An engagement upon the frontal field.
Comes to nothing more than a comparison of whose interstellar warships put out the fiercer firepower, whose interstellar warships have the stronger power of defense and interception, whose interstellar warships can break through and pierce into the enemy's formation the faster, and so on.
It was true that in numbers the Demon Race fleets held the advantage.
But after coming to grips with the Owl Dragon Legion's interstellar warships, they found that these interstellar warships seemed rather unlike those enemy warships they had met with in the past.
The first was in the matter of long-range firepower output.
For all that the Demon Race fleets held the upper hand in numbers, looking to this stage of trading fire alone, the Owl Dragon Legion's side yielded nothing whatever — drum for drum and banner for banner!
The chief reason for it came naturally of the 50 T3 Judicator-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Ships and the T4 Gorgon-class Heavy Interstellar Heavy-Artillery Ships that are standard issue to every Owl Dragon legion fleet.
Whereas the T4 Hell-Angel-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Ship, on account of its own vast consumption in battle, and its long build time and heavy raw-material consumption besides.
Cannot for the present be fitted into the regular fleets.
For all that, these interstellar warships named above sufficed of themselves to carry the burden of the Owl Dragon Legion's firepower output.
And the T4 Gorgon-class Heavy Interstellar Heavy-Artillery Ship above all: five T4 Gorgons now serve in every Owl Dragon legion, and six Owl Dragon legions make a full 30 T4 Gorgons.
The sight of 30 T4 Gorgon-class Heavy Interstellar Heavy-Artillery Ships firing a salvo together is seldom to be seen; the Demon Race fleets may be counted fortunate to have witnessed it, and to have tasted it besides.
Where there is a spear, there is naturally a shield.
The Demon Race fleets' side had a great number of T4 Gargoyle-class Heavy Interstellar Frigates to carry the front-line defense and interception tasks; they would use the star shields they spread to ward off the oncoming attacks.
And when the star-shield energy was drained away, they would use their own hull armor to ward it off.
And when the hull armor had been damaged to a certain degree, these T4 Gargoyle-class Heavy Interstellar Frigates would withdraw behind the line of battle and take up the close-in defense tasks of certain interstellar warships, and at the same time, by the black technology of their hull armor, slowly repair themselves.
In the eyes of the Demon Race fleets this was already a very fine interstellar frigate indeed.
But today they met with a finer interstellar frigate still.
The T4 Paladin-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Frigate.
30 T4 Paladin-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Frigates can form a star-shield matrix outright, which greatly increases the effect of the defense.
In such a case, the only means remaining to the Demon Race fleets was a hard frontal assault.
And by the Demon Race fleets' tactical doctrine, that means naturally the T4 Demon-Hunter-class Medium Interstellar Battlecruisers taking the lead, the T4 Keen-Blade-class Light Interstellar Interceptors carrying the support, and the remaining T3-grade interstellar warships filling out the rest.
Forming assault-and-penetration fleets, one after another.
Relying upon the assault to tear open the enemy's line of battle, and to pierce into the enemy's fleets and cut them apart.
This strategy, with their own fleet numbers holding the advantage, had carried the Demon Race fleets everywhere without a check.
But today they ran up against an iron plate.
The T4 Demon-Hunter-class Medium Interstellar Battlecruiser's attack was fierce indeed; but the T4 Blue-Eyes White Dragon-class Heavy Interstellar Armored Battleships holding the line down from behind blocked it with a strength more terrible still.
As for dealing with those T4 Keen-Blade-class Light Interstellar Interceptors — having studied the Demon Race fleets' way of fighting long before, every commander of the Owl Dragon Legion's fleets had several methods by which to break them.
The first was that the T4 Paladin-class Heavy Interstellar Missile Frigate is itself fitted, in each single ship, with 3,000 Paladin-type short-range interception defense interstellar missiles; and of its close-in guns and the rest we need not speak.
These short-range interception defense interstellar missiles can intercept the enemy's weapon attacks; and naturally they can as well intercept those T4 Keen-Blade-class Light Interstellar Interceptors outright as they charge.
Beyond which, the T4 Skeleton-King-class Heavy Interstellar Armored Destroyers stood in strict array besides.
This class of interstellar armored destroyer, set before a T4 Keen-Blade-class Light Interstellar Interceptor, is for all the world so many great boulders — and they are so many eggs.
The end of throwing eggs at stones is plain to see.
The T4 Keen-Blade-class Light Interstellar Interceptor's advantage lies in the speed of its passage; it can open an instantaneous offensive like a wolf pack, and encircle and strike enemy ships within some given area.
But its shortcomings are plain to see as well: its weapon modules can be reckoned no better than middling, while its hull armor and star shields are both very poor.
And once it loses the protection of its star shield.
Even a T3 Triceratops-class Interstellar Heavy Assault Frigate, or a T3 Wolverine-class Heavy Interstellar Armored Destroyer, can settle these thin-skinned fellows.
Which produced a scene of exceeding interest.
Once these T4 Keen-Blade-class Light Interstellar Interceptors closed, first a T4 Skeleton-King-class Heavy Interstellar Armored Destroyer or a T3 Wolverine-class Heavy Interstellar Armored Destroyer would blast their star shields to pieces.
And thereafter the T3 Triceratops-class Interstellar Heavy Assault Frigates would swarm up as one and destroy them where they stood!
The captains of these T4 Keen-Blade-class Light Interstellar Interceptors, one may guess, never imagined even in death that where before it was always they who encircled and destroyed the enemy, now they had become the quarry that is hunted.
And above all when their hulls took the ramming of that interstellar frigate of the enemy's fitted with a ram, they were broken utterly in their hearts.
At the last, the overwhelming majority of the T4 Keen-Blade-class Light Interstellar Interceptors came to an end with their hulls poked through into scattered pieces, and fell.
They had lost too pitifully!
And this was very far from the end of it.
The Owl Dragon Legion has always set store by the returning of courtesies.
Since you have opened an attack upon me of your own motion, then how should I let slip so fine an opportunity?
The Owl Dragon Legion's side put together assault fleets made up of T4 Tyrant-class Heavy Interstellar Missile-Battlecruisers, T4 Vermilion Bird-class Medium Interstellar Cruisers, and T3 Blizzard-class Light Interstellar Battlecruisers and T3 Wind-Eagle-class Medium Interstellar Cruisers.
And opened a surprise assault upon certain lines of the Demon Race fleets which, through attacking of their own motion, had left themselves open.
The Demon Race fleets, seeing it, set out to intercept and block these enemy ships as well.
But the case they met with, and the case their own demon assault fleets had met with, were as far apart as heaven and earth.
That T4 Tyrant-class Heavy Interstellar Missile-Battlecruiser which bore the brunt at the head displayed a mighty power of firepower output.
For besides one Tyrant heavy bow-gun and six 10,000mm-caliber heavy electromagnetic cannon, this class of interstellar battlecruiser.
Is fitted besides with 50 interstellar missile launchers, holding in reserve 5,000 medium- and short-range Tyrant-type interstellar missiles.
And beyond that, 166 quadruple-mount heavy particle energy rapid-fire guns, and 488 fully automatic high-density six-barrel energy close-in guns.
This is quite simply a steel behemoth armed to the teeth.
Under the shock of these steel behemoths, the outcome for the Demon Race fleets' assaulted lines of battle, and the outcome for the Owl Dragon Legion's assaulted lines of battle, were results diametrically opposed.
Which for a while left both the Demon Race fleet commanders directing this battle dumbfounded.
What was going on?
This way of opening the thing was not right at all!