How did Lucan fail to defeat Dulinor?

[Ulsyus]

My logisticians are a humorless lot … they know if my campaign fails, they are the first ones I will slay.

– Alexander the Great

There are some really great assessments in here, this thread is a pleasure to read. Without wanting to sound like there's a duck with a machinegun nudging everything along, the outcome was narrative driven, the conflict inevitable in a setting where the status-quo was going to be irrevocably changed and nicely set up by the historical precedents (or taking advantage of them).

I like the quote above, because I think it could just as easily be attributed to Lucan as it could to Alexander.

In the big-hands little-maps world of intra-Imperial conflict, maybe Lucan simply had more capacity to produce stuff, enabling him to keep in the fight but, as pointed out in so many posts, not sustain sufficient localised superiority of force that would enable him to defeat the legion of enemies surrounding him.

 

[Peter Newman]

"My question is how do you see that having happened?"

Defeat in detail. To quote JMS "Only an idiot fights a war on two fronts, Only the heir to the throne of the King of idiots fights a war on twelve fronts!"

Lucan was fighting a war against: Dulinor, Margaret, Antares, Vland, the Solmani, the Aslan, Daibei, the Real Strephon, some Vargr, some of his own population against insinuations of fratricide, and, eventually, Virus. You do the math.

 

[jcrocker]

To be fair, Lucan did just have Dulinor as a dedicated opponent at the start. Most of the rest of the Imperial factions resulted in Lucan's bad management.

To be even more fair, it all looks like a terminal case of "writer's fiat" from here. So he was outta luck from the get-go.

 

[BRJN]

Lucan is a teenager when:
"Lucan, did you finish reading the book on Grand Strategy I mentioned to you?"
"Yes, Uncle Strephon. Grand Strategy is when I tell the Admirals what to do, and they go do it."
"Errrmmm … we need to talk."

-From this point, I doubt I'm being very original.-
Lucan has several problems to overcome.
* Shaky rise to the throne. He crowns himself and gets into a fight with the Moot about it. Instead, announce you are taking charge for the duration of the emergency; meanwhile the proper ceremonies and procedures will be undertaken in due course. Try to cooperate in public and downplay anything you find embarrassing (like a request for DNA).
* Surrounded by enemies. Lucan has no secure flanks. Some of those enemies are self-inflicted (Daibei).
* Personality disorders. Lucan is described like a 3 years old once he gets a taste of Power. Is he shooting everybody who tells him, "You gotta keep your cool in public"?
* No sense of priorities. You can rally the Imperium to defeat the Treacherous Assassin, but not if you rant at, and mortally offend, your subordinates (Brzk).
* Scorched-earth tactics aimed at civilians and the Imperium's material infrastructure demonstrates that NOBODY will be safe with him in charge over them.

 

[BwapTED]

Lucan is a teenager when:
"Lucan, did you finish reading the book on Grand Strategy I mentioned to you?"
"Yes, Uncle Strephon. Grand Strategy is when I tell the Admirals what to do, and they go do it."
"Errrmmm … we need to talk."

-From this point, I doubt I'm being very original.-
Lucan has several problems to overcome.
* Shaky rise to the throne. He crowns himself and gets into a fight with the Moot about it. Instead, announce you are taking charge for the duration of the emergency; meanwhile the proper ceremonies and procedures will be undertaken in due course. Try to cooperate in public and downplay anything you find embarrassing (like a request for DNA).
* Surrounded by enemies. Lucan has no secure flanks. Some of those enemies are self-inflicted (Daibei).
* Personality disorders. Lucan is described like a 3 years old once he gets a taste of Power. Is he shooting everybody who tells him, "You gotta keep your cool in public"?
* No sense of priorities. You can rally the Imperium to defeat the Treacherous Assassin, but not if you rant at, and mortally offend, your subordinates (Brzk).
* Scorched-earth tactics aimed at civilians and the Imperium's material infrastructure demonstrates that NOBODY will be safe with him in charge over them.

Lucan is an example of why Right of Assassination is not an entirely bad idea.
But of course nobody uses it on him.

 

[McPerth]

Lucan is a teenager when:
"Lucan, did you finish reading the book on Grand Strategy I mentioned to you?"
"Yes, Uncle Strephon. Grand Strategy is when I tell the Admirals what to do, and they go do it."
"Errrmmm … we need to talk."

-From this point, I doubt I'm being very original.-
Lucan has several problems to overcome.
* Shaky rise to the throne. He crowns himself and gets into a fight with the Moot about it. Instead, announce you are taking charge for the duration of the emergency; meanwhile the proper ceremonies and procedures will be undertaken in due course. Try to cooperate in public and downplay anything you find embarrassing (like a request for DNA).
* Surrounded by enemies. Lucan has no secure flanks. Some of those enemies are self-inflicted (Daibei).
* Personality disorders. Lucan is described like a 3 years old once he gets a taste of Power. Is he shooting everybody who tells him, "You gotta keep your cool in public"?
* No sense of priorities. You can rally the Imperium to defeat the Treacherous Assassin, but not if you rant at, and mortally offend, your subordinates (Brzk).
* Scorched-earth tactics aimed at civilians and the Imperium's material infrastructure demonstrates that NOBODY will be safe with him in charge over them.

This has reminded me about this TNS I posted in April fools' day 2013:

Capital, Core2118 A 586498 F date:91-1112

:alpha:Admiral Santanocheev has been named today Naval Attaché for young prince Lucan.

:alpha:After being sacked from command in Spindward Marces for alleged mismanagement of the war against the Zhodani, Admiral Santanocheev has been judged by the admiralty and found not guilty, and gossip says a new duty was been looked for him.

:alpha:“Someone with his connections was sure not to be condemned and was sure to find a new assignment”, told to this reporter an officer of INI, who asked for anonimity (Santanocheev's relations with INI have been strained at best times). “He almost lost the war for the Imperium, and at least at this mostly honorific post he could not mess things as he did in his last command”.

:alpha:As Prince Lucan is prince nearly only in name, yet protocol requires a naval attaché for him to learn about naval matters, most people agree about this being an honorific post without influence, and gossip says he has been put on it as a golden retire, so to say.mega:


April's fool

 

[Cryton]

I'm sure that communications lag played a part in it.

 

[Kilgs]

It's also a consideration to consider the mental acuity of Lucan when it comes to considering "how did things go so wrong so fast?"

The Imperium is HUGE. It gathers more information than anything in existence on everything that affects it, it has more factions and "parties" than any earth government, it has aliens to deal with, crushing numbers of logistics, trade concerns across not a planet but a thousand planets, not to mention a significant amount of autonomy granted to those planets... all of these things must be well-balanced on a razor's edge.

If the person in charge of keeping it balanced is unbalanced themselves and/or focuses on certain things to the exclusion of others, it is a recipe for disaster.

It's almost impossible to conceive of the Imperium functioning well when a significant portion (Dulinor) has done the unthinkable and destabilized it. Add to that a monomaniac (solely focused on killing Dulinor/legitimizing his reign) with some serious instability issues (whether or not they developed over time or were always there) and you have a sugar confectionery of ultimate disaster.

The sheer scale of ruling such a vast territory/population would likely require an intellect and disposition of nearly inhuman capability or absolute trust in aides/representatives to manage their corner of things.

Take away the brilliance, add in distrust of the government machine and nobility, spice with that aforementioned monomania... doesn't seem too hard to envision that someone would muck things up pretty quickly, blame the apparatus and further the distrust to the point where one man tried to be everything. This is one of the narratives that is discussed where Lucan tried to run the war and diplomacy himself instead of delegating across a million parsecs.

(Amusing note in HT is that the economy ran fine because he had no interest in it therefore the government apparatus continued functioning well until the very end.)

But... yes, it was a disaster because it needed to be a disaster. Frankly, I find it hard to believe that it lasted as long as it did.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

disclaimer: I'm not that read up on the Rebellion fluff, so I might be missing stuff here, but my 0.02Cr on the matter:


I aggree with the general feeling that the rebellion, as written, feels forced, and the cracks that opened so wide just didn't seem to exist in the preceding material that we had to work with (saying the "imperium is not a strong as it appears at first glance" is not the same as saying the "Imperium system is so fragile that a single bad succession could rip the whole edifice apart".) to this, all I can suggest is that most background material is focused on the peoples of the Spinward Marches, a border zone, and one that has a clear external threat to unify against. They may be much more unified and have a greater belief in the value of the Imperium than the citizens of the Core that have no conceivable external threats, It's already noted in fluff that the domain of Deneb has something of a different culture (look at the use of "behind the claw" as a label, which implies a stereotype to associate with the label).




on Lucan and his inability to beat Dulinor, I aggree with others that their might well have been a element of "the imperium is Too Big To Fail" in the thinking of many, much as it played a part in the fall of the 1st imperium.

another factor that might be the speed at which the initial events happened on Capital, which might have sown many of the seeds of distrust.

Due to the time lags involved in interstellar governance, the Moot and most nobles were quite likely used to having the luxury of time in order to decide what to do, because taking a week to deliberate didn't add that much lag to a order that took six months to reach the frontier, and it would take just as long for the results to filter back. Hell, they were likely used to rubber-stamping the actions of the nobles on the spot because the local duke had already made his decision and was months into implementing it before they even heard about it.


Then, suddenly, if the space of a few hours, several of the foundational assumptions of the game are overturned. The Emperor. the ultimate arbiter in their power struggles, was dead, as was his established Heir, and killed by a man who they mostly thought of as one of the Emperors allies.

This assassin, their peer and a fellow player of the game, then demanded that they recognise him as Emperor, claiming the throne and "winning" the game, on the basis of a rule not used in 500 years. Naturally enough, the moot thought that this, for lack of a better word, was cheating, and refused to condone the power play that broke almost every rule they knew about the game. So Dulinor flees, having misread the Moot totally.

Then, Lucan turns up and basically demands the same thing that Dulinor did. At this point, He's already declared himself Emperor, started rattling off orders, and is really just waiting for the Moot to rubber stamp his accession to the throne.


No one is really sure what us actually happening, who is involved and what their end goals are. Lucan might be in the line of sucession, but what happened to his brother? Could all this be a power play by Lucan? The Moot is using to having time, time to think, to plot, to scheme, to bargain and compromise, but now it hasn't got time for any of that. The Moot is being presented with a fait accompli. Lucan is now emperor, loyal citizen. please sign here on the dotted line, and I can get on with the business of crushing this revolt.



But the Moot knows, not just thinks, but knows, that they choose the next Emperor. Lucan was third in line, true but thats because someone had to be, and no one seriously expected him to become Emperor*. Their must have been half a dozen nobles in the Moot who, arguably, were better suited for the Throne than Lucan.

Thus, they hesitate, and try and delay, because they desire time, time to understand what is going on and for the situation to crystallise.


Lucan, on the other hand, sees things differently. His world has also just been turned upside down. He has just lost several close family members. A man he trusted has just committed the ultimate betrayal, and he has just survived a attempt on his own life.

The time to act is now. He knows that Dulinor is already on the way back to his Domain to rally his fleets and start a war. He needs to get the Imperium moving, to mobilise it, before any more time is lost and Dulinor can march on capital.

But the Moot is hesitating, quibbling, and their are rumours that he had something to do with his brothers death**. Why are they stalling? I am the rightful heir, unexcepted though my accession is. The imperium is facing a crisis, and needs a strong government to direct it though the storm, so why they blocking the only man who can give them that? Are they in on the plot? are they also traitors? can I trust any of them?


Lucan might not have been paranoid before, but he's just had a deeply traumatic event happen to him, and he wouldn't be the first to have trust issues afterwards. And, you could argue he wasn't really that paranoid afterwards, considering the number of people who really were out to get him.

This inability to trust others is likely the foundation of the micro managing aspects of his personality. He likely knows that its a sub optimal way of doing things, but he just doesn't trust his underlings anymore.




*although I must question the fact that the Emperor, his anointed direct heir, plus his de jure second and third heirs, all lived in same building for 10+ years, and no one thought that this was a bad practice. plently of things the 3I could have flattened the Imperial Palace and everyone in it, and not all of them require malicious intent.



**is it ever established if he did or didn't?

 

[McPerth]

DISCLAIMER: all of this is dependnet on my take of the IN standard procedures and naval strategy.

Another point that lead to the inconclusive static front in the Lucan/Dulinor may have been the organization of the IN itself...

As I see it, the IN is organized in several layers, mostly the crust defense and the deep reserves.

The first one (crust defense) is where most jump capable warships are organized, as they are better to delaying and intelligence , actions and to retreat at short notice (without having to recover their BRs), as well as to hit and run commerce raiding, as their ships can divide in smaller units (even single combat ships). Of course, those same reasons make them suited for reccon in force actions.

The second one (deep reserve) is where mors of the BT/BR are assigned, as they are more an offensive branch to be used in masse, as any situation where they must retreat is likely to end in disaster.

Of course, the interior parts of the Imperium are likely to have little (if anyting) in the way of crust defense, just a handful of cruisers for anti-piracy and an even smaller number of probably old battleships for "diplomatic" missions (to show the flag and perform gunboat diplomacy when some trouble arises), bein formed mostly by BT/BR units to reinforce the borders when needed. They relied on the ships already in the crust defense misión for those vital missions.

IT's also likely that Dulinor, planning for the coup for years, has increased this kind of ships (the fact he IN failed to notice it can only be explained by a full control of it in its domain), but when Lucan found himself as de facto Emperor, and with the state of mind Xerxes describes, he ordered a full ofensive with only those offensive and less flexible BT/BR units, without the support of the jump capable combat ships needed for those missons (mostly for the reccon in force).

So, those units advanced with little intelligence, probably losing many smaller ships used to obtain it (but unaware to stand aainst even the smallest opposition) against aa fleet with higher capacity in those roles, probably leading to several ambushes.

And also the reinforcements from other sectors are likely to be mostly those deep reserve units, wile most of the crust reserve units remaining in place (and having problems for the lack of reserves, to the point some sectors just fell).

SO, after both fletes, mostly offensive and with limited delaying and reccon capacities (though Dulinor had an adevantage here) clashed, losses where enormous, leading to situation not unlike the initial moves of WWI, and the answer was the same, to dig in and waiting for some strategical advantage to ressume the offensive.

In the meanwhile, several more fronts opened to Lucan, most fo them also with better crust deense (and so raiding and recon in orce capacity) than himself, and his rage lead him to confront them, despite none of them was taking ofensive moves, and so distracting more ressources, and leading to more losses. while Dulinor did not have this problem (Strephon Stronglod front was minor for him, and it did not take ofensive moves),

Of course, as said, this is my take on naval operations, and YMMV...