Apollo Redundancy

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:For the same reason that pinnaces and cutters are popguns against real warships. A stealthy enough platform designed to take out ACMs may be effective only against ACMs, not against real warships. I am not against an unprecedented tactic of maneuvering and sneaking a counter missile system within range of the enemy. Unprecedented stealth allows unprecedented tactics. The MA has always been about turning the nail on its head.

As others have said, those should fire at the pods, not at the missiles after launch. The pods are collecting in great quantities for an alpha launch and they have an onboard fusion reactor that can be made go critical.

But once the missiles launch, it's one or two seconds until they light up their impellers. That means this putative attacker must be within 1 light-second from the missiles to have a chance of seeing them before their wedges come up, making the sensing much more difficult, and placing impenetrable wedges on the way. I don't think they can get to that range at all, since there should be escorts further out from the SDs, which would be therefore much closer to those ships and presumably detect them.

I agree for the most part, except for the misunderstanding AND the devil in the details.

Firstly, I am thinking about a scenario where the GA is attacking Darius, and stooging outside the hyper limit. They think they are alone, thus don't see the Sharks or the LD or the very stealthy anti-missile platforms being steered into position.

Of course the platforms should go after the pods. After all, it is an anti-missile platform! And as I stated above, eliminating an entire Alpha launch and the the time it took to roll it, and the time it will take to roll a second ALPHA LAUNCH, buys an LD the time it needs.

IF!, the launch gets off before the platforms are completely in place, then chasing the lower Accel missiles down should result in killing the trailing ACMs. And perhaps a fair number of missiles as well.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:And as I said before, even if this all worked, it would be a one-time trick. Then these ships have revealed themselves and have been gunned down by the onboard grasers, lasers and maybe even PDLCs, because they are within range.

Not necessarily ships, but possibly platforms. But even losing a Shark would be acceptable to losing an LD. The MA cannot afford to trade ship for ship. But sacrificing a Shark for an LD would be acceptable. Especially if the LD has now slotted into place and hellfire and brimstone is moments away.

cthia wrote:Plus, tactics that work only once are fine if designed for a particular reason, like allowing an LD to tactically maneuver into a critical position; akin to laying down suppressive fire by eliminating an expected launch. An LD might only need one 'get out of jail free' card.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Fair enough.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Plus, after eliminating or handicapping the launch it could attack the ship before it is blasted out of space.

That would neither be possible nor believable. If the attacking ships had the power to take out the launching superdreadnoughts, they should have done that before the launch. Waiting for a couple thousand missiles to be in space is stupid.

Remember, the source of the attack are platforms, they are only popguns against warships. Dunno what kind of firepower upgraded Sharks will carry. At any rate, it isn't going to hurt if the popguns attack a warship. Especially if it is going to die anyway. It might serve to distract the warship, or do SOME damage. Like taking out communications, a missile tube. Something. It is akin to my suggestion that an ACM shouldn't just die at the end of its mission. It should ram! Especially against an LD which might be vulnerable.

Thinksmarkedly wrote:Sure, it could have been ill-timing, but it would still be stupid to reveal yourself by shooting at some missiles (and not even the warheads) before trying to attack the ships that have more missiles. Even if such an attack could blunt the missile salvo sufficiently, the fact that those ships are firing will reveal them to the supedreadnoughts and their escorts. No sane CO would gamble on being able to fire at the missiles and the motherships by firing at the lesser threat first. If they are unable to take out the motherships, those motherships can make a second salvo of similar size.

Again, these stealthy platforms are popguns against real warships. These are stealthy anti-missile platforms. An LD may not be able to afford to wait until an alpha launch is bearing down on it. So, take the CM fight to the enemy if possible. And again, the time it takes to roll another alpha launch may give an LD all the time it needs. Time to make sure the fleet never gets to fire a second launch. Alpha or otherwise.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

cthia wrote:Taking the CM battle to the enemy could be decisive if an entire Alpha launch could be eliminated before it is even launched.

True, but that means attacking the pods or the launching ships, not one ninth of the missiles.

Agreed. However, one ninth of the missiles might do if they are critical ACMs. I'm talking about giving an LD all of the edge it can get, as a contingency plan.

If you can get that close just kill the SDs, ignore the pods. There is one SD that dropped say 360 pods. If you have enough attack vehicles to target 360 pods you can target every SD with dozens of attack vehicles, which will strike from total surprise and can avoid both the sidewalls and the armor.

kzt wrote:If you can get that close just kill the SDs, ignore the pods. There is one SD that dropped say 360 pods. If you have enough attack vehicles to target 360 pods you can target every SD with dozens of attack vehicles, which will strike from total surprise and can avoid both the sidewalls and the armor.

In that case, kill the damn SDs!

I hear you guys. Everyone wants to turn SDs into flaming datum. If dozens of SDs can be wiped out of existence, I agree. But let me flesh out what's going on in my head a bit more.

First. ThinksMarkedly is shaking his head going, "cthia, nothing is going to be able to get that close." But what if the MA can sneak a platform in, very close, because it is very small, with limited firepower, good for only anti-missile duty?

I am thinking that missiles are much softer targets than warships. And missiles that are sitting in pods without a wedge are even easier to kill. Heck, pods can probably be destroyed with simple high density shrapnel.

Limited firepower designed as anti-missile support might not even scratch the paint on a heavily armored SD, even with sidewalls down.

How do you avoid the armor?

At any rate, let's say everyone is right, dozens of SDs can be destroyed. What about that alpha launch? An LD may be lost. A critical LD that has been maneuvering, trying to slot itself into position for whatever reason.

Anyway, if destroying dozens of SDs is possible, I would immediately change my tune and agree to it without reservation.

But again, how do you avoid the armor if the firepower is very limited? Good for only killing naked, fragile missiles in pods.

Doh!

Late edit:

Because I forgot a critical point! If that alpha launch is from only several SDs, it might not be worth losing an LD to the alpha launch. A one to one-to-three trade isn't in the MA's favor. So the expected launch must be taken out.

How many SDs are worth an LD?

The cost of the spider drive appears to be huge. The graser torps have to be close to shrike sized. So why would you want to even design something less effective than the graser?

And it doesn’t matter how many missiles you shoot at a LD. Space is big, you might as will plan to kill the mayor by shooting a pistol randomly into the sky at noon. It’s not IMPOSSIBLE that you might succeed, but it is extraordinarily unlikely.

cthia wrote:First. ThinksMarkedly is shaking his head going, "cthia, nothing is going to be able to get that close." But what if the MA can sneak a platform in, very close, because it is very small, with limited firepower, good for only anti-missile duty?

I'll grant you that something VERY small and, therefore, with limited firepower, could be even stealthier than a graser torpedo and thus get into much closer range. And in doing so, it may be able to locate individual pods or clusters of them, and shoot them out of the sky.

Indeed, the tactic may be to wait for the pods to begin launching, so that you know the launch is nearly ready to be loosed. Because, and this is critical, those weapons are a one-time thing. Once they've fired, they've either destroyed themselves, or they will be destroyed by PDLCs. And then the tactic won't work again, because then the attacking fleet will be wise to it and sweep the immediacies with recon drones and escorts. Hell, they may even just barricade with a couple hundred CMs to clear the space.

The problem, however, is that this is wasteful.

First, you need to get those weapons in position, without being detected. If this is an attack on Darius, Darius defenders can't know when the GA will arrive, where it will arrive from hyper and just where it'll stop in order to make the launches. So they can't pre-position sufficient attack platforms. Those platforms would need speedy drives to get there, probably a GR-quality stealth impeller. The spider drive is slow and massive... and besides, they have graser torpedoes that can kill the SDs.

Second, because of the need to get into position, there's the issue of timing. If the GA arrives at Darius unannounced, they could have already rolled the pods and be ready to make said alpha launch within 5 minutes of crossing the alpha wall. There isn't time to get those weapons into position.

Third, there's a chance that the attack doesn't do enough. The GF may decide to keep rolling pods, at which point the weapons couldn't take enough out of the ACMs to make a difference, so they have to shoot. They may fail to actually take down sufficient quantity of ACMs, because the missiles jinked that way instead of this way, or the timing was off by 10 milliseconds, or something else. Or they may be spotted by random chance (a GR literally stumbles upon a platform).

Those platforms would, at best, blunt one alpha launch, but leave the motherships untouched. So those motherships can make a second launch, and achieve the same objective, with a minor inconvenience of doing so 10 or 15 minutes later.

But this would cost in construction of those platforms. I seriously doubt any good logistician would spend time and resources on an endeavour that has such a low probability of success, low effectiveness and high cost.

At any rate, let's say everyone is right, dozens of SDs can be destroyed. What about that alpha launch? An LD may be lost. A critical LD that has been maneuvering, trying to slot itself into position for whatever reason.

Better to lose that ship or installation than leave the fleet in being and able to launch a second, and third, and fourth launches. Honor camped out at the hyperlimit of Galton for a week and fired two million missiles.

One single asset can't be worth leaving the fleet there, largely untouched. This plan needs to either have a very, very high reward, or be of such low cost that it's of no consequence that it completely failed by taking out exactly 0 missiles.

Anyway, if destroying dozens of SDs is possible, I would immediately change my tune and agree to it without reservation.

We're not saying it is, but we're saying that this is what the MAN should be researching and developing. Better to have 5 different strategies that may or may not work at taking out SDs than to have a sure one that can take out missiles in the 2 seconds between deploy and wedge activation.

Because I forgot a critical point! If that alpha launch is from only several SDs, it might not be worth losing an LD to the alpha launch. A one to one-to-three trade isn't in the MA's favor. So the expected launch must be taken out.

Which is why this strategy isn't worth it. It's not about the reward if it works, it's that it has such a low probability of continued success.

Why would you want to "upgrade" Sharks?

Not that they are a bad stealth weapon as they are even if they had to carry the GTs outboard (the LDs will carry them inboard) though I'm not quite sure if they also carried the various packages delivered ballistically also outboard or inboard.

Test beds or not, they work and my guess is the time and money to any refit isn't going to be useful. While you might let LD get inside the hyper limit, you probably don't want anything as "dirty" (ordinance hanging all over the hull) get close to the hyper limit or try and go creeping around to ambush an attacking fleet.
On the other hand, you probably wouldn't need the entire (all the Sharks at both MBS and Blackbird) to go after one or two other systems that are getting iffy about going along with what the Alignment wats then to do ---particularly because your not actually going to make overt threats to them before you devastate said systems. Other than Beowulf, how many systems of the sizes that were hit with Buccaneer need the kind of treatment used to cripple Manticore and Grayson? Darn few. How many systems have perhaps 40 or 50 dispersed yards for warships and hundred or more KM sized combination residence/commercial/military/fabricaton stations in orbits. One Shark and a Ghost for targeting recon and you can probably take out 20+ "normal" stations and major fabrication facilities --and the local "starship repair yard".

Who has a system defence network and shoals of defence pods like Manticore?

Perhaps the Sharks are even significantly slower than LD's for getting between systems or long-mission deep strikes? So you send them earlier. Or send them as a preemptive deployment to places you want to use as examples but only have them loiter -for months.

Use them on 3rd tier targeting tastings......they strike from seemingly out of nowhere, hit a lot of soft (not military hardened or highly defended sites) facilities which don't have impeller wedges up because they have nothing to see till things start blowing up.

Heck, on most systems, you could even send a ship like a modern RMN BC to come screaming in- pump out a crapload of MDSs and pods to target almost anything orbital in the system and blow it all to hell...this is the Alignment, massive collateral casualties is nothing to them. You want panic, Mannheim SDF with IFF off and towing a lot of pods could pop out of hyper with no transmissions and just launch at a long list of targets.......catastrophy and "mindless" destruction by unnamed foes.....really good Alignment planning

Brigade XO wrote:
Heck, on most systems, you could even send a ship like a modern RMN BC to come screaming in- pump out a crapload of MDSs and pods to target almost anything orbital in the system and blow it all to hell...this is the Alignment, massive collateral casualties is nothing to them. You want panic, Mannheim SDF with IFF off and towing a lot of pods could pop out of hyper with no transmissions and just launch at a long list of targets.......catastrophy and "mindless" destruction by unnamed foes.....really good Alignment planning

With Gtorps, why do you even need a Shark? Send in some Ghosts to survey the system and set up the inner system control station, then have a freighter come into the system and drop off G-torps at the hyper limit programmed to have a circuitous course to the target region. The Freighter stops and drops off/picks up a few cargo pods like a normal freighter would, then continues on it's merry way. A week or so later the Gtorps come slashing in on a weird vector out of the dark, get final targeting from the Ghost's platform, then rip apart their targets. No Sharks or LDs needed.