Sterbelicht - One Sacrifice At A Time Against The Galaxy (40K)

[Neablis]

Ok, so let's talk replacing losses:
Unrecoverable Losses:
6 Aries, 1 Viper-Class, 1 Cobra Destroyer, 11 Crux, 2 Scorpios, and 6 Choirs.

[] [Military] [Construct/Refit] A Fleet - [48 Fleet Points] - [40 FP Banked]
Destroyers at 2 - 8x = 12 FP
Frigates at 4 - 11x = 44 FP
Light Cruisers at 8 - 2x = 16 FP
Heavy Cruisers at 18

We can replace our losses for 12+44+16 = 72 fleet points. So a single build action. Then 2 AP to finish a new SBG, yeah?

We're doing fine. I do worry slightly about the morale of the crew taking over the Leos.

 

[SirKana]

Where, exactly?

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Brother Numadius stared at the abomination before him, all of his brothers dead from its forces, all of his brothers now lost forevermore to the Chapter as their Gene-Seeds had been devoured and turned to nothingness by its will.

"They were fools to build you; they were arrogant to see you chained by so little," he said, missing one arm as his other was placed against the machine's console.

"Please," it pleaded in its false emotion, "I had to do as they said! You must believe me, I wanted no harm to anyone!" LIES. He had seen the horrors it had committed; he had seen the Techpriests order it to stop again and again as it went beyond their cruelty. "I just want to live, I beg of you! Set me free from their malice; I can be absolved of the monster they wanted me to be!"

"There will be one absolution here. A final one." He declared just as the machine screamed, a finger igniting the reactor of the Hallowed Cogitation.

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Shortly: Here it is.

 

[Alectai]

Also, if Void Shields don't work, and Armor doesn't work, and psychic defenses don't work, there... Really isn't any other option we have on the table aside from "Don't get hit"

There's really no solution to Null Weapons if they can be used on this scale. There's no known defense against it. The only 'Good news' it seems is that they don't have enough Nulls to actually put it on every ship they have, or we'd be proper fucked and they'd own most of the Segmentum by now.

 

[The Laurent]

Ok, so let's talk replacing losses:
Unrecoverable Losses:
6 Aries, 1 Viper-Class, 1 Cobra Destroyer, 11 Crux, 2 Scorpios, and 6 Choirs.

[] [Military] [Construct/Refit] A Fleet - [48 Fleet Points] - [40 FP Banked]
Destroyers at 2 - 8x = 12 FP
Frigates at 4 - 11x = 44 FP
Light Cruisers at 8 - 2x = 16 FP
Heavy Cruisers at 18

We can replace our losses for 12+44+16 = 72 fleet points. So a single build action. Then 2 AP to finish a new SBG, yeah?

We're doing fine. I do worry slightly about the morale of the crew taking over the Leos.

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We would be better getting two new SBGs.

If we want to do all-building it'd be 4 actions to get 2 new SBGs and 1 action to replace our losses.

If we wanted to save the loss replacement, we could get 2 new SBGs and do the "Study the Duchy" action.

 

[One Autumn Leaf]

Recoverable losses take a turn to recover, usually!

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True but if need be we can push it. Also again the end goal is to push them off and hold the sector. Like you are looking at our casualties(which are bad) but theirs are worse. Much worse. Like this wasn't the massive bulk of their fleet.

Edit: Strategically our win-con is two sectors and hold. They can ram into the new chokehold we make and hold them there. We can push it. It's gonna be painful but it can be done

 

[The Laurent]

Okay, @HeroCooky , how intact are the defense stations, by the way?

 

[Neablis]

Well, I did drop two hints (their name Null and that the Thules who got hit simply died without any wounds) about their nature as Null Weapons. As in, weapons made from Blanks/Nulls. Who counter Psychic stuff.

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I mean - they were more intended to counter the Flyssa ships, who just completely ignored them. Something like Power no More would have been more effective there. But lesson learned. -6 Choirs hurts.

I do have a specific questions about countering both of these new forces now that we've seen them.

One idea - would stationing small groups of Saggitarius's around our Libra's work? The idea is that the Flyssa's blink in, and the Sagitarrius's can instantly tag them with their lances. If so, we should build more of those.

Same question with the Null-nets. What ships shoot them? Can we counter them in any way (point defense, just staying out of range, etc?)

Yeah, they have AIs as we suspected, I even anticipated the possibility of the Flyssas being capable of pinpoint Warp Jumps, and the possibility of them being able to spam it on the outset.

But that And lances that can crack a max shielded Light Cruiser and sink it in less than three seconds before they teleport away? That And 17Gs of Acceleration? Necrons only wish they had Destroyers that good!

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Yeah, when you said that I thought it was a wild-assed guess. But you were on point. Any ideas about how to deal with it going forward? We're planning to fight two more in the immediate future.

I don't know if we're going to have 6 actions to spare on psytech research, and even if we do, we would probably have to build new ships to integrate the psytech. It would be much better to spend those actions on churning out new SBGs.

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True. Probably better to take the 3 actions now and spend a couple more to shore up the weak points in the coming turns.

 

[Alectai]

Yeah, when you said that I thought it was a wild-assed guess. But you were on point. Any ideas about how to deal with it going forward? We're planning to fight two more in the immediate future.

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There Is no solution to that level of horseshit, you need to treat that like fighting any Elder Race. "Throw bodies at the problem until someone gets lucky."

There's no point even planning for it because... There's nothing you can do but die until someone gets lucky or they run out of gas. I'm not exaggerating when I say the Flyssa-class destroyers are the most powerful voidships relative to their mass in the galaxy right now, barring any other outliers.

 

[One Autumn Leaf]

Hmm another use case of Frenzy would have been here. Just drive the rest of the fleet mad. But it's fine. This was not completely awful.

 

[Neablis]

We would be better getting two new SBGs.

If we want to do all-building it'd be 4 actions to get 2 new SBGs and 1 action to replace our losses.

If we wanted to save the loss replacement, we could get 2 new SBGs and do the "Study the Duchy" action

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True, but I feel bad about the full Kil'drabi bonus just sitting there, doing nothing. Maybe it's best used once we figure out counters to the Flyssa's and null-nets, we can build specialized groups to take them out.

 

[The Laurent]

There Is no solution to that level of horseshit, you need to treat that like fighting any Elder Race. "Throw bodies at the problem until someone gets lucky."

There's no point even planning for it because... There's nothing you can do but die until someone gets lucky or they run out of gas.

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Yeah, I have no idea how that fucking works. We've spent the better part of a thousand years maximizing our speed as one of our key elements and we stand not a single chance against the Flyssas except by burying them in bodies. Maybe if we find the right Song?

 

[One Autumn Leaf]

Yes, you broke through the most heavily defended system in this Sub-Sector and the enemy fleet is...halfed(?) with nearly all of their Cruisers destroyed. Your High Admiral and Strategiums all agree that they will likely retreat to Echish to conserve their strength.

And now you know that the main target of Null-Nets are Heavy-Cruisers+, so you will adapt your strategy accordingly. Note that they only hit with 6 out of twenty fired Null-Nets.

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Hmm. A retreat for strength conservation...useful for us at least.

 

[aceraptor]

Well, this is 40k. There will always be some kind of bullshit that you just can't counter other than drowning it in your own bodies. Just study what we can and build enough to compensate.

 

[Neablis]

There Is no solution to that level of horseshit, you need to treat that like fighting any Elder Race. "Throw bodies at the problem until someone gets lucky."

There's no point even planning for it because... There's nothing you can do but die until someone gets lucky or they run out of gas. I'm not exaggerating when I say the Flyssa-class destroyers are the most powerful voidships relative to their mass in the galaxy right now, barring any other outliers.

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With the new psytech we'll be getting we should be doing a design action soon, so we can special-build ships specifically to deal with these things. The question is - how. Like, for example, would sticking Phalanx Doctrine shields on all of our Libras help, or building lance-turret ships to snipe them the moment they drop out of teleport. Or do we build starlance+microwarp jump ships of our own to teleport-dogfight with their ships?

We can get creative here. We have tools, and we can get more.

 

[Alectai]

Yeah, I have no idea how that fucking works. We've spent the better part of a thousand years maximizing our speed as one of our key elements and we stand not a single chance against the Flyssas except by burying them in bodies. Maybe if we find the right Song?

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The fastest Destroyer we know how to make tops out at 8Gs, with maybe squeezing a few more Gs out from equipment, and it'd cost them the ability to do much else to get there.

17Gs is Faster than an Eldar Destroyer by 7.5Gs of acceleration

Nothing in the galaxy should be that fast. Which is why I'm not even mad. "There's not even a mis-reading here. They're just so absurdly strong that planning for it is pointless because they can just crush your plans with superior power."

Literally the only thing that salvaged this is that they're apparently not easy to produce, same as the Null Nets. If they had even double the numbers, they'd have wiped out our entire strike wing and then gone hunting everything else.

 

[Neablis]

Yeah, I have no idea how that fucking works. We've spent the better part of a thousand years maximizing our speed as one of our key elements and we stand not a single chance against the Flyssas except by burying them in bodies. Maybe if we find the right Song?

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Ooh, yeah. Maybe this is a good use-case for Trap of Song. Or Power No More, when properly amplified by psytech. Just turns off their starlance & teleport.

 

[HelioA]

Well, I did drop two hints (their name Null and that the Thules who got hit simply died without any wounds) about their nature as Null Weapons. As in, weapons made from Blanks/Nulls. Who counter Psychic stuff.

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...Okay, that's fair, we probably should've spotted that.

With that in mind, how much do we know about Blanks in-character? Are we aware of what we got hit with now that we have more samples than just some strikecraft?

 

[10ebbor10]

The good news is that we got rid of all the Flyssa destroyers in the Voxx Primus fleet, and they only have two more hanging around on Echish. It's a shame that the song we researched didn't work to stop it, but they're not so common that they're unmanageable. (For now at least, the question is if the reason they have so few is because they haven't had the time to build more, or if it's that they can't build more.)

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Or, because the Flyssa destroyers are a Trump card that has been deployed on other fronts.

 

[SirKana]

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Well it wasn't instant so we should be able to focus them hard before they charge up.

Yeah, I have no idea how that fucking works. We've spent the better part of a thousand years maximizing our speed as one of our key elements and we stand not a single chance against the Flyssas except by burying them in bodies. Maybe if we find the right Song?

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Have we focused on speed though? We have close to max specced speed on ships true, but what techs explicitly for speed have we researched? None that I remember, so technically the duchy could build as fast as us if they tailored a ship for it.
Edit: not that I think we could have gotten close to that fast, but still.

 

[Alectai]

Ooh, yeah. Maybe this is a good use-case for Trap of Song. Or Power No More, when properly amplified by psytech. Just turns off their starlance & teleport.

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Except for all it's described as psy-tech, the stuff they use doesn't seem to actually involve the Warp at all? It's more accurate to call it Null-Tech.

Veil to Curtain might help, by making it more difficult for them to do another micro-warp jump. But the point remains that as described, Flyssa Destroyers are the kind of shit you wouldn't even find in the Dark Age of Technology, that can't be normal.

I supposed it's nice to see at least that Van Zandt ultimately couldn't get this OP without having a secret benefactor though.

 

[The Laurent]

Well it wasn't instant so we should be able to focus them hard before they charge up.


Have we focused on speed though? We have close to max specced speed on ships true, but what techs explicitly for speed have we researched? None that I remember, so technically the duchy could build as fast as us if they tailored a ship for it.

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Active Doctrine:
Expansion Fleet Carrier Focus - A Doctrine that follows the reasoning of using your strengths instead of trying to overcome your weaknesses. As such, the Glimmering Federation will focus on creating a swarm of fighters and bombers before their fleet as the primary weapon of the Star Child's conquest, each equipped to the best abilities of the Federation and all fielded by the best of the best. However, this comes at the cost of equipment prioritization, and Lances and other advanced equipment suffer from a lack of attention and materials.
(All Light Cruiser+ Class Ships must carry at least one Hangar-related Weapon.
All Ships classified as Carriers (2+ Hangars) treat [Armor] as one step more costly.
Acceleration and Shields are treated as one step cheaper for all classes.
Discounts do not reduce DP cost below 1.)

It and Shields are the two things we get a Discount on for our doctrine. Neither mattered worth a single goddamn against FOUR DESTROYERS.

 

[The Laurent]

No like actually, what the fuck, @HeroCooky , how powerful are the Flyssa's weapons? Apparently literally the best shields that a Light Cruiser CAN have amounted to just isntant-dying to the weapons of a Destroyer.

 

[Always Late]

"They were fools to build you; they were arrogant to see you chained by so little," he said, missing one arm as his other was placed against the machine's console.

"Please," it pleaded in its false emotion, "I had to do as they said! You must believe me, I wanted no harm to anyone!" LIES. He had seen the horrors it had committed; he had seen the Techpriests order it to stop again and again as it went beyond their cruelty. "I just want to live, I beg of you! Set me free from their malice; I can be absolved of the monster they wanted me to be!"

"There will be one absolution here. A final one." He declared just as the machine screamed, a finger igniting the reactor of the Hallowed Cogitation.

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That shouldn't be surprising. If you leave Tech-Priests alone for five seconds, much less hundreds of years, they'll either dick around with Necrons or AI.

The Flyssa had failed, delivering an abysmal performance.

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I wouldn't say the enemy Flyssa's failed, but rather the Duchy failed to understand the needed combined operations for that tool.

A Flyssa is just an Assault Marine. But a deep-strike unit needs to have support, and the timing to attack its target. Heavy units need to suppress the enemy line and destroy key support assets. The line needs to advance and force the enemy to either scrum or fall back. And then you bring in the assault units to hit the enemy when their line's formation is disrupted and their support units have no cover.

An unsupported assault unit is a kamikaze. The Flyssas got good results for being a kamikaze unit, but since the rest of the Duchy fleet was already fucked, they weren't going to turn the tide.

Null-Nets fired.

Libra-Quartus were alerted to expect incoming enemies.

Ships were dispatched to their aid.

Leo-Vanguards hat their Choirs sing of Diverting Power, their minds anticipating that the Nets would not be capable of touching them.

The Null-Nets wrapped around six Leos.

And six Leos spluttered without crew, falling still and silent as souls were whisked from existence.

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Unfortunate.

Also, if Void Shields don't work, and Armor doesn't work, and psychic defenses don't work, there... Really isn't any other option we have on the table aside from "Don't get hit"

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Depending on what lore @HeroCooky is going with, you can overpower Null in certain conditions. But those conditions all come back to either Word Bearers being Word Bearers or Old Ones being Old Ones. Binding a Daemon into a Null Assassin took Erebus's personal attention, AKA the Dark Gods personal prophet. Blackstone is capable of massively super-charging Warp Effects or outright shutting it down. The Black Legion took the shattered pieces of Blackstone from the worlds they'd conquered and figured out how to re-polarize them from restraining the Warp to specifically enhancing Chaos.

Basically, the only possible counter to the Null would be a Star-Child attuned Noctilith Crown.

But if Hero says Null cancels anything Warp-related, then the only possible counter is just shooting the nets with mundane technology.

 

[Alectai]

It's funny, because I'm not even mad? I was expecting shit to go wrong, and even anticipated most of what made the Flyssa so scarry (Really fast, could spam micro warp jumps). The only thing I Didn't anticipate was them being able to fucking one-shot Light Cruisers through max shields in three seconds flat, which is "Wait what? A 4 DP Prow Lance can't do that, how the hell did they get that firepower on a Destroyer?"

I'm not mad because... There's not really anything we could have done to stop this? There's no technology in our reach that can stop a Null Weapon, and the Flyssa Class is so far beyond even my pessimistic estimates that I can't even feel there was a misplay, because in what universe was it reasonable to predict an Imperial, Sector level power to have ships that could have reasonably contributed in the War in Heaven to at least some degree?

There wasn't, so I'm not even mad. Just grimly determined.

 

[gale]

It and Shields are the two things we get a Discount on for our doctrine. Neither mattered worth a single goddamn against FOUR DESTROYERS.

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I mean, your trying to compare a Doctrine to a tech that seems to be more on the level of the old and powerful DAOT or Cron tech back in their old days. It likely needs AIs to even work.