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Attacking Darius:

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Attacking Darius:
Post by cthia   » Sat Aug 14, 2021 11:26 am

cthia
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Inta da fire


My opinion seems to differ quite a bit about how easy it should be to attack Darius.

I don't know about you, but I am having nightmares about a Home System that makes the perimeter that the MBS has established look like a Boy Scout Camp.


Spider
--The system defense variant.

Sharks
--Hungry officers looking for promotion? LOL



Massive Forts w/ Spider Drive
-- Surrounded by shoals of system defense graser pods.

Massive Graser Installations
--They don't even have to have much mobility, because they are built in enormous numbers. When you have invisible weapons platforms seeded throughout your system, you can maneuver and engage the enemy with those invisible installations in mind, thus setting a trap.

Do you really think you can hyper into Darius without receiving a very warm welcome?

HOT AS HELL :!: :!: :!: :o :oops:

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: Attacking Darius:
Post by cthia   » Sat Aug 14, 2021 12:07 pm

cthia
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Who the hell can tell what the hell we've hypered into!

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: Attacking Darius:
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Sat Aug 14, 2021 12:36 pm

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cthia wrote:
Inta da fire...


My opinion seems to differ quite a bit about how easy it should be to attack Darius.


Maybe a siege may be better. If the GA can take and hold the terminus, Darius is cut off from rapid deployment.

I don't know about you, but I am having nightmares about a Home System that makes the perimeter that the MBS has established look like a Boy Scout Camp.


I don't think that's either possible or likely.

The MBS defences are nothing to sneeze at. To make them look pale in comparison requires such a great amount of firepower and sensing technologies that it would be inconceivable in the HV. We'd be talking about the single most industrialised system in the Galaxy, equivalent to 20 core systems, and populated for less than 2 centuries. it also requires a much larger population base than there is on Darius. And a much larger shipyard than we know is there.

The other problem is the likelihood of this happening. Such thick defences imply a lot of officers and a lot of ships, most of which are hyper capable and any of which is capable of destroying the planet if it got the chance. Are the Detweilers trusting of their subordinates? Because if they're not, they're not likely to trust large fleets in system because those could turn on them. And it only takes a single hyper-capable ship leaving to betray the secret of Darius' existence and location. The more ships you have, the easier it would be to get lost in the noise, and coast to the hyperlimit with wedges down.

Plus all those stealth ships that their own sensors can't detect. How do the Detweilers know those aren't conspiring against them to attack or leave?

Spider
--The system defense variant.


Spider is a propulsion system. You'll have to explain what you meant by this.

Sharks
--Hungry officers looking for promotion? LOL


On the problem with ambitious officers, see above. I'd much rather have non-ambitious officers who just want to get their jobs done well.

Massive Forts w/ Spider Drive
-- Surrounded by shoals of system defense graser pods.


Those are likely, but no more so than there would be in the MBS, except for the spider. The spider itself is not a gain here, since the fort is still limited to paltry acceleration in the order of 100 gravities. That's 2x more than a Manticoran fort, but nothing compared to the ships flying rings around it.

But there doesn't seem to be much of a difference between a fort and an LD. Maybe the difference is whether it mounts a hyperdrive (and streak drives are big) and impeller rings for the Warshawski sail so they can transit through wormholes. Therefore, the non-hypercapable version of the LD (a corvette?) could free up some internal volume to be rededicated to missiles or torpedoes.

But is that worth it? A defender can't rely on stealth to sneak up on the enemy, they have to be around the objective they're defending. Those spider emitters on their hull are also surface that they can't have a missile tube on. Plus, the moment they raise the bubble wall, the stealth is gone.

So I fail to see the purpose of a spider-driven fort. It's much cheaper and useful to have a regular fort, maybe with no propulsion other than thrusters.

Finally, there's the question of how to build them. Each one costs as much time, resources, and treasury as an LD. And we know they hadn't built a lot of them yet. That also means they're far more likely to have pre-spider forts, because those they could have begun building a century ago, even with paltry industries.

Massive Graser Installations
--They don't even have to have much mobility, because they are built in enormous numbers. When you have invisible weapons platforms seeded throughout your system, you can maneuver and engage the enemy with those invisible installations in mind, thus setting a trap.

Do you really think you can hyper into Darius without receiving a very warm welcome?


The problem again with the spider is how slow they are compared to a wedge. A graser torpedo is going to be manoeuvring around 50 gravities, while the ships they're tracking are moving at 550+. Those ships are also getting screened by LACs that can get up to 800.

And how mind-boggling huge space is. It takes a lot of industry to build sufficient graser torpedoes and seed them throughout the system so they can reach all possible approaches to Darius Gamma. So if they go for this strategy, I imagine it's a close-in defence (a light-minute or two out, at most) of the planet, meaning the entire rest of the star system is left to fend for itself. That in turn means it's the end of the space industry, since no further resources from asteroids are going to be fed into their orbital industries too.

Trying to trap an incoming fleet further out just doesn't seem feasible or effective. No fleet is going to come on a straight line, because they know such stealth exists. Tom Clancy had it right with the Crazy Ivan manoeuvres. And you need a lot of torpedoes to take out a fleet as big as the Grand Fleet. It's going to be at least one torpedo firing and striking per capital ship to kill it and the GF is going to come with 500 of those. How many torpedoes do you need to guarantee a hit? The fleet is going to be evading, will be inside wedges (through which the torpedoes can't see), obscured by sidewalls (through which torpedoes have trouble seeing), protected by such sidewalls and by lighter ships which will be pushed out to screen against stealth attacks.

So I'd expect at least 5x the number of torpedoes to capital ships and I'm being generous. So just how many 5000-torpedo groupings can the MAlign have in Darius?

Finally, nail in the coffin for spider stealth is the spider activation: we know there are betraying emissions when that happens. 5000 torpedoes activating at once paints them pretty clearly.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by cnrd22   » Sat Aug 14, 2021 1:30 pm

cnrd22
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cthia wrote:
Inta da fire


My opinion seems to differ quite a bit about how easy it should be to attack Darius.

I don't know about you, but I am having nightmares about a Home System that makes the perimeter that the MBS has established look like a Boy Scout Camp.



One thing to consider also is that Darius doesn't stand by itself but it is a (secret for now) member of the Renaissance Factor which is led by Alignment core members, so unless one can prove without a shadow of a doubt that Darius and the RF leaders are the evil guys behind all, that could turn ugly soon diplomatically too - I easily see an SL revanchist faction taking power and allying itself with the Alignment while claiming that that is the cuddly secret Alignment as the baddies were annihilated at Galton; after all if O' Hanrahan can fool the treecats and Honor by allowing herself to sincerely believe that the Darius faction are the good guys and the Galton were the baddies, who knows how many others in position of power and influence we do not know of as yet can do that...
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by cthia   » Sun Aug 15, 2021 4:25 am

cthia
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crnd22 wrote:One thing to consider also is that Darius doesn't stand by itself but it is a (secret for now) member of the Renaissance Factor which is led by Alignment core members, so unless one can prove without a shadow of a doubt that Darius and the RF leaders are the evil guys behind all, that could turn ugly soon diplomatically too - I easily see an SL revanchist faction taking power and allying itself with the Alignment while claiming that that is the cuddly secret Alignment as the baddies were annihilated at Galton; after all if O' Hanrahan can fool the treecats and Honor by allowing herself to sincerely believe that the Darius faction are the good guys and the Galton were the baddies, who knows how many others in position of power and influence we do not know of as yet can do that...

Absolutely! But even if the Galaxy does prove that the Mesans in the Darius System are the real baddies, and the GA manages to locate the system, the GA's response will still be governed by politics. Queen Elizabeth will not want to appear to be no better than the criminals they seek. This same limitation was present when Honor attacked Sol.

Which is partly why I think the author issued a disclaimer right before UH, when he stated that he thinks he deals with the SL in a way that everyone will be pleased. He knew the average fan was expecting and perhaps wanting the SL to be totally destroyed. And to the average fan, the Sol System was the focus of that destruction.

The entire Galaxy would have turned on Honor in an instant if she had crossed certain lines.

Which means, any GA force hypering into the Darius System will have to have to play by certain rules. A scorched earth policy would be fine as long as it doesn't include barbaric bombardments of the planet. Infrastructure, yes. To bombard the planet the GA will have to follow the acceptable universal rules of war and first control the orbitals about Darius Gamma. Of course, the shipyards orbiting Darius Gamma (Darius Prime) will be military targets but these space stations are orbiting the planet. I don't think destroying Darius Prime is going to be a walk in the park for any navy. Much less controlling the orbitals. For all intents and purposes, these "orbitals" are invisible.

Interesting post crnd22.

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: Attacking Darius:
Post by cthia   » Sun Aug 15, 2021 1:17 pm

cthia
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ThinksMarkedly wrote:Maybe a siege may be better. If the GA can take and hold the terminus, Darius is cut off from rapid deployment.

:o Take the terminus? You're a rather ambitious warmonger aren't you? You think taking on a WH whose fortification has been progressing for centuries will be possible? Against invisible - weapons and naval components? And I certainly hope you are not planning your attack through the WH itself? The Spiders in their nests will get you. :D

cthia wrote:I don't know about you, but I am having nightmares about a Home System that makes the perimeter that the MBS has established look like a Boy Scout Camp.
ThinksMarkedly wrote:I don't think that's either possible or likely.

The MBS defences are nothing to sneeze at. To make them look pale in comparison requires such a great amount of firepower and sensing technologies that it would be inconceivable in the HV. We'd be talking about the single most industrialised system in the Galaxy, equivalent to 20 core systems, and populated for less than 2 centuries. it also requires a much larger population base than there is on Darius. And a much larger shipyard than we know is there.

The other problem is the likelihood of this happening. Such thick defences imply a lot of officers and a lot of ships, most of which are hyper capable and any of which is capable of destroying the planet if it got the chance. Are the Detweilers trusting of their subordinates? Because if they're not, they're not likely to trust large fleets in system because those could turn on them. And it only takes a single hyper-capable ship leaving to betray the secret of Darius' existence and location. The more ships you have, the easier it would be to get lost in the noise, and coast to the hyperlimit with wedges down.

Plus all those stealth ships that their own sensors can't detect. How do the Detweilers know those aren't conspiring against them to attack or leave?

OTOH, the Darius System has not been plagued with any wars throughout it's existence. It hasn't lost any infrastructure to attack. It has never had to witness a countless number of credits burning with their warships. They have yet to lose a single warship. At least in the Darius System.

On the notion of the Alignment's fear of loyalty, of course you are kidding? The MA has never relied on trust or loyalty. Ever. They have other, more reliable and much more permanent, solutions. Solutions which I imagine have proven to be a successful deterrent to disloyalty and disobedience.

cthia wrote:Spider
--The system defense variant.


ThinksMarkedly wrote:Spider is a propulsion system. You'll have to explain what you meant by this.


Forgive my manners. I have a tendency to talk in the familiar. We have been discussing the Alignment for centuries and we have become a bit familiar with our foe. We don't refer to the more informal LDs as the Lenny Detweilers, we refer to them in the familiar as the Spiders. And we don't refer to the Spiders by their propulsion system. Although we certainly have to take the drive system into consideration. Spiders don't come stock with the bigger twin turbocharged V-12s that the enemy uses, their engines are closer to being "electric." They have no emissions and they are silent. :D

cthia wrote:Sharks
--Sharks are hungry officers looking for a promotion.
Sill funny. :lol:

ThinksMarkedly wrote:On the problem of ambitious officers, see above. I'd much rather have non-ambitious officers who just want to get their jobs done well.

Well, the MA has that too. I got the impression that failure isn't tolerated. I'd guess culling isn't out of the question.

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: Attacking Darius:
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Sun Aug 15, 2021 6:24 pm

ThinksMarkedly
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cthia wrote::o Take the terminus? You're a rather ambitious warmonger aren't you? You think taking on a WH whose fortification has been progressing for centuries will be possible? Against invisible - weapons and naval components? And I certainly hope you are not planning your attack through the WH itself? The Spiders in their nests will get you. :D


Of course not. No attack through a wormhole into fortified positions is going to work. We've discussed this to the death before, in why Tsang wasn't smarter.

But an attack from hyperspace, yes, it's possible. We don't know how strong the Darius terminus fortifications are. It's possible there isn't a sufficient force there to stop a determined GF attack. Whether they can hold them or not is a different story, but it's not impossible.

More importantly, we know Felix isn't defended. If the GF seizes Felix and fortifies it, then the Darius terminus is useless, however many forts there may be there. The MAN would need to send a great deal of ships via regular hyperspace to lift said blockade, each of which will be a footprint in the alpha wall when they translate anywhere close to the Junction.

cthia wrote:OTOH, the Darius System has not been plagued with any wars throughout it's existence. It hasn't lost any infrastructure to attack. It has never had to witness a countless number of credits burning with their warships. They have yet to lose a single warship. At least in the Darius System.


The same applies to Erewhon, just to name a star system.

And it applied to Sol for 5x the length of the habitation of Darius. And it still wasn't much more industrialised than other Core systems. It was probably the single most industrialised system until Honor paid a visit, but it wasn't 100x more industrialised than anyone else. I doubt it was 10x more industrialised than Manticore, despite having 12x the population.

My point is that industrialisation progression in the HV is pretty paltry. Darius may have been the single greatest industrialisation success in history and still be behind any Core world, Haven, Manticore or New Berlin. For what you're proposing to be true, it would have to have had a progression orders of magnitude faster than any one else has ever seen, at a minimum, and nothing we've seen indicates it is the case.

On the notion of the Alignment's fear of loyalty, of course you are kidding? The MA has never relied on trust or loyalty. Ever. They have other, more reliable and much more permanent, solutions. Solutions which I imagine have proven to be a successful deterrent to disloyalty and disobedience.


That's a sad consolation after the planet was destroyed by a ship falling into it or a ship escaped with the secrets. It's a deterrent, for sure, but anyone attacking the planet alone would know it was suicide any way. And those that escape, they may yet live for a while if Beowulf finds a cure.

And they may not even know they have nanites programmed to kill them in the first place! If we are talking about a navy with 10000 ships in system, then we are talking about a navy with a logistics infrastructure to match, which means freighters, tenders, tugs, mining ships, etc. Are all of them as fanatic as the admiralty? Do all of them know it's a suicide to leave?

Frankly, I don't think that the presence of suicide nanites is known to even a minority of the population that is infected by them. That would, by itself, engender sufficient discontentment against the rulers.

Forgive my manners. I have a tendency to talk in the familiar. We have been discussing the Alignment for centuries and we have become a bit familiar with our foe. We don't refer to the more informal LDs as the Lenny Detweilers, we refer to them in the familiar as the Spiders. And we don't refer to the Spiders by their propulsion system. Although we certainly have to take the drive system into consideration. Spiders don't come stock with the bigger twin turbocharged V-12s that the enemy uses, their engines are closer to being "electric." They have no emissions and they are silent. :D


You're using a "royal we" there...

But in any case, what would a system-defence version of a capital ship mean?

Well, the MA has (non-ambitious officers) too. I got the impression that failure isn't tolerated. I'd guess culling isn't out of the question.


See above on harsh, repressive measures that are known to the population.

The Darius society is kept somewhat peaceful because it's under the illusion of being a perfect society and is insulated from the real news from the rest of the Galaxy. Star ruling by fear and you cause resentment and we get back to ambitious officers.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by Brigade XO   » Sun Aug 15, 2021 6:56 pm

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Felix (the system and the "secret" wormhole) are not defended in the traditional sense but the Mannerheim (spelling) SDF is hanging out and using it as an exercise location and although they have no legal claim (yet, that we know of) they certainly might be expected to at least protest a GA fleet showing up for any reason.

Even if the Felix wormhole doesn't have more the possibly a ship or two "wandering around"- which would be possibly suspicions in it's own right- what is on the other side of that wormhole is quite likely to be much worse than what the Harvest Joy ran into trying to transit the Torch wormhole. Unless the Alignment has lost part of its mind, the Darius side of that wormhole ought to be almost as heavily defended as the Manticore Junction. The Felix wormhole is hiding in plain sight with nobody using it or knowing of its existence except the Alignment (et al) and even if you wandered by Felix - why you would do that is unclear- looking for a wormhole and then looking to explore it once found would end up being COMPLICATED.

So IF you discovered, by some means, that there was a wormhole and it lead to The Alignment, and IF you showed up there, the best you could do might be to blockade it- over protests of the SDF that was exercising in the system and what are the odds you are going to send a survey ship thought it? That completely ignores the possibility that the Felix wormhole is now defended on the Felix side by Spider Drive warships lurking around.

We know that at least two other terminus locations other than the one that leads to Torch exist but we have absolutely no information about where they are and what they might (or might not) be near.
It was never really said how the Ghosts and Sharks got from Darius to either Manticore or Grayson. Did they use the Torch wormhole? Did they use hyperspace from Darius to Manticore AND Grayson? That is a concerning question because if they used hyperspace then the coordination on the OB strikes starts to bring up some interesting possibilities on where Darius is in relation to both Manticore and Grayson. And if the OB Alignment ships used one or both of the wormholes we have no information on, then that begs the question of where either of them are.

Laying siege to the Felix wormhole is going to cause all sorts to problems. Mannerheim and the RF are the least of that. What do you know, how are you justifying it to the rest of the Star Nations- including the SL 2.0.

At that point how do you find out where Darius is and get there vis hyperspace and what are the chances that the Alignment is going to be able to come after the blocking force and/or the home systems of the GA?

Messy, very messy.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by ThinksMarkedly   » Mon Aug 16, 2021 1:14 am

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Brigade XO wrote:Felix (the system and the "secret" wormhole) are not defended in the traditional sense but the Mannerheim (spelling) SDF is hanging out and using it as an exercise location and although they have no legal claim (yet, that we know of) they certainly might be expected to at least protest a GA fleet showing up for any reason.


Protests can fall on deaf ears. It won't help in the war, especially if it is a war. You can't complain your enemy has seized your territory.

Yes, the Mannerheim SDF was quietly protecting the Junction, but it wasn't enough. It was just to protect against a random surveyor or pirate. A task force from the GA would have no trouble dispatching them.

To protect it property, they'd have to openly claim the junction.

Even if the Felix wormhole doesn't have more the possibly a ship or two "wandering around"- which would be possibly suspicions in it's own right- what is on the other side of that wormhole is quite likely to be much worse than what the Harvest Joy ran into trying to transit the Torch wormhole. Unless the Alignment has lost part of its mind, the Darius side of that wormhole ought to be almost as heavily defended as the Manticore Junction. The Felix wormhole is hiding in plain sight with nobody using it or knowing of its existence except the Alignment (et al) and even if you wandered by Felix - why you would do that is unclear- looking for a wormhole and then looking to explore it once found would end up being COMPLICATED.


What's on the other side of the junction doesn't matter if it's blockaded from this side. We've discussed this in the other thread: a ship transiting is not in stealth and is in danger from LACs, much less a full task force.

Note seizing the Junction does not give access to Darius. It just prevents Darius from exploiting the Junction for rapid transiting elsewhere.

So IF you discovered, by some means, that there was a wormhole and it lead to The Alignment, and IF you showed up there, the best you could do might be to blockade it- over protests of the SDF that was exercising in the system and what are the odds you are going to send a survey ship thought it? That completely ignores the possibility that the Felix wormhole is now defended on the Felix side by Spider Drive warships lurking around.


I agree, they are not going to transit.

It was never really said how the Ghosts and Sharks got from Darius to either Manticore or Grayson. Did they use the Torch wormhole? Did they use hyperspace from Darius to Manticore AND Grayson? That is a concerning question because if they used hyperspace then the coordination on the OB strikes starts to bring up some interesting possibilities on where Darius is in relation to both Manticore and Grayson. And if the OB Alignment ships used one or both of the wormholes we have no information on, then that begs the question of where either of them are.


Right, we were not told how the Ghosts and Sharks were deployed. We suspect it was through the Felix Junction, but it's not been said so explicitly. We don't actually know where Darius is located and where the other termini lead to. It's entirely possible David is keeping this secret up his sleeve to reveal at the appropriate time.

But we can be sure it was not through Torch. That would have been observed.

Laying siege to the Felix wormhole is going to cause all sorts to problems. Mannerheim and the RF are the least of that. What do you know, how are you justifying it to the rest of the Star Nations- including the SL 2.0.

At that point how do you find out where Darius is and get there vis hyperspace and what are the chances that the Alignment is going to be able to come after the blocking force and/or the home systems of the GA?

Messy, very messy.


I agree it could get messy, but I don't agree it would be a reason to not do it. War is messy.
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Re: Attacking Darius:
Post by cthia   » Mon Aug 16, 2021 4:53 pm

cthia
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ThinksMarkedly wrote:What's on the other side of the junction doesn't matter if it's blockaded from this side. We've discussed this in the other thread: a ship transiting is not in stealth and is in danger from LACs, much less a full task force.

Hmm... how fast can a warship shed the sails and shut down the hypergenerator? I'm talking about an emergency military n-space configuration.*

--shrug--

And if you've guessed where I'm headed, then how about it? Has textev supplied us with the total time to initiate the spider drive? I'd bet it has been discussed already. But if the spider drive can be brought up instantly, or instantly from an idle state, and an idle state can exist simultaneously with hypering, then perhaps the rules of engagement will give the Spiders (LDs] enough time to activate their stealth. Also, it isn't exactly inconceivable that the MA has eliminated transit sickness.

The GA doesn't have any idea what is on the other side of that WH. And even if during wartime ships exit the WH, until the GA can identify the bad guys for certain, they can't simply fire on anything coming out of the WH. It could be an innocent navy.

Also, with their total stealth, who is to say whether the MA has very stealthy platforms watching the watchers. And these platforms could be armed to the teeth awaiting orders. I can't believe the MA hasn't foreseen the time that that end of the WH would be seized.

* In the same vein as the much higher risk associated with removing the safety interlocks off the engine. Risky, but there are times that warrant it.

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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