>CREW AUDIO LOG
>MIDNIGHT OIL, CPT-2IC
>HARMONY, SPR. CARRIER
>9626.31 GSY
Is this thing … I think it’s—oh, right. Green light must mean—ahem. Alright, second-in-command, Midnight Oil’s log, galactic standard year nine-six-two-six, point … Uhh, I think two eight? I’m still unfamiliar with this damn date system.
So, it has been a little over four days since we returned to orbit around our planet. The Captain disembarked after the first day back, along with many of the crew, leaving us running with the bare minimum. Not that I can blame everypony for wanting to take a break, though. After what we went through in that nebula, I was amazed even the best of the best managed to hold it together and focus. Rumour has it the Captain himself seems to have taken it pretty badly, though. That might explain why the purple unicorn, I think her name was … Twilight? Twinkle? Ahh, irrelevant. Anyway, it might explain why she literally dragged the Captain off Harmony.
I overheard a brief communication between the Captain and his superiors just before he left, too. Turns out everything the Bentusi had told us was spot-on, and after some final analysis and confirmation, our fleet will rendezvous with the same fleet that had assisted Manaan some time ago. Their scientists seem to have made some significant discoveries.
Hmm. Wish I could say the same for our guys. Some of the engineers who have chosen to remain on board have already started to inspect the core we obtained from the nebula, but for all their meticulous inspections, it seems we aren’t going to uncover even the slightest clue about where to look for the sixth and final core. It’s times like this I’m glad I just order ponies around, because I swear I can smell the stench of sizzling scientist brains up here.
One thing we did uncover about this fifth core is that it is the loyalty core. Using data from the Hiigaran’s original core, which, if I remember correctly, was the laughter core, a neural interface is being constructed to allow somepony to integrate themselves with the core. I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t a scary thought. I’ve been told the way the device is designed, it detects the brain patterns and allows pretty much any living being to interact with the core. Or something like that, anyway. I lost the chief of science when she was explaining to me what an artificial synaptic bridge is. I don’t think she even knew, herself!
One interesting thing I read while trying to understand this interface was the history behind the technology. This current design works without any surgery or bodily modifications to the user, but earlier designs made my stomach turn. This S’jet woman who leads Hiigaran fleets used to have wires coming out of her head. Wires! From holes drilled into her head! So many, it almost looked like her mane! Actually, I think a topic change is in order. Just thinking about that makes me feel … Ugh!
Harmony is still going to be a while before the damage incurred from our battle will be fully repaired, but that large hole in our forward section has been hastily patched up. Not exactly pulled off with finesse, but a large slab of metal welded on by our resource collector seems to have done the trick. Repair teams have had the opportunity to enter the sealed-off sections to survey the internal damage, but according to them, it’s not as bad as it looks. I estimate another three, maybe four days, before everything is restored to the state our vessel was in before we left, including properly fixing up that hole, and restoring the appearance of our flagship.
In the meantime, we have made ourselves useful. No point sitting in orbit with a hoard of resources, so Harmony has taken on the role of some major construction operations, while supplementing our projects by performing short-jumps to resources in our solar system. Last briefing, we had a discussion about creating a homeworld defence grid, that basically consists of several hundred frigate-sized hyperspace inhibitors surrounding our planet, at a radius just a ways past our moon. Any unidentified vessels would be detected before they could get anywhere near us, and if necessary, Princess Luna will … Well, she will give our uninvited guests a full moon.
Of course, while several officers can see the benefits of this, including myself, I do have to question the timing of such an endeavour. The time and resources required to build all these inhibitors would be astronomical, forgive the pun. If it were up to me, I would first get some more ships added to our fleet. Sure, we now have a full hangar of strike-craft, two destroyers, a resource collector, and a mobile refinery, but with everything I know about these keepers, I certainly wouldn’t want to get caught short of ships, should we find ourselves in an ambush, or with an uncharged hyperdrive. But I guess the Captain knows best.
Still, I might just get what I wished for. We do have plans to construct a carrier. Not exactly powerful, though. It’s basically a smaller version of Harmony, and without any ion cannons. So practically defenceless, save for a few peashooters on it. At least it can house ten more strike-craft squads. Even so, it will only assist us in setting up this inhibitor grid, and then it will remain here, separate from our main fleet. While I can sleep a little easier at night, whenever ‘night’ is out here, I think the Captain is a little paranoid about any threats to us. Nice to know he is looking out for us, though.
Hmm, what else should I be noting? Everything else seems fine, I guess. Most of the remaining crew are apparently having a hot-sauce drinking contest on the mess deck, hosted by that annoying pink pony. What is she doing here, anyway? Civilians have no place here. I need to make a mental note to ask her later. Anyway, the bridge is a ghost town. Population, me. Corona is on leave, and Zenith is off doing some inspections on the weapons. Heard the two nutcases at the controls are a hoof-full. Quite frankly, I’m not too interested in interacting with either of them. Or that griffon down in construction, now that I think about it.
Then again, I’ve never trusted those griffons. Bunch of arrogant jerks, the lot of ‘em. No idea why the Princesses even agreed to let them serve aboard our ship. I mean, the fact that the Princesses agreed, simply because other nations had a problem with us possessing such powerful weapons and technology seems downright cowardly to me, and just makes us look weaker in their eyes. I’ll be damned if ponies are seen as pushovers! You’d think others would show us more respect. We control the sun and moon, for goodness sake!
Wow, I did not expect to get into a full-blown rant on griffons. Again. I should make another mental note to see if these logs can somehow be edited.
Anywho, unless I want to start making remarks about completely mundane issues, such as the hot water not working in one of the crew quarters, I think I’ll just sign off here. Midnight Oil, out.
…
Damn green light still on. Where the hay is the stupid off button? Maybe it’s thi—
>LOG TERMINATED
C10 out! Sorry for the delay and short chapter, but the next chapter will be the longest one yet, and I've already finished my first draft of it. Please accept this chapter 11 spoiler as my apology:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ohm3CGrSFR8
complete noob on HW2, but are those ships with the red exhaust scavenger ships or rogue Vagyrs?
EDIT: those explosions in the end(spoilers) sound like we lose a capital ship, is the harmony going down?!
2143649
Well, if you want to know:
Those are Turanic Raider ships. There is a mod for HW2 which adds them as a playable race. All the ships you have seen in the previous games, plus a few new ones, like the one with the red exhaust, which is a Cruiser-class ship. However, you can see two ion-array frigs, several fighters, and standard corvettes flying past, as well as a carrier.
As for what those explosions are, I'm not gonna say, because I'm an asshole!
I hated raider carriers. "Oh hey look it's a defenseless carrier!" then you get the Ion cannon to the face.
2144984
Annoying as fucking hell. You would think that that 'dinky' little thing would be almost defenseless but NO, they had to throw a curve ball and add ION CANNONS on it. It ate up three ion-cannon frigs before it died!
Their plan to use Luna's moon for defense reminds me of Shadow Raiders.
2145720
The curve ball is that you couldn't salvage it!
Whatever, I had 15-20 multi-beams by the end of HW1
2146118
Its possible but the mission you get a good chance with has enough anti-salvete strikecraft around to make it useless.
2147401
Possible to disable it? Hmm, I don't recall that happening. Still, if you capture all the ion-array frigs, you can take care of it without any problems. One of the times I did the campaign, I decided to have a ton of salvage corvettes (the more you have, the more frigs will appear...). Position your corvettes, and you have just given yourself 6 new frigates. That's not including the two that come with the carrier at the end of the level, either.
2147509
However once the raid starts you're swarmed with assault and missile 'vetes from all directions, making it hundred or so times harder than anything to that point.
2150426
Heavy corvettes. Lots of them. Your fleet should be made of nothing but them and salvage corvettes. If you had enough salvage corvettes after mission 2, you should have also captured several Taiidan assault frigates as well, to take care of future enemy corvettes.
2150973
Even then it becomes a hard slog in combat if you don't do the 'wait until you harvest everything' bit after you complete the mission's objectives.
2150990
Oh yes, definitely.
You know what? Harvest on nightmare mode. Go on, I dare you to harvest everything in Deep Space - Sea of Lost Souls (the ghost ship mission).
I did that once. Know what I did? I left the computer for about half an hour after finishing the objectives, and started cooking dinner. Then I watched some TV.
Other times in my quest for RUs, I used salvage corvettes aggressively. Technically, if you time it right, you can capture even the turanic fighters...You just have to wait until they have shot you up long enough for them to run out of fuel, then get a salvage corvette, select a target, order it to kamikaze, then just before it hits, cancel orders and select your target again as quickly as possible. Capture, retire the craft, repeat.
...I had a lot of free time as a kid...
2151036
I could only do it in 30 minute stretches. [grumbles about overprotective parents]
I can see this ending with the Mane Six using the hyperspace cores as massive FTL-capable Elements of Harmony to defeat the Progenitors. Presumably with a rainbow-colored ion beam.
4759770
I will seriously die of laughter if that actually happens.
La space nerd that loves space games.
Thinsk this is based on homworld the comic, reads it, this ant like what my sisser was babbling about, google, ohhhhh I 'ant never heard of that, looks at comments full of fans, huh, seems popular