With This Ring (Young Justice SI) (Thread Fourteen)

[Darko]

Paul also has a war to win and they're one barely above average cargo ship. Unless they're wearing rings themselves he has more important crap to do than fire a single barrage from a NEMO battleship

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Are you seriously not paying attention to the part where these guys have access to dangerous tech and are willing to give it to the Reach?

If they are allowed to keep doing this then the Reach will probably get more and more tech.

However, if Paul stops them then the Reach lose a recourse.

The war with the Reach may take decades.

Stopping the Free Lancers may take just a few days.

Why shouldn't Paul stop them when he may be the only one that can do it and stopping them helps them with the war?

 

[Ardy]

Are you seriously not paying attention to the part where these guys have access to dangerous tech and are willing to give it to the Reach?

If they are allowed to keep doing this then the Reach will probably get more and more tech.

However, if Paul stops them then the Reach lose a recourse.

The war with the Reach may take decades.

Stopping the Free Lancers may take just a few days.

Why shouldn't Paul stop them when he may be the only one that can do it and stopping them helps them with the war?

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Because the free lancers aren't building this tech, I have no clue where the hell they're getting it from but they're middlemen, or if we're lucky they stumbled upon some ancient tech trove and decided to sell it to the highest bidder. For all we know they've done literally everything they can because they've already sold off everything they've found, all they're doing now is mopping up whatever profit they have left to grab by duplicating the tech and selling it before the reach starts producing anti construct guns on their own

Don't ignore them or anything, but Paul can take on whole fleets by himself and unless he plans to greediport to them and end this in 10 seconds this doesn't require his skills

 

[Darko]

Because the free lancers aren't building this tech, I have no clue where the hell they're getting it from but they're middlemen, or if we're lucky they stumbled upon some ancient tech trove and decided to sell it to the highest bidder. For all we know they've done literally everything they can because they've already sold off everything they've found, all they're doing now is mopping up whatever profit they have left to grab by duplicating the tech and selling it before the reach starts producing anti construct guns on their own

Don't ignore them or anything, but Paul can take on whole fleets by himself and unless he plans to greediport them and end this in 10 seconds this doesn't require his skills

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Why would them being middlemen or just finding the tech but not building it matter?

They still have the tech and are selling it.

If Paul catches them then he can figure out where they're getting it from and stop it at the source.

If he doesn't then they're free to keep selling it to the Corps' enemies.

Or other people can find the place they're getting it from, or the one making it can use other people to sell it.

And why should Paul take a risk and think that they've sold all the tech they had?

The first time he met them they had a power ring in their possession.

The second time they came up he found out they have anti-Lantern tech.

Taking a chance and hoping that they have no more tech is stupid when so far it's been shown they have tech that can do serious damage to the OLC and GLC if it continues spreading.

And this may require his skills.

As I mentioned previously, Paul is extremely powerful and has a lot of experience with unusual tech.

The Free Lancers apparently managed to get away from Jordan, a skilled Lantern, so they have experience fighting Lanterns and thus any Lantern Paul sends to get them may not be able to do the job.

 

[Mr Zoat]

'built'
'blast through'
'the ships' or 'their ships'
maybe 'step out and'
'usual'
'shoulder'
'arm-mounted'

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Thank you, corrected.

Really hoping Paul didn't just attack a bunch of innocent people and that these people were somehow evil.

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Those were some of the other Reach-created fleets.

Their -> there

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Did you mean 'instructions' here? Because it's an odd choice otherwise.

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Thank you, corrected.

 

[Ardy]

Why would them being middlemen or just finding the tech but not building it matter?

They still have the tech and are selling it.

If Paul catches them then he can figure out where they're getting it from and stop it at the source.

If he doesn't then they're free to keep selling it to the Corps' enemies.

Or other people can find the place they're getting it from, or the one making it can use other people to sell it.

And why should Paul take a risk and think that they've sold all the tech they had?

The first time he met them they had a power ring in their possession.

The second time they came up he found out they have anti-Lantern tech.

Taking a chance and hoping that they have no more tech is stupid when so far it's been shown they have tech that can do serious damage to the OLC and GLC if it continues spreading.

And this may require his skills.

As I mentioned previously, Paul is extremely powerful and has a lot of experience with unusual tech.

The Free Lancers apparently managed to get away from Jordan, a skilled Lantern, so they have experience fighting Lanterns and thus any Lantern Paul sends to get them may not be able to do the job.

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as I said before you don't just ignore them, but Paul is not the only orange lantern in existence nor the only one who can track down a single cargo ship. Outside of greediport tracking please tell me exactly which of his skills they need to bring down the free lancers, especially when he has fleets to fight in a war where he is now the only lantern who can engage said fleets without fear of dealing with anti construct guns due to greediporting

 

[Assblaster5000]

Would anyone happen to know where that "Die for Sunset Shimmer" image is? I thought that I'd saved the URL somewhere, but I very clearly didn't and I'm rather fond of the image.

 

[Darko]

as I said before you don't just ignore them, but Paul is not the only orange lantern in existence nor the only one who can track down a single cargo ship. Outside of greediport tracking please tell me exactly which of his skills they need to bring down the free lancers, especially when he has fleets to fight in a war where he is now the only lantern who can engage said fleets without fear of dealing with anti construct guns due to greediporting

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I already told you what skills he has in my previous posts, you just didn't seem to read them.

Paul is perhaps the most skilled and experienced power ring user the OLC has, and he also has a plethora of powers that ordinary Lanterns don't have.

Due to his experience and power the Free Lancers would most likely be more easily defeated than if they were faced with an ordinary Lantern, thus ensuring they are captured and the Reach lose a resource for anti-Lantern weaponry.

Also because he has several unique abilities they may not be able to defend themselves against him compared to a regular Lantern whose abilities they may be aware of and can thus create defences against.

He also has experience with weird tech and can thus adapt to any unusual tech the Free Lancers may have at their disposal, while an ordinary Lantern may not have so much experience with unusual tech and can potentially be defeated.

And as I mentioned previously tracking down the Free Lancers would probably take him a few days at most.

The Reach will probably need more than a few days to equip enough of their ships with the construct draining weapons in order to be a threat to the OLC, so Paul has time.

And if the Free Lancers go free then they're free to sell more weapons to the Reach, thus making the war all the harder for the OLC.

 

[Mr Zoat]

Would anyone happen to know where that "Die for Sunset Shimmer" image is? I thought that I'd saved the URL somewhere, but I very clearly didn't and I'm rather fond of the image.

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Could you describe it?

 

[crazygrox]

But I'm looking at that fleet's great grandchild. Glowing purple blurs along the sides mark the intrusion into normal space of their fracture cannons. No traversing or charging required, just press a button and space breaks in a line to your target. There's no gun there to disable either; it's literally just a point in space nominated by the actual projection system inside the well-armoured hull.

Well force fielded hull too, I note. And Threllian was right about the gravity shielding. And the flack.

The flack turrets actually look a bit… Off? Actually. The outer hull looks like it's designed to be as featureless as they could make it, but the small turrets break that aesthetic and… Look almost stuck on. Which means that they… What, that the Free Lancers came almost directly here, gave them the designs and left them to it? Had been working on the turrets for a while and handed over a warehouse worth for them to integrate in their own time?

Jordan's file implied that those turrets were lightspeed, which might mean that I can dodge them if I stay far enough away. It also implied that the weapon was only weakly penetrating against anything that wasn't a construct. So my best defence against them is armour which the big guns will blast through like it's not even there, because from their point of view it isn't. And my best defence against the big guns are a type of physics-warping construct that I can use, but will go down very easily to the anti-construct guns.

Oh, and I can't hide in a ship because the big guns aren't affected by their hulls and their internal sensors are sufficiently good that it would be suicide to try.

But other than that-.

Oh, no, I forgot: while the main guns have a somewhat limited effective range and their sub-light speed isn't that good, the ships can use their gravity shielding to do short range space-bending teleports. So…

So if I can dummy them into teleporting towards me and have a gravity weapon pointing in the right direction, I could get lucky.

Starting to think I.. should have brought more clones.

Okay, actual plus side: though their ships have very good energy generation systems, their guns consume more than they can generate during high-intensity combat. Which is probably why the Reach haven't adopted the design across their entire fleet. So if I get all of the doomguns to fire constantly at the same time then I might exhaust them, assuming that they're far more stupid than I know them to be.

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This tactical discussion is making me think about what sort of ships would actually be a complete counter to lanterns.

I'm thinking: something like these anti-construct guns, or another anti-construct system. Used as flak, and mounted on swarms of fighter craft to help compensate for any range and dodging issues.
Coupled with the sorts of weapon systems it's been mentioned that the Reach used in the last war, wide area psychic or exotic weapons that kill or distract everything within a volume of space, possibly also appropriate-colored lasers.

The issue with fighting Orange lanterns this way is that unlike the green lanterns, they can easily make complex telepathic shielding or exotic-physics neutralizing constructs(also I think they're trained to keep stuff to block lasers in their subspace pockets). So to credibly try to use the normal anti-Lantern weapons against them someone essentially needs anti-construct weapons.

And then there's the issue that anti-construct weapons(other than crumblers), and area-effect weapons are likely to be poorly optomized against other warships.
But I suppose you could just have one power system that's capable of either powering the anti-ship or the anti-Lantern loadout, and just accept that this ship will be extra big to mount both loadouts. Or do what scarabs do, with the transforming between different weapon loadouts as necessary, but on a ship-scale.


Edit: also the appearances of anti-Lantern weapons in this story are starting to make me wonder whether a technological anti-wizard/anti-magic weapon exists somewhere.
There's already a magic-based version in spell-eaters, and an orange light version in converting the magic energy to orange light and feeding on it. I assume Qwa-matter would tend to destroy any magical shield or spell it can contact and might potentially destroy the souls of hostile resurrecting wizards.
But all of those are literally magic, or technology that's essentially magic, none of it's anything that could be produced on an assembly line or as a temporary construct by using a ring.
Makes me wonder whether the Reach or Controllers have any reasonably-low-tech counters to magic.
The odds are probably better looking at the Reach, because the controllers would use something glow-related to produce the effect they wanted which it might not be casually easy to counter with a ring, and the Reach have surely had to conquer thaumically active worlds with rebellious reincarnating wizards or adjacent magical planes before.
Maybe it'll become relevant if OL's research projects ever figure out how exactly dreams can produce spaceborn magic.

 

[Assblaster5000]

Could you describe it?

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It was Sunset in her demon looking form giving a slightly altered version of one of Darksied's speeches, the one with him saying he would "crush you with three billion hands" and all that.

Edit:I remember that it was a series of images rather than just one, and I think it was in the first chapter of the Renegade episode that he first went to Equestria in, but other than that I've got nothing more to go on.

 

[Coda]

So... No corrections today?

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I was moving house. Sorry. Here you go.

as Orion glare at him imperiously.

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glares

flack turrets

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any ship with decent flack can shoot out your offensive constructs

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And the flack.

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The flack turrets actually look a bit… Off?

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"flak", and possibly additional instances ("flack" is an unrelated word referring to publicity or publicity agents)

Two luck effectives in that class left

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I can't figure out what "luck effectives" is supposed to mean. Best I can guess is that you meant "lucky" and "effectives" is jargon/slang for "ships that remain effective".

juluumi

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juluuni

Jordan's file implied that those turrets were lightspeed, which might mean that I can dodge them if I stay far enough away.

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While this is true, dodging would require superluminal detection capability -- which is to say, exotic active scans, because passive scans are also lightspeed (at best) and non-exotic active scans are half lightspeed at best. (Unless the turret telegraphs its shots enough that you know where to dodge before the shot actually fires, but by the rest of the descriptions that's not likely the case.)

I feel that I'm being a little boring here

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No, you're not boring at all. You're slicing ships apart, not drilling holes through them.

The brain needs to be involved because you are harnessing the Glow, an emergent feature of sophonts. You cannot make a machine which can wield a ring unless that machine has a mind capable of feeling emotions. At which point, you may begin to make statements about how many standard persons worth of mind and emotions it is

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Creating an avarice enlightened AI might be a bit hard, though.

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I wrote a story about this...

 

[RichardWhereat]

Does anyone remember what chapter John Constantine climbed the mountain and met Paul? I tried searching the Story Only thread for the earliest version of "Constantine", but couldn't get anything. Similar keywords did nothing to help.

Nevermind.

 

[Ardy]

I already told you what skills he has in my previous posts, you just didn't seem to read them.

Paul is perhaps the most skilled and experienced power ring user the OLC has, and he also has a plethora of powers that ordinary Lanterns don't have.

Due to his experience and power the Free Lancers would most likely be more easily defeated than if they were faced with an ordinary Lantern, thus ensuring they are captured and the Reach lose a resource for anti-Lantern weaponry.

Also because he has several unique abilities they may not be able to defend themselves against him compared to a regular Lantern whose abilities they may be aware of and can thus create defences against.

He also has experience with weird tech and can thus adapt to any unusual tech the Free Lancers may have at their disposal, while an ordinary Lantern may not have so much experience with unusual tech and can potentially be defeated.

And as I mentioned previously tracking down the Free Lancers would probably take him a few days at most.

The Reach will probably need more than a few days to equip enough of their ships with the construct draining weapons in order to be a threat to the OLC, so Paul has time.

And if the Free Lancers go free then they're free to sell more weapons to the Reach, thus making the war all the harder for the OLC.

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and as I said in previous post, being adaptive to new tech is not enough to take him off fighting the potential collapse of the war effort and the death of trillions to hunt down a single ship that any OL or NEMO ship could do. He's not the only competent person in the galaxy

 

[Someguy Somewhere]

Just figure I'd start this list up, since there seems to be some Anti Lantern Arms Race plotting going on.

Feel Free to chip in.

Known Anti Lantern Weapons / Counter
__________________________________

Colour Matched Laser / Reflective Armour
Magic (Simple Direct Attacks) / Scry Wards + Spell Eater Talisman
Telepathy / Psi-Baffles and-or Significant Telepathic Defense Training
Molecular 'Crumbler' Disruption Field / Ablative Construct Shield Layers or Highly Resistant Meta Materials
Cold Gun / Does not effect Construct shields + properly insulated full body armor
Rail Gun Rounds (or any other Sub Light Munitions) / Anti Missile Defense Turret (Lasers or other Faster-Then-Light counter fire)
Estrogina's Construct Disrupting Gold Skin / Non Construct Attacks (Crumblers and x-ionized blades)
Purple Death Ray / Unknown (DODGE!!!)
Neural Impactor / Unknown (DODGE!!!)
Free Lancers Construct Draining Gun / Unknown (DODGE!!!)


Significant Conventional Force Applications (enough to knock out an environmental shield)
- Kinetic 'Blunt or Sharp Impacts' (includes Sonic Based Attacks) / Kinetic Shield + Body Armor
- Radiation / Radiation Shield + Body Armor
- Gravity / Gravity Based Spacial Warp Stabilizer

 

[Darko]

and as I said in previous post, being adaptive to new tech is not enough to take him off fighting the potential collapse of the war effort and the death of trillions to hunt down a single ship that any OL or NEMO ship could do. He's not the only competent person in the galaxy

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And as I said in my previous posts, the Reach may need a not so small amount of time in order to install their new anti-Lantern weaponry in enough ships in order to increase their threat level.

Paul may need just a few days to track them down.

I'm betting the Reach are going to need a lot more than a mere few days to increase their threat level to the point you're implying.

Yeah Paul isn't the only competent person in the galaxy, but his skills (which I have mentioned in previous posts and will not do so here, you can just read what I've already written above) give him a greater chance of succeeding where others may not be able to.

Please read what I've written. Don't become like Vaermina.

Makes me wonder whether the Reach or Controllers have any reasonably-low-tech counters to magic.

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They may have some.

Hinon can use magic, although she doesn't like to, so some of them may have created some anti-magic tech.

The Guardians also beat the Empire of Tears, a magic using empire, so they may also have some.

and the Reach have surely had to conquer thaumically active worlds with rebellious reincarnating wizards or adjacent magical planes before.

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They did conquer a planet where the species was apparently naturally alchemical, but they didn't understand it all that well.

It was mentioned in this story that magically active planets are extremely rare, like one in a thousand, so the Reach may not have encountered any magical planet until the above mentioned one.

There's also the possibility that even if they did conquer a magically active planet that the level of magic present there wasn't significant enough for it to be noticeable.

Not all planets are as magically crazy as Earth.

The natives may also be unaware of magic and have no mystical traditions, or they stopped using them and they faded to myth.

As for reincarnating wizards or magic planes.

It's possible that reincarnation doesn't work for them and they can't come back if they're dead, or they don't know how to.

And for magic planes and even potentially gods.

Well it's possible that the species may not have any gods, either due to not believing in one or the magic energies of the planet not forming one, or the gods in question may not care about the mortals.

 

[Darko]

I try to push all thought of the truly horrible thing

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Maybe 'things'

 

[Ardy]

Please read what I've written. Don't become like Vaermina

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Jesus, calm down, there's no need for that kind of language

 

[Darko]

Jesus, calm down, there's no need for that kind of language

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Sorry, got a bit frustrated there, but I'm still sorry that I would call anyone that.

But I'm still sticking to what I said about Paul and the Free Lancers.

 

[Mr Zoat]

25th August 2012
05:39 GMT

This-

I calculate angles and shift to put the Scarab Warrior between me and as many of the primary weapons as possible.

-is-

As his anti-construct weapons target my stabiliser constructs I simply abandon them, his shots flying past me and hitting the hull of the ship.

-going-

Physical barrier and create a railgun behind it, load crumbler rounds.

-to-

The shot from the Scarab Warrior's main gun disintegrates the shield, but the follow up shots from the construct disruptors do nothing to the entirely physical railgun. I charge it with ring power and fire.

-be-

The Scarab Warrior ducks behind his shield, crumbler rounds hitting home and abrading it before-

-interesting.

-the fracture cannons open fire. Space around us turns purple, though I've got no idea if they're missing because they're distracted by their own confused desires or they're trying to aid the Scarab Warrior.

This one's orange, for some reason.

But if they're trying to avoid-.

My half-formed fracture cannon construct is destroyed by the ship's anti-construct guns, which activate for long enough to hit me all over. My armour holds just fine but even my environmental shield is driven back inside it. Keep moving extrude-

Dodge!

-armour plates and then dump Construct Lanterns while vision is blocked and then

step out and

appear on the far side of the ship because as thematically significant as fighting an upgraded Scarab Warrior who can turn off my constructs is, I'm actually here to destroy the fleet and acquire biological samples. And keep moving and

evading, because

without a Scarab Warrior to avoid shooting at the gunnery crew are a little more on the ball. Construct armour-.

And it's gone, and this time from a direct hit rather than a specific anti-construct gun.

Dodge harder and recreate the armour, then… Destructive blast.

The ship's shield shimmers, flak turrets locking onto the beam immediately and extinguishing it. Progress… Shields somewhat degraded-

One of my Construct Lanterns is destroyed and returned to my ring, giving me a sudden image of how well the ambush worked. And it did work, but the Construct Lanterns weren't able to do significant damage before-. And there are the rest. Not sure whether or not it would have worked better if I reinforced them… Or if they'd had stronger avarice when I assimilated them. Hellwraith is still going strong.

-so I fly closer and fire again. Same result: some damage, but the flak deals with it before it does anything too serious.

Ah heck.

Construct crumbler fire at the seven closest flak emplacements destructive pulses!

The flak guns start to track the projectiles and then switch to the pulses once those appear. Which means that they're just slightly out of place and slightly too slow in tracking them. The pulses hit the shields and somewhat disrupt them, the crumblers striking just a-

Another volley of destructive pulses.

-moment later and… Shield's down for a second and the second wave of pulses go in and yes, flak emplacements gone.

That doesn't help with all of the others, but at least I've got a viable strategy now. Destroy the flak, then fly back out of convenient range and use con-.

The space around me explodes in a flare of light and radiation!

I shift position, scanning for the source. Constructs. Workable. And since there's slightly less flak now I fire a destructive blast in the direction that shot came from and briefly see the outline of a Scarab Warrior. A different silhouette from the last one, though that could just be shapeshifting. Empathic vision… Yes, there they are. Focus on the ship.

Destructive blast at the ship. Flak response slower. The shield over this section is back up but goes down again after a moment, allowing me to hit the-. To briefly hit the hull before the Scarab Warrior gives up on invisibility and switches to rapid fire construct disruptors, neatly covering the hole in the-

Where's the other one gone?

-ship's defences but who cares now because they're both on the far side of the fleet so same again. More destructive pulses targeting flak turrets, crumbler barrage and a second volley of pulses and same result, good.

Keep moving. Always

keep

moving, and let the purple-. Ah, they finally actually hit their own ship! Nice to see, even if it doesn't actually help me all that much. Shift position up the hull a little and repeat, because I'm still taking fire from three other ships and there's no way that I could try mustering the power to breach the armour just yet.

Lantern-

Suddenly there's a ship in front of me as space bends and it manages

a full broadside

but I'm out of there immediately because a warship appearing right in front of you isn't a good sign. Okay, if they've got their heads straight to the point that they can do things like that I've got to consider another empathic attack to re-stun them.

Threllian-

The Scarab Warriors would probably work as a source, but there's no way that will make them stop fighting. I'm.. not too far away from an actual Reach world here, but I'm not super keen to risk their defences until a good deal more intelligence gathering has taken place.

-to-

Still, I can repeat the process here, by-.

-Illustres.

This time the guns completely ignore the destructive pulses and target the crumbler rounds. They're not.. completely effective, but the shield stays up and the flak turrets are undamaged. Darn it.

"Yes?"

Dodge and

move

and try again, no, they're sharing. Okay. This time I fire a volley not of destructive pulses but of small construct crumbler rounds. The guns ignore them for the fraction of a second it takes them to cross the intervening space and their shield is gone and the constructs keep going! Hah!

The other-

There go their turrets and I get some actual hull damage in before I'm forced to move by the fracture cannons.

-fleets are moving.

…

Darn it.

 

[Darko]

This one's orange, for some reason.

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Either they're trying to be symbolic, or it was just a coincidence.

Speaking of Scarabs I can't help but think of Paul actually wielding one in the future.

This may be because there was a new chapter of It's an Unliving last night, and the whole giving the Team Scarabs.

To those of you unaware, that fic is back.

without a good deal more intelligence gathering has taken place.

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either 'until a good' or 'having taken place'

intervening space and the shield gone and

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'shield is gone'

 

[FreeGod]

If Paul is having this much trouble regular lanterns might start getting reassigned to using their rings to make more warships as a better aid to the war effort than fighting directly.

 

[BlueMangoAdea]

If Paul is having this much trouble regular lanterns might start getting reassigned to using their rings to make more warships as a better aid to the war effort than fighting directly.

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I think normal lanterns will usually have warship support?

 

[Vaermina]

Might we be about to see the rarest of the rares? Paragon actually loosing for once?

 

[moralrelativity]

Nice to see OL having to work, REALLY work hard to get the upper hand. But part of me still wants him to get a power-up soon that will nullify the construct draining effect.

 

[FreeGod]

Speaking of Scarabs I can't help but think of Paul actually wielding one in the future.

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He likely will sorta it's the next logical step in Paul's power armor. So he might not use a Scarab, be he is likely to steal every bit of the design worth stealing and add it to what he has.

After all with the Reach throwing construct draining weapons around all over the place Paul is going to have to focus on improvements besides his ring.

 

[Handlewithcare]

I'm still fuzzy on the Reach strategy here.

Are these fleets just for PR? Is it another Paul trap? Are they meant to lure in survivors of their various races?

Guess seeing where the fleets will move to might clear some things up.

 

[RichardWhereat]

25th August 2012
05:39 GMT

Darn it.

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Do you ever take holidays? Because, apart from four instances that I can remember, you've been posting every single day for years. Or are they pre typed, and posted even on your holiday?

 

[Chojin Patriarch]

25th August 2012
05:39 GMT

This-

I calculate angles and shift to put the Scarab Warrior between me and as many of the primary weapons as possible.

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Likely not to be too useful, given they can probably redirect the firing point around the blind spot created by the friendly. Still, sticking close to the Scarab will interfere with their ability to target you properly. And they almost certainly know that...

Spoiler: Commentary spoilered for length

-is-

As his anti-construct weapons target my stabiliser constructs I simply abandon them, his shots flying past me and hitting the hull of the ship.

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I have the feeling this is going to be a theme for this fight. Duck, dodge and maybe try to fight back.

-going-

Physical barrier and create a railgun behind it, load crumbler rounds.

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Good thing you don't have to stand still to make constructs, like a rookie. That sort of mechanics is a pain in MMOs with area attacks.

-to-

The shot from the Scarab Warrior's main gun disintegrates the shield, but the follow up shots from the construct disruptors do nothing to the entirely physical railgun. I charge it with ring power and fire.

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Ooh, fabricating real weaponry? That's one way to counter the anti-Spectrum weapons. But now you have to deal with things like rail damage and charging times. Yay, balance.

-be-

The Scarab Warrior ducks behind his shield, crumbler rounds hitting home and abrading it before-

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Dang super-tough materials. And going into melee would be damn risky given it's strength and ludicrous range of weapon options.

-interesting.

-the fracture cannons open fire. Space around us turns purple, though I've got no idea if they're missing because they're distracted by their own confused desires or they're trying to aid the Scarab Warrior.

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Why can't it be both? Still, any chance of it getting hit is low...

This one's orange, for some reason.

But if they're trying to avoid-.

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Heh. Probably a coincidence. I doubt they tailored it specifically for OL, given they couldn't have known he'd be hitting them...

My half-formed fracture cannon construct is destroyed by the ship's anti-construct guns, which activate for long enough to hit me all over. My armour holds just fine but even my environmental shield is driven back inside it. Keep moving extrude-

Dodge!

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Gah, like a boss with environmental allies. So frustrating.

-armour plates and then dump Construct Lanterns while vision is blocked and then

step out and

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One upside: the Scarab Warrior is still limited to having to actually traverse the space between him and you. And I doubt he can move faster than light as easily as a lantern...

appear on the far side of the ship because as thematically significant as fighting an upgraded Scarab Warrior who can turn off my constructs is, I'm actually here to destroy the fleet and acquire biological samples. And keep moving and

evading, because

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Yes, that's proving rather difficult, isn't it? I rather think they don't want that, don't they. How rude, being all obstructive...

without a Scarab Warrior to avoid shooting at the gunnery crew are a little more on the ball. Construct armour-.

And it's gone, and this time from a direct hit rather than a specific anti-construct gun.

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From the primaries? Ouch. At least that gives a good reference for damage. It takes a fair amount to break constructs as strong as his are...

Dodge harder and recreate the armour, then… Destructive blast.

The ship's shield shimmers, flack turrets locking onto the beam immediately and extinguishing it. Progress… Shields somewhat degraded-

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Time for a swarm approach? Can the anti-spectrum guns actually affect more than one thing at a time?

One of my Construct Lanterns is destroyed and returned to my ring, giving me a sudden image of how well the ambush worked. And it did work, but the Construct Lanterns weren't able to do significant damage before-. And there are the rest. Not sure whether or not it would have worked better if I reinforced them… Or if they'd had stronger avarice when I assimilated them. Hellwraith is still going strong.

-so I fly closer and fire again. Same result: some damage, but the flack deals with it before it does anything too serious.

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I presume the Hellwraith is running amok aboard ships, trying to damage fire control or helm functions...

Ah heck.

Construct crumbler fire at the seven closest flack emplacements destructive pulses!

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There we go. Give them more targets than they can shoot.

The flack guns start to track the projectiles and then switch to the pulses once those appear. Which means that they're just slightly out of place and slightly too slow in tracking them. The pulses hit the shields and somewhat disrupt them, the crumblers striking just a-

Another volley of destructive pulses.

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The old shotgun approach, eh? The Lantern equivalent of buckshot.

-moment later and… Shield's down for a second and the second wave of pulses go in and yes, flack emplacements gone.

That doesn't help with all of the others, but at least I've got a viable strategy now. Destroy the flack, then fly back out of convenient range and use con-.

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Problem is, there's more than one kind of gun involved...

The space around me explodes in a flare of light and radiation!

I shift position, scanning for the source. Constructs. Workable. And since there's slightly less flack now I fire a destructive blast in the direction that shot came from and briefly see the outline of a Scarab Warrior. A different silhouette from the last one, though that could just be shapeshifting. Empathic vision… Yes, there they are. Focus on the ship.

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Oh, great, they sent multiple Scarabs out here?

Destructive blast at the ship. Flack response slower. The shield over this section is back up but goes down again after a moment, allowing me to hit the-. To briefly hit the hull before the Scarab Warrior gives up on invisibility and switches to rapid fire construct disruptors, neatly covering the hole in the-

Where's the other one gone?

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Just too many damn things to keep track of, isn't it? Powerful as you are, you're still human, and you're still only capable of thinking so many things at a time...

-ship's defences but who cares now because they're both on the far side of the fleet so same again. More destructive pulses targeting flack turrets, crumbler barrage and a second volley of pulses and same result, good.

Keep moving. Always

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A slow grind, eh? Thankfully, they can't replace destroyed turrets as fast as you kill them. So it's just a matter of time...

keep

moving, and let the purple-. Ah, they finally actually hit their own ship! Nice to see, even if it doesn't actually help me all that much. Shift position up the hull a little and repeat, because I'm still taking fire from three other ships and there's no way that I could try mustering the power to breach the armour just yet.

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...The problem is getting that time, with so many things trying to kill you.

Lantern-

Suddenly there's a ship in front of me as space bends and it manages

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Oh, and now he's got an incoming call too? Hoo-bloody-ray...

a full broadside

but I'm out of there immediately because a warship appearing right in front of you isn't a good sign. Okay, if they've got their heads straight to the point that they can do things like that I've got to consider another empathic attack to re-stun them.

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Oh, yeah, the ships can make short-hop teleports too, can't they? Gah, like dodging mobile land mines. That shoot at you.

Threllian-

The Scarab Warriors would probably work as a source, but there's no way that will make them stop fighting. I'm.. not too far away from an actual Reach world here, but I'm not super keen to risk their defences without a good deal more intelligence gathering has taken place.

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And given that most of their desires probably align with the fleet's there's not going to be much oomph involved.

-to-

Still, I can repeat the process here, by-.

-Illustres.

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That's if you get time to break off. Yes, I know, Greediporting is instant, but as soon as he disappears, the fleet will be making repairs. Assuming they don't already have damage control teams in place...

This time the guns completely ignore the destructive pulses and target the crumbler rounds. They're not.. completely effective, but the shield stays up and the flack turrets are undamaged. Darn it.

"Yes?"

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Need more pellets. Too many for them to get them all.

Dodge and

move

and try again, no, they're sharing. Okay. This time I fire a volley not of destructive pulses but of small construct crumbler rounds. The guns ignore them for the fraction of a second it takes them to cross the intervening space and the shield gone and the constructs keep going! Hah!

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There you go. Volume, not quality.

The other-

There goes their turrets and I get some actual hull damage in before I'm forced to move by the fracture cannons.

-fleets are moving.

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...Well, shit. Looks like they decided to use 'summon bigger fish'. Multiple times over.

…

Darn it.

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Time to leave? Hopefully without leaving a smoking corpse?

Hoo boy. This is one hell of a 'rock and a hard place' situation. Or maybe more like Scylla and Charybdis. At least OL has a lot more options than Odysseus had in that situation. It's just going to be a matter of how quickly he can run through them to find something that works... And that's assuming he has time before their backup arrives, which I assume the other fleets are moving for. Looks like this attempt is a failure.

 

[Ngamer11]

Mr Zoat, exactly what and how many Construct-Lanterns do Paul and the Renegade have at their disposal? Cause unless Paul went to those other fleets and immediately assimilated their near brain dead crews, he shouldn't have that many. Related to this, how many other Orange Lanterns have Construct-Lanterns in either timeline? I only remember Komand'r having a single Citadelian Construct-Lantern.

 

[Grimnar]

Might we be about to see the rarest of the rares? Paragon actually loosing for once?

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If it is, it's because Dox (and by extension Zoat) has no idea what the fuck they are doing.

"Yes, the enemy is gathering forces to attack" "Let them... then we can fight them."
"What if we just destroy them piecemeal as they gather, thus dealing maximum damage and reducing loses"
"That doesn't make a good story."

That's literally what is happening right now.

At this point I want the reach to win, because they arn't a bunch of children fucking around.