Question about Beowulf tactics

SharkHunter wrote:The location of the reserve doesn't affect Beowulf's tactics, however. That's a "GA strategic decision" and if the Mandarin's are going to try to jump on Beowulf before the known referendum date, they're not going to be using reserve SD's to do it.

With Al-Fanudahi knowing what's being discussed, that would argue that based on time to cut orders, pick up a supply of Technodyne pods, and get assembled and shaken out for an attack, the ships have to be already active and come from Sol itself.

I'd wonder if that leaves an opening for bad things to happen. AKA while the fleet's away, the evil step-children will play. Might be the whole reason Kingsford et. al are considering it to begin with, aka bad advice not in the SL's or SLN's best interest.

No one was suggesting using the Reserve in the attack on Beowulf. Stealthseeker was suggesting that Beowulf destroy the Reserve in response to the attack on Beowulf.

SWM wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:The location of the reserve doesn't affect Beowulf's tactics, however. That's a "GA strategic decision" and if the Mandarin's are going to try to jump on Beowulf before the known referendum date, they're not going to be using reserve SD's to do it.

With Al-Fanudahi knowing what's being discussed, that would argue that based on time to cut orders, pick up a supply of Technodyne pods, and get assembled and shaken out for an attack, the ships have to be already active and come from Sol itself.

I'd wonder if that leaves an opening for bad things to happen. AKA while the fleet's away, the evil step-children will play. Might be the whole reason Kingsford et. al are considering it to begin with, aka bad advice not in the SL's or SLN's best interest.

No one was suggesting using the Reserve in the attack on Beowulf. Stealthseeker was suggesting that Beowulf destroy the Reserve in response to the attack on Beowulf.

A few CLACs with a Beowulfer as the spokesperson who is the public face explaining to the subject systems why they are doing this might be a perfect cover.

StealthSeeker wrote:This is where it would be so wonderful to have access to all the books as text documents that could be searched for key words and phrases to look for things like this. This 2 system depot thing for mothballed ships is such a strong memory that I have a hard time accepting that I didn't read it somewhere and that it's not true. But I would have to re-read all the books to find the reference.

It's nice (I got the ebooks from Baen and then converted the rich text format, rtf, files to plain text). But it's also still surprisingly difficult at time to find certain half-remembered bits of text-ev. Misremembering a single key word can be enough to make something nearly impossible to find -- even with the full searchable text.

See munroburton's example from the previous page. Only by remembering the key name "Hyperion One" was he able to find the info he was looking for. A "logical" keyword like "Reserve" totally missed it because RFC just called them "mothballed" in that description.

(And don't get me started on abbreviations -- for example there are about 6 or 8 different ways an acceleration might be written out in the books)

kzt wrote:

StealthSeeker wrote: I think the only thing that can fit a Mark-23 is a ship designed from scratch that can accommodate it's size.

Most of your post is right, but Manticore actually did rebuild a few SDs to handle tube launched MDMs. Not sure if they were Mk23 or or the bigger capacitor based ones that preceded them without looking it up.

I think some of each.
HoS explicitly says some Gryphons were modified to handle Mk23 (fusion powered) MDMs, but I believe some other SDs were built or modified to handle MDMs back in the run-up to Buttercup -- and those would have been the larger capacitor powered birds.

SWM wrote:

SharkHunter wrote:The location of the reserve doesn't affect Beowulf's tactics, however. That's a "GA strategic decision" and if the Mandarin's are going to try to jump on Beowulf before the known referendum date, they're not going to be using reserve SD's to do it.

With Al-Fanudahi knowing what's being discussed, that would argue that based on time to cut orders, pick up a supply of Technodyne pods, and get assembled and shaken out for an attack, the ships have to be already active and come from Sol itself.

I'd wonder if that leaves an opening for bad things to happen. AKA while the fleet's away, the evil step-children will play. Might be the whole reason Kingsford et. al are considering it to begin with, aka bad advice not in the SL's or SLN's best interest.

No one was suggesting using the Reserve in the attack on Beowulf. Stealthseeker was suggesting that Beowulf destroy the Reserve in response to the attack on Beowulf.

Ah. I didn't read back far enough. Though I would argue that without the GA SD-P's however, what makes anyone think that the Beowulf SDF could pull that off, as early on they will only have 36 "just better than SLN SD's", needed for system defense (Hello, Mesa?) not SD(p)'s? Politically, I don't see why Beowulf would bother to expend the political capital, travel time, or missile ammunition on the attempt. Should the GA make the decision, a few Nike(s), Sag-C's and CLACs per yard will be enough and Beowulf wouldn't need to join the fray.

Although after any attack on Beowulf (which will fail), I think that the Beowulf SDF would temporarily have as many Solarian SD's as they want to keep in operation, less those that got turned into raw materials on the way in. After which they can just use them for target practice or for holiday fireworks, solar flare experiments, etc.

SharkHunter wrote:The location of the reserve doesn't affect Beowulf's tactics, however. That's a "GA strategic decision" and if the Mandarin's are going to try to jump on Beowulf before the known referendum date, they're not going to be using reserve SD's to do it.

With Al-Fanudahi knowing what's being discussed, that would argue that based on time to cut orders, pick up a supply of Technodyne pods, and get assembled and shaken out for an attack, the ships have to be already active and come from Sol itself.

I'd wonder if that leaves an opening for bad things to happen. AKA while the fleet's away, the evil step-children will play. Might be the whole reason Kingsford et. al are considering it to begin with, aka bad advice not in the SL's or SLN's best interest.

SWM wrote:No one was suggesting using the Reserve in the attack on Beowulf. Stealthseeker was suggesting that Beowulf destroy the Reserve in response to the attack on Beowulf.

SharkHunter wrote:Ah. I didn't read back far enough. Though I would argue that without the GA SD-P's however, what makes anyone think that the Beowulf SDF could pull that off, as early on they will only have 36 "just better than SLN SD's", needed for system defense (Hello, Mesa?) not SD(p)'s? Politically, I don't see why Beowulf would bother to expend the political capital, travel time, or missile ammunition on the attempt. Should the GA make the decision, a few Nike(s), Sag-C's and CLACs per yard will be enough and Beowulf wouldn't need to join the fray.

Although after any attack on Beowulf (which will fail), I think that the Beowulf SDF would temporarily have as many Solarian SD's as they want to keep in operation, less those that got turned into raw materials on the way in. After which they can just use them for target practice or for holiday fireworks, solar flare experiments, etc.

The reason for using Beowulf as the front men for the attack on the Reserve fleets is to justify the attacks as retaliation for the unprovoked attack of the SLN on Beowulf, instead on Manticore aggression.

Prior to Buttercup, the Peeps might have been able to take Beowulf, but they wouldn't have been able to keep it. The SLN had more than enough to boot the Peeps back where they came from and irritating the SLN by aggression against an SL member would have not been a good survival choice.

Don

n7axw wrote:Prior to Buttercup, the Peeps might have been able to take Beowulf, but they wouldn't have been able to keep it. The SLN had more than enough to boot the Peeps back where they came from and irritating the SLN by aggression against an SL member would have not been a good survival choice.

Eh. The Peeps would be in possession of Manticore (and probably Silesia and the Andermani Empire) before moving on to the League (which they had no plans to, but my feeling is that either the Legislaturalists or the Committee would have felt they had no choice). In possession of pretty much the entire 'Haven Sector' (and much of the wormhole network), the People's Republic could certainly have built a fleet capable of defeating the SLN (presuming the SLN remained fat, dumb, and happy even after Manticore and the Andies went down, which seems depressingly likely), and the PRH was big enough that occupying the critical League worlds was a long way from impossible.

drothgery wrote:

n7axw wrote:Prior to Buttercup, the Peeps might have been able to take Beowulf, but they wouldn't have been able to keep it. The SLN had more than enough to boot the Peeps back where they came from and irritating the SLN by aggression against an SL member would have not been a good survival choice.

Eh. The Peeps would be in possession of Manticore (and probably Silesia and the Andermani Empire) before moving on to the League (which they had no plans to, but my feeling is that either the Legislaturalists or the Committee would have felt they had no choice). In possession of pretty much the entire 'Haven Sector' (and much of the wormhole network), the People's Republic could certainly have built a fleet capable of defeating the SLN (presuming the SLN remained fat, dumb, and happy even after Manticore and the Andies went down, which seems depressingly likely), and the PRH was big enough that occupying the critical League worlds was a long way from impossible.

And exactly why would the MAlign have ignored that opportunity to have the SL take the Manticore Wormhole Junction and install a Frontier Security puppet regime? Hammering Haven into dust bunnies in the process, of course.

n7axw wrote:Prior to Buttercup, the Peeps might have been able to take Beowulf, but they wouldn't have been able to keep it. The SLN had more than enough to boot the Peeps back where they came from and irritating the SLN by aggression against an SL member would have not been a good survival choice.

drothgery wrote: Eh. The Peeps would be in possession of Manticore (and probably Silesia and the Andermani Empire) before moving on to the League (which they had no plans to, but my feeling is that either the Legislaturalists or the Committee would have felt they had no choice). In possession of pretty much the entire 'Haven Sector' (and much of the wormhole network), the People's Republic could certainly have built a fleet capable of defeating the SLN (presuming the SLN remained fat, dumb, and happy even after Manticore and the Andies went down, which seems depressingly likely), and the PRH was big enough that occupying the critical League worlds was a long way from impossible.

JohnRoth wrote:
And exactly why would the MAlign have ignored that opportunity to have the SL take the Manticore Wormhole Junction and install a Frontier Security puppet regime? Hammering Haven into dust bunnies in the process, of course.

Actually, the original MAlign plan was probably to have Haven take Manticore (and the AE), and then in about 30 years (while Haven gets worse and worse - remember the MAlign had pretty good hooks into the Legislaturists) before using Haven to dismantle the SL. Haven would almost certain not have attacked Beowulf until that time however, simply because it was not in the MAlign's interest to attack the SL until it was ready with the RF.

JohnRoth wrote:And exactly why would the MAlign have ignored that opportunity to have the SL take the Manticore Wormhole Junction and install a Frontier Security puppet regime? Hammering Haven into dust bunnies in the process, of course.

The peeps got pretty good at that whole war thing. Not to mention mass production of warships. I suspect it would be far more costly than the SLN would have expected in their wildest dreams, and I'm not sure they would have won even if they were willing to throw all of BF at them.