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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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All right, I have completely drafted a plan, which from my point of view is basically just AKuz's plan with a few relatively minor and obvious embellishments, but which ALSO includes everything I actually advocate doing.

The plan:
1) Actually addresses what we're going to say to the Caitians, something I think all the currently available plans are lacking in, including Plan AKuz, which I otherwise like.
2) Is a bit more precise and explicit about what we do when, and why, and does things like mention the Seyek as possible mediators in addition to the Risans.
3) Includes significant chunks of AKuz's plan verbatim, because it's a pretty good plan, which is why I voted for it in the first place.

EDIT: I will put the text of this plan, without the vote option, in my next post. I'm not making it a vote option until I have a chance to see what the tally looks like and at least communicate about all this with the people on the anti-blockade side.
 
Also, as a political play, why not give Dawiar to Romulans?

It would prevent Cardassians from mucking with them
It would ablate some fears of Romulans about our unrestricted growth
It would possibly mean that Dawair got protection against "Big Bad Federation"

We just need to set some provisions that we would still get access to Riza and that Romulans won't bully Dawiar.
 
NHO said:
Also, as a political play, why not give Dawiar to Romulans?

It would prevent Cardassians from mucking with them
It would ablate some fears of Romulans about our unrestricted growth
It would possibly mean that Dawair got protection against "Big Bad Federation"

We just need to set some provisions that we would still get access to Riza and that Romulans won't bully Dawiar.
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Romulans are way on the other side of our space, and would probably treat the Dawiar rather badly, since it looks the Dawiar are so stubbornly independent and argumentative that they'll pick a fight with a buzzsaw. Remember our first contact- they buzzed our Excelsior, and opened fire on us when some of their ships smacked into our shields like birds into a windowpane.
 
Okay, this is what I'd like to see. If you like this plan, then for now vote "Inspect, Mediate, Enlighten." If we can get some kind of reasonable discussion going about how to proceed and disarm this two-party system where one party is asleep, maybe I'll make it a real plan.

Plan Smother the War

Phase 0: Approach the Caitians and coordinate with them on a policy intended to 'smother' the war and permit a peaceful resolution of the conflict. This will require the Caitians to restrain themselves from raiding Dawiar installations, and refrain from purchasing foreign weapons, not that they really need to do the latter.

Instead, we will adopt a policy of blockade and investigation into the root causes of both the overall war and the Polaris incident. As a gesture of good faith, we are asking the Caitians to restrain themselves as outlined above.

Phase 1A: Starfleet (and the Caitians) contain the situation by setting up inspection patrols around the area and officially declaring that we will allow no outside military intervention until the situation is resolved peacefully, including searching for military equipment. Specifically, the Caitians are at war and can put up a blockade. We could use our ships to scan for ships entering the region, not do anything about it ourselves, but tell the Caitians. Then Caitian ships could enforce the blockade.

Perhaps ask for Betazoids to help out keeping the peace and helping us detect ships smuggling in weapons or hidden Cardassians (Presumably if a Cardassian cruiser strolls up we let them through to prevent triggering a war.)

AMENDMENT: Obviously the blockade will take place a comfortable distance from any specific Dawiar world, installation, or outpost.

Phase 1B: (AT THE SAME TIME) Attempt to figure out exactly how this happened. Perhaps someone triggered a Dawiar taboo or misread a custom. Perhaps some trick or misunderstanding caused the Dawiar to think they had to attack the Federation (and the Caitians) first.

Invite in a relatively neutral power known to the Dawiar to act as mediators and investigators. Attempt, with the Dawiar's consent, to begin mediation on a neutral world with the neutral power acting as arbitrators. (the Seyeks seem like a good option, as do the Risans). Send Enterprise along with our ambassadors, to let them know that we mean business.

Phase 2: (IN CASE OF EMERGENCY) If the Dawiar continue to refuse to co-operate and reject mediation or break off talks... Send Enterprise directly to the Dawiar home system to affirm our commitment to an equitable sharing of space and resources, and to ask, as directly as possible, that the Dawiar state their intentions toward us, and explain their actions. We recommend that this be done with one or more other explorers in trailing support at a distance, to warp in if Enterprise is attacked.

Under no circumstances is Enterprise to seek battle, however. If the explorers are attacked, their instructions are to withdraw from the system, causing as little harm to the Dawiar forces as is compatible with preserving the safety of their own commands.

The dispatch of multiple explorers is intended to shock the Dawiar into negotiation, or at least into explaining their motives in a clear and unambiguous fashion. It may reasonably be rejected without prejudice to Phases 0 and 1 of the plan.

[Phase 2 has been edited]
 
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Plan Akuz and my plan disagree on these aspects:

1. I believe this inspection patrol/blockade/interdiction idea is not a good one. Several reasons. First, it ties up our ships on patrols and we don't have a whole lot of ships in the region. Second, we don't in fact know that anyone is sneaking anything in, and it may result in our ships spending their time on patrols that have no results. It's quite possible that the Dawiar don't need additional shipments of torpedoes. This isn't WWII. This is a war with very few starships fighting it, in battles that don't last that long. At the very least, they won't be expending massive quantities of torpedoes until the war turns much hotter, so it's not clear what we would be accomplishing. Third, even if it did result in a shipment being interdicted, the results would be diplomatically unpredictable. It's doing something for the sake of being seen to do something, always a bad idea.

2. It hasn't been discussed much, but I am also not a fan of "Phase 3: If the Dwair continue to refuse to co-operate and reject mediation or break off talks, drop the equivalent of the entire explorer corps at the edge of their system to show how impossible victory is. Do not seek battle, however, just as a final show of force that will perhaps shock them into negotiation." This is as much as declaration that we will side with the Caitians in war. The Council doesn't want to do that, and they have told us they don't want to do that. It also relies on a number of assumptions about Dawiar psychology that may not prove true. It might or might not be a good idea based on what our investigations uncover,

3. While I do not oppose Phase 2 per se, I feel it imposes a lot of unnecessary preconditions on negotiation. Let's find out more about the Dawiar and see how they do things, and then we can figure out if neutral moderators are a good or bad idea and whether meeting on a neutral world is a good or bad idea. Too many preconceptions about how it should all go down.
 
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To anyone who has a good idea what they want, but is hesitant because they think it won't win anyway: It's not too late to suggest a new plan. We have had over 50 voters at some points in this quest, right now only 19 voted, and many of those will be willing to change over if a better plan comes along. Late comers have won a few times before in this quest.
 
Whatever plan investigates Weird Cultural Thing ASAP I'm 99% sure is the right thing to do. I wouldn't be surprised if some sort of ritual combat is part of how negotiations and disputes are settled, and by us bringing the Ambassador the Polaris was seen as the designated 'champion'. There's still way too much we don't know about what happened there to draw solid conclusions unfortunately,

Any plan investigating should interview the survivors of the Polaris and the crew of the Dryad first thing, especially if any Bridge crew from the Polaris lived, they'd be in the best possible position to tell us what exactly was said before the shooting started. Did the Dawiar fleet attack as a group, or just one ship at the beginning? Things like this are critical to understanding what the heck happened there.

I really disagree with any plan bringing in Risa to negotiate. They're about as far apart from the Dawiar culturally as anything we've seen so far.
 
@Simon_Jester
It's better than AKuz's plan, and IF I was in favor of a blockade I'd go for it over AKuz's plan.

But Briefvoice just summed up my objections quite nicely. While I personally think that yes, we absolutely SHOULD side with the Caitians if negotiations fail, our bosses disagree, which means we don't have the authority for Phase 2 (you) 3(Akuz).
 
[x] [ADVICE] Plan Try to talk, then gunboat investigate
-this is an act of war just as much against us as the Catians, but also looks like a mistake.
-the first thing we do is try to find a third party who can conduct discussions to try to deescalate. We want to try everyone local we can think of. At the same time, we push intelligence and counterintelligence hard to see what we can find.
-if that is not being successful, we get a Betazoid diplomatic team, sick it on the Enterprise, and send in a flotilla to talk and investigate on site. This is going to be on the most locked down rules of engagement possible, subject to the local diplomatic team needing to escalate.
-if that all fails, and we need to give it time and full support, then we need to support our Catians allies and make clear that attacking diplomatic missions is not acceptable.
-this is likely trying to start a proxy war and we need to defuse it. We also are making a statement to other races in how we act about both allies and neutral races. We need to always keep that in mind and be fair and honest in our dealings.
 
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Briefvoice said:
1. I believe this inspection patrol/blockade/interdiction idea is not a good one. Several reasons. First, it ties up our ships on patrols and we don't have a whole lot of ships in the region. Second, we don't in fact know that anyone is sneaking anything in, and it may result in our ships spending their time on patrols that have no results. It's quite possible that the Dawiar don't need additional shipments of torpedoes. This isn't WWII.
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I would not be surprised at all if the Dawiar don't have the AM facilities for long-term production of torpedos. It's quite possible the Cardassians will supply them with that as well, in which case WHOO BOY.

Briefvoice said:
2. It hasn't been discussed much, but I am also not a fan of "Phase 3: If the Dwair continue to refuse to co-operate and reject mediation or break off talks, drop the equivalent of the entire explorer corps at the edge of their system to show how impossible victory is. Do not seek battle, however, just as a final show of force that will perhaps shock them into negotiation." This is as much as declaration that we will side with the Caitians in war. The Council doesn't want to do that, and they have told us they don't want to do that. It also relies on a number of assumptions about Dawiar psychology that may not prove true.
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It is possible if the Council doesn't like that part of the advice they can reject it while listening to the other parts.

I almost feel like we should be able to present both plans since we have no idea what advice they'll accept.
 
On another note, here's my wish list for the main Snakepit event.
Betazed Starbase: Covers system defense requirement and fits the pattern. We can get away with not using starships for the Betazed defense requirement because we've already got a decent task group covering the Sol Sector.
Rennie: Thread Consensus. Invoke Gift of QM.
Constellation Refit: Bring them up to snuff. We won't be phasing them out for quite a while.
All available resource colonies: Need income.
Any available outposts: Crisis quantum assets.
Fire the tac guy: I want tac control before war.
Mixed Berths: We need more production space, and we need room for refits.
Any discounted tech teams: We need more research options.
Academy Expansion: Crew bottleneck is a thing.
Diplo Push on:
Orions: Inside the Amarkia sector, will not meaningfully increase defense requirements. Get them over 300, then stop.
Caldonians: They gave research benefits from hitting normal affilite status, we'll get more from close affiliate. Also adds minimal defense commitment increase because they're in the Klingon Border Zone.
Seyek: Keep them out of the Cardassian SoI. Yes, backstory issues. Still don't want them Cardie-aligned.
Indorians: Most likely next Cardie target after the Seyek.


Almost certainly can't afford all of this.
 
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Simon_Jester said:
Phase 1A: Starfleet (and the Caitians) contain the situation by setting up inspection patrols around the area and officially declaring that we will allow no outside military intervention until the situation is resolved peacefully, including searching for military equipment. Specifically, the Caitians are at war and can put up a blockade. We could use our ships to scan for ships entering the region, not do anything about it ourselves, but tell the Caitians. Then Caitian ships could enforce the blockade.
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You should clarify that Starfleet inspection patrols are NOT to enter either Dawair or Caitian space.

Also may need to roughly specify how many ships we can spare for this task - we may only have 2 or so ships available, though Oberths don't contribute much to garrison requirements and likely have excellent sensors, but at the opportunity cost of less success at science events from sectors they previously were garrisoned.

Simon_Jester said:
Phase 1B: (AT THE SAME TIME) Attempt to figure out exactly how this happened. Perhaps someone triggered a Dawiar taboo or misread a custom. Perhaps some trick or misunderstanding caused the Dawiar to think they had to attack the Federation (and the Caitians) first.
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I do like the prose of Briefvoice's version of this, since it's noticeably more comprehensive here, especially the point of a likely Cardassian plot, and that we can try getting Spock or other xenopsychology experts involved.

edit: Also betazoids on diplomatic teams may help (or could backfire due to paranoia).
 
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pheonix89 said:
On another note, here's my wish list for the main Snakepit event.
Betazed Starbase: Covers system defense requirement and fits the pattern. We can get away with not using starships for the Betazed defense requirement because we've already got a decent task group covering the Sol Sector.
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Seems kind of over-coverage honestly, since we can cover Betazed with a single Centaur-A. . Why not put it on the RBZ instead? That's incredibly stable and unlikely to shift on us.

Diplo Push on:
Orions: Inside the Amarkia sector, will not meaningfully increase defense requirements. Get them over 300, then stop.
Caldonians: They gave research benefits from hitting normal affilite status, we'll get more from close affiliate. Also adds minimal defense commitment increase because they're in the Klingon Border Zone.
Seyek: Keep them out of the Cardassian SoI. Yes, backstory issues. Still don't want them Cardie-aligned.
Indorians: Most likely next Cardie target after the Seyek.

Almost certainly can't afford all of this.
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I would sub in the Yrillians for the Orions, Check out the map; we don't pay attention to them and it'll be Dawiar II except Coreward instead of Rimward.
 
lbmaian said:
You should clarify that Starfleet inspection patrols are NOT to enter either Dawair or Caitian space.
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Duly amended, though I thought it was obvious.

Also may need to roughly specify how many ships we can spare for this task - we may only have 2 or so ships available, though Oberths don't contribute much to garrison requirements and likely have excellent sensors, but at the opportunity cost of less success at science events from sectors they previously were garrisoned.
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I would very much rather NOT make that commitment until we have Council approval to go forward with the blockade plan. Our entire deployment strategy looks very different if we go for a blockade than if we don't.

Also may need to roughly specify how many ships we can spare for this task - we may only have 2 or so ships available, though Oberths don't contribute much to garrison requirements and likely have excellent sensors, but at the opportunity cost of less success at science events from sectors they previously were garrisoned.
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We may have to commit explorers to the task. Which would also be a good thing if, say, the Cardassians randomly attack a Caitian ship, which would be totally in character for them.

I do like the prose of Briefvoice's version of this, since it's noticeably more comprehensive here, especially the point of a likely Cardassian plot, and that we can try getting Spock or other xenopsychology experts involved.

edit: Also betazoids on diplomatic teams may help (or could backfire due to paranoia).
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Briefvoice's version is more comprehensive because he's been selectively editing his plan on the fly for two hours or so after the main opposition to his plan went to bed.

And as a note to everyone who thinks me suggesting an alternative plan would be a good idea, and might draw more voters, please note that only one person has come forward favoring my plan. Meanwhile, we have explicit tactical voting against the blockade idea, making it very imprudent for me to abandon support for a pretty good blockade plan in favor of one I think is a bit more refined.

Furthermore, @OneirosTheWriter has declared his intent to close the vote as soon as he wakes up, in which case it may be impossible for us to resolve this issue before that happens. Because @AKuz may not actually wake up before the vote closes, and is in no position to amend her plan as the evolving discussion unfolds and casts new light on the details of the blockade strategy.

Basically, I think the situation is very unequal in that the blockade strategy is committed to a static plan that can be nitpicked to death and cannot be amended to address people's concerns. Whereas the anti-blockade strategy is being steadily revised and updated to be increasingly appealing to all and sundry.
 
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Briefvoice said:
Seems kind of over-coverage honestly, since we can cover Betazed with a single Centaur-A. . Why not put it on the RBZ instead? That's incredibly stable and unlikely to shift on us.
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Because the starbase is a one-time 20pp cost for a hilariously more powerful asset. Because the Starbase comes from a different budget than the Centaur-A. We're seriously low on mobile assets ATM, and the starbase doesn't use the resources that are constraining them. Also, because we've got a starbase over every single core planet so far.

I would sub in the Yrillians for the Orions, Check out the map; we don't pay attention to them and it'll be Dawiar II except Coreward instead of Rimward.
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We've got no affiliates anywhere the Yrillians, and unprovoked attacks on actual members doesn't have the same political complications as on affiliates, because it's a very clear attack on the UFP proper.

And since the Cardassians already used Syndicate proxies against us once, we want counter-play against that line of attack, like streghtening the Orion Union.
 
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