@Drakador_Chaos
As Alhergus and his generals pour over their star charts, one thing becomes clear very quickly. The hypergate at the edge of Dawn space would be the focal point of this war and whoever held it would have the strategic high ground. After an initial probing force was beaten back, Alhergus sent for his engineers and ordered them to design him a new line of ships to fight a war like no other.
One evening, the engineer comes into the room where the Imperator is talking with a senior admiral, knocking against the door timidly. Alhergus glanced up sharply and gestured her in. "What do you have for me?"
The woman loads the files into the hologram display and several ship designs appear, rotating slowly. "These were what we were able to develop with the time frame you gave us. Admittedly, dealing with the unique challenge of the Dawn's kinetic weaponry was an issue, but we've managed to configure our new shielding systems to exert quite a bit of drag against incoming projectiles rather than just attempting to stop them cold. MAC rounds will still hurt, but they won't quite gut these new ships like they would the old ones."
Alhergus snorts. "I suppose that's fine, but what about offense? I see no new weapons here."
The engineer merely grins and pulls up a partial schematic of a Dawn frigate. "That's the good news. Our analysis indicates that most of the armor on Dawn ships is extremely hard and brittle. Great for stopping MAC rounds cold. Not so great for standing up to constant barrages of laser fire. Our current weapon loadouts should work just fine."
Impressed, Alhergus merely nods, then turns to his admiral. "She's given us the means, now what about the method? If we can't crack the blockade around the gate, we're simply sitting ducks."
In response, the admiral merely pulls something else up on the projector that has both Alhergus and the engineer's jaws dropping open in shock..