Based on what evidence? The SEM and Grayson were attacked by a navy they did not know existed, that navy belonged to a nation they did not know existed. That nation had plans they were not aware of. They did not know what the nation in question wanted as the end goal. Making any “reasonable assumptions” based on a 1/100th of a % of information is asking for trouble.Jonathan_S wrote:You can make some fairly reasonable assumptions.
But the MA wasn’t led by most people, their goal was the significantly weaken the SEM and Grayson without destroying their will to fight. It was a fine line, even if they had more Sharks to throw at the attack what more could they destroy? Home Fleet? 3rd Fleet? The forts at the junction? All the industry in trevor’s star? What exactly would destroying more industry and ships accomplish for them? It would destroy the SEM’s will or ability to fight, the SLN sends it’s 400 SD’s and the SEM has no will remaining to resist. There is only so much you can expect from a nation, and if you pushed to hard the SLN ends up with great examples of RMN’s finest technology and a very intact industry to build a new fleet, instead of ending up with a crushed SLN you end up with an SLN that has state of the art RMN technology and the ability to pump out a hell of a lot of SD(P)’s well before the MA can build their LD’s.Most people don't have attack aims where their ideal outcome is to damage or destroy 40%, or even 60%, of the shipbuilding in a system.
The MA wanted the RMN weakened but not beaten so that they can beat the SLN and with whatever is left over have it out with the RHN and see both navies mutually destroyed. The RHN is savagely beaten, the RMN is beaten down and the SLN is defeated and the League is disintegrating. The SEM had no way of knowing exactly what the end goal was for the MA so they should have made no assumptions and worked based on facts alone.
So if the MA hit 60%-80% of the SEM’s shipyards just because that met their goals the SEM should assume that the MA doesn’t have enough ships?So if they hit less than 100% of the yards you can start looking at why that might be and what that implies about their capabilities.
The US Army has over 1,000,000 people in uniform fulltime, National Guard and Reserve, exactly how many of those people are in a tier 1 special forces army unit? If a mission calls for the use of Tier 1 Special Forces are you going to assume that they represent all that the enemy has in terms of manpower?
For all the RMN knows the Sharks could have only 1 purpose and that is a surprise attack, so few navies would build more ships that are essentially a one trick pony. For all the RMN knows the MAN could have a few hundred SD(P)’s in the background but only a handful of special ships just for a surprise attack. Why build 100, 300 or 500 Sharks if they serve one purpose and are not combat worthy otherwise?
Unless you attack a lot more targets then you really need to hit to meet your goals, if the MA needed at least 1 of the SEM’s stations destroyed and as many of the dispersed yards as they can, they spread their attack with little margin of error on individual targets, the redundancy is the fact that they are attacking all 3 stations with success being judged if at least one is destroyed.You'd look at how much overkill they used on the targets that they did hit - 100+% overkill implies that either they didn't trust their weapons effectiveness or they expected substantially better defenses than they actually encountered. Conversely 0% overkill hints that they might be resource stretched because any failure or anything stopped by defenses would have cut into their effectiveness. Militaries try for a reasonable level of overkill.
Did the RMN and SEM know who was behind the attacks? What their goals were? What their intentions were with regards to the SLN and RHN? Did they know why they were attacked( to destroy them or weaken them)? The bigger the footprint the easier it is for something to go wrong, the easier it is for the RMN to have sensor data and the harder it is for the MA to hide in the shadows. Hell even the League might sit back and wonder what happened if they were heading for a war and someone managed to trash the entire industry of the SEM along with it’s navy.From looking at what they did hit verses what they could have potentially hit - given their demonstrated capabilities - and looking at the level of overkill employed you can make some pretty reasonable assumptions about how they viewed their tactical goals and capabilities on the day.
No, when you don’t have any intelligence on the enemy or their intentions and goals it is far better to assume they are stronger and build as powerful fighting force as you can afford rather than assume they don’t have enough fleet to threaten you and cut your fleet strength. I am not suggesting that the SEM dig it’s own economic grave and jump in by maintaining a fleet of 1,000 or more SD(P)’s right after OB on its own, I am suggesting they build and maintain as many SD(P)’s as they can and with Bolthole that would be in the 400+ range.Obviously like much intelligence work you've got the risk that something totally outside your knowledge caused them to pick a goal you'd dismissed as irrational or caused them to employ less force than they actually had available (including deliberately holding back to screw with your threat assessment). But its a far better starting point than simply assuming your enemy had vast resources that they simply arbitrarily decided not to use this time.
Assuming the enemy who just slaughtered 9 million of your citizens in a few seconds is strong is better than assuming that he is weak, one assumption gives you a pleasant surprise if it was a premature attack on their part and the other assumptions leaves you conquered or slaughtered.