Logic behind splitting Lacoon?

SharkHunter wrote:In essence L-1 one is "stay the hell out of our playground", meaning that no SLN ship, warship or other can now see inside the GA based on access from the wormhole junctions. ...

L-1 is more "We're taking our ball and going home. And you can't use our bats either."

IOW, L-1 recalled all Manticoran Merchant Marine ships from Solarian controlled space. The intent was more to remove MMM ships from potential reprisals than to obstruct SL spies. It had the beneficial (to Manticore's war aims) side effect of crippling Solarian interstellar shipping, but the aim of L-1 was to prepare the "killing grounds" by removing non-combatants.

L-2 is the plan to actively suppress Solarian trade by closing wormholes and actively raiding Solarian commerce.

Roguevictory wrote:I'm strictly an amateur strategist so I'm probably mistaken but I thought Commerce Raiding campaigns usually have two objectives.

1: To disrupt the enemy economy and supply lines plus increase political pressure at home on the target power to end the conflict in the raider's favor.

2: To force the target power to divert warships to escort their merchant vessels and hunt down the raiders or both.

If I'm right than wouldn't destroying the pursuing warships help objective 2 by decreasing the number of warships the League navy has available? Usually, based on my understanding, raider vessels are usually less armored or more lightly armed than warships, or out numbered badly enough that engaging warships is a serious risk but with the GA Tech edges it seems like the risk of a raider force being damaged or destroyed in an engagement with a SL pursuit force would be very low. I know in sheer numbers the ships the SL loses in such engagements probably wouldn't weaken it that badly but it seems like decreasing the number of hulls, and trained personal the League has available, even a little, would benefit the GA more than saving the missiles for GA Freighters would.

Part of (2) is to maximise the forces the enemy deploys to protect against your raiding, in numbers of ships total, number of ships in each defensive force, and size of individual ships. A historical example of the third point would be the Tirpitz: as long as she sat in her anchorage, the RN had to deploy battleships as escorts for convoys to Russia (because of intelligence failings, this lasted even after she had been rendered unable to set to sea and was reassigned as a fixed artillery battery).

IIRC, in the Pearl describing the Rolands, RFC indicated they were able to effectively combat 95% of all probable commerce raiders, at a time when the RMN was thinking in terms of opposition by the PRN and Silesian pirates. This would have allowed the RMN to deploy single Rolands in places where they might have deployed pairs of CLs or a CL with DDs... and is now rather irrelevant.

In the current situation, while it would not be in the GA's interests to completely destroy every ISLN defensive force willy-nilly, it could be useful in a longer-term strategy to partially destroy some. The scenario runs as follows:

A GA raiding force (for argument's sake, a pair of Rolands and a passenger vessel to receive prisoners and carry the prize crews to take captured ships back to home space) enters some undefended minor nodal system in the SL. They spend some time successfully capturing random merchies entering or leaving the system. Noting that merchies are unarmed and sluggish, generally surrender quite quickly (from textev in the earlier books) and the GA is not interested in slaughtering civilians, they are probably ordered to avoid firing if at all possible. They may rotate around a few nearby systems, so the locals are never quite sure whether it's safe to travel.

Eventually, the ISLN sends a defensive force to destroy the neobarbs: a squadron of DDs, immense overkill for the reported raiding force. To provide maximum coverage, they will probably split up on arrival: a division to patrol each of the usual approach and departure corridors, and rotate one division through planetary orbit to 'show the flag', prove the ISLN is actually doing something, and give the crews opportunity for shore leave (very important, shore leave).

The two Rolands promptly 'fight their way out', crippling or destroying all the ships in one of the divisions. The survivors send reports back to their HQ that they were overpowered and went down fighting bravely against a force far more powerful than originally reported (can't admit they were sitting ducks as the GA ships cruised past).

This is repeated in several places. The ISLN gets the idea, and sends out more powerful defensive forces, possibly starting with half CL squadrons to back up each DD squadron.

The GA forces in each system picketed by the reinforced defensive forces 'fight their way out'... and so the cycle continues. Since a Roland can apparently take on ISLN BCs on a one-to-one basis, and Hexapumas are even more capable, the ISLN will end up deciding between sending out their entire complement of BCs (and any BBs they have in reserve) plus possibly DNs and SDs in penny packets (having never deployed capital ships in less than squadron strength, and therefore having no doctrine for doing so) for local defence, or performing offensive operations.

They might be well advised to take the defensive option. At the moment, the most effective offensive operation they can manage is quick dashes through GA systems while loudly broadcasting pornography...

RMN choice for Commerce raiding force are Nikes, so SLN will need SDs squadrons to get rid of unpleasant visitors.

SharkHunter wrote:Seems to me (unless I missed something, it is 2am after all), that most of the posts assume that the major difference between L1 and L2 has emphasized was getting the Manticoran ships, and the timing set accordingly. Partially true, but strategically and tactically less so, and it's discussed several books before aRT.

In essence L-1 one is "stay the hell out of our playground", meaning that no SLN ship, warship or other can now see inside the GA based on access from the wormhole junctions. Information TO the League and therefore the SLN is thereby forced to a crawl, side benefit it gets the RMMC hulls back to safe space, meaning that Frontier Fleet will get notified about what is happening ONLY after it is too late to do anything about it.

So it's a deep space communications blackout, of sorts.


Then the L2 "pygmy" known as the RMN decides to step on ALL of the long distance commercial arteries using the Sag-C's, etc. effectively saying "oh, and by the way, we're taking over ALL of the playgrounds so that we can do whatever the hell we want where you can't see us. And we don't think you've got the ships or guts to stop what we just did."

Which even the SLN leadership knows actually means "oh and by away behind the wall we're going to try and dismember your Verge and maybe some core system loyalties towards folks who like us better".

You are misremembering the nature of Lacoon I. Lacoon I only recalled all Manticoran freighters from Solarian space. It did not stop Solarian ships from traveling to Manticoran space.

SWM wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Seems to me (unless I missed something, it is 2am after all), that most of the posts assume that the major difference between L1 and L2 has emphasized was getting the Manticoran ships, and the timing set accordingly. Partially true, but strategically and tactically less so, and it's discussed several books before aRT.

In essence L-1 one is "stay the hell out of our playground", meaning that no SLN ship, warship or other can now see inside the GA based on access from the wormhole junctions. Information TO the League and therefore the SLN is thereby forced to a crawl, side benefit it gets the RMMC hulls back to safe space, meaning that Frontier Fleet will get notified about what is happening ONLY after it is too late to do anything about it.

So it's a deep space communications blackout, of sorts.


Then the L2 "pygmy" known as the RMN decides to step on ALL of the long distance commercial arteries using the Sag-C's, etc. effectively saying "oh, and by the way, we're taking over ALL of the playgrounds so that we can do whatever the hell we want where you can't see us. And we don't think you've got the ships or guts to stop what we just did."

Which even the SLN leadership knows actually means "oh and by away behind the wall we're going to try and dismember your Verge and maybe some core system loyalties towards folks who like us better".

You are misremembering the nature of Lacoon I. Lacoon I only recalled all Manticoran freighters from Solarian space. It did not stop Solarian ships from traveling to Manticoran space.

They might be remembering the "belligerent" Manty force at the beginning of one of the recent books - Manty forces were sent to wormholes to make sure 1) the message got to as many RMMM ships as possible, 2) the RMMM ships follows the orders, 3) the wormholes remained open to Manty shipping, and 4) to maintain the safety of the RMMM ships during the evacuation of SL space.

The local commander had refused RMMM shipping access to the wormhole, so the RMN had seized the control platforms. Since the local SLN DD commander had taken up a threatening posture at the wormhole, the RMN force was on alert, and once the DD comander threatened to destroy RMMM ships, the RMN commander was allowed to take the gloves off and threaten the SLN commander back.

Had there been no threat to the shipping and ships allowed to go on their way, the RMN force would have been sitting there doing nothing, like they probably had been in numerous other places.

SWM wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:Seems to me (unless I missed something, it is 2am after all), that most of the posts assume that the major difference between L1 and L2 has emphasized was getting the Manticoran ships, and the timing set accordingly. Partially true, but strategically and tactically less so, and it's discussed several books before aRT.

In essence L-1 one is "stay the hell out of our playground", meaning that no SLN ship, warship or other can now see inside the GA based on access from the wormhole junctions. Information TO the League and therefore the SLN is thereby forced to a crawl, side benefit it gets the RMMC hulls back to safe space, meaning that Frontier Fleet will get notified about what is happening ONLY after it is too late to do anything about it.

So it's a deep space communications blackout, of sorts.


Then the L2 "pygmy" known as the RMN decides to step on ALL of the long distance commercial arteries using the Sag-C's, etc. effectively saying "oh, and by the way, we're taking over ALL of the playgrounds so that we can do whatever the hell we want where you can't see us. And we don't think you've got the ships or guts to stop what we just did."

Which even the SLN leadership knows actually means "oh and by away behind the wall we're going to try and dismember your Verge and maybe some core system loyalties towards folks who like us better".

You are misremembering the nature of Lacoon I. Lacoon I only recalled all Manticoran freighters from Solarian space. It did not stop Solarian ships from traveling to Manticoran space.

I believe you are also misremembering the nature of Lacoon I. It not only recalled all Manticoran freighters, it closed all Manticoran controlled wormholes to SL traffic (except recognized news organizations). lacoon II was to go out and actively seize all of the WH junctions that the RMN could reach, and deny their use to the SL, as well as engage in commerce raiding.

fallsfromtrees wrote:I believe you are also misremembering the nature of Lacoon I. It not only recalled all Manticoran freighters, it closed all Manticoran controlled wormholes to SL traffic (except recognized news organizations). lacoon II was to go out and actively seize all of the WH junctions that the RMN could reach, and deny their use to the SL, as well as engage in commerce raiding.

Yep - here's the quote from Mission of Honor that supports that

Mission of Honor: Chapter 26 wrote:Case Lacoön was the Royal Manticoran Navy’s plan to close all wormhole nexii under its control to Solarian traffic. Or, rather, that was the first phase of Lacoön. The second phase included active commerce raiding and the extension of de facto Manticoran control to every wormhole nexus within its reach, regardless of who that nexus nominally belonged to.

Mission of Honor: Chapter 27 wrote:now that Lacoön One was in effect. The League wasn’t going to be happy when it discovered Manticore had closed the Junction to all Solly traffic. Or that nondiscretionary recall orders had been issued to every Manticoran merchantman in Solarian space. Or, now that he thought about it, that orders had been dispatched to every station commander to take whatever steps seemed necessary to protect Manticoran ships, property, and lives from Solarian action.

I do remember an exception to the closure, for news dispatch boats, but it must have been mentioned elsewhere.

Dang, you're right. I'm the one misremembering.

Jonathan_S wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:I believe you are also misremembering the nature of Lacoon I. It not only recalled all Manticoran freighters, it closed all Manticoran controlled wormholes to SL traffic (except recognized news organizations). lacoon II was to go out and actively seize all of the WH junctions that the RMN could reach, and deny their use to the SL, as well as engage in commerce raiding.

Yep - here's the quote from Mission of Honor that supports that

Mission of Honor: Chapter 26 wrote:Case Lacoön was the Royal Manticoran Navy’s plan to close all wormhole nexii under its control to Solarian traffic. Or, rather, that was the first phase of Lacoön. The second phase included active commerce raiding and the extension of de facto Manticoran control to every wormhole nexus within its reach, regardless of who that nexus nominally belonged to.

Mission of Honor: Chapter 27 wrote:now that Lacoön One was in effect. The League wasn’t going to be happy when it discovered Manticore had closed the Junction to all Solly traffic. Or that nondiscretionary recall orders had been issued to every Manticoran merchantman in Solarian space. Or, now that he thought about it, that orders had been dispatched to every station commander to take whatever steps seemed necessary to protect Manticoran ships, property, and lives from Solarian action.

I do remember an exception to the closure, for news dispatch boats, but it must have been mentioned elsewhere.

SWM wrote:Dang, you're right. I'm the one misremembering.

Yes, here's Sir Carmichael telling Kolokoltsov about the nature of Lacoön I:

A Rising Thunder, Chapter 5 wrote:“You’re withdrawing all of your warships to Manticoran space?” Kolokoltsov said slowly.
“No, I’m afraid that would be quite impossible, Mr. Permanent Senior Undersecretary. The Royal Navy’s responsibilities are far too widespread and demanding for us to do such a thing. Unhappily, that means our only alternative is to close all Manticoran warp termini to Solarian traffic, beginning immediately. Courier vessels and news-service dispatch vessels will be allowed passage regardless of registry, but all Solarian-registered freight carriers and passenger ships will, unfortunately, be denied passage until the current disputes are re-solved.”

Draken wrote:RMN choice for Commerce raiding force are Nikes, so SLN will need SDs squadrons to get rid of unpleasant visitors.

Depending on how many Nike's are available. Using House of Steel as my reference, there were only 12 Nikes in service just prior to the BoM, and while they were in full-scale production, only the 'initial' production run would have been completed prior to Oyster Bay.

So maybe 60 additional Nikes', totally 72 in service, of which 16 are in Talbott with Mike's Tenth Fleet.

There are still 85+ Agamemmnons' out there, so they may be employed in the raiding missions.

We shall see, eventually.