Ashin Varanin
Professional Enabler
@[member="Cyrus Tregessar"]
The Rancor. The ancient, immobile Atrisian command ship, now little more than a container for a truly impressive amount of fighters. Fighters which were now heading for the approximately equal air battle above the plains. The Fringe small craft forces on this side of the planet were, to put it mildly, committed. The dozens of pilots who perished under the Maelstrom submunition warheads would have put it otherwise if they weren't busy tasting the trademark innovation of the former Imperial Remnant. Say what you will about Val'Ryss Zankarr, she had always fostered creativity, and now the orbital Fringe starfighter screen was paying the price for walking unprepared into a first contact of sorts.
The wall of battle travelled slightly sideways, objectively speaking. Each ship did not precisely follow the one ahead of it, but travelled a parallel course for derelict-avoidance purposes, as the entire formation swept across the directed firing arcs of the massed Star Destroyers. Broadsides roared back, each Permanence-class vessel rolling around its long axis to bring fresh guns and shields to bear. When ships died, by and large, they were the warhead-packed Deathhead heavy cruisers, in the process of disgorging wave upon wave of baradium proton torpedoes. There was a reason Ashin didn't much like the Deathhead, but even drawing from the three largest centres of industry in the Unknown Regions -- Lwhekk, Rakata Beta, and 244Core -- one worked with what one had. Fragile Wasp heavy cruisers likewise accounted for a good portion of the wall of battle's casualties. As of yet, the Permanence-class ships -- shields rotating with their hulls, key points turadium-plated, collision-avoidance pressor beams keeping debris from critical areas -- remained in better condition than their escorts.
Such was the situation when Tregessar's putative double envelopment arrived. The frigates and small craft had a decided advantage in acceleration capacity over the formation as a whole. With the Fringe fighter screen reeling from the Maelstroms -- wings upon wings, admittedly, with some capacity for resilience and powerful Ranger transceiver-based comm centres to reorganize squadrons and assignments as necessary -- the Atrisian prongs were able to engage with the capital ships at extreme range before the Fringe fighter response could coalesce from opportunism to coordination. Since the entire wall of battle was still travelling oblique to the Atrisian line of fire, the leading edge of the wall met the associated prong with predictable force, while the aft prong had to chase the rear of the formation. Omnidirectional fire was the purview of Wasp heavy cruisers, and they guarded the rear with abandon despite the losses they'd taken closer to the center of the wall.
The wall itself continued to storm forward, its path curving to bring all its momentum to bear and slip it alongside the Atrisian formation, from there to go behind it if possible. But that was a long way off, now that fighter involvement made the battle tick by in smaller increments of time.
Upon reaching striking distance of the quickly rotating Permanence-class vessels, the Atrisian bombers would soon discover that each boasted twenty quad laser batteries and twenty point-defense batteries. As one, the battleships ceased to rotate, allowing for much more accurate targeting at close range. Each Permanence employed a hundred and sixty anti-fighter and anti-warhead emplacements, along with dozens of collision-avoidance pressor beams to stave off those pesky bridge/hangar suicide/boarding runs. The durable battleships began to shudder in earnest at the magnitude of the bombardment, but the Fringe Diathim interceptor (read: bomber-killer) was on the job with more warheads and guns than any interceptor should boast. Naginatas found themselves engaged with the equivalent Aeseth, which had a slight but significant warhead advantage, and which occupied a greater proportion of Fringe fighter deployments than the Naginata generally occupied in Atrisian doctrine. The TIE Qiang found that it had no equivalent on the battlefield. That was not a good thing for the TIE Qiang.
And let us not forget the Rancor, sending a goodly portion of starfighters to the battle o'er the plains. The Fringe had absolutely no relevant assets -- except for the Astral Horizon, now behind the wall of battle in a stately geosynchronous orbit over the plain. The beautiful thing about flak cannons -- superior to any other anti-fighter weapon, as the Clone Wars had proven -- was their flexibility of ammunition. It was a simple matter to program the ballistic projectiles to explode at a certain range, so simple that the programming was tied directly into targeting software. Four hundred full-scale mass driver flak cannons spat metal at a significant fraction of lightspeed as the Rancor's fighters came around the curve of the planet. They ran into a wall of airbursts sufficient to shred capital ships. And then another, and another, and another, long before they could get close to the plains engagement. The Chrysalide-class had been designed to face entire contingents of the Omega Protectorate's Belsar supercarriers. Flak cannons had limited utility in more involved battlefields -- but large groups of fighters on a transit course, with nothing else around? A flak coordination officer's wet dream.
The Chrysalide's designer was an old friend of Val'Ryss Zankarr, after all, she of the Maelstrom submunition. This was cheaper, and sustained.
The Rancor. The ancient, immobile Atrisian command ship, now little more than a container for a truly impressive amount of fighters. Fighters which were now heading for the approximately equal air battle above the plains. The Fringe small craft forces on this side of the planet were, to put it mildly, committed. The dozens of pilots who perished under the Maelstrom submunition warheads would have put it otherwise if they weren't busy tasting the trademark innovation of the former Imperial Remnant. Say what you will about Val'Ryss Zankarr, she had always fostered creativity, and now the orbital Fringe starfighter screen was paying the price for walking unprepared into a first contact of sorts.
The wall of battle travelled slightly sideways, objectively speaking. Each ship did not precisely follow the one ahead of it, but travelled a parallel course for derelict-avoidance purposes, as the entire formation swept across the directed firing arcs of the massed Star Destroyers. Broadsides roared back, each Permanence-class vessel rolling around its long axis to bring fresh guns and shields to bear. When ships died, by and large, they were the warhead-packed Deathhead heavy cruisers, in the process of disgorging wave upon wave of baradium proton torpedoes. There was a reason Ashin didn't much like the Deathhead, but even drawing from the three largest centres of industry in the Unknown Regions -- Lwhekk, Rakata Beta, and 244Core -- one worked with what one had. Fragile Wasp heavy cruisers likewise accounted for a good portion of the wall of battle's casualties. As of yet, the Permanence-class ships -- shields rotating with their hulls, key points turadium-plated, collision-avoidance pressor beams keeping debris from critical areas -- remained in better condition than their escorts.
Such was the situation when Tregessar's putative double envelopment arrived. The frigates and small craft had a decided advantage in acceleration capacity over the formation as a whole. With the Fringe fighter screen reeling from the Maelstroms -- wings upon wings, admittedly, with some capacity for resilience and powerful Ranger transceiver-based comm centres to reorganize squadrons and assignments as necessary -- the Atrisian prongs were able to engage with the capital ships at extreme range before the Fringe fighter response could coalesce from opportunism to coordination. Since the entire wall of battle was still travelling oblique to the Atrisian line of fire, the leading edge of the wall met the associated prong with predictable force, while the aft prong had to chase the rear of the formation. Omnidirectional fire was the purview of Wasp heavy cruisers, and they guarded the rear with abandon despite the losses they'd taken closer to the center of the wall.
The wall itself continued to storm forward, its path curving to bring all its momentum to bear and slip it alongside the Atrisian formation, from there to go behind it if possible. But that was a long way off, now that fighter involvement made the battle tick by in smaller increments of time.
Upon reaching striking distance of the quickly rotating Permanence-class vessels, the Atrisian bombers would soon discover that each boasted twenty quad laser batteries and twenty point-defense batteries. As one, the battleships ceased to rotate, allowing for much more accurate targeting at close range. Each Permanence employed a hundred and sixty anti-fighter and anti-warhead emplacements, along with dozens of collision-avoidance pressor beams to stave off those pesky bridge/hangar suicide/boarding runs. The durable battleships began to shudder in earnest at the magnitude of the bombardment, but the Fringe Diathim interceptor (read: bomber-killer) was on the job with more warheads and guns than any interceptor should boast. Naginatas found themselves engaged with the equivalent Aeseth, which had a slight but significant warhead advantage, and which occupied a greater proportion of Fringe fighter deployments than the Naginata generally occupied in Atrisian doctrine. The TIE Qiang found that it had no equivalent on the battlefield. That was not a good thing for the TIE Qiang.
And let us not forget the Rancor, sending a goodly portion of starfighters to the battle o'er the plains. The Fringe had absolutely no relevant assets -- except for the Astral Horizon, now behind the wall of battle in a stately geosynchronous orbit over the plain. The beautiful thing about flak cannons -- superior to any other anti-fighter weapon, as the Clone Wars had proven -- was their flexibility of ammunition. It was a simple matter to program the ballistic projectiles to explode at a certain range, so simple that the programming was tied directly into targeting software. Four hundred full-scale mass driver flak cannons spat metal at a significant fraction of lightspeed as the Rancor's fighters came around the curve of the planet. They ran into a wall of airbursts sufficient to shred capital ships. And then another, and another, and another, long before they could get close to the plains engagement. The Chrysalide-class had been designed to face entire contingents of the Omega Protectorate's Belsar supercarriers. Flak cannons had limited utility in more involved battlefields -- but large groups of fighters on a transit course, with nothing else around? A flak coordination officer's wet dream.
The Chrysalide's designer was an old friend of Val'Ryss Zankarr, after all, she of the Maelstrom submunition. This was cheaper, and sustained.
