Alternate history: PRH-Solarian War

Sigs wrote:
Odds go from a manageable ~1.5 to 1 to a not so manageable 1.84 to 1 against the RMN as well as the shock, if he managed to destroy the entire task force Hancock it would be even worse. An opening phase like this would be crushing to the Alliance, 2 crushing defeats, the loss of an ally and a major base that now threatens 3 alliance members in the region which will be begging for reinforcements. Instead they started the war by losing 77 SD/DN's while taking out less than 10 wallers and most likely half that. They went from 300 wallers vs 460 wallers to 295 vs 383 wallers.

If this is how the war started, I would be looking long term for victory since the short term isn't exactly feasible at the moment.

It was even worse. As you showed, 5 or so of the initial RMN loses could be repaired, but 16 of the PRH ships were also captured intact or in a repairable shape, pushing the ratio to 311:383. (though not all the new alliance ships would be available for a duration.)

Sigs wrote:I think you can hide them almost indefinitely in a system nobody knows about. As long as you are careful it is entirely possible.

I wasn't talking about knowing where they are. I was talking about knowing they are missing in the first place.

But even then, after 5 years, there's a good chance of finding them, since logistics, mail, personnel transfers will happen. If the PN is leaky, the ONI could find out where they are.

Or maybe they will look at it and consider that there is an intelligence error, someone is feeding you faulty intelligence etc... IF you are missing that many ships and after 5 years none of them have surfaced it might just be written off as faulty intelligence.

They'll have done analysis and double- and triple-checked everything. One discrepancy can be explained away. A lot of them, over years (a systematic error) cannot. If nothing else, they need to know where the faulty data comes from: counter intel? Missing coverage?

If they can't explain the discrepancy, then they can't dismiss it either. They have to assume those ships could be somewhere and prepare accordingly.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
I wasn't talking about knowing where they are. I was talking about knowing they are missing in the first place.

But even then, after 5 years, there's a good chance of finding them, since logistics, mail, personnel transfers will happen. If the PN is leaky, the ONI could find out where they are.

They somehow managed to keep it a secret under the committee and under the resurrected republic.

If your intelligence tells you that the enemy is building 100 SD's/year and only 80 SD's/year are being commissioned and deployed that would be a concern, if your intelligence is telling you that the enemy is building 100 SD's/year and only 80 SD's/year are being commissioned and deployed for a second, 3rd, fourth year and you can neither confirm nor disprove the theory at what point do you count that as faulty intelligence especially if the enemy in question has lost dozens of systems since the start of hostilities and has launched a number of offensives as well. At some point the majority of the intelligence committee would have other things to worry about and will shelve the issue if not outright ignore it. I mean you have a nation of 100-300 systems with a diameter of 280 LY at some point worrying about the 20% of ships of the wall that may not even exist takes a backseat to the 80% you most definitely know exist. What's worse, if you don't know where they are and if they even exist you cannot do a thing about it, they may or may not exist, and if they exist they could be anywhere in 100-300 populated systems in the republic or anywhere in republic space in unpopulated or unoccupied systems.

If they can't explain the discrepancy, then they can't dismiss it either. They have to assume those ships could be somewhere and prepare accordingly.

How do they prepare accordingly? They have 700+ SD's facing them how would you prepare for the potentially 100 SD's that are unaccounted for? Especially if during the war years those ships never showed up during allied offensives or PN offensives?

When you are getting ground down by an enemy that is producing more and better ships than you are it’s going to be hard to explain how you allowed a fleet to get destroyed because ‘in a few years we’ll have enogh firepower to scare manticoran perimter control for a few hours.’

Sigs wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
I wasn't talking about knowing where they are. I was talking about knowing they are missing in the first place.

But even then, after 5 years, there's a good chance of finding them, since logistics, mail, personnel transfers will happen. If the PN is leaky, the ONI could find out where they are.

They somehow managed to keep it a secret under the committee and under the resurrected republic.

By "it" I assume you mean here Bolthole.

Under the Legislaturalists and the CPS, Bolthole wasn't producing anything. It was under the radar because there was almost no mail going there and hardly any transfers, as the entire workforce was already on site. And it wasn't producing anything that couldn't be explained.

Once it did, ONI clearly knew about Bolthole. They didn't know where it was, any more than it wouldn't know where your mystery fleet would be, but it knew it existed.

I think it was later determined it was a Committee thing. ONI was wrong.

kzt wrote:I think it was later determined it was a Committee thing. ONI was wrong.

What part? Dark Page makes it clear that Bolthole was discovered during the Legislaturalists' tenure. Did you mean when they built the shipyard there?

I don't remember direct evidence either way, only ONI's speculation that the Legislaturalists started. We are talking about having a shipyard cranking out hundreds of SD(P)s in 1916-1917, in a system that 30 years earlier had no idea life existed outside their own planetary surface and no spaceborne industry. All of that industry had to be shipped in from Haven and the workforce had to be raised to minimal space-safety working conditions. Especially the latter I don't think could be done in mere 10 T-years. So I guess that ONI was right and the Legislaturalists started it, but maybe the first gird in the yard was set only during Pierre's time.

ThinksMarkedly wrote: So I guess that ONI was right and the Legislaturalists started it, but maybe the first gird in the yard was set only during Pierre's time.

So I actually looked up the story again. Basically the Legislaturists dicovered it, but actual production capability was created by Pierre. The first SDs were being completed when Theisman said goodby to St Just. But they were all old-school SDs.


Oh, and if you want an idea of how much industrial capability the SL has, there is this quote, from 2016:

"Which was how, thirty-four T-years later, the Refuge System had come to be home to the Bolthole Complex, the biggest and most modern shipyard and industrial nexus of the entire Republic of Haven. Indeed, despite its still small population (by Core World standards), Bolthole’s capacity was superior to that of any Fringe World and at least a quarter of the League’s Core systems, and it was still growing."

So basically the most advanced and industrialized system in Haven has more industry than 1/4 of the Core Worlds of the SL. Which means that each of the remaining thousand or so of the SL Core Worlds, at a peacetime status, have more industrial capability than EVERY system in Haven, and probably more then every Manticoran and Andy system.

Which is why the GA spent a lot of effort avoiding going to war with the entire SL.

kzt wrote:"Which was how, thirty-four T-years later, the Refuge System had come to be home to the Bolthole Complex, the biggest and most modern shipyard and industrial nexus of the entire Republic of Haven. Indeed, despite its still small population (by Core World standards), Bolthole’s capacity was superior to that of any Fringe World and at least a quarter of the League’s Core systems, and it was still growing."

So basically the most advanced and industrialized system in Haven has more industry than 1/4 of the Core Worlds of the SL. Which means that each of the remaining thousand or so of the SL Core Worlds, at a peacetime status, have more industrial capability than EVERY system in Haven, and probably more then every Manticoran and Andy system.

Which is why the GA spent a lot of effort avoiding going to war with the entire SL.

Sorry, I really don't get your argument.

First, "thousand or so of the SL Core Worlds" -- I get the distinct impression that the Core is not a thousand systems, but is closer to 100 instead, maybe 200. That would make Bolthole's industrial output lose only to 75 or 150 Core Worlds.

Second, a logic issue. We don't know how the other systems in the Republic rank compared to Bolthole. You can't infer that Bolthole is the only system in the Republic that has better industrial capacity than a Core World.

Now, I suspect you're right and the vast majority of Havenite, probably all Silesian, and definitely all Talbott systems have lesser industry than any of the hundred or two Core Worlds. But that would leave the possibility that a system or two in Haven (say, Jouet) have more industry than some Core Worlds. Plus definitely Haven and New Berlin themselves, which should have industry comparable to Core Worlds.

kzt wrote:"Which was how, thirty-four T-years later, the Refuge System had come to be home to the Bolthole Complex, the biggest and most modern shipyard and industrial nexus of the entire Republic of Haven. Indeed, despite its still small population (by Core World standards), Bolthole’s capacity was superior to that of any Fringe World and at least a quarter of the League’s Core systems, and it was still growing."

So basically the most advanced and industrialized system in Haven has more industry than 1/4 of the Core Worlds of the SL. Which means that each of the remaining thousand or so of the SL Core Worlds, at a peacetime status, have more industrial capability than EVERY system in Haven, and probably more then every Manticoran and Andy system.

Which is why the GA spent a lot of effort avoiding going to war with the entire SL.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Sorry, I really don't get your argument.

First, "thousand or so of the SL Core Worlds" -- I get the distinct impression that the Core is not a thousand systems, but is closer to 100 instead, maybe 200. That would make Bolthole's industrial output lose only to 75 or 150 Core Worlds.

Second, a logic issue. We don't know how the other systems in the Republic rank compared to Bolthole. You can't infer that Bolthole is the only system in the Republic that has better industrial capacity than a Core World.

Now, I suspect you're right and the vast majority of Havenite, probably all Silesian, and definitely all Talbott systems have lesser industry than any of the hundred or two Core Worlds. But that would leave the possibility that a system or two in Haven (say, Jouet) have more industry than some Core Worlds. Plus definitely Haven and New Berlin themselves, which should have industry comparable to Core Worlds.

I have no idea how accurate this is, but the Honorverse Wiki states the following (which supports the idea that there might be no more than a few hundred core worlds):

There were 1,784 planets that held League membership, spread over the core systems, also called the Old League, and the Shell.

The inner systems, or Core worlds, were the first hundred or so colonies settled from Earth and many of them had populations larger than ten billion.