Cr0.02
Rob's hypothesis:
A. No Existential Threats
AM8 goes to lengths to suggest that the Darrians had no existential threats. Neither the Zhodani nor any other big power. So, aside from showing the flag and putting down occasional Darrian uprisings (surely not common?), they don't need a powerful fleet.
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So here's one point where my mind has been changed: those pre-Maghiz Darrian warships did not originally have spines, no matter what tonnage they are, because they were completely and utterly unnecessary. In fact, I suspect that Darrian never developed them at all.
Note that this gaping hole in the military budget hints at Darrian's secret sauce: the lack of enemies let them leapfrog technologically to TL16.
/Cr0.02
There were no threats
that we're aware of. The fact that AM8 goes to
any lengths to imply there were no existential threats is in itself suspicious.
Anyway, sorry to bomb the thread and disappear.
A thought: The Darrians had a monopoly on the narrative for centuries – I think it’s possible (maybe likely) a lot of their history is bunk, and they’re covering things up, e.g. there was a competing civilization that they totally destroyed, or they did something ala the Zhodani with an ancient device that caused a huge catastrophe that they’ve hidden. 494-098, Zeta 2, Nirton, and Dawnworld are nearby suspicious systems. The Maghiz itself could not have happened as detailed in any version of T - unless you want to declare "because it did", then something else happened, e.g. a civil war or Ancient device/intervention.
Anyway, let's hit this with logic - let me know if anyone strongly disagrees with any of this:
Question 1: Is there a TL16 fleet?
Yes. AM8 says there are under 2 dozen ships, or which possibly 4 are converted merchants. It also says they're the core around which the Confederation navy is built.
Question 2: What is the nature of the fleet?
If there is a fleet, there was a threat. There has to have been, or there would be no fleet. That seems inarguable to me. If so, we have no knowledge of what that threat was. The composition of the fleet depends on the nature of the threat - a civil war? Pirates? A civilization that no longer exists?
Evidence about the nature of the fleet is limited (except in MT
Darrians). If the TL16 ships are the core of the modern navy and are of any use in combat, then they're not a bunch of Barekdoldin-type corvettes.
That a distinction was made in AM8 that some are converted merchants means the rest are purpose-built, so they're not all converted giant merchant ships.
Looking at a couple of ideas in this thread:
Non-jump ships – this is appealing for a few reasons, e.g. it explains why they weren’t used to maintain communications. But at T16-17, you’re getting into hop drives and anti-matter, so you gain very little by having sublight vessels.
Non-spinal mounted cruisers – to me, if they’re cruiser-sized ships, they have spinal mounts. Why would you build a cruiser-sized ship and not give it a spinal mount? I’d rather have ten 5 kton destroyers than one 50 kton spineless cruiser. And they know about spinal mounts. I don’t see them forgoing this -
if they built cruisers.
Question 3: Why aren’t they using the fleet?
Again, there’s no clear evidence. In the 2FW, I’d guess the Sword Worlds were TL10-ish (pegging them at 3 TL below the Imperium). A force of substantial TL16+ ships would utterly crush a TL10 fleet of
any size. Even a TL12 fleet would be in serious trouble. In any case, they lost the Entropic Worlds in the 2FW, failed to regain them in the 3FW, and lost them a second time in the 4FW. There has never been any mention of TL16 ships involved, and I don’t see how there could have been – surely it would have been noticed and commented on (but not necessarily when the Darrians are victorious).
On the other hand, the Darrians had no problem retaking the Entropic worlds in the 5FW. I would presume they would have had to defeat the Narsil fleet to accomplish this, and as Narsil by itself is half the population of the Sword Worlds, it should be a substantial fleet.
We never really get an OOB except in the game 5FW, where the Gram & Joyeuse fleets combined have 6 BatRons & 5 CruRons. So the Narsil fleet should have something like half that – if so, that reinforces the idea that the Darrians have some potent ships.
So to me, there must have been a reason why they weren’t used in the 2-4FW, and (possibly) used in the 5FW. Possibilities:
-An internal political reason
-They’ve never been used in any of the wars and they aren’t a substantial force at all. This contradicts AM8 too broadly IMO.
-Something has recently caused a large increase in Darrian capabilities, e.g. regaining a lot of TL16 or an important discovery on 494-098.
Open question: Why weren't they used to maintain post-Maghiz civilization? My only thought is that the navy didn't expect a long night and so they wanted to preserve their assets to deal with any threat that emerged.
Three asides:
-Population of pre-Maghiz Darrian: From the Solomani arrival to the Maghiz was 587 years. Assuming a conservative 1% growth rate and a starting population of 10 million, you'd get 3.4 billion. To limit it to 1 billion, you'd need both a low starting pop and a low growth rate. It doesn't look like much of the population left for colony worlds.
-Why would we be quick to dismiss GURPs and Mongoose? GURPs can get a little fanciful, and MT2 has some irritating errors (and
Lightning-class blasphemy), but unless there’s a strong reason to dismiss either, I think they should be at least considered. MT
Darrians gives them a
lot of ships (I count 87 cruisers), TL16+ or otherwise, but they did mention force levels are unusually high due to the impending 5FW. The planetary navies may be full of old reactivated mothball ships.
-The Darrians have been referred to as space elves or hippy Vulcans, but I've always thought they were space Melniboneans - a formerly great race with no remaining ambition that is content to live in the remnants of past splendor having lost the knowledge of how to recreate it, with the dragons as the TL16 fleet analogue. (The dragons can only be employed in extreme emergencies, as they sleep for centuries after use.)
