Alternate history: PRH-Solarian War

All you have to do is take and hold the junction. Which is easy to say and could be very hard to do. It all depends on what is still operational in Manticore.

If the PRH managed to get the entire SKM intact, complete with forts, a good chunk of the RMN and industrial facilities it's unfeasible. You simply cannot defeat the 120 forts with what the SLN can reasonable assign to the task. You need well over a thousand 1910 era ships, and most of them will be trashed in the process. And at some inconvenient moment the fleet hanging around Manticore will show up too.

Now if you show up and everyone suddenly changes sides for whatever patriotic, personal survival or financial reasons then it's great. But is that reasonable to count on?

Because if you are facing a decent amount of the surviving fortifications you can't take them and hold it against the Peeps. So you'll go in, get your mobile units shot to hell by the forts, then the remainder get all blowed up by the Peep fleet that responds.

If you are going to get your fleet all blowed up you might as well do it while trashing the mobile units of the Peeps, which are the actual threat. Once you run them out of mobile units it's basically over for a few years. And if you win at Haven you WIN. It's all over.

Sigs wrote:There is no Way, no how 120 forts of between 16-20 million tons can hold off 1,000 SD's when technologically they are within a generation of each other and the attacking force is a professional military(very arrogant, inexperienced, and not as well trained but still trained to operate the ships)

For a 16,000,000 ton fort to have 10X or more of the firepower of an SD, the SD has to have only at most 1,500,000 tons in offensive missile weapons(just the system not counting the ammo) and the fort has 1,000,000 tons for offensive energy weapons, defensive weapons, life support, armour, structure, propulsion, sidewalls etc... They basically are a 1 shot weapon, they have 10X the firepower of an SD...for the first shot, after that they have no means to defend themselves, no armour to protect them, no ammunition to attack the enemy...nothing.

The author disagrees.

kzt wrote:There are a seies of alternatives between doing nothing and hurling your entire fleet at Haven.

And the problem is that the enemy in this case knows they are screwed of they don't take some risks, risks the SLN cant really take. If the Alliance don't think they will be able to hold out long enough to get the SD(P)'s, CLAC's and LAC's in service they have to take some significant risks to push the LEague off balance

First, you econmically cur off the Peeps and their allies from the SL. No banking, no trade, etc. almost certainly hurt them more than you.

With the SLN being as large as it is, just doing this will take probably a year to accomplish and another year for it to actually be felt truly felt by Haven and the empire because of the distances involved.

You could start activation of the reserve, which takes time but for a limited scale (like a thousand) probably under a year.

If you have enough ships in the reserve worth reactivating.

Organize a call-up of the SDFs.

How many of them have SD's of their own? You might end up with 50-60 SD's more and a couple of hundred lighter ships.

You increase production of SDs at you usual manufacturer’s and work on developing others. You have over 1000 heavily industrialized sustems, it doesn’t take a lot to get a lot.

But it does take a long time, Haven has probably 3-4 times the Leagues shipbuilding capabilities at start of war, the League can and will catch up if the captured tech doesn't pan out but it will take time getting the infrastructure, getting the stockpile of supplies for the SD's. Those yards wont produce anything for at least 4 years... but when they produce they will produce a hell of a lot. For the first 4 years of the war, Haven will outproduce the League by a wide Margin.

You could send out raiding detachments of SDFs and FF BC squardons. This is a tually useful even if you are planning a direct attack, as it forces dispersion of Haven naval forces.

IF the Republic's industry is dispersed, if 90% of their systems are a drain on the central government, raiding them wont really accomplish much.

You could establish a base with the GSN, since they seem a little exposed right now.

Assuming that the Republic did not capture them. If Manticore surrendered my assumption was that Grayson surrendered as well.

You could launch large scale strikes on economically critical systems. This also forces dispertion of the peeps.

Same goes for the League, 300 battleships can cause unbelievable destruction to the League because the majority of the league is not protected in any way shape or form. The first dozen systems they hit will cause everyone else to ask for terms to stay out of the war and go about their business. Many would secede from the League to go about their business in peace.

This is not one nation one flag, this is 1,700 nations under 1,700 flags who all happen to be in the League because that was the only game in town, the second they get dragged into a war they didn't want or ask for many will be looking for the nearest emergency exit especially when they become targets for the Alliance.

Sigs wrote:
This is not one nation one flag, this is 1,700 nations under 1,700 flags who all happen to be in the League because that was the only game in town, the second they get dragged into a war they didn't want or ask for many will be looking for the nearest emergency exit especially when they become targets for the Alliance.

They voted to go to war. They were not dragged into anything.

munroburton wrote:Obviously. The second wave assembled at Tasmania, whose exact location is still unknown, but was almost certainly a fleet base "north" of Beowulf, probably in the Shell. Barely qualifies as "away from the Core," but close enough.

Rajampet may have been a fool, but he was still SLN CO. If he orders 600 SDs to go somewhere, what are they going to do? Mutiny? Or set forth even knowing they might have to abandon up to a dozen SDs enroute due to engineering casaulties?

If he orders them moving, they'll move, but how soon and in what shape will they arrive in? Just sending the orders to whatever bases these ships are in will take time, then for them all to arrive in Tasmania, etc.

Plus there's all the logistics involved. The GA leadership mocking that SLN Fleets can actually move off the core has a kernel of truth. Getting 600-700 ships supplied for a 400 light-year trip through hyperspace is no joke. Logistics win wars, after all.

So the SLN could have sent just under half of its remaining active BF, but I don't think they could move in less than 6 months.

As incompetent as Crandall might have been, Winter Forage probably did produce some useful results and showed where the SLN needed to fix its logistic pipeline. In this alternate timeline scenario, no such learnings happened. Moving 1000 SDs would take much longer then.

Sigs wrote:There is no Way, no how 120 forts of between 16-20 million tons can hold off 1,000 SD's when technologically they are within a generation of each other and the attacking force is a professional military(very arrogant, inexperienced, and not as well trained but still trained to operate the ships)

I think we can go about this another way: what would the RMN design its fort force to withstand? We know that the Gryphon-class SD was designed to hold off on its on against any SD in production or probably envisioned by any Navy out there. It follows that they'd design the forts with similar thinking.

The greatest threat to Manticore was the PN, which had 412 SDs, 48 DNs and 374 BBs at the start of the war. During the war, they'd have continued producing them so I expect the numbers continued increasing, despite losses. The RMN would similarly continue fortifying the Junction.

Here's a guess: at any point in time, the Junction forts were expected to hold on their own for an extended period against half the PN coming in hyper and a mass transit from Trevor's Star, or for a short period against the full PN. In the former case, Home Fleet would be expected to be battling the other half of the PN in-system, while in the latter it would be rushing to relieve the forts. If Home Fleet is inside the hyper limit, it would 2 to 3 hours to relieve the forts.

So in this scenario, the forts would have been able to hold 500 SDs at least 15% better than what the PN was fielding for 4 hours at the time of surrender.

So if this is the PN holding off against the SLN, those forts should be able to hold against at least 800 Solarain SDs for the same period. And unlike the RMN-PN case, in this case relief forces can come from Trevor's Star, Basilisk, and Gregor (unless the SLN forced a huge mass-transit of suicide freighters to lock the junction down).

TFLYTSNBN wrote:This seems like the most likely scenario to me. The MWHJ not only has enormous economic value, it provides strategic mobility. Control the MWHJ and all terminals and the effective combat power of the SLN is massively magnified. It is a short hop from Sol system to Beawulf and that terminal. Then onward to Trevor's Star and Gregor. The PRH will surrender and the IAN will negotiate a peace.

I don't agree it's the most likely. The MWHJ is the single best defended volume of space in the known Galaxy. And at this time it's effectively blockaded in the Beowulf terminus, so the Alliance can't use it to raid the Core.

The Erewhon Wormhole Junction, on the other hand, is nowhere as fortified. Unlike the MWHJ, there was no PN holding one terminus, so the forces holding it were nowhere as thick. And the ESN was nowhere as powerful as the RMN anyway. The SLN can attack it from both sides: in Joshua, from the Core, and in Erewhon directly, launched from Smoking Frog (Maya Sector, upsetting Barregos' plans). This Junction can be taken and held for the SL, which would cut the transit time for SL forces from the Core to the Haven Sector. And because of the proximity to Congo and its wormhole, the MAlign would push for this plan so they can have a short control loop.

Haven could use the Calvin wormhole (the one that exits close to Bolthole) to take a shortcut to the Shell, but it wouldn't be as effective as Erewhon-Joshua.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
The Erewhon Wormhole Junction, on the other hand, is nowhere as fortified. Unlike the MWHJ, there was no PN holding one terminus, so the forces holding it were nowhere as thick. And the ESN was nowhere as powerful as the RMN anyway. The SLN can attack it from both sides: in Joshua, from the Core, and in Erewhon directly, launched from Smoking Frog (Maya Sector, upsetting Barregos' plans). This Junction can be taken and held for the SL, which would cut the transit time for SL forces from the Core to the Haven Sector. And because of the proximity to Congo and its wormhole, the MAlign would push for this plan so they can have a short control loop.

Haven could use the Calvin wormhole (the one that exits close to Bolthole) to take a shortcut to the Shell, but it wouldn't be as effective as Erewhon-Joshua.

It also liberates Erewhon, so it also directly accomplishes a war aim. I'd probably send someone to Yeltsin too, with enough authority to make deals if there is any potential after they poke around out at the edges and don't see anything too discouraging.

kzt wrote:It also liberates Erewhon, so it also directly accomplishes a war aim. I'd probably send someone to Yeltsin too, with enough authority to make deals if there is any potential after they poke around out at the edges and don't see anything too discouraging.

Grayson may not be as important, though. They were just getting up to speed in major shipbuilding. To anyone in the SL, Grauson would be the neobarbs' neobarb. It would be hard to convince them to devote any time to Grayson. At this time, they were still heavily dependent on Manticoran aid, so the SLN would probably (and rightfully) see Grayson as a drain on resources.

But they had started building SDs. The Steadholder Denevski class is from 1908 and the Benjamin the Great would complete in 1911. Even if only 10 or 15 had been built before the Manticore Alliance surrendered, that's an impressive record. And I'm sure Honor would push for the liberation.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
On the other hand, it's very much what the Legislaturalists and CPS would do. Having several different units around your planet that can bombard it means several different officers in command. You don't want that literally hanging over your head.

Why not? If I were in their place I would want defence of the capital in as many hands as possible, efficiency in actual combat sucks but if it comes to defending the capital chances are you are already done.

Having StateSec, regular Navy, Fortress Command that doesn't answer to the navy etc... gives them all something to fear, the chances of the navy commander organizing a coup is smaller when they will face 1 or more organized forces that wouldn't want to work with them on principle.

Keeping the elements guarding the capital means they are less likely to conspire against you, for many dictators the security problem would be on the inside rather external.