Beta 11
Dates: May 2003 - Late July 2003
Winners: Tibrans
Best-Known Boraxian LCs: poacher, Godofwine, Hapiface
Best-Known Ajaxian LC: Faulcon
Best-Known Tibran LCs: Llotyhy, VoxDei
Best-Known Krilgorian LCs: Bad_Boy, Siuras, Crazygirl
Beta 11 had a rather unusual start, in that the hitherto-mandatory furball in the roids didn't happen. The Bors went there, but found themselves largely on their own as all three other legions headed straight for the outer ring. The points scoring system for bombers had been changed, meaning that bombers would level up much faster when bombing, but more slowly when dogfighting, and this enticed the Tibs, Krils and Ajax to go for early strikes on opposition scan towers.
The Krils and Ajax both initially moved towards the Bor scan tower, but when the Tibs attacked Star City with a small force (since it was early enough that there were no LCs yet), the Jax returned home and kicked them out again. The Tibs withdrew to CT6, where they had more numerous forces, and the Jax followed resulting in the first major battle of the game. The Jax initially seemed to have the advantage, in that the Tibs were very bomber-heavy and should have levelled up more slowly, but superior tactics from the Tibs resulted in a Tib victory. This was followed by a short standoff, before a diplomatic mix-up resulted in the Ajax jumping to Dragor, allowing the Tibs to invade SC with more force this time. Despite this, the Ajax should once again have won due to the proximity of their home sector at this early stage, but once again they were out-thought by the Tibs, who crushed them and began to level their bombers up on the tower.
After a short interval, the other two legions stopped playing cat-and-mouse and formed a half-hearted NAP with the Ajax against the Tibs, who were by this time starting to get level 3s already while the other legions were just getting level 2s. Although this could have succeeded, some rather half-hearted attacking by the Ajax and Bors, coupled with the Krils just not showing up and instead opting to hit the Tib scan tower (completely ineffectively due to not having any bombers), allowed the Tibs to further hurt the Ajax fleet, while simultaneously demolishing the Bors before destroying the Ajax scan tower, eventually ending up with a level 4 fleet while everyone else still had level 2s and a few 3s.
From this point the Tibs should have been unstoppable. Indeed, they proceeded to smash the Krils in TMC, Acrador and Mattas Head before destroying the Kril scan tower and proceeding to wipe the floor with the Bors (and their scan tower) in Durius Highlands. Three scan towers had been destroyed, no fleet came close to challenging that of the Tibs, and it was only tick 70. There was talk of the fastest game ever, and it should have been, but it didn't happen.
From Durius, the Tibs moved down and massed up in Dreadlar. There was some argument about whether they had the fleet to attack Krilgore (although very bomber-heavy, and not far off cruisers, it was still early and the Tib fleet wasn't up to the level usually used to take on a base), but they went in anyway. Debate remains as to whether the assault would have been successful had the Tibs bombed from the start rather than spending four or five ticks engaging the Kril fleet, but they didn't and despite starting from a very low-level position, the Krils duly levelled up faster than they were being destroyed. The Tibs began to take losses and made a slightly disorganised retreat to Southern Sector, where they made a stand and lost a few more ships when the reinvigorated Krils counterattacked. Demoralised, the Tibs retreated back to MoK and then to Tibrar, where they sat and waited for the Krils to go away.
The Krils did, eventually, get bored and go looking for easier prey. A period of skirmishing followed, with all four legions maneuvering for advantage. The Tibs still had a lead, but it was substantially smaller than before with the Krils coming up fast. Eventually, the Tibs made a move to attack Ajaxus. Once more they didn't bomb from the start, and although this time they were successful in destroying Ajaxus, the base explosion left their fleet seriously damaged, and allowed the remaining Ajaxians to destroy several high-level Tibs. By this time the Krils and Bors were bombing the Tib scan tower, and although it originally took damage quite slowly, the rate increased and by the time the Tibs had returned to Tibrar and argued over what to do it was too late. The Tibs assaulted TMC in a bit of a rush, were repulsed with losses and lost their scan tower.
This marked the end of the Tib lead - from this point the Krils took a lead and held it. The remaining Ajax were scattered, and despite still having a reasonable fleet the Tibs were ineffective and eventually scattered themselves as well. This left the Krils free to attack the Bors, which after a while they did, chasing the Bors back to Boraxus. The Krils still didn't have a lot of bombers, but they had some cruisers by now and the Bors weren't fighting terribly effectively (they actually left Boraxus well before it was destroyed). The Kril war machine ground slowly on, and despite a late attack on PK by the eventually-rallied Tibs, they destroyed Boraxus. With no hope of destroying Krilgore before the Krils could return home and destroy them with their now-overpowering fleet, the Tibs left Krilgore as Boraxus was destroyed, and went home to fort up.
Rather bizarrely however, the Krils didn't attack. And didn't attack. And didn't attack. What they did do was to hunt down most of the remaining Bors in an effort to win a few more cruisers. They actually spent so long doing this that the Tibs got several carriers in the meantime from repairs and pickups. By the time the Krils did attack, the Tibs had at least achieved a position from which they could mount a defence, even if they were still quite a way from parity with the Kril cruiser fleet. Even so, the Kril assault was so powerful that it should have overwhelmed the Tib defences before the home-sector advantage could have told, except that the Krils made the same mistake as the Tibs did early on and didn't start bombing immediately. Had they done so then Tibrar would most likely have been destroyed, but the opted to engage the Tibs instead, and not even the highest-level ships but the level 4s. Eventually they were repulsed.
And from there, despite a still far-superior fleet the Krils went back to not attacking. They spent some time not attacking, and then a little time not attacking. There were a few skirmishes as the Tibs made the odd half-hearted attempt to break out of Tibrar, most notably one in Canopus West won decisively by the Krils, but mostly pretty much nothing happened. The Krils eventually got bored and attacked again, but by then they'd been so convinced of the impossibility of attacking a defended Tibrar by the nay-sayers on their legion (one in particular), that half their fleet didn't jump in and the ones that did ran away again two ticks later. After this, and rather anti-climactically (if heroically in the eyes of some very bored players), the infuriated Kril LC self-destructed Planet Krilgore, leaving the Tibs as de-facto victors.
Submitted by VoxDei on 04/08/03
