Poor Transtellars -what are they going to do?

GabrialSagan wrote:There is another option, hire mercenaries. FF and BF are going to be busy fighting the Manties and the Manties cannot be everywhere at once. I have raised this issue before (http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8142) but it seems to me that if the SLN is busy fighting a real war against a technologically superior opponent there is going to be very little that the League regulators can do to prevent The League's super rich (I.E. The folks who actually own and operate the transtellars) from buying ships, hiring mercenaries and go on their own sprees of conquest. It only takes one frigate in orbit to launch kinetic strikes and it seems like the wealthy elites of The League can afford to buy heavier hardware than that.

Take it, yes. I agree with you. But hanging on to it could be a horse of an entirely different color. Eventually someone with more resourses will notice and the party is over.

Don

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n7axw wrote:

GabrialSagan wrote:There is another option, hire mercenaries. FF and BF are going to be busy fighting the Manties and the Manties cannot be everywhere at once. I have raised this issue before (http://forums.davidweber.net/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=8142) but it seems to me that if the SLN is busy fighting a real war against a technologically superior opponent there is going to be very little that the League regulators can do to prevent The League's super rich (I.E. The folks who actually own and operate the transtellars) from buying ships, hiring mercenaries and go on their own sprees of conquest. It only takes one frigate in orbit to launch kinetic strikes and it seems like the wealthy elites of The League can afford to buy heavier hardware than that.

Take it, yes. I agree with you. But hanging on to it could be a horse of an entirely different color. Eventually someone with more resourses will notice and the party is over.

Don

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Yes and no. What I am talking about is the beginning of the end of the League as an effective government, a dark age of interstellar warlordism. Chaos, strife, and uncertainty are bound to arise from that sort of situation. But if it a choice between giving up all their holdings in the Verge and the Shell, effectively hemorrhaging a huge percentage of their wealth, or hiring some ships and soldiers to allow them to continue business as usual (perhaps even increase their profits as mercenaries may allow the wealthy to become even more ruthless and exploitative than they could get away with under OFS regulation) I have a feeling that at least some of the League plutocrats will take their chances getting their hands dirty doing for themselves what they once relied on OFS to take care of for them.

Yes, but...

the very chaos you are describing is going to mitigate against someone like a transstellar being able to hang on against the bigger sharks out there, folks like the Alignment, the Alliance or even the SLN whose ships will still be there when the League breaks up. SLN commodores and admirals make far more likely warlords than transstellars. Or think alliances between SLN admirals and OFS governors and comissioners. Maya will be more the rule than the exception, although Barragos has the advantage of anticipating what was going to happen which means that he has a head start in planning against it.

If I were a transtellar, I would start cashing out and moving my assets to a comparatively safe core world. Heck, I might even take some of my ill-gotten gains and invest in rebuilding Manticore's industrial plant. For the immediate future, systems defended by large capable fleets are going to be magnets for capital. Any port in a storm, hey...

Don

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n7axw wrote:Yes, but...

the very chaos you are describing is going to mitigate against someone like a transstellar being able to hang on against the bigger sharks out there, folks like the Alignment, the Alliance or even the SLN whose ships will still be there when the League breaks up. SLN commodores and admirals make far more likely warlords than transstellars. Or think alliances between SLN admirals and OFS governors and comissioners. Maya will be more the rule than the exception, although Barragos has the advantage of anticipating what was going to happen which means that he has a head start in planning against it.

If I were a transtellar, I would start cashing out and moving my assets to a comparatively safe core world. Heck, I might even take some of my ill-gotten gains and invest in rebuilding Manticore's industrial plant. For the immediate future, systems defended by large capable fleets are going to be magnets for capital. Any port in a storm, hey...

Don

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What makes you think that OFS bureaucrats are going to have any authority when the SLN is no longer there to back them up? What makes you think those SLN fleet officers do not have familial and financial ties to the plutocrats in the League?
I think you are forgetting what a transtellar really is. Transtellars are just corporations, legal entities that are given the fictional status of personhood to simplify transactions and judicial processes so that groups of people can pool their resources toward a common goal. Corporations are not people, but they are owned and managed by people, very, very rich people. These plutocrats have power and authority that comes with the ability to martial stupendous resources to achieve their own ends, which in this case is generating more wealth for themselves and their investors.

War is expensive. If there were a SLN admiral who decided to go rogue and carve out a fiefdom for herself she cannot do it alone. Even if she were a charismatic leader who could garner the loyalty of the men and women under her command (something that I get the impression is a rare thing among the ranks of the SLN) she still needs to take care of her people and maintain her ships. This is a lot easier to do if this hypothetical SLN admiral has the financial backing of a coalition of plutocrats who offer to subsidize the cost of maintaining a fleet in exchange for the right to exploit the people living on the planets the admiral wants to control. This is very similar to what is already going on in the protectorates except that these new mercenary endeavors would be able to cut out the middleman.

Personally I think warlordism from anyone is rather unlikely in the long term. You need ground forces to control a planet beyond brute ransom. Note that the only long term successful warlord we are aware of was the founder of the Andermani empire who specifically did positive things like improve agriculture and improve the quality of life, would transtellars really want to do that?

Transtellers think of themselves as businesses and brute ransom is not an effective business plan and would likely alienate a lot of potential friends in less chaotic places. Also all it takes is a few proper navy ships from any major power to trash the orbital infrastructe of such warlords domains and the ground opposition will run over them in no time. Look as what happened to Warnecks forces when the threat of nukes went away. Even a low pop verge planet is far to large to fully demilitarise and enough locals with hunting rifles can take out the batallion or so troops that have been brought in.

Again the experiance of the Indian Mutiny and a great many other colonial wars (especially the Boer wars) shows that without the ability to suborn the local forces AND ship in overwhealming firepower when needed you can't hold a large ammount of territory. I feel the experiences of the British in the Boer war is a good analgy for what any warlord is likely to run into after a few years once gear starts wearing down and casualties take a toll.

[quote="Silverwall"]Personally I think warlordism from anyone is rather unlikely in the long term. You need ground forces to control a planet beyond brute ransom. Note that the only long term successful warlord we are aware of was the founder of the Andermani empire who specifically did positive things like improve agriculture and improve the quality of life, would transtellars really want to do that?

Do trans-stellars need to do that? That is what OFS was for (and of course the Yucels and intervention battalions). If Barregos et al can hang on to Maya, and other FF governors can hang onto their sectors, the Transstellars can carry on. The governing entity is inconsequential. Which is what the renaissance Factor was created to take advantage of, thus insuring the continuation of Jessyck, manpower et al

WeirdlyWired wrote:Which is what the renaissance Factor was created to take advantage of, thus insuring the continuation of Jessyck, manpower et al

The Renaissance Factor is not going to be a safe haven for Manpower, Jessyk, and other "unsavory" Mesan corporations. It is explicitly stated in texev that the RF is anti-slavery and basically overall goody-two-shoes; Manpower especially will not be welcome in their territory.

With Rome comming apart by the 4th century, there was chaos everywhere. All sorts of wars in the crumbling of the Western Empire and more than a little in the maintenace of the Eastern Empire. All those city states and Warlord occupied territories scattered around Europe and beyond changing hands and politics is a bloody swirl of opportunities as individuals, cities military leaders too what they thought they could hold and then had to manuver to keep it. Italy was shattered and prostrate. Germany- well it didn't get anywhere near together till the end of the 19th century. England (and Ireland) had how many waves of invasion from the Norse/Danes, germanic tribes etc. That was felt down into France. In that same mix you ended up with the Islamic empire(s) sending waves up into the Balkins, fighting with the city-states in Italy, ending up with much of the southern shore of the Med and holding Spain until Battle of Tours and the push back down into the Iberian Pen. Total mess.
Now add starships, modern weapons and the same types of mindsets. Sure, some part of the SL may survive as Byzantium did but it won't be bloodless and it will not come without essentially a continuation of the seemingly endles civil wars that were a major contribution to causing Rome to fall (because it could not fight itself and the rest of the world too.

Brigade XO wrote:With Rome comming apart by the 4th century, there was chaos everywhere. All sorts of wars in the crumbling of the Western Empire and more than a little in the maintenace of the Eastern Empire. All those city states and Warlord occupied territories scattered around Europe and beyond changing hands and politics is a bloody swirl of opportunities as individuals, cities military leaders too what they thought they could hold and then had to manuver to keep it. Italy was shattered and prostrate. Germany- well it didn't get anywhere near together till the end of the 19th century. England (and Ireland) had how many waves of invasion from the Norse/Danes, germanic tribes etc. That was felt down into France. In that same mix you ended up with the Islamic empire(s) sending waves up into the Balkins, fighting with the city-states in Italy, ending up with much of the southern shore of the Med and holding Spain until Battle of Tours and the push back down into the Iberian Pen. Total mess.
Now add starships, modern weapons and the same types of mindsets. Sure, some part of the SL may survive as Byzantium did but it won't be bloodless and it will not come without essentially a continuation of the seemingly endles civil wars that were a major contribution to causing Rome to fall (because it could not fight itself and the rest of the world too.

I would imagine that a key difference is that when Rome collapsed there were relatively large numbers of barbarian or hostile tribes, countries, etc around it who could take arcs rotate of the fall. Plus there were a lack of nearby, interested, militarized neutrals.
The verge and beyond has its share of penny ante pirates, but no real equivilent of the Norse of Germanic tribes. Will there be some level of warlordism? Probably. But will it be the civilization consuming spasms that overtook Rome? Seems very unlikely to me...

Pure 'peanut gallery conjecture' here but...

I suspect that he smaller Transtellar(s) that aren't tightly wired into OFS and the Mandarin's are going to cut deals with GA aligned sectors and get back to a more "heavily inspected" business as usual model -- think OBS/Fearless but likely even more heavily inspected than that -- and with systems who have proven to have good governance. For example, Manticore will likely let the Maya Sector become a safe shipping route, then add the Madras sector once the House of Thomas on Meyers is stabilized and force supplemented.

Some of the Laccoon II wormholes might begin to reopen in systems like Idaho, Zunkers, etc. once a non-corrupt regime is in place, as that benefits systems friendly to Manticore as well. If I were in charge of the Honorverse/bless Haven project I would assume that a lot of supplemented but smaller Haven/GA warships will begin to be rolled out and tasked with commerce protection in those areas.

Meanwhile... the Transtellars headquartered on Mesa are pretty much sitting ducks and will get dismembered rather quickly. Final question being what happens with FF and OFS associated systems and whether the Verge systems start to clean up on their own as the GA economic clout takes hold... or they go for Warlordism and get the same treatments that Dumbass Damien and Yucel got in the previous books.

Thoughts?