Operation Sanskrit - a minor doubt

--snipping--

Star Knight wrote:First, i dont see why you can just get info about Harrington. How much information you can get depends entirely on your intelligence assets.
Or as said, just guess. You have a confortable margin of error, Eighth Fleet will be deployed for a minimum of three weeks. As soon as they hypered out its too late to recall them.

Of course it is possible for things to go wrong and all, but what other option is there? If you miscalculate and Eighth Fleet shows up, you will probably be able to surrender anyway.

Second, the idea to trap Eighth Fleet as well was wrong in the first place. You dont have to destroy every fleet of the alliance to win the war. You win it by destroying the yards and taking the high orbits of Manticore. It is then irrelevant if there are hundreds of wallers left elsewhere. Assuming of course the GSN will continue to sit on its ass and not attack Haven...

Excellent points, though the "hundreds left" is too high a number. I also wonder if Beatrice was designed to take the high orbitals (something I'd always assumed), but in re-reading, here's a telling line:

At All Costs wrote:"But we cost them almost as many ships of the wall as we lost," he continued, "and if NavInt's estimates are accurate, we've got damned near three times as many of them as they do. Did. Not to mention the fact that we're about to take at least temporary control of their home star system away from them."

I take that to mean that Beatrice was strategically planned as a Basilisk/Zanzibar raid writ large, meaning that -- your example-- if 8th fleet was away to play at Jouett, etc., Tourville might have been able to reload his surviving ships while Chin holds down the fort, then return into the Manticoran Binary system and move to his desired points in space and signal Manticore "you have ____ minutes to abandon your fleet bases before we open fire", following which we'll have a delegation waiting at point Y to negotiate the cessation of hostilities according to OUR terms."

No RMN main yards, no Apollo production, game over.

SharkHunter wrote:Excellent points, though the "hundreds left" is too high a number.

Not really.
Alliance total before Manticore is some 350 SD(P) according to Honors 'Eighth Fleet has x% of Alliance total / Alliance actually available'.

This includes everything from the GSN Homefleet, IAN units undergoing refits/redeployment from Andermani territory, RMN units still working up, task forces deployed to other Alliance worlds and so on.


If you break it down it looks something like this when BoMa happens

RMN:
75 (RFC Chart) - 1 (Solon) - 11 (Zanzibar): 63
building: 35
redeployed: 12 (Lynx)
available: 86 (less if builings are not finished)
lost: 60 SD(P) (98 lost total, rest GSN/RMN)
remaining after BoMa: 38 (about 4 in Eighth Fleet, 12 at Lynx)

GSN:
115 (RFC Chart)
buildings: ?? (much, they Show up with some 150 during Second Manticore)
lost: 12 at Manticore
remaining: at least 103, but at least 50 SD(P) are being build

IAN:
132 building / refits
lost: 26 at Manticore
reamaining: 106 will be ready in the coming tmonths


Alliance total after BoMa: some 250 SD(P)

add the conventional SDs (i said wallers for a reason) and 'hundreds' is not too high at all.

What will happen if the Alliance Shows up at Haven with
100 conventional SD(P), 50 Apollo SD(P) and 200 SD?

I also wonder if Beatrice was designed to take the high orbitals (something I'd always assumed), but in re-reading, here's a telling line:

I dont really read anything into this. Temporary control of the star System means taking the high orbitals and destroying the fixed defenses. Just trashing the fleets and yards doesnt mean you control the system.

No RMN main yards, no Apollo production, game over.

With so many wallers deployed elsewhere the game really isnt over if the Alliance doesnt want to.
Even if Manticore surrenders it says nothing about other Alliance members.
How will they force the surrender of Trevors Star if they take Manticore? Just asking? Why should they comply? Honor just can declare her units as being under GSN command by assuming her GSN rank, so its not totally illegal even.
Itll take many weeks to assemble another task force to attack Eighth Fleet at Trevors Star.
What about Grayson? I would recall every waller i can reach to Yeltsin and assemble a powerfull fleet there.
It'll take some time but whats preventing me from attacking Haven in the long run?
I dont know about the White Haven Admiralty, but i'm sure the GSN has contingency plans for exactly this Scenario.

Thats what i dont really like about AAC. There are so many interesting possibilities but its just another ‘uh that was close, thank god for Honor’ story.

--snipping--

Star Knight wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Excellent points, though the "hundreds left" is too high a number.

Not really. I dont really read anything into this. Temporary control of the star System means taking the high orbitals and destroying the fixed defenses. Just trashing the fleets and yards doesnt mean you control the system.
...
Thats what i dont really like about AAC. There are so many interesting possibilities but its just another ‘uh that was close, thank god for Honor’ story.

--end snipping--

Her personal arrival means nothing, and it's the "press" that gives the Salamander all of the credit. Sure, she's a superior tactician, but she's not standing on a sandbag in space dismantling the enemy single handedly. It's how well her ships are trained, how well they follow that doctrine, and yeah, a not inordinate amount of luck that Honor isn't killed herself.

Keep in mind, originally RFC had Honor dying in the Battle of Manticore, likely with her in McKeons shoes. At the point in the battle where those lines were spoken, Eighth Fleet hadn't arrived, and even if Honor had been killed instead of McKeon; when the rest of the Apollo capable ships arrive, all of the RHN commanders know that likely any Haven ships in system will be toast, unless Chin nails them.

My personal opinion is that the RHN admiral knew that Haven was likely aware that they weren't going to get to the high orbitals because of system defense pods, but that with at least two of the main fleets out of commission and relative impunity to destroy the infrastructure, the war would have still effectively been over because the GSN and Andermani weren't producing Apollo yet.

All of that missile production was in the Home System, so the ONLY Apollo missiles left would have been what was already aboard, and per the post-Oyster Bay conversations, that wouldn't have been enough to capture Haven. So IF the desired battle sequence had occurred, no 8th fleet arrival, then Beatrice would have been strategically decisive enough for Pritchart government to offer reasonable terms which the Alliance would likely have had no choice but to accept.

What is interesting to me as an author is that this alternate sequence of events still allows the same playout re: the MAlign and the Solarian League. Oyster Bay did what the Battle of Manticore did not, and Cachat/Zilwicki's arrival with Simoes still would have turned Haven towards allegiance with their former enemy. Nothing in the Talbott system changes at all, aka 10th Fleet's battle sequences are unchanged. Perhaps Oyster Bay might have been used to take out Capitol Fleet instead?

The key strategic fact in PD 1922 is still that no one outside the highest echelons of the RHN knows where Bolthole is located.

SharkHunter wrote:--snipping--
The key strategic fact in PD 1922 is still that no one outside the highest echelons of the RHN knows where Bolthole is located.

This is indeed the key strategic fact. And the one that has to most worry the Malign upper echelons. As long as they don't know where Bolthole is, and given that Manticore and Haven are going to be cooperating in running Bolthole henceforth, there is ALWAYS going to be a large fleet capable of dismantling anything they can do. There biggest asset was being able to hide in the shadows, and now that that cover has been blown, they have serious problems. The only real asset they have left is the fact that the GA doesn't know about the RF - the Lenny Detweilers will be a powerful weapon when they get them built, but the loss of even one of them will effectively negate them because it will give the GA too much information about their capabilities, and if you only use them in situations where you can be sure nothing will get away, you will almost never be able to use them at all.

SharkHunter wrote:The key strategic fact in PD 1922 is still that no one outside the highest echelons of the RHN knows where Bolthole is located.

Really? Do you think they have the President of the Republic of Haven as the astrogator on all the ships running to and from bolthole?

kzt wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:The key strategic fact in PD 1922 is still that no one outside the highest echelons of the RHN knows where Bolthole is located.

Really? Do you think they have the President of the Republic of Haven as the astrogator on all the ships running to and from bolthole?

I said the highest echelons of the RHN, not RoH, aka Navy vs. civilian. I think you're objecting to the fact that with all of the ships produced, there's a alot more people who do know, correct? Except that I'd assume that the RMN went over Tourville's ships (and likely crews) with a fine tooth comb looking for clues, I might agree.

My assumption is that the SD(p)s and other ships are probably "assembled" into task groups and formations at a separate and more useful staging location after construction, much as the RMN's new ship types for Buttercup & Cutworm/Sanskrit were built elsewhere, delivered via hyperspace, and exercised up at their staging point at Trevor's Star.

SharkHunter wrote:My assumption is that the SD(p)s and other ships are probably "assembled" into task groups and formations at a separate and more useful staging location after construction, much as the RMN's new ship types for Buttercup & Cutworm/Sanskrit were built elsewhere, delivered via hyperspace, and exercised up at their staging point at Trevor's Star.

Pretty much. Senior leadership doesn't have time to personally navigate each of the hundreds of ships.

They have a scene in one of the books showing, iirc, Sharon working up a fleet at bolthole and being told by the senior leadership that she would not command it.

kzt wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:My assumption is that the SD(p)s and other ships are probably "assembled" into task groups and formations at a separate and more useful staging location after construction, much as the RMN's new ship types for Buttercup & Cutworm/Sanskrit were built elsewhere, delivered via hyperspace, and exercised up at their staging point at Trevor's Star.

Pretty much. Senior leadership doesn't have time to personally navigate each of the hundreds of ships.

They have a scene in one of the books showing, iirc, Sharon working up a fleet at bolthole and being told by the senior leadership that she would not command it.

Just a point of clarification: I think you meant Shannon.

Don