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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
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Glassware said:
The Romulans established a new government and are in the process of drafting a constitution we actually like. I now care about protecting that improbable and rare state of being more than I do the Klingons, where any reform the current Chancellor manages to implement will almost certainly be cast aside by whoever kills him.

In the longer term, I suspect any real positive relationship with the Klingons requires there be someone for us to fight together. In the original timeline, it was the Romulans-but with warmer Romulan relations this is no longer desirable. With Klingon culture revolving as it does upon war and causing harm to other species and themselves, I ultimately favor the Romulans over them if at all possible.
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The hole in that thinking is that Romulans aren't actually particularly better.

You're ignoring the fact that Romulan culture, on the whole, can be summarized as "nest of vipers". The current reforms are good and should be encouraged, but they might still be just as easily undone. Constitution is just paper until it gains enough time to become custom; for time being it's largely reliant on backing of handful from Romulan elites. And while elites can give direction to a society, they aren't society per se. I'm not sure just how deeply the support for current reforms goes - you will remember that Empress was crowned at sword point, and even if the democratic reforms would be popular, it will take considerable time for rest of the Romulan society to catch up with radically progressive leaders like Empress or Wenli. We might just as well our entire work undone by a single well-placed bomb, with Empress' successor falling back onto established Romulan culture. You can't just jump over actual centuries of institutionalized xenophobia in handful of years, and even should the Romulan Empire transform into a Republic, they might very well retain their ambiguity towards Federation. It might be even possible that future Romulan governments fall back onto xenophobia and isolationism because it's trendy and wins elections.

The irony is that our current goodwill lies completely in a handful of officials within Empire, whose lives and power are fleeting; and much of that goodwill was established by...us fighting alongside Romulans. Against Biophage, true, but it bears reminding that Romulans engineered Biophage in the first place. If we're talking "long term", we might not see concrete friendship with Romulans within this century.

Say what you want about Klingons, but their unpredictability is predictable in itself, and it's just as possible to try an improve Klingon society. In fact, given that Klingons are slightly more open than Romulans, I'd imagine we'd get better results if we put our minds to it.
 
I think Lend lease *at this point* is jumping the gun, if you guys want to shake the breen, Early mobilization might work better and might help the Breen reconsider.
Providing some help? sure, intel is fine and so is playing the diplomatic game as is the Diplomatic game, but at this point we should wait before offering industrial support to anybody

[X][PREZ] Alliance-Building Diplomacy Response to gain more participants in response
[X][PREZ] Recon & Intel Support
[X][PREZ] Conciliatory Diplomatic Response to Breen
 
"our current goodwill lies completely in a handful of officials within Empire"
true too a point.

but here likely most ppl reasoning on this, what if we can embolden that part of the Empire and show them that the UFP can and will support them.

sure they will be a tricky not always honest ally but then we don`t fully trust the klingon ether otherwise we wouldn`t have a guarded border with them now would we.
 
early mobilization mean going to war.
as much as they might have hurt our pride and ppl.
we where in the way, we where not the intended target.
i`m willing too give them some slack.

as long as we can stay out of active combat and help end the war, with maybe at the end a better "friend" then i am all for it.
if we lose the chance to get the breen to join, ya that be sad, but not the end of the world.
 
Chaos Blade said:
I think Lend lease *at this point* is jumping the gun, if you guys want to shake the breen, Early mobilization might work better and might help the Breen reconsider.
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Any large scale Federation mobilization won't just shake the Breen, it will shake the galaxy. It signals that we consider this to be a Biophage-level threat, or at least on the scale of "Licori mentats screwing around may blow up a star and doom every planet in a fifty light year radius."
 
Simon_Jester said:
I'm a bit surprised by Crogan's bonus; it sounds more like something we'd get from the head of Starfleet Intelligence. What's the rationale?
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He's vetting out the Lecarre infiltrators from being promoted or assigned to sensitive posts?


[X][PREZ] Aggressive Diplomatic Response to isolate Breen
[X][PREZ] Conciliatory Diplomatic Response to Breen
[X][PREZ] Recon & Intel Support
 
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Alastor Mobius Toth said:
The hole in that thinking is that Romulans aren't actually particularly better.

You're ignoring the fact that Romulan culture, on the whole, can be summarized as "nest of vipers". The current reforms are good and should be encouraged, but they might still be just as easily undone. Constitution is just paper until it gains enough time to become custom; for time being it's largely reliant on backing of handful from Romulan elites. And while elites can give direction to a society, they aren't society per se. I'm not sure just how deeply the support for current reforms goes - you will remember that Empress was crowned at sword point, and even if the democratic reforms would be popular, it will take considerable time for rest of the Romulan society to catch up with radically progressive leaders like Empress or Wenli. We might just as well our entire work undone by a single well-placed bomb, with Empress' successor falling back onto established Romulan culture. You can't just jump over actual centuries of institutionalized xenophobia in handful of years, and even should the Romulan Empire transform into a Republic, they might very well retain their ambiguity towards Federation. It might be even possible that future Romulan governments fall back onto xenophobia and isolationism because it's trendy and wins elections.

The irony is that our current goodwill lies completely in a handful of officials within Empire, whose lives and power are fleeting; and much of that goodwill was established by...us fighting alongside Romulans. Against Biophage, true, but it bears reminding that Romulans engineered Biophage in the first place. If we're talking "long term", we might not see concrete friendship with Romulans within this century.

Say what you want about Klingons, but their unpredictability is predictable in itself, and it's just as possible to try an improve Klingon society. In fact, given that Klingons are slightly more open than Romulans, I'd imagine we'd get better results if we put our minds to it.
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Also, pretty sure the Remians can't vote, so they're arguably worse than the Klingon's when it comes to their subject races. The Klingon's, after all, just put a nonKlingon in charge of their entire economy.
 
Iron Wolf said:
What are your areas of concern?
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Commander, Starfleet has had days to months to think about the options and get analyses from SFI and the FDS about the likely outcomes of each of these options. We, on the other hand, are making decisions based on four-word summaries that don't even completely describe what each program would entail. How much leverage would we have with Lend/Lease? What would be the goal of Recon? What is Sabotage even possible, much less a reasonable response? We know the Romulans have heard about this; what are they doing and thinking? What about the Klingons, what do they know and what are they thinking or doing in response? What exactly is "early mobilization"? What would a "conciliatory" diplomatic response entail? How about "aggressive"? How would the Klingons and Romulans react to each of these options? Would the Romulans turn any of them down? What are the projected long-term consequences of Lend-Lease on the Romulan economy, particularly its fleet? It took me three minutes to come up with that list of questions and we should be going into this vote with answers to every single one of them.

edit: I'll note that these questions also apply out of character. You're telling us that this is the most important vote that we'll make in this period of the quest and we're voting on four-word summaries that leave us guessing about what they entail or how they're even options. And how can we project the long-term consequences of something that we can't even define properly?
 
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[X][PREZ] Romulan-Klingon Border Peacekeeping Response
[X][PREZ] Alliance-Building Diplomacy Response to gain more participants in response
[X][PREZ] Recon & Intel Support
 
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[X][PREZ] Subterfuge & Sabotage Response
[X][PREZ] Recon & Intel Support
[X][PREZ] Aggressive Diplomatic Response to isolate Breen

I'm really surprised there are more votes for early mobilization than subterfuge and sabatoge. (Well, so far mine is the only one.) Why gear the entire Federation for a war when a few targeted operations could be just as effective at stopping or deterring the Breen?
 
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Derpmind said:
I'm really surprised there are more votes for early mobilization than subterfuge and sabatoge. (Well, so far mine is the only one.) Why gear the entire Federation for a war when a few targeted operations could be just as effective at stopping or deterring the Breen?
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We have approximately zero physical intel on the Breen and negative SOPHINT. AFAIK we don't even know where their planets are. It's so bad that I'm surprised it's even an option.
 
charysa said:
He's vetting out the Lecarre infiltrators from being promoted or assigned to sensitive posts?
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But what in his background makes him good at that...? It it just the sheer force of his Tellarite sarcasm and general orneriness, the way I might imagine fop Makpol doing, or the way Leslie's bonuses in a non-engineering field might work?

[A/N: Seriously, Leslie's most prominent actual talents are flexibility, pragmatism, a hard-earned ability to deduce when something's too good to be true, and a gift for dredging through his long, eventful memory for ways to exploit just about any gimmick he's ever heard of. Man's got gambits for days, and in anything truly important, he layers them. On reflection, him being Science 4 Insight 4 is very much justified]
 
That fact that there is even an option to have early mobilization is a surprise to me. Mostly because despite our PP shortage we don't actually need it. Especially after Mobilization comes into affect next in game year. We have an entire Kepler wave coming next quarter and those ships are going to be needed to replace any ships that we are sending toward the Breen. And make no mistake we are going to be sending ships one way or another. We can not afford to not send ships given the Breens attack on our ship in neutral space. And then there is the fact that we just lost the equivilant to half our entire career casualties in one year. You better believe the Federation is angry.
 
Alastor Mobius Toth said:
The hole in that thinking is that Romulans aren't actually particularly better.

You're ignoring the fact that Romulan culture, on the whole, can be summarized as "nest of vipers". The current reforms are good and should be encouraged, but they might still be just as easily undone. Constitution is just paper until it gains enough time to become custom; for time being it's largely reliant on backing of handful from Romulan elites. And while elites can give direction to a society, they aren't society per se. I'm not sure just how deeply the support for current reforms goes - you will remember that Empress was crowned at sword point, and even if the democratic reforms would be popular, it will take considerable time for rest of the Romulan society to catch up with radically progressive leaders like Empress or Wenli. We might just as well our entire work undone by a single well-placed bomb, with Empress' successor falling back onto established Romulan culture. You can't just jump over actual centuries of institutionalized xenophobia in handful of years, and even should the Romulan Empire transform into a Republic, they might very well retain their ambiguity towards Federation. It might be even possible that future Romulan governments fall back onto xenophobia and isolationism because it's trendy and wins elections.

The irony is that our current goodwill lies completely in a handful of officials within Empire, whose lives and power are fleeting; and much of that goodwill was established by...us fighting alongside Romulans. Against Biophage, true, but it bears reminding that Romulans engineered Biophage in the first place. If we're talking "long term", we might not see concrete friendship with Romulans within this century.

Say what you want about Klingons, but their unpredictability is predictable in itself, and it's just as possible to try an improve Klingon society. In fact, given that Klingons are slightly more open than Romulans, I'd imagine we'd get better results if we put our minds to it.
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The Klingons are very open. In that they are the best there is, and intend to conquer everyone. Without another aggressive power to distract them they'll turn around to us as their next foe. We need a third power to balance them out so they can't choose to fight us without fear of a backstab.

Having the Romulans always looking for weakness whereas we have proven we can be trusted not to backstab them is the very base of our relationship with them. A relationship that leads to them having to beat the Romulans first before they attack us, and therefore serves to check the Romulans from attacking us in turn.
 
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Alastor Mobius Toth said:
You're ignoring the fact that Romulan culture, on the whole, can be summarized as "nest of vipers". The current reforms are good and should be encouraged, but they might still be just as easily undone. Constitution is just paper until it gains enough time to become custom; for time being it's largely reliant on backing of handful from Romulan elites. And while elites can give direction to a society, they aren't society per se. I'm not sure just how deeply the support for current reforms goes - you will remember that Empress was crowned at sword point, and even if the democratic reforms would be popular, it will take considerable time for rest of the Romulan society to catch up with radically progressive leaders like Empress or Wenli. We might just as well our entire work undone by a single well-placed bomb, with Empress' successor falling back onto established Romulan culture. You can't just jump over actual centuries of institutionalized xenophobia in handful of years, and even should the Romulan Empire transform into a Republic, they might very well retain their ambiguity towards Federation. It might be even possible that future Romulan governments fall back onto xenophobia and isolationism because it's trendy and wins elections.
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The sad part is that Wenlai is fully, painfully aware of all of this. He doesn't buy into the great man idea of history, and he understands how events are shaped by vast impersonal forces of institutions and culture. He doesn't think for a moment that he can just rewrite Romulan society and actually would consider it the height of arrogance to try.

All he can really hope is that there a liberal currents that have been suppressed in Romulan society and that if Velim gives them the opportunity to express themselves, they will. But if they don't, they don't.

No wonder he drinks.
 
OneirosTheWriter said:
Ships Scrapped

Gaeni - Planning to scrap Tech-Frigates, 2 in 2323.Q2, 2 in 2324.Q2
Indorians - Ship of the Line, ICS Anvil, NCC-3401, was taken out of service last year. Two additional 'Frigate-class- ships will be withdrawn from service for scrapping this year.
Caldonian - 2 Caldonian Escorts will be scrapped in 2323.Q2, followed by two more in 2325, a part of phasing out these obsolete ships in favour of new Patroller-As, Centaurs and Keplers.
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Those planned scappings are big deals, by the way. The Gaeni have 10 Tech-Frigates out of a 19 ship fleet. I can only conclude they took a look at the Centaur-B and Kepler, looked back at their Tech-Frigates, and decided they can do better with Starfleet designs.

The Caldonians have 7 Escorts out of a 17 ship fleet, so that's a lot of their ship capacity as well, likely for the same reasons.

The Indorians have 3 frigate-class cruisers, so that's not quite as big a deal.
 
Briefvoice said:
Those planned scappings are big deals, by the way.
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Actually the Indorian one is the big deal, because the others have only confirmed partial four-ship plans to scrap their fleet, and aren't moving at a particularly fast rate. (The Caldonians won't be done for eight years, at their current rate of two ships every two years with a single left over.) The Indorians, meanwhile, have withdraw a significant fraction of their heavies from service.
 
How many Keplers are launching again next year? I am trying to think about what ships they might replace that can be sent to form a task force can deal with the Breen's provocations.
 
Some of them might go to that task force, but basically assume any sector with a Rennie could substitute a Kepler.
 
Enerael said:
How large is the Breen warfleet? With the sensor data from Courageous we should have an estimate.
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Courageous detected at least a dozen hulls.

[ ][PREZ] Industrial Support/Lend-Lease Response
I would like the FDS opinion on this.
[ ][PREZ] Alliance-Building Diplomacy Response to gain more participants in response
What powers, and why, would join in on fighting the Breen/protecting romulans? Even just Shays quess would be very helpful.
[ ][PREZ] Aggressive Diplomatic Response to isolate Breen
...they are isolationists. Why is this an option?
[ ][PREZ] Conciliatory Diplomatic Response to Breen
This does mean trying to convince them to stop the war right? Likely enhanced by sending ships and stuff?
[ ][PREZ] Subterfuge & Sabotage Response
What does this mean?
[ ][PREZ] Direct Action Response against Breen assets
Would Romulans allow us passage through their space? Let our ships operate alongside their?
[ ][PREZ] Romulan-Klingon Border Peacekeeping Response
We need the FDSs opinion on this.
[ ][PREZ] Recon & Intel Support
What would this entail? sending solitary ships to spy in that area seems really dangerous. Again, could we operate out of Romulan territory?
[ ][PREZ] Push for Federation Early Mobilisation
Would this include a sate of emergency? A reminder of what Early Mobilization is would be nice too.
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We aren't listing Klingon conciliation options at present because we need to know what you're going to be trying to conciliate first!

To answer your next questions point by point to avoid spaghetti posting:
  • Industrial Support/Lend-Lease Response - FDS opinion is fairly straightforward: the Klingons like the current balance of power, even if it is imbalanced in their favor. However, more symbolically, there is major concern about the Khitomer accords. The Romulans were party to negotiations around the original agreement, and the Klingons wish to see some level of Federation neutrality between them and the Romulans. The Federation assisting the Romulans after they transitioned to a more friendly government will be noted; and possibly construed as a break with neutrality.
  • Alliance-Building Diplomacy Response to gain more participants in response - Bolians are the obvious outreach, OSA and Licori, even Harmony can be considered. This also entails reaching out to the Ked Paddah and other affiliates who may otherwise have wanted to watch and wait.
  • Aggressive Diplomatic Response to isolate Breen - while they are isolationists, cutting them off from their few trade partners will have an impact on their infrastructure capacity and thus ability to expand warfighting capacity. Cutting down sympathy to the Breen position may encourage third parties to avoid any involvement. This could even prompt Bolians to exploit their position astride Breen logistics lines.
  • Conciliatory Diplomatic Response to Breen - this could mean stopping the war, it could mean shortening it, it could mean finding out Breen motivations. At the very minimum it is designed to keep the Federation open as a neutral third party for mediation, depending on other choices made.
  • Subterfuge & Sabotage Response - This means "let SFI do some sneaky subterfuge and sabotage against Breen targets." If they're caught, though...
  • Direct Action Response against Breen assets - Romulans may allow access to their space, but likely won't. However, you have other avenues to strike Breen targets.
  • Romulan-Klingon Border Peacekeeping Response - FDS is split. As some of you have noted, in the event things really do to shit, the Klingons could be upset at the Federation blocking the Klingons from taking military action. It would also edge into concerns with lend-lease -- it's a deal that more favors the Romulans. However, the Empire has security concerns of its own, and part of their heavily militarization on the border is that while they trust the Romulan government now, they are very concerned about a revanchist first strike, either from the current government trying to secure itself or from a successor government. If you commit to this mission, they expect it sizable and long term. As for the Romulan perspective -- well, they can't complain.
  • Recon & Intel Support - this will require Runabout scouts and possibly T'Mir-style shenanigans with larger vessels. No word yet on Romulan basing; that may be an escalation to be considered later.
  • Push for Federation Early Mobilisation - Early mobilization gives Starfleet and other powers who choose to engage in mobilization enhanced resource and crew incomes, shorter build times, and access to special options. But choosing this basically means you expect to fight a war; going into this mode and then using it to horde more resources to expand Starfleet will not end well. It will not necessarily entail a state of emergency but you're edging really close. The degree to which this is selected determines how broadly mobilisation occurs. A low vote for it could just see local member worlds mobilise. Being one of the top options would see nearly the entire Federation start to gear up in a very clear threat of imminent explosions.
 
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