Remaining holes in SLN intel

tlb wrote:

Joat42 wrote:Just saying that a core world has the economy to afford ship building programs is a gross simplification. Some worlds certainly has ship building capacity but as I repeatedly said someone has to foot the bill.

And your example of Germany, Japan, France or China is an apt comparison insofar that if 90% of trade carrying capacity disappeared - what would happen to their economies. Couple that with another analogy - that NATO would fracture. Imagine the cost of consumer goods, for example a car in the US in this situation, when you have limited trade and the government are co-opting the production facilities and the engineers for military projects. Hey presto - severe inflation.

There would be economical problems for all involved. It's not like everyone has a surplus of manufacturing capability to produce all the goods needed in each country. And then you want to divert a lot of capacity to a program to build new warships.

And with your reasoning, there is also the added caveat that Lacoon wouldn't have the effect it has - since core systems can just start producing things locally with their abundant industry that has nothing better to do.

A core systems economy can be extremely large but when it gets hit first with Lacoon 1&2 and then the fracture of the League it is going to be affected - severely. That means where will be very little wiggle room for sinking money into projects that will costs billions if not trillions of credits and at the same time robbing the industry of needed people and resources.

So no, the question isn't "deciding they want to do it" - it's can they afford it.

You must know much more about the economies of the core worlds than I do, because I have no idea how much of the GDP of any core world depends on external trade. So I do not know how good it is to compare to Japan, which is resource poor and trade dependent.
Lacoon and the loss of the Verge will definitely hurt the finances of the League bureaucracy and the multi-stellar corporations. Again I do not know enough to conjecture how this will affect the economies of the core worlds. Certainly there will be dislocations and failures among firms that need external resources, but does that result in a crash or just a minor blip?
If you have text to support your statements, then please produce it.

Joat42 wrote:PoW - What are the League/Solarian League Navy financial resources?
Baens Bar - An authorial comment on "fighting the massive waves of the SLN" - §6 & §7

tlb wrote:

Joat42 wrote:PoW - What are the League/Solarian League Navy financial resources?
Baens Bar - An authorial comment on "fighting the massive waves of the SLN" - §6 & §7

Since I do not have access, would you provide quotes directed to the capacity of the core worlds? We accept that the League and its navy are impacted.

PoW - What are the League/Solarian League Navy financial resources? wrote:Chris is also right, though perhaps not as strongly so as he has argued, about the League's attitude towards naval spending. Despite the League's enormous (read incalculable) wealth, the League government is usually on fairly tight fiscal rations. Proportionately, most of the League's member governments, however poor, have much higher tax revenues than the central government does. This is, in large part, intentional. When the League was first organized, its charter members had been independent worlds and star systems for as much as a thousand years. They had no intention of resigning their individual sovereignties to a central government, especially not one which--by the nature of things--would be arthritic in operation if only because of the communication delays. Accordingly, they opted for a very decentralized federalism and, taking a page from the frames of the US Constitution, deliberately designed as much "grit" as possible into the system to prevent the central government from gradually (and naturally) evolving into something more powerful than they wanted. Accordingly, the League government's funding sources are specifically limited by the League Constitution... and direct taxation of League citizens is expressly prohibited. The central government is funded by a collection of import duties, customs fees, direct assessments for naval spending, etc., plus additional voluntary contributions. This means that while the absolute amount of cash flowing through the League's coffers is stupendous, it is actually quite low compared to the many things the government has to pay for. (This problem has become even more pronounced over the last 200-300 years as the SL's bureaucracies have grown larger and larger. In a very real sense, the bureaucrats are trying to sneak around the flank of the deliberately decentralized Constitution by gradually extending the areas--both physical and governmental--which are controlled by League regulation rather than by League legislation. As this growth has continued, an ever greater slice of the total federal budget has been absorbed by the bureaucracy at the expense of other, more traditional organs of the government... like the Navy. At the same time, the Navy has also developed into a bureaucratic monster which has not fought a war--or seriously considered the need to--for at least 200 years.)

Baens Bar (runsforcelery) wrote:(6) Assuming that Manticore pursues an all-out offensive strategy resulting in the near-total destruction of Battle Fleet and the destruction of all known military shipbuilding centers, can Manticore indefinitely prevent the Solarian League from rearming?

This is one of the questions I've previously addressed here on the Bar. In my opinion, it would not be that difficult for Manticore to prevent the reemergence of large military shipbuilding centers in the territory of the Solarian League. I gave you the breakdown on the forces I thought would be necessary to manage something like this quite some time ago, and it really wouldn't be a huge commitment of forces on Manticore's part.

It would, of course, by the very nature of things, be far more difficult to prevent the development of clandestine shipyards -- like Bolthole --23 at this time might have very little or no industry, or even be totally unpopulated. Developing such capacity would be a far from minor chore, however. It would require a mammoth financial investment, and it would also require the movement of quite a bit of materiel and personnel. The sheer cost of the project would probably be a considerable deterrent for any individual member system of the League, and it would be extraordinarily difficult for something as corrupt and bureaucratic as the present League to manage something like this without having Manticoran sympathizers somewhere become aware of it and blow the whistle on the effort. I'm certainly not trying to argue that it would be impossible to accomplish this. I'm simply pointing out that it would not be easy to accomplish it, and that there would be many opportunities for Manticore to become aware of what was happening, even if they didn't know exactly where it was happening.

Bear in mind also, however, that it isn't Bolthole's productivity which makes Bolthole so dangerous to Manticore. The fact that it was possible to build up an entire modern navy without Manticore becoming aware of it was obviously of major importance, of course. But what truly made Bolthole dangerous were the efforts of Shannon Foraker and her little think tank. Bolthole could have built exactly the same number of pre-pod superdreadnoughts, and it wouldn't have materially affected the balance of power between Manticore and the Republic of Haven at all.

In the same sense, a Solarian Bolthole which served as the secret research center in which the Solarian League developed matching -- or superior -- technology would be extremely dangerous. However, Manticore has already been burned by that particular set of events already, and the Alliance has been building up its production capability ever since the beginning of this round of the Havenite Wars. Assuming the Solarian League or some other nasty person doesn't get a lot luckier than the Republic got in Operation Beatrice, Manticore's building capacity is unlikely to do anything but increase. I think that we could reasonably assume that the Star Empire's management would see a certain logic in locating well protected, locally manned shipbuilding centers outside the Manticore Binary System itself after what happened to Grendelsbane and what almost happened in the Battle of Manticore. The reason I make this point is that the Solarian League would not only have to build a Bolthole at which the new technologies could be researched and developed, but would also have to build a Bolthole -- or a series of Boltholes -- in which it could clandestinely build a fleet, as well, and that fleet would have to be big enough to take on whatever the Manties had built and/or were capable of quickly building. So if the Star Empire is monitoring the star systems where such fleets might be built (aside, of course, from whatever Bolthole-clone the Sollies might manage to create), it would really come down to what those built-from-scratch, secret building centers could produce compared to what the openly acknowledged Manticoran (and quite possibly Havenite and Andermani, as well) yards could produce. Given the fact that I'm pretty sure we could count on a Manticore which is attempting to impose what amounts to a long-term occupation of the Solarian League to remember the painful lesson of Bolthole and Operation Thunderbolt, I imagine that the difficulties in secretly building a navy capable of defeating the Star Empire in battle would be significantly greater than many people appear to be assuming.

Baens Bar (runsforcelery) wrote:(7) In the event of a war between the Star Empire of Manticore and the Solarian League, what happens to the Manticoran carrying trade and the wealth generated by its wormhole junction?

This is another question which admits of several possible outcomes. First, bear in mind that the Solarian League's shipping lines also rely upon the wormholes dominated by the Star Empire's astrographic position. Also bear in mind that the tactical superiority of the Manticoran Navy, and its ability to move quickly via the wormhole junctions in the event of hostilities, means that Manticore would be substantially better placed militarily to secure (and retain) control of the majority of the wormholes in existence than the Solarian League would be.

Another not unimportant point to bear in mind is that Manticore has gone to considerable lengths to build and maintain the friendliest possible relations with the other wormhole junctions. It hasn't always been possible for them to nourish good relations, generally because of other circumstances, but overall, Manticore is on excellent terms with the majority of the star systems which possess wormhole junctions of their own. Many of these systems are members of -- or, at least, dependencies of -- the Solarian League, which naturally means that the official policy of the League is going to become a factor in their relations with Manticore. Despite that, however, it's most unlikely that any of those star systems would be willing to cooperate in shutting down Manticoran traffic through them except in the wake of a formal, legal declaration of war from the League Assembly, rather than simply some sort of bureaucratic fiat handed down by Frontier Security or Frontier Fleet. And, as I already commented above, in the absence of such a formal, general declaration of war, it is entirely possible (even probable) that Manticoran trade with the majority of the Solarian League would continue unabated.

(As a historical example of how this could happen, look at the relationship between the Dutch and Spain during the lengthy rebellion against Spanish rule in Holland. Spain was one of the Dutch merchant fleet's main customers. In fact, many of the artillery pieces mounted by the vessels of the Spanish Armada had been cast in Dutch foundries. Business was business, and the governments in question winked at it because each of them needed something the other offered. This particular relationship existed despite the fact that Spain had declared the Spanish Netherlands to be in a formal state of rebellion and had dispatched an occupying army to fight a particularly brutal war on the Netherlands' soil. The possibility of a commercial relationship continuing untrammeled by the vicissitudes of a "state of war" which didn't even directly impinge upon the star systems in question would, I think, be considerably greater.)

Assuming that a formal state of war was declared, and that the Solarian League remained intact as a coherent political unit (or, at least, as close to a "coherent political unit" as it's ever been), then the consequences for the Manticoran merchant service -- and for the revenue stream based upon that service -- could become far graver. Even then, however, the fact that Manticore would be in a better position to control/dominate the network of wormhole junctions would mean that cutting off Manticoran trade might well prove to be a case of having cut off its nose to spite its face where the League was concerned. Should the League succeed in cutting off all Solarian trade with Manticore (which, frankly, would be extremely unlikely, in my opinion, given human nature), Manticore would be well positioned to inflict severe, if not outright crippling, damage on Solarian commerce simply by denying League shippers access to the majority of the wormhole network. Shipping times would increase (you should pardon the expression) astronomically at the very same time that a huge chunk of the hulls (the entire Manticoran merchant marine) -- not to mention the warehousing facilities and service organizations -- upon which League shippers have depended literally for generations evaporated. The financial dislocations within the League would be immense. Although probably not life-threatening to the League, on the face of things, at least, it would inflict severe damage on the League's industrial and economic stance, it would throw the entire League badly off-balance strategically, if only where the movement of military units were concerned, and the severe economic hardship it would impose upon the systems most affected by it would be a powerful be stabilizing influence on the League because of the way in which it would undermine those systems' loyalty to and self-interest in the concept of preserving the League.

The consequences for Manticore, would obviously be extraordinarily drastic, as well, of course. The question which would arise would be the extent to which Manticore's presumed increase in trade with the Republic of Haven and the Andermani Empire, plus whatever sectors/segments of the Solarian League wound up effectively isolated from the rest of the League by Manticore's domination of the wormhole networks, compensated for the loss in trade with the rest of the League. I'm not beginning to suggest here that those other sources would equal the loss in trade with the rest of the League, although I strongly suspect that it would increase drastically, since Manticore's continued existence would imply that it was managing to lop off additional chunks of the League and incorporate them into at least its economic sphere of interest, if not into its territory. I'm simply saying that there would be some compensation in the new trade realities, and that the hit to the Manticoran revenue stream might not be quite so severe and crippling as might be expected at first glance.

Frankly, it's also highly likely that Solarian shipping would suffer more from commerce raiding and privateering than Manticoran shipping would. There are several reasons for this, including the fact that the Manticorans have far more experience at commerce protection than the Solarians do and, in ships like the Rolands, they have much more effective commerce-raiders. But the biggest single factor would probably be Manticore's likely domination of the wormhole networks. Essentially, Manticoran merchant shipping would be far less exposed than anyone else's because it could go directly from one star system to another, hundreds of light-years away, in a single jump, whereas the Sollies would lose that capability. The greatest areas of vulnerability would still lie within the star systems of destination for the cargoes in question, given how difficult it is to locate a convoy or a single freighter in hyper-space, but that would be a point at which Manticore's greater experience and commerce protection would come into play most strongly.

I suppose the bottom line is that in the event of a complete rupture between the Solarian League and the Star Empire of Manticore, I think Manticore would probably be in a position to increase its domination of the carrying trade and economic services market by expanding into the areas the Solarian League was no longer capable of servicing, since there would no longer be any Solarian competition in those areas. Obviously, this presupposes that the Star Empire is able to survive militarily and to exert control over the wormhole networks as I have suggested above.

cthia wrote:Even though it is late in the fourth quarter, the SL still has that get out of jail free card. Claim that there is a hidden entity that has been manipulating them just like what happened when the same entity coerced two much smaller, easier to manage governments into war, when it should have been more difficult.

Then offer to pay reparations and bury the hatchet. Manticore will have to accept, because to deny would make them look like the baddies.

Loren Pechtel wrote:

cthia wrote:Even though it is late in the fourth quarter, the SL still has that get out of jail free card. Claim that there is a hidden entity that has been manipulating them just like what happened when the same entity coerced two much smaller, easier to manage governments into war, when it should have been more difficult.

Then offer to pay reparations and bury the hatchet. Manticore will have to accept, because to deny would make them look like the baddies.

It would end hostilities with Manticore, it would not end their fundamental problem that Manticore has shown that Battle Fleet is not the 1000# gorilla it pretends to be. There goes the Verge and probably the Shell.

cthia wrote:Hence, why Beowulf had to be beaten. Set an example. Psychologically, Beowulf's whooping is going to lay heavy on the minds of many players. The fact that the criminals will be prosecuted after the fact is little consolation to someone in a pine box six feet under. The SEM cannot patrol the enormous League. Any of their responses will be reactions, not protections. Many polities are not going to want to be smacked around until big brother gets home.

The SEM just doesn't have enough ships. They're still light in the ass. They got a big chest, a huge chest, and big manly Manty muscles, but still light in the ass.

PoW - What are the League/Solarian League Navy financial resources? wrote:Chris is also right, though perhaps not as strongly so as he has argued, about the League's attitude towards naval spending. Despite the League's enormous (read incalculable) wealth, the League government is usually on fairly tight fiscal rations. Proportionately, most of the League's member governments, however poor, have much higher tax revenues than the central government does. This is, in large part, intentional. When the League was first organized, its charter members had been independent worlds and star systems for as much as a thousand years. They had no intention of resigning their individual sovereignties to a central government, especially not one which--by the nature of things--would be arthritic in operation if only because of the communication delays. Accordingly, they opted for a very decentralized federalism and, taking a page from the frames of the US Constitution, deliberately designed as much "grit" as possible into the system to prevent the central government from gradually (and naturally) evolving into something more powerful than they wanted. Accordingly, the League government's funding sources are specifically limited by the League Constitution... and direct taxation of League citizens is expressly prohibited. The central government is funded by a collection of import duties, customs fees, direct assessments for naval spending, etc., plus additional voluntary contributions. This means that while the absolute amount of cash flowing through the League's coffers is stupendous, it is actually quite low compared to the many things the government has to pay for. (This problem has become even more pronounced over the last 200-300 years as the SL's bureaucracies have grown larger and larger. In a very real sense, the bureaucrats are trying to sneak around the flank of the deliberately decentralized Constitution by gradually extending the areas--both physical and governmental--which are controlled by League regulation rather than by League legislation. As this growth has continued, an ever greater slice of the total federal budget has been absorbed by the bureaucracy at the expense of other, more traditional organs of the government... like the Navy. At the same time, the Navy has also developed into a bureaucratic monster which has not fought a war--or seriously considered the need to--for at least 200 years.)

Baens Bar (runsforcelery) wrote:(6) Assuming that Manticore pursues an all-out offensive strategy resulting in the near-total destruction of Battle Fleet and the destruction of all known military shipbuilding centers, can Manticore indefinitely prevent the Solarian League from rearming?
...
It would, of course, by the very nature of things, be far more difficult to prevent the development of clandestine shipyards -- like Bolthole --23 at this time might have very little or no industry, or even be totally unpopulated. Developing such capacity would be a far from minor chore, however. It would require a mammoth financial investment, and it would also require the movement of quite a bit of materiel and personnel. The sheer cost of the project would probably be a considerable deterrent for any individual member system of the League, and it would be extraordinarily difficult for something as corrupt and bureaucratic as the present League to manage something like this without having Manticoran sympathizers somewhere become aware of it and blow the whistle on the effort. I'm certainly not trying to argue that it would be impossible to accomplish this. I'm simply pointing out that it would not be easy to accomplish it, and that there would be many opportunities for Manticore to become aware of what was happening, even if they didn't know exactly where it was happening.

Baens Bar (runsforcelery) wrote:(7) In the event of a war between the Star Empire of Manticore and the Solarian League, what happens to the Manticoran carrying trade and the wealth generated by its wormhole junction?
...
Assuming that a formal state of war was declared, and that the Solarian League remained intact as a coherent political unit (or, at least, as close to a "coherent political unit" as it's ever been), then the consequences for the Manticoran merchant service -- and for the revenue stream based upon that service -- could become far graver. Even then, however, the fact that Manticore would be in a better position to control/dominate the network of wormhole junctions would mean that cutting off Manticoran trade might well prove to be a case of having cut off its nose to spite its face where the League was concerned. Should the League succeed in cutting off all Solarian trade with Manticore (which, frankly, would be extremely unlikely, in my opinion, given human nature), Manticore would be well positioned to inflict severe, if not outright crippling, damage on Solarian commerce simply by denying League shippers access to the majority of the wormhole network. Shipping times would increase (you should pardon the expression) astronomically at the very same time that a huge chunk of the hulls (the entire Manticoran merchant marine) -- not to mention the warehousing facilities and service organizations -- upon which League shippers have depended literally for generations evaporated. The financial dislocations within the League would be immense. Although probably not life-threatening to the League, on the face of things, at least, it would inflict severe damage on the League's industrial and economic stance, it would throw the entire League badly off-balance strategically, if only where the movement of military units were concerned, and the severe economic hardship it would impose upon the systems most affected by it would be a powerful be stabilizing influence on the League because of the way in which it would undermine those systems' loyalty to and self-interest in the concept of preserving the League.

The financial dislocations within the League would be immense. Although probably not life-threatening to the League, on the face of things, at least, it would inflict severe damage on the League's industrial and economic stance, it would throw the entire League badly off-balance strategically, if only where the movement of military units were concerned, and the severe economic hardship it would impose upon the systems most affected by it would be a powerful be stabilizing influence on the League because of the way in which it would undermine those systems' loyalty to and self-interest in the concept of preserving the League.

cthia wrote:That's the part that's not quite clear to me. How many SL worlds are there? I think I remember a number upwards of three thousand???

cthia wrote:If the Harrington Plan is to work, they must fracture a big enough chunk of that 3000. Systems are not going to split on account of promises. "You'll send us some ships when? Oh hell no. We are not going to be the next Beowulf!"

What I always thought everyone was missing is that the 800# gorilla still has that identity and weight advantage over the Verge and Shell.

tlb wrote:What is the percentage of the systems (for example Yildun) that would be most affected out of the total number of core worlds?

Joat42 wrote:

cthia wrote:That's the part that's not quite clear to me. How many SL worlds are there? I think I remember a number upwards of three thousand???

It's ~2000.

cthia wrote:If the Harrington Plan is to work, they must fracture a big enough chunk of that 3000. Systems are not going to split on account of promises. "You'll send us some ships when? Oh hell no. We are not going to be the next Beowulf!"

What I always thought everyone was missing is that the 800# gorilla still has that identity and weight advantage over the Verge and Shell.

What you are missing is that the SL isn't a homogeneous entity. It consists of single and multiple system politys. And as soon as the league starts shedding members the SLN will take a big financial hit.

Why do you think Kingsford put Operation Buccaneer in motion? He wants to scare members that are thinking about cozying up to Manticore because it makes financial sense for them. Remember, the SLN is almost entirely funded on merchant tariffs and taxes, and any system that starts trading with SEM in SEM hulls is basically taking money from the SLN and giving it to SEM.

Also, punishing systems that already does this doesn't impact the SLN since they've already lost that income - but it will cost the SEM money - lost income from lost trade and added cost for helping and beefing up the SDF in punished or soon to be punished systems. The added bonus for SLN is that the SEM has to spread their resources out.