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I predict that the Solarian League will survive.

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I predict that the Solarian League will survive.
Post by ThisName1   » Thu Aug 03, 2017 12:28 am

ThisName1
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This prediction is based on the fact that things are going well for the Mesan Alignment but not perfectly. So far it seems that there is always a wrench in the gears somewhere for all the major MA plans. They succeed in their biggest goals but are never quite perfect.

They've had to set all their final plans in motion early due to the discovery of the talbott terminus and the new proximity of Manticore. That's the biggest wrench.

They had to launch oyster bay early using the wrong ships, but it went off perfectly. But their navy isn't as far along as its supposed to be.

The Battle of Monica killed their plans to kick the manties out of talbott but did start the ball rolling on getting manticore and the league shooting at each other. So partial success.

The plan to foment rebellion with fake promises of manticoran assistance in the verge was succeeding perfectly until Manticore actually started providing the promised assistance, and now firebrand is captured. Another mostly successful operation.

They got most of their people off of mesa before the GA showed up, but did have to kill a lot of the people they wanted to evac, and in a very high profile way. They even lost Albrecht Detweiler and his wife. But they still have their sons and are using the killings as another wedge between the League and the Manties in the court of public opinion. Yet another partial success.

This is all pure speculation but if this theme continues the league will shed systems, lose power, and prestige but survive. Under new management yes. Ad with a new, or at least heavily amended, constitution. But with enough power to act as a stabilizing force that will keep enough chaos down that the Renaissance Factor will not be able to grab as many worlds as they like.
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Re: I predict that the Solarian League will survive.
Post by kzt   » Thu Aug 03, 2017 12:32 am

kzt
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Monica wasn't about Talbott, it was about tech. The RMN would have needed a few months to crush everyone involved who hadn't mysteriously vanish she'd, but crush them they would.
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Re: I predict that the Solarian League will survive.
Post by ThisName1   » Thu Aug 03, 2017 12:50 am

ThisName1
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Your right. Point still stands though.
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Re: I predict that the Solarian League will survive.
Post by Weird Harold   » Thu Aug 03, 2017 1:12 am

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ThisName1 wrote:They've had to set all their final plans in motion early due to the discovery of the talbott terminus and the new proximity of Manticore. That's the biggest wrench.

They had to launch oyster bay early using the wrong ships, but it went off perfectly. But their navy isn't as far along as its supposed to be.


Actually, they didn't have do do either of those things. If they had simply stuck to the plan and waited for the Lenny Dets to work up, they could have executed the original Oyster Bay plan that included Haven's home fleet as well, they would have been just as successful if not more.

The only real threat to their secret wormhole network was the successful slave revolt on Congo/Torch. The attempted Eridani Edict violation using the PNE just made matters worse. Byng, Crandall, and Filareta just matters worse.

Rather than advance their timetable with half-baked improvisations, they could have gone into deep(er) hiding and let the new situation settle until they completely understood the dynamics.

Albrect and his clones aren't (weren't) nearly half as smart as they think they are.
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Answers! I got lots of answers!

(Now if I could just find the right questions.)
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Re: I predict that the Solarian League will survive.
Post by George J. Smith   » Thu Aug 03, 2017 3:45 am

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Weird Harold wrote:Actually, they didn't have do do either of those things. If they had simply stuck to the plan and waited for the Lenny Dets to work up, they could have executed the original Oyster Bay plan that included Haven's home fleet as well, they would have been just as successful if not more.

The only real threat to their secret wormhole network was the successful slave revolt on Congo/Torch. The attempted Eridani Edict violation using the PNE just made matters worse. Byng, Crandall, and Filareta just matters worse.

Rather than advance their timetable with half-baked improvisations, they could have gone into deep(er) hiding and let the new situation settle until they completely understood the dynamics.

Albrect and his clones aren't (weren't) nearly half as smart as they think they are.


ISTR that the reason for the accelerated evacuation of Mesa was the fear that a Manticoran fleet would arrive in orbit around Mesa within a short time and things the Detweilers wanted to keep under wraps would be exposed.

They were worried that MAlaign personnel would be discovered on Mesa and thus confirm what Manticore had been saying all along. They had to kill so many in the way they did because not every single MA person hidden amongst the general population of Mesa had the self destruct nannites.
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T&R
GJS

A man should live forever, or die in the attempt
Spider Robinson Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (1977) A voice is heard in Ramah
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Re: I predict that the Solarian League will survive.
Post by munroburton   » Thu Aug 03, 2017 9:04 am

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Probably not.

Honor Harrington wrote:We're going to have to demonstrate everything we've learned about deep-area raids instead of system-by-system advances. We're going to have to go after their military infrastructure. Take out their more modern and larger system defense components. Rip up their rear areas, wipe out their existing, obsolete fleet and its trained personnel, take out the shipyards they'd use to build new ships. In other words, we're going to have to go after them with everything we have, using every trick we've learned fighting Haven, and demonstrate that we can hurt them so badly that they have no choice but to sue for peace.

But even that won't be enough. We can blow up Solarian fleets every Tuesday for the next twenty years without delivering a genuine knockout blow to something the size of the League. The only way to actually defeat it - and to make sure that we've put a stake through its heart, and it doesn't just go away, build a new fleet, and then come back for vengeance a few years down the road - is to destroy it.

<snip>

So if we get into an all-out war with the League, our strategy is going to have to have a very definite political element. We'll have to make it clear that the war wasn't our idea. We'll have to drive home the notion that we're not after any sort of punitive peace, that we're not trying to annex any additional territory, that we have no desire to conduct reprisals against people who don't want to fight us. We need to tell them, every step of the way, that what we really want is a negotiated settlement... and at the same time, we have to hit the League as a whole so hard that the fracture lines already there under the surface open right up. We have to split the League into separate sectors, into successor states, none of which have the sheer size and concentrated industrial power and manpower of the present league. Successor states that are our size, or smaller.

<snip>

In other words, once we break the League militarily, once we splinter it into multiple, mutually independent star nations, we have to see to it that none of those star nations have any motive to fuse themselves back together and gang up on us all over again.


Does not bode well for the League.
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Re: I predict that the Solarian League will survive.
Post by Theemile   » Thu Aug 03, 2017 9:45 am

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George J. Smith wrote:
Weird Harold wrote:Actually, they didn't have do do either of those things. If they had simply stuck to the plan and waited for the Lenny Dets to work up, they could have executed the original Oyster Bay plan that included Haven's home fleet as well, they would have been just as successful if not more.

The only real threat to their secret wormhole network was the successful slave revolt on Congo/Torch. The attempted Eridani Edict violation using the PNE just made matters worse. Byng, Crandall, and Filareta just matters worse.

Rather than advance their timetable with half-baked improvisations, they could have gone into deep(er) hiding and let the new situation settle until they completely understood the dynamics.

Albrect and his clones aren't (weren't) nearly half as smart as they think they are.


ISTR that the reason for the accelerated evacuation of Mesa was the fear that a Manticoran fleet would arrive in orbit around Mesa within a short time and things the Detweilers wanted to keep under wraps would be exposed.


Sadly, before the Malign's continual stirring the pot, Mesa was 20-30 places down Manticore's target list. In 1918, the same reasons for Manticore ignoring the thorne in it side named Mesa which kept it from attacking Mesa for 200 years still existed. Despite Lynx giving them another avenue for attack, the Beowulf terminus and Visigoth wormhole had placed Mesa within 2 weeks of Manticore for centuries.

Manticore simply had better things on it's mind.

However, the Malign's plan required the Havenite sector power to attack the SL and force it's breakup, while being destroyed in the process, leaving no intact powers to contest it's rise. But the Malign's hamfisted maneuvering brought them quickly up Manticore's list.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: I predict that the Solarian League will survive.
Post by Dilandu   » Thu Aug 03, 2017 11:02 am

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The situation is, that Manticora & Co could destroy the League - but they could not possibly CONTROL the chaos they would create. They are, simply speaking, are too small.
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Oh well, if shortening the front is what the Germans crave,
Let's shorten it to very end - the length of Fuhrer's grave.

(Red Army lyrics from 1945)
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Re: I predict that the Solarian League will survive.
Post by Jonathan_S   » Thu Aug 03, 2017 11:23 am

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Theemile wrote:Sadly, before the Malign's continual stirring the pot, Mesa was 20-30 places down Manticore's target list. In 1918, the same reasons for Manticore ignoring the thorne in it side named Mesa which kept it from attacking Mesa for 200 years still existed. Despite Lynx giving them another avenue for attack, the Beowulf terminus and Visigoth wormhole had placed Mesa within 2 weeks of Manticore for centuries.

Manticore simply had better things on it's mind.

Though to be fair Beowulf through Visigoth is a politically charged invasion route. Sure Mesa is an outlaw system, not part of the League, but while Manticore could argue that legally the Beowulf terminus is Manticoran territory so warships transiting it and heading away from Beowulf never entered the territorial space of a League member sytsem, Visigoth is also a League member and unlikely to grant permission for an RMN invasion force to use their sovereign terminus to access Mesa. (And even less likely to allow long term usage to, for example, allow Manticore to mount a standing anti-slavery patrol right on the edge of Mesa territorial space)

So while, physically Manticore was 2 weeks or whatever away from Mesa for centuries, Mesa could be reasonable comfortable that that route was unlikely to be exploited. If Manticore had gone after them I'm reasonable confident they would have taken the long way through hyper to minimize diplomatic issues with the League. In contrast, the Lynx terminus, being Manticoran sovereign territory has no such legal / diplomatic encumbrances should they choose to use it to harass or invade Mesa.


Still I agree that if the MAlign hadn't been stirring the pot so hard Manticore would have been unlikely to use Lynx to move aggressively against Mesa.
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Re: I predict that the Solarian League will survive.
Post by PeterZ   » Thu Aug 03, 2017 11:42 am

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Where will the chaos happen? The Core League worlds can survive the economic chaos. The political chaos outside the Core won't do much to prevent the world's within the Core from regaining their balance.

The Shell will have the same opportunity as the Core, but with less resources to retool as quickly. Disruptions in the Protectorates will derail some of their efforts but not all.

It is the Protectorates and the Verge that will become chaos. The GA can control them. They can't do it easily but they can do it. After all, the GA and Manticore in particular hold the sling that slew Goliath. It's is their stubborn refusal to bend a knee to the League that began the League's decline and eventual fall. That reputation will carry weight beyond the Core and Shell. That reputation will let them facilitate governments to organize in most places. Haven's manpower will further help tamp down the violence in more places. The threat of the GA's departure to allow the transstellars return will smooth over any residual violent passions.

I am sure there will be some systems hat will insist on some form of despotism or another. Leave them to their own devices and help those that choose in accordance with the GA's values.

Dilandu wrote:The situation is, that Manticora & Co could destroy the League - but they could not possibly CONTROL the chaos they would create. They are, simply speaking, are too small.
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