What happens to all that debris?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:10 years ago, could the RMN still have launched on the reserve and avoided Ganymede's defenses, like now?

Yes, but they wouldn't do it.

Technically, the Mk14 ERMs and even the Mk13 could have likely avoided the defences of Ganymede and inflicted serious damage to what the RMN commander would have wanted to hit. Nowhere as good as Mk23 of course, even the pre-Apollo ones, but those missiles had already been ahead of the SLN Javelins before successive iterations against the war with Haven made them even beter.

SDMs have a regular range of about 7.5 million km, which is under half a light-minute. ERMs extend that to 17 million km, which is close to a full light-minute. Jupiter's hyperlimit has a radius of 3 light-minutes. So with SDMs, even the extended range ones, the attacking force would need to travel at least 2 light-minutes into the limit, which takes an hour. That's an awfully long time, but avoiding hitting Jupiter is pretty easy, so the fleet doesn't need to decelerate after launching and can just cut a chord and exit on any vector after about another hour and still be at only 0.1 c so it can transit out of the system.

They'd also need to have brought a lot of ships to tow enough pods. It's totally feasible for them to have rolled pods from the colliers before making their alpha translation into the Jovian system, so they could have brought sufficient missiles. But firing even a quarter as many as Honor did would have strained their capabilities.

So it could be done.

I don't think the ERMs were in service 10 years (1912 PD) ago. The earliest class we know of that carried any type of ERM was the Sag-B with her Mk14 ERMs; and HoS tells us that those didn't start entering service until 1917. (And the first SD(P)'s with their early MDMs weren't in service that early either, as they starting coming in in 1914).

I'd picked that time in my example specifically to be before any of the extended range missiles came into play.


Also, while the seekers, ECM, and programming of the RMN's single-drive missiles would have been better than the SLN's Javelin; we discovered that the SLN actually had slightly better SDM missile drives.

The Javelin (and counterpart) missiles that Ganymede would have been lobbing back at attackers would have been almost 3.5% quicker (at 47,600 gees) than the RMN's missiles; and thus had that same relative advantage in terminal velocity and maximum range (7.55 million km from rest compared to the Mk13's 7.30 million).

(Now the base velocity of the RMN ships would have added to their missile's range; but it also increases the range at which the Javelins can launch because the RMN ships are coming to meet them. And in the 3 minutes an SDM missile is under power likely doesn't give the RMN ships enough time to alter their vector such that they can land a powered salvo while still themselves staying out of that slightly longer ranged Javelin's powered envelope)




Still, if the Reserve is scattered around Jupiter along Ganymede's entire orbital track then the furthest Reserve cluster, on the far side of Jupiter from that moon, would be about 2.1 million km away it. So you should be able to engage at least a portion of the Reserve while avoiding the heaviest defenses -- though there are presumably some missile and point defense platforms scattered around the entire orbital path of Ganymede (if not some seeded even further out) and so you'd have to tangle with those. You'd also potentially have to face the active SLN forces stationed at Ganymede (which included some unspecified number of SDs when Honor attacked); as those could come around Jupiter to engage you. But even so it should be possible to wreck a non-trivial percentage of Reserve One while staying far enough from Ganymede itself to avoid directly taking on the brunt of the extra defenses concentrated around it.

Jonathan_S wrote:I don't think the ERMs were in service 10 years (1912 PD) ago. The earliest class we know of that carried any type of ERM was the Sag-B with her Mk14 ERMs; and HoS tells us that those didn't start entering service until 1917. (And the first SD(P)'s with their early MDMs weren't in service that early either, as they starting coming in in 1914).

I'd picked that time in my example specifically to be before any of the extended range missiles came into play.


Also, while the seekers, ECM, and programming of the RMN's single-drive missiles would have been better than the SLN's Javelin; we discovered that the SLN actually had slightly better SDM missile drives.

The Javelin (and counterpart) missiles that Ganymede would have been lobbing back at attackers would have been almost 3.5% quicker (at 47,600 gees) than the RMN's missiles; and thus had that same relative advantage in terminal velocity and maximum range (7.55 million km from rest compared to the Mk13's 7.30 million).

Hmm... I thought the ERMs had been available before the MDMs. That makes a huge difference in survivability, though.

The pre-MDM RMN missiles had a slightly higher acceleration than the MDM ones too, so I calculated 47500 gravities for them. But that hardly makes a difference because the range of the SLN counter-fire would be comparable, if not better. That means the entire force is subject to retaliation fire and it stands to reason that NSG could fire a lot more missiles than the pre-pod SDs can carry. The only redeeming factor is that the NSG launchers could probably cycle only once a minute, so there would only be three salvoes in flight before the RMN missiles arrive at NSG.

And this is assuming those missiles target NSG so they can't fire any more. Because if those survive, then NSG could put a fourth and a fifth salvo in flight to hit the retreating RMN force.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Shouldn't a reserve of 10,000 or more ships be more valuable than the space station? Yet it seems the entire reserve were sitting ducks without any protection at all.

Quick note: there were at 8,000 SDs in the entire SLN reserve. I've argued before that not all of them were at Naval Station Ganymede, that some would be in other systems. And I've argued "Reserve One" isn't the entirety of the NSG reserve either. <snip>

.

You are correct, David has always said that there are 6 reserve sites in the core. The one at Sol was just the largest.

Go back and read that part of UH. Naval Station Ganymede was looking at that missile launch which appeared to be heading right for it and was tracking it. So it flushed it's own missiles ) "120,000 Improved Cataphract pods belched 720,000 missiles at the Manties").in a use it or lose it effort. They tracked the Mk-23s and calculated how long the ballistic phase would be and were right on that. Remember this flight was going really well at 1st drive shut down.
And as soon as the entire RMN missile flight reached the range for Naval Station Ganymede (and we have to presume all the active warships around it plus any remote locations that might be able to engage with CM or light speed weapons, they started firing. And got a real shock when they did as poorly as they did against the Mk-23.
And other than what were -in the opinion of the Station's commander- clearly mistakes (he wasn't that clear about some might have lost target lock and hit active ships) every other one of the Mk-23s went through the Naval Station Ganymede defensive fire envelope envelop and to destroy more than 90% of the reserve fleet at Ganymede.

UH "Naval Station Ganymede fired well over two hundred thousand counter-missiles at them, backed by more than four thousand point defense clusters, most far larger than any mobile structure mounted. They were more powerful, there were more of them, and their software had been continuously tweaked since the Battle of New Tuscany.
And they still weren’t good enough.
The defenders killed 811 Mark 23s, but 260 of them were penetration platforms. In the end, 1,249 of the most powerful laser heads ever deployed punched straight through the very best the Solarian League Navy could throw at them. They drove in on their targets and then, in one perfectly synchronized instant, they detonated."

Down the throat of the volcano and did the job intended. Message: You can't stop us, you can't defend against our fire and, yes we are dam good at this. Comply of die.

Jonathan_S wrote:Also, while the seekers, ECM, and programming of the RMN's single-drive missiles would have been better than the SLN's Javelin; we discovered that the SLN actually had slightly better SDM missile drives.

The Javelin (and counterpart) missiles that Ganymede would have been lobbing back at attackers would have been almost 3.5% quicker (at 47,600 gees) than the RMN's missiles; and thus had that same relative advantage in terminal velocity and maximum range (7.55 million km from rest compared to the Mk13's 7.30 million).

Weren't those Javelins and other SLN 'improved' missiles also coming out after the era of MDMs and ERM's had started? The Sollies had basically only just started fielding them recently before Byng went and got his ass shot off and started the whole Manticore vs League thing. They officially adopted Javelin missiles circa 1920, so a cutoff of 1912 is well before Javelins were likely to even be in testing let along production state.

So if we go back in time to 1912-ish, if Manticore doesn't have MDM's and ERM's, the League also wouldn't have their enhanced missiles, so I think Manticore would still have the clear edge due to it being mobile units vs static defenses. In other words the same scenarios as Second & Fourth Yeltsin or even Battle of Cerberus (threat of c-fractional missiles, and static defenses cannot dodge). Manticoran ships had considerably higher compensators in 1912, especially compared to ~1903 (2nd Yeltsin) and most other Solly ships are still rocking tech from the 18XX's, so even without ERM's or more than first-gen Ghost Rider recon drones the Manticoran's wouldn't have had major difficulty dropping Ganymede.

Then there's the whole argument over whether or not Ganymede actually had fully modernized defenses ONLY? Because Solarian League Navy arrogance, and having their mothballed SD's still relying on primarily on autocannons for point-defense, it's easy to believe they may not have spent a ton of money to constantly modernize Ganymede (and the other mothball stations) to always have the absolute cutting edge technology at all times.

After all, why bother spending money on updating your defense platforms every few years when nobody could possibly be crazy enough to attack the League period, and certainly not crazy enough to try for some form of headshot by attacking Sol itself.... right?

Somtaaw wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Also, while the seekers, ECM, and programming of the RMN's single-drive missiles would have been better than the SLN's Javelin; we discovered that the SLN actually had slightly better SDM missile drives.

The Javelin (and counterpart) missiles that Ganymede would have been lobbing back at attackers would have been almost 3.5% quicker (at 47,600 gees) than the RMN's missiles; and thus had that same relative advantage in terminal velocity and maximum range (7.55 million km from rest compared to the Mk13's 7.30 million).

Weren't those Javelins and other SLN 'improved' missiles also coming out after the era of MDMs and ERM's had started? The Sollies had basically only just started fielding them recently before Byng went and got his ass shot off and started the whole Manticore vs League thing. They officially adopted Javelin missiles circa 1920, so a cutoff of 1912 is well before Javelins were likely to even be in testing let along production state.

I wasn't able to find anything saying that the Javelin (BC/CA) or Spatha (DD/CL) missiles were newly introduced when Byng headed off to the Talbott area. Though the Spatha are called "new-generation" in ToF and SoF, and there are statements in multiple books referring to the Javelin as current-generation or newest. But those don't really hint as when that generational change occurred. (And what Byng says is "we've got Javelins in the magazines, not those crap Pilums Technodyne supplied to Monica" but that also doesn't hint as to how long ago that Pilum got replaced)

However I did find something I'd forgotten in SftS saying that their stablemate capital missile was: "the brand-new Trebuchet capital ship missile the Solarian League Navy had just begun to deploy."

So you're probably right about the whole family of missiles being introduced more recently than 1912 PD. Oops. (Though these don't seem to be a specific reaction to reports of MDMs or ERMs; simply a coincidence in timing)


(Though, to be fair, the SLN does actually use its destroyer and cruiser grade missiles far more often than its capital ones -- so it's not inconceivable that those smaller ships got the new generation missiles long before the SLN decided to fund wholesale replacement of their capital missiles. However, since Ganymede is presumably protected by capital missiles it may not matter for this hypothetical if Javelin or Spatha were around in 1912, as it seems Trebuchet wasn't)

Jonathan_S wrote:I wasn't able to find anything saying that the Javelin (BC/CA) or Spatha (DD/CL) missiles were newly introduced when Byng headed off to the Talbott area. Though the Spatha are called "new-generation" in ToF and SoF, and there are statements in multiple books referring to the Javelin as current-generation or newest. But those don't really hint as when that generational change occurred. (And what Byng says is "we've got Javelins in the magazines, not those crap Pilums Technodyne supplied to Monica" but that also doesn't hint as to how long ago that Pilum got replaced)

Monica also got Indefatigable-class BCs, while Byng was fielding brand, new Nevada-class ones. "Losing" some Indefatigables was hard enough even for the MAlign with Technodyne's cooperation, I don't think they could have "lost" Nevadas.

The Javelins are at this time probably "state secret" and "not for export," so even Technodyne might balk a little at providing them. There's also a question of whether the old Indefatigables that the Monican Navy got could fire the Javelins without a major refit first. It stands to reason that the Indefatigables that were retired were an older flight, so they may not have had the latest missile launcher upgrades.

(Though, to be fair, the SLN does actually use its destroyer and cruiser grade missiles far more often than its capital ones -- so it's not inconceivable that those smaller ships got the new generation missiles long before the SLN decided to fund wholesale replacement of their capital missiles. However, since Ganymede is presumably protected by capital missiles it may not matter for this hypothetical if Javelin or Spatha were around in 1912, as it seems Trebuchet wasn't)

Not to mention far more capable, lighter missiles. The SLN had not had to fire capital-ship missiles in anger in centuries, so it had no comparison basis on how to judge the capabilities of the Trebuchets. But, as you said, the Javelins and Spathas were probably good improvements over the previous generations like the Pilums (Pila?) because the FF actually used those missiles and had sensor readings to back up improvement claims.

But back to your defence question... it's possible that Ganymede only had Trebuchets, not anything newer. The Cataphract was based on a Javelin coupled with a CM body because doing the same to a Trebuchet would make it too big to be launched from tubes. So if Ganymede only had Trebuchets, they were even less capable than Javelins. And that's assuming that NSG got the latest for their magazines, which is not a given.

But even if all NSG had was second-generation SLN capital-ship crappy missiles, they'd still have a LOT of them. With comparable range as a non-MDM Grand Fleet, they could inflict a lot of damage to the attackers, to the point that they'd have to withdraw before completely demolishing the station. Which is my point above: without the tech and especially range advantage the MDMs offered, Honor would never have attacked the Reserve and left NSG as an active threat behind her back.

tlb wrote:

Loren Pechtel wrote:What explosives? Honorverse fusion warheads are set off by gravity generators. You can't set off lithium deutride with chemical explosives anyway.

Are you trying to tell me that a "fusion warhead" has no explosive effect?! There is an atomic explosion and the warhead has been used in that mode purely for that explosive effect.

I have already explained this earlier in the thread and I do not understand how people get fixated on the idea that only chemicals can produce an explosion.

Sure, if provided enough power they can be commanded to make a very big boom. However, they're sitting there cold on a cold ship, they do not have the capability of going boom. Furthermore, the big boom can only happen if the computer has decided it should happen--and decent weapons systems have arming systems that do not even arm the warhead until they believe the weapon has been properly deployed. (That software program that tried to detonate the magazine doesn't make sense.)

To get an accidental magazine detonation requires dumb explosives--plain old HE.

There have been multiple incidents in which the chemical detonators of nuclear weapons have gone off in accidents. Zero of those have produced a nuclear yield. Honorverse weapon safeties will be better than ours.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Leda has a diameter of 21.5 km and Lysithea's is 42.2 km. They're highly irregular, not spherical, but if I approximate them to a sphere of half that radius, Leda would have a surface area of 1250 km² and Lysithea of 5000 km². For 5000 ships, that's 0.25 to 1 km². We don't have the dimensions of SL ships, but I'll approximate using the dimensions of an Anduril-class SD from HoS: 1304 x 189 x 176 m. So giving each ship a berth of 1.5 km long by 0.25 km wide on the surface gives a footprint of 0.375 km². They'd be packed like sardines on Leda, but Lysithea would be far roomier.

And how are you packing them like sardines? You have something that can place them like that without disturbing the ships nearby?? Your reaction jets are going to toss the nearby ships around.

munroburton wrote:Along the lines of what just happened with Naval "Station" Ganymede, I think it's easy to get lost in regarding the "Reserve" as if it was actually a functional reserve. It ceased to be that as soon as the SLN ran out of reserve personnel to man it(or built more ships than they had crews for).

They do have something of a disposal operation, as their battleships don't exist anymore and only a few dreadnoughts, if any, remained in the oldest corner of that reserve. That suggests to me the whole thing is more of a badly backlogged scrapyard queue. They probably started off calling it a Reserve so nobody asked why the scrapyards were so poorly run and then the bureaucracy forgot they did that and simply let it accumulate.

I think it's a reserve while conveniently ignoring the fact that they have no way to man it. It's really more a pork program for the ship builders, though.