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

Silverwall wrote: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.

He did.
My argument is that if the People's Navy parked a battle squadron in Endicott, the Masadan's response would have been...what, exactly? Write a strongly worded letter of protest? Appeal to the many off-world allies Masada didn't have?

What they certainly couldn't have done is in any way forced the PN to leave, because if one Battlecruiser can go through the GSN in a straight fight without slowing down, it could go through the technologically equivalent and less well trained Masadan Navy just as fast. Masada's opinion ONLY matters if the PRH decides to let it matter.

The very act of parking the Saladin in Endicott space 'conquered' the system from a Naval perspective. It's only through the PRH's normally conspicuous-by-its-absence generosity that they basically 'gave it back' by transferring the Saladin from the PN to the Masadan Navy.

This thread is essentially wondering why they did that.

locarno24 wrote:

Silverwall wrote: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.

He did.
My argument is that if the People's Navy parked a battle squadron in Endicott, the Masadan's response would have been...what, exactly? Write a strongly worded letter of protest? Appeal to the many off-world allies Masada didn't have?

What they certainly couldn't have done is in any way forced the PN to leave, because if one Battlecruiser can go through the GSN in a straight fight without slowing down, it could go through the technologically equivalent and less well trained Masadan Navy just as fast. Masada's opinion ONLY matters if the PRH decides to let it matter.

The very act of parking the Saladin in Endicott space 'conquered' the system from a Naval perspective. It's only through the PRH's normally conspicuous-by-its-absence generosity that they basically 'gave it back' by transferring the Saladin from the PN to the Masadan Navy.

This thread is essentially wondering why they did that.

Appearances holding them back. At that hypothetical point, Masada hadn't really pissed Manticore off yet. From the Havenite perspective, they couldn't be sure that Manticore wouldn't bail out the Masadans somehow and claim brownie points for "liberating" Endicott.

It's even more plausible due to how badly the Basilisk Incident hurt Haven's diplomatic credibility in following years.

Later, as they were starting the war for real, the Peeps went to a lot of trouble manufacturing incidents(albeit possibly in response to the Basilisk and Yeltsin fallout). Indeed, these incidents simply put Manticore on alert and threw away any possibility of surprise, which they had at Trevor's Star. This shows that for some reason, they were concerned about someone's perception, but it's not really clear whose. Their dolists or the Sollies? Probably a bit of both.

munroburton wrote:
Later, as they were starting the war for real, the Peeps went to a lot of trouble manufacturing incidents(albeit possibly in response to the Basilisk and Yeltsin fallout). Indeed, these incidents simply put Manticore on alert and threw away any possibility of surprise, which they had at Trevor's Star. This shows that for some reason, they were concerned about someone's perception, but it's not really clear whose. Their dolists or the Sollies? Probably a bit of both.

The Royal Manticoran Navy, as much as anyone.
Internal opinion matters but PubIn and the MHP twists and filters everything so much that it's only tangentially relevant what the truth actually IS.

Remember a big part of the aim of the incidents was to get the RMN to go "oh, crunk, we're getting a lot of minor incidents, we need to reinforce local system garrisons and patrols", so that - in theory - Operation Argus would let them see forces getting withdrawn earlier than the RMN expected and Operation Perseus could bushwhack the nodal systems whilst big chunks of their forces where elsewhere.