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Shroom Man 777 wrote:That works. Basically after the Formics launch their fleet to the Outlands, and when the Outlands matter blows over, they're gonna go "uh, now what?" and then decide to divert their fleet to the anti-MEH forces. There are gonna be other Inhumanist League meetings in 3401, anyway.

Excellent. Maybe we can have my official ambassador and my Inhumanist League representative try to take credit for the redirection at the same time, for added hilarity.

Shinn Langley Soryu wrote:BELKA! IS! BACK! (Even though a major storyline involving them has stalled completely, but whatever. )

Eh, those starfighters of theirs would never work properly if they hadn't managed to copy proprietary Malletspace Munitions Missile Massacre Pod technology and cram sixty-plus missiles onto four hardpoints.

Simon_Jester wrote:

Shinn Langley Soryu wrote:BELKA! IS! BACK! (Even though a major storyline involving them has stalled completely, but whatever. )

Eh, those starfighters of theirs would never work properly if they hadn't managed to copy proprietary Malletspace Munitions Missile Massacre Pod technology and cram sixty-plus missiles onto four hardpoints.

The Belkans do some legitimate trade with the Haruhiists, mainly out of necessity. It's perfectly within reason for the Belkans to buy export versions of the HMM Pod to arm their fighters, then reverse-engineer them. Belkan companies such as Gründer Industries, General Resource, and Neucom did manage to reverse-engineer some of the components of the HMM Pod, thus leading to the development of unique weapons systems such as the ADMM integrated on the CFA-44 Nosferatu; reverse-engineered HMM Pod technology is also used in the weapons bays of older fighters such as the Space F-22, Space YF-23, Space F-35, and Space Su-47 (I did come up with suitably Germanic proper names for them, but I can't be fucked to remember them right now). Gründer, General Resource, and Neucom are probably the companies that are closest to actually figuring out what makes the HMM Pod really tick, but they still have a long way to go.

General of the Smarmies Strak says something!

Force Lord, confirm that Centrality stealth ships are currently attacking the MEH?

Shroom Man 777 wrote:Force Lord, confirm that Centrality stealth ships are currently attacking the MEH?

Can neither confirm nor deny.

In all seriousness, the order was given in the last days of February, and by March the effects would have become a bit noticeable. How sucessful my ships are, you can only guess.

Man. General Strak. Pretty classy, actually.

Shinn Langley Soryu wrote:The Belkans do some legitimate trade with the Haruhiists, mainly out of necessity. It's perfectly within reason for the Belkans to buy export versions of the HMM Pod to arm their fighters, then reverse-engineer them.

They do have irate young women and share similar national artistic styles, so their ability to replicate the weapon should not be surprising.

I'm thinking that the FROD Force would occupy the same role as New Zealand's military in any planned coalition force, if it is included. Like what the man Stuart Slade himself said, and what Shepistani analyst Bart Blade would also say, Ford Prefect's Country will never be capable of large conventional wars, so it doesn't try to do that kind of mission, but instead tailors its forces to meet other needs that it can actually excel at - in combat support roles that are nonetheless important, and can be performed without giant armadas of great warships, but with small and light high-tech and well-trained mobile units.

A FROD Force is capable of engaging targets in space, reentering the atmosphere to operate in the air, and actually touching on the ground to fight as a light armored vehicle. Yes, a dedicated LAV or Baneblade or Rus tank or Dredka or USMC Terminator tank or even just a Chornyb or any other APC/IFV could do this better. Except you'd have to wait for hours for a transport ship to bring that piece of armor dirtside, IF there are ground forces actually stationed in that solar system (either on or off-world). If your space patrol wanders into, say, a tiny enemy outpost or smuggler base on a planet, and your space patrol has to wait for days because the spaceship carrying the tanks is busy somewhere else, this capability can be useful. If the enemy forces are relatively light.

Yes, there are flaws in the whole Stryker/Rumsfeld/Shinesky doctrine, you can't occupy a Space Vietfghaniqistan with it, but that's not what the FROD Force is supposed to do.

ESCAPE!

Best girlfriend ever.

Good, good.

And good to see more of Navy NYAH! up, Shroomy. I'll do a more detailed read later for pleasure, but from earlier I know it'll be good.

Agent Sorchus wrote:I was saying that the calling for war based on a flimsy case for "slavery" wasn't a valid reason to wage war yes. I had always intended to go to war for the Zenocidal attitudes towards the Orks though. Who says I can't be a little hypocritical? Besides I actually have a large enough ground army to keep watch on the Bragulans while they are in civilian rich territories.

It was the no lying thing that CN started yapping about that pushed my buttons, and made me want to call out the MeH. Jokingly I was considering having the EUC claim that the MeH population failed the Eoghan's sentience exam by being unable to lie.

Hey, no worries. While I did think that having some nations throw up some friction would be good, upon further review, given how heavily weighted the forces gathering against the MEH are quickly becoming, I suspect they won't say much. A single star nation can hardly stop the tide that is currently churning by this point.

Unless you're Sea Skimmer's nation that nobody beside their immediate neighbors probably cares about; in which case you object because that's just your thing. But since his nation lacks definition, it'd be impossible to say whether they'd even notice what's going on, really.

And having another nation around to keep watch on the Bragulans is always a good thing.

RogueIce wrote:And having another nation around to keep watch on the Bragulans is always a good thing.

*Chuckles very very loudly*

The chat tonight has made some calls for the Mehstomp to get started, but since we all know that there is going to be a decent amount of things to write and that this might will slow down and run into unreal time I think that it would be a good idea for everyone to air their ideas of what will come after/because of it so that we can write into the future without having the Stomp become a block in writing about the unconsidered ramifications.

I just want the stomp over with. It's really detracted from other aspects of the game. We need more player interaction, not another dogpile on an NPC.

Which is ironic, since I'm a huge ass contributor to the stomp. Yeah, I'm a hypocrite, a big fat hippopotamus of a hypocrite.

I'll come straight out and say that I will be annihilating every world in sector A26 and will destroy anyone who tries to stop me. Frankly, I don't think many people will actually try to stop it; I bet a lot of governments will secretively wish that they could get away with something like that. Plus it should create a lot of nice political fallout for players to interact over with those who absolutely condemn it, those who publicly condemn it but really couldn't care less, and those who are happy to see the utter destruction of what is viewed as a galactic threat.

I want the galaxy polarized, choosing sides and at each others throats. The weak need to be culled if the strong are to find glorious death at the hands of the machine god.

Did you just claim three quarters of the MEH for yourself?

Dark Hellion wrote:I'll come straight out and say that I will be annihilating every world in sector A26 and will destroy anyone who tries to stop me. Frankly, I don't think many people will actually try to stop it; I bet a lot of governments will secretively wish that they could get away with something like that. Plus it should create a lot of nice political fallout for players to interact over with those who absolutely condemn it, those who publicly condemn it but really couldn't care less, and those who are happy to see the utter destruction of what is viewed as a galactic threat.

I want the galaxy polarized, choosing sides and at each others throats. The weak need to be culled if the strong are to find glorious death at the hands of the machine god.

Like hell will we let you stand by and annex that much of the MEH.

Have you developed a defect, machine, or do you have some other explanation for the foolishness that leads you to end your little adventure long before you get to make war on the Xylxx?

Before this turns into an argument over nothing, double-check the map. Sectors A-27 and B-27 are not controlled by the MEH. The Emissaries most likely want those unoccupied sectors as a buffer against the other coalition forces. Dark Hellion just wants to see bizarro-Earth burn, and quite a few of us would certainly love to help pour fuel on the fires.

Agent Sorchus wrote:The chat tonight has made some calls for the Mehstomp to get started, but since we all know that there is going to be a decent amount of things to write and that this might will slow down and run into unreal time I think that it would be a good idea for everyone to air their ideas of what will come after/because of it so that we can write into the future without having the Stomp become a block in writing about the unconsidered ramifications.

This is a good idea. Anyway, my idea for the opening salvo:

The Shinra-led coalition attacks a single system with a Warp Gate ahead of everyone else. The MEH, in response, activate a Warp Gate to pile on reinforcements. Unknown to them, however, we will have correctly deduced which system they will send ships from (or alternately, Beo has three ships prepared; see below), and Tianguo will have stealthers ready for a kamikaze run.

Thanks to having lots of extra energy stuff to overload and blow up, they'll 'ram' the sending Gate, causing a catastrophic overload which destroys both gates with a spectacular explosion, destroying ships in both systems and anything unlucky enough to be in the wormhole itself.

One ship that will die and that I have claimed in this fashion will be the Pellaeon-class Density. That one's mine, and she dies in the Warp Gate Boom.

After that, everyone else jumps in for a coordinated strike against the major MEH systems and we go from there. That's what I got, anyway.

As to whether this indicates epic vulnerability of Warp Gates, the answer is a Definite No. To quote Steve from IM:

(02:17:42) Steve: Maybe have a post-war scare where the press tries to provoke anti-warp gate hysteria due to the idea that they can be used to do that much damage.
(02:17:49) Steve: While it later gets shown that the MEH tech was unique and badly-designed.

So basically this is not a tactic that will ever work again.

Shinn Langley Soryu wrote:Before this turns into an argument over nothing, double-check the map. Sectors A-27 and B-27 are not controlled by the MEH. The Emissaries most likely want those unoccupied sectors as a buffer against the other coalition forces. Dark Hellion just wants to see bizarro-Earth burn, and quite a few of us would certainly love to help pour fuel on the fires.

Actually, I wasn't intending to argue. I figured my evil smiley made it clear I wasn't opposed. I see it as something that could drive some further interactions.

I don't want the MEH to go down just because their warpgate went poo. If we're willing to send ships to slag them, then we might as well have a good fight on our hands, ne?

Wouldn't want the Shinrans to achieve great victory just by tricking the MEH by having their warships pretend to tie their shoelaces or something.

Shroom Man 777 wrote:I don't want the MEH to go down just because their warpgate went poo. If we're willing to send ships to slag them, then we might as well have a good fight on our hands, ne?

Wouldn't want the Shinrans to achieve great victory just by tricking the MEH by having their warships pretend to tie their shoelaces or something.

It won't. This destroys some ships, including the damn Density of his (which I so want to go down like a bitch, and by one of Pellaeon's plans). There will still be plenty of fatty warships left to die in Glorious Battle.

Okay.

Also. Dark Hellion, I salute you.

The Collectors will be showing up at MEHEarth, running a snatch&grab along with some Lost assets while the Coalition charges into the system.