SLN Reserve

Annachie wrote:Within reason, I would have thought that BF bases would tend to be located at wormholes, especially junctions, and that each base would have a part of the reserve there.
Well, core world junctions/termini anyway.

The problem with that is that there are only two or three wormhole termini inside the Solarian League; Beowulf (which does NOT have a BF Base,) Visigoth, and Sasebo are the only WHT known to be in the SL Core. Visigoth has a substantial System Defense Force (of unknown composition) to contribute to the Renaissance Factor Navy (aka the MAN.)

The other WHT identified by the various glimpses at Operation Lacoon are Shell or Verge systems, which are in Frontier Fleet territory. None of them had any permanent SLN presence.

On the subject of protecting the Reserve, I think that protection is probably pretty minimal. Doing something like pulling the spark plug wires or distributor cap would protect the fleet against theft. Attack of any Core World would be "unthinkable" so a retired bi-centenarian with a tazer (a la "a mall cop") would be considered sufficient physical protection. (Well maybe an old-style LAC to patrol the edges.)

There is Joshua which is out in the Shell. That has an open question as to IF the SL maintains a base there or perhaps just a presence as the gateway to Erwhon. Erwhon would know but so far I don't believe we have been told anything. Erwhon also has it's deal with Maya (and a major surprise for the SL if any of the SL Fleet decide to take over the Erwhon end of the wormhole and then go on to get the other end of the Junction route via Terra Haute.

What I have seen has been mostly the SL posting ships to wormholes mostly for customs "enforcement" which is actualy just keeping the money flowing into the SL (and local governors) pockets.

The SL, in the form of either BF or FF, would need a reason to put an SL base someplace. Some of that would fall under Tactical/Stratigic considerations but give what we know of the League and Fleet so far there is going to be a very heavy influence of who is getting paid or making money to go along with the Strategic component. So far we haven't seen any background on where the Fleet or the SL Government thinks problems for the League were comming from except to keep a bootheal poised over Protectorates which might be getting out of line or places that could be aquired for funding the League and lineing pockets.

What they are going to do now and what is starting to happen at the Reserve bases is also mostly cloudy. If the SL is not rushing to put mothballed SDs into service, they may be working on getting any ships below-the-wall into service. That would include both warships and any fleet transports/freighter types to start to replace the lift capacity taken away by Lacoon.

kzt wrote:

Sigs wrote:If Fort Knox holds 1% of the US gold reserves it requires serious security. If on the other hand it hold 50% of the gold reserves of the US it requires significantly more security.

Consider how you go about stealing 10,000 tons of gold. That's like 500 semis full of gold. Give me some idea how many people you need in your conspiracy to pull this off and how long you think it will take carry it out. Like how long it will take for you to load 20 pallets with a fork lift on each of 500 trucks.

You have to have some security, but not absurd amounts of security.

The security has to be proportional to the value of the target. Just because it is hard, and just because it is very unlikely to happen does not mean it is impossible...

There are plenty of examples in history where some general has assumed it would be impossible for x to happen or for y to happen or for z to happen thus he defended against the most likely threats ignoring the unlikely once. Just because it is unlikely does not mean you should ignore the possibility nor are you exempt from the result of ignoring that possibility.


Fort Knox and it's gold is but one example, what if we were talking about the Nuclear arsenal of the US? Would you say that the higher the concentration of weapons, the heavier the security? If the US disperses it's say 10,000 weapons as a means of protection from surprise attack wouldn't you say that each individual weapon or each individual cluster of 10-15 weapons has to be as heavily protected as possible within reason, but if you clustered 10% of the weapons in one location the security has to be significantly heavier then when it is only a single weapon or even 10 weapons?


This same argument applies to Aircraft carriers, Submarines, Aircraft, tanks etc etc etc...

Weird Harold wrote:On the subject of protecting the Reserve, I think that protection is probably pretty minimal. Doing something like pulling the spark plug wires or distributor cap would protect the fleet against theft. Attack of any Core World would be "unthinkable" so a retired bi-centenarian with a tazer (a la "a mall cop") would be considered sufficient physical protection. (Well maybe an old-style LAC to patrol the edges.)

Some system defense missile launchers, a bundle of LACs along with the long range sensors of the base they´re at or near and you have pretty much made it very nearly 100% impossible for any kind of pirates to ever get anywhere close to the reserve vessels.
And considering they´re mothballed rather "deeply", even the most extreme of hi-jacking would probably require dozens of people days or even weeks before they could move a ship at all anyway.

And as the reserve is stated to be at major fleet bases, there will either be squadrons of active capital ships on location or coming and going pretty much all the time.

And outside of Haven quadrant, a single squadron of DNs backed by system defence missiles and LACs can destroy >99% of anyone that could even try to attack.

And even just the notion of deep strike actions is generally a big no-no, just look back at how shocking that development was in the Haven/Manticore war, and that was for the people there, including most of those doing it.

So yeah, even with just a few squadrons of LACs as available mobile units, those reserve ships were pretty darn safe in general.

Tenshinai wrote:
That is false logic. If the security is sufficient to keep 1% safe, then essentially the same force will still be sufficient for 50%.
Because you don´t want that 1% to be stolen in the first place, so you MUST have ENOUGH to prevent that as well.

You cannot say "oh it´s just 1% so we just make sure NEARLY all thieves can´t steal it".

You have 8,000 SDs to protect and you have a force of 500 SDs and 1,000 escorts(BC and below) at your disposal for pickets.

Scenario 1) Those 8,000 SDs are spread out in 100 locations.

Scenario 2) Those 8,000 SDs are spread out in 50 locations.

Scenario 3) Those 8,000 SDs are spread out in 5 locations.


Would you defend each location with the same level of force regardless?

We do have to take into account that we are not dealing with a competent and rational organization. Would they have less security simply because they believe no outside power would dare attack or try to steal the reserve of the invincible SLN.

Sigs wrote:
The security has to be proportional to the value of the target. Just because it is hard, and just because it is very unlikely to happen does not mean it is impossible...

There are plenty of examples in history where some general has assumed it would be impossible for x to happen or for y to happen or for z to happen thus he defended against the most likely threats ignoring the unlikely once. Just because it is unlikely does not mean you should ignore the possibility nor are you exempt from the result of ignoring that possibility.


Fort Knox and it's gold is but one example, what if we were talking about the Nuclear arsenal of the US? Would you say that the higher the concentration of weapons, the heavier the security? If the US disperses it's say 10,000 weapons as a means of protection from surprise attack wouldn't you say that each individual weapon or each individual cluster of 10-15 weapons has to be as heavily protected as possible within reason, but if you clustered 10% of the weapons in one location the security has to be significantly heavier then when it is only a single weapon or even 10 weapons?


This same argument applies to Aircraft carriers, Submarines, Aircraft, tanks etc etc etc...

Depends on what threat you're worried about. If it's a surprise attack destroying the weapons then a higher concentration requires stronger defenses against that attack to mitigate the loss of dispersion and concealment you get from concentrating your nukes, carriers, etc.
But if you're worried about theft then concentration allows you to economize on defenses/guards. The concentrated items will have more guards than any one of the items would have had while they were dispersed; but less that the aggregate total of all the dispersed guard forces.

This is really a simple geometry problem and has actually been solved before. During WWII the British and the US worked out that the most efficient use of convoy escorts was escorting bigger convoys.

The situation is very simple. If you double the radius, you can store eight times as many starships in the resulting volume. Yet you only quadruple the surface area. The force size you need to defend your mothballed starships is, asymptotically, a function of the surface area of the volume your mothballed starships occupy.

That argues for one big blob of reserve starships orbiting a system you absolutely have to defend anyway.

There are also huge operational advantages of having your reserve starships concentrated -- first off, you don't have to waste time concentrating them for battle after you have activated them. Second, you also make the operation of calling up reserves to crew them much simpler.

So my bet would be to park them all in one of the Lagrange points around Venus' orbit.

pnakasone wrote:We do have to take into account that we are not dealing with a competent and rational organization. Would they have less security simply because they believe no outside power would dare attack or try to steal the reserve of the invincible SLN.

I think that the security of the reserve would have been set centuries before the events in the books and at some point the SLN had to be at least marginally competent and rational force. Plus there is also the advantage at least from my perspective of having x# of independent commands for senior officers.