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

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Maybe not 240, but what is the exact number? Honor had demonstrated at Solon, despite losing, that two Invictus protected by LACs could shrug off 11,000 missiles. 42 SD(P)s, though most of them Medusas, deserved attention. The other Gryphon- and Sphinx-class SDs should not be ignored either. The big issue was the number of LACs, which they could not properly predict.

Then the RHN might just surrender if the RMN and their 42 SD(P)'s and 48 SD's can survive 195,000 targeted missiles and 80,000 blindly fired missiles but the RHN with their 80 SD(P)'s and 100 SD's get destroyed by a salvo of 150,000 missiles. If the RMN can survive 2-1 odds in both SD(P)'s AND SD's the RHN is done and can go home.

Overkill is an acceptable outcome. Underkill is not: if the attacking force is neutralised and Home Fleet survives, it can go after the other force.

Overkill is acceptable IF you have something to face the fixed defences with aside from the 140 SD(P)'s with various degree of damage. Again, if the RMN can destroy 80 SD(P)'s and 100 SD's with Home Fleet's 42 SD(P)'s and 48 SD's then the RHN might as well surrender.

Theisman and Tourville calculated half a million missiles necessary to gut Home Fleet. Why are you calculating less than 200,000? Do you know somoething they overlooked but should have known?

Yeah, if the RHN needed 5.7-1 odds in SD(P)'s it was game over with or without Apollo. Do you realize you are aruing that the RHN needed 240 SD(P)'s to take out 42 SD(P)'s. If that is the case then the RHN needs at least 2,100 SD(P)'s to be able to face the MA and their 360 SD(P)'s in equal odds, and I doubt the RHN has 2,100 SD(P)'s in their back pocket.

The info from RFC himself says there were no BBs left (the line actually completely missing from the table). But you're right that Hera system still had two. As the discussion between Andrea and Honor goes, it's probably just a handful here and there, on the way to decommissioning so their contribution wasn't a factor.

It is for the 3rd tier systems that get them. But even if there are 50-100 of them they will be in the bottom 1/3-1/2 of the Republic's systems rather than higher up where they are likely to face actual combat.

Either way, by the time of the conversation between Theisman and Pritchart, manpower was an issue and they were decommissioning SDs. The RHN wouldn't keep any crew on a BB if they could be user on an SD or SD(P) or CLAC. So at this point, defence was likely consisting of BC and lower, SD and up only. No BBs or DNs anywhere to be seen.

They shouldn't have had DN's and BB's to begin with. They build 330 SD(P)'s, they had to mothball some SD's to man those SD(P)"s and they should have started right off the bat with the BB's and DN's but that is not truly relevant. I would bring even BB's if I had them but that's just me.

I'm not sure where you're going with this.

You're questioning Theisman and the RHN Admiralty and NavSec. Sure, you have different ideas and they could have worked given you know something they didn't. I simply asked the question: given the parameters of what they were planning for, who would they use for the defence? Giscard had just won a battle against Eighth Fleet.

Yeah, and using the commander who pounded your top commander as the face of the new offensive seems like a no brainer. Uhm, sorry Honor but you are such a great defensive commander that we will deploy you to defend Alizon and give command of 8th Fleet to someone else... we REALLY need to protect Alizon.

Yeah, apparently I do know something they don't, they can duplicate 8th Fleet tactics and do to the alliance what 8th Fleet is doing to the republic, they can force the MA to redeploy to cover both the Andermani Empire and Silesia. Imagine if suddenly 40+ SD(P)'s showed up in the empire and took out one of their systems, what happens with the 40 IAN SD(P)'s deployed to the minor allies? I would bet they are recalled so fast that it would make the smaller allies dizzy. And to top it off the Empire will be demanding SD(P) reinforcements from the MA.

Travel time. The courier could have to go in the wrong direction to bring the mission orders and they would have had further to travel.

Yeah because the majority of the RHN is deployed on the opposite side of Haven.

You're making an assumption that the bulk of the RHN is betwewen Haven and Manticore. Nothing in the text supports that conclusion. Given that Eighth Fleet was doing deep raids weeks from its supporting base, why couldn't they attack systems on the other side from Haven? And if so, why wouldn't the RHN set up pickets in them?

And you are assuming they are all on the other side. And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if?


It boils down to this, their plan called for ~330 SD(P)'s and they magically showed up with only 330 SD(P)'s. So either the rest of the RHN wasn't ready at all or they left them behind because they weren't part of the plan.

If the Python Lump, with another 50 SD(P)s -- all of them Invictus class -- is out of the yards, then those extra ships would not suffice. Especially if those ships are Keyhole II-capable. The Python Lump would also have a number of Agamemnons and Nikes which would thicken the missile offence and defence.

Forget increasing your forces to 1000 SD(P)s supported by 35000 LACs. If Manticore is defended by 50 Apollo-equipped SD(P)s, the battle is lost.

That's my point, the reason there are only 335 SD(P)'s in 2nd/5th is because of plot, if they brought 580 SD(P)'s, 300 SD's, 70 CLAC's and 700 escorts to the battle the MA loses, so either 2nd/5th is weak enough that 8th Fleet can beat them/bluff them or the python lump happens.

You cant tell me that 250 SD(P)s, 300 SD's, 600+ Escorts and 60+ CLAC's were all conveniently too far away for them to make it on time and the RHN just happened to have just barely enough to execute the original plan with the same number of ships.

Sorry, I didn't mean that. I meant that the time between the Battle of Lovat and the Battle of Manticore was 10 weeks. Of which 8 weeks would be spent in travel. Whether the fleet was 1 week away from Haven by DB or 7 weeks doesn't matter: the total time combined by the DB and the fleet is 8 weeks.

So it takes 8 weeks to go the 300 LY from Haven to Manticore?

Someone more familiar with military strategy has to chime in whether always being prepared for long trips is even possible. Consider this: do they have sufficient perishables for 2 months of travel at all times? If not, can they load sufficient in 2 days?

They are in a friendly system, they should be always stocked. If an overwhelming force comes into the system and forces you to retreat you have to be able to actually retreat, and you have to be able to if nothing else maintain some ships in system for prolonged period of time to gather intel if for no other reason. Not having your ships ready for retreat if it comes to that seems like a recipe for a suicidal last stand, and planning to retreat to the nearest system doesn't count unless you can guarantee 100% that the nearest system is not occupied by the enemy.

Sending the fleet on rations doesn't seem like a good idea to me. They'd get there, but morale would be sufficiently low to compromise combat effectiveness.

I've eaten rations for weeks on end, I've slept in tents for weeks on end as well, they will survive just fine. After all they are in the military.

I mentioned the GSNS Honor Harrington's hull number to give an idea how many ships the Grayson yards could construct. Yes, she was the first SD(P) ever, not the 31st.

Those also account for the ships Manticore Gifted the GSN. Also the Grayson started from scratch in 1905, between 1905 and 1915 they were in a constant state of expansion so how many ships they build before 1912 has no bearing on how many ships they can build 1915-1919.

That's the Python Lump. Which did not launch until October or November, so Caparelli was optimistic.

Python lump would be the ships they laid down from November 1919 on right after Thunderbolt.

Or didn't take into account the need to fit them them with Keyhole II, which delayed the process.

So Caparelli is wrong on how many ships the MA can have in 18 months, and Theisman is wrong on how many ships the RHN has... got it.

The ships 2 years out are those that would be laid out at the moment the war started, as Manticore builds a superdreadnought in 24 months.

Python lump. November/December 1919 till November 1921 is JSUT ENOUGH time to get those ships done.

Also note how the delay in the Python Lump, which applied to the IAN, probably also applied to the GSN. The addition of Keyhole II inserted a delay into already-in-process ships.

Did it really? Because for the IAN they designed their own ships and the RMN had to create a solution, the GSN and the RMN would have been building their SD(P)'s from the ground up with those modifications in place. As for the SD(P)'s under construction in 1919 for the RMN and GSN, Im going to go ahead and tell you they finished them as soon as they could, having 90-100 SD(P)'s now when you are desperate is soo much better than having 90-100 keyhole capable ships 6 months too late.

So the Alliance did not have 400 ships at the moment the Battle of Manticore started.

Notice how I said they didn't?

Yes, that's what Theisman estimated they'd have when he talked to Pritchart, but he was including all 120 IAN SD(P)s which we know weren't ready. So the total must be 320-340, at most.

Thanks for confirming my math here buddy.

We know the Manticoran shipyards wouldn't deliver their share until three or four months after the Battle of Manticore. As I said above, the delays might have pushed the additions you're mentioning further out.

The Manticore yards will not deliver the ships laid down in late 1919 for a few months, the ships that were between 30% and 70% done are going to be finished quicker and in small batches rather than 1 lump sum.

Tell that to the Emperor. There's no way he'd agree to critically uncovering his capital world or his important shipyards. Note how Theisman not knowing where the 120 Andermani wallers are probably indicates those yards are not in New Berlin.

Or he is 450 LY away from New Berlin and doesn't have up to date info, or more likely he is 450 LY away AND the empire's intelligence network is really good so he cant get intel.

The Sultan of Zanzibar might protest and make the Alliance fragile in the long run if his system is uncovered,

Yeah, big loss for the MA, the small nations that are a drain on the Alliance's capital ships might abandon the alliance.

The Gustav Anderman can simply order his ships not to go, plus recall his contributions to Eighth Fleet.

And then he ends up out of the alliance, at war with the republic waiting for the republic to crush Manticore and Grayson, use them to attack the empire and take the empire out.

Which ones survived the Battle of Manticore? Almost all of the new construction was delayed because of the need to add Keyhole II.

Prove it.

They have a stronger Home Fleet than the Manticoran Home Fleet for a reason and the reason is what you said: there's no strategic reserve 6 hours away, which you can order to start moving in 18 minutes. Manticore was the target that RHN did attack, but it need not be the only one. The yards in Grayson were building Apollo missiles and Keyhole II enabled ships just like in Manticore. Probably at a smaller scale, but at a non-negligible contribution. A simple rule of thumb is that Manticore would be contributing 50%, Grayson 25% and the Andermani another 25%. Presenting juicy targets to the RHN would be unwise. Especially the one that, until the Python Lump and new construction really did go forward, was the premier navy in the alliance and was carrying the biggest load.

And the RHN is going to do what exactly? Go in and capture Grayson? Destroy its industry? Will that end the war?

The RHN is staring at a losing war, what they do, they know will be returned with interest in a few months. So their only hope is a quick victory or do just enough to piss off the Alliance into blowing the republic's industry on the way to Haven.

And more importantly we don't know if the GSN didn't keep 20 or so of the SD(P)'s with Keyhole for their Home Fleet.

No, weakening Grayson is irresponsible.

Ok, Cant weaken New Berlin, cant weaken the smaller allies, cant weaken Grayson...maybe the MA can ask the SLN to send them a few SD's for defence.

So as a conclusion, there aren't enough movable forces in commission at the time of the Battle of Manticore that could be used to reinforce Eighth Fleet against another 320 RHN SD(P)s.

Where the hell is the RHN going to get 320 SD(P)'s? Remember they had only 620 total as you are so quick to argue, 32 destroyed in Lovat, 319 in Manticore which leaves the RHN with a total of 269 SD(P)'s which means they cant hit anyone, because if they hit Manticore and get their remaining fleet crushed the ships guarding the minor allies, GSN and IAN Home Fleets and all other SD(P)'s will be stripped to form a fleet to go and beat the Republic into submission, and since we haven't seen the fixed defences in action we can safely assume that the RHN will lose a lot before they take Manticore and that's without Home Fleet being rebuild and the MA will reshuffle ships from the allies even if they have to weaken them all, otherwise the MA loses its meaning since the SKM is in dire need and its allies wont help.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Sorry, I realised a few minutes after posting this that I made an error here by drawing a distinction between the Python Lump and the new construction. The Python Lump is the new construction started after Thunderbolt. When I posted the above, I was thinking of the partially built ships left over during the High Ridge administration, which should take from 0 to 80% of 24 months But that can't be right either.

In the same Chapter 7, Caparelli says that there are 35 SD(P)s under construction and should commission between six to ten months. Those are the only RMN ships that might be commissioned before January 2022. Caparelli says that there are 90 IAN SD(P)s in construction, but some won't be complete in 18 months. So if the Alliance started the war with 232 and added all the 35+90 by the Battle of Manticore, that leaves 43 to be added by the GSN.

Now, we know that the IAN did not add 90 by July 1921. They only added 40.

Anyway, your argument is that by the time they'd need to execute Beatrice:

1. The RHN would have 956 total ships, 856 of which would be battle-ready
2. The majority of the Havenite forces would be close to Haven and would not add more than 1 week of delay

So when Lovat happened and Theisman, the Admiralty and Pritchart knew the war would be won or lost on a single operation, regardless of how much industry Haven kept, Theisman still ordered only 336 ships to go?

Why would he do that?

Let me add a couple ONI estimates from Chapter 7:

• RHN had, at the time of the meeting (early 1920) some 300 SD(P)s (matches the infodump);
• Haven had 400 to 450 ships in construction at Bolthole, though they had no idea how far in construction they were;
• 400 more units were in construction elsewhere in "Nouveau Paris and two or three other of their centrala systems"
• those 400 others wouldn't complete for 24 to 30 months

IF they had 330 SD(P)'s ready for war and all of them were built in one yard, it stands to reason that those SD(P)'s were finished and the next batch started quickly after. The RoH knew they were going to war so they would have laid down more ships immediately. More to the point, the majority of those SD(P)'s were finished early to mid 1919 to allow for work up, forward deployment and training for Thunderbolt, so the RHN didn't deploy those ships, wait 6 months and then lay down more ships, it would have been as quickly as possible right after the first batch is done.

We can't know for sure if the estimates at Bolthole were right or not, since ONI had no direct visibility to it. I'd assume they're not too far off the mark, but even if they are, we can take it they weren't far off the mark for the other yards: that means all the ships to be used in Beatrice had to come from Bolthole.

Yeah and they had to come in one batch or the RHN managed to design, test and build one batch of SD(P)'s and immediately after laid down another equal batch of SD(P)'s and build both of them in 4 years along with designing and testing.

In order for there to be 956 ships, Bolthole would have had to produce 620 in the 18 months between Thunderbolt and Beatrice.

No, they had to produce the ~400 SD(P)'s maybe a little more.

Since it takes 3 years to build each, any ships ready by June 1921 would have to have started in early 1918 at the latest.

So the RHN designed, tested and build 330 SD(P)'s in less than 4 years? Did they have the SD(P) design ready to go? Worked out all the kinks? Or did they build all of them without any testing and hoped they worked?

Since the design didn't start before 1916, the 336 ships used in Bolthole and these 620 of yours must have at some time been all in construction at the same time. That means Bolthole had to be able to construct 956 ships simultaneously.

No they don't. The 330 SD(P)'s HAD to be built BEFORE Thunderbolt for them to participate and still be able to defend the Republic. For the Republic to launch Thunderbolt they had to have faith that their ships had well drilled crews, and enough drill had been done from the department, to ship, to squadron, to TF, to Fleet level. They didn't just dump 100 SD(P)'s on Giscard and tell him to attack, he had training and that takes time. They had to get Toruville in position, this means that the SD(P)'s had to be finished at latest in Early 1919 if not late 1918. And if they were done in Early 1919 then 25-30 months from Dec18/Jan19 is right around Lovat. And is definitely around the time frame Theisman was talking about(mid to Late 1921).

The Republic announced their SD(P)'s in early 1919 and started laying down ships immediately, they would have been stockpiling components in those yards as well and rpepping to build those SD(P)'s for a while, because from the ONI briefing it seems that the set up is the same for SD's as it is for SD(P)'s so prep the components, announce and start building. Even if they started only 50% of the 400+ SD(P)'s immediately they will be coming into service in mid/late 1921, around the time that Beatrice would have been executed.

Finally, if the RHN had 700-750 more SD(P)s coming in between late 1922 and early 1923 (400 from the other yards and 336 from the slips freed by the construction used in Thunderbolt) in addition to the 956 already in commission, how in the Galaxy would the balance tip towards the Alliance once the Python Lump and other Alliance war-time efforts were ready?

It wouldn't, that's the problem, the MA's only hope would be the RoH not being able to afford to build/maintain that many SD(P)'s.

At All Costs, Ch. 7 wrote:"That may be, Pat," Hamish said, "but the thought of looking at twelve hundred SD(P)s in a couple of years doesn't exactly fill me with joyous enthusiasm."

Your numbers are off by 515.

When was Beatrice planned for? When was this conversation had? And more importantly, a couple of years is not a specific number/date, it doesn't mean that in a couple of years they will have 1,200 SD(P)'s but at a couple of years minus a day they will have 620 SD(P)'s. The ships wont all finish at the same time, they will be staggered. Its not like the RHN will have 620 SD(P)'s on March 1921, 620 SD(P)'s on April 1921, 620 SD(P)'s on May 1921, 620 SD(P)'s on June 1921, 620 SD(P)'s on July 1921 and 1,200 SD(P)'s in August 1921.


So between May and December the 400 SD(P)'s under construction in the yards outside of Bolthole would be coming out of the yards and not all at the same time, 100 in may, 100 in june, 100 in july….

Sigs wrote:Yeah, if the RHN needed 5.7-1 odds in SD(P)'s it was game over with or without Apollo. Do you realize you are aruing that the RHN needed 240 SD(P)'s to take out 42 SD(P)'s. If that is the case then the RHN needs at least 2,100 SD(P)'s to be able to face the MA and their 360 SD(P)'s in equal odds, and I doubt the RHN has 2,100 SD(P)'s in their back pocket.

Concentration of force and defeat in detail. There's no place where all 360 SD(P)s of the MA are gathered.

Yeah, and using the commander who pounded your top commander as the face of the new offensive seems like a no brainer. Uhm, sorry Honor but you are such a great defensive commander that we will deploy you to defend Alizon and give command of 8th Fleet to someone else... we REALLY need to protect Alizon.

Please list the defensive actions Honor had taken while in command of Eighth Fleet. Giscard, on the other hand, had just implemented and won a battle in the past month.

Yeah, apparently I do know something they don't, they can duplicate 8th Fleet tactics and do to the alliance what 8th Fleet is doing to the republic, they can force the MA to redeploy to cover both the Andermani Empire and Silesia. Imagine if suddenly 40+ SD(P)'s showed up in the empire and took out one of their systems, what happens with the 40 IAN SD(P)'s deployed to the minor allies? I would bet they are recalled so fast that it would make the smaller allies dizzy. And to top it off the Empire will be demanding SD(P) reinforcements from the MA.

This is where the civilian leadership comes in. Military strategy is there to serve a political purpose. Attacking the Andermani Empire does not serve that purpose.

And you are assuming they are all on the other side. And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if? And what if?

I'm not. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I'm assuming it's evenly spread radially around Haven. There'll be outliers, of course.

It boils down to this, their plan called for ~330 SD(P)'s and they magically showed up with only 330 SD(P)'s. So either the rest of the RHN wasn't ready at all or they left them behind because they weren't part of the plan.

Yes.

That's my point, the reason there are only 335 SD(P)'s in 2nd/5th is because of plot, if they brought 580 SD(P)'s, 300 SD's, 70 CLAC's and 700 escorts to the battle the MA loses, so either 2nd/5th is weak enough that 8th Fleet can beat them/bluff them or the python lump happens.

Exactly. So if we reason back that Theisman wasn't stupid, we have to reduce the total RHN force to match.

You cant tell me that 250 SD(P)s, 300 SD's, 600+ Escorts and 60+ CLAC's were all conveniently too far away for them to make it on time and the RHN just happened to have just barely enough to execute the original plan with the same number of ships.

I gave you two reasons, not just the distance one. The other are ships that can't be moved because word would get to Manticore before the ships would. That would tie up around 100 SD(P)s more.

've eaten rations for weeks on end, I've slept in tents for weeks on end as well, they will survive just fine. After all they are in the military.

"Survive" is not the same as "high moral, peak efficiency to take on the single best defended system in the Galaxy."

Either way, moot point, since Bolthole definitely is on the wrong direction and adds 20 days.

Those also account for the ships Manticore Gifted the GSN. Also the Grayson started from scratch in 1905, between 1905 and 1915 they were in a constant state of expansion so how many ships they build before 1912 has no bearing on how many ships they can build 1915-1919.

Grayson wouldn't be expanding the yards during the High Ridge years, at least not significantly. They were still highly dependent on Manticore help for that, which High Ridge wouldn't give. They were straining their economy to keep building at the rate they were and would not be able to keep it at that level for long either.

Anyway, if we assume an average build rate between 1912 to 1920, to go from 0 to 115 SD(P)s, that's 14 vessels per year. I'm willing to go as high as 20 in the 1919-1921 time frame, which means the GSN should add no more than 30 ships from the beginning of the war to the Battle of Manticore.

Caparelli is wrong on how many ships the MA can have in 18 months, and Theisman is wrong on how many ships the RHN has... got it.

No. Caparelli was wrong in the estimate and did not foresee the Keyhole II refit, because it didn't exist yet at the time he made the estimate. Theisman knew exactly how many ships he had.

Did it really? Because for the IAN they designed their own ships and the RMN had to create a solution, the GSN and the RMN would have been building their SD(P)'s from the ground up with those modifications in place. As for the SD(P)'s under construction in 1919 for the RMN and GSN, Im going to go ahead and tell you they finished them as soon as they could, having 90-100 SD(P)'s now when you are desperate is soo much better than having 90-100 keyhole capable ships 6 months too late.

We have textev saying that the new builds were done from the ground up to handle Keyhole II. But with the correction that the Python Lump is the ships started after Thunderbolt and that they left the yards before Oyster Bay struck in February 1922, we know that there wasn't any significant delay for them.

However, the ships that were not built from the ground up to handle Keyhole did need refits. That's all ships that were in construction at the time of Thunderbolt and we know from textev that it totalled 35 SD(P)s.

Or he is 450 LY away from New Berlin and doesn't have up to date info, or more likely he is 450 LY away AND the empire's intelligence network is really good so he cant get intel.

Just the embassy in New Berlin would suffice to take pictures of the ships in refit if the yards were in orbit or sufficiently close in-system. NavSec was sufficiently capable to know that there was some technical issue, just not what it was.

That calls for a yard at least as far away as the outer system. Like Blackbird is for Grayson. Either way, two loci to defend.

And then he ends up out of the alliance, at war with the republic waiting for the republic to crush Manticore and Grayson, use them to attack the empire and take the empire out.

I'm sure he'd think of that possibility. But he wouldn't uncover his home system.

Which ones survived the Battle of Manticore? Almost all of the new construction was delayed because of the need to add Keyhole II.

Prove it.

All the new construction was given to Honor. Therefore, there were no more ships to be had.

The only thing I'd concede is if Eighth Fleet had more ships left in Trevor's Star because they'd just been delivered and were working up. They might not even have had their missile load delivered, so they wouldn't be effective in battle.

And the RHN is going to do what exactly? Go in and capture Grayson? Destroy its industry? Will that end the war?

The RHN is staring at a losing war, what they do, they know will be returned with interest in a few months. So their only hope is a quick victory or do just enough to piss off the Alliance into blowing the republic's industry on the way to Haven.

And more importantly we don't know if the GSN didn't keep 20 or so of the SD(P)'s with Keyhole for their Home Fleet.

Yes, they'd destroy the industry and get a breathing room. Remember this discussion is if there hadn't been Apollo. If Beatrice had been launched and had failed without Apollo, the RHN could attack Grayson if it was uncovered. That would reduce the MA war-producing industry by at least 25%, with the RHN having 400 SD(P)s in the pipeline to be delivered in one year.

Where the hell is the RHN going to get 320 SD(P)'s? Remember they had only 620 total as you are so quick to argue, 32 destroyed in Lovat, 319 in Manticore which leaves the RHN with a total of 269 SD(P)'s which means they cant hit anyone, because if they hit Manticore and get their remaining fleet crushed the ships guarding the minor allies, GSN and IAN Home Fleets and all other SD(P)'s will be stripped to form a fleet to go and beat the Republic into submission, and since we haven't seen the fixed defences in action we can safely assume that the RHN will lose a lot before they take Manticore and that's without Home Fleet being rebuild and the MA will reshuffle ships from the allies even if they have to weaken them all, otherwise the MA loses its meaning since the SKM is in dire need and its allies wont help.

Sorry, I'd forgotten the 32 from Lovat. Chin made it home with 17 SD(P)s. You're right: of the 620, minus 32 from Lovat, minus 336 that set sail to Manticore, plus 17 that made it back, that's 269.

Home Fleet had been 42 SD(P)s, though only 1 was an Invictus (HMS Invictus herself). Supported by another 50 SDs and thousands of LACs, 240 RHN SD(P)s annihilated it. Honor has 35 SD(P)s, though by this time over half are Invictus and Harringon II, but she has no SD support and the LAC defence has been depleted. An Invictus has twice as big a pod load as a Medusa, but the deployment rate and, more importantly, the missile defence rate isn't twice that of the older class. Plus, any reinforcements she may receive by uncovering the minor allies would be more Medusas; only Grayson would be able to send some Harrington II. The RHN has 269 SD(P)s left.

That sounds like an about even match up to 50 SD(P)s.

Sigs wrote:IF they had 330 SD(P)'s ready for war and all of them were built in one yard, it stands to reason that those SD(P)'s were finished and the next batch started quickly after. The RoH knew they were going to war so they would have laid down more ships immediately. More to the point, the majority of those SD(P)'s were finished early to mid 1919 to allow for work up, forward deployment and training for Thunderbolt, so the RHN didn't deploy those ships, wait 6 months and then lay down more ships, it would have been as quickly as possible right after the first batch is done.

Agreed that the slips of the 300-some SD(P)s that Haven had were filled by new SD(P)s being built in Bolthole. That matches the ONI estimate that 400 were being built at Bolthole after Thunderbolt.

Yeah and they had to come in one batch or the RHN managed to design, test and build one batch of SD(P)'s and immediately after laid down another equal batch of SD(P)'s and build both of them in 4 years along with designing and testing.

The same Chapter 7 says that ONI had picked up on Pierre and Saint Just stockpiling parts they had no idea the purpose for. So the design of an SD(P) may have started before the Theisman Coup. Foraker finished it, so the design wasn't complete before 1915. But if they started in 1915, those ships would be ready by late 1918, so the second batch could be ready in 1921.

Theisman had 100 recently-delivered ships in April 1921.

In order for there to be 956 ships, Bolthole would have had to produce 620 in the 18 months between Thunderbolt and Beatrice.

No, they had to produce the ~400 SD(P)'s maybe a little more.

Haven had 318 after Thunderbolt. All ships in RHN service at the time of Beatrice came from Thunderbolt. Therefore, Thunderbolt would need to produce all 956 ships.

318 had been delivered before Thunderbolt, so 638 had to be delivered between Thunderbolt and Beatrice. So at a minimum Bolthole would need to have 638 slips.

So the RHN designed, tested and build 330 SD(P)'s in less than 4 years? Did they have the SD(P) design ready to go? Worked out all the kinks? Or did they build all of them without any testing and hoped they worked?

They apparently did. And as Chapter 7 says, 80% of the Sovereign of Space shares parts with the DuQuesne class.

No they don't. The 330 SD(P)'s HAD to be built BEFORE Thunderbolt for them to participate and still be able to defend the Republic. For the Republic to launch Thunderbolt they had to have faith that their ships had well drilled crews, and enough drill had been done from the department, to ship, to squadron, to TF, to Fleet level. They didn't just dump 100 SD(P)'s on Giscard and tell him to attack, he had training and that takes time. They had to get Toruville in position, this means that the SD(P)'s had to be finished at latest in Early 1919 if not late 1918. And if they were done in Early 1919 then 25-30 months from Dec18/Jan19 is right around Lovat. And is definitely around the time frame Theisman was talking about(mid to Late 1921).

Agreed, in most part. There's just enough time for Bolthole to deliver a second wave of SD(P)s by the time Beatrice would need to be launched. The only question is whether that wave is closer to the 318 that had launched or closer to 638 that your argument requires. That's a 2x difference.

And we're neglecting the CLACs. Before Thunderbolt, Haven had already built 48, all at Bolthole. Before Thunderbolt, those wouldn't be built in the other yards, so they must have laid down a few for the second wave.

When was Beatrice planned for? When was this conversation had? And more importantly, a couple of years is not a specific number/date, it doesn't mean that in a couple of years they will have 1,200 SD(P)'s but at a couple of years minus a day they will have 620 SD(P)'s. The ships wont all finish at the same time, they will be staggered. Its not like the RHN will have 620 SD(P)'s on March 1921, 620 SD(P)'s on April 1921, 620 SD(P)'s on May 1921, 620 SD(P)'s on June 1921, 620 SD(P)'s on July 1921 and 1,200 SD(P)'s in August 1921.


So between May and December the 400 SD(P)'s under construction in the yards outside of Bolthole would be coming out of the yards and not all at the same time, 100 in may, 100 in june, 100 in july….

Beatrice was planned for launch if necessary in July 1921.

The conversation was just after Thunderbolt, so either December 1919 or January 1920 and ONI has just reported that 400 ships won't launch for 24 to 30 months. Hamish is reacting to that, so he's worried about a 1200 SD(P) Havenite navy in January to July 1922. That's six to twelve months after Beatrice. Either way, the RHN fleet wouldn't be more than 750 by ONI's estimates before the end of 1921.

I admit ONI could be wrong.

But evidence acummulates that 956 SD(P)s in July 1921 is just unlikely. It requires way too many slips in Bolthole, it requires ONI to be wrong by more than 50%, it requires that Theisman not use two thirds of his modern wall to activate a Hail Mary. Occam's Razor applies.

And please answer this part of my post:

Anyway, your argument is that by the time they'd need to execute Beatrice:

1. The RHN would have 956 total ships, 856 of which would be battle-ready
2. The majority of the Havenite forces would be close to Haven and would not add more than 1 week of delay

So when Lovat happened and Theisman, the Admiralty and Pritchart knew the war would be won or lost on a single operation, regardless of how much industry Haven kept, Theisman still ordered only 336 ships to go?

At least one, if not both, of your arguments must be wrong.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Concentration of force and defeat in detail. There's no place where all 360 SD(P)s of the MA are gathered.

But the RHN needed 5.7-1 odds to take out RMN's Home Fleet, with super powerful ships like that, the RHN could have hit only maximum of 2 systems before they ran out of ships. Hell they may run out of ships on one system.

If the RMN's Home Fleet of 42 SD(P)'s had put such a dent in the RHN's 2nd Fleet and 2nd Fleet required such overwhelming firepower to destroy Home Fleet then the RHN HAD to attack Manticore, anything else would have been useless.

Please list the defensive actions Honor had taken while in command of Eighth Fleet. Giscard, on the other hand, had just implemented and won a battle in the past month.

So instead of using the guy who beat the Manticore Alliance's top commander in a battle recently as your field commander for Beatrice you will leave him in a rear system defending a 2nd tier system? Really? I would say its more likely that the RHN would use him as commander of Home Fleet, not only did the RHN send 335 SD(P)'s to attack the Manticore Home System but they send the guy who beat the RMN/GSN's top commander to lead the attack, that right there is a double whammy.

This is where the civilian leadership comes in. Military strategy is there to serve a political purpose. Attacking the Andermani Empire does not serve that purpose.

Why? Its not like the Empire is going to declear war on the RoH again.

I'm not. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, I'm assuming it's evenly spread radially around Haven. There'll be outliers, of course.

And not a single one of the systems that would have met the timetable had more CLAC's and SD(P)'s/SD's to send?

Yes.

So they chose not to bring more ships, the defeat in BoM was a choice.

Exactly. So if we reason back that Theisman wasn't stupid, we have to reduce the total RHN force to match.

For the plot. He chose not to bring those extra ships, there was no logical reason why. There may have been time constraints and you might be partially right but he chose not to bring the extra ships that may have made a difference so the defeat rests squarely on his shoulders because he knowingly chose to send insufficient forces.

I gave you two reasons, not just the distance one. The other are ships that can't be moved because word would get to Manticore before the ships would. That would tie up around 100 SD(P)s more.

You cant tell me all those ships were too far away, so if half were within range then he chose not to bring them. Second, the RMN should have been prepared for the attack, the fact that they weren't speaks volumes for the competence or lack thereof of the RMN's senior leadership. Their actions should have told them what the only viable option for the RHN was so anything the RHN did at that point shouldn't have been a surprise

"Survive" is not the same as "high moral, peak efficiency to take on the single best defended system in the Galaxy."

Either way, moot point, since Bolthole definitely is on the wrong direction and adds 20 days.

Doesn't explain the rest of the missing RHN ships. And it does matter, if your military is so soft that eating rations for a few weeks breaks their moral god help you because your fleet is useless.

Grayson wouldn't be expanding the yards during the High Ridge years, at least not significantly. They were still highly dependent on Manticore help for that, which High Ridge wouldn't give. They were straining their economy to keep building at the rate they were and would not be able to keep it at that level for long either.

But they were expanding UP TO the end of the war. Their pace might have slowed during the ceasefire but they still had to build upwards to 100 SD(P)'s in 4 years.

Anyway, if we assume an average build rate between 1912 to 1920, to go from 0 to 115 SD(P)s, that's 14 vessels per year. I'm willing to go as high as 20 in the 1919-1921 time frame, which means the GSN should add no more than 30 ships from the beginning of the war to the Battle of Manticore.

They were also very convinced that war was going to start soon, which means they would have found the money to push a little harder before SHTF.

No. Caparelli was wrong in the estimate and did not foresee the Keyhole II refit, because it didn't exist yet at the time he made the estimate. Theisman knew exactly how many ships he had.

Keyhole II had nothing to do with the estimates, nowhere in the books do they say anything about slowing down construction because of keyhole II outside of the IAN SD(P)'s which leads me to believe that it was designed with RMN/GSN SD(P)'s from the start and realistically, as desperate as the MA was for SD(P)'s any SD(P)'s they had close to construction would have been commissioned as quickly as possible without trying to prolong their construction on the off chance that Keyhole and Apollo actually did work as promised.

We have textev saying that the new builds were done from the ground up to handle Keyhole II. But with the correction that the Python Lump is the ships started after Thunderbolt and that they left the yards before Oyster Bay struck in February 1922, we know that there wasn't any significant delay for them.

However, the ships that were not built from the ground up to handle Keyhole did need refits. That's all ships that were in construction at the time of Thunderbolt and we know from textev that it totalled 35 SD(P)s.

So what is your point?

Just the embassy in New Berlin would suffice to take pictures of the ships in refit if the yards were in orbit or sufficiently close in-system. NavSec was sufficiently capable to know that there was some technical issue, just not what it was.

Who says they still have an embassy in New Berlin and who says that the IAN yards are in orbit and not in a different location in the system where civilian traffic is not likely or approved.

That calls for a yard at least as far away as the outer system. Like Blackbird is for Grayson. Either way, two loci to defend.

We know absolutely nothing about the Andermani yards, what we know is that their tradition as a nation is more militarized than the SKM's which means they might have build their military infrastructure further away from prying eyes rather than the RMN which consolidated their civilian and military construction yards.

We know that the Empire was considered safe simply because of it's distance which is why I think 40 SD(P)'s showing up in the empire would have forced the MA to redeploy and might have forced them to pull back 8th Fleet.

I'm sure he'd think of that possibility. But he wouldn't uncover his home system.

I am not saying he uncoveres the Home System, I am saying that the threat level is lower due to distance and the beating the RHN suffered would indicate that it would be safe to take some SD(P)'s from his Home Fleet to assist the allies especially since the senior partner is not virtually defenceless.

Yes, they'd destroy the industry and get a breathing room. Remember this discussion is if there hadn't been Apollo. If Beatrice had been launched and had failed without Apollo, the RHN could attack Grayson if it was uncovered. That would reduce the MA war-producing industry by at least 25%, with the RHN having 400 SD(P)s in the pipeline to be delivered in one year.

And in that case Grayson is defended, New Berlin is defended, Zanzibar and the other minor allies are defended, the RHN and its remaining 260 SD(P)'s capture Trevor's Star, trash the Manticore Home Systems defences and capture Manticore and the war is over. The GSN and IAN are separated by 200 LY, the biggest yards the alliance has are now under control of the RHN and thus the alliance loses.

They have to weaken somewhere, grabbing a squadron from the IAN Home Fleet, 2 squadrons from the GSN Home Fleet and stripping all minor allies of SD(P)'s rebuild Home Fleet and 3rd Fleet, and with some risky deployments you can have a significant force guarding Trevor's Star and Manticore depending on who the RHN decides to attack.

More importantly, without Apollo, the RHN will likely not attack again until they have rebuild their strength. If the 42 SD(P)'s of Home Fleet can cause so much devastation to 2nd Fleet imagine what would happen to the 260 SD(P)'s they send to Grayson so they decide to do so, and imagine what 40 or 50 lightly damaged or undamaged RHN SD(P)'s will do defend the republic against the MA and their 210 remaining SD(P)'s after the GSN Home Fleet is wiped out.

Sorry, I'd forgotten the 32 from Lovat. Chin made it home with 17 SD(P)s. You're right: of the 620, minus 32 from Lovat, minus 336 that set sail to Manticore, plus 17 that made it back, that's 269.

And we dont know whar state the 17 SD(P)'s were in, they might have been barely more than wreaks or they might have been lightly damaged.

Home Fleet had been 42 SD(P)s, though only 1 was an Invictus (HMS Invictus herself). Supported by another 50 SDs and thousands of LACs, 240 RHN SD(P)s annihilated it. Honor has 35 SD(P)s, though by this time over half are Invictus and Harringon II, but she has no SD support and the LAC defence has been depleted. An Invictus has twice as big a pod load as a Medusa, but the deployment rate and, more importantly, the missile defence rate isn't twice that of the older class. Plus, any reinforcements she may receive by uncovering the minor allies would be more Medusas; only Grayson would be able to send some Harrington II. The RHN has 269 SD(P)s left.

No Apollo=no desperation to finish the war quickly. Which means they will take all their remaining SD(P)'s and defend Haven, or if they are feeling particularly frisky attack Trevor's Star with the Hope that it has not been reinforced quickly enough.

That sounds like an about even match up to 50 SD(P)s.

If the Ma has 240 SD(P)'s and the RHN has 269 SD(P)'s it is not even close to an even match. The MA has a known multiplier of 1.3 which means their 240 SD(P)'s are actually 312 SD(P)'s. Split it in the 4 important systems they have the equivalent of 78 S(DP)'s defending each system and in the case of Manticore it would be 156 SD(P)'s plus fixed defences.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
Please list the defensive actions Honor had taken while in command of Eighth Fleet. Giscard, on the other hand, had just implemented and won a battle in the past month.

It makes no sence to keep your best commander on the defensive. Honor was placed in an offensive fleet because 1) she was considered the MA's most capable commander and 2) she had scored a number of victories against the PN and RHN so it was psychological. What you are suggesting for Giscard is a waste of resources and it would be just as wasteful on Honor.

Sigs wrote: It makes no sence to keep your best commander on the defensive. Honor was placed in an offensive fleet because 1) she was considered the MA's most capable commander and 2) she had scored a number of victories against the PN and RHN so it was psychological. What you are suggesting for Giscard is a waste of resources and it would be just as wasteful on Honor.

Sometimes it does. The guy running the fire brigade counterattacking to screw up attacks when you are on the defensive needs to be pretty good. Bit that wasn’t what they were doing.

Sigs wrote:

This is where the civilian leadership comes in. Military strategy is there to serve a political purpose. Attacking the Andermani Empire does not serve that purpose.

Why? Its not like the Empire is going to declear war on the RoH again.

Because Pritchart doesn't want it. That is too close to what the Peeps would have done and she wants to distance herself and the renewed Republic from that image.

Theisman fought the whole second war with an arm tied behind his back. There were probably strategies that would let him win outright on Thunderbolt -- I disagree with your plan of attacking Manticore and Trevor's Star simultaneously, but it could have succeeded. More importantly, if winning was the goal, then all they had to do was wait a little longer. The Bolthole production was going steady, the RMN was not growing and the GSN production would have to sooner or later plateau.

And not a single one of the systems that would have met the timetable had more CLAC's and SD(P)'s/SD's to send?

I've made my position clear that they could and they did. A great deal of the 336 ships that were sent to Manticore were used for defending those systems. I understand you disagree, that you think they would have needed far more time than I allotted for training together, but that doesn't deny the internal consistency. Maybe launching Beatrice that quickly wasn't part of the plan, maybe Theisman thought that he'd have more time to train the units together, but Apollo changed that.

Anyway, if we assume an average build rate between 1912 to 1920, to go from 0 to 115 SD(P)s, that's 14 vessels per year. I'm willing to go as high as 20 in the 1919-1921 time frame, which means the GSN should add no more than 30 ships from the beginning of the war to the Battle of Manticore.

They were also very convinced that war was going to start soon, which means they would have found the money to push a little harder before SHTF.

I agree. That's why they were building 15+ SD(P)s per year (30+ simultaneously) when hostilities were halted and they bought basically all pre-Sphinx SDs that High Ridge was willing to sell. If you add all the SDs and SD(P)s that the GSN had in active and reserve, they had more hulls and definitely more tonnage than the RMN had before the first war, without the benefit of the Junction to fund it.

So what is your point?

That Caparelli was wrong when he said that they'd get 35 ships within 18 months, because we saw very few ships being added to Eighth Fleet between Thunderbolt and Solon. It was only for Lovat that Honor started getting really new units. And this is with the GSN building 20/year, so over 1.5 years we should have seen 30 ships from them too. We didn't, not until Lovat.

They have to weaken somewhere, grabbing a squadron from the IAN Home Fleet, 2 squadrons from the GSN Home Fleet and stripping all minor allies of SD(P)'s rebuild Home Fleet and 3rd Fleet, and with some risky deployments you can have a significant force guarding Trevor's Star and Manticore depending on who the RHN decides to attack.

More importantly, without Apollo, the RHN will likely not attack again until they have rebuild their strength. If the 42 SD(P)'s of Home Fleet can cause so much devastation to 2nd Fleet imagine what would happen to the 260 SD(P)'s they send to Grayson so they decide to do so, and imagine what 40 or 50 lightly damaged or undamaged RHN SD(P)'s will do defend the republic against the MA and their 210 remaining SD(P)'s after the GSN Home Fleet is wiped out.

Of course they had to redistribute their forces to cover Manticore and the shipyards there. My point is that you can't calculate the forces of the entire Alliance against the RHN because the Alliance cannot concentrate all their forces in one place. You have to make a more reasonable calculation of how much they could afford to uncover in Grayson and in New Berlin.

Another point is that this situation would simply never happen. The RHN could not throw all its remaining 269 SD(P)s at it either because it would mean uncovering everything in the Republic. Even if they took control of Manticore, they'd suffer devastating losses, so a task force out of Grayson could come to Nouveau Paris and demand surrender there too. And this is all to discuss the musings Honor had after winning, whether there could be a force sufficient to defend Manticore after their losses, but we don't know if she was thinking of what she had on hand or what she could get in two weeks' time.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Theisman fought the whole second war with an arm tied behind his back. There were probably strategies that would let him win outright on Thunderbolt -- I disagree with your plan of attacking Manticore and Trevor's Star simultaneously, but it could have succeeded. More importantly, if winning was the goal, then all they had to do was wait a little longer. The Bolthole production was going steady, the RMN was not growing and the GSN production would have to sooner or later plateau.

I tend to agree - if Haven's goal had been outright victory there are other paths they could have taken with the reveal and use of their new ships.

However I'd throw in the proviso that I'm not sure that politically President Prichart could have kept her Legislature under control for the 3 years so so it'll take until the next wave of SD(P)s and CLACs were available. She was already facing a fair bit of pressure to resolve things with Manticore - and high ranking people in all parties were briefed on the Naval Budgets and that the Navy was up to the point where, at a minimum, Manticore couldn't simply ignore them anymore. Even if you got everyone to agree to delay the reveal, that secrecy lets them play domestic political games of letting others into the know to sway them to their side.

And she's limited to 3 terms of 5 years each. I believe she took power in mid to late 1915 (though depending on how long Theisman's caretaker government lasted possibly early 1916). Which means that as the tensions that led up to Thunderbolt were going on she was probably in a reelection campaign, though the election itself may well have happened before the start of the war. Depending on the exact timing that might make it even harder for her to resist presume to make stronger diplomatic moves to get Manticore to negotiate in good faith. And she wasn't having any luck with that until she revealed that Haven had a sizable navy. She'd be over halfway through her 2nd term before the next major round of warships was completed. So that's a awful lot of her total Presidency wasted waiting to have an overwhelming stick with which to force Manticore to accept terms.

And frankly with the 5 way civil war finally concluded it's going to become damned suspicious if Haven's known shipyards don't start laying down new wallers. But then you've got the problem that either they waste tons of money building obsolete SDs as a cover, or they start building SD(P)s and risk High Ridge panicking and ordering a preemptive strike (since if the Bolthole ships are kept secret he doesn't realize he can't kill all Haven's SD(P)s on the ways). You might be able to win a ware by mousetrapping the RMN's preemptive strike with all your secret wallers; but it's a pretty risky method. And hard to keep those secret forces in covering position, while remaining totally secret, for what may possibly be years before either High Ridge attacks or a large mass of new SD(P)s are ready.
(Sure they can hide in hyper, or even in deep space somewhere close enough to be summoned by a courier - but the system's they're covering need to know to send the courier so knowledge that there are covering forces has to be disseminated and that can spread and get picked up by ONI eventually - and Haven't known navy is mostly accounted for so if you then find there are covering forces assigned to every system with a shipyard; but they clearly aren't part of the known navy then that's a bit signal that you've missed something. But if you assign known naval forces to that job as well then you've got to keep them from leave and highly censor their communication for years so they don't share that they've been working with unknown super-powerful new warships.

So it's actually fairly hard to simply wait for more SD(P)s. However if outright victory was the all encompassing goal the existing ones could have been used differently in a total surprise attack to have achieved that.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:More importantly, if winning was the goal, then all they had to do was wait a little longer. The Bolthole production was going steady, the RMN was not growing and the GSN production would have to sooner or later plateau.

Well, it depends on whether the goal is defeating Manticore and dictating terms from orbit, or securing a lasting peace. Because while the High Ridge government had been surprisingly resilient, if it fell (and when it was set up, no one expected it to hold together long), Manticore was going to be both more rational at the negotiating table and a much tougher military opponent.