The Lords of Ruin -- Battletech/Killzone

[prometheus110]

Map of Known and Suspected Mandate Units, Nuclear Weapons, and Fortifications


According to synthesised intelligence gathered by Republic and Capellan operatives in the Celestial Mandate, the Mandate Armed Forces has anywhere between 7 to 9 free-floating Battlemech regiments in its armed forces in addition to the five regiments that make up McCarron's Armored Cavalry. While small compared even to the Republic's battlemech force, these 12-13 regiments are nonetheless highly experienced and will be fighting in familiar terrain, advantages that will make wrapping them up difficult even with an overwhelming firepower advantage.

In terms of conventional forces, efforts to build up the MAF's conventional arm have seen substantial success; the MAF is now able to call on anything from 48 to 56 such regiments. Split 3:1 between infantry and armoured regiments in favour of the infantry, the MAF's conventional arm is composed of a minimum of 36 infantry regiments and 12 armoured regiments. In terms of composition, these units range from pure foot infantry to fully mechanised/armoured units, and there appears to have been a deliberate effort to ensure that most have access to anti-material weapons suitable for use against power armour.

In addition to these free-floating units, almost all Mandate systems boast planetary militias of varying sizes, loadouts, and abilities. The wealthiest and most populated systems can typically call on at least 4 regiments of planetary militia, some number of conventional fighters, and 1-2 lances of mechs, and the poorest are often limited to a single battalion of infantry.

According to reports from agents embedded within the Mandate Armed Forces, the MAF expects to be able to respond to an attack on a planet in approximately 2 weeks depending on factors such as jumpship availability, whether a message gets out, etc. However, should fighting last longer than that period, the Outer Rim Defence Initiative can expect to see more and more Mandate forces jump into the fray within a matter of days/weeks.

Thanks to a half-decade of efforts, the Rimward and Coreward borders of the Celestial Mandate have been heavily reinforced with multiple forts lying between its capital and its border with ORDI states. Making matters worse, reports from Capellan spies indicate with varying degrees of reliability that the Mandate has deployed nuclear weapons to numerous systems. Between the substantial fortification efforts and the deployment of nuclear weapons, cracking the Celestial Mandate's Coreward border will likely prove difficult.

 

[Retired Explorer]

I see that you're completely ignoring why the FedSuns invest so much into their military as oppose to welfare (hint: it has to do with the two war crime happy factions on their borders).

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This is a somewhat of a void point when the richest realm in the IS also borders the dracs but even of we were to agree that they can't stop comitting crimes because their neighbours are comitting crimes. Have they ever noticed that underdeveloped land is unproductive and thus a liability? The fact that they don't chip away at the Outback's poverty little by little is worse for their military situation than actually not spending as much in their military. They also, somehow, have the buget to help their core worlds (after all, the NAIS was built in 3012 and has been a budget drain since given that R&D requires obscene amounts of money to be fruitfull) but not to improve an Outback planet.​

Lorewise, it is completely against it. The QM is allowing this so we can get our war to get the Outbacks.

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Lorewise, they can be however the authors want but we are talking about this quest and in this quest the sources are treated as unreliable and the Feds have no Doylist reason to be the good guys so they aren't. If you want an example of how a monarchy treats threats to their power (such as people striking) then you could just google the tragic week of Barcelona (Where the spanish monarchy bombarded Barcelona for a whole week because the monarch didn't like people striking), St. Petersburg Bloody Sunday (where a peaceful march led by a clergyman suffered sudden lead poisoning for asking to have human rights) or maybe any event that I would care to mention in the century of iron.​

Yvonne Davion, military commander of the Capellan March, head of Analysis and Speculation of DMI, Prince's Champion: "Am I a fucking joke to you?"

Buddy, back that wild claim with a source or something, yeah?

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Yvonne Davion is all good and great but tell me: How many female historical characters do you know that stood out during the medieval period? Joan of Arc was used as a political pawn and the moment she no longer was usefull she got burnt alive, Isabel the Catholic (queen of Spain) is mainly remembered as the wife of Ferdinand the Catholic, hell, her daughter is only remembered because she gave birth to the first emperor of Spain (she literally was sent to an insane asylum and died there). Reality teaches us that feudal societies are not exactly egalitarian.
​

Even if we were to limit our analysis of feudal societies to Battletech's. Yvonne still doesn't escape her dynastic obligation of giving birth to some tyke otherwise the Stainer-Davions would go extinct thus causing a power vacuum followed by a civil war, arguably, the most important thing she did for the stability of the realm was giving birth thus the intrinsic value of a woman in BT still depends on their ability to give birth.​

 

[SuperHeavy]

Well if I had to guess the plan for the Mandate is to promply nuke rush our MAWLR units while trying to tie up our PA and better equipment in urban fortresses. Good news is that we can bring capital grade firepower and plenty of ASF interceptors to the fight thanks to the navy. The former can batter the forts into surrendering or failing that into molten glass. The latter can run cover for our ground forces against a lucky ASF with a can of sunshine slung underneath. Outside of their forts I am not overly worried about their conventional forces of conscripts and armor. Plus a single Noctis class cruiser in system makes any incoming reinforcement dropships dead meat.

 

[always_confused]

13 Regiments? Interesting. I'm curious how many are surviving stock from the end of the 3rd Succ and how many are new creations.

 

[Just Some Guy]

Between the substantial fortification efforts and the deployment of nuclear weapons, cracking the Celestial Mandate's Coreward border will likely prove difficult.

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Belka is that you?

 

[Chloe Sullivan]

Yvonne Davion is all good and great but tell me: How many female historical characters do you know that stood out during the medieval period? Joan of Arc was used as a political pawn and the moment she no longer was usefull she got burnt alive, Isabel the Catholic (queen of Spain) is mainly remembered as the wife of Ferdinand the Catholic, hell, her daughter is only remembered because she gave birth to the first emperor of Spain (she literally was sent to an insane asylum and died there). Reality teaches us that feudal societies are not exactly egalitarian.

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LOL. The point of a feudal structure is to have a bunch or nobility of varying ranks. Egalitarianism is obviously counter to that.

But if you mean gender egalitarianism, I would point out that in many place women had more legal rights and a higher chance at political and economic power in the high Middle Ages than the Renaissance/Early modern.

The past was far from equal in any sense, but "women only mattered for their womb" is ahistoric nonsense.

 

[Retired Explorer]

LOL. The point of a feudal structure is to have a bunch or nobility of varying ranks. Egalitarianism is obviously counter to that.

But if you mean gender egalitarianism, I would point out that in many place women had more legal rights and a higher chance at political and economic power in the high Middle Ages than the Renaissance/Early modern.

The past was far from equal in any sense, but "women only mattered for their womb" is ahistoric nonsense.

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Yeah, I totally agree that the Renaissance/Early modern era was not a time where women were free and it is also very important to note that both "Middle Ages" and "Renaissance" are eurocentrist descriptors. I don't know much about history outside of Europe, China and the Middle East, so it is obviously possible that there were other societies outside my knowledge that were more mindful about gender egalitarianism.

However, I totally disagree with "women only mattered for their womb" being ahistorical (though it is nonsense). The salic law specifically said that women, nor their heirs, could inherit this law was widely used in Europe to the point that the 100 year war was caused by it (this law also caused 5 Civil Wars in Spain but that happened after Napoleon so it is part of the Modern period), one of the causes of the orthodox-catholic schism in the late 8th century was that the Archbishop of Rome (he wasn't yet Pope) didn't want Irene of Athens as Empress of the Roman Empire or there's also the tradition of throwing acid at women's face when they married someone their familly didn't agree with...

Feudal societies cared about women because of their capabilities of making babies because feudal societies were dynastic societies (a person's rights and position in society comes from who their parents are) if a member of the family married with someone of lesser importance would mean that their children were of lesser importance, thus making the whole family less important (women were assets for social climbing and securing power bases).​

 

[KnightofTempest]

Yeah, I totally agree that the Renaissance/Early modern era was not a time where women were free and it is also very important to note that both "Middle Ages" and "Renaissance" are eurocentrist descriptors. I don't know much about history outside of Europe, China and the Middle East, so it is obviously possible that there were other societies outside my knowledge that were more mindful about gender egalitarianism.

However, I totally disagree with "women only mattered for their womb" being ahistorical (though it is nonsense). The salic law specifically said that women, nor their heirs, could inherit this law was widely used in Europe to the point that the 100 year war was caused by it (this law also caused 5 Civil Wars in Spain but that happened after Napoleon so it is part of the Modern period), one of the causes of the orthodox-catholic schism in the late 8th century was that the Archbishop of Rome (he wasn't yet Pope) didn't want Irene of Athens as Empress of the Roman Empire or there's also the tradition of throwing acid at women's face when they married someone their familly didn't agree with...

Feudal societies cared about women because of their capabilities of making babies because feudal societies were dynastic societies (a person's rights and position in society comes from who their parents are) if a member of the family married with someone of lesser importance would mean that their children were of lesser importance, thus making the whole family less important (women were assets for social climbing and securing power bases).​

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Salic Law wasn't used outside of France and England, since it was considered too strict in a lot of other places.

Germany practiced Male preference primogeniture, which still allowed men descended from the Female Line to inherit if their claim was the best, as did Italy and Spain.

A lot of Eastern Europe still went with regular primogeniture, in which the firstborn child of either sex inherited. That's how we got things like Jadwiga, Queen Regnant of Poland, or Olga of Kiev.

Basically? Europe wasn't a monoculture and a lot depended on where you loved and when.

 

[silverwolf]

Ok which nation is white on the south-southwest border?

 

[Retired Explorer]

Salic Law wasn't used outside of France and England, since it was considered too strict in a lot of other places.

Germany practiced Male preference primogeniture, which still allowed men descended from the Female Line to inherit if their claim was the best, as did Italy and Spain.

A lot of Eastern Europe still went with regular primogeniture, in which the firstborn child of either sex inherited. That's how we got things like Jadwiga, Queen Regnant of Poland, or Olga of Kiev.

Basically? Europe wasn't a monoculture and a lot depended on where you loved and when.

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The salic law is indeed a frankish law first published somewhere in the 6th century, the Kingdom of the Franks eventually conquered a whole lot of Europe and created the Holy Roman Empire, which is to say Frankia is not France; Frankia is Northern Italy, France, Catalunya, Navarre and Germany. This particular law doesn't really seem to depend on the place but on, for example, Isaballa the Catholic was a Tratamara and so she ccould inherit but her daughter couldn't not only because (according to the consensus of the time) she was insane but because the Habsburg do practice the Salic law.

Spain, once again, had 3 Civil Wars (I was wrong on the previous reply) because of it, they are called the Carlist Wars.​

 

[Omega-Chris]

Ok which nation is white on the south-southwest border?

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There is no nation there those are all independent worlds.

 

[KnightofTempest]

The salic law is indeed a frankish law first published somewhere in the 6th century, the Kingdom of the Franks eventually conquered a whole lot of Europe and created the Holy Roman Empire, which is to say Frankia is not France; Frankia is Northern Italy, France, Catalunya, Navarre and Germany. This particular law doesn't really seem to depend on the place but on, for example, Isaballa the Catholic was a Tratamara and so she ccould inherit but her daughter couldn't not only because (according to the consensus of the time) she was insane but because the Habsburg do practice the Salic law.

Spain, once again, had 3 Civil Wars (I was wrong on the previous reply) because of it, they are called the Carlist Wars.​

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I mean, you say that about the Hapsburgs, but then Maria Theresa is a thing. . .

Salic law tended to only apply up to a point outside of France. Usually, that point was when your dynasty was going to not be eligible to keep their thrones.

The French keeping Salic Law around up until the Revolution is the exception, not the rule.

 

[Nottheunmaker]

If we want to avoid nukes, the rimward border seem free of them. Might also indicate they don't expect the Helghast to jump in during a potential conflict, which seems very silly, but maybe they know something we don't.

Still, if nukes are mostly concentrated on the borders, we can mostly just skip over them. The main problem area looks to be Victoria, as expected of the political and industrial center.

If we can get commando units to hit the nuclear weapon site, MAWLRs would be free to ravage the more traditional fortifications. Nothing new in that thought, but it's still good to have in mind. Our navy keeps potential reinforcements out, combined arms for the ground side.

 

[Kelenas]

Map of Known and Suspected Mandate Units, Nuclear Weapons, and Fortifications

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Regarding the nuclear weapons; how numerous are they - both in total, and per location - and what forms do they have? Ie, are they large, long-range missiles akin to ICBMs? Shorter-ranged missiles launched from strikecraft? Dumb-bombs to be dropped, or used as nuclear mines? Some sort of mix?

 

[Gmerguy]

I mean, you say that about the Hapsburgs, but then Maria Theresa is a thing. . .

Salic law tended to only apply up to a point outside of France. Usually, that point was when your dynasty was going to not be eligible to keep their thrones.

The French keeping Salic Law around up until the Revolution is the exception, not the rule.

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...I mean this is interesting but does it even matter here? The Inner Sphere runs on Neo-Feudalism not actual feudalism, and FASA didn't describe it granularly enough how it worked in Battletech to make a functional system because that wasn't necessary for big stompy robot fights.

Doylist logic here is that its a "Handwave Government" that purely exists for flavor and whatever Neo-Feudal system exists is functional, to one degree or another, given its been around for centuries. Details are filled in only as needed and everything else is left blank, because they are not necessary.

 

[Nalanaya]

So, correct me if I'm wrong guys...the Mandate doesn't have all that much offensive capability in terms of jump-ships to transport their forces, or ASF squadrons and Assault Dropships to fight Helghan cruisers, right? That is why they are focused on the defensive.

So what exactly is stopping us from just keeping some warships along the heavily fortified border with most of their mech regiments to blow them away if they try to invade, and then taking the rest of our forces up through the bottom left across the diagonal of undefended worlds? Effectively cutting off the two heavily fortified borders from supplying each other and putting pressure on both fronts?

Or for that matter, just pushing in and destroying all space assets until the Mandate effectively can't leave their fortresses to strike back or support each other, then pick them apart at our leisure.

I suppose it really comes down to the amount of the Navy we think we can afford to commit. Past a critical threshold, naval firepower sufficient to completely counter an opposing navy with minimal risk on our part makes a lot of things in war much simpler for us (even if we can't just completely halt all jumpship movement in the Mandate or prevent smuggling smaller amounts of troops/ammo because it'd cause a major humanitarian crisis by starving some planets).

But, while the Mandate fight is going down, it's likely that the Outback revolution will kick off too. The Cappies shifting thier forces to fight the Mandate means all the other Houses can relax their own forces on the border to more concerning areas mean for the FS at least probably more military presence and tension in the Outback and/or Draconis March. And then war along either front would lead to more war along the other while the FS are distracted. Well, all this or the opposite way around, with war in the FS freeing up the Cappellans to attack and/or prompting the Mandate to go on the offensive while the ORDI is busy in the Outback since it's clear to all that they aren't winning a slow cold-war.
Which means in either case, the Fleet is torn in three directions of invading and neutralizing Mandate space forces (and in the best case only that if Canopus and the Aurigans can provide the supply chain), countering Davion War ships and numerous assault Dropships in the Outback, and finally policing our own territories from the various pirates that come out of the wood work when a war kicks off.

I suppose seperate from all this, the real mystery is what the FWL and LC will do. They've got no stake in any of the others troubles, and so the smart thing to do might be to just safe-guard their own developing economies using the core and stay out of the war. But their Great Houses, and a conflict will make the Cappellans and Dracs more vulnerable for the FWL/LC respectively. And going to war with either of those could make them look vulnerable to each other. And since neither of them like each other or their neighbors very much, and both still have some control issues with overly independent and glory seeking (reckless) subordinates due to their respective division/corruption...things look weighed against them to get involved even before accounting for ComStar. How exactly they do and who they target could be a real problem though. The FWL pouncing on the Cappellans rear is NOT GOOD for war with the Mandate, since the Caps are the only source of immediate pressure on the 'northern' border to keep them from reinforcing the south.

 

[KnightofTempest]

So, correct me if I'm wrong guys...the Mandate doesn't have all that much offensive capability in terms of jump-ships to transport their forces, or ASF squadrons and Assault Dropships to fight Helghan cruisers, right? That is why they are focused on the defensive.

So what exactly is stopping us from just keeping some warships along the heavily fortified border with most of their mech regiments to blow them away if they try to invade, and then taking the rest of our forces up through the bottom left across the diagonal of undefended worlds? Effectively cutting off the two heavily fortified borders from supplying each other and putting pressure on both fronts?

Or for that matter, just pushing in and destroying all space assets until the Mandate effectively can't leave their fortresses to strike back or support each other, then pick them apart at our leisure.

I suppose it really comes down to the amount of the Navy we think we can afford to commit. Past a critical threshold, naval firepower sufficient to completely counter an opposing navy with minimal risk on our part makes a lot of things in war much simpler for us (even if we can't just completely halt all jumpship movement in the Mandate or prevent smuggling smaller amounts of troops/ammo because it'd cause a major humanitarian crisis by starving some planets).

But, while the Mandate fight is going down, it's likely that the Outback revolution will kick off too. The Cappies shifting thier forces to fight the Mandate means all the other Houses can relax their own forces on the border to more concerning areas mean for the FS at least probably more military presence and tension in the Outback and/or Draconis March. And then war along either front would lead to more war along the other while the FS are distracted. Well, all this or the opposite way around, with war in the FS freeing up the Cappellans to attack and/or prompting the Mandate to go on the offensive while the ORDI is busy in the Outback since it's clear to all that they aren't winning a slow cold-war.
Which means in either case, the Fleet is torn in three directions of invading and neutralizing Mandate space forces (and in the best case only that if Canopus and the Aurigans can provide the supply chain), countering Davion War ships and numerous assault Dropships in the Outback, and finally policing our own territories from the various pirates that come out of the wood work when a war kicks off.

I suppose seperate from all this, the real mystery is what the FWL and LC will do. They've got no stake in any of the others troubles, and so the smart thing to do might be to just safe-guard their own developing economies using the core and stay out of the war. But their Great Houses, and a conflict will make the Cappellans and Dracs more vulnerable for the FWL/LC respectively. And going to war with either of those could make them look vulnerable to each other. And since neither of them like each other or their neighbors very much, and both still have some control issues with overly independent and glory seeking (reckless) subordinates due to their respective division/corruption...things look weighed against them to get involved even before accounting for ComStar. How exactly they do and who they target could be a real problem though. The FWL pouncing on the Cappellans rear is NOT GOOD for war with the Mandate, since the Caps are the only source of immediate pressure on the 'northern' border to keep them from reinforcing the south.

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Because we need to attack them to take the pressure off the rebels, that was the whole point of doing this.

We sit on the defensive and the rebels we both trained and equipped will be crushed by Mandate Mech Forces they are not trained to fight.

They don't have anything heavier than a few mortars right now. The second they try to actually seize any meaningful facilities, they either get bailed out by allies or ground into the dirt. That's how it is.

Do you want them to get crushed?

Or worse, the Capellans swoop in and do all the work, thereby getting all the influence, leaving us with nothing to show for our multiple turns of prepwork but expenditures with no gains either in soft or hard power.

 

[Nalanaya]

Because we need to attack them to take the pressure off the rebels, that was the whole point of doing this.

We sit on the defensive and the rebels we both trained and equipped will be crushed by Mandate Mech Forces they are not trained to fight.

They don't have anything heavier than a few mortars right now. The second they try to actually seize any meaningful facilities, they either get bailed out by allies or ground into the dirt. That's how it is.

Do you want them to get crushed?

Or worse, the Capellans swoop in and do all the work, thereby getting all the influence, leaving us with nothing to show for our multiple turns of prepwork but expenditures with no gains either in soft or hard power.

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How exactly did you get 'sit on the defensive' from 'use the navy to crush the Mandate fleet and sweep up the middle diagonal'?

For all those worlds with no fortifications, likely nukes, or pre-assigned mech regiments? I'd assume taking them is only natural and relatively quick to do. In any event, wouldn't those also be the places with the most rebels around who could also do the most around because the Mandate presence is so weak? Because the fortress worlds on the border, which we would invade eventually no matter what...are the places where the rebels are likely the weakest and matter the least anyway. Not unless all of them also have all of the Mandates critical industry centers (which weren't part of the map, though some of them probably do).

Hell, even if a space-sweep didn't include landing on even the most vulnerable Mandate worlds, it would still take the pressure off the Rebels. The Mandate would have to leverage it's forces to try to counter us after-all, and that would limit what they could bring to bear against the rebellion, while on the flip side we could provide more resources faster to insurgents.

 

[Anon500]

To add onto this point, taking most of the naval fleet and land forces and disappearing from the expected fronts means that they suddenly need to scramble their reserves to either defend somewhere else (wherever the hell they expect us to attack now), try to attack (good luck) or just hold prayer sessions that we aren't just skipping the front lines entirely by warping past them (yeah, nothing says we need to get within nuke range of the border planets. Just jump and jump again).

Seriously, why are we debating attacking a heavily entrenched position when there are any number of ways we could maneuver to make most of their forces and fortifications useless.

(Listen, I say all this, but I totally admit I could be missing something... But, couldn't we just... You know... Skip past the border and assault the capital? Provide the only distraction we need by getting the mad laio to recall all her troops, while we sit in orbit and let her reduce her domain to a single planet)

 

[GardenerBriareus]

But if you mean gender egalitarianism, I would point out that in many place women had more legal rights and a higher chance at political and economic power in the high Middle Ages than the Renaissance/Early modern.

The past was far from equal in any sense, but "women only mattered for their womb" is ahistoric nonsense.

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I'll add on to this that there was a definite reactionary misogynist movement in opposition to figures like Joan of Arc; it's no coincidence that a lot of the female Catholic saints come from before the 1500s, and you had QAnon esque misogynistic conspiracy theories like the witch panic starting to spring up as of the late 1400s.

 

[zezia]

(Listen, I say all this, but I totally admit I could be missing something... But, couldn't we just... You know... Skip past the border and assault the capital? Provide the only distraction we need by getting the mad laio to recall all her troops, while we sit in orbit and let her reduce her domain to a single planet)

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Remember she is not the ruler anymore

According to the Capellan Confederation, Celestial Empress Romano Liao is no such thing. Though responsible for the Mandate's independence in the first place and empress for several years, Romano Liao was nonetheless the victim of a palace coup by a coalition of nobles over a decade ago. Backed by the Mandate's intelligence service and McCarron's Armoured Cavalry, the coupists quietly deposed Liao in 3029 and made her a prisoner in her own palace; every public appearance and video message after that point faked, monitored, and/or manipulated to give the appearance that she still ruled the nation --something helped by the Capellan tradition of their ruler rarely being seen in public.

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We could maybe take their capital and force a complete surrender. Since it's not being ruled by an insane despot these nobles might have enough sense to accept total surrender.

 

[Always Late]

How exactly did you get 'sit on the defensive' from 'use the navy to crush the Mandate fleet and sweep up the middle diagonal'?

For all those worlds with no fortifications, likely nukes, or pre-assigned mech regiments? I'd assume taking them is only natural and relatively quick to do. In any event, wouldn't those also be the places with the most rebels around who could also do the most around because the Mandate presence is so weak? Because the fortress worlds on the border, which we would invade eventually no matter what...are the places where the rebels are likely the weakest and matter the least anyway. Not unless all of them also have all of the Mandates critical industry centers (which weren't part of the map, though some of them probably do).

Hell, even if a space-sweep didn't include landing on even the most vulnerable Mandate worlds, it would still take the pressure off the Rebels. The Mandate would have to leverage it's forces to try to counter us after-all, and that would limit what they could bring to bear against the rebellion, while on the flip side we could provide more resources faster to insurgents.

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There's two words that make any Warship-centric plan something not done without the highest level of strategic planning: The Ares Convention.

You don't do nukes. You don't do orbital bombardment. The use of Warships as anything other than countering other Warships or overly expensive and inefficient cargo-haulers has been dead in the Inner Sphere for centuries. Breaking the precedent of the Succession Wars and announcing to the Inner Sphere we have a goddamn navy is the best way to make people think "Amaris is back". Because that's what makes the Ares Conventions more powerful than any long-dead court of military law that'd care about investigations on whether a ballistic missile hit too close to a city: It's the one thing all these war-happy lunatics agree on, how a war should and should not be fought.

If we're going to announce to the Inner Sphere that our military runs off of Warships, especially before the Outback War kicks off, you better have a plan.

A way to help soften the blow may be to render bombardments under a second-strike ROE. We can move ships around, but glassing only starts once Article One has been confirmed breached, thus showing the Mandate's just being crazy.

(Listen, I say all this, but I totally admit I could be missing something... But, couldn't we just... You know... Skip past the border and assault the capital? Provide the only distraction we need by getting the mad laio to recall all her troops, while we sit in orbit and let her reduce her domain to a single planet)

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WWII Pacific style bypassing of islands worked there because the IJA were on mostly uninhabited islands. Here, we have amoral mercs sitting in massive civilian population centers. We have to get them to surrender, rather than just start gunning down civvies when the checks bounce. That means direct engagement.

 

[mmgaballah]

The Ares Convention.

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we never signed those , and its a point of pride for the Taurians that they never gave so much as a single fuck about them , besides the inner sphere lords wipe their asses with the The Ares Convention on a semi regular basis whenever they get in the way and have been doing so for more than 300 years by this point and lastly the Mandate have Nukes stationed at their border forts and they didn't put them there so they don't get used so there isn't even the pretense that they are following the convention

 

[Omega-Chris]

(Listen, I say all this, but I totally admit I could be missing something... But, couldn't we just... You know... Skip past the border and assault the capital? Provide the only distraction we need by getting the mad laio to recall all her troops, while we sit in orbit and let her reduce her domain to a single planet)

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One word logistics. If we try to attack their capital we will be outrunning our supply line by allot. Which is just a recipe for disaster. Heck we may be able to capture the capital but we won't be able to hold it without a proper supply line.

I do have a different plan that doesn't involve us attacking the heavily fortified worlds on the border. If you look closely on the map Calavor is pretty close to the border with the Aurigans.
It's also not very heavily defended and has no nukes. This is why it's the perfect place to establish our beachhead.

However I do think we need to do another intelligence check before committing. As currently it looks so good that it may be a trap.

However is it isn't one I say we attack and take it. Once Calavor is captured and heavily garrisoned (as it's likely that the forces from either Sunnywood or Midthun or both will try to retake it) preferably with a MAWLR we essentially have a straight path to the capital. And allong the way we can draw out the forces stationed on the border worlds by attacking the planets behind them.

 

[Always Late]

we never signed those , and its a point of pride for the Taurians that they never gave so much as a single fuck about them , besides the inner sphere lords wipe their asses with the The Ares Convention on a semi regular basis whenever they get in the way and have been doing so for more than 300 years by this point and lastly the Mandate have Nukes stationed at their border forts and they didn't put them there so they don't get used so there isn't even the pretense that they are following the convention

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That's why perception matters. Even if Star League is dead, even if ComStar doesn't slap people about every infraction, It's about social norms and international standards. What makes the Successor Lords care because it affects their ability to rule and wage war. So unless you feel like experiencing the Putin Speedrun, it's a good idea to brush up on your literature.