I take back everything bad I ever may have said about old Munchy. He came through with the plans for a warp dissipator this year, and casually informed me of his new project: Impulse Drives! Once he works out the details of how to actually construct them, they'll let our bulky troop transports chug along at Warp 4 - twice the speed of my current starships - and enable Warp 5 engines for my fleets! Oh, bear, I can't wait; I seriously can't wait! Actual strategic speed!
2453:
More good news from the labs, as auto-repair systems and fusion bombs are ready for installation on the fleet. The boys will be happy to hear that Munchy's next project is an armored exoskeleton for them, and I suppose I'm glad to hear he's researching a graviton beam. Now, I do like streaming weapons more than most designers seem to; they're certainly versatile weapons in their way, since they can target more than one ship in a tightly-clustered fleet with a single beam. If our enemies started fielding weapons like these graviton beams, I would likely have to start phasing out my fighters in favor of larger, more durable combat ships. That said, the damage they cause can be somewhat unreliable, and their versatility has its limits. Legendary fleet engineers like Sullla and ZedF said Fusion Beams were among their favorite weapons - and no wonder! When an enemy fleet includes cruisers or battleships mounting shields, heavy weapons, and repulsor beams, long-range weapons of your own are the only good answers - such as the heavy fusion beam. Heavy Fusion cannons are so powerful, they're even good for knocking down missile bases on the surface until the target manages to put up a Class X planetary shield generator - as yet still only theoretical technology. And for the everyday task of wiping out enemy fleets, the regular fusion beam mount is hard to beat (unless you can get Megabolt cannons like our treacherous Darlok neighbors). Their only serious weakness is in dealing with large fighter fleets - single-ship targeting means lots of overkill and too few targets killed at each volley - and for those, you can send in ships with banks and banks of lower-tech weapons like my beloved NPGs. So, with fusion cannons on the table, why is Munchy working on graviton beams instead? Look, I'm just a starship engineer. Don't ask me.
2454:
Someone forgot to tell Grook that we never made any lopsided tech trades with the buggies. He's just "evened things out" a little by stealing a mark 3 battle computer from their labs at Dolz. Oh, well. I can use it, and the bugs aren't complaining, so I'm happy. Apparently Spica's missile bases can use it too though: My fleet left the system some time ago to head for Silicoid space, and three of those high-speed Darlok King Cobra cruisers, with destroyer escorts, are inbound, due next year!
2455:
Still no word on an ETA for Impulse Drives. Oh, by the way, apparently someone doubled the number of missile bases at our Spica colony. The King Cobras managed to drop a nuclear bomb or two that didn't do much to our heavy planetary shielding, but a few waves of 30 merculite missiles apiece blew the Darlok ships to pieces before they could do any meaningful damage. Poor things.
2459:
For some reason, Munchy is still working on projects that have nothing to do with our fleets. Advanced ecological restoration is well and good, and I guess advanced soil enrichment will be good to feed more troopers when the project is finished, but really - it's almost as if there are other interests that matter in the Bulrathi empire besides me! I think I'll just ignore it and have a look at a great new example of how NOT to design a starship!
Bear in mind we're going to get three of these next year. I never said I was perfect! Anyway, let's have a look at what's right and wrong with this thing. The Sniffer 2.0 is meant to be a scanner ship. Its entire mission is to meet enemy fleets, detect their weapons and related systems, and transmit the data home so I can design the most effective counter-fleets in response. To this end, what does it need? Our most advanced engines go without saying. (Most advanced for now, that is.) The idea is to find out about enemy star fleets before they attack our colonies. Besides, if we're looking for information about a specific type of alien ship, the Sniffer has to be in the same place at the same time as one of those ships, and coordinating that is much faster with an improved space scanner to see where the aliens are going and a quick Sniffer to reach its destination in time. Next, it has a battle scanner. That's the entire point of the ship, allowing it to sniff out the details of enemy ship design from maximum combat range. So far, so good. Now, it's also carrying reserve fuel tanks, and that makes a certain sense: Important enemy fleets may be hiding beyond normal fuel cell range, and this piece of equipment can also allow us to scan alien starfleets - like those of the Alkari - even before we make diplomatic contact with the people commanding them. And then ... an inertial stabilizer? Battle computer? A set of four NPGs?! Did I actually think this starship was going to get in a fight with somebody?!
Well, sort of. In theory, if it was out scouting some planet that just had a couple of fighters on defense, it would get the chance to do a surface scan by knocking them out of space. If we were ever going to build a serious assault fleet that crawled across space at warp 2, it could conceivably contribute to a battle to which it was sent with a real combat force just to confirm the specs of the opposing fleet. That's not happening though - not with warp 5 on the horizon - and the chances of finding a planet defended by a couple of token fighters at this stage of galactic development are ... not great. Since we're building such a small number of these, it really doesn't matter. Our empire can afford to waste a few dozen BC on frivolous equipment these days. But arming my scanner ship for combat was still rather silly.
2460:
Well, my scanner ships look sillier than ever now that Ssithra has agreed to reinstate our NAP. The main reason I built them at all was to have a look at those of his fleets that hadn't yet approached our colonies. Others were going to head off to other fronts, and still will, but the entire exercise now seems rather pointless.
2463:
Grook is off in Silicoid space, trying to "make things even" with the enemy - and doing a rather poor job of it, I must say. If he'd stolen something for my ships, that would be great - but instead, he's stolen the Silicoids' personal deflector shield designs. That's only going to emphasize our ground forces' enormous inequality!
2464:
If Munchy isn't named Bear of the Year, there's something deeply wrong with the selection system.
Alpha Females and Gentlebears, we have Impulse Drives! Munchy's already started work on some kind of stargate project whose only saving grace is that it's slightly less pointless than ten-parsec basic range for a civilization that will soon control stars all across the galaxy, but that isn't the point. He has the right to rest on his laurels for a while. We have Impulse Drives, everybody!!!
I've already redesigned just about everything in the fleet. Our new Swipe 5.0 fighters are much like the old Cubs, but upgraded with warp 5 engines, class 7 maneuverability, and our most advanced battle computer - mark 3. The Scent 5.0 is sort of like the old Sniffers - and almost as silly - but has an important engine upgrade instead of a totally unimportant battle computer, and only mounts two NPGs. And for the first time in my tenure as Chief Starship Engineer of the Bulrathi People, I get to design a bomber that will actually see the starlight of night in the galaxy.
Of course my bombers will have Impulse engines. Of course they'll have a Fusion Bomb - the best we have available - apiece. But that leaves us with the same eternal question that always arises with fighters: Accuracy or speed? The truth is, it depends mostly on the expected defenses it's going to face. We can't cram a computer on this hull at the same time as a stabilizer and enough turning jets for maximum maneuverability, so if we were going after someone with advanced missiles and high-level jammers, we might have to rethink our entire design, for instance by using larger ships with more bombs apiece, or waiting until we can get better miniaturization. Sadly for the Silicoids though, they have no jamming capabilities, no missiles better than nukes, and no serious prospects of getting their silicic claws on any in the immediate future. So we can basically do whatever we want, and if only for the ability to strike before their fleets can respond, I'm planning to max out on speed.
If I could have given up one level of maneuverability for a computer upgrade, it would have been worth it, but there was no such possibility. The new Mattock 5.0 bombers - designed exclusively for breaking up rocks in the land our farmers desire - are going to be a little speedy. A mere mark 1 computer would have increased their hit rate by a good 25%, even against the Silicoids' nonexistant ECM, but the tradeoff would be extra time to reach the target and likely more bombers lost en route (both because of the delay and because of the lower maneuverability - the Silicoids' best possible targeting systems have a 5% chance of hitting our Mattocks, but that chance would quadruple if they didn't have Stabilizers on board ... though most of their ships probably have no better chance of hitting the ships either way...). As a rule, I like to give my bombers maneuver class 6 when I can get it, then upgrade the battle computer as much as possible, then max out whatever maneuverability improvements are possible at that point. This is because Class 6 is the turning point that allows a bomber to reach its target after one less volley from the missile bases than something with Class 4 or 5 would see. (I hate building bombers with maneuver classes under 4, because they wind up dealing with 4-8 missile volleys where these Mattocks will only have to see 1 or 2).
All this accomplished, the plans are ready to send out to Romulas, which is going to build them at top speed out of the parts from its gigantic prebuild, its massive mineral reserves, and all the treasury funding it can receive. (The RBO-9 has built up a pretty enormous reserve treasury, and are ready to spend it freely, so I won't even question such loony-seeming decisions as agreeing to Ssithra's proposed trade package this year: An upgrade to 650 BC!)
2465:
We now have a respectable fleet.
With our transports blazing in at warp 4, timed to arrive at the same time as our fighters, after the bombers have already slipped in to wipe out all the planet's missile bases, whether or not there's an attempt to stop them by any kind of fleet, Rhilus is set to become the next ex-Silicoid Bulrathi colony!
Grook is way off at the far galactic rim, stealing anti-missile rocket plans from Xengara, which is sort of too bad; we're still not really even with the kitties, and it won't be long, whatever he does, before we have all the Silicoid's technology.
2466:
I mentioned that the Silicoids have no ECM to speak of, right? Well, we have ours up to class 4 now, which ... will help Grook with his hacking work, mostly. Nobody's going to be firing on our worlds any time soon, I'm afraid. On a plus note though, old Munchy's off to work on an Advanced Space Scanner to extend our scanning range still more, and plan out our planetary invasions in advance of hitting the worlds with our fleets! Meanwhile, my Mattocks should have reached Rhilus this year, but I haven't heard the outcome. Apparently it's top secret, and only being revealed within the official command structure of the military. You have no idea how frustrating it is to design such wonderful starships and not even know what they did!
2467:
The reports are finally in ... and we didn't lose a single Mattock!
We blew all 16 missile bases to bits before their missiles could even catch up to our bombers, and before the Morey destroyers even managed to retreat! And now it seems our ground forces arrived, outnumbered by less than two to one, and therefore took the planet, obviously. GNN is reporting we're the first to twelve stars - ahead of even the Darloks! What a breakthrough for the Bulrathi!
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Next: Wrapping Up
