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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:
I can see all sorts or scenarios where the slow down attempt fires back horribly, but I struggle to come up with even a single one where it's worth the risk.

Could the people voting for the slow down attempt explain what they actually intend to achieve with that?

Buy time for moving our fleets? We already have (barely) enough time to get them in place, losing a week would hurt a lot, but gaining one wouldn't help anywhere near as much. And we wouldn't be gaining any time for preparing for the Kadak-Tor because we don't even know where she is and can't count on her being caught in the effect. We are losing information on where the Kadak-Tor could be, possibly risking it escaping the Cardassians to do bad things, risking the Kumari, risking causing a possibly unnecessary war, delaying learning what is actually going on, and if it was going to end in war anyway all we've done is given the other groups time to catch up.
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Whatever the Cardassians are planning, slowing down their progress will disrupt it.

Given that they aren't even trying to communicate with us at the moment, I'm not particularly inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt. (I assume we've been trying to communicate with the Cardies as well for an explanation for a 'WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS'.)

Speaking about the Kadak-Tor's warp signature, could we try getting it my getting all the warp signatures and then eliminating all the ones we know?
 
[X] [CBZ] Deny attempt
[X] [TF] Decline Preposal

Even if the Kadak-Tor is attempting to defect to the Federation, Nash's awesome gray rival/love interest is not worth leaving the Kumari potentially at risk from the whole of the Cardassian fleet.
 
[X][CBZ] Authorise attempt to slow down Cardassian task force
[X][TF] Decline Proposal

And we may slow down whole secret spy starship things, later.
 
OneirosTheWriter said:
Aboard Runabout BG-1, High-Speed Starfleet Intelligence Command Runabout

"You just had to open your mouth, didn't you?" sighs Commander Usha.

"All I did was suggest it would be good to have some people already familiar with the Kadak-Tor down in Caitian space, alright?" snorts Kuznetsova as they watch the stretched lines of stars flash by. "How was I supposed to know they'd consider that volunteering?"

Commander Usha just groans.
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"Next time, Alex, write a goddamn memo."
 
Simon_Jester said:
Anyone who thinks it was a mistake to commit an Excelsior to Vega rather than moving it to the spinward front OR leaving it at Sol, for example, is now out of luck.
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Vega is spinward of Sol though? That's a main reason why I preferred Case Alpha over Case Epsilon, because the Endurance could be sent on from Vega to Amarkia relatively easily if the situation called for that.
Shard said:
Whatever the Cardassians are planning, slowing down their progress will disrupt it.
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Why would you think that? if this is all a ruse to be able to get their fleet close to our borders without us being sure what is going on delaying the most forward group plays into their hand is is almost the greatest gift we could possibly give them, because it gives the other groups a chance to catch up without giving the ruse away. If they want to trick us into attacking first it also plays into their hands. Can you actually sketch a specific, plausible Cardassian ruse that would be hindered?
 
Um, no.

I point out that they could also just move slower to group their ships up.

I operate on the general 'If it's not in their plans it would probably fuck them up.'

Though I now wonder if Cardassia has a bad case of Changeling infection making them do unintelligent stuff. I mean, this is the equivalent of the Soviet Union massing up their fleet and then moving it towards the USA without any diplomatic postering or communication.
 
Nix said:
Vega is spinward of Sol though? That's a main reason why I preferred Case Alpha over Case Epsilon, because the Endurance could be sent on from Vega to Amarkia relatively easily if the situation called for that.
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Vega to Amarkia is a short hop, but Vega to, say, 21 Themis is nearly as great a distance as Earth to 21 Themis, if you look at the map and play with the Pythagorean Theorem a bit. Especially since, if I read your map correctly, Vega is noticeably above the plane of the map.

The ships that make up Fifth First Fleet at Vega are moving almost perpendicular to the direction they'd have to go to reach where the action is now, and at a large angle to the direction they'd need to go in order to go where you anticipate the action (at Amarkia). The Sol Sector fleet will travel for a week, to shave a few days off their travel time.

So if your priority was to get as much firepower as possible as close to the main theater of operations as possible as fast as possible...

Ordering Fifth First Fleet to Vega wasn't as bad as, oh, ordering it to Betazed. But it doesn't do a lot of good either.

EDIT: If you really wanted to rush the Sol Sector Fleet to where you expected conflict, the thing to do was just to order as many ships as possible to abandon Sol entirely and head for Ord Grind Duk, which is on the direct route between the affected region and our core space. Except then we wouldn't have a covering force in case we get jumped from the coreward direction, which I'm told is something we should be worrying about.
 
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Shard said:
I operate on the general 'If it's not in their plans it would probably fuck them up.'
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I get the idea, but I still don't know if we want to fuck their plans up. They still haven't fired a shot at a Federation ship (during this movement anyway) nor encroached on our territory. In fact, they've been very pointedly not encroaching on our territory. Why are we going to try to fuck up ships flying through neutral space out of... what, out of fear?

Let's see what they're flying towards. We don't know yet if we want to slow them down or speed them up.

Remember Q's warning.....
 
Shard said:
Um, no.

I point out that they could also just move slower to group their ships up.
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Assuming that the reason for these bizarre events is to confuse us on whether or not they were intending to attack, no, they couldn't, that would be pretty obvious.

This is an example of Simpson's paradox. The Cardassians are reasonably likely to be our adversary in this situation. And delaying their first group is pretty likely to hurt them. But delaying is NOT all that likely to hurt our adversary, because it disproportionately hurts the Cardassians in cases where they aren't.

Simon_Jester said:
EDIT: If you really wanted to rush the Sol Sector Fleet to where you expected conflict, the thing to do was just to order as many ships as possible to abandon Sol entirely and head for Ord Grind Duk, which is on the direct route between the affected region and our core space. Except then we wouldn't have a covering force in case we get jumped from the coreward direction, which I'm told is something we should be worrying about.
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And my own plan, proposed before everyone decided they'd rather get prefab options, did send the Endurance to Ord Grind Duk. Naturally I'd have preferred that over either Case.
 
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[X][CBZ] Deny attempt
[X][TF] Decline Proposal

We don't have a specific reason we want that specific force delayed, and their intel services will suspect something up if a ship of ours is up for repair in the middle of action. We want to keep de-escalation chances as high as we can without risking major security problems.
 
If we were at war or got some confirmation of malicious intent, I'd go for delaying tactics, but as it stands, it's too risky with uncertain gain.

Even if the S'harien Kumari probably pulled off the mission successfully with no trace back to Federation involvement, I'm still not sure if that's a good or bad thing yet.

[X][CBZ] Deny attempt

Too premature to withdraw our anti-Syndicate forces as well.

[X][TF] Decline Proposal
 
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First vote is pretty close and just swung around, second vote is unanimous on course of action but divisive on spelling.
Vote Tally : Sci-Fi - To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest) | Page 578 | Sufficient Velocity
##### NetTally 1.7.4

Task: CBZ

[X][CBZ] Deny attempt
No. of Votes: 13
Derek58
AKuz
Briefvoice
ClawClawBite
Glassware
lbmaian
Muramasa
Nix
nocarename
pheonix89
Random Member
UberJJK
Yeangst

[X][CBZ] Authorise attempt to slow down Cardassian task force
No. of Votes: 11
Erandil
Artemis1992
Finagle007
Japanime
Nervos Belli
NHO
PauliExklusor
Shard
SynchronizedWritersBlock
tryrar
UbeOne

——————————————————————————————————————————————
Task: TF

[X][TF] Decline Proposal
No. of Votes: 19
Erandil
Artemis1992
Briefvoice
ClawClawBite
Derek58
Finagle007
Japanime
Nervos Belli
NHO
Nix
PauliExklusor
pheonix89
Random Member
Shard
SynchronizedWritersBlock
tryrar
UbeOne
UberJJK
Yeangst

[X] [TF] Decline Preposal
No. of Votes: 5
AKuz
Glassware
lbmaian
Muramasa
nocarename

Total No. of Voters: 24
 
[X][CBZ] Deny attempt

As long as we don't even know what the Cardassians are planning and whether slowing them down would be a serious obstacle to their plans, starting aggressive actions against one of their fleets seems rash to me. It might kick off an avoidable war
 
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[X][CBZ] Deny attempt

[X][TF] Decline Proposal


Tbh I'm feeling there should be an option where we at least try to talk to them, even if it is warping in a volunteer crew on a fast ship to the other side of the system to where their fleet is and broadcasting a challenge. Yeah the Cardies are very unlikely to talk to us no matter what they are up to, but it might be worth a shot.

Maybe just the knowledge that we see what they are up to and feel strongly about them keeping the fuck away from us might be enough to get them to back off.

Come to think of it what if this is all a posturing maneuver, the Cardies seeing how aggressive they can be right next to us, before we respond
 
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[X][CBZ] Deny attempt
[X][TF] Decline Proposal

Delaying them is just too risky for too uncertain a payoff. As for Sulu's TF Proposal, it's a good idea, but I feel that it's too early to say whether we need it or not. But keep it on file, we may end up doing it as more information becomes available.

And I support asking the Daiwar if they know anything about the Cardassians, or to ask them what they're doing for us. They clearly have diplomatic links to them because those torpedeos didn't just fall off a space truck, and this really doesn't seem like it would be a burden of any sort.
 
Gear said:
And I support asking the Daiwar if they know anything about the Cardassians, or to ask them what they're doing for us. They clearly have diplomatic links to them because those torpedeos didn't just fall off a space truck, and this really doesn't seem like it would be a burden of any sort.
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If we can decrypt that message it will be unnecessary because we'll know everything the Dawiar know.

In a way it's doing them a favor to grab it by listening in rather than "just asking". Avoids putting them in a very awkward position when we're asking for info the Cardassians clearly don't want to share.
 
Regarding deployment plans, I'm of two minds. One is that I hope we get the chance to revisit deployment plans at some cadence. Second is that the more control you hand over to players, the greater the temptation to micromanage. Which is not a bad thing in and of itself, but if it involves tens of variables or happens frequently AND it's not adequately comprehensible within a couple minutes, then the voting starts getting exclusive - like what's kinda happening with research - and plan makers will start bickering over tons of smaller and smaller details.

If it wouldn't slow down the quest progress too much, I'd prefer a two-phase voting per in-game week, where the first phase establishes goals and overall strategic maneuvers (like this and last update), and a second phase where players get a chance to fine-tune the implementation of those goals and maneuvers.

That would help cut down the number of variables being considered at a time, especially if the implementation phase involves task-level voting for each relatively independent subgoal.

SynchronizedWritersBlock said:
I'm getting a better grasp for Sulu. He's brilliant, but absolutely undeterred in getting his solution. I feel he needs someone above him to temper him.

Not quite a suitable replacement Admiral of Starfleet right now.
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To be fair, it is Sulu's job to provide as many viable tactical plans now. This is a good plan, if intel could just nail down what the heck the Cardassians are up to and verify such a plan would help.
 
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I'm also really curious to see how long it takes to decrypt these intercepted messages. The initial messages from more than an in-game week ago still haven't been decrypted yet, or else Starfleet Intelligence would have informed us. (And no, despite any misgivings about the intel head, they can't be that incompetent to withhold info from us.)
 
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