Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
I argued that the task force was at The Twins for only one year: from 1920 to 1921, until Harvest Joy transited. After that, they stopped round-the-clock picketing The Twins. And I argued that they probably started the preparations to get there very quickly after Congo fell, but then stopped the rush when the Harvest Joy mission was announced. They could've got there a lot quicker, but didn't need to.

It is either worth protecting or it’s not. Congo falls and they should have been there quickly thereafter, assuming that the SKM, Republic or Erewhon will announce an expedition in time would have been highly negligent from the leadership of the MA and the RF. They are willing to kill people and destroy ships to keep the secret of the location of the WH but they are only willing to do it part time and only when the enemy announces it?

The location of The Twins is not important. What was important was to make sure Harvest Joy didn't return, so the survey in Congo stalled an spent a lot of time re-analysing the data. It was supposed to buy time.

For what? One of the WH let to Felix where one terminus led to Darius, as long as Felix is secret no one asks pointed questions, if the SKM or the Republic surprised the MA and surveyed the WH quietly without much fanfare they would be 1 transit away from bottling up Darius. They may not know the importance of Felix and the existence of Darius but they will be well placed either way.

If that happens, then the location of The Twins is compromised. But the GA still won't know about Felix.

Until they find out the WH leading to Felix and start investigating, the whole point of defending the other end of the Congo WH is to keep everyone guessing, if they waste 6 months to a year waiting for Harvest Joy to come back the long way and don’t launch any more ships it buys the MA time, then it would be time to figure out what the problem is and how to overcome it when you don’t know whats on the other side and where the other side is. Then IF they figure out the problem and occupy the system they have to spend time surveying the twins, finding the Terminus and investigating further only to hit another brick wall that they have to go through. This whole exercise might take anywhere from a couple of years to a couple of decades depending on luck, the intelligence agencies of the powers involved and the willingness to risk more ships.

That makes a lot more sense. The Twins is closer to Darius than it is to Mannerheim, so why did the MAlign entrust that task to Mannerheim and run the risk of leak than to have the MAN picket The Twins? The MAN personnel have no contact with the outside world, so even if they were not dedicated to the cause, they couldn't leak even even if they wanted to.

The MAN might have no ships in service other than the Sharks and ghost class which makes no sence to me but it might be the answer, in 1921 they were training up the Sharks to execute OB or they were working them up and the Ghost class ships might have been great spy/scout class ships but they were virtually unarmed so they wont be much use in picketing a system.

My immediate conclusion is that they couldn't. Which makes no sense, since the MAN must have had a couple of BC-sized ships by then. It did have Shark prototypes already, so it must have been building up the tech ladder.

Either they didn’t have ships or they weren’t willing to expose the MA when they could risk MSDF, one leads to questions of who is there and what they are doing and who do they belong to while the other side with the MSDF it is why they are there which would take a lot less explaining then a MAN squadron that doesn’t exist.

Theemile wrote:When the book came out, we asked David this question. The Twins force was only sent out in reflex to the news of the Harvest Joy's deployment, sent via Steak Boat. It was not a permanent deployment - The ships returned several weeks later once it was determined that the wormhole team was in monitoring mode, and would not send another ship for some time.

See that makes no sense to me, the system is only worth defending if the enemy tells us ahead of time that they are coming. What if they had somehow missed the news and they had surveyed the system, came back announced the results only then? I mean they could depend on luck but that’s basically the MA version of flipping a coin and hoping that Erewhon wont enact a plan rather quickly to survey the WH quietly with the approval of both the SKM and the republic.

The minefield question came up, but no official comment. Someone mentioned that a minefield requires tending, and seeing a minefield in a random system (which are hard to find, since they are extremely stealthy), might raise more questions. however, it is possible that a minefield replaced the BCs longterm.

Which doesn’t change the fact that the MA/RF basically depended on luck that they will find out about a survey significantly ahead of time to be able to picket the other end with enough firepower in time to keep the survey ship from leaving. Anything in their “perfect” plan goes even slightly wrong and they are screwed, if the Erewhon government had decided to survey the WH with the blessing of both Manticore and Haven but do it quietly because they are at war the MA’s plan is SOL. Like I said, that system is either worth defending or not worth defending, there shouldn’t be a part-time option and since the author made a part time option that makes the MA sound like even more of an unhinged, arrogant and armature organization than they already are.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
A minefield would be a lot less conspicuous than a squadron of BCs with sidewalls up sitting there for no identifiable reason.

Anyway, what replaced the BC squadron from Mannerheim is not the question. The question is why it was there in the first place, instead of one from Darius or a CA squadron from Darius. And what we can conclude from that?

What we can conclude is that the MAN has no ships other than Ghosts and Sharks so their growth potential is stunted and they are completely unprepared for a war THEY started. Therefore they are the most unprepared and incompetent bad guys in history.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
A minefield would be a lot less conspicuous than a squadron of BCs with sidewalls up sitting there for no identifiable reason.

Anyway, what replaced the BC squadron from Mannerheim is not the question. The question is why it was there in the first place, instead of one from Darius or a CA squadron from Darius. And what we can conclude from that?

What we can conclude is that the MAN has no ships other than Ghosts and Sharks so their growth potential is stunted and they are completely unprepared for a war THEY started. Therefore they are the most unprepared and incompetent bad guys in history.

They don't have the ships for the war they started, they don't have the crews for the war they started and they keep pissing off the people with both the ships and crews to come after them knowing that they can do little to defend themselves for the next couple of decades other than pray in whatever deity they may or may not believe in.

Maldorian wrote:
Like I wrote earlier: We are guessing that the Alingnment have "normal" warships, but we have ne proof. What if they haven´t and they call Mannerheim because they don´t have ships to send?

That's the thing though, they are the only once with the timetable, so they should have been building up their manpower for decades or centuries before they kick off, because I wouldn't want to start a war with the rest of the galaxy with a small inexperienced navy. They may be getting officers and NCO's from the RF navies but it cant be that many or once again someone will start to wonder where all those retired personnel permanently disappear to. If the MAN has no conventional ships and their only units are the a handful of Ghost Class ships and 28 Shark Class ships then they are in a whole lot of more trouble in the upcoming war.

Sigs wrote:

Maldorian wrote:
Like I wrote earlier: We are guessing that the Alingnment have "normal" warships, but we have ne proof. What if they haven´t and they call Mannerheim because they don´t have ships to send?

That's the thing though, they are the only once with the timetable, so they should have been building up their manpower for decades or centuries before they kick off, because I wouldn't want to start a war with the rest of the galaxy with a small inexperienced navy. They may be getting officers and NCO's from the RF navies but it cant be that many or once again someone will start to wonder where all those retired personnel permanently disappear to. If the MAN has no conventional ships and their only units are the a handful of Ghost Class ships and 28 Shark Class ships then they are in a whole lot of more trouble in the upcoming war.

Indeed, but that's absurd. The MAN must have smaller ships than the Sharks and Ghosts in Darius. It's simply inconceivable that they would have started their navy with such huge ships so late in the game. That would be a level of incompetency incompatible with the intelligence observed from the Detweilers.

Even if their timetables were upended by he First Manticoran-Havenite War ending as it did, they still must have built a few smaller ships. And such smaller ships could have been used in The Twins.

The bottleneck could have been personnel. If they had the hulls but not the crew, they couldn't have deployed anyway (the available personnel is working up the Ghosts and Sharks to prepare for the LDs).

Still far-fetched. Maybe President Hurskainen just wanted the glory of killing Harvest Joy for his people.

Sigs wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
I argued that the task force was at The Twins for only one year: from 1920 to 1921, until Harvest Joy transited. After that, they stopped round-the-clock picketing The Twins. And I argued that they probably started the preparations to get there very quickly after Congo fell, but then stopped the rush when the Harvest Joy mission was announced. They could've got there a lot quicker, but didn't need to.

It is either worth protecting or it’s not. Congo falls and they should have been there quickly thereafter, assuming that the SKM, Republic or Erewhon will announce an expedition in time would have been highly negligent from the leadership of the MA and the RF. They are willing to kill people and destroy ships to keep the secret of the location of the WH but they are only willing to do it part time and only when the enemy announces it?

I'm not arguing it isn't worth defending, quite the opposite. Nor am I arguing that they depended on the announcement. I'm saying that the announcement did happen and therefore they knew the timetable for the transit.

We don't know what happened prior to the announcement. They may have been scrambling to get someone there (and Theemile says RFC said they had sent a streak boat), only to recall once the timeline became clear.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Indeed, but that's absurd. The MAN must have smaller ships than the Sharks and Ghosts in Darius. It's simply inconceivable that they would have started their navy with such huge ships so late in the game. That would be a level of incompetency incompatible with the intelligence observed from the Detweilers.

Ghosts are pretty small, like FF or old DD size. Sharks are BB sized.

kzt wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Indeed, but that's absurd. The MAN must have smaller ships than the Sharks and Ghosts in Darius. It's simply inconceivable that they would have started their navy with such huge ships so late in the game. That would be a level of incompetency incompatible with the intelligence observed from the Detweilers.

Ghosts are pretty small, like FF or old DD size. Sharks are BB sized.

Thanks for the correction. But the point still remains: you don't jump two orders of magnitude from 60k tonnes to 4 million. You could only do that for spider-driven ships if you already had experience building bigger, conventional ones.

I understand that the Sharks were testbeds for the real ships they wanted, but you don't start with something that big as your first big ship. Not even if you managed to get all the brainpower out of Technodyne: you need to trial out your construction techniques, your yards, etc.

Could they be this arrogant? That they knew everything in theory, so they concluded they could put everything in practice at a moment's notice? (Arrogant people sometimes are right, the fact that the Sharks did get produced as proof, but think of the risk involved!)

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Indeed, but that's absurd. The MAN must have smaller ships than the Sharks and Ghosts in Darius. It's simply inconceivable that they would have started their navy with such huge ships so late in the game. That would be a level of incompetency incompatible with the intelligence observed from the Detweilers.

Or extreme arrogance. They know they are the only once at the table who know there is a game, so they make some serious assumptions and make their plans to require damn near 100% of the things going right for success. The way they seem to presented in the series is smart but arrogant bunch who in many cases overcomplicate things but give no margin for error.

Even if their timetables were upended by he First Manticoran-Havenite War ending as it did, they still must have built a few smaller ships. And such smaller ships could have been used in The Twins.

That’s the thing though, their timetable might call for ships at a certain time/date but they still would require the crews decades ahead of time, and they would need SD’s of their own for training, and operation.

The bottleneck could have been personnel. If they had the hulls but not the crew, they couldn't have deployed anyway (the available personnel is working up the Ghosts and Sharks to prepare for the LDs).

The ghosts are irrelevant because they are unarmed FF/DD class ships, unless they have them in the thousands their crew’s would be insignificant. The Sharks even if they are heavily crewed they cant have more then 3,000/ship and that’s assuming that the MA went above and beyond in overstaffing their training ships. Having 28 Sharks with 3,000/ship is 84,000 crew members, They would have to have massive number of forts to make up for the crew shortage but having massive number of people in fortifications doesn’t equal capable warship crews.

Still far-fetched. Maybe President Hurskainen just wanted the glory of killing Harvest Joy for his people.

I don’t think a 600 year old conspiracy would allow for one of it’s subservient members to make decisions like that on their own which might endanger the success of the larger mission.