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

So from one perspectivve, Manticore is looking to bring Grayson in as a trading partner in great part because the ultimate terms of the deal would have given Manticore basing rights in that system as part of the military cooperation treaty they would be signing. Grayson is in a good spot as a an impediment to Haven and a springboard/jump off point against Haven by Manticore.

Haven also wants Grayson for essentially the same reason but is not at all interested in any kind of equal or supportive partnership with Grayson. Grayson has a terrible planet but they do have resources, at least a minor merchant marine operation and is growing. They also are in a spatial position to be usefull to Haven in going against Manticore in a war with the flip-side that they would need to keep Manticore out of there.

So, Haven being Haven, they go screwing around with the the people Grayson fears most in the Universe (with the possible excpetion of OFS but they are a LONG way away at this point) and Masada's primary goal is the conquest and recovery of Grayson as their spiritual home and either one of two outcomes will work...... Remeber they have been running attacks at Grayson for centuries with truly old tech ships and nuclear weapons trying to bomb them into submission. The two outcomes for Masada are 1) they crush the Grayson leadership and force the population to submit to the Masadan leadership as their proper place in their vision of religion or 2) kill off the heretic population by nuclear bombardment and take the system to use for their own.
Haven is funding and equiping Masada to eliminate Grayson as someplace Manticore can use as a base or allied system. Haven doesn't care what the Masadan's do to the Grayson as long as Haven is the one to have "basing" and other system use rights.
Kind of like whipping the Stilties up with religious ferver and drugs to crash the Basilisk system's economy (because they can still strip it, what do they care about the local intelegent life) and use the "failure" of Manticore creating the conditions under which the uprising occurred to boot them off planet and take the system to "save it" for the Stelties as peace loving Havenites who will rebuild for the locals and provide all the benefits the dastardly and cruel Manties witheld from the locals and tried to exploit the planets resources.

Sounds about right.

Jonathan_S wrote:Building a fleet base is a massive multi-year infrastructure project.

If Haven had gotten control of Endicott and suppressed Grayson I think it far more likely they'd target war in 1906 than 1904.

My assumption isn't that they would suppress Grayson if they sent enough ships to bouncing White Haven out of Endicott -- isn't that they would invest in a fleet base, it's that they've forward-deployed enough very dangerous class of ships (probably battleships) to "defend their ally", with the strategic thought that tactically two BC division would have to leave the system without engaging in an actual battle, and that Home Fleet is not going to re-deploy to retake Endicott anytime RSN. But they are going to have to reinforce Grayson from any Peep Navy adventurism towards Yeltsin's star by diverting strength from Home Fleet. Thoughts?

If the gambit with supporting the Masada Faithfull with ships and equipment had been successful, Grayson would have been under the control of the Faithfull, perhaps even with the traitor on Grayson as their mouthpeice on planet (or he would have been very quickly dead) and Haven could have moved in what it needed to make use of the system as a base and staging area because the people who controlled Grayson wanted them there.
Once the planet surrendered to the Faithfull, Manticore wasn't going to have any say in the matter and probably the only thing they could have done is take their freighters (if they had not yet been turned over to the Government of Grayson) and go home.

Does that advance the eventual start of the war between Haven and Manticore? Depends. What it certainly does is both remover a tradeing and military allied treaty partner and along with not giving Manticore the use of the system for stratigic reasons, it probably means that the innovation and approch to several problems and tech advances don't happen since the non-Masada population that survives will be involved in staying alive under the rule of the Faithfull and not getting that tech injection.
Haven is unlikely to give the Faithfull much in the way of upgrades in either consumer, commercial or military manufacturing or designes. Not really sure how much Haven is going to want to interact on a trade basis except to perhaps trade or barter for various resources (of either Masada or Grayson) as certainly Masada doesn't have much they otherwise want.

It appeared that at least the Haven officers on the scene understood what a mess the whole religious componant was and probably the diplomatic people as well. Grayson probably had a much better range of things they could sell but once Masada took control everything was going to be a compleat mess till the Faithfull got their hands into everything and controls/ownership on every part of the now massively changeing Grayson society.

HotQ was written before Weber (and Honorverse military leaders) developed an understanding that the concept of "strategic depth" was somewhat exaggerated. While on board fuel supply is not unlimited, it becomes irrelevant when operating on Warasawki sails in a grav wave. The situation is not analogous to coal fired warships having to cross the Pacific. The only benefit of forward basing is to save travel time. However; forward bases compel strategic dispersal.


The premiss certainly made a great story.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:HotQ was written before Weber (and Honorverse military leaders) developed an understanding that the concept of "strategic depth" was somewhat exaggerated. While on board fuel supply is not unlimited, it becomes irrelevant when operating on Warasawki sails in a grav wave. The situation is not analogous to coal fired warships having to cross the Pacific. The only benefit of forward basing is to save travel time. However; forward bases compel strategic dispersal.


The premise certainly made a great story.

Do not ignore that Haven's method of repair and part replacement required well stocked depots and maintenance facilities close to the theater of action. Although Manticore may have overvalued the need for bases near the enemy, in the case of Haven the need was real.

tlb wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:HotQ was written before Weber (and Honorverse military leaders) developed an understanding that the concept of "strategic depth" was somewhat exaggerated. While on board fuel supply is not unlimited, it becomes irrelevant when operating on Warasawki sails in a grav wave. The situation is not analogous to coal fired warships having to cross the Pacific. The only benefit of forward basing is to save travel time. However; forward bases compel strategic dispersal.


The premise certainly made a great story.

Do not ignore that Haven's method of repair and part replacement required well stocked depots and maintenance facilities close to the theater of action. Although Manticore may have overvalued the need for bases near the enemy, in the case of Haven the need was real.

There is the issue of how far crippled warships can travel. At least they don't have to contend with submarines lurking to torpedo them.

Also remember that Haven was primarily in the business of taking systems as sources of resources and stripping of wealth and cashflow to support the welfare programs at home. It then had to also set up "security" for those systems so they would not be able rebel.

So they made virtue out of nessessity and were taking systems in the directions of future targets as places both to mass ships and to maintain support logistics.

Brigade XO wrote:Also remember that Haven was primarily in the business of taking systems as sources of resources and stripping of wealth and cashflow to support the welfare programs at home. It then had to also set up "security" for those systems so they would not be able rebel.

So they made virtue out of nessessity and were taking systems in the directions of future targets as places both to mass ships and to maintain support logistics.

True, though in the case of Manticore it would have been a non-issue. The Junction would have allowed very quick access from established supply lines going through Trevor's Star.

That said, The Book has an inertia of its own. This is how the PRH had executed its expansion, so it is how it would continue to expand.

I thought the book made it clear that "Selling" Masada a battle cruiser was the only way to get worthwhile firepower into the region. I specifically remember the Havenite captain lamenting the fact that the Masadan's wouldn't allow the predeployment of a Havenite battle squadron into thier system.