Reserve destruction

The GA should seek the destruction--or at least damage to not combat-worthy--of the reserve. Their only use against the GA is for commerce raiding but they serve the Sollies another purpose--keeping other systems in line. Destroying the reserve will weaken the Solarian hold over other systems and thus hasten it's demise.

SYED wrote:Destruction of the reserve fleet would not be that useful, as currently those ships are useless and out of date. The thing is it would increase the damage to the league reputation, with out slaughtering people. My advice would be to target the slips and shipyards, that service and contain the mothballed ships. So their logistics and infrastructure is damaged, but they retain most of the reserve likely damaged, still to expensive to replace or repair.

I wonder what is the likely hood the alignment has rigged those ships to blow, while primitive, would they risk militar gear being spread out.

Sell or give them to some large shipping company to be converted over into armed merchant ships... Lots of cargo space

Weird Harold wrote:

Somtaaw wrote:The point Theemile and I are making, is that IF there is a mad rush to steal the superdreadnoughts from the reserve, nobody is going to care about maintenance issues, they just want the ships to cover immediate needs.

If the ships are coming from the reserve, they had better care about maintenance! They are NOT going to get an unmaintained deathtrap out of the boneyard without at least minimal maintenance. And that's without even replacing the bits and pieces cannibalized for fleet repairs or sold off on the black market.

Abigail Hearns expressed her disgust with SLN maintenance during her SAR excursion into a defeated SLN SD. That was a SLN ship on active service; how much worse will even the best of the SLN reserve ships be?

Well - if it is in the Reserve, it is theoretically in mothballs for very long term storage without degradation. Granted, it's possible the mothballing cut corners; that it was mothballed well enough but suffered maintenance deficits already at that time that were not addressed then; and that it hasn't had bits sold off to feather the nest of some corrupt Reserve supervision officer. That last may be less likely than you may think - just because they can probably lose whole units if they're going to, so if it's there, it may be intact!

It does mean though that refurbishing them for use though is going to be a lot of work. They're not ready to drive off the lot. You may not even be able to tow them casually away and not have something awful go wrong with something poorly secured. So systems with a Reserve presence has a bunch of old, obsolete wallers that, while they are built, will take a lot of care with a lot of specialized facilities before they're good for... well, being some waller instead of no waller, assuming a whole lot of crew.

They would represent a whole lot of third-tier naval hardware, for whoever has them after the seizure, refurbishment, and crewing. For some, all of that will be easier than getting anything comparable. (Late PRN battleships, say.) The dealers would ask for a lot; putting them back in service will take building or adapting infrastructure or working out expensive, slow expedients; crewing will be an awful trick.

But how many Manticoran, Havenite, Andermani, Beowulfan or Erewhonese capital ships are for sale? Crappy as they are, those Reserve ships represent a most of the merchandise on the market, if you're not starting from scratch. And there's no time for that - if it's 5-10 years for a good waller, or 2 to get a Reserve one into service with a thin, semi-trained crew, ancient weapons, and system readiness issues... well, one of those will help when a bad neighbor shows up with a similar crappy waller in 3 years and one won't.

JeffEngel wrote:Well - if it is in the Reserve, it is theoretically in mothballs for very long term storage without degradation. Granted, it's possible the mothballing cut corners; that it was mothballed well enough but suffered maintenance deficits already at that time that were not addressed then; and that it hasn't had bits sold off to feather the nest of some corrupt Reserve supervision officer.

That "theoretically" that is the sticking point. We know that the rest of the SLN is corrupt, and IIRC, textev or Word of Weber that officers in nominal command of reserve ships consider them their personal piggy-banks -- to the extent that they're collecting pay for ships that no longer exist.

We also have textev that Adm Kingsford has no hopes of bringing anything from the reserve back into active service. That means anyone buying a ship from whoever inherits the Boneyard(s) is going to buy it "as is" or wait in a long line for the heirs to refurbish a ship enough to deliver it. Two years wait for most of the SLN Reserve Fleet is probably optimistic.

JeffEngel wrote:But how many Manticoran, Havenite, Andermani, Beowulfan or Erewhonese capital ships are for sale? Crappy as they are, those Reserve ships represent a most of the merchandise on the market, if you're not starting from scratch. And there's no time for that - if it's 5-10 years for a good waller, or 2 to get a Reserve one into service with a thin, semi-trained crew, ancient weapons, and system readiness issues... well, one of those will help when a bad neighbor shows up with a similar crappy waller in 3 years and one won't.

Wallers are offensive weapons. If you're not planning on being that "bad neighbor" showing up in three years, why do you need an SD or ten?

If you're willing to wait -- as Maya is -- Erewhon will build you an SD with "Manticore Lite" technology. The Andermani will probably build you one as well (if you get in line quickly enough.)

But the GA will give you a raft of system defense missiles and a squadron or two of modern LACs -- as well as training and the plans for making more of either -- as part of a bribe to secede from the Solarian League. The only thing lacking in what the GA will provide is "penile substitute" status; They might have to bring in one of the hulked SLN SDs they've collected and demonstrate the effectiveness of the defense systems.

The choice will boil down to effective defense or ineffective status symbol. Some systems will make the choice for status; especially if they can attract or absorb an active SLN SD squadron looking for a new home. Some will go for the effective defense. And some will go for a mix of effective defense and "penile substitution."

Mothballing starships is probably a lot more effective than mothballing a sea faring warship.

Drop the thing in a parking orbit, depressurize and/or draw down the air and replace with another gas so it's not corroding anything. Straight vacuum is almost as bad as leaving the standard oxy-nitro, so it has to be a total gas swap.


You'd probably need to top off the Hydrogen bunkers (and since it's a superdreadnought, that's going to require some substanial tanking capacity), and a whole lotta capacitor power to give the mothballed ships a jumpstart. More or less the same you'd do to a car that was stuck for the winter somewhere due to ice for extended periods.

You'd also need a fairly large 'prize crew' if you're raiding the SLN Reserve mothball drydocks. Not just to get those big assed superdreadnoughts reactivated, but also to pick over it as fast as you can to be sure it's even usable. No point to spending the hours and hours to get it operational and ready to hyper out, only to find out half the weapons are junk. But each unit should be fairly close to immediate departure from drydock, just add fuel, bodies and ammunition and you have an fighting force.... in theory. In reality, you'd probably have great big gaping holes in would-be preformed squadrons, a ship here, a ship there missing.


As for tactics, there's really only so much detail the neutral SDF obersers can learn. With both sides of the Haven wars pumping out all their ECM, and having to be way off at observer ranges, they wouldn't be seeing anything detailed unless you're talking the equivalent of using a telescope and video-taping the raw maneuvers, instead of relying on tracking impeller wedges.

So rather unlikely those observers would get any battle formation ideas, or anything beyond what a tactician should already know, since tactics and formations stayed the same for centuries. Wallers would use missiles at extended range trying to get a feel for the enemy's ewar capabilities, they'd try to close and bring energy batteries to bear. The defender knows the same steps, and unless they're pinned to something they had to protect, would roll up on their sides and veer off and combat returns to missiles once again. Pretty sure that was from tSVW, Battle of Nightingale (first 5 or 6 chapters)

So SDF's would loosely have known, even for a few decades that there were some improvements possible.... but they'd have the generic Solarian attitude their stuff was better. So if they've been researching it at all, it'd be the equivalent of a Solarian Jonas Adcock, shuffled off in a back office with zero resources, scribbling on paper until Second New Tuscany. By Battle of Spindle, and Second Manticore with Filareta getting stomped, those Solarian Adcocks in various systems might have gotten their funding jumped. But again, very unlikely they'd be fielding any new improvements, giving a possible +10% increase is being generous... although the systems that have TIY yards in them might have some immediate missile and compensator increases, but nobody else would.



For the topic of Solarian states and aggressors, most of us are referring to the probable bloodbaths of Solarian-on-Solarian violence. When the League actually fragments, it's going to make Silesia look like a walk in the park, a lot of systems have their grudges and even the Mandarins expect their members to start fighting again if they didn't crush Manticore fast.

So waiting in line, period... when your neighbour only a few lightyears away simply said "*&^% it" and stole ships from the Reserves, and you know that system hates your guts. Yeah, you're not going to be waiting patiently to buy ships, you're stealing some yourself, or you're already drawing up surrender terms.

Weird Harold wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Well - if it is in the Reserve, it is theoretically in mothballs for very long term storage without degradation. Granted, it's possible the mothballing cut corners; that it was mothballed well enough but suffered maintenance deficits already at that time that were not addressed then; and that it hasn't had bits sold off to feather the nest of some corrupt Reserve supervision officer.

That "theoretically" that is the sticking point. We know that the rest of the SLN is corrupt, and IIRC, textev or Word of Weber that officers in nominal command of reserve ships consider them their personal piggy-banks -- to the extent that they're collecting pay for ships that no longer exist.

Right. I'm suggesting there that the corruption is likely nipping off entire ships, rather than parts of the ones that are there - so if you do actually have a ship there, it probably really is a fairly well mothballed, fairly well intact... museum piece. You don't have to worry about the ships that are supposed to be there sucking worse than their age would suggest - you "only" have to worry about them not being there at all.

We also have textev that Adm Kingsford has no hopes of bringing anything from the reserve back into active service. That means anyone buying a ship from whoever inherits the Boneyard(s) is going to buy it "as is" or wait in a long line for the heirs to refurbish a ship enough to deliver it. Two years wait for most of the SLN Reserve Fleet is probably optimistic.

Maybe, but the 5-10 years for a new waller out of homegrown or can-be-trusted sources is maybe that too. If there's a significant gap, the point can stand - if, as you rightly bring out, it really comes down to waller vs. waller anyway.

JeffEngel wrote:But how many Manticoran, Havenite, Andermani, Beowulfan or Erewhonese capital ships are for sale? Crappy as they are, those Reserve ships represent a most of the merchandise on the market, if you're not starting from scratch. And there's no time for that - if it's 5-10 years for a good waller, or 2 to get a Reserve one into service with a thin, semi-trained crew, ancient weapons, and system readiness issues... well, one of those will help when a bad neighbor shows up with a similar crappy waller in 3 years and one won't.

Wallers are offensive weapons. If you're not planning on being that "bad neighbor" showing up in three years, why do you need an SD or ten?

Larger SDF's do have them. Up til recently, stopping a waller with anything short of a waller wasn't to be counted on. I suspect, throughout the League and around it, people in many places do still think that, and they may well not be able to count on, or think they can count on, GA MDM system defense missile pods to defend them against an enemy wall. Heck - will the GA trust every threatened system enough to put those weapons in those systems under the effective control of the locals? Maybe - probably, with some sort of system to offer some security - but would all those people out there know and trust the GA enough to suppose so?

And even for SDF's without offensive ambitions - serious hypercapable warships are necessary for dealing with security out near the hyperlimit, and for providing a plausible threat of retaliation to would be bad neighbors. They're not strictly bad neighbor systems themselves.

If you're willing to wait -- as Maya is -- Erewhon will build you an SD with "Manticore Lite" technology. The Andermani will probably build you one as well (if you get in line quickly enough.)

And your relationship with your neighbors and with the Andermani or Erewhonese may change in the meantime too. For that matter, for many places, those are on the far side of human space. Think of all the warships being built in British yards at the outset of WWI that didn't go to the places that ordered them. These anxious buyers may have serious and justified concerns both about the time between now and those arrive, and whether or not that deal will even work. The museum piece they can definitely have and get operable a bit sooner may be, at the least, an attractive transitional bit of insurance.

Maya's in an exceptionally fortunate position. They've had a long, long time to plan carefully, and to conceal the development and deployment of modern missile platforms to use as their own interim insurance measure - along with the visible FF detachment that really is working for them - while they wait for modern wallers. And they've got friends in Erewhon and Torch, and through them, Haven and Manticore. Places like Saltash or Mobius are far more typical examples, or Talbott (on the Nuncio or Split end even, not the Rembrandt, Montana, or Dresden one).

Although, in that case, affording even one dirt-cheap, cut-rate, museum-piece waller may be the problem, and they may "benefit" from no one bothering to want to come at them with anything that would demand that much defense.

But the GA will give you a raft of system defense missiles and a squadron or two of modern LACs -- as well as training and the plans for making more of either -- as part of a bribe to secede from the Solarian League. The only thing lacking in what the GA will provide is "penile substitute" status; They might have to bring in one of the hulked SLN SDs they've collected and demonstrate the effectiveness of the defense systems.

The choice will boil down to effective defense or ineffective status symbol. Some systems will make the choice for status; especially if they can attract or absorb an active SLN SD squadron looking for a new home. Some will go for the effective defense. And some will go for a mix of effective defense and "penile substitution."

On their behalf, I'd hope they'd have the access to the effective defense. It'd work well for them. But between how many such systems there are, the smear job the GA's rep is and will be getting from the Mandarins and Alignment, and how much the GA will need so much of its hardware itself or at least in secure partner hands... many places may not experience that as a choice.

[quote="JeffEngel"]Right. I'm suggesting there that the corruption is likely nipping off entire ships, rather than parts of the ones that are there - so if you do actually have a ship there, it probably really is a fairly well mothballed, fairly well intact... museum piece. You don't have to worry about the ships that are supposed to be there sucking worse than their age would suggest - you "only" have to worry about them not being there at all.[quote]

We don't have even a hint of Solarian capital ships being in non-SLN hands. The biggest SLN ships we've seen in non-SLN hands are Battlecruisers sent to the breakers instead of the reserve fleet. Even those are remarked on as being beyond the usual level of "lost ships" in the hands of pirates or warlords.

I think that homeless squadrons of Battle Fleet are more likely sources for military muscle than the Reserve Fleet -- if nothing else, they would come with knowledgeable crews (by SLN standards) and be available as soon as they showed up looking for a home.

(It might be problematic that the Admiral(s) on the Flag Deck(s) might think they should be in charge, but there won't be much a defenseless system can do about it. BF squadrons, Homeless or otherwise, are going to show up long before a local SDF can be built (or bought) from scratch.)

Weird Harold wrote:If the ships are coming from the reserve, they had better care about maintenance! They are NOT going to get an unmaintained deathtrap out of the boneyard without at least minimal maintenance. And that's without even replacing the bits and pieces cannibalized for fleet repairs or sold off on the black market.

Abigail Hearns expressed her disgust with SLN maintenance during her SAR excursion into a defeated SLN SD. That was a SLN ship on active service; how much worse will even the best of the SLN reserve ships be?

Doesn't matter.

What was the average life span of WWI pilots?

17 days.

Generals told WWI soldiers that all the barbed wire was gone at the Somme, so, take FULL gear, and Walk leisurely towards the German trenches and wipe out whomever remained. 600,000 dead later and 1.2 Million casualties later, the lines still had not moved appreciably.

In WWII, Lancaster bombers had only 15% of their aircrews survive their bomber going down as it was next to impossible to get out of the airplane. Did they stop flying? No. They increased tempo. It was the best the Brits had.

No one gives a flying wet fart about death rates in command. All they care about is that you OBEY.

Thus saving your nation in the process.

Death rates in "death traps" are only useful stats for arm chair admirals sitting their fat well fed arses in plush chairs leaning their giant self inflated heads on cushy head rests near a fire while it is sleeting snow outside.

Weird Harold wrote:We don't have even a hint of Solarian capital ships being in non-SLN hands. The biggest SLN ships we've seen in non-SLN hands are Battlecruisers sent to the breakers instead of the reserve fleet. Even those are remarked on as being beyond the usual level of "lost ships" in the hands of pirates or warlords.

But we do have lots of evidence that in the League, they never stopped building superdreadnoughts. Why? Because superdreadnought construction contracts were very lucrative, and very very easy ways for someone in power to pay back a favor with a federal government level contract to build waller.

That's part of why the Reserve is so huge, compared to active fleet. Forgive me, I'm not ex-military myself and in particular I was a Canadian Air cadet (not navy), but isn't your reserve supposed to be smaller than active? For that matter, even in non-naval issues, if you command an American company, organized in about four platoons (I think?) you'd actively use three platoons on-the-line, and keep the fourth as reserve in case you need to reinforce... my numbers might be off but the general idea applies, right?

In the League, because they never stopped building, their "Reserve" is, around 50% stronger than their active waller fleet I believe? Trying to find the numbers on Honorverse wiki is a bit difficult. That's also not counting any screen also 'officially' in the Reserves, although that's likely to be chock full of holes and entire 'lost' squadrons that were sold off to pad a retirement fund.

It's about 400% of the active force. Planning for how they would mobilize it was apparently a bit vague at best.