Traveller, The Rise of Empire: A Naval Design, Procurement and Command Quest
- Thread starter 4WheelSword
- Start date
- Original Art Quest Sci-Fi
Yeah, I'll prefer that too - but if we also out a minefield to that rock before it and station 2 ICs/Frigates there for a time being, that can look as a cooler and more decisive move to our resident rhesus monkey, eh, to Council.
Okay, so 112 days, that's not too bad.
I think we should snag whatever is at [01,-0,2] and set up a refuelling base there. That lets us reach the northern worlds while making only 1-hex hops, meaning our transport ships can devote much less space to fuel. However, we should also send a diplomatic mission northwards immediately to restart contact in advance of it.
You can very cheaply make impromptu stations by hollowing out planetoids and then hauling them around, which is another advantage of the big tugboat I described earlier. Buffered planetoids are also very resistant to damage, and doubly so if we can combine it with a military hull (which doubles the maximum armour).
I'm fine with going to the prison planet, but I think we should target the northern worlds first.
To bring up trade again, the problem with the prior analysis is that it wasn't accounting for the limited volume of trade goods available. While the southern trade route is very profitable per ton of cargo, the amount of cargo moving is small. For large shipments, a different set of rules are in play. Menorb and Natoko are both pop 9, and Menorb is poor. Since we're an agricultural world, that means they have bulk freight modifiers of 11 and 10 respectively; this corresponds to, on average 584.5 tons of freight to Natoko, and 528.5 tons of freight to Menorb. Freight is 0.0014 MCr/ton, which is worse than the small volume stuff discussed previously, but there's a relatively large amount of it.
KleverKil'Vanya
Ortillery Operator
Can we drag them outa their palaces and sit them down in a station and leave them there?
Like my guys this shit takes time and stringing our friggan expensive slow to replace ships out in penny packets is the absolute worst idea they have ever had.
Like my guys this shit takes time and stringing our friggan expensive slow to replace ships out in penny packets is the absolute worst idea they have ever had.
Need @Artificial Girl and @Coyote Niff in here to help us oust the citizen's council
I'd do them as separate but simultaneous missions. One group does a double jump from Deep Hope to meet with the northern worlds on the x,03 line, while we send a simultaneous mission of a cruiser and some cargo ships to establish a base at [01, -02]. I think that a base there is better than [02, -03] for a first step since it's not quite as far out (so cheaper to establish) and we can avoid needing double jumps once we start trading with the northern worlds (or more likely we single jump on the first leg with the cargo hold full of bulk goods, then fill fuel bladders in the cargo holds and double jump to get home, which we can do as long as we have 10% of the total displacement being excess stuff we are exporting).
Friendship ended with mine warfare, now playing OpenTTD in space is my new fixation.
Rat King
Izutsumi-pilled
Need @Artificial Girl and @Coyote Niff in here to help us oust the citizen's council
I'd do them as separate but simultaneous missions. One group does a double jump from Deep Hope to meet with the northern worlds on the x,03 line, while we send a simultaneous mission of a cruiser and some cargo ships to establish a base at [01, -02]. I think that a base there is better than [02, -03] for a first step since it's not quite as far out (so cheaper to establish) and we can avoid needing double jumps once we start trading with the northern worlds (or more likely we single jump on the first leg with the cargo hold full of bulk goods, then fill fuel bladders in the cargo holds and double jump to get home, which we can do as long as we have 10% of the total displacement being excess stuff we are exporting).
Friendship ended with mine warfare, now playing OpenTTD in space is my new fixation.
[ ] Invite the Citizen's Council on an inspection tour and "accidentally" leave them in orbit around a small asteroid.
Yeah, basically what I meant by a combined mission - just put it under one overall commander to run the thing with the subgroups doing their thing as needed.
- Location
- Somewhere in the stacks
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Personally I'm in favor of deploying munitions to remove the citizen's council at this point. 
[X] Plan: Fuck the citizen's council
-[X] 4-6,000 mines (requiring a layer capable of deploying 1,000 mines per month).
-[X] Immediately plan and deploy a military mission North - to do what?
--[X] Civilian ships, escorted by a pair of interstellar cruisers and a frigate are to establish the beginnings of a permanent refelling and defence station in [01, -02].
--[X] Concurrently, a diplomatic mission consisting of a CFA, a FSS, Ba Kim, and three frigates is to depart from [01, -02] to Menorb, Inthe, and Natoko, leaving behind the frigates to set up permanent embassies in each system in advance of follow-up talks.
--[X] Activate the reserve couriers (x3) to assist with message running within the mission space and to run news back to Home.
--[X] This mission is authorized to take whatever independent action they deem necessary against hostile forces should ships of the same raider design be encountered or should their ships be fired upon by an unknown third party.
-[X] Other - write in:
--[X] Surreptitiously begin investigating ways to insulate the HSWS from the Citizen's Council's whims
I'm not sure which ships we have, so I'm being vague, but I assume someone can tell me what needs to be updated.
I'm taking initial steps to figure out how to oust the Citizen's Council, since a coup isn't planned overnight (and it doesn't even need to necessarily be a coup, but I think we all agree that some random businessman shouldn't be calling the shots).
-[X] 4-6,000 mines (requiring a layer capable of deploying 1,000 mines per month).
-[X] Immediately plan and deploy a military mission North - to do what?
--[X] Civilian ships, escorted by a pair of interstellar cruisers and a frigate are to establish the beginnings of a permanent refelling and defence station in [01, -02].
--[X] Concurrently, a diplomatic mission consisting of a CFA, a FSS, Ba Kim, and three frigates is to depart from [01, -02] to Menorb, Inthe, and Natoko, leaving behind the frigates to set up permanent embassies in each system in advance of follow-up talks.
--[X] Activate the reserve couriers (x3) to assist with message running within the mission space and to run news back to Home.
--[X] This mission is authorized to take whatever independent action they deem necessary against hostile forces should ships of the same raider design be encountered or should their ships be fired upon by an unknown third party.
-[X] Other - write in:
--[X] Surreptitiously begin investigating ways to insulate the HSWS from the Citizen's Council's whims
I'm not sure which ships we have, so I'm being vague, but I assume someone can tell me what needs to be updated.
I'm taking initial steps to figure out how to oust the Citizen's Council, since a coup isn't planned overnight (and it doesn't even need to necessarily be a coup, but I think we all agree that some random businessman shouldn't be calling the shots).
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Rat King
Izutsumi-pilled
In this case, I think Expeditionary Flotilla fits the bill -
- One CFA, acting flagship
- Two ICbIII
- Four FFE (various models)
- One FSS
Would allow them to leave an ICbIII and a pair of frigates to watch the refueling station, CFA, an ICbIII and two frigates can take the diplomatic mission on war (or the CFA can stay behind, but basically a decent force to throw at the problem and it's what they're for).
We could also commit the scouting flotilla to provide extra scouting capability.
EDIT: May also want to commit our spare couriers to provide both inter-expeditionary communications and to provide a courier line back to Home and make sure that Vice Admiral Gebara has leeway to act as they see fit.
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I think that could work; edited it in. CFA acts as a flagship. Entire group transits to the site of the intended station, leaving behind the interstellar cruisers and a FFE to oversee the construction of the base, and possibly poke more at the prison planet. The CFA, three FFEs, and the FSS then go around the "hook", leaving behind a FFE at each stop to act as an embassy ship. The CFA and FSS then jump back home.
To be fair, we are have already been growing gradually insulated from a Citizen Council. With each new ally/client state, we are less dependent on the Home's government for our budget and such (and more on everyone else).
So long as Council does not think that this is a bad thing and does not start to do something about it, we can keep humoring them.
So long as Council does not think that this is a bad thing and does not start to do something about it, we can keep humoring them.
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Rat King
Izutsumi-pilled
I'd throw in the Ba Kim to do the diplomatic niceties, honestly, and would let us keep the FFEs concentrated with the CFA. Would mean spending a bit longer in each system, but I think it's worth the trade off.
[X] Plan: Fuck the citizen's council w/ Ba Kim
-[X] 4-6,000 mines (requiring a layer capable of deploying 1,000 mines per month).
-[X] Immediately plan and deploy a military mission North - to do what?
--[X] Civilian ships, escorted for Expeditionary Flotilla, will establish a refueling and out post station in [01, -02]. The EF should leave a force adequate to guard this construction while it continues on the next leg of its mission.
--[X] Concurrently, a diplomatic mission consisting of the Ba Kim and whatever forces Vice Admiral Gebara deems necessary will depart from [01, -02] to Menorb, Inthe, and Natoko with the goal of re-establishing contact and setting up permanent embassies in each system in advance of follow-up talks. The HSWS recommends that diplomacy focus on finding out what these planets want and how we can leverage that to bring these systems into our orbit to be used as an effective buffer zone for the core against raids (basing rights, etc. or even closer integration under a military alliance).
--[X] Activate the reserve couriers (x3) to assist with message running within the mission space and to run news back to Home.
--[X] Vice Admiral Gebara is authorized to take whatever independent action they deem necessary against hostile forces should ships of the same raider design be encountered or should their ships be fired upon by an unknown third party.
--[X] As a tertiary objective for this mission, If time allows conduct a closer examination of the "prison planet".
-[X] Other - write in:
--[X] Surreptitiously begin investigating ways to insulate the HSWS from the Citizen's Council's whims.
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I'll throw in the Ba Kim to do the diplomatic niceties, but I really want to leave a permanent presence and I think the frigates are low cost enough to justify. It'll be easier to send an encrypted message with our cargo ships to the diplomats that are there permanently than send a diplomat,
Agreed, but when it comes down to it, the Citizen's Council is involved in paying the bills and providing the bullets. The more we can isolate them from the essential parts of our operations, the less they can do to halt further efforts to push them out. I'm hoping to slowly ramp things up so that by the time we end up making big changes, the Council is powerless to stop it.
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It's funny that after 17 years of existence, including several flashpoints, incidents and such, what the HSWS least experienced at and probably worst at, is a ship-to-ship warfare.
And the HSWS has basically no experience about it. The closest things were the destruction of Heimdall by the Junta's ships in then-S'Taxu, which, frankly, wasn't much of a learning experience. Rhe second closest was the IC in S'Taxu being fired at by Dynast missiles and firing at their missile stations. Not exactly the ship-to-ship event, and mostly the result of fatal negligence from HSWS - in terms of diplomacy, intelligence and of putting enough ships in a would-be warzone.
The recent attack on the Deep Hope was almost a ship combat, but in the end the fight itself did not happen.
The HSWS has a lot of ideas about space combat, sure. Fighters and carriers, EWAR, some sort of multi-layered defence of planets with minefields, stations and ships (and probably more fighters and planetside installations), mine warfare in general... But in the end, during the tensions with Hermosa, we were very much unsure if our space force can successfully take on the Hermosan ships. Their ships are pretty different in their design, and probably somewhat simpler in idea (though better in tech) - but it could be that they are better than ours. That was probably the main thing that informed our actions about Hermosa.
---
Quite better HSWS is about space-to-planet warfare. It provided orbital support to Dynast forces in early action in S'Taxu, and it interdicted all the warring factions in Xyri in their war.
Neither of those events were "planned invasions of the hostile planet", to be sure. But those were real events, and HSWS more or less "won them" - unlike our ship engaments, which were, if we would be pressed to qualify them, losses. (Heimdall was lost; IC in S'Taxu orbit failed to intercept all the nuclear misisles, took a lot of damage and had to seek help from Juta's asteroid ship - which the ICs should have also stopped; unknown stealth ship destroyed Deep Hope station and evaded our fleets missiles/torpedoes).
Conversely, HSWS successfully supported the Dynasta advance from orbit (we generally shouldn't do that, but the action itself worked), and successfully stopped the fighting on Xyri.
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Scouting is something HSWS is ok with. Generally the scouting effort is probably impresisve for a low-tech jump-1 navy, but not because of our great scouting doctrines (our current scout ships generally probably suck, or, more politely, very much suboptimal). The scouting success grows from the foundation of HSWS superior logistics.
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Diplomacy, ironically, is something HSS was pretty bad at initially but slowly grew more proficient at. Early S'Taxu effort was bad, as we undermined our own initial diplomatic agreement. We also failed to keep enough force in the system to prevent fight from starting - or from it being successfuly won by someone.
Involvement in Xyri wen much better, and currently relations with Hermosans are a success. In Fornice, Hexos and Nova Refugio we also do not seem to fail, as well as with Noctocole.
HSWS earned bug blackeyes in this field, but is experienced now. It has MIC. It mostly manages the foreign policy by itself, rather than is led by the Council. It, and Home in general, profits from the current efforts.
---
What HSWS is really good at is logistics. In the beginning, invention of drop-tanks allowed the scouts - and cruisers, to move around for 2 parsecs unsupported, and later the creation of FSS allowed to basically go around Hermosa and discover the systems almost in their rear. HSWS has courier network and can engage (diplomatically, explore, and if necessary more) the planets 8 parsecs from Home. This is probably impressive for a jump-1 navy.
And this is a field where HSWS is good from the beginning, and from which im large part grow its successes at exploration and at diplomacy.
And the HSWS has basically no experience about it. The closest things were the destruction of Heimdall by the Junta's ships in then-S'Taxu, which, frankly, wasn't much of a learning experience. Rhe second closest was the IC in S'Taxu being fired at by Dynast missiles and firing at their missile stations. Not exactly the ship-to-ship event, and mostly the result of fatal negligence from HSWS - in terms of diplomacy, intelligence and of putting enough ships in a would-be warzone.
The recent attack on the Deep Hope was almost a ship combat, but in the end the fight itself did not happen.
The HSWS has a lot of ideas about space combat, sure. Fighters and carriers, EWAR, some sort of multi-layered defence of planets with minefields, stations and ships (and probably more fighters and planetside installations), mine warfare in general... But in the end, during the tensions with Hermosa, we were very much unsure if our space force can successfully take on the Hermosan ships. Their ships are pretty different in their design, and probably somewhat simpler in idea (though better in tech) - but it could be that they are better than ours. That was probably the main thing that informed our actions about Hermosa.
---
Quite better HSWS is about space-to-planet warfare. It provided orbital support to Dynast forces in early action in S'Taxu, and it interdicted all the warring factions in Xyri in their war.
Neither of those events were "planned invasions of the hostile planet", to be sure. But those were real events, and HSWS more or less "won them" - unlike our ship engaments, which were, if we would be pressed to qualify them, losses. (Heimdall was lost; IC in S'Taxu orbit failed to intercept all the nuclear misisles, took a lot of damage and had to seek help from Juta's asteroid ship - which the ICs should have also stopped; unknown stealth ship destroyed Deep Hope station and evaded our fleets missiles/torpedoes).
Conversely, HSWS successfully supported the Dynasta advance from orbit (we generally shouldn't do that, but the action itself worked), and successfully stopped the fighting on Xyri.
---
Scouting is something HSWS is ok with. Generally the scouting effort is probably impresisve for a low-tech jump-1 navy, but not because of our great scouting doctrines (our current scout ships generally probably suck, or, more politely, very much suboptimal). The scouting success grows from the foundation of HSWS superior logistics.
---
Diplomacy, ironically, is something HSS was pretty bad at initially but slowly grew more proficient at. Early S'Taxu effort was bad, as we undermined our own initial diplomatic agreement. We also failed to keep enough force in the system to prevent fight from starting - or from it being successfuly won by someone.
Involvement in Xyri wen much better, and currently relations with Hermosans are a success. In Fornice, Hexos and Nova Refugio we also do not seem to fail, as well as with Noctocole.
HSWS earned bug blackeyes in this field, but is experienced now. It has MIC. It mostly manages the foreign policy by itself, rather than is led by the Council. It, and Home in general, profits from the current efforts.
---
What HSWS is really good at is logistics. In the beginning, invention of drop-tanks allowed the scouts - and cruisers, to move around for 2 parsecs unsupported, and later the creation of FSS allowed to basically go around Hermosa and discover the systems almost in their rear. HSWS has courier network and can engage (diplomatically, explore, and if necessary more) the planets 8 parsecs from Home. This is probably impressive for a jump-1 navy.
And this is a field where HSWS is good from the beginning, and from which im large part grow its successes at exploration and at diplomacy.
This is a good writeup, and I agree with some things and disagree with others. My add-on thoughts:
- Agreed that we are inexperienced in actual combat. However, I think we've prepared fairly well, and the issues were more about uncertainty of our opponents' capabilities in terms of productive ability and tech level and rapid changes in circumstances (e.g., having to remove all p-beams) making it difficult to establish a cohesive doctrine.
- I'd argue that the recent event does inform us somewhat of how ship-to-ship combat can play out, since we can expect that most engagements will probably be cases where one side is fleeing and the other is trying ot bring them to battle. We've seen the impact of maneuverability and evasive actions, even if we never managed to score a hit. This will probably be similar to a lot of future engagements until we start striking at key targets that cannot be abandoned (or vice versa). We should look at it, and plan around similar events at a larger scale.
- Our ability to conduct orbit-to-surface actions is very important, especially if we want to oust the Citizen's Council in the future...
- Is there anything actually suboptimal about our scout ships? We may want to pivot towards more of a cruising role as opposed to pure discovery as we move out of the "finding out about what's out there" stage and into the "fighting what's out there" stage, which means armed warships, but the deep space surveyor doesn't seem to be that poor. I admittedly haven't looked much at it, and I'm interested in which deficiencies you're spotting.
- I do think that our efforts in Hexos and Nova Refugio have not been unqualified successes. Sure, we haven't started a war, but we also haven't gotten much from them. IMO, a big part of this is that we are very heavily focused on either the initial follow-up contacts where we introduce ourselves and figure out what's going on, but struggle to get smoothly through the period of normalizing relations to a mutually beneficial steady-state relationship. I think we've made improvements to prevent us from repeating the early mistakes of S'Taxu where we over-committed to one relationship, but we now have a different problem of being unable to respond to rapidly changing situations and thus struggling to dictate what the eventual relationship will be, and this problem only gets worse with range. Equus is a strong example of this - had they not been taken over by Hermosa, they would have been a powerful ally, but we fumbled going between "we've met you" and whatever we wanted the next state of our relationship to be. Similarly, we got in contact with the northern polities but have kinda left them hanging. This is an important issue moving forward - we're in this "danger zone" with Fornice, Hexos, Nova Refugio, Menorb, Inthe, and Natoko.
- I think we're very good at logistics for what we've been doing, which is scouting and peacetime deployments of our ships. However, I think that this is vulnerable during wartime or in other "unusual" circumstances. For example, we have no way of dealing with a ship that's unable to jump due to battle damage (a fact that's on my mind since we just had two instances of that happening back-to-back). We shouldn't rest on our laurels, but instead try and think of cases that we don't have experience with and upgrade to match.
There is a non-zero chance that this will backfire horribly, with either the northern enemy jumping the EF at our new station or the Council finding out about our scheming—but why not.
[X] Plan: Fuck the citizen's council w/ Ba Kim
[X] Plan: Fuck the citizen's council w/ Ba Kim
If they jump at our new station, we have ships there to defend it. I had 2 ICs and a frigate, while Chrono left it up to the local commanders, but in both cases, there's something there that'll make it hard for them to pull a repeat of last time.
[X] Plan: Slow and Careful Fornicating &Knuckles Ba Kim
-[X] 4-6,000 mines (requiring a layer capable of deploying 1,000 mines per month).
-[X] Immediately plan and deploy a military mission North - to do what?
--[X] Minelayer, to create a minefield around the [01, -02] comet body, and two frigates to watch over it. In case of hostile attention, activate the field and either maneuver around it, or plain flee. Be careful that our new stealthy enemy can overtake us fleeing.
--[X] Only after that, move more fleet force and civilian ships to erect the logistical station there.
--[X] Concurrently, a diplomatic mission consisting of the Ba Kim and whatever forces Vice Admiral Gebara deems necessary will depart from [01, -02] to Menorb, Inthe, and Natoko with the goal of re-establishing contact and setting up permanent embassies in each system in advance of follow-up talks.
--[X] Activate the reserve couriers (x3) to assist with message running within the mission space and to run news back to Home.
--[X] Vice Admiral Gebara is authorized to take whatever independent action they deem necessary against hostile forces should ships of the same raider design be encountered or should their ships be fired upon by an unknown third party.
--[X] As a tertiary objective for this mission, carefully (and in secret from Menorb, Inthe, and Natoko) investigate the "prison planet".
-[X] Other - write in:
--[X] Surreptitiously begin investigating legal ways to lock-in the HSWS financing. Even if we can't legalistically argue that current arrangements allow this, prepare new changed agreements for Fornice or whoever else, that would make financing the HSWS an obligation by Home's government, rather than at-will (as HSWS would be protecting the new allies, those allies will surely be relieved to know that Home's domestic politics can't invalidate the common shield of space force)
-[X] 4-6,000 mines (requiring a layer capable of deploying 1,000 mines per month).
-[X] Immediately plan and deploy a military mission North - to do what?
--[X] Minelayer, to create a minefield around the [01, -02] comet body, and two frigates to watch over it. In case of hostile attention, activate the field and either maneuver around it, or plain flee. Be careful that our new stealthy enemy can overtake us fleeing.
--[X] Only after that, move more fleet force and civilian ships to erect the logistical station there.
--[X] Concurrently, a diplomatic mission consisting of the Ba Kim and whatever forces Vice Admiral Gebara deems necessary will depart from [01, -02] to Menorb, Inthe, and Natoko with the goal of re-establishing contact and setting up permanent embassies in each system in advance of follow-up talks.
--[X] Activate the reserve couriers (x3) to assist with message running within the mission space and to run news back to Home.
--[X] Vice Admiral Gebara is authorized to take whatever independent action they deem necessary against hostile forces should ships of the same raider design be encountered or should their ships be fired upon by an unknown third party.
--[X] As a tertiary objective for this mission, carefully (and in secret from Menorb, Inthe, and Natoko) investigate the "prison planet".
-[X] Other - write in:
--[X] Surreptitiously begin investigating legal ways to lock-in the HSWS financing. Even if we can't legalistically argue that current arrangements allow this, prepare new changed agreements for Fornice or whoever else, that would make financing the HSWS an obligation by Home's government, rather than at-will (as HSWS would be protecting the new allies, those allies will surely be relieved to know that Home's domestic politics can't invalidate the common shield of space force)
Rat King
Izutsumi-pilled
Well, if they jump at EF, we'll have learned something regardless. But that is what we're sending them out to do - look at things and potentially get shot.
I think the Citizen's Council has a point. We've lost Deep Hope to a single ship from a polity that we didn't know existed and if that attacker had jumped into Xyri or Cassalon then they may have been able to do real population or economic damage. We have an ambitious imperialist peer on our doorstep and no plan to do anything about it beyond waiting and hoping that de-escalation works. We had the debacle where we unilaterally outlawed our most effective weapons because they can cause radiation sickness. We have exciting alien(?) ruins and a large pre-industrial population nearby and haven't helped the oligarchs make money from either of those, nor have we done any scientific or humanitarian work.
We have a bunch of ship designs and some interesting ideas, but we're not really delivering safety or profits for the oligarchs.
I think our mine doctrine is an example of us continuing to micro-manage stuff rather than specifying the outcomes we want. E.g. we don't know if these mines would protect us against these speedy, stealthed attackers. A whole fleet worth of torpedos and missiles didn't work at deep hope because their ship can outrun our missiles, at least temporarily.
Regarding the North, I think the plans to build some hardened outposts heading North to extend our logistics are okay and good for the civvie merchants (and maybe those asteroid mines make some money too??), but I don't know that we really need them for military purposes because we could build a few more logistics ships for a similar cost as armoured refinery stations, and then we could spend the operational range in any direction we want (including the potential war with Hermosa) and we wouldn't have introduced new liabilities for us to defend.
Regarding splitting up our forces, I really don't think we should be micro-managing this. I think we should decide what our overall aim is (diplomacy and exploration North to gain information; turtle-up and ignore them (the Aslan are doing this and it hasn't hurt them); gung-ho punitive mission/counter-raid; etc).
We have a bunch of ship designs and some interesting ideas, but we're not really delivering safety or profits for the oligarchs.
I think our mine doctrine is an example of us continuing to micro-manage stuff rather than specifying the outcomes we want. E.g. we don't know if these mines would protect us against these speedy, stealthed attackers. A whole fleet worth of torpedos and missiles didn't work at deep hope because their ship can outrun our missiles, at least temporarily.
Regarding the North, I think the plans to build some hardened outposts heading North to extend our logistics are okay and good for the civvie merchants (and maybe those asteroid mines make some money too??), but I don't know that we really need them for military purposes because we could build a few more logistics ships for a similar cost as armoured refinery stations, and then we could spend the operational range in any direction we want (including the potential war with Hermosa) and we wouldn't have introduced new liabilities for us to defend.
Regarding splitting up our forces, I really don't think we should be micro-managing this. I think we should decide what our overall aim is (diplomacy and exploration North to gain information; turtle-up and ignore them (the Aslan are doing this and it hasn't hurt them); gung-ho punitive mission/counter-raid; etc).
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I'm a fan of that, but I'm thinking those should be slightly later steps. Right now, the Citizen's Council still has significant leverage over us, but we can take steps to "reduce the HSWS's economic burden on Home's taxpayers". That sounds like something that's being done by a responsible HSWS leadership, and which oligarch enjoys being asked to pay for things? Once we hollow out a way of funding ourselves and generating our own supplies, we can reach out to the Daughters. At that point, the Citizen's Council won't be able to do much to stop us off-planet, and the stuff they do on-planet won't matter - we control the orbitals and can support whichever faction we want in the revolution that the Daughters will likely spark.
The goal is the metaphorical frog-boiling, except we're starting things off by putting a lid on the pot before we even start turning up the heat since we don't know how sensitive our stove is.
The mines should be triggered when an enemy is within the minefield, which means they can't outrun them (since moving in one direction just brings you closer to other mines). That's why they're located outside of torpedo range from the central strongpoint, so that an attacker needs to get close.
Minimum cost defensive stations with external fuel tanks attacked are absurdly cheap, as are other system defence assets when compared to jump-capable ships. They also pair well with logistics ships, which during peacetime can stockpile supplies at the forward operating bases, and then during wartime can focus on running supplies from the forward operating bases to the fleet instead of making the trip all the way from Home. While it's only around 1.1^x, tonnage does increase exponentially with range travelled, and these unknown northern raiders are probably 5-6 parsecs away from Home, meaning we'd have to make a 10-jump round trip if we don't want to use drop tanks.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
[X] Plan: Fuck the citizen's council w/ Ba Kim
I think that furthering our relationship with the Daughters is part and parcel with reducing the Citizen's Councils influence on us and I do not think we can really fully separate ourselves from the funding provided by another body. The taxes of millions of people is always going to make up far, far more of our budget than any attempts to gain our own income through trade.
I think that furthering our relationship with the Daughters is part and parcel with reducing the Citizen's Councils influence on us and I do not think we can really fully separate ourselves from the funding provided by another body. The taxes of millions of people is always going to make up far, far more of our budget than any attempts to gain our own income through trade.
[JK] Immediately invade Hermosa
It's those perfidious Hermosans distracting us for years in Heimdall and flanking us from the north. They shall pay for this deception.
It's those perfidious Hermosans distracting us for years in Heimdall and flanking us from the north. They shall pay for this deception.