Cheth Wars

Cheth Wars
Image of Echelon Frigates from the HE trailer by Kwazedilla
Date April 18 - July 22, 2022 (95 Days) Location Server-wide Result Damkoth Blockade voluntarily lifted by Echelon to avoid killing the server.
Participants
Allied Sovereign States Amcaran Social Republic UNSC Neo Nova Primordials United Federation (Arimfea) Orovika (material aid, minimal direct involvement)	Echelon Gutin War Cult Vulnere Republic of Carthage (material aid, minimal direct involvement)
Casualties and losses
Unknown (a lot)	Unknown (a little)

The Echelon Wars were a series of closely-related irregular conflicts that occurred in the early months of Horizon's End. The conflicts were fought chiefly between members of the Bastion of Neutral Groups (BoNG), an alliance led by Echelon, and the Allied Sovereign States (ASS).

These wars strongly favored the BoNG combatants, with most victories in battle being theirs. ASS combatants largely relied on guerrilla warfare tactics to score occasional victories in this time.

Context

Resource Scarcity and Inexperience

"The Clapper", an experimental frigate designed by FellOffBridge for the Allied Sovereign States. This ship design is generally understood to be a poor one.

A corvette designed by _Longy for the Allied Sovereign States. This ship design with its limited paint scheme provides a good example of resource scarcity, and was a major driving force in the war.

The nature and complexity of Horizon's End's tech tree makes gaining access to substantive resources or infrastructure extremely challenging (and in some cases, impossible) without external support. At the time of the Cheth Wars, the survival server had just been created, and as a result, resources were extremely scarce: as an example, most Allied Sovereign States ships at the time employed white stained glass rather than black stained glass for their cockpits at this time, as production of black stained glass required a black stained glass printer, which in turn required a black stained glass block, which was unobtainable through normal means as squids did not spawn on the server - this was only rectified when black stained glass produced via the /dye donor perk was used to construct black stained glass printers.

Ore blocks, which are essential in starship construction, were especially challenging to mass-produce with such limited means. Asteroids did not exist on the server at this time, meaning that obtaining resources required traveling to the appropriate planet (planetary ore distributions were also more restrictive at this time than in the present day) with a drill ship, which would itself be extremely expensive to create. During the entire span of the Cheth Wars, only four frigates were constructed - two on the BoNG side, and two on the ASS side. Under these conditions, the sinking of a large ship would decimate the net worth of an entire nation; such incidents often resulted in the players of said nation giving up on producing large ships, or leaving the server entirely.

One critical result of this extreme scarcity was creating a strong incentive for players to betray their allies or friends for a small sum of resources. An example of this is a case where FellOffBridge attempted to pirate a Novan starship, specifically a light freighter because the "opportunity presented itself." despite the fact that both of these nations were allies at the time.

Furthermore, the Cheth Wars were compounded by a large experience differential between the two sides. Echelon possessed extensive knowledge and understanding of server mechanics even prior to the launch of the survival server, allowing them to construct relatively effective and comparatively strong warships; inversely, the Allied Sovereign States had minimal comprehension of shipbuilding, causing them to field highly experimental and flawed ship designs which were no match for the Echelon fleet.

Internal Conflict in the Allied Sovereign States

"Holy shit, they were shooting down each others' ships!"

During the Cheth Wars, many Allied Sovereign States ships were sunk due to friendly fire. Friendly fire was prevalent in ASS fleet battles for a multitude of reasons:

• Both sides used an orange/black color scheme for their ships; inefficient ASS SvS comms led to easy misidentification of allies as enemies.
• Issues with server performance made seeing other ships in combat often challenging or inconsistent.
• Some players would deliberately shoot down their allies' ships to gain personal resources from their salvage, and then excuse it as accidental.
• Many players in the Alliance had personal grudges against others, and would shoot down allied ships deliberately during chaotic battles.
• The ASS suffered from significant deficits in fleet coordination.

History

Damkoth Blockade

The Horizon's End survival server opened to the public on 4 April 2022, after 4 months of anticipation by the player-base following the closure of Star Legacy. The very same day, Vandrayk, leader of the Echelon Caliphate (a successor to Vega on Star Legacy) announced a blockade of the planet Damkoth, which was host to Echelon's chief operating center of New Baker Street and was the primary source of Chetherite on the server (followed up by Luxiterna):

Damkoth Blockade
Until further notice effective as of this morning, Damkoth is under a strict blockade by the Echelon caliphate. All chetherite mined on Damkoth is now subsidized and under Echelon control. 
Upon no circumstances will chetherite be mined while an Echelon member is online without swift military action. Upon entering the planet, you will be asked to leave. This will be your only warning. 
Any refusal of this order will result in your death and loss of items. 
Due to combat not being enabled yet, we are under a verbal blockade, any refusal of said orders will result in your name being logged and marked for termination by an Echelon or Vulnere operatives until we feel that our stolen chetherite has been repaid in full. 
Vandrayk, Echelon Caliphate

Because there were no asteroids on the server at the time, the blockade made chetherite near-unobtainable ; often, players would have to cruise to far-away destinations (all systems were on the same map at the time), or buy chetherite from Echelon for an extreme markup. The Damkoth Blockade was ended voluntarily by Echelon on 17 July 2022. Echelon made this choice when they concluded that their actions were causing too much harm to the server, and continuing the war would result in the complete destruction of the playerbase.

Chetherite Scarcity

A significant impact of the Damkoth blockade was an extreme scarcity of chetherite on Horizon's End. For the first approximately two weeks of the blockade, Damkoth was the sole planet on the server which spawned chetherite, making it the sole renewable source of chetherite in the game. On 17 April 2022 (?), at Oriomium and/or kwazedilla's suggestion, a smaller amount of chetherite ore was added to the planet Luxiterna; however, this change was far from resolving the scarcity issue.

At this time, Damkoth was located in Asteri (close to Spawn), while Luxiterna was located in Regulus, making going to Luxiterna over Damkoth for chetherite extremely inconvenient for new players. Additionally, chetherite ore rates on Luxiterna were drastically worse than on Damkoth, and it was common for Vulnere (an ally of Echelon) to attack players mining on Luxiterna as well. Mining on Luxiterna also didn't prevent Echelon itself from attacking if you had ever entered Damkoth previously. According to some sources, even being associated with people who mined on Damkoth would get you attacked by Echelon; the result of this would be that most players on the server were considered valid targets.

Eventually, the issues caused by the inconvenience of Luxiterna and the convenience of Damkoth were addressed by the server developers wholesale moving several planets between systems:

• Damkoth from Asteri to Ilios
• Luxiterna from Regulus to Asteri
• Vask from Ilios to Regulus

Damkoth Slavery

During the Damkoth blockade, Echelon employed a system of forced labor to penalize players who violated the blockade. Specifically, any player caught violating the terms of the blockade would be forced to mine 9 stacks of chetherite for Echelon, under the threat of being targeted with attacks if they did not comply.

In addition to veterans, Echelon enforced these terms on new players on the server; while new players are typically protected from attack for 48 hours of gameplay, Echelon were allowed by server staff to enforce penalties on new players who violated the blockade, on the basis that violating the blockade constituted an attack on Echelon, which voids a player's protection.

Aftermath

<this is where you explain what actually came of all this>

Legacy

The Cheth Wars are broadly understood to have caused extreme damage to the Horizon's End player-base, 'filtering out' a large portion of Star Legacy veterans who attempted to play the server in its early days. Per NovaManGood2110, "more people quit from the cheth war than the RDY war and VA war combined". This is considered to be the broadest conflict in Horizon's End history.