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	Archive through June 28, 2016	38		06/28 09:51am

Alan Trevor:

I have to disagree with your analysis. Were it correct, the Tholians would have had larger scouts for ". . . supporting these short-ranged, short-duration, limited offensives; which are conducted not to capture and hold territory but to disrupt enemy offensives." well before the General War. Historically they clearly did not as others have pointed out.

Sorry, but the Tholians do seem to have relied on a "Maginot line" mentality. And that does not mean they tried to face the Klingons head on. Rather I think it means they did operate from their bases to be able to strike at the Klingon logistics.

It is, after all, why "The Swarm" was so important in convincing the Klingons they could destroy the Tholians and open up a connection with the Romulans: Tholian border battle stations could be destroyed denying the Tholians the ability to strike at Klingon logistics supporting attacks on the Tholian Starbases and homeworld/Dyson sphere.

Facing the Klingons head-on in fleet on fleet engagements would have been a losing proposition, the Tholians had to use the sensor nets of the bases to be able to strike where the Klingons were weak, then fall back on the bases to avoid effective retaliation, i.e., being caught in a battle in open space where Klingon numbers could be brought to bear.

By Mike West (Mjwest) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 12:37 pm: Edit

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Quote:

So - Federation players - do you want an NCLX?

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By Alan Trevor (Thyrm) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 02:18 pm: Edit

SPP,

If you will forgive my impertinence for saying so, I think the limitation in your own analysis is that you are not distinguishing between pre-312th Tholians and post-312th Tholians. I submit that, although the Tholians must still remain on the strategic defensive after the 312th arrives, the way they defend the Holdfast should change due to their greatly improved ability to fight in open space.

And I am most certainly not arguing that the Tholians should engage the Klingons in a bunch of open space battles of attrition. That's a losing strategy due to the disparity in overall numbers and resources. But if they have the ability to engage a major Klingon battle fleet in open space (which they don't have until after the 312th arrives), this greatly complicates the Klingons' offensive problems. If the Tholians adopt a purely "Maginot Line" defensive strategy, the Klingons can defend that FRD park or base (which is crucial to their offensive) with only light forces. But if the Tholians have the capability to launch a strong attack against it, or other targets on the fringes of Tholian space, the Klingons need to commit major fleet elements to defend it. The more fleet elements the Klingons have to commit to defense, the fewer they have for actually assaulting Tholian bases.

Similar considerations will require the Klingons to commit major fleet elements to convoy defense to protect the freighters (or even tugs/ LTTs) resupplying their forces. And again, the more ships the Klingons have to commit to convoy defense, the fewer they have for actual assaults.

In the meantime, those Tholian "offensive" forces remain on the strategic defense, defending Tholain space. But their existence still requires the Klingons to commit more assets to defending their logistics network. While the Tholians could make such an attack (probably as a riposte after a klingon attack) with conventional ships led by a Neo-Tholian dreadnought or an Archeo DHW, an X-fleet (supported by a strong X-scout) could strike, and then return to base, much faster.

That, at any rate, is why I think the Tholians (post-312th arrival) need to cultivate the capability to engage in (limited) attacks, even if they rarely employ that capability. I await your response.


Mike West,

I pretty much completely agree with you. But as I have previously said, I don't play Feds all that often so I wanted to see what regular Fed players thought.

By Steve Petrick (Petrick) on Tuesday, June 28, 2016 - 03:11 pm: Edit

Alan Trevor:

I tend to disagree with you due to the strategic situation and background.

The Tholians had few web casters until around Y184. All the ones they did have up to that point were pretty much restricted to the few existing Neo-Tholian ships, which they were loathe to risk outside of Tholian Space.

By Y184, the "threat" of Klingon attack had subsided, and it subsided due to those Neo-Tholian ships with web casters and the allowance of a few "allied ships" (Gorn and/or Kzinti, no Feds . . . Orion mercenaries are not really mentioned, but I would suspect that the Tholians would not allow such in their space if they would not allow the Federation).

With the exception of the raid where they captured disruptor technology, and a small expeditionary force provided for Operation Cavalry (and later, Operation Unity), the Tholians do not leave their home space; they do not have the military might to risk such operations. They do not seem to think it worth "poking the bear" to raid into the Klingon (or Romulan, or Federation) space.

Frankly, if they were willing to risk such a thing, they would have sent their X-squadron with whatever other ships they could scrape up to attack the Seltorian Hive ship and ravage the Seltorian "homeworld" it orbited.

They did not.

They sat behind their defenses and largely treated the Seltorian infestation in the same manner they treated the Tholians: They Defended.

So the Inter-Stellar Concordium took care of the problem.

Let us both admit, right here and now, that the Tholian response to the Seltorians was either short-sighted, or was intended to avoid wasting resources that were being put into trying to find a means to rebuild the Dyson Sphere's engines to run, or to build a fleet of merchant ships to run. We all know the Seltorians said more of them were coming because they had found Tholians, we just do not know exactly when they are going to arrive, and with what. And we are all (everyone in the Alpha Octant after the truth about the Seltorians was revealed) hoping the Seltorians are not able to advance their technology so that we can beat them easily with improvements to our technology in the intervening years (if we do not destroy ourselves in the interim with renewed wars).

But the Tholians demonstrably do not raid out of their space. They defend their borders (where the webbed bases make formidable bastions) and strike from them at Klingon supply convoys trying to support operations inside their space.

By Steve Cole (Stevecole) on Friday, July 05, 2019 - 07:36 pm: Edit

FINAL ANALYSIS

Tholian CWSX: There is nothing technological stopping the Tholians from building this. The problem is they have very little need for it (by this point all of their battles are in hexes adjacent to starbases and they already have two existing X-scouts) and they cannot afford the opportunity cost to build it (they have too few X-hulls and too few XTPs; build this means NOT building something more useful). As such, it could be a "possible but never built" and we may print a few of those, maybe this one, maybe not.

Federation DDLX: It is unclear if the plasma-armed variants were actually useful in combat or were all converted to standard ships before this time. The torpedoes would have to be bought from the Gorns. It seems a bit impractical to build some of these as they'd never be in just the right place for internal pirate hunting. As such, it could be a "possible but never built" and we may print a few of those, maybe this one, maybe not.

Further discussion would have no impact on that decision, so they're here waiting to see how many such slots there are and what other candidates there are.