Gratuitous Federation & Empire

 Julia is my latest hero in the campaign. She comes from an Italian family with a very long, perhaps even legendary, history. She makes her appearance just as the General War really starts to kick off... Starfleet Academy is at full stretch, rotating new officers through the system as fast as possible. The First Officers of older ships up to Destroyer class are being promoted to command their own new vessels as soon as they roll off the production lines, and people like me are being sent to replace them as soon as we graduate.  The overall strategic situation is delicate. The Coalition offensive against the Kzinti has ground down to a sort of stalemate, although the Klingons are grimly reducing our direct geographical links with our erstwhile allies piece by piece. The Hydran capital is reported to have fallen; rumors abound about the little guys fortunately managing to extricate much of their fleet before it met its demise. From  http://www.ussalbion.co.uk/hermes.html In the meantime,

 Although our combined Coalition forces were unable to reach the Hydran capital itself, the Klingons were able to destroy the last remaining major installation, the Hydran Starbase. This means they have no real repair capacity in the region, which is confined by our fleet sensors showing a steady stream of crippled ships heading towards the Hydrans' staging point to their Old Colonies, a newly constructed Starbase.  After regrouping, we go in again, and I am in the thick of it right from the outset. High Command has agreed with the Klingons that our vessels will lead the assault as we have better anti-fighter capability due to our ESGs. The usual strategy will be in place: degrade their fighters and hopefully take out some ships as well, or at least do enough damage to remove them from consideration.  The Hydrans are determined to make us pay for every parsec, and engage us as soon as they can at the approaches to the planet. They want to delay our arrival at the capital itself for

 The Kzinti mount a spoiling attack on the Klingons' main forward base, the planet of Lumien. The Klingons are quite happy to give this up, though, because they know the big cats will not be able to keep hold of it due to the strategic situation. The Boneheads are determined to make the Kzinti pay first, and this they do in fine fashion. As well as the usual slew of mangled and destroyed ships, the main events are the destruction of a Kzinti Strike Carrier by a close assault from a C8 Dreadnought in combination with a D6M Mauler Cruiser - the first major loss to the Kzinti carrier force in the war. The next engagement sees the Klingons ejected from the planet, and the Kzinti get their revenge by crippling the Mauler with a close pass from their own Dreadnought after the Mauler's batteries have been depleted blowing up some smaller ships. The costs the Kzinti too, though, because their Dreadnought is heavily damaged and old Admiral Mr'iarr killed in action.  From https://www

 ... well, something like that. When I started to run some ship captain biographies as part of keeping my interest going, I half expected a couple of them to end up on opposing sides. At one point I had the bright idea of including a survivor from a neutral planet, Kooth the Bird Man, who ends up working as an Orion mercenary. The vagaries of space fighting have meant that he and my Hydran Hero Astyanax have ended up fighting in the same desperate battles at the last remaining Hydran Starbase before Hydrax against the Klingons. My imagination is telling me that after Kooth's rather grand entrance uncloaking an Orion CA and saving some Hydran ships, he and Astyanax would get together in the Starbase bar for some comradeship before heading out to war again. Kooth actually has a good experience in this campaign. The Hydrans are really up against it, and when his CA was repaired after its bruising encounter with a Lyran police flotilla, I rolled randomly to see where he would be deploy

 The Coalition have finally made their move. Large numbers of Lyran vessels are converging on our outer planetary systems, while a large Klingon fleet heads directly for our home worlds. I am in the thick of it from the outset in my Knight-class Hellbore Destroyer, the Inevitable . We take up position well to port of the planet of Hyerark, the final staging point on the way to Hydrax itself. The Inevitable  is part of a light flotilla along with another Knight and a Crusader Frigate Leader; the combination gives us respectable Hellbore power. Off to our immediate starboard is a Caravan Tug carrying a Scout Pallet, accompanied by a Thoroughbred Heavy Cruiser. Next to them is our Paladin Dreadnought flagship, with two Ranger Cruisers. I assume that the rest of our fleet is stationed on the other side of the planet. We make rather a grand sight, especially with all the fighters escorting the Paladin and Dragoons, but we are well aware that the Klingons are going to try to degrade our squa

 It is finally time to strike directly at the Hydran home planets. The Klingons have amassed more ships than us, basically because we took out two Hydran Starbases while they destroyed one. So they are heading directly for the capital. Our fleets are tasked with the two other main Hydran systems, Anthraxan and Hydramax. As Captain of the War Destroyer Dark Fury , I am assigned to the forces tasked with reducing Hydramax. I see no action during the approach battles to the region, but I soon find myself in the thick of it in the vicinity of the second planet in our target area, Hypnokerm. Our initial assault is beaten off, albeit at the cost of large numbers of Hydran fighters. We should have the edge in attrition, though, because we have many light vessels. Due to losses in the war so far, our cruisers have taken a pounding, but like most Lyran fleets, we have extra command ships. This means that our fleets will be somewhat imbalanced in action, comprising whatever we can put together,

 The Kzinti have given the Lyrans a hard time, and the Federation has had mixed results with their own limited counterattacks. Their 3rd Fleet has taken the formerly neutral outpost of Sherman's Planet from the Klingons, but the 2nd Fleet was heavily defeated when the Klingons used Reserve Movement to reinforce their other main neutral zone holding. These are important forward bases for the Klingons, so they are determined to keep making the Feds work hard for any gains. Klingon forces are recovering on the Kzinti Front, with many of their damaged ships having been repaired. One stack still remains at the main Starbase that provides logistical support here, and you can see those at the bottom centre of the map above. The Klingons have created a temporary Northern Reserve Fleet from their fresh repairs, and used that to vaporise the Kzinti Battle Station that used to stand at the junction between Klingon-Kzinti-Federation space (hex 1805). The rest of the Klingons have concentrated

 I have not seen direct action for quite a while now, but that is because our fleets are mostly consolidated at Homeworld. As a Light Carrier, the Tempest  is not considered to be a front line ship, more as a feeder of fighters forward to the heavier Strike Carriers as and when they are needed. This suits me because it gives me time to familiarize myself with the logistical workings of a carrier vessel, knowledge I am sure will come in useful in the future. The Coalition offensive stalled after devastating several of our outermost home system planets, and then we received a respite when the Klingons decided to attack the Federation. The Flatheads were beginning to make signs of entering the war on our behalf anyway, so the Boneheads must have decided to pre-empt that decision and strike first. While the Lyrans retire to their main forward staging post of Zimdars, the Klingons divert their main effort on our front against the Marquis' Starbase, which has been cut off from direct con