Brigade XO wrote:The US subs in the Pacific both killed a lot of Japanese ships and crews and troops. It crippled the import of all goods to Japan and movement of men and equipment out from in and between staging areas and destinations. It also forced Japan to divert warships to run as escorts for the tankers, freighters and troopships as well as for larger warships. The subs, given they were on Earth, could sometimes report enemy movements if the appeared critical or were tasked with recon missions or landing & recovering raiders to various enemy bases such as radio listening posts and communications relays.
Its really tough to send out warships when you aren't getting enough oil to meet projected operational needs and industrial production of war materials.
Kingsford has to make a number of difficult choices in what he tells the people doing the commerce raiding how to conduct the campaign. He already has the idea that the SLN is likely to loose in any one-to-one engagement of equal sized ships and the SEM/RHN is consistantly performing well above their nominal class designations. So he is going to face a decision of at least pairing ships in the raiding because sooner or later they are going to run into a GA ship patroling or on convoy duty.
IF a warship attacks or forces to surrender a merchant just inside or outside the hyperlimit of a system it is possible that if the crew is allowed to abandon ship they can head in-system expecting some sort of assistence from whaterve inter system ships are there. Or there may not be anything that can actualy be of help even if it has the legs to go out to meet the surivors. If the merchant is it away from an inhabited system (like the Peeps were doing in Silesia) then the odds of survival are low because they have to depend on some other passing ship to notice them and stop.
Going along with that, there is an actual war going on and SLN warships really are fair game anywhere even if the GA isn't currently going into SL space. The areas out on the Verge where OFS is working their protection rackets is another matter. Most of these inhabited systema are nomininaly independent thought they may just be OFS puppets or satraps of various Interstellars. The GA can go looking for SLN warships there and be covered by exactly the same fig leaf FF and OFS is using. This is NOT SL space, we are just looking to protect the commerce of the local systems. That the GA is not killing or capturing freighter and the SLN is will become abundently clear to anybody who bothers to pay attention and it will still end up with the GA running essentialy anti-piracy sweeps while the SLN is waging ecomomic warfare against almost everybody else. Not a really good way to try and paint yourself as holding the moral high ground.
That the SLN is going to have to usually use ambush tactics to do much damage to GA forces is going to lead them to try and swarm GA ships when they can't do small ambushes. They are still going to come off with an abysmal loss ration in combat with GA warships.
I would suspect that shortly after there is eveidence of the commerce raiding, the GA is going to send strike forces in on known or suspected SLN (mostly FF) logistics nodes and Sector Governers locations and just blow the crap out of any SLN assets in systems. They may leave the orbital stations and industrial facilities but every SLN ship is going to be destoryed and, quite possibly the surviving OFS/SLN senior officer will be told that they are just going to have to handle their own rescue and recovery of surviving SLN staff becaus the GA force has other pirate nests to go clear out. Your in a system you hold and have been raiding merchant shipping....If you don't like having to pick up your own people in a system you are still alive in, just say so and will will pick them up and hold them for trial on suspision of piracy. Your choice.
Granted, that would be fairly heavy handed without evidence in their pockets that it was a ship or ships based her or using it for resuppy that have been doing the raiding, but could be dam effective. Want to fight a GA warship, bring it on. Want to be all brave and courageous to go out and murder non-combatant merchants, you can have the penalties that go with the crimes. The SLN spacer will even get fair trials under existing SL law....really big smile.
Someone has already mentioned that the problem with commerce raiding in the 'Verse is that it has no direct chance of forcing a dénouement, other than the loss of lives -- unless the raiding party(ies) is successful in targeting convoys of advanced tech. Which the GA will not leave lightly escorted. It does have the effect of spreading an enemy's naval strength, but in the RMNs case it wouldn't matter -- if the GA are the raiders. In fact, if
Eighth Fleet raids League space, they'd want a concentrated SLN force to facilitate killing as many warbirds with one launch.
I don't see the SLN picking up lifepods full of barbarians. That is a possibility that needs considering. Remember, there was a time when the Peeps could not be counted on to pick up pods.
I suppose the only chance of that would be the relatively few pods the Peeps would want to take home as prizes for propaganda. If the League forces pods from a ship -- considering the logistic limitations of a successful SLN raiding strategy -- it is highly likely those pods will have little chance of survival -- being so far away from civilization. By pod standards.
It wouldn't surprise me if there are a few SLN ships who target the pods with grasers. Barbarians aren't people. They're targets. And many SLN officers loathe Manticorans and it is highly likely they have friends who have been granted lifetime tickets to Valhalla at the hand of Manticoran missiles.
