I believed I've arrived quite late at the battle... I actually spent a lot of time, after being assigned to the mission at Titequ Sector Command in G2, experimenting with alternate pylon loadouts, validating an interesting money-making alternative (see THIS POST), and scratching my head after the buggy results of my homemade alternate version of Captured Thargons (that's another story entirely, still in the making...
). Equipment changes while docked usually take a LOT of game-time, as any one who keeps an eye on the ever-updating onboard clock will notice.I was assigned to a Thargoid fight at Anenat, which is 4 jumps away from SecCom. While enroute I delayed myself still more with whatever interesting stuff - trading opportunities, mostly, and probably the occasional pirates.
So I docked at Cemabe, in order to do my last pre-battle save game. I switched my full 170-ton load (composed of assorted goodies, bought somewhere, to be sold somewhere else where prices are high enough...) to the HyperCargo system. I know, HC breaks up now and then, but my ship is a Dark Rainbow (which is sort of a Caduceus++), and usually the DCN takes care of most repairs in-flight (and a repaired HC comes back to life with its full previous loadout intact). Using HC leaves the standard hold all empty and naked and ready to accomodate the expected battle spoils.
I'm writing this battle report while peeking at a file comparison between the Cemabe save and the post-battle Anenat save (hint: WinMerge is a GREAT tool!). As I had already departed from Titequ SecCom with the full battle ordnance (wouldn't miss the 75% discount!!) and seemingly not used any of it, it's a valid comparison point.
So, anyway I emerged at Cemabe's witchpoint and didn't see a soul around... battle over for this delayed Commander, maybe ?? Not exactly sure how I managed to do it, but I somehow ended up arriving in the middle of THIS WTF MESS.
As you can see from the screenshot above, I had already suffered [quite] a few shots - both shields are at their bare minimum (ShieldEqualizer saving my bones once more). The 5 empty pylons are from the released Captured Thargons (I mean the 'official' version, for the moment being
), and 3 Anti-Thargoid Drones, which are probably the white dots approaching from 1.5 o'clock. In this battle at least, the CT's and the Drones acted seemingly just like diversionary stuff, to draw fire away... none of them scored a single kill (at least I didn't notice any). The 5th (and last) empty pylon is the one I always keep empty - this way it's easier to check alternative pylon loadouts when docked.While some battle time had actually already lapsed before I took the screenshot, I had been mostly a sitting duck up to that moment, being fired at and releasing my 'diversions'... so that I can safely use that clock value to mark my 'actual' battlestart moment. It was 22:53:41.
I counted 15 Navy ships at this shot-moment.
At 23:04:45 I took THIS BATTLE-CLOSURE SHOT. I can see just ONE navy ship standing (that's the Behemoth probably)... and so eleven minutes, four seconds of game time had elapsed.
Interestingly enough, at some time halfway during battle I received the Navy call - "Battle is over, reserve pilots may now leave the system". Well it wasn't certainly over for me... I hadn't gone there just to be shot at and leave all the spoils behind. I guess the game was trying to reward the player for doing 'some' work for the Navy...
So, battle was over for real now. Time to start the dull after-battle mopping work
. I certainly wouldn't have cargo space to scoop all of these Thargon corpses... so what I did, bearing in mind the usual 85Cr purchasing price of AlienItems at SecComs, was to shoot all of the 114-119Cr (higher-bounty) Thargons, and scoop all of the 50Cr ones for later profit.At mid-scooping I had to also shoot a pesky Offender stealing my spoils
... got back 3 Thargons to scoop (interestingly enough, they were now worth 5 and 11.9Crs only).I took quite some damage during the battle... IIRC, the Memory Expansion, the CargoPod, Military Shields and Extra Energy Unit. HyperCargo remained intact, and while I took care of the boring scooping, DCN was already busy fixing stuff. Iron Hide (with Military Upgrade) remained 100% dead though (DCN won't touch it). Will have to buy a brand-new one later.
I interrupted my scooping again, for a number of times, to attend to a number of escape pods... I managed to rescue 2 Lieutenants and 1 Captain, for a bit more of a reward.
I had also one very interesting moment - and a VERY RISKY one - while chasing a 4th escape pod which seemed to be hiding either behind or inside the PLANET. I finally found the elusive capsule, and managed to scoop it as it was actually orbiting inside the atmosphere. I forgot to take the most memorable snapshot 
- the exact instant, just before scooping the lucky fellow, with my altitude bar fully red and with less than 2 mm left 
. I wouldn't do this EVER again... I risked losing all the precious, still unsaved battle (and post-battle) results. And the orbiting fellow netted me a mere 250Cr 
. I'll be a bit more wise regarding atmospheric pods from now on. 
Mmmm... I didn't say much yet about the battle itself. From the comms log I recall learning about 6-7 Invaders, 3-4 Battleships, 3-4 Cruisers (not all of them killed by myself). But I think I've finished off 4 or 5 of these personally (probably being a bit conservative here, lest anybody complains I'm undeservedly bragging).
The pylon loadout is missing from the 2nd screenshot - so I'm comparing the pre- and post-battle save files to see what I did actually use.
Number of missiles fired: NONE !!! I found this amazing... (read on).
The Dark Rainbow has 10 turrets - the original 8 from the Caduceus, with the same power but with increased fire rate and accuracy, plus one fore and one aft turret. In my previous (and first one) Thargoid battle for GalNavy, the stray fire from some turret was the probable culprit for the Navy turning back on me after the last Thargoid was done for
. This time the turrets were quite a bit nicer (to me...) - I'm totally clean after the battle, and I'm probably on my way to perfect a Cruiser-killing turret maneuver (which I describe below). Unless I got this wrong (will someone correct me pls ?), while Thargoids have a 360° fire span, this 360° works only over a single plane - the one plane where the ship is slimmer, which I believe is also its sole possible direction of flight. So if I'm right, and if I can actually pull this out while under fire from other ships, I'd be able to circle around a Thargoid ship (actually keeping 'underneath' it), while trying to always keep it positioned at either one of the 4 corners of my screen (that's where 5 of my turrets would be pounding it at a combined rate of around 15 bursts per second). At the same time, the target would be turning on its vertical axle, trying in vain - I hope - to bring his laser to bear on me. That's certainly an attempt to be done on next battle... so, is there any Commander out there with some experience on this ?
As a matter of fact I might need to call up the Thargoid commanders before the next battle and fully explain the maneuver to them, so that they can perform as expected. [sorry fellas, attempting to recycle an ancient Brazilian soccer joke here.]
Ok, back to battle statistics... 'ship_kills' went from 850 to 914. That's 64, which I estimate at being 4 'live' Thargoids, one poor Offender and 59 zombie Thargons. While 'shipCommodityData / Alien Items' went from 14 to 43 - that's 29 scooped Thargs. Sum total of 88 Thargons found remaining at end of battle and dealt with by myself in a quite bureaucratic fashion.
Now, if we consider there were 15 Navy ships at the start of battle, what would be a good estimate of the number of Thargons killed by the Navy? Well, Thargons are fast and hard to kill (in fact I didn't even bother to SEE one during the whole fight
) - I'm guesstimating 14 Thargon kills by the Navy. Comments on this estimate pls ?? So let's see now... 88 + 14 = 102 (Total of Thargons that participated on the battle). If we divide by 6 (considering it takes one Thargoid ship to release 6 Thargons), we arrive at 102 / 6 = 17 Thargoid ships... which sort of fits in with my coarse enemy count by the comms log. Let's not forget that I got late at the party and probably missed 2 or 3 Thargoid ships already dispatched by the Navy.
Another peek of the save files brings up some more interesting data:
. . . Increase in credits: +8752Cr. That includes 1250 for rescuing 4 pods, approximately 6844 for 59 Thargons averaging 116Cr each, and a remainder of 658 for all of the bigger Thargoid ships. I won't complain of course, but there's something wrong with my calculations somewhere as I distinctly remember finishing off one ship for 500Cr worth of bounty alone.
Never mind. . . . Captured Thargons: 5 released, 5 MIA
. . . Anti-Thargoid Drones: 3 released, 2 recovered, 1 MIA
. . . Fuel Tanks: 1 used, 2 remaining
. . . Heavy Railgun rounds fired: 43 (I find it just TOO cumbersome to hit anything that moves with the AFT laser...
I'm using a large one-piece HOTAS joystick, which just won't be easily turned 180° for backward firing, and besides I find it hard to actually SEE any moving targets behind me amidst my own thruster fumes). The railgun is a reasonable wait-for-laser-to-cool replacement, but I'll probably return to the Medium Railgun which has a faster rate of fire.. . . RealLife(tm) time (measured between both saves): oops, never mind (it's actually a bit more than 5 days
). But from memory, those 11 minutes translated into about 45 minutes of actual battle (lots of interruptions by cat & wife, a number of game pauses for breath plus tactic thoughts, and... I do prefer fighting with TAC=0.50 and =0.25, as with TAC=1 I can't even place a cargo pod inside the crosshairs). Plus 60+ minutes (both game- and real-life time) for the scooping boredom. Next time I'll try to actually REMEMBER to deploy the Cargo Shepherd together with the CT's and Drones... this might reduce the probability of MIA's in the end, and certainly ease-and-increase the loot scooping.
Well, I'm heading now for some bureaucratic stuff. Take note of what's in cargo hold, empty it into the docks, deactivate HyperCargo, sell what's worth here, reactivate HC, get 'my' original cargo back, buy what's cheap... pay a visit to the local Rock Hermit, repeat everything... and maybe head to Beveri to finish that Random Hits job which's been sitting on my todo list for ages.
Oh, erm, not really, wait...
first I have to pay a visit to some high-TL neighborhood so that I can more easily finish off that 'Captured Thargons V2' debugging. More bureaucratic stuff for sure... buy equipment, sell equipment, save, quit, check savegame file, edit file, lather, rinse, repeat. I guess that's the life of a restless, albeit lazy and slow, Oolite Commander and precarious hacker. 
Well that's it folks... hope you may actually find some of this interesting !
Cheers
(EDIT: fixed couple typos)
