Andermani strategic blunder in 1905 PD?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:How would the GSN have shaped up had this come to pass? No captured ships to give it. And Haven may not have lost good men to defection, no time for it. And Honor wouldn't have been on Grayson to train them.

Depends on when "this came to pass." If it happens after Icarus, then there isn't much of a difference. At that point in time, the GSN is building Honor Harrington-class SD(P)s in greater quantity than the RMN.

Even if it's around or shortly before the liberation of Trevor's Star, the GSN has been participating in the Medusa design, Project Anzio, and has already built at least couple, probably many more, SD of their own. By this time, the GSN is already in the Top 10 of Navies in the Galaxy, with at least three battle squadrons.

If instead the IAN joined as the OP proposed, around 1905 and 1906, the GSN only has the Manticore's Gift for battle squadrons and has only begun building cruisers and battlecruisers. So if the war gets resolved much more quickly, they wouldn't build as big as they actually did because there would be no need for it.

Pretty much; If the IAN comes in with 80 wallers 6 months after 3rd Yeltsin, that is a bigger contribution to the Alliance energy heavy wall than the combined Grayson/Erewhonese contribution (11 captured Peep wallers, 27 Grayson built, 20 Grayson manned/Manticore built + ~16 Erewhonese Dreadnoughts) at the time of Buttercup outside of the Erewhonese home system defense force.

Those IAN ships will be a significant force bolus at a time when the Peeps are still strategically off-balance, working from a scrambled logistics structure as their pre-war basing system had been designed to support offensives actions going into Alliance space and a good number of those bases have been captured/destroyed in the immediate counter-offensive and politically divided. Furthermore, the Grayson/Erewhonese forces were to some degree balancing forces against the war emergency construction that Haven had undertaken and was commissioning by 1908 and 1909. An early injection of 80 IAN wallers in H1 1906 is potentially strategically decisive as that would likely give the Manticoran Alliance quantative equality with far fewer must defend targets and therefore strategically offensive quantatitive superiority of qualitatively superior forces.

Another opportunity the IAN may have missed as incentive or reward for throwing in with the RMN, is the possibility of a lucrative deal to use the MWJ. Let's call it frequent flyer miles. Similar to the lucrative, too lucrative, agreement given Beowulf, says House of Steel.

cthia wrote:Another opportunity the IAN may have missed as incentive or reward for throwing in with the RMN, is the possibility of a lucrative deal to use the MWJ. Let's call it frequent flyer miles. Similar to the lucrative, too lucrative, agreement given Beowulf, says House of Steel.

Do we know what the major trading partners are for the Andermani? If they are mainly Silesian systems, then the wormhole would offer no benefit.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:Another opportunity the IAN may have missed as incentive or reward for throwing in with the RMN, is the possibility of a lucrative deal to use the MWJ. Let's call it frequent flyer miles. Similar to the lucrative, too lucrative, agreement given Beowulf, says House of Steel.

Do we know what the major trading partners are for the Andermani? If they are mainly Silesian systems, then the wormhole would offer no benefit.

Asgerd, Manticore and Silesia are the major players, but they hit the SL as well.

tlb wrote:Do we know what the major trading partners are for the Andermani? If they are mainly Silesian systems, then the wormhole would offer no benefit.

That's not necessarily true - it depends on which systems they're trading with in Silesia. The far end of Silesia, over towards Basilisk, would be a shorter transit from Andermani space through the Junction.

Certainly Manticoran ships find it profitable to make the run from Gregor (in Andi space) to Basilisk trading their way through Silesia.

So low enough transit fees might help Andi trade to the far side of Silesia by saving them money due to reduced transit time.


Still, I think they'd need something better that low transit fees to justify throwing their navy into the war against Haven. It might be an extra incentive; but it isn't enough to be the whole reason.

Manticore had been granting Junction Fee reductions for various trade partners and Manticor Alliance members.

That alone would be worth a lot to Aldermani merchant marine (and so the Empire) both in terms of reduced cost and better access to markets. If you can use your own shipping to import and export from the Empire with markets in the SL rather than depend on League flagged shipping you gain both exposure and the ability to make direct contacts in those markets.

What we see in War of Honor is the start of the real discussions about the partitioning of Silesia into Andermani and SEM pieces. Not that it is negotiated by Honor but that this is the first point we see discussions that are clearly centered on the desire and expectations and needs of the Andermani to make a more forceful and coordinated aquistion of systems then they had in the recent past and that some level of cooperation from Manticore is a better idea than crowding the Star Kingdom while at the same time pushing intimidation contacts on the Silesians.
And, no, they are not talking about splitting it up between them at that point but while this is going on, the opportunity of Talbot is opening up with the High Ridge Government now pushing the idea of bringing in systems from that area to what (though it isn't talked about that way) will become the Star Empire of Manticore.

Those pieces (since a major reason that the Rembrant Trade Union got behind the idea of all those system in Talbot to become part of Manticore was to avoid them all being picked off by OFS) is really only a short walk from gaining a major asset and market of systems in Talbot who WANT to join SKM to taking a realpolitik look at the cesspool of problems that is Silesia and deciding that an agreement to solve almost all the identified problems of more than a hundred years of corruption and piracy there is to split it with someone who actualy holds a lot of the same ideas as you in rule of law, trade and remove Silesia as the flashpoint it is. The Andermani get a massive growth, the two of you will clean up the overarching political and corruption problems and you will have at least addressed long standidng needs and fears of the Andermani about being hemed in.

Brigade XO wrote:Manticore had been granting Junction Fee reductions for various trade partners and Manticor Alliance members.

That alone would be worth a lot to Aldermani merchant marine (and so the Empire) both in terms of reduced cost and better access to markets. If you can use your own shipping to import and export from the Empire with markets in the SL rather than depend on League flagged shipping you gain both exposure and the ability to make direct contacts in those markets.

What we see in War of Honor is the start of the real discussions about the partitioning of Silesia into Andermani and SEM pieces. Not that it is negotiated by Honor but that this is the first point we see discussions that are clearly centered on the desire and expectations and needs of the Andermani to make a more forceful and coordinated aquistion of systems then they had in the recent past and that some level of cooperation from Manticore is a better idea than crowding the Star Kingdom while at the same time pushing intimidation contacts on the Silesians.
And, no, they are not talking about splitting it up between them at that point but while this is going on, the opportunity of Talbot is opening up with the High Ridge Government now pushing the idea of bringing in systems from that area to what (though it isn't talked about that way) will become the Star Empire of Manticore.

Those pieces (since a major reason that the Rembrant Trade Union got behind the idea of all those system in Talbot to become part of Manticore was to avoid them all being picked off by OFS) is really only a short walk from gaining a major asset and market of systems in Talbot who WANT to join SKM to taking a realpolitik look at the cesspool of problems that is Silesia and deciding that an agreement to solve almost all the identified problems of more than a hundred years of corruption and piracy there is to split it with someone who actualy holds a lot of the same ideas as you in rule of law, trade and remove Silesia as the flashpoint it is. The Andermani get a massive growth, the two of you will clean up the overarching political and corruption problems and you will have at least addressed long standidng needs and fears of the Andermani about being hemed in.

Though the Andermani, in War of Honor before Haven restarted the war, were getting more and more willing to crowd Manticore in Silesia in order to push their territorial claims there. (Hence the rising tensions that led to limited shooting incidents prior to the Havenite attack at Sidemore)

Through the first war they'd been very careful to avoid crowding Manticore. But in the ceasefire they'd started pushing for some belated compensation for not trying to take advantage while Manticore was in a tough spot.


I suspect after Talbott they were pushing harder because the realpolitik Andermani also saw it as a fairly small step from the High Ridge government letting Talbott join into a newly forming SEM (to a fair bit of domestic acclaim in Manticore) to them deciding that they might finally impose a unilateral solution to the festering swamp that was Silesia and annex the whole thing.

The Andermani seem to have wanted to make it very clear that not only was now the time to address the issue; but that they wouldn't accept being left out of the solution. (Which happily left them in a good position to participate in the partition of Silesia as part of the realpolitik deal that brought the IAN in to help Manticore after Thunderbolt)

I tend to think if the RMN formed something of, at least, a defacto Alliance with the IAN, the Andies would be given access to the MWJ at bargain basement prices. It's only natural to offer access to the MWJ as appreciation. However, with this direct, native access to Silesia (and other markets) it would naturally come with blessings to seek out Silesia. I believe their beef would have been settled naturally at that time because the traditional prohibiting factors would no longer apply. No Navy wants a potential enemy operating in their backyard or next door. The Alliance in 1905 would have eliminated the RMN and IAN as competitors and potential enemies. Well. And, long pent up anxieties between the two would never have come to pass. The RMN would have enjoyed travel through Andermani space as well.

And, I wonder what kind of shot in the arm Andy tech would have given Project Gram. And who knows how whatever came off the Manty assembly line would have helped the IAN.

cthia wrote:And, I wonder what kind of shot in the arm Andy tech would have given Project Gram. And who knows how whatever came off the Manty assembly line would have helped the IAN.

It sounds as though it had already been helping the IAN by way of their very efficient intelligence service. But Apollo and Keyhole-2 were fruit of the alliance.

tlb wrote:

cthia wrote:And, I wonder what kind of shot in the arm Andy tech would have given Project Gram. And who knows how whatever came off the Manty assembly line would have helped the IAN.

It sounds as though it had already been helping the IAN by way of their very efficient intelligence service. But Apollo and Keyhole-2 were fruit of the alliance.

True, but to a limited form. Like the MAlign, they knew a lot of the what but were missing quite a bit of the how.