Should the MAN attack if they knew the location of Bolthole?

Of course, the MAN could always elect to target Beowulf's infrastructure first, then target Bolthole. It isn't like a Case Zulu would be issued for Bolthole. There would absolutely be no need to suspect an imminent invasion of Bolthole.

Destroying Beowulf's infrastructure, weapons, ships and slips and then dealing with Bolthole is what's called a Royal Flush. Ace high. And as the MAN departs...

"Now make bricks without straw, bitches!"

Oh yeah, quite the devastating hit....


... except that it leaves the majority of havenite ship- and weaponbuilding capacity intact.

Originally, Oyster Bay was supposed to hit all of Manticore, Grayson and Haven yards more or less simultaneously. Possibly the Andermani and the Erewhonese as well.

If the Alignment still attempts that, it would be a no-brainer to include Bolthole(if they find out where it is). It'd just be one more target on a list of dozens.

munroburton wrote:Originally, Oyster Bay was supposed to hit all of Manticore, Grayson and Haven yards more or less simultaneously. Possibly the Andermani and the Erewhonese as well.

If the Alignment still attempts that, it would be a no-brainer to include Bolthole(if they find out where it is). It'd just be one more target on a list of dozens.

But they didn't. No one has mentioned it and I can't imagine not doing it during the negotiations. Once Haven and Manticore were allied, something would have been said.

Now that there actually is war I think the Mesalliance will not be that direct. They WANT the Solarian League to collapse. They got the war they wanted.

They are more likely to use the Spiders, etc., to cause mischief. Do a few atrocities, etc., to create chaos. That way the planets involved can go about their business without that much notice from anyone.

But they didn't. No one has mentioned it and I can't imagine not doing it during the negotiations. Once Haven and Manticore were allied, something would have been said.

Now that there actually is war I think the Mesalliance will not be that direct. They WANT the Solarian League to collapse. They got the war they wanted.

They are more likely to use the Spiders, etc., to cause mischief. Do a few atrocities, etc., to create chaos. That way the planets involved can go about their business without that much notice from anyone.[/quote]



Another point. Haven was really good at keeping Bolthole secret. Manticore kept trying to figure out where it was and got nowhere. There were not that many Solarians who were under Mesalliance control. It is likely they didn't know the location.

And since they didn't attack, there really should not be a debate...

We have had a lot of conversation about Manticore looking to improve the defences of the new stations. That seems to include keeing up shields all the time despite the cost in ware and complicating the access to the stations for people, supplies, ships.

Why wouldn't the same things be put into place at Beowulf, Bolthole and as many of the other Haven facilities as fast as they can? Same for the Aldermani and Erwhon.

The opportunity to kill a signifcant portion of Haven's top R&D plus much of the remaining Manticore R&D would be a very tempting target. Hitting Beowulf has the same effect except that it is more in the range of all that Manticore tech manufacturing that will continue to build the GA's strength and ability to detect and fight off other attacks.

A question is wether the Malignment can mount another attack so soon without the targeting data it needs. Or does the Malignment have several new and different weapons systems that will be just as effective as what was used in Oyster Bay that we haven't been shown yet............

Is my memory faulty in thinking that Benjamin Detweiler, who was head of the Alignment military, was opposed to staging any operations at all using the Sharks and wanted to wait until the Leonard Detweiler class spider ships were available. He was overruled by his clone-father Albrecht who believed that the timing was perfect to speed up the Alignment plans. Since while Oyster Bay worked, the timing was off (missed a whole yardful of ships that had been built quicker than he thought and were already being worked up, caused both Haven and Beowulf to ally openly with Manticore much earlier than they were meant to, aided by the return of Cachat and Zilwicki with news of the Alignment's existence and Simoes knowledge that the spider drive exists), is Benjamin likely to continue to oppose further Shark operations?

kzt wrote:Bolthole is a very hard target because you know nothing. You don't know where things are, you don't know what is going on, you don't even have orbital data. Are you going to send your entire strike force on a >4 month long trip based on what?

So do you send a probe in first to see what the heck is going on, or do you roll in everyone and see if you can just obliterate them, but take the risk that there is nothing there worth the firepower deployed and weapons expended?

However, that isn't true for Beowulf. You know exactly where every rock is in the system. You have agents in the system and the the overall internal security posture has traditionally been sleepy, shading into bored. So you know where the military plants are, you know where the critical defensive nodes are, you pretty much know everything about Beowulf. (They didn't spot a entire team of well-known manpower operatives carrying out a kidnapping and extortion operation, and the manpower guys had no real fear they they would.) So yeah, I think dumping 6MT of graser torps from a freighter transiting could yield quite spectacular results in a month or so.

At the current point in the story, it's basically impossible. The Sollies have outdated tech. They'll just get shattered. The Mesalliance might try something with the Spider drives but we already known that the Manties have learned some things about it and probably learned more from Simoes. He might have work on the streak drive but he would probably have learned some elements. I
think at this point, the Detweilers will be keeping their heads down.

Let the League sink and work on the tech before doing anything at all. Wait a generation or two and you won't have all the expert leaders in the Grand Alliance as you work your way through the League, picking up members.

Andy33 wrote:Is my memory faulty in thinking that Benjamin Detweiler, who was head of the Alignment military, was opposed to staging any operations at all using the Sharks and wanted to wait until the Leonard Detweiler class spider ships were available. He was overruled by his clone-father Albrecht who believed that the timing was perfect to speed up the Alignment plans. Since while Oyster Bay worked, the timing was off (missed a whole yardful of ships that had been built quicker than he thought and were already being worked up, caused both Haven and Beowulf to ally openly with Manticore much earlier than they were meant to, aided by the return of Cachat and Zilwicki with news of the Alignment's existence and Simoes knowledge that the spider drive exists), is Benjamin likely to continue to oppose further Shark operations?

No you are correct, He (and his brothers) were afraid of "Buck Fever". pretty much the entire MAN was devoted to the Manty/Grayson strikes, and those were determined to be barely sufficient for the job. Fortunately for them, everything went right, no one was caught or killed, and the strike worked.

But now the enemy is alerted.

The current force's crews are more important as Cadre for the force being built than they are as an actual force right now. The Sharks are NOT the correct tools to wage a war - they were subscale proof-of-concept demonstrators, built in bulk to test naval theory, but they are overly vulnerable to real world results. They were pushed into battle only because the Detweilers are several years from completion, and Manticore required a being brought down a peg for "the plan" to work.

Using the Sharks again , against an alerted enemy will run the high risk on one being destroyed/captured. Destroyed means that the mission failed, and the valuable crew and their skills have been lost. Captured means the same, and the technology is in enemy hands - as well as proof that the "Phantom Menace" exists.

Every mission will push their luck, and since the Malign, and it's ships, are not ready. That luck needs to be conserved.

That brings us to the question of what the current plan is for use of the LD's and whatever the Alignment is building. Going after Haven, Manticore and probably now the Aldermani, Erwhon and Grayson (not sure if they have Maya in their sights yet).
We presume one of the thing the LD's are for has something to do with opening oppertunities or at least cutting down opposition to the RF once is activly starts to coalesce. But we don't know and can't be sure till something spills out.

Using the LD's along with the Ghosts (or their next generation) to target military targets withing the SL is a possibility but that might have to be nicely timed to elimitate the best of the SLN in a winnowing engagement and cripple at least League Worlds inf not just Core Systems' ability to produce more viable warships. The largest problem with that is it is probably going to convince the SLN and a lot of League members that the Alignment threat does exist though at that point they may not be able to do anything about it.