The Alignment's Next Step

Starting a different take on this thread: just reread Mission of Honor because it has huge chunks of Detweiler's thought processes, what's next for the RF, even suggestions for how one of the RF worlds is supposed to 'delicately coopt' a neighbor when things go into the tank when the verge erupts...

MoH also mentions a whole lot of other "sector governors" following the Maya example and pulling out of the league... except that those other sectors are anticipated to be RF controlled.

Which... brought me back to why Damian Harahap has been trying to light the Verge on fire... trouble is Henke's hammer bearers (Zavala and Terekhov, et. al) have been smashing that plan -- and supporting the Verge worlds before the RF has a chance to step in and save the day.

So... who do you trust... the folks that stepped in when they didn't have to, have a reputation for the square deal, or the folks who lit the fire and then pretend to arrive to clean it up? Hmmm. Dang Manties are screwing up all the MAlign plans, simply by continuing to act honorably...

Of course, this is the HonorVerse...

SharkHunter wrote:Starting a different take on this thread: just reread Mission of Honor because it has huge chunks of Detweiler's thought processes, what's next for the RF, even suggestions for how one of the RF worlds is supposed to 'delicately coopt' a neighbor when things go into the tank when the verge erupts...

MoH also mentions a whole lot of other "sector governors" following the Maya example and pulling out of the league... except that those other sectors are anticipated to be RF controlled.

Which... brought me back to why Damian Harahap has been trying to light the Verge on fire... trouble is Henke's hammer bearers (Zavala and Terekhov, et. al) have been smashing that plan -- and supporting the Verge worlds before the RF has a chance to step in and save the day.

So... who do you trust... the folks that stepped in when they didn't have to, have a reputation for the square deal, or the folks who lit the fire and then pretend to arrive to clean it up? Hmmm. Dang Manties are screwing up all the MAlign plans, simply by continuing to act honorably...

Of course, this is the HonorVerse...

The reason Damian Harahap & his fellows have been trying to set the Verge on fire is to promote the crisis that will lead to the SL breaking up. Also they have been laying the groundwork to blame Manticore for the unrest & to take the blame for not coming to the Verge's rescue. The RF would have been completely innocent in all of this & it is notable that all of the RF Systems have leaders & governments who have good reputations... at least on the outside.

As you say, it's not Damian Harahap's fault that he can't see that the Manties would behave honourably & not abandon the Verge Systems. After all the only systems he's experienced have been the SL & Mesan Alignment.

SharkHunter wrote:Starting a different take on this thread: just reread Mission of Honor because it has huge chunks of Detweiler's thought processes, what's next for the RF, even suggestions for how one of the RF worlds is supposed to 'delicately coopt' a neighbor when things go into the tank when the verge erupts...

MoH also mentions a whole lot of other "sector governors" following the Maya example and pulling out of the league... except that those other sectors are anticipated to be RF controlled.

Which... brought me back to why Damian Harahap has been trying to light the Verge on fire... trouble is Henke's hammer bearers (Zavala and Terekhov, et. al) have been smashing that plan -- and supporting the Verge worlds before the RF has a chance to step in and save the day.

So... who do you trust... the folks that stepped in when they didn't have to, have a reputation for the square deal, or the folks who lit the fire and then pretend to arrive to clean it up? Hmmm. Dang Manties are screwing up all the MAlign plans, simply by continuing to act honorably...

Of course, this is the HonorVerse...

How is the plan not working? From where I stand, things are going swimmingly. There are two possible outcomes here:

1. The Alliance ignores the independence movements that the Alignment has been stirring up. In which case, the Alliance gets its name smeared in the Verge, leaving them open to other possible patrons...like the Alignment.

2. The Alliance decides to help out the independece movements, just like Mike Henke has been doing. In which case, great! They're now forced to disperse a massive amount of firepower in order to support these now independent systems. And by having official RMN presence everywhere, it'll be pretty dang easy to sell to the Core worlds that the Alliance really is the aggressor.

Sounds like a win-win to me.

Rincewind wrote:As you say, it's not Damian Harahap's fault that he can't see that the Manties would behave honourably & not abandon the Verge Systems. After all the only systems he's experienced have been the SL & Mesan Alignment.

Well he mostly failed to anticipate that the Verge systems would succeed in setting up an independent communication channel to the Manties.

He never expected Manticore to learn about the rebels until after the rebellion failed and been crushed; only then would the fact that "Manticore" encouraged and then abandoned the rebellions would come out. As the sole message conduit between the rebels and "Manticore" he thought he was in a perfect position to ensure that no messages got through; unfortunately for him some rebels had more initiative and bypassed him to talk directly to the RMN.


Yes there are ways the MAlign can spin the actual Manticoran intervention to their benefit in the Core worlds; but they never planned on Manticore having a chance to intervene. Making Manticore the aggressors seems less usefore for the MAlign as branding them as untrustworthy allies who'd renege on their agreements. If they'd pulled that off the RF worlds would look much better, in comparison, for allies in a post-League universe. (Would you want to rely on someone who'd abandoned their friends before?)

Damian Harahap was initialy doing the same job for OFS that he is now doing for the Alignment. Of course, he doesn't actually know he is working for the Alignment but he is real sure he is working for Manpower ( somebody who is appearing to be much more than just a major corporation or perhaps an actual Transtellar who is becoming something more).

That he had been tasked by OFS to destabilize governments in the past is clear. That it was probably both to bring new governments in that were to be subsumed by either (or both) OFS or one (or more) Transtellars is also clear. What OFS wanted was to become the "protector" of any system with a more that hardscrabble economy and drain off the profits and anything else they could get their hands on to the OFS in general and the local OFS leadership and friends.

We have seen him think about working for his new boss and primarily thinking that the money is good and though the employer has changed they really don't seem to be any worse than OFS though perhaps they are actually thinking bigger. That is somewhat disturbing as it shows both an even worse image of OFS and a very callous apporch to causing massive damage and losses of life for political and ecomomic ends. And he doesn't really care as long as he gets paid and keeps his skin in one piece.

It is still possible that he may start wondering just how dangerous this is going to be to himself - in a fairly dangerous line of work already- when it is not just an OFS boss of high level flunky that could get him killed but that the leadership might easily sacrifice (or eliminate in covering things up) him and not think of it beyond "just business".

Duckk wrote:

feyhunde wrote:And there's a difference between ML plans, and what gets accomplished. I've mostly been concerned that the MAN seems to be built around a specific weapon which seems to have one single use despite plans for making an even bigger fleet. It strikes me it seems odd for a works once weapon.

Spider drive ships are no more "works once" ships than nuclear submarines today. Just because the Alliance knows the spider drive exists now doesn't obviate the difficulty in finding them.

Thinking more it makes sense to try and do any such EE violation under false flag anyway, since MWW has stated what the MA really wants is to be shown as right rather than exterminate baseline humanity.

And going around creating inexplicable genocidal attacks is exactly the sort of thing that twigs people to the existence of the MA. Using the spider drive ships to attack Solarian planets or infrastructure from empty space is going to immediately point out their existence to even the most dense Solarian. And using the Alignment's nanotech is even harder, because it can only do very simple, preprogrammed commands; so it cannot force someone to compute a fire plan targeting a planet and execute it. Using either of these would quickly prove the Alliance might be on to something. We've already got some people in the Solarian League starting to investigate those "outlandish, clearly fantastical" claims. Repeated, high profile usage of them will quickly prove them right.

This is the kind of thing that has always had me head scratching about the spider drive stuff. I have to assume there is more to them and their capabilities that we have not seen yet because as is they seem of questionable use especially now that manticore is yelling to the galaxy about a hidden group using this tech.

They are the only ones who have it so if the alignment starts using it the finger prints are going to go back to them and people start thinking manticore is onto something. If they use it to blow up worlds same thing. Same with their nano tech now people start suddenly doing things that make no sense starts getting people more closely examining the remains for this kind of attack.

So they have some pretty neat tech advantages but are in a position where they almost can't use them without at least partially coming out of the shadows. The more they use them the more their existence is proven and if they don't use them then it simply gives the alliance more time to reverse engineer it and counter measures for it.

Their time to make the most use of the capabilities is right now but given manticores shouting to the galaxy about it would be very hard for them to make effective use of them.

As much as it would hurt the alignments best plan may very well be go silent and go deep and simply go back into dormant mode for another few hundred years and try again.

kaid wrote:

Duckk wrote:Spider drive ships are no more "works once" ships than nuclear submarines today. Just because the Alliance knows the spider drive exists now doesn't obviate the difficulty in finding them.

And going around creating inexplicable genocidal attacks is exactly the sort of thing that twigs people to the existence of the MA. Using the spider drive ships to attack Solarian planets or infrastructure from empty space is going to immediately point out their existence to even the most dense Solarian. And using the Alignment's nanotech is even harder, because it can only do very simple, preprogrammed commands; so it cannot force someone to compute a fire plan targeting a planet and execute it. Using either of these would quickly prove the Alliance might be on to something. We've already got some people in the Solarian League starting to investigate those "outlandish, clearly fantastical" claims. Repeated, high profile usage of them will quickly prove them right.

This is the kind of thing that has always had me head scratching about the spider drive stuff. I have to assume there is more to them and their capabilities that we have not seen yet because as is they seem of questionable use especially now that manticore is yelling to the galaxy about a hidden group using this tech.

They are the only ones who have it so if the alignment starts using it the finger prints are going to go back to them and people start thinking manticore is onto something. If they use it to blow up worlds same thing. Same with their nano tech now people start suddenly doing things that make no sense starts getting people more closely examining the remains for this kind of attack.

So they have some pretty neat tech advantages but are in a position where they almost can't use them without at least partially coming out of the shadows. The more they use them the more their existence is proven and if they don't use them then it simply gives the alliance more time to reverse engineer it and counter measures for it.

Their time to make the most use of the capabilities is right now but given manticores shouting to the galaxy about it would be very hard for them to make effective use of them.

As much as it would hurt the alignments best plan may very well be go silent and go deep and simply go back into dormant mode for another few hundred years and try again.

forget about the lenny dets, a shark would make a good commerce raider. run up to a merchantman under stelth, and there is no way for them to see you.

darrell wrote:forget about the lenny dets, a shark would make a good commerce raider. run up to a merchantman under stelth, and there is no way for them to see you.

Most merchants can accelerate faster than a Shark, which means that the Shark would have to place itself somewhere along a path that a merchant is likely to take. As soon as it fires off a missile, it's given away its position. The obvious response is: there's a warship in stealth out there.

Systems without an adequate fleet capable of locating and taking on a Shark probably don't have enough merchant traffic to make it worth while, systems that do have enough traffic can also detect a hyper transit that's fairly close in, which is more time the Shark has to spend getting into position.

JohnRoth wrote:Most merchants can accelerate faster than a Shark, which means that the Shark would have to place itself somewhere along a path that a merchant is likely to take. As soon as it fires off a missile, it's given away its position. The obvious response is: there's a warship in stealth out there.

Systems without an adequate fleet capable of locating and taking on a Shark probably don't have enough merchant traffic to make it worth while, systems that do have enough traffic can also detect a hyper transit that's fairly close in, which is more time the Shark has to spend getting into position.

You use a graser torp. Just drop it off around where merchants drop in and out of hyper. It can just sit and wait for a customer whose course is within it's maneuvering window. The sign of the attack is the merchantman suddenly exploding as the graser pops the fusion reactor. Of course, this same attack will take down most warships too.

kzt wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:Most merchants can accelerate faster than a Shark, which means that the Shark would have to place itself somewhere along a path that a merchant is likely to take. As soon as it fires off a missile, it's given away its position. The obvious response is: there's a warship in stealth out there.

Systems without an adequate fleet capable of locating and taking on a Shark probably don't have enough merchant traffic to make it worth while, systems that do have enough traffic can also detect a hyper transit that's fairly close in, which is more time the Shark has to spend getting into position.

You use a graser torp. Just drop it off around where merchants drop in and out of hyper. It can just sit and wait for a customer whose course is within it's maneuvering window. The sign of the attack is the merchantman suddenly exploding as the graser pops the fusion reactor. Of course, this same attack will take down most warships too.

I think that would be massive overkill in terms of cost of the weapon to use against a merchant ship. Not to mention that the more times they use it the more chances that one will fall into the hands of the GA.