Carrier Battles Mod Stories

[Suicide Junkie]

History of Carrier Battles #1

The 2420s: An Analysis of Early Reformation Memnorak Warship design.
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Memnorak ship design circa 2420 would prove critical to the course of galactic history in the coming years. The reformation was still underway, and there was mounting pressure from the Cultist forces to the north. Only a few short years earlier, 80% of the Memnorak's standing navy had been annihilated by the CSX Assisted Suicide and her quarter-squadron of fighters at the first battle of the Udix-Narcisston warppoint. Time was running out for the Memnorak; the Cultists would soon be back with an invasion force, and they desperately needed to come up with a defense.

By the year 2419, the Memnorak had finally found a combination they believed could defeat the CSX Assisted Suicide. Utilizing short range assault craft based in a large, mobile mothership like the Cultists were doing was the key. Production of the "Hive" class carrier and "Wasp" class fighters would dominate the Narcisston economy for the next decade, and it would not be until early in the 2430s that the Memnorak would finish building a new design for the front lines.

The Hive class Carrier was unlike the Cultist "Pew" class carriers mainly in that all of its systems were totally dedicated to its primary purpose of launching fighters. A Hive could hold a greater tonnage of fighters than its Cultist counterpart, and was also capable of launching its entire complement in a single wave. This dedication to fighters precluded the use of support weapons on the carrier itself; the fighters aboard had to fend for themselves while the carrier retreated. This rapid-launch ability of the Hive's was crucial to the Memnorak strategy, which involved using mostly "Wasp" class Heavy Bombers. The faster they could launch bombers, the more compact the resulting missile volley would be, and the less time there would be for enemy point defense to operate. A full Hive would thus by proxy unleash such a huge number of missiles that the enemy would be overwhelmed and blasted to pieces.

In stark contrast was the Cultist system, in which fighters were launched in as many as three waves, and cargo capacity was secondary in importance to support weapons. The Cultists also utilized smaller fighters; although each fighter was relatively weak, the larger number of them allowed for wider coverage. A Pew would also follow its fighters into combat, providing a stream of light missiles to suppress enemy targets.

The most crucial thing about the whole situation was the fact that the primary function of the Cultist "Flame" class fighters was to shoot down missiles. The destruction of the crusader class ships by Cultist "Flame" fighters may have misdirected the Memnorak researchers into thinking they were really anti-ship fighters, and pressure from a panicked government may have forced them to chase the first option to show any promise. Still, the fact remains that they chose to respond with the proverbial "rock" to the Cultists' "paper". Missiles were what the Cultists were best at taking down, and missiles were what the Memnorak were providing.

Now, a full Hive worth of Wasp class bombers could certainly take down a quarter-loaded Cultist Pew, but since the CSX Assisted Suicide immediately retreated when the first Hive was completed, such a battle would never occur. Two Hives could cripple or destroy a fully loaded Pew as well, although their bombers would certainly be wiped out. Without the anti-fighter weapons that would be found on truly post-reformation designs, Memnorak bombers would be helpless against any defense fighters that survive the destruction of their mothership.

When the second battle of the Udix-Narcisston warppoint occurred in 2425, the Memnorak had two full Hives against the Cultists' single Pew and two support ships. Normally this would have resulted in the destruction of at least the carrier, or possibly both support ships. However, with uncanny timing, the Cultists arrived while the second Hive was still moving into position, and they were able to split the two waves of bombers. The first Hive's bomber wave opened fire at point blank range while the second wave was just reaching maximum missile range; about six minutes out from the warppoint. The slow launch rate of the Cultist carrier limited their antimissile power in the first two minutes of combat, and the CSX Assisted Suicide took moderate damage despite the best efforts of her interceptor pilots.

The second wave of Memnorak bombers, on the other hand, found itself facing two-thirds strength missile fire from the wounded carrier and the full fury of 60 swarming Flame fighters. The Memnorak bombers failed to score any further damage on the Cultists, as their last missiles were picked off with only seconds to spare. Although the cult support ships were unable to engage in the battle with the bombers, they were able to breach the shields of the Memnorak carriers with their heavy missiles. The Cultist interceptors were unable to do any noticeable damage, but with nothing to lose, they swarmed and attacked anyways. The Memnorak carriers, with no weapons and heavy missiles pounding on their armor, were unfortunately doomed. Although they lasted for over half an hour, the long range bombardment was relentless, and both Hives were eventually destroyed.

With the advantage of hindsight, it seems certain that the best the Memnorak could have done, given the socio-economic and political conditions, would be to stock their Hive class carriers with dogfighters and a small anti-ship missile battery. Dogfighters would have quickly stripped the Cultist's fighter screen, and subsequently allowed the missile battery to bombard the unprotected Cultist ships. It is quite certain that there would have been heavy casualties in the fighter ranks, and the Memnorak carriers would have suffered some damage in the subsequent missile exchange with the support ships. Had they done so, however, they would have scored a key victory and put the Cultists on the defensive for the next twenty years at a minimum.

In the end, Memnorak weapons technology and industrial capacity were more than advanced enough to turn back the Cultist assault in 2425. However, the Memnorak were still burdened both by the lingering effects of their pre-reformation designs and by the immense pressure from a government once self-described as "scared ****less". Due to these factors, the Memnorak engineers seized on a highly inefficient design which happened to show a glimmer of potential in their simulators. The Memnorak defenders would have been beaten at the second battle of the Udix-Narcisston warppoint even had the Cultists been late, but inexplicable timing of their attack allowed the flagship carrier of the Cult of SJ to escape destruction. The Memnorak design problems combined with the unbelievable timing of the Cultist forces in that battle would pave the way for the full scale Cultist invasion of their home planets a mere twenty years later. Although fully post-reformation designs would be much more effective, they would then be badly outnumbered by the Cultists, who had so far only lost a single frigate and a handful of fighters in the war.