Sigs wrote:The way I see the initial MA plan for the RF, the one that had Manticore/Haven either destroyed,one occupied by other etc... it involved the collapse of the League and the MA using their newly constructed warships to destroy most or all shipyards not in RF hands and then use those same warships to force other core systems to join forces with the RF systems. This would involve a somewhat lengthy time period because the idea is not to for the MA to simply scare core worlds into joining the RF but to make them desperate and subservient enough to be willing to accept the leadership of the original RF members because the alternative would be worse. The reason I see as their initial plan calling for desperation is because they would surrender essentially their very independence for the security that the RF provides thus giving the RF and the MA the ability to put through any changes they may desire. As the RF fleet expands to offer the protection to new core systems which by then would be desperate for any protection whatsoever because of the actions of the MA. At that point they will not be arguing about division of power as long as the RF provides the ships of the wall to “protect” them from the unseen enemy.
Now that Manticore, Haven and Grayson are in fact allied and not destroyed their entire plan collapses. Basically, until the MA is destroyed any unexplained( and highly suspicious) mass disappearances of warships and/or attacks on core systems will in my opinion force the hand of Manticore/GA. Until the MA and their entire structure is destroyed the GA cannot and likely will not allow any large scale nation building, meaning that the GA will prevent the formation of large nations due to the fact that they do not have in-depth intelligence and they do not know who or what they are fighting against. This to me means that they will not allow the successor states to unite in numbers that might actually challenge the GA industrially and subsequently militarily.
My point is that their plan is as of the last book undoable, this means that the GA cannot and will allow significant number of core systems to join together to form a nation that can threaten them until the MA is destroyed.
As long as the GA can provide some sort of security for as many core systems as they can, they will prevent the RF from getting those systems desperate enough to be willing to sign off their freedom in exchange for security.
My read is that the MA wants total galactic domination in order to pursue their plans, if they wanted to just control humanity they could have become the power behind the bureaucracy of the League pretty easily without having to spend 600 years plotting and planning.
What the MA/RF planned and what they are actually going to get are two different things and the survival of the League in any shape or form hangs on the decision of not only the MA but of the GA.
Well sure. It's pretty clear that the MAlign is now on about plan G and improvising wildly; so what they'd originally planned is mostly out the window.
But they might still be able to salvage a few things from it.
The prep work they did to make the various RF systems attractive nuclei around which to form the initial separate successor states (not so much their SDF strength as their strong support for law and order, stance against corruption, and actions against genetic slavery and piracy) still make them look attractive to neighbors looking to band together
and make them look like good guys to the GA.
I suspect Manticore and Haven are unlikely to want to commit to multi-decade long fleet deployment to provide primary security to ex-League worlds; nor do they want to turn over even much Manti-lite tech except to the most trusted system.
I'm expecting their defensive treaties to be shorter term and require the protected worlds to work towards being self-sufficient for primary system security. (As in you don't hit certain milestones along that path the GA can cite that as a violation of the defense treaty and drops you).
If the GA can get to the point where they're really only promising to send a fleet to retake a system if it's captured then they don't need to tie up lots of forces in fast response nodal pickets.
Anyway the RF worlds still appear to be well positioned to attract some of their neighbors into a mutual defense association, treaty organization, or even multi-system government. And as long as they didn't get individually too big, or benefit from a lot of unexplainable attacks on surrounding systems, the GA is likely to be in
favor of that as it creates stability, discourages piracy and warlordism, all without requiring major deployments of GA assets.
It's when the MAlign plan called for the multi-system states the grew around each RF world to start merging that the GA would likely object and react.
