The main Meklar assault fleet is on its way to Mentar, one of the most critical worlds in our empire - and one in a nebula, without any planetary shielding. I've already exhausted all the reserve and prebuilds I had throughout the empire, but every star in the region is still doing its little best to get a few more BlazeWings into Mentar space. The planet itself is doing its best to assemble more of its shieldless bases, and the full Galos defense force, including our only dreadnoughts - the Dactyl and ancient Barrage - will arrive just in time for the battle. We're going all-in on this one: If we lose, we'll have no defenses left, and the Meklar will be able to run roughshod over our entire empire at their liesure. Yet we must defeat them somehow! We have a smaller force in the Toranor region, and they have smaller forces playing defense, but this is the battle that will decide the war: Their most powerful fleet against ours!
Of course, with 397 battle scanners in our fleet, we've got a better view than this of what the combatants actually look like.
Here flies the enemy. Let's start with those Devastators at the top of the screen: The oldest extant Meklar ship design, but in some ways the most dangerous. Every hit from those Warp Dissipators will severely reduce our ships' speed and our ability - on which we desperately rely - to evade enemy beams. Even though other ships have more deadly weapons, those will have to be our first targets if we're to have any hope of defeating the fleet at all. They're stacked up with Zortium Armor, and we have to destroy all three ASAP - even once we have, any damage their dissipator has done to our engines will stay with us throughout the battle! Oh. And notice how they all have auto-repair systems; the more of our ships and bases they kill, the harder it will be for us to even keep up with their self-repair nanites. Meanwhile, between them, these guys are packing sixty-six Heavy Fusion Beams, 9 other heavy weapons (even the lasers are dangerous in this nebula, particularly to our paper-armored destroyers) and 228 Omega-V bomb racks. Remember, we have no shielding for our bases. If those things reach the planet, forget about the bases: The colony itself may not survive the battle for its skies! Oh, and don't discount those 300(!) Fusion Beams, Hard Beams, and Mass Drivers either. The Repulsor ships may be safe from them, but if we're going to get through their auto-repair, our BlazeWings will have to fly right into their teeth! And check out the attack and defense levels on all those ships. I ... this battle is going to be turbulent, to say the least. Good thing I brought the main fleet!
The Barrage may have more Heavy Blast Cannons than the newer Dactyl, but with its older battle computer, it still won't do as much actual damage against the newer Meklar dreads. It's also a great deal slower, and without autorepair, that means if they concentrate fire on the Barrage, it may quickly be destroyed or forced to retreat. The main force will be the BlazeWings though - the ships that have to face up against the enemy's heaviest firepower. Without them, we'd be doomed in this fight. With them though, we have over 400 Heavy Blast Cannons, nearly all directed by the most advanced targeting systems of any ships in the galaxy. And backing them up, safe so long as our repulsors can keep the enemy bombers at bay, are no less than 42 Stinger Missile tubes at our 14 missile bases. I've sent everything to this battle! If we lose as we lost at Toranor, our worlds are doomed.
The battle is joined, and their dissipators hit our BlazeWings, slowing them down and doubling (or worse!) their chance of being hit! We fly in, taking damage, losing destroyers, Blast Cannons blazing, and the Devastators are blown to pieces! Everything's firing on the BlazeWings! We're losing dozens of ships! Then our Wingslaps have to inderdict a desperate fly-around bid, and though they save our bases for the moment, heavy beam fire tears our whole Dissipator destroyer group apart! Still, our repulsor dreads are holding; they've re-formed the battle line, keeping the planet out of danger - and the last of the Tornado death dreads just went down in flames! Still more of our BlazeWings burn, but we've taken out the Annihilator, and our Dactyl shreds their colony ship almost as an afterthought! They're down to the deadly Nexus cruisers, the unspeakably numerous fighter/bombers that bombed out our Toranor colony...
...and we've beaten them, to the last ship! We lost nearly one hundred BlazeWings, but that leaves us the bulk of our fleet - and the main Meklar starfleet has been burnt from the heavens! Our dreadnoughts both survived; the planet is completely unharmed. More than three-quarters of our assault destroyers live to burn the enemy wherever they strike next. The invincible Meklar starfleet...
...is no more. We've beaten their most powerful attack force in battle, and after all that we have suffered, after all the prophecies of doom, in spite of the still-frightening Meklar tech lead, we can hold our own against them - and we shall win this war!
