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 - 26 July 2024 (45 days) Location Server-wide Result White peace struck with Vegan involvement on 26 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 gunships in the 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, then a member of Imperial Nova, at her space station in Regulus, 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 losses across the 6 weeks that the war lasted.