Congratulations! The war is over! Now what?

Weird Harold wrote:

Sigs wrote:How would they know if any of the Core systems are supporters of the MA?

And whose to say that the munitions they send to a core system does not end up in the hands of the MA or the SLN?

They don't know, any more than they know whether some Kornati nationalist or Dresden Patriot isn't going to sell the technology to the highest bidder. They're still going to put SDM Apollo pods, Mycroft, and LACs into every system in the Talbott quadrant and Beowulf.

The technology is going to wind up in MAlign and SLN hands eventually -- assuming the SLN survives long enough to make use of it -- so why not share the technology with those who profess to be friends?

Manticore has a history of sharing technology with mutual defense treaty partners; why should new treaty partners be treated differently just because they are from the SL Core (or Shell, or Verge?)

Because (1) they are recently seceded League systems which may have elements within its military that have some degree of loyalty to the League. (2) Do you think even a rebel group in Talbott would trust the league?

There is a little difference between defending newly acquired territory and defending recently seceded enemy systems. Handing over modern weapons to nations whose loyalty may not be totally clear might not be the greatest idea.

And yes, the technology will eventually make it out but why speed up the process by handing it out?

darrell wrote:
The SEM pulled a large number of ships out of the SL. Haven will have to do the same, which will swamp the havenite sector with ships

That will be thousands of manticoran ships. The chance that those ships will remain idle ranges from zero to impossible. A few will go to talbot, a few will go to silesea, almost all will go somewhere else.

There are a multitude of ways that the SL can narrow down where the ships are working, because it is much easier to make a profit if you can get on a regular route.

there are dozens of ways to find a likely target system to set up to nab a manty freighter.

1. have a spy bribe a clerk or secretary back in manticore.
2. hang around a well defended popular system, wait for a manty freigher to pull out, use the higher hyper bands to get to his destination before him.
3. inquire at a destination what freighters arrive and how often. if no manti freighters do, go elsewhere.

If you have 10,000 freighters and 10,000 routes that would be great. But what happens if you have 10,000 freighters and only 500 routes? There are 2,000 member and protectorate systems in the League and the Manticorean merchant marine had a lot of business in those systems. Now those 2,000 potential markets are temporarily closed it would mean that quite a few ships will have no route to go through. Haven can accept only so many freighters, so could the other GA members and neutrals.

At this point I would say a lot of the reservists from the MMM would be called out and the government would be assisting shipping corporations until the situation changes.

Lord Skimper wrote:Assuming the wars are all over, just remember that internal strife in the Kingdom was never pleasant, If the Empire is now 1000's of systems it is only going to be time before Manty Tech is used against Manty Tech in a civil war.

I don't think the SEM will expand to control a large part of the League. They might add some more systems from the protectorates but ultimately they will settle to something manageable.

As it is the SEM is out of balance with the old SKM population being outnumbered 7 to one by the new systems.

munroburton wrote:Before Crandall bumbled into Spindle, they had 2,000 active SDs and 8,000 reserve wallers. No hard numbers on smaller vessels. Since then, they have lost 498 of their active wall. ~300 of the active fleet are supposed to be undergoing maintenance at any given time.

They do not have the money, manpower or plans to reactivate more than a few dozen reserve vessels. In any case, those ships are worse than useless, as admitted by the SLN's CNO to the League's senior bureaucrat. The best of them is no better than what Filareta and Crandall had and the worst are considerably more obsolete - autocannon point defense instead of laser clusters, for example.

Imagine if every single ship the Royal Navy had ever built was kept in a Reserve. Hundreds of sailing ships with cannons(varying from the 1600s galleons to the 1800s' specialisations), scores of ironclads, battleships, dreadnoughts, submarines, carriers and so on.

How much use would that titanic armada be against the current USN?

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/site/entry/Harrington/201/1

This states that the SLN has a higher percentage of light units than Manticore or Haven. So using the fleet strength of 1905 as a basis Manticore has ~ 81% of its total fleet as light units(lower than DN) while Haven has approximately 76% of its fleet in lighter combatants(lower than DNs)


If we guess the SLN being 85% light units then we can guess that there are roughly 13,000 light units from DD to BC.

Sigs wrote:http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/site/entry/Harrington/201/1

This states that the SLN has a higher percentage of light units than Manticore or Haven. So using the fleet strength of 1905 as a basis Manticore has ~ 81% of its total fleet as light units(lower than DN) while Haven has approximately 76% of its fleet in lighter combatants(lower than DNs)


If we guess the SLN being 85% light units then we can guess that there are roughly 13,000 light units from DD to BC.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/si ... gton/202/1

More recently, it's been stated that the combined tonnage of the RMN surpassed the combined tonnage of Frontier Fleet somewhere in the middle of the first war with Haven. From the 1905 chart, that would be about 2.5 billion tonnes. Again, using the average tonnage for the RMN's sub-wall component in 1905, Frontier Fleet should have about ten thousand hulls. There was a lot of rounding in my calculations, but we may be in the ballpark.

The problem with that is, if they actually had ten or thirteen thousand hulls, they have enough to plant at least two in every known inhabited system. We haven't seen them - Meyers and Maya both had understrength forces and Filareta's fleet didn't get a screen anywhere near commensurate with its wall. So where have they been?

Jonathan_S wrote:

kzt wrote:It's likely to be fairly effective, at least at first. Commerce raiding doesn't require you close on the target, you can dump a pod of DDMs at it from 30 million km out and be pretty confident that the freighter is toast. It certainly is if you are willing to hang around until coast phase is done, but even a very dumb missile against a single target with no countermeasures or defenses is probably perfectly adequate.

There are certainly countermeasures you can take, but they take time to organize and have costs.

Given the specs on a Cataphract that's roughly 5-1/2 minutes until coast phase is over, or almost 7 until detonation.

On the one hand that's a long time to be hanging around, an system defense Mk23 pod within 33 million km could strike in only 5 minutes (49 million if you give it the full 7ish minutes). On the other even a couple minutes coast phase probably isn't enough time for a freighter to move out of either the target lock or the engagement basket.
So if you were able to get to within 30 million km undetected, and were still outside the hyper limit (or at least very close to it) you'd have a chance to smash a freighter and escape...

Does EVERYONE else believe that the only place that the SL can attack manty shipping is on GA worlds?

Does EVERYONE else believe that when manty shipping was removed from the SL, that they have just been sitting in manticore orbit, doing nothing and loosing money?

If I was the SL navy, I would not go near any GA world. There is 10,000 other inhabited worlds that they could hunt at. At the time of the SVW haven and manticore had more than 2,500 BC's, CA's, CL's, & DD's.

Since the SL navy is bigger, they should be able to free up 2,500 DD's & CA's. Send one to each of the 2,500 biggest "neobarb" colonies. If each ship captures an average of 2 GA ships a year, IMO that would be a success.

Sell the goods for tax revenue. Sell the ships to SL shipping companies at half their value price and shipping increases plus you get more income for R&D as well as to build new warships. In addition the GA would have 5,000 fewer merchant ships to bring in revenue to the GA.

Sigs wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:Manticore has a history of sharing technology with mutual defense treaty partners; why should new treaty partners be treated differently just because they are from the SL Core (or Shell, or Verge?)

Because (1) they are recently seceded League systems which may have elements within its military that have some degree of loyalty to the League. (2) Do you think even a rebel group in Talbott would trust the league?

Did you miss the bolded statement, or are you just willfully ignoring it?

Manticore gave missiles, LACs and blueprints to Zanzibar, Alizon, Erewhon, and who knows how many other members of the original Manticoran Alliance. They gave the technology to Grayson even before the Macabeans were rounded up and despite significant opposition in the Keys.

Why should they treat new treaty partners any differently than they treated old treaty partners? (if a former league member doesn't want to sign a mutual defense treaty, they don't get the tech directly and will have to pay black-market prices for it.)

darrell wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Given the specs on a Cataphract that's roughly 5-1/2 minutes until coast phase is over, or almost 7 until detonation.

On the one hand that's a long time to be hanging around, an system defense Mk23 pod within 33 million km could strike in only 5 minutes (49 million if you give it the full 7ish minutes). On the other even a couple minutes coast phase probably isn't enough time for a freighter to move out of either the target lock or the engagement basket.
So if you were able to get to within 30 million km undetected, and were still outside the hyper limit (or at least very close to it) you'd have a chance to smash a freighter and escape...

Does EVERYONE else believe that the only place that the SL can attack manty shipping is on GA worlds?

Does EVERYONE else believe that when manty shipping was removed from the SL, that they have just been sitting in manticore orbit, doing nothing and loosing money?

If I was the SL navy, I would not go near any GA world. There is 10,000 other inhabited worlds that they could hunt at. At the time of the SVW haven and manticore had more than 2,500 BC's, CA's, CL's, & DD's.

Since the SL navy is bigger, they should be able to free up 2,500 DD's & CA's. Send one to each of the 2,500 biggest "neobarb" colonies. If each ship captures an average of 2 GA ships a year, IMO that would be a success.

Sell the goods for tax revenue. Sell the ships to SL shipping companies at half their value price and shipping increases plus you get more income for R&D as well as to build new warships. In addition the GA would have 5,000 fewer merchant ships to bring in revenue to the GA.

True. I got distracted calculating the response range for a Mk23 and failed to cover the scenario of getting jumped in a non-GA system.

There are some systems outside the GA that might be just about as hostile to marauding FF units (as someone else mentioned earlier like the Andermandi, Erewhon, or in a different way even the Maya sector). But there will likely be Manticoran traffic to other fringe or verge systems. And unless escorted well it'll be much more vulnerable than operating between GA systems.

On the one hand those systems individually probably see Mantie traffic far less frequently than GA systems will. But the vastly lower risk is probably worth it - so yeah, the League will probably at least hedge their bets by picketing a bunch of non-aligned systems.


Which brings me to an idea I've had percolating for how Manticore could try to take the fight back to the League with a lower risk of giving them a rallying cry to circle round. Basically if you lose a freighter you send a task force to the nearest FF/BF base and explain to the system government that it's in that you have no particular beef with them, but are responding to raids against your ships supported from this base, then blow away all the SLN units in the system (but try not to tangle with an SDF only forces). But for the first offense leave the base intact.
2nd offense come back and take out the base as well.

It's a little defensive minded, but by responding to provocations maybe you can avoid pissing off the hosting system or creating martyrs for the League to rally behind.

Jonathan_S wrote:It's a little defensive minded, but by responding to provocations maybe you can avoid pissing off the hosting system or creating martyrs for the League to rally behind.

Have you heard of the period that the Kriegsmarine called "Second Happy Time"? That's what is going to happen to shipping in the SEM etc until they pull a lot of ships off of offensive roles. The SLN won't be really trying to capture ships, they will be trying to blow them up as expediently as possible. So I don't think they will organizing expeditions to attack 300 SLN bases a week.

munroburton wrote:

Sigs wrote:http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/site/entry/Harrington/201/1

This states that the SLN has a higher percentage of light units than Manticore or Haven. So using the fleet strength of 1905 as a basis Manticore has ~ 81% of its total fleet as light units(lower than DN) while Haven has approximately 76% of its fleet in lighter combatants(lower than DNs)


If we guess the SLN being 85% light units then we can guess that there are roughly 13,000 light units from DD to BC.

http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/si ... gton/202/1

More recently, it's been stated that the combined tonnage of the RMN surpassed the combined tonnage of Frontier Fleet somewhere in the middle of the first war with Haven. From the 1905 chart, that would be about 2.5 billion tonnes. Again, using the average tonnage for the RMN's sub-wall component in 1905, Frontier Fleet should have about ten thousand hulls. There was a lot of rounding in my calculations, but we may be in the ballpark.

The problem with that is, if they actually had ten or thirteen thousand hulls, they have enough to plant at least two in every known inhabited system. We haven't seen them - Meyers and Maya both had understrength forces and Filareta's fleet didn't get a screen anywhere near commensurate with its wall. So where have they been?

1)A portion would be in refit, if we use the % of SDs in refit as a guide it could mean that ~1,300 light combatants should be in refit at anyone time.

2) There could be a requirement of having light warships in certain systems far in excess of their actual needs simply because of prestige reasons... eg having a 100 light warships in a system because it is more valuable than most or in some sectors.

3) More valuable sectors might prove to have more vessels.

4) There might be certain valuable systems that need protection(shipyards, training facilities, logistical strongpoints etc...) Wouldn't be a good thing if you had all of your munitions poorly defended so that someone can blow your munitions with little opposition.

5) Strategic reserve formations. Frontier Fleet might keep centralized formations in case some sectors need reinforcements.


It could be any combination of these 5 or any number of other reasons they don't deploy their strength properly.


In the series we have seen the League do some incredibly stupid things, so poorly deploying ships might be one of them.

After all the 25+ BC's that were deployed to Talbott under Byng even though only 17 participated in the second Battle of New Tuscany. Those ships had to come from somewhere, so maybe a central reserve area for the nearby sectors?