Long term consequences of the League's collapse

n7axw wrote:Honor proposed the strategy of braking up the League into more managable sized states that would be small enough not to be a threat to the Star Empire. The method is to be sure that the ties with the League are broken and then offer in their place friendship, economic ties and mutual defense treaties. I have seen different figures for the size of the League, but the smallest is abt 1800 systems.

So given that reality how many systems does GA need relationships with to accomplish its goal?

Don

Numbers alone don't count for much. Consideration of those systems' economic, political and military clout are more important.

For example, securing good-terms relationships with virtually every wormhole owner is worth more than a hundred Verge planets of the Mfecane type, isolated and scattered around the... Verge.

Core worlds of the League are also desirable, particularly those old enough to have established daughter colonies and therefore likely to have some influence over them(when they aren't bitter rivals, like Beowulf/Mesa or Grayson/Masada).

n7axw wrote:So given that reality how many systems does GA need relationships with to accomplish its goal?

Tough question.

A lot will depend on whether the SL breaks up in singletons, like Beowulf, or big chunks like the Maya Sector. I would say that any successor star nation claiming more than 10% or the League -- 180 systems -- is going to be cause for concern.

The GA already has at least one member twice that size and every member can expect to gain at least one or two member systems, so they may find larger star nations acceptable, but I doubt they'll allow much more than 200 systems to an empire.

Oddly enough, that works out to around 10% of the league that the GA has to suborn at minimum. If they can manage that and show that they will honor any declaration of Neutrality by former members, they should be OK.

50 core worlds could be in the same industrial power and population as the entire GA.

kzt wrote:50 core worlds could be in the same industrial power and population as the entire GA.

I would think that it would be a very high priority to break up the core worlds and keep them from recombining.

Don

Up thread I posted how I saw Manticore's advantages. In this post I try to summarize Manticore's challenges in the aftermath of a League collapse.

MAlign- We know that Alignment has its own agenda for the galaxy and hopes to capitalize on League's collapse to promote its agenda. We also know that they have developed two new drive systems, the streak and the spider. We also know that they have superior stealth. What we don't know are the actual perameters of the military threat. I suspect that if the issues with stealth could be resolved, the military threat would be managable.

Too many fires, not enough fire trucks to douse 'em. This has to do with allocation of resourses in the resulting chaos of the League's collapse. As competent as the RMN is, it is much too small, even in combination with its allies to be everywhere and police every disturbance.. Its priorities are going to be the wormhole system, protecting its commercial interests, honoring its treaties with former League worlds and, of course keeping the homeworld and its empire safe. The RMN is going to have to expand, especially in the lighter ship classes. This should become easier as Silesia and the quadrant are integrated into the empire, freeing up some light combatants and expanding the resourses needed to acquire more.

Managing its relationships with its neighbors- Haven, Grayson and Beowulf are the biggies. They are the formal GA along with Manticore. Right now things are helped by sharing tha MAlign as a common enemy. While this continues, they should set up mechanisms for resolving disputes and encourage inter--Alliance trade as much as possible. Then there are the Andermani. They are not a part of the Alliance at this time.
Their interests should be honored as far as possible and they will hopefully be encouraged to join as the focus shifts away from the League toward the Alignmemt where Gustav has a clear and abiding ax to grind.

Enough for now...

Don

Weird Harold wrote:The GA already has at least one member twice that size and every member can expect to gain at least one or two member systems, so they may find larger star nations acceptable, but I doubt they'll allow much more than 200 systems to an empire.

Erm... the new Republic of Haven has about 150 systems, and is by far the largest polity in the Grand Alliance (the Star Empire of Manticore and the Andermani Empire both being in the 50-75 range including their respective Silesian protectorates). The PRH at its peak had about 400, but a lot of them availed themselves of the opportunity to leave when Pritchart and Theisman provided it (also, some of that number was systems claimed only to put forward bases against Manticore in, but with no significant planetary population).

A great deal of the verge has been harmed by the league practises, that the damage will take years to undo, to allow them to stand by themselves. Multiple system s nay need to stand together just to suffice. Others could be overwhelmed by just a few warship, so fall to empire building.
we assume those with ships will attempt to build their own empires, but what if remains of the league navy instead choose to work for a specific system/s. They are already mercenary in nature, now they would just reveal the TRUE them. The nqgy has all sorts of special interests, so when it goes bad, their patrons will be howling fir thru paid soldiers to come to protect tgema nd their assets.

SYED wrote:A great deal of the verge has been harmed by the league practises, that the damage will take years to undo, to allow them to stand by themselves. Multiple system s nay need to stand together just to suffice. Others could be overwhelmed by just a few warship, so fall to empire building.
we assume those with ships will attempt to build their own empires, but what if remains of the league navy instead choose to work for a specific system/s. They are already mercenary in nature, now they would just reveal the TRUE them. The nqgy has all sorts of special interests, so when it goes bad, their patrons will be howling fir thru paid soldiers to come to protect tgema nd their assets.

I don't normally complain about spelling in forums, but the last half of your paragraph is rather unreadable my friend.

BobfromSydney wrote:

SYED wrote:A great deal of the verge has been harmed by the league practises, that the damage will take years to undo, to allow them to stand by themselves. Multiple system s nay need to stand together just to suffice. Others could be overwhelmed by just a few warship, so fall to empire building.
we assume those with ships will attempt to build their own empires, but what if remains of the league navy instead choose to work for a specific system/s. They are already mercenary in nature, now they would just reveal the TRUE them. The nqgy has all sorts of special interests, so when it goes bad, their patrons will be howling fir thru paid soldiers to come to protect tgema nd their assets.

I don't normally complain about spelling in forums, but the last half of your paragraph is rather unreadable my friend.

I tend to cut SYED some slack, as I am of the opinion that he is not a native English speaker (Tester knows I make enough errors on my own and I've been using English all of my 61 years). Still, SYED, slowing down a bit and getting it right does help--because I for one usually find your points cogent and well-taken.

Now, back to the Honorverse...


As for the warlord cycle, that is going to happen and what happens after that depends a lot on said warlord. Barregos and Roczak are one example, planning well ahead and knowing what they want to accomplish. We have never seen the 'leaders' of the Maya Sector planets and I wonder if they know what is going on behind the curtain, but that hasn't been revealed by RFC.

I can see some systems in the Core or Shell that know each other (and more importantly, trust each other) band together and co-opt part of BF/FF, be they as mercanaries or because the crews are primarily from the region.

Out in the Verge is where warlordism is most likely, and Warnecke-types may have their moment, but areas of stability like Talbott and Maya among others will suddenly find themselves very popular with systems needing new friends.

We shall see, evenually.

Hi Hutch,

Just catching up on threads I've missed.

I'll try to finish further comments on Monday.

Something to keep in mind is that id the SL is around 50-50 150 to 200 LY in radius, the volume is some 23.83 million cubic LY's.

Depending on how many nodal pickets you think the GA can set up soon, given another 400 RHN SDP's completing this fall to winter for around 1200 before Bolthole begins its new construction series, aside from the wormhole network we still know very little about [there were only 5 termini in the SL before Idaho, but there are apparently lots more now] but 180 such pickets with 4 SDP's each, so one division could handle a violation while the other was still in reserve, would be roughly within 40 LY of the entire former SL.

Therefore available in about 5 days to reign retribution if no one else can for a EE violation, although given a third of the SL has hyper warships, and I suspect many of those are sympathetic with Beowulf if not the GA in general, there should be quite a police force even without the aforementioned pickets.

We need a updated wormhole map because what we do know seems to imply a lot more hyper bridges than there were when the series began so the gaps between them or the volume each termini serves could be much smaller than we've previously thought, permitting closer communication and reaction time.

Given the rate things are happening, I suspect the GA with something like 5000 warships to start with, ie far larger than the RF's combined SDF's [ruining the appeal the MAlign was counting on], will be once the SLN's reserves and bases have been destroyed, be able to liberate the protectorates rather handily, and provide the police force some fear won't be there.

So there might be less to worry about.

L

Hutch wrote:

BobfromSydney wrote:**quote="SYED"**A great deal of the verge has been harmed by the league practises, that the damage will take years to undo, to allow them to stand by themselves. Multiple system s nay need to stand together just to suffice. Others could be overwhelmed by just a few warship, so fall to empire building.
we assume those with ships will attempt to build their own empires, but what if remains of the league navy instead choose to work for a specific system/s. They are already mercenary in nature, now they would just reveal the TRUE them. The nqgy has all sorts of special interests, so when it goes bad, their patrons will be howling fir thru paid soldiers to come to protect tgema nd their assets.**quote**

I don't normally complain about spelling in forums, but the last half of your paragraph is rather unreadable my friend.

I tend to cut SYED some slack, as I am of the opinion that he is not a native English speaker (Tester knows I make enough errors on my own and I've been using English all of my 61 years). Still, SYED, slowing down a bit and getting it right does help--because I for one usually find your points cogent and well-taken.

Now, back to the Honorverse...


As for the warlord cycle, that is going to happen and what happens after that depends a lot on said warlord. Barregos and Roczak are one example, planning well ahead and knowing what they want to accomplish. We have never seen the 'leaders' of the Maya Sector planets and I wonder if they know what is going on behind the curtain, but that hasn't been revealed by RFC.

I can see some systems in the Core or Shell that know each other (and more importantly, trust each other) band together and co-opt part of BF/FF, be they as mercanaries or because the crews are primarily from the region.

Out in the Verge is where warlordism is most likely, and Warnecke-types may have their moment, but areas of stability like Talbott and Maya among others will suddenly find themselves very popular with systems needing new friends.

We shall see, evenually.