You also seem to have missed the fact that the inner system _also_ had massive 'fixed' defenses, centered on the 3 space stations. Home Fleet may have been as little as 50% of the firepower inside the hyperlimit - that's not at all certain, of course, since AFAIK there's no specific number given. The reason those defenses played so little role in the Battle of Manticore was that a) their version of Keyhole/Apollo was just starting to deploy, so most of the battle was outside their reach and b) when 2nd Fleet did come into range of the defense systems at Sphinx they were instructed not to engage, since that would allow Tourville to return fire without having to worry about committing an EE violation if anything hit the planet.
As for the assassination of King Roger, Queen's Gambit makes it abundantly clear that the traitors weren't put on trial because there was no possibility of convicting them. I don't recall that there was even any hard evidence developed that the King was murdered.
Sigs wrote:I haven't finished reading the new posts in the thread as I have been busy at work.
My initial post was indented to ask the question of whether the situation would have been different if the Forts guarding the Junction were in fact SD's leaving only a handful bigger forts as fixed defences. Even if it is assumed that ton for ton the conversion is 1:.6 or .7 it would still be worthwhile because the Junction is a secondary objective in the immediate war.
So assuming at an average of 20,000,000 tons per fort for 124 forts that would translate to 177 new SD's even if we assume that the cost and manpower for 1 ton of fort equals to only half a ton of SD.
Why do I think the Junction is a secondary objective in the war? Because losing control of the Junction still leaves you with the three planets and all the industry that is in the inner system, sure it would be a heavy loss but the warfighting abilities of the SKM would have survived at least in the short term. So the motivation for starting the war for Haven was the junction, the knockout blow would not have been the junction, it would have to have been the destruction of all industry or most of it in the inner system and the subsequent capture of the capital.
During the first war with Haven, Home fleet was regularly stripped of ships of the wall, so you end up protecting your main industrial, military, manpower and political resource with a significantly smaller defensive force than you would protect a secondary resource such as the junction.
Having strong stationary defensive forces which could not offer mutual support means that they could be defeated in detail or Haven could have launched the first war with an attack on the Manticore System, destroyed Home Fleet which at the beginning of the first war was reduced to around 72 of the wall which to me means that if haven had reinforced their fleet that was to attack Grayson and instead launched against the Manticore Home system. The war would be over and Manticore would still have several hundred SD's worth of firepower around the Junction.
As for the political situation? I think that when Haven had the King assassinated, the government should have publicly and aggressively brought the traitors to trial and subsequently used that to force through stronger measures for rearmament. Keeping the assassination secret did more damage to their long term rearmament plans than bringing them to trial. The situation would most likely have been significantly better at the start of the war if the assassination had be exposed rather than covered up.