@Neablis, just to make clear, is the fluff a warning against doing it right now and expecting to pull it off perfectly, or is it more a warning against trying to do it 'on the side' while focusing on something else?
It's not a warning against not doing it. It's calling out that it's probably the trickiest of the options, which means that it will be risky to do now, but if you leave it alone it'll also take the most effort to tackle properly and non-risky. If you want to do it without a fair amount of planning and preparation, now's the time.
We should dismantle Bongo or otherwise settle them in a definitive and absolute manner before we fight another Chaos ship of any stripe again. We handled this well, but it could have gone much worse. Certainly we won't like other ships having intel from the inside on us.
(Also more importantly we've basically extracted all the low and mid hanging fruit from Bongo.)
You know. There's a solution for this.
Looks at psychic encryption.
It's highly unlikely this was a Slaughter-Class. Those have merged weapon batteries of both lances and macrocannons and its speed would have been noteworthy. As is we know this had a Hangar Bay and Lances, so the most likely culprits is a Devastation-class cruiser. Keep in the mind the Slaughter-class isn't exactly common and among the rarest of Chaos Cruisers, so don't expect we'll see any unless we have actual intel on it.
It was a Styx-class.
I feel this deeply, well done
Yeah it was very satisfying to write.
As for the vote. It might be cold, but the industry is more important than the people on the station. Both in terms of preservation and preventing the enemy from using. That much BP could churn out problems quick if we let it, and we know Chaos has figured out a perverted version of OMC.
They basically just took Denvan OMC operators, mutated and servitorized them, then stuck them in as the control module.
On the flipside: There were only six (twelve, if you count the half that was gunned down in surprise) of them and it merely cost us a hundred and change bots to put them down. By this setting's standards, that's a terrific exchange rate where basic infantry versus Astartes is concerned.
Closer to 200 I think. Your bots were chaff, but at least they were chaff equipped with weapons that could
actually hurt them. I don't think they were counting on every single one of your troops being armed with weapons that posed a threat to them.
[X] Notify W that we're going to try and ensure the Chaos worshippers don't get to rush the warships currently being built into service. With any luck, we'll retake the manufactories intact enough to provide more relevant numbers for other ground campaigns going forward.
[X] Aetherion
Would this be preferable? I understand your point, but I'd rather not have this become any more of a protracted war than it already is.
No write-ins. Just the listed options. Don't worry about Denvan negative publicity too much here. You already saved the planet, now you're helping clear the system.
I am concerned about them managing to get a ship ready.
As long as you move on Aetherion next turn you'll be able to prevent that.
I am curious if ships build at Aetherion are warp capable. If not then let them finish if yes then we better stop them.
They look like they're built to be warp-capable.
They would be jumping without a navigator and without an abacus, we would find it trivial to chase them down, assuming they'd actually survive the jump. Most likely such an attempt would just lead to feeding themselves to daemons... which some might consider an act of faith but wouldn't be much of a concern to us.
You aren't certain there aren't more sorcerers in the system, or at least apprentices. If they were building ships it would have made sense for them to be building warp-jump capability.
Our OMC operators can do 1 build action per turn i assume the is also the case for chaos OMC.
Also, you're above 1 action/turn with this tech:
-[] Human Virtual OMC simulations (150 RP) Simulation of the organic-machine control interfaces is tricky, but it has some pretty significant benefits. Not only will it make it far easier to train people on how to use the OMC technology, it'll let people virtually fight each other to discover new strategies. Besides, that might be fun. (Dramatically improved OMC competence. This may result in an increase in manufacturing efficiency for OMC-controlled manufactories, and will result in increased effectiveness of OMC-controlled military units.). Critical Success.
All Organic-machine control happens at a higher level of competency, increasing the productivity of manufactories entirely controlled by OMC-equipped personnel, and increasing the combat capabilities of OMC-controlled combat units.
Somewhere around 1.3 or so. I'm not going to give you hard numbers because I don't want you calculating out exactly how many BP a friendly polity should have, but it was a significant improvement.
... You know what. I think that we should defer to someone who knows the local conditions better than we do - W. So, if a write in is possible:
[X] Ask W for which area she thinks we should deal with first
Edit:
@Neablis is this legal?
She'd probably tell you to go to Aetherion, but that's because she's a cold-hearted strategist who plans for the long term, and she hasn't really dealt with Chaos on a large scale as much as you have. But this is your decision because you're the one in the hot seat.
@Neablis Can we send some macro cannon projectiles at the shipyards to do some damage and slow them down while we do other shit?
Shipyards are static so just send them on pre calculated ballistic arc should work.
There's too much uncertainty in the firing trajectories, when you fire there's an error cone. At medium-ish range it's not too much, but over longer ranges it's the primary problem with macrocannons hitting things. That and the slow-ish speed.
Say, a question. I'm kind of feeling inspired to wirte some omake from the viewpoint of one of the non-space marines marines that ended up surrendering. But would crew on one of those big Chaos ships most likely be someone who was once an Imperial Marine and turned coat, just a descendant of a long line of people serving on that ship?
Most likely a long line of people serving. They also press-ganged people from Denva itself. This:
They were pulling people off Denva, they could even be a native Denvan. I do not think they would be imperials since the IoM hasn't been in this neck of the woods for something like three hundred years now so I think the options are:
- Denvan Janissary
- Hereditary crew of the Echo of Apotheosis
I'm hoping psychic encryption would jam Bongo's communications but it's also possible demonology would just let us either bind and command him to shut the hell up, or go a step further and bind him helplessly into a titanium cube or something.
Both options. Depends a bit on research rolls.
I do hope this is a wake-up call to build a proper military and not just a laughably small amount of infantry with no tanks or anything. Oh, and a brig. We can only save one, because we have nothing.
You've
got a brig. It's even psychically shielded. A dozen cells already contain necrons, but there's a lot of room for surrendered cultists.
1x Captive Holding cells 32/500 (50 HP)
But you've got a point about the Taste of Chaos. That'd unlock the ability to drop an assault shuttle or orbital bombardment on any Chaos ritual as soon as it spins up.
It's unlikely we will be able to fully clear out chaos during this combat turn, gotta have at least one command action for further cleaning them out.
There will probably be a Denva roll to catch the cultists. And each of Aetherion & Klyssar's nest probably requires their own actions to recapture.
Hey
@Neablis , would Psy Encryption have prevented Bongo from contacting the warband?
Most likely. It's kind of adjusts your psychic shields to also drown out using the warp to send information in.
Most certainly. I would recommend handing control of our ground forces next turn to W or a commander. They would have better success with our forces under their indirect control. That should provide a bonus to the action.
@Neablis please confirm.
Depends on what you intend. Giving it to them permanently? Then you're boosting whatever they're doing, and certainly provide
them a bonus to
their action. But if you run your combat bots in parallel to what they're doing then you get two rolls, one for you and one for them. This isn't a "simple trick" to get a bonus to an action.
Random coffee break thought for next turn research I wonder if instead of Taste of Chaos:
We instead get:
Curio cabinet is only has a chance of improving our detection rate of cultists, but might allow for more mundane detection. Coupled with improved warp sensors it could end up with the same level of cult detection. It also gets us a step closer to warp comms.
They all stack. Curio cabinit probably is more about mundane detection, though it would likely discount Taste of Chaos, potentially dramatically. At-range is more about you being able to detect chaos rituals spinning up in Klyssar's station or Aetherion from Denva orbit.
