To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
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We're not prepared to win anything but a general war. That's what this comes down to. I understand that it feels wrong for us to not have Starfleet come out of left field and save the day, but I have a different opinion: If this were an Empire Quest, this would be the perfect opportunity we'd have been waiting for. That's how the ISC and the HoH see things: The Ashalla Pact are a hostile threat, and we've been given excuse to wage a full war to dismantle them completely. The only possible intervention we are prepared for is an actual war, and frankly we're in a position to win and everyone knows it. The Cardassians know that the Federation is not an empire and will not wage a war. However, both for their own reasons, the ISC and the HoH would like nothing more than to see us comit to a general war. And we would win! We have a massive fleet, we have support from two major powers, we have all the diplomatic excuse we need, let's crush those scum Cardassians!
If this were an Empire Quest.
This is not an Empire Quest.
This is a wake-up call: If we had merely resolved the Chrystovians's [Distant Stars: 5/100] tag, we'd have far more options right now. We'd be prepared to pull off some crazy stunts and win a few unlikely dice rolls and save the day. But we didn't, and this is the price. We need to keep in mind in the future that not getting our foot in the door with an obvious source of conflict will leave us completely flatfooted and powerless to help. It happened with the Laio and the war we just ended, it's happeneing with the Chrystovians right now, and it'll happen in the future again with whover we decide to strategically ignore next time we send out our TFs. We cannot deal with constant crisis situations to put out the fires that we "proactively" ignore. If this feels like failure, then that's because it is: We failed to do anything to help in the past, and that's why in the future we need to not be complacent.
[X] We should not intervene in the Chrystovian invasion.
If this were an Empire Quest.
This is not an Empire Quest.
This is a wake-up call: If we had merely resolved the Chrystovians's [Distant Stars: 5/100] tag, we'd have far more options right now. We'd be prepared to pull off some crazy stunts and win a few unlikely dice rolls and save the day. But we didn't, and this is the price. We need to keep in mind in the future that not getting our foot in the door with an obvious source of conflict will leave us completely flatfooted and powerless to help. It happened with the Laio and the war we just ended, it's happeneing with the Chrystovians right now, and it'll happen in the future again with whover we decide to strategically ignore next time we send out our TFs. We cannot deal with constant crisis situations to put out the fires that we "proactively" ignore. If this feels like failure, then that's because it is: We failed to do anything to help in the past, and that's why in the future we need to not be complacent.
[X] We should not intervene in the Chrystovian invasion.
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pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
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One: Evidence it's manufactured as opposed to a real thing they're using as an excuse?
Two: Who the hell are the Kohbeerians?
Three: The Konen fought a war with the Cardassians, lost ... and are now in an arrangement that looks remarkably like a Stellaris/CKII vassalship. They still have in house capital warship production!
Correction: We the players have heard nothing.
Which only tells us that nothing was sufficiently newsworthy to make it to Commander, Starfleet and to us through the fourth wall. Not actually data.
It's possible that individual incidents are manufactured ... but there's no actual evidence of that.
It's NOT possible that the government-backed pattern of running social science experiments on prewarp civs is manufactured because we caught them in the act. Repeatedly.
They sure are slick-talking fuckers, but I can see a blatant attempt at manipulation for what it is.
Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
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Well, we have this Intel report that shows the Cardassians to be stripmining Bajor and forcing Bajoran to move into cities so the Cardassians can take their land and homes. It's like they're concentrating them for some reason.
We know things are not well on Bajor:
Random Member
Gardener of Human Happiness
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- Behind You
You.... do realize that that's how they're portrayed in DS9, right?
Chaos Blade
Procrastinating Writer
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- Buenos Aires, Argentina
[X] We should not intervene in the Chrystovian invasion.
No, just no. not at this time. the Cardies are a problem, but are only so, the Chrystovians are far from being squeaky clean and might have brought them on themselves and this is far away which mean our forces there are going to be vulnerable to attrition and our capacity to quicly reinforce is going to be not.
We can't run that war and keep the HOH in check and, frankly? I rate those hypocritical assholes as a far bigger threat than the spoonheads
No, just no. not at this time. the Cardies are a problem, but are only so, the Chrystovians are far from being squeaky clean and might have brought them on themselves and this is far away which mean our forces there are going to be vulnerable to attrition and our capacity to quicly reinforce is going to be not.
We can't run that war and keep the HOH in check and, frankly? I rate those hypocritical assholes as a far bigger threat than the spoonheads
Origami Clock
Right twice a day
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- Brighton, UK
Forced urbanisation =/= death camps. I personally long for the day humanity can retreat into shining arcologies and attempt to repair the damage we did to the ecosystem. Then again I'm Shizoid and would quite happily be a brain in a jar if I could, so my perspective is probably biased.
Alastor Mobius Toth
***** ***
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- Neon Ghetto
They literally offered two. "Multiple" applies only if we're being pedantic.
Their opinion on this is literally them saying we should strike now, and that if we don't it's basically contemptible cowardice. It's very typical, very schematic moral panic that demands something be done without assessing the situation we're in, because all they're capable of is thinking in terms of our industry.
If we're getting into characterization, that in itself speaks oddly of ISC; surely they would understand the value of not starting a war while we're literally preparing to improve our fleet, release new ships into service and get a handle on several other crises....exact sort of thing you'd need secured before starting a war?
You are naive if you think we can trust HoH to not intensify their efforts after the stunt their ambassador just pulled, especially since they have multiple directorates. And I personally don't trust ISC to carry this out. They have their hands full with Felis, and we want to give over the entire stretch of border? That just isn't going to work out.
They said "we will open a second front, but we're going to prioritize the Harmony anyway. Which...I'll give them credit that they will do something, but it still feels rather halfhearted.
If we were allied with ISC and they were attacked by Pact, I'd fully expect Federation not to just relieve them, but light entire Cardassian border from Ashidi space to Gabriel. And not "We will make a push on Bajor, but we really gotta watch out for Gorn!"
Frankly, we've said our pieces. I don't agree with almost everything you said. And you probably don't agree with what I said, as is your right. But that's about all we're going to get from this conversation.
Bajor is literally right across our border. Kobheerians are deep in Cardassian space. Nobody gets a prize for telling which one is easier to keep tabs on, especially when Bajor has a major diaspora which has some contacts with it's homeworld.
Given that Kohbeerians were alive at time of DS9, it would be rather radical for Cardassians to exterminate them at this time.
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... No, I don't. I made a pointed counter-argument to the perceived 'if we intervene we'll win' atmosphere by trying to point out that we very well might lose. Where is there, except perhaps in a figure of speech, a "we're guaranteed to lose"?
You do remember the Imelak terraforming events? I'm not saying the for sure will use similar methods, but they could. They could also inflict simply so much damage that the damaged parties leave the Federation that couldn't protect them in the war they warned about.
Wow, military planning changed a lot since I last took a look at it. And here I was thinking it's the job of military planners to look at worst case scenarios, come up with contingency planning and take all that into consideration for the risk assessment.
There is a story about the Japanese performing simulations before Midway, and when they added 'everything in our favor' and 'Americans have arbitrary problems' they didn't lose.
In this case it's a good lie, it fits with our captain's log posts (iirc). And I'm sure they embellished and falsified, and I'm also sure that it's not only fabrication.
True, but not the whole truth, as we simply prioritized our help. And didn't want to incite the Cardassians to GBZ, v2.
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Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
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In case you're not making the connections, the historical Nazis forced the Jews to move into overcrowded ghettos so they could steal their land and homes, sealed them in said ghettos, then genocided them once all of them had been contained. Historical parallels should be frightening to you, but I guess not.
So being conquered by Space Nazis is something that you can deserve. Good to know.
Given that the Bajorans have almost certainly appeared in Pact propaganda and we've heard nothing about the Khobeerians, even from the Chrystovians, I somehow doubt that all is well.
It can be a real thing, sure. It still isn't enough for them to deserve to be Nazi'd, which is apparently a core portion of your argument.
Khobeerians were a neighboring species to the Chrystovians that we sent an EC ship to go looking for, found them being conquered, then found the Chrystovians incidentally.
The Konen were able to put up enough of a fight to get a peace treaty signed and were willing to be useful enough idiots that they were co-opted (the telepathy part is very handy). The Cardassians are going to be able to crush the Chrystovians without much of a fight and will thus be able to dictate terms, which is different.
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- United Kingdom
[X] We should intervene in the Chrystovian invasion.
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- Germany
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I got the impression the Konen think they can play/use the Cardassians.
From the DS9 episodes that show the occupation of Bajor they also used the Bajorans for forced labour like the Nazis used some POWs and eastern europeans for forced labour. That is in extremely unsafe conditions and with not enough food.
Making this an argument about the justness of the Cardassian casus belli probably isn't the argument to be having.
The fact is, a general war will be immensely destructive and is unlikely to end well with a politically divided Federation. Yes we could win if both sides fight to the knife, but the Federation isn't anything close to united on this. A humiliating politically-forced peace after we start taking some serious losses and the STO and Indorians and Apiata start dying in droves is more likely.
The fact is, a general war will be immensely destructive and is unlikely to end well with a politically divided Federation. Yes we could win if both sides fight to the knife, but the Federation isn't anything close to united on this. A humiliating politically-forced peace after we start taking some serious losses and the STO and Indorians and Apiata start dying in droves is more likely.
Origami Clock
Right twice a day
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Frankly because actual genocidal Fascism is so much a product of specific economic and cultural factors that it is SoD breaking for me to believe that a policy capable of sustains a peer-level economy and industry to the Federation would succumb to it. It would be like having a modern day Mongolian Horde or default credit swaps taking place back in Bronze Age palace economies. Honestly Space Feudalism as a whole only gets a pass because of genre conventions, the same way Woznium or Q does.
If I were a foreign polity, the real lesson I'd take from non-intervention is that you don't get the benefits of Federation protection without being a Federation Member (or at the very least an Ally).
Sign up today, Ashidi.
Sign up today, Ashidi.
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I don't want to crush the Cardassians. I want to put them in a position where they can choose whether to abandon their plans to invade the Chrystovians, accept a compromise solution, or fight a war where they risk getting crushed.
Because the Cardassians are playing an empire quest. And they're going to keep doing this, just like they already did to Bajor, until we convince them that getting along with us and being part of a broader international community that resolves problems without enslaving the neighbors is better than, well, enslaving the neighbors.
I fully expect the Cardassian Union and the Ashalla Pact to still exist on the other side of a war, if a war happens here. But I don't want to send the message "the Federation is okay with you enslaving the neighbors, just because we were too busy to send a task force halfway around your flank when we were worried you might attack it during years when a lot else was going on."
The Chrystovians are not a potato chip for the Cardassians to snap up because we "weren't going to eat that."
They offered three. One, a task force to help us directly. Two, diplomatic coverage on our border with the Harmony. Three, if a war starts they agreed to fight the Dylaarians. Given how little wordage was spent in the updates detailing the ISC's position, that seems like a good start. If you think they should do more, or different, things for us, why don't you start outlining what you want from them instead of assuming they're unwilling to do things that are within their power?
Complications to that:
1) They think we're strong enough to handle this already.
2) They may see no reason to assume that delay will benefit only us, and not the Cardassians. The Cardassians have been getting stronger in important ways lately; they are not a stationary target for us to overtake, and conquering more strip-mineable worlds won't make them weaker.
3) The ISC thinks in terms of ending threats, not in terms of indefinite buildup while leaving the threat loitering out there.
What I'm saying is, it would be better than leaving that border uncovered. If we leave some ships there (and we probably will), then those ships will be at a much lesser disadvantage than they would be otherwise. I'd much rather have a few dozen ISC ships sweeping along that frontier trying to LIMIT the scope of Harmony diplomatic penetration, than have zero ships doing that same thing.
It's like, you can argue "the ISC is engaged in moral panic and isn't willing to do anything for us," or you can argue "the ISC is willing to do something for us, but I don't think it'll be enough because the Harmony is going to double down while we're distracted." You can't argue both at the same time.
You're reading a lot into how you feel about short passages that we haven't gotten any clarification on. It is very easy to misinterpret or misunderstand text on that scale. "Second front" to me sounds like a serious enough effort to at least pin down the Dylaarian navy, in addition to either actively helping us elsewhere on the front lines, buying time for us on the diplomatic front against the Harmony, or both. I don't know how much they can actually do but that sounds like a good start.
Yes, that's because the Federation is like three or four times larger than the ISC.
Their idea of a maximum-effort campaign to help us beat the Cardassians looks pretty feeble compared to what we could do as a maximum effort to beat the Cardassians ourselves, because we're capable of much more effort than them.
Could the Cardassians invasively 'terraform' worlds to wipe out their populations and ruin them so they can't be liberated by a counterattack? I suppose. While they're at it they could just bombard the planets into glass billiard balls, with the same result.
Either way, at that point they've escalated the war to genocide against entire Federation-aligned species, at which point I would fondly hope that we would be in position to fully mobilize our industry, among other things. A large part of what's kept the Cardassians at parity with us is that we haven't done that; if that changes they're not in a good position.
[tries to resist accusing MTB of lying about what I said]
What you do is. You look at a range of outcomes. Here is the best case plausible scenario. Don't bet on it happening, but at least know what it looks like. Look at the worst case scenario, where we arbitrarily assign problems to ourselves and advantages to the enemy. Look at the probable scenarios- both the ones where everything goes as we predict (including the enemy being tough and smart), and the ones where there are unexpected breaks but they cut both ways rather than all falling in favor of one side.
A competent military plan is not made by just assuming everything is as bad as it can conceivably be, then acting accordingly. That gets you into situations like the Peninsular Campaign, where excessive caution and indecisiveness results in the enemy being free to literally ride rings around you, or keep you pinned down and unwilling to assault enemy "artillery positions" that consist of logs painted to look like cannons.
You don't assume everything is as good as possible and make plans that don't allow for failure. You don't assume everything is as bad as possible and make plans that don't allow for success. You make plans that assume something in between, and allow for deviations from the expected result in a variety of ways, both good and bad.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
How vigorously do we make that an element of our diplomatic sales pitch, exactly?
I guess I have too much investment in this quest that I honestly get a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach as I want us to prepare to jump into the meatgrinder voluntarily, powered largely by a vague sentiment that "it's the right thing to do".
Those poor bastards in the Ked Paddah and the Honiani really picked the wrong time to join if we do go to war.
How much of a selling point do you want to make, "If you join, you might randomly find yourself embroiled in a war over a people you've never met hundreds of light years away."
Those poor bastards in the Ked Paddah and the Honiani really picked the wrong time to join if we do go to war.
How much of a selling point do you want to make, "If you join, you might randomly find yourself embroiled in a war over a people you've never met hundreds of light years away."
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
If nothing else, we're unlikely to ask them to do much of the bleeding, if only because we need them to safeguard us against getting backstabbed too hard by the Harmony.