The Fourth Empire, 1 million planetoids, and the Achuultani

Garth 2 wrote:The think is, we don't know really how many survirors there were and what state they where in after the visit.

We know there was enough to rebuild, and then inturn improve on there technology, we know that they explored and knew enough (or figured it out) to place sensor platforms on the traditional approach route.

But combine with the lenght of time between visits, the population, as stated by Horus, start to forget and focus on domestic concerns, which have a habit of drawing down your availalbe armed forces especially if you then slip into civil war.

After all, its clearly stated that Colin was the first Leader who managed to stop a visit (and therefore keep/maintain a population centre) and connected to that capture enough information on the enemy to learn something about them (after all Horus nor anyone else, mention any real information on the enemy just the left over Human battlefleets so presumably the Achuultani destroed or reclaimed any of their own vessels after the battle before moving on).

Not entirely accurate.
It is known that the immediately previous incursion culled humanity back to only the population of Birhat being survivors.

It is known that one of the predecessor Imperiums seeded life on a large number of planets, including Terra and Birhat.

It is also known that there have been more predecessor Imperiums than the "official" number, but they're even older, with even less evidence left behind of their existence.

If I understand you correctly, you're saying that there were many previous human civilizations they don't know much about? That's not the case. The Second Imperium was the first one of humans, from the planet Mycos. All of the earlier ones were nonhumans. It was one (or more than one) of the nonhumans that seeded all of the worlds, and Mycos was one of the ones seeded.

I think it was the First Imperium; given the name, it probably left behind much more evidence than the others, since the others were apparently unknown when the numbering started. They do seem to know a lot about the First Imperium, from the seeding to their military tactics of avoiding habitable worlds.

Kytheros wrote:

Garth 2 wrote:The think is, we don't know really how many survirors there were and what state they where in after the visit.

We know there was enough to rebuild, and then inturn improve on there technology, we know that they explored and knew enough (or figured it out) to place sensor platforms on the traditional approach route.

But combine with the lenght of time between visits, the population, as stated by Horus, start to forget and focus on domestic concerns, which have a habit of drawing down your availalbe armed forces especially if you then slip into civil war.

After all, its clearly stated that Colin was the first Leader who managed to stop a visit (and therefore keep/maintain a population centre) and connected to that capture enough information on the enemy to learn something about them (after all Horus nor anyone else, mention any real information on the enemy just the left over Human battlefleets so presumably the Achuultani destroed or reclaimed any of their own vessels after the battle before moving on).

Not entirely accurate.
It is known that the immediately previous incursion culled humanity back to only the population of Birhat being survivors.

It is known that one of the predecessor Imperiums seeded life on a large number of planets, including Terra and Birhat.

It is also known that there have been more predecessor Imperiums than the "official" number, but they're even older, with even less evidence left behind of their existence.

bkwormlisa wrote:If I understand you correctly, you're saying that there were many previous human civilizations they don't know much about? That's not the case. The Second Imperium was the first one of humans, from the planet Mycos. All of the earlier ones were nonhumans. It was one (or more than one) of the nonhumans that seeded all of the worlds, and Mycos was one of the ones seeded.

I think it was the First Imperium; given the name, it probably left behind much more evidence than the others, since the others were apparently unknown when the numbering started. They do seem to know a lot about the First Imperium, from the seeding to their military tactics of avoiding habitable worlds.

Actually, in one of Dahak's briefings to Colin, he notes that the inaccurately-named First Imperium (of which the humans only had indirect evidence) was believed by scholars to have actually been at least 7 distinct Imperiums, almost certainly of different races, each one wiped out by the Achuultani before the rise of the next Imperium.

The term First Imperium came about because the Humans knew that there had been something out there, but until they actually stopped to pay close attention to the evidence, they thought it had been a single Imperium.

Hope this helps.

bkwormlisa wrote:If I understand you correctly, you're saying that there were many previous human civilizations they don't know much about? That's not the case. The Second Imperium was the first one of humans, from the planet Mycos. All of the earlier ones were nonhumans. It was one (or more than one) of the nonhumans that seeded all of the worlds, and Mycos was one of the ones seeded.

I think it was the First Imperium; given the name, it probably left behind much more evidence than the others, since the others were apparently unknown when the numbering started. They do seem to know a lot about the First Imperium, from the seeding to their military tactics of avoiding habitable worlds.

Kytheros wrote:

Garth 2 wrote:The think is, we don't know really how many survirors there were and what state they where in after the visit.

We know there was enough to rebuild, and then inturn improve on there technology, we know that they explored and knew enough (or figured it out) to place sensor platforms on the traditional approach route.

But combine with the lenght of time between visits, the population, as stated by Horus, start to forget and focus on domestic concerns, which have a habit of drawing down your availalbe armed forces especially if you then slip into civil war.

After all, its clearly stated that Colin was the first Leader who managed to stop a visit (and therefore keep/maintain a population centre) and connected to that capture enough information on the enemy to learn something about them (after all Horus nor anyone else, mention any real information on the enemy just the left over Human battlefleets so presumably the Achuultani destroed or reclaimed any of their own vessels after the battle before moving on).

Not entirely accurate.
It is known that the immediately previous incursion culled humanity back to only the population of Birhat being survivors.

It is known that one of the predecessor Imperiums seeded life on a large number of planets, including Terra and Birhat.

It is also known that there have been more predecessor Imperiums than the "official" number, but they're even older, with even less evidence left behind of their existence.

No. Multiple previous non-human Imperiums, in addition to the multiple human Imperiums.
Humanity arose on Mycos. That Imperium fell with an Incursion. The Fourth Imperium was founded by the survivors from Birhat of the Incursion that toppled the Third Imperium.

Also, what Michael Everett said.

So, why doesn't someone go looking for the Achuultani?
No, that isn't intended to be suicidal.
You know there is a major and massive threat out there and it REGULARLY come looking for humans or any other inteligence. Finding said humans, it tries its damedest to exterminate them.
Never seems to leave an occupying force, odd that.
If you build an absoluitly gigantic number of ships up to and including planitroids, I would expect that the humans would send some of them out looking for trouble. Not to go shooting up the place but to see where Trouble lives and find the edges of it's usual area of control.
Don't put the coordinates of human space in the navigation computers, make that bit of data something that very few of the crew would know and make some provision that if the ship is going to be captured, it will be destroyed.
Send out a lot of ships to very very quietly slink around in the dark and see what can be found. It gives you a number of options, not the least of which is to place tripwire systems in the genral direcction of the Achuultani known or indicated path of approch for an early warning system.
IF you decided that you need to take the fight to then instead of just creating a defensive network, you could do that but do it from some other approch than stright back at them along the "traditional" attack routes.
Has it been tried in the past? We don't know. But it makes sence to me that you should have a way of gathering information and data about the enemy.

Brigade XO wrote:Has it been tried in the past? We don't know. But it makes sence to me that you should have a way of gathering information and data about the enemy.

It does make a lot of sense. It could be that the founding emperor or one of his successors decided that, despite the third imperium "losing the faith", there might really be a threat out there. If the Empire did scout the Achuultani, it would explain building all those ships, which otherwise do seem like overkill for a polity of several thousand systems.

It would also explain the bio weapon. It wasn't intended to forestall a future civil war, which would be a suicidal use of such a thing. So if the Empire hadn't lost control of the bio weapon, presumably the Achuultani would have been wiped out tens of thousands of years before Dahak and Colin ended the mutiny. In fact Imperial expansion might have found Earth before that happened!

Brigade XO wrote:So, why doesn't someone go looking for the Achuultani?

The 4th Imp did:

The Armageddon Inheritance, ch. 19 (Hector MacMahan is describing what was learned from the Achuultani scouts' computers) - "After their flight, the Achuultani organized to defend themselves against pursuit, just as the Imperium organized to fight the Achuultani themselves. And just as the Imperium sent out probes searching for the Achuultani, the Achuultani searched for the Great Nest-Killers. Like our ancestors, they never found their enemy. Unlike our ancestors, they did find other sentient life forms. And because they regarded all other life forms as threats to their very existence, they destroyed them."

And they never found them because (same chapter):

"Third, the Aku'Ultan inhabit relatively few worlds; most of them are always away upon the fleets of their 'Great Visits', sweeping the galaxy for 'nest-killers' and destroying them. The few planets they inhabit seem to be much further away than the Imperium ever suspected, which is probably why they were never found, and the Achuultani appear to be migratory, abandoning star systems as they deplete them to construct their warships."

So apparently they really didn't explore all that much of the galaxy (after all, it would take incredible ages at Dahakverse FTL speeds), and the Achuultani a) were farther away than they really expected and b) didn't actually occupy that many planets in the first place (given the size and power of their fleets, the 4th Imp probably expected a huge expansive empire.)

I always thought that the large number of battle planetoids and lack of actively looking for the Achuultani was because of a cultural fear that the entire fourth Empire was based on.

Not knowing how many ships the Achuultani had, there could never be 'over kill', because you never knew if the seemingly (and accurately so) Galaxy spanning genocidal race would have HUGE fleets that if all were called together at one point would stillexceed the 1000 or more planetoids.

Second, living on spaceships greatly limits you resources for building more spaceships, and from the above computation, makes for a very small total number of humans. You could have only mobile platforms doing asteroidal extraction to expand the fleet, but humans evolved on planetary surfaces, and the vast majority probably still preferred living on them. That means you need LOTS of planetoids to defend each colony system.

Third, with the early warning net that they had built, they would be able to concentrate the huge number of planetoids in uninhabited systems to fight the next incursion before it got to the inhabited worlds. And whether they met in a single system or in deep space, the Achuultani would easily detect such a large fleet and could not possibly ignore the threat, so they could choose where to meet them. So have too many to fight in one small space would not be a limit.

Fourth, no matter how good the early warning network, and active scouting as well, no one would be willing to live on an unprotected planet, so every inhabited system would need enough ships to stop a surprise invasion that might sneak past everyone. Further, when the alarm is raised and the fleet is marshaled, you would still need enough planetoids left to guard each system while the other concentrated to fight the incursion.

All of these mean that no one would know how many was enough, let alone what was over kill. And when you are playing with the survival of your species against someone so obviously good at genocide, there is only one side to err on. In fact, the real surprise is that there were so few!

Mike

There were a million (10^6) planetoids, possibly more. How is that a small number? If you figure that there were ten thousand inhabited systems/systems used as fleet bases, that's an average of one hundred planetoids per system; and if you go for a nodal system, plus reduced detachments in central regions, with heavier concentrations on the fringes ... that's a respectable number of ships, especially when you mix in the loads of parasite craft.

I agree that a million planetoids is quit a lot. And I shudder to think of how many asteroid belts were completely cleaned out to build that much mass. But it is only a huge number when you know that it is bigger and more powerful than the enemy you face. And if that enemy is unknown, but known to span the galaxy and sterilise every living system it finds, I don't think it is over kill at all.

After the fighting is over, they would have realised it was way over kill, but not before,

Mike

Kytheros wrote:There were a million (10^6) planetoids, possibly more. How is that a small number? If you figure that there were ten thousand inhabited systems/systems used as fleet bases, that's an average of one hundred planetoids per system; and if you go for a nodal system, plus reduced detachments in central regions, with heavier concentrations on the fringes ... that's a respectable number of ships, especially when you mix in the loads of parasite craft.