GA Strategy, Tactics and Targets

namelessfly wrote:I am so full of crap theorizing that the Detweilers who manipulated the demise of the RoH into socialism,manipulated the RoH into war with the SEM, then manipulated the diplomatic correspondence to renew hostilities during WoH were not well enough connected to know where Bolthile is.

Furthermore; I can't imagine the Detweilers being willing to cripple the SEM while leaving the PRH intact unless the RMN had an overwhelming technological advantage.

Well I could be wrong but I believe that Detweiler didn't know at the time that the RH would be end up being allied with, rather than at war with the SEM after Oyster Bay. I'm sure that Detweiler merely hoped that the destruction of their industrial base and the approaching conflict with the SLN would leave Manticore and Greyson vulnerable to destruction, hopefully taking a lot of the SLN and the RHN with them of course. That would take Manticore and Greyson off the board, which crippling both the League and the Republic. Sort of a win win WIN type of situation.

As such, it makes a lot of sense for both the Republic and the Andermani being excluded from the original OB strike list.

Weird Harold wrote:

J6P wrote:Do a FIND word in the electronic books for Detweiler in SFTS and it should get you there.

I'll try that, again. I did the search on all the ebooks at once. I'll try that one book.

Do a "bolthole" search. That should narrow it down significantly wouldn't it? Actually, I think the passage you are looking for is in MoH, not SFTS.

Watch this, it is in ART

There will not be more OB's immediately because it will be obvious there is a 3rd party out there just as Manticore has said. Even Sollies can figure out 1+1 still equals 2.

Eventually spider ships will be unleashed, but not until after the SL breaks and new political spheres have been solidified.

wastedfly wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:
I'll try that, again. I did the search on all the ebooks at once. I'll try that one book.

Do a "bolthole" search. That should narrow it down significantly wouldn't it? Actually, I think the passage you are looking for is in MoH, not SFTS.

Watch this, it is in ART

I think you guys are conflating two things together:
The reason they didn't hit the RHN shipyards and their lack of penetration into Manticoran R&D.

The reason they didn't hit Haven was because they didn't have the ships to do it wether they knew of Bolthole or not played no role in that decision. The original plan called for them to hit all the major powers in the Haven Quadrant (Manticore was never projected as such by the Malig), however due to the rise of the RMN and Grayson combined with the push up of the operation neither Haven nor the Andies got hit due to using the Sharks instead of the as yet unready Lenny Dets. From what I recall all the talk concerning the Havenite shipyards and whether there existed a "secret" shipyard was never brought up. What was brought up in Textev was the lack of success at penetrating ONI's cloak of secrecy around Manticores R&D projects (something Haven wasn't able to penetrate either) and the reason why they still don't know how MDM's work let alone Apollo.

ONE major target for the GA within the League space would be Technodyne and Yildun (which it Technodyne's major shipbuilding location in a system without a habitable planet but is a primary production site for a lot of the SLN capital ships). If they hit that- and don't show the normal consideration of either the RHN or RMN for letting people evacuate- then the do in no small way to the SL what Oyster Bay did to Grayson and Manticore with the killing of a significant numbers of the experienced shipyard and related industries people.

The Alignment ran Oyster Bay against the two places that were the most important threat. The original plan was to hit Haven as well but there just were not enough ships and weapons to do it because the whole Lenny Det project, though "on schedule" was caught short (another plan caught by relality and things not anticipated) and diverting anything to ANY of the many Haven yards would have left infrastructure intact at Grayson and Manticore.

Even the short version of Oyster Bay was still intended to have Haven crippled as the Alignment ANTICIPATED that, even after the looses Haven took at 1st Manticore, Haven would almost immediately after getting the reports of Oyster Bay, try again to strike and capture at least the Manticore Home System.

One of those things that keep messing up Alignment plans steps into foil that 2nd Haven strike- Manticore and Haven stop the way and become allied against the Alignment. What the Alignment expeced to happen was that even having suffered the losses of people and naval ships with Oyster Bay, RMN (at least) would have savaged the Haven fleet(s) in the second try at taking the Manticore system even if Haven won that fight and Haven would have been in a bad way when the SLN was sent out to impose peace on the neo-barbs. That "peace" would have involved taking over Manticore by OFS and also taking apart the Republic of Haven. The losses Haven would have taken even with what they would still be able to inflict on the SLN would have essentially both destroyed RHN as a force and will also ground up a lot more of the SLN, helping to push the fracturing of the SL as per Alignment plans. Essentialy Manticore and Haven would have been gone but much of the active SLN fleet (both FF and BF) which means their most modern ship and most of the crews with real experience including combat experience would be gone. SLN would be down to 3rd and 4th string players (and worse) plus still with all sorts of incompetent senior staff. They would be facing all those SDFs of systems that would want to take advantage of the new situation. They might even have a lot of former RHN running around as pirates or at least mercenaries.

In Mission of Honor, Lacoon II is mentioned as having commerce raiding as part of the plan. I would like to see when and how that is implemented

I'm in agreement with Alizon about MAlign being the major threat. The difficulty is finding the Alignment. What that means is that the war against the Alignment will be a war of intelligence rather than a primarily a naval one until that is solved.

Freezing large numbers of SDPs around Alliance systems will not increase the security of those systems. As Mike Henke pointed out, a pair of Nikes could have caused the damage suffered in the Yawatta Strike. The issue is detecting and identifying the enemy in time to engage.

That being the case, I think that leaving behind smaller defensive forces at home while sending out enough ships to deal with the League plus a reserve ready force uncommitted but available to be used at need would make the most sense.

Finally, I wonder what will be the bottom line intel haul from COG. I know that conventional wisdom is pessemistic on this, but I wonder. Houdini was far too complicated not to suffer the consequences of Murphy's law. Zilwicki and Cachat already understand that people are being evacuated or eliminated. You have McBride now rid of his Gaul. Mark my words, something else is going to turn up, perhaps someone who was supposed to be evacuated, perhaps something as simple as a missed computer, but something will turn up for Cachat/Zilwicke to get their teeth into. We just don't know what yet.

Don

boballab wrote:The reason they didn't hit Haven was because they didn't have the ships to do it wether they knew of Bolthole or not played no role in that decision. The original plan called for them to hit all the major powers in the Haven Quadrant (Manticore was never projected as such by the Malig), however due to the rise of the RMN and Grayson combined with the push up of the operation neither Haven nor the Andies got hit due to using the Sharks instead of the as yet unready Lenny Dets. From what I recall all the talk concerning the Havenite shipyards and whether there existed a "secret" shipyard was never brought up. What was brought up in Textev was the lack of success at penetrating ONI's cloak of secrecy around Manticores R&D projects (something Haven wasn't able to penetrate either) and the reason why they still don't know how MDM's work let alone Apollo.

No, they did mention that they lacked the ships to hit haven, and they mentioned that they hadn't located bolthole, and hitting haven without hitting that was of limited value.

But the ships they need are getting closer to completion every day....

Hi N7AXW,

Thanks so much for expressing some common sense and rationality, wisdom in short, evidently much better than I have.

All the RMN in the Manticore systems couldn't stop the OB attack because it happened too quickly, so what good would larger fleets even if ten times their size really be?

Regarding the loss of the SEM and Grayson's infrastructure, we have the substitute of Beowulf and Haven making up much of that gap faster than anyone in Manticore thought possible before the GA, with Invictus type SDP's being built at Bolthole then sent to Beowulf to install the Keyhole platforms and Apollo MDM's and gear etc within a couple of years, while Beowulf will produce Apollo's several month's earlier [mid-summer] than the pessimistic year-end projection QE III made in her HD broadcast in MoH, so like Commodore Terekhov's thoughts about Filaretta, I'm not worried about the attack on Beowulf affecting the GA's plans.

We have all the textev that the SL is "doomed", using just about term imaginable that it will collapse or be smashed, broken, shattered, fractured, splintered, sliced and diced, etc.

So these posts of the SL somehow surviving beyond 5 years are simply not what RFC intends to happen.

While the MAlign intended the SKM to do a big part of that, they didn't expect it to smash the SL as quickly as the GA now can.

Taking out BF and its reserve, the big club the mandarins have used for centuries, would indeed shatter much of the
SL especially the shells [ who have so many SDF's] NTM the several plus core old league worlds Kolokoltsov knows will join Beowulf, while eliminating as much as possible of the FF encourages the protectorates and verge besides the shells, so there's very little left remaining to threaten Manticore any more.

So sending out the forces needed to eviscerate the SL's military capability and potential against the GA as soon as possible, especially since such inhibits if not directly threatens the search for the MAlign, makes all the sense in the world.

Thanks to the MMM, and the openness of the SL, the GA already knows where all the SLN bases etc are, and has known for decades as the success of Lacoon 1 &and 2 indicate, so scouts aren't needed to search them out now, saving a lot of time.

We don't know if the GA has started already, but it will be soon, as Sean Magellan expected a lot of 'heavy metal' to be moving through the termini he's secured.

The "Lenny Det's" are still years away from being commissioned, so given what's gone wrong with the MAlign's plans so far, what else will go wrong by then?

When is the next book due?

Any idea what the working title might be?

I'm getting really desperate after CoG already.

No kidding, and the feeling is general, I'm sure.

L

n7axw wrote:I'm in agreement with Alizon about MAlign being the major threat. The difficulty is finding the Alignment. What that means is that the war against the Alignment will be a war of intelligence rather than a primarily a naval one until that is solved.

Freezing large numbers of SDPs around Alliance systems will not increase the security of those systems. As Mike Henke pointed out, a pair of Nikes could have caused the damage suffered in the Yawatta Strike. The issue is detecting and identifying the enemy in time to engage.

That being the case, I think that leaving behind smaller defensive forces at home while sending out enough ships to deal with the League plus a reserve ready force uncommitted but available to be used at need would make the most sense.

Finally, I wonder what will be the bottom line intel haul from COG. I know that conventional wisdom is pessemistic on this, but I wonder. Houdini was far too complicated not to suffer the consequences of Murphy's law. Zilwicki and Cachat already understand that people are being evacuated or eliminated. You have McBride now rid of his Gaul. Mark my words, something else is going to turn up, perhaps someone who was supposed to be evacuated, perhaps something as simple as a missed computer, but something will turn up for Cachat/Zilwicke to get their teeth into. We just don't know what yet.

Don

wastedfly wrote:Do a "bolthole" search. That should narrow it down significantly wouldn't it? Actually, I think the passage you are looking for is in MoH, not SFTS.

Watch this, it is in ART

That was the first attempt: search for all ebooks containing the word "Bolthole." Then search each positive individually. The reference I'm looking for apparently doesn't use the codename when referring to Haven's hidden R&D facility.