Solly Fleet Advancements

Hi Jonathan_S,

The early books give some size details, so we have references to the SL being 300-400 LY's in diameter, ie 150-200 LY's in radius from Sol, with the verge beyond out to ~400 LY.

Including half the outer volume means a total volume of ~23.83 million cubic LY's, for 1784 members that 3188 cubic LY's @ or a radius of ~14.717 LY.

Remember Manticore is 512 LY from Terra, so it would have been a while before the OFS came knocking.

The SL includes around 2/3 of the human race, but colonization should extend outward to at least a 1000 LY radius by now.

L

Jonathan_S wrote:

Eagleeye wrote:How many of the Core worlds are near enough to earth to get to them in, say, 4 weeks max one-way, and without using wormholes? Is there a core world in Alpha or Proxima Centauri? In Sirius? In Barnard's Star? In Ross 248?

By military ship that'd be other core worlds within roughly 160 lightyears of Earth. (Assuming military propulsion, but not risking the Eta bands - if you're talking courier ship it's almost 200 lightyears for a 4 week one-way transit)

I don't recall if we've gotten a approximate diameter of the League, and we certainly don't have a map of all it's members. So I won't try to estimate how many might fall within that diameter.

(And of course that's just an approximation; any hyperspacial features that required deviation from a straight line course or moving into a lower hyperband would increase transit time considerably and distort that notional "4 week transit" sphere.

Alizon wrote:The first of the Phase III designs will begin construction at this time. These vessels may steal a page from Haven in adopting smaller Dreadnaughts, possibly Battleships as a key fleet elements in part to compensate for Manticorian drive node and compensator superiority but also to reduce construction times so that the fleet may begin receiving "modern" vessels as quickly as possible. These vessels will be designed at least with provisions to carry pods within their drive fields and some limited form of pod laying capability may be adopted.

This bit of your post jumped out at me. I'm actually thinking the opposite. Without the need to close to energy range, and with the missile ranges the SLN will hopefully have at this point, what do they need higher tactical speed for?

Specifically how is a quicker but much more fragile ship (BB), or even somewhat more fragile ship (DN), more useful that a slow but robust (SD) platform? (This is probably doubly true given that they're unlikely to close the acceleration gap all that much by this point; so their hypothetical BBs will probably still be slower than RMN SDs)


I admit that during the first war, in the the SDM era, relative acceleration was significantly more important, but now I just don't see it as an overriding priority.

Jonathan_S wrote:

Alizon wrote:The first of the Phase III designs will begin construction at this time. These vessels may steal a page from Haven in adopting smaller Dreadnaughts, possibly Battleships as a key fleet elements in part to compensate for Manticorian drive node and compensator superiority but also to reduce construction times so that the fleet may begin receiving "modern" vessels as quickly as possible. These vessels will be designed at least with provisions to carry pods within their drive fields and some limited form of pod laying capability may be adopted.

This bit of your post jumped out at me. I'm actually thinking the opposite. Without the need to close to energy range, and with the missile ranges the SLN will hopefully have at this point, what do they need higher tactical speed for?

Specifically how is a quicker but much more fragile ship (BB), or even somewhat more fragile ship (DN), more useful that a slow but robust (SD) platform? (This is probably doubly true given that they're unlikely to close the acceleration gap all that much by this point; so their hypothetical BBs will probably still be slower than RMN SDs)


I admit that during the first war, in the the SDM era, relative acceleration was significantly more important, but now I just don't see it as an overriding priority.

Acceleration equals the ability to influence the range at which combat takes place and it can also influence the range at which your missiles can engage by imparting to them an initial launch speed.

The other advantage is quite simply that these vessel types are faster to build so you can include them in your operational fleet at a faster rate and in greater numbers which is important if you want to have enough of them soon enough to make an impact. This also works well with the only realistic Solarian strategy of having vast numbers of adequate vessels considering even at this stage that there is going to be a huge gap between the individual capabilities of Manticorian vessels and their Solarian counterparts.

Other possible advantages of having more hulls is that it makes it more difficult for Apollo type systems to target just a few opposing SD's and wipe out a disproportionate percentage of a Solarian task force's capability. You simply have more targets that need to be engaged and destroyed to have the same impact. Further having more faster hulls gives you greater strategic flexibility. After all, however capable they might be, the best SD in the universe can only be at one place at a time which the equivalent of say two or three battleships can be deployed in different locations.

When the Solarians have enough of these vessels to effectively retire the Phase I upgraded ships and the Phase II builds in front line duty and Solarian industry is fully mobilized then the mix would start to shift more towards SD's but by that time you're probably well into Phase IV construction.

Jonathan_S wrote:Specifically how is a quicker but much more fragile ship (BB), or even somewhat more fragile ship (DN), more useful that a slow but robust (SD) platform? (This is probably doubly true given that they're unlikely to close the acceleration gap all that much by this point; so their hypothetical BBs will probably still be slower than RMN SDs)

First, I think Alizon is far too optimistic about the League surviving long enough or having enough shipyard capacity to field new designs. but...

If the League does survive to build new types, an up-armored BB with accel as close to manti SDs as possible would be my choice. I wouldn't build anything as fragile as a prewar Havenite BB, but I would build the fastest, hardest, nastiest BB I could roll out of the assembly docks like WWII liberty ships. (A ship a day)

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Specifically how is a quicker but much more fragile ship (BB), or even somewhat more fragile ship (DN), more useful that a slow but robust (SD) platform? (This is probably doubly true given that they're unlikely to close the acceleration gap all that much by this point; so their hypothetical BBs will probably still be slower than RMN SDs)

First, I think Alizon is far too optimistic about the League surviving long enough or having enough shipyard capacity to field new designs. but...

If the League does survive to build new types, an up-armored BB with accel as close to manti SDs as possible would be my choice. I wouldn't build anything as fragile as a prewar Havenite BB, but I would build the fastest, hardest, nastiest BB I could roll out of the assembly docks like WWII liberty ships. (A ship a day)

A BB with the accel of a RMN SD(P) is still one heck of an undertaking.


Using a pre-war compensator a 4.5 mton Triumphant-class BB only had a 43g accel advantage over a 8.3 mton Gryphon-class SD. (And that's at 100% power / 0 compensator margin. At the then normal 80% power it shrinks to 34.4g accel advantage)

An Invictus-class SD(P), in 1919, could pull 562.6g (flat out); to put that in perspective that's a higher accel than a pre-war 38 kton dispatch boat. To equal that a 4.5 mton design needs a compensator that's a 26% improvement. As a comparison it took Manticore an entire decade from their first improved compensator until they hit that level of improvement.


I just don't see the League managing to do it all that much sooner; and of course Manticore keeps improving. So who knows what a current refit SD(P) can pull

Alizon wrote:The other advantage is quite simply that these vessel types are faster to build so you can include them in your operational fleet at a faster rate and in greater numbers which is important if you want to have enough of them soon enough to make an impact. This also works well with the only realistic Solarian strategy of having vast numbers of adequate vessels considering even at this stage that there is going to be a huge gap between the individual capabilities of Manticorian vessels and their Solarian counterparts.

Battleships are only slightly faster to build than superdreadnoughts, and are far less powerful and survivable. See this infodump: http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... ngton/70/1. For relative construction times, see: http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/290/1.

If it takes 18.5 months to build a BB and 23 months to build an SD (Solarian construction times would be much longer, of course), then for 25% increase in construction time, you get a ship twice as heavy, far more powerful, and far more survivable.

Jonathan_S wrote:A BB with the accel of a RMN SD(P) is still one heck of an undertaking.


...

I just don't see the League managing to do it all that much sooner; and of course Manticore keeps improving. So who knows what a current refit SD(P) can pull

Whatever the final compensator improvements might be, a BB is still faster than a SD from the same design bureau/yard.

Whatever the acceleration difference might be, it will be less for a SLN BB than for a SLN SD.

SWM wrote:Battleships are only slightly faster to build than superdreadnoughts, and are far less powerful and survivable. See this infodump: http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... ngton/70/1.

True, but the infodump specifies "old style battleships" -- I specified a heavily up-armored BB specifically armored and armed to take on SDs with odds-on advantages (say 10:1?)

DW does say any future BBs would more likely be BC(large) variants not intended as wallers and "only an idiot" would pit them against wallers at any odds. But "Only An Idiot" pretty much describes SLN command thinking, so a BB(p) with oodles of extra fire control and armor sounds like a good idea from a SLN tactics POV.

I wouldn't put it past SLN brass to decide to run them in pairs with one loaded with ship-killer pods and the other with CM pods.

Weird Harold wrote:First, I think Alizon is far too optimistic about the League surviving long enough or having enough shipyard capacity to field new designs. but...

That's because the moment Beowulf certifies their Mycroft system is fully online (and the Beowulf Terminus forts receive extra pods and the fire control to handle them), freeing up Truman's TF, Grand Fleet is going to start taking out the major construction sites in the SL (with the deliberate exception of Sol itself). If memory serves, the number of sites capable of building wallers is quite limited.

The way I expect it to typically go down is for Grand Fleet (or one of its task forces if they don't need the whole enchilada) to show up, demand the surrender of all Solarian personnel in the system, get everyone off the construction platforms, and let loose a bunch of Shrikes (with Katana escort in case of any shenanigans) to slice them up with their grasers, just to save ammo.

Option 2: Marines will hook up remote controls for the fusion plants, retreat to a safe distance, and deliberately overload them so they blow up.

TheMonster wrote: If memory serves, the number of sites capable of building wallers is quite limited.

The number of sites that build SLN wallers is quite limited. It's unclear how many others there are. But likely not that many.