Author Topic: The Diamond Shark tank and Sea Fox preserve: Cause somebody has to start it...  (Read 238118 times)

Tai Dai Cultist

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One question . . . with the Shark/Foxes having sold a LOT of Nova Cat produced equipment- Jousts, Shoden, Arbalest, Ocelots, Clan BA, Void, SM1 series and other items . . . does anyone think they will take the cream of the designs and keep producing them?

I say this as a big Joust/SM1/Clan BA/Void fan.

The ER3145 mentions how the Combine took the Cat's production facilities from them.  (one of the reasons they felt the need to rebel)

Whether the Sharks ended up with some of them isn't specified.  It's certainly possible the Sharks made a deal to buy some of them, run them for a cut of the output, or simply launched Trials of Possesion for the lines they wanted.

Neufeld

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So, the khanates are distributed roughly as following:
- ilKhanate - Draconis Combine part of IS
- Tiburon Khanate - Lyran Commonwealth part of IS
- Spina Khanate - FWL part of IS
- Skate Khanate - Federated Suns part of IS
Did I get it right?

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GreekFire

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Close, but one small correction. The ilKhanate is not limited to a single theatre, and can travel and do business anywhere; so replace it with the Fox Khanate (don't bother looking for it in ER:3145, it wasn't there).

I think there might be some variation over time, however. Hunters of the Deeps says "...the Khanates and their Aimags, which bid for and fought to acquire the rights in specific regions of space...", so I'd expect a variation on your standard Trial of Possession for shipping rights.
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Arkansas Warrior

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Who covers Liao space?  Split between Spina and Skate?
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Yeah, that's what makes it complicated. The Clan OZ is also written to be divided in two.

If I had to take a wild guess, each Khanate covers two halves of two different sectors; EG: Tiburon would cover half of the Coreward and Anti-Spinward sectors, giving them roughly what's described in ER:3145.

That would most likely leave the Capellan Confederation to the Skate Khanate.
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wellspring

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Yeah, that's what makes it complicated. The Clan OZ is also written to be divided in two.

If I had to take a wild guess, each Khanate covers two halves of two different sectors; EG: Tiburon would cover half of the Coreward and Anti-Spinward sectors, giving them roughly what's described in ER:3145.

That would most likely leave the Capellan Confederation to the Skate Khanate.

It makes sense for the khanates to straddle the borders between nations, rather than operating within them. Greater resistance to political interference, plus you can conduct cross-border trade without complicating things by coordinating with another khanate.

Maybe not how they did it, but probably the Right Way to do it.

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Yep, that's pretty much it exactly. Each khanate has a rough territory they operate in but they can negotiate with other khanates to gain rights to business outside their usual swimming holes.

Kitsune413

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Quote
-Not a single commanding officer present before the Wars of Reaving (except for Alan Hawker, Barbara Sennet and possibly a few WarShip/AeroFighter ones) was in command by 3085.


This may not be so bad considering most clans discrimination against age. Though, Clan Sea Fox does generally ignore alot of that discrimination.

But we lost that crazy Blood Angel chick? >.> she was nuts.
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wellspring

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This may not be so bad considering most clans discrimination against age. Though, Clan Sea Fox does generally ignore alot of that discrimination.

Do they? During the Hawker years, the ill-starred Khan used a lot of staffing tricks to pack the touman with cronies, but FM:WC is pretty clear that there's always been the usual anti-freebirth discrimination. There's not much evidence either way regarding age discrimination, but the Field Manual probably would have made a note of it if the Sharks were unusual in that regard.

Kitsune413

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Do they? During the Hawker years, the ill-starred Khan used a lot of staffing tricks to pack the touman with cronies, but FM:WC is pretty clear that there's always been the usual anti-freebirth discrimination. There's not much evidence either way regarding age discrimination, but the Field Manual probably would have made a note of it if the Sharks were unusual in that regard.

The majority of the clans touman got decimated in Tukayyid. But because the clan lets warriors retire to other castes they allowed them to trial back to fill their ranks. So after Tukayyid, despite taking the most horrific losses possible there they had one of the strongest touman's in the clans. Staffed predominantly with Older Savvy Mechwarriors.

Tukayyid may also be the reason for our very wonky RAT's. Probably lost most of our omni's on that planet.

So after the freebirth units that were second line threw their lives away to help a couple of the true born mechwarriors get off planet they decided to allow freebirths into frontline combat units.

Clan Wolf and Jade Falcon needing to rebuild their touman then had the clans crusaders thrown at them in the harvest trials. So they ditched most of the crusader faction which tends also to be the group that suppresses freebirths.

Clan Diamond Shark died on Tukayyid. It was that factions final battle. (Though I suppose its death throes lasted through the great refusal)

They replaced their losses with a bunch of strategically minded Warden Merchant Warriors and have been Clan Sea Fox ever since. After this battle their tactics completely change and they start playing the long game.

The mention of the warriors gifted to clan coyote after this wreaking havoc makes me wonder if they didn't know quite a bit about the society, purged their own faction and got ready to get the hell out or if like has been mentioned they knew more about it than they let on.

Edit: Also Clan Wolf totally won the rights to Ian Hawker's legacy and they can have it. Bargained Well and Done. >.>
« Last Edit: 11 April 2013, 15:29:27 by Kitsune413 »
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wellspring

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The majority of the clans touman got decimated in Tukayyid. But because the clan lets warriors retire to other castes they allowed them to trial back to fill their ranks. So after Tukayyid, despite taking the most horrific losses possible there they had one of the strongest touman's in the clans. Staffed predominantly with Older Savvy Mechwarriors.

The majority of the Touman didn't even reach the Inner Sphere. Elements of three Galaxies fought in that battle: Alpha, Gamma, and Omega. Alpha and Gamma took very serious but not fatal losses. Omega, a freebirth garrison unit, was the only galaxy that was destroyed entirely (saving the two front-line galaxies).

Otherwise, good analysis. Barbara Sennet is the perfect Diamond Shark: low-key, soft-spoken, and gets the job done. You're right: her measures (and those of Angus Labov, ironically the one who gets more of the credit) restored the Touman and (quietly) restored the Diamond Sharks. Hawker's pre-Invasion measures marginalized the other castes, along with warden and freebirth warriors. Barbara quietly undid those policies without controversy despite Hawker remaining in charge.

That doesn't say that ageism doesn't exist in the Sharks; it was clearly an emergency measure. Live fire trials were also suspended, but that doesn't mean the Sharks had a change of heart about those either.

Clan Diamond Shark died on Tukayyid. It was that factions final battle. (Though I suppose its death throes lasted through the great refusal)

They replaced their losses with a bunch of strategically minded Warden Merchant Warriors and have been Clan Sea Fox ever since. After this battle their tactics completely change and they start playing the long game.

I mostly agree with this, too, but while Wardens tend to be less radically anti-freebirth than the Crusaders, they still have the same prejudices. FM:WC is very clear about the fact that the post-great refusal Diamond Sharks still have a typical level of anti-freebirth sentiment for the clans. Though Hawker's measure banning freebirths from front-line galaxies was rescinded after Tukayyid, it had only been implemented five years before at the start of the invasion (along with most of his other policies). The prejudice greatly antedates Hawker.

The mention of the warriors gifted to clan coyote after this wreaking havoc makes me wonder if they didn't know quite a bit about the society, purged their own faction and got ready to get the hell out or if like has been mentioned they knew more about it than they let on.

Quite possible. It would fit their modus operandi to purge themselves, and make a gift of the traitors to buy off the Society long enough to effect their withdrawal.

If so, Vinton was one of two things. As written, it could be seen as a betrayal: the Coyotes annihilating the unsuspecting Sharks and taking a world they might have gotten for free if they'd waited. (Much as the Cloud Cobras seized and conquered Nova Cat territories that they'd pledged to defend.) It might also represent a Coyote reprisal for an undisclosed betrayal by the Sharks, perhaps seeking to distance themselves from the scandal. Or... the whole thing could be a sham, with the Diamond Sharks emptying the world of civilians and equipment, then abandoning the planet to the Coyotes, except for a single tiny underwater enclave which the Blood Spirits later discovered. This last theory actually works whether the Sharks were working with the Society or not.

Either way, it's fishy that the Coyotes didn't occupy their prize after working so hard and bleeding so much to take it. The sharks had had years to empty that planet, and I'm finding it hard to believe that they didn't. Like Salonika, it was a massive and senseless massacre that conveniently explains the loss of men, materiel, and civilians, with no surviving witnesses to rebut the Sharks' story.

Arkansas Warrior

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The majority of the clans touman got decimated in Tukayyid. But because the clan lets warriors retire to other castes they allowed them to trial back to fill their ranks. So after Tukayyid, despite taking the most horrific losses possible there they had one of the strongest touman's in the clans. Staffed predominantly with Older Savvy Mechwarriors.

Tukayyid may also be the reason for our very wonky RAT's. Probably lost most of our omni's on that planet.

So after the freebirth units that were second line threw their lives away to help a couple of the true born mechwarriors get off planet they decided to allow freebirths into frontline combat units.

Clan Wolf and Jade Falcon needing to rebuild their touman then had the clans crusaders thrown at them in the harvest trials. So they ditched most of the crusader faction which tends also to be the group that suppresses freebirths.

Clan Diamond Shark died on Tukayyid. It was that factions final battle. (Though I suppose its death throes lasted through the great refusal)

They replaced their losses with a bunch of strategically minded Warden Merchant Warriors and have been Clan Sea Fox ever since. After this battle their tactics completely change and they start playing the long game.

The mention of the warriors gifted to clan coyote after this wreaking havoc makes me wonder if they didn't know quite a bit about the society, purged their own faction and got ready to get the hell out or if like has been mentioned they knew more about it than they let on.

Edit: Also Clan Wolf totally won the rights to Ian Hawker's legacy and they can have it. Bargained Well and Done. >.>
That's an interesting, and insightful, way of looking at it.




Something I'm wondering about: with only what, 5-6  Aimags per khanate(?) I can't imagine they caravan around in just that many groups with an entire Successor State (plus some) each.  Are Aimags therefore regularly broken down into binary/trinary sized units that travel separately?  What would you imagine the composition of one of these detachments is?  It would necessarily vary, I'm sure, but generally speaking.
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rebs

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I think they can be broken down to lone jumpships when they are out in the boonies of the IS, like the Davion outback, or the neither regions of the former FWL states.   

This will likely be detailed in the upcoming products, I would imagine.   
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Scrollreader

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My understanding is that the Aimags move somewhere, and then the fleet radiates out from that point 1-3 jumps, with each Jumpship having some sort of defensive force.  A few weeks later, they gather back together, and then all make a handful of jumps to a new center of trade and starting point and begin again.  There's some info in Touring the Stars

rebs

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Hopefully that still holds true.  I don't see why it wouldn't, but I also wouldn't know for sure what's in store.
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Colt Ward

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Wellspring, one correction . . . only a single cluster from Omega was present on Tukayyid.  Yes they did get buried . . . and Omega took some later hits too.  The Ghost Bears retook the periphery world the Sharks had taken, losing two clusters to the Bears- which reaped some of them as abathka warriors.  Alpha and Gamma both lost two clusters . . . the injury is in those clusters representing bloodnamed and ristars.

While I am not contesting that the Dracs took the lines- I will have to read closer on the Foxes and the fallout.  It was more I wanted to see the materials remain in production on the general market.
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GreekFire

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If so, Vinton was one of two things. As written, it could be seen as a betrayal: the Coyotes annihilating the unsuspecting Sharks and taking a world they might have gotten for free if they'd waited. (Much as the Cloud Cobras seized and conquered Nova Cat territories that they'd pledged to defend.) It might also represent a Coyote reprisal for an undisclosed betrayal by the Sharks, perhaps seeking to distance themselves from the scandal. Or... the whole thing could be a sham, with the Diamond Sharks emptying the world of civilians and equipment, then abandoning the planet to the Coyotes, except for a single tiny underwater enclave which the Blood Spirits later discovered. This last theory actually works whether the Sharks were working with the Society or not.

Either way, it's fishy that the Coyotes didn't occupy their prize after working so hard and bleeding so much to take it. The sharks had had years to empty that planet, and I'm finding it hard to believe that they didn't. Like Salonika, it was a massive and senseless massacre that conveniently explains the loss of men, materiel, and civilians, with no surviving witnesses to rebut the Sharks' story.

Vinton is a big ugly question mark. Something went on, and we aren't in the know. Vinton started getting raided relatively early on in the Wars of Reaving (with the bandits trying to knock out the HPG...why?), and then the HPG got infected by a nasty virus in January 3072. That's immediately after the Society/Coyotes decided to go into action; there wasn't time for outsiders to infiltrate the planet to plant the virus. It was an inside job, done by Shark scientists. That much is clear.

By then, the Adders and Vipers had forcefully convinced the Sharks to leave the Homeworlds in force. Vinton going dark quickened the matter, with merchant fleets being turned around mid-transit to head back towards the Inner Sphere. The Sharks weren't rampaging around like certain other Clans, and certainly posed no obvious short-term threats to the Society and their Coyote allies.

So why did the Coyotes invade Vinton in the first place? Why commit a staggering 3 Galaxies worth of troops and 3 Cluster of Society forces (a huge number of units for the Society to field in one place) to conquer it? They could have waited and taken over the planet at a later time, and used the forces to focus on the Adders/Vipers. The only things I can think of are either that:
a) There was something on Vinton that the Society desperately needed.
b) There was someone on Vinton that the Society desperately needed.

I'm not sure what they could have been looking for. Maybe the local Society cell went rogue after the initial strike on the HPG. Maybe someone learnt something they shouldn't have, and desperately needed to be taken out. Maybe someone on Vinton had developed some sort of technology able to deal with some of the Society threats, or maybe there was an ancient forgotten cache that needed to be taken care of. One thing is for sure: the Society, and in extension the Coyotes, wanted Vinton dead.

Then we have the Salonika incident in June 7032. I'm not quite sure on this, but that's roughly the amount of time it would take for a ship leaving Vinton immediately after the HPG blackout to get there. This suggests that the ships might have been infected by the HPG virus, stranding them in the system against their choice. But then why would it activate that late? The only explanation I've got: there were Society agents in the fleet. They disabled the ships. All of them. It explains why the merchants didn't flee the system before or during the last naval battle, only afterwards (the ships without Burrocks on them scattered as soon as they could). The Burrocks, once they won the massive naval battle, fixed their ships for them.

OK, that works. I just linked something together, though: Semi Kalasa left on the last mass convoy leaving Vinton. Mass convoy as in...60 JumpShips, 2 WarShips? She leaves the Homeworlds, possibly with some very important intel. Halfway through the journey, Society agents knock out the Shark JumpShip cores with a virus. What followed would have been an undocumented Shadow War between the Society traitors and the Watch agents seeking to root them out to extract a means of repairing the JumpShips.

This goes on until the Burrocks stumble across them. One thing leads to another, and the Diamond Shark escorts are completely destroyed. Kalasa, realizing she has to stay alive for whatever reason, lies low on one of the non-essential JumpShips. As fate would have it, the Burrocks fix their JumpShips and Kalasa manages to escape the main convoy (either through guesswork, luck, or by straight-up overpowering the Burrock guards. Many of these lower castemen, after all, would have been Warriors at one point in their lives). What happened to the original Society traitors? Probably weeded out and killed, either before the Burrocks arrived in-system or afterwards. On the other hand, they could have ended up on Tathis with the rest of the Shark stuff.

Thoughts?
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Dreyf

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The ER3145 mentions how the Combine took the Cat's production facilities from them.  (one of the reasons they felt the need to rebel)

Whether the Sharks ended up with some of them isn't specified.  It's certainly possible the Sharks made a deal to buy some of them, run them for a cut of the output, or simply launched Trials of Possesion for the lines they wanted.

Where does it say that the Combine took the Cat's production facilities? 

The reference I found talked about the Cat industries being dismantled after the Second Combine/Dominion War.  If they were dismantled we have no idea where the specs and equipment went.  The reference also mentions that it was the remaining industries which makes me think the Cats may have lost production capacity during the actual fighting during the war.  Until more information is known, I think it quite possible that the Foxes began producing at least some of the Nova Cat equipment.

rebs

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Vinton is a big ugly question mark. Something went on, and we aren't in the know. Vinton started getting raided relatively early on in the Wars of Reaving (with the bandits trying to knock out the HPG...why?), and then the HPG got infected by a nasty virus in January 3072. That's immediately after the Society/Coyotes decided to go into action; there wasn't time for outsiders to infiltrate the planet to plant the virus. It was an inside job, done by Shark scientists. That much is clear.

By then, the Adders and Vipers had forcefully convinced the Sharks to leave the Homeworlds in force. Vinton going dark quickened the matter, with merchant fleets being turned around mid-transit to head back towards the Inner Sphere. The Sharks weren't rampaging around like certain other Clans, and certainly posed no obvious short-term threats to the Society and their Coyote allies.

So why did the Coyotes invade Vinton in the first place? Why commit a staggering 3 Galaxies worth of troops and 3 Cluster of Society forces (a huge number of units for the Society to field in one place) to conquer it? They could have waited and taken over the planet at a later time, and used the forces to focus on the Adders/Vipers. The only things I can think of are either that:
a) There was something on Vinton that the Society desperately needed.
b) There was someone on Vinton that the Society desperately needed.

I'm not sure what they could have been looking for. Maybe the local Society cell went rogue after the initial strike on the HPG. Maybe someone learnt something they shouldn't have, and desperately needed to be taken out. Maybe someone on Vinton had developed some sort of technology able to deal with some of the Society threats, or maybe there was an ancient forgotten cache that needed to be taken care of. One thing is for sure: the Society, and in extension the Coyotes, wanted Vinton dead.

Then we have the Salonika incident in June 7032. I'm not quite sure on this, but that's roughly the amount of time it would take for a ship leaving Vinton immediately after the HPG blackout to get there. This suggests that the ships might have been infected by the HPG virus, stranding them in the system against their choice. But then why would it activate that late? The only explanation I've got: there were Society agents in the fleet. They disabled the ships. All of them. It explains why the merchants didn't flee the system before or during the last naval battle, only afterwards (the ships without Burrocks on them scattered as soon as they could). The Burrocks, once they won the massive naval battle, fixed their ships for them.

OK, that works. I just linked something together, though: Semi Kalasa left on the last mass convoy leaving Vinton. Mass convoy as in...60 JumpShips, 2 WarShips? She leaves the Homeworlds, possibly with some very important intel. Halfway through the journey, Society agents knock out the Shark JumpShip cores with a virus. What followed would have been an undocumented Shadow War between the Society traitors and the Watch agents seeking to root them out to extract a means of repairing the JumpShips.

This goes on until the Burrocks stumble across them. One thing leads to another, and the Diamond Shark escorts are completely destroyed. Kalasa, realizing she has to stay alive for whatever reason, lies low on one of the non-essential JumpShips. As fate would have it, the Burrocks fix their JumpShips and Kalasa manages to escape the main convoy (either through guesswork, luck, or by straight-up overpowering the Burrock guards. Many of these lower castemen, after all, would have been Warriors at one point in their lives). What happened to the original Society traitors? Probably weeded out and killed, either before the Burrocks arrived in-system or afterwards. On the other hand, they could have ended up on Tathis with the rest of the Shark stuff.

Thoughts?

Definitely right about one thing: the WoR is not a first-hand account.  Sometimes it's not even a second or third-hand account.   

We've had that conversation. Ghostbear jumped in to let us know that that is probably the correct way to view the WoR.  It's a collection of rough but by no means complete information that has been informed by a party far removed from actual events in many cases. 

Semi Kalasa had a vested interest in making sure the WoR document read as she felt it should be read.   She is said to hold Clan honor of the highest importance, but if she felt that the Home Clans are no longer truly Clan, then she could have her way with plenty of informational snippets, or at least, have her way in how they are spun.     

Where does it say that the Combine took the Cat's production facilities? 

Check the entry for the Fifth Sword of Light, iirc.
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Oh BTW another thing I noticed in ER:3145 is that we appear to be using Chainelane Isle inhabitants as a source of personnel. Chainelane characters can choose the Freeborn Sibko (Stage 2) life module, and get the In For Life/Clan Sea Fox trait. Looks like we're using them to create beefed up infantry/tank militias for our holdings out there.
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Definitely right about one thing: the WoR is not a first-hand account.  Sometimes it's not even a second or third-hand account.   

We've had that conversation. Ghostbear jumped in to let us know that that is probably the correct way to view the WoR.  It's a collection of rough but by no means complete information that has been informed by a party far removed from actual events in many cases. 

Ah, k, I'm going to have to read through the thread again.
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No prob, dude. 

Check pages 6 and 7, this will save you some time searching. I hope.  Unless you are busy with the search grind as I type this.   

And remember, he said nothing definite, he just hinted that that's the right way to view it.
« Last Edit: 12 April 2013, 16:08:14 by rebs »
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Tai Dai Cultist

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Quote from: Tai Dai Cultist
The ER3145 mentions how the Combine took the Cat's production facilities from them.  (one of the reasons they felt the need to rebel)

Whether the Sharks ended up with some of them isn't specified.  It's certainly possible the Sharks made a deal to buy some of them, run them for a cut of the output, or simply launched Trials of Possesion for the lines they wanted.
Where does it say that the Combine took the Cat's production facilities? 

The reference I found talked about the Cat industries being dismantled after the Second Combine/Dominion War.  If they were dismantled we have no idea where the specs and equipment went.  The reference also mentions that it was the remaining industries which makes me think the Cats may have lost production capacity during the actual fighting during the war.  Until more information is known, I think it quite possible that the Foxes began producing at least some of the Nova Cat equipment.

Dismantled = took.  At least from the Cat's perspective... the Cats lost their factories because of what the Combine did.. ergo the Combine took them. 

As was pointed out in both our posts, we don't know what happened to the factories after they were denied to the Cats.  It could well be that the Sharks/Foxes swooped in and bought the peices, took them in a trial of possession, or offered a 'sweet' deal to the Combine to run the factories FOR the Dracs for a 'small' percentage.  Maybe the Combine set them up on other worlds far from the Cat 'cultural preservation districts' and are running them on their own domestically.  All we DO know is that after the Combine took the Cat's factories, they did something other than turn around and give them right back.
« Last Edit: 12 April 2013, 16:19:25 by Tai Dai Cultist »

Kitsune413

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Oh BTW another thing I noticed in ER:3145 is that we appear to be using Chainelane Isle inhabitants as a source of personnel. Chainelane characters can choose the Freeborn Sibko (Stage 2) life module, and get the In For Life/Clan Sea Fox trait. Looks like we're using them to create beefed up infantry/tank militias for our holdings out there.

I haven't seen this in the book yet.

Before it seemed like they were trying to use them as a buffer state to beef up the worlds they held there. But I'm not sure whats going on in the Chaineline islands other than its being a shadowrun setting for Sea Fox Characters.
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rebs

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I'm not sure whats going on in the Chaineline islands other than its being a shadowrun setting for Sea Fox Characters.

 O0  Good description.   A little loose, no magic, no dragons as yet found and reported, but one never knows what the future holds.

With a whole cluster of stars there, I always wonder what else is going on that hasn't been revealed.   

I believe we have shipyards there too, iirc.  Hmmmm...
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Kitsune413

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O0  Good description.   A little loose, no magic, no dragons as yet found and reported, but one never knows what the future holds.

With a whole cluster of stars there, I always wonder what else is going on that hasn't been revealed.   

I believe we have shipyards there too, iirc.  Hmmmm...

We do have shipyards. Thats where we were dragging other clans warships for refit back when warships mattered. There are apparently some intelligence agencies there that out do us. I really do hope that more information is revealed soon.

I really want to know more of everything. I love how the Diamond Shark Watch is one of the meanest groups out there after the WoR.
« Last Edit: 13 April 2013, 16:51:55 by Kitsune413 »
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Gray Jaguar

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O0  Good description.   A little loose, no magic, no dragons as yet found and reported, but one never knows what the future holds.

With a whole cluster of stars there, I always wonder what else is going on that hasn't been revealed.   

I believe we have shipyards there too, iirc.  Hmmmm...

I believe we've found dragons there that take the form of Adders.  Its only a matter of time before they return with technology that is on par with what we view as magic.  Working HPGs, iATMs, Nova CEWS, WarShips, and likely some kind of strange new weapons and genetics we have no clue about.
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wellspring

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Vinton is a big ugly question mark. Something went on, and we aren't in the know. Vinton started getting raided relatively early on in the Wars of Reaving (with the bandits trying to knock out the HPG...why?), and then the HPG got infected by a nasty virus in January 3072. That's immediately after the Society/Coyotes decided to go into action; there wasn't time for outsiders to infiltrate the planet to plant the virus. It was an inside job, done by Shark scientists. That much is clear.

By then, the Adders and Vipers had forcefully convinced the Sharks to leave the Homeworlds in force. Vinton going dark quickened the matter, with merchant fleets being turned around mid-transit to head back towards the Inner Sphere. The Sharks weren't rampaging around like certain other Clans, and certainly posed no obvious short-term threats to the Society and their Coyote allies.

So why did the Coyotes invade Vinton in the first place?

(Snip...)

Thoughts?


Well, it's an interesting interpretation. A few quibbles. First: the HPG virus affected only HPGs and WarShips which mounted them. My understanding is that non-HPG equipped ships were not affected, nor were ordinary JumpShips. Of course, this could be disinformation, but that's my understanding.

Second, the Snake Alliance attacked the Sharks shortly after uniting against the Snow Ravens (Bearding of the Shark). However, the Cloud Cobras refused to participate (citing their recent combat losses). The Star Adders quit after a few token attacks. The Goliath Scorpions (clearly an early Snake ally, even if they never openly acknowledged it) never attacked at all. In the end, it was the Vipers, whose costly "victory" against second-line shark forces is questionable.

To my mind, I think what happened is this:

After fending off the Vipers, the Sharks had several years to relocate to the Inner Sphere. Their front-line galaxies were mostly occupied there, except for Beta, which established an enclave in the Chainelains. We know they abandoned most of their other worlds first, leaving Vinton as their last bastion. This makes a lot of sense-- it kept them out of most of the fighting, at least for a long time.

How would I have done a relocation? The thing is, moving millions of people across more than a thousand light years is a logistical nightmare. The Sharks helped the Bears and Cats do it; they knew exactly what they were getting into and had already been preparing for such an eventuality for a while. As the "logistics" clan, they were especially well-prepared for what was ahead. Oh, and BTW, they were selling to the Cats and Wolves in Exile? What do you think they were selling, exactly? If you were in those clans' merchant castes, what would you have bought? Mobile factories? Equipment for upgrading infrastructure? The stuff the Diamond Sharks were most likely to have been making (to sell) is precisely the stuff they needed for a quick resettlement. Shipments might well have been on the way long before the Wars of Reaving started.

I'd have started exploring the Deep Periphery in earnest years before, looking for some suitable hidden bases to house my civilians and production facilities. But maybe they're based in the near periphery, not having thought of it, or not having found any suitable settlement locations.

The Sharks lost 80 jumpships at Salonika. And they still have a massive fleet left over afterwards. So can we stipulate that they have more than enough JumpShips to make a massive command circuit? With 80 JumpShips, and 11 Mammoth-class DropShips modified to be filled with foot infantry bays, you can set up a circular chain (a "conveyor belt") that moves more than half a million people per trip across 1200 LY. Assuming no LiFusion batteries. Each "pulse" of the conveyor is a week apart, and each individual Mammoth's trip is 25 days (that's a full load, launch, go through the "conveyor", land, unload cycle), including 3 hours transiting from one jumpship to another through the conveyor.

(If you want me to explain this concept in detail, ask me in another thread or via PM. There are a number of refinements in the strategy that I'm omitting for simplicity. Such as measures for security in transit, recovery if there's a security breach, supplies, how to set up the conveyor in the minimum possible time, etc. I'm assuming 3 jump collars per jump point; you can add more or less to your taste. You need to have a site prepped to receive all those people, of course, but my plan also has the ability to spread the people out over multiple receiving worlds, and you can prep the planets while you're setting up the circuit.)

You could do it with 40 jumpships and three Mammoths, but with 80 JS and 11 Mammoths it can be a continually operating conveyor belt, moving more than half a million people per week. In two years, you could have moved the entire Diamond Shark Kerensky Cluster population to the Inner Sphere. This scales more or less linearly; with 160 JS / 21 DS, you can do it in just over a year. Obviously, that's just for the people; infrastructure requires more trips but moving 120 kilotons of cargo per week, and that's not counting the "static" cargo carried by the links in the chain but not used during conveyor mode. That's also assuming Mammoths rather than Behemoths, which makes more sense for non-perishable cargo. Five months setup time to get the command circuit in place. Add a few jumpships -- but not as many as you think -- if you are aiming for a longer trip.

OK so now I ask, why didn't the Sharks do it that way? They had plenty of time.

Greekfire identifies a few possible reasons for why things played out the way they did. I propose another: that the Sharks did move their entire civilian population, probably to a periphery world or worlds. That's their production area. They keep most of their civilians and factories safely out of harm's way. And why not, right? The Inner Sphere was burning up in Jihad, the Clans are massacring one another. What we see on Trondheim and the khanates is just the sales and marketing arm, including most of the military and intelligence apparatus. The rest of the clan, the civilian part, is safely ensconced out of view.

So how do you go from that many people to being a small, spread-out, largely space-based clan? Well, you start by having lots of branch offices, making it hard to count the population and production to begin with. The known Chainelane Isles enclave is useful in this regard because it's known but largely off-camera. Hell, it might well house all 66 million people right there; the population of the United Kingdom is roughly the same. Though I'd be surprised if the wily and cautious Sharks would be so foolish as to put their population all in one place, and all in the natural invasion path of the Star Adders.

At that point, the rest is spin. Assume that both Vinton and Salonika were (exaggerated/staged/never happened). What changes? The only witnesses other than the Sharks to Salonika were Burrocks, now dead. And maybe some wreckage, which could be anything. The only witnesses to Vinton were the Society-affiliated Coyotes (Shark allies, also now dead), the Shark survivors, and the Blood Spirits who arrived later to find the last survivors, who can once again only attest that 1) the planet was in ruins, and 2) it was mostly emptied. Everyone assumes that the iceberg died in those two battles, and that the part we see is all there is. Not prepping to kill us all or destroy the oceans or something, simply doing what the Shark Foxes do best: playing it low-key and making a killing.

Anyway, that's my theory.

Kitsune413

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I really can't wait for the next field reporting. Kind of wondering if the 422nd cluster is just whats left of zeta galaxy rolled into Sigma.

Is there a timeline anywhere for the wars of reaving? I haven't seen one. =\
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wellspring

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I really can't wait for the next field reporting. Kind of wondering if the 422nd cluster is just whats left of zeta galaxy rolled into Sigma.

Is there a timeline anywhere for the wars of reaving? I haven't seen one. =\

Sarna has one. I've been compiling my own summary, but it's very incomplete.

 

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