Reserve destruction

Loren Pechtel wrote:

noblehunter wrote:Getting back the reserve, I want Manticore to leave it in one piece. That way when the Mandarins attempt to reform the League into something that can survive we get to see idiot politicians objecting because it was really that serious, they'd activate the Reserve. It's not like the Mandarins could admit every last one of those ships is barely worth the missiles it'd take to blast them to cinders.

They're not useless. The ships are just as capable as they were before at keeping the thumb on their rebellious systems.

So completely useless, then. Battle Fleet didn't go anywhere near rebellious protectorates; that was Frontier Fleet's job (if forces directly responsible to OFS couldn't manage it), and they had the ships (and Marines) to do it.

noblehunter wrote:The problem with sending the Reserve out on suppression missions is that the GA has the inside track. Since the GA can still use the wormhole network it would be a simple matter for them to position forces to intercept. Especially once they get intelligence assets in place.

Any time those SDs went out they'd run the risk of finding a flotilla of cruisers waiting for them. Once they crossed the hyper limit their only choice would be surrender or die.

We aren't saying to use them against the GA. They're basically just targets to most anything the GA can field.

The thing is the fewer hulls the Sollies can field the more trouble they will have holding onto rebellious provinces.

Especially if the GA takes to mining troublesome systems: A destroyer and a bunch of Apollo pods floating in space. A destroyer with Apollo pods should be able to take even a waller. After getting a few rebel-suppression missions blown out of space the Sollies will be very careful about what they send out.

(Yes, I know a destroyer can't make proper use of Apollo--I'm saying to use it for the control missile that effectively raises the number of missiles a ship can control 8x and thus would let a destroyer control a salvo that can kill a waller.)

drothgery wrote:So completely useless, then. Battle Fleet didn't go anywhere near rebellious protectorates; that was Frontier Fleet's job (if forces directly responsible to OFS couldn't manage it), and they had the ships (and Marines) to do it.

And there's something magical about a Battle Fleet ship that means it can't be used by Frontier Fleet?

Loren Pechtel wrote:And there's something magical about a Battle Fleet ship that means it can't be used by Frontier Fleet?

Battle Fleet doesn't really own anything except SDs. Almost all of the screening and scouting elements belong to Frontier Fleet. FF has smaller ships because it doesn't need bigger ships and can't afford to concentrate the manpower in each SD and cover the area they're responsible for.

Adding ships from the Reserve Fleet, which is mostly old SDs, would be a negative force addition to Frontier Fleet -- they require more people to police fewer systems. There are only a few systems with SDFs that Frontier Fleet could't intimidate with CAs or BCs.

The biggest problems for the SLN are time and money. Both of which are being constricted by outside players.

The currently the active BF and FF should be more then sufficient to keep a lid on things outside of GA and Beowulf.

It will take time for any change in policy change to reach the reserve yards outside of Sol System. Even with out upgrades it will take time to reactive and restock each ship. Then you have to get a crew aboard and give them time to start working together as a cohesive team. I say it will take six months to a year before we would really see ships coming out of the reserve. There will be practical limits on how many ships that can be brought out of the reserves at any one time.

Now if they have to upgrade a ship it will take up a slip space that could be used for building a new ship. That has to be taken in to account when choices are being made on which ships to pull out of the reserves.

I have made the comment before that reserve probably grew far larger then was originally intended. All that is really need is enough ships to cover the lag in getting the shipyards up to war production levels.

pnakasone wrote:The currently the active BF and FF should be more then sufficient to keep a lid on things outside of GA and Beowulf.

There is a comment in one of the books that Frontier Fleet had to rely on the SLN's reputation for overwhelming response to attacks because they didn't have enough ships to patrol in proper strength.

Battle Fleet is greatly reduced and likely to be further reduced by attacking Beowulf and/or further encounters with the GA.

pnakasone wrote:It will take time for any change in policy change to reach the reserve yards outside of Sol System.

Per Admiral Kingsford, the new CNO of the SLN, they won't be reactivating any of the reserve because they don't have the money, they don't have the people, they don't have the time, and the Reserve ships are the wrong ships for the kind of war they have to fight.

Any discussion of the Reserve thus has to be of systems grabbing parts of it to beef up, or form from scratch, their SDFs. Whether it is current or former members of the SLN or Verge systems who think they see an opportunity to grab some serious fire-power on the cheap, There are going to be numerous problems to be overcome in getting a reserve SD activated, armed, and moved to its new home.

In the final accounting, a reserve SD is going to be a very expensive scarecrow that does very little to improve military capability.

We aren't saying to use them against the GA. They're basically just targets to most anything the GA can field.

The thing is the fewer hulls the Sollies can field the more trouble they will have holding onto rebellious provinces.

Especially if the GA takes to mining troublesome systems: A destroyer and a bunch of Apollo pods floating in space. A destroyer with Apollo pods should be able to take even a waller. After getting a few rebel-suppression missions blown out of space the Sollies will be very careful about what they send out.

The last line is what I meant. The GA doesn't even need to mine the system as you suggest. Just take advantage of their superior position to get intel and move ships far faster than the Sollies. And with security duty off the table there's no viable use for the SDs. But if not reactivated they'll be a giant distraction for any attempts to get the Assembly on board with improving the League effectiveness.

Per Admiral Kingsford, the new CNO of the SLN, they won't be reactivating any of the reserve because they don't have the money, they don't have the people, they don't have the time, and the Reserve ships are the wrong ships for the kind of war they have to fight.

And it'll be next to impossible to explain that to certain kinds of politicians Weber tends to have floating around.

Weird Harold wrote:In the final accounting, a reserve SD is going to be a very expensive scarecrow that does very little to improve military capability.

To be fair the reserve SDs have worked as rather good scarecrows for centuries. Unfortunately the crows now have guns big enough to simply vaporize the scarecrow.

Weird Harold wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:And there's something magical about a Battle Fleet ship that means it can't be used by Frontier Fleet?

Battle Fleet doesn't really own anything except SDs. Almost all of the screening and scouting elements belong to Frontier Fleet. FF has smaller ships because it doesn't need bigger ships and can't afford to concentrate the manpower in each SD and cover the area they're responsible for.

Adding ships from the Reserve Fleet, which is mostly old SDs, would be a negative force addition to Frontier Fleet -- they require more people to police fewer systems. There are only a few systems with SDFs that Frontier Fleet could't intimidate with CAs or BCs.

There actually ARE BCs in the Reserve:

from SoS:

"While the Indefatigables are being replaced in Solarian service by the Nevada-class ships, Mr. President," Levakonic said, speaking up for the first time, "they served primarily with the frontier fleet elements. As I'm sure you're aware, that means they were kept much more rigorously updated with refits than is traditionally the case for Solarian ships of the wall or battlecruisers attached to the Central Reserve. These vessels represent very nearly the latest word in SLN weaponry and EW capabilities. Ms. Anisimovna has pointed out that they would effectively quadruple your existing tonnage. In terms of actual effective combat strength, your navy's capabilities would increase by a factor of well over a hundred."

{bolding mine}

It is possible that the Reserve BCs will be activated, but that could take as long as an SD - especially since it appears that they are just as out of date as the rest of the reserve.

Theemile wrote:

There actually ARE BCs in the Reserve:

from SoS:

"While the Indefatigables are being replaced in Solarian service by the Nevada-class ships, Mr. President," Levakonic said, speaking up for the first time, "they served primarily with the frontier fleet elements. As I'm sure you're aware, that means they were kept much more rigorously updated with refits than is traditionally the case for Solarian ships of the wall or battlecruisers attached to the Central Reserve. These vessels represent very nearly the latest word in SLN weaponry and EW capabilities. Ms. Anisimovna has pointed out that they would effectively quadruple your existing tonnage. In terms of actual effective combat strength, your navy's capabilities would increase by a factor of well over a hundred."

{bolding mine}

It is possible that the Reserve BCs will be activated, but that could take as long as an SD - especially since it appears that they are just as out of date as the rest of the reserve.

Indeed, and in keeping with the general thread, its potentially viable to steal anything that's physically present in the Reserve.

They're out of date ships, built for the wrong kind of war... I believe that many to most of the Reserve superdreadnoughts are still armed with auto-cannon defenses, and very few (if any) have point-defense lasers, because they were designed and built centuries prior to laserhead missiles that have stand off attack range rather than contact warheads. The Reserve BC's would be similar, but still have greater mobility and lower cre requirements than the SD's do.


But all that is only valid when fighting against a Grand Alliance opponent. Against anyone else, those ships are still perfectly viable either for active operations, or as a scarecrow threat to scare off would-be aggressors. Solarian League member state politicians are going to be desperate to be seen as "doing something", regardless of whether it's a good something or not. By buying, bribing, stealing, or commandeering Reserve ships, they're achieving that something that would keep them voted into government.

Think Aleksandra Tonkovic from the Talbott Cluster convention, she did her heel-dragging because she honestly thought she could manipulate things her way, regardless of whether it was for the better good of the talks or not.