- Location
- madison
well, they did achieve their primary goal of letting the cargo ship escape.
To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
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- Sci-Fi
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- 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?
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- Mid-Atlantic
I mean, they put up a pretty good fight, not just as good as we'd expect. The dice went rather poorly for them, while the Jaldun performed slightly better than one would expect just by statistically averaging their damage output.
- Location
- United States
does anyone have a link to where the various sydraxian factions were described? it was too long ago for me to remember all of the details.
UbeOne
Daydreaming CPU
- Location
- Philippines
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Call them phaser banks or phaser batteries then.
Eh, it seems more than a tad optimistic to me to expect those guys to mobilize to that level (and perhaps even risk losing significant part of those fleets) to help (or take revenge for) a minor pre-FTL civilization. I mean I expect them to step up their border patrols and make it clear that such actions will not be tolerated in their own space but I doubt they would be very enthusiastic to go to such lengths to help a non-entity outside of our space. In the case of Starfleet you can at least argue how intervened a certain set of morales and ethic is with the rest of the service but I don't think that is necessarily true for the affiliates. Hell in the case of the Seyek you don't have to go that far back to have them be on the opposite of such an event (as in the race that conquers) and while they are opinion seems to have changed I doubt they have changed to such a massive degree that they will now support such an operation while the Cardassians are growing in strength and the Konen make appearances near their border...
Sure, for the sake of argument let's strike the Seyek from the list entirely.
Starfleet will almost certainly commit the entire local fleet. That's ~31 C right there. We borrow two Qloathi frigates and a Fathership team and that brings us to 56C in a very pessimistic estimation. Still a lot.
I think we will get a larger intervention, though. This is a present threat to places like Risa, Caitian colonies, and the Fiiral won't like it either.
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- Location
- Australia
The Federation is not forcing them into any territory, we are refusing travel through our border, no more no less. As a good neighbour we may even tell the Klingons that we suspect they will try them next and why we refused them, but this does not make us responsible for their actions at all.
It may also stop the Klingon advance and reverse their gains or force a stalemate.
I dont think there's anything unique in this situation. They are not affiliates, we have not expanded our borders to defend them, hell we havn't technically even talked to them yet. I dont see why we would pick a fight here when there's plenty of atrocities occurring nearby that we deign to ignore.
At best we may express our displeasure to their fleet and close our borders to them. if they wish to escalate things form there, that's another story.
With the above in play we could offer relocation and material support to their civilisation to a place within our borders, but that would be a humanitarian mission. not an obligation.
That's what I'm hoping for, that they see a +50C pain train coming and they decide to fuck off somewhere else.
Not seeing how that's a bad thing.
The thing it is far safer, easier and cheaper to deal with this threat by "fortifying" the Federation border than it would be to send an expeditionary force to openly confront the Hishmeri over their actions. It seems far more logical to increase the garrisons in that region of space and step up the military readiness than going for the most extreme option right of the bat...
And both the Hishmeri Septs and the Federation should be aware that there is very massive difference between attacking a helpless minor civilizations and attacking one of the most powerful faction in this region of space, one being despicable the other suicidal, which is why I don't think that the threat is that big... The last thing the Hishmeri should want to do is to give us a ironclad casus belli.
Seyek actually feel some level of cultural guilt over how they went about pacifying the Fiiral, so it's entirely possible they'd be interested in preventing someone from doing something similar.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The thing is, this isn't just an idealistic thing. It's practical.
Forward deployment and putting a strong force far enough out that the Hishmeri encounter it early will greatly reduce the risks to the species on our border. If the Hishmeri don't encounter significant Federation forces until they cross our border, they're likely to underestimate us until they've already clashed with us, inside our space, possibly after causing chaos or destruction. Furthermore, they could enter our space as a 'wavefront' spread out across multiple sectors.
If we take a more proactive posture... the Hishmeri encounter a large fleet, one that would require a major united effort by their entire nomadic culture to overpower. And one that isn't even fighting in self-defense; this isn't some kind of last-ditch force they're fighting. The fact that we'd send a fleet this big just to protect a planet that is almost nothing to us will communicate that we have many such fleets, more than the Hishmeri can confront. It will indicate that we're willing and able to mobilize fleets to push back against them- that whatever they may have heard, we're not somehow so distracted that we can't respond to their intrusions.
Thus, this isn't just an idealistic "save the planet that can't defend itself" move. It's also a move to teach the Hishmeri to respect the size and depth of the forces we have at our disposal, and to give them the earliest possible opportunity to see these forces. Having seen them, they are more likely to make a calculated decision either to avoid our space, or to be on good behavior while passing through it.
The Federation's rimward border is long and lightly fortified, and there are by nature a bunch of 'soft' targets in the area (such as some of the mining facilities in the Ferasa Sector, or Risa). Deploying our fleets along that border for an extended period of time, awaiting a threat that may trickle in over a period of months or years, isn't necessarily easier or cheaper than showing up once to confront the forward-most fraction of their fleet.
The Hishmeri, hearing about the Federation, are probably asking themselves:
"Is this a civilization of multiple allied species that are well-armed, well-coordinated, and prepared to defend themselves? Or is this a relatively decadent and disorganized polity, with weak points we can pick apart and exploit?"
We want them to conclude that the answer is "the former," because that's the kind of thing that opportunistic nomads prefer to avoid. But we're more likely to accomplish that by showing up with a large and powerful fleet as soon as any of them come near our space. More so than we are by parceling out our fleet in penny packets along a lengthy border and waiting for them to arrive.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
Even if we end up having to teach the lesson "don't screw with the Federation" to several different groups of Hishimeri over a span of months or years, it is better we assemble a strong fleet and teach it as decisively as possible. Nomads neither want nor can prosecute pitched battles, they depend on speed and shock. If we convince them that they will have to stand and bleed and trade body blows, they will go elsewhere.
- Location
- Australia
I just feel as this is a random offshoot of their fleet and if we decide we are going to police outside our borders we are going to be at it for the next year (or foverever as similar opportunistic species do things we do not approve of) as this event repeats itself x1000.
Better to screen their fleet as it approaches our borders then send a starfleet / militia fleet to welcome them on our border, then let them know the borders closed to them and not to intrude on federation space.
That fleet can then shadow them as they move along our border. No fight, limited buildup and limited disruption from the GBZ dispute, CBZ fortification, or whatever insane idea the Catident expects us to push through.
In reality though this response is above our heads and we should lock the Hawkes and pacifists in a room until they have a coherent federation response to this and similar events (third party threatening pre-warp civ outside borderzone). We could even call it the Stesk Doctrine which would be hilarious if he doesn't like the compromise.
Better to screen their fleet as it approaches our borders then send a starfleet / militia fleet to welcome them on our border, then let them know the borders closed to them and not to intrude on federation space.
That fleet can then shadow them as they move along our border. No fight, limited buildup and limited disruption from the GBZ dispute, CBZ fortification, or whatever insane idea the Catident expects us to push through.
In reality though this response is above our heads and we should lock the Hawkes and pacifists in a room until they have a coherent federation response to this and similar events (third party threatening pre-warp civ outside borderzone). We could even call it the Stesk Doctrine which would be hilarious if he doesn't like the compromise.
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pbluekan
Somethin's Fucky ...
- Location
- Trumpistan
- Pronouns
- He/Him
My whole point here, is that they can't even ask for assistance, and that we know without a doubt that they do require some form of it.
I'm not advocating that we patrol and police outside our borders. That is impractical and pointless.
I'm not advocating that we investigate Klingon space for any prewarp civs they may be conquering. We only know that happens OOC, and anything IC is, at best, rumor. Even then, that is Klingon sovereign space.
I'm advocating that because we went looking for prewarp civs in the path and we found one that is currently under duress, that we are morally obligated to assist in some fashion.
Don't misconstrue this to me advocating that we police outside our borders looking for prewarp civs to protect. I'm referring only to this instance, and this instance only applies because we happened to find one that is in immediate danger.
Edit: I'm not even suggesting we pick a fight. There's some pretty straightforward diplomatic possibilities. Hell, even offering recovery assistance to the prewarp civ after the hishmeri leave is sufficient imo.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Furthermore, it probably takes time for a lesson taught to one group of nomads to disseminate among the other nomads. By getting an early start on the process, we increase the odds that the bulk of the nomads will learn "don't screw with the Federation" BEFORE actually reaching our space.
There's a huge difference between the outcome we get in two different cases:
A) Imagine if the typical Hishmeri 'tribal squadron' or whatever sits down and holds a pow-wow twenty light years from our border and goes "okay, we can go through the Federation or go around" and the consensus is "crap let's not do that."
B) Imagine if the typical Hishmeri tribal squadron doesn't really think about the Federation, it's not on their radar and they'll deal with it when they get there- and then they encounter the first Federation border picket and only then decide whether or not to turn around.
In case (B), we have a lot more direct contacts between our border pickets and the Hishmeri, and some of the dumber or more opportunistic septs will probably try to pick a fight. In case (A), we never even see the smarter septs, including the opportunistic ones- they go around. Some of the dumb ones hit us anyway, but they don't have as much advantage of protection from the mass.
To get condition (A), we need to spread the meme "the Federation has vast fleets and is willing to use them to chase us away" as far and wide as possible, and to start spreading it as early as possible.
So basically, in order to avoid having a large fleet tied down for a year or so while the Hishmeri trickle in and through our space...
You propose to have a large fleet tied down for a year or so while the Hishmeri trickle in and through our space.
Because seriously, the whole Hishmeri fleet isn't just going to be like ten or fifteen ships that will all agree to fly in a single convoy. It's going to be scores of ships. Maybe hundreds of ships, even if most of them aren't armed. Controlling that large of a fleet just by patrolling the border is going to take a lot of ships, and they're going to need to remain on patrol for as long as the Hishmeri remain in the area. And if we're NOT actively chasing them away from the subsectors near the border... They're going to remain in the area for quite a while, milling around and figuring out where to go next if they can't just keep going coreward and into Federation space.
I'm not opposed to doing this. However, I'm going to vote strongly against advising the politicians anything along the lines of "oh yeah, we're best off just deploying the ships in a big wall along our border." Because 'wall in space' tactics really don't work very well. Fleets have to be concentrated to be effective, or they have to vastly outnumber the opposition. We probably won't outnumber the Hishmeri as a whole, so we have to concentrate our strength and find ways to keep the Hishmeri away from the border as long as possible, while making enough of a show of force to convince them to seek less heavily defended pastures elsewhere.
We might even do THEM (the Hishmeri) a favor and warn them that the Klingons are mighty warrior badasses who defeated the LAST bunch of space nomads to pass through this region, and it would probably be a good idea to avoid them too. Just fly around. Sooner or later they'll find a passage through. Far, far away.
We could even tell the Klingons we tried to warn them away from Klingon space, which might slightly soften any Klingon anger resulting from what happens when Sept Moh-Rahn inevitably intrudes on Klingon territory.
- Location
- Australia
Why would they be inside our space? I said we would aggressively direct them away from our border, but not skirmish in unclaimed space. And I said we would do a slow build of forces as their fleet approaches rather then panicking and scrambling a large response now.
You say walls in space doesn't work, yet every major startrek civ has starbases strung along their borders and patrols along them, we also often track and investigate ships on vectors towards our territory, why would this be any different?
If we tell them to leave and they do not, that is a very different scenario, and any hishmari ships trying to slip the border should have their ships scuttled until they get the picture.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Then the plan makes even less sense, because you don't even gain the advantage of operating our fleet close to our own bases.
You're saying "to avoid the trouble of having to keep a fleet Out There for a year, busily driving the Hishmeri away, let's keep a fleet Out There for a year, busily warning the Hishmeri away. Oh, and blowing up any Hishmeri that try to slip past us or just cluelessly press forward and react with bravado when challenged."
I mean, it's not that 'wall in space' is that bad a strategy. It's simply that if we're willing to commit the resources it would take to do 'wall in space' effectively against a fleet that probably consists of at least several squadrons of armed ships... We might as well deploy the same resources a little further forward, protect some otherwise defenseless civilizations, and warn the bulk of the Hishmeri away from our space entirely, keeping them at a greater distance.
The norm in a border zone is that we have like three or four ships in the whole zone, and when one potentially hostile ship approaches we send one ship to investigate or warn it off.
The problem is, Hishmeri ships won't be coming in individually. They'll move in squadrons, possibly in groups of several warships leading the way and scouting for the much larger wave of civilian ships following at a safe distance behind them. We can't just have a few ships patrolling a long border zone and expect to be able to block a whole squadron with one ship. We need squadrons of our own, and the overall force is going to add up pretty quickly. Especially since we need multiple squadrons covering multiple subsectors of border; otherwise one Hishmeri squadron can slip past while we're off dealing with another one.
I mean, we can do that. I am not now intending, and never did intend, to somehow claim that it's impossible.
But it's not magic. It's not a 'cheap and easy' way to accomplish a goal that would otherwise be hard.
It's a commitment that will probably require us to update our sensor coverage on that border and deploy large fleets of dozens of ships for an extended time. And if we're willing to do that anyway, we might as well take the same ships and do the same thing with a "forward deployed" stance.
Your proposal of avoiding any situations where we send large fleets far forward to cover planets outside our space seems to be based on the idea that doing so would be more work, or more expensive, or less effective than building a wall of ships at or near our border. I disagree with that idea.
Might as well bring out Sign of Rethelia into play, that way we don't need too many Seyek ships and if early enough a Megatortoise. I'm thinking that seeing this large awe inspiring super battleships with a few of our Excelsior escorts just for contrast, they would back off hard.
Honesty I feel those ships need to put through its paces since staying at home is like a white elephant.
Too bad we can't borrow Basilica of Lakhept for good will tour to this part of the sector.
I prefer we use a limited amount of ships with one for each members to show truth of our diversity along with two large intimidating ships paying a visit rather than disrupting our other deployments.
Honesty I feel those ships need to put through its paces since staying at home is like a white elephant.
Too bad we can't borrow Basilica of Lakhept for good will tour to this part of the sector.
I prefer we use a limited amount of ships with one for each members to show truth of our diversity along with two large intimidating ships paying a visit rather than disrupting our other deployments.
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- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The big issue is that the Seyek need to worry about the Cardassians- and a war with them could blow up quite soon if the Sydraxian situation goes ugly in the wrong way(s). They may not be able to spare their biggest dreadnought. A megatortoise would be a good alternative, but they're slow and I'm not sure how well designed they are for protracted deep space operations far from Rigelian space.
Shouldn't take a year to see if they're going to comply or not.
I believe the idea is that they won't come at all. Put on a show of force to convince them that the Federation is too tough a pickings. That we can and will scramble a fleet to fight. So the Sept leaders or whatever government they have, take the fleet around in search of another path.
Shadows
Sacred Priestess of the Benevolent Dice Gods
- Location
- USS Civilian, DDG-214
- Pronouns
- She/Her
An accurate portrayal of Klingon diplomacy. Well done.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
It's likely that the ships that just hit the pre-warp planet are the very 'tip of the spear' and we won't even see the main body of the fleet trickling in for a period of some months. It may well be a year before the last stragglers are obviously headed away rather than just loitering somewhere twenty light-years from the border and looking like they might try to cross into our space.
EDIT: I'm not saying it WILL, but it could. We shouldn't assume that this is going to be an event that resolves 'rapidly.' It may not involve a lot of intense conflict or mobilization, but it would pleasantly surprise me if it were over in a hurry, given the slow nature of ship movement and the seemingly divided government of the Hishmari.
That's basically what I've been proposing.
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I don't think that The Hishmeri Septs are some dark, alien threat from Deep Space hell-bent on destroying and plundering the Federation who are too stupid to understand that enraging the Federation is a less than optimal idea without having shoved a massive fleet into their face. I mean really, we have talked with them on several occasions now (and they had some time to talk with the other factions in the region too) which one would suspect is more than enough to convey some idea of just who and how powerful we are - those are not some illiterate barbarians incapable imagining anything beyond their own limited existence/territory but a culture that may well be older than the Federation itself, capable of reason and logic.
The idea of strengthening the patrols the border is not so that we can intercept waves of attacks like a bulwark but simply to make it clear to them that we are watching them, that this is our space and that attacking us won't go unnoticed. If they aren't criminally stupid that and some clear talk should be more than enough to convince them to stay away... You don't need a massive fleet to do that which is why it is cheaper, easier and safer to do so.
There is simply very little reason for them to provoke us when they can simply keep their distance and plunder the minor powers/move around the powderkeg that is this area of space. Space is big and there is nothing preventing them from going around us,the Cardassians, Klingons or Romulans.
And in the unlikely case that they decide to be that stupid and attack us there are those nice big fleets of the Seyek, Qloathi and Risa sitting just on the side of the border, easily within reach of any possible conflict point that can react as necessary.