On 18Jun2022 1311, Phil Pugliese - philpugliese at yahoo.com (via tml
list) wrote:
> In the games I played the 3I was always, always, eventually triumphant.After all Terra was totally isolated. Not even w/i the farthest jump of the front lines.It was just a matter of time.Terran 'victory' was measured by how long they could hold out & how costly it became.
> Losing those ground forces, in the end, wouldn't have made much diff if the goal was to reduce the Sols to impotence.What made the Sols potent was their fleet, not the ground forces of regions that had never, ever been part of the TerranConfed, 2I, or 3I.IDK why those areas would be wanted anyway  except maybe for that lucrative cluster of worlds that wound up very close to the armistice line rimward of Terra.
> Recovering all the territory that the 3I had ever had was the most powerful  rationale, IMO, for just up & stopping.
> BTW, there was also a lot published about all the 'dispossessed' 3I nobles that still hadn't recovered their rightful places after the SolRimWar.In fact the 3I, had arguably probably recovered almost all the territory that the 3I had ever held plus, arguably probably some more. The # of 'dispossessed' would've had to have been very small and easily dealt w/ by granting new patents of nobility. Someone must've figured that the entire Sol Sphere (pre-SolRimWar Sol territory) must've been been part of the 3I even though the earliest docs state otherwise. Yet another instance of some who didn't really know the TU.
But they didn't recover all of the 3I's territory. They didn't even
recover all of the original Terran Confederation's territory. The maps
show that was extending further in all directions than the 3I went
(expect coreward of course, as that was most definitely recovered). And
the Solomani Confederation's borders at the time of the Rim War were
those of the 3I, because they'd been part of the 3I, albeit a part that
had been allowed enormous independence (an obvious mistake in hindsight).

What's more, the 3I's advance stopped with the remaining industrial core
only a little beyond what was then the front line. That they lacked the
will to spend the resources to take those and finish the Confederation
as a serious threat and major power says that the 3I was worn out,
despite being several times the Confederation's size, having several to
many times it's industrial capacity and population, and a higher TL as
well (though only just, of course).

This is way I maintain that the 3I is not actually very good at fighting
wars (and that's using CT - if you use MT's assumptions about fleet
sizes, etc. the 3I is outright *terrible* at fighting wars).

--
Rupert Boleyn <xxxxxx@gmail.com>