Snoop ships... vs. the MA.

kzt wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Meanwhile the dozen or so crew members that matter are up to something else besides moving freight entirely. Thoughts?

Every agent or intel officer you put in the field is someone else who can make a mistake or just have a very bad day. Guess what happens next?

Torlek wrote:

Torlek wrote:Personally I think Houdini will start leaking like a sieve:
1. The number 1 protection of Houdini, was that nobody was looking for disappeared people. As of CoG Zilwick and Victor have suspicions. If and when they start digging, they will find something. Especially since the whole intelligence communities of Haven, Manticore and Beowulf are desperate for new leads and will help.
2. Internal dissent will be a huge problem. Most of the disappeared people are not to happy with their situation. When the reality of the MAs plan or what happened to Mesa (like for example murdering their spouses to cover their disappearance) hits them, that problem will get even worse. A few successful defections would be enough to cripple Houdini.
3. They used slavers to transport their people at least in part. Those slavers are all of a sudden unemployed, all of a sudden the SL seems to be a lot more eager, when it comes to space slavers, because the MA is cleaning house, Torch is getting really active, when it comes to slaver hunting and they are hardly loyal to the MA. Some could decide to trade the information about those mysterious passengers, which they took away from Mesa just before the arrival of the RMN, for a nice stay in a Manticorian low security prison.
4. The final implementation was rushed. Somewhere something is bound to go wrong.

tldr: Houdini is too big, too complex and too rushed. We saw the first hints of a leak. There will be more.

Zakharra wrote: It's working so far. There are some problems with your points though.
1. It's going to be hard to figure out who is truly vanished and who is dead. With as much destruction that happened, identifying the bodies of the dead is going to be a horrendous chore and prone to missing more than a few. Some of the people those two will think might have vanished will be dead because they were deemed unusable by the MAlign.

2. I am sure a lot of them will be distraught at first. But where would they be able to defect/inform outsiders of what has happened? They are going to be watched every moment of every day until they are in the Darius system. It's going to be very difficult to try and do anything but obey orders and if they are kept aboard ship the entire time, the chances of them informing/escaping drop dramatically.

3. The MAlign likely already has plans for that and would find ways to silence the ship crews. There will be no slavers spilling information because they will likely be dead.

4. The timing was rushed, but the protocols for dealing with crews and incoming refugees would already be in place.

Sure they will be able to deal with dissenters and other people who know to much. Most of the time at least. Even 99% of the time. But let say 1 person succeeds in defecting. Points the GA to one Renaissance factor base, which gets visited by some SDs. After the wreckage cools the go through the data banks and find the location of some other RFs bases. Rinse in repeat.
The problem with keeping a secret (and somebody with sufficient resources and determination is trying to crack the secret) is that you have to be perfect.
The even bigger problem is time. They will have to keep the secret for years. Until they have strong enough naval forces that keeping the secret does not matter anymore.

SWM wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Do you really care how he's flagged if he's "not a(n) obvious Manty shill? And those swarthy crewmen, their accents are all wrong, blah blah blah, and his manifest show he's trading with my neighbors...

The guy who wants to contract with the ship might not care (but he very well might care). But I guarantee that the manager of the station that the ship docks at DOES care how he is flagged and that his papers are in order. No legitimate trading station is going to allow a ship claiming to be Silesia flagged to dock, since there is no government of Silesia to flag them.

SharkHunter wrote:If word hasn't got out about the change of management in the Madras sector, then you could route some of your tricksters through that area implying that this is one of Verrochio's new pet deals, etc.

Weird Harold wrote:Nitpick: The management of the Maya sector hasn't and isn't changing. What is changing is the Allegiance of that management from "Loyal Sepoy" to "Independent Nation."

Also, if word hasn't gotten out about the change in allegiance, "Maya Sector shipping" still is "SL shipping" and blocked from using the Wormhole Network. In order for "snoop-ships" to use Maya registry and the Wormhole Network, the word has to get out to the GA (which already suspects) and inevitably out to the Solarian League when Mayan shipping avoids commerce raiders and uses wormholes.

At that point, it would be wise for Barregos to join the GA or at least open negotiations for mutual defense treaties.

JeffEngel wrote:Maya Sector ships may be nominally purchased by - oh, pick any flag of convenience you like - to evade the Solarian ban on wormhole use. That would satisfy the formalities and may be slow enough to get back to Earth until it's too late.

Weird Harold wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:If word hasn't got out about the change of management in the Madras sector, then you could route some of your tricksters through that area implying that this is one of Verrochio's new pet deals, etc.

Nitpick: The management of the Maya sector hasn't and isn't changing. What is changing is the Allegiance of that management from "Loyal Sepoy" to "Independent Nation."

Also, if word hasn't gotten out about the change in allegiance, "Maya Sector shipping" still is "SL shipping" and blocked from using the Wormhole Network. In order for "snoop-ships" to use Maya registry and the Wormhole Network, the word has to get out to the GA (which already suspects) and inevitably out to the Solarian League when Mayan shipping avoids commerce raiders and uses wormholes.

At that point, it would be wise for Barregos to join the GA or at least open negotiations for mutual defense treaties.

Weird Harold wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Maya Sector ships may be nominally purchased by - oh, pick any flag of convenience you like - to evade the Solarian ban on wormhole use. That would satisfy the formalities and may be slow enough to get back to Earth until it's too late.

It is a Manticoran/GA ban of Solarian shipping. The League isn't in a position to ban Manticoran or GA shipping although they probably have issued a ban on the remote chance they might gain control of a Wormhole someplace.

SWM wrote:Sharkhunter said and almost certainly meant Madras Sector, not Maya sector. He's not talking about Barregos, he's talking about the systems that Henke is sweeping through.

SharkHunter wrote:They bring their intel back to either the CoG fellows, Tenth Fleet, or Patricia Givens in ONI who correlates the findings and formulates plans. Or a commodorish type in the area gets dispatched to investigate.