[X]A living tank. Trying to repair the Dune Crawler mid-battle was apparently annoying enough to inspire something the could repair itself; and also take care of all nasty melee business.
Because I like stuff that repairs itself.
[X]Rasputin want to do battle. Outside the formation, you will be faster, and can close the distance before the defenders are annihilated. An attack from the rear will distract them, and buying the Imperials some breathing space. Breathing space, the ground war will get nasty for them.
It's a big planet and though we may be able to narrow down where the inquisitor is, Chaos may very well get to him first. Lets ensure they cannot escape with our sweet loot. If it turns out they made the shiny useless for us or bypass our helmets through warp shenanigans, we ought to have sufficient firepower to do a pleasing imitation of exterminatus.
Besides, the inquisitor should hold out longer than most, unless he faces some traitor terminator. Chaos warbands are usually led by terminators from the traitor legions, aren't they?
[X]An infiltrator. Getting shanked left its mark. The face is fixed now, and now Arial has her own bundle of 'Suprise! You're dead now'. It also works as a fashionable scarf according to Gene, and only Gene. Your opinion that scarfs should not outweigh the carrier is rejected.
[X]Rasputin want to do battle. Outside the formation, you will be faster, and can close the distance before the defenders are annihilated. An attack from the rear will distract them, and buying the Imperials some breathing space. Breathing space, the ground war will get nasty for them.
[X]You want the Inquisitor dead. But who cares whether you do it or some Chaos scum, as long as he dies. Stay in formation, kill Chaos, look through the remnants.
[X]An infiltrator. Getting shanked left its mark. The face is fixed now, and now Arial has her own bundle of 'Suprise! You're dead now'. It also works as a fashionable scarf according to Gene, and only Gene. Your opinion that scarfs should not outweigh the carrier is rejected.
[X]An infiltrator. Getting shanked left its mark. The face is fixed now, and now Arial has her own bundle of 'Suprise! You're dead now'. It also works as a fashionable scarf according to Gene, and only Gene. Your opinion that scarfs should not outweigh the carrier is rejected.
[X]Rasputin want to do battle. Outside the formation, you will be faster, and can close the distance before the defenders are annihilated. An attack from the rear will distract them, and buying the Imperials some breathing space. Breathing space, the ground war will get nasty for them.
[X]An infiltrator. Getting shanked left its mark. The face is fixed now, and now Arial has her own bundle of 'Suprise! You're dead now'. It also works as a fashionable scarf according to Gene, and only Gene. Your opinion that scarfs should not outweigh the carrier is rejected.
[X]Rasputin want to do battle. Outside the formation, you will be faster, and can close the distance before the defenders are annihilated. An attack from the rear will distract them, and buying the Imperials some breathing space. Breathing space, the ground war will get nasty for them.
[X]An infiltrator. Getting shanked left its mark. The face is fixed now, and now Arial has her own bundle of 'Suprise! You're dead now'. It also works as a fashionable scarf according to Gene, and only Gene. Your opinion that scarfs should not outweigh the carrier is rejected.
[X]Rasputin want to do battle. Outside the formation, you will be faster, and can close the distance before the defenders are annihilated. An attack from the rear will distract them, and buying the Imperials some breathing space. Breathing space, the ground war will get nasty for them.
[x]You want the Inquisitor dead. But who cares whether you do it or some Chaos scum, as long as he dies. Stay in formation, kill Chaos, look through the remnants.
The defenders will have a nasty time, but it will make sure you're ship doesn't get blasted apart by a whole fleet, or recruited into the Ecclesiarchy, or some other bullshit.
[X]An infiltrator. Getting shanked left its mark. The face is fixed now, and now Arial has her own bundle of 'Surprise! You're dead now'. It also works as a fashionable scarf according to Gene, and only Gene. Your opinion that scarfs should not outweigh the carrier is rejected.
[X]An infiltrator. Getting shanked left its mark. The face is fixed now, and now Arial has her own bundle of 'Surprise! You're dead now'. It also works as a fashionable scarf according to Gene, and only Gene. Your opinion that scarfs should not outweigh the carrier is rejected.
[X]Rasputin wants battle. Outside the formation, you will be faster, and can close the distance before the defenders are annihilated. An attack from the rear will distract them, and buying the Imperials some breathing space. Breathing space, the ground war will get nasty for them.
It's risky for your ship, and deployment will have to get past the enemy screen, but this way you can actually bring all your forces to bear.
[X]A living tank. Trying to repair the Dune Crawler mid-battle was apparently annoying enough to inspire something the could repair itself; and also take care of all nasty melee business.
[X]Rasputin want to do battle. Outside the formation, you will be faster, and can close the distance before the defenders are annihilated. An attack from the rear will distract them, and buying the Imperials some breathing space. Breathing space, the ground war will get nasty for them.
[X]An infiltrator. Getting shanked left its mark. The face is fixed now, and now Arial has her own bundle of 'Suprise! You're dead now'. It also works as a fashionable scarf according to Gene, and only Gene. Your opinion that scarfs should not outweigh the carrier is rejected.
[X]Rasputin wants battle. Outside the formation, you will be faster, and can close the distance before the defenders are annihilated. An attack from the rear will distract them, and buying the Imperials some breathing space. Breathing space, the ground war will get nasty for them.
Outside the tight battle formation of the fleet (changing formation would be a matter of weeks, given the average skill level), you can speed up and half the travel time.
It will still be two days watching of Imperials get kicked around. Yes, most of them would only recognize a technological wonder if it walked up them and shouted about duty and death, at which point they would do their best to get it shot to pieces by the next barbarian. You still prefer them to the Chaos fuckers, who just plainly cheat to make really dumb shit work. That offends you.
It turns out better than expected. The Imperials fly in solid, if uninspired formation. It's textbook work, with all the good and bad that entails. Morale is holding steady, presumably the threat of having their mind, body and soul flayed, raped and eaten (in all possible permutations) motivates them.
The Chaos ships on the other hand only seem to occasionally remember that they are allied and should work together, not just next to each other. That means the Imperials get to gang up on unsupported ships more than even the dumbest Khornate should allow. It doesn't matter so much for the captial ships, who are tough and scary to move away before noticeable damage is done (with the exception of one ship, whose captain must've been asleep or something). The escort ships don't have that luxury, and several die completely unnecessary and frankly embarrassing deaths.
Eventually though, the Chaos fleet gets their shit together, and regroup. At which point they notice you. A day late, but that's Chaos for you. They send the damaged Cruiser and two Escorts. Which is a welcome, if insulting, underestimation of your danger.
Fun fact: Seeing things makes hitting them easier. Funner fact: The Undying is an Explorator vessel, with some very nice auger arrays. It is good at seeing things. To put it in Binary, you get to hit them before they can hit you.
Your lance melts one escort's broadside, but doesn't finish the job. Still, that should massively reduce the danger of torpedoes in place no torpedo should be.
Speaking of torpedoes, you're rather glad you had Cerritos go through the fail-safes, because you enjoy your torpedo tubes unexploded. You'd like the other guy's tubes exploding (because of your torpedoes actually launching and hitting) even more, but you'll take what you can get. As a truly great mind surrounded by barely measurable minds, you've learned to handle disappointment.
Case in point: One voidcraft wing sallies forth, and bombs the enemies lance to pieces. Yay.
The other spends half an hour trying to get one ship to start. They eventually manage to forcibly override one 'Fuel line connected' warning, and careen straight into the bulkheads. Because of the still connected fuel line. Which then sprays burning fuel all over the place.
Suffice to say, they're not heading out anytime soon.
The good news in all of this is that the other captain still hasn't woken up, and so counter fire is rather sporadic, and his positioning rather embarrassing. The bad news is that half your fighter cover missing means several assault rams slip through, so now you have screaming assholes defiling your beautiful ship.
Speed: 66 -> ~ 2 days
Imperial relief speed: 50 >> ~ 6 days
Imperial Survival: 69 vs 13 -> Imperials do well, if uninspired. Chaos leadership fails. Loose several Escorts, one Cruiser damaged.
Chaos Response to You: 72, damaged cruiser and two escorts send, they are sticking close together.
Battle: Augur gives first strike
-Lance: 49, one Escort badly damaged
-Torpedo: 04, well maintained: 41-> no damage, torpedoes can be cleared on next turn
-Craft: 74,10 well maintained: 04 -> One strike successful, enemy lance destroyed. Second wing explodes
Chaos answer: 69,18: Enemy cruiser not very effective, escorts moving towards flanking positions. Several boarding rams connect.
You actions, choose 1:
[]Full speed ahead: You're not here to bother one sleepy Chaos captain. You're here to bother a whole bunch of slightly less sleepy Chaos captains. Go meet them. You'll just have to be a little careful not to get shot in the back, in case first guy wakes up.
[]Wake up Rasputin: He wanted battle. Now you have battle. Maybe now he'll stop being such a needy bastard, and actually will help.
[]Coordinate the Offense: A lesser mind would get caught up in the myriad troubles of the moment. You realize that just blasting the enemy one by one with the greatest possible efficiency will solve half of them, and make the rest much less troubling.
-[]write-in targeting priorities
[]Let's not die, ok?: It's said that the best defense is a great offense. That's not entirely wrong, but entirely unhelpful, since you're offense is severely reduced right now. But you can make a pretty great defense from clever maneuvering and proper use of the void shields. It will do.
Arial's actions, choose 1:
[]Release the danger noodle: Arial is very proud of his new pet/fashion statement. Well, the tight, familiar corridors of your ship are just about the best environment for a live test. As long as it drops it's kills on Arials workbench, not yours, because that is not hygienic, and only a little cute.
[]Douse the fire of evil: So, you have a sprinkler system. Normally, it deals with the inevitable fires on a Mechanicus ship. But a lot of Arial's concoctions could be pumped through there as well. It won't kill a Space Marine, but maybe it will bother them, and it certainly will do some damage to their cannon fodder.
[]Douse the fire of fuel: A significant part of your ship is on fire. That is not nice. It's not exactly his specialty, but he's a Magos, and you can send him of to deal with that. He gets to put it out, however long that might take, and however voidcraft get melted in the process.
Cerritos' actions, choose 1 :
[]Hold the line: While rude people carving unpleasant graffiti into your walls is bothersome, it's not too bad as long as those walls are nowhere near anything important. You can always send someone to clean them up later. You will send Cerritos to ensure they don't to any important walls.
[]Firebreak: You're hangar isn't in any state to launch more ships. But right now, the fire hasn't actually gotten too deep, so if he reshuffles your craft, it will burn itself out, eventually. You'll have to write off any further launches from that bay, but the damage to you're craft will be contained.
[]Ready the next round: Your torpedo tubes are currently full of unexploded torpedo. Your minions will fix that eventually, but it will take time. Someone experienced with high explosives in dumb places would speed it up, so you might even get to use them in this fight.
AN: Today's update was brought to you by me wondering how to make the battle sequence actually good, and not boring and overly long like it is in almost every CK2ish thing (which includes my earlier attempt).
My first thought was 'You like @aguy 's evil midget quest, so maybe use his system'. My second thought was 'later'. My second productive thought was 'Why not use something like the system you've been using?'.
My first thought was 'You like @aguy 's evil midget quest, so maybe use his system'. My second thought was 'later'. My second productive thought was 'Why not use something like the system you've been using?'.
[x]Wake up Rasputin
[x]Douse the fire of fuel
[x]Hold the line
Rasputin knows how to fight this ship better than anyone. We get him on that and keep us all alive in the meantime. Cerrutos has a more combat specced chassis than Arial and he knows where he put the traps so he gets the fight the boarders and Gene gets to fight the fire.
[x]Wake Up Rasputin
[x]Douse the fire of evil
[x]Firebreak
The Cerritos action pretty much renders the fire not an issue - an upgrade from the Arial response to the fire.
The Gene hunt-and-kill lets her deploy her shiny new toy, and we know that letting that thing get field tested will make her happy. It's also a more decisive solution than the Cerritos version.
Rasputin loves this kind of situation, and waking him up for it will make him happy. Look! We've already sustained a bit of battle damage!
