How was Haven supposed to fight the SL (Detweiler Plan)?

tlb wrote:That misses the point by ThinksMarkedly: its involves attack by military warships upon purely civilian ships, with a resultant loss of civilian lives.

Sigs wrote:Transporting Raw materials and goods to support the war effort of the enemy. As far as I know you still cant kill passenger ships, but freighters are good to go and you still have to give them a chance to surrender or maybe not, I don't know?

People or things, it is all interstellar commerce and just like submarine warfare, it can all be blown up.

tlb wrote:I am not trying to argue that the SLN did nothing wrong; indeed they rightfully got slapped down by Honor for all that they did. The question is simply whether they were technically guilty of an EE violation. Also if they were guilty of such, then what were the differences between Hypatia and Basilisk?

I do not think that a declaration of war enters into it, the League was operating under an expansive interpretation of the self-defense clause. They wanted damages, which could include casualties, to make others rethink their positions.

To my mind the difference is the purpose of the orbitals.
The Hypatian orbitals are primarily residential - with huge numbers of civilians living there and apparently only the light industry and retail that supports them.
The Basilisk orbitals are primarily commercial warehousing and industrial, with apparently some naval basing (like "Medusa Gold One, the Navy's relatively new orbital HQ for the Basilisk Station", with relatively little civilian residential living space aboard them (the naval bases orbitals weren't expected to be able to fully evacuate in time, but most of the civilian platforms probably could be abandoned well before the deadline because they'd have relatively few crew aboard)

So basically Hypatia orbitals illegal civilian residential targets, Basilisk orbitals legal military and industrial targets.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Though one big difference is Home Fleet is much weaker (12 SD(P)s during Thunderbolt vs 48 during BoM) - so if Haven was able to throw the same 30 squadrons of SD(P)s, 240 ships, at it they'd have a 20:1 numerical advantage in podlayers instead of the 5.7:1 they actually had during BoM. With those numbers you'd expect Home Fleet to outright kill far less than the 40% (with 8% more heavily damaged and the remaining 52% all damaged and short on missiles) they did historically.

Where did you get that Home Fleet only had 12 SD(P)s during Thunderbolt? The Fleet Strengths list the RMN at 75 SD(P)s. At Sidemore, Honor had 18 SD(P)s but 12 or 16 of those were Grayson units (the wiki lists 6 ships in each of Yu's Battle Squadrons, but I don't understand why the GSN would have reduced to 6 ships per squadron, though the ship names in Battle Squadron 9 support Medusa-class ships) and Higgins had 7 though we don't know how many were Grayson units either. That leaves at least 14, possibly a few more, in Home Fleet.

Just curious if I missed another place where the SD(P)s should be.

Anyway, at this time, Home Fleet should have the lion's share of the RMN's active 125 conventional SDs (Honor had 24 and Higgins 16) and they'd all have pods. The hull count between Thunderbolt and the Battle of Manticore was probably the same.

Though there's another advantage for the RHN here: at this time, Home Fleet would have been commanded by a Janacek appointee. The wiki lists D'Orville, but is contradicting itself because it also says D'Orville was put on half-pay by Janacek.

I got the pre-Thunderbolt disposition of RMN SD(P)s directly from White Haven's discussion with GSN's Admiral Macdonnell when he was aboard the surprise GSN reinforcements to 3rd Fleet at Trevor's Star.

War of Honor: Ch 57 wrote:"Third Fleet has almost a hundred ships of the wall in its order of battle, including forty-eight of our SD(P)s, Niall, and two SD(P)s are down for local refit. We have exactly two—count them; two—more squadrons of them with Home Fleet. We have another squadron of them assigned to Sidemore Station. We have a fourth squadron assigned to Grendelsbane. And we have, at the moment, four more of them in various stages of overhaul and working up back home but not assigned to Home Fleet. That's it, even with the dribs and drabs Janacek has managed to add to his order of battle.

Manticore is down to 6 ship squadrons, so 2 squadrons of SD(P)s at Home Fleet is 12 ships (admittedly, like at Grendelsbane, where Higgins actually has 7 SD(P)s, there might be one or two stragglers attached; In which case Home Fleet's SD(P) strength might have been as many as 14. But I think if it was 15 it would have been described as "two and a half squadrons" while less than 3 extras might have been rounded down). And there were the other 24 or so under overhaul or workout at Manticore that simply weren't assigned to Home Fleet; presumably because they weren't currently fully combat capable.

So 48 at Trevor's Star, 7 at Grendelsbane, 6 (IIRC) with Honor, about 12 - 14 in Home Fleet, and about 24 or so in refit or workup. Total of just around 100 SD(P)s mentioned.

(But none of this counting the GSN / Protector's Own forces; this is purely the RMN SD(P)s)

tlb wrote:What you really mean is smaller in number of casualties compared to Beowulf; because physically Hephaestus is probably bigger than the orbitals destroyed at Beowulf combined.

That's what matters to me, the people.

tlb wrote:People or things, it is all interstellar commerce and just like submarine warfare, it can all be blown up.

I think RFC wants it a bit closer to classic cruiser rules, not the later unrestricted submarine/aircraft warfare "rules".

Under either set of rules escorted convoys of freighters may be attacked and destroyed without warning - the act of traveling in military convoy makes them military targets. If an enemy warship comes up while you're dealing with one of their freighters that freighter pretty much now gets treated as if under convoy. But otherwise the enemy's freighters can't be destroyed without warning - you need to give the civilian crew a chance to leave the ship and, assuming they heave to when ordered and cooperate in abandoning ship, you are responsibly for ensuring that they can reach safety. Once they've evacuated, or if the ship attempts to run or fight you, then you can destroy the ship.

And then we never saw the Honorverse equivalent of stopping and inspecting neutral shipping to ensure it wasn't carrying military supplies to your enemy. Under the cruiser rules you absolutely could not destroy a neutral ship for that, but could take it into port where the contraband could seized before the ship was allowed to resume it's journey.

Things get messy when you legitimately suspect that you're facing a Q-ship. But still, like I said RFC seems to be mostly inspired by the older age of sail cruiser rules for actions against enemy commerce - not the 20th century unrestricted warfare.

kzt wrote:No, David defines it pretty clearly in the pearls. It is space to ground, doesn’t cover orbital platforms at all, and is an attack that directly causes civilian casualties. If everyone starves next winter or a city gets crushed when your orbital factory falls to earth that doesn’t count.

He doesn't mention orbital platforms. But he does repeatedly mention the "planetary population" and "major population centers" and in a system like Hypatia a fairly large percentage of the total planetary population lives in the major population centers of the residential residential orbitals around the planet. And while RFC's examples tend to be about bombarding the planetary surface I'd be surprised if the letter of the Edict was so narrow that residential orbitals, no mater how large, were outside its scope and the civilians aboard them fair game for terror strikes with WMDs.

Certainly the people in power in Hypatia believed that destruction of their residential orbitals would be considered wholesale and wanton destruction in violation of the Edict. RFC hasn't, that I've seen, come out and said that they were wrong about that belief.

Manticore's stations were different since they were major military installations, naval docks, and shipyards, not just residential population centers. And compared to the numbers living in the orbitals of Hypatia of Beowulf the population of Manticore's stations is far closer to company housing than a major city.

Sigs wrote:That is 56% of the RMN's SD(P)'s and 35% of the GSN's SD(P)'s. If the RHN shows up with too little they run the risk of defeat or at least suffering significantly more casualties, show up with too much and they run the risk of forcing both the RMN and GSN to retreat to the Terminal if there are forts there.

That doesn't bode well for the plan.

I'm Pretty sure the RMN knew about the SD(P)'s at that point, they just didn't know how many. So maybe showing up with 250 SD's and the RMN being able to identify only 80 of the SD's as SD's might force her to conclude the rest are SD(P)'s. Considering the what % of the RMN SD(P)'s she is in command I would venture a guess that she would retreat rather than tangle with potentially 180 RHN SD(P)'s even if the GSN had their 40 S(DP)'s in the system.

In the real Second Battle of Trevor's Star, it was 100 RHN SD(P)s versus 86 GSN + RMN SD(P)s. Giscard left without engaging. I'm not sure he'd have engaged if he had had 180 SD(P)s. Any engagement would have cost him some of his ships, which would be needed to defend the republic against whatever remained of the RMN and GSN and IAN.

And he happened to chance upon the GSN forces. If he hadn't and got ambushed, he would have no time to extricate himself. Risky plan.

there are forts at the terminal she can retreat there and hold off, but even if she retreats with the GSN in tow that still goes from 150 RHN SD(P)'s vs 23 RMN SD(P)'s to 150 RHN SD(P)'s against 109 SD(P)'s that's going to be a bad day for 1st Fleet but they will face HF first and then 86 SD(P)'s after. They will lose most of their ships but as long as some make it still victory.

The Havenite ships cannot transit. Even if there are no forts on the Trevor's Star side of the Junction, there are in the Manticore side. Any and all enemy ship transiting is destroyed upon arrival.

And I repeat that "lose most of their ships" are a bad proposition unless that leads to outright victory or, like Beatrice planned, destroying the shipyards.

Will be stuck in Grayson since Grayson is the only industrial center of the Alliance not immediately threatened by the RHN.

We know that the GSN had sent away 12 SD(P)s (or 16) to Sidemore and 40 to Trevor's Star. That's over two thirds of their total forces. So please don't argue that they wouldn't do what we know they did.

Those forces are sufficiently mobile. And if Haven has just had the vast majority of its SD(P) fleet smashed, the GSN forces can be effective. Plus the IAN.

Sending them to Marsh is one thing, forcing them on the capital of their ally when the ally might not want them is another thing. I guess it was luck that they showed up, demanded transit and the RHN attacked quickly after because how long could they stay in Trevor's Star if the SKM is making noise about them leaving? How long can the Protector's Own stay in Manticore against the SKM's wishes? And what are the chances that the RMN would leave Grednelsbane and it's 73 SD(P)'s and 19 CLAC's under construction without a single SD(P) as defence?

The fact is that they were there. The RHN cannot make a plan that assumes that they won't be.

Yeah and the attack to Trevor's star is a success which is more than what happened in Thunderbolt. 1st Fleet Retreats and on their way back to the Republic they visit Grendelsbane and destroy it.

The distance from Trevor's Star to Grendelsbane is the same, regardless of whether it's an RMN, GSN or RHN ship. And that distance might be shorter if starting from Manticore. We don't know.

Anyway, even if the RHN manages to take Trevor's Star and destroys the Grendelsbane yards, the attack on Manticore still failed and did chew up a significant portion of the ships sent there. Unless they also left, without achieving their objective, which leaves MA forces to retake Trevor's Star.

If he sees SD(P)'s coming through the Junction and he doesn't like his odds he runs and kills off as much of home fleet as he can which he outnumber 6.5 to 1 ad even if he loses most of his Fleet the MA just lost Trevor's Star and whatever 1st Fleet destroyed in the process and they STILL don't know how many SD(P)'s the RHN has.

He can't. If he's in sufficient range of Home Fleet to be effective, he doesn't have time to disengage from Home Fleet before the relief forces drop in outside the hyper limit. If he's in range of both, he's toast. If he's not in range of the relief forces, that means he's so far inside the hyper limit he won't be able to hyper out before they close the range, so he's also toast.

And in that situation, there's a good chance the admiral in charge will simply surrender with their ships, which subtracts from the RHN total and adds to the MA total. Not a good exchange.

Well it seems to be done like that for the Manticore Alliance after Icarus. Everybody and their mother wanted SD(P)'s and the government had to oblige, with the constitution so new the President might feel pressured enough to oblige as well or Congress might have a way to over rule her.

The Alliance is not a central government. The multiple members are sovereign entities, have their own navies and will make their own decisions.

And they cant do that if they took 240 SD(P)'s from the 620 SD(P)'s at the time they needed to catch 8th Fleet.

I repeat myself: the forces preparing for Beatrice are available to serve as ambush fleets. Pre-deploying them does not mean sending them away from the core systems. It means moving them closer to Haven so the decision loop is shorter and consolidating in large groups so they can train together.

Guess what ambush fleets are? Large groups of ships training together.

Don't say they had to be all together. The person that THeisman had picked to be their CO wasn't with them; he was in Lovat in one of the ambush fleets. So if Giscard was preparing for Beatrice and was serving at the same time in an ambush fleet, that supports my argument that the two things can be done at the same time.

Let's use your numbers, Bolthole 60 SD(P)'s, Haven 100 SD(P)'s, Main Shipyard 1 system 60 SD(P)'s, Main Shipyard 2 system 60 SD(P)'s. So far that's 280 SD(P)'s.

Those are not my numbers. I was at Haven 100, Bolthole 100, Primary System 1 64, Primary System 2 64, but your numbers are ok too.

Secondary Shipyard 1 system 40 SD(P)'s, Secondary Shipyard 2 system 40 SD(P)'s, Secondary Shipyard 3 system 40 SD(P)'s. Total for this is 120 SD(P)'s.

Main Front Fleets 150 SD(P)'s, base close to Trevor's Star is 50 SD(P)'s. Total is another 200 SD(P)'s.

No. There aren't 200 ships close to Trevor's Star or Manticore. There are 50 only.

By the way, if I had to tie some ships down without the ability to use them for defence, that's where I'd put the ships working up. So you can't remove from the equation.

So now we have the most vital systems covered and 7 Fleets covering the most likely MA targets. At the same time they tie down the bulk of the MA's SD(P)'s keeping them from reinforcing 8th Fleet.

I don't doubt Theisman wished he had 956 ships. He would have wished for 1250 too. But you don't fight a war with the weapons you wish you had; you fight with the ones you do have.

Nope, Lovat happens, they know they are screwed so they take Home Fleet, Bolthole and every Ambush Fleet and picket they can get their hands on to attack Manticore and attack Manticore now. Split them in two fleets, nothing fancy, 1 Fleet goes towards Home Fleet and the other stands behind to cover their back. I don't care how good 8th Fleet is and how good 3rd Fleet is, if I had 600 SD(P)'s to throw I would especially if I am fairly certain they don't have Apollo widely deployed yet.

So why didn't he send 600 ships?

There is a contingency plan, there is forward deploying supplies, ammunition and fleet train for that contingency plan and then there is the 240-335 SD(P)'s training for that contingency plan. I have zero objections to making a plan, I'm sure that Theisman has a planning cell somewhere in the octagon doing nothing but contingency plans.

You have not convinced me that "pre-deploying" implies "forward deploying." Unless you have new arguments why those ships working up could not be close to Haven and the picked CO only had 48 ships under him, we're going to have to stop this line of thought and agree to disagree.

I'm interested on how you explain Giscard's presence in Lovat.

Haven did definitely have enough ships to send 6 SD(P)s to all 18 Top 20 systems besides Haven and Bolthole and still have 5 squadrons left.

So your plan is to put 100 SD(P)'s to be a diversion?

No. They aren't diversion. They are actual, inner system defence. A multi-vector defence usually implies at least one force coming from the inner system. So seeing a squadron in the inner system is expected and doesn't tell you if there are more forces in hyper or in the outer system.

And I argued as well that not seeing the forces in the inner system does not mean there aren't any forces. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Depends on how many drones you have, and where they are and if the MA has special stealthy long endurance Drones or not which the RHN cannot be sure of. There may be no drones in the system, or the system might be full of 100 Drones. If they ar actively scouting they are not sending 1 Drone and hoping for the best they would send multiple drones from multiple directions and since its second and third tier systems the RHN might not even notice a destroyer or two sneaking into the system to maintain constant surveillance.

The problem is not endurance, it's range. But yeah, if the RMN has a breakthrough in drone and scanning technology, the RHN is in trouble. And yes, the RHN should plan for the drones having better capability than they know they've seen so far and that there could be more drones than they could account for with destroyers and CLs scouting the systems. But even then, the outer system is huge: for example, here the hyper limit would be 20 light minutes which would barely include the asteroid belt. Neptune is 4 light-hours from the Sun. The Kuiper belt extends from there to 7 light-hours. And then there's the Oort Cloud. The entire Havenite Navy could be hiding there with their wedges up and the drone wouldn't pick it up.

A ship making a run from the inner system to where such a fleet is hidden would be limited by the recharge time on their hypergenerators, not the distance or the band they reached. They can get there and the relief forces coming back in 15 minutes, which is far less than they'd want to give the attacking force anyway. They'd want the attacking force to be far enough from the hyper limit so they can't simply turn back and run away.

Or you can keep pressure on the MA because not only are they a democracy, they are also an alliance of different nations all of which will demand protection. Keep the MA fleets tied down and they cannot send more than a dozen or two SD(P)'s to 8th Fleet for a while. Take reasonable precautions to protect your important systems, tie down as much of the Alliance fleet as you can and hope you guessed right. Or screw Camille and go on the offensive, take Trevor's Star and make them travel from outside of the republic for Cutworm IV-XX instead of leaving their base within spitting distance of the most important systems in the republic intact.

I'm not saying that the RHN shouldn't try and keep the MA fleets tied down. I'm saying that they can use subterfuge and not have in place all the ships that they appear to have. Make it appear you're stronger while the ships are elsewhere preparing for an operation.

Of course, two could play this game, but the leaders of those other sovereign nations are far more likely to make public noise than the governors of Havenite systems, especially if such a fleet was stationed on a system like Seaford Nine that didn't have a civilian population.

Do enough damage and you can cripple the economy of the RoH even if their core systems are still intact. Just because they can build the SD(P)'s doesn't mean they can actually afford to build them or maintain them or operate them.

You could be wrong. If the primary and secondary systems remain, they may be able to support reconstruction of all the tertiary systems without significantly impacting the war-fighting ability. In any case, the point is moot because the MA simply doesn't have the time that it would take to do that in the first place. Theisman knows that he can't let the war drag for too long, he has to conclude it before the balance shifts away from him. And because the MA knows that Haven knows this, they won't implement a plan that does little to the war-fighting ability of Haven.

And the once with the Ambush Fleets, because the whole point is to ambush the enemy and you can really announce to the system population that they are actually covered. So you run the risk of losing virtually every system aside from Haven, Bolthole, and the top 3 or 4 systems you are actually protecting. The RoH can either use force to keep them in or let them go but when they start losing systems like Lovat because they have no SD(P)'s it starts to hurt.

Unless the RHN is able to properly cover every system and I calculated above that they can't, there's no way that the Ambush Fleet's presence would be announced to the population. Even the governors wouldn't be told. That would be poor OpSec: who knows if the RMN ONI or the Manticoran SIS or the Andermani haven't penetrated that system's government?

Do you remember the 4 little reasons why he kept the rest behind?

Yes, but they are not relevant. This is not the meeting with Pritchart in April. This is early June after Apollo was seen in action at Lovat. He knows the war is over in the next couple of months. Either he wins or he surrenders. Defending against an Eighth Fleet sortie or the Andermani showing up is not worth it. In fact, he probably can guess now why the Andermani had been missing: they were taking on this new weapon. If they do turn up, it's likely they'll be armed with these weapons, so holding 600 ships back won't do any good, but would do a lot of bad.

When he was planning the attack Apollo wasn't a thing and he was worried about the IAN and 8th Fleet so he was still worried about protecting the republic. And with 335 SD(P)'s it would have been enough if 8th Fleet did not have super duper missiles and EW. They would have taken serious losses but they would have had enough for all 3 Fleets.

Again, the planning doesn't matter right now. Why would Theisman hold back 620 ships if he knows they are paper tigers?

Why did he send only 335 then? Why not send the entire 590 SD(P)'s in the RHN all at once?

I answered that:

335 is just about everything that he could send, short for the 100 in Capital Fleet, 100 in Bolthole and some other systems that couldn't be recalled in time and the least ready of the ships still working up. He can't send a good portion of Capital Fleet because the news of its movement would make to Manticore before those ships; he wouldn't send the least ready of the ships because that's just throwing spacer lives away and could possibly hinder the other good ships (net negative contribution).

Cant they use all those fancy LAC's and destroyers to keep every ship in the system until its too late to warn the MA?

No. First, because stopping all ship movements in Haven for a month would be economically catastrophic. Maybe it was worth it if it had the desired effect.

But second, because they couldn't stop the word getting out either way. The RMN doesn't depend on civilian traffic to scout Haven. They probably have a DD or CL dropping in once a week to find out what's going on and to keep tabs on Capital Fleet. There are probably Manticoran RDs there. Even without the RDs, the fact that the system is on lockdown is a dead giveaway that something is up. The civilian newsfaxes that are broadcasting information in the open would have also be speculating on why Capital Fleet is suddenly gone.

Now, it's possible that he had been playing the deception game with Capital Fleet that I outlined above. But that's at most 50 ships: the other 50 need to be in the inner system.

The Battle of Lovat also destroyed 32 SD(P)s, so Haven no longer had 620 of them at this point, but 588. Less, if some of the other SD(P)s at Lovat were damaged enough they weren't battle-ready.

Sigs wrote:It could have been just as easy for a rogue element inside the government to commit OB. Say the RoH had the technology they just couldn't figure out how to use it without killing that many people and some rogue admiral or rogue politican decided to use the technology to win the war and worry about it later. Especially if it comes close enough after Lovat but far enough to allow for the deployment of the weapons.

No, it can't be just as easily. Fudging the correspondence took two people in the right places who otherwise had legitimate access to the correspondence.

An attack like OB requires the technology to exist in the first place. I agree with you that if Haven did have the technology, Tourville could be in doubt whether they were responsible or not. He'd have negotiated differently, depending on how appalled he became at the results he thought elements in his government could have done. But the point was that he didn't know about the technology and he would have known if it had been scaled up to ships capable of doing what was done. Since he didn't, Haven didn't have the technology, therefore Haven wasn't responsible.

Sigs wrote:In other words it helps if the plan works but it is not necessary for t to work. Most likely if 2nd Fleet attacks they overwhelm 3rd Fleet(RMN) and take Trevor's Star and the RoH is in a much better position than they were in the original Thunderbolt. They have whatever is left of 2nd Fleet and Trevor's Star. 1st Fleet on the other hand might have a couple of spies in Manticore that can go and tell them Trevor's Star attack happened and the commander on the spot decides if the risk is that much greater due to the delay. If they decide not to attack they wing by Grendelsbane and take out the system and go home.

The moment the attack starts on either side, the Junction locks down. So at best the spies on either side would be able to tell that the attack commenced, but not who's winning. If the forces in Trevor's Star had been significantly reinforced and the CO on the scene decides to withdraw, the first indication the CO on the Manticore side will have that this happened is when ships start transiting from Trevor's Star. Heck, maybe they bluffed with sensor decoys (and we know that's possible because Lorelei would exist in two years) and the CO fell for it!

Trevor's Star is a hell of a consolation prize.

Not really. You're exchanging Trevor's Star for 140 of your SD(P)s, about half the force you had available. And there's a good chance 100 of those are surrendered in working conditions that add to the MA battle roster.

Or drive the attackers away. Don't forget that option

Unless they send an overly cautious admiral no one will retreat when they outnumber the enemy 3.9-1 if its only 3rd Fleet or 2.1-1 if the GSN is there as well.[/quote]

Yes, they will. 2.1 to 1 is not overwhelming superiority. You risk losing the majority of your fleet when you won't have more SD(P)s for another 2 years, at least.

More than likely 3rd Fleet and the GSN will retreat knowing they represent a large portion of the Allied Firepower.

This is "counting on the enemy doing what you expect them to do." Please describe your plan not in "most likely" but "in the worst case" (I'll grant you reasonable cases, not that High Ridge was actually brilliant, had a secret shipyard with 200 SD(P)s ready to go and was just playing dumb).

150 SD(P)'s because the 10 Tourville lost in Marsh would not be destroyed.

Those 10 would be in Marsh. The scenario here is that Honor gets recalled with here 6 SD(P) from Marsh unexpectedly. Tourville would still be there or on the way back, but not able to join the fighting.

However, if the plan was to attack the MBS, sending a fleet after Honor is pointless. She can't fight a war with 6 SD(P)s.

Anyway, the RHN had 315 SD(P)s. 180 plus 140 is 320 already.

With what the GSN send 2nd Fleet would be fine...unless the GSN is willing to strip Home Fleet Trevor's Star Cannot be reinforced that heavily. And if by some mirecale there are 150 Alliance SD(P)'s and 10,000 Katanas and 46 BC(P)'s in Trevor's Star thend 2nd Fleet retreats. But for that to happen everything that could go wrong has to go wrong for them, everything that could go right for the GSN/RMN has to go right for them and the GSN ONI has to be made up of a bunch of honest to god psycics.

And what's the contingency for that? Lose the war in one strike?

Anyway, I'm not talking about 150 Alliance SD(P)s, let's say the 86 that were in Trevor's Star when Giscard didn't attack and the 18 more that Honor brought back with her: 104. Plus the conventional SDs that would be towing pods: 52 that were under Kuzak plus 25 more with Honor. And 11 DNs. Whoever was sent with 180 would withdraw. Your plan is for the attack in Trevor's Star to go first, so there would be no news through the Junction that the attack in Manticore was underway. The forces in Trevor's Star need to assume they're on their own against those 192 ships of the wall.

What happens if they launch Thunderbolt and they find out their tech is not up to standard? Can they call a time out? If they find out that their ships need 2 or 3-1 advantages they are screwed anyway.

The big difference is how many ships remain. Under the actual Thunderbolt, the RHN sent out 130 of its 315 SD(P)s, meaning 185 remained and would definitely not be damaged or destroyed. Giscard clearly had orders not to sacrifice his fleet, so he also left without firing a single shot. All the other task forces were sent against systems without heavy pickets, so their chances of success were much greater. The only must-win target was Grendelsbane. If that one failed, those 75 Invictus would enter service before Haven could deploy the second wave from Bolthole.

But even if only those 285 ships remained, the MA had 190 SD(P)s. They wouldn't have the 3:1 advantage needed to win the war, but they'd have sufficient to hold the balance of power and they could outbuild the MA.

The worst case scenario for Thunderbolt would be if Giscard got suckered into an attack that made him lose all his forces, with some 50 pressed into service on the MA side. Since he'd destroy some 50 on the MA side too, that means Haven finds itself at 185 against 190. That's really not good odds. But Giscard didn't have to win. His target was quite frankly, optional.

In your scenario, there's a non-negligible chance that the RHN would lose 200 ships or more, with some of those actually being pressed into service on the MA side. Even if they take Grendelsbane out, the RHN could find itself at 120 ships against 190 on the Manticore side. That's an even worse exchange. And unlike the actual Thunderbolt, the COs on the scene would really need to attack, otherwise the MA forces could just cross the wormhole and obliterate the other side.

And if Thunderbolt was launched 4 days early? Where would the invincible GSN TF be then?

Again "counting on the enemy doing what you expect him to do." The whole argument here is that your plan depends on this.

The worst case scenario in your plan is much worse than what was the worst case for Thunderbolt.

Largest Operation was Trevor's Star, second Largest Grednelsbane. Sidemore was a side show with only 1/3 of the force send to Grendelsbane. And sending 80 SD(P)'s more with the 100 SD(P)'s Giscard already had would have gone a LOOOOOOOOOOONG way to easy any of his discomfort in facing almost twice as many SD(P)'s as he though he was. Even if the Protector's Own and the 13 SD(P)'s from Sidemore and Grendelsbane were in Trevor's Star for a visit he would still have more than enough to crush the Alliance Fleet.

Right, sorry, I forgot Grendelsbane when I wrote that. It was indeed larger than the operation at Sidemore.

But I repeat that 180 RHN SD(P)s against 104 RMN and GSN SD(P)s are not good odds. It's not "more than enough to crush the Alliance Fleet". At best that's a stalemate where both forces are depleted. If this happens, then there's no one to go after Grendelsbane and the MA can outbuild Haven.

So its reasonable to assume that the RMN will send 100% of their SD(P)'s in one system NOT home system? It's too complicated to send 2 DB's but expecting that the GSN will know exactly when you are planning on attacking Trevor's Star and Sending 43 SD(P)'s In a GSN TF and the Protector's Own while the RMN sends 100% of their SD(P)'s leaving Manticore and Grendelsbane(with 75% of their SD(P)'s under construction) is reasonable?

No, 100% of the Manticoran or Grayson Home Fleets would not leave the Home System. But over two thirds of the GSN did leave and in case of an attack, two thirds of the Manticoran Home Fleet could transit to Trevor's Star.

The problem with the DBs is not that it's complex, it's that you invite a bad defeat for one or both of the forces if something does happen. You have to game out what's the worst that could happen if everything goes wrong for you and right for the enemy and your plan has a much worse result in the worst case. Sure, it has a much better result in the best case, but the risk/reward ratio here is way too lopsided.

So the Alliance should have brought all of their CLAC's to the system they didn't know was being attacked?

Yes.

Why did Protector Benjamin send 40 SD(P)s to Trevor's Star? My argument is that he could have sent ALL the CLACs because he doesn't need the carriers to defend his system, only the LACs. Those can be based on forts and bases.

[quoteYou realise that they guessed...they didn't know they guessed. So once again, coordinating 2 DB's through the junction for two Fleets is too complicated but guessing one of the targets of the RHN, guessing the right time, conducting the operation while the PM of the SKM is firmly opposed to any GSN interference convincing Janacek to deploy 100% of the RMN in one system that is NOT the Home system leaving 75% of his SD(P) construction virtually defenceless along with the other 25% of his construction being very much exposed along with 100% of the SKM industry is reasonable?[/quote]

There's no guessing what the right time is. The GSN component can be sitting in Trevor's Star for several months. They didn't have to be there for exactly two days. And no on is talking about moving Home Fleet before the attack happens in Trevor's Star. The point is that Home Fleet can move once it knows the attack starts. The plan should not count on Home Fleet staying put once it knows Trevor's Star is under attack.

And yes, coordinating two DBs through a Junction the enemy controls is too unreliable. Not complex, just unreliable.

How long would 100% of the RMN SD(P)'s take to get from Trevor's Star back to Manticore if 1st Fleet attacks? And if they get back can they catch 1st Fleet before they destroy the entire industry around Manticore?

Each SD takes 3 minutes through the Junction. So 50 ships would take 2 hours and 30 minutes. An attacking fleet dropping out of hyper on the limit needs 3 and a half hours to reach 0-0 with Manticore, 2 and a half for a drive-by.

But again not the point. You can't count on the Home Fleet CO not being reckless. What happens if he is reckless and sends the majority of his force through the Junction, and the Manticore prong of the attack didn't launch or launched late?

Jonathan_S wrote:Under either set of rules escorted convoys of freighters may be attacked and destroyed without warning - the act of traveling in military convoy makes them military targets. If an enemy warship comes up while you're dealing with one of their freighters that freighter pretty much now gets treated as if under convoy. But otherwise the enemy's freighters can't be destroyed without warning - you need to give the civilian crew a chance to leave the ship and, assuming they heave to when ordered and cooperate in abandoning ship, you are responsibly for ensuring that they can reach safety. Once they've evacuated, or if the ship attempts to run or fight you, then you can destroy the ship.

Ah, I see. So if a warship is conducting commerce raiding and happens upon a civilian ship under the flag of the enemy, it can then demand the ship heave to, but it cannot fire upon that ship if they comply. If this ship suddenly gets a memo that they are needed elsewhere, they can't simply fire on the freighter, they'd have to let them go.

On the other hand, if an enemy warship turns up while they're preparing to board the freighter, the freighter becomes a military target and can be destroyed. So it's up to the warship of the enemy to decide whether to engage or not, because it knows it's putting those civilians at risk. It may need to wait out of range until the crew is safely transferred and the ship either taken into prize or scuttled, before beginning an approach.

Correct?