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Considering the numbers involved in the bombardment of New Brasilia, it is perhaps not too heartless to sigh in relief at how relatively light Andorian civilian casualties were.
 
Alectai said:
Ah, and there's the downside to the Klingon economy, they can shit out more D7s, but they're much weaker than the standard models--mostly by way of cannibalizing old D6s. We blew through their pre-war stock and they're now indulging in autophagy to keep up the pressure, while we're about to double the number of Excaliburs in service, which were already enough to shit all over a D7 even 2 to 1 at their peak performance, and the Member Fleets are heavily committed.

I think we don't have to worry about a status quo ante-belllum outcome now. What's worse is that the Klingon economy is very dependent on successfully waging war to function, so even a white peace would knock them out for a good while--buying us enough time for our major investments to start paying out.
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I don't think the Andorians would be willing to settle for a white peace. Destroy all the D7's and as many D6's as they can find, destroy the space stations, orbital shipyards & repair docks, Anti Matter production plants, fuel tankers, bulk transports, mining facilities... Destroy so much of their infrastructure that it'll take them decades with their now wrecked economy to rebuild it so they can then start to build new ships. During this time, we carry on advancing our tech level and building as many new ships as possible - building up as much of overtake as we can. It'll also send a nice message to the other powers. "Don't f**k with us! We're happy to leave you alone, but if you attack us, we won't destroy you. We'll knock you down so far that you'll be defenseless against anyone else and it'll take you a lifetime just to get back to the same point - while everyone ELSE keeps advancing! So, do you feel lucky?".
 
TheShadowDeamon said:
I don't think the Andorians would be willing to settle for a white peace. Destroy all the D7's and as many D6's as they can find, destroy the space stations, orbital shipyards & repair docks, Anti Matter production plants, fuel tankers, bulk transports, mining facilities... Destroy so much of their infrastructure that it'll take them decades with their now wrecked economy to rebuild it so they can then start to build new ships. During this time, we carry on advancing our tech level and building as many new ships as possible - building up as much of overtake as we can. It'll also send a nice message to the other powers. "Don't f**k with us! We're happy to leave you alone, but if you attack us, we won't destroy you. We'll knock you down so far that you'll be defenseless against anyone else and it'll take you a lifetime just to get back to the same point - while everyone ELSE keeps advancing! So, do you feel lucky?".
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That would certainly give Starfleet and the Federation a reputation, akin to that one bubbly, friendly person in the neighborhood who will wash your car, clean your house, help fix your tools, etc, but you cross them, they'll burn everything you own and then continue being friendly to everyone else.
 
What I'm curious about is the impact on Federation politics. Starfleet got pretty badly hammered in the first two years, only really managing to turn things around in year three and presumably four. Will we see a push for a bigger, more unified Star Fleet come out of this, rolling the planetary guards under its aegis?
 
landcollector said:
You jest, but if the Federation had been doing its job properly the Empire would never have gotten as far as the Core.
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Against a larger, more advanced, more militaristic, and (at the time) more unified power? Yeah, no. Winning at all is the Federation doing its job properly.

We won on the strength of our economy, the resilience of our political system, the discipline of our military, and our willingness to make the deadliest thing in the Alpha Quadrant all while sobbing "Look what you made us do!" All but the last of those takes time to be felt.
 
I'm exceedingly glad we have massive repair bases in every sector right now. Losing that many ships should have crippled us too, but instead everything not destroyed is ready to go in months. That's a crazy repair rate.
 
Firehawk242 said:
Against a larger, more advanced, more militaristic, and (at the time) more unified power? Yeah, no. Winning at all is the Federation doing its job properly.

We won on the strength of our economy, the resilience of our political system, the discipline of our military, and our willingness to make the deadliest thing in the Alpha Quadrant all while sobbing "Look what you made us do!" All but the last of those takes time to be felt.
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Dodging the subject. Different policy making likely would resulted in the Decisive Battle:tm: happening sooner than in orbit of a Core world. In short, I disagree.
 
Firehawk242 said:
What I'm curious about is the impact on Federation politics. Starfleet got pretty badly hammered in the first two years, only really managing to turn things around in year three and presumably four. Will we see a push for a bigger, more unified Star Fleet come out of this, rolling the planetary guards under its aegis?
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I'd argue the opposite: Core member worlds being threatened means that the members keep their member fleets around longer.
 
Tank man said:
Another good choice might be Hooker, founder of geographical botany and one of the most important botanists of his time.

Article:
Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (30 June 1817 – 10 December 1911) was a British botanist and explorer in the 19th century.[1]​ He was a founder of geographical botany and Charles Darwin's closest friend.[2]​ For 20 years he served as director of the Royal Botanical Gardens, Kew, succeeding his father, William Jackson Hooker, and was awarded the highest honours of British science.[3]​[4]​


He was also, alongside Darwin, responsible for the terraforming of Ascension Island.

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In 1843, botanist and explorer Joseph Hooker visited the island. Four years later, Hooker, with much encouragement from Darwin, advised the Royal Navy that with the help of Kew Gardens, they should institute a long-term plan of shipping trees to Ascension. The planted trees would capture more rain and improve the soil, allowing the barren island to become a garden. So, from 1850 and years thereafter, ships came with an assortment of plants from botanical gardens in Argentina, Europe and South Africa. By the late 1870s Norfolk pines, eucalyptus, bamboo, and banana trees grew in profusion at the highest point of the island, Green Mountain, creating a tropical cloud forest.
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That's some real fascinating history, thanks!

TheShadowDeamon said:
I don't think the Andorians would be willing to settle for a white peace. Destroy all the D7's and as many D6's as they can find, destroy the space stations, orbital shipyards & repair docks, Anti Matter production plants, fuel tankers, bulk transports, mining facilities... Destroy so much of their infrastructure that it'll take them decades with their now wrecked economy to rebuild it so they can then start to build new ships. During this time, we carry on advancing our tech level and building as many new ships as possible - building up as much of overtake as we can. It'll also send a nice message to the other powers. "Don't f**k with us! We're happy to leave you alone, but if you attack us, we won't destroy you. We'll knock you down so far that you'll be defenseless against anyone else and it'll take you a lifetime just to get back to the same point - while everyone ELSE keeps advancing! So, do you feel lucky?".
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"The opportunity here is to bring them to their knees. Then we'll be in a far better position to dictate terms."
-Admiral Cartwright

Caveat: Admiral Cartwright was part of a conspiracy to start a war with the Klingons rather than attempt peace. The entire point of having laws of war is to wage it such that peace becomes possible afterwards.

I don't see it happening, it will never happen. But I'm almost imagining fighting all the way to Qo'noS followed by a WWII style reconstruction of Klingon territory. Learn from the mistakes of WWI that led to the Nazis.

Zimmerwald1915 said:
[Insert root beer comparison here]
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"Let me tell you something about Hew-mons, Nephew. They're a wonderful, friendly people, as long as their bellies are full and their holosuites are working. But take away their creature comforts? deprive them of food, sleep, sonic showers, put their lives in jeopardy over an extended period of time? And those same friendly, intelligent, wonderful people... will become as nasty and as violent as the most bloodthirsty Klingon. You don't believe me? Look at those faces. Look in their eyes."
-Quark
 
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Really setting up things for year 4, which will be very interesting to see. We have the 2nd wave of excaliburs coming out (and i think some of the tech is no longer considered experimental so production cost for that wave dropped) built to good standards. While they have rushed out replacement D7s with poor quality and by cannibalizing their D6 fleet. The cupboard is bare for the Klingons, if those D7s are destroyed they have no way left to make cruisers and with the surviving Excaliburs plus the new wave they are going to be tested.

Also I do see member fleets being stronger for longer. Might also see a push into finding more resources within Federation borders to exploit for a post war build up of starfleet but also a push for new designs in the rebuild.

Edit- The Archers are probably putting in some real work in keeping the advances supplied and repaired as well.
 
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I can see two scenarios that lead to a more or less white peace. One the already emboldened Pirates that were abusing Federation colonies step up their efforts scenting blood, as well as saber rattling by other polities making the Federation and a bunch of unhappy Andorians end the conflict for now so the very much diminished fleet can actually fix and maintain things while the Federation rebuilds the fleet from the ground up more or less.

The other scenarios involves the Organians of some other hyper entities like the one who made Kirk fight the Gorn captain stepping in for whatever reason.
 
TheShadowDeamon said:
I don't think the Andorians would be willing to settle for a white peace. Destroy all the D7's and as many D6's as they can find, destroy the space stations, orbital shipyards & repair docks, Anti Matter production plants, fuel tankers, bulk transports, mining facilities... Destroy so much of their infrastructure that it'll take them decades with their now wrecked economy to rebuild it so they can then start to build new ships. During this time, we carry on advancing our tech level and building as many new ships as possible - building up as much of overtake as we can. It'll also send a nice message to the other powers. "Don't f**k with us! We're happy to leave you alone, but if you attack us, we won't destroy you. We'll knock you down so far that you'll be defenseless against anyone else and it'll take you a lifetime just to get back to the same point - while everyone ELSE keeps advancing! So, do you feel lucky?".
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Yeah no. I don't see the Federation going full scorched earth in return for 20,000 fatalities that seem mostly accidental when they didn't go that hard for the Romulans, who absolutely did break out the Big Box of War Crimes, even if they didn't go quite as hard as they did in the novels.

That doesn't mean that the Federation doesn't have an obvious option for their stretch goal: The Kriosians.

Krios Prime is located in the unimaginatively named the Kriosian System and is the home world of the Kriosians. They were independent in 2153 when the Earth Fed Enterprise rescued their monarch, but were under Klingon dominion by 2256 per Discovery and remained as such in 2367 when they showed up in TNG (their first appearance from and IRL perspective) though a year later they may be independent.* Regardless, they should be a relatively recent conquest, and are usually** depicted as close to the Federation-Klingon border, making kicking the Klingons out and granting them their independence a reasonable war goal, and certainly one more in keeping with Federation ethos than a slash and burn anti infrastructure campaign that would probably kill hundreds of thousands to millions of civilians due to logistical disruptions alone.

* it's been a long time since I've watched TNG so I'd need to rewatch that episode, and Perfect Mate is not high on my list.
** Star Trek maps are not the most consistent.
 
landcollector said:
Dodging the subject. Different policy making likely would resulted in the Decisive Battle:tm: happening sooner than in orbit of a Core world. In short, I disagree.
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Federation policy was rational with what they knew about the decionmaking of the Klingon Empire, which in this era wasn't actually that much.

See the QM's post here:
Sayle said:
There's an element of truth to the accusation that Starfleet was grotesquely unprepared for an all-out conflict with the Klingons. It's also true if you know there's going to be a war soon you change your procurement priorities. But the drive behind the Excalibur was much the same as the logic that if someone is building a battleship with 16" guns you better have something capable of fighting it or they might get Ideas.

But Starfleet's planning was based around the idea that the Klingon Empire was the Holy Roman Empire of space and therefore permanently involved in fractious internal politics, and also that in the event a central political power happened that it would at least operate rationally. Starfleet can read a map: the Federation is too big, the prizes on the border or within range too small, and by their calculations they could make themselves far more trouble than they were worth.

Unfortunately, Karhammur's decisionmaking was completely rational, except it was driven by internal politics rather than the metric of a 'beneficial' war. The Klingon penchant for irrationality on that front is perfectly demonstrated by the Klingon-Federation War instigated by Gowron.

The war planning for Starfleet isn't irrational. For them the war had entered a 'trade territory for time' phase since day one, and they were very happy with the result of the Pharos battles where they stalled out the Klingon war machine. There's a new build of Excaliburs on the way with superior strategic and tactical maneuverability. The rest of the fleet is retrofit with harder-hitting weapons or being recovered and repaired. The places the Klingons were going to attack if they weren't literally going for a do-or-die attack for apparently No Reason were becoming so heavily fortified that they were going to be Arcadia all over again.

As for this idea that if Starfleet just had more budget? It's not about budget. You can't just dig up some iron and coal for your steel manufacturing. It's all about strategic resources. The SDB Federation has greater resource-flows than the OTL Federation, so can build more ships. Duranium, tritanium, dilithium, parsteel, all these things are limited by extractive industry and natural supply, not money.
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And here:
Sayle said:
To be fair to Starfleet Intelligence, Klingon Great House politics have been a complete shitshow with lots of weak Chancellors who couldn't recentralise since the last Imperial Dynasty failed in the 2100s. This also had the happy side effect of being self-perpetuating, because the perpetual warfare kept the Empire focused inwards and fighting each other most of the time without a Chancellor strong enough to rein them in. Then weak Chancellors weren't respected or were deposed, repeat ad infinitum. For the vast majority of their spacefaring history the Klingons have been a Great Power in the region happy to throw down with big military expeditions into their neighbours, with the lack of organisation up until the Federation/Klingon Wars being pretty atypical. It's a bit like how for most of human history China has usually been the most populated and organised state on the planet, but was very much marginalised for a couple of centuries.

Karhammur is the start of the process that turns the Chancellor from First Among Equals who is nominally in charge to "actually, I am in charge" of the TMP/TNG era.
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It seems unlikely the Federation would go for a full defeat of the Klingon Empire, yeah. It's one thing to fight an empire with substantial divisions and not trying its hardest because its trying to conquer territory from another power, quite another to make them feel threatened by invading far longer held territories where the various houses running the nation have a lot more to lose. Obviously in such built up areas where their internal logistics are excellent and they have everything they care most about would be more fiercely contested.

The Federation probably also doesn't want to get in to such a long drawn out war when their assessments of the Klingon Empire seem to indicate it might win a long term attritional war. Better to recover all your areas, make sure they had a good bloody nose from all that and do not feel like trying that again any time soon. And then focus on building up the Federation more and reverse engineer the Klingon technology so in future you could do better.


And on that note, with the superior Klingon materials now in R&D, we might finally get better nacelles. Some further speed gains a decade or two after the war would certainly be a nice improvement.
 
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My guess of what Fed policy would be is to take enough territory to prove that they can in combination with deeper/more extensive strikes on military targets (e.g. shipyards) in an attempt to bring the Klingons to the peace table without a more extensive (and costly) conquest.
 
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