Steven Bonneville:
> [email removed] wrote:
>> Keep in mind, though, that TL15 "armies" have considerable "organic"
>> spacegoing capability. After all, a TL15 grav-tank is different from
>> a fighter primarily in the way its crew are addressed ("driver", "gunner",
>> as opposed to "pilot", "gunner")...
> True. And this is certainly one of the places where using 5FW falls down
> hard.
Quite so.
> But if this is all correct, then what about:
>> Note, btw, that the Zhodani Consulate was incapable of capturing TL12
>> Jewell in spite of limited Naval assistance in the defense of Jewell, and
>> a three year siege.
> Which leads to another question. What were the Zhodani planning to gain
> by sending that tech-14 40th Fleet of theirs on an attack on the tech-15
> defenses at Rhylanor?
One must keep one thing in mind at all times - the Rules are the
Reality of the game. This is why, for instance, Striker II produces
considerably different results than TNE in certain cases. In Srtiker II,
a man with an ACR can kill a man wearing light battledress with little
difficulty. In TNE, this is nearly impossible. So a battle played out
under TNE produces the opposite results than a battle played out in
Striker II.
This applies also to 5FW vs HG/MT/TNE...
However...
> If they can't get Jewell, they surely can't take Rhylanor. They
> certainly don't have three years to besiege it; not even three weeks.
> Is it supposed to be a suicidal strike raid of some sort?
My best guess for making sense of this attack is to assume that the
attack was intended to:
1) divert reinforcements from some more crucial theater of operations,
and
2) allow the Zhodani to attack the repair yards of the Imperium. A
successful hit on the Impy repair yards could have disabled naval strength
all out of proportion to the attacking force. It is even possible that
the commander of the Zho force intended to destroy the yard capacity of
Rhylanor in order to force the Impy forces to drop back another subsector
onto their own supply lines.
3) it was a bluff to achieve a political objective elsewhere.
The difficulties are:
1) There is no hint that the Zhos HAD another "more crucial theater"
to play in.
2) If Rhylanor WERE defended as well as the leading-edge naval base/
repair center it was, then the Zhos would have had no chance of success,
and knew that, too.
The bluff angle is the best one, but it assumes that there was some
objective to the 5FW other than beating the Imperium. Possible, certainly,
but not consistent with the supposed Zho policies that led to the entire
series of Frontier Wars.
> Third, the trouble with Fulacin as a forward base is that if the
> Imperials catch on, there's *no* gas giants in the system to refuel at!
Also true. The Fulacin base idea is abysmally stupid, really. ;-)
I never found the "Secret Base" rule to help the Zho player in any
way in winning 5FW. The notion that the Impies would not figure things
out is bizarre, to say the least.
Most importantly, of course, is the detail that the presence of that
"A" starport on Fulacin was no secret! So even if the Impies had not a
clue that the starport was a forward staging area for the Zhos, they
knew it was there, and that therefore it could be captured by the Zhos
and used against the Imperium. Therefore it would be disabled or defended
in the face of a Zho advance in the region, rendering it useless...
Also, the subsidiary notion that the Impies could discover and
neutralize the secret base on Fulacin without the Zhos finding out before
the war began is a trifle bizarre. Or are the Zhos stupid enough to not
bother checking these things at the last minute, the way real militaries
do...
> So they'd either have to go attack Porozlo, or go back to
> Tureded, which at least has gas giants, to refuel. So the idea that the
> Zhodani can possibly surprise the Imperials is shaky, and the subsector
> navy and Rhylanor's defenses should be warned. Finally, Rhylanor has
> all the defensive advantages of a tech-level on the invaders, a HiPop
> shipyard and naval base, and probably reinforcements from the tech-15
> shipyards of Deneb that are in the rear area. Oh, and the fact that it's
> very likely that between the fleets in Regina, Vilis, and Lanth subsectors,
> they can cut off the Zhodani retreat. Even raiding Rhylanor seems to be
> a really risky idea.
Quite. Note that the Zhos lost the war in a big way as a result of
that particular attack.
Why did the Zhos try it? Maybe they are in love with decapitating
strikes like the lads in the RCES? Maybe (definitely, from what I
recall of the war) the Zho in charge of military operations against the
Impies was an imbecile? Maybe they intended the attack to fail, thus
giving the Impies the "victory" necessary to push armistice talks to
completion before the Impies could take any territiry away from the
Consulate?
---Steve