Say if someone wanted to run a Seltorian arrival campaign in the Middle Years, having them arrive in, let's say, Y150.

(In such a campaign, one would keep the Selts restricted to what ships they could build and field from the Burning Torch of Vengeance - and for arguments' sake, one might assume a lack of heavy Klingon co-operation and keep the three-boom hulls away from them, too.)

While the Selts would perhaps be more powerful, pound-for-pound, versus unrefitted Alpha ships of equivalent hull displacements, they would have limits on the size of hulls they could put into action.

What kind of challenges might such a Tribunal force offer in such an event?

(Indeed, just how much of a headache would they give the Holdfast of that era?)

By Kevin Humar-Barrett (Cheethorne) on Monday, March 08, 2010 - 12:32 pm: Edit

Why wouldn't the Klingons provide heavy support, in fact did they really provide that much support anyway?

It seems that the Seltorians suffered from a real lack of ingenuity when it came to their ship designs and engineering issues in general, so coming up with the three-hulled ships might not have been very hard for the Klingon engineers. Other than some technical advice like that (and for t-bombs and wild weasels and things like that), I don't think the Klingons gave the Seltorians much besides a barren planet and operational freedom. As for the Tholians, in Y150, they don't have any ships larger than the C-class cruiser, so the Seltorians can field larger ships.

I think the biggest obstacle would be the political situation. In Y150, there is no general war going on and no formal state of war between the Klingons and the Tholians. I'm not exactly sure of the reasons the Klingons never dedicated themselves to destroying the Tholians, but I believe it was because of expected losses and they didn't want to weaken themselves compared to their neighbors (at least until there was a valid reason to do so, like during the General War and rebuilding a pass to the Romulans). Of course, never underestimate the idiocy of Seltorian tactics that dictated sending hulls and squadrons against the Tholians almost as fast as they could be built instead of actually forming a real strategic.

Overall, even with minimal support from the Klingons, the Seltorians would prove to be a huge threat to the Holdfast, which might encourage them to allow the Federation to intervene in their defense, which would likely be enough to stop the Seltorians from winning (since the Federation wouldn't want to see the Tholians fall to Klingon allies). In the end, a wide war between the Federation and the Klingons might occur or a stalemate might be reached with the Tholians existing only with the support of Federation ships.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Monday, March 08, 2010 - 12:49 pm: Edit

Rather than no alliance, perhaps one might say the three-boom ships need design techniques which only matured at the time of the General War, and were unavailable prior to the development of ships like the D5 (for whatever reason).


In any case, the point would be to limit the access to these ships, and make the Seltorians 'get by' with their M81-derived fleet.

By Kevin Humar-Barrett (Cheethorne) on Monday, March 08, 2010 - 01:22 pm: Edit

I can live with that reasoning.

In such a case, the Seltorians would still have a clear advantage in large hull capabilities, but only if they were patient enough to build up reasonable ship squadrons to use their advantage.

Without the benefit of quickly built attrition units (fighters and especially PFs, which the Seltorians fell in love with), the Seltorians would need to rely on their heavy hulls to win battles against heavily fortified Tholian bases, which means they would need to the time to build substantial numbers of them.

However, as I said, given the Seltorian tendency to attack as quickly as they could, they would probably build a single large hull ship combine it with some small hull ships and throw it against the Tholians. I imagine that given the lack of real ships in the Tholian fleet and the comparable high quality of the Seltorian fleets, the Seltorians would eventually be able to wear the Tholians down using this tactic, but it would take years.

As I said before, the largest unit the Tholians could muster would be the C cruiser and it would have to go against CL and CA cruisers from the Seltorians. In the small ship categories, the two forces are far more balanced, but strategically, I would say the Tholians would be dooomed without outside intervention from the Federation.

By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, March 08, 2010 - 01:36 pm: Edit

I think you need to simply ask yourself, what level of friendship should one work with an alien species and how fast?

For the Klingons to start sharing all sorts of engineering expertise would require a fast friendship and they don't even have that with the Lyrans.

Promises and overtures to friendship are all well and good but time proves those things out. The Klingons offered some basic concepts like Gunboats and such, gave the Seltorians the basic materials and a planet to keep their promise from.
But don't you think the Klingons asked about Shield Cracker/Web Breaker technology? Why would the Klingons help the Seltorians reengineer their ships when the Seltorians refused them this vital technology?
Pressure of the General War against the Feds and Kzinti was serious and the Seltorians were doing what the Klingons needed; releaving pressure on a less important front (but not so unimportant as to be abandoned because they still needed to reconnect with the Romulans).
Also, the Klingons knew that the Seltorians were masters of an entire galaxy that they had wrested from the Tholians. In other words, the Seltorians represented a potential future threat as a very powerful conquering empire. You cannot take back knowledge, and giving knowledge to the Seltorians means giving it to the entire Seltorian Empire. Such a thing is bound to come back a bit you.
Gunboats were about to be considered obsolete and so facing them in the future, while a problem, would not be insurmountable. Gunboats are a fairly limited technology as well. However, starship engineering is another matter. That kind of information is not a closed door. In fact, it is a door that swings both ways.

I'm not SVC, and the above is not official. Just my opinion.

By Terry "Full Stop" O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Monday, March 08, 2010 - 05:11 pm: Edit

I think the Klingons were in a formal state of war with the Tholians; certainly, they never recognised the validity of the Holdfast's existence (except possibly after the GW and as a necessary evil for the fight against the Andromedans) and had the Tholian Border Harassment Squadron constantly raiding the Tholian borders.

It is historically known that the Klingons did help the Selts build some ship classes like the NCA and BCH which did not exist in the M81. They presumably also helped them develop transporter bombs, suicide shuttles, and weasels, which were not in use in M81.

The Klinks might have wanted web breakers, but no Milky Way empire ever succeeded in copying ANY extra-galactic technology. So obviously there was some kind of basic issue with that, which prevented it.

What I think would have happened was this: The Seltorians, backed up by Klingon ships, attack the Tholians with massive numbers. (Tholian Border Squadron, Home Fleet, and perhaps some ships from the Imperial War Reserve as well.) The Selt ships are not very numerous, but their web breakers overcome the only thing preventing Klingon victory and the Klinks overwhelm the Tholians in a few months. Once the Tholian Dyson Sphere is captured, the Klingons betray and destroy the Seltorians. The Selts may try to resist or not, but the Klingon numerical advantage is so large that the outcome is never in doubt.

By Gary Carney (Nerroth) on Monday, March 08, 2010 - 05:38 pm: Edit

Ah, but how long would it take for the Klingons to build up the TBS front enough to launch such an invasion, even if they agreed to fight alongside the Seltorians?

It might not happen overnight - and in that time, it's possible that the Holdfast might suddenly find itself becoming that little bit less standoffish towards the Federation.

Plus, the UFP in turn might not want to see victorious Klingons parked on the doorstep of the Romulan Empire. (The Klinks could either try to invade the Romulans or do some kind of deal - either of which would be very bad news for the Federation.)

So, if the Seltorians get to bring a few Klingon friends along, perhaps they might find the Seventh Fleet popping across the Neutral Zone to counter them?

The war the Organians historically called a halt to might be triggered a few years early...

(That could be the seed of an interesting Middle Years F&E scenario, once Civil Wars is published...)


Which leads me to the tactical side of things.

If the Federation and Tholians were fighting the Klingons and Seltorians in the Y150s, what kind of tactics and deployments might the two sides use?

And for that matter, how well would any meddling Middle Years Orion pirates do at raiding Seltorian convoys?

By Kevin Humar-Barrett (Cheethorne) on Monday, March 08, 2010 - 08:14 pm: Edit

I could easily see the Federation intervening on a Klingon / Seltorian alliance against the Tholians, and for that reason, I don't think the Klingons would do much to militarily help the Seltorians. The Klingons do not want a direct war against the Federation and won't do anything to provoke such a war without laying a lot of diplomatic groundwork first (ie. the General War and the alliance with the Romulans). Although a victorious Seltorian offensive would likely result in Federation intervention, it would allow the Klingons to choose whether to become involved or not.

For tactics, and this being a tactics discussion, I would say that even without t-bombs, suicide shuttles, and wild weasels, the Seltorians would do very well against the surrounding empires. Their ships are built up to the standards of the late General War era and they are fighting un-refitted middle year ships.

Against the Tholians, I could see the Seltorians ruling space battles. They simply have larger and better hulls than the Tholians have and while the Tholian destroyers are good ships, they are relatively rare and the Seltorians would likely be able to deploy their limited resources better (having all the initiative in the war).

Against the Orions and the Federation, the Seltorians have all the advantages of late war ships: better power curves, stronger ships, more weapons. A convoy is a convoy, but I doubt the Seltorians would even have a lot of those since I can't see the Klingons allowing the Seltorians to expand beyond one or two planets. Even better, the Seltorians have a fairly large number of defense phasers and very little for them to shoot at except opposing ships.

By Terry "Full Stop" O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Monday, March 08, 2010 - 09:13 pm: Edit

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Ah, but how long would it take for the Klingons to build up the TBS front enough to launch such an invasion, even if they agreed to fight alongside the Seltorians?

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By Loren Knight (Loren) on Monday, March 08, 2010 - 10:39 pm: Edit

What is, and always has, been keeping the Klingons from rolling over the Tholians is other matters on other borders. If the Seltorians were to arrive early, like Y150, they would certainly provide a marked advantage that the Klingons would probably move on. But the Klingons would have a lot less to offer the Seltorians and they might be more afraid of them than the Tholians.

The Seltorians ahve ships and technology that is more advanced than the Klingons. In Y150, the Klingons are just enterning their modern starship design and the Seltorian have marked superiority over them. The Klingon reaction would certainly not be one of trust. The Seltorians are, after all, revolutionaries. As such, the Klingons may well deny they Seltorians a base, in which case the Seltorians would just take one and then find themselves at war with the Klingon Empire (and perhaps allied with the Tholians... well, maybe that's going too far, but they do, in fact, ally with them eventually.)

The indication of SFU history to me is that the Klingons never had any real love for the Seltorians. Certain the Seltorian arrival in Y179 was convenient and the Klingons took advantage of that, but I don't think the Klingons ever truely trusted the Seltorians, nor did they balk at their annihilation (and even clean up after the ISC).

Seltorians arriving in Y150 may appear to be a greater threat at that time, one the Klingons would not tollerate. Indeed, the Seltorians may very well have seen the Klingons as inferior and in need of conquering and control.

Of course, they last word of the last Seltorian commander would have been, "Wow. They addapted fast."

By Terry "Full Stop" O'Carroll (Terryoc) on Tuesday, March 09, 2010 - 12:45 am: Edit

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What is, and always has, been keeping the Klingons from rolling over the Tholians is other matters on other borders.

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The indication of SFU history to me is that the Klingons never had any real love for the Seltorians.

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Indeed, the Seltorians may very well have seen the Klingons as inferior and in need of conquering and control.

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