Breaking the "sprawl"

Bill Woods wrote:

Brigade XO wrote: We don't really know what is already there or what may be going to be added as it is plot driven. Not actually sure (since they aren't displayed) where Nuncio is in relation except it is X light years from Y and Z and that Idaho is A from Manticore. And just exactly why there happend to be a SQUADRON of FF BCs available at the call of the OFS Governor (must be at least several systems being delt with by him) who sent them with the freighter to force the access to the Nuncio terminus?

A squadron of BCs for an OFS sector seems normal enough. Madras sector had at least a division. Whatever sector Saltash is in had a squadron, though only a division was available for deployment. Maya has whatever it has; the force deployed to defend Torch doesn't seem to have raised concerns.

Storm From the Shadows, Chapter 36 wrote:Oh, come on, Lorcan! he told himself bracingly. You know Thurgood is an old woman at heart. Do really think he'd still be just a commodore at his age if he had a clue about how things really work? They sent him out here to get rid of him, not because of his brilliance! And of course he's been running scared ever since Monica. Until Byng showed up, he was the one who'd have had to go up against the Manties, and the biggest thing he had under his command was a division of heavy cruisers. No wonder he didn't want to cross swords with the big, bad Manties!

Shadow of Freedom, Chapter 33 wrote:“It does seem like using a sledgehammer to swat flies,” Howell Chavez, CO of SLNS Edgehill, Thurgood’s battlecruiser flagship, agreed. Thurgood glanced at the com display which linked his flag bridge to Chavez’s command deck, and the flag captain chuckled humorlessly. “I mean, I’m flattered and everything, Sir, but it is a little excessive, don’t you think?”
“It’s possible they think we’ve been reinforced,” Wayne said, but Thurgood shook his head.
“Possible, but not too damned likely. Not way the hell and gone out here.”

...Snip...

In the meantime, every hyper-capable ship that could get underway, had. She wasn’t especially surprised to see the Frontier Fleet detachment running hard for the hyper limit, and she didn’t blame Commodore Francis Thurgood one bit. In fact, she’d expected no less out of him. She and Cynthia Lecter had made it their business to study every scrap of information they could dig up on him, and it was obvious he was no Byng or Crandall. She’d been confident he’d recognize his responsibility to rescue whatever he could from the wreck for future service, and given that they’d obviously caught him with hot impeller nodes for some reason—an exercise, perhaps?—he was doing precisely what she would have anticipated.

...Snip...

Thurgood’s battlecruisers had been accelerating away from Meyers for sixty-five minutes, and they hadn’t been wasting any time about it. In fact, they were accelerating at almost 4.8 KPS2, their maximum military power, without the inertial compensator safety margin upon which SLN doctrine insisted. As a result, their velocity away from the planet was up to 18,712 KPS, and they’d traveled 36.5 million kilometers. Assuming constant velocities, Thurgood would reach the hyper limit on the far side of the primary twenty-six minutes before Michelle could, which meant his battlecruisers would be able to slip away into hyper before she brought him into her Mark 16s’ effective powered envelope. She would have been able to get inside her Mark 23s’ much longer powered envelope, however, and her SD(P)s would have made short work of his battlecruisers and lighter units under those circumstances. It would have required the units she committed to the attack to simply overfly the planet without decelerating, but she had far more firepower than she’d ever need to deal with Meyers.

SharkHunter wrote:I wonder.... how many sectors/sector governors there are out in the Protectorates and Verge, and where the huge count of FF ships is supposed to be "hiding", at least to us readers.

Given that Battle Fleet is known to be dominated by cronyism, an amount of misplaced ships, etc... I'm wondering if Frontier Fleet is quite a bit more of a paper tiger than RFC has let on and his characters in charge of the SLN are really aware.

The other thing that factors into my thinking is the size of the forces assigned to the workhole termini that we have records of being taken in Laccoon II, and a surmise that a Sollie BC is perhaps 3x easier to smack than an SD, it would stand to reason that they're not expecting formations more than maybe 2-4 full BC squadrons or so.

Thoughts?

Theemile wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:I wonder.... how many sectors/sector governors there are out in the Protectorates and Verge, and where the huge count of FF ships is supposed to be "hiding", at least to us readers.

Given that Battle Fleet is known to be dominated by cronyism, an amount of misplaced ships, etc... I'm wondering if Frontier Fleet is quite a bit more of a paper tiger than RFC has let on and his characters in charge of the SLN are really aware.

The other thing that factors into my thinking is the size of the forces assigned to the workhole termini that we have records of being taken in Laccoon II, and a surmise that a Sollie BC is perhaps 3x easier to smack than an SD, it would stand to reason that they're not expecting formations more than maybe 2-4 full BC squadrons or so.

Thoughts?

I think it's been well documented that the FF is used to being broken into penny packets for patrols and missions. Chances are, if you hit a FF base, only 25-33% of it's assigned force will be there - and 1/2 of those will be down for maintenance. The rest will be out patrolling or in transit. And if you care to sit there for awhile, those patrollers will return in small groups for you to pick off. Of course, the longer you stay, you also run the risk of a neighboring, major nodal force coming to the rescue of the Base defenders. But overall, FF is like an old sheet - stretched, worn out and thin everywhere.