Assuming you were in the position of Michelle Henke ...

Lord Skimper wrote:1. contact the Andies and ask if they could send a suitable force to hold Mesa, while she takes and holds the terminus.

2. Take and hold the Terminus under Lacoon II.

3. Secure the systems she used to get to Mesa.

saber964 wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:1. contact the Andies and ask if they could send a suitable force to hold Mesa, while she takes and holds the terminus.

2. Take and hold the Terminus under Lacoon II.

3. Secure the systems she used to get to Mesa.

The terminus is probably already been seized.

I came up with this scenario months ago on how I would seize Mesa.

Tenth Fleet Likely OrBat.
20 SD(P)
8 CLAC
16 BC
8 DD (probable) used as dispatch boats

Planet Invasion Force
8 SD(P)
2 CLAC
8 BC
8 DD as H space messengers

Terminus Invasion Force
4 SD(P)
2 CLAC

H-limit Perimeter Blockade Force
1 CLAC
1 SD(P)
2 BC
Four units placed around H-limit to stop any ships from leaving system.

JohnRoth wrote:

saber964 wrote: quote="Lord Skimper"]1. contact the Andies and ask if they could send a suitable force to hold Mesa, while she takes and holds the terminus.

2. Take and hold the Terminus under Lacoon II.

3. Secure the systems she used to get to Mesa.

The terminus is probably already been seized.

I came up with this scenario months ago on how I would seize Mesa.

Tenth Fleet Likely OrBat.
20 SD(P)
8 CLAC
16 BC
8 DD (probable) used as dispatch boats

Planet Invasion Force
8 SD(P)
2 CLAC
8 BC
8 DD as H space messengers

Terminus Invasion Force
4 SD(P)
2 CLAC

H-limit Perimeter Blockade Force
1 CLAC
1 SD(P)
2 BC
Four units placed around H-limit to stop any ships from leaving system.

JohnRoth wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:Mannerheims got the most powerful of the RF SDF's, but that doesn't mean Visigoth has a virtually non-existant one. They've got the Junction to point to as a reason to have a more powerful than average SDF.

I pointed out earlier, Mannerheim has at least four Task Forces, and the fourth has at least a single dreadnought as it's flagship. Going purely speculative, and assuming equal forces and screen it's running upwards of four dreadnought squadrons, and an unknown strength for screen. Except that's not very powerful compared to Beowulf having four and a half superdreadnought squadrons + screen, and Mannerheim is also acknowledged as having "one of the most powerful SDF's in the LEAGUE" not just for the RF.

And if Mannerheim's both among the League's most powerful and the single most powerful in the RF, but Visigoth also has a wormhole and is part of the anti-Beowulf MAlign plans... Visigoth can't possibly have under a DN squadron or two. Still smaller than the notional Mannerheim SDF, but definitely going to be something creeping into "do you really need a fleet that powerful?" question range, if the SLN weren't so arrogant yet oh so clueless.

Here's the thing. The statement that the Mannerheim SDF is one of the largest in the entire SL comes from Chapter 50 of Torch of Freedom, while the statement that none of them are all that big individually comes from Mission of Honor. This is a definite contradiction. Which one is likely to be correct? I'd take the one from MoH rather than the one from ToF, simply because the intent of the scenes is different. Looking at that, I'm not at all convinced that projecting the mention of one dreadnaught into four complete dreadnaught task forces is all that justified.

As far as Visigoth is concerned, it has a junction to protect, not a bunch of neighbors to boss around. Protecting a junction is best done with forts, not SDs. That's the way Manticore does it. Big, bad-assed forts.

Rincewind wrote:The comment that none of the Renaissance Factor's SDFs are all that big is in comparison to the SLN & any of the combatant navies in the Haven Sector. Certainly they could be as big or bigger than the Royal Manticoran Navy was prior to Roger III's build-up so they could each have up to two or three battle squadrons of superdreadnoughts supplemented by dreadnoughts. Mission of Honor also commented that although individually they were small there was eleven of them so presumably they added up to a quite sizeable force.

Mission of Honor Chapter 38 wrote:There are eleven of them, for God's sake! None of them may be all that huge in isolation, but when you combine them, they get a hell of a lot more impressive.

JohnRoth wrote:

Rincewind wrote:The comment that none of the Renaissance Factor's SDFs are all that big is in comparison to the SLN & any of the combatant navies in the Haven Sector. Certainly they could be as big or bigger than the Royal Manticoran Navy was prior to Roger III's build-up so they could each have up to two or three battle squadrons of superdreadnoughts supplemented by dreadnoughts. Mission of Honor also commented that although individually they were small there was eleven of them so presumably they added up to a quite sizeable force.

The comment from MoH is:

Mission of Honor Chapter 38 wrote:There are eleven of them, for God's sake! None of them may be all that huge in isolation, but when you combine them, they get a hell of a lot more impressive.

There's nothing in here that says what he's comparing them to. Where did you get the idea that he's comparing to the SLN or pre-buildup Haven sector? There's nothing in that statement that says that.

Rincewind wrote:The comment that none of the Renaissance Factor's SDFs are all that big is in comparison to the SLN & any of the combatant navies in the Haven Sector. Certainly they could be as big or bigger than the Royal Manticoran Navy was prior to Roger III's build-up so they could each have up to two or three battle squadrons of superdreadnoughts supplemented by dreadnoughts. Mission of Honor also commented that although individually they were small there was eleven of them so presumably they added up to a quite sizeable force.

JohnRoth wrote:The comment from MoH is:

Mission of Honor Chapter 38 wrote:There are eleven of them, for God's sake! None of them may be all that huge in isolation, but when you combine them, they get a hell of a lot more impressive.

There's nothing in here that says what he's comparing them to. Where did you get the idea that he's comparing to the SLN or pre-buildup Haven sector? There's nothing in that statement that says that.

Eagleeye wrote:Right. But 11 navies (especially these 11 navies) should represent an impressive amount of vessels, even in absolute numbers, without any comparision. And because the RF-navies did not suffer from the institutional blindness to ignore anything that came from the Mantie-Haven-wars like the SLN did, they could be even more impressive than the pure addition of numbers may suggest. The only thing they lack definitely is recent fighting experience (at least, as far as we know). But I wonder, if the RF System Defense Forces did train with and against each other? And if so, what kind of pretext did they use to keep the SLN sleeping?

JohnRoth wrote:
This brings up something that I don't remember being addressed: how are 11 systems going to form the core of a new polity that will include the entire previous Solarian League.

Let's assume, for the sake of the argument, that all of the RF systems are on the boundary between the Core and the Shell, that is, they are exactly 100 ly from Earth. The circumference of that circle is 628.3 ly, which puts the sytems 57.11 ly from each other. That would be a bit shorter in a straight line, of course, so let's assume 50 ly (I'm too lazy to look up how to calculate the chord). That's over a week at full dispatch boat speeds. It would be shorter with the Streak Drive, but I seriously doubt if the RF systems have that.

If they're distributed that far from each other, coordination in a single star kingdom is going to be a significant problem, while if we pull them together for coordination, then lots of the original settled area is going to be even farther away and will be harder to consolidate.

JohnRoth wrote:Let's assume, for the sake of the argument, that all of the RF systems are on the boundary between the Core and the Shell, that is, they are exactly 100 ly from Earth. The circumference of that circle is 628.3 ly, which puts the sytems 57.11 ly from each other. That would be a bit shorter in a straight line, of course, so let's assume 50 ly (I'm too lazy to look up how to calculate the chord). That's over a week at full dispatch boat speeds. It would be shorter with the Streak Drive, but I seriously doubt if the RF systems have that.

Peregrinator wrote:

JohnRoth wrote:Let's assume, for the sake of the argument, that all of the RF systems are on the boundary between the Core and the Shell, that is, they are exactly 100 ly from Earth. The circumference of that circle is 628.3 ly, which puts the sytems 57.11 ly from each other. That would be a bit shorter in a straight line, of course, so let's assume 50 ly (I'm too lazy to look up how to calculate the chord). That's over a week at full dispatch boat speeds. It would be shorter with the Streak Drive, but I seriously doubt if the RF systems have that.

To add to your point about distance, the systems are not points on a circle of 100 light-years' radius, but rather on a sphere of similar radius with a surface area of ~125,664 square light years. Of course none is more than 200 ly away from another.