Hard Light Productions Forums
General FreeSpace => FreeSpace Discussion => Topic started by: CT27 on July 29, 2022, 07:22:18 pm
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A while ago we talked about what an NTF 'victory' would have looked like (basically they got Polaris, Regulus, and Sirius...I think that was the consensus).
What would a GTI victory in Silent Threat/STR have looked like? What would the post-war situation be?
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Ooh, now that is an interesting thought experiment. :yes:
I imagine it would have had several effects:
1 - the GTA either being taken over by the GTI completely or the remaining GTA and the GTI signing a peace agreement but then immediately entering a cold war scenario. (Fortune would indeed have favoured the bold ;-) )
2 - Relations with the Vasudans would take a nose dive. If some part of the GTA remains then perhaps that part will maintain the alliance with the Vasudans, but I imagine it would be somewhat fraught. If the GTI controls everything, they either go to war with the vasudans again or enter a cold war scenario with them.
3 - The shivan technology and intelligence wouldn't be lost, so the GTI would have a clear technological edge over the vasudans and non-GTI humanity. The Hades may become a whole class of ship with several sister ships. Beam weapons would be in widespread use earlier.
4 - the colossus wouldn't have been built.
5 - ETAK would probably still happen, but possibly earlier on and with greater success.
6 - The NTF probably wouldn't have come into existence since there wouldn't be a perceived need for it since the GTI would be performing that perceived function.
7 - Discovering and opening the GamDrac Knossos may still happen - and possibly earlier on.
8 - Attempting to contact the shivans in the nebular might still happen. It could be a slower and more cautious process since it would presumably have the full weight of the GTI behind it, as opposed to just the Iceni and bosch running from the GTVA. Whether this would change the outcome would be up to the storytellers. Capella may still go boom and the GTI might still have to retreat and sever the nodes to survive, or it could turn out quite differently. :-)
Just my off the top of my head thoughts :-)
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There is a failure debriefing for the last mission of ST:R...
We failed to stop the Hades before it could repair its engines, and the GTI superweapon successfully made the subspace jump to Altair. It has only been a few short hours since the battle ended, but our worst fears have been confirmed.
We have already started to receive reports on the devastation being wrought in Altair and Aldebaran. Hundreds of thousands of Vasudans are believed dead, and many of the PVN's highest-ranking officers have committed ritual suicide, including Admiral Amentep, commander of the PVD Guardian and the Vasudan 13th Battle Group. Most alarmingly, Hammer of Light cells in Altair have begun to change their rhetoric, claiming that the prophesied Great Destroyers are not the Shivans after all, but the Terrans.
Perhaps our victory was not meant to be. In our battle against the Hades, the odds were against us, and the sentiments of fourteen years are not easily pushed aside by the events of six months. As we speak, Terran ships across the GTA are defecting to the GTI in large numbers, and members-in-hiding of the intelligence directorate have emerged to seize power in Delta Serpentis. In the face of overwhelming opposition from our former allies, Admiral Tess and the Soyakaze have surrendered.
Our failure has brought calamity to our ravaged systems. Though the wars against the Vasudans and the Shivans are now over, we may have paid the price with our souls.
Another interesting scenario is what might have happened if the GTI conspiracy had not been uncovered by the Krios.
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This got me thinking: is there any campaign in which you fly for the gti insurrection?
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If there isn’t there should be 😎
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From the perspective of a GTA civilian, not much would change I think. The leaders of the GTA would be different, what with the whole coup thing, but it would be very easy for anyone in a position of power to just go back to killing vasudans like they've been doing for over a decade. In the same vein, a collapse of the GTA into smaller nation states still seems pretty likely. Although the Hades can definitely be used to keep various people in line by force, it's hardly invincible and it can not be everywhere at once. It's pretty unlikely that the GTi would somehow be better at keeping everything together. At best there would still be a GTA, but in name only as the various regional powers just do their own thing.
For a Vasudan, however, there's little to do except run or be subjected to becoming second class citizens at best or outright genocide at worst, reflecting the way European settlers treated the peoples they conquered in the Americas.
Eventually a GTA successor state would find the Knossos portal, study it, and then the terrans would get massacred by the Shivans outright since there's no joint terran-vasudan designs and as such no Colossus or meson bomb, or even an organized military since the GTVA was so instrumental in getting the disparate Terran States back together
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Was the Hades supposed to have a Lucifer style shield when it was completed? I forget if it was or not.
Damn autocorrect...
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Eventually a GTA successor state would find the Knossos portal, study it, and then the terrans would get massacred by the Shivans outright since there's no joint terran-vasudan designs and as such no Colossus or meson bomb, or even an organized military since the GTVA was so instrumental in getting the disparate Terran States back together
They would have projects like ETAK in a much bigger scale though.
I mean, many knowledge of GTI was lost when the Hades and Jotunheim exploded. Bosch was able to built an ETAK device with the data that was left by GTI... now imagine which technologies they had 2367 if the complete knowledge had been available.
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Was the Hades supposed to have a Lucifer style shield when it was completed? I forget if it was or not.
Damn autocorrect...
Both the Hades and Lucy have their HP doubled from FS1 to FS2 (400k to 800k) what would imply it did to make up for the "invulnerable flag" Lucy had in every mission, and as a way to take their unique shielding account when combating beam weapons (with ~50% being repelled by the shield).
That being said, I doubt that would make sense in game lore. Constructing the Hades must've been under way for several years, long before the Shivans were ever encountered, and while GTAs tech was sufficient to have many warships refitted with beam weapons rather easily, I doubt that would work for shields too. The Hades didn't have the 5 reactors Lucy had which I'd presume were primarily required to run the shield, so at best GTI could've protected some sensitive spots.
However, I'd presume GTIs HQ on Earth might have significant more insights into Lucys shields and likely share it with whoever governs Sol.
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#1 Has the PVE retained a second strike capability?
We know from canon that the conventional forces of the PVN were decimated between the HoL and the Shivans, both in terms of units destroyed and units defected. However, early on in the FS1 campaign, the PVN appears to have sophisticated ability to deploy forces in at least one system marked as green on the early star maps, Betelgeuse. If you extrapolate that our to fourteen years, the PVE might have developed a system by which to deliver retaliatory attacks in the event of an overwhelming enemy offensive.
#2 "Holding on to a prize as vast as [the Parliamentary Vasudan Empire] isn't going to be easy. It's going to require an enormous number of ships, a massive occupation army, and constant vigilance."
Granted the character in the show I ripped that quote from was talking about an adversary multiple magnitutes beyond a handful of star systems, but they were also able to command much more ressources than the GTA/GTI would. Remember, FS2 canon states that Sol remained the economic heart of the GTA. Unless the GTI would complete a genocide of the Vasudan species (which would be strategically unwise - more on that later), they would need forces to control the defeated PVE. And it would need support those forces, esspecially considering that due to the Vasudans different biology, the Vasudans can occupy habitats that would a challenge for humans - making it difficult for the occupied to supply the occupiers (which also posses a security problem).
Additionally to the capability of maintaining an occupation, the question has to be asked if the political will do so exist. STR establishes that despite having forecasting models the GTI did fail to make a case for their course of action with a considerable number of the GTA's command level officers as well as the rank and file - extend that the general population, which might be warweary and contain a percentage of anti-war dissidents who left Sol in protest. Add to that the military mindset which assumes compliance historically has failled to manage the frictions of civilian administration (e.g. be failing into ever increasing repression), the GTI might not be as good at riding the horse they are sitting on as they might assume.
The fracturing the GTA into local power blocks might just go on as it did in canon as a result.
#3a An occupied PVE might become a breeding ground for radicals
Holding the PVE under occupation will eventually breed resistance, the presence of foreign troops throughout history always inspired resistance by the occupied. However unlike historical examples, there is no evident technological gab between occupier and occupied here - while the ressources to build such things as high-yield weaponary and subspace drives maybe controlled, the knowledge to manufacture both would remain with the Vasudans. All it would take would be blind spot of the occupation force for a radical group to grow and develop the capability for large scale attacks.
And there is already a ready made blind spot, as the Hammer of Light would persist.
#3b An PVE targeted for genocide would loose all inhibitions
As I mentioned before, a campaign of genocide would be strategic mistake, and not "just" unmititaged ethical downfall. It would also remove all inhibitions for those who remain fighting to fight to even more extremes, and those who have no been fighting before to pick up the fight. Sure the GTI might have won the contest of arms, but the question then comes are they capable of stopping a completely inhibited enemy forces that does not give thought of their own survival?
We never quite got an answer for the FS1 era by which rules of engagment the GTA and PVE fought their war - but the duration of fourteen years, may hint that certain tactics and weapons were prohibited. Chemical and biological warfare would be esspecially devastating in an interspecies war - and both these types of weapons actually have a low threshold of delivery beside their indiscriminate nature. A "victorious" GTI would probably have to content with unconventional assault or its aftermath.
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Eventually a GTA successor state would find the Knossos portal, study it, and then the terrans would get massacred by the Shivans outright since there's no joint terran-vasudan designs and as such no Colossus or meson bomb, or even an organized military since the GTVA was so instrumental in getting the disparate Terran States back together
They would have projects like ETAK in a much bigger scale though.
I mean, many knowledge of GTI was lost when the Hades and Jotunheim exploded. Bosch was able to built an ETAK device with the data that was left by GTI... now imagine which technologies they had 2367 if the complete knowledge had been available.
Right. But then, I still think the GTA would be at a technological disadvantage. The GTVA is fielding Shivan tech with the Kayser and with beam cannons, so they obviously did not bury all research. And although Bosch had high hopes for Etak, there's no saying that a more advanced version of the technology would help. It's not like things ended well for the NTF.
All good points Orpheus
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The absolute pivot would be to strip the Vasudans of their space-Navy. After that, they'd be at the mercy of the GTA (assuming that GTI would not face a Terran civil war at the same time), and no longer able to fight back efficiently.
#1 Has the PVE retained a second strike capability?
Thats an interesting point. However, even though I think that Vasudan resistence would last for quite a while,
one should keep in mind that "resistence in space" follows entirely different rules than, say, fighting for the liberty of your occupied country on 20th century Earth. It requires high-tech if you want to keep up any kind of credible threat, which you cant find around every corner and could easily be brought under control of a Terran occupation - like, you'd literally have to build nuclear weapons in your garage to fight this kind of war. So in the end, any resistence group would run out of ships and ammunition and ultimately rather fight whatever Vasudan puppet government has been set up instead of the Terrans themselves. 32 years after (FS2 time), there'd be likely no resistance left.
#2 "Holding on to a prize as vast as [the Parliamentary Vasudan Empire] isn't going to be easy. It's going to require an enormous number of ships, a massive occupation army, and constant vigilance."
Perhaps GTA would occupy the the Vasudan planetary capitals to install puppet regimes, but in the long run there'd be probably little difference between collaborateurs and "independent" governments if the Terrans controlled the access to space/subspace and hence all interstellar comm/transportation/trade. The only thing Terrans would have to occupy would be the key sectors of the economy - ship construction, and maybe the fusion powerplants to turn them into a pre-industrial civilisation again just by flipping the powerswitch. Occupying habitats possibly doesn't even matter if you can sit in your spaceship and threaten to nuke the planet into a radioactive wasteland.
As the Terran colonies were still poorer than the Vasudan ones, occupying them would be both possible (manpower becoming available due to unemployment as Earth being cut off would still cause a rupture) and immensely profitable (industrializing Terran colonies by ripping off the Zods). Seizing Vasudan resources would help a GTI-run GTA to become popular with the public, and help the central government to gain addontional influence over the GTA-systems and blocks by distritbuting them as they see fit. Furthermore, GTI would have accomplished in a few months what GTA couldnt in 14 years - eliminate the Zods as a strategic threat.
#3a An occupied PVE might become a breeding ground for radicals
As above, whether the Terrans sit in orbit, occupy keypositions, implement a puppet government or capture the entire local government (colony) may not even matter in the end due to the global balance of power. As such, dealing with radicals would be the problem of the local (likey Vasudan) government.
The point is that without high-yield weaponary and subspace drives you are simply unable to fight effectively except maybe occasioal terrorism. Knowing how a computer chip is made and being able to make one are 2 fundamentally different things. Space-ready technology may be very widespread in 24th century but you probably won't be even able to randomly build your own fusion reactor, leave alone a whole military-grade fighter.
The only way to truely hurt the Terrans would be where there own interest would be threatend - like blowing up the shipyards that would've been gradually be rearranged to produce Terran parts or research groups that add to Terran science/R&D; but that would also deminish the Terran desire to keep them in existence in general.
#3b An PVE targeted for genocide would loose all inhibitions
They could not do anything about it if they'd loose their navy and GTA would drop a couple hundred Harbingers on their planet. It would not in Terran interest, though.
Right. But then, I still think the GTA would be at a technological disadvantage. The GTVA is fielding Shivan tech with the Kayser and with beam cannons, so they obviously did not bury all research. And although Bosch had high hopes for Etak, there's no saying that a more advanced version of the technology would help. It's not like things ended well for the NTF.
Despite the economic disruptions, scientific progress didn't halt as far as I can see that. As long as the Terrans not deliberately kill all Zod scientists, the outcome would be roughly the same.
We neither know whether the knowledge about the Shivans (or parts of it) was actually lost when GTI HQ was destroyed.
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I disagree: the Vasudan scientists would've to be willing to work together with Terran scientists. That can't be forced, especially not when the guys you would be working for are the people who couped the folks you enjoyed working with! I feel like the value and necessity of co operating with the vasudans has been very well established in both fs1 and 2 at this point
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To answer the questuon, "what would a GTI victory look like"?
A glorious Zod-free future.
That is all. :p
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I disagree: the Vasudan scientists would've to be willing to work together with Terran scientists. That can't be forced, especially not when the guys you would be working for are the people who couped the folks you enjoyed working with! I feel like the value and necessity of co operating with the vasudans has been very well established in both fs1 and 2 at this point
The "value of cooperating" would simply be that they'd face severe repressions by whatever government would be in charge. Perhabs not the best enviroment for cooperation, but rewarding them with a beneficial place in their state should be reason enough to get results.
FS1 and ST made rather clear that that cooperation was seen as more favorable than to continue fighting but also that there were people who not shared this opinion. FS2 presents what ultimately happened but it is by no means the only possible outcome.
To answer the questuon, "what would a GTI victory look like"?
A glorious Zod-free future.
That is all. :p
(https://cdn.discordapp.com/emojis/411810337243791362)
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The "value of cooperating" would simply be that they'd face severe repressions by whatever government would be in charge. Perhabs not the best enviroment for cooperation, but rewarding them with a beneficial place in their state should be reason enough to get results.
That has, historically (meaning irl history, not fs history) not really worked out all that well. The Nazis famously relied upon forced labour to build a lot of their advanced equipment (ie tanks and fighters), and that equiment faced frequent sabotage as a result.
Putting Vasudan scientists in positions of power in a society that they have very good reason to oppose means that an opressor, at the best, has to be constantly looking for signs of sabotage and betrayal, and at worst simply doesn't see the sabotage until its too late. You're not going to get good results in such an enviroment.
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Again, I would not compare a 24th century setting with 20th century warfare. The main point of collision would be if the Terrans forced the Vasudans to build Terran ships, what would result in a comparable situation as stated by you; but even though sabotage may be painful, it likely wont stop the entire warmachinery in a significant way. Also, spaceship construction could be arranged in a way that by outsourcing only certain parts (such as subsystem manufacturing) you could delegate the influence eventual sabotage may have upon Vasudan contractors by leaving the inspection of the produced goods to Terran companies - ultimately they'd only be cutting their own legs.
The rest would be mostly how the Vasudans would react to having their access to space restricted/removed by the Terrans. Would a society of scholars and philosophs drop all endeavors for knowledge if it was not for their (collective) benefit, when it was one of the few sources for individual wealth? Probably not. Being a scientist means that you are in a slightly better position than an average citizen, but by no means in a position to effectively mingle with government affairs, especially if they'd run into Terran interests (ie, the people who run your power grid, control your economy and hold massive influence of all institutions of the planteray governments).
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Good point, there would be massive sociological changes by then. It'd be as different as 300-400 years ago society is to us.
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People talking about opening the knossos, but with the xenophobia of the GTI, I'm thinking there's a good chance they'd just blow the knossos as soon as they found it, and hunt down and exterminate any remaining Shivans that had infiltrated terran space. It would also fit their typical MO of "sanitising" areas. Humanity might never even know there had been a second Shivan incursion with the GTI covering it up.
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It's rather hard to tell what could happen IMO. On one hand, the militant state likely resulting from a GTI takeover could come to be so backwards technologically without the Vasudans and while keeping its entire population under its foot that it would've been wiped out even without a single Sathanas emerging. Maybe just the Ravana would've been enough.
On the other hand, I'd expect the GTI to drop an unparalleled amount of resources into military R&D, including Shivan research and ETAK-adjacent tech... Possibly to the point of either becoming capable of a conventional victory against even the Sathanas fleet we've seen in FS2, or possibly even avoid the entire incursion with ETAK bull****tery.
So, whatever the writer imagines will happen. Just make sure it's consistent with itself :P
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Imagine the juggernauts being torn apart by a large fleet of ships that are each a substantial upgrade on the Hades, born out of the GTI's xenophobia in preparation for a potential Shivan return. :)
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Imagine the juggernauts being torn apart by a large fleet of ships that are each a substantial upgrade on the Hades, born out of the GTI's xenophobia in preparation for a potential Shivan return. :)
Then the Shivans send in a bunch of ships that are even bigger and more powerful.
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Imagine the juggernauts being torn apart by a large fleet of ships that are each a substantial upgrade on the Hades, born out of the GTI's xenophobia in preparation for a potential Shivan return. :)
The summary of FS2s setting was pretty much "Terrans and Vasudans managed to rebuild their civilisations". Following X or Y ideology doesnt give you technology and industrial capacity at will. At a very best scenario, the implosion of GTA (and its economic standstill) could have been avoided and Terran-Vasudan civilisation would have started to synergize on both political and economic levels in a highly directed way at an earlier point (right from 2335 instead 2345, though the date is not exactly clear) under very different presigns. That might give you, at the very, very best a few years (~3 years would be +10% addontional growth) ahead on industry output. It might be enough to kill a 2nd or 3rd Sath, what says pretty much all.
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Imagine the juggernauts being torn apart by a large fleet of ships that are each a substantial upgrade on the Hades, born out of the GTI's xenophobia in preparation for a potential Shivan return. :)
How would the GTI be more effective at building their Hades-descendents then the GTVA? The GTVA was also preparing for the Shivan's return, that's why they build the Colossus, the meson bombs, and the GTVA itself.
There's also a distinct undercurrent through Silent Threat and FS2 that indicates that the rogue GTI didn't see the shivans as a threat to be defeated, but as a tool to enhance their own power: They were aware and experimenting with Shivan tech before Ross 128, and the research that Bosch uncovered revolved around being able to talk to the Shivans. The rogue GTI was focused on defeating the Vasudans at any cost, an attitude that's mirrored in Bosch.
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It was Mito's post that made me post that. My main prediction is that they'd blow the knossos, so the confrontation with the jugs wouldn't even happen. But I don't think they'd go full on into building a large fleet of ships that are upgrades on the Hades, though I do think they'd probably produce a better Hades and build additional Hades vessels.
To imagine the extreme end of Mito's post, perhaps enslaving the Vasudan race and putting them to work would get the job done. They'd also have to go digging around in the knossos like the GTVA did. The jugs came one by one, so they could destroy them that way. Even without a fleet of super ships, if they built a number of Hades class ships, they could destroy the jugs by taking up position at the sides of the knossos, away from the four beams of red death, and tear the jugs apart one by one as they came through into our space.
Yes, they might get greedy and explore the portal, but they'd already gathered their Shivan stuff to experiment with, and with their research base safe, they'd have had years with the Shivan tech. I think with the fact that they weren't at all interested in exploring the possibility of peaceful coexistence with a race they'd worked together with very well, they'd take no chances with a completely hostile race that almost killed us all, and blow the knossos.
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To imagine the extreme end of Mito's post, perhaps enslaving the Vasudan race and putting them to work would get the job done.
What makes you think that that would be more effective then the Vasudans fully contributing of their own volition, like they do in the GTVA?
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They managed to build a hades in a fraction of the time it took to build a colossus. Also, the axis in ww2 were a teeny bit xenophobic but managed a heck of a lot of military industry.
Give the GTI the whole terran industrial base and research capability (we managed to crack subspace without the zods) and they might be OK.
(When I say we, I mean humans, not space radicals)
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Also, the axis in ww2 were a teeny bit xenophobic but managed a heck of a lot of military industry.
Actually no. The Axis had significantly less military industry then you'd expect them to have. Goebbels held his infamous Total War speech in 1943 but Nazi Germany didn't actually move to Total War footing until mid-1944 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sportpalast_speech) (and then it did so poorly). Whilst the Allies and the Comintern were enlisting their entire civilian population into wartime production from 1940 or 1941, the axis waited, and even when total war protocols were put in place they preferred using forced labour over their own civilian population, which caused a lot of problems: Nazi wartime production was notoriouisly poor quality in 1944, with stuff like landing gear systems, gearboxes or V1 guidance systems being either poorly constructed or outright sabotaged.
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To imagine the extreme end of Mito's post, perhaps enslaving the Vasudan race and putting them to work would get the job done.
What makes you think that that would be more effective then the Vasudans fully contributing of their own volition, like they do in the GTVA?
Well you wouldn't have to worry about pesky things like the Vasudans doing what they wanted and living their own lives, having to pay them or labour laws.
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Well you wouldn't have to worry about pesky things like the Vasudans doing what they wanted and living their own lives, having to pay them or labour laws.
Instead you have to worry about keeping your slave population in line, and you can't give them any of the important jobs (like, say, warship construction) since they have a vested interest in not contributing to the tools you're using to opress them.
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To imagine the extreme end of Mito's post, perhaps enslaving the Vasudan race and putting them to work would get the job done.
Part of the reason why the Gulag was massively scaled down in the 1950s was that with increasing industrialisation and mechanisation, large scale deployment of unskilled human labor became less profitable and hence less relevant. I doubt that would do anything - even if the Zods would be forced to Terraform a planet with bare hands, what would it aid to a war against Shivans? Nothing.
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The absolute pivot would be to strip the Vasudans of their space-Navy. After that, they'd be at the mercy of the GTA (assuming that GTI would not face a Terran civil war at the same time), and no longer able to fight back efficiently.
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As above, whether the Terrans sit in orbit, occupy keypositions, implement a puppet government or capture the entire local government (colony) may not even matter in the end due to the global balance of power. As such, dealing with radicals would be the problem of the local (likey Vasudan) government.
The question is if the occupation by orbital blockade would be sustainable on basic level - A fleet orbiting a planet still would need to be supplied from somewhere; if you are deliberatly cut yourself off from the planet your are orbiting a source of supply to avoid sabotage (and that's assuming that the planet can supply your fleet) you need a supply train from a safe port. The longer that supply chain get the more vurnable your blockade is to disruption - be it by attack, sabotage or just run of the mill frictions.
Another problem besides the logistical challenge is detecting an breach of enforced disarmament from orbit. While you can employ satelitte surveillance that doesn't free your from on the ground verification, unless you're willing to bomb every bag of rice falling over. Which reduced the incentive your blockaded planet to comply.
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The question is if the occupation by orbital blockade would be sustainable on basic level - A fleet orbiting a planet still would need to be supplied from somewhere; if you are deliberatly cut yourself off from the planet your are orbiting a source of supply to avoid sabotage (and that's assuming that the planet can supply your fleet) you need a supply train from a safe port. The longer that supply chain get the more vurnable your blockade is to disruption - be it by attack, sabotage or just run of the mill frictions.
There's no canon evidence that loosing Sol rendered the exiled forces inoperational in the short run. Cooperation had started not long ago so even if they had prioritized Terran needs over their own (which seems pretty unlikely to me) so that may have happened later on but atleast for the time of the rebellion it should've worked.
Another problem besides the logistical challenge is detecting an breach of enforced disarmament from orbit. While you can employ satelitte surveillance that doesn't free your from on the ground verification, unless you're willing to bomb every bag of rice falling over. Which reduced the incentive your blockaded planet to comply.
The point is: you don't even need to. As long as your Zod-puppet government complies (bc, you have for example the power to unplug all of their economy and electronics by cutting the energy supply) you can leave virtually all planetary-side duties to them, which then would use its own institutions to maintain order among the Zods. Who is supposed to supply them, anyway? Terrans? Not entirely impossible but pretty much all they'd get would be pistols pointed at spaceships.
They managed to build a hades in a fraction of the time it took to build a colossus.
Likely in less time simply bc it is much smaller. Also, the Hades was likely under construction by the entirety of GTA (with Sol) for years before the Great War. Ofc they could've come up with different designs like the Iceni or something like the Golgatha from BWO but it would not surprise me if they'd build something Colossus-like to show how stong the Terrans are. But regardless of what they do they could bump their kill record to 2-5/80-90 Saths at best; not enough to stop the Shivans anyway.
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Random theory time: when we're already talking about tactical stuff, my idea is that while Colly was meant to fight Lucys, I could imagine the Meson Bomb being a backup for "whatever the Shivans have besides that".
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Honestly i just think that the desire to see big booms is what binds sentient life together.
Part of the reason why the Gulag was massively scaled down in the 1950s was that with increasing industrialisation and mechanisation, large scale deployment of unskilled human labor became less profitable and hence less relevant. I doubt that would do anything - even if the Zods would be forced to Terraform a planet with bare hands, what would it aid to a war against Shivans? Nothing.
It's notable that we do have a few states that field extensive amounts of forced labour today. In the US, Federal Prison Industries employs 60% of the US's federal prison population (which is mandatory - you only don't work there if you can't). It should as such be noted that when it was contracted to build combat helmets, they weren't up to snuff (https://oig.justice.gov/reports/2016/i1608.pdf).
The point is: you don't even need to. As long as your Zod-puppet government complies (bc, you have for example the power to unplug all of their economy and electronics by cutting the energy supply) you can leave virtually all planetary-side duties to them, which then would use its own institutions to maintain order among the Zods. Who is supposed to supply them, anyway? Terrans? Not entirely impossible but pretty much all they'd get would be pistols pointed at spaceships.
Notable that this has worked quite well historically too. When the Spanish subjegated the Aztecs they kept almost all political structures intact: There were still city states, there were still rulers of said city states (often the same ones or family members of the deposed Emperor of Tenochtitlan), it's just that they answered to a different emperor now. Puppet governments in general do seem to work well throughout all the centuries I am aware of.
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Well you wouldn't have to worry about pesky things like the Vasudans doing what they wanted and living their own lives, having to pay them or labour laws.
Instead you have to worry about keeping your slave population in line, and you can't give them any of the important jobs (like, say, warship construction) since they have a vested interest in not contributing to the tools you're using to opress them.
Wouldn't be too hard to keep them in line when you can just start carving a planet like a cake with the Hades if they get out of line. Sabotage a ship? A city gets wiped off the map.
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That leads to extremist radicalism. Nothing to lose mentality, because there will always be a few wonky nails in the toolbox.
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That leads to extremist radicalism. Nothing to lose mentality, because there will always be a few wonky nails in the toolbox.
You'd be able to tell the difference between such normalcy and sabotage though, surely?
Besides, you don't have to have the Vasudans doing such things, though you'd want to take advantage of their skilled personnel if possible. Instead, it could be like every great empire in ancient times, with slaves doing menial work to free up the Empire to be doing other things.
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Wouldn't be too hard to keep them in line when you can just start carving a planet like a cake with the Hades if they get out of line. Sabotage a ship? A city gets wiped off the map.
Once again I have to point you towards the Nazi's practices of forced labour and why they didn't work. In essence, you are already illustrating the issues with your own point here: You now have to employ military force in order to keep the slave population in line. That's a pretty big military investment, made bigger by the fact that you're now killing your own workforce. A workforce that, in the GTVA, contributed to all aspects of the military. This harkens back to my original point: When you're at the point that you're bombing cities to keep the population in line, you don't have an effecient military force - or at least, one more effecient then the GTVA.
You'd be able to tell the difference between such normalcy and sabotage though, surely?
See above. The Nazis often weren't able to tell, needed a lot of people to make sure that they could tell, and had less and less people to do that as the war progressed (since those people were needed at the front).
Let me ask you a very simple question.
Who do you think is going to work harder?
- A person making military equipment for an army that their family members or children or spouse are in
- A person making military equipment for an army that killed their family members, children or spouse
The former was practiced by the Allies, the later by the Fascists. You can take exactly one guess on which side had more effecient military production. And yes, I'm aware that I've been criticized for using an example from the past to extrapolate 300 years in the future, but I darely say that my examples are more recent then...
Besides, you don't have to have the Vasudans doing such things, though you'd want to take advantage of their skilled personnel if possible. Instead, it could be like every great empire in ancient times, with slaves doing menial work to free up the Empire to be doing other things.
... this thing right here.
So, first of all, we don't live in ancient times anymore. Menial tasks have been replaced with machines, and we can except this trend to continue in the coming centuries. You can see this trend in forced labour today as well: The United States employs roughly 800,000 forced labourers, not 150 million (https://www.aclu.org/news/human-rights/captive-labor-exploitation-of-incarcerated-workers). Most modern legal frameworks that exploit labour are far less overt then this. The Kafala system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kafala_system) in the Gulf states springs to mind as the most well known example, with the usage of an Exit Visa system (ie "You can't leave unless we allow it"), which has been marked by human rights watch as effectively forced labour. But there's a big difference between these systems and what you're proposing: The US's forced labour population comitted crimes and is less then 1% of the population. The gulf states's forced labour involves people from all over the world who ultimately choose to be there, and the gulf states have been forced to change the system under threat of revolt.
There's arguably less of a reason to even talk about ancient states, as ancient states used slave labour for things that are now done by machines. But let's do it anyway!
First of all, we should probably acknowledge that even the Roman Empire, that really started putting the whole "enslaving entire populations" into practice in the first century, never had a relative slave population in Italy that exceeded 30%. And here too, the slave population came from all over the empire, and even Rome's subjegated peoples (and even slaves) had some form of social mobility. Even then, slave revolts were a concern.
None of this is present when you propose enslaving the entirety of the vasudan race. There's three problems here:
- Roughly half of your population is now enslaved (unless you start massacring them, but then you'd already have a smaller workforce then the GTVA baseline)
- Everyone you have enslaved has a common langauge and heritage, making it easier for them to unite
- Since the slavery is tied to being a vasudan, the vasudans have nothing to lose but their chains
All of these make the system ripe for a revolt. The only system in ancient times that is close to this is the Spartan system of Helotry (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helots), but the spartan system of helotry came at a huge cost: The entire social structure had to be reformed in order to supress slave rebellions. The purpose of the army was to kill slaves. Armies were trained by killing slaves. Gaining power in Sparta under the helotry system just meant that you had more slaves to kill, and your responsibilities revolved around killing slaves. Which brings me back to the point I made all the way at the top of the first post: If you're busy supressing slaves, you're not building an effective countermeasure to the Shivans, something that the entire GTVA revolved around.
And yes, the Spartans are praised as a effective military force, but this is very much a case of the popular imagination not aligning with historical reality. (https://acoup.blog/2019/08/16/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-i-spartan-school/)
The only way to make this system sustainable (if it even can be implemented because although the rogue GTI faction may have won in our scenario, they don't exactly control the conscience of all mankind) is for the vasudan population to be massively reduced (again, less effecient), or for the Terran population to be reunited with earth.
Which, as you may know from having played FS2, needs the Knossos portal to be found and stay open, thus inviting the Shivans.
There is simply no scenario in which the GTI could subjegate the Vasudan population and be more effecient at shivan killing then the GTVA.
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I’m going to let you know that I don’t want this to mushroom into something huge, branching off all over the place and I wasn’t sure if I wanted to respond after your post if we’re going to wade into such deeper waters on this, but I will respond and see where this goes, but I make no guarantees on further participation. I’ve left some things out, particularly on the Kafala System that I’d otherwise mention as I don’t want tons of tangents.
If we’re going to dive this deep, there are certain things we don’t know to prove this either way. How would the Vasudans respond to being enslaved? Would they be more or less malleable than typical human slaves? Could be anything from accepting it meekly to mass ritual suicide rather than be enslaved. If they can be enslaved what would be the best use for such slaves in the GTI’s World?
I think you’ve made strong points, and the PVN would have to be crushed to ensure GTI dominance, and no doubt some more of the GTA as well, resources and personnel which would still be around to fight Shivans in the GTVA timeline. Not nearly all of it of course, people would die or retire and ships would be put out to pasture, but plenty of that hardware was still in service when the Shivans came calling, and the newer Vasudan advancements probably wouldn’t happen.
But GTI advancements were also lost in the GTVA timeline in the fire of war. The Hades completely outclasses anything outside the Colossus built by the GTVA. The research that the GTI did, and the time they’d have free to do much more, with exponentially greater resources than they had for their clandestine operation skulking around in the shadows doing all this. Now they’d be able to do it in the open with the resources of a space empire behind them. Even with the disadvantages of not having the co-operation and manpower of a united GTVA, this could be enough, more than enough, under the right set of circumstances. And we only need the right set of circumstances for this exercise.
For your question, minute for minute, I think the willing worker is the more productive worker. But the willing worker working a normal work week would be outstripped by the slave worker working dawn to dusk 24/7. Before you even get to the reduced costs of said workers.
The nazis are an interesting example in that they had superior military technology and inferior many other things. They went a long way with that superior technology, they would have flattened any other European nation in a one on one confrontation. They were able to defeat the combined power of multiple allied nations.
There are still plenty of menial tasks to be done today, and I’m sure there’d be plenty in the future too. And slaves could potentially do certain jobs cheaper than machines.
There’s a lot of things that could go wrong for the GTI, and I certainly think if you were betting on the outcome, odds are the GTVA would have been in a better position to confront the Shivans when they came than the GTI would be. But I also think it’s very possible they could have done a better job under certain conditions by pushing their technology forward, even with a considerably smaller military force than the GTVA, due to advanced technology.
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So I'm gonna reply a bunch more later but I just wanted to head this off:
The nazis are an interesting example in that they had superior military technology and inferior many other things. They went a long way with that superior technology, they would have flattened any other European nation in a one on one confrontation. They were able to defeat the combined power of multiple allied nations.
The Nazis didn't have superiour technology compared to allied nations. During the fall of France, French tanks were superiour to German tanks. The T-34 was superiour to the Panzer 3 and 4 to the point that Nazi doctrine called for a 5 to 1 engagement. What decided those massive early gains is numbers advantage and surprise. The Nazis outnumbered the Soviets 2 to 1 in 1941, as a fully mobilized army faced one that was not at all prepared for war. Their victory in France early in the war was mostly down to luck due to the french commander in chief being a moron - and the Nazis had superiour numbers in france too, with their army alone being larger then the french and british armies combined.
The Nazis had some technologically advanced things that outmatched their allies with respect to technology, like the Me262 fighter, but it should be noted that those kind of "Nazi Superweapons" were extremely expensive projects in a desperate attempt to find some advantage over the allies, whilst the Allies were able to field more technological advancements across the board. Case in point: The allied armies involved in the invasion of normandy were fully motorized, whilst the Nazis were still reliant on horse and wagon for their logistics.
Kinda wanted to state that before anything else because the whole "Superiour nazi technology" is a neo-nazi myth that entered the popular consciousness during the cold war.
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The Hades completely outclasses anything outside the Colossus built by the GTVA.
It doesn't. It's just a really big ship. It doesn't neccisarely have any advantages beyond being a big ship (Which is the same problem the colossus has). It should be noted that the Hades was brought down by fighters alone, on its first deployment.
When considering things built by the GTVA, you should also consider the armanent: The GTVA was able to put beam cannons on all of its capital ships. You'd have to consider if the GTI could do the same, as the GTVA had acccess to GTI records (they just didn't decide to use the talking-to-shivans bits, as per bosch), and the GTVA has at least double the scientists as the GTI would have (since they're not sidelining the Vasudans*).
For your question, minute for minute, I think the willing worker is the more productive worker. But the willing worker working a normal work week would be outstripped by the slave worker working dawn to dusk 24/7. Before you even get to the reduced costs of said workers.
So this is provably (https://www.cnbc.com/2019/03/20/stanford-study-longer-hours-doesnt-make-you-more-productive-heres-how-to-get-more-done-by-doing-less.html) false. (https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/teams-become-more-productive-when-their-hours-are-shorter) The more you make people work, the less results you get. Fatigue is a real thing that you can't just beat out of people.
* And if we're going to back to the Nazi point: The nazis lost a bunch of their scientists by sidelining them (https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/pt.6.4.20180926a/full/). The self-imposed brain drain of authoritarian governments is very real.
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The nazis are an interesting example in that they had superior military technology and inferior many other things. They went a long way with that superior technology, they would have flattened any other European nation in a one on one confrontation.
The Nazis couldn't even beat the UK one on one. The USSR, once it actually got its **** together and had good commanders in charge, beat the living **** out of Nazi Germany through the use of superior logistics and superior doctrine.
"Superior Nazis technology" is a meme. The only domain in which the nazis were more advanced than anyone else was rocketry. The Allies were equal or superior in every other respect.
There's a reason why the USA successfully developed the atomic bomb and Nazi Germany wasn't even close.
They were able to defeat the combined power of multiple allied nations.
Uh, what version of WW2 have you been learning about? The Nazi weren't able to defeat the Allies. They lost the war.
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The Nazis beating the French was also a huge fluke. If the French had kept a mobile reserve or even telephone lines to their commanders the Ardennes offensive would likely have failed and Nazi Germany would have lost the war years earlier, comprehensively outmatched and beset by economic collapse.
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Additionally if you are going to pull claims out of your arse about the efficiency of Nazi slave labour programs you are required to buy and read The Wages of Destruction by Adam Tooze: https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/aw/d/B002RI9MSY/ref=tmm_kin_swatch_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1661287465&sr=8-1
I sure as hell didn’t go to the effort of reading it to try to precis the entire thing to ****ing Lorric.
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Imagine actually thinking in your ostensibly functioning human brain that slave labour is some sort of video game thing where you flip a switch and people work 24/7 for a happiness debuff lol. Yeah if you’re brutal enough to people they’ll just power through the need to sleep! Even the Nazis had more contact with reality than that, though if they’d also stuck to posting we’d all be better off.
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The question is if the occupation by orbital blockade would be sustainable on basic level - A fleet orbiting a planet still would need to be supplied from somewhere; if you are deliberatly cut yourself off from the planet your are orbiting a source of supply to avoid sabotage (and that's assuming that the planet can supply your fleet) you need a supply train from a safe port. The longer that supply chain get the more vurnable your blockade is to disruption - be it by attack, sabotage or just run of the mill frictions.
There's no canon evidence that loosing Sol rendered the exiled forces inoperational in the short run. Cooperation had started not long ago so even if they had prioritized Terran needs over their own (which seems pretty unlikely to me) so that may have happened later on but atleast for the time of the rebellion it should've worked.
This is not about short term -- I actually been spending a lot more research time on what it takes to supply a space ship long term (because I've an interest what highly automated ships should look like, and the remaing crew are a major logistical issue)
Without a port for regular resupply, oxygen and water supply as well as replacement parts for filtration and scrubber systems will add up
The worst part is water - while technically abundant through cosmic ice - it is also a prime vector to introduce hazardous material (biological or chemical) onto a star ship, and possibly contaminate it permanently.
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I should probably also adress the whole "It's cheaper to not pay your workers" point because it's bad.
Specifically: Not paying your employees is great from the perspective of an individual who owns a space-ship making factory. You get to keep your money! But it means **** all for a society that's trying to maximize warship production. The goal here is to build as many warships as possible, not who gets to reaps the benefits (although you may want to look into that since you also kinda want to have a society that people want to live in if you want to keep your head).
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All depends on the way society functions in GTI Land. Will private industry even be a thing, will MONEY even be a thing? Was money a thing in the GTA even? I can't recall it even being stated if companies like subach were privately owned or not.
Any insight from the reference bible?
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The GTVA had private corperations at least, but I don't think FS1 covers this aspect at all.
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Yeah, this is what I thought would happen if the tangents started. The fun's been taken out of this now. I don't know if you had more you intended to post Joshua, but know it's unlikely I'll be interested now.
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Y'know, with that attitude I can see why most people don't really bother with you anymore. Next time I'll try to address the ignorance of your statements, I'll do it for other people's sake, not yours.
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Let's start afresh, no animosity.
Clean slate.
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well if you want an incredibly thorough analysis of how a state willing to be completely ruthless in pursuit of military power above all else, up to and including mass slave labour of designated populations, functions, what kind of limitations promote that strategy and how effective it is, i recommend The Wages Of Destruction by Adam Tooze
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I find reading about that sorta stuff kinda difficult.
Tbh i could only get halfway through Blitzed, in small part because the book oversells itself a bit*, but mostly because reading about fascist regimes just leaves me ****ing depressed. I can't imagine this is any better. Does it atleast have some gallows humour to lighten the mood?
* Blitzed has a tendency to attribute all of Hitler's and his regime's issues to the copious amounts of drugs being consumed, and that's a bit too much. Guns germs and steel does the same with its own hypothesis. I guess it's a marketing thing.
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Well it’s fairly clinical academic history, so no. Although the total contempt the author has for Speer and his bull**** really seeps through.
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Well, bit the bullet and bought the ebook.
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Okay, started reading through that book, and I'm finding it very interesting. I particularly like how the opening pays attention to 1920s Germany's economic policy of attracting American investments and using those investments (and the poltiical leverage of the investors) to pay back (and delay) the reperations required for the versailles plan. This only got a brief mention in my middle school history class, and it's... pretty clever, all things considered.
Very good recommendation.