Hard Light Productions Forums
Hosted Projects - FS2 Required => Blue Planet => Topic started by: LordPomposity on June 03, 2011, 04:10:21 pm
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First, since this post has blossomed into quite the :banghead: of text, the TLDR version: conquering Sol will do little to solve the problems that drove the GTVA to invade in the first place. Win or lose in Sol, rebellion and collapse are seriously likely.
The following exchange in the WiH Census thread got me thinking about the GTVA’s options at this point.
I don't really want to get into a point-by-point argument so I'll just say that
I think you're oversimplifying the problem here. It's not just that 'something will happen which will destabilize the GTVA', it's that almost all outcomes destabilize the GTVA.
Don't finish the gate? Population rebels at broken promises.
Finish the gate, don't declare war, don't try to control immigration? Enormous emigration to Sol.
Finish the gate, deny immigration? Rebellion that makes the NTF look like a picnic.
Finish the gate, attempt diplomatic resolution and staged immigration? Ubuntu ideology spreads virally.
Think of the GTVA in that situation as East Germany and the UEF as the West, except East Germany believes it needs to exist to keep the West safe, and the West doesn't seem to care much about that at all.
Ah but I can add to that:
finish the gate, have war, win war, deny immigration and still face just as large a rebellion on your side AND face rebellion/unrest in the recently conquered Sol system.
So, the war having started, let’s looks at the various ways (some much more likely than others), in which things could pan out. We’ll work our way from UEF victory to GTVA victory.
Scenario 1: Total UEF victory. The UEF routes GTVA forces in Sol, pushes through the node to Delta Serpentis, and proceeds to sweep through the GTVA system by system. The Security Council is either killed or signs an unconditional surrender at gunpoint. This would practically require direct divine intervention on the side of the UEF, but this being BP that’s not exactly outside the realm of possibility.
Result: the GTVA is conquered. The UEF may or may not actually disband the military/put the Admiralty in reeducation camps where they’re forced to learn Linux/turn the GTVA’s daughters into bloodthirsty pot-smoking schizophrenic lesbians/whatever the hell else the Security Council is afraid of, but in any case its curtains for the GTVA.
Scenario 2: Limited UEF victory. The UEF destroys or routes GTVA forces in Sol and reclaims their greatest advantage in this war: the ability to concentrate their defenses at a single subspace node. The GTVA gives up.
Result: The defecation hits the ventilation back home. The population accuses the Security Council of not taking the war seriously given the relatively small fraction of GTVA forces committed to Sol. Whether the accusation if fair or not, it’s enough to lead to rebellion. If the rebel forces are victorious, Possibly see a slight modification of Scenario 5. If the GTVA is victorious, well good for them, but they’ve taken severe losses and Sol is still blockaded (and probably has a lot more destroyers by the time the GTVA has cleaned up its mess at home). Depending on what sort of mood the UEF is in at the time, Scenario 1 becomes a possibility again.
Scenario 3: Truce. The UEF and GTVA fight to a draw.
Result: Pretty much the same as in Scenario 2, although if the rebels win then they’re probably in a better position to attack Sol.
Scenario 4: Quagmire. The war stagnates, and the GTVA forces in Sol are in no danger of defeat but fail to achieve victory.
Result: Again, questions are raised about how seriously the GTVA takes this war, and somebody stages a coup on the platform of committing more forces.
Scenario 5: Pyrrhic GTVA victory. The UEF destroys or routes GTVA forces in Sol and reclaims their greatest advantage in this war: the ability to concentrate their defenses at a single subspace node. The GTVA, faced with certain rebellion should they walk away from the war, commits everything.
Result: Easily the stupidest thing the GTVA could do. The entire GTVA fleet pours through the jumpgate in single file, straight into the waiting guns of four destroyers and numerous frigates. They eventually prevail given their vast numeric advantage, but the losses are appalling. Unless the GTVA is really lucky, somebody is probably going to use this as an excuse to stage a rebellion, on top of that. And that’s assuming the Shivans don’t show up before the GTVA can replenish its strength (a matter of years, if not decades).
Scenario 5: GTVA victory by UEF surrender. Pretty straightforward. The war keeps going the way it has been, and the Elders surrender.
Result: The GTVA now has to deal with exactly the same problems as it would have had it left Sol alone. If people wanted to migrate back to Earth before, they still will now. Ubuntu is still present and widely practiced on Earth, even if it no longer forms the basis of government, and the danger of its spreading remains. This danger is made all the more real because the harder the GTVA tries to repress Ubuntu, the more they will justify its ideology. On top of that, at least some elements of the Second and Third are likely to ignore the order to surrender. If they take either the Bretonnia or Solace back from the Elders in the process of going rogue, they could wreak havoc in the Sol system for years.
Scenario 6: GTVA victory by UEF surrender, followed by GTVA restrictions on migration back to Sol.
Result: Crazy Dave already covered this. Can you say ‘rebellion’? Yeah, I thought so. Plus the same problems with remaining elements of the Second and Third as listed in Scenario 6.
Scenario 7: GTVA victory by UEF surrender, followed by the eradication of Ubuntu, after which immigration is permitted. The GTVA is going to have to turn the entire system into a reeducation camp, and a full-blown police state replete with death squads is equally necessary.
Result: And, if it’s possible at all, it will take a LONG time. Long enough that the GTVA’s nascent population of proto-rebels will get impatient and go for the throat. On the plus side, GTVA forces would at least get some cool new black uniforms out of it.
Scenario 8: GTVA victory by total war. The UEF fights to the last man, and the GTVA incinerates every inhabited surface in the Sol system.
Result: Well, nobody wants to move back to Sol anymore, but they’re probably kind of pissed at the GTVA for expending massive resources to go back to Earth, only to go Vasuda Prime on it. This is not going to help stability. Not to mention the fact that if the GTVA mounts attacks this direct, they’re probably going to lose at least a destroyer or two before the UEF fleet is destroyed.
And all of these ignore the possibility that Steele may have already started TVW2.
Anybody have a scenario in which the GTVA is not completely and utterly screwed? Or am I completely mis-thinking one or more of these? Because the best option for the GTVA at this point seems to be to fly around their wing of Maras in Sol a bit, scream bloody murder about a third Shivan incursion, pull the fleet out, M-bomb the node, and hope nobody calls them on it.
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One thing I'm going to point out.
The entire GTVA fleet pours through the jumpgate in single file, straight into the waiting guns of four destroyers and numerous frigates.
The UEF has only three.
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Scenario 1: Total UEF victory. The UEF routes GTVA forces in Sol, pushes through the node to Delta Serpentis, and proceeds to sweep through the GTVA system by system. The Security Council is either killed or signs an unconditional surrender at gunpoint. This would practically require direct divine intervention on the side of the UEF, but this being BP that’s not exactly outside the realm of possibility.
Technically unfeasible, not merely because the GTVA vastly outnumbers the UEF and is l33t at blockading jump nodes, but simply because the UEF ships are designed for situations where supplies are only an intrasystem jump away. Their ships simply can't face the logistic imperatives of operating out of Sol, contrary to GTVA ships. They wouldn't be able to mount any kind of credible offensive toward the GTVA core systems.
For the rest, there isn't anything screaming "definitely not possible in the BP universe". Scenarios sound feasible if more or less unlikely.
Anybody have a scenario in which the GTVA is not completely and utterly screwed? Or am I completely mis-thinking one or more of these? Because the best option for the GTVA at this point seems to be to fly around their wing of Maras in Sol a bit, scream bloody murder about a third Shivan incursion, pull the fleet out, M-bomb the node, and hope nobody calls them on it.
Simple. GTVA wins the war, and has a firm enough control on the GTVA-side population to reduce the risks and/or extent of potential rebellions, through propaganda and quiet assassinations (remember the BP tech description of the Pegasus ?)
EDIT: Also, for reasons discussed in other topics, the UEF would probably not manage to hold a solid node blockade if they ever manage to drive the GTVA back and retake the node. GTVA sends a meson bomb to clear the immediate vicinity of the node, then fighters that jump out immediately further in system and then back to bomb/treb/maxim the hell out of Narayanas that would like to play snipers. Then sends the fleet.
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No matter how the war ends (and I have a hard time believing the GTVA or UEF would resort to scorched Earth tactics), one population will have to integrate the other in some way. Given that the civilian population is basically the same size for both polities (~9 Billion, give or take), the victor will be changed into something that is fundamentally different. Just as there is no way Ubuntu policies would work to govern an area as vast as the terran part of the GTVA unaltered, there is no practical way for the GTVA to eradicate Ubuntu completely.
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One thing I'm going to point out.
The entire GTVA fleet pours through the jumpgate in single file, straight into the waiting guns of four destroyers and numerous frigates.
The UEF has only three.
According to the wiki, the Temeraire defected shortly after AoA. That may be bad info, but whether it’s three or four, defending a system with only one node leading in is a VERY strong position. Although, in response to MattTheGeek, I had forgotten about meson bombs.
Still, taking into account the GTVA’s demonstrated skill in precision microjumping, if sending meson bombs through subspace were that easy, the UEF would have zero destroyers. :p
Technically unfeasible, not merely because the GTVA vastly outnumbers the UEF and is l33t at blockading jump nodes, but simply because the UEF ships are designed for situations where supplies are only an intrasystem jump away. Their ships simply can't face the logistic imperatives of operating out of Sol, contrary to GTVA ships. They wouldn't be able to mount any kind of credible offensive toward the GTVA core systems.
I agree completely, hence the disclaimer about divine intervention. In fact, it’s about as likely a GTVA battlegroup trying to make an intersystem jump and instead going on a two-week romp through a Shivan-infested parallel universe, during which one of their pilots discovers a race made of energy and binds his consciousness with a ship. :p
Simple. GTVA wins the war, and has a firm enough control on the GTVA-side population to reduce the risks and/or extent of potential rebellions, through propaganda and quiet assassinations (remember the BP tech description of the Pegasus ?)
I’ll admit there’s a chance, but the GTVA’s reasons for war are based on the premise of an extremely fractious population that is getting tired of listening to their government already. Propaganda and assassinations are probably not going to keep that population under control.
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One thing that bothers me about this whole thing is the assumption that in the event of total GTVA victory by way of dissolution of the Ubuntu party, that it would resemble in ANY way a police state. I mean really, we have no indication at all that such would be the case.
More likely, production around Sol is ramped up and geared toward military production to recoup losses suffered on both sides, and the average citizen of Sol votes for General Assembly members instead of whatever they call the elected officials now. The Ubuntu party is dismantled, and the Elders are removed from power in a best-case peaceful worst-case forced by only minimal violent action fashion.
Jupiter suffers less shock from reintegration, 1) because it's been under GTVA control much longer, and 2) the elements that are most likely to rebel are also most likely to agree with the GTVA's assessment of the inevitable Shivan return.
Mars and Earth suffer much more, both due to size of population and relative peacefulness of the surrounding space compared to Jupiter and the outer planets. However, best-case, there is no rebellion, mostly because of the perceived attitude that led the GTVA into their first blunder around Neptune: they're mostly peaceful. Worst-case, you get a rebellion of much smaller intensity than the war that has been raging for a couple years at that point. Police state and death squads? Sorry, what? Hell, if that's absolutely necessary, use what's left of the Fedayeen. That's what they do anyway.
Back in the rest of the GTVA, massive wave of emigration. It's pretty much unavoidable. However, the GTVA can put restrictions on that, much the same way only so many people can immigrate to America every year (which, granted, the way it's done is not the best solution for America now), it's eminently more enforceable in a bottleneck situation like with the Sol jump gate. Best-case here, you've got a smallish, regulated immigration flow both to and from Sol (people have been cut off for 50+ years. There's no way NONE of them don't want to leave), a huge and healthy boost to the ailing GTVA economy, and the shipyards to recoup your losses in a few years, tops, assuming the integration of the UEF fleet into the GTVA fleet goes smoothly (i.e., they go quietly and integrate well). Worst-case, you have a immigrant bottleneck at the node, outer-colonies may rebel, but they'll be fairly minor, and with any sort of Vasudan help, they'll be put down quickly and decisively. UEF Fleet does not integrate peacefully, and fight a stiff rebellion for several years that goes nowhere and, while painful, ultimately changes nothing. With the loss of supporting elements like the docks and shipyards the UEF ships absolutely need regular access to in order to function, any rebellion falls apart quickly. Even a logistics ship will only last them so long, assuming nothing untoward happens to it in the first place.
In summary:
Best-case: UEF surrenders; Ubuntu party dissolved; healthy, regulated migration to and from Sol; massive boost to GTVA economy from shipyards and trade with Sol; resistance from hard-line UEF fleet elements is swiftly crushed in the absense of support facilities; advancement of technologies in a parallel direction to beam technology, allows GTVA to supplement node blockades with effective artillery and direct-fire support.
Worst-case: UEF surrenders; Ubuntu party influence remains, even if party itself is dissolved; migration leads to bottlenecks at Sol node (let's face it, leaving it unregulated would be a colossally retarded move), civil unrest leads to several minor rebellions; major rebellions still unlikely, and easily put down with support from Vasudan fleets; hard-line UEF fleet elements capture one or more logistics ships before hiding. They are still destroyed, but after a much longer and painful resistance.
EDIT: Temeraire defects after AoA? I think not. All crews from the ships of the 14th Battlegroup that returned through the portal (which the Temeraire did) were debriefed, then removed to positions far, far away from Sol. The only outright defections from the 14th were the Duke, Labouchere, and Solace.
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The police state comment wasn't about removing the Ubuntu party from power; it was about what would be necessary if the GTVA wanted to eradicate the Ubuntu philosophy completely to prevent a resurgence/spreading. I'm not of the opinion that that scenario is even remotely likely, I was just using it to comment that it would be nigh-impossible to kill Ubuntu as a philosophy. It's incredibly impractical on one hand, and the GTVA lacks the stomach for it on the other.
Excellent point about Jupiter.
As for controlled immigration after conquering Sol...well, one of the assumptions that informed the GTVA's decision to go to war is that its people were chomping at the bit to get back to Earth, i.e. rebellion was inevitable in the event of restricted migration with the UEF and GTVA as separate entities. If quotas are put in place, the agitators need only create the impression that the GTVA is playing favorites in how migration slots are assigned. In fact, resentment would be easier to keep in check if the GTVA could pin the blame on the UEF. Which, if there is no UEF, it can't.
As for the Temeraire, methinks the Journey's End article is in need of some [citation needed] tags.
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They could have had lied to the public and declared the Sol jump node "impossible" to repair, but "without giving up" (fill in all the possible political lies one can come up with).
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Regulated != Restricted. Current U.S. immigration policy allows for a number of immigrants from each foreign country equal to a percentage of the foreign population living in the U.S. at the time of the last census.
In this case, I think the regulated flow of migration would be something like that. A number of migrants from worlds in the GTVA, and as many people that want to leave Sol as they want. Not a pitifully small number that would enrage everybody, but not veritable floods of people. Worth remembering is that illegal immigration is much less of an issue in space, with only one entrance to Sol than it is in the modern-day U.S.
With that in mind, and a sensible immigration policy, the GTVA can strike a happy balance between immigration and rebellions; enough to discourage large-scale revolts, but not enough to pull the rug out of colonies' economies. The GTVA can always deal with a single system, especially if the Vasudans are helping.
The main causes of the NTF Rebellion are gone, namely 1) Bosch, that magnificent bastard, and 2) revocation of a Vasudan alliance in favor of a return to Earth. The two are no longer perceived as mutually exclusive, and a charismatic, disgruntled fleet admiral will have a much harder time rallying the masses on a message of racist seperatism, especially now that the Vasudans have taken a stance of supporting the Terran portion of the GTVA, at least after the Second Shivan Incursion.
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I have a hard time believing the GTVA or UEF would resort to scorched Earth tactics
But sir, they already have.
The UEF has blown up their own infrastructure to deny it to the GTVA (TBI).
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There are other options as well. The economic bliss of Sol could translate to a kind of a Marshall plan to the outer colonies, something that would increase massively the hope of the peoples in these places, also preventing them to completely abandon the outposts and gain confidence in humanity.
Perhaps people are too pessimistic here. We could be in the brink of a second joint terran and vasudan "golden age" with an economic boom that was fueled by the exchange of different technologies that were developed in two very separated paths of research.
All the political problems that people see in either GTVA's victory or UEF's, or the stalemate is more easily solved by the combination of simple propaganda and the usual human trait of forgetting what happened last week, so inconsistencies are easily forgiven ;).
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It might be a regulation from the perspective of the GTVA government; to opponents of that government, it would appear a restriction.
The point I'm trying to make here is that regulated migration to and from Sol would have been just possible with Sol still under UEF jurisdiction. The GTVA took one look at Sol and decided that if they tried to keep immigration contained to non-damaging levels, they'd have a rebellion on their hands that would make the NTF look like a gaggle of tea partiers holding signs about a birth certificate. Hence, the war. With the war over, assuming the GTVA wins (a safe assumption, unless Byrne, Bei, Bei, and friends have something absolutely brilliant up their sleeves), the desire to immigrate is going to be just as strong as it was before and the problem will remain unsolved. The only difference is that the GTVA will have to say to those not approved for immigration "sorry, we're keeping you out" rather than "those big mean UEF people are keeping you out". The former seems more likely to foment rebellion than the latter.
You could, of course, argue that it's absurd to think that either would foment rebellion, and many have, but the GTVA security council apparently has good reason to think rebellion's a real threat. Either that or they're complete idiots, which they've given pretty ample evidence for in FS2. :p
As for immigration from Sol out to the GTVA worlds, the indiscriminate orbital nuking of Luna probably quenched a lot of UEF citizens' enthusiasm to go out and mingle with the GTVA. :D
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Aha, but the GTVA still had to contend with the fundamentally imcompatible Ubuntu movement. Important to realize that while immigration would be regulated/restricted, information still flows freely. Unless the GTVA is prepared to completely stop all traffic from Sol, which is a bad idea both economically and politically. By all the simulations the GTVA ran before the decision to send the 14th through (the only evidence we have on the matter), it was impossible for the GTVA to not invade Sol from their point of view. In a damned-if-we-do, more-damned-if-we-don't scenario, the only appreciable variable becomes the outcome of the invasion.
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I don't see that ideological problem as "problematic". Look at laboratory Earth. Since WW2, America had to face the problem of communism which was deemed too dangerous and appealling for the masses. How did they solve it? Not by war. By propaganda and persecution. McCarthyism, etc. "Commies" eat babies, don't you know?
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I have a hard time believing the GTVA or UEF would resort to scorched Earth tactics
But sir, they already have.
The UEF has blown up their own infrastructure to deny it to the GTVA (TBI).
But there's a difference between blowing up an easily-replacable space station, and carpet-bombing population centers.
I don't see that ideological problem as "problematic". Look at laboratory Earth. Since WW2, America had to face the problem of communism which was deemed too dangerous and appealling for the masses. How did they solve it? Not by war. By propaganda and persecution. McCarthyism, etc. "Commies" eat babies, don't you know?
Except the situation is a tiny bit different.
Unlike Communism, Ubuntu works. Ubuntu citizens are more healthy, happier, and more prosperous than GTVA citizens. In terms of cold, hard, economic facts, Ubuntu ensures a higher standard of living than the GTVA. You cannot propaganda that away, especially if you have no real way of controlling the population (remember, the population of Sol is equal to the population of the entire terran half of the GTVA). Propaganda simply doesn't work when the thing you're using propaganda agianst has been proven to work for decades.
In addition, the GTVA wants Sol for its economic strength. That strength comes from the policies set by the Ubuntu Council of Elders. In other words, you can't get the economy without at least acknowledging the ideology that makes it work so well.
I stand by my initial point. Whoever wins this conflict will have to adopt so many characteristics of the other side that what comes out in the end will be a completely different entity.
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There seems to be some big assumptions here, that somehow the population of the GTVA is a powder keg, ready to rebel at the drop of a hat. How many policies have you disagreed with from your own governments? Consider the Iraq war, for example - millions of people in the US, UK and Australia were against it. Zero rebellions.
Unless there's something in the BP fluff that mentions something about the GTVA being primed to rebel (which is pretty stupid anyway, given the constant Shivan threat hanging over their heads), then I don't think it's reasonable to just jump to rebellion, except maybe at the ballot box.
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Hm...Sol is something like the promised land, I get that...
but this reminds me of east and west Germany...
UEF people will move out, no matter who wins, to secure their fortunes while those living in GTVA systems just want to see earth...
Another point is the thing, that the Ubuntu philosophie undermines the GTVA...they held of the GTVA for around 18 month...
And even the council of elder must admit, that the shivans will return one day...
My scenario?
There must be a diplomatic solution, like Ubuntu being something like a...civil system and the GTVA like some sort of...well...Nato.
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The GTVA can win by making lots and lots of meson bombs, then jumping an AWACS out of player reach i.e. 45k, and directing precise meson bomb jumps (it sounds weird when you read it) into the enemy space station, or ship. Losing an AWACS or two is nothing for the GTVA.
Well...the whole idea of Ubuntu can't and must not affect current GTVA policies/stuff/politics. The Shivans. Everything because of the enigmatic race hellbent on the destruction of the Terrans and Vasudans...Shivans. I wonder what the government of the Shivan-
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The GTVA can win by making lots and lots of meson bombs, then jumping an AWACS out of player reach i.e. 45k, and directing precise meson bomb jumps (it sounds weird when you read it) into the enemy space station, or ship. Losing an AWACS or two is nothing for the GTVA.
Except that Meson Bombs tend to take a decent amount of time to work themselves up to detonation. Used in a situation where a ship had just jumped in? Sure, might possibly work, assuming the target didn't disable, destroy, or contain it before it could be armed and detonated. But it would only work once. And against an intelligent enemy, it would never work offensively.
More in-line with the thread topic, any sort of reintegration of Sol is going to induce radical changes in Humanity and the GTVA at large. But the payoff is a better shot at survival, and by turning this into a military victory, maybe, just maybe, the GTVA can remain the dominant political force of Humanity at the end of the day.
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But there's a difference between blowing up an easily-replacable space station, and carpet-bombing population centers.
The GTVA did exactly that to Luna.
Unlike Communism, Ubuntu works. Ubuntu citizens are more healthy, happier, and more prosperous than GTVA citizens. In terms of cold, hard, economic facts, Ubuntu ensures a higher standard of living than the GTVA. You cannot propaganda that away, especially if you have no real way of controlling the population (remember, the population of Sol is equal to the population of the entire terran half of the GTVA). Propaganda simply doesn't work when the thing you're using propaganda agianst has been proven to work for decades.
Not necessarily true. The United States of America has objectively a lower life expectancy then most Western European democracies, while at the same time having astronomically higher per-capita healthcare costs. It’s a fact. It’s indisputable. And yet clever propaganda on the part of those with a vested interest in maintaining the current system turned popular opinion against the American people’s own self-interest and undermined last year’s reform efforts. The result was an unambitious bill that lacked the defining characteristics of the objectively superior European healthcare systems.
I probably just doomed the thread to derailment with that, but what the hell.
However, it's true that even the best propaganda won't fool everybody. The question is whether it fools enough people.
I stand by my initial point. Whoever wins this conflict will have to adopt so many characteristics of the other side that what comes out in the end will be a completely different entity.
If the GTVA wins militarily, there’s a decent chance that will happen, and it’s probably the optimal outcome. That said, a large part of the GTVA’s motivation for war was to prevent the spread of Ubuntu, and having conquered Sol they’re probably not going to adopt key elements of Ubuntu without a fight (whether successful or not). The UEF has, as far as I can tell, neither the means nor the desire to take control of GTVA space; their victory condition is kicking the GTVA out of Sol and locking down the node, so they needn’t worry about adapting the GTVA’s philosophies in order to effectively govern new territory. Still, the increase in militarism required to kick the GTVA out would likely leave its marks.
There seems to be some big assumptions here, that somehow the population of the GTVA is a powder keg, ready to rebel at the drop of a hat. How many policies have you disagreed with from your own governments? Consider the Iraq war, for example - millions of people in the US, UK and Australia were against it. Zero rebellions.
Unless there's something in the BP fluff that mentions something about the GTVA being primed to rebel (which is pretty stupid anyway, given the constant Shivan threat hanging over their heads), then I don't think it's reasonable to just jump to rebellion, except maybe at the ballot box.
As far as the trigger-happiness of the GTVA population when it comes to rebellion is concerned, I’m going off what General Battuta said in the post I quoted up top (Battuta: if I’m twisting your words or taking them out of context, please correct me). If they’re willing to rebel over the GTVA not building the gate or not letting them move to the UEF, they’re willing to rebel over a lot of things.
On the matter of the UK, USA, and Australia’s situation vs. that of the GTVA? I think almost all Brits, Americans, and Australians, whether they agree with the war or not, would agree in a heartbeat that they would rather be living in the UK, the USA, or Australia than in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Not necessarily true in the case of the GTVA vs. the UEF. As you said, zero rebellions in the case of those three modern countries. The GTVA has experienced the defection of thousands of personnel, three capital ships, at least one fighter wing, and one of its most decorated flag officers. On top of that, the GTVA's confidence in the loyalty of the officers and crew of one of its most modern and powerful battlegroups is shaken enough that the Security Council elected to keep them as far from the war as possible.
And we’re not really talking about a rebellion in support of the UEF, either. A closer real-world analogy would be the Russian Empire during the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. The Russo-Japanese War was started at least in part as a means of unifying Russia behind a common cause, and backfired terribly when the Russians got their rears handed to them and made the Tsar and his officers look like idiots. A few years later, it wasn’t any measure of sympathy for Russia’s European enemies, but frustration at the government’s mishandling of World War I, that was the last straw in spurring the people to revolution.
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But there's a difference between blowing up an easily-replacable space station, and carpet-bombing population centers.
The GTVA did exactly that to Luna.
No, that would be civilian targets getting caught in the crossfire when important military targets are located within population centers. Much like Hiroshima, which was a military supply depot with a garrison of several thousand troops when it was bombed.
Unlike Communism, Ubuntu works. Ubuntu citizens are more healthy, happier, and more prosperous than GTVA citizens. In terms of cold, hard, economic facts, Ubuntu ensures a higher standard of living than the GTVA. You cannot propaganda that away, especially if you have no real way of controlling the population (remember, the population of Sol is equal to the population of the entire terran half of the GTVA). Propaganda simply doesn't work when the thing you're using propaganda agianst has been proven to work for decades.
Not necessarily true. The United States of America has objectively a lower life expectancy then most Western European democracies, while at the same time having astronomically higher per-capita healthcare costs. It’s a fact. It’s indisputable. And yet clever propaganda on the part of those with a vested interest in maintaining the current system turned popular opinion against the American people’s own self-interest and undermined last year’s reform efforts. The result was an unambitious bill that lacked the defining characteristics of the objectively superior European healthcare systems.
I probably just doomed the thread to derailment with that, but what the hell.
However, it's true that even the best propaganda won't fool everybody. The question is whether it fools enough people.
Not touching this with a 20 foot pole, but I will say that, due to the complete lack of people coming through the node that can spread any news of how well Ubuntu works, it'd be much easier to produce propaganda saying the UEF is a pathetic bunch of baby-eaters and that the rest of the population is better off where they are. I realize earlier that I said there's no way to stop the information from getting through, but that's assuming the GTVA lets people leave, which they don't necessarily have to do.
I stand by my initial point. Whoever wins this conflict will have to adopt so many characteristics of the other side that what comes out in the end will be a completely different entity.
If the GTVA wins militarily, there’s a decent chance that will happen, and it’s probably the optimal outcome. That said, a large part of the GTVA’s motivation for war was to prevent the spread of Ubuntu, and having conquered Sol they’re probably not going to adopt key elements of Ubuntu without a fight (whether successful or not). The UEF has, as far as I can tell, neither the means nor the desire to take control of GTVA space; their victory condition is kicking the GTVA out of Sol and locking down the node, so they needn’t worry about adapting the GTVA’s philosophies in order to effectively govern new territory. Still, the increase in militarism required to kick the GTVA out would likely leave its marks.
I think the better name for this thread would be "Is there any way for the UEF to win?". Militarizing to throw the GTVA out of the system is counter to (if not real) perceived Ubuntu philosphy, not to mention next to impossible militarily. Even if they push the GTVA out of the system, it's also next to impossible to keep them out. Not fighting results in GTVA domination of the Sol system. Keeping the war at its present intensity is not an option due to continuing loss of life, erosion of public support on the GTVA side, and erosion of war materiel on the UEF side.
There seems to be some big assumptions here, that somehow the population of the GTVA is a powder keg, ready to rebel at the drop of a hat. How many policies have you disagreed with from your own governments? Consider the Iraq war, for example - millions of people in the US, UK and Australia were against it. Zero rebellions.
Unless there's something in the BP fluff that mentions something about the GTVA being primed to rebel (which is pretty stupid anyway, given the constant Shivan threat hanging over their heads), then I don't think it's reasonable to just jump to rebellion, except maybe at the ballot box.
As far as the trigger-happiness of the GTVA population when it comes to rebellion is concerned, I’m going off what General Battuta said in the post I quoted up top (Battuta: if I’m twisting your words or taking them out of context, please correct me). If they’re willing to rebel over the GTVA not building the gate or not letting them move to the UEF, they’re willing to rebel over a lot of things.
On the matter of the UK, USA, and Australia’s situation vs. that of the GTVA? I think almost all Brits, Americans, and Australians, whether they agree with the war or not, would agree in a heartbeat that they would rather be living in the UK, the USA, or Australia than in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Not necessarily true in the case of the GTVA vs. the UEF. As you said, zero rebellions in the case of those three modern countries. The GTVA has experienced the defection of thousands of personnel, three capital ships, at least one fighter wing, and one of its most decorated flag officers. On top of that, the GTVA's confidence in the loyalty of the officers and crew of one of its most modern and powerful battlegroups is shaken enough that the Security Council elected to keep them as far from the war as possible.
And we’re not really talking about a rebellion in support of the UEF, either. A closer real-world analogy would be the Russian Empire during the Russo-Japanese War and World War I. The Russo-Japanese War was started at least in part as a means of unifying Russia behind a common cause, and backfired terribly when the Russians got their rears handed to them and made the Tsar and his officers look like idiots. A few years later, it wasn’t any measure of sympathy for Russia’s European enemies, but frustration at the government’s mishandling of World War I, that was the last straw in spurring the people to revolution.
Staying away from current politics again, while GB may be a respected member of the community, and a member of the BP team, he is not the Word of God. If the GTVA population is so ready to rebel, then some issue or other, even one unrelated to the war, can spark it off, and it becomes a non-issue to the discussion. If this situation with the portal and only the situation with the portal is what may spark a rebellion, it speaks to more of an issue with perceived effectiveness of government than it does to a general readiness to rebel. With that in mind, a victory in Sol, following which the GTVA does not allow full immigration, may still avoid a rebellion, if only because the government is now Getting Stuff Done. Of course, the war must end relatively quickly for that to be of any help at all, or the population may rebel in protest.
Personally, I think the population of the GTVA isn't so ripe for revolt. Under certain extenuating circumstances, such as failure of the Sol campaign, perhaps. Following a victory, I highly doubt it.
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Fair enough, the nuking of Luna wasn't for the lulz. But it does signal a pronounced shift away from the GTVA's theorized goal of taking Sol intact to grab its economic power, and heralds a growing sense of urgency that the GTVA needs to win at any cost before they manage to really embarrass themselves. This war was supposed to last a matter of days, remember.
Not touching this with a 20 foot pole, but I will say that, due to the complete lack of people coming through the node that can spread any news of how well Ubuntu works, it'd be much easier to produce propaganda saying the UEF is a pathetic bunch of baby-eaters and that the rest of the population is better off where they are. I realize earlier that I said there's no way to stop the information from getting through, but that's assuming the GTVA lets people leave, which they don't necessarily have to do.
You're a much wiser man than I, then. :p And agreed.
I think the better name for this thread would be "Is there any way for the UEF to win?". Militarizing to throw the GTVA out of the system is counter to (if not real) perceived Ubuntu philosphy, not to mention next to impossible militarily. Even if they push the GTVA out of the system, it's also next to impossible to keep them out. Not fighting results in GTVA domination of the Sol system. Keeping the war at its present intensity is not an option due to continuing loss of life, erosion of public support on the GTVA side, and erosion of war materiel on the UEF side.
Oh, I'm taking it pretty much for granted that the UEF is well and truly screwed. On top of what you said, once the dust settles, even if they somehow scrape out a victory (which is practically a military impossibility based on what we know now), I'd wager that a lot of people are going to be seriously unhappy with how the Elders handled things.
Of course, if Byrne pulls out something brilliant, with the backing of the Elders, this problem goes away.
Staying away from current politics again, while GB may be a respected member of the community, and a member of the BP team, he is not the Word of God. If the GTVA population is so ready to rebel, then some issue or other, even one unrelated to the war, can spark it off, and it becomes a non-issue to the discussion. If this situation with the portal and only the situation with the portal is what may spark a rebellion, it speaks to more of an issue with perceived effectiveness of government than it does to a general readiness to rebel. With that in mind, a victory in Sol, following which the GTVA does not allow full immigration, may still avoid a rebellion, if only because the government is now Getting Stuff Done. Of course, the war must end relatively quickly for that to be of any help at all, or the population may rebel in protest.
Personally, I think the population of the GTVA isn't so ripe for revolt. Under certain extenuating circumstances, such as failure of the Sol campaign, perhaps. Following a victory, I highly doubt it.
Okay, I'll buy that. I also find such an extreme readiness to rebel rather implausible, to tell the truth, but if we remove it then we've suddenly brought back into the picture a number of very valid alternatives to war. Making the GTVA fools, villains, or both.
The fact that it's taken the GTVA as long as it already has to make headway against a vastly inferior foe, on top of the flurry of defections from the 14th, is probably making them look pretty weak already. The Battle of Saturn was probably something of a propaganda victory, but even with the destruction of a rather infamous UEF unit, the Carthage is badly damaged and many of her escorts were destroyed. It feels like a defeat from the perspective of the player because we lose a lot of characters we've come to know and like, but seen from the other side the Imperieuse arrives to bail Lopez's ass out of the fire with about thirty seconds to spare, and not before several thousand GTVA officers and crew have died. In an asymmetric war-of-choice like this one, any military victory short of an overwhelming one can look bad.
Yeah, I was too pessimistic in my earlier assessment of the GTVA's chances (i.e. that they're completely screwed). But I do maintain they've still got pretty much all the problems they had before they started the war (whether those problems are large or not), plus the not-so-minor problem of a war that has gotten a lot bloodier than they counted on.
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My opinion: The GTVA is able to win the war, but not the outcomes.
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Staying away from current politics again, while GB may be a respected member of the community, and a member of the BP team, he is not the Word of God. If the GTVA population is so ready to rebel, then some issue or other, even one unrelated to the war, can spark it off, and it becomes a non-issue to the discussion. If this situation with the portal and only the situation with the portal is what may spark a rebellion, it speaks to more of an issue with perceived effectiveness of government than it does to a general readiness to rebel. With that in mind, a victory in Sol, following which the GTVA does not allow full immigration, may still avoid a rebellion, if only because the government is now Getting Stuff Done. Of course, the war must end relatively quickly for that to be of any help at all, or the population may rebel in protest.
Personally, I think the population of the GTVA isn't so ripe for revolt. Under certain extenuating circumstances, such as failure of the Sol campaign, perhaps. Following a victory, I highly doubt it.
Okay, I'll buy that. I also find such an extreme readiness to rebel rather implausible, to tell the truth, but if we remove it then we've suddenly brought back into the picture a number of very valid alternatives to war. Making the GTVA fools, villains, or both.
The fact that it's taken the GTVA as long as it already has to make headway against a vastly inferior foe, on top of the flurry of defections from the 14th, is probably making them look pretty weak already. The Battle of Saturn was probably something of a propaganda victory, but even with the destruction of a rather infamous UEF unit, the Carthage is badly damaged and many of her escorts were destroyed. It feels like a defeat from the perspective of the player because we lose a lot of characters we've come to know and like, but seen from the other side the Imperieuse arrives to bail Lopez's ass out of the fire with about thirty seconds to spare, and not before several thousand GTVA officers and crew have died. In an asymmetric war-of-choice like this one, any military victory short of an overwhelming one can look bad.
Yeah, I was too pessimistic in my earlier assessment of the GTVA's chances (i.e. that they're completely screwed). But I do maintain they've still got pretty much all the problems they had before they started the war (whether those problems are large or not), plus the not-so-minor problem of a war that has gotten a lot bloodier than they counted on.
To be objective, The GTVA made slow headway in the early stages of the war (meaning, everything up to the beginning of WiH) because 1) the UEF had a lot of infrastructure that makes suprise attacks an impossibility, 2) that infrastructure had to be removed from the equation somehow, 3) there were more than a few militia units not affilitated with a specific fleet that had to be taken care of, and finally 4) they really did underestimate both UEF resolve and willingness to fight.
Much of the buildup to WiH consists of Admiral Severanti using numerical superiority, ease of restock/resupply due to the short distance to the gate, and as much time as he damned well pleased to remove those infrastructure assets and militia units from the equation, and also to put pressure on Jupiter and 3rd Fleet by hitting convoys.
Numerous discussions on both the IRC channel and the board here have mostly come to the consensus (along with help from the BP members :P ) that, while the GTVA could have ended the war quickly, it would have been horrific. Steele's opportunities to hurt the UEF so quickly at so little cost have only come around because of Severanti's low-intensity war-fighting for the 18 months leading up to Artemis Station. That is not to say that the 3rd Fleet repelled repeated heavy assaults from the best the GTVA had to offer for months on end (but it doesn't make them any less awesome anyway).
I like these threads.
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And what if the shivans appear and both sides unite just like terrans and vasudans did in 2335 :@ Seriously people, you are are all pessimists
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The Shivans will straight away charge to Sol so it can blow up Earth, because their grudge for Sol wasn't fulfilled in 2335!
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Not necessarily true. The United States of America has objectively a lower life expectancy then most Western European democracies, while at the same time having astronomically higher per-capita healthcare costs. It’s a fact. It’s indisputable. And yet clever propaganda on the part of those with a vested interest in maintaining the current system turned popular opinion against the American people’s own self-interest and undermined last year’s reform efforts. The result was an unambitious bill that lacked the defining characteristics of the objectively superior European healthcare systems.
I probably just doomed the thread to derailment with that, but what the hell.
However, it's true that even the best propaganda won't fool everybody. The question is whether it fools enough people.
I think you may have missed something here. The GTVA/UEF war would analogous to the US trying to conquer Europe, and then trying to impose US policies and politics on Europe. Now, granted, the GTVA does have an easier time controlling the information flow (since everything is bottlenecked by the node), but they cannot declare Earth off-limits to their civilians. People will want to visit Earth, and while there, will talk to Ubuntu citizens. Information will flow out of the Sol system, and there's nothing the GTVA can do to stop it, not without risking further destabilization of an already unstable domestic situation.
The fact that it's taken the GTVA as long as it already has to make headway against a vastly inferior foe, on top of the flurry of defections from the 14th, is probably making them look pretty weak already. The Battle of Saturn was probably something of a propaganda victory, but even with the destruction of a rather infamous UEF unit, the Carthage is badly damaged and many of her escorts were destroyed. It feels like a defeat from the perspective of the player because we lose a lot of characters we've come to know and like, but seen from the other side the Imperieuse arrives to bail Lopez's ass out of the fire with about thirty seconds to spare, and not before several thousand GTVA officers and crew have died. In an asymmetric war-of-choice like this one, any military victory short of an overwhelming one can look bad.
Why does this always come up.....
The UEF is anything BUT a "vastly inferior foe". The UEF fleet is, in terms of firepower, roughly equivalent to 4 or 5 GTVA battlegroups. Prior to Steele's arrival and the battle of Artemis Station, the GTVA was fighting against an enemy that was always one step ahead due to the subspace sensor net enveloping Sol, thus negating one of the biggest factors in FS warfare. Yes, the UEF navy was hampered by Byrne's indecision and by not having as deep a personnel pool as the GTVA, but still, it is definitely not a foe to be underestimated.
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I think he means that the GTVA is telling its civilians that the UEF is inferior as opposed to them actually being inferior. The Tev higher-ups wouldn't willingly commit political suicide by saying that they're fighting an equally-good-if-not-better adversary and that the war may last much longer than anticipated.
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And now, after the failed Delenda Est? I wonder how long the 2. and the pitiful rest of the 3. fleet can stand against a bloodhound like Steele. And the morale isn't high ground, even now Byrne holds his fleet back and they have lost one of their best, if not the best, task force. Four frigates, two cruisers, one AWACS and all those fighters as casualities, what a deep strike.
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And now, the Fedayeen enter the fray, we will see how this turns out.
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There seems to be some big assumptions here, that somehow the population of the GTVA is a powder keg, ready to rebel at the drop of a hat. How many policies have you disagreed with from your own governments? Consider the Iraq war, for example - millions of people in the US, UK and Australia were against it. Zero rebellions.
Unless there's something in the BP fluff that mentions something about the GTVA being primed to rebel (which is pretty stupid anyway, given the constant Shivan threat hanging over their heads), then I don't think it's reasonable to just jump to rebellion, except maybe at the ballot box.
Well, lets be honest. The GTVA has been in power for like, what, 40 years ? It's pretty much a military dictature, with a few relents of democracy for caring about civilian matters. They have based their politics on building a huge fleet to stop the next Shivan advance. Shivans arrive, GTVA get their ass kicked, they lose Capella, they have millions of refugees on their hands. I can about see why people are on the verge of rebellion at that stade.
Now add to the equation 18 years of straining the Terran economy to its limits to build the Sol gate, just next to an economically prosperous Zod empire, and just to be immediately denied immigration after the gate is complete because of a new war. And a war against fellow Terrans, to boot. The tevs have pretty much an economical crisis in their hands, they can't really convince the populace that they'll protect them against a Shivan invasion anymore, they're denying them Sol while it has been their only way to keep the population under control those past 18 years, and they're waging a new war, straining the economy even more, and causing the destruction of families because father X died against the UEF and stuff.
I think we have here more than what's required to have a pretty nice powder keg.
Hm...Sol is something like the promised land, I get that...
but this reminds me of east and west Germany...
UEF people will move out, no matter who wins, to secure their fortunes while those living in GTVA systems just want to see earth...
Another point is the thing, that the Ubuntu philosophie undermines the GTVA...they held of the GTVA for around 18 month...
And even the council of elder must admit, that the shivans will return one day...
My scenario?
There must be a diplomatic solution, like Ubuntu being something like a...civil system and the GTVA like some sort of...well...Nato.
That's what the Elders and Byrne have been trying to do for the past 18 months : finding a diplomatic solution. The Elders would have been pretty good at that, if the Tevs had been willing to accept anything else than a nearly unconditional surrender. Thing is, the Tevs have pretty much closed diplomatic negotiations before they really started.
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The way I see it the GTVA-UEF terran civil war can end only in the following ways.
1. The GTVA manages to win the war through attrition, exhausting both UEF resources (be it material or personel) and Sol's morale. Citizens grow tired of the fighting and cling to their spirituality rather than the Ubuntu council and support for the UEF leadership starts to fade. Sooner or later a Guy Fawkes may try to blow up the council to force a political change.
2. The GTVA manages to win through overwhelming force, probably through assistance from the Vasudans (two Hatshepsut's and a Typhon can turn the tables fast). The UEF knows it cannot win and may either choose to surrender it's forces to the GTVA, commence the order to scuttle all UEF assets to prevent the GTVA from using their ships or otherwise engage into a military exodus (hiding ships far away in the kuiper belt or oort cloud) with the intention of colsolidating their forces to mount a counter-offensive. Most likely however, UEF ships and personel would join the GTVA ranks with the decision of having an as large as possible force to face off against the Shivans with.
3. The UEF wins the war by convincing the Vasudans to put presure on the Terrans in the GTVA, through evidence of atrocity or evidence that the GTVA terrans with additional UEF forces added to their ranks can become a force which is superior in size and power to the Vasudans.
4. The UEF wins through several tactical victories and the GTVA's losses are mounting up too high (imagine losing a destroyer or two). Peace negotions would follow.
5. The UEF wins through getting information of the GTVA attrocities out to the GTVA citizens, while such a 'wikileaking' attempt may at first be contained repeated attempts may cause uproar, forcing the GTVA to submit the admirality and security council to serious change (possibly working out a more peaceful solution). Vasudans will also likely intervene (see point 3.)
6. The UEF manages to sabotage/destroye the DeltaSerpentis-Sol portal and subsequently collapses the jumpnode again through the use of large explosives (or detonating a Solaris-class inside the node). The GTVA could not build another portal without atleast cooperation of the Vasudans this time who, if they agree to help, would surely demand a different approach towards the UEF.
7. The Vasudans go through a political change and may find that their participation in the GTVA is no longer the preferable option, presuring the Terrans to cease the war and start negotions with the UEF or other facing the threat of the Vasudans supporting the UEF. This change may either be initiated by Khonsu II who seems to take awareness of the grand events which will yet have to unfold, or he may find himself replaced (although I find this unlikely given that Khonsu II seems to openly converse and communicate with all factions of the Vasudans, both religious and non-religious). Cause for such a change can be that they expect a shivan invasion to be imminent and fear that without immediate peace, the GTVA and UEF are at risk of being destroyed.
8. Outside intervention occurs through Shivan, Vishan or maybe even Brahma intervention. With neither the GT(V)A and the UEF wanting a two-front war if invasion does occur, an unease alliance of convenience is likely formed much like 50 years ago.
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It's pretty much a military dictature, with a few relents of democracy for caring about civilian matters.
You are literally making this up. Simply because the game deals with the military aspects and so that's all we see does not mean the GTVA is a military dictatorship.
You have utterly failed to appreciate the fact that the games do not provide an omniscient viewpoint.
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Indeed. The GTVA, in our estimation, isn't a military dictatorship. It is similar to the EU in concept, as in, a singular government body charged with maintaining an alliance of the various colonies, ensuring common standards and, crucially, a common defense.
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Indeed. The GTVA, in our estimation, isn't a military dictatorship. It is similar to the EU in concept, as in, a singular government body charged with maintaining an alliance of the various colonies, ensuring common standards and, crucially, a common defense.
Indeed. And this, at its heart, is why the concept of a police state or ANY resemblance thereof is enormously unlikely.
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Really ? I was pretty sure I read that somewhere...
Anyway, the rest of the post still stands.
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The original GTA (not the Terran GTVA) felt closer to a military dictatorship. Then again the FSRefBible states that it had little domestic influence and was focused on space exploration.
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Except the situation is a tiny bit different.
Unlike Communism, Ubuntu works. Ubuntu citizens are more healthy, happier, and more prosperous than GTVA citizens. In terms of cold, hard, economic facts, Ubuntu ensures a higher standard of living than the GTVA. You cannot propaganda that away, especially if you have no real way of controlling the population (remember, the population of Sol is equal to the population of the entire terran half of the GTVA). Propaganda simply doesn't work when the thing you're using propaganda agianst has been proven to work for decades.
Ok, this is utterly bollocks. If you want to say that it isn't "the same thing" coz Russia had it worse than america, then fine, trade places. How come the Russkies had to endure communism for so long when it was so goddamned clear that capitalism was so much better?
How come did Russia manage to avoid mass migration and rebellion for so many decades?
Your idea is simply not true. At all.
In addition, the GTVA wants Sol for its economic strength. That strength comes from the policies set by the Ubuntu Council of Elders. In other words, you can't get the economy without at least acknowledging the ideology that makes it work so well.
Unless you don't really buy the idea that the economic boom had anything to do with Ubuntu, but external factors. You are making too many assumptions here.
I stand by my initial point. Whoever wins this conflict will have to adopt so many characteristics of the other side that what comes out in the end will be a completely different entity.
But this is different from the OP, which is about how the GTVA "loses" either way.
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In addition, the GTVA wants Sol for its economic strength. That strength comes from the policies set by the Ubuntu Council of Elders. In other words, you can't get the economy without at least acknowledging the ideology that makes it work so well.
Unless you don't really buy the idea that the economic boom had anything to do with Ubuntu, but external factors. You are making too many assumptions here.
Right. Please read the supplementary materials for BP. I would recommend the "What is Ubuntu?" dossier. The economic strength of Sol is because, not in spite of, the leadership of the Council of Elders. If you want to argue stuff in the BP verse, you should stick to BP canon.
Ok, this is utterly bollocks. If you want to say that it isn't "the same thing" coz Russia had it worse than america, then fine, trade places. How come the Russkies had to endure communism for so long when it was so goddamned clear that capitalism was so much better?
How come did Russia manage to avoid mass migration and rebellion for so many decades?
Your idea is simply not true. At all.
And you are too hung up on the wrong RL analogies. The cold war situation between Russia and the US is not a good analogy for the difference between the UEF and the GTVA. The two systems are much closer, for starters. But where the GTVA is mostly hands-off, and doesn't involve itself in the day-to-day operation of the colonies except in areas of common interest and defense (obviously), the UEF favours a more intrusive approach to governing. If you really want to draw an analogy, US vs EU is the one you should use, not US vs USSR.
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And what if the shivans appear and both sides unite just like terrans and vasudans did in 2335 :@ Seriously people, you are are all pessimists
Don't have time to respond to everything right now (and doubt I will, but great discussion, folks), but it speaks volumes about the current situation that a Shivan incursion can be considered an optimistic outcome. :p
EDIT:
I think he means that the GTVA is telling its civilians that the UEF is inferior as opposed to them actually being inferior. The Tev higher-ups wouldn't willingly commit political suicide by saying that they're fighting an equally-good-if-not-better adversary and that the war may last much longer than anticipated.
This is part of it. The other part is that while the UEF fleet is equal to 5 GTVA battlegroups, the GTVA has a lot more than 5 battlegroups. Yes, they have two exceedingly valid reasons for not committing everything they have (the big one starts with an Sh and rhymes with Shivans; perhaps more importantly, they also really can't afford to shirk on their treaty obligations and thereby piss of the Vasudans any more than they already have). However, in the 18 years since Capella, an entire generation has come of age with no memory of the Shivans. The more reactionary elements of this generation, as the war passes the year-and-a-half mark and becomes increasingly costly, may well be asking why the Terran half of the security council is more concerned with appeasing the Zods than it is with attending to a very pressing Terran problem...sound familiar?
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In addition, the GTVA wants Sol for its economic strength. That strength comes from the policies set by the Ubuntu Council of Elders. In other words, you can't get the economy without at least acknowledging the ideology that makes it work so well.
Unless you don't really buy the idea that the economic boom had anything to do with Ubuntu, but external factors. You are making too many assumptions here.
Right. Please read the supplementary materials for BP. I would recommend the "What is Ubuntu?" dossier. The economic strength of Sol is because, not in spite of, the leadership of the Council of Elders. If you want to argue stuff in the BP verse, you should stick to BP canon.
You missed the point. You might have your own theory of how Sol boomed, the "canon" theory might be another, and, the one that matters for these discussions, GTVA might have a completely different opinion of what caused the boom. These are very subtle, yet majorly important distinctions to make, rather than the confidence in the omniscience of all entities within BP.
Ok, this is utterly bollocks. If you want to say that it isn't "the same thing" coz Russia had it worse than america, then fine, trade places. How come the Russkies had to endure communism for so long when it was so goddamned clear that capitalism was so much better?
How come did Russia manage to avoid mass migration and rebellion for so many decades?
Your idea is simply not true. At all.
And you are too hung up on the wrong RL analogies.
It's not that I'm "hung up", it's because they are easily remembered.
The cold war situation between Russia and the US is not a good analogy for the difference between the UEF and the GTVA. The two systems are much closer, for starters. But where the GTVA is mostly hands-off, and doesn't involve itself in the day-to-day operation of the colonies except in areas of common interest and defense (obviously), the UEF favours a more intrusive approach to governing. If you really want to draw an analogy, US vs EU is the one you should use, not US vs USSR.
I'll byte, though in disagreement. Ok, so lets imagine that the "socialist" EU is so much better than the States. Why the hell is the typical american still convinced that the right to hold a weapon, the right not to have an health national system, and the sheer implosion of all things state is a better ideology than the one used in the EU, despite all the evidence to the contrary? It's not even as if they were living in different planets, you know?
What makes up for this cognitive dissonance? Ideology and propaganda, that's what. It makes the whole difference.
Do you even know what is considered the second most influential book in the States by a survey in the Library of Congress? Atlas Shrugged. That should tell you in a nutshell what is the force behind all this cognitive dissonance: ideology.
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The_E is reminding everyone of the canon theory, Luis.
As for the rest of that post: Leave real-life politics to GD, please.
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The_E is reminding everyone of the canon theory, Luis.
Which is totally irrelevant to the GTVA's assessment of Sol's economy, unless it is stated somewhere that the GTVA was constituted by people who unanimously believed in the canon.
As for the rest of that post: Leave real-life politics to GD, please.
Way to ****ing miss the point. I don't care if you like Ayn Rand or not. What I care is that the assumption that people in the outer colonies will judge Sol by the same omniscient eyes that the canon omniscient narrator of the BP webpage is utterly silly and does not take into account any kind of believable human psychologies.
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That's certainly not what it sounded like we were talking about. Shall we take a look at the argument progression?
The_E points out you're using the wrong analogies with the U.S. and USSR to portray the GTVA and EU.
You come up with "Socialist" EU vs. U.S. proves that ideology causes cognitive dissonance.
What you just said about omniscient viewpoints.
No, still doesn't sound like what we were talking about.
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That's certainly not what it sounded like we were talking about. Shall we take a look at the argument progression?
The_E points out you're using the wrong analogies with the U.S. and USSR to portray the GTVA and EU.
You come up with "Socialist" EU vs. U.S. proves that ideology causes cognitive dissonance.
What you just said about omniscient viewpoints.
No, still doesn't sound like what we were talking about.
Yeah, that's what probably happens when you skim rather than read.
Case in point, E states that the GTVA has to deal with the Elders and Ubuntu and **** 'coz they are fundamental to the Earth's economy and its boom.
I simply stated that this assumes that the GTVA believes in this "theory". E replies saying it's no theory it's canon, which is completely irrelevant viz a viz GTVA's opinion on the matter.
The ideology discussion is a second discussion involving the beliefs of the populace of the outer colonies, that since Sol's jump node is open, there will be a massive flood of emmigrants to it, because everyone somehow "knows" that Sol is a "paradise" with its amazing economy and ideology. But as we know by historical precedent is that if people are trained to hate or love a certain ideology, they will be predisposed to do so, irrespectively of its inherent values. Thus the only logical thing for the GTVA to do is to warn the populace of the "dangerous" "hippy" and "commy" "naive" ideology which is just incompetent at dealing with the Shivans, and they will do so not by "rational information", but by Glenn Becking them out to smithereens.
Got it now?
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If the fact that Ubuntu and the Elders are a major contributing factor to Sol's booming economy is valid (and canonically it is), then the GTVA has to deal with it even if they remain unaware of such. A charcter not knowing about something does NOT remove it from consideration among people who know better (read: everyone participating in this discussion).
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Unless there's something in the BP fluff that mentions something about the GTVA being primed to rebel (which is pretty stupid anyway, given the constant Shivan threat hanging over their heads), then I don't think it's reasonable to just jump to rebellion, except maybe at the ballot box.
The GTVA is primed to rebel because of the constant Shivan threat hanging over their heads. The government lost the confidence of its population at Capella - for arguably unjust reasons - and the following economic downturn turned the GTVA into a powder keg.
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Yeah, that's what probably happens when you skim rather than read.
Case in point, E states that the GTVA has to deal with the Elders and Ubuntu and **** 'coz they are fundamental to the Earth's economy and its boom.
Except, remember the canon document where this was stated? A little Dossier called "What is Ubuntu"? Which was written, in universe, as a briefing document for the GTVA security council? In other words, we can safely assume that the GTVA higher-ups are aware of the role the elders play, and are cognizant of their importance for the UEF economy.
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Yeah, that's what probably happens when you skim rather than read.
Case in point, E states that the GTVA has to deal with the Elders and Ubuntu and **** 'coz they are fundamental to the Earth's economy and its boom.
Except, remember the canon document where this was stated? A little Dossier called "What is Ubuntu"? Which was written, in universe, as a briefing document for the GTVA security council? In other words, we can safely assume that the GTVA higher-ups are aware of the role the elders play, and are cognizant of their importance for the UEF economy.
Touché
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Unless there's something in the BP fluff that mentions something about the GTVA being primed to rebel (which is pretty stupid anyway, given the constant Shivan threat hanging over their heads), then I don't think it's reasonable to just jump to rebellion, except maybe at the ballot box.
The GTVA is primed to rebel because of the constant Shivan threat hanging over their heads. The government lost the confidence of its population at Capella - for arguably unjust reasons - and the following economic downturn turned the GTVA into a powder keg.
That makes zero sense to me. Nations at risk of invasion are historically unlikely to change their government, and if the populace of the GTVA didn't support the broad-strokes policiy of their government, why wouldn't they have voted them out, rather than risking military gear that might, at any moment, be needed to fight the Shivans?
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There are precedents for it. Czechoslovakia shortly before being invaded by Hitler comes to mind.
Then again, rebellion wasn't a reasonable possibility there either. The concept that morale collapse -> rebellion doesn't really follow (for a democratic system, at least, and if the basic needs of a majority are being met, which still appears to be the case; I haven't heard anything about mass famine). There are other options, and one of them even appears to exist; the rise of a charismatic leader who restores faith in the system. (Khonsu)
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That makes zero sense to me. Nations at risk of invasion are historically unlikely to change their government
Nations that start and then lose wars are historically prone to changing their governments, and that's how people saw the Second Incursion: overconfidence and hubris that led to the loss of a densely populated star system. It's not a very just assessment, but it shattered public confidence in the GTVA military/political complex.
The GTVA lost its reputation as an aegis against the Shivan menace and came to seem at best ineffectual and at worst actively dangerous in the public eye. As described in the BP background material, this was not a particularly fair assessment, but it was the prevalent one.
and if the populace of the GTVA didn't support the broad-strokes policiy of their government, why wouldn't they have voted them out, rather than risking military gear that might, at any moment, be needed to fight the Shivans?
I don't really understand what you're saying here.
Think back to FreeSpace 2. The GTVA's ability to control its population depended on the promise of protection against the Shivan threat. When the population lost confidence in that ability, the GTVA needed something to prevent a repeat of the NTF - and the return to Sol under the Petrarch Doctrine was the solution.
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Yeah, I'm sold on the explanations, albeit a little too confident in its own inevitability. It's a very interesting political plot, and one that could arise a plot leak in WiH2, with the combination of Battuta's discussion on how this universe had similarities with Foundation. Of course I'm risking a bet here, but I'd say that Battuta had also in mind on how the BP war was fundamentally over with the lack of support in GTVA's outer colonies, and how similar that situation was in Foundation too (when confronting the empire with the foundation). Of course, he couldn't have discussed it without leaking such a major plot point.
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My problem is that, unless the GTVA in BP is a military dictatorship, then they're under civilian control - civilians that are, I assume, democratically elected. The first election after the 2SI would have been disastrous for the government of the time, no doubt. But following that, if the population didn't support, for example, the (assumed new) government's Terran Knossos policies, why not vote them out as well?
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Well you know they still have a 56% majority in the parliament, and unless someone inside the government provokes a crisis, you still have to wait untill the next elections occur. The UEF could be motivated by this fact. It is well known that from the events of Jupiter, the coming GTVA elections are still 13 months away, which means that if they happen not to have more significant drawbacks like Jupiter's, they may get allies in the political opposition in the GTVA parliament, who have been pressing the anti-war campaign for almost two years now, only being slightly silented by the events at Jupiter.
And of course I'm not making all this up! :lol:
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Why didn't the citizens of Polaris, Regulus and Sirius just vote the government out?
The citizenry did, broadly, support the return to Sol. That was part of the importance of the project - to mollify the populace and offer a carrot to work for. But the dangers the GTVA faced weren't as simple as failure of confidence in a single government or set of leaders. It was a failure of confidence in the system as a whole - the kind of unrest that isn't expressed through democratic channels. (Again, the kind of unrest exploited to create the NTF).
Moreover, look at the GTVA's lineage. The GTA was basically NATO - a military organization with very little power in the civilian sphere. The GTVA stands closer to a true interstellar government, but of all its branches, the General Assembly is the only one that can really be said to respond to public opinion. There are powerful civilian positions which would remain more or less untouched by elections and the like. The Security Council is, by design, stable.
Remember, this is a government that spans worlds. There are powerful positions in every democratic state on Earth which are intentionally isolated from public opinion. The GTVA has similar positions, both civilian and military - GTVI, for instance, is a powerfully influential organization.
The GTVA has existed for less than fifty years. Prior to its formation, there were multiple, independent Terran states, and those identities haven't been submerged. The GTVA bought the loyalty of the Lost Generation with the promise of security and expanded human power in the face of the Shivan menace. It couldn't sustain that promise, and that threatens its very raison d'etre in the public eye.
The issue is not that 'our leaders have failed us'. The issue is that the relatively young GTVA failed catastrophically in the first test of the very promises that created it. Or, at least, that's how people see it - a perception shaped by economic problems as much as by military realities.
The GTVA is a democratic state. So were the early United States. But the US faced enormous challenges across the first hundred years of its existence, and at no point in the first forty years of its life (which the GTVA still occupies) was anyone confident it would endure rather than splinter. It took the Civil War to really settle many of the lingering questions about the American political system.
I think that's a good analogy for why the GTVA's problems can't be solved by an election cycle.
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Why didn't the citizens of Polaris, Regulus and Sirius just vote the government out?
The Sol-GTVA war is, in my opinion, the best reason for a Neo-Neo-Terran-Front.
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But without having some kind of direct popular control via elections, its own authority relies upon the willingness of those who are elected upon. You brought up NATO, well NATO is a joint operation that groups several countries which are, in turn, governed by democratic govs. Which means that NATO does what it does despite the people's best interesses, but only for so long. If people get too irritated at NATO, they will blame their own governments and take them out of their offices next elections.
If there is no such kind of pressure that the masses can do to this big GTVA institution, then that fact automatically strips its own authority. We have good examples, such as the president of the EU, who is a buffoon that no one cares to know any better nor has he any kind of power and legitimacy, since he was appointed by the EU bureaucracy, which in itself has little democratic support. So whenever Obama "calls" Europe, he won't call this EU president. He will call Germany, France or Britain.
Similar **** happens to the UN.
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For that matter, any potential rebellion needs tools to make it meaningful. If you have the loyalty of the fleet, you do not need that much of the populace, only the segments that support the fleet. There is no precedent I can find for organized political mutiny by unit of a naval force. Even the closest I can come up with, the Nore mutiny, was about pay and service conditions and was only loosely connected with political issues.
So for the moment, let's forget the influence of the people and focus on the tools that would be needed to make it meaningful: what does the fleet think? Are their needs being met? Have there been serious cuts to pay or benefits, lengthened terms of service, something to make the fleet rank and file angry?
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Well, they were ordered to fight against their own fellow people... that cognitive dissonance did create a rebellion at the Sol jump node.
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Well, they were ordered to fight against their own fellow people... that cognitive dissonance did create a rebellion at the Sol jump node.
True, but this was engineered by outside forces. I think the team has gone on record as stating that the Vishnians may have rigged the whole scenario to screw up the GTVA's plans. The GTVA has fought against its own people in living memory (NTF) and most of its officer corps is still familiar with doing so. They've built up the return, true, and that may hurt, but I still think you need a stronger rallying cry in the fleet to make this "spoiling for rebellion" possible.
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The fleet's loyalty is probably quite solid, at least among the officer corps - it is a professional organization with a powerful mandate.
But while the fleet can control interstellar and interplanetary transit and exert a powerful influence on rogue political elements, it's an ineffective tool for handling civil discontent - its instruments are too blunt. If the GTVA ever reaches the point where it has to exert force to control its citizenry, its policies have failed, and its leadership is well aware of that.
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I'm not really suggesting bombardment from orbit, so much as the GTVA being able to simply ride out any local rebellions by containing them and eventually incorporating them back into the fold when the economic dislocation from a lack of space travel hits. Too much, too fast, could probably overwhelm this defense of course.
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That policy might actually work quite well in the long run, but a world isolated and contained is a world that can't be put to use - in Civ terms, civil discontent is going to hamper productivity, and the GTVA needs its productivity.
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...and essentially went to war for more of it. A fair point, sir. I concede.
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....and what can they do about it? Take the iraq war as an example. Despite the fact that the war was "illegal", so to speak, did nothing but place Bush into a position of power and win the elections in 2004. It took more 4 years for Obama to reach the office, and even then he wouldn't commit to abandon Iraq.
I'm not claiming that in the long run, the GTVA won't run into serious political backslash, but it appears that for now they have some time to crush the UEF, at least until the next political cycle.
And there's also the question of alternatives. What are the alternatives for the colonies? So the GTVA was unable to stop the shivan threat to commit a second holocaust. What kind of alternative would be better for them? A jesuistic "love your enemies" kindof ridiculous pacifism? I don't think so, given the sheer fear both humans and vasudans must assuredly have for the Shivans. The only alternative is a religious rebellion, similar to the Hammer of Light heresy, linking shivan actions to the "sins" of the GTVA (and given human nature this is a real problem).
More over, I even think that this fear and paranoia that the human populace almost probably has nurtured given the threat of the Shivans should have protected them from the ideologies of Ubuntu quite well. I can imagine these humans thinking "what sissies, what do they know about the dangerous universe? They are children, unaware of the Death Hand lurking above their heads, and dare make smug smilies at us as if they know it better". Still the canon information is that the GTVA still fears this ideological threat... (I wouldn't agree but hey it's what we have to work with).
There's also the issue that, in times of trouble, the populace tends to patriotize itself and support the leadership (one more reason for the GTVA go to war: not only destroy the Ubuntu ideology but gather popular support at home with the basic tribal instinct that humans share).
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Eh... I'm unconvinced. I get what you're saying GB, but it just doesn't feel like a justification for rebellion to me, not in a democracy.
But it's BP's canon, they can do what they want with it. :nod:
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Eh... I'm unconvinced. I get what you're saying GB, but it just doesn't feel like a justification for rebellion to me, not in a democracy.
Yet you have a historical example where just such a rebellion occurred in just such a democracy.
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Hm...this "the GTVA started the second war" doesn't work for me.
A shivan cruiser, out of nowhere, destroyed with another cruiser with minimal losses, the role of the Trinity most likely top secret...
They had to press their advantage.
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Or they could have tried to blow up the portal immediately after they beat the first shivan troops back, instead of arrogantly believing they could defeat the Shivans.
Now from a realistic point of view, they probably couldn't do it back then, because they didn't have enough meson bombs, but a mob is usually not interrested in such small details, so the argument might still be used to cause unrest.
Furthermore one could argue that mankind brought the 2nd shivan incursion down upon themselfs, by creating the NTF and starting the civil war. Could the GTVA have prevented the NTF rebellion if they had paid more attention beforehand? Could they have ended the rebellion much quicker, but messed it up thanks to command being incompetent? Was command so interrested in ETAK that they let Bosch have his way for some time?
Now please don't start discussing the answers to those questions, I just brought them up to show that there is enough furtile ground for people to blame mankind and/or the GTVA for the Shivan incursion, wether it's true or not.
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I Miss You! .. Old Galactic Terran Aliance!..., With you apollos and Orions! =(
Going to the point
GTVA I think, as was the conflict only have to make a push over, I think FSU is going to pay if they are caught Mars, I do not see much future for the UEF forces for this little problem of the lack of numbers and the numerical disadvantage, one miraculously given a surgical strike at terran supply lines and force them to retreat, perhaps to Neptune, but the numerical superiority and lack of equipment that has the UEF that is quite battered,
only chuck norris can save, I guess I will have saved in cryogenics
I would like to end a ceasefire and an agreement of friendship, so that the 2 factions are not lost, that the technologies are well separated and together we can give the
shivans (as happened in the Great War)
or perhaps a Shivan invasion may come to save what remains of the UEF
Use the Google traductor
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The UEF still has Fleet bombers. Steele's stunt in Earth's orbit was extremely risky if you ask me, unless he has no idea that such bombers exist (which I highly doubt).
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IIRC Vajras have yet to be cleared for operational use. While he may know of them, they were likely a non-issue in his attack plan.
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The UEF still has Fleet bombers. Steele's stunt in Earth's orbit was extremely risky if you ask me, unless he has no idea that such bombers exist (which I highly doubt).
He knew that he had another timely jump available. Remember, the Carthage is still an aging design, despite its experimental jump drive, we know that the Raynor is designed to out-maneuver known Shivan tactics.
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I Miss You! .. Old Galactic Terran Aliance!..., With you apollos and Orions! =(
The still GTA exists....from a different view. It exists as the General Terran Assembly (GTA) :D
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Don't worry, the Fedayeen will try.
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It's pretty much a military dictature, with a few relents of democracy for caring about civilian matters.
You are literally making this up. Simply because the game deals with the military aspects and so that's all we see does not mean the GTVA is a military dictatorship.
You have utterly failed to appreciate the fact that the games do not provide an omniscient viewpoint.
That's not entirely true. Although it is by no means a dictatorship (as civilian contentment and public opinion is clearly important to the GTVA), the GTVA IS partly run by the military. Even if we look only at the FS and FS2 universe, we see that the military is considerably more involved in the day to day working of the GTVA than your average form of government, with the military making up a full third of the political system of the GTVA (alongside the Vasudan Imperium and the General Assembly). Aside from this, the military is often seen taking on the role of a police force as well, which means the military plays a much greater role in the GTVA than in any ordinary government.
If you wish to delve into the BP canon, when you read up on the profile of Steele, you'll even notice that he was educated in a 'Space War College' that expressly deals with military courses, such as Bachelors in 'Battlefield Psychology' and Masters in 'Strategic Studies', with treatises written on military matters such as warship design. This implies by far, a much greater degree of militarism than any nation we've ever seen on Earth, if there are recognized graduate and post graduate degrees in, essentially, how to wage war. Furthermore, it is said that the decision to invade Sol was made by the security council, which is the military branch of the GTVA. This is important as it means the military declared war all on it's own without the need to answer to some higher civilian power. So the security council has a very large degree of autonomy in how to operate on matters regarding security, and doesn't seem to have to directly answer to a civilian regulatory body (although it does seem to have to answer to public opinion to a limited degree, perhaps candidates for the security council are somehow elected by the public). It's probably not so much a case of the military running the GTVA as the rampant militarism present throughout it making it seem that way.
Which leads me to this.
The fact that it's taken the GTVA as long as it already has to make headway against a vastly inferior foe, on top of the flurry of defections from the 14th, is probably making them look pretty weak already. The Battle of Saturn was probably something of a propaganda victory, but even with the destruction of a rather infamous UEF unit, the Carthage is badly damaged and many of her escorts were destroyed. It feels like a defeat from the perspective of the player because we lose a lot of characters we've come to know and like, but seen from the other side the Imperieuse arrives to bail Lopez's ass out of the fire with about thirty seconds to spare, and not before several thousand GTVA officers and crew have died. In an asymmetric war-of-choice like this one, any military victory short of an overwhelming one can look bad.
Why does this always come up.....
The UEF is anything BUT a "vastly inferior foe". The UEF fleet is, in terms of firepower, roughly equivalent to 4 or 5 GTVA battlegroups. Prior to Steele's arrival and the battle of Artemis Station, the GTVA was fighting against an enemy that was always one step ahead due to the subspace sensor net enveloping Sol, thus negating one of the biggest factors in FS warfare. Yes, the UEF navy was hampered by Byrne's indecision and by not having as deep a personnel pool as the GTVA, but still, it is definitely not a foe to be underestimated.
Why is this the accepted consensus? For the love of me i cannot understand why a civilization which is both technologically and numerically disadvantaged as well as suffering from VASTLY inferior training, experience and war mentality is achieving such ridiculous kill ratios in all engagements that we see. The discrepancy in the combat prowess should so vast that aside from a considerable numerical superiority, or a substantial tactical advantage (something not likely to happen considering the superior training and experience of the GTVA commanders), the UEF should be horrifically losing all battles involving capships, but instead we see the exact opposite, such as 4 frigates and 2 cruisers taking on 4 corvettes, 4 cruisers and a destroyer with ZERO losses (delanda est). That particular mission made me want to tear my hair out and the part that made me happiest during the whole thing, was watching the Imperiuse and the escorting corvette rip through the attacking fleet, because it's the ONLY part in the whole damn mission that made any shred of sense (amusingly, the force you're deployed against at the start, is more than capable of tearing apart the Imperiuse and the escort corvette assuming they all start in range).
A frigate is roughly the same mass as a corvette (they're longer, but much slimmer), but has some of its space and personnel taken up by a fighter bay and maintenance facilities, so you'd assume it wouldn't perform as well in a direct combat role as a corvette. If you then factor in the inferior weapons and reactor tech of the UEF compared to the GTVA, you're left with the logical assumption that a UEF frigate should be decisively outgunned by a TEV corvette (which isn't true in the slightest, and we see Karunas packing an insane 29(!!!!) turrets). And yet, we don't see a single mission in which this happens like it actually should except at the very end of delanda est. In the mission before that, we see an Orion with full fighter complement run away from 2 Karunas approaching it in an optimal broadside position for the Orion, yet strangely the Orion jumped out? Even ignoring the fact that the weapons, armor and jump drive on the Carthage were said to be upgraded, the frigates were approaching from an angle that would have seen them in range of 2 BGreens and 2 TerSlash beams, which should quickly reduce both ships into flaming hulks. If we replaced those Karunas with Deimos corvettes, although the Orion would take substantial damage, the plan would be considered doomed to failure. So why are ships with less powerful weaponry seemingly performing better against a souped up version of a ship which would ordinarily kill a pair of Deimos. This puzzles me beyond all belief, as the game texts say one thing, which seems logical and believable, yet what we see in-game is the exact opposite and makes no sense whatsoever.
Tl;Dr: Peace loving hippies with inferior tech are somehow performing ridiculously well against a higher tech society, geared for war, with nearly a century of constant warfare to hone their skills, weapons and ship designs. Wtf
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Now that was interesting reading. Here are my thoughts about UEF-GTVA war:
-Regarding ship performance, which I admit is kinda puzzling at times:
The thing, I think, is that the UEF and GTVA have a very different approach to warfare. As it is stated on several occasions, the UEF favors high performance/cost hungry/low autonomy designs, which are only a jump away from shipyard, thus highly effective in a single system as long as it provides all the necessary infrastructure.
On the other hand, GTVA ships have supposedly been designed to operate in hostile environment systems away from dry docks, shipyard, whatever, and possibly can't afford the huge number of torpedoes UEF frigates launch in every fights for instance. Even with logistics ships, the BP-GTVA must still have this design philosophy. There is also the fact that the GTVA is used to fight shivans, with tend to use lots and lots of ships or its own rebelled forces, which obviously follow the same philosophy. I think it is said somewhere in the techroom that early GTVA defeats were due to the fact that they badly underestimated the edge these high-performance ships would give to the UEF.
One other thing is that during 18 months, the GTVA is fighting against the 3rd Fleet, which is not entirely composed by rookies since they have been fighting GEF forces on a regular basis, and is commanded by an ex-GTA Officer, which has seen some action during the great war.
-Regarding Delenda Est, here is how I see the mission
With its jump drives fried and other GTVA fleets in system pinned down as stated in the briefing, the Carthage is pretty much on its own. It first sends several waves of bombers with softens the frigates a little bit before they engage the first 2 corvettes. Why only 2 corvettes ? Because sending everyone would leave the Carthage vulnerable to flanking (with was one of the attack plans iirc). Why not just sit and wait until the frigates are in range ? OK, that one puzzled me at first, but sitting and waiting would mean that the destroyer will definitively be caught in the cross fire and take damage. And its was likely that the UEF would deploy an AWACS to render the Carthage's BGReen inopperative.
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For the love of me i cannot understand why a civilization which is both technologically and numerically disadvantaged as well as suffering from VASTLY inferior training, experience and war mentality is achieving such ridiculous kill ratios in all engagements that we see.
Whoever said the UEF has inferiour training for their crews? The whole GTVA armada is geared - and thus most likely also trained - to fight Shivans. Hordes of low performance fighters with the occasional dragon wing thrown in.
The UEF fighters are superiour to Shivan and GTVA fighters (or at least to the Capella era fighters, which seem to make up the majority of the invasion force's arsenal), which makes fighting them very different (and much riskier) than fighting Shivans. And considering they were fighting "technologically inferiour pacifists, without the stomach for a real war" I'm sure many GTVA veterans underestimated the UEF fighters corps. And in battle, underestimating the enemy is often the last mistake you make.
And yet, we don't see a single mission in which this happens like it actually should except at the very end of delanda est. In the mission before that, we see an Orion with full fighter complement run away from 2 Karunas approaching it in an optimal broadside position for the Orion, yet strangely the Orion jumped out? Even ignoring the fact that the weapons, armor and jump drive on the Carthage were said to be upgraded, the frigates were approaching from an angle that would have seen them in range of 2 BGreens and 2 TerSlash beams, which should quickly reduce both ships into flaming hulks.
Wether the Carthage would have been able to deal with the wargods right there and then doesn't matter. Lopez had orders from Steele to lure the wargods into his trap.
But let's ignore that for a moment, along with the presence of the AWACS that made sure the Carthages beams were jammed:
The beams wouldn't be sufficient to annihilate even one of the Karunas with one salvo and in all likelyhood that's all an Orion will ever get off. Because there were Uriels present, who just completely disarmed two dedicated anti-fighter ships (a Deimos and an Aeolus), so they'd chew through what little fighter defense the Carthage had in no time. Add to that the Apocalypse torpedoes and massdrivers and you got a very well armored and completely disarmed sitting duck. Maybe MAYBE the Carthage would have been able to take down one Karuna, but both? Unlikely in the extreme.
Furthermore, it is said that the decision to invade Sol was made by the security council, which is the military branch of the GTVA. This is important as it means the military declared war all on it's own without the need to answer to some higher civilian power.
Or it's just supposed to mean something along the lines of "The security council put the complete plan for the invasion before the civilian part of the government and started the operation after getting their approval".
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If you wish to delve into the BP canon, when you read up on the profile of Steele, you'll even notice that he was educated in a 'Space War College' that expressly deals with military courses, such as Bachelors in 'Battlefield Psychology' and Masters in 'Strategic Studies', with treatises written on military matters such as warship design. This implies by far, a much greater degree of militarism than any nation we've ever seen on Earth, if there are recognized graduate and post graduate degrees in, essentially, how to wage war.
That is really, really untrue. Think, for a moment, what places like West Point (home of the US Military Academy) or Annapolis (US Navy Academy) are for. Or what any number of think tanks are doing.
Furthermore, it is said that the decision to invade Sol was made by the security council, which is the military branch of the GTVA.
No, it's not. The Security Council is the highest governing body of the GTVA, named so because the GTVA as an organization is charged with securing humanity's continued existence. Just like the UN Security Council, it is staffed by civilians, and ultimately elected by the populace.
Why is this the accepted consensus? For the love of me i cannot understand why a civilization which is both technologically and numerically disadvantaged as well as suffering from VASTLY inferior training, experience and war mentality is achieving such ridiculous kill ratios in all engagements that we see. The discrepancy in the combat prowess should so vast that aside from a considerable numerical superiority, or a substantial tactical advantage (something not likely to happen considering the superior training and experience of the GTVA commanders), the UEF should be horrifically losing all battles involving capships, but instead we see the exact opposite, such as 4 frigates and 2 cruisers taking on 4 corvettes, 4 cruisers and a destroyer with ZERO losses (delanda est).
Wow. Have you played the mission? Last time I did, the UEF lost 3 Frigates, 4 Cruisers, and an AWACS...
A frigate is roughly the same mass as a corvette (they're longer, but much slimmer), but has some of its space and personnel taken up by a fighter bay and maintenance facilities, so you'd assume it wouldn't perform as well in a direct combat role as a corvette. If you then factor in the inferior weapons and reactor tech of the UEF compared to the GTVA, you're left with the logical assumption that a UEF frigate should be decisively outgunned by a TEV corvette (which isn't true in the slightest, and we see Karunas packing an insane 29(!!!!) turrets). And yet, we don't see a single mission in which this happens like it actually should except at the very end of delanda est. In the mission before that, we see an Orion with full fighter complement run away from 2 Karunas approaching it in an optimal broadside position for the Orion, yet strangely the Orion jumped out?
FS Warfare 101. What you see on the field is not the entire force available. Lopez was told, in no uncertain terms, that she was flying into a trap. She chose to bug out, and assemble her escorts. Which, as it turns out, was the correct choice of action.
Even ignoring the fact that the weapons, armor and jump drive on the Carthage were said to be upgraded, the frigates were approaching from an angle that would have seen them in range of 2 BGreens and 2 TerSlash beams, which should quickly reduce both ships into flaming hulks.
According to what, exactly? Remember, the UEF has the demonstrated ability to jam direct-fire beam targeting. Also keep in mind that UEF frigates are built to disarm opponents at extreme range using their Gauss Cannons and missiles.
If we replaced those Karunas with Deimos corvettes, although the Orion would take substantial damage, the plan would be considered doomed to failure. So why are ships with less powerful weaponry seemingly performing better against a souped up version of a ship which would ordinarily kill a pair of Deimos. This puzzles me beyond all belief, as the game texts say one thing, which seems logical and believable, yet what we see in-game is the exact opposite and makes no sense whatsoever.
If you replaced the Karunas with Deimos-class ships, the entire battle plan would be different. As stated above, Karunas are built on an entirely different paradigm than GTVA ships (precision damage through Gauss Cannons and Mass Drivers with Apocalypse spam on the side). The UEF ships are built to disarm and disable, not destroy directly. Also note that the main anti-capital firepower in the UEF navy is delivered via bombers like the Vajradahara, which you haven't seen in action so far.
Tl;Dr: Peace loving hippies with inferior tech are somehow performing ridiculously well against a higher tech society, geared for war, with nearly a century of constant warfare to hone their skills, weapons and ship designs. Wtf
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The UEF are not exactly "Peace loving hippies". They are a society that hasn't had to live with the possibility of destruction by weakly god-like entities; they are about as peace-loving hippie-ish as any democracy on RL Earth. Those peace loving hippies have, in fact, built a military that is far more powerful than anything they could possibly need for intrasystem policing duties. Think about that for a second. In addition, do not automatically think that Beams are higher-tech than the missiles and mass drivers produced by the UEF. While Beams do fit the GTVA paradigm of having long-range, low maintenance ships rather well, the UEF was able to pursue more ressource-intensive ways of outfitting their ships. As Norbert said, UEF ships are high maintenance, low endurance, but have extreme firepower for their size.
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If you wish to delve into the BP canon, when you read up on the profile of Steele, you'll even notice that he was educated in a 'Space War College' that expressly deals with military courses, such as Bachelors in 'Battlefield Psychology' and Masters in 'Strategic Studies', with treatises written on military matters such as warship design. This implies by far, a much greater degree of militarism than any nation we've ever seen on Earth
Those were all actually based on institutions located in democratic nations on Earth right now. :nervous: But the GTVA is certainly more hardcore than the UEF.
Why is this the accepted consensus? For the love of me i cannot understand why a civilization which is both technologically and numerically disadvantaged
Whoa, whoa, hang on. The UEF lacks a number of the GTVA's most powerful technologies, but it does have excellent antimatter farms and an enormously capable scientific community. Moreover, numerically disadvantaged? Sol contains population to more or less match the rest of the GTVA, not to mention the corresponding industrial base.
Sol has been colonized for centuries. The rest of the GTVA worlds have been colonized, IIRC, for less than a century - humanity didn't get starflight until fairly soon before FreeSpace 1.
the UEF should be horrifically losing all battles involving capships, but instead we see the exact opposite
We can have a reasonable discussion here, but not if you're going to say things like 'the GTVA horrifically loses all battles involving capships'. ;)
such as 4 frigates and 2 cruisers taking on 4 corvettes, 4 cruisers and a destroyer with ZERO losses (delanda est)
Frigates are significantly more badass than corvettes - the strike package there was specifically designed to do the job without losses. A Karuna is more of a half-destroyer than it is a corvette.
Also, I think you're forgetting an important part of the mission - the job you did. The UEF has always been described as having a well-equipped fighter corps, and the Wargods were elite pilots. Delenda Est is hardly easy, at least on realistic difficulties - the attack can fail if the gunships don't do their jobs.
(amusingly, the force you're deployed against at the start, is more than capable of tearing apart the Imperiuse and the escort corvette assuming they all start in range)
No it's not. It may look that way in FRED, but I'm guessing you haven't worked in all of their capabilities.
A frigate is roughly the same mass as a corvette (they're longer, but much slimmer), but has some of its space and personnel taken up by a fighter bay and maintenance facilities, so you'd assume it wouldn't perform as well in a direct combat role as a corvette.
The assumption is incorrect. GTVA and UEF doctrine alike dictate somewhere between one and a half and two corvettes as an even match for a frigate.
In the mission before that, we see an Orion with full fighter complement run away from 2 Karunas approaching it in an optimal broadside position for the Orion, yet strangely the Orion jumped out?
Brother...cool down and think about this like a battlefield commander.
Two Karunas isn't enough to take on the Carthage. Not at all. But Lopez is smart. She knows that if she stays there and engages, she's gonna get jumped from another angle.
If we replaced those Karunas with Deimos corvettes, although the Orion would take substantial damage, the plan would be considered doomed to failure. So why are ships with less powerful weaponry seemingly performing better against a souped up version of a ship which would ordinarily kill a pair of Deimos. This puzzles me beyond all belief
Because the Karuna is a more powerful tactical force than the Deimos. Pretty simple. What it lacks in brute force, it makes up for in the ability to blow the hell out of turrets with its gauss cannons and sling antimatter weapons at long range.
Tl;Dr: Peace loving hippies with inferior tech are somehow performing ridiculously well against a higher tech society, geared for war, with nearly a century of constant warfare to hone their skills, weapons and ship designs. Wtf
TL;DR: enormous industrial society with highly advanced technology is gradually losing war to military experts with different but also highly advanced technology and superior combat doctrine.
Makes sense to me.
You just seem to have some fundamental misconceptions about the technological and industrial balance here, as well as the tactical capabilities of the relevant combatants.
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I think that BP's balance between the two sides is pretty spot on, so I have no clue on what TOA is banging about.
The only issue I have with the campaign is the big "**** you" with the imperieuse at the end, I mean, we got the trouble to steal it and it was a pain in the ass (I kept failing the mission because whenever I realised what was going on, already the pods were jumping out...), only to reach the final mission and watch it kick our butts off.
Now, I may have missed some plot points since I skimmed most of the debriefings, but still!
Of course, it's the kind of "**** you!" that doesn't piss me off, since it's part and parcel of the story.
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Wait what.
The ship that you capture, and that launches escape pods, is the Agincourt. It's a logistic ship. A big, hugeass freighter. Nothing in common with the Imperieuse, a Titan-class Destroyer with 3 BBlues of death and more fighters than you can count.
Also, if you didn't read the fiction, then you didn't really played to WiH.
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I think that BP's balance between the two sides is pretty spot on, so I have no clue on what TOA is banging about.
The only issue I have with the campaign is the big "**** you" with the imperieuse at the end, I mean, we got the trouble to steal it and it was a pain in the ass (I kept failing the mission because whenever I realised what was going on, already the pods were jumping out...), only to reach the final mission and watch it kick our butts off.
wwwwwwwait
The ship you stole was the Agincourt, a logistics and supply ship.
The ship that ambushes the Wargods in Delenda Est is the Imperieuse, a fully armed next-generation destroyer/carrier.
The war would be going really badly if the Titan destroyers were just logistics ships.
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such as 4 frigates and 2 cruisers taking on 4 corvettes, 4 cruisers and a destroyer with ZERO losses (delanda est).
You're forgetting two important things:
1. All four frigates were Karunas.
2. Beam damage in the FreeSpace 2 engine is applied per-frame.
;)
On a more serious note, I'd like to point out that perhaps the Wargods cutting a swathe through the Carthage's escorts is pretty good proof that UEF tech is not inferior. :wtf:
The beams wouldn't be sufficient to annihilate even one of the Karunas with one salvo and in all likelyhood that's all an Orion will ever get off. Because there were Uriels present, who just completely disarmed two dedicated anti-fighter ships (a Deimos and an Aeolus), so they'd chew through what little fighter defense the Carthage had in no time. Add to that the Apocalypse torpedoes and massdrivers and you got a very well armored and completely disarmed sitting duck. Maybe MAYBE the Carthage would have been able to take down one Karuna, but both? Unlikely in the extreme.
You're forgetting that the Carthage's port broadside BGreen emitter has more hitpoints than the ship's actual hull. :p
I mean, seriously, why don't they build the entire ship out of that stuff? Is there just not enough salvaged Volition Bravos armor plating to go around? ;)
The only issue I have with the campaign is the big "**** you" with the imperieuse at the end, I mean, we got the trouble to steal it and it was a pain in the ass (I kept failing the mission because whenever I realised what was going on, already the pods were jumping out...), only to reach the final mission and watch it kick our butts off.
lolwut?
Either I missed some fairly important missions, I'm completely misreading your post, or you're confusing the Imperieuse with the Agincourt.
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I think he very well is. But TBH I got pretty pissed at Laporte for saying 'massacring pods now!' during The Plunder.
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I think he very well is. But TBH I got pretty pissed at Laporte for saying 'massacring pods now!' during The Plunder.
That was pretty clearly a veiled, acerbic protest, not some kind of celebration. She even says she hopes they were unmanned afterward.
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I got pretty pissed at Laporte for saying 'massacring pods now!' during The Plunder.
Replay that mish. She pretty clearly states that she hopes these pods were automated to call for reinforcements after jumping and not "full of panicked crewmen".
EDIT: STOP NINJA'ING MEE
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The intent of that line will probably be a lot more clear when you guys find someone other than Microsoft Mary to say it. ;)
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The only thing about that mission I was a bit disappointed was, that the escape pods don't have an engine subsystem. On my first playthrough I tried to disable them with the scalpel, but that didn't do anything other than producing pretty lights.
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Give 'em time to do the voice actin', heheh. Although she might hope they were unmanned, massacring is a very strong word.
I mean, say the sentence 'Massacring escape pods now!', to yourself. Don't you feel anything? If not, try saying it to your family or someone. They'd think you're nuts or something and laugh at you :P
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Give 'em time to do the voice actin', heheh. Although she might hope they were unmanned, massacring is a very strong word.
I mean, say the sentence 'Massacring escape pods now!', to yourself. Don't you feel anything? If not, try saying it to your family or someone. They'd think you're nuts or something and laugh at you :P
Did you read the explanation of the line above? Are you a native English speaker? Do you see what Laporte is saying with the line?
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I think that BP's balance between the two sides is pretty spot on, so I have no clue on what TOA is banging about.
The only issue I have with the campaign is the big "**** you" with the imperieuse at the end, I mean, we got the trouble to steal it and it was a pain in the ass (I kept failing the mission because whenever I realised what was going on, already the pods were jumping out...), only to reach the final mission and watch it kick our butts off.
wwwwwwwait
The ship you stole was the Agincourt, a logistics and supply ship.
The ship that ambushes the Wargods in Delenda Est is the Imperieuse, a fully armed next-generation destroyer/carrier.
The war would be going really badly if the Titan destroyers were just logistics ships.
Ahhh now I see what went wrong in the campaign.
My own ****ing brain! :lol:
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Also, if you didn't read the fiction, then you didn't really played to WiH.
I read.... half of it.....
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The only thing about that mission I was a bit disappointed was, that the escape pods don't have an engine subsystem. On my first playthrough I tried to disable them with the scalpel, but that didn't do anything other than producing pretty lights.
I'm almost certain I disabled the escape pods, but the mission wouldn't continue until it went away.
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They said Steele might've planned for all that, like the Agincourt's theft and all that. But...Steele didn't seem to be fazed by it. Chiwetel Steele, eh...
What is the origin of Chiwetel? French? No idea about Steele, heheh.
Give 'em time to do the voice actin', heheh. Although she might hope they were unmanned, massacring is a very strong word.
I mean, say the sentence 'Massacring escape pods now!', to yourself. Don't you feel anything? If not, try saying it to your family or someone. They'd think you're nuts or something and laugh at you :P
Did you read the explanation of the line above? Are you a native English speaker? Do you see what Laporte is saying with the line?
I've read the explanation, and yes, I'm a native English speaker. But no, I don't see what Laporte is saying, if anything it was a horrible attempt at sour sarcasm (if that's intended) in a 'serious' situation. I don't deny I'm dense most of the time, but I'm sure there are better words. If not, I really don't get Laporte...
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The only thing about that mission I was a bit disappointed was, that the escape pods don't have an engine subsystem. On my first playthrough I tried to disable them with the scalpel, but that didn't do anything other than producing pretty lights.
I'm almost certain I disabled the escape pods, but the mission wouldn't continue until it went away.
I've tried disabling them with Scalpels and never managed to do it. Unless the Hermes' engine hitbox is messed up and I didn't know about it, I dont think they're actually disable-able.
And Luis, I kinda want to know how WiH worked out in your mind when you were confusing those two ships. It must have been...surreal :lol:
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The only thing about that mission I was a bit disappointed was, that the escape pods don't have an engine subsystem. On my first playthrough I tried to disable them with the scalpel, but that didn't do anything other than producing pretty lights.
I'm almost certain I disabled the escape pods, but the mission wouldn't continue until it went away.
I've tried disabling them with Scalpels and never managed to do it. Unless the Hermes' engine hitbox is messed up and I didn't know about it, I dont think they're actually disable-able.
And Luis, I kinda want to know how WiH worked out in your mind when you were confusing those two ships. It must have been...surreal :lol:
(http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/images/Gtlanemoi.jpg) (http://www.hard-light.net/wiki/images/thumb/Gtdtitan.jpg/500px-Gtdtitan.jpg)
They look eerily similar actually.
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Give 'em time to do the voice actin', heheh. Although she might hope they were unmanned, massacring is a very strong word.
I mean, say the sentence 'Massacring escape pods now!', to yourself. Don't you feel anything? If not, try saying it to your family or someone. They'd think you're nuts or something and laugh at you :P
Did you read the explanation of the line above? Are you a native English speaker? Do you see what Laporte is saying with the line?
While the subsequent line about hoping the pods were unmanned partially clears things up, the difference between an enthusiastic "massacring escape pods now!" and a disgusted/sarcastic "massacring escape pods now!" is 100% tonal. The tone we had to work with was "mass-uh-CURRR-ring ess-CAYP PAWDZ now," which doesn't give us a hell of a lot of hints. :p
As presented currently, the scene can validly be interpreted as Noemi first bloodthirstily going for the kill, and subsequently expressing remorse/hoping she didn't actually kill anyone. Given the fact that by this point the GTVA had suspended BETAC and massacred its fair share of defenseless civilians, coupled with Noemi's deeply-conflicted-verging-on-mentally-ill personality, this reading of her lines isn't exactly far fetched.
That said, given the success of AoA I'm sure you guys will find a voice actor who will clean up this little problem quite handily.
What is the origin of Chiwetel? French?
Igbo origin, Anglicized short form of Chiwetelu.
As for the difference between an Anemoi and a Titan, it would have been pretty hilarious if Steele had shown up during Delenda Est with the Agincourt. :lol:
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Give 'em time to do the voice actin', heheh. Although she might hope they were unmanned, massacring is a very strong word.
I mean, say the sentence 'Massacring escape pods now!', to yourself. Don't you feel anything? If not, try saying it to your family or someone. They'd think you're nuts or something and laugh at you :P
Did you read the explanation of the line above? Are you a native English speaker? Do you see what Laporte is saying with the line?
I've read the explanation, and yes, I'm a native English speaker. But no, I don't see what Laporte is saying, if anything it was a horrible attempt at sour sarcasm (if that's intended) in a 'serious' situation. I don't deny I'm dense most of the time, but I'm sure there are better words. If not, I really don't get Laporte...
She's protesting the order and calling attention to the fact that they could well be slaughtering a bunch of panicked deckhands.
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And Luis, I kinda want to know how WiH worked out in your mind when you were confusing those two ships. It must have been...surreal :lol:
I was like "wtf, .... gROansnfnble... but I CAPTURED THAT "#%&"#$&"! "
Then I was like "yeaaaah perhaps this was covered by the fiction parts I didn't read.... (guilt)"
And then I was like "Yeah wtv, I have to change the diapers of my son, cool campaign kthnksbye!"
@Destiny, yeah well I wouldn't confuse a Raynor with it. Not that distracted!
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An Anemoi and a Titan hardly look alike.
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An Anemoi and a Titan hardly look alike.
To be fair, when I look at the Anemoi, the first thing to spring to mind is not 'logistics ship'. The color scheme and basic design doesn't really reflect its function too well - it looks like a super-sleek destroyer that for some reason someone forgot to arm. Stick a few awkward looking docking clamps onto the side, and we might get the point a bit better.
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The tanks that surround it are what sell it to me. Despite the two being completely different in appearance, all the time playing Independence War 2 and looking at the Gas Transports (Big brown ships with huge tanks on them) I imagine the Anemoi having basically the same thing in those tanks if not other kinds of liquids.
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They could also store non-liquid stuff in there. It would actually make sense to prepare complete "tanks" at the supply base, then just switch the empty tanks with the filled ones and have the logistic ship going far faster than if you had to carry all the materials over with smaller transports, or through docking tunnels.... if they are detachable that is (in fluff, not game).
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Stick a few awkward looking docking clamps onto the side, and we might get the point a bit better.
I believe the Anemoi did at one point have weird looking docking clamps (on a completely different model), but they had to go back to the current model because they couldn't contact the original creator.
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Stick a few awkward looking docking clamps onto the side, and we might get the point a bit better.
I believe the Anemoi did at one point have weird looking docking clamps (on a completely different model), but they had to go back to the current model because they couldn't contact the original creator.
I'm going to guess it was the Goner Mobile Shipyard made by Mox of Xtended mod for X3R.
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That wasn't a guess Ravenholme :P
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That wasn't a guess Ravenholme :P
Wellll, it was a very educated guess.
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Hey, maybe vasudans enter the war, I remember that there was an attempted diplomatic contact with them, which ended in complete failure, because the terran sabotaged, and the captain of the destroyer vasudan I saw quite disappointed,
if vasudans actively enter the war, I think the UEF has no chance,
the vasudans are much better than the terran, just be the end for the UEF, should they intervene
also it would help a lot of diplomatic relations between the terran and vasudans and would fight side by side against another "evil" enemy, The UEF
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Yeah, after the crushing defeat at Saturn, Brynes Secret Project better be pretty bad ass or its game over for the UEF. Regardless, I think that in some form, there will be a reunification of Sol with the GTVA, whichever side wins, because the ultimate trump card still remains - the Shivans.
Think about it. The GTVA went to war to stop Ubuntu from spreading, in a way, they may have already won. They've hardened resolve in Earth to fight against them, and introduced Ubuntu to its first external test. I think that even if the UEF wins, the GTVA has still secured its goal, because the pacifism they were afraid of could not and would not have survived the war.
The vibe im getting off the message of the Vishnans in AoA about bringing the rest of the race to 'enlightenment' is that ultimately, Earth has the right idea. So I can see Ubuntu spreading, but i guess, 'Evolved Ubuntu', because the Ubuntu that developed on Earth can't work either, it grew in isolation. This war will have gone a LONG way towards teaching the people of the UEF that the universe is a cold and unforgiving place, and that the lesson they can learn from the GTVA is that they need to be ready to defend themselves.
Besides, if and when the Shivans return, can you imagine the awesome force that the combined armament of GTVA weaponry and UEF style weaponry could dish out? Allthough I've noticed we seem to refer to the Shivan's as idiots who always throw hordes of fighter craft at their enemies until something breaks. That strategy has worked for them in the past, but who's to say they are incapable of changing their tactics and updating their hardware? They've been knocking down races for thousands upon thousands of years, I'm pretty sure they're adaptable.
Anyways, I'm rambling. I think, based on the imperatives laid out by the Vishnans, certain things need to happen to guarantee humanity's survival, and neither side will be recognizable when the dust settles.
While on that point though, I had to get past the whole Vishnan thing before I really thought about it. I never liked the whole spiritual enlightenment theme of AoA, it was a real departure from what I was used to. A good story by far, and I'm pumped for the next installment... but I dunno. I liked the Shivans when they were a roving genocidal force difficult to define and without any great purpose except perhaps they didnt like it when people started picking on other races (drawing from the Ancient monologues here). It felt more rewarding to think of an ultimate victory over the shivans as a product of our determination and military prowess then because we found enlightenment. Just my two cents, but its not my story, and its a good story, and im pumped to see where the final conclusion of it goes.
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Good stuff Drogoth.
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Good stuff Drogoth.
Yes. :yes:
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It felt more rewarding to think of an ultimate victory over the shivans as a product of our determination and military prowess then because we found enlightenment. Just my two cents, but its not my story, and its a good story, and im pumped to see where the final conclusion of it goes.
In some sense, I don't believe it's possible to deal with the Shivans on a level except for militarily. The Vishnans actually tried, from a position the Shivans actually acknowledged as an equal, at the end of AoA and the Shivans still defaulted to CrushKillDestroy when the crunch came, facing a race that could easily be mistaken for gods.
At some point the Shivans will probably have to be fought regardless. The real question is when and how.
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"When" is "when we have a technological chance of doing so positively; "How" is a combination of technology, economics and tactics.
Given the advaces of Shivans in almost all of these aspects (perhaps with the exception of "tactics"), I would guess that "When" translates to "As Later As ****ing Possible", ALAFP.
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With combined arms, they have a slim chance...
UEF ships with GTVA drives and reactors, pummeling the Shivans with long range fire, while GTVA vessels shock jump them, when their forward armarment is being taken out...
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"When" is "when we have a technological chance of doing so positively; "How" is a combination of technology, economics and tactics.
We don't have to be able to actually beat the Shivans. We just have to make them think we can, or even, now that they've been revealed as rational or semi-rational beings, that mutual annihilation is on the table. Building confidence via a series of limited, controllable engagements and keeping a finger on the pulse of Shivan ship design and tactics are both goals that could be accomplished with existing means at the time of WiH, though perhaps not for long.
It would also do a lot to reduce their threat. One of the reasons the Shivans are such a big scary problem is simply a lack of knowledge about their capabilities and mindset. This is something you could reasonably cure by fighting limited actions and watching how they respond.
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It would also do a lot to reduce their threat. One of the reasons the Shivans are such a big scary problem is simply a lack of knowledge about their capabilities and mindset. This is something you could reasonably cure by fighting limited actions and watching how they respond.
Your last point was what the GTVA did during the second incursion...
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Your last point was what the GTVA did during the second incursion...
No, I'm pretty sure it wasn't. For one thing, they would have shut the Knossos off on a schedule to make sure nobody got through.
For another, the way the Second Incursion was fought, in particular the attack on the gas miners, has always lead me to believe that the GTVA at some point actually went for broke and started cracking heads on a major scale. Attacking that sort of a rear-area operation doesn't read like poking them to see how much noise they make.
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In BP canon the GTVA higher-ups decided to see if they could press for a true strategic victory against the Shivans during the Second Incursion. NGTM1R's analysis is correct.
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With combined arms, they have a slim chance...
UEF ships with GTVA drives and reactors, pummeling the Shivans with long range fire, while GTVA vessels shock jump them, when their forward armarment is being taken out...
Indeed, but the shivans have shown they could adapt to their enemy's tech, especially according to BP-canon, which states that their fighter's primaries are voluntarily downgraded.
If they decide to improve their primaries, improve their beam's range and maybe throw more lilith-like warships, thing are going to be tough. We are also unsure wether beam jamming is going to work on shivans, and given the subspace agility usually given to shivan, they could just short-shock-jump an artillery unit. Although I'm not sure about BP-canon's position regarding shivan jump agility.
Anyway, long story short, I think that even a GTVA-UEF combined strike force would have some difficulties fighting off shivans (unless they stick to retail ships/weapons).
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Not to mention (again, because it seems that people tend to easily forget it) that UEF ships are not suited to operate out of Sol. That makes GTVA-UEF combined strikes very unlikely in the rest of the Tev systems. And which means that the Tevs are back to square one, defending their own territory by themselves.
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Thats what I wrote: UEF ships need GTVA jumpdrives and logistic ships etc...
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They would also need GTVA weapons. Given that the main guns on UEF ships are all ammunition-based, they simply do not have the option of straying far from their supply sources. In RL terms, the UEF is a shore navy, and cannot stray far from its home port, as opposed to the GTVA's blue-water navy.
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Oh, that's actually new to me...but makes sense...
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I think it's pretty obvious that you would need to outdo by some orders of magnitude the technological achievements of GTVA / UEF to get the Shivans to "scared" or "respectful" mode. Specially since they should be pretty aware of your astonishingly tiny puny and "mostly harmless" status.
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which states that their fighter's primaries are voluntarily downgraded.
We know that many of their weapons are runnibg on lower performance than they could manage, but we do not know wether that really is voluntarily.
It could be that they can only replicate their weapons, but don't really know the technology well enough to adjust them to full power, or that the original designs are sacred and cannot under any circumstance be modified (like Covernant technology in Halo, or the mechanicus in WH40K) or that there is a higher authority forbidding them from using their full power or whatever.
In short: We only know there are limiters there, but not wether they are in there because the Shivans want them to be there or wether they can just switch the limiters off.
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OOOh - UEF ships are more like galleys and GTVA ships are more ships of the line?
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UEF Weaponry could still be adapted for outsystem engagement, it simply wouldn't be nearly as adaptable as the GTVA units. I think an offensive campaign against the Shivans would boil down to GTVA style ships running recon and exploratory offense and once a target of value was discovered, combined GTVA/UEF style force would knock it down.
As for defending Tev systems, I simply do not agree that UEF style weaponry couldn't be used in that role. Obviously if the GTVA started commissioning ammunition using ships for that role they would have the supply net in each system or perhaps in 'hub systems' to keep that force well supplied
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As for defending Tev systems, I simply do not agree that UEF style weaponry couldn't be used in that role. Obviously if the GTVA started commissioning ammunition using ships for that role they would have the supply net in each system or perhaps in 'hub systems' to keep that force well supplied
Then guess what, Shivans come and om nom nom it all with a bunch of SF Dragons, cruisers, corvettes or destroyers. They're capable of doing just that. If not, another Lucifer-class vessel might appear with it's 30km range Shivan Super Laser turned beam, or the Sathanas spam.
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As for defending Tev systems, I simply do not agree that UEF style weaponry couldn't be used in that role. Obviously if the GTVA started commissioning ammunition using ships for that role they would have the supply net in each system or perhaps in 'hub systems' to keep that force well supplied
Then guess what, Shivans come and om nom nom it all with a bunch of SF Dragons, cruisers, corvettes or destroyers. They're capable of doing just that. If not, another Lucifer-class vessel might appear with it's 30km range Shivan Super Laser turned beam, or the Sathanas spam.
Destiny, that argument honestly made no sense to me, could you reword?
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He seems to be saying the shivans will just mob the Tevs and kill everything anyways.
:doubt:
Also something in there about the shivans 'om nom nomming' the ships supplying the UEF style warships.
Which is kinda silly, you could just escort the supply ships.
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As for defending Tev systems, I simply do not agree that UEF style weaponry couldn't be used in that role. Obviously if the GTVA started commissioning ammunition using ships for that role they would have the supply net in each system or perhaps in 'hub systems' to keep that force well supplied
Then guess what, Shivans come and om nom nom it all with a bunch of SF Dragons, cruisers, corvettes or destroyers. They're capable of doing just that. If not, another Lucifer-class vessel might appear with it's 30km range Shivan Super Laser turned beam, or the Sathanas spam.
By that logic we shouldn't have any space borne infrastructure Why build repair yards to repair damaged ships when the shivans might just 'omnom' them? Especially in the BPVerse, where we have huge Logistics Ships which could easily carry replacement ammunition in a mobile format. Besides, like I said, we could keep them in 'hub' systems and distribute in smaller packets to active operation areas. And I would submit to you that if the Shivans can just 'omnom' our core systems at will despite any defences we might mount, then we've already lost.
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As for defending Tev systems, I simply do not agree that UEF style weaponry couldn't be used in that role. Obviously if the GTVA started commissioning ammunition using ships for that role they would have the supply net in each system or perhaps in 'hub systems' to keep that force well supplied
Then guess what, Shivans come and om nom nom it all with a bunch of SF Dragons, cruisers, corvettes or destroyers. They're capable of doing just that. If not, another Lucifer-class vessel might appear with it's 30km range Shivan Super Laser turned beam, or the Sathanas spam.
Destiny, that argument honestly made no sense to me, could you reword?
Eh, that was too cryptic? There's nothing from preventing the Shivans from as QuakeIV said, mobbing the GTVA/UEF supply net/hub system. If anything, they're insanely good at mauling people who do that. That's why GTVA ships are were designed to be self-sufficient (sorry, can't find the right word) in the long run. The Shivans have the subspace agility. Subspace tracking is not limited to the humans. They can reliably intercept and destroy Anemois and their attending fleets with the sheer numbers and beam superiority they possess. And Drogoth, the Shivans already have eaten up our core systems.
Twice.
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I think it's pretty canon that FS2 describes a "lost war", Drogoth. The only way GTVA can possibly defend its systems against the Shivans is by mounting a sufficient defence to delay the Shivans from entering core systems with enough time in order to nuke the nodes connecting to them.
That's the only strategy that has the slightest chance of managing a state of affairs where the GTVA population isn't genocided to oblivion.
In the long run, the best possible strategy is to keep defending the systems this way, until you get sufficiently technologically capable to mount a credible threat to the Shivans. There are others, like attempting communication, or just be very good at isolating yourself forever.
One could imagine a galaxy filled with isolated species, the few ones who were able to defend themselves in that way against the shivans. Wouldn't it be great if these species managed a way to talk to each other?
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As for defending Tev systems, I simply do not agree that UEF style weaponry couldn't be used in that role. Obviously if the GTVA started commissioning ammunition using ships for that role they would have the supply net in each system or perhaps in 'hub systems' to keep that force well supplied
Then guess what, Shivans come and om nom nom it all with a bunch of SF Dragons, cruisers, corvettes or destroyers. They're capable of doing just that. If not, another Lucifer-class vessel might appear with it's 30km range Shivan Super Laser turned beam, or the Sathanas spam.
Destiny, that argument honestly made no sense to me, could you reword?
Eh, that was too cryptic? There's nothing from preventing the Shivans from as QuakeIV said, mobbing the GTVA/UEF supply net/hub system. If anything, they're insanely good at mauling people who do that. That's why GTVA ships are were designed to be self-sufficient (sorry, can't find the right word) in the long run. The Shivans have the subspace agility. Subspace tracking is not limited to the humans. They can reliably intercept and destroy Anemois and their attending fleets with the sheer numbers and beam superiority they possess. And Drogoth, the Shivans already have eaten up our core systems.
Twice.
It took them quite some time to push through to Vasuda and ultimately Sol, even with the Lucifer being untouchable at the time. And the second time they took down 1, count em ONE of our systems, and they had to come through a route that we had already identified. They didn't just sprout up in Vega or Delta Serpentis for example, they came to Capella through a defined route. Even the blitz in the great war had defined entry points.
Even assuming they do a repeat of the Great War and enter unexpectedly in multiple systems, I simply don't buy the argument that we shouldn't build ammunition depots because they could possibly be destroyed. I'm not saying the Shivans couldn't destroy them (provided they reach the system in question), but the simple fact that they can is no reason to lie down and play dead.
The flexibility of having forces that can engage from extreme range far outweighs the risk that our depots might get hit. I'm by no means advocating a total switch over to UEF doctrine, that would leave us at to high of a risk of depot hits, but a mixed fleet would be the most effective answer to the Shivan threat IMHO. Engaging a Sathanas from extreme range seems better then launching fighters and hoping they can disable the beam cannons in time for example.
And Luis Dias, that delaying action constitutes a win in my books, I'm not saying having these ammo dumps will let us suddenly **** all over the Shivans, but a mixed fleet will be more effective at fighting them then just closing to beam range and slugging it out like we always have.
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The first time, they had shields and we didn't, and they had a capship that was actually invulnerable to everything.
The second time, they unveiled WTFPWN beams and Juggernauts, and still only got as far as Capella.
In the alternate universe, a pair of destroyers, a trio of corvettes, and a few cruisers and support ships ate a Juggernaut, a Lucifer, and eight or nine destroyers for breakfast. Granted, the Lucifer got taken with help, but the Juggernaut and four destroyers went down hard and fast, without Vishnan help, and without friendly capship losses. In a situation where resupply was difficult, repairs were done quickly, with minimal outside support, and there was no loss replacement.
With full logistical support, loss replacement for any ambushes or a few stupid mistakes, and the might of the full Terran and Vasudan armadas, the Shivans are hardly likely to "om nom nom" anything but beams.
Yeah, the GTVA can't straight up WIN against the Shivans, mostly because we have no knowledge of their full strength, the location of any production facilities, or anything of the sort, they can sure as hell make the Shivans lose too.
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I really doubt that. If they really wanted to, I have a feeling the Shivans could just steamroll the GTVA in a couple weeks. They might take massive losses but do they really give a toss?
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Even assuming they do a repeat of the Great War and enter unexpectedly in multiple systems, I simply don't buy the argument that we shouldn't build ammunition depots because they could possibly be destroyed. I'm not saying the Shivans couldn't destroy them (provided they reach the system in question), but the simply fact that they can is no reason to lie down and play dead.
Sure. You want to delay their ramming as much as possible.
And Luis Dias, that delaying action constitutes a win in my books, I'm not saying having these ammo dumps will let us suddenly **** all over the Shivans, but a mixed fleet will be more effective at fighting them then just closing to beam range and slugging it out like we always have.
Sure it is a win. Just like me fleeing from bullies and escaping a brutal beating is a "win". Yeah, look at me "winning" as fast as I can!! ! :lol:
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Even assuming they do a repeat of the Great War and enter unexpectedly in multiple systems, I simply don't buy the argument that we shouldn't build ammunition depots because they could possibly be destroyed. I'm not saying the Shivans couldn't destroy them (provided they reach the system in question), but the simply fact that they can is no reason to lie down and play dead.
Sure. You want to delay their ramming as much as possible.
And Luis Dias, that delaying action constitutes a win in my books, I'm not saying having these ammo dumps will let us suddenly **** all over the Shivans, but a mixed fleet will be more effective at fighting them then just closing to beam range and slugging it out like we always have.
Sure it is a win. Just like me fleeing from bullies and escaping a brutal beating is a "win". Yeah, look at me "winning" as fast as I can!! ! :lol:
*shrug* haha, if it keeps us alive to fight another day...
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I really doubt that. If they really wanted to, I have a feeling the Shivans could just steamroll the GTVA in a couple weeks. They might take massive losses but do they really give a toss?
I don't think they do, it occurred to me that the Shivans were just...taking their time, playing around until the first Sathanas was blown up.
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The first time, they had shields and we didn't, and they had a capship that was actually invulnerable to everything.
The second time, they unveiled WTFPWN beams and Juggernauts, and still only got as far as Capella.
Ok, let's check this out. They only "got as far as Capella" because apparently they were only interested in its star. Had they rallied for the Vega or Epsilon Pegasi node as far as they could, they would just steamroll every humanzod colony. GTVA was "lucky" they went for the star instead.
The "win" that Drogoth talks about is really about being ignored by the bully and escape certain doom. It's when a lion gets up to two meters in front of you, then ignores you and goes trashing your tent, you run to your car and flee and then call it a "win".
In the alternate universe, a pair of destroyers, a trio of corvettes, and a few cruisers and support ships ate a Juggernaut, a Lucifer, and eight or nine destroyers for breakfast. Granted, the Lucifer got taken with help, but the Juggernaut and four destroyers went down hard and fast, without Vishnan help, and without friendly capship losses. In a situation where resupply was difficult, repairs were done quickly, with minimal outside support, and there was no loss replacement.
You talk as if GTVA is filled with Rainors and all the updated warships. What will these fleets do when faced towards a fleet of 80 Sathanas? Do I even have to remind you the giganormous multikilometer ship we are presented in the end of AoA? What answer can you possibly give to that?
With full logistical support, loss replacement for any ambushes or a few stupid mistakes, and the might of the full Terran and Vasudan armadas, the Shivans are hardly likely to "om nom nom" anything but beams.
Ahhhh you'd do a terrific "Command Guy" :lol:
Yeah, the GTVA can't straight up WIN against the Shivans, mostly because we have no knowledge of their full strength, the location of any production facilities, or anything of the sort, they can sure as hell make the Shivans lose too.
Hmmm not.
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Even if the Shivans had gone for other systems, destroying the node stops any reinforcements, and mop up is simple enough, if not exactly easy. Worth noting that this would have happened even if the Sathanases had gone for other systems anyway. De-beaming a Sathanas is not impossible, or even especially difficult compared to some other things. BP canon has a Sathanas being destroyed with no loses by less than half a battlegroup, when the Sathanas gets as good of a shot at them as it's ever realistically likely to get, coming in close enough to easily close to beam range.
Instead, it gets torn to ribbons by the Orestes's bomber wings, and goes down hard. Even allowing for Shivan escorts this remains effective, and we've only ever seen Sathanases deployed solo.
There are at least four full battlegroups composed of the new Raynor and Titan class destroyers: the 14th, the 15th, and two currently unnamed battlegroups that (if you were in IRC that day) we have confirmed, for a total of four of each kind of new destroyer. Supplemented with Mjolnirs and Meson bombs, I'm fairly convinced that a node could be held against damn near anything the Shivans can throw.
Terran Command isn't retarded, you know. Try thinking strategically instead of as the pilot you play as. Nearly everything he does/says makes sense on that level.
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Even if the Shivans had gone for other systems, destroying the node stops any reinforcements, and mop up is simple enough, if not exactly easy. Worth noting that this would have happened even if the Sathanases had gone for other systems anyway. De-beaming a Sathanas is not impossible, or even especially difficult compared to some other things. BP canon has a Sathanas being destroyed with no loses by less than half a battlegroup, when the Sathanas gets as good of a shot at them as it's ever realistically likely to get, coming in close enough to easily close to beam range.
Instead, it gets torn to ribbons by the Orestes's bomber wings, and goes down hard. Even allowing for Shivan escorts this remains effective, and we've only ever seen Sathanases deployed solo.
There are at least four full battlegroups composed of the new Raynor and Titan class destroyers: the 14th, the 15th, and two currently unnamed battlegroups that (if you were in IRC that day) we have confirmed, for a total of four of each kind of new destroyer. Supplemented with Mjolnirs and Meson bombs, I'm fairly convinced that a node could be held against damn near anything the Shivans can throw.
Terran Command isn't retarded, you know. Try thinking strategically instead of as the pilot you play as. Nearly everything he does/says makes sense on that level.
While i dont think we dont have a chance at survival, i also disagree that the shivans would be so easily put to rest.
We are forgetting that in the BPverse, the only time we've seen the shivans since the second incursion was in the alternate universe where we had never had beam weapons before. In the actual universe they have whitnessed capella era firepower, and could likely adapt. We're assuming that they will continue using capella era ships and weapons indefinitely. That is a bad assumption
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Even if the Shivans had gone for other systems, destroying the node stops any reinforcements, and mop up is simple enough, if not exactly easy. Worth noting that this would have happened even if the Sathanases had gone for other systems anyway.
You can't destroy a node that you aren't in control of. From the moment that you are steamrolled out of the Pegasi node, you can't destroy it anymore. And your only chance is to get other nodes destroyed. You may still try to get Polaris or Regulus, but that would be tight. If however the Sathanas were to get Vega, they would be opened to both Deneb and Beta Aquilea, which in turn would open the Shivans to Vasuda, Sirius, Antares and Delta Serpentis. From the moment they get Vega, they are already dividing GTVA territory in two. And with Beta Aquilea, in three.
Your fleet would be separated from itself, divided and outnumbered. You could aspire for some conjunction of systems to be able to isolate themselves, but it would be a very tight operation, and needless to say, you'd lose a lot of systems and populations.
De-beaming a Sathanas is not impossible, or even especially difficult compared to some other things. BP canon has a Sathanas being destroyed with no loses by less than half a battlegroup, when the Sathanas gets as good of a shot at them as it's ever realistically likely to get, coming in close enough to easily close to beam range.
That's one Sathanas against a battlegroup. Now try a whole Sathanas fleet packed with destroyers and cruisers, not trying to "catch" a runaway fleet but just interested in bombing planets. Now you get to defend said planets with a torn, divided and disorganized bunch of spare ships. Good luck with that.
There are at least four full battlegroups composed of the new Raynor and Titan class destroyers: the 14th, the 15th, and two currently unnamed battlegroups that (if you were in IRC that day) we have confirmed, for a total of four of each kind of new destroyer. Supplemented with Mjolnirs and Meson bombs, I'm fairly convinced that a node could be held against damn near anything the Shivans can throw.
You still need time to mount up such defense. If you lose a node, you will be pressed to reorganize defenses on multiple nodes now. How will you be able to destroy these gargantuan fleets with 4 Raynors and a bunch of Mjolnirs? You may get the first 4 or 5 Sathanas.... only to be steamrolled by the flood not much longer than that.
Terran Command isn't retarded, you know. Try thinking strategically instead of as the pilot you play as. Nearly everything he does/says makes sense on that level.
Yeah thanks for that, I had never wondered about strategies before you know.
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Every time these arguments come up, whoever is arguing against the GTVA starts from a position of how everything possible goes wrong and assumes that as what will happen. I admit I tend to stray a bit too far in the other direction, but still, the GTVA failing to block every single node as the Shivans move? If the Shivans had shown an inclination to move on other systems, you can bet Command would have been hurrying quite a bit faster to shut those nodes. Shivans get to Epsilon Pegasi, shut the next layer of nodes. Information travels faster than ships ever can, and as a position is lost, the next steps up. Maybe during the SSI they would have succeeded in getting through. Maybe. Certainly not now.
When the node shuts, the fleet can easily deal with any isolated Shivan remnants.
Re-read the FS1 briefings and such. The Shivans hold no interest in planets, going instead for control of subspace nodes and transit points to planets' direct exclusion. Ships coming through a node are easy prey for Mjolnirs and blockades. Ships heading toward nodes are easy prey for Mjolnirs and blockades. Ships staging between nodes are easy prey for bombers. The NTF end-run through the series of blockades to Gamma Draconis shows just how deadly blockades are to masses capital ships in rapid transit. Yes, the SJ Sathanas smashes a blockade to get to where it's going in Bearbaiting, but that blockade was ill informed of the juggernauts abilities. Defending a node means that the GTVA picks exactly where and how a fight goes down, and can stack all the advantages against the Shivans. A tactical reserve of the new corvettes allows Command to hunt down and destroy any ship that escapes before the blockade is destroyed, and when the blockade is lost, the transit to the node to assist in the defense or move to the next system in, if necessary.
And again it all comes down to time. An effective blockade nets the GTVA precious minutes to bring node closers into position. Minutes are all it takes, and the new ships and tactical doctrines of the GTVA net a lot of minutes in the form of savaging the front end of the Shivan column. Those "torn, divided, and disorganized bunch of spare ships" we've already seen completely destroy a Sathanas and its entire escort (provided the escort existed. I'm inclined to think it did), once again, with zero losses.
Don't be so quick to discount the Titan destroyers. They may not have the straight up firepower of a Raynor, but they can damn well take care of themselves. Witness the Temeraire against the four Shivan destroyers between Frankenstein's Monsters, Forced Entry, and Preserving the Balance, and how it nearly effortlessly wipes the floor with all of them. Eight next generation destroyers, plus an untold number of new corvettes, which in conjunction have been shown to mop the floor with Sathanases. You can't tell me those are ineffective against the Shivans, because they obviously are.
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Terran Command isn't retarded, you know.
"GTT Stern, you are under direct orders to dock with the Shivan cargo!"
Also, you seem to assume that the Shivans will continue screwing around once they feel seriously threatened. The main batteries on Titans and Raynors are much, much, more fragile than the ones on Sathanases.
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Scotty, they're merely lone destroyers, give or take with escorts that the Temeraire beat. Also in Forced Entry we (The bunch of us in the multi test :P) were the ones who took down the Abel's beams and saved the Temeraire's ass.
I'd say more, but there's many more perspectives that I wanna read.
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It seems to boil down to this on the strategic scale:
If the GTVA can get a massive network of empty systems with sensor platforms, watching for the Shivans, they can deploy their destroyers and anemoi to fight a Russian style retreating attack to grind down the Shivans before they even reach the core systems.
At some point or another the GTVA will be forced to face the Shivans head on, however the GTVA have the logistical capability to operate ships very far away from home. They therefore would be in a very good position to cause huge amounts of trouble for the Shivans.
Circumventing centralised offensives and cutting supply lines, doing huge damage to the rear.
Being able to pick and choose where and when the enemy ships are to be attacked.
You could destroy well over 80 sathanii if the situation is handled correctly.
The Shivans can feel free to adapt, they are either slowed down and forced to decentralize and deal with the harassing fleets, or they could try to centralize and starve to death from lack of supply lines.
History has demonstrated from Sun Tzu forward that its almost impossible to attack an enemy that chooses to fight like that.
EDIT: Pretty late for me to be thinking about war on the strategic scale, so this probably doesn't make sense in one way or another.
Assuming I'm wrong in I'll probably massively shift my stance upon analysis of a counter argument, this isn't a concrete statement of my position on matters.
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Scotty, they're merely lone destroyers, give or take with escorts that the Temeraire beat. Also in Forced Entry we (The bunch of us in the multi test :P) were the ones who took down the Abel's beams and saved the Temeraire's ass.
Of course. :P
However, the Kyton was destroyed in a matter of seconds with no damage sustained, the Abel was destroyed with help of the integral fighter cover any destroyer has, and was already heavily damaged from the delaying action the Temeraire was at in the first place (where, given the duration of the action, we can expect the Abel to have NOT been the only Shivan capital ship). The two from Preserving the Balance were with support from integral fighter cover, a rather undergunned bullseye, and a corvette.
I'm not convinced a Sathanas could stand up to even a properly supported Titan. Or even a lone Titan with an experienced bomber unit.
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If the Sath gets the jump on the Titan, easily
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If the Sath gets the jump on the Titan, easily
In a straight up battle a sathanas could take a titan easy as well.
I'm sure the GTVA could crunch up 80 plus sathanas easily provided they successfully ambushed all of them and the Shivans were to stupid to adapt. I mean yeah, when the deck is stacked in the GTVA's favor they can win but the first rule of every battle plan is that no battle plan survives first contact with the enemy. Things could get very bad very fast.
As such, I think the GTVA might had a fighting chance at beating back another Shivan invasion.. but it wouldn't be a cake walk. It wouldn't even be an even fight, it would be a grueling, monstrous task.
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If the Sath gets the jump on the Titan, easily
The expression is an equation, not an inequality. The exact same thing happens to the Sathanas if it gets jumped.
As such, I think the GTVA might had a fighting chance at beating back another Shivan invasion.. but it wouldn't be a cake walk. It wouldn't even be an even fight, it would be a grueling, monstrous task.
For what it's worth (and what it looks like :P ), I agree with you. When the Shivans adapt, and I have no doubt they will, the engagements will stop being "Pick Sath, flank, kill" and start being a tactical and strategic nightmare of constantly mobile ships on both sides, trying to pin down as many ships as they can. Unless, of course, the Shivans just go "**** THIS we have reserves" and refuse to change their tactics. Unlikely, but still possible.
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Could you guys provide an example of the Shivans "adapting anyways"?
Iv been reading that a lot but I cant think of an example myself.
My impression of their tactics in Freespace II amounts to sending in bigger and bigger warships until they start to win.
Freespace I is just desperately charging about with their super-destroyer in an attempt to destroy everything before the GTVA can wear them down and kill them.
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The Shivans in bp-verse have their technology hobbled for some reason, but are capable of being much more powerful.
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Could you guys provide an example of the Shivans "adapting anyways"?
Iv been reading that a lot but I cant think of an example myself.
My impression of their tactics in Freespace II amounts to sending in bigger and bigger warships until they start to win.
Freespace I is just desperately charging about with their super-destroyer in an attempt to destroy everything before the GTVA can wear them down and kill them.
They baited the GTA into caturing the Taranis and then tracked it to Tombaugh installation, subsequently destroying it.
Rigged Cargo containers to destroy the transports (Stern and Dobbs) that they new would probably pick up the cargo
They are capabale of strategies that are a little more under the table then just hitting things with a bigger wrench, but lets look at those situations you mentioned as well.
Both times, it arguably worked for them. The Lucifer could have and WOULD have completely destroyed us had we not lucked out and found the ancient records. The Sathanas fleet kicked the **** out of us and blew up a star, we barely bailed ourselves out of that one.
All I'm saying is that if the Shivans have been knocking down races like dominoes for thousands of years then I find it highly unlikely that they are unable to adapt. If ever their big ship strat starts to fail, I expect they'd develop new tactics
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Circumventing centralised offensives and cutting supply lines, doing huge damage to the rear.
Being able to pick and choose where and when the enemy ships are to be attacked.
You could destroy well over 80 sathanii if the situation is handled correctly.
The Shivans can feel free to adapt, they are either slowed down and forced to decentralize and deal with the harassing fleets, or they could try to centralize and starve to death from lack of supply lines.
That presupposes that the Shivans have rear areas that can be attacked. This might not be true.
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Presence of the SSG Rahu and gas mining operation suggests it is in fact the case, however.
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Hm...how was it possible that the Tev send in a Meson bomb in "The Blade Itself" without a Triton? Or was there a Triton which set us up the bomb and I didn't notice it due to heavy fighting?
My point: Is the GTVA able to simply send Meson bombs through subspace like in Stargate?
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Well, I think they sent it through one of the intra system gate, which are used by ships not equipped with subspace drive, iirc
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That presupposes that the Shivans have rear areas that can be attacked. This might not be true.
Well,
Presence of the SSG Rahu and gas mining operation suggests it is in fact the case, however.
and all the operations involving attacking Shivan supply convoys. They are as much dependant on logistics as we are, and those supplies have to come from somewhere.
Hm...how was it possible that the Tev send in a Meson bomb in "The Blade Itself" without a Triton? Or was there a Triton which set us up the bomb and I didn't notice it due to heavy fighting?
My point: Is the GTVA able to simply send Meson bombs through subspace like in Stargate?
The GTVA has made major progess in term of subspace technology since FS2 indeed. The Delta Serpentis-Knossos gate, the sprint jump drives and the SSM strikes are good examples of that.
But keep in mind that those intrasystem jump gates don't require any kind of jump drive installed. This is the very point in the first place. Shipping anything through them isn't more difficult than putting it in the big circle and pressing the right button.
Could you guys provide an example of the Shivans "adapting anyways"?
What, Shivans growing beam cannons and flak everywhere between FS1 and FS2 isn't enough for you ?
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Hm...how many dockpoints has a single logistic ship?
Equipping one with sprint jump drives, docking as much meson bombs as possible and using it as mine layer...several shivan capships emerge from subspace...blow the bomb...and sent in the ship, dropping the bomb.
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Every time these arguments come up, whoever is arguing against the GTVA starts from a position of how everything possible goes wrong and assumes that as what will happen. I admit I tend to stray a bit too far in the other direction, but still, the GTVA failing to block every single node as the Shivans move? If the Shivans had shown an inclination to move on other systems, you can bet Command would have been hurrying quite a bit faster to shut those nodes. Shivans get to Epsilon Pegasi, shut the next layer of nodes. Information travels faster than ships ever can, and as a position is lost, the next steps up. Maybe during the SSI they would have succeeded in getting through. Maybe. Certainly not now.
It's the exact other way around Scotty. Your idea is the one hanging in the balance against the odds. You need GTVA to deliver its punch perfectly throughout the entire Shivan armada flood without any kind of breach. If you are unable to do this, you will eventually lose. This is not because Murphy's law or anything like that, but because Shivan armada is just so much numerically superior to GTVAs.
And your points about Epsilon Pegasi nodes and what nots I have addressed them and you just ignored them. Were the Shivans to conquer the Vega node, you'd be completely ****ed up. So sure, I concede that if by lucky chance they will *all* go towards Epsilon Pegasi instead, you can win some time and shut down Regulus or something like that.
But you see, this only furthers my point that the GTVA position is the only hanging in the balance. dependent upon your enemie's mistakes rather than depending on its own capabilities.
Re-read the FS1 briefings and such. The Shivans hold no interest in planets, going instead for control of subspace nodes and transit points to planets' direct exclusion.
Yeah, that's why they didn't nuke Vasuda Prime nor did they bombard planet Earth in BP alternative universe.
Oh wait.
Ships coming through a node are easy prey for Mjolnirs and blockades. Ships heading toward nodes are easy prey for Mjolnirs and blockades.
Sure, a blockade would give Shivans a really bad time. Doesn't matter, they still have enough punch to ram through. Blockades work well in the first few minutes when the **** begins to hit the fan, but when your Mjolnirs and your Destroyers are getting distracted by swarms of shivan bombers and fighters, the shivan armada that passes through the nodes begins to last more than a few dozens of seconds, enough for them to beamrape your destroyers / mjolnirs. Eventually you will lose the node.
This strategy only works if your enemy is really worried about not losing many ships. But they have shown that they do not mind too much if they lose a destroyer or two.
Ships staging between nodes are easy prey for bombers. The NTF end-run through the series of blockades to Gamma Draconis shows just how deadly blockades are to masses capital ships in rapid transit.
Bad example for two big reasons. First, the NTF rush was a gambit maneuver to get Bosch into the nebula, and was never meant otherwise. In that regard, the NTF achieved their objective in that rush. Second, you are really not comparing the fleet assets of the NTF in the rush with shivan assets if they "Rush", now are you?
Yes, the SJ Sathanas smashes a blockade to get to where it's going in Bearbaiting, but that blockade was ill informed of the juggernauts abilities. Defending a node means that the GTVA picks exactly where and how a fight goes down, and can stack all the advantages against the Shivans. A tactical reserve of the new corvettes allows Command to hunt down and destroy any ship that escapes before the blockade is destroyed, and when the blockade is lost, the transit to the node to assist in the defense or move to the next system in, if necessary.
Sure. But you are easily forgetting that nodes start to multiply like a tree. If you skip back one node, now you have two nodes to defend. If you skip two nodes, you have now four nodes to defend. And your fleets are now separated. This is BAD.
And again it all comes down to time. An effective blockade nets the GTVA precious minutes to bring node closers into position. Minutes are all it takes, and the new ships and tactical doctrines of the GTVA net a lot of minutes in the form of savaging the front end of the Shivan column. Those "torn, divided, and disorganized bunch of spare ships" we've already seen completely destroy a Sathanas and its entire escort (provided the escort existed. I'm inclined to think it did), once again, with zero losses.
Already with that example. That was a lone Sathanas zeroing in your armada. You had the tactical advantage of that point (Sathanas are pretty bad Juggernaughts if they fight lonely), and the fact that it didn't jump within beam range. You destroyed a single Sathanas with a lot of luck and numerical superiority. A single Sathanas is *not* a shivan armada hellbent in raping you to smithereens.
Don't be so quick to discount the Titan destroyers. They may not have the straight up firepower of a Raynor, but they can damn well take care of themselves.
They are good ships, sure. Let's get this straight however. If a single Sathanas amongst the eighty they shown having brings itself to beam range, your "can damn well take care of themselves" destroyers are raped in a single salvo (80k points per beam pulse, 4 beams = 360k points... the Titans are armored with 125k points).
So you get a cornered beamless Sathanas into your range, ahah! now you are getting them! Suddenly to your right and left two Sathanas jumpbeamrape you and your "take care of themselves" fleet is oblivionated.
Witness the Temeraire against the four Shivan destroyers between Frankenstein's Monsters, Forced Entry, and Preserving the Balance, and how it nearly effortlessly wipes the floor with all of them. Eight next generation destroyers, plus an untold number of new corvettes, which in conjunction have been shown to mop the floor with Sathanases. You can't tell me those are ineffective against the Shivans, because they obviously are.
It's easy when you are the one gangbanging the others with superior numbers. Let's see how well you'll fare in a situation where you are outnumbered 20:1 or worse. Or IOW, let's see how many seconds your amazing fleet will last.
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Every time these arguments come up, whoever is arguing against the GTVA starts from a position of how everything possible goes wrong and assumes that as what will happen. I admit I tend to stray a bit too far in the other direction, but still, the GTVA failing to block every single node as the Shivans move? If the Shivans had shown an inclination to move on other systems, you can bet Command would have been hurrying quite a bit faster to shut those nodes. Shivans get to Epsilon Pegasi, shut the next layer of nodes. Information travels faster than ships ever can, and as a position is lost, the next steps up. Maybe during the SSI they would have succeeded in getting through. Maybe. Certainly not now.
It's the exact other way around Scotty. Your idea is the one hanging in the balance against the odds. You need GTVA to deliver its punch perfectly throughout the entire Shivan armada flood without any kind of breach. If you are unable to do this, you will eventually lose. This is not because Murphy's law or anything like that, but because Shivan armada is just so much numerically superior to GTVAs.
And your points about Epsilon Pegasi nodes and what nots I have addressed them and you just ignored them. Were the Shivans to conquer the Vega node, you'd be completely ****ed up. So sure, I concede that if by lucky chance they will *all* go towards Epsilon Pegasi instead, you can win some time and shut down Regulus or something like that.
But you see, this only furthers my point that the GTVA position is the only hanging in the balance. dependent upon your enemie's mistakes rather than depending on its own capabilities.
Re-read the FS1 briefings and such. The Shivans hold no interest in planets, going instead for control of subspace nodes and transit points to planets' direct exclusion.
Yeah, that's why they didn't nuke Vasuda Prime nor did they bombard planet Earth in BP alternative universe.
Oh wait.
Vasuda Prime was the homeworld of the Vasudans. "Nuking" the planet's surface was more a showcase of power and taking on a moral aspect (I mean, how good do you fight if you hear that your homeworld is nothing more than a fireball or a glassed desert?). If the shivans destroyed earth, the fighting morale of the terrans would be crushed and they would be destroyed with ease.
Otherwise, I wonder how they vanquished the ancients if they just go on subspace nodes....
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Vasuda Prime was the homeworld of the Vasudans. "Nuking" the planet's surface was more a showcase of power and taking on a moral aspect (I mean, how good do you fight if you hear that your homeworld is nothing more than a fireball or a glassed desert?).
Now you are just making **** up. You cannot possibly know this. For all I know, their motives could be astonishingly myriad.
Perhaps they zeroed-in in their homeworlds, ignoring colonies, because that would be the best strategy of attack. Having nuked the homeworlds, the rest would follow, just like BP fanon states in the alternative universe.
Perhaps million of other things. You can't count on what motives you don't know.
What you *cannot* do is to assure yourself that shivans won't bombard planets when they in fact did so once and attempted to do a second time.
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Indeed. All they did was position the warhead at another gate, told the gate to link up to another one, and give the warhead a little push.
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Indeed. All they did was position the warhead at another gate, told the gate to link up to another one, and give the warhead a little push.
Isn't it possible to like, activate the detonation timer while in subspace, then time it to explode the second it exits?
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In theory, yes.
However, the situation in TBI was a bit different, the meson warhead was sent out as an area denial weapon in case the marine boarding failed.
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Perhaps they zeroed-in in their homeworlds, ignoring colonies, because that would be the best strategy of attack.
For that matter, they didn't actually ignore colonies according to the FS1 tech description.
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Ah so there. I was assuming he was "technically" correct.
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And maybe it made the alliance destroy containers "off screen" that would have been valuable to them, because they thought that the Shivans mined them too, even when they didn't.
It might not have been a major victory to blow up two transporters, but considering what the Shivans invested to do it and the possible consequences, I'd call it a good move from their perspective.
As for the whole discussion about wether the GTVA would be able to stop Sathanii or not there is something that was mentioned once, but then forgotten.
SJ Dante aka Shiva.
Unlike the Sathanas, that thing has beamturrets all over and those turrets are heavlity armored.
Even IF the GTVA can throw up a blockade that can stop several Sathanii, a single Dante used as spearhead is going to throw the door wide open and allow said Sathanii, and whatever else the Shvians decide to bing to the party, to enter the system without much resistance.
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Yeah, your only chance there is to foresee Dante's arrival and rush to nuke the node before it crosses it. And I'll say that with good tactics by the shivans, your chances are less than slim.
So pray instead that there won't be any node "leaks" before the terrazods are actually ready to face these behemoths.
(of course this won't happen coz it's a fun game, and without shivan's presence some time in the future, it stops being fun, but hey!)
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(of course this won't happen coz it's a fun game, and without shivan's presence some time in the future, it stops being fun, but hey!)
Sounds like: Every FS2-campaign needs shivans.
My suggestion:But everytime shivans arrive you know it is a hopeless war. Nearly forgot the Dante.
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Hopelessness is a good narrative driver, if you give the player just the slightest hope that you'll be able to somehow prevent hell.
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Since I think a third Shivan invasion would be a good addition to the BP universe if handled correctly, I'll just throw out a few spots.
1. It's clear the Shivans are still intent on wiping out humanity and the Vasuadans in accordance with their nature to preserve by destruction, damning the rules of the Vishnans/Brahmans. Shivans don't care, they care only about achieving their own unknowable, implacable goals. Under these circumstances, a third Shivan war cannot be averted.
2. It is likely since Shivans cannot create jump nodes, they will need to find a new point of entry into GTVA space. In other words, a new path to Earth/GTVA.
3. GTVA weaponry has significantly improved, enough perhaps to destroy a few of the larger Shivan fleets through conventional tactics. However, Shivan fleet capabilities have been shown to be utterly inexhaustable at this point. The Lucifer fleet according to Volition was, "a scouting fleet", the Juggernaught fleet only contained by the slimmest of margins. A third 'serious' Shivan invasion would be 'almost' unstoppable.
4. Vishnans aren't likely to be a reliable ally against the Shivans. Again, they have their own goals as well, and they seem to be none to pleased with humanity's latest self destructive urges.
5. It would make the most sense, both from a Freespace canon perspective and a BP canon perspective to have a, 'third option' for defeating the Shivans. The Shivans must be fought, and the line must be held against overwhelming odds until such a path to victory is found. The Shivans are destroyers of entire civilizations over hundreds of thousands of years. Just surviving a Shivan genocide IS a victory, one that Humanity and the Vasudans have managed twice. Convincing the Shivans mankind is worth saving seems to me to be too trite a solution. However, the great equalizer of the Shivan wars has been this:
Shivans are just as dependant upon subspace as the GTVA. A sub space weapon of some sort, either to seal the Shivans off, or cripple their travel through it would be a plausable way to 'defeat' the Shivans without either making them seem either weak (sorry guys, we had time to tech up so eat beams!) or stupid (Aw! You little humans were just like us all along! Let's kiss and make up!).
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Yeah.
Well the shivan war cannot be averted if BP writers find it unavoidable. It's a tautology ;).
Your second point is interesting and gives me some stupid ideas. Like for instance, we get to see another star banging up. At the same time, GTVA sensors detect subspace anomalies in a given sector in the same system where the artificial supernova is seen. This means Shivans banged up a new star in order to enter GTVA/UEF space.
Since there's something called "lightspeed" and you might say "wait a minute, if you see the star blowing up, that means it blowed up 4 years ago, the node should have opened 4 years ago". We could technobabble our way around this and state that the new wormhole was created with the speed of light, so that the timelines mostly matched (between the "astonishing visuals" of a banging up star and the subspace anomaly being detected).
This would be very cool, to sit there in space and all of a sudden we would see a distant star blowing up in the background. We could see effects too. How is this technically possible? Dunno, but doesn't seem too difficult. One mission, we would see the shiny nova, then we would receive Command's chatter telling us that a subspace something is happening in a quarter million kilometers that direction, we would jump there and watch a new shivan fleet arriving. Beam rape the tiny cruiser you are escorting, panic attack, stay alive as long as you can before your jump drive refuels itself and jump out.
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The Shivans most certainly CAN build jump nodes, I refer you to the end monologue of freespace one.
Even if that monologue hadn't stated that 'all the jump nodes from earth are gone, but the shivans can rebuild them' there was still never a statement saying they couldn't. In fact, if we can reverse engineer a Knossos that we no longer have access to, the Shivans can definitely reverse engineer when they have two confirmed Knossos in their space. I would not be at all surprised to see the shivans build their own gate, and pop through the former Capella node in either Epsilon Pegasi or Vega.
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Sure, I understand, I was just going for spectacular views instead.
The nova was allegedly used in FS2 to build a "new" node. Terrans used Knossos copy pasted device to "renew" Sol node. It's somewhat different.
But I agree that it would create a big plot hole. Shivans should be able to renew the Cappella node.
So the only thing left is a motive. Or a catalyst. In FS2, the catalyst is NTF actions in Gamma Draconis, who are willingfully trying to connect with the shivans. What will lure the shivans out of their own business to try to demolish this humanzod nuisance once and for all?
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The Shivans most certainly CAN build jump nodes, I refer you to the end monologue of freespace one.
Even if that monologue hadn't stated that 'all the jump nodes from earth are gone, but the shivans can rebuild them' there was still never a statement saying they couldn't. In fact, if we can reverse engineer a Knossos that we no longer have access to, the Shivans can definitely reverse engineer when they have two confirmed Knossos in their space. I would not be at all surprised to see the shivans build their own gate, and pop through the former Capella node in either Epsilon Pegasi or Vega.
Possible, but the majority of Freespace 2 points to the fact that the Shivans were at least partly dependant upon the technology of the Ancients, for convience if nothing else. And they cannot use jump points that are collapsed, otherwise the Sathanas fleet would have been able to jump right out of Capella into the heart of GTVA space. Whether or not they can rebuild them with sufficent time and energy, we just don't know.
As for the BP never dealing with Shivans again, I think that's unlikely. Too much has been built up about a coming catastrophe that will dwarf the GTVA/UEF conflict for the Shivans not to return in some form. Whether it's the third invasion or not.
A catalyst based on the information we've been given in BP is the Shivans are looking for an excuse to prove mankind is unworthy of preservation, thus being able to side step the whole issue of Vishnans. A sufficent massacre of UEF or GTVA forces/civilians might be the 'disturbance in the force' the Shivans are looking for to jump back into the fray. Not to mention the fact that UEF is actively seeking those who are sensitive to Shivans via project Nagari.
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Yeah it's that kind of harmonic karma silliness that puts me off in AoA.
It's their mod, they know better what they want to do, I just hope they don't go that direction.
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The Shivans most certainly CAN build jump nodes, I refer you to the end monologue of freespace one.
Even if that monologue hadn't stated that 'all the jump nodes from earth are gone, but the shivans can rebuild them' there was still never a statement saying they couldn't. In fact, if we can reverse engineer a Knossos that we no longer have access to, the Shivans can definitely reverse engineer when they have two confirmed Knossos in their space. I would not be at all surprised to see the shivans build their own gate, and pop through the former Capella node in either Epsilon Pegasi or Vega.
Possible, but the majority of Freespace 2 points to the fact that the Shivans were at least partly dependant upon the technology of the Ancients, for convience if nothing else. And they cannot use jump points that are collapsed, otherwise the Sathanas fleet would have been able to jump right out of Capella into the heart of GTVA space. Whether or not they can rebuild them with sufficent time and energy, we just don't know.
As for the BP never dealing with Shivans again, I think that's unlikely. Too much has been built up about a coming catastrophe that will dwarf the GTVA/UEF conflict for the Shivans not to return in some form. Whether it's the third invasion or not.
A catalyst based on the information we've been given in BP is the Shivans are looking for an excuse to prove mankind is unworthy of preservation, thus being able to side step the whole issue of Vishnans. A sufficent massacre of UEF or GTVA forces/civilians might be the 'disturbance in the force' the Shivans are looking for to jump back into the fray. Not to mention the fact that UEF is actively seeking those who are sensitive to Shivans via project Nagari.
Obviously they couldn't just cruise out of the collapsed Capella nodes, but if we can build a Knossos to stabalize a node, they certainly can, and possibly will sometime in the future
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We've never seen any Shivan construction facilities, or structures, or anything.
The fact that they use the Knossos portals when they obviously care very little about loss of resources points to them not having the ability to build the devices themselves.
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We've never seen any Shivan construction facilities, or structures, or anything.
You've never been in "Shivantown" for that matter.
The fact that they use the Knossos portals when they obviously care very little about loss of resources points to them not having the ability to build the devices themselves.
It's certainly evidence corroborating that theory, but by no means a sufficient one.
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The 'karmic silliness' was present back in FS1. The Shivans were depicted as cosmic judge, jury and executioner on races that 'went too far' occording to their own alien definitions. They're not mean to be forces of good, just a massive, uncaring, unrelenting galactic antibody agents.
The idea that Shivans are simply waiting for mankind to give themselves more rope to hang themselves with is still quite Shivan based on what we've seen. Shivans are intelegent, but utterly alien. Bosch attempt to contact them with offers of an alliance resulted in the slaughter of the majority of his crew.
Anyway, the point is that the Shivans are looking for a way back into a fight with humanity, the question is if a common threat will be able to unite the GTVA and UEF the way the threat of Shivan annihiliation forced the GTA and PVN to unite. And even if they do unite, how long will they be able to hold out until a solution is found?
I believe quite strongly that the Shivans cannot be militarily defeated by 'ordinary means'. But that doesn't mean they're invincible, or cannot be stopped.
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I have no problems with witnessing silly remarks being proclaimed by the NPCs of the game (like the ancients logs etc.), just as long as it is clear that this is not an actual knowledge of what the Shivans (or any other race for that matter) really are and what they are up to, but rather how some people interpreted their nature.
That is why I was in disagreement with Darius take on the matter. FS1 made some indirect remarks about theories of shivans, but they actually remained black boxes throughout the original series. AoA just takes it (almost!) literally. Battuta (I think) has told me (us) that these dialogs happening in AoA between shivans and vishnans, etc., were visions channeled to the player in a "mysterious way", and that the message was simplified, bla bla bla bla, meaning that even what we see on AoA isn't exactly literal, but rather how lieutenant Bei was able to understand it.
Still the sight of seeing a dialog between these creatures (and in a very simplistic grammatical way) really undermines Shivan's identity as a species incapable of making nothing more than simple sentences with basic ideas about destruction and construction (well that's my take on the matter).
I agree with you they are utterly alien, and that's the way, imo, they should be fictionized. The worst thing it could happen is if they somehow aligned themselves with some kind of metaphysical theological crap about how they exist in order to "judge" the "cosmic harmony", how they are here to maintain the "balance", or any other silly simplistic holistical bull****.
No, I'd *love* them to be unpredictable. Devious. Smart. Without any (observed) rules. All chaos. And we (the humanzods) would be left with our own paranoias creating these arbitrary categories where we could fit them inside and pretend to understand them. That's the kind of antagonist I like: an unforgiving uncategorizable formidable force.
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One of the best examples of this was the Vassago in Vassago's Dirge. The GTVA comes up with a brilliant plan to sucker the Shivans into a trap, and it works... at first. The combination of Pegasus stealth fighter TAG'ing Shivan warships for the Carthage and Mjolnirs to destroy results in the annihilation of a major Shivan force. But then the Shivans get wise and the Vassago's is able to not only dodge the beam attack, but retaliates with it's own mega beam adaptation of the same tactics used against it. Due to split second timing and skill, the destroyer is put down and the Carthage is saved, but only just.
That is how battles should go with the Shivans. Everytime you think you have the upper hand, you learn, very quickly, you don't, and yet you still have to find a way to win.
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We've never seen any Shivan construction facilities, or structures, or anything.
The fact that they use the Knossos portals when they obviously care very little about loss of resources points to them not having the ability to build the devices themselves.
We penetrated into two shivan systems. One was a nebula were they could hide several deathstars and we wouldn't know it unless we stumbled across them by sheer (bad) luck, so who knows what was really there. The other system was empty except for some mysterious structures (maybe communications relays to connect the Shivans with their home systems?). Judging from that along isn't very wise if you ask me.
It's like flying around Pluto and proclaiming that todays Humans have no sattelites or space stations because there are non that can be detected from that far out.
Moving on to the matter of portals:
Maybe those Knossos we saw in the system with the commnodes were build by the Shivans, but were replicated from the original so well that we couldn't tell from several kilometers away.
Or maybe it was actually the ancients who copied the Knossos from the Shivans, before they were wiped out.
Or maybe the Shivans don't even need Knossos' and just didn't bother destroying those. After all the Sathanas came through a node that command assumed closed down. Now maybe it was as they later speculated, that the node stabilized enough to exist without the portal, or maybe the Sathanas was what kept the node together after the portal was blown up.
Bottom line is, we just don't know. Everything else is just speculation and thus open for the modders to make up for themselfs.
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Knossos technology being shivan in origin rather than Ancient? Utilised heavily by the ancients until the shivans used the gates against them? These bring up interesting plot possibilities and will have a Massive Effect if used right :P
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Knossos technology being shivan in origin rather than Ancient? Utilised heavily by the ancients until the shivans used the gates against them? These bring up interesting plot possibilities and will have a Massive Effect if used right :P
Steele > Shepard
I haven't read the thread through and through to see if it's mentioned, but didn't the Shivans of FS1 simply *appear* in Ross 128 and Ikeya? No Knossos, no mention of traversing an unknown node they were just there. Is it far-fetched to assume they could simply show up again in those same systems since presumably the Shivans have an (unknown) method of reaching them?
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Yeah they could be using uncharted nodes or nodes too unstable for Terrans and Vasudans to use, but they may also have used a Knossos.
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Knossos technology being shivan in origin rather than Ancient? Utilised heavily by the ancients until the shivans used the gates against them? These bring up interesting plot possibilities and will have a Massive Effect if used right :P
Yeah........ let's not go there. :D
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Just bringing up the most unlikely, but still possible... possibility... (stupid language) to make a counterpoint here. I don't think it really is like that at all, but as I said it still might be possible, even if it's very far fetched without contradicting any canon information, except the unproven theories and speculations of command and Dr. Hargrove.
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I don't think that's even remotely likely.
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Here's the thing about the Shivans... they're alien! And they're way beyond us. Whenever people start thinking there may be some hope of a GTVA victory against the Shivans I have to crack a smile. There's just no way. If the Shivans wanted to genocide humanity they would do it, and the best we could hope for would be to delay them for few centuries (which I like to think is a drop in the bucket for them).
In BP canon it's only been what, 15 years since Capella? How long have the Shivans been around? Do they even have "individuals" in their society, with a sense of time and an individual lifespan? We think of the thirty years between FS1 and FS2 as a long time but for the Shivans one preceded the other more or less immediately. What if the third incursion starts in another 100 years? For us we'd start wondering if the Shivans are really gone and then be caught completely by surprise, for them it'd be totally normal.
Also, the notion that we'd inflict heavy casualties on them means nothing because casulties mean nothing to them. We have no idea how many ships they have but judging from The Lion's Den it's more than we can comprehend. That was the problem in the Second Incursion, we fundamentally failed to understand just how powerful they are. We treated the victory over the Sathanas like some great epic event that changed the course of the war, then were dumbfounded to discover the Sathanas is apparently just a regular Shivans warship, no big deal they have (at least) 80 more. You can't stand against that, even now in BP canon with the amazing new warships I doubt highly the GTVA can take on the Sathanas fleet that wiped out Capella.
Every military victory you can attain against them is meaningless. Sure you can hit their supply lines, but will that really do anything? You can inflict casualties but their society has no individuality,do then even have a "society"? So what if you kill a few million of them, that's small comfort when they're burning your home world to the ground.
Nah, military victory against them is meaningless. You can't fight them that way anymore than you can fight the Vishnans. I think thats kind of the point of Blue Planet, that the GTVA has philosophically lost its way. Quoth Adama, "it's not enough just to survive..."
<-- my .02
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Yeah, your last paragraph nails it.
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Assumes numerous facts not in evidence, of course.
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Here's the thing about the Shivans... they're alien! And they're way beyond us. Whenever people start thinking there may be some hope of a GTVA victory against the Shivans I have to crack a smile. There's just no way. If the Shivans wanted to genocide humanity they would do it, and the best we could hope for would be to delay them for few centuries (which I like to think is a drop in the bucket for them).
In BP canon it's only been what, 15 years since Capella? How long have the Shivans been around? Do they even have "individuals" in their society, with a sense of time and an individual lifespan? We think of the thirty years between FS1 and FS2 as a long time but for the Shivans one preceded the other more or less immediately. What if the third incursion starts in another 100 years? For us we'd start wondering if the Shivans are really gone and then be caught completely by surprise, for them it'd be totally normal.
Also, the notion that we'd inflict heavy casualties on them means nothing because casulties mean nothing to them. We have no idea how many ships they have but judging from The Lion's Den it's more than we can comprehend. That was the problem in the Second Incursion, we fundamentally failed to understand just how powerful they are. We treated the victory over the Sathanas like some great epic event that changed the course of the war, then were dumbfounded to discover the Sathanas is apparently just a regular Shivans warship, no big deal they have (at least) 80 more. You can't stand against that, even now in BP canon with the amazing new warships I doubt highly the GTVA can take on the Sathanas fleet that wiped out Capella.
Every military victory you can attain against them is meaningless. Sure you can hit their supply lines, but will that really do anything? You can inflict casualties but their society has no individuality,do then even have a "society"? So what if you kill a few million of them, that's small comfort when they're burning your home world to the ground.
Nah, military victory against them is meaningless. You can't fight them that way anymore than you can fight the Vishnans. I think thats kind of the point of Blue Planet, that the GTVA has philosophically lost its way. Quoth Adama, "it's not enough just to survive..."
<-- my .02
Mere semantics, and survival *is* enough. Humanity didn't quit when the black death rolled around, or any other number of horrible wars or crisis. We don't quit, even against the impossible.
And let's not sell the GTVA too short Anjelus. The Shivans *have* been trying to exterminate humanity and the Vasuadans, and they were stopped, twice. Now, it's unlikely that kind of sucess can be repeated indefinately, but it's poor story telling to create an enemy so powerful there isn't a *single* path to victory.
Assume for a moment Freespace 3 was actually made, do you really think the end of the story would have been, "The Shivans were too powerful and fighting them was pointless, so we all quit and died." ?
No, there may not be a way to militarily crush the Shivans, but fighting to survive against them is a victory until another way is found.
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I demand manwiththemachinegun for presidency of all human kind :P
I guess he's mostly right, there's no point in having a invincible foe to fight with, we humans tend to see things as finished or unfinished, the fact that something remains unfinished does not bond well with our wishes.
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And let's not sell the GTVA too short Anjelus. The Shivans *have* been trying to exterminate humanity and the Vasuadans, and they were stopped, twice. Now, it's unlikely that kind of sucess can be repeated indefinately, but it's poor story telling to create an enemy so powerful there isn't a *single* path to victory.
I'd actually argue the Shivans weren't even bothering with us the second time round. They didn't exactly do much save for blow up a star, and that's not exactly conducive to exterminating mankind (bombarding entire planets from orbit is).
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Of course it remains unfinished. It always does. Have you ever heard of One Thousand and One Nights? A good story-teller never ends the story. He will always terminate it with a cliff hanger. And I have, again, no problems with a narrative path where we eventually defeat the Shivans just as long as it isn't a stupid one, but you will have at the same time to present "troubling matters" that will keep you up at night.
Because that's the spirit of FS, and it is the unfinished nature of FS that kept its lure for so long, I might add ;).
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And let's not sell the GTVA too short Anjelus. The Shivans *have* been trying to exterminate humanity and the Vasuadans, and they were stopped, twice. Now, it's unlikely that kind of sucess can be repeated indefinitely, but it's poor story telling to create an enemy so powerful there isn't a *single* path to victory.
Technically it is only once they tried to wipe us out, and they did do a good number on the Vasudans!, also i am sure i can remember someone from :v-old: saying that the fleet in FS1 was just a scouting fleet. Also if we hadn't discovered the Lucifer's weakness, well bye bye earth.
Also the second incursion wasn't an invasion, its been a while since i played the Fs2 campaign but the Shivans even try to get past Capella? They seemed only interested in securing Capella and i think the fleet was their to protect the sathanas and clear the area so they could build their galatic hyperspace bypass! If and when they came back i recon and to quote bender "were boned!"
But if the GTVA is win the UEF war, i think they need to do it quickly, as a prolonged war will wouldn't be good for morale and also would it be a victory after the cost of life and ships which would come in handy, as UEF assest i think would be effective against shivans, certainly figthers and bombers.
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Technically it is only once they tried to wipe us out, and they did do a good number on the Vasudans!, also i am sure i can remember someone from :v-old: saying that the fleet in FS1 was just a scouting fleet. Also if we hadn't discovered the Lucifer's weakness, well bye bye earth.
Ah yes, the old gamebox blurb, I remember reading that for the first time and exclaiming, "scout fleet?!" :eek2:
Also the second incursion wasn't an invasion, its been a while since i played the Fs2 campaign but the Shivans even try to get past Capella? They seemed only interested in securing Capella and i think the fleet was their to protect the sathanas and clear the area so they could build their galatic hyperspace bypass! If and when they came back i recon and to quote bender "were boned!"
But if the GTVA is win the UEF war, i think they need to do it quickly, as a prolonged war will wouldn't be good for morale and also would it be a victory after the cost of life and ships which would come in handy, as UEF assest i think would be effective against shivans, certainly figthers and bombers.
Assumes numerous facts not in evidence, of course.
See that's the problem right there, we don't have a clue why the Shivans do what they do. I like to think they must have some kind of motive on some level, but then again action without motive is a totally alien concept to me and the Shivans are nothing if not totally alien. When it comes to Shivans a lot of things are heavily implied but not really backed as fact. (Action without motive: maybe they're all stoned or really drunk?)
For instance, during Capella they didn't seem to mind having a number of warships blown up alongside the GTVA during The Bang. And I'm fairely sure we've never seen the Shivans retreat from a losing fight (feel free to call me on that). It's likely, though not necessarily fact, that the Shivans think nothing of suffering huge losses. If you had a fleet of 80 Saths you really wouldn't mind would you? Of course there isn't evidence to back it up but it's pretty much a given.
I think it goes without saying that the Shivans operate on a very large scale and it's heavily implied in the tech entry that the Galaxy is infested with them. So they're a tough nut to crack. If they can't be stopped then there isn't much point in fighting them, but it's been proven in both games that they can be stopped, at least temporarily.
And let's not sell the GTVA too short Anjelus. The Shivans *have* been trying to exterminate humanity and the Vasuadans, and they were stopped, twice. Now, it's unlikely that kind of sucess can be repeated indefinately, but it's poor story telling to create an enemy so powerful there isn't a *single* path to victory.
And so there's the dilemma. Lets say for a moment the Shivans really can't be stopped. Perhaps Humanity and Vasudans are so little of a concern they've been haphazard in their attempts at genocide? Bit of a cop out but you can't say FS doesn't tend to contradict itself when measuring the Shivans.
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The Shivans can be "beat", but I just don't think military victory is the answer or even realistic. Does anyone really see the GTVA/UEF/Vasudans combined EVER being powerful enough to attack Shivan space and invade and occupy their homeworld, if they even have one which isn't likely? Or sign a peace treaty and have a little armistice where we divide the Milky Way between us and them?
I mean seriously. I don't take the stance that Shivans are some mystical force, a "galactic immune system", or a "punishment for our vanity". But I do think they're much higher up on the food chain than we are, humbling as that may be. In fact that idea is what attracted me to FS lore in the first place.
What are they? No idea. What do they want? No idea. What are they capable of? Have some idea (nuking a star, destroying planets and civilizations, etc) but I've got a good feeling that we've only scratched the surface of what the Shivans are capable of overall.
Are they ever going to invade again? Damn I hope not.
HAVE they ever even actually invaded? The war against the Lucifer was probably the bloodiest and hardest we've ever fought but for them it was a skirmish. And during what we call the 'Second Incursion', which we consider another great big epic confrontation of David & Goliath, they weren't really even trying, they just did whatever it was they did to Capella and swept our fleets aside because we were in the way.
Yea I realize "invincible foe" isn't good or traditional storytelling, and I don't think they're at all invincible. But I just think Shivans are big scary things in a big scary universe and we should be duly humbled by them :pimp:
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The Shivans can be "beat", but I just don't think military victory is the answer or even realistic. Does anyone really see the GTVA/UEF/Vasudans combined EVER being powerful enough to attack Shivan space and invade and occupy their homeworld, if they even have one which isn't likely? Or sign a peace treaty and have a little armistice where we divide the Milky Way between us and them?
If I remember right, every negotiation attempt failed. Well, now we have ETAK but even then I don't think that the Shivans are very diplomatic.
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I think there are many more species themselves aware of the Vasudans, and the Terrans, I sometimes think that in the Milky Way had thousands of alien factions with their own technology and shivans .., appeared out of nowhere .... when I look at their ships do not seem, even of this galaxy
and I think that destroy stars shivans to consume any type of material, can be said to reap stars thus come to devour the Milky Way do not know why but I guess 5 factions traveling together to the colony of making a closer GTVA diplomatic presentation and asked whether they want to join a sort of intergalactic NATO to stop the shivans in systems completely unknown!
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and I think that destroy stars shivans to consume any type of material, can be said to reap stars thus come to devour the Milky Way do not know why but I guess 5 factions traveling together to the colony of making a closer GTVA diplomatic presentation and asked whether they want to join a sort of intergalactic NATO to stop the shivans in systems completely unknown!
Never underestimate the power of a large group of idiots working together eh?
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Unity is strength
and more speaking about the shivans
Also, I saw the shivans deploy hundreds of Sathanas, does not seem logical that not only GTVA throughout the galaxy is enduring the scourge of red bastards?
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That would make sense, someone has to be out there.
If they are, they are probably perfectly willing to align themselves with fellow Shivan prey.
That would make for an interesting campaign.
"Civilized races of the milky way, UNITE!"
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That would make sense, someone has to be out there.
If they are, they are probably perfectly willing to align themselves with fellow Shivan prey.
That would make for an interesting campaign.
"Civilized races of the milky way, UNITE!"
do not steal my idea!,
all I need is a large and talented team xD
he only problem of such a project, would be the size, and make the main FS2 campaign is seen as a prologue xD
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This just in: Alpha 1 is secretly Commander Shepard.
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This just in: Alpha 1 is secretly Commander Shepard.
Darius has already trolled a few threads with this.
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This just in: Alpha 1 is secretly Commander Shepard.
When I played Mass Effect, the reapers reminded me of the shivans so much that i got pissed, yelld 'FS RIP' and quit playing
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I see no resemblance, in shape or background story.
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All powerful alien race bent on genocide for unknown reasons? I dunno, it was probably an unfair comparison, but I'm predisposed to disike choice based RPG's :(
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All powerful alien race bent on genocide for unknown reasons? I dunno, it was probably an unfair comparison, but I'm predisposed to disike choice based RPG's :(
You're both ripping off Berserker. Step off the Saberhagen.
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Not to derail the thread but the Reapers aren't half as cool as the Shivans. They were up there in ME1 but... well, let's just say we learned a bit too much about them in ME2 for my taste.
Whereas the Shivans have been haunting my sleep for fully half my life now. Those death black ships and all... and their weapons are too much... NO IT ISN'T! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, YOU WEREN'T THERE!
:eek2:
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And then we have Reapers... the same Reapers we (as a small team of infantrymen so to say) killed two of. Okay the first was just disabled by us and then blown up by the Normandy (with a "little" help from a whole fleet), but the other one we defeated by shooting it's eyes out :wtf:
Oh did I mention that the Reapers don't have any mysterious goals. They just want two things: Harvest the living beings in the milky way as food, slaves and ressources and make sure nothing can become sufficiently strong to beat them.
The Shivans on the other hand? Some sources say they want to annihilate the "destroyers" so the peacefull races can flourish, but then why didn't they try a bit more seriously to wipe the GTVA out? Or are they overestimating our strength and thus gather far more foces than we've seen so far for the final push? Are they trying to lull us into thinking it's over to hit us with a surprise attack? Are they secretly observing or even infiltrating us, to learn our weaknesses or even sabotage us from within as preparation for the next assault?
And so on and so forth...
Shivans are much cooler and far deeper than even the ME1 Reapers ever were before ME2 messed them up.
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Shivans are much cooler and far deeper than even the ME1 Reapers ever were before ME2 messed them up.
Yea you're right. I guess I just kinda liked that scene where you meet Sovereign on Virmire and that revelation abot the Keepers. Love those little guys!
Buuut yea they never touch the Shivans. Realistically speaking even that entire scene was copied from the confrontation with the Kohr-za (spelling?) in Star Control 2. See now the Ur-Quan, THEY'RE a great alien antagonist. I'd put them on Shivan level guilt free.
There really ought to be a Freespace and Star Control crossover. Hmm... mod idea...
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Shivans are much cooler and far deeper than even the ME1 Reapers ever were before ME2 messed them up.
Yea you're right. I guess I just kinda liked that scene where you meet Sovereign on Virmire and that revelation abot the Keepers. Love those little guys!
Buuut yea they never touch the Shivans. Realistically speaking even that entire scene was copied from the confrontation with the Kohr-za (spelling?) in Star Control 2. See now the Ur-Quan, THEY'RE a great alien antagonist. I'd put them on Shivan level guilt free.
There really ought to be a Freespace and Star Control crossover. Hmm... mod idea...
You should play Wings of Dawn.
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Wow ... I've been away from the forums for awhile. I had no idea that I had helped inspire an 11-page thread during that time. :eek: I've read through it (well okay admittedly only a small fraction of it) and I liked a lot of the discussion. It made for interesting reading, so thank you LordPomposity for picking it up. :)
Anyway, regardless of whether or not the GTVA or UEF has a chance of winning, I look forward to the next chapter in the story. :D
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I see no resemblance, in shape or background story.
(http://social.bioware.com/uploads_user/490000/489559/27704.jpg)
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It's odd, because when Freespace 1 came out, people were saying exactly the same thing about the similarity between Shivans and Shadows, since B5 was in around its third or fourth season by that stage ;)
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Yeah sure, but at least Volition kept their hands away from this Tau **** and avoided the creation of a benign super species to "compensate" the shivans, and maintain Freespace as noir as they possibly could.
....and then we had BP to **** it all up :lol:
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If you think the Vishnans are benign then you are super dumb like Samuel Bei.
We should totally take it to those mother****ers. Meson Bomb their **** straight into the next universe.
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Benign was a wrong word, you're right. Better say "like a Vorlon".
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(http://social.bioware.com/uploads_user/490000/489559/27704.jpg)
Except that Shivans are not a race of ships nor do they abduct people for the utilization of resources.
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Do you deny the motivational?
Or what about the red beams of death manifesting themselves out of the peak of their claws, shredding their opponents' ships to smithereens?
Or what about the invincible shields the reapers have, exactly not unlike a certain shivan juggernaught?
Or what about the sheer invincible armada of shivan/reaper juggernaughts, driving towards certain human doom?
Listen to this monologue and try not to remember Mass Effect:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hf0yfv2fHyw&feature=related
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Shivan ships don't fire molten metal.
Shivan ships don't hibernate where they're vulnerable.
Unless Reapers are making stars explode, there's still little to no corrilation.
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Shivan ships don't fire molten metal.
How do you really know this? I mean, canon-wise.
Shivan ships don't hibernate where they're vulnerable.
You cannot possibly know this as well.
Unless Reapers are making stars explode, there's still little to no corrilation.
I'll have your head when ME3 arrives and we do indeed see them supernovaeing a star. ;)
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They use a magnetic bottle to direct superheated plasma at their target or something. Vishnans use gravitationally strips of altered spacetime (!?!?!?)
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Shivan ships don't fire molten metal.
How do you really know this? I mean, canon-wise.
Most threads discussing it usually decide if going from mission dialogue at the very least photon beams are used, it's likely there just to be there, but researching and reverse-engineering the weapons from the Lucifer and finding out that they're metal-slinging streamers, I don't find it to be likely.
Shivan ships don't hibernate where they're vulnerable.
You cannot possibly know this as well.
The Lucifer wasn't sleeping in Subspace when it was trying to enter Sol, even then it's never said that they hibernate, and it doesn't seem that they would.
Unless Reapers are making stars explode, there's still little to no corrilation.
I'll have your head when ME3 arrives and we do indeed see them supernovaeing a star. ;)
If that does happen I'll probably take it off myself. :P
**** trying to separate the quotes. :nervous:
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They use a magnetic bottle to direct superheated plasma at their target or something.
I doubt they're actually plasma streamers simply because otherwise our electronics should flip out every time we take AAA beam hit.
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In BP canon anyway, they're relativistic plasma weapons which use a magnetic bottle to guide the beam to its target.
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Your second point is lame, Zane. The Lucifer was not sleeping in the sol node because it was in its job schedule. You don't sleep while working, you lazy!
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Your second point is lame, Zane. The Lucifer was not sleeping in the sol node because it was in its job schedule. You don't sleep while working, you lazy!
No, not really, I just said that the Lucifer wasn't sleeping. Reapers are vulnerable while hibernating, and hide where they will not be found because of this. The Lucifer on the other hand was vulnerable doing something entirely different, wide awake and ready to make humanity miserable.
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You'll see that we will destroy the reapers while mass effecting between nodes. We just haven't seen it before because we hadn't the chance.
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They use a magnetic bottle to direct superheated plasma at their target or something.
I doubt they're actually plasma streamers simply because otherwise our electronics should flip out every time we take AAA beam hit.
That depends on how heavily shielded they are. Since plasma based weapons (blob turrets) were the staple of FS ships for quite a while this should be taken into account.
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That depends on how heavily shielded they are. Since plasma based weapons (blob turrets) were the staple of FS ships for quite a while this should be taken into account.
Blobs are self-contained plasma weapons, which may actually be possible, but projecting an incredibly long magnetic field out into space to contain a thin stream of high-energy plasma would have effects regardless of how heavily shielded your electronics are. For starters the shielding necessary to protect your electronics wouldn't be all that much less than that to protect you from the plasma. Then you get induction in any metallic object the field comes in contact with as it extends, and rather impressively at these power levels.
As an addendum, notes from FS1 and FS2 about effective anti-shield weapons suggest that kind of focused magnetics would be absolutely devastating to shields. Yes, beams pass through, and that might happen, but there should also probably be some serious loss of power.
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(http://social.bioware.com/uploads_user/490000/489559/27704.jpg)
Except that Shivans are not a race of ships nor do they abduct people for the utilization of resources.
Volition Canon had them being Von Neumann-esque machines, albeit with more intelligence.
That is almost exactly what the Reapers are, when you get around the bizarre, nonsensical crap added in ME2.
In BP canon anyway, they're relativistic plasma weapons which use a magnetic bottle to guide the beam to its target.
Oh hey, does someone on the bp team read David Weber and Steve White's "Starfire" series? Because that's exactly what the Bug plasma beams in it are.
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Ahem. We are all Von Neumann esque machines ;)
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Blobs are self-contained plasma weapons, which may actually be possible, but projecting an incredibly long magnetic field out into space to contain a thin stream of high-energy plasma would have effects regardless of how heavily shielded your electronics are.
That would explain the subsystem damage, especially from slashing beams, although 300 years in the future I doubt electronics like what we have today will still be in use, let alone the protection mechanisms we use. However it is very heavily implied that the beams we see are plasma, the fact that we can see it at all shows it isn't just a laser.
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That is almost exactly what the Reapers are, when you get around the bizarre, nonsensical crap added in ME2.
(http://i293.photobucket.com/albums/mm56/HLPHades/ImageMacros/Humanreaper.jpg)
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Hey, I warned you guys.
Step off Saberhagen's Berserkers or we're going to have trouble.
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(http://fortnightlitpress.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/knapp01.png?w=480)
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In BP canon anyway, they're relativistic plasma weapons which use a magnetic bottle to guide the beam to its target.
Oh hey, does someone on the bp team read David Weber and Steve White's "Starfire" series? Because that's exactly what the Bug plasma beams in it are.
I friggen love that series. Really most of David Weber's stuff haha. But yeah thats a fair point, and a similarity I hadn't thought of... I shall er. Vote up your question, do they?
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Whereas the Shivans have been haunting my sleep for fully half my life now. Those death black ships and all... and their weapons are too much... NO IT ISN'T! YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND, YOU WEREN'T THERE!
:eek2:
eve online? O,o lol
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eve online? O,o lol
...right.