Eridani Edict Violation of the most Dismissive Kind...

kzt wrote:Fighting pirates and commerce raiders have pretty much no similarity. A SLN ship gets within say 36M KM of a merchant the merchant is dead. There is no need to close, match velocities etc. Raider fires a small group of missiles that is programed to ensure that the merchant can't roll the ship against more than a small percentage and then it leaves.

Merchants have no redundancy or armor. X-ray lasers will blow huge gaping holes through both sides and the reflections from the plasma will nicely irradiate much of the ship.

Maybe the ship blows up, maybe it doesn't. Maybe it's just severely damaged. Maybe the crew chooses to abandon ship during the many minutes they have, maybe it doesn't. Not their problem.

You an say "but we'll convoy with warships for missile defense." And I say "really"? There are like 20,000 member of the Manticoran Merchant Marine. There are HUGE demands on light ships for spider screening. There are demands from the extra 60 members/protectorates of the SEM for protection. Where do you get all these ships?

Which is why the Manticoran Merchant Marine has been withdrawn from Solarian space and the wormholes closed to Solarian shipping. The Solarians can play Battle of the Atlantic all they like - the Manties aren't going there.

To commerce raid, you first need to get your ships to where the commerce is going on. And that, for the SLN, is now a long, long way away.

kzt wrote:Fighting pirates and commerce raiders have pretty much no similarity. A SLN ship gets within say 36M KM of a merchant the merchant is dead. ...

All true except for one minor detail -- the SLN's Operation Buccaneer version of "commerce raiding" bears more resemblance to Allied carpet bombing in WWII than it does the Battle of the Atlantic. They are NOT going after merchant ships, they are going after "trading partners."

Weird Harold wrote:

kzt wrote:Fighting pirates and commerce raiders have pretty much no similarity. A SLN ship gets within say 36M KM of a merchant the merchant is dead. ...

All true except for one minor detail -- the SLN's Operation Buccaneer version of "commerce raiding" bears more resemblance to Allied carpet bombing in WWII than it does the Battle of the Atlantic. They are NOT going after merchant ships, they are going after "trading partners."

They are probably going to attack some of their own planets along the way. And if caught, there may be some executions.

If a Sollie ship violates the rules, they could be treated as pirates.

kzt wrote:Fighting pirates and commerce raiders have pretty much no similarity. A SLN ship gets within say 36M KM of a merchant the merchant is dead. ...

Weird Harold wrote:All true except for one minor detail -- the SLN's Operation Buccaneer version of "commerce raiding" bears more resemblance to Allied carpet bombing in WWII than it does the Battle of the Atlantic. They are NOT going after merchant ships, they are going after "trading partners."

ldwechsler wrote:[They are probably going to attack some of their own planets along the way. And if caught, there may be some executions.

If a Sollie ship violates the rules, they could be treated as pirates.

So, how do q-ships work? How did Ms. Admiral Harrington run her Q-ship? Oh yeah, she trolled for Havenite Commerce raiders, launched LACs and a few missiles.

No, the GA cannot be everywhere at all times, but the WHJs give them the inside track. I doubt many "real" SL BF or FF ships will be hanging out around Erewhon or Maya. I hope they get caught in Grayson space. Which leaves Silesia and the Andermani Empire.

Manticore by itself does not have to protect all shipping. Especially after Barregos pulls the trigger on Operation Sepoy. Haven has more ships than Manticore, especially cruisers, which, IIRC, make excellent convoy protection. Toss a few Q-ships in the mix to make it look like an unescorted convoy swanning all fat and happy into some star system ...

Well, given that HoS says they scrapped all of those, that seems hard to do.

kzt wrote:Well, given that HoS says they scrapped all of those, that seems hard to do.

They can build some. Although a convoy system might work well.

Even better, good intelligence. Find out where they resupply and take those places down. If they come there, just have ships waiting.

If they get ships going out to them, simply take those ships, or if possible, follow them to key rendezvous points and take down the ships.

Find out where they are being built and take down those places.

ldwechsler wrote:They can build some. Although a convoy system might work well.

Even better, good intelligence. Find out where they resupply and take those places down. If they come there, just have ships waiting.

If they get ships going out to them, simply take those ships, or if possible, follow them to key rendezvous points and take down the ships.

Find out where they are being built and take down those places.

New construction is a 5 year solution to a 2 year problem.
Honorverse ships have really deep magazines, so given that they will need like 6 missiles max to kill a merchant resupply isn’t a need for the raiders.

If the earlier RMN Q-ships are scrapped then were are they going to build them, with what equipment will they outfit them and there is a major challange in adding people to crew and command them.
Manticore has to reestablish insystem manufacturing. Unless enough time has gone by, everything is comming from Beowulf and shipped out to Bolt Hole (or someplace) for the hulls being built at Bolt Hole to be completed. Dam, that's a lot of traffic going to Bolt Hole -all passing through the MWJ, trade-craft----not so much.

Then there are the crews. Sure, Haven might even have a few Q-ships left. So with the Wayfairer class ? worn out? -other than the one lost to the Peep Raiders- there was no need to build more? Or was any surviving ship retrofitted as RMN armed aux transport?

Haven taking up the slack on providing anti-commerce raiding patroling is going to change the landscape politicaly and economically.

There is also the question of what mix you need in the anti-commerce raiding deployments. Other than SLN going to beat up and make a lesson of SL or non-member systems, what are they actualy sending out as raiders? Single ships? Pairs or up to 4? What mix? DD's certainly can kill merchants, heck, close to energy range and destroy the engine, leaving the ship dead and the crews to fend from themselves. Or are they going to destroy the ships & crews.
Crusiers/BCs make more sense from a duration standpoint, still, are you going to just kill ships and let the crews survive as they can make do or are you going to try and take ships as prizes---which brings transport capasity back to the SL, earns money (probably) for the officers/crew- we don't know with SLN- but would mean you have to bring along people to put aboard to run and navigate the ships (dump the existing crew somewhere).

So many questions:)

Brigade XO wrote:If the earlier RMN Q-ships are scrapped then were are they going to build them, with what equipment will they outfit them and there is a major challange in adding people to crew and command them.
Manticore has to reestablish insystem manufacturing. Unless enough time has gone by, everything is comming from Beowulf and shipped out to Bolt Hole (or someplace) for the hulls being built at Bolt Hole to be completed. Dam, that's a lot of traffic going to Bolt Hole -all passing through the MWJ, trade-craft----not so much.

Then there are the crews. Sure, Haven might even have a few Q-ships left. So with the Wayfairer class ? worn out? -other than the one lost to the Peep Raiders- there was no need to build more? Or was any surviving ship retrofitted as RMN armed aux transport?

Haven taking up the slack on providing anti-commerce raiding patroling is going to change the landscape politicaly and economically.

There is also the question of what mix you need in the anti-commerce raiding deployments. Other than SLN going to beat up and make a lesson of SL or non-member systems, what are they actualy sending out as raiders? Single ships? Pairs or up to 4? What mix? DD's certainly can kill merchants, heck, close to energy range and destroy the engine, leaving the ship dead and the crews to fend from themselves. Or are they going to destroy the ships & crews.
Crusiers/BCs make more sense from a duration standpoint, still, are you going to just kill ships and let the crews survive as they can make do or are you going to try and take ships as prizes---which brings transport capasity back to the SL, earns money (probably) for the officers/crew- we don't know with SLN- but would mean you have to bring along people to put aboard to run and navigate the ships (dump the existing crew somewhere).

So many questions:)

The best way to beat commerce raiding is through good intelligence. Find out where they reprovision. Where do they leave off prisoners?

If they kill the prisoners they are pirates no matter who they work for. As for provisions, either they go to planets or they have rendezvous. Good intelligence can do a real lot to stop these ships.

Destroying the orbital installations around a planet assisting the commerce raiders would take a long time to overcome.

ldwechsler wrote:

Brigade XO wrote:If the earlier RMN Q-ships are scrapped then were are they going to build them, with what equipment will they outfit them and there is a major challange in adding people to crew and command them.
Manticore has to reestablish insystem manufacturing. Unless enough time has gone by, everything is comming from Beowulf and shipped out to Bolt Hole (or someplace) for the hulls being built at Bolt Hole to be completed. Dam, that's a lot of traffic going to Bolt Hole -all passing through the MWJ, trade-craft----not so much.

Then there are the crews. Sure, Haven might even have a few Q-ships left. So with the Wayfairer class ? worn out? -other than the one lost to the Peep Raiders- there was no need to build more? Or was any surviving ship retrofitted as RMN armed aux transport?

Haven taking up the slack on providing anti-commerce raiding patroling is going to change the landscape politicaly and economically.

There is also the question of what mix you need in the anti-commerce raiding deployments. Other than SLN going to beat up and make a lesson of SL or non-member systems, what are they actualy sending out as raiders? Single ships? Pairs or up to 4? What mix? DD's certainly can kill merchants, heck, close to energy range and destroy the engine, leaving the ship dead and the crews to fend from themselves. Or are they going to destroy the ships & crews.
Crusiers/BCs make more sense from a duration standpoint, still, are you going to just kill ships and let the crews survive as they can make do or are you going to try and take ships as prizes---which brings transport capasity back to the SL, earns money (probably) for the officers/crew- we don't know with SLN- but would mean you have to bring along people to put aboard to run and navigate the ships (dump the existing crew somewhere).

So many questions:)

The best way to beat commerce raiding is through good intelligence. Find out where they reprovision. Where do they leave off prisoners?

If they kill the prisoners they are pirates no matter who they work for. As for provisions, either they go to planets or they have rendezvous. Good intelligence can do a real lot to stop these ships.

Destroying the orbital installations around a planet assisting the commerce raiders would take a long time to overcome.

The resupply vessels/systems are especially important. Killing all of the Type XIV Milchkühe put a severe crimp on the U-boat fleet's ability to operate at extended ranges from their French bases. And the supply vessels were also part of the anti-surface raider campaigns. They can either be tracked, to lead you to the raiders, or destroyed, to force the raider to return home, or seek resupply in a friendly or even neutral port.

As mentioned earlier, once any resupply ports are identified, a trap can be laid just inside the hyper limit for raiders coming in for supply, support vessels coming in to replenish, or support vessels on the way out to meet a raider.