Strategies in the Manticore / League Conflict.

MY READ based on current book.

In most of the post I have read on multiple topics there seems to be an emphasis on SD and fleet battles.
BUT in the books David has characters state that Manticore does not want to invade the core systems as this would be politically disastrous and lead to a true mobilization of the League. Without a declaration of war the League is dependent on interstellar trade and its protector-ship revenues. At this point the League leadership wants to claim victory for political purposes; but let's be realistic they are looking for an exit strategy that makes them look good. Thus Manticore/League conflict is most likely going to settle into brush wars along the frontier and both sides are going to be avoiding fleet battles.


Manticore Strategic Plan

Manticore's objectives will be limited: 1) prevent full scale war; 2) reduce the Leagues ability to fund the conflict, and 3) maybe bring down the current League leadership. The best way to accomplish these goals is to eliminate the revenue from the protector-ships. Thus Manticore needs lots of "light units" BC and CA to operate against Frontier Fleet, covert ops to engineer revolutions in "protectorate and independent systems". In this way Manticore is not invading the League, but responding to local request for assistance against criminal abuse of power and corruption. Play up fight against corruption and oppression for the League Core world audience.

Ironically, the alignment tactics are actually strengthening Manticore and Haven efforts. OPPS.. minor Miscalculation.



The League Strategic Plan

The League needs modest "Victories" for political reasons; Battlefleet needs fund for R&D and eventually major shipbuilding; and Frontier Security is going to under pressure to increase revenue. Thus the League leadership may become divided: Battlefleet really should be pushing for a peace accord as they need time and a strong economy to rebuild the fleet. I see Frontier Security (FS) initially being hawkish and really putting the screws on to raise revenue. FS will most likely look to commerce raiding as a way to strike back and I see them moving to liberate systems under Manticore domination. Of course this could be problematic as most of Manticores allies have very nasty system defenses.

In truth the League's best strategy would be de-escalation, the restoration of trade, a vigorous espionage program to steel tech. But I do not see the current leadership considering this option.

rdelorme16 wrote:In truth the League's best strategy would be de-escalation, the restoration of trade, a vigorous espionage program to steel tech. But I do not see the current leadership considering this option.

The Current League leadership wont go for that, but more importantly the GA Leadership will definitely not go for that. They know they have the League on the ropes, so any peace that does not completely fragment the League in very, very, very small pieces is bad for them. If the GA members were stupid enough to make peace with the League and give them breathing space to mobilize their resources then they would deserve to be crushed.

The GA should encourage the League leadership in to more missteps that further erode their position and cause more and more systems to leave rather than accepting any peace offers that just buy time for the League to mobilize their industry and research and equalize the odds.

rdelorme16 wrote:Manticore Strategic Plan

Manticore's objectives will be limited: 1) prevent full scale war; 2) reduce the Leagues ability to fund the conflict, and 3) maybe bring down the current League leadership. The best way to accomplish these goals is to eliminate the revenue from the protector-ships. Thus Manticore needs lots of "light units" BC and CA to operate against Frontier Fleet, covert ops to engineer revolutions in "protectorate and independent systems". In this way Manticore is not invading the League, but responding to local request for assistance against criminal abuse of power and corruption. Play up fight against corruption and oppression for the League Core world audience.

However, due to ship tonnage inflation, the League already believes RMN destroyers to be light cruisers, and RMN heavy cruisers to be battlecruisers. And with the speed differentials, the RMN could be sending single podnoughts around and still be outrunning just about everything down to the size of SLN destroyers.


Those two points, mean it doesn't really matter what units they commit to operations against the League, they're automatically going to look more threatening than intended due to the tonnage creep. If you send a division or two of what they think are battlecruisers, which are classed as the smallest Honorverse capital ships, you've already escalated things.

So if you're damned if you send "light" forces, and damned if you send wallers, may as well just send the wallers out too rather than keeping them concentrated. Especially considering that even if every single Solarian waller, active and Reserve were concentrated into one fleet [should be something around another 600-900 SDs], they still couldn't break something the size of Task Force 34, Honor's Marsh command pre-Thunderbolt (18 SDPs, 25 SDs, 11 DN, & 10 CLACs).

I think your missing the politics.

Most of Frontier Security's dominion are not legally part of the League; thus the threat is to the League's budget, but not to the League's population. Let be realistic; the Leagues core systems are democracies, where the electorate is focused on "local system issues". Thus I suspect that on most League worlds current Manticore Situation gets about 5 minutes a week of "air time" on most news networks. Manticore needs to keep the this situation. If the League mobilizes and begins to but its huge economic resource into play, the war would be like fighting Haven x 10000. That is a no win scenario in the long run.

So yes Manticore can pound any League fleet, but it can not afford to invade and try to occupy the League's core planets; asthe Empire can not do this fast enough. A mobilized League can addresses the tech disadvantage rather quickly. But a "peace time" League with a disinterested populous can be made a broke impotent giant. Thus GA must keep the League populous neutral or angry at their leadership; they can not afford to total war commitment out of the League.

Somtaaw wrote:So if you're damned if you send "light" forces, and damned if you send wallers, may as well just send the wallers out too rather than keeping them concentrated. Especially considering that even if every single Solarian waller, active and Reserve were concentrated into one fleet [should be something around another 600-900 SDs], they still couldn't break something the size of Task Force 34, Honor's Marsh command pre-Thunderbolt (18 SDPs, 25 SDs, 11 DN, & 10 CLACs).

The SLN still has somewhere in the neighbourhood of 1,800 SDs in active service plus the reserve which is irrelevant because they don't have the money nor the trained manpower to do anything with... nor is it worth mobilizing.

rdelorme16 wrote:I think your missing the politics.

Most of Frontier Security's dominion are not legally part of the League; thus the threat is to the League's budget, but not to the League's population. Let be realistic; the Leagues core systems are democracies, where the electorate is focused on "local system issues". Thus I suspect that on most League worlds current Manticore Situation gets about 5 minutes a week of "air time" on most news networks. Manticore needs to keep the this situation. If the League mobilizes and begins to but its huge economic resource into play, the war would be like fighting Haven x 10000. That is a no win scenario in the long run.

So yes Manticore can pound any League fleet, but it can not afford to invade and try to occupy the League's core planets; asthe Empire can not do this fast enough. A mobilized League can addresses the tech disadvantage rather quickly. But a "peace time" League with a disinterested populous can be made a broke impotent giant. Thus GA must keep the League populous neutral or angry at their leadership; they can not afford to total war commitment out of the League.

They have to encourage league member systems to leave the league and then pound each and every SLN unit send to force them back. Right now, in the core the GA is getting a lot of airtime because they managed to destroy the Leagues reputation of being invincible in about 5 minutes which means that for the first time in half a millennium many of those League members don't have the protection of the SLN to count on so they will start to look at the war in terms of who started it, and how can we avoid getting dragged into it.

Taking and holding the terminii known through out human space, as well as denying access to the league navy and transtellsrs, will force the league I to action.

With shipping crippled, and the terminii network shutdown, can they supply their other forces and military operations?

They could actively go after the slave trade, which will cause conflict eventually.

Beowulf has allies or assets in the league, can they share intelligence on the world's likely to rebel?