(SPOILERS) Expected defeat at Beowulf.

Hmmm... maybe the Solarian intelligence finds out, that Beowulf builts war material for manticore! That would be an good explarnation to bomb the orbital intustry to debris, and if some of the debris would fall into a city like the Yawata strike, that would be a lot out casulties.

Jump in, start missles and sensor drohnes, jump out and a time later a small ship jumps in to see what happend!

Maldorian wrote:Hmmm... maybe the Solarian intelligence finds out, that Beowulf builts war material for manticore! That would be an good explarnation to bomb the orbital intustry to debris, and if some of the debris would fall into a city like the Yawata strike, that would be a lot out casulties.

Jump in, start missles and sensor drohnes, jump out and a time later a small ship jumps in to see what happend!

I think something that belligerent would have to be after the plebiscite takes Beowulf out of the League. Granted, it gets plausible then.

JeffEngel wrote:

Maldorian wrote:Hmmm... maybe the Solarian intelligence finds out, that Beowulf builts war material for manticore! That would be an good explarnation to bomb the orbital intustry to debris, and if some of the debris would fall into a city like the Yawata strike, that would be a lot out casulties.

Jump in, start missles and sensor drohnes, jump out and a time later a small ship jumps in to see what happend!

I think something that belligerent would have to be after the plebiscite takes Beowulf out of the League. Granted, it gets plausible then.

Why is that Jeff? If you're a traitor you're a traitor. It most certainly is plausible now.

It was plausible from my relative positioning after the last fiasco in system.

JeffEngel wrote:

Maldorian wrote:Hmmm... maybe the Solarian intelligence finds out, that Beowulf builts war material for manticore! That would be an good explarnation to bomb the orbital intustry to debris, and if some of the debris would fall into a city like the Yawata strike, that would be a lot out casulties.

Jump in, start missles and sensor drohnes, jump out and a time later a small ship jumps in to see what happend!

I think something that belligerent would have to be after the plebiscite takes Beowulf out of the League. Granted, it gets plausible then.

cthia wrote:Why is that Jeff? If you're a traitor you're a traitor. It most certainly is plausible now.

It was plausible from my relative positioning after the last fiasco in system.

You really can't treat a system as a member in fair standing of your star nation and go in and blow up their orbital infrastructure. It rather strains the shared fiction of common nationality. They're hardly a traitor system when they've not voted to be one. They may have a traitor government - if the League could go so far as to make that claim stick, when it can't call this a war - but you deal with a government by capturing the high orbitals and demanding its surrender. (In this case, you'd be doing that in order to serve as back-up for the Gendarmerie securing the planet, arresting the ringleaders, and investigating their actions against the League.)

JeffEngel wrote:

Maldorian wrote:Hmmm... maybe the Solarian intelligence finds out, that Beowulf builts war material for manticore! That would be an good explarnation to bomb the orbital intustry to debris, and if some of the debris would fall into a city like the Yawata strike, that would be a lot out casulties.

Jump in, start missles and sensor drohnes, jump out and a time later a small ship jumps in to see what happend!

I think something that belligerent would have to be after the plebiscite takes Beowulf out of the League. Granted, it gets plausible then.

cthia wrote:Why is that Jeff? If you're a traitor you're a traitor. It most certainly is plausible now.

It was plausible from my relative positioning after the last fiasco in system.

JeffEngel wrote:You really can't treat a system as a member in fair standing of your star nation and go in and blow up their orbital infrastructure. It rather strains the shared fiction of common nationality. They're hardly a traitor system when they've not voted to be one. They may have a traitor government - if the League could go so far as to make that claim stick, when it can't call this a war - but you deal with a government by capturing the high orbitals and demanding its surrender. (In this case, you'd be doing that in order to serve as back-up for the Gendarmerie securing the planet, arresting the ringleaders, and investigating their actions against the League.)

Makes sense to me... if it were a League of Extraordinary Gentlemen with that past MO. It isn't and it isn't.

Beowulf has already voted to be traitors by a show of hands when they committed that unforgivable act during a de facto state of war.

Vengeance fuels them now with a (even if it's misplaced) morbid sense of justification on their side. In the League's eyes, the Wulf is rabidly treasonous. And rabies is highly contagious with no known cure except death.

I don't recall that the then-leaders of the USN particularly distinguished themselves on or immediately after the entry of the US into WWII. In fact, the accounts I've seen speak of people driving down to the beach to watch the ships burn as the Kriegsmarine went through them like shit through a goose. They did have the virtue of being at least somewhat prepared to learn from their mistakes, of course.

Until 1941, Japan was fighting a land war, with a fairly minor brown-water component, so the only war-hardened part of the IJN was their land-based air forces. Which shows in their performance: pilots second to none, senior commanders... not so much. Can you see Tourville or Theisman making Nagumo's mistakes at Pearl Harbour or Midway? And he trained up in a navy that had seen fleet combat in living memory [in fact, I suspect that was part of the tension between him and Yamamoto, who was at Tsushima - albeit as a very, very junior officer].

The honors were probably about even on gaffes. The USN could afford more, is all.

kzt wrote:So can you tell me what fleet actions the leaders of US Navy in WW2 participated in prior to that little dustup? How about officers who distinguished themselves in combat and rose to lead the USN during WW2?

Yeah, kind of hard to find this given that the combat actions prior to WW2 for the last 30 years consisted of a few small-scale actions against uboats, and a total of three USN ships were lost due to enemy action (one to a torpedo, one to a mine, one to an IJN air strike while anchored).

So obviously with that kind of lack of skills and experience the battle hardened Kriegsmarine and extremely competent IJN, both who had been at war for several year by that point, totally dominated the oceans, right?

And yeah, I'm kind of tired of the battles that some guy once described as war porn.

I think we're seeing evidence of the wisdom RFC showed in keeping the initial battles against the Peeps mostly off-screen. Aside from Hancock and 4th Yeltsin, we don't see any of the initial lopsided Manty victories against the Peeps. We get a look at one of the fights (Nightingale?) where White Haven is driven back by superior numbers and passable tactics but that's pretty much it for major fleet actions until Icarus. Until the Peeps figure out how to fight despite their disadvantages, in other words. The Sollies haven't had (and probably won't get) the chance to learn.

If we want the GA to face a serious threat, we'll probably have to wait until they go up against spider drive ships. The learning curve facing the League Navy is too steep given the central government's expected lifespan.

There may perfectly well be Frontier Fleet people who commanded multiship actions in support of the OFS, when systems needed to be given better government. Of course, they were facing enemies who were less effective against frigates with gatling antimissile defenses.

Louis R wrote:As much as I sympathise, I'm afraid that you'll have to accept that there _aren't_ any "worthy League opponents". There's exactly 1 living SLN flag officer who has commanded a multi-ship action - and he made all the classic noob mistakes that Haven-Sector commanders have had beaten out of them before they graduate from ship command [usually, in fact, before they _achieve_ ship command]. since he is still alive, Rozsak will learn from them, but he's got a long way to go before he'll be able to face up to someone like Genevieve Chin, never mind a Manty or Grayson trained by Honor Harrington or Hamish Alexander. And he's the only man in Solarian uniform for whom even task force command is more than a theoretical exercise. The majority of Sollies have never even seen blood shed for real. None have had their ships shot to scrap around them.

Rozsak is unlikely to be fighting either Haven or Manticore any time soon.

Haven is supporting Torch and Manticore is supporting Torch. Rozack (along with the Maya Sector Gov) is supporting Torch.

Erwhon and Maya have vastly more than an "understanding" and Erwhon is building the ships for Maya that lets Rozsak both replace the lost ships and build up the Maya fleet. The still nominal FF ships in the area of the Maya systems are under the command of Rozsak as far as I can see and any that are just passing though are unlikely to have their command staffs invited to briefings of what is actually going on at Maya--unless, of course, it is part of a plan at some point to appropriate those transient our as yet un-cooped FF ships to add to the fleet (or just make them unavailable to FF).

Rozsak and Maya would be happy to NOT engage anybody in the GA and are unlikely to go out of their way to cause them problems. They respesent major potential tradeing partners and there is the conduit via Erwhon.

I expect that we will soon see the Maya area becomming a sink-hole for FF ships even if it isn't identified as such by the SLN for a while. Unless somebody stumbles over something, and reports back to FF or BF, it is quite possible that Maya could be used as a waypoint out to the commerce raiding in the direction of Basilisk and Manticore and those ships just don't ever report back after the head off on the missions fro the Maya area.

Brigade XO wrote:Rozsak is unlikely to be fighting either Haven or Manticore any time soon.

Haven is supporting Torch and Manticore is supporting Torch. Rozack (along with the Maya Sector Gov) is supporting Torch.

Erwhon and Maya have vastly more than an "understanding" and Erwhon is building the ships for Maya that lets Rozsak both replace the lost ships and build up the Maya fleet. The still nominal FF ships in the area of the Maya systems are under the command of Rozsak as far as I can see and any that are just passing though are unlikely to have their command staffs invited to briefings of what is actually going on at Maya--unless, of course, it is part of a plan at some point to appropriate those transient our as yet un-cooped FF ships to add to the fleet (or just make them unavailable to FF).

Rozsak and Maya would be happy to NOT engage anybody in the GA and are unlikely to go out of their way to cause them problems. They respesent major potential tradeing partners and there is the conduit via Erwhon.

I expect that we will soon see the Maya area becomming a sink-hole for FF ships even if it isn't identified as such by the SLN for a while. Unless somebody stumbles over something, and reports back to FF or BF, it is quite possible that Maya could be used as a waypoint out to the commerce raiding in the direction of Basilisk and Manticore and those ships just don't ever report back after the head off on the missions fro the Maya area.

I was thinking something along the same lines. It would be highly amusing if the SLN command decides to use the Maya Sector as their local command post for the commerce raiding fleet, and sends a few admirals, with staff and a couple of battle fleet SDs, to oversee it.