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SPOILER end of the MA

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Re: SPOILER end of the MA
Post by n7axw   » Sun May 06, 2018 10:38 pm

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Sigs wrote:
n7axw wrote:
In a way Sigs point remind me of our own military industrial complex. Magnify the underlying threat to convince Congress to build against it.
It's pretty hard to magnify genocide...


So we end up building the stuff to maintain our industry as much as to defend against external threat. So what's the answer?

Dunno...

Don

-

I think this falls under the category of hope for the best but prepare for the worst, if you are wrong it is a lot easier to recover from that then if you hope for the best and prepare for the best nd end up being wrong.


And SD(p)s are best reponse to a challenge resulting in genocide??? Really? You can't even precisely define the nature of the threat and you want to throw SDs at it... if you can find the threat to aim at. Right now SD(p)s appear to be very expensive targets rather than effective warships against the threat that actually exists, or at least against what we know of the threat...

Then too, you talk of defending 600 plus systems. Again, really? Short of building a size of fleet to rival the SLN, you really can't do that. Nor is that really the GA's job. The GA's job is to defend the Haven Quadrant, the Talbott Quadrant, and whatever systems they have treaty relationships with. Also they have a commitment to commerce protection which is an argument for lighter hulls.

In short there are limits to the mission. That is how it has to be, at least until the MA in flushed out into the open and the stealth issue is resolved. Then the nature of the mission can be reassessed.

Don

-
When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: SPOILER end of the MA
Post by ywing14   » Sun May 06, 2018 11:11 pm

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Sigs wrote:
ywing14 wrote:
Which is the entire issued Don. I'm not saying it wouldn't be great for the SEM/GA to go on building hundreds/thousands of SD(P)s. But that's unrealistic, the queen said it's unrealistic. His opinions remind me too much of star trek where money is never really an issue and no one gets paid.


So if the war with the League continued would they have found the money or surrendered halfway through the war?


You don't worry about money in the middle of a war for survival, you worry about the debt after the war is done.


There you go making my point for me again. The war is over, what they would have done if the war continued is a mute point. The war is now over, as is a large majority of the justification for trying to build a massive fleet which would have been needed to take the SL. But with the SL's surrender there is no longer a justification to maintain/build a massive fleet. There is only a justification to find the Malign/Other Guys. Which if played correctly could help bind the new SL and GA together.

They might have had to surrender if the Mandarins pushed through there amendment to tax the SL. Given that would have basically turned the entire money issue for the SL on its head.
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Re: SPOILER end of the MA
Post by ywing14   » Sun May 06, 2018 11:24 pm

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Sigs wrote:
ywing14 wrote:

Why do you need 2-4 nodal forces in Talbot? The threat to Talbot from the SLN has been neutralized and they secured there flank when they punched out Meyers. You need one with maybe 12-18 Wallers in Spindle the current seat of government. 4-8 in Silesia? Seriously? All those worlds are protectorates. It's unknown if they'll even choose to join the SEM. Again you need one of maybe 12 Wallers to cover where Sarnow is located. Not to mention they can call on the Andies, who are allies at the moment and vice versa. Then you've got Home Fleet and a squadron at Trevor's Star but honestly probably not Basilisk since it's likely still recovering from what the Peeps did to it. There is no point in spreading out there forces anymore. All it does is make it easier to defeat them in detail.

You do need 2-4 Nodal forces in Talbott because they are PART of the SEM thus deserve to receive protection. As for Silesia, look up the definition of protectorate... the word protect is in the name so the SEM has kind of taken responsibility to protect them wether they are part of the SEM or not. What's more if the SEM took half of the Confederacy that means that they have to protect about 30 systems which is twice as many systems as Talbott, thats 30 potential targets to discredit the SEM... if the SEM is not willing to protect the Silesian protectorates properly they might as well hand them over to the IAN for protection and move on.




The GA has already postulated that the Malign has a Bolthole. They've postulated a lot of things that have in fact turned out to be accurate. Given standard construction rates it should take them 1-2 years for each SD. I'm not arguing with you that the Malign isn't a threat or that it wouldn't be great for the SEM. I'm merely stated that its quite evident from textev that they are going to go into a build down.

And it is quite evident that this would allow the next bunch of books to repeat the same pattern. The GA gets surprised by numerically superior bad guy and the determined little underdog who is greatly outnumbered fights long and hard until the numbers start coming into play. I get that if the writer decided to strengthen the GA as a whole the next part of the series would be incredibly boring when the RMN, RHN, GSN and their allies are ready and willing to tangle with anyone and everyone. It would be more interesting if the RMN is reduced to a force of less then 100 SD(P)'s and a whole bunch of Cruisers that are spread throughout the galaxy and cannot defend their home systems...



And it's not unreasonable given all the SEM has been through in the last 40 years. At some point they've got to give. It is completely unreasonable to continue building an endless number SD(P)s. At what point should they stop? You'd just have them build as many as the could until the found the Malign?
Chances are that 50%-80% of the SD(P)s are near completion, doubt it would take that much more to complete them, seeing as they are being constructed by Haven where the absolute cost of the ship should be much less than in a Manticoran yard.

Are you saying that all the information the GA has on the Malign is useless? Because that is what it sounds like your saying. That's not even remotely accurate.
What information do they have? As in what information do they have and can back up with facts and what part of their "information" is nothing more than guesses?

Do they know the important things like:
-Where the MA is located?
-Who their allies are if any?
-How advanced their technology is?
-How big their fleet is?
-How big their industry is?
-What their ultimate goal is?
-How they are planning to achieve that goal?


They know very little about the MA, most of what they "know" is just guesses from tidbits they gathered here and there.

How would convoy escorts drive the SEM in debt anymore than it already is?

1)You have to build them.
2)They are ton for ton more labor intensive then Manticoran SD(P)'s and chances are the proportions are the same for Havenite SD(P)'s. So you have to man them.
3)You have to have logistic train capable of supporting them.
4)You Have to build bases around the protectorates and core/shell systems not part of the League
5)Anything on convoy escort/counter piracy mission is not available for home defence. Should anything happen a huge % of your fleet as it is would be spread across the galaxy unable to assist in time.
6)If I wanted to mess with you I would concentrate on ripping the guts out of your convoy escorts and anti piracy missions by ambushing them when they are far away from support, make you drain your treasury building more ships and training more crews to be slaughtered.


On one hand you want them to build and crew thousands of SD(P)s but that's cheaper then building smaller vessels and patrolling systems....
Where exactly did I say I want the RMN to build and crew thousands of SD(P)s?


You've also stated that 20-30 years isn't really any debt but suddenly it isn't when you're building brand new SD(P)s that are currently worthless when it comes to defending your star systems.
The SEM might be in debt but they still quite a lot of wealth locked up in assets within the Empire and outside the empire. But more importantly, when you are fighting for your life, the last thing you should concern yourself with is the money, I would rather my nation be bankrupt post war and suffer those consequences than be annihilated with a whole lot of assets they "saved" up.




The SEM already has been doing that exact thing in Silesia for years and managed to survive.
60 systems in Silesia vs 600 or 1,000 systems across the galaxy in the middle of a war with an enemy who has shown no restrained when it comes to mass murder... yeah those are comparable.


There are plenty of worlds in the protectorates they can use as supply points. Meyers, Swallow, Chebor, Mobius...
I would venture a guess and say that all those systems would be in the same general vicinity. That would be the same as saying that you can use Nigeria, Ghana and Cameroon as supply bases and it would make the war in Iraq and Afghanistan easier logistically.


So far the GA has protected their territorial integrity. The GA has not lost a single system since it has been formed.
They also have been around for less then a year... that isn't as decisive an argument as you might believe.


They receive protection with 1 nodal force. The war with the Peeps and RHN proved rather convincingly that splitting ships up into penny packets to picket star systems wasn't going to protect systems in the long run if the enemy was willing to hit them in sufficient strength. Spreading your ships all over the place serves no purpose other than defeat in detail.

The SEM isn't fighting for it's life anymore. The MAlign was just looking to get SEM and RoH out of its way so it could bring genetic manipulation to the mainstream. It doesn't need to destroy the Manties to do that. It just needs them pruned back a bit. That was the point of their strategy. Use them to break up the league and damage the SEM to the point it couldn't respond effectively to the MA. It's now fighting to discover what the MAlign is up to. When they were fighting the SL more SD(P)s made sense. Now they are not. They need to shift resources to things which are more important such as finding Darius since they know something like it exists, finding the MAlign, and figuring out an answer to the spider drive. Otherwise those ships serve no purpose and are as useless as an SL SD.

They've already lost the Hypatia and Beowulf. How can you say they haven't lost systems?
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Re: SPOILER end of the MA
Post by pappilon   » Mon May 07, 2018 4:50 am

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ywing14 wrote:
They receive protection with 1 nodal force. The war with the Peeps and RHN proved rather convincingly that splitting ships up into penny packets to picket star systems wasn't going to protect systems in the long run if the enemy was willing to hit them in sufficient strength. Spreading your ships all over the place serves no purpose other than defeat in detail.

The SEM isn't fighting for it's life anymore. The MAlign was just looking to get SEM and RoH out of its way so it could bring genetic manipulation to the mainstream. It doesn't need to destroy the Manties to do that. It just needs them pruned back a bit. That was the point of their strategy. Use them to break up the league and damage the SEM to the point it couldn't respond effectively to the MA. It's now fighting to discover what the MAlign is up to. When they were fighting the SL more SD(P)s made sense. Now they are not. They need to shift resources to things which are more important such as finding Darius since they know something like it exists, finding the MAlign, and figuring out an answer to the spider drive. Otherwise those ships serve no purpose and are as useless as an SL SD.

They've already lost the Hypatia and Beowulf. How can you say they haven't lost systems?


How many MAN/RF warships did the MAlign use in the Battle of Beowulf to destroy Mycroft and 3 habitat stations? How many ...anything would it have taken to prevent the loss of those civilian lives?

All they spent was 3 bombs, 6 shipping containers and one idiot suicide bomber, who didn't even ever figure out that he was a suicide bomber. It was New Tuscany writ larger.

You are trying to arm yourself against an enemy who has no desire to have a military confrontation. Its entire focus is world domination through subversion, not military conquest. And it is not the entire military might of Beowulf hat is its enemy, but the billions of warm bodies that are not "genies".

Stir old resentments, stoke the fires of resentment and let your stooges pound on each other to create fear and uncertainty in their neighbors, repeat. How many SDs do you need to defeat that enemy, who as you say you can't even identify?

The real war to be fought can not be fought with SD(p)s. Yes, they will be needed for the few and far between military confrontations. But the MAlign sees military confrontation as the last phase of a much more subtle political conflict.

You cannot build enough ships of any class to defeat the MAlign. No matter how awful an idea is, it cannot be defeated by raw strength.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The imagination has to be trained into foresight and empathy.
Ursula K. LeGuinn

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Re: SPOILER end of the MA
Post by ywing14   » Mon May 07, 2018 7:31 am

ywing14
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pappilon wrote:
ywing14 wrote:
They receive protection with 1 nodal force. The war with the Peeps and RHN proved rather convincingly that splitting ships up into penny packets to picket star systems wasn't going to protect systems in the long run if the enemy was willing to hit them in sufficient strength. Spreading your ships all over the place serves no purpose other than defeat in detail.

The SEM isn't fighting for it's life anymore. The MAlign was just looking to get SEM and RoH out of its way so it could bring genetic manipulation to the mainstream. It doesn't need to destroy the Manties to do that. It just needs them pruned back a bit. That was the point of their strategy. Use them to break up the league and damage the SEM to the point it couldn't respond effectively to the MA. It's now fighting to discover what the MAlign is up to. When they were fighting the SL more SD(P)s made sense. Now they are not. They need to shift resources to things which are more important such as finding Darius since they know something like it exists, finding the MAlign, and figuring out an answer to the spider drive. Otherwise those ships serve no purpose and are as useless as an SL SD.

They've already lost the Hypatia and Beowulf. How can you say they haven't lost systems?


How many MAN/RF warships did the MAlign use in the Battle of Beowulf to destroy Mycroft and 3 habitat stations? How many ...anything would it have taken to prevent the loss of those civilian lives?

All they spent was 3 bombs, 6 shipping containers and one idiot suicide bomber, who didn't even ever figure out that he was a suicide bomber. It was New Tuscany writ larger.

You are trying to arm yourself against an enemy who has no desire to have a military confrontation. Its entire focus is world domination through subversion, not military conquest. And it is not the entire military might of Beowulf hat is its enemy, but the billions of warm bodies that are not "genies".

Stir old resentments, stoke the fires of resentment and let your stooges pound on each other to create fear and uncertainty in their neighbors, repeat. How many SDs do you need to defeat that enemy, who as you say you can't even identify?

The real war to be fought can not be fought with SD(p)s. Yes, they will be needed for the few and far between military confrontations. But the MAlign sees military confrontation as the last phase of a much more subtle political conflict.

You cannot build enough ships of any class to defeat the MAlign. No matter how awful an idea is, it cannot be defeated by raw strength.



Pappilon, agree. It’s what I’ve been saying to sigs all along. There isn’t a point to building more SDs right now.
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Re: SPOILER end of the MA
Post by n7axw   » Mon May 07, 2018 9:26 am

n7axw
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I wouldn't go so far as to say build no more SD(p)s. What I have been objecting to is the notion that no matter what the problem, throw SD(p)s at it. Define the mission. And if it calls for more SD(p)s, build them. If not build what is actually needed to get the job done. SD(p)s are not a magic bullet to throw at every problem.

Don

-
When any group seeks political power in God's name, both religion and politics are instantly corrupted.
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Re: SPOILER end of the MA
Post by Joat42   » Mon May 07, 2018 10:08 am

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n7axw wrote:I wouldn't go so far as to say build no more SD(p)s. What I have been objecting to is the notion that no matter what the problem, throw SD(p)s at it. Define the mission. And if it calls for more SD(p)s, build them. If not build what is actually needed to get the job done. SD(p)s are not a magic bullet to throw at every problem.

Don
-

"With limited tools, single-minded people apply them inappropriately or indiscriminately"

Or as the proverb goes: If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail

---
Jack of all trades and destructive tinkerer.


Anyone who have simple solutions for complex problems is a fool.
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Re: SPOILER end of the MA
Post by Sigs   » Mon May 07, 2018 10:17 pm

Sigs
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n7axw wrote:
And SD(p)s are best reponse to a challenge resulting in genocide??? Really? You can't even precisely define the nature of the threat and you want to throw SDs at it... if you can find the threat to aim at. Right now SD(p)s appear to be very expensive targets rather than effective warships against the threat that actually exists, or at least against what we know of the threat...
Yes I do think that SD(P)'s are the best weapon to go for. If they are just big targets then so is everything else you can think of including those prized fixed defences, forts and cruisers. But when you find the means to detect the MA's ships those SD(P)'s suddenly become the most lethal ships in existence. When the GA knows so little about their enemy's plans, having an overwhelming force seems prudent.

By the way what exactly in your view is the threat that exists?




Then too, you talk of defending 600 plus systems. Again, really? Short of building a size of fleet to rival the SLN, you really can't do that. Nor is that really the GA's job. The GA's job is to defend the Haven Quadrant, the Talbott Quadrant, and whatever systems they have treaty relationships with. Also they have a commitment to commerce protection which is an argument for lighter hulls.


The SEM already has been doing that exact thing in Silesia for years and managed to survive.

60 systems in Silesia vs 600 or 1,000 systems across the galaxy in the middle of a war with an enemy who has shown no restrained when it comes to mass murder... yeah those are comparable.

My point is that those who champion the need for lighter units have not specifically defined the mission. Are you protecting a few core systems or are you protecting every major trading partner? Comparing Silesia and the RMN's 300 year involvement during peacetime to anti-piracy and commerce protection for potentially hundreds of systems is a little silly. Either there are commitments that will eat up thousands of cruisers for the next few decades or the whole argument for lighter units is false. to protect commerce and conduct anti piracy patrols for a handful of systems you most definitely do not need all that many lighter combatants.

In short there are limits to the mission. That is how it has to be, at least until the MA in flushed out into the open and the stealth issue is resolved. Then the nature of the mission can be reassessed.

Don

-

You have not stated a solid mission aside from requiring a lot of light warships for anti piracy missions in an unspecified sized area for an unspecified length of time.


Commerce protection requires a lot of lighter units, units that would require a lot of logistical support to remain far from home bases as well as shipyards, manpower and money amongst other things.
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Re: SPOILER end of the MA
Post by Sigs   » Mon May 07, 2018 10:32 pm

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ywing14 wrote:
There you go making my point for me again.

A war is over...just not THE war.

The war is over, what they would have done if the war continued is a mute point.


If they(SEM/GA) can sustain those fleets at war with the SLN they can sustain those fleets in a war with their true enemy...the one who engineered everything up to that point.

You can't have it both ways, either they can or they can't. If the war with the SLN had continued the GA would have manned those ships and fielded them, so if they can do that against the League who only tried to kill millions of people why can't they do that against the enemy who has so openly shown their willingness to commit genocide.


The war is now over, as is a large majority of the justification for trying to build a massive fleet which would have been needed to take the SL. But with the SL's surrender there is no longer a justification to maintain/build a massive fleet. There is only a justification to find the Malign/Other Guys. Which if played correctly could help bind the new SL and GA together.
Are you assuming that the MA will now sit on their hands and wait for the GA to come and find them? That they will not be investing everything they have in R&D and industrial expansion? Do you think that the MA is going to sit on their hands and NOT build SD(P)'s of their own when they get the technology? Or LAC's? Is the MA just waiting for the GA to find them and kill them or are they preparing for war? The MA has their own little Bolthole and at least a dozen other systems to draw support from. It would be too late to start thinking of naval expansion when the GA discovers that the MA has spend the 5,10,15 or 20 years post UH building their industry, researching and building their fleets up.

They might have had to surrender if the Mandarins pushed through there amendment to tax the SL. Given that would have basically turned the entire money issue for the SL on its head.
Or they might have found the resources to stay afloat.
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Re: SPOILER end of the MA
Post by Sigs   » Mon May 07, 2018 10:39 pm

Sigs
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ywing14 wrote:
They receive protection with 1 nodal force. The war with the Peeps and RHN proved rather convincingly that splitting ships up into penny packets to picket star systems wasn't going to protect systems in the long run if the enemy was willing to hit them in sufficient strength. Spreading your ships all over the place serves no purpose other than defeat in detail.
Somehow I doubt 3rd Fleet was the only Nodal Force the RHN had deployed if the potential target list extended to a couple of dozen systems.

The SEM isn't fighting for it's life anymore. The MAlign was just looking to get SEM and RoH out of its way so it could bring genetic manipulation to the mainstream.
And now what they will leave them alone after killing 70 millions of their people? I doubt the MA has anything of the sort in mind.


It doesn't need to destroy the Manties to do that. It just needs them pruned back a bit. That was the point of their strategy. Use them to break up the league and damage the SEM to the point it couldn't respond effectively to the MA. It's now fighting to discover what the MAlign is up to. When they were fighting the SL more SD(P)s made sense. Now they are not. They need to shift resources to things which are more important such as finding Darius since they know something like it exists, finding the MAlign, and figuring out an answer to the spider drive. Otherwise those ships serve no purpose and are as useless as an SL SD.
So what put everything else on hold until the MA is found and you can find your answer to the spider drive? I can see it, we found the MA but we don't have the fleet to attack them, we will be building a massive invasion fleet since we now have the MA's address, I mean we will need a few years to do so after we find them but they will have to patiently wait... right?

They've already lost the Hypatia and Beowulf. How can you say they haven't lost systems?
At what point did the SLN or the MA take possession of either one of those systems? Plus one of them was not even part of the GA at the time...
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