My only friend, the End.

25 May 06

It's over. I can't say it was very fair at the end. The combined might of over one hundred worlds bearing down on the last seven Human planets. I am impressed though. With only one exception they never made it easy. Let's get that one out of the way first. With only a handful of planets left, I expected to fight tooth and nail for each one. When my dreadnought battle fleet arrived at Beowulf, I was looking for an epic battle. I found a fully developed size 10 world with plenty of resources left completely unguarded. I fixed that problem for them.

Most of the final battles were my dreadnoughts and escorts overwhelming a half dozen cruisers, destroying the partially developed defense rings and taking out the planet. The last epic battle was at Barnard's Star. Most of my attacks were as close to simultaneous as I could make them. I wanted him spread thin trying to defend everything. One consequence of this meant that not all the attack fleets were equal.

The plan was to have a ready torpedo boat fleet available to back up any fleet that got into trouble. That would give them some firepower backup and the ability to spread fire over multiple targets. I had two of those fleets, but needed one to hit as many planets as possible. Of course, the one torpedo boat fleet attack jumps right into the teeth of Barnard's Star. It had two full defense rings, over thirty ships defending it about half cruisers and half destroyers but lead by a dreadnought. My boats fought valiantly, but were over matched. They took out eight destroyers right away, but lost as many of their own. They got a few shots off on the planet, but had to withdraw. I immediately launched the backup boats to go to their aid. Unfortunately, the initial group couldn't survive the next battle. I hadn't even seen the dreadnought yet.

The second group arrived right after that. They took out the remaining destroyers and some of the defense rings before taking heavy casualties. I knew I needed a dreadnought group there soon. After that round ended, I sent one of the victorious battle groups even though they hadn't had much chance to patch up yet. The torpedo boats tried to hold out for relief, but couldn't last once the dreadnought appeared on the scene. The relief fleet had just turned into a revenge fleet. It was time to deploy the staplers.

When they arrived, the fleet only had some minor damage left over on the dreadnought, but it was still in the green. This fleet had a little of everything, a few torpedo boats, staplers, cloaked assault ships, repair ships and even a refinery to produce fuel if they ran short. A couple of the cloaked ships flashed forward to start pounding on the remaining planetary defenses. Everyone else focused on the Human dreadnought. The earlier torpedo boats must have done some damage as soon plasma was venting all along the length of the ship. Then a pair of torpedoes slammed into igniting the whole ship in a fireball. The cheers went up as it broke apart. I noticed the Human fleet remnants fleeing as the fleet turned toward the planet. Willingly or not, we were welcomed as liberators.

I admit I was a bit surprised that I didn't get the message the Humans were defeated. I tracked down the remnants on a neutral star, but still nothing. Then I noticed some ships on the long range scans. I sent a couple cruisers to investigate. One was just a scout trying to limp home, but I learned where he was going. The Humans had done something pretty clever.

There was a standard ploy the Humans used when fighting. They'd send an assault group right at my ships, but use one or two flanking groups going off to the side. The thing was you never knew if they were retreating back to the node point, breaking for another node point or just trying to get around behind you. One of those groups had done that enough to find a distant planet exactly where I wasn't looking. It was set up as a base of last resort.

As I organized fleets to take out this unexpected find, I sent the cruisers on to take care of the other ship on the scopes. They intercepted the ship limping to the refuge, but it wasn't just one ship. It was a whole battle fleet lead by two dreadnoughts. Fortunately, my cruisers had cloaking technology or they would have been wiped out. They were able to do some minor damage to the fleet, but needed help. I now had to organize two major battle groups.

I had wondered earlier why the Humans had been harassing one of my further back planets. The existence of their refuge explained it. The up side for me was there were disproportionate defenses there. I was able to reassign the defense fleet to take care of this new 'lost fleet' threat while the assault fleet for the refuge was getting into position.

The planetary assault happened first. My planet killer fleet warped in. The defenses weren't fully in place yet. My cruisers were able to sweep away the initial fleet response and charge into the teeth of the platforms. They gave much better than they took as the planet killer roared into position. The first shot made it clear the Humans on the planet had no chance. My cruisers went off to mop up the rest of the defenses and a couple of fleeing ships. The second salvo left only a sliver of life on the refuge planet. The Human's last hope faded as the planet went dark.

That just left the dual dreadnought fleet. I sent in my fleet with a command dreadnought, an assault dreadnought and a half dozen cloaked assault cruisers. The cruisers were sent to deal with the smaller ships while the big boys slugged it out. Using my speed advantage, I maneuvered my dreads at an angle to position on slightly behind the other. That meant that my two dreads both had clear firing on the front Human dread, but the rear would have to move around to fire freely on my ships.

The plan worked well. By the time the rear ship had cleared, the first was nearly gone. The final beams cut through the Human dread and actually did a little damage on the big node drive of the second. Though he was hardly damaged, it was now two against one. The simultaneous beams of all the dreadnoughts lit up the surrounding space, but the Human ship couldn't take the beating for long and exploded. My cruisers had finished off the remaining ships. The battle was won.

Once again I looked for the announcement of Human defeat, but was disappointed. It seems one cruiser had escaped the carnage of the dreadnought battle. It was trying to limp somewhere sub light. The battle was over almost as soon as the intercept course was plotted. Finally, I got both the Humans defeated message and the victory celebration.

The final stats showed 900 destroyers killed to 127 lost, 416 cruisers killed to 66 lost and 29 dreadnoughts killed to 3 lost.

Jason