Newbie questions about MT

[Vargr]

Hi all,

My familiarity with MT is limited. The tidbits I know were gathered from here and there on the net. I have an overall picture of what happened in the period of 1116-1130 before Virus comes along and wipes a clean (or black if you will) slate, but there are some specific issues I do not understand.

I would ask the MT veterans to indulge my curiosity. Apologies in advance as all of this must have been debated ad infinitum before.


- Why did Dulinor shoot the Emperor in the first place? From what I understand he accused him of being an impediment to the progress of the Imperium of somesuch; but it seems to me the Imperium was doing fine until he pulled the trigger.

- Why did Dulinor hightailed it back home right after the deed was done? If he had killed the Emperor through Right of Assassination the logical thing to do would be to stay on Capital and wait for the Moot to acclaim him as the new boss.

- Why did Emperor Strephon wait so long until he revealed himself (well after the poo had hit the fan) instead of jumping up immediately and yell "Hey everyone! I'm alive! Dulinor shot my replicant!"

- How come the moot bent over backwards so easily to Lucan? With the Emperor dead it would be the de facto power in the Imperium. It had the power to dissolve it if necessary. We could say one of the reasons behind the creation of the Moot was precisely to deal with this sort of crisis.

- How come the majority of the Imperial Navy had no compunctions about staring to kill itself? Why did no one in High Command seem to realize they where fighting fellow Imperials and not Aliens or Invaders?

- And on the same vein, how was it that the different factions were so balanced in terms of not only force, but also military savvy that, as the years roll on all that happens is progressive mutual annihilation?
Where were the equivalents of Admiral Nelson and Napoleon in all the forces involved in the infighting? To assume they would be evenly distributed among the factions is courting disbelief.


Of course, I realize the true answer to all of the above is "Because the designers wrote it so". What I am asking for are answers from the POV of the setting's internal consistency (assuming there was one).

 

[shield]

I can answer a few questions.

Dulinor wanted the Imperium to intervene more in member worlds affairs. He didn't like all those repressive govt types. He wanted the planetary govts to reflect the will of the planets people. Strephon said no as this undermines one the major pillars of imperial society and would have caused chaos.

Dulinor was orignally going to stay on Capital but a couple of thinks went wrong. One of the Imperial guard units could not be confined to barrack and got rather upset when the emperor was killed, the other was the failure to kill Prince Lucan (who would have ascended the throne as legitmate heir). So he legged it back home.

Strephon was not present. He was on the way to Gushmege naval depot on a covert mission to review the longbow project. All these are very hush hush and can't be revealed to the general public. He also went to pieces a bit when he heard the news that his wife and daughter were dead. By the time he gets the news, Lucan is in control of capital and Dulinor is almost back into his domain. The crew of strephon's cruiser decides to head to gushmege when the emperor breaksdown. It is too late for him to announce himself. If he goes to capital lucan is likely to have him killed to retain the throne.

The moot has a problem of who to vote for: Dulinor by right of assasination, Lucan is the legitimate heir but there are strong suspicions he has killed his brother. Maragret is a more distant heir and a compromise candidate. They can't make up their mind. When various other empires invade the nobles in those areas naturally defend them, and split from the Imperium as it can't send any fleets (the fleets are busy fighting each other). This spliting of loyalities also affects the navy. Fleets attacked by aliens fight the aliens, the more central fleets that should be the stratgeic reserve have declared for one of the 3 (4 with strephon) candidates and are fighting each other. The various rulebooks state that the nobility had come to think their positions were god-given and the Imperium would survive so they were free to conduct their power plays.

As for why the fight goes on for so long, All sides have common ship types, all the officers know the capabilities of the enemy ships, as well as their tactics (having gone to the same naval colleges). It is going to take a major change of thought to get past this commonality of thought and equipment.

Hope this helps

Cheers
Richard

 

[Swiftbrook]

- How come the majority of the Imperial Navy had no compunctions about staring to kill itself? Why did no one in High Command seem to realize they where fighting fellow Imperials and not Aliens or Invaders?

(no expert here)

Naval Officers are trained to follow orders. Emperor --> Arch Dukes/etc --> Admirals --> etc. With multiple "emperors" the Arch Dukes and Admirals had to make a choice. Then they had to follow orders and 'kill the rebels'.

I think the idea of an admiral 'mutaning' against the entire Imperial Navy and not entering the fight has two problems. First, thier admirals. They live and breath giving and recieving orders. To not follow orders on such a grand scale would be unthinkable. Second, where do you go and what do you do? Have your fleet protect a world or subsector, against all enemies? That world or subsector would have to declare it's independense -- maybe worse than joining a faction. Or maybe the Admiral takes his fleet and run's off and hides -- not going to happen.

I have toyed with the idea of some of the Corrodor fleet disregarding orders and heading to the Domain of Deneb. Reasoning: most of the squadrons/fleets ships and crews are made up of DoD personnel who don't like the idea of heading to the core and getting into a civil war they don't understand. Corodor has too small a population to support the huge fleets assigned to it. The personnel had to come from other parts of the Imperium.

-Swiftbrook

 

[aramis]

Swiftbrook:
how many flag/general officers have you known? By the time they get that high, they are nor "order followers" as much as "interpreters and issuers" in exactly the same way as lesser nobles.

Further, almost all historical coups have been, if not insticated by, done in collusion with ranking generals.

The idea of an Admiral deciding he knows better than his superiors is common enough in the real world, even with near instant comms. It's all the more likely when he's weeks out of contact.

 

[cajon5]

I second Aramis' post. The history of the U.S. Civil War is not my forte, but IIRC there was a long period of officers deciding where their loyalties lay, with the U.S.A. or the C.S.A. If you look at coups and civil wars in other countries, it is always a question of whether or not the military will go along with the coup.

 

[shield]

If you look at some of the TNS entries for the rebellion years and escpecially the early years there are instances of fleets defecting. They are mainly border fleets or raiders. I Think Dulinors raiders disappeared after a major looting spree.

But most admirals will stay loyal to their local commanders / nobles. Lots of their crew is probably locals. Even if they considered defecting, those in the heart of a faction's area will have great difficulty getting out. They would have to bide their time. Its those on the borders that can change loyality and make a break for it.

We know the Dulinor's brother was the sector admiral in his home domain, which obviously helped. He had probably persuaded lots of the local admirals as well.

Cheers
Richard

 

[Lycanorukke]

Also the fleet captains/admirals can only 'know' what is happening from their marching orders. You could definelty bet that the faction leaders would 'sanitise' the orders and intel updates.

Where as current days fleets can gain information from any number of sources 'under the table', the comm lag for a trav fleet would mean with 'snap' orders (such as the assassination) about the only thing they could do is follow them till more information becomes available. If the fleet admiral got a order from the emperor himself to send his fleet to X to bring the evil assassin and his cohorts to justice, it seems fairly unlikely he would refuse outright or question too much (a very bad career move).

And by the time they find out its not just 'mopping up rebels who are on the run' its too late to get out short of defecting or going rogue. And Lucan was quite well known for 'removing' admirals who had a "really really bad attitude" later in the rebellion. And Dulinor could have had a few yers to ensure the right people were in the fleets. As for Margaret, she proably was lucky enough to get the fleets who couldn't make up their minds or didn't like the first two choices.

 

[shield]

Yes, a system defence fleet admiral at captial refused the order to fire on Dulinor's fleeing ship as he didn't know if Dulinor was the new emperor or not. I bet lucan cut short his career and probably his life.

Can't remember if there is a TNS statement as to what happened to this admiral.

Cheers
Richard

 

[Lycanorukke]

Yes, a system defence fleet admiral at captial refused the order to fire on Dulinor's fleeing ship as he didn't know if Dulinor was the new emperor or not.

Thinking on that though - for most of the Imperium the last 'real' war was the Soli Rim war over 100 years ago. Even the Corridor fleets would have been a cushy posting - two front line battle fleets against some technologically inferior "scrapyard class" Vargr fleets. The Spinward Marches had the frontier wars - but they were rather limited in area so any experience in fighting against a roughly equal foe was kept there. As for the Core sectors and so on - they would have almost been a joke posting of flag waving and bigwig impressing.

That is more than enough time for 'battle hardened' soldiers to retire and/or die of old age. And given the Imperiums Vilani leanings of patting onself on the back about how wonderful they are it would more than open ample opportunity for "REMF admirals/commanders" to infest the ranks, similiar to the British navy before it was cleaned out in the 17 century. An easy enough job when the fleets just wave flags, or attack occassional corsairs, and no competition in sight but when hard decisions have to be made - they are terrified of cutting their career off at the knees by making the 'wrong' decision, so they blindly do what they are told or stall. IIRC - The Old Expanses fell to the Soli's because the local admiral waffled in the absence of clear commands. Even the last frontier war had the political fighting between Norris and Santanocheev which put them in trouble until the whole warrant saga.

The moot seems have suffered from a similar rot of career nobles who just kept chairs warm, and waffled when the chips were down, and Strephone mentions that he is worried that people give their loyalty to factions rather than 'The Imperium'.

 

[Vargr]

Thanks for all the answers and POV's guys.

It makes more sense now. It seems the unending-war-until-exhaustion scenario was caused by the causality of lots of rotten luck on different levels.

Or to use laymen's terms the s**t hit not one fan, but several, in diferent places, different times and in the possible worst possible manners. :devil:


Still, it's a shame about Virus. It would have been nice to know where all the mess was heading to.

Oh well...

 

[Whipsnade]

It seems the unending-war-until-exhaustion scenario was caused by the causality of lots of rotten luck on different levels.

Vargr,

Not exactly.

There's so much rotten luck on so many different levels that the whole Rebellion first strains and then breaks all credulity.

Among so many other things, the factions were too finely balanced, one or more should have faltered or fallen to the others over the course of MT's run. In their desire to shake up the presumed static nature of the CT OTU, GDW and DGP kicked off the Rebellion which was essentially static also.

MT presented static chaos. The Rebellion was chaotic, but the chaos resulted in nothing. Towards the end of MT attempts were made to show some of the changes that the Rebellion should have wrought, but those efforts were far too late.

The "static chaos" of the Rebellion continually rubbed the Hobby's collective nose in the overly contrived nature of the setting and that slowly turned people away from the MT setting and eventually the game as a whole.


Regards,
Bill

 

[shield]

Yes, look at the clearing up just before the virsus truck. Margaret has formed alliances with the Hivers and some of the more moderate solomani commanders over in the old expanses.

The solomani are arguing over what is human - do we include certain species. Strephon has bowed out and crippled militarily by a Lucan strike and send his son over to Norris. You can see the Vilani going back to their old static traditions whilst dealing with the vargr. Norris seems to have got it together, amd Archduke Brzk gets killed off in a sudden fusion plant failure (oops). Lucan seems to be turning his bit into a police state and not sure whats happening with Dulinor.

Smaller polities like those at promise or the duchy of oasis formed, and Hardtimes indicates that some of them survive until the remaining factions start expanding again.

Virus of course changed all this. It looks like GDW had this re-expansion plotted out and then changed course to virus.

Cheers
Richard

 

[Vargr]

I just realised...

Virus is a "Rock falls, Everyone dies!" WTF? moment on a galactic scale. o:

 

[Swiftbrook]

Thanks for all the answers and POV's guys.
Still, it's a shame about Virus. It would have been nice to know where all the mess was heading to.

Oh well...

This is MT. Virus never happened!

The last issue of MegaTraveller Journal (#4), had an article that was basically a 'what if'. It was just a collection of notes on what some of the writers thought the direction MT should go in. Nothing came of it and much was lost in hard drive crashes.

I agree that the factions were too balanced and that GDW/DGP didn't really develop the rebellion timeline and choose winners. Too bad.

-Swiftbrook

 

[Lycanorukke]

I agree that the factions were too balanced and that GDW/DGP didn't really develop the rebellion timeline and choose winners. Too bad.

Judging from the TNS articles and the Knightfall/Hard times modules, it seems that they did have a heavy leaning towards Margaret winning (wont even start on bloody IRIS). But they did paint themselves into a corner - no matter who they 'chose' to win, a lot of people wouldn't have liked it.

The one which always bugged me was why the Soli's simply didn't roll over the top of the Vegans and Daibei - by Hard Times (1125) the Solis have 5 sectors of potential production capacity, while everyone else had 2-3 subsectors at best.

 

[Swiftbrook]

The one which always bugged me was why the Soli's simply didn't roll over the top of the Vegans and Daibei - by Hard Times (1125) the Solis have 5 sectors of potential production capacity, while everyone else had 2-3 subsectors at best.

If you look at the maps, the Solomani penetrated about a subsector in depth into the Solomani Rim sector. Lucan never pulled the Solomani Rim fleet, and I expect they were capable ships in that fleet so the Solomani paid for the territory they claimed.

In time, the Solomani should be able to penetrate deeper into the Imperium, maybe even retaking to their original borders, but that would take a lot of resources. You have to defeat the enemy and then hold it as well -- an occupation fleet or task force of some kind in most systems.

Just some thougths.

-Swiftbrook