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Asterite34 posted:Okay, so it turns out it is kind of a nightmare to have a hostile colony share a planet with you, as they can turn the place into an unassailable fortress with ease and that kinda fucks you if you need access to it. You'd need a majority of the population to go with it otherwise its somewhat of a hostage situation but otherwise yeah.
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Feb 19, 2021 00:47
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TDS posted:Yeah, mechanically ground units with surface to orbit weapons are very powerful. They get bonus range compared to ship-based ones. A planet or moon with a decent STO garrison is a tough nut to crack, especially if you care about the world and its population and don't want to shoot tons of nukes down the gravity well. At that point your only option is dedicated dropships rushing in, because normal troop transports will get mauled before they finish unloading. (or blockading them from out of range/ignoring them) Its one of the things I'd most like tweaked with Aurora atm. STO weapons are really cool, and thematically make sense but because the game doesn't track the horizon on planets or deal with combat in a positional way they're far too powerful and easy to abuse. Even adding a minimum number of STOs needed for low orbit control (based on the size of the body) would help balance it out a fair amount. As that way you could do limited orbital bombardment to reduce a garrisons STO numbers enough to attempt ground force landings and resupply. Asterite34 posted:Okay, so it turns out it is kind of a nightmare to have a hostile colony share a planet with you, as they can turn the place into an unassailable fortress with ease and that kinda fucks you if you need access to it. That would be up to Mr Bates as whilst smuggling AKs to our oppressed brethren is fairly easy, motorised high energy laser platforms are a bit harder to hide in amongst a shipment of nutrient bars!
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Feb 19, 2021 00:48
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BwenGun posted:Its one of the things I'd most like tweaked with Aurora atm. STO weapons are really cool, and thematically make sense but because the game doesn't track the horizon on planets or deal with combat in a positional way they're far too powerful and easy to abuse. Even adding a minimum number of STOs needed for low orbit control (based on the size of the body) would help balance it out a fair amount. As that way you could do limited orbital bombardment to reduce a garrisons STO numbers enough to attempt ground force landings and resupply. Yeah Im glad they are in but they need tweaking because its absurdly easy to make any attack impossible. Yeah, these are basically modified starship size and grade weaponry with attached power systems and active sensory systems. It's gonna be hard smuggling a significant amount of these. Telsa Cola fucked around with this message at 01:27 on Feb 19, 2021 |
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Feb 19, 2021 00:53
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On less hypothetical notes: what do posters think perspectives of life in the divided states of america both right now and earlier could be like? And what about non-comintern views on the comintern?
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Feb 19, 2021 00:55
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So could we feasibly kidnap Hirohito while he's been secreted outside of his usual residence and drop him off on Mars? On a less jokey note totally not joking about the kidnapping the (oddly shady) deal offered would be a massive commitment to both parties considering a presumed lack of any serious diplomatic contact until this point. How about we stay open to considering their requests at a later date and for now focus on building a more trusting relationship like we have with Hawaii first? It would also give us some time to properly investigate their intentions and uncover any ulterior motives. Plus, our most populous member-state China might be a bit pissed off if we don't at least try for some reconciliation between the two and/or official acknowledgement of atrocities and reparations before agreeing to do business, surely? At the very least we should be having these discussions out in the open rather than as surprise under-the-table pressure sales in an empty factory. Really loving this LP so far, sometimes the storytelling and debates get so interesting I forget the thread's even about Aurora 4x.
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Feb 19, 2021 01:12
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I mean, so far it seems the intent of the deal is to knock us off balance and try and make us do something dumb. It's done very well at the first part, we can't let it do the second.
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Feb 19, 2021 05:15
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Doing something dumb is a grand Aurora lp tradition and I will not see it being sullied in this manner.
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Feb 19, 2021 06:30
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Yes, but I'd prefer a ludicrous boondoggle instead, like carving Phobos and Deimos into giant orbiting statues of marx and lenin. ...Hey, now there's an idea...
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Feb 19, 2021 06:36
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We should shoot something with a mass driver. Anything really.
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Feb 19, 2021 06:39
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Pirate Radar posted:We should shoot something with a mass driver. Anything really. If we make Phobos into a giant floating marx head, we can outfit the eyes with defence lasers and the mouth with a mass driver.
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Feb 19, 2021 06:45
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NewMars posted:When we make Phobos into a giant floating marx head, we can outfit the eyes with defence lasers and the mouth with a mass driver.
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Feb 19, 2021 06:48
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May 15, 1982 As in many countries, there is more than one Communist Party in India. They don’t get along well with each other, but both the parliamentary parties and the extraparliamentary militant groups have an interest in staying on good terms with the Comintern, which your agents have managed to use to keep them from sabotaging each other too much. The summit in India is as much a summit of the Indian communist movement as it is a Comintern diplomatic mission. Your team crosses the Chinese border into India with a concrete offer to give to the Indian government: a large consignment of Socialist Aid Program housing and Trans-Newtonian infrastructure, in exchange for some of India’s large food surplus. This benefits them in two ways: first, the construction and infrastructure you’re providing them will directly stimulate their economy; second, their government will have to purchase vast quantities of food to make up their end of the deal, which will indirectly stimulate their economy by distributing wealth to Indian farmers. That’s the carrot in this carrot-and-stick arrangement. But first, you must meet with the stick. Your delegation is met at the border by a column of Naxalite militia, who lead them to a temporary encampment in the deep wilderness. It was erected solely for this meeting, and will be dismantled after the meeting ends. Hidden around it, in rings of concealed fortifications and observation posts, are thousands of armed Indian communists, from every faction represented at the meeting; if the Indian government decides to take this opportunity to decapitate their communist movement, they’ll be in for one hell of a fight. The dozen diplomats of the Comintern delegation meet there with the leaders of half a dozen Naxal factions and the three largest parliamentary Communist parties. The negotiations begin even as the Japan meeting is ongoing. The decision of the People’s Congress was to use these allies to ‘encourage’ the Indian government to accept the deal, and this is the agreement that is reached. Both the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary factions are quite happy to have an opportunity to throw their weight around, and this, along with the hope that it will lead to further support in their struggle from the Comintern, is enough to bring them into uneasy alliance. The parliamentary parties will exercise peaceful pressure on the government, and the armed insurgents agree to temporarily reduce the intensity of their campaign, with the implicit threat of redoubling it if the government rejects the offer. The last piece of the puzzle, then, is to present the offer. This happens on the 15th of May, when the New Delhi government agrees, via a Communist Party of India intermediary, to meet with the Comintern’s delegation in Calcutta. The meeting is much more standard than the unusual Japanese meeting – a team of professional diplomats meets with another team of professional diplomats, at a table. There are pleasantries exchanged, documents presented, proposals discussed. One of the Indian negotiators, a quiet, bright young woman in nondescript clothing whose name you never catch, but who the others seem to defer to, calls the first day’s meeting to a close after several hours. The discussions have seemed productive, with nothing standout worth noting. The offer you bring to the table is straightforward, beneficial to both parties, and the Indians seem receptive to it, with most of the day’s discussions centered around the logistics of how it would be carried out, specific amounts, and timetables. The second day’s discussions are rescheduled to take place in a rural village outside of Calcutta. It’s an unusual choice, and becomes more unusual when the Comintern delegation’s motorcade drives past the ruins of a burned-out convoy of vehicles on the road. The Indian negotiators stand nearby on the scorched grass. “Your handiwork,” the nondescript woman says as the nervous delegates disembark, smiling disarmingly. “We thought you’d like to see it, the concrete results of building communism in India. Seventeen people died in this attack.” The awkward silence lasts just a few beats too long before another Indian negotiator breaks it. “We want this to stop. Our offer is this: our government likes your offer and wants to accept it. We think it would benefit both parties. Your nations have a growing population and your food production has still not recovered from the nuclear autumn; our nation’s agricultural production will virtually eliminate the risk of famine in your organization’s territories. As a show of good faith, we will even deliver our first shipment of food aid to the Comintern before the agreement is finalized, with no expectation of repayment. However, our willingness to accept this offer over the long term is contingent on this ending.” “In short: call off your attack dogs. Formally recognize the legitimacy of the Indian government – the current Indian government. Pacify our communist insurgency. Do that, and your organization will have a friend in India.” May 17, 1982 The XCOM Cydonia team prepares the first of several preliminary reports on their initial exploration of the Face and surrounding environs. This one is on the most immediately pressing issue – the biological remains. All told, over two thousand skeletons and corpses have been found in or immediately around the Face. All of them are of the same species as the Roswell aliens. With a few exceptions inside the Face itself, most of them appear, from cursory initial investigation (the team has simply not had time to perform autopsies or detailed studies of thousands of corpses), to have expired from injuries sustained during combat – blunt force, penetrating wounds from projectile weapons, shrapnel, cauterized full-body puncture wounds the team conjectures are from energy weapons, slashes from blades. The Cydonia survivors’ efforts to bury the bodies inside the Face have significantly impeded xenoarchaeology efforts, as there is no way of determining where a specific body in their mass grave fell or under what circumstances, or what artifacts they had in their possession. Even their clothing has largely been disrupted by the haphazard burial process. Outside, on the Martian surface, the situation is different. The evidence there, buried under a layer of Martian dust, is of a bitter, hard-fought ground assault on a fortified defensive position. Trenches, makeshift redoubts constructed out of loose rocks, and burnt-out armored rovers in hull-down positions surround the airlocks leading into the Face. In them are bodies in armored EVA suits patterned in mottled rust-red camouflage that renders them near-invisible against the Martian surface. The team has tentatively grouped these bodies into a single ‘side’, which they have given the provisional designation of the ‘Defenders’. They are armed with a surprisingly diverse assortment of personal weapons; most of them appear to be projectile weapons. Intermixed with them, and surrounding their defensive positions on the Martian plain, are the group the team has given the provisional designation of ‘Attackers’. They are clad in much heavier, thicker armored suits of dull silver-grey, and their weapons are more standard; unlike the ‘Defenders’, their armaments have no immediately obvious projectiles or source of propellant, and how exactly they work or what they do is unclear. Which side won, or what their objectives even were, remains unclear. The secure channel to Cydonia remains open for further inquiries. The team will, barring additional instructions, next focus on the Face's basic support systems - specifically, the power grid, heat management system, water grid, and life support and climate control systems, to attempt to suss out how they work. This is considered to be necessary prerequisite work before anything is done with the site's computers, complex electronics, or the cryo storage tubes. The Barsoom away team, acting in support to the XCOM specialists, will focus primarily on the Cyclops and German survivors, continuing to interview them and monitor their status. The survivors are restless and have been eager to help, cleaning up debris inside the Face, showing our teams around, and doing manual labor for them. Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 08:16 on Feb 19, 2021 |
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Feb 19, 2021 08:14
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Bates commented on the discord (which people should join, by the way, it's fun) that the farmers of India are basically living under a feudal system in all but name, subject to unceasing brutality. This must end, immediately. The Farmers must be given the right to self-management and self-organization, their lands returned to them. As well, the socialist aid we give them must be overseen by a joint partnership between the comintern and the indian government. If we think there's any chance of it being misappropriated, that is. In return we will use our contacts with the communists to hopefully end or at least significantly reduce the insurgency as well as provide socialist aid and recognize the legitimacy of their government.
NewMars fucked around with this message at 09:06 on Feb 19, 2021 |
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Feb 19, 2021 08:59
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Yeah, that little display is certainly effective, but it takes two to tango, unnamed lady. You want it to stop you need to address the (entirely legitimate) grievances of the militant communists. Credible commitment to reform at least the core issues (and probably as many others that we can get away with), overseen by the parliamentary communist parties, and we'll both recognize the government as legitimate and set aside a full diplomatic team to help pacify the militant communists.
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Feb 19, 2021 09:24
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If they want to be legitimized they're going to have to actually address the problems of the farmers and other workers of India. If they can do that, then I believe we can negotiate in good faith with them. If not, then they're only proving their illegitimacy.
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Feb 19, 2021 10:01
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Simu-cast worldwide are the proceedings of the Comintern. Unfortunately, this means someone always has to be up later than they'd like. Late into the night where they are, they work, discussing the hopes of peace and prosperity, of a future where the proletariat may be liberated by means of openness, dialogue and peace. It is an astounding logistical display and a technological marvel. It is a government of the people, by the people, for the people. Maybe not perfectly, but greater than any seen before. But the people have long known the violence of the state, the treachery of the capitalist class and the desperate scrabblings of authoritarians who recognize no god or ideology but naked greed and lust for power. They may not have seen the backroom deals, the secret plots, the conspiracy against the body public that has maintained ten thousand years of class oppression, but they know them all too well. They have seen them take any tool that could uplift the worker and fashion it into a new lash, a new collar for a proletariat so very close to liberation. But they are liberated now. Not everywhere, not yet. And they have learned. They have learned to keep a secret. At a midnight, unannounced trade union conference in Sydney a proposal is formulated, passed by unanimous consent. In three minutes it has been sent across the continent to every city union and beyond the waters. From there it spreads. In California, a landline beneath the senate house is picked up. In Cascadia, a late-night train pulls into station, among the tired masses one worker keeps a note close to the chest. In the soviet politburo a terminal is accessed and from there forwarded to Lunagrad via satellite relay. In Cuba, an aging statesman takes care not to drop cigarette ash as he reads a newly-printed fax. The message: Regarding the diplomatic situation in India Whereas it is generally agreed by means of council vote that the Indian government as it stands has engaged in a long-term and brutal oppression of it's proletariat and prior experience has contra-indicated the likelyhood of continued reform beyond that which would strengthen the existing powerbase via means of false class consciousness, co-option of leftist elements or friendly relations with a perceived enemy power (I. E. Us). This being the case, should negotiations succeed, we must be ready for a reactionary movement against the liberated proletariat. Reaction may be in the form of "peaceful" co-option or violent coercion but will likely have elements of both. A cornerstone of our diplomatic efforts so far is to see rural workers liberated from the near-feudal conditions they currently suffer under with the guaranteed right to self-organize. So it is that there have, historically, been various means by which this situation has only resolved with further entrenchment of the capital class. These means being: unequal reformation of land, the allocation of land to workers who cannot possibly utilize it alone (often resulting in private or state purchase), propaganda praising individual efforts in capitalist economic success, use of state monopolies or state sponsorship of capital-friendly individuals to destroy smallholders. None of these can be allowed to pass. In order to prevent further strengthening of capitalist dominance within the Indian nation, we have tentatively formulated the following proposal, currently titled: "OPERATION CHAKRAVARTIN" Operation Chakravartin is to consist of a dual approach, the first half being a more public-facing method of cooperation with parliamentary elements within the Indian Communist and Socialist parties, while the second half will resolve around supporting the paramilitaries. In dealing with the parliamentary parties, our work will be in seizing the imitative in moving in to aid Indian farmers and urban workers: they are to act as tutors in the principles of socialism, foremost among them unionizing and mutual aid. Through disbursement of resources they are to strengthen incipient union organizations so that they are not economically subsumed or crushed by state or private enterprise. This will require investment in the forms of literature and material aid and can probably just be done publicly through the socialist aid we are planning to give them anyway. However, when dealing with the paramilitaries, it is worth remembering that we are dealing with a very, very long-running insurgency here. We must be able to identify those who are truly in it for the people's struggle and separate out those who will merely turn this into a massacre. Truthfully, this can never totally be done, but we must try. Socialist paramilitaries can be aided as a pipeline to arm the unions and tutor them in self-defense as well as methods to ensure that should the government attempt a more violent means of coercion, that it will fail. We will put a stop to the insurgency, but in doing so, we must make sure that if the government should attempt to leash the proletariat again, that it will be met with revolution.
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Feb 19, 2021 10:08
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Comrades, after reading the report from the Cydona Base we have a small suggestion that might hopefully be of use to the survivors, namely that the next supply ship to Mars carries a crate full of old sets of encyclopedias and related literature. It would give the survivors a physical reminder of home, and by starting at encyclopedias released a couple years after their abduction and moving up say 5 years every time they'll have time to absorb the changes slowly and in small increments. Of course the support staff will have to be diligent in correcting biases, half-truths and the like but we believe it'll be a valuable tool for both the survivors and the support staff. Finding sets might require going diving through old libraries but I fully believe we should be able to find sufficient intact sets to be able to send to Mars, though I would like to pre-emptively express my sympathies to the German representatives on the difficulty of finding sets to send to the German Uboat crew from ca. 30's-40's that would be acceptable to send to them.
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Feb 19, 2021 13:25
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Mister Bates posted:The XCOM Cydonia team prepares the first of several preliminary reports on their initial exploration of the Face and surrounding environs. This one is on the most immediately pressing issue – the biological remains. All told, over two thousand skeletons and corpses have been found in or immediately around the Face. All of them are of the same species as the Roswell aliens. With a few exceptions inside the Face itself, most of them appear... to have expired from injuries sustained during combat – blunt force, penetrating wounds from projectile weapons, shrapnel, cauterized full-body puncture wounds the team conjectures are from energy weapons, slashes from blades. Some things about this whole scenario are very mysterious. So, one side (attacking) had all the same gun, the other side had a mixed variety of armaments. All the corpses show a diverse array of wounds. This seems to imply that the defenders won, and the corpses are all the attackers. But the scenario otherwise seems to imply that the attackers were the better military force (actual standardized weapons and heavier armor, like real soldiers) and there are signs inside that it was the Roswell aliens defending the compound (some of the bodies being shot were behind a barricade). There's also the strange fact that the losing side's corpses were just kinda left around and there's only dead Roswells. Would make sense if the attackers won and then removed their fallen in a hurry... but then what were they attacking for if they left the compound intact and operating? Alternately, this could be some kind of civil war between Roswells, so regardless of which side won all the corpses would be of the same species. GunnerJ fucked around with this message at 14:28 on Feb 19, 2021 |
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Feb 19, 2021 14:20
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Was the Mars enclave the hideout for a mixed group of Roswell species rebels/ exilants / outsiders tjat were eventually found by the official military and exterminated? But yeah, its very strange that the winners/attackers did not bother with the recovery of their own fallen...did all attackers die AND all defenders, too? Btw did the team find any Roswell kids or elders?
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Feb 19, 2021 15:39
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Legitimizing the government of India without being promised that the aggrieved farmers and rural citizens will be given parliamentary representation and legislation to solve the worst of their problems would be a complete betrayal of our allies in India. Any agreement we come to with the current Indian government should also first be passed by the local Communist factions, if they give it 2/3rds majority support, we'll move to implement it. Acknowledging the Indian government as legitimate is absolutely on the table... as long as they prove themselves to be a legitimate government of, by and for the people. Aside from reforms, this would also require elections held under the supervision of Comintern observers who certify that everything went without intentional disruption by either side.
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Feb 19, 2021 15:53
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Mister Bates posted:May 15, 1982 I dunno, this smells like Trickle-Down Economics to me. How can we be sure this won't just collect in the pockets of the landowners before it gets down to the literal peasants? The SAP housing we can at least be sure won't be misappropriated unless the bourgoisie has a fondness for tens of thousands of units of prefab IKEA furniture. Plus, the government buying up all the food surpluses may result in a massive price increase, and THAT'S gonna be felt by the underclass at least in the short term. Seems like a poor bargain to potentially trade food for free shelter. That is to say, I'm not opposed to this deal, but we should be careful of the specifics to make sure it isn't done in the most capitalist ratfuckery way possible. Otherwise all that serf-grown food is gonna taste like ashes in our mouths. quote:“In short: call off your attack dogs. Formally recognize the legitimacy of the Indian government – the current Indian government. Pacify our communist insurgency. Do that, and your organization will have a friend in India.” This seems fairly doable, though obviously these insurgents don't directly answer to us even if they see us as ideological brethren. Unless they're inviting us to put Comintern peacekeeping boots on the ground of THEIR country. Hmm... that's not a bad idea, actually. A Comintern force ostensibly to root out the more dangerous insurgents. gently caress it, we're already on speaking terms with the more reasonable of them and they've already offered to loving chill for a bit while we sort this out diplomatically and immediately cut down violence significantly without firing a shot. In reality their MAIN objective will be to act as observers and evaluators to see that the Workers are allowed representation and self-organizatoin to ensure they're the ones reaping the benefits of this deal. We can request some legislative concessions ensuring direct payment to the actual farmers for their goods and programs to help in their self-organization, we certainly have a few old hands at this to offer suggestions. We can get Chavez on the line. Hopefully this will be enough to quiet down the more sensible paramilitary groups. And for the ones that are impossible to satisfy, well, we WOULD have boots on the ground to show what happens to jerks who CLAIM to speak for the people while merely being violent brutes.
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Feb 19, 2021 17:18
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I'm opposed to the idea of using Comintern troops to suppress communist militants, but if it's at all possible for us to get them to stand down or agree to a cease fire diplomatically then we should absolutely go for it.
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Feb 19, 2021 22:52
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VideoWitch posted:I'm opposed to the idea of using Comintern troops to suppress communist militants, but if it's at all possible for us to get them to stand down or agree to a cease fire diplomatically then we should absolutely go for it. Agreed, diplomatic solutions are preferred immensely in this case. That being said, there comes a point where it makes us look bad if every violent uprising slaps a Hammer and Sickle logo on themselves and claims they act with our tacit approval.
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Feb 19, 2021 23:03
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VideoWitch posted:I'm opposed to the idea of using Comintern troops to suppress communist militants, but if it's at all possible for us to get them to stand down or agree to a cease fire diplomatically then we should absolutely go for it. The issue is that there are dozens of competing communist parties here so there is a very real chance that making a deal with one of them is going to piss off another one. I am 100% on board with making it a requirment that they fix the gently caress out of the weird feudal system they have going on though, at the very least.
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Feb 19, 2021 23:12
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The Republic of the Outer Banks concurs.
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Feb 19, 2021 23:15
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I doubt the Indians would let any armed Comintern troops in at this point, anyway. Letting foreign troops perform police actions on your soil looks really bad for a sovereign nation, especially if it's not even a close ally sending them but someone on the other 'side'.
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Feb 19, 2021 23:15
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The issue is that we don't actually know what the demands of the insurgent group are. If they are essentially "we want control of the goverment" we are going to have issues.
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Feb 19, 2021 23:19
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Telsa Cola posted:The issue is that we don't actually know what the demands of the insurgent group are. If they are essentially "we want control of the goverment" we are going to have issues. There are a couple regionalist separatist groups fighting alongside them but the Naxalites are generally Maoists or Maoist-adjacent groups who are waging a protracted people's war with the end goal being the establishment of a unified Indian socialist state. 'We want control of the government' is exactly the demand. Their relationship with the parliamentary communist parties varies from open hostility to fairly friendly depending on which parliamentary party and which Naxalite faction you're talking about. They have been fighting since before the GRW, and received aid from Comintern-aligned powers (although the Comintern has not officially intervened in India they have in fact continued to receive some quiet aid from individual member states).
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Feb 19, 2021 23:37
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Mister Bates posted:There are a couple regionalist separatist groups fighting alongside them but the Naxalites are generally Maoists or Maoist-adjacent groups who are waging a protracted people's war with the end goal being the establishment of a unified Indian socialist state. 'We want control of the government' is exactly the demand. Thank you for the info dump!
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Feb 19, 2021 23:38
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Antilles posted:Comrades, after reading the report from the Cydona Base we have a small suggestion that might hopefully be of use to the survivors, namely that the next supply ship to Mars carries a crate full of old sets of encyclopedias and related literature. It would give the survivors a physical reminder of home, and by starting at encyclopedias released a couple years after their abduction and moving up say 5 years every time they'll have time to absorb the changes slowly and in small increments. Of course the support staff will have to be diligent in correcting biases, half-truths and the like but we believe it'll be a valuable tool for both the survivors and the support staff. I would support this plan. Finally, a use for outdated textbooks and encyclopedias that isn't just a doorstop! NewMars posted:- "OPERATION CHAKRAVARTIN" - I do wonder about the specifics of 'socialist education' here though. Would it be any specific socialist leanings? Anarchism, Mao-ism, etc? zanni fucked around with this message at 23:45 on Feb 19, 2021 |
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Feb 19, 2021 23:39
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Committing to one leaning is guaranteed to make people mad, so probably as wide a mix as we can go?
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Feb 19, 2021 23:48
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That seems wisest. There's plenty of common ground to be found without needing to get into the specific details of any one approach.
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Feb 19, 2021 23:50
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zanni posted:I would support this plan. Finally, a use for outdated textbooks and encyclopedias that isn't just a doorstop! Funding a coup through a guise of socalist aid would also make it very very unlikely anybody ever trusts us again. That being said we could absolutely make sure that the farmers we helped don't get immediately crushed.
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Feb 19, 2021 23:53
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Telsa Cola posted:Funding a coup through a guise of socalist aid would also make it very very unlikely anybody ever trusts us again. Agree completely!
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Feb 19, 2021 23:55
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SavageGentleman posted:Was the Mars enclave the hideout for a mixed group of Roswell species rebels/ exilants / outsiders tjat were eventually found by the official military and exterminated? But yeah, its very strange that the winners/attackers did not bother with the recovery of their own fallen...did all attackers die AND all defenders, too? The situation looks strange indeed. But we must not make the mistake of employing human ethics to what is literally an alien civilization. Their values and practices might not consider the bodies of their fallen as deserving of respect, simply to be discarded. Various religious or ideological reasons could be constructed which could explain such a behaviour. Maybe they consider a dead body simply as a empty shell, devoid of anything deserving a respectful treatment. maybe their fallen are considered to have 'failed in their duties' or disgraced themselves by allowing themselves to be killed. Maybe individual lives are considered worthless in relation to the collective. The presence of specialized camouflage and seemingly improvised weapons by the 'defenders' might hint at them representing a guerilla-force, fighting against an overwhelming party. This might point at ideological differences between these factions. The lack of heavy weapons being used against planetary targets seems odd. maybe another cultural imperative exist, forbidding their use. Maybe pressing military needs precluded their employment, although I cannot comment on possible scenarios and like to refer such speculations to qualified specialists.
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Feb 20, 2021 00:12
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So far the XCOM team have found no bodies that look to be of children. They have also found no provisions for permanent habitation or any sign that the Face contained anything like residences. They haven't even explored the whole building yet, though, and the Face itself represents only a tiny fraction of the entire site, which sprawls over many kilometers, almost all of which remains totally unexplored.
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Feb 20, 2021 00:30
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Were any of the “attacker” bodies found inside the compound, or were they only outside? At very least we seem to have recovered a great deal of Roswell technology here.
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Feb 22, 2021 03:08
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Pirate Radar posted:Were any of the “attacker” bodies found inside the compound, or were they only outside? Several of the bodies inside the structure are clad in the remnants of the attackers' armor. May 19, 1982  Technically feasible railgun designs have been around since the 1940s, and working models have been around since not long after that. There is a wide gulf between 'working' and 'practical', though, and as of today the Comintern is halfway across that gap. The new rail and barrel designs can withstand significant structural strain, enough that they should theoretically be able to survive hundreds of shots before needing to be changed, instead of the 1-3 shots of conventional designs.  Academician Hapke takes to calling themselves DervinosDoom in the Internetwork BBSes, a name which quickly becomes semi-official after it makes its way into a press release.  Their labs are retasked to the other half of the railgun project - using the barrels they have just designed to actually fire a projectile. They expect a breakthrough by November. May 22, 1982 Argentina unilaterally annexes the Falkland Islands, a de facto stateless territory nominally administered by the Government-in-Exile of the United Kingdom. The 50 or so poorly-equipped and demoralized soldiers serving as a 'garrison' surrender without a fight, and the so-called 'Falklands War' is effectively over in a few hours. Prime Minister Thatcher lodges an impotent protest from her office in Tokyo. May 25, 1982 A warship, specifically a Sheffield-class destroyer, flying no flag and bearing no identifying marks, attacks and sinks an Argentine merchant ship off the coast of the newly-renamed Malvinas. FESTER surveillance tracks the ship back to South Georgia, information which is not relayed to the Argentines (they are not a Comintern member nation). The situation will be monitored closely for possible connections to GLADIO or threat to the Comintern. There does not appear to be any current permanent human presence there; speculation is that the 'pirates' may have a supply dump hidden on the island. May 28, 1982 Pope Marcellus III begins an official tour of Great Britain, the first reigning pope to do so. May 29, 1982 The Argentine corvette ARA Guerrico intercepts and engages in a gun duel with an unidentified Sheffield-class surface combatant. For reasons unknown (you have no insight on the Argentines' plans) the ship does not use its payload of Exocet anti-ship missiles. Despite this, the ship eventually succeeds in driving off the much larger vessel, sustaining moderate damage in the process. Your orbital surveillance indicates that the unflagged (presumed-British) ship has likely sustained engine damage, and it limps for Antarctica. June 2, 1982 The unflagged ship intercepts and destroys another Argentine merchant, only to be caught by three Argentine corvettes and at last destroyed. The survivors rescued from the ship identify it as the HMS Coventry and claim to be pirates operating on their own initiative, with no orders or support from a national body. The UK Government-in-Exile claims no knowledge of the ship or its operations. The Argentine government condemns the actions of 'Japanese puppets' in a fiery statement to the UN. June 11, 1982 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial premieres in the People's Republic of California. The movie arrives at a time when aliens are already a major pop-cultural obsession, and becomes an interplanetary phenomenon almost immediately. June 13, 1982 A Lunar Self-Defense Force rover patrol southwest of Lunagrad detours off the road to respond to an automated distress signal indicating a medical emergency. They are forced to abandon their rover and proceed on foot into broken, rocky terrain. The signal is coming from a jury-rigged portable transmitter. They follow a line of bootprints from the location back to the road. They're unsure what the purpose of this ruse was, but it did occupy them for several hours, during which time they were not patrolling the road. June 15, 1982 The XCOM Cydonia team issues another brief preliminary report, this one on the structural integrity and basic construction of the Face. In short, they're almost certain the Face was a natural structure that was hollowed out and reinforced with TNEs. In addition to the four giant airlocks leading to the 'drydocks', there are at least six others at ground level, four of them sized for personnel and two of them much larger. There is no sign of major structural damage and the entire Face is airtight. The 'Hanging Gardens' structure is the main access point to the facility's extensive lower levels, of which there are six, three of which we have been able to access. Of these, one contains sleep chambers, one contains what we believe is infrastructure for water, life support, and power distribution, and one is bulk storage. We have yet to study the contents of the storage containers; we have only so much time and only so many personnel. It is on the to-do list. There are multiple levels of chambers built into the walls of the Face, some of which we have been able to access, but about half of which remain closed to us. We are not currently attempting to gain entry to areas we do not have access to; we will try to understand what we can access first. The multiple levels of the Hanging Gardens are covered with plants growing in a soil substrate, with extensive water and UV-light infrastructure. Decorative water features and walkways snake through the structure. All of the plants we've examined have been Earth plants, very few of them food crops (the abduction survivors claim to have stripped nearly everything edible and they appear to be telling the truth). The very top tier of the structure, which overlooks the entire dome, is occupied entirely by an auditorium-like space, with semicircular rows of seating surrounding a central raised dais. All of this is powered by an external source - we have, with the help of orbital surveys, traced the wiring through the structure to a central junction on the 'infrastructure' sublevel, and from there, underground, out, and away into an unexplored area of the Cydonia ruins. Whatever is supplying electricity to this place, it's not in this building. The incoming power dynamically adjusts to meet load. The lights and climate control operate on a timer or sensor synced to the local day-night cycle, with most of the internal lights in the dome dimming shortly after local sunset; we have yet to determine the mechanism by which this works. June 21, 1982 Having completed a survey of the asteroid belt and Jupiter's Trojans, the Skarbnik and Karzelek are given their next mission: a 'Grand Tour' of all the outer planets and their moons. Skarbnik will visit Jupiter, Uranus, and Eris, while Karzelek will visit Saturn, Neptune, and Pluto. Distant Minerva will remain uncharted until you specifically plan an expedition there. The final results of the inner-system asteroid survey, excluding comets, are as follows: 
Mister Bates fucked around with this message at 07:43 on Feb 22, 2021 |
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Feb 22, 2021 07:25
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Those asteroids are... actually pretty decent, for space rocks (They never have as much as planets). I'm mildly interested in the Argentina situation, but first things first: I think we have to start stepping up lunar self-defense force training: you should never abandon your vehicle like that, always keep a watch on it!
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Feb 22, 2021 08:18
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NewMars posted:Those asteroids are... actually pretty decent, for space rocks (They never have as much as planets). I'm mildly interested in the Argentina situation, but first things first: I think we have to start stepping up lunar self-defense force training: you should never abandon your vehicle like that, always keep a watch on it! All these shenanigans on the moon is making me antsy... it might be time for the moon to get a FESTER station, for situations like this?
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Feb 22, 2021 10:05
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