Brigade XO wrote:If Manticore had not been warned about Filareta there would have been a lot more losses on both sides though the majority proably still have been to the SLN.
Without the interruption of Filareta being confronted by the massed fleets and at least warned by and called to surrender by Harrington, the SLN fleet would have come in shooting and the Home Fleet would would have gone to Case Zulu and started killing everything it could reach with both missiles from magazines and the system defense pods.
The other thing that happens is a different result with the Task Force hanging around near the Beowulf end of the wormhole. Given that we have already seen that Beowulf told the SLN that it would not allow them to transit- and even if the RMN force was not staged forward to the Beowulf end of the wormhole, things would have gone much differently. Lets say that Beowulf backed down and didn't engage the SLN....but given the level of involvement between the BSDF and RMN (and their respective governments), unless the SLN somehow gabbed control of Astro Control, messages would have been set though to the Junction that the SLN force was moving on the terminus......and then the Junction fully switches on the auto response for it's minefields and gives the forts "weapons free" notices. Why? because the trigger for the SLN force to go though the terminus is a courier boat running through to the Beowulf end bringing the news to the SLN task force that Raging Justice has started by what would have been the appearance and engagement by Filareta.
So every SLN ship coming through from Beowulf is going to be at least heavily damaged if not turned to dust bunnies.....and it really would have been shooting fish in a barrel without any mitigation of damage by the shots having to go through the water first. Just how many SLN ships would have been destroyed within 10 seconds of appearance at the Junction end before the "close" mines would have all been expended and the time started to rise to 20 seconds, 30 seconds and the closest forts would have started pumping small packets of missiles into the throat of that emergence lane. Remember, these weapons are steerable so you fire from a fort and bring the missiles in so they are accelerating straight down center of the emergence lane- and the throat aspect of the emerging ships. Maximum chance of significant damage in the most vulnerable part of the target even if they had advanced to the point where they could bring up their wedge.
So lets say all of the task forces attempts to go through and 98% of the crew are killed. Then there is what is going to happen to Filarta. Ok, the RMN ships might be out of position but they and the pods are shooting MDMs and Filareta still don't have any real handle of what RMN ECM and other penetration aids are going to do to his fleet. So he's beaten back the Sphinx portion of the Home Fleet but taken massive casualties......and unit size groups of the unit of Home Fleet arriving from Manticore via hyper so they are outside the hyper limit and getting full sensor tactical data from the surviving members of the Sphinx contingent AND all those Ghost Rider drones....so they are able to start pumping waves of MDMs at Filarta from outside the hyperlmit and GUIDING them all the way into their targets but able to micorjump out against return fire- while the missiles targeting Filarta get handed off the the Apolo Birds and RMN manned ships.
Would Filarta even threaten an EE event if they didn't surrender.....he's fighting for his life, not in compleat control of Sphinx orbitals----and, at best, he is now having to absorb long range guided fire (massive bulk sniping) while he's down in that gravity well and watching his SDs being torn apart.
And exactly what
Elzabeth's response to this variation of the attack? She still has Harrington and the SLN has now launched a 2nd fleet level attack at the Star Kingdom, this one at the Home System. The Alignment might just get their wish.
You bring up some interesting points. I totally forgot Tsang's prong of the attack, and hence what a totally intact OpSec would have meant all around.
If Beowulf would have been kept out of the loop, Beowulf would have been taken by surprise too, politically as well. Meaning Beowulf wouldn't have had a chance to discuss internally what its reactions would be, could be, or should be, politically, as far as denying Tsang passage. And if Beowulf would not have received the memo, then it means the SLN suspected Beowulf of treachery and treason with enough passion to act on it. If the SLN had had that much brains, then Beowulf would not have been given a weeks warning. Tsang would have arrived and immediately proceeded to advance.
I never understood why the dispatch boat was used in the manner it was used. Coordination of forces should have had that dispatch boat ensuring that Filareta's Fleet was in place. Tsang's Fleet would have had no reason to be late since it was traveling via junctions. It was crazy for Tsang's Fleet to telegraph its intent. When Tsang arrived in Beowulf space, she should have maneuvered on the junction immediately as part of the plan. Beowulf would not have opposed Tsang alone.
The kicker is that the two prongs did not know about each other. The right hand may not have known what the left hand was doing. Filareta simply didn't seem to know about Tsang as we speculated. If that is true, then that is another break the RMN received. They were attacked by a totally unorganized, blind, haphazard two-prong attack. What???
That dispatch boat should have been traveling with Filareta. Heck, the SLN acted as if this was their first rodeo.
I still think total OpSec would have been bloodier for the RMN. Apollo wasn't distributed across the board. Warships would have been caught out of position, without Apollo, and immediately fired upon.
Had the RMN been alone because Haven had not sent them yet, was there a chance Filareta could have hypered inside their own range of Honor's Fleet? Because of wargaming or maneuvering?
If so, then as much lead as Filareta could have pumped out, Honor's Fleet would have taken a beating being out of position for mutual defense. I know this includes a lot of ifs, but total OpSec could have changed a lot of ingredients in the meal.
P.S.
If Tsang had come through, why wouldn't she do it in a mass transit?
As I said in another thread, Tsang could have threatened an EE violation against Beowulf.
BTW, the Havenites totally maintained OpSec in the BoM. Or that would have gone down much differently as well.