I only just found this quest, but with the benefit of hindsight I'm not sure entirely sure why the Heavy Task Force was even given as an option. It feels like both a trap vote and ooc.
Like, yes, it was pointed out how risky it was, but from what I can tell that risk was couched almost entirely in terms of startling Great Houses - and arguably, keeping them on their toes is part of the Imperial Navy's job, so that's not even a bug exactly, just a very risky feature. Starting the civil war by Navy task forces blowing each other up because one admiral thought the other was starting a coup, the risk of which should have been obvious to Yui given recent information, isn't.
Why was the Heavy force ever even an option then? Isn't Yui supposed to be good at politics? This feels like the fumblings of an amateur.
I haven't seen that the system in question being in another fleets AO was even mentioned either until after the fact. I honestly was under the impression that the 13th fleet really did have the right to take a battlesquadron on a 'Training Cruise' there with no further official challenge than raised eyebrows, given it's official role.
But if IC we knew ahead of time that that wouldn't be the case, is there any reason that sending a courier to 4th Fleet HQ - which we had no OoC indication was anything but completely loyal given that at the same time Admiral Saltmeister advocated for splitting 13th Fleet up to reinforce them among others - in order to warn them that we had a battlesquadron operating in their backyard wasn't even considered as an option? Seems like the sort of thing that would merit a courtesy note. For that matter, neither did we even consider sending a courier to ask 4th fleet for their hardcopy of the merc's weapons licenses when we couldn't find the mercs' version?
And from what we can tell, it's not like the entire mission actually accomplished anything beside alienating what could otherwise have been allies.
So the entire thing comes off utterly and completely as an idiotic boneheaded mistake committed by what is supposed to be and by all other accounts is a genius-level political operator. I could understand it if it was a trap orchestrated by another political genius, but it wasn't, there was no outside prompting for it at all beyond stupid internet conspiracies.
I don't know. It just, it baffles me. Especially when everything else about this quest that I've seen is so good, the characters seem likeable and with depth, and the worldbuilding detailed. I just don't get it.
