Nitpicking at A Rising Thunder...

Kytheros wrote:
If your navigator is good enough. If not, you might have a repeat of the Icarus Raid on Basilisk - dropping out of hyper headed away from the wormhole instead of towards it. Or you drop out too far, allowing the defenders time to react.

I'm doubtful about the SLN's ability to drop forces right on top of a wormhole terminus. I would expect the most attempts would probably drop short.

Mix in that probably half the Manticoran ships are lying in stealth at any given time, and successfully ambushing a Laocoon 2 picket force seems difficult. It's also possible that the Laocoon 2 pickets would park somebody in hyper to wait for just such an attempt.

Don't forget, the SLN is in a peacetime mindset - and the last thing you do is hazard your ship in peacetime rules. Don't forget wormhole are dangerous places with odd grav spikes and ships flying around all willy nilly. No SLN navigator is going to cut the corners a RMN nav will, inordinate safety is so ingrained, they will not even think for awhile about what is possible and continue being "safe" and a "close" jump will still be fairly distant and safe.

Hutch wrote:Wait a second. An 'independent' star nation 100 LY from Sol which puts it squarely in the Shell, if not in the Core itself, with a wormhole terminus to boot, and the SL/OFS hasn't got its' hooks in it? Given the conduct out on the Verge with the Protectorates, it seems unlikely that there are any real 'independent' systems that deep into the SL.

Sort of like Mesa. A small, independent star nation within the boundaries of the league, with a wormhole terminus.

Roulette isn't explicitly tagged as home to or controlled by one or more transtellars, as Mesa is, but it is undoubtedly rich enough from transit fees to buy sufficient patronage of league members to avoid overt OFS attention.

Another point is that the major worry is the Office of Frontier Security and at 100LY from Sol, Roulette hasn't been on the "Frontier" for generations.

Kytheros wrote:I'd give Sag-C's a bigger proportion than Rolands of freed up slots that could handle both as well. The Sag-C is just that much better than a Roland, in most circumstances. Rolands would get all the slots that can't handle anything bigger without upgrades.

The Rolands aren't going to be that much stealthier than a Sag-C and a Sag-C is going to carry a lot more recon drones, so for scouting/reconnaissance purposes, whatever stealth advantages a Roland has are made less relevant by the Sag-C carrying more recon drones.

I suspect the more pertinent ammunition endurance lies in missile magazines. Rolands have demonstrated they don't have a shortage of RDs and for that matter, neither did the older destroyers Eighth Fleet were using to reconniter Havenite systems.

If that holds true, then building Rolands instead of Sag-Cs is a better idea if the objective is to increase one's interstellar scouting capabilities, as more hulls can visit more locations.

BrigadeΔ wrote:That is probably the best way for the SLN to hurt the grand aliance at the moment, drop a squadron (or even a division) on the wall out of hyper on top of one of the lacoon pickets, the Sagnami C's and Rollands will fight hard I am sure however even solly wallers will swat them like flies if they drop out of hyper within a 5,000,000 kilometers and if the manticorian ships run for it you can still transit the no longer secure wormhole and ambush the unsuspecting ships on the other side of the terminus, it will not end the GA but you could at least have a few victories to claim. And even if your astrogation is not good enough, you have lots of ships and can leave a few dozen in an out of the way star system for practice.

Best bet, but not a good one.
Without pre-scouting the wormhole pretty heavily you shouldn't have a good idea of even roughly where the RMN ships are.

Even if those ships want to be close enough to land laser-heads on a hostile transit before it clears the entry 'lane' and can raise wedge & sidewalls (call it within 2 minutes of emergence) they can still be anywhere within 6 million KM of the terminus (3 million km if they're older ships without DDMs). And most of them will probably be under stealth, keeping on eye on things with Ghost Rider drones.


You'd need to be damned lucky to emerge within 500,000 km, pick them up, and fire -- all before they can roll behind their wedge and attempt to break clear.

Jonathan_S wrote:Best bet, but not a good one.
Without pre-scouting the wormhole pretty heavily you shouldn't have a good idea of even roughly where the RMN ships are.

Even if those ships want to be close enough to land laser-heads on a hostile transit before it clears the entry 'lane' and can raise wedge & sidewalls (call it within 2 minutes of emergence) they can still be anywhere within 6 million KM of the terminus (3 million km if they're older ships without DDMs). And most of them will probably be under stealth, keeping on eye on things with Ghost Rider drones.


You'd need to be damned lucky to emerge within 500,000 km, pick them up, and fire -- all before they can roll behind their wedge and attempt to break clear.

Lucky or just somewhat competent, possesing a lot of ships and easily able to come in at low velocities, given how powerful a waller is inside of energy range you could just space them in a 3 dimensional grid so that at least one ship will have a good shot at anything in the grid and a ship of the wall's energy weapons really only need one good hit on a DD even one as big as a roland, and given how big the solly fleet is you can afford to use a couple of squadrons to cover an area of a few million kilometers as a "manti free zone" and then on top of that you can bring in a bunch of BC's to cover the fringes, and as this is effectively guerilla warfare you can afford to bring enough ships to ensure no survivors and at that range even a nike class will not be able to last long with 2-3 SD's in energy range on different bearings.

BrigadeΔ wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Best bet, but not a good one.
Without pre-scouting the wormhole pretty heavily you shouldn't have a good idea of even roughly where the RMN ships are.

Even if those ships want to be close enough to land laser-heads on a hostile transit before it clears the entry 'lane' and can raise wedge & sidewalls (call it within 2 minutes of emergence) they can still be anywhere within 6 million KM of the terminus (3 million km if they're older ships without DDMs). And most of them will probably be under stealth, keeping on eye on things with Ghost Rider drones.


You'd need to be damned lucky to emerge within 500,000 km, pick them up, and fire -- all before they can roll behind their wedge and attempt to break clear.

Lucky or just somewhat competent, possesing a lot of ships and easily able to come in at low velocities, given how powerful a waller is inside of energy range you could just space them in a 3 dimensional grid so that at least one ship will have a good shot at anything in the grid and a ship of the wall's energy weapons really only need one good hit on a DD even one as big as a roland, and given how big the solly fleet is you can afford to use a couple of squadrons to cover an area of a few million kilometers as a "manti free zone" and then on top of that you can bring in a bunch of BC's to cover the fringes, and as this is effectively guerilla warfare you can afford to bring enough ships to ensure no survivors and at that range even a nike class will not be able to last long with 2-3 SD's in energy range on different bearings.

At a rough approximation you need to station SD's in a offset grid no more than 700,000 km apart to keep the furthest points of the 500,000 km sphere around each from having gaps.

In the 6,000,000 km sphere around the terminus you'd need 5038 350,000 radius spheres to fill the volume. That's basically more than the remaining active SD Battlefleet to get the kind of coverage you seem to be asking for!


"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen..." [HHGttG]

Jonathan_S wrote:"BrigadeΔ"]"Jonathan_S"]Best bet, but not a good one.
Without pre-scouting the wormhole pretty heavily you shouldn't have a good idea of even roughly where the RMN ships are.

Even if those ships want to be close enough to land laser-heads on a hostile transit before it clears the entry 'lane' and can raise wedge & sidewalls (call it within 2 minutes of emergence) they can still be anywhere within 6 million KM of the terminus (3 million km if they're older ships without DDMs). And most of them will probably be under stealth, keeping on eye on things with Ghost Rider drones.


You'd need to be damned lucky to emerge within 500,000 km, pick them up, and fire -- all before they can roll behind their wedge and attempt to break clear.

Lucky or just somewhat competent, possesing a lot of ships and easily able to come in at low velocities, given how powerful a waller is inside of energy range you could just space them in a 3 dimensional grid so that at least one ship will have a good shot at anything in the grid and a ship of the wall's energy weapons really only need one good hit on a DD even one as big as a roland, and given how big the solly fleet is you can afford to use a couple of squadrons to cover an area of a few million kilometers as a "manti free zone" and then on top of that you can bring in a bunch of BC's to cover the fringes, and as this is effectively guerilla warfare you can afford to bring enough ships to ensure no survivors and at that range even a nike class will not be able to last long with 2-3 SD's in energy range on different bearings.[/quote]At a rough approximation you need to station SD's in a offset grid no more than 700,000 km apart to keep the furthest points of the 500,000 km sphere around each from having gaps.

In the 6,000,000 km sphere around the terminus you'd need 5038 350,000 radius spheres to fill the volume. That's basically more than the remaining active SD Battlefleet to get the kind of coverage you seem to be asking for!


"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen..." [HHGttG][/quote]


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And keep in mind, Not sure which RMN Capt / Commo said it but "a sufficiently large SLN detachment may be able to push my squadron off this terminus, but I guarantee it will lose much more than the tonnage of my squadron doing it"

Mk 23's at long range, Mk 16's at intermediate range will thin out any SLN BC Squadron sent to re-take a Lancooned Terminus.

-- Stewart

Jonathan_S wrote:At a rough approximation you need to station SD's in a offset grid no more than 700,000 km apart to keep the furthest points of the 500,000 km sphere around each from having gaps.

In the 6,000,000 km sphere around the terminus you'd need 5038 350,000 radius spheres to fill the volume. That's basically more than the remaining active SD Battlefleet to get the kind of coverage you seem to be asking for!


"Space," it says, "is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist's, but that's just peanuts to space, listen..." [HHGttG]

Yes you would need a lot of ships to cover the terminus entirely however you could cover the piece of it where the enemy force is with only a dozen or so and you can find the manticorians fairly easily, they are the ones telling the "Legitimate merchantmen" and others bringing food to fring world orfans and medical supplies to planets in need to go away and if some of those "Legitimate merchantmen" happen to have military grade passive sensors or at least a flight recorder on board then it's not the fault of the SLN comander on the scene is it?

BrigadeΔ wrote:

kzt wrote:No you won't. The WH is far outside the hyperlimit. You can drop out of hyper pretty much right on top of the WH.

That is probably the best way for the SLN to hurt the grand aliance at the moment, drop a squadron (or even a division) on the wall out of hyper on top of one of the lacoon pickets, the Sagnami C's and Rollands will fight hard I am sure however even solly wallers will swat them like flies if they drop out of hyper within a 5,000,000 kilometers and if the manticorian ships run for it you can still transit the no longer secure wormhole and ambush the unsuspecting ships on the other side of the terminus, it will not end the GA but you could at least have a few victories to claim. ...

Ambushes like that shouldn't happen. Each picketed wormhole should have an overall commander for the forces deployed on both sides of the wormhole (or all the termini of a junction). Someone who has the authority to shift forces through it to meet apparent threats, and has dispatch boats routinely shuttling back and forth, to keep himself and his lieutenant on the other side up to date.

kzt wrote:

Hutch wrote:I would be watching the hyper limit with some modest concern.

No you won't. The WH is far outside the hyperlimit. You can drop out of hyper pretty much right on top of the WH.

Picking nits at my nit-picking, eh?

You're right, of course. As others have subsequently discussed, it is possible (albeit difficult) for the ISLN to drop a Squadron of wallers close enough to a wormhole to be in their missile envelope (even with the older, non-Trebuchet missiles) and thus negate the Manties range advantage.

Of course, that doesn't negate the Mantie pods/fire control/Dazzlers/Dragon's Teeth/counter-missile doctrine which will play a role, but it's one of the few chances the Sollies have to fight on something with close to a winning parameter.

As for the comments on a planet with a wormhole 100LY from Sol but not a SL member, you're probably right and I shouldn't have mentioned the OFS. My guess is that it has powerful Core members that are close friends (perhaps even colonized the place) and they have used that 'clout' to avoid becoming a SL member.

Still, I imagine that it would be...interesting.

IMHO as always. YMMV.