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Petals of Titanium -- My Life as a Mecha Setting Bridge Bunny Quest

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I'll be honest, I didn't expect this to be so close first thing.
Adhoc vote count started by Gazetteer on Sep 24, 2019 at 12:18 AM, finished with 28 posts and 19 votes.
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marids said:
[X] Civilian casualties are already worse than you'd feared

Strategically AND tactically speaking, this is the best choice. Unlike any normal last-stand battles where heroes are expected to die gloriously to save as many as possible with no consideration for the day after, this time the consequences of one battle will last for the rest of the entire empire's future.

Either of the first options will only reduce the chances of victory, and even if the battle is somehow won the enemy can simply come back with another fleet in time with massive industrial bases to rely upon, while the defensive fleet can't be replenished nearly as easily. Thus for the sake of long-term survival, the enemy fleet has to be decisively beaten at the best odds possible to secure the most remaining allied fleet assets, or else the enemy wouldn't even have to wait that long to try again since they don't need to build up as much for the next round to win.

Thus, at the cost of some civilians now, the future of all other civilians would be saved. Or else while they could be saved now, there would be no future left for them at all when the enemy comes back with no defenders to protect against them, and that time it would be someone else actually willing to carry out the orders to massacre everyone.
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So, where, exactly, are we going to survive if our civilian population has been--potentially--cut in half?

The casualties were already speculated to be bad, 'Worse than expected' is nightmarish in light of that.
 
[X] The enemy fleet is larger than expected

We don't really know all the details of the political situation wherever the enemy came from, but their fleet staff's overly-competitive nature and observed lack of competence in some ways, and the fascist attitudes shown, it's a little hard to get a proper sense of them. They are starting to feel just a bit like the bumbling villain who never runs out of feckless goons to throw at the Good Guys.

We are supposed to be poor and resource-starved as a polity, but we seem to have plenty of warships where it counts. Then again, our own military hierarchy has nepotistic posts and racists and has been described as "much better than it was a few decades ago".

...You know what, ignore my rambling. This is a high drama mecha-genre story, I oughtn't hold the politics to the same level as in Down With Victoria.
 
Alectai said:
So, where, exactly, are we going to survive if our civilian population has been--potentially--cut in half?

The casualties were already speculated to be bad, 'Worse than expected' is nightmarish in light of that.
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Cut in half is better than lost completely. Either as much as half of them die now, or there won't be any surviving civilians in the future if the battle results in enough military losses to make the next invasion impossible to win against.
 
Also there has been political turmoil amongst the Saturnian's over Her Imperial Majesties Empire being here. Having a mutual enemy kill Saturnian and Core World exile civilians could weaken the hostility.
 
[X] Civilian casualties are already worse than you'd feared

We saw the consequences of letting the enemy preserve their forces...
 
[X] The enemy fleet is larger than expected

...hey look on the bright side! If they enemy fleet is larger than expected they must've really stripped locations of garrison fleets that were needed to keep the locals in check!
 
Oh goddammit. This is just going to suck. I know it is.

[X] The enemy fleet is larger than expected

Changing my vote.
 
[x] Civilian casualties are already worse than you'd feared

Ultimately, both of the other complications (a stronger attacking force or a weaker defending force) will lead to more civilian casualties as well.

At least this option puts the increased civilian casualties in the past, while giving us the chance to prevent more civilian casualties in the future now that reinforcements have arrived. Whereas putting the Saturnians at a military disadvantage means it will be harder for us to make a difference.

Not to mention we want to avoid the worst case scenario, which is we lose the battle and everyone dies anyway.


Alectai said:
It sure as heck feels that way

I'm not claiming to be objective about it though, this quest just hurts so much to read even as much as I jump at every update the moment I read it. The big thing being that it doesn't feel like the enemy had to particularly strain themselves to throw this fleet at us that's an existential risk to everything we know, and how they've suffered little to no compunctions against little things like suicide missions, or honest to god genocide.

And we've seen little from their side suggesting that their society is anything more than a gigantic fascist state that everyone still alive buys into, and has somehow avoided the normal problems of a fascist state by way of having destroyed all meaningful competition while still having a good external enemy to point at, while they indoctrinate their population to think what they need to think.

It's coming out of general despair as opposed to rational logic or anything, but hell when I look at the actual numbers I just sort of sit back and weep for a while.
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The GM has stated that sending this expedition to Saturn was no small task:

Gazetteer said:
We know from several references, including directly from Mosi, that the enemy invasion force came from Jupiter. Jupiter is very far away from Saturn much of the time, and is only relatively close to it now for a limited amount of time. Many of these ships are therefore taken from Jupiter's existing forces (reminder that Jupiter has a problem with Jovian rebel forces so the Divine Navy can't keep it too undefended), or had to be sent leapfrog from the inner solar system, to Jupiter, to Saturn. Saturn is more than twice as far away from Earth, on average, than Jupiter is, so sending a fleet directly from Earth to Saturn poses much higher logistical problems to the extent that it has never been mentioned as a possibility for a military invasion force.

When it's mentioned by Divine Navy officers that if this invasion falters, they won't be able to send another one soon, they mean this. The undertaking of mobilising full-sized fleets over that span of space is monumentally expensive and cannot be done on a whim, or without preparation. Numerical superiority and manufacturing capacity does not mean that much if the enemy you want to direct it at is located 1.2 billion km away, in a setting where interplanetary travel has always been described as expensive, dangerous, time-consuming and highly unpleasant.
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The characterization also shows the people in the Divine Empire are not monolithic:

Gazetteer said:
Kind of sorry to hear you feel that way. I'm pretty aware that the actual opposing empire, its ethos and its general deal is like... broad to say the least, and was generally pretty low hanging fruit in terms of a villain faction. But I've also been going out of my way for literally the entire run of this quest to not depict the individuals fighting for it as all being one-dimensional cartoon cutouts? It took until Nakamura before I was actually willing to say "here, have a genuinely unhinged zealot." In terms of character writing, I do not typically try to deal in caricature.
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As for how the regime has survived? Well, they're still fairly young. It's not as if historical Fascist states fell within a day either.

Alectai said:
So, where, exactly, are we going to survive if our civilian population has been--potentially--cut in half?

The casualties were already speculated to be bad, 'Worse than expected' is nightmarish in light of that.
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There's no reason to think higher civilian casualties means "half" the planet has died.

As for survival, if the battle is lost then nobody survives.
 
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[X] The enemy fleet is larger than expected
At the end of the day, we are soldiers. We have to take the blow so the civilians don't have to.

Even if it does feel like I am currently signing Owusu's death warrant...
 
[X] The enemy fleet is larger than expected

If they lose even more of their ships in this already horribly expensive campaign, their fall will be all but assured or at least greatly accelerated.
 
All shall be well.

[X] The enemy fleet is larger than expected

I mean, Civilian is undoubtedly the most advantageous, but one of the reason why we do this whole business is protecting populace.
 
Picking civilian casualties will likely gaurantee some of the crew's family dying.

This whole situation sucks.
 
Alectai said:
And we've seen little from their side suggesting that their society is anything more than a gigantic fascist state that everyone still alive buys into, and has somehow avoided the normal problems of a fascist state by way of having destroyed all meaningful competition while still having a good external enemy to point at, while they indoctrinate their population to think what they need to think.
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If that was the case, they would not be here to wipe us out. they'd hurt us and then be driven back. this is a massive expenditure of men and material in an attempt to exterminate our entires polity. Further, we know there was unrest that was only recently suppressed and it may not be a permanent suppression. The very fact that they are here means they are willing to spend dealy to kill us.

@Gazetteer question, if the enemy fleet is larger, does that mean the enemy used a bigger % of their fleet, or that they just had more ships?



[X] Civilian casualties are already worse than you'd feared

because the other two choices are going to be "pick an extra thing to lose" at the end of this. I have the dim hope that if we are ruthless and clever we might be able to have a non-phyirc victory and not have to lose knight. Its very likly we will have a vote that boils down to
[] lose knight
[] Saturn won't be in a position to be easily wiped out in round 2 ten or so years down the line.

I'm willing to go pretty far to avoid that.
 
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