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How would you attack the SL

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Re: How would you attack the SL
Post by Vince   » Sun Jun 19, 2016 10:23 am

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Somtaaw wrote: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. :lol:

The two phases of Lacoön and what they consist of, as defined by:
Mission of Honor, Chapter 26 wrote:Faces tightened around the table with his last sentence. Case Lacoön was the Royal Manticoran Navy’s plan to close all wormhole nexii under its control to Solarian traffic. Or, rather, that was the first phase of Lacoön. The second phase included active commerce raiding and the extension of de facto Manticoran control to every wormhole nexus within its reach, regardless of who that nexus nominally belonged to.
Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.
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Re: How would you attack the SL
Post by Weird Harold   » Sun Jun 19, 2016 10:31 am

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Somtaaw wrote:
Weird Harold wrote: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. ...


ETA: Vince beat me to the quote:

Mission of Honor
Chapter Twenty-six wrote:
Faces tightened around the table with his last sentence. Case Lacoön was the Royal Manticoran Navy's plan to close all wormhole nexii under its control to Solarian traffic. Or, rather, that was the first phase of Lacoön. The second phase included active commerce raiding and the extension of de facto Manticoran control to every wormhole nexus within its reach, regardless of who that nexus nominally belonged to.


The key to destroying the League is to starve the Mandarins and SLN and the Trans-stellar corporations that finance them. Free verge systems from OFS "protection" and Trans-stellar servitude; neutralize Frontier Fleet and OFS gendarmerie where they are transstellar puppets and support SLN units that want to mutiny in favor of secessionist systems that need System Defense forces.

The Solarian League relies on fees from interstellar trade and protectorate systems; dry those sources of revenue up and the League government dies on the vine without the GA confronting the SLN except in defense or small detachments like Adm Thurston's command in Meyers.
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Re: How would you attack the SL
Post by Somtaaw   » Sun Jun 19, 2016 10:35 am

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Vince wrote:
Somtaaw wrote: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. :lol:

The two phases of Lacoön and what they consist of, as defined by:
Mission of Honor, Chapter 26 wrote:Faces tightened around the table with his last sentence. Case Lacoön was the Royal Manticoran Navy’s plan to close all wormhole nexii under its control to Solarian traffic. Or, rather, that was the first phase of Lacoön. The second phase included active commerce raiding and the extension of de facto Manticoran control to every wormhole nexus within its reach, regardless of who that nexus nominally belonged to.
Italics are the author's, boldface and underlined text is my emphasis.



Hmm, I didn't remember they were actually doing active commerce raiding. Still think that's mostly summed up in just recalling their own freighters, given how much of Solarian commerce rested in Manticoran hulls and barring all wormholes to Solarian usage.
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Re: How would you attack the SL
Post by darrell   » Sun Jun 19, 2016 10:48 am

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SharkHunter wrote: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".


You recall that most Solly systems don't have an SDF more powerful than a bunch of LAC's???

You are a planet's leader. Beowulf succeeded from the the SL and was visited by a force of 500 SLN SD's. Your SDF is a couple squadrons of LAC's. As long as you are smart enough to "Poor piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel" you are going to think long and hard before you call for succeeding from the SL.
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Re: How would you attack the SL
Post by munroburton   » Sun Jun 19, 2016 10:54 am

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Somtaaw wrote: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. :lol:


The Lacoon scenes in the recent books were moving quite fast. IIRC, one of the RMN COs decided to jump to Lacoon II before he got the orders to do so.

The big problem then is manpower - Solly merchants require slightly larger crews. And whilst a Star Knight could probably take half a dozen prizes before it loses too many bodies, a Sag-C is going to struggle after the second or third detachment.

Remember, we don't know exactly when Case Lacoon was drawn up, but implictations are that it was before the war with Haven began. In other words, before the reduced-crew automation came into usage, reducing crews to ~25% of prewar levels.

As you point out, blowing them up contributes to anti-GA propaganda - even if they are granted a generous amount of time to evacuate, the sensor recordings of Solly merchants blowing up is fuel onto the fire. So what can they do if they've stopped a Solly merchant, can't afford the manpower to take it and don't want the propaganda hit of blowing it up?

Until they have the capability on hand to capture most or all Solly freighters that show up, it would be unwise to start capturing them on a first-come-first-served basis.

Furthermore, the GA doesn't want to inflict armageddon upon the interstellar economy - their objective is to starve the League's government, which has two main revenue streams - wormhole transit fees and protectorate fees. Destroying Solly freighters in large numbers won't directly affect either of those(especially with Lacoon II already taking the wormholes and the 'Henke Doctrine' of smashing OFS), but it will anger too many different systems for a long time - contrary to the Harrington Doctrine.

So they can't destroy too many freighters. I expect GA commerce raiding to be almost 100% captures, with vessels held ransom in exchange for the League's dissolution or as incentives to secede. The only ships getting blown up are slavers or dangerously run-down tramps.

Edit: Another possibility is they were waiting for the completion of Laocoon I(evacuation of all Manticoran merchants) before beginning active commerce raiding.
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Re: How would you attack the SL
Post by Sigs   » Sun Jun 19, 2016 11:18 am

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Crown Loyalist wrote: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.

If you as the GA or just Manticore go to liberate the protectorates, you automatically assume responsibility for their protection. Freeing 100 systems means that since the majority of those 100 systems may not have any form of government acceptable to you ready and you will have to provide security in space and on the ground while it is established.

Freeing a system and walking away would mean Manticore would get the blame for removing the admittedly imperfect FF protection and stability and subsequently abandoning those newly freed systems to fend for themselves with many falling into multisided civil wars that end up killing millions or billions of people.
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Re: How would you attack the SL
Post by kzt   » Sun Jun 19, 2016 3:11 pm

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Sigs wrote:If you as the GA or just Manticore go to liberate the protectorates, you automatically assume responsibility for their protection. Freeing 100 systems means that since the majority of those 100 systems may not have any form of government acceptable to you ready and you will have to provide security in space and on the ground while it is established.

Freeing a system and walking away would mean Manticore would get the blame for removing the admittedly imperfect FF protection and stability and subsequently abandoning those newly freed systems to fend for themselves with many falling into multisided civil wars that end up killing millions or billions of people.

Somewhere between 0.1 and 1% of the population is normally needed. So if the average verge planet has a billion people Manticore just needs to provide somewhere between 100,000 and 1,000,000 troops to establish security. Per planet. What could possibly go wrong?
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Re: How would you attack the SL
Post by Kytheros   » Sun Jun 19, 2016 4:57 pm

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One way to screw with the League would be to do something like the Cutworm and Sanskrit raids.
Only, instead of shooting the place up, make the point that you could have done so and nothing in-system could have stopped you - push Core Worlds into demanding protection, and then realizing that the SLN isn't capable of protecting them, and that if the League keeps pushing Manticore, one of these days, those RMN ships that keep making a mockery of the SLN's attempts to protect them are actually going to trash the place.
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Re: How would you attack the SL
Post by StealthSeeker   » Tue Jun 21, 2016 12:17 am

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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



If this is the premise, then things are going to change drastically from the Lacoon plans. Lacoon was concieved with Manticore as the only aggressor taking on the SLN. Lacoon did not plan on allies as part of the aggressor group. Nor did it take into account of an ally planet suffering 10 million civilian planetary deaths. So things would change drastically.

Within 2 to 3 weeks a large task force would move on Earth and destroy anything militarily related. All active ships, all reserve ships, all construction facilities, even admin facilities would be chunks of space debris. With in a short period of time, attacks would be mounted against 3 or 4 more SLN hubs destroying the full military infrastructure there.

Also in the core worlds, as most don't have a SDF, small task groups, 20 or so, of 4 to 6 ships, depending on their size (destroyers, cruisers, BC's) that would make lightning raids of ship construction facilities in the core worlds. Destroying most but not all facilities at each planet.

As far as commerce raiding goes, have individual ships go on the hunt. Capture any shipping they find. Offload the crews and drop them off at the first available planet. Have temporary prise crews take the freighters to a pre-arranged deep space location that is near by and leave them there. Space is huge, unless you know where those ships are, you'll never find them. Real prise crews can come by later and pick them up. This way the small ships doing the hunting can keep a full crew and deny the SL the use of the freighters at the same time.

Out it the Frontier, I would put together a good number of task forces that contained one personal transport, one ammunition transport, one SDP, one CLAC and six BC's. Each of these task forces would go attack FF sector HQ's which are usually defended by 6 or fewer SLN ships of BC size or smaller. Send in the SDP and CLAC and see if they come out to fight or try to run. If they run, drop the 6 BC's in their path from hyper. Destroy these ships either in battle or by scuttling them after their surrender. If the local system had transport to pick up the survivors, help them do so. If they don't use your own personal transport to collect them and return them to a planet. Then move on to the next HQ. The plan here is to destroy as much military capability as possible, not regime change. The marines can do that later. Right now it's blitz and smash and then move on. It might even be necessary to disable the hyper engines of any passenger ships to keep the word of what is happening from spreading to fast. Freighters again would be take to some arranged deep space point and left, if not disabled at the planet.

With in half a year of these tactics the SLN and FF would be in serious hurt
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Re: How would you attack the SL
Post by darrell   » Tue Jun 21, 2016 1:16 am

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StealthSeeker 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



If this is the premise, then things are going to change drastically from the Lacoon plans. Lacoon was concieved with Manticore as the only aggressor taking on the SLN. Lacoon did not plan on allies as part of the aggressor group. Nor did it take into account of an ally planet suffering 10 million civilian planetary deaths. So things would change drastically.

Within 2 to 3 weeks a large task force would move on Earth and destroy anything militarily related. All active ships, all reserve ships, all construction facilities, even admin facilities would be chunks of space debris. With in a short period of time, attacks would be mounted against 3 or 4 more SLN hubs destroying the full military infrastructure there.

Also in the core worlds, as most don't have a SDF, small task groups, 20 or so, of 4 to 6 ships, depending on their size (destroyers, cruisers, BC's) that would make lightning raids of ship construction facilities in the core worlds. Destroying most but not all facilities at each planet.

As far as commerce raiding goes, have individual ships go on the hunt. Capture any shipping they find. Offload the crews and drop them off at the first available planet. Have temporary prise crews take the freighters to a pre-arranged deep space location that is near by and leave them there. Space is huge, unless you know where those ships are, you'll never find them. Real prise crews can come by later and pick them up. This way the small ships doing the hunting can keep a full crew and deny the SL the use of the freighters at the same time.

Out it the Frontier, I would put together a good number of task forces that contained one personal transport, one ammunition transport, one SDP, one CLAC and six BC's. Each of these task forces would go attack FF sector HQ's which are usually defended by 6 or fewer SLN ships of BC size or smaller. Send in the SDP and CLAC and see if they come out to fight or try to run. If they run, drop the 6 BC's in their path from hyper. Destroy these ships either in battle or by scuttling them after their surrender. If the local system had transport to pick up the survivors, help them do so. If they don't use your own personal transport to collect them and return them to a planet. Then move on to the next HQ. The plan here is to destroy as much military capability as possible, not regime change. The marines can do that later. Right now it's blitz and smash and then move on. It might even be necessary to disable the hyper engines of any passenger ships to keep the word of what is happening from spreading to fast. Freighters again would be take to some arranged deep space point and left, if not disabled at the planet.

With in half a year of these tactics the SLN and FF would be in serious hurt


remember that the goal is to break the SL up an all out attack on earth will tend to bring the SL back togeather.

first attack, kill all reserve ships.
wait at least 2 to 3 months
Second attack, kill all SD's
wait at least 2-3 more months
third attack kill all military shipyards.
wait at least 2-3 more months
fourth attack, kill all hyper capable warships
wait at least 2-3 more months
kill all civilian shipyards.

Make sure that you broadcast what your target is and that they have time to evacuate and minimize casualties.
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