Hello war mongers. In part one of Let's Break it, you succesfully destroyed a Galactica class battlestar parked in lunar orbit. http://forums.spacebattles.com/threads/lets-break-it-the-low-tech-vs-scifi-challenge-part-1.228463/ For this next round you have recieved several technological goodies from the battlestars scrap pile. You might need them. Scenario A (Easiest Level): You have captured the Galactica and its fighter/raptor compliment mostly intact. With minor repairs, you can outfit it as a full functioning vessel. Assume Tylium is another word for Thorium. You have succesfully duplicated Jump Drive, Galactica Rail Gun, and DRADIS technologies. Inventory: 1 Galactica. Jump drive tech. DRADIS tech. Railgun Tech. Viper engine tech. Raptor engine Tech. 1 lunar supply base. 100 Vipers, 50 Raptors. Scenario B: You had to blast the Galactica to bits, but you recovered the jump drive. You cannot duplicate it yet, but you can fuel it, and have figured out how to use it. You can duplicate the Rail gun and DRADIS technologies with relative ease. Your lasers pewpewed much of the fighter pilots, and after the crashing, and surrendering, you recovered most of the vipers and raptors. Inventory: 1 earth designed project Orion battleship outfitted with a salvaged galactica jump drive. DRADIS tech. Railgun Tech. Viper engine tech. Raptor engine Tech. 1 lunar supply base. 50 Vipers, 20 Raptors. Scenario C: You smashed the battlestar good. Too good. You duplicated the rail gun tech from the scrap, and the DRADIS is ok too. You couldn't fix what was left of the jump drive, but you have the raptors with FTL, and the vipers to draw escort. Inventory: 1 earth designed project Orion battleship. DRADIS tech. Railgun Tech. 1 lunar supply base. 50 Vipers, 20 Raptors. Scenario D: You done gone blowed dem all up. Inventory: 1 earth designed project Orion battleship. 1 lunar supply base. Mission: So. As it turns out, the "moon" Charon is actually a gravitationally anchored Mass effect relay! Who knew? Anyway. Your job, is to do anything you can to kill the Reapers known as Sovereign. You are humanity. If you are feeling plucky, you may try to kill all the reapers. If you are feeling omnicidal, you may try to kill everything in mass effect. You have five years (not including travel time to Charon) When you post, mention the scenario (A,B,C, or D) Lowest tech wins the low tech award. In addition to the goodies you are given in your inventory, you may use any real life technology. This includes technology that is bleeding edge and not completely together yet. However, the most bleeding edge tech is guaranteed to only work once. It might work more than once if you can convince the judge. Since this is Mass effect, two special awards will be given for Paragon, or Renegade. Actual winner of the challenge is determined by consensus. As usual I play judge of evidence. Provide enough evidence, and I'll allow it. Also, I award smileys for effort, creativity, effectiveness, or anything I care to award for. Keep it civil. Trolls will be awarded unhappy faces. Super trolls will be trolled.
Do I have access to Colonial AI research? I'm assuming 'no', but would want clarification. Is it possible to build jump drives for nuclear missiles (you said Raptor engines?) If so, then I'm missile spamming. Scenario A1: My Raptors become missile-boats, while the Vipers are automated (if I can get Colonial AI, so much the better, if not, than telepresence with the Pilots riding in the Raptors) outfitted with nuclear ordnance, and in conjunction with the Raptors, are used as a diversion, so that the jump-missiles (launched from a refitted Galactica, the major refit being an increase in missile capabilities) are allowed to get within jump-range. If the jump engines are small enough, the Raptors will be outfitted with the jump-missiles. Thousands (hundreds if you think the Galactica can't hold that many, and/or the Raptors have a standard missile load-out) of nuclear missiles execute their jumps, materializing within the enemy. Explosions within have got to cause ... fun times for the Reapers. This tactic is repeated as many times as necessary, by ensuring that there are an ample supply of missiles to fall back to. Scenario A2 (If you don't like A1) Failing that, most of my Raptors, and the Galactica herself, are loaded to the gills with the most powerful nuclear ordnance we've got (and if it will help, all the rest of the nukes at our disposal, going from highest-to-lowest yield, that she can muster,) and sent on a suicide mission; they will perform a jump within the Sovereign. We lose the Galactica, a lot of Raptors, and maybe some crew, but it sounds like Mission Accomplished. This all happens within the first year. Meanwhile, back on Earth (and Luna,) designs are being drawn up for warships that are extensively automated, and designed around the concept of launching my jump-missiles (or just regular missiles, if I don't get to have those.) These ships will be rather small (747-ish in size) and capable executing a jump, taking a beating, launching missiles, and jumping out; the ships are expendable, so having a docked Raptor (or two) for crew evacuation will be a consideration, in case the the jump engines can't be spun-up. I don't know how the rail guns will help (I thought they fired conventional rounds?) unless they are modified to launch the nuclear ordnance, so if I can, the RGs are utilized as enhanced-missile launching systems, and are incorporated into the Wasps. In addition to this, Raptor construction will take place, namely the missile-boat variant, (the Battle of the Colony showed the effectiveness of those missile-equipped Raptors.) If my first plan doesn't work, I mass produce my ships (lets call them Wasps since they will back a nasty sting) and Plan B consists of sending my Wasps and Raptors out by the scores, and missile spamming the shit out of the Sovereign. If I get the jump-missiles, I anticipate a bloody massacre for the enemy; if not, there should be enough missiles in the air to overwhelm the Sovereign. (I suppose I could postpone Plan A and utilize the Galactica and her complement, but I'm not too partial to them.)
Do Battlestar Galactica Jump drives really work like that? If so, in scenario A) I strap/produce jump drives and attach them to a few of the larger asteroids, and telefrag that reaper bitch. Lets see him be a threat to earth when 1 Ceres or 2 Pallas appear in/around him. If that doesn't work, I simply strap the enigines to the asteroids once more, and ram them into him. Sir Issac Newton is the deadliest son of a bitch in space after all. Scenario B) and C) I do similar, using the shuttles/fighters to pull/launch the asteroids. In all scenarios except D, if the son of a bitch looks like hes going to win, I send the next few asteroids at the mass relay and take him down with me. But since the mass relays themselves are supposed to be far harder to kill/destroy then the reaper themselves, launching a few would still be more then enough to take thim down on a direct hit, considering it only took a single asteroid in Arrival.
For maximum Renegade, I wait for Sovereign to show up and attempt to harvest or attack humanity. If Sovereign stays in orbit or does not approach Earth, I use the captured Raptors to jump in close and launch nukes at point blank. Assuming Scenario A, that's fifty Raptors, assuming Scenario B or C, that's twenty Raptors. Reapers can be killed by repeated shots from dreadnought or even cruiser guns, although Sovereign was far tougher. This might be Villian Decay from ME1 to ME3, or Sovereign might actually be one of the stronger Reapers. It won't matter, though. Assuming each Raptor has two nuclear missiles in the low-megaton range and a quarter of them hit, that's still enough ordinance to obliterate or at least cripple the Reaper. Nuclear weapons might actually be more effective than kinetics, since barriers only block KE and nukes in space break things mostly via radiation. Where's the Renegade part? Ideally, I wait for Sovereign to land first, then nuke the crap out of him using any and all nuclear weapons available. Still working on an actual workable strategy.
