The Grand Alliance Grand Attack

lyonheart wrote:Hi Rob,

A couple nits; the AE should have had 39 systems by 1920 PD, and keeping a lot of stuff to protect their yards against spider drive ships is unlikely to stop or reduce such an attack without being able to identify and track the attackers.

SWM wrote:

lyonheart wrote:The whole point of moving them out of the SL's line of fire was for them to go take out Mesa.

Not quite. The point of moving the Andermani out of the League's line of fire was not for them to take out Mesa, but for them to go after the Alignment. Even at that time, they knew there was a difference. Going after Mesa is a reasonable step in going after the Alignment, but we don't know that the Andermani intended to take that particular step. It is possible they intended to go after the Alignment a different way.

munroburton wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:*quote="lyonheart"*Hi Rob,

A couple nits; the AE should have had 39 systems by 1920 PD, and keeping a lot of stuff to protect their yards against spider drive ships is unlikely to stop or reduce such an attack without being able to identify and track the attackers.

The whole point of moving them out of the SL's line of fire was for them to go take out Mesa.

Given time is of the essence, I suspect the IAN to have prepared quickly then left the empire somewhat obliquely to mask their targeting and travel to Mesa, without using wormholes, since those nearest Mesa would obviously be picketed by the MAlign.

The news we have of CoG is that there were only 12 SD sized footprints which is much less than the 20 SDP's and squadrons or three of CLAC's, NTM ammunition ships etc [bur evidently more SD's than the MAN or its friends has]; so I suspect Mike was again holding back much of her strength again to also strike at the Visigoth wormhole, as well as wait for some to attempt to escape before ringing down the forces blocking them.

Waiting for the details NTM snippets is going to be very hard.

L
*quote*

Several points here: first, the statement was "...a big hyper footprint - at least a dozen ships of the wall!" That doesn't give me a great deal of confidence that they waited to confirm and ID the ships before reporting to the General Board.

Second, she may well be attacking the wormhole simultaneously; that could be where the rest of the ships went.

Third, she is not going to make a simultaneous attack on Visigoth. Attacking through the wormhole is suicidal. Visigoth is 568 ly away from Mesa in the opposite direction from Meyers; she's not going to hold back attacking Mesa for part of her fleet to go that distance to attack Visigoth.

Additionally, when 10th Fleet invaded Meyers, it didn't come in one lump. Several detachments were left in hyper to pounce upon those attempting to flee the system. Mesa has considerably more traffic than Meyers and would require more ships assigned to this interception role, so whatever numbers the Mesans detected initially almost certainly are fewer than what they face, regardless of that foe being the IAN or 10th Fleet.

SharkHunter wrote:

Relax wrote:Does not Storm from the Shadows tell us exactly how many CLAC/SD Henke takes with her??? 2nd to last chapter IIRC.

Shadow of Freedom, last chapter. It says that Henke was going to take basically mostly leave her screen in place in the Madras sector other that what she's presumably already dispatched, and use her cruisers on up for something else.

I don't remember if Terekhov et. al are back from Mobius yet, and that's several of the ships, and some of her screen is going to stay behind in Meyers and in the Madras sector while she moves on Mesa. So "a minimum of twelve big hyper signatures" would be about right if they snuck a couple smaller ships such as a Sag-C (such as the HMS Alister McKeon, perhaps?) or two in from WAY out system for a peak at Mesan near space with recon drones, and then bring the big boys in in one fleet manuever. Thoughts?

JeffEngel wrote:

lyonheart wrote:Hi Rob,

A couple nits; the AE should have had 39 systems by 1920 PD, and keeping a lot of stuff to protect their yards against spider drive ships is unlikely to stop or reduce such an attack without being able to identify and track the attackers.

Maybe, maybe not. There's a "well, what else can we do?" response, which has something to it. There's the possibility that cranking up general vigilance will catch a lucky break: Grayson almost accidentally caught their component, although the good guys don't know that; and Manticore had a chance (albeit a small one) following normal procedure not knowing there was such a threat out there. And last, if they catch a way of maybe detecting those things - a technological trick that even just improves luck a bit - having sensor platforms far, far away reduces their opportunities to get lucky.

So while the IAN showing up soon at Mesa is a real possibility, there are too many other useful things they may be doing (including defending their homes directly) to make it a slam-dunk.

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:

SWM wrote:*quote="lyonheart"*
The whole point of moving them out of the SL's line of fire was for them to go take out Mesa.*quote*
Not quite. The point of moving the Andermani out of the League's line of fire was not for them to take out Mesa, but for them to go after the Alignment. Even at that time, they knew there was a difference. Going after Mesa is a reasonable step in going after the Alignment, but we don't know that the Andermani intended to take that particular step. It is possible they intended to go after the Alignment a different way.

Point. It also leaves the leadership of the League with a neutral who can provide a go-between if the Mandarins ever decide to stop shooting themselves in the foot, and decide to talk. And the Anderman Navy's numbers wouldn't have made any impression on Rajampet or his crowd of like-minded admirals.

The Andies also had restricted their anti-slavery efforts to their own space; I would guess that they might decide to enlarge that particular mission, and shake the bushes hard. Very hard.

YMMV,

Rob

lyonheart wrote:Hi JeffEngel,

Please reread Honor's conversation with Chein-lu, NTM Albrecht Detweiler's summary of what the smart thing for the GA and the AE to do what we just read etc, ie the AE not joining the GA AT THIS TIME, in order to attack Mesa ASAP.

Where else does the the GA have a clue the MAlign exists and can be found in large numbers except on Mesa?

Granted Anton was discovering it was leaving very quickly, but too late to let anyone else know.

So I'm curious where else you think the IAN might go that makes sense from what we know from the textev?

L

Hutch wrote:snip

So...this leads to several options....

1. The smaller force is actually the Andies.
2. Mike has deployed/is deploying her other ships..elsewhere (wormhole terminus?
3. The initial report is sketchy and came from several people reporting it to each other, so the information content may have slipped.
4. The MWW may have gotten his math wrong again on ship deployments (he does that, which drives a bean-counter like me crazy.
5. Or he has something totally out of left field that he is going to pull on us.

We shall see, eventually.

George J. Smith wrote:

Hutch wrote:snip

So...this leads to several options....

1. The smaller force is actually the Andies.
2. Mike has deployed/is deploying her other ships..elsewhere (wormhole terminus?
3. The initial report is sketchy and came from several people reporting it to each other, so the information content may have slipped.
4. The MWW may have gotten his math wrong again on ship deployments (he does that, which drives a bean-counter like me crazy.
5. Or he has something totally out of left field that he is going to pull on us.

We shall see, eventually.

my bold

How about a Solly task force looking to use the Mesa ~ Visigoth wormhole in the hope of getting somewhere that somebody knows is a back door to the Haven quadrant.