Congratulations! The war is over! Now what?

Weird Harold wrote:

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.

Given that Manticore is sharing pretty much everything with Haven -- an empire they've been at war with for several decades -- I would guess that Manticore isn't as paranoid as you are.

I'm sure that some safeguards against duplicity will be put in place, depending on the individual system involved, but offering less than complete parity would be counter-productive.

Also, I doubt that the GA is going to be giving away more than System defense pods, Mycroft or Moriarty control systems, and LACs. They might be willing to sell surplus ships eventually, but are going to need everything they have for the immediate future.

How would they know if any of the Core systems are supporters of the MA?

And whose to say that the munitions they send to a core system does not end up in the hands of the MA or the SLN?


Manticore is sharing with Haven out of necessity, first they don't have the means to build ships and munitions while haven does and second they are on the same hit list.

Putting SD's into systems that want to secede backed up by pods seems like a good enough defence, and if they can grab off the SLN reserve and start handing out the most modern SD's to the newly independent systems while helping them build up their own militaries might be more productive. After a while once they have proven themselves, selling export versions of the weapons might be in order but right off the bat? I don't see it.

Kingsford wants to use commerce raiding as an initial step to actually -probably- do some damage to Manticore and get some "victories". Since all the Manticore Merchant Marine has been recalled by legal order, the SLN is going to have to go into GA controlled space or other interesting places to find targets.
Just exactly do you think is going to happen when SLN ships start operating as commercie raiders in the area of Tera Haut and Jason and (wait for it) Erwhon? Erwhon is going to be pissed. Erwhon can actualy do something about this and some FF CA or BC that gets caught by a modern Erwhon warship - say a BC- with "Manticor Lite" tech is going to go missing from the SLN order of battle.

Want to send some squadrons out by way of Maya to disburse on missions to do a run around the edge of Manticore territory? I think the Maya naval will be adding a few more FF units to the training command.

The RF member SDF's (some of which are good sized) is going to start being "protective" of their individual members systems and have a problem with SLN ships hunting nonexistent Manticorian Freighters there.

Even if EVERY civilian yard in SL Member systems and any in Protectorate systems start building warships tomorrow, it is going to take a while to do any good. Not just that they will need the 1) plans and design specs, 2) create the supply channels and manufacturing facilities for ALL of the military grade equipment to support the new yards 3) train more people up to building the different ships, 4) train the crews....there is the large problem that they will be building -at best- only current Solly/Technodne etc warships. They DO NOT HAVE the Haven and Manticore tech nor miniaturization nor ship automation to build GA capable ships.

The Alighment is going to stick it's bloody hands into things and screw with whatever it can to cause the SL to fail. Delays, outright sabotage, misinformation.

The Mandarins (and so many other bureaucrats and politicians etc) are so busy trying to both cover their butts and avoid getting -at minimum- thrown out of their positions and then trying to not get themselves put in jail or killed that they can seem to only keep playing "the game" by the old rules rather than find a way to stop the avalanche that is surely coming.

Sigs wrote:But the protectorates are one of the few essential sources of income for the League government. Without the protectorates the hole that the League is in gets that much bigger.

Life is hard. An economic collapse next week is better then a military defeat tomorrow. They are in a desperate situation and know it. The longer they can push off total defeat the better the chance that something good will happen. It's pretty much their only option other than suing for peace, which the leadership of the SL has not yet agreed to.

kzt wrote:

Sigs wrote:But the protectorates are one of the few essential sources of income for the League government. Without the protectorates the hole that the League is in gets that much bigger.

Life is hard. An economic collapse next week is better then a military defeat tomorrow. They are in a desperate situation and know it. The longer they can push off total defeat the better the chance that something good will happen. It's pretty much their only option other than suing for peace, which the leadership of the SL has not yet agreed to.

How do they avoid military collapse or at least postpone it by abandoning the protectorates? Most systems that the GA has are either impregnable or not really worth the effort because a victory will be much worse than defeat.

Commerce raiding on the other hand has lower chance of success because the bulk of the trade is going to go between the GA members and more to the point, right now Manticore has many more Merchant ships than they could possibly need since the withdrawal from the league. If they lose 10 freighters there are 100 more waiting around.

The Mandarins feel they need something they can spin as a great victory before they are going to negotiate with the GA as not to bee seen as the weaker party. The problem is they are assuming that the GA is willing to negotiate after all that has happened.

Sigs wrote:How do they avoid military collapse or at least postpone it by abandoning the protectorates? Most systems that the GA has are either impregnable or not really worth the effort because a victory will be much worse than defeat.

The protectorates are militarily worthless. They don't even have any psychological impact, losing one has the impact of someone in NYC hearing about a bloody riot in Fagatogo (Go ahead, look it up, I'll wait) - a place they have never heard of and which produces nothing of any significance to them. They suck up military force and have essentially no potential to generate force.

Abandoning them is like choosing to abandon Mogadishu and moving those forces to defend Rotterdam instead. Long term something bad might happen, but if you face defeat in the near term who can or will worry about the long term impact of not getting defeated?

Sigs wrote:How would they know if any of the Core systems are supporters of the MA?

And whose to say that the munitions they send to a core system does not end up in the hands of the MA or the SLN?

They don't know, any more than they know whether some Kornati nationalist or Dresden Patriot isn't going to sell the technology to the highest bidder. They're still going to put SDM Apollo pods, Mycroft, and LACs into every system in the Talbott quadrant and Beowulf.

The technology is going to wind up in MAlign and SLN hands eventually -- assuming the SLN survives long enough to make use of it -- so why not share the technology with those who profess to be friends?

Manticore has a history of sharing technology with mutual defense treaty partners; why should new treaty partners be treated differently just because they are from the SL Core (or Shell, or Verge?)

Y'all, keep in mind the premise of this thread... If the war is over, there IS NO Malign, and the Mandarin form of the controlled league is also a thing of the past. So the question is then, what next?

Sigs wrote:

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.

And how many of them are actually host to Manticorean or Havenite merchantmen? The biggest problem is in those systems that Belong to GA members and/or a silent partner like the Andermani, Erewhon or Maya.

If any of those systems you mentioned were important enough to require multiple freighter visits per year then the GA may do something to offset the danger. But keep in mind that the SLN has a limited number of ships and many of those light combatants will be needed to keep a lid on the protectorates. Every light combatant you send to prey on GA shipping will not be around to help secure one of the few remaining sources of income to the central government.

The SEM pulled a large number of ships out of the SL. Haven will have to do the same, which will swamp the havenite sector with ships

That will be thousands of manticoran ships. The chance that those ships will remain idle ranges from zero to impossible. A few will go to talbot, a few will go to silesea, almost all will go somewhere else.

There are a multitude of ways that the SL can narrow down where the ships are working, because it is much easier to make a profit if you can get on a regular route.

there are dozens of ways to find a likely target system to set up to nab a manty freighter.

1. have a spy bribe a clerk or secretary back in manticore.
2. hang around a well defended popular system, wait for a manty freigher to pull out, use the higher hyper bands to get to his destination before him.
3. inquire at a destination what freighters arrive and how often. if no manti freighters do, go elsewhere.

SharkHunter wrote:Y'all, keep in mind the premise of this thread... If the war is over, there IS NO Malign, and the Mandarin form of the controlled league is also a thing of the past. So the question is then, what next?

Good point, but I think the MAlign will still be around. The "war" is against the Mandarins and SLN and the campaign against the MAlign will be the next war, if it will even be a war in the classic sense -- it is going to be more of an anti-terror campaign than a conventional war.

Anti-piracy and commerce protection are going to be the big concerns for the GA militarily, and playing peace-maker between former SL members is going to be the diplomatic problem.

Other than that, the universe is in for a "Happily Ever After" ending -- because this is a fictional universe after all is said and done.