Space Empires. Space marauders

Vasyr's Raiders: Alex Isabelle

Reds of Altair: Laura Beltrami

On one side the Vasyr's Raiders, on the other the Reds of Altair. Two peoples from distant solar systems, united by one thing: the interest in making their planet the capital of a stellar empire. Although separated from the pitfalls of deep space, it was clear from the outset that only one of the two could reign over this sector of the galaxy. Peace was never going to be an option.

The initial phase of the game saw a very rapid expansion by the Raiders, who quickly produced large numbers of colonizing ships, sending them around their sector to take control of the planets. The Reds, on the other hand, opted for a more cautious approach, dealing primarily with the collection of minerals, colonizing the planets more slowly, and developing military technologies early on.

Two completely different approaches, which quickly came to a confrontation, even if not an open one, when the people of Vasyr, having explored a large part of their sector, decided to tackle deep space, stumbling upon a series of black holes and other forms of misfortunes that dispersed more than one crew, but which allowed them to reach the planet Omikron, located right in the enemy sector, just before the opponents. An open declaration of war.

The Reds, not foreseeing a guaranteed victory against this sparse Vasyrian vanguard, limited themselves to occupying the adjacent planet Cerberus. For several years the colonies on Omikron and Cerberus then flourished and the fleets on them swelled. On Omikron they took it a little easier, because in the meantime on the other side of the sector a second offensive was being prepared, conceived as an advance directed towards the heart of the Reds, the planet Altair. At this point the Cerberus fleet decided to attack. This led to the First Battle for Omikron, the first open clash between the two powers. The Reds have made a certain boast of their superior technology, devastating the Vasyrian fleet, without however being able to break through the terrible defensive bases placed in defense of the planet. Noting that this advance would have resulted in a stalemate, the Red officers decided to make a temporary turnaround, retreating to Cerberus.

From here, two things happened. On Cerberus the fleet started to grow again, while on Omikron some defenses slightly higher than the initial ones were rebuilt. The nearby planet of Fionn was also occupied, a further setback to the sovereignty of the Reds, as well as a further opportunity to drain resources useful for the Vasirian cause. At the same time, on the opposite side of the sector, the Raiders went to explore deep space, looking for a direct route to Altair, finding it in a couple of systems dominated by the great desert planet Abaddon. After having developed the technologies necessary for its terroformation, it was colonized and transformed into a second bridgehead for the invasion of systems subjected to the Red domination.

At one point the Red central management thought this was enough, and started off a grand operation with the Cerberus fleet; destination: Omikron. The Second Battle of Omikron was actually a general slaughter, at the end of which the Red cruisers managed, as the only survivors of their fleet, to eliminate the fearsome cannons of the planet's defensive base, as well as its spaceport, all its defenders and a couple of civilian ships as well. It took another year of bombing to completely wipe out the raiding colony. Soon after, however, the latter opened the games on the other side of the map, beginning to demonstrate the reason for their name. They eliminated some old Red cruiser models, then bombarded the nearby planet Vortigen for about a year, eliminating the colony on it, and then quickly escaping to another planet, where they carried out further massacres before returning to Abaddon, where the final offensive was being prepared.

Here the Reds finally began to highlight the problems of their economic project. While the fast-paced military search had given them a sufficient advantage in open confrontations, allowing them to win the game's most devastating battle rather easily, their fewer colonies failed to support the weight of the late military campaign. Harassed by rising ship maintenance costs and increasing raids by the Vasyrians, they have had to watch the almost helpless arrival of a huge fleet dominated by two Raider's dreadnaughts. Thanks to the important research carried out in the field of propulsion over the previous decades these ships left Vasyr, passed through Abaddon, where they found other less powerful ships waiting for them, and continued towards Altair, reaching it and breaking everything in a single, almost unpredictable, direct attack.

After just one year of continuous bombardment, the Red capital was destroyed, and Vasyr's rule became unchallenged in the entire galactic sector.

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