Spoiling attack.
Intelligence on current Rachni ship hardware and tactics, scouting deployments, testing new tactics disrupting Rachni ship deployment patterns,wrecking fortifications and every bit of Rachni infrastructure we can reach.
We arent going to be trying to conquer systems, just to deny Rachni assets.
And this is assuming all this intelligence is critical when neither our allies or ourselves can particularly exploit it, scouting in force that will provoke a response that renders that information temporary, testing new tactics ignores that the biggest advancement to our tactics
are the cutting edge high tech warships we aren't fielding yet. Asset denial and attacks on infrastructure is ignoring one of the fundamental realities of warfare- a force can not launch an offensive without degrading it's capabilities- either by attrition, use of stockpiles and supplies, and in the requisite recovery after any offensive.
Saying 'we should attack because it will kill Rachni' is meaningless, any damage we inflict has to serve a higher military purpose or we are squandering our strength flailing at a colossus. I'm saying wait, wait for the revolutionary new warships to proliferate, wait for the TA to be able to coordinate with us, wait for the TA to learn our own tactics and vice versa. There is no urgency working against us beyond 'the rachni may or may not be recovering faster than the rest of the galaxy is recovering' and several factors that lend to us actually waiting.
Destroying Rachni logistics structures so sustained attacks on our border systems suffer certain disadvantages. During the swarm event, damaged Rachni needed to make a relay transition, cross the system slowly by sub light speed or make a faster than light jump, and transition through a second relay before it could reach a Rachni dock, each transition and FTL jump potentially worsening any existing damage. In shadow sea we have a cluster which has never been raided. Thus, Raiding it to apply the same m advantage against any fleet attempting to invade maroon sea is worthwhile.
First of all- this spaghetti posting is bullshit. This is a dumb fucking tactic to try and argue for the merit of any attack at all as opposed to an attack that is actually working towards an operational or strategic goal. I'm sure as hell not going to repeat myself multiple times on this.
A raid on Shadow Sea now either squanders it's presupposed vulnerability when neither we or anyone else can exploit it, presumes that Shadow Sea is largely unprepared for raids because the Rachni can't make the logical leaps of a child despite fighting the rest of the galaxy without losing, and is conflating the ultra-high intensity of the Wrath of the Swarm event that saw the Rachni
assaulting a fortified system- with the results of a raid in force.
Because success operates by degrees in this quest, and Mordin, who is soon to retire, raises our chance of achieving greater degrees of success and lowers odds of failure. More Raiding fleets (Mira will not be able to simply recall those handed over to the joint fleets on a whim) increases the narrative impact. Double the number of fleets can hit double the bumber of targets in the window available to them, or allow us to target another cluster under the assumption that our fleets are drawing Rachni forces thin.
Odds are we are a few years out from Terminus being ready to raid. Their fleets have no experience with relay busting and they'll want to run some war games exercises to accomplish their aims. That means a few years before they start raiding, and they'll only have the fleets we give them. All their providing is Battle fleets for gate busting, which we don't specifically need, given unlike any previous raids, there is no risk of the Rachni coming in through another relay in the system just after we send the buster fleet through.
Raiding is not the end all be all of warfare here, and they absolutely have experience with Relay Assaults either way. Moreover- you are massively ignoring the importance of a diversionary or spoiling strike where the TA attacks to divert pressure from our raids. The notion the TA has nothing to teach *us* or is a useless liability until they learn our doctrine is just arrogant.
An attack now benefits from a single worst-class hero. An attack with the TA in a few year benefits from the best warships in the galaxy and logistical and military support from several TA battlefleets. There is no competition between T2 power with a bargain hero vs the same T2 power, much better ships, and the direct assistance of a T1 power.
Raiding isn't that life intensive, especially when we likely still have the barrier advantages we exploited for low casualties during the wrath of the swarm event. We'll be easily be able to replace any losses over the course of the year, likely longer, between a year 37 raid and terminus being ready to begin offensive operations.
Terminus Alliance is unlike to try actual raiding until year 39 the earliest, assuming they received them year 37, and practice year 38. That's two years before we benefit, and no guarantee we have a martial action free to coordinate fleet elements outside joint command to assault in conjunction with their forces.
Except if the Raid goes wrong and the Rachni-
who have limited other active fronts because the Citadel and Terminus are both too spent to launch an offensive- manage to defeat or contest the relief relay assault and thus bottle up the raiding fleet(s) and consign the entire force to annihilation. Raiding is not without risk, especially raiding an opponent who has few other distractions right now. That is absolutely the worst case scenario and
extremely unlikely- but every time we roll the dice and attack we are gambling, and it's a matter of when not if we get called on it. Risking vital fleets now for marginal and fleeting advantages when we have *much* better support and resources to call upon as a whole in the near future is entirely unnecessary. We need to gamble when the stakes are high and the rewards are worth it.
And? The TA doesn't need to commit to a major raid of their own to open up the way for the Alliance (us included) to launch a major offensive. Raiding serves a purpose, raiding for the sake of itself is not going to win the war, and we shouldn't judge our allies' capabilities by whether or not they can and will launch a raid.
The logic is more "We have a limited time to carry out a raid with all of our available Raiding fleets, a hero who specializes in Raiding, while potentially in the aftermath of the Rachni weakening themselves by attacking maroon sea. We are in an ideal opportunity to press one strong raid to weaken an untouched Rachni system on our border, so it would be foolish not to do so.
I think this overestimates the opportunity we have by a long shot. If the Rachni weakened themselves significantly attacking Maroon Sea then our single Battle Fleet there is heavily outmatched and retreating. Shadow Sea is likely to be fortified and prepared for a raid, and it's not a particularly critical cluster either. Attacking it because we haven't attack it yet and have things that can attack is not particularly more advanced logic than 'because it's there and we haven't been there yet'.
First off, we've never really picked which clusters we raid. QM takes the degree of success in mind and chooses targets. In previous discussions I have emphasized the vulnerability of certain clusters like Shadow Sea and styx theta and the advantages of spending the next decade softening up these clusters with the intension of taking them as part of the next great clash, but ultimately it's not always up to us.
None the less, this is a disastrously ambitious first raid for terminous. Hawking Eta is too important and critical to risk raiding. The council is going to be hesitant to move on Horsehead again, especially if they know potential Rachni Reinforcements are flooding into it. Their is a major chance our Raiding fleets end up trapped behind a greatly reinforced relay defense and sufferer heavy cassaulties breaking out. This war isn't going to be won for a good 50 quest years, possibly longer, and Hawking Eta will be one of the last clusters taken.
Overall I'm hoping raids will be focused on clusters adjacent to Caleston Rift, as it's the most likely big target to the Rachni's next major offensive, if they don't focus on the council.
First of all, I'm not saying we'll do this or we should be planning to do exactly this. I'm saying there's so much more meaningful offensives
It's not a conventional raid for the one thing- and for the other
we have raiding fleets that would be doing the actual raiding part. The other half of raiding that falls on Battlefleets is just a more developed form of Relay Assaulting. Something the Terminus is trained in. This is basically a redeveloped idea of the Citadel's offensive into the Horsehead nebula that they couldn't hold, but with trained
Attican raiders there to take advantage of the brief window. The Rachni can't afford to keep the Relay utterly fortified forever, not without creating opportunities elsewhere. The Council might be reluctant, which is why you do as allies do and discuss this operation with them before hand. If they're willing to commit- then you workshop the operation further. If they're not- you don't. The point is, multiple attackers on multiple fronts massively increases the difficulty for the defender.
My point isn't 'do this and we win' or 'do this and we take Hawking Eta' it's that coordination lets us do much more impactful things than a single raid on a cluster with no realistic capacity to follow it up. I'm not going to take any argument of 'we need to take our time this war will last centuries' that uses that to justify 'let's send our obsolete ships on a raid so we can take advantage of a single minor hero rather than wait for our position to strengthen'.
Your kind of missing the entire primary aspect of the Raiding fleets damaging Rachni logistics infrastructure to make it harder for them to sustain offensives and easier for us to conquer their weakened systems. A follow up conquest comes years later unless some over success forces the Rachni to just cede a cluster. The idea is too damage infrastructure, not just push into a system and engage in an immediate all out brawl for it.
You're missing the point that the Terminus systems follow Mahakian doctrine, and that our doctrine isn't inherently superior. You are obsessing about the raid. We need to raid. The TA can't raid. Any offensive has to be a raid or we're wasting our strength etc.
This reductive attitude ignores that some of our greatest successes
culminated in decisive battles that were all out brawls. The Wrath of the Swarm was a textbook decisive battle where we were able to achieve local superiority over a superior foe and brawled with them until they flinched. But raids can still help- they can divert enemies to other clusters, they can slow down a response or take advantage of the need for the enemy to concentrate, or determine when the counteroffensive will hit by scouting into other clusters, etc. We can fight pitched battles without our raiding fleets being useless, and the Terminus Alliance can certainly fight pitched battles that we can exploit with our raiding doctrine, or vice versa.
Nothing said here changes the fact that we have substantial reason to think that time can be made to be on our side. We will have revolutionary new warships and allies that can either exploit the distraction we cause with our raids or we can raid to exploit the distraction they cause. All of those are worth substantially more than a Taylor-class hero and ensure that we can keep punching above our weight class.
Part of what actually teaching the TA will entail isn't going to just be 'how to copy us' it's going to be 'here's what you can in your frontline clusters that will help us on our raids on our clusters' and 'here's what we can potentially do with our raiding forces, how can we use these to help your own offensives and defenses'. It should be absolutely obvious how useful telling the TA military what we want from them and learning what they want from us is.
