Battle of Sigma Draconis predictions/speculations

ldwechsler wrote:
I am not certain any more that there will be an attack on Beowulf. While it sounds interesting, Kingsford is not the moron that Rajanpat was.

He has to know that it will cost heavily. If the ships do get through somehow and wind up causing an Eridani Edict violation, the leaders of the fleet there could wind up on trial by the Grand Alliance and hanged. The top leadership of the League could be tried in absentia as part of that.

What we saw in the snippets is an attack on a nearby unaligned planet. Far safer. If you want a raider policy which deals with small numbers of ships at a time, you will not want a major battle which will probably cost a lot of ships.

Keep in mind that mandarins could not afford another battle where their navy was on the offense and got smashed. And if Beowulf is that target of an EE violation, that would make things far nastier.

Sending several large task forces to home worlds and destroying all space infrastructure would be a reasonable answer.

Theemile wrote:David snerked awhile back that there will be an SLN assault on Beowulf - and 10 million civilian causalities. Beyond that it is all speculation.

The assumption is the attack comes before the publicite, as the SLN leadership discussed in one of the last books, but in reality we don't know. Many are also assuming that the MAlign will attempt to make the most of the assault, causing the civilian deaths David mentioned in some way or form. But once again, conjecture.

Silverwall wrote:Not to impugn the chaser of Celery but I would not put it past him to basically be doing a hollywood trailer here and mashing two seperate events together to look dramatic. Did he explicitly state that the casualties were taken at the same time as the assault of just that there would be one and that somthing would cause millions of civilian casualties? My memory of the comment was that he was careful not to explicitly connect the two events.

IIRC, though it is a dubious assumption, It was a plot point like Honor dying in one book then getting a reprieve, it seems to me he said it was the plan but the "reality of the story" rendered it a dead end and he tossed it.

pappilon wrote:

ldwechsler wrote:
I am not certain any more that there will be an attack on Beowulf. While it sounds interesting, Kingsford is not the moron that Rajanpat was.

He has to know that it will cost heavily. If the ships do get through somehow and wind up causing an Eridani Edict violation, the leaders of the fleet there could wind up on trial by the Grand Alliance and hanged. The top leadership of the League could be tried in absentia as part of that.

What we saw in the snippets is an attack on a nearby unaligned planet. Far safer. If you want a raider policy which deals with small numbers of ships at a time, you will not want a major battle which will probably cost a lot of ships.

Keep in mind that mandarins could not afford another battle where their navy was on the offense and got smashed. And if Beowulf is that target of an EE violation, that would make things far nastier.

Sending several large task forces to home worlds and destroying all space infrastructure would be a reasonable answer.

Theemile wrote:David snerked awhile back that there will be an SLN assault on Beowulf - and 10 million civilian causalities. Beyond that it is all speculation.

The assumption is the attack comes before the publicite, as the SLN leadership discussed in one of the last books, but in reality we don't know. Many are also assuming that the MAlign will attempt to make the most of the assault, causing the civilian deaths David mentioned in some way or form. But once again, conjecture.

Silverwall wrote:Not to impugn the chaser of Celery but I would not put it past him to basically be doing a hollywood trailer here and mashing two seperate events together to look dramatic. Did he explicitly state that the casualties were taken at the same time as the assault of just that there would be one and that somthing would cause millions of civilian casualties? My memory of the comment was that he was careful not to explicitly connect the two events.

IIRC, though it is a dubious assumption, It was a plot point like Honor dying in one book then getting a reprieve, it seems to me he said it was the plan but the "reality of the story" rendered it a dead end and he tossed it.

You know, there may be a way you could have my scenario AND David's foreshadowed 10 million civilian casualties. If you destroy over 100 SDs that were charging towards the planet, where does the wreckage go? If there's so much of it, maybe tugs and point defence lasers in orbit can't disintegrate it all in time. Without accel, it may miss the planet; but if it hits a space station you could get a repeat of what happened to that space station above Sphinx during the Yawata Strike. Although the stations would have warning so they could probably rais their "sidewall bubbles"...

Theemile wrote:David snerked awhile back that there will be an SLN assault on Beowulf - and 10 million civilian causalities. Beyond that it is all speculation.

The assumption is the attack comes before the publicite, as the SLN leadership discussed in one of the last books, but in reality we don't know. Many are also assuming that the MAlign will attempt to make the most of the assault, causing the civilian deaths David mentioned in some way or form. But once again, conjecture.

pappilon wrote: IIRC, though it is a dubious assumption, It was a plot point like Honor dying in one book then getting a reprieve, it seems to me he said it was the plan but the "reality of the story" rendered it a dead end and he tossed it.

Atticus of Amber wrote:You know, there may be a way you could have my scenario AND David's foreshadowed 10 million civilian casualties. If you destroy over 100 SDs that were charging towards the planet, where does the wreckage go? If there's so much of it, maybe tugs and point defence lasers in orbit can't disintegrate it all in time. Without accel, it may miss the planet; but if it hits a space station you could get a repeat of what happened to that space station above Sphinx during the Yawata Strike. Although the stations would have warning so they could probably raise their "sidewall bubbles"...

There is always that. 25 years of posts, podcasts etc to plow through to find one bit of data. I suppose it will be settled in a year one way or the other. Happy waiting!

So with the Manty fleet a few jumps away, the only way that the SLN could really attack Sigma Draconis without committing more mass suicide is to pop over the hyperlimit and fire missiles at extreme range with a nice long ballistic component. Anything else would be suicide.

Now you might say that's sure to cause civilian megadeath, but I say you don't get to backstop your military production facilities with civilians and then whine about it when someone decides to blow your military facilities into scrap. Even the Neo-barbs over on Grayson knew that much.

That said, attacking Sigma Draconis before the plebiscite? Why would the Solarian League do that? In fact, there is an actual war on now. The SLN can place their SDF under Solarian command. (Or at least have a slightly better excuse.) Now you say Beowulf would refuse? Really? Point out to them exactly how you would need to attack them. And how you have a hundred thousand DDM pods to do exactly that sitting over in hyperspace. Send a diplomat in person who believes it too.

Then you insert your marines and people aboard the SDF ships stations and the like. If you managed to pull this off without alerting Manty intelligence, you send the Manties trapped missiles. "Oops".

Assuming the Manties don't fall for your tricks, you kick Manticore off the Terminus. Obviously Manticore could try and resist, but then they kill the Beowulf SDF people. Which as far as your concerned is an epic win since now Beowulf should pretty much hate Manticore.

Now you either delay the plebiscite with an excuse ("Hey your government is supporting terrorists! We're gonna want non-crooks to organize this.") or just ignore it, ("So we control the orbitals. We're occupying Beowulf until this war thing is over."). Possibly kick them from the League before the plebiscite and occupy them. ("So yeah, these guys are def traitors. Let's kick them and occupy until the war is done.")

Eventually Manticore is going to come over to liberate Beowulf. Especially if you start winding up to execute Honor's family members. Use Beowulf to backstop your forces and fortifications. In fact, you'll want to be close enough to the planet that if a ship goes down it hits the planet's surface. The goal is to get Manticore to kill as many Beowulfian civilians as possible.

Obviously Beowulf might not go along with your antics. In which case you fire missiles from outside the hyperlimit and wreck as much of Beowulf's industry as you can. You won't be trying to hit the planet, but accidents might happen. Hell, Oyster Bay didn't even touch the planet and millions of deaths still happened! You might try a hyper ambush of any Manticorian rescue fleet. Those missile pods will be a lot less important in energy range.

Obviously, even if Beowulf goes along with everything they'll probably hate you by the end of it, but as long as you can get them to hate Manticore too, Beowulf will be out of the war.

Unfortunately, the SLN seems to always find the worst possible option, so I suspect they'll do something like try flying through the star for a sneak attack.

There is no evidence at all to connect the 10 million casualties with the Solly attack. I personally suspect that what we are looking at is a bio/chemical attack on Beowulf by the Alignment, perhaps using the Lenny Dets.

We might not see that until sometime into the next story arc.

Don

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n7axw wrote:There is no evidence at all to connect the 10 million casualties with the Solly attack. I personally suspect that what we are looking at is a bio/chemical attack on Beowulf by the Alignment, perhaps using the Lenny Dets.

We might not see that until sometime into the next story arc.

Don

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We have no evidence that there IS a Solly attack. RFC has changed a real lot of things over the years. Right now, a major attack would be a strange strategic move.

And I really doubt that the MAlign would be directly involved. True, it would be a clever move. However... it would really get a lot of people riled up and have far more interest in searching for the perps.

ldwechsler wrote:

n7axw wrote:There is no evidence at all to connect the 10 million casualties with the Solly attack. I personally suspect that what we are looking at is a bio/chemical attack on Beowulf by the Alignment, perhaps using the Lenny Dets.

We might not see that until sometime into the next story arc.

Don

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We have no evidence that there IS a Solly attack. RFC has changed a real lot of things over the years. Right now, a major attack would be a strange strategic move.

And I really doubt that the MAlign would be directly involved. True, it would be a clever move. However... it would really get a lot of people riled up and have far more interest in searching for the perps.

Quite correct, the attack on Beowulf may have evolved into the proposed attack on <SNERK>. And if you don't know about the proposed attack on <SNERK>, I propose you read the snippets and David's comments on them.

You do have evidence of a Solly attack on Beowulf being planned at the end of ART. What we don't know is how that was carried out or even if it was carried out. But it is not unreasonable to assume that it did or to speculate on the outcome.

I have been trying to remember where my impression of things comes from sinse my previous post. I rather vaguely remember David discussing this in a podcast a year or so ago although I wouldn't want to bet the rent on that...

Don

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quite possibly a cat wrote:So with the Manty fleet a few jumps away, the only way that the SLN could really attack Sigma Draconis without committing more mass suicide is to pop over the hyperlimit and fire missiles at extreme range with a nice long ballistic component. Anything else would be suicide.

Now you might say that's sure to cause civilian megadeath, but I say you don't get to backstop your military production facilities with civilians and then whine about it when someone decides to blow your military facilities into scrap. Even the Neo-barbs over on Grayson knew that much.

Nobody's backstopping their production facilities with civilians. It's just the production facilities aren't that far away from the planet and striking them risks plowing a missile into the planet. (Many books ago when Ghost Rider was new I did some math on this, trying to figure out what it would take to make a missile that was safe to use near planets--and I don't think it can be done due to a lack of a reliable way of detecting planets in time. Missiles are meant to operate in a heavy EW environment and the defenders will be trying to blind them. A blinded missile attacking something near a planet has no hope of detecting the planet. The only non-jammable sensor I can come up with is a tide detector--and I can see no way to make it accurate enough. You have the nasty problem that tides drop off at the third power of distance rather than the second and to get a bearing on the planet you need two detectors on opposite sides of the missile. Your bearing is based on the difference in range between the two--a small fraction of an inch. Even if you could measure it is it really the planet, or is it being confused by something nearby, say another missile? It's the same problem as with astrology--nearby objects exert a far greater tidal force on you than the other planets do.)

n7axw wrote:You do have evidence of a Solly attack on Beowulf being planned at the end of ART.

A Rising Thunder
(The very last scene) wrote: “You mean Kingsford and Bernard are thinking in terms of pouncing on Beowulf—coming straight in across the hyper limit and going flat out for the planet—before any Manty forces at the terminus can intervene?”

“I think that’s about the only thing they could be thinking of,” al-Fanudahi said. “I don’t know if it would work, but assuming Beowulf hasn’t been completely surrounded by new and nasty missile pods, a big enough force of superdreadnoughts, especially with enough of the new Technodyne missile pods, probably could fight its way in through the BSDF and the fixed defenses. And once they controlled the planetary orbitals, they’d be justified under interstellar law in demanding the system’s surrender.”

“And exactly where in this fascinating analysis of yours do the Manty superdreadnoughts come in?” Teague inquired politely. “You know, the ones over at the terminus? The ones who are going to come right back over to Beowulf and kick our sorry asses out of the star system?”

“Oh, those superdreadnoughts?” Al-Fanudahi smiled crookedly at her. “Well, I suppose the idea would be that once the system government surrendered to us, we’d announce special emergency elections—called at the insistence of the Beowulfan public, of course—in light of the existing Board of Directors’ high-handed and probably treasonous actions. And no doubt that new, legitimate system government would denounce the previous system government’s decision to even consider seceding from the Solarian League. Obviously, it would be incumbent upon us to recognize the new, legitimate—I did mention that it would be legitimate, didn’t I?—system government’s position. And, equally obviously, Manticore would be on very thin ice when it came to denying the legitimacy of that new system government, given their desire to avoid the puppet-master image. So the logic, I imagine, is that since what Manticore really needs is control of the Beowulf Terminus, the Manties would recognize a fait accompli when they saw it and let us have the Beowulf System back.”

“And if the Manties don’t roll over that way?”

“In that case, I would imagine, our fleet commander negotiates a withdrawal from the star system. Probably on the grounds that the orders which sent him there in the first place had misread the true sentiments of the Beowulfers. Now that he’s had the opportunity to observe firsthand that the decision to secede enjoys genuine popular support, of course he’s prepared to acknowledge that and retire from the lists. Of course, if Manticore is so unreasonable as to deny a negotiated, peaceful withdrawal with no further combat, our commander can’t be held responsible for any collateral damage that might befall the system infrastructure—and population, unfortunately—in the course of an unprovoked Manticoran attack upon his peaceably departing forces.”

(bold mine)

n7axw wrote:What we don't know is how that was carried out or even if it was carried out. But it is not unreasonable to assume that it did or to speculate on the outcome.

That scene is about a impending request for an intelligence assessment and speculation about just what might be planned. We don't actually know that the attack was planned or scrubbed in favor of the "commerce raiding" depicted in the snippets.

Given the rumor of 10 million civilian deaths, I would guess that the speculation in the texev above is pretty close to the actual plan -- especially the bit about "peacefully departing forces."