Mesa is the boogy man it wasn't meant to be

Scuffles wrote:See I'm with SWM on this one. Open conflict as a means to dominating the galaxy is impractical at best and impossible at worst. There's just way too much galaxy out there to take, and if you do go about subduing everybody you're going to have the problem of keeping them subdued.

I'm not saying that the Alignment aren't perfectly happy to shoot people in the face, I'm just saying that they're also pretty smart and they have to recognize how bad it would be to have to pacify a hostile galaxy.

If they go conquistador they're going to start finding blocks of individual systems - many of which are going to have an industrial base equal to what Manticore had - banding together to fend them off. That's not surmountable for the Alignment because they don't have the military tech advantage that the GA has and they can't stand off hundreds of battle fleet SDs, let alone Haven sector warships.

The Alignment wants to position themselves by having large groups of systems sign up with them willingly. In an ideal galaxy (where they didn't accidentally create a massive alliance of sworn foes that just happens to be militarily capable enough to paste the navies of the entire galaxy at once) they wouldn't take a single system by force with the exception of any would-be warlords that can serve as examples of their goodness and peace-keeping skills.

Trying to conquer the galaxy just guarantees that a large portion of it will shoot back at you. Uniting the galaxy under your banner is not the same thing.

SWM wrote:I'm not going to wade back into the discussion. But I'd like to point out that some people are talking about what the Alignment's plans were originally, and some are talking about what the Alignment will have to do now that Manticore is throwing their plan off. To keep the discussion productive, it will be important to distinguish these two, and not accidentally cross the arguments, like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters. I recommend that people make clear which situation they are discussing in each post, to prevent accidental confusion (combustion?).

n7axw wrote:Abnother thing that RFC hints at is the potential willingness and capacity of the Alignment to wage bio warfare. As far as I know, we haven't hashed this out here on the forums, but this has some truly nasty potential, bringing back one of the worst sides of old Earth's final war.

tonyz wrote:

n7axw wrote:Abnother thing that RFC hints at is the potential willingness and capacity of the Alignment to wage bio warfare. As far as I know, we haven't hashed this out here on the forums, but this has some truly nasty potential, bringing back one of the worst sides of old Earth's final war.

Yes. We've had at least two references, including one of Albrecht Detweiler's wife looking over a review of weaponized nanotechnology, to this. And there was Ellen D'Orville's fate in House of Steel, too. I suspect that somebody is going to deploy something nasty fairly soon, perhaps as a false flag operation...

n7axw wrote:

Scuffles wrote:See I'm with SWM on this one. Open conflict as a means to dominating the galaxy is impractical at best and impossible at worst. There's just way too much galaxy out there to take, and if you do go about subduing everybody you're going to have the problem of keeping them subdued.

I'm not saying that the Alignment aren't perfectly happy to shoot people in the face, I'm just saying that they're also pretty smart and they have to recognize how bad it would be to have to pacify a hostile galaxy.

If they go conquistador they're going to start finding blocks of individual systems - many of which are going to have an industrial base equal to what Manticore had - banding together to fend them off. That's not surmountable for the Alignment because they don't have the military tech advantage that the GA has and they can't stand off hundreds of battle fleet SDs, let alone Haven sector warships.

The Alignment wants to position themselves by having large groups of systems sign up with them willingly. In an ideal galaxy (where they didn't accidentally create a massive alliance of sworn foes that just happens to be militarily capable enough to paste the navies of the entire galaxy at once) they wouldn't take a single system by force with the exception of any would-be warlords that can serve as examples of their goodness and peace-keeping skills.

Trying to conquer the galaxy just guarantees that a large portion of it will shoot back at you. Uniting the galaxy under your banner is not the same thing.

I agree that MAlign is not going to try to conquer the whole galaxy militarily for precisely the reasons you suggest. What I have said is that as the RF's military capability improves, they will become more willing to use overt military action to advance their ends. I will add by noting that those ends, while expansionist at any one moment in time will of necessity be limited. Nor will overt action be their only tool. They will still use covert action when they believe that will advance their goals. They will also use politics and diplomacy. Their goal is not conquest, but dominance. They will seek that by whatever vehicle seems best expedient.

Don

Scuffles wrote:See I'm with SWM on this one. Open conflict as a means to dominating the galaxy is impractical at best and impossible at worst. There's just way too much galaxy out there to take, and if you do go about subduing everybody you're going to have the problem of keeping them subdued.

I'm not saying that the Alignment aren't perfectly happy to shoot people in the face, I'm just saying that they're also pretty smart and they have to recognize how bad it would be to have to pacify a hostile galaxy.

If they go conquistador they're going to start finding blocks of individual systems - many of which are going to have an industrial base equal to what Manticore had - banding together to fend them off. That's not surmountable for the Alignment because they don't have the military tech advantage that the GA has and they can't stand off hundreds of battle fleet SDs, let alone Haven sector warships.

The Alignment wants to position themselves by having large groups of systems sign up with them willingly. In an ideal galaxy (where they didn't accidentally create a massive alliance of sworn foes that just happens to be militarily capable enough to paste the navies of the entire galaxy at once) they wouldn't take a single system by force with the exception of any would-be warlords that can serve as examples of their goodness and peace-keeping skills.

Trying to conquer the galaxy just guarantees that a large portion of it will shoot back at you. Uniting the galaxy under your banner is not the same thing.

hanuman wrote:Scuffles, no one is saying that the Alignment (or the Factor, as its public face) is going to go into conquistador mode now or even tomorrow. What we are saying is that it will become inevitable, eventually.

Now that the GA knows of the Alignment's existence, its various members will be far more alert for any covert attacks. Covert operations can take you only so far, and if the Alignment wishes to eliminate the GA's members as future opponents to its plans, it will have to challenge them militarily at some point. The same goes for some, if not all, of the League's successor states. Just because the League is playing ostrich wrt the news of the Alignment's existence and manipulation of League policy, does not mean that the League's successor states will all be equally unwilling to disregard that news. Some of them will take it seriously and will be willing to be advised by the GA as to how to counteract the Alignment's known covert tactics and methods, which will force the Alignment to act overtly against them, as well, in time.

Amaroq wrote:

SWM wrote:I'm not going to wade back into the discussion. But I'd like to point out that some people are talking about what the Alignment's plans were originally, and some are talking about what the Alignment will have to do now that Manticore is throwing their plan off. To keep the discussion productive, it will be important to distinguish these two, and not accidentally cross the arguments, like crossing the streams in Ghostbusters. I recommend that people make clear which situation they are discussing in each post, to prevent accidental confusion (combustion?).

Good point. When we think of the Alignment's plans we tend to lump both the pre-GA and post-GA parts together but unexpected developments out Manticore and Haven's way have disrupted the original plans.

Without Manticore and the GA, how did the Alignment plan to splinter the SL? Just through orchestrated uprisings in crucial systems with RF members poised to take control?

SWM wrote:

hanuman wrote:Scuffles, no one is saying that the Alignment (or the Factor, as its public face) is going to go into conquistador mode now or even tomorrow. What we are saying is that it will become inevitable, eventually.

Now that the GA knows of the Alignment's existence, its various members will be far more alert for any covert attacks. Covert operations can take you only so far, and if the Alignment wishes to eliminate the GA's members as future opponents to its plans, it will have to challenge them militarily at some point. The same goes for some, if not all, of the League's successor states. Just because the League is playing ostrich wrt the news of the Alignment's existence and manipulation of League policy, does not mean that the League's successor states will all be equally unwilling to disregard that news. Some of them will take it seriously and will be willing to be advised by the GA as to how to counteract the Alignment's known covert tactics and methods, which will force the Alignment to act overtly against them, as well, in time.

That's not what everyone has been saying. Here's an example of what I was talking about before--confusion between original plans and current/future necessities. Some have been arguing that it was the Alignment plan all along that they would go conquistador, even before the Haven Sector became a problem. That's what I and some others had been arguing against, and Scuffles was agreeing with me. You are talking about something different.