to go around. These are the favored ambush positions, where raiders can simply sit behind radar cover of the islands until opportunity strikes, and attack at relatively close range and high speed – getting in under the missiles and railguns of the defending ships before unleashing their preferred close-attack missiles and torpedoes.
Elsewhere, things get substantially more difficult. Even with a semi-submersible cheesebox on a raft, an Initiative ship can reliably see it well before it sees them. A proper submarine can get much closer, but in turn has limited visibility, and oftentimes significantly limited speeds.
There are many tactics that the Brotherhood uses to hunt merchant convoys, ranging from the large and obvious to the small and discrete. The largest is commonly known as the 'stampede method.' While Initiative convoys are quick, they can be herded. Using large mosquito fleets, a convoy can be herded into a minefield or prepositioned submarine assets as they try to avoid engaging a seemingly overwhelming number of targets. While a somewhat risky play, especially when the Initiative is supplying air cover in the form of a carrier or ground based aviation, there are a number of areas (especially in the Pacific) where such protection is somewhat difficult at best.
Another approach uses the Wing in Ground Effect to make rapid missile and laser attacks. While not particularly stealthy, WiGE vehicles can be hard to spot up until they begin vectoring in an attack run, and can break contact relatively quickly – although only by conducting oblique attacks.
In this quarter's operations these small-scale raiders have been overwhelmingly successful, in many cases as a result of the Initiative not being able to supply nearly enough escorts. While more risky convoys – such as those to Australia and New Zealand, or between South America and West Africa – always have a GDI naval presence, others often have to make do. For example, the North Atlantic route is patrolled and ties down about ten modern warships at any given time, but it is still routinely raided – with submarines using the arctic ice shelf or icebergs for cover until they can break out and do damage before vanishing. Elsewhere, strikes have been daring and aggressive, with boarding parties being a common feature of operations where the Initiative has not been able to provide escort. So far these operations have not reached a point where most day-to-day operations are substantially impacted, but losses are high and unsustainable. While not an immediate choke on the Initiative's ability to wage large-scale offensives, if these rates of loss are maintained (let alone increase) the ability for the Initiative to supply long-range logistical support will begin to rapidly decline.
While the Regency War is a global conflict, it is not a place of uniform supply consumption. While the materials needed to supply large-scale operations, like GDI offensives in Europe or the Americas, are measured in kilotons and megatons, other fronts are far more quiescent. These range from places where the local warlord is carefully not making offensive maneuvers, like China, to areas where GDI has treaties and agreements like the Arabian peninsula. Even in these locations there is some demand for consumable supplies beyond those needed to refresh the stockpiles and for training, but it is far lower than what is consumed by even a relatively quiet open front like, for example, the Siberian operations theater, where distances are long enough and populations low enough that neither side has managed to move the front line significantly.
With other areas needing the supplies much more than, for example, the Arabian Peninsula, GDI has been shipping those supplies to other Blue Zones – in that case primarily to South Africa and Australia, although some have been shipped as far as South America to supply Escoffier's drive.
The Australian Campaign
With the Australian continent beginning to cool, GDI launched into a wave of sweeping offensives. With much of the continent covered by Red Zones and the short but brutal bloodletting initiated by the execution of Killian Qatar, the warlords remaining were fragmented and low on resources, trapped between GDI and the deep Red Zones. The remainder fell rapidly under the influence of Bintang, as the only remaining warlord in the region with enough influence to seriously oppose GDI.
Much of the region is simply inhospitable. Even with modern life support technologies to draw moisture from the air, stillsuits, and a wide variety of other technologies, there is simply not nearly enough water to support large inland populations. This means that the vast majority of the population is on the coastal extremes, where they can make use of desalination plants to ensure sufficient water for both farming and their own needs.
The big remaining strategic target was the city of Adelaide. While the Brotherhood had spread the population all throughout the region, the city itself was still an important civilian population center, and an infrastructural core. Traditionally, it had been protected by ASM and coastal artillery batteries spread across the islands and peninsulas south of the city, and protected from GDI offensives by the strength of the Yellow Zone warlords. With the rapid and massive expansion of the Australian Red Zone, and the death of Killian Qatar, the strength of the Australian warlords was not what it once was.
The earliest proper defenses came with the rise of Brother Marcion, who envisioned Adelaide as the site of a glorious stand, a place where his battle brothers could fight GDI head on and emerge victorious as desert warriors and buried airbases invaded the Blue Zone. In pursuit of this, the original network comprised a network of hidden marshaling points, defense towers, and battery after battery of artillery hidden beneath disruptor fields.
However, as Killian rose to power, the defensive network shifted. No longer was it a place for a grand battle, but something rather more prosaic: a tar-pit to slow GDI advances – heavily automated, with few of the elements of the glorious defense remaining. Arrays of laser and shredder turrets controlled from networked hardpoints served just as well, and were far less wasteful of manpower that could be moved to other points.
Now, the defenses are still primarily Killian's work, but maintained without her resources. Many sections have been abandoned entirely, while others have seen shortenings, rationalizations, and increased networking, further reducing the number of men needed to man the works. One of the topics that GDI had discussed with those who came into the Initiative's arms was the state of the defenses. However, that information is now a decade out of date, and much of it has changed – in detail if not on the macro scale. While significant parts are still the same, others have changed drastically – often simplified, with less sophisticated devices and systems replacing hardpoints. By GDI's best estimates, roughly one in eight of the Obelisks of Light no longer function, nor do about one in sixteen of the antiaircraft sites.
The offensive launched in early May, with initial drives conquering hundreds of kilometers a day, but that would not last. The most major of these conflicts in the early phase was the center of population and the port city of Adelaide.
General Alfred Dorne – a veteran of campaigns across the Australian continent – established a rapid offensive, with flying wedges of light vehicles driving across the open desert north of Adelaide, taking on the Brotherhood's methods. While risky, the attack cut the supply line to the north, while fleets of hydrofoils and constant air patrols maintained a blockade from the southern approaches – leaving the city and the majority of the Yellow Zone's population trapped in a GDI pocket. At that point, it was only a matter of time and siegeworks. Recognizing this, many of the Brotherhood forces in the city chose to surrender rather than fight to the end, with the lines collapsing as local commanders took their own initiative to raise white flags. The campaign turned to refugee operations as GDI's armored units shifted north, beginning a slow march across the desert.
This northern campaign rolling up the Brotherhood faced severe logistical challenges. While the Brotherhood's tiberium power sources and mobile units could effectively flit from hardpoint to hardpoint – many times using disruption fields or more conventional camouflage to mask their movements – GDI had to ship everything in, across road networks that were never particularly good or comprehensive.
With Adelaide on the edge of a vast Red Zone, and effectively cut off from GDI logistical networks, it was the job of the civil engineers to build rails to the city – cutting through minefields, entrenchments and bunkers to lay a straight and level path back to the Blue Zone cities. While many in the city refused to leave, tens of thousands more took GDI's offers to move back. With much of the city's infrastructure effectively intact, there are many proposals of what to do with it, but all will have to wait for the end of the war, with the logistical infrastructure tied up in other operations at this time.
After savaging GDI naval assets in the northern Australian theater, Bintang managed to deliver masses of weapons, primarily RPG-59s, but also a wide array of other modern weapons, including Stahl-pattern laser sniping devices, advanced combat armor, Mantis drones and numerous other systems.
However, even before the delivery of kilotons of new hardware, the offensive was already running into trouble, primarily due to logistics. For both sides, it is a relatively simple equation. For any given logistics truck and crew, they have ten to twelve hours a day of operations. A load in one such truck takes an average of an hour to turn around at each point. Exceptions do exist: for example, water trucks (which can be drained in minutes), versus bags of rice, which can take significantly longer. That means that the primary limitation on throughput is actually transit time. Assuming an average speed of 45 kilometers per hour, a single truck can take about four loads of material to the front line a day at 45 kilometers from depot to the front. Increasing the distance to 90 kilometers drops it to two to three loads per day, and at 150 kilometers or more, it is, at best, one load a day. Now, this is usually less of an issue. On well built and maintained roads, or even the decades-out-of-maintenance roads of Europe or the Americas, 45 kilometers per hour is noticeably pessimistic. During the BZ-2 Counter-offensives in 2047, convoys maintained an average road speed of 90 kilometers an hour (and some runs were substantially closer to 135 kilometers per hour) due to having clear roads, straight lines, and orders to move quickly to minimize the threat of stay-behind units and pockets of resistance that had not been completely cleared. Even in the Yellow Zones across most of the world, where there is substantial legacy infrastructure, 45 kilometers per hour is pessimistic – sixty or seventy is more average there. In Australia however, the territory being fought over never had the level of development to make that possible, with even the major highways being two lanes across hundreds of kilometers of bare scrubland at best.
Additionally, there are severe problems in the shape of the infrastructure. The vast majority of the transport links are north-south, adding substantial length to try to use them for military efforts. Even with GDI adding a number of east-west rail lines, and the rapid construction of fortress town hardpoints, there are simply too few across far too much territory to significantly cut the length of the supply line, especially as the front continued the northern push. This left Dorne's offensive running into significant problems, especially as the arms delivered by Bintang's run began filtering to the front. With Brotherhood resistance stiffening rapidly, leading elements began to face increasingly effective ambushes, with prepositioned ATGMs, minefields, artillery and entrenchments proving increasingly lethal as units ran short of ablative plates and shells. Even with a series of bands of new east-west rail and fortress town lines, Dorne made the decision to slow his offensive and find good terrain, allowing the offensive to stall across most of the line in mid-June, after one of the single largest terrain grabs in the war.
The Siege of the Himalayas
Blue Zone 18 has often been a relative backwater for the broader Initiative. While certainly important, and an outpost in the deepest regions of the Yellow Zones at one time – and now a narrows between Blue and Red Zones – it has not been a site of major industrial development. While not autarkic, the Himalayan Blue Zone is highly self-sufficient.
The siege, however, has more in common with that of storied Troy, rather than something more modern. It is not a thing of vast artillery barrages, strategic bombing, or, for that matter, grand victories and defeats. It is a slow, creeping thing. GDI held tight in its mountain keeps, the paths to them covered with battery after battery of railguns, entire fleets of artillery, and a near constant overflight of ion cannons standing ready to blast troop concentrations out of existence. It is a war of will and persistence, with the Brotherhood picketing the valleys and forming outposts on the hills, cutting the men and women who call the mountains home off from material supply. From the high watchtowers, observers can see Gana march and mill. The air warning radar sees raid after raid, but none come to give battle.
The Himalayas, barring some paradigm-changing developments, will be able to hold out for four to six years without problems, then facing increasing problems for much of the decade following that – as systems begin to break down due to a lack of specialized parts, skilled labor, and other tools. However, this will be a slow process, and one that can be slowed to a crawl with existing technologies so long as they are deployed.
Overall
In terms of overall progress, the most recent quarter has been far more successful than the first, with major ground gains and the Initiative running rampant around the world. While marred by major defeats as the Warlords turned their eyes towards particular goals and forced issues that the Initiative would have rather remained unsolved, these have involved the personal attentions of the very highest ranks of the Brotherhood, and the most elite of their forces. Elsewhere, the rank and file have been decisively outmatched, and in some cases overmatched by GDI's ability to strike rapidly and decisively deep into their home areas.
Similarly, around the Brotherhood, the severe localism of the warlord era has been problematic for them. Localized commanders (sometimes down to the level of companies and battalions) are used to operating independently, and so often break from their orders when given commands that would lead to their destruction, even when it would have saved far larger units elsewhere.
Even with numerous major defeats and the Brotherhood able to continue striking severe blows against GDI, GDI has seized vast stretches of territory, and is expecting to continue the progress found this quarter. Even if the offensives have to be called to a halt, and the forward elements called back, there are likely to be significant shifts in territory and population held for six months to a year after the end of active conflict.
Beyond the major active battlefronts, GDI has not so far attempted to bring vast new territories under its direct control. Rather GDI's forces have focused on destroying the Brotherhood's core weakness: its trained and equipped manpower. By bringing the Brotherhood to battle time and time again, it has managed to break many of the best the Brotherhood has to offer.
Bintang/Stahl otp for clowning in the GDI
overall good though. Navals a shit show but we already knew that from the navy shouting it at us until we finally listened and it looks like bintangs successes are mitigated by the Aussie nod crumbling so hard that we need to stop and wait for our back lines to catch up. might need suborbital shuttles to help the himilayan blue zone stayed supplied but I suspect they'll get out under more intense attack as time goes in.
overall good though. Navals a shit show but we already knew that from the navy shouting it at us until we finally listened and it looks like bintangs successes are mitigated by the Aussie nod crumbling so hard that we need to stop and wait for our back lines to catch up. might need suborbital shuttles to help the himilayan blue zone stayed supplied but I suspect they'll get out under more intense attack as time goes in.
ConfusedCanuck
Where did it all go wrong?
- Location
- Neverland
At this point I'd say our two warlords doing the best are Bintang and Stahl but again overall this is a massive success for GDI and if possible we should continue it.
- Location
- USA
This sounds like another planned city. Australia being close to the warlords causing us problems makes me very interested in doing it. Maybe after finishing Chicago to free up a spot.
They tried to stop our investigation of the captured airship but got thwarted. Good good good.
Navel stuff is bad. But not as one sided as I feared.
We definitely need some better anti-sub stuff and (as always) more ships.
Excellent news from several fronts.
But it seems future gains require more logistics and consumables to continue.
- Location
- Washington DC
Essentially each of the battle reports this quarter has ended with some version of 'and then we ran out of logistics and can't continue pushing'. So...it's not really possible. We're going to have to spend at least a quarter, probably more like a year, consolidating, rebuilding, retrenching, and putting out the significant indicator-related fires that have sprung up due to both battle damage and the significant refugee influx.
It's all a significant net victory, but now we need to digest the giant bite we took out of NOD. We'll get back to wrecking shit in a bit, but for now, it's time to build and rebuild.
ConfusedCanuck
Where did it all go wrong?
- Location
- Neverland
I did say if possible didn't I? I know in all likelihood we'll need to hold on any more attacks but if we do get an opportunity to press somewhere then we should continue to press then.