So....imagine you are Admiral Parnell's staff officer

kzt wrote:

drothgery wrote:But it wouldn't have been fighting Manticore. It would have been fighting Manticore and San Martin (who was no slouch), with the Trevor's Star terminus in San Martino hands so the Manticore-San Martin alliance could strike deep into Havenite territory pretty easily.

It took under a day for them to take San Martin IIRC. Basically, if you don't have force already in the system or at least ready to go at the junction you are not going to influence the outcome. At worst you get destroyed in detail by the peeps sitting at the terminus.

And it really doesn't matter what someone without multiple SD squadrons thinks about Haven, they can't really hurt Haven. And Haven can squash them like a bug when they get around to it.

Also, Manticore at the time of Roger's death had less than 50 wallers; most were Dreadnoughts and 14 of the Fleet were ancient pre-buildup designs. Yes, they could probably all be deployed in Defense of Trevor's star, but the PRN was easily large enough to take them and the sub-waller San Marino fleet at the same time.

kzt wrote:

drothgery wrote:But it wouldn't have been fighting Manticore. It would have been fighting Manticore and San Martin (who was no slouch), with the Trevor's Star terminus in San Martino hands so the Manticore-San Martin alliance could strike deep into Havenite territory pretty easily.

It took under a day for them to take San Martin IIRC. Basically, if you don't have force already in the system or at least ready to go at the junction you are not going to influence the outcome. At worst you get destroyed in detail by the peeps sitting at the terminus.

And it really doesn't matter what someone without multiple SD squadrons thinks about Haven, they can't really hurt Haven. And Haven can squash them like a bug when they get around to it.

Yes. No Erewhon, though. No Grayson. No Talbot(one t), Zanzibar or Alizon either. No fleet stations at Hancock or Grendelsbane. Whilst most of them didn't really seem to bring much to the war effort, they did serve to distract the PN from attacking the only target they should have.

Theemile wrote:Also, Manticore at the time of Roger's death had less than 50 wallers; most were Dreadnoughts and 14 of the Fleet were ancient pre-buildup designs. Yes, they could probably all be deployed in Defense of Trevor's star, but the PRN was easily large enough to take them and the sub-waller San Marino fleet at the same time.

Bit more than that. They had 35 SD and up to 66 DN according to HoS numbers. The RMN BBs were decommissioned 15 years prior to San Martin's defeat, with the beam-heavy Gladiators coming online.

Even by that point, Haven would probably need to commit almost their entire Navy, but the odds are still in their favour.

However, given that the San Martin Navy managed to evacuate some civilians from the system, it's clear Haven invaded the system on a budget(hence assassinating KR3 to keep the RMN out of it).

Now... the next question to me, is what does Parnell do in 1906, assuming the Pierre Coup never happened and the PN's command teams remain intact? Does he handle the fighting retreats to Trevor's Star better, perhaps holding it, or gamble by sending a fleet to seize the Junction and bring in reinforcements via Trevor's Star?

Since several others are advocating for a blitz, I might suggest an alternate course of action:

If we go for a total war, winning will shred the fleet to a degree unacceptable to maintaining order in those places still come to terms with the new dialectic. We might change the exchange rates with clever tactics and picking our operational targets, but at some point our wallers are going to meet theirs and that is going to cost too many ships. Even owning the junction won't pay off the price quickly enough to allow a serious re-armament program, and w ewill face threats from powers we once considered safely below us (this is 1900 after all, before economies start to exponentially become "whaetever is needed to fight space WWII - and then the moment we need bigger, better, more massive tech, the industrial base is ready to go").

We should maintain a fleet in being, and begin seeing what small concessions we can get without going to war. The manty government is not particularly interested in an all-out throwdown, and we don't need to give them one. Let the threat of war get as much as it can for us before we actually need to go. If conflict is needed, we follow a strategy of strictly limited engagements and commerce raiding, inviting manty retaliation on the same scale.

Their political system will not want to go full mobilization and the lack of a a massive fleet battle won't kickstart it, allowing us to start negotiations after a cruiser war.

If for some reason they do mass everything and decide to take politically unacceptable casualties - will they really commit to losing hundreds of wallers over a non-existential threat - we can meet them on the defensive, where fixed positions and the ability to mouse-trap them with response forces to help offset their tech advantage. Keep a strong squadron in unknown positions so that they can never strip Manticore bare for the attack. (and, depending on how much latitude we want given here, keep some boomers up-hyper on an alert system to serve as an escalation cap; the spectre of total MAD will help keep everyone down in the mud and keep this a limited affair)

GloriousRuse wrote:We should maintain a fleet in being, and begin seeing what small concessions we can get without going to war. The manty government is not particularly interested in an all-out throwdown, and we don't need to give them one. Let the threat of war get as much as it can for us before we actually need to go. If conflict is needed, we follow a strategy of strictly limited engagements and commerce raiding, inviting manty retaliation on the same scale.

Their political system will not want to go full mobilization and the lack of a a massive fleet battle won't kickstart it, allowing us to start negotiations after a cruiser war.

The SKM government did not want to go to war, but was preparing for it (si vis pacem, para bellum). It's highly unlikely the SKM would start the war, since the build up was against a threat and public opinion wasn't on their side for starting one. So if the PRH didn't start it, there would be no conflict. I'm not sure of the benefit of that though: what do you accomplish?

Another aspect is that the Lynx terminus would eventually be found, just on a different timetable. Then all of a sudden the SKM becomes the SEM, much bigger and powerful.

The problem with this is that the PRH did not have the time it would require. Its treasury was empty. It had to expand to keep the BLS payments and that needed to come from one of three places: towards Erewhon, towards Silesia or towards Manticore. The first one was rejected because it would grow towards the League and was considered an unacceptable risk. The second was the preferred, but Basilisk was on the way and would bring about a conflict with Manticore anyway.

munroburton wrote:Yes. No Erewhon, though. No Grayson. No Talbot(one t), Zanzibar or Alizon either. No fleet stations at Hancock or Grendelsbane. Whilst most of them didn't really seem to bring much to the war effort, they did serve to distract the PN from attacking the only target they should have.

Theemile wrote:Also, Manticore at the time of Roger's death had less than 50 wallers; most were Dreadnoughts and 14 of the Fleet were ancient pre-buildup designs. Yes, they could probably all be deployed in Defense of Trevor's star, but the PRN was easily large enough to take them and the sub-waller San Marino fleet at the same time.

Bit more than that. They had 35 SD and up to 66 DN according to HoS numbers. The RMN BBs were decommissioned 15 years prior to San Martin's defeat, with the beam-heavy Gladiators coming online.

Even by that point, Haven would probably need to commit almost their entire Navy, but the odds are still in their favour.

Indeed, we don't know how big Haven's fleet is at this time. We know they had a much bigger fleet and tradition of shipbuilding in Travis' time, but with the discovery of the Junction, the RMN may have caught up. We don't know what the parity was for the peaceful years of the 17th and 18th centuries. Clearly Haven began a build-up when it became expansionist with the DuQuesne Plan. Until Roger's build-up, the PRN must have been much bigger.

But during the Trevor's Star incorporation? We don't know the force levels. It's possible that Haven noticed the build up and began one of their own too. That means a self-reinforcing cycle of both powers building up, with Haven having a higher starting point but with a shallower curve.

However, given that the San Martin Navy managed to evacuate some civilians from the system, it's clear Haven invaded the system on a budget(hence assassinating KR3 to keep the RMN out of it).

Now... the next question to me, is what does Parnell do in 1906, assuming the Pierre Coup never happened and the PN's command teams remain intact? Does he handle the fighting retreats to Trevor's Star better, perhaps holding it, or gamble by sending a fleet to seize the Junction and bring in reinforcements via Trevor's Star?

I think Parnell would have continued executing the war as he had planned. The initial defeats at Hancock and Third Yeltsin notwithstanding, the PRN was bigger and was getting help from the League contractors. He had no reason to rethink it all. And without Pierre's self-decaptiation of his own fleet, Parnell might have been able to actually bring the RMN to its knees before Project Gram produced enough goodies (namely, Medusa and Shrike classes) to turn the tide. Remember that the PRN was headless between Parnell and McQueen. If it had used that time to prosecute the war sensibly, it might have won.

Or it might not. The admiralty and commands under Parnell might have been ossified and unwilling to learn. There wouldn't have been a Theisman, a McQueen or a Giscard as leaders who actually learned.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Another aspect is that the Lynx terminus would eventually be found, just on a different timetable. Then all of a sudden the SKM becomes the SEM, much bigger and powerful.

If not for the somewhat weird political situation at the time in the SKM, they probably don't add more than Lynx proper and the terminus system (though may spend some time and money turning the Rembrandt Trade Union into a de jure star nation rather than a de facto one and propping it up to the point it can handle a light Frontier Fleet task force). Especially if there's no precedent from the San Martin annexation to go on.

Yeah, adding a bunch of barbarians who provide no revenue and are a huge military manpower and financial sink doesn't make you more powerful.

The only thing it does is move the 2% cap that David had on the SKM military up, but only when they can be effectively trained. This allows the SKM to keep supporting on welfare their feminist performance artists, finger puppet clinics and interpretive dance troupes in the style they wish to be supported, as they add so much to the economic muscle of the SKM.

While military strategy must fit political ends, it is the PN's duty to point out when the political ends cannot be reasonably achieved with the means at hand. If you win a major war with the SKM, the fleet is shredded, the system falls apart, and you won't be able to keep the happy days of easy conquest up.

If you lose, well, you lost and the system falls apart.

Instead the strategic objective of our war, if so needed, is to gain a concession on being able to transit the Basilisk area en-route to Silesia where we can win an easy conquest.

From a national decision making view, the BLS policy was a gambit for initial stability (well, really just so we could see how rotten-bad people who aren't manties are, even though the manties will in later books be shown ro undertake extensive social welfare and universal income policies that would have BLS like effects, but work with me), but we need to recognize that our ability to expand outwards easily is reaching a culminating point. If we win a limited war to gain Basilisk passage, we have one good fight with Silesia that can redress the system...but the system will need to change.

Or, even if it is inconclusive, war with a peer power provides the justification for slashing the bloated social services and affecting long change. Better to do that while bleeding a few screen ships a month than watching a decade of GDP disappear in thirty minutes.

Internal to our organization, a dust up with a power that can actually challenge us will likely help persuade the politicians to release additional finances and human capital to modernizing the fleet - which as your staff officer, seems like exactly where we should be sending some of that excessive social spending.

drothgery wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Another aspect is that the Lynx terminus would eventually be found, just on a different timetable. Then all of a sudden the SKM becomes the SEM, much bigger and powerful.

If not for the somewhat weird political situation at the time in the SKM, they probably don't add more than Lynx proper and the terminus system (though may spend some time and money turning the Rembrandt Trade Union into a de jure star nation rather than a de facto one and propping it up to the point it can handle a light Frontier Fleet task force). Especially if there's no precedent from the San Martin annexation to go on.

It's clear that the Lynx system, for all intents and purposes, voted for annexation before Harvest Joy returned only because Trevor's Star had requested annexation a few years earlier. And the latter did that because of very close ties between the two systems and because Manticore had just liberated it. If the groundwork hadn't been there, Lynx wouldn't have had the epiphany to ask for it too at the time. And thence, the RTU wouldn't have done the same in organising the Constitutional Conference.

But it might have happened anyway. Unlike other Beowulf or Trevor's Star termini, Lynx would have had no right to WH transit fees or joint ownership. Its economy would definitely improve, but it would be just a spark away from asking for annexation to get a bigger share of the benefits and starting the snowball again. I don't see the Manticore government denying it.

And that's assuming that Trevor's Star doesn't get liberated anyway, even under Parnell.

In the worst case scenario, there's no Star Empire, but the Star Kingdom does get a new route to the Solarian League worlds ahd the commensurate increase in wealth and prestige. More traffic means more income for the Chancellor of the Exchequer, which means more funding for the RMN.

The only thing that would have been different is that there would be no RMAIA because High Ridge would likely never have become Prime Minister and needed an agency to divert funds from.

GloriousRuse wrote:While military strategy must fit political ends, it is the PN's duty to point out when the political ends cannot be reasonably achieved with the means at hand. If you win a major war with the SKM, the fleet is shredded, the system falls apart, and you won't be able to keep the happy days of easy conquest up.

If you lose, well, you lost and the system falls apart.

As it did. Twice.

Instead the strategic objective of our war, if so needed, is to gain a concession on being able to transit the Basilisk area en-route to Silesia where we can win an easy conquest.

Do you think it likely the SKM would have agreed to that?

On one hand, I can't see the Centrists or the Crown Loyalists, who had been screaming about Havenite expansionism for decades and encroachment to Manticore accepting it. This would be akin to condoning the Havenite annexation of parts of Silesia and I don't think they'd like that. Moreover, it would have brought the PRH in conflict with the Andermani's desires upon Silesia, so Manticore would find itself between two neighbours fighting. It's also an economic problem, since Manticore derived quite a bit of revenue from Silesia, which would probably drop off once they became part of the PRH.

On the other hand, I can see the other parties, who were for appeasement, to wish to grant it. The more they postponed the conflict, the better for them. The Conservatives would be saying that all that matter was the internal market anyway, who cares what happens to Silesia? Some might even say that giving PRH more rope would hasten its demise. Besides, the PRH was probably funding those parties and could funnel some of its dark money to sway Manticoran public opinion.