NationStates Jolt Archive

If you aren't in the RP, please stay out of this thread, unless you have specific reason to be in it (like an expert from NSD). I'll try to keep the index as up to date as possible, just tell me if I've missed one.

THREAD INDEX
Pre-war
Peace Conference (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=552196)
Questers delivers the ultimatum (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=553750)
War
"We do not care for what we have" - First war thread (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=554093)
Operation Stillborn - Warmaster's thread (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=554460)
Sidethreads
League of Armed Neutrals (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=553404)
Reinforcing Ravenna (http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=553827)

A list of complete sides will not be compiled at the moment, as I'm not sure anyone knows who will eventually show up at the table on both sides and who won't.

Can we cut down on the OOC in the IC threads please?

Now, moving on to a few of my complaints thus far into the rp. I will link each individual post, and name my complaints pertaining to it.

First and foremost, the time wanking has got to stop. If you didn't make it ICly clear that your troops were in a location BEFORE the RP, too bad, so sad. Mac, Cali, nothing against you, but reinforcements have to be RPed. In Cali's case, since she was reinforcing her colony, I would have never cared if she had said those troops were there in the first place. However, in this thread, she directly states that these are reinforcements to her colony: http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showthread.php?t=553827. She also states that these reinforments will arrive in less time than it takes for you to get from one side of Haven to the other, and she is on a completely seperate world. Mac doesn't have the benefit of reinforcing his own nation. His troops were not in Holy Marsh before the RP started, and it's a bunch of crap to say "Oh wait I didn't have time! Let me move in millions of troops so I can win the war!"

Moving on, the move by Derscon to "mine" the Haven Strait is a bunch of crap. First, given the size and depth of it, it would be ne'er impossible anyways, unless you ahd the benefits of a large interspersed island chain, like Shansekia took advantage of. On top of that, Praetonia and I are consistently monitoring the Haven Strait. Him from his colony, and myself from my homeland. I can not speak for Prae, but I know that I am consistently running sorties out from my exterior islands, and any attempt by NATO to mine the Haven Strait would be noticed and would not be permitted. I can ICly resolve this by sinking his ships, but then I will be accused of timewanking as "lol he already did it". The link to this post resides here http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13604947&postcount=8.

Now let me move on to Allanea. For now, I'll focus on this post: http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13606777&postcount=20.
Moreover, the Shansekian barbarians have mined neutral trade waters
First, the mining was SIC. Second, the waters were not neutral, as Shansekia clearly owns them. I understand his president may be retarded, but at least he could spew some halfway decent propaganda.
Between them, they delivered about 20 various submunitions for every Questarian soldier, not counting the FAE rounds of course.
Right, so if Questers said he had 1 million soldiers at the border, then you shot of 20 million rounds... Right...
Fed from observation satelite was data on the various airbases between the Allanean border and London.
London isn't the Questarian capital...
The Allanean aircraft did not get deep into enemy territory – rather, they came in fast and low, using the full benefit of their stealth technology, dropping chaff as they crossed into airspace – and then, fired a total of 1200 HARM missiles at whatever flashed an enemy RADAR at them within 350 kilometers. Then they went home, never having come deeper than 40 kilometers into Questers.
I could care less how Questers responded. This is poor IC etiquette, plain and simple. You don't RP coming, shooting, and leaving all in the same post. Questers handled himself quite well for how he responded to this.

Now for Warmaster. This post: http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13616292&postcount=1 is wrong in so many ways. First and foremost, is the timewanked mobilization.
This war had been long-awaited and long-prepared by the Kregaians. Fleets had been assembled, funds had been saved, supplies had been stockpiled, armies had been consolidated, defenses had been reinforced, and weapons had been strengthened, all in preparation for this moment
And where was this RPed? I can guarantee you that if APOC knew Gholgoth was mobilizing we would not have been at our peacetime readiness levels when this all kicked off.
From missile sites all across Kregaia, anti-satellite missiles were launched. The ASM-140 Caelus was the Imperium's choice for this commonplace task, namely, the destruction of enemy satellites, both military and commercial. Anything owned by a citizen or corporation of an APOC nation was targeted by at least two missiles; enough, in theory, to shut down a hefty portion of the enemy's civilian and/or military communications.
ROFLWUT!!!?!!!111!1one! You seriously think you can afford to do that? Doc alone probably has more satellites than you have missiles, and even attempting this would bankrupt your nation. Not to mention that if your plan succeeded, you would Kessler Syndrome the world. Not just Haven. The world. Way to make space unusable for everyone for generations. That includes yourself. Ask Izi if you don't believe me. So not only did you bankrupt your nation, you also killed eery satellite in orbital space.
Such targets were absolutely ideal for godrods anyway: they are truly terrifying weapons, perfect for shock-and-awe tactics.
Will someone please godrod me? Please?

That about wraps up my complaints. I don't see how we can be considered the class of NS if we don't maintain our standards, and thus far throughout the RP, they have been rather lax.

Yeah if you were targeting every entire APOC satellite it would be hundreds of thousands of satellites, space would be fucked.

Kessler Syndrome
.... Dear Gods, here comes ZMI



As for folksies who want their Nukewealth stuff done, point me in a direction when you want it put into action. I've got lots of OOC agreements but not a lot of direction in where they want me and my crowd to post to get it all ICatized.

Right, so if Questers said he had 1 million soldiers at the border, then you shot of 20 million rounds... Right...

This isn't that much, especially in a major war. For example, (without looking it up in a book) I believe that the Red Army was able to bring together around 60,000 heavy artillery guns for the final offensive on Berlin in January 1945; assuming each gun fires twenty rounds you've already fired 1.2 million rounds. It's expensive, but deploying men is more expensive. In any case, I don't really agree with the way the artillery is being used, but this is more a tactical disagreement than saying that the attack is unrealistic.


You seriously think you can afford to do that? Doc alone probably has more satellites than you have missiles, and even attempting this would bankrupt your nation.

I don't know the entire situation, so forgive me for not knowing certain things (if this is so, then just consider this as an inquiry), but satellites should be more expensive than anti-satellite missiles; so wouldn't it be more difficult to have more sattelites than another nation has missiles?

What kind of missiles are these? If they are hit-to-kill then I don't think the damage to orbit would be that great (not to mention that the debris would scatter itself either away from orbit or towards the atmosphere, where it would burn up).

Posts for both for Matt's thread and Warmaster's will be coming (hopefully) at some point today.

To mention the space pacts policy. Myself and Izi have to kill your launch capacity now warmaster, if you start Kessler syndrome and Scand will be forced into it too ..shooting down your munitions.

As for your ..terrible orbital attack um .. I really do not think you have the missiles with the capabilities to make all that large of a dent in the ZMSF. You have utterly no idea of my orbital capacity nore the good grace to enquire.

and your god rod sats?

God rod firing objects are predefined platforms given the necessary scale fires at an APOC target you will have roughly at most 5 minutes left to use or loose them if you stuffed some of them in expensive Lagrange point positions as third wave weapons.

Then they will no longer be part of the equation, further they are the opening shot of hyperwar and for that I must have a proper OOC discussion with NATO and Golgoth members on what they will and will not accept as my extensive space investment WILL be brought into play in this and while I would not target such things as AMFs orbital nuclear deterrent as that would clearly raise the escalation I will slag every last operating non nuclear launch facility specifically you possess to the best of my and izis ability.

If you do not recant by the end of this IC day you will no longer have so much as a bottle rocket capable of reaching orbit warmasters.

Post script.. just like AMF and many others I have extensive orbital nuclear deterrent capacity ..so of course what this means is you just carried out an act equivalent to attacking one of my SSBNs or silo complexes.

The results are ..obvious.

Post Post Script,

I will be DMin a real world Dark Heresies game today so I cant respond this OC day. Please do not post further orbital combat until this has been discussed.

I agree ... the attack should have been more selective ... and possibly discussed with before with NATO.

I agree with the before-mentioned points. Warmaster, that was a unrealistic and rather silly thing to do.

I'd also like to urge all those of us who are going to be participating in this RP arch to make their best effort to write good quality posts and not five-minute blurbs. I'm confident that the vast majority of you already are, but in case it isn't clear, I'm here thinking about Allanea's reply to my opening strike, which was a three-line undetailed and rather poor description of a counter-attack that leaves much to be desired, and which I feel didnt quite match the detailed post he replied to. The whole of the Allanean counter-strike is quoted below.

http://forums.jolt.co.uk/showpost.php?p=13613513&postcount=37
Naturally, the attack merited a response, and as such, the Allaneans fired right back at the Cotlandi. From mobile trucks and immobile emplacements, missiles were fired, targeting heavy bunkers and airfields in the Cotlandi portion of the Demilitarized Zone in the same fashion and with the same density of attack that the Cotlandi attacked the Allaneans with.

Let's try for the future to have a proper quality in our posts and make this a fun and inspiring RP. That, Allanea, means something that is preferably a bit (read: understatement) more detailed than the blurb quoted above.

TO KAMPFERS:

For starters, Kampfers, APOC would have no way at all of knowing about most of these things. Let's move through my points one by one.

1. "Fleets had been assembled": This force was deployed from the capital, Korronis, and Korronis literally always has huge fleets in its harbors and armies in its barracks, and they come and go rather frequently. It's not unusual for hundreds of ships to leave in order to escort a particularly important convoy or to make a show of force somewhere. Compare this to Clan's whole navy already being ready and waiting in their assigned ports, and beginning to leave pretty much as soon as he declared war. Your argument seems to be, you could track my ships piling up in Korronis's docks, and thus you would have prepared for it. But Clan, again as an example, has clearly prepared for all of this. Hence, you did prepare for it. Just as a side note, if you could track me doing it, I could track Clan doing the same.

2. "Funds had been saved": You are not monitoring my funds. You cannot monitor my funds. Ergo you have no way of knowing that funds have been set aside for the expenses of this war.

3. "Supplies had been stockpiled": I didn't RP this because all it would amount to is "Meanwhile, deliveries of [product] steadily increased by [percentage]..." Your governments could not possibly know the details of the supply situation in my nation that well, and thus could not react to it. None of you created a thread or made a post saying "It looked like war was coming so we placed increased orders for oil, bullets, toilet paper, tents [etc]"; hence, I don't see why it's a problem that I didn't RP it before now.

4. "Armies had been consolidated": again, please tell me how you can track the movements of my troop trains/flights.

5. "Defenses had been reinforced": Kregaia is a paranoid nation that likes to keep its defenses in good condition. Checking to make sure that the missile sites all work and maybe adding some more coastal batteries or whatever is hardly grounds for APOC to begin a troop buildup to counter it. Which, again, Clan's post indicates that you were already doing anyway.

6. "Weapons had been strengthened": this is so vague that I regret putting it in there. It's filler, and means absolutely nothing. We're not changing our standard rounds or packing more HE into our missiles. I'm going to edit it out.

In short, you can't accuse me of not RPing most of these things, because you didn't either. And yet, as Clan's post demonstrates, you guys were clearly ready. I have done nothing different. And obviously, you don't have spies in my nation, because you didn't put any there. I know this is a lengthy answer; it's not because I'm cranky, I just want to be thorough.

To the satellite bit, Kampf: I'd appreciate it if you'd tone down the sarcasm, but you do have a good point. Although it wouldn't bankrupt me to shoot down that many satellites (oh, and I was not counting ZMI in this, because as I understand, he's not in my tech level and hence I will not be RPing with him), it would create a Kessler Syndrome above about half the planet. Assuming I had that many ASATs ready at hand, which I don't. Instead I will edit it to target Praetonian and Clandonian communications satellites and any of their satellites we suspect to be military. I imagine that's a far more manageable number.

Finally, I have no idea what you mean, Kampf, when you make your reference to godrods.

TO ZMI:

I have absolutely no idea about the extent of ZMI's satellite force, but I am under the impression that you are FT, and hence I am not RPing with you; your satellites (I should have made this more clear) were not included in the initial attack. But as you can see above, I've revised that attack. You're still not one of the targets.

I don't see your point with godrods. I know that they are the opening shot. I know that they occupy a certain position in space. I know that I would have a short time to use them before APOC began trying to shoot them down, which would, of course, eventually succeed. And yes, some of them are in LaGrange points. Those did not fire. And I know they can be shot down. So they may take rather heavy casualties. Also, I'm not sure I understand what you were saying, but I don't see why firing godrods as the opening shot of the war necessitates an OOC discussion. It's just as legitimate as opening with a barrage of non-nuclear ICBMs.

Finally, again, I can't RP with a FT nation, and so your proposed retaliation is moot. You were not included, anyway, in the original bombardment, and you certainly are not included now, so you may consider your nuclear deterrent intact.

ZMI is not FT... I'll get to the rest later.

ZMI is not FT... I'll get to the rest later.

I'll take your word for it for the time being, but it's moot anyway, because I still am not targeting him.

ZMI is not FT...

lol

I agree with some of the points raised on this thread, disagree with others -

1. I will not accept un-RPed retrospective military buildups, Clan didn't claim anything like that except in Tristan, which he RPed beforehand in the Yuslevakia thread. Warmaster presently seems unclear on the issue, now claiming that none of the preparations he flagged up as extraordinary were in fact unusual. If so then fine, though holding a country at permanent full time readiness will mean the military will be smaller than for a state that maintains lower levels of readiness in peacetime. Draw your own conclusions from that.

2. I'm a little unclear on this combined satellite attack thing. Why would Praetonia and Clandonia watch The Warmaster destroy all their satellites and offer no retaliation? Unless you're impyling that you shot down all of the satellites at the same time immediately prior to the godrod attack, but that isn't possible because our satellites aren't all in the same position, so the kill vehicles will take longer to reach some than others. And yeah the attack would be massively expensive, if you want to shoot down satellites that are over Haven from Gholgoth, the missiles you're using will be much larger even than ICBMs. I'm not sure how you'd have enough launch vehicles to do that all at once.

3. ZMI isn't a FT nation. He has MT, PMT and FT techsets, which he uses according to the nature of the RP.

Warmaster, Doc isn't even PMT with the stuff he'd be using in this war..

As for Godrods, they're, and mind my language, fucking retarded. They're useless pieces of metal shit that land on the ground, shake it, and blast some windows. Maybe collapse a building. Thats Kampf's point. Go ahead and godrod us. You'll waste money.

If I want to waste money, fine. I'm hardly expecting Warminster or Kingston to be damaged even moderately by this. I'm doing it because the noise and the sound and the repeated impacts will, at the very least, mildly irritate the population. The Paris Gun did extremely little in WWI, but it did intimidate people. That's all I'm expecting.

The military is not on permanent standby. However, given the extreme tensions with APOC that have been building recently, I doubt it can be challenged that my nation has been assembling forces. Expensive, certainly, but no more for me than for any other nation that assembled a force of equal size. Believe me, my economy can handle the expense of supporting the force I have launched.

Prae, you and Clan can, of course, offer retaliation. I expect you to. The attack is against your satellites over Haven, and yes, my missiles will not all reach it at the exact same time. But the point is that at least some of them will have been destroyed by the time the godrods are fired. And, as has been pointed out, satellites are most likely a lot more expensive than the missiles I'm using; I am launching from the CAD (not that far from Doom, who is pretty much in the region of Haven itself), not from Gholgoth, and hence the missiles don't have the cost of an ICBM.

Prae, when can you post an IC reply?

please tell me how you can track the movements of my troop trains/flights

Recon satellites. The fact that every satellite will cross over every point of the globe at one point and that I have a few more than one or two, not to mention any of my allies who would have seen and fed me the intelligence. It's rather hard to mask a ton of ships getting prepared for a war, and in the same way, an army.

as Clan's post demonstrates, you guys were clearly ready. I have done nothing different.

I don't think Clan should represent all of APOC. Not to mention that as Prae said, his readiness was RPed.

Essentially you are arguing that you are always at a full war readiness, and quite frankly you can not sustain yourself that way 100% of the time without making large cutbacks into the size of your forces.

To the satellite bit, Kampf: I'd appreciate it if you'd tone down the sarcasm, but you do have a good point.
Sorry, will cut that in the future.
Although it wouldn't bankrupt me to shoot down that many satellites
Since you are editing the post, I won't argue this in depth, but, erm, no, you couldn't afford to do that.
And yes, some of them are in LaGrange points.
If I remember correctly, Doc's Smythii Accords restrict access to these areas, thus their importance.
It's just as legitimate as opening with a barrage of non-nuclear ICBMs.
Which, for reasons I will keep to myself, is just as stupid as using godrods. Once again, will someone please godrod me?

ZMI isn't a FT nation. He has MT, PMT and FT techsets, which he uses according to the nature of the RP.
QFT

However, given the extreme tensions with APOC that have been building recently, I doubt it can be challenged that my nation has been assembling forces
If you don't RP it it can not simply appear. If your military was on peacetime conditions before, and it was never RPed as entering wartime or pre-war conditions, then you would still be at peacetime conditions.
I'm doing it because the noise and the sound and the repeated impacts will, at the very least, mildly irritate the population.
Right, and when THAADs knock the godrods off course and they fall harmlessly into the ocean and the civilian populace appluads because they thought the government was putting on a show for them, then what? Or if the THAADs push it into a hospital. I doubt you care about civilian life, but the remaining neutrals in Haven might. Godrods are very, very silly. Much the same way with non-nuke ICBMs.

Yeah if you were targeting every entire APOC satellite it would be hundreds of thousands of satellites, space would be fucked.

Since I haven't read Warmaster's post, I cannot comment on it specifically. However, I would like to comment on this quote and Kampf's concerning the number of satellites and the costs associated with shooting them down.

First off, satellites aren't cheap, not in the real world, not in NS. In fact, I expect that they are more expensive in NS since none of us cop out on our gear, and since real life spy sats are about a billion a pop, let's for the sake of argument assume that NS spy sats are 2 billion at least. Communication satellites are about 80 million in real life, but who knows what they are in NS.

I'm not good at math at all, but I see a problem here with fielding that many satellites (correct my figures if I'm wrong). 100k communications sats will cost about 8 trillion, and for the sake of argument, 100k spy sats will run about 200 trillion. Granted it's not going to be one or the other, but you can still see the associated costs with having that many sats, even though I understand that this is for the entirety of APOC and not a single nation. But still, somewhere inbetween those two figures is the cost of fielding spy/comm sats per every 100k units.

However, to shoot down 100k sats using (for the sake of argument) the SM-3, which is near 10 million, that comes to 1 trillion dollars. Granted NS ASAT's are larger, better, faster, and more expensive. But still, it's more than clear that it is way more costly to field extreme numbers of satellites and much less costly to shoot them down. I also understand that shooting down satellites that are on the other side of the planet are going to require larger and larger missiles and the cost associated with a massive launch will increase accordingly, but the point still stands that it is indeed cheaper.

I think one thing could have been useful before Warmaster made his post, IE: Just how many satellites you have. I don't think anyone was assuming it would be a number in the hundreds of thousands, since even spread out over 20+ members that would still cause a hefty dent in your national budgets and you would not be able to front lavish navies, expensive air forces, and bloated armies if you're wasting all your cash in space. You'd probably be looking at double digit figures somewhere in the trillions per memberstate when all is said and done. I mean, you could do it all, but your economy would tank rather quickly.

Anyways, all this talk of escalation needs to end now. This is a MT war (low to mid PMT is also expected, since our weapons and the sheer numbers we employ are entirely unrealistic), and I don't want to see space this's-and-that's being brought in. From many years of experience that is how you ruin wars (also with nukes, which if I recall nobody will be using), because then it turns into a 'Oh yeah? Well, suck on THIS! [Insert ever increasing wank here]' contest.

Oh, and Kak Khemet: It's more than clear that you're somebody's puppet. I have neither the time nor patience to deal with ridiculous threads.

The military is not on permanent standby. However, given the extreme tensions with APOC that have been building recently, I doubt it can be challenged that my nation has been assembling forces.
Tensions were high for months with no actual war, forces can't be kept permanently on readiness. I do not claim mine are, and no one else on the APOC side has, to my knowledge.

Expensive, certainly, but no more for me than for any other nation that assembled a force of equal size. Believe me, my economy can handle the expense of supporting the force I have launched.
That's the point, other nations dont keep their forces permanently on max readiness like this, APOC ones anyway. And you're not the only one who inflates their economy.

Prae, you and Clan can, of course, offer retaliation. I expect you to. The attack is against your satellites over Haven, and yes, my missiles will not all reach it at the exact same time. But the point is that at least some of them will have been destroyed by the time the godrods are fired.
Yeah, I know. What I'm saying is that once you declare war and start shooting our satellites, we're not just going to let your weapons platforms drift gracefully over our capitals...

And, as has been pointed out, satellites are most likely a lot more expensive than the missiles I'm using; I am launching from the CAD (not that far from Doom, who is pretty much in the region of Haven itself), not from Gholgoth, and hence the missiles don't have the cost of an ICBM.
They'll cost more than ICBMs anyway, it's just like this they'll cost way way more, not just a bit more. And ok, CAD -> Prae isn't very far... just several times the circumference of the RL earth. Tho, I dont recognise gholgoth closer than the previous ~30,000km from Haven anyway, which includes CAD if you're claiming to own it.

Prae, when can you post an IC reply?
Not before the issues Kampf and ZMI raised are sorted out.

<discussion of satellite costs>
Interesting points here. At first I was inclined to agree with you, but if you average the present RL number of operational sats (560) to world GDP and multiply by APOC's GDP, somewhere in the region of 80,000 - 120,000 is not unreasonable. Now whether or not this sort of number would actually provide any real advantage over a much lower number is debateable, I'd say it probably wouldn't, but it would be affordable, at least.

"I also understand that shooting down satellites that are on the other side of the planet are going to require larger and larger missiles and the cost associated with a massive launch will increase accordingly, but the point still stands that it is indeed cheaper."

The point doesn't stand at all. It isn't necessarily wrong, but nothing you've said substantiates it. I do broadly agree, though, that a satellite decap strike would be affordable, but I doubt it would be instantaneous and attempts to make it so would cause the trade-off in cost to swing heavily against the attacker.

Anyways, all this talk of escalation needs to end now. This is a MT war (low to mid PMT is also expected, since our weapons and the sheer numbers we employ are entirely unrealistic), and I don't want to see space this's-and-that's being brought in. From many years of experience that is how you ruin wars (also with nukes, which if I recall nobody will be using), because then it turns into a 'Oh yeah? Well, suck on THIS! [Insert ever increasing wank here]' contest.
I don't think Doc was saying that he would escalate thewar by raising the tech level. Those are rather damning words to put into someone's mouth without much evidence.

I'm ok with things now the points of been cleared apart from the godrod attacks, are you targeting stuff randomly or directed against certain buildings like the government, finance, etc. ?

"

The point doesn't stand at all. It isn't necessarily wrong, but nothing you've said substantiates it. I do broadly agree, though, that a satellite decap strike would be affordable, but I doubt it would be instantaneous and attempts to make it so would cause the trade-off in cost to swing heavily against the attacker.

So I guess figures demonstrating the theoretic costs of fielding satellites that number in the (and I quote Clanddonia here), 'hundreds of thousands' and the comparitive costs of a massed ASAT strike are meaningless now. Interesting.

And I'm sort of bewildered how you can say my overall point doesn't stand at all, but then 'broadly agree' with half of it....


I don't think Doc was saying that he would escalate thewar by raising the tech level. Those are rather damning words to put into someone's mouth without much evidence.

I never accused anyone in name on one side or the other of doing so (especially since some players on both sides have FT assets), I clearly stated that "I don't want to see space this's-and-that's being brought in". Period, and any and all talk of it needs to end now. I would also appreciate it if you wouldn't put words in my mouth. I offered a statement that said any escalation into 'space this's-and-that's' needs to be avoided, because like nukes it ruins RP. I refuse to debate you on this and have you pick my posts apart when I posted in this thread in the first place to try and act like the voice of reason. Heed the advice or not, there doesn't need to be any debate on it.

So I guess figures demonstrating the theoretic costs of fielding satellites that number in the (and I quote Clanddonia here), 'hundreds of thousands' and the comparitive costs of a massed ASAT strike are meaningless now. Interesting.
Exactly, since the figures you used were for a much cheaper ASAT. The cost of the satellites wasnt infinite, so you cant just extrapolate your answer for any arbitrary cost of ASAT and claim its still valid.

And I'm sort of bewildered how you can say my overall point doesn't stand at all, but then 'broadly agree' with half of it....
I said I agreed he could afford the strike, not that it would be practical to actually do or net him a profit.

I never accused anyone in name on one side or the other of doing so (especially since some players on both sides have FT assets), I clearly stated that "I don't want to see space this's-and-that's being brought in". Period, and any and all talk of it needs to end now. I would also appreciate it if you wouldn't put words in my mouth.
Doc was the only one who threatened escalation. I don't see what words I am supposed to be putting into your mouth. The fact remains that taking escalation to mean godmoding to raise the tech level of the RP is not the sort of accusation that should be bandied around lightly, regardless of who it is directed against.

I offered a statement that said any escalation into 'space this's-and-that's' needs to be avoided, because like nukes it ruins RP. I refuse to debate you on this and have you pick my posts apart when I posted in this thread in the first place to try and act like the voice of reason. Heed the advice or not, there doesn't need to be any debate on it.
If refusing to accept any criticism constitutes reason. People can come to their own judgements on that. I have no such problems with you questioning my opinions. In fact, I actually agreed with much of what you said.

Exactly, since the figures you used were for a much cheaper ASAT. The cost of the satellites wasnt infinite, so you cant just extrapolate your answer for any arbitrary cost of ASAT and claim its still valid.

If you disagree with me using real life base figures and extrapolating them to match your alliance's supposed claims of satellites, show me some numbers to the contrary. By all means provide me with some links to anything showing what kind of satellites you field and their associated costs, because I can't determine overall figures if I don't know what your hardware costs.

I said I agreed he could afford the strike, not that it would be practical to actually do or net him a profit.

I never claimed it would net him a profit if that's what you're asserting.


Doc was the only one who threatened escalation. I don't see what words I am supposed to be putting into your mouth. The fact remains that taking escalation to mean godmoding to raise the tech level of the RP is not the sort of accusation that should be bandied around lightly, regardless of who it is directed against.

The words you put into my mouth was that I was accusing Doc in name of escalation. To me it doesn't matter who said it first, the second the word 'escalation' is uttered in reference to anything involving the word 'space', it needs to be nipped immediately, which I did.

And you did it again just now by accusing me of saying that escalation into space tech constitutes godmodding. I never said such a thing, I didn't even use the word godmod once! I'm not making these accusations Prae, you're accusing me of things I never even said.


If refusing to accept any criticism constitutes reason. People can come to their own judgements on that. I have no such problems with you questioning my opinions. In fact, I actually agreed with much of what you said.

I'm not refusing to accept criticism, I'm stating that I am not going to debate you about advice I'm giving to everyone involved in this RP. If this sort of nitpicking is what I can expect then I will just keep my mouth shut, and if the RP goes to hell then so be it.

You can't simply ignore someone on the grounds that they have a large MT space infastructure. That's a load of bull, and any attempt to ignore Doc for such will not be tolerated.

Nukes, and space tech as well, do not ruin RPs. Peoples (read: your, the readers) reaction to it does. Did the nuclear attack kill A Passion Play? I think not.

Let me also casually observe that NATO had no problem with Doc when he aided them in the four day war, and that treating him like this now is very, no, extremely hypocritical.

.... or everyone involved can STFU and roll with it. I'd personally like to see how APOC will respond to Warmaster downing all its sats. I assume it will be reciprocation, which can only be a good thing for RP quality. And I also assume that both sides would be able to take both his graciously, as true experienced RPers. As the two "Big Name" alliances of MT, I believe that both APOC and NATO can weather a no-sat situation.

Remember, all the new players who come on NS just itching for an RP look at what the "big names" do. (and finding out who the "big names" are isn't hard on NS) By RPing this large conflict out, we're not only letting this cold war get hot, we're also showing that yes, you will be like this someday Mr. April 2008, if you keep at it. Hell, half the names in here are the reason I worked my tail off to become a better RPer.

Nukes, and space tech as well, do not ruin RPs. Peoples (read: your, the readers) reaction to it does. Did the nuclear attack kill A Passion Play? I think not.


Good thing that they had the same OOC arguments from the first post then, no? A Passion Play, (And indeed the whole war in Greater Dienstad) is something I look towards achieving as an RPer, but trying to compare this with the current situation where OOC treachery and deceit is common doesn't go that well, does it? As a note for the reader, the collective behind the War of Golden Succession is one to be admired for both their IC posts and OOC cooperation.


You can't simply ignore someone on the grounds that they have a large MT space infastructure. That's a load of bull, and any attempt to ignore Doc for such will not be tolerated.


Kessler, just more losses for said player if we take it that far, assuming the technology is MT that is.

And now I'll STFU as No Endorse so wisely put it.

Whatever the cost of the ASATs, there is no question that the sats are going to be much more expensive. If we accept that any ASAT launched from CAD is going to be the size of an ICBM and further accept that the missile (minus the warheads) is going to cost about the same as said ICBM, that means each missile is going to be roughly 80 million per missile. A Keyhole equiv would cost about 600 million, if one includes launch costs. So, even at three missiles per satellite, it's going to cost 240 million to take out each satellite. I honestly don't think you can argue that the cost of shooting down the sats is going to be ruinous unless you also accept that actually putting those sats up in the first place would be even more ruinous.

As for myself, I have something like 8,000 military sats in total.

Look, I am not going to watch this thread dissolve into nitpicking. I'll retcon the godrods and the satellite attacks if you guys honestly find it that egregious. The launching of the fleet and the declaration of war are the most important parts of that post.

Do I believe I'm actually wrong? Not in all respects, and I believe I already fixed the big problem (the world-wide Kessler Syndrome). But it's far more important to me that this go ahead as planned than that my ego be soothed by arguing. Guys, chill. Everybody. Gholgoth and APOC alike. This is a game, and I for one would like to see how this war goes. We all have our egos, and we all think we're right. Please, I'm asking everyone, next time we're tempted to write that little sarcastic barb, don't. Because then the other guy sees it and writes another one. And that exchange explodes into a killed thread. I will not let that happen. And don't think that I'm going to delete everything I do that gets criticized, either. But we all need to keep our eyes on the prize here: namely, the thread itself, and not let OOC shit get in the way.

Clan, if you're ok with the godrods, to answer your question: I'm basically firing at random into the city, as I'm aware that the odds of a godrod hitting a specific building are quite low. To Prae, you may ignore the godrods if you find them to be extremely unrealistic; similarly, either of you may ignore the satellite attack if you truly think it is a wank. But please, let's put this behind us, and make some IC posts.

Okay campers a little bit of anger I see.

To address the primary issue that seems to be held against me as had been stated on multiple occasions I have tech sets to suit each environment. I am not a git. I will be engaging you with KEWs not GRASERs. Dazzlers that may blind you not UV APLs that can slice and dice at 3400 metres. SAMs and high ROF ACs not rail drivers (though that last one is debatable and contentious really in light of the USN trails and relative investment levels).

In order to launch a strike of this scale kessler syndrome is inevitable even "just" to shoot down two nations entire orbital assets, let me make that clear warmaster your effectively poisoning tens of hundreds of orbits to levels that would grind a great deal of our (and by our I mean everyone in orbit) orbital non mobile combatants into so much scrap metal, radioactive ex warhead or not and in short piss of a great great deal of people whether you "wanted" to involve them or not. Sats are not NEAT when they are explosively contact detonated, if you want to be neat spend even MORE money on matching velocities and ramming the thing with a mini tug rocket to force it to re enter.

AMF as for cost not only would the cost be very high as we are talking about matching DECADES of launch investments with one decapitation strike and the costs associated with fielding and maintaining that large and capable an ASAT force.

Good grief unless a truly leviathan build up which on this scale would be internationally noticed the long term costs of such a ASAT grid capable of matching a larger nations entire decade after decade launch investments would be back braking to any military budget. With Lagrange point reach (something you would require equivalent boost costs to a sat launch) but response and interception by orbital assets of every nation is not only necessary but if they want to live or have there orbital assets survive entirely automatic in nature.

Other states with heavy orbital investment military or otherwise would be if they wished to keep them forced quite seriously to intervene or suffer losses. Space is not the sea. Flotsam and jetsam up there hurt in a sabot through a pumpkin kind of way. The Smythii accords were set up to in no uncertain terms make it QUITE clear of the result of the deployment of kessler educing weapons warmaster. In short I and Izi will if this sort of thing is carried through in some arena which we accept as existing, toast the violators launch sites.


As a side note AMF I think it now necessary to list what I WILL use in the case of "orbital escalation". which by its nature HAS to be considered hyperwar. In short ..30 minutes or less and its all effectivly over for low and high orbit and that is if you have some really impressively large and expensive boosters. Launching those KEWs is a VERY open attack on people I am broadly allied to in the realm they in part trust me to have some influence in. By this alone I would have to respond.

The combatants I would be effectivly engaging with in any orbital warfare would be primarily my armed satellites, any of which including civilian over a metric ton get built tax free as long as they carry a 250 kilo armaments module consisting of a caseless silicone gel sealed GPMG and a set of two space to space contact missiles. The concept of this is maximum availability of vectors of engagement, in short to field enough orbital firepower to have a safe vector of engagement that forces debris into a re-entry. This not only promotes the use of micro sats which are effectivly too small and numerous to be effectivly engaged without the use of mass spread fragmentory weapons that anger everyone but also means that those major installations that I do have in orbit constantly add to my gross orbital firepower.

Secondary response strike would come from my extensive array of ocelot space combatants, most of these are based on set platforms in high orbit or at the Lagrange points. Effectively they are nothing more than Soyuz scale highly manouverable unmanned capsules equipped with spinal mass drivers of 20mm calibre and two GPMGs and a delightful selection of optional missiles, KEWs and strap on boosters are of course on occasion added.

Tertiary response would be from my space to ground KEW launchers on your launch sites these are equipped on everything from my orbital battle platforms to the Alexander Drexel class translunar DDGNs and the odd lunar orbiting platform, (expensive but giving me that fourth wave admittedly three days later, but its still a killer) ADs are effective MT translunar combatants useing existing technology, there primary "dumb" arms being a set of 4 200mm recoilless rifles.


ASAT launch plumes are just as highly visible as the full release of warmasters entire strategic nuclear arsenal would be, some should be intercepted by BPs or the like before impacting the sats, platforms and orbital manned stations, shuttles, capsules and ships fielded by everyone. This was not made ..available. While his strike was just against two APOC members the ENTIRE APOC and or automatic triggered defences were not given the large and effective engagement window they should have to knock down a fair number of the outbounds in there highly vulnerable boost phase.

Escalation to full scale conventional orbital warfare would be the logical step to take if this is carried out and indeed an almost automatic step in many cases. Human responses simply cannot be trusted to be fast or remotely accurate enough to be in this command loop.

I don't know how anybody could ignore godrods if they accept the idea of offensive strike sats such as those that ZMI uses. Godrods are far simpler, after all.

How about a rewrite of the thing so that there's less ASATs and more jamming of the satellite communications with the ground? Solves the bitchfest, works perfectly fine, and makes more room for stories because now you have to attack/defend the jamming sites (this idea blatantly ripped from actions by Red during USN wargames in the 1980s).

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How about a rewrite of the thing so that there's less ASATs and more jamming of the satellite communications with the ground? Solves the bitchfest, works perfectly fine, and makes more room for stories because now you have to attack/defend the jamming sites (this idea blatantly ripped from actions by Red during USN wargames in the 1980s).

Yeah that sounds a good compromise, I'm happy with the godrod attacks not but I've been out so I'm not sure entirely what Prae's position is. The thing with ASAT warfare or the planned strategy of space warfare (as a scholar) is you would go for select satellites such as ones overpassing (e.g. RORSATS) an area of strategical or tactical importance and not go for a total annihilation of the enemy's civil and military orbital infrastructure.