lapland wrote:The consortium won't try to attack the Morridons first because they want to keep the rest of the galaxy neutral until they have taken care of the Kerrines. They announced to the galaxy that the Kerines are their enemy, not the rest of the galaxy. Although the consortium doesn't care about the Morridons they don't want the initial fight to be bigger then it has to be. They know the Morridons are supported by EVERYONE in the galaxy so they aren't going to attack them until it's unavoidable. Once it is unavoidable, then the Morridons had better be ready to make a decision, and quickly. It does take two days for the interdictor to get up and ready and if a ship is cloaked inside the shield it could be pretty hard to clear them out once the interdictor is up and operational. Just hide well, and in two days you have the run of the planet after you take out the star gate, and start pounding anything in sight. As long as there aren't any Kerinne ships in orbit, not much else can stop a consortium ship.
You need to think what the Consortium was planning to do with 30000+ ships without considering the Interdictors. They were planning just to swamp the Imperium/Karinnes with ships so that there would be no reinforcements when they attacked Karis. Now with the Interdictors in play they can't do that, they can't get to one of the Imperium/Karinne/urumi planets. Now place yourself in the Consortium commanders shoes. You can blackmail the Skaa and Alliance with the double dealing they have been doing. They could let that info slip to the other sector powers forcing the Skaa and Alliance into totally being in the Consortium camp. Jason already considers them enemies. The Skaa and the Alliance were the next two largest powers after the Urumi and the Imperium. The rest of the powers in the sector are smaller and are afraid of being eaten up either by the Consortium, the Skaa or the Alliance. So now you can't attack the Imperium/Urumi/Karinnes directly so you do it indirectly. The only place they can do that is Moridon, until they find a way around the interdictors. It could also be a way to fracture the houses of the Imperium. Would all the Houses that use Moridon to bank with so the Empress can't find all their assets be fine with having all of it go poof with the loss of that planet? That could severly hurt a lot of the Faey houses with that economic hit and might cause the Empress to have to "bailout" those houses to keep them from failing. So since you can't attack them directly you hurt their economies and take out all the little fish and isolate the Imperium/Karinne/Urumi alliance behind their Interdictors. This also gives the Consortium access to planetary resources of those conquored smaller powers.
The initial Consortium plan was to just swamp the Imperium/Karinnes and then go after everyone else once they took them out. Now they have a couple choices:
1. sit on their asses while trying to find a way around the Interdictors while being nibbled to death by the Karinnes. Meanwhile trying to manipulate the rest of the secotr to side with you.
2. Reverse your plan, take everyone else out and set up camp while researching a way around the Interdictors. This has the bonus of might drawing their enemies out of their safe havens and attack where you can face them with overwhelming numbers. It also gives you access to Plantary resources such as food, minerals and water. It also takes it away from your enemies.
3. Give up and go home.
Those are the choices the Consortium has, this war has turned into nothing but a giant castle siege. Just go back and look at how most succesful castle sieges were won. They weren't won by charging head long into the defense but be keeping them behind their walls while you took over the territory around the castle isolating it. You then starved the defenders under because they couldn't feed themselves for long. Now it wouldn't happen over night but if the Consortium was smart you leave the Imperium/Karinnes/Urumi behind their Interdictors while you conqueor the rest of the sector. Now eventually the Imperium/Karinnes/Urumi would breed themselves out of what they could feed themselves. That has been one of the Imperium's weaknesses all along, that was why they took over Earth, they were on the verge of having a food shortage. Remember the Faey don't believe in birth control they will eventually outgrow their current resources.
Their is also another historical reference of what happens to a "neutral" country when they just happen to get in the way of one of two combatants, It also comes from WWII. When Germany invaded Poland in 1939 Britain and France declared war on Germany and Germany reciprocated but fighting didn't breakout right a way between them. It wasn't until 1940 when Germany launced its attack against France through the Ardennes Forest on one end of the Maginot Line and through "neutral" Belgium and Netherlands on the other end. The Germans flanked both ends of the heavily defended Maginot line and the French believed that Hitler would respect Beligum neutrality so didn't build defences there. Well we know how well that worked out for the neutral Netherlands and Belgium and for France that relied on that neutrality.
Another example of what happens to a "neutral" during a war were one side decides he needs what you have is Norway from WWII.
Norway, though neutral, was considered strategically important for both sides of the war for two main reasons. First was the importance of the port of Narvik, from which large quantities of Swedish iron ore, on which Germany depended, were exported; this route was especially important during the winter months when the Baltic Sea was frozen over
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norwegian_Campaign
