Mark the Merciful (Kif Hegemony) vs Slynky (Trithian Empire) - 2406.1

Still a very open, mind-taxing game. The squadron I had such high hopes for chased down into Slynky's newest expansion colonies, and fought about 3 destroyers coming through a warp-point. We won, but took so much damage that there was no functional combat power left - the only ships undamaged were the minesweepers. So they all fled back to their base with their tails between their legs.

A couple of turns later, Slynky's homeworld vomitted out a large fleet that swept all the mines at the connecting WP and destroyed my defending fleet. However, he took a reasonable amount of damage and - most importantly - lost several minesweepers. So, did I have 100 mines orbitting my homeworld, or was it only 20? You know, in all the excitement, I'd kinda forgotten myself. So the question he had to ask himself was; did he feel lucky, punk? Well, did he?

He didn't. His fleet patrolled in the middle of my home system, scaring the children and wrechking the real-estate values. I started concentrating warships as fast as I could, but I was very nervous about any coming battle; my race is just not cut out for space battles. We are a superior civilisation, and our children grow up playing turn-based strategy games not mindless reflex-testing console rubbish. The result is that when they grow up and join the navy, and are put in front of a radar screen with incoming dots and weapons to fire, they just have no idea what to do...

Anyway, Slynky hung around for several turns, and colonised a planet in my system. Finally he decided to take the risk of attacking one of my minor planets in the home system. The minefield was bigger than his sweeping capacity, and he lost a number ships while glassing the planet. I decided that I couldn't wait any more, and two turns ago attacked. Thanks to superior numbers and the damage he'd previously taken, we won that battle (with heavy losses of our own) and cleared the nasty Trithian colony from our system. Now what?

It's still a very low-tech game (DUCs, ion engines, missiles, a bit of armour and ECM) because neither of us have had the resources to spend on development. What's more, there is no way of identifying a front-line or defending, anything very much. So there's lots of maneuver, lots of guessing, and too much tension.

What fun.