To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
- Start date
- Sci-Fi
-
- Tags
- star trek exploration fully automated luxury gay space communism top level canon (canon) #hashtagcontent all-encompassing space amoeba cardassian boy bands cardassian magical girls darkest bureaucracy debate makes the qm cackle like palpatine hoh is an empire quest it has to be foreign infiltrators more ships ship happens singers delenda est starfleet this is not an empire quest ur waifu is collective?
- Location
- madison
I had actually forgotten about that. huh, well the certianly are doing what we asked. those Megatortises are amazing.
Hey everybody, sorry about the 'wall o' text'. Normally I wouldn't do something like that, but I wrote it on a plane and posted it using my phone as a hotspot while waiting to get off. Been a little busy up until right now, despite a few quick replies I posted on my phone.
Despite my many crimes against formatting, I basically stand by the content of the strategy to the president that I outline:
1. No garrison requirements for the duration, allowing us to pull as many Starfleet vessels as we need.
2. No drawdown in the Gabriel Expanse.
3. United Earth, Rigellian, Betazoid, and Vulcan member fleets requested to go all in.
4. Tellar and Andor fleets requested to be allowed to operate in Sol, Rigel, and Vulcan sectors to take up the slack for missing ships.
5. Other member fleets requested to hang tight to secure our other borders.
6. Deny the Licori one big battle where they can wipe out our fleet with a superweapon.
7. Coordinate with the Ked Peddah as high priority.
Am I missing anything important from that?
Despite my many crimes against formatting, I basically stand by the content of the strategy to the president that I outline:
1. No garrison requirements for the duration, allowing us to pull as many Starfleet vessels as we need.
2. No drawdown in the Gabriel Expanse.
3. United Earth, Rigellian, Betazoid, and Vulcan member fleets requested to go all in.
4. Tellar and Andor fleets requested to be allowed to operate in Sol, Rigel, and Vulcan sectors to take up the slack for missing ships.
5. Other member fleets requested to hang tight to secure our other borders.
6. Deny the Licori one big battle where they can wipe out our fleet with a superweapon.
7. Coordinate with the Ked Peddah as high priority.
Am I missing anything important from that?
I'm doing my detailed read-through of Nerzizza's battle now.
Thoughts as I proceed:
- Over 50% evasion rate by the Apiata in 20 turns.
- Drops to a more reasonable 30 to 40% as battle goes on. Still nuts.
- At 80 turns, one stinger has dealt almost half of the entire fleet's damage.
- Damage is pretty evenly spread except for the poor CDF Icaran which just got pooped on by sticky stingers.
- At 120 turns the Grizzi has caught up to the Triada in damage dealt. Interestingly both ships have also taken a disproportionate number of hits.
- There's this insane section where three Apiata ships evade in a row, then there's scratch damage on a Queenship, then three more evasions in a row.
- Damage is trending the Apita's fleet's way slowly, 120 to 90. Think the main difference is evasion rate.
- The CDF Icaran has gotten a long respite. The Triada is losing shields now, but has jumped back up to double the damage dealt of the nearest Apiata ship. Penetration is hurting the two stingers that still have high shields, they're both down to 80% effectiveness. But the Apiata damage lead is increasing.
- More triple evades. The CDF Icaran is getting shot again, stingers are sticky to it again. The damn thing is down to 0.03 hull and 0.01 combat effectiveness. It gets 4 more shots off before it dies.
- Apiata evade rate is 38%. And only NOW we get Way of the Bee.
- CDF Benakot and CDF Anakar reduced to zero shields. That's a Kaldar and a Combat-Variant Takaaki.
- The Fozarri gets hit hard. Stinger is down to 60% effectiveness from burnthrough, now loses shields. The Triada also loses shields. Apiata endurance starting to run out. The fleet as a whole is down to 83% combat effectiveness vs the Cardassians at 76%, and this despite the Cardies losing an entire C4 ship. (61% accounting for the Queenships being poop).
- Hits starting to mount on the H1 stingers. The Fozarri also gets a triple-hit combo off on the CDF Benakot, which might have saved the battle. Hull damage triggers a retreat on the Cardassian side, and they must have rolled amazing because it takes them one turn to leave.
- Apiata final combat effectiveness is 72.5% vs 74.12% for the Cardassians. As in, they were pulling ahead. e: Accounting for the Queenships as only 1/3 as effective, it's 50.3% combat effectiveness. Wow.
- Evade rate: 39.4% for the Apiata, 17.5% Cardassians.
- We dealt 233.87 damage. The Cardassians dealt 179.18 damage. That is not entirely accounted for by the evade rate difference.
- Unsure what the point of Queenships are. They dealt 27.42/233.87 damage, or 11.7%. They took 18 out of 175 shots, or 10.3%. For reference, they were 33% of the fleet, so that means they involve themselves 1/3 as much as Stingers do. If they had not been present, the Stingers might have won anyway. And if we had lost, I would point to them as the reason we lost.
- We captured one unit of Cardassian techs.
- @OneirosTheWriter I notice there's no fleet total stats in the end of battle breakdown like there is in the one every 20 rounds. Also, no one was awarded the "kill" for disabling the CDF Icaran.
Thoughts as I proceed:
- Over 50% evasion rate by the Apiata in 20 turns.
- Drops to a more reasonable 30 to 40% as battle goes on. Still nuts.
- At 80 turns, one stinger has dealt almost half of the entire fleet's damage.
- Damage is pretty evenly spread except for the poor CDF Icaran which just got pooped on by sticky stingers.
- At 120 turns the Grizzi has caught up to the Triada in damage dealt. Interestingly both ships have also taken a disproportionate number of hits.
- There's this insane section where three Apiata ships evade in a row, then there's scratch damage on a Queenship, then three more evasions in a row.
- Damage is trending the Apita's fleet's way slowly, 120 to 90. Think the main difference is evasion rate.
- The CDF Icaran has gotten a long respite. The Triada is losing shields now, but has jumped back up to double the damage dealt of the nearest Apiata ship. Penetration is hurting the two stingers that still have high shields, they're both down to 80% effectiveness. But the Apiata damage lead is increasing.
- More triple evades. The CDF Icaran is getting shot again, stingers are sticky to it again. The damn thing is down to 0.03 hull and 0.01 combat effectiveness. It gets 4 more shots off before it dies.
- Apiata evade rate is 38%. And only NOW we get Way of the Bee.
- CDF Benakot and CDF Anakar reduced to zero shields. That's a Kaldar and a Combat-Variant Takaaki.
- The Fozarri gets hit hard. Stinger is down to 60% effectiveness from burnthrough, now loses shields. The Triada also loses shields. Apiata endurance starting to run out. The fleet as a whole is down to 83% combat effectiveness vs the Cardassians at 76%, and this despite the Cardies losing an entire C4 ship. (61% accounting for the Queenships being poop).
- Hits starting to mount on the H1 stingers. The Fozarri also gets a triple-hit combo off on the CDF Benakot, which might have saved the battle. Hull damage triggers a retreat on the Cardassian side, and they must have rolled amazing because it takes them one turn to leave.
- Apiata final combat effectiveness is 72.5% vs 74.12% for the Cardassians. As in, they were pulling ahead. e: Accounting for the Queenships as only 1/3 as effective, it's 50.3% combat effectiveness. Wow.
- Evade rate: 39.4% for the Apiata, 17.5% Cardassians.
- We dealt 233.87 damage. The Cardassians dealt 179.18 damage. That is not entirely accounted for by the evade rate difference.
- Unsure what the point of Queenships are. They dealt 27.42/233.87 damage, or 11.7%. They took 18 out of 175 shots, or 10.3%. For reference, they were 33% of the fleet, so that means they involve themselves 1/3 as much as Stingers do. If they had not been present, the Stingers might have won anyway. And if we had lost, I would point to them as the reason we lost.
- We captured one unit of Cardassian techs.
- @OneirosTheWriter I notice there's no fleet total stats in the end of battle breakdown like there is in the one every 20 rounds. Also, no one was awarded the "kill" for disabling the CDF Icaran.
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Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
We might want to consider diplomatic outreach to the Laio. Their location makes it likely they'll get caught up in any super weapons deployed, or become a battlefield if we aren't careful. They don't have much of a fleet so there's no point trying to recruit them for the war, but we should look into fast-tracking them to affiliateship just in case the Licori decide to start exploiting them for resources like the Sydraxians and Gretarians.
I worry that fast-tracking them to affiliate status might have the opposite effect. Right now they're uninvolved neutrals. As affiliates they're fair game for attack that we have to defend, and might be targeted precisely for that reason.
- Location
- Australia
Missing a pair of Centaur-A's here, btw.
- Location
- Tulsa Oklahoma
Honestly not truly that picky when it comes to how the government works. All that really matters is that they are willing to open lines of dialogue, aren't directly hostile, are not prone to abrupt reversals of direction when it comes to posture and whose end goals are not firmly set upon the destruction of all other forms of life.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
Something is up with Andor Guard shipyard op decisions. Other than the Vulcans, they're the only Starfleet design-following member fleet that had to scrounge for the resources just to build a single Renaissance. Meanwhile, UE and Tellar saved up enough for 3 Renaissances each! Vulcan, well, I had lighter expectations for them, so I'm not as surprised they decided to lay down the last Connie-B instead of saving up for another Renaissance.
Your total is off here - that's just the total for the cruisers.
Aside from wording differences, the only practical difference between your and SWB's plans is that yours lacks specifying the strategic objective(s) (edit: as opposed to tactical objectives in prosecuting a war), while SWB's lacks any mention of the GBZ.
edit: oh and also SWB's plan includes the new border zone (LBZ?) in the hope that it would block mentats from crossing over to member sectors and that we'll get FD border zone mechanical bonuses.
Yeah, the Apiata combat doctrine looks unbalanced to the point of paranoia in keeping their queens safe. Such a ratio would make more sense if the Queenships each accompanied 4 Stingers instead of 2 Stingers, but we're not seeing that here.
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Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
You're not wrong, but hopefully in that situation we would be capable of protecting them. At the very least, we should let them know what's going on and just why we're at war, so they can decide what to do for themselves. The best case scenario is for them to go undistubed by either side, but I'm not sure how feasible that is. And I'd rather have to protect another world than have the Licori gain a client species.
As I said when the battle results came out, it should probably be 2/3 rather than 1/3. Otherwise that beautiful 7 shields is pointless.
The LBZ too.
Whoops, read it from the wrong row.
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I do say, "Instead we would prefer to gradually attrit their fleet and destroy their production network until they are forced to come to terms."
Basically, the objective as I understand it is to get the Empire to cry uncle and agree to do what we tell them regarding mentats. We don't necessarily want to occupy their worlds or devastate their entire fleet, just hit them until they give in to demands (presumably verified by inspections).
EDIT: The reason I don't want to do a LBZ is that then we have to garrison it, and those are ships we're pulling from actually fighting the war. And if we don't garrison it... then what's the point? The time for a LBZ is after the war is over.
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- Location
- Tulsa Oklahoma
… the point where you realize the situation has gone FUBAR: when you start to think the introduction of the Dominion may actually improve the state of affairs.
I don't think the Empire itself crying uncle will make the mentats stop. We've already been told the Emperor doesn't have that influence. We can wreck their trade but that means we defeat them as a nation-state. What we do not do is stop their individual clans from doing shit with mentats. That requires us to make each house cry uncle, and if they each own planets like implied in their descriptions, then they won't be nearly as dependent on interstellar trade as the Empire as a whole is.
Basically, Tactical has a nice plan to defeat the Acadian Empire as a whole, but it's not a plan that accounts for their internal politics.
The warfleet counts as the garrison, no? That's what I would understand if we did it.
Basically, Tactical has a nice plan to defeat the Acadian Empire as a whole, but it's not a plan that accounts for their internal politics.
The warfleet counts as the garrison, no? That's what I would understand if we did it.
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I think this assumes too much. The Emperor has been unwilling to endure the political cost of stopping the mentats. That does not mean it is impossible for him to do so. In particular, the war is likely actually increasing his power, as all of the noble house fleets have been subsumed into imperial control. We have not been told it is impossible for him to comply without our demands, and I believe it would be a mistake to assume from the outset that it's not possible.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
The Emperor has been unwilling to endure the political cost of stopping the mentats even when they're directly threatening the continued existence of his civilization, I'm fairly certain that he's either a puppet or completely out of touch to the point that commerce raiding may not apply the correct pressures. We should definitely plan for the case of the Empire fracturing into several dozen dangerous shards which go flying around blowing up suns under the pressure we're applying.
I may be misremembering, but I was the impression that the Queenships are FTL carriers, and the Stingers are STL only or only have a very limited FTL capability. So the Stingers need to have a Queenship present, to have reached the battle at all - but the Queenship will be as far from the battle as possible.
There are no Queens on the Stingers, so they are treated as pure attrition units - only the Queenships matter for force projection/moral over losses.
At this time, the Little Queenships present can only support two Stingers as tag a-longs - that will probably change as tech lets them bigger ....
And losing the war will take most of his power away, so he ends up powerless and having to enforce terms that his houses are up in arms against while powerless.
I mean, of all the people, the Emperor, presuming competence like you are, should be best-informed about what happens when the Federation gets mad and hulks out. See also the GBZ the last two months. Hell, he should know that he can't expect to win against the Ked-Paddah and the Gaeni (and indeed that he hasn't done anything and instead brought a second enemy into an even war indicates that he can't).
We were told that there were internal issues that stopped the Emperor from clamping down. Now, there are likely also reasons he doesn't want to clamp down which will be removed by sufficiently defeating his Empire in war, but his wants are not the only thing, then fighting a protracted anti-shipping war is a horrific mistake. The more time you let this go, the more superscience bullshit we'll have to deal with.
I just don't see how the risk pays off by defeating their merchant marine. If we spend 3 years doing that and then decide that no, the Emperor can't enforce a mentat ban, we've sputtered away a lot of time and a lot of risk to Federation citizens. If instead we go after the mentat-makers directly, the risk is a lot less to our civilians and we have more options, albeit greater to our ships.
Well, i guess it's a real vote then because I fundamentally disagree with you on strategy.
Let me ask, why are the NPCs in Starfleet Tactical on my side, and why have they not drawn the same conclusion that you have? After all, they have far more information in-universe than we can have. So if it's so obvious to you, why is it not obvious to them? You smarter than Sulu?
- Location
- Australia
That's not quite the standard of decorum I'm looking for here :X
- Location
- Nova Scotia, Canada
I think it might be that Starfleet Tactical has told us the way to defeat the Licori which should end the threat of the mentats while SWB's plan is focused on preventing the threat of the mentats which should defeat the Licori.
Either way should solve this problem but both have risks based on which direction to go first. If we try to defeat the Licori first the mentats have more time. If we try to take out the mentats first then the Licori could do more damage to our fleet before being defeated, or they might even force a stalemate until we can repair or reinforce.
I'm starting to get the feeling that these might be 2 problems instead of one. Mentats going rogue and the Licori being unable to control them and the nobles/emperor not willing to admit that. That would explain why they aren't using the mentats more aggressively as a kind of MAD deterrent and why they aren't willing to negotiate about putting mentat controls in place. The Licori can't do either one and admitting it would cost them a lot of their influence.
They might be stuck in a death spiral trying to hold out for one of the mentats to finish a weapon they can use to stabilize their empire but the mentats keep running off with their prototypes.
Either way should solve this problem but both have risks based on which direction to go first. If we try to defeat the Licori first the mentats have more time. If we try to take out the mentats first then the Licori could do more damage to our fleet before being defeated, or they might even force a stalemate until we can repair or reinforce.
I'm starting to get the feeling that these might be 2 problems instead of one. Mentats going rogue and the Licori being unable to control them and the nobles/emperor not willing to admit that. That would explain why they aren't using the mentats more aggressively as a kind of MAD deterrent and why they aren't willing to negotiate about putting mentat controls in place. The Licori can't do either one and admitting it would cost them a lot of their influence.
They might be stuck in a death spiral trying to hold out for one of the mentats to finish a weapon they can use to stabilize their empire but the mentats keep running off with their prototypes.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Oh, my.
@Briefvoice, would you mind clarifying what support from Oneiros's posts leads you to believe that Starfleet Tactical favors a gradual campaign of attrition against their shipping over a 'blitz' attack? It does seem like a counterintuitive plan given what we think we know about the Arcadian Empire (namely that it is decentralized and that the emperor may or may not have much actual power).
Frankly, if Starfleet Tactical recommends this course of action, I suspect it's because they are Starfleet Tactical, not Starfleet Political Analysis. They're thinking of the Licori species as a single unified war machine that can be forced into compliance by inflicting cumulative damage on the machinery. They're not thinking about the internal divisions within the species that insulate certain parts of the species from damage that affects other parts.
This, combined with the Licori having a total of like Combat 70 or 80 or 90, causes me to find it darkly amusing that a bunch of people were once going "oh yeah, with the Gaeni involved in the war, the Licori won't be able to stand up on their own, we don't need to get involved."
Yeah... not that simple, I guess. For that matter, it's entirely possible that the Licori now have military ascendancy over the Ked Paddah, if enough of their current ship listing is recent construction build up during the war mobilization. Since we know they lost a big chunk of their fleet attempting a full-out attack into Ked Paddah space some 3-5 years ago (I forget), it's likely that most of their current g
Maybe Vulcans are just really, really good at upkeep on vintage spaceships, because of being super-meticulous about maintenance requirements? Maybe for some crazy reason they assembled a 'fresh' Soyuz out of spare parts some time in the 2260s and it's actually much newer than most of the other ships of that class? Maybe the head of the Vulcan Space Council has a secret sentimental fixation on that Soyuz because it was their first command back in the days when Jim Kirk was a cadet, and Saurian brandy was almost as good as Romulan ale (but nobody knew what Romulan ale was yet)?
[Colossal nova blast wave washes across star system]
[Megatortoise is still there, the only ship left mobile, slightly scorched, having just fucking tanked a blast that would have reduced an Excelsior to a pancake, with light hull damage]
Leslie:
"...We're gonna be up to our eyeballs in intolerably smug turtle-men for the next thirty years, aren't we?"
Plus, the Laio are technologically primitive, and unlike the conflict with the Sydraxians, we're being given the go-ahead to wage aggressive war against the Licori directly. If the Licori start abusing the Laio, we can find out with reasonable ease and start blowing up the Licori ships involved. That wasn't an option for us when we found out the Sydraxians were muscling in on the Gretarians.
It does rather have the effect of making the Apiata fleet seem resource-inefficient, if they can only commit an average of two or maybe three Stingers per explorer-sized combatant that doesn't do much fighting.
Sure, but that's within the bounds of normal Federation Diplomatic Service activities. The Laio probably won't remain ignorant of this war for very long. If they decide not to join us, it's probably because they don't want to risk getting their sun exploderized, and if they're attacked, they have our phone number.
Leslie:
"So, who are these Domino-whozits..."
[read read read]
"Huh. Ugly. Son, are you talking about the time when I start to think that, or the time when you start to think that?"
- Location
- Australia
A big part of Starfleet Tactical's rationale is that a big part of the Arcadian response to the Ked Paddah has been to turtle up their systems. The Ked Paddah have been reluctant to risk the necessary explorers to pop the starbases or double-outposts. Only the central homeworld is fully self-sufficient, so that leaves attrition campaigns as an attractive alternative to attempting a coup de main.
- Location
- Patriarchova
I think what we should do is hit the colony worlds that are the seats of noble houses. Eliminating the political influence of the strongest nobles will allow the Emperor to negotiate a surrender, assuming he's saner than them. Even if he isn't, we'll have hopefully taken out the most dangerous mentats and their employers.
Economy raiding isn't going to work fast enough, even if it might be the best strategy had we more time to spare. Attacking Morshad would be folly, since it's going to be the best defended and we sort of want the central government to get stronger rather than weaker.
Colony strikes against the seats of the feudal lords are looking like the best approach.
Appeal to fictional authority lmao.
Economy raiding isn't going to work fast enough, even if it might be the best strategy had we more time to spare. Attacking Morshad would be folly, since it's going to be the best defended and we sort of want the central government to get stronger rather than weaker.
Colony strikes against the seats of the feudal lords are looking like the best approach.
Appeal to fictional authority lmao.
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Our information is that it is the Nobel Houses that support the troublesome Mentats. The Nobel Houses are heavy invested in the Colonies, correct?
If both are true, and if the Home World Emperor isn't hiding his own Mentat super weapon team, then crushing the support base for the Nobel's sounds like the most effective way to bring this under control.
If space around a Colony is interdicted and precautions are taken, unless the Mentat is deploying planet/star killing weaponry in their own system we should be able to prevent the local Mentats from causing too much trouble.
How many Nobel supported Mentats are hanging around the Home System instead of the Colonies though - and how many does the Royal Family support itself .... (I'm not going to buy a claim of zero) ?