Build a Fleet!

Theemile wrote:

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:I don't recall anything that said the 36 ships were Beowulf's entire wall; was that in a post somewhere? I agree with Jonathan_S to a degree, but I expect that is around half of their total.

For those arguing about the economic power of core worlds, it was in the text that Manticore surpassed old Earth only around the start of the story arc, ie., around 1900 or soon after. So old Core worlds with large populations ought to have as much income as Manticore, or almost.

Regards, Rob

OK, My Mind's going - it may be because of textual changes made between the Earc and the final or maybe Alzheimer's is setting in early. I remember comments that it was the entire BSDF wall, instead I found this:

“No, Ma’am,” Marceau said, still with that peculiar edge to his voice. “It’s originating from near the terminus, but it’s from Vice Admiral Holmon-Sanders, not Traffic Control.”
Tsang glanced quickly at Takeuchi. Marianne Holmon-Sanders was the Beowulf System Defense Force’s senior in-space officer, ranking just behind Admiral Corey McAvoy, the chief of naval operations. She was also the commanding officer of the BSDF’s First Fleet—its only fleet, really—which made the fact that the incoming message was from her even more interesting.

(Bolding mine)

So, If there's only 1 Fleet, and it's there, there can't be many ships elsewhere. I throw up my hand over it being ONLY 36 ships - But I doubt Beowulf has another formation of 36 lying around.

Sigs wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Hmm, I went back and looked at the exact wording from ART and I may have been off-base.

"And [Tsang's task group] was also the next best thing to three times the total combat strength of the Beowulf System Defense Force’s thirty-six superdreadnoughts." [ART Ch14](BTW this is Tsang thinking; not an omniscient narrator)


On the face of it that does sound like it was Beowulf's entire force that Tsang saw.

Grasping as straws there may still be some other explanations:
a) Maybe Tsang's intel factored ships down for refit out of the "combat strength".
b) Maybe SLN Intel was wrong about Beowulf's total SDF strength.
c) Maybe a few of Holmon-Sanders' SD weren't Beowulfan (just to make up the numbers for any that couldn't make it).
d) For that matter, despite the Beowulfan rep to the League talking about Tsang's willingness to attack their 36 SDs we have no PoV that confirms that all 36 impeller signatures the SDN saw were real.
e) Or maybe Beowulf did pull of as massive all-effort surge to get every single one of their SDs out of the docks and ready to confront the SLN (they did have a fair bit of advanced warning after all.

We can't know for sure, but the text certainly gives the impression that they didn't have the usual 40-66% unavailable.

Why would 40-66% of their SD's be unavailable? Why would they have between 40% and 60% in yard hands unless its to repair battle damage?

Theemile wrote:

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:I don't recall anything that said the 36 ships were Beowulf's entire wall; was that in a post somewhere? I agree with Jonathan_S to a degree, but I expect that is around half of their total.

For those arguing about the economic power of core worlds, it was in the text that Manticore surpassed old Earth only around the start of the story arc, ie., around 1900 or soon after. So old Core worlds with large populations ought to have as much income as Manticore, or almost.

Regards, Rob

OK, My Mind's going - it may be because of textual changes made between the Earc and the final or maybe Alzheimer's is setting in early. I remember comments that it was the entire BSDF wall, instead I found this:

“No, Ma’am,” Marceau said, still with that peculiar edge to his voice. “It’s originating from near the terminus, but it’s from Vice Admiral Holmon-Sanders, not Traffic Control.”
Tsang glanced quickly at Takeuchi. Marianne Holmon-Sanders was the Beowulf System Defense Force’s senior in-space officer, ranking just behind Admiral Corey McAvoy, the chief of naval operations. She was also the commanding officer of the BSDF’s First Fleet—its only fleet, really—which made the fact that the incoming message was from her even more interesting.

(Bolding mine)

So, If there's only 1 Fleet, and it's there, there can't be many ships elsewhere. I throw up my hand over it being ONLY 36 ships - But I doubt Beowulf has another formation of 36 lying around.

Theemile wrote:Update - Jonathan S. found the Quote about the 36 being the whole fleet - The mental Gears aren't slipping as much as I thought....

Sigs wrote:But in this case, I would say Beowulf would keep its SD's in the home system and send all of their SD's to the Terminal because it was very, very,very unlikely that the SLN would decide to attack one of its member system civilian population, and if they did the 36 SD's in the Beowulf would not be able to stop 3 times their number without Manticore's help.

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:
I have a little trouble reading that. If you mean they sent the whole fleet because they thought it likely the SLN would seize the terminus and assault their civilians, I agree. As to whether the Beowulfer SDs could have stopped Tsang alone--we'll never know. We know the SLN was confident; we don't know whether they were over-confident. We just don't know what sort of "modernization" their ships and systems (referred to in CoG) have actually done over the last decade. But we do know they were generally informed of Manticoran advances, and the ERM and off-bore capability come to mind as not being super-obvious to an SLN observer. . . ..and being in Manti service since at least 1917. . . . .

Regards, Rob

Sigs wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:We can't know for sure, but the text certainly gives the impression that they didn't have the usual 40-66% unavailable.

Why would 40-66% of their SD's be unavailable? Why would they have between 40% and 60% in yard hands unless its to repair battle damage?

Sigs wrote:{snipped out my older quote--rob}
Sorry, yes I meant that they send the whole fleet because they didn't fear the SLN will attack the infrastructure and the civilians. {at home, you mean}

As for the rest, I think it was in one of the books where they said that Manticore and Beowulf had an agreement to not add any Manti technology to the Beowulf fleet because of fears that it might somehow make its way over to the SLN so I always assumed that the Beowulf and League ships are equal technologically with maybe the SLN being less competent...

munroburton wrote:
I'm not sure 40-60% down for refit is normal. Maybe for the early war People's Navy. After they took Trevor's Star, Manticore had to pull about a third of its battle wall in for refit, maintenance and repairs - exceeding the peacetime goal of no more than 25% in yard hands.

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:

Sigs wrote:{snipped out my older quote--rob}
Sorry, yes I meant that they send the whole fleet because they didn't fear the SLN will attack the infrastructure and the civilians. {at home, you mean}

As for the rest, I think it was in one of the books where they said that Manticore and Beowulf had an agreement to not add any Manti technology to the Beowulf fleet because of fears that it might somehow make its way over to the SLN so I always assumed that the Beowulf and League ships are equal technologically with maybe the SLN being less competent...

It was in Mission iirc; when the news of Raging [in]Justice was leaked to Manticore. But, since the SLN had such a high opinion of local SDFs in general, as long as they didn't light off any flares, they could add some things. By limiting their missile ranges in exercises to normal range, and just not firing any double salvos, they hide the changes I suggested. And Beowulf shouldn't have found it too difficult for their intel types to have a look into SLN reports from Adm. Hoover at Technical Analysis--after all, the SLN had what has to be the worst Intel command ever (exceptions are noted, but not relevant here).

So, if 1st Fleet had ERMs, they drastically outrange Tsang; if they can fire off bore, it is 72 broadsides, not 36; if they had enough fire control, they could stack the salvo, for an equivalent rate of fire of 142 of Tsang's ships. . . . If If If.

Regards, Rob