and I'll take the low road, and I'll hit the Martians before ye... Mainly, this image is an excuse to show the two versions of the rebuilt Belter patrol cruiser -- the standard version to the right and the streamlined to the left. Now I'll have to go back and update my fleet sheets and supplementary material... (yeah, there's probably some medication I can take for OCD, but that would take all the fun out of it, right?) It's also another attempt to work on my rings: lots of rocks, a big metaball object and a cube of fuzzy grains overlaying the lot of them. You'll notice there's a flight of "obscured ships" on the low road -- on the other side of the ring "plane". The planet itself is a single sphere with a procedural material I tweaked until it looked sort of like Saturn -- at least close up. Thanks as always for viewing commenting and favoriting. --- Commodore Marquart gets a bad rap for splitting his forces at Saturn. But that really misses the point of what he was trying to do. When the Martians stormed in, they had more than enough ships to take every moon or base near the planet, so a stand-up fight would have been a slaughter. We already proved that back at Jupiter. Instead, he split his forces into two task groups. The heavy group, with most of the non-streamlined ships, made a quick dive for the planet, gaining speed for a retreat back into the inner system. The streamlined ships and most of the Marauders took a slower tact, aiming to retreat into the rings and atmosphere and fight a guerrilla war against the invaders. Yes, during that retreat, the Commodore's two groups were split in space, but in reality, they weren’t. With all the longer range ten meter lasers in the far group, both units supported the other against a Martian concentration on one or the other, and the split virtually guaranteed that one group would escape: the Martians couldn't really split their forces and pursue without leaving their transports a little too vulnerable. Tactically, it was a sound call. Too bad the Martians didn't bite. They hadn't come out to Saturn for a fight, they'd come out for Saturn. All they had to do was hold back and wait for us to flee. With just the guerrilla group left to contend with, they were in a lot stronger position to control the whole Saturn region. Marquart didn't fail on tactics. He failed on strategy, and that's why we ought to can his ass. -- Captain Leann Horvath, Asteroid Belt Guard High Command, 23 June 2520.