The Two General's Problem

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The population of the MBS at a mere 3 billion after 500 T-years of existence is low. The population of the Sigma Draconis system at a "mere" 40 billion after nearly 2000 years of a technological society is also pretty low. We quadrupled Earth's population in the last 100 years and that was starting with early 20th century medicine.

Jonathan_S wrote:Now none of that explains why the MAlign wasn't cranking up population growth on Darius and Galton.

tlb wrote:What would be the motivation for an arbitrarily high population level, particularly at Darius with its long lifespan?

penny wrote:That should be obvious. A high population could build their necessary infrastructure no problem. There could be several space stations in MAlign space tending to the matter of building the projected 100 LDs.

I thought the workers would build even faster since they are indoctrinated like a cult building against the evil empires who are out to get them.

The question was, why is the current population not much larger than the current several billion, for example a trillion?

Yes, the non-elite people of Darius are taught they are in the right, but they have also been bred to be satisfied/complacent. The text mentions that they would not be able to innovate the way that Manticore does. I believe this also means that they would not be able to build as fast.

penny wrote:I suspect that what the author will do when handling the MA in the end will be similar to what he did with the SLN. Issue a disclaimer that he hopes the way he deals with the foe will be acceptable. As far as the SLN, it was, indeed, acceptable. I don’t expect it to be any different with the MA.

tlb wrote:I am not sure what you mean by "issue a disclaimer" that he hopes will be found acceptable (*).

The Solarian League had been led astray by corruption and unchecked power. What was imposed demanded that executive power in the new League be representative and accountable. The Grand Alliance did not simply hope that this would be accepted, they demanded that this be accepted. In what way would that apply to the Malign? In what way did that apply to Galton? Only on Mesa, after the Malign had fled, could something like that work.

The Malign will not be treated the same way that Haven and the Solarian League were. With them the rot was limited and could be removed; indeed it had already been cut away in Haven, before a resolution was discussed. With the Malign, the rot is at the core of its being.

*: I understand you to be saying that the author has written a disclaimer that he hopes will be acceptable to the readers. That is the extent of my possible understanding. What is the nature of this supposed disclaimer for the Solarians? How do you expect this will be repeated with the Malign?

penny wrote:In an interview or something out there, David said that he thinks he has dealt with the SL in a way that will be acceptable to his readers.

-- skip --

So the author issued the disclaimer because it would not have been realistically possible to destroy the whole of the huge SL. Nor could it have been done without actually soiling the reputation of the good guys and having his readers turn on them.

I was not aware of the statement, but I was pointing out that the problem with the Solarian League was its governance that was not responsive nor accountable to its members. So the demand that a new constitution be written to correct those faults was the best solution and I am surprised that needed to be explained.

But I still fail to see how that could possibly extent to the Malign, who are rotten to the core. Being the good guys still allows for a KEW to be dropped on the building holding the criminal leadership; as has been demonstrated by Commodore Aivars Terekhov killing off Brigadier General Yucel and the rest of the governmental and military command structure in the Mobius System. This does not mean that Darius must be cleansed, but its elite structure must be neutralized (we will see how the author deals with that problem). It might be as simple as the treatment of Masada.

penny wrote:But I'd like to issue my own disclaimer with the reminder that the author allows planetary bombardments if after controlling the orbitals the enemy refuses to surrender.

If the LD's tactics are simply to lob g-torps from the hyper limit at infrastructure and planets like cowardly enemies, then the author's punishment might fit the crime in the event of an EE crime. Certainly in the event of mass EE crimes throughout the galaxy; which cues the reminder that the author also issued a disclaimer about the mindset of people in the HV not resorting to EE crimes. Paraphrasing "with the possible exception of facing total defeat."

So, in the end, if the MAN adopts a strategy of destroying planets, then the author might let the punishment fit the crime. I can't imagine that that sort of mass atrocity will fail to engage any reader in the matching horrors of what must be done.

Just to reiterate - under the Edict the permissible planetary bombardment even after a government refuses to surrender is very restricted.

By and large you can only bombard things that threaten your ships in orbit, or large collections of military forces. (Though the flipside is that trying to use civilians, or even entire cities, as human shields removes their normal protections)


And while it is true that under sufficient provocation someone might go beyond the bounds of the Edict in retaliation, the specified response to an Edict violation is to punish the leaders/government of the perpetrator -- not the rest of that system's population. Basically the SLN is supposed to come in, capture the current leaders, and then force a regime change.

But in the case of the MAlign the bigger problem is finding their system in the first place. There seems to more than sufficient firepower around to capture it and forcibly occupy and demilitarize it; once it's found. So nobody should get pushed to the point of needing to kill a planet in self-defense.

(Not that I think the MAlign is going to start blowing away planetary populations in job lots; but, yes, if they commit enough atrocities then, once found, they might get atrocitied back before calmer more rational heads prevail)

tlb wrote:The question was, why is the current population not much larger than the current several billion, for example a trillion?

Yes, the non-elite people of Darius are taught they are in the right, but they have also been bred to be satisfied/complacent. The text mentions that they would not be able to innovate the way that Manticore does. I believe this also means that they would not be able to build as fast.

If we are not privy to another hideout, why would we be privy to its population? And why would there need to be a population of trillions when you can utilize population control at its finest. Only certain segments of the population need to be grown to large levels. And if they have the benefit of prolong the populations have no need to follow a normal course of growth.

I’ve said it before. I don’t think the MAN has to be able to match the build rate of the GA. They don’t even need to come close. The GA builds many different kinds of ships, and weapons. And then screening elements. The MAN has no need for screening ships. The MAN does not need a wall of battle.

Each member of the GA did the same thing and had large navies. The MAN would only need to build the LD and the Ghosts. And the Ghosts would probably be a lot fewer.

The GA builds lots of different types of missiles. Platforms. Drones, several different drones. LACs. CLACs. Pinnaces. Even Sting ships for the planet, etc. There is no need for sting ships for the MAlign planets. There is no civil unrest or uprisings on any MA planet. If we did a full research I’m sure we can shorten the build list a lot further.

Weapons? I don’t see the MA needing weapons to police the planet. Life pods? Do they need life pods?

How large a population does there need to be to build a couple different ships and a few different missiles?

tlb wrote:The question was, why is the current population not much larger than the current several billion, for example a trillion?

Yes, the non-elite people of Darius are taught they are in the right, but they have also been bred to be satisfied/complacent. The text mentions that they would not be able to innovate the way that Manticore does. I believe this also means that they would not be able to build as fast.

penny wrote:If we are not privy to another hideout, why would we be privy to its population? And why would there need to be a population of trillions when you can utilize population control at its finest. Only certain segments of the population need to be grown to large levels. And if they have the benefit of prolong the populations have no need to follow a normal course of growth.

We know, because the author told us, from Mission of Honor, chapter 38:

By now, the Darius System's total population was in the very near vicinity of 3.9 billion, of whom just under two billion were representatives of one of the alpha, beta, or gamma genomes the Alignment had worked to improve for so long. The remainder of the system population were genetic slaves, but the conditions of their slavery were very unlike those which obtained elsewhere. For one thing, they were treated far better, without the often savage discipline slaves often received elsewhere. In fact, the Darius System was one of the very few places where the Mesan Constitution's official legal protections theoretically intended to protect slaves from gross mistreatment were actually enforced. For another, they had a much higher standard of living. And for yet another, they formed the backbone of a highly trained, highly skilled labor force which had earned the respect of its supervisors.
Every one of those slaves had been born here in Darius, and not one of them had ever left the system. Their knowledge of what was happening elsewhere in the galaxy, of the history of Mesa, or of their own history had been carefully controlled for generations. They'd been aware for those same generations that they and their parents and grandparents had been laboring to build first the basic industry and then the specialized infrastructure to support a massive navy, but they were convinced it was intended as a defensive fleet.
Yet for all the years which had been plowed into Darius, all the effort, all the generations of labor, the fact remained that its space stations and shipyards were significantly less capable than Manticore's had been prior to Oyster Bay. Benjamin Detweiler didn't like admitting that, but he agreed with his father; the day someone stopped admitting the truth was the day he could kiss any of his hopes for the future goodbye. And the truth was that, despite the accomplishments of the Alignment's R&D, and despite any tactical advantages which might accrue from the streak drive and the spider, very few star nations could have matched the industrial efficiency of the Star Empire of Manticore. Indeed, Benjamin suspected that even Manticore had failed to grasp just how great an advantage it possessed in that regard.
Over the last five or six T-years, he and Daniel had been trying to introduce Manticoran practices here at Darius, only to discover that the task wasn't as simple and forthright as it ought to have been. If they'd really wanted to duplicate Manticore's efficiency, they would've had to duplicate Manticore's entire industrial base—and its society—and they simply couldn't do that. Their labor force was extraordinarily good at following orders, extremely well trained, and highly motivated, but the kind of independence of thought which characterized Manticoran workers wasn't exactly something which had been encouraged among the slave workers of Darius. Even if it had been, their basic techniques and technologies were simply different from Manticore's. Better than the majority of League star systems could have produced, if those other star systems had only realized it, yet still at least a full generation behind the Manties.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:The question was, why is the current population not much larger than the current several billion, for example a trillion?

Yes, the non-elite people of Darius are taught they are in the right, but they have also been bred to be satisfied/complacent. The text mentions that they would not be able to innovate the way that Manticore does. I believe this also means that they would not be able to build as fast.

penny wrote:If we are not privy to another hideout, why would we be privy to its population? And why would there need to be a population of trillions when you can utilize population control at its finest. Only certain segments of the population need to be grown to large levels. And if they have the benefit of prolong the populations have no need to follow a normal course of growth.

We know, because the author told us, from Mission of Honor, chapter 38:

By now, the Darius System's total population was in the very near vicinity of 3.9 billion, of whom just under two billion were representatives of one of the alpha, beta, or gamma genomes the Alignment had worked to improve for so long. The remainder of the system population were genetic slaves, but the conditions of their slavery were very unlike those which obtained elsewhere. For one thing, they were treated far better, without the often savage discipline slaves often received elsewhere. In fact, the Darius System was one of the very few places where the Mesan Constitution's official legal protections theoretically intended to protect slaves from gross mistreatment were actually enforced. For another, they had a much higher standard of living. And for yet another, they formed the backbone of a highly trained, highly skilled labor force which had earned the respect of its supervisors.
Every one of those slaves had been born here in Darius, and not one of them had ever left the system. Their knowledge of what was happening elsewhere in the galaxy, of the history of Mesa, or of their own history had been carefully controlled for generations. They'd been aware for those same generations that they and their parents and grandparents had been laboring to build first the basic industry and then the specialized infrastructure to support a massive navy, but they were convinced it was intended as a defensive fleet.
Yet for all the years which had been plowed into Darius, all the effort, all the generations of labor, the fact remained that its space stations and shipyards were significantly less capable than Manticore's had been prior to Oyster Bay. Benjamin Detweiler didn't like admitting that, but he agreed with his father; the day someone stopped admitting the truth was the day he could kiss any of his hopes for the future goodbye. And the truth was that, despite the accomplishments of the Alignment's R&D, and despite any tactical advantages which might accrue from the streak drive and the spider, very few star nations could have matched the industrial efficiency of the Star Empire of Manticore. Indeed, Benjamin suspected that even Manticore had failed to grasp just how great an advantage it possessed in that regard.
Over the last five or six T-years, he and Daniel had been trying to introduce Manticoran practices here at Darius, only to discover that the task wasn't as simple and forthright as it ought to have been. If they'd really wanted to duplicate Manticore's efficiency, they would've had to duplicate Manticore's entire industrial base—and its society—and they simply couldn't do that. Their labor force was extraordinarily good at following orders, extremely well trained, and highly motivated, but the kind of independence of thought which characterized Manticoran workers wasn't exactly something which had been encouraged among the slave workers of Darius. Even if it had been, their basic techniques and technologies were simply different from Manticore's. Better than the majority of League star systems could have produced, if those other star systems had only realized it, yet still at least a full generation behind the Manties.

All of that applies to Darius. Possibly even Galton, although I suspect even those figures do not include Galton. But none of it would apply to an unknown system.

penny wrote:All of that applies to Darius. Possibly even Galton, although I suspect even those figures do not include Galton. But none of it would apply to an unknown system.

Why would a third system have been developed any different than the first two? In what way would the same leadership have felt compelled to change its practices?

Mind you the author was telling us that Manticore's efficiency is partly a result of their autonomy of thinking for everyone involved, which the MAlign leadership simply won't abide by. They don't want a couple billion people thinking freely and travelling freely.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

penny wrote:All of that applies to Darius. Possibly even Galton, although I suspect even those figures do not include Galton. But none of it would apply to an unknown system.

Why would a third system have been developed any different than the first two? In what way would the same leadership have felt compelled to change its practices?

Mind you the author was telling us that Manticore's efficiency is partly a result of their autonomy of thinking for everyone involved, which the MAlign leadership simply won't abide by. They don't want a couple billion people thinking freely and travelling freely.

Why were the first two developed so differently from each other? Purpose and compartmentalization is the MA way.

Travelling? Where would they go? To other cities on the planet? Because they certainly aren’t leaving the system. That means even less ships overall that the system as a whole needs to produce.

penny wrote:Why were the first two developed so differently from each other? Purpose and compartmentalization is the MA way.

They weren't developed so differently. Both had the same root development principles: societies based on genetic slavery controlled by the higher tiers of MAlign genetic lines. Both had control of media and information. The difference lay on one being blatantly militaristic and the other not.

Where would the third be different? Why would the MAlign create a society that is not filled with genetic clones? Why would they not control it like they want to control the rest of humanity?

Travelling? Where would they go? To other cities on the planet? Because they certainly aren’t leaving the system. That means even less ships overall that the system as a whole needs to produce.

Exactly. That's why they can't match Manticore efficiency and innovation. Note I was responding to the third system being potentially able to match those qualities.

If it isn't going to, then I don't see why it would need to be different than Darius and Galton in the first place. Just do more of the same, only further out.

Edit - I spent way too long on this; in part because the Wiki was plenty drunken so I was deeply scouring the two relevant books in an attempt to verify numbers.

penny wrote:Each member of the GA did the same thing and had large navies. The MAN would only need to build the LD and the Ghosts. And the Ghosts would probably be a lot fewer.

Actually I'd think the other way around. Sure the Ghosts aren't escorts, so you don't need them for that reason. But they're still your scouts -- the less irreplaceable ships that are as stealthy as possible to sneak in close, ferret out all the targets, and leave behind guidance platform communication relays to provide final strike targeting.

Oyster Bay (admittedly about as big an attack on any system that the MAlign should every need to pull off) used basically everything they had and seems to have had about 18 or so Ghosts to about 28 Sharks. (see below) That's fewer, but not a lot fewer.

And I'm actually surprised it's that low.
However a LD seems like it'll carriy the firepower of at least a couple Sharks; but won't require any less scouting and advanced targeting.

A couple of LDs can likely kill the orbital infrastructure of most any system -- but it'll still take 6 or so ships stealthily poking around to put together the fire plan. Of course (if you don't mind risking them) you could use LDs for that kind of sneak in close, manage short ranged RDs, meet up to exchange sensor takes and consolidate a unified target list. But it'd be a total waste to send 6 LDs to scout a system when you only need 1 or 2's worth of weapons. Better to use the cheaper more specialized Ghosts for that and allocate LDs based on much firepower you need to deliver.

(Plus you could even use freighters to deliver Silver Bullets or even normal graser torps as long as Ghosts have locked in the targeting lists -- letting you economize even further)

So I wouldn't be at all surprised if the MAlign built and deployed anywhere from 3 to 6 Ghosts for every LD.


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The gritty details of the ship counts:

We have a hard count on the Sharks, Albrechts watched all 28 leave; and were later told 20 of those went to Manticore
where after emergence from hyper they split up into the separate 14[1] ship Task Group 1.1 Manticore-A strike, and 6 ship Task Group 1.2 Manticore-B strikes; leaving 8 to hit the Blackbird yards in Yeltsin as Task Group 2.1.

Ghosts are a bit harder to count. We know that "freighters" "all of them of at least four million tons" [SftS] carried the Ghosts. I'm assuming 3 freighters; based on circumstantial evidence.

We know there were 3 scouting groups:
Task Group 1.3 - At least 3 ships[2], commanded by Commodore Karol Østby aboard his flagship MANS Chameleon, scouting Manticore-A
Task Group 1.4 - unknown size, commanded by Commodore Milena Omelchenko aboard her flagship (unknown name), scouting Manticore-B
Task Group 2.2 - 6 ships, commanded by Commodore Roderick Sung aboard his flagship MANS Apparition, scouting Yeltsin/Grayson.

I doubt the scouting groups assigned to the more important two targets were smaller than the one assigned to Yeltsin; but we aren't given an overall count. We have a minimum floor of 10 Ghosts. If we assumed the scouts were weighted the same way the strike was (50%/21%/29%) we'd get an 11/4/6 split for 21 total -- but Manticore-A seemed to get all their from the same freighter and I don't know you could cram 11 frigate sized ships into the holds of a pretty regular freighter. So, maybe a more plausible split is to say 18; making for three equal groups of 6. But I wouldn't be surprised to find Manticore-A did get a larger group.


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[1]There's actually an off by one error between MoH and SftS.

MoH [pg 104/369 of the .rtf ebook]
- Task Group 1.1 is MANS Mako plus "fourteen more ships of Task Force One" [total 15] - hitting Manticore-A.
- Task Group 1.2 is "six units" - hitting Manticore-B.
- Task Group 2.1 is "eight additional Shark-class ships" - hitting Yeltsin
[So that's a total of 29 Sharks]

SftS [pg 371/520 of the .doc ebook] Has Albrecht watching the Shark's head off to initiate Oyster Bay and says there are "only twenty-eight of them, divided between Admiral Topolev's Task Force One and Admiral Colenso's much smaller Task Force Two"

SftS [pg 498/520 of the .doc ebook] Gives Task Force One's size as "The twenty Shark-class ships" (by implication leaving Task Force Two with the other 8)

SftS [pg 504/520 of the .doc ebook] Has, beyond Make's "hull, fourteen more ships of Task Force One kept perfect formation upon her" [15 total]

I think RFC messed up and counted TG 1.1 as 14 total, since "fourteen" was written; and so added up to 28 instead of 29 and wrote the rest of SftS from that mistaken number. But since SftS gives us the hard count I went with it even though I think it's more likely the book in error.

FWIW SftS also messed up the task group designations; its glossary marking Østby as commanding Task Group 1.1 even though MoH clearly said that group was the Sharks; and MoH's glossary lists him in command of TG 1.3.

[2] Because 3 are referred to by name: Chameleon, Ghost, Wraith.