Alternate history: PRH-Solarian War

Jonathan_S wrote:Well old-style forts do tend to sit within shoals of remote weapons platforms. At least the ones at the Junction did. Though that might make more sense there given the shallow hyper limit. You can emplace weapons platforms closer to the terminus to help shred anybody making a hostile transit and out near the million km hyper limit to discourage units from trying to insert close and try a high speed run into energy range.

From what I understood they were a one shot weapon which might not be particularly useful if I were to attack from 6,000,000 km outside the energy weapons range. I doubt it would be economical to put it around the entire perimeter of the junction and most of those weapons would be energy weapons or PC/CM of dubious quality. And are we sure that the SD's cant surround themselves with those platforms if they so choose? So if that makes a fort go from 3 SD equivalent to 15 SD equivalent that should work the same for an SD right?

It'd take time to build up the attack runs, then flush a large fraction of your magazines. You'd have to break off, slow down, rendezvous with ammo ship to resupply. But by staying outside of powered missile ranges the significantly more nimble SDs can pick away at the forts with impunity. (To prevent that Home Fleet would need to come out and engage the attacking fleet. But in this scenario with Manticore defeated would Haven have left a large enough fleet to be able to tangle with the SLN outside of support range of the forts?)

Very much depends on what they captured from the SKM, if the SKM destroyed their own industry in their retreat I would guess that the system picket might be light units, at that point there would be nothing to defend in the system. If on the other hand the PRH captured their entire industry virtually intact I would say they would guard it heavier than anything outside of Haven itself.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:It is probable that any scenario that enables the PRH to conquer the SKM then attack the SL, or more likely be attacked by the SL, will have severely atritted the PRH navy, the RMN and the junction forts. Even if the RHN conquered Manticore, Sphinx and Griffen, the junction forts would hold out at least to secure better terms. As a result, an SLN attack on the junction would be less challenging.

They know exactly how the PRH operates, they can hold out as long as they want but the longer they go the more brutal the situation in the SKM becomes. Likely outcome is forts are blown, crews evacuate to Beowulf to be used for RMN in Exile or slihgly less likely they abandon forts and the crew's go to Beowulf while forts are occupied by the PN. At the end of the day the forts have nowhere to go unless they switch sides and join the BSDF at which point the war if it were to start would be at a severe disadvantage for the PRH and Andermani Empire IF they even get a chance to ally with eachother, the PRH appears as the aggressor, and more importantly now they have to fight their way through the junction defences or wait a few months and have the entire SLN at their doorstep . If the PRH did not capture the junction forts but instead those forts collectively joined the BSDF there are very few scenarios where the PRH wins the war.

The SLN cannot take and hold the MWHJ unless there are essentialy no fixed defenses. Which isn’t unreasonable, but was that the base assumtion?

If the SLN shows up and every havenite heads for the limit then yes, you probably can hold it the junction and the entire sustem. Or you’ll force the peeps to destroy their mobile forces ober the next month in an attempt eject the SLN. And it’s been mentioned that Beowulf has a lot of industrial capability, and knows some things. So that will probably be painful to the Peeps.

But it’s generally a bad plan to assume that your enemy will flee when you show up. You probably have to have clear and uncontested control of the WHJ for a few days, before you can assume you got all the mines, before its usable. So it’s a pretty high risk plan unless you know a whole lot about the Peep deployment and general willingness to fight to the death over somone elses system.

kzt wrote:The SLN cannot take and hold the MWHJ unless there are essentialy no fixed defenses. Which isn’t unreasonable, but was that the base assumtion?

I think either way is a possible assumption. If we look at Theisman's Operation Beatrice, if he had won the Battle of Manticore, the forts would have stood down once Manticore surrendered. There would have been virtually no forces of relevance on the other termini, but more importantly, once your government surrenders, you surrender.

The surrender terms would have included handing any ships and forts as intact as they were at the moment of surrender. You're not allowed to scuttle your ship/installation after the terms have been accepted. So the question is whether there were forts intact at the moment of surrender and I would say there were.

Of course, that doesn't stop any CO from scuttling their command anyway, but then they could forfeit the protections as prisoners of war under the Deneb Accords. And while being treated as POWs by the PN may not have been that great, it probably beat the certainty of being treated as a common criminal by InSec.

Historical note: Admiral Ludwig von Reuter scuttled his ships at Scapa Flow after they had been surrendered to the World War I Allies and he doesn't seem to have been prosecuted for it. Wikipedia even says that he and his sailors were treated as POWs because they broke the terms of the armistice. If I understand the details right, the Armistice ceased hostilities but did not officially make Germany surrender, so those ships still belonged to the Germany Navy at the moment of scuttling (no longer Imperial). The wording on Wikipedia may not be precise either that the ships had been surrendered, as it also uses the term "interned". But I think that if von Reuter had done the scuttling after the Treaty of Versailles went into effect, it's possible he'd have been prosecuted as a criminal for destroying Allied property.

It’s not just whether the fors exist, it’s the half-million crew you need to operate them.

kzt wrote:It’s not just whether the fors exist, it’s the half-million crew you need to operate them.

Good point. The Alliance wouldn't be able to keep the RMN crews on them. They might develop a serious case of SSS when the SLN came calling -- Stormtrooper Shooting Syndrome.

That means finding and training crews to operate Manticoran equipment, effectively.

Sigs wrote:

TFLYTSNBN wrote:It is probable that any scenario that enables the PRH to conquer the SKM then attack the SL, or more likely be attacked by the SL, will have severely atritted the PRH navy, the RMN and the junction forts. Even if the RHN conquered Manticore, Sphinx and Griffen, the junction forts would hold out at least to secure better terms. As a result, an SLN attack on the junction would be less challenging.

They know exactly how the PRH operates, they can hold out as long as they want but the longer they go the more brutal the situation in the SKM becomes. Likely outcome is forts are blown, crews evacuate to Beowulf to be used for RMN in Exile or slihgly less likely they abandon forts and the crew's go to Beowulf while forts are occupied by the PN. At the end of the day the forts have nowhere to go unless they switch sides and join the BSDF at which point the war if it were to start would be at a severe disadvantage for the PRH and Andermani Empire IF they even get a chance to ally with eachother, the PRH appears as the aggressor, and more importantly now they have to fight their way through the junction defences or wait a few months and have the entire SLN at their doorstep . If the PRH did not capture the junction forts but instead those forts collectively joined the BSDF there are very few scenarios where the PRH wins the war.

I had not thought of that!

This is astonishing!

TFLYTSNBN wrote:there are very few scenarios where the PRH wins the war.

I had not thought of that!

This is astonishing![/quote]
It’s the fallback option of the SKM. Join up with Beowulf. Become part of the SL, This has severe impact on the SKM government leadership, but they don’t get shot. Which certainly has advantages when compared to the alternative.

And I’d expect that somehow Beowulf might just have a SLN detachment visiting anout that time.

Sigs wrote: If the PRH did not capture the junction forts but instead those forts collectively joined the BSDF there are very few scenarios where the PRH wins the war.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:I had not thought of that!

This is astonishing!

kzt wrote:It’s the fallback option of the SKM. Join up with Beowulf. Become part of the SL, This has severe impact on the SKM government leadership, but they don’t get shot. Which certainly has advantages when compared to the alternative.

And I’d expect that somehow Beowulf might just have a SLN detachment visiting about that time.

Tried to straighten out the quotes.

In any of these scenarios; where would the stories about Honor be set? Presumably her mother would have married a Solarian Marine? So would Honor be a a Solarian Frontier Fleet officer or a Gendarme or an officer in the Beowulf Biological Survey? I think the last is most possible, as she could fight the slave trade.

tlb wrote:

Sigs wrote: If the PRH did not capture the junction forts but instead those forts collectively joined the BSDF there are very few scenarios where the PRH wins the war.

TFLYTSNBN wrote:I had not thought of that!

This is astonishing!

kzt wrote:It’s the fallback option of the SKM. Join up with Beowulf. Become part of the SL, This has severe impact on the SKM government leadership, but they don’t get shot. Which certainly has advantages when compared to the alternative.

And I’d expect that somehow Beowulf might just have a SLN detachment visiting about that time.

Tried to straighten out the quotes.

Thanks, I was getting confused.

In this timeline, if the war had been deteriorating for Manticore and its allies for some time, would they have sought to join the League to avoid being taken over by the Peeps? If this fallback strategy is likely, then the timeline couldn't have happened as in the OP.

Unless Parnell managed to take Manticore by surprise, with his own version of Beatrice. Suppose White Haven is out with Third Fleet and Sixth Fleet trying to liberate Trevor's Star, then there's only Home Fleet in Manticore to defend it. If Manticore falls quickly, before Beowulf can respond, game over.

In any of these scenarios; where would the stories about Honor be set? Presumably her mother would have married a Solarian Marine? So would Honor be a a Solarian Frontier Fleet officer or a Gendarme or an officer in the Beowulf Biological Survey? I think the last is most possible, as she could fight the slave trade.

If Allison had married someone else, then Honor wouldn't exist. You can speculate where the change in the timeline would have occurred; mine was that the Rob S. Pierre either never attempted his coup or he failed, meaning the Legislaturalists survived and actually got their act together. If Parnell fired the strategists that were coming up with plans winning the Most Convoluted Plan of the Year Prize, they'd have a shot.

And in this scenario, my guess is the timeline changes for Honor during or after Flag in Exile: she'd still have killed Pavel Young and got benched for it, ending up as Fleet Admiral in the GSN. After that, it's difficult to say: would Parnell have launched a BB-led invasion of Yeltsin? And would the RMN have recalled her before HMS Wayfarer for active front-line duty as the war situation deteriorated? They might have given her her BC squadron as Commodore before the end of the war.