[The E]

Here's a thought: Bosch has been an agent provocateur all along. GTVA High Command knows that there's a growing anti-Vasudan sentiment among the human population, and they know that communication with Shivans via ETAK is possible.

However, there's a problem: If they came out openly about wanting to communicate with the  Shivans, there would be an enormous backlash from the Vasudan side, seeing as they're still sour about the whole dead homeworld thing. In comes Bosch with a plan: Use the existing antipathy against the Zods to establish a new faction, one that can be used as a lightning rod for said antipathy by drawing in the most extreme people, commit atrocities that make the moderates and undecided ones go back to GTVA proper, and develop ETAK under said faction's umbrella. Then, he argues, it doesn't matter if the zods find out about it and get pissed, seeing as they're already plenty pissed about all the zod murdering. Once Colossus is operational, we can mop up the NTF, while at the same time seeing where ETAK leads us. Afterwards, any results from the ETAK project can be either disavowed or used, depending on what they are.

[Luis Dias]

Yeah, that's the other extreme. Tin Foil Hat territory, the whole mentality of "this was a huge spectacle sham, it was actually all over under control" that birthers and truthers share.

I don't think "Monsters" can be tamed that way, nor do I think anyone inside the GTVA would ever believe that it could be tamed that way AND simultaneously just trust this Bosch dude to play all the cards nicely like that. Wild cards like Bosch are never to be trusted.

[jr2]

Or cards like Osama bin Laden or Sadaam Hussein?

[Luis Dias]

Would you trust Osama or Saddam with such a plan?

[jr2]

Not now, no. Did we back them vs the USSR and Iran before? Yes. In other words, once you invest power into an independent card, if the card (or in the card Bosch's case, the movement he created) gets out of hand, it can be rather messy to clean up. 

[Luis Dias]

Pretty sure my point was not just to throw power into a wild card, but especially with such a convoluted plan to boot. In Osama's case, that would be akin to hire the guy to take planes to Manhattan so that the US government could pursue a war in the middle east. But instead of doing just that, also give him the chance to have full blown destroyers, cruisers and lots of planes at his disposal, but it's all right, it's all under control!

[jr2]

... This is Command we're talking about here. 

[Luis Dias]

Right, I understand your point, especially if you consider The_E's version of "GTVA", by which I mean Blue Planet's, wherein they have all these supercomputers making huge calculations about these kinds of movements and so on. I still stand to the idea that this kind of "Batman-esque" closed web of manipulations to get everyone to do what you want to do is not my interpretation of Volition's GTVA Command (at all).

[AdmiralRalwood]

Right, I understand your point, especially if you consider The_E's version of "GTVA", by which I mean Blue Planet's, wherein they have all these supercomputers making huge calculations about these kinds of movements and so on.

I think you're confused; the UEF is known to have supercomputers analyzing, for example, economic patterns, but I can't recall any mention of the GTVA doing the same.

That said, The E's post doesn't seem to be describing Blue Planet's GTVA, although... perhaps if they viewed Capella as a comprehensive failure of the ETAK concept...

[Luis Dias]

I'm not confused, the whole reason for the Sol incursion is given by the plot that directly tells us that the GTVA command ran lots of scenarios for what would happen when the gate opened, and because all the results pointed to a massive ideological and demographical problem that wouldn't be contained by Command, they chose war. This is basic BP canon, look it up.

I also didn't say he was bringing BP up. *I* brought it up. And I didn't understand your last sentence.

[AdmiralRalwood]

I'm not confused, the whole reason for the Sol incursion is given by the plot that directly tells us that the GTVA command ran lots of scenarios for what would happen when the gate opened, and because all the results pointed to a massive ideological and demographical problem that wouldn't be contained by Command, they chose war. This is basic BP canon, look it up.

Perhaps you should take your own advice; there is no reference to supercomputers running projections. There may have been, but for all we know, it could be a network of Nagari operatives or something completely different. There's simply no canon reference to what you describe that I can find.

I also didn't say he was bringing BP up. *I* brought it up. And I didn't understand your last sentence.

Did... did you forget the wording you just used and I just quoted?

especially if you consider The_E's version of "GTVA", by which I mean Blue Planet's

That sure sounds like you're saying the version of the GTVA he just described is Blue Planet's version of the GTVA. If that's not what you were saying, then... what were you saying?

[The E]

For the record? I was not talking about the BP GTVA.

[Luis Dias]

Admiral, you're confused. Let's get things straight here.

1. I don't think Freespace's GTVA is portrayed with the kind of "prescience" technology that would enable the kind of decision by command to give Bosch such a role as described above in FS2.

2. The closest of such ability was portrayed in Blue Planet as I described above, regardless of your inability to find any reference to super computers. Such scenarios were modeled and thoroughly ran to see any other way outs. There was none other than war. This was widely discussed in other threads so your denial here is baffling.

3. I made the connection between 1 and 2 in jest, not to be taken so seriously.

4. Despite 3, Blue Planet does not have a monopoly on the idea.

[AdmiralRalwood]

Admiral, you're confused.

...In your opinion.

Let's get things straight here.

1. I don't think Freespace's GTVA is portrayed with the kind of "prescience" technology that would enable the kind of decision by command to give Bosch such a role as described above in FS2.

2. The closest of such ability was portrayed in Blue Planet as I described above, regardless of your inability to find any reference to super computers. Such scenarios were modeled and thoroughly ran to see any other way outs. There was none other than war. This was widely discussed in other threads so your denial here is baffling.

3. I made the connection between 1 and 2 in jest, not to be taken so seriously.

4. Despite 3, Blue Planet does not have a monopoly on the idea.

1. Nothing about The E's hypothetical requires anything even remotely resembling "prescience".

2. "It was widely discussed" != "This is basic BP canon, look it up."

Look, all you had to say was, "I was just making a joke; I didn't actually mean The E was describing Blue Planet's GTVA." That's not what you said. Instead, you acted like a presumptive jackass (who, by the way, still hasn't linked to anything confirming that the GTVA ran simulations on supercomputers; I'm not saying it didn't happen, I'm just saying it's not explicitly stated anywhere that I could find).

[NGTM-1R]

The Plan

Admiral Ahmose suggests, by the fact he was violating orders, that the Vasudan command structure would have to be in on this plan as well.

And honestly there's very little reason to think this works given the dynamics of the Pre-NTF GTVA. The Vasudan economy recovered quickly. The Terran economy did not. That's one of the reasons for the resentment. The Vasudans rebuilt their military quickly. The Terrans did not. The Vasudans retained a unified military structure and the built-in institutional experience to control large-scale military operations and logistics across a wide-spread area of space. The Terrans would have lost most of that in the factional period.

What I'm saying here is it's very likely Admiral Petrarch is taking his orders from a Vasudan. Given the recent history of both races I would be really, really surprised to learn that the upper command and staff levels of the GTVA's military aren't heavily skewed towards Vasudans.

... This is Command we're talking about here. 

I have spent enough time on this subject, debunking this line of thought, that I really begin to feel anyone who spouts it and has been here as long as you have is deserving only of a kick in the balls. But that's both impractical and too vicious.

Command has shown itself to always be capable and intelligent within the bounds of its knowledge; the existence of the Sathanas fleet was in no way a predictable issue and many of the other "stupidities" Command gets accused of are no such thing. I wrote an entire essay about this once. I have no idea where you were that week, but I really do recommend going and finding it; Command takes reasonable precautions against known threats. Sometimes those don't work; that is life. Sometimes the threats are beyond any kind of predictability; even then, Command manages the situation well and has a workable plan to save what can be saved.

These people are not stupid. If anything they're downright heroic considering a lot of people would have simply shut down and declared "all is lost" after the Sathanas Fleet came into the picture. Command not only didn't do that, it managed to craft a workable solution in an extremely short amount of time. (Put another way, Command managed to beat the Outside Context Problem, something originally described as "the sort of thing most civilizations encounter in the way a sentence encounters a full stop.")

[Luis Dias]

Admiral, I never reported any member here outside of bots, am proud of that tradition and will keep it despite your responses, but regarding my alleged lying about BP's GTVA supercomputers Here's a quote from the fiction:

Furthermore, the appeal of the Ubuntu ideology was so great that GTVA sociopsychologists predicted massive conversion amongst a populace already yearning to abandon failed colony worlds and emigrate to Earth. The military might of the GTVA would be brought down by ideology once more.

Under the guidance of President Toqueville, as advised by a panel of psychohistorians and sociopsychologists, the Security Council elected to enact its most severe contingency: the invasion of Sol. This contingency was hotly debated but ultimately selected for several reasons...

"Psychohistorians" is a reference to Asimov's Foundation and their computational technology of calculating futures on a wider social scale.

If you keep annoying me with your obsessive Shenanigans keep in mind I won't respond, kthnks.

[AdmiralRalwood]

regarding my alleged lying

Please point me to any instance of me accusing you of lying or "making up" supercomputers.

[Luis Dias]

So instead of apologising for your behaviour you now deny you accused me of lying. But I'm the jackass. Duly noted and memorised for future reference.

[The E]

Luis, you were the one accusing Ralwood of accusing you of lying. Cool it. As far as I can tell, all Ralwood was saying was that there is no direct reference to a certain detail in BP's background you posited to exist (something, I have to add, not exactly relevant to this particular discussion).

[Luis Dias]

If you unblock me, I can PM you. For everyone else lurking or interacting on this ridiculous idiocy, it's over.