SPOILER end of the MA

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:I don't know if their new allies--whether independents or secessionists--would get more tech than they had given Erewhon already. Mostly, they wouldn't need it, because most of them aren't necessarily the Mandarin Booster Society. And, because no one is raiding their system but pirates, and they can deal with those already. Verge worlds, on the other hand, would do well enough to buy from the League, for now; or would need to be happy with the equivalent of Star Knight tech. Enough to beat off chicken thieves, and OFS wannabees.

But, imo, Haven didn't catch up "repeatedly".

Starting the first war, their tech wasn't all that different in capability, and Haven had the numbers to win. But the coup (and St. Just) killed off their own senior officer corps. With competent leadership under McQueen, they used what they already had much more effectively (circa 1910-ish); Sollie tech infusions narrowed the gap in missile capability, but was irrelevant with the appearance of the MDM. But that improvement was bought, not developed by Haven. And it didn't actually close the gap. The real improvement in PRN performance was caused by combat experienced, competent officers. Better Manti tech just stalemated against the larger Havenite Fleet, until Buttercup.

Oh, and another real Havenite advantage between the wars was Janacek.

Regards,

Rob

n7axw wrote:There is really a quite a bit to what Sigs says. But what I am having trouble getting wrapped around is how ambigious his sense of limits seems. IIRC, his figure on the number of SD(s) is about 800. Seems like a pretty healthy chunk of firepower to me. Why is that figure inadequate? He suggests 1200 instead. Why does that figure look more comfortable? Maybe it should be 2400. What is it we are trying to accomplish or what is the mission?

If what we are talking about is system defense, are oodles and oodles of SD(p)s even the best way of going about it? A squadron of Invictus class podnaughts would be 8 ships. IIRC, they carry 750 pods apiece using the latest flat pack pods. That would be 6000 pods before they are shot dry. Maybe you could accomplish the same thing with freighters and well defended keyhole 2s. And you could use the savings to add more pods. Add into the mix huge numbers of ghostrider drones and enough Katanas to provide some missile defense.

And given the current situation, as long as the spiders are undetectable, what SD(s) really are is very expensive targets rather than warships. Solving that is really the most important priority at the moment.

Don

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Sigs wrote:

ywing14 wrote:


And yet again you're still 100% wrong. If you called in a bomb threat and I responded by posting 1000 Guards around the building would that prevent you from carrying out a bombing of the building? Not necessarily.

You are 100% right... but in this case the bomb threat is called and you send the specialists in this case you have 50 of them. You send 5 to find the bomb if it exists and defuse it, and you leave the rest for another bomb threat if it arrives. Now for a city with potentially 100 targets that is manageable, for a city with potentially 10,000 targets not so much. When I call in 20 bomb threats you have to honour all of them but you will be stretched thin, if I call 100 threats you lose.


Same applies for SD(P)'s, you have 150 of them to respond to threats with as well as keep them in reserve incase you find the enemy base of operations. If you have to create 2-4 Nodal forces in Talbott like Haven had to in response to 8th Fleet you might be ok but you have stripped the cupboard of deployable assets. Now if you have to maintain 2-4 Nodal forces in Talbot, 4-8 in Silesia and Home Fleet and defences in Trevors Star, Basilik as well as maintain your portion of defences in Bolthole and commitments to other allies you are pretty much screwed. Having 150 SD(P)'s to defend up to 5 targets is manageable when you are forced to defend 15 or more targets simultaneously you are forced to choose.

The GA has been investigating the MA attacks and they all point to the fact that the MA clearly has a small fleet.

Assuming that the MA thinks and behaves like the GA. The only evidence that the GA has for the MA having a small fleet is that they have forced the League in confrontation with the SEM rather than coming out and confronting both of them in the open. They may have political reasons for doing that, they may have military considerations for that or they may have reasons the GA cannot even imagine for that. An assumption like that means that the GA will have to assume that the MA does not have shipyards to build more ships and find the people to crew those ships. The GA might be right that the MAN is small, but how long does it take them to build a SD sized warship? How capable are they? How many of them do they have and how many can they build simultaneously? If the MA has 50 SD(P)'s of their own and can build 150 SD(P)'s a year would the GA be right to assume that the MA is a non threat militarily?

All of the characters including Henke and Honor make this point in the books. The MA as to this point excelled at asymmetrical warfare yet you continue to want to respond by building conventional warships. I don't understand why you think SD(P)s are going to make a difference?

Because eventually it has to come up to open warfare. If the MA wanted to simply murder billions or trillions of people they can do it with small number of ships. But if their plan involves conquering the galaxy in one form or another they have to come out in the open.


They have perfected asymmetrical warfare as you pointed out in order to not have their existence exposed, now that they are it might change.

And it would be fairly easy to divide up fleets at the moment. You keep a large fleet in Spindle and a large fleet in Manticore. That's pretty much it. It's unlikely the quadrant could even handle a significant number. There you go. You don't need hundreds more.

And I attack Silesia... then what? You have to take ships from one of the two systems in order to form a third nodal force. Then Haven asks why they are the only once providing security for Bolthole so that takes a 4th fleet. Hypatia becomes an important system for the GA rebuilding effort with it's infrastructure and industry so that requires some SD(P)'s. Throw in a couple of more core systems and your commitments just became more numerous then your 150 SD(P)'s can handle.

You're right they don't know, but in the last 3-4 years they found out a lot more than the previous 600. Most of the MA doesn't even know what the plan is. The citizens of Darius surely don't.

They found out more... true but that is relative. If I know absolutely nothing about you and I find out your hight or age or skin colour I know infinitely more then I did before but in the grand scheme of things it means nothing because it is useless information.

The GA knows the MA exists and they have some advanced technology... they don't know how many bases the MA has. They don't know how many ship yards they have and how big/capable they are. They don't know the end goal of the MA. Logic and outlook are relative, what is logical to you might not seem so logical to someone else because of their experiences.

How is protecting their commerce a number 3 or 4 priority? It's commerce is the entire reason it was able to stand up to the Peeps and the SLN.

So protecting your income is more important then protecting your people, territory and industry?
1)Protecting the SEM's territory, industry and population.
2)Protecting the SEM's allies and meeting allied commitments
3)Protecting their commerce.

If you cant do 1 and 2 then number 3 is irrelevant.

Now after a large portion of it's space manufacturing has been destroyed, it has pissed off hundreds of worlds with its seizure of worm junctions, set of a chain of events that will likely turn the protectorates into a giant Silesia, and ran the SEM into 20-30 years of debt; you think it's a good time to ignore protecting its merchant fleet?

I never said not protecting the merchant ships. I said protecting the merchant fleet takes a lower priority then protecting the territorial integrity of your empire, the population and the industry of the empire.

In a prolong society with lifespans in the 200-300 years somehow I doubt 20-30 year debt would be earth shattering.

The GA has told the SLN it has to stand down its fleet. I don't see how they'll suddenly now be able to police commerce.

The SLN had to withdraw to member systems not stand down and likelihood of the League remaining united at a reduced size is high. Thus the GA won't have to police thousands of former League member systems. What's more the SLN can be tapped for anti piracy patrols under GA control in order to get them to start taking responsibility and trying to clean up after their own mess.

Furthermore do you think any of the protectorates or even shell systems want to see SLN ships doing anti piracy patrols????

Probably not, but then again if the SLN knows the GA is watching over the SLN they might be amendable...since they would have no means to deal with the pirates all by themselves.

The GA published all of the SLN's secret plans were they used their own vessels as pirate vessels as a pretext to invade sovereign star nations. I'm not advocating the GA become the SLN. I'm advocating they act similar to the way they acted in the confederacy for years prior to the outbreak of war with Have. They ensure Cargo Ships get from Point A to Point B in one piece. By making money they can afford to build all those big beautiful SD(P)s you want.

And in the process they would have to tie down thousands of their own cruisers and destroyers for decades to police an area many times the size of their own nation hundreds of light years from home. Just the logistics of that would drive the SEM into a few hundred years of debt. Imagine having to build and maintain dozens of major bases within the former protectorates and verge systems in order to supply and service the ships doing the commerce protection. Those ships will therefore be out of the RMN order of battle for emergencies close to home.

ywing14 wrote:
Which is the entire issued Don. I'm not saying it wouldn't be great for the SEM/GA to go on building hundreds/thousands of SD(P)s. But that's unrealistic, the queen said it's unrealistic. His opinions remind me too much of star trek where money is never really an issue and no one gets paid.

Sigs wrote:

ywing14 wrote:
Which is the entire issued Don. I'm not saying it wouldn't be great for the SEM/GA to go on building hundreds/thousands of SD(P)s. But that's unrealistic, the queen said it's unrealistic. His opinions remind me too much of star trek where money is never really an issue and no one gets paid.

So if the war with the League continued would they have found the money or surrendered halfway through the war?


You don't worry about money in the middle of a war for survival, you worry about the debt after the war is done.

Sigs wrote:What are the commitments that the RMN has that require so many cruisers?

If the MAlign develops FTL fire control and deploys it before the GA can detect spider drives, it's all over no matter how many Apollo SDPs the GA deploys. Building SDPs fall a distant third behind R&Ding a spider detection system and deploying enough hulls to cover their new found expanded territory.

And whats the point of covering their newfound expanded territory if it's with light ships that will be used as target practice by any serious enemy? Eventually SD(P)'s will become common warships, building thousands of BCs and below and deploying them months from home means that you are maintaining a massive fleet yet it has absolutely no bearing on your defences of your home territory and worse does not allow you the opportunity to attack the MA should you find their base.

Oh, and man those hulls while expanding every other part of their economy at the same time to pay for those ships and the war debt.

The war debt is a non issue, first you worry about surviving and then you worry about paying debt you accumulated while you were surviving. Worrying about debt when an enemy is either trying to conquer your people or annihilate your people seems a little silly.

ywing14 wrote:

Sigs wrote:And yet again you're still 100% wrong. If you called in a bomb threat and I responded by posting 1000 Guards around the building would that prevent you from carrying out a bombing of the building? Not necessarily.

You are 100% right... but in this case the bomb threat is called and you send the specialists in this case you have 50 of them. You send 5 to find the bomb if it exists and defuse it, and you leave the rest for another bomb threat if it arrives. Now for a city with potentially 100 targets that is manageable, for a city with potentially 10,000 targets not so much. When I call in 20 bomb threats you have to honour all of them but you will be stretched thin, if I call 100 threats you lose.

ywing14 wrote:

Why do you need 2-4 nodal forces in Talbot? The threat to Talbot from the SLN has been neutralized and they secured there flank when they punched out Meyers. You need one with maybe 12-18 Wallers in Spindle the current seat of government. 4-8 in Silesia? Seriously? All those worlds are protectorates. It's unknown if they'll even choose to join the SEM. Again you need one of maybe 12 Wallers to cover where Sarnow is located. Not to mention they can call on the Andies, who are allies at the moment and vice versa. Then you've got Home Fleet and a squadron at Trevor's Star but honestly probably not Basilisk since it's likely still recovering from what the Peeps did to it. There is no point in spreading out there forces anymore. All it does is make it easier to defeat them in detail.

The GA has already postulated that the Malign has a Bolthole. They've postulated a lot of things that have in fact turned out to be accurate. Given standard construction rates it should take them 1-2 years for each SD. I'm not arguing with you that the Malign isn't a threat or that it wouldn't be great for the SEM. I'm merely stated that its quite evident from textev that they are going to go into a build down.

And it's not unreasonable given all the SEM has been through in the last 40 years. At some point they've got to give. It is completely unreasonable to continue building an endless number SD(P)s. At what point should they stop? You'd just have them build as many as the could until the found the Malign?

Are you saying that all the information the GA has on the Malign is useless? Because that is what it sounds like your saying. That's not even remotely accurate.

How would convoy escorts drive the SEM in debt anymore than it already is?

On one hand you want them to build and crew thousands of SD(P)s but that's cheaper then building smaller vessels and patrolling systems....

You've also stated that 20-30 years isn't really any debt but suddenly it isn't when you're building brand new SD(P)s that are currently worthless when it comes to defending your star systems.

The SEM already has been doing that exact thing in Silesia for years and managed to survive.

There are plenty of worlds in the protectorates they can use as supply points. Meyers, Swallow, Chebor, Mobius...

So far the GA has protected their territorial integrity. The GA has not lost a single system since it has been formed.

n7axw wrote:
In a way Sigs point remind me of our own military industrial complex. Magnify the underlying threat to convince Congress to build against it.

So we end up building the stuff to maintain our industry as much as to defend against external threat. So what's the answer?

Dunno...

Don

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