The enemy in "extended space": SLN or MAlign

Vince wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:A Nevada probably would win one-on-one against a Star Knight; but it'll be limping back to the body and fender shop afterwards.

munroburton wrote:Before the first war officially started, a Star Knight(actually, I think it was the Star Knight) took on four Peep BCs and sent at least two of them to the yards.

IMO, it'd do a little more than send a Nevada limping, but it'd be a fight similar to Jessica Epps vs Hellbarde.

You remember correctly. The RMN heavy cruiser Star Knight took on 4 Sultan-class battlecruisers in The Short Victorious War and sent two of them to the yards for longer than the Peeps expected. Star Knight was lost in action.

How about HMS Fearless against PNS Saladin (a BC against an already wounded Star Knight), or the example of HMS Gauntlet under Michael Oversteegen (in Service to the Sword). Granted that ship was a larger "Saganami-A", not a C which could have handled Mark-16 missiles, going up against (and winning) against four Solarian heavy cruisers (Gladiator Class).

The crews may have not been up to SLN/FF standards, but it shows the relative advantage of RMN crews fighting their ships even against overwhelming odds. Goes back to the Saganami tradition.

StealthSeeker wrote:

kzt wrote:If someone working for your state police killed a member of an outlaw biker gang under highly questionable circumstances, would you feel it's ok if the bikers burned your town down? Why or why not?

I doubt that you would be happy that your town got burned down, but you would know why it happened. And if you wanted to prevent it you would do a little preemptive engaging with that biker group to try to head things off.

You may like to, but you're also likely, realistically, to spend a while maintaining the assumption that your police are good guys and those biker gangs are bad guys. If the biker gangs want you to get over that assumption, they are going to have to go out of their way not to look like bad guys. Which means they are not going to have the freedom to act like the wounded party in a simple one on one fist fight.

That's the problem with your original analogy that kzt is trying to point out. The Solarian League is not a person. It's only vaguely a thing. It's a loose assemblage of thousands of system governments. It does things that they are only barely aware of, and things they're not aware of at all. They are not the Grand Alliance's enemy. If they were, the GA would be utterly screwed in the long term. If the GA makes those thousands of system governments, those trillions of people, the enemy, the war is lost. The whole point is to detach them from that League government, not to make them line up behind it in fear or outrage.

If the SL doesn't want to get beaten to a pulp, they had better be doing some “engaging” to make a little peace before things get out of hand. And the GA/RMN needs to make it very clear to the SL in general that they have to do something about their Mandarins activities before something really nasty happens.

Those system governments certainly do need to wake up and make moves. Beowulf is doing exactly that, and the example is going to light the way for plenty more. But if the GA opts to start punishing them directly for not yet overthrowing the League government, it's just ratcheting up the chances that the successor states will be coming after them in a few years. They need to fight so as to make those successor states genuine friends and allies, not a cowed Warsaw Pact under a Manticoran Soviet Union.

I cannot think of any Alignment plan that would accomplish more for their ends than to have the GA convey this kind of thuggish attitude to League members. It wouldn't take more than one junior flag officer in the RMN or RHN to screw the pooch in a delicate operation to accomplish it, either.

Destroying Gendarmerie camps is something not to do unless you have a very good reason because of the locations. The problem with Gendarmerie camps is that they tend to be either on worlds which are being "pacified" or are part of the FF/OFS nodal structure. They are primarily ON PLANETS. Striking at the camps means either sending forces down to the planet to attack or hitting them with a kenetic strike.
If you need or want to support a group trying to liberate their world from OFS or OFS supported dictator, transsellar etc, you may have to send down Marines and possibly hit the actual Gendarmerie cantonment from orbit.
If you only visit a system to destroy the orbital logistic structure for OFS/FF you should probably stick to ships and actual stations belonging ot OFS/FF. Hitting the planet looks like a conquest move and you really don't want to have to leave troops there long-term. If you already hold the orbitals (which the Gendarmerie can't touch from the ground) you "should" be able to hold the threat of brute force (kenetic strike) over them and have the local (non OFS) forces disarm and disburse them. Depends of you want or even can initiate regime change on the ground. One thing to consider is that if you destroy the OFS/FF ships for an area, you vastly limit where the Gendarmerie can go. They need ships to move to other systems, otherwise they are isolated. Even if you do get involved on the ground to assist liberation movements you are going to have to leave SLG on planet (disbursed and under guard by locals) in any case because you are not going to want to or probably have the means to move them anywhere.

Let's be even more evil as the MAlign:

How many RMMC freighters have been lost to Manpower related ships in Silesia over the last 200 years since HMS Nike and Edward Saganami's day that carried valid (if old) Manticoran transponder codes. AKA it doesn't matter if it's a junior GA flag officer screwing the pooch, or someone playing the role of thug and getting a big chunk of the SL to BELIEVE that it was the nasty evil Manticoran(s) attacking the League home worlds.

But as others have pointed out, the MAlign really doesn't want the SLN to go into serious upgrading/rearming R&D mode either. They want the vast League populaces asleep at the wheel until it is too late. Which is why my argument is that politically the enemy in extended space IS those corrupted leaders such as the OFS sector governors who want "business as usual", without whom the entire remaining MAlign plan must fail.

SharkHunter wrote:Let's be even more evil as the MAlign:

How many RMMC freighters have been lost to Manpower related ships in Silesia over the last 200 years since HMS Nike and Edward Saganami's day that carried valid (if old) Manticoran transponder codes. AKA it doesn't matter if it's a junior GA flag officer screwing the pooch, or someone playing the role of thug and getting a big chunk of the SL to BELIEVE that it was the nasty evil Manticoran(s) attacking the League home worlds.

I'm not certain what you are asking or trying to get at here. In answer to the question posed (how many RMMC freighters have been lost to Manpower), the answer is almost none. As far as we know, Manpower has not tried hitting Manticoran ships since Saganami.

Perhaps I am not understanding the context of your question/statement? There have been so many subtopics in this thread that it's not clear what you are thinking about without a bit more context.

JeffEngel wrote:Those system governments certainly do need to wake up and make moves. Beowulf is doing exactly that, and the example is going to light the way for plenty more. But if the GA opts to start punishing them directly for not yet overthrowing the League government, it's just ratcheting up the chances that the successor states will be coming after them in a few years. They need to fight so as to make those successor states genuine friends and allies, not a cowed Warsaw Pact under a Manticoran Soviet Union.

I cannot think of any Alignment plan that would accomplish more for their ends than to have the GA convey this kind of thuggish attitude to League members. It wouldn't take more than one junior flag officer in the RMN or RHN to screw the pooch in a delicate operation to accomplish it, either.

The original question was, "What targets are on the firing range?"

Arguments can be made all day long as to why one thing or another shouldn't be done, argue long enough and someone will simply walk up and shoot you in the head. The GA has a tech advantage that they need to take advantage of and use now! Don't tell me what can't be a target, tell me what you think can be a target. If the GA sits and does nothing but to wait on events to happen around it, the GA has lost. Don't tell me what you can't do, tell me what you can. How can you widen the fissures in the SL to speed it's demise? How do you protect your shipping from Admiral Kingsford plan to attack it. How do you prevent him from bringing lots of newly built light units into the fight? Say to him "pretty please don't do it?"

The GA has a technology advantage, it must be used, tell me, how would you choose to use it?

SWM wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Let's be even more evil as the MAlign:

How many RMMC freighters have been lost to Manpower related ships in Silesia over the last 200 years since HMS Nike and Edward Saganami's day that carried valid (if old) Manticoran transponder codes. AKA it doesn't matter if it's a junior GA flag officer screwing the pooch, or someone playing the role of thug and getting a big chunk of the SL to BELIEVE that it was the nasty evil Manticoran(s) attacking the League home worlds.

I'm not certain what you are asking or trying to get at here. In answer to the question posed (how many RMMC freighters have been lost to Manpower), the answer is almost none. As far as we know, Manpower has not tried hitting Manticoran ships since Saganami.

OOPS. Forgot to finish my line of thinking but it doesn't really take old transponders, was just pointing out that the MAlign could go whole hog into the smack SL worlds infrastructure to 'make the SL believe that it's the Manties attacking' business by whatever means, old transponder codes or whatever, and get the same wave the flag effect, aka the SL jumping into R&D mode and eventually bolthole-ing the GA.

Problem is, that just makes the League harder to take down later themselves if they do.

Jonathan_S wrote:I agree that you don't need much of a ship to destroy or capture merchant ships.

But pirates usually take advantage of systems that either turn a blind eye, or are too weak to patrol the hyper limit. In the short term there probably aren't a lot of systems like that that will be seeing much GA merchant traffic. So Kingsford seems likely to make a bad choice looking for places where GA merchants are more likely to show up (but where he'd not expect to run into heavy RMN defenses). Places like, say the Talbott Cluster systems, or minor systems on the Haven side of the Manticore/Haven frontier.

But we know that most of those systems have pod and/or LAC based defenses capable of very roughly handling BC squadrons, or even (especially given their poor missile defense) SD squadrons. So those attractive looking targets
are a bad idea.

Another possibility would be to attempt to grab back a wormhole so you can ambush merchants attempting to use it (most likely those on a return leg back to a seized wormhole). But again, the modern light units there can chew up SLN BCs unless very very unlucky.

Or you can sit in Verge systems that you think might draw GA merchant traffic, or try to lay patrol lines across strategic rifts. But the RMN has a lot of experience at convoy protection, and even their older units are going to fights like hell to keep the SLN raiders off the merchants. A Nevada probably would win one-on-one against a Star Knight; but it'll be limping back to the body and fender shop afterwards.

I would have to believe that Kingsford's commerce raiding would some how be a step above what normal pirates would be able to do. I would send them out in half squadrons with lots of prize crew aboard. I would be capturing every cargo ship I could and be sending it back to the SL to help out with the shortage of freight haulers back there. I would take the crews that came of the cargo ships and drop them off on settled but undeveloped planets that rarely see ships but once a year.

But I also want to take away all those new light units that he says he can build so much faster than he can build new SDs so I want to attack and take away his ability to build those ships. I want to be like Admiral Henke and press my advantage. I want to make the fissures in the SL bigger. What targets are on the firing range that can make that happen?

StealthSeeker wrote:If the GA sits and does nothing but to wait on events to happen around it, the GA has lost. Don't tell me what you can't do, tell me what you can.

The GA is NOT just sitting around, they are -- according to plan -- using a mix of diplomacy and "economic warfare"

StealthSeeker wrote:How can you widen the fissures in the SL to speed it's demise?

By letting the Mandarins step on their dicks instead of stepping on your own.

StealthSeeker wrote:How do you protect your shipping from Admiral Kingsford plan to attack it.

The same way the RMN has been protecting commerce for centuries; convoys and hunter-killer missions against pirate strongholds. (in this case, "pirate stronghold" == "Frontier Fleet bases and OFS sector headquarters"

StealthSeeker wrote:How do you prevent him from bringing lots of newly built light units into the fight? Say to him "pretty please don't do it?"

You deny him the revenue streams to pay for them. (and/or accelerate the breakup so there is no Solarian League to fund a "SLN."

StealthSeeker wrote:The GA has a technology advantage, it must be used, tell me, how would you choose to use it?

Commerce protection, commerce raiding, wormhole interdiction, liberation of OFS protectorates, suppression of Frontier Fleet and OFS "business as usual."

I would not go "Hulk Smash" or "Hackenslash" just because I could do so. Where possible, I would follow Adm Gold Peak's example from Meyers and Mesa; where not possible, I'd follow Aivars Terekov's example and demonstrate why you don't want to "make David Banner angry."

Brigade XO wrote:Destroying Gendarmerie camps is something not to do unless you have a very good reason because of the locations. The problem with Gendarmerie camps is that they tend to be either on worlds which are being "pacified" or are part of the FF/OFS nodal structure. They are primarily ON PLANETS. Striking at the camps means either sending forces down to the planet to attack or hitting them with a kenetic strike.

I'd had in mind the places they are kept in between practicing jackbooted oppression, and assumed there were fairly frequent periods of Stormtrooper downtime. That's just a best-guess assumption, I'm not going to the mat for it.

Either way though, to the extent you can deprive them of transport would be about as good practically and won't be quite as rough politically. I wonder how much of their routine transport is in SLN hulls as opposed to freighters or liners that are scrambling to satisfy the Solarian need for bottoms with the Manticoran ones no longer available.