Green Drone War

The Green Drone War is the plot of the series 'Space Engineers: Colony Lost'. It is the war fought in the year 2733 between the evil Green Drone Armada, a society of militaristic drones bent on galactic domination and the extinction of all life, and the collective forces of Red Wood Industries (RWI), Crazy North Logistics (CNL), and the Royal Coalition of Spatial Protection (RCSP). The Allied fleets suffered great losses throughout the war, but over time, beat the GDA back at key battles, such as the Battle of Icarus and the Invasion of P3-X2. The war ultimately came to an end at the Battle of the Black Hole, which led to the destruction of the GDA’s fleet, the Controller, the Commander, and the Artifact.

Early Stages
Before the war began officially, a group of Colonists led by former RWI Captain Jack Roberts, in the middle of a conflict with the Drone Reactionary Force (DRF), stumbled upon a secret base that housed multiple facilities for building drones and weapons of war, as well as the Controller’s chamber. He announced his evil plans to the factions and drove them from the base. Over the next few weeks, the GDA encountered both factions’ fleets with groups of A-Bot drones and small fighters.

During a standoff between two RWI Defender-class Frigates, the RWI Gauntlet and the RWI Stalwart, and two INIC corvettes, the GDA deployed two of their destroyers and about fifty drones to exterminate them. Each destroyer was armed with Atlas Superlasers, which annihilated each ship one by one. Only two RWI crew members survived, and they later joined Roberts' Colonists since he was once RWI.

Eventually, at least three GDA destroyers were engaged by a Daedalus-class Battleship commanded by the sinister Admiral Markus, and two more Defenders, the Talon and the Karnack. Though a few destroyers were disabled, all the RWI ships were destroyed. Admiral Markus, in his hubris, was also killed, and three of the crewmen from his flagship also found their way to the Colonist Survivors (CSS).

Finally, three GDA destroyers attacked the Colonists’ base, Watchtower Station. All the Colonists’ warships managed to escape, and the GDA eventually took over the station and turned it into an orbital base. The GDA sent another five destroyers to finish off the Colonists and the DRF, who in turn, though they had just fought and killed each other in a battle, allied against the drones, though they stood no chance. The DRF flagship, the hybrid Exturtle, was destroyed, as was the Colonists’ Avalon corvette, and former RCSP officer Venom was thought to be dead. The Colonist flagship, the Vengeance, was heavily damaged before Roberts' XO, Commander Craz, enabled the jump drives before he was somehow captured by the GDA, sending the ship into the unknown.

The War Begins
Roberts and the remaining Colonist crew, Finn, Castle, Horza, and Bashful awoke on a war-torn planet, on which a GDA destroyer was floating above a graveyard of ships from various factions, doing battle with a Defender-class Frigate, the RWI Malta. As the Colonists collected scattered survivors of crashed ships around the valley, including RWI marines Ler, Owen, and Morslupus, and DRF drones Papple and Finchy, the Malta was crippled and crash-landed.

The Colonists passed by another downed Defender, the Amazon, and stumbled upon an underground GDA base where the Commander, the military leader of the Armada, was waiting to trap them. They managed to escape and steal a large rover called the Keep-class Mobile Base, which they used to traverse the surrounding land and salvage more crashed vessels. The GDA pursued them with Falcon-class Fighters procured from the shipyards of RCSP, until the CSS found an abandoned outpost called the Bastion and made it into their hideout.

All across the galaxy, the GDA war machine destroyed factions, conquered worlds, and pushed RWI, CNL, and RCSP forces back towards their inner systems. Very few could stand against their oppression.

The Call for Help
Several weeks after escaping the Vengeance’s crash site, Roberts and the Colonists encountered a group of survivors from the Malta, led by Lieutenant Evan Connolly. However, they were too late to save them, as when the RWI troopers tried to take a relay tower to broadcast a distress signal, the drones fought them back and killed them all. Connolly left a log that Castle found, providing them coordinates to a huge GDA transmitter tower.

The Colonists stormed the base and started hacking into the tower’s broadcast systems. The GDA sent a Scourge-class Carrier and numerous fighter squadrons to deal with them, but just before the fighters toppled the tower, Roberts sent his signal, hoping that an RWI ship would receive it. Fortunately, the RWI Intrepid, a Defender-class Frigate captained by Commander Sam Reed received the signal and soon deployed to assist the Colonists, who returned to the Bastion to find several drones lying in wait, which they quickly dealt with and began repairs. However, the carrier and its fighters pursued the Keep, but with the timely arrival of the Intrepid and its fighters, the Colonists were able to hold out and repel the attackers. Roberts and Reed spoke about their next plans, and the Intrepid then set out to set up a small base nearby.

The Rescue of Dr. Craz
Several days after the Intrepid arrived, the GDA finally uncovered the Artifact, which they worshipped above all else and believed would help them take over the galaxy. The Intrepid’s crew got word and sent scouts to find the GDA headquarters. The Colonists took the Keep, a few support rovers, and a modified RCSP Raven-class Gunship, and along with the Intrepid’s forces, moved in to assault the GDA’s base and rescue Craz and take the Artifact.

After a tense battle where the Colonists crossed a large bridge over a canyon, they pushed on to the base. At least one of the Intrepid’s V-203 interceptors was shot down, and all of the Colonists’ smaller craft were too damaged to carry on and were left behind. The Keep, using its magnetic coil cannon, was able to eliminate a carrier over the base courtyard, and the Colonists infiltrated the base. However, when they entered the chamber where the Artifact was held, they found that it was missing, and the Commander had jammed their comms and surrounded them.

Before they could be executed by a fighter, Craz appeared out of a trapdoor and destroyed the ship with his minigun. Meanwhile, two GDA destroyers arrived and damaged the Intrepid, causing it to crash-land which killed all the crew except for Reed. As the Colonists evacuated the base in the Keep, they quickly rescued Reed from the crash before another destroyer and several fighter wings appeared and began pursuing them. The drones had rigged the bridge to explode, trapping the Keep between a canyon and a destroyer and swarming them with fighters’ strafing runs.

Safe Haven
As the Colonists made their last stand, reinforcements from the RWI Valiant arrived and evacuated the Colonists as the GDA destroyer blasted the Keep off the bridge. Two Valkyrie-class Gunships shuttled them to the massive Daedalus-class Battleship and they left the system to safety.

Captain Jonathan Hunter and Commander Chris Lock of the Valiant spoke to Roberts and Reed about RWI’s current status in the war. After another brief battle with two more destroyers, in which the escorting Phoenix-class Assault Frigate, the RWI Savannah, was destroyed, Roberts and his crew were officially inducted into RWI’s ranks, and were given a prototype Eclipse-class Science Corvette, the RWI Eclipse.

The Hunt for the Artifact
Aboard their new starship, the team traveled to the lava world of Ravcor, where the Artifact was rumored to be being held. They set up a base of operations in an abandoned CNL outpost. Meanwhile, the Commander ordered research procedures to be conducted on the Artifact. Some time later, Craz discovered a set of coordinates that led them to a crashed CNL Carrier, the Vanessa, which the crew salvaged for a few days until a GDA destroyer and a squadron of fighters attack the site and wrecked the remains of the crashed vessel. Fortunately, with modifications made to the outpost, including a coil cannon, the team was able to down the destroyer, which self-destructed shortly after.

The drones continued to pick at the base’s defenses when Roberts took the Eclipse to a briefing with RWI personnel and left Craz in charge. When he returned, the team covertly traveled to and disabled the GDA headquarters’s communication relay stations outside the base’s lava river perimeter. The Valiant and a small support fleet soon arrived and engaged a GDA blockade. Captain Hunter deployed a wing of fighters to aid in the main attack, though they were quickly shot down.

As the team infiltrated the base and obtained the Artifact from a research center inside. Their escape was difficult however, as the drones had still managed to scrambled their communication with the Valiant, and the ex-DRF member Papple was presumed dead during the evacuation. The team retreated to their base with the Artifact and only had a few moments to set up defenses, including two Papple Chairs, before two destroyers, multiple fighters, and a fire team of foot soldiers arrived and bombarded the base, destroying the team’s fighters and the outpost’s comm tower and small ship hangar facilities. After a heated firefight between the crew and the GDA troops, Roberts set the base’s self-destruct system, wiped the computer files, and evacuated everyone on the Eclipse.

The Eclipse rejoined the Valiant and its escorts, the Achilles and the Griffin, in space and fended off multiple destroyers trying to recover the Artifact. However, both Phoenix Frigates were lost and the Valiant’s port side hangar bay and bridge were severely damaged when the Commander’s Dreadnought arrived. The Valiant and Eclipse managed to jump away to the Amre system and hide in a nebula to enact repairs. Captain Hunter was injured during the escape and Commander Lock was killed. Major Everett’s squadron, Blue Squadron, was also destroyed.

A Valiant Stand
The surviving ships were soon discovered by a GDA transmitter outpost in a nearby asteroid cluster, above the ice planet Demus in the Amre System. A few fighters and a destroyer tried to attack them, but the Eclipse and the Valiant managed to defeat them and Roberts took a team to board the outpost and send a signal to their allies for help. They also managed to partially reverse-engineer an Atlas laser module found in the station and build two of them in the Valiant’s main gun section. This proved useful for a short time, as the GDA sent more destroyers to attack them. Fortunately, two CNL Frigates were able to reinforce them, but were quickly shredded by the drones in the next battle since they didn’t have shields.

The Valiant took heavy damage before the RWI Discovery, a Venture-class Science Cruiser under the command of Captain Sarah Hawk, arrived. Upon hearing that the Valiant’s FTL core was damaged beyond repair, Roberts ordered the Valiant’s crew to abandon ship. He took Reed, Castle, and Finn aboard the doomed starship and left Bash in charge of the Eclipse to defend against another wave of drone ships, buying enough time for the Discovery to load the Valiant’s crew and the Artifact and escape to friendly space. In a desperate effort, Roberts rammed the Valiant into a GDA ship that was cutting the Discovery off, but this caused them to float into the nearby ice planet’s gravity well, forcing them to crash.

An unknown time later, the Discovery arrived at a research lab on Icarus, the capital world of RWI, and underwent experimentation procedures by Doctor Colt and observed by Captain Hawk and Grand Admiral Adam Williams, the leader of RWI. Meanwhile, the Commander executed a subordinate officer on board his ship for failing to stop the Artifact from escaping. He then contacted the Controller, who reprimanded him and ordered him to secure the Artifact at all costs to rule the galaxy.

Reunited with RWI
Roberts and Reed managed to safely crash-land the Valiant on Demus, and after the Eclipse and the remaining V-203s arrived, they fought off pursuing Green Drone fighters and constructed a small shack and supply platform on the ground. The GDA struck them several times with carriers during snowstorms, and in return, the Eclipse was used to attack a nearby outpost and the team stole coordinates to a GDA shipyard in orbit of the planet. Roberts formulated a plan to attack the shipyards, but the Eclipse was too damaged to leave the planet. The crew held off attacks from many fighters and a few carriers before Finn’s repairs were complete. They then boarded the Eclipse and left the system as the Valiant and their outpost exploded behind them.

The Eclipse crew then came upon and stopped at a GDA refueling depot and found a captured CNL cargo vessel, which they used to infiltrate the shipyards. The Eclipse was temporarily given a rotor gun by Craz and Finn to strike the station from long range. Roberts took Reed, Castle, and Bash to infiltrate the shipyards and succesfully steal a GDA Destroyer, with which they escaped the system along with the Eclipse as the GDA Command Dreadnaught arrived. The two ships jumped to an unidentified planet and discovered a derelict CNL carrier. A GDA ambush attempt was to thwarted by Captain Hunter arriving with a trio of Phoenix-class Frigates including the RWI Strident and the RWI Siphon. The reinforcements subsequently escorted them to Icarus, where they met with Grand Admiral Williams aboard Cyrus Command Station in orbit.

Since the Eclipse needed to undergo repairs, Roberts and his team were diverted temporarily to a Defender-class Frigate, the RWI Tigris, and joined the flagship of RWI, the RWI Apollo and a small fleet in destroying the Demus shipyards. As soon as the Apollo was gone, the Commander of GDA ordered his fleet to move in and attack Icarus’s shipyards and cities. Admiral Isaac Sheppard of the RWI Osiris managed to send a message to Williams, who ordered the fleet back at once.

The Battle of Icarus
As the Apollo, Tigris, and Phoenix Frigates Pursuit and Aegis Fate arrived at Icarus, the GDA had already been assaulting various positions around the planet. The two frigates were lost breaking through the blockade, and the Apollo sent Roberts and his team down to the Capital City to repel the invaders. The Commander’s Dreadnought was nowhere to be seen, as it was stealthily making its way around RWI sensors to strike at the Black Vault, the RWI secret research and development facility, which held the Artifact. Commander Reed and a company of marines were sent to defend the Vault and got there just in time to set up defenses.

Roberts and his crew split up and made their way to the RWI HQ building in the Capital, where the secured vital data files. Meanwhile, the Commander himself led the attack on the Black Vault, forcing Reed to hide while all the other marines and officers in the Vault who did not evacuate were slaughtered. The drones wounded Dr. Colt and recovered the Artifact, bringing it to a shuttle at the large hangar in the facility.

Fifty minutes passed before Williams got word of the attack and sent Roberts a squadron of fighters and a Phoenix-class Frigate, the RWI Liberty, while another Phoenix-class, the RWI Charon, finished off the invaders in the city. The Liberty was destroyed by the Dreadnought but Jack and the team rescued Reed and made their way to the Artifact containment room. Dr. Colt informed them of his discoveries about the Artifact’s origins and potentialities. Jack moved into the hangar as the Commander was leaving, but was unable to stop the transport form escaping to the Dreadnought. The Dreadnought immediately broke off and left the atmosphere. The Apollo sent the Defender frigates Bishop and Goddard to intercept, but both were vanquished. Though Admiral Williams wanted to move the Apollo into range, his XO, Commander Edwards, convinced him to break off, allowing the Dreadnought to escape into FTL.

The Search for Admiral Ellis
After CNL reported one of its admirals, Sven Ellis, had gone missing after a battle with the GDA, Captain Roberts' crew and the Eclipse were sent to find him on a storm-ridden, dusty planet. Roberts and his team had recently relocated Papple at a deactivated DRF Hive, and the Eclipse had been critically damaged in a skirmish with reactivated DRF ships. Nevertheless, the team set out in ground vehicles and soon located the Admiral in his crashed CNL Battleship. Craz was called away by CNL High Command for an unknown reason and left in a transport before they found Ellis. When they were attacked by a squadron of GDA Fighters at the crash site, Roberts used his AI program, DJ, to fly the Eclipse in and quickly extract them and take the Admiral back to CNL space.

The Invasion of P3-X2
The RWI Discovery managed to locate the Artifact and the main GDA Headquarters on the planet P3-X2, the planet where the Colonist Survivors had originally encountered the Green Drones. The Discovery managed to send a partial messages to Grand Admiral Williams before their comms were jammed and the ship was attacked by improved GDA destroyers. Their engines and FTL core were quickly disabled and Captain Hawk ordered the crew to abandon ship while she crash-landed the Discovery on the planet’s surface.

Seventy-two hours later, the joint RWI and CNL invasion fleet arrived. The Eclipse team had been sent ahead of the fleet to disable defenses on Watchtower Station, which the drones had taken over after driving the Colonists out. Craz rejoined them in a modified CNL Gunboat, and the fleet smashed through the GDA blockade. When the Dreadnought arrived with five more destroyers, the RWI Zheng-He, the newest Daedalus-class Battleship, used its dual Atlas Lasers to drive it off. The Zheng-He remained in orbit with a small fleet to finish off the GDA ships while the rest of the invasion fleet landed ground troops and set up a landing zone on the planet.

Jack’s team set out in Marauder-class Rovers, RWI tanks, and Vulture-class Attack Helicopters to find a side entrance into the GDA bunker while Captain Hunter attack the main entrance with the Tigris’s marines. However, the Controller and Commander had predicted their plans, and when Jack’s team arrived in the Artifact’s research facility, they again found it abandoned, save for the two leaders of the Armada. They set the base’s self-destruct sequence and stalled the crew with drones as they escaped to the Controller’s personal warship, the GDA Super-Dreadnought. The massive ship lifted off near the Apollo’s position, and Williams, when he learned the Artifact was aboard, he ordered all Allied ships to intercept the Super-Dreadnought and any other retreating GDA forces at all costs.

As Hunter’s team evacuated, Jack and his team stole a Keep-class Mobile Base and linked up with the survivors of the Discovery. They helped the RWI Osiris evacuate Captain Hawk and the remaining crew before escaping aboard the Eclipse (assisted by DJ) themselves and rejoining the fleet.

The Allied Fleet couldn’t get near enough to the Super-Dreadnought due to the Command Dreadnought and multiple destroyers covering the Artifact’s withdrawal. Out of nowhere, a small RCSP battle group appeared, led by Jack’s old friend Venom, who had somehow rejoined RCSP ranks as a commander. He led the Legacy-class Dreadnought, the RCSP Harbinger, and a few support ships in breaking through the Green Drone lines, but the Dreadnought and Super-Dreadnought managed to escape.

All RWI forces also withdrew to Icarus or another rocky moon under CNL’s control. Jack’s team was put in charge of repairs throughout the fleet, using several CNL freighters recovered from a base being assaulted by a GDA destroyer, which was destroyed quickly by the RWI Bristol and a wing of 203s.

The Battle of the Black Hole
All remaining allied forces eventually rendezvoused at Icarus to prepare a final strike. Meanwhile, the escaped GDA forces had done the same just outside the gravity field of a black hole. The Commander reported that the Artifact had begun charging and their forces were in position for the final phases of the GDA grand plan were nearly completed.

Grand Admiral Williams briefed the leadership of the three factions of their strategy. The three fleets were going to commit all remaining forces and attack the Super-Dreadnought and its escorts to destroy the Artifact once and for all. After gathering their resources, the ships formed up and jumped into hyperspace.

Initially, the joint fleet did very well. The escorting five GDA destroyers were quickly blasted to smithereens by the fleet, but their momentum wavered when the Dreadnought used one of its four Atlas Lasers to cripple the Zheng-He by destroying its bridge, killing Captain Gideon and all the command crew except for Commander Reed, who was elsewhere in the ship. Reed then assumed command after some hasty repairs.

The fleet in turn targeted the Dreadnought and slowly weathered down its shields. It’s laser weaponry proved extremely powerful and a challenge to avoid, but the combined focusing fire of the fleet was able to finally cripple the Dreadnought’s structural integrity, sending it out with a massive explosion and reducing it to rubble. At this, Jack’s path to the Super-Dreadnought was cleared, and he left the Eclipse in the hands of Morslupus and Finchy while he went to board the massive warship with the rest of the crew.

The knew they had to move fast, for the Artifact was reported by a GDA officer to the Controller to be forty percent charged. The Controller ordered the Commander to report to his control room and answer for his failures. The strike team moved in and landed in the ship’s immense hangar. The Captain’s team hurried through the colossal starship, fighting through waves and waves of security forces until they came to a vast empty room. They were then faced by the Commander, who climbed into a Mega Drone and engaged the team. However, it was not enough, as his Mega Drone was disabled and the Commander was injured. His last words were words of defiance to Jack, before Jack executed him.

The Endgame
By this time, the Super-Dreadnought had been reinforced by more destroyers and its laser weapons were charging. The Allied Fleet was struggling to buy time for Jack’s team. One Atlas laser shot from the Super-Dreadnought blasted through the Eclipse’s shields and hull, killing Mors and Finchy and setting the remaining debris adrift. The corvette’s remains slammed into the Super-Dreadnought’s hull, and the Eclipse was no more.

Meanwhile, Jack’s team had fought their way to the Controller’s control room, fighting through shielded drones and other defenses. After a brief standoff, in which Jack ordered the Controller to stand down and the Controller revealed his plans to wipe out all life in the galaxy using the Artifact to bring back the Artifact’s ancient creators.

As the Controller’s last guards suppressed the crew and the Artifact reached ninety percent charge, Finn set explosives on a set of computers nearby. The destruction of the devices ended the Artifact’s charge sequence, rendering it useless. Explosions were triggered throughout the mighty ship. The Controller raged in despair over the tragedy, and finally, Jack ended the maniacal drone leader with a blast of his shotgun. The battle was over.

The damage to the Super-Dreadnought had ruptured the ship’s navigation and stabilizers. According to scans made by Owen and DJ, the Artifact was drawing the ship closer to the black hole’s event horizon. Jack looked at the Artifact for a moment while the team scrambled to the gunships for evacuation and asked DJ to confirm that the black hole would destroy the Artifact for good. DJ confirmed it and Jack, too, ran to the dropship and the team departed the vessel.

On the Apollo, Williams realized what was happening and at the urging of Jack, withdrew the fleet from the black hole’s vicinity. A final salvo from all remaining ships disabled the Super-Dreadnought for good, and it began falling into the black hole. The Valkyrie Dropship docked in the Apollo’s hangar bay, and the warship retreated from the system as the last traces of the GDA and the Artifact vanished into the abyss. At last, the Green Drone War was over.

Aftermath
A month after the war’s end, Jack had been promoted to Admiral, and his team had gone their separate ways. Craz was now in charge of a CNL battle group, Venom had returned home to RCSP’s capital world and used the Harbinger to liberate it from remaining Green Drone forces, thus allowing RCSP’s High Command to come out of hiding. Finn and Castle had started a salvaging organization called Dawnstar Salvage Corporation, And Owen, Ler, and Papple had stayed with RWI, as had Commander Reed, who had been promoted to Captain. He and Jack were overseeing the development of a new project, code named “Odyssey”, though it is unclear what the project is or how far along it has gotten at this time. During one of his personal logs, Jack reminisced on his team’s adventures and conflicts and fun times throughout the war and before it - the comrades he had lost, their accomplishments, and the hope that he had for the future of the galaxy.

A few months later, Castle and Craz rejoined RWI's ranks under Jack's command again. At some point, RWI High Command tasked Jack and the crew to take the RWI Tigris, which had received substantial upgrades since the war's end, and visit the United Colonies of Agaris (UCA) to find out what happened to the RWI Pegasus, a black-ops Daedalus-class Battleship which disappeared sometime during the Green Drone War. Jack took Craz, Reed, Castle, Owen, and new crew members Collier, Timedoctor, Tigz, and Castro on a stealth mission to UCA space, fighting off Reaver pirate ships along the way.

Despite the Green Drones being completely destroyed, remnants of their existence still remained in the galaxy after their defeat. About a year after the war’s end, the Joint Expedition Task Force was founded to investigate a signal found in deep space, from the ancient ruins of a civilization rumored to have created the Artifact. Admiral Roberts and Captain Reed led the expedition. Aboard the expedition ship, the RWI Prometheus, were a complement of salvaged Green Drones reprogrammed to serve RWI - the controversial Project X-12 Drones - which they went rogue upon activation, causing the Prometheus to crash-land on the planet Chrome II. In an ancient city, the RWI team eventually discovered a second Artifact deep in the underground laboratories, and subsequently quarantined the area to prevent any internal JETF conflicts.