Tokkeitai Operation Briefings

[Karst]

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-source ID: Kuromaguro-
-subject: report-

Hello, this is Tuna.

So I've been flying around Liberty for some time now and I guess I can report on what I've seen so far.
The very first people I encountered on my trip there were two Xenos in Kepler.

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This would prove to be a the beginnings of a trend, masses of various unlawfuls that operated in effective groups all over the sector. Nothing further happened at that point.
I took a nice tour together with Kazumi but it was very quiet, nothing interesting to report.

On my next trip, there were even more encounters with forces hostile to Liberty.
The first were some 75th squad Outcasts, which were just retreating from a successful attack. Interestingly, there was also a small Nomad nearby though it seemed to be operating a lone. Actually, I have no idea what it was doing.
But it seemed pretty nice, if I was interpreting its, uh....signals correctly.

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The next encounter was a Rogue and a Hacker gunboat in California. I hung around with them for a while until the Navy responded with appropriate force.
The two of them still made it out, I think. Interestingly, another Nomad showed up, though it too simply took off soon enough.

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This sort of thing continued for the rest of the trip. Reavers and Rogues and such attacking targets in central New York, destroying ships despite facing overwhelming odds and/or defenses....Well, see for yourself.
Also, you'll see what the LSF's Hoover Station looks like when all turrets are firing. It's pretty spectacular.

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The next flight was when things got really interesting. I posed as a sort of indie journalist and got to tag along with a GRN fleet in Magellan.
After a lot of waiting around, the battle broke out at the California gate, and, well....it was truly a mess.
Basically we had GRN, mercs, and some Rogue destroyers on one side, against the Liberty Navy, some Bretonians, and weirdly, even an exiled Kusari destroyer and bomber.
The Liberty forces seemed to lack both organization and skill, as they basically lost one ship after another. The losses were around five snubcraft, two gunboats, one freighter, and an LABC on the Liberty side, while the GRN side lost two bombers.

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After that, an impressive Rogue-aligned force had assembled that went on a genuine killing spree through Liberty.

The two Exile ships were destroyed, as were at least two snubcraft and two LABCs, a Dreadnought, and a siege cruiser. Others were forced to land under fire.
Eventually, they moved north and slowly split up. Their luck finally ran out when a lone Scylla was caught by a six-ship Navy bomber squadron.
Eventually, three Scyllas were destroyed.

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So I'm just going to summarize my impressions of security in Liberty: response times are very high. There is inevitably a sizable delay between pirate disruptions or foreign incursions and an appropriate Navy response.
Additionally, these responses are generally very poorly coordinated, with ships often arriving one at a time rather than in a cohesive strike force, despite Liberty clearly possessing an overall enormous fleet.
On the other hand, groups of pirates and mercenaries roam free, often striking with some success even against targets deep inside Liberty core space.
Groups of pirate cruisers are apparently not unusual, and they seem to lack neither skill nor coordination compared to the Navy they fight.

Speaking of fighting, that's really most of what I saw, and I don't think that's just because I tended to follow it around. The volume of trade ships really is pretty small compared to Navy and pirate ships.....I guess it's true that most of the money made in Liberty is in the financial sector? I don't know.

So in conclusion, Liberty is a genuine battleground. I remember it being messy, but not quite like this, although it's been a while since I last visited I guess. Ah well.

That's all I've got for now, I think. I'd really need more time to, er....study their economy in depth and stuff. I mean, this whole assignment was pretty....vague?

Anyway, that's that. Tuna out.

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