TNG: Unification

[SolkaTruesilver]

Sela is dumb.

I mean, SERIOUSLY. She is so freaking stupid. There is no other explanation. She is handed a perfectly flawless victory (still, you need to explain to me how you hold a planet with 2000 soldiers), and she just yaps about her whole plan, go into every. fucking. details.

And then, she leaves the good guys alone. In her office. Like, 3 of the most competent starfleet officer EVAR. One that she forgot that "She Learned to Respect in Battle".

Stupid bitch, badly-written character.

[Deepcrush]

Yeah, I think in Unification they just brought her back because she did well in Reunion. The problem hit when they noticed they didn't have a plot to carry it and somehow had to just blow the whole Romulan plan. Its as if they went the whole ep and then thought... "Oh shit, this plan could honestly work now! Quick, turn two million troops to two thousand and have her pull a Dr Evil in her office!"

[Mark]

2,000 troops. I wonder what they hoped to accomplish against the Vulcan populace with that. Ok, MAYBE 2,000 troops would work on a colony planet, but Vulcan is one of the founding members of the Federation. In Enterprise, we saw they have compantant soldiers who are trained to fight with both beam and melee weapons.

I mean, MAYBE those 2K troops could have assassinated the government officials before being overwhelmed, but of all the races of the Federation, I see the Vulcans as having the easiest time recovering from a blow like that.

Hmmm....we'll never know.

[Tyyr]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... nseOfScale

[SolkaTruesilver]

2,000 troops. I wonder what they hoped to accomplish against the Vulcan populace with that. Ok, MAYBE 2,000 troops would work on a colony planet, but Vulcan is one of the founding members of the Federation. In Enterprise, we saw they have compantant soldiers who are trained to fight with both beam and melee weapons.

I mean, MAYBE those 2K troops could have assassinated the government officials before being overwhelmed, but of all the races of the Federation, I see the Vulcans as having the easiest time recovering from a blow like that.

Hmmm....we'll never know.

Hell, they even stated that they would be so entrenched the Federation wouldn't be able to do anything against them.

I mean, even if they were the Cream of the Romulan Empire's Navy Seals/Delta Force (meaning, the elite among the High Elite), it's just silly. Maybe taking hostage the government, key political, cultural and historical locations? something like 100 soldiers per target. Any attack against one of these site would end up with a total retaliation in ALL the other sites?

That's just speculation, I know. But still. They can't simply hold the planet hostage like that indefinetly. They will eventually need support, which means either cloaked troop transports (Warbirds?) or smugglers. Both of them would be under EXTREME scrutiny from the Federation and Starfleet, I doubt any regiment would succeed.

Anyway, it always buggers me when they talk about "an invasion force of 60,000 Klingons!" to conquer an ENTIRE PLANET when you think there was 130,000 U.S. soldiers in Iraq alone.

Fun Quiz: How many soldiers do you think you would need to conquer Earth effectively? (meaning, you don't really have to go an conquer Somalia). you'd need to neutralise the whole of North america, Europe, Russia, China, japan, Australia, Iran... That's a lot.

[Mark]

An old drill sergeant I had gave us a similar excercise. He said to effectively control an occupied populace, you need at LEAST one heavily armed soldier for every 20 unarmed and unresisting civillians, plus heavy support such as armor, air support, and artillary. So if is statement was true, it would take an ass load of troops to effectively occupy anything. I mean, France would likely make it easy on occupying forces but can you really see folks like Al'Quida or those mountain boys in Arkansas accept occupation?

With an active resistance going on, I would guess you'd need one soldier for every five or ten insurgents.

[SolkaTruesilver]

I mean, France would likely make it easy on occupying forces but can you really see folks like Al'Quida or those mountain boys in Arkansas accept occupation?

Awww... come on. France surrendered on that one occasion because she had been badly out-strategised. But I guess people will just keep having fun about it, eh?

But your question is valid. "Accept Occupation", is it the same as "take up arms to throw back the invaders" or "active resistance"? Will these guys start to fight when their own national army is being steamrolled (disregarding the fact that they would probably be joining the service to defend their home if it happened) or they would go guerilla/La Resistance?

'cause if they join the defending force, you don't need to count them for the occupation force. It's not hard to oppress a body.

[Captain Seafort]

With an active resistance going on, I would guess you'd need one soldier for every five or ten insurgents.

Other way round, and then some. At its peak the IRA was only around 1200 strong, but the British Army and the RUC GC needed twenty times that number to keep a lid on the problem. That's against a fairly limited insurgency compared to something like Afghanistan.

[Deepcrush]

You have to remember that trek combat isn't really a science so much as a joke. 2000 Romulans would get crunched just by the Vulcans on the planet. 60,000 Klingons are more like 60,000 Viking raiders looking for glory and loot. The first wouldn't make any real effect, the second would only be on a planet long enough to butcher a city and then leave.

In DS9 we here Martok's talk about the CU's 11th Order which was built of 500,000 Cardassians. To Martok, this was a simple matter and something that would be over in a week. Even this is minimal considering its a whole planet they are taking over. The RSE's 2000 number is just crap like KTT's three million clones issue.

[SolkaTruesilver]

You have to remember that trek combat isn't really a science so much as a joke. 2000 Romulans would get crunched just by the Vulcans on the planet. 60,000 Klingons are more like 60,000 Viking raiders looking for glory and loot. The first wouldn't make any real effect, the second would only be on a planet long enough to butcher a city and then leave.

In DS9 we here Martok's talk about the CU's 11th Order which was built of 500,000 Cardassians. To Martok, this was a simple matter and something that would be over in a week. Even this is minimal considering its a whole planet they are taking over. The RSE's 2000 number is just crap like KTT's three million clones issue.

KTT?

the 500,000 Cardassians of the 11th Order was a reserve unit of woundeds and old people, one that would barely put up an effective fight, in Martok's words. (He probably thought he made them a favor by killing them in battle).

I remember in "Waltz" they mentionned a Federation Troop Convoy. I don't remember the number thrown at that moment, tho.

[Captain Seafort]

2000 Romulans would get crunched just by the Vulcans on the planet.

Assuming, of course, that the Vulcans weren't grossly incompetent. This is the Federation we're talking about.

The RSE's 2000 number is just crap like KTT's three million clones issue.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - that many men with small arms (which is all we've seen from Trek armies) sould be able to hold a few strongpoints within a single city for a week or two against an early 20th century army, but no more.

What's really damning about the whole thing is that I think the plan had at least some chance of working. Given known Fed attitudes towards anything resembling a fight (at least before the Dominion War) and their complete lack of any weapons other than SMGs, I wouldn't be too surprised if a week's resistance from Romulans holding key government buildings could have induced them to cede the planet.

[Captain Seafort]

KTT?

Karen Traviss. An idiot who thinks a full-scale war can be fought across an entire galaxy, against an enemy numbering in the quadrillions, with three million men (i.e. fewer than the Russians lost in 1941).

the 500,000 Cardassians of the 11th Order was a reserve unit of woundeds and old people, one that would barely put up an effective fight, in Martok's words. (He probably thought he made them a favor by killing them in battle).

He was right. To properly defend a planet you'd need at least a couple of orders of magnitude more than that.

[SolkaTruesilver]

He was right. To properly defend a planet you'd need at least a couple of orders of magnitude more than that.

But maybe you don't need to defend a planet, that's the thing. Ultimately, you need to defend the local installations, like the supply base, the repair facilities, etc... In short, the war effort this planet is providing, rather than conquering every square kilometers of the planet.

If you really want to go in the absurd, you may say you only want to conquer this planet to beat the army that is located there, because you don't want to leave your back exposed to a full (but weak) army while invading Cardie Space. But that just remembers me Red Vs Blue:

"Why are we here?"
"To fight the blues! We want to prevent them taking this valley!"
"But why do they want to take the valley?"
"To prevent us from taking it"
"So they are here becaue we are here. And we are here because they are there?"
"Pretty much"
"...... works for me"

[Graham Kennedy]

I always got the impression that Denise Crosby took a look at early TNG and thought "Well this is sucky, and it's gonna sink soon. I'll get out early and build a movie career, maybe."

Her outside Trek career flopped, whilst TNG went on to big things. And she seems to have spent every day since nibbling around the edges of TNG, doing whatever she could to cash in on it. Coming back as Yar and then Sela, making documentaries about the fans and conventions, anything for a Trek related paycheck.

Anyway, Sela's whole plan was dumb. A few thousand troops to invade VULCAN? That would be like taking a couple of hundred guys to invade New York! If she'd had those three ships as a foot in the door and then fifty cloaked Warbirds following along, then MAYBE she would have stood a chance of getting a foothold that would have lasted six months or so. For a successful invasion, I'd want the whole Romulan fleet behind me - and even then I'd give it a fairly low chance of success.

[Tyyr]

But maybe you don't need to defend a planet, that's the thing. Ultimately, you need to defend the local installations, like the supply base, the repair facilities, etc... In short, the war effort this planet is providing, rather than conquering every square kilometers of the planet.

Still insufficient unless the entire war supporting ability of a world is concentrated in an area of less than a square kilometer.

Assuming, of course, that the Vulcans weren't grossly incompetent. This is the Federation we're talking about.

2,000 Soldiers holding off a planet of 6,000,000,000? 3,000,000 to one odds isn't incompetent... it's... there's no word for it. Hell, all you've got to do if you really want them out is you take a shuttle up in the air, accelerate it to a nice high velocity and slam it down on the Romulan position. Problem solved.