Bintang had been somewhat more successful. After the Battle of Natuna Sea the unconfirmed fear was that the Brotherhood were making an attempt at a realignment strategy.
Pirate Queen Bintang, to all other warlords: "Heeeey, what's up, bitches, guess who
else besides our beloved Prophet got shot with an ion cannon and lived to Nodstagram about it?"
[smug smug smug]
Other Warlords: "GrrrRRRRRrrRRRR!"
These [Titans] in particular had been modified with Stahl-type Binary Propellant cannons instead of their standard 120mm L7s, giving the shots enough velocity to core through a Predator, at the risk of extreme flammability inherent in such propellants . Additionally, they had added a pair of Spitfire laser systems on the port side, lending the Titans an effective anti infantry and anti aircraft laser system.
Huh. It's official; tiberium bipropellant guns are Nod's
de facto counter to our railguns. Also, more than one warlord is pursuing non-laser antitank weapons as a counter to our rollout of anti-laser ablatives. The actual battlefield effectiveness of the ablatives thus declines (since they affect a smaller fraction of all incoming fire), but we still gain by virtual attrition- leveraging our superior production capacity to force Nod to abandon what was otherwise a promising and efficient weapon system, for relatively modest expenditures of our own.
In the face of the front, two Majors prepared their Companies and themselves for the upcoming battle. In command of Archangelsk's Fourth and Fifth, Major Matej Miran and Caitlin Kyriaki steeled themselves behind the entrenched fortress line. Though Home Guard elements all across the world had seen combat in various forms against Brotherhood forces, this would mark the first high-intensity combat that such formations would face. Here, new citizens of the GDI from wartorn Europe who chose to serve would have their mettle tested. Here, the design concept of the Home Guard as line-holders would have its trial by fire.
Testing the performance of what appear to be Green Zone-recruited reserve troops.
...In particular, there's a greater ratio of MCVs allocated to the defensive lines and Fortress Town hubs. Against what amounts to a mirror match, it is reasoned that a superior defense would exhaust Krukov and his ilk's pretension for firepower.
Ahh. Makes sense.
When Cherdenko's forces were spotted, Orlovsky spared no expense in deploying the entirety of his MCV formations. For those three days, the constructors poured concrete and steel into the earthenworks in a series of ramparts, decoy bunkers and emission generators. Notable additions included fallback underground hardpoints where injured GDI troopers could be stabilized and their entrances collapsed to prevent capture or execution. Thus, a battlement of two defensive lines connected via an underground rail that spanned half a kilometer was ready, with dozens of bunkers and weapons emplacement ready to blunt the assaults head-on.
...All this in
three days? I'm impressed. Though I'm unclear on the actual length of the defensive lines thus constructed.
Yet the Home Guard held firm. With presighted targets and the light of the dawn giving clear vision, the ordinance equipped troopers retaliated. RPG-43s barked from firing slits as integrated T15 and T20 missile launchers gave their voices to the orchestra of death. As the payloads rocked the Titan frames and overwhelmed the Spitfire systems, Miran gave the order for the emplaced railguns to fire. Streaks of blue-white lanced through the air, downing Titans one after another. Multiple vehicles caught fire, two detonating in showers of toxic flames blasting out from ruined chassis and blinding the battlement temporarily.
As noted, modern conventional antitank weapons (heavy guided missiles and direct fire railguns) are adequate to take down heavy combat walkers such as Titans and Avatars. On the other hand, I don't see that this was ever really in dispute.
Yet, some did not need direct vision to fire. The Guardian turrets had revealed their positions to destroy the Titans and allowed the Spectre platforms to triangulate and fire– 155mm shells crackling out of the stealthed vehicles and into the Guardians.
Nod has artillery, and good artillery, but the nature of their operating out of stealthed vehicles means they cannot match us for volume of fire and sustained barrages. They have to time their artillery attacks very carefully, or risk destruction of assets too valuable to expend lightly. Much the same is true of their Venoms acting as forward aerial observers for cruise missile attacks.
Additionally, an entire wing of Firehawks pushed past the scrum into Setigory, tangling into an interception squadron of Barghests. In a close ranged dogfight, five Firehawks fell in exchange of six of their oppositions before the battered interceptors broke off in tatters, giving the remaining Firehawks free reign to destroy the Setigory base.
Some seem to be alarmed by this, and I'll say more about it later maybe- but I do
not consider this to be a bad exchange.
The
Barghest Banshee-
bis is an advanced fighter built based on Tacitus-tech. Nod cannot mass produce them in vast numbers; they are very much the "high" component of their traditional "high-low" mix. Many Nod warlords simply do not have Banshee-
bis support.
The Firehawk is our
mainline multirole fighter-bomber, and we have a prodigious capacity to make more of them, especially with the recent war factory refit phase that sped up the Tib War Three era production lines. Practically every GDI commander has Firehawk support on call, assuming the theater's air assets aren't specifically blowing up something else at another point on the front at that exact moment.
Imagine if six of our Apollos had been shot down by a cloud of Nod Venoms, and we'd only taken down five Venoms in exchange. That would be
bad for us; the situation we're actually discussing here is almost as bad for Nod.
The URLS-modified QAAMs are
working; we've successfully enhanced the Firehawk to be broadly on par with the Banshee-
bis. That doesn't mean we can afford to be complacent in the air, but it does indicate that we have a major advantage.
[[EDIT: Much later, I realized I was being stupid when I said this. Because thinking about how this aerial battle would have played out, an entire wing of Firehawks must have salvoed their QAAMs at the much smaller number of Barghests. Normally, our aircraft have the advantage in long range missile combat, but the Barghests must have been so hilariously agile and durable that they just stunted through the missile barrage and still managed to inflict serious losses on the Firehawks before being clawed down by sheer overwhelming weight of numbers. This was an extremely worrying moment in hindsight]]
As the Titans pushed past the first defensive lines– and as militants bedecked in GDI-like equipment and a handful of Black Hand squads within Reckoners surged within, the retreating Guards rallied around their squad leaders and hard points of the second line. Through the internal PA system, both Majors hollered invectives at the invaders and exhorted the remaining effective forces of one and a half companies to make their stand. And to the surprise of the Nod elements, Kyriaki and the combined forces of the Guard counter-charged their assault, forcing a ruinous room-to-room skirmish within the seeming warren of the fortifications. Hallucinogen and incendiary grenades reaped their tolls here, where roomfuls of defenders either kill each other in rage-filled hallucinations or scream as they burn alive. It was clear now that the two lines would crumble, and Cherdenko's forces would surge through.
And yet again, the Home Guard held firm. Even as Miran and his entire command squad within a rear line bunker went up in flames from an errant shot of a Titan and as Kyriaki's half-dead immolated body were dragged back by what remains of the counter-charging forces into one of the collapsible bunker warrens, the platoon and squad leaders took initiatives. Some took their final stand in the CIC room and ensured the remote emplacements kept their fire. Some collapsed the roof atop their own formation with sonic grenades if it meant taking down Black Hand troopers. Some crept through the battlements Nod thought cleared, rescuing wounded into what few bunkers remain uncollapsed and taking out smaller elements piecemeal. All these amounted to the further delaying of the entire offensive for another thirty minutes, beyond the wildest expectations of Orlovsky.
...Those Home Guards' strength was as the strength of ten men each, for their hearts were pure.
Pure. Badass.
At 0700, two hours after the battle was joined, General Orlovsky led two regiments, over a hundred Predators and supporting arms, into a massed attack against the Brotherhood of Nod. Slashing across the open farmland north of the city, they hit the forward elements of the Scorpions ready to lead into the echelon attack as the Initiative flank curled back towards the city, and utterly routed them. Initiative lasers shredded waves of incoming rockets, while railguns flashed forward. Each of Orlovsky's platoons had such an overwhelming superiority at the point of contact...
Illustrating how important the new antimissile lasers are. Notably, Mammoth tanks would be eating a lot more missile hits in this situation. Granted that Mammoths can (literally)
tank a lot of of missile hits, but it'd still be impairing their ability to make a similar strike in the same situation, because they'd start adding up cumulative disabling hits on their weapons and treads, if nothing else.
With escape impossible, and the army completely outmatched, Cherdenko gave the order to surrender in limited broadcast. While such surrenders are very rare in modern warfare, it is not unknown. And unlike in most fronts, where rules of engagements are barely listened suggestions for both sides due to the Brotherhood's propensity for feigned retreat, the Russian front kept to a tighter, conventional standard. Though some among Cherdenko's troops were reluctant to lay down their arms, the chance of prisoner exchange back to their territory and the certainty of three square meals a day in a GDI prison was enough to convince them. And as Cherdenko himself is disarmed and brought into Orlovsky, he bitterly remarked the following good faith reward: "At least that damned svoloch would have a harder time at it."
Huh. Good to know that broadly positive treatment of Nod captives is paying off with Nod being less likely to fight to the death, at least on some fronts.
The Siege of St. Petersburg
At the same time, just over a thousand kilometers away, Krukov had been on the move. While still hundreds of kilometers short of the terminus city of St. Petersburg, he had taken a rough dogleg in order to approach the city directly from its south. Bypassing the ruins of Moscow, his army marched along the eastern shore of Lake Ilman as it turned north. Expecting Cherdenko to be demonstrating against the city of Arkhangelsk, drawing GDI attention and reaction forces, he had marched in a very loose formation, a common practice for the Brotherhood as it ensures that GDI ion cannon strikes are only minimally effective. Marching north, towards the GDI positions, Krukov gathered his banners.
I can only assume that Krukov's forces were popping in and out of cloak to some extent, too...
"Before my grandfather's grandfather was born, before the gift of Tiberium, this was all our land. Before the Initiative carved up the world into their zones, these were all our good places; our dead are buried here. The Brotherhood knows this. The Brotherhood respects this. Kane respects this. The Initiative has no regard, no respect; they come and try to take what is ours, land, people, Tiberium! They talk of how they will 'help us and protect us'. They seduce the weak and put us to sleep with golden promises: when we wake, all that we had is gone-stolen! They take our children and turn them into little GDI drones at the beck of faceless masters. So we fight to keep what is ours, what must stay ours! There can be no peace with the Initiative, men of stone, and iron, and lies! There can be only war. Today we strike another blow against GDI, and another, and another, until we drive them into the sea! Peace. Through. Power!"
It's admittedly a good line.
The plan ran into trouble at a place called Chudovo, the point where the two forces were most separated. Two battalions of Initiative mechanized infantry made a stand in the ruins of the old town, abandoned for decades at this point. Outnumbered more than ten to one, the battalions were never going to stop Moskvin's fifty thousand men. They were enough however to delay them. Spotted by forward stealth tanks, Moskvin made the decision to go offroad, flanking to the north in order to bypass the force, and bring up his shorter ranged artillery pieces to reduce the position. This proved to be a mistake, as wings of aircraft based out of the Finnish Blue Zone began striking at the strung out forces, and GDI Ion Cannon M-272 arrived over the battle space, with the two battalions acting as forward observers for the strike punched a substantial hole in the force.
Ah, yes, the problem with two-pronged attacks. One or the other of the prongs is likely to run into something that slows them down.
While Moskvin regrouped after the damage done to him, Krukov made a daring attack. Having bypassed the GDI forces falling upon Moskvin, he launched an assault on the fortified city of St. Petersburg stewarded by Brigadier General Rostam Tir and unveiled a new weapon, the Underminer.
Uuugh, now I'm having flashbacks to
The Incredibles.
A rapid tunnel borer derived from the Brotherhoods previous attempts at subterranean offensives, it is effectively an underground torpedo-transport. Using a pair of screws to cut a hole in hours that would take conventional units days to get through, they drilled through to St. Petersburg's underground complex and unloaded their payload, a series of Afanc-class Gana biomechanical organisms. These mountains of meat and metal made their unstoppable gait through the lightly armed and armoured Home Guard and their attached artillery unit. Once they breach, each of the drills contains a series of Gana, in the case of Krukov's use, a squad of the Afanc type, mountains of meat and metal unleashed at close quarters against lightly armed and armored Home Guard and artillery units. At close quarters, a standard issue GD2 proved to be woefully inadequate and while the standard issue armor piercing rounds riddled the monsters, they refused to fall, and those that did still twitched and flailed, spraying laser beams and bullets as their cybernetic augments and nervous system refused to acknowledge their host's deaths. The handful of T5s issued to the Guard intended as light anti-material weapons proved effective as they spat high explosive death into the monsters, each hit turning the snarling maws and battering limbs of the monsters into rapidly dissociating pieces and smears of blood and guts. Even so, the chaos brought by the assault silenced GDI artillery as Tir made the order to retreat the mauled Home Guard, giving Krukov the minutes he needed to unleash his full might into the city. Rather than being slaughtered at range by railguns and missiles, Flame Tanks surged into the defensive lines, and breathed fire indiscriminately, punching a hole as the front line collapsed.
Huh. This was a clever use of underground attack assets and the biomonsters. Nod's new biomonsters probably can't stand up to serious antitank fire no matter how tough they are, and a subterranean assault cannot, by nature, deliver many or very physically bulky units. But a subterranean assault with Nod's bullshit-tier rapid tunneling, combined with the biomonsters, can fuck up GDI's rear lines where the bulk of the antitank weapons
aren't quite effectively.
Down on the ground and with the outer defensive lines south of the city proper collapsing, Tir sounded a general retreat. By squad, by platoon, and by company, Initiative forces began fighting a thousand and one battle as they conducted a bitter fighting retreat through the streets of the city, buying time for civilians to be evacuated at their own expense. Building by building, street by street, the Home Guard and the Initiative garrison bolstered by civilians armed in surplus gear and weapons– for none who lived Fortress Towns are unaware of the risks–made the advancing Brotherhood pay for each inch of ground in blood and fire.
Notably, lots of civilians caught up in this.
Yet another reason why we really,
really want to build up enough Housing that no GDI civilian has to live in the fortress towns if they don't want to.
As night fell, both sides settled in. While this would typically be a time for routine infiltration operations and counter assaults, Krukov had always been chronically short and deprived from Shadow Teams, allowing GDI to concentrate their full attention towards the back lines. While the crack of sniper fire and salvoes of artillery continued through the night...
At least our side hadn't started running out of shells
yet?
Pushing GDI back to the Neva river line, they ran headlong into a GDI position that had been fortified and hardened overnight by the 121st Super Heavy Battalion "Viktar's Finest". With 56 Mk.III Mammoths and their attendant support prepared and presighting their foes, they fired at the crossing. A total of one hundred and twelve railgun slugs and over two hundred missiles made their voices heard in a withering storm of fire, singular shots downing Titans and twinned or triplied strikes pounding Avatars and Purifiers into scrap metal.
Ahh, and here we see the Mammoths in action. And
yes, they're still doing fine... though again, in the assault role they'd be eating a lot of missile fire unnecessarily, simply because we haven't given them the same kind of point defense the Predators have.
He relayed that he was supposed to tie down the forces in Arkhangelsk and the surrounding regions for days– up to a week if need be– as Krukov attempted to chase his white whale, the true destruction of a Blue Zone Arcology within the Finnish Blue Zone.
Yeah, that didn't pan out.
Lastly, he knew that Krukov had at least one major project in mind, dubbed "Project Varyag''. Though Cherdenko does not know what it entailed, it had taxed the Eastern Warlords in tributes over the past years.
Oof. That could be rough. Some kind of superweapon, I suspect, possibly an anti-orbital one. Krukov has enough secure territory to countenance such a thing.
On the GDI's part though, reconstruction efforts must go underway. Not only to refill the ranks, but also to ensure that Saint Petersburg can stand. As the farthest east hub of the European parts Initiative, it has been a terminus node that is the closest to the Himalayan Blue Zone. Within the following quarters, it is expected that the logistics line will be strained and free labour will be expended to take advantage of the lull as the Brotherhood committed to a power struggle.
Expect us to have to pay a -Logistics penalty temporarily, and/or do an Infrastructure project to patch things up.
AccomplishingProvidence
And here we see the principle that, sometimes, the best counter to esoteric tactics is a calm, competent, "workmanlike" general. Much like King Theoden in the classical work Lord of the Rings, General Orlovsky shows that knowing what you can and cannot do goes a long way to winning battles.
Heh. One wonders if AccomplishingProvidence is a fan of the same analysis of
The Two Towers as the one not long ago published on acoup.blog , which I could link to if people are interested...
[In summary, Saruman is kind of a hack; Theoden displays competent, workmanlike generalship and takes the best possible advantage of weaknesses in the enemy's disposition and forces, though sheer enemy numbers and fanaticism obviously drive him to the breaking point]
I would say we should not celebrate this as an absolute victory. Krukov lives, and his industrial base still exists. Tiberium is often the great equalizer, so we may be in a situation where Krukov will learn and adapt from this. Time will tell.
Aaaand if AccomplishingProvidence is Kane, one wonders if that's an admonishing finger-waggle at Krukov.
EvaDatabase
(First post!)
With how divided Nod is right now, I do wonder if Krukov really thinks he can beat GDI with a tank blob or if he's just working with what he has. Can't really do stealth and misdirection when you don't have enough invisi-tanks and ninjas, after all.
That's a pretty good point...
