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Terminus Quest: A CKII Mass Effect Quest

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[X] Plan String them out
[X] Plan Concentration of Force
 
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[X] Plan String them out
-[X] Inform the Alliance?
--[X] Yes. They're impacted by this, and you're a formal member now. This is no longer the time to hold back.
-[X] Call for the Terminus Joint Fleets?
--[X] No. This isn't the kind of battle they train to fight, and you have yet to thresh out a joint command structure. There are also the obvious political reasons not to call for help on this particular issue.
-[X] Who reinforces Maroon Sea? Check all that apply.
--[X] 1st Battle Fleet. You need firepower, you need it now.
---[X] Both battle fleets are to conduct withdrawal through the Relay to Attican Beta once insertion of raiding fleets is done.
--[X] 1st Raiding Fleet. They will (in part) get there fastest.
---[X] Upon insertion, the fleet is to assume raiding duties.
--[X] 2nd Raiding Fleet. They're not in a frontline system.
---[X] Upon insertion, the fleet is to assume raiding duties.
--[X] 3rd Raiding Fleet. They're not in a frontline system, and Mordin is one of your greats.
---[X] Upon insertion, the fleet is to assume raiding duties.

Since I'm not seeing any plans yet that seek to deny Rachni the fleet battle, I've drawn one. It's not without faults, relying on shellgames to an extent - however, I consider the window between deployment of 2nd and 3rd raiding fleets and withdrawal of battle fleets to Attican Beta small enough to be an acceptable risk.

Now, what the plan does is let Rachni have an experience of a whole lot of raiders harassing their forces, assuming this is not a proper large-scale assault aimed at Caleston Rift. If it is? Well, then we retain our forces to deploy in reaction to that, and TJF, being warned yet not burdened by our demands for more fleets, probably can hold onto Caleston.

Edit:
[X] Plan Safety Overkill
 
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Dwergar said:
Now, what the plan does is let Rachni have an experience of a whole lot of raiders harassing their forces, assuming this is not a proper large-scale assault aimed at Caleston Rift. If it is? Well, then we retain our forces to deploy in reaction to that, and TJF, being warned yet not burdened by our demands for more fleets, probably can hold onto Caleston.
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Except a key part of the Terminus defensive strategy is dependent on heavily fortified relays, which haven't been set up at the Maroon Sea to Caleston Rift Relay because we were supposed to be defending Maroon sea cluster. If the fleets pass through that relay terminus likely has to pull defenders off other relays in the system, leaving them more vulnerable to assault by Rachni forces from styx theta and shadow sea.

Even if they can hold Caleston even moderate losses are terrible, especially if they result from a threat we were supposed to be containing and pulled our major offensive fleets from unnecessarily for a strategic gamble dependent on them having not targeting Caleston or another cluster besides maroon sea or attican beta.

In general leaving our raiding fleets to try and whittle down 3 battle fleets worth of Rachni vessels isn't liable to accomplish much in the course of a few days. Raiding fleet are well suited to jumping around a cluster dealing damage to infrastructure, and they can engage Battle fleets for a time, but heat is an issue and they aren't intended to do a constant running battle against a concentration of Rachni vessels that can use their barrier fleet for cover and potentially get lucky with a stray barrage of dreadnought rounds.

It's risking unnecessary casualties for us and terminus most likely we are force to redeploy our battle fleets for the fourth phase of battle. It makes far more sense to keep our battle fleets in maroon sea until we are given cause to withdraw them, rather than including it as an automatic part of the next round of combat.
 
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Randino Treviani said:
Except a key part of the Terminus defensive strategy is dependent on heavily fortified relays, which haven't been set up at the Maroon Sea to Caleston Rift Relay because we were supposed to be defending Maroon sea cluster. If the fleets pass through that relay terminus likely has to pull defenders off other relays in the system, leaving them more vulnerable to assault by Rachni forces from styx theta and shadow sea.

Even if they can hold Caleston even moderate losses are terrible, especially if they result from a threat we were supposed to be containing and pulled our major offensive fleets from unnecessarily for a strategic gamble dependent on them having not targeting Caleston or another cluster besides maroon sea or attican beta.

In general leaving our raiding fleets to try and whittle down 3 battle fleets worth of Rachni vessels isn't liable to accomplish much in the course of a few days. Raiding fleet are well suited to jumping around a cluster dealing damage to infrastructure, and they can engage Battle fleets for a time, but heat is an issue and they aren't intended to do a constant running battle against a concentration of Rachni vessels. that can use their barrier fleet for cover and potentially get lucky with a stray barrage of dreadnought rounds. It's risking unnecessary casualties for us and terminus most likely we are force to redeploy our battle fleets after for the fourth phase of battle.
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Yes, Caleston Rift could come under attack then - with ample warning and more reserves available, and defence at the Relays being feasible. And we, having retained a battle fleet essentially in good order, would be able to counterattack.

Fleet battle at Maroon Sea posits that Rachni are hell-bent on advancing to Caleston and/or Attican, yet are doing so with less fleets than they had during their last attack on Attican Beta - something I don't find all that likely.

If they're not planning on deploying more fleets and advancing further, than deploying raiders to harass and soften them up works just as well, and if they're throwing significant amount of fleets into the fray, then we'd have to concede Maroon Sea for the short term regardless, as we don't have favourable circumstances for a fleet battle.
 
[X] Plan Extreme Concentration of Force
 
[X] Plan Concentration of Force

If things continue to go downhill we can move 3rd RF into the furball, but right now 1 raiding fleet doesn't feel like enough to cover Attican Beta while we've only seen 3 Rachni fleets committed and don't know where the rest will appear.
 
Randino Treviani said:
Attican Beta is a far lower priority target than Caleston Rift or Exodus cluster, do to the greater strategic significance they hold.
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While you're correct that when measuring percentages of industrial output the Rift or Exodus are more important the Rachni may have decided to try and cut us off in order to defeat us in detail. They don't know about Kurik's Run, presumably, but if that's their objective then they can in fact deploy whatever formations they want to in aid of that goal.

Randino Treviani said:
We have no evidence that they'll be fielding further barrier fleets yet
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We had no evidence they would be fielding barrier fleets in the Maroon Sea and yet here we are. I'm not feeling particularly comfortable with basing the possible survival of our state on the Rachni fielding a single fleet as an experiment.
 
I'd like to come out to bat for Extreme Concentration of Force.

I think we are missing a real opportunity by not absolutely crushing them with just about everything we've got.
The 3rd Raiding fleet is strong and experienced, and with the amount of static defences there we can trust them to hold for more than long enough for us to send more ships back if the necessity arises.
Meanwhile, we can be ensuring minimal losses on our side and setting ourselves up for a meaty counter attack. Unless they bring another 3+ Battle Fleets through AB I'm confident we can hold them off and then return to finish them off once the MS battle has been seen through. More to the point, if they send yet more fleets into MS we don't want to be caught flatfooted, and I think there's real risk of them jumping from MS to Caleston and creating a political nightmare for us if we don't firmly control MS from the jump.
 
[X] Plan Extreme Concentration of Force

EDIT: Approval voting
[X] Plan Concentration of Force
 
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[X] Plan Extreme Concentration of Force

I like this slightly better than Concentration of Force, but would be okay with either.
TBH, I kinda wish we could take the political hit to bring in an Alliance fleet to try to cut them off, and thus convince the Rachni that we were trying to suck in and destroy this strikeforce, but it's not really worth it.
 
[] Plan Concentration of Force

Personally I would have prefered to get the TA on site in Attican Beta, but oh well lets hope this is not just a diversionary attack.
Edit: Switched vote
 
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PoptartProdigy said:
In situations where I want to resolve the whole thing as a single roll, the admiral leading will be the admiral either with seniority or the one specified as being in command.
In this one, I'll be breaking things down more finely.
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Thank you for the explanation.
PoptartProdigy said:
You do, albeit differently.
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PoptartProdigy said:
Ships are not asked to sacrifice themselves to save the dreadnought.
They still sometimes do.
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Fair enough.
Id like to think I'd have noticed if things were desperate enough that we had a formal policy of sacrificing smaller ships to save capital ships.

Lemme go see what the vote options are.
 
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