Albrecht

It does start to seem that the destruction of all sorts of Alignment locations and facilities was part of the Houdini plan from the start. If they had decided that they would erase the evidence of any facilities by rebuilding them then there would have been a truly massive tail to the Houdini plan involving thousands of people billilions of credits and years of work.
On the other hand, simply building nuclear weapons under all of the physical locations (or having self destruct back-doors built into fusion plants that were the local power support inside said locations) would get rid of the evidence.
Think about Firebrands conclusion of what was the Gamma Center site. That was demolition on a massive scale which -other than it looked like demolition to an experienced and trained eye- removed ALL the evidence of what had been there.
This is a ceramicrete civilization and unless you went out of our way to build with lesser materials, you are leaving shells that are really tough to change without ripping them down. What was in those locations? We don't know except for Albrect's private island compound which had to have been a really sophisticated base and communications center with all sorts of records and equipment. How do you rip that down- quietly- in what is supposed to be a nature preserve?
Mesa as scheduled to take the fall and essentialy reap the rewards of it's centuries long genetic slave business and I suppose that was supposed to be part of the cover to getting rid of a lot of physical evidence. Perhaps there was a plan-not implimented yet- to forment a Seccie/slave revolt which would end up wrecking Mesa and all those locations would have been "tidied up" as nominally many over reactions of the Mesa security forces. Look at how massive the Alighment presence was in keeping tabs on the Seccie population.
Just saying

Brigade XO wrote:It does start to seem that the destruction of all sorts of Alignment locations and facilities was part of the Houdini plan from the start. If they had decided that they would erase the evidence of any facilities by rebuilding them then there would have been a truly massive tail to the Houdini plan involving thousands of people billilions of credits and years of work.
On the other hand, simply building nuclear weapons under all of the physical locations (or having self destruct back-doors built into fusion plants that were the local power support inside said locations) would get rid of the evidence.
Think about Firebrands conclusion of what was the Gamma Center site. That was demolition on a massive scale which -other than it looked like demolition to an experienced and trained eye- removed ALL the evidence of what had been there.
This is a ceramicrete civilization and unless you went out of our way to build with lesser materials, you are leaving shells that are really tough to change without ripping them down. What was in those locations? We don't know except for Albrect's private island compound which had to have been a really sophisticated base and communications center with all sorts of records and equipment. How do you rip that down- quietly- in what is supposed to be a nature preserve?
Mesa as scheduled to take the fall and essentialy reap the rewards of it's centuries long genetic slave business and I suppose that was supposed to be part of the cover to getting rid of a lot of physical evidence. Perhaps there was a plan-not implimented yet- to forment a Seccie/slave revolt which would end up wrecking Mesa and all those locations would have been "tidied up" as nominally many over reactions of the Mesa security forces. Look at how massive the Alighment presence was in keeping tabs on the Seccie population.
Just saying

I seem to remember RFC saying that the plan was to erase everything tracelessly; the bombs were a fallback in case they couldn't do it without being caught.

Otherwise I agree.

JohnRoth wrote:I may have confused things. By "final raft" I meant the ones that went off when Albrecht pushed the button, not the ones in "Final Flourish." As far as I can tell, those were mostly installed as part of building the secret installation. Some may have been installed later when the installation was coopted or subverted (like the one in the orbital habitat), but the mission parameters indicate that most of them were original.

Agreed and thanks

JohnRoth wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:It does start to seem that the destruction of all sorts of Alignment locations and facilities was part of the Houdini plan from the start. If they had decided that they would erase the evidence of any facilities by rebuilding them then there would have been a truly massive tail to the Houdini plan involving thousands of people billilions of credits and years of work.
On the other hand, simply building nuclear weapons under all of the physical locations (or having self destruct back-doors built into fusion plants that were the local power support inside said locations) would get rid of the evidence.
Think about Firebrands conclusion of what was the Gamma Center site. That was demolition on a massive scale which -other than it looked like demolition to an experienced and trained eye- removed ALL the evidence of what had been there.
This is a ceramicrete civilization and unless you went out of our way to build with lesser materials, you are leaving shells that are really tough to change without ripping them down. What was in those locations? We don't know except for Albrect's private island compound which had to have been a really sophisticated base and communications center with all sorts of records and equipment. How do you rip that down- quietly- in what is supposed to be a nature preserve?
Mesa as scheduled to take the fall and essentialy reap the rewards of it's centuries long genetic slave business and I suppose that was supposed to be part of the cover to getting rid of a lot of physical evidence. Perhaps there was a plan-not implimented yet- to forment a Seccie/slave revolt which would end up wrecking Mesa and all those locations would have been "tidied up" as nominally many over reactions of the Mesa security forces. Look at how massive the Alighment presence was in keeping tabs on the Seccie population.
Just saying

I seem to remember RFC saying that the plan was to erase everything tracelessly; the bombs were a fallback in case they couldn't do it without being caught.

Otherwise I agree.

Yes and wasn't Houdini supposed to be like a 4-5 year orderly evacuation with "deaths" adding like .000005% to the annual planetary total? IIRC they were months into Houdini when the WHJ was discovered. A + BorC had the discussion we can't wait, we have to accelerate Houdini. But that will increase "collateral damage' [exponentially]. Getpsyops on it, and maybe we can use that "Ballroom" attack as cover.

That was plan OOPS.