The hypothetical 'Battle of Lovat'

Ok, so this post is about the battle that never happened: Lovat during Buttercup.

Specifically, I am referring to the conversation that Giscard and Tourville had about surrendering to White Haven and how they couldn't risk it. My question is this: Couldn't they have fired a whisker lazer at the Manty fleet as soon as it translated in-system identifying the exact ships that were StateSec, and informing White Haven that as soon as those ships were destroyed that the Havenite NAVY desired to surrender (but could not before hand due to the risk of being shot at by StateSec ships)?

E.g., Giscard gives White Haven complete tactical information on the ships to kill and promises to surrender as soon as they are destroyed. For White Haven, what does he have to lose? If it turns out Giscard is lying, well, he'll still be far enough away to destroy everything else before the Havenites come into range. But, if Giscard is telling the truth then he doesn't have to kill potentially hundreds of thousands of people AS WELL AS the propaganda effect of blasting the fact that 2 of Haven's 3 best Admirals surrendered to him.

Thoughts?

Erls wrote:Ok, so this post is about the battle that never happened: Lovat during Buttercup.

Specifically, I am referring to the conversation that Giscard and Tourville had about surrendering to White Haven and how they couldn't risk it. My question is this: Couldn't they have fired a whisker lazer at the Manty fleet as soon as it translated in-system identifying the exact ships that were StateSec, and informing White Haven that as soon as those ships were destroyed that the Havenite NAVY desired to surrender (but could not before hand due to the risk of being shot at by StateSec ships)?

E.g., Giscard gives White Haven complete tactical information on the ships to kill and promises to surrender as soon as they are destroyed. For White Haven, what does he have to lose? If it turns out Giscard is lying, well, he'll still be far enough away to destroy everything else before the Havenites come into range. But, if Giscard is telling the truth then he doesn't have to kill potentially hundreds of thousands of people AS WELL AS the propaganda effect of blasting the fact that 2 of Haven's 3 best Admirals surrendered to him.

Thoughts?

My first thought is technical. I'm not sure the Buttercup era MDMs had enough accuracy to be sure of that surgically targeting State Sec ships if White Haven keeps a reasonable safe distance. Also unless he smashes all the key SS ships in the first couple salvos there's a significant risk that they'll realize they've been betrayed and push the button anyway, taking the rest of the Peep fleet with them...

There are also informers everywhere.

Yeah, but Giscard has one hell of an ace in the hole - the active connivance of the senior People's Commissioner in the whole fleet, who has a universal reputation for zealous loyalty to The Cause, who likely knows who every one of those informants is, who has access to any equipment she needs or wants without a word of explanation, and who has ample completely legitimate excuses to get 5 minutes alone with Giscard under circumstances where she absolutely knows she controls the surveillance systems.

With that setup all they have to do is record the secret message using a hand com or similar, and have Citizen Commissioner Pritchart carrying the only copy as an innocuous data chip on her person (where it is about as absolutely secure as physically possible). She will by definition be on the bridge with Giscard when the actual action is going down, and are *you* going to argue with her when she walks over to your comm station, hands you the chip, and tells you where to point your whisker laser?

At that point something like less than half a dozen people know anything at all (depending on how many people crew the flag bridge com station, and on how many of them she can glare into creatively finding excuses to be elsewhere while she quietly speaks to the operator) and none of them *know* for sure what she's doing - and she's Citizen Commissioner Pritchart, certified zealot, icy avatar of the iron fist of Statesec and the Committee, and general all-around nightmare from the deep. A simple "There are things you don't need to know, Citizen Lieutenant" delivered in her best 'commissioner voice' and I'll give you 90% odds that nobody even *thinks* of breathing a *peep* about it to anyone. And even if someone did, the secret only needs to keep for an hour or two, and the entire fleet is at battle stations. Under those conditions, *she* probably controls the only means by which an informant's report could reach the statesec ships before the battle is over.

It could still go wrong, but it'd definitely be plausible, and we *know* for damn sure that Pritchart has the acting ability to pull it off. Also, imagine Roseandheather's fangirling reaction.

Are you all forgetting what Shannon Foraker did to said State Sec SD's?

That plan was already in place and would have been used the moment the Manties arrival was confirmed, heck it was probably the main reason why it existed in the first place.

Jonathan_S wrote:My first thought is technical. I'm not sure the Buttercup era MDMs had enough accuracy to be sure of that surgically targeting State Sec ships if White Haven keeps a reasonable safe distance. Also unless he smashes all the key SS ships in the first couple salvos there's a significant risk that they'll realize they've been betrayed and push the button anyway, taking the rest of the Peep fleet with them...

That sounds about right, that Buttercup MDM's were pretty inaccurate. I think one of the only times they fired from the then-max range was at Barnett. Just about every other occasion of MDM's from then onwards, most ships seem to want to close to "just beyond the SDM range of their opponent" to maximize hits while attempting to avoid action.

However, I'm not sure exactly which button you're talking about that StateSec would be pushing. They were there to put "trusted guns" within range of Giscard and Tourville, and even if they were a neighbouring squadron to the respective squadrons that held Giscard and Tourville in the middle of a fleet action they couldn't roll ship and skew turn to guarantee hits on the flagships they needed to hit. They'd be locked into the wall, and any attempt to pull out of the wall would either:
a) disable the StateSec ship in addition to regular Navy (not that they'd care about collateral damage, but disabling themselves is something they'd try to avoid) due to the skew turns
or
b) make it really easy for every regular naval ship to shoot them because they suddenly cut acceleration to drop behind the wall.

Ed130 The Vanguard wrote:Are you all forgetting what Shannon Foraker did to said State Sec SD's?

That plan was already in place and would have been used the moment the Manties arrival was confirmed, heck it was probably the main reason why it existed in the first place.

This seems a little more plausible, although I'm not entirely sure it was the main reason it existed. Giscard, and Tourville knew they were marked men the second they became associated with "the McQueen Offensives". But they also knew that even if they'd successfully taken out the StateSec watchdogs, that with Pierre and Saint-Just still at Nouveau Paris that their resistance would do nothing except prove they weren't "loyal to the regime". They were caught in a Catch-22, no matter which way they tried they were doomed, and that they wanted to, something about "avoid shootouts in their quarters".

The Foraker "oops" incident, judging by the utter surprise and shock that we saw, means Foraker put that contigency together entirely on her own initiative. Foraker hardly put it together as a way to help the Manties, she did it to help her innocent trusted Admirals from being dragged away in chains by StateSec for doing their jobs.

Somtaaw wrote:

Ed130 The Vanguard wrote:Are you all forgetting what Shannon Foraker did to said State Sec SD's?

That plan was already in place and would have been used the moment the Manties arrival was confirmed, heck it was probably the main reason why it existed in the first place.

This seems a little more plausible, although I'm not entirely sure it was the main reason it existed. Giscard, and Tourville knew they were marked men the second they became associated with "the McQueen Offensives". But they also knew that even if they'd successfully taken out the StateSec watchdogs, that with Pierre and Saint-Just still at Nouveau Paris that their resistance would do nothing except prove they weren't "loyal to the regime". They were caught in a Catch-22, no matter which way they tried they were doomed, and that they wanted to, something about "avoid shootouts in their quarters".

The Foraker "oops" incident, judging by the utter surprise and shock that we saw, means Foraker put that contigency together entirely on her own initiative. Foraker hardly put it together as a way to help the Manties, she did it to help her innocent trusted Admirals from being dragged away in chains by StateSec for doing their jobs.

Well, by the time Foraker had it set up, White Haven's arrival at Lovat was expected. One should not totally discount the possibility that Foraker was prepared to blow all those SS ships out of space just to give her CO the option to surrender - and avoid killing a few hundred thousand PN personnel whose deaths wouldn't change Haven's military defeat.

Getting a whisker laser in would be difficult at best. Plus whose to say that the StateSec SD's wouldn't be 'escorting' any of 12th Fleet flagships, 3 or 4 SD's each escorting Giscard or Tourville flagships plus any senior TF commanders.

Erls, If I was in Saint-Just's shoes the one place I would be sure to have backup informers (unknown to my commissars) would be on the flagships of every fleet.
Remember Saint-Just was not an amature ( although his failure to replace commissars at irregular intervals point to his possibly loosing his edge ).

Erls wrote:Ok, so this post is about the battle that never happened: Lovat during Buttercup.
SNIP
Thoughts?

Yes, thoughts. If White Haven arrived, everyone would be at battle stations. Wedges/sidewalls up, sensors active, defenses active. If you were White Haven would you not say, "Why should I do it?"

Gotta remember the whole problem as demonstrated in the books was that State Sec was about to take over the entire military. State Sec ships got the info first so they could get their wedges/sidewalls up and effectively dominate a much larger force.

The RHN ships under Giscard, had numerical superiority by a wide margin. They could have simply fired on and obliterated the State Sec ships themselves as they had active defenses etc. A salvo or two right up the poop chute of the State Sec ships would have done them in just fine.

So, NO, White Haven would not have fired on them. He would have just waited for the dust to settle before taking the surrender.