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
- Tulsa Oklahoma
If they know about the State of Emergency clause of the Federation, and seeing as that it was pulled out during the Biophague conflict, they might believe that Starfleet, in retaliation for the interference in their operations by the council, took advantage of the incident to exert pressure upon the council while they had no authority to countermand Starfleet. A Coup d'état if you will. As for why nobody was killed, any death would result in special elections, so torturing the current membership till they saw the light would have been much more effective. I mean, said expansion didn't really start until the Biophague conflict was brought to an end, so …
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I would strongly dispute the "offensive war" bit.
Regardless of what the paperwork says the Licori DoW'd the quadrant with the supernova induction tests.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
Winged One
Not the Simurgh
- Location
- definitely the ground
- Pronouns
- They/Them/It
And a lot of people, including some within the Federation, think that view was us playing games to try and make an offensive war with a good Casus Beli as politically palatable as a defensive war.
Hell, in the President's case they might even be right.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
[looks at yet another ThoughtMaster post]
...
I suspect that for most of the 23rd century Starfleet was a somewhat larger and better-balanced organization. After all, Starfleet was considered credibly capable of stopping the Klingons. Starfleet wouldn't have started seeming wimpy until post-Khitomer, pre-Biophage and that was a relatively short period of time. Less than ten years!
I like your post, I'm just not sure the Romulan or Klingon high commands would share your strategic calculus.
...
That wouldn't be a good reason to advance the border zone, though, and without advancing it, it would be kind of pointless to rename it. Although we might be able to integrate the Gretarians, but I suspect they'd just be embedded in the border zone.
Hm. Nitpick...
I suspect that for most of the 23rd century Starfleet was a somewhat larger and better-balanced organization. After all, Starfleet was considered credibly capable of stopping the Klingons. Starfleet wouldn't have started seeming wimpy until post-Khitomer, pre-Biophage and that was a relatively short period of time. Less than ten years!
I like your post, I'm just not sure the Romulan or Klingon high commands would share your strategic calculus.
They favored "self-reliance" and I believe they were meant to be an analogue to the group that laid the foundations of North Korea, if you want something to worry about.
- Location
- Tulsa Oklahoma
What? I was theorizing possible explanations that other powers would field to explain how the Federation changed from an insular, isolationist power, to an expanding, interventionist giant who gobbles up planetary civilizations like popcorn, in a way comprehensible to their mentalities. Such a 180 degree change in direction sounds, from the perspective of an individual whom isn't in the know, to be caused by a major change in governance.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
[looks at another ThoughtMaster post]
...you know, I'd really, really hoped you were joking.
...you know, I'd really, really hoped you were joking.
I think that would be borrowing a lot of unnecessary trouble. Compared to the North Korean communists, the Graduates have a very dissimilar origin story. Unless they've radicalized a lot over the past two or three years, while they may seek revenge on the existing Hierarchy government and its membership, they're not likely to turn the place into a demented hellhole the way North Korea did.
aeqnai
Nerdy Homu
- Location
- Laniakea Supercluster
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Mind, North Korea could only really come to be because of the Soviets and Chinese being able to support, control, and mold them post WWII, and the Sydraxians are quite cut off from any similar effect right now. Emphatically so, even.
Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
They struck me as less North Korea and more post WW2 Austria. A country that was utterly wrecked by two successive wars and then once they finally get their shit together they decided to take themselves out of international affairs as much as possible and avoid any entanglements. Of course, that's just speculation, and the Sydraxians do have a martial tradition, so they may take a more militant stance.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
So... like the Swiss, then?
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
This is unnecessarily condescending. If you ignore the whole "ThoughtMaster making a post" thing, he does have a point. I can easily see the Lecarre having that point of view before their infiltration of Starfleet.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
The bit about "maybe Starfleet tortured all the Councilors" just seemed too over the top. I honestly was hoping that was a joke.
- Location
- Tulsa Oklahoma
It was either that, or having a brainwashing method on hand. Anything else would run into the trouble of not being able to explain why it is that the council suddenly became the puppets of Starfleet while previously they were its most ardent critics.
pheonix89
Wants to be Seven Of Nine
- Location
- North American Plaguelands
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Thing is?
Self-reliance is a perfectly valid economic stance for an interstellar scale actor.
It's the economic position almost all interstellar powers start from.
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Are we reading different posts? @ThoughtMaster is speculating how the various paranoiacs and jerks who neighbor the Federation might interpret a seeming about-face in UFP foreign policy.
[Edit]
And @AKuz'd!
[/Edit]
Last edited:
There's the boring, dull old explanation of, "Starfleet found some political allies in the Council and cut deals to mutual benefit." Which is how politics works in the Cardassian Union, Romulan Empire, and Klingon Empire.
- Location
- Mid-Atlantic
Or... you could be incorrect about the assumption that the Council was predominantly critical of Starfleet? We saw what the Council acted like pre-Biophage, and while they did ask Kahurangi some tough questions and give us some problems, there wasn't much sign of them being especially hostile to Starfleet as such. Even the Pacifists seem to disagree with Starfleet because they oppose warfare and fighting in general, not because they hate the institution.
As for Rogers? Rogers wasn't fired until after (1) Starfleet had lost Excalibur, one of its flagship explorers, on a secret mission near Romulan space that Rogers may have directly ordered, and (2) Rogers had badly mishandled the Ares project. Not just "tried to build a warship," but "tried to build a warship, lied to the Council about its capabilities, and fucked up the design process royally. Before him was Cartwright, who led a criminal conspiracy to provoke an act of war by assassinating the Klingon leadership.
Why wouldn't the Council's opposition to such behavior be fully consistent with them 'falling into line' and being moderately supportive of Starfleet once Starfleet's leadership starts acting in a trustworthy and competent manner again?
You're running to the most-ghastly explanations, while overlooking much less ghastly and more obvious explanations like:
"The Council always had a mixed relation with Starfleet, some factions support it while others oppose it. Indeed, all factions support Starfleet in some capacities, but want it to do some things rather than others, and sometimes disagree about how big Starfleet should be or what they want it to do. The Council will unite to support Starfleet when it is clearly defending the Federation from a major threat like the Klingons (pre-Khitomer), or the Biophage... but it will also unite to restrain Starfleet if Starfleet is clearly abusing its authority or if Starfleet leadership starts doing obviously stupid things."
@OneirosTheWriter does participating in wargames add crew experience?
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
... I think you're still talking past each other. This is a nice exposition and all, but I'm pretty sure ThoughtMaster was still talking about how other polities, particularly the paranoid/militaristic ones that just don't understand how the Federation hasn't collapsed yet, could be viewing the apparent Starfleet 180 without the benefit of knowing how Federation politics work in detail.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
He indicated it does not:
I'm also not sure if war games help with doctrinal research as previously speculated (or indicated?) since I'm not seeing related research bonuses in the 2316 EAS:
although the war games chosen in 2315 leading up to 2316 was just a throwaway 2v2 that we never even got to see a combat log for. Then again, the infamous 2314 "T'Mir destroys Betazed" war games also didn't seem to have an impact on the following 2315 EAS.
Last edited:
To be fair, the real result of that wargame was the Patroller-A design.
lbmaian
a thirsty squirrel
- Location
- USA
And probably more. Even though Betazed war support didn't directly increase from this war game, IIRC there were substantial narrative effects and maybe it made the Betazed more amenable to one of their cruisers being deployed on the front lines.
But this does give me an idea: If it's true that this war game spurred the Betazed to research that Patroller-A refit ASAP... could we somehow engineer a war game that does something similar for another member? Indorians have a lot of old frigates (but not their cruiser named "frigate") that could use a quick Patroller-A style refit.
