Bring back Earth

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

During which time they could have launched another dozen KKVs.

Firing KKVs in response to millions of civillian deaths, while they are unaware of the coup is an acceptable level of escalation, especially when Earth still holds the lion's share of the military, making fleet action unviable at best, and idiotic at worst.

 

KKV's are, for all intents and purposes, nuclear weapons. The only difference is fallout - they still vaporize cities. The level of death and destruction is unfathomable - New York City gone in a blink of an eye. With the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the entire country of Japan still feels echoes of cultural and social PTSD. Nuclear weapons are taboo, and even nuclear power is met with extreme distrust.

I feel that if KKV's exterminated all of these cities and all of these people, we'd need to have current-time hatred of such weapons or the factions that "pressed the button" completely ostracized and a pariah of the galactic community.

[TishinaStalker]

And I really don't see the "edginess" in international conflict.

 

With all due respect, Delta, you can't possibly tell me that you don't see the "edginess" in a species essentially destroying its /home planet/. Yes, essentially destroying because that timeline says that the KKVs fired at Earth literally obscured Earth's surface in smoke and global firestorms. That sounds to me like everyone that ever lived on Earth is dead as a door and marked as 'extra crispy' on the KFC menu. A trade dispute doesn't need to end the way it did. Those are solved through sanctions and other such actions like making more strict laws. How did it end instead? It ended in ash, blood, and silence. Soft rains did not come.

Regardless, FFrances' question is more important on how this engages the players. If anything, the destruction of Earth isn't very user friendly. Spend a while making a character from Earth, deciding "Meh, I'm going to make them from X country. I think that'll be neat", but then after you say that IC'ly, everybody immediately starts ridiculing you IC'ly because Earth is basically nothing but ash. If Americans are still all like "Never forget" every single September because a building was destroy, and thus ending 2,900+ lives, then why aren't the Humans showing even a single shred of remorse or anger at the fact that Humans themselves destroyed Earth, and put an end to billions upon billions of Human lives? I'll tell you why. Not a single Human cares. No one cares because no one wants to relate with the feeling of the Earth being destroyed. Why? Because we're still living on it. If anything, the destruction of Earth has clearly shown that it has done nothing to engage the players in more interesting RP. This means that if anything, bringing back Earth would create more interesting RP, and give players a reason to actually be from Earth. Otherwise? Otherwise, Earth is that one shithole planet that everyone goes to, to have an edgy character that's from badlands.

[Gollee]

A trade dispute doesn't need to end the way it did. Those are solved through sanctions and other such actions like making more strict laws. How did it end instead? It ended in ash, blood, and silence. Soft rains did not come.

 

Tishina, I feel like you are not actually processing what we are telling you.

 

During which time they could have launched another dozen KKVs.

Firing KKVs in response to millions of civillian deaths, while they are unaware of the coup is an acceptable level of escalation, especially when Earth still holds the lion's share of the military, making fleet action unviable at best, and idiotic at worst.

 

They were not fired due to a trade dispute, they were fired in response to accidental firing by Earth, resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths. The colonies did not know that the firings were accidental, all they were aware of was Earth hitting them with the most destructive weapons in the human arsenal, without any escalation of force. They fired to, in their eyes, prevent genocide on themselves; not because of a trade dispute.

[Guest]

If perhaps we didn't have such a shitty motive for Earth being KKV'd to near nonexistence, and had some additional background information on the EarthGov and SolGov tensions during the time, perhaps taking by example from the Second Cold War involving the Chinese and the USA in the Fallout universe leading up to the Great War, it wouldn't feel so unnecessarily edgy.

[TishinaStalker]

A trade dispute doesn't need to end the way it did. Those are solved through sanctions and other such actions like making more strict laws. How did it end instead? It ended in ash, blood, and silence. Soft rains did not come.

 

Tishina, I feel like you are not actually processing what we are telling you.

 

During which time they could have launched another dozen KKVs.

Firing KKVs in response to millions of civillian deaths, while they are unaware of the coup is an acceptable level of escalation, especially when Earth still holds the lion's share of the military, making fleet action unviable at best, and idiotic at worst.

 

They were not fired due to a trade dispute, they were fired in response to accidental firing by Earth, resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths. The colonies did not know that the firings were accidental, all they were aware of was Earth hitting them with the most destructive weapons in the human arsenal, without any escalation of force. They fired to, in their eyes, prevent genocide on themselves; not because of a trade dispute.

 

Gollee, how can you not see that a trade dispute (which is pretty much what this thread has made out the internal conflict to be because Earth Gov was screwing other people's economies), that could've been handled in a non-violent manner, ended in bloody conflict, and that bloody conflicted (which could've been avoided) ended in the death of billions upon billions of Humans?

[Guest]

Miscommunication is what caused Vietnam and Afghanistan, Tish. It can happen.

[Susan]

Except we didn't nuke the shit out of either place.

How the fuck do you 'accidentally' launch WMDs of that magnitude, anyway? Humans are stupid, but are we really that stupid?

[Gollee]

They were not fired due to a trade dispute, they were fired in response to accidental firing by Earth, resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths. The colonies did not know that the firings were accidental, all they were aware of was Earth hitting them with the most destructive weapons in the human arsenal, without any escalation of force. They fired to, in their eyes, prevent genocide on themselves; not because of a trade dispute.

 

Read what I am writing, the KKVs being fired were not to do with the trade dispute, though the reason they were even aimed at each other was due to a civil war, to do with increased autonomy.

As stated, in this direct quote from the timeline.

2314: Several of the largest inner colonies petition the Earth-dominated Alliance government for increased autonomy and decreased trade restrictions. Earth gives only token concessions to these colonies, causing widespread unrest which many colonial authorities refuse to quell. Several colonies refuse to enforce trade restrictions, causing Earth to declare martial law in these systems and send Sol Alliance fleets to restore order. Many of these fleets mutiny and refuse to follow orders. Within a month, the Alliance military is split along Earth and Inner-Colony lines.

A coalition of inner colonies form the Provisonal Government of the Alliance of Solarian Colonies (PGASC), which declares itself the legitimate government of the Sol Alliance. This event marks the beginning of the Great War.

Earth pop: 14.5 billion. Total pop: 26 billion.

2315: Following an initial period of confused fighting, the Earth forces withdraw to Sol and several nearby minor star systems, threatening to unleash Kinetic Kill Vehicles (KKV's) should PGASC forces enter the Sol System. The various colonial navies rush to manufacture their own KKV's. A cold war of sorts begins. Cut off from outside trade, the Sol system's economy begins to implode.

Although the majority of the war's fighting takes place in the inner systems, hostilities break out between the PGASC and many of the independent powers. With the majority of the PGASC forces focused on fighting earth, dozens of systems declare independence. Fully half of Alliance space is lost to independent powers and revolutionaries.

2316: Facing immediate collapse, the civilian governments of Earth attempt to negotiate a surrender with the Colonial forces. A number of Earth military commanders stage a coup, arresting prominent political officials and declaring martial law. Roughly a third of the Earth fleet remains loyal to the civilian government and mutinies. The occupied Alliance capital is destroyed in the resulting crossfire. In the confusion, some Earth KKVs fire at their targets. Entire Inner Colony cities and orbital installations are annihilated as a result of the KKVs, causing hundreds of millions of deaths. In retaliation, Colonial forces launch KKV's at targets throughout the Sol system, mostly on Earth. The entirety of Earth’s orbital infrastructure is destroyed due to bombardment and the resulting kessler syndrome. The new orbital debris ring is visible to the naked eye, and smoke clouds from the global firestorms obscure the planet’s surface for months.

This event eventually becomes known as the Holocaust of 2316.

@Susan: If, during the cold war, either Russia or America had had a military coup, the chance of confusion amongst the ranks, or among politicians thinking it was supported by the other side, is very high, which could lead to a weapon being fired; and if Russia nuked America, or vice versa, even by accident, there would be a guaranteed counter response; this is what happened here.

[Erik Tiber]

Why does there need to be genocide like this at all? Why would a species that is trying to become a super power in known space decide to billions of its people killed? There is a term for this, and that is conflict of interest. If anything, genocide by bombing Earth's orbit, the use of KKVs to kill swaths of its /own/ population, etc. just makes Earth an incredibly edgy and grimdark planet as has been stated on the thread so far.

That doesn't answer my question on why there needs to be genocide between Humans. What kind of coup was this? What were they rebelling against? This doesn't seem to make sense. The wiki page doesn't even give a brief couple of sentence long explanation on /why/ that civil war happened.

Okay, so there's escalating tensions, colony worlds decide to disobey Alliance law, the Alliance sends ships to enforce these particular laws, many of these ships mutiny and side with the colonies. Then ensues civil war between inner colonies and Sol. Sol gets its ass kicked and withdraws to sol, uses the threat of RKKV's to force a stalemate, MAD ensues.

Sol is losing, civilian leadership wants to surrender. Military leaders enact a coup to prevent this. Much of Earth military mutinies and opposes the coup. In the resulting fighting, capital is destroyed, this is mistaken for a colonial KKV attack, some of the KKV's are launched, Colonies retaliates.

TL;DR Civil war between Earth and colonies following tensions, Sol starts losing, Sol civgov want to surrender, military coups to prevent this, in the resultingn confusion KKV's get launched and colonies retaliate.

Reason for bombardment of orbit: Destruction of military installations in Earth orbit as well as orbital infrastructure. This inevitably results in kesseler syndrome (This is a pretty basic danger for space infrastructure, bear with me). As stuff in orbit gets destroyed, their wreckage is basically an expanding cloud of debris. This debris hits other space installations, wrecking them and turning /them/ into expanding clouds of debris as well. This debris expands more and more, wrecking more and more, resulting in more debris, until several days/about a week and change later, all orbital infrastructure being destroyed. Orbit is now dangerous to anything because any ships or stations will get rekt by debris. You'd need to make a hugeass laser array to get that stuff down and it would take quite a while.

Bombarding orbit is sorta excusable and if you want to do crippling damage then destroying everything in orbit is unavoidable. Bombarding the surface on the other hand is just a silly billy thing to do.

I mean what was the lore team trying to accomplish by making Humans destroy Earth? It certainly (at least in my eyes) doesn't seem very interesting, and all it does is to make Humanity's history more edgy and grimdark. I apologize for being blunt, but that whole explanation you just gave seems like it was just a dumb trade dispute that could've easily been solved through diplomatic action, instead of it ending with Humans deciding that they're going to blow up their /home planet/.

I mean what was the lore team trying to accomplish by making Humans destroy Earth? It certainly (at least in my eyes) doesn't seem very interesting, and all it does is to make Humanity's history more edgy and grimdark. I apologize for being blunt, but that whole explanation you just gave seems like it was just a dumb trade dispute that could've easily been solved through diplomatic action, instead of it ending with Humans deciding that they're going to blow up their /home planet/.

Tishina, Ffrances, essentially this was me attempting to think up a more plausible explanation for why exactly Earth was destroyed. I did not know why it needed to be destroyed. Ben stated that it was an established part of many people's backstories, thus we needed to keep it. I personally was against this, but as Ben has final say and is the loremaster whereas I am only a lore member, I was unable to change this.

 

What I would like to know, is what exactly this specific scenario brings that's engaging for the players. Because I fail to see it; you have some faraway colonial dispute that's as old as history, and people already fail hard enough to care about real history, so you can't expect them to care about ancient history of a fictional storyline that's not really relevant to the storyline itself anymore (other than as an exposition device).

And if it does nothing good, then it should be removed. One of your tenets should be to keep things as simple and easy to understand as possible - complex parts of the lore that serve no purpose really need to be cut, because lore as it is now is a monster nobody can actually understand.

 

I'd just like to spell out my position here, and how much I like different possibilities. Currently, we sort of have this so that the colony systems are important in comparison to Earth.

I'd personally be fine with this getting settled with a more minor war. I'd also be fine with only orbit being bombarded and modern day earth still being super important. If this does get settled diplomatically then I'd be fine with that too.

[Guest Marlon Phoenix]

They were not fired due to a trade dispute, they were fired in response to accidental firing by Earth, resulting in hundreds of millions of deaths. The colonies did not know that the firings were accidental, all they were aware of was Earth hitting them with the most destructive weapons in the human arsenal, without any escalation of force. They fired to, in their eyes, prevent genocide on themselves; not because of a trade dispute.

 

Read what I am writing, the KKVs being fired were not to do with the trade dispute, though the reason they were even aimed at each other was due to a civil war, to do with increased autonomy.

As stated, in this direct quote from the timeline.

2314: Several of the largest inner colonies petition the Earth-dominated Alliance government for increased autonomy and decreased trade restrictions. Earth gives only token concessions to these colonies, causing widespread unrest which many colonial authorities refuse to quell. Several colonies refuse to enforce trade restrictions, causing Earth to declare martial law in these systems and send Sol Alliance fleets to restore order. Many of these fleets mutiny and refuse to follow orders. Within a month, the Alliance military is split along Earth and Inner-Colony lines.

A coalition of inner colonies form the Provisonal Government of the Alliance of Solarian Colonies (PGASC), which declares itself the legitimate government of the Sol Alliance. This event marks the beginning of the Great War.

Earth pop: 14.5 billion. Total pop: 26 billion.

2315: Following an initial period of confused fighting, the Earth forces withdraw to Sol and several nearby minor star systems, threatening to unleash Kinetic Kill Vehicles (KKV's) should PGASC forces enter the Sol System. The various colonial navies rush to manufacture their own KKV's. A cold war of sorts begins. Cut off from outside trade, the Sol system's economy begins to implode.

Although the majority of the war's fighting takes place in the inner systems, hostilities break out between the PGASC and many of the independent powers. With the majority of the PGASC forces focused on fighting earth, dozens of systems declare independence. Fully half of Alliance space is lost to independent powers and revolutionaries.

2316: Facing immediate collapse, the civilian governments of Earth attempt to negotiate a surrender with the Colonial forces. A number of Earth military commanders stage a coup, arresting prominent political officials and declaring martial law. Roughly a third of the Earth fleet remains loyal to the civilian government and mutinies. The occupied Alliance capital is destroyed in the resulting crossfire. In the confusion, some Earth KKVs fire at their targets. Entire Inner Colony cities and orbital installations are annihilated as a result of the KKVs, causing hundreds of millions of deaths. In retaliation, Colonial forces launch KKV's at targets throughout the Sol system, mostly on Earth. The entirety of Earth’s orbital infrastructure is destroyed due to bombardment and the resulting kessler syndrome. The new orbital debris ring is visible to the naked eye, and smoke clouds from the global firestorms obscure the planet’s surface for months.

This event eventually becomes known as the Holocaust of 2316.

@Susan: If, during the cold war, either Russia or America had had a military coup, the chance of confusion amongst the ranks, or among politicians thinking it was supported by the other side, is very high, which could lead to a weapon being fired; and if Russia nuked America, or vice versa, even by accident, there would be a guaranteed counter response; this is what happened here.

 

A failed coup is what ended the Soviet Union, and for a brief time the Soviets thought that the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan was a coup, due to Alexander "I am in control here" Haig, and a confusing series of events involving soviet submarines in the Atlantic and an unclear succession due to people immediately pushing for a transfer of presidential powers while Reagan was still on the surgery table.

Considering that the world is not currently recovering from a cataclysmic nuclear exchange, I can say that the number of "coups to nuclear war" events is rather low.

Perhaps I just personally feel strongly about this because of my cathartic fascination with the Cold War and its ramifications (both real and hypothesized), but weapons of mass destruction are never fired on accident.

Every single close call in the Cold War that revolved around accidents was a malfunction in detection equipment. There was one incident where a Soviet early warning station got an alert that we launched a nuke, thought it was fake and reset the systems, got the same alert, then tried to fix it again only to get the same alert, and the base commander made the decision to not blow the horn to his superiors because he (thankfully) assumed that if we were to nuke his country, it wouldn't be just a single ICBM. And it wasn't - it turned out to be a Norwegian satellite or whatever. Fuckin' vikings.

[Erik Tiber]

Anyway, I perosnally like the way the coup worked and happened and all that, and apparently at least one other player likes it, juts thought it was relevant.

I do know that the overall lore should not be convoluted though. I just like situations of miscommunication and it was fun to think about.

 

A failed coup is what ended the Soviet Union, and for a brief time the Soviets thought that the attempted assassination of Ronald Reagan was a coup, due to Alexander "I am in control here" Haig, and a confusing series of events involving soviet submarines in the Atlantic and an unclear succession due to people immediately pushing for a transfer of presidential powers while Reagan was still on the surgery table.

Considering that the world is not currently recovering from a cataclysmic nuclear exchange, I can say that the number of "coups to nuclear war" events is rather low.

Perhaps I just personally feel strongly about this because of my cathartic fascination with the Cold War and its ramifications (both real and hypothesized), but weapons of mass destruction are never fired on accident.

Every single close call in the Cold War that revolved around accidents was a malfunction in detection equipment. There was one incident where a Soviet early warning station got an alert that we launched a nuke, thought it was fake and reset the systems, got the same alert, then tried to fix it again only to get the same alert, and the base commander made the decision to not blow the horn to his superiors because he (thankfully) assumed that if we were to nuke his country, it wouldn't be just a single ICBM. And it wasn't - it turned out to be a Norwegian satellite or whatever. Fuckin' vikings.

Well this is certainly something to consider with respect to these events. Sorry, don't have time for more in-depth response ATM but I will likely later!

[Guest]

If you have an idea of how we can "fix this shit" and perhaps give a valid reason as to why Earth was borked for 138 years, supervirus being one good instance, besides "Accidental nooks happened, oops!", feel free to suggest them to the lore team.

Granted, now that you've all given some insight on how actually ridiculous it is, it's probably better we change it to something believable. "Accidentally launching a WMD that causes the planet to suffer from consistent and catastrophic damage that spreads like cancer over a short period of time for no raisin", isn't really a great way to provoke thoughtful discussion about the lore and backstory for the Alliance.

[Frances]

STOP.

You guys are having an argument over fluff. Which was not the point of this. We're speaking of whether nuking earth is a good design choice or not, as far as player engagement.

Let's get back on topic.

[TishinaStalker]

I tried to steer the discussion back to FFrances' question. Lets try that again.

 

What I would like to know, is what exactly this specific scenario brings that's engaging for the players.

 

^FFrances' question, which was only answered with "I don't know."

 

Regardless, FFrances' question is more important on how this engages the players. If anything, the destruction of Earth isn't very user friendly. Spend a while making a character from Earth, deciding "Meh, I'm going to make them from X country. I think that'll be neat", but then after you say that IC'ly, everybody immediately starts ridiculing you IC'ly because Earth is basically nothing but ash. If Americans are still all like "Never forget" every single September because a building was destroy, and thus ending 2,900+ lives, then why aren't the Humans showing even a single shred of remorse or anger at the fact that Humans themselves destroyed Earth, and put an end to billions upon billions of Human lives? I'll tell you why. Not a single Human cares. No one cares because no one wants to relate with the feeling of the Earth being destroyed. Why? Because we're still living on it. If anything, the destruction of Earth has clearly shown that it has done nothing to engage the players in more interesting RP. This means that if anything, bringing back Earth would create more interesting RP, and give players a reason to actually be from Earth. Otherwise? Otherwise, Earth is that one shithole planet that everyone goes to, to have an edgy character that's from badlands.

 

^ A non-lore dev member's reason for why it's not engaging, and what the current Earth lore causes, but should still be responded to by someone that can answer: "What I would like to know, is what exactly this specific scenario brings that's engaging for the players." It seems to me like Gollee knows that Tablespoon knows the answer. Could we please get Tablespoon here if that's the case? Then we'll be able to get somewhere.

[Guest]

STOP.

You guys are having an argument over fluff. Which was not the point of this. We're speaking of whether nuking earth is a good design choice or not, as far as player engagement.

Let's get back on topic.

 

This looks like a yes or no question.

So my answer is no.

[Gollee]

STOP.

You guys are having an argument over fluff. Which was not the point of this. We're speaking of whether nuking earth is a good design choice or not, as far as player engagement.

Let's get back on topic.

 

This looks like a yes or no question.

So my answer is no.

 

Agreed.

[Erik Tiber]

STOP.

You guys are having an argument over fluff. Which was not the point of this. We're speaking of whether nuking earth is a good design choice or not, as far as player engagement.

Let's get back on topic.

I'd agree with the others and say no.