Beta 12
Dates: August 2003 - end November 2003
Winners: Draw between Boraxians and Tibrans
Best-Known Boraxian LCs: Sight, Llotyhy, Reema
Best-Known Ajaxian LC: DarkRaven, Bad_Boy
Best-Known Tibran LCs: the_hero, TheCat
Best-Known Krilgorian LCs: Guderian, Chopper, Spiderwolve
The game started in now-customary fashion with the adjacent legions squaring off - the Bors and the Krils started fighting in and around Perosis, while the Tibs and Ajax started hitting each other roughly opposite in and around CT6 and Garen. Of the two fights, the Tibs got the better of the Ajax, and the Bors pushed the Krils back to Mattas Head.
The end of this early period marked the beginning of The Great Krilgorian Standstill. The Bors, having pushed the Krils back to Mattas, invaded and started liberally smacking them around some more, while levelling up their bombers by bombing the Kril scan tower. However, the Tibs moved (somewhat slowly and disorganisedly) to Acrador, and the Ajax invaded Durius Highlands, which made the Bors nervous about the possibility of taking on the other three legions in Mattas Head with no fallback sector. So they moved out of Mattas, leaving the somewhat surprised Krils with a small fleet and a mostly-intact scan tower while they went to chase the Ajaxians away. The Bors went and soundly defeated the Ajax in Durius, chased them back to Star City, defeated them again and destroyed their scan tower and then returned via Durius to Mattas Head to find that, more than a hundred ticks since they had initially invaded that sector the Krils hadn't moved, and in fact hadn't done much other than repelling a small and disorganised Tib assault (the Tibs themselves had apparently gotten bored and mostly wandered off, leaving a small horde of decoys in Acrador).
The Bors, grateful for the opportunity for more points now that their previous source from the Ajaxians had been more-or-less used up, gleefully set about demolishing the Kril fleet and scan tower in Mattas Head while the Ajaxians sulked at home and the Tibs tried to find their fleet somewhere. Having done this, and beginning to look unstoppable, they moved back to Orbital to consider their next move. They had just decided to go after the Tib scan tower, when the Tib fleet attacked Durius Highlands. The fleet was already partially split, so the Bors opted for the risky tactic and sent a squad of high-level bombers through NSA to TMC to attack the Tib scan tower, while the remainder of the fleet defended their own scan tower in Durius. The TMC squad destroyed the Tib scan tower with little opposition, but the Bor tower in Durius was reduced to 18k health before the Bors managed to get enough firepower to repulse the Tibs.
Having flattened all the scan towers, the Bors regrouped in Durius Highlands to guard their scan tower while it regenerated. By the time they were happy with its health, the Tibs and Ajax were keeping each other busy, so the Bors decided to attack the Krils again, this time going for the jugular and attacking Planet Krilgore. Although initially repulsed, the new rules about greatly reduced base regeneration meant that they could regroup and attack again, and at the second (or third, can't remember) time of asking the Krils had apparently more or less given up and PK was destroyed.
This, however, is where things started to get bogged down. The Tibs had been levelling up off the Ajax and had a fleet that wasn't the match of the Kril fleet but was capable of putting up a good homeworld defence, and even included a couple of cruisers. Deciding that it was best to knock out their now-greatest opposition first, the Bors moved straight on and attacked Tibrar, although they took enough time doing it that the defending Tibs had plenty of time to get home and get organised. The Bors attacked Tibrar, and made the classic TVS mistake of trying to engage and the Tib fleet before bombing the planet. As ever, it didn't work - although a number of high-level Tib ships were destroyed, the lower-level Tibs levelled up ferociously and were beginning to threaten the Bor fleet. Realising that the assault wasn't going to work, the Bors withdrew from Tibrar and went after easier prey in the shape of the Ajaxians.
The Bor plan, in an effort to draw the Tib fleet out of Tibrar and prevent a stalemate, wasn't actually to destroy Ajaxus, but just to take it to the point where a good sneeze would destroy it and then leave again. Unfortunately, an admin mistake resulted in every ship in the game taking 1/3 damage just as the Bors were jumping to Ajaxus, and the extra damage to their cruisers meant that they left Ajaxus before the plan had called for. From here they lost their way slightly, and after wandering around a little bit massed up for another attack on Ajaxus.
At this point, the event that really stalemated the game occurred. The DNS server serving TVS went down, meaning that those who knew the IP address could get in to the game, but those who didn't (or didn't know it was still working) couldn't. This continued for over a week, and a number of pilots, including at least two Bor cruisers, never returned to the game. At first, thinking it would be a temporary problem, the legions did nothing. Then, as the downtime dragged on, they started moving around and killing the active (and some inactive) pilots, but there was an unofficial agreement not to attack bases while this problem was continuing. However, as the downtime continued, and with a slowly increasing number of Tibs and Ajaxians bombing the Bor scan tower (they weren't making any serious inroads, but it was annoying), the Bors went back to attack Ajaxus again. Their reduced fleet did some damage, but before it was finished they decided to leave and try to save their now rather sick-looking scan tower. This they did, but didn't want to wait for it to repair that much and returned to the offensive in Ajaxus. The Tibs waited a few ticks and then returned to bombing in Durius, while the Ajaxians went back to defend their home. They weren't successful, but they did manage to reduce three or four cruisers and level 5 Bors to the red before the planet went, somewhat depleting the Bor fleet.
The Bors went home to lick their wounds, chase a few Tibs away from their homeworld, and assess things. The Tibs, now having nothing better to do, went home and forted up. The Bors, also having nothing better to do, slowly straggled over to Canopus West, collected their reduced fleet there, and attacked Tibrar. Initially, they seemed to be being successful, and reduced Tibrar by 100k in a day or so. unfortunately, that left 200k on it, and the Tibs had by now grown to the point where they could destroy a cruiser in one tick. The Bors withdrew to Canopus West, repaired up and tried again, this time losing a number of level 5s and cruisers in a quite short time. They withdrew again, and then went home.
From this point it became increasingly clear that there wasn't going to be a winner. The Tibs, with a now-superior levels-wise fleet, made an attempt to assault Boraxus, but unfortunately most of their fleet was in the form of semi-active pilots who stayed in Tibrar, and they were unable to decisively defeat the Bors outside of Tibrar. The Bors, for their part, faced declining active numbers (as did the Tibs), and were unable to marshal anything like the required forces to destroy Tibrar. Despite a reduction in the size of the bases, the game just dragged on for another couple of hundred ticks before being killed off.
Submitted by VoxDei on 05/12/03
