The SLN commerce raiding strategy WILL work.

pldew wrote:But before Eloise, Tom, and Co. popped in to suggest alternatives. Forming the Grand Alliance changed the situation. Learning of the existence and intentions of the Alignment changed the situation. Why would that policy not be subject to reassessment?

Because the Sollies have no interest in listening the the Alliance, rightly or wrongly. The League may have been maneuvered into this situation by the Alignment, but it couldn't have gotten there if it wasn't already rotten to the core. Manticore has repeatedly offered olive branches to the League in order to deescalate the situation, but instead the League keeps upping the ante. They've tried to explain how the entire situation has been manipulated, but Sollie arrogance - not just the Mandarins, but the public at large - has kept things on high heat. Any show of weakness is just going to inflame the rest of the Verge, so the League has to keep pressing or see everything fall apart. It's either take their best shot at bringing Manticore to heel and have a hope of riding the storm, or submit to the demands of some piddly neobarb star nation and have a guaranteed collapse of the League. So since it's obvious the League is not backing down, the Alliance is going to fight to break up the League.

pldew wrote:

Duckk wrote:You should not turn your back on the 800-pound gorilla in the room, especially when he's already pissed off at you. The Alliance doesn't want to give the League time to consolidate its domestic politics and give time for the SLN to redress its technical shortcomings. The League's industrial might is huge, and can easily plow the Alliance under if it can close the gap.

But what if the gorilla is shackled, and the king cobra is loose? Seems to me the League is pretty well contained, but the Alignment is not. I have a hard time seeing the League conceiving, designing, putting into service, and developing the doctrines to utilize, the units needed to face the Grand Alliance in under a decade. Thus I would call the Alignment the greater and more immediate threat.

To follow the analogy: You have no idea where the king cobra is, the gorilla's shackles are loose, you have no way of knowing when they will come off, and you can continue to look for the cobra while you are trying to figure out where the cobra is.

The SLN does not need to reach even capability with the RMN. If the can win an engagement where they have a 5 to 1 advantage, then the Manties are in trouble. Considering Haven, with a crappy education system and a bad R&D establishment, and still managed to reach near parity within 5 years, I suspect that the SLN could get "good enough" in the same time.

You have to take out the League. The League's continued existence is an unacceptable threat to Manticore's survival. Mesa might be a problem, or might not. The League will kill Manticore as soon as it has the ability to, and it can easily have that ability inside of a decade.

More importantly, if the League survives the short term intact, it will become impossible to defeat. It will have used the time to sure up its key flaws and turn into a real governing body, provoked to make the necessary reforms now that it has been shown that those reforms are needed. Once that's done, Manticore's only strategy for beating the League - splintering it - becomes untenable. Letting the League survive is an assured Manticoran death warrant.

Crown Loyalist wrote:You have to take out the League. The League's continued existence is an unacceptable threat to Manticore's survival. Mesa might be a problem, or might not. The League will kill Manticore as soon as it has the ability to, and it can easily have that ability inside of a decade.

More importantly, if the League survives the short term intact, it will become impossible to defeat. It will have used the time to sure up its key flaws and turn into a real governing body, provoked to make the necessary reforms now that it has been shown that those reforms are needed. Once that's done, Manticore's only strategy for beating the League - splintering it - becomes untenable. Letting the League survive is an assured Manticoran death warrant.

Mesa "might" be a problem??? Are you joking? Mesa orchestrated the whole mess! As for the League using its time to reform, that's highly doubtful, at least as long as Mandarins are in control. They are too busy covering their own arses. I do agree with keeping the pressure on, however.

I see the Alignment as the more dangerous problem over the long term. But since GA can't get at the Alignment right now, by all means, let's focus military resources on fragmenting the League.

Don

crewdude48 wrote:
To follow the analogy: You have no idea where the king cobra is, the gorilla's shackles are loose, you have no way of knowing when they will come off, and you can continue to look for the cobra while you are trying to figure out where the cobra is.

The SLN does not need to reach even capability with the RMN. If the can win an engagement where they have a 5 to 1 advantage, then the Manties are in trouble. Considering Haven, with a crappy education system and a bad R&D establishment, and still managed to reach near parity within 5 years, I suspect that the SLN could get "good enough" in the same time.

How is the League unshackled? How can they project power right now? Not five years in the future, five months from the end of CoG.

If the objective of the GA is to destroy the League, why is Grand Fleet not in Earth's orbitals by the end of CoG? There is nothing to stop it going wherever it is pointed. Or any other point or points in the League? as Michelle points out to her staff in outlining her move on Mesa, Both Haven and Manticore doctrine had evolved deep strike as a preferred tactical approach. Honor and Theismann had more to do with that evolution than anyone, and I don't see either abandoning the approach any time soon. But we haven't seen anything of the kind yet. It's not like there was extensive damage to repair after 2nd Manticore.

All I'm trying to say is there will be a debate on priorities for the GA. We haven't seen it yet. I'm not predicting what the outcome of that debate will be. But I do predict it will occur in some form.

pldew wrote:If the objective of the GA is to destroy the League, why is Grand Fleet not in Earth's orbitals by the end of CoG? There is nothing to stop it going wherever it is pointed. Or any other point or points in the League? as Michelle points out to her staff in outlining her move on Mesa, Both Haven and Manticore doctrine had evolved deep strike as a preferred tactical approach. Honor and Theismann had more to do with that evolution than anyone, and I don't see either abandoning the approach any time soon. But we haven't seen anything of the kind yet. It's not like there was extensive damage to repair after 2nd Manticore.

Because a direct attack on the Solarian League of that nature is more likely to make victory impossible than it is to quicken victory. The Grand Alliance doesn't need to beat the Solarian League militarily. That's already done, and the Solarian League isn't a military threat. The Grand Alliance needs to beat the Solarian League politically, to put pressure on fault lines, and to shatter the political edifice that is the League itself. That's not something that's going to be done with deep strikes. Every deep strike the Grand Alliance carries out is more likely to convince League members that whatever their own problems are, they need to get past them deal with Manticore. As soon as that happens, Manticore is done.

pldew wrote:

crewdude48 wrote:
To follow the analogy: You have no idea where the king cobra is, the gorilla's shackles are loose, you have no way of knowing when they will come off, and you can continue to look for the cobra while you are trying to figure out where the cobra is.

The SLN does not need to reach even capability with the RMN. If the can win an engagement where they have a 5 to 1 advantage, then the Manties are in trouble. Considering Haven, with a crappy education system and a bad R&D establishment, and still managed to reach near parity within 5 years, I suspect that the SLN could get "good enough" in the same time.

How is the League unshackled? How can they project power right now? Not five years in the future, five months from the end of CoG.

If the objective of the GA is to destroy the League, why is Grand Fleet not in Earth's orbitals by the end of CoG? There is nothing to stop it going wherever it is pointed. Or any other point or points in the League?

The GA's goal is more to defuse the League than to destroy it. Yes they want it to fracture into smaller less overwhelming successor states. But they want to do so in a way that leaves those successors no more than somewhat irritated with the GA. (Because they damned well know that while they can will the short term naval fight they can't patrol or occupy the entire League space well enough to prevent a rebuilding of naval power should the various League worlds be itching for a rematch)

So the GA are avoiding acts which would be very likely to cause long term hostility, or major rallying points. Like, say, smashing humanities home world! Or exploiting their temporary tech edge to search and destroy through League space; slaughtering the crews of any warship they find there. From a moral and psychological perspective it's very different to kill or force the surrender of forcing that are attacking the GA than to hunt down the forces that are (ostensibly) defending their own territory.


Probably the best case for the GA is for the various League worlds to succeed because they feel fed up with the bullying and incompetence of the League bureaucracy; most notably demonstrated by their repeated failed attempts to attack the GA (plus the revelations that will be coming forth about how they exploited the verge). This possibly encouraged if the Mandarins try for extra-legal taxation to support the war they themselves started. But you don't want to make the 'man on the street' so pissed off that he ignores all that and focuses on long term revenge against the GA.

n7axw wrote:Mesa "might" be a problem??? Are you joking? Mesa orchestrated the whole mess! As for the League using its time to reform, that's highly doubtful, at least as long as Mandarins are in control. They are too busy covering their own arses. I do agree with keeping the pressure on, however.

I see the Alignment as the more dangerous problem over the long term. But since GA can't get at the Alignment right now, by all means, let's focus military resources on fragmenting the League.

Don

I'm looking at this from Manticore's perspective. Manticore knows Mesa wants to destroy it, but Manticore doesn't know what capabilities Mesa has. Manticore knows that the Solarian League is a thousand-system industrial powerhouse the likes of which the human race has never seen at any other time in history. And it knows that as soon as the League gets its act together, it'll put that might into crushing Manticore into powder. There is no such thing as a bigger threat to Manticore than that; whatever Mesa is, whatever it intends, and regardless of the fact that Mesa loosed the League on Manticore, Mesa itself cannot be a bigger material threat to Manticore than the League.

The Solarian League may be in the middle of a giant game of CYOA, but you're a lot more skeptical of the Mandarins than I am. If you give those people time to make up for their mistakes and the mistakes of the League, they'll try to make reforms. They're "covering their own asses" because not doing so means the League dies of apoplexy (conveniently meaning their own individual interests are aligned with the League's survival interest). Give them a moment to breathe easy and they'll take that moment and work to solve the problems which, frankly, not one of them would have considered significant enough to warrant change before New Tuscany. Now that they know those problems are potentially fatal, they'll work to fix them, if only because not doing so means that it'll all fall apart the next time they drop a stitch. If they don't, they'll get replaced by people who will.

Now that the League has decided it has to kill Manticore, Manticore is faced with two implacable enemies: Mesa and the Solarian League. Mesa is only more dangerous if their extremism leads them to adopt extreme tactics; the Solarian League outclasses them as a threat in every dimension except the crazy.

I'll accept the premise that there is no need to reconsider strategic priorities if:

a. Someone will explain how the League can project power sufficient to harm the SEM within five years of the end of CoG. Not just do R&D, but create a fighting force and doctrine to use it, with competent officers to lead it.

and

b. Someone will explain how "the biggest intelligence coup of the last several centuries" lacks the relevance to change anyone's strategic thinking. Particularly in light of the formation of the Grand Alliance in direct response.


I am not requiring that reconsideration to come to any particular conclusion. But I think it needs to occur, after 2nd Manticore and the formation of the Alliance. And we haven't seen that yet.

pldew wrote:I'll accept the premise that there is no need to reconsider strategic priorities if:

a. Someone will explain how the League can project power sufficient to harm the SEM within five years of the end of CoG. Not just do R&D, but create a fighting force and doctrine to use it, with competent officers to lead it.

and

b. Someone will explain how "the biggest intelligence coup of the last several centuries" lacks the relevance to change anyone's strategic thinking. Particularly in light of the formation of the Grand Alliance in direct response.


I am not requiring that reconsideration to come to any particular conclusion. But I think it needs to occur, after 2nd Manticore and the formation of the Alliance. And we haven't seen that yet.

(a) It doesn't matter, because if the Solarian League is still in one piece in 5 years, that means the Solarian League hasn't fallen apart, and the probability of its collapse drops dramatically. That means if Manticore accepts the League's short-term survival, it's accepting the probability of its long-term survival.

(I'd also add that I think the Solarian League is not nearly as far away from being a military threat as you think; a production line of MDMs the quality of those tossed around by Filareta at Manticore can turn a squadron of battlecruisers with a missile collier into a real threat to anything short of a superdreadnought division.)

(b) Because the intelligence coup doesn't have any impact on the industrial weight the Solarian League can bring to bear, and thus has no impact on its long-term military potential. That potential still massively, massively outweighs the Grand Alliance's military potential. Besides, Manticore has nothing it can do from a strategic perspective in the short term to deal with Mesa other than what Michelle Henke has already decided to do.