Beating up Frontier Fleet, mercilessly

--big snip--

JeffEngel wrote:Hopefully Admiral Sarnow (among many others) has had some time to spend thinking more on commerce protection routines.

I'm thinking that once the first SL raids have happened, for the RMC between the wormholes or at critical attack points, the convoys will get pretty good sized along the lines of the so-called "Sarnow deployment".

It would also be rather fun to see every PN Q-ship ever manufactured that still exist put back into service as RHN warships, except with upgraded compensators, fire control, and longer ranged missiles, to accompanying those convoys, ya think?. Maybe a merchant or repair yard couldn't do warships but could start churning out Trojans, etc. Steal all the grasers and PDLC clusters from those danged captured Solarian SDs, etc.; that might be the only bit of those danged ships worth using (hooked to GA fire control, of course).

Think of what fun all a whole bunch of HMMAC Wayfarer types would have in the DDM/MDM era against SLN attacks. Many ka-booms. Likely few of them merchies.

SharkHunter wrote:--big snip--

JeffEngel wrote:Hopefully Admiral Sarnow (among many others) has had some time to spend thinking more on commerce protection routines.

I'm thinking that once the first SL raids have happened, for the RMC between the wormholes or at critical attack points, the convoys will get pretty good sized along the lines of the so-called "Sarnow deployment".

It would also be rather fun to see every PN Q-ship ever manufactured that still exist put back into service as RHN warships, except with upgraded compensators, fire control, and longer ranged missiles, to accompanying those convoys, ya think?. Maybe a merchant or repair yard couldn't do warships but could start churning out Trojans, etc. Steal all the grasers and PDLC clusters from those danged captured Solarian SDs, etc.; that might be the only bit of those danged ships worth using (hooked to GA fire control, of course).

Think of what fun all a whole bunch of HMMAC Wayfarer types would have in the DDM/MDM era against SLN attacks. Many ka-booms. Likely few of them merchies.

It'd take some refitting, amounting to reconstruction, to get too far on a lot of those Q-ships. There's also the problem that drawing the enemy in and blowing them away with a Q-ship tends to rely on the enemy not having an interest in just blowing you up, which is what SLN commerce raiders will be planning. Certainly the defenses and speed of Haven War veteran fleet train units will come as a shock though, and what your convoy can control in the way of missiles from pods it can use to great effect. (But it's only going to be RHN pods and missiles that can be spared for the time being, running around with convoys that will hopefully never even see a raider to shoot.)

While I'm not impressed with the practicality, it certainly brings a smile to the face picturing it.

An interesting thought: SLN ships running around blowing away or seizing merchants without the benefit of a declaration of war (by the League, against the nations behind those freighters) are, technically, pirates, and anything short of summary execution is a generosity, not something they can claim under the customs of war. Kingsford is effectively proposing to turn the invincible Solarian League Navy into a barbarian horde, or the largest public criminal enterprise in history.

I wonder how hard it would be for Haven to redesign a new pod with the Manty fusion reactor and tractor? Could it possibly be a field mod by a repair ship? Haven still has their pod and missile lines up. How hard would it be to upgrade the missile warheads with the new Mod-G warheads that the Manties were rolling out? I know the Manties had missile production seriously ramped before Oyster Bay, so I would expect Haven to have done the same, especially with so many SD(P)s on the way. How long to get missile pods that can tractor onto older ships that Haven would build? You would be back to the pre-pod first large salvo tactics, but it would be better then nothing for the older ships, Haven and Manty alike.

JeffEngel wrote:An interesting thought: SLN ships running around blowing away or seizing merchants without the benefit of a declaration of war (by the League, against the nations behind those freighters) are, technically, pirates, and anything short of summary execution is a generosity, not something they can claim under the customs of war. Kingsford is effectively proposing to turn the invincible Solarian League Navy into a barbarian horde, or the largest public criminal enterprise in history.

The SEM declared war on the SL, which kind of takes care of that legality.

Kizarvexis wrote:I wonder how hard it would be for Haven to redesign a new pod with the Manty fusion reactor and tractor? Could it possibly be a field mod by a repair ship? Haven still has their pod and missile lines up. How hard would it be to upgrade the missile warheads with the new Mod-G warheads that the Manties were rolling out? I know the Manties had missile production seriously ramped before Oyster Bay, so I would expect Haven to have done the same, especially with so many SD(P)s on the way. How long to get missile pods that can tractor onto older ships that Haven would build? You would be back to the pre-pod first large salvo tactics, but it would be better then nothing for the older ships, Haven and Manty alike.

That would probably be pretty hard. The mirofusion plants, and improved grav lensing on the 16-Gs, are cutting edge Mantie miniturization and gravitational technology.

Haven has the basic ideas, but at least as recently as the start of the 2nd War, they lagged significantly behind in those areas. (Needed full recon-LACs to get FTL recon info back, and even then had bandwidth low enough that the LACs couldn't beam the raw sensor take back -- they had to summarize)

On the other hand, even the cruder Haven tech is more than enough to trash even Cataphract carrying, Halo equipped, SLN units. In the short to medium term ladling on the best of the RMN's goodies is mostly gratuitous overkill.

JeffEngel wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:
I'm thinking that once the first SL raids have happened, for the RMC between the wormholes or at critical attack points, the convoys will get pretty good sized along the lines of the so-called "Sarnow deployment".

It would also be rather fun to see every PN Q-ship ever manufactured that still exist put back into service as RHN warships, except with upgraded compensators, fire control, and longer ranged missiles, to accompanying those convoys, ya think?. Maybe a merchant or repair yard couldn't do warships but could start churning out Trojans, etc. Steal all the grasers and PDLC clusters from those danged captured Solarian SDs, etc.; that might be the only bit of those danged ships worth using (hooked to GA fire control, of course).

Think of what fun all a whole bunch of HMMAC Wayfarer types would have in the DDM/MDM era against SLN attacks. Many ka-booms. Likely few of them merchies.

It'd take some refitting, amounting to reconstruction, to get too far on a lot of those Q-ships. There's also the problem that drawing the enemy in and blowing them away with a Q-ship tends to rely on the enemy not having an interest in just blowing you up, which is what SLN commerce raiders will be planning. Certainly the defenses and speed of Haven War veteran fleet train units will come as a shock though, and what your convoy can control in the way of missiles from pods it can use to great effect. (But it's only going to be RHN pods and missiles that can be spared for the time being, running around with convoys that will hopefully never even see a raider to shoot.)

Rather than Q-ships, think jeep carriers, equipped with pods and LACs. If you can deter an attack on a convoy, that's good enough.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Kizarvexis wrote:I wonder how hard it would be for Haven to redesign a new pod with the Manty fusion reactor and tractor? Could it possibly be a field mod by a repair ship? Haven still has their pod and missile lines up. How hard would it be to upgrade the missile warheads with the new Mod-G warheads that the Manties were rolling out? I know the Manties had missile production seriously ramped before Oyster Bay, so I would expect Haven to have done the same, especially with so many SD(P)s on the way. How long to get missile pods that can tractor onto older ships that Haven would build? You would be back to the pre-pod first large salvo tactics, but it would be better then nothing for the older ships, Haven and Manty alike.

That would probably be pretty hard. The mirofusion plants, and improved grav lensing on the 16-Gs, are cutting edge Mantie miniturization and gravitational technology.

Haven has the basic ideas, but at least as recently as the start of the 2nd War, they lagged significantly behind in those areas. (Needed full recon-LACs to get FTL recon info back, and even then had bandwidth low enough that the LACs couldn't beam the raw sensor take back -- they had to summarize)

On the other hand, even the cruder Haven tech is more than enough to trash even Cataphract carrying, Halo equipped, SLN units. In the short to medium term ladling on the best of the RMN's goodies is mostly gratuitous overkill.

Havenite pods have to be tractored by the ship, meaning wedge interference and a slower accel/decel. The ship also has limited tractors, meaning a limit on the number of pods. If the pods tractor to the ship, the ship can carry more up to the limit of blocking weapons and sensors. So, I was wondering if it would take long for Haven to design and build pods with the Manty plans for the reactors and tractor systems? The Manties are going to take awhile to get their lines back up, so if it would take too long, then the Havenites should just keep build their old pods. BUT, if it would not take too long for the modifications, then having pods that can tractor themselves to the older ships, even with the old Havenite missiles, that would be a good thing for the older ships, Havenite or Manty.

As for the Mod-G warhead, IIRC it was better grav lensing and beam rods. With Manty plans, if the Manty style warheads could be added easily, then updating the Havenite warheads would be a good thing. Especially, if you can save room for better sensors.

Of course all of this is contingent on if building the tools to build the tools, etc doesn't take to long either. I would go with the pod issue first and the warhead/sensor upgrade second as having more pods on an older ship is worth more. With the GA going into place, that could take shorter than we think with Manty help.

Bill Woods wrote:Rather than Q-ships, think jeep carriers, equipped with pods and LACs. If you can deter an attack on a convoy, that's good enough.

RFC has talked about a LAC module you could install just inside a cargo door. It would hold some LACs and maintenance equip for giving a freighter temporary protection via LACs while in normal space and transitting grav waves in hyperspace.

If you can do that with a LAC module, you can add a pod module, but then you need fire control and the like, so LACs would probably be easier.

kzt wrote:The SEM declared war on the SL, which kind of takes care of that legality.

They almost certainly did, because the Manticoran constitution makes large-scale warfare without a declaration of war quite difficult, but I don't believe there's any explicit textev or Word of God on this. I could be wrong, though.

JeffEngel wrote:It is reasonable to suppose that a lot of the graduating classes, returning merchant marine officers and crews, and engineering staff aboard existing ships, will get sucked off into either directly replenishing the manufacturing staff, or into the jobs the people doing that replenishing are coming from (add steps as necessary).

A critical, particular portion of the national workforce up and died there. Manticore isn't going to be able to replenish that portion just by taking survivors with the very same skill sets and have them go to work training up high school graduates to fill in the rest, not in the time frame they need. "Neighboring" professionals are going to get pulled in in a large series of career shifts, with a whole lot of on the job training.

I don't think it's going to be as if a Saganami Island class or two just vanished from shipside duties - it won't be that direct or that simple. But there will be an indirect dent on crewing ships from people who have to be somewhere else more urgently for once.

As far as I understand it, Manticore needs to keep as many cargo ships in business as possible in order to generate funds for rebuilding the systems infrastructure. So I don't think that the merchant marine will be sucked dry.

What I think a lot of people are forgetting is the repatriation of all the POWs from Haven, especially all the yard workers from (Grendelsbane?) that Haven captured when they resumed hostilities. So people are going to be available when new facilities become ready for activity.