THE LENNYS ARE COMING! THE LENNYS ARE COMING!

I'm not sure Detweiler's yacht is a spider drive vessel - I thought it was an impeller driven vessel(like Anisimova's, only larger).

As for why they managed to pull Oyster Bay off with only the Sharks, here's what the original OB list probably looked like, with the revised list in parentheses:

Hephaestus(8 Sharks)
Weyland(6)
Vulcan(7)
Blackbird(8)
Haven's Proctor 1
Haven's Proctor 2
Haven's Proctor 3 Yards
Haven's Gunther Yard
Lovat
(Probably another three or six Havenite systems)
Additional possibilities:
New Berlin
Erewhon
Zanzibar &
Alizon(had Tourville not hit them)
Grendelsbane(Like above, the MAlign could not rely on Haven to be so successful here)
Hancock Station
Trevor's Star

They had only 29 Sharks - barely enough to hit the four targets they chose. If they're building 30 Leonards, each single one capable of replicating a squadron of Sharks' firepower - that would be more than adequate to smash every target on the list above.

munroburton wrote:I'm not sure Detweiler's yacht is a spider drive vessel - I thought it was an impeller driven vessel(like Anisimova's, only larger).

As for why they managed to pull Oyster Bay off with only the Sharks, here's what the original OB list probably looked like, with the revised list in parentheses:

Hephaestus(8 Sharks)
Weyland(6)
Vulcan(7)
Blackbird(8)
Haven's Proctor 1
Haven's Proctor 2
Haven's Proctor 3 Yards
Haven's Gunther Yard
Lovat
(Probably another three or six Havenite systems)
Additional possibilities:
New Berlin
Erewhon
Zanzibar &
Alizon(had Tourville not hit them)
Grendelsbane(Like above, the MAlign could not rely on Haven to be so successful here)
Hancock Station
Trevor's Star

They had only 29 Sharks - barely enough to hit the four targets they chose. If they're building 30 Leonards, each single one capable of replicating a squadron of Sharks' firepower - that would be more than adequate to smash every target on the list above.

Ah.

If I'm not misunderstanding you, you are presuming that the LDs will be built for infrastructure raids only, relieving that responsibility from a more traditional fleet? Somehow that seems like lots of overkill.

Does textev put the total of LDs at ~ 30?

Also, has the crewing requirements been mentioned anywhere by David?

MaxxQ wrote:currently available textev clearly indicates that there's absolutely no way a Detweiler could stand up to even a heavy cruiser armed with DDMs or MDMs in pods.

I dunno. Spider drive detection range is about a light-second even if you know what you're doing, according to MoH, right? Isn't that comparable to energy range? So the Lenny Det could sneak up within energy range of a pod-layer and kill it with grasers.

cralkhi wrote:I dunno. Spider drive detection range is about a light-second even if you know what you're doing, according to MoH, right? Isn't that comparable to energy range? So the Lenny Det could sneak up within energy range of a pod-layer and kill it with grasers.

That's the best The MAlign could do. They don't have FTL comms or any of the Ghostrider tech (or Haven equivalent.)

That "light-second detection" is more range than the GA is currently capable of and far less range than the GA will soon be capable of. The GA has far more motivation and experience in countering enemy tech than the MAlign has.

The Spider Drive warship is going to be a flash-in-the-pan rather than a game changer and become The Drive That Cannot Be Named to go with the Weapon That Shall Not Be Named.(tm)

cthia wrote:Ah.

If I'm not misunderstanding you, you are presuming that the LDs will be built for infrastructure raids only, relieving that responsibility from a more traditional fleet? Somehow that seems like lots of overkill.

Does textev put the total of LDs at ~ 30?

Also, has the crewing requirements been mentioned anywhere by David?

No textev on numbers of LDs. Or their crews. 30 is my guess based on there being ~30 training ships(the Sharks).

One of the ways to look at it is, the German u-boats weren't ever meant to defeat their opponents' main fleets. They did incredible damage within a narrow window of time, before the Allies figured out how to mostly neutralise the threat.

As for overkill, that's a matter of perspective. If the R&D costs are disregarded, the units are extremely efficient - Haven for example couldn't scratch Manticore's home shipyards despite using 300 plus wallers - 2.4 billion tons of shipping. The Sollies failed even harder with more. The Manticore portion of Oyster Bay used roughly 100 million tons of shipping - and every single one of them made it home.

Conceptually, they're probably most like nuclear missile submarines - invisible at all but the shortest ranges, with a devastating payload capable of infrastructure-destroying strikes. Armed with some anti-shipping weapons, but not intended to seek out the other side's first-line warships.

Of course, there is probably a surprise. We'll just have to wait a couple more years to find out exactly what it is!

Something occurred to me while watching a movie last night.


What would Manticore, Grayson or Haven do if a fleet of Lenny Dets were able to get in system and in optimum position, contacted the planet and insisted that the planet and navy surrender and strike its wedge or else the planet dies?

During every applicable confrontation in the Honorverse, each CO always had to extend his force and protect the planet. Sebastian D'Orville stated that he had no choice but to extend his forces (go out and meet) the Havenite force. He had to respect the possibility of an EE strike. However, if the enemy forces have already managed to get themselves into position — checkmate?

The US does not negotiate with terrorists. Yet, what if the terrorists were holding the entire planet hostage? Or the entire US and its allies? Which is effectively what the Lennys can do.

Edit:

It reminds me of the movie Independence Day when the motherships were maneuvering into strategic position around the planet, and Jeff Goldblum's character answered the question "What happens when they all get into position?" ...

"Checkmate."

In the Old West parlance a cowboy referred to it as...

"I've got the drop on you!"

munroburton wrote:Since the (manned) drive is limited to 150g regardless of size, the tonnage limit is effectively removed and large forts do exist, proving such construction is possible

No, there is no hard 150g limit. There is a limit composed of the current effectiveness of grav plates and what techniques you use to deal with thrust. Liquid immersion with oxygenated fluorocarbons gets you about 50g tolerance vs the 6 or so they get from a couch.

munroburton wrote:
If I were the GA, I'd have at least six recon drones operating around each warship permanently, even when "anchored". They can at least interpose wedge fields in an emergency until the warship can warm up its nodes.

So it can, with the best tech the MAN has, detect the torpedo at a light second. Detect does not mean localize, it means detect. It needs to cover 250,000 km to destroy your formation. Assigning it's moving at .2C. So you have ~4 seconds to notice this and attempt to mauve in front of what you think is the target and where you think is right now.

And a recon drone hanging is space with a running wedge in almost certainly more detectable than a graser torp, so it will just evade it.

And the RMN doesn't have the same tech base for locating spiders as the MAN.

MaxxQ wrote:All the information we currently have (and I mean "we" as in including myself - I have no idea what David has in mind for the Lennys) indicates that they cannot fight an open battle with any other ship. David MAY have some new superweapon for them, but there's been no hint of it at all anywhere, and currently available textev clearly indicates that there's absolutely no way a Detweiler could stand up to even a heavy cruiser armed with DDMs or MDMs in pods.

David has explicitly said that the MAN knows exactly what it is doing and their ships are not one-trick ponies. What that will result in is unclear.