MP: I don't read that from the text. In fact, I get the opposite. From C3:

"By their actions and other means, the Andromedans attempted to convey the idea that they did not expect to conquer the entire galaxy, only selected parts of it. Much Romulan territory was occupied, for example, on the pretext of an Andromedan promise to leave the Federation alone."

We know, of course, that they attacked the Feds in Y192. But the example above illustrates the point...they didn't plan on wiping out the galaxy, but were interested in key parts. They did do their best to destroy everyone's military, and did a fine job. Note these two facts, again from C3:

1: The ISC had more large ships than any other three races combined when they launched their pacification plan. (C3, pg. 33)

2: 2/3 of the ISC fleet was destroyed by the Andros before it could be conslidated. (C3, pg. 34)


That's telling. The ISC had the largest force available, and one of the best, yet was nearly destroyed in a few short years. I do not think anyone was in the condition to do much nation-building during this period, but there appears to be no reason to believe the Andros wiped out or stripped worlds they captured. If you have a source that says otherwise, let me know...there's so much stuff out there, I don't doubt I could miss something.

By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 06:03 pm: Edit

>The ISC had the largest force available, and
>one of the best, yet was nearly destroyed in a
>few short years.

But everyone had trouble with the Andros, at least until X-ships showed up. I suppose that if all the Galactic powers had waited until they had lots of powerful ships, and they all attacked the ISC at the same time, they could have done the same job that the Andros did, but that's different from saying that the ISC wouldn't have been able to maintain the neutral zones.

C3's descriptions of the Andromedan Mining Station and Agricultural Station imply that they showed little interest in maintaining the ecosystems of the planets they captured.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 06:09 pm: Edit

I realize everyone had trouble; the point is that they were busily attacking ISC ships during this period, rather than landing on and capturing planets. They had relatively few ships, so to accomplish this (and take out everyone else), they had to be doing a lot of moving and fighting.

By R. Brodie Nyboer (Radiocyborg) on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 08:14 pm: Edit

I seem to recall reading something about the Andros wanting to strip planets bare (either that or I've confused the Andro invasion with "Independence Day") but not being able to do so. I'm sure they were able to "stripmine" some planets (if that was their plan) before they were trounced, but other than SVC who's to say how many?

I guess it remains to be defined how the "devastated"/"reconstruction" areas were affected by the wars.

By Joseph R Carlson (Jrc) on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 09:04 pm: Edit

In scenario book #1 is three scenarios that have information relevant to this discussion.

SH24 Y187. Fornax system. Feds fought three battles with the ISC who declared the system independent. Andros settled the matter once and for all (text doesn't say how the Andros settled it).

SH25 Y188. Klingons attacked the ISC support bases. Later the Klingons return in force to finish the job and are met in force by the ISC resulting in the bloodiest battle of the ISC war.

SH26 Y190. The Andromedans sought to conquer the galaxy by disrupting military operations and support facilities.

The Andros start their conquest Y190. Y197 the height of their power is reached and by Y198 their power declines as the RTN is disrupted.

A fiction story in CL20, "A Really bad Day" is set along the Fed/Rom NZ in Y196. Andros were launching attacks against the Romulan core systems from sat bases along the NZ. During the second month of the campaign against the sat bases 70 ships were lost by all races.

The Feds and Roms are still patrolling the NZ but it is unclear how much actual control they have of their respective territories. It appears the Andros targeted military units and support facilities. My opinion is Andros didn't take over large numbers of planetary systems.

Both the ISC and Andros targeted military installations and ships. Some of the military support structure may have been rebuilt.

OpU started in Y201 and ended in Y202. Very few X ships were involved, which to me means they were back in their own races territory patrolling and fighting. Every races fleet would be depleted of ships and resources. Whether there are wide NZs in some areas or the one hex variant doesn't matter. The capability to patrol and control is what matters.

As a note privateering is legal piracy in the eyes of the race supporting the privateer but might not in the eyes of the race being attacked. The USN fought the Tripoli pirates in the Med rather than pay “transit fees”.

By Mike Raper (Raperm) on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 09:30 pm: Edit

Good stuff, Joe. Thanks for posting.

The thought I had about privateering wasn't so much from the governmental standpoint. I thought of it more as almost a company one. Let me explain.

Take Planet A. Planet A was in the Klingon Empire, close to the Fed border. During the GW it was liberated by the Feds while they were on the march toward the Klingon capital. They enjoyed this prosperity because the Feds bought stuff from them instead of taking it, or just ignored them completely...take your pick.

Then, along comes the ISC. They further reinforce Planet A's freedom by seperating the Feds and Klingons even further. Now Planet A starts to trade their goods (mined ore, foodstuffs, whatever) to whoever wants to pay for it. They make money, and are relatively prosperous. Life is good because the ISC keeps everyone (including pirates) at bay. Then along come the Andros, who kick the crap out of the ISC and everyone else. The borders are a shambles, the ISC cannot protect them anymore, and they are afraid of being re-absorbed into Klingon space. So, they use some of that money to buy some small ships; bombers, maybe, or PF's and a tender. Then they hire a couple of privateer vessels for local defense. They are essentially setting up as a company planet, with no wish to be owned by anyone, but rather to trade with whoever will pay for what they have. They can trade goods for ships and weapons if they like, and hire crew. They won't have a big defensive force most likely, but enough to make it expensive to try to attack them. That's the use I can see for privateers in the trade wars...guns for hire, to keep neutral worlds free from absorbtion by whatever Empire is nearby.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 10:10 pm: Edit

Is anyone opposed to having industrialized colonies have:
Drone Factories
Mine Factories
Ground Base Construction
Fighter Factories
Bomber Factories
PF Factories
Freighter Factories
Auxilary Conversion Capability

Basically, is anyone opposed to colonies being able to construct defensive units?

By Joseph R Carlson (Jrc) on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 10:26 pm: Edit

Mike,

I can accept that version of privateering as being the norm. This style of operating is then different from the Orion Cartels piracy operations with some legit fronts being able launder funds etc. A third way of operating would be the Romulans, through some hidden way, supporting privateers, which would be limited and more localized. That is my opinion.

I agree with lets make it funs. I happen to think areas with limited navy control will facilitate fun scenario generation. As one can focus more on small groups of ships etc.

One point on the Andro war. It doesn't seem the Andro come, stayed, and layed seige. Instead they appear, destroy, and leave; they don't stay around and control through occupation because they don't have the forces to do so. The references to "being reduced to a dozen F&E hexes" needs to be viewed from that form of Andro operation. These core areas remained, in general, secure.

Galatic forces still patroled and battled Andros over the races full territory. Such galatic operations were limited by logistic support, which was also one of the Andro's targets. What prevented the final conquest was destruction of the RTN, not some Jutland style battle.

By Joseph R Carlson (Jrc) on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 10:32 pm: Edit

Tos,

I think it is a good idea. Most of these "factories" are not high tech. These operation could even sell to the naval forces needing support.

By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 11:10 pm: Edit

Tos: I think that's exactly the sort of thing that a "prosperous neutral" planet would have. I don't think that the idea is that bombers are bought and shipped; I think they're built in situ. In fact, I'd expect to see mostly bomber factories, and few (if any) fighters! Fighters use a lot of high-tech, high-performance, miniaturized equipment. It's the difference between Ferrari and Ford; Ferrari's cars will outperform anything Ford can deliver, but it's easier to keep a Focus operating than it is a Testarossa.

Mike R: Module C3's descriptions of the Andro Mining and Agro Stations imply that Andros trash any world they control.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, December 13, 2005 - 11:45 pm: Edit

Tos, several thoughts:

Personally, I would differentiate it a bit more. I like the idea but believe that only the wealthiest and most important colonies would be able to produce all of those. (I think you should also add Defsats to the list.)

A lesser industrialized colony might be able to produce, for example, drones, mines, and fighters/bombers, but not PFs. It could build small freighters, and convert them to auxilliary warships. And it could convert a large freighter if it acquired one from somewhere else, but couldn't produce the large freighter from scratch. It might be able to build ground bases except for those with phaser-4s.

I suspect that few if any Fed colonies could produce gatling phasers, since we know the Feds were unable to produce enough to meet their needs even when the Federation was fully intact. But F-18s and A-10s, and probably even A-20Fs, shouldn't be a problem.

This also opens the door to some interesting new units. Imagine an industrialized colony that could produce F-15s and FB-111 bombers for local defense, and also exported some of these; but the gatling phasers were supplied from a centralized factory in the capital, rather than produced indigenously. Having been cut off from the main body of the Federation, it continues to produce the fighters with the fighters having two phaser-3s instead of a phaser-g, and the FB-111 has two phaser-2s instead of one phaser-2 and one phaser-g. These units wouldn't be quite as good as the standard versions, but would be something the colony could build all on its own.

And although I have argued that very few of these independent colonies would possess real warships, it occurs to me that the few that did so might actually have some very powerful ones for their size. Consider the Wyn "overgunned" ships. There is no reason I can think of why major races couldn't have built ships as power and weapons heavy as the Wyn ships. They simply chose not to do so. The extreme maintenance requirements for these overgunned ships meant they could never operate at any significant distance from a friendly base. This was fine for the Wyn but unsatisfactory for an empire thousands of parsecs across. But an independent colony that does somehow possess a real warship is in a comparable position to the Wyn. Since the ship is never intended to operate at any distance from the planet, why not give it the "Wyn treatment". Imagine a (former) Fed colony that somehow acquires a DW and overpowers/overguns it to an extent comparable to what the Wyn did with the Kzinti frigate. That DW wouldn't be very useful for anything other than defending the local area. But in that role it would be a monster. Even an X-destroyer wouldn't engage it lightly.

One final thought: In our previous discussion about independent colonies and ships, you mentioned briefly the possibility of independents not being individual colonies but rather "regions" that included several colonies that subsequently banded together for mutual support. If few or no colony planets could build everything on your list, but many could produce some of the items, that could provide an interesting hook for "independent regions"

Imagine two industrial colonies fairly near to each other. Prior to the Andro invasion, one produced freighters. It therefore has shipbuilding capabilities but the only weapons it can indigenously produce are those used on standard freighters, phaser-2s and phaser-3s. The second colony has no ship building facilities but built weapons for the empire's warships, plus fighters and bombers. If these two colonies ally the whole is much greater that the sum of the parts. Having independent colonies that can build some, but not all, of the stuff on your list seems to have the potential to create some interesting political dynamics.

Just my .02 quatloos worth.

By michael john campbell (Michaelcampbell) on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 08:39 am: Edit

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No, you tolerate the few strong independent worlds for now and bring as many back into the empire as is practical. MOST worlds would not have the resources to make independance a preferable way of life.

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but there appears to be no reason to believe the Andros wiped out or stripped worlds they captured. If you have a source that says otherwise, let me know...there's so much stuff out there, I don't doubt I could miss something.

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By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 10:24 am: Edit

Why wouldn't a planet have a bomber factory? The whole idea of bombers is that they're local-defense shuttles, cheap and simple and easily within the capabilities of colonial industry.

I agree that they probably wouldn't have fighter or PF construction, but that's only because bombers are just as good at defending as the other ships, and there's no reason for an independent world to want to project power.

I don't have a problem with Trade Wars-era planets having very heavy defenses. I'd picture most of the fights being in open space near a world, trying to interdict rival shipping (or keep the lanes open for your own.)

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 10:40 am: Edit

The reason an independent world needs a navy is to protect its convoys. Worlds with weak navies will have to rely on a trade cartel to provide the necessary protection, and they will take a big bite out of the profits.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 11:59 am: Edit

But that really only applies to worlds that were a) industrialized before the empire contracted under ISC/Andro pressure, and b) didn't have its industrial capabilities destroyed by the Andros. I still believe that the number of planets meeting both criteria is small.

An agricultural colony that produced food for export, or a mining colony that produced valuable ores to be processed into finished goods elsewhere, would not meet the first criterion. They might well have planetarry defenses provided by the empire before the contraction. And they might be able to maintain those, and expand them after a fashion. But no matter how much they "need" a navy, they would never be able to produce one without outside help.

An industrialized planet cut off from the empire might well be able to produce a navy, even if it consisted of skiffs and armed freighters and auxilliary ships. But now the second criterion comes into play. If the planet's industrial capabilities were good enough that the Andros considered it a threat to their rear areas, they would have smashed those capabilites, undoubtedly including any shipyards, as a security precaution.

So as I see it the only colonies that would actually have navies were those with significant industrialization, but which were weak enough not to require suppression by the Andros. "Just enough, but not too much..." I think this would be a narrow slice of all the colonies out there.

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 12:22 pm: Edit

I agree with Alan. The moment any world builds war-goods production facilities, they would get the crap kicked out of them by the andros. At least as soon as their products make themselves known.

The andro purpose was to crush resistance, not to democratize it.

Mike R assumes the Andros would more or less leave the outer worlds alone. That may not be the case. You have to assume they had a use for the civilian population of those worlds. If they don't they would devastate every populated world just for "pest control". It's easy to do. You don't need a fleet, just a Python. Anything that can fight off the Python gets more serious treatment.

Now if we want to talk about what an independent world can produce, we look at the Bargaintine Campaign. Planets can build extremely cheap stuff: fighters, drones, even refit freighters. Probably you could add mines and defsats to the list. Not PFs.

If you have enough of it, you should be able to convince a pirate to go elsewhere.

By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 01:16 pm: Edit

Given the background of Bombers, I would suggest that a colony planet is more likely to deploy Bombers than it is to deploy Fighters...Bombers aren't just three- or four-space fighters, they're an entirely different system that uses some of the same rules.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 02:58 pm: Edit

These aren’t 100 person outposts, these are planets with populations between 1 million and 10 billion. In some cases these may be the home planet of a fully industrialized subjugated/member race. Capturing the economic output of these planets is what the General War was all about.

During the general war the empires are at war. Every even remotely capable colony will be provided some ability to defend itself, to do otherwise would leave that world vulnerable to even the smallest of raids. At a minimum this would include ground bases and production facilities for expendables such as drones. The largest worlds would have production facilities for the gamut of defensive units. Most colonies would fall somewhere in-between. Even a tiny 10 million colonist agricultural colony would have to be heavily industrialized well beyond the capabilities of present day Earth.

No planet short of a major race homeworld, like Orion, would have the facilities to develop their own ships, but during the Trade Wars they will need to acquire a deep space fleet for convoy escort duty and would be willing to provide cash and trade the empires need.

To the best of my knowledge no one has definitive information as to what Andros do when they encounter a heavily fortified world. That the only capital assault they attempted was against the LDR tells me they were not interested in assaulting heavily fortified fixed defenses. I’m assuming they are satisfied to isolate colonies by destroying trade routes and eliminating all potentially offensive units. If they intentionally exterminated every living being we would have heard the horror stories by now.

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 03:06 pm: Edit

I've been thinking (always dangerous, I know) that the most widely deployed space-capable vessels in the devastated zones might be similar to the F-7, which was intended to have maximum compatibility with admin shuttles. Some colonies would have the capabilites to build fighters and/or bombers (I believe Mike Powers is correct that bombers, while more expensive than fighters, are easier to build), and a few might have the capability to build PFs or ships. But the ability to build admin shuttles is probably much more widespread than any of these other capabilities. Most races had no interest in F-7 type fighters while they were capable of producing "real" fighters. But an isolated colony in a devastated zone might view matters differently. And there might even be a sort of "slow heavy fighter" based on Heavy Transport Shuttles.

Of course, colonies that have retained the ability to produce actual combat units, whether fighters, bombers, PFs, or freighters modified to auxilliary warships, would not be likely to produce anything like an F-7. And that brings us back to what is still an unsettled point. What percentage of the colonies in the devastated zones possess actual industrial capabilities? What percentage are "barely self sufficient"? What percentage have collapsed into barbarism or even been annihilated

By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 03:13 pm: Edit

Tos,

I don't think that's true. I'm pretty sure the Andros conducted an unsuccessful assault against the Klinshai systen itself. I'll try to find the reference when I get home, but I believe the independent boom (fighting seperated because the rear hull wasn't completed) of a B-10 was destroyed while repulsing the attack.

By Michael Powers (Mtpowers) on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 03:24 pm: Edit

I also don't see why independent worlds would have convoys. Convoys would come to them. There might be plenty of "security contractors" hanging around, but you won't have, say, the New Mars Space Police Force escorting out-system freighters over to Middle Finger. (Unless they did...but in that case, what cargo is so important that it rates an official police escort? Sounds like something that a Prime Team would be interested in...)

By John Trauger (Vorlonagent) on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 03:29 pm: Edit

It should also be pointed out that no independent world can fortify itself the way a principle empire world can.

An independent world has its own economy.

An empire world has the economy of an empire. Sure it has to be spread over a wider area, but it can also be concentrated where desired.

IIRC, according to SPP, the Andros are unique in their ability to assault fixed defenses because they can exhaust expendible defense supplies (like drones) by retreating, repair if necessary, and returning.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 03:31 pm: Edit

Alan, great questions. Are there any hints in Prime Directive? Beyond percentage, do we even have a count of colony worlds?

I remember a Captain's Log story about a corporation/planet/colony developing and pushing its only type of fighter. Though a different fighter was adopted by the Federation this one planet continued to use the locally produced version. The moral of the story is that we know some planets having the technical knowledge and facilities to design and build competitive fighters.

Lets start with F&E. To the best of my limited memory F&E shows major and minor colonies and these colonies develop a significant number of economic points every turn. Sectors of space with no major or minor colonies still produce economic value, but in a more limited way. Presumably these barren sectors actually have smaller colonies where the net economic activity is mostly reinvested rather then exported. Though I can’t prove it I believe this is reinforced by the established history of the Klingon – Kzinti wars (A3.3) where they kept swapping control over three key colony planets not shown on the F&E map.

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 03:31 pm: Edit

Question for the F&E players: What is a PDU? How many credits does it take to purchase a PDU? How many credits does a small colony produce? How many credits does controlling a sector produce? Ultimately, how many years would it take for an independent colony with production equal to a barren sector to build a PDU?

By Tos Crawford (Tos) on Wednesday, December 14, 2005 - 03:44 pm: Edit

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I also don't see why independent worlds would have convoys. Convoys would come to them.

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