SDN Worlds 4 Commentary Thread VI

[Simon_Jester]

[deep breath]

[modhat on]

Sorchus? I think you have read something into my tone that is not, or was not meant to be, there. Perhaps I said something wrong.

What's important is that gunboats are supposed to be balanced by lacking inter-sector mobility on their own. It should be a military operation of some complexity and effort to transfer them between sectors, probably taking longer than it would to transfer larger, self-contained starships, but well within the capacity of an organized military.

(Think in terms of moving aircraft from one base to another across distances too large for the aircraft to fly. You wind up shipping the things under a tarp on a ship, and it takes a lot of effort. You can still do it, it's a good idea under plenty of circumstances, it's just not easy)

I don't really care how this is done. If the boats fly under their own power under conditions that make it impractical for them to fight en route, with a certain amount of laborious logistical arrangements, that's good enough for me. What matters is that it is difficult and that gunboats are still not at the high end of strategic mobility without their carriers.

All I care about is that it takes extra work to transfer them over multi-sector distances, more than just "hop in cockpit, set course for Dagobah," unless Dagobah is in the same sector as where you started from.

To me, it seems most logical to have this 'extra work' take the form of shipping the gunboats inside the hull of a large, longer-ranged freighter. You are not obliged to do it this way. If you want your gunboats to be moved long distances by having your mongooses strap into cockpits for three weeks and periodically top off from a tanker, fine. If you want them to be moved long distances by being dismantled and reassembled at the destination, fine. If you want them to be physically portaged across the light years by sweaty Elysian hero-sailors carrying them on their shoulders (don't ask me how), that is also fine as far as I'm concerned.

As long as it represents a significant, out-of-the-ordinary operation, so that gunboats overall, on average and in general gain significant strategic mobility independent of their carriers.

There.



Now.

[rolls d6 sitting beside the computer]

I rolled a 2 for Formless. Will that do?



[modhat off]

[Formless]

FYI, having been in personal contact with Sorchus before he put up that post, I think I can explain. The idea is that this is a convenient method of transporting the gunships on short notice, not that its an easy or preferable method for obvious reasons. After all, where is the hilarity in doing things the easy way?

As for me, a two will work just fine. Thanks a bundle.

Oh, for further reference, I've revised the name of my nation to "the Steganocracy of Burmuda Space". It'll make more sense in time, I assure you.

[Shroom Man 777]

One question though. How well do gunboat-type hyperdrives endure such long distance travels that they weren't designed for? Do they do a stop-go-stop-go kind of thing, so the drives won't get too taxed? Like, after how many parsecs, they take a break and relax their hyperdrives?

[Simon_Jester]

One question though. How well do gunboat-type hyperdrives endure such long distance travels that they weren't designed for? Do they do a stop-go-stop-go kind of thing, so the drives won't get too taxed? Like, after how many parsecs, they take a break and relax their hyperdrives?

That would probably be a minimum necessary thing to keep from frying the machinery, I'd think (modhat is off, by the way).

Way I figure it, a gunboat carries about the minimum-size practical hyperdrive, which means lower margin of error in the engineering, more vulnerability to component overheating and other stresses. None of this is conducive to smooth long-distance running. Regular stops to refurbish and inspect the engines for maintenance will help keep anything from failing catastrophically.

Think about jet engines on fighter aircraft- they're supposed to go through hours of checkup after every flight; usually you need several man-hours to prep the craft for every hour it spends in the air. That's because those engines perform close to the limits of what's technologically possible, and there's not a lot of room for error or for parts to wear down before failing.

Incidentally, just such a failure affected one of Hyperion's auxiliary drive nodes did on the run to the Shinra rendevous point- that's what rousted Wenli out of bed to the sound of klaxons in that one post. Because that engine wasn't really meant to be running a thousand light years at speed continuously. In theory the machinery could do it, and mostly it did, but it requires a good deal of extra attention to maintenance and redefining the "red line" on the metaphorical dials more strictly. One of Hyperion's engineers screwed up there, by the way, and he's going to be in a lot of trouble over it.


I still think this would be cost-ineffective compared to just shipping the damn things on a larger vessel that's designed for long distance runs, but that's me.

[Force Lord]

PINGAS!

So this is an idea I had floating around in my mind, and now the first result can be seen.

[Shroom Man 777]

Curious.

How many nations supported or sided with Byzantium during the Tau wars?

I count New Anglia, Holy Empire of Haruhi Suzumiya, Clans of Hiigara, Bragulan Star Empire, Shepistani Republic, Grand Dominion, and Tianguo.

New Anglia also thoroughly decimated the Dilgrud around the same time. The Haruhiists were fighting together with Byzantium during the same time. Hiigara recently issued a statement praising the Byzantines for their historic achievements, while condemning Nova Atlantis and blocking Atlantean traffic to the Outlands. The Bragulan Star Empire also shat on the Tau in the past, when subversives tried to promote the Greater Good in post-revolutionary Bragule. Shepistan and Grand Dominion have also exterminated alien menaces in the past. Tianguo is extremely xenophobic.

The only nations I know of that openly and publicly and very visibly took in Tau survivors were Nova-Atlantis and Miratia. So, they are actually in the minority compared to the aforementioned nations that participated in, or at least cheered during, The Running of the Tau.

Cause I know some people are trying some historical revisionism with this Great Crusade stuff, even going so far as to alter Fin's sections in the wiki.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

Meh. I am beginning to suspect that Zor's beef with the Tau is not so much humanitarian but a more personal fanboyish reason.

Sucks to be him, because I despise the Tau, and I wouldn't mind them dead.

[Shroom Man 777]

But seriously, during that time, it seems as though many other nations did similar nasty things to a whole bunch of troublemaking specieses. Dilgrud, Amplitur, Tau, possibly others. It's like how many of the allied nations during the early-mid parts of the Cold War also happened to be fascist dictatorships or something.

[Simon_Jester]

New Anglia also thoroughly decimated the Dilgrud around the same time. The Haruhiists were fighting together with Byzantium during the same time. Hiigara recently issued a statement praising the Byzantines for their historic achievements, while condemning Nova Atlantis and blocking Atlantean traffic to the Outlands. The Bragulan Star Empire also shat on the Tau in the past, when subversives tried to promote the Greater Good in post-revolutionary Bragule. Shepistan and Grand Dominion have also exterminated alien menaces in the past. Tianguo is extremely xenophobic.

The only nations I know of that openly and publicly and very visibly took in Tau survivors were Nova-Atlantis and Miratia. So, they are actually in the minority compared to the aforementioned nations that participated in, or at least cheered during, The Running of the Tau.

Umeria has a history of, at least once, taking in alien emigré populations: a certain fraction of the Trill species who couldn't abide with becoming part of the Anglian Empire came to Umeria. There was even a Trill "government in exile" operating in Umerian space, which denounced the Anglian annexation and proclaimed itself the true government of the Trill people (or some fraction thereof) for some decades after the Anglian annexation of their homeworld.

And this occured not long after the end of the Byzantine-Tau war, looking at the general history thread.

(I worked this out with Steve, you can double-check with him)

Umeria has never adopted a policy of holding an entire species responsible for the actions of a govenrment to the point of extermination of that species- though to be honest, the Jaggan War fails to qualify for that purely because there were plenty of other ork worlds that the Umerians didn't burn or plan to burn. If all the orks in the galaxy had lived on Jagga, then Umeria would have done its damnedest to kill all the orks in the galaxy; think of that what you will.

If any Tau came knocking on Umerian doors circa 2900-2940 AD, Umeria would have taken some fraction of them in. Certainly there'd never have been any real concern of angering the Byzantines or Haruhiists, not after their campaign went genocidal- Umeria never really gave a toss what either of those nations think, although we try to maintain reasonable levels of diplomatic relations with them, as between any set of remote, mutually neutral peer-nations.

However, the Tau would have no specific reason to go to Umeria, and the Umerians would not have made a special effort to encourage Tau to do so. It would be far more logical for the Tau to seek refuge in other territories closer to their space- Red/Blue being an obvious candidate now that they're on the map. Or the UN, depending on their policy at the time.

However, by now (four hundred years later) any small Tau populations will likely have shifted towards the 'home in exile' states of Atlantis and the IUW, because that's where there are thriving Tau communities large enough to sustain cultural life as something other than a negligible minority.

At the time, did Umeria take in Tau survivors? Probably, since I'm sure at least a few showed up. How many? I can't possibly guess. Did those survivors form a self-sustaining community of their own which exists as a thriving subculture in Umeria today, as in Atlantis and the IUW? No, they did not, or if it did they gradually melted away to other countries in the past four hundred years.

[Shroom Man 777]

Maybe they tried to set up more of those Greater Good Enclaves but that didn't work out when they ran afoul of the Technarchs who challenged the Ethereals to provide calculations or otherwise concede, and those guys left and the Technarchs went concession accepted, bitch, QED.

I mean, since the Technocracy is, despite everything, a one-party autocracy and all that.

[Simon_Jester]

Maybe they tried to set up more of those Greater Good Enclaves but that didn't work out when they ran afoul of the Technarchs who challenged the Ethereals to provide calculations or otherwise concede, and those guys left and the Technarchs went concession accepted, bitch, QED.

I mean, since the Technocracy is, despite everything, a one-party autocracy and all that.

This is actually very very probable.

In a less Shroom-o-vision mode, I will make it canon.

Some Tau community of on the order of one to ten million went to Umerian space, and were granted entrance as a bloc after disavowing their association with the Tau government (a belligerent power). They attempted to set up on what was at the time one of the Umerian fringe worlds- Sichuan, maybe, or one of a few others, and build a new Tau society.

However, this placed them at odds with MiniWell regulations on the proper organization of society- think about how communities like the Amish need special exemptions and treatment. And while MiniWell does make allowances for nonhuman species, it's bad about making allowances for different (human or nonhuman) cultures.*

The Tau came under increasing legal pressure to 'Umerianize' themselves- caste regulations to be relaxed, because the Umerian class system runs at right angles to the Tau one: an Ethereal might well be a Type Three citizen (Two is unlikely but possible) while plenty of the other castes are likely to wind up as Type Fours and thus hold a higher social and legal 'station' in Umerian society than many of the Ethereals themselves. It wasn't that the Tau had a caste system, just that it was the wrong one; the Umerians don't believe in defining castes by birth any more than they believe the post of poet laureate should be hereditary.

Eventually, the tension grew so high that the Tau community split into, well, I call them "reform" and "orthodox" Tau. The "orthodox" Tau all left for Atlantis or some other place where they could be free to practice their normal codes of conduct. The "reform" Tau either stayed in Umeria or scattered to other nearby nations in the Spinward Expanse, but there aren't enough of them to be even remotely significant as a demographic in modern Umeria. Probably no more than a million of them, which in relative terms is about equivalent to an immigrant community of one thousand people in the modern US circa 2010.

Were the words "Concession accepted" actually used? The historian shall remain silent on that point.
__________

*Which is one reason the Vinarans do poorly in Umeria. They actually have a rather sophisticated and complex native culture, one that isn't all RAH ULTIMATE WARRIOR loopiness, but the Technocracy has an institutional lack of respect for it as a legitimate alternative to The Umerian Way.

[Steve]

Keep in mind that the reason that New Anglia was on the verge of exterminating the Dilgrud as a race was because the Dilgrud themselves refused to surrender. They fought and fought and fought, killing their own people with scorched earth campaigns and mass use of atomics on their worlds, and it took an extremely old and weary Emperor taking the throne, after the reigning one's death in combat, to decide that "there is no honor in extinction".

Of course, by doing so his race became a semi-independent dependency of the Anglian Empire, in which some people now grumble that the Dilgrud should be jettisoned because of the occasional need for suppression campaigns and the costs in blood and treasure associated with them. For the majority of the Empire, though, such is the Burden of Empire, and there is generally no support for a "cut the Dilgrud off" policy.

That said... there was some collaboration between Byzantium and Anglia. The Second Dilgrud War came to an end, in part, because the Byzantines threatened to join New Anglia over the Tau exiles that had provided technology and ship building expertise to the Dilgrud, and only desisted after the reigning Emperor slaughtered them as scapegoats for his defeat at Maktur (in turn dying amongst billions of his people from the Tau revenge plague). Meanwhile the New Anglians were keen to see the Dominion and Shepistan and Byzantium all as fellow powers struggling to survive, or having barely done so, against rapacious alien hordes.

The main difference, in the end, is that the aforementioned states all have blatant xenophobic tendencies from their existential wars with alien menaces while New Anglia has become an inclusionist empire in which aliens are granted rights and seen as citizens and subjects of the Empire completely equal to Humans, reaching the highest levels of government. As a result, the past centuries have seen the degrading of relations with the other survivors of existential wars to the current cold relations.

[Shroom Man 777]

So, does this mean Anglia still thinks the Tau were assholes who got what was coming to them?

[Steve]

So, does this mean Anglia still thinks the Tau were assholes who got what was coming to them?

Mostly. We think they certainly deserved to be subjugated, but on the other hand genocide was a bit far - they weren't allowed to surrender after all - and the Imperium's violent xenophobia marks them as backward to Anglians now.

[Shroom Man 777]

Poo. I still say Nova Atlantis is inflating its census statistics numbers for historians' opinions regarding the Tau War.

[Shinn Langley Soryu]

Unsurprisingly, the Haruhiist stance on the Tau skews heavily towards Byzantium's. Simon's been admonishing me to actually write out actual history on the Wiki, but from what I've already planned out, the Haruhiists saw the genocide of the Tau as perfectly justifiable, considering the Tau's proximity to the Holy Empire's territories, their involvement in the concurrent Directorate War, and the general threat that they posed. The Haruhiist position has grown only slightly more moderate over the centuries; Tau settlement was and still is one of the major reasons for the oftentimes-strained diplomatic relations between the Holy Empire and the Nova Atlantean Commonwealth, after all.

Apart from the Tau, the Pfhor, the Bragulans, the Karlacks, and a few other species (including but not limited to the usual suspects like the Dilgrud and the Amplitur), the Holy Empire is generally highly tolerant of xenos. We did offer asylum to other species that were persecuted by the Tau and their thralls, after all. The Holy Empire is also home to the second-largest expat population of Chamarrans. There are also Zigonian, Orthii, Trill, Dorei, Moogle, Phosako, and Eoghan enclaves of varying sizes on some of the more developed worlds.

[Simon_Jester]

Phosako would not be a good fit for the Holy Empire. They don't do wacky very well.

[Mayabird]

I think they're sane, or at least calm and analytical enough though that they can take the wacky in stride. They'd be like a whole species of Egon Spengler but without the attempted self-trepanation.

[Simon_Jester]

I wouldn't go that far. They do have, on average, things like a sense of humor. And Phosako social skills are actually excellent among themselves- small group and large group interactions proceed very smoothly, as a rule, though they can suffer from severe miscues and 'what do you MEAN it didn't occur to you to do X?' when dealing with humans.

But I take your meaning.

They're not necessarily more analytical than humans- not Vulcans. They just get along with each other very effectively, and are largely immune to some of the 'madness of crowds' conditions that afflict human societies.

[Master_Baerne]

That right there is an extremely useful trait.

[Simon_Jester]

Oh, absolutely. The Phosako took a long time to get out of the Stone Age, and a similarly long time to get out of the Iron Age, mostly because of what might be termed "Jared Diamond hates your guts:" the parts of their world best suited to the rise of industrial civilization were far from the centers where they evolved, and far from the centers where their earliest civilizations emerged. But...

Put it this way. The Phosako fought an industrial-age world war once, over what might best be described as an irresolvable disagreement about the basis by which committees of citizen-representatives were chosen. The war was fought with technology around what humanity had between 1935 and 1950, and it ended with a low-intensity nuclear exchange: both sides had the bomb, but neither side had numerous or high-quality delivery systems.

At this point, they looked around at the trenchscapes, the wreckage, the bomb craters where the Grey Prophet's capital used to be. And they promptly signed over control of all atomic weapons on the planet to a multinational body roughly equivalent to today's UN.

This illustrates the difference between Phosako and humans rather effectively, in my opinion.

[Master_Baerne]

Aww, that was sweet, Maya. It's nice to see more of the Refugees' social structure.

[Simon_Jester]

Good stuff, Klavo. Of course, Guynald shall return!

(They saved Guynald's beard! )

[Steve]

Due to the high amounts of OT I'm soon to rake in and a major drop in my time for online stuff, I simply can't be the lead mod in decision-making for right now (and indeed possibly at all). I'm asking Simon_Jester to take those reigns for now and to make judgements and rulings for the STGOD in my place.

If anyone has a protest or request involving this, please voice it here.

[KlavoHunter]

UNNNNNNNNNNLIMITED POOOOOOWERRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!!