I'm inclined to agree with Dolash on this. The Star Wars galaxy has proven time and again that the lightside groups tend to do what they can to rescue captured prisoners.

Throughout the expanded universe, The New Republic enters dangerous situations where the loss may not be worth the gain just to rescue their men who have been taken captive.

The Coalition is a lightside group which means it must run on the fundamental basis of not writing men off as casualties of war. The fact that the Coalition is a lightside faction means it would try any options available if it meant they might return men to their famillies. Even if the options that Dolash has are limited he should still try them if it may result in the rescue of his men.

Also, seeing as Dolash created the men that Telan has captured arent some of them NPC's? If they are then Telan killing them off without Dolash's permission is-to me- a form of godmodding.

I'm not blaming you, Telan, I'm just saying that at TRF the argument of a fair trade has never had much weight.

No, Telan can do it. The permission to kill is not required for NPCs... however, it's a really, really lame thing to kill someone's character without their permission, regardless of how often or how well they develop it.

I have to side with Telan on the fact that your rescue efforts are doomed to fail and ill avised, but I agree that that doesn't matter; they're the good guys. If they could just crunch the numbers, find the risk unnaceptable, and let their people die, they wouldn't be the good guys. Dolash can make the attempt if he wants, and it can be messy, but rather then tell him why he can't do it and why he shouldn't do it, you should let him give it a shot. Infiltration missions are always interesting, n'est pa?

Like Irtar could charge the Emperor. Oh, he would die hardcore but he CAN do it. And I could try to rape a black belt. Yes, said black belt would snap my neck but I could TRY to do it. So if Dolash wants to try and rescure prisonners from an Imperial Stonghold, he can TRY. Even though it is likely he will fail.

Exactly.

Even if it's seriously unlikely to succeed unless I come up with something really brilliant, I should still be permitted to make the attempt.

If I am to make this attempt, however, it would certainly help to just confirm the near future of your plans so that I don't go making assumptions about what you plan to do.

Namely 1) Do you plan to keep fighting my men in hyperspace? If so, it is true that four hours is a long time for an army to hold out, but at the same time you put your ships at severe risk that my men will do something in the firefight that might destabalize them and get them lost in space - they might not, but that risk is certainly there. If you intend to fight them during the trip, then obviously that is where we would begin from. If you do not intend to fight them but instead intend to keep them contained, then we can probably skip right ahead to where I started with the agent hanging around on a Corellia space station.

2) When you get to Corellia, what's your plan? Do you intend to just dock briefly with the nearest space station, take on reinforcements, pick up a new set of escort ships then high-tail it for a more secluded place? Do you intend to park yourself there and bring in as many men as is necessary to engage and bring down the enemy aboard your vessels? Do you even intend to do anything beyond leap in-system, order up a fresh set of fighters and gunships, then leap out again? If you can confirm your short-term plans in advance, then I can write my post taking this into account and not making any assumptions about where you might go or why.

If the answers to these questions are to your satisfaction, then I will procceed forthwidth. Of course, you could just let us off at the next exit... No? Fair enough. :P

Sheesh, Telan. Just decompress the deck and blow them out into space if they want to leave that badly.



As for IHOG: I think it was very fair for TNO to allow GC to live another day. :D


And if the gravity plating is turned up high, the boarding party aren't doing much fighting. They are grunting and straining to pick their heads off the floor (whether in hyperspace or not).

I agree that Dolash is allowed to attempt to find his men, I was simply pointing out it's not a particularly smart move, nor is it likely to succeed.

*shrug*

However, Dolash: answer me this. Why would the soldiers still aboard the Astrus continue to fight? Wouldn't they, valuing life, surrender? Fighting ultimately means death - remember, if the Astrus is damaged and lost in hyperspace, so are your men. Are they collectively willing to commit suicide by continuing to fight? They are trapped aboard an Imperial ship, outgunned and they will eventually lose. No longer is this a matter of breaking through the lines, sabotaging the reactor, and retreating - now they have nowhere to go back to. Simply put, if they fight, they will die. There's no way around that.

Whereas, if they surrender, they may be granted the rights of a prisoner of war. You know OOC that they will not, but IC the soldiers themselves would have to prefer to entertain that thought than assured death. Even if the race is "suicidal", I question whether all of them will continue to fight: they no doubt have families back home that they will be abandoning by fighting. Would they not prefer to take the chance that they will see them again over assured death?

You're blending IC and OOC here, I think. You're looking at what the soldiers would do knowing that the Empire is going to kill them. But IC, the soldiers don't know that - Telan is perhaps the most "honourable" soldier in the Empire, and therefor the most likely to grant them pardon.

Well, there are a few factors to consider here, namely we don't know it's Telan and not once has he tried to parley with the soldiers. He certainly hasn't called a cease-fire or anything. It's pretty hard to surrender even if they wanted to under those circumstances.

Also, consider the fact that the Empire has never been known for it's kind treatment of prisoners - we don't follow the news closesly enough to know the nuances of who has what rules of engagement regarding to which prisoner coloney is used blah blah blah, but definetly the Empire's rep for brutality proccedes them. Surrendering is just as good as being dead.

Plus, to top it off, they do have solid leadership, and to volunteer to be shot through space head-first into an enemy ship and fight on it is pretty suicidal to begin with. Most of them probably could guess how low their survival odds were.

I still don't believe that would lead them to continue fighting. The survival instinct is the strongest instinct we humans have - we do almost anything to avoid pain and death. Knowing "this mission might kill us" and "if I continue firing I will die" are different things. In the former you accept the risk as a possibility; in the latter it's a choice: you're either going to live or you're going to die (in the short term).

In this sort of scenario, I believe most of your soldiers would be thinking of surviving in the short term. Why die right now for nothing? Why not survive, where the chance of escape/being freed exists (as limited as it might be)?

Well, probably most notably because most of them aren't humans. I'd imagine there'd be a number of Tynnans, then some Azguards and the like, humans would be pretty low down on the scale there. Humans are really an ethnic minority, in fact.

Of course, survival is something key to pretty much all races, but history is filled with examples of men heroically fighting to their death, and I feel that I have detailed the Coalition sufficiently to believe their soldiers to have the stern stuff to fight it out to the bitter end for their beliefs.