Re: Retrograde gimmickry

On Sat, 10 Jun 2000 stiltman@teleport.com wrote:
> The purpose of a starfleet of any sort of starfaring power is to keep
your
> enemies from going places where you don't want them.	The reasons for
this

  That is an assumption I don't necessarily agree with.

> aren't too difficult to figure out.  Oerjan touched on it a bit, but
I'm
> not sure he quite got the point across, so I'll state it a bit more
explicitly.
> The general point is that science fiction is rife with examples of
what
> happens when a starship is given some sort of free rein to hammer away
at
> a planet that can't run away from it, regardless of how slow it is.

  I think my favourite, for reasons I know not, was in the Man-Kzin wars
where a ship traveling at near light speed ejected some [super computer
aimed] ballbearings on a planet, and effectivly eliminated all
population
centers.  :)

> A starfaring power that does _not_ want this to happen to them has to
be
> able to put ships between the enemy and their planets that can hold
the line
> to make sure that it doesn't.  If they're dedicating much of their
resources
> to what amount to "skirmish forces" that are going to be good for
little but
> flying away from an enemy in deep space and slinging insults at them,
they've
> lost sight of this simple goal.  An enemy with slower ships with
greater
> short-range firepower is not truly being stopped by speed and range. 
The
> skirmishers need all day to do significant damage to the enemy at the
range
> they need to maximize their effectiveness; the planets they'd be
charged with
> defending won't have that long to live.

  There are examples in Star Trek and Star Wars where the planet is in
fact fully protected from enemy ships, until the shield/cloak generator
drops.	:)  Common sense though tells us it's easier to defend something
as big as a planet with something small and specific like a small fleet
of
ships instead of something huge and general like shield generators.
 
> IMHO, show me a game where keepaway tactics are considered sound, and
I'll
> show you a game that has just flat out lost sight of what an
interstellar
> war is _really_ about.  And if you need to remind a player who abuses
them,

  Ian M. Banks has a good universe where The Culture's humans effectivly
live on large [very, very, very large] space ships.  Although in that
universe while the humans are maybe the color, the actual 'race' is the
vastly intelligent machine brains whos bodies are the ships.

  Anyway, when an interstellar race could point a bunch of nanites at an
asteroid and have an interstellar ship ready in a couple hours, and
they've relinquished any attachment to a particular ball of plasma,
retrograde fleets would seem to be the more natural.
  After all, with a dread planet, if Star Trek has shown us anything,
all
you have to do is beam a couple people on board and infect it with a
virus
and everything is good again!  ;D