[Phantom Hoover]

As far as the GTVA are concerned anything that wouldn't perform well in the scaled-up worst-case Capella scenario that the TEI is designed for is a liability. As I and others said before, they might look at certain UEF doctrines for certain highly specialised roles. UEF craft in the fleet? Forget it.

[IcemanFreespace]

If you want to write your own fiction about the UEF adapting to the logistical realities of a Shivan incursion, that's fine and it could be pretty cool. Telling the BP team that they're wrong about their own setting is pretty dumb though.

It is, if GTVA doesn't have any bases from which it could deploy UEF craft and if it is going to lead many offensive wars, attacking well defended hostile systems from now on. But until now, they led mostly short, defensive battles, sometimes attacking first for tactical advantage. It could use UEF's stuff, and in a big way.

I'm suggesting that designing an Uriel or a Karuna is way, way harder than maintaining it and supplying it. That's pretty much where I came in into the topic.

[Phantom Hoover]

Honestly it doesn't sound like you've absorbed enough of the background material if you think the TEI fleet is geared towards 'fighting offensive wars, attacking well defended hostile systems'. GTVA doctrine is completely focused on defence, against an enemy so overwhelming that your bases will be in hostile territory almost immediately.

[IcemanFreespace]

I suggest you read my post again.

[niffiwan]

I'm suggesting that designing an Uriel or a Karuna is way, way harder than maintaining it and supplying it. That's pretty much where I came in into the topic.

Of course this is true, design is very hard. However, it's equally true that adding a new spaceframe to the combat roster, where the new spaceframe has very low parts & consumables commonality with every other spaceframe on the combat roster, is hard enough to not be worth adding it.

[The E]

So when did GTVA need long legs exactly? Sol invasion, sure, don't send UEF stuff to Sol. Send something else. Use some of UEF craft for strategic attacks.
Going through the portal? Send something which will last a month in the wilderness. Fight hard for your life? Use better craft with better weapons, whichever those may be. They combined Vasudan technology with Terran. Decades on, they can't use UEF stuff? Hey, maybe those Hecates can finally be of some real use...

Consider this. The GTVA is in a war against an enemy with no known limit on ressources, with no known strategical vulnerabilities to exploit. In the long run, the GTVA will lose, unless it can find something that substantially changes the equation. Until then, the GTVA's mandate is to ensure human/vasudan survival.

Now, Consider Sanctuary. Even in the "prime" universe, the Sanctuary plan was likely put into motion during the first incursion. They didn't go through with it, given how quickly the shivan threat evaporated after the Lucifer was shot down. That plan is still one of many contingencies in the GTVA playbook.

Further, take a look at the Anemoi class. Sure, they're incredibly useful. But they're assets geared for expeditionary warfare, something the GTVA actively discourages. Their capabilities are far beyond what a logistics vessel for a long-term patrol of known space would need.

Yes, there are obvious reasons why the GTVA favours endurance and ease of maintenance. Transparent ones for easy dissemination and consumption by the populace. However, there are also other reasons that people in the GTVA rarely talk about because noone wants to raise the specter of having to pack a couple thousand people into cryo and flee into the wilderness.

[Celendil]

Further, take a look at the Anemoi class. Sure, they're incredibly useful. But they're assets geared for expeditionary warfare, something the GTVA actively discourages. Their capabilities are far beyond what a logistics vessel for a long-term patrol of known space would need.

Yes, there are obvious reasons why the GTVA favours endurance and ease of maintenance. Transparent ones for easy dissemination and consumption by the populace. However, there are also other reasons that people in the GTVA rarely talk about because noone wants to raise the specter of having to pack a couple thousand people into cryo and flee into the wilderness.

You're saying that at least some part of the development of the Anemoi - covertly - was to act as sleeper ships to disperse into unknown space if the situation was overwhelmingly unwinnable? Interesting, that's not an aspect of their development or a use for them I'd considered before. No wonder that's never been a widely-suggested alternative use for them - the admission that they were built as a last-ditch survival option would, uh, not be great for GTVA morale, right?

[Luis Dias]

They do seem somewhat defenseless for that role, though. Even Sanctuary was an actual destroyer and they didn't have the time to implement an actual anti-genocide ship. One would wonder that they should, at least, have some kind of special abilities, like highly complex stealth capabilities, making it extremely difficult to detect. Something like borrowing key techs from the Pegasus project, or new power sources that do not give out any heat signature whatsoever. Perhaps some subtler subspace engine. As it is, it's almost like a glorified civilian ship that will be a sitting duck once shivans discover its tracks.

[Phantom Hoover]

IIRC even the team acknowledge that the Anemoi's seriously undergunned for its purpose, and I think they were talking about upgrading it at one point.

[crizza]

But you would still need factory ships to get a refugee fleet supplied. The 14th logistic ships had run dry or were nearly out of supplies after they managed to return to Sol.

[The E]

But you would still need factory ships to get a refugee fleet supplied. The 14th logistic ships had run dry or were nearly out of supplies after they managed to return to Sol.

They ran out of their supplies of pre-made parts, but they do have facilities to build parts from scratch if necessary.

[crizza]

Ah, ok.
I thought about large factory ships which are being fed be a small fleet of mining ships etc

[NGTM-1R]

They do seem somewhat defenseless for that role, though.

I don't know about this. They might, but on the other hand at that point the only real answer is to get away into the night undetected. It's not as though the GTVA has any reason to believe that, once detected, the Shivans will ever stop looking. The Sanctuary seemed to have that exact problem.

Guns aren't going to help at that point.

[Luis Dias]

That precise reasoning is why I followed it up with the following sentences:

One would wonder that they should, at least, have some kind of special abilities, like highly complex stealth capabilities, making it extremely difficult to detect. Something like borrowing key techs from the Pegasus project, or new power sources that do not give out any heat signature whatsoever. Perhaps some subtler subspace engine.

And my only point there isn't even to say that these would "solve" their problem, but that they would signal to us that this was thought through and that the world building isn't ad hoc, but pervasive. A simple sentence on the techroom highlighting some high tech developments in order to make this ship invisible in many situations (or at least "more invisible" than its counterparts) would be enough to give a "wink wink" in The_E's direction.

[Celendil]

One piece of tech that it does strike me that the GTVA being very interested in acquiring is their AWACS beam jamming abilities. Given how effective it was against Serkr and the Carthage (with the obvious vulnerabilities, of course), it would make sense for the GTVA to be interested in adapting that to combat Shivan beam spam.

[X3N0-Life-Form]

In general, I would believe that the GTVA is going to closely study the UEF's handling of hostile beam weaponry, including the various beam jamming and EM warfare tricks.

[NGTM-1R]

That precise reasoning is why I followed it up with the following sentences:

If these are possible for a logistics vessel, they are possible for combat craft. The bottom line is that if you give it to Anemoi and nothing else it stretches disbelief. (c.f Star Trek Voyager and the holodecks once being said to run on a power source that is apparently less compatible with the rest of the ship than entirely alien technology.) Worse, they'd give the logistics vessel possible combat application, making us wonder why it wasn't a part of the GTVA's strategy in Sol.

Easier and simpler to just say that in that situation guns won't solve their problems, so they were not a design emphasis. Occam's Razor works on storytelling.

[Luis Dias]

You're right, perhaps "new high end technology" does prop up those questions. It probably has more to do with design choices than "new tech". More of X, necessrily less of Y. For instance, a ship that sacrifices weapon power and engine speed, in order to be able to function with a much smaller heat signature power source, or a subtler subspace engine that is slower, but again, uses less power and is more discreet. Priority is stealth, sacrificing almost everything else that the rest of the fleet must be good at.

[Aesaar]

They do seem somewhat defenseless for that role, though.

They're defenseless for the role because they aren't combat vessels and under no circumstances are they meant to be left alone.  Any exodus situation would have them accompanied by actual combat vessels and probably a very sizable civilian fleet.  You know, ships to support.  Anemois aren't transport ships, they're support vessels and mobile factories.

[Luis Dias]

Right, I took the Sanctuary analogy too much literally, I'm sorry.