Honor awakened a sleeping GIANT

cthia wrote:I do recall it being explained to Honor that the orbital farms were not touched. Which may have been a tactical error made by the MA, as crucial as the Japanese ignoring the oil fields at Pearl.

No doubt it would have been a human act of kindess, but the MA does not remind me of o a human, or kind, entity. In restropect, I seem to slightly recall some sort of snafu in their tactical ability to hit Grayson at the time?

The Malign is represented as having put considerable thought into avoiding an Eridani Edict violation at either Grayson or Manticore during Oyster Bay. What they were hoping to accomplish was purely military, crippling the allies so Haven could defeat them; although with the change in government at Haven, that expectation was absurd. In any case that expectation was destroyed by the revelations brought back by Anton Zilwicki, Victor Cachet and Herlander Simões.

cthia wrote:Yeah, I can see where stalling could be used as a tactic. In fact, IINM, stalling was used in the Battle of Hypatia to allow the RMN to get into position?

At any rate, I was shocked that the SL never considered what the MA did to Grayson to be an EE violation.

I assume you mean Mesan Alignment by "MA", not Manticoran Alliance. Why would the SL consider it an EE violation when it was even less than was done to Manticore? Oyster Bay, in the Yeltsin system, didn't touch anything in Grayson's orbit -- so all those orbital farms, and habitats, were just fine, and of course no debris raining down on a habitable planet. It "only" blew away the industrial and shipyard complex out at Blackbird (and so any debris would be bombarding an uninhabited airless moon, or a gas giant; so no groundside death toll either)

FYI - this is relayed to Honor by Admiral Yanakov in Ch 36 of MoH



The only people who did commit an EE violation against Grayson was the Masadan Navy; when they'd "nuked planetary targets in the last war". (And Sword Simonds had orders which authorized him to go as far as more EE violations during HotQ -- when he was directed to, if necessary, perform "demonstration nuclear strikes on their less important cities")

And RFC said that the reason the SL didn't invoke the Edict against Masada is that by the time they had intelligence about the violation Manticore had already seized the planet and replaced the offending government -- so there was nothing left for the SLN to really do.

tlb wrote:The Malign is represented as having put considerable thought into avoiding an Eridani Edict violation at either Grayson or Manticore during Oyster Bay. What they were hoping to accomplish was purely military, crippling the allies so Haven could defeat them; although with the change in government at Haven, that expectation was absurd. In any case that expectation was destroyed by the revelations brought back by Anton Zilwicki, Victor Cachet and Herlander Simões.

And being clear that the MAlign didn't do that because they had good intentions. I'm sure they could've kept the SL from confirming that a violation had happened and thus from siding with the Alliance, but they'd have had to spend considerable political capital and capital capital to achieve this. Simpler to just not commit it.

Jonathan_S wrote:

cthia wrote:Yeah, I can see where stalling could be used as a tactic. In fact, IINM, stalling was used in the Battle of Hypatia to allow the RMN to get into position?

At any rate, I was shocked that the SL never considered what the MA did to Grayson to be an EE violation.

I assume you mean Mesan Alignment by "MA", not Manticoran Alliance. Why would the SL consider it an EE violation when it was even less than was done to Manticore? Oyster Bay, in the Yeltsin system, didn't touch anything in Grayson's orbit -- so all those orbital farms, and habitats, were just fine, and of course no debris raining down on a habitable planet. It "only" blew away the industrial and shipyard complex out at Blackbird (and so any debris would be bombarding an uninhabited airless moon, or a gas giant; so no groundside death toll either)

FYI - this is relayed to Honor by Admiral Yanakov in Ch 36 of MoH



The only people who did commit an EE violation against Grayson was the Masadan Navy; when they'd "nuked planetary targets in the last war". (And Sword Simonds had orders which authorized him to go as far as more EE violations during HotQ -- when he was directed to, if necessary, perform "demonstration nuclear strikes on their less important cities")

And RFC said that the reason the SL didn't invoke the Edict against Masada is that by the time they had intelligence about the violation Manticore had already seized the planet and replaced the offending government -- so there was nothing left for the SLN to really do.

Yeah, I mentioned recalling the conversation where it was explained to Honor that the farms were omitted in the attack in the very first post at the top of the page. And tlb corrected me about the MA's intention. My humble thanks to both of you. ::doffs hat::

Oh yeah, MA for Mesan Alignment. I never adopted MA for Manticoran Alliance.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

tlb wrote:The Malign is represented as having put considerable thought into avoiding an Eridani Edict violation at either Grayson or Manticore during Oyster Bay. What they were hoping to accomplish was purely military, crippling the allies so Haven could defeat them; although with the change in government at Haven, that expectation was absurd. In any case that expectation was destroyed by the revelations brought back by Anton Zilwicki, Victor Cachet and Herlander Simões.

And being clear that the MAlign didn't do that because they had good intentions. I'm sure they could've kept the SL from confirming that a violation had happened and thus from siding with the Alliance, but they'd have had to spend considerable political capital and capital capital to achieve this. Simpler to just not commit it.

Interesting. On the other hand, it may have -- or should have -- angered the SL, and it would have been easy to make it appear to the SL that it had to be Haven. Because only a Neobarb Navy would commit such an act.

Or it could have turned out to be a given to the SL because the two neobarbs were involved in an ongoing war, and Haven must have developed some new tech.

cthia wrote:Interesting. On the other hand, it may have -- or should have -- angered the SL, and it would have been easy to make it appear to the SL that it had to be Haven. Because only a Neobarb Navy would commit such an act.

Now that's interesting. If the plan had been to blame Haven, then committing an atrocity to cause the SL to enter the war and hammer on Haven would have been a good start. Given that having SL fight Haven was the original plan all along, it was probably very tempting.

But I don't think they had the time to prepare for that. Manticore was clearly winning. First, it would be hard to justify not siding with Manticore after this, which means de-escalating all the tensions that they had been building up for the last couple of years. Second, the SL would have to send direct observers to confirm what had happened, which would reveal inconsistencies. Notwithstanding the SLN's incompetence and corruption, there's still a large risk that they actually see things through, particularly if they are having direct chats with the Manticore government. Third, timeline: Oyster Bay's objective was to have Haven move in and finish the war, but controlling when this would happen was not possible. The MAlign may control the SLN's movement and make it just too slow, but without knowing when the RHN would actually deliver the finishing blow, it limits their shenanigans. And whatever they do, the communication loop with Sol is just 2 weeks of round-trip, while Haven requires 2 months if Trevor's Star is not an option, meaning that SL observers can go to Manticore and come back to Sol with their report before Haven even found out that something had happened.

Oyster Bay was a rushed job (not as rushed as Fabius and the end of Houdini), so I don't think they could figure out a way to do it.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Interesting. On the other hand, it may have -- or should have -- angered the SL, and it would have been easy to make it appear to the SL that it had to be Haven. Because only a Neobarb Navy would commit such an act.

Now that's interesting. If the plan had been to blame Haven, then committing an atrocity to cause the SL to enter the war and hammer on Haven would have been a good start. Given that having SL fight Haven was the original plan all along, it was probably very tempting.

But I don't think they had the time to prepare for that. Manticore was clearly winning. First, it would be hard to justify not siding with Manticore after this, which means de-escalating all the tensions that they had been building up for the last couple of years. Second, the SL would have to send direct observers to confirm what had happened, which would reveal inconsistencies. Notwithstanding the SLN's incompetence and corruption, there's still a large risk that they actually see things through, particularly if they are having direct chats with the Manticore government. Third, timeline: Oyster Bay's objective was to have Haven move in and finish the war, but controlling when this would happen was not possible. The MAlign may control the SLN's movement and make it just too slow, but without knowing when the RHN would actually deliver the finishing blow, it limits their shenanigans. And whatever they do, the communication loop with Sol is just 2 weeks of round-trip, while Haven requires 2 months if Trevor's Star is not an option, meaning that SL observers can go to Manticore and come back to Sol with their report before Haven even found out that something had happened.

Oyster Bay was a rushed job (not as rushed as Fabius and the end of Houdini), so I don't think they could figure out a way to do it.

I thought that is exactly what would happen. I think the wild card is how Manticore would react, because they most certainly knew that it was NOT Haven.

So, the question becomes whether the Queen would intercede for Haven, or go ahead and allow the SL to weaken them, and or buy time for the RMN. IOW, it may have led to an Alliance between Haven and Manticore anyway.

At any rate, the SL was never shown to actually care about anyone violating the Edict, as long as it wasn't in their neck of the woods or committed against their own interests. As far as I could tell.

It seems like there should have been some department of the SLN which investigates even close to EE violations, to be certain. What was the procedure? Did a polity have to apply for an EEV investigation?

cthia wrote:Interesting. On the other hand, it may have -- or should have -- angered the SL, and it would have been easy to make it appear to the SL that it had to be Haven. Because only a Neobarb Navy would commit such an act.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Now that's interesting. If the plan had been to blame Haven, then committing an atrocity to cause the SL to enter the war and hammer on Haven would have been a good start. Given that having SL fight Haven was the original plan all along, it was probably very tempting.

But I don't think they had the time to prepare for that. Manticore was clearly winning. First, it would be hard to justify not siding with Manticore after this, which means de-escalating all the tensions that they had been building up for the last couple of years. Second, the SL would have to send direct observers to confirm what had happened, which would reveal inconsistencies. Notwithstanding the SLN's incompetence and corruption, there's still a large risk that they actually see things through, particularly if they are having direct chats with the Manticore government. Third, timeline: Oyster Bay's objective was to have Haven move in and finish the war, but controlling when this would happen was not possible. The MAlign may control the SLN's movement and make it just too slow, but without knowing when the RHN would actually deliver the finishing blow, it limits their shenanigans. And whatever they do, the communication loop with Sol is just 2 weeks of round-trip, while Haven requires 2 months if Trevor's Star is not an option, meaning that SL observers can go to Manticore and come back to Sol with their report before Haven even found out that something had happened.

Oyster Bay was a rushed job (not as rushed as Fabius and the end of Houdini), so I don't think they could figure out a way to do it.

cthia wrote:I thought that is exactly what would happen. I think the wild card is how Manticore would react, because they most certainly knew that it was NOT Haven.

So, the question becomes whether the Queen would intercede for Haven, or go ahead and allow the SL to weaken them, and or buy time for the RMN. IOW, it may have led to an Alliance between Haven and Manticore anyway.

At any rate, the SL was never shown to actually care about anyone violating the Edict, as long as it wasn't in their neck of the woods or committed against their own interests. As far as I could tell.

It seems like there should have been some department of the SLN which investigates even close to EE violations, to be certain. What was the procedure? Did a polity have to apply for an EEV investigation?

You two are putting a lot of thought into something that did not happen and was not in the Malign's interest to make happen.

The Malign wanted Haven and the Solarian League to fight each other, because that is what their plan said should happen. However their plan was out of date, because Manticore had already developed world beating technology in the Apollo missile system. Oyster Bay was a panic reaction to both Apollo and the success in the Talbot Quandrant. It actually might be better for that plan if the Solarian League had conquered Manticore, because the SLN would be slower in implementing that technology which the Malign dominated corporations would be gobbling up.

Even though we never see the Solarian League responding to an Eridani Edict violation prior to their navy creating one, that does not mean that procedures where not in place. It only means that the author had other things in mind.

cthia wrote:At any rate, the SL was never shown to actually care about anyone violating the Edict, as long as it wasn't in their neck of the woods or committed against their own interests. As far as I could tell.

It seems like there should have been some department of the SLN which investigates even close to EE violations, to be certain. What was the procedure? Did a polity have to apply for an EEV investigation?

I certainly hope there weren't enough violations or even accusations of violations that it was worth a full-time team! The procedure was probably simply to publish the all over the news and then have any ambassadors (possibly in exile) contact the SL government to prod.

The other problem with getting the SLN to fight Haven is that Haven was the second largest navy in the Galaxy and had been for centuries. Unlike the upstart neobarbs from Manticore (a single system), Haven was known and was a multi-system polity. The SLN would not rush to send 70 SDs to crush any Haven system, like Crandall did at Spindle. They'd know, however incompetent they were, that Haven had hundreds of SDs and would fight back.

All this means that the SLN would take the time to begin reactivating the reserve before taking an EE enforcement action against Nouveau Paris. And the longer this takes, the longer the probability that the inconsistencies with Oyster Bay would become evident.

tlb wrote:The Malign wanted Haven and the Solarian League to fight each other, because that is what their plan said should happen. However their plan was out of date, because Manticore had already developed world beating technology in the Apollo missile system. Oyster Bay was a panic reaction to both Apollo and the success in the Talbot Quandrant. It actually might be better for that plan if the Solarian League had conquered Manticore, because the SLN would be slower in implementing that technology which the Malign dominated corporations would be gobbling up.

Right, I was just debating whether they may have tried, simply because the plan had said this was the plan. I'm sure some analyst did propose it. But I agree it wouldn't have been ideal, so it was probably tossed out.