SPOILER end of the MA

PeterZ wrote:I would like to repeat that the MAlign works under similar economic constraints as the GA. Darius is a single system economy. Unless it trades actively, it's growth is limited by productivity and population.

The MA has the RF for financial assistance and then there are likely investments in dozens of systems that are helping with the financial situation. Wouldn't it make the MA the most incompetent bunch of bad guys if they spend 500 years planning this big event and didn't plan for the finances?

There is only so much that a single system can produce. The GA will has more than 300 systems at the end of UH. When we next visit the Honorverse, that Alliance will likely have in excess of 500. At least 50-60 of the 200 or so incremental systems will be Core world's that have associated historically with Beowulf. Darius alone can't compete with that.

Darius is not alone, they have the RF. How many core systems will remain in the league and how many will go with the GA?

How many systems does the MA have? And do the leader of the GA know how many systems the MA has or do they make assumption on faulty intelligence?

If they remain in solitude, they won't ever pose an existential threat to the GA nations.

What if they use the boogeyman of the MA to force systems into the arms of the RF?

My point is that we know that Darius has a population of ~3 billion people and it is a single system. We know that the RF is part of the MA with probably another 30-60 billion people and a very powerful economy. What the GA knows is quite different.

What happens if a few dozen shell and core systems join up with the RF and inadvertently help fund the MA?

The more they cooperate with the RF, the greater the chances they will be discovered. Unless they cooperate at significant levels, the combination of the MAlign and RF won't be able to defeat the GA. The more agents they send in to the GA, the greater the chance that such an agent will be caught and the nanos countered. It'll take many autopsies. However, if the MAlign sends enough agents, Beowulf will figure it out one autopsy at a time.

So? If your agents don't know much of value what are they going to tell the GA? If you make sure that those individuals don't now about Darius or the RF they won't be of value. What do you think will happen? That the MA will fully brief their agents on their plans and then send them out?

Darius, then can't completely dive into a black hole and disappear. They have to find that balance of espionage, economic cooperation and military coordination with the RF. That means they will leave bread crumbs for someone -Plays with Fire and Fire Watch- to look for.

If the MA are careful and stop rushing operations they could get away with it for a long time... Space is large and the GA apparently has only 4 intelligence agents worth being called intelligence agents, there are few of them and a lot of space to cover.

Joat42 wrote:Not really, I usually refer to myself as a pessimistic optimist but I'm also a realist. Just going for the biggest, most expensive hammer is not always the best solution.

It is if you don't know the severity of the threat.

Your expectations on what navy the SEM can realistically build and support is way out of proportion what its population are prepared to pay for, and had they proceeded with building up the navy after the SL was "defeated" I can guarantee that the current administration would be out of a job very quickly and be replaced with an administration more amenable to the peoples will.

And I would like to suggest that the will of the people would be made in the shadow of the MA murdering 7 million of their countrymen and 50+ million people of their closest allies BY the MA not the League. I would venture a guess that the MA is in the forefront everyones fears. The war with the League amounted to 5 million Solarian casualties and less then 4,000 GA casualties. The war with the MA cost 70+ million innocent civilians their lives at the cost of a few dozen agents. Who do you think the people would be more afraid of?

From the book it's evident that there is no immediate danger of naval attacks from the MAlign for a very long time. Their plan didn't work out as they expected but taking that as proof they are going to pursue active naval engagements with the SEM/GA is quite a jump.

Their plan didn't work out as they expected but taking that as proof they are NOT going to pursue active naval engagements with the SEM/GA is quite a jump.

And if you had bothered yourself with thinking a bit you would soon realize that so far the MAlign has only engaged in asymmetric or proxy warfare. You can pour extreme amounts of money and resources into trying protecting yourself 100% against that - but it would ultimately be futile and ruinous.

And what if the MA engaged in asymmetric warfare because they thought they could get away with it? Or because ti fit within their plans? Does that automatically mean that they don't have the means to go to military offensive?

pappilon wrote:
They came out exactly once in what ...600 years, 1000? And then only because of the totally unexpected. Operation Beatrice happened, and they saw an opportunity to advance their plan by 20 years. As it turned out it failed spectacularly and their plan is now ashes.

They have no timetable, they are not looking to conquer the galaxy, or the Solaran League or even Torch. They can play the long game and make another 600 year plan and pull a mountain over their little rabbit hole. You can't beat an idea with bullets, even very big ones.

You cannot put the genie back into the bottle, once it is out its done. At this point what the MA wants and is willing to do is less important then what the GA wants and is willing to do. The GA will search high and low for the MA, so unless the MA decides to completely cut off communications with the outside and abandon the RF and start from scratch a couple of hundred years down the road they don't have a chance. The MA can minimize their chances of being found but they left too much evidence in Mesa for all of it to have been destroyed... eventually something will break, someone will get lucky or your luck runs out. The GA is very motivated. They survived the 600 years in peace because no-one knew about them, but after Beowulf I would bet even the League is waking up to how they got played from the get go, and it really depends on how they come out of this, they could come out with blood in their eyes and hang all of the atrocities they(the League) committed and were willing to commit on the MA and actively help the GA looking for them which would make the GA's job of searching all that much easier.

pappilon wrote:
All textev shows they do not do direct military confrontation they use minimun force for maximum effort. They use the RoH and SEM against each other, then use the SL against the SEM. Yes they did Oyster Bay. See above.

And so the MA is completely incapable of adapting? They hide and try again in the future? More importantly can the GA know that for a fact or would they be assuming? The GA cannot in good conscience assume that their enemy who just killed 60+ million of their citizens has never wanted a military confrontation and go with that assumption, if they are wrong the consequences are going to be very unpleasant.

pappilon wrote:
Same thing they been doing for the previous 600 years. They are not in a life or death struggle, they are waiting for the correct time to strike again. AGAIN nobody knows exactly who they are, where they are, who, if anybody, thir allies are. They are virtually invisible except for three footprints on a beach with the neap tide coming in.

Judging from Beowulf would they do anything of the sort? They have waited 600 years, they won't wait 600 more. Whats more they tried the puppet master approach and it didn't work, if their first 600 years and attempt were completely illogical and counter intuitive and a complete failure are they going to be willing to try again? Especially after mommy and daddy were killed because of the big bad Manties?

They have the time to wait and watch, continue their scheming and maneuvering. They do not have to do anything Until their location has been found.

Yeah, but if their location is found and the GA cannot do a thing about it for 5 or 10 years because they have no fleet to attack with I would say that the MA would have a lot of time to wreak havoc.

After their spectacular failure they can adopt one of several options:

The most likely would be an attack on the GA infrastructure that still remains, take out as much of the GA's industrial capabilities as they can so as to prevent the GA from getting too far ahead and at the same time build up their own capabilities.

or

They can hide out and hope the League gets as corrupt as it was so that they can maneuver them into a war with them into another war a couple of centuries down the road. The SLN senior leadership knows all about the infiltration of the other guys which means they will likely be cleaning house of anyone and everyone who is with the other guys and all that are incompetent/corrupt, same goes for the civilian government. There is no reason to assume that their covert option would exist in the future.

If I read the text correctly their real navy is the Renaissance Factor. all the Lenny Ds are for is exactly what they did at Manticore, make the initial salvos and GTHOD while the RF navy picks up the pieces.

That is great, but what are they going to use them for after the MA's plan went bust? Send them to the breakers?

pappilon wrote:
Well, to defeat them militarily is how you defeat the Masadans militarily. You make sure absolutely every one of them is on planet then you destroy the planet with KEWs. Because if yiu leave even one of them alive they will grow a new population of revanchists and come after you again. And fot the MAlign, you not only have to find their new world you have to iddentify every one of their allied worlds and you have to totally destroy every one of them

Is that your plan?

You don't have to, the people who actually know about the pan and are the driving force are only a handful of people which is glaringly obvious as no-one has heard about them for 600 years. If a lot of people were inside the onion then there would likely have been quite a few more leaks throughout the years more Jack McBryde's especially after the start of the atrocities not everyone is suited to be a mass murderer. You take out the leadership in Darius, takeout the leadership in the RF once you figure it out and you are golden. How many people need to be inside the onion in the RF for them to manage to organize into a nation? I doubt it's more then 20. All of the political leadership and maybe the naval leadership.

Keep in mind that most people in Darius are not aware of the situation/events in the rest of the Galaxy and defiantly not aware of the history of Genetic Slavery. And they defiantly are not aware of the Genocide that the MA has launched against Manticore, Grayson, Beowulf or Mesa...when the people who are not in the know on Darius see all that evidence they may kill their leadership all by themselves.

Sigs wrote:

Joat42 wrote:Not really, I usually refer to myself as a pessimistic optimist but I'm also a realist. Just going for the biggest, most expensive hammer is not always the best solution.

It is if you don't know the severity of the threat.

A typical fallacy, and in this instance they have a fairly good indication of the threat.

Sigs wrote:

Your expectations on what navy the SEM can realistically build and support is way out of proportion what its population are prepared to pay for, and had they proceeded with building up the navy after the SL was "defeated" I can guarantee that the current administration would be out of a job very quickly and be replaced with an administration more amenable to the peoples will.

And I would like to suggest that the will of the people would be made in the shadow of the MA murdering 7 million of their countrymen and 50+ million people of their closest allies BY the MA not the League. I would venture a guess that the MA is in the forefront everyones fears. The war with the League amounted to 5 million Solarian casualties and less then 4,000 GA casualties. The war with the MA cost 70+ million innocent civilians their lives at the cost of a few dozen agents. Who do you think the people would be more afraid of?

The people want justice, not an oversize navy that has no use that only costs money.

Sigs wrote:

From the book it's evident that there is no immediate danger of naval attacks from the MAlign for a very long time. Their plan didn't work out as they expected but taking that as proof they are going to pursue active naval engagements with the SEM/GA is quite a jump.

Their plan didn't work out as they expected but taking that as proof they are NOT going to pursue active naval engagements with the SEM/GA is quite a jump.

No, it's not. There is no reasons for them to engage in active operations but multiple for them no to. Going active means that they have lost EVERYTHING and the only way to succeed is to browbeat the rest of the galaxy. That's not the current situation.

Sigs wrote:

And if you had bothered yourself with thinking a bit you would soon realize that so far the MAlign has only engaged in asymmetric or proxy warfare. You can pour extreme amounts of money and resources into trying protecting yourself 100% against that - but it would ultimately be futile and ruinous.

And what if the MA engaged in asymmetric warfare because they thought they could get away with it? Or because ti fit within their plans? Does that automatically mean that they don't have the means to go to military offensive?

See above.

There exists no logical reasons for SEM to build up their navy, at least you haven't managed to present any.
There exists no logical reasons for the MAlign to pursue active naval operations, at least you haven't managed to present any.

n7axw wrote:But Sigs, the GA already has a fleet of SD(p)s... IIRC, the number we have been using is about 800 units. There is no reason to believe that I can see that what is on hand doesn't represent massive overkill.

Fixed defences have a way of being compromised, give someone 4 or 5 years and a few merchant ships or you know a couple of scout ships in Talbott to find a weakness in the fixed defences, once a weakness is found it becomes a matter of scale. If a way is found to take out the defences, you need to be able to reinforce your territories and allies. The GA will need have enough money and industrial power to reinforce every system with enough SD(P)'s to protect it from every threat, but they have to have the ability to have Nodal forces in Talbott to reinforce threatened systems or try to catch an enemy in action and destroy that force. They need to have Nodal forces in Haven's space to do the same but they need to be able to protect all of that industrial infrastructure the GA depends on as well. Then there is Silesia, Erewhon and Maya wether they want to or not the GA has to protect them as well, Manticore, Grayson, Beowulf, an unknown number of core/shell worlds who defected from the league and would want protection. The MA won't have the resources to attack everywhere but they can target the GA where its most vulnerable just like 8th Fleet did to Haven, and the GA has to be able to reinforce that area or lose it in the long term. All those commitments are steadily eating away at the available strength and that is before the GA counts for the protection of Bolthole and a strategic reserve to reinforce any member of the GA that requires it as well as you know the ability to form a fleet to attack Darius when they find it. If the GA finds Darius and has to expose all of their critical systems in order to attack Darius that would be a very bad thing.

Nor do we have any assurance at all that we can take those SDs and properly use them against the Lenny Dets as long as the issue with stealth continues.

If SD(P)'s backed up by plenty of LAC's don't have a chance then light combatants have even less of a chance. At which point broadcast to the galaxy that you are surrendering and be done with it. When the GA finds a way to counter the stealth issues they will either upgrade existing SD(P)'s or add a stopgap measure to allow them to find those stealth ships. On the other hand if the GA tries to find a way to solve the stealth issue and then build their ships it would mean that the GA would be exposed for a long time while the SD(P)'s in question are being build.

In short, what in the dickens do you think you're going to be able to accomplish?

Have the means to defend my territory and take the war to the enemy.

As far as building light units, the mission is easy to define...commerce protection, anti piracy work, showing the flag, selling to systems in the Verge for maintaining order on their own turf... missions like Zavala's mission to Saltash or Terekov's to Mobius. In short, any mission that doesn't require a sledge hammer. I would like to see lots of lighter units...with streak drives and Mark 16s...

And in the mean time leave your home territories and allies without the abilities to protect themselves. Being able to protect your commerce but not being able to reinforce systems that are threatened defeats the whole purpose of having a navy.

During the Havenite wars, building SD(p)s at a breakneak pace made sense for both sides since they were trying to survive against an enemy whose capabilities were pretty much out in the open and known.

And now its even more vital since they don't know the capabilities of the MA. If Haven build a whole new fleet out of Bolthole in only a 4 or 5 years why can't the MA?

But that is not the situation in the here and now.

How so? If I remember correctly the RHN started Thunderbolt with ~318 SD(P)'s most if not all of them having been build in Bolthole in the previous 4-5 years. Now the GA can safely assume that the MA has a Bolthole of their own, can they assume that the MA cannot replicate what Haven did?

We haven't established that an SD(p) can even survive in combat against what the MA can throw at it from stealth...which makes building more of them a case of "doing something" even if we have no idea that the something we are doing is the right something.

Don

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You are 100% right... you should always wait until you can guarantee that you are doing the right thing before you get yourself ready. You should always leave yourself exposed because you are not 100% sure that you are doing the right thing.

If the GA can't find a way around the MA's stealth no ships will be survivable in the initial engagement but the lighter ships are ton for ton more manpower intensive then an SD(P), weather the SD(P) in question is Havenite or Manticoran. You will be putting more people in less survivable platforms doing missions that are not going to be essential to the GA while ignoring the essential missions and more survivable platforms that the GA needs. Granted the GA cannot see the stealth ships but chances are that once the first shot is fired they can keep a good track on them. I doubt their capabilities are going to be so advanced as to allow them to fire from stealth and remain in stealth, so once they fire all bets are off and you better hope you have something capable of firing back.

Joat42 wrote:
There exists no logical reasons for SEM to build up their navy, at least you haven't managed to present any.
There exists no logical reasons for the MAlign to pursue active naval operations, at least you haven't managed to present any.

There exists no logical reason to kill 46 million people in a poorly planned operation when there was little chance of hanging it on the League yet here we are...

pappilon wrote:Points, all valid. The other one is The Republic of Haven 2.0 is facing exactly the same enemy with exactly the same unknowns as Manticore. Yet Eloise Pritchard, our BFF and system ppesident has flatly stated that her government will not can notmaintain its wartime pace of construction. There are still bad memories of the Legislaturalists and the Navy being used to suppress legitimate greivances against it.

Because of all the GA members they have enough to cover their systems. Why would Haven invest more in SD(P)s of their own when they already represent a good 68% of the Allied wall? They have enough to protect themselves Manticore doesn't.

So, if Manticore wishes to pay for hulls, fine we will build them, but our inventory is just plain big enough.

They don't need more SD(P)'s, the RMN does...that is the whole point. The RMN has 60-70% of the RHN's territory to protect with only a fraction of their hulls and what they do have they plan on cutting back.

Loren Pechtel wrote:Something else to keep in mind: An attack on Darius doesn't need as many ships as defending it would.

Remember what happened at Ganymede: Honor could hyper out when faced with the vast missile storm, her targets had no such option.

While GA missiles don't work as well fired from beyond the hyper limit they do work, anything not dangerously close to a planet can be destroyed. The whole face of attacking a planet has changed.

Unless the MA is building up their anti-Missile capabilities. You can do that to the SLN because they cannot stop those missiles, but if you were to fight someone who has good anti-missile doctrine and capabilities then you will need to stay and fight.

Since so many people keep bringing the anti-piracy and commerce protection as the main mission the GA has to be worried about let me ask you this:

How many systems would benefit from that anti-piracy?
How many systems would benefit from commerce protection?
How many lighter combatants (BC(P) and below) would you need?
How would you keep them supplied?
How do you decide which system benefits from anti-piracy patrols and which systems do not?
How do you decide which of the potentially 600 to 1000 systems are important enough for GA patrols?
How do you sell it to the GA public when all those manpower intensive ships require a large fleet train and logistical support closer to their patrol bases and all of it costs a lot of money for little return on investment?
How do you maintain 2,000 or 3,000 BC(P) and below in hundreds of systems and patrol routes and have them in sufficient strength that the GA doesn't end up losing a few of them with all of their nice technology to the MA?
How do you react when the MA sends out a coupe of dozen Leonard Detweiler class and Shark Class ships to intercept and destroy quite a few of the patrols? Do you give up and go home? Do you double down? Do you send heavier ships you don't have to support those endangered missions?


Its one thing to say we need anti-piracy patrols and we need lighter ships to do it when the actual mission is vague and the size and scope of the mission is vague as well. But one of the most important questions is how do you prevent the GA from turning into the League and Frontier Security?

Bit of a straw man there.

You don't need a fleet train to support pirate suppression operations. Your vessels won't get significantly damaged or fire a lot of ammo. The vessel sails out of base, run around showing the flag for some period and then goes back to base.

It is demanding of the leadership of your vessels, but not of your fleet support elements.