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Verge Nations Post-Uncomprising Honor

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Re: Verge Nations Post-Uncomprising Honor
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Wed Nov 06, 2019 9:59 pm

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Brigade XO wrote:Not immediately perhaps but I can see the GA and other interested parties going to take a look. From the same perspective, I can imagine Kingsford making a point of trying to both get back into the shrinking/shifting SLN areas and wanting to pass the word to the GA of any ships/officers who have gone AWOL and are causing problems.
Why? Because one of the last things he needs is the GA blaming the SLN for the people who have gone rogue and set off to be pirates or local warlords.
Remember that for all that is left of Battle Fleet, it is still Frontier Fleet that has the people with the best experience and most usefull ships. Anybody that takes off with SLN ships is going to cause the SLN and the League a lot of trouble, particularly if the GA takes the position that SLN can't control it's people.
That is without even getting into the discussion of SLN and what is going to shape out of the SL 2. getting rid of both Alighment agents, general incompetents (political, military, etc) and "dealing" with the OFS managers and operatives who have been abusing the OFS.
So, particulraly if Kingsford knows he has had people take off as independent contractors in the warlord or pirate business he is going to want to get the GA involved as soon as possible to deal with them--particularly since the SLN isn't going to allowed to go chasing them out of it's narrower boundaries


If I were Kingsford, I'd actually ask to take care of those myself, with a cadre of trustworthy officers and ships. If the GA wants to be present as observer, sure.

Benefits:

1) show the Galaxy that the New SLN is not the Old SLN, that they're dealing with their corrupt people and are now upstanding members of the community

2) get the New SLN officers to gain experience the hard way: through the crucible of battle

3) show the flag to systems that were on the verge (pun intended) of declaring independence. Not to intimidate them, but to demonstrate the benefits of remaining members.

4) eventually get the GA to relax the prohibition, so the SLN can perform merchant protection duties outside the SL
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Re: Verge Nations Post-Uncomprising Honor
Post by TFLYTSNBN   » Thu Nov 07, 2019 5:54 pm

TFLYTSNBN

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Brigade XO wrote:Not immediately perhaps but I can see the GA and other interested parties going to take a look. From the same perspective, I can imagine Kingsford making a point of trying to both get back into the shrinking/shifting SLN areas and wanting to pass the word to the GA of any ships/officers who have gone AWOL and are causing problems.
Why? Because one of the last things he needs is the GA blaming the SLN for the people who have gone rogue and set off to be pirates or local warlords.
Remember that for all that is left of Battle Fleet, it is still Frontier Fleet that has the people with the best experience and most usefull ships. Anybody that takes off with SLN ships is going to cause the SLN and the League a lot of trouble, particularly if the GA takes the position that SLN can't control it's people.
That is without even getting into the discussion of SLN and what is going to shape out of the SL 2. getting rid of both Alighment agents, general incompetents (political, military, etc) and "dealing" with the OFS managers and operatives who have been abusing the OFS.
So, particulraly if Kingsford knows he has had people take off as independent contractors in the warlord or pirate business he is going to want to get the GA involved as soon as possible to deal with them--particularly since the SLN isn't going to allowed to go chasing them out of it's narrower boundaries


If I were Kingsford, I'd actually ask to take care of those myself, with a cadre of trustworthy officers and ships. If the GA wants to be present as observer, sure.

Benefits:

1) show the Galaxy that the New SLN is not the Old SLN, that they're dealing with their corrupt people and are now upstanding members of the community

2) get the New SLN officers to gain experience the hard way: through the crucible of battle

3) show the flag to systems that were on the verge (pun intended) of declaring independence. Not to intimidate them, but to demonstrate the benefits of remaining members.

4) eventually get the GA to relax the prohibition, so the SLN can perform merchant protection duties outside the SL



All good points.

However; is a former SLN ship that is crewed by people who have renounced their alliegance to the SL still a SLN ship?

Given the precedent set by Gustov Anderman, would the GA necessarily be oppossed to warlords ruling Verge systems if their reign was not malignant?
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Re: Verge Nations Post-Uncomprising Honor
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Thu Nov 07, 2019 8:31 pm

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TFLYTSNBN wrote:All good points.

However; is a former SLN ship that is crewed by people who have renounced their alliegance to the SL still a SLN ship?

Given the precedent set by Gustov Anderman, would the GA necessarily be oppossed to warlords ruling Verge systems if their reign was not malignant?


If those ex-SLN were properly decommissioned by the SLN and sold to those new owners, then yeah, the SL and SLN can disclaim responsibility. That's an Anderman case: he (and any partners) legally owned an armada, including the Vergeltung.

But that's not what's going to happen and that's not what happened during the Haven Civil War either. Those are rogue units, who absconded with the ships still legally owned by the SLN. The crew may renounce their citizenship and take up service with a new nation in the Verge, but they can't take their ships with them. If nothing else, the SLN has an obligation to reclaim those ships.

The SLN may actually sell the surplus of ships that it no longer needs. It must have something in the order of ten of thousand ships BC-sized and below, most of which were FF and a great deal thereof used for shady reasons. The SLN will dramatically and immediately downsize, followed by a crash rebuild of newer, more modern units. The only question is whether there'll be a market for those units, especially if, as we discussed in another thread (the one about shipyards in Talbott), Havenite, Manticoran and Andermani shipyards start producing export versions of their designs.
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Re: Verge Nations Post-Uncomprising Honor
Post by Jonathan_S   » Fri Nov 08, 2019 12:53 pm

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TFLYTSNBN wrote:All good points.

However; is a former SLN ship that is crewed by people who have renounced their alliegance to the SL still a SLN ship?

Given the precedent set by Gustov Anderman, would the GA necessarily be oppossed to warlords ruling Verge systems if their reign was not malignant?

Well if they're not part of a recognized government and they're going around seizing ships or planets then they're just normal pirates -- so in the SLN captains and admirals turning warlord its kind of a moot point. Either they're in trouble because they've got SLN ships outside of League space and will be treated as pirates or they're in trouble because they're actually pirates.
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Re: Verge Nations Post-Uncomprising Honor
Post by fallsfromtrees   » Fri Nov 08, 2019 1:10 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:
TFLYTSNBN wrote:All good points.

However; is a former SLN ship that is crewed by people who have renounced their alliegance to the SL still a SLN ship?

Given the precedent set by Gustov Anderman, would the GA necessarily be oppossed to warlords ruling Verge systems if their reign was not malignant?

Well if they're not part of a recognized government and they're going around seizing ships or planets then they're just normal pirates -- so in the SLN captains and admirals turning warlord its kind of a moot point. Either they're in trouble because they've got SLN ships outside of League space and will be treated as pirates or they're in trouble because they're actually pirates.

I suspect that part of the question is going to be how they became warlord. If (like Gustav Andermann) they are invited to help solve a problem, then I suspect that the GA is going to say well and good. If on the other hand, they engaged in EE violations (i.e KE strikes to force a surrender), then the GA will take a very dim view of them, and deal with the problem.
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Re: Verge Nations Post-Uncomprising Honor
Post by kzt   » Fri Nov 08, 2019 3:57 pm

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fallsfromtrees wrote:then the GA will take a very dim view of them

And in a couple of years later, when a GA ship hears about this, the trail is long cold. It's like murder in Chicago. When only 15% of the murders result in convictions the odds are that nobody in a groups that are committing the murders are really worried about the cops.

Assume there are 6000 verge systems, it takes a month to reach the first one, a month to get back to base and you can visit one per week while on patrol. Assume a 6 month patrol, with 6 months between patrols. How many ships do you need on assigned to patrol to reach each system once a year?

About 400 ships. Do you really think that the RMN is going to assign every light unit in the fleet to this in a period where they are interested in reducing the cost of the RMN so as to afford to pay the enormous infrastructure bills?

How exactly are they going to do this and also keep looking for weird hyperspace anomalies a few light months out from Manticore, patrol their own space, run fleet exercises and otherwise do all the core reasons that that the have a navy at all?

So how often do you really think each system is going to get visited, with enough time spent to realize the system president is being held at gunpoint when he courtiously denies you the right to enter his space?
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Re: Verge Nations Post-Uncomprising Honor
Post by PeterZ   » Fri Nov 08, 2019 4:33 pm

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Kzt's point regarding the sheer volume of space the Verge World's and Protectorates inhabit is quite telling. The effect will be that anything beyond 30 days travel from a GA controlled WH terminus is on its own. That threshold represents the AAC size of star nations. They will have to find an organization to join to secure whatever they can from warlords. Heck, they may choose occupation by a warlord to negotiate a better deal.

With that in mind, the astrography of the Honorverse suggests that volume of spaces is about half of all inhabited space. That means between the MA and rogue warlords, half of inhabited space is open to their unhindered influence. Some of those rogue warlords may find common cause with the GA or not. Astrography would allow them some protection to be independent but not a big enough PITA to annoy the GA or the SL 2.0.

I can't wait to see what that looks like.
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Re: Verge Nations Post-Uncomprising Honor
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Fri Nov 08, 2019 9:25 pm

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kzt wrote:Assume there are 6000 verge systems, it takes a month to reach the first one, a month to get back to base and you can visit one per week while on patrol. Assume a 6 month patrol, with 6 months between patrols. How many ships do you need on assigned to patrol to reach each system once a year?

About 400 ships. Do you really think that the RMN is going to assign every light unit in the fleet to this in a period where they are interested in reducing the cost of the RMN so as to afford to pay the enormous infrastructure bills?


You don't have to visit every system. If you visited 1 in 10, then there's a 1 in 10 chance that the GA is going drop unannounced on your party. Are you feeling lucky?

Moreover, planets seldom exist in isolation, even in the Verge. They trade locally with one another. A coup would not go unnoticed to spacers visiting the planet, especially if suddenly there's a squadron of warships in orbit -- and if you seize those ships, then whoever they belonged to will have even more reason to seek help. So the GA doesn't need to come to the system that was captured, they only need to reach one of its 5 closest neighbours.

If you multiply the two, then you can cover the same with 20-50 times fewer ships.

And this is not just the RMN. The GA has far more light warships than 400. In peace time, what better way to get the skippers to get hands-on knowledge than to go patrol everywhere?

Finally, you don't need warships to find out that there's problem. That's what the merchant fleet is for, with all those reserve officers. It takes one to return to a nodal force and blow the whistle.
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Re: Verge Nations Post-Uncomprising Honor
Post by kzt   » Fri Nov 08, 2019 10:43 pm

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So you drop out of hyper, spend say 2 hours to get to the planet. You swat anyone who objects and tell them that you are going to come collect stuff and you'll blow up the town if anyone resists.

So it takes you 8 days to collect whatever really valuable but easy to resell stuff they have and the top 50 contestants from the Miss Planet contest and then you take off. Total time is under 10 days.

Is the 0.2% chance that some annoying busybody is going to interrupt you a serious deterrent to your nefarious plans?

You can do this 20 times and have about a 95% chance that no annoying busybody is going to stumble upon you.

How much security is the GA really providing here? How many raids will it take before they petition OFS to come back and keep them safe?
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Re: Verge Nations Post-Uncomprising Honor
Post by Galactic Sapper   » Sat Nov 09, 2019 10:39 am

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kzt wrote:So you drop out of hyper, spend say 2 hours to get to the planet. You swat anyone who objects and tell them that you are going to come collect stuff and you'll blow up the town if anyone resists.

So it takes you 8 days to collect whatever really valuable but easy to resell stuff they have and the top 50 contestants from the Miss Planet contest and then you take off. Total time is under 10 days.

Is the 0.2% chance that some annoying busybody is going to interrupt you a serious deterrent to your nefarious plans?

You can do this 20 times and have about a 95% chance that no annoying busybody is going to stumble upon you.

How much security is the GA really providing here? How many raids will it take before they petition OFS to come back and keep them safe?

I already addressed this very point.

Galactic Sapper wrote:
kzt wrote:If you are depending on SLN naval units for KE strikes that means you have NOTHING in space with a popgun. So the first guy who shows up with an 80 y/o DD can do whatever they want. And take whatever they want.

That's basically what we see in the systems which have been described. Most aren't going to have more than a few massively outdated LACs for customs and law enforcement. Give it 20 years or a few horrible examples and that will change. Even then it wouldn't stop your system from being another Marsh if someone shows up with something heavier.

That's why I mentioned helpful neighbors. No one wants to live next to a Warneke any more than they want one in their own system. The possibility of a neighboring system being able to call in a battlecruiser squadron from one of the major powers would keep such events to hit and run tactics rather than long term occupations. Because the GA, the Andermani, the Erewhonese, the Mayans, etc. have commercial interest in stepping on any Warneke-wannabes that might show up.

Yes, there's going to be piracy. The next 10-20 years are going to see lots of that sort of attack, until enough of the verge systems can afford to defend themselves against moderate levels of piracy- say, enough system defense to squash a heavy cruiser or two. Most systems will be able to afford that level of self defense within a decade or two of getting the Solarian boot off their necks. Or they'll form smallish multi-stellar associations such as Talbot had prior to annexation, so multiple systems can cooperatively fund a battlecruiser squadron or so. Even 8 ships spread over 20 systems would be a pretty hefty deterrent to that sort of hit-and-run piracy, since the ships would be based locally and spend much less time in transit as well as being more familiar with local conditions.
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