Yukabacera's news page Longturn 1 - Longturn 2 - Longturn 3 - Longturn 4 - Longturn 5 - Longturn 6 - Longturn 7 - Longturn 8 11. Skysmasher lottery You know the standard defense turrets we got? They're simply stationary versions of the Skysmashers, the anti-ship weapons the Komato invented a long time ago. Thousands of the little mechanical pests would be released into the air (or space), targeting the nearest enemy ship and pelting it with Shocksplinter. The attacks were too weak to spend any time trying to swat all the individual Skysmashers down, but so damaging that the accumulated blasts made a noticable difference in battle. It was more of a distraction tactic if you ask me, though. Each Skysmasher had a reinforced armor plate with a serial number and AI version number - when the Skysmasher was destroyed, this plate would often be the only scrap of metal left intact, and could be collected after battle to determine how often each AI version was shot down. Of course, the Komato being the Komato, someone made a game out of it. People could invest in particular AI versions, and win prizes if their version didn't get shot down in a battle. This was supposed to help develop the most effective version of Skysmasher, according to Imperial Research, but naturally people started looking for loopholes. Some invested in the version with the most effective flying and dodging routines, but some invested in the ones that aimed so poorly, they were never considered dangerous enough by their enemy to be shot down to begin with. I bet you can see where this is going... yeah, until they realized what a bad idea the Skysmashers lottery was, there were only two major versions of AI left: one that flew around like crazy but did little damage, and one that calculated the perfect trajectory to the enemy spaceship and then fired in the exact opposite direction - or left the battlefield entirely and tried to fly into the nearest star. I'm still glad I'm not in Komato Imperial Army. Yuka out. 12. Beginning of the end? The Komato have begun a massive operation to simultaneously strike as many of our fleets as possible. I thought it had been quiet lately... I can only imagine our planets falling even faster now, not that it matters to you and me that much - Elem Sioz isn't exactly the easiest of our strongholds to get rid of. We're pretty safe here. I heard we're calling back a lot of perimeter fleets here, and Hel Sarie's been increasing the diplomacy efforts to stop the war. Not that it's ever helped, but at least we're trying. Even the Komato call Sarie a hero, but then they may be sarcastic. A hero to us is an enemy of theirs, and all that stuff. You know what? I'm not worried. I'm taking all of this a little too casually. Been expanding my hot drink can collection, checking out some planet scans, writing about silly commercials like the Komato weren't trying to rule the galaxy... maybe you just can't stay serious all the time, or I'd be counting bullets, not stars. Pretty sure I'll be flying into a flailing panic by the next news update though, when the Komato come knocking on my own door instead of hanging around a couple of lightturns away... oh well. Yuka out.