The Grand Alliance Grand Attack

JeffEngel wrote:I think the mutual defense treaties signed with the SEM will mean that any of those successor states will be committed to fighting both their target and the SEM if they want to mess with that other successor state, and that the amounts of power among the weakest successor state, the strongest, and the SEM, will discourage that sort of adventurism.

Think of it less as a Warsaw Pact and more as Pax Manticore.

A typical provision of mutual defense treaties is that each party will come to the aid of the other if they are ATTACKED. If you start it, the other party is not required to come to your aid, and in fact, if the party attacked is also a signatory of a mutual defense treaty with SEM, you could find yourself facing attack by the SEM.
This was the provision in the Erewhon/Haven mutual defense treaty that allowed Erewhon to sit on the sidelines when Haven went back to war with Manticore.

One possible plan would be to target and engage ANY BF/FF forces outside of the League itself and perhaps some within the league. That would cut down the number of ships and trained (however poorly) crews. It would also possibly remove SLN commanders who could take the opportunity (or find themselves "forced" into it) to go warlord. This leaves any SDFs to protect their systems and opt out of supporting the SL.
Problem: doesn't allow for anybody doing what the Maya area is doing.

Forcing the re-writing of the SL Constitution isn't going to work. At the very least, the "one system- one veto" will effectivly let the Alignment blow the rewrite up or stall it till things get worse. There is the practical problem -for the GA and SEM- that leaving even New SL the same size or even half the size of the existing one could still come after the GA.

The GA and friends (Erwhon, Maya -sort of but not visible- and the Andermani) have not yet been shown as having any idea that something like the RF is set up and working. NOTHING in the books, unless I have missed something, shows anyone thinking or talking about an RF type sub-plan. Just watching the relativly slow and incremental formation of the RF is not going to tell you it is a tool of the Alignment. Even if RF members start implimenting "internal" policies in health and biology as fed in by the Alignment, not a lot of people are going to notice.

It is certainly possible that one or more pieces form out of the SL and Shell and Verge systems that neither the SEM, RH, or the Alignment plan on or are able to deal with. This could be political, religious, corporate-industrial, sucessfull warlord, whatever.

The Alignment has this nice, neat plan for the RF based on a dozen systems rising to form itself. It has been speculated that a primary method of dealing with systems resisting the RF or appearing to be forming something that could slow it down is the LDs for devistating said system or group of systems ability to more than survive once their space infrastructure and any military shipping is destroyed.
Of course, we have been seeing how a number of Alignment plans are not going according to plan.

Manticore is only looking to break up the SL as you would shatter a bolder. They (and the GA ) so far are only looking to engage the resulting piece as trading partners and more-or-less a don't attack me or my interests and we will not attack you.

Manticore and friends are constrained by the understanding that if they just go into the League Member Systems and trash them (and killing millions of people) they will be creating a vast pool of people who will hate them and be a probable course of future problems. The Alighment just doesn't care about that. The Alignment is, at best, looking at every other human in the universe as raw material to be fit into its plan and doens't care how many die either now or later to advance it's agenda

Brigade XO wrote:snip
The Alignment has this nice, neat plan for the RF based on a dozen systems rising to form itself. It has been speculated that a primary method of dealing with systems resisting the RF or appearing to be forming something that could slow it down is the LDs for devestating said system or group of systems ability to more than survive once their space infrastructure and any military shipping is destroyed.
snip

The problem in using the LDs to break up opposition to the RF is that the first time you do, you tip off the GA that the Malign is behind the RF, since only the MAlign has access to that type of ship, which will kind of defeat the purpose of the RF - at least now that the GA is aware of the MAlign. It would appear from textev that they are going to just let the natural advantages of belonging to the RF convince additional systems to join, rather than attempt to grow it by force.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:snip
The Alignment has this nice, neat plan for the RF based on a dozen systems rising to form itself. It has been speculated that a primary method of dealing with systems resisting the RF or appearing to be forming something that could slow it down is the LDs for devestating said system or group of systems ability to more than survive once their space infrastructure and any military shipping is destroyed.
snip

The problem in using the LDs to break up opposition to the RF is that the first time you do, you tip off the GA that the Malign is behind the RF, since only the MAlign has access to that type of ship, which will kind of defeat the purpose of the RF - at least now that the GA is aware of the MAlign. It would appear from textev that they are going to just let the natural advantages of belonging to the RF convince additional systems to join, rather than attempt to grow it by force.

It's plausible that they had that plan for the spider SD(P)'s, but yeah, that plan's now blown as it'd tip at least cleaver GA analysts and maybe other institutions that the RF has the MA as a guardian angel. I imagine the MA has to revise plans far, far more than they'd anticipated now.

I also wonder just how secure the loyalty of the RF will be to the Alignment, if the ancient Detweiler plan keeps going off the rails. They could be the core of a solid successor state and then quietly cut ties with the Alignment and go on about respectable ways. (Barring nanotech assassinations, etc.)

Relax wrote:
They do not need a single light hull to accomplish this goal. Now after this goal is accomplished, yes, light combatants will become a pressing concern.

Assuming your views regarding how many light combatants Haven has built align with me that is. If you are in Lyonhearts camp, for the RHN building a couple thousand light combatants already, then the issue of "not enough light combatants", vanishes. At least is mitigated to a very large extent.

Ok. In terms of your stated goal and the point of this thread which is strategy for attacking the Solarian League, you are right.

Light combatants for commerce protection and for dealing with situations where the GA's commercial interests are threatened in the Shell and the Verge is really another subject. I don't really know how many hulls that the Alliance has that would suit for that purpose. But it seems to me that the emphasis has been on SD(p)s for a long time, primarily because they were fundamental to the survival of both sides during the Havenite-Manty-Grayson conflict.

I do believe that Manticore in particular is going to need larger numbers of BC and down sized hulls for dealing with what will be the increasing scope of its commercial interests.

Don

n7axw wrote:Light combatants for commerce protection and for dealing with situations where the GA's commercial interests are threatened in the Shell and the Verge is really another subject.

Not really.

With Rajampet's suicide and Kingsford's rise to SLN CNO, the Solarian League's strategy is to concentrate on commerce raiding instead of confrontation between wallers. Lacoon II incorporates active commerce raiding on the SEM's part. (presumably aided by the GA.)

The primary area of conflict is going to be commerce raiders vs commerce protection -- iow, small ship business. Battle Fleet and the SLN reserves are going to be secondary targets after Frontier Fleet's nodal bases and raiding task groups.

Weird Harold wrote:

n7axw wrote:Light combatants for commerce protection and for dealing with situations where the GA's commercial interests are threatened in the Shell and the Verge is really another subject.

Not really.

With Rajampet's suicide and Kingsford's rise to SLN CNO, the Solarian League's strategy is to concentrate on commerce raiding instead of confrontation between wallers. Lacoon II incorporates active commerce raiding on the SEM's part. (presumably aided by the GA.)

The primary area of conflict is going to be commerce raiders vs commerce protection -- iow, small ship business. Battle Fleet and the SLN reserves are going to be secondary targets after Frontier Fleet's nodal bases and raiding task groups.

There are two discussions going on here, Harold. One is the one that Relax was addressing which is how you attack the League itself with intent of fragmenting the League by peeling away systems and sectors. That discussion has the League on defense.

The other discussion has to do more with what you are addressing with commerce protection where the League attempts to go on offense. That was more my focus when I expressed my concern about a shortage of light hulls.

I will freely acknowledge that these discussions are intertwined and not completely separate from each other.

Don

n7axw wrote:There are two discussions going on here, Harold. One is the one that Relax was addressing which is how you attack the League itself with intent of fragmenting the League by peeling away systems and sectors. That discussion has the League on defense.

The other discussion has to do more with what you are addressing with commerce protection where the League attempts to go on offense. That was more my focus when I expressed my concern about a shortage of light hulls.

The Commerce raiding portion of Lacoon II and the concurrent commerce protection from SLN Raiding is the plan as hinted at in textev for fragmenting and peeling away sectors and systems.

The kind of major attacks with heavy task forces espoused by Relax is exactly the kind of strategy that will engender revanchism and long-term strategies of revenge on the GA.

In the immediate future, Frontier Fleet is going to be the source of resistance and conflict. Taking out Frontier Fleet bases and liberating protectorates (a la Meyers and the Madras sector) in conjunction with maximal disruption of trade to Solarian League systems (and protection of non-league systems' trade) is going to cut the SLN's purse strings and encourage the systems with the least tradition of being "Solarian" to secede.

Mandarin/SLN attempts to block secessions and reclaim protectorates and shell systems will encourage others to abandon the league in protest.

In short, the "small ship war" is going to be the primary line of attack with Wallers only really involved in taking sector headquarters and (non-league) hard targets like Yildin.

n7axw wrote:
There are two discussions going on here,
Don

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Don --

I believe you have it in a nutshell.
I would add that, at least in the shell and verge, there are 3 planetary / system types to be found

1) Those like Meyers, which were established as FF Nodes and the locals found they had little choice -- these, like the Meyers PM noted, would be glad to be rid of OFS and the SL in a heartbeat if a suitable, mutually equitable treaty or local defense can be established.

2) Those like Saltash, which had internal conflict issues and after being under the OFS Proxies may now find a stronger reason to resolve their localized conflicts.

3) Those systems where the local populace has no say, but they do, of course, have a deep devotion to their Presidents for Life; (Said Prez for Life "may" be looking anxiously / hopefully for that SLN task force). Some of THOSE locals MAY make the Prez for Life see an "end-of-life" scenario.

-- Stewart

Weird Harold wrote:The Commerce raiding portion of Lacoon II and the concurrent commerce protection from SLN Raiding is the plan as hinted at in textev for fragmenting and peeling away sectors and systems.

The kind of major attacks with heavy task forces espoused by Relax is exactly the kind of strategy that will engender revanchism and long-term strategies of revenge on the GA.

In the immediate future, Frontier Fleet is going to be the source of resistance and conflict. Taking out Frontier Fleet bases and liberating protectorates (a la Meyers and the Madras sector) in conjunction with maximal disruption of trade to Solarian League systems (and protection of non-league systems' trade) is going to cut the SLN's purse strings and encourage the systems with the least tradition of being "Solarian" to secede.

Mandarin/SLN attempts to block secessions and reclaim protectorates and shell systems will encourage others to abandon the league in protest.

In short, the "small ship war" is going to be the primary line of attack with Wallers only really involved in taking sector headquarters and (non-league) hard targets like Yildin.

What you say is entirely reasonable. Unfortunately, that's not what the thread was intended to be about. The topic of the thread was, if you were going to attack the League in force, how would you do it? That's why people have been focusing on that. I see it as more of a What If topic.