Scenario of War with the League

Sigs wrote:And the only way they can do that is by stripping their core systems of all mobile defences.

Which Core systems (or any systems) were stripped to form Crandall's Task force or Filareta's "Raging Justice?"

The SLN doesn't appear to parcel out "mobile forces" to individual systems, or even parcel Battle Fleet out to regional/nodal centers. Frontier Fleet is allocated to sector bases/fleets, but the SLN as a whole seems more oriented to intimidation and retaliation than protection.

More to the point, we have textev that Crandall simply followed the standard SLN Contingency Plan in advancing on Spindle with (presumed) overwhelming force, and that Raging Justice was also built around that same standard contingency planning. Other than Frontier Fleet plans for masquerading as pirates, Ever-increasing intimidation and retaliation in ever-increasing force seems to be their ONLY war-fighting contingency plan.

Weird Harold wrote:

Sigs wrote:And the only way they can do that is by stripping their core systems of all mobile defences.

Which Core systems (or any systems) were stripped to form Crandall's Task force or Filareta's "Raging Justice?"

Which core systems were protected by the SLN's SD's? There are likely systems in the League that host a large SLN presence but in peacetime there is likely only a few locations that have SD's. Once the League's member systems realise that this is an actual honest to god war with a well armed, multinational organization with a strength of 52% of your active wall and 60% of those you can immediately use(not in yard hands) they will start demanding SD's be posted in their system to protect their infrastructure.If the GA stationed 400+ SD's in Beowulf and then used those SD's to attack the core, every core system will demand SLN protection and having ~25% of your available SD's somewhere other than defending the League would be unacceptable.

Weird Harold wrote:The SLN doesn't appear to parcel out "mobile forces" to individual systems, or even parcel Battle Fleet out to regional/nodal centers. Frontier Fleet is allocated to sector bases/fleets, but the SLN as a whole seems more oriented to intimidation and retaliation than protection.

Because they haven't been in a war in centuries and therefore have had no need to do much defence planning. Just because they haven't deployed their SD's to cover their core systems doesn't mean that those core systems will not demand SD's to protect them from the GA and if the SLN decides that it wont provide those ships the Systems will find other means to protect themselves(separate peace with the GA, building their own fleet up). Once you have dozens of systems declaring neutrality and/or seceding from the league the League has a problem, they lose the industrial muscle of those systems and has to militarily force them back into the League which gets us back to having to provide the ships to keep those systems in the League.

And what more important, it has been mentioned several times that the SLN does not have the capability(fleet train) to operate too far away from its bases, which means even if they attack one of the GA's important systems that fleet would be out of commission until repaired and rearmed.

Weird Harold wrote:More to the point, we have textev that Crandall simply followed the standard SLN Contingency Plan in advancing on Spindle with (presumed) overwhelming force, and that Raging Justice was also built around that same standard contingency planning. Other than Frontier Fleet plans for masquerading as pirates, Ever-increasing intimidation and retaliation in ever-increasing force seems to be their ONLY war-fighting contingency plan.

Yes, that is true, but the SLN's SOP's assume that they are fighting a single system or even a few system nation with limited ability to project power. It is a lot easier to attack a nation with overwhelming force when the nation in question cannot threaten you, but it is not as easy to do that if the nation or nations in question can place several hundred SD's with battle hardened crew's and officers right next door to your most important systems.

Weird Harold wrote:

Sigs wrote:Did you read the numbers I posted? How does the SLN have the overwhelming numbers when they also have 20 times the territory to defend? If the GA had to protect Manticore, Grayson, Haven, Bolthole and maybe a dozen to 2 dozen other systems while the SLN has to protect several hundred core worlds which will be screaming for protection.

The SLN's standard contingency plan is precisely what Adm Crandall did -- head for the Capitol system and force a surrender. The SLN only has to capture three or four systems and has the numbers to do that if only faced with SDM technology.

The League will probably fall apart later, but the war would be over before the construction advantage became relevant.

The problem is you are looking only at shipboard firepower. At the specified time Manticore has pods, the SLN does not. The SLN is going to behave according to doctrine--they're going to go for Manticore. They'll probably meet half of Manticore's fleet (a fight I think they would win) and a whole bunch of pods seeded in space. The SLN eats salvo after salvo from empty space. They might choose to shoot back at best they kill empty pods. By the time the fleets engage the SLN has been ravaged.

Meanwhile, the other half of the fleet can show up at a Sollie world and see what's there. Major fleet, leave. Minor/no fleet--punch out anything of military value and dictate terms to the planet. The SLN has nowhere near the forces needed to defend every important world against this approach and any world that wants to remain part of the Solarian Empire will be screaming for forces--thus severely hamstringing the SLN while the bleeding continues.

Since it's known that leaving the Solarian Empire and declaring neutrality will protect them expect worlds to do this in droves. The Solarian Empire crumbles, victory to Manticore. (Remember, they're not after conquest, just the end of the threat.)

Loren Pechtel wrote:The problem is you are looking only at shipboard firepower. At the specified time Manticore has pods, the SLN does not.

True, but the standard practice of all forces using pods of that era is a single missile swarm from towed pods and tube launched missiles for cleanup. The SLN has the numbers to soak up a single missile storm of pod launched SDM missiles.

I'm not considering just shipboard firepower, but the normal tactics of the RMN and Haven from that era -- especially the system by system approach to warfare. The SLN doesn't subscribe to that approach and will go immediately for a deep penetration decapitation strike against Manticore, Haven, Grayson, and (probably) Erewhon.

Sigs wrote:Yes, that is true, but the SLN's SOP's assume that they are fighting a single system or even a few system nation with limited ability to project power. It is a lot easier to attack a nation with overwhelming force when the nation in question cannot threaten you, but it is not as easy to do that if the nation or nations in question can place several hundred SD's with battle hardened crew's and officers right next door to your most important systems.

No matter what the assumptions behind the SLN SOP, that is the policy they operate under. Given the scale of the SLN, changing SOP is no trivial task; especially since the SLN has the numbers to carry out their SOP and no immediate reason to believe otherwise. SLN SOP doesn't figure on a long war; just long enough to assemble the task forces and travel to the Capitol system(s).

Sigs wrote:

Relax wrote:Did all of the SL's forts disappear? Unless we are going to postulate none of the SL worlds have any.

Why would they have any or at least enough to matter?

Same reason anyone else has them. $$$/Firepower they are vastly superior.

Relax wrote:Same reason anyone else has them. $$$/Firepower they are vastly superior.

If the SLN had a choice between more SD's or forts what do you think they would choose? They keep a reserve of 8,000 SD's and 2,300 in active commission as well as thousands of lighter ships. The League does not see a need to maintain defences because it is the biggest most powerful nation around and they know it. Forts are a defensive weapon by their very nature and do not have the prestige that SD's have and if I'm not mistaken most of the Fleet 2000 changes were predominately cosmetic in nature aka make them look cooler rather than more combat effective. This means that it would be more prestigious for them to have a few hundred more SD's than having forts on any but the most essential sites and even then those forts might be obsolete.


If we are talking about Haven, Manticore or Grayson it would be different because all 3 nations have 20 years worth of combat experience so they will go for forts when forts are called for, but the league has not fought a war in centuries and thus does not think like them.

Oh yes, what someone has not mentioned is that somewhere, DW, mentioned there are only 5 wormhole Junctions in the entire SL.

Joshua, Beowulf, Yildun, (Mind fart), System to Mesa, and.... Did we see the 5th in the opening chapters to A Rising Thunder? The hidden junction the MALIGN knows about and uses would be the 6th near Mannerhiem.

So, the couple dozen systems with SDF's near Beowulf level, do not have such SDF's to protect wormhole junctions.

Sigs wrote:

Relax wrote:Same reason anyone else has them. $$$/Firepower they are vastly superior.

If the SLN had a choice between more SD's or forts what do you think they would choose? They keep a reserve of 8,000 SD's and 2,300 in active commission as well as thousands of lighter ships. The League does not see a need to maintain defences because it is the biggest most powerful nation around and they know it. Forts are a defensive weapon by their very nature and do not have the prestige that SD's have and if I'm not mistaken most of the Fleet 2000 changes were predominately cosmetic in nature aka make them look cooler rather than more combat effective. This means that it would be more prestigious for them to have a few hundred more SD's than having forts on any but the most essential sites and even then those forts might be obsolete.

If we are talking about Haven, Manticore or Grayson it would be different because all 3 nations have 20 years worth of combat experience so they will go for forts when forts are called for, but the league has not fought a war in centuries and thus does not think like them.

According to your logic, the USA doesn't build Frigates, LCS's, or have programs for a cheap light fighter or a cheap submarine... A universal truth, POLITICIANS are always looking to increase THEIR slice of the pie they get to dole out in guanxi, etc. Same reason we are still building M1 Abrams tanks even though the Pentagon has not wanted to build any for the last 10+ years.

Do not look for logic and reason to rule in reality. This is a naive ideal. Rather look to Nepotism, power, and $$$ to rule in most cases.

Loren Pechtel wrote:The problem is you are looking only at shipboard firepower. At the specified time Manticore has pods, the SLN does not. The SLN is going to behave according to doctrine--they're going to go for Manticore. They'll probably meet half of Manticore's fleet (a fight I think they would win) and a whole bunch of pods seeded in space. The SLN eats salvo after salvo from empty space. They might choose to shoot back at best they kill empty pods. By the time the fleets engage the SLN has been ravaged.

Except of course Manticore has never done that with SDM pods. And for good reasons, they're so short ranged that you 'd have to use a truly ludicrous number to cover an inner system; and trying to retreat down a line of then relies too much on forcing the enemy to go where you want them to. You've got to keep your fleet intact, to provide fire control for the pods, but have to stay nearly in range to lure the enemy into a series of ambushes. However the free floating pods are very vulnerable to proximity kills, even from weapons on ballistic after their drives have burned out. That same necessity to lure the enemy down a path of pre-dropped pods means a bright enemy commander can guess where the pods have to be and can saturate the area with contact nukes. And the geometry is such that it would be quite hard for your fleet to stop all missiles from edging past them and wiping out those pods.


Now if the SLN attacked without sufficient numeric superiority towed pods plus one pre laid ambush might let you stop them. But they're unlikely to attack with that few. They've long realized that the number of SDs they'd need to mount a half decent defense of even the most important core system drastically exceeds the number needed to crush any conceivable enemy. (For that matter the cost to build and man them would exceed the cost yo rebuild any system an enemy might overrun) So their plan was to largely ignore defense and throw the heaviest possible force directly at the enemy's key system to force an end to the war.
Without the tech gap that actually occurred it's unlikely that either Haven or Manticorean could withstand such a blow.

Weird Harold wrote:
No matter what the assumptions behind the SLN SOP, that is the policy they operate under. Given the scale of the SLN, changing SOP is no trivial task; especially since the SLN has the numbers to carry out their SOP and no immediate reason to believe otherwise. SLN SOP doesn't figure on a long war; just long enough to assemble the task forces and travel to the Capitol system(s).

Then they lose, the GA sends out 500 SD's to all the important shipyards, convinces as many core systems as they can to cede and be back in defensive in Beowulf ready to reinforce Manticore.


The 11th Fleet was already in position near Manticore to conduct an attack as was TF 496, if they were not there and the technological restrictions I stated were in place the SLN will not even consider deep strikes because unless they decide to attack the Beowulf Terminus they will have to go the long way around and that would likely let their mission and destination leak, by the time they get to their destination the GA could have forced many core systems into neutrality if not outright alliance and still be back before the SLN attacks comes.

Even if the SLN stripped all defences from Earth and the other core worlds and ship yards, and they attacked Manticore, Grayson or Haven with 2000 SD's they have to fight their way through pods, forts and whatever fleet is present and if their operational security is as tight as it was with 11th Fleet the GA could have the bulk of its fleet waiting at its Target.


Every ship the GA loses will be replaced by one of Haven's yards or even Bolt Hole while every ship the SLN looses will not be replaced at all because while the overwhelming fleet is traveling to its target the GA has destroyed/captured all the yards as well as made peace with a whole bunch of core worlds.

And after the battle in whatever target system they choose what happens then? They are stuck far from home with damaged ships and limited logistical support and they might be forced to go back to bases that no longer exist in order to make repairs they no longer can make.