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The Practice War [Complete]

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me.me.here said:
Don't be ridiculous, now. Extragalactic invaders are clearly Season 2 bad guys, they'll only come after the fight for freedom and hope against the Shiplords trashes half the galaxy.

I mean, come on, that's basic magical girl genre savviness. :V
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??? man(?), you get it wrong. They'll come in the middle of the fight with the SL, which requires making common cause with the SL and some anti-traitorous SL action, with a big SL-hero reveal ...
 
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MTB said:
??? man(?), you get it wrong. They'll come in the middle of the fight with the SL, which requires making common cause with the SL and some anti-traitorous SL action, with a big SL-hero reveal ...
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This is deep genre savviness tho, I only have a basic level.

Also, there's a bunch of non magical girl related reasons for why extragalactic invaders would wait until everything was on fire, they just aren't as funny to talk about.
 
me.me.here said:
Also, there's a bunch of non magical girl related reasons for why extragalactic invaders would wait until everything was on fire, they just aren't as funny to talk about.
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Nonono, you see, the extragalactic invaders are running from a more severe threat, that is following them! And our heroes must journey to the origin and resolve the secrets of this crusade!
 
MTB said:
I think DP wants to come up with an idea for SL logistics/deployment capabilites and constraints. If you've got 3 warfleets and a cruise speed of 200LY per day, that's another story than 35 warfleets and a cruise speed of 20000LY per day.
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@Snowfire I actually would suggest taking this up with the technical team, if you haven't already, as this sort of logistical detail will determine whether and how the Shiplords will respond after Third Sol, and again after Fourth Sol.

veekie said:
Huh...it sounds a LOT like the War Fleets are essentially Byzantine Cataphracts:
-Fast as all hell
-Functionally indestructible, they were too armored for missile weapons to hurt, and too mobile for siege
-Functionally irresistable, whatever they hit would be broken by a hail of arrows and then run over by a charge.

With the drawback of being ludicrously expensive to maintain and deploy.
Nearly impossible to replace too, they took a lifetime of training to raise.
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Our biggest issue is that Practice is sort of the same: extremely powerful, but has a long, long training time to raise combat-capable Potentials. Boutique specialists like this always inevitably fall to societies and weapons that can be employed on industrial scales: iron replaced bronze not because it was initially better but because it was cheaper, and muskets replaced longbows, despite being slower to fire and less accurate, because they were fast to train soldiers with.

It's one reason I've been such an advocate for research into combat drones, automation, ans Secrets, all of which can be employed on industrial scales (especially the Sixth Secret). Specialists like Amanda, Mary and Iris, individuals with training times measured in decades, should never see front-line combat: even if they are better at it than a thousand cheap drones, the key is to employ two thousand drones for every one of them, and rely on economies of scale to make up the difference. It takes some of the romance out of fighting, but romance is better between Amanda and Mary off the battlefield anyway.

MTB said:
Lagless stealthed couriers deployed at the end of lagless communication range. If you are the regular fleet called to inspect 'wtf is going on with this tributee', you'd do that precaution at minimum, even if you 'just' suspect that some other power/or whatever dwells in darkness uses them as patsies.
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Which is why I'm still so baffled that hasn't happened already. I mean, the Shiplords were already willing to break their own RoE, in a task normally so important to them that it's considered among the highest postings in their society, and second an extremely expensive Regulars cruiser to their Tribute fleet which then intervened at a point where it couldn't have known the Tributary Cycle was broken, but they couldn't include a couple of cheap courier units (and maybe a not-so-cheap one with a good lagless sensor suite)? I mean, I know why they did it in a Doylist sense, because if they did the Quest would effectively be over by War Fleet before Earth could possibly be ready for one, but it still baffles me why the Shiplords would throw a Medicamet at a problem that would have made much more sense having half a dozen courier units thrown at it instead.
 
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With millions years of experience, reinforced tribute fleet might have sounded like likely overkill but not too expensive.
And there was still the tombstone system - I bet there aren't many instances where that system was demolished by a tributee.
 
TheEyes said:
Which is why I'm still so baffled that hasn't happened already. I mean, the Shiplords were already willing to break their own RoE, in a task normally so important to them that it's considered among the highest postings in their society, and second an extremely expensive Regulars cruiser to their Tribute fleet which then intervened at a point where it couldn't have known the Tributary Cycle was broken, but they couldn't include a couple of cheap courier units (and maybe a not-so-cheap one with a good lagless sensor suite)? I mean, I know why they did it in a Doylist sense, because if they did the Quest would effectively be over by War Fleet before Earth could possibly be ready for one, but it still baffles me why the Shiplords would throw a Medicamet at a problem that would have made much more sense having half a dozen courier units thrown at it instead.
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If I were to hazard a guess it has something to do with either the tradition of the Tribute fleet not having tech above the 'proper level' or just institutional inertia
 
TheEyes said:
I mean, the Shiplords were already willing to break their own RoE, in a task normally so important to them that it's considered among the highest postings in their society, and second an extremely expensive Regulars cruiser to their Tribute fleet which then intervened at a point where it couldn't have known the Tributary Cycle was broken
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There are a lot of assumptions in this sentence.
 
So a bit of an odd question @Snowfire do we have any plans to capture Shiplords during the Third Battle of Sol if things go well? Prisoners could provide us with a wealth of information.
 
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DragonParadox said:
So a bit of an odd question @Snowfire do we have any plans to capture Shiplords during the Third Battle of Sol if things go well? Prisoners could provide us with a wealth of information.
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*takes a moment to check for magpie influence* :V

@MTB has the right of it. Prisoners are very much a quaternary objective, and possibly even further down the list. It's something that the War Office and Ministry of Security would absolutely love to be able to place higher on the list, but that they also know they can't.

Victory is more important.
 
MTB said:
Clarification: Victory == Survival. Bonus points for 'nearly no collateral damage', hard-core award for 'only moderate military losses'.
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Lina is actually somewhat confidently aiming for the second one. The FSN is going to bleed for it, but in the end, that's what its crews signed up for. None of them want to die, but every serving member in the FSN swears an oath to defend humanity. Sometimes, that calls for sacrifice.

And in a choice between them and civilians on Mars or Earth or your inner-system stations? They'll make that sacrifice.
 
uju32 said:
We've seen Practice used to prevent external action, and to neutralize mindcontrol/bodycontrol imperatives.
I don't think we've actually seen Practice used to subvert a personal decision.
And I rather doubt you'll find a Mender with the mindset to do that.
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Still might be worth looking into, when you are dealing with the threat of trillions dying, the personal agency of one of the people committing the genocide weights very lightly indeed IMO.
 
DragonParadox said:
Still might be worth looking into, when you are dealing with the threat of trillions dying, the personal agency of one of the people committing the genocide weights very lightly indeed IMO.
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Problem uju pointed to: Practice is insofar similar to Dresden magic, as it works on a 'I really want that' on a soul-deep basis. And that opens up all the slippery slope of 'justified means'.
One of the reasons Amanda is still thinking about 'Purify', I think.
 
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