The Grand Alliance Grand Attack

It is possible that Mike sent part of her fleet to come out relative to the Mesa-Visigoth wormhole terminus (on the Mesa side) and we have only been shown the initial detection of the main part of it dropping in on the direct line from Meyers to Mesa. That would make sense if she wanted to quickly both isolate Mesa from any traffic through the wormhole and capture as much of the starships already at Mesa and at least the first few that come through the wormhole.
She would not have to have simultanious appearences of both forces though that would be the optimum tactic as she is not expecting anything that can stand up to her wallers or her LAC force. It would be even better to drop a number of light units at different points outside the Mesa hyperlimit as a net with a better chance of catching mostly merchant traffic- primarily slavers- exiting the system on normal business. There should be a way to track and calculate the optimal routes for merchant shipping to other inhabited systems in the area. In most cases, a DD would be more than sufficent to stop a merchant or even two if you are in front of them relative to hyper limit

Brigade XO wrote:It is possible that Mike sent part of her fleet to come out relative to the Mesa-Visigoth wormhole terminus (on the Mesa side) and we have only been shown the initial detection of the main part of it dropping in on the direct line from Meyers to Mesa. That would make sense if she wanted to quickly both isolate Mesa from any traffic through the wormhole and capture as much of the starships already at Mesa and at least the first few that come through the wormhole.
She would not have to have simultanious appearences of both forces though that would be the optimum tactic as she is not expecting anything that can stand up to her wallers or her LAC force. It would be even better to drop a number of light units at different points outside the Mesa hyperlimit as a net with a better chance of catching mostly merchant traffic- primarily slavers- exiting the system on normal business. There should be a way to track and calculate the optimal routes for merchant shipping to other inhabited systems in the area. In most cases, a DD would be more than sufficent to stop a merchant or even two if you are in front of them relative to hyper limit

That brought to mind an interesting bit we don't know yet. Current "RMN scouting doctrine" is to slip a DD into near space to get a scouting report of all known ships, etc. and then set the battle space to their liking once that ship hypers back up and delivers the mail, so to say.

I wonder if that gives 10th Fleet any clues about 'which ships hyper'd out when relative to Houdini. I also think she'd dispatch at least a DD or courier through to Visigoth from Mesa if they don't already have a good picture in that system. I don't think Visigoth is going to automatically blow every RMN ship out of space upon arrival, even if they are partially MAlign because that invites the rest of the RMN to come for a visit.

SharkHunter wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:It is possible that Mike sent part of her fleet to come out relative to the Mesa-Visigoth wormhole terminus (on the Mesa side) and we have only been shown the initial detection of the main part of it dropping in on the direct line from Meyers to Mesa. That would make sense if she wanted to quickly both isolate Mesa from any traffic through the wormhole and capture as much of the starships already at Mesa and at least the first few that come through the wormhole.
She would not have to have simultanious appearences of both forces though that would be the optimum tactic as she is not expecting anything that can stand up to her wallers or her LAC force. It would be even better to drop a number of light units at different points outside the Mesa hyperlimit as a net with a better chance of catching mostly merchant traffic- primarily slavers- exiting the system on normal business. There should be a way to track and calculate the optimal routes for merchant shipping to other inhabited systems in the area. In most cases, a DD would be more than sufficent to stop a merchant or even two if you are in front of them relative to hyper limit

That brought to mind an interesting bit we don't know yet. Current "RMN scouting doctrine" is to slip a DD into near space to get a scouting report of all known ships, etc. and then set the battle space to their liking once that ship hypers back up and delivers the mail, so to say.

I wonder if that gives 10th Fleet any clues about 'which ships hyper'd out when relative to Houdini. I also think she'd dispatch at least a DD or courier through to Visigoth from Mesa if they don't already have a good picture in that system. I don't think Visigoth is going to automatically blow every RMN ship out of space upon arrival, even if they are partially MAlign because that invites the rest of the RMN to come for a visit.

I suppose they could have risked a destroyer in a higher hyperspace band, so that it arrives earlier. But the Houdini movements were aboard regular merchant traffic. Why should a destroyer scouting for military forces pay any attention to them. And even if they go over the records, what could they see. Heavy Merchant traffic departing in all directions, which is to be expected in Mesa. Even some fancy/armed/stealthed mysterious private yacht would not be that unusual for Mesa. I would assume various big cheeses at Manpower have them just to show how important they are. And there should be plenty of departing traffic considering the unstable situation on Mesa.

I think it is going to take a pretty good break in the intel department for the GA to make a lot of sense of what is going on at Mesa.

To be sure, we know the rats are abandoning the sinking ship, but to where and what are the specifics on the how?

There is one possibility we have already discussed which is that Zach and Gail will fall into alliance hands.

Then there is the question of how much sense that our pet wizards, Anton and Victor, will be able to make of what is happening on Mesa at the moment.

I do think that there is a good chance of getting that break. Houdini was too hastily organized and sloppy to avoid leaving clues behind.

Don

--snipping--

Torlek wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:...That brought to mind an interesting bit we don't know yet. Current "RMN scouting doctrine" is to slip a DD into near space to get a scouting report of all known ships, etc. and then set the battle space to their liking once that ship hypers back up and delivers the mail, so to say.

I wonder if that gives 10th Fleet any clues about 'which ships hyper'd out when relative to Houdini. I also think she'd dispatch at least a DD or courier through to Visigoth from Mesa if they don't already have a good picture in that system. I don't think Visigoth is going to automatically blow every RMN ship out of space upon arrival, even if they are partially MAlign because that invites the rest of the RMN to come for a visit.

I suppose they could have risked a destroyer in a higher hyperspace band, so that it arrives earlier. But the Houdini movements were aboard regular merchant traffic. Why should a destroyer scouting for military forces pay any attention to them. And even if they go over the records, what could they see. Heavy Merchant traffic departing in all directions, which is to be expected in Mesa...

--end snips--

I am going to respectfully disagree. In conjunction with the fact the Cachat and Zilwicki are on planet, Mesa Traffic Control definitely has records, and there's only a number of destinations Houdini can head for, and a limited number of hyper'd out ships. With 30,000 ish people disappearing, they didn't all ship out on a few merchant hulls, there's likely to have been some passenger liners in the mix. Consider how many passenger bus and ocean liner traffics you'd have to track from pre-1989 Moscow to pretty anywhere to figure out where big groups of people had headed towards, and yes, I know that Moscow is landlocked. That's the point. Large groups of people didn't visit and leave Mesa normally.

SharkHunter wrote:I am going to respectfully disagree. In conjunction with the fact the Cachat and Zilwicki are on planet, Mesa Traffic Control definitely has records, and there's only a number of destinations Houdini can head for, and a limited number of hyper'd out ships. With 30,000 ish people disappearing, they didn't all ship out on a few merchant hulls, there's likely to have been some passenger liners in the mix.

It's terrible how , once again, some darn computer attack has blown up all the official computer systems. Just like happened after green pines, so it was probably those ballroom terrorists again.

SharkHunter wrote:--snipping--
I am going to respectfully disagree. In conjunction with the fact the Cachat and Zilwicki are on planet, Mesa Traffic Control definitely has records, and there's only a number of destinations Houdini can head for, and a limited number of hyper'd out ships. With 30,000 ish people disappearing, they didn't all ship out on a few merchant hulls, there's likely to have been some passenger liners in the mix. Consider how many passenger bus and ocean liner traffics you'd have to track from pre-1989 Moscow to pretty anywhere to figure out where big groups of people had headed towards, and yes, I know that Moscow is landlocked. That's the point. Large groups of people didn't visit and leave Mesa normally.

Okay 30.000 departures. Assuming average group size of 6 (Zach and Gails group was 6 people IIRC). So 5000 groups. The Second Havenite-Manticoran War ended in May 1922 (which triggered Houdini) and the mystery fleet arrived in October of that year. Lets just assume that groups were departing for 3 months. That would mean 56 groups a day.
The question is: Are there 56 suitable vessels departing everyday from Mesa, without changing traffic patterns. Since I just have misplaced my copy of the official traffic statistics published by the Mesan astro control, I give you these numbers. The Port of Hamburg (Germany) has on average about 27 departures a day, while the Airport of Houston (Texas) has on average about a 1000 departures a day (source wikipedia numbers are rounded).

Torlek wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:--snipping--
I am going to respectfully disagree. In conjunction with the fact the Cachat and Zilwicki are on planet, Mesa Traffic Control definitely has records, and there's only a number of destinations Houdini can head for, and a limited number of hyper'd out ships. With 30,000 ish people disappearing, they didn't all ship out on a few merchant hulls, there's likely to have been some passenger liners in the mix. Consider how many passenger bus and ocean liner traffics you'd have to track from pre-1989 Moscow to pretty anywhere to figure out where big groups of people had headed towards, and yes, I know that Moscow is landlocked. That's the point. Large groups of people didn't visit and leave Mesa normally.

Okay 30.000 departures. Assuming average group size of 6 (Zach and Gails group was 6 people IIRC). So 5000 groups. The Second Havenite-Manticoran War ended in May 1922 (which triggered Houdini) and the mystery fleet arrived in October of that year. Lets just assume that groups were departing for 3 months. That would mean 56 groups a day.
The question is: Are there 56 suitable vessels departing everyday from Mesa, without changing traffic patterns. Since I just have misplaced my copy of the official traffic statistics published by the Mesan astro control, I give you these numbers. The Port of Hamburg (Germany) has on average about 27 departures a day, while the Airport of Houston (Texas) has on average about a 1000 departures a day (source wikipedia numbers are rounded).

-------------------

If (1) the records of the departed do not show on passenger manifests (and I'll bet they don't) and (2)they are officially dearly departed (per Mesan records with few / no inquiring kin asking questions) and (3) the departures have been stretched over 3 to 6 months,
then
(A) Only Zilwicki's analysis (or similar) will detect the departures at all and (B) only an chance interception, such as a possible Torch interception of evacuees freed of their GAUL "protectors" will SHOW the evidence.

All leading to a "not likely" result.
I still think Zach and Gail will be intercepted and survive, but that's up to "tum te tum tum"

-- Stewart

I don't think you would be able to identiby highly stealthed ships and yachts in or moving around/leaving the Mesa system.
That would be primarily because they would not be using said stealth gear. Why bother? All it would do is call attention to themselves from the System tactical net/SDF. They also have no reason to be slinking around. You apparently can't yet identify Streak Drive ships just from visuals and there is no reason for the Alignment to put any Spider Drive ship anywhere near the Mesa system.

Traffic to and from the Mesa system has the option of the Mesa-Visigoth wormhole or just heading out in whatever direction is best for it's next or 1st destination on whatever business it is on.
I don't recall any discripton of Visigoth actually stopping and searching ships comming through from Mesa for slaves so any of the Houdini people who are being sent on ships with slave cargos are going to be a fairly good cover, especially if you only add two or four Houdini's plus a GAUL to any given ship. Heck, if the Alignment didn't use public transport from surface to station and just used private shuttles w/o bothering to list the escapees as passengers then you can move them off world and onto a cargo ship without all that bothersome paperwork that would let them be tracked.
There have to be places that ships come from or go to on a regular basis at Mesa through hyperspace. They don't have to be on any particular schedule, just the best direction (and that changes with planetary movement) and there is no reason why a ship can't head out as if it were going to the 123 System and change course a suitable time after it enters hyperspace. If I were taking a load of slaves somewhere, that is what I would do. Who is going to check (to this point) from the government of Mesa? Freighters also can carry passengers. They probably even do it on a regular basis and at a level of more than the occasional one or two. Depends on where ships are going and, typicaly, how often other scheduled transport goes- and how it goes- to the same points. It is not unususal now for what are essentily cargo boats to carry passengers to points on Earth's oceans without regular scheduled passenger service or where that service is infrequent.
Given the amount of potential space available on your average Honorverse freighter, they could easily have room for 10 to 20 people given that they are going to have (and want to have) plenty of available environmental capacity and support such as food. If you have a bunch of somwhat shady ships calling at Mesa all the time (slave transports etc) it would be relatively easy to put several people on even a non-slaving ship just by transfering them in regular cargo/supply lighters.

Brigade XO wrote:I don't think you would be able to identiby highly stealthed ships and yachts in or moving around/leaving the Mesa system.
That would be primarily because they would not be using said stealth gear. Why bother? All it would do is call attention to themselves from the System tactical net/SDF. They also have no reason to be slinking around. You apparently can't yet identify Streak Drive ships just from visuals and there is no reason for the Alignment to put any Spider Drive ship anywhere near the Mesa system.

Traffic to and from the Mesa system has the option of the Mesa-Visigoth wormhole or just heading out in whatever direction is best for it's next or 1st destination on whatever business it is on.
I don't recall any discripton of Visigoth actually stopping and searching ships comming through from Mesa for slaves so any of the Houdini people who are being sent on ships with slave cargos are going to be a fairly good cover, especially if you only add two or four Houdini's plus a GAUL to any given ship. Heck, if the Alignment didn't use public transport from surface to station and just used private shuttles w/o bothering to list the escapees as passengers then you can move them off world and onto a cargo ship without all that bothersome paperwork that would let them be tracked.
There have to be places that ships come from or go to on a regular basis at Mesa through hyperspace. They don't have to be on any particular schedule, just the best direction (and that changes with planetary movement) and there is no reason why a ship can't head out as if it were going to the 123 System and change course a suitable time after it enters hyperspace. If I were taking a load of slaves somewhere, that is what I would do. Who is going to check (to this point) from the government of Mesa? Freighters also can carry passengers. They probably even do it on a regular basis and at a level of more than the occasional one or two. Depends on where ships are going and, typicaly, how often other scheduled transport goes- and how it goes- to the same points. It is not unususal now for what are essentily cargo boats to carry passengers to points on Earth's oceans without regular scheduled passenger service or where that service is infrequent.
Given the amount of potential space available on your average Honorverse freighter, they could easily have room for 10 to 20 people given that they are going to have (and want to have) plenty of available environmental capacity and support such as food. If you have a bunch of somwhat shady ships calling at Mesa all the time (slave transports etc) it would be relatively easy to put several people on even a non-slaving ship just by transfering them in regular cargo/supply lighters.

We do that that the shipping pattens were detectable. In CoG we have textev that the controllers on Balescu station noted the large increase in traffic. This indicates that there is something that Anton will be able to sift out of the background.