Author Topic: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?  (Read 7430 times)

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Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?
all presumably using research from Shivan technology.

Tsunami was definitely underway prior to that, you actually have to defend a science ship that's doing the experiments. Similarly there's nothing about the Harbinger that suggests it's using exotic technology; we could build the Harbinger warhead now, if we were minded to.

Those are not strategic goals, those are tactical ones. How you fight the war is not the same as why you fight the war and what you ultimately intend to get out of it.

You don't know the difference between strategic and tactical, so this is laughable. "How" and "why" you fight the war are not strategic or tactical questions; they have little to do with how this apportioned at all.

Grand strategy is the level at which war, economics, politics, and diplomacy overlap, and concerns itself with why if any do, but that is hardly the only question. ("Europe First" to use a WW2 reference.) Strategy is the level at which goals and means towards achieving the grand strategic ends are decided and units assigned and supplied to achieve them. (Operation Overlord.) Operational warfare concerns the maneuver and engagement of forces to achieve a specific goal dictated at the strategic level over a limited timeframe; usually to achieve a breakthrough, or force the destruction or surrender of specific enemy forces. (The paradrop to block easy access German access to the beaches, enable easy Allied breakout, and defeat threats to the landing.) Tactics is the level at which local commanders issue orders to directly combat the enemy in accordance with the operational plan. (Dick Winters' ad-hoc squad taking out an artillery battery that was firing on the beach.)

Dekker's goals for the most part fall in the strategy and operational levels. None of them are actually explicitly tactical.
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Offline CT27

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Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?
I'm working on a scenario where the GTA does a lot better in the T-V War.  Would taking Vega be reasonable in that regard?

 

Offline DefCynodont119

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Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?
@NGTM-1R, I'm aware of that, (hence the citation needed jokes :p ) but my main point was that the Medusa bomber, Tsunami, and harbinger where not used during the T-V war, even if they were underway in development.



I don't think the Tsunami, Harbinger, or their associated bombers, the Medusa or Ursa, were necessarily developed during the Great War.

They could have been in development/R & D, during the T-V war, but they were not used before the Great War:

Quote from: La Ruota Della Fortuna's Briefing text, Techroom, and Big Bang Failure debrief

We have also acquired a wing of the new Medusa bombers. . . 
The new Tsunami bomb is the ultimate anti-cruiser weapon, and can be carried by the Medusas. . . 
As the first bomber to carry the Tsunami bomb. . . 
The destruction of the GTS Asimov has struck a major blow to our attempts to preserve this sector. Due to the loss of the Asimov's data, Project Tsunami is no more.

The prospect of destroying Shivan cruisers without the Tsunami bomb is daunting, to say the least.

Without it, we have no chance of destroying enough major Shivan vessels to win this war.


Sorry if my tone came across as negative at any point, text/word only communication can make it seem so for everyone.  :blah:
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Offline NGTM-1R

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Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?
@NGTM-1R, I'm aware of that, (hence the citation needed jokes :p ) but my main point was that the Medusa bomber, Tsunami, and harbinger where not used during the T-V war,

Tsunami, probably.

Harbinger...

Of course, the fact the GTA was developing and had deployment doctrine apparently based on experience ("most effective when used in preemptive defensive strike against non-military installations.") for salted nuclear weapons is...rather awkward to a non-xenocidal reading of the conflict.

No, it seems quite possible they actually DID use the Harbinger on the Vasudans.
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Offline Woolie Wool

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Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?
all presumably using research from Shivan technology.

Tsunami was definitely underway prior to that, you actually have to defend a science ship that's doing the experiments. Similarly there's nothing about the Harbinger that suggests it's using exotic technology; we could build the Harbinger warhead now, if we were minded to.

Those are not strategic goals, those are tactical ones. How you fight the war is not the same as why you fight the war and what you ultimately intend to get out of it.

You don't know the difference between strategic and tactical, so this is laughable. "How" and "why" you fight the war are not strategic or tactical questions; they have little to do with how this apportioned at all.

Grand strategy is the level at which war, economics, politics, and diplomacy overlap, and concerns itself with why if any do, but that is hardly the only question. ("Europe First" to use a WW2 reference.) Strategy is the level at which goals and means towards achieving the grand strategic ends are decided and units assigned and supplied to achieve them. (Operation Overlord.) Operational warfare concerns the maneuver and engagement of forces to achieve a specific goal dictated at the strategic level over a limited timeframe; usually to achieve a breakthrough, or force the destruction or surrender of specific enemy forces. (The paradrop to block easy access German access to the beaches, enable easy Allied breakout, and defeat threats to the landing.) Tactics is the level at which local commanders issue orders to directly combat the enemy in accordance with the operational plan. (Dick Winters' ad-hoc squad taking out an artillery battery that was firing on the beach.)

Dekker's goals for the most part fall in the strategy and operational levels. None of them are actually explicitly tactical.
Can your pedantry, you know that Dekker's answer was not what the thread was asking about, and "how do I win the war" and "what ultimate result do I want from this war" are different questions. Dekker's answers could apply to nearly any war in the FreeSpace universe (except wars against Shivans because they don't have an identifiable population base or home territories) and are thus not answers at all.
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Offline DefCynodont119

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Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?
Of course, the fact the GTA was developing and had deployment doctrine apparently based on experience ("most effective when used in preemptive defensive strike against non-military installations.") for salted nuclear weapons is...rather awkward to a non-xenocidal reading of the conflict.

So I just went through the command briefings and:
Oh yeah, It was the new Ursa bomber that was the first to carry the Harbinger and that's why it showed up late in-game, that's right. . . . I forgot. . .  :warp:
So Harbinger's must have been made to be launched from installations or capital ships of some kind. We know that no bomber could carry it before the Ursa, (as explicitly stated by the game) so something else must have.

Quote
Tsunami, probably.
It's not "probably", It's absolutely- The game explicitly says that the Tsunami will not enter circulation if you fail to save the Asimov from shivan attack at the end of the mission "Big Bang".  :p



« Last Edit: November 06, 2016, 03:42:10 pm by DefCynodont119 »
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Offline Colonol Dekker

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Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?
Goals of each side.
That's a pretty general question.

Goals is a pretty general term.
war aims equally so.

I put in adequate answers.

I I'd say I could list more points but I'd hate to wind anyone up by not being specific and getting down to a micromanagement level for instance-

Supply each regiment with adequate petrol/oil/lubricant for land based vehicles.

Supply each regiment with adequate petrol/oil/lubricant for field generators.

Supply each regiment with adequate oil for burning latrines out.


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Offline Droid803

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Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?
zods want fishes and headz, clearly
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Offline CT27

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Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?
Goals of each side.
That's a pretty general question.

Goals is a pretty general term.
war aims equally so.

I put in adequate answers.

I I'd say I could list more points but I'd hate to wind anyone up by not being specific and getting down to a micromanagement level for instance-

Supply each regiment with adequate petrol/oil/lubricant for land based vehicles.

Supply each regiment with adequate petrol/oil/lubricant for field generators.

Supply each regiment with adequate oil for burning latrines out.


Let me reprhase the question a bit:

If the Terrans had 'won' the T-V War, what systems would they have annexed?

 

Offline 666maslo666

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Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?
Almost every bomb in Freespace is a WMD. The yields are absolutely massive, at least if you take the techroom values without question.
A cyclops is around 3 GT, that's ludicrous considering most powerful US nuke in service is only 1.2 MT. A cyclops is equal to about 2500 of the most powerful US nukes currently in service.

This makes sense if you assume bombs in FS were used for planetary bombardment. You need a lot more power than modern nukes have if you want to completely wreck a planet's surface rather than just target some key cities.

On the contrary, massive yields could be due to bombs being used in space and not on planets. Lack of atmosphere means no destructive shockwave to rely on. All the damage would have to be radiative, quickly falling off with distance squared (and if there is anything plentiful in space, it is space (distance). Spaceships would have radiation shielding simply to be spaceworthy. Last but not least, there would much less risk of collateral damage in space, whereas using such bombs on a planet would probably make it all uninhabitable.

All this means that bombs used in space warfare ought to be a lot more powerful than our current firecrackers.
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Offline Mongoose

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Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?
Um, shockwaves fall off with the radius squared too.

 

Offline Flaser

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Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?
Except for one thing. If you hold the high orbitals, the only WMD you need is large rocks. Kinetic strikes are just as good as nukes if you hold the orbital high ground, and a lot less messy afterward.

You need to hold the orbitals for a considerable time for rocks to do their job. (Either boosting the package to sufficient speed or having gravity do that for you... maybe warping in a big damn rock, though we saw little such "sapper" work in FS). With the Harbinger and its ilk, you merely need to be in position to launch and not properly take and hold it... which means that "reprisal" strikes are very much a possibility. Yes, they can't nuke your *entire* planet, just wipe off your *capital* (...and half the continent it sits on).

So IMO high-yield nuclear weapons can still act as deterrents, because while they're not necessary as weapons of conquest, as tools of the (even suicidal) sneak attack they can very much function. Even a single destroyer getting loose in a system could launch a strike force where you'd be hard pressed to ensure *no* weapons *ever* get through. Have the bombers converge on the planet from as many directions as you can arrange... even with subspace drives of their own, the defender can't react *immediately*. Granted such strikes won't ever achieve a knock-out, even of a single planet... but the political consequences are disastrous for whoever gets sucker-punched. No democratic government (or any government who doesn't have their populace absolutely under the jack heeled boot) would risk it.
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Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?
Flaser, with subspace drive tech, they don't need to hold the orbitals for that long. Just long enough to warp in some decent sized rocks with appropriately aimed exit points. And, regardless of the seeming ease of destroying space rocks in the FSU, it really isn't that easy. Star Trek has way higher power outputs and they couldn't take out one large asteroid headed for a primitive planet in "The Paradise Syndrome."
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Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?
Quote
Star Trek

Erm, I'd stay away from quoting Trek number when it comes to quantifiable, hard SF questions. That they can't take out an asteroid has more to do with plot requirements than the stated yields of their weapons.

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?
So, first I must apologize because, yes I did confuse a few terms here ... a MAD regime doesn't work beyond the planetary scale (however that doesn't mean MAD regimes were not implimented on contested planets, in absence of an orbital presence), however Flaser made the point I would have made about the details of a deterrence strategy.

Lack of atmosphere means no destructive shockwave to rely on. All the damage would have to be radiative, quickly falling off with distance squared (and if there is anything plentiful in space, it is space (distance).

You statement is only true for weapons that don't detonate by combustion (which would have a wave of expended material expanding outward with the force of the detonation) and for weapons designed to avoid shrapnell from the delivery system (which would have the shrapnell travelling outward with the explosive force)


Of course, the fact the GTA was developing and had deployment doctrine apparently based on experience ("most effective when used in preemptive defensive strike against non-military installations.") for salted nuclear weapons is...rather awkward to a non-xenocidal reading of the conflict.

No, it seems quite possible they actually DID use the Harbinger on the Vasudans.

We were already at that point ... but if you have plausible theory how the T-V war could have gone from the escalation which followed after the bombing of a civilian target, and then arrive at a lasting peace (even if said peace was enforced through fear of a common enemy)

In Blue Planet, the deployment of WoMDs against civilian targets by the GTVA is another matter because from the state of the war you can assume that the UEF doesn't have tha capacity to retaliate in kind, as such ideas such as Mutually Assured Destruction do not apply
Though the GTVA in BP are simply targetting the UEF logistical backbone rather than "~wahaha genocide is fun" or some kind of fear tactics like nukes in the cold war.

Please re-read the command briefing for "Post Meridian" - it is quite clear there that the deployment of nuclear weapons on Luna was done with little to no regard for civilian life
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Offline General Battuta

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Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?
We have a lasting alliance with Japan after nuking two of their cities and firebombing more.

 

Offline 0rph3u5

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Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?
We have a lasting alliance with Japan after nuking two of their cities and firebombing more.

Valid point, however I may submit the point that the political landscape of East Asia (in regards to possible involvement of Sovjets in the Pacific, the rise of Communism and Maoism in East Asia) might account for some of the groundwork laid after the war... (and quietly persists into the present?)

EDIT: Is it just me or did Battuta just take the very cavalier "it worked out in the end"-attitude for one most horrific things* humans have ever done to each other?  :confused:

*EDIT3: Just to clarify, I don't mean to deny the crimes committed in the name of the Empire of Japan nor do I seek to invalidate the "stop the war now, to save the lives of those who fight and be caught in continuing war"-rationale; All I want propse is that there is a tier of events in recorded human history of singular horrific quality that they should not be repeated, emmulated or serve a guidepost for furture course of action, unless said course of actions is to NOT DO IT AGAIN.



EDIT2: Maybe I should rephrase the basis for the though experiment then (italtics for the added conditions):

Can you provide plausible theory how the T-V war could have gone from the escalation which followed after the bombing of a civilian target with the weapon of mass destruction, and then arrive at a lasting peace (even if said peace was enforced through abstact fear of a common enemy), if the attacked had the capability of an retaliatory strike with equal weapons?
« Last Edit: November 15, 2016, 01:06:36 pm by 0rph3u5 »
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==================

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"When you work with water, you have to know and respect it. When you labour to subdue it, you have to understand that one day it may rise up and turn all your labours into nothing. For what is water, which seeks to make all things level, which has no taste or colour of its own, but a liquid form of Nothing?" - Graham Swift, Waterland

"...because they are not Dragons."

 
Re: Goals of each side in the Terran-Vasudan War?

Please re-read the command briefing for "Post Meridian" - it is quite clear there that the deployment of nuclear weapons on Luna was done with little to no regard for civilian life

It's quite hard to execute a surprise attack on civilian factories that produce military equipment/repair/ammunition/whatever while avoiding civilian casualties. In fact it's almost impossible.
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