Well IIRC they lost phase one, PanO seems to be characteristically slow to react and need time to make the warmachine start working, Yu Jing been more agile and alert hit them hard, Yu Jing dominated on phase one and gained significant gains, on phase two with the full PanO fleet in motion and everything working for the war effort Neocolonial wars ended with an arbitrated by O-12 peace treaty that reset the territories to were they were before the neocolonial wars started and I have to point out again that PanO at that time was casually bombing from orbit Yu Jing capital planet, the war ended and to some extent Yu Jing was "saved" by O-12 using the public outcry against the war to force a peace treaty and reset the tables to the status quo (quite unfavourably for PanO to be honest). I doubt PanO can ever really "win" Yu Jing, they can be a ridiculously huge power (hence the hyperpower) but Yu Jing are not small at all and defeating them even significantly does not in any form take them out of the map, in contrast for example PanO going in an all out war against any of the "three small" (or all of them at once). Politics and power play in Infinity seems to be more intricate, but also quite alien to what we have in our present real history.
This is both spectacularly uninformed about rl politics and an awkward justification of nonsensical writing.
I am afraid it is two different things I meant to say cut by myself awkwardly. I meant more intricate than some people give them credit for and that they are completely alien to what we have now, IIRC you said in this tread why I said it in the past and I think if I remember it correctly what you said for my reasoning was correct. Writing must serve a purpose and if the purpose is the split of Japan from Yu Jing then it must serve this purpose.
Writing also must not break the suspension of disbelief. You can break Japan away from YJ without this problem. This was not how it's written. Which is why I say the overall geopolitical situation lacks coherence. Look at the description @daboarder provides of a hyperpower as a power only constrained by actions that would trigger MAD, then at your description of how the Necolonial wars ended (which has more akin to the Suez crisis or latest Israeli war in Lebanon than the actions of a power less constrained than a 'hyperpower'). You describe the geopolitics as 'alien', I'd describe them as 'unbelievable'. This isn't too much of a problem because largely the details of the geopolitical situation is irrelevant to the scale we care about. It also isn't a problem unique to the Infinity fluff: very few space operas have geopolitical structures that actually make sense. Aside, we need a new word for the equivalent of geopolitics in the Sphere.
Cosmopolitics... at once accurate and a little silly-sounding. I kinda like it. To clarify the actual canon, the First NeoColonial War launches with PanO contesting Yu Jing right to presence on Svalarheima and their support for the Helot rebellion, with territorial disputes on Human Edge and Paradiso and an exploding ship the catalyst. That war was forced to end due to public opposition, capitalized upon by O-12, with the accord at Accra. PanO fails at its goals, they do not emerge controlling Svalarheima and Yu Jing continues to support the Helots (though admittedly they state they will cease to do so), Yu Jing fails at its goals PanOceania is still the Hyperpower. The second NeoColonial War launches shortly thereafter, when it becomes apparent the first war did not change actual Yu Jing policy towards the Helots. Yu Jing is far more effective in this second war, in terms of space forces at least, bringing the full war to the Sol, Varuna, and Acontecimento systems. At this point, PanOceania deploys its Metatron system in the Mahisa Total Offensive, culminating in strikes directly against Yutang. Yu Jing is then forced to sign the accord at Rio Negro. Key point here is that Yu Jing was winning, if not dominating, and then suffered a major setback. PanO was suffering a setback, and then launched Mahisa which forced peace, which gives us the exact limits of the power of Metatron: if it had changed the war and made PanO dominant, why would PanOceania agree to peace? There is no reason to, at this point canon gives us no evidence of the public outcry explicitly mentioned in the other two Colonial Wars, why not just end Yu Jing, eliminate the rival, secure full control of Svalarheima at very least? But no, Rio Negro, the peace PanO gained through their Total Offensive, like Accra leaves things just as they were beforehand. Yu Jing has been forced to give up the additional territories it had gained in the war, but again, Yu Jing still keeps its presence on all the contested worlds. Again, Yu Jing supports the Helots. Again PanO remains the hyperpower. Both sides have once more failed to win. The final NeoColonial War breaks out over PanO claiming ZuluPoint, and Yu Jing attacking to contest that claim. Yu Jing deploys the Darao probes to counter the Metatron system, and launches a direct attack on Neoterra. The war is ended when public pressure and O-12 maneuvering force the Peace of Concilium. Yu Jing keeps its presence on contested worlds, borders are left unchanged, except that PanO surrenders ZuluPoint (the territory which their claim on triggered this whole war) to O-12, a clear and definitive loss for the 'hyperpower'. So, phase one no one wins or accomplishes anything. Phase two Yu Jing starts winning and gets halted by Metatron which forces them back to the status quo. Phase three PanO loses. There's a lot of material to those wars, a lot to discuss, but if you're looking for PanOceanian power, their greatest success in the wars is that they hit hard with Mahisa to stop themselves from losing and restore the status quo. Its a great spot to pull 'Yu Jing can't surpass PanO, they fail every time', since that is true, but this isn't the place you want to be mining for proof of Hyperpower superiority since the story doesn't offer any of it.
Yup. Someone on 4chan posited a much more believable breakdown of the Uprising conflict with PanO and Tohaa supporting JSA and Ariadna and Aleph supporting Yu Jing, with Nomads, Haqq, and the rest of the NA2 factions forming a neutral, opportunistic group. And of course CA doing CA things. Made much more sense than the official version, as it didn't have factions like Haqq falling over themselves to help PanO kneecap Yu Jing for no benefit to themselves. I'm not holding my breath as to the consequences of Uprising actually being thought out to this degree in the canon story, but this situation, with (almost) all of the other human powers joining forces to steal Yu Jing's territory and kick them while they're down, should have diplomatic ramifications later. Especially with respect to the Paradiso command and so on. But if Haqqislamite fleets are under attack by CA forces? Fuck 'em, they're on their own, Yu Jing's gotta look after itself because they can't trust anyone else not to stab them in the back. O-12 also just aided and abetted the theft of land from Yu Jing, and there's no talk of reparations. Yu Jing should be looking to get its pound of flesh in recompense, and looking for alternatives from their dependence on O-12 wormholes. Hell, perhaps even telling O-12 to fuck off and make their own AI, since Aleph obviously kept mum about the conspiracy to steal land from them.
The only thing I'd disagree with is characterising Phase 1 and 2 as not a win for either side. 'No change' is a good outcome when fighting a primarily defensive war against a superior power. PanO is a potentially-hegemonic power. Stopping their expansion and gaining O-12 recognition for disputed territory is (IMO) a clear win for YJ. Not as big as could be hoped, but a good outcome nevertheless.
EVO Repeater "Hacking Device", anarchist. I will agree that the geopolitics/cosmopolitics are alien. After all, when every merchant Captain has the equivalent of Chixulub in his control, major powers should be extremely paranoid about stepping into open warfare. When September 11th 2101 was some asshat dropping 4 Tunguska Event blasts (between 3 and 30 megatons each) onto Earth instead of 4 airliners crashing into buildings, the entire political system is far less tolerant of terrorists. You thought the US response was scary? Imagine how pissed the entire planet would be if you destroyed London, NYC, Paris, and Moscow. No hiding place would be deep enough. I have no problem with the split of Japan from YJ. I have grave issues with how the split was presented and accomplished.
See i look at it as. Yu jing tried to undermine pano and failed. Remaining the potentially hegemonising power and biggest fish is a clear win for pano
That basically turns on which power you consider to be revisionist and which as status quo. The impression that I get is that YJ's principal war aim was confirmation and maintenance of their territorial rights on Svaal, Paradiso and Earth whilst PanO's was to reduce or eliminate YJ rights primarily on Svaal and secondarily on Paradise. Based on that assessment I'd characterise YJ as a status quo power and Pano as a revisionist power with hegemonic aims. The alternative reading is that YJ's a revisionist power who's attempting to establish that they're capable of resisting PanO. But even by that reading all there phases are wins for YJ: avoiding being squashed like bugs for daring to challenge PanO whilst hanging on to your territorial rights is a huge win in that case. Also (in this alternative case) the incompetence of Pano in allowing a balancing power to develop whilst it (PanO) is experiencing what could almost be considered a golden age displays frankly unbelievable levels of incompetence. I find it much more believable to consider the Hyperpower tag to be hyperbolic or self-delusion (compare Fukyama's 'End of History' as a comparable delusion) and YJ to have always been a great power competitor to PanO (just a significantly weaker one).
Well... There are several levels here on Space-to-planet warfare. First, while we don't know how space warfare is conducted in Infinity (but I think we can assume something akin to what Mass Effect shows us: slugs and missiles shot real fast, I think the slugs will have some explosive charge to do more damage to the target, or self-destruct after a time to avoid navigation hazards) we can safely accept that grabbing an asteroid and throwing it into a collision course is fairly easy for anyone (giving enough time, even a shuttle can do that...), with the obvious disadvantage of said "projectile" following a predictable trajectory (and thus being easy to intercept). Second, we can assume freighters have some sort of anti-piracy defense, despite the need of Minotaur Drives and the existence of Circulars; this points to piracy being conducted in the transition between Circulars and planets/stations, and the traffic to "dark zones" (places without the Circular routes) being quite scarce (and mostly government-controlled). This means mostly something to hold on enough for the authorities to reach them and scare the pirates. So really, I'd contest the idea of every ship being able to be a threat to anything, leaving aside the "suicide run" of crashing the ship against the unsuspecting station/planet (so it's not like any merchant has access to huge missiles, it's that they ride on one!). Mind you, this does not block your 2101/11, it just makes it from "asshat captain fires 4 gizmos and blasts 4 cities" to "asshat captain feigns impulsion problems, then ship enters desdending orbit... and at the right time it blows up in some big chunks that attempt to level some cities", but I'd assume that there are ways to intercept the debris and very severe traffic lanes. I know that I would not let any big freighter to approach closer than the Moon, anyway, and use one of her Lagrange points (or the three that are outside Earth's gravity) as exchange point for cargo... and that's even assuming the big freighters even come inside the system, instead of transferring all cargo about Pluto or so.
The PanO EVO hacker being just the same as everyone else's despite their real time interstellar haxx in the background is exactly the type of thing that makes them super lame to play.
