Sigs wrote:ywing14 wrote:
First off, neither Grayson nor Manticore are Democracies.
You are right, both are dictatorships... neither one has any resemblance to a democracy like you know having an elected lower house or something...
Second we really don't know what's going to happen in the Shell. It's stated in the books a few times that lots of worlds in Shell have scores to settle with each other. We don't know who's going to go Conqueror or not.
They may have scores to settle but how many of them have navies worth the name? If they were to take a portion of the SLN with them when they split it might be a concern but a small one because at the end of the day the GA still has the strongest fleet in the neighbourhood, a visit by a couple of SD(P)'s and CLACs might discourage any scores from being settled.
LACs are useful as you said but I don't foresee them being deployed in that many systems. The GA does not want to become the SL. And that's what'll happen if they try to do what Frontier Security did.
They should not try to do what Frontier Security tried to do, they should move in to protect as many systems from Pirates as they can and with a pre determined timetable start training and transferring the equipment into the hands of local authorities. It will not be immediate, it might be 6 months in some particularly stable systems in the protectorates and verge such as the Kingdom of Meyers to a few decades in the less stable systems but this should not be an open ended mission and building a lot of light combatants to commit to anti-piracy and commerce protection will have the end result of removing Frontier Security and replacing it with the GA version.
Even the Least advanced of the Verge and protectorates can man LAC's and even destroyers if the need arises.
Justifying the building of smaller vessels for commerce protection will be quite possibly the easiest thing in the world for the SEM to do.
Until someone asks how long this mission will last... when you commit hundreds or thousands of light combatants to commerce protection and anti-piracy it should have an end date, the GA cannot afford to spend centuries committed to that mission like Manticore spend committed to Silesia.
The SK did commerce protection for centuries in Silesia.
There might be a big difference between policing 60 systems alongside the IAN while the League has 1,700 members, probably 100 core systems and the rest shell systems. If the League sheds a lot of members this could be hundreds of systems not counting verge and protectorates, when all is said and done it could rise to be in the thousands. Plus all of those systems will not be conveniently located in the same nice little area of space but will be hundreds of light years apart. The goal should be to provide immediate security and allow the shell to re-arm. The GA's job should be to ensure a safe and successful transition from league members to independent systems, it should not be concerned with protecting every core or shell system from conquest or they will be engaged in wars for the next 500 years. Revive and update the Edict so as to prevent atrocities and let the systems sort themselves out.
As they say at the end of the last book RMN cut it's teeth doing commerce protection. Manticore had the largest Merchant Fleet in space and still does.
Difference in scale and the RMN had no choice unless the SKM wanted to conquer the confederacy, it does have a choice, they should be encouraging the nations that could do so to build up their own defences and take responsibility for their neighbourhoods and for those in the verge and shell they should be providing the tools to get to a stable government and then hand over the reigns to a navy capable of protecting the government. The GA should not be building thousands of light warships t protect hundreds or thousands of system from pirates without an exit strategy, question would be "Why is the GA spending blood and treasure to protect systems that might be thriving but are unwilling to protect themselves?"
Manticorans understand how important that still is to them. They'll understand why they need to protect them. And ironically enough while commerce protection does cost money, it doesn't cost as much as say...fighting a war with the largest political entity in known space. The citizens probably won't even be taxed. They'll just use junction fees.
Commerce protection over hundreds of light years in hundreds or thousands of systems with fleets of thousands of Leith warships will cost a lot of money, in salaries, in maintenance of the ships themselves, consumables, ammunition, and the hundred and one things that are needed to maintain those ships on station. And then you have people asking why are we not encouraging the locals to take control of their defences? Why are we footing the bill for their defences?
Manticore will just use the same strategy they use in Silesia just writ larger. Convoys where possible and then single ships/divisons roaming the space lanes and making port of call visits to various planets.
Why should they do that when they can let the locals take care of it where possible and try to make it possible where it currently is not?
It doesn't matter how large their navies are it just needs to be bigger than their neighbors. If the GA doesn't get involved in everyone's squabble we could still see small navies fighting each other. Grayson and Masada were doing. Manticore already said it wouldn't act as Frontier Security. They don't plan on involving themselves in very single thing that occurs out there. Also don't think they'd use an SD or CLAC when a Nike BC is much faster but that's beside the point.
But that's exactly how Frontier Security started out!!! It started with the best intentions of protecting these worlds and morphed into something else as time went on. Silesia is literally the best example as Honor said at the end of the book!! You point is the exact opposite by basing LACs in squadrons in different systems you're doing exactly what they are trying to avoid. Patrols roving the space lanes is less likely to lead to Frontier Security than basing ships and LACs in star systems until you believe they can take care of themselves.
How can the GA not afford to spend time building light combatants to fight piracy? They were able to afford it for over 200 years in Silesia? What's changed? Manticore has a bigger population base, crews are smaller, and a larger tax base now. Not to mention they can trade with the ROH again. Sounds a lot cheaper than building Hundreds or Thousands of SD(P)s.
The SKM didn't want to conquer Silesia, it did so out of political and military necessity.
How is it going to be militarily cheaper to have your vessels searching for pirates and protecting merchant ships than it will be provide military protection to the Shell and the Verge until they are able to rearm themselves or for a lot of them probably build a navy that they haven't maintained in generations? All of your ideas point out to doing exactly what Frontier Security was originally intended to do.... Which is the opposite of what Commerce Protection is.
You literally want to do everything that Honor said they shouldn't do in the last chapter.
"The situation in the Protectorates promised to be more complicated, and probably ugly. In some instances—like Chotěboř, Seraphim, Włocławek, Mobius, and Swallow—the local star systems looked to be adjusting well, with a minimum of bloodshed and civil unrest. In other cases…not so much. There were a lot of scores to pay off out there in the Fringe, especially on the planets whose native oligarchs had been deepest in OFS’s pocket, and OFS wasn’t going out of its way to engineer any soft landings. In fact, some OFS governors and managers were clearly determined to make the entire process as ugly as they possibly could.
And it’s our fault, too, she admitted unflinchingly. We knew a lot of this would happen when we issued the demand. But I honestly don’t see any other way we could have gone. If we hadn’t demanded Frontier Security’s total disbandment, something that big, with so many people in other people’s pockets, would have hung on, claiming it was “winding down as quickly as possible,” for decades. Maybe even longer.
Quite a few Manticoran politicians argued that the Star Empire had a moral responsibility to provide the stability the ex-Protectorates needed. That, as the creator of the power vacuum, the Grand Alliance was the only force capable of filling it. Part of Honor wanted—badly—to endorse that argument. She was a historian, and specifically a military historian, and she knew how poorly it was going to end in some of those star systems. She didn’t want to see that…and, she knew, she wanted to avoid the moral guilt for having allowed it to happen.
But the last thing the galaxy needed was for the Grand Alliance to simply replace Frontier Security. And the last thing the Grand Alliance needed was to turn into Frontier Security. The Office of Frontier Security had started with the best of intentions, and it had taken a while for it to warp and corrode. But it had happened, and Honor Alexander-Harrington had no desire to see her star nation—either of her star nations—start down that dark and twisty road.
Besides, there’s such a thing as independence and maturity. Star nations have to learn to walk, just like anybody else, and they need to learn to stand on their own two feet. We won’t do them any favors by “casting a protective wing” over them if it prevents them from learning both those things.
And it wasn’t like the Grand Alliance was simply going to walk away. It had no intention of intervening to impose outside solutions, but it was prepared to trade with any star system, support any legitimate government, extend economic support and military aid as trading or treaty partner. And it was prepared to whack any hands that got too greedy and grasping where their neighbors’ toys were concerned. No doubt there would be an upsurge in piracy and warlordism, but the Royal Manticoran Navy had cut its eyeteeth in the Silesian Confederacy. Any newly independent star systems who were inclined to emulate their erstwhile OFS masters would discover the RMN and its allies had a short way with freebooters and would-be conquistadors."
What you want to do is great in theory but the Road to Hell is Paved with Good Intentions.
Building SD(P)s in smaller number is still just as labor intensive, you could crew 16 Rolands for 1 Medusa B. What makes more sense to build when at the moment you've got maybe 1000 star systems to visit and your current destroyer can take out the SLs BCs? With all the wormhole junctions it don't think they need as many bases as you say. These vessels operate in small number or on there own all the time 6-9 month deployments aren't all that long.
But they can't in fact be sure the locals can do it on there own. Silesia couldn't handle it for centuries. Who's to say when the other worlds will be ready. Who's to say the GA won't do joint patrols with other nations or planets. Build up relations.
