Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
We have a sizable Elcor Contingent.
Have you SEEN how Elcor ground combat is described?
Badassfully : This one suggests clearing your pants, buggy ones.
Terminus Quest: A CKII Mass Effect Quest
We have a sizable Elcor Contingent.
Have you SEEN how Elcor ground combat is described?
Badassfully : This one suggests clearing your pants, buggy ones.
Does that mean that a regular success would have had fewer options? Or does that mean that a regular success would have imposed penalties to the more complicated strategies?
I'm reasonably certain that we only need one fleet per cluster.
@PoptartProdigy — could you clarify?
- Location
- Boston
I think raiding is our best bet. If we turtle the Rachni can eventually build a big enough hammer to smash us. Likewise for trying to match them in strait up fleet engagements. We need to adopt the equivalent to space guerrilla warfare. Even if we piss them off they still have to honor the threat of an attack that could come anywhere. We would force them to leave penny packet defensive forces everywhere, hampering their ability to act offensively.
To those saying we are not strong enough there are numerous examples in history (Vietnam and Korea come to mind) of a relatively small force hold off a far larger army. Now this obviously is not a direct comparison, but I think it is proof enough that the tactic can work. That being said this is certainly the option with the most inherent risk, but I think we can pull it off.
Therefore I propose the following:
[ ] Plan: The Subtle Knife
-[ ][FLEET] Many Fleets. Smaller fleets will struggle to address determined resistance and force you to bring in reinforcements from other fleets, but can be produced in greater numbers, allowing you to more reliably cover ground.
-[ ][DOCTRINE] Adopt Raiding Doctrine. Virmire faces a situation outside the planning of conventional military thinkers, and thus it is only fitting that you adopt a doctrine designed by Virmireans. You cannot hope to face the Rachni in the open once they truly turn their focus to you. Instead focus on slipping through their lines and striking at their rear, wreaking havoc and forcing them to split their focus a thousand ways. The chaos you leave in your wake will be your contribution to the struggle.
-[ ][MARINES] Grant Tannuvael's request. Now that the fight is moving beyond your space, there is a need for an elite, navy-integrated ground force responsible for void-borne operations. Will require an eventual fleet-wide refit.
Thoughts?
To those saying we are not strong enough there are numerous examples in history (Vietnam and Korea come to mind) of a relatively small force hold off a far larger army. Now this obviously is not a direct comparison, but I think it is proof enough that the tactic can work. That being said this is certainly the option with the most inherent risk, but I think we can pull it off.
Therefore I propose the following:
[ ] Plan: The Subtle Knife
-[ ][FLEET] Many Fleets. Smaller fleets will struggle to address determined resistance and force you to bring in reinforcements from other fleets, but can be produced in greater numbers, allowing you to more reliably cover ground.
-[ ][DOCTRINE] Adopt Raiding Doctrine. Virmire faces a situation outside the planning of conventional military thinkers, and thus it is only fitting that you adopt a doctrine designed by Virmireans. You cannot hope to face the Rachni in the open once they truly turn their focus to you. Instead focus on slipping through their lines and striking at their rear, wreaking havoc and forcing them to split their focus a thousand ways. The chaos you leave in your wake will be your contribution to the struggle.
-[ ][MARINES] Grant Tannuvael's request. Now that the fight is moving beyond your space, there is a need for an elite, navy-integrated ground force responsible for void-borne operations. Will require an eventual fleet-wide refit.
Thoughts?
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
You launch a relay assault and, while the enemy is busy defending against that, send through your raiding forces. Raiding forces disperse and start burning shit while the main assault force withdraws. Raiding ships adhere to a strict time limit and return to the relay by that time limit, whereupon you launch another covering assault as previously scheduled. At all times decline all-out battle. The goal is to get the raiding forces onto the relay network behind enemy lines where their garrisons are weak, and move around faster than pursuers can mobilize. Then the raiders can act with relative freedom. The difficult part is getting into and out of hostile territory -- and addressing those difficulties is the core of the raiding doctrine.
You actually don't have any elcor on Virmire.
Regular success would have had no ground support doctrine and no independent marine corps option.
Unless the Rachni get a full invasion going in said cluster, yes, one fleet is enough for patrol duties.
Sucal
The Devil’s Cut
- Location
- Bottom of the barrel
...
Fun killer.
And here I was imagining a bunch of Volus in full Madmax gear, screaming 'witness me' as they lept off their elcor buddies and into the Rachni Swarm.
Hey, its the Terminus systems!
(though really, how far are we from the Vorcha home planet).
- Location
- Estonia
I think raiding with our battlecruisers focus or territory defense make sense and the best would be a mix of the two i think somehow.
and i like many fleets abit better cause they provide more flexibility and u can still have big fleets but just assign one admiral to be in charge of certain things with his fleet and u help him if ur from another fleet maybe? If things are agreed beforehand or are just run on seniority instead then things should be fine?
Id like to expand marines a little with so that they are better but probably not into mini armies ?
and i like many fleets abit better cause they provide more flexibility and u can still have big fleets but just assign one admiral to be in charge of certain things with his fleet and u help him if ur from another fleet maybe? If things are agreed beforehand or are just run on seniority instead then things should be fine?
Id like to expand marines a little with so that they are better but probably not into mini armies ?
- Location
- Russia
Huh. And there I thought exactly opposite - that normal success would have trap options (thinking that your "if an option is here it is viable because of GS" means that without GS we would get some non-viable options)
That's sort of true. You need to have something called Locality, which basically means 'only the stuff directly around you affects you', where 'directly' means something like 'reachable at or below lightspeed', and 'stuff' is matter and energy. For most cases, that essentially means no FTL. But if you do weird enough shit to space things get complicated. General Relativity technically allows both FTL and time travel, you just need some really weird circumstances. Depending on how Eezo works, it might produce that weirdness.
- Location
- Russia
There is also superdeterminism loophole. Granted, it would make this quest (and our entire existence) pretty pointless, but a theoty is a theory.
VoidZero
Passing Flan 布丁魔王
- Location
- Anywhere but RL
I think small fleets and defensive doctrine plus granting void marine middling expansion are our safest bet. We need time to setup our existing assets instead of go out and look for trouble. What we have are already more than enough to become an eventual power, we just need to survive until that time.
[ ] Plan Piracy
-[ ][FLEET] Many Fleets. Smaller fleets will struggle to address determined resistance and f[post=PostId]Title[post=PostId]Title[/post][/post]orce you to bring in reinforcements from other fleets, but can be produced in greater numbers, allowing you to more reliably cover ground.
-[ ][DOCTRINE] Adopt Raiding Doctrine. Virmire faces a situation outside the planning of conventional military thinkers, and thus it is only fitting that you adopt a doctrine designed by Virmireans. You cannot hope to face the Rachni in the open once they truly turn their focus to you. Instead focus on slipping through their lines and striking at their rear, wreaking havoc and forcing them to split their focus a thousand ways. The chaos you leave in your wake will be your contribution to the struggle.
-[ ][MARINES] Completely reform the marines, making them a massive, elite force capable of striking any target from space without army support. Will require immediate production of dedicated vessels and a navy-wide refit.
OK, imho this is the optimal build for our navy.
We are going to be raiding the shit out of the enemy and conserve as much heavy metal as we can get away with.
Now it may seem counterintuitive but going overboard on marines helps us in this as we can include some Assault and boarding ships in the raider doctrine and that means they have a integrated ground force that can assault and occupy and garrison space ports, stations and fleet yards.
It will enable our raiding fleets to immediately have a contingent of ground forces that can secure for a short to medium term local facilities for their own use, thus greatly enhancing their endurance outside of our support strucutre and allow commanders to raid small outposts and worlds superficially. Because we sure as shit are not going to get into tunnel fighting with the Rachni.
It also allows our raiding fleets to act as immediate cavalry if they happen upon a contested world, and once the Rachni War is over gets us a force with the institutional knowledge to greatly aid in taking over the Terminus by pretty much having each of our raiding fleets be a small self contained fully kitted armed force that can do both initial naval and ground actions, thus making them a even greater racing raiding nightmare as they can raid not only the space lanes but worlds too.
-[ ][FLEET] Many Fleets. Smaller fleets will struggle to address determined resistance and f[post=PostId]Title[post=PostId]Title[/post][/post]orce you to bring in reinforcements from other fleets, but can be produced in greater numbers, allowing you to more reliably cover ground.
-[ ][DOCTRINE] Adopt Raiding Doctrine. Virmire faces a situation outside the planning of conventional military thinkers, and thus it is only fitting that you adopt a doctrine designed by Virmireans. You cannot hope to face the Rachni in the open once they truly turn their focus to you. Instead focus on slipping through their lines and striking at their rear, wreaking havoc and forcing them to split their focus a thousand ways. The chaos you leave in your wake will be your contribution to the struggle.
-[ ][MARINES] Completely reform the marines, making them a massive, elite force capable of striking any target from space without army support. Will require immediate production of dedicated vessels and a navy-wide refit.
OK, imho this is the optimal build for our navy.
We are going to be raiding the shit out of the enemy and conserve as much heavy metal as we can get away with.
Now it may seem counterintuitive but going overboard on marines helps us in this as we can include some Assault and boarding ships in the raider doctrine and that means they have a integrated ground force that can assault and occupy and garrison space ports, stations and fleet yards.
It will enable our raiding fleets to immediately have a contingent of ground forces that can secure for a short to medium term local facilities for their own use, thus greatly enhancing their endurance outside of our support strucutre and allow commanders to raid small outposts and worlds superficially. Because we sure as shit are not going to get into tunnel fighting with the Rachni.
It also allows our raiding fleets to act as immediate cavalry if they happen upon a contested world, and once the Rachni War is over gets us a force with the institutional knowledge to greatly aid in taking over the Terminus by pretty much having each of our raiding fleets be a small self contained fully kitted armed force that can do both initial naval and ground actions, thus making them a even greater racing raiding nightmare as they can raid not only the space lanes but worlds too.
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- Location
- Earth
Alright, in that case I've got a slightly strange idea that I would like to argue for.
*The following is slightly meandering in how it goes through my arguement, but I don't have the time to clean it up before voting begins, so I'm posting it now.
By all rights, if you want to maximize our ability to stay alive, taking Big Fleets and Defense Doctrine seems like the obvious way to go since they synergize together so well. However, the probable need to build up a fleet to its full strength before we commit it to offensive actions means that it will be ages before we can do much other than maybe take Kepler Verge.
From that last sentence and the question I asked Poptart, I had an idea.
[ ][FLEET] Many Fleets. Smaller fleets will struggle to address determined resistance and force you to bring in reinforcements from other fleets, but can be produced in greater numbers, allowing you to more reliably cover ground.
[ ][DOCTRINE] Retain Territory Defense Doctrine. Ultimately, Virmire remains a world with its back against the wall, and any offensives you make must be made only once you are sure of your position. Turtle up, and turtle harder. Make your space a brick wall, against which the Rachni might break themselves. You will serve the larger struggle with the forces the Rachni must devote to bottling you up. Will not cost additional resources to implement.
Let's get the obvious issue out of the way first.
Yes, we are going to have headaches coordinating multiple fleets together. However, as the relay assault back on turn 10 proved, it's hardly impossible. We probably just need to spend time, and some credits, doing exercises between fleets that need to group together. Additionally, we are hardly going to be doing offensives, which is when we are most likely going to group fleets together in the near future, on a whim so we will have plenty of time to do said exercises.
Here's why I want it though.
If we take both Big Fleets and Defense Doctrine, we aren't particularly likely to take much more than the clusters we already own, plus maybe Kepler Verge. If the citadel slacks off or isn't pushing at it for whatever reason, then we might get to take Hades Gamma in a couple of decades as well.
But as soon as we make contact with the citadel, and it would most likely have to be them since we wouldn't of the number of fleets required to break out in the direction of the terminus or Quarians, it seems unlikely we will ever be able to claim anything else, since our forces would no longer be doing all of the work, thus giving us a claim on the area via right of conquest.
Additionally, it a very passive combination. Until the citadel breaks through Hades Gamma to us or we build up and take it instead, we would mostly just be sitting back and waiting for them to attack us. That doesn't seem like the best idea to me, since it would give the Rachni all the time in the world to eventually wise up and just straight up bury us under more ships than we can fight. We need to do things to keep them off balance. The Offensive Doctrine and the Raiding Doctrine are obviously made for that, however a strong defense is more important. Which brings up the question about what can we do about that.
This is where taking Many Fleets and Defense Doctrine comes in. Taking both of these would allow us to have the fleet numbers to garrison all of our current holdings and then have free fleets to go on the offensive earlier, while still having defense as the most important part of our doctrine. So long as we have the fleets expected to work beside each other do exercises, the coordination problem can be minimized, allowing us to still commit large numbers of ships to an offensive if required.
Since defensive doctrine will also improve the reaction times of reinforcement fleets, we don't lose much by breaking up our ships into smaller forces across more clusters, since as long as we keep a reinforcement fleet or two on stand by, they can quickly come where ever we are attacked and give us the effect local numbers of a Big Fleet.
tldr: Many Fleets is more flexible and gives us the ability to take offensive action far sooner than Big Fleets would which will help keep the Rachni off balance and probably gain us more territory, while taking Defense Doctrine will mostly cover the holes in the local lack of ship numbers for defense caused by taking Many Fleets. Also, turn 10 showed that we can act to work around or minimize coordination issues.
(and now to go do things I have been putting off in order to write this up. See you all in a couple of hours at vote time.)
Edit: Fixed some things.
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- Location
- Orlando, Florida
I feel like this plan best plays to Virmirian strengths, and if our situation changes, we can always change our doctrines. Also, SPESS MEHREENS.
[ ][FLEET] Many Fleets. Smaller fleets will struggle to address determined resistance and force you to bring in reinforcements from other fleets, but can be produced in greater numbers, allowing you to more reliably cover ground.
[ ][DOCTRINE] Adopt Raiding Doctrine. Virmire faces a situation outside the planning of conventional military thinkers, and thus it is only fitting that you adopt a doctrine designed by Virmireans. You cannot hope to face the Rachni in the open once they truly turn their focus to you. Instead focus on slipping through their lines and striking at their rear, wreaking havoc and forcing them to split their focus a thousand ways. The chaos you leave in your wake will be your contribution to the struggle.
[ ][MARINES] Completely reform the marines, making them a massive, elite force capable of striking any target from space without army support. Will require immediate production of dedicated vessels and a navy-wide refit.
[ ][FLEET] Many Fleets. Smaller fleets will struggle to address determined resistance and force you to bring in reinforcements from other fleets, but can be produced in greater numbers, allowing you to more reliably cover ground.
[ ][DOCTRINE] Adopt Raiding Doctrine. Virmire faces a situation outside the planning of conventional military thinkers, and thus it is only fitting that you adopt a doctrine designed by Virmireans. You cannot hope to face the Rachni in the open once they truly turn their focus to you. Instead focus on slipping through their lines and striking at their rear, wreaking havoc and forcing them to split their focus a thousand ways. The chaos you leave in your wake will be your contribution to the struggle.
[ ][MARINES] Completely reform the marines, making them a massive, elite force capable of striking any target from space without army support. Will require immediate production of dedicated vessels and a navy-wide refit.
- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Nah, successes in general mean that if it's there, it's good.
You can always change your mind. That said, generally you want to avoid massive and costly reorganizations to your military in the middle of a war insofar as it's possible.
- Location
- USA
If we raid enough to be annoying they don't go penny packet, they instead say you know what enough is enough and pause their assault on citadel space to gather a huge fleet and just run it straight to our homework which they know the location of and burn it to the ground.
Great for the Citadel in giving them a breather, not so much for us as we lose our home and will only have what we can evacuate further into the cluster and hope that the Rachini do not search for us.
The thing that is saving us from the Rachini is that the Citadel is taking more of their attention and forces so we are only facing the leftovers. We get too big and annoying and they may feel it is worth pausing operations to eliminate us once and for all.
- Location
- Outside the Box
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Independent marine corps is an expensive but potentially worthwhile upgrade, but I'm going to bet that most people will argue that, canonically, ground support doctrine should not work at all. It took the Krogans to successfully do that, right? Except the need for the Krogans was actually for troops resilient and numerous enough to take the fortified Rachni homeworlds and end the conflict. I'd wager that ground support doctrine in this quest means taking any planets or systems that aren't the extremely fortified homeworlds. So theoretically it should actually have real benefit, as a successful operation under that doctrine would mean permanently removing the resources of entire planets from the Rachni war machine. Rachni reinforcements would have nothing but empty territory to recapture if they pushed back. It's also the doctrine likeliest to affect the war on a grand scale, which while it might attract much negative attention, would also attract allies who we don't even have any contact with. Unless it's a trap option, (unlikely as the option is a reward for a greater success,) it should be possible for us to make ground support doctrine actually work.
I assume that the plans will all heavily prioritize the defense of our relays, and that the difference is mostly going to be seen in how we deal with the rest of the cluster outside of the initial relay system.
Doesn't that go directly against the word of the GM? That would imply that the strategy was inherently unable to achieve its objectives, and thus would not be an option given.
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- Location
- United States
I do not think we should change our doctrine. It is the best one when outnumbered, and we are nothing if not outnumbered.
With that said, i think large fleets are best on the defense and the marines can stay as they are.
With that said, i think large fleets are best on the defense and the marines can stay as they are.
If we manage to get the cluster,and from what we see we can, raiding fleet imho is our only affordable defence, asside from fortifying major relays, because we can not hold a conquered cluster if we are colonising our own.
This is imho why I am going full pirate with the many/raiding/even more marines, as with this set up once we secure the cluster and fortify its main relays full of defense platforms we can send in aggressor raiding fleets and torch the other linked clusters.
The Rachni will never ignore us and eventually will send a response. With the hardest raiders possible my intention is to push as hard as possible not only in this cluster but others and pretty much burn everything to the ground. If we find survivor we evacuate them. If we find a major Rachni world we bomb it to shit and perhaps send some suicidal volunteer marine comandos with nukes to play space hulk if it is a regional capital. That was the only way from what history we know ooc and if we find such a world then throwing nuke armed suicide volunteer harasses is imho worth it. Edit: Going even more marines is getting raiding fleets a budget ground support doctrine attachment basically imho, for the added extra cost of course but with said ability. Just enough to do some damage on the ground with a raid as well if the fleet managed to beat any defenders by planting some nukes.
My idea is to destroy everything in the cluster not needed to support our cooperation and repeat it in the other linked clusters if we can push through.
When the Rachni empire strikes back each cluster we took or heavily raided should have a hidden support and supply base and the assigned the raiding fleets shold completely avoid and let them pass. If they can not push thoru our fortified relays they die and if they can or if the relays are not fortified the raiding fleets would not have helped much. But what they will do great is continue to torch any installations the Rachni attempt to create to support a advance towards our Cluster and slowly starve, thus forcing them to go on a hunt the raider time consumeing task that not only makes them lose time but also invest a larger number of heavy metal in said cluster.
The main defense become not a large fortified and defensive posture but the sheer difficulty in managing to supply and support a fleet large enough to get o Virmire and manage to assault it, becase crazy raiders are doing their best to blow everything that is not a fleet up, ad wit BC, many raiders, and more marines than you can shake a fist at we can raid far and long, destroying the support infrastructure for the incoming fleet.
To defend ourselves we must advance and torch everything and then avoid fighting, except for the relay/cluster defense fleets and continue torching everything we can get away with as far as we can get away with. We are not going for the knockout blow we are trying to create a massive no-mans land via constant raiding that forces the Rachni to pretty much waste whatever heavy metal they could spare for us defending against our raiders.
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10ebbor10
DON'T PANIC
- Location
- Present
Just use a bigger rock.
The Mass effect universe is easily capable of earth shattering bombardement. They just refuse to do it in most circumstances because life-bearing worlds are not omnipresent, and you want to capture rather than destroy them.
But since we're dealing with a genocidal war with the Rachni, and the worlds are barely habitable in the first place , none of those issues should apply.
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- Location
- Europe
I'm sorry, I just don't see that being a practical long-term strategy. Relay assault seem to carry quite a bit of random chance regarding where you'll end up. Our forces might end up in the middle of a superior defense fleet with no way out(like the Rachni scouting fleet we demolished). Putting aside the incredible risk of a diversionary relay assault, the Rachni would surely figure the strategy out after the first couple of tries and create a reserve to engage the raiders or just ignore the diversionary fleet entirely. Furthermore, I don't see how the return-trip would work since you have to get close the relay in order to activate it, which would be trivial for a defensive fleet to prevent, regardless of whether or not you have a "covering assault."
Remember our first trans-relay assault? The vast majority of the Rachni fleet was stationed far away from the relay itself. Presumably, it is too resource-intensive to keep a significant portion of their fleet mobilized. If we time things right, the assault fleet should be able to overwhelm the beachhead defenses and get the raiding fleet back across the relay before the main Rachni fleet is able to intercept them.
If the Rachni do start keeping their fleet mobilized around a relay, that is a win for us. It means that they will be continuously wasting resources without us taking any losses.
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- Location
- Rockford, USA
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Trivial how? By interposing themselves between the raiders and the relay? Indeed, save that doing so leaves them open to fire from your assault through the relay.
Suffice it to say, there are tactics which can work.