Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:Haven managed to keep the locations of both Bolthole and Hades secrets for years, by limiting access to need to know. No un-vetted civilians nor any civilian ships is a minor inconvenience.

A wormhole lane with only naval traffic is a curiosity when known, but is not a secret breaker.

Sigs wrote:If I remember correctly that wormhole was out of the public's eye and they had the advantage of forcibly moving people to Bolthole and keeping them there for extended period of time, but either way there is a shelf life on the location of a secret base especially in a democratic society.

Bolthole already had a population and is still a secret. Hades' location only became known because of the escape.

There may be an expiration date on a secret like that, but we do not yet know what it is.

The expiration date is when you run out of excuse to keep people in Bolthole from the rest of human civilization.

tlb wrote:First: hitting a planet with a fractional C missile would be an EE violation, but hitting an orbital structure with one is NOT.

Sigs wrote: What does it matter? EE violations are worthless since there is no one willing to enforce it or even able to enforce it. The GA can take over enforcement of the EE but if the MA does the violation no one really knows where their government is so they cant do anything to the MA until they find them and then they would have to hunt down their leadership because the civilians at Darius are innocent.

There have been extensive discussions about the future of the Eridani Edict: whether it can be enforced and who would be able to do it,

Even if it has been effectively nullified, it is still an ideal standard that has societal significance. It has always been the case that the normal populace is considered innocent and only the leaders are punished and that is difficult for the Malign until Darius is found.

However in the specific example of the SLN dumping out missiles that would hit Beowulf, that is not a problem. The Mandarins have already been arrested and will face charges of crimes against humanity that specifically include violating their own laws on the conduct of war expressed by the Edict.

tlb wrote:Haven managed to keep the locations of both Bolthole and Hades secrets for years, by limiting access to need to know. No un-vetted civilians nor any civilian ships is a minor inconvenience.

A wormhole lane with only naval traffic is a curiosity when known, but is not a secret breaker.

Sigs wrote:If I remember correctly that wormhole was out of the public's eye and they had the advantage of forcibly moving people to Bolthole and keeping them there for extended period of time, but either way there is a shelf life on the location of a secret base especially in a democratic society.

tlb wrote:Bolthole already had a population and is still a secret. Hades' location only became known because of the escape.

There may be an expiration date on a secret like that, but we do not yet know what it is.

Sigs wrote:The expiration date is when you run out of excuse to keep people in Bolthole from the rest of human civilization.

If that is the limit, then we expect it to remain hidden until after Darius is found (barring something unforeseen).

Sigs wrote:3) The MA’s goal was to weaken Manticore and Grayson without breaking their will to fight. If they had hit everything at once and destroyed every bit of warfighting capabilities it would have meant the League would stroll in and take over the Manticore home System and they would be in square one except now they have to engineer an incident with Haven and the League.
4) Going after 2 systems close together geographically is hard enough, trying to coordinate an attack over hundreds of LY’s in 4 maybe 5 systems would have meant disaster because if one attack was discovered early the whole strategy goes out the window. Especially when the target has internal lines of communication.
5) The MA might have 1,000 SD(P)’s, they may have 1,000 SD(P)’s under construction or they may have two guys and a canoe as a navy. The GA doesn’t know and guessing wrong could spell death for them.
6) There could be a handicap with the spider drive that keeps the MA from incorporating it in all their ships, so if it allowed those ships to be completely stealthy but they were limited in ship to ship combat I wouldn’t build a lot of them either. Building hundreds of ships that are potentially a one trick doesn’t really make sense. The spider drive could verywell be easy to spot once you know what to look for so why build all that many ships if you can only use them once or twice.

Note that they did go after two systems dozens of light-years from each other: MBS and Yeltsin. And you're not arguing against me, you're arguing against White Haven and the Admiralty: they're the one who concluded that the unknown enemy did not have enough resources to make a more thorough job at the time and left way too much for everything to go exactly right. You may say they were wrong, since they based those conclusions on assumptions that may not hold water.

You're also right that they can't know what was in construction at time of the attack, so in the year since Oyster Bay the situation will have changed. But as you yourself said, no one builds hundreds (much less thousands!) of ships at the same time without putting them through trials to figure out if they work or don't. White Haven's argument was that if they had even those early versions, they'd have used them.

Sigs wrote:

Yes, quite oppposed that. Outside of the Kuiper Belt, the war was barely felt by League members, aside from those targeted by Operation Buccaneer (and those are far more likely to become GA friends and allies than not). Their SDFs were not involved in battle, their infrastructure is still present. The only complaint they have is against Operation Lancoön, which may have brought a period of economic downturn.

They may not be physically involved but they know that the SLN and their own ships suddenly became 10,000 targets. They know they are defensless against the GA and that means they are defenceless against the one enemy they truly know about. They also lost somewhere in the neighbourhood of 30% of their wallers and probably half of their BC’s, in once case 100 ships were lost fighting a BC and 3 lighter combatants.

I'm not disputing the facts, only the conclusions you're making. Yes, everyone and their grandma (who was not living under a rock, anyway) felt the economic downturn, heard the news and/or propaganda and saw the SLN get trounced. No one is going to forget for centuries that the League surrendered!

What I'm saying is that the vast majority of systems in the League was not significantly affected by the way. Given the decentralised nature of the League, the majority of the populations feels a citizen of their worlds first, Solarian second. With the exposure of the corrupt government in Old Chicago, I wouldn't be surprised to see public opinion turn towards planetary or regional nationalism. And as I said, the GA will be doing its best to encourage that, breaking up the 363 kg gorilla into smaller, bite-sized... uh... orangutans?

Sigs wrote:And they have to be thinking that anyone who can get through the defenses of Manticore and Grayson would have no problem disassembling the SLN and the SDF’s bolt by bolt at their leisure.

Indeed, which is all the more reason to cooperate with the GA instead of fighting it, once the Ghost Hunters and Kingsford ram the idea through the thick skulls of the politicians. Don't hold your hopes up, though (I won't). Instead, it's far more likely that conspiracy theories will abound and governments will conveniently forget that there was someone else attacking Manticore and Beowulf.

Sigs wrote:

No doubt. They have different advantages than Haven did. The problem we're highlighting is that they're missing some pretty crucial ones that Haven did.

The League could dump money and resources into 500 different projects while the GA can fund 1/10th of that. Hell 10 Core systems might be able to fund significantly more research projects then the GA. When the technological gap is closed, quantity becomes a decisive advantage.

I maintain that it was quite different. The SLN in 1923 was still top-heavy, lazy, far more corrupt than the PRN was under the Legislaturalists in 1905. The PRN might have thought itself invincible and had a doctrine set on stone at the start of the first war, but Pierre saw to it that any such thinking went away quickly. They lost a lot of institutional knowledge, but it did get rid of the REMFs that weren't contributing. The purges opened up the way for people like Theisman, Tourville, Giscard, Diamato and McQueen to rise to the top.

And the SLN will no experience purges because? They just got their collective asses handed to them in such a spectacular way that if there is one good thing for the SLN from the war it is that they will start eliminating the their Deadwood and reorganizing their manpower according to needs. They now know what definitely doesn’t work, they know that there was a third party interfering with them and a motivated a competent leadership that is clean from foreign influence. They will work on cleaning the rest of the SLN and rebuilding.

They won't because they're not at war any more. There'll be crash R&D programs and you're right that there are probably 10 Core Worlds that could throw sufficient resources to far outpace the R&D, if they banded together. But they won't, because they don't exist in a vacuum, so the GA will be instead becoming friends with them and trying to make it so no emergency R&D programs happen. Politicians will soon forget about funding them.

And don't forget the disadvantage that I highlighted: the SL member worlds have very little access to Manticoran or Havenite captured tech. Knowing something can be done is two thirds of the work, but Paretto's Law also applies: 20% of the work takes 80% of the time. Without captured tech, without detailed sensor scans from anywhere except Hypatia, where the RMN fought mostly with last-gen ships and missiles, they have that steep curve to climb. It can be done, but it won't be as fast as Haven.

There won't be a lot of purges because the is no revolution going on in the League which could excuse breaking up deeply ingrained and corrupt traditions. Kingsford has a huge work ahead of him to make sure that he has competent staff and that his COs are actually trained. But he can't make a CPS-style purge. He'll fire who's really incompetent, court-martial the corrupts, retire the dead-weights, but there'll be a lot left he'll just have to put up with, for a while at least.

Sigs wrote:

I don't doubt that the SLN and newly independent SDFs can catch up. I'm saying that they have a longer and steeper hill to climb than Haven did, even if they have some advantages that Haven didn't to mitigate that.

But their advantages vastly outweigh their disadvantages. Their basic technology, industrial size, financial wealth and their fear will outweigh their disadvantages and lack of intelligence.

I disagree on the conclusion and on the fear factor. I agree on the rest: basic technology, industrial base and wealth put them ahead of where Haven was. I don't think there's going to be fear besides the initial reaction because the GA is going to go out of its way to be non-threatening to anyone who just plays by neighbourly rules.

tlb wrote:If that is the limit, then we expect it to remain hidden until after Darius is found (barring something unforeseen).

No, way too many people know it. Honor knows it. What possible need to know does she have?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Note that they did go after two systems dozens of light-years from each other: MBS and Yeltsin. And you're not arguing against me, you're arguing against White Haven and the Admiralty: they're the one who concluded that the unknown enemy did not have enough resources to make a more thorough job at the time and left way too much for everything to go exactly right. You may say they were wrong, since they based those conclusions on assumptions that may not hold water.

I am arguing that the thought process used to reach that conclusion was faulty. They knew absolutely nothing about the MA and their goals or capabilities and they based their decisions on a wild assumption. People keep bringing up that the Admiralty thought it was all they had and in this case that position is wrong. They didn't know why the MA committed to OB, so drawing the conclusion that they could have hurt them worse and they didn't means they didn't have the resources to do it is probably bordering on criminal negligence. Since they didn't know the goal of the MA when it comes to OB they don't know the whether it was a complete success or a failure.

You're also right that they can't know what was in construction at time of the attack, so in the year since Oyster Bay the situation will have changed. But as you yourself said, no one builds hundreds (much less thousands!) of ships at the same time without putting them through trials to figure out if they work or don't. White Haven's argument was that if they had even those early versions, they'd have used them.

Why would they use them? They accomplished their goals with the ships on hand. Ultimately as the reader we have a better understanding of the goals of the MA, and my understanding is that adding more ships to the attack wouldn't have made the attack more successful, instead it would have unraveled their plans that much sooner.

What I'm saying is that the vast majority of systems in the League was not significantly affected by the way. Given the decentralised nature of the League, the majority of the populations feels a citizen of their worlds first, Solarian second. With the exposure of the corrupt government in Old Chicago, I wouldn't be surprised to see public opinion turn towards planetary or regional nationalism. And as I said, the GA will be doing its best to encourage that, breaking up the 363 kg gorilla into smaller, bite-sized... uh... orangutans?

They went from the biggest, strongest nations to defenceless in a couple of years, I agree with you likely the League has shed a good chunk of their territory and that is good for the GA. But on the other hand the SLN now has proof that there was an unknown third party involved in instigating the war. I can see it from the other side as well where most of the League remains because member systems see 1,000 systems having a better chance to cut back on the technological edge a lot faster then 10 Core systems or even 100.

Indeed, which is all the more reason to cooperate with the GA instead of fighting it, once the Ghost Hunters and Kingsford ram the idea through the thick skulls of the politicians. Don't hold your hopes up, though (I won't). Instead, it's far more likely that conspiracy theories will abound and governments will conveniently forget that there was someone else attacking Manticore and Beowulf.

I would bet that in real life if the 70,000,000 + people died in what amounted to a massive war crime and the victims having the upper hand told you that you were in-fact not responsible most people will grab it with both hands and run. Do you think that given a choice most politicians and citizens in the League wouldn't like to essentially absolve themselves of everything they did and everything that could be blamed on them by pointing the finger at someone else...someone the victims were actually blaming as well.

They won't because they're not at war any more. There'll be crash R&D programs and you're right that there are probably 10 Core Worlds that could throw sufficient resources to far outpace the R&D, if they banded together. But they won't, because they don't exist in a vacuum, so the GA will be instead becoming friends with them and trying to make it so no emergency R&D programs happen. Politicians will soon forget about funding them.

Why would they forget? Unless the GA is willing to start deploying a lot of SD(P)'s to many core/shell systems for the foreseeable future those newly independent systems will be very interested in a fleet of their own. few people with the means want to depend on someone else for their protection, especially the people who until 1921 thought their navy was invincible with its 10,000 SD's. If they depend on the GA for protection it is only a matter of time until the democracies of the GA start demanding payment for that protection as the GA leadership is also made up of politicians and most of them are elected so it would be pretty hard to convince your population that its a good idea to defend everyone for free.

And don't forget the disadvantage that I highlighted: the SL member worlds have very little access to Manticoran or Havenite captured tech. Knowing something can be done is two thirds of the work, but Paretto's Law also applies: 20% of the work takes 80% of the time. Without captured tech, without detailed sensor scans from anywhere except Hypatia, where the RMN fought mostly with last-gen ships and missiles, they have that steep curve to climb. It can be done, but it won't be as fast as Haven.

Again though, they have the advantage of a better starting tech then Haven, significantly larger industrial base, insane amount of wealth inside most core/shell worlds and the same motivation to not be defenceless.

There won't be a lot of purges because the is no revolution going on in the League which could excuse breaking up deeply ingrained and corrupt traditions. Kingsford has a huge work ahead of him to make sure that he has competent staff and that his COs are actually trained. But he can't make a CPS-style purge. He'll fire who's really incompetent, court-martial the corrupts, retire the dead-weights, but there'll be a lot left he'll just have to put up with, for a while at least.

And he will have a few years at least to make the necessary changes. Create a core group of competent SLN officers and use that group of competent officers to assess and bring in more competent officers, they are limited to what they can do but they are also afforded a lot of time before the first SD(P) remotely close technologically to the GA's SD(P)'s comes into service. At the same time the Ghost Hunters will grow in size and focused on removing anyone from the military and government that is corrupt, start from the senior officers and senior bureaucrats and move on down. Kingsford would have had to serve probably close to 80 or more years, I would hope that in that time he has made some connections with competent officers, he brings them in and the Ghost Hunters go through their lives to clear them from wrongdoing. It might take him a lot of time but I doubt he will be fielding SD(P)'s in less then 5 years so he has time. If the Ghost Hunters clear someone from corruption or other unsavoury crimes but that officer turns out to be a well connected idiot just shuffle him over to the Reserve so that they can command an inactive reserve SD squadron if he cant outright fire him. Its like someone swallowed a bunch of diamonds, sure you have to go through a lot of smelly crap to get them but if you need them it would be well worth it.

I disagree on the conclusion and on the fear factor. I agree on the rest: basic technology, industrial base and wealth put them ahead of where Haven was. I don't think there's going to be fear besides the initial reaction because the GA is going to go out of its way to be non-threatening to anyone who just plays by neighbourly rules.

1) They all know how the League treated the verge and protectorates, the core and shell might have in general pretended to be ignorant of the realities but they knew. If they don't have a fleet to protect their own interests they are at risk of becoming the protectorates and they know what the League did to the protectorates. After all Frontier Security probably had good intentions when it first started out.

2) Until 1921 Haven, Manticore, Grayson and Andermani were nothing but neobarbs smashing eachother with clubs in their "wars". How many core worlds will willingly become a protectorate of the neobarbs in the GA?

ThinksMarkedly wrote: What I'm saying is that the vast majority of systems in the League was not significantly affected by the way. Given the decentralised nature of the League, the majority of the populations feels a citizen of their worlds first, Solarian second. With the exposure of the corrupt government in Old Chicago, I wouldn't be surprised to see public opinion turn towards planetary or regional nationalism. And as I said, the GA will be doing its best to encourage that, breaking up the 363 kg gorilla into smaller, bite-sized... uh... orangutans?

They won't because they're not at war any more. There'll be crash R&D programs and you're right that there are probably 10 Core Worlds that could throw sufficient resources to far outpace the R&D, if they banded together. But they won't, because they don't exist in a vacuum, so the GA will be instead becoming friends with them and trying to make it so no emergency R&D programs happen. Politicians will soon forget about funding them.

Sigs wrote:They went from the biggest, strongest nations to defenceless in a couple of years, I agree with you likely the League has shed a good chunk of their territory and that is good for the GA. But on the other hand the SLN now has proof that there was an unknown third party involved in instigating the war. I can see it from the other side as well where most of the League remains because member systems see 1,000 systems having a better chance to cut back on the technological edge a lot faster then 10 Core systems or even 100.

Why would they forget? Unless the GA is willing to start deploying a lot of SD(P)'s to many core/shell systems for the foreseeable future those newly independent systems will be very interested in a fleet of their own. few people with the means want to depend on someone else for their protection, especially the people who until 1921 thought their navy was invincible with its 10,000 SD's. If they depend on the GA for protection it is only a matter of time until the democracies of the GA start demanding payment for that protection as the GA leadership is also made up of politicians and most of them are elected so it would be pretty hard to convince your population that its a good idea to defend everyone for free.

They are not defenseless against everyone, only the GA, the MA and the Andermani. So they will not ask for protection from the GA, only peace for the foreseeable future. There is no reason for most Core Worlds to leave the recreated League, instead they will devote energy to fixing the naval situation and eliminating the Malign agents.

Why would the GA try to stop the research? That would only create jealousies and suspicions. Far better to keep an eye on developments to see if the result are better than current technology.

kzt wrote:

tlb wrote:If that is the limit, then we expect it to remain hidden until after Darius is found (barring something unforeseen).

No, way too many people know it. Honor knows it. What possible need to know does she have?

The secret isn't the existence of Bolthole, not even how to reach it from Haven, it's where it's located in space. Since you can't know where the wormhole in J-156-18(L) exits, you can't know where the Refuge system is either.

You have two ways to attack it: the first is to discover its spatial location. You'd do that by capturing navigational data in a ship that has been there, but Haven had already been pretty thorough in deleting it after transit. You could do it by stealing from super secret servers in Haven or Manticore. Or you could get it from navigation crews that know that he wormhole at J-156-18(L) exits in the Calvin System, but I don't think they need to know that particular detail, only that the WH exits in a G4 system with no inhabitable planets.

The other way is to attack through the wormhole and there has not been a successful attack that way in the books. I don't think it can be successful against a well-defended WH. You can't sneak in: the picket on either side would see you, the defenders on the near side wouldn't let you and would warn the other side, the defenders on the far side can shoot you down before you can bring your wedges back up. You'd need a mass transit with a could of squadrons of SDs and even that wouldn't defeat a pair of forts or an SD picket. And even if you could transit to the Calvin system, you still have to find the Refuge system 10 light-years away from Calvin.

tlb wrote:If that is the limit, then we expect it to remain hidden until after Darius is found (barring something unforeseen).

kzt wrote:No, way too many people know it. Honor knows it. What possible need to know does she have?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The secret isn't the existence of Bolthole, not even how to reach it from Haven, it's where it's located in space. Since you can't know where the wormhole in J-156-18(L) exits, you can't know where the Refuge system is either.

A problem is that the lost colony story is too good and might invite the telling in a place where it can be overheard. Not that I think that Honor knowing the secret is a problem; but telling would reveal the location, even without knowing about the wormhole.

I comfortable with my original statement, because it was in response to the statement that the secret would come out when the people of Refuge no longer accepted excuses for staying hidden.

Sigs wrote:I am arguing that the thought process used to reach that conclusion was faulty. They knew absolutely nothing about the MA and their goals or capabilities and they based their decisions on a wild assumption. People keep bringing up that the Admiralty thought it was all they had and in this case that position is wrong. They didn't know why the MA committed to OB, so drawing the conclusion that they could have hurt them worse and they didn't means they didn't have the resources to do it is probably bordering on criminal negligence. Since they didn't know the goal of the MA when it comes to OB they don't know the whether it was a complete success or a failure.

Why would they use [more resources if they had them]? They accomplished their goals with the ships on hand. Ultimately as the reader we have a better understanding of the goals of the MA, and my understanding is that adding more ships to the attack wouldn't have made the attack more successful, instead it would have unraveled their plans that much sooner.

White Haven's logic wasn't about the motivations, it was about the methods. Indeed, they had absolutely no clue why someone would execute OB, not until three months later when Pritchart arrived bringing Cachat, Zilwicki and Simões. No, the entire logic was that the operation itself was flimsy, hanging by a thread and depending on everything working correctly for it to succeed. Any one of multiple mistakes could have compromised the success and a few did: the research staff of HMSS Weyland wasn't aboard Weyland, a great chunk of the Python Lump of new construction was already outside the construction slips, the original signal of the insertion was picked up, transmissions were intercepted.

So that's why someone who had more capabilities would have used them: not to cause more damage or more moral outrage, but to ensure that the objectives that they did accomplish would be accomplished even if a few more things had gone wrong.

Sigs wrote: They went from the biggest, strongest nations to defenceless in a couple of years, I agree with you likely the League has shed a good chunk of their territory and that is good for the GA. But on the other hand the SLN now has proof that there was an unknown third party involved in instigating the war. I can see it from the other side as well where most of the League remains because member systems see 1,000 systems having a better chance to cut back on the technological edge a lot faster then 10 Core systems or even 100.

Oh, I think I see your argument. I thought you meant that they were defenceless against everyone, even fourth-rate neobarbs. As tlb answered, they are defenceless against the GA, but the GA has no intention of attacking them. What you mean is that they are defenceless against the MAlign, even if they don't agree with the GA's conclusion that it is the MAlign.

Yes, you're right here, up to an extent. If they also agree with White Haven's conclusion that the enemy doesn't have all the resources, they have a window of opportunity to fix those defences. But I disagree that they need SD(P)s for that. For defence, a couple hundred thousand missile pods will do and Technodyne already has that technology.

And this is even all the more reason to cooperate with the GA: get some more defence technology from the GA instead of developing from scratch and find the MAlign.

Sigs wrote: I would bet that in real life if the 70,000,000 + people died in what amounted to a massive war crime and the victims having the upper hand told you that you were in-fact not responsible most people will grab it with both hands and run. Do you think that given a choice most politicians and citizens in the League wouldn't like to essentially absolve themselves of everything they did and everything that could be blamed on them by pointing the finger at someone else...someone the victims were actually blaming as well.

You're probably right. I hadn't thought of that detail and yes, politicians will embrace wholeheartedly the idea that they were not responsible for the Yawata and Beowulf Strikes.

Sigs wrote:Why would they forget? Unless the GA is willing to start deploying a lot of SD(P)'s to many core/shell systems for the foreseeable future those newly independent systems will be very interested in a fleet of their own. few people with the means want to depend on someone else for their protection, especially the people who until 1921 thought their navy was invincible with its 10,000 SD's. If they depend on the GA for protection it is only a matter of time until the democracies of the GA start demanding payment for that protection as the GA leadership is also made up of politicians and most of them are elected so it would be pretty hard to convince your population that its a good idea to defend everyone for free.

Politicians will forget because that's what politicians do. As 1925 and 1926 come along, they'll begin thinking of local problems instead of funding R&D. The absence of war and direct threat will dull the urgency that they feel now in 1923. And as I said above, they have system defence pods, so politicians will claim that they aren't defenceless (and they really aren't!).

Neither they nor the GA will know how well they're going to fare against real MAlign warships, but as we argued before, the only remedy for that is to continue searching. And yes, continue R&D in other areas.

Sigs wrote:Again though, they have the advantage of a better starting tech then Haven, significantly larger industrial base, insane amount of wealth inside most core/shell worlds and the same motivation to not be defenceless.

I'm not disputing that. Anyway, only time (and David) will tell how much those factors contribute to the outcome.

Sigs wrote:

I disagree on the conclusion and on the fear factor. I agree on the rest: basic technology, industrial base and wealth put them ahead of where Haven was. I don't think there's going to be fear besides the initial reaction because the GA is going to go out of its way to be non-threatening to anyone who just plays by neighbourly rules.

1) They all know how the League treated the verge and protectorates, the core and shell might have in general pretended to be ignorant of the realities but they knew. If they don't have a fleet to protect their own interests they are at risk of becoming the protectorates and they know what the League did to the protectorates. After all Frontier Security probably had good intentions when it first started out.

2) Until 1921 Haven, Manticore, Grayson and Andermani were nothing but neobarbs smashing eachother with clubs in their "wars". How many core worlds will willingly become a protectorate of the neobarbs in the GA?

Okay, so there could be governments, politicians, news media, conspiracy theorists, reasonable people, etc. that stoke that fear. The problem though is that the GA will not be stoking that fear. It will be doing the opposite: extending trade agreements to those systems and proving that they're not interested in protectorates. The Hypatia-Beowulf joining of the GA will even show that if you want something more, you can become an equal partner.