Yeah, I'm fine with choosing another target. However, I think my reasons for picking Bespin should carry over to other targets. I liked Bespin purely for the reasons that make you guys nervous, haha. It's has gravitas. We have characters that dwell there. It's alive. To have something happen there actually means something. Just to be clear. I'm fine with not using Bespin. I get not wanting to upend things you've spent time building. That said, whatever target we choose should be a place that actually means something to the boards. Isde Naha, while being a realistic target doesn't mean anything to me and has only really been mentioned in passing on the boards. Maybe they cut straight through to Corellia and that's where the stand off occurs?
You realise that Corellia is also somewhere I've invested a whole lot of time and effort, right? Pick on someone else's hard work, damn it! Joking aside though: let's play devil's advocate. Let's say that the very first encounter between the Empire and the Ssi-Ruuk happens at Corellia, and the Empire loses badly. Then what? Sure, the event may have gravitas, but now we're painted into a corner, because there's no way to top that. No battle with the Ssi-Ruuk is ever going to feel as devastating as the defeat at Corellia, and we'll run out of RP settings pretty darn fast if trashing one is the only way to make a thread feel like there are stakes. Both narratively, and in terms of ramifications for players and the community, messing with Corellia (or Bespin, Jovan Station, etc) feels like a season finale sort of event, and blowing our load on episode two feels like a waste. We should work up to that, so it feels like we "earned" such a big event. It also feels unnecessarily hasty: we've literally just introduced some sweeping changes to the boards, lets give people the opportunity to catch their breath and capitalise on those new writing opportunities before we try and drown people with the next wave of changes. If our goal here is to stimulate activity, it probably isn't a smart move to immediately distract people by dangling a decimated Corellia in front of their faces. If Isde Naha doesn't tickle you in your special places, then fair enough: we can try and find somewhere that does. Corellia doesn't feel like the right fit for episode two, though. If we're going to do that (and there's going to need to be a big community discussion before anything like that happens, because of how many people it might affect) then at the very least let's save it until later in the "season" - perhaps at a point when Alliance reinforcements are an option? After all, we've got a lot more active characters on the Alliance side of things, so playing the Corellia card at a point when it's only going to benefit a handful of people probably isn't an optimal choice either.
Haha, I promise I'm not trying to pick other people's constructed settings. I'm just looking for meaningful Imperial settings. If everyone wants to flip the chess board around to have it start at Thule/Korriban instead of Terminus ya'll can come crash my sand castles. I think we have different perspectives when it comes to these sorts of events. You've put it in terms of seasons with this battle being a climax, but I feel it's the beginning. To use the seasons metaphor I'm less interested in 24 episode season and more inclined toward a four shot mini series. Where each episode is action packed and the seasons are short. I'm personally not a prolific writer. I choose my threads carefully because I can't keep up with most people here. So I can't divide my time writing filler threads in between major plot points. Joking aside though: let's play devil's advocate. Let's say that the very first encounter between the Empire and the Ssi-Ruuk happens at Corellia, and the Empire loses badly. Then what? Then we deal with the ramifications of a major loss and the fallout from that. There are so many writing opportunities that come out of a seamingly invincible fleet being proved the opposite. I mean at the start of Battlestar Galactica they lose Earth and their entire fleet, it didn't seem to blunt their ability to tell stories. We could even let them take Coruscant and have the Empire reeling to regroup in shock of what happened. we've literally just introduced some sweeping changes to the boards, lets give people the opportunity to catch their breath and capitalise on those new writing opportunities before we try and drown people with the next wave of changes. If our goal here is to stimulate activity, it probably isn't a smart move to immediately distract people by dangling a decimated Corellia in front of their faces. I'm not sure why one enticing option differentiates from another in this instance. Can't we give people the option to write when and where they want?
Personally, all these ideas are great. I would focus everything on the motivations of the Ssi'ruuk's invasion. What are they after, ultimately? If it's just to flout their muscles, then the opportunities are wide open. If they're after something specific, then it definitely narrows the field a lot and helps determine their route of conquest to get there. Eventually, spies, agents and other information merchants are going to be able to help direct the "good guys" toward the eventual victory - whatever form that may take. If tech is their goal, then the Corporate Sector is one focus, or possibly a remote world that's got some unique insights into a new invention: The Gree? A lost tribe of Rakata? Sith Alchemists? An alien genius that's just made some huge breakthrough? Maybe someone that's broken the code on Dathomir and has learned how to use the Aerie's ancient secrets? We have the larger picture in mind already, now bring that down to earth where everyone can contribute. Make it more personal. Give the Ssi'Ruuk's focus a name.
I think we have different perspectives when it comes to these sorts of events. You've put it in terms of seasons with this battle being a climax, but I feel it's the beginning. To use the seasons metaphor I'm less interested in 24 episode season and more inclined toward a four shot mini series. Where each episode is action packed and the seasons are short. I'm personally not a prolific writer. I choose my threads carefully because I can't keep up with most people here. So I can't divide my time writing filler threads in between major plot points. I mean at the start of Battlestar Galactica they lose Earth and their entire fleet, it didn't seem to blunt their ability to tell stories. Battlestar Galactica is not an online roleplaying community, though. They don't have to be mindful of the ramifications that their story choices will have on other people. We do - or at least, we have a responsibility to not be assholes about it. As I have already said, from a narrative standpoint I am onboard. The Empire losing badly to the Ssi-Ruuk makes a lot of sense. It will help push the Empire towards dealings with the Chiss. It will probably make them more open to the idea of cooperating with the Alliance. That is not filler, and if we can find the right location candidate, we can give it all the gravitas we need without having to resort to messing things up for other people. It's the OOC aspect that I feel is premature: in order to be respectful of our peers, we would need to be patient, give people the opportunity to wrap up stories and figure out the path for their characters moving forward - and that takes time. If we're patient, and if we invest time and effort into building up to an attack on Corellia, it will have even more gravitas an impact when it does happen, and we'll have earned it. For our Chin'toka style battle, I would suggest having the Ssi-Ruuk go after a planet that is in Imperial space, but is the homeworld of a race significant to the Alliance. The Empire is going to care about the scale of their loss either way, so for them the location doesn't really matter. By making it an alien homeworld though, it maximises the impact for the Alliance, opens up old wounds about worlds that the Alliance "abandoned" the fight to liberate when they signed the Treaty, and just generally does more to engage the wider community than an Empire-centric event would. It also opens up the option of having the Empire resort to using a Starkiller missile against said planet: a very Imperial solution to the problem, it exposes the Ssi-Ruuk to the technology (thus giving them a reason to develop countermeasures against it), and it makes that second half of the Chin'toka style idea even more costly. It's also the kind of move that might halt the Ssi-Ruuk advance (the reason that they don't overrun the Greater Javin, etc?) and is an added incentive for the Empire to explore other possibilities - because while they're happy to Starkiller a planet of aliens, that tactic won't be as palatable if it is a human world, etc. Would something like that have enough gravitas/impact to not feel like filler? What are they after, ultimately? I really like this question. One thing we would need to be careful of though: if we give the Ssi-Ruuk a singular/specific objective, we'd need to make sure there's a good reason/excuse for why haven't just gone straight there - inconvenience, steps they need to take first, etc. Tying things in to Dathomir in some way could be interesting: I suggested over in one of the other discussions that the Ssi-Ruuk might have some sort of connection to or reverence for the Kwa, who are a) from Dathomir, b) had advanced Force-powered interstellar tech, and c) are big blue dinosaurs, blue being the colour of the caste that the Ssi-Ruuk place the most value/prestige in. It potentially ties in to the Vanguards storyline as well (the last time the Ssi-Ruuk were used on the boards). In that arc, the Ssi-Ruuk were trying to establish themselves in the Gordian Reach, which is pretty close to Dathomir. Perhaps their original Plan A was to fortify themselves in the Gordian Reach and use that as a stronghold within reach of Dathomir, but the events of Vanguards messed that up, and so this more widespread invasion is their Plan B? Dathomir does have a lot of player characters tied up in it, mind you. On the one hand, there's some great story potential if the Ssi-Ruuk ever manage to succeed in getting there - perhaps Dathomir would even be a good place for an Alliance/Imperial team-up, given the ties to Hapes and the Circle? On the other hand, it might mess things up for folks the same way that the Ruuk going after Corellia would, so there'd need to be a big community discussion about that.
Yeah probably not a great idea to invade/displace/destroy the venues with large established communities, so lets put that on ice. This isn't something that's going to be done quickly, so if you're looking at four big movements and then done, I'm not sure this is going to mesh with that expectation. There are certainly small subsets of the conflict that we can write beginnings and conclusions for on a shorter timeframe, but at least in my take of this, I'm seeing this war as a pretty long-term arc where we write stories at least referencing it for a year or more. So probably the first thing to do is like the original post says, lets focus on the immediate aftermath. There's a good two sectors between terminus and greater Javin that we can stitch in some early battles, but also plenty of alliance sectors right there too. If we assume the Ssi-Ruuk will advance on those two star lanes, maybe they do so under slowly stiffening resistance. The Empire prepares for the foregone conclusion that the invaders in their territory are about to lay siege to Javin, so they pull out all the stops to repulse them. Only this isn't the Ssi-Ruuk's objective, and the bulk of their forces hit Eriadu and Sullust in tandem.
I definitely like the idea of going after Eriadu. Strategically, it's a great place for the Ssi-Ruuk to attack, and it makes a lot of sense that the Empire would invest a lot of military forces to avoid the homeworld of the Empress from being captured - which will make their devastating loss all the more potent. Based on what Tear has been describing, I think it satisfies those criteria well. I'm not sure Sullust has the same effect, though. On paper it is the Sullustan homeworld, so it's a big deal, but in terms of player engagement, pretty much all of our Alliance attention is directed elsewhere, around Jovan, Bothawui, Hapes, etc. It's also worth bearing in mind that Sullust was attacked by the Empire shortly before the Treaty, so this is almost like the Ssi-Ruuk picking off the weakest member of the herd. It's a low blow for the Alliance, for sure, but there's a limit on how big a splash it will make for the Alliance characters we actually have. However, if Eriadu is attacked but Sullust isn't? Suddenly we're in a situation where the Alliance has a Ssi-Ruuk stronghold right on their doorstep. Sullustan is a weakened/wounded world, but on principle the Alliance HAS to defend it, which potentially draws in our military characters and focuses them on that region. But, those reinforcements have to come from somewhere, so every step to protect (distinctly alien) worlds like Sullust, Sluissi, and Clak'dor might come at the expense of protection in other areas. How will Hapes react when the Senate asks them to sacrifice some of their paranoid military protection to safeguard a bunch of aliens? How will the Cizerack feel about protecting an industrial competitor like Sullust? How will the aliens in that area feel if reinforcements come in the form of ex-Imperials who defected en masse after the Treaty, like the Gordian Reach fleet? We potentially give ourselves a refugee crisis too, as people flee from the Ssi-Ruuk towards the area where most of our player engagement is (refugees on Jovan Station, etc), and there's all kinds of debates, bickering, and back office politics that could spring out of this. I think the threat of an attack on Sullust is going to generate more content for us than the actual attack itself would. As an added bonus, because it is so close to Eriadu, if the Empire does decide to launch a counterattack after their initial defeat, there's an opportunity here for Alliance forces to sail across the border and help out. We'd get to showcase some of the new ships that Sullust/Sluis Van have been working on the last couple of in-game years, perhaps the first deployment of IKM's new E-Wings, possibly some bombers like the ones we saw in The Last Jedi (according to the Visual Dictionary, they date from this time frame), and that sort of thing. Not only would this incident knock the Empire down a peg in terms of military resources, but it would also serve to demonstrate that the Alliance is stepping up it's game as well, so that the balancing of things is happening on both sides. We still have room to escalate the conflict on other worlds in the future... but with all of those episodic pieces fitting together, I don't think we'd be lacking for impact or gravitas.
If Tukphen agrees with her, Thada Adel will definitely be heavily involved with the refugee crisis; campaigning for resources, pledging Mon Cal assistance, and using the opportunity to improve the perception of the Quarren by employing many of her own people to handle the crisis in Alliance space.
Sullust doesn't have the infrastructure it once had, but it still has a lot of metallurgical resources. The Alliance losing both Sullust (maybe) and Mustafar (highly likely) are going to make the good guys feel a pinch even if its not in terms of finished assets. I'm cool with the Ssi-Ruuk going all-in on Eriadu initially, if only because it doesn't take much for the Alliance to see the writing on the wall, especially if they lose Mustafar first.
Tukphen would absolutely be onboard with taking a role in the refugee crisis. As far as he's concerned, that's a big part of what the Alliance is for, and a bit of a nomenclature tweak doesn't change that. As far as making the Alliance feel the pinch... we might want to be careful with that. The AFP has only existed for two years at this point, and the new ship designs from SoroSuub and Sluis Van (the Defender and Endurance Star Destroyers, etc) are probably only just beginning to roll out. (Folks bailed on those threads before they got anywhere, but we can probably assume that two years is a reasonable turn-around to develop and build the first batch of these new ships). One of the reasons we wanted to add those ships to the Alliance was to create variety, so that the Allies were fighting with a medley of ships in contrast to the unified design conventions of the Empire. It makes sense for the Ssi-Ruuk to want to deprive the Alliance of Sullust and Mustafar, but it's also going to shoot ourselves in the foot in terms of that design variety: Sluis Van can't build them if we take their supply sources away. If we're going to pinch the Alliance, we need to do so carefully, to make sure we're not doing the wrong kind of damage.
