Hi Brigade XO,
Kudos, excellent points as usual, I always enjoy your posts.
I would add that we have textev of some private corporations, like Manpower and others based on Mesa, though not exclusive to Mesa, of having their own navies albeit not very big [largest are BC's], because no one else would defend their properties, which probably include whole planets if not systems spread across the galaxy.
Granted these are a relative handful of all the transtellars [a range of less than 1% to 1/2%?], but they will have to be accounted for by the GA because some of them might attempt to undo the GA liberation of the protectorates etc.
While no ground forces are mentioned, there seem to be plenty of mercenary forces around that might be on long term contracts with various consortiums.
While they wouldn't be big enough to handle threats to everything at once, I suspect their operating doctrine is similar to FF's; deterrence by a small presence rather than overwhelming force always on hand.
Given about 2/3 of the SL relies on LAC's, besides the SLN, I suspect most of the verge also relies on LAC's, so even a handful of real hyper warships, mainly light cruisers and destroyers, are enough to deal with most threats.
Systems controlled by transtellars known to have a private navy will have to have a more permanent GA presence than those who don't until the private navy is fully accounted for.
I further suspect the MAlign has done its best to set up or sabotage such private navies as part of the preparation for the establishment of the RF, and who knows, some might be commissioned to appear as the RMN in certain times and places, with the same kind of explosive precautions Mesa had for the SS TG at Torch.
I also suspect it won't just be the protectorates that will be confiscating transtellar assets, because the shells may have some strong feelings about their relationships with various transtellars too, and may coordinate their efforts to seek justice by seizing all the local properties of the same transtellars simultaneously etc, for maximum bargaining power.
The RTU was hated in the TC for its abuses of its power, but none of them seem impossible for transtellars to have inaugurated several centuries earlier and easily exceeded all too often since.
The advantages of the wormhole network in aiding and abetting the protectorates and shells in accomplishing their various revenges will probably seal their bond with the GA.
The GA may even show them how.
L
Brigade XO wrote:I think the Transstellars are going to have a difficult time hanging onto a whole lot of systems unless they are firmly in control of local police and military including their own security troops.
Why? Because even if systems who's "tyrants" or "dictators" can't get military force from OFS to shore up the regimes, they may end up "nationalizing" the transstellar's property just as fast as a local revolutionary group would should it succeed in throwing off the current corrupt systems.
Nobody has mentioned the transstellars having their own private armies. They have depended on OFS/FF. If I were a newly in charge of a system through a revolt against the prior government, one of my first moves would be to change the laws and get the assets and businesses that made the system so desirable to the transstellars out of thier hands.
You don't even have to kill anybody, you just eject them as "foreign nationals" that pose a signifant risk to the safety and stability of the System--and nationalize all those assets. You could turn the assets back to original owners or just sell them to your own citizens or some other option. Without OFS to give the orders- and without the transstellars being able to quickly organize ----and arrive with-- some force to compel the locals to "give back" the industries, they are just out of luck. Legal problems--well, the legal system will have changed and the local government will enforce the new one. That new one will NOT be slanted to protect the TS interest.
You may find a lot of places like Meyers where the TS and OFS had overlaid the local laws with "special provisions" which protected them but ultimatly leave them vulnerable to criminal proceedings for all the things they did- under the existing laws of the System AT THE TIME THEY COMMITED THE ACTS.
Fill you prisons, confiscate the ill-gotten gains and move forward.
Well, there was the sword duel thing on Grayson, but I don't thing trials against giant corporations would go that way
