Alternate history: PRH-Solarian War

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Anyway, we've heard that the SLN wanted to send this force, but we don't know where they were or how quickly they could assemble. It's entirely possible that what we heard from Rajampet and the Mandarins was nothing more than wishful thinking, with a great deal of exaggeration by Rajampet.

I don't think this would be an exaggeration, the SLN has spend centuries without an external threat, they don't have many major bases for the wallers. Chances are they are concentrated in a half dozen to a dozen bases which would mean sending orders to those bases gets you the wallers needed. Now the logistical support for those ships is a whole other issue since after all Filareta and Crandall both walked into their respective battles with their fleet train in tow and if I remember correctly one if not both were captured. No fleet train kinda makes this a one way mission, seeing as the first wave of 430 SD's wasn't enough a 500 SD wave would have done nothing especially since the first wave bearly scratched the paint on a few ships, its not like they softened up the target.

I wrote that Erewhon falls but didn't write what happens to its wormhole. The Beowulf terminus would certainly be blocked because Beowulf had been an antagonist of the PRH for a long time, since the Technical Conservation Act of 1778 PD. But we don't know what's in Joshua. It's quite unlikely that they'd have an SDF capable of stopping the PN.

My assumption would be that if Erewhon fell and the LEague declared war shortly thereafter, Haven can get word to its Erewhon picket quicker to take the other side and the SLN probably wont even think of that WH until its already fortified.

So if the Alliance activates its version of Lacoön when hostilities seem inevitable, the first thing they'd do is secure the wormholes leading to the SL Core. Joshua may be nowhere as close to Sol as Beowulf, but too close for comfort.

They have to picket the physical approach to the League from the Haven Sector, as well as defend against potential attack from Joshua and form a fleet to retake it.

On the other hand, whatever mobile forces the Alliance can deploy will be nowhere as capable as those the GA did deploy in the actual timeline. With no entrenched forts and no MDMs, those forces could be bounced out by a determined SLN task-force. Doing it to Joshua would be first order of business: liberate Erewhon, which was one of the reasons for hostilities, and secures a wormhole to access Haven and blocks a second MWHJ terminus (Terre Haute).

When you are arrogant, and feel like you are the only navy around means you make mistakes. The SLN might send a force to take the system but they might not send enough, without a predeployed force and no WH to go through, the SLN will need 6-8 months just to get to Haven and however long it takes them to assemble the fleet and its escort seeing as a large portion of the escort would have to come from the protectorates since that's where FF is deployed. The alliance would have enough time to reinforce the WH, since this will be a sideshow I doubt the SLN would send a massive fleet unless they think they can overwhelm the picket fast enough and the other side is not fortified.

kzt wrote:
Given that the SLN has access to a rather experianced team of people who have a lot of recent combat experiance against Haven you’d expect at least some of that to flow into the SLN via Beowulf.

After the first massive defeat or two, the SLN has to be humbled before they take advice from a neobarb navy that lost a war...

kzt wrote:well, how did getting 1000 sd destroyed while not taking the WH produce that outcome? Because thats what is going to happen. You need more like 1500 to have a shot. otherwise you are ust marching into a meat grinder. One fortress can block the WH. You have to get ALL of them to get anything. And you won’t. And even if you had 50 surviving SDs, what are they going to do when a Peep fleet drops in? So at the end you get nothing, other then getting your entire mobile fleet destroyed. If that’s your plan youcan probably do better with a scrap dealer.

Though it does simplify your options, given that you got tour entire moblie force massacred and did absolutely no damage to the Peep mobile forces.

That's assuming that the RMN managed to get 3-4 times the People's Navy's waller firepower in the forts just on 30% of their budget in 1903. Why didn't the RMN use whatever superweapons they put on those forts on SD's instead? Even half as much firepower in SD's would have ended the war real quick.

kzt wrote:The author disagrees.

4 times the tonnage, 10-30 times the firepower it doesn't make sense. What does an SD have that a fort doesn't have? And does that thing take up 90% of the SD's tonnage? Because if it doesn't either the forts are using some superweapons or someone made a mistake on the match.

kzt wrote:They voted to go to war. They were not dragged into anything.

What goes on in Chicago does not necessarily represent what the people in the rest of the league want/think. What are the chances that a rushed vote in the Assembly with corrupt and inept delegates will generate a result much different than if you were to ask say the delegates to confer back home? I mean you have to force it through, sending messages back and forth could be a year or two before war is declared, the Alliance would be bringing the MDM's, CLAC's and SD(P)'s in service about the time the LEague declares war.

Everyone knows the Assembly is a useless, obsolete organization, how many of the systems will send their best and brightest to the assembly and how many of the representatives are corrupt as hell and will vote whichever way they are told? Especially if Beowulf is leading the charge?

ThinksMarkedly wrote: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.

They didn't really learn anything, anyone that took a lesson with them ended up a prisoner or dead which was one of the major problems for the SLN, they were not learning lessons because anyone who engaged the GA ended up dead or a prisoner, and anyone they let go was ridiculed and ignored for surrendering or retreating.

Sigs wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote: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.

They didn't really learn anything, anyone that took a lesson with them ended up a prisoner or dead which was one of the major problems for the SLN, they were not learning lessons because anyone who engaged the GA ended up dead or a prisoner, and anyone they let go was ridiculed and ignored for surrendering or retreating.

I meant before she attacked Spindle. She was in the Madras Sector for an extended period of time. She must have sent reports back on what the fleet train she was assigned failed, even if just to cover her ass about things that weren't working and ships that were failing.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
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.

I would argue that during the War the RMN would be focusing on their mobile forces rather than fortifying the junction. The Junction defences were not meant to withstand anything known to men, they were meant to make an attack on the junction national suicide because if the PN send their 400 SD's 50 DN's and 370 BB's and lost 80% of that fleet, the war is over even if they captured the Junction. Manticore lost all the forts but still has 300+ wallers in service.

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.

My guess is as I stated above, they were there to make any assault on the junction prohibitively expensive for the PN. The PN wont attack because even though they might win if they send 100% of their wallers, they will gut their fleet and then Home Fleet will crush whatever is left over and invade the republic.

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).

As far as I remember they will lock the Beowulf terminus down but not the rest, In "on Basilisk Station" Honor was stating that the reason the PN wanted two terminals was because they can send double the wallers through because each terminal is independent of the other.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
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.

The SLN doesn't have anything in the region that can actually take a picket of DN's and BB's without waller support. Once captured it brings them significantly closer to Haven sector but would the SLN settle for Significantly closer instead of in the Haven Sector.

Sigs wrote:My assumption would be that if Erewhon fell and the LEague declared war shortly thereafter, Haven can get word to its Erewhon picket quicker to take the other side and the SLN probably wont even think of that WH until its already fortified.

Given that you seem to think that fighting your way through the entirety of massive defenses of the Manticore WH is no big deal, why is the Erewhon WH a big deal? Somehow I doubt the SLN will wait a decade or two, which is what it takes to actually fortify the WH. Mines sure, but that's no big deal once you own the system.