Cold War Comments Thread

[Kurt (OP)]

Maybe the Humans can sue for peace while they have the chance? I suspect not though, their enemy has no reason to accept since they have defeated the only threat that might have tipped the balance.

Well, they defeated the first attack.  Whether or not that's the entire Mintek fleet, or whether they'll be amenable to negotiations at this point, no one knows. 

Kurt

[Kurt (OP)]

I thought federal Theocracies had average as crew grade? They must have send their newly build ships out to do battle. Ouch.

I just checked, and you are right.  I checked their racial settings in SA, and for some reason they have "green" as their base crew grade.  I don't know if that's an error in SA, or if something happened during race generation.  I've changed it to average now, but obviously that doesn't make up for what's already happened.  I'll write it off to the fact that the Mintek have been at peace for decades, and their military skills atrophied.  That matches their background that I've written up anyway. 

Smart thing would have been to have a collier along with even a small minefield, bunching the foes up on the warp point, and allowing you to avoid point blank untill your ships are active. Then move close and deliver. Those 3 roudns before minesweepers can really go into action (Transit, activate scanner, find mines before going into minesweeper mode) are priceless.

The more things like gunboats and sbmhawks come into play, the further the point blank defense of warppoints gets... uneconomical. Point blank really works best when you have enough firepower about to be certain to obliterate each wave as it comes in, even in the first round of activation, as you then have the advantage  as the transiting enemy is still transit addled. Else its machine guns at ten paces.

Yeah, a minefield, even a small one, would have been great.  The problem is, at that point the Mintek had only a few automated weapons, and only one automated weapons control ship available, and it was brand new.  The Mintek hadn't really been prepping for war before this, as they didn't anticipate this happening.  They should have, but there you go. 

Kurt

[StarshipCactus]

Things are really falling apart for Humanity. I don't see a way for them to win in the short term, and with the issues back home, long term prospects are looking worse and worse by the month.

[Gyrfalcon]

I’m expecting the combined fleet is going to fortify the border with D’Bringi space only to get news from home that Earth has been nuked to hell and back because the USSR collapsed and decided nukes were the way to express their discontent with each other.

[Black]

The possibility of nuked Earth rises considerably, we can only hope that there are some reasonable Soviet officers on Earth that will put a stop to this.

[StarshipCactus]

So between those two battles, who came out on top? The Mintek did lose some big ships, but the D'Bringi lost two leaders and a bunch of cruisers. I don't know how that stacks up economically.

The D'Bringi are now facing a siege situation, which is less than good considering how the Humans are moving forwards, even with the issues on Earth. If the D'Bringi don't know about the situation on Earth, peace might be possible if the Humans sue for it.

Do the Mintek have more than one JP in their home system or are they truely bottled up? If they have more than one JP, they can continue economic expansion quite easily, forcing an arms race (A cold war even) between the two sides until they get themselves a second border to attack through.

[Kurt (OP)]

So between those two battles, who came out on top? The Mintek did lose some big ships, but the D'Bringi lost two leaders and a bunch of cruisers. I don't know how that stacks up economically.

In terms of sheer tonnage the D'Bringi Alliance lost those two battles, however, in terms of percent of fleet lost, the D'Bringi alliance comes out on top.  Strategically, its a little harder to work out.  Strategically, the D'Bringi won by forcing the Mintek out of their space, however, they now have to devote at least a percentage of their fleet strength to ensure that the Mintek are bottled up, which is problematic when you consider that they had to divert their frontline fleets from facing the humans.  The Mintek also have a win/loss situation.  They lost a good percentage of their fleet, and were forced out of D'Bringi space.  That's bad.  They have mothballed reserves, and survived, so that's good.  They are also on the brink of developing the next tech level, which is very good. 

The D'Bringi are now facing a siege situation, which is less than good considering how the Humans are moving forwards, even with the issues on Earth. If the D'Bringi don't know about the situation on Earth, peace might be possible if the Humans sue for it.

Do the Mintek have more than one JP in their home system or are they truely bottled up? If they have more than one JP, they can continue economic expansion quite easily, forcing an arms race (A cold war even) between the two sides until they get themselves a second border to attack through.

The D'Bringi have no idea if the Mintek have any other warp points.  If they do, though, then they can be sure that the Mintek are looking for other routes into D'Bringi space. 

Kurt

[Andrew]

The D'Bringi/Rehorish have the problem of almost winning two wars, unfortunatly they lack the strength to win either war by assaulting the enemy homeworld. They now need to garrison the Mintek WP and still have enough force to drive the human fleet back to Earth and then either bottle them up or assault that WP and do all of that before they end up in contact with another species and have to send ships to watch that contact point

[misanthropope]

i would have sworn the only person alive who would try to "stabilize the situation" with a nuclear strike, is my ex-wife. 

[Kurt (OP)]

i would have sworn the only person alive who would try to "stabilize the situation" with a nuclear strike, is my ex-wife.

Ha!  I have known quite a few people throughout my life who thought that increasing the level of violence would calm things down.  The problem is that under certain circumstances, at certain levels of force, that does work.  At least during the immediate situation.  But it doesn't always translate to larger situations, and it doesn't always work, and it almost always has longer term consequences.  And when politicians begin putting their own self interest ahead of the interest of their nation, or conflating the two, then it becomes a much larger problem.  For everyone.

[Gyrfalcon]

Damn, I was right.

Basically, if the humans don't smash the Rehorish fleet without taking significant casualties themselves, humanity is done, correct? With the loss of the homeworld and its shipyards, and the slower population growth and production speeds, they have no realistic chances of dealing with the D'Bringi Alliance anymore unless they can preserve all of the combined fleet.

[Black]

Well, humanity is most likely screwed. Tomsk Union will likely stay independent under protection of Bjering, so no help from there.

There are most likely some surviving shipyards in Sol still, but I have no idea how Starfire deals with productivity on planet that has high amount of radiation and dust in atmosphere. Is it possible to tow the shipyards from Sol to Sigma Draconis?

There are also Tarek, they could be more significant issue for Coalition in current situation, I wonder if it would be prudent to deal with them now before they grow even more?

[Andrew]

Starfire does not track radiation and dust. What matters is how many population units survived, and of course the shipywads my impression is that a signifigant amount of the population will have survived as most of the bombardment seems to have been aimed at PDC's with a few other salvo's at population.
However even assuming I am right that will have reduced the production of earth a lot and so hurt the human economies. The shipyards are probably less critical in this situation as a lot seem to have survived and the ability of the humans to maintian their fleet has been reduced so they can't afford to build a lot of new ships

[Kurt (OP)]

Damn, I was right.

Basically, if the humans don't smash the Rehorish fleet without taking significant casualties themselves, humanity is done, correct? With the loss of the homeworld and its shipyards, and the slower population growth and production speeds, they have no realistic chances of dealing with the D'Bringi Alliance anymore unless they can preserve all of the combined fleet.

The Soviet shipyards survived the conflagration.  Sorry if I didn't make that clear.  There was a lot going on.  Having said that, the Russian shipyards surviving doesn't really make that much of a difference with humanity thrown into confusion and its political leadership gone, so you aren't wrong. 

Humanity's hope now is that the D'Bringi Alliance is sufficiently distracted by its new enemy, which Admiral Ruston and General Semenov have theorized about but do not have concrete intel on at this point.  Their advantage, slim as it is, is that the D'Bringi Alliance has no way of knowing about the disaster that just happened, unless they capture some humans that know.  Fog of war is working overtime in both directions on this one. 

What the long term effects are is unclear, but unlikely to be good for humanity, even assuming they successfully end the war they currently face. 

Kurt

[Kurt (OP)]

Well, humanity is most likely screwed. Tomsk Union will likely stay independent under protection of Bjering, so no help from there.

The Tomsk Union has an understandable dislike for the USSR, which abandoned them to the D'Bringi and the Rehorish, but, like most of the colony worlds, they have a deep love for the Earth.  For all that they left to go to other worlds, Earth is still thought of as 'home' by many of them.  If the USSR had arrived on the scene and said, "we saved you, now you are rejoining us", it would be problematic for them.  They might even try to fight to stay independent, especially if the Bjering decided to help.  Under the current circumstances, who knows?

There are most likely some surviving shipyards in Sol still, but I have no idea how Starfire deals with productivity on planet that has high amount of radiation and dust in atmosphere. Is it possible to tow the shipyards from Sol to Sigma Draconis?

There are also Tarek, they could be more significant issue for Coalition in current situation, I wonder if it would be prudent to deal with them now before they grow even more?

The Soviet yards in Earth orbit survived.  Starfire doesn't deal with radiation and dust at all, so I will be imposing restrictions on the population remaining on Earth (yes, there are survivors).  Essentially, Earth is going to become a "Harsh" world, with a limitation of 800 population units, compared to the benign world with a limitation of 3,200 PU's that it was before.  Also, it will take some time to recover.  Less than it would in "reality", I admit, but it will take some time before it becomes a significant factor again, if ever. 

As for the Tarek, well, the Wunderlanders have been pressing for a pre-emptive attack on the Tarek for years now.  I wonder what will happen now that the Coalition is no longer around to stop them?  <G>

Kurt