ThinksMarkedly wrote:
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.
You would have to know the motivation before you know if it was a success or not. If the MA’s goal was destruction of the SEM’s ability to fight they failed because they left a couple of hundred SD(P)’s and probably a thousand smaller ships in the RMN not to mention their deployed missiles so it would have been a failure. So the SEM’s leadership made some seriously flawed assumptions and based their enemy strength assessment on those assumptions.
If on the other hand the MA’s goal was to destroy as much of the SEM’s ship building, research facilities, missile manufacturing and the spaceborne portion of their workforce to weaken them for the war that they were instigating with the League then it was a success. Therefore making an assumption that since they didn’t destroy the RMN’s capital ships, missile colliers and repair facilities outside of the home system the attack was a failure is faulty to say the least.
When you don’t know the other side’s goals you cant assume that they are on a tight budget. They attacked the SEM’s industry and destroyed it thereby weakening the SEM’s military according their plan because if they had attacked the RMN and destroyed everything but a handful of SD(P)’s chances are that when 11th Fleet showed up the result would have been much different and the SEM’s future would have been bleak.
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.
And more ships means more opportunity for something to go wrong, for someone to spot something and give away the attack before it gets a chance to start. They don’t know if the ships that conducted the attack were general purpose warships or specialized warships, if they were specialized warships I too wouldn’t want to build hundreds of them knowing that there are few opportunities for me to use them. Maybe the MA found a way to track those ships and they knew one attack was all they were going to get out of them so why build more ships then you would need for the mission.
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.
They went from being the #1 navy in existence stronger then the next 9 navies combined to being dead last in combat power when compared to the other real navies. They went from dictating the way the game was played and expecting everyone to toe the line to depending on other nations and alliances to not attack them out of the goodness of their hearts. They don’t know how long the GA will remain in existence and they don’t know fi it were to break apart what would happen if the GA’s members started to carve out pieces of the league. Even if they had no designs on revenge they would still want a fleet of their own capable of defending the remnants of the League and being able to give pause to anyone willing to threaten the League.
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.
I doubt that anyone would give the SLN warfighting technology until the League and the SLN clean up their act, and by that time they will have developed their own.
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!).
They aren’t defenceless unless they piss of the RMN, RHN, GSN, IAN, BDSF, ENS, MARSN, MAN or any of the potentially dozens of other navies that would spring up over the following decades and will try to get technological parity. Fixed defences means that each and every member system is on it’s own and the League if you take mutual defence out of the equation has very little left to offer its members.
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.
And preparing. IF there was ever a situation where the saying “I would rather have it and not need it than need it and not have it” applies it would be in this situation. If the League doesn’t provide common defence then its member states would go and form their own alliances and nations to provide common defence.
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.
If Hypatia and Beowulf didn’t join any nation of the GA but became GA members they would build fleets of their own and in Beowulfs case modernize their fleet. How long before the people of the SEM start demanding Hypatia build it’s own navy or pay for the protection it gets from the GA? If we cannot convince 7 billion people to not build armies, navies and air forces what makes you believe that convincing 5,6,10 or 20 trillion people that they don’t need a fleet would be a success?
