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Opening Phase of Havenite war

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Re: Opening Phase of Havenite war
Post by munroburton   » Thu Apr 04, 2019 5:22 am

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kzt wrote:
munroburton wrote:I'm not sure that's the case. A fort should generally be comparable to two SDs built at the same time, so an energy fort is roughly equivalent to two SDs built at the same time and a MDM fort is roughly equivalent to two SD(P)s.



I don't claim to understand this, but the Great Weber has said its more like 20 SDs per fort:


Although the Star Kingdom had opted not to reactivate the fortresses around the Junction's central terminus, there were at least a dozen of them under construction at the Lynx Terminus. They wouldn't be as big as the Junction forts, but they were being shipped in in prefabricated chunks, and unlike the Junction forts, they were being built with the latest in weapons, sensors, and EW systems. And they were also being built using the same manpower-reducing automation which was a feature of the most recent Manticoran and Grayson warship designs. When finished, each would mass about ten million tons, significantly larger than any superdreadnought, and with far less internal volume devoted to impeller rooms. Bristling with missile tubes and LAC service bays, they would constitute a most emphatic statement of the Star Kingdom's ownership of the wormhole terminus.
...
"Your Majesty, at the risk of sounding immodest, the only real question would be how long it took us to blow all seventy-one of them out of space. Those forts were designed to hold that terminus without any outside support against the attack of two hundred and fifty of our own pre-Apollo podnoughts. Now that they have Apollo, their defensive capability's been multiplied many times. We still aren't sure by exactly how much, but it's got to be at least a factor of four."


That's just weird. Perhaps it was a slip and he meant to say twenty-five SD(P)s could be taken out by ~12 forts.

It does suggest that the original Junction forts were still floating around somewhere at that time - not scrapped during or even before Janacek's tenure as I previously believed. Interesting. I suppose they might still be of use against wormhole attackers in the event that a hostile power managed to seize one of the termini.
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Re: Opening Phase of Havenite war
Post by cthia   » Thu Apr 04, 2019 11:16 am

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kzt wrote:
munroburton wrote:I'm not sure that's the case. A fort should generally be comparable to two SDs built at the same time, so an energy fort is roughly equivalent to two SDs built at the same time and a MDM fort is roughly equivalent to two SD(P)s.



I don't claim to understand this, but the Great Weber has said its more like 20 SDs per fort:


Although the Star Kingdom had opted not to reactivate the fortresses around the Junction's central terminus, there were at least a dozen of them under construction at the Lynx Terminus. They wouldn't be as big as the Junction forts, but they were being shipped in in prefabricated chunks, and unlike the Junction forts, they were being built with the latest in weapons, sensors, and EW systems. And they were also being built using the same manpower-reducing automation which was a feature of the most recent Manticoran and Grayson warship designs. When finished, each would mass about ten million tons, significantly larger than any superdreadnought, and with far less internal volume devoted to impeller rooms. Bristling with missile tubes and LAC service bays, they would constitute a most emphatic statement of the Star Kingdom's ownership of the wormhole terminus.
...
"Your Majesty, at the risk of sounding immodest, the only real question would be how long it took us to blow all seventy-one of them out of space. Those forts were designed to hold that terminus without any outside support against the attack of two hundred and fifty of our own pre-Apollo podnoughts. Now that they have Apollo, their defensive capability's been multiplied many times. We still aren't sure by exactly how much, but it's got to be at least a factor of four."


munroburton wrote:That's just weird. Perhaps it was a slip and he meant to say twenty-five SD(P)s could be taken out by ~12 forts.

It does suggest that the original Junction forts were still floating around somewhere at that time - not scrapped during or even before Janacek's tenure as I previously believed. Interesting. I suppose they might still be of use against wormhole attackers in the event that a hostile power managed to seize one of the termini.

It's probably in the SKM's (and the author's) best interest to remain vague about it -- classified info. It's always better to keep a hole card.

It would seem that strategic placement of more forts would allow tactical depth during battle. I'd keep the older forts up and running, since they are mobile units able to be repositioned during battle. Even a pawn can cause the enemy headaches -- if available manpower and resources are not limited. Seems wasteful to scrap older missiles. Properly placed, they can still kill anything coming out of the terminii.

BTW, 20 SDs per fort sounds better. It seems a waste of time to build a fort that can be defeated by 3 SDs. What's the point? These things are huge, slow, and heavily laden with missiles for a reason.

Hmm, I wonder how many Charles Wards would equal the firepower of a fort?

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Opening Phase of Havenite war
Post by tlb   » Thu Apr 04, 2019 1:55 pm

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kzt wrote:Although the Star Kingdom had opted not to reactivate the fortresses around the Junction's central terminus, there were at least a dozen of them under construction at the Lynx Terminus. They wouldn't be as big as the Junction forts, but they were being shipped in in prefabricated chunks, and unlike the Junction forts, they were being built with the latest in weapons, sensors, and EW systems. And they were also being built using the same manpower-reducing automation which was a feature of the most recent Manticoran and Grayson warship designs. When finished, each would mass about ten million tons, significantly larger than any superdreadnought, and with far less internal volume devoted to impeller rooms. Bristling with missile tubes and LAC service bays, they would constitute a most emphatic statement of the Star Kingdom's ownership of the wormhole terminus.

I have found two quotes about the forts around the Manticore WHJ. The first makes clear the forts from the beginning of the war are decommissioned, never to come back, from Shadow of Saganami in chapter 8:
A sizable chunk of Home Fleet was deployed out here, ready to dash through the Junction to reinforce Third Fleet at Trevor's Star at need, or to cover the Basilisk System against a repeat of the attack which had devastated it in the previous war. And, of course, to protect the Junction itself.
Once that protection would have been the responsibility of the Junction forts. But the decommissioning of those fortresses had been completed under the Janacek Admiralty as one more cost-saving measure. To be fair, the process had been begun before the High Ridge Government ever assumed office, for with Trevor's Star firmly in Manticoran hands, the danger of a sudden attack through the Junction had virtually disappeared. Perhaps even more important, decommissioning the manpower-intensive fortresses had freed up the enormous numbers of trained spacers to man the new construction which had taken the war so successfully to the People's Republic.
But now Manticore, and the diminished Manticoran Alliance, was once again upon the defensive, and threats to the home system—and to the Junction—need not come through the Junction. Yet there was no question of recommissioning the fortresses. Their technology was obsolete, they'd never been refitted to utilize the new generations of missiles, their EW systems were at least three generations out of date, and BuPers was scrambling as desperately for trained manpower as it ever had before. Which meant Home Fleet had to assume the responsibility, despite the fact that any capital ship deployed to cover the Junction was over nineteen hours—almost twenty-one and a half hours, at the standard eighty percent of maximum acceleration the Navy allowed—from Manticore orbit.

The second states that prior to the Battle of Manticore there were new style forts that made use of the latest technology from At All Costs, chapter 62:
In effect, Home Fleet had been isolated from the rest of the inner-system's defenses, because any attacking fleet would be between D'Orville's ships and the fixed defenses which were supposed to support it. And that attacking fleet would have been able to begin building an acceleration advantage towards its objectives while Home Fleet was still getting itself organized.
Under those circumstances, an attacker without the strength to defeat both Home Fleet and the inner defenses together might well still have the strength to turn on Home Fleet—which would have no option but to pursue him—and crush it in a separate, isolated engagement.
Which was why D'Orville was so relieved the new forts were finally operational. Much smaller than the old prewar fortifications which had been decommissioned to provide the manpower to crew new construction, they were actually more powerfully armed, thanks to the same increased automation and weapons developments which had gone into the Navy's new warships. And each of those forts was surrounded by literally hundreds of missile pods, with the fire control to handle stupendous salvos. It would take an attack in overwhelming force to break those defenses, which had freed D'Orville to move Home Fleet closer to a more traditional covering position, locating his command in Sphinx orbit.
His new station provided Sphinx with badly needed, close-in protection. And with the planet of Manticore still trailing its orbital position, and so still deeper into the zone and (as always) further inside the hyper-limit, he was actually better placed to cover Manticore than he would have been anywhere else. Any least-time course to Manticore would require the attacker to get past his position at Sphinx, first, and he could easily intercept the opposing fleet short of its objective.
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Re: Opening Phase of Havenite war
Post by cthia   » Thu Apr 04, 2019 5:14 pm

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From textev tlb was kind enough to deliver . . .
At All Costs Ch. 62 wrote:It would take an attack in overwhelming force to break those defenses, which had freed D'Orville to move Home Fleet closer to a more traditional covering position, locating his command in Sphinx orbit.

His new station provided Sphinx with badly needed, close-in protection. And with the planet of Manticore still trailing its orbital position, and so still deeper into the zone and (as always) further inside the hyper-limit, he was actually better placed to cover Manticore than he would have been anywhere else. Any least-time course to Manticore would require the attacker to get past his position at Sphinx, first, and he could easily intercept the opposing fleet short of its objective.

Which is commensurate with what I was saying that the Peeps capturing Trevor's Star and Basilisk, forces the disposition of Home Fleet and its options. No matter how crazy the prognosis of attacking through a junction, it forces the defense to remain honest. Chess has its rewards.

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Opening Phase of Havenite war
Post by Brigade XO   » Thu Apr 04, 2019 6:05 pm

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Chess teaches a lot of things. Not least is that losing situational awarness can at least cost you assets if not the war and also get you killed. So you have to think about what you can see, what you (are supposed to ) know, capabilites of the pieces in play and have alternatives available.

If you don't hold both ends of a wormhole, then you are going to have to defend the end closer to you (and your assets). If you hold both ends---and you suspect that you have people out there that might want to take it away from you, you are going to have to both provide defence for both ends and workout a system to POSSIBLY reenforce one end from the other or find out when one end is going to have it's defenses washed away and it becomes both a death trap to you going that way and an avenue of attack if you can't contain traffice comming at you.

So you have to honor all the threats you undersand or suspect. If the forts were being decommissioned with Trevor's Star in White Haven's hands and the end of the war looking probable, it makes sence to free up the manpower to crew the ships to continue taking the war to the enemy. Janacek would have contined that since it was building the peace but it is not clear if the forts were -at that time- scrapped or were they actually only partialy prepped for storage pending the actual end.

All of this is a complicated version of 3 dimentional chess. The entire board (well sphear) is in motion and there is a time component as well since more pieces can be added at any time and in almost any place on nominal edge of the sphear outside the topography of the components of the hyper-limit. You have to defend and respond to threats as you discover them and work from there. Messy.
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Re: Opening Phase of Havenite war
Post by cthia   » Thu Apr 04, 2019 8:25 pm

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Brigade XO wrote:Chess teaches a lot of things. Not least is that losing situational awarness can at least cost you assets if not the war and also get you killed. So you have to think about what you can see, what you (are supposed to ) know, capabilites of the pieces in play and have alternatives available.

If you don't hold both ends of a wormhole, then you are going to have to defend the end closer to you (and your assets). If you hold both ends---and you suspect that you have people out there that might want to take it away from you, you are going to have to both provide defence for both ends and workout a system to POSSIBLY reenforce one end from the other or find out when one end is going to have it's defenses washed away and it becomes both a death trap to you going that way and an avenue of attack if you can't contain traffice comming at you.

So you have to honor all the threats you undersand or suspect. If the forts were being decommissioned with Trevor's Star in White Haven's hands and the end of the war looking probable, it makes sence to free up the manpower to crew the ships to continue taking the war to the enemy. Janacek would have contined that since it was building the peace but it is not clear if the forts were -at that time- scrapped or were they actually only partialy prepped for storage pending the actual end.

All of this is a complicated version of 3 dimentional chess. The entire board (well sphear) is in motion and there is a time component as well since more pieces can be added at any time and in almost any place on nominal edge of the sphear outside the topography of the components of the hyper-limit. You have to defend and respond to threats as you discover them and work from there. Messy.

My niece owns me in 3D chess.

Your point about entering a termini that's been captured is interesting. The MA could capture and destroy any unit waiting to carry the news home that "The MA is coming!," with those nasty stealthy ships.

I sure never envied Caparelli's position. I always gave him the utmost respect. Which reminds me, who was his "doppelganger" in the RHN during the Pierre-Just regime?

Also, I always wondered about controlling the orbitals about Sphinx. Could Sphinx be held hostage, especially with Honor's family on Sphinx?

Son, your mother says I have to hang you. Personally I don't think this is a capital offense. But if I don't hang you, she's gonna hang me and frankly, I'm not the one in trouble. —cthia's father. Incident in ? Axiom of Common Sense
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Re: Opening Phase of Havenite war
Post by stewart   » Sun Apr 07, 2019 4:45 pm

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cthia wrote:
Also, I always wondered about controlling the orbitals about Sphinx. Could Sphinx be held hostage, especially with Honor's family on Sphinx?


--------------

A single planet in a multi-planet system could indeed be captured and forced to surrender, that was in fact Filereta's plan for BOM II against Honor.

The follow-on would have been ugly. Not wanting any "missed missiles" to pass on to the planetary surface, any re-take operation would need ship-to-ship strikes either by laser/graser or by flanking shots where the planet does not play backstop.

-- Stewart
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