Would Dispersing Shipyards Blunt or Stop a Second Oyster Bay

kzt wrote:We are talking LAC sized weapons. Our guess was 12-30 MT.

Galactic Sapper wrote:12-30 MT does seem reasonable, but we really don't know. The only true upper limit on their size is the mass limit of any wormhole they might want to transit. Yes, we do know they have alpha nodes as well as a spider drive. Since their acceleration is limited by the grav plates rather than a compensator, a large spider ship should accelerate about as fast as a smaller ship. They're going to be absolutely sluggish compared to conventional ships in a grav wave, but that's better than being locked out of grav waves entirely.

As for LAC-sized weapons... no. The Silver Bullets used in UH were specially designed for their function: a recon drone with a second capacitor pack, solar panels, and the business end of a grazer torpedo stuck on the front and was still not quite as big as an LAC. A standard grazer torpedo is smaller than that, but we don't know how much smaller.

Theemile wrote:The Graser Torp is at least in the 5K ton region - it is a full up Starship fusion reactor (which masses in the 3-5 Kton range), and a CL sized Graser (which masses in the 2-3 Kton Range), plus the spider drive, controls, command, comms, RCS, and structure. It could very likely be in the mass range of an old LAC - 8-12Ktons.

Remember - G Torps are large enough that they could not be carried in a Shark's Pod bay and had to be carried externally - and each 5-6 Mton Shark was limited to carrying 3 Torps externally.

I cannot find the quote from RFC about a bubble sidewall, but I remember a statement that the spider drive does not work when the bubble is up. So they are not completely defenseless. Then presumably they turn off the spider drive and bring up the bubble sidewall in some order. But can't that be observed by normal means, despite their great stealth? So isn't there a period as the bubble comes up where the ship is visible and vulnerable? How long does that take? Can you generate a bubble sidewall with alpha nodes or do you need beta nodes for that?

tlb wrote:

kzt wrote:We are talking LAC sized weapons. Our guess was 12-30 MT.

Galactic Sapper wrote:12-30 MT does seem reasonable, but we really don't know. The only true upper limit on their size is the mass limit of any wormhole they might want to transit. Yes, we do know they have alpha nodes as well as a spider drive. Since their acceleration is limited by the grav plates rather than a compensator, a large spider ship should accelerate about as fast as a smaller ship. They're going to be absolutely sluggish compared to conventional ships in a grav wave, but that's better than being locked out of grav waves entirely.

As for LAC-sized weapons... no. The Silver Bullets used in UH were specially designed for their function: a recon drone with a second capacitor pack, solar panels, and the business end of a grazer torpedo stuck on the front and was still not quite as big as an LAC. A standard grazer torpedo is smaller than that, but we don't know how much smaller.

Theemile wrote:The Graser Torp is at least in the 5K ton region - it is a full up Starship fusion reactor (which masses in the 3-5 Kton range), and a CL sized Graser (which masses in the 2-3 Kton Range), plus the spider drive, controls, command, comms, RCS, and structure. It could very likely be in the mass range of an old LAC - 8-12Ktons.

Remember - G Torps are large enough that they could not be carried in a Shark's Pod bay and had to be carried externally - and each 5-6 Mton Shark was limited to carrying 3 Torps externally.

I cannot find the quote from RFC about a bubble sidewall, but I remember a statement that the spider drive does not work when the bubble is up. So they are not completely defenseless. Then presumably they turn off the spider drive and bring up the bubble sidewall in some order. But can't that be observed by normal means, despite their great stealth? So isn't there a period as the bubble comes up where the ship is visible and vulnerable? How long does that take? Can you generate a bubble sidewall with alpha nodes or do you need beta nodes for that?

Yes, we have David's confirmation that the bubble and the spider are incompatable techs, so the spider drive will have to be shut down to activate a bubble.

We've never seen a bubble sidewall in combat or on a ship - so how long does it take to form? - < 1 hr is probably a safe guess . Seriously, The process of forming is probably short enough to defend against a single drive missile launch, but leave a vulnerability for energy weapon shots.

Yes, a sidewall can be observed by normal grav sensors inside at least single drive missile range, So when they switch to their sidewall, they are 100% committed to combat - unless they have some type of defenses we don't know about.

Forts only have 1 ring of beta nodes and use bubble sidewalls for their main defense - without their wedge up - so bubble sidewalls do not require any nodes for operation.

The problem is we are missing SOMETHING - something massive that makes these ships effective in their owner's eyes so they will build bulks of them instead of proven techs. As previously discussed and shown in text - The missile Pods, G-Torps, or Silver Bullets, can all be dropped in a system buy otherwise legitimate freighter traffic. And as demonstrated, the Silver Bullets can be dropped multiple months in advance, maneuver around a system, analyze targets, and attack at a given queue, (G-torps can for weeks to low months) without the need of one of these "Fancy" ships. In "standard" combat they are going to be inferior to a standard SD(p), or even SD, because an SD(p) will tactically outrange them with MDMs, and an SD can bring them into energy range at will, and both can control the combat conditions once they engage. (The Spider drive ship cannot run away when the bubble is up, nor out-run (or run down) either ship under spider.)

So something is missing from the equation. some tech or use of tech we just don't know about.

Personally, If I was an SD(p) captain and I localized one of these, I'd fire off a steady, but low volume, stream of missiles at the LD, forcing it to keep the bubble up and not maneuver, while I maneuvered outside it's effective firecontrol range, then I'd pound it mercilessly, while maneuvering against any Gtorps it fired. (crud, you would have to be vigilant against those things pouncing on you for months after the attack....)

kzt wrote:Sharks were built as training vessels. There are twenty four sharks IIRC. What do you think is a reasonable ratio between training vessels and combat vessels?

I don't think that's the issue. I'm not commenting on how many they plan to eventually build. I'm commenting on how many they are building right now in 1923 and how many we can expect by 1930.

My argument is that they wouldn't ramp up to even 10 LDs at a time before the first one is put through trials.

Once that is done, all bets are off.

kzt wrote:

Sigs wrote:As it stands the MAN is planning a war with unproven ships with a radically different doctrine than anyone else in history and banking on the enemy not being able to find a way to get them on sensors. If their ships don't measure up or their doctrine doesn't measure up or the enemy finds a solution to the spider drive they are in serious trouble.

Let's assume the massive ships are as combat effective individually as each of the rather smaller Lynx fortresses. How does that change the equation to you?

Aren't those fortresses able to take 250 pre-Apollo SD(P)'s? If that's the case and there is a dozen of them it would mean that each fort is the equivalent of 20 SD(P)'s. This means that even if they had only a dozen of them they can go through pretty much any one of the GA's defences save for Manticore, Haven, Beowulf and Grayson and even then it wont be a guarantee. But if they are that powerful all the MA has to do is wait out the GA for a decade, finish off a couple of dozen of them and swoop into the Manticore Home System, crush Home Fleet and split the GA into 3 pieces after the Manticore WH is taken out of the equation. Beowulf/Hypatia cannot give or receive support from anyone else, Haven and Grayson are separated from Beowulf and the Andermani, Erewhon and Maya are separate from everyone else and its game over for the GA.

Sigs wrote:My understanding of the plan involved weakening the SEM and forcing a fight between them and the League in which the RMN is forced to crush the SLN fracturing the League but exhausting themselves and their means of defence. Once the RMN is near defenceless because even if they got their missile production going in 10 months or less it would only be a fraction of their pre-OB production so they will have used everything they had to keep the SLN at bay which would have given the Republic an opening to hit the SEM. Once Manticore falls, the Republic would be to busy incorporating as much of its territory as it can (Talbot, Silesia and the allies) and wouldn’t have any attention to spare for the League. With the League potentially fractured into hundreds of independent nations the RF has a chance to unite.

Please see the other thread on what we think the plan is and the fact we think it's rather off the rails. Your comments to the discussion would be really good.

Weakening the SEM and forcing a fight between the SEM and the League is already a revised plan. The original plan was for Haven to fight the League. The revisions started when the SKM defeated the PRH in the first war. Oyster Bay, though revised itself, was still meant to get Haven to win the war. One of the Detweilers (Albrecht, I think) clearly says they expected Pritchart to force surrender, not ally itself with Elizabeth. Which means that the confrontation they'd started between Manticore and the League wouldn't translate to the war they needed. So even after Oyster Bay, there would have been years, possibly a decade, before that phase of the plan arrived.

Sigs wrote:But at the same time, Mannerheim consistently missing a good chunk of their fleet because it is deployed to guard the other end of the wormhole of Torch would raise sucpisions especially if they have had to do it for a decade or more. And by secret I mean they are hidden, not shown until they are needed. Not being able to explain where at least 8 of your BC’s are at anyone time for decades would be suspicious, maybe not at the time but it sure would raise some flags when the GA starts digging. Not to mention the fact that you have to have a reliable crew for each and every one of those BC’s and reliable crews for every other ship that relieves them. Unless there was something valuable in the system that could justify 8 BC’s as a picket or the Mannerheim fleet was numbered in the hundreds of BC’s where one squadron missing would not be a big deal but it still leaves the reliable crew question.

And you have to rotate the picket home eventually, you cant set up a picket for long term without this getting out and the GA sending a ship or two to investigate this “secret” wormhole. Even when Torch was under Mesa’s control you would still want a picket there just in case. Rotating ships through this deployment for any length of time even if its only the 3 years since Torch was liberated it would mean you have to rotate at LEAST 3 squadrons in which still leaves the crew’s of 24 BC’s with the knowledge of a “secret” wormhole. How long before someone brags at a bar or a party somewhere that in early 1921 they were in a battle while guarding a secret wormhole terminus? And how long before one of the GA’s intelligence services manages to get a sniff of that? At this point with the RF being an independent nation if I were the GA I would make sure that we have intelligence assets on the ground in the main systems of that nation. The battle that they hear about coincides with Harvest Joy going missing, soon enough they cut back through the bullshit and exaggerations and they have all they need “secret wormhole, picket squadron, date of contact”. If you have ships that are not in the public eye and crews that don’t officially belong to you it works, otherwise you leave scarps even if you feed your crews some BS about guarding important economic assets.

Sorry, there are two problems with that argument: "consistently" and "good chunk". The Mannerheim picket of The Twins was neither consistent nor a good chunk of the fleet. It was a squadron of BCs and we know Mannerheim had an outsized Navy, so I expect this means a dozen or two SDs. And it was deployed only around the time the Harvest Joy was expected to transit. The transit was well-publicised, so the MAlign and Mannerheim had enough notice to know to deploy the special squadron, with trustworthy crews. No one is going to transit a wormhole they don't have navigational data for, so there was no danger before the Harvest Joy.

Having 8 BCs disappear for a bit of time is no big deal. You tell the galaxy that it's exercise manoeuvres and you hide the squadron's deployment in an actual, larger exercise of your fleet. Benjamin got away with it twice with the Protector's Own. The crews themselves have to be somewhat trustworthy: as I said, they know about the wormhole and that it is a secret, but they just don't know the real reason why.

But you're right that that third shift impeller tech may brag at a bar and cause the intelligence services to find out what really happened to the Harvest Joy. The problem is only that right now the GA and the SL have no reason to suspect Mannerheim and the RF are connected to the MAlign.

Sigs wrote:What I mean is that if you estimate that your “d-day” would be in 1950 and you need to start the process in 1920 to be fully ready for 1950 I would start in 1890. This gives you more wiggle room, if you need to kick it off early, you have the ships, the crews and the capacity to build more ships and train more crew, if you need to hold off for a couple of decades extra this gives you more time to prepare your crews, increase the size of your navy. If I need to be at work for 6:30 am and to be 5 minutes early I need to leave at 5:50 am I plan on leaving at 5:40 am so that I have some room for traffic, construction etc… and this is for 40 min ahead, when they are planning in centuries rather than minutes, hours , days or months the fudge factor has to be in dacades since only an idiot would have a rock solid plan that gives no wiggle room and worse would instigate a war with a powerful and extremely pissed off enemy and leave the initiative entirely in the hands of that enemy for dacades.

You can't do this ad infinitum. If you calculated that 5:50 am was sufficient and added 10 minutes of buffer, why can't they have done the same? If they thought they needed the fleet in 1950, calculated they could get there by starting the ramp up in 1925, so they started in 1915. Seems sufficient to me and aligned with the information we have.

Sigs wrote:Having 500 SD(P)’s at the Havenite Level or better and discovering the spider drive wouldn’t make their fleet obsolete, it would make it more flexible, you have ships that are proven to be able to go toe to toe with the enemy and you have a secret weapon that can sneak into a system ahead of your main force and sow confusion and destruction in the enemy before battle is even joined. Whats better is you have a doctrine that already works when you take the doctrine from the RMN and RHN and add your own touch to it. As it stands the MAN is planning a war with unproven ships with a radically different doctrine than anyone else in history and banking on the enemy not being able to find a way to get them on sensors. If their ships don't measure up or their doctrine doesn't measure up or the enemy finds a solution to the spider drive they are in serious trouble.

True, except they can't have neither 500 SD(P)s nor at the Havenite level. So that's a moot point. They've know about SD(P)s since 1914, but without MDMs, those aren't very useful. The technology they have access to wouldn't make 500 SDs much of a fight against the RMN or RHN. And I maintain I don't think they have 500: at best, I think they have two squadrons.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

kzt wrote:Sharks were built as training vessels. There are twenty four sharks IIRC. What do you think is a reasonable ratio between training vessels and combat vessels?

I don't think that's the issue. I'm not commenting on how many they plan to eventually build. I'm commenting on how many they are building right now in 1923 and how many we can expect by 1930.

My argument is that they wouldn't ramp up to even 10 LDs at a time before the first one is put through trials.

Once that is done, all bets are off.

We know from the book (SoV) multiple LDs are under construction at Darius as of 1922 and 1/2 completed. Whether there was a prototype we are unaware of, a pilot construction vessel, or whatnot - the first flight of Multiple LDs are 1/2 constructed at the current place in the timeline. I doubt it's 100 ships, but 10-20 (or more) are in the middle of construction right now.

Sigs wrote:

kzt wrote:Let's assume the massive ships are as combat effective individually as each of the rather smaller Lynx fortresses. How does that change the equation to you?

Aren't those fortresses able to take 250 pre-Apollo SD(P)'s? If that's the case and there is a dozen of them it would mean that each fort is the equivalent of 20 SD(P)'s. This means that even if they had only a dozen of them they can go through pretty much any one of the GA's defences save for Manticore, Haven, Beowulf and Grayson and even then it wont be a guarantee. But if they are that powerful all the MA has to do is wait out the GA for a decade, finish off a couple of dozen of them and swoop into the Manticore Home System, crush Home Fleet and split the GA into 3 pieces after the Manticore WH is taken out of the equation. Beowulf/Hypatia cannot give or receive support from anyone else, Haven and Grayson are separated from Beowulf and the Andermani, Erewhon and Maya are separate from everyone else and its game over for the GA.

The comment was the 12 Lynx APOLLO Forts could take on 250 non-Apollo SD(p)s. The LDs do not have Apollo, nor even full MDMs. Plus, LDs waste massive mass on their Spider drive - something Forts don't do with their tiny beta node wedge, allowing more mass in forts for weapons systems. In a standard Fort vs an LD 1:1 fight, the LD would be at a massive disadvantage.

Besides, all the Planets in Manticore have Apollo forts and Shoals of Apollo missiles, so the LDs would need to neutralize them after the destroy the mobile units.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:
I don't think that's the issue. I'm not commenting on how many they plan to eventually build. I'm commenting on how many they are building right now in 1923 and how many we can expect by 1930.

My argument is that they wouldn't ramp up to even 10 LDs at a time before the first one is put through trials.

Once that is done, all bets are off.

They kicked off their 6 century operation, if they had not laid down dozens of Detweilers before they sure as hell have now. We are not talking about a regular navy that is introducing warships into service in peacetime, we are not even talking about the RMN introducing SD(P)'s during wartime, after all they had effective warships to use so they had the luxury of building a few SD(P)'s and CLAC's and try them out in exercises and maybe even in combat unintentionally but the MAN is not in that position. The MAN has 28 BB's in with the Shark-class ships, they have a handful of Ghost-class ships that are scout ships. They don't have the luxury of going through introducing a ship into service, testing it as much as they want and then once satisfied going into mass production, they either build as many of the Detweiler-class ships as they can as quickly as they can and deal with any issues when they come up and potentially be left with a useless warship or they can go through the process of building 1 or 2 ships, testing them, once satisfied in 5-6 years start laying down further ships and end up with whatever regular ships the MAN has in Darius plus 28 Shark-class ships as defence.

It is a little too late for them to start doing things the proper way now that they have killed so many citizens of the member states of the GA, now its build a fleet as fast as possible or lose Darius in a few years when the Grand Fleet and it's 1,000 SD(P)'s show up in Darius a few years down the line faced by a handful of BB's and some regular SD's and lighter ships backed by whatever fixed defences Darius has. They didn't need to step out of the shadows right this minute, they could have waited a decade or two and amended their plans for the changing situation and struck when they were ready but they chose to go so they have to make some choices, do they want to face the GA with a large number of potentially flawed but powerful warships or do they want to face the GA with what they have now.

After all if they don't want to build Leonard Detweilers until satisfied they should at least start building Shark-Class ships as quickly as possible and designing proper weapon load outs for them so they have something to fall back on. They cant depend on the RF for protection because that would put the RF in the cross hairs, and the RF cannot depend on them for assistance because they have nothing to assist with.

Sigs wrote:They kicked off their 6 century operation, if they had not laid down dozens of Detweilers before they sure as hell have now. We are not talking about a regular navy that is introducing warships into service in peacetime, we are not even talking about the RMN introducing SD(P)'s during wartime, after all they had effective warships to use so they had the luxury of building a few SD(P)'s and CLAC's and try them out in exercises and maybe even in combat unintentionally but the MAN is not in that position. The MAN has 28 BB's in with the Shark-class ships, they have a handful of Ghost-class ships that are scout ships. They don't have the luxury of going through introducing a ship into service, testing it as much as they want and then once satisfied going into mass production, they either build as many of the Detweiler-class ships as they can as quickly as they can and deal with any issues when they come up and potentially be left with a useless warship or they can go through the process of building 1 or 2 ships, testing them, once satisfied in 5-6 years start laying down further ships and end up with whatever regular ships the MAN has in Darius plus 28 Shark-class ships as defence.

It is a little too late for them to start doing things the proper way now that they have killed so many citizens of the member states of the GA, now its build a fleet as fast as possible or lose Darius in a few years when the Grand Fleet and it's 1,000 SD(P)'s show up in Darius a few years down the line faced by a handful of BB's and some regular SD's and lighter ships backed by whatever fixed defences Darius has. They didn't need to step out of the shadows right this minute, they could have waited a decade or two and amended their plans for the changing situation and struck when they were ready but they chose to go so they have to make some choices, do they want to face the GA with a large number of potentially flawed but powerful warships or do they want to face the GA with what they have now.

THAT I can agree with. Regardless of whether they had planned for 100 LDs by 1930, after the SL surrendered and the Grand Fleet is intact and out for blood, they have to reconsider the building priorities. They have to build lots of LDs because that's the only strategy they have.

Despite that being a massive risk. What happens if a flaw is found in them? What happens if the spider drive is detectable by some new technology?

As we've discussed, the decision-making at the innermost core of the Onion is no longer rational.

Theemile wrote:Yes, we have David's confirmation that the bubble and the spider are incompatable techs, so the spider drive will have to be shut down to activate a bubble.

We've never seen a bubble sidewall in combat or on a ship - so how long does it take to form? - < 1 hr is probably a safe guess . Seriously, The process of forming is probably short enough to defend against a single drive missile launch, but leave a vulnerability for energy weapon shots.

Yes, a sidewall can be observed by normal grav sensors inside at least single drive missile range, So when they switch to their sidewall, they are 100% committed to combat - unless they have some type of defenses we don't know about.

Forts only have 1 ring of beta nodes and use bubble sidewalls for their main defense - without their wedge up - so bubble sidewalls do not require any nodes for operation.

The problem is we are missing SOMETHING - something massive that makes these ships effective in their owner's eyes so they will build bulks of them instead of proven techs. As previously discussed and shown in text - The missile Pods, G-Torps, or Silver Bullets, can all be dropped in a system buy otherwise legitimate freighter traffic. And as demonstrated, the Silver Bullets can be dropped multiple months in advance, maneuver around a system, analyze targets, and attack at a given queue, (G-torps can for weeks to low months) without the need of one of these "Fancy" ships. In "standard" combat they are going to be inferior to a standard SD(p), or even SD, because an SD(p) will tactically outrange them with MDMs, and an SD can bring them into energy range at will, and both can control the combat conditions once they engage. (The Spider drive ship cannot run away when the bubble is up, nor out-run (or run down) either ship under spider.)

So something is missing from the equation. some tech or use of tech we just don't know about.

Personally, If I was an SD(p) captain and I localized one of these, I'd fire off a steady, but low volume, stream of missiles at the LD, forcing it to keep the bubble up and not maneuver, while I maneuvered outside it's effective firecontrol range, then I'd pound it mercilessly, while maneuvering against any Gtorps it fired. (crud, you would have to be vigilant against those things pouncing on you for months after the attack....)

The problem with raising sidewalls is that you have to drop your stealth, as the sidewalls are very visible at a distance. So you'd do it only if you find yourself already in a pickle, usually having lost your stealth by other means. And raising a bubblewall is a last resort activity, since you become ballistic after this. Against an enemy that can fire missiles every minute for 2 hours, it's a long time to be a sitting duck, made worse by the problem that the spider drive will limit the manoeuvrability.

For all we know, the LDs' main strategic asset is its stealth. It's able to come into a system either undetected (translating a light-month out) or hide itself very quickly after translation, scout the system, then fire a massive swarm of G-torps to finish of any clustered infrastructure.

Against pre-Buttercup galaxy, that may have been sufficient. With surface area to spare, the LD can have a lot of missile tubes to defend against the loss of stealth until it can translate out. And it could probably count on mutual support from other LDs. Against massive MDM swarms and Apollos, I'm not so certain. A spider-driven G-torp probably has a much lower acceleration than an MDM, so range becomes a huge factor as it was in the SL-Manticoran War. Remember: gravity plates have much less ability to nullify acceleration than a wedge, so you can't accelerate the G-torp too fast or it'll just disintegrate on its own -- like hitting a solid wall at thousands of km/s.

Could they have more, that SOMETHING you mentioned? It's possible, but not a given. I think we'd have heard something by now if they did. The fact that this something wasn't an asset during Oyster Bay or Fabius indicates it doesn't exist. And as I said above, the LDs were probably designed to face off pre-Buttercup, isolated and scared enemies.

That part of the equation changed. The MAlign's ability to react to it is limited, plus they are in a time pressure. And finally, it's all too easy to convince yourself you have enough, without the echo chamber issue that RFC has already stated exists. We see it all the time in companies, thinking they have the greatest product and that everyone will love it, only to see it flop in the market.