League Survival

kzt wrote:

Sigs wrote:So some nations will form around former SLN naval yards and might get large portions of active SLN ships and reserve SLN ships. So those nations would arguably be able to provide just as much if not more security than the 12 RF systems unless that is the Rf systems have an average of 100 wallers per system then it changes the dynamics.

If you have a mostly operational SD cruiser in your system you have removed yourself from the target list of the average predator. If you have a mostly operational SD squadron even large well organized predators are going to attack you unless they have some sort of massive superiority that allows them to defeat you with minimal damage to yourself.

If you have 20 obsolete LACs that have an availability rate of 60% then you are in a somewhat different position. And the vast majority of SL system are in that position.

The drawback to having people from somewhere else providing you military defense is that the cure might well be worse that the disease. If you are the president for life of 20LACland and Admiral SDsquadron shows up to talk about working together your negotiating position is (militarily at least) pretty weak. If Admiral SDsquardon decides he'd rather by president for life you are going to have a very big problem (but probably not for very long...).

However if another well armed polity that you have worked with during better times offers you a defensive alliance in exchange for reasonable taxes and some loss of autonomy that might well seem like a better deal.

drothgery wrote:

SWM wrote:They'll be scattered, of course. Which means no single system is going to be facing the entire SLN, just as I said. You're argument about facing the entire SLN is ridiculous.

And it's relatively easy to develop MDM system defense pods and something like Moriarity in a short amount of time. Which if you've got enough of, means you're pretty much safe from any conventional attack short of a big fleet of pod-laying wallers. Which very few polities have now or will for quite some time.

Sigs wrote:

SWM wrote:They'll be scattered, of course. Which means no single system is going to be facing the entire SLN, just as I said. You're argument about facing the entire SLN is ridiculous.

Yeah they will be scattered, but before they scatter the mandarins will likely not take kindly to anyone leaving the League. Beowulf is right next door the the GA and its few hundred SD's that can destroy every SD and DN in SLN service many times over and they are still waiting willing to attack Beowulf…what do you think happens when a system that may not have the GA right next door to them decides to split? Even if they have significantly more advanced ships they will still face overwhelming odds up until the League and the SLN start collapsing.


What happens if a month after Beowulf declares their desire to withdraw from the League another member makes the same decision and they also have a few dozen SD's, do you think the mandarins will let them go or go and smack them down?

Sigs wrote:So you think that the citizens returning to their home system will in most cases decide to take power for themselves? Some might, but many will not(because by that time the politically appointed admirals will be dead or kicked out the nearest planet), they will return home and try to help protect their home system and maybe even its neighbours.

Besides, the RF will likely be demanding more than the loss of some autonomy, it would probably go much further than that. Can't have what would amount to a democracy because once the RF systems become outnumbered by their new allies/states within a nation etc… and they have a democracy, things may take a path the RF does not want. That is why I think the original and any subsequent plan would require some galactic bogeyman to strike so much fear into core systems that they end up being willing to essentially subjugate themselves in order to survive.

Sigs wrote:

SWM wrote:I never said that 12 RF systems were going to lead ALL of the core worlds. No one except you has suggested that.

Isn't it literally the whole point of the RF to eventually replace the League? Can't really consider it a success if the replacement nation is 10% of the League's core systems.

SWM wrote:I think the plan was much more subtle than that. I believe the plan was to use the chaos to build much smaller coalitions. Only over time would they grow and coalesce. I don't think the Alignment was planning to crush or cripple all rival successor states.

The problem with that plan would be that a number of core worlds have the means to create a powerful navy. So if the MA/RF wanted to unite a large part of the League's core systems then they wouldn't allow those very systems to develop mature navies. If you get 20 or 30 successor states that get the bulk of the collapsing SLN wall and screen, that may be enough to remove the immediacy from the situation and buy them enough time to build their military complex and reorganize the military forces under their control to become an unmovable force in their own right. Then instead of the MA and the RF controlling 80%,90% or even 100% of the League, they control a small fraction and compete for the others with a number of (at that point) powerful nations that can challenge them.

Sigs wrote:What happens if a month after Beowulf declares their desire to withdraw from the League another member makes the same decision and they also have a few dozen SD's, do you think the mandarins will let them go or go and smack them down?

SWM wrote:Second, you seem to think that the RF was expecting to simply take over. I don't think that was ever the plan. As I said above--it is much more subtle than that. You only seem to see a straight drive to power. That's not the way the Alignment works. They move slowly. They manipulate things. They use subterfuge. Why try to force other systems to join the RF when you can make them want to join the RF alliance. After a few decades, with the right manipulation (which the Alignment specializes in), it would start to snowball.

The Alignment's strategists had picked the name for that power—the Renaissance Factor—decades ago, and the exquisitely orchestrated crescendo of disasters would "force" them into taking steps to protect their own star systems from the tide of anarchy. They wouldn't call themselves a star nation—not immediately—but that was what they would be. And, in the fullness of time, when it was obvious to the entire galaxy that they were simply responding to the catastrophic, totally unanticipated disintegration of the League, they would finally, regretfully, exercise their constitutional right to secede from the League and formally assume their position as a sovereign star nation.

A star nation which had grown solely out of their emergency association to stave off collapse. On which had nothing at all to do with Mesa . . . and which would painstakingly avoid anything that could be even remotely construed as a eugenics policy.

Until, that was, the rest of the galaxy discovered that the Renaissance Factor had become exactly what it called itself—the reinvigorated successor of the Solarian League, at least as big and powerful as the League itself had ever been, and dedicated, indeed, to the rebirth of humanity in a new and glorious future of potential fully realized at last.

Albrecht Detweiler wasn't at all certain he himself, even with prolong and the "natural" longevity engineered into his genes, would live long enough to see that day arrive. But that was all right, for he was seeing something even more important. He was seeing this day, when centuries of sacrifice, planning, and unceasing labor had finally come to fruition and forced the path of human history into the rightful direction from which the sanctimonious Beowulf Code and the human race's hysterical reaction to Old Earth's Final War had diverted it so long ago. None of them would live long enough to see the completion of the journey upon which their entire species had just unknowingly set out, but every one of them knew it would come, and that they—they and their ancestors—were the ones who had made that so.

SWM wrote:First, you seem to assume that the RF states won't be getting any of those SLN ships, too.

Second, you seem to think that the RF was expecting to simply take over. I don't think that was ever the plan. As I said above--it is much more subtle than that. You only seem to see a straight drive to power. That's not the way the Alignment works. They move slowly. They manipulate things. They use subterfuge. Why try to force other systems to join the RF when you can make them want to join the RF alliance. After a few decades, with the right manipulation (which the Alignment specializes in), it would start to snowball.

Again, none of this works if Manticore or Haven are still major powers.

SWM wrote:

Theemile wrote:Check HOS, The Ad Astra DNs were built in 1632 and the first of the Manticore SDs were built in 1742. Both classes (after refit) were in use up to the opening shots of the first war. The 11 Thorston BBs predated the Ad Astras. Janacheck's rebuttal to Roger Winton's call for a capital buildup lists the Thorstons and Ad astras, but didn't mention the Manticor SDs. We called David on that and he replied that they were in Mothballs thus not counted.

Yes, I was editing my post when you responded.

But it is confusing because HoS also says, "Despite opposition from some members of the aristocracy, King Roger's buildup increased the RMN from a mere twelve ships of the wall at the time of his coronation to nearly eighty ships of the wall by his death." And later it says, "The expansion driven by Roger's foresight lasted four decades, despite his own tragic, early death. The Navy's wall of battle grew from a mere three squadrons at the time of his coronation in 1857 to over eighty ships by the time of his death, thirty years later."