Costs of warlordism in a post-solarian galaxy

cthia wrote:Not loyal to them inasmuch as arrogant institutional hate for the uppity neobarbs - and the color of Mandarin money. I also suspect that many are not going to be wanted in a post League and may be facing war crimes - as traitors and more. Many may follow the Mandarins for lack of anywhere else "safe" to go. Sort of a safety in numbers. The galaxy is plenty large enough for another Maytag. Or call them Hoovers - sucking up every criminal element they can find.

Conquer it and they will come.

I could see them trying this and maybe succeeding for a few years before the Manties or their friends track them down and bring in a squad or three of modern wallers to bring them in dead or alive because of who they are and what they did. But there are other families of wealth, power, and prestige. There is huge and rich, plenty of rich boys and girls who think they are the next Gustav Anderman. If the Yeou family could afford to buy the presidency for their idiot son to keep him away from the family business, could they afford to give him a battle squadron to go and play conqueror so the family could get the revenue from the planet directly without going through OFS for protection?

There will be instances like the Maya sector where the sector government is ready to function without help from Old Terra, but most of the OFS sectors are not. Barregos has the foresight to see what is coming as well as the good fortune to have a sector commander who will tell Battle Fleet where they can shove their recall orders when Kingsford starts sending every available sollie spacer into the fiery talons of apollo missiles. Most sollie sector governors are soon going to find themselves short on ships. What happens when they call for OFS support and it stops coming? What happens when raiders, pirates, and slavers realize that the mighty invincible Solarian League Navy is nowhere to be seen? Warlords can come in all shapes from all sorts of backgrounds and are motivated by all sorts of reasons (though greed is usually the culprit).

Somtaaw wrote:This is loosely covered in the books regarding Maya Sector and OFS Governer Barregos with Admiral Rozsak (misspelled but close enough).

There is also the "sector governors primed to revolt" by the MAlign. IIRC there are "hundreds."

Many others will be displaced by ambitious Transtellar execs or local FF/Gendarme commander. Basically any system that doesn't have an effective government in place is going to go through a period of Totalitarian Rule and/or Revolutionary Committee.

As long as Manticore/GA can conclude a separate peace agreement or non-aggression pact with whatever government evolves, they're not going to be overly concerned with who it is or what form it might take. Where the MAlign has promised Manticoran support for freedom movements, that will be modified somewhat.

Weird Harold wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:This is loosely covered in the books regarding Maya Sector and OFS Governer Barregos with Admiral Rozsak (misspelled but close enough).

There is also the "sector governors primed to revolt" by the MAlign. IIRC there are "hundreds."

In addition to that, there's all the Frontier Fleet files which cover contingency operations, and knowing the corruption of FF and OFS in general, we can pretty well assume they've been implemented more than once or twice.

Little things like Case Buccaneer, or Case Fabius, so Frontier Fleet units are already accustomed to being somewhere between pirates and warlords themselves, if they aren't acting in an official Frontier Fleet representing OFS action.


So dozens of Sector Governors (I dont think it'd be hundreds plural, 100 sectors in totality perhaps, but given the size of Maya I dont think even the League has multiple hundreds of Verge and Shell sectors), preparing or already prepared to leave. Frontier Fleet units that decide to pre-emptively go become pirates and warlords ahead of minor things like official orders to do so (which would also tell higher how to track them back down), and the GA smashing out FF/OFS base nodes...


Would-be Warnecke's everywhere are probably rejoicing at the mere thought the League is going to be too distracted to deal with them. Also rejoicing because Manticore is going to be too busy to deal with them and they can raid Manticoran shipping again (mistaken belief but they're dumb enough to think they can finally get away with something decades of pirates couldnt)


The age of galaxy wide peace has ended, and the age of piracy & warlords has arisen until the League has finished shattering. Then it'll be another century for most of the outrageously flamboyant warlords to be hunted down and forced out of their empires, before peace returns.

Somtaaw wrote:So dozens of Sector Governors (I dont think it'd be hundreds plural, 100 sectors in totality perhaps, but given the size of Maya I dont think even the League has multiple hundreds of Verge and Shell sectors), preparing or already prepared to leave. Frontier Fleet units that decide to pre-emptively go become pirates and warlords ahead of minor things like official orders to do so (which would also tell higher how to track them back down), and the GA smashing out FF/OFS base nodes...

Mission of Honor
Chapter Thirty-nine wrote:When the Manties hammered the SLN into wreckage yet again—when the carefully primed "spontaneous rebellions" broke out in a dozen places simultaneously in the Verge as the League Navy's reputation crumbled, and when the score of Frontier Security governors who'd been carefully prepared by their own versions of Aldona Anisimovna followed the example of the Maya Sector and unilaterally assumed emergency powers in order to "protect" the citizens of their sectors—

Dozens of rebellions AND a score of "carefully prepared" Governors.

So, not hundreds, just a bunch or two.

The basic premise has a basic foundational assumed flaw. The transtellars will have money in which to finance said conquest. If the league shatters, the economic system also Shatters. Said transtellars go from large assets on their books to having NO assets on their books.

Relax wrote:The basic premise has a basic foundational assumed flaw. The transtellars will have money in which to finance said conquest. If the league shatters, the economic system also Shatters. Said transtellars go from large assets on their books to having NO assets on their books.

The assets are not going to evaporate overnight, especially if the navy is too busy fighting manties to be enforcing commercial laws. I am not just talking about Transtellars, though I do see them as a powerful catalyst for the rise of warlordism, all it takes is greedy men with ships and flexible morals. The first warlords would probably be Silisian and State Sec pirates who want to settle down and own a planet.

GabrialSagan wrote:The first warlords would probably be Silisian and State Sec pirates who want to settle down and own a planet.

Those guys are pretty much all gone.

I am not sure that warlordism by any idiot with a left over DD is actually that much of a worry. Yes they can extort a certain amount of cash etc from a planet but unless you have a whole squadron and associated ground elements your ability to actually control a whole planet only lasts a short amount of time. To give a RL example Imagine trying to control all of a middle eastern country with one burke class Destroyer. You could extort some cash but you won't actually be able to do much more and the moment you come ashore you will risk getting mobbed by cranky locals. The manpower differential is too great and unless you can suborn the local elites your options in the face of problems are: go put a bullet in them personally or blow up an entire city block with some very limited munitions you can't replace locally.

A whole squadron + supporting troops can take control of a low pop planet as shown in Marsh so the real question is how small a force can actually pull this off. Remember that planets surrender to avoid orbital bombardment which is basically the nuclear option and you want to avoid that if you plan to take over. Remember planets are BIG imagine fighting Afganistan on a global scale.

GabrialSagan wrote:

Relax wrote:The basic premise has a basic foundational assumed flaw. The transtellars will have money in which to finance said conquest. If the league shatters, the economic system also Shatters. Said transtellars go from large assets on their books to having NO assets on their books.

The assets are not going to evaporate overnight,

Haven't read much history regarding the late 20th century I take it? Try Chile, Venezuela, Argentina, Mexico, Panama, Libya, Most of Europe, especially Warsaw Pact countries, etc. One day the "transtellars" of our time had a massive asset. The next day they had nothing.

Assets get nationalized 100% by whoever owns the territory. IF said planetary new government wishes to join a political union in which said transtellar still resides, they may honor the asset ownership. Or they may honor a partial ownership. In either case they are losing at least 51%.

Silverwall wrote:I am not sure that warlordism by any idiot with a left over DD is actually that much of a worry. Yes they can extort a certain amount of cash etc from a planet but unless you have a whole squadron and associated ground elements your ability to actually control a whole planet only lasts a short amount of time. To give a RL example Imagine trying to control all of a middle eastern country with one burke class Destroyer. You could extort some cash but you won't actually be able to do much more and the moment you come ashore you will risk getting mobbed by cranky locals. The manpower differential is too great and unless you can suborn the local elites your options in the face of problems are: go put a bullet in them personally or blow up an entire city block with some very limited munitions you can't replace locally.

KEs are precision manufactured machines, but I suspect I can make things very damn exciting with a graser. The atmosphere will absorb and scatter it, but if you are mostly looking to send a message, who cares?

Let's say I'm a pirate and want you to deliver 50 billion in those clever money chips and the top 20 finishers in the miss planet competition. How many cities do I have to destroy to get compliance? Am I going to run out of ammo before you run out of cities?