League Survival

My you don't believe that the MA exists I should clarify I mean that you cannot convince the GA that you believe that they exist. Because let's be honest, if you were the leadership of the GA and the leader(s) of the League show up after taking three crushing defeats, each exponentially worse than the previous defeat, hat in hand telling you that they believe you that the MA orchestrated the war and are the real threat what would be the first thing to pop in your head? Most like that the League's leadership is trying to avoid destruction just long enough to get parity.


My view is that the GA see's the League as a long term threat that has to be removed soon but the biggest threat is the MA. The GA will likely view the MA as the primary enemy because of the duration of the planning(~600 years) which means that it is likely longer than Manticore has been a nation. Since it seems that the MA is getting in to the end game by the time of 1920's based on their actions I would assume that they have some military power that can be a threat to Manticore/GA. So either the RF has a substantial secret fleet in existence or the MA has has a substantial fleet already built in Darius. If they don't, the second that someone uncovers anything about the RF, its association with the MA and its member nations they will get hammered so hard that they will cease to exist as a political unit very quickly which throws a monster wrench into the plans of the MA.

What the GA needs to do with the League and what they will be able to do with the League once they get more intelligence on the MA may very well be significantly different thereby giving the League some breathing space.

So accelerate research on weapons, spread out that research into as many core and shell systems as possible and as soon as a viable weapon system becomes available put it into production, in the meantime all shipyards produce merchant ships as fast as possible. Select a few ship designs that meet your needs if one ship design doesn't meet all your need and pump them out as fast as you can to meet the demand after the MMM left, if one ship design meets all your needs even better.

As soon as your research brings back a viable weapon system, accelerate testing and production. Pump out as many weapons as you can and start fortifying your systems while awaiting ship designs that stand a chance against the GA. Once a ship design becomes available start pumping out the biggest ship you can build quickly, for example if it takes you 2 years to build an SD but only 1 year to build a BC then start building some SD's but the majority of your ship building should be in the BC so as to allow you to get something, anything that can face the Alliance and have a hope of surviving the meeting.


And the biggest part is praying to whatever god you believe in that the GA will be busy with the MA so that you can get enough time to get some new weapons for the few hundred Core and Shell worlds you can retain.

Sigs wrote:And the biggest part is praying to whatever god you believe in that the GA will be busy with the MA so that you can get enough time to get some new weapons for the few hundred Core and Shell worlds you can retain.

The flaw in your pipe dream is that the Anderman Empire was explicitly excluded from the GA so that they could deal with the MAlign while the GA dealt with the Solarian League. Emperor Gustav had precedence in dealing with the MA because of the Hofshulte Affair. (Haven could possible have claimed greater precedence over the Dole and Legislaturalists, but lack convincing proof of that conspiracy.)

IOW, the League is the primary concern of the GA until they deem it destroyed and no longer even a potential threat.

Weird Harold wrote:

Sigs wrote:And the biggest part is praying to whatever god you believe in that the GA will be busy with the MA so that you can get enough time to get some new weapons for the few hundred Core and Shell worlds you can retain.

The flaw in your pipe dream is that the Anderman Empire was explicitly excluded from the GA so that they could deal with the MAlign while the GA dealt with the Solarian League. Emperor Gustav had precedence in dealing with the MA because of the Hofshulte Affair. (Haven could possible have claimed greater precedence over the Dole and Legislaturalists, but lack convincing proof of that conspiracy.)

IOW, the League is the primary concern of the GA until they deem it destroyed and no longer even a potential threat.

And my view is that if I were the MA I would have a fleet before I start pissing off everyone, thus it might prove that the MA is a little tougher to crack than anyone expects.



What we know about the MA are their very vague plans and even more vague capabilities. I figure that there will likely be some serious firepower at the end of 600 years of planning. For all we know they have a few thousand SD's of their own that have advanced systems that are equal to or superior to the GA. Besides, the unknown factor will tie down virtually the entire wall of the GA in picketing, they need to picket Manticore's Home System, Grayson's Home System, Haven's Home System, Bolthole, Beowulf, and any other vital system including which would tie down virtually the entire wall for the near future considering that the RMN SD's are the best the GA has but also have somewhat limited supply of missiles. And then we add that the GA has to tread carefully or they will end up with 1,000 heavily industrialized and very pissed off systems if they don't deal with them carefully which means that the war against the League has to be handled with a scalpel rather than a hammer.

Sigs wrote:And my view is that if I were the MA I would have a fleet before I start pissing off everyone, thus it might prove that the MA is a little tougher to crack than anyone expects.

And that changes the textev of who goes after the MAlign and Who concentrates on the SL, exactly how?

Sigs wrote:And my view is that if I were the MA I would have a fleet before I start pissing off everyone, thus it might prove that the MA is a little tougher to crack than anyone expects.



What we know about the MA are their very vague plans and even more vague capabilities. I figure that there will likely be some serious firepower at the end of 600 years of planning. For all we know they have a few thousand SD's of their own that have advanced systems that are equal to or superior to the GA. Besides, the unknown factor will tie down virtually the entire wall of the GA in picketing, they need to picket Manticore's Home System, Grayson's Home System, Haven's Home System, Bolthole, Beowulf, and any other vital system including which would tie down virtually the entire wall for the near future considering that the RMN SD's are the best the GA has but also have somewhat limited supply of missiles. And then we add that the GA has to tread carefully or they will end up with 1,000 heavily industrialized and very pissed off systems if they don't deal with them carefully which means that the war against the League has to be handled with a scalpel rather than a hammer.

Textev is pretty clear on this point. The MAlign does not have a substantial fleet(or did you miss how Oyster Bay was executed way ahead of schedule, with training ships and without hitting a single Havenite target?).

What they do have is limited to those training ships, the mysterious Detweiler-class originally intended to carry out the Oyster Bay operations, the various SDFs of the Renaissance Factor and a small fleet of streak boats.

Yes, the GA doesn't have that information. However, the RMN did an analysis that concluded Oyster Bay was carried out with limited resources(eg, Home Fleet wasn't destroyed, the Junction platforms weren't attacked, the mining bases, the out-system assets they had in Trevor's Star). They will err on the side of caution, yes, but not to the point of keeping their entire fleets gathered up in a few precious baskets whose locations are known to Joe Solly, never mind the MA.

I think the Alignment never intended to fight and conquer openly until the final phase of their plan, perhaps taking the long-term view that advantages in warfighting capabilities are inevitably ephemeral and a classic war of conquest requires overwhelming superiority in numbers. They currently have a population of about four billion(Darius) and a GDP derived from that - compare with those of the OSK/SEM, RoH, AE, old Silesia, the entire League. A brute force approach is out of the question, as already realised in the Harrington doctrine.

Weird Harold wrote:

Sigs wrote:And my view is that if I were the MA I would have a fleet before I start pissing off everyone, thus it might prove that the MA is a little tougher to crack than anyone expects.

And that changes the textev of who goes after the MAlign and Who concentrates on the SL, exactly how?

Think it through…

think a little harder….


give up yet?

If the Andermani cannot deal with the MA because the MAN happens to be more than the Andermani can handle then it would become the responsibility of the GA. The Andermani have X number of SD's and other vessels, they don't know much if anything about the MAN let alone their strength. If the MAN proves to have a stronger fleet, or the RF has a substantial fleet no one knows anything about then it could turn that the Andermani cannot deal with it alone. If the Andermani cannot deal with it alone you get 1 of 2 options…(1)The Andermani go on the defensive leave the MA alone and the GA leaves the MA alone to deal with the League, or (2)The GA steps in and assists the Andermani thereby causing splitting of forces, any units send to deal with the MA will not be available for the war with the League.

munroburton wrote:
Textev is pretty clear on this point. The MAlign does not have a substantial fleet(or did you miss how Oyster Bay was executed way ahead of schedule, with training ships and without hitting a single Havenite target?).

Ok, can you please provide a source? Not doubting you but I haven't seen it and I wanna read up on it.

But I through the training vessels were used because only they could accomplish the mission, they might still have a conventional fleet or they might not. I didn't think that there is much information on the MA other than vague numbers in relation to the MAN.

Sigs wrote:

munroburton wrote:
Textev is pretty clear on this point. The MAlign does not have a substantial fleet(or did you miss how Oyster Bay was executed way ahead of schedule, with training ships and without hitting a single Havenite target?).

Ok, can you please provide a source? Not doubting you but I haven't seen it and I wanna read up on it.

But I through the training vessels were used because only they could accomplish the mission, they might still have a conventional fleet or they might not. I didn't think that there is much information on the MA other than vague numbers in relation to the MAN.

I don't have the text quote on hand, but this is essentially accurate. Oyster Bay was pulled off significantly ahead of schedule, with fewer ships then planned. There are repeated comments about moving up the schedule of events for all aspects of the MA plans.

More over, the Lenny Dets are just being completed, and they are a relatively small fleet. The intention had been that the RF would provide the core of the initial fleets that the MA needed.

What we don't know is what sort of weapons the Lenny Dets carry. Or their defenses. There has been a lot of speculation on this, given what we know of the Honorverse physics and ship characteristics.

Presumably the MA has kept fully abreast, and believed, all the information coming out of the Haven sector concerning the war. They may not know the full extent of the GA war fighting capability, but they will surely have the best guess of anyone outside the GA. One would hope that the MA wouldn't commit the Lenny Dets to suicide missions, given how few of them there are. There for, I can only conclude, that the MA believes the Lenny Dets have an ability to stand up to the current threat environment.

In some fashion or another.

Sigs wrote:If the Andermani cannot deal with the MA because the MAN happens to be more than the Andermani can handle then it would become the responsibility of the GA.

You're hanging a pretty big outcome on "IF."

The IAN was willing to take on the Janacek era RMN over Silesia, they have Apollo and Keyhole II equipped SDs, and they have a lot of intelligence work to do before they stumble over the MAN or Darius. They have some R&D work to do as well before they (or the GA) can reliable detect the Spider Drive in operation.

You're betting that the League will survive long enough for the IAN to need to holler for help with the MAlign.

While the MAlign agents inside your systems -- SLN financial analyst, "muckracking," high profile reporters (O'Hanrahan and the financial reporter who fed her the doctored New Tuscany data,) and who knows how many others working to fragment the League so the Renaissance Factor can pick up the pieces.

Those are some very long odds against your survival if you need the IAN to fail that badly to survive.

The passage on the size (or lack of size) on the MAlign's navy is in Chapter 30 of Mission of Honor, p. 419 of the hardcover. Use "can't have a very large navy" as the search string if you've got an e-book version.

The MAlign's objective with respect to the Solarian League is to break it up into small enough fragments that the Renassance Factor will look like a safe haven to everyone else. They don't want anything large enough to challenge the RF as the single nucleus around which almost everything will coalesce. Looking to keep a large enough fragment of the SL alive to do research and continue the war under its own power isn't anything the MAlign wants. The only way the SL can possibly survive is to realize not only that the MAlign exists, but to carry out a radical, top to bottom, side to side, front to back purge of everyone with any connection to Manpower or the MAlign.

I regard that as unlikely.