Kai
Retired Staff
A big thanks to Doshii for putting up with me and playing the awesome starfighter pilot.
A scimitar starfighter finds itself in a medium-density asteroid field; generally it has about 100 miles between each of the 400 or so mile-long rocks. Sensors detect four energy signatures, each behind a different rock. one of the largest signatures lights up, revealing a Mindy in Shrike anti-armor set up. it takes two shots with its gauss cannons then charges!
The pilot of the fighter jammed her engines to full throttle and took a nosedive, trying to dodge the two cannon shots launched at her. Since her shields were so thin, she relied on speed first, and thought about how the Shrike protected itself. She went to the railgun first, with her lasers linked to fire all four at once.
Not expecting a fighter to move so fast, the Mindy's railgun rounds missed high, and the pilot dove her armor to follow , finding herself in the sight of the fighter's own railgun, and a hail of heavy laser fire. The miscalculation on the Mindy's part ended her life very quickly, as the railgun round pierced her shields followed by the laser rounds turning her armor to slag.
The pilot jigged her fighter up toward one of the other asteroids. She fired a railgun round at it, just to see how far it would get, as she kept the fighter flying at about 70 percent throttle. She wanted to be ready to dodge if she had to.
the round impacted on the asteroid, blowing a decent sized, but small crater into it, and starting a few cracks, but the asteroid simply changed direction in response to the hit. The Enemy behind it, however, was none too happy, and used its PPG to push itself from the rock, revealing it to be a Hostile Powered armor. It released a cloud of BOLT antimatter missiles and fired a few rounds from its HPAR before PPGing back to the protection of the rock it was using as cover.
The fighter jammed its engines as it dove again, taking a couple of the HPAR rounds before it then circled sharply upward toward the armor's bottom, not giving the armor the satisfaction of its cover. Her fire-linked laser cannons went off again several times as she added her own stream of autocannon fire, burning through at least 40 rounds to try and get it moving, if not outright kill it.
The BOLT missiles followed the fighter in its dive, many hitting the asteroid itself, the survivors flying uselessly off into space as the fighter suddenly 'climbed'. The residual explosions and clouds of particles obscured the fighter pilot's vision enough that the Hostile was able to pull itself out of the way, but it still took several hits to its shields, losing those completely from the power of the fighter's weapons. The fighter was met with a large volume of HPAR fire as the Hostile began to fight back.
The fighter peeled away as the fire came on, likely taking more damage it couldn't easily sustain. She could not let the enemy go, however, and twisted back around to lace more autocannon fire at the armor. All the shields she had left she threw forward and leveled all the weapons she had.
The fighter's fire proved ineffective, as the powered armor had moved, but the turbulence of its projectiles had started to clear the clouds of dust in time for the pilot to watch her shields get ripped to shreds by the sustained fire. a couple of shots impacted with the transparent armor of her cockpit, making large smudges and raising the inside temperature a bit. the sensor pod was ripped off, cutting the fighter's range down by about three quarters. still plenty for the current battle, but more detailed scans would probably be difficult. Noting the fighter was currently shieldless, the Hostile pushed off of the rock and came hurtling towards its enemy, an LSP firing wildly (and rather uselessly) as the Vibrosaw knife was brought out, presumably to attempt to tear open the cockpit.
The pilot cursed at the loss of her shields, and saw the enemy coming at her with the LSP and knife. It was now or never. The pilot quickly rezeroed her laser cannons and let out a volley, with a single railgun shot squarely targeted on the armor's chest.
The rapidly approaching target soaked up the laser fire, nearly all of its armor ablating and being taken down to practically nothing, but curiously, the Railgun round did not kill it, merely having the same effect as it had had on the asteroid, knocking it off in another direction. The armor was, however, finished, its joints fused and all weapons destroyed. the Nepleslian pilot swore profusely and loudly over the radio, spouting something about the fighter pilot's mother, before hitting an asteroid and beginning to curse at that instead. The third signature decided to light up at this point, but, being farther away, didn't immediately attack, instead taking its time getting a shot lined up with the Fighter.
The pilot threw the engines out of combat mode, going for pure travel, and set the throttle to maximum, 0.35c. She hoped that would be enough as she started flying as far away from the battlefield as she could to charge her weapons, engaging in plenty of small movements to keep a lock off of her backside. She had somehow lost more than just the boost to her sensors, but most of their capability, and she had no shields. Her armor was practically paper thin, as was the cockpit, and she was not going to take any chances attacking an unidentifiable enemy without any protection.
The tactic payed off, and the enemy did not pursue, being more cautious than the previous two. The Starfighter's navigational shielding turned on, as if it had noticed the pilot's nervousness. The shield readouts simply read "Overloaded: recharging", but the Destiny system would give more detail if the pilot wished. The Lasers soon read full charge, and her other weapons stated their ammo counts. the Pilot could either wait for the shields to recharge, giving the enemy time to prepare, or she could charge in with what she had now and attempt to take the armor off guard with her heavier, longer-ranged weapons.
The pilot spun around, but reduced her throttle back to combat speeds. Using the Destiny AI, she calculated a shot that would take advantage of what she did best. Space did not give her any environmental concerns, so she targeted with her railgun and fired off a trio of rounds, one each second. The hope: Make the armor dodge and try and snap-snipe it with her laser cannons.
The tactic would have worked if it were not for the enemy pilot, the armor, which would by now be identified as a Daisy Spacy, hid behind the rock it was using as cover. The railgun rounds simply impacted on the rock, pushing it back at a low speed that was of no trouble to the armor pilot. "Come and get me." a cocky male voice sounded of the radio, the Yamataian pilot was obviously taunting the fighter.
The pilot cursed the fact her craft had no weapons that could do wide area damage. But she was now faced with an enemy she could be familiar with. That helped; she knew the autocannon would be very useless, and the railgun would also not do quite enough damage. Laser cannons were her best bet. "Why? I would prefer to pursue the fourth enemy together."
"Oh, and why do you propose this course of action? you just killed one of my compatriots and destroyed our ally's armor. should I just trust that you would rather not take me as soon as my back is turned?" The Daisy pilot asked, but, after a moment of mulling it over, he appeared from behind the asteroid, shields and weapons powered, but clearly in a defensive posture. He knew he didn't have the range to hit the fighter from his position. "I'd prefer to go unpaid than die any day."
"I am sure some kind of compensation can be reached," the pilot replied with a small smile. The parameters of the scenario were no longer clear, but she pushed her engines to 0.05c while she inquired about her shields.
The Daisy pilot powered down his weapons and sat on his Asteroid, keeping his shields up in case the fourth combatant decided he was not worth keeping alive anymore. The Destiny AI reported that the Fighter's shields were at 45%, and needed to reach 50% before they would return to operational status, as any less would be a waste of power. and, just in time, the fourth signature powered up, and a WHITE AOP shell came racing from an asteroid about 200 miles away, aimed at the currently weakened starfighter.
The pilot saw the shell on her HUD and rolled to the side, and she replied with a single volley of laser cannon fire, to see how her enemy would react.
The enemy replied by firing two more shells, a BLUE followed by a RED, as the Daisy pilot reacted by using his forearm weapons to take out he WHITE shell that had begun circling about to get another crack at the fighter. As if on cue, the Destiny AI notified that the shields had reached a serviceable charge and turned back on, continuing to charge up as they were. Something told the fighter pilot that this last enemy had the range to not be useless against her.
The pilot pushed her engines to 0.35c again to get back into the fray, but dumped all of her spare laser cannon energy into her shields, trying to bulk them up. She tried to fly head on into the rounds fired at her, then twitch the fighter to get out of the way just at the last second, and reply with railgun fire, if only to show she had fight in her.
The pilot's efforts managed to save the fighter, as the sudden boost to the shields was just enough to keep the BLUE round from completely taking them out, leaving just enough to absorb the RED round's near miss. with almost nothing left, the Navigational shields shut off to help try and bring the defensive ones back on. The railgun fire didn't hit the enemy, but managed to provoke it into launching from its asteroid, the hulking shape emerging from the billowing dust clouds quickly identified as an Aggressor PA, which began to fire at the fighter with its cahingun, must of the rounds going wild at this range but a few starting to ping off armor plating on the wings and fuselage.
Seeing she would get no help from the Spacy Daisy, the pilot narrowed her eyes at her target's description as she swung away from the fire. Her laser cannons could hurt the enemy with several hits, but the railgun was not up to the task. The autocannon was pointless, and she detached it from its hardpoint after she was sure no plasma rounds were near her. She dipped below the armor's point-of-view, essentially using its asteroid for her own cover as she scrambled for options. She would not be able to escape it, that much was for sure. It had three rounds left in its main gun. And plenty of other weapons. She tried to avoid him for now.
Since the armor was lumberingly slow compared to the fighter, it hunkered down on the other side of the asteroid, and launched all of its BOLT armors at the signature that the star fighter gave off, and they all made their merry way around towards the fighter, starting a hail of detonations behind the fighter as they encountered its thruster wash. still, this had an effect as the rapidly growing cloud of explosions both hit the asteroid and caught up with the fighter. the main thruster started showing signs of damage, and chunks of rock flew from the asteroid, impinging upon the fighter's body, and causing a loud ruckus.
The pilot knew she only had the one shot with her thruster taking damage, and she struggled for control as she made the tight curl around the asteroid to get at the fighter's back or front, whichever she came across when she would meet it, almost face-to-face. The moment she did, she would fire her laser cannons at as tight a zero as they could be set, with luck surprising him by being so close.
the explosions seemed to have been enough to convince the Aggressor pilot that the fighter had been destroyed, but he was terribly mistaken as the fighter suddenly showed up behind him, firing its lasers. the sudden ablation of its rear armor as well as hits taken to the upper sections of armor knocked the thing to the surface of the asteroid, destroying the AOP and knocking the chain gun out of its hand. the pilot had precious few seconds while the Aggressor tried to right itself to react.
The pilot shunted all power from her engines and left herself with only navigational control as she jammed the fighter to a hard stop above the Aggressor. She then unloaded on its back, head, any part of it she could see, firing with her laser cannons and her rail gun.
the pilot was able to make the hits, but the Aggressor's pilot had decided to flip around and expose its heavier frontal armor, the sloped plates causing the kinetic dart rail gun rounds to bound off and create a cloud of dust around the armor. The fighter's lasers fared a little better, boiling off a couple layers of plating, including its heavy shoulder shield, but the armor was capable of firing its PLA's at the fighter from this position, in an attempt to ward it off. The pulse lasers raked across the fighter's lighter armor, scoring lines all over its surfaces and carbonizing a few zigzags across the pilot's field of vision.
The pilot had little choice. Her engines were without power, all of it pushed into navigational control or her laser cannons. She kept firing, trying to hit its head, as she shoved the fighter in a sharp drift away and to the right of the armor. She kept firing her rail gun, as well, knowing it was all she could do to damage it.
The laser fire managed to almost do it, she fused the armor's joints, and finally melted the PLA's off, but just couldn't kill it. instead, it fired its thrusters one last time and rocketed at the fighter, using itself as a missile. The impact was just enough to deform the entire cockpit and hull section, popping the canopy off and completely venting the fighter's atmosphere. The pilot wasn't immediately dead, but it didn't look to good for her either. The fused aggressor continued to jet forward until its engines died, and it drifted off towards its partner, the fused Hostile.
A scimitar starfighter finds itself in a medium-density asteroid field; generally it has about 100 miles between each of the 400 or so mile-long rocks. Sensors detect four energy signatures, each behind a different rock. one of the largest signatures lights up, revealing a Mindy in Shrike anti-armor set up. it takes two shots with its gauss cannons then charges!
The pilot of the fighter jammed her engines to full throttle and took a nosedive, trying to dodge the two cannon shots launched at her. Since her shields were so thin, she relied on speed first, and thought about how the Shrike protected itself. She went to the railgun first, with her lasers linked to fire all four at once.
Not expecting a fighter to move so fast, the Mindy's railgun rounds missed high, and the pilot dove her armor to follow , finding herself in the sight of the fighter's own railgun, and a hail of heavy laser fire. The miscalculation on the Mindy's part ended her life very quickly, as the railgun round pierced her shields followed by the laser rounds turning her armor to slag.
The pilot jigged her fighter up toward one of the other asteroids. She fired a railgun round at it, just to see how far it would get, as she kept the fighter flying at about 70 percent throttle. She wanted to be ready to dodge if she had to.
the round impacted on the asteroid, blowing a decent sized, but small crater into it, and starting a few cracks, but the asteroid simply changed direction in response to the hit. The Enemy behind it, however, was none too happy, and used its PPG to push itself from the rock, revealing it to be a Hostile Powered armor. It released a cloud of BOLT antimatter missiles and fired a few rounds from its HPAR before PPGing back to the protection of the rock it was using as cover.
The fighter jammed its engines as it dove again, taking a couple of the HPAR rounds before it then circled sharply upward toward the armor's bottom, not giving the armor the satisfaction of its cover. Her fire-linked laser cannons went off again several times as she added her own stream of autocannon fire, burning through at least 40 rounds to try and get it moving, if not outright kill it.
The BOLT missiles followed the fighter in its dive, many hitting the asteroid itself, the survivors flying uselessly off into space as the fighter suddenly 'climbed'. The residual explosions and clouds of particles obscured the fighter pilot's vision enough that the Hostile was able to pull itself out of the way, but it still took several hits to its shields, losing those completely from the power of the fighter's weapons. The fighter was met with a large volume of HPAR fire as the Hostile began to fight back.
The fighter peeled away as the fire came on, likely taking more damage it couldn't easily sustain. She could not let the enemy go, however, and twisted back around to lace more autocannon fire at the armor. All the shields she had left she threw forward and leveled all the weapons she had.
The fighter's fire proved ineffective, as the powered armor had moved, but the turbulence of its projectiles had started to clear the clouds of dust in time for the pilot to watch her shields get ripped to shreds by the sustained fire. a couple of shots impacted with the transparent armor of her cockpit, making large smudges and raising the inside temperature a bit. the sensor pod was ripped off, cutting the fighter's range down by about three quarters. still plenty for the current battle, but more detailed scans would probably be difficult. Noting the fighter was currently shieldless, the Hostile pushed off of the rock and came hurtling towards its enemy, an LSP firing wildly (and rather uselessly) as the Vibrosaw knife was brought out, presumably to attempt to tear open the cockpit.
The pilot cursed at the loss of her shields, and saw the enemy coming at her with the LSP and knife. It was now or never. The pilot quickly rezeroed her laser cannons and let out a volley, with a single railgun shot squarely targeted on the armor's chest.
The rapidly approaching target soaked up the laser fire, nearly all of its armor ablating and being taken down to practically nothing, but curiously, the Railgun round did not kill it, merely having the same effect as it had had on the asteroid, knocking it off in another direction. The armor was, however, finished, its joints fused and all weapons destroyed. the Nepleslian pilot swore profusely and loudly over the radio, spouting something about the fighter pilot's mother, before hitting an asteroid and beginning to curse at that instead. The third signature decided to light up at this point, but, being farther away, didn't immediately attack, instead taking its time getting a shot lined up with the Fighter.
The pilot threw the engines out of combat mode, going for pure travel, and set the throttle to maximum, 0.35c. She hoped that would be enough as she started flying as far away from the battlefield as she could to charge her weapons, engaging in plenty of small movements to keep a lock off of her backside. She had somehow lost more than just the boost to her sensors, but most of their capability, and she had no shields. Her armor was practically paper thin, as was the cockpit, and she was not going to take any chances attacking an unidentifiable enemy without any protection.
The tactic payed off, and the enemy did not pursue, being more cautious than the previous two. The Starfighter's navigational shielding turned on, as if it had noticed the pilot's nervousness. The shield readouts simply read "Overloaded: recharging", but the Destiny system would give more detail if the pilot wished. The Lasers soon read full charge, and her other weapons stated their ammo counts. the Pilot could either wait for the shields to recharge, giving the enemy time to prepare, or she could charge in with what she had now and attempt to take the armor off guard with her heavier, longer-ranged weapons.
The pilot spun around, but reduced her throttle back to combat speeds. Using the Destiny AI, she calculated a shot that would take advantage of what she did best. Space did not give her any environmental concerns, so she targeted with her railgun and fired off a trio of rounds, one each second. The hope: Make the armor dodge and try and snap-snipe it with her laser cannons.
The tactic would have worked if it were not for the enemy pilot, the armor, which would by now be identified as a Daisy Spacy, hid behind the rock it was using as cover. The railgun rounds simply impacted on the rock, pushing it back at a low speed that was of no trouble to the armor pilot. "Come and get me." a cocky male voice sounded of the radio, the Yamataian pilot was obviously taunting the fighter.
The pilot cursed the fact her craft had no weapons that could do wide area damage. But she was now faced with an enemy she could be familiar with. That helped; she knew the autocannon would be very useless, and the railgun would also not do quite enough damage. Laser cannons were her best bet. "Why? I would prefer to pursue the fourth enemy together."
"Oh, and why do you propose this course of action? you just killed one of my compatriots and destroyed our ally's armor. should I just trust that you would rather not take me as soon as my back is turned?" The Daisy pilot asked, but, after a moment of mulling it over, he appeared from behind the asteroid, shields and weapons powered, but clearly in a defensive posture. He knew he didn't have the range to hit the fighter from his position. "I'd prefer to go unpaid than die any day."
"I am sure some kind of compensation can be reached," the pilot replied with a small smile. The parameters of the scenario were no longer clear, but she pushed her engines to 0.05c while she inquired about her shields.
The Daisy pilot powered down his weapons and sat on his Asteroid, keeping his shields up in case the fourth combatant decided he was not worth keeping alive anymore. The Destiny AI reported that the Fighter's shields were at 45%, and needed to reach 50% before they would return to operational status, as any less would be a waste of power. and, just in time, the fourth signature powered up, and a WHITE AOP shell came racing from an asteroid about 200 miles away, aimed at the currently weakened starfighter.
The pilot saw the shell on her HUD and rolled to the side, and she replied with a single volley of laser cannon fire, to see how her enemy would react.
The enemy replied by firing two more shells, a BLUE followed by a RED, as the Daisy pilot reacted by using his forearm weapons to take out he WHITE shell that had begun circling about to get another crack at the fighter. As if on cue, the Destiny AI notified that the shields had reached a serviceable charge and turned back on, continuing to charge up as they were. Something told the fighter pilot that this last enemy had the range to not be useless against her.
The pilot pushed her engines to 0.35c again to get back into the fray, but dumped all of her spare laser cannon energy into her shields, trying to bulk them up. She tried to fly head on into the rounds fired at her, then twitch the fighter to get out of the way just at the last second, and reply with railgun fire, if only to show she had fight in her.
The pilot's efforts managed to save the fighter, as the sudden boost to the shields was just enough to keep the BLUE round from completely taking them out, leaving just enough to absorb the RED round's near miss. with almost nothing left, the Navigational shields shut off to help try and bring the defensive ones back on. The railgun fire didn't hit the enemy, but managed to provoke it into launching from its asteroid, the hulking shape emerging from the billowing dust clouds quickly identified as an Aggressor PA, which began to fire at the fighter with its cahingun, must of the rounds going wild at this range but a few starting to ping off armor plating on the wings and fuselage.
Seeing she would get no help from the Spacy Daisy, the pilot narrowed her eyes at her target's description as she swung away from the fire. Her laser cannons could hurt the enemy with several hits, but the railgun was not up to the task. The autocannon was pointless, and she detached it from its hardpoint after she was sure no plasma rounds were near her. She dipped below the armor's point-of-view, essentially using its asteroid for her own cover as she scrambled for options. She would not be able to escape it, that much was for sure. It had three rounds left in its main gun. And plenty of other weapons. She tried to avoid him for now.
Since the armor was lumberingly slow compared to the fighter, it hunkered down on the other side of the asteroid, and launched all of its BOLT armors at the signature that the star fighter gave off, and they all made their merry way around towards the fighter, starting a hail of detonations behind the fighter as they encountered its thruster wash. still, this had an effect as the rapidly growing cloud of explosions both hit the asteroid and caught up with the fighter. the main thruster started showing signs of damage, and chunks of rock flew from the asteroid, impinging upon the fighter's body, and causing a loud ruckus.
The pilot knew she only had the one shot with her thruster taking damage, and she struggled for control as she made the tight curl around the asteroid to get at the fighter's back or front, whichever she came across when she would meet it, almost face-to-face. The moment she did, she would fire her laser cannons at as tight a zero as they could be set, with luck surprising him by being so close.
the explosions seemed to have been enough to convince the Aggressor pilot that the fighter had been destroyed, but he was terribly mistaken as the fighter suddenly showed up behind him, firing its lasers. the sudden ablation of its rear armor as well as hits taken to the upper sections of armor knocked the thing to the surface of the asteroid, destroying the AOP and knocking the chain gun out of its hand. the pilot had precious few seconds while the Aggressor tried to right itself to react.
The pilot shunted all power from her engines and left herself with only navigational control as she jammed the fighter to a hard stop above the Aggressor. She then unloaded on its back, head, any part of it she could see, firing with her laser cannons and her rail gun.
the pilot was able to make the hits, but the Aggressor's pilot had decided to flip around and expose its heavier frontal armor, the sloped plates causing the kinetic dart rail gun rounds to bound off and create a cloud of dust around the armor. The fighter's lasers fared a little better, boiling off a couple layers of plating, including its heavy shoulder shield, but the armor was capable of firing its PLA's at the fighter from this position, in an attempt to ward it off. The pulse lasers raked across the fighter's lighter armor, scoring lines all over its surfaces and carbonizing a few zigzags across the pilot's field of vision.
The pilot had little choice. Her engines were without power, all of it pushed into navigational control or her laser cannons. She kept firing, trying to hit its head, as she shoved the fighter in a sharp drift away and to the right of the armor. She kept firing her rail gun, as well, knowing it was all she could do to damage it.
The laser fire managed to almost do it, she fused the armor's joints, and finally melted the PLA's off, but just couldn't kill it. instead, it fired its thrusters one last time and rocketed at the fighter, using itself as a missile. The impact was just enough to deform the entire cockpit and hull section, popping the canopy off and completely venting the fighter's atmosphere. The pilot wasn't immediately dead, but it didn't look to good for her either. The fused aggressor continued to jet forward until its engines died, and it drifted off towards its partner, the fused Hostile.
