Tactical Discussion – Combating the new Unknowns

[Xavier]

Recently, we encountered a new, unknown enemy species. They are being regarded as being enemies due to their hostile actions. Despite all attempts to communicate and avoiding conflict, it seemed the unknown vessels have only hostile intentions towards the TSN and therefore pose a credible threat that needs combating.

I am opening this discussion to gather suggestions on how to handle this threat the next time we come into contact with this enemy.

A recent intelligence reports compiled by officers in our intelligence department gives some indications of the enemy’s capabilities. Below is a summary of the key points from that report:

1. multiple vessels can link to increase overall firepower;
2. vessels have been sighted exiting singularities;
3. they are able to “capture” TSN ships in some kind of force field;
4. individual vessels have wide firing arcs with a high rate of fire and are heavily shielded;
5. individual or linked, all vessels are very manoeuvrable.

At this moment in time, we have no real strategy to combat this threat. We must consider therefore how to deploy our ships against them to effectively neutralise the enemy during the next combat situation.

[Verok]

On the Hydra, we were pursuing one of the new ships while it was chasing another TSN ship. We actually struggled to keep up with it and were having to use frequent bursts of warp drive to keep up. I ordered the weapons officer to go manual and attempt to disable the enemy’s engines (maneuvering). Once hit, the ship quickly came to a halt and we were able to concentrate fire to take down their shields.

Typically, we target enemy weapons, but if you can establish a 2-ship combat situation where one ship acts as bait while the other can target engines, we found that it worked quite well.

If this tactic is to be used, then I would definitely recommend the pursing ship have the stronger weapons of the two, in order to take the ship down quickly.

I suspect that a scout ship would act as an excellent lead ship in that scenario, given that they have slightly faster engines. The Hydra took out the enemy engines with a couple of hits, and then once it stopped, we finished it off very quickly.

This tactic really should work quite well in any situation where the enemy ship has faster maneuvering/engine capabilities than a TSN ship. If this tactic works consistently, we might even want to give it a fleet combat maneuver designation.

[Author]

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