Jump 94
Here we are: the Federation High Command. It doesn't look nearly as intact as it should do, though. The Rebels got here first, and although the Federation's made a fair job at fighting them off, it wasn't a complete job, and the Federation fleet in this area was almost wiped out. Most notably, the Rebels already focused fire on all the military hangars in the area; we have nowhere to repair and there's nothing to resupply with.
Of course, we give them our information about the Rebel flagship: that's what we were sent to deliver, and it could well be very important now. More importantly, it opens up a potential plan for the future: this area is pretty much surrounded by Rebels, so we're going to have to fight no matter what, but at least it strongly suggests the choice of targets.
The Federation military has, of course, been trying to destroy the Flagship anyway; even without knowing how crucial it is, it was something that obviously needed destroying. with the additional information, it makes sense to direct all their available resources into focusing on it; once it's destroyed, the rest of the Rebellion will have less of a reason to exist, and can likely be easily wiped out. Of course, even
getting
to it isn't particularly easy; it has a large retinue of elite Rebel fighters that help to protect it, and Federation cruisers have so far had issues just getting within weapons range without getting stuck in a dogfight. The Federation is going to keep trying, though.
We also get some intelligence on the Flagship itself. As expected for a ship this large and important, it has a number of features that will make it hard to destroy, but they also identified some potential weaknesses:
- Four shield generators, as if that wasn't obvious. Luckily, they're all in the same place, so we may be able to focus-fire on it.
- A cloaking device, making it hard for us to get weapon locks.
- Instead of being centralised, the weapon power relays are split up all over the ship; we can't just aim at the weapons generally, any shot of ours is only going to be able to affect one of them (OK, we might be able to hit two with a beam). This means that any "target the weapons" request must specify
which
weapon.
- Speaking of the weapons, it has four of them: a burst laser; a burst missile launcher; a burst ionizer; and a large beam which can pierce one shield layer.
- The ship has a very large number of crew (the Federation hasn't been able to produce an accurate count, but it's at least 10), and full life support facilities, including high-turnover medical facilities and fast, reinforced oxygen pumps.
- The ship's navigational controls for impulse and for FTL jumps are separate. The FTL controls are too well-shielded to aim for, but the impulse controls are a bit of a weak point; although shielded against many attacks, there isn't so much shielding that it's implausible to break through the shielding and destroy the controls beyond it. With so many crew, though, it's often quickly repaired.
- The ship has a highly advanced internal security system, involving heavy blast doors which automatically seal off any area with intruders, and prevent fire and oxygen leaks from spreading. Previous Federation attacks have caused the only real victory over the Flagship; after some attacks with an experimental weapon, the doors to the beam and ionizer rooms somehow managed to end up welded completely shut, meaning that if we kill the crew in those rooms, the ship will have no way to replace them.
- The ship has a highly advanced hacking device, that's been known to cause the equipment on ships attacking it to shut down or even start working against its own ship. Stories abound of things like the oxygen pumps running backwards and completely draining the attacking Federation ship of oxygen.
Most worrying, though, is the ship's apparent ability to self-repair. It seems pretty clear from the observations that the Rebel Flagship has somehow been repairing itself while in hyperspace between jumps, which is of course completely impossible. Maybe some time in the future we'll be able to capture and study whatever technological marvel allows that, but for the time being, we just have to work out a way to deal with it. The only plausible way to prevent the Flagship simply jumping away and repairing whenever it's damaged seems to be to hold it too close to the beacons; what remains of the Federation military engineers division has therefore been working on the beacons in the area to make them "draggier" and harder to jump away from. Even so, we're likely going to have to fight this thing multiple times before it's destroyed. Maybe we can at least do some permanent damage to it.
Anyway, we get an interesting report on what remains of the Command's hyperspatial scanners: the Flagship is jumping to a nearby beacon, that's just being reinforced, and we can arrive on the same jumpcycle if we wish. It's a rare opportunity to attack the Flagship, and we're pretty much the only ship in position to take advantage of it. So our orders, at least for the moment, are clear; whether we're fighting for glory or merely trying to survive, we know where to go next.
Plans, everyone? You will likely need to collaborate with each other in order to make sure your various attacks and defences aren't stepping on each others' toes.
