Excellent points, if the SL tries to raid GA merchants, perhaps the mandarins might pause to consider what the GA could do raiding its merchant ships.
But instead of only 50 merchant raiders, imagine at least 3-400 minimum, possibly several hundred to a thousand below the wall, all with dozens of tractored pods, able to attack hundreds of star systems simultaneously at will, using MDM's well beyond the range of any system defenses, particularly the ~1200 that have only old LAC's if that for defense.
We don't have House of Lies yet, but the RoH could have assigned 6-8 already industrialized star systems each to build just BC's, CA's, CL's and DD's besides LAC's and CLAC's; so that in the almost 3 years since the war began they could have produced 2-3 thousand more hyper warships below the wall.
While the RHN's are certainly not as good as the RMN's they'd be far better than the SLN's; which combined with the RMN and GSN's , could total 6+ thousand or more given what the SEM produced in just the ten monthes since the June 1920 fleet Strength Chart which totaled nearly 4000 combined then (the losses of Manticore A, or BoMA as I used to refer to it, having more than been made good etc), the text implication that far more were commissioned in the next ten monthes before the Pearl Bay attack, so I wouldn't be surprised if the RMN had doubled its June 1920 numbers, while the GSN might be up 50% to ~3500 combined.
Even if the RHN only doubled its size, with the IAN up only 50% to 12-1300, the combined Haven sector total would be well over 7000, enough to not only provide plenty of cover for their merchant shipping but enable at least 1-2 thousand to concentrate on the SL.
Having been impressed by the Agamemnon BCP, I could see a RHN version with 240-288 larger RHN pods [16 missiles @] massing around the Nike's 2.4 M ton size, able to take out a couple dozen SLN BF SD's before reloading, or whole SLN FF BC squadrons with just a dozen pods, like Scotty could have.
Unleashing a couple hundred of them among a thousand or two GA merchant raiders could eliminate 2/3's of the SL members system infrastructure and freighters [if they don't join the GA in the aftermath of the Beowulf EE violation] in just 2-3 monthes, long before the mandarins realise what's happening.
Part of Honor's conversation with Kingsford might go something like this:
"Regarding your last point, the SL doesn't exist already; most of the former members [including the 1000-1200 we've visited beside those claiming to have more serious SDF's] in the last 3-4 monthes have voted to drop their SL membership and make treaties with us and/or their neighbors in preference to out of touch mandarins that taxed them far too much to favor their core friends while violating their own laws whenever it suits them."
"In case you're curious, over a quarter of the ex-members greeted us were quite friendly from the get go, and over half the rest warmed up to our offers rather rapidly, while only ~12% of the rest showed any interest in anything more than local associations, mainly along ethnic or cultural lines."
Feel free to add your own insights.
L
Brigade XO wrote:We have seen the Alignment using what are essentialy pirates in the past, certainly mercenary groups. The People's Republic Navy in Exile was a pirate force, not mercenary. Monica is/was running a shop as a mercenery supplier.
With Capt. Gweon providing input, the Alignment is pulling all sorts of strings with the raiding. Not perhaps a fine tuned control but certainly general impact. While killing both GA merchanting shipping (actual GA member merchant marine or independents who are trading with them) is one goal, killing GA warships is probably in the mix but that depends on your perspective. You look at this one way and the SLN is going to loose a lot more ships trying to kill GA warships. They might develop (and perhaps even report back on sucessfull tactics of they survive) ways to destroy either PRHN or RMN ships but the loss ratio is probably going to be very badly lopsided unless the SLN has overwhelming numbers and good ambush.
On the other hand, if they do the asymectrical warfare approch and kill merchants where the warships are not currently patrolling, they force the GA to change deployments and probably disburse the warships with both adds to the needs of both navies and makes it more likely that they can catch a GA ship alone to their advantage.
Remember that the Alignment is just as happy to kill off SLN ships and crews, particularly those who show initiative and creativity. Just the chaos of perhaps 50 actual warships engaging in commerce raiding- and just for destruction of shipping- is going to be a significant problem for all sorts of people. About the only one not effected is the Alignment since they don't have much in the way of "civilian" traffic out there to get hit.
