Archive through September 17, 2004
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Tholian-Seltorian Home Galaxy + War:
Archive through September 17, 2004
To Admin: I wasn't sure where to stick this so if you think it goes somewhere else, feel free.
Okay, two issues. First I'd like to discuss the Neo-tholian/Seltorian war.
First, I'd like to start some sort of conversation to try to see, even if it's in a general sense, how the Seltorians could possibly defeat the Tholian Will in the THG. Basically I want to try and come up with a better reason than "Because SVC said so", if possible.
First off I'll list what I have observed and try and point out the problems to the current history. I'll list some ways I could see it working afterwards.
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Okay, the first problem is that in every battle we have played with the Seltorians vs The Will, the Seltorians either lose extremely quickly or suffer something like 95%+ losses.
An example of this was when we had the Seltorians attack a Tholian BATS.
The bugs had a full 11 ship fleet including a DN and BCH.
The Tholians had a NBB a PC, and very small mine field (Captor mines and some small mines). The NBB was there because it happened to be there (campaign movement reasons)
It was a rather drawn out battle but the net result was that the PC and NBB withdrew without damage (mostly) and the bugs failed to kill BATS after the tholian ships left and instead withdrew with only a damaged frigate remaining (all other ships had been destroyed by combined phaser fire from the NBB, PC and BATS).
What makes this a good example is that it seems to follow the same pattern that all engagements of this type follow when we play them.
Namely; the Bugs lose. Badly and without doing much, if any, damage to the Tholians.
There are several reasons for this. The most obvious two are the number of web breakers vs the number of web casters.
In even an average Neo-Tholian fleet it is not unreasonable to expect to be facing 16-20 casters. Now, it takes multiple web breakers to bring down a single strand of web. The net result is that the Tholians are able to put up more web each turn than the Seltorians are able to bring down.
This leads me to a two conclusions regarding the Seltorians. The first is that if you don't try and use them against Neo-Tholians, and instead use them against the Arachnos, they suddenly have sufficient web breakers to be a threat. The second conclusion is that in order for them to have been able to be a threat to the Neo-Tholians, they would have had to have considerably more web breakers than they do currently. It would not supprise me in the slightest if they had dedicated web breaker ships, much in the same way various races use maulers or drone ships.
If these ships were, say, CAs with all WBs in place of the PCs than having only 3 such ships would give you around 80% of the WB power of an entire fleet of normal ships. Now if you go and add these 3 WB ships to an 11 ship fleet you nearly the number of WBs in the fleet, and hence, the treat the Seltorians and be to a fixed web.
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The second problem I see is the difference in technology between the Seltorians and the Tholians.
As I understand it, the Tholians basically "Uplifted" the Seltorians to starfaring status through various means and gave them old GW era tech. I say old because if you read around the Tholians are listed as having X2 technology in their home galaxy.
You may ask then, "Okay, if they had X2 then why are the Neo's GW(X0)?"
I think that question has a very simple answer. They didn't need to be.
With no real threat to their power in a long time, why pay for very expensive X2-level ships when X0-level ships accomplish the same mission at drastically less cost? Taken in this context it is my belief that the Neo-Tholians are an example of the Tholians trying to get as much as they could at the lowest cost possible. Sort of like someone choosing to buy a small economy car instead of a shiny expensive sports car when all you have to do is drive back and forth from home to work. The sports car is basically pointless since the economy car does the same thing, and does it at less cost.
It makes sense if you think about it. Why pay to maintain a fleet of all X2 ships when you can accomplish the same goal with vastly cheaper X0 ships? The answer is that you have 98% of your fleet be X0 (the existing Neo's) and the other 2% be mothballed full X2 tech for emergencies. It wouldn't suprise me at all if there were only less than a dozen X2 ships across the entire Tholian Will when the Seltorians attacked.
Given that the Neo-Tholians understood basically all the Tholian technology (which seems to be the case from what I read), pretty much everything "new" they are coming up with (with some exceptions) are probably just examples of them restoring damaged buildings or building new ones that could produce more 'lost tech'.
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From a strategic standpoint the only way I can see the Seltorians being able to actually beat the Tholians is if they did a highly precise, simultaneous attack on just about every Tholian position they could reach in an attempt to prevent the Tholians from consolidating forces. If the Tholians are/were spread out in the same manner that the ISC were when the Andros attacked them it because slightly more plausible. Even if this is done though, it doesn't really answer how they win short of raw attrition. Which in itself doesn't work well since even the large capital ships get destroyed at an alarming rate.
Couple points:
One is that the Selts reproduce at alarming rates if they want. Numbers are little trouble.
Two: Tholians have spheres that is the primary points they wish to protect. You do not have to destroy the enemy whole all at once. First you break their back.
Three: Selts are NOT the only race in the galaxy only the latest to be give most trusted race status.
Four: Why would the Selt player, in a base assault scenario, be using his WB's on cast web? Cast web falls on it's own in most all cases (that is unless it is cast between qualified anchor points).
Daniel;
Though we've been disagreeing in the "particle cannons" thread, I'm in complete agreement with you here. In a "fair fight" the Tholians should beat the Selts in the Home Galaxy, even with the Selt web breaker.
I've always more or less assumed (and color text suggests) that the Tholians suffered from extreme complacency/overconfidence in the Home Galaxy. Their ships were old designs because they never saw the need to make them state-of-the-art technologically. They let the Selts build a huge fleet, saving themselves the trouble and expense of doing so and complacently assuming that webs and web casters gave them untouchable superiority. And even after the Selts began their revolt, the Tholians responded rather lackadaisically. They just couldn't bring themselves to believe the Selts were really a threat until it was too late.
I think the problem with the Tholians vs. Selts is probably what forces you were using with the Neo's.
Look at the Selt attack verses a Neo SB. Assuming that those forces were approximately 'maxed' for the Neo's defense, it would have a lot less WC's then what then you used in your own Campaign.
Now since it's been noted that the Selts massively outproduce the Neo's, historically, what happened historically becomes similar to what the Andro's attempted in the Alpha Quadrant. Reduce everything to 'isolated bastions' then reduce each one at a time, not caring about loses, since the Defenders couldn't receive reinforcements from any other 'bastion'.
So what if the Selts lose a DN+2BCH+others per battle, if the Neo's lose a NDN/NBB+others. The Selts shall outproduce them, and overwhelm them eventually.
At least that's my theory, and I'm sticking to it. 
Now we can easily turn this topic in making a Neo vs. Selt campaign playable. Like what kind of limitations should hamper the Neo's to impede them enough to be fair to the Selts.
Or address 'build' issues. Neo's build schedule looks somethink like this:
Spring: NDN, NCA, 2NCL, 3NDD, 4NFF, 6PC
Fall: NCA, 2NCL, 3NDD, 4NFF, 6PC
And the Selts look like this:
Spring: DN, BCH, 2CA, 4CL, 6DD, 6FF
Fall: DN, BCH, 2CA, 4CL, 6DD, 6FF
(just to warn, I pull that out of my arse...)
Etc.
I was not part of Daniels campaign mentioned above, but when the Seltorians came out we did run several different scenarios, including a base assault. The main reason to fire on cast web is if you spend time either maneuvering around it or waiting for it to go away it gives the bases P-4s several additional shots that are not answered.
Based on our games you would need an eight to one superiority across your fleet for the Seltorians to have a reasonable chance of success.
Daniels idea of special all WB ships to fulfill the roll of Mauler would make a great deal of difference.
By Loren Knight
"One is that the Selts reproduce at alarming rates if they want. Numbers are little trouble."
While true of individual members of the Seltorian race, this does not mean that they are producing ships that quickly.
By Alan Trevor (Thyrm)
"I've always more or less assumed (and color text suggests) that the Tholians suffered from extreme complacency/overconfidence in the Home Galaxy. Their ships were old designs because they never saw the need to make them state-of-the-art technologically. They let the Selts build a huge fleet, saving themselves the trouble and expense of doing so and complacently assuming that webs and web casters gave them untouchable superiority. And even after the Selts began their revolt, the Tholians responded rather lackadaisically. They just couldn't bring themselves to believe the Selts were really a threat until it was too late."
A virtual requirement, even with the changes mentioned.
ADM
Wow.... almost nobody disagreed with me... lol...
Scott:
Given that the Tholian production was, from what I remember SVC saying a few places, decentralized in the sense that they produced ships from multiple locations, I suspect initally they had superior production abilities to the Seltorians BUT were not building their full scedule at the time. Sort of like what the Federation does at the start of the general war.
Namely; start with little but have the capicity to gear up quickly.
Your scedule also is forgetting that NBBs seemed to opperate in about the same role as Galactic DNs do.
Loren:
Point 3: I agree. But from what I can read the Seltorians are the ones to have anything more than freighters. Getting assistance from anything other than the ocational pirates would take some time since it is somewhat likely that the most another given race under Will control would have available would be armed freighters or POSSABLY a monitor type vessel.
Point 4: They didn't. In the example I gave, the base assault with the NBB, there really wasn't any cast web. But it was damned hard for them to hurt the outer layer of web enough, even with a full fleet of web breakers, to counter the 2:1 power ratio that web enjoys. Also, without some sort of major deteriant they couldn't stop the PC and NBB, at the same time, from repowering the web and making nearly all of their web breakers totally ineffective.
Even when they got the web down to 31 or below, they had problems getting through and lost a ship or two in the attempt.
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Looking at Loren's point #3, I agree that the Seltorians would have tried to recruit as many other races as possable. The primary problem is that, unless the Tholians had a aux race for each production sector, all they would have to work with intitally would be armed freighters.
It would take them time to gear up to produce warships. As an example, look at the FRA in Omega or the LDR in Alpha. Both are similar examples of a 'race' having to gear up to produce warships. It took them a bloody long time to do it.
Now, with the bugs helping, it would probably take alot less time but it still is likely that they would not be able to assist the Seltorians in any meaningful way for the inital attacks.
A thought that goes back to Loren's #1 point:
I agree with David that it is unlikely that increased crew production ment increased ship production as well. At least in terms of the larger combat ships. My reasonling behind this is looking at the hive ship in this galaxy. They had massive numbers of personel but appeared to have substantial diffculty producign even CL sized ships. They did NOT, though, appear to have problems at the other end of the size spectrum sinc they produced massive numbers of PFs.
This leads to the point that, if the Seltorians have a small combat ship in the THG, smaller than a frigate but larger than a PF, that they could mass produce and crew with their vamped up crew production, it would certainly solve their numbers problem. Give it a F&E cost of 2 EP and you would see massed numbers of them appear out of the woodwork.
It would also let them use swarm tactics since they could send in probably 7-8 of these for the same F&E cost as one DN and allow them to hold the big expensive ships in reseve untill the corvettes had softened up the target some.
I'm sick right now so pardon me if I'm incoherent...
What makes up SFB history isn't always exactly playable and the situation isn't only made up of what is before you (SSD's etc.)
Two questions that should lead to lots of answers:
If no one else has any ships that are a threat then why do the Selts have such a powerful navy? If piracy is the only threat the Tholians are powerful enough to handle the large threats and the Selts need only a Heavy Pol at most. But they get full naval cruisers and DN's. There must be potential threats greater than the Tholians care to handle themselves. It is an entire Galaxy after all.
I'd bet they are having problems getting large numbers of Tholians to sign up for duty. Times are REALLY good and the Spheres are abosolute paradises. The Selts are handling things nicely...ah to be an aristocrate in Rome...er the Will. Still, they do maintain a considerable force led by Battleships no less.
Question Two: The Tholians control the Galaxy. To what end? Sphere building takes a lot of resources is one thing to consider. Controling the galaxy provides a level of security not attainable otherwise (or so they think but have had this for a pretty long time). But then, obviously the Tholians are not interested in isolating everyone and just doing everything themselves. They've handed much responsability to the Seltorians (and other in the past) as most trusted race (which implies there are other "not as" trusted races). These races probably produce valuable resources for the Tholians. They conduct shipping and other important duties, under Tholian supervision no doubt. But for a Galactic Empire to run as it should the Tholians have come to rely of their subjects.
Once the Seltorians have caused enough trouble for the Tholians that they can no longer hold the Will in an iron...er, stone grip, these other races can begin to break loose. They can contribute a great deal simply by revolting in their local system. Perhaps even simply refusing to produce. In other cases they may just produce less. Convoy freighters through out the Galaxy suddenly start having engine trouble.
The more the Selts gain the easier it gets, until the tide turns and the Will falls, fast.
This, in large part, is why the Tholians in our galaxy have such an isolationist attitude. They saved a bit of paradise and will never trust again. They are the last of their kind (so they believe) and have nowhere else to go. They settled on the edge of the galaxy probably because moving the sphere makes it very vulnerable and they couldn't risk going deeper and encountering hostile races. They would indeed have been better off heading into the Federation but they didn't and couldn't have known that.
Loren: Good points. Though I'm not sure how many answers it generates but it does have more questions.
The reason I said the other races had mostly freighters was that, that is what the various scenarios imply, if not outright state.
Question 1: Is there another reason for the Tholians to have larger ships aside from just having bigger units than their current subject race(s)?
If there are other fringe races hiding out at the edge or outside the galaxy, as Loren seems to suggest, than that would be a reason to maintain a stronger than just police fleet. A second reason could be simply to generate fear/respect/awe among the various systems.
Sort of like the races seeing "Look at what they have! No way am I revolting if I know that's what will show up to stop me!" or "Yay! look at all the things the Tholians have to protect us with!", ect , ect.
I think a third reason is just plain old Tholian paranoia.
The problem though, of the Seltorians taking massive losses remains if they only employed the current ships. They had to have had SOMETHING else in order to be successful at all.
Fair fight or not, if they have to give up ten battle fleets for every Tholian fleet they destroy (which seems to roughly be the percentage when we play Thols vs Selts), they simply can't win with their current ships.
The problem is compounded when one looks at just how much raw firepower it takes to take down even a single dyson's sphere.
The Rome analogy seems better than some others I've heard but there are certain problems that need to be addressed, in my opinion, for it to work completely.
Question 2:
I agree that the Tholians require their subject races to operate a galactic empire. The each sphere, however, is also capable of producing more than any 4 major planets on their own. Now, using say, the F&E map for reference (which SVC I believe has said is about the size of the THG), there should probably be between 7-12 regional capitals operating. The galactic capital is likely to have considerably more and probably is effectively impossible to attack without losing everything you threw at it.
That is a fair amount of production even without the planets contributing. Also, I believe it is safe to assume that not all of the systems would revolt. It's entirely likely that some of them LIKE the Tholians and then your in the situation of not knowing who is going to side with who.
So basically the Seltorians would have to have an absolutely enormous production base in order to take the sort of losses that my experience has shown them to take. And a production base that large is not something I believe the Tholians would let them have no matter how much of a non-threat they were assumed to be.
The paragraph entitled "The Seltorian Revolution" Under R15 seems to indicate that they did in fact have many bases able to fit ships with the web breaker, and that they had mass production capability. Wouldn't this point to the Seltorians having the ability to build ships quickly? These bases are refered to as "shipyards". They would have access to vast resources since they policed the galaxy. Instead of capturing freighters to be returned to duty for the Tholian Will, they would allow the freighters to continue operating, but in Selt service. With their large numbers, they could easily capture and hold major production planets that the Tholians could not, due to atmospheric differences. The Tholians would have many ships, but with their resources cut off, would have difficulty building more. Also, remember that this was seen as a "Holy War" by the Selts. Death in the service of their diety (or whatever) would be a powerful motivator, I would think. Their losses would be largely irrelevent in the holy crusade, since they could build more ships, faster, and replenish individual losses on a massive scale.
Something else to keep in mind:
If the Seltorians are acting as the 'Hands of the Tholian Will' as it were, WHO'S BUDGET IS PRODUCING SELT SHIPS? Selt ships would be produced by funding from the Tholian Will, rather than their own worlds. Granted the Tholians would keep enough of their own ships active to be able to put down any {to their mind} possible uprising, but the bulk of the Tholian Will's ship production would undoubtedly be Seltorian ships.
That, coupled with possibly generations of Seltorian reports of ships 'destroyed' by 'monsters', 'pirates', or 'unknown phenomena' when those ships are actually being mothballed for the eventual uprising, would ensure that the Seltorians have overwhelming numerical superority.
Most of the other subject races would likely not care which 'overseer' they have as long as their own situation is comfortable, and doesn't worsen.
I'll have to verify the size of the Tholian galaxy; I didn't know it had ever been defined.
It would seem that there is no doubt many races in the Tholian home galaxy of all sorts of tech levels. It wouldn't seem too out of hand for there not to be a Tholian equivalent of the Prime Directive some of the races might be primitive compared.
I'm not sure there is going to be any race that knows the Tholians and "likes" them. Some may live fairly comfortably and be afraid of change. Indeed, there is likely to be many that feel that way. Others will hate them flat out, and not always because of Tholian deeds or misdeed. But in any case the Tholian charge their subjects for the right to exist or they are punished. Most technological races were conquered at some point by the Tholians and few will forget.
Some races will be in positions to bargain and will enter the Will by treaty. This is preferable to war but still, few will enjoy being a subject. Once the galaxy is a single Empire there will be no other races to compare against and nothing to give a subject race a feeling of pride for being apart of something greater. There is only the Tholians and their subjects and no one is going to look to the Tholians as gods (well, maybe some very primitive races), only as alien masters.
SETORIAN PRODUCTION: Galaxies are huge with places to hide. You cannot avoid that. Something else occurred to me, maybe the Seltorian booms could be built covertly in freighter shipyards (they are sort of Pod like after all and the round and long pod shape is a universal stable container shape). Take these back to a ship yard and DD's become CA's with a little extra quick work.
Once the war is going and territory is liberated production and production assistance becomes greater. Meanwhile, as races revolt or stop production the Tholians will lose resources and production ability. While they have a sizable fleet to begin with it will take time to:
1) Realize the reality of what is happening.
2) Lure Tholian citizens into service.
3) Train them.
This affects all levels of the Tholian War Machine, from supply to ship construction to actual manning of the ships. Tholians by this time are used to prime living and little hardship. Sending themselves or children off to die in cold space just isn't natural anymore. But as spheres fall, fear sets in and full mobilization and possibly fanaticism for war will set in, but too late. The Selts are unique and have a way to counter web, even if it's slow it is enough to garner hope in the galaxy that they can actually win, and revolt spreads throughout the Will.
So it isn't just the actual function of the WB that helps win but the promise it gives.
JCB: from what I understand that doesn't nessicarily work because of something I remember SVC saying somewhere (could be wrong). Although what I remember SVC saying doesn't nessciarly work either to be fair.
That being, the entire galxy wide revolt only took a few years.
Now to me, this seem rather impossable even if it's just due to scale. Every location in the entier Will basicly falling simultaniusly across the entire galaxy, apparently without resistance, seems more than a little far fetched.
Particuarly with the diffculty of attacking the Tholian's spheres. I'v tried running that in F&E with the Klingons. They don't have enough ships to pull it off agasint the HOLDFAST. Change out the arachnos for the Neo's and things go down the tubes even faster.
Each seltorian force attacking one of the dysons spheres would have had to have a navy akin to the ISCs starting forces, and be willing to lose effectivly all or virtually all of it in the assault.
I don't care who you are, if you lose 150-300 ships attacking one out of 12 locations, there is no way in heck you can replace all of those ships fast enough to have the entire galaxy taken over within a few years.
Realisticly what I think we are looking at is a long, drawn out conflict that the Bugs can only win by uplifting or freeing other races.
So I guess, to me, we are looking at 3 options.
1) The Seltorians, via some unknown ability overthrow the Will everywhere within a few years.
2) The Selrotians win a much longer war by recruiting the more advanced races as they capture territory. Some groups of Tholians trapped behind the battle lines flee to other galaxies and the Seltorians send pursuit forces after them while they focus on the main conflict.
3) The war is still active to this day but everyone has reached the point of exaustion and conflist has peetered out to small random battles with neither side willing to risk diffcult to replace ships.
I do agree with Loren though. The web breaker did not win the war. It was just the PR tool that let the Bugs recruit allies who helped win the war.
Oh, Loren, the Seltorian booms are rear hull specific. The DD/FF share a boom, the CA/CL share one and the DN/BCH share one. I don't remember for sure but the rear hulls may be the same design as well. Just like the Neo-Tholians they seem very much like "Okay, we have this budget... how much can we put on a ship for that?"
Ie; price came first.
The FF/DD have the same rear hull. The DD has 2 Booms instead of 1 for the FF.
The CL/CA are the same. And the BCH/DN falls into the same category as well. Each pairing has it's own style of booms. The larger of the pairing has 2 of them, while the smaller has one.
Ken. Right. I think I said that hehe....
I just don't have my SSD book handy and the bugs aren't used enough to let me have a clear mental picture of them.
JCB: Dunno if I was clear. The bugs, as I understood it, received all of their technology from the Tholians as part of the uplifting process. Shield Cracker included.
It would not suprise me if the Tholians were building and supplying them with entire ships either as an attempt to limit Seltorian production, or as a trade mechanism (bugs do X, Y, Z and they get A, B, and C).
If the Tholians were indeed building ships for the Seltorians to use than I suspect that once the Seltorians found the web breaker, they started building secret shipyards or freeing some of the least monitored races and updating their freighter yards as much as possible. One has to remember though that technologically, the bugs are exactly the brightest bunch. The bugs found the web breaker, literally, because a certain tech on a Selt ship botched his repair of a shield cracker (Whee! GURPS Crit success or Crit failure hehe). And as Loren pointed out, it provided them with a PR tool to show other potential allies. Sorta like "look! we have something to stop the Tholians super weapon!". Even if they were using the best cases or doctored footage to back up claim.
Personally I think the second option I listed above is the most likely. If true than I expect that, initially at least, the Seltorians ran and hide like mad till they could recruit someone to aid them and/or hide them.
What Kenneth said is what I meant. I was going from memory but figured the point would be understood.
Did I mention I didn't feel well?
Quote:DKT said: I don't care who you are, if you lose 150-300 ships attacking one out of 12 locations, there is no way in heck you can replace all of those ships fast enough to have the entire galaxy taken over within a few years.
See, before the Selts got the WB, a Dyson Sphere would survive verses any would-be-rebel. Nothing could touch a Dyson Sphere with a 3-layer wedding cake. Period. Therefore any 'sector' fleet might be the size of the 312th (12-15 ships lets say).
With WC's vs no WB, there's no need for a mass number of Neo's (as CL29's demonstration of a "Rebel Reduction" shows).
There a Scenario with a Will+Selt fleet vs Reformer+Selt fleet at about 10 ships each. The Reformer gets killed. I doubt any "Reformer" would ever have more than 10-15 Neo Ships +20-30 Selt ships (tops). Never a threat to a Neo SB or Dyson Sphere.
Then all of sudden ALL Selt ships can break webs (or within a 1-year period being refitted). And the Neo's start loosing ships everywhere they are away from their SB's and Dyson Spheres. (And I imagine that the Dyson Spheres are far enough apart that they could never support each other, like 10+ hexes).
As Loren has said also, I believe, that the 'lethargy', in gearing up their own Neo-hull shipyard also meant that they couldn't replace any combat loses that the Selts dealt to them.
Scott:
Well my problem with that is the Neo's don't lose ships at any sort of noticable rate in tactical battles vs the just Seltorians. So from my experiance, they Seltorians have to be using something other than what we have seen so far in terms of ships in order to inflict losses on the Tholian fleet.
And assuming they can't replace ANY loses is very likely incorrect given the production ability of each dysons sphere. I think it more likely that they could not initally produce enough ships to replace loses to Seltorians+Rebels.
At the moment I'm assuming that the Rebel ships had/have some sort of weapons system that was negated by web prior to the WB but when assisted by the bugs is effective enough to hurt Tholian ships.
As far as distance between each shipyard, I'd say the F&E map of the Alpha are probably is a reasonable item to estimate regional capital distance with, barring more information.
It isn't always nessasary to inflict great harm to a Military by just destroying ships. You can destroy shipping. You can cause ships to be out of supply first then beat them.
The Selts winning was certainly not by one or two stradigies but by hitting them constantly, consitantly, and everywhere they could.
You can pin down a large fleet with half the ships and not lose any while a squadron wipes out that vital convoy.
Another thing to remember is that the Selts never had to cross a border. Imagin if the Klingons began their invasion from 100 points within the Federation all at once instead of pouring over a border.
Battles don't have to be won in one scenario. Perhaps consider how you would take out a SB in 4 senarios or more.
I'm reminded of our good General Schwartzcoff "First were gonna cut it off, then we're gonna kill it."
For what it is worth, I remember it being stated the Dyson's Sphere is held to gether by Web, I think it was in a GURPS topic I am not sure, If the WB can destroy Dyson's Spheres they just became a Terror weapon of the first magnitude, at least as far as the Tholians are concerned.
ADM
ADM: I wouldn't think so. It takes disgustingly little power to totally negate the effect of web breakers on a small web. Now if SVC changed his mind about sphere size it would be much easier to take one down with web breakers but as is, a 3 hex web is quite easy to reinforce back to normal.
Loren: valid points but each of the dyson's spheres is itself able to produce considerable EP so it's not possable to cut them off entierly. It's sorta like taking all the space around someone's capital in F&E and not attacking the capital itself. Sure they can't move much but they are still building and repairing things.
I do agree that it's likely the bugs did attack everything they coudl get away with, but eventually they do have to attack the various spheres in order to eleminate the tholians.
With weakened defenses.
The issue of the Sphere producing EP themselves is a matter that will be soon worked out. There is little doubt that a sphere can store an enormous amount of resources but they are a construct and require resources to remain functional.
It seems more logical that whileshpereare not built IN solar systems (to avoid having to deal with all the natural hazzards and heat issues) they are built NEAR them and this is where the resources come from. To fully reflect this fact F&E would actually need to place sphere in their own location away from their normal resource supply. BUT since they sphere can store resources and a minor level of canibalization can occur then at that level it would appear that the Shperes produce their own EP, even when cut off for a while. I'd say they would run out of resources in 10-25 years if cut off from their neiboring system.
So I've come full circle, no change to F&E and yes a sphere can support itself for a considerable time. Still, not enough to build defensive fleets to hold off a continous sege.
I don't think I said it could hold out indefinatly.... at least I don't think I did...
Just that they weren't completely without resources if they had just a sphere.
Interested observer chiming in here.
Perhaps the solution isn't so complicated. There have been several very interesting ideas presented, and combining them could lead to a devestating outcome.
After the discovery of the Web Breaker, the Selts realize the potential for what they have and start mass production.
They also start making pacts with any rebel groups, outlying races, etc that may have ships.
Over a period of years, the Selts lose dozens (or hundreds) of ships to a "rebellion", in the process destroying dozens or hundreds of rebel ships. All these ships (on both sides) are in reality evacuated to some convenient nebula, radiation zone, whatever, for safe keeping & refitting to WB tech.
The Selts convert some of these ships to assault variants (ie, tons of WBs, nothing much else).
Now, fast forward a decade or so. The Selts going into open revolt. They use their "entire" fleet (at least the official one that the Tholians know of) to attack and kill some regional capital as far from the racial capital as possible. They then move their fleet to attack another regional capital.
This attack prompts the Tholians to react with their fearsome power... They sortie the fleet out to destroy the rebel fleet ("It's perfect, they're all in one place over our fixed defenses..."). The Tholians are secure in the knowledge that all their defenses are secure with a few house keeping PCs plus the Dyson Sphere's firepower.
The Selts send their carefully nurtured "ghost fleet" to attack the Tholian racial capital (ie, shipyard). While the Selts take huge losses in both battles, they do manage to destroy the Tholian homeworld. During the assault, they make sure to barage the capital sphere with massed WB fire. This causes some localized devestation and instability, but the power reserves of the sphere eventually compensate - ie, it doesn't really tear the sphere apart. The Selts do manage to destroy the sphere with convential arms after a prolonged battle. The reinforcements are too far away to arrive in time.
Now, Industrial Light & Magic takes over. With some careful edits, the VID of the battle is distributed to the galaxy. They show an initial assault, the wedding cake being slowly worn away, then massed WB fire on the sphere. Close up of some deck plates or sections being thrown into space after the web has been destabilized. Cut out the next 20 hours of the battle... The money shot is the Homeworld Dyson Sphere expanding in a cloud of gas after it's been destroyed. No survivors left to tell the tale...
The whole galaxy sees these images. Panic ensues in the regional capitals. The military tries to maintain order (after all, they just drubbed the Selts in an open space battle), but most regional governors fear that they will be the next target. After all, if the VIDs are right, it only took minutes to destroy an entire sphere!!!
One of the regional capitals decides to avoid this fate - they'll "make a run for it". Mustering all the fleet they can manage, they set the Dyson Sphere in motion. They also (of course) leave their minefield, fixed defenses, and wedding cake behind. The first such run (our own Archeo Tholians) is intentionally allowed to escape as an example to other regional capitals.
Over the next few months, other regional governors make the fateful decision to run. The Seltorians see their chance and break the back of the Will.
So, in reality, the Selts stacked the deck. They had 2 big victories, but used them well in their propoganda campaigns. These were enough to set some of the regional capitals to flight - where they were much easier pickings for the Selt fleets. Over time, it didn't matter if the Tholian fleets were superior - there's no shipyard left to replace losses. It's just a matter of time...
Quote:I don't think I said it could hold out indefinatly.... at least I don't think I did...
Just that they weren't completely without resources if they had just a sphere.
I agree.