Scenario of War with the League

kzt wrote:Your response isn't more convincing if you make it 5 times.

What part do you disagree with?

Sigs wrote:Why would it be unrealistic? I'm limiting certain technologies because the more I think about it the more it seems to me that even if the technological gap was much narrower the SLN specifically and the League in general will not survive it.

With the limitations you place on RMN tech, the Grand Alliance would not form and the SLN numerical superiority would be overwhelming. There would probably not be a Talbott Quadrant because there would have been no "Building The Peace" research grants to find the Lynx terminus.

Specifically, with the limitations you've placed on the RMN most of the story RFC wrote would not have happened. The RMN would not be pushed into a war they cannot win, and the SLN contingency plans would work the way they always have if Manticore did get into a war with the SLN.

Sigs wrote:At the end of the day the League is getting defeated, whether it is defeated in battle after battle and conquered bit by bit or it is defeated through the use of diplomacy at the end of the day it makes no difference to the league as it will cease to exist in it's current form.

With the limitations you've placed on the technology, the RMN will suffer a great deal of attrition even if they win a battle. The RMN can't sustain the kind of casualties an advantage less than that provided by the MK-16G would produce. Even if they do have an ERM range advantage, that is only going to give them one or two salvos before a fight descends into a furball. Military defeat of the SLN is probably NOT going to happen under your restrictions.

Politically, the Solarian League is going to fall apart whether Manticore, the GA, or MAlign do their worst or nothing at all. The only questions are "how long will it take?" and "how bloody is it going to be?" Without the Tech advantage RFC has given Manticore and the Grand Alliance for numbers, the best thing Manticore can do is play "turtle" and spend more on R&D until the League self-destructs.

Let me get this straight. You have 16Mkm range and your opponents range is ~8Mkm and you cannot figure out how to keep the range open..... Good grief, did space become a maze obstacle course all of a sudden when I was not looking? Last I checked, the GA still has the acceleration advantage...

Sigs, missing the major point: No one has ever claimed that BF does not have some light units. It certainly does as BOMA II showed. The books have made abundantly clear, that the majority of BF's units should the SLN find itself in a war was supposed to be from FF.

TheEmile... Where does it say they were replacing BF reserve BC's with Nevadas? Looked in the usual culprit places and I could not find. What I remember specifically, was that the Indefatigable BC's were being replaced with Nevadas as they retired.

Weird Harold wrote:With the limitations you've placed on the technology, the RMN will suffer a great deal of attrition even if they win a battle. The RMN can't sustain the kind of casualties an advantage less than that provided by the MK-16G would produce. Even if they do have an ERM range advantage, that is only going to give them one or two salvos before a fight descends into a furball. Military defeat of the SLN is probably NOT going to happen under your restrictions.

Well the RMN would still have the accel advantage. So in many cases, especially on the offensive, they should be able to use that accel advantage to control the combat range. Basically avoid building up mutual vectors that force them quickly into SDM range.

Now you can't always do that; sometimes you're on the defensive and must stay between the enemy and their objective. And sometimes you'll get herded into a Nightingale style ambush. But often you'll be able to control the engagement distance against their wall. (Can't stop their BCs or cruisers from dashing forward unsupported; but against an intact wall of ERM equipped SDs that's a extremely manageable threat )

Jonathan_S wrote:Well the RMN would still have the accel advantage.

With the limitations that Sigs specifies, there is no way that Manticore can win the numbers war. Their advantages other than range aren't enough to engage the SLN without sustaining some damage in any engagement and they don't have the numbers to sustain any kind of damage for any length of time.

Lets see, SLN has no fire control advances and it is supposed to miraculously hold the line against someone with ships with vastly higher numbers of both offensive and defensive capabilities? SLN would still be eliminated in a mere 2 months. Now if you cannot achieve a diplomatic solution after this sprint, sure, they would get wiped out unless they destroy the entire space faring industry of the SL and place a destroyer in every orbit of every planet to keep them a couple thousand years behind the technological curve. By the way, this is doable. Just takes the GA being ruthless.

Jonathan_S wrote:The one exception to that is if the Solarian League managed to maintain operational security and could drop a Raging Justice level strike on Manticore or Haven without warning. That might give them a heavy enough numerical superiority (3 or 4 to 1) in that system to punch out the respective home fleet and take control of the system. That would certainly take Manticore out of the war, and probably could take Haven out - but if not they'd at least inflict disproportionate losses and trash major shipyards and industrial complexes. And we know that that kind of steamroll the home system attack is their normal strategic plan (which on the one hand means the GA should anticipate it even if they get no specific warnings; but on the other hand keeping sufficient forces home to repel a huge Battlefleet attack basically requires giving up strategic offensive beyond nuisance BC raids.

And why do you think they would win even then? Manticore had pods, I would expect their home system was riddled with them. Remember what happened to Crandall? That's basically what's going to happen to anyone who goes after Manticore. The lack of MDMs won't change this--simply deploy your pods at least a million km in front of your fleet. The pods will be in range when they fire but if the Sollies return fire they're just wasting it on now-empty pods. There won't be any ships in range when the pods fire, the Sollies have nothing to do but sit there and get ravaged. (In the actual battle the Sollies were in range because the objective was to force a surrender. Had they engaged as soon as the Sollies couldn't make it back across the wall before the missiles got there there would have been no return fire.)

Eagleeye wrote:But ... The Solarian League is so damned big, you simply can't control even the Core-Worlds, much less the worlds in the shell (some of them are not to sneer at, too - technologically speaking - because it's at least my impression that most of the worlds currently (in the official Honorverse) in the Alignment are Shell-Worlds)

So, sooner or later, some Core- or Shell-Worlds have the time to build a modern navy ... and then the GA is doomed.
(at least, if a - the SL hangs together; b - the Verge remains calm and under solarian control; c - the shell remains calm and under solarian control)

You don't really need to control the League. Punch out the existing shipyards and demand the surrender of the worlds. Grant immediate parole, though--they're not allowed to build or host anything beyond anti-piracy ships and the GA has free run of the systems to inspect anything they want.

Since you can bombard a world that refuses to surrender I don't think they're going to be inclined to play games. The league falls apart.

Kytheros wrote:The GA is nowhere close to its maximum potential. Remember, Haven's still got something like a thousand SD(P)s building, if not more. Sure, a Havenite SD(P) won't have Apollo or be as good as a Manticoran SD(P), but it's still going to be a lot better than anything the League can field for probably at least five years, if not longer. Plus, there's the Andermani, if need be. And, as I noted above, Manticore itself has a lot of room to grow and work with given time.

It would take them a lot longer than 5 years to field stuff to match current GA ships. There's a lot of tech to develop before they can even design the ships, let alone start building them.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

Kytheros wrote:The GA is nowhere close to its maximum potential. Remember, Haven's still got something like a thousand SD(P)s building, if not more. Sure, a Havenite SD(P) won't have Apollo or be as good as a Manticoran SD(P), but it's still going to be a lot better than anything the League can field for probably at least five years, if not longer. Plus, there's the Andermani, if need be. And, as I noted above, Manticore itself has a lot of room to grow and work with given time.

It would take them a lot longer than 5 years to field stuff to match current GA ships. There's a lot of tech to develop before they can even design the ships, let alone start building them.

I notice that loran said AT LEAST 5 years.

5-6 years is probably about right for the first SL new SD's to be built. ship build times in the SL appear to be about the same as manticore build times 1900 PD, so it is in the relm of possibility. Once the decision is made to build a new SD class, look for 1-2 years to design the new ship, 3.5-4 years to complete construction = 4.5-6 years.

The big question is political. How quickly does the decision to build a new SD class come about?

Another question is how quickly can they ramp up production? Once the first new SL SD comes off the producion line I would be surprised if they could complete more than one a month for the next year. After all, since manticore has more merchant hulls than the entire SL, they can't divert civilian building slips to military, what few civilian building slips they have will be needed to build new merchant ships.