While i don't always think the plans i propose are good ones, i'm more spitballing to see what sticks.
1. The Dylaarians could be a problem for us. one answer. take e-corp + what ships we can borrow from Collie, Sgurri, and Beans Star. travel up, kick their teeth in like we did with the Sydraxians, and come back. It's a delaying tactic but it has potential. smash an enemies offensive capibility, they can't reinforce the cardassians and suprise us.
That plays interestingly with the "I want to kill the Lampreys" video I just watched...
I'm opposed to this suggestion. The Dylaarians seem relatively peaceful (if super-duper motivated by IP rights). So far we have interacted with the Dylaarians only twice. On both occasions they proved amenable to reason and 'enlightened self-interest.' They are a prime candidate for prying away from the Cardassians, because Cardassia can't give them anything we can't give them too, and we're more likely to respect their cultural values, even if said cultural values make SV forumgoers want to strangle the little geckobastards occasionally.
Furthermore, the Dylaarian expansion into the Gabriel Expanse is not a direct threat to the Federation. The biggest reason we're aggressively fighting the Ashalla Pact in the region is mostly just to prevent the Sydraxians and Cardassians from having an easy route to link up by. Dylaarian colonies in the coreward-spinward corner of the Expanse won't cause a problem with that. The Dylaarian colonies are even farther from the Sydraxian homeworld of Borandt III than the Cardassian border is, after all; any supply line that links Cardassia and the Hierarchy by way of Dylaarian space is going to be so long and roundabout that we've won a major victory just by forcing their ships to travel such a long route.
Moreover, it is likely to cause political dissension in the Council if Ainsworth goes after the Dylaarians. Because
unlike the Cardassians and Sydraxians, the Dylaarians have no history of provoking or attacking us. Very few Council members are upset to see Sydraxian warships explode, after those same warships attacked United Earth holdings repeatedly a few years ago. Cardassian warships, likewise. Even the Pacifists will settle for grumbling quietly when we blow up their ships in aggressive operations. They won't feel that way about the Dylaarians, who have done nothing to us, who have never initiated violence against us, and who were willing to listen to reason during first contact even when they believed we had violated one of their most sacred laws.
Therefore, it would be a
really bad idea to launch a violent pre-emptive strike against the Dylaarians. We'd be alienating a group we have good reason to hope we can one day persuade to abandon the Cardassian cause, a group that is not a threat and has not provoked us in any way, and it would cause us political problems later on.
2. Black ops: we hire the Yrillians to raids the Sydraxian. it ties them us and pushes them away from the cardassians.
One, the Federation government is strongly opposed to this sort of thing. Two, the Yrillians, especially the fierce and piratical Yrillians, tend to like the Sydraxians better than they like us. What's to stop Yrillian pirates from just pocketing the money and, you know,
not attacking the Sydraxians? Or for that matter, just warning the Sydraxians we're coming and staging fake fights or something? The Hierarchy and the Yrillian pirates already collude to run a protection racket on the Gretarians; why wouldn't they collude to run a con on us?
3. very bad idea. war crimes and atrocities. We send Cardassians, Sydraxians, and Dyaarians a biophage care package each. even i'm against this one but hey why not.
Why even suggest things that are horrible if you don't personally approve of doing them?
Don't bring up ideas you know are bad. One of the core values that has carried this thread through roughly six months of OOC time and hundreds of votes is the value expressed by the "this is not an empire quest" tag. We're not trying to conquer the galaxy or do horrible hideous things to our enemies here. A lot of us are enjoying this
entirely because we're playing a decent group of people. It's frustrating and extremely disruptive to have "weaponize the Biophage" come up every ten pages. The questmaster is already tired of it, so much so that he snapped and dropped a collective punishment on the entire quest because people wouldn't shut up about it.
Even if I think that was a little unfair, it really doesn't matter. The Biophage was horrible, ghastly beyond belief. It would make an incredibly dangerous weapon, one far more likely to backfire and wipe out all life in the galaxy than to do anything useful. In-story the Romulans already tried to weaponize it and failed,
leading to the very outbreak that killed a world just last decade.
Please... just stop.
It's not funny. It's not cute, it's not constructive.
Please... just... stop...
4. We draw out the Cardassian scouts with escorts into a trap. hide, pull them in, crush them with larger forces.
Okay this one isn't so bad. It's also the sort of low level tactical detail Ainsworth handles on her own, that is literally what we pay her for, so that we
aren't doing a tactical micromanagement game with our ships in the Expanse.
5. another bad idea. we send the ball up and invade the Sydraxians and finish them off. move on the the Dawiar, then Lecarre.
Don't suggest things you know are bad ideas. It's hurting other people.
6. black ops. support the bajorans resistance movement. distract the Cardassians with other matters.
We literally just signed a treaty where promising not to do this was the cornerstone of the treaty. Did you read the stuff surrounding Celos?
these arn't all mutually exclusive, but some are better plans than others what do you guys think?
I think that willfully suggesting bad ideas that involve doing evil unto people and breaking treaties is a bad thing and I hope you stop.
