Chapter 2 - Time to chill
There are multiple reasons I picked this little, and I do mean little, system out of all the others. First off it's not that far from Earth, only 40 LY compared to some of the other options; however it also has something I find useful. It is completely worthless to the Goa'uld. For one, the star is a very cool red dwarf barely large enough to be called a star. Even with seven planets in a very tight orbit around it, there are no stargates for the goa'uld to use to travel here. The planets are near Earth in size, but not habitable by most standards of the definition. Starting with the closest planet to the star we have a magma planet, then a barren rock, then two oceanic planets, two ice balls, and the last being is covered in storms due to the methane atmosphere. The reason the two oceanic planets are not habitable is due to the orbits around the star, four and six days respectively, not allowing for any stability of the planets themselves. Constant under ocean ground quakes create some impressive tidal waves.
This tiny little star is also only 5 LY from Ra's planet Abydos, at least that is the last information available to me based on the Ha'tak computer core two years ago. I just have this funny feeling I am gonna have to get most of my news this way by ambushing Goa'uld ships as I can find them. I am wishing I had paid more attention to the show now that I am stuck living it. Now that I think of it, I should do that soon so I don't miss anything important.
Before I get to that, however, I need to do what I came here to do. Scanning the system didn't take long considering how small it was. There really wasn't anything to find, so I sent the command to my clones to bring the Charons in. Less than an hour later the first station I was deploying was bringing itself online. EVE stations are kinda nice, when you build them they are in a 'packed' mode for easy moving to different systems. When you activate them, they 'unfold' and you end up with a much larger station than you would think could come out of such a small (if you can call 80,000 m3 small) item. What makes the Fortizar station a priority is its purpose. It is a fortress station built to survive a decent sized fleet attacking it. I can't say for sure how effective the goa'uld will be against it though. All stations have a survival mode if they get attacked and shields drop by a set amount, they go into reinforced mode and become invulnerable for a day or two before they are no longer protected. That should give me time to clear out any attackers. Due to the way they are deployed, it takes a full 24 hours for a station to come online once the unpacking has started. Then I have to dock and install all the extra stuff that makes a station worthwhile. Since we are going to be parked here for a while till the station is up and running, I spend the waiting time going through my memory about every single person and event I can remember from the stargate TV show and adding it to a note file. By the time the station allows docking, I still haven't remembered much.
Now that docking is allowed, I dock up all nine of us and begin installing all the necessary mods needed for the station to be my new home. Installing the quantum core and station service modules is fairly quick, adding in the fuel blocks to get everything online plus the defenses and weapons means that it takes maybe 10-15 minutes once the 24 hour timer expires. With all my ships docked and unloaded, it is time to assemble all my ships and fit the right modules onto them. Once the clones and I are done with that, I get all of us into our combat ships and undock us. It is time to gather information.
Since I have no idea as to the changes in the politics and ownership of various systems in the last two years, I have to try targeting a system that isn't too important yet hasn't changed hands for a while from the old data I have. There may be other options, but I have no clue where the Nox are, nor how to contact the Asgard, and I have this feeling that warping to Earth orbit to hack the internet would not be seen as a good thing. I do however have a decent stellar map of goa'uld occupied worlds to use and semi-recent information on who controls them. I have to look for a lesser known one who would be afraid to be seen as weak if they complained about it. After reviewing the names of the various system lords, I picked Camulus. His space was not close to Earth, nor was he that important from what I remember of the show. Being a system lord, even a minor one, should be good enough if they are as backstabbing as I remember them being. I wanted to avoid the major system lords for the simple issue of them being vindictive bastards, and they would spend a lot more time trying to find me if one of their ships went missing.
Once we all undocked, I set a course for Camulus's domain. It was only about four days away, and there was another goa'uld who held territory between my new base and my target. Engaging the warp drive, I checked on the other ships in my fleet. There were two battleships in my fleet, and they were both Rokh class Caldari battleships fit as blaster boats. Not designed for long range, they did have one thing I wanted in spades, Firepower! Armed with 8 Neutron Blaster Cannons loaded with antimatter ammunition, I was hoping I could take down the Ha'tak before it could give off a distress signal. The next three clones were in Hurricane class Minmatar battlecruisers. They also sported guns, but not the hybrid style the Rokhs did. No, these guns were of the 650mm Howitzer variety, again at eight guns per ship. Where the Rokh's guns would do damage in the thermal/kinetic damage types, the Hurricane's guns were loaded with EMP ammunition. This would (I was hoping) be effective against the shields of the goa'uld ships. The last 3 clones were in Thrasher class Minmatar destroyers. Their job would be to take out any smaller ships like the Deathgliders or Alkesh that may be in the area. I had them setup with 8 gatling guns each using 125mm depleted uranium bullets. I remember the Deathgliders not having shields, but a 10 inch bullet should take them out easy enough. Unfortunately, I can't remember much about the Alkesh.
Then there was my ship, the Astero. I had no weapons fit on this ship, even though it did have the ability to use them. Instead I had a probe launcher and a prototype cloaking device. It was one of the few items I had been able to research a Tier 2 item of. This meant my ship could stay cloaked even during a warp jump. I also had the data miner module equipped. After verifying that everything was going smoothly, I opened the program I had asked Aura to make for me. When you are bored at your desk at work, have you ever played the Solitaire game that most computers come with? Yeah I really did ask Aura to remake the classic card game Solitaire. Traveling four days at warp is boring, and after spending seven days at warp to set up the new base of operations, I realized I needed something to combat the boredom. Thus my small number of 'bored games.' I know it should be 'Board Games' but I like my name for them better. I had walked Aura through seven or eight different solo card games and explained the rules. I may not have remembered them all, but Aura did pretty well considering I haven't found a problem yet.
I don't remember how many games I had completed when the five minute warning went off signaling that we were about to come out of warp. That was another feature I begged Aura to add. Long distance travel through warp is not that interesting when you can't sleep and the view fills your vision constantly. We exited warp about 600 AU out from the star of our targeted system. I can't remember the name of it, but it wasn't very memorable either. What was important was that we were outside the sensor range of the Goa'uld ships. Then came my job. I cloaked my ship and warped into the system alone.
I was not sure what to expect when I arrived about 5000 km from the outermost planet, but I am relieved that it was not directly in front of a dozen enemy ships. This is always the worst part of scouting, the first entry into the system. You have no idea what is safe and what isn't. Did someone see you? Maybe, do they care? Also maybe. In this case, I knew any ships I saw in the system would be hostile, so it wasnt so much a question of if they would respond if they saw me, but how many ships would be coming for me. Since I no longer need jump gates to travel to different systems, there was very little chance anyone saw me warp in. The new style warp drive did have its drawbacks in that it opened a highly visible vortex of energy at both the entry point and exit point. The good side was you had to be in visual range to see it because sensors may miss it. So while they may have seen the vortex, they couldn't see me. First thing I did was change course and accelerate to a few thousand meters per second away from the exit vortex. After about a half million kilometers, I came to a stop and watched to see if anything was on my D-scan. I also launched my combat scanner probes.
Well, what to ya know. There was a pair of Ha'tak class ships near a moon over the second planet in the system. Intelligence showed that Camulus only had access to 5 Ha'tak class ships, or at least he only officially had access to five of them. If both of these were his, and his territory was about twenty inhabited planets, then it was a good bet he had more. Using the probes, I narrowed down my scanning to where the two Ha'taks were and the moon they were orbiting. Probes did not see any smaller ships flying around though, which meant they were probably either landed on the planet or docked inside the two Ha'tak. After verifying there were no other ships in the system, I warped to the far side of the moon from where the two Goa'uld ships were orbiting. This should hide the energy vortex from their sensors, unless they have some based on the planet. I really don't remember if they did that or not. I did another scan with my probes to verify the system was still clear other than the two ships.
Once that was done, I recalled my probes and moved my ship around the planet to where I could get a visual look at the Ha'tak. Marking the location of the one furthest from the planet, I sent the information to the clones. I had worked out the tactics for this raid before we had even left the Fortizar. Since it would take only a few minutes for them to arrive, I made sure I was out of the way of both the Ha'tak and where my clones' ships would arrive. The two battleships came out right where I wanted, directly astern of the most distant ship, and immediately began pelting it with some very large antimatter rounds. Within 30 seconds, more than 50 of them had struck the first Ha'tak. The shields were not worth mentioning since I guess they were not actually turned on. The clones were already heading to the second ship when the Goa'uld finally started to react. The first one was beyond hope, and its debris was already spreading out a bit.
The 3 Hurricanes did not even have a chance to really get involved with the first kill, but they came out of warp closer to the second ship just before it started moving and deploying death gliders. Luckily the destroyers also came out of warp with the Hurricanes. As the Hurricane battlecruisers targeted and opened fire on the remaining Ha'tak, the three destroyers began spraying 125mm depleted uranium at the incoming group of fighters. My battleships were out of range for their guns and were unable to attack the remaining enemy ships. Fortunately, the battleships also had drones to use, so they deployed their five drones each to help with the fighters that could overwhelm the smaller ships given enough time.
The Hurricane class battlecruisers were just under 500m in length, but made up for it in sheer firepower. With each of the three shooting 650mm EMP rounds at a rate of 8 per 9 seconds at the Ha'tak, the shields protecting the Ha'tak began dropping quite fast. It was about five minutes later that it too was a floating wreck. As the EMP rounds had broken the shield, they also began shorting out the ship's systems which made the problem for me even easier. Tons of holes in the armor and yet no secondary explosions. At this point, the death gliders were the only enemy ships left, and they were quickly dropping to the large caliber gatling guns my destroyers used. There was some damage to my clones' ships though. One of the Hurricanes had taken significant damage to its armor after a full broadside from the second Ha'tak. Luckily the death gliders did not have much firepower as they couldn't capitalize on the chance to blow up one of my ships. One of my Thrashers was forced to warp off as it was barely alive with only its hull holding it together. The loss of a couple of the drones from the Rokhs wasn't anything to worry about.
As soon as the last enemy ship was destroyed, I decloaked and rushed to the Ha'tak wrecks. Using the data analyzer module, I was able to hack the computer cores of both before too long. The download only took a few minutes before Aura notified me she had received all of the recoverable data. Leaving the wrecks right where they were, I initiated a warp jump to a point about 500au outside the system to make sure we did not leave anyone behind. Once we all were at the rally point, I warped us all back to the Fortizar. We took no significant losses and the data was acquired, I would say that was a success.
Before I continue telling my story, I should explain a few things. Due to the FtV ( fluid to vacuum space) changes, my ships were affected in various ways. Starting with the least important, Radio… Communications I was used to in New Eden were all done in subspace due to other forms of transmission being useless outside a few hundred kilometers in fluid space. Since I was now in vacuum space, this meant other means of communications were available including radio. From what I could remember from the show, it seemed like most of the races had some form of non-subspace communication ability. At least I would be able to listen in on Earth entertainment and military frequencies when I got close enough. This also affected all of the scanning equipment and modules on my ships, since before they had to power through fluid space, by increasing their range and resolution by a very significant margin. Probes and Dscan now had very improved capabilities and targeting range/ability was ungodly. Being able to lock onto a rock a few tens of thousands of kilometers away would be unheard of in New Eden.
The next change was concerning movement. With my current ships, they were based on fluidic space, which provided brakes for me when I cut the throttle. It doesn't work that way here. Without a lot of practice, I was a disaster in space when trying to do anything more complicated than fly in a straight line. I am quite happy the ships themselves had quite a bit of automatic course correction built into their control systems. What this does mean is that I was not as maneuverable as the goa'uld ships, but most of my combat ships were faster by a long shot when staying under FTL. Since all my ships had engines designed to overcome fluid drag, my acceleration and top speed shot through the roof. It should be noted that a Charon cruising at 0.7c takes a LOOOOOONG time to stop.
Then comes the changes to my ship's defenses. When you build something to make it strong enough to move quickly through a liquid then move it to a vacuum, you now have a VERY overbuilt ship. This means my ships should survive more damage than I was used to since they were not holding off the pressure of a fluid trying to crush or drag parts off. It also meant the shields, as they no longer had to operate and protect against that same fluid space, had a much higher regeneration rate. Aura had estimated around a 25% improvement in armor effectiveness; and while the shields were only strengthened by about 4%, their regeneration rates were increased between 30% and almost 70% depending on the size of the ship. The larger ships had the best improvement.
The last of the noticeable FtV changes was in weapons. The most noticeable was the VASTLY increased range of pretty much every weapon type I could make or use. First off, the range of all of my weapon possibilities basically had no end. As long as I could target and track it, I could hit it. The chance of a hit might be low enough to not be really effective, however, since lasers, guns, and missiles could continue near indefinitely in vacuum, it meant the scale of battlefields just grew by several orders of magnitude. Elementary school science taught us that a laser would go forever in vacuum if focused correctly. Having a coherent light based weapon that was effective through sometimes over 100km of fluid meant that its range was near limitless. If I could see it, I should be able to hit it. Projectile and hybrid weapons were almost as good as lasers when it came to actually hitting the target. The changes had affected them by removing drag, which meant that the bullets were traveling at .8c. Not quite instant damage, but close enough that it was not a large issue. Missiles were very different. In New Eden, they were slow, fat, and could do amazing damage if they hit. The problem with them was that if you could fly fast enough to make them run out of fuel, you were safe. At the moment they were unusable due to needing a complete guidance system redesign. Not enough processing power available to make the necessary speed/course decisions that would be needed in combat. Aura had spent quite a bit of time trying to update the software for them, but no luck yet without some major changes to them. When testing them, however, there was one improvement on missiles. The detonations were far larger than they had been before, and this included the bombs from stealth bomber frigates. If we could ever get the guidance systems fixed, they may be useful in the future.
Anyway, back to the return trip to my fortizar… While we were in warp, Aura and I were having a debriefing and brainstorming session. It is a really smart idea after combat is over to look back and think of how you did. Looking at both the good and bad to see what works and what doesn't. Aura agreed with me that the first of the two ships likely did not have shields active, which is odd since New Eden ships always had shields active unless someone had blasted through them. This made sense considering it died a fiery death in under a minute. Looking back at the images Aura had taken through the sensors, it was clearly shown that the first salvo had passed through the armor completely. The remaining salvos turned an already burning wreck into a cloud of scrap metal. The second ship took longer, since the shields were up before it got hit. I don't remember if they took a while to get to full strength or not, however, it did take almost two minutes to drop the shields enough to start hitting the ship itself. Aura did request that the next time I destroy one of the goa'uld ships to please remember to bring the salvage back to the fortizar so she could analyze the remains for knowledge and later use.
She also commented on my lack of fleet tactics, a point I was in agreement with. Any time I have attacked anyone it has been either a solo attack, or I am defending myself from someone else attacking me. That being said, I will admit I am not the best at group tactics. I needed to learn what I could from the resources I had available in the knowledge database Aura had a copy of. I also agreed to spend time practicing those same tactics. This was going to be an ongoing thing. I remember others in New Eden saying that PVP combat was all about practice till you get it right, then keep practicing. Guess what I was going to be doing in my spare time when I got back to the fortizar.
After the combat report, Aura began updating me on current events. It seems that Ra died rather recently. According to the data I had been able to recover from the two Ha'tak, the supreme system lord had died in a big explosion that no one was taking credit for. Kinda funny that I know who did it. In the last two weeks since Ra's death, most of the system lords had been scrambling to take over Ra's former domain. It seems that Camulus was keeping his head down. He didn't want the other system lords to know he had quite a few more than the five ships he was allowed, closer to thirty. He was also smart enough to realize that his twenty-eight ships would not be a match for the major system lords who all had at least fifty ships with most having far more. Since I took out two of them, he is now down to twenty-six.
From what I remember, after Ra's death, it was a couple years before Apophis came through the gate on Earth and got the events of the TV show rolling. This means I have plenty of time to practice, cause chaos, and build up the resources to fight a long term war. Until I go on the offensive, there are things that need to get done. First, the aforementioned combat practice. Second, working with Aura to create new BPOs of the tech I really want. Third, devising a war strategy that keeps the goa'uld guessing as to who is attacking them since I don't want them to know who or where I am for as long as possible. Fourth, how the hell do I deal with the jaffa on the ground? Fifth, locating some trading partners that are not friendly with the goa'uld since if I can get working versions of the tech here she may be able to make BPOs of it far easier. Aura and I decided to take care of the fifth topic first.
Finding trade partners was going to be difficult. I remember most of the major races, but have no idea where they would be in the galaxy. The Orbanians were not spacefaring, but had power generation tech as well as nanite learning capabilities. The Nox were pacifists and I doubt they would consider trading with me. The Asgard were mostly not in this galaxy and the only way to get a hold of them would likely be through the slim chance of running into one of their ships. The Tok'ra were always hiding, and there was no chance I would find them on my own. There was another race, where one of the scientist guys had a crush on Major Carter (I know the actress Amanda Tapping is HOT, wonder if she looks the same in this reality) but I can't remember what they called themselves. After spending some time thinking about it, Aura and I figured that the best chance was spending time loitering around Earth since the Asgard did spend time there fairly regularly. While I am nowhere near able to travel to other galaxies with my current tech, it was possible I could trade for other tech from them, like teleportation tech or something of similar value. Hell, they may want in on the cloning tech I have available.
Aura and I also started going over the industry ideas I had been contemplating. I remember some of the limits placed on capsuleers by CONCORD and decided those limits should no longer be viable. The biggest one for me was concerning drones. Since transmissions through vacuum were now far easier, drone control ranges were now far greater and drone speeds far higher. I had clocked one of my drones at .93c when its MWD had kicked in. The limit I was thinking about though was concerning the number of drones deployed at one time. CONCORD had limited it by fiat years ago for some reason. I know there had been some very expensive implants on the market that allowed more than the five drone limit, but I had never found one available for sale once I started playing EVE. I wanted to find out what the maximum amount of drones I could deploy at once could be.
With Aura starting work on the drone issue, I brought up the possibility of landing on a planet. I had no idea if any of my ships could, and I had never needed to before. Since only the Goa'uld had space capabilities (ignoring the Asgard since they were not very active) I would need some way to load/unload from my cargo ships to any trading partners. I would also need to use smaller ships, there is a huge difference between a 300m Bustard landing in a field to unload versus a 2.5km Charon trying to find a large enough place to set down without sinking into the ground. When I broached this topic to Aura, she informed me that all my ships did have landing gear. Since capsuleer ships were based on normal human crewed ships, just modified for a single capsuleer to control, all except capital ships were capable of landing on a planet. Capital ships were just too massive and heavy to safely land on even the most reinforced spaceports on a planet's surface. Looks like I would be using either a Crane blockade runner or a Bustard deep space transport. Even with the Crane I could haul 33.7 million Kg of iron in one trip without cargo extenders, talk about overkill. I guessed that would be one thing I would start building when I came out of warp.
The next topic Aura and I discussed was the schematics she had located in the info dump from the Ha'tak I had done earlier. It seems the goa'uld did not really have much in the way of manufacturing facilities like most civilizations did. They relied on slaves to make everything using primitive tools, which meant the schematics were built on a "Construction for Dummies" basis. Aura was able to read the schematics and had no issues converting them into BPOs for my use; however, this also meant I could possibly have Aura upgrade my current stock of BPOs to include new components like say better computers? New Eden computers still dealt with similar tech to current Earth, just massively upgraded: transistors, diodes, wire, and chips. The goa'uld used crystal based computing systems. In fact, there were almost no wires used in their entire ships. Crystal data storage, crystal power generation, crystal processors, and insulated crystal power conduits meant far faster and more efficient computing with significant increases in data storage and power generation considering the size of the systems.
I mentioned to Aura that it would likely be beneficial to both her and myself if she could update all current BPOs and BPCs to take into account this technology. I would think a new fortizar with all crystal based computing and power conduits ranked as a major upgrade for both her capabilities as well as the functioning of my ships. Glancing at Aura's digital image in my HUD, it reminded me of that 80's TV show 'Max Headroom'. She glitched. It took nearly ten seconds for her to fix herself, and made the crystal tech upgrades her number one priority, including upgrading all my blueprints as soon as she figured it out. Remember how when I first woke up in a capsuleer body I mostly zoned out of Aura's initial briefing? The remaining three days till I reached the fortizar were like that for me, but this time on the other end of the zoning out. I relaxed and let the view outside the ship occupy my visual sense while I spent the remaining time in warp thinking about future possibilities and plans for how to reach it.
I remember my parents teaching me various lessons when I was little. One of the most important was to set goals. I had talked to Aura about it at various times, however, I never had actually set any fixed long term goals. I had three days to think about them, so that is what I did. Listing them in a new note file was to make sure I didn't lose track of what I wanted to get out of this long term. Goal the first: crush the Goa'uld completely. Goal the second: prep for the Ori. Goal the third: prep for the Wraith. Goal the fourth: save the Asgard. Goal the fifth: conquer the galaxy… (I deleted that last one)
Goals one and four I would need to do concurrently, as both would need to be done relatively quickly. I know the Asgard only had maybe ten years left as a species before they commit mass suicide, so that was a priority. They also had the robotic spiders on crack chasing them down too. I needed to know more before I could get involved in that little problem. As for the Goa'uld, I would need to keep them fairly weak or they would overwhelm me when they finally found me. With practice, I would like to say I could handle a Ha'tak in one-on-one combat, but I don't think I could guarantee it. The largest problem with attacking the Goa'uld would be them hunting me down once they figured out they were being attacked by another space faring race. I hadn't thought about it before attacking Camulus, and I really should have. If either of the ships had sent off any information about me, I may already be in trouble. I asked Aura if she could determine if any transmissions were made from either ship reporting an attack to anyone. It took a few minutes, but she informed me we were not at risk from that at the moment.
When it comes to warfare, there are two types of plans, tactical and strategic. Tactical is on the battlefield itself, who is where and what they are doing in the area of operations. Strategy is the big picture. Remember all those old war movies where the generals are gathered around a table looking at a huge map? Those generals were discussing strategy, not tactics. Tactics are what they teach the fresh recruits and newly minted officers fresh from the cradle. In this case, I thought back to a book I read when I was into war history (I did mention I was a nerd). In order to survive and win against the Goa'uld I needed to deceive them. Best of all, the tech from New Eden gave me the way to do it. I wasn't going to be one enemy, I was going to be four separate enemies engaging them from different directions. One thing about the four major races in New Eden, their ships all looked and fought differently. I told you before how Amarr ships used lasers? They also fly ships that look like they are made of gold. Minmatar ships use cannons and look like they are made of rust. Caldari ships use missiles while their ships are mostly bluish and shaped oddly. Gallente ships are more rounded, silverish, and swarming with drones.
Quickly I pulled up the map of the galaxy with the most recent intel on who had what territory. There were large areas controlled by a single system lord each, however, they did not actually have that many planets under their control in each of those areas. If I remember right, they almost entirely stuck to places with working stargates, and ignored places with no habitable planets or moons. There were also areas of the galaxy where no Goa'uld was known to patrol or occupy. From my memory, I only remember there being about 10 thousand stargates in the galaxy. I know for a fact this is nowhere near the number of systems with planets, either habitable or not, in the galaxy. I could hide just about anywhere, even in the middle of one of the 'controlled' areas. It would make transit to and from combat zones easier. I would also need multiple stations scattered around with clone bays so I could swap clones for instant movement to different parts of the galaxy. This was going to be fun!
When I arrived back at my fortizar, I got my clones into action. Quickly I assembled seven exhumer class mining ships and geared them up. I also prepped the Orca I had brought for the eighth clone to run. Once they were ready, I sent them off to begin a massive mining campaign. I wanted to strip at least one of the asteroid belts in this system of as much as I could in the next couple months. This was going to take quite a bit of effort to get rolling. I could do this by building three more stations. I was not going to use three for fortizars, since I wanted to give them the impression of four different space faring civilizations. Since I really don't want to spend much in the way of resources or time building massive structures, and I don't plan on using them other than as a docking location for each race's ships plus a clone bay, I chose the Astrahus, Athanor, and Raitaru. Those are the smallest of the stations I can build at the moment.
Opening the corp hangar I had dropped all the compressed ore I had brought with me, I reprocessed all of it to see what I had to work with. I ended up with a good amount to start with, however I knew it wasn't near enough. Looking into the asset list, I knew I had an ungodly amount of compressed ore at my original station seven days away by warp. I did have a set of clones back there, however, I would need a ship to transport that ore back to here, or I could just build what I needed there, which may be a safer proposition, and faster too since I had the Rorqual there already. I knew which stations I needed to make, but I wasn't sure yet which ships I would be working on.
Opening a new note file on one side of my HUD, and the ship tree on the other. The easiest race for me to set a fleet for was Gallente. Spider tanked Dominix battleships were beastly in combat, high damage and very hard to crack. Spider tanking is when you have multiple ships repairing each other in combat instead of focusing on repairing themselves. If I set up three trios of Domis, with each ship repairing two others, it would mean that each trio would operate as a unit, with heavy or sentry drones doing the damage at long range. As long as I warped out each trio as a unit when they got low on shields, then I shouldn't lose any, while still pounding the Goa'uld ships into scrap.
The Caldari ships would have to wait, as I had better options than the Rokhs if Aura could resolve the missile problem. Passive shield tanked Raven battleships were designed to handle large engagements with either cruise missiles or torpedoes, which tore other battleships to pieces. There was also the possibility of using nine Manticore class stealth bombers, again relying on the missile guidance problem being fixed. I would have to wait on Aura's progress before I could decide for the Caldari fleet.
For the Minmatar fleet, I also had some options. One of the ships I had been playing around with in New Eden was an artillery fit Vargur marauder class battleship. It had the ability to activate a Bastion module, which greatly increased its firepower while reducing the damage it took for a short period. Another module it used quite well was the micro jump drive, which would instantly jump your ship 100km forward. I would need to test that module when I got a chance to see if it was affected by the FtV changes before I made my decision though. The second option was to fit up nine Tornado class battlecruisers for hit and run style attacks. With battleship sized weapons on a cruiser hull, jumping into a system to fire off four or five salvos each at whatever Goa'uld ships were in range before jumping out again was a valid tactic.
Now comes the hard decision… The Amarr ships to use. While I did train in armor tanking and Amarr ships, I never really used any. My Astero can use lasers just like Amarr ships, and I can use them well, but I have no experience fighting in Amarr ships. Looking at the ship tree again, I needed to find a laser using ship that I could handle. I ignored the Astero and its sister ships since they were not designed for fleet combat but rather exploration. There was a pirate faction called Sansha Nation that used lasers on their ships, but their ships were more for small scale skirmishes and quick raids than prolonged combat. I did however find an interesting shield tanked battleship that used lasers. It was called the Bhaalgorn. It was based on an Amarr Armageddon class battleship, but was more my style. It also had the bonuses of being designed for capturing other ships. This was a ship designed to dominate other battleships by neutralizing large amounts of power on the enemy ship or siphoning that same energy off for the Bhaalgorn to use for itself.
Maybe I was going too simplistic on this. Even the Goa'uld had different ship types depending on what they were doing including fighters, troop transports, bombers, and a couple others. Looking back over the ship tree again for the races, I made some choices. Force Alpha would be the Gallente ships: Nine Vexor cruisers and nine Dominix battleships which I could field trios of either size as needed. Force Beta would be the Caldari ships: EIther Rokh battleships and Ferox cruisers OR Raven battleships and Drake battlecruisers (if the missile problem is fixed). Force Gamma would be the Minmatar: Vargur battleships with Hurricane cruisers as support. Force Delta would be the Pirate faction ships: the Bhaalgorn battleships with Ashimmu cruisers for support. The dual ship class setup should allow me to handle any size ship that comes after me, at least for now. I probably don't remember all of the different ships the Goa'uld used, but I doubt the Ha'tak is the biggest since they seem to be quite numerous according to the intel I have.
There is one more ship group I think I need to have. A force to use when the excrement strikes the oscillator. This force is for when I am backed up against the wall. Glancing back at the ship tree I look to the right side at the ships there. I haven't even trained for any of these ships. The largest ships I have trained for are the freighters and battleships. There is always the chance I will run into something that none of my four primary combat force groups could handle, so I am planning to build a capital ship combat force just in case. It was going to take me ages to build Task Force Omega: Four Hel class supercarriers, four Naglfar class dreadnaughts, and one Ragnarok class titan. Building nine capital/supercapital class ships meant mining beyond a crap ton of ore. I may end up stripping this entire solar system bare and still not have enough. Considering how long it was going to take to build them, it was probably a good thing that it was also going to take me at least that long to train to even fly them.
Decisions, decisions… I am going to build the three other stations first as well as the first four combat fleets. The battleships and cruisers won't take more than a few days once I get the ore gathered up. Considering I already have some ore at my fallback point and original station, I jumped to my clone I had left behind.
Checking in with Aura broke the silence I hadn't noticed from her over the last few hours. She had made some progress in her tasks on crystal computing. Data storage was far easier than she had expected. Unfortunately that was as far as she had progressed on that front. The missile problem however, was resolved. She had replaced the guidance system on the BPOs completely with a more simplistic version that had been adjusted to account for vacuum space. This meant far less fuel was needed, but meant missiles could now travel much farther to target and a greatly increased speed. They were not quite as maneuverable as before, however, they would have a greater impact since the empty space left by unneeded fuel was devoted to a larger warhead. This gave the missiles a 45% greater damage output. I went ahead and began building task forces Alpha, Beta, Gamma, and Delta. Since the missile problem was solved, Beta would be the Ravens and Drakes. I also began construction on the parts needed to build the three stations. Just for fun, I also slipped in nine Manticore stealth bombers and their mods into the queue.
Since I was going to hold off on any further attacks till the stations were ready, the best bet was to mine my ass off with One through Eight. This didn't mean I had to spend all my time mining rocks though. I know where Earth is, and it would probably be difficult to contact the Asgard unless they saw me somewhere I have no business being. Besides, the sooner I get in contact with them, the sooner I can trade for tech I want Aura to make BPOs of. I wonder how Asgard power generation stacks up against what I currently have. Aura already informed me that Goa'uld power generation is worse than what I have, however, their systems are more efficient. I want to correct that efficiency problem and make sure I don't fall behind.
Looking over the ships I had available, I figured I could do a little exploring while I was hanging around Earth. After double checking the Stratios cruiser to make sure it had the right setup, I undocked and set a course for Earth.
"Warp drive active."