ywing14 wrote:
You keep saying your ideas come with a timeline but in fact they don't. Look at the USA? They had a timeline too. 15 years later there are still troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. You can sit here all day and say there is a timeline or that you have a timeline in mind. But that's completely meaningless. Because by specifically stationing LACs you're making those worlds dependent on you for security. How can you sit here and honestly say all of those worlds will be ready to govern or protect themselves in 5-10 years? You can't!
The US caused the problem in Iraq and Afghanistan by removing the governments in question, granted they were POS government to begin with but once you remove the government you have a certain obligation to continue until the job is done. In the case of the verge/protectorates using 2 examples from 5,000 years of human history might not be that accurate. The verge/protectorates want independence, they will get it either way. Either they get their act together and get their government and military going and continue with a good relationship between themselves and the GA or they end up losing a golden opportunity. If the locals don't behave in a fashion the GA finds acceptable the GA can simply pull out and leave them to figure it out all alone. No violence required, no threat of violence no occupation. Frontier Security started by trying to "civilize" everyone wether they wanted it or not and eventually morphed into what they ended up. The GA should do the opposite, give everyone a chance on a limited time frame and leave those who fail to take advantage while assisting those who take advantage of the opportunity.
I'm not saying you need thousands of light vessels doing anti-piracy. However, I feel that if the GA has about 600 SDs that they probably have at the very least a couple thousand lighter vessels. Trying to place 30 LACs in these various systems which are not going to be able to provide any real support to them is much more expensive then having a couple hundred light vessels plodding the space ways and making stops at various planets.
And that would be the perfect time to start developing at least rudimentary capability to maintain their LAC's at least to some limited degree. Taking the responsibility for commerce protection without trying to transfer the responsibility to the locals eventually is asking to turn into Frontier Security and whats worse, having "a couple of hundred light vessels" moving from system to system means that the system they just left and the system they are going to are now completely open to pirates, if you have 200 light warships and 600 or 1,000 systems to cover your ships will spend a lot more time traveling between systems then actually protecting those systems so you end up with only a fraction of your ships ever being on patrol at any one time. If I see an RMN CA leaving the system and with so few ships to go around I know they will not be back for at least 6 months this means that I have a 6 month window to do as I please. So that means you invest 200 warship for a mission they will not be able to accomplish and you do it in the most inefficient way possible while also pissing off everyone for failing.
How is Silesia a bad example of commerce protection? You can argue shoulda woulda coulda all day for the political situation there all day. But you can't ignore what the queen and honor said.
They spend 200-300 years patrolling 60 systems and trying to protect them and the SKM's commerce from piracy, what they accomplished is to keep Silesia pirate infested as ever, sustain a consistent low number of casualties and damage and at the point in time when they couldn't sustain the anti-piracy patrols the piracy problem ballooned to the point that it might have led to suspension of trade. At this point the GA will be dealing with verge/protectorates and there would be many of them, dealing with 800 or 1,000 of them in the short term means that some will succeed and some will fail those that succeed good on them, they will be welcomed as trade partners and allies, those that fail will be ignored until they change their ways or become a problem for the GA to deal with.
