SLN Future

Sigs wrote:The ships might be useful, but the crew's would be of questionable loyalty. We don't know how deep the MA has infiltrated the FF, the last thing you need is to use MA assets to hunt for the MA. Using frontier fleet in the verge might create the picture that the GA is nothing but Frontier Security with a new master.

The FF will need to be reorganised, definitely. But my point stands: change the leadership and the organisation should turn around. The MAlign did not have the ability, inclination, or need to infiltrate the FF by the tens of thousands. They had a few, key assets properly placed and those had a huge multiplying effect.

It's true that the direct agents of the MAlign were not the admirals themselves, but mid-ranking officers and enlisted crew, with sufficient access to said admirals. A change of leadership will not remove them by fiat, but if the new leadership is less prone to corruption, then the agents' advances should be somewhat limited. There's also the fact that the lines of communication with Darius may be very long right now, so those agents may not be able to act much.

Those few hundred were backed up by thousands of other who were willing to turn a blind eye to EE violations, who are corrupt in one way or another or are just plain incompetent. They have an entire Branch of their Military that is basically rent-a-thug, not even worth reorganizing into an army. The SLN has done a lot of very questionable things for decades if not centuries, changing the culture of the military would take several decades of work during which there has to be constant overwatch on the of the navy to prevent return to corruption. Basicly there are 150,000,000 people in the navy, trying to root out the bad apples when the entire organization has done business that way forever will a massive undertaking.

OFS and the Gendarmerie are getting disbanded. But the SLN Marines and Navy officers can be redeemed, with enough time and effort.

In your metaphor, you can throw a chest of 150 million apples because a few thousand, even ten thousand, are bad. Less than 0.01%.

The problem is did their actions during the war and their actions for the decades preceding the war permanently damage their reputation? They were prepared to carry out the murder of their own civilians, the attacks on those systems could have caused tens or hundreds of millions of casualties if not billions by blindly firing while retreating, they were ready to carry out those actions, the comparison would be whether you trust to bring the SS back post war, after they were willing to commit atrocities and actually committed atrocities during the war.

I don't think it's permanently damaged, not like the SS or the OFS. But I don't have hard facts to prove that, it's just an impression.

I was going with the assumption that a lot of the shell systems are quite powerful as well, not as powerful as the core but many would come close. Otherwise the GA has little to fear in terms of revenge from the League if they can rebuild Manticore, Beowulf and Grayson along with any core systems that join the GA or at least become allies they can be a major countering force to the League. That is before all the newly liberated verge and protectorates are factored, all of them are poor and under developed but many will be very motivated and with the right approach, in a few decades the GA can have many new powerful allies or members from what used to be the verge and protectorates.


But if the League has only 50 core worlds and the rest are the equivalent of Talbott Quadrant in terms of industrialization I would say that they would have to go with a hybrid, the shell systems wont be able to put up much of a fight and the core systems will not be willing to fund hundreds of SD's to protect everyone. To be fair though, financially the SLN was funded in large part through fees collected from trade, if you cut it in half and eliminate the fees from the protectorates, the SLN should easily maintain 700 SD's before having to resort to taxation, eliminate the corruption, waste and bloat and you can probably triple that before there is even a tax.

I think I wasn't clear. I didn't mean the majority of the Shell are Talbott-like. The newest members probably are, though, which is where my comparison to Montana and Split come into play. The ones closest to the Core are probably like Alizon and Zanzibar: rich and industrialised enough that they could field something between one SD and one squadron. But I don't think there's more than 200 of these. That's still 2000 to 3000 SDs, but the existing SD count in all the SDFs in the Shell was already probably approaching 1000. Tripling the number of available ships of the wall would be no small feat, but it's not an order of magnitude increase.

I think RFC said somewhere that there are about 50 navies called "first rate" and he defined them as being able to field at least one squadron of SDs. That goes in line with what the other thread discussed: anything below one squadron of ships of the wall is probably a misallocation of resources. Either you field one full or slightly understrength squadron (6 ships or more), or you invest in BCs. So a system like Alizon that is rich enough to buy an SD would hardly have it in its own system most of the time: that ship should be with the neighbours', training, so they can act as a squadron if the need arises. I don't see the systems investing in that, especially not in peace time.

I might be underselling the League, though.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The FF will need to be reorganised, definitely. But my point stands: change the leadership and the organisation should turn around.

I agree.

Here's what drives my thinking. You have to give the League the benefit of the doubt that they can change, like I need to get over my qualms with Haven's old stripes. The gorilla was a product of it's corrupted masters. I am certain many of the officers saw the writing on the wall, but what could be done other than to get with the program.

Actually, as I think someone already opined, the officers showed amazing loyalty; it reminds me of the officers who followed Elvis Santino into the afterlife.

I also don't think we should get ahead of ourselves. The RF may run amok in League space if there is no SLN to oppose it. And without a presence, piracy and disagreements will revert back to what it once was which produced the need for the OFS anyway. The SLN can't stand up to the GA, but it can certainly stand up to uppity factions cropping up in League space.

The bigger the entity, the more difficult it is to control. Haven fell to that fact as well. In her trimmed down fashion operating under a new Constitution, I think the SL can get it's act together. Especially since its citizens are no longer sleeping idiots, and the Galaxy's big brother is watching.

OFS can't do its job without the promise of its big brother at home.

cthia wrote:The bigger the entity, the more difficult it is to control. Haven fell to that fact as well. In her trimmed down fashion operating under a new Constitution, I think the SL can get it's act together. Especially since its citizens are no longer sleeping idiots, and the Galaxy's big brother is watching.

That is an interesting point, but is it correct in Haven's case? Haven's fall was sealed when the Legislaturalists bribed common citizens with the Dole to produce a hereditary system of government. It was the increasing demands of the Dole, complicated by the reduced productivity of the workforce, that forced the government and the Navy to become conquistadors. So it seems that Haven had been significantly smaller at the time it took the wrong term than it was by the time of The Short Victorious War.

The main question (for which I do not have an answer) is how does the size of the restored republic compare to the Peoples' Republic of Haven at the point when it was decided to begin conquering neighbors?

tlb wrote:That is an interesting point, but is it correct in Haven's case? Haven's fall was sealed when the Legislaturalists bribed common citizens with the Dole to produce a hereditary system of government. It was the increasing demands of the Dole, complicated by the reduced productivity of the workforce, that forced the government and the Navy to become conquistadors. So it seems that Haven had been significantly smaller at the time it took the wrong term than it was by the time of The Short Victorious War.

The size of the republic was never well established in any of the books. Maybe House of Lies will give us better information in the appendices.

House of Steel said that when it began annexing willing neighbours, it was composed of Haven itself and some daughter colonies. It doesn't say how many, though. My reading was that it was no more than 20 settled planets. At its largest expansion, by SVW, it seems to have got to 300, but that includes uninhabited systems like Seaford Nine where it had significant bases. And looking at how many different nationalities Honor met in Hades, there had to be a considerable number.

So let's say 120-150 member systems with civilian population. That means that from 1844 to 1905, it must have annexed more than one system per year on average.

The main question (for which I do not have an answer) is how does the size of the restored republic compare to the Peoples' Republic of Haven at the point when it was decided to begin conquering neighbors?

I think we can safely say it's a lot larger. Prichart managed to hold a lot of the members that had been conquered for more than a decade in the restored Republic. She only concedes that some of the most recent annexations were going to vote for independence. Pierre's economic reforms, which she continued, provided a real improvement to the population of those systems. Those that didn't have living memory of the time before annexation are likely to have stayed.

Remember that prolong wasn't as readily available in the PRH as it was in Manticore. Pritchart herself is only second-gen, if I'm not mistaken -- though she's about the same age as Hamish Alexander, as she was around 50 when she joined the Aprilists (need to re-read "Our Sacred Honor" for those details) -- and she did live in Nouveau Paris. The other systems of the PRH would have received later, probably no earlier than the 1860s. With poor medical help, with the Mental Hygiene propaganda, and with InSec and later StateSec pruning the troublemakers, the vast majority of the population of systems annexed before 1886 would only remember life under the PRH by the time of the vote in 1916-1917.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:That is an interesting point, but is it correct in Haven's case? Haven's fall was sealed when the Legislaturalists bribed common citizens with the Dole to produce a hereditary system of government. It was the increasing demands of the Dole, complicated by the reduced productivity of the workforce, that forced the government and the Navy to become conquistadors. So it seems that Haven had been significantly smaller at the time it took the wrong term than it was by the time of The Short Victorious War.

The size of the republic was never well established in any of the books. Maybe House of Lies will give us better information in the appendices.

House of Steel said that when it began annexing willing neighbours, it was composed of Haven itself and some daughter colonies. It doesn't say how many, though. My reading was that it was no more than 20 settled planets. At its largest expansion, by SVW, it seems to have got to 300, but that includes uninhabited systems like Seaford Nine where it had significant bases. And looking at how many different nationalities Honor met in Hades, there had to be a considerable number.

So let's say 120-150 member systems with civilian population. That means that from 1844 to 1905, it must have annexed more than one system per year on average.

The main question (for which I do not have an answer) is how does the size of the restored republic compare to the Peoples' Republic of Haven at the point when it was decided to begin conquering neighbors?

I think we can safely say it's a lot larger. Prichart managed to hold a lot of the members that had been conquered for more than a decade in the restored Republic. She only concedes that some of the most recent annexations were going to vote for independence. Pierre's economic reforms, which she continued, provided a real improvement to the population of those systems. Those that didn't have living memory of the time before annexation are likely to have stayed.

Remember that prolong wasn't as readily available in the PRH as it was in Manticore. Pritchart herself is only second-gen, if I'm not mistaken -- though she's about the same age as Hamish Alexander, as she was around 50 when she joined the Aprilists (need to re-read "Our Sacred Honor" for those details) -- and she did live in Nouveau Paris. The other systems of the PRH would have received later, probably no earlier than the 1860s. With poor medical help, with the Mental Hygiene propaganda, and with InSec and later StateSec pruning the troublemakers, the vast majority of the population of systems annexed before 1886 would only remember life under the PRH by the time of the vote in 1916-1917.

Yes, its size simply got too large to manage. It doesn't seem practical to gobble systems up without a rhyme or reason. Being conquistadors comes with a cost. You have to feed these systems from the table of your own infrastructure. If you have problems feeding your own people, how can you keep expanding unless you're acquiring affluent planets, like the SK. It comes back to The |value| of captured enemy systems. Also, the more systems you acquire the more resources it drains to maintain and keep. The SK had rhyme or reason when it courted a system. And, it could afford to do so.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
The FF will need to be reorganised, definitely. But my point stands: change the leadership and the organisation should turn around. The MAlign did not have the ability, inclination, or need to infiltrate the FF by the tens of thousands. They had a few, key assets properly placed and those had a huge multiplying effect.

They don't have the need to infiltrate tens of thousands, they have had centuries to place their people and likely they have tiered their agents, from the top down so that no matter what happens they always have some agents moving up. They don't need to have thousands of agents in place to really f**k up the GA's day, a handful well placed agents doing something at the worst time, any atrocities committed by the SLN while under the command of the GA are atrocities committed by the GA, so what the verge would see is that the saviour's they thought they were getting are actively using FF for their operations and FF needs to screw up once or twice to make the GA public enemy number 1 in the verge and protectorates.

What is worse is that we would almost have to expect that some of the FF officers would go back to business as usual if deployed back into the verge or protectorates and would need to be dealt with, but the GA dealing with them after the fact doesn't help their image.

Also there is the fact that I wouldn't want the SLN get legitimacy in the verge and protectorates, even if they do everything according to the GA's instructions, keeping thousands of FF ships in the verge and protectorates gives them a starting point to reoccupy the verge and protectorates when they get parity. After all their ships will already be there and they have done the mission for years already, so instead of the GA calling the shots the SL calls the shots and tells the GA to go home as they are no longer needed.

OFS and the Gendarmerie are getting disbanded. But the SLN Marines and Navy officers can be redeemed, with enough time and effort.

The Marines definitely, the navy probably not. I think it would be easier to fire everyone and start from scratch then to change the image of the navy in anything less than 50 years. They were perfectly willing to commit EE violations against neutrals, they were perfectly willing to commit atrocities against their own people, they were perfectly willing to be used as tools of oppression...forget the verge and protectorates, they were being used to oppress core and shell worlds and that is a massive breach of trust because the core and shell don't care that the SLN has been raping and pillaging the verge for centuries, they care that the SLN was willing to rape and pillage the core and worse of all they were willing to do it to people who told both sides to take a hike. As much as it would be ineffective to have dozens or hundreds of individual navies forming the SLN I think that it would be the only way to go for them unless the league members are willing to go out on a limb here and give the SLN another chance.

As for the Gendarmerie, I would most definitely not disband them, I would merge them in the League Army if there is one, and if not I would use them as the core for said army with the supervision of a lot of Marines. The last thing I want is to suddenly release millions of sociopaths and psychopaths into the League, I would keep them all in one nice group(the army) spread throughout the League and with each Army unit I would place a caretaker Heavy marine Brigade to visit pain on them if they don't behave. Hell make them construction troops or just pay them to sit and do nothing, but releasing them into the League's systems when they have spend a lifetime oppressing people without repercussions would be a mistake.

In your metaphor, you can throw a chest of 150 million apples because a few thousand, even ten thousand, are bad. Less than 0.01%.

You only need one asshole to ruin it for everyone, and the SLN proved that they were well stocked on arrogant, homicidal assholes. So the SLN had quite a few assholes that ruined it for everyone. And I'm not saying that all 150 million are MA agents or even that a large part of the 150 million are corrupt, what I am saying is they as an organization have been bloated beyond recognition, they have let their standards and training go down so far into the crapper and they have let corruption so deep into their core that it is easier to spend the next decade or two picking the best from the SLN and starting over then transferring the less stellar and releasing those that are proven to be corrupt, stupid, incompetent or all of the above. It's not a matter of removing a bunch of political commissioners, removing politically connected but incompetent officers and calling it a day, you have to remove a massive amount of corruption from the SLN and to top it off you need to change the culture of the fleet from one that looks down on everyone outside of the League, to reach for the stick when a carrot would work better and to be willing to commit atrocities on command to one of personal responsibility and refusal of illegal orders. For that I would say they need a very stronger fleet criminal investigations department that will work on rebuilding the culture of the SLN and then coming down HARD on anyone who abuses those below him, civilians or his authority for personal gain. After you publicly execute a few senior officers for treason because they accepted bribes from transtellars for whatever reason it should be easier.

I don't think it's permanently damaged, not like the SS or the OFS. But I don't have hard facts to prove that, it's just an impression.

They were willing to kill 6,000,000 people in Hypatia, they were willing to blindly fire missiles at industrial platforms without giving them a chance to evacuate and retreat, leaving those missiles a chance to hit a planet and kill billions. Members of the SLN were working for the MA to kill tens of millions of Beowulfs people under the cover of the SLN's attack. And also TF 11.6 was willing to destroy a SL members SDF to pursue an illegal war while that member was acting within their rights... and the only reason they didn't destroy the BSDF is because of the RMN. Instead of being the Guardians of the SL and its people, the SLN ends up being the biggest threat to the SL and it's people, the GA showed more concern for SL citizens in all situations than most SLN officers throughout the war.

I think I wasn't clear. I didn't mean the majority of the Shell are Talbott-like. The newest members probably are, though, which is where my comparison to Montana and Split come into play. The ones closest to the Core are probably like Alizon and Zanzibar: rich and industrialised enough that they could field something between one SD and one squadron. But I don't think there's more than 200 of these. That's still 2000 to 3000 SDs, but the existing SD count in all the SDFs in the Shell was already probably approaching 1000. Tripling the number of available ships of the wall would be no small feat, but it's not an order of magnitude increase.

That's where a properly trained, funded, organized and run reserve comes into play, you can have a large enough reserve that would cost significantly less than an equivalent full time fleet. So having a large number of SD(P)'s in service and a larger number in reserve would do just fine. But by reserve I don't mean a ship graveyard that the League calls a reserve, I mean a reserve that is prepared to mobilize ships the first 20% within 3 months of activation and the other 80% within the next year. There should be plans, there should be training and there should be actual mobilizations periodically to make sure that the Reserve can be mobilized in a timely fashion and most importantly it should be kept on par with the regular fleet rather than being kept as a collection of warships from the previous 400 years.

I think RFC said somewhere that there are about 50 navies called "first rate" and he defined them as being able to field at least one squadron of SDs. That goes in line with what the other thread discussed: anything below one squadron of ships of the wall is probably a misallocation of resources. Either you field one full or slightly understrength squadron (6 ships or more), or you invest in BCs. So a system like Alizon that is rich enough to buy an SD would hardly have it in its own system most of the time: that ship should be with the neighbours', training, so they can act as a squadron if the need arises. I don't see the systems investing in that, especially not in peace time.

That's 50 NAVIES, but out of the SL's 1,700 members how many have SDF's? If there are 50 navies within the League that are considered first rate how many could there be? Not every core system has a navy, and chances are the vast majority of core and shell systems that CAN afford a first rate navy don't see the need to do so, until recently they were protected by the mighty and righteous SLN which is neither mighty or righteous at the moment.

Up until this point very few of the core and shell worlds needed SD's of their own, which is to say that few of them even bothered to have SD's because having SD's of your own is a waste if you have the SLN protecting you with their 2,300 SD's, and 8,000 Reserve SD's. I would assume that the Front line navies counts ALL the navies in the galaxy, like the RHN, RMN, GSN, IAN, EN, BSDF, obviously the SLN and maybe 6 or more of the RF's member systems since some of them weren't in the league but in their sphere of influence like Erewhon was. There may be another half a dozen to a dozen independent systems with sufficient economy and industry as well as desire to build SD's of their own. Ultimately I can't see more then a handful of core and shell worlds building SD's of their own since you build SD's because you need them, not because they are pretty.



NOTE: I am having serious problems posting here because for some reason my posts are being cut off at random places, the message is there but when posted it doesn't appear. It seems like putting everything in italics gets the whole message there.

Here is how I see a re-formed SLN being composed:

1) The SLN will completely reorganize their naval forces. No longer will there be a Battle Fleet and a Frontier Fleet. Instead, there will an Active Duty Fleet and a Guard Fleet. The ADF will have its HQ in the Sol system (of course), but will have major naval bases spread throughout SL space so that 90% or so of the member systems are within 2 weeks transit. The GF will be more akin to the American National Guard, with the units based in each member's systems and manned by the inhabitants of that system. Each regional base will be supported by multiple systems capable of building and servicing every class of ship, and those systems will get steady orders for work.

2) The order of battle will also change. Instead of having 8,000+ SDs, the SL will instead realize it makes a lot more sense to have a much smaller number of active ships and instead pursue constant evolution and change. That is, ships will be designed to last for 100 years, not 500. They will then be sold for scrap, or used for other purposes.

3) I could see the ADF settling on the following as the official order of battle:
A) 1 Division of SDs per member system.
B) 1 CLAC (and LACs) per member system.
C) 2 Division of BCs per member system.
D) 2 Division of HCs per member system.
E) 1 Squadron (16 ships) of CA/DD per member system.

Each regional HQ will have forces assigned to it roughly proportionate to the number of member systems in its region, minus 10%. The extra 10% from each region will be based in the Sol system as the ready reserve able to respond to any any area of need, or pursue offensive operations outside of SL space.

4) Each member system will be required to have as their reserve (part of the GF), the following:
A) 1 CLAC (and LACs).
B) 1 Division of BCs.
C) 1 Division of HCs.
D) 1 Division (4 ships) of CA.
E) 1 Division (4 ships) of DD.

Each member system could, of course, build additional ships. The SL would cover 75% of the costs of the required ships. The SL would also cover 50% of the costs (based on ADF averages) for each system to build and maintain the order of battle as described in part 3, in addition to the ships described in this part.

5) Each regional base will also have a corresponding R&D facility, and while each facility will share information and findings each facility will be semi-autonomous in what it can research and develop. By that I mean, while Sol can always require research to be done in specific areas, it cannot control more than 50% of the research being done. Sol also cannot forbid or prevent research from being done into any field (provided it is legal, e.g. genetic slavery cannot be done).

Additionally, each regional base will have autonomy in building prototypes of new warships, and can build and maintain up to 1 full squadron of every class of ship of experimental designs. This provision, of course, is to help the SL spur new research and design and stop resting on its laurels.

6) The regional fleets will be required, at least once every 2 years, to have a large contingent of its order of battle participate in combat exercise against a different regional base. The exercise will be held at a third regional base, with the hosting base writing the rules and providing the refs. This is to spur the commanders and crew to continue refining their skills.

That's as far as I've gotten so far. Thoughts?

What was frightening in UH is the speed in which the SLN implemented new systems. Now that their eyes are open to the new threat environment, we should be able to expect a leaner, meaner gorilla.

The Peeps stockpiled an abundance of BBs at Bolthole. If the SL can cut into the GAs range advantage and mostly concentrate on building one ship type, like the Peeps, thousands of them, can't they quickly get back on balance?

The SL can't have BBs coming out of Bolthole, but with their size, they can surely have BBs coming out of their butthole.

Quantity has a quality of its own.

Sigs wrote: They don't have the need to infiltrate tens of thousands, they have had centuries to place their people and likely they have tiered their agents, from the top down so that no matter what happens they always have some agents moving up. They don't need to have thousands of agents in place to really f**k up the GA's day, a handful well placed agents doing something at the worst time, any atrocities committed by the SLN while under the command of the GA are atrocities committed by the GA, so what the verge would see is that the saviour's they thought they were getting are actively using FF for their operations and FF needs to screw up once or twice to make the GA public enemy number 1 in the verge and protectorates.

They had centuries to infiltrate the SLN, but they didn't infiltrate the RMN or the other GA navies for centuries. That means they have little ability to get someone in command position now, especially with treecat-assisted vetting. Note I'm not saying any infiltration is impossible: I'm saying getting direct agents in command positions. And having just come out of three wars, the RMN roster doesn't have many corruptible people in the first place, at least not to the level the MAlign needs.

So I'm not worried about an agent making the GA do something to damage its reputation. Something like Operation Janus is far more likely (false flag operations).

They were perfectly willing to commit EE violations against neutrals, they were perfectly willing to commit atrocities against their own people, they were perfectly willing to be used as tools of oppression...
[...]
They were willing to kill 6,000,000 people in Hypatia, they were willing to blindly fire missiles at industrial platforms without giving them a chance to evacuate and retreat, leaving those missiles a chance to hit a planet and kill billions.

Who's "they" here? The entirety of the SLN? Let's take Hypatia: do you mean all spacers, crewman and officers in 88 battlecruisers were in on it? That they all knew what their orders were and understood the context they were in? Not just a couple of admirals, their staffs and their flag captains?

What would you have a team of Lt (j.g.) and petty officers aboard Adm. Hajdu's flagship do? Mutiny to remove him from command? Adm. Gogunov would have assumed command, dispatched marines and put the mutiny down. That's assuming the marines aboard SLNS Camperdown didn't do it themselves.

Take Adm. Capriotti, who executed Buccaneer at Cachalot: he was worried about his own staff turning against him if he didn't follow his orders. So even though he had qualms, he had little freedom in his orders (though he managed to find some wiggle room). And he knew that if he didn't do it, the SLN would send a worse hardliner who could make things worse.

Members of the SLN were working for the MA to kill tens of millions of Beowulfs people under the cover of the SLN's attack. And also TF 11.6 was willing to destroy a SL members SDF to pursue an illegal war while that member was acting within their rights... and the only reason they didn't destroy the BSDF is because of the RMN. Instead of being the Guardians of the SL and its people, the SLN ends up being the biggest threat to the SL and it's people, the GA showed more concern for SL citizens in all situations than most SLN officers throughout the war.

I agree with your characterisation, but Adm. Tsang didn't see it that way. She saw traitors to the League. As such, they were enemies and she was in her legal rights to blow them out of space. She was wrong, but it doesn't change how she, her staff and her deputies saw things.

In both cases, these admirals and their staffs were a product of their arrogance and operating under very strict, well-crafted orders designed to provoke mayhem.

That's 50 NAVIES, but out of the SL's 1,700 members how many have SDF's? If there are 50 navies within the League that are considered first rate how many could there be? Not every core system has a navy, and chances are the vast majority of core and shell systems that CAN afford a first rate navy don't see the need to do so, until recently they were protected by the mighty and righteous SLN which is neither mighty or righteous at the moment.

We don't know how many systems in the League had any standing military defence force. Many might not have had any of their own because the SLN was there. But very likely almost all of them had less than an independent system of the same size would have had.

Another point is that we've been told about Frontier Fleet and Battle Fleet. So what patrolled inside SL space? The FF might have been on the fringes of the Shell (frontier), but not in the inner side and the Core. Battle Fleet was designed for battle, not patrol. Who who patrolled? My guess is that this is where SDFs came in, with ships all the way to BCs but few with larger. Navies like the Mesan Space Navy and the Silesian Confederacy's.

I'm going to take a wild guess here and say that there were something around 1000 SDFs out of 1700 member systems. The BSDF was the largest, at three dozen SDs.

Not all of those 50 first-rate navies are in the League. Just that we know of, we have to remove Haven's, Manticore's, Andermani, Grayson's, Erewhon's and Mannerheim's (and the Maya Sector's, though their SDs hadn't commissioned yet by the end of UH). There are probably a handful of others elsewhere around the League. So maybe 30 "first rate navies" are SDFs in the League.

Up until this point very few of the core and shell worlds needed SD's of their own, which is to say that few of them even bothered to have SD's because having SD's of your own is a waste if you have the SLN protecting you with their 2,300 SD's, and 8,000 Reserve SD's. I would assume that the Front line navies counts ALL the navies in the galaxy, like the RHN, RMN, GSN, IAN, EN, BSDF, obviously the SLN and maybe 6 or more of the RF's member systems since some of them weren't in the league but in their sphere of influence like Erewhon was. There may be another half a dozen to a dozen independent systems with sufficient economy and industry as well as desire to build SD's of their own. Ultimately I can't see more then a handful of core and shell worlds building SD's of their own since you build SD's because you need them, not because they are pretty.

I came to a few more than "a handful". If there are 30 members that have first-rate navies, it's likely 35 of those are Core systems.

cthia wrote:The Peeps stockpiled an abundance of BBs at Bolthole. If the SL can cut into the GAs range advantage and mostly concentrate on building one ship type, like the Peeps, thousands of them, can't they quickly get back on balance?

Where did you get that Bolthole had BBs? The 374 that the PN had at the beginning of the first war ware not in Bolthole. From all we know, Bolthole shipyards didn't come online until late in the first war, too late to make a difference before Buttercup. And at that point, they'd build SDs, not BBs.

But yes, the SLN can quickly deploy SD(P)s carrying Cataphract pods. I'd say within 2 T-years, if they want to press it.

Other equalising technologies, not so much.

Three-stage missiles: The Cataphract is a dual-stage and it's huge. The SLN and their contractors have little idea for now how to build the baffles and compact fusion reactors to build something equivalent. Similarly, they don't have cruiser- and destroyer-sized dual-drive missiles.

High bandwidth FTL comms: they don't have FTL comms at all right now, but the principle is known. They can probably get something quickly, like the Havenites did in preparation for Thunderbolt. But widening the bandwidth will take some time in pure research. More likely, this will come out of stealing some Hermes Buoys and reverse-engineering them.

FTL-equipped, stealth recon drones: this means small enough, which is something the Havenites hadn't yet reproduced. Even after reverse-engineering Hermes, this doesn't give them sufficient stealth. I doubt the MAlign will be contributing theirs now.

Either way, Hermes probably won't get them all the way to an Apollo Control Missile. Add to that the Keyhole II electronics, which is not likely to be reproduced easily.

Finally, there's all the algorithms built-in to point-defence and EW. Again something that the RHN didn't manage to reproduce yet and they were much further ahead than the SLN was.