The Tale of the Hosohedron, the valiant little Engi Ship.

[Androconus]

Here's a story I wanted to share about a type A Engi Cruiser.

The Hosohedron left the hangar of a Federation outpost and set out on it's mission. The crew was mostly Engi, but it was Captained by a human. Captain T. Bloch. Bloch was recently promoted, having served as Chief Engineer in a Kestral Class ship by the name of "Sparrow". This was unexpected, as Chief Engineer to Captain was out of keeping with Federation Promotion Policy. It was an unusual situation; His superiors felt that his engineering experience would mean he would work well with the Engi crew, and besides, with the Federation crumbling, they had little choice. Any more qualified Federation Personnel were with the main fleet preparing for battle with the Rebels.

Captain Bloch was given information that was to be transferred to the main Federation Fleet. Long distance com-relays were down and they had no other options.

Very soon after leaving the Hosohedron received word that the Rebel Fleet had overrun the outpost and they were to try stay ahead of it.

The first sector of the journey went smoothly. Apart from a few minor kinks and moments-lost-in-translation, which was to be expected of the situation, a system started to settle into place. Bloch soon got used to the drone-centric nature of the Engi ship and crew moral was high.

Along the way, they managed to pick up a few more Drone schematics and upgrade their systems a bit. They were making excellent headway. Captain Bloch noted in the logs that a large amount of barterable scrap had to be put towards maintenance of the Hull. He conceded that this was probably to be expected of such a ship: Engi designs are famous for their haphazard and patched-together nature.

A path was charted through Zoltan space, which spanned over two sectors. Things started to get tough in the second sector. Pirate ships and Rebel scouts were increasingly well armed, and with so many resources going towards Hull Repair, there was little left for weapon upgrades. Despite these difficulties, the Hosohedron had managed to win favour with the Zoltan leaders, partly due to its continued efforts against piracy in the system, but mainly due to the cool-headedness and empathy the Captain showed in a particular high-friction situation involving a Rebel ship which had been repurposed by the Zoltan. The crew left Zoltan space with hope in their hearts. The fourth sector of their Journey was to be the space surrounding the Rock Homeworlds.

Here, the signs of struggle began to show. With increasingly advanced shield technology, the Ion Blaster was becoming less and less useful, often not completely disabling the shields before the Combat Drones engaged, meaning only one would get a shot through. There had been ship depots selling more advanced Ion technology in Zoltan space, but with all their resources channelled toward keeping the Hull intact they hadn't been able to purchase anything.

Many times, the Hosohedron had to engage the ftl mid fight to make an escape. The crew scrounged what scrap they could find and used it to patch the hull at every depot they could find. Moral was low, scrap was low, and worryingly, fuel was low.

This had snuck up on them somewhat, as generally they fuel salvaged from enemy ships was enough to tide them over, but with few victories in the past few weeks, they had less opportunity for resource collection. The problem finally came to a head when they ran out. They had enough to power everything else, but an FTL jump was out of the question. The crew of the Hesohedron had little choice but to activate the distress signal and wait, praying to whatever gods that were listening that a friendly face would find them.

Prayers mustn't travel well through space, because their rescuer was a Rebel Rigger. Once it had seen the Hosohedrons Federation markings, it dropped any notions of aid and powered its weapons. Captain Bloch cursed his luck, surely the fleet was still a few dozen light years back the way they came? What's this ship doing so far forward? Whatever the reason for this ships untimely arrival, they had a problem on their hands. A quick scan revealed that the ship had a three-phase shield system. The Hesohedron could only reliably take down two. The Ion beam was engaged and power was taken from life support so they could get as many Combat drones running as possible.

It was a losing battle. They just didn't have enough firepower to penetrate the shields, and with no fuel, and escape was out of the question.

With the end in sight, they sent out a broadcast on Zoltan frequencies with the information they had failed to bring to the Federation Fleet. The message would arrive in a number of days. They had no hope of reinhorsements, for the Hosehedron, the cavalry would never arrive. But perhaps the Zoltan Command would receive it, and send a ship to take the up the reins by delivering the message to the Federation Fleet.

Captain Thomas Bloch left the cockpit on autopilot and went down to the engineering bay to join the Engi. An Engineer at heart, he never liked command positions. If he was to die, he wanted to die in his domain.

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I've somewhat Obfuscated that with a narrative, so here is a brief TLDR in actual game terms: I did a run with an Engi cruiser. I did the necessary quest to unlock the Zoltan Cruiser (I left out the particular details of it to try avoid spoilers). Due to excessive hull maintenance costs, I didn't get the necessary weapon upgrades in time for sector four. Jumped from fight to fight, winning some, retreating from others, I ran out of fuel near the exit beacon. A Rebel Ship found me and halfway through the battle I exited and returned to the hanger, knowing that it was literally impossible to survive the battle and wanting to preserve a reasonable possibility in my mind that they could have made it. It broke my heart after to realise that if you abandon a game while the ship is still alive, it doesn't count it in the stats. So I wrote this to commemorate one of the most enjoyable runs I've had so far. Despite the Hosohedron's tragic end, I count this as a bittersweet victory, because I managed to unlock the Zoltan Cruiser.