Future Naval sizes

Jonathan_S wrote:I believe it was Uncompromising Honor that said that the warplan, in case of attack, was for the Frontier Force BCs to rush to do their best to slow and contain the attacking force ‘like white blood cells’ while Battle Fleet pulled together their retaliatory strike on the attacker’s home systems.

Spilting the RMN into 4 SD groups means that odds are they’d be expected to lose to a 64 BC opposing force. So mobbing enough FF BC squadrons into their path of advance might start slowing or defeating the attack; while BF launches their strike on Manticore.

My point is not about a conventional war, my point is of a war the SLN launches against Manticore, Haven or both where they know that the war is lost no matter what they do so their only play is stay, fight and die or go to the core and shell worlds and cause as much damage as possible.

Relax wrote:While it is true no one other than DW knows the numbers of CA/CL/DD, we do know there are vastly more numerous CL/DD than BC in the SLN. I think that quote is where??? I cannot recall. So while my number I typed up is the maximum IMO, assuming only a couple thousand CL/DD is also absurd. You are right that we also have a quote saying the SLN was heavy on the BC's, but that was only in comparison to the Peoples Navy at the time I do believe who used 350 Battleships. I think that quote was in SVW?

More numerous but by how much? Im using the information I have available and that is that Frontier Fleet uses BC’s as the workhorse of the protectorates and the verge. It’s a distinct possibility that there are tens of thousands of CA’s, CL’s and DD’s spread throughout the outer edges of the League on anti piracy duties but if that was the case why didn’t the SLN call them back with the BC’s? Having 10,000 CL’s and 10,000 DD’s in Sol to support the the wallers, BC’s and pods might have been a much more productive than keeping them on station fighting piracy where they are of little use to the war effort.

Likewise your postulate that we only see BC's is also inadequate. Madras sector had zero and had nothing to do with Byng or Crandall coming through and taking them as we have quotes that vast majority of systems have no presence at all but occasionally have squadrons/divisions of DD/CL come through. Only reason we see mostly BC's is No one, not even the SLN are stupid enough to send CL/DD instead of BC's.

Where are the DD’s? Where are the CL’s? There has to be a reason why the League uses the BC’s as the backbone of their forces for the Verge rather than using CL’s and DD’s even though the vast majority of the systems in the verge won’t have anything to go against destroyers let alone BC’s. There are only so many Verge systems, and there are only so many Protectorates and we know in somewhat specific terms how many League members there are. Either the Admiral Kingsford didn’t know what he was talking about when he says that the SLN is forced to retain some of their SD’s to be deployed to the verge so they can withdraw the BC’s. Either the CL’s and DD’s don’t exist in such great numbers or the SLN for unexplained reasons leaves them in place where they are and uses SD’s to pressure the protectorates and verge in order to recall the BC’s.

As for overabundance of lighter units... you assume we know how many systems SLN controls. We have no idea. If we had 10,000 + systems this would make more sense for how DW has also laid out the Merchant marine in the HV and importance and flow through numbers of the MWHJ.

How so?

So, while I believe my number is the ceiling, we also have a floor and I cannot see fewer than 10,000 light combatants.

Where were they when the missile advantage became apparent? They might not be worth individually but having 20,000 CL’s and DD’s concentrated in one place might go a long way to equalize the League's shortcomings.

They recalled the BC’s, Send SD’s to the protectorates and verge and did absolutely nothing about the massive number of DD’s and CL’s.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:[

I still dispute that, especially if we consider the 1930s.

The League doesn't need a squadron of SDs in each of 1500 systems, for a total of 12000 SDs. It needs system defence missiles and LACs. The same doctrine we talked about for Talbott and Silesia for the RMN applies to the League. Assuming technological parity, one squadron of SD(P) can fight one other squadron of SD(P). But you only need a defensive missile constellation to outfight the same squadron of SD(P), with a much less manpower-intensive solution, much more cheaply and, crucially, in a way that can hardly be abused to project force.

Except with the increased lethality of defensive forces there will be a proportional increase of the offensive forces in their ability to deal with defences. Or it gets to a point where all sides invest heavily in fixed fortifications and make offensive weapons obsolete where even a small neutral system can make itself too tough of a nut to crack to even attempt. At which point only BC's, CA's and CL's remain because there won't be a point to build SD(P)'s if

That leaves an attack by a navy that has more than a few SD(P) squadrons, because presumably they would leave a couple at home too. That reduces the number of potential attackers in the Galaxy from "too many" to "a handful" and you can keep an eye on a handful. You can know whenever a chunk of their wall of battle leaves "for exercises." And they also know you know, meaning that your exercise turned out to be an attack somewhere, you won't be able to get away with it.

And it still leaves the problem that civilians within the League member systems will still demand warships to be in their systems whether they are needed or not and if the SLN can't oblige then they won't depend on the SLN and go their own way.

Post war they are building the League politically, diplomatically and militarily from the ground up, that's when they will be demanding this be included in the Leagues constitution.

And the number of those with which you're currently at precarious diplomatic conditions with should be counted with at most one finger, if you're doing your job right.

And more importantly, they'd have business in the systems that are actually League members, in the Shell. We've never visited them in the books.

The League has to be very very very careful because they will lose some members but if they start pushing the systems with most potential for growth they will lose even more, they will if not already have pushed most neutrals into the GA and the GA will invest heavily in any and every protectorate, verge and neutral who comes to the GA with a stable government and a desire to join in common defence. Having 40 years of peace, hundreds if not thousands of systems with no industry to speak of and a highly motivated GA leadership to industrialize as many of them to make up for the imbalance with League industry might push the GA to becoming the preeminent power in Human space. The core and shell worlds that are already heavily industrialized can only grow so much while the League's own actions are extremely motivational for the rest of the galaxy to make every effort to grow their industry and economy.

Sigs wrote:The League can easily field 300 times what the RMN was able to field in 1905 unless the vast majority of the League is so under developed that its a handful of core systems with top notch economies and the rest are useless drains on resources. Thats 90,000 wallers and 400,000 lighter units.

Agreed, at least within one order of magnitude.

They are very much under armed, and until the 1850’s they did not need much because nobody is crazy enough to fight them but post 1850 there are a number of nations with the military means to not win a war but make a League victory VERY expensive for the League.

Disputed, see previous post.

Every member system will demand SLN protection and there are hundreds of systems with the financial, industrial and political pull to get significant SLN presence or build sizeable forces of their own. I am leaning more towards building their own navies so as not to depend on the League.

Agreed, but in the post-war situation does not require wallers to protect one's system. You only need the missiles that those ships would fire and a proper C&C center.

Asking Canada if its worth investing more into national defence is one thing, asking Ukraine post war with Russia if they want to invest in National defence might give you a significantly different response.

True, but ask the question again about Estonia, a NATO member. Or Finland, that is joining NATO, and has a robust military.

Only one problem with that, the SLN is months away from the GA’s industrial heart but the GA is days or a couple of weeks from the most heavily industrialized systems of the League AND a few hours/days from reinforcing home territory as well.

That's why I said "equally protected on average." As I said before, it's poor comfort for those that did get attacked, but on average the League is safe. And as the League is safe, the League can afford to send emergency help to the systems that were attacked.

The time factors you present are not necessarily the case. It was the case during the war because the RMN effectively seized the wormholes early. If it had occurred to them to do so, the SLN could have done the same earlier, but with huge political downsides (they weren't officially at war). And they couldn't hope to hold against a local attack any warp bridge that the GA decided to go after, given the technological imbalance, but this is a situation that will not likely repeat either.

Problem is that the GA AND the SLN are the threat here. No amount of changes will wipe the memory of the SLN attacking member systems and threatening league citizens with mass death for exercising their rights.

That is very true, but tangential to the discussion we've been having. Any system that fears the SLN will fear them whether they're part of the SL or not. So they might as well stop funding that force that could come threaten them. They will secede and they will build their own local forces, at least to the level to make their system unattractive to attackers.

In the books after Operation Icarus the MA member nations demanded wallers for protection not a stronger deterrent. How many systems were willing to part with their defensive picket in order to reinforce 8th Fleet? At the start of the 2nd war how many member systems were willing to send their wallers to 8th Fleet to reinforce it by weakening their home fleets.

Which was shown to be ill-advised. Dispersing wallers led to defeat in detail, made worse by having the experienced military commanders be subject to local inexperienced politicians' orders.

For the second war, there were only three polities with wallers worth sending in the first place: the Andermani, Manticore and Grayson. None of the other allies had a ship worth sending.

Grayson kept a 40-60 SD(P) home fleet for a good chunk of the 2nd war I highly doubt core and shell systems that can build large fleets of their own.

They could if they put their minds to and are given the time.

They will remember that they went from being citizens of the most powerful nation in human history by a wide margin to crapping their pants expecting the big bad RMN to sail into their system and destroy their industry and eat their children and then to make things worse they saw the SLN attack League member systems and threaten citizens with mass murder. Having the right to secede from the League means nothing if you also give the League central government the only weapons to keep member systems from seceding.

I still question how much that affects the average citizen on the street. Do they care that their military is the most powerful? Or do they care that the economy is going well and they have a good quality of life? What will they care more, that the military that was supposed to defend them turned out to be a paper tiger, but in its revelation it also took down the corruption at the highest level and effectively improved representation?

No, really, I have to ask how much the SLN's vaunted prowess as part of the SL's identity. Because if it was part of their identity, then you're right and this would be a blow to discover that it wasn't. But I don't have reason to believe it was, especially given how small the SLN actually was compared to the overall population, meaning so few people from each world could be part of it, and that it had done jack sh*t for the past 300 years. The upper cadres of the SLN BF appeared to have been also full of cronyism, meaning full of well-connected families and hangers-on, not a good sample of the population.

And that is why realistically the GA has no option but to get closer, invest in industry and invest in former protectorates and verge systems vacated by the League and that have a stable enough government. Thats also why the neutral systems as well as some League members and the Andermani and Erewhon and Maya Autonomous Regional Sector will also pursue closer ties to the GA if not outright membership in the GA. They all know that the only thing standing between them and the League is the GA.

There's the third path of neutrality. The SLN only attacked the systems that were friendly with the GA, so one might infer that if they had remained neutral, they'd have been bypassed (ok, that's not exactly true, q.v. Cachalot, but politicians can easily muddy these waters). And particularly, there's one large-ish group of systems blazing this path right now.

It's too bad that the Renaissance Factor is doing it for ulterior motives.

League members will demand and likely get picket based on their importance.

Yes, as it should be. Cold calculus, but correct nonetheless.

At least it's better than getting pickets based on whose palms were greased the most.

Sigs wrote:Except with the increased lethality of defensive forces there will be a proportional increase of the offensive forces in their ability to deal with defences. Or it gets to a point where all sides invest heavily in fixed fortifications and make offensive weapons obsolete where even a small neutral system can make itself too tough of a nut to crack to even attempt. At which point only BC's, CA's and CL's remain because there won't be a point to build SD(P)'s if

And what's wrong with that?

Unless that system turns out to be a den of piracy and slavery that needs to be dealt with by the civilised Galaxy, let them be strong. But brute force still applies and as we've seen with Galton, the GA can fire 2 million missiles from outside of the hyperlimit and eventually wear such a system down.

And it still leaves the problem that civilians within the League member systems will still demand warships to be in their systems whether they are needed or not and if the SLN can't oblige then they won't depend on the SLN and go their own way.

Unless the SL can convince them that it's a waste of money to put wallers in those systems, because the missile defence suffices.

Or they simply don't do it at all, so the system has the option of paying for the local defence and have the theoretical support of the SLN, or paying for the local defence and not have the theoretical support of the SLN. Which one would you choose, zero or potentially non-zero?

Post war they are building the League politically, diplomatically and militarily from the ground up, that's when they will be demanding this be included in the Leagues constitution.

Not going to happen. You don't codify military matters into your Constitution and expect that to survive the test of time. Imagine if the constitutions of the 18th century Earth had codified that every male (white, of course) citizen shall be issued a musket to aid in the defence of their countries; what good would that do against an F35?

And the politicians writing the Constitution also know it's a deal-breaker.

Relax wrote:Thanks for the reply, finally saw it. Somehow I missed it.

NITS: One reason our numbers are so much different:

1) We are told in MoH Scientist class ships have ~6500 upwards to 7000 compared to RMN SD's with 5000-->5500.

2) BC's Indafatiguable, I thought we were told they had 2200-->2500?

I used the numbers from honorverse.fandom.com and I understated the numbers so that means that their deployable manpower is even larger.

3) I think the Broadsword numbers are a bit high and I used the numbers out Honor of the Queen and Star Knight class. Your broadsword numbers which I have no idea where you got, though an old memory does think there were comparisons between braodsword/star knight but I cannot place where exactly? SVW maybe? Or was it from the tactical simulator stuff I never bought? Maybe SLN CA's are more manpower heavy? I did use the numbers from OBS/HoTQ for the lighter ships and you could be right that SLN ships have 100 more people per ship than Manticore. This aspect of manning would drastically decrease the numbers quite a bit.

The numbers you used and the numbers I used were not so far apart to change much in the way of potential forces. It might a few hundred cruisers and destroyers to the total if I over estimated but its not going to get the numbers from 5,000 CA's, CL's and DDs to 34,000 CA's, CL's and DD's.

Using your ship numbers and values brings us to a deployable force of over 40,000,000 men and women which is representing ~26% of the SLN total. Either the SLN is more efficient than the RMN and has less bloat in their support infrastructure or they don't have the 34,000 cruisers and destroyers.

Fox2! wrote:
The Gendarmerie seem to have several roles, some mentioned above:
-Federal Law Enforcement, including smuggling, drug running, anti-slavery
-Headbreaking for OFS, client states, and the odd interstellar
-Agents provocuteur for OFS (and the MA, at need and one remove)
-Intelligence gathering in support of the above

The second and third roles should disappear. Most of those involved in these roles should be discharged, many tried for crimes, some shot or hanged.

What I meant is that the Gendarmerie is a federal force so they were not restricted to the protectorates and verge. So there is potentially several million Gendarmerie officers as Law Enforcement in the League that belong to the same organization but different side as those who commit war crimes in the verge and protectorates.

Sigs wrote:What I meant is that the Gendarmerie is a federal force so they were not restricted to the protectorates and verge. So there is potentially several million Gendarmerie officers as Law Enforcement in the League that belong to the same organization but different side as those who commit war crimes in the verge and protectorates.

Why are we discussing the Gendarmerie? They're not part of the SLN and couldn't be conscripted to work in the SLN because it's not their skill set.

Sigs wrote:

Fox2! wrote:
The Gendarmerie seem to have several roles, some mentioned above:
-Federal Law Enforcement, including smuggling, drug running, anti-slavery
-Headbreaking for OFS, client states, and the odd interstellar
-Agents provocuteur for OFS (and the MA, at need and one remove)
-Intelligence gathering in support of the above

The second and third roles should disappear. Most of those involved in these roles should be discharged, many tried for crimes, some shot or hanged.

What I meant is that the Gendarmerie is a federal force so they were not restricted to the protectorates and verge. So there is potentially several million Gendarmerie officers as Law Enforcement in the League that belong to the same organization but different side as those who commit war crimes in the verge and protectorates.

Agreed, as we see with the Gendarmerie members of the Ghost Hunters, who come out of Law Enforcement and Intelligence, not leg breakers. And there are Gendarmerie on Hypatia in LE and Intelligence roles, at least until the results of the plebiscite are implemented, and they are asked to either transfer to the Local LE organization, or to remove themselves from the system.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:So your worry is that they're going to go rogue and resort to warlordism?

No my worry is that ads a member of the League I would have absolutely no protection if I live outside of the 10-20 systems that have wallers. Being able to defend your territory is a fundamental requirement from all members.

Those don't need Honor's Surrender Demands to be declared as pirates. They are pirates and warlords. And just where are they going to refit a superdreadnought after their actions?

Either I am not explaining myself or you are misunderstanding me. The League is screwed if they attacked a nation with 80 SD’s and a really good fleet train and stockpile of missiles. They are screwed because the SLN is so powerful that the fleet in question has no chance and if they decide to make the League pay they have their pick at 1,700 League member systems out of 1,750, you are not a real nation if you can only defend 2% of your territory and the people that live in the other 98% of League territory might have a thing or two to say about being left out to dry.

The League is too strong for a nation with 80 wallers to have any hope of surviving but knowing that they are losing either way the League is too weak to defend against 80 wallers who are send on a suicide mission to make the League pay for their victory.

You still try to extract the best terms possible. If you don't kill too many of them, they might be more merciful. If not for your population, for your spacers. Those 300 SDs would have a crew of 1.5 million people. If you know you're going to lose anyway and you start the reception by killing half a million of the opposing side, what do you expect is going to happen?

So surrender? With the SLN’s history of treating protectorates really well I imagine that would be the first option of everyone.

I completely understand the "threat of hanging by morning." Which is why there must always be a path to less violence. The doctrine of the SLN BF was to come with such an overwhelming force that the other side would have no illusions about being able to win. They should then surrender without firing a shot.

Except when they do it to that one nation that decides to make them pay. Counting on everyone to behave rationally doesn’t always work and having a history of making life terrible for protectorates doesn’t make the don’t fight option being all that appealing.

While true, that's a complete stupidity on the part of whoever gave the order. Why in the Galaxy would they do that? Would they want to be remembered as worse than all the Marvel Cinematic Universe villains combined?

This is some backwards Russia thinking. We can attack you and your people as much as we want and destroy your homes and infrastructure and industry but the second you attack OUR territory in retaliation you are the villain in the story. Manticore deciding not to fight in the Manticore system but to attack and wreak the Leagues industry doesn’t make them villains, they aren’t attacking random nations. If Iraq could have retaliated against the US in 2003 they had every right to, they would be the villain of the story if they retaliated against Zimbabwe because the US attacked them but attacking legitimate targets in the US doesn’t make them villains.

And don't forget "never give an order you know won't be obeyed." The Parthian Shot was such an order, because at least one of the SLN task force commanders refused to implement it. Discipline in the RMN and RHN would be such that this order would not be obeyed anywhere. Demolishing systems that barely even knew a condition of war existed is not something the crews would abide by.

Why would the RMN need to kill civilians? The systems are defended by cruisers and destroyers if at all, the SLN doesn’t have anywhere near enough SD’s to reinforce systems under attack.

As long as they give the people in the system adequate Tim to evacuate they are free and clear if the system chooses not to evacuate that’s on them and as long as you don’t attack within a weeks travel of a SLN base with significant waller presence you’d be good

Correct, but that second situation is the only valid one. Why would the 80 SDs be wasting their time in middle-tier systems that aren't worth a squadron of the wall or four squadrons of battlecruisers in the first place? If they went after 20 systems 4 times, that's 80 systems, or 4% of the pre-war League, probably representing less than 1% of the League industrial output and population.

Because the League doesn’t have adequate forces to provide protection for them. Its not a question of not being worth as much as a question of not having anywhere near the ships to provide defences. If we make a conservative assumption that the 1750 League members equal to about 300 times the economy and industry of 1905 SKM then we can safely say that the SLN is absolutely pathetic and not a real force. If we assume that they have 300 times the economy and industry of the SKM in 1905 then they could field a force of 90,000 SD’s without breaking a sweat and yet they only field a force that is less than 2.5% of that number.

The only saving grace for the SLN is that nobody else had the means to challenge them and the League hasn’t attacked nations with wallers.

The point I've been trying to make is that attacking systems that the SLN didn't deem worth defending in the first place is squandering your resources. That only gets the SL population anger at you, it won't destroy their ability to make war. It's not rational.

It’s not attacking systems the League did not deem worth defending, its attacking systems that are left undefended by virtue of a fatal flaw in SLN doctrine. Their doctrine is if we want to attack someone we will attack them and they will kindly wait in their home system to die, if they have wallers and want some revenge the League is screwed because they didn’t invest enough into the military because so much of the money and resources were spend on corruption and the lack of legitimate threat. Either 99.5% of the League member systems are not worth defending or the League doesn’t have enough ships to offer adequate protection to 99.5% of their systems. They either have 25 systems wroth defending and 1725 not worth defending or they have 1725 systems worth defending but no means to do so.

They will go on an arms race, I never disputed that. What I am disputing is the need to have 18000 ships of the wall to cover 1500 systems. They don't need 18000 ships to go to war with any one component of the GA, particularly if they can convince the other components to turn against that component.

Except what if they can’t convince any other component to not get involved? Its all nice and fancy making plans to fight a fraction of the enemy alliance but pulling it off is a whole different thing. Maybe in 300 to 500 years sure, but with prolong most of the movers and shakers would be still alive, hell in 200 year many of the movers and shakers might still be alive and so would large % of the population. Its much harder to convince them to abandon allies when they remember that the League is kinda pissed off at the whole lot of them.


Making your strategy on the assumption that you have to fight only one portion of the enemy is a terrible idea.

According to what we know of the HV economics, no polity other than the SL could field tens of thousands of capital ships, and that's only if the Constitution had been amended to allow for direct funding. Grayson was struggling to maintain 120 ships of the wall, and by the end of UH Beth is clear that Haven can't maintain their ~800 for too long either. I don't particularly agree with this, but I didn't make the rules.

Haven is probably operating on 10-15% of their max capacity, Grayson is also not operating on maximum capacity either and neither is the vast majority of the SEM and even Manticore after OB. If the GA doesn’t make a plan to grow their economies then they deserve to be conquered by the League. Opening Manticore, Andermani and the thousands of verge and protectorates as markets for Havens goods will promote massive growth. The economy and industry of 1905 Haven is different than that of 1920 Haven and it will be different from that of 1965 Haven. Same goes for the rest of the GA and former protectorates and verge.

See above why I think that suicide-by-cop is not a good idea.

Just because its not a good idea doesn’t mean its not gonna happen.

You didn't address my math.

There's no system in the League that 374 battleships could wreck, combined or in dispersed form, that would even come close to one Haven, even in Legislaturalist times. I'm arguing that even 130 systems that they could attack and wreck before falling apart would equal one Haven.

Meanwhile, you've made the situation worse for those left at home.

What math? You mean to tell me that the League is a super power put only has 20-40 systems that are heavily industrialized while the other 1700 are useless? That means the GA doesn’t have much effort to equal the Leagues economy. Manticore, Grayson Haven, Beowulf, Hypatia, Andermani, Erewhon… That right there is 20% of the Leagues industry. Removing the policies that kept the Republic in poverty will quickly bring the Republic to an economic and industrial power in a decade or two while Manticore and their empire will also grow and leave the Eague in the dust.

In your view apparently the League is only 40 systems and the other 1,700 systems are worth absolutely nothing economically or militarily.

That leaves the systems that aren't worth attacking in the first place and the middle-tier ones.

So are you saying 99.5 % of the League member systems are NOT worth defending and are NOT worth attacking? That 99% of the industry comes from .5% of the systems? Do you have a source that 99.5% of the Leagues systems are not worth protecting? Do you have a source that stated 99.5% of the Leagues member systems are worthless in terms of industry and economy?

That's not nearly comparable. You'd need to talk about a war between Trinidad and Tobago and the US to get even close to the difference in size, and you'd still be a magnitude off.

Can you elaborate on this a bit?

This is sounding like the rationale that North Korea adopts today. They can't hope to win the war in the long run, but they can make it costly enough for the attacker to remain un-attacked. The problem with that logic is that the DPRK's premise is built upon keeping the Kim family in power, not the welfare of the people.

And? If he is in danger of being taken out do you think he will hesitate to start a war and kill millions out of spite? If it happens here why not 2,000 years from now?

Otherwise, the best course of action would be to obtain the most favourable terms in losing the war, so you can hope to rebuild later and your population won't suffer. If the other side decides to keep occupying, then you'll need support from the rest of humanity to build your Fifth Column and insurgency, to overthrow the occupiers (we saw that happening in Madras).

Exactly how willing was Hitler when Germany started losing the war? You are talking like everyone always looks at the best for their people rather than doing tings for selfish reasons.

If instead you become the most reviled system in history, you can forget that. It is said that the Romans salted the earth after defeating Carthage in the third and final Punic War, so nothing would grow there. This would be worse.

I disagree with that being done in the first place. It's ill-advised and counter-productive: it wrecks little more than symbolic, but has huge negative, long-term consequences. And that's assuming the crews execute it in the first place.

Again 99.5% of th systems in the League are nothing but symbolic?

IYes, you are. None of those hundreds of systems they could attack have sufficient military targets to be worth more than a footnote. The only thing they can attack in those lightly-defended systems are civilian infrastructure.

They don’t have to have military targets, they have to have spacebar industry. And you can’t prove that the League has 99.5% of its members worth.nothing.

Destroying spaceborne civilian infrastructure is an atrocity. It exists for a reason, to support the economy of that place. If you destroy the spaceborne food-producing greenhouses, what are they going to eat? If you destroy the solar collectors, how are they going to power their systems? If you destroy the space habitats, where are they going to live? At best, you could destroy the non-food-producing industry but that would still plunge the system into a deep recession and that could go one of two ways: people die nonetheless, or the League offers federal help and all you did was piss people off with no upside.

What did the RMN destroy in Cutworm? What did the RHN destroy in Zanzibar and Alison in the second war? Only military industrial targets or everything but the habitats?

And again: the crews would not execute such an atrocity, if it is not a military target.

They will ABSOLUTELY execute those orders. They executed them in Basilisk, Alizon, Zanzibar, Lovat and countless other battles. The Manticore alliance did not only target shipyards and munitions manufacturing, they targeted civilian industry as well. Oysterbay wasn’t an atrocity because it targeted civilian infrastructure, it was an atrocity because it targeted civilian industrial centres without giving a chance to the civilians to evacuated.

I argue that is not a strategy of desperation. It's not even a strategy. It's collective suicide pact.

And no nation in the human history has ever fought to the bitter end even if they had other choices

And even if they did and even if a portion of the League was left wrecked, I'm arguing that is not going to be, in the worst case scenario, more than 10% of the League's population and industrial capabilities. It will rebound economically in due time.

I HAVE NEVER SUGGESTED SLAUGHTERING CIVILIANS. You can attack civilian infrastructure and industry as long as you’ve given the civilians an adequate time to leave the target. The allies bombed civilian infrastructure and industry in Germany and Italy during World War 2, civilian infrastructure and industry doesn’t get a pass…