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Attacking Earth

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Attacking Earth
Post by Rincewind   » Mon May 16, 2016 6:24 pm

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As the confrontation between Manticore & the Solarian League has developed & the SLN has suffered disaster after disaster one point that has come out is that it is believed by the Mandarins that attacking Earth would be A Bad Idea insomuch as it would provide a rallying point for all the League Systems & unite them against Manticore & the Grand Alliance.

Now obviously RFC has his own plans which will come out in Shadow of Victory but I would like to add my two penny worth.

Would attacking Earth really be such a mistake? Certainly it would provide a rallying cry for some systems but, then again, those systems would have rallied to Earth & the Mandarins no matter what. Look at their reactions to Green Pines. It did not matter what anybody else said, they believed what suited their own prejudices because they wanted to. So they would automatically oppose the Grand Alliance no matter what. As for the other systems, particularly those further away from Earth & the Core Worlds they already have a different view of Earth anyway based on their experience with the Mandarins & the Transtellars.

I once said to my brother that I could not see how Mrs Thatcher could win an election in 1983 when there was three million people unemployed. His reply was that most of those three million would have voted Labour anyway. A different situation certainly but the principle applied. Most of the systems that would rally to the Mandarins would do so anyway even if the Grand Alliance doesn't attack Earth. So you might as well be hung for a sheep as a lamb.

Thoughts anyone?
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Re: Attacking Earth
Post by Silverwall   » Mon May 16, 2016 6:45 pm

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Attacking earth is absolutely a bad move.

Most of the action so far has been defensive or out in the periphery in Non Star League territories.

To put it in an earth perspective imagine if the US had invaded New Zealand in 1870 and interdicted all traffic round the cape of good hope. Britain would be ticked but not terribly worried.

If they occupied London I think the rest of Europe would be very worried and consider the US to be insane militarists who need to be opposed no matter how much France, Spain, Russia and Prussia hate each other.
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Re: Attacking Earth
Post by kzt   » Mon May 16, 2016 6:57 pm

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The fact is that the reporting on green pines was reasonably accurate. It was a Manticores Intel agent who removed the security systems from the weapon and then gave it to someone who was known to be unstable who then was allowed to use it to commit mass murder.
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Re: Attacking Earth
Post by Torlek   » Mon May 16, 2016 7:15 pm

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We have text evidence that the Mandarins think that a strike against Sol would be a mistake by the GA, because that would be one of the few things that could actually unite the SL and commit to war and the GA is to smart to do that.

However lets play devils advocate.
We have no text evidence regarding the strategic offensive plans of the GA.
The mandarins are myopic, when it comes to the public and leadership sentiment outside Sol. Haven Sector wars have in the recent past show that actually trying to amass territory is counterproductive. Instead they focused on raids against high value military, industrial and political targets such as Sol.
How committed the SL is to waging war is irrelevant in the short term, because they have no ability to wage war for now.
A successful Strike against Sol does not necessary mean occupation of Sol. The GA could destroy the Sol garrison, blow up all war relevant orbital industry (after evacuating it) take the high orbitals and demand the hand over of let say the 10000 most important SL Bureaucrats and leave before anyone can react.
Trying to respect SL sentiment and not escalate things is something I would do before the war starts not after. Especially if you have decided to eliminate the SL as a strategic thread, which the GA has IIRC.
The above assessment of the mandarins is still heavily by Solarian perception of invincibility despite all the evidence to the contrary.
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Re: Attacking Earth
Post by Weird Harold   » Mon May 16, 2016 7:38 pm

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Torlek wrote:However lets play devils advocate.
We have no text evidence regarding the strategic offensive plans of the GA.


We do have textev for Manticore's strategy before the formation of the GA. There is no evidence that the formation of the GA changed the facts behind the "Harrington Doctrine" enough to modify Manticore's strategy so it is presumed that Admiral of the Grand Fleet Honor Alexander-Harrington would follow the doctrine she proposed to Elizabeth I/II and her advisors.
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Answers! I got lots of answers!

(Now if I could just find the right questions.)
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Re: Attacking Earth
Post by SharkHunter   » Mon May 16, 2016 9:01 pm

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The best reason to NOT attack the Sol System is simple. They've got a huge, expensive, but completely overmatched space navy that Manticore could take out in a single battle.

Giving the core worlds incentive to build new ships. Train better officers, develop better weapons, etc. Better to leave the ostrich's head buried in the sand, and let the mandarin's try to spin things until the house crumbles around them, don't you think?
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All my posts are YMMV, IMHO, and welcoming polite discussion, extension, and rebuttal. This is the HonorVerse, after all
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Re: Attacking Earth
Post by kzt   » Mon May 16, 2016 9:33 pm

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If you were going it attack earth, not that I think is necessarily a great idea, but if you did I'd do it this way.

You announce, publicly that your task force will arrive on date X (at least 3 months out) at 08:00 hours GMT and will proceed to earth to arrest the leadership of the SLN and SL for war crimes. Then you give a complete list of the ships in the task force, which would be say 96 SD(p) and 12 CLACs, plus screen and logistics.

Dare them to fight. Or show them running.
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Re: Attacking Earth
Post by Sharp Claw   » Tue May 17, 2016 12:29 am

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While attacking Earth, destroying the military infrastructure, while leaving civilian space based systems alone would not necessarily be a bad idea to demonstrate right in the SLN home system the true balance of military power. Even the Mandarins could not spin their way out of that one. Blowing up the SLN reserve fleet or the production facilities for more obsolete SLN warships would be a waste of missiles IMO.

Since the SLN has decided to adopt a raiding strategy, primarily using battlecruisers, a far more effective way to send a message would be to completely trash both the military and civilian space based infrastructure of any SLN system used as a base for such raids, after issuing warnings to evacuate of course. That would really send the message that wars have consequences and that however much pain SLN raids might inflict on the GA the SLN would suffer much worse. Trashing a few important SLN systems would really turn up the political heat on the Mandarins to sue for peace.
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Re: Attacking Earth
Post by SharkHunter   » Tue May 17, 2016 3:03 am

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Remember, they don't have to even approach earth. Sol 1 is the SLN's premier station in Sol Space, and it's out somewhere in the Mars/Jupiter region -- which is way too close to the hyper limit given the Mark 16G and 23E, etc. Manticore wouldn't have to do more than hyper in to hit the base, although I'd assume that the SLN is not insanely stupid, and that they've put it Jupiter's hyper limit "system shadow". Problem being that the GA/RMN wouldn't attack along the ecliptic for just that reason.

Given the clues that RFC has given about Scotty trying to persuade an admiral to not make him kill all of the opposing SLN forces, methinks that would apply here.

That said, given that most of the SD's in Sol space are likely docked at the station, it wouldn't take even ONE SD(P) to put a royal hurt on mighty SLN's home base. Send a squadron or two? and kaboom... buh-bye about 10-15% of the active SLN and Sol-1. Problem is they'd have to kill way too many innocent SLN spacers to make it a moral choice, unless push really comes to shove and it is the only remaining alternative. Thoughts?
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All my posts are YMMV, IMHO, and welcoming polite discussion, extension, and rebuttal. This is the HonorVerse, after all
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Re: Attacking Earth
Post by darrell   » Tue May 17, 2016 5:07 am

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Sharp Claw wrote:While attacking Earth, destroying the military infrastructure, while leaving civilian space based systems alone would not necessarily be a bad idea to demonstrate right in the SLN home system the true balance of military power. Even the Mandarins could not spin their way out of that one. Blowing up the SLN reserve fleet or the production facilities for more obsolete SLN warships would be a waste of missiles IMO.

Since the SLN has decided to adopt a raiding strategy, primarily using battlecruisers, a far more effective way to send a message would be to completely trash both the military and civilian space based infrastructure of any SLN system used as a base for such raids, after issuing warnings to evacuate of course. That would really send the message that wars have consequences and that however much pain SLN raids might inflict on the GA the SLN would suffer much worse. Trashing a few important SLN systems would really turn up the political heat on the Mandarins to sue for peace.


First, how do you determine that system X is a base for the commerce raiders?

Second, IMO trashing civilian space infrastructure would be a bad idea.

Third, to destroy military shipyards and not destroy any reserve ships? There is so many things wrong with that that I won't bother listing them.

If I was in charge of an attack on SL worlds, I would translate in well outside the hyper limit. I would have about a 10 minute recording stating along the lines of:

The SLN has attacked the following manticoran ships and planets: To prevent further attacks the SEM will by destroying your military infrastructure. Any warships attempting to cross the hyper limit will be destroyed. You have 4 hours to evacuate all hyper capable military ships and all military shipyards and stations before they are destroyed.
You have 3 hours 50 minutes ...
You have 3 hours 40 minutes ...
You have 3 hours 30 minutes ...
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Logic: an organized way to go wrong, with confidence.
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