Invasion Thoughts, Not Errata

ottarrus

Emperor Mongoose
I'm on my second read-through and a couple of thoughts strike my mind...

1. Manchurian Forces at Earth/Sol, pg 8. How did the Manchurians go from fielding overly large frigates with design problems [Tunghu class, etc.] and the Empress not in complete control of the country's military or territory to being able to field a battleship??? If the Throne of Heaven can't even control their own industrial production, how the Hell are they able to construct a 'flagship' project like this [pun intended]?

I'll no doubt have other thoughts and questions. Feel free to add your own.
 
I'm on my second read-through and a couple of thoughts strike my mind...

1. Manchurian Forces at Earth/Sol, pg 8. How did the Manchurians go from fielding overly large frigates with design problems [Tunghu class, etc.] and the Empress not in complete control of the country's military or territory to being able to field a battleship??? If the Throne of Heaven can't even control their own industrial production, how the Hell are they able to construct a 'flagship' project like this [pun intended]?

I'll no doubt have other thoughts and questions. Feel free to add your own.

Everyone gets to play. Economics etc. matter for naught. Let us remember that Manchuria could not stop a single French cruiser rampaging around just over a decade ago.

To be clear, as written in the core material the entire idea of "battleships" is new, and they aren't battleships as we'd think about them. The entire concept was pioneered by the French as a really big ship capable of prolonged independent deployments or acting as the core of a fleet. They are "battlecruisers" as we'd think of them. The smaller Bismarck class "battlecruiser" is actually a battleship, but lacks the armour. Fighters aside, a Suffren outruns and outguns a Bismarck by a large margin.

The battleship itself is an extension of the "big ship" cruisers* the French started fielding 20 years ago. In French I translated the concept as la grande frégate.

Battleships are not additional to cruiser or destroyers. Battleships are what replaced cruisers, and even cruisers are a concept less than 25 years old. There is a sudden sustained increase

The French had a bunch of battleships. They'd built at least 5 in the last decade (because fleet deployments to Tirane and elsewhere were not covered) and commissioned the Napoleon in late 2301. Britain had at least two (probably three, with the third at Tirane) and at least one "battlecruiser." Germany had one battleship (Bayern, probably under construction at the time of the revolution), and had completed two smaller Bismarck class "battlecruisers" (Bismarck and Guderain) completed in 2298 and 2301 respectively.

The American "battleship" Columbia is closer to Bismarck. The canon Columbia was weakly armed and armoured, but had a large fighter complement (9 FS-17A). Two more, Hornet and Intrepid, are being built. These replace Kennedys in the building scheme.

The Kennedy class "cruisers" and Hamburg class "cruisers" are clearly something different to a Suffren, both being less than half the size of a Suffren. They are "pocket cruisers, " the size of a French frigate like the Ypres. The Konstantin is not an old ship, but a modern, fusion driven ship.
 
The creation of a pseudo-racial caste system of spacers-planet dwellers-goons is contrary to established canon.

The Kafer stress response makes them more permanently intelligent with every exposure (i.e in the Vakach* or other combat), and per their quasi-religious beliefs (Ch *kaar Gurrruthr, the "Statement of Fact") laid down by Striker-of-Stars. A stupid Kafer will keep being put through the Vakach* until they smarten up enough to win, or they die and become "food or fertiliser."

By the time of the Invasion proper, the Kafers had developed pharmaceutics to trigger the smart state, but apparently only used them for starship crews (Challenge 33, the canonical "Lone Wolf" article detailing a Kafer Alpha raiding the French Arm in February-March 2301).

It is canonically stated that carapace colouration etc. has no impact on a Kafer's social status etc.

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The creation of a pseudo-racial caste system of spacers-planet dwellers-goons is contrary to established canon.

The Kafer stress response makes them more permanently intelligent with every exposure (i.e in the Vakach* or other combat), and per their quasi-religious beliefs (Ch *kaar Gurrruthr, the "Statement of Fact") laid down by Striker-of-Stars. A stupid Kafer will keep being put through the Vakach* until they smarten up enough to win, or they die and become "food or fertiliser."

By the time of the Invasion proper, the Kafers had developed pharmaceutics to trigger the smart state, but apparently only used them for starship crews (Challenge 33, the canonical "Lone Wolf" article detailing a Kafer Alpha raiding the French Arm in February-March 2301).

It is canonically stated that carapace colouration etc. has no impact on a Kafer's social status etc.

View attachment 5465

I agree that coloration and other ephemera are not used as a caste system, but Kafer have always had a sort-of meritocracy of how smart one is and this does form what is in effect a caste system.
It's a given that in Kafer society age equals exposure to combat and the more combat a Kafer experiences the more opportunity they'll have to retain more of the awareness they experience. So a rough caste system has shaken out based on how smart the Kafer's native baseline intelligence it has, how much combat they've seen, and how much intelligence they've gain from that combat.
'Goons' are the dummies of Kafer society. They're the ones who weren't that smart to begin with and didn't learn a whole lot in life. They're good assault troops [ALL Kafer are 'good assault troops'] but lack the self awareness needed for leadership or technical roles.
 
There is a hierarchy, but it's more like military rank based on intelligence. There is a clear division into two major groupings:

Gnich*luchk'! - translates as "oversuzerain." The current "king."
Gnich*luchk’!ah - translates as "suzerains of destiny". Senior government figures, such as planetary governors. There are currently nine, including the Oversuzerain.
Gnich*ah - translates as "suzerains". Senior officers. Mayors of cities etc.
Gnich* - translates as "planners." Junior officers.
Snipers (no Kafer word given I can remember). Permanently smart Kafers not in command but who rather serve to protect the stupider Kafers. Probably just a rank of Gnich* since that encompasses all the permanently smart.
---
Chok’aav - translates as "veterans," or probablly "long survived." Sergeants.
Chok’av - no translation given. Corporals.
Chok’ah - translates as "survivor." Likely a private or general citizen level.

Chok' is the Gah (the Kafer language) word for survive. Ah on the end of a word is the possessive (and maybe a dimunitive like je in het Nederlands), and so Chok'ah is literally "surviving one" or "survivor."

The difference between a Chok' and a Gnich* is permanent awareness. A Gnich* no longer enters Vv'eh (literally "night," the stupid state). They never gave us a word for snipers, but they are also permanently smart. A formed Kafer warband consists of a main body controlled by a Gnich* via his Chok'aav's. They are warned of threats by the snipers to give them time to wake up the warband. On Aurore it was likely that a lot of units lost their snipers and Gnich*'s, causing them to stumble around. Thus they appeared stupider than they would normally be.

Kafers are forced to go through the Vakach*, which only stops when a Kafer "wakes up." The Kafers have the belief in Juurrrk, the killing of those too stupid to function, and if a Kafer during Vakach* doesn't wake up it is beaten to death. A Kafer who can wake up is a Chok’ah. One who can't is "food or fertiliser."
 
One final thought on the Morale statistic...
Invasion Pt. 1 pg 11: " MRL checks should not be used in place of good roleplaying but can be a useful tool for a Referee whose Travellers insist on
undertaking unrealistic actions."
Which I think pretty much solves the issue of the character that did one term in Army Support and the rest of his time as a Merchant trying to get all 'Jason Bourne' with it...
 
One final thought on the Morale statistic...
Invasion Pt. 1 pg 11: " MRL checks should not be used in place of good roleplaying but can be a useful tool for a Referee whose Travellers insist on
undertaking unrealistic actions."
Which I think pretty much solves the issue of the character that did one term in Army Support and the rest of his time as a Merchant trying to get all 'Jason Bourne' with it...
Define heroes, "Travellers who insist on undertaking unrealistic actions."
 
The fighting at Tithonus in 2298 is messed up. Further, the astrography is messed up, and in the AEH etc.

Tithonus casts an 87 light-second STL zone. At warp-1, it takes about 6 h from the shelf to Aurore, or about 4 h for a canonical Kafer BB. The dead zone (i.e. what Colin calls "the Wall") of Tithonus is 827 Mm (million meters) in radius, and Aurore orbits at 927 Mm from Tithonus. It is outside Tithonus' dead zone by a margin of about 100,000 km.

Indeed, if Aurore was inside the dead zone, it could not reasonably be settled as starships could not reasonably reach it.

Aurore casts its' own dead zone 12,419 km in radius. The planet is 9,450 km in diameter and so the planets dead zone is ca. 7,700 km in altitude above the surface of the planet.

On page 9:

"The first wave of alien starships was seemingly defeated just beyond the Wall. As the human forces closed, more alien ships dropped out of FTL speeds to reinforce the invaders. Human forces had to withdraw towards Aurore and were forced to rely on their reaction drives below
the Wall. Military forces on Aurore mobilised regular troops, militia and law enforcement to defend the colony in case the aliens defeated the fleet."

This is a nonsensical statement. The astrography is, not the scale:

Tithonus schematic.png

I think it's clear here that Colin doesn't understand the astrography of Tithonus and Aurore. A warp 1.8 starship "dropping out of FTL" (i.e. crossing the FTL shelf) is still 4 hours travel from Aurore. He's written like he thinks like it's a Traveller jumpship emerging 100 diameters from a planet.

Further, the reason it is called the "dead zone" (in prime canon) is that stutterwarp drives do not function properly, and starships cannot maneouvre, use screens or launch missiles and fighters. Since they are not warping, they are trivial to hit. However, they are fully in range of all weapons of ships outside the dead zone.

The entire point of combat in 2300AD was to knock your enemy out of warp. Normally vast numbers of shots were fired to obtain a hit, but when the target isn't warping (such as the Sung systemships during the Slaver War) then the target solution is trivial and basically all of them hit. Once you've knocked out the enemies warp drive, destroying their ship was trivial. In the scenario involving shooting at landers on the ground, each shot automatically destroyed the target without needing to roll. The same applies here.

By going below the shelf, the Terran forces would have essentially "beached themselves." All Kafer attacks automatically hit, doing massive damage (since instead of one shot from of a volley hitting, all of them are), and they can use missiles and screens. The Terrans gained no advantage in terms of avoiding being hit, and lost much of their defence (the screens of the larger ships) and firepower (neither missiles nor fighters can be used).

Further, the writing seems to imply the Kafers went into the dead zone. Why? The Terran forces have made themselves fish-in-a-barrel. Shoot them like such...

(Edit, I forgot a divide by two in my calculations of speed. Corrected)
 
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