Solly Fleet Advancements

lyonheart wrote:*Do you recall what Terekhov said to Yucel in SoF, chapter 31?

Basically:

'If 2 GA SD[P]'s could kill 70 BF SD's, and the GA has only 500 they could kill all of BF including the reserve 3 times over'; which is inaccurate in significant important details [such as 2 for 70 actually being less than double BF's current size] but the gist is quite correct.

For precision's sake, the actual quote:

Shadow Of Freedom
Chapter 31
Commodore Terekhov wrote:“You obviously haven’t paid any attention to reality in some time,” Terekhov said. “And you’re just a bit behind the news, too. For example, on the basis of what you’ve just said, I don’t suppose you’ve heard about what happened to Vice Admiral Dubroskaya at Saltash, when five of our destroyers destroyed all four of her battlecruisers. Or about the fact that the Star Empire is now allied to the Republic of Haven. Or that between us, we now have somewhere around five hundred ships of the wall, any two of which could have controlled every missile we fired at Crandall in Spindle. Let’s do some math here, Brigadier. If two of our ships can kill seventy of yours, and we’ve got five hundred of them, that means we can kill every superdreadnought in Battle Fleet, including the Reserve, about three times each.”

He is indulging in a bit of hyperbole, because they didn't destroy, or even target, all 70 of Crandall's ships. Not that any amount of rational argument was going to get through to Brig. Yucel.

Alizon wrote:Ok,

Well you do have something like the Cubans and rubber dingy's and rowboats with a machine gun parallel and as fate may have it, it's pretty much where the US Coast Guard spends it's time. It's the Frontier.

All along the League's borders is a semi explosive mix of League frontier worlds, protectorates and independent star systems which, up into recently, have been under the protection, guidance or threat of Frontier Fleet. It's something like a pressure cooker with FF holding the lid down while simultaneously taking out the best bits for itself.

Here is the crux of our disagreement. I say that a destroyer is not overkill when dealing with a a potentially rebellious frontier world. Solarian destroyers are not nearly as powerful as you seem to think. A destroyer is the bare minimum I would want to send to a frontier world--I'd prefer to send a couple, or perhaps light cruisers. It is the frontier that is more likely to face piracy and other problems. And if the world is potentially rebellious, you will need at least a few marines. A destroyer is the smallest vessel you can put marines on. I would never consider sending anything less capable than a Solarian Rampart-class ship.

I think you are also overestimating the savings you would get from making a smaller ship.

I believe we will have to just disagree here.

Much earlier in the thread, someone suggested that the SLN might find it usefull to attack and take back one of the wormhole ends closest to them.

With enough wallers and willingness to take casulaties, that is certainly possible. However, consider the potential GA/SEM response. Manticore and the GA would not attempt to retake it through the wormhole but they could send a force the long way through hyper-space.

The original RMN holding force doesn't have to fight to the death holding the SL end of a wormhole. It would be ever so much better to bleed the attacking force white (if not destroy most of it) until the RMN was running low on weapons and then run for it. Either through the wormhole or just hyper-out. Unless it is a compleat screw up on the part of the RMN, that kind of option will do significant damage to the SLN attcking force and suffer "relatively" low casualties since the RMN has the range advantage.

When they get to the newly aquired SLN end, they will find a large concentration of SLN ships. Many of those will be tucked in close to the terminus for defending it. Lots of of SLN "targets". The GA would be comming out of hyper with NO constraints of hyper-limits. They can come in as close to the terminus as is deemed safe. Most of the SLN ships will NOT have their hyper-drives on-line and it will take time for them to spin them up.

It would be best if a couple of RMN BC's dropped in WAY outside of the terminus (take a page from oyster bay)and then snuck in to run Ghost Rider RDs through the area.

Remember what the SLN's capabilities are NOT in the area of counter-missile engagement!

The GA force- with that massive missle range advantage- could drop in, confirm targets, fire MDMs and then "just" maneuver to avoid getting into the engagement envelopes of the SLN ships. You could adjust missle fire to saturate anything relatively close to the GA ships. For the rest of the SLN warships, you don't actually have to fire enough missiles at any one ship to guarantee its destruction but you need enough to get a mission kill. The difference in mission-kill vs destruction may not be great enough not to go for full killes each target. The implication of lightening the fire on any one ship would be to get signifcant damage and effectively take it out of combat for up to years. The SLN would have to recover any cripples they thought could be repaired and take them away for Yard work.

It depends on what you plan on doing once you clear the SL off the terminus again. Rinse and repeat might be a good stratagem. You are destroying SLN ships and killing a lot of their crews, but doing it well away from any of the SL planets and not hitting any civilian/commercial infrastructure.

Just a thought

Why would they not have their hype drives ready? It's also totally logical that you hide the main SL force in hyper.

Because it puts additional wear on the components, leading to shorter service life and higher maintenance costs. Since you cannot know when an attempt will be made on the system, it means keeping the hyper generators up 24/7, for weeks, months, or even indefinitely.

If you turned off the fusion reactors and removed the air the wear and tear would be reduced even more.

Unlike the RMN, the SLN has yards to repair their ships in.

Keep those nodes and hyper drives hot. Take the wormholes or all is lost. Without taking the wormholes, the SL loses much of its defensive depth. Why, attacking, Mancitore infrastructure is a really stupid initial strategy. Shouldn't the MALIGN want the SL to at least inflict some damage on the GA? As a secondary objective, sure it makes sense. Primary? No.

MALIGN needs time to partially even the giant advances in weapons technology.

MALIGN does not want the SL to utterly fracture, but rather step into the void created by lack of leadership. Therefore the MALIGN does not want to SL to utterly fracture. If a completely fracturing of the SL happens, this allows the GA, to much more easily pick up the pieces they want, keep many others neutral in their favor, and parce out those who are most likely part of the MALIGN and hostile to them.

We are going to see this in the next few books how the MALIGN screwed the pooch

Relax wrote:Unlike the RMN, the SLN has yards to repair their ships in.

Keep those nodes and hyper drives hot. Take the wormholes or all is lost. Without taking the wormholes, the SL loses much of its defensive depth. Why, attacking, Mancitore infrastructure is a really stupid initial strategy. Shouldn't the MALIGN want the SL to at least inflict some damage on the GA? As a secondary objective, sure it makes sense. Primary? No.

MALIGN needs time to partially even the giant advances in weapons technology.

MALIGN does not want the SL to utterly fracture, but rather step into the void created by lack of leadership. Therefore the MALIGN does not want to SL to utterly fracture. If a completely fracturing of the SL happens, this allows the GA, to much more easily pick up the pieces they want, keep many others neutral in their favor, and parce out those who are most likely part of the MALIGN and hostile to them.

We are going to see this in the next few books how the MALIGN screwed the pooch

Ummmm...... According to the Malign original plans there was not supposed to be any GA to compete with their puppets for the loyalty of ex-SL worlds. Haven was supposed to conquer Manticore then implode, then the SL would collapse.

Since this has turned into a what-should-Manticore-do-to-the-Sollies thread, here's my proposal:

I'm sure the ONI has a good idea which Solly systems are capable of building ships for the ISLN. Dispatch a bunch of destroyers and light cruisers to scout each system using a variant of what the Peeps did with Argus. Do a low-signature hyper translation far enough out that your ship is unlikely to be noticed. Accelerate, buzz past the hyper limit on a ballistic course, deploy a spread of Ghost Rider drones, let them spy out the system, recover drones and move on. Or, leave a few drones to sneak around after you're gone. Do NOT use grav-pulse communication; it might be noticed.

If the system is not building ISLN units, fine. Scout it again in a T-year or so. Check some of the less likely candidates in the meantime.

If there are ships under construction, schedule it for a visit by a modest task force a month or two before the first ones are finished. Give a few hours' evacuation warning, blow the ships to tiny bits, and leave. Make no special effort to destroy the system's infrastructure beyond collateral damage from taking out the ships and anybody that tries to stop you.

Since it takes over a T-year to build even a light cruiser, there will be plenty of opportunity to prevent the League from building anything, much less a fleet that could present a threat. Only systems that are actually attempting to contribute to the ISLN's war effort will be hit. After a while they're going to find it very hard to get anybody to accept a contract!
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It takes two to make peace. It only takes one to make war.

Brigade XO wrote:Much earlier in the thread, someone suggested that the SLN might find it usefull to attack and take back one of the wormhole ends closest to them.
[snip]
When they get to the newly aquired SLN end, they will find a large concentration of SLN ships. Many of those will be tucked in close to the terminus for defending it. Lots of of SLN "targets". The GA would be comming out of hyper with NO constraints of hyper-limits. They can come in as close to the terminus as is deemed safe. Most of the SLN ships will NOT have their hyper-drives on-line and it will take time for them to spin them up.

Well, you've potentially got to worry about the resonance zone of the wormhole; so that might limit exactly how close you'd want to try dropping in (although none of them would have as dangerous an RZ as the Manticoran Junction does)

I suspect that kzt is closer to right; that the SLN would attempt to keep their hyper drives in the ready state. So the GA attackers retaking the wormhole could only count on having about 4 minutes before their targets could slip into hyper (minimum cycle time for an 8 mton SD).

But the good news is that 4 minutes looks to be enough time that you can still fire from just beyond SDM range (by using at least one full accel stage) with DDMs or MDMs and reach the target before they can hyper out. (But if you screw up your navigation you could either be so far out you can't hit them in time, or so close that you take SDM fire in response)


Now I'm sure that some of the SLN ships will have their hyper drives less than fully ready when the ball goes up (failures, necessary maintenance, etc) But defending a spot outside the hyper limit it'd be damned dangerous not to have hyper generators ready to let you escape.