Hyperspace Combat and the Solarian Leauge Navy

kzt wrote:You might note that in tSVW the Bellerophon is running without sidewalls up and that apparently is typically how warships ships operate. So the level of paranoia that people are projecting on the part of the RMN doesn't seem to be matched by the behavior of the RMN.

Peacetime, BEFORE all the events i noted to be likely to give a heightened level of paranoia.

kzt wrote:

n7axw wrote:I am not sure about using the recon drones. How do they function in hyper? You probably face the same problem getting them across the hyper wall as you do lacs. The advantage would be that you could deploy them quicker than lacs. The draw back is that unless we are talking about mistletoe style drones, they have no way of bloodying the bad guy's nose.

Unless you send forth LACs in the hundreds they just going to die if they encounter anyone who will stand and fight. A shell deployment means each recon group is out of support range of every other group. How many LACs do you think you need to take on a BC squadron that knows you are coming?

This is an honest question rather than an argument. Are current sln bcs capable of countering a modern lac attack? My presumption is that they aren't even in n-space. In hyper the lacs are tiny targets to start with and stealthed to boot. I don't think they even find the lacs, let alone successfully counter them. Presumimg pre-buttercup tech, am I mistaken on this?

Don

n7axw wrote:

kzt wrote:I'd really suggest using recon drones instead. Or send the LACs through and RAPIDLY follow with the convoy. The problem for the LACS comes with leaving hyper, as a bunch of LACS and a carrier all inside mutual wedge distance are not in an ideal position to fight if someone drops onto them from Beta, and the whole un-dock, maneuver and then re-dock to go back to RS is going to take some time.

Fist, kzt, there is no such thing as completely risk free no matter how hard you try. My notion of it would be that it would be better to risk the colac -- a freighter modified to handle the lacs-- than to risk an entire convoy. As for getting the news back into normal space, that is what couriors are for.

I am not sure about using the recon drones. How do they function in hyper? You probably face the same problem getting them across the hyper wall as you do lacs. The advantage would be that you could deploy them quicker than lacs. The draw back is that unless we are talking about mistletoe style drones, they have no way of bloodying the bad guy's nose.

Two significant advantage of recon drones are that a significant number can be launched and controlled from even a platform a small as a destroyer and that they're more expendable than a manned LAC.

If your recon drones pick up a force too big to fight heading towards your emergence signal you can run, without pausing to recover your drones. It's a lot harder to make that decision if you are abandoning a hundred or more people aboard your LAC screen.

So you've got a lot less exposed to loss while you're scouting hyper before the convoy or fleet leaves n-space. On the other hand, if you do bring a CLAC or large freighter carrying a significant number of LACs (and they don't end up lethally close upon entry) you've got a lot more combat power with you; so the size of the force you can fight off is much larger...

But on the gripping hand a convoy escort's job us to keep their chargs safe; not to necessarily destroy any enemies they come against. I think DDs and recon drones give you more bang for your buck for that mission than assigning at least a LAC squadron and modified freighter to each convoy.

People I would like to point out that we don't actually know that much about current SLN designs. Yes, we know that the Nevadas possess an all grazer broadside design, but the only other 'modern' SLN design we have seen is the Gladiator, about which we don't even have a true tonnage range.

Furthermore, the Nevada is a Battle Fleet design, for all we know the grazer armament is actually an anachronism, remember HoS established that 'all-grazer' designs existed before, admittedly it was a heavy cruiser, but the point remains. All grazer broadsides were not invented by the Graysons, instead they convinced the RMN to return to the idea, for the matter the Andies had SDs that were all grazer broadside (admittedly this was because they had suppressed the lasers in order to fit extra missile tubes [which also would seem to fit the BC doctrine that BF would be operating under, matter of fact BF doctrine with regards to BCs might be similar to Grayson doctrine, with the added twist of having them serve double duty as the people who cut down the opponent's wounded, ala the shrike]).

n7axw wrote:This is an honest question rather than an argument. Are current sln bcs capable of countering a modern lac attack? My presumption is that they aren't even in n-space. In hyper the lacs are tiny targets to start with and stealthed to boot. I don't think they even find the lacs, let alone successfully counter them. Presumimg pre-buttercup tech, am I mistaken on this?

SLN stealth is pretty decent.

Since LACs don't carry recon drones they will have to get fairly close to spot them. Exactly how close that is seems unclear.

LACs moving slowly are hard to pick up, but not so much accelerating at full speed. Particularly if you know they are there.

The LACS are launched from a large ship the crosses the wall (which is a HUGE signal) and then sits there on Alpha launching LACs. Since nobody hangs out on Alpha you have a pretty good idea what is going on and have a pretty good idea the soonest that they can arrive and at least some vague idea about when they can detect you.

Given that you would have also hung around on real-space watching and sending in recon drones I'd assume you'll have decent ideas about LAC signatures and can make rational judgement on your ability to take them.

If you don't think you can take them you can invisibly translate to Beta. If you do think that your 8 BCs can take on 1-8 LACs than you can go play. And 8 BCs have a LOT of missiles and grasers.

HungryKing wrote:People I would like to point out that we don't actually know that much about current SLN designs. Yes, we know that the Nevadas possess an all grazer broadside design, but the only other 'modern' SLN design we have seen is the Gladiator, about which we don't even have a true tonnage range.

Furthermore, the Nevada is a Battle Fleet design, for all we know the grazer armament is actually an anachronism, remember HoS established that 'all-grazer' designs existed before, admittedly it was a heavy cruiser, but the point remains. All grazer broadsides were not invented by the Graysons, instead they convinced the RMN to return to the idea, for the matter the Andies had SDs that were all grazer broadside (admittedly this was because they had suppressed the lasers in order to fit extra missile tubes [which also would seem to fit the BC doctrine that BF would be operating under, matter of fact BF doctrine with regards to BCs might be similar to Grayson doctrine, with the added twist of having them serve double duty as the people who cut down the opponent's wounded, ala the shrike]).

Well, the Nevada's are "Fleet" designs which are used by both battle fleet and frontier fleet and are the current state of the art in the SLN in their class.

We actually don have some decent data on other SLN designs such as the Scientist and Vega class SD's with the Vega being the slightly larger and more powerful variant. I believe we also have some insight into certain specifics on the Rampart and War Harvest DD designs.

We can also conjecture much about their likely capabilities based on other evidence presented. SLN designs are built for the type of combat which existed around the time of the first Haven Manticorian Alliance war so we're not talking pre-Buttercup we're talking PRE-Buttercup. We know that the SLN are not innovators and for many of the reasons that say the Royal Navy in our own history is not. When you have the largest navy in the universe by a large margin, you don't want to introduce technical innovations that may make thousands upon thousands of warships obsolete overnight and place both you and your rivals at square one.

We know that the Solarians have been doing their best to ignore advancements in the Haven sector but there also has been evidence of some ongoing modest advancements such as the Halo EW system but nothing earthshattering.

Chances are current SLN designs are similar to the kinds of vessels you would have seen fighting for Manticore or Haven in the early stages of their war with some minor to modest advancements.

kzt wrote:

n7axw wrote:This is an honest question rather than an argument. Are current sln bcs capable of countering a modern lac attack? My presumption is that they aren't even in n-space. In hyper the lacs are tiny targets to start with and stealthed to boot. I don't think they even find the lacs, let alone successfully counter them. Presumimg pre-buttercup tech, am I mistaken on this?

SLN stealth is pretty decent.

Since LACs don't carry recon drones they will have to get fairly close to spot them. Exactly how close that is seems unclear.

LACs moving slowly are hard to pick up, but not so much accelerating at full speed. Particularly if you know they are there.

The LACS are launched from a large ship the crosses the wall (which is a HUGE signal) and then sits there on Alpha launching LACs. Since nobody hangs out on Alpha you have a pretty good idea what is going on and have a pretty good idea the soonest that they can arrive and at least some vague idea about when they can detect you.

Given that you would have also hung around on real-space watching and sending in recon drones I'd assume you'll have decent ideas about LAC signatures and can make rational judgement on your ability to take them.

If you don't think you can take them you can invisibly translate to Beta. If you do think that your 8 BCs can take on 1-8 LACs than you can go play. And 8 BCs have a LOT of missiles and grasers.

Well just a couple of things.

LAC's are not superships. What makes them dangerous is numbers, a LAC squadron can do a LOT of damage and any warship should be wary of that many, a single LAC is a small warship that a direct hit by a BC sized grazer will pretty much turn into dust bunnies.

Numbers give them power. Against a bunch of LAC's it's impossible for a larger vessel to keep the nasty things from getting clear shots at the sidewalls or down the throat, up the kilt shots with potentially BC caliber Grasers.

Now if you have a decent group of vessels and you're ready for them, fleet units can deal with LAC's unless grossly outnumbered by them.

Where the SLN is likely to mess up is that they are going to consider Alliance LAC's to just be slightly more modern versions of the weak and defenseless older style LAC's they are used to in League space. This means, initially, SLN units are going to suffer badly when first encountering Alliance LAC's. The survivors of this experience and going to learn quickly that Alliance LAC's are not what they are used to and will adapt over time.

LAC's can be dealt with, you just have to realize what they can do and then shape your approach to dealing with them accordingly.

The survivors of this experience and going to learn quickly that Alliance LAC's are not what they are used to and will adapt over time.

What survivors?





Seriously though, anytime they go far enough into a fight to end up fighting LACs, is fairly likely to end up in their inability to to get away.

Tenshinai wrote:

The survivors of this experience and going to learn quickly that Alliance LAC's are not what they are used to and will adapt over time.

What survivors?





Seriously though, anytime they go far enough into a fight to end up fighting LACs, is fairly likely to end up in their inability to to get away.

I keep thinking about what happened at 2nd Hancock to those Peep battleships. The newer version of Shrikes are even more dangerous. I visualize the Sollies as operating with pre-Buttercup tech which would mean that you could probably do things with lacs against Solly BCs that you couldn't get away with against Republican designs. If I'm right, the campaign against the League could turn into a re-enactment of Buttercup.

Don

Ok having just read the whole topic I want to say a few things. First forcing a fleet action in hyperspace might be possible but the odds are very low, and the odds on the SLN managing to force enough such actions to turn the tide of the war are almost nil IMO. They might be able to hit a few convoys in hyper but odds are that if such raids start becoming more than an annoyance the GA can dig their Q-ships out or build more, and their weapons match or exceed the weaponry of any ship the SLN is likely to send convoy raiding. Finally some people seem to think the SLN will score a decisive victory in energy range, when based on the energy range fights we've seen its more likely IMO that both sides will be shredded, and if uch a fight happens in a gravwave and ships start losing sails they are dead, which means a fight inside a gravwave is very, very likely to turn into a disaster for both sides.