The Human Republic has peacefully traded with both the Glorbulan Empire and the Zorblax Confederacy for generations...

The Human Republic has peacefully traded with both the Glorbulan Empire and the Zorblax Confederacy for generations. Unfortunately, the Glorbulans and Zorblaxians have declared war on each other due to a horribly convoluted succession crisis involving a valuable planetary system, the Emperor's maternal great-grandfather's bastard son, and a dirtbike. Neither expects humanity to join them, but they both demand it cease trade with the other faction for the duration of the war. No one is certain how long the war will last, but projections by Republic generals estimate the Glorbulans and the Zorblaxians are relatively equal in strength and willingness to conduct war.

The Glorbulans mine and refine about 70% of the galaxy's FTL fuel, so losing them as a trading partner would make interstellar commerce almost twice as expensive to conduct--and they threaten to suspend all trade with humanity if their demands aren't met. They are also humanity's largest traditional trading partner and are responsible for about 25% of all human interstellar commerce. However, deals with the Zorblaxians to conduct anti-piracy operations are the only thing that prevent fringe human colonies from being overrun by X'vavv'in raiders and sacrificed to their insane gods, and the Republic's fleet simply isn't large enough to protect all of the colonies by itself. Additionally, the Zorblaxians are still a major trading partner and responsible for about 15% of all human interstellar commerce. They threaten to cease trade and cease the anti-piracy operations to divert their fleets to the war unless their demands are met.

What should the Republic do?

>Glorbulan
>Zorblax

All you need is to give the Cromulins a Zylox crystal so that they can send out the Protothean vibration to solve the problem.

>trusting the Cromulins with a Zylox crystal

Fuck off back to your space banks, you shifty-eyed Queethar.

>Bringing the Cromulins into this
Son of a MANTIS!

You must be as dumb as a Nublugctian nerble-dung farmer.

In this instance the most beneficial option is clearly to maintain trade with the Glorbulans.

Having to conduct anti-piracy operations weakens the Zorblax armada.

If you side with Zorblax you align yourself with the weaker force because they're forced to divert military assets. Siding with the Glorbulans means that they're evenly-matched, but still reduces the odds that you picked the eventual loser to help.

>its a " the human republic thinks its all of mankind again" episode

I mean, after processing the system data you ARE the only humans in that galaxy.

If you hadnt gone all muh freedomz and fucked off, the Earth Hegemony would still be able to reach out and slap some ayy lmao shit.

But no. You fucked off to some remote galaxy and refuse aid

Plus paying twice as much for all interstellar commerce is a bigger deal than maintaining some fringe colonies (which you can just pull back from). The anti-piracy operations are not something the Zorblaxians, presumably, can just ignore so withdrawing from the colonies means they have to still pay military attention to them.

Making the Glorbulans the actual bigger trading partner is just a huge swing too, like I can't see why you would ever side with the Zorblaxians here unless you think they will definitely win the war.

Obviously, the solution is to halt trade with both factions and act as a neutral arbiter to solve the issue of succession, or at least prevent an outbrake of war.

Ow, that hurts. So much Cromulin hate

Both sides have presumably presented the same demands to all the other interstellar nations. So how about uniting with these other nations in halting the trade with both of them? It will hit us hard, but those fuckers will get hit harder, losing all of their trading partners like that.

Maybe it will encourage them to seek peace.

Perm secretly trade with both. Do you even war profiteer?

Central trades with the Glorbulans, the colonies secede and trade with the Zorblaxians.

Glorbulans and Zorblaxians escalate the conflict and demand their human allies join the war. Soon the colonies and central are forced to fight each other and humanity is destroyed.

Nice going asshole.

Clearly both sides value our presence in some way, shape or form. is there no way we can act as an neurtral broker and help them talk this out?

If not, then we start with the process of subversion and have agents working in both sides to help bring the coming war to a close and reduce casualties were possible.

Last ditch option is to start cracking the whip on smugglers and get them working for our cause off the books.

This war is not going to happen. If the Glorb stop providing affordable hypermatter fuel comma then humans will have no choice but to spearhead an initiative by all the other races of the Galaxy to organize their militaries and come in on the side of the Zorbs with the intent of ceasing the hypermatter mines and refineries. The galactic economy cannot suffer that kind of hit. If the Zorb fleets withdraw their protection and allow Raiders to ravage The Fringe systems, the humidity will have no option except you can script absolutely every colonist on every friend's world and ship them to the front lines to reinforce the Glorb military. Even without adequate training, we can quintuple the size of their military within a month. They would steamroll over the Zorb by sheer weight of numbers. The faster the war was ended, the faster the survivors could be organized into Patrol militias and resettle the fringes on a war footing. Nobody wants either of these things to happen, so both of you are going to sit your retarded asses down and figure out a compromise.

Pfft. Who the fuck needs the Glorbulans? We've become completely independent of them since we've started running our engines on liquid plasma.

That system isn't perfected for common commercial use yet and you know it. And even if it were, we'd have to retrofit close to two hundred bulk freighters and who knows how many small vessels. Slightly over a dozen research stations do not equal a fleet of traders.

>What should the Republic do?
Stop trade with both of them and build a Hyperspace Wall.

Maybe build the Wall first so that they can both pay for it off trade duties before the borders are closed.

Make Republic great again!

Actually, we're ready to release our first commercial use vehicles this year. I'm very excited.

i assume Earth will solve this diplomatic crisis the way every Earth kingdom has always solved every diplomatic crisis - whichever faction's lobbyist gives the biggest bribes to the most eloquent speaker in the Earth government will then get the most eloquent speech in Earth parliament and convince everyone that the Zorblaxians "have always been our allies" or whatever the fuck nationalistic babble is needed to get us to support the faction that bribed him.

and then we'll march boldly forward, get our asses reamed, lie about it and cover it up and blame it on the other party, fifty years later it'll all get exposed but no civilian will care because they're all in the holotanks fucking some imaginary celebrity, and the douchebags responsible will be banging their mistresses on yachts made of solid gold somewhere, laughing as they watch the world burn on their future TVs.

We already did and sent multiple fleets including dreadnoughts and carriers to help them.

I was involved with some testing for those new liquid plasma engines. I had 10 ships powered by those when my fleet left for a normal patrol. 2 broke down before leaving the gravity well of the planet we were orbiting, 2 blew up when we started powering the jumpdrives, another almost opened a black hole when it decided to dump every kilowatt of power in to the jumpdrive. Once we arrived in the next system 2 more just stopped working, and another blew up. At this point we returned to base. Before we jumped we detected more power spikes from another one of the ships, that ship never came out of jumpspace. You could offer me every credit in existence and i would still refuse to be within a lightyear of those deathtraps.

A space wall is unfeasable, like anyone with commen sense knows. The 3rd dimension completely ruins your plan.

Yes, I'm still mad that schools are now allowed to charge extra for geometry classes.

Those were the V1s with the liquid injectors. This time, we've improved the engine design by using a supermatter shard powerplant with a oxygen cooling ventilation system, it's virtually foolproof.

Ah, greetings Executive. Good that I ran into you here. I was hoping we could set a date to discuss the Gor-Blorgatov shipping lanes contract.

Yea, does the twenty-fifth of this month sound alright to you? I've got a few other military contracts wanting to test the Blue-space artillery on the range this week so I'll be busy.

Sure, that will be perfect. That leave me some room to oversee our Mercantile battle automaton sentry bots that we will ship out in a few months. We can put you and your company up for a pre-order of 5.000 units. Perfect to use as bodyguards, security or just use them a personly army if you want.

About that pre-order, we would like to respectfully decline. We've been rolling out our own cyborg units recently and corporate would like to have them field tested. This is an attached picture of our security cyborgs.

I see you are going with quality, well, we are aiming for quantity
I am basicly ripping off the Trade Federation from SW, but hwo could I not. Also, cool pic btw, did you make it yourself?

LIES! LIES!

The new engines are not anywhere near ready for use yet. They've been faking the tests with the prototypes to avoid any overt suspicions and force everyone into contracts for exclusive rights for repair and maintence!

How long until we both start proxy wars against each other just to fieldtest our robots

What, no bootyborgs? Come on NT, step it up.

EI NATH!

Let the games begin.
Nah, I just blew up a current cyborg sprite.

Oh boy, looks like someone needs to see the doctor.

Oh god, not again!

W0w, §-§uck§ tO b£ yOu GUy§.

How much would it cost to hire you?

A££ tHe te& 1n §-§paCe CHinA, A§ ThE §-§ayiNg gO£§-§.

OP why the repost? 1st reply is always questioning choice of names.

Hot pic tho.

I say side with one of them to end the war sooner. And as I see your military isn't prepared for this kind of war, but that's no problem, just sign this deal, ignore this part it's not important, and you'll be equipped with the newest technology of warfare straight from the factories of Grontar V!
Tested? Sure, whatever, they're tested.
Now, what'cha say we just get this deal done?

The key word there is virtually. Sure, the simulations show nothing going wrong, but I guarantee you the second you build and attempt to operate one of those, it'll blow up and take half the orbit system with it. Also, oxygen cooled? Really? What is this, the 22nd century?

bump

We got more power output if we use oxygen cooling due to oxygen being more reactive.

> A says stop trading with B or we won't trade with you
> B says stop trading with A or we won't trade with you
So OP's saying they're outright going to also create a crippling galactic recession that diminishes their own ability to afford their own war efforts, instead of negotiating guaranteed supply contracts in advance?

I would bet this entire thread is psyops, where both sides make those demands publicly, while privately both sides are trying to cut deals for things, which will be kept hush hush.

Also
>one side controls 70% of the space fuel supply
Then the prices are doubling or tripling anyway, because even OPEC only comes out to 40% of production and 60% of trade. Knowing that fuel will be resold to the other side anyway, the space fuel barons would just jack the prices up, so the profits go directly to them and fund the war effort rather than enriching only third parties, and reassure their nervous trade partners by pointing out that they'll be investing it right back in them for other material.

At the very least, the price hike should cancel out the losses from refusing to sell directly to their enemies, and the prices will be blamed directly on the other side creating the necessity.

So have you guys already contracted someone for cleanup duty after these droid conflicts? You know it does terrible things for the environment.

Yea they're both a pain in the Ass.

Keep trading with the both of them.

Just hear me out. Should either side follow through on its threats then they will be out a trade partner where as their enemy will have a trade partner in us that suddenly has a far greater supply. In short, stopping trade with the Republic guarantees your opponent access to a buyers market.

Keep trading with them both. The first to condemn themselves to a slow death was never a worthy ally.

We need to start stockpiling fuel and imidiately begin a naval expansion program. I don't know how this will turn out but we need to be prepared ether way.