Last use for SL SD captured

Brigade XO wrote:Putting the SLN POWs on Sphinx would make for an interesting time. Not only would they have to deal with the winter, it's a fair bit above Earth normal for gravity and unless those SLN spacers were in really good condition, they are going to have an intersting time adapting to the local conditions.
Those conditions, particularly the winter, would make doing anything but surviving in the camps difficult since you aren't going to do well outside in 3 T-years of winter.

Not exactly mistreatment of prisoners but certainly almost as bad as Ceberus though the local flora and fauna isn't going to outright poison you should you eat it. On the other hand, some of the fauna might just eat you. Sphinx might not be such a good ideas from the point of view of having to provide all that energy to keep people warm and alive during the winter and setting the prisoners to building simple buildings like log barracks isn't going to cut it.

There is an easy answer to the snow, you just put the prisoners in the opposite hemisphere from the current winter one. If the prisoners are still there in 6 years, you have bigger issues. The heavy gravity will just discourage prison breaks.

Of course, while SLN warships are themselves largely obsolete, I imagine that their individual components might be very useful to minor powers. Building a decent navy just got quite a bit cheaper with surplus SLN energy mounts.

Theemile wrote:We're still talking about crews of around a thousand per ship just to drive the ship between systems and keep the systems working for the flight. Manning the weapons will be in top of that.

I don't know what trolls backside these numbers were pulled from but merchies doesn't need thousands of crew to go from point A to point B - they wouldn't either. You don't have to man EVERY system - warships have redundant systems such as 3 rectors, when 1 can do the job, that's 2/3rds of the rector crew gone right there. They "ferrying" ships would not require ANY weapons crews nor FC sensor crews (since they would have no fire to need control), NONE of the combat systems would need manning, and the captain can go without someone to while his seat cushion every time he stands up. A single merchant crew could get it where it needs to go, with armed escorts, and a great deal of secrecy as to the true nature of the crew, providing security. 1 ship out of each group would need to be fully manned, with a rotating crew providing the minimum requirement for combat systems. these crewmen would rotate at irregular intervals between the various ships to provide an illusion, and uncertainty, as to which are fully crewed and which have minimum ferry (merchant size) crews. That is all that would be needed, 2-3 thousand total, running successive trips to ferry all of them where they need to go.

Weird Harold wrote:You're forgetting that the SLN SDs have NO automation such as merchant ships and newer Haven Sector ships incorporate.

That's not true, the SLN crew don't lift their missiles by hand and slide them in the tubs! Every starship has automation, the SLN just didn't incorporate AS MUCH as the GA in order to justify their high budgets for crew salaries (which is pilfered by the high command). Much of the non-automated systems would be in weapons which would not be active in the "ferry" ships. and much of the remaining would be in redundant systems (like reactors 2 & 3) which would also be shut down.

Somtaaw wrote:I'd have to go with Gryphon though, simply because it's much harsher, and that with the absence of a declaration of war, the Solarian survivors should consider themselves lucky not to be summarily executed as pirates.

That neatly cuts the legs out from all but the thickest head officers objections, while also reminding them, their fair treatment is optional and voluntarily offered.

It's not the general crews fault, and their treatment may become extremely important as the outcome is far from decided , should the SL regard GA raids as "pirates" and summarily execute them?

Also it would break with the Manie's 1 strike rule, but perhaps taking the DNA of all upper rank offices (Lt Commander +) into a separate database and informing them that they have been ranked as "pirates" for their actions but if there is no significant incidence among their men then this decision may be reconsidered after their repatriation, otherwise they will be downloaded into the general pirate database.

It's a fight to the DEATH: In this corner are the 1500 worlds of SL, with a total population of 5 trillion. In this corner we have the three non-idustrialized worlds of Manticore, with a total population of 3 billion. In that corner is Beowulf and Haven, who are now attempting to exit the arena claiming the treatment of the SL PoWs is a treaty violation and their alliance is now void.

kzt wrote:It's a fight to the DEATH: In this corner are the 1500 worlds of SL, with a total population of 5 trillion. In this corner we have the three non-idustrialized worlds of Manticore, with a total population of 3 billion. In that corner is Beowulf and Haven, who are now attempting to exit the arena claiming the treatment of the SL PoWs is a treaty violation and their alliance is now void.

You mean 2000+ Solly systems, the 1784 systems and 200+ verge systems run by FF

kzt wrote:It's a fight to the DEATH: In this corner are the 1500 worlds of SL, with a total population of 5 trillion. In this corner we have the three non-idustrialized worlds of Manticore, with a total population of 3 billion. In that corner is Beowulf and Haven, who are now attempting to exit the arena claiming the treatment of the SL PoWs is a treaty violation and their alliance is now void.

Consider the treatment of the "POWs" in Split, they're being rather well treated, and yet they still harp and complain at every opportunity they're "being mistreated":

Shadow of Freedom, Ch 7 wrote:“So that’s about the size of it, on the housing side, at least.” Henri Krietzmann looked around the Governor’s House conference room in the planetary and quadrant capital of Thimble and shrugged. “It’s only been seven weeks since O’Cleary’s surrender, so despite Admiral Bordelon’s protests, we’re actually doing pretty damned well, I think. Especially considering the fact that we’re not the ones who went and invaded their star system!”
-snip-
And she obviously intended to be as inflexible as possible in demanding Manticore meet the Deneb Accords’ obligations to properly “house, feed, and care for” prisoners of war. The fact that there were the next best thing to half a million of those prisoners, and that they’d arrived with absolutely no warning, couldn’t mitigate those obligations in any way, as far as Bordelon was concerned. She not only repeated her demands for “adequate housing” at every meeting with any of Medusa’s or Krietzmann’s representatives but insisted her protests against her personnel’s “mistreatment” be made part of the official record.

And yet, even Vice-Commissioner Jongbo in Madras understood,

Shadow of Freedom, Ch 35 wrote:Unfortunately, he didn’t have much to work with. He recognized the weakness of his position as well as he was certain Gold Peak did, yet the only defense he had was to make it a matter of playing public roles against one another. He couldn’t keep her from going wherever she wanted, but as long as he played his role and blustered strongly enough, he might at least slow her down. And he could always hope she’d be worried enough about setting precedents to hesitate about resorting to more rigorous techniques. After all, eventually somebody on the Manties’ side was going to find himself in an analogous position. Hopefully Gold Peak would hesitate to give someone on the Solarian side an excuse for starting right out pulling fingernails and toenails.

Unfortunately, only a complete imbecile would think for one moment that the Solarian League was going to worry about precedents set by Manticore, and Gold Peak was no imbecile. Hongbo was glumly aware that Solarian arrogance—and especially that of Frontier Security and the Gendarmerie—was going to be sublimely confident it could do whatever it wanted without worrying about reprisals, and he never doubted the Manticoran admiral across the desk from him knew that as well as he did.

Between those two little quotes, let's also examine one critical term... "prisoner of war". As we know, Tsang and by extension the Mandarins, don't even have a declaration of war. So both Crandall's attacks, and Filareta's Raging Justice were, essentially pirate attacks writ large, and that's in the books too. The POW label is a courtesy that Manticore has chosen to extend, but is under zero obligation and everyone inside and out of the League understands that. But Manticore doesn't have to follow every rule of the Deneb Accords (which are presumably very similar to the Geneva Convention's Rules of War)



Manticore dropping POW's on Sphinx or Gryphon is slightly eyebrow raising, but it's certainly not the brutality we saw out of StateSec, and can expect from OFS/Gendarmes. If the Sollies are going to complain on Split where they were essentially put on tropical paradise; with hurricane season months away, they're going to absolutely HOWL bloody murder no matter where you put them.

Since they'll complain no matter where you imprison them, may as well just drop them on Gryphon. Higher than Terra gravity, energetic weather, and no local hexapuma's to keep from munching the prisoners. Sphinx just has too many threats, from peak bears & hexapuma's, and we also know they have snakes with legs but do not know whether those are poisonous snakes. Too many animal threats on Sphinx, and while it might be possible to convince some treecats to "watch over" prisoners, it's inefficient compared to a similar prisoner camp on Gryphon would be, despite the weather.

Somtaaw wrote:Between those two little quotes, let's also examine one critical term... "prisoner of war". As we know, Tsang and by extension the Mandarins, don't even have a declaration of war. So both Crandall's attacks, and Filareta's Raging Justice were, essentially pirate attacks writ large, and that's in the books too. The POW label is a courtesy that Manticore has chosen to extend, but is under zero obligation and everyone inside and out of the League understands that. But Manticore doesn't have to follow every rule of the Deneb Accords (which are presumably very similar to the Geneva Convention's Rules of War)



Manticore dropping POW's on Sphinx or Gryphon is slightly eyebrow raising, but it's certainly not the brutality we saw out of StateSec, and can expect from OFS/Gendarmes. If the Sollies are going to complain on Split where they were essentially put on tropical paradise; with hurricane season months away, they're going to absolutely HOWL bloody murder no matter where you put them.

Since they'll complain no matter where you imprison them, may as well just drop them on Gryphon. Higher than Terra gravity, energetic weather, and no local hexapuma's to keep from munching the prisoners. Sphinx just has too many threats, from peak bears & hexapuma's, and we also know they have snakes with legs but do not know whether those are poisonous snakes. Too many animal threats on Sphinx, and while it might be possible to convince some treecats to "watch over" prisoners, it's inefficient compared to a similar prisoner camp on Gryphon would be, despite the weather.

I will agree with you and add a blunt comment, while you may not need (or be able) to follow the treaties for treatment of POWs to the letter, deliberate mistreatment of POWs is a path you do not want to start down. I.E. putting them on Gryphon in tents and then expecting them to build their own barracks, is rough, but arguably acceptable. Putting them through what happened on Cerberus would be several steps too far.

If Manticore pisses off Beowulf they are toast.

Beowulf is currently the ONLY place that can build all the core technologies of the RMN. And they have the plans for them.