cthia wrote:You don't send LDs to infiltrate an enemy system to wait for an opportunity. They are there to attack. They are there to kick the ever loving crap out of the system. By comparison, the Yawatta Strike was a love tap.
Well, exactly. So what is their primary mission and how would it be accomplished?
I'm asking because this opportunity for an attack we're discussing here has to be of meaningful magnitude compared to the primary mission, otherwise the LDs would never break cover to attack. They would have continued to wait to do what they came to do in the first place, because once they kick the hornet's nest, the entire system goes on alert, closing their window of attack for the other mission.
And this other mission must also have a meaningful chance of success, within a reasonable time frame. It can't be waiting for an opportunity that may never happen, or depending on the enemy being dumb.
And if I were responsible for this "Operation Nemesis (?)," I wouldn't send just enough LDs. There will be a few extra which have secondary targets. And after some specific timeline they are free to execute those secondary targets if opportunity knocks. Because the other LDs are already in place. If someone fires on Home Fleet, holy hell will be hatched from unholy Spiders.
Sure, but you need to describe what this operation would be in the first place. You're describing now the chance attack as the primary mission, which it can't be. Or are you really suggesting they'd come and wait for a year or two until those ships did drop their wedges and into the attack solution?
The scanning equipment in orbit will be useless and focused elsewhere. If you are scanning your property with binoculars, you aren't focused on the tree in your front yard. And the scans of the Forts will be irrelevant from their distance.
That's a bad metaphor. Trees don't move and the forest doesn't get close to you.
You seem to imply the RMN will all of a sudden forget that the MAlign has stealth ships and stop it's continuous scanning procedures that were most likely put in place after the Yawata Strike. I say "all of a sudden" because the timeline for the rest of the books is likely to be at most 15 years, so the attack would need to happen within this timeframe. I don't agree they'll do that.
Though yes, Honor's action during the Battle of Galton (see the "they all became dumb" thread) put that into question.
BTW, this also puts a limit on the number of LDs that can exist. See the post on the other thread that discusses the Sharks having prototype spider engines as late as 1921 PD and that they simply couldn't produce them any faster!
Your description of attacks rely on serendipity or the Manties being particularly dumb. Home Fleet does not come into orbit, it's always on the move. Even if it did come into orbit, it would be no more than once a Manticore year, so the window of attack is what, 6 hours every 600 days? This also depends on that many LDs somehow inserting, which we know is a 3- to 4-month operation at a minimum. And they wouldn't be in orbit nor leave torpedoes close to orbit because there's just too much traffic, the chance of random detection is high and grows with the time they wait. So if they are not in orbit, how can take the opportunity if the Home Fleet comes?
In fact, if the Home Fleet suddenly turns and starts coming for you, you should skedaddle! Are you really going to bank on their course change being a coincidence?