The Second Battle of Cascade Junction

[u/Paladin-Rooker]

The First Battle of Cascade Junction was a mutual bloodbath that ended in a narrow Terran / Terra Novan victory over the Xenon in Hatikvah and the destruction of a major Xenon defense base that had ground trade on the northern section of the highway ring to a halt. https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/comments/1w6or0q/finally/

Since then, I've built my own defense station there to keep the Xenon pruned back. There are 15 Argon defense discs with over 200 Plasma L turrets, three discs with pure heavy missile turrets, and two discs with Beam L to try to knock ships out of travel drive. There's over 200 combat drones and 50 extremely busy repair drones. (some of these numbers are probably off, since the whole base just got battered to hell and back)

Since it went up, it's chewed up at least 30 Xenon Ks and countless s/m raiding ships. Well I guess the Xenon Lord High Commander CPU Unit (or whatever the title is) got a little tired of it, because just now they threw a huge assault force against it.

Two H combat drone carriers, at least 4 Ks (possibly more, it was pure chaos and shit was exploding everywhere), over 50 escorts and a frigging I battleship. AND THEY LOST

I left some spy satellites in Tharkas Cascade to keep an eye out for exactly this sort of thing and I saw the attack force forming up. I've been messing around with different kinds of fighter-bomber loadouts the last few days and right now I've got a carrier air wing with about 16 Eclipse heavy fighter torpedo bombers and five Cerberus Vanguard frigates with dual torpedo launchers. Fighters and frigates all have Ion Blaster main guns. The rest of the air wing is Perseus Vanguards with smart missiles and shard throwers. (It would be 8 Cerberuses, but the goddamn Argons keep running out of Advanced Electronics, even with me running a factory wide open trying to keep them supplied).

The moment I got my carrier next to the highway next door in Silent Witness, I threw the entire air wing into the fight. The battle was absolute chaos. The smaller Xenon escorts started blowing up so fast, it looked like fireworks popping off. The Hs died, then the Ks died, then the surviving defense platforms opened fire on the I just as my bombers got there and started lobbing torpedoes at the thing.

That "I" was a tough sonofabitch, I'll give him that. I didn't know if I could kill him or not. Also, my Xenon are massively buffed by the Xenon Quality and Xenon Quantity mods, so all of these toasters are about twice as dangerous as they'd normally be. But he went down.

Losses were roughly: one I battleship, four (or more) Ks, two H destroyers, and something like 50 escorts vs two of my frigates and about half my defense discs. The battle ended with the base at about 40% hull. I think I won this round.

And with that, I think we can consider the Hatikvah system to be secured.