GA Strategy, Tactics and Targets

SWM wrote:

KNick wrote:While the SLN does not equate slavers and pirates, unlike the GA members, they do consider pirates as criminals. Their thinking seems to run along the lines of "Slavery is "business as usual"", while piracy is bad for business. It is not necessarily the SLN that has determined their course of action, but the Transstellars. Slavery does not impact them like piracy does. While the SLN might let a slaver go, the same is not true of a pirate. So, for good or ill, FF has kept piracy to a minimum. Once FF has been removed there is no other force to keep it in check and, as lucrative as piracy can be, it is possible that there will be a rise in the number of pirates.

Actually, the Solarian League is a signatory to the Cherwell Convention, so technically they do have the same punishments for genetic slavery as they do for pirates. It's just that much of the time they do not actively enforce it, and in some areas deliberately look the other way.

Further I got the impression that when they were enforcing the Cherwell Convention they were much less likely to enforce the "equipment clause" interpretation / addition to convict and pushing slavers merely for being on a ship equipped to transport slaves; regardless of whether slaves where present when inspected.

I don't remember if that was clearly written anywhere; but it's probably easier to bribe or grease your way past an inspection when they don't have to ignore a cargo of live slaves.

n7axw wrote:As for Honor's strategy, that also depends heavily upon the use of force, or at least the perception that the GA could apply overwhelming force in the specific situation. Imagine an overwhelming force of SDPs showing up on your doorstep with the message, "Renounce your ties with the League and sign a peace treaty with us and we will offer trade ties, the use of the wormholes, and protection against League retaliation. Refuse our offer and we will destroy your infrastructure, your sdf, and anything the League can use to wage war against us."

That is the heart of Honor's strategy. To quote the Borg, "resistance is futile," BUT, there is a positive alternative to resistance if you will but take it. The bet with this strategy is that some of the worlds in the core, most worlds in the shell, and the Verge will find the offer good enough not to refuse; indeed, that loyalty to the League is weak enough that this strategy will pare away the League, denying the enemy the resourses needed for waging war, which, after all, was the point I was making in my previous post

It might be even better if that force showed up, and basically said
"Look, we've no particular quarrel with you but Battlefleet keeps attacking us and to curtail that we need to demolish the support infrastructure they have in your system. We don't want to fight you, but anyone who launched unprovoked attack must be dealt with. However if you renounce the incompetent idiocy and cease supporting them we'd be happy to return to normal trading with you. On the other hand if you increase support or launch your own attacks we can always come back"

IOW try not to directly threaten the system. Always try to cast this as a fight between the GA and the misguided and corrupt League Bureaucracy and their Battlefleet minions. That gives the system governments an easy way to disassociate themselves from the central government. (After all who wants to be pro bureaucratic morass )

And at least in the first round I'd lean less on threatening them if they don't renounce their ties as enticing them if they do.


In my opinion you've got a bit of time to let them ride along at the current level of support of the League while trying to decide whether or not to split. You can take out any Battlefleet specific support infrastructure now, but only need to escalate to directly confronting the system government if they significantly increase support for anti-GA activities or try to stay on the fence too long.

If they really want to harm the league go after the transtellars, not only would it cripple the league financially but get alot of the verge on their side.
That way they can make it profitable or new indapendants to be their allies.

If the discover darius, they need to take and hold it. that was to be the alignments ace, if they loose it they are just as vulnerable as anyone. Also, it would allow for greater ties between the alliance, and i see the kingdom of torch expanding into both felix and darius, and possibly beyond.
Felix allows a great travel advantage for sneaky plans.

This is starting to sound like Manticore and to a lessor extent Haven are going to shift into a position of - if you don't hurt us, we won't hurt you.

That lets them reopen trade with the pieces that fall off the SL.

The problems include 1) That dam Alignment that has been manipulating so many things for so many years and has those (effectively) invisable ships and is using BIO WEAPONS to attack targets. Then there is that whole question of just exactly does the Alignment want and what are they going to do to get there?

Problem 2) The nominally politicaly stable and previously 8,000lb gorilla that has been keeping the lid on agressive neighbors (except OFS and their friends in the transstellars) for centuries has been demonstrated to be ineffective. The SL is going to fail, people (including said OFS and other corrupt elements in and who have been dealing with the SL system) ARE GOING TO try and take over systems and create their own little empires. They are NOT going to be peaceable or live quietly with their neighbors and EVERYBODY is going to have to build networks of alliances and military treaties and navies (at least powerful local defense). This will make early and late Middle Ages Europe look like a sandbox in kindergarden.

Just how do you convince the tyrants and megalomaniacs to stay away from others? If you have to do it through a combination of economic influence (which can suddenly fail if said tyrant decides chances are good to snatch everything or just kill the biggest impediment) or outright military power, do you self-impose limits to what you are going to do in responding to "problems".

Big mess

SYED wrote:If they really want to harm the league go after the transtellars, not only would it cripple the league financially but get alot of the verge on their side.
That way they can make it profitable or new indapendants to be their allies.

If the discover darius, they need to take and hold it. that was to be the alignments ace, if they loose it they are just as vulnerable as anyone. Also, it would allow for greater ties between the alliance, and i see the kingdom of torch expanding into both felix and darius, and possibly beyond.
Felix allows a great travel advantage for sneaky plans.

If the GA captures Darius, the Alignment loses, period. The leadership of the Alignment is moving to Darius.

Brigade XO wrote:This is starting to sound like Manticore and to a lessor extent Haven are going to shift into a position of - if you don't hurt us, we won't hurt you.

That lets them reopen trade with the pieces that fall off the SL.

The GA has to do more than reopen trade with "the pieces that fall off;" The GA has to encourage pieces to break away cleanly.

Their mantra has to be "We're at war with the Solarian League. If You're part of the League, we're at war with YOU.

"If you're not part of the League, we'll sign a bilateral mutual defense and trade agreement with you, or you can remain neutral and go your own way."

SWM wrote:

SYED wrote:If they really want to harm the league go after the transtellars, not only would it cripple the league financially but get alot of the verge on their side.
That way they can make it profitable or new indapendants to be their allies.

If the discover darius, they need to take and hold it. that was to be the alignments ace, if they loose it they are just as vulnerable as anyone. Also, it would allow for greater ties between the alliance, and i see the kingdom of torch expanding into both felix and darius, and possibly beyond.
Felix allows a great travel advantage for sneaky plans.

If the GA captures Darius, the Alignment loses, period. The leadership of the Alignment is moving to Darius.

Are we sure of that?

We know they're moving somewhere, but the books have been amazingly silent about where. I keep thinking about Zack McBryde and Gail Weiss at Baliscue Station. While we don't know where that is, it's got to be close enough to Parmley Station to make a raid on it reasonable. That might suggest their destination is fairly close to Haven or the Maya Sector.

JohnRoth wrote:

SWM wrote:If the GA captures Darius, the Alignment loses, period. The leadership of the Alignment is moving to Darius.

Are we sure of that?

We know they're moving somewhere, but the books have been amazingly silent about where. I keep thinking about Zack McBryde and Gail Weiss at Baliscue Station. While we don't know where that is, it's got to be close enough to Parmley Station to make a raid on it reasonable. That might suggest their destination is fairly close to Haven or the Maya Sector.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure about that. When the Detweilers were talking about moving up Houdini, they said it involved moving people to Darius.

The reasonable thing would be to move 99% of the people being taken away in Houdini to Darius and out of play as far as anything happening to them back where other people like Manticore and Beowulf are going to be looking for them.

That being said, I suspect that they are going to be very carefully sequestered from the slave population of Darius. The kinds of things that the slaves could learn from them that the Alignment really doesn't want the slaves to find out include 1) that they truly are slaves and all that implies from the Mesa mindset and perspective, 2) what the slaves are involved in is NOT a purely defensive military buildup and what are the REAL REASONS that "others" are going to attack Darius and the Alignment. That would be 1) Genetic Slavery (sorry we didn't mention you are both chattle property, we sell things like you as expendable tools and you are essentialy just experimental constructs with no intrinisic worth except to do our bidding) and 2) The Alignment has been planning to kill off almost all the rest of the humans in the universe - and likes to play with bio weapons in the process- because it wants to replace them with their own "improved" version.

Did I mention that you slaves are a disposable resource like stripping off a latex glove after washing out the toilet?

Hello Brigade XO,

Kudos for your typically excellent analysis.

It could be quite a mess actually.

But given the average OFS has less than 3 FF ships in system, they would at most risk 1 to attempt to seize another system, assuming it had one or less to defend itself with; so there can't be that much empire building until more ships become available to the local wannabe empire builders.

Until the OFS stops looting and starts building the local infrastructure to build more ships, the system governor isn't going to be much of a threat to his neighbors.

I don't think they will have that much time.

Given roughly half of the verge has at least a few hyper warships each like the Talbot Cluster, NTM a good fraction of the shell also have their own hyper warships; the various rather small local FF detachments, without the BF club waived ominously in the background, aren't all that powerful and can't grab all that much without drawing too much attention to themselves, that with or without the GA, will bring some relatively quick retribution.

While we haven't yet seen a nodal force FF CO [possibly an admiral] take a shot at creating his own little empire, we may soon; I suspect it would involve executing all the local OFS bureaucrats to appease the abused local citizens, to woo them to his standard, what else would he appeal to?

The 6 pillars of the RA? [From CoS]

How acceptable might that be to the GA?

Given their knowledge of the SL from Lacoon 1 & 2, they might like some FF nodal CO's etc.

Only RFC and Sharon know for sure.

L

Brigade XO wrote:This is starting to sound like Manticore and to a lessor extent Haven are going to shift into a position of - if you don't hurt us, we won't hurt you.

That lets them reopen trade with the pieces that fall off the SL.

The problems include 1) That dam Alignment that has been manipulating so many things for so many years and has those (effectively) invisable ships and is using BIO WEAPONS to attack targets. Then there is that whole question of just exactly does the Alignment want and what are they going to do to get there?

Problem 2) The nominally politicaly stable and previously 8,000lb gorilla that has been keeping the lid on agressive neighbors (except OFS and their friends in the transstellars) for centuries has been demonstrated to be ineffective. The SL is going to fail, people (including said OFS and other corrupt elements in and who have been dealing with the SL system) ARE GOING TO try and take over systems and create their own little empires. They are NOT going to be peaceable or live quietly with their neighbors and EVERYBODY is going to have to build networks of alliances and military treaties and navies (at least powerful local defense). This will make early and late Middle Ages Europe look like a sandbox in kindergarden.

Just how do you convince the tyrants and megalomaniacs to stay away from others? If you have to do it through a combination of economic influence (which can suddenly fail if said tyrant decides chances are good to snatch everything or just kill the biggest impediment) or outright military power, do you self-impose limits to what you are going to do in responding to "problems".

Big mess