FTL: Limited Information (Federation Victory!)

For completed/abandoned Mish Mash Games.
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Post Post #700 (ISO) » Mon May 06, 2019 1:33 am

Post by the worst »

I'll keep the defence bot up for this phase to help mitigate the missiles o7 mostly gonna focus on keeping our shields up though because the ion+pewpew+laser barrage is nasty
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Post Post #701 (ISO) » Mon May 06, 2019 2:41 am

Post by Iconeum »

I've put up a plan that includes sabotaging their ion shots, + firing wildly at whatever we can hit. We're good.
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Post Post #702 (ISO) » Mon May 06, 2019 2:55 am

Post by Gammagooey »

i will....flyyy the ship >_>

Let's go team!
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Post Post #703 (ISO) » Mon May 06, 2019 3:05 am

Post by Varsoon »

And I shall make poor powergrid decisions! :D
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Post Post #704 (ISO) » Mon May 06, 2019 3:07 am

Post by Gammagooey »

If you can manage it maybe turn off the oxygen for 3 seconds whenever the missile barrage comes out to give me that sweet sweet engine power to dodge them better
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Post Post #705 (ISO) » Mon May 06, 2019 4:33 am

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Post Post #706 (ISO) » Mon May 06, 2019 10:39 am

Post by the worst »

ok team quick hacking question.... want me on their piloting system or need a weapon depleted?
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Post Post #707 (ISO) » Mon May 06, 2019 10:40 am

Post by Varsoon »

Ooof. Their pilot system WOULD give us free hits and I think the best defense here is taking them out before they get too many bursts off on us.
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Post Post #708 (ISO) » Mon May 06, 2019 10:41 am

Post by Varsoon »

Buuuuut synch up with weapon strategy because I think we might be relying on our BIG BOOM that ignores dodge?
So buying us time might be the strategy here.
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Post Post #709 (ISO) » Mon May 06, 2019 10:53 am

Post by the worst »

Yup fair call. Sorry for the delay, I was pretty sleepy last night.
Spyconeum where would you like hacking deployed?
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Post Post #710 (ISO) » Mon May 06, 2019 6:25 pm

Post by Iconeum »

Yeah if you can slow em down that would help me a LOT
Rawr!
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Post Post #711 (ISO) » Mon May 06, 2019 6:50 pm

Post by the worst »

so get this on missiles or ion? which do you feel worse about?
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Post Post #712 (ISO) » Mon May 06, 2019 6:52 pm

Post by Iconeum »

Piloting system, right?
If not that, or it's not working well, then missiles
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Post Post #713 (ISO) » Mon May 06, 2019 6:58 pm

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oh sorry yeeet
piloting system hack incoming <3
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Post Post #714 (ISO) » Tue May 07, 2019 3:08 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 95


Let's go. We jump, and catch the Rebel Flagship just as it arrives at a beacon. There's no time to pay attention to the surroundings; we have to pour all our attention into this battle.

The Flagship starts its battle by cloaking immediately; we can't do anything to it until it becomes visible again, so all we can do for now is deploy a Defence Drone. The Flagship launches a hacking drone, and unfortunately, our Defence Drone misses it; it locks onto our secondary weapons and starts scrambling their attempts to get weapon locks. At least it didn't hit the Artillery.

Our shields block the enemy lasers, so the first damage of the battle comes from the enemy missile launcher; it sprays three missiles at us, and the Defence Drone only has time to shoot down one of them. One hits an empty room, and one takes out the Infirmary. Only Elizabeth and Iconeum have nothing to do, and Iconeum's been locked in the weapons room by the enemy hacking drone, so Elizabeth goes over to the life support department to try to fix it.

Meanwhile, we get some of the first damage in against the Rebel ship. We start off with some system damage against their ionizer, with our hacking drone making it impossible for it to dodge our Pulse Bomb; however, it doesn't go down immediately, and disrupts one of our shield barriers while we're hitting it. The first damage to the Rebel ship's structure comes at long range from a Federation cruiser, which is having trouble getting near the fight but which can at least use remote-combat weapons; it can hardly aim at that distance, but does at least manage to hit an empty room on the Flagship.

The Hacking Drone can't fire very often, so our second Pulse Bomb has to aim without its help, and misses. However, nothing can stop the Artillery Beam, which cuts right across the enemy ship, damaging its shields, engines, and particularly its life support. Then we have to wait a while – it cloaks again, and simultaneously sends a hacking pulse at our weapons, so we'll have to wait before we can once again attack. At least we completely dodged the second missile barrage, thanks to some skilled piloting via Gammagooey, and Varsoon turning off the oxygen pumps for a second or so to squeeze extra power into the engines.

By the time our aimable weapons come back online, the Rebel crew have fixed all the system damage to their ship. However, the next volley gives us a huge opportunity; the covering fire from the Federation hits the enemy Shields system. Even better, the Rebel weapons don't bother us much; we temporarily lose a shield generator to ion disruption, and the worst spends 10 seconds frantically getting it back online, but that doesn't damage our ship's structure, and the defence drone manages to shoot down two of the three missiles it fired, with Gammagooey dodging the third. We take advantage of the gap in the shields by firing everything we have at the enemy Shield system (apart from the Pike Beam, which we can't power and wouldn't have charged by now anyway); a quick hack lets us take control of the Flagship's steering for a vital few seconds, and move the shield generators right into the path of our Pulse Bomb and Burst Laser. We get a second Pulse Bomb to hit the shield generators, taking them all out, right before the enemy cloaks; it responds with a laser volley that forms a gap in the shields with the first two lasers, but fortunately, misses our temporarily unprotected ship with the third.

It'd be nice to finish off the Flagship by shooting at it – its shields are down and we would have a perfect opportunity to destroy it – but it responds by taking control of our weapons and firing three of its own weapon systems at once. Luckily, our shields hold, and all we have to deal with is a fire amidships. Elizabeth knows what to do about that, though; it's an inessential room that we don't have to walk through, so she opens an airlock and an internal door to drain the oxygen sustaining it out to space.

The next laser burst from the enemy misses entirely, although it couldn't have gotten through our shields anyway. Meanwhile, our Pulse Bomb is the first weapon to come back up – we use it to create another breach in the enemy Shields room, making it hard for the enemy to repair it. Then our Burst Laser is up, and we know that as long as all shots connect, we'll destroy the Flagship; and our hacking drone is up, too, so we can take control of its impulse engines and prevent it from dodging. It fires one last burst of missiles at us while our lasers are en route, then realises what amount of trouble it's in, and immediately fires up its independent FTL system and jumps out of there.

…It was still too close to the beacon. It tried to jump away when it really shouldn't, and large bits of it got left behind; in particular, its cloaking device just broke off, as did its ionizer, its hacking drone control unit, and all the circuitry controlling its internal security. It might be able to repair in hyperspace, but it surely isn't going to be able to repair
that
.

As the enemy missiles are still on the way, but we know that nothing
else
is going to be fired at us this batle, we take power out of the shields (which are useless against missiles) in order to get the engines at full speed. It mostly works, and we take only minimal damage.

It's completely unclear how to take advantage of most of the components and weaponry that came off the Rebel flagship; they're too large to fit on pretty much any Federation ship, let alone ours. We can, however, treat some of it as scrap metal; ⛯19 isn't a whole lot, and we might have nowhere to spend it, but there's no reason
not
to loot it, right? More usefully, there are some explosives among the debris, so we quickly craft a bit of Pulse Bomb ammunition.

After the battle, we stop to take stock of our surroundings. The area's more or less completely unrecognisable from battle damage, but one thing we do find is a Federation hyper-relay satellite; it's unclear what its intended purpose is, but right now, we can use it to gain updates about the situation. We get in contact with some Federation scout ships that have hyperspatial scanners; they've detected the Flagship in hyperspace and know where it's going to jump next. We are, unsurprisingly, in range of that too; the Flagship might be highly advanced, but at least its jump range for emergency jumps doesn't seem to be any better than the range we can make when under less time pressure. More worryingly, the Rebel's remaining autoships are converging on the same location; the Federation scramble their own warships to hold them off, but they suspect that some of them might be able to get through; we'll likely have to be dealing with attacks on multiple fronts on the second round of the battle.

Still, there's nothing we can do until the beacon pull, so may as well talk strategy for round 2 of the fight. I'll post additional information in people's PTs.
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Post Post #715 (ISO) » Tue May 07, 2019 3:50 am

Post by the worst »

If I can get about 30 more scrap I can upgrade a subsystem; otherwise I'm good to go when you guys are. how do you want hacking deployed in phase 2? - piloting again?
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Post Post #716 (ISO) » Tue May 07, 2019 4:56 am

Post by Gammagooey »

yeah I can reinforce engine controls with 8 more scrap, but I don't think it's really necessary - sounds like it wouldn't use more power though if we don't have anything else we need.

It might be different with call's mods but from what I remember each phase of the flagship fight usually has a specialty now that we're past the first phase - we might want to hack that since their cloak is gone and we're going to be able to get a lot more shots off, but piloting so that all of our shots hit is still a very good option, esp. if we bomb shields again.

also, there aren't repairs or stores near us, so we're going straight into the 2nd flagship phase once we're done strategizing - the alternative is likely stumbling onto more rebels and taking some unnecessary damage accidentally while wandering around.
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Post Post #717 (ISO) » Tue May 07, 2019 8:15 am

Post by Iconeum »

Ill send some over

What a great read btw!
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Post Post #718 (ISO) » Tue May 07, 2019 8:33 am

Post by Varsoon »

I can also upgrade our power for 35 scrap, by the by
I have 5.
If we can do that well in the next phases of this fight, we should make it.
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Post Post #719 (ISO) » Tue May 07, 2019 10:48 am

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I have just over 4 scrap. :lol: sending it to Gooey.
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Post Post #720 (ISO) » Tue May 07, 2019 11:10 am

Post by Varsoon »

Hahaha
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Post Post #721 (ISO) » Tue May 07, 2019 2:40 pm

Post by Gammagooey »

Cool, I'm good on scrap, ya'll ready for this?

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Post Post #722 (ISO) » Tue May 07, 2019 3:01 pm

Post by the worst »

it's so onnnn
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Post Post #723 (ISO) » Wed May 08, 2019 4:43 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Jump 96


We take care to move
well
away from the beacon; the rigged beacon has already done serious damage to the Flagship, and we don't want the same thing to happen to us. Then we jump after it, and observe that it's missing its entire port wing.

The Federation navy is busy holding off many of the other ships in the area, so we have a clear shot for the Flagship. However, it seems that many of the auto-scouts around here have been donating drones to the effort; the Flagship doesn't have a drone fabricator, but it
does
apparently have a drone control system, so we're going to have to be dealing with that as well as with the Flagship's remaining weapons.

We start off by deploying our own drones, though: a Defence Drone to defend against missiles, and a Hacking Drone aimed, as before, at the Flagship's navigation controls. The flagship has its own Defence Drone, but by modulating the power going into our Hacking Drone, we manage to make it slow down and speed up in such a way that the enemy Defence Drone misses it. We don't have any other attacks that it can shoot down, so we've neutralised it for the duration of the fight.

That's not the only drone we have to deal with, though. A Combat Drone flies around making small gaps in the outer shield layer; that won't be a problem when it's on its own, but it may be when combined with other weapons. A Beam Drone lies in wait; it can't do anything right now, but it's surely going to take advantage if our shields ever go down. There's also a fleet of Boarding Drones heading for our ship; our Defence Drone shoots down one, but it's unlikely to be able to keep up forever.

We land a couple of Pulse Bombs on the enemy missile launcher; this doesn't take it out, but does slow it down, and the resulting hull breaches will make it hard to repair. Diverting power from life support to engines allows us to dodge the first burst of lasers, too. The Flagship retaliates by landing a Boarding Drone among our drone control units, breaching through the hull; Varsoon and Elizabeth go over to try to do a bit of combat disassembly on it, Elizabeth taking care to leave the doors to the room open to buy a bit more time before all the oxygen drains.

With our third Pulse Bomb, the enemy missiles are down (and one of the crewmembers fixing them, nearly dead, has to make an emergency run to the Flagship's Infirmary). Our Artillery Beam also fires, scoring an impressively precise hit right down the heart of the enemy ship. Then a huge number of things happen at once: the Federation cruisers land a hit on the flagship (sadly, to an empty room), and the Rebel autoships retaliate with a huge horde of drones, just as Varsoon and Elizabeth finish off the enemy boarding drone. Our shields go down almost immediately, giving the enemy beam drones a chance to connect, and they take the Hacking Drone's control unit and the oxygen pumps offline. Varsoon and Elizabeth quickly leave the room, Elizabeth closing the doors behind her – that whole part of the ship is going to lose oxygen very soon. the worst brings the shields back up and goes to repair the broken drone control unit. Iconeum takes advantage of the damage to the enemy shields, landing another Pulse Bomb on them.

At least the horde of drones aiming for us doesn't stay in range for long; slowing down in space is just as hard as speeding up, and having aimed for our ship at incredible speed, they overshoot. They'll be back, but we have some breathing space while they try to turn round. Varsoon takes advantage of the lull by heading to the infirmary, having taken the brunt of the boarding drone's attacks. Elizabeth, as the only available crew member, goes to repair the oxygen pumps. Meanwhile, the worst and Iconeum are able to synch up their actions perfectly; the worst gets the hacking drone back online just as Iconeum gets the Burst Laser and Pulse Bomb locked on, and we fire everything at the enemy shield generators. In fact, the Artillery Beam's rudimentary targeting software is having a great day too, and picks the same target at the same moment, damaging the enemy oxygen pumps on the way. The result: three enemy shield generators down, one ionized, two breaches and a vacuum in the surrounding area, and two dead Rebels.

The next Boarding Drone gets shot down by our Defence Drone, and Gammagooey dodges enough of the following laser volley that it fails to pierce our shields, so it's peaceful on board our ship for a while. That gives Elizabeth time to finish the repairs to our oxygen pumps; we've lost a lot of air, but still have enough to breathe. It also gives Iconeum enough time to lock the Burst Laser back onto its target – the enemy shields are still down, and will be until the Rebels can repair the breaches in their shield room, so it's a perfect situation for deploying it. Our hacking drone is latched onto the enemy ship for the purpose of disrupting its navigation controls, but its effective range is just slightly longer than that, so when the Rebels decide to rotate out their pilot, the worst takes advantage by controlling the door to the bridge and locking the replacement pilot out. That makes it pretty bad at dodging, so Iconeum manages to hit with all three of the Burst Laser shots, taking the enemy missiles back down even though they'd only just repaired them.

Turns out it's not just us who took advantage of the destruction of the enemy defences. A few moments later, a Federation cruiser that has won its battle with the autoship it was trying to hold off looks for a new target, notices that the Flagship is moving predictably and its shields are down, and launches a volley into its drone control unit. The whole right wing of the Flagship breaks off, and it looks like the ship's going to break up too. However, apparently the reduction in its weight made it harder for the beacon to hold it in place; realising that it's now at safe jumping range, it jumps away.

For a moment, we saw into the heart of the Flagship, and we didn't like what we saw; a huge power surge was coming out of its exposed core, powerful enough that we could feel it through the vacuum of space.

What do we get from the fight? Well, the Federation fleet is here, and managed to clean up some of the more critical of the remaining autoships, leaving the Rebel drones uncontrolled; they just fly off into space. In general, the debris in the area is moving very quickly, and our impulse engines are far from top-of-the-line; they can't catch up with it. We do manage to snag one drone part, though, together with a small amount of ammunition and scrap (⛯21).

We also note that the Flagship has, apparently, jumped in the wrong direction. That's interesting; it's capable of FTL jumping when its impulse controls are down, but apparently it listens to them when they're apparently working? At any rate, it seems quite plausible that our hacking drone may be responsible for it picking the wrong beacon. It would have been nice if we could have aimed it away from beacons altogether, leaving it stranded in time, but apparently it had a failsafe to prevent that. Oh, well; at least this way, there'll be no risk of someone building a new beacon in the far future and accidentally reviving the Rebellion. Anyway, it's probably going to come back through here if we wait for it. Of course, that doesn't mean we can't chase it if we want to.
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Post Post #724 (ISO) » Wed May 08, 2019 4:54 am

Post by callforjudgement »

Although the fight is over, we still have a few repairs to make aboard the ship. It was too hectic to spend much time in the Infirmary during the fight – Varsoon had his worst wounds healed, but is still somewhat injured, and Elizabeth is looking mildly asphyxiated – so the first thing we need to do is to take a trip there to make sure that everyone's properly fit for fighting. The next problem is as to how we're going to repair the breach in the drone control room; it turns out that even opening all the interior doors on the ship doesn't allow the collective power of the ship's oxygen pumps to outpace the oxygen leak from it. So all that we can do is to send crew in to make progress on repairing it with their breath held, and then send them back to the infirmary for supplemental oxygen. At least nothing goes wrong when we're doing that; there's still fighting going on in the area but it's moved well away from the beacon by now (given that both the Federation and Rebellion know that the beacons have been rigged, that's not surprising!), and is unlikely to come back to our location until at least the next jumpcycle (we're at a likely location for the arrival of FTL jumps).

As expected, we have no real way to do any sort of precision engineering here, nor anyone we can buy equipment from. So if we're going to be doing anything with our scrap, it'll have to be by just bolting scrap to things in order to help insulate them against damage. (The prices for this will be the same as at the previous beacon.)
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