Scenario of War with the League

kzt wrote:I will again point out that the leadership of the SEM was highly confident that, without the use of outside sources, they could rebuild their shipyards to be producing light ships in 2 years and SDs in 4 years. This is without any industrial base and with having to recruit and train an entire workforce.

Why do you think it would take 50 years for someone who has a fully intact modern industrial base and a large highly experienced workforce?

It wouldn't take 50 years to start building stuff, true.

It would only take a few years, probably a decade at most, to build the infrastructure to start building the best ships that the various core worlds have the technology for. Also true.


It would take much longer for the R&D to match most of Manticore's tech advantages, even longer to get those technologies to deployable status, longer to design ships using them, longer still to build them.
At that point, you've only just started to build a fleet capable of (mostly) matching the RMN. It's going to take you even longer to build enough of those ships.



Manticore already has the technology and ship designs to use that technology. Manticore also has the trained and experienced naval personnel to use it all. The only thing Manticore doesn't have is the industrial infrastructure - which is the easy part.

Manticore has well over 50 years of actively pushing its R&D - and over a decade of wartime pushing R&D further out of necessity. Suppose that knowing it is possible halves the research time involved - that's still 25+ years of R&D. Then you've only just gotten the technology - you still don't have anything that uses it, you need to design (a year or two) and then build not just one, but many ships using it. You also need to recruit and train the people necessary to run those ships.


It's also worth noting that it is quite likely that the League/successor fragments are not going to implement Manticoran levels of warship automation, at least initially. The automation is something that isn't quite as readily apparent to outside observers the way things like ship acceleration and MDMs are. This will further drive up manning requirements.

darrell wrote: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.

Actually, the big question is financial. There is ample textev that the Solarian League doesn't have the money to out-build the GA. They can't tax directly and Lacoon has cut deeply into fees from regulating trade and the MAlign's stirring up rebellion in the Protectorates is going to cut into that revenue stream (if it doesn't cut it out completely).

The SLN has been continuously building a trickle of SDs to keep the capability, with production schedules in the decades/ship; artificially slowing production to about one SD every five years.

Unfortunately, one of the SLN's prime contractors for warships is Technodyne Industries of Yildun who are high on Manticore's hit list after Monica and Filareta's Cataphracts. I don't recall any other warship contractors being identified by name, but there are not many.

The SLN does have a cadre of technicians (corrupt and venal though they may be) and some yards. What they don't have is the money to expand those capabilities and any of the suggested ways of raising the necessary cash/credit -- ie direct taxation -- is going to increase the rate of seccession by disgruntled League members and/or the rate of rebellions in the Shell and Verge.

Individual League members may have the money to expand construction of warships, and will probably have the legal means to raise cash/taxes but no real motive to do so for the benefit of the Mandarins or SLN. If they build warships it will be for a System Defense Force -- and an eye to repelling the SLN as Beowulf presumably will need to do in the next book.

The League, the SLN, and individual League members all have the technology base to ramp up production of warships -- of whatever quality -- but only individual League members have the Money to do so. After (projected) events at Beowulf become common knowledge, League Members are going to be very reluctant to fund the SLN.

Trans-stellar corporations are going to be the only source of funding and support the Mandarins can reasonably expect, and I doubt that support is going to last long as the League crumbles.

tl;dr: There might be the technology and capacity but there is NOT the money for the SLN to expand. SDFs will grow more capable faster than the SLN as a result.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

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.)

The pre-podlayer ships were far more limited in the amount of firecontrol they mounted. Even if you gave them infinite pods they can control less of them simultaneously than an SD(P) could because they weren't designed for the missile numbers you can get in pod-based combat.

Missile pod based defense of more than basically point targets wasn't practical until you got the range of MDMs (3 times the endurance gives 9 times the range).


Pods, towed and deployed around forts and yards, will help but I don't think it can reverse the flow if the SLN hits Manticore, out of the blue, with say 600 SDs in 1910 PD. Home Fleet just isn't big enough to use enough pods to even that kind of numerical disparity out.

Loren Pechtel wrote: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.

Crandall ran into Apollo -- even with Light-speed control that's far more than just a "MDM advantage." The MK-23 warhead is bigger and more capable than an ERM's and the Apollo AI collating information from eight missiles gives the penaids even more of an advantage.

The limits Sigs placed on Manticoran technology would make a big difference in the Battle of Spindle -- IF the conditions that led to that battle ever happened. All that would be required for Crandall to win would be for the survivors to press on to their own missile range and eventually to energy range. They would take heavy losses, but so would Manticore; losses the SLN can absorb, but Manticore cannot. (Manticore's losses at Spindle would be total unless they abandoned the system.)

Weird Harold wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote: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.

Crandall ran into Apollo -- even with Light-speed control that's far more than just a "MDM advantage." The MK-23 warhead is bigger and more capable than an ERM's and the Apollo AI collating information from eight missiles gives the penaids even more of an advantage.

The limits Sigs placed on Manticoran technology would make a big difference in the Battle of Spindle -- IF the conditions that led to that battle ever happened. All that would be required for Crandall to win would be for the survivors to press on to their own missile range and eventually to energy range. They would take heavy losses, but so would Manticore; losses the SLN can absorb, but Manticore cannot. (Manticore's losses at Spindle would be total unless they abandoned the system.)

with enough pods, the battle of spindle would be the same, even with manticore having only SDM's.

The battle of spindal fired 1536 pods. The E missiles were controlled by only a portion of henke's fleet. (500 by the rolands) My guess is that her entire fleet would be able to control about 1/4th the pods, so that would be 384 pods, each with 12 SDM's, 10 attack birds, 2 EW birds each.

Position 10th fleet between crandal and spindal, 1 LM inside the hyper limit. if 10th fleet maintains 9Mkm-10Mkm seperation, 10th fleet will be able to firee on crandal, crandal won't be able to return fire.

Put 384 pods 1 LM further in, and place 19 more groups of 384 pods between the first set of pods and spindal. spaced correctly they can pass a set of pods every 4 minutes, for an 80 hour engagement.

As 10th fleet passes each set of pods, they fire them off. Targeting 8 ships per pod grouping, that is 4608 total missiles, and 480 attack missile per SD. As you can see, they only need to use half the deployed pods to kill every ship in crandals task force from DD to SD.

darrell wrote:The battle of spindal fired 1536 pods. The E missiles were controlled by only a portion of henke's fleet. (500 by the rolands) My guess is that her entire fleet would be able to control about 1/4th the pods, so that would be 384 pods, each with 12 SDM's, 10 attack birds, 2 EW birds each.

You're missing the point that 10th fleet would NOT have the fire-control in Sigs alternate-honorverse that they had in the book. With "pre-buttercup" limits on offensive tech, I don't think there would have been a Battle of Spindle or Talbott Quadrant to worry about.

That's the big flaw in Sigs' premise; the lack of buttercup levels and quantities of offensive tech means that the course of the war with Haven would have been drastically different and minor details like the High Ridge government and "Building the Peace" initiatives would never have happened.

There would be no "Grand Alliance" that includes Haven (and probably no alliance with the Andermani) because there would be no overwhelming advantage on either side -- whether Buttercup level or Apollo level.

Without the events in the Talbott Quadrant -- Monica, New Tuscany I and II, & Spindle -- there's no reason to go to war with the SL and no Raging Justice to fuel outrage.

With the explicit exclusion of the MAlign's activities, there is no impulse to initiate hostilities on either side.

With only pre-buttercup offensive tech and no Grand Alliance or Talbott Quadrant, Manticore doesn't have the numbers to withstand the SLN. Luckily they don't have any reason to go to war either.

The idea that High Ridge's "Building the Peace" initiative was essential to discovering the Lynx connection is dubious at best. The lead scientists on that project was already working on it - Reynaud even thinks the government oversight doubled the research time from its inception.

And in fact, Reynaud went to Admiral Haynesworth and asked for a bit of Astro Control' survey command budget to carry out the sensor runs.

The funding, people and equipment that found the Lynx terminus came from Astro Control, which was running the project before the RMAIA was even formed.

The RMAIA did sod all but take credit and serve as an embezzlement vehicle. At most, the ceasefire ensured Harvest Joy was available - but a wartime Cromarty government would still have found a ship to explore the far side of a seventh terminus.

munroburton wrote:The idea that High Ridge's "Building the Peace" initiative was essential to discovering the Lynx connection is dubious at best. The lead scientists on that project was already working on it - Reynaud even thinks the government oversight doubled the research time from its inception.

Were they working on it before the cease-fire? I don't really believe that the High Ridge vehicle for graft and corruption did anything more than encourage what was low-priority research during wartime, but I do believe that the circumstances that made the High Ridge government's "Peace" possible would not have happened with "pre-Buttercup" level technology.

Sigs said no podnaughts and no MDM's. Said nothing about fire control. All of the ships at that time were being built with vastly higher numbers of control channels to handle even more pods on tow. No reason they would not have been thinking about adding a tractor to the pods at the same time allowing even normal SD's to carry hundreds of them at a time.

darrell wrote: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.

I'll accept 5 years to build a new SD. What I'm saying is that until they develop at a minimum the MDM they don't know what to build and so they can't start building it.