The Excalibur Alternative

Since there doesn't appear to be a Excalibur Alternative forum, I am posting this here.

Ever since I first read this book, I believe that RFC has made an error, or at least that the Emperor is mistaken, when the Emperor says that the outcome of the conflict with the Federation is uncertain. I believe that the testev demonstrates that the Federation is toast.
OTOH, I have read enough in these forums to realize that while RFC does make the odd mistake now and then, the reason that they are odd is that they are few and far between. So I'll lay out my case, including what I think are reasonable assumptions, and let someone tell me what I have overlooked.
Textev facts:
Sigularity com speed is approx. 700c
Empire ships are 11 times at fast as Federation ships
Empire ships are 9 times a powerful/ton as Federation ships.
There are 7 Empire worlds with > 2 billion population
It will take the Federation > 8 years to gather a fleet of 35 Ogre class Dreadnaughts
Federation is 150K years old
Sol System production is 17 Sword Dreadnaught equivalent/month after 6.5 years
None of Lach'heranu's ships got away
Nothing has destroyed a Federation Ogre class dreadnaught in 62K years
Assumptions:
The Federation has expanded its borders at the rate of 1 LY/century and that the border of the Fedeation explored region as just reached Sol system.
That Empire ship maximum speed is less that 700c (since if the ships are faster than the signularity com, there is no point to the singularity com)
The Federation is a mercantile organization that will expend no more on military hardware than is necessary for either home system self defence or to supress any pretensions to independence subject populations might have - for most of the 1200 subject worlds in the Federation this is no more than a heavy cruiser or so (support for this assumtion is the fact that it will take more than 8 years for the Federation to gather more that 35 dreadnaughts for a return engagement)
The maximum speed of an Empire ship is 660c (slightly less than the singulary com speed). This implies the maximum speed of a Federation ship is 60c.
Given that the Federation is 150K years old and that it has expanded at the rate of 1LY/century, the distance from Federation central to Earth is 1500LY, and the time to travel from Earth to Federation Central is approximately 25 years.
Given the travel times, it will be 25 years before Federation Central expects to hear back from Lach'heranu about her successful mission to destroy Earth. Sometime after that , it should occur to them that we should have heard back by now. The assumption will NOT be that "OMG, she must have met a superior force that completely destroyed her task force" since that concept is not in their world view (it's been 62K years since a Federation dreadnaught was destroyed). The normal reaction is to send a scout ship to investigate what happened.. This will take another 50 years (25 out and 25 back) - assuming that the Empire doesn't catch and destroy the scout ship. This gives a minimum of 75 years before the Federation is even aware of what is going on.
The 7 Empire worlds with >2 billion population should have a production capacity at least equal to Sol system's.
And now a few calculations:
It will take approximate 4.5 years to get to the far side of the Federation (3000/660). Added to the 6.5 years it will take to get into full production, this is 11 years off of the available 75 years to counterattack before the Federation is aware of what is going on.
Given that you are producing 34 Sword equivalents for 768 months (64 x 12), this is over 26000 Sword equivalents, which is the same as 235000 Ogres. Sending 5 sword equivalents to each of the 1200 subject worlds to remove them from the eqution, leaves over 20000 Sword equivalents spread across 300 primary Federation worlds. Breaking them into 20 task forces of 1000 Sword equivalents (equivalent of 9000 Ogres) and sweeping across the Federation faster than they can respond (remember Empire ships are 11 times faster), those systems are gone. Given the superior stealth of the Empire ships, it should be possible to ambush most of the systems and prevent anything from getting away before the system is pacified. This culminates with the task forces amassing on Federation Central and forcing the complete capitulation of the Federation - as I said the Federation is toast.

I had thought about asking for a separate TEA forum, but given the lack of interest in this post, I suspect there is even less interest in a TEA forum than in the 5 topic AT forum.

fallsfromtrees wrote:I had thought about asking for a separate TEA forum, but given the lack of interest in this post, I suspect there is even less interest in a TEA forum than in the 5 topic AT forum.

Actually, I think the problem is how many books are in RFC at any one time. Frankly, to me, he has an embarrassment of riches in the number of series he has going. Singly, he has Honor Harrington now facing the MESA Metastasis along with the Solar Federation. He then has the Honorverse lines of the Slave revolt and pre-Honor Manticore. Then he has the Dahak series with finding the evil master computer to stop the death sweeps. Next he has Safehold for multiple volumes to get to the Gbaba. Then there are the other collaborations and toss-offs that equal others best efforts.

I'd go on but I have work to get done for tomorrow when I turn into a tax preparer through April. Instead of a daily look to see what has appeared in these forums, it will be weekly at best!