Question: Mesan/Monican plan to take the Lynx Terminus

cstar wrote:As I think this is a pretty obvious hole in the plan, I was wondering if Mesa actually thought that it was possible for the plan to succeed, or if they were just trying to cause trouble in Talbot, knowing that neither Monica or the SLN could take control of the terminus.

The MAlign's objective was to get Manticore into a "two Front" war with the SLN and Haven; with enough casualties on all sides to leave the SL fragmented and the Haven Sector defenseless.

kzt wrote:They can come out of hyper in energy range of the terminus as far as I know. It's a complex navigation issue to do this, but they can.

Probably. We know that the 2nd wing of the Peep attack on Basilisk in EoH was targeted to drop well within SDM range on high speed vector towards the terminus.

That had a good chance of taking out the defending forts, with their incomplete brethren and limited stocks of pods.
Even when they screwed the jump they probably could have taken the forts except that 8th fleet happened to be out very near another terminus - allowing a much faster response than home fleet could hope to make.


Monica might have been thinking they could do something similar with their BCs. (Whether the MAlign thought, or cared, if the plan had any realistic chance of victory is something else entirely though. They may be been quite happy to let their catspaws take a 1000:1 shot)

Keep in mind that the Mesans are playing the Monicans for patsies. What the brains behind Mesa really want is not to slow down Manticoran expansion: they want to bring about a shooting war between Manticore and the Solarian League, as part of their plan to destroy and replace the League.

Everything they tell Tyler and the Monicans is a highly slanted version of the truth, They don't care if Monica succeeds; they don't care about the details of the plan, except insofar as they have to make then plausible to Tyler and the others who are involved; they don't care what the chances of success are. All that matters is getting Manticore shooting at the Solarian League, or vice versa.

Tyler's analysts were probably incapable of spotting the hole(s) in the plan as presented. The root cause of this is that they're used to thinking of the Solarian lLeague as the galaxy's 800-pound gorilla, and can't really conceive of anyone not knuckling under when the League lumbers up and demands its solution be accepted.

Twenty years earlier they probably would have been correct, too.

cstar wrote:I've be rereading Shadow of Saganami and when I got to the section where the Mesans and OFS explain their plan to Tyler I felt like there were some major holes in their plan.

The plan seems to be based on the idea that the Monicans could overwhelm the pickets and take control of the Lynx terminus before anything from Home Fleet could get there. Based on the 2nd Battle of Basilisk, and the general response to a Case Zulu, I think that its unlikely that any force could get to the terminus fast enough that nothing could go to Manticore and return with a superdreadnought or two.

As I think this is a pretty obvious hole in the plan, I was wondering if Mesa actually thought that it was possible for the plan to succeed, or if they were just trying to cause trouble in Talbot, knowing that neither Monica or the SLN could take control of the terminus.

My recollection is that Mesa's plan is 1) Monica takes the terminus (light picket, no forts), 2) Monica mines the terminus, and swipes Manticoran tech, 3) Monica calls for League assistance (Byng shows up unexpectedly quickly), 4) Manticore shows up in force out of hyper, kills every warship at the terminus, 5) Manticore and the League are at war.

Mesa tells Tyler that they can take merchantmen hostage, and gain control of the terminus (and the revenue). They don't mention that Manticore is likely to declare them pirate, and take Monica itself for the merchantmen issue, and close the terminus to all traffic for the attack itself.

akira.taylor wrote:

cstar wrote:I've be rereading Shadow of Saganami and when I got to the section where the Mesans and OFS explain their plan to Tyler I felt like there were some major holes in their plan.

The plan seems to be based on the idea that the Monicans could overwhelm the pickets and take control of the Lynx terminus before anything from Home Fleet could get there. Based on the 2nd Battle of Basilisk, and the general response to a Case Zulu, I think that its unlikely that any force could get to the terminus fast enough that nothing could go to Manticore and return with a superdreadnought or two.

As I think this is a pretty obvious hole in the plan, I was wondering if Mesa actually thought that it was possible for the plan to succeed, or if they were just trying to cause trouble in Talbot, knowing that neither Monica or the SLN could take control of the terminus.

My recollection is that Mesa's plan is 1) Monica takes the terminus (light picket, no forts), 2) Monica mines the terminus, and swipes Manticoran tech, 3) Monica calls for League assistance (Byng shows up unexpectedly quickly), 4) Manticore shows up in force out of hyper, kills every warship at the terminus, 5) Manticore and the League are at war.

Mesa tells Tyler that they can take merchantmen hostage, and gain control of the terminus (and the revenue). They don't mention that Manticore is likely to declare them pirate, and take Monica itself for the merchantmen issue, and close the terminus to all traffic for the attack itself.

Well the argument was that the Manties wouldn't fire on Byng because they wouldn't want to go to war with the SL. What they didn't mention is the probability that when Byng had the junction, he would hand it over to Monica was slightly less than zero.

kzt wrote:They can come out of hyper in energy range of the terminus as far as I know. It's a complex navigation issue to do this, but they can.

I still think that unless this is true, Monica would not be able to establish any control of the junction because of the low response time from Manticore.

cstar wrote:

kzt wrote:They can come out of hyper in energy range of the terminus as far as I know. It's a complex navigation issue to do this, but they can.

I still think that unless this is true, Monica would not be able to establish any control of the junction because of the low response time from Manticore.

They can establish control. They get to keep it until a few RMN BatRons show up via Hyper to kill them all.

kzt wrote:They can establish control. They get to keep it until a few RMN BatRons show up via Hyper to kill them all.

Which will take a fair while, given that Lynx is over 600 light years from the nearest RMN battle squadron. Plenty of time to get Byng into place and arrange a nice little shooting incident.

Dafmeister wrote:

kzt wrote:They can establish control. They get to keep it until a few RMN BatRons show up via Hyper to kill them all.

Which will take a fair while, given that Lynx is over 600 light years from the nearest RMN battle squadron. Plenty of time to get Byng into place and arrange a nice little shooting incident.

I wonder how long it would take for the RMN to get there, weeks? Months? In the meantime the quadrant is isolated and has only what was already in the area for defense...

Don

n7axw wrote:I wonder how long it would take for the RMN to get there, weeks? Months? In the meantime the quadrant is isolated and has only what was already in the area for defense...

Don

Would it though? I'm assuming that ever since OBS, and at least since the discovery of the Lynx terminus, there's at least a ready reserve of SOME RMN ships within close range of the junction, and that the junction courier (first mentioned in OBS) hyper's back into RMN space broadcasting a "terminus zulu", because the RMN ain't stupid and they know that retaking a terminus is a copper-plated -itch. if you know what I mean.

So even if you just make the "junction strike defense force" even just one Aggie, a Nike, or an SD(p) with a small screen, ready to jump through, they'd be able to put up enough of a defense of any "non-Haven" terminus long enough for other ships to arrive.

I would argue that the Monican BCs were meant from the start to be toast as soon as they engaged the RMN anywhere, but to at least capture some tech in the mean time, and get OFS and Byng to jump in.