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Operation Valerica, 3
Operation Valerica, Part 3
The rest of the operation turned out to be riddled with errors and upsets. For example, one aspect that went otherwise than planned was that the hostages had been swapped around in locations on the day the raid was carried out, which massively complicated the scenario - we had now extracted some random who we knew next to nothing about, and of course we couldn't just leave them as they now knew too much; they had to be pulled in. And they weren't the only surprise guests accidentally liberated trying to find Valerica. So much time was lost in fact, that the neurotoxin darts the guards had been non-lethally downed with wore off, and the window our hackers had implemented into the security systems was entirely used up. As a result, our teams had to fire lethal ammunition instead, which massively complicates what was supposed to be a stealth operation that wouldn't be discovered until long after they were gone.
And naturally, the delay that followed burned our contacts' ability to remain on Earth after their identification, necessitating a hot extraction of several civilians and both combat teams.
As a result, they only had one way out.
They stole an Orion drive equipped corvette.
While a fantastic bonus, this caused a massive furor. Idmé had not actually planned on stealing a warship. Suddenly she found herself with the potential that - if she could get the Lunese fleet to cover her unplanned acquisition - they had a shot at bringing home the UNE's most prized technology. But for the Lunese fleet to come closer than geostationary orbit would mean a collapse of the ongoining peace talks.
As a result, Idmé was left on her own, with some debate among Baselines about turning her over to the UNE to prevent reprisals. Fortunately, the other Superiors shut that possibility down, not willing to abandon one of their own.
Our liberated corvette was therefore instructed to get back as quickly as possible, something that had already been begun due to pursuing UNE corvettes.
The Geostationary Alliance however, knew nothing about what was going on. They just had a fleet of Orion drive warships accelerating as hard as they could coming towards them. As a result, they broadcast strict instructions to cease the attack, and informed the UNE that this aggression would not be tolerated.
The UNE of course, claimed the launches were in response to Lunese aggression; but the Geos figured it couldn't be us because these were Earth-launched vessels, and told the UNE such. And the UNE naturally did not want to reveal that one of their ships had been stolen. Idmé then realised that if she took charge of the situation, there was a good opportunity to bring the Geos on our side, and announced that she had carried out a successful raid to secure staff, materials and an example of the Orion drive, for the good of all offworlders to safeguard against UNE aggression, and that the lead corvette was hers.
Now, the Geos at this point had a choice to make. They could either help the UNE by using their long range defensive weaponry to hit us, or help us by hitting the UNE corvettes, or do nothing.
It was quite a tense period, waiting for their decision.
That could either be good or very, very bad. If this destroys any hope of peace with the UNE, it might be the end for Luna's independence. The Lunese response was interesting, but admitting to being the aggressors might have been a bad idea.
Operation Valerica, 4
Operation Valerica, Part 4
At this point, we ought to discuss what warships were in play.
The Geos relied on mainly Lunese and asteroidal material to construct warships from, with imports from Earth being limited to what they couldn't get from us or the Cis-Lunese. But, knowing effective warships were the only way to keep independent from either us or Earth, meant they were prepared to pay for them.
Now, the Geos occupy geostationary orbit; 35,786km above Earth. With the typical Hohmann Transfer, is roughly eleven to fourteen hours after launch from Earth; it depends on how long it takes to align with the destination. The calculations to get extreme-long range guns laying down flak in roughly the right area - as much as anything can be in the right area over such distances - take milliseconds. And with modern railguns, where our (read as us, the Geos and the Cis for this) tiny pellets are being fired at ~100km/s also take milliseconds. Now, to do these speeds needs some seriously big guns; the smallest - smallest - is thirty tonnes of mixed metals. And, it is that small because it is imported from Earth as a finished article to install; the ones where the Geos import the materials and build the guns in orbit can be over two hundred tonnes; the biggest - propelling a pellet to over a hundred and fifty kilometres a second - is just over four hundred tonnes.
Now, the pellets are tiny specks of carefully shaped metal; cost to us to fire them is a either a massive solar array or a nuclear reactor, as the pellet itself is practically irrelevant.
So, our ammo supplies are effectively massive, we can fire half a dozen shots a second per gun.
With an eleven hour crossing?
Random chance means that area saturation will shred their ships in the crossing.
Therefore, the traditional balance of power has always been the Geos can lay down a threat of shredding firepower on any UNE warship that leaves low Earth orbit, with questionable accuracy. Luna being a further three hundred thousand kilometres out tilts it back in our favour; our combat computers just about have time to identify a launch, estimate the trajectory and begin a dodge burn by the time they cross the distance. And so do theirs, obviously as the software is the same, being co-developed. As a result, war between us and the Geos is pointless.
Now, the UNE know this. It means they either launch a huge number of ships and try to spam so many we can't down all of them, or change the game.
Orion drives change the game. With the potential of constant acceleration at 3g+ depending on the crew's endurance meaning a transit time potentially as low as fourty minutes - can cross fast enough, and with sufficient armour, to theoretically make it work. And if the Geos decided to light us up, we'd find out the hard way.
Naturally, they could afford to wait; the Orion drives made the shps faster, but UNE weapons had the same laws of physics restrictions as we did, which meant they didn't have ~100km/s railguns. They had 2-10km/s guns.
Which meant the Geos had time on their side.
See, one of the reasons I don't normally stick to a single character's perspective is it means that in moments like this where readers want to know what the Geostationary Alliance is planning I can't write because One-One-Zero's perspective is that of a resident of an armoured bunker who's working off data several seconds old just in transit time...
If this was Life2.0, I could have had various character's perspectives; agents on GeoBase-1 trying to spy on the Geos' defence committee, agents aboard our ship, Bruno and Valerica's perspective...
Instead, we don't get to know until tracer flares are visible. And that is a little late to find out.
If this was Life2.0, I could have had various character's perspectives; agents on GeoBase-1 trying to spy on the Geos' defence committee, agents aboard our ship, Bruno and Valerica's perspective...
Instead, we don't get to know until tracer flares are visible. And that is a little late to find out.
Operation Valerica, 5
Operation Valerica, Part 5
Mistress Hencaal ultimately decided to order our corvette to go straight past the Geostationary Alliance. This was rather against protocol; for obvious reasons you aren't really supposed to blast through a very densely populated region, and with pursuers on our tail, we couldn't risk slowing down until we were within accurate range of friendly artillery. They made a course adjustment to miss the ring of satellites and stations, naturally.
The Geos, after very tense discussions, said they would disable and impound the corvettes if they threatened Geostationary Alliance neutrality. No suppression fire, yet.
Now, the UNE had been gearing up for a mass wave attack strategy - it was the only way to win with conventional rockets after all. So, they had hundreds of Orion corvettes and thousands of older LF/Ox rockets of various fuel types ready to launch. Dimitri declared that impounding their pursuing vessels would be considered an act of war, hoping the Geos would back down.
As the corvettes were now a few minutes away from feasible combat ranges, the Geos conducted a referrendum on whether to open fire. While this was fraught with difficulties - not even four percent of Geostationary Alliance members managed to conduct their polls before the cut-off - what consensus was achieved was that it was not their fight.
The corvettes passed without incident.
Now it was our turn.
And we had an hour to prepare.
And so the war begins.
Why can't the Geos/Lunese attempt an orbital bombardment of Earth? For that matter, why can't Earth orbitally bombard Luna? The Geostationary Alliance being in the way? Does the neutrality of the Cis-Lunar companies ensure that orbital bombardment isn't a threat on either side?
Why can't the Geos/Lunese attempt an orbital bombardment of Earth? For that matter, why can't Earth orbitally bombard Luna? The Geostationary Alliance being in the way? Does the neutrality of the Cis-Lunar companies ensure that orbital bombardment isn't a threat on either side?
Short answer - because it's much harder sci-fi than normal Stellaris.
The long answer has numerous factors. Some technologies are more advanced than the game possesses (genetic engineering, aeroponics, red lasers, railguns, space habitation) because they are already ones that we are working with today and - like most sci-fi - Stellaris just hasn't kept up with cutting edge space science or the reasonably foreseeable extrapolations from that, especially in the context of another century or more of research and development and funding in the context of economic growth delivered from space development and the potential of weak-AI industrial integration.
As far as bombarding Earth goes, a projectile of sufficient mass to not vaporise from atmospheric friction and retain sufficient momentum to be a useful bombardment weapon wouldn't be able to be fired at the velocities these pellets are fired at with the heat dissipation technologies that cool the reactor and the craft, and therefore wouldn't be suitable as an anti-ship or anti-projectile weapon over the distances these weapons are being utilised. They would have to get orbital bombardment specialised ships to low Earth orbit. Likewise, Luna has supply issues based on the materials on the Moon that restrict the ability to fire other kinds of weaponry; low volatiles and minimal recoverable materials for nuclear fission or fusion weapons limits their locally mined and manufactured options.
As far as bombarding Luna goes, it would be much easier thanks to the negligible atmosphere, and presents a credible threat even with the more limited weapons available, and is why Lunese independence didn't take place until the War of Three Billion and the resulting loss of Earth's nations ability to dominate the colonies.
For Earth to regain that capability means being able to put very large warships into orbit, which presents a problem. If you look at the delta-v map in the Documentation post, you can see a Lunese vessel needs 1800-2000 m/s delta-v (allowing a little excess for non-perfect launches and a slightly higher orbit) to be orbiting and therefore able to fire. Earth however, needs 9500-10,000m/s delta-v to be in an equivalent position. I.e. an Earth launched ship needs five times as much velocity, which means a far higher fuel/ship mass ratio.
This means on a like-for-like comparison that a Lunese launched ship can devote much more mass to it's armour, it's electronic warfare capabilities, it's flares, it's ammunition and most importantly when dealing with railguns on these scales for this kind of mission profile, weapon mass.
Another Lunese advantage and disadvantage is that being stationary relative to the Earth's perspective opens opportunities for both sides, which allows Luna to do really powerful ground-based weapons that don't have to be limited by radiating the heat from power generation away.
And lastly, geostationary orbit is just under 36,000 km above Earth. Luna is more than ten times further out. Accurate bombardment from that kind of range is really rather hard; even with barrels at hundreds of metres long with ten metre diameters, feasible ranges in combat are pretty much exclusively in the sub-2000 km distances against other ships with the ability to dodge incoming fire. To use these weapons from these distances through the atmosphere would have a difficult time hitting the right city from geostationary orbit, and the right country from Luna.
Plus as you point out , because of these accuracy issues the residents of low Earth orbit, up to geostationary orbit and cis-Lunese space would all take a rather dim view of Earth and Luna firing artillery at each other; it would not be difficult to aim at an incoming ship and take out a habitat (as inherently only being capable of station-keeping, they can't get out of the way) instead with the crossfire.
As a result, warfare is kind of limited, leading to the characterisation as a second Cold War, and why the peace has lasted for so long; they want these weapons for the threat potential, and not so much for usage.
The long answer has numerous factors. Some technologies are more advanced than the game possesses (genetic engineering, aeroponics, red lasers, railguns, space habitation) because they are already ones that we are working with today and - like most sci-fi - Stellaris just hasn't kept up with cutting edge space science or the reasonably foreseeable extrapolations from that, especially in the context of another century or more of research and development and funding in the context of economic growth delivered from space development and the potential of weak-AI industrial integration.
As far as bombarding Earth goes, a projectile of sufficient mass to not vaporise from atmospheric friction and retain sufficient momentum to be a useful bombardment weapon wouldn't be able to be fired at the velocities these pellets are fired at with the heat dissipation technologies that cool the reactor and the craft, and therefore wouldn't be suitable as an anti-ship or anti-projectile weapon over the distances these weapons are being utilised. They would have to get orbital bombardment specialised ships to low Earth orbit. Likewise, Luna has supply issues based on the materials on the Moon that restrict the ability to fire other kinds of weaponry; low volatiles and minimal recoverable materials for nuclear fission or fusion weapons limits their locally mined and manufactured options.
As far as bombarding Luna goes, it would be much easier thanks to the negligible atmosphere, and presents a credible threat even with the more limited weapons available, and is why Lunese independence didn't take place until the War of Three Billion and the resulting loss of Earth's nations ability to dominate the colonies.
For Earth to regain that capability means being able to put very large warships into orbit, which presents a problem. If you look at the delta-v map in the Documentation post, you can see a Lunese vessel needs 1800-2000 m/s delta-v (allowing a little excess for non-perfect launches and a slightly higher orbit) to be orbiting and therefore able to fire. Earth however, needs 9500-10,000m/s delta-v to be in an equivalent position. I.e. an Earth launched ship needs five times as much velocity, which means a far higher fuel/ship mass ratio.
This means on a like-for-like comparison that a Lunese launched ship can devote much more mass to it's armour, it's electronic warfare capabilities, it's flares, it's ammunition and most importantly when dealing with railguns on these scales for this kind of mission profile, weapon mass.
Another Lunese advantage and disadvantage is that being stationary relative to the Earth's perspective opens opportunities for both sides, which allows Luna to do really powerful ground-based weapons that don't have to be limited by radiating the heat from power generation away.
And lastly, geostationary orbit is just under 36,000 km above Earth. Luna is more than ten times further out. Accurate bombardment from that kind of range is really rather hard; even with barrels at hundreds of metres long with ten metre diameters, feasible ranges in combat are pretty much exclusively in the sub-2000 km distances against other ships with the ability to dodge incoming fire. To use these weapons from these distances through the atmosphere would have a difficult time hitting the right city from geostationary orbit, and the right country from Luna.
Plus as you point out , because of these accuracy issues the residents of low Earth orbit, up to geostationary orbit and cis-Lunese space would all take a rather dim view of Earth and Luna firing artillery at each other; it would not be difficult to aim at an incoming ship and take out a habitat (as inherently only being capable of station-keeping, they can't get out of the way) instead with the crossfire.
As a result, warfare is kind of limited, leading to the characterisation as a second Cold War, and why the peace has lasted for so long; they want these weapons for the threat potential, and not so much for usage.
- 1
So, as mentioned in Life2.0, I'm starting a new job today, and as a result, don't have as much time to write.
TerraGen Dominion was always intended to be a slower paced work with more detail going on behind the scenes, and with the end of the Second Cold War now blasting into view riding thousands of bombs, there's quite a bit of background details to figure out.
TerraGen Dominion was always intended to be a slower paced work with more detail going on behind the scenes, and with the end of the Second Cold War now blasting into view riding thousands of bombs, there's quite a bit of background details to figure out.
Operation Valerica, 6
Operation Valerica, Part 6
We spent the preparation time negotiating acceptable accuracy-at-range values with the Geostationary Alliance; with our weaponry, misses presented a great deal of danger to them, and they declared the damage of a single habitat would be grounds for economic sanctions. This would be quite a problem for us; we conducted our cost-benefit analysis, and we worked out we realistically could not be sure of hitting enough to make the replacement of a total habitat loss viable.
Eventually, the Geos agreed to let us fire at the 50% percent expected hit rate distance. Thankfully, this was still out of the Orion drive equipped Corvette's weapon range, but there were still problems, as the potential to dodge their ships could do could mean we could fire all day and keep missing. Battle would come down to our liberated Corvette, and at what point does our enemy abandon their pursuit to carry out evasive action to wait out our fleet's delta-v.
That might sound odd, but keep in mind that these are very big ships with very big guns. And well, conventional RCS and turret mounting strategies are highly problematic because of the sheer amount of thrust needed, and the size of turrets needed; it isn't difficult to make a turret that takes up as much mass as a whole ship, and that is only the minimum feasible sizes. So we took the cheap route and attached our artillery to fuel tanks, and used the engines to fine tune the position of the ship. A few did have minimum-sized turrets, but we're only talking fractions of a degree per second in rotation.
Both are fine at very long range, where small movements allow a wide sweep.
But this was going to come down to fairly close-up shooting.
So, small movements would be out the window.
But, we have the advantage that we can refuel our ships, of course; when they run out of nukes, they are adrift. That fear was ultimately what led Dimitri to retreat the first Orion Corvette that tried before.
Ms Hencaal therefore assumed that they would have planned for us exploiting that weakness. As a result, her strategy became one of making a net with the few turreted artillery ships by positioning them where Geo and Cis habitats would not be in the way, and therefore enable them to fire the way we designed for them to fire. But, with less than an hour to go, the net would only be a dish. We waited for Dimitri's answer.
Eventually, the Geos agreed to let us fire at the 50% percent expected hit rate distance. Thankfully, this was still out of the Orion drive equipped Corvette's weapon range, but there were still problems, as the potential to dodge their ships could do could mean we could fire all day and keep missing. Battle would come down to our liberated Corvette, and at what point does our enemy abandon their pursuit to carry out evasive action to wait out our fleet's delta-v.
That might sound odd, but keep in mind that these are very big ships with very big guns. And well, conventional RCS and turret mounting strategies are highly problematic because of the sheer amount of thrust needed, and the size of turrets needed; it isn't difficult to make a turret that takes up as much mass as a whole ship, and that is only the minimum feasible sizes. So we took the cheap route and attached our artillery to fuel tanks, and used the engines to fine tune the position of the ship. A few did have minimum-sized turrets, but we're only talking fractions of a degree per second in rotation.
Both are fine at very long range, where small movements allow a wide sweep.
But this was going to come down to fairly close-up shooting.
So, small movements would be out the window.
But, we have the advantage that we can refuel our ships, of course; when they run out of nukes, they are adrift. That fear was ultimately what led Dimitri to retreat the first Orion Corvette that tried before.
Ms Hencaal therefore assumed that they would have planned for us exploiting that weakness. As a result, her strategy became one of making a net with the few turreted artillery ships by positioning them where Geo and Cis habitats would not be in the way, and therefore enable them to fire the way we designed for them to fire. But, with less than an hour to go, the net would only be a dish. We waited for Dimitri's answer.
Earth has more corvettes with the Orion Drive, too. Fleeing might be a better option here... if they can get away with it.
Operation Valerica, 7
Order Of Battle
Ms Hencaal's: | Allied Lunese Navy: | United Nations Of Earth Navy: | Other Lunese Navy: |
| 1x Orion Corvette* 1x Musschenbroek-class Heavy Orbital Artillery 3x Tesla-class Light Orbital Artillery 3x Miller-class H2-Ox Tanker | 1x Musschenbroek-class Heavy Orbital Artillery 6x Tesla-class Light Orbital Artillery 2x Miller-class H2-Ox Tanker 1x Surface-to-Space Artillery Platform** | 4x Orion Corvette 386x Orion Corvette (reserve) 18x Orion Battleship (reserve) 4562x Fusion-boosted InterPlanetary Ballistic Missile (reserve) 6x Orion Corvette (Shipyard***) 1x Orion Battleship (Shipyard) | 87x assorted Heavy Orbital Artillery 117x assorted Light Orbital Artillery 50x assorted H2-Ox Tankers 403x Surface-to-Space Artillery Platforms**** |
* Not really combat capable
** Based in Mare Serenitatis
*** That is, sufficiently completed as to be operable as a distraction/extra target to divide Lunese fire
**** Based in clusters all over Luna
Operation Valerica, Part 7
Unfortunately, our efforts to persuade the other Lunese Superiors to assist us were hampered by the risk of starting all-out war - after all, at this stage it was arguably one rogue Lunese agent against Earth. Ms Hencaal stood almost alone, with the only ships joining in being also from the United Republic of Mare Serenitatis. However, the simulations comfortably predicted us to win the initial engagement, with two-sigma estimates of them not even firing a shot; what would happen if Earth opted to launch all reserves was very much a concern, as the UNE had been preparing for this conflict for a very long time.
The worst part of war in space is the waiting. So many possibilities; Dimitri might back off and accept the loss. Or, go to full-scale retaliation. In the end, he opted to try to negotiate.
The worst part of war in space is the waiting. So many possibilities; Dimitri might back off and accept the loss. Or, go to full-scale retaliation. In the end, he opted to try to negotiate.
My Mistress looked her opponent in the eye over the video conference. "Dimitri. Both of us have been running out simulations of the impending conflict for hours now. We both know that I have the upper hand in the field."
"I can still activate the self-destruct."
"Yes, but that guarantees Giordano works for me. Which is why you haven't already done it. I have won this engagement. I won it the moment you failed to get your corvettes in range to hit mine."
"You can't defeat the entire of my fleet."
"Do you want to risk it though?"
"You're bluffing."
"I don't need to bluff. The only aspect giving you even the slightest chance is the incoming velocity your ships have."
"Good luck Ms Hencaal. You'll need it."
The connection is disconnected. "Your orders, Domina?"
She leans with her head in her hands, before standing. "All hands general quarters."
Does that mean that this battle is happening? Or is the all hands thing just a precaution?
The battle will take place once I figure out how to write it interestingly from One-One-Zero's perspective as someone who is just looking at viewscreens; their ships have already begun their transfer orbits to interception. The corvettes have begun the deceleration burn to inject into lunar orbit.
Operation Valerica, 8
Operation Valerica, Part 8
Bruno and I stand in front of a dozen HoloDisplays. For Bruno, well, his sister happens to be on the ship that gets destroyed in practically every simulation in which we assume that the UNE opts to destroy it rather than let it be secured. He is tearing his hair out.
"Do we have any way to save her? Please, any way..."
"Our hope is that our enemy will attempt to board our corvette and therefore that while your sister will be captured, she would live. However, the difficulties of trying to conduct a boarding operation while both ships are decelerating at multiple Earth-gravity equivalents is extremely tricky."
"Just fire the guns for crying out loud!"
"If we fire now, we cannot be sure of hitting the enemy any more than being sure of not hitting your sister's ship. We must wait for striking range."
"But they've got lasers! They can fire from further away."
"That is a common misconception; while they can hit from extreme range, the actual damage done is much reduced because the beam loses cohesion. In every simulation, our artillery take out their lasers first."
He tries to breathe. "Two minutes Mr Giordano."
"That's easy for you to say, you don't have relatives in the fight."
"Actually, I do. My people are deployed as ship crew as we are smaller than Humans. You face losing one sister, I face losing several nieces and nephews. I advise you to draw strength from the favourable predictions."
He stays quiet after that, looking at the screens. "Which ships are they on?"
I highlight the URV Coulomb, URV Hertz and the URV Ampere on the main HoloDisplay. "Ok, fair point. Oh, our corvette is breaking away."
"Yes. We expect them to be deploying their fuel reserve as warheads."
"To bomb us?"
"That would be futile because of our ground defences. No, they will try to get lucky by firing missiles and trying to overload our defensive flak railguns."
"Can it work?"
"In theory, yes. It does need in the region of six to eight hundred missiles, it depends on how accurately our flak fires."
"Eight hundred nukes?"
"We knew Earth wouldn't be able to deploy bigger railguns than us, and the sheer size of our railguns make them competitive with lasers. Therefore, Earth is left with missiles. Each of our combat ships therefore has one artillery railgun, and an arrangement of numerous smaller railguns to take out missile swarms. Plus flares and radar jamming pulse emitters."
"They're launching."
We watch the display track batches of twenty missiles as they blast towards our corvette; it intercepts several with it's own laser systems, empties it's own missiles to try to intercept the other missiles and fires flares, and in desperation they choose to accelerate as hard as they can and hope to somehow knock out any missile that comes too close while they flee. Our artillery vessels open fire with all weapons and numerous flares to generate large heat signatures, distracting some missiles. Several hundred are wiped out. Bruno closes his eyes.
It's not enough; missiles begin impacting the pusher-plate off centre.
Soon our corvette is spinning wildly out of control.
The nukes start impacting the hull.
Bruno howls in anguish.
Operation Valerica, Aftermath
Operation Valerica: Aftermath
Buoyed by their victory, the four corvettes continued deeper into Lunese space, before orders from UNE soon turned them around; Dimitri was conceding high Lunese orbit, his corvettes returning via Hohmann transfer. He had achieved his objective, and didn't stop to consider the effect that abandoning the advance would have.
The fact that a single Superior of relatively middling standard had taken on the UNE and had them retreat without actually engaging Lunese forces was a major boost for Ms Hencaal's reputation within Lunese society, and she leveraged minority leadership of a broad coalition of Superiors who favoured imposing Lunese dominance on Earth, and reminding the UNE who really was boss.
Therefore, Lunese Superiors began leveraging economic influence to undercut UNE exports to the low Earth orbit habitats.
Low Earth orbit was a key region of space to dominate, and the UNE spent a huge amount of resources trying to keep the LEO habitats on their side and away from Geo, Cis and our influence, it's agents having spent decades keeping habitat ownership within UNE based corporations, with high tariffs and nationalistic boycotts attempting to restrict Lunese and Asteroidal imports to LEO space.
With thousands of habitats in LEO, the oldest dating to the mid-first century, coordinating a hard-takeover would be a complex task to arrange. But, arrange it we would.
The fact that a single Superior of relatively middling standard had taken on the UNE and had them retreat without actually engaging Lunese forces was a major boost for Ms Hencaal's reputation within Lunese society, and she leveraged minority leadership of a broad coalition of Superiors who favoured imposing Lunese dominance on Earth, and reminding the UNE who really was boss.
Therefore, Lunese Superiors began leveraging economic influence to undercut UNE exports to the low Earth orbit habitats.
Low Earth orbit was a key region of space to dominate, and the UNE spent a huge amount of resources trying to keep the LEO habitats on their side and away from Geo, Cis and our influence, it's agents having spent decades keeping habitat ownership within UNE based corporations, with high tariffs and nationalistic boycotts attempting to restrict Lunese and Asteroidal imports to LEO space.
With thousands of habitats in LEO, the oldest dating to the mid-first century, coordinating a hard-takeover would be a complex task to arrange. But, arrange it we would.