09-05-2018, 09:59 PM | #81 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Meifumado
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Re: The Stars Our Destination
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09-05-2018, 10:40 PM | #82 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: The Stars Our Destination
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09-05-2018, 11:33 PM | #83 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Meifumado
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Re: The Stars Our Destination
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I was imagining warp drives before that refuelled after every short hop, but instead let's say they're jump drives that only link to nearby solar mass gravitational wells. Fuel tanks can provide fuel for a few hops, but then need a gas giant or fuel depot. When an expeditionary force arrives, you meet it with light defenses, either delaying for a larger reinforcement force to arrive (from the large base a few hops away), or just harrying before falling back to the next defensive position. Would that meet the necessary criteria?
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09-06-2018, 12:10 AM | #84 | |
Join Date: Dec 2007
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Re: The Stars Our Destination
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So yeah, you put outposts in high traffic routes that can provide repair and refueling services for passing ships that have their tigers go flat. Possibly with fleet units attached for security and communication. |
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09-06-2018, 01:24 AM | #85 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: The Stars Our Destination
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You'd need to provide a reason that it's better to fight a multi-stellar delaying action rather than a single decisive battle.
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09-06-2018, 01:37 AM | #86 | |
Join Date: Dec 2006
Location: Meifumado
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Re: The Stars Our Destination
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ETA: Sorry, that's what you meant by border pickets. Maybe..... there's also a superjump drive which can jump deep into enemy territory, but is wildly inaccurate. Attackers can blunder somewhere into behind the lines, but then use the smaller jumps to hone in on a target system.
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09-06-2018, 02:26 AM | #87 | |
Join Date: Jul 2008
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Re: The Stars Our Destination
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Skipping over the border just means that you have to picket all of your space instead of the perimeter. Or, quite possibly, that you have to abandon the idea of controlling a large volume of space rather than a small perimeter around each key system because the cost of picketing is unsupportable.
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I don't know any 3e, so there is no chance that I am talking about 3e rules by accident. |
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09-06-2018, 05:19 AM | #88 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: The Stars Our Destination
The problem with not maintaining bases in uninhabited systems is that an enemy can find out the patrol schedule and build around it. If a system is visited once a month, then an enemy force has a month to set up a defensive position, which is more than enough time at TL10. When your patrol next came back, it would find an enemy military base in 'friendly' territory, with more than adequate defenses, capable of providing support to any enemy FTL units that wanted to harass your shipping.
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09-06-2018, 06:24 AM | #89 |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: The Stars Our Destination
If shipping is easily harassed from behind enemy lines, then there's no way for the enemy to support their outpost, because they have no way to stop the first empire's FTL ships doing exactly the same thing, but from a better position. The proper owner just cuts off the outpost's supplies and goes on about their business.
It would certainly happen, so long as the raiding outpost were cheap enough that you'd get a net return on the investment in your harassment, and more effective than just launching the commerce raiders from back in your own space. But it's not a fatal flaw in the defense or an insightful attacker "I WIN" button, any more than WW II was poorly fought because neither side had soldiers linking hands from coast to coast, or that the British lost control of the seas in the Napoleonic wars because they only blockaded ports, not garrisoning every hundred nautical mile square portion of the Atlantic with a floating base and fleet for "defense in depth". (Or "of depth", in this case...) You can't physically occupy all space on a single planet, much less a chunk of galaxy. So you observe (with patrols if that's the only way tech lets you get eyeballs on the space) and respond. |
09-06-2018, 06:42 AM | #90 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Wellington, NZ
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Re: The Stars Our Destination
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For defence in depth like this to work, the FTL drive has to be limited in some way so that the invader must advance through these systems, rather than just flying on past them, or such that FTL ships can be detected and intercepted from a system. At this point we have a good reason for most systems to be occupied, rather than ignored if there's nothing interesting in them - they are stepping stones on the way to somewhere else.
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