Solarian League Naval Strenght versus SLN Strength

Ever hear of that wargame where the USN got spanked by speedboats and cruise missiles only for the results to be invalidated? Militaries come to conclusions they want to hear all the time. The Solarian League totally does that. Manticore and Haven are a lot better at not doing that because their existence hinged on getting it right. And even then, small scale cases of this still existed, like what happened during the Shrike tests.

Dilandu wrote:Basically, that's why I consider League as extremely implausible Bad Guys. They required so many authors direct intervention to be weak, that... well, they are unrealistic. And frankly, I could not see the reason, why the SLN must be reduced to complete incompetence in therms of plot development

Good point, i never understood this either.
I mean, IMO there are many good reasons why the SLN is incompetent and lacks behind. What i dont get is why made them so utterly and totally outclassed that its not even funny anymore.
Kinda the first rule of any military scifi literature, the battles should be interesting and engaging.

I remember the times after AAC/TSoS when we were waiting for the Battle of Spindle to play out.
Many great discussions back then if 10th Fleet would be able to hold against what most assumed were the equivalent of at least Sphinx class SDs. 10th Fleet should have won, but it would have been a very tough fight.
But well, in the book Henke got Apollo pods and the Sollies autocannons instead of laser clusters.
Too bad.

And its not just the SLN. The Alignment suffers from the same problem. Their tech is good on paper and would be fun to read about a couple of in universe years down the road, but we'll never actually get there.

Dilandu wrote:Oh yeah, and corrupt League industry, of course, actually are purehearted non-possessors.

Basically NO ONE INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY EVER REACTED LIKE THAT. Because such reaction is bad for buisness. The arm race is always good for buisness.

So unless ALL the League upper clases are Mesan agents - and we knew that they aren't - they should act exactly the opposite. I.e. "oh no, those neobarbs poossessed the new weapons that could - in future, of course - change the force balance. We need immediatedly to vote for more money gave to industrial moguls... er, for the new defense bills and emergency shipbuilding program, of course!"

For an arms race to occur you have to have an enemy you firmly believe can hurt you enough to defeat you. Warefare had been static for several centuries by the time the Havenite wars occurred. The problem is that SLN leadership did not believe it was even possible that the "neobarbs" could even develop any tech to match them let alone surpass them.

pnakasone wrote:For an arms race to occur you have to have an enemy you firmly believe can hurt you enough to defeat you. Warefare had been static for several centuries by the time the Havenite wars occurred. The problem is that SLN leadership did not believe it was even possible that the "neobarbs" could even develop any tech to match them let alone surpass them.

Exactly. Here's another real life case: smartphones. Back 10 years ago, no one had Apple on their radar. It was just Microsoft, Blackberry, and Nokia. Apple was just this quirky company that made Macs and MP3 players. And if you remember anything about the smartphones back then, they weren't very smart. When Apple dropped the iPhone like an atom bomb on the public, none of their engineers could believe the technological claims. They were fully entrenched in the ecosystem as they knew it. And where are all three now? Completely gone from the phone game.

pnakasone wrote:For an arms race to occur you have to have an enemy you firmly believe can hurt you enough to defeat you. Warefare had been static for several centuries by the time the Havenite wars occurred. The problem is that SLN leadership did not believe it was even possible that the "neobarbs" could even develop any tech to match them let alone surpass them.

Basically again, it's not only improbable, but impractical solution. For example: the US military before World War II clearly underestimated Japanese tech level and generally considered Japan as realtively weak military power. But does this means, that US military just stopped working on new weapons? No: they invested quite a lot in newest possible solutions, like Mark I fire control computers and magnetic torpedoes (admittedly, the magnetic fuze aren't their great achievement, but they were clearly considered as pinnacle of pre-war technology).

And again: all Havenite war was NOT "local conflict somewhere else". It was basically next door to the center of the League - just one transit from Beowulf. The war was not just close; the war was literally one step from being inside the League itself. There is no way the League could "just ignore that".

Moreover, there is no any particular reason WHY the League should "just ignore that". Who would benefit from such actions? What would be the prize for inaction?

Dilandu wrote:

MuonNeutrino wrote:(Ignore the fact that 80% of them are in mothballs,

Basically the League reserve fleet make no sence at all. For what reason they need about 8000 SD's in reserve, if their standing fleet was bigger than all other fleets in Galaxy combined?

The League has always seen itself as the most important star nation in existence, and the SLN was designed to maintain that belief, both in the mind's of the League's own citizens, and more importantly, in the mind's of outsiders.

The maintenance costs of the reserve fleet are essentially zero but the scrapage cost of a superdreadnaught are significant, so its easier to just leave old ships where they are and build a new ones. This trend has gone on for centuries.

During this time nothing had ever challenged the League's core belief about itself, and the idea had totally taken hold that nothing ever would, or could, which has driven the belief that it was not only the most important, but also the most technologically, culturally and 'every-other-attribute' advanced too.

The SLN's conceptualisation of war was similarly stagnant: wars were like this in the past, and will be like this in the future, and we have exactly the fleet needed to decisively win the last war.

Here is the kicker: twenty years ago this belief was entirely justified, they really did have a fleet that could win every war just by existing. They 'knew' it didn't matter if they lost 50 SDs in every engagement, those ships could be immediately replaced by almost identical ships from the reserve.

The RMN's revolution in shipbuilding came about because they challenged every idea underlying the stagnant model the SLN was built to maintain. Its results may have exploded into Solarian consciousness in the last year, and Havenite consciousness in the last fifteen, but its roots go back to King Roger's build up 70 years ago

Dilandu wrote:
Basically again, it's not only improbable, but impractical solution. For example: the US military before World War II clearly underestimated Japanese tech level and generally considered Japan as realtively weak military power. But does this means, that US military just stopped working on new weapons? No: they invested quite a lot in newest possible solutions, like Mark I fire control computers and magnetic torpedoes (admittedly, the magnetic fuze aren't their great achievement, but they were clearly considered as pinnacle of pre-war technology).

And again: all Havenite war was NOT "local conflict somewhere else". It was basically next door to the center of the League - just one transit from Beowulf. The war was not just close; the war was literally one step from being inside the League itself. There is no way the League could "just ignore that".

Moreover, there is no any particular reason WHY the League should "just ignore that". Who would benefit from such actions? What would be the prize for inaction?

The fact that thous in charge of the SL and its navy refer to almost every one who is not a member of the SL as neobarb speaks volumes for the mind set of the leadership. With that kind of mind set do they take anything that neobarbs are doing seriously? What they had in place had worked for centuries why change it just because some neobarbs where having a little spate on their very very large door step?

As an example look at how Europe viewed the Russo-Japanese War.

pnakasone wrote:As an example look at how Europe viewed the Russo-Japanese War.

Could you expand on that example? IIRC, the Battle of Tsushima more or less confirmed the dreadnought doctrine and certainly fuelled the British-German naval arms race preceding WW1.

nrellis wrote:

Dilandu wrote:Basically the League reserve fleet make no sence at all. For what reason they need about 8000 SD's in reserve, if their standing fleet was bigger than all other fleets in Galaxy combined?

The League has always seen itself as the most important star nation in existence, and the SLN was designed to maintain that belief, both in the mind's of the League's own citizens, and more importantly, in the mind's of outsiders.

The maintenance costs of the reserve fleet are essentially zero but the scrapage cost of a superdreadnaught are significant, so its easier to just leave old ships where they are and build a new ones. This trend has gone on for centuries.

During this time nothing had ever challenged the League's core belief about itself, and the idea had totally taken hold that nothing ever would, or could, which has driven the belief that it was not only the most important, but also the most technologically, culturally and 'every-other-attribute' advanced too.

The SLN's conceptualisation of war was similarly stagnant: wars were like this in the past, and will be like this in the future, and we have exactly the fleet needed to decisively win the last war.

Here is the kicker: twenty years ago this belief was entirely justified, they really did have a fleet that could win every war just by existing. They 'knew' it didn't matter if they lost 50 SDs in every engagement, those ships could be immediately replaced by almost identical ships from the reserve.

The RMN's revolution in shipbuilding came about because they challenged every idea underlying the stagnant model the SLN was built to maintain. Its results may have exploded into Solarian consciousness in the last year, and Havenite consciousness in the last fifteen, but its roots go back to King Roger's build up 70 years ago

Regarding the statement above in bold, here's the supporting analysis by fester:
An apologia for Battle Fleet (Potential HoS Spoilers)