>Just one question that's been nagging at me. It seems Earthforce
>isn't taking steps to fight the IPO on equal footing. Time and again
>they seem woefully inept, underequipped and understaffed than to be
>anything other than cannon fodder.
>
>Do they field anything that can contend with some of the stuff the IPO
>can bring to bear?

If I might be permitted to speculate rampantly, as is my wont, Earthforce is, to a large extent, trying to fight new wars using the old rules.

Do they have hardware that can come close to matching that fielded by the WDF/IPO? Sure. Starfleet has the Galaxy-class, which is about to par with the Iowa-class (see "Reflections and Transitions" in Symphony No.1), and the EA has it's own equivalents.

But the galaxy has moved beyond that. During the United Galactica era and Federation era right up to the War of Corporate Occupation, conflict was largely hardware-dependent. The WDF had the Wayward Son and all manner of interesting Zetan overtechnology, so Genom built a bigger, nastier ship. Then when the WDF came roaring back they built their own massive hi-tech fleet to smash against Genom's enormous hi-tech fleet. Part of what kept the CFMF operating was Washuu building them ultimate cool shit.

But even though the War of Corporate Occupation wasn't very long ago, those days are gone.

Gryphon and Zoner and people like them used to be a LOT rarer than they are now. Oh, sure, the WDF had a ton of Detians in it, but all Omega-2 can do is make you immortal; it can't make you EXCEPTIONAL. The exceptional people were a rarity.

They're still pretty rare... except Gryphon has made a point of seeking them out, cultivating them, training them, implanting magic lenses into them, and honing them into an elite squad of intergalactic peacekeepers.

The IPO/WDF would likely have won Tau Ceti even if both sides had been crewed by thoroughly unremarkable career military types; they had the EA outnumbered and outgunned. But part of the reason they not only won, but won embarrassingly easily (seriously, the casualty ratio is so lopsided that it's something that gets people court-martialed if they're on the bad end of it) is because they threw Utena Tenjou, Nikola Tesla, John Spartan, Cortana, Tuncer, the Repo Men, Virginia Shepard, and assorted Duelists and Gods at the EA. The old WDF couldn't have down that; they didn't have that kind of staff. On a very, very good day you might have been able to get maybe ten people with that kind of utterly superlative mastery together in one place, and that would involve doing things like pulling in Martin Rose AND Redneck from their other responsibilities.

(This isn't to denigrate the crew of the old Wayward Son in any way.)

THAT'S how the new wars are fought. The era of "giant fleet that blots out the stars" has largely passed, I think, although such fleets may continue to exist; quantity has a quality all it's own. Organizations like Big Fire understand this; you will note that Big Fire is itself organized on the "elite team of superlative individuals" model, what with the Magnificent Ten and all. Geoff Depew himself seems like an outgrowth of that philosophy; for the cost of making one of HIM, Big Fire probably could have bought a whole 'nother fleet. Which would you rather have, that fleet or one(1) Geoff Depew?

And I don't mean to complete denigrate hardware, of course. The IPO has Skuld Ravenhair on tap, they're gonna have GOOD stuff. And even Utena Tenjou couldn't take on the whole Earth Alliance with just her array of swords of many adjectives.

Anyway, that's kind of how I view the EA. The parts of Earthforce that view this conflict purely in military terms (it's not, but the Joint Chiefs probably are not privy to other plans) probably think if they can just build enough Nova-class battleships and put them in the hands of reliable people they can do just about anything, because hell, isn't that how it works?

They are, I submit, dead wrong.

(Or maybe I am wrong. I'm wrong a lot.)

-Merc
Keep Rat