Talk:Man is Dead: The Magnate War

General principles:

Only theta makes good FTL. Only ZOCU had that in quantity. The League had some, but was limited to painstakingly hand-crafted courier and gunboat-scale drives.

The magnates were motivated by conquest. Theta was important, but by no means the central purpose.

You can make bad FTL with first-generation drives. These take a month or more to recycle and are far from reliable.

Everyone has crappy tech. Apart from anything else, it's only 2160-80. If in doubt, assume you don't have it.

ZOCU is wholly responsible for inventing mecha. Sophisticated combat frames did not appear until the ZOCU war.

The Magnates invented Alephs which were hideously superior pilots.

Fabbers were important to produce supplies, equipment and small vehicles on-site. Advanced or large craft were mostly built with real industry and shipped in.

To start with let's confirm what every system's role was. Bear in mind this is all 2-4 decades ago and could be very much different to their modern bent.

Minkowski: Converted slowdrives to jumpships, made things to carry with them, assembled relief forces, ate drones.

Nidaros: Got invaded by the Magnates. This arm of the invasion probably went very badly for the Magnates due to ZOCU's thetadrives.

Delten: Took forefront as the Magnate manufacturing world during the war. Ended up becoming the primary shipyard facility after the breakdown ended.

Eternal Dawn: Supersoldiers with advanced (for the Rim anyways) armor and railguns, landing in your cities!

Azadestan: Invaded by the Magnates at some point.

Nefer: Primary producer of the League's theta jump drives.

Structure of the war: Peel's framework

• The Magnates sat around on their homeworlds for the first decade, first plotting, then massing elite shock troops/strike craft and limpdrive jumpships/freighters.
• The 'first phase' invasion against Hyperborea, Dogma, etc. was a successful unexpected blitzkrieg, and these worlds folded. They remain under Magnate control. A few escapees managed to reach the future League worlds and warn them.
• The 'second phase' invasion against Van der Teega, Finnegan's Folley, Sarreva and Nidaros was less successful. The Nidaros attack was repulsed by ZOCU's theta-equipped navy. The League invasions bogged down due to desperate preparations by the League states.
• The war stalemates on the League worlds for the rest of the war. Sarreva is a meat grinder and Finnegan collapses to insurgency.
• In the 2170s the League makes several important technical breakthroughs and establishes a credible limpdrive fleet to bring their industry to bear, and the Magnates make several behind-the-lines raids to disrupt these developments.
• The tide turns towards the end of the 2170s. The League, with developed industry, substantial fleets and no need to subdue conquests, was a bridge too far for the Magnates now.
• The Magnates had lost Sarreva and Finnegan's Folly at the end of the breakdown. In the confusion of reconnect, a Solomon-backed ceasefire is hammered out that returns Van der Teega to the League, establishing their successful defence of their member worlds and removing enough wind from the hawks to prevent an immediate and potentially disastrous counterattack against the dug-in Magnate first phase conquests.

Prospective dates:

2160-62: First phase invasions.

2164: Invasion of proto-League.

2165: Invasion of Nidaros

2169: Mink fleet attacked by feral drones, engineers eat the hearts of drones to gain their strength.

2171: Plasma cannons start mass production

2178: Magnates pushed out of Sarreva

2179: Magnates pushed out of Finnegan's Folly, post-breakdown recontact ships arrive

2180: Solomon Armistice