Ilios Alliance-Vask Authority War

Ilios Alliance-Vask Authority War
Vask Authority frigates down an Imperial Novan destroyer at the Battle of Asteri
Date 11 June 2024 - 29 July 2024 (48 days) Location Server-wide Result White peace struck with Vegan involvement on 29 July. Majority of Vask Authority players subsequently banned from server, remnant of Vask Authority resumes pirating to present.
Participants
Ilios Alliance Orovika Radiance Cortesia Del Mar Imperial Nova Arimfea Republic of Carthage	Vask Authority Vega (material aid, minimal direct involvement)
Casualties and losses
171685 warship blocks lost 127685 to Vask Authority 44000 to Vega at the Battle of Asteri 46274 freighter blocks lost	91819 warship blocks lost 2 battlecruisers lost (1 captured intact) 684 freighter blocks lost

The Ilios Alliance-Vask Authority War was a major military conflict on Horizon's End fought between the forces of the Ilios Alliance and the Republic of Carthage against the pirating nation of Vask Authority, which was materially supported by Vega, in the summer of 2024.

This war was the first conflict in Horizon's End history to see the use of supercapital warships in combat, and established the dominance of starfighters and 500-block tackle gunships in the (post-gunship nerf) 2024 starship combat meta. It is the most recent major war in server history, and the progenitor to the current Long Peace.

History

Prelude

Andurian Federation

Following the conclusion of the Horizon Federation-RentDueYesterday War on 8 January 2024, RentDueYesterday, a major pirating nation led by FellOffBridge, was re-formed by pqio into the Andurian Federation. Unlike its predecessor or successor, the Andurian Federation presented itself as a respectable participant in server politics, and did not allow its members to engage in unrestrained piracy.

From 11 February 2024, the Andurian Federation engaged in a military conflict with Arimfea, with Imperial Nova intervening on behalf of Arimfea on 26 February. This war ended on 18 April 2024 with a white peace, leaving the Andurian Federation's combat-inclined player-base without anyone to fight.

Three weeks later, on 3 May 2024, pqio formally handed control of the Andurian Federtion back to FellOffBridge, who renamed it first to "HorsemenOfTheVegapocalypse", before settling on "Vask Authority" the following day.

Vask Authority

Under FellOffBridge's leadership, Vask Authority took a more hostile stance towards the rest of the server, adopting a policy of allowing its members to pirate other players on the server as they wished. This was first realized when z4nityy began pirating server-wide on 13 May, followed up soon thereafter by DearGhost doing the same.

As the largest colonist and privateer alliance on the server, the Ilios Alliance served as the primary responders to Vask Authority piracy. Seeking to avoid sparking an all-out war with the whole of Vask Authority, the Alliance settled on a policy of attacking members of Vask Authority only when they were engaging in acts of piracy, seeking to detract from their ability to cause mayhem on the server in this way.

Additionally, on account of a convergence of interests in anti-piracy activity, and viewing the prospect of all-out war with Vask Authority as an increasingly inevitable one, the Ilios Alliance admitted the nations of Imperial Nova and Arimfea as associate members of the alliance on 10 June 2024. This brought the two nations, who had already been combating Vask Authority piracy on their own, under the Ilios Alliance's mutual-defense umbrella, and facilitated coordinated fleet actions between all five alliance members.

11 June Incident

On 11 June 2024, at 12:15PM EDT, DearGhost attacked SammaSystem, a member of Imperial Nova, at her space station in Ilios, killing her in PvP. Novan forces scrambled to hunt down DearGhost in retribution (in accordance with Alliance policy); however, DearGhost quickly fled south to Vask Authority's shielded main space station, Apollyon, and sought refuge inside the structure. Vask Authority leadership _Clone1137 and FellOffBridge had previously declared Apollyon to be off-limits to non-members of Vask Authority, and declared that DearGhost was under Vask Authority protection while inside the station, regardless of the act of piracy he had committed minutes earlier.

The Novan response force elected to assault Apollyon regardless, prompting a fleet battle in which Vask Authority forces directly engaged Ilios Alliance ones. This event is broadly considered to be the start of the Ilios Alliance-Vask Authority War.

Conflict

Fleet Doctrine

Once formal war began, the fleet doctrines of the Ilios Alliance and Vask Authority quickly solidified.

As of the start of the war, the Ilios Alliance was much better prepared for combat than its predecessor the Horizon Federation, counting among its ranks many skilled SvSers, such as _omni, EloMilo, NovaManGood2110, yodabird19, and _Longy. This enabled the Alliance to attack members of Vask Authority proactively (as opposed to exclusively responding to incidents of piracy). Ilios Alliance combatants sought to leverage their numerical superiority in combat, seeking to ensure that every fight that they took against Vask Authority gave them the numerical advantage, and quickly disengaging from any unfavorable matchup. These incentives produced a fleet doctrine centered on skilled strike teams employing smaller ships than their adversaries, most often starfighters and gunships.

Vask Authority fleet doctrine was nearly diametrically opposed to that of the Alliance. With material support from Vega, whose non-involvement in the war ensured that their industrial output was unimpeded, Vask Authority were able to mint several supercapital warships: cruisers and battlecruisers. These ships offered disproportionate health and firepower per pilot, allowing Vask Authority to partially compensate for their numerical disadvantage. A majority of fleet engagements involving more than one Vask Authority pilot would involve the use of one of their battlecruisers, as these ships were competitive in combat against 2-3 capital ships, and were nearly untouchable for the small ship classes that the Ilios Alliance favored.

These incompatible fleet doctrines resulted in a large number of matchups between Ilios Alliance and Vask Authority forces ending in stalemate, with Ilios Alliance small ships unable to sink Vask Authority supercapitals, and Vask Authority supercapitals unable to catch up to Ilios Alliance small ships.

Battle of Asteri

Main article: Battle of Asteri

The Battle of Asteri was the single largest fleet engagement in the war, caused when FellOffBridge released the battlecruiser "ARMAGEDDON" inside a Vask Authority-controlled siege station on 26 June. Ilios Alliance forces attempted to prevent Vask Authority from recovering ARMAGEDDON until the station's siege window re-opened after 22 hours, resulting in Vegan forces intervening on behalf of Vask Authority to flush the Ilios Alliance garrison from the station.

Vegan leadership, in a diplomatic communique to Ilios Alliance leadership 3 hours prior to the battle, claimed that their impending involvement was due to Vask Authority paying them 1,000,000 credits for a mercenary contract, and that they did not want anything to do with the war beyond this, even posting purported private message logs between themselves and Vask Authority leadership as proof. It was subsequently discovered that this premise was a ruse, and that the logs were faked, to justify Vegan involvement without incurring diplomatic consequences. This became known to the Ilios Alliance after they observed z4nityy's payment of 1,000,000 credits to Vandrayk being quietly refunded a few days after the battle; the Battle of Asteri is widely understood among Ilios Alliance members to be the moment at which the true extent of Vegan support for Vask Authority was understood.

The Battle of Asteri was a blowout defeat for the Ilios Alliance, claiming 44,000 blocks' worth of Alliance warships - over 25% of the Alliance's total warship losses across the 7 weeks that the war lasted.

Siege of Cicatrix

Radiance was the largest member of the Ilios Alliance measured by active player count during the war, and its population had relatively few combat- or tech-oriented players. This made Radiance players prime targets for Vask Authority piracy, due to their number and their relative inexperience in defending themselves at the time. This was most acutely realized in the city of Cicatrix, the capital of Radiance, which is located on Aerach, a single jump away from Vask Authority's central operations base of Apollyon in Regulus.

Members of Vask Authority, especially z4nityy, attacked players in Cicatrix frequently over the course of the war, most often killing them on foot in PvP. While the Ilios Alliance-Vask Authority War is generally not held to have been as damaging to server health as the Horizon Federation-RentDueYesterday War before it, the Cicatrix attacks are typically cited as the most damaging thing to server health that Vask Authority did in the course of the conflict, as Cicatrix (and indeed Radiance as a whole) was (and still is) a major hub of relatively new and non-combat-oriented players, who were liable to be chased off the server by repeated unprovoked attacks.

These attacks resulted in a large number of battles taking place on or outside of Aerach, and a large number of casualties for both the Alliance and Vask Authority. As a majority of Ilios Alliance defenders lived far from Aerach (yodabird19 on Chimgara; _omni on Kovfefe; _Longy and NovaManGood2110 on Aret (opposite the Regulus star from Aerach)), bringing in outside defenders to Cicatrix proved a time-consuming endeavor for the Alliance, leading to several members of Radiance (SmolPotatoLord, Kay_2905, and TonyTheMage_) teaching themselves ship combat in order to defend themselves.

However, the Alliance's ability to punish Vask Authority pirates for attacks on Cicatrix proved limited, as Aerach had a Trade Outpost (Aerost) at the south of the planet, a safezone to which attacking pirates could quickly escape when confronted. This dynamic led to widespread calls among server players for a mechanic that would prevent players in combat from hiding in safezones, ultimately leading to the implementation of the Combat Tag system on 9 November 2024.

Capture of ARMAGEDDON

On 16 July 2024, _omni found himself in a 1v2 engagement against Vask Authority forces in southern Ilios. _omni was piloting a 2,000 block gunship, while FellOffBridge piloted the battlecruiser ARMAGEDDON, and z4nityy pursued him in a starfighter. For unknown reasons, FellOffBridge elected to unpilot his battlecruiser (leaving it active, but immobile) and exit into space on foot, in an attempt to board _omni's ship and kill him in PvP. Instead, however, _omni successfully killed FellOffBridge in the ensuing engagement with a Blaster Shotgun, leaving the battlecruiser ARMAGEDDON unattended.

yodabird19 quickly responded to the situation from Chimgara, sprinting south in a starfighter to assist in capturing the orphaned battlecruiser; by the time he arrived, the battlecruiser had automatically released. While _omni engaged z4nityy in combat to keep him from claiming the battlecruiser, yodabird19 created a 150-block radius station claim called "mogged" to secure the battlecruiser for the Alliance. z4nityy initially protested that, as he was still engaged in combat with _omni, the claim was not valid; however, _omni proceeded to kill z4nityy in PvP as well, conclusively securing ARMAGEDDON for the Ilios Alliance.

The capture of ARMAGEDDON, which was worth over 81 stacks of iron blocks, was the Ilios Alliance's first headline victory in the war. To many in the Alliance, it served as a vindication of the Battle of Asteri, as the capture of ARMAGEDDON had been the object of that battle, which the Alliance had lost.

500 block Gunships

Among the most notable developments in the starship combat meta during the war was the popularization of a new subclass of warship: the 500-block tackle gunship. While this class of ship was known to the server, and had been used before in combat (for example, three of them were involved in the Battle of Asteri), their employment by the Ilios Alliance in the latter weeks of the war proved a decisive divergence from previous SvS doctrine.

yodabird19 is credited with the idea to pivot alliance SvS strategy towards heavy employment of 500s, circa 4 July 2024. As a starfighter main, he observed that a large number of Ilios Alliance strike teams consisted primarily of groups of skilled starfighter players (so-called "starfighter mogsquads") working in concert, and that these teams tended to see the most success; however, as starfighters could not employ Starship Gravity Wells, these teams typically included one 2000-block gunship to provide an allied gravity well to the engagement, which provided a slower and more vulnerable target for Vask Authority opponents to focus on.

A 500 block gunship is the smallest size ship in the game that can still deploy a gravity well; at only 143% the size of a 350-block starfighter, these ships behave more like starfighters than like larger subclasses of gunship: they employ plasma cannons and torpedoes for weapons, have a single shield, and can achieve both cruise and direct control speeds comparable to that of a 350-block ship (~33-35 and 16.9, respectively).

The introduction of 500s to Ilios Alliance fleets - typically one per strike team, in place of a 2K - removed a critical weak spot in Ilios Alliance attack squads, which caused a measurable improvement in Ilios Alliance SvS performance in the latter half of the war. Furthermore, due to being nearly as difficult to kill as a 350-block starfighter, 500s were optimal choices for trapping Vask Authority supercapitals inside gravity wells, preventing them from reaching an ongoing fleet engagement by blocking their access to Hyperspace.

This style of 1:1 removal of players from a fleet engagement was advantageous to the Ilios Alliance, as it favored their numerical advantage.

Sinking of CATACLYSM

The battlecruiser "CATACLYSM" is sunk by Ilios Alliance forces on 26 July 2024

somebody else write this

Peace Negotiations

At 2:49PM EDT on 26 July 2024, approximately 1 hour after the sinking of the battlecruiser CATACLYSM, Vegan diplomats reached out on behalf of Vask Authority, offering an immediate cease-fire to the war and terms of white peace between the Ilios Alliance and Vask Authority. Based on chat logs obtained in the Vask Authority Leak, it is understood that the impetus for this offer of peace was a consensus among members of Vask Authority, spurred on by the sinking of CATACLYSM (which represented the first time Ilios Alliance forces defeated a Vask Authority supercapital in fair combat, and the first supercapital sink in server history), that Vask Authority's small group of elite combat players would not be able to keep up in the future with the Ilios Alliance's growing war proficiency. As Vandrayk put it in his opening statement during negotiations:

VA is looking to negotiate peace and end the war. They are tired of fighting with uneven odds and have no allies other than Vega to rely on, which we are obviously not looking to join in the war so we advised for surrender. After the second lost BC today, I think that it is reparation enough for the toll of the war on top of the other you guys already took. I propose In regards to the end of the war:
-Full peace for both sides, neither side shall attack the other
-Stations remain as they are as of now (similar if not the same to how they were at start of the war)

Vegan diplomats intimated that they intended to strongarm the Ilios Alliance (who very much did not want to risk a conflict with Vega) into accepting these terms of peace, stating, "if you're unwilling to give peace against an enemy who has surrendered, there will be a larger discussion that has an ending that nobody wants". It was later revealed in the leak that the intent of these peace terms was to give the Ilios Alliance time to create their own supercapital warfleet, which would give Vega an excuse to directly involve themselves in a subsequent war against the Alliance.

A cease-fire was declared between the Ilios Alliance and Vask Authority on 29 July 2024, to allow for negotiations to progress. Negotiations stalled, however, as the Ilios Alliance were hesitant to accept terms that they believed would simply set them up for another war a few months in the future. The negotiations ended up being moot, however, as on 4 August 2024, the Vask Authority Leak resulted in FellOffBridge, _Clone1137, and Vandrayk all being permanently banned from the server (which compounded with a previous ban against DearGhost for exploiting), crippling Vask Authority as a fighting force, and restoring Vega to more friendly leadership.

z4nityy, as the sole active participant in Vask Authority not to be banned from the server, abrogated the cease-fire and resumed solo pirating under the Vask Authority banner, which continues to the present.

Legacy

The end of the Ilios Alliance-Vask Authority War marked the beginning of a distinct political era of server history, characterized by unipolar political dominance of the Ilios Alliance, commonly referred to as the Long Peace. What conflict does still occur in this present period (mostly small-scale piracy by individuals such as z4nityy and Sherbet_S) is generally derivative of this war.