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[CptWinters]

Unless these "Tolot Blisters" can put some serious hurt on the Umiak, it looks like Winter Tide's about to buy the farm.

Arioch, is there any... I guess you could call it "command tension" between Stillstorm and Ashrain?

[Trantor]

Breaking up a massive Wedge with so few ships. That´ll be interesting to see...

[Beliskner]

Very nice. Nova's face just astonishing, magnificent.

[Martenzo]

I have just realized something. The Internet is, eventually, not going to be big enough to contain the awesomeness and magnificence of the Loroi.[/exaggeration]

[sunphoenix]

Resolute is what I'd call the Loroi expressions! The "Armor of Contempt"... they will NOT yield or withdraw. Very nice.

[Count Casimir]

Resolute is what I'd call the Loroi expressions! The "Armor of Contempt"... they will NOT yield or withdraw. Very nice.

I see what you did there.

But all things considered, I love the expressions on this page. Beautifully done, Arioch. Nova especially shows a lot of emotion with just a little dialogue.

[sunphoenix]

? What I did? Clarify please?

[Sorus]

Just echoing the "this page owns" sentiments.

[sunphoenix]

Were I Captain Winter Tide I'd turn the ship head on to the approaching Umiak Wedge formation and rotate along my lateral axis to provide as little of a target profile to the enemy and not be stationary so the 'crabs' can't get a solid lock...'hopefully'. Then focus the heavy beams forward and with my secondary batteries set to anti-missile fire. She can't run might as well inflict some damage ... fighting smart!

[CptWinters]

If Winter Tide can't maneuver, she's dead; at these ranges, I think it's guaranteed that the Umiak will have a solid firing solution on her, especially winged as she is. Her only hope, as far as I can see, is whatever toy Black Razor and her squadron are deploying.

[sunphoenix]

LOL! Never said her options were great... just that going down fighting and taking a few of them with her would be preferable to trying to flee and be shot to pieces anyways!

[NOMAD]

you do have a point Capt winters but i recall the story of the DD-724 Laffey, the famous "ship that would not die". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Laffey_(DD-724)

Now, I understand that was a rare instance of survival against continuous attack, but given the situation that winter tide is in, still in the fight, maneuvering as fast as possible and still dodging some fire. Although, from the display the front rank is taking hits and breaking.

as for the tolot blisters, I'm thinking there are three possibilities

A) a reusable or one shot area of effect weapon

B) A piloted point defence ships ( thinking homeworld 1 defence fighter)

C) a large-capacity cluster torpedo (like the anti-corvette torpedo's from homeworld 2 torpedo frigate, but for med-heavy class umiak ships )

these are the more obvious reason why the right wing needs to dissolve ( avoids friendly fire)

[icekatze]

hi hi

I get the impression, from nothing but the shape of the weapons themselves, that they will split open and launch a bunch of sub-munitions once they're closer to their target area.

As for the Winter Tide, I agree that things don't look good for the poor little ship, and the Umiak aren't known for leaving ships alone even when they go dead in space. Still, I don't think the Winter Tide is the Umiak's real target, so perhaps they might still be baited into going after something else if the opportunity presents itself.

Also: Panel 3 is amazing, I love all the different angles and the engine effects (both active and destroyed), and I'm glad to see Arclight and Ashrain again, though I wish it could be under better circumstances.

[sunphoenix]

I expect the Umiak tactic is to close distance with the Loroi flotilla and split their formation in half by wedging a force between their two flanks. This is mostly, I would think, to make the Loroi 'Zone Defense' counter-missile fire unusable so the Umiak superior numbers can capitalize on their numerical advantage.

[Solemn]

If Winter Tide can't maneuver, she's dead; at these ranges, I think it's guaranteed that the Umiak will have a solid firing solution on her, especially winged as she is. Her only hope, as far as I can see, is whatever toy Black Razor and her squadron are deploying.

I disagree with this assessment.
While the Umiak certainly could destroy the Winter Tide, I think it might actually be more useful to them to keep her alive and concentrate fire on non-crippled targets, depending on what the Umiak hope to achieve with this attack.
The Umiak presumably wish to do as much damage to the Loroi as possible, but the form that said damage takes changes the shape of the battle.

Winter Tide lacks powerful long-range weapons. She's a point-defense specialist whose offensive capabilities are limited at best. A live Winter Tide poses minimal threat to the Umiak themselves, and there are other ships within her squad with equivalent weaponry that also still have working engines. A destroyed Winter Tide would help convince the Loroi to withdraw immediately, since they are less likely to be able to survive subsequent attack runs without her point defenses. However, a crippled Winter Tide offers some interesting possibilities.

If Winter Tide's damage could possibly be repaired in the field, then those repairs will take time, which works to the Umiak advantage, particularly if the shots that would have killed her (and thus eliminated the time the Loroi spend mending her wounds) were instead spend crippling or killing other, more threatening vessels.

If the Winter Tide's damage cannot be repaired in the field, then I see three options open to the Loroi.
1. They could try to leave the system with her; at half-thrust, she can still move and still has main power, so her jump drive is presumably still functional. 15 Gs is a terrible acceleration rate for attempting to escape a foe who remains capable of 25 Gs, so this option would probably involve the Umiak making more successful subsequent attack runs than otherwise.
2. They could rescue the crew of the Winter Tide and scuttle the ship. They already had a number of shuttles scrambled to retrieve the salvage teams, moving people from the Winter Tide to another ship in its immediate area might not add all that much time to that retrieval, but it will take more time than not retrieving Winter Tide's crew. Perhaps it could take enough time for the Umiak to attack again, in full force.
3. They could abandon the Winter Tide to her fate without making any sort of rescue or repair effort. This doesn't necessarily give the 51st the highest odds of survival, that really depends on how able the Umiak will be to make another torpedo run and how many surviving Umiak and Loroi ships there are after this attack finishes.

But, if the Loroi do have the ability to leave unmolested if they leave without Winter Tide, and they don't if they bring Winter Tide with them or evacuate her, then abandoning her would be the logical course of action, and might actually serve to buy the rest of the Loroi more time if the Umiak choose to destroy her. Sort of a "last viking on Stamford Bridge" situation. The Umiak are doubtless aware of this fact, being a pragmatic people themselves. If Winter Tide gets left by the main fleet, then the Umiak will kill later just as easily as they can kill her now; she doesn't have any beam weapons heavier than a medium blaster, which wouldn't even scratch the paint of an Umiak vessel at effective plasma focus range. The Umiak are likely aware of this fact as well, given that the Loroi organize their ships into convenient class categories and make each class fairly easy to tell apart, which must just be convenient as all hell for the Umiak; the Umiak always know what they're going up against and how to act accordingly, and the Loroi never do.

Winter Tide will be just as dead if the Umiak kill her later or if the Loroi scuttle her as she'd be if the Umiak killed her now. However, if the Umiak kill her now, they lose the advantage of time given by forcing the Loroi to deal with having a crippled ship. Furthermore, the number of shots they can fire is a limited quantity here, they aren't going to be in range forever, so they have to make each hit provide the most benefit possible to the battle as a whole. So, if the Umiak believe that after this attack run the Loroi will just up and leave the Winter Tide, then the Umiak would naturally prioritize shooting ships that they can't just come around and shoot later at their own convenience; wouldn't want to waste the opportunity. If I were under that impression I'd shoot other weak and smallish ships like other Rapiers, the Warhammers, and some of the Scimitars. If the Umiak believe that the Loroi will hobble away, slowed by a crippled Winter Tide, then they should prioritize shooting at the ships with the greatest long-range offensive weaponry here, like the Tempest, the Black Razor, the Tsunami and everyone else with Pulse Cannons, so that they'll lose fewer ships at long range, making their next run more effective overall. If the Umiak believe that the Loroi will evacuate the Winter Tide, then they might prioritize targets based on how close they are to the Winter Tide and perhaps use their point defenses to wipe out any shuttles they can (rather than targeting the interceptors) in order to make the evacuation take as long as possible so they have more time to set up a second attack run.

If the Loroi can repair the Winter Tide in the field, then those repairs will presumably require some time. Possibly even more time than an evacuation, but the advantage here is that if those repairs can be conducted internally then the fleet can run at half-thrust while she's being repaired, whereas you'd be limited to less than 1/3 thrust while evacuating Winter Tide by shuttle. This means that even if Winter Tide can be patched up enough to get moving again, the time taken to patch her up would be time bought for the Umiak to make another attack run, time which they otherwise would not get.

There are circumstances under which I believe the outright destruction of the Winter Tide becomes a high enough priority to warrant using valuable shots on her. Such circumstances are:
--The Umiak have no intention of making another attack run. Unwilling or unable, doesn't matter.
--The Umiak intend to make another attack run, but don't believe that they'll get within Plasma Focus of the Loroi. So they need their next torpedo launch to do the job for them, so they have to take out as much point defense as they can right now.
--There are other crippled ships in the Loroi fleet right now, with even less offensive capability.
--This attack was actually never about defeating the 51st, its true purpose is merely to probe, to find out what the Loroi are doing and assess the situation accordingly.
--This attack was actually never about defeating the 51st, its true purpose is to drive them away from the strange alien wreckage they're probing, so crippling Winter Tide and forcing the Loroi to stay relatively stationary is thus counterproductive but destroying her outright is beneficial.
(If Stillstorm believes that last option, things could go badly for Alex, since it could be taken to indicate that the situation was engineered by the Umiak, especially if the ship that he's on never takes any hits despite being a target that ought to be a priority target.)

There are probably many other possibilities that I have overlooked here.
I'm no galactically renowned space captain or anything, but by my reckoning, hits to pretty much everyone who isn't Winter Tide should be prioritized, and the attacks on Winter Tide were already a fantastic success which may have been of more benefit to the Umiak than her outright destruction would've been.

There are a number of Umiak beams shown in-frame with the Winter Tide, which would tend to indicate that those were shots fired at Winter Tide that narrowly missed, and Arclight confirmed that the Umiak appear to be moving against Winter Tide specifically. But that could mean any number of things. It could be that the Umiak were targeting someone else entirely and it just looks like those shots were meant for Winter Tide, since there's far more beams in that volley than seems necessary to take Winter Tide out. It could be that the Umiak actually intentionally missed the Winter Tide, in order to provoke her comrades to rush to her aid, thus making them an easier target, though I kinda doubt that, since it would require the Umiak to understand their enemies' psychological weaknesses and play on them, which would tend to require experience with said enemy and I doubt that most Umiak commanders last across the multiple engagements required to develop accurate notions of Loroi psychology.

I'll agree that the Umiak firing on Winter Tide, forming up specifically against Winter Tide, and that Arclight's statement that Winter Tide is "the target" all very strongly indicate that Winter Tide is doomed. What's worse, the manner of the Bellarmine's destruction indicates that whoever killed the Bell isn't the type to be satisfied with a merely defeated or crippled opponent, but rather feels some need for total destruction even when it's not necessarily the most beneficial course of action to take, so if the Umiak kill Winter Tide it'll be yet more evidence that they shot the Bell (thereby making the last-minute revelation that it was really the Barsam all along all the more shocking). So you're probably right, Winter Tide probably is going to explode soon, but I feel that there's still enough room for reasonable doubt, and to call Ashrain's ordinance her only hope seems a bit hasty.

[Aygar]

I get the impression, from nothing but the shape of the weapons themselves, that they will split open and launch a bunch of sub-munitions once they're closer to their target area.

Further clue comes from the Trade language dictionary, which defines 'tolot' as 'an agile aerial Deinar predator that attacks in large flocks'.

--Aygar

[CptWinters]

I'll agree that the Umiak firing on Winter Tide, forming up specifically against Winter Tide, and that Arclight's statement that Winter Tide is "the target" all very strongly indicate that Winter Tide is doomed. What's worse, the manner of the Bellarmine's destruction indicates that whoever killed the Bell isn't the type to be satisfied with a merely defeated or crippled opponent, but rather feels some need for total destruction even when it's not necessarily the most beneficial course of action to take, so if the Umiak kill Winter Tide it'll be yet more evidence that they shot the Bell (thereby making the last-minute revelation that it was really the Barsam all along all the more shocking). So you're probably right, Winter Tide probably is going to explode soon, but I feel that there's still enough room for reasonable doubt, and to call Ashrain's ordinance her only hope seems a bit hasty.

So you're saying she's almost certainly dead... What then is her only other hope? Someone has to do something, or she'll die. If it isn't Ashrain's "Tolot Blisters," then what is it?

[Solemn]

I'll agree that the Umiak firing on Winter Tide, forming up specifically against Winter Tide, and that Arclight's statement that Winter Tide is "the target" all very strongly indicate that Winter Tide is doomed. What's worse, the manner of the Bellarmine's destruction indicates that whoever killed the Bell isn't the type to be satisfied with a merely defeated or crippled opponent, but rather feels some need for total destruction even when it's not necessarily the most beneficial course of action to take, so if the Umiak kill Winter Tide it'll be yet more evidence that they shot the Bell (thereby making the last-minute revelation that it was really the Barsam all along all the more shocking). So you're probably right, Winter Tide probably is going to explode soon, but I feel that there's still enough room for reasonable doubt, and to call Ashrain's ordinance her only hope seems a bit hasty.

So you're saying she's almost certainly dead... What then is her only other hope? Someone has to do something, or she'll die. If it isn't Ashrain's "Tolot Blisters," then what is it?

The slim chance of the Umiak having no intention of killing her. The chance that Ashrain breaking formation will draw all their fire, by virtue of offering a much more valuable target. The chance that the Umiak shots fired have only been aimed at her because she's been the only ship in that weapons' range, and that they'll be within range of other, higher priority targets before they hit her, since she's managed to dodge a whole lot of them so far. And the chance that some factor I'm unaware of could come into play.
None of these are terribly likely to save her, but I think they're as likely to save her as the missiles.

[Count Casimir]

"Save the Soroin Torret, save the galaxy."

[osmium]

Just to note, while it might not be the best source to draw inspiration from due to the fudge-y nature of having to constrain such a complicated reality into the damage system from attack vector, according to the attack vector simulator / game thing Arioch whipped up if they *don't* keep those point defense lasers occupied and they close too close to the wintertide they can be formidable weapons in close. They do like 1/5 the damage of an Mk4 at close range, so you can really stack the damage if they get in close. By my rough calculation in my crazy excel the Loroi ship are actually better in close than Umiak vessels, but only at point blank range without having to use point defense lasers to shoot down torpedoes (which I will repost again at some point if only because I'm still hosting it and people might find it interesting and it isn't linked to in this forum)

Given how damaging / offensive combat generally (i.e. ships just can't sit around and take hits) is I don't think the Umiak can afford to leave a weapons platform up and running especially considering how much easier it is to hit a limping target (Even moreso because loroi rely heavily on their mobility for defense... a shot that misses does no damage) the utility of that kill shot is much greater than a shot with a much smaller percent chance of damaging a different ship.

-O