Strategic Planning

blackjack217 wrote:Easier said than done of course, but its about the only field where I could see an SLN victory, and I think they need at least one.

The problem with this is that the SLN appears constitutionally incapable of making good choices. In fact, they seem to get presented with the chance to make a good decision and then instead take a truly awful choice instead.

Just as a single example I'm going to go with the Second Battle of Manticore. Your opponent is entrenched with most of their forces at their main base. You know what you do first? Hit the mining base. Or pillage the improvements. Those giant arrays? Something other than the most heavily defended point! Even if you can win a full-on-fight don't. Pick up all the easy kills first. When they refused to surrender he just should have been like "whelp, time to go blow the Unicorn belt to dust. You kiddies have fun defending the very last place I'll attack." It might not have done the job, but at least it wouldn't have been so mind-numbingly awful. Or those giant arrays. Just spray them down with autocannons or something.

Seriously, these are the tactics he should have picked up from playing StarCraft.

The point is fighting in a grav wave would be a great move, so we know the SLN will avoid it no matter the cost.

quite possibly a cat wrote:

blackjack217 wrote:Easier said than done of course, but its about the only field where I could see an SLN victory, and I think they need at least one.

The problem with this is that the SLN appears constitutionally incapable of making good choices. In fact, they seem to get presented with the chance to make a good decision and then instead take a truly awful choice instead.

Just as a single example I'm going to go with the Second Battle of Manticore. Your opponent is entrenched with most of their forces at their main base. You know what you do first? Hit the mining base. Or pillage the improvements. Those giant arrays? Something other than the most heavily defended point! Even if you can win a full-on-fight don't. Pick up all the easy kills first. When they refused to surrender he just should have been like "whelp, time to go blow the Unicorn belt to dust. You kiddies have fun defending the very last place I'll attack." It might not have done the job, but at least it wouldn't have been so mind-numbingly awful. Or those giant arrays. Just spray them down with autocannons or something.

Seriously, these are the tactics he should have picked up from playing StarCraft.

The point is fighting in a grav wave would be a great move, so we know the SLN will avoid it no matter the cost.

And he would have been pretty much toast when he tried them.

You're thinking that after twenty-odd years of fighting Haven Manticore hasn't got missile pods, fire control stations, and quick reaction forces positioned to deal with anyone who tries that? Or the fact that entire damned Havenite wall of battle (more or less) was sitting right on the other side of the hyper wall ready to drop in behind any9one who tried something like that outside the limit? I will concede that the straight on attack was . . . unwise and resulted primarily from Sollay arrogance and bad intel (they thought Manticore had been hammered even harder than it had and had no clue they were actually about to confront every navy in the Haven Sector combined, but your "easy targets" are nowhere near as naked as you appear to assume they are. The Sollies might have been able to get in with something the size of 11th Fleet and inflict substantial damage, but their losses would have been far heavier -- in both absolute and relative terms --- than the defenders. Admittedly, they probably would have been less than total *(some of their hyper drives would have had to cycle fast enough to get them back out; it just wouldn't have included any of the SDs), but they still would have been catastrophic. And if --- as would probably have been the case --- they had attacked those "vulnerable" targets in less strength than Filareta had, they would have achieved far less for what would probably have been near-total losses.

Not saying what they did do worked out any better, but the long term consequences of the sort of raids (which I assumke you would repeat at intervals, picking off different targets --- or trying to, at least --- with each attack) would ultimately have been ruinous for the SLN.

Especially when the GA decided to respond in kind by burning core system space industry to the ground.

RFC responded to me!

Eh, you can hardly blame the guy for not taking into consideration the Haven wall of battle!

The actual good choice would have been to disown Crandall, reform their government, and begin ramping up research and industry so humanity is ready if they encounter a hostile advanced civilization. Sure, humanity hasn't had that happen yet, but a heck of a lot of aliens have! Don't end up like the Medusans! Don't wait until its too late!

But the SLN doesn't make good choices. Maybe they're allergic?

P.S. Don't take this too seriously.

As far as attacking the grav sensors, one of the Bu9 guys pointed out they were not nearly as easy to destroy as I thought. Apparently they are more a very large array of objects separated by km that are precisely located and tracked relative to each other so as to detect exceedingly small effects.

So you need to destroy many many objects, which means you pretty much need a ship at energy range to do this in reasonable time frame.. And apparently they are cleverly inside the hyper limit.

kzt wrote:As far as attacking the grav sensors, one of the Bu9 guys pointed out they were not nearly as easy to destroy as I thought. Apparently they are more a very large array of objects separated by km that are precisely located and tracked relative to each other so as to detect exceedingly small effects.

So you need to destroy many many objects, which means you pretty much need a ship at energy range to do this in reasonable time frame.. And apparently they are cleverly inside the hyper limit.

So sneaky, those rotten Manties! Who would'a thunk it?

kzt wrote:As far as attacking the grav sensors, one of the Bu9 guys pointed out they were not nearly as easy to destroy as I thought. Apparently they are more a very large array of objects separated by km that are precisely located and tracked relative to each other so as to detect exceedingly small effects.

So you need to destroy many many objects, which means you pretty much need a ship at energy range to do this in reasonable time frame.. And apparently they are cleverly inside the hyper limit.

ummm wouldn't old fashioned nuke warheads be easier to use than picking them off one by one with lasers/grasers?

Gun Boat Diplomacy wrote:

kzt wrote:As far as attacking the grav sensors, one of the Bu9 guys pointed out they were not nearly as easy to destroy as I thought. Apparently they are more a very large array of objects separated by km that are precisely located and tracked relative to each other so as to detect exceedingly small effects.

So you need to destroy many many objects, which means you pretty much need a ship at energy range to do this in reasonable time frame.. And apparently they are cleverly inside the hyper limit.

ummm wouldn't old fashioned nuke warheads be easier to use than picking them off one by one with lasers/grasers?

There are not dozens of them, there are many thousands of them located kms apart from each other. And in space you have to get close to be effective with nukes. It’s pretty much just a really bright x-ray emitter whose intensity drops by the square of the range.

kzt wrote:As far as attacking the grav sensors, one of the Bu9 guys pointed out they were not nearly as easy to destroy as I thought. Apparently they are more a very large array of objects separated by km that are precisely located and tracked relative to each other so as to detect exceedingly small effects.

So you need to destroy many many objects, which means you pretty much need a ship at energy range to do this in reasonable time frame.. And apparently they are cleverly inside the hyper limit.

Gun Boat Diplomacy wrote:ummm wouldn't old fashioned nuke warheads be easier to use than picking them off one by one with lasers/grasers?

kzt wrote:There are not dozens of them, there are many thousands of them located kms apart from each other. And in space you have to get close to be effective with nukes. It’s pretty much just a really bright x-ray emitter whose intensity drops by the square of the range.

We seem to be talking about the space version of LIGO on steriods. (LISA pathfinder and eLISA) That is, a whole bunch of radar reflectors and laser interferometers. A much easier to hit target would be the computational facility that's needed to integrate the results into something useful.

This conversation makes me wonder, however, about some comments from RFC that "grav waves" are not conventional gravity, so they might need different kinds of detectors.

JohnRoth wrote:
We seem to be talking about the space version of LIGO on steriods. (LISA pathfinder and eLISA) That is, a whole bunch of radar reflectors and laser interferometers. A much easier to hit target would be the computational facility that's needed to integrate the results into something useful.

This conversation makes me wonder, however, about some comments from RFC that "grav waves" are not conventional gravity, so they might need different kinds of detectors.

I'm pretty sure your 2nd paragraph is right. LIGO measured grav waves that move through the fabric of space time at the speed of light.

Honorverse grav sensors measure ripples in the Alpha wall moving at 62x light. (Well if you're already in hyper then they're moving on the next higher hyper wall at, IIRC, the speed of light in that next higher hyper band - which actually means the higher in hyper you go the less FTL relative to you those FTL signals would be)

I would expect at some point for the morale of the SLN to collapse. Think about it. In the very few cases where SLN forces have survived their encounter with the GA, that was largely where GA forces did not wish to engage in a slaughter. If GA destroyers can defeat SLN battlecruisers and GA heavy cruisers can defeat SLN SDs I can't imagine that there would be much willingness on the part of the SLN to bring the fight to the GA.

Yes, they are professional. Yes, they are kind of stupid. But it isn't like the SLN is like the Wermacht in WWII or the IJN in that same war. I can't imagine they are all that willing to die for the Mandarins.

If I were a Solly task force commander or ship captain I would regretfully inform higher that my ship(s) were having unfortunate and unforeseen mechanical breakdowns and would be hors de combat for the foreseeable future.