Looks like things are getting interesting! I wonder how long the Harmony can keep this up?
[] Focus on the Licori and Bolians
We are, of course, conducting diplomatic pushes on all four next quarter.
Why Licori and Bolians, not Licori and OSA?
I think the main point is that Horizon isn't saying "be our friends or die" to any of the powers. That might be implicit if you're being a bit paranoid, but none of the powers being courted get that impression or are operating under the assumption that if they join with the Federation they will be annihilated.
Edit: also please consider how massively hypocritical it would look to be mad about the Treaty of Celos and then also say "no, Harmony...... stop"
Like what divides a Federation warfleet from a Horizon one? Size?
...Uh yeah, about that.
Basically, the fleets we send on diplomatic missions tend to be
SMALLER than the defense forces of whoever we're talking to. The Gorn are presumably not super worried about what would happen if TF Royal randomly attacked them, for instance. If I'm wrong about that, it casts the whole dynamic down there in a new light.
Likewise, I'm pretty sure the Trill had enough raw force to cope if the Federation had suddenly turned against them in and around Ruby Eyes' Folly. Likewise the Ittick-ka. We normally don't send diplomatic fleets
so big they could easily double as conquest fleets.
Just about the sole exceptions to this principle are Task Force Beyond (which has historically been scattered over a huge area of space and
locally weaker than any of the navies of the powers it's talking to) and Task Force Unity (where protecting Federation spacers and colonies from the belligerent minor powers in a war zone was part of the job description).
In any one quarter, we'd visit the Licori on a diplomatic mission for TF Beyond with, oh,
one explorer and a few frigate escorts. Maybe throw in a cruiser. We don't take five or six explorers plus screening elements to visit the Licori and flood their space with heavy units that could casually overwhelm them with a surprise attack. Remember that the Licori have like ONE battleship that can match even a single one of the Harmony cruisers, to say nothing of all those other cruisers and the frigate swarms operating off (presumably) multiple heavy capital-class tenders.
So yeah, one of these Harmony space-carrier-battlegroups, even a
quarter part of their overall task force, could almost certainly do exactly that- conquer with a surprise attack. Even if the Harmony promises they won't do that, they have the capacity, and if they actually deploy 1/4 of their overall force in or around the space of, say, the Licori... they have the capacity to do that, especially with the advantage of tactical surprise.
So for the militaries of the powers in question, if they don't already trust the Harmony very very much, this almost HAS to be a situation that puts them all on high, tense alert. Because if the Harmony wanted to plan for a massive sneak attack that would decapitate the governments of all four polities and put puppets on their respective thrones or throne-equivalents, gambling that the Federation wouldn't do anything about it... this is
exactly how the opening phase of their preparations might look.
And if those other nations are going (back to) a war footing because they're worried they might get attacked (as the ISC and the Tauni will be
very bluntly warning literally everyone might be about to happen)...
Well yeah, we kind of have to, too.
Making yourself the biggest military power in the entire region tends to make all the other regional powers nervous and worried about your intentions, unless they were already your trusting ally.
Like I'm sorry if the argument is that "It's bad when Horizon has 20+ ships" and you take that to the President she's going to either laugh or clip your wings by implementing a TF ship ceiling.
No, the argument is "you know, with all those ships forward-deployed, if the Harmony were
ever going to launch a surprise attack or use its ships to, say, enforce a pre-planned coup on the Felis homeworld or something, they would be doing that
right now." This looks very, very much the way the preparations for a war would.
And if Madame President reacts to this by saying "yeah, you're right, it's super provocative to visit any foreign space polity with a fleet equal in firepower to its entire national navy," you know what?
I'd agree with her. I'd accept that restriction.
I mean the fact that the Harmony can now decapitate the Licori government and establish control over their orbits within a matter of days is indeed a little concerning considering their past history? Like...Lugis has basically no guarantee they're not going to immediately overthrow him in favor of the revolutionaries if he lets them into his space considering their rhetoric, past history, and the sheer size of their fleet. I don't see this ending in a way that doesn't involve him attempting to hold his population hostage with a mentat bomb or something.
While I don't think Lugis would actually try that last part, aside from that I agree with Glassware in a statement about the Licori, if we swap out everything after "don't see this ending..." with the word "...well."
Those are warships. Harmony has dual-purpose vessels like SF does. Remember how mad we all got when N'Gir called one of our explorers a battlecruiser?
The thing about a dual-purpose task force is... it can serve
two purposes. One is peaceful outreach, the other is face-crushing.
Nobody, least of all our own Pacifists, is under the illusion that our peacefully outreaching
Excelsiors can't switch directly to face-crushing mode in a matter of hours should we give the orders.
And while
we may consider it heresy to look at our lovely
Excelsiors and
Ambassadors and think "battleships," you may be assured that the Licori and the Bolians do not share our religious scruples. The Licori probably still flinch every time they hear the name '
Enterprise' after the trouncing we gave them at the Ixaria Approaches. I doubt they are any less nervous about the potential of a large Harmony fleet to launch a lightning campaign of conquest, especially against an opponent now unprepared for such a war, as the Licori (or Bolians) would be.
Also they wouldn't all be in port at once! They're off doing a whole bunch of things to reach out!
Sure, the Licori-facing Harmony carrier battlegroup isn't
all in the orbit of Morshadd, but if on May 18, 2324, all the Harmony captains in Licori space suddenly open their sealed orders and are directed to fly to the nearest Licori planet and "enforce order..." Well, bluntly, the Licori government has no way of knowing that
won't happen. They'd feel the same way about a Federation fleet of equal size, probably, if only because of how easy it would be for a fleet that big to finish what we started in the war nine years ago.
And, again, likewise the Bolians, likewise the Felis. The OSA might not feel that way, but
trusting others' good intentions to a fault, to the point where they get away with literal murder... Is kind of the OSA's collective tri-species hat, so that doesn't really say very much.
Perhaps Lugis thinks the Horizon can calm his revolutionaries and unfuck the economy? You don't have indication Horizon flat murders leadership.
If Lugis isn't at least
worrying about it, or for that matter worrying that the Harmony will lose patience and back a coup to overthrow him, he's nowhere near suspicious and cynical enough to have survived the snakepit of
his own species' politics as long as he has.
The man who thought torturing information out of OSA-pirate prisoners was worth it for the greater good, wouldn't be innocent enough to not consider the risks of the Harmony turning on him with a fleet too big for his own navy to even slow down.
Anyway, more generally- I can believe that
one or two of the regional powers think this is all niceness and lollipops. I can even believe that they are objectively correct to do so.
But it shatters my suspension of disbelief if
none of the regional powers look at this and think "shit, the Harmony is about to get evil on us again." I'm quite sure the Tauni and ISC are thinking that, based on literally their own direct experiences with the Harmony well within living memory.
This is not a do or die force. It is not perceived that way. I am going to push back on that hard.
If you want me to treat it that way, you are also signing up for Starfleet to either
A ) Be massive hypocrites
B ) be seriously limited in future TFs
Can someone do a rundown of the combat power of this Harmony force (divided by four) and compare it to the strength of the national navies in the region? I think that might illustrate my point.
Because I'm pretty sure it breaks down to something like "Combat 45-60 per species," which is enough to be a big threat.
Wow, this is completely ridiculous. I can guarantee that had the heads of the member fleets decided to give us 20 ships free of charge to use in Beyond, there would be nowhere near this level of concern, if there would be any at all.
If we flooded the border region with this many ships and the Licori and Bolians and Felis
flipped out and the Harmony mobilized a whole 'nother fleet to restore parity with us in reaction... Well frankly, I wouldn't blame any of them. And that's the mirror image of the reaction I'm having to this news.
When you have enough armed force in a region to conquer the region,
people take you fucking seriously. This is not, or should not be, news.
Honestly, why would it be more dangerous for those nations? They can't meaningfully resist any conquest if the other superpower does not get involved anyway. So why shouldn't they let all those ships do the usual diplomatic things all other ships were doing?
Because when our ships visit them one at a time, they at least know that if
that one ship starts shit, they can cope. They can at least deter us a little by starting a fuss and blowing up whichever few of our ships are immediately in their territory before getting rolled over.
But letting a really big fleet into your territory is setting yourself up for the risk of a decapitation strike- a blow that lands so hard that your navy never gets a chance to fight back effectively, that topples your government and leaves you powerless.
Not at all. While the HoH having all those ships free (there HAS to be some kind of significant cost to them for this.) to send there is rather concerning, our problem is the SoD break that the UFP wouldn't consider this a act of war and close to it.
See, I DON'T actually consider this an act of war... but I do consider it an extreme provocation, because it's a force big enough that if they sent as many corvettes along as they might have done... It's strong enough to conquer the entire region it's operating within.
