SLN Ship improvement

Sigs wrote:

n7axw wrote:
But that was anticipated in the Harrington Plan: break the League up and then befriend the successor states by offering mutual defense treaties, trade agreements, and educational and cultural exchanges.

And that is not always going to work. Unless the GA want's to force people into their treaties and trade agreements it will not always work. More to the point many of the core worlds will resent being in a position of weakness compared to the GA.

n7axw wrote:Another thought. The peace that the League enforced is also gone. At least some of the successor states are going to be worried more about defending themselves against antagonistic neighbors than making trouble for Manticore. That will create openings for both the GA and the RF Factor to exploit.

I would venture a guess that the vast majority of the successor states will be worried about defending themselves from their neighbours, but that does not mean they will not want revenge against the GA. The GA took down or is going to take down their insulation from reality and many will not soon forget.

Not forgetting doesn't really change the reality that they will have more immediate concerns than Manticore to deal with. And that is finally the point.

Don

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Sigs wrote:If you take an obsolete LAC design, remove all armament and add only PD clusters and you have an ineffective weapon by itself but in large numbers it is quite effective. As you start building you are simultaneously doing R and D. When you make a breakthrough you add it into the design and the next batch of LAC's and so on. You might end up with 20 different variations but when you have the chance you start retiring the earliest classes of LAC's.

One issue with attempting to build a missile defense unit on a classic LAC is that it's hard to keep it integrated with any starships in your system defense force. Classic LACs top out at 409.x gees. Anything smaller than a 7.7 mton SD is quicker than that. So even Scientist-class SDs are a touch over 3% quicker, and of course cruisers would vastly outpace it.

Forcing your system defense fleet to give up agility and distance in order to stay under the missile defense umbrella of anything build off old LACs seems like tying their hands behind their back. If you're thinking that route maybe better to go back to the even older corvette style ships, basically a frigate without a hyper generator. That gives you full powered nodes, allowing better acceleration and a hull big enough to carry a more useful number of CMs - vastly improving it's anti-missile capabilities.

Eagleeye wrote:

Henry Brown wrote: [...]For example, let's say there is Warlord A and Warlord B. Each controls a number of former SL planets and each has inherited 100 Scientist class SDs. Warlord A upgrades his Scientist SDs so they have 50% more counter missiles and laser clusters. A 50% increase in missile defense is not going to make any difference against the GA: those Scientist class ships are still going to get blown out of space. My question is: would the 50% increase in missile defense be decisive against the non-upgraded Scientist SDs of Warlord B?

Impossible to say. It don't hurt, that's for sure. But in a battle there're so much more facettes you have to consider. For example: Where is the battle? Is one side forced to take the battle (because it's in its homesystem for example)? Is the guy who commands the modernized scientists the aggressor or the defender? How good are both COs in battle tactics and battle psychology - means: how good are they in reading the guy/gal on the other side correctly? How are the politicians in the system of the defender? Are they trying to be backside drivers for their admirals or do they have enough trust into the abilities of their people on the sharp end? If I think longer, I'm sure I can come up with more additional facets, but even so you take my meaning, don't you?

And even in the hypothetical where you're just comparing offensive and defensive power of the fleets and ignoring tactical considerations and skill of the commanders, you have to look at opportunity costs.

Refitting old Scientists with 50% more point defense should, all else being equal, make them much tougher opponents against non-upgraded Scientists. (Though the Scientist-class wasn't really designed for their missiles to be decisive)

But assuming Warlord B has similar resources he might be much better off sinking the production equivalent of overhauling 100 SDs' point defenses into pod laying fast supply ships so his 100 SDs, with their off the shelf point defense, have access to many more pods -- more than enough to swamp the improved point defense of Warlord A.

So even in the warlord scenario, where they can't yet build improved wallers, investing in heavy refits to current SDs may not be an optimal course. (Especially since you almost need and SD capable shipyard to do major refit to them). You might be able to do one-for-one upgrades to more capable PDLCs or gut the CM launchers to put in ones with faster cyclic rates without such a yard. But adding more CM tubes would definitely be a major activity for an SD capable yard.

n7axw wrote:

Sigs wrote:I would venture a guess that the vast majority of the successor states will be worried about defending themselves from their neighbours, but that does not mean they will not want revenge against the GA. The GA took down or is going to take down their insulation from reality and many will not soon forget.

Not forgetting doesn't really change the reality that they will have more immediate concerns than Manticore to deal with. And that is finally the point.

Don-

Agreed, Don.

Fleet commanders and regional powers will begin thinking of how to conserve the SLN Battle Fleet for use to defend against or conquer their neighbors. That means the GA will be used as a threat to the more aggressive SL member nations to shut up and don't veto the Peace Treaty. Not because they want peace so badly per se, but because they want to use the remainder of Battle Fleet for their own purposes.

Battle Fleet is useless against anything modern the GA could put up against it. That doesn't mean BF is useless against all those other ships the SLN has in their inventory. The more influential member states will begin pulling strings to get the Navy to stand down or be subsumed into local SDFs. If the GA allows those forces to survive, we'll have the Fleet commanders looking for member star nations to sponsor them.

n7axw wrote:Not forgetting doesn't really change the reality that they will have more immediate concerns than Manticore to deal with. And that is finally the point.

The Weimar Republic has much more immediate concerns than France to deal with too. Remind me how that turned out?

Sigs wrote:I would venture a guess that the vast majority of the successor states will be worried about defending themselves from their neighbours, but that does not mean they will not want revenge against the GA. The GA took down or is going to take down their insulation from reality and many will not soon forget.

The Mandarins are working overtime to make the GA look like liberators not conquerors if the preview snippets are any indication. Although, Henke, Victor and Anton are working overtime to make the GA look like the worst biggest danger to galactic peace since the EE Edict was passed. Honestly, if the Mandarins had waited a few months before attacking the Manticore home system, Henke would have handed them the perfect tool to rally the League.

So I think revenge will probably be off the table, unless Manticore does something stupid. Well, some Mesans might do something for revenge, but I suspect that would be terrorist grade activity. Which could still turn Manticore into a graveyard.

Point is the League Worlds probably aren't going to want revenge over bringing down the Mandarins/SLN. However, that doesn't mean Manticore will have any friends. After WWII, the Soviets and the rest of the Allies didn't remain friends.

A worst case scenario is the League disintegrates, a peace treaty is established and the RF factor promptly binds the League worlds into a NATO like alliance and then they embargo all trade with the Manticore and possibly some other GA worlds.

Also if we're being defensive the best defense is the ability to wipe out your opponent's worlds or at least cause massive civilian causalities. Stealthy planet killing missiles. Its not a real plan if you are the aggressor, but it works really well for keeping aggressors off your back. Especially, when the aggressors have set a precedent that nuking worlds is acceptable behavior in war.

How long do you estimate the SLN will require to implement your plan? Not that the current run of snippets indicate they are inclined to any such defensive action.

FWIW, RFC "guessed" that Uncompromising Honor ends in Mar 1923 PD or about six months after SoV ends. Since this story arc will end then, the SLN has less than six-months to make any hardware changes. Or change tactics or strategy, for that matter.

We shouldn´t forget, that there are smaller navies in the Solarian League. The Battle fleet is maybe a collection of idiots, but that doesn´t count for all other navies.

If I remember correct, somewhere is mentioned, that there were militariy observers from other planetes during the Manticorian/Havenite war. Every one who looked at the manticorian newspapers saw that the warfare was changing and could start thinking what you can do to imrove the security of your own planet, years before the Solarian League was involved in the whole mess.

System defense Missle Pods and a highly improved missle defense are good ideas. Think of the logistic in Honorverse: You need months to reach the most solarian world´s and if the target world has an too strong missle defense you are getting out of ammonution and have to travel months back for resupply.

And if you come back with strong enough forces to do the job, you tie to many forces at that planet what weakens your fleet.

Another point is: You have the full control of your local system defense fleet! If you trust in Battle fleet, it can happen, that they leave your system to defend someone else.

I don´t expect any good organized defenses from the Battle Fleet, but the local fleets are another story.

Present indications are that the League as we have known it isn't going to survive much longer.

While Kingsford is apparently sending out both commerce raideing forces and at least one Task Group to a non-SL system inside the nominal SL controled zone to make an example of it for trading with Beowulf and we think Manticore, there is almost nothing they can do RIGHT NOW to improve the ships involved.

It is POSSIBLE that they could - if they have been paying attention- start building some variation of a LAC as an anti-missile platform BUT they would be essentialy adding counter-missile magazines/box launcers to current designs with probably some more energy counter missle clusters. A couple of problems with that. 1st is how long it will take someone to think of this, get at least one built and then get production started on some significant number. THEN you have the challange of designing tactics for said LACs. Give the vast differences between GA LACs and anything the SLN has, the SLN stuff isn't going to have the power (nor the fusuion reactors) nor the sensors nor the FTL connection with Apollo capable ships & command missiles for updated tactical information and direction.
So your new LACs would mostly need to be between SLN targets (any SLN ships) and a GA force. Remember that GA LACS are dammed stealthy and tough for capital ship missles to lock onto. SLN LCS.....not so much.

Upgrading SLN warships to add counter measures (counter missles and energy beam clusters) would help though the same problems of superior GA drones plus FTL communicaitons and tactical updating persist. The SL also -though it apparently doesn't realize it yet-seems to have the potential to upgrade/improve their software which would improve both existing and any additional cm weapons tied into a ships net or existing electronic decoys (HALO) but they haven't done it and nobody's mentioned it's being looked into---and Manticore isn't about to suggest it nor point out where it can be done.

At the moment it would seem that the best way to achieve any victories against GA warships is to essentialy ambush a couple with a vastly larger forces and hope to pound them into submission or to destruction before they can cut the SLN force to little pieces if not just blow the crap out of the SLN ships from outside the SLN engagement range and then keep moving further away.

The suggestion that the SLN start looking to preserve all those existing ships to use to force SL members and others within the nominal SLN sphere of influence (not couting the Verge and outward) has merit from the stand point of that being a large number of places where the existing SLN ships can be dominat. That leads to the question of if/when othe SL Member systems start to requeste assistence from the GA to help them get out.

Messy, very messy.

Jonathan_S wrote:One issue with attempting to build a missile defense unit on a classic LAC is that it's hard to keep it integrated with any starships in your system defense force. Classic LACs top out at 409.x gees. Anything smaller than a 7.7 mton SD is quicker than that. So even Scientist-class SDs are a touch over 3% quicker, and of course cruisers would vastly outpace it.

The conventional warships are the one that will have to integrate themselves into the LAC formations not the other way around. The conventional ships are there to discourage enemy ships from moving too closely to the LAC's. This is a temporary inefficient solution meant to buy some time and defend strategic systems it is by no means meant to be taken on the offensive unless the LACs in question were dramatically improved.

Jonathan_S wrote:Forcing your system defense fleet to give up agility and distance in order to stay under the missile defense umbrella of anything build off old LACs seems like tying their hands behind their back.

The true power lies in the missile pods and anti-missile forces. The fleet is there to protect the LACs from larger combatants who get close to engage since the LACs will have nothing heavy enough to threaten them.

Jonathan_S wrote:If you're thinking that route maybe better to go back to the even older corvette style ships, basically a frigate without a hyper generator. That gives you full powered nodes, allowing better acceleration and a hull big enough to carry a more useful number of CMs - vastly improving it's anti-missile capabilities.

That is where Frigates come in, remove the hyper generator and load them up in two variants, one purely energy and one purely counter missile. They would provide more firepower but also would take longer to build, more crew would be needed and losing one would hurt a lot.

quite possibly a cat wrote:The Mandarins are working overtime to make the GA look like liberators not conquerors if the preview snippets are any indication. Although, Henke, Victor and Anton are working overtime to make the GA look like the worst biggest danger to galactic peace since the EE Edict was passed. Honestly, if the Mandarins had waited a few months before attacking the Manticore home system, Henke would have handed them the perfect tool to rally the League.

Where exactly is it that the Mandarins are working overtime to make the GA look like Liberators?

And how are Henke, Victor and Anton doing anything to make the GA look bad? I don't know if you misspoke or I missed a major shift in the plot.

quite possibly a cat wrote:Point is the League Worlds probably aren't going to want revenge over bringing down the Mandarins/SLN. However, that doesn't mean Manticore will have any friends. After WWII, the Soviets and the rest of the Allies didn't remain friends.

1) The League worlds and the GA are not allies.
2) We are talking about systems that enjoyed for the most part being part of the League. They received protection from reality that everyone not part of the League did not and more to the point they received benefit from the oppression of the majority of those outside of the league. Once you destroy their way of life and that security many core worlds will be looking for revenge. It might not be immediate but it will be in their thinking. And it will be obvious to the GA as well.

quite possibly a cat wrote:A worst case scenario is the League disintegrates, a peace treaty is established and the RF factor promptly binds the League worlds into a NATO like alliance and then they embargo all trade with the Manticore and possibly some other GA worlds.

No, a worst case scenario is the League disintegrates and 1,700 systems split in to hundreds of nations that start wars with each other. The GA gets the blame for billions of deaths and loss of stability and security for the majority of the human race.

The RF has to tread carefully because anything they do that makes it seem like this is part of a greater plan will get them hammered. If this is all coming at the GA out of nowhere and the League is behind in the thinking, anyone who reacts too quickly and seems to be too organized will get the GA's undivided attention and that will likely not be a good thing.

quite possibly a cat wrote:Also if we're being defensive the best defense is the ability to wipe out your opponent's worlds or at least cause massive civilian causalities. Stealthy planet killing missiles. Its not a real plan if you are the aggressor, but it works really well for keeping aggressors off your back. Especially, when the aggressors have set a precedent that nuking worlds is acceptable behavior in war.

Yeah, but at that point military forces are not required and there is no real winner only losers at the end of the day. If you don't kill every member of that nation they can come back and do the same to you. This is MAD on a grand scale... for this to work you have to kill each and every member of the opposing nation because even if only 1 ship survives it still has the ability to do the same to you. Hell even if 1 person survives they can still do the same to you.

Maldorian wrote:
I don´t expect any good organized defenses from the Battle Fleet, but the local fleets are another story.

We are already seeing some relatively senior people asking questions and doing investigation, there has to be some intelligent leadership in the SLN that has not been corrupted by the MA. This could be leading towards an overthrow of the current system and there is at least one military formation that to me at least seems to be the least corrupt of them all and that is the Solarian Marines. This could mean that there could very well be competent leadership coming into the League.