The Soul of Haven

Dauntless wrote:an ally is ally because generally you have simmilar desires/goals.

the war was basically over even if the idiot in charge of SKM refused to make good on it. the reason they were allies had been fixed.

so while their might have been other things SKM could have done for them the idiot made it clear that he though of them the same way the SL thought of SKM.

so war is over and your ally is being a jerk? no reason to stay.

as to penalty? maybe if they had broken a treaty. but they didn't they just formally withdraw from the alliance, as was their right. if there are penalties it is a business contract which is a very different kettle of fish.

Indeed. A stiff monetary penalty was what I was thinking. IOW, "You can buy out your contract."

Dauntless wrote:erewhan was an ally. not a member planet of the SKM. they couldn't have stopped them leaving, well maybe if they had thrown high ridge out, apologised, offered more tech and a shipyard similar to grendlsbane

Good point. Which would have been a small price to pay. Pretty much a steal at any cost. On that note, if I'm not mangling the timeline, Erewhon may have escaped the MA's wrath by the hair of their chinny chin chin by being excluded in Oyster Bay.

they were hard pressed to do ostyer bay in 2 locations. a third would have really made things tricky and likely a lot less successful.

if Haven hadn't taken grendalsbane then the impact of ostyer bay would have been very different. there would still have been at least 1 manty controlled shipyard able to produce large numbers of ships.

adding erewhon would have likely either delayed the strike or forced a complete rethink.

cthia wrote:

Dauntless wrote:an ally is ally because generally you have simmilar desires/goals.

the war was basically over even if the idiot in charge of SKM refused to make good on it. the reason they were allies had been fixed.

so while their might have been other things SKM could have done for them the idiot made it clear that he though of them the same way the SL thought of SKM.

so war is over and your ally is being a jerk? no reason to stay.

as to penalty? maybe if they had broken a treaty. but they didn't they just formally withdraw from the alliance, as was their right. if there are penalties it is a business contract which is a very different kettle of fish.

Indeed. A stiff monetary penalty was what I was thinking. IOW, "You can buy out your contract."

The wiki data chip on Erewhon is interesting on this matter if it's accurate. They did have a Treaty with Haven. And since Manticore was giving them a substantial amount of technology, I find it inconceivable there was no existing treaty with Manticore. Apparently, once upon a time they also had a treaty with the League.

Treaty with Republic of Haven

Prior to the outbreak of the Second Havenite-Manticoran War, and concerned about the perfidy of Manticore under the High Ridge government, Erewhon signed a mutual defense treaty with the Republic of Haven, which provided only for mutual defense, not a complete alignment of foreign policies. Careful not to strain relations, Republican President Pritchart publicly declared that, since Haven had initiated open hostilities with the Star Kingdom of Manticore, they would not expect Erewhon to do the same. (HH11)

Relations with Solarian League

The Republic of Erewhon was once mentioned to be a member of the Solarian League. (HH1) This was later corrected, as Erewhon just had a military treaty with the League.[1] The Solarian League had long courted Erewhon in an attempt to bring it (and its Junction) into the League.

Dauntless wrote:adding erewhon would have likely either delayed the strike or forced a complete rethink.

Realistically, they got 90% of the way to the end state by just hitting the major stations. Which takes at most 6 Sharks.

If you just focus on the high end manufacturing complexes and ignore the ship fabrication sites it's still really effective.

The problem is that Haven has like 8 well known shipyards and a giant secret one, so what do you do about that?

You could, by jumping in further out, hit twice as many sites, as the odds that any of your attacks will be stopped is in fact fairly low. That adds months to the time when all the surprises everywhere show up at once.

Combining these two concepts you could probably hit all the RHN, AIN, RMN, GSN and the other allied powers at once and it's likely they would all work. But your attack goes off more like June than February.

kzt wrote:

Dauntless wrote:adding erewhon would have likely either delayed the strike or forced a complete rethink.

Realistically, they got 90% of the way to the end state by just hitting the major stations. Which takes at most 6 Sharks.

If you just focus on the high end manufacturing complexes and ignore the ship fabrication sites it's still really effective.

The problem is that Haven has like 8 well known shipyards and a giant secret one, so what do you do about that?

You could, by jumping in further out, hit twice as many sites, as the odds that any of your attacks will be stopped is in fact fairly low. That adds months to the time when all the surprises everywhere show up at once.

Combining these two concepts you could probably hit all the RHN, AIN, RMN, GSN and the other allied powers at once and it's likely they would all work. But your attack goes off more like June than February.

Interesting strategic analysis kzt, thanks for that. The picture you paint makes me see the MA in the War Room gaming out the same scenario. Surely it had to be obvious to them as well. Which makes one wonder why they didn't go for it. It appears that they didn't worry about the Havenite's war fighting capability. Why would that be? Which is also the reason I said Erewhon escaped the wrath of the MA by a thin hair. Being a Havenite ally didn't seem to concern them. Perhaps they thought it would help level the playing field so that they both would destroy each other. And of course, their lack of prescience didn't allow for them to foresee a coming alliance. How could they have, even Pritchart and Beth are still gobsmacked by it. More so Beth. Well, because of Beth, Eloise just as much. LOL

And if I'm right in why they didn't care if they were a Havenite ally, would they have cared if they knew about the existence of Bolthole?

They didn't have the ships to go for the Haven Yards. Plus they don't know where Bolthole is. Additionally, they were not anticipating the SEM and RoH becoming allies. If anything they were hoping for continued animosity and no peace treaty.

ywing14 wrote:They didn't have the ships to go for the Haven Yards. Plus they don't know where Bolthole is. Additionally, they were not anticipating the SEM and RoH becoming allies. If anything they were hoping for continued animosity and no peace treaty.

Not in detail. But they could wreck the manufacturing facilities.

However, not knowing where bolthole is located is a pretty huge problem. It appears that Bolthole has a complete asteroid to ship manufacturing capability. So blowing up all the others would have big effect on Haven ship construction, but still 1/3 to 1/2 of their normal build capability would remain.

And yeah, they were hoping they would go kill each other.

So the MA definitely knows about the existence of Bolthole? Is that in UH? Not just the location, but even the existence of Bolthole would still be classified info, no?

kzt wrote:

ywing14 wrote:They didn't have the ships to go for the Haven Yards. Plus they don't know where Bolthole is. Additionally, they were not anticipating the SEM and RoH becoming allies. If anything they were hoping for continued animosity and no peace treaty.

Not in detail. But they could wreck the manufacturing facilities.

However, not knowing where bolthole is located is a pretty huge problem. It appears that Bolthole has a complete asteroid to ship manufacturing capability. So blowing up all the others would have big effect on Haven ship construction, but still 1/3 to 1/2 of their normal build capability would remain.

And yeah, they were hoping they would go kill each other.

I think it was the politics more than anything else holding back on attacks on non-Bolthole Haven facilities.

If BOTH sides had been hit, it would have been very clear that someone on the outside was interfering. That might well have driven to the two sides together. Remember that the alliance came about almost by chance. Z and C brought in key info. But attacking both nations would have certainly focused them on elsewhere and I would guess they would pick Mesa.