Attacking Earth

StealthSeeker wrote:

Kytheros wrote:There's no point in destroying the Reserve. Actually
trying to reactivate it would break the SLN, and the League.
Nothing in it has any meaningful combat value, much of it is old and obsolete, even by the standards of the SLN, no real maintenance has been performed, and there's jack all for crew.
It would be cheaper and faster to design and build an entire new fleet than to reactivate the SLN Reserve. You'd almost certainly end up with better ships if you started from scratch, too.

I would disagree. Filareta in his attack on Manticore was boasting of the size of the reserve fleet as in incentive for the Manticore fleet to surrender and not antagonize the SLN. The SLN itself is just now coming to the realization of how useless the reserve SD's really are, how aware do you think the public is of just how useless it is? Having it destroyed would sociologically remove the "club" of the reserve fleet from the minds of the SL general public, not just the SLN.

Second, SD's would be lousy at commerce raiding but the thousands of smaller ships, destroyers and cruisers, which would be much easier to bring out of mothballs, would work great for the commerce raiding that the new SLN "Lord Admiral" is suggesting for a war tactic. Those smaller ships may not be a match for any GA ship of similar size but the shear number of them scattered about the universe would be in hundreds of places that the GA would not have the ships to cover. How many destroyers could they crew with the people from one active SD or called up from a reserve?


Third, how much of a shock would it be to the SL and the SLN to have a bunch of "insignificant" LAC's "ghost" in, unseen, until they go active, and start destroying things. The facilities for building/reactivating ships would also have to be destroyed on the "pass through" by the LAC's. The carriers for the LAC's would drop them off outside sensor range, then jump to the opposite side of the elliptic to pick them up after they have passed through and destroyed everything.

Use those LAC's to hit them hard like they did to Haven in operation buttercup(?). Their heads will be spinning so hard they won't have a clue as to which end is up!

Destroy as much military infrastructure as you can but leave the civilian stuff alone. The GA might even try some commerce raiding of it's own. Capture as much shipping as they can. The SL is already severely short on transports, make it even worse. If the GA ship doesn't have a prize crew for the freighter, space everything from the freighter but food, clothing and farm equipment. We don't want them to think that we are trying to starve anyone to death or kill civilian crews.

Leave civilian stuff as untouched as possible. Make it clear that the attack is only on the military as a reprisal for their attack on Beowulf.

pnakasone wrote:Must not forget that SLN is two different Navies Battle Fleet and Frontier Fleet. The reserve is primarily Battle Fleets SDs and contains only a small number of the lighter classes. All the light stuff was to be provided by the Frontier Fleet.

StealthSeeker wrote:

pnakasone wrote:Must not forget that SLN is two different Navies Battle Fleet and Frontier Fleet. The reserve is primarily Battle Fleets SDs and contains only a small number of the lighter classes. All the light stuff was to be provided by the Frontier Fleet.

The Frontier Fleet always seems to be strapped for ships and what they have seems to be of much older and refurbished classes. I don't think Crandal's attack force used any Frontier Fleet ships and she had a good number of smaller class ships.

I just don't see the Frontier Fleet coming up with the number of ships needed for the commerce raiding that the new SLN "High Admiral" is talking about. And it didn't seem like he was talking about taking the time to build a bunch of new ships for how soon he wanted to begin the task. Thought he was talking about building a bunch of smaller classes rather than SD's, (he could turn them out much faster) at least until the technology gap is closed. But he is still going to need that bunch of smaller class ships that are almost immediately available and they have to come from somewhere. Where did all those BC's come from that were delivered to Monica?

I think that there are a lot of smaller ships in the reserve.

StealthSeeker wrote:The Frontier Fleet always seems to be strapped for ships and what they have seems to be of much older and refurbished classes. I don't think Crandal's attack force used any Frontier Fleet ships and she had a good number of smaller class ships.

kzt wrote:The RMN was also strapped for ships in 1904. They have several thousand worlds vs the few dozen that the RMN had to worry about. How many BC, CA,Cl, and DD did the RMN have in 1904?

The SLN could literally 100 times more ships than the RMN did and still be over extended due the vastly larger distances that have to deal with.

StealthSeeker wrote:I agree that the SLN and FF have numerically more ships but they are indeed spread out very thinly. In this case a numerically and technically superior guerilla attack force making strategic tactical strikes could take down a dispersed force in detail. Making it even harder for the SLN to concentrate enough ships in a single location for effective use. Take them apart piece by piece before they can organize an effective defence.

kzt wrote:

StealthSeeker wrote:I agree that the SLN and FF have numerically more ships but they are indeed spread out very thinly. In this case a numerically and technically superior guerilla attack force making strategic tactical strikes could take down a dispersed force in detail. Making it even harder for the SLN to concentrate enough ships in a single location for effective use. Take them apart piece by piece before they can organize an effective defence.

Let me restate this.
In 1905 the RMN had
199 BC
333 CA
195 CL
485 DD

And they were still always short of ships for Silesia etc.

Assume that the SL has
19,900 BC
33,333 CA
19,500 CL
48,500 DD

Which is the 100X number I used above.

Do you think they might be able to cause some issues wandering around Manticoran space if they decide that is the mission and to hell with all the other stuff they normally do?

Why or why not?

StealthSeeker wrote:

kzt wrote:quote="StealthSeeker"
I agree that the SLN and FF have numerically more ships but they are indeed spread out very thinly. In this case a numerically and technically superior guerilla attack force making strategic tactical strikes could take down a dispersed force in detail. Making it even harder for the SLN to concentrate enough ships in a single location for effective use. Take them apart piece by piece before they can organize an effective defence.
quote
Let me restate this.
In 1905 the RMN had
199 BC
333 CA
195 CL
485 DD

And they were still always short of ships for Silesia etc.

Assume that the SL has
19,900 BC
33,333 CA
19,500 CL
48,500 DD

Which is the 100X number I used above.

Do you think they might be able to cause some issues wandering around Manticoran space if they decide that is the mission and to hell with all the other stuff they normally do?

Why or why not?

Well if they have 100x the ships and 1000x the space to protect they'll have one tenth the number of ships to concentrate in a particular area. (like my funny math?)

If I remember correctly, it was stated at some point that Filareta's task force of hundreds of ships was only something like the 4th time in the SL history that the SL had managed to put that many ships together and it took them forever and a day to do it. And they got themselves blown to little bitty pieces. I suppose it is possible that if they collected enough ships, thousands of them, from all over the SL, they could overwhelm the Manticore defence. But they had a hard time collecting Fiareta's ships and he was much nearer a location of more concentrated existence of ships.

At the rate at which they could redeploy ships, the GA might be able to destroy them faster than they can gather. The mandarins are struggling to get a force together to pay a visit to Beowulf to "secure" the system.

So no, I don't think they can pull enough ships from their widely dispersed locations and move them to the verge and do it effectively. Not in the turmoil that the GA would be bringing down around their ears. Occupied wormholes and all that. Especially if sectors are to scared to let all their ships go and become defenceless in all the turmoil.

Not going to happen, especially if I take out the SLN admin facilities in Mars orbit. That would be a serious part of their command and control.

George J. Smith wrote:
They already have a fleet of 500+ ships which was intended to be the 2nd wave after Filaletre's fleet, (even though they didn't think it would be required) that plus the task force which was trying to use the Beowulf terminus to support Filaletre might be the force that goes to Beowulf to stop the Beowulfers from leaving the league.