Alternate history: PRH-Solarian War

You can’t take the system unless you can fight through the orbital defenses. That’s the great thing about starting the war with this, Honor mentioned how the wouldn’t deploy the missile pods and other remote weapons until they were at war.

Not like you could take the system with a dozen ships or anything, but it’s a lot easier.

Also, if you are actually at war and losing you can’t move significant number of ships. You need them to stop the attacks, you can’t pull 50% of your forces off the line for a few months when you are getting pressed everywhere. It’s kind of obvious, even if you don’t just outright lose the war.

kzt wrote:MDMs were the highest priority project of the RMN. They got built as soon as they could roll them out. So at this point they are years from design completion, possibly still dealing with nailing down the theory.

So they can’t appear earlier than they did, unless you go to a hack solution.

The bottleneck for Operation Buttercup and the establishment of Eighth Fleet appeared to be the availability of SD(P)s, not the munitions. Once Buttercup started, White Haven wasn't sparing the missiles. That's not what happened to Apollo a decade later: the Keyhole II-enabled ships were available, but the missiles weren't.

This is why I am saying I concluded that the MDMs were available before. They were indeed used in Second Hancock in 1913, so I guess prototypes were fired 2 years before and the theory was nailed down at the latest 1910. Then again, Second Baslisk also happened in 1913 (simultaneously, actually) and saw the first deployment of SD(P)s.

Either way, finishing the research and coming up with a prototype and production runs in Beowulf is a much more likely scenario than scrapping the entire SD-building effort in the SLN or even the BSDF and retooling for an SD(P). Again from Apollo we know that retooling and reprogramming the molecular industries is doable in a short time frame. Large construction not so much. GNS Honor Harrington entered service in 1913 and that was only because the GSN diverted construction from everything else into it. A single SD(P) wouldn't be enough to reconquer Manticore, so that would need to wait until at least 1915 or 1916. MDMs might have been in sufficient quantities much earlier than that and might allow a liberation of Manticore in 1913.

kzt wrote:You can’t take the system unless you can fight through the orbital defenses. That’s the great thing about starting the war with this, Honor mentioned how the wouldn’t deploy the missile pods and other remote weapons until they were at war.

Not like you could take the system with a dozen ships or anything, but it’s a lot easier.

Also, if you are actually at war and losing you can’t move significant number of ships. You need them to stop the attacks, you can’t pull 50% of your forces off the line for a few months when you are getting pressed everywhere. It’s kind of obvious, even if you don’t just outright lose the war.

A perfect definition and symptom of having lost "the initiative."

kzt wrote:
Also, if you are actually at war and losing you can’t move significant number of ships. You need them to stop the attacks, you can’t pull 50% of your forces off the line for a few months when you are getting pressed everywhere. It’s kind of obvious, even if you don’t just outright lose the war.

Sure you can, the more territory that the MA has the more they have to garrison which would eat away at their strength, but if the PN is actively conserving their fleet and only fighting where there is a reasonable chance of success but also willing to retreat when it becomes a losing proposition then they would still have numerical superiority, they can shave off some of the new construction, 1 out of every 4 new SD's is deployed in a secret base... after 4 years it would add up. Or start building 2 fleets on opposing sides of the front, when they are ready they get the order, leave and concentrate in an uninhabitable system before leaving for the Manticore Home System. How many PN SD's, BB's and DNs are destroyed between 1905 and 1910 simply because of the fear of defeat/retreat? Remove that fear and conserve the fleet, instead of building 100 SD's to replaced 120 SD's destroyed, they will build 100 SD's to replace 40 destroyed SD's and increase the fleet by 60 SD's.

You are not going to stop to build a garrison. You are going to say, OK, got that, let's blow the PRN facilities. What's my subsequent objective? Let's go! And send back a courier with the news.

And when ONI gets reports of this happening in multiple areas it's going to result in a couple of likely results. One is you launch a general offensive aimed at the core nodes of Haven, their main fleet bases and yards, with the intention of rolling them up one after another. Or at least finding their fleet. The second is start working to find out where their forces are, there will be records in the systems you overrun. The third is to start building up central reserves, from new construction and ships coming out of maintenance and repair.

kzt wrote:You are not going to stop to build a garrison. You are going to say, OK, got that, let's blow the PRN facilities. What's my subsequent objective? Let's go! And send back a courier with the news.

I seem to remember reading in quite a few of the books that the Manticore Alliance had to picket systems they captured, they didn't just blow the defences and leave.

And when ONI gets reports of this happening in multiple areas it's going to result in a couple of likely results.

Exactly what are they going to realize? I'm not talking about the PN stripping 90% of their forces from the front, and leaving them somewhere hidden for a year or two, I am talking about diverting some of the new construction while concentrating a lot of forces in two visible fleet on the front. The RMN might wonder why the PN is so cautious but after suffering the defeats in the beginning of the war I'd be cautious too. They cant know with 100% accuracy that the PN has x number of waller coming out of yards if for no other reason than the Republic is a nation that has a diameter of 210 LY, just the size will mean that ONI will need 3 maybe 4 years to gather enough intelligence to form a trend. And again Im not talking about taking all the construction, I am talking about diverting 1 out of 5 ships to a system with no population or maybe Bolthole. Once ready for the offensive, get the fleet positioned in Alliance space and send orders for the two other fleets to join them.


Let's say that the PN has 350 SD's and 35 DN's left after their disastrous opening offensive. The PN cannot defend everything with such a force, so they have to pick what they will defend, they fight when they have to and retreat when they have to instead of being committed to fight to the death repeatedly by their political masters. If in 5 years the Republic build 500 SD's and deployed 100 of them in secret do you think anyone will really notice? IT will take years for ONI to gather the intelligence and get a pattern that x # of ships disappear from the PN every year, it will take time for them to verify that it really is happening and not faulty intelligence and then they have to wonder what will be the purpose of those ships, are the a strategic reserve, are they being kept back because the Republic is having other problems, are they worried about something or is this an offensive fleet. At which point what do you think the RMN can really do about a bunch of ships that may or may not exist that you cant find? Abandon the alliance and hunker down in the Home System, avoid any offensives until they nail down the secret fleet's location? Are they going to rush into offensives to try and smoke them out? I mean after 5 years of war the original 350 SD's and 35 DN's might be down to 300 SD's and 0 DN's but they now have 400 SD's in the PN that the RMN can worry about suddenly a 200 SD's disappear, by the time the RMN figures out they are gone, confirms this and decides what to do they will be in Manticore with a well trained and well organized 100 SD's no one knew about. Overwhelm the defences in one afternoon.

One is you launch a general offensive aimed at the core nodes of Haven, their main fleet bases and yards, with the intention of rolling them up one after another. Or at least finding their fleet.

They know where the fleets are, in their bases on the front, if by 1909-1910 the PN has 800 SD's but the RMN can account for only 700 it wont make them reckless in their offensives just to try and draw out those 12.5% they are missing, they are going to be infinitely more careful and weary because they wouldn't want to end up in a battle with 100 SD's they didn't account for.The SS managed to build and man at least 38 SD/DN's without anyone noticing and that includes the PN if Im not mistaken, so why cant the PN hide 100 SD's out of 500?

The second is start working to find out where their forces are, there will be records in the systems you overrun. The third is to start building up central reserves, from new construction and ships coming out of maintenance and repair.

When the PN has 700 SD's and 370 BB's while the Manticore Alliance has 450 DN's and SD's in service they will be hard-pressed to build too much of a central reserve when they have to provide adequate protection for the allies, newly captured territory, the home system and all bases such as Hancock, Gredelsbane etc… and besides, are they going to worry about 12.5% of the wall that may or may not be missing or will they worry about the 87.5% that they definitely know is there? For the alliance the RMN Home Fleet was the strategic reserve, when there was a need for wallers they took them from Home Fleet.


The MA has to defend Manticore, Grayson, Basilisk, Alizon, Zanzibar and a dozen other systems as they make their way into the Republic, they have to create an offensive fleet as well so that is eating up wallers. If the Republic fought the war smarter and held critical systems with heavy forces and picketed everything else lightly they can conserve and grow their forces while simultaneously delaying the Alliance. If the PN selects 10 important systems on the front to picket with heavy SD forces, keeps some reserves in the back to reinforce any of those systems and picket everyone of the other systems with BB’s. Picketing less important systems with the 370 BB’s means that if the Alliance wants those systems they will have to send wallers to take them and if they want to keep them they have to keep wallers in place or sufficient lighter forces to prevent the retaking of those systems. Picket every system that doesn’t have SD’s with sufficient forces to drain the Alliance, when there are 4 BB’s defending a system the alliance will need at least 4 SD’s to have sufficient forces to punch out the picket and not lose any ships or suffer major damage, send anything less and you still might win but you suffer damaged or destroyed wallers.


Again it comes down to how much you skim off the top for your secret fleet, if its 50% its bound to be noticed quicker than if its 20% and with the size of the republic it will take a few years for the intelligence agencies to even pick up the discrepancy and even then there are explanations that could be made as to why there is a discrepancy(Working up, internal security, inproper count, misleading intelligence, at anyone time there could be a redeployment of assets going on etc…). That 100 or so SD’s wont be a tipping force in the war but if suddenly 100 PN SD’s disappear from the front and if the Alliance learns about ti in time it will be less of a worry than if 200 Wallers were to go missing at once.

Sigs wrote: Exactly what are they going to realize? I'm not talking about the PN stripping 90% of their forces from the front, and leaving them somewhere hidden for a year or two, I am talking about diverting some of the new construction while concentrating a lot of forces in two visible fleet on the front. The RMN might wonder why the PN is so cautious but after suffering the defeats in the beginning of the war I'd be cautious too. They cant know with 100% accuracy that the PN has x number of waller coming out of yards if for no other reason than the Republic is a nation that has a diameter of 210 LY, just the size will mean that ONI will need 3 maybe 4 years to gather enough intelligence to form a trend. And again Im not talking about taking all the construction, I am talking about diverting 1 out of 5 ships to a system with no population or maybe Bolthole. Once ready for the offensive, get the fleet positioned in Alliance space and send orders for the two other fleets to join them.

Unless Bolthole is already up and running, which it isn't at this point in time, the ONI and SIS know exactly what shipyards the PN has and what their output is. If the PN starts diverting 20% of the ships it builds, they'll pick up. They probably have spies and often scout the system to count ships being built. There's a reason Theisman built ALL of the SD(P)s used in Thunderbolt at Bolthole: the Manties didn't know about that yard.

If the PN is concentrating for a Sunday punch, this is not the way. At least, not at 20%. Maybe 4 or 5% only.

You can hide forces by moving them around. With the transit times required, it's easy to lose them and lose track of which ships ended up where. Beatrice proved that. TBH, I'm surprised that Theisman did manage to move 60-75% of his wall without ONI getting wind of it.

When you launch a general offensive (which is also a spoiling attack) you are not worried about your minor allies. You are going go off and rampage through Haven space. The MA has two important systems, Manticore and Grendelsbane. Manticore is critical, and Grendelsbane is very heavily fortified, so most reserves are at Manticore. Everything else is expendable.

So if you are not finding major forces your fleets advance until you do, blowing up stuff along the way. You hit targets like Solon, then you hit targets like Lovat. No going back to base, you reload and move on. Then you hit core, critical systems like Jouett. And then, if you are still combat effective, you go after Haven itself.

Somewhere in there you will find their fleet. Or you'll win the war.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Unless Bolthole is already up and running, which it isn't at this point in time, the ONI and SIS know exactly what shipyards the PN has and what their output is. If the PN starts diverting 20% of the ships it builds, they'll pick up. They probably have spies and often scout the system to count ships being built.

What would they pick up though? System x managed to build 10 SD's, they were handed over to the navy and then what? How can you know that 2 of those 10 SD's weren't deployed to the navy? We are talking about more than 100 systems in the western portion of the republic, who is to say that the spies didn't miscount? Or your scouts missed a couple of SD's when they scouted a system, I mean is it really possible to miss a couple if the system is picketed by 60-70? How do you know that those ships aren't working up? How would you be sure that you account ships in transit, I mean wouldn't it be possible for the scouts to miss a couple of hundred SD's in their count if those SD's were out on a mission?

There's a reason Theisman built ALL of the SD(P)s used in Thunderbolt at Bolthole: the Manties didn't know about that yard.

So? It would be pretty obvious what they were building to anyone who saw it if those SD(P)'s and CLAC's were built in the regular yards. The Republic is a large place, I doubt that ONI and SIS get within 80% accuracy on counting ships.

The missing SD's if they even notice them will be a puzzle but I doubt it will be their top priority when the missing 100 SD's are by far the smaller threat when the MA is facing 700 SD's and 360+BB's.

If it is uniformed missing number they may even count it as disinformation from the PN's counter intelligence folks.

If the PN is concentrating for a Sunday punch, this is not the way. At least, not at 20%. Maybe 4 or 5% only.

What is that going to do? Might as well deploy all the ships and attack from the frontline fleets.

You can hide forces by moving them around. With the transit times required, it's easy to lose them and lose track of which ships ended up where. Beatrice proved that. TBH, I'm surprised that Theisman did manage to move 60-75% of his wall without ONI getting wind of it.

It takes time to get wind of it, they have to get news that the SD(P)'s have left a particular system and then wait for the SD(P)'s to enter a different system. Besides, the 330 SD(P)'s represented only 30% of the total SD(P)'s of the RHN. There was a conversation between Pritchart and Theisman where the question was raised as to what would be left over if the attack failed, and it was somewhere around 600 SD(P)'s. They managed to concentrate that many ships because I doubt that 3rd Fleet was the only force laying a trap for 8th Fleet, so when 3rd Fleet was destroyed Theisman redeployed the other fleets to a target system for the upcoming offensive.

kzt wrote:When you launch a general offensive (which is also a spoiling attack) you are not worried about your minor allies. You are going go off and rampage through Haven space. The MA has two important systems, Manticore and Grendelsbane. Manticore is critical, and Grendelsbane is very heavily fortified, so most reserves are at Manticore. Everything else is expendable.

Why didn't the war go this way in the books? Abandon Grayson, Alizon, Zanzibar and all the others for a general offensive?
In all honesty if by early 1910 The PN has 700 SD's and 370 BB's in open opposition to the RMN I doubt anyone will go into a general offensive and uncover their systems just because they cant account for 100 SD's. I am not suggesting that the PN hide 90% of their SD's, I am suggesting that instead of sending all 500 of their new SD's to the front over a 5 years period they only send 400 SD's to the frontline fleets, take the other hundred, work them, drill them, get the most experienced crews and commanders for this fleet. The SKM wont risk the war because they MAY be missing 100 SD's somewhere, the republic is large, those SD's could be working up, they could be redeploying or they could be doing any number of things that would not be suspicious. Exactly how would the RMN get into a every major naval base and count off how many SD's are in the system? How would they know that there aren't a few squadrons being deployed from system a to system b during the time that their latest intelligence was sent?

So if you are not finding major forces your fleets advance until you do, blowing up stuff along the way.

Who said anything about not finding major forces? There is a HUGE difference between giving your forces a no surrender order and watching them die for little return vs giving your field commanders the freedom to retreat when situation is unfavourable and fight when it is favourable. In one you lose 10 systems and 60 SD's while in the other you lose 10 systems and no SD's. If the RMN sails into a system with 40 SD's and he system is picketed by 20 SD's, the PN retreats, to fight another day and all.

You hit targets like Solon, then you hit targets like Lovat. No going back to base, you reload and move on. Then you hit core, critical systems like Jouett. And then, if you are still combat effective, you go after Haven itself.

What about the PN and their 700 SD's deployed between the front and the Haven system?

Somewhere in there you will find their fleet. Or you'll win the war.

Uhm the RMN will knw where the PN is, they just wont know where 12.5% of the new SD's went. Pretty big distinction dontcha think?


Do you actually think that the RMN will launch a massive all forces offensive against 87.5% of the PN's wall just because they cant account for the other 12.5% of the wall? Your suggestion is that they will go into major base 1 with its dozens of SD's, hit it, move on to major base 2, hit that, move on to major base 3, hit that etc... while all major bases have 50+ SD's deployed?

The distinction is that the PN would not deploy their SD's into EVERY system in the western part of the Republic, but would deploy them in a few key systems while the rest would be picketed by BB's. the RMN cannot bypass them because then those fleets would be behind them where they can attack the alliance...or manticore because they just abandoned the alliance in order to attack 700 SD's in a dozen fortified bases for shits and giggles.