- Location
- Lake Wobegon
- Pronouns
- He/Him/His
Slavery per se anyway. The empire remained fond of and dependent upon various forced labor regimes.
Linked contents
StriderInCosmos
Wanderer in the Worldsea
- Location
- Somewhere in... Terminal Dogma? I think?
We seem to be getting off the topic of the quest. I'm sure there's a thread somewhere else on the site we can take this to.
Empress_Boog
Grand Empress
Ah, my apologies, I read that wrong.
This is true, the Empire was a place that at its height oppressed 1 out of every 4 people on the planet, but as Kana said to think everything about Britain was bad denotes a lack of understanding.
In any case, I do wish that something other than Thunderchild would appear to win, but since it isn't I guess we can try and talk about how many of these ships we want to produce.
EDIT:
I didn't see this until after I posted my responses, but I agree and will stop now.
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- Location
- America
This is basically going to depend on how much industry we have, bearing in mind that we also still need to replace some of the stingrays that the romulans removed.
Ideally 3 though. One for Earth, one for the colonies, and one to go to Romulus
Too much dispersion of force. One with a small TF to cover earth and then ram the rest straight through the Romulan Star Navy
I think you mean 6. Two for each. Always double tap.
- Location
- England
[X] UES Bulwark
The Earth-Romulan War: 2156-2158
The first year of the war was characterised by essentially no contact between United Earth and Romulan forces. While the members of the Coalition of Planets honored their defensive pact by likewise declaring war on the Romulan Star Empire, local political concerns stopped short of a total mobilisation. The Vulcan High Command was still dysfunctional as a result of the societal upheavals caused by the rediscovery of the Kir'shara, and was unwilling to support offensive actions. While Earth was the recipient of protection from Vulcan starships, there was no major shift towards Romulan space.
Likewise, the Andorians were unwilling to completely invest in the war. While they recognized the danger that Romulan incursions represented, especially given the genocidal intent of the attack on Earth, the Andorians and Vulcans had been on the verge of war a mere three years prior and the good-faith diplomacy of Earth was relied upon as the mediator for that distrust. With United Earth now politically distracted with the Romulan conflict and without the Vulcans reducing their defenses, Andoria was unwilling to take the first step and leave themselves exposed. This caution was compounded by the distraction of a major outbreak of Rigillian Fever occupying government resources on Andoria. They did however detach parts of the Imperial Guard to proactively search for Romulan forward operating bases and refuelling depots, successfully destroying a station near Denobula in late 2157.
The Tellarites were likewise willing to contribute to the war effort, but as yet did not consider themselves to be completely involved in the Earth-Romulan War. While happy to contribute industrial materials and intelligence, the Tellarite defense forces only stepped up patrols of their own space. This state of support rather than cooperation ended with the Romulan invasion of Denobula in March of 2158. After clearing the orbital spaces of military installations and bombarding the central government bunker, they coerced a surrender that gave them complete control of the planet's orbital infrastructure. The Tellarites then began to proactively position their ships towards the Romulan border.
By this point Earth was producing over five Stingray-class light cruisers and an NX-class starship every year in preparation for a push towards known Romulan territory. This advance was prepared for by a scouting mission by the UES Enterprise, which had spent practically the entirety of 2157 investigating the antispinward border of the Coalition. In addition to identifying several star systems with known Romulan activity, the Enterprise also confirmed that the feared Romulan cloaking device was incompatible with the antimatter-based warp engines used during the attack on Earth. In fact the majority of the Romulan fleet was still using Warp 3 as its maximum cruise, while the cloaked ships were using an experimental new power system. This explained the necessity of a refuelling stop, as the majority of the Romulan fleet had an operational range that excluded Earth and Vulcan.
The United Earth fleet set out from Sol in July 2158, intending to strike at Denobula and deny the Romulans a supply route towards Earth. The fleet consisted of fourteen Stingray-class cruisers; the NX-class starships Columbia, Challenger, and Endeavour; and the dreadnought Thunderchild. They were still en route when in August a Romulan strike force destroyed the Proxima Centauri colony, killing six million civilians and destroying the VCS Surak in orbit. This convinced the Vulcans to more proactively take a role in the war, and a fast-response fleet from Vulcan intercepted the Romulans a month later en route to Denobula and destroyed them.
The Andorians responded to the increased involvement of the Vulcans by likewise strengthening their patrols, but only mobilised to total war conditions when it was discovered that the Rigelian Fever epidemic was linked to a deliberate aerosolisation event in early 2156 by presumed Romulan agents. With the Imperial Guard fully committed to war, the Tellarites and Vulcans likewise began advanced deployments towards the Romulan border.
The Battle of Denobula began on October 14th, 2158. The Romulans had erected a trio of defended outposts in high orbit of several of the system's main bodies, one of which was Denobula itself. The Romulans had also accumulated a substantial force of twenty Warp 3 warbirds at this forward operating base. Wary of the potential for cloaked minefields or ships, Admiral Black refrained from immediately engaging while the the dispositions of the Romulan fleet were analysed. Judging that the Romulan access to shield technology favored the enemy in a large and prolonged fleet engagement, the United Earth fleet split into two forces. The first was a squadron of the three NX starships led by Columbia and accompanied by a half-dozen Stingrays, while the other consisted of the Thunderchild and eight Stingrays.
Attacking two of the three Romulan outposts simultaneously, the defenders were unwilling to leave the unmolested outpost over the Denobulan homeworld completely undefended, leaving a flight of three warbirds to protect it against any surprise attacks or disengagements by the faster Earth starships. Of the remaining Romulan vessels, twelve engaged the Thunderchild and her escorts while five fought a delaying action to protect against Columbia's fleet element.
The Thunderchild immediately came under heavy fire in the initial exchange, appearing the preferential target for the Romulan force and the outpost itself. No less than nine disruptor beams impacted her forward hull in under three seconds, overwhelming the polarised hull plating and causing multiple hull breaches on C, D, and E deck. The dreadnought responded with her beam weapons, a rapid salvo from a dozen phase cannons over the span of five seconds burning through the shields of one of the lead warbirds and causing a catastrophic hull breach.
The fleet then cleared the first clash, passing through the Romulan formation. The Thunderchild's escorts broke apart and came about to re-engage the Romulan fleet in detail, while the dreadnought closed on the station and fired a full volley of photonic torpedoes. The four antimatter warheads and a barrage of phase cannon fire broke through the shield and inflicted serious damage on the station. The Thunderchild then banked to starboard while continuing fire from her cannons, turning back towards the fleet battle and firing a pair of photonic torpedoes into the outpost from her aft launchers. This caused massive secondary explosions as volatile storage and antimatter supplies were breached, resulting in the station's destruction.
The dreadnought then rejoined the battle proper, but her compromised forward plating meant the ship was unable to bring her forward torpedoes to bear on any of the warbirds. Instead the Thunderchild made a pass on the edge of the battle, using her starboard and aft cannons to concentrate fire on targets of opportunity. As a result two more warbirds were destroyed in cooperation with the Stingrays, although the Whiptail and Fanray were lost to Romulan atomic torpedoes.
The battle then turned against the Earth starships however, Romulan disruptor beams disabling the Butterfly and Softnose. The Thunderchild was again left as the main target of the Romulan force, with her remaining four escorts harried away from her by a squadron of warbirds. While her aft coverage and photonics allowed her to destroy another enemy ship, the concentrated fire quickly penetrated her aft plating and damaged her nacelles and main saucer section. Now beginning to lose her cannons, Thunderchild began a spiralling turn to port to bring her forward weapons to bear, but the more agile warbirds were able to evade this effort and continue to fire.
Now leaking drive plasma and with only one functional aft torpedo tube, the dreadnought managed to disable another attacker before the remaining five warbirds chasing her scored a hit on her starboard engine assembly and nearly brought the ship to a standstill. On the brink of losing power entirely, the Thunderchild returned fire with her few remaining operational cannons to no effect. However the arrival of the Columbia and Endeavour at high warp into the battlespace forced the attacking warbirds to disengage under the force of the NX's forward armament, saving the ship from certain destruction.
Approximately ten seconds later the surviving four Stingrays and the damaged Challenger from Columbia's attack group also dropped out of warp and joined the battle, prompting a Romulan withdrawal from the area and to the final station, which resulted in a consolidated defending force of a dozen warbirds. The battle would conclude a week later when a partially-repaired Thunderchild and a quartet of newly arrived Andorian Kumari-class battlecruisers spearheaded an attack by the fleet on the remaining outpost. Without the threat of Romulan ships in orbit, the Denobulans quickly overran the minor Romulan garrison in the capital and liberated the planet.
The Battle of Denobula was the first major offensive victory for the Coalition of Planets, though the bloody and destructive battle nonetheless demonstrated that victory would come at a high cost. But the destruction of the Denobulan refuelling and supply outposts forced the withdrawal of now overstretched Romulan squadrons which had been preying on Coalition shipping and attempting to engage isolated starships away from populated systems, redefining the front line of the war to the unclaimed space between Romulan and Coalition territory.
Likewise, the Andorians were unwilling to completely invest in the war. While they recognized the danger that Romulan incursions represented, especially given the genocidal intent of the attack on Earth, the Andorians and Vulcans had been on the verge of war a mere three years prior and the good-faith diplomacy of Earth was relied upon as the mediator for that distrust. With United Earth now politically distracted with the Romulan conflict and without the Vulcans reducing their defenses, Andoria was unwilling to take the first step and leave themselves exposed. This caution was compounded by the distraction of a major outbreak of Rigillian Fever occupying government resources on Andoria. They did however detach parts of the Imperial Guard to proactively search for Romulan forward operating bases and refuelling depots, successfully destroying a station near Denobula in late 2157.
The Tellarites were likewise willing to contribute to the war effort, but as yet did not consider themselves to be completely involved in the Earth-Romulan War. While happy to contribute industrial materials and intelligence, the Tellarite defense forces only stepped up patrols of their own space. This state of support rather than cooperation ended with the Romulan invasion of Denobula in March of 2158. After clearing the orbital spaces of military installations and bombarding the central government bunker, they coerced a surrender that gave them complete control of the planet's orbital infrastructure. The Tellarites then began to proactively position their ships towards the Romulan border.
By this point Earth was producing over five Stingray-class light cruisers and an NX-class starship every year in preparation for a push towards known Romulan territory. This advance was prepared for by a scouting mission by the UES Enterprise, which had spent practically the entirety of 2157 investigating the antispinward border of the Coalition. In addition to identifying several star systems with known Romulan activity, the Enterprise also confirmed that the feared Romulan cloaking device was incompatible with the antimatter-based warp engines used during the attack on Earth. In fact the majority of the Romulan fleet was still using Warp 3 as its maximum cruise, while the cloaked ships were using an experimental new power system. This explained the necessity of a refuelling stop, as the majority of the Romulan fleet had an operational range that excluded Earth and Vulcan.
The United Earth fleet set out from Sol in July 2158, intending to strike at Denobula and deny the Romulans a supply route towards Earth. The fleet consisted of fourteen Stingray-class cruisers; the NX-class starships Columbia, Challenger, and Endeavour; and the dreadnought Thunderchild. They were still en route when in August a Romulan strike force destroyed the Proxima Centauri colony, killing six million civilians and destroying the VCS Surak in orbit. This convinced the Vulcans to more proactively take a role in the war, and a fast-response fleet from Vulcan intercepted the Romulans a month later en route to Denobula and destroyed them.
The Andorians responded to the increased involvement of the Vulcans by likewise strengthening their patrols, but only mobilised to total war conditions when it was discovered that the Rigelian Fever epidemic was linked to a deliberate aerosolisation event in early 2156 by presumed Romulan agents. With the Imperial Guard fully committed to war, the Tellarites and Vulcans likewise began advanced deployments towards the Romulan border.
The Battle of Denobula began on October 14th, 2158. The Romulans had erected a trio of defended outposts in high orbit of several of the system's main bodies, one of which was Denobula itself. The Romulans had also accumulated a substantial force of twenty Warp 3 warbirds at this forward operating base. Wary of the potential for cloaked minefields or ships, Admiral Black refrained from immediately engaging while the the dispositions of the Romulan fleet were analysed. Judging that the Romulan access to shield technology favored the enemy in a large and prolonged fleet engagement, the United Earth fleet split into two forces. The first was a squadron of the three NX starships led by Columbia and accompanied by a half-dozen Stingrays, while the other consisted of the Thunderchild and eight Stingrays.
Attacking two of the three Romulan outposts simultaneously, the defenders were unwilling to leave the unmolested outpost over the Denobulan homeworld completely undefended, leaving a flight of three warbirds to protect it against any surprise attacks or disengagements by the faster Earth starships. Of the remaining Romulan vessels, twelve engaged the Thunderchild and her escorts while five fought a delaying action to protect against Columbia's fleet element.
The Thunderchild immediately came under heavy fire in the initial exchange, appearing the preferential target for the Romulan force and the outpost itself. No less than nine disruptor beams impacted her forward hull in under three seconds, overwhelming the polarised hull plating and causing multiple hull breaches on C, D, and E deck. The dreadnought responded with her beam weapons, a rapid salvo from a dozen phase cannons over the span of five seconds burning through the shields of one of the lead warbirds and causing a catastrophic hull breach.
The fleet then cleared the first clash, passing through the Romulan formation. The Thunderchild's escorts broke apart and came about to re-engage the Romulan fleet in detail, while the dreadnought closed on the station and fired a full volley of photonic torpedoes. The four antimatter warheads and a barrage of phase cannon fire broke through the shield and inflicted serious damage on the station. The Thunderchild then banked to starboard while continuing fire from her cannons, turning back towards the fleet battle and firing a pair of photonic torpedoes into the outpost from her aft launchers. This caused massive secondary explosions as volatile storage and antimatter supplies were breached, resulting in the station's destruction.
The dreadnought then rejoined the battle proper, but her compromised forward plating meant the ship was unable to bring her forward torpedoes to bear on any of the warbirds. Instead the Thunderchild made a pass on the edge of the battle, using her starboard and aft cannons to concentrate fire on targets of opportunity. As a result two more warbirds were destroyed in cooperation with the Stingrays, although the Whiptail and Fanray were lost to Romulan atomic torpedoes.
The battle then turned against the Earth starships however, Romulan disruptor beams disabling the Butterfly and Softnose. The Thunderchild was again left as the main target of the Romulan force, with her remaining four escorts harried away from her by a squadron of warbirds. While her aft coverage and photonics allowed her to destroy another enemy ship, the concentrated fire quickly penetrated her aft plating and damaged her nacelles and main saucer section. Now beginning to lose her cannons, Thunderchild began a spiralling turn to port to bring her forward weapons to bear, but the more agile warbirds were able to evade this effort and continue to fire.
Now leaking drive plasma and with only one functional aft torpedo tube, the dreadnought managed to disable another attacker before the remaining five warbirds chasing her scored a hit on her starboard engine assembly and nearly brought the ship to a standstill. On the brink of losing power entirely, the Thunderchild returned fire with her few remaining operational cannons to no effect. However the arrival of the Columbia and Endeavour at high warp into the battlespace forced the attacking warbirds to disengage under the force of the NX's forward armament, saving the ship from certain destruction.
Approximately ten seconds later the surviving four Stingrays and the damaged Challenger from Columbia's attack group also dropped out of warp and joined the battle, prompting a Romulan withdrawal from the area and to the final station, which resulted in a consolidated defending force of a dozen warbirds. The battle would conclude a week later when a partially-repaired Thunderchild and a quartet of newly arrived Andorian Kumari-class battlecruisers spearheaded an attack by the fleet on the remaining outpost. Without the threat of Romulan ships in orbit, the Denobulans quickly overran the minor Romulan garrison in the capital and liberated the planet.
The Battle of Denobula was the first major offensive victory for the Coalition of Planets, though the bloody and destructive battle nonetheless demonstrated that victory would come at a high cost. But the destruction of the Denobulan refuelling and supply outposts forced the withdrawal of now overstretched Romulan squadrons which had been preying on Coalition shipping and attempting to engage isolated starships away from populated systems, redefining the front line of the war to the unclaimed space between Romulan and Coalition territory.
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It did exactly what it was asked to do: provide a force concentration that Stingrays couldn't match, allowing it to break through the naval fight and remove the strategic target before rejoining the brawl.
And yeah. You'd think the cobelligerents would be willing to sell shield technology. Now that they are actually at war, I expect that to have happened.
StriderInCosmos
Wanderer in the Worldsea
- Location
- Somewhere in... Terminal Dogma? I think?
Let's go, Thunderchild! We made her tough, and it bore her out of battle with two mission-kills and two assists. Whatever ship of this line comes next is going to have a real example to look up to.
- Location
- England
Don't forget that she can take full credit for the destruction of one of the defended stations, too.
Night_stalker
Slava Ukraini!
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Come on, Thunderchild!
And this is why a DN or BB is a huge deal. She took the full fury of twelve warbirds alpha strikes, killing one in return THEN destroyed an enemy starbase/staroutpost on her own. Sometimes you need a brick to ruin a belligerents day.
- Location
- New York
- Pronouns
- He/Him
I'd say we need a step down in a heavy cruiser next… something with more punch than a stingray so it can't be ignored to focus on the dreadnought, but not nearly as expensive as the latter.
- Location
- west
She also lived to flip the bird at more Romulan birds.
- Location
- his hidden lair
In a single pass no less. This is pretty disastrous for the Romulans now that it looks like they're increasingly on the defensive. Thunderchild demonstrated that in any serious engagement with Earth dreadnoughts the Coalition forces are likely capable of destroying any fortified infrastructure even if the Romulans repel the attack.