What happened to the Vesuvius?

Originally posted by papachulo10
This may be my mean side of me talkin, but why did Confed leave the Kilrathi so much space after the war. I mean you fight a species for ssssooooooooo long and you leave them so much. SUre we destroyed their homeworld. They are lucky confed didn't make them go the way of the Dodo. I think that Confed you take most of the remaining Kilrathi systems and use them to give the Confed economy a "jump start". What do you think?
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You're assuming here that Confed 'won' the war. Now I must admit that I haven't read most of the WC fiction, so I'm running on what went in the game but to me you spend most of WC3 with Confed losing badly. Practically one failed mission and the cats are landing on Earth. Both the Behemoth and the Temblar bomb projects are last ditch efforts to take out the Kilrah homeworld and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

So Blair makes it through and takes out Kilrah prime, killing the Emperor (and presumeably a sh!^load of other important cats). Melek assumes command of the local cat fleet and promptly surrenders to the Heart of the Tiger.

Given that Confed has, up until this point, been losing, it's probably fairly safe to say that the Kilrathi have a reasonable edge in numbers. Destroying Kilrah is not going to change this. So what is going to happen to Melek and this chance at peace if Confed tries to throw its wait around?

(My memory is hazy. Is it in WC2 somewhere that in a conversation with Hobbes, Blair questions the futility of the war and whether a sudden strike to kill the Emperor may not be more profitable?)

By WC4, Confed clearly has the edge - the 'peace treaty' has obviously prevented the cats from developing new ships & weapons, while Confed has continued. Even in WCPro the cats are still flying the same antiquated ships. In WC4, Tolwyns actions are stirred by the fear that Confed is going 'soft', that spending cutbacks will weaken the military too much.

To continue my rant, I personally don't see Tolwyn as a monster or a neo-Hitler or anything like that. I see him as a soldier doing what he sees as his job - to protect everything that he holds dear. He has spent 40 odd years fighting an enemy. He knows EXACTLY how close humanity came to extinction (and I feel that was VERY close). Now that that enemy is gone, he watches as everyone laughs and thinks the danger has gone away. But he knows that there will always be danger, whether from the various Kilrah sects that refuse to admit defeat, whoever those guys beyond the Kilrah system are (sorry I can't remember their name) or even the Border Worlds. The price of freedom is eternal vigilence.

I believe his actions are motivated by the long-term survival of the human species. While I do not believe this justifies the methods he used, remember that Tolwyn has watched his species claw its way back from the brink of extinction, only to see them throwing it all away again. He is an Admiral, who through decades of war has had to order many people to their deaths. While his methods may seem distasteful to we who live in (relatively) peaceful times, the sacrifice of a few lives to preserve the greater good is not illogical.
 
Yeah, Blair and Hobbes were on a station orbiting Ghorah Khar, chatting about the various ways to end the war. Blair says he'd like a quick strike, to kill the Emperor and heir.

Now, Hobbes vetoes this, saying that there's always someone to take his place. This happened, even though Melek is not a highborn Kilrathi. What, I wonder, would have happened if one of these "fifteen cousins" had been on the Dreadnought to take over? Would family revenge make him continue the war? It's likely Melek et al. would have done exactly as the provisional Emperor said, because of the discipline of thier culture.

No matter, it didn't happen. We won.

The only major problem with the Confederation is the fact that we get taken by surprise a lot. Yeah, once the message gets through that over there are people we should be shooting at, we're hard to beat, but people seem to get through to Confed space and take a few casualties (Battle Of Earth, anyone?) before Confed decides to do something about it.

Tolwyn.......had a point. He just chose the worst way possible of enforcing it. I suppose Hitler really did think the Jews needed killing, but Tolwyn differs from Hitler in that he had a valid point to make. And he didn't have a pimp 'tasche. Yes, what Tolwyn did was evil, and if he hadn't of hanged himself, I would have shipped him out to Telamon instead of shooting him, but the "who will protect us?" speech did make me think.
 
Originally posted by AzraeL

You're assuming here that Confed 'won' the war. Now I must admit that I haven't read most of the WC fiction, so I'm running on what went in the game but to me you spend most of WC3 with Confed losing badly. Practically one failed mission and the cats are landing on Earth. Both the Behemoth and the Temblar bomb projects are last ditch efforts to take out the Kilrah homeworld and snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

So Blair makes it through and takes out Kilrah prime, killing the Emperor (and presumeably a sh!^load of other important cats). Melek assumes command of the local cat fleet and promptly surrenders to the Heart of the Tiger.

Given that Confed has, up until this point, been losing, it's probably fairly safe to say that the Kilrathi have a reasonable edge in numbers. Destroying Kilrah is not going to change this. So what is going to happen to Melek and this chance at peace if Confed tries to throw its wait around?
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Blair not only took out a large number of Kilrathi, but also took out that large fleet that, had you failed, would have had the cats landing on Earth. While I'm sure the Kilrathi still had a number of ships available, I think the loss of that fleet, which was probably made up of the best and brightest, put Confed on at least even footing in numbers. In addition, the Kilrathi may not have known how the Temblor worked, adn may have believed that confed could use it on any Kilrathi planet.

Oh, and the fiction, particularly Fleet Action supports your thoughts, since one of the main Terran shipyards is severly damaged during the Battle of Terra. I tend to agree that the Kilrathi, had they given more time and thought to the matter could have still put up quite a fight.

[Edited by Shane on 01-29-2001 at 11:28]
 
I agree. Tolwyn is a patriot and i think that they should have taken into account the decades of service he had put in for humanity. WHich brings me to my next point. What would have happened to him if he didn't kill himself? Life in the brig, execution?
 
Originally posted by Shane
In addition, the Kilrathi may not have known how the Temblor worked, adn may have believed that confed could use it on any Kilrathi planet.
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That was indeed the case. In False Colors there are examples of Kilrathi being afraid of Confed possibly using T-bombs again.
 
Originally posted by Shane
Blair not only took out a large number of Kilrathi, but also took out that large fleet that, had you failed, would have had the cats landing on Earth. While I'm sure the Kilrathi still had a number of ships available, I think the loss of that fleet, which was probably made up of the best and brightest, put Confed on at least even footing in numbers. In addition, the Kilrathi may not have known how the Temblor worked, adn may have believed that confed could use it on any Kilrathi planet.
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I would have thought that, with Confed on the back foot and pushed nearly back to Earth, that the relative number of ships close to Kilrah and subsequently 'removed' by Blair would be relatively small compared to the numbers in other systems. The impact of the loss of most of the Kilrathi heirachy, including the Emperor together with a large number of high ranking military officials & strategists, would be far more significant then the loss of vessels and men. The raw numbers, I feel, would still be in favour of the Kilrathi, although with noone to lead them.

As for the Temblor bomb, is it really so much more dangerous then other more (or less) 'conventional' weapons such as the bio-weapons capable of rendering a planet uninhabitable, or even the gen-select weapon (which I imagine Confed had under development at the time. I seriously doubt it was all Tolwyns idea in WCIV). While I admit the Temblor has the advantage that it can be delivered by a single fighter, the effort required to get a fighter to a valid target (God knows how much effort construction of those asteroid bases took) is still considerable. Presumeably with enough effort you could also smuggle a freighter full of bio-weapons into a system.

Anyway, I agree the Kilrathi were probably badly shaken and suffered a very serious setback. I was merely responding to one or two of the earlier posts which questioned why Confed didn't, say, pillage the Kilrah systems. You can only push someone so far.

Note : Melek surrenders to Blair, the Heart of the Tiger, a valiant, and above all noble and honourable opponent.
 
Don't forget that the Kilrathi's huge invasion fleet was also lost while it was loading to strike Earth during the temblor assault. They had just practically lost the Hakaga force, and then their second massive resource project goes down the drain too. Sure, the Kilrathi still had the advantage in numbers, but not so much as they should have had coincidence not taken its toll.
 
Confed lost most of its shipyards on Earth, now the Kilrathi lost most of the shipyards since most of their were in kilrah, the planet (and its moons, since those moons were colonizide my the Kilrathi) itself had most of the military, weapons and fighter production facilaties on the empire, they could still fight but lost of most of their advantage in production, and that was what have always given the edge to the kilrathi in the War.If they would still fight, that would me on more equal ground with ConFed.
 
no they wouldn't be on equal ground because confed was on its last leg and the Kilrathi even after loosing that fleet must have had alot of ships left. And they still had the shipyards that built the Hakagas to begin with.
 
I agree that the kilrathi would have a slight edge. they must have more carriers and a few fleets up their sleeves. Maybe if they weren't to shaken up by the death of their emporer they could have rallied and struck back. MAYBE. But like tolwyn said, It was humanities finest hour. Or in my opinion our darkest day.
 
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