Shattered Hopes - Nova Storm War

[Glyn]

I am posting this to share the epic struggle that’s been going on in the final seven game years of the Shattered Hopes game.

The players are:
Irideans – Played by Douglas
Yor!rek – Played by Fuzzie
Atlantean – Played by Glyn

First this is my first PBW game and it’s been going on for about a year real time. I am the only one who was an original player from the start, and I have enjoyed the game immensely. I would like to thank all the other players!

Douglas has done a great job with the Irideans. When he took them over they were in last place. He managed to take his empire to first place just before unleashing his 30 nova ships on the unsuspecting players. He has made this game especially challenging!

Fuzzie took over the Yor!rek empire just a few turns before the Irideans’ Nova Storm. After having the empire destroyed, Fuzzie stayed in the game apparently having a shipyard ship hidden in a nebula system. Eking out an existence while trying to stay hidden from the remaining empires.


The action report is mostly from my memory so there maybe inconstancies in the timeline and/or omissions. The other players are welcome to post corrections.

[Glyn]

The seven year struggle to rid the Galactic of the Irideans started suddenly when they covertly deployed thirty star nova weapons through the known galaxy abusing the long standing diplomatic treaties between the empires that allowed general trade and free movement through systems. Within months it was confirmed that all contact was lost with four of the seven galactic empires. Few actually knew at the time but Irideans only were responsible for fall of three empires the forth empire, a worm like race, fall was due to an ongoing effort by the Atlanteans to annexed the remains of their one time ally whose empire had fallen into anarchy. The Atlantean empire lost a third of its colonies and ships to the Irideans’ nova storm, leaving it struggling to regain its economical footing while facing the traitorous Irideans Empire and their ally empire. The Irideans are a cybernetic enhanced humanoid race and their allies were a large insect race that looked like large green ants. Luckily the Ant Empire was frozen in inaction possibly due to fear of their more powerful ally who had just destroyed three races without blinking a visual sensor.

[Glyn]

With the Atlanteans being behind the Irideans in technology, first year of the war was devoted to protecting and exploiting what was left of Atlantean space. Such as taking small mineral rich colonies and converting them into space based strip mines. Being unable to effectively reach the Irideans, the Atlanteans turned their attention to the petrified Ant Empire. The Atlanteans used their covert operations to infiltrate the Ants Empire primarily to disrupt their partnership with the Irideans and secondary to convince as many of their planets and ships to join the Atlanteans side of the conflict. Until the Atlantean could disrupt the Ants partnership with the Irideans, they darn not send any fleets into the Ant’s space due to the Irideans ability to open warp points anywhere and counter attack any fleet fleet. The Atlanteans best defense was keeping the Irideans in the dark.

During this time the Atlanteans leaned the technical secrets of opening and closing warp points and built ships to do so. The Irideans besides building a dozen ring-worlds deploy a new more destructive weapon against the Atlanteans during this time that enabled them to collapse a sun into a black hole without warning just by placing their ship in our system. Luckily, due to our system shields and a few well placed ships we only lost one newly colonized system to the dreaded weapon.

[Glyn]

Within two years the Atlantean’ intelligence work with the Ants was paying off, they had forced them into declaring war on the Irideans, gathered star charts on all of the Irideans Empire and convinced a few ships and planets to join the Atlantean Empire.

The Atlantean discovered the ships of one of the fallen empires hiding in a nebula, tediously holding on by placing remote mining satellites among the asteroid remains of planets. The Yor!rek race resembled giant flowers and are highly religious. Due to the mystical ability of this empire to target ships in battle it was to Atlanteans advantage to help reestablish this empire by allowing them to capture one of our colonies. Before the Nova Storm, the Atlanteans had acquired members of several races the Yor!rek being one such race. So the Atlanteans were able to arrange for the Yor!reks to capture a colony of their own race. It was a risk to bring back a race and to give them a hand full of colonies through the Atlantean space, but the Atlanteans counted on the Yor!reks near extermination by the Irideans and our helpfulness in reestablishing their empire as a strong force in securing a lasting partnership with them.

[Glyn]

The Irideans quickly used there influence to force the Ant’s to declare war on the Atlanteans, and somehow forced the Ant’s to hand over colony after colony to them. In an effort to stop the whole sell absorption the Ants by the Irideans, Atlanteans were forced to use troops to capture as many colonies as possible.

Atlanteans attempted several attacks against the Irideans space, mostly in the systems acquired from the Ants, due to the fact that the Irideans were working to build a cocoon of warp points through their space in order to protect it from sudden attacks. Atlantean usually managed to glass a hand full of colonies before the Irideans would counter attack with a larger fleet. The Atlanteans were reluctant to use more than a third of our ships due to the need to prevent a counter attack on the Irideans part into Atlantean space.

The most successful of these hit and run tactics were when the Atlanteans attacked with two fleets of thirty ships having modified the support ships to lay mines. They attacked as usually but dropped mines at the end of the first attack run. Instead of making a second attack run they stayed in position and dropped more mines. The Irideans predictably counter attacked with double the ships against both the invading fleets losing 120 ships to the mines. The Atlantean invading fleets then split into four smaller fleets each with their own attack run. The Irideans lost a month in positioning mine sweepers with there next counter attack fleets. Next month the Atlantean fleets split into even smaller fleets of six ships each for their attack run. The Irideans counter attack fleets with mine sweeper only stopped half the attacking ships, and had to break down into small fleets themselves to intercept the rest of the Atlantean ships raiding their space. All told that attack had glassed about half of the Irideans planets and ring-worlds. Unfortunately the Irideans had finished cocooning his systems preventing the Atlanteans from making more raid attacks.

[Glyn]

The Irideans glassed one system using conventional fleets then retreated when the Atlanteans fleet gained control of the Irideans front door warp point.

Finaly got the Yor!reks restablished with a world of their own. We agreed on a plan.
The idea was simple; the Atlanteans would build the ships and place them at a retrofit base where the Yor!reks would add the talisman device before returning them back to Atlanteans control. Due to the minimum resources available to the Yor!rek the ships had to be transferred in mothballed state. Once returned the ships would be reactivated and trained before being used against the Irideans. This was a slow process.

Atlanteans started their first ring-world project. The Irideans had already finished more than a dozen of their ring-worlds.

[Glyn]

The Irideans were embarking on a tactic of chipping away at the Atlantean empire and denying them access to undeveloped systems by systematically creating a new black hole once a month in one of the outlying system, which usually contained a few new colonies. Thus the Black Hole Machine was started. Also, due to the Irideans placing the opening of the only warp point into their space in a system with random ship movement, it was imposable to intercept his black hole ships as they left Iridean space.

Ant’s Empire was no more whether it was due to Atlantean attacks or Iridean lobbing black holes is hard to say.

[Glyn]

The Irideans discovered the existence of the Yor!rek Empire in one of these black hole attacks. The Atlanteans shifted some Intel planets to the Yor!reks to help defend them from the expected Irideans Intel attacks. Unfortunately, the Irideans continued their Intel attacks again the Atlanteans at an alarming increasingly about. Before the end of the year the Atlanteans were unable to defend against all the Intel attacks by the Irideans despite building new Intel facilities on almost all its worlds. It is guessed that an Intel attack allowed the Irideans learned of a weakness in the Atlanteans defense which they used to glass two systems and then used their black hole weapons to destroy the now empty system. The two systems contained most of the Yor!reks colonies; in addition the Irideans caused war to be declared between the Atlanteans and the Yor!rek s through the Intel attacks. The Yor!reks had only managed to get about thirdly talisman ships refitted and transferred back to the Atlanteans, before the Intel attacks interrupted the process. Eventually the Atlanteans were able to build enough Intel to stop the Irideans attacks.

[Glyn]

Irideans managed to black hole six more systems for a total of thirteen or more.

Things were looking grim for both the Atlanteans and Yor!reks, slowly losing system after system to the black hole Irideans machine. It was time to risk an all out attack on the Irideans’ only warp point into their space. The Atlanteans goaded the Irideans with a message as to them being unable to defeat the Atlanteans in 7 years despite the advantages the Irideans Empire has over the Atlanteans. Hopefully the Irideans would send an attack against the Atlanteans in response to the message thereby weakling the Irideans’ main warp point.

It worked far better then hoped! The Irideans had sent almost all of their attack ships (160) in a three prong raid on Atlantean space, while the Atlantean’s entire fleet of 130 ships defeated the 30 odd ships left to defend the warp point and 30 odd support ships. It should be noted that the Irideans created a black hole in one system just moments after the main Atlantean fleet exited the system on the way to attack the Irideans. Thirty other Atlantean ships traveling with the main fleet were caught in the explosion showing how close the Irideans came to wining the war.

During the second month the Irideans glassed about two dozen Atlanteans worlds including all three home-worlds, while only losing eighteen of there own colonies. The Irideans had chosen the path of mutual destruction believing that 136 well developed worlds and massive resources could out last the Atlanteans remaining 86 world’s with its struggling economy resources.

The third month showed the difference between an empire well connected with warp points and one with the original warp point paths. The Atlanteans lost 5 colonies while the Irideans lost 50.

[Glyn]

It is now the start of Year Eight of the Nova Storm War and is the current turn.

The Irideans have about 70 planets left with about 160 ships attacking Atlantean space and about 50 ships defending Iridean space.

The Atlanteans have about 55 planets left with about 130 ships attacking Iridean space and at least 30 ships defending Atlantean space.

The Yor!rek have planets and ships, but the number is unkown by the Irideans.