Notes from Weber--SPOILER WARNING!!!

munroburton wrote:As for Frontier Fleet, I don't know whether they share BF's facilities or have their own major bases at separate locations. They probably have dozens of minor facilities around the periphery(one might be Tasmania).

Not much point in sharing BF's facilities, since FF basically operates in the outer shell and verge. So probably most of their major bases are in the outer shell, with perhaps some minor ones elsewhere in the verge. Even Meyers, the sector capital, only had a relatively small number of battlecruisers to "police" the entire OFS sector. BF may utilize FF infrastructure if there's a need to project power beyond the SL "official" border, but the FF doesn't have *internal* security responsibility even though they are under the auspices of the Interior Ministry.

If one were to expect any kind of logic in how the SL's ministries are structured, one would think that OFS and the FF would be under the Foreign Ministry, instead of the Interior Ministry.

munroburton wrote:We didn't see characters from any of Tsang's other ships, so this is pure speculation, but given how political the SLN is, any flag officer with a chunk of the Sol Home Fleet is going to be significantly more senior than any other flag officer stuck at one of the lesser half-dozen bases. So Tsang came from Sol with at least a squadron, perhaps up to three(if not all of them!), of her 100 wallers.

I'm not sure seniority was important. The SL had already sent Kingston's representative to Beowulf ahead of Tsang. That rep was no doubt higher in the actual pecking order than Tsang was. Realistically, finding someone "dumb enough" to follow orders no matter what those orders were would be more important in this situation than seniority. Not that in the SLN you couldn't probably find both in the same person in many cases. After all, we don't know whether Crandall came from Sol, or whether Byng did either. Or, for that matter, Filereta. They obviously all came originally from the core, somewhere, since they were all BF admirals. But we really only know where they ended up, and possibly where they were one position removed - McIntosh for Crandall, and Tasmania for Filereta. I believe Meyers for at least Byng's ships - since they were FF units. Tsang's origin is never mentioned.

munroburton wrote:As for those capabilities - they have everything as of shortly after Buttercup. It makes little difference to the SLN whether the MDMs fired at them are capacitor birds or Apollo-guided and microfusion-powered.

That was my point, as well. It doesn't really matter if they had dual drive pods, first generation MDM pods, or Apollo pods; the SLN at it's current level of deployed military technology would find it difficult to deal with them in any case. And since they have the treaty with Haven, it's out entirely out of reason that they might have Moriarty system controllers as well.

snipped

--Eloise and Emperess Elizabeth are going to forge even closer ties between Haven and Manticore, by giving citizenship in one polity the same recognition in the other (i.e., if a Manticorian moves to a Havenite system, he will be treated the same as if he was a Havenite, and visa versa for Havenites in the SEM.

Alfredo and Warner will be able to return to Haven without a death sentence hanging over their heads.

OrlandoNative wrote:Perhaps a thought. But considering that Erewhon *does* have that mutual defense treaty with Haven, and, even if they don't have a *lot* of ships, the ones they have would obviously be of the same caliber as Haven's; it would seem silly for the SLN to attack at this point and risk retaliation. Plus they no doubt have system defense pods left over from when they were part of the original Mantecoran Alliance. The Sollies are worried enough about the Beowulf terminus, as it is. Erewhon is effectively neutral *until* the SLN attacks Haven or themselves. Opening a wide-open, multi-sided war isn't the kind of thing any strategist with the brains of a flatworm would want to do. It's at least possible that even a Solly would know that.

And in any case, if the SLN did attack Erewhon, I suspect they'd do the same thing that happened at Grendelsbane... ...namely just destroy the shipyards that manufacture and use the military technology before the Sollies could get their hands on it if it looked like the Sollies might win in the first place.

Regardless of their new builds (and new technologies, which I'm sure they have at least DDM defenses, If not MDM defenses), Erewhon has plenty of firepower at it's disposal. In the 1st war, they had 12 DNs in 8th Fleet. Now, they would hardly leave themselves naked, and we can assume that they would keep the majority of their fleet at home for defense, so we can be fairly sure they have at least 24 Wallers from their original purchase from the SL, and probably another squadron or 2. They also purchased a squadron of King William SDs and the remaining Anduril SDs (The most armored SD class built by Manticore, if not anywhere, of which 14 were originally built), so we can guess that they purchased somewhere between 12 and 18 SDs from Manticore. So Erewhon should have somewhere between 36 and 60 Wallers in their inventory. In addition, they probably have Forts for their junction and homeworld. All in all, Erewhon will not be a pushover, even if they don't have a single new waller.

George J. Smith wrote:snipped

--Eloise and Emperess Elizabeth are going to forge even closer ties between Haven and Manticore, by giving citizenship in one polity the same recognition in the other (i.e., if a Manticorian moves to a Havenite system, he will be treated the same as if he was a Havenite, and visa versa for Havenites in the SEM.

Alfredo and Warner will be able to return to Haven without a death sentence hanging over their heads.

I would just like to point out one minor snag in this plan.

This snag is that Grayson, despite all outward appearances, is not really an appendage of Manticore.

It is its own sovereign nation, not subject to Manticore's decree. And I suspect that Grayson, with its inherent conservatism and, to an extent, provincialism, would hesitate to involve itself in a diplomatic move of this magnitude.

I could, however, very easily see an EU-style 'reciprocal relationship' forming between Grayson and Haven, in particular because of those two individuals you named, as well as the rest of the Elysian Space Navy.

That said, I very much doubt Warner or Alfredo would ever be pardoned. I elaborated on this in an earlier thread, but, however much she might wish to, Eloise can't pardon them. They did commit treason, and as a head of state, she cannot risk giving treason legitimacy.

With all that gloom and doom out of the way, however -- look at them just look at them they've found each other at last!!!

roseandheather wrote:With all that gloom and doom out of the way, however -- look at them just look at them they've found each other at last!!!

As a complete aside from someone who mostly just lurks, I just wanted to say that I always appreciate your enthusiasm. It helps make this forum a more cheerful place to read.

kzt wrote:If I was running the SLN, I'd hit Erewhon. It is probably the most accessible and least well defended system that has access to much of the RMN tech.

Yes, but what exactly constitutes "least well defended" in this case?

They have to expect big chunks of system defense missile pods at minimum.
And even just that alone, SLN should know by now that they´re not really capable of messing with Haven sector missile pods at all yet.

Tenshinai wrote:

kzt wrote:If I was running the SLN, I'd hit Erewhon. It is probably the most accessible and least well defended system that has access to much of the RMN tech.

Yes, but what exactly constitutes "least well defended" in this case?

They have to expect big chunks of system defense missile pods at minimum.
And even just that alone, SLN should know by now that they´re not really capable of messing with Haven sector missile pods at all yet.

Sure, they might lose. But they need to do something anyhow, because they are losing now and the trajectory doesn't look promising.

OrlandoNative wrote:Erewhon and Zanzibar aren't in the same class. Zanzibar never had the same capability as Erewhon as far as shipbuilding went. They were only capable of building lighter units like destroyers and cruisers. Erewhon could (and did) build SD's. Pod capable SD's.

Erewhon is building SD(P)s 'now'. But before allying with Manticore they purchased their ships of the wall from Technodyne. Afterwards, they purchased their ships of the wall from Manticoran shipbuilders (and RMN surplus). They only started building their own capital ship yards due to the combination of the Maya Sector's needs and that neither Manticore nor Haven were in a position to supply SD(P)s to Erewhon.

roseandheather wrote:That said, I very much doubt Warner or Alfredo would ever be pardoned. I elaborated on this in an earlier thread, but, however much she might wish to, Eloise can't pardon them. They did commit treason, and as a head of state, she cannot risk giving treason legitimacy.

With all that gloom and doom out of the way, however -- look at them just look at them they've found each other at last!!!

I believe she could pardon both our wayward Havenite-turned-Graysons, if she really wanted to. She couldn't prior to this latest revelation, but there are a LOT of former Legislaturalist admirals that turned coat and took service with Manticore.

Alfredo never actually committed treason, he asked for political sanctuary because he already knew he was going to be executed, simply for failing. Even though the Ambassador could have backed him up that it was Masada's instructions that caused the oeprations failure.

And Warner... well he's screwed, he didn't just get sanctuary he actively aided the enemy in time of war. Regardless of the actual circumstances.

There is also that minor fact that technically Theisman committed treason by overthrowing Saint-Just. And (sorry rose) Eloise is also riding the edge of treason. Not just as a freedom fighter Aprilist against the Legislaturalists, but in her 'failure' as a Commissioner.


So if the Havenites who turned traitor and joined Manticore in the timeframe between tSVW and HaE, are going to be able to "come home" to Haven and not be arrested and executed on the spot. Then the Havenites who joined Grayson could receive pardons too, if these treaties between Haven and Manticore get extended to include Grayson.

OrlandoNative wrote:

n7axw wrote:First, there is no reason to believe that Tsang's fleet didn't originate from Mars. That fleet base is huge and has both lots of active wallers and a large number of mothballed SDs. She could have easily assembled her fleet there.

Don

The problem is that there's no reason to believe Tsang's fleet originated at *any* particular place. RFC never said where Tsang's fleet came from. It could have come from *any* SLN base anywhere in the core, or, even, from the shell, if one there was closer to Beowulf than any in the core. Or various elements could have come from different places and just met up prior to continuing on to Beowulf. We just don't know. Stating "She came from Mars" under those circumstances - without a shred of corroboration - is mere speculation.

One could just as easily speculate that those ships had been accumulating for a while near Beowulf, just in case hostilities with Manticore had reached such a point that the GA sent an attack squadron through the terminus to invade some of the core worlds; and just decided to "repurpose" that force when they decided to send in Filereta.

Even the fleet Filereta led didn't come from one source; he may have brought the bulk of it from somewhere else, but other ships trickled in from nearby deployments as well.

I think we can do a bit better than sheer speculation here. I am not sure about this, but I think we can do some guessing here based on the timing. So let's try. The first thing we know is that Crandall's and Filereta's fleets were assembled prior to the Battle of Monica. In Crandalls case, she had, IIRC, 72 SDs out in the Verge --MacIntosh, I think --- with purported purpose of demonstrating her fleet's ability to manage it's logistics. Crandall's fleet may well not have needed assembling. Given an active on duty number of 2000 SDs, it is not unthinkable to visualize her fleet as a permanent taskforce.

Filereta's fleet is a different matter. That fleet was obviously assembled for the occasion. 400 plus SDs is a different ball of wax than 72. In fact we have textev for the fact that it was being assembled right up to the moment Filereta took off for Manticore.

The point is that these two fleets were positioned as a part of a plan that the Alignment was executing through its proxies among whom we now know was Rajampet.

Tsang's situation is a lot more vague. I don't think that she was part of the original plan. My own notion is that Tsang's orders to Beowulf were born out of the Mandrains need to put Beowulf on the defensive in the Assembly in Chicago. Beowulf's refusal to allow Tsang passage through the junction accomplished that.

If I'm right about this, Tsang's inclusion happened late in the game. That means that there wouldn't have been near as much time to get her force together and on its way.


I see this as meaning two things. First, I suspect that Tsang's ships were already together as part of a permanet task force and thus did not need to be assembled. 100 SDs would not be an unreasonable number, using the same logic we used with Crandall's fleet.

The second thing it would have to mean is that Tsang and her fleet were immediately available to be dispatched. That means in the Sol system, presumably at the SLN fleet base at Mars.

Obviously I am speculating here, but I think it fits with how the story is lsid out in ART.

Don