[Hellstryker]

How would you play your cards if you were in the UEF's or GTVA's shoes. Spur of the moment conversation on Skype got me thinking...

[7:51:02 AM] Justin Hopkins: Honestly.
[7:51:03 AM] Cameron: They were also cryogenically frozen Great War Veterans.
[7:51:13 AM] Justin Hopkins: If I were in the UEF's shoes.
[7:51:15 AM] Justin Hopkins: Know what I would do?
[7:51:17 AM] Cameron: Which would mean that when you've aged, there's a younger parallel universe clone of yourself.
[7:51:20 AM] Cameron: What?
[7:51:32 AM] Justin Hopkins: I would let one of the 'defected' ships 'escape' to the GTVA.
[7:51:43 AM] Justin Hopkins: Say that the UEF had been holding them hostage or something.
[7:51:50 AM] Justin Hopkins: Sneak it into Delta Serpentis,
[7:51:58 AM] Justin Hopkins: And then destroy the Sol gate.
[7:52:22 AM] Justin Hopkins: It would be a temporary setback for the GTVA,
[7:52:35 AM] Justin Hopkins: But it would allow the UEF to go into overdrive and buy them time to dig in.
[7:52:36 AM] Cameron: But we have no idea how long it takes to stabilize a jump node.
[7:52:50 AM] Justin Hopkins: Study the beams of the Labouchere and start mounting them on UEF ships.
[7:52:53 AM] Cameron: If it were instantaneous, then destroying the gate would do nothing.
[7:53:03 AM] Justin Hopkins: Construct more frigates and Solarises.
[7:53:05 AM] Justin Hopkins: Etc.
[7:53:06 AM] Cameron: Best thing would be a Bastion style explosion.
[7:53:12 AM] Cameron: Instead of targeting the gate itself.
[7:53:16 AM] Justin Hopkins: That wouldn't do ****.
[7:53:20 AM] Justin Hopkins: The Lucifer did that.
[7:53:31 AM] Justin Hopkins: The gate is in place to *correct* that damage.
[7:53:41 AM] Justin Hopkins: You have to take out the gate itself.
[7:53:45 AM] Cameron: What if both are neccessary?
[7:53:56 AM] Justin Hopkins: Then you sacrafice two ships.
[7:54:08 AM] Cameron: But then the GTVA are ready for the second attack.
[7:54:17 AM] Justin Hopkins: After the rebuild the gate.
[7:54:22 AM] Justin Hopkins: Which took thirty years before.
[7:54:27 AM] Cameron: No, what I mean is.
[7:54:53 AM] Cameron: The GTVA would probably figure out that the hostage ships were UEF defectors all along and were the reason for the sabotage of the Sol gate.
[7:55:08 AM] Justin Hopkins: Is why you send both ships through at once.
[7:55:11 AM] Justin Hopkins: One right after the other.
[7:55:17 AM] Cameron: Ahhh.
[7:55:19 AM] Justin Hopkins: One blows up the gate. other detonates in subspace.
[7:55:24 AM] Justin Hopkins: Brilliant, right?
[7:55:37 AM] Cameron: The Sol Gate is probably nowhere near as resilient as the Knossos either.
[7:55:38 AM] Justin Hopkins: Then the UEF dig in and start prepping for when the GTVA returns.
[7:55:44 AM] Justin Hopkins: Probably not.

[Hades]

Only problem is, the GTVA most likely has a blockade up at the Sol gate and it'd take a while for any of the defected ships to destroy said gate, so the GTVA could easily either destroy it before it causes too much damage or disarm and disable it in an effort to try and recapture the vessel.

Either way, the GTVA already knows which ships defected.

[7:53:03 AM] Justin Hopkins: Construct more frigates and Solarises.
[7:53:05 AM] Justin Hopkins: Etc.

It's not that simple.

[MatthTheGeek]

Not to mention that it would be more than suspicious for a ship that has defected to defect back again. To boot, after the original defection, the whole original Tev crew was probably fully replaced by Feds. All in all, I don't think the Tevs would fall for it. They would force the ship to disengage its engines, get borded, crew evacuated and ship commandeered back by real Tev crew even before it gets anywhere close the node. Result : you've just offered a free ship to the Tevs, free of charges. Congratulations.

For the "construct more frigates and Solarises" part, they do that already. As fast as they can, at least for the frigate part (A Solaris probably requires at minimum half a dozen years to complete, and more resources than the Feds can afford in the middle of a war). You just can't just double the size of your fleet in a 18 months window. Constructed ships aren't even enough to replace the sustained losses.

[headdie]

How about this one have the meson destroyer detonate as it exits on the Delta Sep end of the node, the both the Lucifer and bastion were half way through their transitions in the cutscenes so a two stage explosion, the back half in the node and the front half in real space right in the gate, the back half seals the node and the front half destroys the gate + possibly helping seal the node.  probably buy the UEF a few months if the gate is merely damaged and probably a couple of years if it is destroyed.  Might be work having a backup destroyer on standby just in case though. 

This is all of course a mute point if the UEF dont have meson technology, remember it took a combined effort from both sides of the GTVA to research the things in the first place and would have been an extravagance to make the Solaris class sound reasonable.

[The E]

Even if they had started laying down new hulls at the start of the conflict (Discounting the issue of the shipyards being all ready to start work on new warships right away, which they aren't), those ships would only now start to appear. Building a Sanctus, Karuna, Narayana, or Solaris takes a long time; this isn't WW2 where build times for new warships were on the order of a few months.

And what headdie said, obviously.

[Colonol Dekker]

I'd get defrosting the Solace's crew and get them down the Acid mines pronto. . . . . Were i Buntu oppressive.

[Snail]

The UEF have comet crackers (really big nukes I guess) which could have payloads comparable to Meson Bombs.

[The E]

No, I guess those aren't comparable in yield.

[T-Man]

Being a UEF fanboy, i'd hop in the UEF chair too.

Like the idea of sending the defected ships through as a ploy; good one, might work, but would the GTVA fall for it? They would likely insist the vessels were taken over and the crews placed into custody so they'd be unable to do it. A suicide ship again might work, but FS has demonstrated an ability to detect warheads, so they'd need a lot of cover and luck.

The Feds are on the backfoot definately; if they try to fight the GTVA head on they will loose. The Tevs weakness however is their reliance on subspace; even Steele warps in and out quick. I would try to develop some kind of subspace jammer and get that deployed; would prevent the GTVA from subspace strikes, and the gate network could perhaps be modified to work through the jamming, so then its just a matter of keeping gates locked down. Alternatively some kind of code or frequency could be introduced that allowed UEF ships to still operate. Any non-subspace advance into a jammed area would be detected quick and risk trapping themselves and then getting grinded down, unless you brought tons of supplies and kept a supply line going with convoys. A single strike would take weeks, maybe months.

If a mobile version of the above could me made, then you could wait for a GTVA destroyer, jump in a jammer quick with 2 or 3 Naras and trigger the jammer. I doubt any destroyer could survive a strike like that for more than 20 secs. The only downside would be having to protect the jammer (which would probably have to be a Oculus) and that if any Tevs warped in at the edge of the jamming and came in on engines, you'd be trapped too unless you dropped the field to run.

[Snail]

No, I guess those aren't comparable in yield.

They could still be capable of blowing up the node corridor, if you had enough of them (which is the main thing most people seem to want to do). Given that the Gefs could get ahold of one they can't be that rare.

Actually there are other non-Meson technologies capable of creating rather big explosions that the UEF also have access to. They could use those.

[headdie]

the issue might not be purely yield but also the forms of energy eg 1 kiloton of tnt just goes boom, a kiloton rated nuke gives off ionising radiation. What types of energy does a meson give out, is there a type of subspace radiation to consider

[-Norbert-]

The UEF has two Anemoi under their controll. Those two might have enough parts (and blueprints) to build meson bombs. And if those ships are powered by meson reactors, they could even take them out and rebuild them into makeshift meson bombs.

But wether they can build meson bombs or some equivalent capable of closing the node isn't really the issue if the UEF can't overcome the blockade at the jumpnode first (or keep them busy long enough for the bombs to make the jump). Considering the GTVA had plenty of time to fortify the position and can call in reinforcements from within Sol and from Delta Serpentis it's rather unlikely that they are able to break that blockade.
Apart from that I doubt Byrne is willing to commit the bulk of first fleet to such a suicide attack and without those ships the already minimal chances of success fade away completely.

[Scotty]

Everyone always forgets that even if you seal the node, you still have something like five full GTVA battlegroups in the Sol system.  More, if the Vasudans get there first.  You can be damn sure they won't be happy if they're sealed in Sol.

[MatthTheGeek]

Without supplies, they won't last long. The UEF just have to hold their ground until the Tev ships fall apart. You can expect a fair amount of surrendering too if they realize they're stranded on Sol for good.

[Snail]

What Matth said, the entire GTVA force in Sol is pretty much dependent on the great umbilical as it is.

[MatthTheGeek]

Anemois and captured stations are just supply storage and repair stations in term of logistics, they don't spawn supply out of the blue. At one point they'll run out.

Remember the end of AoA, when they said they were battle damaged and short on supplies ? That's was after only some days (how much was it, two weeks ?) without support, and with two Anemois. And a self-sufficient Sleeper ship.

[The E]

And a few major fleet engagements.

[MatthTheGeek]

If the Tevs stranded in Sol don't get into any engagement, they're not too much trouble for the UEF, right ?

[Colonol Dekker]

Biological warfare

[LordPomposity]

Depends on how many weeks/months worth of supplies are already stored at Neptune and Jupiter, then.

The UEF could very well shoot themselves in the foot by collapsing the subspace corridor; as it stands, if the UEF manages to give the GTVA a big enough black eye, it could erode popular and political support for the war effort enough to force the Security Council to pull out. If the corridor is destroyed, that's no longer a factor. The GTVA forces already present in system might be willing to accept much heavier losses to achieve victory than the civilian politicians currently in charge of the war would. The GTVA forces in Sol probably have the schematics necessary to rebuild the portal, and if they can conquer the system they would certainly have the resources to do so.

Hell, if the only other option is logistical decay followed by surrender, I can certainly see Steele deciding that committing everything a decisive fleet battle over Earth is the best of a number of very bad remaining options despite the massive costs that even a victory would entail.