Re: [GRIMDARK] Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons Discussion

[Icy Shake]

Yeah, they don't seem super in to it, but don't you figure that it was the Enclave that reached out to her? From a simple logistical standpoint, the reverse just seems less likely to me. And if Tart reached out to them and they didn't care for the subterfuge angle, why put her in the loop? Someone, somewhere in the Enclave was working with her, and the deal didn't turn in to anything that added value to the Enclave's plan.

Or maybe they really just didn't care, or their spies and soldiers really don't get along. Whatever the reason, they didn't even need to try to have a better plan available, leaving this operation a completely unjustifiable, total fail. And emblematic of their larger, strategic problems.

[Moodyman90]

In a poor attempt to justify this, there's the elected officials in the Enclave which probably pushed for more peaceful methods, such as the quiet take over of Friendship city, and the military with their head up their asses who believed they should simply mow over any from of opposition because there's no way they could be matched.

Once again, over estimating how much their own troops would be willing to fire on defenseless ponies and under estimating how much of a fight those on the surface could put up. Especially after Red Eye was taken care of and the Goddess with her Alicorns out of the picture.

The civilian side of the Enclave are just normal ponies fed lies by the military, which let the civies believe they had some power with being able to vote. And the military let themselves believe they was untouchable and thus could make mistakes.


I'm certain there's real life examples of "superior" armies making tactical unsound decisions because those in charge didn't think their army could fail.

[Icy Shake]

In a poor attempt to justify this, there's the elected officials in the Enclave which probably pushed for more peaceful methods, such as the quiet take over of Friendship city, and the military with their head up their asses who believed they should simply mow over any from of opposition because there's no way they could be matched.

Wasn't it established somewhere that you had to be a member of the Enclave (the military) to hold elected office? But I guess that's neither here nor there, since most soldiers wouldn't have ever seen real combat anyway, and wouldn't have been in planning roles either. So I guess you have a valid point, either way.

Once again, over estimating how much their own troops would be willing to fire on defenseless ponies and under estimating how much of a fight those on the surface could put up. Especially after Red Eye was taken care of and the Goddess with her Alicorns out of the picture.

Well, the Goddess being out of the picture probably wouldn't have factored into their plans too much, since the original plan involved alliance with her. But again, the bolded point is actually an argument in favor of leaving that one guy, who has been doing nothing, in Podunk, Nowhere, for decades, until after Red Eye's defeat.

I'm certain there's real life examples of "superior" armies making tactical unsound decisions because those in charge didn't think their army could fail.

Oh, sure. There are plenty. Notably the decision by the Nazis to break their nonaggression pact with the Soviets (okay, that's strategic, but that's the larger problem I have anyway, and the strategic missteps are what allowed many of the tactical ones to happen). But "And then I won because my opponents somehow managed to trip over their own genitals . . . three or four times . . . in a row" isn't exactly a great way to end a story. (Maybe a comedy.) Even if it is realistic. It's just, well, people reading adventure stories probably want something more exciting than real life.

[SilentCarto]

The Wonderbolts should have been active sooner--you don't need people who can perform rainbooms to make plans of how to protect against hyper-irradiated ghouls who could do them. On the same note, the way you deal with Radar is assassination, not blowing the shit out of a city. Hell, they had willing organized crime there to take care of it, or they could send in a spy or something.

I tend to agree, but look at it this way -- they have essentially zero intel assets on the ground, so they don't necessarily know where and how to get at every dashite on their roster, and the guys they're trying to kill are the only guys on the surface who will actually recognize the assassins. And moving a lone crack team into position to assassinate each dashite would take way longer than the Cauterize timetable called for. Instead, they figured they could roll in on each location with a pair of Raptors, pacify any defenses, launch an infantry strike to kill the target, and move on. Once again, they had nothing but contempt for the capabilities of Wastelanders, and it was a real shock to run into significant resistance. And even that wouldn't have helped if Altostratus hadn't grown a conscience.

Likewise, what was the point of trying to subdue the whole Wasteland all at once? Why attack New Appleoosa, for instance? Because it traded with your enemy? Look, they're pegasi; they don't need to take out the outlying positions first.

This is a good point, but again, intel. They didn't necessarily know where Red Eye was, personally, and Filly was very visibly armed for anti-armor work and apparently (to them) had access to megaspells. If there was one place in the entire wasteland that they would know would require a full-on siege platform assault, it was Filly. A surprise attack is terribly foolhardy if you don't know anything about your enemy, and gaining that intel means advance scouts, skirmishing parties, the works.

As for "why New App", I'd assume they wanted to secure any further strategic weaponry they might have on hand.

I still can't explain the rationale for sending what amounts to at least a destroyer squadron to kill or capture a guy when they already had contact with a group right there which was already carrying out assassinations.

Well, if you want something done right... That guy had already failed to assassinate both the mayor and Littlepip, so he was obviously incompetent to off a veteran wily enough to slip the grasp of the Enclave itself. After all, he's just a surfacer...

[Derpmind]

Kkat made a blogpost that included a link to an interview in which Kkat made a brief mention of one of Somber's other stories.

...if any of you are interested in that.

The story mentioned is actually buried in EqD's old caverns. Somber, have you thought about posting some of your old stories up on fimfiction?

[Somber]

There's a thought.  not sure how to import them tho.

Edit: also... SQUEEEE!

[Plasticube]

Read both articles, that was a really good quote going to keep that in mind, thanks :)


my head canon of why the Enclave lost(or at least a main reason)  is because the enclave is not like the combined armed forces of a modern country, they just have an air force.

If we are going to make comparisons to failed military doctrine, then most ponies in charge are the type that think strategic bombing/air power alone will win wars. 

A power armored enclave trooper, won't fight like infantry, they won't take cover, most of em probably don't even know the concept of cover, because they are more like heavily armored fighter jets than paratroopers.

they took whatever wartime training up into the clouds with them, think of how they were used to fighting then, the earth ponies in power armor and magical unicorns have been fighting in the trenches for months, the same kilometer of ground has been lost and retaken multiple times, daily gains are measured room by room, meter by meter.

Out from the blue come Rainbow Dash and the pegasi she trained for war, fly past the minefields, past the carefully planned kill zone of overlapping machine guns and punch through where the air defense is weakest, into the enemy lines turning the zebras own artillery and heavy weapons against them and routing the zebras in a matter of hours.

sure we lost a few hundred but that's nothing compared to what the earth ponies and unicorns lost over months of fighting, can could they hold the place now that they have managed to take it? 

Sure they say after all they have power armor like the earth ponies too, except better, in fact pegasi, pegasi are just better, doing in hours what earth ponies couldn't in months, way too important to stay here, needed in another fight hundreds of kilometers away, thats your job steel ranger, oh yeah you unicorns too.
 
Except they can't hold an objective, imagine earth ponies fighting a pegasi in say an old concert hall.

 Its full of perfectly fine chest high walls but the first thing a pegasi is going to do is leap into the air, because for a pegasi staying still is death.

 they need to maneuver, be hard to hit, to get on a target's 6 o clock for the kill, most of them probably don't even know the concept of taking cover, sure fighting a griffon in the sky, they might use a cloud to break line of sight but cloud dosen't stop bullets and almost everything in a pegasi city, walls, furniture, anything you or I might get behind during a firefight, won't stop a bullet. 

Except now you have pegasi fighting in enclosed spaces

An enclave trooper sees a steel ranger? great, lets just ignore this chest high wall, not lean out exposing as little as possible to get shot at, stand right in this doorway in the open and shoot at that steel ranger.

 who is in cover behind a pillar or something so that all you see is a heavy weapon poking out the side and half of the ranger's face, just enough for one eye to get past the pillar to see the pegasus.

( yeah im aware of steel rangers in FoE fiction being too dumb for cover but at least getting behind something is the first reaction for an earth pony when something goes wrong, vs evasive action for a pegasus )

Sky Tank? More of a gunship than a tank, its not going to be hull down, to present a smaller target, most of the armour probably isin't even on the front, its going to be flying around the battlefield, functioning more like an attack helicopter than a tank.

This goes on and on, I wrote alot more than I released once I got started, to avoid annoying everyone with a wall of text I'm going to edit it an put it up on the  [Fallout Equestria] Setting discussions thread later.

[O. Hinds]

This goes on and on, I wrote alot more than I released once I got started, to avoid annoying everyone with a wall of text I'm going to edit it an put it up on the [Fallout Equestria] Setting discussions thread later.

Yay! Thanks; I don't think we have an exhaustive analysis of the GPE's tactics yet. Perhaps you'd also like to contribute to work on the Bitter war, and maybe even the New Cloudsdayle stuff? Oh, but don't reply to this here; I don't want to clutter up this thread with a headcanon conversation that Somber likely doesn't care about reading.

[Derpmind]

So I'm not sure how many know this, but a while back Sethisto accidentally mucked up the old comment system in all the old archived posts on EqD. He said that everything's back up somewhere and that he was going to fix it sooner or later, but it's later and so far all those old comment threads haven't come back. So until that gets fixed, I made this comment to hopefully direct some people over here. It's just a copy of Random Blank's 67 week old comment over here, (I can't get that link working right. Sort by Rating and it pops up on top.) but if anyone thinks I should edit it at all please say so. I'm also thinking of putting up an epitaph for all 15,000 lost comments, but I'm not sure how to phrase that.

[Icy Shake]

The Wonderbolts should have been active sooner--you don't need people who can perform rainbooms to make plans of how to protect against hyper-irradiated ghouls who could do them. On the same note, the way you deal with Radar is assassination, not blowing the shit out of a city. Hell, they had willing organized crime there to take care of it, or they could send in a spy or something.

I tend to agree, but look at it this way -- they have essentially zero intel assets on the ground, so they don't necessarily know where and how to get at every dashite on their roster, and the guys they're trying to kill are the only guys on the surface who will actually recognize the assassins. And moving a lone crack team into position to assassinate each dashite would take way longer than the Cauterize timetable called for. Instead, they figured they could roll in on each location with a pair of Raptors, pacify any defenses, launch an infantry strike to kill the target, and move on. Once again, they had nothing but contempt for the capabilities of Wastelanders, and it was a real shock to run into significant resistance. And even that wouldn't have helped if Altostratus hadn't grown a conscience.

The point on intel is a good one, but is still frustrating because the lack of intelligence was military policy. I can get leaving diplomacy as a non-priority, but it's hard to justify the lack of regular recon. Anyway, I wasn't necessarily saying that it had to be the Wonderbolts who would take out the Dashites; in fact, that would probably be either overkill in most cases or simply a misallocation of resources. Fundamentally, Cauterize was about protecting the SPP. As such, the priority should be to go after the most imminent threats on that front first--and the Dashites themselves lack the ability to make a go for it, and this at least is something the Enclave should be aware of. The defining concern is, at this point, not knowledge, but the men and materiel to pull something off: their major thrust should be towards concentrations of military capital, with the targeted kills or captures of the ponies with the threatening knowledge coming after.
Basically, if you're worried someone is going to nuke you in the next week, you target their delivery platforms, not their nuclear physicists. They can wait until later.
But, them painting themselves into a corner intel-wise could still be an issue.

Likewise, what was the point of trying to subdue the whole Wasteland all at once? Why attack New Appleoosa, for instance? Because it traded with your enemy? Look, they're pegasi; they don't need to take out the outlying positions first.

This is a good point, but again, intel. They didn't necessarily know where Red Eye was, personally, and Filly was very visibly armed for anti-armor work and apparently (to them) had access to megaspells. If there was one place in the entire wasteland that they would know would require a full-on siege platform assault, it was Filly. A surprise attack is terribly foolhardy if you don't know anything about your enemy, and gaining that intel means advance scouts, skirmishing parties, the works.

As for "why New App", I'd assume they wanted to secure any further strategic weaponry they might have on hand.

Well, the attack on the Cathedral was actually a couple days before that on Filly, and it seemed to me that it was likewise a highly visible concentration of hardware and fixed assets, which further drew attention to itself with the magical burns all around it. So even if you don't know the head guy is there, it's an obvious choice of target when you want to deal a crippling blow.

As for New App, wasn't that at least hours after Friendship Island? They have radios; it shouldn't take that long for word to get around that surface population centers are harder to attack than they thought and that attacking civilian targets runs the risk of causing mutiny. And why attack--especially knowing that--without intel suggesting that there is meaningful hardware there? I guess they might have heard that the balefire bomb was there at some point? That could actually be a good reason, either as revenge and propaganda or on the off chance they had more . . . something. But again, that would be operating on the basis of intelligence gathering, and if you're doing enough to get that, why not enough to make plans that hold together?

I still can't explain the rationale for sending what amounts to at least a destroyer squadron to kill or capture a guy when they already had contact with a group right there which was already carrying out assassinations.

Well, if you want something done right... That guy had already failed to assassinate both the mayor and Littlepip, so he was obviously incompetent to off a veteran wily enough to slip the grasp of the Enclave itself. After all, he's just a surfacer...

But that's not what happened, at least not exactly. The plan was always the destroyer squadron, but kinda-sorta with some help on the ground from the local mafia. The failure of the assassinations didn't come until about an hour before arrival and the assassinations were misaimed from the get-go.
Sure, I get the potential anti-surfacer bias, but why would they think that an old-as-dirt pegasus who evaded the Enclave maybe two generations ago, maybe just one and a half, (and who hasn't evaded them since; they clearly don't, or at any rate didn't, care about Dashites as long as they stay below the cloud curtain--heck, that's the very basis of the Dashite brand!) would be harder to assassinate (For instance, why would he be expecting it? They manage to pull off a thought-out, planned, coordinated response and there's no reason for him to think they'd suddenly take an interest in him: he had nothing to do with Maripony, after all, and the strike could come during the mobilization phase when all the Wasteland sees is increased scouting activity concentrated primarily over hard Red Eye targets.) than a young, healthy politician who was already leaning on the people they were working with?

Read both articles, that was a really good quote going to keep that in mind, thanks :)


my head canon of why the Enclave lost(or at least a main reason)  is because the enclave is not like the combined armed forces of a modern country, they just have an air force.

If we are going to make comparisons to failed military doctrine, then most ponies in charge are the type that think strategic bombing/air power alone will win wars. 

A power armored enclave trooper, won't fight like infantry, they won't take cover, most of em probably don't even know the concept of cover, because they are more like heavily armored fighter jets than paratroopers.

they took whatever wartime training up into the clouds with them, think of how they were used to fighting then, the earth ponies in power armor and magical unicorns have been fighting in the trenches for months, the same kilometer of ground has been lost and retaken multiple times, daily gains are measured room by room, meter by meter.

Out from the blue come Rainbow Dash and the pegasi she trained for war, fly past the minefields, past the carefully planned kill zone of overlapping machine guns and punch through where the air defense is weakest, into the enemy lines turning the zebras own artillery and heavy weapons against them and routing the zebras in a matter of hours.

sure we lost a few hundred but that's nothing compared to what the earth ponies and unicorns lost over months of fighting, can could they hold the place now that they have managed to take it? 

Sure they say after all they have power armor like the earth ponies too, except better, in fact pegasi, pegasi are just better, doing in hours what earth ponies couldn't in months, way too important to stay here, needed in another fight hundreds of kilometers away, thats your job steel ranger, oh yeah you unicorns too.
 
Except they can't hold an objective, imagine earth ponies fighting a pegasi in say an old concert hall.

So, you make a good point regarding the ability to hold ground. However, by definition that could not have significantly contributed to their defeat, on the simple basis that their two major defeats/Pyrrhic victories (the Cathedral and Fillydelphia: I don't count the "Battle of us Sneaking the Hero Unit into the Target Building" as one) were not battles in which they tried and failed to maintain a hold on to ground they had previously taken; they were pitched battles in which the Enclave was on the offensive. Come to think of it, I'm not even that sure if I can think of anywhere they won a land battle outright, such that holding territory would even come into the picture. Maybe there was a broadcast at some point? The closest that we really saw firsthand, that I remember anyway, might be the camp they set up in Manehattan.
Edit: the more general not taking cover issue might have, though.

[WovenTales]

I don't suppose anyone downloaded those comments (to read offline, maybe) before they went poof? The annoying thing is that I did have them all at one point, but deleted them because the script I was creating to process them into reasonable html wasn't finished, and the Wayback Machine doesn't actually have many of the pages. I am glad Seth's planning on restoring them at some point, but just in case it's one of those things that always has a lower priority than everything else, it might be nice to have a hard copy. Yes, that might be rather crazy, but having the history of this group could be rather nostalgic at some point. Plus we would have something to reference if anyone asks about the dolphins if anyone wants to try to pull out all the setting discussion.

[Moodyman90]

Firstly I like to apologize to you Icy Shake. I know you're not intentionally infuriating me. For some reason your constant going "Well the Enclave should have done this" while we do our best to explain reasons why they went about everything as stupid as they did bugs me. Once again I know you're not doing that on purpose to mess with me, just something I have to get over.

And it's not like I disagree with you, but I do for the most part. Honestly I think I've lost track of the reason behind this current topic. If it's to prove the Enclave was a competent fight force as a whole then I think we've failed. If it's to provide reasons for their incompetents than I think we've somewhat succeeded unless ones version of the Enclave is of the perfect fighting force that never made mistakes or miscalculations.

As oppose to a fighting force which for the past 200 years never really had to need to use tactics outside of maybe a skirmish with Griffons every now and than and fighting a dragon every few decades. And if you go with PH canon than those fights against the dragons are mostly staged to show the civies that the military needs to stay in control.


Though really I think my problem is that if I actually get involved in a discussion and I feel like it hasn't moved forward as all in some way I get fidgety.

[Somber]

Question... did I have an article by ace buckley asking where Luna was?

[O. Hinds]

But, them painting themselves into a corner intel-wise could still be an issue.

Actually, I can imagine a fair amount of "We were just nuked!! We have to do something!!" "But ma'am, we're not prepared for this. We need to gather intelligence, prep the troops, find out exactly who--" "WE WERE JUST NUKED! WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING! I DON'T CARE IF WE DON'T KNOW ENOUGH, JUST… BURN EVERYTHING DOWN!" "Are you… Um, yes ma'am." Cue the various components of the GPE military being forced into action with whatever intel they already had at the time. And the "we have to do something now" argument does sort of have a point; it prevents the public from getting the impression that the GPE, having had one and nearly all of its leaders taken out in a costly attack from the surface, is afraid to do anything. The delays in attacking Fillydelphia and the Cathedral could then be the GPE desperately trying to gather whatever last bits of intel it can on its expected hardest targets before political and strategic forces compel action.

For some reason your constant going "Well the Enclave should have done this" while we do our best to explain reasons why they went about everything as stupid as they did bugs me.

I think that it is useful, actually. We know what the Enclave did, and knowing what they should have done instead allows us to ask in more detail "So why did they do the former instead of the latter?"

Question... did I have an article by ace buckley asking where Luna was?

I don't think so. I don't recall such a thing, and a search for that name turns up two articles on other things. It may be that the article was included and not signed, but I consider that relatively unlikely.

[FeatherDust]

"WE WERE JUST NUKED!  WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!  I DON'T CARE IF WE DON'T KNOW ENOUGH, JUST… BURN EVERYTHING DOWN!"

This is what I was going to bring up. Cauterize wasn't a fully prepared action, it was a panic response by politicos and military leaders who have never seen true warfare in their lives.

Not only did they get hit with the most destructive weapon they can imagine; it destroyed an invincible battle platform that they can NEVER REPLACE. They can't even salvage it for scrap.

And second, I don't think they approached this as a war at all. It was just wiping out small clusters of vastly inferior enemies, more like hunting down pirate ships than facing a navy.

[Somber]

No.  It was planned... against Red Eye.  It was going to be the Enclave's "spectacle war" against the surface.  The film would be five star gold propoganda.  "See!  These are the horrors of the surface!  Disease!  Taintsprites!  Monsters!  Maruader armies... but no match for our Enclave might!  Buy war bonds!"  The soldiers testimony of seeing what surfacers do to each other in Philidelphia would be tragic.  There were no plans to present or fight Tenpony or Friendship city... not when you had Red Eye being the perfect villain.  But then Maripony happened and "Oh shit!" was the response.  Red Eye WAS a threat, but suddenly there were real threats facing the Enclave rather than scripted ones.  Plus, the perfidy of Thunderhead meant they could no longer be trusted.  And then the old MAW hubs getting broken into...  it was too much and there was no time for the punja to react to all the simultaneous threats at once...

That's my take, I think.

[cb5]

No.  It was planned... against Red Eye.  It was going to be the Enclave's "spectacle war" against the surface.  The film would be five star gold propoganda.  "See!  These are the horrors of the surface!  Disease!  Taintsprites!  Monsters!  Maruader armies... but no match for our Enclave might!  Buy war bonds!"  The soldiers testimony of seeing what surfacers do to each other in Philidelphia would be tragic.  There were no plans to present or fight Tenpony or Friendship city... not when you had Red Eye being the perfect villain.  But then Maripony happened and "Oh shit!" was the response.  Red Eye WAS a threat, but suddenly there were real threats facing the Enclave rather than scripted ones.  Plus, the perfidy of Thunderhead meant they could no longer be trusted.  And then the old MAW hubs getting broken into...  it was too much and there was no time for the punja to react to all the simultaneous threats at once...

That's my take, I think.

That's what I was thinking as well.  Politically speaking in order for large armies to justify their budgets they have to have some sort of conflict to justify their budget.  Red eye was the perfect enemy and all of a sudden like you said, "OH SHIT!".

Also politically speaking there is a lot of money in playing the hero during a war.  Playing the hero that comes into save the day from evil slavers and liberate the wasteland would have gone a lot differently if the enclave hadn't shown up at the same time as littlepip.  If Littlepip had shown up earlier then the enclave wouldn't have launched operation cauterize and the enclave would instead just gone in guns blazing towards red eye's forces solely.  Whoopsie!  From the enclave's eyes red eye planned the attack at that time, when in reality it was just coincidence they showed up at the same time.

[Somber]

Fuck... Vegas plan fell through... fuck fuck fuck...

[Guest]

@Somber
Very sorry to hear that, mate. :( Hope it doesn't screw you over too hard, and that other plans in the near future come to fruition. Fuckin' sucks.

[O. Hinds]

Oh dear...

[O. Hinds]

Notice: We have changed the title of Chapter 58 to "Departures" to avoid conflict with the title of Chapter 52.

[WavemasterRyx]

*hugs Somber gently* I'm really sorry to hear that... I really hope you'll be okay, sir.

[Guest]

So... I wonder is thunderhead going to be a ghost town? According to Glory this is the time of year males have to go away for a while (I don't agree with plan of action personally but it is what it is.) And the female/male gender ratio doesn't seem to apply to the fallout equestria universe.

[Icy Shake]

Firstly I like to apologize to you Icy Shake. I know you're not intentionally infuriating me. For some reason your constant going "Well the Enclave should have done this" while we do our best to explain reasons why they went about everything as stupid as they did bugs me. Once again I know you're not doing that on purpose to mess with me, just something I have to get over.

And it's not like I disagree with you, but I do for the most part. Honestly I think I've lost track of the reason behind this current topic. If it's to prove the Enclave was a competent fight force as a whole then I think we've failed. If it's to provide reasons for their incompetents than I think we've somewhat succeeded unless ones version of the Enclave is of the perfect fighting force that never made mistakes or miscalculations.

As oppose to a fighting force which for the past 200 years never really had to need to use tactics outside of maybe a skirmish with Griffons every now and than and fighting a dragon every few decades. And if you go with PH canon than those fights against the dragons are mostly staged to show the civies that the military needs to stay in control.


Though really I think my problem is that if I actually get involved in a discussion and I feel like it hasn't moved forward as all in some way I get fidgety.

Sorry for that; I'm afraid that when I see things that bother me, I start to go down the rabbit hole (see Cutie Mark Symbolism/Prophesy/Princess Celestia discussion). All I can do is make the principled—and not at all self-serving [/sarcasm]—claim that pointing out flaws in their actions is an important step in determining the root cause of the odd choices.

And you remind me of something I thought of last night, namely, it seems like there must be some cognitive dissonance (or, of course, naked cynicism) at the high levels of the government and/or military. Basically, my thinking runs like this: given the actual threats faced over the Wasteland Era, and the fact that they have, in effect, an ocean of air separating them from everyone else (modulo a few griffins and a dragon or two), how do they justify—to the population—their extreme militarization in the face of scarcity? I know it's no good to draw too strongly from a very few instances, but think of secure isolationism as facilitating a decline of militarization, not the continuation: see Japan in the pre-modern era, allowing itself massive backslide in military power and technology up to the second half of the nineteenth century, or America during the interwar period, pretty much just expanding the navy, letting the rest sort of whither. Especially if they also think that even on the ground the surfacers  are no threat, they just don't need the forces they maintain, at least not all the heavy siege machinery.

(And, if that's not what they believe, meaning that the expenditure on the military is justified, wouldn't that imply more effort in routine scouting? I guess part of the reason for that is fear of soldiers seeing what it's really like down there going Dashite, but at some point if you really think there's a potential threat, you take the risk and do your best putting the most reliably loyal soldiers on the scouting missions.)

Now, there's the argument that it's to secure their police power, but the giant ships aren't really the best suited for that job (sure, one, maybe even two just for the fear factor à la the Death Star); they'd probably be better off mothballing two of them, keeping rotations so that there are at least enough ponies who know what to do so they can get them out of storage and man them in decent time, and have most of the balance be more like infantry, which is more useful in holding up a police state. Working within PH territory, I'd speculate that the internal tensions are behind the continued active duty of the capital ships; perhaps a balance is maintained by having each of several factions or towns hold one in fear that the others would use theirs given unilateral disarmament.

But, them painting themselves into a corner intel-wise could still be an issue.

Actually, I can imagine a fair amount of "We were just nuked!!  We have to do something!!"  "But ma'am, we're not prepared for this.  We need to gather intelligence, prep the troops, find out exactly who--"  "WE WERE JUST NUKED!  WE HAVE TO DO SOMETHING!  I DON'T CARE IF WE DON'T KNOW ENOUGH, JUST… BURN EVERYTHING DOWN!"  "Are you… Um, yes ma'am."  Cue the various components of the GPE military being forced into action with whatever intel they already had at the time.  And the "we have to do something now" argument does sort of have a point; it prevents the public from getting the impression that the GPE, having had one and nearly all of its leaders taken out in a costly attack from the surface, is afraid to do anything.  The delays in attacking Fillydelphia and the Cathedral could then be the GPE desperately trying to gather whatever last bits of intel it can on its expected hardest targets before political and strategic forces compel action.

Oh, I appreciate the "just got nuked!" point, and that does allow for some leeway, but first, as Somber said, this wasn't entirely a new plan, and second, my bigger point was that you'd think the military would want intel all along (barring cynicism or fearing treachery more than going into battle unprepared).

For some reason your constant going "Well the Enclave should have done this" while we do our best to explain reasons why they went about everything as stupid as they did bugs me.

I think that it is useful, actually.  We know what the Enclave did, and knowing what they should have done instead allows us to ask in more detail "So why did they do the former instead of the latter?"

Aw, you beat me to it! But at least since it's from you instead, it looks better than if I said it first.

No.  It was planned... against Red Eye.  It was going to be the Enclave's "spectacle war" against the surface.  The film would be five star gold propoganda.  "See!  These are the horrors of the surface!  Disease!  Taintsprites!  Monsters!  Maruader armies... but no match for our Enclave might!  Buy war bonds!"  The soldiers testimony of seeing what surfacers do to each other in Philidelphia would be tragic.  There were no plans to present or fight Tenpony or Friendship city... not when you had Red Eye being the perfect villain.  But then Maripony happened and "Oh shit!" was the response.  Red Eye WAS a threat, but suddenly there were real threats facing the Enclave rather than scripted ones.  Plus, the perfidy of Thunderhead meant they could no longer be trusted.  And then the old MAW hubs getting broken into...  it was too much and there was no time for the punja to react to all the simultaneous threats at once...

That's my take, I think.

That's what I was thinking as well.  Politically speaking in order for large armies to justify their budgets they have to have some sort of conflict to justify their budget.  Red eye was the perfect enemy and all of a sudden like you said, "OH SHIT!".

Also politically speaking there is a lot of money in playing the hero during a war.  Playing the hero that comes into save the day from evil slavers and liberate the wasteland would have gone a lot differently if the enclave hadn't shown up at the same time as littlepip.  If Littlepip had shown up earlier then the enclave wouldn't have launched operation cauterize and the enclave would instead just gone in guns blazing towards red eye's forces solely.  Whoopsie!  From the enclave's eyes red eye planned the attack at that time, when in reality it was just coincidence they showed up at the same time.

Got there first again! Oh well. Yeah, I agree; there's only so long you can keep up the fear without any action to back it up.

Fuck... Vegas plan fell through... fuck fuck fuck...

I'm sorry to hear that; I really hope that something else will work out for you soon.

[SilentCarto]

The point on intel is a good one, but is still frustrating because the lack of intelligence was military policy. I can get leaving diplomacy as a non-priority, but it's hard to justify the lack of regular recon. Anyway, I wasn't necessarily saying that it had to be the Wonderbolts who would take out the Dashites; in fact, that would probably be either overkill in most cases or simply a misallocation of resources. Fundamentally, Cauterize was about protecting the SPP. As such, the priority should be to go after the most imminent threats on that front first--and the Dashites themselves lack the ability to make a go for it, and this at least is something the Enclave should be aware of. The defining concern is, at this point, not knowledge, but the men and materiel to pull something off: their major thrust should be towards concentrations of military capital, with the targeted kills or captures of the ponies with the threatening knowledge coming after.

I agree that there was some willful ignorance there. To some extent, I think even the leadership deliberately blinded themselves to the suffering on the surface. Their policy -- not unfounded, especially in the early days -- was that they didn't have the resources to help, so there was no sense in stressing over the situation down there. They probably limited the surface exposure of any given individual because if they spent too much time down there, they started sympathizing, and it doesn't matter whether that contact was for the purposes of diplomacy or intelligence.

I disagree about the imminent threats. From their perspective, those who knew the details of the SPP (Enclave), had the ability to enter Neighvarro (Pegasi), and had been on the surface long enough to potentially find a bypass (Dashites) were the single greatest threat to their civilization. From their perspective, who cares if Red Eye takes over the ground? The lightning rods, Raptors, and armored troopers could take out any flying machine he could possibly throw at them, and why would earth ponies and unicorns even want to attack them, anyway? The clouds are unusable to them.  The core objective of Cauterize was double pronged: kill the presumed Dashite who had penetrated a MAw shield and take whatever it was that allowed him to get through for use on the SPP Hub shield itself, and destroy Red Eye's ability to field advanced weapons. They pulled off the latter admirably -- the Cathedral fell as quickly as you could have hoped, and Pip was a fairly equal-opportunity monkey wrench in the two sides' respective plans.

Basically, if you're worried someone is going to nuke you in the next week, you target their delivery platforms, not their nuclear physicists. They can wait until later.

In this particular case, New App doesn't represent the scientists, but the bomb factories. Their trade and scavenging efforts were (to an outside observer) what turned up one bomb, and they wanted to make sure it wouldn't turn up another.

As a side note, Calamity was known to operate out of New App, so I have to wonder to what degree the Raptors were there for him, too.

Well, the attack on the Cathedral was actually a couple days before that on Filly, and it seemed to me that it was likewise a highly visible concentration of hardware and fixed assets, which further drew attention to itself with the magical burns all around it. So even if you don't know the head guy is there, it's an obvious choice of target when you want to deal a crippling blow.

Absolutely. It takes time to move those siege platforms into position, though, so I would assume that Overcast was on the way there since Cauterize began, or shortly after. I'm going to give the Enclave the benefit of the doubt and assume that they deployed their Raptors on these smaller side missions with plenty of time to regroup with their Thunderhead fleets before the big battles.

As for New App, wasn't that at least hours after Friendship Island? They have radios; it shouldn't take that long for word to get around that surface population centers are harder to attack than they thought and that attacking civilian targets runs the risk of causing mutiny. And why attack--especially knowing that--without intel suggesting that there is meaningful hardware there? I guess they might have heard that the balefire bomb was there at some point? That could actually be a good reason, either as revenge and propaganda or on the off chance they had more . . . something. But again, that would be operating on the basis of intelligence gathering, and if you're doing enough to get that, why not enough to make plans that hold together?

Roughly 12 hours between the fights -- Friendship City was shortly after sunset, and Pip arrived at New App sometime in the morning after spending the night in prison. As for intel, Pride specifically said that they'd learned that the bomb came from New App originally. So yeah.

But that's not what happened, at least not exactly. The plan was always the destroyer squadron, but kinda-sorta with some help on the ground from the local mafia. The failure of the assassinations didn't come until about an hour before arrival and the assassinations were misaimed from the get-go.
Sure, I get the potential anti-surfacer bias, but why would they think that an old-as-dirt pegasus who evaded the Enclave maybe two generations ago, maybe just one and a half, (and who hasn't evaded them since; they clearly don't, or at any rate didn't, care about Dashites as long as they stay below the cloud curtain--heck, that's the very basis of the Dashite brand!) would be harder to assassinate (For instance, why would he be expecting it? They manage to pull off a thought-out, planned, coordinated response and there's no reason for him to think they'd suddenly take an interest in him: he had nothing to do with Maripony, after all, and the strike could come during the mobilization phase when all the Wasteland sees is increased scouting activity concentrated primarily over hard Red Eye targets.) than a young, healthy politician who was already leaning on the people they were working with?

That reminded me of something. Their goal with all of this seemed to be "capture if possible, kill if necessary". They demanded Radar be turned over and they captured Calamity at gunpoint. They presumably wanted to interrogate all these Dashites to find out who got into the MAw and how they bypassed the shield. Getting him hogtied by a collaborator is a lot easier than shooting it out and maybe killing him, and they need the Raptors to transport him... and to provide fire support if (when) their collaborator decided he wanted to demand an outrageous price after he saw how much they wanted Radar.

No. It was planned... against Red Eye. It was going to be the Enclave's "spectacle war" against the surface. The film would be five star gold propoganda. "See! These are the horrors of the surface! Disease! Taintsprites! Monsters! Maruader armies... but no match for our Enclave might! Buy war bonds!" The soldiers testimony of seeing what surfacers do to each other in Philidelphia would be tragic. There were no plans to present or fight Tenpony or Friendship city... not when you had Red Eye being the perfect villain. But then Maripony happened and "Oh shit!" was the response. Red Eye WAS a threat, but suddenly there were real threats facing the Enclave rather than scripted ones. Plus, the perfidy of Thunderhead meant they could no longer be trusted. And then the old MAW hubs getting broken into... it was too much and there was no time for the punja to react to all the simultaneous threats at once...

That's my take, I think.

Sounds about right to me.

[SilentCarto]

Fuck... Vegas plan fell through... fuck fuck fuck...

Erf. I'm sorry. :(

[cb5]

Somber try putting in your applications electronically. You have a lower response rate, but you can put them out at a much faster rate while saving gas. If you send 200 places your resume electronically you'll hear back from about 20, and 5 interviews and 1 or 2 will try to hire you.

Sending in your resume electronically:
+faster rate
+saves gas
+easier to do
-lower response rate
-have to put in about 200 to get hired.

[Icy Shake]

I agree that there was some willful ignorance there. To some extent, I think even the leadership deliberately blinded themselves to the suffering on the surface. Their policy -- not unfounded, especially in the early days -- was that they didn't have the resources to help, so there was no sense in stressing over the situation down there. They probably limited the surface exposure of any given individual because if they spent too much time down there, they started sympathizing, and it doesn't matter whether that contact was for the purposes of diplomacy or intelligence.

I disagree about the imminent threats. From their perspective, those who knew the details of the SPP (Enclave), had the ability to enter Neighvarro (Pegasi), and had been on the surface long enough to potentially find a bypass (Dashites) were the single greatest threat to their civilization. From their perspective, who cares if Red Eye takes over the ground? The lightning rods, Raptors, and armored troopers could take out any flying machine he could possibly throw at them, and why would earth ponies and unicorns even want to attack them, anyway? The clouds are unusable to them.  The core objective of Cauterize was double pronged: kill the presumed Dashite who had penetrated a MAw shield and take whatever it was that allowed him to get through for use on the SPP Hub shield itself, and destroy Red Eye's ability to field advanced weapons. They pulled off the latter admirably -- the Cathedral fell as quickly as you could have hoped, and Pip was a fairly equal-opportunity monkey wrench in the two sides' respective plans.

All good points, but I should just add something that I left implicit originally: I figure you have to assume that any information may have already leaked from whoever originally got it; it's a lot easier to transfer (and multiply!) than any physical capital that might be needed to make the attack.
. . .

Basically, if you're worried someone is going to nuke you in the next week, you target their delivery platforms, not their nuclear physicists. They can wait until later.

In this particular case, New App doesn't represent the scientists, but the bomb factories. Their trade and scavenging efforts were (to an outside observer) what turned up one bomb, and they wanted to make sure it wouldn't turn up another.

As a side note, Calamity was known to operate out of New App, so I have to wonder to what degree the Raptors were there for him, too.

Roughly 12 hours between the fights -- Friendship City was shortly after sunset, and Pip arrived at New App sometime in the morning after spending the night in prison. As for intel, Pride specifically said that they'd learned that the bomb came from New App originally. So yeah.

. . .
Which is why (absent Calamity, which is something I wasn't thinking about at the time, but nevertheless question the immediate practical importance of since he was at that point a fairly known quantity at Friendship City) I think that New Appleoosa makes more sense as a propaganda/retributive play than a direct military interest. But that could just be a difference in estimated turnaround time on any of the town's future endeavors on behalf of Red Eye. (And I still think that the long gap between the battles would have enabled the Enclave to reevaluate attacks on peripheral targets of unknown value and defensive strength, but it's a more minor point if you work from your explanations, which at least justify it as a target.)

Absolutely. It takes time to move those siege platforms into position, though, so I would assume that Overcast was on the way there since Cauterize began, or shortly after. I'm going to give the Enclave the benefit of the doubt and assume that they deployed their Raptors on these smaller side missions with plenty of time to regroup with their Thunderhead fleets before the big battles.

That's a good way to look at it, and helps to explain the lack of the heaviest equipment elsewhere.

That reminded me of something. Their goal with all of this seemed to be "capture if possible, kill if necessary". They demanded Radar be turned over and they captured Calamity at gunpoint. They presumably wanted to interrogate all these Dashites to find out who got into the MAw and how they bypassed the shield. Getting him hogtied by a collaborator is a lot easier than shooting it out and maybe killing him, and they need the Raptors to transport him... and to provide fire support if (when) their collaborator decided he wanted to demand an outrageous price after he saw how much they wanted Radar.

Ah, that's an important thought; I expect they could manage without anything quite so heavy just to carry him back, but I wasn't thinking about the need to intimidate current associates.

Anyway, some random stuff and a nice gift for O. Hinds.

Chapter Twenty Running Thoughts:

Chapter Twenty Editing:

[Derpmind]

Rampage looked from me to P-21, and then asked, “Um… are you two gonna kiss or what?”
The Dealer just smiled and chuckled softly, shaking his head.  Immediately, we both went bright red.  P-21 stammered and pointed at me.  “Kiss?  Her?  She’s a mare!”  Rampage broke into giggles as P-21 scowled.  “I don’t even like her like that… really!  I have grenades, you know!”  
. . .
I might not, but…  “P-21!  I need you!  Right now!” I shouted.  Rampage’s giggles exploded into peals of laughter.
He stepped in with a look promising to find some way to murder a certain striped pony.  “It’s not for sex or a joke,” I added quickly.  I stepped over to the terminal.  “Can you access this?”
His scowl disappeared.  “Maybe.  Let me see.”  He hobbled in front of it.  “Ugh… huge password.  It better not be mares setting up more sex dates.”  Rampage walked in, rubbing tears of mirth from her cheeks.  He started his magic as I tapped my left hoof on the top of the monitor.  Then he hit a key and the terminal let out a beep.  “Whoa… I’m in on the third try!  That was lucky,” he said, pleased at the turn of events.

Missed opportunity for Rampage reaction to double entendre on the bolded part.

Does that qualify as an editing error?

[O. Hinds]

@Icy Shake:
Ah, thank you very much as usual.

He just looked at me like I was doing something stupid again.  “What?” I asked levelly.

This should begin with "P-21," not "he": there's a full paragraph talking about Glory and Rampage between this and the last time P-21 was mentioned.

Sorry, but I disagree here. P-21 both is the only male in the conversation and was addressed by Blackjack just above.

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