The Aries Maneuver
by Kai Rosenthal

The following is an excerpt of one of the many excellent gamereports that are traditionally written by all players who win a game at Lord Firefall's lair. The full story of the war this maneuver was used in, Harsh Realms, can be found in the Hall of honor.

In the meantime at Carsonio, a strategy was developed to get rid of the annoying Lokis: the "Aries maneuver".

You need an Aries (preferrable with low ID) with good engines and an expendable warship capable of taking the defended planet. We used a captured D7 with bad engines for this.

Load the warship for battle with the planet plus as much minerals as will fit in the cargo space, but NO fuel. Tow the warship with the Aries to the Loki-covered planet, so that the Aries runs out of fuel arriving there. They're fuelless, so defending ships can't attack them. The planet could be set to NUK, that's why you should have the warship capable of handling the planet and of course set to attack first.

It doesn't matter if the hovering warships take the planet back, your prime goal is staying in orbit. So, next turn you should have two fuelless ships in orbit. Transfer the minerals from the warship to the Aries, set the Aries to tow the Loki away to his demise. Set the fuelless warship to escape into the warpwell. If you conquered the planet, you can transfer a bit of fuel and escape totally. Else the warship may get 1 kton of fuel transferred by the enemy, towed and killed. But hey, that was an expendable ship, remember? You get the Loki killed, next turn you can proceed with cloaker operations.

This would also work with a Neutronic Refinery, but the costs of these with good engines...Yikes!