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Not Alex posted:I don't like plan Jack cause it has our entire force make more ungated jumps. Having the the undamaged parts of the task force remain in the Pit is functionally the same but with one less jump. Not quite, either our vessels are out doing business, salvaging wrecks, surveying, hiding and spying, in which case all is right and good, or they are sitting on our Ranga JP in which case they are at the mercy of a potential large and powerful sensor on a large and powerful craft pinging the system to see if those burning monkeys aren't coming from that other keyhole in reality. Well, I think so, maybe the fartcrabs already know which JP we came from and are just curious at the second one.
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Dec 3, 2017 20:24
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Cathode Raymond posted:The biggest problem I see with abandoning the pit is the complications it introduces for defending Sol. Its a bottle we can't currently stop, the logical solution is to stop it up once we have the forces and resources in place to do so. LLSix posted:No. That's boring and bad. Why are you so eager to abandon the Pit when we're still winning? We aren't winning, were one more enemy squadron away from losing the entire Nebula force. Holding the line in the PIT is like Stalin ranting about how the Soviets should absolutely not fall back and regroup during Operation Barbarossa. Note: It didn't go well for the Soviets until they stopped doing that. Not Alex posted:I don't like plan Jack cause it has our entire force make more ungated jumps. Having the the undamaged parts of the task force remain in the Pit is functionally the same but with one less jump. The problem is alot of the ships in the Nebula that are undamaged are really not useful in the Nebula and should never have been brought in the first place.
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Dec 3, 2017 20:24
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What if we flank the Pit aliens by exploring other jump points until we find their home system?
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Dec 3, 2017 20:26
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Jack2142 posted:We aren't winning, were one more enemy squadron away from losing the entire Nebula force. Holding the line in the PIT is like Stalin ranting about how the Soviets should absolutely not fall back and regroup during Operation Barbarossa. Note: It didn't go well for the Soviets until they stopped doing that. It arguably allowed them to evacuate more industry east which isn't even a claim we can make here. One the other hand salvage expeditions in the Pit are perfectly defensible... I really look forward to the moment when we have a way to do proper interstellar communications. We should also ask auntie about the fartcrabs, maybe she knows a thing or two about them.
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Dec 3, 2017 20:27
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SIGSEGV posted:We should also ask auntie about the fartcrabs, maybe she knows a thing or two about them. I will have my Facility Oracles begin performing the proper auguries in compliance with traditional Rimward Orthodox Church of the Facility rites.
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Dec 3, 2017 20:45
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LLSix posted:No. That's boring and bad. Why are you so eager to abandon the Pit when we're still winning? I think it's really important to point out that we have no idea whether we're winning. This could be like if Gaul managed to knock out a Roman Legion with half their army so they decided they're clearly winning. We have absolutely no context for the enemy's force composition or volume but we know they build very big, very advanced, very powerful craft very well suited to function in the nebula. And there is one very significant advantage to withdrawing behind our jump points and that's that we can mine and missile the gently caress out them, we can't do that in the nebula, any engagement we fight there is going to be fought on more or less even terms as the last one demostrated, there is no advantage, really, to holding their side of the gate because we cannot reach far enough with any weapons to outdo their combat jump capability, so all we're really doing is setting ourselves up for ambush by a superior force, as we just demonstrated. Whereas if we withdraw behind our jump points we can leave scouts on the far side, coordinate most of our defense on our side, and station a shitload of missile boats and mines to gently caress the poo poo out of anything that comes through before it can recover its ECM/shielding/PD. We have significantly better chances of alphastriking anything that comes through our jump point than we do the one in the pit and we can also get advanced warning. Also I would question whether, even if they have shielding, that they can actually use it in an assault on our jump point, because they can't turn them on in the Pit, and they won't be able to turn them on until after they're through our side, which means unless I'm misunderstanding that their shields won't have any charge when they transit... Because shields take time to build charge once activated. There are a lot of reasons why we will fare better fighting on our own turf. Our only hope of holding the Pit is a joint terra/martian task force, I think, to overwhelm attackers with numbers. Unless Mars is prepared to commit a hell of a lot of ships to this front and where does that leave us against Terra, fighting a war to keep them safe? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 20:49 on Dec 3, 2017 |
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Dec 3, 2017 20:45
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I like plan Jack but I also believe we need to aggressively pursue any options we have for obtaining all the Pit salvage we can get ASAP because if the Pit aliens don't either kill all the terrans (unlikely) or withdraw before being destroyed (very unlikely) then the aliens have handed their tech to the terrans on a platter.
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Dec 3, 2017 20:51
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Jack2142 posted:The problem is alot of the ships in the Nebula that are undamaged are really not useful in the Nebula and should never have been brought in the first place. If they hadn't been there we would have lost the force 3 fights ago. So that's not true even in hindsight. I just don't understand the opposition to staying within bug out range of pit-rag JP. We got a pretty drat good idea of their top speed. One scout on the pit-unknown JP lets us operate with complete impunity within a significant portion of the system. If anything it helps draw them into a dread trap sitting on the rag-pit JP.
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Dec 3, 2017 21:02
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This is a minor detail compared to other discussions and I’m sorry if it was posted and I missed it, but what kind of odds are we looking at that the ships with boarders will repel the boarders?
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Dec 3, 2017 21:02
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Not Alex posted:If they hadn't been there we would have lost the force 3 fights ago. So that's not true even in hindsight. We have 6 ships in the Nebula force who's primary/only armament is missiles (Hubbles, Taiaha, Revolution), we also have a Locklear which is primarily carrying Fighter bombers, + this is ignoring the jump destroyers which are unarmed entirely. So 9 out of 23 ships or almost half the force is incapable of doing much in the Nebula. The Pollux's and Azrael's have done essentially all the work, once in Ranginui these ships will be able to contribute more than being bricks of armor and components.
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Dec 3, 2017 21:10
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Jack2142 posted:We have 6 ships in the Nebula force who's primary/only armament is missiles (Hubbles, Taiaha, Revolution), we also have a Locklear which is primarily carrying Fighter bombers, + this is ignoring the jump destroyers which are unarmed entirely. So 9 out of 23 ships or almost half the force is incapable of doing much in the Nebula. The Pollux's and Azrael's have done essentially all the work. Yes but they drew meson fire like champs in our first encounters. With so few effective weapons had the crabs focused the beam ships we would have lost the ability to damage them and lost everything as we ran towards the jump. I'm not saying we want to included helpless ships if we have a choice, but we're lucky they were there.
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Dec 3, 2017 21:27
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Jack2142 posted:We aren't winning We are winning. So far we've held the field after every single engagement. Which every culture ever has agreed does in fact constitute winning. Except apparently for you. But you have an ulterior motive for claiming otherwise so its hardly surprising that you continue to make claims that are the opposite of reality. Not only have we held the field, but we've also destroyed more of their combat tonnage than they have of ours. These aren't even Pyrrhic victories. They're clear and obvious victories. No amount of name-calling is going to change that. OwlFancier posted:I think it's really important to point out that we have no idea whether we're winning. This could be like if Gaul managed to knock out a Roman Legion with half their army so they decided they're clearly winning. We have absolutely no context for the enemy's force composition or volume but we know they build very big, very advanced, very powerful craft very well suited to function in the nebula. If galactic-political concerns mean handing over the Pit to the Terrans and letting them fight the Shivans, I'm fine with that, but it's a bit early to make that call, don't you think? We have a prime opportunity to see both how the Terrans fare against the Shivans, and how some of the Shivan vessels perform outside a nebula in just two days. It's a bit premature to be making defensive plans before that happens, don't you think?
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Dec 3, 2017 21:54
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OwlFancier posted:Also I would question whether, even if they have shielding, that they can actually use it in an assault on our jump point, because they can't turn them on in the Pit, and they won't be able to turn them on until after they're through our side, which means unless I'm misunderstanding that their shields won't have any charge when they transit... Because shields take time to build charge once activated. Yep, no shield charge jumping from nebula to somewhere else Cathode Raymond posted:This is a minor detail compared to other discussions and I’m sorry if it was posted and I missed it, but what kind of odds are we looking at that the ships with boarders will repel the boarders? Not Good. Unlike the last couple of attempts where they lost the vast majority of their forces trying to reach the ship, this time it was already crippling slow and most of them landed OK. There's a lot of them, they're very effective and this isn't a Pollux (N) variant with the integrated marines - it's only whatever crew is still currently left alive
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Dec 3, 2017 21:57
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Not Alex posted:Yes but they drew meson fire like champs in our first encounters. With so few effective weapons had the crabs focused the beam ships we would have lost the ability to damage them and lost everything as we ran towards the jump. Alright thats fair, my main hope behind regrouping is we replace these ships with either Nebula Optimized Pollux's or Azrael's or at the very least beam combatants who can be more than just cannonfodder. LLSix posted:We are winning. So far we've held the field after every single engagement. Which every culture ever has agreed does in fact constitute winning. Except apparently for you. But you have an ulterior motive for claiming otherwise so its hardly surprising that you continue to make claims that are the opposite of reality. The Aliens just blew through our blockade at the Jump point, if they stayed and fought we would have lost the fight, we have an opening to withdraw which we should take. We just lost a pair of cruisers, with another being boarded and likely to be captured... and many ships are damaged albiet operational they are far from optimal condition. I don't think you know what a Pyrrhic Victory is... Phyrrus held the field in his battles against the Roman Republic and inflicted heavy losses against them. However he still took casualties and the Romans were able to drum up reinforcements. He was forced to withdraw because his force wasn't certain he could avoid being destroyed in detail. Right now we have no idea what the combat structure of the Fart Krab's fleet actually is, pulling back minimizes our risk of being destroyed in detail and we can always transit back to the PIT and re-take it once we have a better force available. The Graveyard comments are me joking... Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 22:34 on Dec 3, 2017 |
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Dec 3, 2017 22:19
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I think we're all basically in agreement, and we're not going to need to make strategic decisions about the Pit until after we see how the UT fight plays out.
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Dec 3, 2017 22:27
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Will we be able to keep playing after we become a wholly vassalized subsidiary of Terra with uncontested access to all the xenotech they can grab? 
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Dec 3, 2017 22:31
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LLSix posted:We are winning. So far we've held the field after every single engagement. Which every culture ever has agreed does in fact constitute winning. Except apparently for you. But you have an ulterior motive for claiming otherwise so its hardly surprising that you continue to make claims that are the opposite of reality. I think that our focus for the moment is towing whatever poo poo we can out of the pit but stop trying to fortify that drat jump point. Keep, perhaps, a small scout there capable of detecting incursions on passive sensors but not being detected itself, otherwise keep an exclusion zone around that jump point and don't let our ships near it unless there is a very good reason, the distance should be such that if something comes through it, we can make for our own jump point and get through it before they can catch any of our craft. In the event we've secured what technology we can, unless we have an agreement with Terra to storm the jump point in overwhelming force, I don't want to keep throwing ships away in that drat system. I am only willing to conscience holding it if we find the far side of their JP to be amenable to fortification but there is a pretty reasonable chance that it'll be a nebula as well. We can't colonise the place until we can very firmly secure it and the way the rules work, both Terra and us have equally valid claims on the system and it may be mandated as neutral ground anyway. What on earth are we fighting for? Destroying more of their tonnage doesn't mean anything if they have more to throw around. It does us no good to win battles if we have no way of stopping them blasting into the system and going on a tour. As it stands we can't even stop them from flying right past our ships if they wanted to. What do you think will happen if we blockade that JP, and they decide to pull the trick they just did which is ignore our ships and blaze straight for the JP out, only this time it's our jump point. And our main force is still concentrated in the Pit... We have to concentrate defence at the Ranginui jump point anyway because we just demonstrated perfectly that we can not stop the aliens from exiting the pit if they want to. You're proposing to deploy our forces somewhere they can't fight a decisive battle with the enemy, against an enemy we have no idea of the scale of, at the expense of fortifying the only place we reasonably could actually interdict any attack fleet, and which is a far better position for our ships to fight in. Why? OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 22:52 on Dec 3, 2017 |
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Dec 3, 2017 22:44
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LLSix posted:We are winning. So far we've held the field after every single engagement. Which every culture ever has agreed does in fact constitute winning. Except apparently for you. But you have an ulterior motive for claiming otherwise so its hardly surprising that you continue to make claims that are the opposite of reality. Jack2142 posted:Alright thats fair, my main hope behind regrouping is we replace these ships with either Nebula Optimized Pollux's or Azrael's or at the very least beam combatants who can be more than just cannonfodder. Just imagine what happens if they send another Shiva or a squad of Rakshasa when we're down two cruisers. Cathode Raymond posted:This is a minor detail compared to other discussions and I’m sorry if it was posted and I missed it, but what kind of odds are we looking at that the ships with boarders will repel the boarders?  So you wait until the fight is almost over, use SM shenanigans so you can land your marines on a stationary ship so they don't take losses (even though you'll be killing your own crew) so when the ship flips to their control you've got your boarders at 100% strength vs theirs. Also transfer/boarding lets you use slow planet-oriented dropships to cram a dozen battalions into a fighter. Which is totally pointless because it will take a year to unload them.
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Dec 3, 2017 22:51
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LLSix posted:Not only have we held the field, but we've also destroyed more of their combat tonnage than they have of ours. These aren't even Pyrrhic victories. They're clear and obvious victories. No amount of name-calling is going to change that. Isn't this only relevant if we have similar starting tonnage? If this is their entire fleet, then great. If this represents a small patrol fleet, then it means nothing. What are the travel times for: 1) Pit Aliens to Nova Sol 2) Dreadnought fleet to Nova Sol (via the Pit) 3) Dreadnought fleet to Nova Sol (directly) 4) Farseeker to Nova Sol to Ranginui (to redirect the Dreadnaught Fleet) - or if there is a ship at the Ranginui-Pit JP, can they transit? Ultimately we can't do anything to stop the fleet crossing to Nova Sol or get ships there to engage them. All we can do is A) warn UT (which we should do) and either B) send the Dreadnoughts to Nova Sol to kill the Crabs should they beat the Terrans or C) send the Dreadnoughts to the Pit to fortify the JP and engage the Crabs should any more come through. We should pull the assets we have in the Pit back to the Ranginui JP (along with ships for salvage - if possible), but stay in the Pit. Farseeker should transit to Nova Sol - both to warn UT and to observe the fight (and gather intel on the capabilities of both UT and the Pit aliens outwith the nebula) chippocrates fucked around with this message at 23:03 on Dec 3, 2017 |
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Dec 3, 2017 23:00
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I'm fine with keeping ships in there but we should assume that they will need to retreat on contact, so jump allotments should be worked out with that in mind. As I said it doesn't matter how much stuff we put in the Pit, if the aliens jump in using a combat jump we have no idea where they're going to arrive, and if they turn tail and break for one of the other jump points as they have already expressed an interest in doing, we can't stop them. Our only meaningful ability to blockade them is going to be if we can direct absolutely overwhelming long ranged firepower at them, and for that, we need missiles. I would advise Terra of this too, frankly, because the aliens may decide to go on a joyride around nova sol if the terrans can't hold them at the jump point.
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Dec 3, 2017 23:03
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OwlFancier posted:I'm fine with keeping ships in there but we should assume that they will need to retreat on contact, so jump allotments should be worked out with that in mind. It would be advantageous to keep ships in the Pit to let us know if something is heading for the JP, no?
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Dec 3, 2017 23:04
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chippocrates posted:It would be advantageous to keep ships in the Pit to let us know if something is heading for the JP, no? Yes that's a helpful thing, as I said I'm fine keeping ships there as long as they are able to retreat if more aliens show up. We might be able to get a bit of surveying done perhaps and we want intel on what's coming for our JP as you say. But trying to fight in the nebula is suicidal given the aliens know our capabilities now and if they bring anything else in with particle beams, they are going to be more than capable of holding us at range where they suffer minimal penalties while our lasers are functionally ineffective. If that Shiva hadn't had its engines knocked out and had the experience that they now do, they could have happily pootled along at the edge of their particle beam range and blasted our ships to pieces while we slowly tickled their armour. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Dec 3, 2017 |
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Dec 3, 2017 23:07
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LLSix posted:We are winning. So far we've held the field after every single engagement. Which every culture ever has agreed does in fact constitute winning. Except apparently for you. But you have an ulterior motive for claiming otherwise so its hardly surprising that you continue to make claims that are the opposite of reality. We are kind of wining now, but only because the crabs made for the Nova Sol JP for reasons totally unknown to us. We have solid victories so far, lets not throw it all away. I don't personally see a pressing reason to get out of the pit entirely, but we must abandon the unknown JP we are siting on now. We have a badly damaged force and no advantage to gain by staying here, and everything to loose as the next wave to jump through is going to rip us to shreds. And I don't get this idea that UT is suddenly going to get all the salvage. They will presumably win in NS and get whatever salvage they can there, but they are no more in a position to salvage the rest of the pit than we are. And if we want nice easy salvage like UT is going to get the only way to get it is to lure the aliens into Ranginui. Which we can't do if we stay hanging out on the unknown JP in the pit with our dicks hanging out.
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Dec 3, 2017 23:27
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We are very much not winning. We hold the field, kind of, sort of, but that doesn't mean we're winning. If those Rakshasas decide to turn around and attack our fleet again, there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop them and we very well might lose. We don't have that many primary combatants left and we have an awful lot of holes in our armor. We "won" because the enemy decided we weren't as interesting as rampaging somewhere else. And, as a reminder, the enemy has only thrown a few ships at us. We've seen, what, 5 frigates, 1 dreadnought, and 4 cruisers? And, to boot, one of those cruisers is either a total non-combatant (which seems unlikely) or has armaments unsuited for the nebula (which is disturbing because that would imply that they intended to move through the nebula with that ship). Given their technology base, that can only be a small fraction of their fleet -- you just can't build up a high-tech fleet with huge ships like those as a tiny star nation with no resources. The fact that they had a squadron of frigates camped on a friggin' comet in a system they don't even have a colony in supports that. That was a picket force, and the dreadnought and cruisers are their version of rapid response forces. We've given them a bloody nose, yes, but this is effectively Lexington and Concord. We weren't "winning" the Revolutionary War right from the start just because we beat up some overconfident Redcoats.
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Dec 3, 2017 23:28
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Yeah the fact that they are deploying massive fancy craft all over the place is what makes me think they have a much bigger industrial base than we do. And it would indeed be very nice for them to deliver some scrap to our doorstep!
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Dec 3, 2017 23:31
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The other thing would be if the Pit aliens roll the Terrans in Nova Sol, do they make for Sol? The Nova Sol-Sol JP is pretty near Mars, isn't it?
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Dec 3, 2017 23:35
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It's conceivably possible the crabs kill the UT force on the JP. It really isn't likely they do so with such strength in reserve they can just roll into Sol before UT can get reinforcements into NS. Although it might be a good idea to tell UT they are up against some nasty poo poo and to prepare for the worst, i.e. start moving reinforcements in Sol towards the JP while they still have time. The worst case scenario here is the crabs blow past the UT defenders in NS like they just did in the Pit, then make it into Sol and use their weird pulsing to report back. The best way to stop this is if UT puts a fleet on the NS side of the Sol-NS jump since ships have to be on top of the JP outbound, unlike being able to land wide inbound.
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Dec 3, 2017 23:44
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OwlFancier posted:I think that our focus for the moment is towing whatever poo poo we can out of the pit but stop trying to fortify that drat jump point. We can't keep the aliens from going anywhere they want on a tactical level. That just makes keeping the strategic initiative even more important. There's nothing keeping them from flying away from us in Ranganui either. OwlFancier posted:You're proposing to deploy our forces somewhere they can't fight a decisive battle with the enemy, against an enemy we have no idea of the scale of, at the expense of fortifying the only place we reasonably could actually interdict any attack fleet, and which is a far better position for our ships to fight in. Why? Salvage doesn't work in Aurora the way you seem to think. It takes a long time and a dedicated ship. You can't just haul the debris away. Fluffily, think about salvage involving trying to gather up all the pieces of a ship leftover after it blew up into lots of little pieces. It takes time to gather up. In order to protect the salvagers, we need to continue fighting in the Pit. The best place to do that is still near their JP because it gives us the opportunity to get lucky and potentially get kills in before they recover. Jack2142 posted:The Aliens just blew through our blockade at the Jump point, if they stayed and fought we would have lost the fight, we have an opening to withdraw which we should take. We just lost a pair of cruisers, with another being boarded and likely to be captured... and many ships are damaged albiet operational they are far from optimal condition. Jack2142 posted:I don't think you know what a Pyrrhic Victory is... Phyrrus held the field in his battles against the Roman Republic and inflicted heavy losses against them. However he still took casualties and the Romans were able to drum up reinforcements. He was forced to withdraw because his force wasn't certain he could avoid being destroyed in detail. Right now we have no idea what the combat structure of the Fart Krab's fleet actually is, pulling back minimizes our risk of being destroyed in detail and we can always transit back to the PIT and re-take it once we have a better force available. It is true we don't know what their industrial capacity is and you want to give them a chance to bring it to bear. Madness. Our relative industrial capacity only matters if we turn this into a battle of attrition, the way you want to. The most likely scenario when facing a technologically superior foe is that their industrial base is also superior. Our only realistic hope of victory is a quick one. chippocrates posted:Isn't this only relevant if we have similar starting tonnage? If this is their entire fleet, then great. If this represents a small patrol fleet, then it means nothing. So lets assume that the losses we inflict on our foes do matter. In a scenario where we're not wildly outclassed in every metric, then yeah, the Shivans losing more than us is relevant information. So far, through good luck and the foresight of arming even our missile cruisers with beam weapons, we've managed to punch well above our weight. We've taken a border system from them, killed a bunch of their dudes, and stolen one of their bases. In exchange they've... roughed up some of our ships and killed a few of our dudes, but only one of the destroyed ships was a primary beam combatant. So the current situation is: 1) We kicked their asses 2) We kicked their asses again 3) We fought an at-worst inconclusive engagement with significant losses on both sides 4) We still have about 75% of our combat effectiveness on site 5) We are due to be reinforced by a BB squadron with more total tonnage than the superdreadnaught we've already destroyed. All things considered, we're looking pretty to jump through into their system and kick their asses again. I'd prefer to bring up the rest of new fleet first and swap out our fighters before that, sure. But right now we're only in charge of the forces of the Pit and we're doing pretty good so far. I don't see any reason not to continue advancing once we finish local salvage operations. These guys are big, and powerful, and scary. But they're not hopelessly bigger, or more powerful, or more scary than the undefeated Triton Fleet.
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Dec 3, 2017 23:45
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LLSix posted:
This is your interpretation of the actions of totally inscrutable and uncommunicative aliens. Now that's not to say you aren't right but there's no way to know. What if this force is in fact out for reconnaissance in force and isn't interested in fighting, just wants to go on a tour of our systems and report everything back? Or maybe they know wave 2 is coming behind them so it's better to kite us for a couple of hours until their friends arrive. We don't and can't know, and we would be risking far to much for far to little gain if we stay on this JP. These wrecks in TP will still be here next week or even next month. We don't need to hold right now, we don't even have salvage operations in place yet do we?
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Dec 3, 2017 23:51
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Pharnakes posted:This is your interpretation of the actions of totally inscrutable and uncommunicative aliens. Now that's not to say you aren't right but there's no way to know. What if this force is in fact out for reconnaissance in force and isn't interested in fighting, just wants to go on a tour of our systems and report everything back? Yep, just like everyone else's posts about the aliens. If we pull back now, then we're facing a situation where we may have to fight two JP assaults instead of the one we have right now. If you don't think we can win one, how can you possibly imagine we can win two? I think we can win one, but I'm not going to pretend that letting the Shivans fortify a second JP against us is a plan that fills me with glee.
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Dec 4, 2017 00:09
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chippocrates posted:The other thing would be if the Pit aliens roll the Terrans in Nova Sol, do they make for Sol? The Nova Sol-Sol JP is pretty near Mars, isn't it? I believe they would need to observe something transiting the sol jump point in order to know where it is, assuming they haven't aready surveyed the system which I imagine they probably have not given that they don't appear to have developed the Pit beyond a couple of listening posts. So, I suppose it depends, if Terra try to retreat through the Sol jump point they might bring the aliens to our doorstep, and they are not +/- fanatics so they might not be willing to condemn everyone in the system to death in order to buy us all some time LLSix posted:We can't keep the aliens from going anywhere they want on a tactical level. That just makes keeping the strategic initiative even more important. There's nothing keeping them from flying away from us in Ranganui either. Yes, there is, we have missiles and minefields in Ranginui, which they can't outrun anywhere nearly as quickly as our guns and which do not suffer reduced effectiveness at range. They have to be able to survive extensive missile strikes or win the missile war once in Ranginui, as opposed to just turning around and leaving right away and be out of range of basically all our guns almost immediately. To say nothing of them being forced to come to our holdings once there if they want to do any damage to us, while we also have the possibility of strategic monitoring via the DSTS I hope we have set up on the colony. LLSix posted:Yep, just like everyone else's posts about the aliens. They have to fortify two jump points in the Pit, we can attack from either of them with a unified terra/mars force if we want to. If anything them attempting to fortify those points gives us an advantage because Lanchester applies and we will do better if we come at their split force with our combined force. Them trying to fortify the Pit is good for us, it represents as much of an overextension for them as it does for us, if not moreso, which is probably why they didn't bother doing it in the first place. They set up a listening post and sent a QRF to investigate our incursion, which is by far the most sensible way for them to do it. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 00:23 on Dec 4, 2017 |
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Dec 4, 2017 00:13
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Just to be clear though, the Terran force camping the Nova Sol -> Pit JP should be able to prevail against the remaining three crab ships barring some horrible incompetence/perfidious UT cowardice, right?
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Dec 4, 2017 00:19
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Cathode Raymond posted:Just to be clear though, the Terran force camping the Nova Sol -> Pit JP should be able to prevail against the remaining three crab ships barring some horrible incompetence/perfidious UT cowardice, right? probably. i imagine that without the nebula interference they can get better hit rates than us
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Dec 4, 2017 00:20
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Cathode Raymond posted:Just to be clear though, the Terran force camping the Nova Sol -> Pit JP should be able to prevail against the remaining three crab ships barring some horrible incompetence/perfidious UT cowardice, right? Well we would hope so as they have some big ships there I think, but we haven't actually seen UT fight yet so we don't know how good they are
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Dec 4, 2017 00:21
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 they were not penguin friends. Anyway, right now? Pull to Ranganui and hold our jump point. figure how far from the unknown jump point we need to stay to keep from being run down, keep some picket ships in the pit to warn our salvage crews, and warn UT with all relevant info we have on the aliens. As it stands now, we do not have the capability to hold the pit.
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Dec 4, 2017 00:53
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LLSix posted:We can't keep the aliens from going anywhere they want on a tactical level. That just makes keeping the strategic initiative even more important. There's nothing keeping them from flying away from us in Ranganui either. 1. In Ranginui we will have missiles which massively expands our engagement range. If they run away from the Beam Ships our Size 4 Missiles have like a 100m KM range to run from. This will only play into our hands if they try to run away... we can't catch them with beam ships, but our missiles will catch them and they will be vulnerable to fighter bomber ambushes too. 2. Fair, We should protect Salvagers... I just don't think we have the ability too at this time. 3. We might have lost... if the battle comes down to luck we need to pull back where we can stack the odds in our favor. 4. Nitpicking names is asinine. We haven't lost more men yet, but an entire fleet of our newest ships which is 23 is going to be alot to replace right now. Your risking them on the hopes the Dreadnoughts will arrive before more aliens jump into the PIT... we lose nothing by withdrawing and linking up. The Dreadnought reinforcements won't matter if the ships they are reinforcing are all dead. If Pyrrhus isn't a good example then let's use Hannibal and his brother Hasdrubal, Hannibal won his battles against the Romans, but never got the chance to link up with his brother who was ambushed and massacred before the forces could link up and potentially finally pose a threat to Rome itself. We risk having our forces destroyed piecemeal if we keep up with the "MUST HOLD THIS JUMPOINT AT ALL COSTS" mentality. We are risking significant losses that will take time to recover from if we refuse to withdraw and regroup. 5. The Aliens have the advantage fighting in the Nebula, regardless if their industrial base. If they already outnumber us losing an entire fleet of damaged or limited use ships will be even worse than withdrawing them so they can be repaired and returned to fight. 6. We aren't withdrawing entirely, so we wouldn't have to make 2+ JP assaults. I still think we should leave a smaller more disposable force in the PIT so we don't get jumped by surprise while we're regrouping. Even so pulling back and setting up defenses in Ranginui is not a bad idea in case a push back into the PIT fails. Jack2142 fucked around with this message at 01:22 on Dec 4, 2017 |
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Dec 4, 2017 01:14
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Plan Mighty Martial Martian Assistance Concerning Terrans: -Give the Terrans as much informations as feasable -Use the scout for that -Observe the terran/shivan battle with the scout -I am open to giving them access to undoctored vid logs/whatever of the first encounter, even if this gives away some martian capabilities. I foresee possible complications with the terrans going either a) "you pissed off Chtulu and lured it to us" or b) "this is all because your bad diplomacy!" giving them more info in advance is I think a good play. -In addition, giving away some of our capabilities may well leave the terrans more inclined to not order our scout to disable its actives (which is something the Terrans are likely to do otherwise). -Also, this is where it gets sneaky, state that the combat capable part of our fleet are making for the Nova Sol/Pit jump point in order to potentially provide military assistance in accordance to our mutual defense treaty, state that they will transmit into Nova Sol only if invited, indirectly hint that this invitation would result in some expectation of limited salvage rights on our part in any battle in Nova Sol -My guess is that UT will not accept our help outright, but will also not rebuff it because from their pov. having the option to call us in is good. Now, because you may suspect my loyalties due to my avatar, let me tell you why I actually want to do that: As I understand the pit situation: -We want to keep salvaging -We do not want to risk sitting right on their jump point because whatever could come through suddenly -We want to make them fight Terrans as much as possible -We do know their nebula top speed -We do know their jump entry point -We thus do know how far away our assets have to be from theirs if we want to bug out uncontestedly in case of suddenly appearing overwhelming force -We may be able to be in a position where running to Ranginui and running to Nova Sol in an option -We would have an excellent excuse for running to Nova Sol in the case of suddenly appearing overwhelming force since we have claimed to positioned our forces to potentially assist the terrans. I really like having the option of being able to a) jump into nova Sol if UT calls us in to increase the steadiness of our alliance and get some salvage out of it and b) the option of running the gently caress away to Terran space instead of our space should the last conflict freespace 2 mission be suddenly recreated we can also run to c) Ranginui.
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Dec 4, 2017 01:30
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Cathode Raymond posted:Just to be clear though, the Terran force camping the Nova Sol -> Pit JP should be able to prevail against the remaining three crab ships barring some horrible incompetence/perfidious UT cowardice, right? It's an open question but personally I think United Terra is going to get clowned pretty badly. I don't think missiles are going to be all that effective against thick armour & massed railgun fire and UT has every other disadvantage in speed, ECM and tonnage. Or The Pit aliens might not have active sensors capable of spotting small missiles. It's going to be fun to watch sebmojo posted:I think we're all basically in agreement, and we're not going to need to make strategic decisions about the Pit until after we see how the UT fight plays out.
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Dec 4, 2017 01:39
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It's also worth noting that we are not advocating to sit and do nothing about these aliens, what we are deciding is our short term method of handing them, our long term goals involve increasing our technology base with the extensive finds available on Ranginui and the as yet unexplored yet known to be previously inhabited graveyard system. It is entirely possible that we can contain them on this front and work to expand our capacity to deal with them on another one, and any ships they do send through either of our respective jump points also affords us an opportunity to expand our technological base. Our best strategy for dealing with them may entirely be to fight them on our most favorable terms and those terms which offer us the best rewards. We are not so hard up for expansion options that we simply must have the nebula right now even when it's swarming with arseholes.
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Dec 4, 2017 01:55
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 12:45 |
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Not Alex posted:Hey now I only added a communication attempt after they went beyond the reach of my prime communicator, a 45cm spinal laser with the firing stud taped down. I was firmly in the shoot first camp back when people were trying to get us all killed. This bit didn't cost us anything. Sorry.  Anyway, yeah, enough of this talk about running. We'll stay - like true Martians! On the Pit side of the Ranginui jump point. We can always leave for flip's sake. Kill them all, with the Terrans! That salvage is ours! If we get chased off we lure the Fartcrabs to Ranginui and kill them there. Until then we salvage! RA Rx fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Dec 4, 2017 |
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Dec 4, 2017 03:26
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