How was Haven supposed to fight the SL (Detweiler Plan)?

tlb wrote:If you are in orbit and the planet is resisting your surrender demand, then you are permitted to use things much stronger than civilian grade nukes.

Sigs wrote:But if they are not resisting my surrender demands but I still want to kill them civilian grade nukes is the way to go? Or a nation sending their special forces teams with civilian grade nukes to kill as many people as they can, to force them to surrender without controlling the orbitals.

Another Sorites Paradox: how many civilian nukes does it take to change something that is not an EE violation, into something that is. I cannot answer that, since I thought one such nuke was a violation.

Jonathan_S wrote:Though one big difference is Home Fleet is much weaker (12 SD(P)s during Thunderbolt vs 48 during BoM) - so if Haven was able to throw the same 30 squadrons of SD(P)s, 240 ships, at it they'd have a 20:1 numerical advantage in podlayers instead of the 5.7:1 they actually had during BoM. With those numbers you'd expect Home Fleet to outright kill far less than the 40% (with 8% more heavily damaged and the remaining 52% all damaged and short on missiles) they did historically.

Where did you get that Home Fleet only had 12 SD(P)s during Thunderbolt? The Fleet Strengths list the RMN at 75 SD(P)s. At Sidemore, Honor had 18 SD(P)s but 12 or 16 of those were Grayson units (the wiki lists 6 ships in each of Yu's Battle Squadrons, but I don't understand why the GSN would have reduced to 6 ships per squadron, though the ship names in Battle Squadron 9 support Medusa-class ships) and Higgins had 7 though we don't know how many were Grayson units either. That leaves at least 14, possibly a few more, in Home Fleet.

Just curious if I missed another place where the SD(P)s should be.

Anyway, at this time, Home Fleet should have the lion's share of the RMN's active 125 conventional SDs (Honor had 24 and Higgins 16) and they'd all have pods. The hull count between Thunderbolt and the Battle of Manticore was probably the same.

Though there's another advantage for the RHN here: at this time, Home Fleet would have been commanded by a Janacek appointee. The wiki lists D'Orville, but is contradicting itself because it also says D'Orville was put on half-pay by Janacek.

Sigs wrote:In Hypatia, there was no military threat to the SLN as far as they knew at the time they gave the ultimatum. Ultimately I think they wanted casualties, especially there so that's why they gave not enough time. In Basilisk the RHN gave them the most they could. I would also say that in Basilisk it was war, in Hypatia it was a terror campaign.

You can make the case that there was a military threat. Hajdu was specifically worried about completing his job before the RMN showed up. If the RMN were visibly in system, would he be allowed to target the civilian infrastructure with civilians inside?

The saving grace for Giscard at Second Basilisk would be if he can claim the infrastructure he destroyed was legitimately a military target.

Let me ask a different question: commerce raiding is allowed during war, but those are civilian ships that are doing the jobs they had been doing before the war started and presumably would continue after the war too. Why are nations allowed to attack them?

I suspect RFC might answer that it's the "wanton" part of "wanton slaughter." The warehouses in orbit of Medusa would have few people left aboard and so would the civilian shipping that was destroyed with all hands, despite the attempts to get them out. In Hypatia, there were anywhere from several thousand to millions of people still aboard.

That would only lead to the question of how many is too many, but we can't answer that.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Not sure who you meant here that would retreat. Did you mean that the Havenite forces would retreat? That doesn't make sense.

RHN shows up with 180 SD(P)'s and 70 SD's against 46 RMN SD(P)'s and 40 GSN SD(P)'s plus 50 SD's as the defence picket.

That is 56% of the RMN's SD(P)'s and 35% of the GSN's SD(P)'s. If the RHN shows up with too little they run the risk of defeat or at least suffering significantly more casualties, show up with too much and they run the risk of forcing both the RMN and GSN to retreat to the Terminal if there are forts there.

Did you mean Third Fleet? If Kuzak knew she was facing 180 DuQuesne-class or even improved conventional SDs, she would engage and destroy them before any of them got into missile range. But that's unlikely, since she'd question why suddenly the RHN thought its obsolete ships could have a fighting chance when 4 years before they couldn't. So there had to be a trick. Hence, swarms of RDs, which detect deployed pods and pods coming out of the stern of pod-layers.

I'm Pretty sure the RMN knew about the SD(P)'s at that point, they just didn't know how many. So maybe showing up with 250 SD's and the RMN being able to identify only 80 of the SD's as SD's might force her to conclude the rest are SD(P)'s. Considering the what % of the RMN SD(P)'s she is in command I would venture a guess that she would retreat rather than tangle with potentially 180 RHN SD(P)'s even if the GSN had their 40 S(DP)'s in the system.

But if she avoids engagement and retreats, that means she retreats TO Manticore, reinforcing Home Fleet against its attackers. That's not good for Thunderbolt.

If there are forts at the terminal she can retreat there and hold off, but even if she retreats with the GSN in tow that still goes from 150 RHN SD(P)'s vs 23 RMN SD(P)'s to 150 RHN SD(P)'s against 109 SD(P)'s that's going to be a bad day for 1st Fleet but they will face HF first and then 86 SD(P)'s after. They will lose most of their ships but as long as some make it still victory.

But even if 3rd Fleet and the GSN retreating scares them away, taking Trevor's Star is still a hell of a victory especially if you do it without firing a shot. How many of the Thunderbolt targets brought anything positive to the war effort aside from Grendelsbane? Holding Trevor's Star just eliminated their Base within the republic and they have to repeat the process to retake it, 8th Fleet is now larger but they have further to travel.

And don't forget the 75 SD(P)s of the GSN that weren't expected to be in either Manticore or Trevor's Star.

Will be stuck in Grayson since Grayson is the only industrial center of the Alliance not immediately threatened by the RHN. Whatever they can spare will go to Grendelsbane to haul whatever they can from the yards there and get as many of the workers as possible back. The GSN will not expose their system and leave it free of mobile forces.

The GSN did send the Protector's Own and a great deal of its forces away from Grayson at exactly that time, so the chances were "good".

Sending them to Marsh is one thing, forcing them on the capital of their ally when the ally might not want them is another thing. I guess it was luck that they showed up, demanded transit and the RHN attacked quickly after because how long could they stay in Trevor's Star if the SKM is making noise about them leaving? How long can the Protector's Own stay in Manticore against the SKM's wishes? And what are the chances that the RMN would leave Grednelsbane and it's 73 SD(P)'s and 19 CLAC's under construction without a single SD(P) as defence?

If the RHN attacks in two prongs and the GSN comes through the wormhole in response to case Zulu, whether Third Fleet comes as well or not, the RHN attack on Manticore is doomed to failure.

Yeah and the attack to Trevor's star is a success which is more than what happened in Thunderbolt. 1st Fleet Retreats and on their way back to the Republic they visit Grendelsbane and destroy it.

When Lester did come with 250 SD(P)s against Home Fleet, he wiped Home Fleet but in turn was getting wiped by Third Fleet. If it wasn't for Chin arriving with the RHN 5th, he'd have surrendered earlier. And this is the scenario you've painted here.

If he sees SD(P)'s coming through the Junction and he doesn't like his odds he runs and kills off as much of home fleet as he can which he outnumber 6.5 to 1 ad even if he loses most of his Fleet the MA just lost Trevor's Star and whatever 1st Fleet destroyed in the process and they STILL don't know how many SD(P)'s the RHN has.

The only way this succeeds is if the Trevor's Star attack manages to keep any substantial forces from transiting to aid Home Fleet's defence. That could be the GSN or it could be Third Fleet or it could be a visiting force of the IAN for all they knew. That's why I am saying that dividing the attack invites defeat in detail.

It would be either a great success where both systems are captured, or a partial success where only one of the systems is captured. Either the plan works and they suck the picket away from the Terminal and then destroy Home Fleet, 3rd Fleet and the GSN TF thereby wiping out 55% of the MA's SD(P)'s and capturing both Trevor's Star and Manticore or they capture Only Trevor's Star and retreat from Manticore with minimal losses or they get destroyed at manticore by some miracle but it would be a hollow victory.

Being a democracy does not imply that the running of the war is done by popular vote or even by committee. There's a reason there's a Commander in Chief or equivalent rank in most polities, so all military decisions are done within the military hierarchy. In a time of war, with explicit war declared even, Pritchart and Theisman do not have to bow to popular pressure.

Well it seems to be done like that for the Manticore Alliance after Icarus. Everybody and their mother wanted SD(P)'s and the government had to oblige, with the constitution so new the President might feel pressured enough to oblige as well or Congress might have a way to over rule her.

It may be politically inadvisable, but losing the war is also politically bad.

And a politician who has his constituents screaming for defence wont care about the overall war, he will care about his system. Just like Citadel Defence of the MA.

I agree that having a fleet of 50 SD(P) is strong enough that the MA has to honour the threat. Which means that 150 SD(P)s is overkill. The RHN only needs to make it look like it could have those ships available, exact strength unknown but no less than 24 or 32 SD(P)s.

So instead of tying down 160-200 MA SD(P)'s with 150 of their own they will use 100 of them to defend likely targets against 8th Fleet with 50 SD(P)'s that would still be at only 2-6 SD(P)'s if they only kept the extra ships at the front?

Again more or less agreeing. Losing a major shipyard would indeed be a problem, but we don't know how big those are. That's why I said Bolthole, Haven plus two more, the two with the biggest shipyards. That's four systems with shipyards. The other two systems with second-rank shipyards are probably guarded by ambush fleets anyway.

There are probably close to 30 potential targets and you need sufficient forces to cover as many as you can to increase the chances of catching 8th Fleet which is now larger at 50 SD(P)'s because you used 50 SD(P)'s on the front and they can take more risks since they feel more secure at the point in time.

620 SD(P)'s- 100 SD(P)'s working up -200 SD(P)'s Bolthole, Haven and 50 at the front=320 SD(P)'s 320 SD(P)'s divided into 4 fleets of 80 SD(P)'s because once again 8th Fleet is now bigger, bigger ambushes required. You end up covering less systems with larger fleets which end up less effective.

I think it's said Haven had six major shipyards, though that may have been in the PRH time, which means some could have been destroyed in the Civil War or hadn't yet been retooled to produce SD(P)s. But let's take that number for the moment. We know Bolthole can produce 300 SD(P)s and that was definitely the biggest yard. I'm going to call that fully 50% of the production capacity of the RHN. That leaves 300 slips across 5 other yards. They won't all be equal in size either, so I'd give Haven and the two other systems 80 slips in average. That leaves the final two only 20 slips apiece. Losing either of those yards would represent 3.3% loss of the shipbuilding and warfighting industry.

And then add up the economic loss since they aren't only shipyards they are probably net positive for the RoH. There is only so much damage the RoH can take before they start running out of money.

Wrong battle. You're quoting the numbers of the Battle of Lovat and I was thinking of the Battle of Solon. But that's a good point that the Ambush fleet was scaled up from 4 to 6 squadrons.

3rd Fleet was 18 SD(P)'s at Solon, 3 Groups of 6 SD(P)'s against the 2 SD(P)'s of 8th Fleet.

Ok, this is a good point too. If Sanskrit was attacking one of the Top 20 and the RHN wanted to cover them all, they'd have 420 ships (620 minus Haven and Bolthole) to do it with, for an average of 23.3 ships per system. But even with a 956 ship total (in May 1921), that's still 42 per system on average. That's a worse ratio if we say that two systems beyond the capital and Bolthole had forces bigger than Giscard's (64), because that reduces to (420-64*2)/16 = 18.25 or (756-64*2) = 29.25 on average. Either way, we have to conclude that the RHN had to guess where and uncover some of the systems so they could be actually strong when Honor showed up.

And they cant do that if they took 240 SD(P)'s from the 620 SD(P)'s at the time they needed to catch 8th Fleet.

Since they had to make a guess any way, there's no reason to believe that they a lot more ships.

Let's use your numbers, Bolthole 60 SD(P)'s, Haven 100 SD(P)'s, Main Shipyard 1 system 60 SD(P)'s, Main Shipyard 2 system 60 SD(P)'s. So far that's 280 SD(P)'s.

Secondary Shipyard 1 system 40 SD(P)'s, Secondary Shipyard 2 system 40 SD(P)'s, Secondary Shipyard 3 system 40 SD(P)'s. Total for this is 120 SD(P)'s.

Main Front Fleets 150 SD(P)'s, base close to Trevor's Star is 50 SD(P)'s. Total is another 200 SD(P)'s.

100 SD(P)'s are working up.

That's 280 SD(P)'s + 120 SD(P)'s +200 SD(P)'s + 100 SD(P)'s = 700 SD(P)'s

That leaves us with 255 SD(P)'s for the Ambush fleets. If you scale them down to 36 SD(P)'s per system you can 7 ambush Fleets.

You have the main 4 shipyards buttoned down well enough the Alliance wont be touching them for a while.

The secondary 3 shipyards have enough protecting them to require sufficient forces to overwhelm them.

Also there are the 200 SD(P)'s tying down RMN and GSN Home Fleet, Trevor's Star and 8 minor alliance members.

So now we have the most vital systems covered and 7 Fleets covering the most likely MA targets. At the same time they tie down the bulk of the MA's SD(P)'s keeping them from reinforcing 8th Fleet.

Thankfully Theisman and the Octagon thought differently. Launching such a desperate attack without training is likely just going to get his spacers killed for little reason. Without having first analysed the possible failure points so they'd know how to react to Third and Eighth Fleets arriving at different times, how to scout the Junction, how to call Chin in, etc. the chances of winning are lousy.

There is a bit of a difference between planning, and taking 240 SD(P)'s away from pickets to train them. Somewhere in the Pentagon there is most likely a contingency plan for war with every nation on this planet, from Nauru and the Vatican, Canada and Mexico all the way to Russia and China.

A contingency for Beatrice would be setting up the fleet train, stashing away freighters full of missiles to reload the SD(P)'s if necessary, Theisman wargaming it in the octagon. All of those things help speed up the operation without detracting from the RHN's ability to defend the republic. But you still have a fleet of 240 SD(P)'s and another of 90 SD(P)'s that have to form up and train to conduct the operation, if nothin else do a dry run on an empty system. So for Theisman to feel confident he had to have at LEAST 2nd Fleet and those 240 SD(P)'s training as a formed unit if not all 335 SD(P)'s.

That might have been the case if Eighth Fleet had showed up in Haven and annihilated Capital Fleet or showed up in Bolthole and reduced it to slag. Then the RHN would have nothing but one throw of the dice with 520 SD(P)s. And even then I don't think they would have, because if Eighth Fleet had gone through 100 Havenite SD(P)s to achieve its objective, sending 520 more into the same maw might also be just another massacre.

Nope, Lovat happens, they know they are screwed so they take Home Fleet, Bolthole and every Ambush Fleet and picket they can get their hands on to attack Manticore and attack Manticore now. Split them in two fleets, nothing fancy, 1 Fleet goes towards Home Fleet and the other stands behind to cover their back. I don't care how good 8th Fleet is and how good 3rd Fleet is, if I had 600 SD(P)'s to throw I would especially if I am fairly certain they don't have Apollo widely deployed yet.

So it was good that they had a contingency plan for "we have one last chance."

Oh my god. They will STILL have the contingency plan along with the contingency plan to invade Grayson, New Berlin, Beowulf, Sol System and Erewhon, the difference is that now they have a wholebunch of ships who have never operated in anything more than 50 SD(P) Task forces operating in fleets of 200-300 SD(P) per fleet without the benefit of drilling them into a cohesive unit.

There is a contingency plan, there is forward deploying supplies, ammunition and fleet train for that contingency plan and then there is the 240-335 SD(P)'s training for that contingency plan. I have zero objections to making a plan, I'm sure that Theisman has a planning cell somewhere in the octagon doing nothing but contingency plans.

Haven did definitely have enough ships to send 6 SD(P)s to all 18 Top 20 systems besides Haven and Bolthole and still have 5 squadrons left. So waiting might not be an acceptable option for Eighth Fleet. Not to mention that the Top 20 systems need not be concentrated in a small volume: some of them may be weeks away from Haven and wherever Eighth Fleet sets up shop. So any intel Honor gets is two weeks out of date by the time she comes to that particular system.

So your plan is to put 100 SD(P)'s to be a diversion?

And as I was trying to say above, you may be able to see 6 SD(P)s in the inner system (limited volume for RDs to look at) but not in the outer system...

Depends on how many drones you have, and where they are and if the MA has special stealthy long endurance Drones or not which the RHN cannot be sure of. There may be no drones in the system, or the system might be full of 100 Drones. If they ar actively scouting they are not sending 1 Drone and hoping for the best they would send multiple drones from multiple directions and since its second and third tier systems the RHN might not even notice a destroyer or two sneaking into the system to maintain constant surveillance.

So you may as well surrender then. There's no way that the RHN could have adequate protection for all Top 20 systems, even with 956 SD(P)s, much less the entire republic. See math above.

Or you can keep pressure on the MA because not only are they a democracy, they are also an alliance of different nations all of which will demand protection. Keep the MA fleets tied down and they cannot send more than a dozen or two SD(P)'s to 8th Fleet for a while. Take reasonable precautions to protect your important systems, tie down as much of the Alliance fleet as you can and hope you guessed right. Or screw Camille and go on the offensive, take Trevor's Star and make them travel from outside of the republic for Cutworm IV-XX instead of leaving their base within spitting distance of the most important systems in the republic intact.

A lot. First of all, Bolthole is completely isolated from all of this and the MA knew it. They couldn't find supply ships to follow to Bolthole, so they knew Bolthole wasn't consuming production from elsewhere. And they couldn't find supply ships coming out of Bolthole either.

Every system that has it's industry trashed needs emergency aid. Those systems might net negative for the republic but without their industry they are complete drain to the republic not partial. There are only so many dollars a nation has before the money runs out.

The RHN trashing Zanzibar was a two fold problem, they destroyed their warfighting ability along with their picket but also forced the MA to sink funds into the system to try and get some of their industry back. For every dollar sunk rebuilding Zanzibar the MA cannot use that dollar for a new SD(P) or BC(P) or CLAC or LAC. Do enough damage and you can cripple the economy of the RoH even if their core systems are still intact. Just because they can build the SD(P)'s doesn't mean they can actually afford to build them or maintain them or operate them.

Finally, if they secede, it's a blow for the Pritchart Administration, but it's a net gain or at worst a neutral result. The systems that are most likely to secede are the ones that aren't being protected in the first place because they aren't big contributing factors to the economy.

And the once with the Ambush Fleets, because the whole point is to ambush the enemy and you can really announce to the system population that they are actually covered. So you run the risk of losing virtually every system aside from Haven, Bolthole, and the top 3 or 4 systems you are actually protecting. The RoH can either use force to keep them in or let them go but when they start losing systems like Lovat because they have no SD(P)'s it starts to hurt.

If Theisman had 956 SD(P)s plus however many CLACs go along with that at the time he'd expected to have to launch Beatrice, even if 100 are working up, he'd have sent more than 335 at Manticore. For an outright win, you play big or you lose.

Do you remember the 4 little reasons why he kept the rest behind? When he was planning the attack Apollo wasn't a thing and he was worried about the IAN and 8th Fleet so he was still worried about protecting the republic. And with 335 SD(P)'s it would have been enough if 8th Fleet did not have super duper missiles and EW. They would have taken serious losses but they would have had enough for all 3 Fleets.

That's saying before Lovat. After Lovat, when it was clear that the MA had Apollo, he wouldn't have sent any fewer ships than he could have.

Why did he send only 335 then? Why not send the entire 590 SD(P)'s in the RHN all at once?

If he knows that he either has to win in that battle or surrender, why would he keep two thirds of his fleet back?

I don't know you tell me? Why send only 335 if he could send 590? Why send 335 if he could send 920? I don't know it makes no sense.

335 is just about everything that he could send, short for the 100 in Capital Fleet, 100 in Bolthole and some other systems that couldn't be recalled in time and the least ready of the ships still working up. He can't send a good portion of Capital Fleet because the news of its movement would make to Manticore before those ships; he wouldn't send the least ready of the ships because that's just throwing spacer lives away and could possibly hinder the other good ships (net negative contribution).

Cant they use all those fancy LAC's and destroyers to keep every ship in the system until its too late to warn the MA?

And no, don't say "send those working up to Trevor's Star to prevent Third and Eighth Fleets from transiting."

After Lovat it should have been a brute force approach, if you don't have the time to drill your people, being fancy is very complicated and a good way for your people to die. Plus its harder to coordinate through the junction during wartime considering if I'm not mistaken Trevor's Star was a closed military system so not just anyone will get access. And sending the ships still Working up? They are still SD(P)'s, you are willing to let entire systems lose their industry but throwing an SD(P) into a battle before its ready gets you nervous? If nothing else it will fire missiles and be 100 more targets to allow the better trained SD(P)'s a better chance of survival.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
He knew exactly what his government was up to. He didn't know that a rogue element inside the government had messed up the communication.

The blame still fell on the RoH, it doesn't matter who in the government did it, the RoH fudged the correspondence that they blamed on Manticore.


It could have been just as easy for a rogue element inside the government to commit OB. Say the RoH had the technology they just couldn't figure out how to use it without killing that many people and some rogue admiral or rogue politican decided to use the technology to win the war and worry about it later. Especially if it comes close enough after Lovat but far enough to allow for the deployment of the weapons.

No, they didn't. There's a huge difference in scale here.

Similar style different scale.


Which begs the annoying question: why didn't the MAlign do that instead of launching Oyster Bay? There's a chance it will be intercepted, true, but if it isn't caught, there are three very big benefits:

1. There's no tipping the hand that the MAlign exists in the first place.

2. There's no revelation of radical new technology and stealth systems.

3. It plays to the stereotype of the Peeps, especially because as you say this had happened before, which would make it far more likely for Manticore to assume it was a Havenite plot.[/quote]

More custom patrols, smaller stations than Beowulf, transfer cargo is not held at the station... take your pick.

Sigs wrote:smaller stations than Beowulf

Boy is that wrong! From Mission of Honor, chapter 28:

For that matter, there'd never been a single, comprehensive construction or expansion plan of any sort for Hephaestus. The station had simply grown, steadily and inevitably, adding additional lobes and habitats—cargo platforms, personnel sections, heavy fabrication modules, shipyards—as they were required. Taking advantage of the flexibility microgravity made possible. Expanding into a huge, lumpy agglomeration of raw industrial power which had its own peculiar beauty as it floated in orbit, by far the brightest single object in the planet Manticore's night skies. It stretched over a hundred and ten kilometers along its central spine, and tentacles reached out in every direction, some of them the better part of forty or even fifty kilometers long in their own right.

There are forts at Trevor’s Star. Can’t remember if they are at the junction and/or the planet, but there is a line somewhere that compares fortifications to that of Trevor’s Star.

kzt wrote:There are forts at Trevor’s Star. Can’t remember if they are at the junction and/or the planet, but there is a line somewhere that compares fortifications to that of Trevor’s Star.

We know there are forts at the junctions, but those planetary forts have been very elusive.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
In other words, the Two Generals Problem.

In other words it helps if the plan works but it is not necessary for t to work. Most likely if 2nd Fleet attacks they overwhelm 3rd Fleet(RMN) and take Trevor's Star and the RoH is in a much better position than they were in the original Thunderbolt. They have whatever is left of 2nd Fleet and Trevor's Star. 1st Fleet on the other hand might have a couple of spies in Manticore that can go and tell them Trevor's Star attack happened and the commander on the spot decides if the risk is that much greater due to the delay. If they decide not to attack they wing by Grendelsbane and take out the system and go home.

Trevor's Star is a hell of a consolation prize.

Or drive the attackers away. Don't forget that option

Unless they send an overly cautious admiral no one will retreat when they outnumber the enemy 3.9-1 if its only 3rd Fleet or 2.1-1 if the GSN is there as well. More than likely 3rd Fleet and the GSN will retreat knowing they represent a large portion of the Allied Firepower. Or better for the RHN they fight and the MA loses 44% of their SD(P)'s and Trevor's Star as well. The RMN is gutted as a fighting force, if the 1st Fleet has a contingency plan on hitting Grendelsbane if they don't attack Manticore then the MA is in an infinitely worse situation than they were in Thunderbolt.

If the force attacking Trevor's Star is 180 SD(P)s, that leaves 140 for the Manticore Binary System, which has more fixed defences, just as many modern ships and again as many older ships. Tell me how that is a good distribution of forces.

150 SD(P)'s because the 10 Tourville lost in Marsh would not be destroyed.

Either way, if Third Fleet had been substantially reinforced -- and we know it was -- then the Trevor's Star attack fleet risks defeat in detail. See the other posts about Katanas, BC(P)s and Harrington IIs for more information.

With what the GSN send 2nd Fleet would be fine...unless the GSN is willing to strip Home Fleet Trevor's Star Cannot be reinforced that heavily. And if by some mirecale there are 150 Alliance SD(P)'s and 10,000 Katanas and 46 BC(P)'s in Trevor's Star thend 2nd Fleet retreats. But for that to happen everything that could go wrong has to go wrong for them, everything that could go right for the GSN/RMN has to go right for them and the GSN ONI has to be made up of a bunch of honest to god psycics.

At 1.8:1 with untested designs, when you know your technology is not yet up to par with what the enemy had 4 years before? Without knowing for sure that an attack is underway in the Manticore system, they have to assume a portion of Home Fleet could come through and attack them from the rear, thereby reducing the hull number margin even more.

What happens if they launch Thunderbolt and they find out their tech is not up to standard? Can they call a time out? If they find out that their ships need 2 or 3-1 advantages they are screwed anyway.

Launching Thunderbolt, wether going for 2 or 30 systems is irrelevant because finding out your ships are significantly worse than you thought means you lose the war either way.

What kind of plan is that?

What is the difference between attacking 30 systems and finding out you need 3 to 1 SD(P) odds or attacking 2 systems and finding out you need 3 to 1 odds? Either way the Alliance(GSN and RMN) would have more than enough to protect Manticore, Grayson and Trevor's Star without activating the rest of the alliance and then 40 SD(P)'s in 8th Fleet to crush, not defeat but crush anything and everything in their wake.

No, they can't. Not if Trevor's Star had been substantially reinforced, which it was. This attack fleet would withdraw.

You are right, 180 RHN SD(P)'s are quite inadequate to defeat 86 MA SD(P)'s. and 24 CLAC's and 4800 LAC's will be crushed, absolutely crushed by the 1,000 Katana's. And when they are done they can go to manticore, finish off 1st Fleet and their 150 SD(P)'s all the while losing nothing in the process and wrap up the war before tea time.

Defeat in detail.

And if Thunderbolt was launched 4 days early? Where would the invincible GSN TF be then?

Apples and oranges. Thunderbolt wasn't a complex plan. Each of the individual attacks had good chances of winning on their own, without depending on the other attacks happening or failing. Each task force could also withdraw if the defences were thicker than expected without compromising the whole strategic goal.

Yeah and the two fleets attacking are bound by ancient honor to fight to the death and never retreat under any condition whatsoever.

After all, the two largest operations in Thunderbolt (Trevor's Star and Sidemore) did fail and yet Thunderbolt was a success.

Largest Operation was Trevor's Star, second Largest Grednelsbane. Sidemore was a side show with only 1/3 of the force send to Grendelsbane. And sending 80 SD(P)'s more with the 100 SD(P)'s Giscard already had would have gone a LOOOOOOOOOOONG way to easy any of his discomfort in facing almost twice as many SD(P)'s as he though he was. Even if the Protector's Own and the 13 SD(P)'s from Sidemore and Grendelsbane were in Trevor's Star for a visit he would still have more than enough to crush the Alliance Fleet.

That "unless" tells it all. You don't make a plan that assumes the enemy will do what you want it to do. You have to plan for the case when they (reasonably) do exactly what you don't want them to do.

So its reasonable to assume that the RMN will send 100% of their SD(P)'s in one system NOT home system? It's too complicated to send 2 DB's but expecting that the GSN will know exactly when you are planning on attacking Trevor's Star and Sending 43 SD(P)'s In a GSN TF and the Protector's Own while the RMN sends 100% of their SD(P)'s leaving Manticore and Grendelsbane(with 75% of their SD(P)'s under construction) is reasonable? I know the SKM and the Graysons are supposed to be the good guys but at some point we have to assume that they will want to protect their largest number of under construction SD(P)'s even if its only a squadron, and they would want to protect the Home System.

There is 0.000000000001% chance that the Alliance having at least 4 vital systems will deploy 69.5% of their SD(P)'s in one and 30.5% of their SD(P)'s in the other leaving the two largest shipyards and the entirety of the SKM's industry unprotected by a single SD(P).

so your logic at this point if we can even call it that is ever so slightly flawed.

So if the whole RMN, 75 SD(P)s, and 55 of GSN SD(P)s are in Manticore or Trevor's Star, that's 130 against 315, a 2.4:1 margin of superiority in SD(P) hull numbers. That's not enough in my book. The RMN also had 125 SDs at this time, the majority of which would be in Manticore where High Ridge would see them, and they'd be towing pods.

SD's
-------
52 Trevor's Star
36 Marsh
16 in Grendelsbane
~60 deployed in the systems they lost

52+36+16+60=164 SD's


In 1920 the RMN had 125 SD's in active service after they lost ~60 SD's in Thunderbolt. So that leaves at most 25 SD's unaccounted for probably with Home Fleet. And the RHN also has 264 SD's and DN's.

Then you add the CLACs, which the GSN doesn't need to protect its home system, so they could have brought all 24 of them, adding to the 42 that the RMN had. That's more than RHN had (48) and the RHN knows their LACs aren't anywhere as good as the Manticoran/Grayson equivalent. The Havenite LACs are good for defence; the Manticoran design can attack capital ships.

So the Alliance should have brought all of their CLAC's to the system they didn't know was being attacked? You realise that they guessed...they didn't know they guessed. So once again, coordinating 2 DB's through the junction for two Fleets is too complicated but guessing one of the targets of the RHN, guessing the right time, conducting the operation while the PM of the SKM is firmly opposed to any GSN interference convincing Janacek to deploy 100% of the RMN in one system that is NOT the Home system leaving 75% of his SD(P) construction virtually defenceless along with the other 25% of his construction being very much exposed along with 100% of the SKM industry is reasonable?

Can you break down your thinking please? How does the GSN force the RMN to deploy Home Fleet and the Sidemore and Grendelsbane SD(P)'s to Trevor's Star at the right time? What if they deploy a month early and are forced to leave by the SKM?

How long would 100% of the RMN SD(P)'s take to get from Trevor's Star back to Manticore if 1st Fleet attacks? And if they get back can they catch 1st Fleet before they destroy the entire industry around Manticore?

And then you add the BC(P)s. Let's say the GSN brings half of their 40 and they're only as good as half an SD(P) (and I'm underselling them). That's 10 more SD(P) equivalents.

And then you add Apollo, and Mistletoe and the python lump and the entirety of the IAN and the SLN comes in to help why not convince the BSDF to help as well...screw it mobilize the reserve, bet those 180 SD(P)'s wouldn't do too well against 10,500 SLN SD's, 36 BSDF SD(P)'s, 82 RMN SD(P)'s ehll throwin the entire GSN SD(P) force of 115 and don't forget the 604 GSN/IAN/RMN SD's along with the 57 BC(P)'s. While we are on the subject the RMN also moved 100 of the Junction forts to Trevor's Star too so the RHN is very much screwed and lasktly lets not forget the 250,000 katana's that magically appeared in this one system right during the attack.

tlb wrote:I am not trying to argue that the SLN did nothing wrong; indeed they rightfully got slapped down by Honor for all that they did. The question is simply whether they were technically guilty of an EE violation. Also if they were guilty of such, then what were the differences between Hypatia and Basilisk?

My point was that one was during war with an enemy fleet coming at them and they had to destroy the industry and leave ASAP, they let the MA have as much time as possible and the other was under no military threat that they knew of. One the civilian casualties were collateral and kept to a minimum and excess casualties were avoided at all costs and the other(Hypatia) they were actually welcomed and likely part of the impact that Bucaneer hoped to achieve.