Imagine you are Amos Parnell's Staff Officer - Part II

SharkHunter wrote:I think I can answer the "Why Saladin?" in two words, and no, it's not the infamous "plot hammer". Before I do that, however, keep in mind that Haven under the Legislaturists had some penetration into Manticore's workings, so they may have had sufficient warning about ship sizes that were going to be sent to Yeltsin's Star --enough to justify sending a BC.

Anyway, my two words? Alfredo Yu.

Thoughts?

He indeed was the captain, but we don't know if he was PNS Saladin's captain before the mission.

So why do you think he explains why a BC?

Could it also be an insurance policy? A BC being too big and complex for the Masadan Navy to actually operate long term without PN help?

I guess? It's certainly an interesting thought; deliberately giving them a shiny thing that'd be useless from lack of effective maintenance within a year or so.

But then if that was the case, you'd think they'd have been a lot more leery about actually training the crew up - yes, all right, Sword Simonds and his crew sucked, but they were able to fight the ship effectively enough.

Having something to 'scare off' Manticore is fair enough at first glance, but since the Havenite recommendation and aim is to snatch Yeltsin without Manticore ever getting involved it still feels a bit overkill.

They didn't really know what the escort would consist of - I mean, intelligence might have been (probably was) keeping some details to itself but if 'powerful escort' was the best they could do two days before it arrived, at the point however many months or years before when they started negotiations to 'sell' Saladin, they can only have had the vaguest of ideas about Manticoran presence; whilst it was done in response to Manticoran diplomatic overtures to Grayson I can't imagine it was done as a direct response to the specific trade convoy.

My thoughts- the Masadans were never supposed to actually get the Battle Cruiser. It was supposed to be so big they couldn't handle it properly initially, leaving a substantial Havenite command element and cadre in place for as long as possible- and invent issues to protract that period.

Not entirely foolish. My problem is basically this:
If you are prepared to be 'diplomatic' on the understanding that (a) you're lying through your teeth and (b) you plan to invade sooner or later anyway, then I keep coming back to the fact that if you parked a Battlecruiser in Masadan orbit and said "We'd really like naval basing rights in this system. That's perfectly fine, isn't it?" then I'm not sure exactly what Masada can do about it. By all means, at that point, give them some destroyers to take Grayson if you don't want them to feel sore about the whole thing, but there doesn't seem to be any need to ever actually give them the battlecruiser.

It's not like you're going to be needing access to the local industrial infrastructure, after all, so you'd be shipping supplies and tech in from outside, and after the Events of The Promised Land, it's not like Manticore is likely to come riding to Masada's help if they say "help, help we're being repressed."

Frankly, the Moscow - which was a heavy cruiser there during the events of The Promised Land, could probably take on the Masadan fleet in a straight fight if it needed to.

--snipping--

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:I think I can answer the "Why Saladin?" in two words, and no, it's not the infamous "plot hammer". Anyway, my two words? Alfredo Yu.

Thoughts?

He indeed was the captain, but we don't know if he was PNS Saladin's captain before the mission. So why do you think he explains why a BC?

Primarily because of rank limitation because of the apparently decades-long control that the Legislaturalist families had on admiral on up ranks. There's a significant enough age difference that Theisman considers to be Yu his mentor in the PRN fleet, so I am thinking at least three ranks separate them, with Theisman commanding a destroyer and two ship classes between them, i.e. light cruiser and heavy cruisers having Lieutenant and Full Commanders. On the other side. ship-wise, there's no textev or plot reason Yu would have been taken out of a larger ship such as a battleship, dreadnaught, or SD.

That said, my other main is that after the Masadans take over Saladin, Yu laments and looks to defect because he knows that the political leadership does not look kindly on a captain who has lost his ship. With the crew's loyalty to Yu vs. the ship, it only makes sense that he had been in command for a while.

locarno24 wrote:I guess? It's certainly an interesting thought; deliberately giving them a shiny thing that'd be useless from lack of effective maintenance within a year or so.

But then if that was the case, you'd think they'd have been a lot more leery about actually training the crew up - yes, all right, Sword Simonds and his crew sucked, but they were able to fight the ship effectively enough.

Masada did have a Navy before. Whatever the Solarian opinion of neo-neo-barbs may be, those were actually intelligent people who were already running warships. I suspect that Sword Simonds had the best people--ahem, men--on the planet learning how to operate the BC. So unlike the StateSec crew aboard the PNS Tepes, I doubt that PN personnel could fool the Masadans into not actually learning anything.

They clearly didn't learn enough and whatever they learnt didn't add to their tactical skills, though.

Not entirely foolish. My problem is basically this:
If you are prepared to be 'diplomatic' on the understanding that (a) you're lying through your teeth and (b) you plan to invade sooner or later anyway, then I keep coming back to the fact that if you parked a Battlecruiser in Masadan orbit and said "We'd really like naval basing rights in this system. That's perfectly fine, isn't it?" then I'm not sure exactly what Masada can do about it. By all means, at that point, give them some destroyers to take Grayson if you don't want them to feel sore about the whole thing, but there doesn't seem to be any need to ever actually give them the battlecruiser.

It's not like you're going to be needing access to the local industrial infrastructure, after all, so you'd be shipping supplies and tech in from outside, and after the Events of The Promised Land, it's not like Manticore is likely to come riding to Masada's help if they say "help, help we're being repressed."

Frankly, the Moscow - which was a heavy cruiser there during the events of The Promised Land, could probably take on the Masadan fleet in a straight fight if it needed to.

Well, convoluted plans with multiple points of failure seems to have been the norm for the PRH up until this point. Just see Basilisk. Analysts were probably rewarded on how difficult it was for a foreign intelligence to unravel the entire scheme and the number of cut-outs built in.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

locarno24 wrote:I guess? It's certainly an interesting thought; deliberately giving them a shiny thing that'd be useless from lack of effective maintenance within a year or so.

But then if that was the case, you'd think they'd have been a lot more leery about actually training the crew up - yes, all right, Sword Simonds and his crew sucked, but they were able to fight the ship effectively enough.

Masada did have a Navy before. Whatever the Solarian opinion of neo-neo-barbs may be, those were actually intelligent people who were already running warships. I suspect that Sword Simonds had the best people--ahem, men--on the planet learning how to operate the BC. So unlike the StateSec crew aboard the PNS Tepes, I doubt that PN personnel could fool the Masadans into not actually learning anything.

They clearly didn't learn enough and whatever they learnt didn't add to their tactical skills, though.

Not entirely foolish. My problem is basically this:
If you are prepared to be 'diplomatic' on the understanding that (a) you're lying through your teeth and (b) you plan to invade sooner or later anyway, then I keep coming back to the fact that if you parked a Battlecruiser in Masadan orbit and said "We'd really like naval basing rights in this system. That's perfectly fine, isn't it?" then I'm not sure exactly what Masada can do about it. By all means, at that point, give them some destroyers to take Grayson if you don't want them to feel sore about the whole thing, but there doesn't seem to be any need to ever actually give them the battlecruiser.

It's not like you're going to be needing access to the local industrial infrastructure, after all, so you'd be shipping supplies and tech in from outside, and after the Events of The Promised Land, it's not like Manticore is likely to come riding to Masada's help if they say "help, help we're being repressed."

Frankly, the Moscow - which was a heavy cruiser there during the events of The Promised Land, could probably take on the Masadan fleet in a straight fight if it needed to.

Well, convoluted plans with multiple points of failure seems to have been the norm for the PRH up until this point. Just see Basilisk. Analysts were probably rewarded on how difficult it was for a foreign intelligence to unravel the entire scheme and the number of cut-outs built in.

The PRN motto was "win on the first salvo". All their maneuvers usually involved some spec ops to decapatate leadership, some slight of hand to confuse events, and a massive assault to overwhelm the defenders. Come on, the plans to take Trevor's Star involved killing King Roger to paralyze Manticore and try to (slowly) subvert their leadership for a later acquisition.

Placing the Saladin in Masadian hands, under Yu's hand, was pre-placing assets for something bigger.

Theemile wrote:The PRN motto was "win on the first salvo". All their maneuvers usually involved some spec ops to decapatate leadership, some slight of hand to confuse events, and a massive assault to overwhelm the defenders. Come on, the plans to take Trevor's Star involved killing King Roger to paralyze Manticore and try to (slowly) subvert their leadership for a later acquisition.

Placing the Saladin in Masadian hands, under Yu's hand, was pre-placing assets for something bigger.

The corollary of "win on the first salvo" is that you have to have moved sufficient forces to ensure you have overwhelming superiority to achieve that.

Forcing Masada might not have been the best strategy. The Masadas were religious zealots and, as such, convinced of their superiority and righteousness conferred on them by their holy cause. I think they would have complained if the PRH had tried to force anything on them, which the Manticoran Alliance could have capitalised on. At this point, they're still trying to portray themselves as the "good, republican guys fighting imperialist monarchy" in the Solarian media to obtain technical help. They couldn't afford the negative press of Masada complaining.

Though they were annexing smaller systems and usually through OFSesque means. That option might have been considered for Masada, but the analysts probably came to the conclusion that just help them would get them two birds with one stone (Masada and Grayson).

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Forcing Masada might not have been the best strategy. The Masadas were religious zealots and, as such, convinced of their superiority and righteousness conferred on them by their holy cause. I think they would have complained if the PRH had tried to force anything on them, which the Manticoran Alliance could have capitalised on. At this point, they're still trying to portray themselves as the "good, republican guys fighting imperialist monarchy" in the Solarian media to obtain technical help. They couldn't afford the negative press of Masada complaining.

Though they were annexing smaller systems and usually through OFSesque means. That option might have been considered for Masada, but the analysts probably came to the conclusion that just help them would get them two birds with one stone (Masada and Grayson).

Most people mirror-image far too much. People who believe in nothing but their own ambition have no idea what to do when they run into people who do believe in something. For example, the CNN newsreaders talking about any religion or people who don't totally share their worldview.

Or the people in the Bush admin who somehow thought turning Afghanistan into Switzerland was a goal that could be achieved in a decade or less with the help of Nato, one that could be achieved peacefully and one that the afghan leadership on all sides would support.

It turns out that every element of that was a fantasy. No, it wasn't doable in a decade. Maybe not in a century. No, Nato would not actually help, they would mostly at best control the land they were on and suck up resources. No, we killed 5 million Germans to put down the Nazi way of life, and Afghanistan has been Afghanstan far longer then Germany was Nazi. And no, our side just wants to loot the county while ruling despotically. The other side just wants to rule despotically while imposing the values of the 7th century.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Well, convoluted plans with multiple points of failure seems to have been the norm for the PRH up until this point. Just see Basilisk. Analysts were probably rewarded on how difficult it was for a foreign intelligence to unravel the entire scheme and the number of cut-outs built in.

Depressing but true - see the previous thread on this topic.

The Department Of Unnecessarily Convoluted "Cunning Plans" (Undersecretary Mr S. Baldrick) seemed to be in fine form during much of the Legislature's tenure.

Most people mirror-image far too much. People who believe in nothing but their own ambition have no idea what to do when they run into people who do believe in something. For example, the CNN newsreaders talking about any religion or people who don't totally share their worldview.

Or the people in the Bush admin who somehow thought turning Afghanistan into Switzerland was a goal that could be achieved in a decade or less with the help of Nato, one that could be achieved peacefully and one that the afghan leadership on all sides would support.

It turns out that every element of that was a fantasy. No, it wasn't doable in a decade. Maybe not in a century. No, Nato would not actually help, they would mostly at best control the land they were on and suck up resources. No, we killed 5 million Germans to put down the Nazi way of life, and Afghanistan has been Afghanstan far longer then Germany was Nazi. And no, our side just wants to loot the county while ruling despotically. The other side just wants to rule despotically while imposing the values of the 7th century.

Indeed. A big part of it is losing sight of the Top-Level goal (or not being entirely clear on what it was in the first place!).

In many ways, the whole Jericho exercise was losing sight of it. Haven, after all, logically didn't want Masada. It is, by all accounts, a geographically unpleasant planet peopled by some deeply ethically unpleasant individuals with a technology level several decades of investment resources the PRH didn't have short of being "useful".

Hence, frankly, why sitting a naval base in the system somewhere other than around the mainworld and handing them a couple of surplus destroyers (who are still bleeding-edge high-tech warships by Grayson/Masadan standards) to take Grayson with as a payoff not to whine about it publicly seems like a far more sensible approach.

locarno24 wrote:In many ways, the whole Jericho exercise was losing sight of it. Haven, after all, logically didn't want Masada. It is, by all accounts, a geographically unpleasant planet peopled by some deeply ethically unpleasant individuals with a technology level several decades of investment resources the PRH didn't have short of being "useful".

That's a very good point. Unlike all of the Peep conquests, Masada and Grayson would have been a drain on the already-strained treasury, not a boon. They had no intention of annexing.

Hence, frankly, why sitting a naval base in the system somewhere other than around the mainworld and handing them a couple of surplus destroyers (who are still bleeding-edge high-tech warships by Grayson/Masadan standards) to take Grayson with as a payoff not to whine about it publicly seems like a far more sensible approach.

Right, but loses points for being too straightforward.

locarno24 wrote:In many ways, the whole Jericho exercise was losing sight of it. Haven, after all, logically didn't want Masada. It is, by all accounts, a geographically unpleasant planet peopled by some deeply ethically unpleasant individuals with a technology level several decades of investment resources the PRH didn't have short of being "useful".

I understand Masada to be a very nice planet, but it is true that the people are very unpleasant. Unlike Grayson, the planet would have been perfect for colonization; but unfortunately there was only enough transport to move the fanatics.