[Lepanto]

Given the GTVA's massive advantages in several areas, how did the NTF even manage to hold out for 18 months of war, until the events of FS2?

The NTF had:
-Three systems,
-somewhat-outdated strikecraft and capships,
-incompetent commanders who make stupid tactical decisions due to fanaticism (if Koth can be taken as an example),
-and a supreme leader who didn't even believe in his faction's own cause, and so wasn't actually committed to an NTF victory.

The GTVA, on the other hand, had:
-the rest of the loyalist Terran systems and fleet,
-all of the Vasudan systems and fleet (thanks to the Vasudans' superior economic recovery under Khonsu, it's a reasonable conjecture that the Vasudans had a larger industrial base than all the Terran systems combined, and therefore a larger fleet),
-better military professionalism overall (Command's bad decisions notwithstanding),
-more advanced technology in some areas (though their tech development didn't really pick up until around FS2).

Given all the GTVA's advantages, they would logically have been able to field a much larger and better fleet than the NTF, and therefore quickly quashed the rebellion once they had time to mass their forces. But, as it stands, they were unable to make any major gains during the 18 months between the rebellion's start and FS2. As late as FS2, Koth's offensive in Epsilon Pegasi, if it had succeeded, actually could have made the GTVA sue for peace. The GTVA only finally won when Alpha 1 and the Colossus took the field. Jokes about GTVA Command's incompetence aside, why do you think the war could have lasted so long?

Here are some factors that MIGHT help explain why the war took so long:

-Bosch was playing defense with the NTF fleet while he worked on ETAK and harvested Ancient artifacts, putting together the pieces of his contact-the-Shivans plan. Still, especially given that the NTF was fighting the GTVA in contested systems rather than hunkering down behind node blockades in its core systems, I don't know how much difference that would've made.

-GTVA Command obligingly let the war drag on until Bosch had finished ETAK. They did let Bosch go during the events of FS2 (which also raises the question of why Command later seemed to abandon whatever their plan was when they just tried to kill Bosch with the Colossus at the Knossos). If true, this theory requires them to have known about Bosch's ETAK research well before FS2.

-Hidden NTF sympathizers in important GTVA positions helped sabotage the GTVA's war effort.

-The GTVA was only fighting the NTF with a portion of their strength, while keeping a large part of their fleet on Shivan watch, like in WiH with the Sol war. By this point, though, you'd figure Command would have said "enough is enough" and just wiped out the NTF with one massive attack, giving how much of a pain the NTF has become.

To be honest, I don't know how much  actually thought this scenario out. They made a detailed setting with FS2, but by this point, us fans have thought more about the logic of their story than they ever did. I don't think FS2 itself provides any explanation for why the war took so long, so unless I missed anything important, any explanation will have to be fanon.

So. Theories? Comments?

[Black Wolf]

I suspect that there were probably many factors involved, including some of the ones you mentioned. Some other possible ones might have been:

 - Reticence by the GTVA to go all out on the attack due to popular support for the NTF from the people in those systems (or even in the wider GTVA), or simply not wanting to take the inevitable losses, or wanting to not look bloodthirsty in front of the Vasudans, or any number of political reasons to contain rather than outright destroy the rebellion.

 - As you said, GTVA may have been reluctant to pull the fleet off anti-Shivan patrols until just before FS2 - probably this coincided with the Colossus reaching enough combat readiness that they assumed it had it covered if the Shivans came back.

 - Frequent ceasefires or pauses in the warfare (some of which may have lasted months) while the GTVA and NTF attempt to negotiate may have meant that active combat was only occurring over a relatively small percentage of the 18 months of rebellion.

 - Distaste for Human-on-Human warfare may have led to the GTVA (and possibly the NTF too) refusing to destroy ships in the early days of the war, instead trying to disable or disarm them, slowing down the battles and making lots of them indecisive. Once it dragged on for awhile, the GTVA may have decided to take off the kid gloves and end it quickly and decisively.

 - The fleets may not have been so completely mismatched. We don't know the population (or warship) distribution of the GTVA - it's possible that the three fleets that defected to the NTF were a large chunk of the entire Terran force. And if you assume the Vasudans kept out of what was a Terran civil war (for at least the first ear or so) it could very well have been a much closer fight than the way you present it.

There are plenty of other potential reasons too. History has shown that wars between unevenly matched opponents can drag on long past the period that their relative strengths would predict - Syria, Afghanistan, Vietnam and hundreds more.

[AdmiralRalwood]

-GTVA Command obligingly let the war drag on until Bosch had finished ETAK. They did let Bosch go during the events of FS2 (which also raises the question of why Command later seemed to abandon whatever their plan was when they just tried to kill Bosch with the Colossus at the Knossos).

Did they try to kill Bosch at the Knossos? The Colossus's "spontaneous" fire control failure certainly seemed contrived by Command to see whether or not Bosch's ETAK project was successful or not.

[niffiwan]

Wasn't there something in the debriefing about saboteurs disrupting the Colossus fire control systems? (of course, that could just be the "official story").

On the subject of the war lasting 18 months, I'd have thought that initially the GTVA would have had to be very careful about which units they sent to fight the NTF, in case those units defected themselves.  e.g. the GTC Trinity defected well after the start of the war.  So perhaps the GTVA were hamstrung by the need to "screen" their forces to find the ones they could really trust?

[NGTM-1R]

Forgetting the chokepoint factor at work here. Deploy enough ships to the area of the node and nothing will get through; the GTVA might have needed the Colossus to break the blockade, not for its firepower, but for its durability.

[Kolgena]

Forgetting the chokepoint factor at work here. Deploy enough ships to the area of the node and nothing will get through; the GTVA might have needed the Colossus to break the blockade, not for its firepower, but for its durability.

Yup. King's Gambit clearly shows how a handful of strike craft and mjolnirs plus a Typhon (which really didn't NEED to be in the mission) can absolutely trash a fairly large fleet (1 orion, 2 deimos, 1 leviathan, 1 aeolus) as it came through the node piecemeal. Assuming the NTF set up similar blockades, it should have been very difficult to punch through to a hostile end of any NTF nodes. The colossus could have tanked all the damage if it went in first in order to buy time for its backup to snowball in at critical mass.

(off topic: this is exactly why sentry forcefields are insanely powerful in SC2)

[Luis Dias]

Forgetting the chokepoint factor at work here. Deploy enough ships to the area of the node and nothing will get through; the GTVA might have needed the Colossus to break the blockade, not for its firepower, but for its durability.

Spot on. You and Kolgena nailed the tactical analysis. Without the Collossus it is very difficult to enter through blockaded systems. Which in turn makes me question GTVA's sanity or competence in taking so long at blockading their own systems. NTF's 6th fleet rams through Epsilon Pegasi inflicting dozens of thousands of casualties from the GTVA some 18 months into the war. The alternative hypothesis that the GTVA let them do it so they could then destroy the Repulse with the new Collossus is to be pondered, but if that was actually the case then we can question GTVA's very loyalty to their own military personnel.

[Megawolf492]

I would want to know how soon did command know about the rebellion (or the planning for it) and the ETAK project (or the planning for that too). I seriously doubt that the first time command knew about the rebellion is when "half" the navy rebelled. I also doubt that when command did find out about the NTF (whenever that was), they believed the whole "We want to rebel because we hate Vasudans" mantra. They might have had mid to high ranking officials that had a sense that there was more to it than that (but then again, Koth's actions might disprove that).

There is a good chance that command was letting the war stalemate for a bit, along with some "peace talks", to give Bosch more time, because they were curious. But when they found out it had something to do with the Shivans (which I believe for the inner GTVI was well before the beginning of the game), they were like "holy..." and then ramped up the attack against the NTF. Command still wanted to capture Bosch/ETAK instead of destroying them, so that's why they let him escape early in the game and on the SOC loop. But when they saw that Bosch was making a run for the Nebula and to (presumably) make contact with the Shivans, they wanted to stop him at all costs. Once he did make it to the Nebula and made contact, the cat was out of the bag so they went back to trying to capture him.

Also, if they didn't know until the NTF went public, then command might think they weren't as organized as they were. I'd compare it to the American Civil War. The U.S. thought it would be over in 3-6 months, but it obviously was much longer. Command probably underestimated the rebels for a time, until maybe a devastating surprise attack or feint took out a chunk of the Terran fleet (I do believe it was a while until the Vasudans went on the offensive against the NTF).

[swashmebuckle]

I figured Command (at the highest levels at least) set it up from the start. Obviously the Neo Terra movement was a real thing, but by giving it what appeared to be a fighting chance, the GTVA got to try out a bunch of things that it wanted to do:

-Draw out and learn about the Shivans
-Develop and deploy ETAK
-Gather all their (human) enemies under one banner (and under the command of a loyal Admiral) so that they could drop the hammer on them at any time
-Save everyone from the Shivans again
-Be able to deny that they had anything to do with any of these things if and when it blew up in their faces

[SypheDMar]

My hypothesis is that some of the higher ups in the GTVA are part of Bosch's inner circle (or possibly, Bosch is part of their inner circle). I can't imagine that ETAK and the Iceni could be built without help.

Bosch didn't need to start a rebellion to construct ETAK nor to activate the Knossos. The GTVA, though, would need a war or something else to get away with being seen as intentionally provoking the Shivans or failing to contain the Shivans had they failed.

The Colossus also supports Bosch and the GTVA working together. The Colosssus was deployed AFTER Bosch escaped into the nebula with ETAK. And every attempt to catch/destroy the Iceni via the Colossus ends in failure. For a saboteur to be inside the Colossus when the Iceni was in sight would mean that Bosch knew about the Colossus's existence a long time before its deployment. I would also imagine that it would require special talents (probably SOC or someone/team more insane/suicidal) to stop the beams of a high value warship from destroying the most important leaders of the NTF. Note that the saboteur(s) allowed Koth to die. I took this to mean that the saboteur isn't loyal to the NTF but rather loyal to the ones pulling the strings in the GTVA.

And then there's the Psamtik. During its last engagement, its mission was to locate Bosch. However, since Command wouldn't actually have wanted Bosch captured to continue their little run through of a Shivan alliance, they sent the Psamtik to the wrong coordinates to be destroyed. The lives of Vasudans on board aren't worth disrupting an alliance with the Great Destroyers.



I also suspect that Bosch is only a front of the GTVA and that Bosch was willing to accept being so to test out ETAK and communicate with the Shivans. Eighteen months in the war, Bosch may have been disgusted with his position and distrustful of Command when hinting that Command allowed him to escape.

[yuezhi]

I suppose in the end Bosch saw his revolutionaries as nothing more than a convenient trojan meat shield. And what about his foray into Deneb? An archaeological venture for him more than a sound command decision, a giant step for the NTF over zods.

[Lepanto]

On the topic of blockades: though that would help explain why the GTVA would have a hard time advancing into the NTF home systems, that doesn't explain why the GTVA can't crush the NTF fleets in Alpha Centauri, Deneb, and Epsilon Pegasi, which are contested systems.

Upon re-watching the Bosch monologues, Bosch is obviously working alone; he doesn't even imply that he's actively collaborating with anyone in GTVA Command. Now, Command was definitely LETTING him finish ETAK, at least by the time of FS2. Command sabotaging the Colossus themselves would dovetail with their whole let-Bosch-finish-ETAK gambit, and would be much more subtle than their obvious deception in Romans' Blunder.

I'd lean towards presuming that Command found out about ETAK later in the war, when ETAK was close to completion, and decided to drag out the war a bit so he could finish it. It's absurd that Command planned out the entire Rebellion just to let Bosch make ETAK; if they had known of Bosch's plans that far in advance, they could've just made ETAK themselves, and captured Bosch before he could launch the rebellion. They DID have access to the same Shivan research which Bosch used, after all.

But if Command were deliberately letting Bosch follow his plan through to the end, that would mean that they were letting Bosch make first contact with the Shivans on his own terms, which would leave the final outcome of his negotiations out of Command's control. This also would explain why Alpha 1's squadron missed the Iceni again in The Sicilian Defense, if Command fed their own units bogus coordinates again. If they had just wanted to capture ETAK for themselves, they could've just had Alpha 1 disable the Iceni when it jumped in in Endgame, and acquired Bosch's complete ETAK (unless Bosch destroyed it to prevent its capture, but that would still have been a safer move than letting Bosch talk to the Shivans).

I'm frankly unsure how clearly  themselves knew exactly what Command's ultimate gambit was. Command's plan seems kinda inconsistent, at least as they actually wrote it; in Romans' Blunder, they're letting Bosch go. In Endgame, they're (seemingly) trying to kill Bosch, with ETAK onboard, before he can enter the nebula. In the nebula, now they're chasing after Bosch and trying to recover ETAK. 

[Black Wolf]

I'm frankly unsure how clearly  themselves knew exactly what Command's ultimate gambit was. Command's plan seems kinda inconsistent, at least as they actually wrote it; in Romans' Blunder, they're letting Bosch go. In Endgame, they're (seemingly) trying to kill Bosch, with ETAK onboard, before he can enter the nebula. In the nebula, now they're chasing after Bosch and trying to recover ETAK. 

FS2 was pretty carefully written - I'd be surprised if they didn't know what was going on with Bosch. That particular timeline makes sense within the changing context of the war, and, more critically, the changing mindset of Command.

The Roman's Blunder takes place before the Shivans arrive - Command presumably knew about ETAK, but perhaps didn't know that the Shivans were as close as they were. With no Shivans around, ETAK is almost a curiosity - but one with species-saving potential in the theoretical event of the Shivans coming back. In that context, command might have been willing to let Bosch finish, as at the time, there was nothing he could actually do with it to threaten the GTVA. Don't forget, they also had the Colossus coming up, and the resultant mindset that nothing (including the shivans) could threaten them any more - they would, in their mind, crush the rebellion in a few weeks once it launched.

By endgame, the situation is drastically different. The Shivans are back, but their weapons are equal to those of the GTVA and, Colossus or no Colossus, command is probably worried about them. Certainly, they don't want to do anything to piss them off any more than they already are. Allowing Bosch to contact them is too great of a risk - they would rather destroy ETAK than let the first meaningful contact between Humanity and the Shivans be led by an enemy (or, really, anyone but themselves). So destroying ETAK becomes a priority.

By Return to Babel, the situation has changed again. The GTVA are riding high - they've just faced down and destroyed what they considered the Shivan's main superweapon. and crushed the NTF rebellion. Bosh has already spoken to the Shivans - the damage is done there, and while they no longer see the Shivans as the same kind of threat they once did, equally, they're basically dictating terms at this point. Nobody is in a position to challenge them (particularly not the survivors on the Iceni), so why not demand the details of ETAK? Spoils of war, as it were. The basic idea of talking to the Shvans still has a lot of value, even if (as command believes) they're no longer an existential threat to humanity.

So, as usual, it's all about context. I can't guarantee that these were the exact thoughts going through the writers heads when they were designing the sequence, but I'd strongly suspect that it would be something at least vaguely along those lines.

[Lepanto]

I'm frankly unsure how clearly  themselves knew exactly what Command's ultimate gambit was. Command's plan seems kinda inconsistent, at least as they actually wrote it; in Romans' Blunder, they're letting Bosch go. In Endgame, they're (seemingly) trying to kill Bosch, with ETAK onboard, before he can enter the nebula. In the nebula, now they're chasing after Bosch and trying to recover ETAK. 

FS2 was pretty carefully written - I'd be surprised if they didn't know what was going on with Bosch. That particular timeline makes sense within the changing context of the war, and, more critically, the changing mindset of Command.

The Roman's Blunder takes place before the Shivans arrive - Command presumably knew about ETAK, but perhaps didn't know that the Shivans were as close as they were. With no Shivans around, ETAK is almost a curiosity - but one with species-saving potential in the theoretical event of the Shivans coming back. In that context, command might have been willing to let Bosch finish, as at the time, there was nothing he could actually do with it to threaten the GTVA. Don't forget, they also had the Colossus coming up, and the resultant mindset that nothing (including the shivans) could threaten them any more - they would, in their mind, crush the rebellion in a few weeks once it launched.

By endgame, the situation is drastically different. The Shivans are back, but their weapons are equal to those of the GTVA and, Colossus or no Colossus, command is probably worried about them. Certainly, they don't want to do anything to piss them off any more than they already are. Allowing Bosch to contact them is too great of a risk - they would rather destroy ETAK than let the first meaningful contact between Humanity and the Shivans be led by an enemy (or, really, anyone but themselves). So destroying ETAK becomes a priority.

By Return to Babel, the situation has changed again. The GTVA are riding high - they've just faced down and destroyed what they considered the Shivan's main superweapon. and crushed the NTF rebellion. Bosh has already spoken to the Shivans - the damage is done there, and while they no longer see the Shivans as the same kind of threat they once did, equally, they're basically dictating terms at this point. Nobody is in a position to challenge them (particularly not the survivors on the Iceni), so why not demand the details of ETAK? Spoils of war, as it were. The basic idea of talking to the Shvans still has a lot of value, even if (as command believes) they're no longer an existential threat to humanity.

So, as usual, it's all about context. I can't guarantee that these were the exact thoughts going through the writers heads when they were designing the sequence, but I'd strongly suspect that it would be something at least vaguely along those lines.

That definitely makes more sense than anything I'd come up with. Command's behavior is more explicable if they were just reacting to changing conditions.


I know I've derailed my own thread into talking about Bosch now, but if anyone has anything else to say about the NTF war, please do.

[yuezhi]

Because Alpha 1 didn't enlist early enough

[SypheDMar]

I'd lean towards presuming that Command found out about ETAK later in the war, when ETAK was close to completion, and decided to drag out the war a bit so he could finish it. It's absurd that Command planned out the entire Rebellion just to let Bosch make ETAK; if they had known of Bosch's plans that far in advance, they could've just made ETAK themselves, and captured Bosch before he could launch the rebellion. They DID have access to the same Shivan research which Bosch used, after all.

I don't think it's too absurd if you can imagine that the most ordinary people would shudder at the thought of allying with the Shivans at the expense of a current ally. The Vasudans would either be appalled or take advantage of the situation themselves if it was known within the elements of Command. If Command is represented equally by the two Allied species, those that were helping Bosch were probably a smaller faction within the Terran half. Supposing that Command is composed of a ten-member group, Bosch would have his strings pulled by maybe one or two persons. It's not too far-fetched to think that Bosch has people working inside Command either. Considering that Bosch was a GTI operative during the Hades Rebellion, it's very possible that his promotion resulted in other strings being pulled as well by maybe people he's worked with.

The "Bosch" faction within Command would not be able to enact ETAK on their own, so they would need someone else who's radical, patriotic, and insane enough to do so.

If they had just wanted to capture ETAK for themselves, they could've just had Alpha 1 disable the Iceni when it jumped in in Endgame, and acquired Bosch's complete ETAK (unless Bosch destroyed it to prevent its capture, but that would still have been a safer move than letting Bosch talk to the Shivans).

My theory is that doing so would expose the hidden agenda of those within Command, and the ones pulling the strings actually want Bosch to see it through. Bosch's gambit was too fragile to survive on its own without the intervention of Command.

I'm frankly unsure how clearly  themselves knew exactly what Command's ultimate gambit was. Command's plan seems kinda inconsistent, at least as they actually wrote it; in Romans' Blunder, they're letting Bosch go. In Endgame, they're (seemingly) trying to kill Bosch, with ETAK onboard, before he can enter the nebula. In the nebula, now they're chasing after Bosch and trying to recover ETAK. 

I'm with BW on this one that Command is very consistent given the situation. In Roman's Blunder, they let him go. In Endgame, they're still letting him go. In the nebula, knowing that Bosch got away and beng a former GTI operative, got Bosch to  erase all traces of having any connections with Command and leaving red herrings everywhere while giving them back what they wanted all along: ETAK and a Terran representative for a Shivan alliance.