So....imagine you are Admiral Parnell's staff officer

I would appear that Haven tried to take Baselisk using a manufactured uprising to let their fleet- which just happened to be in the area- show up and rescue the planet from the war between the Stilties and the Imperialist Manties who were enslaving the people(- and who didn't have forces in the area that could resist a RHN fleet or task force before it took effective control of the orbitals and installed a puppet government.
Why? Because they could position it just that way to the SL which was the only other actual military/polictial force that could have gotten involved and Haven needed the fig leaf of being a savior to the indigenous population of Baselisk (and all those Havnite merchants etc).

So what does takeing Baselisk get Haven? Well, it gives them a planet they can strip for resources but quite possibly not actualy make much money for them. It gives them a place to serve as a waypoint- in a star system with a habitable planet- between the Republic of Haven and Silesia and that becomes a transfer point for other goods that have arrived at the Baselisk terminus that is outside SKM control. Remember, SKM found/controls the terminus and isn't going to want to give it up. Haven might have taken the system but it doesn't control the terminus and, unless they sent portion of the fleet to the terminus to sieze it before SKM sent warships though in responce to the "uprising" on Baselisk, then Haven is going to have to live with Manticore holding the terminus.

Since we are dealing with hypothetical things, just how long do you think SKM is going to allow Haven merchant traffic to use the Junction after 1) they swoop in and take the Baselisk system and then 2) start picking off Silesia systems?
At the very least, SKM could make the case that it can and should keep RHN ships from using the Junction based on what they did to 1) San Martin, 2) Baselisk and then 3) seizing systems in Silesia. Unless Haven then wants to kick off a war with SKM -and grab the Junction and Manticore, which is what they want anyway- they still will have to send RHN the long way through hyperspace to Silesia and that makes it a really long supply line even if they can send "non-military" ships and goods through to Gregor, heck if they use non-Haven flagged ships to ferry goods to Silesia, they still have to get military supplies past SKM customs etc.
And then, presuming they have to fight in Silesia against both whatever local SDF their next targets have AND the Confed Navy, they are also going to draw considerable attention from the IAE as the Anderman Empire's primary expansion route is through Silesia and Haven is going to become (very quickly) their main competitor there for posession of systems.
Manticore, while not a friend of the IAE, has been running commerce protection in Silesia, not trying to take physical or political control of governments. While they compete for trade, they are not (that we know of) blocking any of the IAN political alliances. Haven, on the other hand, is well known now for swallowing systems.
That might just push the Anderman Empire and SKM together as the IAN is going to need help against the RHN even with that long logistics line though hyperspace to Haven

If you look at it that way, the Liberals and High Ridge's people are going to have a difficult time (well, not amoung themselves) shouting hypocrisy about Manticorian Expansionest Imperial Designs if what the RMN is getting into is what amounts to a defence of the Silesian Confederacy and the local independent systems against Haven's demonstrated aggression...even if the largest local allied entity ends up being the Anderman Empire. Oh, they will scream, but it ends up being a fight against the depridations of Haven vs Freedom of Navigation and Commerce Protection of the merchant fleets of Silesia, Manticore, Anderman and even the Sollies.......humm.

Fireflair wrote:@ThinksMarkedly
You didn't put a time limit on the event occurring. My idea was to translate in on a very gentle downward descent way out. Accelerate up to maximum velocity and tube launch your missiles. Judging where everything will be in orbit is a relatively straight forward astrophysics problem.

Once you launch your missiles, you begin to brake and come to rest relative to the system. So what if it takes 10 months for the missiles to cost into the system? They've been launched with canned routines, told to look for very specifics targets. Your ships can sit way outside the system, watching with light speed sensors and gravitic sensors for what happens. The fleet could sit outside the system for a year without drawing attention as long as they're on zero emcon.

As Theemile answered, that wouldn't work, for a lot of reasons.

1. 1900 Peep missiles weren't designed for endurance, even in coasting. They need to be lit by the mothership prior to launch, which we later saw as a problem when they were designing pod-launched missiles. If you let them out of the tubes and let them coast for months, they are not going to be able to bring their wedges up when the time comes.

2. Even if you could do that, coasting for months at 0.8c would erode their sensor heads. So you either slow down sufficiently so the erosion is acceptable or you deploy abrasion covers like the Mesans did. The latter is an easy solution, though.

3. The RMN would come to investigate any translation, however soft, within light-months. Crucially, Parnell couldn't know how far that really was, but he knew how far his coverage was around Haven and that was light-months. He'd have to try for something like half a light-year out and luck out that the RMN wouldn't come to investigate.

4. The most important part: you can't bring your wedges up to accelerate. The wedge is one of the most visible things on sensors in known space and it propagates superluminally. If you do and you still have your wedge up when the RMN comes to investigate, they'll find you. The RMN doesn't need to defeat you or even escape for the system defenders to be on alert and Home Fleet to come pouncing.

The Oyster Bay attack worked because they overcame three of the four. They translated in a light-month out and the RMN response was on them in 12 hours. They could accelerate because of the spider drives. They had torpedoes specially designed for endurance and for lighting off independently from a ship.

Even if you only do a fraction of the possible damage it's going to throw things into a huge mess. Again, time tables are difficult across interstellar distances but you know how long to get from A to B, you could throw an assault through the wormhole junction, with a significant portion of the forts down it's still going to be a hard row to hoe but it can be done. And you've got the fleet that was sitting outside the system coming in to help.

Please see other threads on attacking through the junction. It's simply impossible to do that. We've discussed maximum transit with SDs, maximum transit with hyper-capable LACs, decoys, ships-in-ships, orthogonally-placed sails, etc. Someone always finds a flaw. And the MWHJ was the most heavily defended junction: even if the Forts were lazy and decided to allow the 37 SDs to bring up their wedges and clear for action, they'd be annihilated on the first strike from the forts.

I'm pretty sure the notion of just plain c-frac strikes was brought up a long time ago. The odds of detecting something coming in were considered very small if it didn't emit any energy and wasn't large enough to occlude something major. So pretty much avoiding ecliptic and coming down on the target would do the trick. The big objection I recall for the c-frac strike was when something went wrong and you hit a planet instead.

For me, a c-frac strike is not stealthy. If you try that with a rock, it's going to create a bow wave of colliding particles to announce its arrival for a month. Not to mention that if someone could accelerate a rock on a precise trajectory, someone else can accelerate it away (it's just a nudge).

If you try any closer, then the defenders saw your wedges, so again not stealthy.

You'd need technology that Haven simply did not have at the time.

Annachie wrote:Really, in 1900 they should have just taken Baselisk and moved on. Outright, none of this pussy footing about.

Eventually trade would start flowing through it and they'd make more money.

They could have still used the excuse of war with Manticore to freeze the BLS, made some token attacks in that direction, and continued on to Silesia anyway.

Welcome to 2020, the year of looking backwards.

Ideally they get all of home fleet to show up in Basilisk and then jump them there, where they don't have the support of fixed defenses. Next stop, Manticore.

Theemile wrote:Unfortunately for the RMN, it was a failed doctrine, especially when you have a prepared opponent.... Who just happens to field 450 BBs...

Also, the RMN was not Haven's only problem- Haven had swallowed 2-3 systems a year, for Decades. As a result, there were numerous "navies in exile" which they had had to dealt with over the years, some of which fielded BCs from their former navy; and at least one system and it's defense force which had gone rogue (with a BC) and had to be put down. BBs had large Marine sections which could be used to deal with rowdy citizens, so overwhelming quick reaction forces of BBs were seen as essential to the Republic's survival.

Well, even that "failed" strategy caused the PRN to dedicate building slips for ships that it would never need. Those are DNs and SDs it didn't build.

But your argument about navies in exile makes sense. I was thinking that Haven had no opponents: once pacified, a system would have trouble enough getting out of the gravity well. A picket of DD would do the trick for that.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

kzt wrote:Fight somone with battlecruisers? In 1905? Why would Haven be worried about the RMN, who somewhat fetishized battlecruiser raids, conducting battlecruiser raids into Haven’s restive rear areas? I mean, it clearly makes no sense to consider that a serious possibility.

That's my point. The war wasn't going to be conducted with BCs, so why did Haven build BBs?

In 1920 that would be a different story, when deep raids were part of the strategy book. Not in 1905. And not with the RMN almost entirely occupied with protecting its allies.

We didn't read much about them but apparently the RMN was sending BC raids into the Peeps rear during the first war. (There was a mention in one of the 2nd war books of a Peep battleship commander who'd managed to spring a 1st was ambush on raiding RMN BCs - to the later's determent.

There' wasn't a strategy of deep raids with wallers; but the RMN had a pre-war strategy of using BC squadrons to aggressively raid. Mind you, all the BBs the peeps had around for internal security made that riskier than assumed - and then pods (even SDM pods) made it even riskier again. (It's just Honor, and the few other major POV characters, didn't end up assigned to BC raiding forces during that first war so it didn't get paragraphs)


One of the major design drivers of the ceasefire era Nike-class BC(L) was to restore that 1st war BC deep raid capability in the face of at least modest MDM system defense pod installations.

Brigade XO wrote:Since we are dealing with hypothetical things, just how long do you think SKM is going to allow Haven merchant traffic to use the Junction after 1) they swoop in and take the Baselisk system and then 2) start picking off Silesia systems?

You'd think that they'd block that traffic. OTOH RFC said that the SKM allowed Havenite merchants to use the Trevor's Star terminus up until at least the Basilisk incident (not sure how soon after the conquest that they began allowing that) - and allowed neutral shipping to keep using it (from which Haven presumably also got transit fees) basically up until the SKM finally took the system.

So given that example Haven might have figured that their merchants would be allowed to use the Junction from Basilisk soon enough...

Brigade XO wrote:Why? Because they could position it just that way to the SL which was the only other actual military/polictial force that could have gotten involved and Haven needed the fig leaf of being a savior to the indigenous population of Baselisk (and all those Havnite merchants etc).

So what does takeing Baselisk get Haven? Well, it gives them a planet they can strip for resources but quite possibly not actualy make much money for them. It gives them a place to serve as a waypoint- in a star system with a habitable planet- between the Republic of Haven and Silesia and that becomes a transfer point for other goods that have arrived at the Baselisk terminus that is outside SKM control. Remember, SKM found/controls the terminus and isn't going to want to give it up. Haven might have taken the system but it doesn't control the terminus and, unless they sent portion of the fleet to the terminus to sieze it before SKM sent warships though in responce to the "uprising" on Baselisk, then Haven is going to have to live with Manticore holding the terminus.

Sorry, I don't think it makes any sense to get the planet but not the terminus. They did get the terminus in Trevor's Star.

Medusa the planet has nil or negative value. The Stilts do not participate in commerce and any activities there would just consume funds. The planet does have warehousing services, but I've never understood why they're in orbit of the planet, instead of close to the terminus. Why do merchants stop at the planet at all, if there's no commerce there? Most ships calling to the system will either transit the wormhole or have just transited from it. All others passing through can come to the wormhole much more easily than to the planet.

I agree that there's a benefit in the SL public opinion, which could help either lift the embargo or convince more to break it.

But the most important gain would be to deny the use of the terminus to Manticore. It hurts Manticore economically even in peace time, but in wartime it should hurt even more if all transit is forbidden. More importantly, it's impossible for Home Fleet or the RMN to use it and thus attack the PRN through it. If the PRH does move on to Silesia, then making sure that the RMN cannot use this shortcut to get there would be a tactical win.

Annachie wrote:Really, in 1900 they should have just taken Baselisk and moved on. Outright, none of this pussy footing about.

Eventually trade would start flowing through it and they'd make more money.

They could have still used the excuse of war with Manticore to freeze the BLS, made some token attacks in that direction, and continued on to Silesia anyway.

Welcome to 2020, the year of looking backwards.

Darn straight! Neither the Manticorans nor the Peeps seemed to truly care about Basilisk. Never again would such a strategic asset like a terminus simply be sitting there for the taking.

The Peeps should have just seized it outright. Except for some silly political reason I can't seem to remember. If I had to guess, Haven wasn't ready to officially start a war. But if the Peeps would have used the operation at Basilisk to kick off the war, Manticore would have lost a lot. Namely their best officer to be.

The Peeps had that force sitting in hyper twiddling it's thumbs. If that fleet would have gone in with guns blazing, Honor would have been lost. Perhaps even White Haven as well when he arrived with the cavalry.

The Peeps were always the victim of overthinking. Most likely the ever present obese gorilla loomed large and in charge and kept everyone honest. None wanted to lose too many resources fighting a war and leaving itself vulnerable to the ever present greedy gorilla.

locarno24 wrote:It's 1900 PD, and Admiral Parnell asks for concepts for taking on Manticore.

We know that in the book series the Legislaturists go with Operation Odysseus, which is supposed to take over Basilisk in a fairly bloodless fashion where they actually look like "the good guys".

The initial meeting in the prologue must have been in 1898 or 1899 (I don't recall the date appearing anywhere).

They have a good idea that the cupboard is bare in Basilisk, so militarily it won't take much to punch out.

Forget the good guys bit, acknowledge that you'll lose a bunch and that it is very risky, but that the junction will help make that up.

For launch in mid 1900 get as much of the Navy (without the BB's) as you can gather, split into two groups. First group hangs off Trevor's Star, just out of view.

Second group goes to Basilisk and hangs just out of view.

Drop a couple of BC's and a CC or two in at the limit and send them on a high speed run towards Medusa - from a direction where this will take a while.

The picket will have to honour the threat, whether they be at the transit station, or at the planet.

Give the picket an hour or two to pick up speed.

One of two things will happen. 1, a ship (civilian or military) gets through the wormhole screaming Zulu Zulu Zulu, or 2, no-one gets through in time.

It doesn't really matter which, though the first would be slightly more preferable as it gives a chance to take out a chunk of home fleet for minimal losses.

Drop the fleet in at the limit closest to the station.

If the message got out, dump a bunch of mines, set up next to the wormhole and wait for Home fleet to arrive and Boom (There's always a Boom).

Whether that happens or not, at a prearranged time both groups conduct a mass transit through the wormhole.

Big Boom.

cthia wrote:The Peeps had that force sitting in hyper twiddling it's thumbs. If that fleet would have gone in with guns blazing, Honor would have been lost. Perhaps even White Haven as well when he arrived with the cavalry.

That was D'Orville, not White Haven, who came to the rescue in Basilisk. White Haven comes to her rescue in HotQ.

The Peeps were always the victim of overthinking. Most likely the ever present obese gorilla loomed large and in charge and kept everyone honest. None wanted to lose too many resources fighting a war and leaving itself vulnerable to the ever present greedy gorilla

I don't think that's something you take into consideration. You plan for not provoking the SLN, not winning against it. Doesn't matter how much of the PRN is left: even if it were intact, it would not outfight the SLN even in 1915.

d-eye wrote:Whether that happens or not, at a prearranged time both groups conduct a mass transit through the wormhole.

Big Boom.

Trying to force the WH is a lot like trying to clog up a woodchpper by throwing your friends into it. You have to realize there is pretty good chance that when you run out of friends that woodchipper is still going to be running just fine, just in need of a good pressure washing.