How would you attack the SL

So here is some food for thought and fun. The SLN and Mandarins are only planning commerce raiding using light units to get a big enough victory to seek peace through veiled strength. They really have not put any effort into how to defend their systems and were to defend them like the GA is just going to sit back and not attack. They have no idea what kind of war they got themselves into they face three war harden navies that with just light units and lacs are going to kick their butts in the commerce raiding stratagem. That between them Manticore ,Grayson and Haven have easily over 400 SDPs min to attack and wreak havoc over the SL. While GA they would prefer to go after the MA, after the SLN attack on Beowulf I see them sending 8 50 SDP and lac carrier fleets to destroy SL military and economic targets. I see them as 8 buttercup campains aimed at the SL. Just think of all the info the intelligence branches got off all those freighter captains that have been servicing SL for decades. Forget earth Go in destroy all major military ship building bases, SLN hubs and the big military research and supply co. then after that go attack the top ten economic civilian manufacturing centers and keep the pressure up the SLN will be scrambling to try and protect their own systems and the mandarins will find out how the game is really played

So for this thread You are Honor 10 million plus Beowulf n’s have died from a SLN attack you are not allowed for political reasons to attack earth how do you bring down The SLN and Mandarins

Attack the 30 biggest most productive systems. Hit the biggest collection of SD and other ships in as many places as possible and do so without any or many losses on your own side. Give the BSC and Ballroom a few Mandarin targets and put them as a certain escort to a certain Admiral Rozsak in a nearby SL system and remove the problem. Have said Admiral assume control of the home fleet and slowly surrender system after system after feeding the morons to the GA. The Andies get to free a few hundred worlds in the shell. The Peeps expand in the other direction and the Manties will expand around the junctions. Pretty soon news will get out and every SL system will be sueing for peace with the once Neobarb GA.

I wouldn't. I'd hit the protectorates, remove the Solarian League forces enforcing League rule and taxation, and establish trade (and in some cases) military relationships with the resulting states.

The protectorates are going to be a catastrophe for generations, though. The key is just get the Solarian League out of the rim systems, and give them a chance to make use of their own wealth rather than have all of it extracted to Sol.

In the meantime, I blitz the League with media, mount defenses against commerce raiding campaigns, and provide military cover as core systems choose to follow Beowulf's lead. I offer any system that withdraws a resumption of full trade ties and some kind of association agreement with Beowulf/the Grand Alliance.

I do not mount any major attacks on the Solarian League's core systems. That strategy is a losing strategy. The League is simply much too big.

I wouldn't. The MAlign is doing a pretty good job of setting the League up to fall apart on its own. The last thing we need is to give them a cause to hang together.

I'd just stand back and wait for the League to fall apart. What the GA brass ought to be doing is planning for how to exploit that situation.

marcus wrote:So for this thread You are Honor 10 million plus Beowulf n’s have died from a SLN attack you are not allowed for political reasons to attack earth how do you bring down The SLN and Mandarins

Your premice is flawed. Beowulf is building the missiles for the grand alliance. There is 2 months before the plebicite. they know that the mandarins have ordered one unconstitutional action in the attempted attack of the beowulf ACS and SDF.

The first missiles they are going to build are 100,000 SDF pods and a mycroft FTL control system. there isn't going to be even 1M dead Beowulfn's.

I am sure that the reserve is not at one place, but spread among many worlds. In addition, per the Harrington doctrine, they need to make sure that their targets know that they did not hit them as hard as they could have.

Split the grand fleet up into components so that each component has one portion of the reserve. Each elememnt translate into the system well outside the hyper limit, so that there is at least 4 hours for a minimum time translation.

Immediately go to a repeating broadcast along the lines of: The SLN has attacked beowulf. As retaliation we will be destroying the unmanned reserve fleet. We have no desire to kill anyone, but Any warship withing 16Mkm of our flight path will be considered a danger to us and will be destroyed. You have 3 hours to evacuate anyone on the reserve ships.

As the fleet goes flashing past at 20% of light speed, they fire 5 salvo's of missiles destroying the entire reserve at that location.

darrell wrote:

marcus wrote:So for this thread You are Honor 10 million plus Beowulf n’s have died from a SLN attack you are not allowed for political reasons to attack earth how do you bring down The SLN and Mandarins

Your premice is flawed. Beowulf is building the missiles for the grand alliance. There is 2 months before the plebicite. they know that the mandarins have ordered one unconstitutional action in the attempted attack of the beowulf ACS and SDF.

The upcoming ~10 mil casualty figure was dropped at a recent convention by our favourite author.

Besides, planets are fixed targets which can be bombarded from beyond the hyper limit. The GA couldn't stop all of Filareta's missiles at 2nd Manticore. A Daniels-style flush of all missile pods at Beowulf the planet would be exceedingly difficult to stop.

There are many other possibilities to produce that horrible result, but as to the topic of this thread, we should remember motive. The SL has no motive to kill ten million civilians. The Mesan Alignment on the other hand...

If a grievously wounded Beowulf refuses to take action against their otensible attackers, instead blaming the so-far mysterious and intangible MAlign, it lends a lot of credibility to the story. Many Sollies(Mandarins included) think Manticore cooked the concept up to justify their "aggression".

JohnRoth wrote:I wouldn't. The MAlign is doing a pretty good job of setting the League up to fall apart on its own. The last thing we need is to give them a cause to hang together.

I'd just stand back and wait for the League to fall apart. What the GA brass ought to be doing is planning for how to exploit that situation.

I disagree that the GA is going to just stand back, they have already set Lacoon II in motion and that includes a commerce raiding element.

The GA is on a course to eliminate the financial support of the Mandarins and SLN. The next step is for Beowulf to take the diplomatic lead in promoting secession of other league members by advertising the illegal attack on Beowulf ordered by un-elected bureaucrats.

First of all, I would assume that in reality there is "no league" to speak of, just a whole bunch of star systems that might get together to fight if and only if my forces do something to rouse the beast. Most of the people on most of those planets and space stations etc. likely just want to go about their business relatively undisturbed, or perhaps with better local governments, but what happens elsewhere isn't their daily concern.

So in reality we're talking about the SLN, Battle Fleet and Frontier Fleet -- we're told FF really has little more than lots and lots of cruisers, that for hundreds of years it's the Battle Fleet fist in the glove that everyone fears. Take away the fist, and all you have is... patrollable sectors, aka something like Silesia. Likely equally corrupt but perhaps not as infested as the Confederacy before War of Honor caused the Andermani and the SKM to end that mess.

So taking down the fist is not really an optimum response, but since you asked -- let's pretend that the MAlign got control of the fist and you HAVE to take out both the MAlign AND Battle Fleet. By my count that is "fourteen main known targets", Mannerheim, Darius, and the 12 Battle Fleet yards we've told exist, plus any depots.

First, preposition scouts to follow any screen that gets away to locate new targets. Then...

Eighth Fleet pursues the MAlign to destruction... leaving the SLN as another fleet's task. Meaning: build up 10th Fleet to Eighth Fleet [48 SD(p) version plus screen] proportions plus resupply and send them on the Grand Tour [destroy all targets of value] in order of reachability.

Likely the 1st 3-4 yards fall quickly, given that 10th Fleet can use the Laccoon controlled wormholes to get wherever faster than anyone else. At some point word gets out, meaning that the SL will go into protect mode at the next logical base/target. By which time 10th Fleet has resupplied and then seems to randomly switch directions to the far side of "inhabited space"
using the best wormholes to start punching out 3-4 more yards from that new general direction.

By this time Battle Fleet is likely reduced to what is in the Sol system and the three smallest remaining yards. Then, the offer of peace is contingent upon 80% of those remaining ships being dispersed to become small navies protecting their assigned sector... "or you can die now".

300 systems fighting 10,000 means you don't attack the lowly systems that have nothing for protection. You need to hit the SL Hard and hit them before they can hit you back. Hitting the systems that don't matter will just speed their development of their own good or better systems.

Hit and run attacks taking out some reserves here and there is useless as well. You hit hard and take out the best systems ability to make war and develop new stuff. You only use hit and run when you can't take systems.

You need the shell and rim to scream for protection to spread the SL resources and over extend themselves. You hit and take the biggest baddest systems and make the SL try and recoupe itself by maintaining as much of its former self. At the same time the rim and shell will scream for help, and will eventually turn to the GA. Andies will 'help out' those close to them. Peeps those on their side. Manties will take care of those near the Junctions. A few armed Silesian freighters those in what may be dangerous areas. A starving dog doesn't remain loyal when a strange comes by bearing steaks.

Hit the 30 largest best most advanced worlds closest to the Junctions and take and hold them. Peep and Andie pods and Mycroft systems. etc...

Weird Harold wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:I wouldn't. The MAlign is doing a pretty good job of setting the League up to fall apart on its own. The last thing we need is to give them a cause to hang together.

I'd just stand back and wait for the League to fall apart. What the GA brass ought to be doing is planning for how to exploit that situation.

I disagree that the GA is going to just stand back, they have already set Lacoon II in motion and that includes a commerce raiding element.

Laocoon II is only "commerce raiding" in that it's Manticoran ships taking over nominally Solarian owned wormholes, and denying any access through said wormholes. It does not actually have the Manticoran ships taking over League freighters, and putting prize crews aboard them to send 'home' to Manticore which is one of the two usual aspects of commerce raiding. The other is to simply blow away merchantmen to deny them to your enemy, which would help anti-GA propaganda.

Simply turning the ships away however, while still good propaganda, is still far less inflammatory than stories of "Manticorans blow away [another] freighter full of innocent civilians, do your part and enlist in the Solarian Navy today" sort of message.

Besides, the typical aspect of "stealing freighters" was already mostly accomplished by simply calling Manticoran freighter home in Laocoon I.