Now Amlizter in Legend of the Galactic Heroes is probably the moment that marked the death knell of the Free Planets Alliance. It was a battle that was basically the Alliance giving Reinhard a victory due to their sheer stupidity on their part.
Some background for those who are new to LOGH storyline. After dealing with like 150 years of non-stop Imperial invasion after invasion while bleeding themselves dry on Iserlohn Fortress, the FPA gets lucky and captures the fort and thus gains the strategic momentum. At this point there is a decision to be made, to try and sue for peace (which while the story makes the pro-peace party to be pretty much good people and the pro-war party but of a warmongering militarists concern for their only power, considering the fact that the Empire never officially recognized the FPA considered them rebels and such was about as friendly to the idea of a democratic republic as bugs are friendly to insecticide peace probably wasn't an option) or take the fight to the Empire itself.
They (the High Council) decided to take the fight on the idea that their massive fleet would be able to overwhelm the Empire and destroy it and thus securing their power in the next election cycle (which they were in danger of losing)
So they launch with like 200,000 ships in I believe 8 fleets and randomly take systems that the Imperials give up without fighting for. The problem which becomes quite apparent is that somehow the Imperials took all the food from the 200 systems that FPA "liberated" and the FPA was tied down in feeding the people, while at the same time their strategic planner was a dunce and their supply lines were open to attack.
After suffering from lack of supplies, the Empire launches an counter-offensive against all the weaken FPA fleets and they retreat. Now you think that the FPA which has a vested interest in not wanting to see its fleets get destroyed would have them go back to their GIANT INVINCIBLE DEATHSTAR of a fortress, but they instead meet up at Amlitzer Starzone. Where they proceeded to get crushed except for the fleets lead by Admiral Bucock (who is the awesome old admiral) and of course the 13th Fleet lead by Yang Wengli.
The sad thing was that all the Alliance Admirals could see the plan for what it was, and it was due to the orders from the High Council who were more concerned about winning the election then winning the war that screwed them over and devastated the FPA fleet. Only two fleets came back home leaving three fleets to guard the FPA in the meantime. A while later, that number is reduced by a fleet during the abortive military coup that is put down by Yang. And thus when the Imperials come a knocking the FPA just simply doesn't have the numbers to fight off like a hundred thousand ships coming all at them.
But enough about this. Lets get to the screen shots!
The Hyperion which is like the only non-standard color flagship of the FPA fleet that I can see or remember off. Its Yang Wengli's flagship that he receives when he takes command of the 13th fleet. However, due interesting situation it becomes the flagship of the exiled Imperial admiral Merkatz in the later part of the series. Its a pretty sweet looking ship with decent firepower for a battleship.
The Barbarossa, Siegfried's Kircheis's ship. Sieg is the childhood friend of Reinhard and a brilliant tactician and admiral in his own right. While Reinhard is called the blond hair brat by his own side, they call his ever present shadow of Sieg the red hair one for the obvious reason he has very red hair.
I'll talk more about Sieg and Reinhard later. But I think its appropriate that he gets a red color sleek battleship which sort of follows (thought you can't see it well in this picture) the same under engine thing that the Brunhilde has.
Konigs Tiger this is the flagship of the Black Lancers, which under the command of the aggressive Admiral Bittenfield serves as like calvary or shock troops. They excel at charging recklessly into the enemy line and sowing confusion. However, they don't do to well when confronted by Yang and his group, but in the scenes where they are not fighting Yang, they are fearsome enemies. Bittenfield's main fault and virtue is that he when he commits to something he does it all the way damn hell or high water, which made him not like him at first, but as time goes on he grew on me.
His flagship looks like like an overgrown cruiser in terms of shape then most of the Imperial flagships tend to look like. Which makes sense since he is leading a fast offensive unit.
These are the FPA space fighters launched for air defense and attack. They are probably some of the most "realistic" space fighters that Sci-fi has put out. For one they have turrets instead of fixed guns mounts and thus are capable of shooting at pretty much any angle and thus running up a ship's hull and firing means that they don't have to oriented at the ship, but parallel.
5 comments:
Nice pictures. You could almost do a Jane's (or Silence's) Fighting Ships with a bit more work.
Sounds like an interesting series.
Can't say I've ever seen a starship anime. Might be fun.
Where's Uranff's ship!?
Nguyen van Thieu's (aka Guen van Hugh, lol) flagship, the Maurya (or Mauria) was jungle-patterned. That's the only other custom-colored FPA ship I can think of.
The Hyperion is actually very modest in the firepower department. It only has 32 forward cannons. In comparison, the Shiva had 108, and the Triglav (sp) had about 90.
Post a Comment