The Sol Alliance; Time to talk about this whole mess.

[LordPwner]

Disclaimer

This is not an attack on the writer of the Lore. This is not an attack on anyone involved in the making of the addition to the new lore on Sol. Its not an attack on any characters or anyone. Just questions.

Comments:

I'm going to start by quote the Wiki found here: https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Sol_Alliance

I will quote every thing I'll be reference by copy and paste by I'll do it like this:

 

An absolute juggernaut in terms of cultural and political influence, the Alliance of Sovereign Solarian Nations (ASSN), commonly referred to as SolGov, the Sol Alliance, and sometimes the Alliance, is a federal union of 125 member state star systems, and 212 dependencies...........

 

With control of hundreds of systems and a large population of about 90 billion, the Sol Alliance is by far the largest nation within all of known space......

 

The prosperity of the Alliance is extremely centralized to the inner colonies, most notably the Sol system, which benefit from their proximity to Earth and being the commercial and industrial centers........

 

The discovery of warp technology in 2130 allowed the few, critically underfunded space programs to coordinate with private companies still functioning to send out probes to other solar systems......

 

The Jamestown Massacre and Resulting Secessions

This incident is considered the catalyst for the First Interstellar War. Alliance authorities blasted the Jamestown system for the unprovoked murder of military officials while outer and frontier colonies applauded the firm stand Jamestown had made for its independence..........

 

The Warp Gate Project: The First Mega-Corporations

The newly constructed Unity Station is officially opened in March of 2300. In orbit around Earth, the massive space station serves as the capital of the Sol Alliance while being large enough to accommodate its population of 250,000 permanent residents. The station was a symbolic gesture, with the capital of the Sol Alliance moved out of the former UN headquarters in New York and put in orbit, it was meant to show that the Alliance represented the entire galactic community of humanity.......... In

2355 Prime Minister Nicolas Chirac began the extremely ambitious Warp Gate Project. Bluespace was still unknown at the time, and galactic travel relied on cumbersome and expensive Warp Drives that relied on immense amounts of energy. Travel between neighboring systems would take days, trips to the middle and outer colonies would take weeks, and journeys to the frontier of human space could take months....

However by the completion of the project in 2390 the benefits were immediate and obvious. While the project itself has brought millions of new jobs during construction, the end of the project had also created massive economic booms for the systems it connected. Traveling through the warp gates cut travel time in half, and many systems, including Tau Ceti, became centers of trade and commerce as hundreds of thousands of travelers now regularly traveled to and through the systems.

 

In 2458, on request of the Skrell Jargon Federation, the Sol Government requested the 33rd fleet of the Sol Navy to blockade Tau Ceti. The blockade caused economic troubles for everyone within Tau Ceti, travel was heavily regulated along with trade. Prices sky rocketed, many of those with low income suffered greatly. The blockade continued to 2459 where it had then become a fully fledged illegal occupation of Tau Ceti. Going against orders from Sol Goverment, Admiral Frost of the 33rd had begun to sell free synthetics into slavery, dismantle synthetics and robotics labs, install a military order, and arrest the president of Biesel in a bloodless coup. This act of war had only gone on for a week before the loyal 25th fleet arrived, smashing apart Frost's ships and forcing the disloyal admiral to flee to the frontier.........

 

Whats the point of all this quoting you might ask? Well its really to bring evidence to my points. ((I put the quotes in spoilers so your eyes wouldn't bleed <3))

1.) Its very clear that A. Sol is a superpower. With that many systems and worlds even WITH the depression they are an economic powerhouse.

2.) The Sol Alliance has a massive amount of Human Capital and the most star systems.

3.) The SolGov with help of EE built a warp that as quoted CAUSED A BOOM IN THE ECONOMY, Cash money, Cash Cash Money

4.) in 2458 the 33rd Fleet comes into Tai Ceti and goes "F you and your robotic goodies. Give me that money." But we also see the 'loyal' 25th fleet come in and smash them to bits. Its very clear that the Sol Navy can deal with people who don't follow orders.

5.) With the Human Capital and all this stuff. Its clear that the Sol Alliance could pull together better military organization. From Star Wars. Chancellor Palp. soon to be Emperor ran the Republic INTO THE GROUND fiscally. ((Aka with cash, ya know, debt.)) But here we have a Government that is actively making money. Because the second great depression was in 2260 So yeah.. Cash Money, Cash Cash Money. And with this SUPER EXPENSIVE WARP GATE, pushing EIGHTY-ONE TRILLION, 82,100,000,000,000. Now understand thats a fuck ton of Cash, but if the paybacks were almost immediate then this wouldn't have been a problem for long. Along with taxes ((Income and sales on products)) plus tariffs, and taxes on companies. You think that Sol would have a good Fleet to ALWAYS PROTECT THIS GATEWAY. Now with that out of the way, Onto

Questions/Concerns:

1.) Why can Sol not actually get their fleets to fucking work? Why is it such a damn problem? It makes no sense militarily or politically to have shit fleets. EVEN MORE SO, IN THE HOME SYSTEM. What do people protect the most? Their home. Now you can argue that "Oh, well Sol is looking to protect their economic interest." Guess what we have.. Well their capital station for one, and two, the massive warp gate didn't scream heresy enough for anyone?

2.) Why does Sol have so many fleets just not following fucking orders? Once again doesn't make sense and has a bad delivery. You can say because "They are patriotic." but If you look at actual battles, Like the; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Bulge ///

'Battle of the Bulge' (16 December 1944 – 25 January 1945) was the last major German offensive campaign on the Western Front during World War II. Now I'm using Wikipedia, do not 100% swing with it, but the sources look good.. But down later in the paragraph we see: Intercepted German communications indicating a substantial German offensive preparation were not acted upon by the Allies.[17][18]

NOW to any person that would be like "What the fuck do you mean stop the people who want to shoot me from setting up. Because A, We know they are going to attack. B, We could stop them setting up. " But wait.. its this magically thing called Chain of Command and a plan. Which Soldiers in the US Military followed. Didn't agree with your officer? Tough luck Kid charge the nest. Didn't agree with the Captain, Lt.? Sucks to suck, lead your platoon forward. Didn't agree with the general, Major? Dispatch the orders. Why would a Superpower allow its military to become shit tier. I can understand Old Doctrine a bit. I can not understand this shit and rebellious leadership. Why do they have it with such a large population base to pull from?

3.) Why don't Sol Planets have armies or Planetary Guards/ Ship-Kill Guns to protect from invasion. If Odin has three heavy BSA guns on ONE of its decks. You think a PLANET would have space defense platforms, planetary guns and forts. Response Troops. Something. Anything. Please dear god anything. But it appears they don't, the raiders just swiped in went 'lol' and kidnapped like what, a thousand people total? Once again, doesn't make sense. This is a core world. It should be like the Warhammer 40k Universe with the whole "Our home planet terra? yeah fuck off Xenos, you ain't touching it." And they are right. For ANY xeno race in 40k It'd be suicide to try and take Terra. Fleet and Chapter count just starts to sky rocket when you get closer to Terra. Why wouldn't the Sol Gov defend what matters most with a lot more fire power?

4.) Why is everyone going, "Oh SovGov sucks." When they are actively trying to get fleets to do things to restore order and fix this whole shit storm. 9/11 Happened and US citizens didnt go, "What the fuck President and Gov, come on, shoot back missiles within twenty seconds of the attack." They started to enlist in masse. Filling the Army, the Navy, and the Airforce to overflowing because they want to defend their home. They want to punch back. They want their revenge, their own slice, etc. etc. I get being upset a little, but riots over it? The recruiting offices should be flooded, not the streets. And yes, I read where the Senator said, "We're not going to let it happen again" instead of, "Lets get 'em." But come on, Its one Senator. Not the President and to be frank, Military High Command has probably already got a plan to fuck the raiders up. Cause thats Generals are paid to do.

5.) So our massive defensive system, We left it alone for 35 years? Oh excuse. The Early Alert System. Not a defensive system really. Yeah it can catch a few ships that try to illegal jump into the system but come on. As stated with point 3, The main Sol system should be HEAVILY defended and hard to get into. No one should have this much success unless Sol's in another depression and physically just can't react.

6.) IS this literally just to kill the Alliance off? It kinda seems either Lore is pushing to kill them off or making ATLAS the big cheese and go for super space racist.

7.) I'm honestly fine with the attack. I don't mean Sol should be "Unkillable God Emperor Beacon of Mankind." But it shouldn't be so... easy.. It shouldn't be walking through a park with enough time to stop and smell roses. Its all just.. it hurts. relating back to question Six, at least to me, its looking like a heavy push to just neuter Sol.

Please do leave constructive feedback, If there is something I put that doesn't make sense please do ask for clarification. As I said I tried not to make this an attack, I don't want it to be. I want questions answered and I hope my points are valid in my issues with the whole drive where the lore is going. Thanks for reading!

[SatinsPristOTD]

I've talked about the most recent Sol lore with several people, and it's been unsettling to some of us. In all honesty, it feels like either someone isn't fully aware on how deep the Military rabbit defense hole goes, or they're deliberately pushing lore into the system without actually worrying about immersion. (Which is the POINT of a lore team. If you can't keep up with immersions, then you're missing a key point.)

So I've got a few issues, and Pwner did a decent job of pointing some of them out.

Let's discuss Planetary Defense in 2018 and how it would change rapidly over time (in 2460.) We are already developing ways on taking down large space debris that could effect Earth in a negative manner. It is by no stretch of the mind that we will be militarizing this system come 2460. In fact, the USA is already discussing a SpaceForce system, which will become our next military branch. Somehow these pirates managed to get past the Sol defense (I'll go into that in my next point), dock at these planets/stations/outposts, and kidnap people while Sol is under the guise that a Lii'dra ship is headed to Earth. Why were these places not on code red, lockdown, with military defense systems ready to aim? Sol believes the Lii'dra are about to attack. System-wide systems wouldn't be that difficult to send a message stating "Code red, lock everyone down." In terms of planets, systems such as the Aegis (or whatever we'll call that in 2460) would be armed and ready to take down any force that isn't planned to dock. A "no flying" ordinance would be put out (like with 9/11. We GROUND all planes. We'd easily force shuttles to turn back or force dock at the nearest port and prepare for immediate search). There is absolutely no way a government of Sol's size would go "Oh no! The Lii'dra are coming! Don't arm our planetary/station defenses! Don't put us in a gridlock!". They'd be worried about covering their assets, and as much as this lore team would like to tell us workers aren't an asset, they are. Sol would immediately try and protect it's workforce from any sort attack, be it a fake Lii'dra, or an unexpected pirate invasion.

Let's go into what sort of defense would exist on these planets. Anti-spacecraft/aircraft/missile launches aside, these planets/stations/outposts would most certainly have some sort of defense to them. Planets would have a national guard, a reserve or something stationed there. A police force would be enlisted there. A militia of armed citizens could potentially be weaponized by these forces. As for outposts, you're telling me Luna, with the Zeng Hu facility, has no sense of protection from invaders like PIRATES?!

How about this "holes in our defense near the Oort cloud" excuse we just read in the article? Speaking to someone who's in the military, it makes no sense for Sol's government to act like a 3rd world country and not change up it's patrol patterns in 35 years. That's insane and it shows that whomever thought that up really doesn't understand how and why the military acts. If the defense was that weak, Sol would have been invaded 15-20 years ago. It's not that hard to map patterns and it doesn't take 35 years to do it. In fact, it makes no sense for the Sol military to have these same patrol patterns after the first Lii'dra attack on the Aurora. Do you think governments don't change up their military tactics when a large force attacks another country? They see what went wrong and immediately look at their own defense and figure out how to strengthen it. Let's use the argument that they were focused on this Lii'dra false tracker. Militaries don't uproot every single defense unit they have to track down one invader. You can't do that. One got through. You have to watch the boarders in case more come. You tighten DOWN on defense. You do not weaken it. In fact, the best way to handle that attack would have been to pull the planetary defense systems and have them do the (stated above) no flight gridlock. You take no precautions. Anything that doesn't IMMEDIATELY port at the nearest port gets taken down. If you are in a state of panic and outright war, you will take military actions. You would not throw your hands in the air and go "Well, let's see how this pans out.". If that Lii'dra ship can't be found and you're fumbling trying to track it, then you have to focus on what you can see. the best way to handle blindspots is to use what you have at hand to fill in the gaps. The sol government isn't that spongebob meme where the filing cabinets are on fire and they're in a solid state of panic.

What is with the Sol fleets disobeying orders and going on rogue manhunts? One happened in 2459 with Frost and the 33rd. Now we have the 1st, 7th, and 11th going off for like.. 1000 people? leaving Sol even more defenseless? After what happened with Frost, the Sol Marines would be shoved so far up the military ass, they'd be breathing the same air. It makes no sense for that sort of action to take place a mear year after the Frost incident. It also doesn't make sense for THREE ENTIRE FLEETS to abandon their home for 1000 people. Sol has a population of BILLIONS. LITERAL BILLIONS. 1000 people is a drop in the hat, and even sane people today would say the defense of the women and children at HOME is more important than those 1000.

So we've talked about why it makes no sense for the pirates to get into the Sol government, right after a "false"tracker for a Lii'dra ship was sent in. Let's discuss docking and ports in the Sol Government. treaties may allow for "free travel" into the Sol government, but I highly doubt they let anyone onto their planets without some sort of docking code. You can't just have ships randomly dock at a planet/station and let them walk around freely. "Free travel" is a lot like what it is with America. Our boarders are open and you are more than welcome to visit if you have a visa/passport. This idea that these pirates managed to dock at planets/stations that should have a defense system, and do so unchecked? Makes no sense. Especially for the Sol system, which has proven to be a bit xenophobic. If you've wrote lore that makes it sound like any ship can fly through the Oort cloud/warp zone and just dock as they please at any planet/station then...... you need to reevaluate what a treaty really means and how that makes sense for a government to even agree to.

Now, this needs to be made clear:... I would love to see the Sol government knocked down a few pegs. I WOULD LOVE TO SEE THIS HAPPEN. But I want it done in a way that logically makes sense and isn't forcing lore onto us that just doesn't fit with the way the Sol nation has been wrote out to be. To me, it feels like you wrote yourself into a hole by making the Sol gov't the way it is, and you're trying to balance it out. That would work, if you weren't doing it with pirates and weird.... disgustingly bad military tactics.

The way to take Sol down needs to be done the way it was brought up. You need an attack on it that is equal.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Hello! Our human loredev Zundy is on vacation running after the man who stole his identity in Puerto Rico, so I'm filling in for him. Mofo, our deputy loremaster might come in too. I'm the Loremaster for Aurora, the one who wrote the recent arc you may be referring to, and was heavily involved in cranking out the Sol Alliance as it is today in terms of its history and how it all leads up to its current state and themes.

I'll start with the big picture of the Alliance and work my way towards the arc in question.

To boil it all down as much as possible, the Sol Alliance is a mess, it contradicts itself, information is outdated, and it's government and whole structure makes little sense or is incredibly dense or complicated. This is played with intentionally in the narrative. The best examples are the fact that the Alliance is a Federal Government, a Westminster System, and a military/economic Alliance between star systems. Each dependency has its own governing parliament, and their Prime Minister becomes a Member of Parliament for the federal Parliament, and serve as long as their term as Prime Minister in their respective system. The Prime Minister of the Sol Alliance is, confusingly, also a member of the lower Parliament and they get 6 votes. Even Senators can be heads of states of individual star systems. It's also built on top of 400 years of continuous legal litigation, all with laws from individual nations grandfathered in when the Alliance was first created, so realistically the laws for the Alliance all go back to the 21st or even 18th century if certain laws are on the books. And these laws can either be overturned or sustained in a ruling depending on if the judge/attorney/lawyers managed to find the citations about when the law was last altered.

For the warp gates, I believe there is a small issue of the end-result of the warp gates not being considered?

https://wiki.aurorastation.org/index.php?title=Timeline_of_Humanity#The_First_Trans-stellars

The warp gate network was unfathomably expensive, and incredibly disruptive. The benefits of the warp gate network was Einstein Engines, who used the network to become the first Megacorporation within the Auroraverse. Solgov itself was broke and had no money after funding the operation, and the entire warp gate system was made obsolete when NanoTrasen began capitalizing on phoron and upgrading these gates to Bluespace gates, which made travel a LOT faster.

The economy of the Alliance is always a total mess with boom and bust cycles, but when it busts it totally shatters.

To bring it all together, you are entirely correct that the Sol Alliance is a juggernaut. It's incredibly powerful, but it's also forever in the twilight of its empire. It's infrastructure is decaying, its government is forever deadlocked, secessionists are constantly causing trouble on the fringes (and even within the core system), and the civilian government seems entirely incapable of effectively dealing with any major crisis'. It is the manifestation of runaway bureaucracy, and a Kafka-esque state. The best historical equivalent would be the Ottoman Empire moments before WW1 - a powerful state sustained through inertia, but the sick man of europe. I also feel that it is a distinctly American privilege that you put so much faith in the chain of command and respect to the civilian government... There may be a more serious issue within the Alliance in this regards than is immediately apparent. The attempts by Sultans within the Ottoman Empire to reform the Janissaries may provide good historical evidence as to how that might go - and the politicians within SolGov are mostly well aware of the balance of power.

Your arguments about the ability of the Sol System to defend itself are a bit confusing, but in many points you are also using talking points shouted by ATLAS within the presented articles.

The defenses and detection plans for the Sol system are 40 years old. It is as if we in 2018 are still using a war plan from 1978 to predict and respond to a full scale Soviet invasion, and this is reflected in how our armed forces and national guard are deployed across the coasts and mainland.

The raiders did not attack Earth itself. They got as far as Saturn. If the raiders actually did attack Earth, even with the total might of the fleet used to raid the system, they would have been destroyed very easily.

The reason that the raiders were so successful is that the entire defense apparatus of the Sol system folded inwards. They were baited into believing that a Lii'dra hiveship was heading straight for Earth in just a few hours. If this actually was a Lii'dra hiveship, then Earth could very well have been entirely destroyed. You can have all the fancy ground defenses and orbital cannons as you want, but no defense apparatus is foolproof and if Lii'dra ships managed to land on the planet and start spreading black and regular k'ois then there would be immense destruction. That is why the system was thrown into an utter panic, because nothing went according to plan.

The reason the fleets were caught unawares was explained in the articles. The government believed (arrogantly) that any attack on the Sol system would be:

1) Detected before it arrived.

2) Delayed by interdiction nets, giving the fleets time to evaluate the threat and mobilize.

3) Intercepted before arriving at any targets.

This didn't happen, because the Lii'dra hiveship was never actually there. It was a spoof on their long range sensors. The government had only a few hours to decide what to do about what they felt was a full scale invasion of Earth. In the chaos and panic, everyone was basically yanked out of their posts and sped at max speed to defend Earth.

They left behind the stations of the frontier areas, which were the actual goal.

Imagine the entire security department save 1 officer goes off on an away mission on another z-level, during crossfire. This also answers why the pirates were able to get on the station despite not having docking authorization. They broke in.... They breached the stations.... There wasn't enough people to repel them in the locations until we reached Jupitor, which is more of a hard target.

But you are entirely correct in that this whole situation is incredibly embarrassing, and shows existential failures within the Sol Alliance's civilian government. That's what ATLAS and many others are so upset, and why they are arguing it may be time to put a more effective candidate in charge. Someone that the Admiralty can respect, and thus work with them to modernize the Alliance. ATLAS and the Admiralty are wanting the Alliance to actually be as strong as the image it projects to the galaxy.

And the questions of how we manage to do that is the whole point of the Alliance's story.

[SatinsPristOTD]

I don't know how to forum quote things, so bear with me:

 

The defenses and detection plans for the Sol system are 40 years old. It is as if we in 2018 are still using a war plan from 1978 to predict and respond to a full scale Soviet invasion, and this is reflected in how our armed forces and national guard are deployed across the coasts and mainland.

 

Uhhh... No. No military or government would even begin to think 40 year old plans would be good to use in a fast paced, space age such as this. That's the worst kind of loophole you can write yourself. If it was using 40 year old equipment... then that's fine. We use old equipment today and it works out perfectly well.

As I stated in one of my points, having every fleet stripped from the defense boarder and run straight for Earth wouldn't have just been labeled as a "bad idea". It would have been a mockery of any of the lore you've wrote out for the Sol Military and Marines themselves. That kind of.... asinine action is what I expect to read from some kind of Onion article. It's simply not a military action that any semi-intelligent government would even think about doing. The best of the best would be sent, while the "reserves" would hold the defense line. Governments don't put all their eggs in one basket.

You failed to mention why places wouldn't have ANY sort of defense. Saturn and Jupiter don't have any Planetary Defense? They have no police force or National Guard there? Even the Aurora has an ISD with Carbines and laser rifles. I would expect Jupiter and Saturn to carry a few BSA's. If the Odin can, they surely can.

If the Sol government was that unstable, they'd have collapsed without a pirate force somehow getting through poorly wrote "net holes" in a defense system that logically wouldn't have been totally abandoned. Earth is Humanitys homeland. It should (and theoretically would) already have enough defense around it.

Furthermore, three entire fleets booking it to save 1000 lives just *doesn't* make sense. I think you fail to realize how big of a system you've created in your own lore. We've got a..... disconnection in our lore's reality. You seem to think the fleet is so small protecting Earth that they'd bring vessels from the Oort cloud to help protect it. In reality, Earth would be gone by the time they got there, and the military isn't dumb enough to not realize that. They're also not stupid enough to retreat their own defense and implode themselves. You also seem to think it makes any sort of sense for admirals to yeet off into space after a group of people that is less than the population of a rural Alabama city. When you've wrote a lore that specifies how large something is, you have to make casualties reflect that. 1000 people ain't shit to worry about and not enough to weaken the defense of Sol even more. Those admirals have military training. They aren't some Quartermaster smuchk with a boner for being the "hero" they need but don't want.

[Scheveningen]

The diversion of the Alliance fleet to protect the homeworld is honestly not terribly different how in Halo where the Gravemind of the Flood throws an infested covenant cruiser near New Mombasa.

The end result is that due to the contamination/risk of spreading involved, a portion of a continent had to be glassed to save the rest of the planet. Like black k'ois, The Flood fuck shit up when they get planet-side. A single spore can eliminate an entire species.

This is not quite the same situation but it's not the first time in science fiction or science fantasy where military movements prioritized the homefront over the frontier worlds and outright neglected the latter due to more formal concerns about the defense of the homeworld. Certain sacrifices had to be made to ensure the risk of a Lii'dra incursion were rendered completely untenable.

It was a fluke, in the end, which was both fortunate and unfortunate.

The loss of some supplies and a space station because the Alliance got PRANKED BRO, is regrettable but not exactly unthinkable. What would you do in the situation where a Lii'dra ship is supposedly attempting to divebomb through Earth's atmosphere?

In the military, command leadership often operate on the standard of, "If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but if I'm right, you don't want me to be right because we can never let the worst case scenario happen."

I'm sure the SA looks pretty stupid right now but the Alliance holds a lot of comparisons to the Galactic Republic in Star Wars. Prior to being reformed into a totalitarian regime, it was a bureaucratic organization that was too big and too wide to really make a concentrated difference due to the people participating in membership of the Republic. Everyone has different priorities and ways of handling intergalactic policy. Administrations are huge in number and still not able to handle relatively simple issues due to the culture of bureaucracy and personal liberties being enforced.

The Alliance is more of a Roman Republic than it is any kind of democracy, to clarify further. One of the reasons Rome fell was due to the mismanagement of the leadership to handle such a massive government in tandem with the other sub-divisionary governors and prime ministers, and so on.

The Alliance lost its Pax Romana about 100 years ago in the lore timeline. They're a stagnant and vulnerable empire despite their size, and no empire is invulnerable. All of the factions have weaknesses and specific kinks to them that make their governance distinct from one another.

Edited August 22, 2018 by Guest

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

Uhhh... No. No military or government would even begin to think 40 year old plans would be good to use in a fast paced, space age such as this.

The interdiction nets and long range radar haven't been updated or moved in 40 years. You cannot cover the holes in the net, you can only move the net around to increase your chances to catch raiders. The nets were never moved around, because there was no reason or intel to say that there would be a coordinated attack on such a large scale. It was arrogance, and the silencing of those who argued for reform through the bottomless pit of bureaucracy. The Admiralty would even agree with you, but SolGov is the one that updates the plans.

 

As I stated in one of my points, having every fleet stripped from the defense boarder and run straight for Earth wouldn't have just been labeled as a "bad idea". It would have been a mockery of any of the lore you've wrote out for the Sol Military and Marines themselves. That kind of.... asinine action is what I expect to read from some kind of Onion article. It's simply not a military action that any semi-intelligent government would even think about doing. The best of the best would be sent, while the "reserves" would hold the defense line. Governments don't put all their eggs in one basket.

 

The entire planet Earth was going to be attacked by an aggressive Hivemind that, if it broke past our defenses, would have the ability to smother the entire planet in black k'ois. It was a doomsday scenario. You're talking as if this was just a calm, normal, typical invasion. The world was about to end! Everyone was desperate. This was a "we have a nuclear bomb in every major city across the US and will detonate them" levels of bad. As it says in the articles, your logic was followed by the forces of Jupiter and Mars. Only half of the fleet at Jupiter moved to defend Earth, and that is the reason the planet was able to repel the raid. The Martian Admiral did not move at all.

There is also the fact that the Alliance fleet doctrine is overwhelming firepower... When they consolidate. In a normal situation these far flung areas would be overrun regardless without support. The border forces' job is to delay an attack long enough for the calvary to arrive. In this case, the calvary could not arrive, so the border forces were overrun. In areas the calvary was stationed, they were repelled. This follows to a T the idea of Rome's Limitanei border forces, who were meant to delay incursions for long enough that Legions could arrive. The articles namedrop a Commander who died defending their post, and mention fighting in several other locations from the local defenders.

 

You failed to mention why places wouldn't have ANY sort of defense. Saturn and Jupiter don't have any Planetary Defense? They have no police force or National Guard there? Even the Aurora has an ISD with Carbines and laser rifles. I would expect Jupiter and Saturn to carry a few BSA's. If the Odin can, they surely can.

They do, and they did. The arc mentions in very article a local defense force either being overrun or repelling the raids. Not every station has a contingent of battle-ready marines on stand by, and a lot of these forces were redeployed to defend Earth from a full scale alien invasion (or so they thought).

 

If the Sol government was that unstable, they'd have collapsed without a pirate force somehow getting through poorly wrote "net holes" in a defense system that logically wouldn't have been totally abandoned. Earth is Humanitys homeland. It should (and theoretically would) already have enough defense around it.

You're right, the Alliance is definitely in some deep trouble, and its stuck in the decay. Here's some reading for the thematic elements of the Alliance:

https://www.google.com/search?q=phases+of+empire+tvtropes&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&client=firefox-b-1-ab

Hopefully we find someone to revitalize the Alliance into a new golden age, or we might see it enter the Long Night. Thematically, the Alliance is on the precipice of falling into the Long Night. I sort of wanted to not openly spoil the whole theme of this major faction, but if it's not being put across right, then I can.

 

Furthermore, three entire fleets booking it to save 1000 lives just *doesn't* make sense.

Planet Earth houses several billion people, and the capital of the Alliance orbits Earth housing another few thousand.

EDIT: You were speaking about the kidnapped people, sorry. And this is a personal moral debate, so I can't make an authoritative stance on it. The Admirals disagree with you, and that's all there is to say.

 

I think you fail to realize how big of a system you've created in your own lore. We've got a..... disconnection in our lore's reality. You seem to think the fleet is so small protecting Earth that they'd bring vessels from the Oort cloud to help protect it. In reality, Earth would be gone by the time they got there, and the military isn't dumb enough to not realize that.

Every Admiral explained why they chose to warp to earth or refuse to warp to earth, citing the travel times. You are speaking the line of the Martian Admiral who entrenched in orbit of Mars because they said exactly what you have said.

 

They're also not stupid enough to retreat their own defense and implode themselves.

It wasn't a retreat, but a redeployment. And several admirals agreed with you, and did not leave their posts or only sent enough to ensure their local area was defended.

 

You also seem to think it makes any sort of sense for admirals to yeet off into space after a group of people that is less than the population of a rural Alabama city.

Several hundred of our citizens were kidnapped and are now being sold into slavery, snatched out of our core worlds. If you don't think that's enough to go try to save them, then I don't know if there's anything I can say to convince you. The Admirals that moved to chase the pirates believe they need to protect their people/

 

When you've wrote a lore that specifies how large something is, you have to make casualties reflect that. 1000 people ain't shit to worry about and not enough to weaken the defense of Sol even more.

Human lives aren't exactly a numbers game... We did not shrug off 9/11 because in comparison to our 300 million people, a few thousand is simply nothing worth worrying about. This also goes into the previous point - we did not calmly, rationally, and methodically respond after 9/11.

 

Those admirals have military training. They aren't some Quartermaster smuchk with a boner for being the "hero" they need but don't want.

Trained military generals and admirals aren't immune from their own initiative, and they are not always ironclad in their relationship with the state.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_coups_d%27%C3%A9tat_and_coup_attempts

[Scheveningen]

Human lives aren't exactly a numbers game... We did not shrug off 9/11 because in comparison to our 300 million people, a few thousand is simply nothing worth worrying about. This also goes into the previous point - we did not calmly, rationally, and methodically respond after 9/11.

 

It sucks to have to relate to 9/11 to make a point about the current state of things to justify lore actions, but this is still an incredibly good point.

RE: Redeployments, in regards to Satin+the OP making mention of this: keep in mind not all of the admirals abandoned their posts, they just redistributed fleet power to the other systems. The fleet around Saturn just wasn't enough to defend against a raider attack that was completely unexpected. This was probably already said but yeah. It's a thing.

If you've ever played Stellaris before, you often have to make military decisions in positioning your fleets in order to prevent your most valuable systems/worlds being taken. While losing a system full of mining stations is regrettable and costly, it is no more costly than leaving your homeworld up for grabs by hostile xeno forces known for biological terrorism and species extermination.

Unless you're really good at that game, it's impossible to be near-psychic of when and how someone is going to attack your territory especially when you don't expect it. Scrambling response fleets are expensive to upkeep and so on. It's worth losing a space station to prevent Earth from getting slagged by bio-terrorism.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

I know the mention is probably squicky, but I feel it's fair in the sense of relating how the Admirals feel about the situation in terms of how it's impacting the response of everyone from this situation. What they're doing is matters of moral debate or ethic or legal debate, but arguing from ironclad authority seems strange.

Another example would be Pearl Harbor, but it might be hard to fully empathize with the emotional element following it since it's so far into the nebulous past.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

The casualties are, according to the news article:

Three dozen mining or habitation stations in the Oort cloud, with 200 civilians and workers abducted and a dozen more killed or wounded. These stations have diverse owners but the majority are Einstein Engines refineries.

Two dozen stations in the The Kuiper Belt, with 50 people being abducted by raiders and dozens more wounded or killed.

The New Pacific station in orbit of Neptune, which is still locked down from multiple breaches. Over 100 people have been abducted and 18 people have asphyxiated.

The Uranus garrison in orbit with and stationed inside the floating settlements repelled the raider attacks, but Commander Jovana Melanija was killed by gunfire defending the station.

Saturn and Jupiter were both hit, with the remnants of the 11th fleet repelling the attack on Saturn while Jupiter was raided and 22 people abducted.

The asteroid belt saw 43 people abducted in coordinated raids, and there are reports of continued fighting within some Einstein Engines habitats.

[Azande]

hard to believe such a large and powerful raider fleet could exist even remotely close to Sol space without the universe's resident superpowers KNOWING it is there.

[Azande]

[mention]Senpai Jackboot[/mention] Where were NanoTrasen and Hephaestus fairly large and powerful (compared to raiders, which they're specifically there to stop) security fleets? Did neither company see defending their Sol investments worth it?

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

hard to believe such a large and powerful raider fleet could exist even remotely close to Sol space without the universe's resident superpowers KNOWING it is there.

 

Deep space is a dark ocean. Every star system is surrounded by pirates and raiders. We are islands in a dangerous ocean. But you could be right. What got so many together?

And they did try to defend. Local security was lumped into local security for brevity.

Corporate stations were also hit and many overwhelmed. Megacorps have large fleets but every station does not have 40 troopers in them.