Remaining holes in SLN intel

One of the things going on with the SL now is that it is already starting to fragment.

Look at the background we have been given, at least from when Maya is introduced. There is an OFS Governor who sees bad times comming and is doing something about it for himself and for the systems over which he has control. He's unusual amoung the OFS but he sees the SL in the 1st quivering of a mass that is tottering and going to come apart.

What is holding the League together now is the Buracracy which is in day-to-day control of the actual rules and regulations as opposed to the Assembly which ends up being all tied up and ususaly ineffective at doing things as they need too large a majority or super-majority to pass anything. Oh, the Assemby is highly political and full of people working the system but it does't pull the actual strings.
The SLN is what enforces the rules and regulations of the League. Not the "law" but the stuff churned out by the bureaucracy overseeing trade, military stuff, intra system disputes. Systems -even groups of systems in formal single polity arrangements- primarly make their own INTERNAL laws and rules, but if you want to play BETWEEN SYSTEMs you have to conform to the SL Bureaucracy "laws" which are rules and regulations governing everything they touch. And the NAVY enforces that. OFS "guards" the frontiers and, at this point, sweeps up anthing profitable or promising into Protectorate status or makes deals with others like local totalitarian governments or Transtellars (or other systems) for a share of the profit and graft.
Why arn't there more overt and open problems between systems within the SL? Because the NAVY will come pound the shit out of you.

Then we have Beowulf. They are fed up with the status quo and also see the chaos caused by what has been going on with the Mandarins--and before the Mandarins were given an enterence to the stage of the story as individuals, we had OFS and the bureaucracy as part of just one big herd of slobbering pigs managing everyting for their own benifit and paying bearly lip-service to the original ideasl of the League.

So Beowulf is going to leave. The entire Mandarin discussion shown with that idea is that the absoluitly can't afford to have that happen. If Beowulf can do it, then others can and THEY WILL. Why? Because this is not one big happy collection of SL Member Worlds and prospective member systems. There are too many systems and organizations with their own ideas and plans and desires for greater power/control looking for ways to excape the controles on them. Take note of the conversaton inside the Beowulf Delegation at the Assembly as it becomes clear that a number of their long-time tradeing partners are now looking to have them damaged or crippled (broken within the League and subjgated to the will of the Buracracy) so they can -they think- step in and take over the economic and political positions Beowulf has built.
It's the NAVY that is going to have to be the actual hammer, the jackals just want the spoils even if they know the Buracracy is going to get the major cut of what falls out.

Manticore can't deal with the League as the League but it should be able to deal with a lot of fragments. Exactly how, other than eventualy orgainzing indivudal trade relations with them, is not quite so clear. In the short term, SEM and the GA should be able to deal with the most overt of the agression amoung the fragments, at least as long as the tech advantage holds and the GA does work even-handedly with the fragments

One of the problems is that the Alignment is not going to let this go quietly and is going to ferment as much chaos and mistrust as possible. Remember, they really don't care how many people get killed, just that they ultimatly end up on top.

n7axw wrote:

kzt wrote:ONE Core world can build a military to take down the SEM. And I’m not kidding.

Yes. Given time and the willingness to make the effort. But the task would not be trivial and the core worlds are not exactly warrior cultures conditioned to the imperatives of war.
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When the former league disintegrates into warring camps they will learn. Or die. And they will remember a golden age that was destroying by this upity group of Neo-barbs who prattle about freedom and equality while bringing mass death and impoverishment to trillions. So essentially the SEM is creating it’s enemies from people who barely know of it’s existence. And they are far more numerous.

kzt wrote:

n7axw wrote:
Yes. Given time and the willingness to make the effort. But the task would not be trivial and the core worlds are not exactly warrior cultures conditioned to the imperatives of war.
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When the former league disintegrates into warring camps they will learn. Or die. And they will remember a golden age that was destroying by this upity group of Neo-barbs who prattle about freedom and equality while bringing mass death and impoverishment to trillions. So essentially the SEM is creating it’s enemies from people who barely know of it’s existence. And they are far more numerous.

More likely, some worlds will more or less be involved with the Grand Alliance, particularly those on the verge and shell.

There will be others who will just declare independence and keep up trade, etc.

Yes, there will be groups that have their own ambitions.

And there will be a core that stays loyal to a far smaller League. One problem may be that a lot of really weak planets will be part of this group hoping for protection. And they'll probably be sacrificial lambs.

kzt wrote:ONE Core world can build a military to take down the SEM. And I’m not kidding.

n7axw wrote:Yes. Given time and the willingness to make the effort. But the task would not be trivial and the core worlds are not exactly warrior cultures conditioned to the imperatives of war.

kzt wrote:When the former league disintegrates into warring camps they will learn. Or die. And they will remember a golden age that was destroying by this upity group of Neo-barbs who prattle about freedom and equality while bringing mass death and impoverishment to trillions. So essentially the SEM is creating it’s enemies from people who barely know of it’s existence. And they are far more numerous.

If the Harrington Plan works as each sector breaks off, then they would be at peace and re-engaging in interstellar trade. So there should not be warring camps, other than the SEM and those still part of the League. If the League choses to attack anyone that breaks off, then it would fall to the SEM to provide protection. We will see this first in the Verge that will soon be free from exploitation by OFS and the interstellar corporations.

kzt wrote:

Joat42 wrote:All this means that after the League has fractured there will no large military threats to the SKM from any former League systems until many decades has passed or even centuries - not counting the MAlign.

ONE Core world can build a military to take down the SEM. And I’m not kidding.

Without MDMs and Apollo, you'd need an active wall of battle far larger than the SLN reserve to take the Manticore system as of the most recent novel even if every non-RMN unit in the system skipped town. Either building that or reverse-engineering Apollo well enough to match the RMN with a fleet within an order of magnitude of size and then building merely hundreds of SD(P)s -- and training up a new corps of officer and enlisted to man the things, because you don't have them right now -- is not going to happen in any reasonable time frame.

Meanwhile unless the ghost of Baron High Ridge has regained power in the SEM, you are probably not doing this aimed at Manticore without them noticing it and reacting (heck, even if the SEM is being led by idiots, people at lower levels will still notice). And, erm, the SEM has way more resources than any single-system polity carved out from the SL Core, even a hypothetical independent Sol (the Junction, San Martin, the Talbot Quadrant, Silesia). And very powerful allies.

The basic thing is Manticore could be viewed as a tiny fish in a big pond when the League existed and the Star Kingdom was a single-system (or effectively single-system) polity. But with no League and dozens of member systems in the Star Empire, it's one of the two or three biggest fish around.

MDMs are a 5 year advantage before you face effective warships armed with them. Haven replicated them with significantly less tech than the core worlds have.

Apollo is harder, but not impossible. It’s probably 15 years at most. It’s also possible that people will go for other approaches to counter it once you get a research and manufacturing establishment bigger then the entire population of the SEM working on it.

Alas, the book was plotted out well before Brexit, or the historical example has been forgotten in this universe, because there are very different ways to make life impossible for Beowulf. The 100% trade boycott comes to mind. "dYou can leave, but then you are totally gone."

Brigade XO wrote:One of the things going on with the SL now is that it is already starting to fragment.

Look at the background we have been given, at least from when Maya is introduced. There is an OFS Governor who sees bad times comming and is doing something about it for himself and for the systems over which he has control. He's unusual amoung the OFS but he sees the SL in the 1st quivering of a mass that is tottering and going to come apart.

What is holding the League together now is the Buracracy which is in day-to-day control of the actual rules and regulations as opposed to the Assembly which ends up being all tied up and ususaly ineffective at doing things as they need too large a majority or super-majority to pass anything. Oh, the Assemby is highly political and full of people working the system but it does't pull the actual strings.
The SLN is what enforces the rules and regulations of the League. Not the "law" but the stuff churned out by the bureaucracy overseeing trade, military stuff, intra system disputes. Systems -even groups of systems in formal single polity arrangements- primarly make their own INTERNAL laws and rules, but if you want to play BETWEEN SYSTEMs you have to conform to the SL Bureaucracy "laws" which are rules and regulations governing everything they touch. And the NAVY enforces that. OFS "guards" the frontiers and, at this point, sweeps up anthing profitable or promising into Protectorate status or makes deals with others like local totalitarian governments or Transtellars (or other systems) for a share of the profit and graft.
Why arn't there more overt and open problems between systems within the SL? Because the NAVY will come pound the shit out of you.

Then we have Beowulf. They are fed up with the status quo and also see the chaos caused by what has been going on with the Mandarins--and before the Mandarins were given an enterence to the stage of the story as individuals, we had OFS and the bureaucracy as part of just one big herd of slobbering pigs managing everyting for their own benifit and paying bearly lip-service to the original ideasl of the League.

So Beowulf is going to leave. The entire Mandarin discussion shown with that idea is that the absoluitly can't afford to have that happen. If Beowulf can do it, then others can and THEY WILL. Why? Because this is not one big happy collection of SL Member Worlds and prospective member systems. There are too many systems and organizations with their own ideas and plans and desires for greater power/control looking for ways to excape the controles on them. Take note of the conversaton inside the Beowulf Delegation at the Assembly as it becomes clear that a number of their long-time tradeing partners are now looking to have them damaged or crippled (broken within the League and subjgated to the will of the Buracracy) so they can -they think- step in and take over the economic and political positions Beowulf has built.
It's the NAVY that is going to have to be the actual hammer, the jackals just want the spoils even if they know the Buracracy is going to get the major cut of what falls out.

Manticore can't deal with the League as the League but it should be able to deal with a lot of fragments. Exactly how, other than eventualy orgainzing indivudal trade relations with them, is not quite so clear. In the short term, SEM and the GA should be able to deal with the most overt of the agression amoung the fragments, at least as long as the tech advantage holds and the GA does work even-handedly with the fragments

One of the problems is that the Alignment is not going to let this go quietly and is going to ferment as much chaos and mistrust as possible. Remember, they really don't care how many people get killed, just that they ultimatly end up on top.

kzt wrote:MDMs are a 5 year advantage before you face effective warships armed with them. Haven replicated them with significantly less tech than the core worlds have.

Apollo is harder, but not impossible. It’s probably 15 years at most. It’s also possible that people will go for other approaches to counter it once you get a research and manufacturing establishment bigger then the entire population of the SEM working on it.

So you just pull tens of billions people from thin air that will magically do all this?

Well, then they can just pull some fantasy tech out of thin air too and clobber the SEM at will (insert Lord Skimper idea here).

cthia wrote:

Rincewind wrote:Yes they have. In addition to creating the monstrosity of the People's Republic & then getting them to adopt that abortion of a plan, the Duquesne Plan, Nesbit found out about & the date of the proposed peace conference between Pritchard & Elizabeth & abort it with their attempted assassination of Queen Berry on Torch. That led ultimately to the resumption of hostilities and the Battles of Lovat & Manticore.

ASs for the Star Kingdom Lady Elaine Descroix was their most senior agent within it & they do have others as how else would they have found out about the changes to Heinrich & Stacey Hauptman's wills leaving control of Hauptman Industries to Honor.

Wait! What? Huh? Elaine Desceoix was a MAlign agent? Is there textev on that?

She is the cousin of Michael Janvier and Baron High Ridge. Which means they could be agents too? That would explain High Ridge's political actions quite well.

Are you sure about that?

I forgot about Stacy's privacy being compromised.

It is in At All Costs in a passage where Albrecht is discussing her with Isabel Bardasano & Bardasano confirms that she has been eliminated.

I'm sorry I can't quote you the exact chapter & page number but my copy of At All Costs is in storage; (& not even on the same island, either). Nevertheless, I remember the passage as it was the first evidence that Mesa was more than just a planet with corrupt corporations & that they were the movers behind a lot of the events that had been transpiring in the Honorverse.

drothgery wrote:
Meanwhile unless the ghost of Baron High Ridge has regained power in the SEM, you are probably not doing this aimed at Manticore without them noticing it and reacting (heck, even if the SEM is being led by idiots, people at lower levels will still notice). And, erm, the SEM has way more resources than any single-system polity carved out from the SL Core, even a hypothetical independent Sol (the Junction, San Martin, the Talbot Quadrant, Silesia). And very powerful allies.

How can the SEM react to someone teching up and building up their fleet? By attacking a peaceful star nation? Come on, the SEM isn't going to do that. Too much democracy.

Even if Manticore has more cash, military build is basically done with internal resources/people. If they can maintain a friendship with Haven and Beowulf they probably stand a better chance. But what happens if say... a dozen core worlds decide to set up NATO?