STO New TFO: Operation "Riposte"

redvenge · April 2019

Since the official thread seems to be about "T6 Coupons" or something, I figured I would start a thread about the story and mission goals. Since I have a "negative opinion" I prematurely banished my thread to Ten Forward.

Looking at the reasoning behind "Operation Riposte", I can clearly see why the Federation is losing the war.

Admiral Cornwall: “That is how you and I might think, but we are not fighting one another. We are fighting the Klingons, and analysis of their overall strategy confirms one thing. The Klingons are after something the value more than territory or victory - they are seeking glory in battle.”

Uh... where did you get the idea that they are seeking "glory in battle"? Did you not listen to T'Kuvma when he told you that ""Members of the Federation, what you call your most remote borders I call too close to Klingon territory. You only live now to serve as witnesses of Klingon supremacy, to be my herald. We do not desire to know you. But you will know our great houses, standing as one under Kahless, reborn in me, T'Kuvma."? They are not seeking glory. They are exterminating you to preserve their way of life.

This also shows that, even after the debacle that was the Battle of the Binary Stars, Starfleet Intelligence has not bothered to investigate the situation inside the Klingon Empire. If they did, they would see that the Klingon force arrayed against them is not a single group, but a chaotic assortment of factions each vying for power. Some of the factions use suicide vessels to blow up starbases, while other factions use weapons that destroy atmospheres of planets, killing the population and rendering those planets uninhabitable.

Admiral Kensington: “An offensive on our part will draw the Klingons away from other worlds and shift the pace of this war in our favor. It will give us some breathing room to gather our fleets. Then, and only then, can the defensive strategies and operations being proposed here today be viable.”

Wow, are you stupid. You admit that you are "leaving vital worlds woefully undefended". The cloaking device means you cannot estimate the actual numbers of ships near Prior's World; nor can you estimate the numbers of ships at nearby worlds. You know nothing about the current state of Klingon command structure (nearby worlds may not move to assist Prior's World; they may leave their brethren to "fend for themselves" while they assault nearly-defenseless Federation worlds).

I guess Sun Tzu is no longer required reading for command in Starfleet:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

So, we are doing a "historical recreation" of the initial attack on Prior's World, which probably resulted in the Federation losing a half dozen planets. Could we have less depressing ST:D content? We know the Federation lost the military aspect of the Federation-Klingon war because they could not adapt to the cloaking device; and because Starfleet Intelligence is incompetent. I imagine Section 31 is too busy making Skynet to defend the Federation.

rattler2 · April 2019

T'Kuvma wanted to unify the Empire, and felt that the only way to do that was to give them a common enemy. Thus he painted the Federation as that enemy, citing them absorbing other cultures into their own and expanding.

While ultimately T'Kuvma's dream of a unified Klingon Empire did come about in the end, it wasn't under T'Kuvma's leadership. Kol lead Imperial forces against the Federation, but he wasn't an idealist like T'Kuvma. He wanted honor and glory in battle. After Kol's death over Pahvo in battle against USS Discovery, the Empire basically fell back on House loyalties and tactics, fracturing into multiple factions in a race to see who can claim the most territory. It was only after L'Rell threatened them with Georgiou's bomb that the Empire unified under one leader, and the war went cold. Said state of Cold War wouldn't really end until the TOS episode where the Oganian Treaty was imposed upon the Federation and Empire. And even after that there was still the tension until at least Kitomer in ST6.

artan42 · April 2019

Kol then inertia lead the Klingons in the war not T'Kuvma. The last war the Federation was involved with was the Coalition Romulan war a century ago. It's hardly surprising the civilian peacetime organisation is a bit bad at fighting a war never mind a war against a people that the last one standing would fight themselves to death.

mustrumridcully0 · April 2019

redvenge wrote: »

Since the official thread seems to be about "T6 Coupons" or something, I figured I would start a thread about the story and mission goals. Since I have a "negative opinion" I prematurely banished my thread to Ten Forward.

Looking at the reasoning behind "Operation Riposte", I can clearly see why the Federation is losing the war.

Admiral Cornwall: “That is how you and I might think, but we are not fighting one another. We are fighting the Klingons, and analysis of their overall strategy confirms one thing. The Klingons are after something the value more than territory or victory - they are seeking glory in battle.”

Uh... where did you get the idea that they are seeking "glory in battle"? Did you not listen to T'Kuvma when he told you that ""Members of the Federation, what you call your most remote borders I call too close to Klingon territory. You only live now to serve as witnesses of Klingon supremacy, to be my herald. We do not desire to know you. But you will know our great houses, standing as one under Kahless, reborn in me, T'Kuvma."? They are not seeking glory. They are exterminating you to preserve their way of life.

This also shows that, even after the debacle that was the Battle of the Binary Stars, Starfleet Intelligence has not bothered to investigate the situation inside the Klingon Empire. If they did, they would see that the Klingon force arrayed against them is not a single group, but a chaotic assortment of factions each vying for power. Some of the factions use suicide vessels to blow up starbases, while other factions use weapons that destroy atmospheres of planets, killing the population and rendering those planets uninhabitable.

Admiral Kensington: “An offensive on our part will draw the Klingons away from other worlds and shift the pace of this war in our favor. It will give us some breathing room to gather our fleets. Then, and only then, can the defensive strategies and operations being proposed here today be viable.”

Wow, are you stupid. You admit that you are "leaving vital worlds woefully undefended". The cloaking device means you cannot estimate the actual numbers of ships near Prior's World; nor can you estimate the numbers of ships at nearby worlds. You know nothing about the current state of Klingon command structure (nearby worlds may not move to assist Prior's World; they may leave their brethren to "fend for themselves" while they assault nearly-defenseless Federation worlds).

I guess Sun Tzu is no longer required reading for command in Starfleet:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

So, we are doing a "historical recreation" of the initial attack on Prior's World, which probably resulted in the Federation losing a half dozen planets. Could we have less depressing ST:D content? We know the Federation lost the military aspect of the Federation-Klingon war because they could not adapt to the cloaking device; and because Starfleet Intelligence is incompetent. I imagine Section 31 is too busy making Skynet to defend the Federation.

Now go back for a moment to the premise this tactics are built on. You disagree with them, but as people have already pointed out, you are wrong. Since T'Kuvma didn't actually get to command in this war, whatever he intended for it is moot. The fact is that the different Klingon houses are looking for honor and glory for themselves in this war, and that can only be had in battle.

Going on the offensive by targeting Priors world means that the Klingons now know where glory and honor is to be had - and also where it can be lost. If they let Starfleet take Priors world back, then that is a mark against them, it shows whoever was involved in capturing and defending it as weak. It forces the Klingons to defend it as good as they can.

Even with cloaking capabilities, Starfleet can still have a rough idea of the distribution of Klingon forces, because they know where the Klingons attacked and they presumably have some intel on how many ships they actually have. They can use the last known positions and known speed of warp ships to get some reasonable estimates onfleet strength.

What the don't know is where the Klingons will strike once they go into cloak. That basically means that staying on the defensive will be a losing proposition to Starfleet, because the Klingons can always choose to attack the more poorly defended worlds. (It is actually very similar to the situation in the Iconian War. The Iconians didn't cloak, but they could appear wherever the wanted to appear, with little forewarning.)
Starfleet has almost no other option but to go on the offensive and take something from the Klingons, forcing them to defend themselves. It of course will have risks - they can't be certain that they won't fly into an ambush. But currently, such a scenario is unlikely, because the Federation was on the defensive the entire time and the KLingons don't expect a counter-attack, nor would they know were.

After the strike at Priors world, things get a bit harder - the Klingons have time to reorganize their forces under cloak. They can now observe Federation attack fleet movements to anticipate Federation attacks - but this binds at least some of their forces to stay close enough to the Federation attack fleet.
It's clear that the Klingons however still think in terms of their house and not the Empire, so usually houses won't fight side by side, since that would mean sharing the glory (and spoils.)

STO New TFO: Operation "Riposte"

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