SPOILER end of the MA

After reading UH some things came to mind, how the MA plans fell apart in the last half of the book and the direction of the GA’s military in the last few pages.

The MA basically took several hundred years of planning and maneuvering and basically flushed it down the toilet in a few months. Basically the set up of the bombings in Mesa and the discovery of a total innocent MA copy had the GA on the defensive. All they had to concentrate on at the point was to block the amendments to the Leagues constitution and keep them from doing something stupid that would have forces the GA’s hand.

All they actually accomplished is pissed off the GA in general and Beowulf in particular to an unimaginable degree, showed the SLN that there is in fact another player besides the SLN,GA and neutrals and worst of all they managed to get the league to stay more or less intact with what would likely end up a more responsive and capable government and larger revenue stream.


At this point, the League exists, the SLN and by extension the League has plenty of evidence they would be more than willing to accept that there are in fact other players involved. And worst of all from the MA’s point of view the RF just showed their cards. It would have been different if the League had fractured and the RF was one in a dozen new nations but if the League sheds more systems they wills still remain a major power and many of the systems they lose will likely gravitate to the GA in one way or another. So there is a likelihood that the next phase of the War the MA will be fighting against the SLN and the GA rather than the GA and hundreds of individual system navies.

If I was a member of the GA’s leadership I would be asking quite a few questions as to how and why the RF organized themselves so quickly to form a government then and at that specific time.


To summarize their position:
-SLN leadership knows that there was someone else at Beowulf
-SLN Leadership now knows that they were thoroughly infiltrated by a third party that was not the GA
-the League still exists and will likely become more dangerous foe when they realize they were played.
-Beowulf is pissed
-Beowulf is really really really pissed and will be gunning for anyone and everyone who looks like a threat.
-the GA still exists and is rebuilding and many core systems will align with them in one way or another.



The MA’s leadership seems to be made up of complete idiots…I guess they have a lot in common with the Mandarins. They took a situation that had a very good chance to succeed and completely trashed it into a position where they will have problems playing one side against the other.



The other thing that really caught my attention is something I am having problems agreeing with. When near the last few pages Elizabeth informs the people she is talking to that the RMN will likely have to demobilize at least in part my first question was why?

At most the RMN has 150 SD(P)’s and that is me being generous while they now have to defend 50-60 systems of their own plus dozens more that at either wishing to join the Empire or would be too important as trade partners or politically important to ignore their needs. Demobilizing even a few SD(P)’s seems like a recipe for disaster. They have so many new systems of their own to protect and with so few ships it seems like the thing to do if you want to get crushed.

Now Haven and Grayson I can see demobilizing at least to a certain degree. Haven is the largest of the GA’s navies with close to 700 SD(P)’s and probably 700 or more under construction, a number they will have a hard time supporting in anything but the most dire of emergencies and Grayson is a single system navy that might not be able to willing to support 120+ SD(P)s in “peace”.

The way I would go about restructuring the GA’s militaries post war with the SLN would be taking the RHN’s SD(P)s and distributing them proportionally to all member states, so if they have 1200SD(P)s build or under construction they eventually end up with 450 for Manticore, 450 for Haven and the rest split amongst the smaller members of the GA. Then I would take the RMN’s and GSN’s ships and would make them GA’s primary striking force with combined crew’s from all the member of the GA. The idea behind that would be that it would help the GA by rotating as many people through that command as possible and make every one of the member navies capable of working as part of the GA team and more importantly the striking force of the Alliance would be made up of the best and most capable ships in their inventory. Make Bolthole the allied construction and research node and add layer after layer after layer of protection until it is impregnable by virtually any enemy. Use every weapon system at your arsenal fixed and mobile to ensure that system is as heavily protected as possible while aiming to rebuild the industrial capabilities of Manticore, Grayson and Beowulf, Beowulf’s daughter colonies and Manticore’s new systems while upgrading Haven’s industry and building up the industry in their systems as well. Once the industry of the alliance is spread amongst 120-200 systems and with the proportional increase in military the MA will have significant trouble making any headway against the GA.

Functionally, the RMN is a single system navy. And they were having issues when they were 30% smaller and the government wasn’t trying to fund an infrastructure project that will cost a decade of GSP. The RHN is supported by something on the order of 100 systems, with probably at least 20 that are fully industrialized. Their per capital GSP is lower than Manticore, but they have like 100x the population that supports their military. It can run at its current size without issues.

The GSN has no supporting infrastructure, so no new construction or major repairs for years. The funds that would have gone into new construction will go into rebuilding their core infrastructure.

kzt wrote:Functionally, the RMN is a single system navy. And they were having issues when they were 30% smaller and the government wasn’t trying to fund an infrastructure project that will cost a decade of GSP. The RHN is supported by something on the order of 100 systems, with probably at least 20 that are fully industrialized. Their per capital GSP is lower than Manticore, but they have like 100x the population that supports their military. It can run at its current size without issues.

The GSN has no supporting infrastructure, so no new construction or major repairs for years. The funds that would have gone into new construction will go into rebuilding their core infrastructure.

When it was the Star Kingdom, then the RMN was a single system navy. But the Star Empire of Manticore is an entirely different beast. They have all the territory they picked up in the Talbot cluster and all the territory they annexed in Silestia. So I do kind of think that they are going to need to maintain a large navy

Snow White and the seven Dwarves, uh, Albrecht and his six clones, made a classic mistake: they forgot to train a successor for Albrecht. The six youngsters each have a specific role, but none of them have been trained to be the synthesizer with the global overview of The Plan that was primarily in Albrecht's head.

Without that, they're going to be making mistakes.

Sigs wrote:And worst of all from the MA’s point of view the RF just showed their cards

From both the Leagues POV and the GA there is nothing special about the RF since we also have Maya and probably some other systems that left the League, so the MAlign's cover is still intact.

Henry Brown wrote:When it was the Star Kingdom, then the RMN was a single system navy. But the Star Empire of Manticore is an entirely different beast. They have all the territory they picked up in the Talbot cluster and all the territory they annexed in Silestia. So I do kind of think that they are going to need to maintain a large navy

If Talbott is productive now then why are they so focused on things like fixing the terrible education, and pouring money into the terrible infrastructure? They can't build ship, they can't pay for their own defense, they can even qualify to be part of the RMN. Eventually, yeah, eventually. In the long run we're all dead too.

But right now it's just a big chunk of space they pour limited manpower and ships into to support the money being poured into the Talbott economy. Which, by the way, would be kind of useful to and almost certainly gain a better return on investment if used to rebuild Manticore or Grayson industry.

kzt wrote:If Talbott is productive now then why are they so focused on things like fixing the terrible education, and pouring money into the terrible infrastructure? They can't build ship, they can't pay for their own defense, they can even qualify to be part of the RMN. Eventually, yeah, eventually. In the long run we're all dead too.

But right now it's just a big chunk of space they pour limited manpower and ships into to support the money being poured into the Talbott economy. Which, by the way, would be kind of useful to and almost certainly gain a better return on investment if used to rebuild Manticore or Grayson industry.

I do agree with you that right now the economies of the new territories are not nearly on par with Manticore. And that as time passes the economies of these territories will continue to increase. However I think that it does not matter how productive or how big the economies of the systems are now.

What really matters is that they have applied for admission into the Star Empire of Manticore. And the Star Empire of Manticore has accepted them. By accepting these territories, the SEM has assumed responsibility for protecting them. They have to protect them. It isn't a matter of economics. It is a matter of responsibility and honor.

Henry Brown wrote:

kzt wrote:If Talbott is productive now then why are they so focused on things like fixing the terrible education, and pouring money into the terrible infrastructure? They can't build ship, they can't pay for their own defense, they can even qualify to be part of the RMN. Eventually, yeah, eventually. In the long run we're all dead too.

But right now it's just a big chunk of space they pour limited manpower and ships into to support the money being poured into the Talbott economy. Which, by the way, would be kind of useful to and almost certainly gain a better return on investment if used to rebuild Manticore or Grayson industry.

I do agree with you that right now the economies of the new territories are not nearly on par with Manticore. And that as time passes the economies of these territories will continue to increase. However I think that it does not matter how productive or how big the economies of the systems are now.

What really matters is that they have applied for admission into the Star Empire of Manticore. And the Star Empire of Manticore has accepted them. By accepting these territories, the SEM has assumed responsibility for protecting them. They have to protect them. It isn't a matter of economics. It is a matter of responsibility and honor.

There is only so much money and resources that can be applied to rebuilding Manticore's industrial infrastructure and training workers.There is sufficient wealth that can be taken out of Solarian investments and reallocated to Talbott. The return on the shifted funds will be greater. With the hit to many of the transstellars revenues after their loss to the GA, Solarian investment would sell at a discount until the new polity is up and running.

Much of this will be private sector assets from Manticoran financial enterprises lending to Talbott businesses. Given the relative poverty in the Quadrant, any wealth reallocated out of the League will go a long way. The tax advantages won't hurt either. For those financial enterprises, they need non-correlated investment in their portfolio. Investments in the improving productivity of the Quadrant is less correlated to the business or economic cycles of established economies, because the local economy is expanding. That's a much more attractive investment for a bank or insurance company than investing in the restructured League. It's also a more attractive investment from a diversification perspective than concentrating more of their investments in Manticoran industry.

So besides any moral obligation to protect the Quadrant, there are a great deal of incentives to invest it's economy immediately. More than a little of the reallocated League investment will flow to Grayson and the RoH as well for many of the same diversification reasons. Manticore has always invested their WHJ trade surplus outside the home system. This will certainly apply to reallocated investments in the League.

One of the problems they have is that a large part of the navy are reservists from the merchants.
The merchants are a large part of the economy.

Podnaughts are offensive, force projection weapons.
They have little defencive roll in a Moriarty scheme. One way to settle the remaining league world down from any beligeranance is to publically reduce your force projection ability.

They need cruisers, lots of cruisers. (And battle cruisers and destroyers)
The crew have to come from somewhere, and given the release of merchies above ...


Actually, that's an interesting exercise. What Pod fleets will remain, where, and how big.
Also, complicated by Haven and how they intergrate.

So:
Home fleet.
WHJ fleet.
Talbot fleet.
Silesia fleet? Would you put SD's into the Silesia fleet?

With Grayson and Beowulf having their own home fleets.

Sigs wrote:After reading UH some things came to mind, how the MA plans fell apart in the last half of the book and the direction of the GA’s military in the last few pages.

The MA basically took several hundred years of planning and maneuvering and basically flushed it down the toilet in a few months. Basically the set up of the bombings in Mesa and the discovery of a total innocent MA copy had the GA on the defensive. All they had to concentrate on at the point was to block the amendments to the Leagues constitution and keep them from doing something stupid that would have forces the GA’s hand.[/quote


I disagree, but only slightly. Albrecht and Colin (?) underestimated the huge disparity of force between the SLN & the RMN which became totally obvious when Crandall was destroyed with virtually marginal damages. They not only needed the SL to collapse, but Haven & Manticore as well. That was already a non-event before Grand Flourish, when Haven signed the peace treaty and combined forces against the league.

They needed the league to become more militarily competent at that point because their entire strategic plan was based on chaos and fear in the remnants of the league. They were feeding weapons tweaks to Technodyne and tactical help to the SLN to try to balance the military equation. They needed the League to pass the constitutional amendment. And that was Albrecht's brilliant modification of the final flourish undercutting the GA's moral superiority that allowed rhe amendment to be nearing ratification.

All they actually accomplished is[1] pissed off the GA in general and Beowulf in particular to an unimaginable degree, [2]showed the SLN that there is in fact another player besides the SLN,GA and neutrals and worst of all they managed to get the league to stay more or less intact with what would likely end up a more responsive and capable government and larger revenue stream.

[1]Yes, the nuclear attacks on the habitats was both a strategic and tactical blunder, coupled with the Amendment. I'm not sure how necessary it was to blow up all the Mycroft platforms, from the tactical perspective. Its not like the feint needed to succeed anyway. But they did gain some useful data about how Apollo works even without Mycroft, which alone might be worth the risk.

[2]Er, questionable onclusion from the information they had. Daoud's group was already operating prior to even the events on Mesa. Had they not rolled up a good portion of the MAlign's intelligence network, the SLN would be blissfully unaware. their people would have dismissed the grazer fire data or caused it to be dismissed. No one would have bought into the ridiculous notion od some MAlign group manipulating the SL. And they have no idea how totally screwed they are since there has been no time for any disatch boat to reach them on Darius from Earth.

(snip)

If I was a member of the GA’s leadership I would be asking quite a few questions as to how and why the RF organized themselves so quickly to form a government then and at that specific time.

Or not, they could just make the stupid assumption that it was long planned just like Barregos' Sepoy Option triggered prematurely by Barregos' own taped broadcast to Earth.

(snip)

The MA’s leadership seems to be made up of complete idiots…I guess they have a lot in common with the Mandarins. They took a situation that had a very good chance to succeed and completely trashed it into a position where they will have problems playing one side against the other.

Harsh judgement. MY humble opinion is the only stupid move they made was the terror attack on the 3 habitat modules, and it probably did not make any difference. Just attacking the Mycroft platforms coupled with the tax amendment would have forced theGA's hand to attack Sol.

The Plan was trashed way back when Terekov attacked Monica. It just wasn't obvious. When Zilwicki & Cachat made their spectacular rise from the dead with Simoes, Albrecht knew The Plan was in serious jeopardy and forced the operational tempo of Houdini. Pricharts response to that information was the nail in the coffin of The Plan.

Besides not getting involved physically in the attack on Beowulf, I'm not sure what they could have done differently to save the plan. And to be fair, they are new at being in charge, it takes a while for any new management team to find its footing. They were forced to take over at a very bad time both strategically and emotionally.

The other thing that really caught my attention is something I am having problems agreeing with. When near the last few pages Elizabeth informs the people she is talking to that the RMN will likely have to demobilize at least in part my first question was why?

At most the RMN has 150 SD(P)’s and that is me being generous while they now have to defend 50-60 systems of their own plus dozens more that at either wishing to join the Empire or would be too important as trade partners or politically important to ignore their needs. Demobilizing even a few SD(P)’s seems like a recipe for disaster. They have so many new systems of their own to protect and with so few ships it seems like the thing to do if you want to get crushed.

Now Haven and Grayson I can see demobilizing at least to a certain degree. Haven is the largest of the GA’s navies with close to 700 SD(P)’s and probably 700 or more under construction, a number they will have a hard time supporting in anything but the most dire of emergencies and Grayson is a single system navy that might not be able to willing to support 120+ SD(P)s in “peace”.

They are no longer fighting a war against the 800 kilo gorilla. indeed there is no more active military engagement. Demobilization from a war footing to a peacetime footing is not following down the path Janacek took them down.

I am certain they will continue to modernize their combined fleets, and continue with R&D at bolthole. Plus they have all that data from Ganymede that Honor captured to plow through. They'll probably complete the SDs under construction, then concentrate on ships below the wall.

They have a serious flaw in Mycroft hat needs fixing, but that will take a lot of system defense pressure off the active navy.