Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: -Norbert- on April 24, 2011, 06:55:52 am
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When the 14th battlegroup vanished without a trace, surely they wouldn't just sit on their hands and do nothing, hoping they might turn up again.
So what did they do?
Were they unable to muster a replacement force in time, or did they call off the invasion till they knew what happened?
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Read The Reunion (http://blueplanet.hard-light.net/reunion.html). The GTVA didn't send in another force right after the first disappeared because they didn't know what the hell was going on. Instead, they moved the reserve ships from the 4th Fleet to blockade the Sol Gate in case the UEF had somehow managed to annihilate the 14th and were planning an invasion.
During the time that the 14th had been absent (between the initial transit and its abrupt return several days later), GTVA High Command had moved the waiting Fourth Fleet into a defensive posture, believing that the UEF had destroyed the 14th Battlegroup. The fear was that the Elders, having interrogated GTVA survivors, might be preparing a breakout towards Beta Aquilae.
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With SOC and spy probes and all that, they must have learned at some point before the re-appearance of the 14th that they were not destroyed in battle.
And even if they had not, they must have done some more than just sit there and tiddle their thumbs waiting for a supposedly superiour enemy force to attack.
I don't know the exact timespan of AoA, but I'd estimate at the very least a full month. Surely the GTVA wouldn't just sit around doing pretty much nothing for a full month, would they? The blockade and all is very nice and official, but I'd like to know what was going on behind the scenes... in the areas that are only on the classified records... or completely off any records.
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It was several days.
The exact same quote:
During the time that the 14th had been absent (between the initial transit and its abrupt return several days later), GTVA High Command had moved the waiting Fourth Fleet into a defensive posture, believing that the UEF had destroyed the 14th Battlegroup. The fear was that the Elders, having interrogated GTVA survivors, might be preparing a breakout towards Beta Aquilae.
If your top-of-the-line battle group has just disappeared without a trace, do you really send in another fleet immediately?
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Especially if your probes show that there's no mention at all of anything unusual happening on the other side. And then there are the variables involved in the Sol gate, the new ships.....
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I wasn't talking about sending in ships.... or for that matter sending anything manned through the node. I wanted to know what their higher ups and black ops were up to, what kind of plans the drew up and such.
But since I overestimated the time period by quite a big margin, I guess that's a moot point now.
Though I'm still interested how the Vasudans took the disappearance of the 14th battlegroup.
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As stated, they moved the 4th in to defend the gate in case **** went down and the 14th really was destroyed. They probably momentarily reconsidered their declarations of war.
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If they had sent in any probes into the Sol gate after the 14th disappeared, would they go to the alternate universe Sol or the UEF-occupied version?
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Probably the UEF occupied reality.
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The event that drew the 14th battlegroup was an isolated one, and it is strongly hinted in BP that it has been triggered by the Vishnans. It's clear that it was isolated since transit occurred normally after they returned.
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Also I remember something about the meson reactors having something to do with the incident and I highly doubt small throwaway probes would be fitted with such state of the art reactor technology, or any reactor at all come to think of it.
Giving them one-shot jumpdrives and a battery, maybe with solar panels to extend the operating time, would be a much better use of ressources. Also I imagine a reactor is going to make a probe easier to detect than solar panels and a battery.
But I'd still like to know how the Vasudans reacted to such news.
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Meson fluctuation, yes. Stereotypically when your reactor suddenly starts to have an energy surge when you're going through space/subspace/hyperspace/nullspace/ultraspace/nospace/myspace you're bound to either explode, go into another universe, go back in time, mutate, come out mangled or something.
The Vasudans, merging mythical/philosophical thingies with science, probably might think quite a lot about the news. Especially since this...Jester...Vasudan was inducted to Khonsu's circle.
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Maybe it got covered up entirely and the Vasudans may not know. They're not on all great terms.
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Which raises a question from me - What is is that got the Vasudans involved in the Sol War? Did the Terran side of the GTVA tell them about the 'misjump,' thereby prompting action from the Emperor? IIRC, the Vasudans have said before that they refused to be involved, and given how cool relations have been in the last few years I doubt they jumped in simply to help their Terran allies. Surely Khonsu has some other motive.
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I think the Vasudans got fully logistically involved after the logistics/Elder splashing incident.
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The main Vasudan motive for helping the Tevs logistically is that they too are starting to get worried about the length of this war. The GTVA knows that the Shivans could come back at any moment, so the longer the war last, the more vulnerable the Tevs and Zods will be to their return.
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Also; increasing the size of the GTVA by 1/3rd
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But it is ironic. First they are displeased that the Terrans put to much effort into building the portal and now they are helping in the conquest of the terretories the portal connected them to.
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Crap, I forgot the Zods didn't pledge actual offensive support until after the negotiations incident. I'm an idiot, sorry guys.
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Well, but they are yet to appear offensive.
My guess, the Zods will protect their logistic ships quite fiercly...look at sunglare...a Hati, a Sobek, several Aeolus...an AWACs...could be an entire battlegruop just to make sure, the GEF will not dare to attack any Zod ship in the near future, no matter, if this incident was orchestrated by Steele or not.
But what would happen, if the emperor got to know about Steeles gambit?
Surely the Zods would be realy pissed^^
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Thats just the thing, who's going to convince them? And the fact that a Vasudan Battlegroup is in Sol is enough for me to believe they have truly entered the war. You don't send a Destroyer Battlegroup to cover logistics ships that are operating behind friendly lines in the first place.
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Battlegroup? The only ships I saw were one Hatshepsut (which is the ship the Admiral came on - for whatever reason), one Sobek, a cruiser and an AWACS. Except for the Admirals flagship that could just be escort for the logistic ship they put in place after the Gef attack.
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Heres my take on that -
1- If the Admiral's sole job had been to conduct negotiations, and said negotiations had gone sour, why is his ship still in system? He had plenty of time to leave before the end of the campaign.
2- If he did in fact stay on as an escort, why is he operating with such a small force? You dont send Destroyers into theaters of war with a minimal escort, no matter how powerful they may be. They are simply too valuable. Therefore, IMO, its more than safe to assume that the remaining battlegroup elements are present in Sol, and simply were not in Sunglare. It would make little sense otherwise.
And 3- We come back to my original point. Why send a whole damn Destroyer battlegroup to cover a few logistics vessels that will, ideally, never be near the front lines, and have already proven to be near impossible to find once they have begun operations? Simple - you don't. The only reason I can see for those ships to remain in system is as an offensive force.
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And 3- We come back to my original point. Why send a whole damn Destroyer battlegroup to cover a few logistics vessels that will, ideally, never be near the front lines, and have already proven to be near impossible to find once they have begun operations?
Well, here's the thing : the UEF has already captured one, and the Gefs assaulted another. The "impossible to find" point seems to be pretty much busted.
Also, we're talking about defending 2-3 logistic ships that are far away from each other. Given the value of those targets (each is arguably as valuable, if not more, than a whole destroyer), sending a whole battlegroup to escprt those doesn't seem too much to me.
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Well, here's the thing : the UEF has already captured one, and the Gefs assaulted another. The "impossible to find" point seems to be pretty much busted.
Two ships. Two ships in a year and a half of warfare, one of which was the subject of Internal Espionage/A brilliant contingency, and the other of which I'm not convinced wasn't simply thrown out there to get that message to Laporte. Thats a pretty good track record, right there. I stand by my points, for now.
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I'd say a logistic ship is worth more than a single destroyer. Maybe up to two destroyers. Don't forget that those two Anemois enabled the 14th battlegroup to come through several heavy fights with the Shivans, cut off completely from any other support and repair. In my opinion they were their lifeline and without them they would have been lost (barring some kind of Vishnan intervention).
Without those ships the invasion forces would have to either go back to Delta Serpentis for resupply and minor repairs and thus be unable to keep this kind of pressure on the UEF or they would have to rely on convoys, which are more vulnerable to attacks than the logistic ships.
On that matter: How are the logistic ships supplyed. Are they flying back to Delta Serpentis or do they get stocked up by big (well defended) convoys?
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I'll give you the cost and overall importance of Logistics ships, but given that they'll be operating behind friendly lines, (which, with the loss of the Wargods, and the possible weakening of the Calder's and Bryne's fleets in the same action, have been made even safer) and the general difficulty involved in actually getting to one, I just don't see a force of this size being purely defensive.
On another note, I'm also curious about the Logistics ship's method of resupply. I dont recall anything in the Techroom about it either. Do they have some kind of Fabrication plant on board or something? Or just really huge cargo bays? I'm also curious about Norbert's question too.
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The enormousness of FreeSpace ships means there is lots of room aboard for lots of crazy stuff, including (doubtless) all sorts of manufacturing.
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But even so, they'd still need materials out of which they could manufacture the neede parts from. And those must come from somewhere too (unless it's a star trek setting with replicators... which BP thanksfully isn't).
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Well, if Logistics ships are capable of producing any parts they need (though I'm probably overestimating the effectiveness of these manufacturing facilities) then it stand to reason that they wouldn't need external resupply all that often, especially now that many of the orbitals and mining facilities in Sol are under their control. Presumably they could just re-purpose any materials they find into items they need. Battle salvage and such. Of course, prior to taking Jupiter they probably wouldn't have had those capabilities, but from the sounds of it Anemoi's can carry more then enough junk to keep a fleet in business for a fair while.
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Well, if Logistics ships are capable of producing any parts they need (though I'm probably overestimating the effectiveness of these manufacturing facilities) then it stand to reason that they wouldn't need external resupply all that often, especially now that many of the orbitals and mining facilities in Sol are under their control. Presumably they could just re-purpose any materials they find into items they need. Battle salvage and such. Of course, prior to taking Jupiter they probably wouldn't have had those capabilities, but from the sounds of it Anemoi's can carry more then enough junk to keep a fleet in business for a fair while.
During AoA the 14th nearly depleted TWO Anemoi's, which is odd.
Perhaps just because they couldn't conduct mining operations.
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There was a ton of rapid jumping, a lot of very nearly getting beam'd to hell by Shivan destroyers, and a couple really big battles the player didn't participate in - for example, the Temeraire's holding action during Forced Entry, which was allegedly even more intense than Forced Entry.
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...really big battles the player didn't participate in - for example, the Temeraire's holding action during Forced Entry, which was allegedly even more intense than Forced Entry.
Sounds like it might make for a good coöp mission :drevil:
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