(back to) Sauron's Headquarters
Being one of the bigger (and older) ships in TBG, life gets a bit boring after some time. There are no aliens that can harm you anymore, you cannot work towards getting a bigger ship because so many of your 99% reliable modules break every turn that you can hardly repair them, and there are no player ships that want to attack you. Therefore, I've decided to quit the game, but it is my opinion that a respectable ship like the Sauron's Revenge deserves an appropriate farewell. That's why I didn't want to leave the game without some decent fireworks! I hope you enjoyed it :-) At least, I am pretty sure that it will take a while before the $389728 damage between players will be surpassed!
Why now and why Wolverine? Wolverine has been the strongest ship (by far) in the galaxy for several hundred turns now. Wolverine has used this position in a way that I don't appreciate. Not only in his position as a prophet of the Mighty One, but also as the 'security' officer of the Betelgeuse Empire. Wolverine alone was the reason why many ships didn't dare to oppose the Betelgeuse Empire. Like other ships, I don't feel like paying taxes (no matter how low they are) and getting nothing in return. I have met Wolverine several times at Olympus during the past fifty or so turns, every time I thought about attacking him, but I didn't because I didn't feel like I was ready to hurt him really bad. Turn 651, the time had come to make him pay!
I choose Short range as my ideal range since it is the only range at which my fire power surpassed that of Wolverine (about 6000 vs 4500).
Olympus was perfectly suited as a battleground since it is the only terrain at which the default range at which fire is opened is adjacent. Therefore, Olympus allowed me to choose short range and still get to fire first (which makes quite a difference with these kinds of firepowers).
If you are sure to get into a battle situation and fear that you will loose your bless Wp artifact, you cam of course overcome this problem by an additional bless Wp spell. However, you cannot do this every time you meet someone who might attack you. Therefore, I expected Wolverine to not use the bless Wp spell. The logical conclusion is that shooting of his Wp artifact first would reduce his firepower with 33% percent, which it did. (of course I have used the bless Wp and bless Id spells, to have a bless on Weapons and Impulse Drives, just in case Wolverine would get the idea to destroy those artifacts)
I must admit that I have made a mistake here. I have seriously underestimated Wolverine's ferocity (or should I say stupidity?). I expected Wolverine to set a rather low retreat threshold and therefore, I intended to target only his most valuable weapons and artifacts (bless Id, bless Sh and bless Wp). Furthermore, I expected that Wolverine might choose to favour engines and try to go to Remote range (where he would have SERIOUSLY outgunned me) so I targetted some of his high-tech impulse drives also. Unfortunately, Wolverine set a very high retreat threshold, so after shooting off 27 exotic and magic weapons/impulse drives and the 3 artifacts, I started targetting random modules (the first one was the bless Sn artifact). Wolverine, on the other hand, had all my working weapons on his target list, and therefore he won the battle in the end.
Another reason why I lost the battle is simply because of the huge amount of weapons that wolverine has. If you shoot off more than one module in each battle round, the amount of damage you have to do to shoot off the next module is doubled with each module you destroyed. (for example: first module needs 100 damage, second needs 200, third needs 400, so to shoot of one module you have to do 100 damage, to shoot of two modules you have to do 300 damage, to shoot of three modules you have to do 700 damage etc.) Therefore, if I do twice as much damage to Wolverine than vice versa, I will only destroy one (!) module more during each round of battle. Since Wolverine has much more weaponry modules than I do, the chances that I can win the battle (providing that Wolverine doesn't set a retreat threshold) is quite minimal
Despite loosing the battle, I have high hopes that my effort will allow other ships to finish the job and I also expect that the other members (or should I say cowards) of the Betelgeuse Empire will now get what they deserve. Don't let them get away with the peaceful solution that they will surely want, now that their leader is crippled!
That's enough smalltalk for now, enjoy :-)
What Wolverine looked like before the battle
What Sauron's Revenge looked like before the battle
What both ships lost during the battle
What both ships looked like after the battle
copyright @ 2001. Site maintained and constructed by Frank Bakker
