Congratulations! The war is over! Now what?

Weird Harold wrote:

Sigs wrote:And from the looks of it, the Mandarins are going to try to keep member systems in the League by force, which means for the GA to succeed they come in with a fleet of their own and offer protection and economic benefits ...

They don't really need to "come in with a fleet," they just need to provide (or broker) system defense systems sufficient to deter the SLN. Erewhon and Anderman will be able to make a mint providing "Haven Sector Quality" system defense pods, and ships.

As more and more systems secede, mutual defense against the SLN will improve with or without direct GA participation. Arms merchants will be far more influential in the break-up of the League than fleets will.

munroburton wrote:
Well, if they throw 500 BCs at the GA's rear areas, the odds are actually quite good someone will find a detachment somewhere that only has legacy ships(perhaps an outsystem convoy escort), as the vast majority of the new ships are on the front lines or protecting critical locations.

The problem is, their overall operation has then spent 490 or 495 BCs to kill perhaps a dozen or a score of the RMN's oldest and outmoded ships still in service. Whilst this is vastly more than Battle Fleet has accomplished, it's still not a war-winning exchange ratio.

I can't remember the exact details of Kingsford's strategy - was he going after Haven as well or just Manticore's Silesia and Talbott quadrants?

Don't suppose it makes much difference either way. If he's attacking Havenite territory, he'll be going up against defenses prepared for Eighth Fleet's raids...

darrell wrote:
Panamax 2 ships are about 500K tons. Take the largest container ship, fully loaded, multiply by 10, and that is the cargo capacity of the average freighter.

Not counting silesia before annexation, most freighters don't travel in convoy in the honorverse. Most locations are relatively free of pirates and it is not economical for a ship to wait months for a handy warship going their way.

So yes, a commerce raiding strategy does have a good chance of success. Send out a bunch of DD's & CL's, if it one of the rare convoys don't leave stelth. if it is one of the way more numerous single freighters, one captured manty freighter and no one knows who captured it, or even the fact that it was captured for months.

Remember saltash, The govonor captured 2 manty freighters, and manticore wouldn't have known about it if it wasn't for a friendly andy freighter.

Just one of many scenerios: A SL DD or CL can enter a system outside detection range (most systems don't have deep space arrays) and wait in stealth. In a few weeks a manty freighter will come in range and be captured. leave the system with your prize and you can go to a nearby for your next ship. Rotate between 2-3 systems and you will be hard to find or stop.


Peep raiding in silesia used BC's because manticore used DD's and CL's for piracy patrol in silesia, but would have worked if they didn't run across a bunch of q-ships that had SD weapons.

Sigs wrote:

darrell wrote:
Panamax 2 ships are about 500K tons. Take the largest container ship, fully loaded, multiply by 10, and that is the cargo capacity of the average freighter.

Not counting silesia before annexation, most freighters don't travel in convoy in the honorverse. Most locations are relatively free of pirates and it is not economical for a ship to wait months for a handy warship going their way.

So yes, a commerce raiding strategy does have a good chance of success. Send out a bunch of DD's & CL's, if it one of the rare convoys don't leave stelth. if it is one of the way more numerous single freighters, one captured manty freighter and no one knows who captured it, or even the fact that it was captured for months.

Remember saltash, The govonor captured 2 manty freighters, and manticore wouldn't have known about it if it wasn't for a friendly andy freighter.

Just one of many scenerios: A SL DD or CL can enter a system outside detection range (most systems don't have deep space arrays) and wait in stealth. In a few weeks a manty freighter will come in range and be captured. leave the system with your prize and you can go to a nearby for your next ship. Rotate between 2-3 systems and you will be hard to find or stop.


Peep raiding in silesia used BC's because manticore used DD's and CL's for piracy patrol in silesia, but would have worked if they didn't run across a bunch of q-ships that had SD weapons.

The League is thinking about this but then again so is the GA.

Could the GA institute a policy of one particular location that ships enter a system kind of like what was instituted in Cereberus? If you know the point of entry for a freighter you can have it secured and escort the freighter in system from there. Having a handful of LAC's patrolling the entry point backed by pods might catch any SLN ships that come fishing in those waters.

darrell wrote:
Have a front man enter a system. Look at the trade pattersn. Hmmm, There is lots of ways to determine where a civilian freighter might turn up in normal space, here are just 2.

A manty freighter that visits here about every 3 months, it comes in from XXXX and when it leaves it usally goes to yyyy. It was last here 11 weeks ago, so should be back in system in another couple of weeks. If we position a ship here we will be at the most likely input vector.

A SL DD does a port call. checking merchant shiping, a manty freighter departed yesterday for ZZZZ. It is a 5 day trip by delta band, 2 days in the theta band. Say goodby, arrive at the freighters destination. It has 2 days to hide itself in stelth before the freighter arrives.

Sigs wrote:

darrell wrote:
Have a front man enter a system. Look at the trade pattersn. Hmmm, There is lots of ways to determine where a civilian freighter might turn up in normal space, here are just 2.

A manty freighter that visits here about every 3 months, it comes in from XXXX and when it leaves it usally goes to yyyy. It was last here 11 weeks ago, so should be back in system in another couple of weeks. If we position a ship here we will be at the most likely input vector.

A SL DD does a port call. checking merchant shiping, a manty freighter departed yesterday for ZZZZ. It is a 5 day trip by delta band, 2 days in the theta band. Say goodby, arrive at the freighters destination. It has 2 days to hide itself in stelth before the freighter arrives.

Manticore sets a location or 2 locations where freighters will enter the system from, and then they will secure both locations with a DD or two, some LAC's and a bunch of pods. Since they have the range advantage a SLN ship has to come in nice and close to get the freighter which means that the SLN would lose a lot of their raiders.


Whereas the GA has more than enough freighters thanks to Manticore and its merchantmarine plus the junction and control of anything they got in Lacoon II.


Cereberus had one entry due to Havenite policy, making the same thing but actually securing the entry might put to rest the SLN plan.

darrell wrote:
that will work great at any alliance system.

There are tens of thousands of systems that are neither part of the GA or the SL. The GA dosen't have enough ships to cover more than 1 or 2 percent of them.

The SL is not going to try to do commerce raiding at zanzabar or spindal. They are going to go to some non allied system that is lightly or not defended but has a lot of ship traffic.

kzt wrote:The SLN leadership knows they are an existential war. They will sacrifice the protectorates and let the corps do their own dirty work.

Sigs wrote:I wouldn't feel too comfortable giving any of the core worlds that secede from the League modern weapons just yet. Give the core systems willing to secede some protection with GA officers in command.