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The Coalition failure in the Second Battle of Hydrax has left me a lot more breathing room than I expected, but there’s still a number of serious problems.

First off, the Coalition is in the middle of upgrading three BATS to SB in Alliance territory. This really surprised me, because of the expense involved, but while I can’t afford letting them all go up, because of the expense of killing them later, I wasn’t sure I could afford to take care of any the BATS now.

The Kzinti front was especially troublesome. Two of the three SBs were going up there, and there’s another BATS behind them. The real problem is that they’re all on the ‘west’ side, towards Lyran space, while my offensive has been directed towards nailing down the ‘east’ side, adjacent to the Federation.

In the end, the major Kzinti effort went to smashing the Klingon BATS/SB at 1202, though I made a stab at 1504, aided by Federation forces. On the Hydran front, another attempt sallied out to challenge 0416, and once that was pinned, several crippled ships transferred from the capital to the off-map area.

Kzinti Theater

Hydran Theater

The Klingon presence in Hydran space has become very attenuated, if I wasn’t desperate to stop the SB upgrade, I would have cleaned them out of Hydran space.

Combats:
1705: Klingon: crip F5L; Federation: crip CA
1402: Klingon: crip F5L
1506: Klingon: crip 7xE4; Kzinti: crip FF, capture planet
1105: Klingon: dest F5; Kzinti: capture planet
1504: Klingon: crip 4xD5, dest D5; Federation: crip 2xFF
1603: Klingon: crip F5, dest D6; Federation: crip NCL, FF
1202: Klingon: crip D7, D6, D6M, AD5, 2xF5, F5E, E4A, dest 2xD5, BATS; Kzinti: crip CV, 2xBC, 4xCM, MEC, CL, CLE, FF, EFF, dest BC, CM, CLE, cap D5
0216: Lyran: crip DD
0918: SSC, both sides retreat
0818: Klingon: crip D7
0416: Lyran: crip CA, 3xCW, dest BATS, CA; Hydran: crip LB, dest DG, HR

Altogether, things are going well. Two BATS have been destroyed, and a lot of EPs have gone down the drain in the form of incomplete Starbase upgrades. The Kzinti have taken neutral zone planet 1506 again, and reclaimed 1105, all of this should start contracting the Klingon budget, as the EPs from conquests is fading. However, the Kzinti fleet still took a fair amount of damage, and there’s only so far they can push before catching up on repairs.

A quick look at the numbers shows that Alliance ships are up from 191 to 214, but only because of released Federation ships being counted toward the total. The Kzinti are up 6 ships and the Hydrans are down 7. Meanwhile, the Coalition total is up from 333 to 346. This is entirely due to the Klingons; the Lyrans are down 12 ships from 100 to 88.