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There's quite simply nothing that the EA could have done to force the Minbari into a stalemate.

Stand-up battles aren't going to work, as the Minbari's tech allows them to own EA vessels with little trouble.
Pulling back to one system isn't going to work, as the Minbari can simply throw larger numbers of superior vessels at that system while capturing all your other assets.
Going guerilla isn't going to work, as your systems will be captured and you vessels will then be deprived of supplies.
Surprise-nuking the Minbari homeworld isn't going to work, as that'll just drive the Minbari into a murderous rage (remember what happened when they lost their flagship?).

No one, not even Thrawn, could have saved the EA. It was a fight between opponents that were too vastly different in comparable power.

You know, the Earth-Minbari War made the League of Non-Alligned Worlds look like cowards. True, they wouldn't have had any chance against the Minbari, but they had fricking TREATIES with Earth that made mutual defense.

Just shows you how much they respected (or of course feared) the Minbari. So much that they did not honour their treaties. Only the Narn supplied weapons, but they supplied Centauri style weapons to try and get the Minbari to attack the Centauri Republic.

Well what the hell was the LoNAW supposed to do? Join Earth, which had started the war in the first place, and make themselves targets for the Minbari?

Deepcrush wrote: You're fighting a holy war where the entire race is willing to die in order to win because you just killed their greatest leader in a thousand years. Glassing their homeworld would just drive them into a mass rage. Bad idea if you want to force a stalemate or force the Minbari out of the war.

The only way to do anything against the Minbari is to just bleed them...

Why can't you do both? Hit and fade mass drivers against their population centers and resource mining facilities then at the same time tightening the line with mass space mines. You bleed them from both ends that way.

I think at this point it seemed the Minbari had no wish to end the war peacefully anyway.

I don't think the EA even knew where the Minbari worlds were, they had just a vague idea where their space even was.

Maybe.. I bet that information could have been bought though. Like from the Narn or Centauri or someone. Yeah they're exploring but Cortez was able to figure out where the Aztec capital was. There's got to be alien species in the know. The Minbari aren't as secretive as the Vorlon.

Think about it. The EA fleet interrupted the Minbari task force that was carrying the Grey Council and Dukat on the very edge of Minbari space. The human ships were likely so far from anything remotely important in Minbari technology, that they would never even breach the Minbari border. The Minbari, in a fit of vengeance attacked the EA on all sides. The borders of the EA would have crumbled like dust.

But yet they held out for two years.

I don't think a stalemate is a possibility. EA was against a species dedicated on their extinction. The only way for humanity to survive is a victory or to flee Earth into neutral territory and hope the Minbari don't go after them.

To have a victory Earth had to bleed the Minbari. Deep is absolutely right in that. I don't know the populations of Minbari but I do know that they have very ancient worlds that aren't completely covered in cities but actually almost agrarian. So that leads me to believe that they have a sparse population. You send drones or fleets with hit and fade orders to bombard surfaces of Minbari worlds into glass. Yes it'll anger the Minbari but at this point the EA does not have an alternative. You mine planets both in space and on the surface. Have dead switches for the last human defender to push before dying. EA did a good job making the Minbari fight for every inch as Londo's great speech talked about. But EA needed to go on the offensive. They needed to kill millions of billions of civilians in 'cowardly' tactics. Brutal yes, but its easier to talk about the justifications and morality of moves after war. And when you're fighting for the survival of your species its the only time I would advocate complete genocide of the alien species you're fighting against.

And hell if you cause so much destruction that the Minbari might actually lose this war then maybe the League or Centauri might join in. Everyone stays clear of the Gorilla in the room but when the Gorilla is dying its a lot easier for people to muster the bravery (or greed) to steal some of his treasure.

A, you don't know their population so taking random guesses at where and how many there MIGHT be is just a big waste.
B, no known ship has ever entered Minbari space without their knowing of it (so far as shown).
C, attacking their population wouldn't matter as their fleet would still be coming after you.

Deepcrush wrote:A, you don't know their population so taking random guesses at where and how many there MIGHT be is just a big waste.
B, no known ship has ever entered Minbari space without their knowing of it (so far as shown).
C, attacking their population wouldn't matter as their fleet would still be coming after you.

A) We have a fair guess based on their talks about population decreasing, scenes on their worlds, amount of worlds

B) Reason it would have to be drones or hit and fade tactics

C) It might it might not. We do know that they have trouble wrapping their heads around unorthadox attacks. You keep them guessing and confused enough and their fleet might spread out helping your battle lines hold. And if you weaken them enough you might gain allies.

Yes this is based on a lot of conjecture but we simply don't know enough not to base it on conjecture. And IMO its the only way victory is even possible. We take your idea of tightening the lines and my idea of Doolittle like raids and the EA might have a chance. At the very least EA would take as many of the Minbari along with them as possible.

Monroe wrote:A) We have a fair guess based on their talks about population decreasing, scenes on their worlds, amount of worlds

At the time in question... then did not know ANYTHING about the Minbari.

Monroe wrote:B) Reason it would have to be drones or hit and fade tactics

Drones need a target, EA doesn't have one.

Monroe wrote:C) It might it might not. We do know that they have trouble wrapping their heads around unorthadox attacks. You keep them guessing and confused enough and their fleet might spread out helping your battle lines hold. And if you weaken them enough you might gain allies.

Even when the Shadows were helping the Centari, Londo was still fearful of Minbari action. No one was going to act, simple fact.

Monroe wrote:Yes this is based on a lot of conjecture but we simply don't know enough not to base it on conjecture.

Conjecture or meaningless guessing and blind statements... you are jumping between them and reaching to far.

And IMO its the only way victory is even possible. We take your idea of tightening the lines and my idea of Doolittle like raids and the EA might have a chance. At the very least EA would take as many of the Minbari along with them as possible.

Agreed.

Deepcrush wrote: At the time in question... then did not know ANYTHING about the Minbari.

You sure? They didn't seem terribly isolated.

Drones need a target, EA doesn't have one.

This depends on finding those planets. Which isn't that impossible.

Monroe wrote: Even when the Shadows were helping the Centari, Londo was still fearful of Minbari action. No one was going to act, simple fact.

Cause humanity was running a defensive war.

And IMO its the only way victory is even possible. We take your idea of tightening the lines and my idea of Doolittle like raids and the EA might have a chance. At the very least EA would take as many of the Minbari along with them as possible.

Agreed.

Yeah I'm surprised you're on the other side of this from me Deep. I'm basically adding onto your plan :p Yes we don't know if it would have worked. But it might have. And might have won the war. Which is more than a pure defensive war could have.

I really don't see this drone thing working, for several reasons

1) As stated, EF really knew nothing about Mimbari space at the time. It's very hard to launch a large scale campaign without knowing where and how to deploy your forces. And jumping around blindly in the general area of Mimbari space seems like a really good way to get a defence force to fly down your throat.

2) Do we know that EF had mass drivers or drone ships? I certainly don't recall earth having either.

3) How would you get these drones (if they do exist) to their targets? Remember, among the younger races, it takes a big ship to make it's own jump point. So either the drones would need to be their own captial ship, or you would need to send ships out loaded with these things. Either way, I'm seeing a lot of resources going into an offensive that even if successful only might have stopped the Mimbari...or it might have driven them to fight even harder. I'm seeing a lot of resources being sent off to fly around blindly from star to star in hopes of finding a useful target, while our own planets and bases are being torn to pieces by a vastly superior enemy. Over all, I'm not seeing a plan that would very likely get passed the initial planning stage.

4) Even if we do have these drones (with mass drivers) and can get them around (either by making them big or loading them into captial ships) and we can find proper targets for them, we still have to face the Mimbari's bigest advantage, their stealth systems. It would take just one Mimbari ship to stop a whole fleet of drones, because the drones wouldn't even be able to know the Mimbari ship was there.


Honestly, the war was just too one sided. It was bad enough that the Mimbari had tougher ships with better weapons. It was bad enough they were stronger then us physically. What really screwed the EF though, was that damn stealth tech. Being unable to detect and target the Mimbari ships is a, and let me say this with proper emphasis, DISADVANATGE THAT WAS NIGH ON IMPOSSIBLE TO COMPENSATE FOR!

Lets consider what all that stealth tech meant

1) No early warning. The only way the EF could know a Mimbari force was incoming would be if they had fighter patrols sweeping the area around planets and bases constantly, and even then it'd be easy to miss them as all you'd have were the pilot's eyes. Space IS REALLY FREAKING BIG. To have any meaningful warning time, you'd need those patrols millions of miles out from the planet/base. The area that would need to be patrolled would be vast beyond the human mind to really truly understand. These are distances the human eye just can not see across.

2) All targeting must be done manually. This is pretty big, especially for the captial ships. The starfuries didn't have it as bad, as the pilots can just point the ship in the general direction and blast away, but you can't do that with a captial ship, hence why their guns can rotate, so you don't have to turn the whole damn ship to aim. Try to imagine trying to hit a target at even just a few miles, while sitting in a chair off center from your weapons, with no computer, and no sensors. The best you might have is a camera that may or may not have enough zoom to find you a target. And that's just a few miles, odds are those Mimbari ships will start blasting away at your ships from thousands of miles away. Good luck.

3) Tactical planning. Imagine how much harder it must have been for the field commanders to direct ships in a battle where they can only get accurate and quickly updated info on their side alone. Want to know how many Mimbari ships there are, where they are, how they're positioned? Guess what, you have to wait for the people on the front line to call the info in, and they're having to do that while in battle...oh and they have to make those counts and judge positions by eye balling it. So the EF commanders were getting guesstimations, when the people out there fighting had the time, and having it come in sparatically, and then having to plug the info into some kind of interface to generate a battle map and then try to come up with a stradgey. Basically the stealth tech took the EF commanders back to the type of planning sessions of WWII, when I'm sure they were used to having live streaming feed from every ship under their command.

Meanwhile, the Mimbari can see the EF ships perfectly, target them easily, and share their tactical sensor feeds without a glitch. Information is POWER, and the Mimbari raped the EF in the information game.

Monroe wrote:Yes this is based on a lot of conjecture but we simply don't know enough not to base it on conjecture. And IMO its the only way victory is even possible. We take your idea of tightening the lines and my idea of Doolittle like raids and the EA might have a chance. At the very least EA would take as many of the Minbari along with them as possible.

Victory?
There is no way EF/EA would have won the war, even with tech level from B5 days, having Omega destroyers and those new starfurys. Delay the inevitable defeat yes; actually they lasted a lot longer than anyone would have thought, so they did a good job with their resources.

I don't think the minbari would have acceptet a stalemate, remember this was not an ordinary war, it was a crusade, a holly war of revenge and annihilation so the cost of the war is not an issue here, they are going to win and destroy humanity. Except they didn't, lucky us.

About taking as many of the minbari along with them as possible; i like the idea of taking the enemy along if i know i'm doomed anyway but i don't know if that is a good tactic if i'm trying to save as many of my people as possible. It's possible the minbari get confused enough and that could buy me some time but on the other hand they could get even more mad.

Lighthawk wrote: 1) As stated, EF really knew nothing about Mimbari space at the time. It's very hard to launch a large scale campaign without knowing where and how to deploy your forces. And jumping around blindly in the general area of Mimbari space seems like a really good way to get a defence force to fly down your throat.

Well said drones and tiny ships could do the scouting. And like I said they might have contact with aliens who know where the Minbari worlds are.

2) Do we know that EF had mass drivers or drone ships? I certainly don't recall earth having either.

We have drone ships now why not in the future?
Mass drivers maybe not. But we sure as hell have nukes. And we have FTL travel.

3) How would you get these drones (if they do exist) to their targets? Remember, among the younger races, it takes a big ship to make it's own jump point. So either the drones would need to be their own captial ship, or you would need to send ships out loaded with these things. Either way, I'm seeing a lot of resources going into an offensive that even if successful only might have stopped the Mimbari...or it might have driven them to fight even harder. I'm seeing a lot of resources being sent off to fly around blindly from star to star in hopes of finding a useful target, while our own planets and bases are being torn to pieces by a vastly superior enemy. Over all, I'm not seeing a plan that would very likely get passed the initial planning stage.

Drone carriers could do it or drone swarms through a jump gate.

4) Even if we do have these drones (with mass drivers) and can get them around (either by making them big or loading them into captial ships) and we can find proper targets for them, we still have to face the Mimbari's bigest advantage, their stealth systems. It would take just one Mimbari ship to stop a whole fleet of drones, because the drones wouldn't even be able to know the Mimbari ship was there.

True. But you send multiple ones. Some would get through. Look at their capital ship the thing has tons of blind spots and not a lot of, to borrow a WoW term, AoE (Area of Effect Damage).

Honestly, the war was just too one sided. It was bad enough that the Mimbari had tougher ships with better weapons. It was bad enough they were stronger then us physically. What really screwed the EF though, was that damn stealth tech. Being unable to detect and target the Mimbari ships is a, and let me say this with proper emphasis, DISADVANATGE THAT WAS NIGH ON IMPOSSIBLE TO COMPENSATE FOR!

Eh maybe. But the post is to find a way possible. Long shot yes but its hope. Their current plan relied on winning through defense.

1) No early warning. The only way the EF could know a Mimbari force was incoming would be if they had fighter patrols sweeping the area around planets and bases constantly, and even then it'd be easy to miss them as all you'd have were the pilot's eyes. Space IS REALLY FREAKING BIG. To have any meaningful warning time, you'd need those patrols millions of miles out from the planet/base. The area that would need to be patrolled would be vast beyond the human mind to really truly understand. These are distances the human eye just can not see across.

Reason butchering their population is so important.

2) All targeting must be done manually. This is pretty big, especially for the captial ships. The starfuries didn't have it as bad, as the pilots can just point the ship in the general direction and blast away, but you can't do that with a captial ship, hence why their guns can rotate, so you don't have to turn the whole damn ship to aim. Try to imagine trying to hit a target at even just a few miles, while sitting in a chair off center from your weapons, with no computer, and no sensors. The best you might have is a camera that may or may not have enough zoom to find you a target. And that's just a few miles, odds are those Mimbari ships will start blasting away at your ships from thousands of miles away. Good luck.

That issue still needs working on.

3) Tactical planning. Imagine how much harder it must have been for the field commanders to direct ships in a battle where they can only get accurate and quickly updated info on their side alone. Want to know how many Mimbari ships there are, where they are, how they're positioned? Guess what, you have to wait for the people on the front line to call the info in, and they're having to do that while in battle...oh and they have to make those counts and judge positions by eye balling it. So the EF commanders were getting guesstimations, when the people out there fighting had the time, and having it come in sparatically, and then having to plug the info into some kind of interface to generate a battle map and then try to come up with a stradgey. Basically the stealth tech took the EF commanders back to the type of planning sessions of WWII, when I'm sure they were used to having live streaming feed from every ship under their command.

Meanwhile, the Mimbari can see the EF ships perfectly, target them easily, and share their tactical sensor feeds without a glitch. Information is POWER, and the Mimbari raped the EF in the information game.

Very true. Maybe a program could be designed that looked at star light around the ship, detected anolomies, targeted them, then shared information... actually... that's a great idea.

Now I'm not going to fault writers from 93-98 for not thinking of this but we have this technology now a days. Imagining ships in the future with it seems so simplistic. I think I just solved the targeting issue.

You don't target the ships. You target where starlight is being affected from. Sure you might have the occasional misfire and you'd need to install devices on EA ships so you don't hit friendlies but wow the answer is so easy.

SomosFuga wrote: Victory?
There is no way EF/EA would have won the war, even with tech level from B5 days, having Omega destroyers and those new starfurys. Delay the inevitable defeat yes; actually they lasted a lot longer than anyone would have thought, so they did a good job with their resources.

I don't think the minbari would have acceptet a stalemate, remember this was not an ordinary war, it was a crusade, a holly war of revenge and annihilation so the cost of the war is not an issue here, they are going to win and destroy humanity. Except they didn't, lucky us.

About taking as many of the minbari along with them as possible; i like the idea of taking the enemy along if i know i'm doomed anyway but i don't know if that is a good tactic if i'm trying to save as many of my people as possible. It's possible the minbari get confused enough and that could buy me some time but on the other hand they could get even more mad.

Yeah even if we managed to get star maps of Minbari space (That were accurate) and begin devastating their worlds. And we solved the targeting issue. There still would be no guarantied we would win. So the only hope would be for those to go as plan and us to hurt the Minbari enough for EA allies to jump in.

And if EA did actually defeat the Minbari you can bet the EA would be the top dogs on the block. Two xeno-wars and in both cases the other people become extinct. Very nice.

Way more bullshit right there then I care to go through............

It ends like this. Could the EA win the Earth-Minbari War? NO, not a chance in hell. Could the EA stalemate the war? Maybe, for a while, but sooner or later the Minbari superior numbers and abilities would just overpower the Earth Force lines.

Deepcrush wrote:Way more bullshit right there then I care to go through............

It ends like this. Could the EA win the Earth-Minbari War? NO, not a chance in hell. Could the EA stalemate the war? Maybe, for a while, but sooner or later the Minbari superior numbers and abilities would just overpower the Earth Force lines.

I get the idea you're only disagreeing with me because its me.

My solution for the targeting problem is great. That alone could at least extend the war and make it so the Minbari losses were greater.

Of course the EA can't win, that's not the point. The point is to take as many of the Boneheads with you as you can. Spamming their space with nuke armed drones won't win the war or even stalemate it but it might just burn millions of the fuckers.