Last use for SL SD captured

saber964 wrote:Everyone is overlooking one important thing regarding SLN POW's. The biggest is all the former POW camps for RHN POW's, they didn't exactly bulldoze them into the ground. Knowing that the SLN was on the way. Remember the timeline.

Late May, president Pritchard shows up wanting a peace/military treaty with QEIII/SEM.
SEM parliament ratifies followed by RH congress.
RHN POW's released probably took place shortly after SEM parliament ratified treaty in early June.

Castenea wrote:

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.

Somtaaw wrote:You want POW camps to be small enough populations that small groups can't fade into the background, planning a breakout, but large enough you have efficient guard:prisoner ratios.

Weird Harold wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:You want POW camps to be small enough populations that small groups can't fade into the background, planning a breakout, but large enough you have efficient guard:prisoner ratios.

That would be the main advantage of using the Sphinx Outback -- Treecat Guards.

Treecats aren't mind-readers, but hiding the possibility of escape from Empaths would be orders of magnitude harder than hiding a tunnel complex from Sgt Shultz.

George J. Smith wrote:You would have to rotate the 'cat guards quite frequently, the constitutional arrogance of SL spacers and their resentment at being prisoners would batter the minds of the 'cats.

Somtaaw wrote:

saber964 wrote:Everyone is overlooking one important thing regarding SLN POW's. The biggest is all the former POW camps for RHN POW's, they didn't exactly bulldoze them into the ground. Knowing that the SLN was on the way. Remember the timeline.

Late May, president Pritchard shows up wanting a peace/military treaty with QEIII/SEM.
SEM parliament ratifies followed by RH congress.
RHN POW's released probably took place shortly after SEM parliament ratified treaty in early June.

The problem with that is still that the total Havenite prisoners is utterly dwarfed by the survivors of Raging Justice, and eventually future prisoners when the SLN tries to do commerce raiding.

Unless they over-populated the camps, which is A Bad Idea. You want POW camps to be small enough populations that small groups can't fade into the background, planning a breakout, but large enough you have efficient guard:prisoner ratios. I believe the Havenite camp Henke temporarily stayed at would only have been about 200-300 range, on an island, which sounds pretty good.

The prisoner camps on Cerberus/Hell were also generally in the low couple hundred range, not on islands, but with the inedible flora & fauna you could put more camps into a given area than you could with say Manticore, Sphinx, Gryphon or Haven.

Edit: :Oops:, after looking in IEH/EoH for a passage I remember Honor even grudingly admitting the prison system on Hell was good, it was just how StateSec acted that made it bad, it appears I underestimated camp numbers. 2500 prisoners per camp, not my above guesstimate. Still vastly lower than dropping a quarter million prisoners into one camp.

saber964 wrote:True on the number of SLN versus RHN POW, but they have enough for about 1/3 of the SLN POW. WIA Go down first followed by most of the senior officers and enlisted and use the SD's as temporary prison hulls until New POW camps can be built

George J. Smith wrote:How much work would be required to turn the SDs into prison hulls?

The space age version of

Spiking the guns
Disabling the rudders
Removing the main sails
Remove the cutters

In other words a lot of work, but the 2nd best use of the SDs, (the 1st being for target practice and boarding party training)

The E wrote:

George J. Smith wrote:How much work would be required to turn the SDs into prison hulls?

The space age version of

Spiking the guns
Disabling the rudders
Removing the main sails
Remove the cutters

In other words a lot of work, but the 2nd best use of the SDs, (the 1st being for target practice and boarding party training)

More than would be required to shuttle the crews to a suitably remote location on a nearby habitable planet.