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GA response to SL attempts to prevent seccessions

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Re: GA response to SL attempts to prevent seccessions
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Thu Jul 27, 2017 8:21 pm

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Jonathan_S wrote:Well as soon as you fire you've pretty much lit off a flare showing where you all, the missile traces are unmistakable. Cataphracts launched towards that might not have the best targeting information but they're probably sufficiently threatening to push you into going active and bringing your active defenses online (rather thay trying to play a hole in space) and those have the downside of making you more visible (while also radically improving you ability to stop the incoming fire)

As for the 3rd drive you might be right. I went back and looked briefly and 2nd Manticore and the ranges were less than I thought - everybody appears to have been within 15 million km of their targets - way inside DDM range.


But the launch against Byng was equivalent to 30 million km (edge of DDM range - though Michele used towed Mk23s) and reports of that range had gone back to the League.

The real evidence would be that Crandal's force at Spindle was engaged from "five-three-point-niner-six million kilometers" (53,960,000 km) though the closing vector made that just a 7.5 minute, 450 second, launch which is equivalent to an at rest range of 45,643,500 km.
But I don't know if sufficiently detailed reports of that debacle got back to the League. If known, that range would imply either a 3rd drive (or extended range drives on a 2 drive missile; something we've never seen done).


Remember, they have pods. They have plenty of time to deploy every pod they have and get far away before things go hot--the Sollies could shoot up the empty pods if their missiles could acquire but that's it. They would only use their internal magazines if they felt safe doing so--the point here isn't a matter of defending the system or winning the battle, but giving the Sollies as bloody a nose as they can.

As for Spindle, I thought they only used two stages there--weren't they using some 2-stage shipboard missiles?
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Re: GA response to SL attempts to prevent seccessions
Post by Loren Pechtel   » Thu Jul 27, 2017 8:33 pm

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A simple way to destroy the reserve without using up a whole bunch of missiles:

C-frac LAC strike. They come in ballistic at something like half of lightspeed. They can use their grasers at very short range, it will make quite a mess of the ships.

They will be out of range of return graser fire in something like 10 seconds--can the defenders realize what's up and shoot in that time? In case of a surprise attack, most likely not. So long as they're not flying at a Sollie ship no missile can catch them.

However, how about a more appropriate response to a KEW strike?

Take some cruisers. Take some Mistletoe drones, remove the warheads and replace them with a bunch of sand. Think Oyster Bay against various Sollie military bases in space. The cruisers provide the boost, then release the drones that only use their engines as need be to line up, they are otherwise ballistic. KEW strike on the bases. From Oyster Bay we saw that you can't keep a wedge around such things, the strike will go home.
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Re: GA response to SL attempts to prevent seccessions
Post by PeterZ   » Thu Jul 27, 2017 9:39 pm

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Why not simply send in a drone to run its wedge through every ship in its path? Or or three drones working together will destroy all the SDs in the anchorage in less than 20 minutes.
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Re: GA response to SL attempts to prevent seccessions
Post by kzt   » Thu Jul 27, 2017 10:00 pm

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They have literally millions of missiles on hand. They really don't need to be particularly concerned with ammunition expenditures. The only time anyone in the RMN has ever been concerned with ammunition conservation was Kuzak, who succeeded in dying with 90% of her ammunition still in magazines.
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Re: GA response to SL attempts to prevent seccessions
Post by Theemile   » Thu Jul 27, 2017 11:38 pm

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Hi Lyonheart,

Top posting so the relevant discussion is available below.

As for the size of the Protectorates, I've seen numbers from 50-2000 thrown around, with top and bottom numbers being questionable (Especially since we've seen interactions with 30-40 protectorates in the books, and given the shape of the map and how dense we know the core to NOT be, the SL ruling over 4000 worlds doesn't make sense.) My assumption is a conservative range many have agreed upon - if the actual number of protectorates is higher, it just adds to the number of systems required to picket and the complexity of the task suggested.

Agreed on the data points you brought up to RFC, however it may be retconned. In SITS (yes I know, semi-canonical), the IAN situation book emphasized that the IAN was LAC heavy in 1900, with large wings of LACs deployed in each system. This LAC heavy doctrine (which may have influenced later RMN CLAC doctrine), would free lighter units for convoy and scouting duties while the LACs take inner system patrol duties.

In WoH or AAC, we see Diamato musing about his BC's (Havenite) being rebuilt with fewer energy mounts and more Anti-missile systems, with few new builds. The war with Manticore probably ate up many light units, followed by the civil war, and finally the splintering of the newer conquests probably saw many light units lost or being taken by seceding systems. And seeing Haven had a small FOREIGN footprint with it's merchant marine and has always been the aggressors against a much smaller adversary, I can see that it never gained convoy experience per-war or had built expecting to need it, since the majority of it's merchies moved from one well defended system to another.

My comment about Grayson was not a comment about it's light units, they have a small merchant marine and 1 "colony", so they do not need many of the traditional DD/CL roles, especially in the CLAC era; however, the number of wallers they have is overly extraneous for their needs - even when they adjust after the wars are over and dump the non-Podlayers, their wall will be massive for their needs in relation to the rest of the universe.

That being said, I always felt that all the big navies had low light unit numbers. The proper pre-war wall doctrine for every waller squadron, had 1 BC or CA squadron tied in close to the wall to defend vulnerable aspects of the wallers, and a DD/CL squadron tied close to the Cruisers to protect them as well. In addition the close screen, you should have a mid screen of a squadron or more of CA/CLs positioned at the edge of missile range, and 1-2 squadrons of DD/CLs for scouting/antiscouting purposes - for each Waller squadron!

Obviously, the outer screens for a fleet of 10 SD squadrons does not need 10 squadrons for the mid screen and 10-20 squadrons for the outer screen, but you should build your forces as if you need them, because they were deployed in squadron size to various hot spots as needed.

Just in this screening role, the RMN should have had ~600 BC/CAs and >600 CL/DDs - where it only had ~530 BC/CAs and 780 CL/DDs total. For commerce raiding, deep raiding, strategic scouting, merchant protection, and show the flag duties, as well as system picketing and sensor ghost chasing, in addition to Fleet picket and scout duties, the RMN should have had >2x the number of light and medium units it actually had in it's OOB in 1905.

And the PRH, with ~825 wallers, ~290 BC/CAs and ~980 CL/DDs should have had more.


lyonheart wrote:Hello TheEmile,

Thanks for another set of excellent points.

I've forgotten how detail my comments within another post but to hope to respond more specifically below:


Theemile wrote:Refining KZT's point, let's define the players. The League has just under 1800 members, and an unknown number of protectorates (probably somewhere between 200 and 500). With wormholes, double planet systems, military bases, etc, we could easily say that there are 2500 major "targets" in the League.

[/The textev repeatedly says 'several hundred protectorates', which I take to mean at least 600, while the number of known wormhole termini is probably between 50-60 throughout interstellar humanity's explored space, and given the SL's penchant for corruption, I doubt there are few naval bases in uninhabited systems within the SL, when so much can be made by the host system, so I'll buy approximately 2500 total potential targets, but note they aren't all simultaneously critically important]

Assuming the RMN has retired or sold off most of the light and legacy fleet units seen in the 1920 fleet list and extrapolating from HOS's build numbers ( as well as figuring in known losses) we can figure that the active Manty fleet is probably smaller than 2000 units, with ~25% being capital ships. Grayson's fleet is insanely top heavy, with capital ships being over half of it's ~500 ships.

[/Very good, yet keep in mind the 1920 FSC is often contradicted by HoS; and given OB, I suspect all escorts are being retained to cope with the construction crisis, which would include some 700 'legacy' ships of the 840 on the chart, while the last ten monthes of new construction was certainly greater than the first ten monthes (391 CA's, CL's, and DD's) so some 900 N/C should also be in service, along with approximately one hundred more BCP/L's and CLAC's, for a total of 200 each, besides 2-300 SDP's and the 230 old SD's, for something between 2400-2500.

The GSN's OoB isn't that strange since it doesn't have the MMM to protect, so aside from fleet work, they just have just a few local convoys to near neighbors, NTM HoS credits them with 54 DD's not 20, and 40 not 60 CA's.

Compared to the other fleets listed, the GSN's is fairly reasonable, the rest are truly ludicrous given their obvious requirements.

Indeed at the first HonorCon I managed to talk to RFC while he was waiting to sign books, and pestered him into admitting the IAN's listed escorts were far too few {which is why he signed my SoS HB with "I should have paid more attention!" :D , although that was even more true of the RHN's, given 150 star system's to patrol and protect.

According to the chart, the IAN had only 280 active and 60 reserve cruisers and destroyers to patrol and protect ~39 star systems before adding Silesia's 33+ [their 51+%], which using the n(n-1)/2 rule to determine the number of potential routes (741) that free trade and commerce might choose to use, and while smaller distributed networks of only around 4-5 systems in ~5-6 weeks could drastically reduce convoy routes to perhaps 5-6%, the rate or frequency of visits (requiring more escorts) is critical to keeping the economy moving if not growing smoothly.

Indeed back at the bar, I argued the grossly inadequate peep escorts were a major reason the peep economy was choking if not starving; there weren't enough convoys moving enough goods fast enough.

My solution to this was to infer that all peep escorts of 5/8's or less tonnage than the latest RMN class [ie >53.125 Kt, which given the RHN was estimated to be ~25% superior to peep's of the same size meant the old ones had a less than 50% chance of surviving] were turned over to the commerce or interior ministries, to help deal with pirates (though some were ex-naval units from occupied systems), who generally had worse ships, and while the numbers were still grossly inadequate, any escort was far better than none.

Of course it might have helped that most such peep convoys may not have carried cargoes pirates wanted. ;)

Unfortunately, it didn't seem appropriate or courteous to go back to my room to find my notes then return and lay all of my figures and reasoning on a hapless RFC, when he couldn't do the same. :(

So the great influx of thousands of MMM freighters into the RoH might turn out to be the best economic shot in the arm the RoH's more distant systems has yet experienced. :)

Thus, while the RHN's 571 escorts look better than the IAN's 340, the diminished RoH still had ~150 star systems for over 11,000 potential separate routes, so even 1% of those arranged for convoy routes makes the chart figures pitiful even without any for working for the fleet.]


We don't know Haven's build numbers yet, but the 1920 fleet list shows Haven's small fraction of light units. The massive losses at Manticore really hurt their light forces ( 100 CA and BCs were destroyed) in addition to the losses from Honor's raids. Unless they kicked up their light construction, we can extrapolate their 1923 fleet to be ~2000-2500 ships, with a capital fraction over 50%.

[/Since the RoH has some 40 industrialized systems, assigning several to construct each class should turn out huge numbers in the ~33 monthes since the second war began.

I think we all agree that Bolthole had to be doing some R&D on all RHN classes, though SDP's and CLAC's had the obvious maximum priority, and thence provided construction blueprints to each ship class group when the new design was approved [fairly quickly given the exigences of the war]; HoL will be very intriguing indeed.

With 12-13 times the number of industrialized star systems, and at least a 75% longer construction period (since the war began), twice or even three times the SKM/SEM's new construction total to OB seems very possible, for a combined total closer to 6000, leaving out the IAN which should add another 1000+.]

So the GA has ~4500-5000 warships from it's 3 major players to defend itself, it's convoys AND take the fight to the opposition.

And then there comes the problem of how the GA will know what anyone in the SL is doing. The major information gathering arm, the MMM, has been pulled from SL space, and some planets are still a month or more from a wormhole via DB; unless you send a ship to every target, you don't know what they are doing. And doing so will stretch the GA
fleets too far.


[/Since the GA has 8-10 times the combat power per ship of the SLN, thanks to the MDM pod (if not more, according to the number of pods carried); far smaller TG's, of less than 1% in terms of numbers and tonnage, can respond to handle the secession mission.

Laocoon was only initiated in March 1922, and by July Kolokoltsov knew the RMN had seized 80% of the hyper bridge termini, with news of more obviously in transit; so restoring trade to those areas now under GA control could begin to repair the damage and dislocation of the past 7 if not 4 monthes.

In terms of intel, there are the 200+ captured FF ships, if the GA can't use its own with SLN transponders to check on things in a variety of ways, presumably prioritized for strategic concerns.

Thanks again for the excellent post,

L
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: GA response to SL attempts to prevent seccessions
Post by Theemile   » Thu Jul 27, 2017 11:47 pm

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Loren Pechtel wrote:
As for Spindle, I thought they only used two stages there--weren't they using some 2-stage shipboard missiles?


The 12 CAs controlling the firing at Spindle only used Apollo pods - that is why they were able to control such massive salvos and do such accurate damage. If they got down to internal missiles, they could have only controlled 3 double broadsides from each SAG-C, or 1440 missiles. The Apollo 8x force multiplier allowed for salvos over 10,000 missiles.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: GA response to SL attempts to prevent seccessions
Post by kzt   » Thu Jul 27, 2017 11:58 pm

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Theemile wrote:The 12 CAs controlling the firing at Spindle only used Apollo pods - that is why they were able to control such massive salvos and do such accurate damage. If they got down to internal missiles, they could have only controlled 3 double broadsides from each SAG-C, or 1440 missiles. The Apollo 8x force multiplier allowed for salvos over 10,000 missiles.

I will point out that this is a fairly trivial trick that is easily reproduced by anyone able to design and build even SDMs.
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Re: GA response to SL attempts to prevent seccessions
Post by Theemile   » Fri Jul 28, 2017 12:20 am

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kzt wrote:
Theemile wrote:The 12 CAs controlling the firing at Spindle only used Apollo pods - that is why they were able to control such massive salvos and do such accurate damage. If they got down to internal missiles, they could have only controlled 3 double broadsides from each SAG-C, or 1440 missiles. The Apollo 8x force multiplier allowed for salvos over 10,000 missiles.

I will point out that this is a fairly trivial trick that is easily reproduced by anyone able to design and build even SDMs.


True - they might not be able to integrate FTL or an advanced AI, but anyone should be able to make a oversized control missile with local data repeaters.

I believe at Barnet in the 1st Havenite war, Theisman had his engineers modify their defensive pods to repeat the fire control instructions from 1 control link over all the missiles in the pod. The missiles didn't mesh their data together and coordinate with each other or the mother ship, and each missile was less effective than it would have been with it's own control link, but it allowed even the smallest ships to throw massive salvos with decent guidance.

Quantity, as they say, has a quality all it's own.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: GA response to SL attempts to prevent seccessions
Post by PeterZ   » Fri Jul 28, 2017 10:47 am

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Theemile wrote:Hi Lyonheart,

snip

Agreed on the data points you brought up to RFC, however it may be retconned. In SITS (yes I know, semi-canonical), the IAN situation book emphasized that the IAN was LAC heavy in 1900, with large wings of LACs deployed in each system. This LAC heavy doctrine (which may have influenced later RMN CLAC doctrine), would free lighter units for convoy and scouting duties while the LACs take inner system patrol duties.


I think the IAN will influence more than just the RMN CLAC doctrine, it will be the model how to distribute resources for the defense of their new responsibilities.

LACs can be built anywhere, rather ramping an given location up to build LACs is fairly straight forward. Some elements of the modern RMN LAC might need to be shipped in initially, but that's not really a problem. Talbot for example can establish LAC yards with start-up capital Steadholder Harrington and Klaus Hauptman could dig up out of pocket change. Come to think of it, Mike Henke, Gwen Archer and Sir Aivar's O'Daley in-laws could manage the same thing either separately or in concert. That sort of funding availability makes modern LACs the defense platform of choice for Verge and Protectorate worlds for the next decade or two. The primary question in my mind is whether the design of choice is closer to the RHN model or RMN? The more limited automation would be easier for local SDFs to train for. Using a hybrid design of fission plant technology, better electronics but slightly less automation might be answer for export LACs.

The RMN would see a heavy reliance on LACs as an effective and cost efficient means of defending newly liberated star nations they feel a moral obligation not to let slide into the impending morass of chaos. The GA would babysit a newsy liberated star nation until it got on its feet with an LAC presence and prepare the star nation to defend itself with an LAC force it can build a hyper capable SDF around.

The quicker those local SDFs can be set up, the more quickly GA naval resources can be redeployed to other hot spots. The more LACs deployed means the more hyper capable Cas, CLs and DDs are free to project force or defend commerce where ever that is needed.
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Re: GA response to SL attempts to prevent seccessions
Post by Theemile   » Fri Jul 28, 2017 11:53 am

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PeterZ wrote:
Theemile wrote:Hi Lyonheart,

snip

Agreed on the data points you brought up to RFC, however it may be retconned. In SITS (yes I know, semi-canonical), the IAN situation book emphasized that the IAN was LAC heavy in 1900, with large wings of LACs deployed in each system. This LAC heavy doctrine (which may have influenced later RMN CLAC doctrine), would free lighter units for convoy and scouting duties while the LACs take inner system patrol duties.


I think the IAN will influence more than just the RMN CLAC doctrine, it will be the model how to distribute resources for the defense of their new responsibilities.

LACs can be built anywhere, rather ramping an given location up to build LACs is fairly straight forward. Some elements of the modern RMN LAC might need to be shipped in initially, but that's not really a problem. Talbot for example can establish LAC yards with start-up capital Steadholder Harrington and Klaus Hauptman could dig up out of pocket change. Come to think of it, Mike Henke, Gwen Archer and Sir Aivar's O'Daley in-laws could manage the same thing either separately or in concert. That sort of funding availability makes modern LACs the defense platform of choice for Verge and Protectorate worlds for the next decade or two. The primary question in my mind is whether the design of choice is closer to the RHN model or RMN? The more limited automation would be easier for local SDFs to train for. Using a hybrid design of fission plant technology, better electronics but slightly less automation might be answer for export LACs.

The RMN would see a heavy reliance on LACs as an effective and cost efficient means of defending newly liberated star nations they feel a moral obligation not to let slide into the impending morass of chaos. The GA would babysit a newsy liberated star nation until it got on its feet with an LAC presence and prepare the star nation to defend itself with an LAC force it can build a hyper capable SDF around.

The quicker those local SDFs can be set up, the more quickly GA naval resources can be redeployed to other hot spots. The more LACs deployed means the more hyper capable Cas, CLs and DDs are free to project force or defend commerce where ever that is needed.


I think you are right, the Export LAC is probably going to look more like the RHN Cimmeterre Beta, with RMN updates, and some systems downgraded to export level to protect any secrets and advanced technologies.

And the Havenites would be smart if they start exploring economic opportunities in the Andermani and Manty spheres - they suddenly have access to a market 2x the size of the one they had before, access to the MMM and IMM, and have multiple holes (SL embargo and Manticore station destruction) in the overall economy they can fill.

If Silesian and Rembrandt Trade Union shipyards were smart, they would license the export LAC design ASAP and start churning them out en-mass. Tied with Manty financial backing, we may soon see corporate DBs following about 2 days behind Manty taskforces. Its shuttle deposits a well groomed man with a winning smile, who confidently says "So I hear you have a system self defense problem - do I have a solution for you!" Days later, a pre-arranged freighter fleet arrives with a complete system self defense package
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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