I predict that the Solarian League will survive.

Minor nit: Haven had a great many more planets than twenty. At the beginning of the war, during Manticore's first thrusts against Haven, they took 24 systems away from Haven, yet Haven still retained loads of defensive depth.

We don't have the precise number of planets that make up the RoH at the beginning of the war but we know it was much higher than 20. I'd guess closer to 300 systems at the beginning of the war. I'm sure we'll find out more when House of Lies comes out.

There's a pearl that talks about the stability of Haven after the restoration of the republic: http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... ngton/49/0

I don't know about making food from carbon basis, but they can surely build enough hydroponics to support themselves if they dedicate enough infrastructure to it.

It is mentioned in one of the earlier books that Haven has (I think) 15 planets which routinely ship food to it. These agrarian worlds are just large farming colonies that Haven could not do without. There are simply too many mouths to feed if the supply from the farming planets were to be cut off.

I think this is a really interesting thought and begets a series of equally interesting questions and hypothesesesses.

It seems that some semblance of the League must survive to continue to protect the Home system of Sol. Whatever will crop up out in the Verge will produce opportunistic piracy just as in any ole system. It is the nature of humanity to take from the rich... and keep.

Who will control the many SDs in League control? They remain an effective fighting force against piracy suppression and protecting Old Earth against anything else short of the big bad lioness that is the GA and they don't have to worry about the big bad lion if they just keep out of the lion's den. If the League wakes up and smell Honor's cocoa, I think they are in a very fortunate position. They have simply grown too big for their own britches and lack true governance of itself. They are at a point that they can simply fracture yet begin anew. In no time at all the core worlds of mother earth that will most probably remain intact, can begin to rebuild its political system, government, military and economy.

IOW, defeat can bring victory if they take lemons and make lemonade.

Fireflair wrote:I don't know about making food from carbon basis, but they can surely build enough hydroponics to support themselves if they dedicate enough infrastructure to it.

It is mentioned in one of the earlier books that Haven has (I think) 15 planets which routinely ship food to it. These agrarian worlds are just large farming colonies that Haven could not do without. There are simply too many mouths to feed if the supply from the farming planets were to be cut off.

So it was an economic or political decision to rely on ag world's rather than domestic hydroponics or farming. Given Haven was the most affected by the Dolost system that discouraged work to give Legislaturalists secure voting blocks of graftful defendants ithat isn't that surprising.

In the long term even Haven could change that. But in the short term if cut off from their accustomed food sources there would be massive disruption and, depending on food reserves and exploitability of alternate local food sources (gathering or hunting existing wild plsnts, animals, fish) there might be some starvation until the hydroponics could be built and the first crop grown.

Of course the most likely reason for starvation in the Honorverse would be the same as it is here on earth. Someone in power takes actions that prevent food from reaching a portion of the population.

cthia wrote:Who will control the many SDs in League control? They remain an effective fighting force against piracy suppression and protecting Old Earth against anything else short of the big bad lioness that is the GA and they don't have to worry about the big bad lion if they just keep out of the lion's den.

Frontier Fleet's cruisers and destroyers are effective against pirates. Battle Fleet's SDs are not effective against anyone; everyone else who has SDs at all has better SDs and even semi-modern forts and system defensive pods will trash them. And SDs without Manty compensators are much too slow to chase down pirates.

drothgery wrote:

cthia wrote:Who will control the many SDs in League control? They remain an effective fighting force against piracy suppression and protecting Old Earth against anything else short of the big bad lioness that is the GA and they don't have to worry about the big bad lion if they just keep out of the lion's den.

Frontier Fleet's cruisers and destroyers are effective against pirates. Battle Fleet's SDs are not effective against anyone; everyone else who has SDs at all has better SDs and even semi-modern forts and system defensive pods will trash them. And SDs without Manty compensators are much too slow to chase down pirates.

Pirates don't have SDs. So Battle Fleet SDs will do just fine in protecting convoys. You don't need to chase pirates down. They have to come to you and get through you if you are protecting convoys or systems.

cthia wrote:

drothgery wrote:Frontier Fleet's cruisers and destroyers are effective against pirates. Battle Fleet's SDs are not effective against anyone; everyone else who has SDs at all has better SDs and even semi-modern forts and system defensive pods will trash them. And SDs without Manty compensators are much too slow to chase down pirates.

Pirates don't have SDs. So Battle Fleet SDs will do just fine in protecting convoys. You don't need to chase pirates down. They have to come to you and get through you if you are protecting convoys or systems.

Convoys are largely unnecessary in the Honorverse and SD are massively inefficient ways to protect them. You're much better off with a trio of CA or even CLs that cost far less to aquire, run, take far fewer crew, than a single SD but can be multiple places around a convoy to detect and deter pirates or commerce raiders.

You really only need convoys when the systems you're visiting are unable to secure their own space. Anomalously Silesia happened to be prosperous enough to be worth trading with while simultaneous, for political reasons, refusing to take the steps necessary to secure the space for (mostly other people's) shipping. Manticore sometimes resorted to convoys (though more often to simply trolling for pirates by having warships pretending to be loan merchants) there because they weren't allowed to secure the systems.
The other place we saw it was military supplies being convoyed to systems near the front lines - where often the convoy escort was nearly as powerful as the picket forces covering those systems. You couldn't count on warning that a system got punched out so you needed the merchants to have close escorts to attempt to scout for and protect them in case the enemy took the system you were in transit to before you heard.

Neither of those seems likely to be widespread even in a fallen rump League. Systems initially worth trading with will almost certainly have the desire and ability to get system defenses of their own and even LACs and pods are plenty to keep almost any pirate hunting somewhere safer.

One of the major differences between hyper travel and Earth ocean travel is that without both near perfect intelligence and a larger number of ships to form a scouting line its almost impossible to detect and intercept even solo ship moving through hyper - so you don't need 'deep ocean' escorts if the port approaches are secure.

Weird Harold wrote:

PeterZ wrote:Where will the chaos happen? The Core League worlds can survive the economic chaos. The political chaos outside the Core won't do much to prevent the world's within the Core from regaining their balance.

The problem in the Core won't be economic as much as it will be Political -- The Mandarins' and SLN's hamfisted attempt to keep Beowulf from seceding is going to cause Core worlds to worry about something similar happening to them. When the Mandarins attempt to pass direct taxation or some other direct control, secession is going to spread like wildfire; the harder the Mandarins try to stop it, the more core worlds will be driven to secede.

With GA diplomats and Renaissance Factor diplomats stirring the pot and the MAlign's sleepers stirring the pot, Secession is going to spread like rabbits in Australia.

Agreed. That is not, however, chaos at the level we will see beyond the Shell. That sort of political realignment impacts how these systems carry on with their business not whether they can do business at all.

The chaos I can see in the Core comes from Battle Fleet using their SDs to quell secession movements. Those systems will call in the GA or the GA will move to where the heaviest concentration of SDs have been reported.

Jonathan_S wrote:So it was an economic or political decision to rely on ag world's rather than domestic hydroponics or farming. Given Haven was the most affected by the Dolost system that discouraged work to give Legislaturalists secure voting blocks of graftful defendants ithat isn't that surprising.

Frankly, it make zero sense. With the ammount of energy needed to move food on transstellar distances, the same food could be just syntesized locally.

One of Honorverse's problem: they are trying desperately to mantain capitalism in universe, where the energy are so cheap that it is economically feasable to haul FOOD on interstellar distances. And where the industrial capabilites are capable to produce high-tech space warships & giant space stations in very short therms. Basically, there are zero reasons why basic goods could not just be free, at least on the such worlds as Manticore and League's Core Worlds.

The problem in the Core won't be economic as much as it will be Political -- The Mandarins' and SLN's hamfisted attempt to keep Beowulf from seceding is going to cause Core worlds to worry about something similar happening to them. When the Mandarins attempt to pass direct taxation or some other direct control, secession is going to spread like wildfire; the harder the Mandarins try to stop it, the more core worlds will be driven to secede.

With GA diplomats and Renaissance Factor diplomats stirring the pot and the MAlign's sleepers stirring the pot, Secession is going to spread like rabbits in Australia.[/quote]
Agreed. That is not, however, chaos at the level we will see beyond the Shell. That sort of political realignment impacts how these systems carry on with their business not whether they can do business at all.

The chaos I can see in the Core comes from Battle Fleet using their SDs to quell secession movements. Those systems will call in the GA or the GA will move to where the heaviest concentration of SDs have been reported.[/quote]

I don't think there will be widespread rebellion in the Core at all. They seem fairly content. That is why I think the Sollies will survive. Yes, they will be far smaller but there will be at least a pretense of normalcy.

A lot of corporations, which seem to have enormous power, will be pushing for stability. Protectorates want freedom and a lot of the planets on the Verge and Shell have a lot of complex controls on them they will resent.

Deep down there is not much Sollie government. Taxes come from trade. Intra-planet production (that done on individual planets) does not even count. Chances are that most full members have a limited Sollie presence.

There will be no problem in tolerating what probably is not very much more than an embassy no matter what it is called.

The Mandarins will be heavily focused on making peace, getting stability. Destroying core worlds won't win friends. Keep in mind also that the last thing they really want is raids against the strongest planets by the Grand Alliance. Destroying space stations there would have a really bad effect.

ldwechsler wrote:I don't think there will be widespread rebellion in the Core at all. They seem fairly content. That is why I think the Sollies will survive. Yes, they will be far smaller but there will be at least a pretense of normalcy.

If the Mandarins were rational and there weren't already "stress lines and fractures" between core worlds, You might be right. The problem is that the Mandarins are NOT rational and textev states that the League is already falling apart; war with the GA is only going to accelerate a break-up that textev says is pretty much inevitable.

The GA could screw up and do something that would cause the League to pull together (temporarily) against an outside threat, but after the Mandarins'/SLN response to Beowulf's secession vote, Core worlds are going to see staying in the League as a worse option than seceding and declaring neutrality (or joining the GA, RF, or some other mutual defense Org.)

ldwechsler wrote:The Mandarins will be heavily focused on making peace, getting stability. Destroying core worlds won't win friends. Keep in mind also that the last thing they really want is raids against the strongest planets by the Grand Alliance. Destroying space stations there would have a really bad effect.

The Mandarins are out of touch with reality and too arrogant to consider "losing face" by making peace with Manticore. They are much more concerned with CYA than they are with with resolving a situation they refuse to admit is anything like as serious as is the truth.