What would The Imperium do?

[JMISBEST]

Hi

Another idea for my uber-race is that once other pirates hear from the pirate mentioned earlier how easy a target The Imperium is a alliance of their 10 greatest living Pirate Warlords who command between 1,000 and 1,100 ships each or a total of 10,438 ships that range from 9,100 tons and TL 16 to 1,377,800 tons and TL 23 use a prototype Jump Gate that takes 13.9 years to build up enough power to use and, with it, get to The Imperium. The imperium is told that in return for trying to contain the situation they will be gifted 8 600,000 ton TL 17 Battleships from a museum and elevated to TL 18 within 200 years. But would or could The Imperium do?

 

[locarno24]

Well.....honest answer: Nothing. Whatsoever.
This isn't like your previous scenario at all.

If at least one ship is a 1 megaDton plus, TL23 superdreadnought - essentially SEVEN's robot body with crew - then 8 half megaDton TL17 warships are unlikely to do anything to stop it, and that's if they fork over the 'reward ships' before they arrive and they're able to engage it en masse and somehow bereft of its thousands of support vessels. A 4-1 advantage of tonnage, which the Imperium won't have anything but theoretical training in using, is not going to overcome a 6 TL disadvantage - that's the equivalent of a battalion of a modern NATO-standard military (TL8-ish) versus 4 battalions of Napoleon's Grande Armée.

This goes double because unlike your previous scenario of "he's running away", this is a ecade-long project to invest, so a sufficient number of those ships will be cargo or factory vessels, because this is planned; they'll have brought enough stuff to sustain themselves in combat long-term.


Secondly......how? If transit back and forth requires prototype/one shot jump gates with a recycle time in the decades, which the pirate in imperial space won't have and won't have the resources to build (a TL14 society not having any meaningful infrastructure to build TL20 projects).

Thirdly....why? Unless they're planning to conquer the indigenous plebs wholesale, a TL14 society can have very little worth the act of investing decades in reaching to plunder.

Forthly.....seriously? This uber race somehow knows via whatever intelligence sources they have amongst the pirates that this jump gate is going to be used, but they can't find it in a decade and a half? When there is an influx of ten thousand multi-kiloDton starships heading towards it?


Basically, it's a case of "all hail our new pirate overlords" and try to work political tensions between the alliances after they've conquered you; which you can plan for but not in any detail because you don't know what they're going to do.

 

[JMISBEST]

More suggestios and ideas please