Has anyone else decided to root against Manticore?

That, including the firing volleys of missiles at the the close orbital infrastructure around an occupied planet from the hyperlimit, is precisely what the RHN did at Zanzibar per David.

kzt wrote:That, including the firing volleys of missiles at the the close orbital infrastructure around an occupied planet from the hyperlimit, is precisely what the RHN did at Zanzibar per David.

Certainly not during Icarus and I don't believe so during the second war either. Do you have text?

Galactic Sapper wrote:

kzt wrote:That, including the firing volleys of missiles at the the close orbital infrastructure around an occupied planet from the hyperlimit, is precisely what the RHN did at Zanzibar per David.

Certainly not during Icarus and I don't believe so during the second war either. Do you have text?

It's how they killed the forces at Zanzibar late in AAC per David's posting here. Let me see if I can find that.

Sorry, it's a 2012 post that has aged off the forum. Doesn't appear to have been copied by the internet archive.

Basically, what David said in AAC:
"About as bad as it could have been," Hamish replied. She looked at him, and he sighed. "He came in with four full battle squadrons of pod-layers, and their battle squadrons are still eight ships strong. He also had a couple of divisions of carriers and at least two battlecruiser squadrons to support them, and although we'd reinforced heavily after Admiral al-Bakr's fiasco—and I use the word deliberately," he added bitterly "—it wasn't heavily enough. He hit the defenses like a hammer, and he started right out by sweeping the asteroid belt with remote arrays of his own, followed by LAC strikes on our predeployed pods. Not only that, he'd brought along fast colliers stuffed with additional missile pods. He left them tucked away in hyper, came in just far enough to draw our mobile units away from their own support bases, and engaged them at long range until both sides had burned most of their ammo. Then he pulled back across the limit, reammunitioned, and came right back in before we could replace the expended defense pods or get our own pod-layers back in-system to rearm. It was a massacre."
...
"Tell me about it!" Theisman snorted. "I know you haven't seen Lester's after-action report on Zanzibar yet, but he makes exactly the same point. In fact, he feels that the only reason he managed to carry through was the reloads he'd brought along for his superdreadnoughts. Basically, he ran them out of ammunition at extreme range, then closed in to almost single-drive missile range to get the best targeting solutions he could. And even then, he needed a superiority of three-to-one."

I pointed out that it takes a special kind of idiot to run out of ammo close to he hyperlimit when the targets you need to protect are deep inside the hyperlimit. David took offense to this and said that the RHN had been using MDMs to attack the orbital infrastructure around Zanzabar, so the RMN forces had to come out to chase them away. It was the RHN using Donkeys that allowed them to pull this off.

So basically he was saying that either the RHN has such great missile seekers that they can be totally confident that attacking orbital targets from MDM ranges has no chance of hitting the planet, or that the RHN is perfectly willing to commit an Edict violation to gain a minor advantage.

Either way, they should have been willing to obliterate Sphinx's orbital infrastructure when they were deep inside the hyperlimit.

And you'll notice Zanibar was reported in Chapter 38. And by Chapter 65 nobody had yet bothered to mention to the commander of Home Fleet that the RHN had this cool new technology that they had been using to steamroll RMN forces.

Did I mention that I think AAC is a terrible book?

Well, while we’re at it...more Deus Ex Manty nonsense is the lack of a strategy from the SL. I’d buy “crush the barbs under our weight with an assault on tv wit home system” until the first fleet receives and utterly one sided drubbing and the MA releases additional intel.

After that, it’s not clear the SL bothers to have a strategy beyond “keep sending fleets to win!”. The argument about tactics is “are there ways a half thinking opponent could have not committed ritual suicide routinely.” Incidentally, with DDMs it’s possible to do outlimit attacks on forces as well, at reduced efficiency. Either with a momentum launch or first stage launch before the remaining stage(s) are used in the final attack run. Sure, the pH is low...but in a war where every week you kill a few cruisers unanswered, eventually you’re going to force a manty move to expose the battle fleet to a potential range favorable fight, or they start ceding systems.

If both sides want a limited war, the tactics of slow killing manties when they defend in limit is a great way to apply leverage for negotiations.

If you want to go “total, but not really”, the SEM is geographically quite small. You could probably roll through all of their planets industry with long bombs in a few months.

As far as honor blitzing Sol, real easy answer there. “Our EEV redline is strikes against the core worlds. Fight on the frontier, squabble over We will leave this conventional until that mark, at which point we will start killing planets. And since, you know, we WROTE and ENFORCE the Eridani edict...it’s not like anyone other than you can get revenge for that.”

So, ready for some MAD? When the dust settles, we’ll have hundreds of systems and trillions of people left; the SEM’s paltry geographic and population base won’t exist anymore. And we’ll be alive to paint you as the horrifying terorist barbs who crossed the line and threatened the home of humanity.

Which is another BS manty magic pass. Pretending WMD actions aren’t in play once you’ve tangled with the SL. Of course they are. The SL are the only people restraining them. And the MAlign has every interest in genociding the SEM and part of original core in an orgy of planet killing to clear the board and pose the RF as the new sane security option in town.

Which brings us to the real nuclear option: you enact continuity of government, move the mandarins to dispersed locations, and use hastas to c-kill every planet in the SEM. It takes precisely one honorverse missile to shatter a planet. All those passages where magic manty tech “let just two missiles through! Look how amazes good we are?” Dead planet. Honor comes back for vengeance, you duke it out out-limit. She’ll kill a few planets, but the manties own much lauded moral perfection won’t let them end the human race pointlessly.

kzt wrote:And you'll notice Zanibar was reported in Chapter 38. And by Chapter 65 nobody had yet bothered to mention to the commander of Home Fleet that the RHN had this cool new technology that they had been using to steamroll RMN forces.

Sounds like a massive retcon, because Chapter 65 does an excellent job of implying Beatrice was the first combat deployment of the donkeys.

Not only that, but using donkeys at Zanzibar wouldn't have made sense in the context of the text we do have. If the Havenites had been able to throw such massive salvos they'd have:

1) killed the defenders outright. Three to one odds are better than the two to one odds Second Fleet had against Home Fleet, and with donkeys that was sufficient to crush Home Fleet for roughly equal losses from Second Fleet. Three to one odds would have ended even more in favor of the attackers, with no need to reload at all.

2) even assuming #1 wasn't true somehow, the attackers at Zanzibar would have shot themselves dry much faster than the defending Manties. If they'd then retreated to reload, the Manties would still have quite a bit of ammunition since the first engagement wouldn't have lasted long enough for them to use it all.

Not to mention that the text regarding Zanzibar was perfectly in keeping with the text we have regarding the first phase of the Battle of Manticore. The first part of the Zanzibar action took place at maximum range and ended with basically a draw; D'Orville closed much closer than that to prevent a repeat since the first ended so poorly for the defenders.

That also doesn't make sense for D'Orville to do, since as far as he knew playing for time worked in his favor. He should have welcomed a protracted long range battle that ran both fleets out of ammo, since that would have left Second Fleet sucking wind when Third Fleet showed up with full magazines and blood in their eyes - especially since Second Fleet was too far inside the limit to escape before Third Fleet killed them all. And Kusak may well have killed them all, too, if they were on a vector that allowed them to cross the limit. She'd have damn good reason not to trust a surrender at that point.

Galactic Sapper wrote:

kzt wrote:And you'll notice Zanibar was reported in Chapter 38. And by Chapter 65 nobody had yet bothered to mention to the commander of Home Fleet that the RHN had this cool new technology that they had been using to steamroll RMN forces.

Sounds like a massive retcon, because Chapter 65 does an excellent job of implying Beatrice was the first combat deployment of the donkeys.

Not only that, but using donkeys at Zanzibar wouldn't have made sense in the context of the text we do have. If the Havenites had been able to throw such massive salvos they'd have:

1) killed the defenders outright. Three to one odds are better than the two to one odds Second Fleet had against Home Fleet, and with donkeys that was sufficient to crush Home Fleet for roughly equal losses from Second Fleet. Three to one odds would have ended even more in favor of the attackers, with no need to reload at all.

DW stated they used the Donkies to reload quickly, not fire massive wave of missiles... If I remember correctly he was saying essentially ~8 minutes tops reload since they have tractors etc can just fly them directly out of cargo holds and into the SDP holds whereupon the standard fire resumes. "fire control" issues... Yet were firing on near orbital infrastructure, yet could not do so at Manticore.

*** Not DW's finest moment ***
Happens in a complex universe. It is not real life: Who knew?

The SL/SLN may have written Eridani Edict and were viewed as the primary enfocers of it- their the 800lb gorilla- they certainly arn't the only ones who see it as a necessity nor are WILLING to enfoce it. Probably almost every system we have seen believes in both the Edict and doesn't want to be involved in anything that would bring it into play. The major exception to that is the Alignment and they really only view it as a component in their plans, not as a prohibition to devistate or kill everything on a planet.
Note that part of the discussion running up to Oyster Bay was to be very carefull to avoid direct strikes of weapons on the Manticore inhabited planets or Grayson but that the debris falling into the gravity wells involved didn't- just - actualy violate the EE. It was going to be "collateral damage" and essentially not their problem.
Part of the Detweiler Plan is to sow havoc and destruction across Human Space such that their front operation, the RF, shouldl be the way to eventialy bring all the systems under the control of the Alignment and impliment all of it's policies about pushing Human Improment.
They know and intend that BILLIONS are going to die but since they will pretty much will be "normal" humans and of little use beyond feedstock for experiments they will be used up adding to the chaos.
Manticore, on the other hand, isn't going to go around devistating planitary environments. They will abide by and enforce the EE. They conduct operations to avoid causing them.

When the SLN and mostly the head of the Bureaucracy decide on what amounts to a terror campaign to stay in power, they - the people in charge- effectivly throw the EE out the airlock since in the process of wipeing out the orbital in other in-system facilities of the system in Buccaneer etc, they are also going to eventualy kill a lot of people and have the same damage to planes as Oyster Bay along with, again eventually, throw missiles at planets.
It is only though the planning of the several SLN commanders in Buccanneer we do see that things haven't been raining down on occupied planet before Honor shows up at Earth and gives them a dose of their own medicine. Perhaps you have missed that what Honore does to the Sol system is a masterful rendition of Buccaneer without the civilian or much of any casaulties on the SLN side- and none we see due to direct GA weapons.

The Alignment, on the other hand, would have been most pleased if the GA had shown up and blasted eveything including the Earth, Mars and EVERYTHING in orbits (they spaired the essentialy civilian orbital habatats) and so start the slaugher and collapse of the SL and make the GA the next Great Satan.

Without revisiting an old thread in its entire, suffice to say the SL is the only power with the raw geographic mass to enforce the Eridani. Everyone else is small enough that committing to an EEV war is potential national suicide. So if the SL tells the SEM that they will start killing planets of the war comes to the core, who besides the SEM is going to say “you can’t do that?”

The morals are nice, but do we really think some other non-aligned power is going to try to counter-enforce on the SL, and embrace a response somewhere between conquest and their population dying in fire as a result, all for the sake of another verge state on the other side of the galaxy? Unlikely. They certainly could potentially kill a few SL planets or take on the SL in a few fleet battles and die in return, but that’s a crap trade for someone else’s problem. Particularly if there’s a nice narrative about how the SL tries to keep it a contained border war before the destructive outliers came in to topple civilization.

Basically, the SL can issue planet-death redlines, and probably should. After all, another state counter-EEVing them is somewhat like Israel declaring that if NATO starts nuking the Soviets, it will nuke London for the benefit of all mankind. A pointless gesture aimed at people it has better ties with, unrelated to its own security, that would have little impact on the overall situation, but result in national annihilation. The level of stupidity you would need to die for manticore as a non-involved state would be quite high.

They werent going after London. Paris and Bonn, as the nations that armed their enemies.

GloriousRuse wrote:Without revisiting an old thread in its entire, suffice to say the SL is the only power with the raw geographic mass to enforce the Eridani. Everyone else is small enough that committing to an EEV war is potential national suicide. So if the SL tells the SEM that they will start killing planets of the war comes to the core, who besides the SEM is going to say “you can’t do that?”

The morals are nice, but do we really think some other non-aligned power is going to try to counter-enforce on the SL, and embrace a response somewhere between conquest and their population dying in fire as a result, all for the sake of another verge state on the other side of the galaxy? Unlikely. They certainly could potentially kill a few SL planets or take on the SL in a few fleet battles and die in return, but that’s a crap trade for someone else’s problem. Particularly if there’s a nice narrative about how the SL tries to keep it a contained border war before the destructive outliers came in to topple civilization.

I think you're correct that if the SL decided it was going to star breaking planets, the GA would have one or two options: retaliate in kind or simply surrender to avoid more destruction. To be honest, this is a lose-lose proposition and even the Mandarins know it. The SL has more depth in this case since it has far more industrialised planets than the GA, but it clearly also has much looser grasp on those planets. A successful media campaign after the SLN starts flagrant violations of the EE could completely implode the League.

This is what the MAlign wanted. Fortunately for everyone else involved, the terms of surrender that Honor imposed squarely put the blame on the Mandarins, opening an escape path for everyone else.

@Theemile: I think this is one of the other no-go ideas: EE Violations, especially of the sneaky kind.