What's the chance of a Streek Drive Super Dreadnought?

Weird Harold wrote:

crewdude48 wrote:That just means that a DD is a BETTER scout than an SD. It doesn't mean that an SD CAN NOT scout.

You CAN water-ski behind a cruise ship. That doesn't mean that cruise ships are suitable for towing skiers.

Any commander who goes scouting in a SD should be cashier in disgrace unless there are outstandingly pressing reasons for not detaching one of the screening ships that are always around a SD.

There are reasons why Navies build so many smaller ships and reasons why those smaller ships travel further in hyper than SDs; Those reasons generally boil down to "an SD is too big and too expensive."

Now Harold, these guys are just playing with tax dollars. They don't need to worry about the expense... After all, it's just "funny money!"

Don

n7axw wrote:Now Harold, these guys are just playing with tax dollars. They don't need to worry about the expense... After all, it's just "funny money!"

Don

Yeah, a million here, a million there, and before you know it you're talking some real money.

The insistence that SDs be used for everything cause they get Streak Drives first does make me wonder if Skimpy is contagious.

Weird Harold wrote:
Yep, they're going to apply everything they learned about deep raids, including the need for scouts and the need for screening elements.

If you give priority to SDs for streak upgrades, where are you going to find scouts and screening elements to keep up with them or go ahead of them to gather information?


Another thing about deep-raiding strategy: You only need SDs when you're attacking systems defended by SDs or SD equivalent system defense pods. If you're "attacking" SL Core Worlds without a SLN presence or SDF, you only need a Roland or two to destroy a system's infrastructure.

Of course you'd need Fast-DDs to scout the systems and tell you which could be raided by Rolands, which needed Nikes and which needed SDs.

But then you'd send SDs everywhere do do all of those missions because they're so "versatile."

PS: If you want me to acknowledge the content of your posts, try deleting all the personal attacks and address the content of mine.

One nitpick. The RMN wasn't using DDs to figure out which systems to hit. The DDs weren't comeing back with Strategic intel - they were hanging around the systems probing with recon drones to give Tactical intel to the raiding fleet when it arrived. (Well expect when performing decoy missions; then they hung around for a week or so and left)


In that case you didn't want them to arrive too much ahead of the raiding fleet because you were making a tradeoff; you wanted enough time to gather intel and scout the defenses but not so much time that a large nodal reaction force was likely to have arrived.

So you already decided how much sooner you wanted your DDs to arrive; you don't want them there any earlier than that because it give the defenders more time that you decided on for them to react. Although even over 400 lightyears the Streak drive only adds up to about 6 days advantage. I guess you could use that to shorten the delay between when the DDs left and when the raiding fleet did (since you weren't going to wait 40+ days to hear back); instead of waiting 7 days you only wait 1 and the rest of the week's lead-time for the couple scouting DDs is made up in transit.

The priorities will be a bit different when raiding the League, but even so you know which systems you want to hit because of decades of intel about facilities and basing gathered by all your Manticoran merchant traffic. For the most part you're not jumping into unknown systems to see whats there.


But still, your raiding forces are going to be more flexible if you spread your Streak drive upgrades / new-builds across a range of classes of all sizes of warships (and fast logistics); instead of focusing almost exclusively on DDs before moving on to any of the larger units.
Identify the class composition you want for raiding groups and focus on building that class balance of "fast" ships.

Jonathan_S wrote:The priorities will be a bit different when raiding the League, but even so you know which systems you want to hit because of decades of intel about facilities and basing gathered by all your Manticoran merchant traffic. For the most part you're not jumping into unknown systems to see whats there.

Since Case Lacoon has withdrawn the MMM from Solarian space, you have no idea where or when the SLN has moved forces or whatever emergency defensive measures the SLN or System forces might have arranged. Charging into a shoal of Technodyne System defense missiles or Cataphract pods isn't the way to get promoted.

As far as pre-war intel from the MMM is concerned, you need SDs for about 25 of around 1800 systems. You can devastate the rest with a battle cruiser each, MAX. Most of them don't have defenses to stand up to a pre-Roland destroyer if it had missile resupply handy.

Jonathan_S wrote:But still, your raiding forces are going to be more flexible if you spread your Streak drive upgrades / new-builds across a range of classes of all sizes of warships (and fast logistics); instead of focusing almost exclusively on DDs before moving on to any of the larger units.
Identify the class composition you want for raiding groups and focus on building that class balance of "fast" ships.

I don't recall saying that only one class at a time should be converted/built. I have only said that smaller ships should have priority over bigger ships, and especially over SDs.

Smaller ships can be converted/built faster than bigger ships because they have less armor and cofferdamming.

Smaller ships can be converted/built in greater numbers because multiple ships can be converted/built in yards that can handle bigger ships.

In general, smaller ships spend more time/distance in hyper and would benefit more from a Streak Drive.

None of that precludes installing a Streak Drive in bigger ships when they go into repair/refit for something more urgent than just a streak drive upgrade.

Normal maintenance cycles will bring the bigger ships in for repair and refit in sufficient numbers to build raiding forces.

Normal duty assignments will keep smaller ships employed and unavailable for conversion, so the majority of Fast-ships are going to come straight from the builders.

Under your "balanced conversions" you're going to need a squadron of destroyers and a division or two of cruisers minimum for every every Fast-SD you acquire. You might as well convert/build them while you wait for the Fast-SD, since the more armor and cofferdamming you have to build or rebuild the longer it's going to take.

Also, as noted above, smaller ships can always be employed somewhere without bigger ships, but SDs will have to wait around for screening elements to catch up. Unless of course, you decide to overturn the strategic role SDs have played since they were invented and employ them without screening elements.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:The priorities will be a bit different when raiding the League, but even so you know which systems you want to hit because of decades of intel about facilities and basing gathered by all your Manticoran merchant traffic. For the most part you're not jumping into unknown systems to see whats there.

Since Case Lacoon has withdrawn the MMM from Solarian space, you have no idea where or when the SLN has moved forces or whatever emergency defensive measures the SLN or System forces might have arranged. Charging into a shoal of Technodyne System defense missiles or Cataphract pods isn't the way to get promoted.

As far as pre-war intel from the MMM is concerned, you need SDs for about 25 of around 1800 systems. You can devastate the rest with a battle cruiser each, MAX. Most of them don't have defenses to stand up to a pre-Roland destroyer if it had missile resupply handy.

You know where the basing and support infrastructure is. And due to the transit times even if you knew where their ships were when you scouted you don't know where they'll be a month later when your raiders can show up after getting the scouting report.

Instead you send in a few DDs to scout a planned target, then one of them meets your force a short distance from the target to hand over the current tactical scouting details. If something nasty took out the scouts I assume you'd abort the mission and head home. But you don't send out scouts, wait for them to return to base, and then send everyone - the delays are too long.

Now for the moment, against the League, the raiding force might just be Wolfhounds, Avalons, Rolands, Sag-Bs, Sag-Cs, Aggies, or Nikes - but that doesn't change the face that you don't wait for your initial scouts to come all the way back; you meet any reinforcements basically at the target (maybe a light-month out and make a go/no-go decision and plan your tactical approach them).

Although in some cases you might not need reinforcements; the scouting DDs, once they convince themselves that they've scouted all the defenses, might switch to attack mode. But I suspect that would be rare -- or at least that you'd send a heavier force of DDs (8 or more) for a scout/raid than Manticore was in the habit of using for pure pre-raid scouting (2 or 3).

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But still, your raiding forces are going to be more flexible if you spread your Streak drive upgrades / new-builds across a range of classes of all sizes of warships (and fast logistics); instead of focusing almost exclusively on DDs before moving on to any of the larger units.
Identify the class composition you want for raiding groups and focus on building that class balance of "fast" ships.

I don't recall saying that only one class at a time should be converted/built. I have only said that smaller ships should have priority over bigger ships, and especially over SDs.

Smaller ships can be converted/built faster than bigger ships because they have less armor and cofferdamming.

Smaller ships can be converted/built in greater numbers because multiple ships can be converted/built in yards that can handle bigger ships.

In general, smaller ships spend more time/distance in hyper and would benefit more from a Streak Drive.

None of that precludes installing a Streak Drive in bigger ships when they go into repair/refit for something more urgent than just a streak drive upgrade.

Normal maintenance cycles will bring the bigger ships in for repair and refit in sufficient numbers to build raiding forces.

Normal duty assignments will keep smaller ships employed and unavailable for conversion, so the majority of Fast-ships are going to come straight from the builders.

Under your "balanced conversions" you're going to need a squadron of destroyers and a division or two of cruisers minimum for every every Fast-SD you acquire. You might as well convert/build them while you wait for the Fast-SD, since the more armor and cofferdamming you have to build or rebuild the longer it's going to take.

Also, as noted above, smaller ships can always be employed somewhere without bigger ships, but SDs will have to wait around for screening elements to catch up. Unless of course, you decide to overturn the strategic role SDs have played since they were invented and employ them without screening elements.

I apologize if I misunderstood, but your repeated arguments that SDs didn't "really" benefit from streak drives, and that the priority had to be small units gave me (and judging by their responses, also other posters) the impression that you didn't want streak drives "wasted" (again my impression) on larger units -- that they all should go to small ships.

I did see one of your much later posts (yesterday I think) where you clarified that you were thinking of it more as a tiebreaker; only if you had two ships of otherwise equal refit priority would the small ship to get the streak drive. And that surprised me because that wasn't the impression of your position I'd gotten up to that point. (And again, I apologize if I misunderstood your actual position)

Jonathan_S wrote:I apologize if I misunderstood, but your repeated arguments that SDs didn't "really" benefit from streak drives, ...

SDs don't benefit from Streak Drives -- at least not as much as other ship types. Having a Streak Drive would definitely be nice-to-have but it is far from a necessity. For that reason, SDs should be the lowest possible priority for Streak Drives -- IF existing SDs can be converted at all.

Two or three build-cycles down the road, new-build SDs should get second or third generation Streak Drives -- after smaller ships have exposed all the bugs in first generation drives. Streak Drives should go into SDs down for major repairs or refit for other reasons, but I don't believe any SD should be taken out of service solely for a streak drive or repair & refit extended unreasonably to fit a streak drive.

It's not like a SD(P) squadron (and screen) calls ahead to make an appointment for a raid. Sure a SD(P) squadron could raid 40% more systems with Streak Drives, but the immediate enemy doesn't HAVE 40% more systems that need SDs to devastate. They do have more than 40% more systems that smaller ships can handle the raiding -- IF the GA were going to raid most systems in the SL at all. The current plan (Lacoon II) is concerned with controlling the Wormhole network and commerce raiding; Thus far done with Cruisers, CLACs and smaller ships.

Eventually every SD will be in yard hands long enough to install Streak Drives, if it can be done, but I can't see where they gain enough to make a special effort to convert them.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:I apologize if I misunderstood, but your repeated arguments that SDs didn't "really" benefit from streak drives, ...

SDs don't benefit from Streak Drives -- at least not as much as other ship types. Having a Streak Drive would definitely be nice-to-have but it is far from a necessity. For that reason, SDs should be the lowest possible priority for Streak Drives -- IF existing SDs can be converted at all.

Two or three build-cycles down the road, new-build SDs should get second or third generation Streak Drives -- after smaller ships have exposed all the bugs in first generation drives. Streak Drives should go into SDs down for major repairs or refit for other reasons, but I don't believe any SD should be taken out of service solely for a streak drive or repair & refit extended unreasonably to fit a streak drive.

It's not like a SD(P) squadron (and screen) calls ahead to make an appointment for a raid. Sure a SD(P) squadron could raid 40% more systems with Streak Drives, but the immediate enemy doesn't HAVE 40% more systems that need SDs to devastate. They do have more than 40% more systems that smaller ships can handle the raiding -- IF the GA were going to raid most systems in the SL at all. The current plan (Lacoon II) is concerned with controlling the Wormhole network and commerce raiding; Thus far done with Cruisers, CLACs and smaller ships.

Eventually every SD will be in yard hands long enough to install Streak Drives, if it can be done, but I can't see where they gain enough to make a special effort to convert them.

You make a lot of valid points but you are focusing on the attack and not the overall advantage of Steak Drives. Task Forces travel through Hyper at the speed of the slowest ship. The tactical advantage goes to the side that can move its pieces across the board the quickest and as complete units. This goes for defending as well as attacking. So my vote is that other than test bed ships, its going to be an all or nothing approach. You only get the advantage if all your ships have the new Steak Drive.

Manticore also has an advantage when it comes to Steak Drive. They have a much more efficient inertial compensator. This will allow them to build bigger ships, still faster than the same class of an enemy, and make room for the much bigger hyper generator (Streak Drive) without degrading the armament. That is purely an educated guess on my part but the two dove tail together nicely.

Totally contrived conversational starter as the timing is completely bollixed up. I tried to divert the convo into this aspect to get a smidgeon of reality into the conversation, but clearly this aspect is still ignored. Much better to argue over definition minutia shaving without a base in sequential logic.

So far: This conversation:

Assumes: SL is still around in 2+ years. It won't be. GA already has enough ships to eliminate all ships in known space if they chose to do so.

Assumes: GA can't build streak hyperdrive in Haven yards and MUST be done at Manticore. Talk about Manticore myopic glasses. R&D? Theory; sure, but prototyping? Nope.

Assumes: SL worlds have MDM.
-- Cataphract pods are useless for defensive purposes against any GA force. Anyone thinks otherwise, I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you and I have heard the London Bridge is for sale. I have the deed, right here(searches under my...)

Only reason GA will really want Streak in the foreseeable near future is to patrol ex SL worlds that broke away with no defenses, but are not trusted/given MDM pods/Moriarity for defense and therefore their defense requires ships and pods under GA control. Of course these ships will all be 2nd rate ships resigned to backwater duties.

After SL breaks, we are looking at a several year break with intelligence gathering being the main thrust as one tries to determine who is just an SL stooge, and who is a MALIGN world. Unless of course there will not be giant battles in the HV upcoming with thousands of ships. Well, I think we can guarantee this will not be true, as one thing DW/MWW/RFC most certainly does well is think BIG. To get these thousands of ships built, requires a lot of time.

Relax wrote:Only reason GA will really want Streak in the foreseeable near future is to patrol ex SL worlds that broke away with no defenses, but are not trusted/given MDM pods/Moriarity for defense and therefore their defense requires ships and pods under GA control. Of course these ships will all be 2nd rate ships resigned to backwater duties.

You realize that 2nd rate ships rarely have the most cutting edge engineering systems installed? Or they wouldn't be second rate?

Anyhow, I'll go back to my original point from years ago, Mycroft is Skynet. You, the system occupant, cannot remove it once it is installed and running in your system. It is a self-defending system based around thousands of horrifically lethal missiles spread all over the inside of the hyper limit linked to a distributed automated fire control system connected by un-jammable FTL comms. You try to touch it and it will kill you.

Jeroswen wrote:You make a lot of valid points but you are focusing on the attack and not the overall advantage of Steak Drives. Task Forces travel through Hyper at the speed of the slowest ship.

Very true, task forces do travel at the speed of the slowest ship -- often ammunition or supply ships, which have pretty much been ignored so far.

Task Forces don't always need SDs, Ammo, or supply ships; Silesia saw damned few SDs until Marsh Station got beefed up to counter the IAN.

Jeroswen wrote:The tactical advantage goes to the side that can move its pieces across the board the quickest and as complete units.

No, the Strategic advantage is enhanced by greater Hyper speeds, but the tactical situation is driven by N-Space speed.

Jeroswen wrote:This goes for defending as well as attacking. So my vote is that other than test bed ships, its going to be an all or nothing approach. You only get the advantage if all your ships have the new Steak Drive.

No, the "advantage" of Streak (not sirloin) Drive is gained by faster information flow, even if only dispatch boats and Destroyers get Streak. Another step in "advantage" comes when you can assemble commerce raiding task groups that wouldn't include SDs. MAximum "advantage" would come when Streak Drives are the new milspec hyper-drive, but even then, there will be a few old ships hanging around in places like Spindle to provide a Station Command facility.

Jeroswen wrote:Manticore also has an advantage when it comes to Steak Drive. They have a much more efficient inertial compensator. This will allow them to build bigger ships, still faster than the same class of an enemy, and make room for the much bigger hyper generator (Streak Drive) without degrading the armament. That is purely an educated guess on my part but the two dove tail together nicely.

A better inertial compensator doesn't let them build bigger ships and building bigger will slow down your entire task force when maneuvering tactically in N-Space. You might build a ship faster than your opponent, but bigger means slower and your bigger Streak Drive SDs won't be as fast in N-Space as your smaller unmodified SDs.

A better Hyper Generator won't make ships any faster in N-Space. A Streak Drive isn't so big that it can't be shoehorned into a standard-sized DB hull. I very much doubt that it will take a bigger SD to make room for one.