True, but Sol in PP is solidly within Archer's territory - not Winters. And he was the Shadow President when Cocijo took Sol over, effectively he's the PP leader who "lost" Sol. Not that anyone could have prevented it but in politics that won't matter.
Thargoid invasion - Next target systems?
- Thread starter Aleks Zuno
- Start date
True, but Sol in PP is solidly within Archer's territory - not Winters. And he was the Shadow President when Cocijo took Sol over, effectively he's the PP leader who "lost" Sol. Not that anyone could have prevented it but in politics that won't matter.
I don't know if PP has that much to do with it. It wouldn't be a PP issue but an issue of security for the entire Federation. It's Fedneck territory first and PP territory second.
Indeed Earth itself is far from a good strategic target! It is historic and a natural conclusion for telepathic aliens with limited understanding of what they read from the only mind known to be legible, yet also war-torn and depleted with the American continent especially worse for wear.
Setting aside possible Earth destruction being more a matter of hindsight, definitely an advance choice to trade Earth for ending a more serious threat would be an interstellar debate, although I think preservation would be very much the minority view! For example, Imperial society has barely any attachment to Marlin Duval or events prior to the Empire of Achenar, let alone anything prior to the Republic of Achenar; with the Empire reflecting and preserving much Human history already, the case for sentimental value would struggle for support versus ending it at Earth and sundering the planet in the process.
I am less sure beyond that, but I can imagine Earth support being low in independent systems and mixed at best even within the Federation, although with Earth Defense Fleet as a notable faction presumably against the notion of many megatons of bio-mechanical alien falling towards it and exploding.
Setting aside possible Earth destruction being more a matter of hindsight, definitely an advance choice to trade Earth for ending a more serious threat would be an interstellar debate, although I think preservation would be very much the minority view! For example, Imperial society has barely any attachment to Marlin Duval or events prior to the Empire of Achenar, let alone anything prior to the Republic of Achenar; with the Empire reflecting and preserving much Human history already, the case for sentimental value would struggle for support versus ending it at Earth and sundering the planet in the process.
I am less sure beyond that, but I can imagine Earth support being low in independent systems and mixed at best even within the Federation, although with Earth Defense Fleet as a notable faction presumably against the notion of many megatons of bio-mechanical alien falling towards it and exploding.
I also wondered how important the earth really is outside history class and documentaries, with the first colonists having left it 1100 years ago and having spread to 20,000 star systems since in the Bubble alone, not to mention Colonia and outposts in the black. But fdev are playing up the importance of it so nor can we entirely dismiss that.
It’s certainly (also) up to them to shine some light on the “Why” of the precise location of the Titan. Of course, it could be some preliminary attempt at psychological warfare or to show “We know where your valued worlds are”… but yeah, there’s probably quite a few people who have no particular connection to Earth. Such is the case for my second character who doesn’t really care much for the world or system and only had a motivation to assist in the defense of Duamta for entirely other reasons than clearing the Titan out of Sol. She also really hates Feds. Or the ones in charge of the corporations making it a capitalist hellhole, at least.
Targeting the administrative capital on Mars or preventing Starship One from making an escape would certainly have achieved more in terms of strategic outcomes. If that is even what the Thargoids are after, but their targeting choices around Sol don’t appear particularly… targeted… with the exception of Duamta and possibly Sirius, so I’m not sure.
I thought it was the American continent/north specifically, which actually survived the destruction of WWIII the best? The US certainly went on to form the Federation with the remaining states.
… and let’s just say I have this feeling in some Imperial circles Earth is mostly used to demonstrate the “Imperial superiority and advancement”, of course.
With 20,000 systems in the bubble I doubt any individual system would really cause a problem if destroyed, in that sense.
- various organisations could have their headquarters' attacked but any organisation big enough that we've heard of it will have offsite backups, multiple offices across various systems, and so on. Azimuth is a fairly small player in this respect, was overly centralised around Wycherley, and still managed to survive the death of its leader and much of its senior staff, as well as considerable loss of assets and the destruction or inaccessiblity of many of its facilities, without losing everything. It wouldn't be pleasant for the Federation to lose Sol permanently (let's say Cocijo somehow sends the star nova, rather than just destroying Earth) but it'd be largely survivable.
- the bubble's least-common production economy type is High-Tech and that's still 1000+ geographically-dispersed systems to take out
- Sol has an extremely high population but it's still less than 1% of the bubble population: again, a tragic event but not one threatening to humanity as a whole. Most systems are much smaller and just rounding errors.
- from a CMDR perspective the engineers are a little less replaceable but as Palin demonstrated (quite a few years back, now!) they can always run away and set up somewhere else.
- Powerplay capitals could even be destroyed - the Power would need to designate another Stronghold as the new capital but could again carry on; on the other side the Stronghold Carriers mean that Shinrarta's major selling point really isn't that important any more
It's certainly hard to think of a better target than Sol for getting people together to defend it, though.
- various organisations could have their headquarters' attacked but any organisation big enough that we've heard of it will have offsite backups, multiple offices across various systems, and so on. Azimuth is a fairly small player in this respect, was overly centralised around Wycherley, and still managed to survive the death of its leader and much of its senior staff, as well as considerable loss of assets and the destruction or inaccessiblity of many of its facilities, without losing everything. It wouldn't be pleasant for the Federation to lose Sol permanently (let's say Cocijo somehow sends the star nova, rather than just destroying Earth) but it'd be largely survivable.
- the bubble's least-common production economy type is High-Tech and that's still 1000+ geographically-dispersed systems to take out
- Sol has an extremely high population but it's still less than 1% of the bubble population: again, a tragic event but not one threatening to humanity as a whole. Most systems are much smaller and just rounding errors.
- from a CMDR perspective the engineers are a little less replaceable but as Palin demonstrated (quite a few years back, now!) they can always run away and set up somewhere else.
- Powerplay capitals could even be destroyed - the Power would need to designate another Stronghold as the new capital but could again carry on; on the other side the Stronghold Carriers mean that Shinrarta's major selling point really isn't that important any more
It's certainly hard to think of a better target than Sol for getting people together to defend it, though.
What if, in Cocijo's targeting of Sol, we're getting a glimpse of how Thargoids think and what they value. In the above case you mentioned, humans compartmentalize their history into before (as in before the Empire) and after - with the latter having much more significance.
But for Thargoid's it seems to be one Hive and one history and that's why Earth (the origin of the human "hive") is so important.
These guys seed the same planets & harvest them over thousands, maybe even millions of years. That's probably why they went berserk on the Guardians, changing the pattern was unthinkable for them.
Or maybe it was unthinkable for the Thargoid queen who may be, for all intents and purposes, immortal and the repository for all Hive memory and patterns.
You mean, scream a scream that alerts the Guardian AI to wake up and investigate who's making all the noise? And then find us playing with their stuff they left behind.
FD HAS to do something with the Guardian AI. All those abandoned bases with doors that won't open HAVE to have something hiding inside of them.
Considering the crashed Thargoid ships we've encountered (especially the ones we can go inside and play with their map room), it would probably make a really cool video of one falling to Earth, crashing, and THEN exploding.
Is that the actual total of inhabited systems in the Bubble? Can you cite a source? I'm not doubting your claim, I merely am looking for a source for the number of inhabited systems in the Bubble to use as reference for the pen and paper EDRPG.
That hive-mind context is also a hypothetical reason for the Thargoids responding to the actions of a few Humans by attacking all Humans, perhaps under the mistaken impression that all minds are hive-minds and therefore one Human represents all Humans. Quite aside from the primary problem of communicating with Thargoids in the first place, a secondary problem is that the entire notion of parley (or even of mild disagreement!) is unimaginable to a hive-mind.
I have not yet thought of any way to explain to an alien that two Humans can be enemies, yet also meet to discuss terms in place of combat.
If it helps to know, our bounty-hunting system INTRA tracks exactly 20584 populated systems! That is Galaxy-wide though; I would need @CMDR Vulkarius to chime in with how many of those are bubbly systems.
It's accurate to the nearest thousand; you can do counting of various datasets (Spansh galaxy_populated data dumps, for example) to confirm that.
To get a more accurate answer you'd need to very carefully define your terms of what the bubble was and where exactly it stopped, and then run those criteria more carefully over one of those datasets.
As I read what you wrote and it fully sank in, I actually felt horror - this war will never end
Follow-up for @Daniel Cloudsifter!
I asked about populated bubble systems and received a entire table by distance; it looks like this:
The answer is that the bubble contains 20000 populated systems if defined as radius slightly over 260 Ly around Sol; that point at 260 Ly is ever so slightly under at 19993 systems.
I asked about populated bubble systems and received a entire table by distance; it looks like this:
The answer is that the bubble contains 20000 populated systems if defined as radius slightly over 260 Ly around Sol; that point at 260 Ly is ever so slightly under at 19993 systems.
But hey, people think it’s a great idea to try starting a counteroffensive against the Thargoids in their home space. Sure that can’t go wrong in any way.As I read what you wrote and it fully sank in, I actually felt horror - this war will never end
Perhaps. I was more thinking a signal to the other Thargoids somewhere outside the Bubble, whichever ones it might’ve been that sent the Titans in. I would be surprised if the Guardian bots failed to notice the Proteus Wave going off (and still effectively acting as a lighthouse as well as memorial to Salvation’s hubris and human stupidity), alongside the immediately following “Thargoid Roar”, but noticed something else that followed roughly two Earth orbits of the sun (otherwise known as years) later.
I do also think Frontier should or maybe are going to do something with Constructs or Guardians. Nemesis is certainly still on the table since early last year. But I’d be lost guessing if it will make an appearance any time soon or even in ED.
Witchspace, where the laws governing time & space don't matter and where entropy probably doesn't work. So all those human ships which were lost in the early days of hyperspace travel are still floating around there somewhere.
Thargoid cities which, being there , last forever and countless hives led by their immortal queens with perfect memories but no human understanding.
I think I'll pass on that crusade.
I think they actually mean somewhere in our galaxy as Col 70 and the general area surrounding Barnard’s Loop is suspected to be locked off because of Thargoids.
It would still be a fairly stupid idea but about 90% of this war is illogical and/or caused by unreasonable, emotionally driven responses. Almost as if humans are the ones behaving in the ways which they accuse Thargoids of being like…
Neither was Frontier, I suspect.
Day Of Infamy Speech?
Going back to some posts of the last few pages... (as I've been meaning to)
This isn't something I would expect Empire or Alliance to care for too much but unlike Hudson or Archer, Winters seems to have a certain inclination toward the human(itarian) side of things and would probably not be too happy to just leave anybody that became trapped on the Titan in this week to explode with it (she was also planning to get the Titan captives released if they remain under regular medical surveillance). Of course, there will also be the 'usual' independent rescue effort going on, but this is one of those rare cases where a superpower might put in some effort to care even if Congress disagrees and would have put the funds into a few Federal Corvettes and/or support ships to throw into a conflict zone instead.
Very much that. Though I agree Archer would use this as an opportunity to berate Winters, it has little to do with Powerplay and more that he's an idiot. How's any one of us supposed to stop a Titan from doing Titan things and moving wherever it wants to be?
You bringing that one up reminded me... I've been wondering just what the purpose of that attack by the Thargoids was, now they're in Sol, when they neither had the knowledge from Seo at that time, nor did it (evidently) have any particular impact on the Pilot's Fed HQ's operations, and population wise there's far more attractive targets not too far in that same region of space, at that (while they would be much less likely to draw the same attention as an attack on Shinrarta would have). I guess if the purpose was to buy the two remaining Titans another week it did a great job of it (even though only Cocijo moved in the end), but if it was not... I'm at a loss about it.
The Alliance got around to releasing them under surveillance a year ago, while Winters was refusing to take up office to do the same, so I'm unconvinced that she'd be all that concerned except for the votes.
As a diversion it was very effective, certainly - it probably got them two extra weeks, in the end. As anything else, not so much.
But it certainly raises the question of why, if they had enough information on the bubble to understand that Shinrarta would at least make a good diversion (entirely plausible for them to have that!), that they needed to probe Seo's mind to figure out that Sol was at least somewhat important too. And therefore ... what information did they actually get to make a change in strategy worthwhile?