Spoiler Alert!!! New book possibilities/probabilities

Jonathan_S wrote:The GA does not know about:

The existence of Darius (including Location, population, anything)
The ship building program at Darius

They may not know anything about those two points, but they do suspect that there is is a "secret base" where the ships used in the Yawata Strike were developed and built.
Dr Simoes may even know the name "Darius" as where the Streak Drives are built and installed.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:The GA does not know about:

The existence of Darius (including Location, population, anything)
The ship building program at Darius

They may not know anything about those two points, but they do suspect that there is is a "secret base" where the ships used in the Yawata Strike were developed and built.
Dr Simoes may even know the name "Darius" as where the Streak Drives are built and installed.

Quite true, but I wanted to point out the repeated mentions of attacking Darius, searching for Darius and attacking Felix or the RF systems are slightly presumptuous at this time. If you don't know what you are looking for, you are rarely able to find it without discovering some interm facts first, and we know the GA is not in possession of those facts yet.

Theemile wrote:Quite true, but I wanted to point out the repeated mentions of attacking Darius, searching for Darius and attacking Felix or the RF systems are slightly presumptuous at this time.

I would agree on everything except "searching for Darius." There isn't enough evidence to describe the search for the MAlign's hidden shipyards as quite "searching for Darius" in a literal sense, but they are searching for the source of the MAlign's spider drive ships.

Felix, the Twins, true nature of The Renaissance Factor, and other targets of armchair admirals, are definitely out of the picture without some intelligence breakthroughs. Even "searching for Darius" is strictly an intelligence gathering and analysis problem for the foreseeable future.

Not necessarily, there have been mentions about Mesa strange behavior concerning the tech wormhole. They would believe it is hiding some thing, so make a termini assualt. The computers of the ships guarding the termini, could very well contain very valuable data, useful in the war.

The league plan is to use commerce raiding to weaken manticore, want to bet the alignment seeing the strength and power the alliance can bring to bear, realize that while they want the league to be shattered, they can not allow the alliance to survive as a dominant power. So they will use their contacts amongst the raiders and pirates to set them after manticore, to expand upon the commerce raiding goal. That way the alliance still shatters the league, but they would be weakened enough to allow the alignment a better chance to respond.

SYED wrote:Not necessarily, there have been mentions about Mesa strange behavior concerning the tech wormhole. They would believe it is hiding some thing, so make a termini assualt. The computers of the ships guarding the termini, could very well contain very valuable data, useful in the war.

While I agree that just about everyone's intelligence agencies have the weirdness about the circumstances surrounding Torch and Torch wormhole somewhere on their agenda, the notion of a terminal assault is a non-starter, according to Word of Weber.

The GA has no clue that Darius or the secret wormhole network exists.

While Manticore (probably the owner of the fleet that shows up at the end of Cauldron) is going to discover that there is nothing in the Mesa system that could have built the ships that pulled off Oyster Bay, they still have no clue either where those ships were built nor the full capability of (or much of anything except they are effective "invisible" to current sensors) not much of anything about the actual ships themselves.

The RF is designed to be the ultimate successor to the SL but only after it serves as rally points and allies to a great number of the existing systems both within and outside the SL. This is going to be a long term project. We have seen Detweiller telling one of the RF members that if one of their high interest candidates for alliance has cold feet (at this point) or just reluctants in joining the SINGLE system that the one RF member now represents, that the man should NOT press the issue and just let the leader of that system/his government/military come to a decision at thier own pace. The whole point is that people need to WANT to join the various members of the RF before the RF actually forms.

Hitting the Aldermani with an Oyster Bay type strike would be a disaster in terms of what the Alignment wants to accomplish. It would provide another (or at least a nominally outside) confirmation that there is "someone" out there that has the capabilities described by Manticore and possibly hard evidence should the Aldermani succeed in capturing any hardware. The Alignment still is actively in hiding. It needs to stay that way, making the claims of Manticore, Haven, Grayson (who may or may not be part of bringing the "Alignment's " knowledge to the universe at large- who the hell has ever heard of Grayson except the GA and a few brave traders). Better to keep building Spyder Drive and other new tech (and weapons) ships and using them carefully to "adjust" things that might forward The Plan.

Any way the Alignment shatters the League is fine as long as it does shatter and the RF is a primary piece of picking up the pieces. As systems come under the influence of the 12 secret RF members, the process will be accelerated to adjust the directions of medical/biological,moral and ethical sentiments of the growing number of fledgling RF members which means that the Alignment's control over those systems will grow and their mindsets will bend in the direction the Alignment wants.

Weird Harold wrote:

Theemile wrote:Quite true, but I wanted to point out the repeated mentions of attacking Darius, searching for Darius and attacking Felix or the RF systems are slightly presumptuous at this time.

I would agree on everything except "searching for Darius." There isn't enough evidence to describe the search for the MAlign's hidden shipyards as quite "searching for Darius" in a literal sense, but they are searching for the source of the MAlign's spider drive ships.

Felix, the Twins, true nature of The Renaissance Factor, and other targets of armchair admirals, are definitely out of the picture without some intelligence breakthroughs. Even "searching for Darius" is strictly an intelligence gathering and analysis problem for the foreseeable future.

The GA believes that the MA has a Bolthole equivalent. They don't know whether it is in a system known to be inhabited but whose significance is not recognized or in a system not known to be inhabited.
I think they also know enough about the spider drive to make some informed guesses about what the LDs will be like. I think they know that for spider drive ships size does not affect acceleration And I think they know that they cannot have sidewalls or wedges. Put these together and you would not be surprised if the MA built huge very heavily armoured ships. Of course the MA could have gone in the opposite direction and accepted the fragility of individual units and gone for large numbers of smaller ships. This would have led to larger personnel requirements and the MA has a smaller manpower pool than its opponents. It also cannot afford heavy personnel losses. Thus I expect the LDs will not be a huge surprise.

JustCurious wrote: Thus I expect the LDs will not be a huge surprise.

Oh, I suspect it will be. A terminally huge surprise. Being able to get into energy range without you detecting them? Someone is going to have a really, really bad day.

Theemile wrote:Quite true, but I wanted to point out the repeated mentions of attacking Darius, searching for Darius and attacking Felix or the RF systems are slightly presumptuous at this time.

Weird Harold wrote:I would agree on everything except "searching for Darius." There isn't enough evidence to describe the search for the MAlign's hidden shipyards as quite "searching for Darius" in a literal sense, but they are searching for the source of the MAlign's spider drive ships.

Felix, the Twins, true nature of The Renaissance Factor, and other targets of armchair admirals, are definitely out of the picture without some intelligence breakthroughs. Even "searching for Darius" is strictly an intelligence gathering and analysis problem for the foreseeable future.

JustCurious wrote:The GA believes that the MA has a Bolthole equivalent. They don't know whether it is in a system known to be inhabited but whose significance is not recognized or in a system not known to be inhabited.
I think they also know enough about the spider drive to make some informed guesses about what the LDs will be like. I think they know that for spider drive ships size does not affect acceleration And I think they know that they cannot have sidewalls or wedges. Put these together and you would not be surprised if the MA built huge very heavily armoured ships. Of course the MA could have gone in the opposite direction and accepted the fragility of individual units and gone for large numbers of smaller ships. This would have led to larger personnel requirements and the MA has a smaller manpower pool than its opponents. It also cannot afford heavy personnel losses. Thus I expect the LDs will not be a huge surprise.

You're running ahead of the data. At this point, all the GA knows about the Spider Drive is what they could deduce from the Oyster Bay attack and what Herlander Simoes could tell them, which was more than nothing, but he didn't actually work on the Spider Drive; his specialty was the Streak Drive.

kzt wrote:

JustCurious wrote: Thus I expect the LDs will not be a huge surprise.

Oh, I suspect it will be. A terminally huge surprise. Being able to get into energy range without you detecting them? Someone is going to have a really, really bad day.

If someone in charge of planning isn't thinking of superdreadnaughts with Spider Drives, they need to be. Beyond that, it is speculation.