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.
There
should be a taskforce limit when deploying ships along the border of a great power.
Honestly, if you let us deploy 42 ambassador-A class starships and uncounted frigates on the Klingon border and the Klingon government just went "OK, that's cool bro", without a carefully negotiated agreement to make it cool (and remember, these are our allies we're talking about), my jaw would be on the floor just as it is right now.
I wouldn't want to to think about how a more neutral power like the Horizon would react, let alone how the Romulans or Cardassians would react.
You miss the point where your implemented mechanics destroy SOD. As others said, a few ships per race is one thing; a 'do or die' force is something else. And Horizon is (or, at least, can) do that to 4 races simultaneously. And you might consider how 'yes, right, we killed our social deviants up to now, but we saw the light and now are totally fully nice guys (except you want to die)' may be received.
+1 to this.
It's a fleet of sufficient size and power that the only diplomacy I can see it doing are these two things:
1) We're you're government now (and will be taking over normal emergency response, bwahahaha)
2) Do what we want or else.
For the normal taskforce stuff, this is pushing things too far for my SoD. Something this dangerous just does not belong in the same paradigm.
Uhhh, I wouldn't say it's that bad.
The thing about the Cuba/Turkey Missile Crisis is that those missiles were less than an hour away from the capitals of the countries in question. They represented an escalation because of how easy it would be to use them for a decapitation strike.
The Harmony fleet doesn't have this going for it, it would still need weeks of flight time to reach our core territory and couldn't just push a button and wipe us out like a few hundred nuclear missiles in Cuba could do to the United States.
So this isn't a Cuban Missile Crisis level escalation. It's more like the kind of squabbles you saw in the 19th century over possession of this or that fortress or colony. Some of which COULD provoke war, but usually wouldn't unless the other side was already spoiling for a fight.
You're kinda right, but in some ways it is worse.
Soviet missiles from Cuba could take out DC and maybe a couple other important cities, but the Soviets had no ability to follow up on such a strike. The US would have had it easier if they'd launched a decapitation strike from Turkey, but the US army would still have to march a long way to occupy any appreciable part of the Soviet Union.
This by contrast is like a combination of the build-up of German armies before Barbarossa and the Cuban missile crisis because the HoH can follow up on the strike and reach Utopia Planatia in a month or two. (Though I have a hard time seeing them devastating more than 25% of the Federation. Likely less. And of course, even such a fleet will need some luck to reach UP with enough strike power to burn it.)
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?
And some of us were recognizing that she had a point.
We regularly use our explorers as battlecruisers, and no potential enemy of the Federation can afford to ignore that our explorers can hurt them in a fight.
It's the same thing here.
And for those who don't know, both the Soviets and the British thought that the German build-up before the invasion was most likely there for
diplomacy to pressure the Soviets into making concessions. It's not like dual use is unknown even here on Earth.
In TBG, the diplomatic effectiveness of a vessel scales closely with how effective a weapon the vessel is. So the dual use of the HoH ships does
nothing to reduce their alarmingness. Just as in our fair moments, we need to recognize the same of Starfleet's ships. Indeed, with phaser arrays, being "dual use" often makes ships better in a fight.
Ask that one ISC diplomat about how the Harmony tends to reach out. I'm sure he reflects on it whenever he visits the grave of the wife they murdered during the local Harmony "outreach campaign".
Yeah, this is another thing which is concerning. The HoH have a history of coming in as friends and misbehaving. So just because their massive honest-not-a-war-fleet isn't aiming to start by misbehaving, doesn't mean they don't have naughty plans for later stages.
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.
Those 20 ships weren't all capital ships. This HoH taskforce is just 42
capitals and we know their smaller ships are no slouches.
Tho I gotta admit, I
would be less concerned about a taskforce of ours, because honestly, I find the way the numbers are put in our taskforces are a little opaque and don't pay close attention to them.
So I likely wouldn't be raising the same concerns if Starfleet deployed 42 capitals to one taskforce, though I'd chip in and support someone else noticing.
Perhaps Lugis thinks the Horizon can calm his revolutionaries and unfuck the economy? You don't have indication Horizon flat murders leadership.
Indeed the Horizon outreach on planet, as mentioned, is almost somewhat at odds with the revolutionary fervour, as they prefer a peaceful incrementalism to violent overthrow. They just like to make that incrementalism go as fast as possible (and are overworked).
You are missing the point that if Lugis allows this fleet into his territory he's admitting that the HoH are his boss.
Because that's what they'll be with 10 capitals over the Licori orbitals (plus supporting swarmers). They'll own the Arcadian Empire by virtue of being able to destroy it should he try anything.
fasquardon
Theoretically.
