WAR ROOM

Theemile wrote:

cthia wrote:What exactly is Michelle's order of battle? Anyone have hard figures on the ready? I think she also has Task Force Talbot.

I didn't realize she had the likes of Terekov and Oversteegen in her mix as well. Potent combo.

It was mentioned several books ago. 20 non-upgraded Medusas, 20 CLACS, 16 Nikes, 12 Sag-Cs, and 5 Rolands were the last solid count. She has since been reinforced with more light units and support ships.

Thanks Theemile. I've seen the numbers on several occasions in various posts, somewhere. And my nonexistent forum secretary is taking a nonexistent vacation. However, I read somewhere that ~ 400 lighter units were slated to join her order of battle. I was wondering if I'd missed somewhere what those definitive numbers were.

And... holy moly! This is a powerful force where over the immediate horizon the only bad guys are Sollies. There are lots of fires she has to put out. She doesn't exactly have to stay concentrated does she?

And what is the disposition of those two or three ammo ships she once had in her order?

cthia wrote:

Theemile wrote:It was mentioned several books ago. 20 non-upgraded Medusas, 20 CLACS, 16 Nikes, 12 Sag-Cs, and 5 Rolands were the last solid count. She has since been reinforced with more light units and support ships.

Thanks Theemile. I've seen the numbers on several occasions in various posts, somewhere. And my nonexistent forum secretary is taking a nonexistent vacation. However, I read somewhere that ~ 400 lighter units were slated to join her order of battle. I was wondering if I'd missed somewhere what those definitive numbers were.

And... holy moly! This is a powerful force where over the immediate horizon the only bad guys are Sollies. There are lots of fires she has to put out. She doesn't exactly have to stay concentrated does she?

And what is the disposition of those two or three ammo ships she once had in her order?

We can't look too hard at Tenth Fleet's OOB or dispositions without a spoiler tag. There are lots of updates in Shadow of Victory.

So noted, munroburton, on your previous post.

I've always been concerned about Erewhon as much as Beowulf since the outbreak of hostilities with the League and the new alliance between Manticore and Haven. What kind of navy is the ENS these days?

I never understand that navy. Wiki reads that they couldn't build larger warships so they counted on them from a contractor in the League in a military agreement. Which involved Technodyne Industries. It states that they were refitted with Manticoran technology.

To what extent? I thought that that was not worth the effort. And who did the refitting? Erewhon itself?

Regarding the League's industrial yards. Does textev give mention of any main yards or are there just a scattering of smaller yards? In case the GA has to make a few yard calls and effect a bit of landscaping with a few Shrikes er strikes.

cthia wrote:So noted, munroburton, on your previous post.

I've always been concerned about Erewhon as much as Beowulf since the outbreak of hostilities with the League and the new alliance between Manticore and Haven. What kind of navy is the ENS these days?

I never understand that navy. Wiki reads that they couldn't build larger warships so they counted on them from a contractor in the League in a military agreement. Which involved Technodyne Industries. It states that they were refitted with Manticoran technology.

To what extent? I thought that that was not worth the effort. And who did the refitting? Erewhon itself?

Regarding the League's industrial yards. Does textev give mention of any main yards or are there just a scattering of smaller yards? In case the GA has to make a few yard calls and effect a bit of landscaping with a few Shrikes er strikes.

I think wiki got it wrong again.

Erewhon is building ships for Maya, including SDs

cthia wrote:So noted, munroburton, on your previous post.

I've always been concerned about Erewhon as much as Beowulf since the outbreak of hostilities with the League and the new alliance between Manticore and Haven. What kind of navy is the ENS these days?

I never understand that navy. Wiki reads that they couldn't build larger warships so they counted on them from a contractor in the League in a military agreement. Which involved Technodyne Industries. It states that they were refitted with Manticoran technology.

To what extent? I thought that that was not worth the effort. And who did the refitting? Erewhon itself?

Not a lot is known about the earlier Erewhonese Navy.

My speculation is they had developed sufficient organic capability to maintain a number of wallers, but had elected to save themselves the expense of learning to build the things themselves by buying SDs from the League or one of the SDFs - remember, Erewhon was about to join the League at one point and elements of the League may have brokered a preliminary deal - which were later redesignated as DNs seen serving with White Haven's Eighth Fleet.

In any case, buying warships or production rights to designs from the League isn't unprecedented - Manticore did it with their Thorsten-class BBs. Everything not classified by the SLN as "top-grade" tech is openly for sale - why Duke Cromarty had to strong-arm the League into a tech embargo against Haven. And why that failed anyway, when they started black-marketing the stuff.

As for refitting - it's demonstrated throughout the series that warships can be incrementally refitted and major service components can be replaced. What can't be easily changed are the weapon systems trapped within massive armour.

Regarding the League's industrial yards. Does textev give mention of any main yards or are there just a scattering of smaller yards? In case the GA has to make a few yard calls and effect a bit of landscaping with a few Shrikes er strikes.

There's textev that mentions six or seven reserve depots including the Hyperion Yard at Mars. This likely includes Battle Fleet construction yards. It definitely doesn't include Frontier Fleet's facilities or those of the SDFs.

cthia wrote:So noted, munroburton, on your previous post.

I've always been concerned about Erewhon as much as Beowulf since the outbreak of hostilities with the League and the new alliance between Manticore and Haven. What kind of navy is the ENS these days?

I never understand that navy. Wiki reads that they couldn't build larger warships so they counted on them from a contractor in the League in a military agreement. Which involved Technodyne Industries. It states that they were refitted with Manticoran technology.

To what extent? I thought that that was not worth the effort. And who did the refitting? Erewhon itself?

Not sure who did the refitting, but the refitting they were doing was fairly minor - they never got most of the Ghost Rider goodies that got unveiled during Buttercup. So no MDMs (hence no need to enlarge missile tubes), no pod laying, no super-LACs. Mostly just things like better inertial compensators, better SDMs to stick in the magazines, likely improved point-defense computer code to better handle the towed-pod opening salvo density, new ECM / counter ECM information to incorporate real-world experience. Maybe newer / better towed decoys. Possibly upgrading the PDLCs. Possibly internal improvement to reduce the cyclic time of missile launches (and make the launchers more reliable).

Expensive, but not the kind of wholesale overhaul that you'd have needed to make those SDs effective even 5 years later.


Up to about that point in the war the tech hadn't change so much to make upgrade ineffective. Remember that even Manticore, as late as just after the capture of Trevor's Star, was still doing upgrades to it's (soon to be) legacy fleet of tube based SDs. IIRC due to lack of uniformity and running maintenance too far into the red they had have 25% of their wall in the yards for major maintenance and upgrades -- a reason their offensive paused after taking Trevor's Star and gave the Peeps, under McQueen, a chance to pull together the counterattack that stalled Manticore's advance (until Buttercup showed off all the new toys and rendered the existing fleets obsolete).

plus their current fleet even if the old DN and SDs they had for scrap from the Janeck admralty can't use MDMs they are already building arsenal ships as seen in Torch of frredom.

said arsenal ships with CL for fire control hammered a fairly big BC fleet, some solly design some ex peep, using just extended drive SDMs

given the time from ToF to end of CoG/SoV said ships might have all up MDMs now. i'm sure they have MDM system defence pods scattered about their home system. bigger then manty or peep versions likely but good enough while they continue to work on the ministration needed to get them aboard ship.

Dauntless wrote:plus their current fleet even if the old DN and SDs they had for scrap from the Janeck admralty can't use MDMs they are already building arsenal ships as seen in Torch of frredom.

said arsenal ships with CL for fire control hammered a fairly big BC fleet, some solly design some ex peep, using just extended drive SDMs

given the time from ToF to end of CoG/SoV said ships might have all up MDMs now. i'm sure they have MDM system defence pods scattered about their home system. bigger then manty or peep versions likely but good enough while they continue to work on the ministration needed to get them aboard ship.

So no hard numbers on the ENS, who I imagine are an eclectic mix of GA ships along with their own?

What I'm getting at is the obvious probability that they would be a strategic target of the SL. Can the ESN hold their own against a reasonable SL force?

Erewhonese have a junction which would make it an automatic target even without the fact that they are of utter importance to the RMN's rebuilding.

Question. Even if an invading enemy force was successful in relieving you of control of a junction, does that automatically give them control of the junction forces? Surely those missiles would be under computer control?

Acquiring the EWJ wouldn't actually help the League though, as I see it.

Lest it has a spoiler tag hailing from SoV, I seem to recall there still remains a sizeable force assembled of SLN origin. Anyone have any hard numbers and disposition of those forces?

And, more importantly, we as readers are aware of that force. Is the GA privy to as well?

With Manticoran yards destroyed, I don't think the GA should take any chances with Erewhon.

cthia wrote:So no hard numbers on the ENS, who I imagine are an eclectic mix of GA ships along with their own?

What I'm getting at is the obvious probability that they would be a strategic target of the SL. Can the ESN hold their own against a reasonable SL force?

Erewhonese have a junction which would make it an automatic target even without the fact that they are of utter importance to the RMN's rebuilding.

Question. Even if an invading enemy force was successful in relieving you of control of a junction, does that automatically give them control of the junction forces? Surely those missiles would be under computer control?

Acquiring the EWJ wouldn't actually help the League though, as I see it.

Well if they were worried about system security they might have been able to get a Moriarty system from Haven (in belated exchange for the Mantie-lite tech turned over before the ceasefire went off the rails and the war restarted). And IIRC their new BC(P) designs should be at least undergoing workups, even if the SD(P)s are still a little while off.

We know that at minimum they have ERMs with 16 million km range, not sure if their MDMs are ready yet. So they've got a fairly long ranged towed pod punch, possibly with Havenite or native MDM system defense pods, possibly with BC(P)s, and then their remaining pre-pod wallers. A large enough force of Scientist and Vegas could probably take that, but you'd need hundreds of them. (And of course even if the GA as a whole didn't react Erewhon still has their mutual defense treaty with Haven - so you've got a very powerful navy obligated by treaty to liberate their system even if Battlefleet does manage to throw enough tonnage at the defenses to exhaust them and take the system)

And of course picking on an apparently uninvolved neutral is bad politics for the League - it tends to support Manticore's position that the Mandarins and their navy are a rogue force trampling unprovoked over anybody who gets in their way. Which tends to encourage the kind of defections that Manticore is relying on and discourage the rallying around the bloody shirt that the Mandarins need to make this a long war that binds the League together.