Pawn - Q7 ... Checkmate?

tlb wrote:To think that the Malign would rain KEWs on a world or three and then kidnap the Empress in order to demand a peace treaty is a serious failure of imagination, when at that point of worldly destruction they could demand total surrender. Because RFC will not write such surrender demands (if he were to do so, I would stop reading in disgust), it follows that the Malign will not be able to reach that point of destructiveness.

Loren Pechtel wrote:I think the MAlign would be reluctant to rain KEWs on a world, anyway. Darius has no defense against RKEWs. Any armed ship can kill a world (c-frac strike, the missiles come in ballistic kamikazes--don't use the warheads. The defenders will have very little if any warning and every round that gets through is a substantial fraction of the energy of the KT impactor.)

cthia wrote:Like, OMG man. I sure wish people would stop saying what the author won't do. Say what you think he won't do. At any rate, I have heard it all before... in spades. Now where did I hear it before. Hmm, let's see.

Oh yeah! When I said the SL will simply start KEWING planets. "Are you nuts?" Many people asked. Duckk said it would never happen and asked me if I thought the SL were idiots.

But then, we all know the story. Yet, it couldn't possibly have happened because the mighty SL were the people who produced and were upholding the Edict!

And the MAlign definitely has more moral fiber than the SL. Definitely!

The good news, tlb, is that you can borrow some crow from Duckk when the time comes. He should have a lot left over in his freezer.

HB of CJ wrote:A time on target kinetic strike on about 10 or so, (maybe more if possible?) of the Grand Alliance, (GA) planets will stop any GA offensive dead it its tracks. Here is why...

First things first. Your first duty is to save your own people. If a kinetic strike on YOUR home planet has wiped out the biosphere you MUST evac all your people .... immediately.

That is what you are going to do to the exclusion of all else. Saving your own comes first. You have 6 months to somehow SAVE 2 BILLION folks from slow certain death.

Remember, the ecosystem have been destroyed...it just does not know it yet. You got to get all of your own people off the planet. Where are you going to put them? Nasty.

More nasty is that the kinetic strikes are stealthed. Nobody knows for sure who did it. The MAlignment will set things up to make it look like the Sollies did it. Again...nasty.

This would instantly gut any offensive capability of the GA fleet. Way too busy doing rescue and relocation duties. Again, nasty. Nasty as in the MAlignment. All in. Yikes!

All in. It gets worserer. Save a couple inhabitable planets so the GA has someplace to put all the BILLIONS of refugees. Wait a bit... then HIT THOSE PLANETS ALSO! Blame the Sollies.

HB of CJ (old coot) Ct.Cm. All in. No rules. Anything goes.

runsforcelery wrote:Excuse me, but this would be an insane strategy for the Mesan Alignment to embrace.

First, it would absolutely confirm to the rest of the galaxy that the Grand Alliance had been telling the truth about the Alignment from the very beginning, and there would be exactly zero chance of convincing the Grand Alliance that the League had done it.

Unless you wish to posit that there is someone in the galaxy somewhere stupid enough to believe the attack you're proposing was the result of some bizarre natural phenomenon, then it could only have been executed by people who have spider drive-level technology. That ain't the Solarian League, and the Manties and Havenites know it perfectly well. Convincing anyone to believe it was the Solarian League would also require someone sufficiently stupid to believe that a navy which is already utterly defeated (whether it wants to admit it or not), as evidenced by the hundreds of superdreadnoughts and millions of personnel it's lost in combat while inflicting effectively zero casualties in return would be crazy enough to deliberately punch every single "no quarter/no mercy/no prisoners" button in the Grand Alliance. No one who can wipe drool off his own chin is going to buy that one.

Secondly, all of those SD(P)s would be the next best thing to useless for any sort of mass evacuation. They are deliberately designed to use minimal manpower, remember? That means they also have have minimal reserve life-support capability to pack in evacuees. Now, what do you think all of those ships-of-the-wall — and supporting cruisers and destroyers — are going to be doing while all the rest of the Grand Alliance's space-going capacity is trying to rescue civilians from the planets you just devastated? Your proposed tactic would turn those ships into the most powerful, merciless, driven military force in the history of humanity. There would be nothing those navies would not do to find the people responsible for an atrocity on such a scale. They'd be kicking down the doors of every high-tech star system in the galaxy, in the full knowledge that someone somewhere has to be the Mesan Alignment's "respectable" front man. And since you will have just confirmed to the rest of the galaxy that someone with the capabilities the Grand Alliance has been ascribing to the Alignment really exists, probably at least two thirds of the Solarian League would be cheering them on the whole way. After all, the Sollies won't really care whether or not the Alignment's objectives are those the Grand Alliance has ascribed to it; all they'll care about is helping the Grand Alliance hunt down --- and put a bullet through the brain of --- the mad dog capable of killing so many billions of people in an indiscriminate kinetic strike.

Third, even if you manage somehow miraculously to divert the Grand Alliance, and even if you manage somehow miraculously to avoid detection when the Grand Alliance takes off the gloves and prepares to break as many eggs as necessary to find you and erase you from the face of the universe and the memory of God, all the rest of the human race will be looking for you as well, and it will never stop looking. Anyone who proposes a political platform or a eugenics program which even remotely resembles the one the Grand Alliance has ascribed to the Mesan Alignment will come under instant, pitiless scrutiny. In effect, the people proposing that platform or program will have self identified themselves with the Mesan Alignment, and they'll have a hell of the time convincing anyone that they're not the Mesan Alignment even if, in fact, they aren't. You will also have guaranteed that if and when the lines are drawn between the "supermen" and the "normals," the "normals" will damned well go "all in" against you, because you will have declared that you are willing not simply to kill billions but to kill entire planets. And do not forget that this is a galaxy in which prolong has become generally available. That means that you're talking in terms of multi-century generations in which the memory of this kind of atrocity will represent first-hand recollection of events rather than history of something that happened long, long ago in a galaxy far, far away. People will remember, and there ain't gonna be any statute of limitations on this sort of megamurder. People are still hunting Nazis today, seventy years after World War II ended, when the Nazis they are hunting can have no more than another 10 or 15 years left. The broadest accounting of the victims of the Holocaust, including Soviet civilians killed during the war, comes to about 11,000,000; if you attack ten high-tech planets, it's probable that you will kill a minimum of 1.5 to 3 billion per planet. By my calculation, that comes to somewhere around twenty billion. When do you propose that the civilized galaxy will stop hunting someone who killed the next best thing to two thousand times the number of people who died in the Holocaust?. How soon do you think that anyone even remotely associated with that action — rightly or wrongly — will be anything other than a pariah on a scale the human race has never before witnessed?

I can see absolutely no upside to this strategy for the Alignment, and I can see an awful lot of downsides. There's no way anyone like the Detweilers would be foolish enough — or desperate enough, certainly short of their own discovery and imminent defeat/demise — to try anything like it. Adolf Hitler may have asked "Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians," but the Detweilers are smart enough to have learned from his example.

tlb wrote:It is not necessary to be a mind-reader, when the author clearly states his preferences.

runsforcelery wrote:There's no way anyone like the Detweilers would be foolish enough — or desperate enough, certainly short of their own discovery and imminent defeat/demise — to try anything like it. Adolf Hitler may have asked "Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians," but the Detweilers are smart enough to have learned from his example.

tlb wrote:It is not necessary to be a mind-reader, when the author clearly states his preferences.

runsforcelery wrote:There's no way anyone like the Detweilers would be foolish enough — or desperate enough, certainly short of their own discovery and imminent defeat/demise — to try anything like it. Adolf Hitler may have asked "Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians," but the Detweilers are smart enough to have learned from his example.

cthia wrote:Which is what I said.

Duckk had to eat crow because of another matter involving the SL and KEWING planets. Which I also stated. It is as if you don't read my posts.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:It is not necessary to be a mind-reader, when the author clearly states his preferences.

runsforcelery wrote:There's no way anyone like the Detweilers would be foolish enough — or desperate enough, certainly short of their own discovery and imminent defeat/demise — to try anything like it. Adolf Hitler may have asked "Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians," but the Detweilers are smart enough to have learned from his example.

cthia wrote:Which is what I said.

Duckk had to eat crow because of another matter involving the SL and KEWING planets. Which I also stated. It is as if you don't read my posts.

I am curious about the Duckk post; where is it?

True, I do not always read you posts thoroughly; life is too short.

cthia wrote:Which is what I said.

Duckk had to eat crow because of another matter involving the SL and KEWING planets. Which I also stated. It is as if you don't read my posts.

tlb wrote:I am curious about the Duckk post; where is it?

True, I do not always read you posts thoroughly; life is too short.

cthia wrote:I'll be John Brown (North Carolina native), then why in the hell do you bother to waste both of our time!

Incidentally, imminent defeat is probably why the Mandarins chose to KEW. In the face of utter defeat / demise why not go out with a bang. (A question I asked upstream). It is human nature. Perhaps the MA aren't human, but it is certainly in their nature.

The Mesan Alignment has invested centuries into this war. And you think they would take KEWS off the table.

cthia wrote:How can one think that an entity that has invested centuries into a war is willing to take anything off the table; can think that an entity which has already shown how it feels about KEWS... who is willing to murder their own people... wholesale, is not willing to murder yours... wholesale.

I have got to get this logic of mine under control.

cthia wrote:How can one think that an entity that has invested centuries into a war is willing to take anything off the table; can think that an entity which has already shown how it feels about KEWS... who is willing to murder their own people... wholesale, is not willing to murder yours... wholesale.

I have got to get this logic of mine under control.

cthia wrote:How can one think that an entity that has invested centuries into a war is willing to take anything off the table; can think that an entity which has already shown how it feels about KEWS... who is willing to murder their own people... wholesale, is not willing to murder yours... wholesale.

I have got to get this logic of mine under control.

Daryl wrote:Regardless of your logic, it is up to the God of that universe, RFC. And he has said no.

runsforcelery wrote:There's no way anyone like the Detweilers would be foolish enough — or desperate enough, certainly short of their own discovery and imminent defeat/demise — to try anything like it. Adolf Hitler may have asked "Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians," but the Detweilers are smart enough to have learned from his example.

tlb wrote:Sorry, Daryl, I am not the only person that does not read thoroughly; because Cthia highlighted the loophole in what RFC has said. See below:

runsforcelery wrote:There's no way anyone like the Detweilers would be foolish enough — or desperate enough, certainly short of their own discovery and imminent defeat/demise — to try anything like it. Adolf Hitler may have asked "Who, after all, speaks to-day of the annihilation of the Armenians," but the Detweilers are smart enough to have learned from his example.