Once my 8 new escorts linked up with the Ghost Fleet in the Azamol system, I was ready to try to turn the tables on the pirates. My plan was to cancel the protection agreement, then intercept their fleet when they moved to raid, so I could fight them away from their base. I have a mining station in the system, so I hoped that would be an enticing target, and I moved my fleet to an empty planet in the system, where I could react back quickly. It was a gamble, if he decided to target a location in another system I would have problems. The Azamol ships already had the Gerax drives, so I wouldn’t be able to catch them in time.
Luckily, they took the bait, and attempted to raid my mining station. I tried to micro the battle to some extent, letting my newer escorts engage the nearest enemies while concentrating my Ghost Fleet ships on one at a time with orders to capture.
The battle was a learning experience, I almost lost a couple escorts when one of his (damaged) escorts retreated back to his base, and my brave escorts decided to follow, I had to quickly manually move them back to the mining station. I also had one ship that was disabled, and waiting for my Ghost Fleet ships to come over and capture, but a couple escorts (who I had given move orders to) decided to turn around and attack, blowing him up. But the net result was a success, I captured 3 of Azamol escorts, which had boarding bays and other advanced tech, and didn’t lose any of my original ships. I pulled a nearby constructor ship over to rebuild one of his that was disabled, the other two were able to repair themselves.
I was feeling pretty good, until I took a closer look at his base – still way stronger than my fleet (now a little over 900, while the base is 1200), and much more advanced tech. I’m gonna need more (and larger) ships to take that on.
I did use my fleet to go Gravillex hunting, since they were all gathered together, and destroyed the one hiding in the star. I saw the ‘Gravillex carcass’ floating along afterward, and so I sent my constructor to salvage, got a couple hundred Gravillex Crystals, which should be useful for something.
At around the same time, I was faced with another pirate threat, in the opposite direction. The Liberated pirates are Haakonish, my first non-human pirates, and they definitely don’t like me.
However, I was feeling confident, this was when I was preparing to fight the Azamol, and with another batch of escorts in the yards, I declined the protection agreement. Initially, it wasn’t too bad, I had a newer Caslon mining station, they raided (with just 2 escorts), the base held them off for a while, and when they finally won it said no loot was taken! Kudos to that base commander!
However, their next target was a resort base in the Gyndeni system, and this one was a little more expensive.
However, by now the cavalry was on the way, the 4 new escorts were headed toward that system. The pirates moved to attack a Caslon mining station in the same system, and the escorts arrived in time. I stuck close to the station, for the little bit of added firepower. I disabled one, and the other ran away. I didn’t have assault pods on my new escorts, so I sent the original Ghost Fleet ships to the system to try to capture the disabled ship, but that took quite a while, and meanwhile my nearby escorts got trigger-happy and destroyed it anyway (there needs to be a setting so ships on Manual don’t initiate attacks).
I did get another new scientist with the discovery (Obidar, who has no known traits), so I let Yuri go and wish him well in rehab. Time to refit my explorers (and build a couple more) and see what we can find!
