Bad Neighbours

This is for posting Fiction and C&C replies ONLY. Note this does not have to be a "fukufic" or evenfanfiction. All longform creative writing allowed. Replying posts must give actual commentary, no "GREAT IDEA" or "THIS SUCKS".

Re: Bad Neighbours

Postby Screwball » Thu Jan 20, 2011 7:45 pm

Cheb wrote:[puts away his long prepared "MOAR!" motivator] Yay :D And right when I was ready to despair :)


I see my timing is perfect as always. :lol:

Pale Wolf wrote:So in theory they could jump out to there, but unless they wanted to risk ceasing to exist, they'd have to do a serious exploratory mission and it'd take months of minijumps to make it?

A case of 'sure, we can explore the galaxy, but the space we're already in suits our needs and it's a huge blow of resources to potentially come up with nothing, or potentially come up with feral drones'?


More like years. That sort of thing basically amounts to a logistical impossibility unless somebody wants to cough up the cash to fund the equivalent of another Stargazer Program - that was the big, UN led project to establish contact with all the longshots in the late 21st century. That's just to reach one system. Finding a planet that is or can be made technically habitable wasn't so much of an issue, but, well... like you say, why bother? They had enough real estate anyway, and it isn't like settling such a remote world would gain them anything economically; they can't get out into the Deep Rim practically anyway - you can tell exactly where Earth's logistics can support stuff, because there's an area of dead colonies which were evacuated in the early days of the Breakdown; the virus never made it beyond that, because there's effectively no Core communications outwards from that point on. Therefore, nobody coughed up the funding. Of course, plenty of those unconnected worlds got longshots, because the earliest longshots were sent out before practical first-gen reusable drives existed, and there wasn't a comprehensive map of the jump network until after the Stargazer Program in the 2130s.

Added to all of that, the Breakdown basically killed human colonisation; it was dying off anyway due to lack of easy real estate, although people were still looking at various systems between the Core-controlled arms. There's basically no infrastructure to support such an expedition now though, which only adds to the cost. Nobody wants to rebuild it, because nobody with the resources (ie, the Core) wants another bunch of rebels they'll have to fight a war with a century down the line, especially since the new colonies would have to be on marginal worlds of dubious value that were the bottom of the barrel last time around. With mass effect drives, that could well change, but it'll also probably make things cheap enough for ZOCU and even individual Expanse planets to get in on the act, not to mention make it easier for ZOCU and similarly positioned powers to start trying to absorb nearby Rim planets, with already developed, if technically obsolete, infrastructure and tens of millions of people. Given the loose, cooperative nature of ZOCU - in a lot of ways, they're a lot more like a military alliance or the pre-Maastricht EEC than an actual nation - the Zocs are pretty ideally placed to capitalise on that, especially since the whole alien invasion thing is going to blow the Treaty of Sirius out of the water.

Most understandably. (Saren's brother = awesome)


If I were in his position, and if the people responsible weren't already dead, I'd be strongly considering shooting them.

Hm, let's hope they launch the damn things before the turians blow the runway to shit - unless, at least, they can launch off the railways and roads. I suppose the best the MSes can do is serve as some anti-air gun nests and then IFVs inside the domes - and penetrating those domes is gonna be murderous, while they get to choose their choke point, they are going to end up having to funnel infantry through choke points against, pretty much, everything the PLA has.


Pretty much. The Chinese do have some surprises in regards to how effective their GTO artillery is, but the only effective weapons like that they have aren't really designed to cover against orbital bombardment; they're to stop LPD landings right on top of towns. Missiles are for attacking ships in orbit, so those GTO particle cannons are operating right at the edge of their maximum range, with all the problems that sort of thing produces. And, yeah, the Chinese fighters do have rough field capability - they're specialised towards fighting occupation wars on dozens of Space Afghanistans, since China is fighting it's own version of the ZOCU war, except they have the political will to actually invade and occupy the dozen or more worlds their military strength can actually sustain. Of course, they had a lot more colonies pre-Breakdown, so they've still got loads of 'Little Taiwans' at the end of their arm, and the Russians are actively trying to sabotage them. The problem is, those fighters still need fuel, they still need ammo, spare parts and all the rest of it. Standard doctrine is to disperse all of that stuff during a war, but nobody's had time yet; it's been about a day since the turians arrived at the edge of the system.

As for the MSes, various people have various doctrines on how to use them on the ground. Some people use them as gunships or light armour (Haraway and Kanon are the big PC examples of that, but China will use them the same way by fiat of me!), others don't use them in anything other than a starfighter role, and some people use them as what amounts to parachute tanks (New Mercia does this, meaning that their 'paratroops' are some of the heaviest formations in their army, given that the 'infantry' are all in power suits - for which you should think 'landmate'). They aren't useless, especially inside a dome where they don't need to worry about fixed wing aicraft, and using them in a 'gunship' role has some advantages - mostly due to the fact that they can land and fight on the ground if they have to - but they aren't as good as a dedicated gunship and a dedicated light tank would be.

Places like Haraway use them like that because they don't really have the industrial muscle to produce suits and gunships and light tanks, so they settle for the option that can do all three jobs, even if two of them are sub-optimal performances. China uses them like that because they have all three in copious quantities, and there's no point in leaving all those suits sitting around doing nothing when they could be making themselves useful. New Mercia, on the other hand, basically ignored space combat altogether, so they don't have all that many suits, but have a lot of gunships and light tanks, given that they were the largest ground campaign in the ZOCU war (technically, it was a separate but parallel civil war, but it had the same sides, so...), and racked up a combined civilian and military death count well into the millions as a result of biological and nuclear warfare. I'm actually pondering having them launch their own opportunistic revanchist war on the EU client state that was split off from them at the end of the war while the Core is distracted; it's totally the sort of thing they'd do.
After careful study of Number One's biographic work My Ceaseless Quest to Conquer Earth and Destroy its Puny Inhabitants, we have come to the conclusion that the Ghast Empire may well be up to something rum.
Screwball
User avatar
Asteroid Senshi
Posts: 776
 

Re: Bad Neighbours

Postby Pale Wolf » Thu Jan 20, 2011 9:02 pm

More like years.


Ouchies.

Given the loose, cooperative nature of ZOCU - in a lot of ways, they're a lot more like a military alliance or the pre-Maastricht EEC than an actual nation - the Zocs are pretty ideally placed to capitalise on that, especially since the whole alien invasion thing is going to blow the Treaty of Sirius out of the water.


Though it might get replaced... if they join the Citadel Council, which... well, I dunno, but I don't really see them casually deciding 'okay, let's become juniour members now!' Postwar's gonna look more like humans as a separate bloc that maintains relations with the Council, but doesn't accept their authority?

If I were in his position, and if the people responsible weren't already dead, I'd be strongly considering shooting them.


Can he shoot their graves? Or strip 'em of military honours for dangerous incompetence?

but the only effective weapons like that they have aren't really designed to cover against orbital bombardment; they're to stop LPD landings right on top of towns


Well, in fairness to the Chinese, that's pretty much all ground-to-orbit can expect to cover. In the end as long as an occupying force has decent pocket calculators, they can drop chunks of metal from beyond pretty much any arbitrary range anti-orbitals have and successfully hit areas on the planet.

Standard doctrine is to disperse all of that stuff during a war, but nobody's had time yet; it's been about a day since the turians arrived at the edge of the system.


Hm. That's actually a viable question - it seems like news of the Relay 314 Incident hasn't actually spread out to Mir yet, I don't recall them seeming to know what was going on from that angle. How fast does news travel, and what the heck is going on at Earth's core? The turians have had time to do basic recon and get a gorram battlefleet under way (my understanding is that it's been weeks, maybe even a couple months), so far all the humans have done is boot the turian asses out of their space (the first time).

Places like Haraway use them like that because they don't really have the industrial muscle to produce suits and gunships and light tanks, so they settle for the option that can do all three jobs, even if two of them are sub-optimal performances.


Hey, if you can make three units for the same cost as one of each... :P

I'm actually pondering having them launch their own opportunistic revanchist war on the EU client state that was split off from them at the end of the war while the Core is distracted; it's totally the sort of thing they'd do.


Hm, in theory, maybe, but aliens are generally a much, much bigger threat.

Though I would laugh. "What the fuck? They didn't even stop fighting each other while waging war with us!"
There is no problem that cannot be solved through the proper application of immense levels of firepower.

- Finally promoted to Spammaster Indeterminate Rank as of June 18, by Stratagemini

<Stratagemini> My Titanium Anus Armour will repel all challengers!

Would you believe this is one of the more tame bits of dirt I've got for him?
Pale Wolf
User avatar
Fukufics Staffer
Posts: 1315
 

Re: Bad Neighbours

Postby Screwball » Fri Jan 21, 2011 5:41 am

Though it might get replaced... if they join the Citadel Council, which... well, I dunno, but I don't really see them casually deciding 'okay, let's become juniour members now!' Postwar's gonna look more like humans as a separate bloc that maintains relations with the Council, but doesn't accept their authority?


The postwar situation is going to be really interesting; you're right that the humans aren't going to just casually give in. The Core powers are used to being the big fish, and most of them have an attitude to AI that would absolutely horrify the Citadel. That is, they're perfectly fine with true AI, although they're not common due to cost reasons, and said AIs constitute an important pillar of the economy. They have all the rights and responsibilities of every other citizen as well, so they aren't owned by companies, they're employed by them (otherwise it'd be slavery), and they're perfectly free to switch jobs. China and Russia have the added problems that they never subscribed to Stauss-Kasserism, so they still have large transgene populations, lots of which wildly violate the Council laws on what its okay to do with genetic engineering.

The Expanse is even worse. ZOCU just got done fighting a war to secure their independence from, depending on the world, PACT, the EU or the UN. The Chinese arm is basically a warzone for the exact same reason. The Council trying to enforce membership on those worlds would result in another war, although if they had the political will to do it, the Council could win said wars. Most Expanse worlds have the same problems as China and Russia with regards to transgenes, except worse as well. As it is, nobody's going to submit to some sort of Sphere-wide body to handle diplomatic relations with the Council - if this had happened before the Breakdown, then the UN could have done it, but that's a political impossibility now. Likewise, because everybody is actively competing (to the point where Russia and China have a sort of low intensity undeclared war going on in the Sino-Russian arm), nobody's going to be willing to subordinate themselves to the sovereignty of a bunch of aliens. Just about the only thing they can agree on is that if it comes down to it, they should shoot the aliens before they shoot each other. :(

Can he shoot their graves? Or strip 'em of military honours for dangerous incompetence?


I guess he could. It's much less satisfying, though.

Well, in fairness to the Chinese, that's pretty much all ground-to-orbit can expect to cover. In the end as long as an occupying force has decent pocket calculators, they can drop chunks of metal from beyond pretty much any arbitrary range anti-orbitals have and successfully hit areas on the planet.


Yep. That's what all Sphere planetary defence doctrine is about; topping the guys in orbit from landing on top of you or, hopefully, using orbital bombardment to accurately hit targets as small as, say, individual tanks. Essentially, it's supposed to stop what happened to Shanxi in ME canon, where the turians sat in orbit and targeted human units with pinpoint accuracy, therefore forcing an attacker to either contest the planet on the ground, or completely level the colonised areas from orbit, which, presumably, defeats the purpose of attacking in the first place.

Hm. That's actually a viable question - it seems like news of the Relay 314 Incident hasn't actually spread out to Mir yet, I don't recall them seeming to know what was going on from that angle. How fast does news travel, and what the heck is going on at Earth's core? The turians have had time to do basic recon and get a gorram battlefleet under way (my understanding is that it's been weeks, maybe even a couple months), so far all the humans have done is boot the turian asses out of their space (the first time).


News of both will reach Earth at about the same time, actually. At the moment, all Earth knows is that somebody with odd technology attacked an ARROWS research post, and a ZOCU fleet went to chase them off. Alshain is a lot closer to Earth, but most of the delay regarding the fight at the relay is due to getting word from the relay system to the nearest system with a hyperwave beacon. You can't transmit FTL over red lines, so somebody needs to physically carry the message through those on a ship, and travel over red lines is slow. Once they actually reach a more settled system, Earth would know in about a week. The turians have a shorter command and control loop, but only with regards to stuff that happens in the middle of nowhere from the human PoV.


Hm, in theory, maybe, but aliens are generally a much, much bigger threat.

Though I would laugh. "What the fuck? They didn't even stop fighting each other while waging war with us!"


Not to Frozen British Space North Korea!
After careful study of Number One's biographic work My Ceaseless Quest to Conquer Earth and Destroy its Puny Inhabitants, we have come to the conclusion that the Ghast Empire may well be up to something rum.
Screwball
User avatar
Asteroid Senshi
Posts: 776
 

Re: Bad Neighbours

Postby Pale Wolf » Fri Jan 21, 2011 2:28 pm

China and Russia have the added problems that they never subscribed to Stauss-Kasserism, so they still have large transgene populations, lots of which wildly violate the Council laws on what its okay to do with genetic engineering.


You can't violate laws that don't apply to you. ^_^

The Council trying to enforce membership on those worlds would result in another war, although if they had the political will to do it, the Council could win said wars.


I dunno about that - wouldn't the Council run into the same logistical problems the Core did? It's a lot easier to fight on home ground over interstellar distances.

For that matter, the Core might get involved themselves. (Either a case of 'humans stick together or we get cut up separately', or of 'fuck this, we don't get to rule those yokels, then neither do those aliens')

Just about the only thing they can agree on is that if it comes down to it, they should shoot the aliens before they shoot each other.


It's not a bad consensus. ^_^

Essentially, it's supposed to stop what happened to Shanxi in ME canon, where the turians sat in orbit and targeted human units with pinpoint accuracy,


I dunno if I'd call 'levelling entire city blocks to get infantry squads' pinpoint.

Alshain is a lot closer to Earth, but most of the delay regarding the fight at the relay is due to getting word from the relay system to the nearest system with a hyperwave beacon. You can't transmit FTL over red lines, so somebody needs to physically carry the message through those on a ship, and travel over red lines is slow.


Ouchies.

Once they actually reach a more settled system, Earth would know in about a week. The turians have a shorter command and control loop, but only with regards to stuff that happens in the middle of nowhere from the human PoV.


I guess in that sense it's a benefit that the turians moved the war to settled areas.
There is no problem that cannot be solved through the proper application of immense levels of firepower.

- Finally promoted to Spammaster Indeterminate Rank as of June 18, by Stratagemini

<Stratagemini> My Titanium Anus Armour will repel all challengers!

Would you believe this is one of the more tame bits of dirt I've got for him?
Pale Wolf
User avatar
Fukufics Staffer
Posts: 1315
 

Re: Bad Neighbours

Postby Screwball » Sat Jan 22, 2011 5:28 am

You can't violate laws that don't apply to you. ^_^


Yeah, but they start becoming a problem when galactic 'polite society' expects you to join their debating club as a matter of course.

I dunno about that - wouldn't the Council run into the same logistical problems the Core did? It's a lot easier to fight on home ground over interstellar distances.

For that matter, the Core might get involved themselves. (Either a case of 'humans stick together or we get cut up separately', or of 'fuck this, we don't get to rule those yokels, then neither do those aliens')


As to the first, the Council is a lot bigger than the Core, and they're a lot more practised at power projection, if not actual large scale warfare. Before the ZOCU war and the Chinese reconquista, 'power projection' meant 'a syscon or division of battleships/cruisers, operating from a nearby colony to clear the nearest systems of drones'. They only really started throwing true fleets around in the ZOCU war, and even then, they were never operating very far from settled planets. That's not to say they don't have any power projection; the Core stomped ZOCU into the ground eventually, once they'd gotten themselves sorted out, and it was only the fact that they knew from past experiance on Kanon, Haraway and New Mercia that ground invasions would turn into occupation wars from hell, and that ZOCU was sitting of relatively sizeable stockpiles of nukes - which could either be used on invaders or given to Zoc stealth ships and used to attack targets on Core planets - that they went for a negotiated peace.

As to the second, well, China and Russia would almost certainly get involved, but they're in the wrong place to support ZOCU. It'd be good for the League and the Magnates, though! The EU and PACT would, depending on how reasonable the Council is willing to be about already extant, widespread AIs, either get on pretty well with the Council, or tell them to take a long walk off of a short pier, moreso with PACT. There are plenty of bitter nations in both groups that would be happy to see the Council flatten the Zocs - Korea and Britain are prime examples, since both were pretty solidly humiliated in the war.

It's not a bad consensus. ^_^


Indeed not.

I dunno if I'd call 'levelling entire city blocks to get infantry squads' pinpoint.


Compared to flattening the entire city?

Ouchies.


Yep. It's like going back to the Age of Sail, and everybody hates it. :P

I guess in that sense it's a benefit that the turians moved the war to settled areas.


Every cloud has a silver lining! :D
After careful study of Number One's biographic work My Ceaseless Quest to Conquer Earth and Destroy its Puny Inhabitants, we have come to the conclusion that the Ghast Empire may well be up to something rum.
Screwball
User avatar
Asteroid Senshi
Posts: 776
 

Re: Bad Neighbours

Postby Pale Wolf » Sat Jan 22, 2011 10:28 am

Yeah, but they start becoming a problem when galactic 'polite society' expects you to join their debating club as a matter of course.


One might, if they weren't expected to follow legal codes you never had a say in and obey a Council of three people whose orders you, again, never have a say in... (And who get all pissy when you don't hang on their every word)

As to the second, well, China and Russia would almost certainly get involved, but they're in the wrong place to support ZOCU.


Huh, really? I kinda figured since the turians were attacking a Chinese/Russian colony, the war zone was at least reasonably close to their colonization area.

It'd be good for the League and the Magnates, though!


Speaking of that, a comment someone brought up on Spacebattles made me wonder. How rapetastic will ground wars get? Aside from the difference in kit, aren't a lot of soldiers very heavily genetically modified, or part-cyborg, or both? (And considering the Magnates with their heavy modifications lost to ZOCU and the League...)

The EU and PACT would, depending on how reasonable the Council is willing to be about already extant, widespread AIs, either get on pretty well with the Council, or tell them to take a long walk off of a short pier, moreso with PACT. There are plenty of bitter nations in both groups that would be happy to see the Council flatten the Zocs - Korea and Britain are prime examples, since both were pretty solidly humiliated in the war.


Fortunately for ZOCU, the Council is not known to be reasonable. ^_^

Compared to flattening the entire city?


I always figured 'pinpoint' implied a certain degree of accuracy and lack of collateral damage...

Yep. It's like going back to the Age of Sail, and everybody hates it.


I guess they're used to it by now, though.
There is no problem that cannot be solved through the proper application of immense levels of firepower.

- Finally promoted to Spammaster Indeterminate Rank as of June 18, by Stratagemini

<Stratagemini> My Titanium Anus Armour will repel all challengers!

Would you believe this is one of the more tame bits of dirt I've got for him?
Pale Wolf
User avatar
Fukufics Staffer
Posts: 1315
 

Re: Bad Neighbours

Postby Screwball » Sat Jan 22, 2011 11:24 am

One might, if they weren't expected to follow legal codes you never had a say in and obey a Council of three people whose orders you, again, never have a say in... (And who get all pissy when you don't hang on their every word)


That's why the post-war situation will be interesting.

Huh, really? I kinda figured since the turians were attacking a Chinese/Russian colony, the war zone was at least reasonably close to their colonization area.


I don't know if you looked at the map on the wiki, but to be honest, it doesn't really help. Like a subway map, it's basically a way of compressing a complex three dimensional structure into an easily readable two dimensional format.

If you're a turian, the 'Sphere' isn't a sphere at all; it's more like a tripod; one of the arms is the EU arm, one is the PACT arm, and one is the Sino-Russian arm, with Earth and the First Stage colonies at the apex. There's a bunch of lightly inhabited red lines connecting them together, up until you reach the end of the arms, where things start blending together. ZOCU is at the end of the PACT and EU arms, so they need to either go through PACT or EU space to reach China and Russia, or through the League and Magnates, which is a longer trip without the benefit of catapults. Despite that, though, Sino-Russian space is still, physically, quite close, which is why the turians stumbled over it. It was just Chinese bad luck that they didn't find an EU, PACT or ZOCU world first.

Speaking of that, a comment someone brought up on Spacebattles made me wonder. How rapetastic will ground wars get? Aside from the difference in kit, aren't a lot of soldiers very heavily genetically modified, or part-cyborg, or both? (And considering the Magnates with their heavy modifications lost to ZOCU and the League...)


Yeah, the turians are in an uncomfortable position on the ground; they have a rough parity in space, owing to their possession of dreadnoughts and the limited human supply of effective capital ships, and over the long term, they could simply bury humanity with cruisers if they had to. On the ground, well, the humans are superior but not quite so screwed as that comment suggested. Essentially, the turians are going to be forced into using more or less similar methods to the modern US military in Afghanistan; that is, infantry in combat are there merely to keep the enemy in one place so that artillery and air strikes can kill him. That's because they can't easily kill them rather than not being able to easily hit them, but they have enough rockets that they can sort of manage it, and their heavy equipment is more or less capable of matching human kit, with the exception of some of the most modern MBTs (they have particle weapons, and I suspect that the turians, quite logically, went for kinetic barriers rather than stupidly heavy armour), and their fighters and CAS birds are somewhat superior to most Sphere aerospace craft in terms of speed and agility thanks to mass effect fields. In an atmosphere, at least; they blow human kit out of the water in space, unless said human kit is fortunate enough to mount zero shift systems.

Humanity, on the other hand, has made individual infantry a lot more lethal than they are now, complete with squad level recon drones and all sorts of stuff. Cheng had to do it through a console, but there's plenty of soldiers who can manage drones through inbuilt hardware and so forth. They also kept all the heavy support and airpower components of modern warfare as well, so, yeah, they're just flat out better than the turians are at fighting a full scale, mechanised interstellar war. In fairness, that's mostly because they've just fought or are fighting a full scale, mechanised interstellar war; most of the stuff regarding fully armoured exoskeletons, large calibre HEAP rounds and all the rest of it started to be introduced in the Magnate War, but only really matured in the ZOCU war. To use New Mercia as a highly relevant example, prior to the start of it's civil war, only about a third of the RSDF Ground Command infantry force wore anything that could be classed as 'power amour', and infantry weapons were much less lethal. In the current timeline, New Mercian infantry is 100% power armoured, unless they're wearing even larger power suits, and the standard infantry weapon now would have been considered a support weapon twenty years before.

The most apt comparison I can think of is that the turians have just spent a thousand years fighting Victoria's Small Wars, whereas, doctrinally, the humans have just finished WW2. Obviously, that's not a perfect comparison, because both sides have drones and so forth, but the two sides are optimised for a different sort of fighting, and unfortunately for the turians, the campaign they want to wage plays to the strength of the humans. Nevertheless, while they're at a disadvantage, so long as they can concentrate their force multipliers competently (and they can, because they aren't incompetent other than in the political arena :wink: :P), they can give a good accounting of themselves.

Fortunately for ZOCU, the Council is not known to be reasonable. ^_^


That was diplomatic. I would have called the arrogant jerkfaces. :D

I always figured 'pinpoint' implied a certain degree of accuracy and lack of collateral damage...


Well, there's still a city left afterwards, right? :lol:

Anyway, considering how few people actually died in canon ME during the FCW, there has to have been something odd going on; there's only a few hundred human casualties in the entire war, and we know that the Alliance lost some ships, which probably accounts for most of those.

I guess they're used to it by now, though.


Indeed. They still hate it, though, especially since, if you are the the hyperwave network, it usually only takes a day or two to get a reply, unless you're sending over a very long distance.
After careful study of Number One's biographic work My Ceaseless Quest to Conquer Earth and Destroy its Puny Inhabitants, we have come to the conclusion that the Ghast Empire may well be up to something rum.
Screwball
User avatar
Asteroid Senshi
Posts: 776
 

Re: Bad Neighbours

Postby Pale Wolf » Sat Jan 22, 2011 3:42 pm

Despite that, though, Sino-Russian space is still, physically, quite close, which is why the turians stumbled over it. It was just Chinese bad luck that they didn't find an EU, PACT or ZOCU world first.


Ahhhh, so the arm is how it works in the Sphere FTL system, but geographically speaking they're pretty close?

Guess we'd best hope the turians don't realize there are different human factions and keep attacking 'em indiscriminately, then - that ought to get 'em workin' together.

The turians are, after all, politically incompetent. Let's get that working for us instead of against us!

Yeah, the turians are in an uncomfortable position on the ground; they have a rough parity in space, owing to their possession of dreadnoughts and the limited human supply of effective capital ships, and over the long term, they could simply bury humanity with cruisers if they had to. On the ground, well, the humans are superior but not quite so screwed as that comment suggested. Essentially, the turians are going to be forced into using more or less similar methods to the modern US military in Afghanistan; that is, infantry in combat are there merely to keep the enemy in one place so that artillery and air strikes can kill him.


Yeah, if the heavies are roughly analogous, the major superiourity in infantry doesn't come out so much. Though tight confines battles like on the Miran space station are going to rip the turians to shreds.

and their fighters and CAS birds are somewhat superior to most Sphere aerospace craft in terms of speed and agility thanks to mass effect fields. In an atmosphere, at least;


*Blinks* Mass effect fields increase speed in atmo? But... atmospheric top speed is dependent solely on drag and thrust, mass doesn't actually come into play at all. I'd think human chemistry advantages would level out into higher thrust (and superiour metallurgy on the fighter's outer skin to tolerate high-speed heat), and thus higher atmospheric top speed - though still less acceleration.

In fairness, that's mostly because they've just fought or are fighting a full scale, mechanised interstellar war


Well, humans are basically prettier krogan...

Nevertheless, while they're at a disadvantage, so long as they can concentrate their force multipliers competently (and they can, because they aren't incompetent other than in the political arena ), they can give a good accounting of themselves.


Well of course. It wouldn't be any fun if the opponent weren't worthy, now would it?

they blow human kit out of the water in space, unless said human kit is fortunate enough to mount zero shift systems.


Mwahahah?

That was diplomatic. I would have called the arrogant jerkfaces.


I have. Repeatedly :P

Anyway, considering how few people actually died in canon ME during the FCW, there has to have been something odd going on; there's only a few hundred human casualties in the entire war, and we know that the Alliance lost some ships, which probably accounts for most of those.


They could have just been counting military casualties.
There is no problem that cannot be solved through the proper application of immense levels of firepower.

- Finally promoted to Spammaster Indeterminate Rank as of June 18, by Stratagemini

<Stratagemini> My Titanium Anus Armour will repel all challengers!

Would you believe this is one of the more tame bits of dirt I've got for him?
Pale Wolf
User avatar
Fukufics Staffer
Posts: 1315
 

Re: Bad Neighbours

Postby Screwball » Sun Jan 23, 2011 8:39 am

Ahhhh, so the arm is how it works in the Sphere FTL system, but geographically speaking they're pretty close?

Guess we'd best hope the turians don't realize there are different human factions and keep attacking 'em indiscriminately, then - that ought to get 'em workin' together.

The turians are, after all, politically incompetent. Let's get that working for us instead of against us!


Yep. Having the turians continue to attack different people is part of the plan, actually; they're going to hit an EU world (my favourite EU world, as it happens) as well, and raid various other people, including indies, before they realise what's actually going on. Whether this will actually unify humanity or not, well, you'll see.

Yeah, if the heavies are roughly analogous, the major superiourity in infantry doesn't come out so much. Though tight confines battles like on the Miran space station are going to rip the turians to shreds.


Correct. Not many people in the Sphere actually use cutting edge tanks either; the vast majority of MBTs are armed with railguns of some sort; the most modern ones are basically varients of those with energy weapons, better armour and sometimes shields.

*Blinks* Mass effect fields increase speed in atmo? But... atmospheric top speed is dependent solely on drag and thrust, mass doesn't actually come into play at all. I'd think human chemistry advantages would level out into higher thrust (and superiour metallurgy on the fighter's outer skin to tolerate high-speed heat), and thus higher atmospheric top speed - though still less acceleration.


I hadn't thought of that. Fortunately, I can still change things. :P

Also, most human fighters use hyper-miniaturised fusion engines, not chemical engines, and the ones that don't are mostly those that use mercurion or some other exotic theotech propulsion. Yes, this rapes physics, but... dust!

Mwahahah?


That was specifically referring to fighters/suits/aerospace craft. ME stuff has better acceleration and manoeuvrability in space, although the humans have better protection (theoretically - the latest mark of Sarissa or Legionnaire is a much different beast to an early mark Sarissa, Hoplite or Leonid after all) and heavier weapons. Since ME weapons can still kill Sphere stuff, and they can dictate the engagement against anything without a zero shift system, the humans are in trouble if they try to pit, say, Hoplites against ME fighters.
After careful study of Number One's biographic work My Ceaseless Quest to Conquer Earth and Destroy its Puny Inhabitants, we have come to the conclusion that the Ghast Empire may well be up to something rum.
Screwball
User avatar
Asteroid Senshi
Posts: 776
 

Re: Bad Neighbours

Postby Pale Wolf » Tue Jan 25, 2011 7:46 pm

Yep. Having the turians continue to attack different people is part of the plan, actually; they're going to hit an EU world (my favourite EU world, as it happens) as well, and raid various other people, including indies, before they realise what's actually going on. Whether this will actually unify humanity or not, well, you'll see.


Unify? Heaven forbid!

I just want 'em all shooting in the same direction. ;)

Correct. Not many people in the Sphere actually use cutting edge tanks either; the vast majority of MBTs are armed with railguns of some sort; the most modern ones are basically varients of those with energy weapons, better armour and sometimes shields.


The more modern tanks (I'd bet the Mercians have 'em, from your description) will again rape their turian equivalents, won't they?

I hadn't thought of that. Fortunately, I can still change things.

Also, most human fighters use hyper-miniaturised fusion engines, not chemical engines, and the ones that don't are mostly those that use mercurion or some other exotic theotech propulsion. Yes, this rapes physics, but... dust!


Should be within human expertise still - and the theotech stuff ought to be fun, though I haven't a clue how at this point :P

Fusion engines ought to work fairly well. Certainly gonna have shitloads of power.

That was specifically referring to fighters/suits/aerospace craft. ME stuff has better acceleration and manoeuvrability in space, although the humans have better protection (theoretically - the latest mark of Sarissa or Legionnaire is a much different beast to an early mark Sarissa, Hoplite or Leonid after all) and heavier weapons. Since ME weapons can still kill Sphere stuff, and they can dictate the engagement against anything without a zero shift system, the humans are in trouble if they try to pit, say, Hoplites against ME fighters.


Mm. And late-mark Legionnaires and everything else appeared to hold up fairly well under GARDIAN - if they keep 'em upgraded, fighter/MS blitzes will remain highly effective.

So we're looking, I think, at fighters/MSes against ships, while the Sphere ships will mostly need to pit their point defence against turian fighters. If they can produce enough zero shift units, then they can consider engaging ME fighters, but if they're in insufficient numbers, they'll just get swarmed to death. What you can do with limited amounts of sufficiently agile space superiourity craft is use them to box in enemy fighters and funnel them into point defence killing zones.

While the MSes, if they're not updated in terms of protection, will get slaughtered by GARDIAN, updated ones can make anti-ship runs with a fair degree of success (still some losses, but less). And one MS on the hull (ie, too close for GARDIAN to get an angle to fire) is more or less inevitable death for any turian ship.

Though it's worth noting. The total casualties they lost were, roughly... 36 units? This is only a rough analogy, but going by modern-day standards...

The Arleigh Burke is a rough 'standardweight' ship, the F-15 is a fighter of around the same generation. The AB takes a crew of around 300, and costs about $1.1 billion per ship. An F-15 takes a crew of 1, and costs about $30 million apiece. For averages, we'll say each person on the Arleigh Burke takes one year to train, and each F-15 pilot takes four years.

Crunching the math, losing 36 F-15s to take out one Arleigh Burke? $1.08 billion dollars, 36 people, and 144 years of training time. Just took out $1.1 billion dollars, 300 people, and 300 years of training time.

They won that. Looks a little hollow, but if fighters are that effective against ME ships, you can afford to even up your paucity in ships by swarming them with fighters. Even more so considering that that's far below the effectiveness of up-to-date MS units.

'course, the fact that you will take casualties doing that is fairly demoralizing, but casualties do tend to happen - for instance, in the jump-to-strike they pulled off after that, they actually sustained worse losses (a cruiser and three destroyers is something like double to triple the loss of money, and more like twenty to thirty times the loss of life), yet that was considered a success rather than a debacle. And one can cut the losses down by employing drone units and purpose-optimized armour.
There is no problem that cannot be solved through the proper application of immense levels of firepower.

- Finally promoted to Spammaster Indeterminate Rank as of June 18, by Stratagemini

<Stratagemini> My Titanium Anus Armour will repel all challengers!

Would you believe this is one of the more tame bits of dirt I've got for him?
Pale Wolf
User avatar
Fukufics Staffer
Posts: 1315
 

Re: Bad Neighbours

Postby Screwball » Wed Jan 26, 2011 6:19 pm

Unify? Heaven forbid!

I just want 'em all shooting in the same direction. ;)


You could probably manage most of them shooting in the same direction at once. Subject to caveats, like Russia backstabbing China, New Mercia backstabbing Albion while the EU isn't capable of doing anything about it, Korea possibly launching a second invasion of Choson while ZOCU is distracted, the Magnates restarting the Magnate War while the Core in general is distracted and so on. There are plenty of people who are crazy enough to fight the turians and their chosen human enemies at the same time. Never let it be said that humanity isn't ambitious! :D

The more modern tanks (I'd bet the Mercians have 'em, from your description) will again rape their turian equivalents, won't they?


Yeah. Fortunately for the turians, most of the people who maintain large formations of the most modern MBTs do so because they have some sort of immediate need to do so. The Mercians, for example, do it because they're sharing a planet with an EU backed breakaway state called Albion. The political situation between them is very much like the situation in Korea immediately after the Korean War, with the added vitriol you'd get from a WMD exchange and the ruler of New Mercia being absolutely convinced that her family was butchered in their beds by terrorists in the employ of the EU and the people who would later become the Albionese government. She's wrong, sort of (and, indeed, partly correct,- it's complicated), but the New Mercian Civil War required joint intervention by the EU and ZOCU after the close of the main ZOCU war to enforce a ceasefire (not a peace treaty- technically, both sides are still fighting, but New Mercia doesn't recognise the existence of Albion, so it's not really a state of 'war'). The only reason New Mercia hasn't kicked the whole thing off again is because the EU has a fleet and army in the system ready to ruin them if they do; without that, Mercia is twice the size of Albion economically and has a much bigger army. That situation means they need to keep most of their kit at home, though, or Albion might try and jump them; the rebels are gutsy enough to try it.

The same goes for the Chinese indies (against China), the League (against the Magnates, although in that case, their 'cutting edge' is about standard tech for the rest of the Sphere) and most of the various indie worlds in the rest of the expanse; those that have advanced ground forces in large number, like Haraway, have a fair chance of just leaving the Core to hang, IMO. That leaves the Core and their colonies the ones with large, high tech armies, but most of them devoted a lot more effort to naval modernisation during the war than to army upgrades, so there's still plenty of kit from the middle of the century in service as well as the M13A20 Space Abrams or whatever. China, being in the middle of conquering a dozen or so planets, is the best off there.

Should be within human expertise still - and the theotech stuff ought to be fun, though I haven't a clue how at this point :P

Fusion engines ought to work fairly well. Certainly gonna have shitloads of power.


The theotech stuff is, basically, an inertialess drive. Sort of. The 'official' description at the moment is 'it goes faster', but since the acceleration of standard fusion drives is limited by what the crew can take, not the power of the drive, that's more or less the only way I can conceive of mercurion working. Compared to some advanced theotech drives, it's not very good (postie drives are better than ME ones, but they also have the advantages of workable, widely implemented pseudogravity and the fact that posties are uploads, and thus not squishy), but it's still a lot better than a standard fusion drive.

In terms of fighters... uh, ruleswise, the two engine components on aerospace craft are engines and verniers (speed and agility, respectively). Most designs seem to have eight slots for propulsion, and split them evenly, or six to four, but a mercurion thruster counts as both an engine and a thruster. So, that means that my (Mercian) Tigershark strike fighter effectively has eight thrusters and eight verniers, making it faster than most other fighters, and more agile than most other fighters. The trade off is, you need lots of dust to actually make the damn things, but ZOCU has dust coming out of it's ears...

Mm. And late-mark Legionnaires and everything else appeared to hold up fairly well under GARDIAN - if they keep 'em upgraded, fighter/MS blitzes will remain highly effective.

So we're looking, I think, at fighters/MSes against ships, while the Sphere ships will mostly need to pit their point defence against turian fighters. If they can produce enough zero shift units, then they can consider engaging ME fighters, but if they're in insufficient numbers, they'll just get swarmed to death. What you can do with limited amounts of sufficiently agile space superiourity craft is use them to box in enemy fighters and funnel them into point defence killing zones.

While the MSes, if they're not updated in terms of protection, will get slaughtered by GARDIAN, updated ones can make anti-ship runs with a fair degree of success (still some losses, but less). And one MS on the hull (ie, too close for GARDIAN to get an angle to fire) is more or less inevitable death for any turian ship.

Though it's worth noting. The total casualties they lost were, roughly... 36 units? This is only a rough analogy, but going by modern-day standards...

The Arleigh Burke is a rough 'standardweight' ship, the F-15 is a fighter of around the same generation. The AB takes a crew of around 300, and costs about $1.1 billion per ship. An F-15 takes a crew of 1, and costs about $30 million apiece. For averages, we'll say each person on the Arleigh Burke takes one year to train, and each F-15 pilot takes four years.

Crunching the math, losing 36 F-15s to take out one Arleigh Burke? $1.08 billion dollars, 36 people, and 144 years of training time. Just took out $1.1 billion dollars, 300 people, and 300 years of training time.

They won that. Looks a little hollow, but if fighters are that effective against ME ships, you can afford to even up your paucity in ships by swarming them with fighters. Even more so considering that that's far below the effectiveness of up-to-date MS units.

'course, the fact that you will take casualties doing that is fairly demoralizing, but casualties do tend to happen - for instance, in the jump-to-strike they pulled off after that, they actually sustained worse losses (a cruiser and three destroyers is something like double to triple the loss of money, and more like twenty to thirty times the loss of life), yet that was considered a success rather than a debacle. And one can cut the losses down by employing drone units and purpose-optimized armour.


Well, the first thing to remember is that the turians are, in fact, a lot bigger than the Sphere; the fleet they threw at Alshain was everything they could scrape together in a month and a bit, and it's about the same size as the ones that fought in the Battle of Haraway, the largest space battle in human history; obviously, it's only got the one dreadnought, whereas ZOCU fielded 19 Palladas and the EU 27 late mark Drakes, but the ship numbers are all the way up there. The turians could probably run the Sphere out of suits by sacrificing cruisers like that, if they had the political and military will, although I don't think it's reasonable for them to behave that way. Of course, if they start losing dreadnoughts, the situation changes.

Second, zero shift systems are fairly rare; Sarrisas mount them, but roughly half the Sarissas in existence are early marks either with weak shields or no shields at all. As far as I know, ZOCU is the only bloc with access to the tech; the Core can put FTL drives on their kit, but they cycle a lot slower and are less accurate, so they generally don't bother, outside of test projects for intersystem strategic bombers and the like. The only publically known suit to mount a zero shift other than the Sarissa is the Masamune, and that's basically one of those super-prototype mobile suits that you get in every mecha anime ever, except it's actually a prototype, so it's got plenty of problems and hasn't entered widespread service yet. It's basically ZOCU's version of the F-22, except as of six years ago. Sarissas and Legionnaires make up significantly less than half of ZOCU's suit inventory; the rest is mostly Hoplites and varients, with a few very, very heavily upgraded Peltasts, both of which are basically completely useless for antishipping strikes. In fact, the Legionnaire was designed specifically because Hoplites were too fragile to survive shipboard point defence once the Core managed to refit their fleet.

Third, long range MS strikes rely, in this situation, on some pretty rare conditions; they're still slower accelerating than ME ships, although they're better than Sphere ships because they're designed to allow the pilot to survive long periods of extended high accel, and being a transgene is almost a requirement to be a pilot in a lot of places. They need to have a significant velocity advantage to catch up to an ME ship trying to run, which they had in UNSO-085.

Given that limitation, the most likely use for them is going to be to jump in close to the enemy fleet, and kick them out in the turians' teeth to immeditately multiply human firepower. That's not exactly an unprecedented tactic, since ZOCU was generally desperate to find ways to increase their effective firepower in order to counter superior Core numbers (especially given that an individual Drake VII can dish out more raw damage than a Pallada...). Long range fighter or suit strikes more or less require a turian ship or ships to be at rest, relatively near a jumpzone, and for the human fleet to carry a high velocity through their jump. That's pretty standard practice; nobody wants to be tooling around accelerating away from a jumpzone at two or three G from nearly a standing start when the defenders might have stuck defsats and all sorts of other nasty things nearby. The turians, not being idiots, will wise up to that pretty quickly.
After careful study of Number One's biographic work My Ceaseless Quest to Conquer Earth and Destroy its Puny Inhabitants, we have come to the conclusion that the Ghast Empire may well be up to something rum.
Screwball
User avatar
Asteroid Senshi
Posts: 776
 

Re: Bad Neighbours

Postby Pale Wolf » Wed Jan 26, 2011 7:51 pm

You could probably manage most of them shooting in the same direction at once. Subject to caveats, like Russia backstabbing China, New Mercia backstabbing Albion while the EU isn't capable of doing anything about it, Korea possibly launching a second invasion of Choson while ZOCU is distracted, the Magnates restarting the Magnate War while the Core in general is distracted and so on. There are plenty of people who are crazy enough to fight the turians and their chosen human enemies at the same time. Never let it be said that humanity isn't ambitious!


They could probably do it, too! :P

and the ruler of New Mercia being absolutely convinced that her family was butchered in their beds by terrorists in the employ of the EU and the people who would later become the Albionese government.


Ah yes, that always helps.

The same goes for the Chinese indies (against China), the League (against the Magnates, although in that case, their 'cutting edge' is about standard tech for the rest of the Sphere) and most of the various indie worlds in the rest of the expanse; those that have advanced ground forces in large number, like Haraway, have a fair chance of just leaving the Core to hang, IMO.


So mostly the tanks will be on par, then? The Sphere has better, but the people who have 'em are busy fighting other people?

but most of them devoted a lot more effort to naval modernisation during the war than to army upgrades,


Well, in fairness, that naval modernization will generally serve them in better stead. Blowing up the transport on the way >>>>>>>> trying to fight on the ground when the bad guys hold orbit.

The theotech stuff is, basically, an inertialess drive. Sort of. The 'official' description at the moment is 'it goes faster', but since the acceleration of standard fusion drives is limited by what the crew can take, not the power of the drive, that's more or less the only way I can conceive of mercurion working. Compared to some advanced theotech drives, it's not very good (postie drives are better than ME ones, but they also have the advantages of workable, widely implemented pseudogravity and the fact that posties are uploads, and thus not squishy), but it's still a lot better than a standard fusion drive.


Hm, that makes sense. Well, as much sense as inertialess magic ever can.

The trade off is, you need lots of dust to actually make the damn things, but ZOCU has dust coming out of it's ears...


Glee!

The turians could probably run the Sphere out of suits by sacrificing cruisers like that, if they had the political and military will, although I don't think it's reasonable for them to behave that way.


That much bigger? Updated suits would lose more like half to a quarter of that - though they may not have enough to hand, those numbers will probably apply in a long-term full-industry war.

Of course, if they start losing dreadnoughts, the situation changes.


Fun bit is that the numbers will look even sweeter on the dreadnoughts.

Second, zero shift systems are fairly rare; Sarrisas mount them, but roughly half the Sarissas in existence are early marks either with weak shields or no shields at all. As far as I know, ZOCU is the only bloc with access to the tech; the Core can put FTL drives on their kit, but they cycle a lot slower and are less accurate, so they generally don't bother, outside of test projects for intersystem strategic bombers and the like. The only publically known suit to mount a zero shift other than the Sarissa is the Masamune, and that's basically one of those super-prototype mobile suits that you get in every mecha anime ever, except it's actually a prototype, so it's got plenty of problems and hasn't entered widespread service yet. It's basically ZOCU's version of the F-22, except as of six years ago. Sarissas and Legionnaires make up significantly less than half of ZOCU's suit inventory; the rest is mostly Hoplites and varients, with a few very, very heavily upgraded Peltasts, both of which are basically completely useless for antishipping strikes. In fact, the Legionnaire was designed specifically because Hoplites were too fragile to survive shipboard point defence once the Core managed to refit their fleet.


Hm. So... nowhere near enough zero shifts to even consider dogfighting except in small numbers. Looks like anti-fighter defence will be dependent on point defence, with the MSes and fighters mostly serving to force the turian fighters into killzones.

Fortunately, the turians, unlike the Systems Alliance, aren't a fighter-based power.

I guess heavily-defended suits aren't the most common, but they should still have enough to do quite a bit of damage.

I see the armoured-up Sarissas being serious dreadnought-killers. Zero shift until you're sitting on the hull, and start cutting. What kind of range does zero shift have?

Given that limitation, the most likely use for them is going to be to jump in close to the enemy fleet, and kick them out in the turians' teeth to immeditately multiply human firepower.


That should be fairly effective. They don't necessarily have that much firepower on their own, but what they can do is exploit holes carved by the big ships.
There is no problem that cannot be solved through the proper application of immense levels of firepower.

- Finally promoted to Spammaster Indeterminate Rank as of June 18, by Stratagemini

<Stratagemini> My Titanium Anus Armour will repel all challengers!

Would you believe this is one of the more tame bits of dirt I've got for him?
Pale Wolf
User avatar
Fukufics Staffer
Posts: 1315
 

Previous

Return to Stories and C&C

Who is online

Users browsing this forum: No registered users