Terminus Quest: A CKII Mass Effect Quest

[UlseDovThur]

Been doing some brainstorming on how I think the war with the Rachni will progress and what everyone's next moves might be. Also hoping to get some discussion on the topic going.

-Citadel:
Probably the easiest to figure out, the Citadel won't be doing much after the nightmare that was their battle at Horse Head. Their ability to mount an offensive was pretty well gutted. So mostly they'll just be sitting back and making sure the Rachni still have to dedicate a significant fraction of their fleet assets to guarding Horse Head.

-Terminus(us):
As it stands our best move is probably to just start rolling up the Rachni's line. Shadow Sea will most likely be our first target as it's by far the system of least value to the Rachni, it opens no new fronts and has no systems behind it that would be cut off, so they won't fight to keep hold of it anywhere near as hard as the others.

The next will either be Hades Gamma or Styx Theta. Taking Hades is effectively a 3 for 1 as Artemis Tau and Voyager Cluster are behind it and it gets us a reconnection to the Citadel in the south of the Galaxy. Styx however provides the Terminus a direct vector of attack into Horse Head. I would prefer Styx and then Hades as by taking Styx it draws even more attention to defending Horse Head thereby making Hades easier to take.

Next would be cleaning out Artemis Tau and Voyager then work our way up and past Gemini Sigma then Ardat Yaal. I wouldn't hit Argos Rho before they are taken as it would be extremely defended being both a 3 for 1 like Hades and an attack Vector into Horse Head like Styx.

After that it's Argos Rho into Horse Head into Hawking Eta and finally the Rachni Home Cluster.

-Rachni:
This was the toughest one and also definitely the most uncertain by a country mile. But my thought was "what would I do if I was the Rachni?".

The Rachni are not in a good place right now. They've lost massive swaths of territory very quickly and while they were able to hold against the Citadels assault on Horse Head they had to pull the strategic reserves they had been building up and paid a staggering butcher bill for it. They are firmly on the back foot here and I find it highly doubtful that they can win a war of attrition any longer. They need a momentum shift, something to turn the tides back in their favor and flip the table.

And so, what I think, and Dread, that they will do is, at some point, pull all the fleet assets they reasonably, and maybe unreasonably, can, gather them in Hawking Eta, and Dive for Omega. If they can take Omega it would shatter the Terminus Alliance if it can't be retaken in swift order. By doing this they knockout the enemy that currently has the momentum on them and the ability to capitalize on it and is chewing through their territorial gains.

It would result in an incredibly chaotic situation but, as they say, chaos provides opportunities. Opportunities the Rachni can actually capitalize on to change the course of the war back in their favor.

 

[Dwergar]

I say we give them to the Justicars, as a sign of goodwill, when the situation is fixed.

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Why?
Ardat-Yakshi are prime supersoldier material, and as it happens, we do have a need of supersoldiers on the ground.

So, give them a choice: They can die quickly, they can die slowly as they rot in their supermax, or they "rip and tear" until either they or Rachni are done for. With that last scenario meaning they might just get conditional freedom at the end.

Been doing some brainstorming on how I think the war with the Rachni will progress and what everyone's next moves might be. Also hoping to get some discussion on the topic going.

-Citadel:
Probably the easiest to figure out, the Citadel won't be doing much after the nightmare that was their battle at Horse Head. Their ability to mount an offensive was pretty well gutted. So mostly they'll just be sitting back and making sure the Rachni still have to dedicate a significant fraction of their fleet assets to guarding Horse Head.

-Terminus(us):
As it stands our best move is probably to just start rolling up the Rachni's line. Shadow Sea will most likely be our first target as it's by far the system of least value to the Rachni, it opens no new fronts and has no systems behind it that would be cut off, so they won't fight to keep hold of it anywhere near as hard as the others.

The next will either be Hades Gamma or Styx Theta. Taking Hades is effectively a 3 for 1 as Artemis Tau and Voyager Cluster are behind it and it gets us a reconnection to the Citadel in the south of the Galaxy. Styx however provides the Terminus a direct vector of attack into Horse Head. I would prefer Styx and then Hades as by taking Styx it draws even more attention to defending Horse Head thereby making Hades easier to take.

Next would be cleaning out Artemis Tau and Voyager then work our way up and past Gemini Sigma then Ardat Yaal. I wouldn't hit Argos Rho before they are taken as it would be extremely defended being both a 3 for 1 like Hades and an attack Vector into Horse Head like Styx.

After that it's Argos Rho into Horse Head into Hawking Eta and finally the Rachni Home Cluster.

-Rachni:
This was the toughest one and also definitely the most uncertain by a country mile. But my thought was "what would I do if I was the Rachni?".

The Rachni are not in a good place right now. They've lost massive swaths of territory very quickly and while they were able to hold against the Citadels assault on Horse Head they had to pull the strategic reserves they had been building up and paid a staggering butcher bill for it. They are firmly on the back foot here and I find it highly doubtful that they can win a war of attrition any longer. They need a momentum shift, something to turn the tides back in their favor and flip the table.

And so, what I think, and Dread, that they will do is, at some point, pull all the fleet assets they reasonably, and maybe unreasonably, can, gather them in Hawking Eta, and Dive for Omega. If they can take Omega it would shatter the Terminus Alliance if it can't be retaken in swift order. By doing this they knockout the enemy that currently has the momentum on them and the ability to capitalize on it and is chewing through their territorial gains.

It would result in an incredibly chaotic situation but, as they say, chaos provides opportunities. Opportunities the Rachni can actually capitalize on to change the course of the war back in their favor.

Click to shrink...

Alternatively, tech to make barriers and reactors and armour might just fall off the truck courtesy of Nazara.
So far, Rachni have demonstrated superb shipbuilding capability, and everyone else keeps up militarily primarily through keeping technological edge. If that technological edge is blunted...

 

[Thorgon]

Why?
Ardat-Yakshi are prime supersoldier material, and as it happens, we do have a need of supersoldiers on the ground.

So, give them a choice: They can die quickly, they can die slowly as they rot in their supermax, or they "rip and tear" until either they or Rachni are done for. With that last scenario meaning they might just get conditional freedom at the end.

Click to shrink...

the Ardat-Yakshi are addicts addicted to sex and murder I'd rather start work on living bioweapons at least those can be confined to a single world by not giving them the intelligence to pilot starships

 

[Dwergar]

the Ardat-Yakshi are addicts addicted to sex and murder I'd rather start work on living bioweapons at least those can be confined to a single world by not giving them the intelligence to pilot starships

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While they might be addicts with preference for sex and murder, they're strongest biotics around - with a matron-level Ardat-Yakshi being more powerful than a matriarch, if not more skilled.

And they don't have any particular abilities that enable mobility beyond usual biotic charges. In the end, people - meaning Asari, but Virmire as well now - do have the means to both hold and move Ardat-Yakshi securely.

As such, I do believe that utilizing them in combat roles - like, say, dropping them on a world to use them as bait for ortillery fodder and for general weakening of Rachni prior to the attack proper - would work at least once. And even a single action might save many, many lives of soldiers of the army.

While landing them into a dark hole and throwing away the key has little risk, it removes an opportunity as well.

 

[Thanatosra]

also not all Ardat-Yakshi are evil so treating them that is like treating people with psychopathy as evil just because some people with it do bad things

edit:like theirs need to be a way for use to know who is one before they accidently kill someone (like the one the gm mentioned)

 

[Thorgon]

also not all Ardat-Yakshi are evil so treating them that is like treating people with psychopathy as evil just because some people with it do bad things

edit:like theirs need to be a way for use to know who is one before they accidently kill someone (like the one the gm mentioned)

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the ones who don't submit to their addiction for sex and murder aren't strong enough to be super soldier material iirc

 

[Dwergar]

the ones who don't submit to their addiction for sex and murder aren't strong enough to be super soldier material iirc

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Not before our super-soldier program is through with them!
As in, they're still capable as soldiers who are biotics, so valuable personnel even before they pick up power through elimination of enemies - in our case, conveniently non-humanoid genocidal bugs.

We just have to prevent said program from advancing to "artificially induce the Ardat-Yakshi syndrome in subjects" stage.

 

[flotter]

And so, what I think, and Dread, that they will do is, at some point, pull all the fleet assets they reasonably, and maybe unreasonably, can, gather them in Hawking Eta, and Dive for Omega. If they can take Omega it would shatter the Terminus Alliance if it can't be retaken in swift order. By doing this they knockout the enemy that currently has the momentum on them and the ability to capitalize on it and is chewing through their territorial gains.

Click to shrink...

I don't think that they need to make a concentrated push to Omega even. They have battlecruisers, and they've seen us use them for decades so they probably understand the role we use BCs for. If the rachni decide to bite the bullet and build a raiding fleet without cutting corners they could slip it past defensive garrisons and raze the backlines of both the TA and the Council with relative impunity.

Right now the Terminus is where the Rachni were at the beginning of the war: digesting territory that they haven't secured totally and thus having vulnerabilities in their supply chain. The Council meanwhile, is utterly incapable of going on the offensive and is going to stay that way for a while. In addition, they're probably not going to build BCs until their dreadnoughts have been rebuilt, which means they're less capable of countering raids then they otherwise would be.

To cap that off, the Rachni have colonized a good chunk of the galaxy, and that means that they potentially have both intel on nearby clusters they intend to raid but also supply drops to extend a raid even further. Raiders can also be used to revitalize flagging Rachni colonies with additional war material, soldiers, even queens. Imagine Eletania but this time with a queen providing both coordination and reinforcements.

Fortunately for us, Rachni are cheapskates, and they have neither the institutional knowledge of how to use BCs nor (probably) a willingness to build the high performance ships needed to raid properly.

 

[UlseDovThur]

I don't think that they need to make a concentrated push to Omega even. They have battlecruisers, and they've seen us use them for decades so they probably understand the role we use BCs for. If the rachni decide to bite the bullet and build a raiding fleet without cutting corners they could slip it past defensive garrisons and raze the backlines of both the TA and the Council with relative impunity.

Right now the Terminus is where the Rachni were at the beginning of the war: digesting territory that they haven't secured totally and thus having vulnerabilities in their supply chain. The Council meanwhile, is utterly incapable of going on the offensive and is going to stay that way for a while. In addition, they're probably not going to build BCs until their dreadnoughts have been rebuilt, which means they're less capable of countering raids then they otherwise would be.

To cap that off, the Rachni have colonized a good chunk of the galaxy, and that means that they potentially have both intel on nearby clusters they intend to raid but also supply drops to extend a raid even further. Raiders can also be used to revitalize flagging Rachni colonies with additional war material, soldiers, even queens. Imagine Eletania but this time with a queen providing both coordination and reinforcements.

Fortunately for us, Rachni are cheapskates, and they have neither the institutional knowledge of how to use BCs nor (probably) a willingness to build the high performance ships needed to raid properly.

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Maybe, but as they would just be copying us I feel like we'd be able to counter them relatively easily. We've been refining such a doctrine for decades at this point and built it from the ground up. We know what works, what doesn't, and what would be effective against it.

Also they aren't in the same position we were, namely deep behind the enemies frontlines.

 

[Randino Treviani]

Maybe, but as they would just be copying us I feel like we'd be able to counter them relatively easily. We've been refining such a doctrine for decades at this point and built it from the ground up. We know what works, what doesn't, and what would be effective against it.

Also they aren't in the same position we were, namely deep behind the enemies frontlines.

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I agree with this. Raiding doctrine was so effective because the enemy was unprepared for the sudden offensives launched during the aftermath of other battles where the concentration of ships into armada style assault or defense fleets left them vulnerable.

Also, given there attempt to cobble together a raiding fleet after there slugfest with the citadel to try and strike out at the councils production lead to Kuriks deep run exposing them, making there first attempt a relative failure, I'd expect them to hold off until they've accomplished the same thing we are doing now, specifically building occupation fleets and incorporating barrier technology.

 

[Nightlord256]

[X] Use the device. Let's see what this woman has in mind.

 

[Lyres Veneer]

I don't think that they need to make a concentrated push to Omega even. They have battlecruisers, and they've seen us use them for decades so they probably understand the role we use BCs for. If the rachni decide to bite the bullet and build a raiding fleet without cutting corners they could slip it past defensive garrisons and raze the backlines of both the TA and the Council with relative impunity.

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Normally I'm content to lurk, but I think you might be overestimating the Rachni's immediate understanding of the battlecruiser doctrinal role. Or at least they did as of two years ago in quest. While it's not by any means improbable that they'd have started correcting for that by now, my suspicion is that they wouldn't immediately key onto it's utility as a raiding craft so much as stumble on it by accident. Likely as a consequence of putting it to work as a heavy asset for fleets suddenly lacking dreadnoughts. Or as a reinforcement for smaller fleets that wouldn't normally warrant a capital ship.

Also, for reference, the quote from PoptartProdigy;

As far as you can tell, the rachni were hoping to use battlecruisers as an unpleasant surprise against the Citadel and Terminus, with their placement in the fleets attacking you being experimental. When they were deployed against the Citadel, the Rachni battlecruisers fought just like dreadnoughts. And, predictably, they died like cruisers. They did an obscene amount of damage, but they died en masse. So did their dreadnoughts; you can barely conceive of losing over a hundred dreadnoughts in two battles. But the rachni did.

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[jjffjhjf]

Yeah... but the Rachni have seen us raiding them using battlecruisers, so it seems unlikely they wouldn't realize they could use them for the same. Though that's difficult to manage as well when they don't have barriers to help get through initial fights and the like. Our barriers are probably a significant portion of how effective our raiding is, just because we can shrug off glancing blows without it actually causing damage to our ships, while the Rachni would get a single hit, and suddenly have a damaged ship they can't take with them.

 

[Yatr]

While I find the idea of using the AY's as super soldiers tantalising, it is a highly risky option, unless we can find some method of properly controlling them. There's also the possibility that they mind control some rachni, either for good or I'll. And then like Benezia in the games, there's the possibility of them deciding they like their chances better by siding with the rachni. And the last thing we need is the AY's lending their biotic might and genetic info to the Rachni Queen. So, if we can come up with some good control methods, like perhaps reconditioning them, implanting a kill switch in them in case they turncoat, or something else equally effective, im down for seeing what value they can provide as shocktroops. Though we would need to give them anonymising and uniform gear so as to hide direct evidence of them serving us, as most asari (especially the council) would be livid if they discovered the truth. So it would be a high risk high reward game.

As for the Rachni's intentions, I think our friendship ends guess about the all out attack on Omega is a sensible guess, and I think we need to speak to our fellow heads of state in the TA about buffering Omega's line of defence, and maybe creating a deeper warning system around it.

 

[Thorgon]

So it would be a high risk high reward game.

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it would be a high risk for medium-low reward, there are other ways to make super soldiers and frankly massed autonomous mechs would probably do better anyways

 

[agumentic]

I don't think Ardat-Yakshi are numerous enough to be relevant on a modern battlefield. Even if each one was worth a company of soldiers, which isn't the case, we have a lot more companies than we have Ardat-Yakshi.

 

[Dwergar]

it would be a high risk for medium-low reward, there are other ways to make super soldiers and frankly massed autonomous mechs would probably do better anyways

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I don't think Ardat-Yakshi ate numerous enough to be relevant on a modern battlefield. Even if each one was worth a company of soldiers, which isn't the case, we have a lot more companies than we have Ardat-Yakshi.

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Not quite.
Obviously, we can't replace our whole army with Ardat-Yakshi - and even if we could, an army of automatons would be effective at lesser expense.

However, what they're particularly suitable for is fighting as a vanguard or for reinforcing places where fighting is particularly fierce, for they're going to be most concentrated combat power - being infantrymen who wield effective combat power of a tank, there won't be any equivalent until we get Krogan Battlemasters that are trained for modern combat conditions.

And having heavy tanks in form factor of rather small - definitely smaller than Krogan! - infantrymen is valuable. For example, for boarding actions or tunnel fighting, places where bulk impedes mobility far too much.

 

[Simon_Jester]

I just don't think there's any plausible way to solve the problems of:

1) Not being able to do this except with Ardat-Yakshi who are already serial killers.
2) Having to figure out ways to keep them fighting for you.
3) Having to figure out ways to dispose of them after the war, because they live for centuries and the Rachni War won't last forever.
4) Them not being goddamn idiots, and knowing that (3) is in play.

 

[Dwergar]

I just don't think there's any plausible way to solve the problems of:

1) Not being able to do this except with Ardat-Yakshi who are already serial killers.
2) Having to figure out ways to keep them fighting for you.
3) Having to figure out ways to dispose of them after the war, because they live for centuries and the Rachni War won't last forever.
4) Them not being goddamn idiots, and knowing that (3) is in play.

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Let's be honest, 3) and 4) are very much problems for future us, if they even are. With the amount of ground pounding that is there to do and will be there to do - while naval war might meet it's end in a decade, the ground pounding is going to take centuries to wrap up - there'd be a whole lot of chances for them to die in the line of duty. And if they don't, well - it's centuries later, the question can be discussed then.

Now, 1) and 2) are more pertinent. 2) is not that hard, I think - like, for typical non-criminal Ardat-Yakshi general army procedures would suffice more or less. For this ring of criminals, well - given a choice between certain death as criminals and possibility of death fighting genocidal bugs (but, more importantly, a chance to come out of it alive while spending a lot of time at an all-you-can-eat buffet of the battlefield), they might just take it. And that's before we are talking about entirely mundane means of influencing opinions - those criminals are entirely at the mercy of our system; Given how IRL social networks of today quite successfully manage to control minds (or something close enough to it), do I need to elaborate just what can you do to a person when you have control over all aspects of their life like an Ardat-Yakshi oriented supermax allows?

Lastly, 1) is a valid question, but we don't know an answer, either IC of OOC, and I'm of opinion that Ardat-Yakshi mutation could be leveraged somehow, meaning that we might be able to leverage an otherwise ostracised part of the population.

 

[Horium]

Does anyone know how far are we chronologically from the discovery of turians and krogans in the original timeline?

 

[Pittauro]

ignoring all ethical concerns, there's a problem with using the AY that's going unaddressed.

How exactly are we supposed to keep AY existence a secret if we use them openly in war?

The Salarian WILL find out at some point, and the Asari will NOT be happy with it.

 

[Whachamacallit]

Does anyone know how far are we chronologically from the discovery of turians and krogans in the original timeline?

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We're several centuries from the discovery of the turians, but I don't think we have an idea on the krogans

 

[Pittauro]

We're several centuries from the discovery of the turians, but I don't think we have an idea on the krogans

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technically the Salarian might have already found the Krogan. We know they supposedly uplifted them in a rush during the Rachni war to deal with them planetside, and I think it was implied they were already keeping them under observation for a while before then (and maybe even slowly uplifting them too, before giving up caution)

 

[Randino Treviani]

ignoring all ethical concerns, there's a problem with using the AY that's going unaddressed.

How exactly are we supposed to keep AY existence a secret if we use them openly in war?

The Salarian WILL find out at some point, and the Asari will NOT be happy with it.

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Yeah open warfare is not an option. Matriarch are distinctive and an unrecognized one would be an glowing beacon for the justicars.

We're several centuries from the discovery of the turians, but I don't think we have an idea on the krogans

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Send Kurik on a long survey/relay push in the direction of there worlds. He'll have something for us within a decade. I'm not sure when precisely there unifications wars ended tho, or when they began, so we might not be getting the unified military power they'll eventually become.

 

[Pittauro]

Send Kurik on a long survey/relay push in the direction of there worlds. He'll have something for us within a decade. I'm not sure when precisely there unifications wars ended tho, or when they began, so we might not be getting the unified military power they'll eventually become.

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We have no real reason to, and the Citadel is currently wary of opening new relays and potentially create new fronts.

If anything I'd want to expand exploration and colonialization/usage of the clusters we control. When we're lucky we can find garden worlds, scientific anomalies to research, or maybe even other races.

Learning Tab is probably not up to date, but according to it we still have some anomalies going unresearched, including a porous planet with tunnels reaching the core, an exploded planet, a black hole system (we can literally approach a black hole, and experiment by throwing things into it!), a red supergiant close to the end of its lifespan (as in "it will go supernova and maybe black hole in a few tens of thousands of years), and a planet with extreme weather.

Admittedly they're not as pressing as Yulair and Prothean tech, but they could still offer interesting insights.