Smarts, you're just slow on the draw today. :P

Edit: 15 minutes behind Smarts

Yes?

EDIT: Fuck! Gue, Smarts, and Irtar all beat me to it!

No seriously.

<.<

Oh Kach.

Hundred of miles away from Wes and his fleet, Kach Thorton watched the event happen live on the status monitors of the Stormhawk.

Just posting this for reference.

Live, and in the horrifyingly true technicolor of real life,

I’m just quoting this because I like this line. :D

the bulk of what had been a bit over one hundred Imperial Fleet and S.S. Ships emerged from hyperspace together behind the enemy fleet

Again, just posting this for reference.

where only a few enemy vessels were stationed in defense of the fleet's rear.

We’ve been over this, Kach. Wes is not at my rear. We debated this and argued this and Wes conceded it was not possible. We have established him and I are on roughly the same level of orbit, although I am slightly higher, and are in different polar coordinates. Please edit your post to remove references to the disputed positioning since Wes himself doesn’t argue this point anymore.

With an urgency brought upon them by their desperation, the remainder of the fleet – around 90 ships including the Borderland compliment he had supplied Wes – opened fire with all guns in what should have been a devastating barrage to the few warships stationed nearby. The very first few ranging shots hit the surprised vessels hard, blasting of pieces of their hulls and valuable equipment. But then, in time for the first barrage something changed and suddenly their turbolasers were ineffective.

Good. Except for the numbers issue which you’ve said you’d address (personally, I’ve never been anal about numbers, but it would help to make your post consistent as to what is there).

“Turbolasers . . . ineffective” the female Captain of a Borderland ISD III reported. Four of them had went in with Vos' fleet, and had miraculously survived the jump unscathed. Another voice came over the comm, this one General Vos thinking aloud:

As Vos said, no thinking aloud. You’re also already being jammed.

This also references back the two points I originally quoted from your post, namely;

1. That Wes is hundreds of miles away.

2. Wes is behind my fleet.

So, you are broadcasting by line of sight transmission across hundreds of miles, with an enemy fleet between receiver and transmitter, and you expect to carry on realtime conversations?

This bends the boundary of logic, so I’d like you to remove it. It’s one thing to have line of sight communication. What you’re talking about is more like hand of god communication.

http://www.drinkplanner.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/warranty_void_if_seal_is_broken.pngs

…what the hell is that doing there?

“Signals,” the designated keyword to pass his order along to communications, and then ordered “Lieutenant, pass word to Commodore Brandt, General Vos, his captains and the Borderland compliment that the enemy vessels are gravitationally shielded by the large ships at the rear center of the formation, approximately 2,800 meters long.

…do I even need to voice my protests at this?

“Captain, I want you to signal the Dictators and activate one of them. The enemy isn't letting us talk. I don't think that it's fair we let him talk too. He was tempted to ask if they could find a way to get through the fighter band jamming, but jamming was jamming and if it was easy to get through what would be the point? From the reports he'd heard the enemy jamming was one step short of impenetrable, just like that of their own Dictator.

I’d like information on the Dictator, if you do not mind. :)

He was tempted to ask if they could find a way to get through the fighter band jamming, but jamming was jamming and if it was easy to get through what would be the point?

…except that later in your post, you have me voluntarily open up the comms myself (Kach, what have you been told about acting for other people?). More on this later.

Briskly moving toward the prime tactical display in the middle of the bridge he was just in time to see the four Reigns dispatched to intercept an approaching groups of enemy ships disabled by what seemed to be miniature superlasers

This section is confusing; it reads as if you are moving to confront a group of my vessels that I shot with my own superlasers.

each ship taking out one vessel in a single shot before turning away.

Just for clarity;

The RFBC doesn’t output a single shot but a series of powerful pulses modulated and focused into a sustained beam. It would be a continuous beam that struck your ship until our generators went critical, which could be a minute or more. If you’ve seen the Ori motherships and how they attack human ships, picture the same; a sustained beam that strikes, then eventually overwhelms, the shields, and then cuts into the hull.

Your ships aren’t taken out persay; just disabled, but not irreparably damaged.

Also, the Parrow Lin ships wouldn’t turn, they’d reverse thrusters. They also fired Armorlin pods as well, which you didn’t mention. You did mention that you pounded them, which is fair; in order to fire, they’d need to be outside our shield, giving you free shots as they retreated (SLOWLY) back to safety.

On the bridge of the Tarkin's Fury

I liked this part of the post and thought it was well written.

I’d like to talk with you about an idea I had if we both find ourselves on AIM tomorrow.

All of a sudden there was an eerie whistle, static and white noise all mixed together that caught her attention – communications were back online but overwhelmed by enemy jamming.

The jamming would manifest as numbers being spoken aloud, but otherwise good; your coms go down, they go back up, and then you realize they’re getting jammed. No issues, well written. :)

slowly weaking for some purpose. After a few moments it was entirely gone, leaving what was now clearly the fighter pilot band open and adding to the surrealness of the situation. Noting the return of communications, pilots used the chance to say whatever needed said quickly.

I can broadcast freely through my own jamming; afterall, I can modulate what information is sent by which terminals, BUT, I like the idea of you having a frantic few minutes with which to panic the fuck out, so I will consent this point in the interest of a better story.

“Guys, if you haven't figured it out yet they're all droids!”

Correction; there are no pilots on my fighters. You don’t know how they’re controlled, and to say they’re all droids is a leap of logic. I don’t like it. Mentioning “there are no pilots on those things!” would accomplish roughly the same while being factually accurate. If you wanted to then speculate that they’re droid controlled, that would be fine, but as it reads, it’s inaccurate and a leap of logic which I dislike.

“Boys, the fighters weapons are useless when they're in their gravity zone, take advantage of it.”

…you know until just now I didn’t actually realize that most of my fighters just have ions. This certainly lends a lot of support to the idea of you having fighter superiority.

If the enemies were droids – as a former TIE Defender pilot herself she knew that droid pilots were easy to pick out because they flew in a highly coordinated, completely consistent manner and showed no initiative in their actions – then the Imperial pilots could likely take on a dozen times their own number with no problem under normal circumstances. Without communications, they couldn't do nearly as well but if the droids were jammed – and Grand Moff Thorton's fleet had just sent out a two minute warning on a complete communications jamming net – then they would be on equal terms again and the Imperials would be able to hold their own.

This however brings up a big argument about humans vs computers that I’d like to classify as “in your opinion, humans are better than droids”.

All of a sudden there was a loud, strangely accented voice on the comm and the reason for the jamming lift suddenly became clear.

As Omnae correctly pointed out (something I hadn’t considered), none of you speak Cree’Ar nor would you have frame of reference to translate his message. As well, Artanis wouldn't know basic. You’d get the message first, then a Basic translation spoken by one of the human tek’a’tara.

Droids, even if they had the best of equipment, would never be the equal of organic pilots with instincts and the sometimes less than rational thinking that made them unpredictable in combat. Even remote piloting – as with TIE Devils and Swift-class fighters – took something unknown away from the pilot that made them inferior to those who were actually present.

Again, I’d like this classified as speculative.

Outnumbered? Two to one, maybe. But with the powerful Coruscant surface defenses continuously pounding away at the attacking fleet –

I’m mostly too far away, and with portions of your fleet between me and the planet. Pounding, I'd say, would be a slight exageration.

it had been found over the course of the siege that Plasma based weaponry, due to it's extremely low density, was almost useless for atmospheric bombardment and it was necessary for fighters and bombers to do this sort of dirty work for their enemy. So far, ground based defense fighters had kept the surface defenses safe from aerial threats, though several positions had been knocked out by ground attacks.

While your science is not without merit, our plasma has been defined before as very dense in terms of the matter content; it’s not as high in energy yield, but the temperature and corrosivity of the plasma itself helps to offset that. As well, Omnae made note of heavy bombardment against the surface, so, there has been heavy bombardment of the surface.

We’ve done it with capital ships, and it HAS come at a cost; I wrote, in one of my posts, of watching a Cree’Ar capital vessel falling through the atmosphere. But it has been done, and never disputed.

Taking one last, quick look at the tactical display Kach noted the fantastic positioning of Wes's ships.

Again, please remove all references to Wes’ fantastic positioning behind all of my defenses.

Cree'ar fighters mixed with them in a deadly duel but those without missiles could do very little, as at close range the shielding effects of the ships inadvertently gave protection to friend and foe and like, leaving the SS ships free to make attack runs.

The fighters with Plasma weapons would still have plasma weapons, mind you.

This is all I have for now, but the points raised by others about your employment of CGTs and the like are meritorious.

I don't have any issue with you communicating with Coruscant though, since Coruscant isn't moving. It would make sending line of sight communication much easier.

They have these neat mirrors on the moon. They're supposed to prove that man actually went there and you can aim a laser (well, not you persay but cosmologists with powerful enough equipment and legal access to said lasers) at these mirrors and then catch the reflection.

It's neat.

But you can't do it if the sky is cloudy. Or if there is any sort of solar interference.

Which begs the question - regarding Coruscant; what is the weather like at these LOS reciever sites?

Coruscant has relatively little cloud cover in relation to a like sized celestial object. Of course, how it has any cloud cover at all boggles my mind but there you go. The arguement I imagine is that the world is so covered that any random square block of city likely has a number of recievers and transmitters for personal and private function that any disruptive cloud cover would need to be larger than the sum total of half the planet. What portion of that might be fighter craft cutting in between, planetary transports moving overhead or even just minute fluctuations in solar winds I couldn't say... but cloud cover is just a little bit minor.

The fact that Wes can't communicate with me at all changes everything... I'm basically going to have to do a total rewrite but I haven't had time to check TRF, let alone set a masterpiece to Word this week. Maybe this weekend.

Well, he can; I've consented to drop the jamming in order to transmit my message, so you have that time to do any communicating you wish to. But the other stuff, the stuff that I and the others mentioned, needs to be reworked.

Take your time Kach, we all have lives (except me :().