Question about Beowulf tactics

Dafmeister wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:It is indeed, but a lot of the neat stuff that Manticore deployed later was already in the works at the start of the first war, including the FTL comms, and much of Ghost Rider. Haven gets a hold of that. The real question is, does Pierre stage his coup if the first results of the war are more successful than they were.

It's a while since I read SVW, but I thought that Pierre's coup took place before the results of Hancock and Third Yeltsin reached Nouveau Paris?

They'd been mouse-trapped. Harris made himself admit that. They'd set their plans in motion, confident the game was theirs to direct as it always had been, only to discover that, after fifty years of conquest, they had finally met a foe even more cunning than they were.

He'd read the dispatches. Given what Admiral Rollins had known, Harris had to agree he'd had no choice but to move against the Hancock System, yet hindsight proved only too clearly that the Manties had known all about the "secret" Argus net. They'd used it to offer Rollins an irresistible bait by "withdrawing" their ships, and the result had been devastating. The arrival of the dreadnoughts which had compelled Admiral Chin to surrender would have been bad enough, but it hadn't been the end. Oh, no. Not the end.

Harris shuddered. The second jaw of the Manty trap had failed by the thinnest margin when the rest of Admiral Parks' "dispersed" task force dropped out of hyper barely thirty minutes too late to intercept Rollins before he hypered out, yet his escape hadn't saved him in the end. Reinforced to almost a third again of his prewar strength, Parks had moved instantly against Seaford Nine and Rollins' weakened task force. Seaford's defenders had destroyed a couple of ships of the wall and damaged others, but only three of their own capital ships had survived, and Rollins' flagship hadn't been one of them. PNS Barnett had blown up early in the action, killing Rollins and his entire staff, and the command confusion that followed had finished Seaford off.

And then Parks had left one battle squadron to hold Seaford and returned to Hancock . . . just in time to meet Admiral Coatsworth as he moved in, expecting to find Rollins in possession. At least Coatsworth had gotten most of his ships out, yet his lead squadrons had taken a terrible pounding, and without Seaford's repair facilities, he'd been driven clear back to Barnett with his damaged units while his courier boats reported the disaster to Haven.

Public Information had clamped down a total news blackout, but rumors had leaked. That was one reason Harris had gone ahead with his annual birthday celebration, as an effort to convince people of the government's "business as usual" confidence in the face of those rumors. Not, he thought bitterly, that he expected it to do any good. The only thing that could really calm the public would be the news that Admiral Parnell's attack on Yeltsin's Star had succeeded, and it would take at least another week for Parnell's report of victory to reach Haven.

Assuming, of course, that he had a victory to report.

Dafmeister wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:It is indeed, but a lot of the neat stuff that Manticore deployed later was already in the works at the start of the first war, including the FTL comms, and much of Ghost Rider. Haven gets a hold of that. The real question is, does Pierre stage his coup if the first results of the war are more successful than they were.

It's a while since I read SVW, but I thought that Pierre's coup took place before the results of Hancock and Third Yeltsin reached Nouveau Paris?

Brigade XO wrote:Lets take a deep breath.

IF the story line alters at any point after the High Ridge debacle and Haven captures the Manticore System, the Republic of Haven gets ALL of the SEM's tech. ALL OF IT.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

SWM wrote:That's great, but people weren't talking about what would happen if Haven captured Manticore during the Second War. They were talking about what the Haven (and the Alignment) would have done if Haven had captured Manticore at the beginning of the first war. Would Haven have eventually gone after Beowulf? That's the question that was being considered.

It is indeed, but a lot of the neat stuff that Manticore deployed later was already in the works at the start of the first war, including the FTL comms, and much of Ghost Rider. Haven gets a hold of that. The real question is, does Pierre stage his coup if the first results of the war are more successful than they were.

Brigade XO wrote:Lets take a deep breath.

IF the story line alters at any point after the High Ridge debacle and Haven captures the Manticore System, the Republic of Haven gets ALL of the SEM's tech. ALL OF IT.

SWM wrote:That's great, but people weren't talking about what would happen if Haven captured Manticore during the Second War. They were talking about what the Haven (and the Alignment) would have done if Haven had captured Manticore at the beginning of the first war. Would Haven have eventually gone after Beowulf? That's the question that was being considered.

fallsfromtrees wrote:It is indeed, but a lot of the neat stuff that Manticore deployed later was already in the works at the start of the first war, including the FTL comms, and much of Ghost Rider. Haven gets a hold of that. The real question is, does Pierre stage his coup if the first results of the war are more successful than they were.

Zakharra wrote:

That's assuming Haven gets the tech in the first place. I can see the SKM doing a thermonuclear abortion of -all- of their military R&D sites and shipyards if Haven was winning. Sort of a last resort attack by denying Haven the goodies the SKM had been developing. Haven would have gotten some of it, but not all by any means.

n7axw wrote:Or the scientists and tech people might have evacuated to the Solarian League. With many of Haven's previous conquests, many among the more talented in the work force evacuated ahead of the conquest itself, often to Manticore, but also to the League. Haven and some of her neighbors who tried to emulate her passed legislation that declared talented people a national resourse and forbade them immigration, but many got out anyway. I don't see top Manty scientists and tech people acting differently.

Don

fallsfromtrees wrote:Beowulf was the Solarian League at that time.

Theemile wrote:Henke's older SD(p)'s can still fire the Mk 23 - they just cann't use the mk23 D/E in Apollo mode. Onl the original ~80 IAN Adler SD(p)s built interwar are limited to the Mk 41s because they canot initiate Fusion pods in the pod bay. Havenite missiles are capacitor as well and their current SD(p)s will probably have the same restriction as the original Adlers. the 40 2nd war built Adlers were modified in the yards to use Fusion pods/missiles and have KH2 for Apollo control.

kzt wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:Beowulf was the Solarian League at that time.

I suggested to David that, backs against the wall, the SKM would politically link itself to Beowulf and hence become part of the SL if the option was being conquered by the peeps. He agreed it wasn't impossible, but since he knew where the plot was going he had never thought about the endgame of the SKM losing. It certainly was not a very appealing option under normal conditions, but knowing that it was just a matter of time before a peep fleet crossed the wall and crushed what little was left of the RMN like a bug makes it not normal conditions.