League Survival

Fireflair wrote: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.[/quote]
So that line of reasoning leads me to believe that the RF fleet has some bite to it as well then if it is intended to form a core of the fleet that the MA needed.

Is there any hint on how small of a fleet they are? If the Darius System is geared towards a large ship building capability they might have enough to seriously challenge the Andermani after all they Empire has a lot of systems to protect while the MA doesn't have any systems affiliated with it other than Mesa that the GA knows about. But I will go back and reread this sections tomorrow as I have a long flight.

JohnRoth wrote: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.

I may be interpreting it wrong but, I think that they did have a small offensive arm that could accomplish THAT specific mission but they very well may have conventional units that could not accomplish that mission without being detected. Essentially that is the special forces of the MA but again that is just my interpretation.

I just cannot wrap my mind around someone spending 6 centuries on something like this only to rush in the last few years without preparing for all contingencies. After all the MA does not face the same problem with manpower that Manticore and Haven do, they can for all intents and purposes "grow" their population and they know the timetable so logically I would be ready ahead of time as opposed to being ready just in time. But again that is just my thinking, because if there is no major fleet awaiting the GA it basically means that they(MA) are one misstep from having their plans completely ruined if the existence of the Darius System comes out to the GA and the list of members of the RF and the role they play also comes out… if that happens it is game over for them.

Sigs wrote:So that line of reasoning leads me to believe that the RF fleet has some bite to it as well then if it is intended to form a core of the fleet that the MA needed.

Is there any hint on how small of a fleet they are?

We know that Mannerheim is the largest part of the Mesan Alignment Navy and that there are (were) twelve systems, plus Darius, in the Renaissance Factor (MAN).

We know from the Pearls that there were only a dozen Navies with a squadron or more of SDs. We know Beowulf is one of them. We don't know if the RMN, RHN, and IAN are included in that dozen.

Mesa apparently didn't have any SDs, and whatever they had in system can't be counted against the MAN any longer.

A SWAG is that at least six of the twelve have conventional SDs on a par with Beowulf, but armed with Cataphracts. Call it 240 conventional SDs with extended range missiles -- minimum.

Sigs wrote:If the Darius System is geared towards a large ship building capability they might have enough to seriously challenge the Andermani after all they Empire has a lot of systems to protect while the MA doesn't have any systems affiliated with it other than Mesa that the GA knows about. But I will go back and reread this sections tomorrow as I have a long flight.

the following is textev re: Darius:

Mission of Honor
Chapter Thirty-eight
(Albrecht Detweiler's POV) wrote:Yet for all the years which had been plowed into Darius, all the effort, all the generations of labor, the fact remained that its space stations and shipyards were significantly less capable than Manticore's had been prior to Oyster Bay. Benjamin Detweiler didn't like admitting that, but he agreed with his father; the day someone stopped admitting the truth was the day he could kiss any of his hopes for the future goodbye. And the truth was that, despite the accomplishments of the Alignment's R&D, and despite any tactical advantages which might accrue from the streak drive and the spider, very few star nations could have matched the industrial efficiency of the Star Empire of Manticore. Indeed, Benjamin suspected that even Manticore had failed to grasp just how great an advantage it possessed in that regard.

Over the last five or six T-years, he and Daniel had been trying to introduce Manticoran practices here at Darius, only to discover that the task wasn't as simple and forthright as it ought to have been. If they'd really wanted to duplicate Manticore's efficiency, they would've had to duplicate Manticore's entire industrial base—and its society—and they simply couldn't do that. Their labor force was extraordinarily good at following orders, extremely well trained, and highly motivated, but the kind of independence of thought which characterized Manticoran workers wasn't exactly something which had been encouraged among the slave workers of Darius. Even if it had been, their basic techniques and technologies were simply different from Manticore's. Better than the majority of League star systems could have produced, if those other star systems had only realized it, yet still at least a full generation behind the Manties.

There are four stations orbiting Darius Gamma, each smaller than any of Manticore's. There are apparently no Grayson style stand-alone yards. Darius Prime is building Leonard Detweilers, but no hard number is given. The impression I get is between ten and twenty -- closer to ten than twenty.

If all four stations are the same, that's forty to eighty Lenny Dets -- that's probably a maximum because they would need other ship types as well as the Lenny Dets.

None of the Lenny Dets are near completion, from all clues and hints, I'd estimate six months to a year for the first and maybe one a quarter thereafter.

Umm, where does it say there are only a dozen systems with more than a squadron of SDs?

kzt wrote:Umm, where does it say there are only a dozen systems with more than a squadron of SDs?

IIRC one of the "Pearls of Weber." It is there or one of RFC's posts, but I've only actually seen it as quotes from the primary source.

ETA: I'm not great at finding stuff in the Pearls or Infodumps at fifthemperium. This is NOT the quote I've seen that states "a dozen" but it's the same general theme:

From:http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/entry/Harrington/181/1
First, those of you who are arguing that the vast majority of the League's system defense forces are not -- and have not been, for centuries -- in serious "defense mode," are essentially correct. Very, very few of the League's systems see any need to have anything except the equivalent of Coast Guard cutters (LACs). Expecting them to have anything more than that would be rather like expecting St. Louis to have the squadron of Arleigh Burke-class destroyers because an enemy invasion force might possibly make its way up the Mississippi Valley. It's just not any sort of real priority for the huge bulk of League star systems. Why should it be? There are a limited number of systems which have specific reasons for having more powerful defense forces, either because they have something especially valuable that needs protecting, or because they happen to have largish merchant marines for which they provide a significant amount of security, or they have system political leaderships which are either paranoid (where their neighbors are concerned) or potentially avaricious (where their neighbors are concerned). That number, however, is extremely limited as a percentage of the League's total membership.

Weird Harold wrote:

kzt wrote:Umm, where does it say there are only a dozen systems with more than a squadron of SDs?

IIRC one of the "Pearls of Weber." It is there or one of RFC's posts, but I've only actually seen it as quotes from the primary source.

I'm pretty sure you are thinking of the "in character" internal thought by an OFS flunky about the size of navies in SftS.

I doubt he's an expert on Navy size of the 5000 or so settled worlds, or even the 1,784 or so members of the SL. So yeah, "seventy-one Solarian superdreadnoughts, accompanied by sixteen battlecruisers, twelve heavy cruisers, twenty-three light cruisers, and eighteen destroyers" is probably bigger then 'most' of navies in the Honorverse. It's bigger then Beowulf's, for example, by 100% or so. But I wouldn't expect that it really is larger then exactly 95% of the navies.

Chapter 35
That was undoubtedly true, but it still didn't change the fact that Manpower had somehow managed to gather up more firepower than ninety-five percent of the galaxy's formal navies could have massed and get it deployed to an out-of-the-way corner like Lorcan Verrochio's. Which suggested to him (although he'd been very careful not to mention it to Valery Ottweiler or Ottweiler's buddy Hongbo) that it was past time for him to reevaluate just how deep into the League's bureaucratic and political structures the various Mesan corporations really could reach . . . and what that meant for him.

kzt wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:IIRC one of the "Pearls of Weber." It is there or one of RFC's posts, but I've only actually seen it as quotes from the primary source.

I'm pretty sure you are thinking of the "in character" internal thought by an OFS flunky about the size of navies in SftS.

Nope, I definitely am recalling an authorial comment rather than anything in character -- and a definite use of the word "dozen."

Then you'll have to find it, because that would contradict the text I just quoted.

kzt wrote:Then you'll have to find it, because that would contradict the text I just quoted.

Not necessarily.

How many "formal navies" are there in the Honorverse? Do SDFs count?

We know of four that out-mass Byng and Crandall Combined (other than the SLN) but we only know of Eight(?) formal navies plus Beowulf's SDF. What is the difference between an SDF and a "formal navy?"

I doubt Commissioner Verrochio's assessment can be taken literally -- counting the SLN as one of the five percent, the IAN, GSN, RHN and RMN meet the specification and would require 95 other "formal navies" to be a literally accurate assessment. Less than Byng and Crandall combined could be as little as a pair of LACs for customs inspections or comparable to Beowulf's 36 SDs.

IOW, your quote gives no indication at all of how many of that 95% has fewer that 76 SDs or 76 trombones in a Navy band as their most powerful units.

kzt wrote:Umm, where does it say there are only a dozen systems with more than a squadron of SDs?

Weird Harold wrote:IIRC one of the "Pearls of Weber." It is there or one of RFC's posts, but I've only actually seen it as quotes from the primary source.

kzt wrote:I'm pretty sure you are thinking of the "in character" internal thought by an OFS flunky about the size of navies in SftS.

I doubt he's an expert on Navy size of the 5000 or so settled worlds, or even the 1,784 or so members of the SL. So yeah, "seventy-one Solarian superdreadnoughts, accompanied by sixteen battlecruisers, twelve heavy cruisers, twenty-three light cruisers, and eighteen destroyers" is probably bigger then 'most' of navies in the Honorverse. It's bigger then Beowulf's, for example, by 100% or so. But I wouldn't expect that it really is larger then exactly 95% of the navies.

Chapter 35
That was undoubtedly true, but it still didn't change the fact that Manpower had somehow managed to gather up more firepower than ninety-five percent of the galaxy's formal navies could have massed and get it deployed to an out-of-the-way corner like Lorcan Verrochio's. Which suggested to him (although he'd been very careful not to mention it to Valery Ottweiler or Ottweiler's buddy Hongbo) that it was past time for him to reevaluate just how deep into the League's bureaucratic and political structures the various Mesan corporations really could reach . . . and what that meant for him.

That quote is in Chapter 37 of Storm from the Shadows; it's Lorcan Verrochio's internal thought.

As far as whether Verrochio knows what he's thinking about, I assume that he does. It's most likely in his background briefing, rather than anything he's directly concerned with, but as a sector governor, he's privy to a lot of that kind of background. (I also assume that SDF's are included in that count of "formal navies.") I wouldn't put much credence on the accuracy of the "95%." Verrochio doesn't have any reason to be concerned about a precise number in this passage. "Overwhelming majority" would do as well, I think.