*grumble* *grumble* Damn Zumwalts.
Limit Dreadnoughts! Fine! I mean I kinda want one for ourselves anyways at some point but I can live w/o it. I mean our swarm of frigates and cruisers with no limit and no end will more than salve that slight.
Sure our cruiser can take out 4-15 dreadnoughts no sweat, but it's NOT a dreadnought! NO limits Citadel, neeneer neeener!
Wow, yea gonna need to corrupt that, cause that buttfucks the SA and us super hard
We should make it a goal to put TW lasers on some power armour and have Revy legally declared a Dreadnought. Also, we should make sure that companies can purchase rights to Dreadnoughts.
No chance of that ever getting through. It might make for a good negotiation point that can be conceded on for something more reasonable but that's about it. The treaty is fundamentally about limiting arms races and buildups so having an obvious loophole like that would negate the whole point of the treaty. Not to mention that ParSec is considered an extension of the Alliance with a thin veneer of being independent.
This should be pretty easy since the limitation seems to be more on weapon power. This is a loophole the Alliance exploited in the old version of the treaty, Carriers, and the Council felt no need to close it in canon so odds are it will still be there in the revised treaty.
Perhaps we should reconsider our plan.
If the same economic limits applied to private companies it might work out. The idea would be that governments can't just create proxy companies at will because the sheer size required to meet the economic requirements for even a single extra dreadnought means that simply purchasing another dreadnought license would be less expensive. Naturally, this still allows us to build stuff based off our independently gained economic wealth.
We could lobby for a PMC's dreadnought count to not be counted against the member state's cap but require that the PMC buy a dreadnought allowance either from the Citadel or from a member state that has a surplus before being legally allowed to possess a dreadnought. That way member states don't have to deal with PMCs they don't control eating up their dreadnought allowance while making sure that you can't use PMCs as a loophole.
For some reason, it's this more than anything else that makes me convinced we're properly emulating the Washington Naval Treaties, it's not even on a piece of paper yet and we're already planning on simply swapping out the weapon mounts whenever we feel like finally breaking the Treaty's limitations. The IJN would be so proud.
I really don't think we should push for Corporate Dreadnoughts, PI doesn't need one for one thing, two- it's going to make a lot of people nervous if Revy get's something that significant under her direct command, and three- do you really want other corporations to be able to make Dreadnoughts? Suddenly Cerebus get's to construct some Dreadnoughts with a lot more ease than they otherwise would be able to.
I'm perfectly happy with making people nervous, encouraging paranoia is a perfectly valid way to prepare for reaper invasion. Also, any company large enough to own a dreadnought will probably be under intense scrutiny, forcing Cerebus to stay on their toes if they want to avoid detection.
Beyond the fact that any such clauses would apply to the Citadel races as well and they've been around long enough to accrue some possibly very big PMCs with their own warships...I'm not sure if the Turians/Asari/Salarians would be willing to sign off on something like that if it meant having to tally their PMCs' weapons in with their national totals.
That's definitely an idea I can support.
"I'm perfectly happy doing something that agitates everyone and is so obviously a biased agenda everyone will unite in shouting down that proposal". Throw money down the drain instead. You'll get more out of it. Council Licensed dangerous research? Gone. Goodwill in C-space? Gone. Image as a militant humanitarian? severely tarnished. Reputation for always acting in the Alliance's best interest? Disputed. This is such a retardedly controversial thing I can't consider a genuine proposal for it seriously.
As long as the nanobots aren't self-replicating and aren't at any risk of causing a gray goo scenario the Citadel will probably be okay with using disassembler swarms. The main problems are the power requirements to disassemble things down to their component molecules(solved with the Arc Reactor) and being large enough relative to the target to cause significant damage in a useful amount of time(problematic against starships since the payload of a missile is quite small so the swarm will be correspondingly sized. It won't work fast enough to do appreciable damage during the time it takes for a space battle and once the battle is over they could divert effort towards neutralizing it).
There is a precedent for corporations having dreadnoughts, the Elkoss Combine built the dreadnought Kwunu although they did gift it to the Vol Protectorate and the Turian Hierarchy upon completion.
