Attacking Darius:

tlb wrote:I am sure that the Malign will try and I am sure that GA will anticipate that. We have still to see what the spider drive G-torpedo will do to a warship with all of its shields up.

I hope both RFC and I live long enough to see this episode written out.

I still think that being able to bring effective fire to bear from beyond the hyper limit renders system defense pretty much impossible.

Shoot and hyper out, let other units control your missiles. Do this on a rolling basis so the defenders can't ambush anyone. Punch out anything that looks military, then demand surrender or everything in space gets destroyed.

tlb wrote:

tlb wrote:At Darius, the graser torpedoes will be on spider drives and so will not be visible in the same way.
Careful, this might be a leak of something as yet unread by many.

Loren Pechtel wrote:No. The first wave wasn't detected because of it's drive, but because it was disturbing the interplanetary medium. A spider torp would be detected the same way at the same distance.

On what page did you read this? My recollection is that all the long range missiles, including all recon drones (which included the G-torpedoes) were spotted by their wedges. I cannot recall a single case were they were spotted optically.

Actually the defenders at Galton should have mixed the G-torpedoes in with the wave of recon drones, which the attacking force ignored to hide their spotting ability.

I find it very difficult to think that a graser weapon can be spotted optically before it is within range.

I didn't say optically. They were spotted by the shockwave of their passage through the interplanetary medium.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Honor fired 18k missiles at a fort. So what? She brought fifty million missiles. It's said she fired millions of missiles at the Galton's full defences to demolish them. How much is that, 10 to 12% of her inventory?

Even if she had had to fire all her missiles and even if half of them had been lost due to fleet train losses, the GA's industrial base is intact, while the sieged system's isn't. The GA can recover much more quickly than the defenders can after such an attack.

The forts could be seen. That's what forts are for. And even if they were stealthed before, once they bring up their bubblewalls, they aren't any more.

And note that she wouldn't have had to use nearly as many if she wasn't trying to keep the casualty count down. If she hadn't--fire a couple hundred thousand at each fort. The forts would be gone. The next wave goes against anything that exposed itself shooting at the waves heading for the forts.

Given the behavior of the defenders at Galton the kid gloves should come off at Darius. Surrenders are false, so there's no reason to weaken yourself to permit them. Salvos should be heavy enough to utterly destroy their targets.

tlb wrote:At Darius, the graser torpedoes will be on spider drives and so will not be visible in the same way.
Careful, this might be a leak of something as yet unread by many.

Loren Pechtel wrote:No. The first wave wasn't detected because of it's drive, but because it was disturbing the interplanetary medium. A spider torp would be detected the same way at the same distance.

tlb wrote:On what page did you read this? My recollection is that all the long range missiles, including all recon drones (which included the G-torpedoes) were spotted by their wedges. I cannot recall a single case were they were spotted optically.

Actually the defenders at Galton should have mixed the G-torpedoes in with the wave of recon drones, which the attacking force ignored to hide their spotting ability.

I find it very difficult to think that a graser weapon can be spotted optically before it is within range.

Loren Pechtel wrote:I didn't say optically. They were spotted by the shockwave of their passage through the interplanetary medium.

Thank you, but this was already answered by others. It was also pointed out that the shock-wave was generated by traveling at about .42c.

Almost everything we'd predicted in this thread that the GF would need to do to attack Darius, Honor did to attack Galton. They scouted before, they blockaded, they brought a huge fleet train for resupply, they stayed out of the hyperlimit and translated to alpha whenever they had to, to avoid incoming ordnance. And especially, they made the defensive shell.


What we didn't hear was the discussion about possible stealth ships that could be around. As we discussed in the spoiler thread, the GA knew that the MAlign had stealth ships with drives based on a new technology. We know they hadn't detected anything at Beowulf. So where was the scouting to find out if such a thing was present at Galton before the engagement? That's been the crux of this thread.

Maybe they actually did it. They couldn't count on finding anything and we know they didn't find anything, so maybe that meant their attack posture remained unchanged. There was no deviation needed from plan to account for finding something.

The shifting positions to avoid stealth attack (tactical evasion, I've called it) that I've been suggesting in all thread long were nowhere to be seen in the Galton attack. The text makes it seem like Honor was camped out at a specific position and didn't move all engagement long. Now, it's possible that they concluded they didn't need to, after the second or third Hasta attack, because they were seeing the stealth weapons early enough...

... but I don't buy it. Like in the spoiler thread, we know they know that those couldn't be what was used to attack either Beowulf, Manticore or Grayson. This wasn't a heat-of-battle oversight, because Honor was there for a week. We didn't hear about the second and third Hasta attacks because they were completely irrelevant to the outcome of the story, but we know that the Galton defenders were planning on sending an even bigger punch. So Honor would have been the recipient of escalating attacks. She would have had to conclude yet another escalation could happen, in the form of stealth torpedoes, which hadn't yet been seen but must exist.

I also suggested Honor do it inside the hyperlimit, so she couldn't be jumped at by a relief force. It seems she stayed outside the entire time.


One tactic we've suggested and was absent was the small ship probing attack. The GF can send small ships ("expendable") to strafe a target that must be defended, like shipyards. The MAN has to honour the threat and reveal their defensive plans, or at least part of it. That means breaking stealth of defensive installations necessary to drive the attack away. Maybe the reason we didn't see this at all is that the Mk23 Apollo appears to be much more capable than we last saw it. It seems to now be accurate at 10 light-minutes (180 million km) or so. So Honor didn't have to send anyone, she just sent missiles and those were doing a good job at demolishing the system infrastructure.


The other topic I'd like to mention was the complete ineffectiveness of the Galton capital ships. Yes, they were impeller-driven SDs and SD(P)s, but as discussed in the spoiler thread, they were irrelevant to the story because they were visible when the GF showed up. If any of them tried to get under way, they'd become a cloud of ionised dust before they could get very far. The same applies to capital ships visible at the time the GF arrives in Darius. Maybe the LDs patrolling Darius are running stealth at all times, but there are ships not in patrol, that are down for refits or resupply, or close to a planet so they can be seen by what they obscure, or they're transmitting, or simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. So there'll be a number of MAN capital ships that will be seen the moment the GF arrives and those are toast.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I also suggested Honor do it inside the hyperlimit, so she couldn't be jumped at by a relief force. It seems she stayed outside the entire time.

I think that you have that backward: by staying outside the hyper-limit she retains the ability to jump (which is lost inside the limit), even in the presence of a relief force. If you recheck what happened to Filareta, I think that you will find that the Haven force did not translate down to close the trap until the SLN was inside the limit.

tlb wrote:I think that you have that backward: by staying outside the hyper-limit she retains the ability to jump (which is lost inside the limit), even in the presence of a relief force. If you recheck what happened to Filareta, I think that you will find that the Haven force did not translate down to close the trap until the SLN was inside the limit.

I hear you but Filareta was massively outranged by the forces on either side of him. He also let himself get trapped by a lure in front of him.

The problem with staying outside of the hyperlimit is that an arriving force can transit on top of you and have accurate targeting transmitted to them by a destroyer that translated to alpha. You can't tell when that destroyer went away, so you don't know when the relief force arrives. If that force has rolled pods and fires as soon as it translates, it can saturate your defences before you can get them going very well.

I'm not saying such a relief force is going to survive, mind you. There's nothing in the Galaxy today that is going to go home happy after a salvo from 250 GA SD(P)s, even if they weren't prepared to fire 10 seconds ago. In a couple of decades, maybe a force of 500 SD(P)s by someone else might and the only entity that is going to have the industry to build that is going to be the SLN.

No, the point was to cause enough losses on the blockading GF to force it to leave and regroup, thereby ending the blockade and allowing the Darius system to resume operations and possibly effect an evacuation of the party leaders.

tlb wrote:I think that you have that backward: by staying outside the hyper-limit she retains the ability to jump (which is lost inside the limit), even in the presence of a relief force. If you recheck what happened to Filareta, I think that you will find that the Haven force did not translate down to close the trap until the SLN was inside the limit.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I hear you but Filareta was massively outranged by the forces on either side of him. He also let himself get trapped by a lure in front of him.

The problem with staying outside of the hyperlimit is that an arriving force can transit on top of you and have accurate targeting transmitted to them by a destroyer that translated to alpha. You can't tell when that destroyer went away, so you don't know when the relief force arrives. If that force has rolled pods and fires as soon as it translates, it can saturate your defences before you can get them going very well.

I'm not saying such a relief force is going to survive, mind you. There's nothing in the Galaxy today that is going to go home happy after a salvo from 250 GA SD(P)s, even if they weren't prepared to fire 10 seconds ago. In a couple of decades, maybe a force of 500 SD(P)s by someone else might and the only entity that is going to have the industry to build that is going to be the SLN.

No, the point was to cause enough losses on the blockading GF to force it to leave and regroup, thereby ending the blockade and allowing the Darius system to resume operations and possibly effect an evacuation of the party leaders.

I understand what you are saying, but all that means is the call in Filareta's case waited until the range was favorable for the defenders. In the case of Darius, the call could come as soon as Honor's force was within the limit (so still within easy range of the translating force). So exactly the same situation as you suggest, except Honor's force has lost one avenue of escape.

I do not remember if it was stated somewhere that a force is blind for some short time after translation; That might be from a different author.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Almost everything we'd predicted in this thread that the GF would need to do to attack Darius, Honor did to attack Galton. They scouted before, they blockaded, they brought a huge fleet train for resupply, they stayed out of the hyperlimit and translated to alpha whenever they had to, to avoid incoming ordnance. And especially, they made the defensive shell.

Come on guys. You can't be that blind. Why do I continue to see things so differently.

First off, you are right that a few things were predicted.

I also predicted that the GA would make a big mistake because they were going in blind. Remember when I was gobsmacked about the notion of a siege? Well, one of the things I said would be lacking is a staging area. An immediate staging area. As follows ...

As TM mentioned, drones would be sent in to stalk the system. These drones would get deep into enemy territory swinging the long way around trying to avoid detection. Now, when the fleet finally arrives, they have got to "sit like ducks" w/o any accel. Stooging around the hyper limit for lack of a staging area, waiting for the feed from the farthest drones to reach them, and then allow time for the staff to formulate tactics. I stated early on in the thread that that wouldn't be possible in Darius.

Even at Galton they were surprised the GA was stooging. Sitting like ducks. The truth is that at Darius, that first launch would have been an Alpha launch and the GA would have taken huge losses. That was a gigantic mistake Honor made even at the beginning. It didn't bite her on the ass because Galton didn't mount a serious defense, or offense. But then, against an enemy they had trouble seeing, the GA had no choice. Just like I predicted. They didn't dare blindly rush in where fools fear to tread. If that first launch would have been at Darius against the same sitting ducks, the result would have been roasted pheasant.

I also predicted that the defense of Darius would include emplacements outside the limit, guessing at probable approach vectors. Honor mused about weapons being found so far out. There would have been a lot more of them at Darius.

And, at Darius that shell of drones, part of the life blood of the assault, would have been eaten for lunch. Effectively putting the RMN's eyes out.

And, please forget about this blockade business. It ain't so. You can't blockade ships you cannot see. How do the GA know they were stopping invisible ships. Darius had to have a way to ensure that the after action report reached Darius. There was no blockade. You can't interfere with Ghosts.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:What we didn't hear was the discussion about possible stealth ships that could be around. As we discussed in the spoiler thread, the GA knew that the MAlign had stealth ships with drives based on a new technology. We know they hadn't detected anything at Beowulf. So where was the scouting to find out if such a thing was present at Galton before the engagement? That's been the crux of this thread.

Which was another grave tactical error! From my view point, the GA's tactics would have been as arrogant and as ignorant and as fatal as the Sollies. If used at Darius.

I don't know why one would continue to think the fleet of LDs are not ready. That is insane. Do consider that all of the real toys were not "allocated" to Galton. Meaning, they are being produced in enormous numbers somewhere else. (And I could have sworn there was a mention of yet a third system. I haven't had a chance to check the book. I have been busy. And it takes time to "search" a book.)

Speaking of enormous numbers, you can't possibly pack more luggage than a serious navy has at home. There was no way the RMN could carry more missiles to Nouveau Paris than were in the "Home System." That is only part of what I mean when I said at Galton, they effectively had two rounds in the chambers, if using six-shooters! Compared to what a Home System should have! Compared to what Darius will have. The tactics the GA used at Galton would have gotten them killed in Darius.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Maybe they actually did it. They couldn't count on finding anything and we know they didn't find anything, so maybe that meant their attack posture remained unchanged. There was no deviation needed from plan to account for finding something.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The shifting positions to avoid stealth attack (tactical evasion, I've called it) that I've been suggesting in all thread long were nowhere to be seen in the Galton attack.

Well, that is not quite true. Honor's unorthodox formation from the beginning took care of that. They didn't use the traditional wall of battle. Which I argued would simply offer up a lunch buffet to invisible weapons. Honor used a, hmm, Matryoshka Doll arrangement? She was the biggest prize at the center. Something the RMN didn't usually do. Again, completely different tactics. As I said early on, "not business as usual."

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The text makes it seem like Honor was camped out at a specific position and didn't move all engagement long.

They were stooging! Stooging! Darius would have been so excited for the opportunity, that they would have taken the time to put on a bib and lay napkins in their laps to properly enjoy the meal. Served cold.

ThinksMarkedly wrote: Now, it's possible that they concluded they didn't need to, after the second or third Hasta attack, because they were seeing the stealth weapons early enough...

Not the real stealth weapons, like, oh, warships?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:... but I don't buy it. Like in the spoiler thread, we know they know that those couldn't be what was used to attack either Beowulf, Manticore or Grayson. This wasn't a heat-of-battle oversight, because Honor was there for a week. We didn't hear about the second and third Hasta attacks because they were completely irrelevant to the outcome of the story, but we know that the Galton defenders were planning on sending an even bigger punch. So Honor would have been the recipient of escalating attacks. She would have had to conclude yet another escalation could happen, in the form of stealth torpedoes, which hadn't yet been seen but must exist.

Those stealth torpedoes would have wiped the stooges out with the first Alpha launch.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I also suggested Honor do it inside the hyperlimit, so she couldn't be jumped at by a relief force. It seems she stayed outside the entire time.

Smart girl. She better not enter Darius' hyper limit. Why would you want to venture into the dark unknown against an enemy you cannot see. I suggested very early on that the tactics would have to be completely different at Darius.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:One tactic we've suggested and was absent was the small ship probing attack. The GF can send small ships ("expendable") to strafe a target that must be defended, like shipyards.

Good thing they are expendable. LOL

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The MAN has to honour the threat and reveal their defensive plans, or at least part of it. That means breaking stealth of defensive installations necessary to drive the attack away. Maybe the reason we didn't see this at all is that the Mk23 Apollo appears to be much more capable than we last saw it. It seems to now be accurate at 10 light-minutes (180 million km) or so. So Honor didn't have to send anyone, she just sent missiles and those were doing a good job at demolishing the system infrastructure.

They were doing a piss poor job. The Alignment's defense were eating them for lunch. Like the RMN's countermissile defense usually does. At a dug in Darius, considering that CMs are cheap and plentiful, Honor's launches would be eaten. She can't have brought along more missiles than CMs, in a bonafide heavily fortified system. And again, that fleet train will be derailed at Darius.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:The other topic I'd like to mention was the complete ineffectiveness of the Galton capital ships. Yes, they were impeller-driven SDs and SD(P)s, but as discussed in the spoiler thread, they were irrelevant to the story because they were visible when the GF showed up. If any of them tried to get under way, they'd become a cloud of ionised dust before they could get very far. The same applies to capital ships visible at the time the GF arrives in Darius. Maybe the LDs patrolling Darius are running stealth at all times, but there are ships not in patrol, that are down for refits or resupply, or close to a planet so they can be seen by what they obscure, or they're transmitting, or simply at the wrong place at the wrong time. So there'll be a number of MAN capital ships that will be seen the moment the GF arrives and those are toast.

I certainly agree. Actually, I think those ships were only props on a stage of misdirection. No serious navy would have so much production without having produced capital ships. They had to have something there. Or the GA would have asked, "Where are their ships?" They were never meant to put up a real fight.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:One more thing: if this takes to happen, do expect the SL to participate too. Then we're not talking about a Grand Fleet of 250 or 500 ships. We'd be talking about a Grand Unified Fleet with 1000 SD(P)s and CLACs and bringing a quarter of a billion missiles.

I used to think the SL could rebuild their image by assisting the GA, as well They are coming around. But don't be so quick to throw all of your eggs in a basket that the SL will be able to throw their eggs in the basket on the way to Darius.

Right now they are grounded, meaning most of their ships are reduced to sitting around twiddling their thumbs like "sitting ducks."

The Mesan Alignment: It was like pushing baby chicks with birth defects into the culler.