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ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Sneak the Lenny Dets into close ambush position of the Lynx terminus.

Six to nine months before the attack. Though it's easy to confirm they are in position at the moment you want the attack to happen.

Use conventional Cataphract armed forces to attack one or more systems deeper in the Talbot cluster - who will send off a Case Zulu. That's the bate to lure Home Fleet to Lynx - not an attack on Lynx. Then once the first heavy units transit into Lynx the Lenny Dets strike - decapitating the terminus forts and crushing each transiting ship.

If a Case Zulu is in progress in the Talbott Cluster, first of all it's Tenth Fleet that is going to respond and they're stationed at Spindle (once they return from conquering), not in Manticore. The only planet that is effectively closer for Home Fleet than Tenth would be Lynx.

But there are more fleets in Manticore that may respond quicker. The forces from Trevor's Star may be closer to the terminus than Home Fleet: Home Fleet usually stays inside the Manticore-A hyperlimit, which is 19 light-hours from the Junction, whereas the Trevor's Star forces could be sitting at the terminus. Even if they aren't, they're closer to the Terminus than Home Fleet.

Finally, regardless of which fleet responds, there are still two fatal flaws in the stealth ambush scenario: first, if a Case Zulu is in progress, the forts will have their bubblewalls up and will thus survive most attacks. You'd have to saturate them with grasers to knock the bubble down and destroy the forts. Second, the fleet is not going to immediately perform a mass transit: if there's urgency, the lighter units will have come through first and will have their wedges and sidewalls up. Those are hard targets to target stealthily and the Nike-class BC(L) squadron(s) that outran the wall will be a threat to the Lenny Dets. The Lennys would have to take not just the forts, but also the lighter units.

And I don't think you can expect a mass transit, unless the attack was in Manticore itself. Any attack outside of the MBS and the termini is going to be weeks away, so they can perform a regular, if expedited, transit. So not only are the Lenny Dets facing the forts with bubblewalls up and the lighter units, but also wallers that are cleared for action.

In that scenario they'd prefer Home Fleet to transit in sequence. Manticore wouldn't expect return couriers while the womrhole controllers are focused on a larger minim safe separation transit (or if sending at minimum possible then there wouldn't be any 'slots' for return traffic). Coming one at a time lets more total ships into the trap - while reducing the changes that a couple ships from a mass transit can survive long enough to get clear and raise wedge, sidewalls, and be able to launch missiles.

I don't think that's likely. Because the RMN used that tactic at the Ajay-Prime Warp Bridge, I'd expect a response to Case Zulu to include a return communication. At least every tenth ship or so. If an ambush does happen, the ships will stop transiting. And as I said above, the ambush needs to wait for the wallers to begin transiting, which means the escorts (all the way up to BCs) will be on the other side.

I don't know that it would work. But that idea isn't to lure them by launching an attack on the terminus - (as you say Manticore might believe it lost and send forces the long way). It was to stage an attack to deeper in that would cause reinforcements to be rushed through the wormhole.

Though I supposed if the Lenny Dets wanted to hang around for months they'd still get a bit of a shot at ambushing any relief force arriving through hyper. But those'd be tougher targets since they'd be in a mutually supporting formation and have full use of their maneuverability, weapons, and defenses.

Not to mention that the exact time and locus of emergence is unknown. The Lenny Dets would need to stay at full battlestations for weeks or months, which is not possible. You can expect a relief force that is coming the long way to scout the terminus before transiting en masse and deploy some Ghost Rider RDs.

Even if the Lenny Dets have FTL transceivers retrofitted (a technology the MAlign didn't yet have at the conclusion of Uncompromising Honor), we can't expect them to have much better than Haven did in the second war for the next decade or two. That is, LAC-sized (re)transmitters, which are easy to pick up.

Adding to the above:

At any time, a portion of the forts will be fully at alert at all times. This will cycle through the fort group, on shifts. Manticore knows ther are stealth attackers out there - they are not going to drop war-time defensive procedures for the forseeable future. So while some forts are "off-cycle" and unprepared, a portion will be completely alert and have their defenses up.

The Emergence lane will be defended, so alert response forces coming through the wormhole will be able to emerge with little damage - it not like a LD will be able to sit on the Emergence lane - it would be inside the defensive perimeter of the forts and vulnerable to all the fort's fire. Every ship that responds make attacking the Emergence lane that much more difficult.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Sneak the Lenny Dets into close ambush position of the Lynx terminus.

Six to nine months before the attack. Though it's easy to confirm they are in position at the moment you want the attack to happen.

I was going to say only if the SEM has had the time, money, and resources to install sensors at Lynx nearly as sensitive as the ones monitoring Manticore itself; but then I realized I was thinking detection distance not travel time.

If the spider ship didn't want to exceed 0.3c on the way in an emergency around 6 lightweeks out (which might be a reasonable detection distance for a secondary system's detector array) it would still take them about 140 days, nearly 5 months, to cover that distance.


So, while I double Manticore has had the time, money, or resourses to put in a hyperspace emergence detector array at Lynx with anything close to the 6 - 9 lightmonth range Manticore itself enjoys, you don't need that range to force an opponent to spend a long time working their way in.

Use conventional Cataphract armed forces to attack one or more systems deeper in the Talbot cluster - who will send off a Case Zulu. That's the bate to lure Home Fleet to Lynx - not an attack on Lynx. Then once the first heavy units transit into Lynx the Lenny Dets strike - decapitating the terminus forts and crushing each transiting ship.

If a Case Zulu is in progress in the Talbott Cluster, first of all it's Tenth Fleet that is going to respond and they're stationed at Spindle (once they return from conquering), not in Manticore. The only planet that is effectively closer for Home Fleet than Tenth would be Lynx.

But there are more fleets in Manticore that may respond quicker. The forces from Trevor's Star may be closer to the terminus than Home Fleet: Home Fleet usually stays inside the Manticore-A hyperlimit, which is 19 light-hours from the Junction, whereas the Trevor's Star forces could be sitting at the terminus. Even if they aren't, they're closer to the Terminus than Home Fleet.

Good point that 10th fleet has been somewhat reinforced. It never got its Apollo SD(P)s and I can't remember whether it ever got any legacy ones either. But you'd need a serious "conventional" attacking force to cause a problem it's BC(L)s and BC(P)s couldn't handle.

But if you could lure additional powerful Manticoran, or even GA, fleets into a wormhole terminus ambush it hardly matters that you're not whittling down ships assigned to Home Fleet itself. It's still a potential chance to inflict seriously disproportionate losses and then escape.

Finally, regardless of which fleet responds, there are still two fatal flaws in the stealth ambush scenario: first, if a Case Zulu is in progress, the forts will have their bubblewalls up and will thus survive most attacks. You'd have to saturate them with grasers to knock the bubble down and destroy the forts. Second, the fleet is not going to immediately perform a mass transit: if there's urgency, the lighter units will have come through first and will have their wedges and sidewalls up. Those are hard targets to target stealthily and the Nike-class BC(L) squadron(s) that outran the wall will be a threat to the Lenny Dets. The Lennys would have to take not just the forts, but also the lighter units.

And I don't think you can expect a mass transit, unless the attack was in Manticore itself. Any attack outside of the MBS and the termini is going to be weeks away, so they can perform a regular, if expedited, transit. So not only are the Lenny Dets facing the forts with bubblewalls up and the lighter units, but also wallers that are cleared for action.

Fair enough about the forts bubble sidewalls degrading the effectiveness of the graser torps or Cataphracts. But wallers clearing for action is still limited by their ability to clear the grav forces of the terminus. Until they're able to run clear they can't raise sidewalls, fire missiles or CMs, deploy decoys, and are limited to trying to defend themselves with energy mounts (included PDLCs). So if, and I'll admit it's a bigger if that I'd given credit for, they can get past the fort the transiting wallers are still extremely vulnerable for those few minutes, no matter how alert they are.

In that scenario they'd prefer Home Fleet to transit in sequence. Manticore wouldn't expect return couriers while the womrhole controllers are focused on a larger minim safe separation transit (or if sending at minimum possible then there wouldn't be any 'slots' for return traffic). Coming one at a time lets more total ships into the trap - while reducing the changes that a couple ships from a mass transit can survive long enough to get clear and raise wedge, sidewalls, and be able to launch missiles.

I don't think that's likely. Because the RMN used that tactic at the Ajay-Prime Warp Bridge, I'd expect a response to Case Zulu to include a return communication. At least every tenth ship or so. If an ambush does happen, the ships will stop transiting. And as I said above, the ambush needs to wait for the wallers to begin transiting, which means the escorts (all the way up to BCs) will be on the other side.

Hmm. They didn't White Haven took his fleet on the double-transit to Basilisk. Now he can reasonably safely trust that there's no ambush waiting at Manticore. But he had no way of being sure that he would beat the expected 2nd arm of the trap at Basilisk. But still he shoved his ships through a tightly sequenced as possible - leaving no time to use the wormhole back from Basilisk to provide a status. He wouldn't have known if he'd been shoving his ships one by one into utter destruction.

Guess it's possible, as a lesson learned from that event, that Manticore changed their SOP to require periodic status or they'd abort the rest of the transit. Certainly since you bring it up it makes sense to "waste" a couple escort transit slots to get an update of the situation on the far side. Anything smaller than a Nike-class only locks it down for 10 seconds and in that kind of transit a destroyer or cruiser or two is unlikely to be missed; so you can afford both the reduced firepower and the time to send a few back with periodic status reports.

I don't know that it would work. But that idea isn't to lure them by launching an attack on the terminus - (as you say Manticore might believe it lost and send forces the long way). It was to stage an attack to deeper in that would cause reinforcements to be rushed through the wormhole.

Though I supposed if the Lenny Dets wanted to hang around for months they'd still get a bit of a shot at ambushing any relief force arriving through hyper. But those'd be tougher targets since they'd be in a mutually supporting formation and have full use of their maneuverability, weapons, and defenses.

Not to mention that the exact time and locus of emergence is unknown. The Lenny Dets would need to stay at full battlestations for weeks or months, which is not possible. You can expect a relief force that is coming the long way to scout the terminus before transiting en masse and deploy some Ghost Rider RDs.

Even if the Lenny Dets have FTL transceivers retrofitted (a technology the MAlign didn't yet have at the conclusion of Uncompromising Honor), we can't expect them to have much better than Haven did in the second war for the next decade or two. That is, LAC-sized (re)transmitters, which are easy to pick up.

Waiting a long time I already admitted. But they hardly need to wait at battle stations - because there's no need to ambush the relief force the moment it exist hyper. You're a hole in space in the next best thing to invisible ships. The relief force has virtual no chance of detecting you or launching an attack. So you just need to keep a rotating sensor watch for signs of the relief force arriving, or ships maneuvering in normal space. Once detected you've plenty of time to come to battle stations and start seeking a favorable firing position.

Theemile wrote:Adding to the above:

At any time, a portion of the forts will be fully at alert at all times. This will cycle through the fort group, on shifts. Manticore knows ther are stealth attackers out there - they are not going to drop war-time defensive procedures for the forseeable future. So while some forts are "off-cycle" and unprepared, a portion will be completely alert and have their defenses up.

The Emergence lane will be defended, so alert response forces coming through the wormhole will be able to emerge with little damage - it not like a LD will be able to sit on the Emergence lane - it would be inside the defensive perimeter of the forts and vulnerable to all the fort's fire. Every ship that responds make attacking the Emergence lane that much more difficult.

The Lenny Det itself wouldn't want to be that close. But it might manage to get a fair number of graser torps idling away, undetected, that close.

The forts would be able to see them once each opened fire. But I'm not sure they'd be able to kill them fast enough to prevent serious damage from grasers that powerful, that close, firing into ships unprotected by sidewalls.


Still, I admit Lynx terminus is a far harder target now than I'd over-enthusiastically assumed in my earlier post. Even for undetectable attackers.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Why would there need to be thousands of ships to devastate the Big 5?

Because, first of all, one of those 5 isn't a single system. There are tens of highly industrialised worlds in the SL and the shipyards are in multiple systems. So let's low-ball and say that they need to attack 25 well-defended systems.

At the same time.

A squadron of Lennys dropped off in a system, with the equivalent of invisible carriers spewing out shoals of Sharks (Wait, how big is a Shark, I simply gotta ask Jayne out to lunch), ought to do the trick. Besides, I was under the impression there would be assistance from conventional ships, I'm assuming as a nasty distraction. In conjunction with some of the GAs captains succumbing to suicide or amnesia by nanite.

Remember, they only need to control the orbitals to demand a surrender. It's the old football tactic "Control the ass and the head will follow."

25*8 is still 200 ships. I don't think a squadron suffices to take all warships, which don't have predictable positions (and remain that way because the cat is out of the bag). And I think total victory would require more than 25 systems simultaneously attacked.

One of the theories about the Detweiler class is that a mere four of them could have carried out the actual Oyster Bay we got, basically using one per target. This is based on the implication that the MAlign's original Oyster Bay plan was to wipe out the core of Haven's infrastructure alongside Manticore and Grayson, possibly the Andermani as well.

At this point, they would have turned upon the League - and we know that viewed the Yawata Strike as an opportunity rather than an ominous threat. They would never have done anything to stop a MAlign attack, especially as the SLN was riddled with MAlign agents.

I don't believe the MAlign ever intended to attack their enemies' navies directly. They were relying on a combination of turning them against each other and later letting them die on the vine after an original-scale Oyster Bay strike.

Jonathan_S wrote:

But there are more fleets in Manticore that may respond quicker. The forces from Trevor's Star may be closer to the terminus than Home Fleet: Home Fleet usually stays inside the Manticore-A hyperlimit, which is 19 light-hours from the Junction, whereas the Trevor's Star forces could be sitting at the terminus. Even if they aren't, they're closer to the Terminus than Home Fleet.

Good point that 10th fleet has been somewhat reinforced. It never got its Apollo SD(P)s and I can't remember whether it ever got any legacy ones either. But you'd need a serious "conventional" attacking force to cause a problem it's BC(L)s and BC(P)s couldn't handle.

Tenth Fleet had 28 SD(P)s by the time Gold Peak began her plans to invade Mesa. That's not counting the Havenite units Tourville brought to the party. We didn't hear much about here SD(P)s because she conquered the entire Madras sector with nothing bigger than a CA. I think the SDs were at Meyers, but I don't recall now.

BTW, quick correction: the Junction is 12 light-hours from Manticore; it takes 19 hours to travel there, one way.

Fair enough about the forts bubble sidewalls degrading the effectiveness of the graser torps or Cataphracts. But wallers clearing for action is still limited by their ability to clear the grav forces of the terminus. Until they're able to run clear they can't raise sidewalls, fire missiles or CMs, deploy decoys, and are limited to trying to defend themselves with energy mounts (included PDLCs). So if, and I'll admit it's a bigger if that I'd given credit for, they can get past the fort the transiting wallers are still extremely vulnerable for those few minutes, no matter how alert they are.

I think I wasn't clear when I explained the wallers clearing for action. My point was that there will be no mass transit unless the threat is to the MBS itself and maybe Trevor's Star. That being so, the DDs will transit first, then CAs, then BCs, then SDs and CLACs. Each waller transiting disrupts the junction for about 2 and a half minutes, which is longer than it takes the previous ship to clear the wormhole and reconfigure from sails to wedge.

The attackers need to decide when to start firing. Do they fire as soon as the first waller comes through? If so, they'll catch that one and the next handful that come oblivious to the danger. But since this isn't an emergency transit, the lack of incoming ships in Manticore would make the fleet stop transiting. Or do they wait until more have come through? Given enough graser torps, they may be able to saturate even SD-level sidewalls, plus again the few SDs and CLACs that transit before the ruse is up.

However, those ships that the LDs don't manage to destroy or cripple on the first shot will be hunting them down. Including all the escorts, many of which are a threat to the LDs. The LDs can't allow themselves to be captured.

Hmm. They didn't White Haven took his fleet on the double-transit to Basilisk. Now he can reasonably safely trust that there's no ambush waiting at Manticore. But he had no way of being sure that he would beat the expected 2nd arm of the trap at Basilisk. But still he shoved his ships through a tightly sequenced as possible - leaving no time to use the wormhole back from Basilisk to provide a status. He wouldn't have known if he'd been shoving his ships one by one into utter destruction.

That was before Ajay-Prime, before highly-stealthed MAN ships. The RMN now knows both, so they wouldn't fall for the same trap.

And as I said above, unless the threat was to the terminus itself, you can't expect an emergency transit. Allowing a ship to return every tenth ship that goes may increase the total transit time by what, an hour? The Lynx terminus is four days away from Lynx, so any relief force will be arriving 8 days after the Case Zulu was declared. An hour is usually not a significant diffeence (counter-example: Third Yeltsin).

Waiting a long time I already admitted. But they hardly need to wait at battle stations - because there's no need to ambush the relief force the moment it exist hyper. You're a hole in space in the next best thing to invisible ships. The relief force has virtual no chance of detecting you or launching an attack. So you just need to keep a rotating sensor watch for signs of the relief force arriving, or ships maneuvering in normal space. Once detected you've plenty of time to come to battle stations and start seeking a favorable firing position.

But if you don't hit it before they can bring their sidewalls up, you're fighting a forewarned force that is looking for you, with a LAC defensive screen. It might not be possible to sneak a graser torpedo through that screen and it might be necessary if it is far enough ahead of the wall. Not to mention the expanding RD shell.

The conclusion in another thread is that a spider-driven graser torp has a very low acceleration, to the point that it's comparable to wedge ships' accelerations. So a graser torp may not be able to attack the relief force unless it prepositions assets and is ready to fire before they move out of range. And you can't know where the force will emerge from hyper, so you can't preposition assets.

And since this scenario implies the RMN knows it's the MAlign that took out the forts using a stealth attack (as there's no one else that can), the responding force will have pulled all the stops.

munroburton wrote:One of the theories about the Detweiler class is that a mere four of them could have carried out the actual Oyster Bay we got, basically using one per target. This is based on the implication that the MAlign's original Oyster Bay plan was to wipe out the core of Haven's infrastructure alongside Manticore and Grayson, possibly the Andermani as well.

Indeed, but that's Oyster Bay. It took only one Trojan Horse to take Troy, but no amount of more wooden horses would ever take any other city again. Stealthily inserting within detection range only worked once.

I don't believe the MAlign ever intended to attack their enemies' navies directly. They were relying on a combination of turning them against each other and later letting them die on the vine after an original-scale Oyster Bay strike.

Indeed, which leads me to think that the LDs will be used for similarly nefarious purposes, not to attack ships that will fight back. I'm just failing to see how they'll even get into range.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Indeed, but that's Oyster Bay. It took only one Trojan Horse to take Troy, but no amount of more wooden horses would ever take any other city again. Stealthily inserting within detection range only worked once.

Perhaps you should consider the history of the Decima Flottiglia MAS? How many ships did they sink after they put out action two battleships in Alexandria harbor?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Why would there need to be thousands of ships to devastate the Big 5?

Because, first of all, one of those 5 isn't a single system. There are tens of highly industrialised worlds in the SL and the shipyards are in multiple systems. So let's low-ball and say that they need to attack 25 well-defended systems.

At the same time.

A squadron of Lennys dropped off in a system, with the equivalent of invisible carriers spewing out shoals of Sharks (Wait, how big is a Shark, I simply gotta ask Jayne out to lunch), ought to do the trick. Besides, I was under the impression there would be assistance from conventional ships, I'm assuming as a nasty distraction. In conjunction with some of the GAs captains succumbing to suicide or amnesia by nanite.

Remember, they only need to control the orbitals to demand a surrender. It's the old football tactic "Control the ass and the head will follow."

25*8 is still 200 ships. I don't think a squadron suffices to take all warships, which don't have predictable positions (and remain that way because the cat is out of the bag). And I think total victory would require more than 25 systems simultaneously attacked.

Not to mention this is the worst coordination possible, worse than what Parnell greenlit for the beginning of the First Havenite-Manticoran War. Each of those task forces need to insert a year ahead of time in order to attack in stealth.

I think you're missing the point. It doesn't matter if the SL (or every single one of the Big 5) are multi-systems. You only need to control the orbitals of the parent planet. When Harrington went off her meds in the Sol system, the whole of the Solarian controlled planets had to agree to lay down their weapons. She didn't have to worry about 200 or more planets.

Remember, "Control the ass and the head will follow." Or in this case, control the heads (of governments) and all of the asses (affiliated planets and warships) have to follow. That's what will allow the Home Planet to go on breathing. Certainly nobody involved will think the perpetrators of Oyster Bay are bluffing about bombarding planets. And if they push the MA to bombard planets after controlling the orbitals of the head of each enclave, no one can blame them afterwards.

cthia wrote:I think you're missing the point. It doesn't matter if the SL (or every single one of the Big 5) are multi-systems. You only need to control the orbitals of the parent planet. When Harrington went off her meds in the Sol system, the whole of the Solarian controlled planets had to agree to lay down their weapons. She didn't have to worry about 200 or more planets.

Remember, "Control the ass and the head will follow." Or in this case, control the heads (of governments) and all of the asses (affiliated planets and warships) have to follow. That's what will allow the Home Planet to go on breathing. Certainly nobody involved will think the perpetrators of Oyster Bay are bluffing about bombarding planets. And if they push the MA to bombard planets after controlling the orbitals of the head of each enclave, no one can blame them afterwards.

Ah, good point. If the government surrenders, the military everywhere should obey.

But what if they don't? Honor got the SL to surrender because the GA's terms were more than generous. If instead it had been the MAlign who ordered the surrender and imposed population-cleansing programs, the military would be in its rights to start a guerilla against the tyrants. The question is whether the military would have the stomach to stomach the bombardments. But if they do nothing, it could be just as bad.

"What's the penalty for stealing bread?" "Death"
"What's the penalty for starting a revolution?" "Death"
"I'm hungry, let's start a revolution"

We also have to question exactly how effective a grazer torpedo would be against an SD with its wedge and sidewalls up. Odds are that they're only a minimal threat unless in vast numbers.

GTs have a cruiser-grade grazer. Not the capital-ship grade grazers on a Sag-C either; think more like the ones aboard a Star Knight. Or better yet, a Shrike. Yes, they're a threat but it's going to take scores if not hundreds of hits to take out an SD. It's in large part what SD armor is designed to resist. That sort of weapon is most effective when you can get dorsal or ventral hits on areas usually covered by the wedge.

Tactically, a Lenny is more likely to use GTs in sneak attack situations where they insert into a system undetected but use conventional missiles/missile pods in ambush situations when the enemy ships are active and alert. They have both systems for a reason.