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

Chyort wrote:Did Manticores allies also suffer a 5 year lobotomy? I don't think they did... And they still barely managed to discover the mere existence of bolthole.

And a few years after thunderbolt and the High Ridge government fell they had still failed to find bolthole despite their best efforts. Which had nothing to do with too much faith in their tech advantage.

So the fact that Haven hid Bolthole for more than five years makes Relax's assertion that scouting is not needed justified?

Chyort wrote:

Weird Harold wrote:So five years of Victory Disease is bad, but two years of Victory Disease isn't?

Ahh... But the rooster crows at midnight...

Oh, and John has a long mustache.


My comments or cryptic code phrases have about as much relevance as yours do without any context/explanation.

I thought you had read the books. Apparently you skipped over references to Victory Disease:

War of Honor
Chapter Twenty-two
wrote:And he's right, she reflected. It's absolutely ridiculous for the Queen's Navy to have gotten so . . . out of shape in barely four T-years. I suppose this is what Hamish meant when he started talking about "victory disease." But I know darned well that it never would have happened if Baroness Mourncreek were still First Lord and Sir Thomas were still First Space Lord.

Mission of Honor
Chapter Twenty-six
wrote:"You know, Ham, I've been doing a little historical research of my own since Mike's first reports about New Tuscany got back to us," he said. "You were right when you suggested Lincoln to me, but there are some other interesting tidbits in Old Earth history, too. For example, I assume you're familiar with the term 'victory disease,' aren't you?"

"As a matter of fact, I am." White Haven's teeth flashed in something which bore a certain vague resemblance to a smile, and Samantha flattened her ears as she lay stretched tense and angry along the back of his chair. "On the other hand, we're the ones who were supposed to be the recipient of a Pearl Harbor attack this time around, not the ones stupid enough to launch it. And I'm not proposing any of us underestimate the scale of the threat, either. ...

Wikipedia wrote:Victory disease denotes when in military history, due to complacency or arrogance brought on by a victory or series of victories, an engagement ends disastrously for a commander and his forces.[1]

A commander may disdain the enemy, and believe his own invincibility, leading his troops to disaster. That commander may employ strategies which, if effective in earlier combats or maneuvers, prove catastrophic against a new or smarter enemy; the commander afflicted by "victory disease" may also fail to anticipate a new enemy may use tactics different from those of old enemies. An overconfident commander may disregard military intelligence which would enable the commander to realize that new tactics are needed.

Though "victory disease" does not inevitably foretell defeat, it often precedes it. The term is also applied outside the military world.

Weird Harold wrote:

Chyort wrote:Did Manticores allies also suffer a 5 year lobotomy? I don't think they did... And they still barely managed to discover the mere existence of bolthole.

And a few years after thunderbolt and the High Ridge government fell they had still failed to find bolthole despite their best efforts. Which had nothing to do with too much faith in their tech advantage.

So the fact that Haven hid Bolthole for more than five years makes Relax's assertion that scouting is not needed justified?

Im not trying to defend anyone or anything.

You tried to blame a tech advantage in some way, shape, or form, for leading to thunderbolt and the 2nd havenite war.
The tech advantage wasn't the problem. Politics and time were.
Thus i pointed out the flaws in your example. The End.

Weird Harold wrote:I thought you had read the books. Apparently you skipped over references to Victory Disease:
*Snip*

Hah. I know what Victory disease is, and I'm fairly sure your 5 year reference was to my comment because you were responding to me. The 2 year part threw me a curve ball though, because you didn't include any context.

And instead of explaining, you try and info dump and change the subject without ever responding to the flaw in your original example.

Since you mentioned Relax though. I went back and saw his comment about scouting not mattering for ~2 years, at this point I'm guessing that is what you meant.

I still don't know for sure though because instead of giving any real clarification, you instead make assumptions and plow ahead with pointless info dumps.


Congrats on the double post though, btw...

Chyort wrote:I still don't know for sure though because instead of giving any real clarification, you instead make assumptions

I guess I did assume you were following the thread instead of just sniping at me. My bad.

Chyort wrote:And instead of explaining, you try and info dump and change the subject without ever responding to the flaw in your original example.

Since you mentioned Relax though. I went back and saw his comment about scouting not mattering for ~2 years, at this point I'm guessing that is what you meant.

At least someone can read on this forum.

Of course Harold still has not tried to justify what any SL world can actually cobble together in 2 years to justify the need for scouting that cannot be done by any attacking force from the hyperlimit. Unless he believes they can magically produce MDM missiles, stealth pods, and ships from a dead start while having zero native industry in these areas of expertise.

Now if he wishes to argue the timeline of WHEN a significant portion of ex-SL worlds will start to have a credible defense requiring scouting, then we might have a discussion. Currently that 75% of worlds with nothing more than a couple of LACs +DD defense is not exactly boot shaking terrifying. Cataphract missiles are simply not a threat to anyone with MDM's. But Harold only wants a discussion without context to chronology. Hey, I will even give him an out as Streak drive development and implementation will coincide roughly with the end of my WAG'd, thumbed, 2 year time window. I will even freely admit that the first prototype streak hyperdrive will be installed in a DB/DD. As soon as it is shown to be feasible there will be a crash projects on all ship classes of hyperdrive.

But, no, In Harold's world, everything is either black or white without any context or chronology attached.

Then throw in Elvis Santino references with no relevance, makes me wonder why anyone should bother to take anything he says seriously.

Relax wrote:Of course Harold still has not tried to justify what any SL world can actually cobble together in 2 years to justify the need for scouting that cannot be done by any attacking force from the hyperlimit. Unless he believes they can magically produce MDM missiles, stealth pods, and ships from a dead start while having zero native industry in these areas of expertise.

They don't have to cobble together missile pods, and unless you scout first, you're not going to know about any freighters bringing in shipments from Technodyne or where they might have deployed system defense pods.

They probably aren't going to lay a shoal of pods in the obvious direct path, they're going to lay them outside the path you're going to "scout" with drones but in range of your probable path. They might even lay a shoal of empty pods for you to find and laugh about how ineffective the defenders are.

Unless you scout ahead, you have no idea if you've brought enough missiles to account for all of the "missile sponges" the SLN might have moved in since the MMM is recalled.

If those "missile sponges" happen to be hiding under em-con above or below the ecliptic, are your RDs going to pick them up with only a couple of hours to "scout?"

I have no idea exactly what equivalent of pungi sticks and suicide vests a system might come up with and i can't guarantee an extended observation of the system will spot whatever they come up with.

I can guarantee your drone shell is unlikely to spot anything that shut-down all emissions as soon as your hyhper footprint was spotted if it isn't directly in your path to the planet.

Weird Harold wrote:

Relax wrote:Of course Harold still has not tried to justify what any SL world can actually cobble together in 2 years to justify the need for scouting that cannot be done by any attacking force from the hyperlimit. Unless he believes they can magically produce MDM missiles, stealth pods, and ships from a dead start while having zero native industry in these areas of expertise.

They don't have to cobble together missile pods, and unless you scout first, you're not going to know about any freighters bringing in shipments from Technodyne or where they might have deployed system defense pods.

They probably aren't going to lay a shoal of pods in the obvious direct path, they're going to lay them outside the path you're going to "scout" with drones but in range of your probable path. They might even lay a shoal of empty pods for you to find and laugh about how ineffective the defenders are.

Unless you scout ahead, you have no idea if you've brought enough missiles to account for all of the "missile sponges" the SLN might have moved in since the MMM is recalled.

If those "missile sponges" happen to be hiding under em-con above or below the ecliptic, are your RDs going to pick them up with only a couple of hours to "scout?"

I have no idea exactly what equivalent of pungi sticks and suicide vests a system might come up with and i can't guarantee an extended observation of the system will spot whatever they come up with.

I can guarantee your drone shell is unlikely to spot anything that shut-down all emissions as soon as your hyhper footprint was spotted if it isn't directly in your path to the planet.

Lets back up a step. First, lets go over Manticore's normal scouting routine.

The send 2 or 3 DDs in a week or so early to hang around under stealth and probe the system with RDs. Then send at least one back to a nearby rendezvous point to meet the main force and turn over the scouting info they've collected; while at least one stays to keep an eye out for last minute changes.


My understanding is that the reason Manticore uses DDs for that isn't that they can do a better job than the main force; it's because it's less damaging to lose them. After all if the main force wanted to hang around the hyper limit in stealth for a similar period of time they'd be able to launch and control way more RDs; giving them that much better a look at the system (and that much higher a chance to find any hidden traps). But if something does go wrong and the initial probe gets mousetrapped better to lose a DD or two than something bigger. So if the DDs don't show up at the rendezvous point it's a blow up [edit: blown op] and the main force aborts the raid.

Now the DDs are primarily performing tactical scouting. Infrastructure doesn't move that quickly, so you basically know what's going to be there when you mount an attack. Conversely fleets are way too mobile, so unless you attack a major base to force its permanent defensive fleet to fight there's no guarantee that the force you thought was there will still be there in a month when your forces finish their trip from your base to the target system. So you raid against infrastructure and hope there's are a reasonable number of defending units that you can also attrit; but you can't really count on catching any specific units -- they might flee, they might have been reassigned or been pulled away to react to some nearby disaster (or they might have been so heavily reenforced that you can't risk tangling with them)



Now, against the League, if we want to raid a system the chance that they'd have anything that could swat a careful DD hiding out by the hyper limit (running RDs) is very low; but the chance they'd have something that could do the same to BC(L)s or SD(P)s doing the same is virtually non-existent. So, in the short term, the logic of using only expendable DDs to do your pre-fight tactical scouting may get altered. You'd still want to take time to carefully scout the system with RDs -- but if you did so with your main force the additional RDs could let you do as thorough a scout in less time.

I don't know if Manticore will do that, but I wouldn't be shocked if they did. But that's a far cry from charging deep into the system blind. You'd still spending as many recon drone hours scouting before moving it; all that changes is how many RDs are used at once and which ships are controlling them.

Jonathan_S wrote:Lets back up a step. First, lets go over Manticore's normal scouting routine.

...

A fair analysis. I would argue that the RMN won't change SOP. Scouting patterns and practices will stay the same.

I would also argue that a couple of DDs scouting for a week will see things that scouting for a couple of hours won't see because they aren't still happening. Mine layers aren't still going to be laying minefields unless your timing is extremely lucky, for one example.

Going back to a previous discussion, if one wanted to hide a secret base, putting it in streak hyperspace would make it totally secure.

Lord Skimper wrote:Going back to a previous discussion, if one wanted to hide a secret base, putting it in streak hyperspace would make it totally secure.

That's been discussed. The consensus seems to be that, while it could be done, it's a pretty useless idea. I'm not so sure, but I'm in a definite minority on that, and in any case it would have to be fairly specialized circumstances to make it worth while.