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Malign contingency Strats and Tacts

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Malign contingency Strats and Tacts
Post by cthia   » Mon Jan 18, 2016 9:46 am

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Contingency Strategies & Tactics formulated by the MAlign

If you back an opponent into the corner, he'll attack.

I keep trying to second guess our antagonists. We don't know where they live. We don't know all of the tech they are working on and what other "new" type of warfare they'll introduce.

What strategy and tactics will or should they use to attack the GA should they attack If their hand is forced like Haven's, when they begin to hear GA footsteps getting too close?

What even newer tech do you feel will likely be introduced by the MAlign?

In what ways should they go about using that tech against the GA, if their hand is forced at some point in the future?

What tech should they be working on?

RFC has said that he'll unravel the League in a manner of his readers' approval. What about the MAlign? Surely David won't leave that thread ravelled? Surely by end of the remaining books it will have been done. Yet surely we don't expect the MAlign to turn out to be the TWATS (The Wishy Washy Wimps With All Those Ships) that the League has become.

We definititely must give the MAlign the credit for not suffering the affliction of poor foresight. Surely there's a mockup contingency plan already formulated and all laid out in their War Room as a motivation -- and for ongoing tweaking as the current theater of war, along with their own technologies and capabilities, changes.

As Haven's ultimate thrust "to kill a Manticore" was in its Operation Beatrice... As the SLN's own ultimate thrust at the heart of the legendary beast was in its Operation Raging Justice... so too, I imagine, has the MAlign envisioned their own grand brand of military justice to be carried out and executed by their greatest military commander to ride herd on the back of its most powerful fleet as a Knight which will thrust its lance into the heart of this three headed beast. Perhaps in an Operation Decapitate?

Space-faring status changes things quite a bit. Suddenly it's child's play to find a needle in a haystack rather than a boltHOLE in space, or a Malignant tumor.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Malign contingency Strats and Tacs
Post by George J. Smith   » Mon Jan 18, 2016 1:10 pm

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Oyster Bay was a like a sub-set of their original plan, which was to include Haven as well as Manticore & Grayson. I think the plan was for Manticore to take out the ISLN and then Manticore & Haven weaken each other so that the Malign could stage their take-over through the RF. Long time since I read the passages that cover it, and when re-reading the books I tend to skip the tedious politically heavy stuff.
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A man should live forever, or die in the attempt
Spider Robinson Callahan's Crosstime Saloon (1977) A voice is heard in Ramah
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Re: Malign contingency Strats and Tacts
Post by JohnRoth   » Mon Jan 18, 2016 1:25 pm

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I predict that the core of the MAlign will go out in a completely satisfying blaze of thermonuclear fury during the Battle of Darius, and we'll only learn that, when backed into a corner, they drew a hole on the floor, dived through it and then pulled it in after themselves.

We will then discover that they've learned how to lie to treecats and taken up a new residence on Beowulf part way through the second series.
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Re: Malign contingency Strats and Tacts
Post by noblehunter   » Mon Jan 18, 2016 2:07 pm

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If MAlign faced up to reality, they'd already be planning to disappear for another millenia to plot. Unless they have something truly nasty in store, I don't see how they're going to sufficiently wreck the Haven Sector to prevent it from forming a social and cultural counter weight to the Renaissance Factor. This attempt at creating a polity to implement wholesale genetic engineering throughout (more or less) human space isn't going to come off.

I'm thinking the current leadership is too in love with seeing the culmination of the plan to be rational enough to back off. Which is good, I suppose, but vaguely disappointing.
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Re: Malign contingency Strats and Tacts
Post by JeffEngel   » Mon Jan 18, 2016 2:30 pm

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cthia wrote:RFC has said that he'll unravel the League in a manner of his readers' approval. What about the MAlign? Surely David won't leave that thread ravelled? Surely by end of the remaining books it will have been done. Yet surely we don't expect the MAlign to turn out to be the TWATS (The Wishy Washy Wimps With All Those Ships) that the League has become.

I would not expect the Alignment to be all wrapped up in this set of books. Instead, it's going to succeed in its primary plan to unravel the League in the next book or two - the remainder of this arc - though with the unexpected problems of a working rival nucleus (the Grand Alliance) for the recovery of human civilization, and that Alliance being all too aware of the Alignment's existence and general aims.

As noted by others - the really smart play would be to fade out until Zilwicki, Cachat, MacBryde, and Simoes are all merely historical figures and come back when no one suspects this Alignment still exists, if it ever did. But they're not rational enough to make that really smart move, and will instead keep trying to undermine the GA and have the Renaissance Factor play the intended role in their lifetimes. That Battle of Darius - and the attendant full exposure of the Alignment - won't come until the conclusion of the next series of books and many years into the future of the Honorverse.
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Re: Malign contingency Strats and Tacts
Post by BrightSoul   » Mon Jan 18, 2016 4:27 pm

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The Malign has reached a point where their plans are now exposed to far more variables than they had planned on dealing with initially. Personally I expect that they are too far in to use long range plans to determine their course.

Events have accelerated to the point that they are now having to make their adjustments to changes on the fly. The only way they can go back to the kind of operational planning that they had used to this point is to climb back down the rabbit hole for a few more generations and I doubt they could do that. The cat is out of the bag somewhat. So far they can play it of as some nutty excuse for Manty aggression but that will change far faster than the Malign had intended.

Each time they have to tap one of their covert resources they are exposing themselves to discovery and we know that there are people hunting for them now. AZ & VC are the ones that Detweiler knows about, Al Fanudahi is the one they should be most afraid of, if they knew about him. His team is sitting at the very center of the alignment's plots. If He can crack open just on of their plans it'll rip the mask off for the rest of the Galaxy to see the threat. If he could dig up evidence that the missile pods were sent to Filareta from Mesa questions will begin to be asked.

Their plans will be short ranged plans to deal with short term potential threats at this point of the game. The luxury for long term sneaking has , for the most part, passed.
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Re: Malign contingency Strats and Tacts
Post by Theemile   » Mon Jan 18, 2016 5:17 pm

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BrightSoul wrote:The Malign has reached a point where their plans are now exposed to far more variables than they had planned on dealing with initially. Personally I expect that they are too far in to use long range plans to determine their course.

Events have accelerated to the point that they are now having to make their adjustments to changes on the fly. The only way they can go back to the kind of operational planning that they had used to this point is to climb back down the rabbit hole for a few more generations and I doubt they could do that. The cat is out of the bag somewhat. So far they can play it of as some nutty excuse for Manty aggression but that will change far faster than the Malign had intended.

Each time they have to tap one of their covert resources they are exposing themselves to discovery and we know that there are people hunting for them now. AZ & VC are the ones that Detweiler knows about, Al Fanudahi is the one they should be most afraid of, if they knew about him. His team is sitting at the very center of the alignment's plots. If He can crack open just on of their plans it'll rip the mask off for the rest of the Galaxy to see the threat. If he could dig up evidence that the missile pods were sent to Filareta from Mesa questions will begin to be asked.

Their plans will be short ranged plans to deal with short term potential threats at this point of the game. The luxury for long term sneaking has , for the most part, passed.


However, they always have the option of isolating some of their sleepers now and starting another Darius in another isolated corner of the galaxy and waiting the required 5-10 generations for the current unpleasantness to become a distant memory. The rest of the current plans would unfold - now - and try their hand at success.

But they would have to do it now, before anything else happens and the sleepers expose themselves or somebody else. Would you have the RF - no, would you have a tech advantage - can't say, but possibly no, but you could try again. There definitely would not be a 3rd try, because an unsuccessful 2nd try would be followed by witch-hunts.
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RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: Malign contingency Strats and Tacts
Post by cthia   » Mon Jan 18, 2016 6:43 pm

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I don't see the GA allowing the MAlign parasite to dig back in. They're looking for them. And if our antagonists begin to hear footsteps, as in crime dramas and detective cases, they may be forced into making mistakes. Paranoid mistakes. And I can't help cheating and factoring in the author's likely wrapping it all up if there's only going to be a couple more novels.

There simply cannot be a MAlign cliffhanger at the end of this. And if that's true, the MAlign won't turn out to be the aforementioned TWATS.

And if they're not going to be the TWATS as the SLN, then they must have a more aggressive contingency plan all worked up.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Malign contingency Strats and Tacts
Post by Daryl   » Mon Jan 18, 2016 8:31 pm

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It will all depend on RFC and his plans for his future. Don't forget that he has lots of "hidden planet" history. Safehold, Stars at War, Bolthole and Darius in Honorverse, Empire of Man; all have elements of a hidden safe planet to a greater or lesser extent.

My bet is that the Malign will be throughly destroyed so as to tie up all the lose ends, but he will leave a little ambiguity about a rabbit hole in order to keep his options open in case he wants to revisit or to franchise the series in years to come.
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Re: Malign contingency Strats and Tacts
Post by Roguevictory   » Tue Jan 19, 2016 12:37 am

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I still don't think the GA and friends will be able to completely destroy the Malign or the RF. Hurt the Malign badly enough it has to alter its plans maybe but IMO the RF is more important to their plans then anything else and attacking the RF systems, even if the GA can ID them would be a massive mistake because it will cause most if not all non gA or non-GA allied systems to see the GA as a new form of the bad old days of Haven. One of the key points of the RF systems is that they oppose everything Mesa appears to stand for so claiming they are secretly under Mesan control will be thought of as a blatant lie.
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