WAR IN THE COLONIA REGION!!!
25 Sep 2019Scubadog
I guess war was inevitable at some point. I was actually still getting used to living in Bisley Landing in the Benzaiten system, having recently moved my entire fleet from Colonia Dream in Ratraii. Colonia Dream had been my home for over three years. Little did I know that a small faction that had also made it their home was fomenting discontent among the independent peoples of Colonia.
The Carcosa system is notable for a couple of things. First, they had some of the harder-to-get modules. Second, they recently added the Federation Assault ship, Dropship and Gunship to their shipyard. These were previously unavailable anywhere in the Colonia region. I won't bore you with details, but suffice to say the upstart faction that had essentially taken over Colonia Dream was exploiting some political realities of the system and branching out to piss in the backyard of some other systems...and this was beginning to have an effect in Carcosa. Over the successive weeks a lot of back and forth was going on, and then some skirmish-by-proxies began happening. Eventually, a straight-up face-to-face battle happened and this apparently resulted in the gloves coming off. All pretense of the offending faction was dropped.
As of yesterday, this faction went directly after Carcosa. Now, as a rule, I'm not a warrior. As a member of The Silverbacks, I absolutely back our leadership's play and I'll throw into the toss as needed. But I won't go looking for a fight. Up to now, I've been on cordial terms with both of the involved factions. But once it became clear that the group out of Ratraii had essentially been lying and they went directly at Carcosa, that affects me, since that's an important system to my livelihood.
Last night, after hearing the call-to-arms of the defending faction in Carcosa, I felt it was time I took a stand. I hopped in The Ceti Rebane, my engineered Federation Gunship, and bounced over to Carcosa. The war was in full swing, with quite a number of combat zones in play already. I picked one to enjoin and, a couple of hours later, emerged having helping the defenders turn the tide on several battles. I cashed in the combat bonds and called it a night. News today was that the defenders owned the day. Yay for us!
Again, I do the occasional bounty hunt, so I'm not a total schlepp in the combat department. I've had my butt handed to me more times than I care to talk about, and I've been sent to the insurance counter plenty. This was the first time I'd taken out my FGS into a for-realz war. Even engineered, she is not the most agile ship out there. Especially when the guy at the stick has very little clue what he's doing. But often you find really good engineering makes up for lack of skill, and this was no different. The first round--which we lost--saw me limping to the nearest outpost to re-arm, repair and cash in what little combat bonds I'd earned. The Ceti Rebane was pretty beat up on that one.
Now, I'm nothing if not observant of patterns, and I learned some things during that first battle. When I'm hunting bounties around a compromised nav beacon, I figured out that I should only go after the lone ships unless I have a fighter. I figured I should never go after any wing bigger than a 2-ship, even with a fighter, unless the two wing mates are small enough for my fighter to take on. In a combat zone, though, even going after a lone enemy is a mistake. Isolated does not mean alone. Their entire fleet is a wing. So, going after what looks like a straggler usually ends up with three or four "stragglers" coming to their aid and suddenly your ship is being blown out from beneath you. My new tactic? Simple, really. Strength in numbers. Go to where your allies are. I began looking for where two or more of my allies were engaging a large enemy vessel and I got in the middle of it. If any stragglers came after me I'd have allies and my fighter to deal with them while I concentrated on the larger enemy. After the herd was thinned out I then could pursue some of the stragglers until the battle was won. And so it went with the rest of the night. By the third round I was heading back to the outpost to re-arm and cash in the combat bonds....not to do any repairs on my ship.
We won the first day, but it's not over until it's over. I go back for more tonight.