Beta 15

Dates: September - October 2004

Winners: Tibrans

Best-Known Boraxian LC: DarkRaven

Best-Known Ajaxian LCs: Anakin, Swedish

Best-Known Tibran LCs: Refunk, ChiliDog

Best-Known Krilgorian LCs: Aspis, SpiderWolve

There was one important game change for this round - bases didn't automatically repair, and there was no way to repair them except by dropping scrap on them. The intended result of this was to prevent stalemates, which it succeeded in doing (though there was some debate about whether it was sucessful aside from that in improving the quality of the game).

With the return of the Scan Towers to the outer ring, all four legions immediately moved onto the OR at the start of the game. The Tibs moved towards Star City and the Ajaxian scan tower, while the Krils moved towards DH and the Bor one. Of the two assaults, the Tib one was the more successful, as despite an initial poor jump to Star City forcing a withdrawal to CT6 at the first attempt, they then defeated an attempted Ajaxian counter-attack in CT6 and then returned to SC and destroyed the Ajax tower.

Meanwhile the Krils had been beaten off from DH with heavy losses, and pursued back to Mattas by the Bors, losing a skirmish in Perosis and then another battle in Mattas Head itself. Thus, while the Bors and Tibs were settling down to feed on their respective targetted towers, and the Ajax were starting what became a tradition for them this game and sitting at home waiting for the Tibs to go away, the Krils decided to move round the inner ring to Aquarious and then out to Acrador and then TMC to attack the Tib scan tower. Although they were somewhat demoralized and took a while to get there in force, they did manage to present the Tibs with a dilemma since they hadn't finished killing the Ajax scan tower. However, the slowness of the Krils' movement and the Ajaxian unwillingness to leave home allowed them to get back in time to save their tower without sacrificing too many ships, although their tower was badly damaged.

Having destroyed the Kril scan tower, the Bors had decided to move to NSA to collect scrap for their base for a bit. This gave the retreating Krils somewhere to go after leaving TMC (ie, back home). With the Jax still not moving from Ajaxus and SC, the Tibs also decided to move round and collect some scrap and therefore moved to Garen. By the time they positioned themselves the Bors had mostly left NSA, since they were concerned that the Krils were maneuvering to attack Boraxus, so the Bors moved to Red Sky City. However, the Krils were emulating the Ajax technique of not moving far from home, so the Bors moved to attack them in Dreadlar. The result was a resounding victory for the Bors, who crushed the Krils and then moved on to PK and started bombing.

While this was happening, the Tibs made a misstep. Lulled into complacency by the Ajax refusal to leave home, they started jumping around a bit and eventually jumped to the Roids. As they did so, the Jax made about their only successful maneuver all game and double-jumped to TMC. Worried by this and by the Bor build up in RSC (at that point), the Tibs withdrew back to Canopus West, but their tower was too badly damaged and the Ajax quickly destroyed it and withdrew back towards Star City. Blinded, the Tibs didn't pursue the Ajax around the OR, but instead persuaded the Ajax to move towards DH and then moved to T3S and Ajaxus, attacking Ajaxian sleepers. As the Ajax fleet trickled in, they moved to attacking Ajaxus, but were eventually beaten off after inflicting some damage on Ajaxus. They withdrew towards Garen.

At this point, the Bors had withdrawn from PK for repairs, and were just preparing to jump back in. Three ticks after they did, the Tibs decided to take advantage of the Bors' distraction and a new special gate from Garen to Dreadlar to attack the Bor fallback sector in Dreadlar. They got a good jump, and the Bors were partly bogged down in PK, but even so the battle was close for a couple of turns before the Krils took the chance to get a little revenge and joined the battle. They weren't particularly there to help the Tibs, but they were out for payback and hitting the Bors pretty much exclusively. The Bor fleet couldn't stand up to both legions given their poor initial conditions, and withdrew to Boraxus. The Tibs and Krils decided to continue their initially-coincidental working arrangement and moved to DH to hit the Bor tower. Although they attempted to put up a fight, the Bors had been badly mauled in Dreadlar and took further losses in DH, and from this point the Tibs had a significant lead over the other legions.

All four legions then withdrew to regroup. The Bors and Krils took longer at it than the Tibs (who had better morale) and the Ajax (who were as regrouped as they were going to get). This left the bored Tibs sitting near the hapless Jax, and there was only going to be one outcome to that - the Tibs gleefully flattened the Ajax again, although this time without attacking Ajaxus.

After a bit more maneuvering, the Ajax had finally gotten up the courage to move around the OR towards TMC (although this courage was mostly due to poor intel, since all three of the other legions were sitting at home and they'd have been in trouble if they'd attacked Tibrar). However, just as they jumped to TMC, the Tibs used a HW-HW gate to jump to Ajaxus. Caught hopelessly out of position, the Ajax moved home. However, they were unable to put up enough resistance to stop the Tibs. The Tibs did withdraw once to expel a joint Kril-Bor expeditionary force from Tibrar, but once they had achieved this they went back to Ajaxus and finished the job, knocking the Jax out.

And from this point, despite still being 100 or so ticks from finishing, the game was in its final stages. Having worked out their HW gate sequence, the Tibs exploited that knowledge ruthlessly. They went home and repaired after destroying Ajaxus, before using their HW gate to jump direct to Boraxus. They damaged it significantly before a joint Kril-Ajax force in Tibrar forced them to return home to avoid being knocked out. They expelled their attackers, and then spent a few days collecting scrap to repair their base and hunting down any incidental Ajaxians that got too close. They then repeated their Tibrar-Boraxus jump, destroying it in short order, and then took advantage of an unexpected Boraxus HW gate to jump direct to Planet Krilgore. Although the Krils and remaining Ajax and Bors eventually got their act together and began a serious assault on Tibrar, they weren't quite able to destroy it before the Tibs blew PK, leaving the Tibs the victors.

Submitted by VoxDei on 01/11/04