A suitable force?

[JMISBEST]

I plan in my campaign to have The Pcs throw a party for all their followers to celebrate the unofficial rebirth of Drinax and have a traitor warn The Imperium

The Players entire force of 33 ships that range from custom build armed and armoured 100 ton Scoutships to A Custom Build 2,600 ton version of The 2,000 ton Escort Carrier that all have between 5 and 70 crew each and a total of 705 crew, all 33 ships and all 705 crew of which will all be at the party and celebrating at The Pcs expense

What I want to know is what you'd suggest would be a suitable number, sizes and types of ships for The Imperium or Aslan that no later then within 80 seconds of The Attackers coming within Sensor Range the players will realize that defeat for their Pcs is guaranteed but provided The Pcs think, act and get their ships into space and to the minimum safe range to jump fast enough they can easily escape and hopefully do so with at their Flagship and at least 11 of their 32 other ships escaping and at least 10 of the other 21 ships captured and both the ships and their onboard personnel in good enough condition to be worth rescuing, if The Pcs want to that is?

 

[M J Dougherty]

Some players will not recognise the possibility of defeat even if the hosts of heaven descend among them and begin administering atomic wedgies.

It is simply not possible to answer this question without knowing your player group. And possibly not even then.

 

[M J Dougherty]

Also, what happens if it takes them 82.1 seconds to realise they're doomed? Is the 80 second thing significant?

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

The Imperium would send a CRURON - 4 100,000 tons ships with about 2 dozen smaller ships, none less than 5000 tons.

When they show up with a "small" force where the smallest ship is twice the size of the largest ship in Drinax's fleet, THE MESSAGE will have been sent.

 

[Rikki Tikki Traveller]

From what i see of your campaign ideas, the Players seem to think they have a huge fleet of ships - and they do, for where they are.

THe Imperium could send a dozen Megaton ships to the region and not have to even break into the stategic reserves in Deneb Sector. The Players are WAY out of their league of they think they can stop the Imperium. Remind them of that.

They are a big fish in a small pond - put them in the ocean and they should quickly realize that there are Sharks and Whales that would barely notice them as the ate them...

The key to the Drinax campaign is to do as much as you can WITHOUT drawing the attention of the Imperium. The Imperium could crush this fleet easily, while still fighting the Fifth Frontier War with the Zhodani.

The players control what a dozen backwater planets? The Imperium has 11,000 worlds with THOUSANDS of worlds at TL15, POP 9 or A - The output of ONE of those planets is more than the entire Drinax Empire.

Hope that helps.

 

[Pyromancer]

The Imperium would send a CRURON - 4 100,000 tons ships with about 2 dozen smaller ships, none less than 5000 tons.

When they show up with a "small" force where the smallest ship is twice the size of the largest ship in Drinax's fleet, THE MESSAGE will have been sent.

The size of the force the Imperium sends will depend more on organizational demands than on the demands for firepower. There's this old myth that during WW2, it "took five Shermans to kill a Tiger". That came up because "five Shermans" is the smallest unit size Shermans operated on. Even if two Shermans would be enough, you don't send two Shermans, you send five, because the way they are organized, it doesn't make sense to send less.

So, the question is, on an organizational level, what is the smallest force the Imperium can send on a solo mission a few subsectors away? And that can't be much smaller than a squadron.

 

[phavoc]

A pair of cruisers (heavy or light) with a squadron on tin cans would wipe out the Drinax fleet.

And if the PC's are throwing a party, they and their hungover and drynk crews will need a hell of a lot more time than 80 seconds to reapond.

I'm with MJD, why is 70 seconds so important? It's not like the invaders could sneak up on the planet by jumping into orbit. They would be spotted more than 80 seconds out unless all the sensor operators were at the customized party event (cause no off the shelf party is good enough!)

 

[JMISBEST]

This isn't A Drinax Party, Drinax Fleet or even near Drinax and as far as the characters know not even Oleb knows of it for definite. They are just using Drinax's unofficial rebirth as a excuse to hold a week long party in the hope of increasing their Crews Morale DM from +2 to at least +4 and hopefully at least +5

 

[M J Dougherty]

None of which affects the points I made.

 

[Condottiere]

Out of curiosity, I looked up Drinax on the map.

An Azhanti could be there in two jumps.

It's possible that any Imperium response would be restrained, in order not to stir up the Aslans.