Verge Nations Post-Uncomprising Honor

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

kzt wrote:FF had something like 10,000 ships in service.

BF had something like 2500.

There are a lot of poor wartime officers in both, that's how bureaucracies work, but most of them just need better tools.

Which the SL is perfectly capable of providing once the SLN stops suppressing innovation.

I think the BF had probably a bit more, but not by much. We know they had 2000 SDs, a quarter of which was lost during the war. But just that number implies there need to have been active escort ships below the wall in the BF too.

In the event of a war, the SLN could call upon the FF to form the bulk of escort duties for the BF, but not even stupid political appointees would miss the fact that integration of forces that never trained together is not immediate. The BF needed a core of escorts of its own that is training with the SDs.

We can probably take Crandall's forces as a good cross-section. She had 71 SDs, 24 BC, 12 CA, 28 CL and 18 DD. If that ratio holds for 2000 SDs, that implies 675 BCs, 340 CAs, 800 CLs and 500 DDs (numbers rounded up and down), for a total of 4315 ships. Give or take several hundred, but I guess this is a good ballpark.

BF had around 10,200 SDs, but only ~2000 were on active duty at any one time. An additional 3-400 were in maintenance at any time. The rest were, as we know, in the reserve, with 50-100 new ships being constructed every year, with 1/2 going directly into the reserve. The oldest ships in the active fleet were retired to the reserve when new ships were constructed, but were refreshed to the newest spec before mothballing. Roughly 1/3rd of the reserve had been refreshed/built in the last 50 years, with the rest still having some autocannon in their defenses, making them completely obsolete against modern weapons.

IN UH it was mentioned that BF only had ~180 BCs in the reserve, and only a handful of smaller classes there as well; the plan was to draw from the Frontier Fleet if active operations was ever required.

Remember, this is a fleet which exercised away from their bases exactly 3 times in the previous 200 years. The 3 Operations we saw previous to SoV (Byng, Crandall, and Filerata) were largest exercises in the verge since those previous 3 - the BF was utterly un-prepared for actual operations and these operations used a major proportion of their light units.

After Sol, Hypathia, Ajay and Beowulf, the BF's BC coffers have to be VERY empty.

Every SLN BF ship in the Sol system is gone. Harrington destroyed perhaps 98% of the SD's in the Reserve parking area. Any of the Reserve Fleet of BCs that Kingsford was having brought back into service are also gone (and any lighter warships as well) and every active duty SLN warship in the system was scuttled.
Also gone is EVERY industrial station in the Sol system including astroid mining and gas extraction from the gas giants. The habitats were not destroyed but Honor did a much better job of eliminating all the industrial and commercial capasity in orbits or moving around in places like the belts--that would include any military storage and ammunition. Probably any military transports including troop ships. Nobody mentioned SLN Dispatch Boats.

The SDs that were gathered to be the second round after Fillerta haven't been mentioned but if they were noted in his Fleets's databases, it is likely that the GA either sent a force to deal with them.....or better, Honor told Kingsford to order them secured with ONLY a caretaking crews and remain in place till the GA could go collect them (in the same manner as Crandalls ships capable of getting to Manticore) to use the materials to rebuild the SEM, Beowulf and Grayson infrastructure. Or she could just waste the material and have them ordered scuttled once GA forces got there to watch and confirm it was done. There would be the little matter of all those crew having to hang out at the local habitable planet till the SLN could arrange transport but that would be the SLN's problem. Remember, if the GA has the information on those ships then Kingsford not insuring they comply with Harrington's order is going to be a BAD THING ford the SLN.

Brigade XO wrote:Every SLN BF ship in the Sol system is gone. Harrington destroyed perhaps 98% of the SD's in the Reserve parking area. Any of the Reserve Fleet of BCs that Kingsford was having brought back into service are also gone (and any lighter warships as well) and every active duty SLN warship in the system was scuttled.

Oh, I had forgotten completely about the scuttled ships after the "Battle" of Sol. That means the SLN lost something like 800-900 SDs from the active flet during the war. The rest, of course, need replacing with better tech (but still good enough against anyone except the GA).

I didn't include the reserve in the calculation. Reactivating the reserve would take time, so there would be time to train FF units to work as escorts to the wall as they're reactivating. So the BF wouldn't need much in terms of reserve ships below the wall, just the active ones needed to be actual escorts for the active BF.

We don't how many of those 8000 SDs of the reserve were parked in Ganymede (Reserve One). Putting all your apples/eggs/SDs in the same basket is ill-advised, but who knows if they just thought "this is the safest system in the explored Galaxy, anywhere else we park them would be less secure." But it wouldn't be called "Reserve One" if there weren't a "Reserve Two". I would imagine they're sorted by the time it takes to reactivate: ready reserve, just take the sheets off the upholstery, refuel and bring ammo and provions; deep reserve, need refit.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:This is exactly the scenario that I was suggesting. Rather than use a hijacked SLN ship or ships to go raiding, you set yourself up as the system protector. The CO becomes King and the other officers become nobles, but your rule is intentionally enlightened. You might set up a Constitutional Monarchy that preserves your political power while granting enough political rights to the citizens that they support the system.

You need to preserve and enhance the system's industrial base so as to have the means to maintain, update and replace your ships. As a result, you don't waste resources on stupid stuff like Gold Plated toilets. Most of your personal wealth would be productive assets that produce income for you but also nurture the industrial development of your vassals.

I do like KZT's comment about the top 50 contestants in this Miss Planet Contest. Set yourselves up as the local protectors and you get the girls without having to coerce them.

The issue with setting up shop in a verge system is that you're easy to find there once the GA eventually gets word about it.

If you're only the top Admiral and reasonably clearly listening to orders from the pre-existing government (however much graft you might be skimming off the top) then they'd probably leave you alone. Not treating it much differently that any government that purchased Solarian designed/built ships and imported naval technical advisors/training cadre to form their system defense force.

If the old (possibly OFS puppet) government was overthrown by the domestic population the GA will probably look a bit more closely - but again if you're just acting as head of the navy rather than running the system (however benevolently) you're probably okay.

But if you go and set yourself up as King, to replace the prior government, there's a non-trivial chance that they'll choose to see that external takeover as piracy writ large and treat you and your officers accordingly.

kzt wrote:

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 courteously denies you the right to enter his space?

What were the Manties doing for several hundred years?

Patrolling Silesian space

Why?

Because they had lots of merchant shipping there.

What are the Manties expecting to be doing for the next couple of hundred years?

Patrolling Verge space.

Why?

Well, see above. Plus see the fact that things got completely upset there, by Manty command, and the Manties recognize this imposes a moral burden on them.

If a system goes all Iron Curtain totalitarian, they're going to get a close visit from the Manties. If someone plays warlord and takes over w/o an Iron Curtain, merchants are going to report it, and the Manties will visit.

There will always be pirates. Pirates with a high body count will get some dedicated ships sent after them. See Oversteegen

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?

How much security did OFS provide?

In what reasonable way is this "possible now" but "not possible before"?

Until you can answer that question, you don't have anything.

The Verge systems were being systematically robbed by OFS and the trans-stellars.

However much of that money was being spent to defend them, it's significantly less than the total amount they were being robbed.

Which means that whatever they were doing before to keep safe can still be done, while still making the systems better off.


"They didn't do this because OFS would have hunted them down"? Yeah, because OFS is so much more serious about stopping pirates than Manticore is, and so much less corrupt.

In case you missed it, that was sarcasm.

GregD wrote:
What were the Manties doing for several hundred years?

Patrolling Silesian space

Why?

Because they had lots of merchant shipping there.

What are the Manties expecting to be doing for the next couple of hundred years?

Patrolling Verge space.

There is a teeny tiny difference between patrolling the few thousand cubic lightyears occupied by a compact group of something like 40 systems who have extensive trade with you and patrolling a few million cubic lightyears occuped by 4000-6000 systems who mostly have no money and nothing of value to sell. And I’ll point out that RMN, despite the huge ecconomic value provide by trade, still had difficulty maintining patrols in Silesian space.

kzt wrote:

GregD wrote:
What were the Manties doing for several hundred years?

Patrolling Silesian space

Why?

Because they had lots of merchant shipping there.

What are the Manties expecting to be doing for the next couple of hundred years?

Patrolling Verge space.

There is a teeny tiny difference between patrolling the few thousand cubic lightyears occupied by a compact group of something like 40 systems who have extensive trade with you and patrolling a few million cubic lightyears occuped by 4000-6000 systems who mostly have no money and nothing of value to sell. And I’ll point out that RMN, despite the huge ecconomic value provide by trade, still had difficulty maintining patrols in Silesian space.

"4000-6000 systems who mostly have no money and nothing of value to sell"

That pretty much has to be false. You can't loot people who have nothing to loot. The systems aren't poor because they have no economic capacity, the systems were poor because OFS was robbing them blind.

No more OFS theft. Anyone bombs all the facilities on the way out, I expect that a complaint eventually percolates it's way up, and the responsible people get sent back for "justice".

So we've got 4000 - 6000 systems with economies that generate at least some cream, and the cream is no longer all being stolen.

Review "Space Vikings". You go after system with nothing, then you're "chicken stealing", and not making enough to cover maintenance on your ships plus parties for the crew. Which means you're not in business for long.

You're going after big, functional, rich systems? You're hurting people that the Manties are looking at as customers. Which means Manty patrols to hunt you down.

If everything going to come up roses? Of course not.

But it's not going to become "pirates joy", either

I'd have liked to hear about Kingford's surrender to the GA fleet. Especially if he told Honor, "just last month l was made aware of a little problem in the SLN, namely that the upper echelons of the navy are filled with MAlign moles. We've discovered 5 so far, but they drop dead as soon as soon as we confront them..... any suggestions ?"

bert953 wrote:I'd have liked to hear about Kingford's surrender to the GA fleet. Especially if he told Honor, "just last month l was made aware of a little problem in the SLN, namely that the upper echelons of the navy are filled with MAlign moles. We've discovered 5 so far, but they drop dead as soon as soon as we confront them..... any suggestions ?"

I'm sure he did talk to her about this, unofficially. The two wouldn't deal with it directly, but would direct their respective teams to work together.

When RFC posted the plans for upcoming books, he hinted that the next Crown of Slaves will include appearances by some of the Ghost Hunters. That might be a consequence of Honor and Kingsford talking.