Insanity: Screening elements in the HV

penny wrote:

tlb wrote:There is what I consider a very strong reason why the Renaissance Factor must never get involved in any fighting: they are protecting a secret wormhole that leads to Darius (or did I remember that incorrectly). If the GA were to gain control of it then all travel would have to be by hyperspace, and so much slower. Plus it might lead to the capture of ships from Darius with navigation data that indicates where the planet is.

I do not see any reason to attack the Solarian League, before any attack on the members of the Grand Alliance; the Solarian League is nothing of military importance now.

How does that work? The mission statement of the RFN was to provide shelter for any entity wishing to part with the League. How can a navy protect if it is not willing to fight???

It was supposed to offer protection to systems that withdrew from the League during that entities post-war breakup.

To that end it was expected to be fighting only defensively against pirates and warlords. Not really engaging the SLN itself (that navy expected to have been largely destroyed in mutual annihilations with the PRN)

Given that the SLN survived far more intact than expected, and the reformed constitution reaffirms systems right to leave peacefully, the RF would both be foolish to fight them and also has no reason to. Plus the (future) RF members deliberately kept most of their navies small before it publicly declared itself, so it'll need time to build a modern fleet. And even the somewhat diminished League massively outweighs the RF in terms of industrial potential -- and will also be building a modern fleet. So by the time the RF has a major modern fleet the League likely will too.
But also, if the new League constitution holds then the SLN wouldn't be starting any fights over systems withdrawing (and then potentially joining the RF) - and the RF would be foolish to show their hand by turning conquistador and attacking League systems.

So what would trigger this war you've assumed will occur?

penny wrote:

tlb wrote:There is what I consider a very strong reason why the Renaissance Factor must never get involved in any fighting: they are protecting a secret wormhole that leads to Darius (or did I remember that incorrectly). If the GA were to gain control of it then all travel would have to be by hyperspace, and so much slower. Plus it might lead to the capture of ships from Darius with navigation data that indicates where the planet is.

I do not see any reason to attack the Solarian League, before any attack on the members of the Grand Alliance; the Solarian League is nothing of military importance now.

How does that work? The mission statement of the RFN was to provide shelter for any entity wishing to part with the League. How can a navy protect if it is not willing to fight???

Jonathan_S wrote:It was supposed to offer protection to systems that withdrew from the League during that entities post-war breakup.

To that end it was expected to be fighting only defensively against pirates and warlords. Not really engaging the SLN itself (that navy expected to have been largely destroyed in mutual annihilations with the PRN)

Given that the SLN survived far more intact than expected, and the reformed constitution reaffirms systems right to leave peacefully, the RF would both be foolish to fight them and also has no reason to. Plus the (future) RF members deliberately kept most of their navies small before it publicly declared itself, so it'll need time to build a modern fleet. And even the somewhat diminished League massively outweighs the RF in terms of industrial potential -- and will also be building a modern fleet. So by the time the RF has a major modern fleet the League likely will too.
But also, if the new League constitution holds then the SLN wouldn't be starting any fights over systems withdrawing (and then potentially joining the RF) - and the RF would be foolish to show their hand by turning conquistador and attacking League systems.

So what would trigger this war you've assumed will occur?

Yeah, previously my notion was driven partly by the RF's plans and what we knew about the SL(N) before Honor took them down a peg. But I also factor in what I think will happen with sleeping RF entities that may cause problems. For instance, the Harrington line is allegedly a lost Alpha line. For sake of argument, let's take that at face value. If the MA had approached the Harrington line about "joining" the MA, I think the Harrington line would have told them to pound sand. YMMV.

The Harrington line would certainly tell them to pound sand now.

But what about the SL systems that are also supposedly sleeping Mesan Alignment cells? Will the MA accept those entities peaceful dissention from their ranks? Will the citizens of such entities go along for the ride? There will be political unrest. How will that be handled? If these governments seek help from outside entities (SL, GA) then the entities themselves might cause political problems. (Akin to Russia/Ukraine and the US, and China/Taiwan and the US. And now that I think about it SL/Beowulf and Manticore.) What will happen and what will these disagreements lead to? Remember the problems Beowulf had trying to secede? Will the RF accept it if the majority of the populations of the entities that they had earmarked as belonging to the RF/MA reject them? Will the MA accept a final vote of these entities to remain as they are? Political unrest and political upheaval has a tendency to invite and incite riots and wars. And drag others into those wars.

In closing, I understand tlb's notion. And I wholeheartedly agree. But under the skin, I always foresaw problems with the RF counting on entities that have been sleeping for centuries. Just like families and people. Am I missing something?

Oh! I forgot to include the most important point which was to be the closing argument of my post above.

If the RFN is suppose to be protecting the Wormhole, and the Ghosthunters of the SL is supposed to be looking for them, what will happen if the SL approaches that WH? The RFN is supposed to just lay out a welcome mat? Again, how can they protect anything if they won't fight? And if they do fight, how can they expect to win against the SL without the MAN's help?

penny wrote:Oh! I forgot to include the most important point which was to be the closing argument of my post above.

If the RFN is suppose to be protecting the Wormhole, and the Ghosthunters of the SL is supposed to be looking for them, what will happen if the SL approaches that WH? The RFN is supposed to just lay out a welcome mat? Again, how can they protect anything if they won't fight? And if they do fight, how can they expect to win against the SL without the MAN's help?

"SL" here is irrelevant: it can be any power, or just about anyone that can't be paid off and made quietly disappear.

The Mannerheim SDF and now RFN are protecting an investment. If someone turns up in Felix and discovers the wormhole - unlikely without a survey, but possible - the Mannerheim forces claim they know about it and are trying to acquire the rights to the system. Which they are, it's all true. Meanwhile, their warships are protecting the wormhole and will deny passage to anyone's survey ships.

Someone may want to provoke the RF. The question though is why anyone that matters would? The SL doesn't gain much by getting one more wormhole, and neither does the GA. For them, the public image is more important than yet one more WH whose destinations are unknown and will not provide economic benefit for decades. Let Mannerheim map the transit vectors, establish corners and then welcome everyone (for a fee).

A rogue ship from one of the above may want to force passage. But by definition it is rogue and disavowed, so the RFN would be in its rights to shoot it down. Maybe... because the system belongs to someone else.

In fact, the existence of the wormhole is a good excuse for an RFN build up. They would be of Solarian-quality ships, with a few inventions here and there, but mostly just SLN surplus. The RF can't afford to tip that they have a secret and massive research base in operation for decades.

If someone does give the RFN the boot in Felix, the MAN may want to take over. But it may also just not do it. So long as they control the Darius terminus, no one is arriving in Darius and telling. The worst that can happen is that neither side can make use of the wormhole.

The RF does't have to go out of its way to engage the SLN and the League. It also doesn't have to engage the SLN at all and the League is having to deal with a lot greater problems than going around trying to pull in non-league members who may or may not have been targets of OFS.

If you follow the logic of the RF coming together to form an alliance against the corruption of the League but wasn't supposed to more than start making the offers of an alliance that would have Mannerheim as one of the original public members, then you could envision that the real shift from the RF to being a bunch of third tier systems just trying to keep themselves out of being caught in a war that isn't going to happen. Haven vs the SL.

That should also give you an idea of just how much of a mistake the Alignment had worked themselves into. They had that fancy meeting with Albrect D and the heads of state of the dozen precursor members of the RF announcing that it was now going to go into organizing mode to both protect them selves and start recruiting other systems that were already worried about what the League had become. Nobody mentions any of the original dozen of the about to be RF having any overt problems with the SL- like OFS showing up to make overtures - but if too many systems see the League having problems then they would start to wonder if the big dog was going to be destracted from keeping pirates or adventures from other systems looking to make money and take real estate while the SLN was busy elsewhere. We have no idea of what the actual anti-league feelings were with those "minor" systems but when Haven got involved in.....just what exactly.
If the expectation of The Plan was for Haven to take Manticore, secure the Junction and the various ends of the several termini for them selves and then start pushing the League you have to wonder how long that would have take.

Ok, you can argue that the Alignment grip on getting the League bureaucracy, SLN and other components could have let them keep OFS from running suddeny to PROTECT poor Manticore after Haven had seized the system and hauled a lot of FF and Battle Fleet along to enforce the takeover of (at least ) Manticore on a OFS's "humanitarian reasons" Like lots and lots of cash and ownership. But what the devil is the time frame and with the SLN turning well directed blind eyes and closed ears to what was going on in the Haven Quadrant there would be not much to divert Battle Fleet or Frontier Fleet from their normal level of keeping problems of raiders and people cutting into their sources of revenue.

They might have just ignored the RF. How did the Alignment count on Haven to be successful with it's Short Victorius War and then just almost with a snap of the fingers convert their entire navel to one with whatever superior tech it was discovered Manticore had and then go try to take on the SLN? Did anybody 1st on Mesa and then on Darius consider that if/when Haven decided to take a piece of of the SL as a warning to stay away that the SLN could have just sucked it up and sent a massive fleet -the long way, via hyperspace- and show up in the Haven home system and blow the crap out of it? Send 400 SLN SDs to Haven and you probably wouldn't find quite enough PRH warships to stop them even with their own advances in the war with Manticor.

Remember, there are all those LDs that are a couple of years from completion and they don't seem to plan on announcing the they are when invisible starships start destroying most of the major orbital structures in all sorts of League systems. The blame is probably -though all the disinformation that will be pushed around- going to be mostly on the League punishing collaborators with Haven or having doing it to cripple the League.

What a grand Alignment plan.

penny wrote:Oh! I forgot to include the most important point which was to be the closing argument of my post above.

If the RFN is suppose to be protecting the Wormhole, and the Ghosthunters of the SL is supposed to be looking for them, what will happen if the SL approaches that WH? The RFN is supposed to just lay out a welcome mat? Again, how can they protect anything if they won't fight? And if they do fight, how can they expect to win against the SL without the MAN's help?

.

At this point, nobody involved with the GA or the SL should have any actual knowledge of the Felix wormhole. Galton was found through intelligence operations and logic. They the GA went looking very very quietly and did their recon of potential locations from a great distance. There really isn't anything in the Felix system that would draw their attention. They might have a scout swing by Felix to take a look but even if it spotted Mannerheim SDF ships in the area, there is nothing there that we have been told of that would shout "I'm living here". There is also no reason to go searching for a worm hole there. If there is a difficulty it's whatever traffic might be coming and going using the wormhole and what might be parked on the Felix side of it to handle traffic and kill people poking their nose in the wrong place. It's a wormhole Darius could park a couple of Sharks out there and ambush anybody that caught a trace of an impeller drive in an odd pace and go in for a look. Mostly it's a non-inhabited system. The survey ship that found the wormhole was eliminated along with crew after submitting the only report to it's hadndles---just another lost ship a long time ago that isn't going to have a record of being near Felix or Mannerheim.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:Oh! I forgot to include the most important point which was to be the closing argument of my post above.

If the RFN is suppose to be protecting the Wormhole, and the Ghosthunters of the SL is supposed to be looking for them, what will happen if the SL approaches that WH? The RFN is supposed to just lay out a welcome mat? Again, how can they protect anything if they won't fight? And if they do fight, how can they expect to win against the SL without the MAN's help?

"SL" here is irrelevant: it can be any power, or just about anyone that can't be paid off and made quietly disappear.

The Mannerheim SDF and now RFN are protecting an investment. If someone turns up in Felix and discovers the wormhole - unlikely without a survey, but possible - the Mannerheim forces claim they know about it and are trying to acquire the rights to the system. Which they are, it's all true. Meanwhile, their warships are protecting the wormhole and will deny passage to anyone's survey ships.

Someone may want to provoke the RF. The question though is why anyone that matters would? The SL doesn't gain much by getting one more wormhole, and neither does the GA. For them, the public image is more important than yet one more WH whose destinations are unknown and will not provide economic benefit for decades. Let Mannerheim map the transit vectors, establish corners and then welcome everyone (for a fee).

A rogue ship from one of the above may want to force passage. But by definition it is rogue and disavowed, so the RFN would be in its rights to shoot it down. Maybe... because the system belongs to someone else.

In fact, the existence of the wormhole is a good excuse for an RFN build up. They would be of Solarian-quality ships, with a few inventions here and there, but mostly just SLN surplus. The RF can't afford to tip that they have a secret and massive research base in operation for decades.

If someone does give the RFN the boot in Felix, the MAN may want to take over. But it may also just not do it. So long as they control the Darius terminus, no one is arriving in Darius and telling. The worst that can happen is that neither side can make use of the wormhole.

And everyone has a habit of accusing me of moving goalposts.

The important gist of my post you dismissed. Again, the Ghosthunters are looking for the MA! Just like when the GA arrived at Galton, looking for the MA! If entities and intelligence services of the SL find out where the MA are located, and they find out that a certain WH leads to it, and if they might happen to find out that there's a window of opportunity such as an undefended end of the WH, and they decide to go for broke, then the SL and their navy is not only relevant...

THEY STOP THE PRESS!

What's irrelevant is how they find out about the WH. And what's irrelevant is why they are deciding to go for broke. What's also irrelevant to the RFN at the time is why they are there and wanting to force their way through. It ain't like they haven't attempted to force their way through a WH before.

And when I trotted pretty much the same thing out to everyone about the GA failing to play by the unavoidable ever present insanity of politics, simply because they had what they thought was incontrovertible evidence, all of you moved those goalposts and fail to accept or believe that the SL, the SL!, will do exactly the same thing??? Really???

Thinksmarkedly??? That can't be you.

Why would they want to force the RF while someone is trying to claim the WH??? Again, really?

Well, Galton wasn't trying to claim anything at the time. It was obvious that they owned that entire system! Didn't seem to matter to that hotheaded Harrington. But suddenly, ownership — pending ownership that is — should suddenly matter to the historically disrespectful and arrogant SLN? Now there's a why?

The last 24 hrs is like I woke up in the Twilight Zone.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:Oh! I forgot to include the most important point which was to be the closing argument of my post above.

If the RFN is suppose to be protecting the Wormhole, and the Ghosthunters of the SL is supposed to be looking for them, what will happen if the SL approaches that WH? The RFN is supposed to just lay out a welcome mat? Again, how can they protect anything if they won't fight? And if they do fight, how can they expect to win against the SL without the MAN's help?

"SL" here is irrelevant: it can be any power, or just about anyone that can't be paid off and made quietly disappear.

The Mannerheim SDF and now RFN are protecting an investment. If someone turns up in Felix and discovers the wormhole - unlikely without a survey, but possible - the Mannerheim forces claim they know about it and are trying to acquire the rights to the system. Which they are, it's all true. Meanwhile, their warships are protecting the wormhole and will deny passage to anyone's survey ships.

And Mannerheim has very quietly bought up some of the rights to the system - so they've a legal leg to stand on if their SDF ships there order away anybody else who shows up. (And given how far juctions tend to be from the system hyper limit any interlopers can likely be sent packing long before they'd have a chance to notice a Junction there. But yes, Mannerheim as the owner should be able to deny passage should the Junction be noticed)

If those interlopers resist leaving then it become legal and accepted to fire warning shots to emphasize your point.


But simply attacking anybody that stopped by is firmly in the stupid-evil quadrant. It turns what should be a unexceptional encounter "hey you're trespassing; get out" into a mystery that the fleet whose scouts never return is going to dig into; hard. So picking that unnecessary a fight is likely to get you into a war you can't win (and that even being in threatens the last known MAlign plan)

Frankly, for the purpose of the MAlign plan they'd be better off giving up Felix than exposing the RF as associates of the MAlign. The Darius end of the wormhole is going to be strongly enough defended to shred any invading fleet; so it's not like Darius's existence will be exposed if someone seized Felix and then spends the months to years it might take to map the safe approaches to the Junction. All you get is another wormhole that appears to eat any ship that transits it.
Loss of the wormhole is annoying for the MAlign, but exposure of the RF as their associates utterly wrecked their long term plans (as least as we know them). So if push really came to combat better for the Mannerheim SDF to yield the system as (without exposing association with the MAlign) they wouldn't have the numbers or the tech to win a real war with either the GA or the League.

penny wrote:The important gist of my post you dismissed. Again, the Ghosthunters are looking for the MA! Just like when the GA arrived at Galton, looking for the MA! If entities and intelligence services of the SL find out where the MA are located, and they find out that a certain WH leads to it, and if they might happen to find out that there's a window of opportunity such as an undefended end of the WH, and they decide to go for broke, then the SL and their navy is not only relevant...

The far end of wormholes are astronomically easier to defend. And in this case can be defended without leaving defenses that might garner attention. But there's no way Mannerheim can put in defenses in Felix that'd stand off either the GA or the SLN for long. Their entire navy isn't powerful enough to pull that off -- and the attackers would be outside the hyper limit firing into Junction defenses/defenders that are stuck within the RZ or the Junction's little hyper-limit.
So send a massive salvo at the attacking fleet and it can just skip away; but the salvo they send back can't be similarly avoided.

Plus, as I mentioned in my other response, it takes months to years of close survey of a wormhole terminus to work out the safe approach. So it's hardly a quick path to Darius.


So, even if the Ghost Hunters somehow found out that Felix was a route to Darius and the GA captured the system - that still doesn't get them noticeably closer to Darius.

Sure, maybe a year after taking possession they can finish up the survey and send ships through. Where they'd uncountably be vaporized by the defenses.

There's a reason that after they came to suspect there were hostiles on the far side of the Torch wormhole that they didn't throw a fleet through -- that'd be a great way to lose an entire fleet for zero gain.

penny wrote:The important gist of my post you dismissed. Again, the Ghosthunters are looking for the MA! Just like when the GA arrived at Galton, looking for the MA! If entities and intelligence services of the SL find out where the MA are located, and they find out that a certain WH leads to it, and if they might happen to find out that there's a window of opportunity such as an undefended end of the WH, and they decide to go for broke, then the SL and their navy is not only relevant...

THEY STOP THE PRESS!

What's irrelevant is how they find out about the WH. And what's irrelevant is why they are deciding to go for broke. What's also irrelevant to the RFN at the time is why they are there and wanting to force their way through. It ain't like they haven't attempted to force their way through a WH before.

And when I trotted pretty much the same thing out to everyone about the GA failing to play by the unavoidable ever present insanity of politics, simply because they had what they thought was incontrovertible evidence, all of you moved those goalposts and fail to accept or believe that the SL, the SL!, will do exactly the same thing??? Really???

Thinksmarkedly??? That can't be you.

Why would they want to force the RF while someone is trying to claim the WH??? Again, really?

Well, Galton wasn't trying to claim anything at the time. It was obvious that they owned that entire system! Didn't seem to matter to that hotheaded Harrington. But suddenly, ownership — pending ownership that is — should suddenly matter to the historically disrespectful and arrogant SLN? Now there's a why?

The last 24 hrs is like I woke up in the Twilight Zone.

Yes, if the author points to the wormhole, then the GA will take it and strongly question those defending it. Maybe as strongly as Galton was questioned. But why do we think that will happen, even with groups like the Ghosthunters searching? Having one end of a wormhole gives no knowledge about the location of the other end, unless a ship comes through from the other side.