The enemy in "extended space": SLN or MAlign

StealthSeeker wrote:What to do with all those SDs that were in home fleet of Manticore and Haven? Its not like the SLN is going to be making any new calls to the neighborhood and neither Haven or Manticore have any intention of attacking the other. All of them will eventually be needed when Darius is finally located, but what do I do with all these SDs in the mean time?

I would turn them loose on the SL's ability to produce new ships, but apparently folks in the forum think that would get the folks in the SL really upset. So then maybe I can go and start grabbing Verge sectors from the SL. Drop a couple of squadrons of SDs and escorts onto a Verge sector central government planet and do a repeat of Meyers in the Madras Sector. Hopefully most of the FF ships for the sector can be caught in that system and forced to scuttle. Then the rest of the systems in the sector can be "visited" with appropriate sized squadrons to handle what newly acquired intelligence says should be there. Just start punching out whole sectors leaving freedom and peace where ever you go.

You mean sowing chaos and destruction wherever you go. When the OFS/FF places are punched/taken out, there's going to be all sorts of people, idealists, revolutionaries and power hungry bastards coming out of the woodwork and making grabs for power. A LOT of people are going to die in the scuffle and its very likely in many of the systems held the longest under OFS rule, there will be some truly nasty regimes coming into power.

Removing a corrupt government does not automatically peace and good governance will happen. It just means there is a chance it might happen, IF it can fight off the scoundrels that seek to seize the reigns of power for themselves.

Those of us saying the GA shouldn't go about wrecking the SLN's ability to build ships are saying that because the shipyards you're wanting to destroy are a part of the infrastructure of the system the ships yards are in. It would be a different story if the SLN built its own ships, but it doesn't. It relies on civilian shipyards, and taking them out means seriously damaging the economy of the system and its orbital infrastructure. That would have a direct impact on how the people see the GA

kzt wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:You deny him the revenue streams to pay for them. (and/or accelerate the breakup so there is no Solarian League to fund a "SLN."

Can you show a single nation that ended an existential war solely or primarily due to an inability to pay for it? There are always ways to "deal with the bills in the future". And they will be used if you turn this into a general war.

Would the USSR count? It was a cold(ish) war; but they lost at least in part because they got out spent, and ran out of money trying to keep up.

crewdude48 wrote:Would the USSR count? It was a cold(ish) war; but they lost at least in part because they got out spent, and ran out of money trying to keep up.

I'd argue no, they actually broke up in the process of a fumbled reform, which turned into a revolution. And they were not actually at war.

Being involved in a very serious war is what both allows and causes people to take actions that are insane from a rational planning mode. Look at the economies of 1946 Japan, Germany, UK and USSR. The winners were in bad shape, the UK spent the next 6 years in what is sometimes called "the age of austerity". The losers needed food provided by the victors to prevent mass starvation, they essentially had no economy left, they had burned themselves out losing the war.

StealthSeeker wrote:The original question was, "What targets are on the firing range?"

Arguments can be made all day long as to why one thing or another shouldn't be done, argue long enough and someone will simply walk up and shoot you in the head. The GA has a tech advantage that they need to take advantage of and use now! Don't tell me what can't be a target, tell me what you think can be a target. If the GA sits and does nothing but to wait on events to happen around it, the GA has lost. Don't tell me what you can't do, tell me what you can. How can you widen the fissures in the SL to speed it's demise? How do you protect your shipping from Admiral Kingsford plan to attack it. How do you prevent him from bringing lots of newly built light units into the fight? Say to him "pretty please don't do it?"

The GA has a technology advantage, it must be used, tell me, how would you choose to use it?

Going after the SLN's mobile forces and infrastructure seem obvious. I suggest sending a dozen or so raider task groups via the wormhole network to enter the League's space from several different directions, with lists of systems thought to have significant SLN detachments or shipyards. (Two exceptions: don't drive straight in from Beowulf, and don't attack Sol System.)

Go in, call on the local commander to surrender. If he refuses, punch out one ship from hopelessly long range. Call on the senior surviving officer to surrender. Repeat as necessary. Order them to abandon their ships; make provision for search & rescue, and blow up the SLN's hyper-capable ships. Try to avoid the local SDF, as long as it's willing to stay out of the fight.

If there's an SLN shipyard in the system, go down, order its evacuation, and destroy it. Try very hard to minimize civilian casualties, both in space and on the planet. Don't waste time on the mothball fleets this time around; give the Sollies the chance to put some effort into re-activating them.

During and after all this, talk to anyone who will listen about 'how we all got into this mess' and 'the true course of the war thus far'. Try to leave the locals pissed off at the Sollie federal government and Navy, for their incompetence and impotence. Then sail off to raid another system, for as long as supplies last.

If system governments build ships for their own defense, fine. If they ally with some neighboring systems against others, ditto. If they make deals with local SLN commanders, 'you get support, we get protection', ditto. All these systems are potential nuclei of the successor states of the League.

crewdude48 wrote:Would the USSR count? It was a cold(ish) war; but they lost at least in part because they got out spent, and ran out of money trying to keep up.

Or for that matter Russia in 1917.

The problem with having to pay absurd amounts of money for the war is that it gives traction to most of the nuts and the fanatics. And the nation that enters into it is not the nation that exits it even if they win. The US went from a isolationist nation in 1939 and very vigorous not isolation nation in 1950.

RFC did address this to a certain extent in IEH. Also the fact that it is now the Star Empire instead of the Star Nation. So where does it stop.

For John Q. Public it really didn't seem like an existential war until Operation Icarus. Which really was the only time until the BoMa that Manticore itself was attacked.

SVW was a failed Pearl Harbor attempt really. So the bad guys showed up we(kingdom citizens) trounced them enough that they had their own revolution. Then proceed to to hammer them in another few dozen systems to reinforce their failures.

Where does that sense of urgency that FDR and Churchill used come from? Sure the forward looking see the possibilities but the average citizen not so much.

Now when Operation Thunderbolt Happened all bets are off and wonder of wonder it is now the Star Empire. <shrug>

Make of it what you will,
T2M

The Solarian League would have to have genuine, serious chunks of system governments' sovereignty and people's allegiance to be a star nation. It does not. It's constitutionally - in both a legal and a political sense - a treaty organization that's been allowed to act as if it were a star nation just because it's never been shoved that way. It's being shoved that way now, with both external challenges and internal ones.

One response, if the people and system governments felt like becoming a star nation in response, would be re-organization with direct taxation of individual or systems for revenue and/or other nationalization of resources. If the people or system governments identified strongly with the League, that could happen and if it did, the GA really would have to conquer and occupy them and hope somehow to change minds or remain a tiny occupying class over a stupendous occupied nation.

Another theoretical response would be a more or less open seizure of power by the Mandarins to get access to revenue and other resources directly, without consent. They've been allowed to use indirect bits and a heavier hand out where people aren't seeing it for centuries, but I don't think people would stand for it when it's not small, indirect, or off in the shadows anymore.

But it's not already a genuine star nation facing an existential attack from without. It's a fake star nation facing an external attack to which it cannot respond effectively respond given the limitations it has. Constitutional reform in the midst of that to become a real, integrated star nation with actual patriots and a sovereign command of people's stuff would give it better than even odds after a long, horrible time. Enough support of the current leadership based on a perception that the enemy is in the wrong could let them stumble to victory too, though that would probably change the League well before the end too.

But for historical parallels, you don't want to look at nations in trouble. You'd want to look at similar alliances, like the League of Nations. When pushed, it folded. No one died for it - no one had to. The component nations simply ceased acting through the League. We can expect the same out of the Solarian League's components.

JeffEngel wrote:The Solarian League would have to have genuine, serious chunks of system governments' sovereignty and people's allegiance to be a star nation. It does not. It's constitutionally - in both a legal and a political sense - a treaty organization that's been allowed to act as if it were a star nation just because it's never been shoved that way. It's being shoved that way now, with both external challenges and internal ones.

One response, if the people and system governments felt like becoming a star nation in response, would be re-organization with direct taxation of individual or systems for revenue and/or other nationalization of resources. If the people or system governments identified strongly with the League, that could happen and if it did, the GA really would have to conquer and occupy them and hope somehow to change minds or remain a tiny occupying class over a stupendous occupied nation.

Another theoretical response would be a more or less open seizure of power by the Mandarins to get access to revenue and other resources directly, without consent. They've been allowed to use indirect bits and a heavier hand out where people aren't seeing it for centuries, but I don't think people would stand for it when it's not small, indirect, or off in the shadows anymore.

But it's not already a genuine star nation facing an existential attack from without. It's a fake star nation facing an external attack to which it cannot respond effectively respond given the limitations it has. Constitutional reform in the midst of that to become a real, integrated star nation with actual patriots and a sovereign command of people's stuff would give it better than even odds after a long, horrible time. Enough support of the current leadership based on a perception that the enemy is in the wrong could let them stumble to victory too, though that would probably change the League well before the end too.

But for historical parallels, you don't want to look at nations in trouble. You'd want to look at similar alliances, like the League of Nations. When pushed, it folded. No one died for it - no one had to. The component nations simply ceased acting through the League. We can expect the same out of the Solarian League's components.

Like the League of Nations, the Solarian League Chamber of Delegates is regarded as a debating society, not a real legislative body that represents the Solarian League's constituents. This is definitely the case with the Mandarins and probably the case with the 'average Sollie in the street' *.

* If there is such a thing as a Sollie, most people living in the Solarian League see themselves as citizens of their star systems and the Solarian League is just an organization that their star system just happens to belong to.

Zakharra wrote:

StealthSeeker wrote:What to do with all those SDs that were in home fleet of Manticore and Haven? Its not like the SLN is going to be making any new calls to the neighborhood and neither Haven or Manticore have any intention of attacking the other. All of them will eventually be needed when Darius is finally located, but what do I do with all these SDs in the mean time?

I would turn them loose on the SL's ability to produce new ships, but apparently folks in the forum think that would get the folks in the SL really upset. So then maybe I can go and start grabbing Verge sectors from the SL. Drop a couple of squadrons of SDs and escorts onto a Verge sector central government planet and do a repeat of Meyers in the Madras Sector. Hopefully most of the FF ships for the sector can be caught in that system and forced to scuttle. Then the rest of the systems in the sector can be "visited" with appropriate sized squadrons to handle what newly acquired intelligence says should be there. Just start punching out whole sectors leaving freedom and peace where ever you go.

You mean sowing chaos and destruction wherever you go. When the OFS/FF places are punched/taken out, there's going to be all sorts of people, idealists, revolutionaries and power hungry bastards coming out of the woodwork and making grabs for power. A LOT of people are going to die in the scuffle and its very likely in many of the systems held the longest under OFS rule, there will be some truly nasty regimes coming into power.

Removing a corrupt government does not automatically peace and good governance will happen. It just means there is a chance it might happen, IF it can fight off the scoundrels that seek to seize the reigns of power for themselves.

Those of us saying the GA shouldn't go about wrecking the SLN's ability to build ships are saying that because the shipyards you're wanting to destroy are a part of the infrastructure of the system the ships yards are in. It would be a different story if the SLN built its own ships, but it doesn't. It relies on civilian shipyards, and taking them out means seriously damaging the economy of the system and its orbital infrastructure. That would have a direct impact on how the people see the GA

If we were to take the Meyers system as an example, the OFS apparently would typically set up a token local government that would act as the puppet government through which the OFS asserted control. What Admiral Henke did was to take away the OFS as the puppeteer and enable/empower the already established government to actually assert control and self governance. (under a watchful eye)

In any place in the Verge where the OFS has created similar local puppeteer governance conditions couldn't the same thing be repeated? Now admittedly I'm being a little optimistic as to the state of affairs on OFS controlled planets as the government in place could easily be extremely oppressive and belligerent as on (Mobius?) which inspired the uprising that the RMN went to the support of. These planets would obviously require more effort.

So I see your point, but I offer this counter point.

Bill Woods wrote:

StealthSeeker wrote:The original question was, "What targets are on the firing range?"

Arguments can be made all day long as to why one thing or another shouldn't be done, argue long enough and someone will simply walk up and shoot you in the head. The GA has a tech advantage that they need to take advantage of and use now! Don't tell me what can't be a target, tell me what you think can be a target. If the GA sits and does nothing but to wait on events to happen around it, the GA has lost. Don't tell me what you can't do, tell me what you can. How can you widen the fissures in the SL to speed it's demise? How do you protect your shipping from Admiral Kingsford plan to attack it. How do you prevent him from bringing lots of newly built light units into the fight? Say to him "pretty please don't do it?"

The GA has a technology advantage, it must be used, tell me, how would you choose to use it?

Going after the SLN's mobile forces and infrastructure seem obvious. I suggest sending a dozen or so raider task groups via the wormhole network to enter the League's space from several different directions, with lists of systems thought to have significant SLN detachments or shipyards. (Two exceptions: don't drive straight in from Beowulf, and don't attack Sol System.)

Go in, call on the local commander to surrender. If he refuses, punch out one ship from hopelessly long range. Call on the senior surviving officer to surrender. Repeat as necessary. Order them to abandon their ships; make provision for search & rescue, and blow up the SLN's hyper-capable ships. Try to avoid the local SDF, as long as it's willing to stay out of the fight.

If there's an SLN shipyard in the system, go down, order its evacuation, and destroy it. Try very hard to minimize civilian casualties, both in space and on the planet. Don't waste time on the mothball fleets this time around; give the Sollies the chance to put some effort into re-activating them.

During and after all this, talk to anyone who will listen about 'how we all got into this mess' and 'the true course of the war thus far'. Try to leave the locals pissed off at the Sollie federal government and Navy, for their incompetence and impotence. Then sail off to raid another system, for as long as supplies last.

If system governments build ships for their own defense, fine. If they ally with some neighboring systems against others, ditto. If they make deals with local SLN commanders, 'you get support, we get protection', ditto. All these systems are potential nuclei of the successor states of the League.

This is much more of what I have in mind for actions that can be taken in the SL core and shell worlds. Go into the action by doing as little damage as possible to get the local forces to surrender. Have the ships go to fully cold nodes and then have each ship guarded by a pair of LACs. Negotiate with the local government about what resources they are allowed to keep. If there is a mix of SLN and SDF forces present the SDF ships can be paroled to the local government on the promise that they will not be used in the war against the GA. However the SLN ships will all have to be scuttled. If the system has shipyards, the planet is allowed to keep what they need to support their SDF but the rest has to be abandoned and destroyed.

All through these negotiations it would be stressed over and over again that none of the actions being taken would have been necessary if it hadn't been for the illegal actions of Mandarins. And if the Government tried to maintain that the Mandarins were just implementing police actions, tell them that the GA is just doing an equivalent police action. But push hard on the idea that none of what is happening should have or would have been necessary if it wasn't for the illegal actions of the Mandarins. Were the Mandarins actions anything that they would have voted for the SL to take? Or that they would have done themselves?

I want these worlds upset as possible as to the predicament the Mandarins have gotten them into.

Keep in mind, the Solarian League got to where they are in current terms by "doing nothing" while the corruption rotted the ideals from within. And hello, there's been an organization (the MAlign) that has been actively plotting to dismember the league into digestible and controllable chunks for longer than Manticore has been settled. Apparently effective enough that within the hundred or so years (haven't looked it up lately) enough to take a major stellar polity known to oppose genetic slavery (Republic of Haven) to near ruin, only saved by a corrupt cabal of Manticoran fools (High Ridge, etc.). Corruption also thoroughly dominates the non-core worlds with corrupted OFS sector governors like Verrochio, etc.

Hmm, and thes MAlign folks are the same ones who corrupted an admiral high up enough the food chain to have been put in charge of a bigger fleet than Manticore's, then sent him off with 2MM Solarian citizens in arms, aka the SLN like lambs to be slaughtered, then made sure it happened.

And... the politically corrupt Mandarins and their underlings have no idea how to respond to any of it except by going about business as usual. AKA the Mandarins are the symptom of the sickness. But then, try to pick a major nation right now on planet Earth in the 201X decade that's doing much better...

Because right now our planetary governments are often similarly corrupted by whatever vices or bad politics or whatever, and are making selfish, power seeking decisions, not those that are actually for the good of the world. (Aka Syria's Assad and cronies aren't dead yet, and the nations of the world haven't invaded Syria to totally decimate ISIL/ISIS, Ebola didn't get whomped by a major first world medical response, etc. (though we finally did help the medical crisis somewhat).