Dragons are sapient, not trainable monsters
Who Needs Harmony?: An MLP Empire Quest
- Thread starter Questor
- Start date
- Location
- Maryland
Each one of these Dragons is roughly the size of a small building, 2 or 3 stories tall. The average combat strength of one isn't generally known due to a lack of actual combat against dragons in Imperial records, but it's believed that at least two or three dozen Griffons acting in concert are needed to have a chance of bringing one down, and that's bare minimum.
- Location
- Maryland
She is safely back in the Empire. Even if you wanted to bring her here to act as some kind of envoy, it would take days for her to make the journey.
First, our firebombing campaign seems to have turned an explosives stockpile against them, and then, to make the bad situation worse, the releif force supposed to pincer us got annihilated by dragons for some reason...
The dice seem to hate the defenders for the moment.
It's actually worse than it seems. That wasn't an explosive stockpile, it was a grain silo.
Have you ever heard of dust explosions? They're usually associated with coal mines and factories, but flour and grain dust can burn just as well given the right circumstances.
Not only did you accidentally create a thermobaric explosion, you straight up destroyed a good portion of the city's food stockpile.
Those aren't actually horrible odds... 🤔
I expected a "you're going to lose a hundred or two for each dragon". I suppose these are more competitively balanced dragons rather than show canon "rl armies watch out" specimen.
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That just makes me more worried
. If there are only 14 dragons and even if we assume these are professional soldiers, so it may take triple the amount of griffs per dragon to take them down we easily out number them and a great factor. I keep thinking its a trap or these are just the advanced scouts of a larger force- Location
- MN
well if he's basing the dragons off of the dragons from the hearts of iron mlp mod I believe their racial traits where they have 90% population growth reductions meaning they only have a population 1/10th of every other nation but each one of their units is basically a super solder or hero unit in of themselves. Very much a quality over quantity army. Though last I checked the mod they didn't have a proper story/tech tree thrown in yet and where more or less a place holder nation/race until the developers could figure out what they wanted to do with them so it could have changed at some point.
Red_Faux
私を終わらせる
- Location
- 'Straya M8
...I don't like this. Especially the 'Mafia' like semi-legal stuff, thats only going to grow until its truly disastrous. Needs to be either cracked down on, the law is the law kinda way, or have Imperial Intelligence not only take advantage of it, but fully infiltrate and control it.
I do not want wannabe godfathers down the road
- Location
- Goose Land
Four men.
The Dragons, out of reflex, because we didn't get out of their way fast enough, deliberately killed four of our men.
I think it's time to do some field testing.
[ ] Plan: Clip Their Wings
-[ ] Reposition cannons, ballistas, and crossbows-in-area for firing lines upon the Dragons.
-[ ] Reposition Army units out of the line of fire, but reinforcing the Siege in case of a breakout attempt.
-[ ] Repositon Knights for potential intercept if something goes wrong.
-[ ] Allow the "relief" force through, but once the Dragons are positioned for a crossfire, open fire.
-[ ] Assuming we don't have time for specific loads, the cannons will fire what they have in them. If they have time for a reload, half will fire Scattershot with the goal of wrecking their wings, the other half will fire Solidshot to lay in the hurt on them. If a particular shot is found to be completely ineffective, shift to the other one.
-[ ] Accept Surrenders if it comes up.
Blatantly, I don't want to deal with the Dragons while in the city. I don't want them to feel any sort of satisfaction for a raiding well done, and I don't want them to have any opportunities to escape, or do a break out and kill any more of our men than need die.
Therefore, setting them up in a crossfire will be about the best chance to lay them low while taking minimum casualties.
The Morale Benefits should be immense if this doesn't botch, because we'll have just slayed 14 Dragons right in front of the enemy and then gone back to the Siege like this is every day for us, which it probably is at this point.
It won't give our Allies the Fire Forged Friendship that we might hope for, but it'll significantly impress upon them to not mess around when it comes to us, which is likely the best we can ask for at the moment.
Letting the "Relief" Forces through will help set up the cross fire, further lower their morale and resources with injured and mouths to feed, and just generally flex on them.
I can see a plan where we demand the surrender of the "Relief" Forces instead, but I don't feel it's worth it and I'm not feeling very merciful, so they get Dragon Bait duty.
Well, that happened. I'd figured that was the case when I read it, but I didn't think we'd be that lucky.
We'll have to take an action to refine Fire Bombing as a Siege Tactic, and to develop the lessons learned on this campaign in general, once we get home.
Lesson #1 seems to be "More Cannons".
I think I'd like to set a goal of 100 Cannon and 100 Ballistae per 10k Infantry, so 502 more Ballistae and 471 more Cannon.
We'd practically need to establish a continous factory process for that, like with our ships.
This would primarily allow us to send much smaller Forces to address problems like these while maintaining the ability to kill Surprise Ursa Majors, because at this point I'm just waiting for two or more major armed conflicts to break out that we want to intervene in.
Hm.
Considering this was set off by the Changlings, and has probably been further nudged by them, I'm...tempted to deliver a politely worded letter to the Prophetess stating that we are not 'Amused' by the involvement of the 'Lady' in these matters.
Make it a sealed letter that we'd like only opened upon specific circumstances, and the Changlings should be reading it within the hour
Your plan has many "maybe's", including the belief the dragons would swoop down so the cannons can fire at them when they are currently at the city altitude where we specifically can't reach with shot'.
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Would you be willing to consider focusing on the dragons instead with this attack plan? As it is, House Storm are basically dead & morale down the well, whereas the dragons are fully intact & roided up in a greed-craze and likely pride so they won't break easily.
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- Location
- Goose Land
I'd missed that bit. Teleported Bombs it is then I guess?
- Location
- The state of Paranoia
Unfortunately, every citizen being prepared for war just means the muggers are just as prepared as their victims. Mugging is caused by economic problems like desperation and inequality, and while we haven't seen any indication that our people are desperate the kind of rapid economic growth that Gryphus has been experiencing tends to create massive inequality.
There's still probably less mugging than back before we took over when people didn't necessarily have enough food or see a future for themselves though…
- Location
- Borderworld, Xen
I think you're assuming a lot, first of all they only attacked those in their way, we have no reason to think they'd attack civilians. But I do believe we should fuck them up in retaliation so they don't think we're pushovers, Mlp Dragons kinda run on the Might makes Right philosophy.
- Location
- MN
well we did purge our lands of a LOT of bandits back when we where clearing out the monsters that infested our countryside so we I would believe it that we have less crime these days then we did back when we started.
We will have options with dealing with them I imagine but always remember that always will be crimes happening guys.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Okay, we need to crack down on this. We absolutely don't want the Prison Industrial Complex to get bigger.
- Location
- Goose Land
Actually now that I think about it
@Questor if the Dragons are in range to flame troops of ours who don't move away fast enough, wouldn't that mean they're within cannon range?
I wouldn't mind if we did some prison reform where we trained inmates in useful skills so they can be productive members of society.
We've had an unemployment crisis looming for quite some time, so while we expand what jobs are available we could also attack it from the other end, giving those who fall through the cracks in the system a chance to rejoin it after they've fallen to criminal activities to deal with hard times.
I wish we were boarding those Yetis, it'd make expansion, which would create jobs and expand the economy, much easier.
Guess we'll just have to Protectorate enough of Maretonia to get a border with the Dragons and build a new line in the sand, that should stave off the job crisis for a little while longer
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I just can't help, but wonder what the Hades happened. What did House Storm do to not just provoke dragons, but for them to shattered their relief force and probably last hope to save the city, and the dragons followed them to Mare-a-Thon to finish the job.
I know it been said the dragons took the initiative, but I'm very curious at what they POV must have been like leading up to this.
Either way, I say let the dragons have House Storm while we make s'mores
I know it been said the dragons took the initiative, but I'm very curious at what they POV must have been like leading up to this.
Either way, I say let the dragons have House Storm while we make s'mores
Either way, the house storm negaverse just had a blippy turn.
Red_Faux
私を終わらせる
- Location
- 'Straya M8
Crime yes, organized crime? That's debatable and worth fighting even if so
It's impossible to get rid of organized crime as well since it's just as it says on the can you can make it so it doesn't get big but that is pretty much it.
- Location
- Washington
I've already detailed why I will not. And I will not, we are not making a few bombs, dropping them, and calling it good. We would be making at least a few rounds of bombs and then dropping them on both forces. In regards to House Storm, we would be targeting large clusters of their remaining forces, which would be around, what? A few hundred? Compared that with the dragons who are both large and few in number. The plan requires both sides to weaken each other while we bomb them. And besides, we literally have forces in the tens of thousands (and keep in mind, our QM has just said it take a few dozen griffins working together to take down a single healthy dragon), by the end of this plan the dragons will likely be seriously injured and down most of their number while our troops would be largely intact when they assault the city. The dragons will not survive, and House Storm would also likely be almost completely destroyed if not out right so.
On the other hand we absolutely don't won't our prisons to be too expensive.
These different costs add up.
Higher stakes should discourage some would be muggers.
I often see the term "inequality" used in the context of wealth and possessions when by virtue of specificity "poverty" would make more sense.
Inequality can range from not having what you need while others do to having a small house next to a mansion.
Let's focus on things every reasonable person can agree are good such as increasing socioeconomic mobility by improving public access to educational materials and improving transportation to provide uncrowded sustainable access to opportunities over larger areas.
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The difference is that the pegasi are pretty much beat no matter what happens, at this point. On the other hand, I fear the dragons will absolutely cause tremendous damage if they manage to shrug off a few explosives.