Light bulb Captured Solly fleet

cthia wrote:"Weird Harold"]"Sigs"]
Look at that, we finally found a use for the captured SLN ships after all...

Post #3 of this thread:

cthia wrote:Can't the GA use them for live-fire sims?

[/quote]
Oh come on! It'd be a welcomed relief from the normal practice of targeting asteroids. And tugs can set them in motion so knife range maneuvers of beam weapons can be practiced.

Save a few for assault marines live practice. SLN ships have peculiarities. [/quote]


------------

Even the SLN (or Tiberian pirates) can target unpowered, large drifting hulks of alloy with no active (or passive) defenses.
And I think Empress Liz might be a bit peeved at shooting at defenseless POW's.
Now if the ships could be loaded with Onion Core dwellers or Solaran Mandarins, that might be another matter.

-- Stewart

Why in the Galaxy is this thread still going? Please, can't we send the willing participants swimming in the oceans of Torch?

I was thinking about the captured Solarian Fleet and Naval personnel, basically the Alliance does not have any benefit from the captured SDs or the naval crews and marines, so why not send them back?

What could be more demoralizing to the enemy then attacking, getting soundly defeated and the enemy doesent consider your main combatants enough of a threat to destroy/retain and just sends them back? Whats more is that they have 1.8 million POW's who they have to take care of while the SLN which is/will shortly be strapped for cash so that is still 1.8 million salaries and general upkeep...

This is not the Manticore-Haven war where both sides are hurting for trained crews, the SLN has tens of millions of members but has no ships that can go toe to toe with any of the Alliance ships.


So the benefits for the Alliance are:
-to further demorilize the SLN and the average Solarian citizen
-show one and all that the SLN presents no threat to the Alliance by sending back all of their captured ships of the wall
-free themselves of the cost to maintain 1.8 million POW and the potential for the Mandarins to use it as propaganda
-add extra expense for the SLN since it gets its Crews back as well as their ships.

What the SLN gets:
-their SDs(worthless against the SDs of the Alliance)
-their crews(they already have more than enough crews but no ships to match the Alliance)



Keep the freighters so as not to aid in the recovery of the Solarian League. Keep all of the minor combatants in order to supply them to systems freed by the 10th Fleet in order to give them some protection against pirates and the FF and thereby protect the Alliance from over extension.

At the end of the day, the captured crews and ships can either sit in the Manticore system and be a drain on Manticore's resources or sit in the Solarian League and be a drain on the Solarian League Navy's resources.

Sigs wrote:I was thinking about the captured Solarian Fleet and Naval personnel, basically the Alliance does not have any benefit from the captured SDs or the naval crews and marines, so why not send them back?

What could be more demoralizing to the enemy then attacking, getting soundly defeated and the enemy doesent consider your main combatants enough of a threat to destroy/retain and just sends them back? Whats more is that they have 1.8 million POW's who they have to take care of while the SLN which is/will shortly be strapped for cash so that is still 1.8 million salaries and general upkeep...

I imagine the salaries are still being paid meanwhile, else there will be much more scandal than the Mandarins can afford. As for food and tents, well, 1.8 million POW's is about 1 POW for every 2,000 Manticorans, who have among the highest per capita incomes in space. They can afford the bread and water.

To the important morale point though - It would be a bit of a kick in the head to have your naval personnel dismissed as not worth keeping, but it's not the only way it can be taken. The crews were captured attacking a star system without a war declared. Arguably, they're pirates. Manticore is being generous keeping them. Sending them back may suggest that Manticore does not dare keep them, that they are trying to make the whole thing go away as best they can and appease the wrathful Solarian League.

This is not the Manticore-Haven war where both sides are hurting for trained crews, the SLN has tens of millions of members but has no ships that can go toe to toe with any of the Alliance ships.


So the benefits for the Alliance are:
-to further demorilize the SLN and the average Solarian citizen
-show one and all that the SLN presents no threat to the Alliance by sending back all of their captured ships of the wall
-free themselves of the cost to maintain 1.8 million POW and the potential for the Mandarins to use it as propaganda
-add extra expense for the SLN since it gets its Crews back as well as their ships.

What the SLN gets:
-their SDs(worthless against the SDs of the Alliance)
-their crews(they already have more than enough crews but no ships to match the Alliance)

The League's inclined to get in trouble with all the ships and crews they've got. Give them back and they may find a place where the RMN is not - space is big, after all. And if they find a place where the RMN is, the crews are likely to be killed and the RMN is out ammunition, which is in meager supply and a lot more expensive than field rations. The SLN crews won't thank you for that; the people in the places they're ordered to won't thank you if they don't find the RMN there.

For that matter, they do have a lot more ships without crews right now: the Reserve. Granted, refurbishing them would take time and money and the results aren't capable of fighting a first-line military on remotely even terms, but return of the crews would lighten that portion of the problem. And without the crews, if they try to reactivate the Reserve, they've got the crewing problem to jack up the scale of the scandal.

Keep the freighters so as not to aid in the recovery of the Solarian League. Keep all of the minor combatants in order to supply them to systems freed by the 10th Fleet in order to give them some protection against pirates and the FF and thereby protect the Alliance from over extension.

At the end of the day, the captured crews and ships can either sit in the Manticore system and be a drain on Manticore's resources or sit in the Solarian League and be a drain on the Solarian League Navy's resources.

Ships aren't a drain on resources. Space is big, rig a nav buoy out of their own spares and let 'em float.

Crew's cheap to feed. Heck, sell tickets and people can come see them to pay for it. (Joke. That's gotta violate the Deneb Accords.)

And if the League found the crew a terrible burden on their resources, they'd've been dismissed prior to Filareta's Last Stand. Go capture more - the League won't view it as a favor.

Sigs wrote:At the end of the day, the captured crews and ships can either sit in the Manticore system and be a drain on Manticore's resources or sit in the Solarian League and be a drain on the Solarian League Navy's resources.

Or they can return to the League with all the collective experience from their lessons at Spindle and 2nd Manticore and give their R&D quite a few pointers, as well as a big kick up the arses of their doctrine formulation and training departments.

Back in 1910 PD, the RMN let a few Havenite PoWs go home after witnessing improved LACs and the prototype pod-laying system in action. Sometime in 1915 or 1916, Shannon Foraker was assigned to command Bolthole. In 1919, Operation Thunderbolt happened.

And unlike Caslet, Foraker and their comrades, the personnel of 11th Fleet and Crandall's Task Force aren't going to be regarded as politically suspicious. The sooner they go home, the sooner a Solarian version of the Havenite Navy's phoenix-like rebirth could happen. For that reason alone, they shouldn't be going anywhere until there's a firm peace treaty in hand with a much reduced League and/or bilateral agreements with break-away homeworlds of SLN personnel.

Its not just money, its food resources and manpower to secure and maintain the POW. Granted it could be taken as a means to appease the Solarian League, but then again that can be avoided if you go in to one of their bases, smash through whatever defenses they have and deposit the POW's and attach a bill for their rations and quarters while they were POW.

The League can cause trouble anywhere and everywhere but when push comes to shove, 2/3 of their Central Reserve is if I am not mistaking obsolete even by their standards. Frankly if it was me, I would do everything in my power to force them to mobilize their reserve, the more obsolete ships they have to maintain, the less money they would have to spend on things like R&D.

If we assume that all of their SD's have the same or similar crew size as a Scientist SD and they have roughly 1,800 SD's in active service that would indicate that they would have almost 11,000,000 crew in those ships alone, plus a Guesstimate of another 5-8 million in Light Combatants, these 1.8 million will not add too much to the overall numbers but imagine the morale of the rest of the fleet when those 1.8 million crew members from the big bad SLN who have very recently received a beating by the RMN start talking... in the Second Battle of Manticore, the SLN lost 69% of their wall while in return killing some LAC's and scratching the paint off of a few warships...

The fact that the SLN is in shock and denial is working in favour for the GA, add defeatism from 1.8 million former POW and the fact that they were released because SLN personnel are not considered worth keeping as POW and you might end up doing more damage that keeping the POW, a lot more damage.

Repairing damaged SDs is a drain, so if done dramatically enough, the SLN might actually b forced to repair those ships instead of just disposing of them.

The League has 1,800 SD in active service with an unknown number of reactivated SD's and DN's during the crisis, those ships have shown that they are nor the equal of the equivalent RMN ships, they are not even capable of standing up to BC's, HC's and CL's unless in overwhelming numbers and prepared to take massive losses in the process. They have capital ships that are useless and crews that are in flying coffins, they may be attempting to use BC's to defeat Beowulf but they will be keeping their ships of the wall as far from potential battle as possible.

Almost 2 million POW standing around doing nothing but talking about how utterly outclassed they are by the RMN cannot be a good thing for their collective morale and self esteem...

munroburton wrote:

Sigs wrote:At the end of the day, the captured crews and ships can either sit in the Manticore system and be a drain on Manticore's resources or sit in the Solarian League and be a drain on the Solarian League Navy's resources.

Or they can return to the League with all the collective experience from their lessons at Spindle and 2nd Manticore and give their R&D quite a few pointers, as well as a big kick up the arses of their doctrine formulation and training departments.

Back in 1910 PD, the RMN let a few Havenite PoWs go home after witnessing improved LACs and the prototype pod-laying system in action. Sometime in 1915 or 1916, Shannon Foraker was assigned to command Bolthole. In 1919, Operation Thunderbolt happened.

And unlike Caslet, Foraker and their comrades, the personnel of 11th Fleet and Crandall's Task Force aren't going to be regarded as politically suspicious. The sooner they go home, the sooner a Solarian version of the Havenite Navy's phoenix-like rebirth could happen. For that reason alone, they shouldn't be going anywhere until there's a firm peace treaty in hand with a much reduced League and/or bilateral agreements with break-away homeworlds of SLN personnel.

The only reason that Bolthole happened at all the way it did happen was because of internal politics that overthrew the previous regime. If the RMN had not released those POW they would have seen the exact same weapons in action in Eighth Fleet offensive and the people responsible for the R&D in Bolthole had nothing to do with the ceasefire at all. If the ceasefire and overthrow had happened on schedule but the PN members had not witnessed anything they would still have had enough data to start at Bolthole.

The enemy of the GA is not the Solarian League, the enemy is the Alignment. The League is nothing but a bit player who is going down one of three ways, severe enough defeat by the GA to force systems to break away, revolt of member systems because of the actions of the Bureaucracy or the MA will destroy them. Focusing on the one Entity that is dead but doesn't know it yet detracts from the real enemy, the enemy that no one seems to know much about. The MA could have 5 obsolete SD's or 5,000 state of the art SD's that outclass the RMN, focusing on the MA might win the war, focusing on the League will surely win that battle but loose the war as the League government and military is thoroughly infiltrated by the alignment that it cannot do anything effectively.

munroburton wrote:

Sigs wrote:At the end of the day, the captured crews and ships can either sit in the Manticore system and be a drain on Manticore's resources or sit in the Solarian League and be a drain on the Solarian League Navy's resources.

Or they can return to the League with all the collective experience from their lessons at Spindle and 2nd Manticore and give their R&D quite a few pointers, as well as a big kick up the arses of their doctrine formulation and training departments.

Back in 1910 PD, the RMN let a few Havenite PoWs go home after witnessing improved LACs and the prototype pod-laying system in action. Sometime in 1915 or 1916, Shannon Foraker was assigned to command Bolthole. In 1919, Operation Thunderbolt happened.

And unlike Caslet, Foraker and their comrades, the personnel of 11th Fleet and Crandall's Task Force aren't going to be regarded as politically suspicious. The sooner they go home, the sooner a Solarian version of the Havenite Navy's phoenix-like rebirth could happen. For that reason alone, they shouldn't be going anywhere until there's a firm peace treaty in hand with a much reduced League and/or bilateral agreements with break-away homeworlds of SLN personnel.

Most of the Sollies aren't 'tac witches'. Hanging on to any who might be makes sense, but out of an SD's 6,000-spacer complement, there's got to be lots who don't know anything that the Manties themselves haven't already told the Sollies.

I don't think a mass release is practical, but sending back a thousand a month, from homeworlds around the League, could generate some positive PR. They might help get out the word that the POWs are being treated fairly, and that the Mandarins and the SLN hierarchy are incompetent lying weasels, e.g. about who shot first at 2nd Manticore.

Sigs wrote: The enemy of the GA is not the Solarian League, the enemy is the Alignment. The League is nothing but a bit player who is going down one of three ways, severe enough defeat by the GA to force systems to break away, revolt of member systems because of the actions of the Bureaucracy or the MA will destroy them.

The League definitely is an enemy. Not by the Manties' choice, or even the Sollies, but ignoring that is not the way to go. When the dust settles, either the Empire or the League will be history. (Most likely the latter, but it's not a done deal yet.)

Bill Woods wrote:

Sigs wrote: The enemy of the GA is not the Solarian League, the enemy is the Alignment. The League is nothing but a bit player who is going down one of three ways, severe enough defeat by the GA to force systems to break away, revolt of member systems because of the actions of the Bureaucracy or the MA will destroy them.

The League definitely is an enemy. Not by the Manties' choice, or even the Sollies, but ignoring that is not the way to go. When the dust settles, either the Empire or the League will be history. (Most likely the latter, but it's not a done deal yet.)

The league is dead on arrival, they cannot do anything to get their military position in order because too many of their high ranking officers and bureaucrats are only concerned with covering their behind and pocketing money. So far we know that their senior military commander was working for the Alignment as is the economic advisor to the new top navy officer and it goes down the line to officers of battle fleet and frontier fleet including sector governors and other bureaucrats. One swift kick and the entire league will topple and if the Grand Alliance focuses most of their resources on the League the Alignment might be able to pull off their plans.