Question about Beowulf tactics

fallsfromtrees wrote:Why is it a matter of public record? Beowulf publishes full details of all of their military expenditures, including those of the BSC? As Beowulf had become increasingly disillusioned with the SL, it might have made sense to build additional SDs for system defense, and the SLN is composed of such clueless idiots that you could easily have sold this.

It's a matter of public record because Beowulf is a democracy. The BSCs activities, which are small clandestine actions for the most part, can be easily hidden in the budgets.

Procurement of 60 Superdreadnoughts, payroll for the 200000 people serving on them, maintenance for them? Not so much. Sure, Beowulf may have shored up their SDF. But not to such an extent.

Unless you can come up with a way for the US to secretly operate 20 additional Nimitz-class carriers without, say, the Chinese noticing,I'd say that the notion of Beowulf operating 60 SDs without the SLN noticing is rather slim.

Sure, it's easy for us to dismiss SLN intelligence as completely incompetent in evaluating the realities of the Haven sector, but I should think that their evaluation of core system military spending is more realistic.

Hi Don,

I couldn't find the distance of the Beowulf terminus in ART, whether its 6 or 10 Light Hours out [the latter IIRC], but the longer response time would still be less than the time to bring up the alpha nodes, for a response time at best of just over half an hour; the message from Beowulf then powering up the alpha nodes and the hyper transit.

I've already argued waiting until the SLN is ~90 minutes past the hyper limit would be better tactically, besides scouting for any mouse trap force [after what the RHN did to Filaretta, the SLN might try the same thing], though they might also try approaching from 7-8 different places on the hyper limit, to overwhelm the nominal defense, but my confidence in the BSDF means they're prepared for this too.

L

n7axw wrote:

SWM wrote:*quote="JohnRoth"*
As you say, appearance is everything. If it's just Admiral Tsang with her 100 SDs, Mycroft will undoubtedly be enough. If she's reinforced with those 600 SDs sitting at Tasmania, I expect that, even with Mycroft, they'll need the reinforcements parked in hyper so they aren't visible. That's also, by the way, a pretty good reason why the attack might be delayed a bit - it will take time for them to get the orders out to Tasmania and then get that fleet moving. By that time, with Admiral Henke sitting on Mesa, they might have some difficulty getting Cataphracts.

This discussion, though, is probably moot since Anton Z came through the Beowulf terminus on his way to Manticore after the plebiscite, and there was no mention of a SLN force interdicting the terminus, which there would almost certainly have been if they'd attacked and won.

Even if they attacked Beowulf and won, they would not be able to interdict the Wormhole. That's currently protected by Manticore, not Beowulf. Anton Zilwicki could easily have entered the system near the wormhole and transited to Manticore without any knowledge of what had happened at Beowulf.*quote*

The SLN does not attack Beowulf and "win" no matter how many SDs they bring to the party.

Or if they do break through to the orbitals, their "victory" lasts exactly as long as it takes for the RMN To arrive with their SDPs and boot them back out. Maybe a few hours??

They could wrack havoc on Beowulf's orbital structure, though.

Don

Hi The E,

The Invictus has a crew of only 1075, the first Medusa's were about 2400, so crew requirements would only be ~65,000 while buying the SD's would be less than M$2T, a trifling sum to a rich system like Beowulf, especially if spread out over 10-20 or more years.

However your essential point that it would or should be noticed is quite correct.

However given the quality of RMN simulators and Beowulf's comparable tech, I suspect the BSDF SD crews are more prepared for switching to SDP's than some think, and system defenses are much tougher before considering Moriarty.

L

The E wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:Why is it a matter of public record? Beowulf publishes full details of all of their military expenditures, including those of the BSC? As Beowulf had become increasingly disillusioned with the SL, it might have made sense to build additional SDs for system defense, and the SLN is composed of such clueless idiots that you could easily have sold this.

It's a matter of public record because Beowulf is a democracy. The BSCs activities, which are small clandestine actions for the most part, can be easily hidden in the budgets.

Procurement of 60 Superdreadnoughts, payroll for the 200000 people serving on them, maintenance for them? Not so much. Sure, Beowulf may have shored up their SDF. But not to such an extent.

Unless you can come up with a way for the US to secretly operate 20 additional Nimitz-class carriers without, say, the Chinese noticing,I'd say that the notion of Beowulf operating 60 SDs without the SLN noticing is rather slim.

Sure, it's easy for us to dismiss SLN intelligence as completely incompetent in evaluating the realities of the Haven sector, but I should think that their evaluation of core system military spending is more realistic.

lyonheart wrote:Hi The E,

The Invictus has a crew of only 1075, the first Medusa's were about 2400, so crew requirements would only be ~65,000 while buying the SD's would be less than M$2T, a trifling sum to a rich system like Beowulf, especially if spread out over 10-20 or more years.

However your essential point that it would or should be noticed is quite correct.

However given the quality of RMN simulators and Beowulf's comparable tech, I suspect the BSDF SD crews are more prepared for switching to SDP's than some think, and system defenses are much tougher before considering Moriarty.

L

That would assume that the new Beowulf SDs had the same level of automation as an Invictus. Beowulf may well not have that technology, and the SLN certainly wouldn't expect them to have it (assuming they're ever away that Manticore has it), so they'd expect a crew of 6,000-plus for each SD. 60 extra SDs equals 360,000 more spacers on the payroll, including at least a few dozen admirals to command the extra squadrons and divisions, which the SLN would be expecting to see if the ships belonged to the BSDF. Not to mention the logistical and support personnel, the increased class sizes as the BSDF academy, the extra construction slips, the increase in orders for spare parts, ammunition and consumables... This isn't the sort of expenditure that can be easily concealed in an open society. Look at the problems the Pritchart administration had keeping Bolthole hidden from their own Congress, and they had both a much larger budget to hide things in and a continuing state of war to justify heightened secrecy.

Brigade XO wrote:Two points:

If the SLN had already run in against Beowulf to tamper with the vote, I would have expected it to be mentioned in the conversation between Anton and Honor. At the very least, Anton would have had some interesting times getting access to the terminus with a large and very pissed off SEM fleet guarding the terminus agains the SLN & it's new puppet government onBeowulf. The other side of that is that a sucessfull defence of Beowulf against the SLN would have forced yet another massive change in the geometry of the political and military stakes and that would have an impact on anything that is or will be happening at Mesa (no, I will not get into detail on that now).

Regarding italics: Why?

I mean, Anton had one topic on his mind, the relief of his friends on Mesa and the man was focused as only Anton Zilwicki can focus on that issue. And Honor had no reason to bring up Beowulf, as she was also focusing on the Mesa issue, and already knew Mike Henke was on her way there.

I'm sure it was covered in subsequent conversation between the two, but to expect it during a meeting where Anton's only focus was to get help sent to Mesa is asking a little bit much of the authors...

IMHO as always. YMMV.

And as for getting through the wormhole, it's light-hours from Beowulf and has been firmly in the possession of the RMN--and traffic was flowing through even before Tsang showed up, so I think someone like Anton probably had the necessary passwords/clearances to get through without too much trouble. IMHO once again.

fallsfromtrees wrote:I have gone back and reread the chapters in ART concerning this incident. I occurs to me that Tsang was unaware that the 60 Manty ships were pod layers, just that they were SDs. It is also clear that Beowulf was acting in defense of the BVeowulf citizens at the terminus and that they were defending the terminus against an illegal Solarian attack. In light of this, my modified suggestion is that the Beowulf Defense Minister be on the flag deck of Truman's ship, and speak when the ships come out of stealth, instead of Truman. Instead of saying that they had borrowed 60 ships from Manticare, inform Tsang that Beowulf a build a few more SDs than the SLN was aware of. That appears to make the balance of power 96 Beowulf SDs against 100 SL, as opposed to 36 Beowulf and 60 Manticore SD against 100 SL. This however makes it appear to be solely a Beowulf defense of the junction, which is the way it was initially presented.

Others have already commented on this, so I will limit myself to one question. Why are you suggesting that Beowulf lie about this? It would eventually become apparent that it was a lie; the ships are marked as Manticoran, they match Manticoran designs, the crews are Manticoran, the ships are not and have never been based in the Beowulf system, and vast numbers of people on Beowulf know that Beowulf doesn't own ships like that. A lie like that is proof of a conspiracy to commit treason.

Using Manticoran ships defending the Manticoran wormhole is absolutely the correct thing to do. There is no reason for Beowulf to pretend that those ships belong to Beowulf, and no way that such a lie could survive any kind of investigation.

I still don't understand why you are so insistent that Beowulf should claim to control those ships.

SWM wrote:Snip...
Using Manticoran ships defending the Manticoran wormhole is absolutely the correct thing to do. There is no reason for Beowulf to pretend that those ships belong to Beowulf, and no way that such a lie could survive any kind of investigation.

I still don't understand why you are so insistent that Beowulf should claim to control those ships.

But what about Manticore trading the ships to Beowulf in exchange for the rebuilding and humanitarian efforts extended by Beowulf

George J. Smith wrote:

SWM wrote:Snip...
Using Manticoran ships defending the Manticoran wormhole is absolutely the correct thing to do. There is no reason for Beowulf to pretend that those ships belong to Beowulf, and no way that such a lie could survive any kind of investigation.

I still don't understand why you are so insistent that Beowulf should claim to control those ships.

But what about Manticore trading the ships to Beowulf in exchange for the rebuilding and humanitarian efforts extended by Beowulf

Some of their most modern and advanced and powerful ships? Not a chance that would be believed except by apologists. Especially since the biggest threat to the SEM was the Solarian League. Giving that many of their ships to a Solarian League Core world would be seen as treason by Beowulf and actively aiding and abetting the enemy.
Also it would have looked like a land grab by Manticore, especially if the vote to secede from the SL was announced while the Beowulf still had those 'loaned' SD(P)s.
Something like that would have turned public opinion even more against Beowulf and I highly doubt they would have gotten anywhere close to 1/4 of the Delegates voting against the investigation measure.

George J. Smith wrote:

SWM wrote:Snip...
Using Manticoran ships defending the Manticoran wormhole is absolutely the correct thing to do. There is no reason for Beowulf to pretend that those ships belong to Beowulf, and no way that such a lie could survive any kind of investigation.

I still don't understand why you are so insistent that Beowulf should claim to control those ships.

But what about Manticore trading the ships to Beowulf in exchange for the rebuilding and humanitarian efforts extended by Beowulf

So Manticore gives Beowulf enough ships to triple their fleet, and loans them the crews until they can train them up, and this just happens to do this just after Beowulf has been informed of the impending SLN fleet transit to Manticore? That stinks of conspiracy. The League would cry that Manticore was bribing Beowulf--or worse, coercing Beowulf, that the Beowulf officers weren't really in control and the Manticorans were forcing Beowulf to conform to their wishes.

I still have not heard a good reason why Beowulf should claim (truthfully or fraudulently) that the ships were theirs. The wormhole belonged to Manticore and the Solarian fleet was trying to execute a sneak attack on Manticore. I don't see any reason why Manticore should not be the ones blocking the League sneak attack.

Zakharra, SWM


What we need is a tongue-in-cheek smiley, obviously the rolling-eyes smiley isn't up to the job