Attacking Earth

kzt wrote:The MA is quite confident that the RMN will take apart the SLN. They don't need to do anything other then what they are currently doing.

Yes, but an opportunity to inject a catalyst can be so irresistibly intoxicating.

Human nature foretells of the % of humans that walk into a totally white room and is left alone with a [BIG RED BUTTON] that says DO NOT PUSH.

Will push the damn button anyways!

Silverwall wrote: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.

Actually there is strong evidence to show that if the Americans had done as you have suggested, (they could not but that is another matter) the other European countries would have either helped them or, at the very least, cheered them on.
America, being so far away, is no direct threat to them. Great Britain, sitting astride the main shipping lanes most definitely was. Also, to judge by their reaction to the Second Boer War Great Britain was deeply unpopular- Despite having no territorial ambitions on the continent whatsoever!

It is just possible that the Alignment might come up with some idea to hit at least something in Earth Orbit or the main military instilation in the Sol System in a bit to make it look like Manticore/The GA did it. The Mandarins would surely claim it was Manticore/GA because they still have too much invested in ignoring the existance of The Alignment even if they suddenly come around to belivening that it exists. The small group going rogue in SLN ONI would believe it was NOT the GA but how are they going to convince anyone and stay both secret and stay alive.

The Harrington Plan is predicated on systems- lots of systems including some from the Core or at least very long-term members, and certainly many that are finding thier own economic growth and system independence contained by the present status of the SL. As systems leave the League, it's ability to improve the capability of the SLN will diminish. The League is already both bleeding money and loosing revenue in almost unimaginable amounts due to Lacoon I and II. While the SLN can make individual systems hurt and can probably cause damage though the proposed commerce raiding, they are looking at a shrinking ability to both support the existing logistics chains AND build the new (and different designs- which the don't have) to attempt to offset the GA tech advances. That doesn' begin to address the difficulty of experience gap between the GA and the SLN in actual current tech warfighting. While the SLN crews and officers probably can learn, they have to both get engaged in combat and survive it. It is the surviving part that is very very iffy.

It's not like all the crew of every SLN ship damaged or destoyed or surrendered to the GL is going to be dead. What is clear is that any of the surrenders, POW's etc are going to be put in places where they aren't getting back to the SL and be able to apply or talk about what they saw or experienced. There are a whole bunch of SLN spacers at Spindle and somewhere in the Manticore system. At last known report, everybody that survived being with Byng at New Tuscany is still cooling their heels there and, while reports have gone back, they are not seeming to make a difference and all those people are STILL at New Tuscany. No clue when or how they are going home. It is even worse at Meyers. Meyers is now "independent" of OFS again and intend to stay that way. All of the crews surrendered there are still at Meyers and, since we last saw Meyers with Mike heading for Mesa and there is a communication interdiction by RMN (and the historic Meyer's government) about the happenings both there and in the the other OFS planets that were being managed from Meyer, nobody even knows all those FF ships are gone and the crews are interned pending....well, whatever Meyer wants to do with them.
I would recommend traiding them for "humanitarian and economic relief for the now publicly revieled deprivations of the OFS Commissioner, Asst Commissioner and various local operates of Transtellars.

Attacking Earth, the Sol System or any of the Core Systems of the SL is just a really bad idea. Let them stew and deal with the screaming about defending said systems from the GA which isn't actually going to come around shooting.

I think the GA should hit SOL.

Show up, punch out everything military and then demand access to the broadcast systems.

Explain to the people what is actually going on and that their government is picking a war they can't possibly hope to win. Tell them that if they don't want to be on the losing end of a war that they need to do something about their government.

Provide copies of the battle data to show how horribly behind the times they are militarily.

Then leave.

Repeat this at as many worlds as possible except tell them that the best way out is to leave the Solarian League.

Actually the force of arms potential would indicate that the Mesans well understand that within 5 years the Sollies will overrun the Grand Alliance. None of it pretty.

So why not first throw a little sabot into the gears? If the Mesans hit Earth, the Sollies may never know for sure who did it ... other than the sneaky Grand Alliance?

If Manticore never saw the Mesan attack coming, what makes anybody think the Sollies will not see Earth's attack coming either? At the same time the Mesans encourage Beowulf?

Wheels within wheels. Creating then expediting many force multiplying secret well designed attacks to set the Grand Alliance and the Sollies at it full bore? Quite doable?

HB of CJ wrote:If Manticore never saw the Mesan attack coming, what makes anybody think the Sollies will not see Earth's attack coming either?

That's the whole point. Manticoran stealth isn't even remotely close to granting total invisibility on the scale necessary to launch an attack on Oyster Bay. So if someone launches an attack on the Sol system using hitherto unknown and impossible capabilities, and that same someone also kicked the shit out of the Manticore system, then by golly maybe those Manticorans are onto something about this Mesan Alignment thing. A direct attack on the Sol system by the Alignment would be irrefutable evidence that there's someone out there pulling the strings. It is literally the exact opposite of what the Alignment wants, so they damn well aren't going to do it.

Duckk wrote:

HB of CJ wrote:If Manticore never saw the Mesan attack coming, what makes anybody think the Sollies will not see Earth's attack coming either?

That's the whole point. Manticoran stealth isn't even remotely close to granting total invisibility on the scale necessary to launch an attack on Oyster Bay. So if someone launches an attack on the Sol system using hitherto unknown and impossible capabilities, and that same someone also kicked the shit out of the Manticore system, then by golly maybe those Manticorans are onto something about this Mesan Alignment thing. A direct attack on the Sol system by the Alignment would be irrefutable evidence that there's someone out there pulling the strings. It is literally the exact opposite of what the Alignment wants, so they damn well aren't going to do it.

I, for one, am not so certain of that Duckk. Entities have been snowing the public over "actual military truth" for eons. Hitler - case in point. Keep in mind that the average Solly in the street doesn't know squat about the actual intimate details about the SLN's defeat in the Manticoran system. The MAlign (and even the League) could use the existing notion that is already in place regarding Manty Super Weapons and spin it any way they like.

The thread that they should pull at, is the fact that the MAlign, via the vulnerability of the Mandarins, could take advantage of the fact that public opinion would logically follow the same erroneous and quite predictable path that Manticore warned the League it was doing - of assuming that the successful MAligh attack gutted the Home System's defenses. And if that was an easily acquired assumption by the entire knowledgeable military, why can't the disconnect also be assumed of "Joe and his public?" The League can play ruthlessly on that easily made and predictable faulty logic - that leads down the road to "Of course Oyster Bay was staged by the Manticorans. Would an actual successful attack have been so successful had it not first overcome the Home System's defenses and not left Home Fleet intact? The Manticorans attacked themselves to draw sympahy to save their arses from the juggernaut that is the SLN."

The Mandarins are crashing and about to burn. When you are falling to the ground you reflexively reach out to catch yourself on anything, or anyone - sometimes, even at their own peril. I don't doubt for a minute that if the MAlign "set up" something like that clandestinely, and just as clandestinely presented it to the Mandarins, that they would bite. In for a penny, in for a pound - regardless of what we think the MAlign would do. Or even should do.


Present it as a challenge to Anisimovna. I surely don't purport to be qualified enough to suggest the limitations on her powers of persuasion.

Again, attacking Sol does nothing to advance the objective of breaking up the Solarian League. From a previous topic:

viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5762

There is no "Solarian unity" in the sense of fundamental loyalty to the central government. There is the inertia of centuries of accepting the system. There is the awareness that on the interstellar level the existing system has worked pretty well for the League's Core Worlds. There is a sense of loyalty to the concept of the League. And for the transstellars who are in bed with the Mandarins (or with OFS), there are huge economic and financial reasons to support the existing system.

The Solarian League was created for a specific purpose, which it has served well in many ways. It has, however, largely outlived that purpose. Or perhaps I should say it is no longer essential to that purpose and the negative consequences of its existence have begun to outweigh the positive consequences. Because of that, there was already a sense of malaise in the air within the League, and I've attempted to make that clear in the books. Without its operators realizing it, the Solarian League had become fragile long before it was manipulated into a war against the Star Empire of Manticore. Those faultlines — which the Alignment, unlike the League, recognized were there from the beginning — are beginning to turn into yawning fissures.

If there were any sign at all that the process was likely to stop or to reverse, then it might be time for the League to consider how to restart it or re-energize it. At the moment, things are working pretty much according to plan in that respect, however. They expected/wanted the League to inflict greater damage on Manticore, and they never counted on the formation of the Grand Alliance, but so far all the evidence suggests that the League is going to be even more devastatingly defeated than their original projections called for, and that long-term League hostility and revanchism towards Manticore is going to be even greater among the Solarian successor states, due to how humiliatingly the League is about to be crushed.

There's no need at this point for them to be pouring any more fuel onto that fire.

Everything is going swimmingly for the Alignment. They are not going to undertake an operation that so blatantly raises their profile, especially since their existence has managed to break through to at least some of their opponents. If Cachat and Zilwicki's fishing expedition didn't come up with anything, then it might have been an acceptable risk to make careful, targeted attacks. But they did. The window to use them with impunity is now gone. So unless the Alignment attacking Sol achieves some major strategic objective that is literally impossible to achieve with any other method, they're not going to roll the dice on having their existence confirmed.

Attacking Earth is pointless as the GA dos not have the ability to purge the SL government in a real effective manner of the coruption.

One thing is that in a real way the Mandarins are a symptom of the real problems of the SL. The corruption in bureaucracy is so deep that just removing the top layer will achieve nothing but new group of Mandarins rising to power in a few years. What the GA is doing is going after the money that supports the corruption.

pnakasone wrote:What the GA is doing is going after the money that supports the corruption.

The drawback to this plan is that there is a lot of money, enough that most of it gets stolen and there is still enough to do the stuff the SL does. The SLN is not where most of the legitimate spending of the SL goes, and it is still huge.