That, yes.
The main things we know about the aggressors:
- They are human, human-derived, or something close enough to fake it with a spacesuit.
- They are technologically advanced, though not overwhelmingly so.
- They operate stealth ships built for skirmishing with a paradigm of fairly close-range ambushes with radiological energy weapons, which either ignore armour entirely or have very good penetration.
- Their ships fight below their apparent weight class: they appear to be built for long range scouting and raiding missions, with seemingly light armour and armament and relying on their technological edge to launch ambushes and their chemical boosters to escape unfavourable engagements. Overall, I'd describe them as heavy scouts carrying out a campaign of reconnaissance by fire.
- They only communicate when under great duress, and share as little information as possible even then. This makes it difficult to assess them: we only have their behaviour and reports of it to work from, and from those we must assume that everything they've done is deliberate and malicious.
- They are murderous, with a habit of launching unprovoked attacks without warning. They may or may not be inclined to massacre captive crews outright, but they're unquestionably willing to kill at the slightest resistance or even insufficiently immediate obedience and will murder captives demonstratively pour encourager les autres.
- They have a reported history of raiding in the region and points southeast. The Aslan are able to fight them off and maintain what sounds like ongoing low-level skirmishing, but don't want to risk an escalation by chasing them in exactly the way we're doing.
- They maintain a presence in the northern systems, able to stalk our diplomatic expedition and plan an ambush.
Overall they appear to be either pirates or some sort of turbo-Hermosans who've gone long past "suspicious xenophobic isolationism" and into a war of all against all against any possible threat. The Aslan report indicates the ships we've seen aren't very effective raiders, but that might just be because they're long-ranged scouts and the Aslan defences were too thorny to launch a proper raiding expedition against.
My first key point is this: the enemy ships we've encountered so far are almost certainly not dedicated warships. The enemy's mainline combatants are probably built along similar lines (unless they have defences able to stop their own guns) but without the need to spend so much tonnage on endurance, they could be extremely dangerous.
The combat we've seen so far sounds like mostly skirmishing, but as we get closer to their home base they'll likely become both more aggressive and
much better armed.
My second point is: the northern systems are an enemy pond. When we deploy in strength we're able to force our way in and make our displeasure felt, but we can't meaningfully force an engagement if the enemy don't want to play, and we can't yet stop them from operating anywhere our deathblobs aren't.
With the way we know they like to behave whenever they can get away with it, it's entirely possible that, as C_Z suggested, the people of Menorb are being threatened by a power they can't meaningfully oppose and who we can't protect them from, to the point where even
speaking to us might be taken as treachery. Before Bogey Alpha had its misjump and decided to behave as the Northern Aggressor does, we were just visitors, and they could ask us to stay (and give up our ship for reverse engineering) safely. Now, after we sent an armed diplomatic expedition to politely ask around "excuse me, but what
the fuck??" and the Aggressors replied "yes and we'll do it again", we're an enemy power.
If that's what's going on, it would also explain why all three of these independent systems are so obsequious to outsiders and interested in our ships. And here comes the HSWS bombing the fuck out of Menorb's surface-to-orbit defences and making them even more vulnerable. Whoopsie! (Possibly).
In that particular scenario we might actually be better off, Menorb relationswise, going in to get our crews back guns blazing so there's no implication of collusion. But it's still building castles on air.
In terms of what to do next:
- It's entirely possible I'm wrong about Menorb's reason for behaving like this. We may as well ask first; we can always start shooting again if they don't let our people go.
- Perhaps we should try raiding that prison colony and see if the people there know anything interesting? Did we ever ask around to find out who it belongs to? If it belongs to the Northern Aggressors I think that anyone they want locked up should probably be free.
- We should be building with a lean to CFA-Ds since firing torpedoes at a thrust 9 skirmisher seems fairly pointless.
- Related, how small and affordable can a practical automated LMDC gun platform be? Preferably something harder to just zap from range than a minimum viable product. Not sure how effective the torpedo mines will be but a gun platform would be much easier to spot and target than a CAPTOR mine.
- Related? I think there's a need for a combat-rated minelayer that can keep up with combat ships and not become collateral damage, to lay forward defences in just-seized territory. Possibly by putting minelayer equipment on a combat supply ship that can resupply ships without either making them jump out or endangering an FSS? Not sure if that's needed, but I think the mines would help with the bite-and-hold.
- Unrelated: can we make drone fighters now? Would they be any good? Certainly more expendable.
- An excellent idea: can we make an automated seed factory? Say, one that we can park in a system and it'll build minefields and fighter drones and automated defence stations to guard the system? This seems like a wonderful idea. Of course, it wouldn't be very smart, so perhaps we could name it something like Berserker so people know to keep clear. Perhaps we could even park it on an enemy's system to make a self-sustaining blockade that makes sure they never go back to space and make trouble again. I don't think this is in the Articles yet so we can probably get away with it at least once.
