To Boldly Go... (a Starfleet quest)
- Thread starter OneirosTheWriter
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Given that I don't recall the Council issuing a declaration of war, I'm going to assume that sending a task force out to smash the Sydraxians is going to raise a few eyebrows in Paris.
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- USA
We ignored them for too long so someone took advantage, I feel like if we do some diplo pushes on them we can fix that.
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- Cyberspace
Well, on one hand, moves like that might provoke the Cardassians to turn outward again ASAP. On the other, they're apparently ignoring entreaties from their clients...
Heh... now there's a thought. I wonder if the Klingons could be induced to think that the Cardassians are currently weak and distracted and might be better cannibalization fodder...
Of course that wouldn't be the proper Federation thing to do, but man, would it be nice...
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The sad thing is they're pretty peaceful and friendly people...we failed to protect them and shelter them from the horrors of the galaxy as a whole.
I'd prioritize the gretarians and the yrillians
Derek58
Rocket Punch is Best Punch
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- Getter Valhalla
It looks like the Yrillians are all ready a Cardassian Affiliate though. Bajor's not.
Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
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Yeah, we need to fix the Graetarian situation. Their exploitation was the result of our war. That makes it fairly close to out fault given that we've basically ignored the Sydaxians and not really engaged them in any way that wasn't defensive. So they feel they can pull tricks like this.
Fucking pacifists are probably going to scream bloody murder, but we really do need to smack the Sydaxians hard enough that they stop this shit. 2012 Snakepit then...
Also need to nab Bajorans while we can to prevent another atrocity.
Fucking pacifists are probably going to scream bloody murder, but we really do need to smack the Sydaxians hard enough that they stop this shit. 2012 Snakepit then...
Also need to nab Bajorans while we can to prevent another atrocity.
This could be a chance to actually pry the Yrillians and the Dawiar away, something that might not be possible in ordinary times.
I remain concerned about what happens if one side actually starts to lose and gets desperate. There's no way a major war stays safely contained in the Beta Quadrant.
Still, it'll be interestingly narratively for both sides to have an easily accessible "neutral territory" while in the middle of a vast war. Imagine this:
The Vulcan colony of "Soltitude" turns into a nexus for ne'er-do-wells and, scoundrels, spies, and agents from all over both quadrants. It's a place where agents of both Romulans and Klingons come to make deals, steal intelligence, and trade for resources that keep their side up and fighting just a little while longer. Ever type of scum you can imagine comes there to make their fortune, fighting the Great War in the shadows and under protection of the Federation's neutrality. For the colonists it's hell, of course. They didn't name their colony Solitude because they wanted visitors!
Then consider the Caldonians and the Gaeni, selling all the latest tech to the Klingons and the Romulans respectively.
On a local galactic level, we're talking the equivalent of WWII in scope. And the Federation is going to have a front seat. Buckle up, because you can't even imagine all the ways this is going to turn into a nightmare.
Exacting shipbuilding materials from the Gretarians? Those bastards! Only a power devoid of morality or compassion would make a diplomatic arrangement with a weaker species and have them send shipbuilding materials for the constuction of their own warfleets. How can they-
(aide whispers in Briefvoice's ear) The Caldonians, you say? The.... the Gaeni, the Orions, the Apinae, the Indorians, the Rigellians, the... the Risans?
Well, I mean... that's different. They're doing it voluntarily.
Okay, kidding aside it's cute that the Sydraxians have their own chibi-affiliate that they're bullying. It turns out I was right all along when I said the Cardassians wouldn't bother with the Gretarians. And yet.
Interesting that the Apinae talk to them so much.
(sigh) Could we just offer to tow out a newly-built Excelsior and blow it up for the? Okay, not serious.
Looks like there's little hope for near-term peace, then. Sorry, Ensign Minmay.
Sounds like up to 50 total combat if they throw everything at us. And growing.
- Location
- Australia
After going through and adding impact/cost to my ledger, I have a 2310 YTD Impact of 33 with a Cost of 24. Cumulative is 60 (not counting Syndicate resilience).
Yeah, how dare some more powerful people that contacted them make them cough up ship-building materials. Only we get to do that!
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We'd be more polite about it.
The Kadesh. They were about to leave the Neutral Zone so its finally safe, and they're at 85/100 so in range of Affiliate status.
That doesn't quite explain it though.
In TOS, the Klingons and Tomulans were near peers to the Federation, maybe a little stronger. Between TOS and TNG, the Federation went through a period of explosive growth, adding hundreds of inhabited worlds and many (hundreds?) members specieses.
Yet, in TNG, the Klingon and tomulan Empires are still peers of the Federation. In fact, in Yesterday's Enterprise, in an alternate reality, the Klingons were on the cusp of defeating the Federation.
Let's not start another fight right now.
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- Central Standard Time
Headcanon: while we were expandong, they were colonizing and developing their interiors.
Both of them won the resource lottery in terms of internal resources.
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- Mid-Atlantic
For clarification, when this report says "like a well-rounded, faster Jaldun," does it mean approximately the same stats as a Jaldun? Or should we read it to mean "like a Jaldun would be, if it were 50% heavier?
Because a 1.8 megaton heavy cruiser built with modernish technology could have that a Jaldun's level of power... or it could be noticeably stronger.
Romulans are chronically paranoid about aggression, and like to play tricks. Klingons are aggressive, and loathe people who like to play tricks. Any alliance between the two powers is going to be massively unstable, and they know that, because they already tried it in the 2260s or so. Which means it wouldn't be very good long-term security.
That being said, while I'd like to prevent this war, I'm not sure it's possible. The Klingons and the Romulans are both fairly warlike species, confident enough in their own strength that they're not afraid of a fight on the strategic level. In canon it's obvious that there have been extensive armed clashes between the two sides, and that's not going to change here.
The UN can do that because they're a superior power. Not as in "stronger" but as in "higher ranking."
People recognize on some legal level that the UN's authority is supranational and neutral, and therefore they are prepared to tolerate its forces doing things on the ground in their country. Sometimes.
No Klingon or Romulan now living is ever going to want to concede that the Federation is the paramount 'supranational' authority in the Beta Quadrant. Therefore they will resist any attempt on our part to penetrate into their space and act as though we have the authority to police, control, or protect their fleets or their citizens. They can't give that up without giving up sovereignty.
That's a very good idea.
@OneriosTheWriter, given that we're expanding both to coreward and rimward, parallel to the RBZ and KBZ, can we get some extended definition of the neutral zones? This is especially important to the Romulans, who fetishize the neutral zone. Probably also to the Klingons.
Furthermore, it occurs to me that if we negotiate the boundaries in ways that cede relatively more potential territory to them, they may feel a bit less threatened by our expansion. Telling the Klingons that we honestly don't mind if they expand into, oh, Sector -7c sounds good. That way they have territory to grow into, and plus that gives the Cardassians something to worry about, which is probably good. Make Risa the 'corner' of our space.
Just extending the existing Neutral Zone to coreward for Romulus would be good, to the best of our ability. The main priority is to reassure them that our impending absorption of the Gaeni isn't an attempt to wrap around their flank.
This isn't really Starfleet's job, but it is unfathomably stupid if the Federation as a whole isn't thinking about this problem. Can we get some kind of a clue as to what the Diplomatic Corps is trying to do on this subject? That should be easy knowledge for the head of Starfleet to obtain, and it has a marked effect on how we proceed from here.
It is probably not within our remit to fight the largest space battle since Kadesh without their permission to launch an offensive. At the very least, the Federation Council needs to believe that diplomacy is not a realistic solution.
That said, we should definitely do diplomatic pushes on our frontier. Try to take advantage of the Cardassians' disarray to peel loose the Yrillians, the Dawiar, and maybe even the Bajorans (maybe) from their grasp, and also to reach out to the Gretarians and try to prevent them from being enslaved by Sydraxians.
Eh. It sounds like the Sydraxians just rolled up and said "hey, give us a million tons of steel," and the Gretarians looked nervously at the murderships and said "...okay." By the standards of "horrors of the galaxy," that is actually fairly tame. I wouldn't feel too guilty about it, although I do think we should do something.
The Sydraxians are angry at us over something that is, ultimately, the product of Cardassian trickery. The Gretarians have no part in it and deserve to stay out of it.
Do bear in mind that the Cardassians can, and have, peeled loose affiliates from us. If we are doing diplomatic pushes on the Yrillians, and Cardassia isn't (which they haven't, at least for this year), that situation could flip very rapidly.
"Our war?" The war exists entirely in the Sydraxians' minds! They're trying to take revenge on us for something that isn't even our fault! We have literally never attempted to harm any Sydraxian thing, at any time, in any way.
The only way we could have prevented this was by doing something stupid. Namely, by responding to the Sydraxians' delusion of having justification to fight us, by attacking them and giving them actual justification to fight us.
The problem is that now, their belief that they have grounds to fight us is causing them to hurt third parties. That isn't our fault, but we're the only ones who can do anything about it.
It's either the Kadeshi, or the Bajorans.
The Kadeshi would be a safer choice in a "don't poke the hornets' nest sense" right now. But we have NO IDEA where they're going. If they go off to a distant quadrant of the galaxy we may never see them again. Conversely, if they settle near our enemies, we may have major problems defending them.
The Bajorans are a riskier choice, but on the other hand, this may be the best possible time to build good relations with them. We may or may not desire to do so, but it's something to consider that IF we had any attention of approaching Bajor diplomatically, BEFORE they are drawn fully into the Cardassian sphere... it's going to have to be now.
Yeah. Basically, the Klingons and the Romulans must have SOME way of growing their military and economy to roughly match us. We may be doing a little better (in relative terms) than the canon Federation, but we can't be doing THAT much better. It's not as though the canon Federation didn't add plenty of members.
[On a side note, it seems likely that, in the Yesterday's Enterprise timeline, the Romulans and Cardassians took advantage of the Klingons attacking the Federation in the 2340s to start carving chunks off of Federation space themselves. This may help explain why the Federation was in special danger of losing in a short amount of time by the 2360s. That was the point at which the other powers' incursions started to add up into something that looked like "defeat."]
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- Central Standard Time
I'd like to push Bajor this year, but I guess they can wait.
Also, 4 isn't a hard limit.
Forgothrax
Not Going Gently
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We're already in a fight. The only difference is that we're ignoring someone who has a third of our combat power and appears to be gearing up to rapidly build a murderball to chuck at our borders.
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- Mid-Atlantic
Let's see... three cruisers that might have Combat 5, plus about ten escorts that almost certainly have Combat 3... that makes a total of 40. Okay, I guess that's somewhere in the neighborhood of one third of our present combat power? Maybe? We have ten or so Excelsiors of Combat 6, plus 25 or so vessels of various types with Combat 3, so that's about 135 (current official number is 144, but I had to look that up).
Anyway, I don't favor ignoring them, and I've been outspoken on this before. But I DO think we should start our "pay attention to Sydraxia" campaign with something other than just trying to build a bigger murderball and chuck it at their borders.
Like, trying to get messages to them through the Gretarians.
Or trying to establish the Gretarians as a supportive forward base.
Or at least engaging in enough diplomacy with various Yrillian factions that we can be reasonably confident the Yrillians won't jump us from the flank while we're entangled with Sydraxia.
Or, hell, all of the above.
Don't react to this like this is a sudden surprise that demands a violent emergency response. We KNEW the situation with Sydraxia looked like this ever since the first raid on Vega colony about two or three in-game years ago. We're preparing to do something about it, but that doesn't mean we should act rashly.
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On television, the Enterprise would solve this by mocking up a fake Excelsior, convincing the Sydraxians they had successfully blown it up, and then negotiating for peace honor having been satisfied.
Nervos Belli
Don't think this means you've won!
- Location
- Murica
Four is a hard limit. The GM put it in to prevent us from spamming all our pp on diplo pushes and integrating the entire quadrant in under a decade. Though there are techs somewhere that increase the cap.