There's been some discussion of a "Tholian invasion" style setting and it to be honest interested me, so I wanted to throw the following questions out.

1. At what point should the invasion take place? Obviously, EY is out, unless you want to run a rather grim invasion form the view point of the galactic powers.
2. What sort of invasion should we see? Note that a group of refugees were able to tow an entire dyson sphere into the galaxy, and regardless of its size, I think that a true invasion might very well include things like semi mobile star bases (you can move them but not fight wwhile moving, etc) and other such examples of large scale engineering.
3. Should we see new weapons/ships? I think that at least in teh case of ships, we should. By all indications the ships of the Will had long since been built in the context of an already conquered galaxy-- if the Tholians were expansionistic their designs would likely be more "Aggressive". Weapons are a bit more dicey-- the most natural idea, some form of seeking weapon would have major balance issues-- tholians are hard enough to fight as it is.
So what do others think?

By Ken Burnside (Ken_Burnside) on Sunday, July 31, 2005 - 08:01 pm: Edit

My inner munchkin has always loved the alternate history where the Tholians (with two-per-year WC production) conquered the EY Romulans, gaining plasma technology, gradually expanding their tech base to increase WC production capacities.

Note, that's my inner munchkin - I don't think ANYONE would find the idea of a plasma armed Tholian fleet to be enjoyable to face.

By Daniel G. Knipfer (Dgknipfer) on Sunday, July 31, 2005 - 09:33 pm: Edit

Ken, that's just evil.

By John Kasper (Jvontr) on Sunday, July 31, 2005 - 10:47 pm: Edit

Evil is when you give the plasma torps the power to run along any web they hit until they hit a ship caught in the web. For really evil, have the torp draw power from the web to keep it at full strength.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, August 01, 2005 - 02:08 am: Edit

You guys might want to wait until PD Tholians comes out. With out understanding where they are comeing from and what they did to build and control the will this might be much wasted effort.

Sorry but there's a lot of stuff no ones thought of before that is going into it.

By Charles Gray (Cgray45) on Monday, August 01, 2005 - 04:50 am: Edit

I am looking forward to that-- I'm assuming we'll see more of what the THolians were like in their home galaxy, and some of how the Will came to be?

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, August 01, 2005 - 12:57 pm: Edit

From the beginning.

By Steve Zamboni (Szamboni) on Monday, August 01, 2005 - 01:13 pm: Edit

Would a Tholian invasion assume that the Seltorian rebellion failed, or that it never happened? If the Seltorians are the prime subject race, then most of the encounters might be between more reasonable Seltorian enforcement squadrons rather than overwhelming Tholian battlegroups.

Technology transfers from rebellious Seltorians may also jump-start Galactic YIS dates.

Toying with an aternate-timeline fiction idea, I envisioned a successful invasion having an easy time until it reached the Vudar-Klinshai-Orion/Earth-Remus line of defenses, then bogging down as there were not enough ships to protect the border against Galactic raiders. An early Andromedan offensive into the Tholian rear areas would collapse the Invasion and return us to our regularly scheduled timeline.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, August 01, 2005 - 09:47 pm: Edit

There were many things that could have made the Seltorian Rebellion fail but then there was so much that made it inevitable.

By Troy J. Latta (Saaur) on Tuesday, August 02, 2005 - 07:38 am: Edit

Another way to do it is just flip-flop the arrivals (and personalities) of the Andro and Tholians. If the Andro hit in the EY and just sit there in Klink space and then the Tholians (with Selty front-liners) hit at the end of the GW...

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Tuesday, August 02, 2005 - 01:40 pm: Edit

Thing is, we know what the ships of the Tholian Will are like.

We know what their Seltoran underlings are like.

What would be more interesting is a Tholian Holdfast that pressed its EY advanatges and looked to carve out an empire.

By John Kasper (Jvontr) on Tuesday, August 02, 2005 - 10:00 pm: Edit

I’ve been thinking of a Stellar Shadows sort of F&E mini-scenario involving the Tholians. I discussed this with some of the F&E players at Origins, and I’d like to post a narrative description to talk about, before working up a properly formatted version.

I’m currently calling it Greater Tholia, although “The Six Powers War” might be a better name.

While the Seltoran conquest of the Tholian Home Galaxy was thorough and complete, there were some rough spots in it. The worst of these, from the Selt point of view, was Sector 300. In that area, the uprising was detected before it got going. While that didn’t really change the overall course of the rebellion, numerous groups of Tholians in that sector had enough warning to escape. In the established history, of these groups only the 312th Battle Squadron arrived in our galaxy. In this proposed Stellar Shadows variant, the 304th also found our galaxy. The 312th had to fight its way out of the home galaxy and arrived in fairly ragged shape, missing some of its ships. The 304th, on the other hand was nearer to the rim of the home galaxy. They had time to retreat in good order, with all of the squadrons’ war ships, as well as a fairly large group of civilian hanger-ons.

Ships of the 304th: 1xNBB, 2xNDN, 6xNCA, 9xNCL, 12xNDD, 12xNFF.

The 304th took a more direct route to our galaxy, arriving about Y150. When Fleet Admiral Whatshisname arrived at Tholia, he took one look around and declared martial law. The idea of Tholians being hemmed into such a small area of space was offensive to him. He immediately set about reordering Tholian society into a militarily aggressive force. The primary actions taken to achieve this were:

-- Scrap the systems used to move the Dyson sphere to our galaxy. (It was damaged beyond repair in the transit, but dismantling would have required authorization by a higher authority than any present on Tholia, and in such a highly structured bureaucratic culture, no one would take the risk of displaying that much initiative.) This freed up a large amount of resources, many of which were irreplaceable home galaxy technology.

-- Repair as many of the 304th’s ships as possible as quickly as possible.

-- Move all of Tholia to a wartime footing and start building up the fleet as quickly as possible.

-- Keep it all a secret so the Klingons, etc. would be surprised when the big push happened.

As a side effect of the early arrival of the Neo-Tholians, the welding techniques that made various late period Archo-Tholian ships possible showed up much earlier. Also, the Tholians had a working example of a Battleship and they wanted more. Work on the six-PC Battleship started about Y155.

Is it possible that not all Selts rebelled and a loyal hive ship accompanied the 304th?

The Tholian military buildup got into high gear when the Four Powers War started. Klingon and Romulan spies, (ooops! “diplomats“) negotiating the Treaty of Smarba noticed that something was going on, but not what.

About Y160, the Tholians boiled out, turning the Four Powers War into the Six Powers War, as they invaded both the Klingons and the Romulans. I’m assuming that the Federation manages to stay out of the fight.

Tholian Space ends up about the size of Kzinti space, about 2/3 at the expense of the Klingons and 1/3 from the Romulans. By the time the 312th arrived, their ships could be easily refitted in a shipyard designed to build such ships.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Tuesday, August 02, 2005 - 10:37 pm: Edit

the only thing that would really limit the tholians during the EY timeframe would be the size of the tholian population (and the corresponding production capacity)

remember that the tholians not only have extremely good ships in comparison to everyone else (especially with the welded hull designs available), but they also have longer range (6 hexes instead of 4), if they take their time and move only as fast as they can pulverize everthing in range before building a new (web protected) base, all the while with very little risk to the bases they start from (who wants to make a major attack against a base that's out of supply/retrograde range from any of your own bases)

if you let the tholians develop attrition units to absorb the damage instead of damaging ships they would be close to invinciable (although the very fact that attrition units are non-existant until you get to the hydrans and kzinti makes this a very attractive scenerio in many ways)

however I wouldn't do it as the 4pw + tholians and romulans, I'd do it as the tholians against the galaxy, with the feds/klingons/romulans being involved from the beginning and the other races being triggered based on tholian progress.

and while this sounds overwelming, remember the condition of the galactic forces.

1. the romulans only have sublight ships (the only thing that will save them is that their area of space is so worthless it's not worth the effort to occupy it)

2. the klingons won't get the home fleet, and given the strains on their other boarders, probably need to send a significant amount of each years production there (to keep the kzinti/lyran/hydran empires from deciding (togeather or independantly) that while the klingon fleet is tied up in tholian space that the klingon capitol looks like easy pickings) rather then being able to focus on the tholians.

3. the feds barely have a starfleet at all, much of their force is still the 'national guard' ships, and those won't be available to defend other people's planets, they'll be kept nearby to protect the home front.

as the tholians advance they will gain income, their opponents will loose it, but more of the galaxy will decide to oppose them. I figure that about the time they are capturing a couple of capitols the other four races will be getting involved (probably with the lyrans being the last holdout, if for no other reason then their reluctance to join the hated kzinti in anything, even fighting for survival)

By John Kasper (Jvontr) on Tuesday, August 02, 2005 - 11:14 pm: Edit

My original intent was to produce a scenario that could be played out on the F&E Sector G Tholian Front map. The Four Powers War would be in the background and cause the Kingons, Fed and Roms to have limited forces available.

From Y150 to Y160, play would actually be offmap. The Klingons (and possibly the Federation and Roms) would be busy spying on the Tholians (by way of some sort of yet-to-be-written rules) and trying to convince their respective governments that Something Big was happing over 'round Tholia and that Something Should Be Done. While that was happening, the Tholian player would be building up the fleet along whatever path s/he desired, while using some sort of counter-espionage to keep the King/Fed/Rom from noticing.

All of the Tholian ships arrive in sad shape and need to be refitted. I’m assuming that each NeoT ship produces a number of special NeoT salvage points equal to its salvage point value and that each ship to be refitted requires its salvage value of such special points, as part of the points needed in the refit.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Wednesday, August 03, 2005 - 12:02 am: Edit

you can limit the size that things scale to by limiting how much the tholians can expand their production. the other races will have substantial offmap resources that the tholians can't reach.

you don't need an active 4PW to drain off klingon resources, just the threat of it happening can be enough to eat up ships and conversions.

the idea of 20 turns worth of the game happening offmap is not something that I think will fly (and the fleet that can be built, even with just the resources of THolia during that time is massive)

remember that the 302nd was able to refit in only a year from scratch when they actually arrived, and if you have them arrive early enough the tholians may still have some of their origional neo ships left (assuming that the arrivial of the 302nd prevents the technology crash that historicly occured)

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, August 03, 2005 - 01:42 pm: Edit

A production cap would make sense considering the Tholian backstory. Loren Knight can speak to this better than me.

In primary SFB continuity, the Tholians are completely dependent on automated "forge" equipment that can produce PC hulls and command modules and that's about it. The technology for making more forges is lost to the Tholians. Tholian Cs and Ds are the result of ordering the forge to produce partial hulls and assembling the pieces in a spacedock.

The arrival of the 314th did not change this fact of Tholian construction life so the arrival of the 304th wouldn't have likely changed it either.

Tholian ship production would by necessity flatline out at max production available though its bank of forges.

It's entirely possible that the 304th's admiral wouldn't realize this limitation until he had comitted the Tholians to war.

By David Lang (Dlang) on Thursday, August 04, 2005 - 04:03 am: Edit

however the limit can be higher then it was historicly.

historicly the available shipyard was only able to build police ships, if you wanted you could stipulate better capacity

also historicly the tholians lost a lot of technology and had to rediscover it as they trained engineers from scratch (and gained the support from the 314th), if they didn't have this crash they may be keeping more of the origional equipment in operation.

also IIRC during the initial klingon assault on the holdfast they got all the way to the sphere and damaged it, but didn't quite manage to destroy it, who knows how much capacity ended up being lost to this damage.

remember that even if the 304th admiral didn't realize this the players will (at least ofter the first game) you have to design the scenerio to work with both players knowing all the details of both sides production and economy, and what will happen to them in the future.

By David Slatter (Davidas) on Thursday, August 04, 2005 - 05:30 am: Edit

I think it would be much more fun to the the tholians invading with an allied Selt, as if the Tholian will had prevailed in their galaxy, and they went on to conquer all the other galaxies.

By Charles Gray (Cgray45) on Thursday, August 11, 2005 - 04:40 am: Edit

One thing to consider is would the Tholians use the same style ships if they were aggressive. The Tholian will ships seemed optomized for occupational duties, rather than long range invasion.