> Stilt:
> I disagree that a Beam-6 fleet is more overdesigned than a 41-45
Well, here's the problem. (And the rest of the email I'm responding to sort of
goes around this same circle, so....) It sort of goes for just about every
sort of retrograde keepaway game from hell.
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
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.
In "Independence Day", a force of about 40-50 orbital interface craft
were capable of destroying most of human civilization inside twenty four
hours. In "Star Trek", a photon torpedo has enough firepower to induce
tectonic upheaval and a single Borg cube can assimilate an entire planet's
population in fairly short order. In "Battlestar Galactica", the Twelve
Colonies of Man
were annihilated by the Cylons when their ships just _once_ got caught
out of position to prevent the Cylons' base ships from mounting a swift
blitzkrieg. In "Babylon 5", giving either the Vorlons or the Shadows a few
hours to work with when they really meant business resulted in an entire
planet being destroyed. In "Star Wars", this time frame for the same result
got scaled down to the few minutes it took the Death Star to get off a single
clean shot.
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.
_That_ is why I would not give a lot of respect to the broad
effectiveness of a retrograde keepaway force and be more inclined to consider
it "gimmickry" than a dreadplanet overloaded with fighters. In a serious war
effort, the effectiveness of the keepaway forces will be marginal. The
dreadplanet can let them brag about being able to drive it off in open space
all they like; it'll just head straight to the enemy homeworlds and reduce
them to their
component atoms. A few short bursts of high-focus plasma will do that
rather nicely; the dreadplanet can happily ignore the comparatively light
breeze of
long-range beams it takes in return. Then the dreadplanet will simply
leave under FTL again, and if the enemy wants to claim bragging rights for
holding the empty space that remains where the homeworld was blown away, I
think the dreadplanet will happily let them.
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, give him a few more stationary scenarios where he has to protect
something that isn't as mobile as his ships are. That's what any competent
enemy is going to do to a fleet relying on skirmishers anyway, and if your
games aren't reflecting that, you need to change the nature of the game to do
so. Sure, the skirmisher's going to probably not agree to play in that
scenario. And in doing so, they're pretty bluntly admitting that no
interstellar nation in their right mind would fight a war like that, either...
which says to me that the retrograde keepaway tactics simply have no sound
place in the game. If it wouldn't be useful in a real situation, it shouldn't
be useful in the game. (To be fair to Jon, though: In this case, "the game"
refers to the way a given scenario is set up rather than any inherent flaw in
the actual Full Thrust rules design.)
Sure, it worked for the Viet Cong. But the Viet Cong didn't have any
easily-
identified, stationary targets that they needed to keep. A starfaring power
doesn't have that luxury. (Over-)Using one particular sort of weapon is
a strategic decision; if it can still inflict serious amounts of damage if it
isn't kept away from an enemy planet, I'd call it a valid war strategy. Using
a strategy that is _only_ useful when you don't have anything important
and stationary to protect is not. And regardless of how you consider the
merits
of a fixed-versus-floating edge argument, SOMEWHERE out there is an
important and stationary target that you're going to need to protect in an
interstellar war. If you can't protect it, you're going to lose the war
regardless of what you can do out in the open.
> Stilt:
(snip discussion of the weak point of skirmishing tactics, ie inability to
defend a fixed objective)
High speed/high range ships also aren't going to be much good at
pressing in against a layered defense.
OTOH, that's not to say there isn't a use for them. If you
showed up with Thrust 1 or 2 ships, my Thrust 8/Beam 4
battlecruiser isn't going to want to close to knife-fighting
range--but it certainly will keep pace, chipping away at them a
couple of dice per turn. May not kill the enemy, but at least the fleet will
be weaker when it meets the rest of my ships.
Against something like the dreadplanet--well, if you've foregone
speed for armor and weapons, then I can either try to buy more armor and more
guns, or I can think of a way to use speed to
turn the tables. If not--well, it's time to go commerce
raiding. Now, I grant you I wouldn't much want to play a game of "long
range chipping"--I did once, to prove my point, then we designed
different scenarios. But I also wouldn't want to play with or against a 5000
point immobile dreadplanet (thrust one qualifies as immobile, IMO). If it were
fitted with, say Beam 6's, that
would make more sense to me--and we'd just have to find another
way to take it out.
> on 6/10/00 13:58, stiltman@teleport.com at stiltman@teleport.com wrote:
> IMHO, show me a game where keepaway tactics are considered sound, and
I'm not sure your assumption that all battles will take place near enough to
a vital, static concern is appropriate in many circumstances/campaigns
(of course yours may be one though). The critical thing is the background in
these cases - since up till this point nothing has been indicated one
way or another about this issue.
As others have mentioned the settings under which the battle take place are
going to be crucial to balance. For instance - There may be a need to
FTL in to a system at some distance away from the intended planetary target
for safety reasons. If this is the case nothing prevents the fast fleet from
engaging the enemy force, especially when engaging a slow one, a ways out from
the static resource. This presents a situation when the retrograde maneuvering
is valid. Another one is if the dreadstar needs to defend such a static point
as well as the skirmisher can dart in and out to pick away at the slow
behemoth until it leaves or commits to a vector for attacking back.
However if the attacking force can FTL right next to the planet and blow it
away then there's very little that can be done to defend it against any
attacker that isn't grossly out sized.
Another issue with the dreadstar is the inability to be in more than one place
at a time. True, the same can be said about a large fleet of equivalent "size"
but then again that fleet can be easily dispersed as needs for it change. This
alone makes dreadstar issues very limited if one thinks about them from the
perspective you're speaking of, one of the limits and considerations that a
star faring race might have.
All that said, I do enjoy playing the occasional game of having one or more
super ships.
Unless I'm way off base here part of your consensus has been that your
dreadstar idea is unbalanced, favoring it's design in battle. If this is the
case and IF the point system in FT is skewed (an issue I'm forgoing for the
time being for the sake of argument) there's always the issue of not using
ships over a certain size.
Please realize I'm not telling you how to play your games or what should be a
better way to have fun (each of us has our own). I've found all sizes of
battle to be interesting, however battles involving smaller ships and smaller
numbers of ships I've found to have more emphasis on subtly, tactics
and maneuvering, involving less the pre-game purchase of forces.
Of course this is only my two cents/pence/francs worth. Your mileage
may vary.
I'm going to be making fairly frequent snips here, as there are only certain
parts that I'm responding to.
> stiltman@teleport.com wrote:
Yes, but then again while your ship might do well on offence (although its
lack of manuverability gives even that problems), I'd hate to try to DEFEND a
system with them. They're too damned slow. If the system has more than one
place worth attacking (by which I mean factories, shipyards, etc.) you're
going to have to divide up your force a lot to defend everywhere, which leaves
you open to being defeated in detail by
an assortment of forces, including high-speed raiders.
[assorted examples snipped. I'm going to provide a counter-example]
One place where this has been discussed at length is in the 'flavour text'
which accompanies the game "Renegade Legion: Prefect" (which
includes fighters, carriers, battleships, etc. ranging from 100-ton
fighters (and less) up to
2.5-km long Battleships (which are roughly resembling your Dreadplanet,
except more manuverable). The one thing that they do is talk a LOT about
doctrine, and why certain forces are suited for certain missions. Now, in a
major assault, BIG ships are warranted. Still, most battles aren't going to BE
major assaults aimed at invading an entire star system. Most battles will be
raids with the objective of destroying a particular target. There are several
possible ways to run a raid. First, you can take a minimal force, which
hopefully won't be detected until it's too late for the defenders to
concentrate their forces at the point you're attacking
(if they even know what it is - the longer you can keep several points
inside your manuver envelope, the longer you'll keep the defenders guessing).
Of course, to avoid being intercepted you can probably only
afford to make one high-speed pass, so you have to be lucky, or slow
down and try again (and face a tougher defence). Alternately, you can take a
BIT ship (eg Dreadplanet) which can (hopefully) take out the target even if
the defenders are concentrated on it. Of course, that also presents problems.
It's going to be hard to hide something that big, which probably gives your
local system commander enough warning to call in the theater reserves (which
will give you a rather hot target to take care of). Further, a large ship may
not have the endurance to take out a target very far inside the enemy zone of
control, whereas a light raiding group can probably get farther faster without
being detected. Now, admittedly, this is something of a simplification (and
it's worth getting Prefect, IMO, for their commentary alone, much less the
game, which I quite like), and depends somewhat (although not exclusively) on
the specific technology of the Renegade Legion universe (which is
somewhat, although not THAT much, different from the canon GZG-verse).
Still, it provides something to think about. (by the way, the commentary also
provides a long discussion on the problem of defending multiple
targets, and intercepting attackers, and manuver envelopes - the stuff
involved isn't THAT critical to the GAME (at least most of it), but it's a
SUPERB overview of the logistics behind potential invasions).
Your dreadplanet also depends on your civilization having A LOT of resources
to put towards a single ship (not to mention a BIG shipyard). As an example,
in the universe where I game, the ENTIRE FLEET (minus
planetary defences of ~500 points/system) is less than 100,000 points
worth of ships. I would NOT want to run a war AND defend my home systems
with 20 ships - they CAN'T be everywhere.
> _That_ is why I would not give a lot of respect to the broad
Again, I'm also quite a bit less likely than you to think that one ship, EVEN
one dreadplanet, can take out a planet. A planet is BIG.
REALLY BIG. (and no, I don't buy the Star Wars OR the Star Trek one-ship
planet-killers). A 1200-mass ship is (canonically) 120,000 tons. You can
bombard cities, yes, but it'll take a LONG time to take out a planet with a
120,000 ton ship (IMO). This, again, is why I like the Renegade
Legion example - planetary invasions are rare, complicated, and about
the only things that involve Battleships (on EITHER side). Most warfare is
raiding (taking out shipyards, factories, communications arrays), and
Dreadplanets are optimal for neither attack NOR defence in those battles
(IMO), because the opponent is under no obligation (in an actual war) to
restrict him/herself to the same point value that you brought.
[massive snip - mostly reiteration (and simply a different philosophy
than my own)]
The one comment I'd make is that saying that long-ranged skirmishers
have NO place in a reasonable interstellar society isn't warranted - or,
IMO, correct. They have a place (but more as raiders than as defenders -
or, at least, sole defenders). This is mostly a matter of how YOUR
universe works - in the types of games I play, a dreadplanet-based force
would die, quickly, because they simply could NEVER establish superiority in
an attack without leaving gaping holes in their defences, and because it would
take TOO long to replace one that you lost (not to mention the fighters).
Again, to each her/his own. Most of this is about how I play GZG games
(and, I must admit, I usually use Full Thrust to replace Leviathan in playing
out games in the Renegade Legion universe (or, my own universe,
with RL-style physics)).
[quoted original message omitted]
> on 6/10/00 13:58, stiltman@teleport.com at stiltman@teleport.com
> I'm not sure your assumption that all battles will take place near
Yes, that's true... but if you're only putting a die or two of beam fire on a
ship every turn, how far out they start from their target isn't going to
matter a terrible amount.
In Star Trek it's indicated that you can't FTL inside a solar system, though
this doesn't seem to matter a terrible amount because going from warp to
impulse speeds only means that it takes you a few minutes to get where you
want to go inside a solar system anyway. In Star Wars, you can go in and out
of lightspeed pretty easily from wherever you want to go, though the sublight
speeds are somewhat less dramatic than the fraction-C speeds that Star
Trek deals with even at impulse. Closer to home, the Kra'Vak in the "Assault
on Starbase 13" scenario in MT pop right out of FTL within striking distance
of a starbase and its garrison force, faster than a light carrier docked at
the starbase can even power up its systems and faster than its escorts can get
into full alert state.
All of these examples seem to agree that bringing a ship out of FTL and to a
stationary target doesn't take a terrific amount of time. A skirmish fleet,
regardless of the exact amount of time involved, probably is not going to
present a meaningful strategic obstacle to anyone who wants to hit a planetary
installation. An attacking fleet could simply FTL in and ignore any
skirmishers defending the system while they assumed an orbital position and
dropped enough biogenic weapons to turn the entire planet's population into
precambrian sludge, then simply FTL out with minor damage. If the defending
fleet doesn't make it a lot more expensive for them to ignore it than that,
they're simply not going to win very many wars.
Anyone who has ever played MOO2 can probably relate somewhat when they have
fast, long ranged craft that can't do a terrible amount of damage but can stay
out of range of the enemy's weapons just fine. The enemy will just fly in,
annihilate your planet, and leave if they're not sure they can ever run down
your ships. The only reason you'd ever win any battles is if you could manage
to needle out some FTL drives while you're at it.
> As others have mentioned the settings under which the battle take
Most likely, this is only going to happen if you've got either a large
concentration of asteroids or other cosmic hazards there -- in which
case, it may well be that faster ships may have some problems themselves. In
whatever case, that's likely only going to mean that that particular star
system falls last, after everything else gets pulverized.
> Another issue with the dreadstar is the inability to be in more than
That's quite true. That's a more valid argument against the Dreadplanet
Roberts than the skirmish tactics... the DPR is probably only going to be able
to be feasible for a force that's already somewhat ahead in a war
effort. (Incidentally, that _is_ the case for the side that operates
it.)
> All that said, I do enjoy playing the occasional game of having one or
As do I. I don't fly the DPR in every single game, by any means. That's
basically begging to lose it. I vary my tactics in size, speed,
maneuverability, and payloads pretty much every single game, so I both don't
get bored and don't get into a situation where I'm more or less
begging to get any one good tactic stomped by over-adjustment.
Cheers...
> Yes, that's true... but if you're only putting a die or two of
Well, no, but it does matter how long it takes to get there.
If you start off two AU away--the FTL limit for the Honor
Harrington universe is around 3 AU for example--if one thrust =1
gee and you plan to accelerate all the way in, you'll get there in about 72
hours. Divide by 15 minute turns and multiply by 2 dice a turn, and you have
576 dice hitting you. From one battlecruiser, about 350 points worth.
If you start out at about 30 AU (Mote in God's Eye universe) then your time to
target is something like 2 weeks.
Of course, if you have no real limits on your FTL drives, then you just pop
out of FTL, launch 4000 points worth of missiles at
his starbase or planet, and pop back into FTL again. And hope
he can't return the favor.
With all the fun we have had with the dreadplanet we must remember it is
limited to a 5000 point game. When we look at this in a campaign sense means a
major concentration of forces. What a big ship like this gives up is the
ability to redistribute the forces after the battle. The dreadplanet is a good
shock ship to spearhead an offensive. It can be forced to FTL by a lesser
value of skirmishers if used in the defense. Slow ships have more room for
weapons. Fast ships can better control range and avoid fighters, missiles,
etc. There are reasons to have both fast an slow ships in a well balanced
fleet. Try preparing 4 fleets for each side and drawing one at random for the
battle this is more like the problem of a commander in the field trying to
work with what he has at hand.
Andy A
> >Yes, that's true... but if you're only putting a die or two of beam
> Well, no, but it does matter how long it takes to get there.
> If you start out at about 30 AU (Mote in God's Eye universe)
> Of course, if you have no real limits on your FTL drives, then
I'd probably take, as my example, the "Assault on Starbase 13" scenario in MT:
the Kra'Vak were able to come out of orbit close enough to catch people off
guard, but not close enough that they couldn't power up their systems before
the Kra'Vak were within firing range. Whether or not that's the
_normal_ way
of doing it, might be questioned, but there's reason to suspect that FTL is
capable of putting them within halfway close striking distance of an enemy
outpost. Let's not forget that scanner range in the previous books was only
54" for active scanners... so further out than that you just plain may not be
able to tell approaching ships apart from celestial matter. One way or
another, it seems pretty plain to me that it's possible to get to a planet
without having to worry about interception before you're within a few turns of
striking range. Stick a cloaking device or ECM into the mix, and most likely
you can hit without a terrible amount of warning.
If the enemy can't meaningfully stop you from reaching the planet, they
probably can kiss it goodbye, yes. It doesn't even take a terrible amount
of firepower... but just a couple or three dozen class 5 K-guns or the
equivalent will shred much of a task force in a couple of turns if they don't
respond in kind. Skirmishers have nothing to do that... which says that if
that's the entire defense, their homeworlds are probably doomed once the first
concentrated assault takes place.
> I'd probably take, as my example, the "Assault on Starbase 13"
scenario in MT:
> the Kra'Vak were able to come out of orbit close enough to
To identify, not to detect.
> One way or
That's rather background dependent. But if you can pop out of FTL and nuke a
planet within a few turns, then a normal fleet isn't going to stop you either,
unless a) it is perfectly positioned to intercept, AND b) they knew within a
few choices where you were coming so they could concentrate their forces
enough to be meaningful, AND c) they knew you were coming now so they have
time to spool up to red alert AND d)you allow yourself to get distracted by
then. Which is improbable. Otherwise, there's no point in having a fleet
(except for the MAD doctrine, in which case you won't be fighting anyway). The
usual scenario would be "We pop out of FTL. They detect us and send a message:
We surrender, don't nuke us, what tribute would you like today?" A possible
alternative, though: Heavy planetary defenses.
Ground-based Beam 8's, screen 3's (yeah, they're not in FB1, so
what? This is a planet, not a ship), multiple ADFC and PDS
clusters, SMR-ER's and fighter bays...a dreadplanet assault on a
heavily defended base might be interesting. The only difficulty
is that you'd have to build such defenses on _every_ planet.
On 10-Jun-00 at 15:01, stiltman@teleport.com (stiltman@teleport.com)
wrote:
> A starfaring power that does _not_ want this to happen to them has to
So if I can intercept you far away from the planet because I have faster ships
and retrograde to the planet, toasting your lumbering hulk in the process,
have I not fulfilled my goal? If I can pick my ranges when attacking your
worlds and destroy your lumbering hulk (or force it to leave) have I not
fulfilled my goal?
Actually, the problem here is you see you map as the "One true map", as such
it could actually be used against you.
Scenario: I am facing the lumbering hulk of doom. It may or may not be a
massive carrier.
Solution: Knowing that we are playing in an artificial universe with
walls, I will take a fleet composed of 1/2 things able to shoot down
massive numbers of fighters and 1/2 small cloaking needle beam ships.
Strategy: Keep the fighter ships out of range of the big guy and let the
fighters come to them. Bring the needle beems up to the big guy and toast his
drives. If he is moving at all I then keep ships out of his arcs and let him
coast off the artificial universe, smacking the wall and being considered
gone. I win if it is my playfield, I win if it is his playfield. If he wants
to FTL out
I win. If it is a _real_ campaign where losses count I needle his
FTL drive if I have ships left to do so that way the ship may not be
recovered.
The problem is you are forcing the tactics you prefer and few here feel
comfortable playing on your terms. Many here are of the Honor Harrington
theory of space combat, speed and maneuver count. Of those that aren't most
are wargamers of other sorts, and the thought of letting your opponent chose
the territory, the rules, and the victory conditions don't sit well.
Laserlight's dead on. Strong planetary defenses would be a likely alternative.
I know too that we have discussed the viability of minefields on the list, but
a society threatened by horrific dreadplanets could hinder the approach of the
assault ship with them. The field need not damage the supership with low
thrust, just gain time for an intercepting fleet or other various defenses to
prepare. Turning to avoid the minefield will certainly
take some time for a thrust-1 ship.
Bill
In a message dated 6/11/00 10:37:09 AM Central Daylight Time,
> laserlight@quixnet.net writes:
<< A possible alternative, though: Heavy planetary defenses.
Ground-based Beam 8's, screen 3's (yeah, they're not in FB1, so
what? This is a planet, not a ship), multiple ADFC and PDS
clusters, SMR-ER's and fighter bays...a dreadplanet assault on a
heavily defended base might be interesting. The only difficulty
is that you'd have to build such defenses on _every_ planet.
> [quoted text omitted]
> Laserlight wrote:
This is similar to the situation in C.J. Cherryl's DOWNBELOW STATION. All the
colonies are large L5 style stations. They are so incredibly fragile that they
don't even pretend to take sides. Any time a fleet appears,
> BDShatswell@aol.com wrote:
Depends on the weapon technology you postulate.
Start manufacturing "Pop goes the Weasel!" missiles. Said missile has:
[1] an FTL drive
[2] a 1000 megaton warhead.
Missile emerges from FTL space at orbital height and
> BDShatswell@aol.com wrote:
Nyrath said:
> Depends on the weapon technology you postulate.
Depends on your FTL limits, but here's a nastier version that would also work:
Pop out of FTL
Launch a barrage of electromagnetically accelerated crowbars at the planet.
They'll come in with no power, no active sensors, no real obvious way to
detect them. Doesn't especially have to be high acceleration. Put a layer of
silicon on them if you
like--or RAM--or use a mix of stealthed and camo'd. Pack them
in methane snow or something to reduce the IR signature.
When the crowbars ablate in atmosphere, they expose their
antimatter core--*boom*
I'm afraid I haven't yet come up with a really convincing reason why Alarish
hasn't already done this.
PFfttz! Pop goes the Weasel missiles, crowbars, dread planets. My head hurts.
Climb out of your ships and fight like real men damn it!.:)
Jade Tseng
[quoted original message omitted]
> In the circle i play in, if you are in a position where there is no
Yeah... that's basically it. What wartime operation is a skirmisher going to
be able to fulfill? If you need to provide cover while you're conducting troop
landings or evacuations, skirmishers are useless. If you need to defend a
planet under concentrated attack, the only reason they'd be any use at all is
if they had the luxury of a week between FTL and planetfall, and they lose
even that if the enemy has fast drives, cloaking devices, or reflex fields. If
it needs to press in on a layered defense net of patrols at an enemy planet,
it's going to be pretty useless. Neither can it present a particularly
daunting defense grid of its own; surgical FTL placement or cloaking devices
will both defeat their purposes as such just by being there.
> and it looks like a (very boring) loss is almost certain,
Yup... let them have the open space. Nothing there but dust.:)
> In the circle i play in, if you are in a position where there is no
> Yeah... that's basically it. What wartime operation is a skirmisher
> and it looks like a (very boring) loss is almost certain,
> Yup... let them have the open space. Nothing there but dust. :)
Stilt said:
> Yeah... that's basically it. What wartime operation is a
Mmm...you're a little pessimistic here. Raiders don't present a
static defense or a full-bore frontal assault, true. But it
doesn't take a week of chipping away to do a lot of damage--call
it "mobile defense." (I'm not particularly taking into account reflex or
cloaks because they're genre weapons, not standard).
AAnd what do you do about commerce? Either you convoy everything and keep your
fleet spread out to cover all your
planets--in which case the enemy main fleet will defeat you in
detail--or you concentrate your fleet and lose freighters to the
raider squadrons.
In the circle i play in, if you are in a position where there is no clear
objective (in most scenarios with an objective, the retrograde tactic falls
flat on its face), and it looks like a (very boring) loss is almost certain,
you fire up your ftl drives and piss off.
> On Sat, 10 Jun 2000 stiltman@teleport.com wrote:
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 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
The
> skirmishers need all day to do significant damage to the enemy at the
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
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