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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)

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To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) Starfleet Ship Design Bureau, Refit ("To Boldly Go...")
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Nix said:
My point was that, in universe and given equal arrival time, there is no remaining relevant difference between escorting one of their ships to their destination and arriving at that destination from elsewhere because direction of arrival is irrelevant. This is an exhaustive list of possible replies to that point:
  • Assumption of equal arrival time is unwarranted.
  • Direction does matter.
  • There is some other relevant in-universe difference.
  • There is some relevant out of universe difference (this concedes the narrative argument and moves to mechanics).
Anything else is irrelevant to the point. Either you were making irrelevant statements or your argument falls under one of these points. Period.
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I don't really understand why it's a relevant point at all, and you haven't made the reasons clear. I originally made no statements about arrival time or direction. You'll have to demonstrate why your example is relevant before I'll be willing to address it more directly, and you haven't done that, you've just claimed it's related to what I'm saying without demonstrating any connection.

This is what I already said about timing the first time you brought it up:
SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
If we intercept diplomatic delegations and monitor them, we are automatically poised to intervene, to counter what is said if it is not completely truthful, and to prevent them from turning vicious or intervene if they did. I mean, we know that they can turn violent based on the ship the Courageous had to destroy.

If we only catch the action after the fact or during, then the consequences are restricted to damage control, which is what we've seen in the Rigel sector up until now. We could, by declaring a border zone and ranging patrols out farther, preemptively intervene and reduce the effect of their diplomatic action from the start. No footholds gained, rather than small footholds being stamped out.
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But from my reading, it was mostly ignored in your response, and you continued to present an apparent distinction between arriving "from the same direction" and "arriving at the same time" (your exact words in the original), when I had already:
1. Pointed out that the timing wouldn't be the same in the least, and pointed out the existing examples.
2. Pointed out that our actions were not limited to merely escorting them. Which I then elaborated on in further posts.

I'll send you a PM about the issues with argumentative style when I get a chance tomorrow, which I don't feel needs to further clutter the thread.


Nix said:
I can't even begin to reply to this because while you are making a bunch of explicit assertions you are still not making the core of your argument explicit. It sounds explicit, but a straightforward reading of this directly contradicts several things you stated before. I could guess how to resolve those contradictions but I am not at all confident which way to guess. You might think it's obvious but it's definitely not.

Here are two examples of explicit arguments that might or might not be similar to what you are trying to say:

  • A HBZ would, as a mechanical effect, change the rage of possible event outcomes in a favorable way. The precedent for this are possible effects of various CBZ commanders in 2306. This does not require explicit in-universe justification.
  • A HBZ would have the in-universe effect of allowing our commanders to intercept and monitor Horizon subversive diplomatic efforts, which they are currently not allowed to due to unfavorable rules of engagement, and exert a degree of control over where those efforts occur by means of doing X, where X is either threatening to shoot at them or some other concrete action.
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Border control is far more than threatening to shoot. In fact, the Federation Diplomatic Service has some jurisdiction over foreign diplomacy, and so does a Starfleet captain. Moreover, Starfleet does act as the Federation's border authority and we don't just let foreign nationals cross at will. Several episodes of Trek have talked about specific border rules. If they want to play by our rules, then we can stonewall them into playing by our rules.

"Yes, we're just calling over the Rigellian FDS Liason and their team of Tellarite trade negotiators. Oh, you didn't know that when the Rigellians signed the articles of confederation they authorized the Federation Diplomatic Service to act in their stead in negotiations with a foreign government? Of course you can proceed to your destination... agreed upon once the Liason arrives."

"I'm sorry, but I've just been in contact with the Koliate Tower, and have been instructed that their negotiating team will be meeting you on Winter Colony instead of Okatha. Oh, be sure to bring warm weather gear, it's rather inhospitable."

"Oh, if you're travelling to Weleck we need to perform a health and safety inspection. Restrictions on the traffic of potentially dangerous bioforms. I'm sure there will be no issues, but you understand the importance of rules like this."

(naturally these are mere examples, and the broad point is that we have far more options than escort vs shoot)

And they don't have a choice but to play by our rules, because their entire strategy is based around playing by our rules. If they violate that, then it's clear that they're in the wrong.


It's not like we can't operate a BZ like this either. Our captains have been doing this since forever. The post-Khitomer crop of Starfleet captains have more experience in playing inter-species negotiator than any crop of captains since Starfleet was founded. It would be different if this was the 2260s and Starfleet was an organization based around growling menacingly over the Klingon/Romulan borders, but this is exactly the same kind of stall-investigate-mediate/dictate that our captains have been doing in every captain's log since the Biophage.

I think you and I do have a semantic distinction over what we call narrative vs mechanics, but I hate semantic distinctions, so if you want to call the overall story written about a set of independently rolled events "mechanics", you can and I now understand what you mean, but I won't use that terminology.

I don't see a reason to drill down the argument about the overall narrative, because it doesn't drill down. It is a broad argument that by establishing a border zone, we are exerting a favorable degree of influence on the progression of the story of our contact with the Horizon. I don't see the exact individual event rewards (definitely mechanical) or even individual event outcomes (mostly narrative, but success/failure is mechanical) as significantly relevant to that, because the overall story supersedes them and guides them. We could have a dozen event successes in the Rigel sector without a HBZ and the story could still lean towards "here comes the Horizon, aren't they sneaky and subversive", while a dozen event success in a HBZ may have an entirely different overall plot.
 
I think this is one of those arguments that can't be resolved without some clarification from the GM.

@OneirosTheWriter , if we established an HBZ, would the Harmony be able to bypass it and proceed directly to Rigel sector due to open borders or something; or would we have a chance to contain their influence to the HBZ?
 
The Federation would, as an institution, become far more aware of Harmony activities, and be able to head off anything over-the-top like a Fleet Tender. As a whole, they can still arrive in Federation space as the Feds are not in a state of conflict. Watch for heads of agreement refardung open borders becoming formalised over the next year.
 
OneirosTheWriter said:
The Federation would, as an institution, become far more aware of Harmony activities, and be able to head off anything over-the-top like a Fleet Tender. As a whole, they can still arrive in Federation space as the Feds are not in a state of conflict. Watch for heads of agreement refardung open borders becoming formalised over the next year.
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Would a HBZ unduly piss off the Pacifists and/or Developmentalists or would they be cool with it?

Random Member said:
AKuz said:
"Hello Human! I am a Horizonian. We are artists, diplomats, and doctors. My people are blueskinned Humanoids with red eyes and dark hair. And we are traditionally known for our calm manner and artistic bent." the hologram says with a chipper tone and a smooth, practiced, voice.
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*blinks* Huh.

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That's genius.

 
OneirosTheWriter said:
The Federation would, as an institution, become far more aware of Harmony activities, and be able to head off anything over-the-top like a Fleet Tender. As a whole, they can still arrive in Federation space as the Feds are not in a state of conflict. Watch for heads of agreement refardung open borders becoming formalised over the next year.
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To broaden it, my concern (and I think @Nix 's) is if we split off an HBZ from Rigel, then we'll effectively have to split our ships between the two zones, but the Horizon can still post up to Rigel. Making it seemingly actually counterproductive to have a HBZ, as it won't stymie the incoming diplomacy and it would be better to simply mush all the ships into Rigel for maximal chance of using P to head off problems.

So would the HBZ act partially as a filter?

To the thread more generally -- I suspect if we DO make a BZ in any case, it'll give us a leg up in movement negotiations, as we can say 'here's our boundary line,' so even if it doesn't blunt Harmony diplo penetration of Rigel it might pay off big time later.
 
OneirosTheWriter said:
The Federation would, as an institution, become far more aware of Harmony activities, and be able to head off anything over-the-top like a Fleet Tender. As a whole, they can still arrive in Federation space as the Feds are not in a state of conflict. Watch for heads of agreement refardung open borders becoming formalised over the next year.
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Hypothetically, how would we create a peace treaty along with a free-for-all culture-war zone?

We will of course need to make a new Presence capital ship for this
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As I read it, a HBZ would stop them sending a Capital, maybe a cruiser, without our knowing. Frigates can probably still sneak through.

What kind of shipping do they have supporting the diplomatic subversion efforts? I don't think it has been stated.
 
SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
This is what I already said about timing the first time you brought it up:

But from my reading, it was mostly ignored in your response, and you continued to present an apparent distinction between arriving "from the same direction" and "arriving at the same time" (your exact words in the original), when I had already:
1. Pointed out that the timing wouldn't be the same in the least, and pointed out the existing examples.
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And yet when I described just that section as you saying just that ("a higher likelihood of arriving at the same time") you took it as an insulting misrepresentation. Apparently you yourself misunderstood what I was actually saying? Or perhaps the insulting part was something else and you failed to be explicit enough about even that? In any case there is nothing else in any of your other posts that I'm more confident about than that that post was (largely) talking about what I thought it was talking about (and you apparently now confirmed?), and the effort to make you put your arguments into an explicit enough form that I could be more confident than that about clearly failed (even when presented with examples of hypothetical explicit arguments you might be making you neither [partially] confirm nor deny them, nor make a similarly explicit statement delineating your actual argument), so there is no object level argument I can address while you insist on misunderstandings being insults. Either you are retracting that or there is no debating with you for me.
 
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It is clear to me now. In Star Wars, Thrawn supported the Empire because he thought the Republic was too chaotic and prone to infighting. But he also thought the Empire was too tyrannical and corrupt and hated the speciesism.

The Harmony looks like an attempt to combine what Thrawn saw as the best traits of both. Behind the scenes, NotThrawn is pulling the strings to prevent a too chaotic decision-making and to push everyone towards a general goal, but the society is still inclusive enough to accept other species and add their strenghts to their own.

Of course they're still not very nice guys, because Thrawn could be very brutal.
 
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Huth fop Makpol

Shurg kap Klasch

Blugh froth Klugiug

Xololth mug Blachlach

Blemblin blin Blablim

Wubba lubba Dubdub

Yub Shubbub

Ia Ia Cthulhu Fthag'n

BLEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOORGGGHHHH

Glockenspiel

Balderdash

Henrietta P. Jackson

Zim
 
Paranoia Goggles, activate!

AKuz said:
"Sadly some disaster befell these brave colonists and they fell into a time of conflict and despair. This period was ended when the first Singers arose to help knit the disparate and scattered survivors and their children into the peaceful union that would become the Harmony." a ring of highly simplified and stylized blue Humanoids hold hands as they encircle a Horizon that has changed into a similar simplified form.
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'Singers'. Some kind of psionics? If not the modern Singers, then at least the original ones (possibly still extant as a shadow government)?

"My people can be found in every profession and at every level of society. Speaker, Invector, and Singer, all count us amongst their ranks." More blue skinned humanoids, all in different dress and equipment, all smiling and waving at Kuznetsova.
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Every level of society? So how big is the percentage of poor or otherwise marginalized Horizon compared to the other species?


"Sadly, our people were struck with a debilitating and deadly disease, called the Red Death, a crisis that was on the verge of destroying our people forever." the same row of Tseskiya as before, but decidedly less jolly and with red patches of almost fungus like material on their bodies poking out from under their cloaks.
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Cynical minds might wonder if the Red Death was a purposefully released Bioweapon.


Invectors. Alexandria thinks that's the Harmony's term for a member of the military. Though it could just be a generic term like "Soldier", or "Peacekeeper", or "Warrior". Or maybe some sort of formal slang? It's been hard to parse exactly what it means.
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Invector. In-vector. So, their purpose is to insert vectors for something (such as propaganda) into other societies?

"Our homeworld, Tiriad, is efficiently managed to maximize both material productivity, and aesthetic beauty. The taming of Tiriad is one of my people's greatest accomplishments." the opposite of most heavily be-oceaned M-class worlds, Tiriad is majority green with small blue oceans. The viewpoint swoops in to show vast continents of delightful rolling green hills and open forests.
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So some degree of collectivist society that would have been easy to subvert by targeting key figures, the rest would have followed along naturally.

"Much of the Harmony's industrial needs are supplied by our hard work and efficient management.", a brief shot of a warehouse filled with goods, industrious Lintrids walking to and fro at a size that gives an impression of a industrial production of massive scale "You can find Lintrids employed in mines, arcologies, and factories throughout the Harmony of Horizon, and crewing many of its freighters and cargo ships. We are often found as Invectors in service with the Peacekeepers and Public Safety we often prefer more hands on roles."
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Worker/Soldier caste. Propably not many Lintrids in science and engineering, art and culture, and (non-irrelevant) government?


"When Moy raiders began preying on Horizon frontier colonies, the Harmony sent peacekeeping missions to help us restore order, and diplomatic envoys to assist in unifying our people under an equitable interstellar government. Though there were many Moy who fought against these changes, reason ultimately prevailed." Cheering Moy lined the streets of a war torn city, cheering for a line of (presumably) Harmony Peacekeepers marching in casual fashion, their bright white and red armor resplendent in the sunlight. Transparent faceplates let Kuznetsova see that Horizonians, Tseskiya, Lintrids, and yes, even Moy were part of this liberating force.
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Pretty standard military backing of a proxy government. Possibly with the last stable and unified government before their warring states era purposefully destabilized by the Harmony.



What's also striking is that the non-Tauni Homeworlds all seem to have rather sparse oceans, possibly indicative of being originally terraformed with limited import of water from off-planet. Wether this would have happened pre-Harmony and the relevant species translated onto the planets by someone else, or wether these homeworlds are actually artfully crafted fake homeworlds remains unsure. If the Harmony are so intent on sharing science, what do they answer when asked for fossil records on the evolution of their member species?
 
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