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The Lords of Ruin -- Battletech/Killzone

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BTW, I'm fervently opposed to the economic warfare against Caliban of Plan Conference Call against the World. Manufacturing a political crisis or just strong-arming local warlords in order for us to take over is something I'm willing to do, if the situation calls for it.

Manufacturing an economic and ultimately inevitably humanitarian crisis to do the same? That's a dick move at best, and a betrayal of Helghan values at worst. I expect we will get lots of shit over it internally if the truth comes out.
 
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Driven by Apathy said:
Manufacturing an economic and ultimately inevitably humanitarian crisis to do the same? That's a dick move at best, and a betrayal of Helghan values at worst. I expect we will get lots of shit over it internally if the truth comes out.
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The Republic has aid stations already on planet. If things get so dire so fast, it basically amounts to a reason to break some slavers so infrastructure can actually be put in place.
 
DaLintyGuy said:
The Republic has aid stations already on planet. If things get so dire so fast, it basically amounts to a reason to break some slavers so infrastructure can actually be put in place.
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That's much better than nothing, admittedly, but I think it would be naive to think a lot of people aren't going to suffer anyway. Quite frankly, if we're willing to go that far, why not take over via naked military force? The harm to the civilian population would be about the same.
 
Driven by Apathy said:
That's much better than nothing, admittedly, but I think it would be naive to think a lot of people aren't going to suffer anyway. Quite frankly, if we're willing to go that far, why not take over via naked military force? The harm to the civilian population would be about the same.
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This seems to be an endemic problem among questers in my experience, yes. In this case I suppose it is probably that it is easier to impose a new order when the old one has demonstrably failed.
 
Okay my big problem concerning Caliban and New Oslo is the buying part. Caliban because we are pulling a revised Portland scheme on it with our actions.

New Oslo well is the religon and how much chaos is going on planet which is why I want to do something a little different. We have as this turn 3 colony ships just sitting and the 4th should be done settling Charbydis this turn well I wonder how many people would like to leave New Oslo to a better place?
 
DaLintyGuy said:
Even just moving goods to the jump point, negating a week long trip, to load DropShips with bulk goods is still a worthy use for them.
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Also keep it n mind how...intagrated a drive is on our ships. Ripping on out leaves the ship full of holes and endangers it's structural integrity. I'd argue that pulling out the drives, filling in that space to make it still space worthy would be far more expensive of an endever since your at that point redesigning the ship from the ground up

With all the points in mind, it's way more of a bother to remove the drives then it is to just leave them in. We'd have to end up spending a good amount of time and money just to redesign the ship to function without the drives, and by the end not only do you a inferior product your trying to sell, but one that a dropship would do massively better and at a way lower cost.

So yeah, leave the drives in and don't scrap the ships. Since you might as be doing that to every ship once you rip out the drivecore.

Edit:Oh and doesn't every ship of ours have antigravity on them. If your so against giving away our advantages might as well take away that feature too, and spend even more time and money redesigning a ship our allies at that point won't even bother buying from us!
 
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DaLintyGuy said:
Even just moving goods to the jump point, negating a week long trip, to load DropShips with bulk goods is still a worthy use for them.
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Without the drives and without the ability to dock with a jumpship, they literally won't ever get to their destination system. Unless you propose that we warp them manually to the destination system then rip out the structurally critical FTL drive and refit the hull to be a working vessel without it in front of the buyer, which would be a hilariously awful, petty thing to do.
 
DaLintyGuy said:
Can I get you to at least take out the throwaway "and scrap the rest"? No need for such when we can just sell them later when defense budgets renew.
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Alright, I can do that. I was thinking in real life terms, were the scrapyard is the ultimate destination for most warships eventually.


@prometheus110

Is a mini-poll among the voters of plan methodical as outlined here acceptable? Can we take the proposed action (Sell one ship each at a fixed price to each of our allies, auction the rest among our allies) with just one action point?

I'm generally a fan of improving plans through discussion and iterative improvement in Quests like this before deciding on a final plan, but if you decide it would cause too much confusion I absolutely understand.
 
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Driven by Apathy said:
Alright, I can do that. I was thinking in real life terms, were the scrapyard is the ultimate destination for most warships eventually.


@prometheus110

Is a mini-poll among the voters of plan methodical as outlined here acceptable? Can we take the proposed action (Sell one ship each at a fixed price to each of our allies, auction the rest among our allies) with just one action point?

I'm generally a fan of improving plans through discussion and iterative improvement in Quests like this before deciding on a final plan, but if you decide it would cause too much confusion I absolutely understand.
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Seems fairly reasonable, I'm happy to have it as one item.
 
prometheus110 said:
Seems fairly reasonable, I'm happy to have it as one item.
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Thanks.


@Brogatar , @Captain Hunt , @Starwarlord , @Ridli Scott , @Chase_L_Maier , @sciencefiction fiction , @Ifraka , @carterhall , @zezia , @Fehu , @HeroCooky , @ThatGuyWithIdeas , @Chaos Blade , @MehOhWell

Adventwolf and Aztez Fan have made a fairly reasonable case that it would be more advantageous to sell at least some of the decommissioned cruisers to each of our ORDI allies without an auction, and that we should sell the cruiser with their FTL drives still functional.

Do you agree with the following changes to plan Methodical? If more than 50% of you are in favor, I'll change the plan. Explicit votes against the change are substracted from the number of votes in favor. Abstentions have no effect.

[ ] Sell one decommissioned cruiser to each of our allies at a reasonable price. Auction off the rest at a private auction among the ORDI nations.
[ ] No, auction all off them off among ORDI.
[ ] No opinion on this.

[ ] Sell the decommissioned cruisers with their FTL drives still intact.
[ ] No, sell the cruisers without their FTL drives.
[ ] Don't care.
 
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[X] Plan Methodical

[X] Sell one decommissioned cruiser to each of our allies at a reasonable price. Auction off the rest at a private auction among the ORDI nations.
[X] Sell the decommissioned cruisers with their FTL drives still intact.
 
[X] Sell one decommissioned cruiser to each of our allies at a reasonable price. Auction off the rest at a private auction among the ORDI nations.
[X] No, sell the cruisers without their FTL drives.
 
[X] Sell one decommissioned cruiser to each of our allies at a reasonable price. Auction off the rest at a private auction among the ORDI nations.
[X] Sell the decommissioned cruisers with their FTL drives still intact.
 
[X] Sell one decommissioned cruiser to each of our allies at a reasonable price. Auction off the rest at a private auction among the ORDI nations.
[X] No, sell the cruisers without their FTL drives.
 
X] Sell one decommissioned cruiser to each of our allies at a reasonable price. Auction off the rest at a private auction among the ORDI nations.
[X] No, sell the cruisers without their FTL drives.
 
[X] Plan Methodical

[X] Sell one decommissioned cruiser to each of our allies at a reasonable price. Auction off the rest at a private auction among the ORDI nations.
[X] No, sell the cruisers without their FTL drives
 
DaLintyGuy said:
I mean. It "is" an option in the action list so it's not quite an insult, but yeah, somewhat close.

...But Conference Call is pretty implicitly "plan status quo", which... I dunno, doesn't grab my support.
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It is not a status quo. It is specifically meant to get a plan and heads up to the ORDI. It is making sure everything is set up so that when the attack happens we can counter immediately and coordinated. And it allows more diplomacy to be done in a single place instead of spreading out those actions with AP.
Driven by Apathy said:
I'm (mostly) not convinced.

To start with, ORDI doesn't mean "The Helghan Republic will give you stuff for (almost) free, forever". It's legitimate that we consider our own interests as well, and we're already giving the ORDI nations exclusivity due to being our allies. Auctioning the ships will simply mean they pay what they think the ships are worth, nothing more, nothing less.

Secondly, I don't believe that auctioning them off will mean the Taurians buy all of them. I think what will happen is that the Taurians buy most of them, and the Coalition and Magistracy focus their bids on a smaller number of ships outbidding the Taurians for those particular ships. Which seems entirely reasonable.

That being said, I see the point in ensuring each of our allies can afford at least one. So how about this (assuming the GM allows doing it with one action point):
  • Sell one ship to each of our allies at a reasonable price. Auction off the rest at a private auction among the ORDI nations. Scrap the remainder, if any.

Hmm... you're right that being driveless will make them much less valuable. That being said, our unique FTL system is a trump card I'm loathe to share.

I also vehemently disagree that not always giving our allies freebies is "a massive blow to relations". Alliance goes both ways. And the assistance with the vaccine, while a nice and appreciated gesture, doesn't really compare the kind of preferential treatment you seem to want. It's not like we couldn't easily develop the vaccine ourselves.

Still, it's worth discussing. What are the points in favor of selling them with their drives, in your view? And why do you think we shouldn't try to maintain exclusivity when it comes to the FTL drive?


If the GM allows it, I'm willing to make a mini-poll asking all voters of Plan Methodical if the plan should be adjusted regarding this matter.
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And where in all of that was there ever anything about giving stuff away at all. The point of the ORDI is mutual protection and cooperation. This auction is literally the opposite of that. It is competition between nations that still don't like each other. And more importantly, the option is to sell squadrons of ships not single vessels as in groups of 3. This entire action along with the "buying" of New Oslo is a huge waste of time and relations. We need to get them to work together not having them compete. Because that serves our intersets. We need them to be allied together properly because we need them as a defensive buffer for ourselves.

As for the FTL you do relize that they can't even understand their own FTL drives right. Without our help they would take decades to develop our FTL drive so selling them the ships with them does not matter. And even if they do they still lack all the rest of the infrastructure required to build them. They would need our help to do that too. The entire point of selling them the decommissioned ships is that they can use them to move military forces with those instead of having to use the Jumpships which allows the jumpships to be used to improve the economic strength of the ORDI. These are military transport. They are no damn use without a FTL drive because they are not strong enough to be a defense force without a massive numeric advantage not to mention like was already pointed out taking the drives out is not an easy or quick thing. They are embedded into the internals of the ship.
Driven by Apathy said:
BTW, I'm fervently opposed to the economic warfare against Caliban of Plan Conference Call against the World. Manufacturing a political crisis or just strong-arming local warlords in order for us to take over is something I'm willing to do, if the situation calls for it.

Manufacturing an economic and ultimately inevitably humanitarian crisis to do the same? That's a dick move at best, and a betrayal of Helghan values at worst. I expect we will get lots of shit over it internally if the truth comes out.
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First of all no we are not creating a humanitarian crisis with the currency devauling. That is the money paid to the mercs, bandits, and soldiers of the pack. Not to the people who already don't have anything to begin with. The point is to weaken the military hold so we can better control them. Second we have more troops on the ground than there are people there is noting we can't handle. Because people decided to waste time and actions on Caliban in the beginning we now have to fix those problems. We have been doing that then you come in without any idea what we are trying to do and call it something it is not. We already invaded the damn planet if our people gave two shits about it they would have said something then not now when we have been there for years. As for your other options maybe take a look at the damn options they are harder to do so you need to lay the ground work which is what we have been trying to do before you came along.
Driven by Apathy said:
That's much better than nothing, admittedly, but I think it would be naive to think a lot of people aren't going to suffer anyway. Quite frankly, if we're willing to go that far, why not take over via naked military force? The harm to the civilian population would be about the same.
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We already did dude. We invaded the damn place and are now stuck playing this game while supporting an army larger than the native population.
DaLintyGuy said:
Even just moving goods to the jump point, negating a week long trip, to load DropShips with bulk goods is still a worthy use for them.
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No it is not because they take even longer than dropships because these things use chemical rockets not fusion drives they are slow as hell. They also cannot dock with a jumpship even if they had a collar (which they do not) because they mass 500,000 tons 5 times the max a jumpdive docking collar can take. Not to mention they are longer and wider than nearly all jumpships in existenace.
 
[N] Sell one decommissioned cruiser to each of our allies at a reasonable price. Auction off the rest at a private auction among the ORDI nations.
[N] Sell the decommissioned cruisers with their FTL drives still intact.

Edit: Changed my vote.
 
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[X] Plan Conference Call against the World.

[X] Sell one decommissioned cruiser to each of our allies at a reasonable price. Auction off the rest at a private auction among the ORDI nations.
[X] Sell the decommissioned cruisers with their FTL drives still intact.
 
Driven by Apathy said:
Alright, I can do that. I was thinking in real life terms, were the scrapyard is the ultimate destination for most warships eventually.
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Eventually yes, but ships are more often than not mothballed or placed in reserve fleets before then because hulls are fairly valuable. Even a ship slated for being scrapped can be held by navies for years before they final go through with it and that's assuming they don't decide to do something like expend it in a weapons test or sell it to an organization be it to operate it in a civilian capacity after being demilitarized or preserving it as museum ship, the latter of which might not be a bad idea. Scrapping functional hulls is also something unheard of in the Inner Sphere and doing so might illicit an even bigger reaction than selling the ships without their drives.

Really that might be what offends the ORDI states more as it implies the Helghast people would rather do something unthinkable, i.e. destroy an irreplaceable piece of technology, rather than give it to those that they claim to be allies. Remember, the Inner Sphere considers attacking JumpShips to be a war crime on par with breaking the Ares Conventions because of how essential they are to society, how few of them are left, and how few are made each year. Helghast ships might not be JumpShips proper but I bet the vast majority of the IS public won't know the difference and they'll consider it no different to someone tearing apart a working JumpShip for scrap metal.

In the eyes of the average Inner Sphere citizen the only reason anyone would consider someone doing something that insane would be if they were trying to deliberately spite someone.

Adventwolf said:
As for the FTL you do relize that they can't even understand their own FTL drives right. Without our help they would take decades to develop our FTL drive so selling them the ships with them does not matter. And even if they do they still lack all the rest of the infrastructure required to build them. They would need our help to do that too. The entire point of selling them the decommissioned ships is that they can use them to move military forces with those instead of having to use the Jumpships which allows the jumpships to be used to improve the economic strength of the ORDI.
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This here is pretty important. JumpShips are a critical bottleneck in BattleTech. More jump capable ships doesn't just mean additional patrol ships or even lift capacity it means a nation can support growth. JumpShip production is insanely limited throughout the Inner Sphere and a lot of that is bought in advance by large companies and the Successor States.

Giving the ORDI states more jump capable ships means that they can redirect portions of their JumpShip fleets otherwise earmarked for military purposes to things such as economic development. Additionally it means that they don't have to commandeer or buy out slots on civilian shipping, disrupting their economies whenever they need to move large amounts of men and materiel. It also makes trading within ORDI space that much more attractive to JumpShip captains who might otherwise be indifferent to operating in the Periphery.

Knowing that the ORDI states won't commandeer their ships and that they have ships that can jump to their aid will be very assuring considering the age old reputation of the Periphery being a haven of lawlessness, conflict, and low profit. The presence of ORDI ships would contradict all three. Armed patrol ships indicating an unwillingness to accept overt criminal activity, the cooperation between the states proving a lack of conflict between them, and that the Periphery nations could afford something that not even the Successor States have stating that there is money to be made there. Most importantly the more JumpShip captains tell their friends that there's money to be made in the Periphery and that it's safe the more JumpShips will come to the Periphery.

ORDI states having more jump capable ships doesn't just aid them militarily but also economically. It also means more JumpShips visiting Helghan.

Edit:

As an additional note, I'm guessing the ORDI states are assuming that these ships are going to be sold with their FTL drives, otherwise they'd be spending money for overgunned DropShips that they can't even be moved because they don't have DropShip collars which I don't see them being as eager to do. And no, retrofitting DropShip collars involves much more than installing a fancy docking port, you would have to effectively rebuild the thing for a JumpShip to be able to carry it. Also of note is that a good chunk of the price of a DropShip comes from the drop collar and associated systems.

That means if the Helghast want to sell their ships without their jump drives and not make them limited to a single solar system they'll have to effectively redesign and rebuild them from the ground up. Assuming they even have the technical know how on how to build DropShips. Otherwise the ORDI states will be dependent on Helghast whenever they want to move their ships which is both counterintuitive to selling them ships if the intention is for them to be able to defend themselves and would also likely engender resentment.

Finally, we have had the size of Helghast FTL drives listed before.

prometheus110 said:
2) In terms of size, it's like, the entire engine assembly is a quarter to a sixth of the ship's length. God knows what the tonnage is, though.
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That is a big chunk of space that is going to have to be accounted for, especially if the drive helps maintain structural integrity as K-F drives do in BattleTech.
 
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Driven by Apathy said:
That's much better than nothing, admittedly, but I think it would be naive to think a lot of people aren't going to suffer anyway. Quite frankly, if we're willing to go that far, why not take over via naked military force? The harm to the civilian population would be about the same.
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The People of the pact are going to suffer no matter what we do, and the primary reason for economic Sabatoge is to make it harder to fund their military military production.
 
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