Pursuant to John Appel's excellent suggestion I've reposted my response to Joe Fugate in the '10 qustions...' thread here. Please respond (if you want to respond) here instead of there.Perhaps this particular discussion (i.e., aspects of the Rebellion Era that snap people's disbelief suspenders) could fork off onto a separate thread, preserving this one for Joe to answer the other questions?
John
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First of all, let me add my welcomes to those of the others and apologise in advance for the roasting I'm about to give you, but I'm afraid you've touched on a nerve here
I will try to keep this civil. No, really. I promise. To try.
I'm afraid we'll never agree on that. You see, I happen to believe that no society can afford to build enough starships to transport ihatei in the numbers you imply. (Much less an Aslan society, since they must perpetually spend most of their substance guarding against their neighbors). Remember, an ihatei fleet is essentially a one-way expedition. That means each of it's members costs hundreds of thousands of credits to 'outfit'.Originally posted by JoeFugate:
It's actually more akin to 50% of all the nations on earth suddenly showing up on the borders of Canada and Mexico and then marching across. Set this in the mid 1800s ...
(And you're overlooking that part of the analogy where the US Navy may be overseas but the Army and the national guards (and the forest rangers and policemen and firefighters) are still home.)
Then the ihatei has to spend a large part of whatever funds the clan lord can spare them on transports rather than fighting ships.
Then those ihatei get oufitted with obsolescent ships, ensuring that they're several TLs below the Imperial ships that they will face if they go that way. A difference of several TLs translates as a massive force multiplier.
Indeed not. Don't get me wrong, I can totally see Norris rush the entire regular fleet and most of the reserves to Vilis to guard against the expected Zhodani invasion.And have many of our troops busy in central Asia ... that's a close analogy, although still not perfect.
But after that I also see the suddenly denuded border duchies start reactivating mothballed ships and building new ships at the shipyards that suddenly don't have any ships to maintain.
And I can see the non-jump-capable system defenses of worlds like Tobia, Glisten, and, yes, even Aki, kick the snot out of any ihatei incautious enough to poke a snout into the system.
And if I can't see the billions living on Tobia and Aki kick the snot out of whatever few tens of thousands Aslans that set foot on the surface, it is only because I can't see them getting that far in the first place.
And I can see a point where the forces at the border facing the Zhodani can't be further augmented because the local shipyards can't maintain any more.
What I can't see is Norris accepting the loss of any world like Tobia or Glisten or Aki, since each of them represent the industrial support of a lot of those warships that he really need.
And as the months go by and the Aslans and Vargr make trouble at his other borders while the Zhodani stay away month after month - I really, really can't see him keep stripping his other borders of each new ship activated or built.
I have to disagree. According to the figures in MT:Rebellion sourcebook the Domain of Deneb should have a peacetime complement of several thousand combat vessels (cruisers and above) and a corresponding number of lesser ships. (That's not counting the reserve fleets or the system navies.)The Imperium does not have enough troops to defend all its borders all at once.
I emphasize the 'peacetime', because the high-population worlds of the Domain are capable of supporting far more than a paltry two thousand combat vessels (plus auxiliaries) if they want to.
The Domain of Deneb has considerably shorter lines of communication than the Aslans.Many of the races outside the Imperium decided to move quickly once they got the news (which still took time to reach everyone ... hence the mid 1800s analogy ... it could be months before our troops in central Asia even knew we had a problem back home).
Well, I'm all for adventure, but I do want a modicum of plausibility with it. I.e. any adventure set on a Tobia under the iron heel of Aslan invaders would do a world[*] of hurt to my willing suspension of disbelief.Similar thing here. Plus it makes for more adventure, and that never hurts an adventure game.
[*] A high-population world
Now, if you had had the ihatei swarm all over the band of neutral worlds just outside the Domain's border, then I would have been with you 100%. But the moment you made the Aslan ihatei strong enough to invade the Imperium, you lost me.
But there's no disarray. The Zhodani never show up. There's no chaos. Just an orderly transfer of fleet assets.Of course, the Aslan are basically land squatters at heart, and the Vargr always like an excuse for a good scrap. Mess up the Imperial chain of command and set it into disarray
System forces that, in the case of Tobia and Glisten and several other worlds, are TL 15. Against obsolescent TL 13 ships. Ouch!...and it's likely all you will have to face for a while is the local system forces.
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Oh, I daresay a few ihatei would be able to sneak in and settle down on some of the low-pop worlds, but once the Imperial Navy show up it would be a choice of swearing fealthy to the Emperor (or the Archduke) or die. And if they do swear fealthy, they cease to be part of the problem and become part of the solution, don't they? ("How would you guys like some prime real estate in Gvurrdon sector?"Once the Imperials sort things out, there's a good chance you could be entrenched and be able to defend your position.
Hans