Rp Background and Reasons

[sovereign]

In fact, I have been reading. The rumours in Cambridge deny any Synth Foods presence in Bretonia, because they have real farms.

The Synth Foods vehicles are arriving from Liberty, not through the blockaded Taus. Farmers hate Synth Foods and foreign trade. The foreign trade is coming from Liberty, not Bretonia.

I have to agree with this. I've spent a fair bit of time raiding Bretonia recently, and not once do I remember a Synth Foods NPC transport. I do, however, remember destroying a lot of them in Liberty and all the way up through Shikoku with my Rogue. Liberty is the source and seat of power of what the FA was founded against, practically exclusively. Effectively no corporations come through the Sigmas for obvious reasons, as well as none coming through the Taus for even more obvious reasons. Shikoku is the only legitimate entry point for Kusari foreign trade, and I would hope that normal FA player patrols would reflect that.

As I read through this, I at first found it rather hard to come to terms with a branch of the FA being used as support troops. The KNF, after all, would probably just recruit/impress them into service if they really needed them, and I have no doubts that given Samura's heavily vested interests in the Taus they wouldn't mind offering the official services of their henchmen that were absolutely dedicated to fighting on the front lines, or as commandos (they are, as has been pointed out, rather well trained, so it's likely some of them are up to snuff for such work). My thoughts wandered to why Samura would sponsor raids in Bretonia rather than Shikoku- remembering again that Samura's competition is entirely Libertonian or named "Kishiro Technologies"- wouldn't Samura gain far more from bolstering its resources or hindering Kishiro's than it would from laying waste to companies that are, from Samura's PoV, unimportant? Then it hit me.

The KNF can't shoot civilians behind the lines.

Really, they can't. Besides being bad form, the negative PR would have significant adverse consequences to the war effort even with Kusari's propaganda machine. Maybe one or two operations could be covered up, but a sustained campaign against Bretonia's (civilian) supply lines would be recognized.

So, the KNF and their puppetmasters in Samura have a problem. In order to wear out Bretonia (now on home ground, as opposed to Kusari's precarious logistic situation), they need to do something to even out the logistics. However, the KNF cannot move openly against Bretonian citizens at risk of losing everything, nor is it likely they will win a war of attrition with current positions- especially now that a still-Bretonian Planet Harris is behind the front and still capable of sending out raiding parties (like the privateers, for instance).

What Kusari needs to complete its stranglehold on Bretonia is a third party that doesn't have to worry about political backlash. A third party with the funding and training to weave past the BAF, do some damage, and run away before overwhelming force comes after them (and on home ground, overwhelming force is not hard to come by). A third party that can be blamed and ostracized openly by its employers without faltering in their loyalty.

Basically, a third party like the Farmer's Alliance- or at least part of it.

Now, as I understand, the Artisan Farmer's Alliance represents a part of the FA with a more generalized focus on tradition rather than just farming. Not all of them should be commando material, nor possess the particular kind of nationalistic fervor that drives them to more or less abandon their personal agendas (and almost certainly their lives) to do what Kusari must do but cannot. This is the kind of person that will inevitably either end up in the Blood Dragons or the Farmer's Alliance (depending on views of the Kusari gov't) but only make up an itsy-bitsy portion of them. This is the kind of person that should be venturing fearlessly into Bretonia waving the flag of the Farmer's Alliance.

HOWEVER- the rest of the Farmer's Alliance still needs to do its job protecting Kusari- well, Samura- from foreign interests. If Samura loses profits to Liberty, then the KNF doesn't have as many ships to throw at the BAF. That is still a very important task, and significantly less likely to kill you. Even ultra-nationalists who are in the FA more for Kusari than for the Farmers are likely to stick with Kusari-side operations because of a functional self-preservation instinct, or the idea that living longer means serving Kusari for longer. The people who go behind the lines should be an utterly minuscule portion of the FA, and a small minority within the ranks of the less farm-centric AFA.



All in all, my suggestion is that the AFA establish a specific wing to fly into Kusari with. They are not intended to fight the BAF, or really even cover numbers when the KNF are losing; they are scarce and valuable and not to throw their lives away while doing anything the KNF can do. The other characters in the AFA should be doing more "traditional" FA things, although I would certainly put venturing out into the Taus to escort or defend Samura operations into this category. In addition to me thinking this is what the RP leads to, I hope that the various parties who came to this thread looking for rational discussion might be satisfied with an arrangement of this sort.

Thoughts?

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