Core world vulnerability

Nearly all SL core worlds have both immense wealth no real navy and no infrastructure to build a navy

So as the SL falls apart what will happen to these systems?

Will they be ransacked by Neo-Barbarians like ancient rome was? And if some are pillaged by raiders how will that effect the rest of the former league?

Will they be ripe for the picking for the RF on one hand and the SEM on the other?

Thoughts?

Alistair wrote:Nearly all SL core worlds have both immense wealth no real navy and no infrastructure to build a navy

This is an unfounded assumption.

So as the SL falls apart what will happen to these systems?

Will they be ransacked by Neo-Barbarians like ancient rome was? And if some are pillaged by raiders how will that effect the rest of the former league?

Will they be ripe for the picking for the RF on one hand and the SEM on the other?

Thoughts?

Well, thought one is that your basic assumption is flawed. Any core system has enough ressources to maintain a modestly sized SDF; given that the breakup of the League will not be a quick event, there is plenty of time for several of them to make defense treaties with their neighbors to avert any sort of barbarian raiding.

Hell, there's a good chance that SLN fleet elements will defect to some of the breakaway core systems.

And then there's the small issue that while these systems may not have military shipyards right now, they certainly have the industrial bases to acquire them in a hurry if they feel the need.

The E wrote:

Alistair wrote:Nearly all SL core worlds have both immense wealth no real navy and no infrastructure to build a navy

This is an unfounded assumption.

I think it's based on the statement that only about 25 navies have enough wallers for a wall of battle and another 25 have at least one or two.

There's certainly more than 45(After subtracting the Haven Sector navies and SLN itself) core worlds in existence. It's almost safe to say that they do not have wallers.

However, that does not mean they have no naval forces, only that their operational doctrines or budgets does not include wallers. They could use anything between LACs and BCs.

munroburton wrote:

The E wrote:Nearly all SL core worlds have both immense wealth no real navy and no infrastructure to build a navy

This is an unfounded assumption.

I think it's based on the statement that only about 25 navies have enough wallers for a wall of battle and another 25 have at least one or two.

There's certainly more than 45(After subtracting the Haven Sector navies and SLN itself) core worlds in existence. It's almost safe to say that they do not have wallers.

However, that does not mean they have no naval forces, only that their operational doctrines or budgets does not include wallers. They could use anything between LACs and BCs.

I think that's probably not entirely true. They likely do not have ships of the wall (BB, DN, and SD's) in their SDFs, but the systems themselves likely have shipyards capable of manufacturing such ships. A fair number likely have shipyards that do build the merchant freighters the SL uses and some of those shipyards will be the ones used to build the SLN FF and BF fleets. They had to be built somewhere after all. /shrug

Also, the bigger SLN bases are most likely in core systems (the biggest SLN shipyard and naval base is around Mars if I remember right and Beowolf is able to build and maintain it's own ships). It makes sense that the SL would put it's most powerful bases in the most loyal systems (not to mention it keeps a lot of money flowing through those systems. Sailors spend money and the workers needed to build the ships and maintain the bases have to come from somewhere.

And some core systems do have wallers. Beowolf has at least 36 SDs and who knows how many smaller ships, as well as the resources to maintain all of them. Admittedly, Beowolf has resources to need SDs in it's SDF that many other systems don't, the Manticore Wormhole Junction, but this doesn't mean that the more powerful core systems cannot and do not have some ships of the wall in their SDFs, if only for system pride. 'Look how powerful and influential and big we are. We have <insert number of DN/SDs>. How many do you have?' Most might not have more than a squadron or two at the most and Beowolf likely has one of the largest SDFs with SDs in it, but to say none of the core systems SDFs have SDs? I think that would be an incorrect assumption to make.

You really don't need wallers. A system defense missile factory producing at a fraction of the 10,000 missile per day rate of Manticore is perfectly capable of making an attack really, really painful. Even crappy dual drive missiles will hurt, when used in tightly spaced salvos of 150,000. And a core system with a population of 10 billion people can build a lot of missile and LAC factories at least as fast as Manticore is building an entire industrial bases from scratch.

I read in one of the books (beats me which one, though) that most of the Core Worlds have their own system defence forces.

It's unlikely, to say the least, that enough pirates would ever band together to threaten a system whose SDF consists of more than frigates.

What is very likely to happen once the League falls apart, is that some of its former member systems might decide to engage in a bit of empire-building of their own. THAT is what Barregos and Rozsak were afraid of when they originally started their conspiracy.

hanuman wrote:I read in one of the books (beats me which one, though) that most of the Core Worlds have their own system defence forces.

It's unlikely, to say the least, that enough pirates would ever band together to threaten a system whose SDF consists of more than frigates.

What is very likely to happen once the League falls apart, is that some of its former member systems might decide to engage in a bit of empire-building of their own. THAT is what Barregos and Rozsak were afraid of when they originally started their conspiracy.

While most core worlds have their own SDFs, the question is how many have just a hundred or so LACS, or just some hyper combatants?

We know there are 25 or so navies (the top 1%) that have 25 or more BB-SDs. Another 25 or so have 3-24. And another 50 have 1-2 white elephants. So just ~4% of navies in the universe have 1 or more BB-SDs.

But that doesn't say anything about defenses.

In particuliar RFC never mentioned forts in the above calculus. While Manticore had ~300 DNs and SDs in 1905, it had ~120 forts around the Manticore junction which all massed >16 MTons (or if you do the math, about the same mass in Wallers as in Junction Forts, if the Forts did not have the advantage) as well as Forts around the planets, the Gregor terminus (mentioned in HaE) and being built at Basilisk.

In short, the RMN, an active navy who policed it own merchant marine across the cosmos, who was planning on a multisystem war had as much mass tied up in forts as it did mobile units.

So a peacetime SDF, whose interstellar commerce is protected by the SLN's FF, only needs to police their claimed volume - and will probably be Fort heavy. Forts are a permanent fixture - an infrastructure improvement. something Politicians can point to. Ships go away - they are an agressive statement, with agressive intent. Forts are only defensive - they are that ever present reminder that your children are safe and your government cares that they are.

As to the mention that the breakway systems will lay claim to part of the SLN - if every of the ~1780 SL Systems get their equal share of the SL's Battlefleet right now, they will each get 5-6 SDs - just enough for a mild workout for a Sag-C division.

kzt wrote:You really don't need wallers. A system defense missile factory producing at a fraction of the 10,000 missile per day rate of Manticore is perfectly capable of making an attack really, really painful. Even crappy dual drive missiles will hurt, when used in tightly spaced salvos of 150,000. And a core system with a population of 10 billion people can build a lot of missile and LAC factories at least as fast as Manticore is building an entire industrial bases from scratch.

No question on your non-need for wallers and the potential numbers of missiles that a core world could build, but.....

That really protects only the inner system and perhaps the asteroid belt and other heavily settled areas, doesn't it?

It does nothing to chase away those pesky raiders sitting out at the hyperspace limit picking of your commerce. Agreed, dozens of LACs towing pods of DDM's will deter them, but who exactly has the blueprints and engineering drawings to build them in the first place?

Meanwhile your economy is going into the crapper due to the lack of trade, the peons are getting restless as things begin to go economically south, and those neighbors 18 LY away whom you never liked have a squadron of BC's in their SDF and have been a bit more...demanding...lately in talks.

We shall see, but static defenses (which when all is said and done, are what System defense pods and Forts are) does nothing to protect your commerce and trade out on the edge of hyper.

We shall see, since I'm sure some systems will try it, but since the GA isn't interested in conquering them (just splitting them off from the SL), they are more likely to be used against SL units than GA units, IMHO.

Theemile wrote:
...

But that doesn't say anything about defenses.

In particuliar RFC never mentioned forts in the above calculus. While Manticore had ~300 DNs and SDs in 1905, it had ~120 forts around the Manticore junction which all massed >16 MTons (or if you do the math, about the same mass in Wallers as in Junction Forts, if the Forts did not have the advantage) as well as Forts around the planets, the Gregor terminus (mentioned in HaE) and being built at Basilisk.

In short, the RMN, an active navy who policed it own merchant marine across the cosmos, who was planning on a multisystem war had as much mass tied up in forts as it did mobile units.

So a peacetime SDF, whose interstellar commerce is protected by the SLN's FF, only needs to police their claimed volume - and will probably be Fort heavy. Forts are a permanent fixture - an infrastructure improvement. something Politicians can point to. Ships go away - they are an agressive statement, with agressive intent. Forts are only defensive - they are that ever present reminder that your children are safe and your government cares that they are.

...

Let's look at this thing about forts for a moment. RFC has, in fact, talked about forts a bit in the books. There are three tactical environments to consider.

The first is pre laser-head missile. A fort in that environment is a super-duper super-dreadnaught (SDSD) that has no hyper capability, but has a gazillion energy weapon mounts, a gorilla-level spherical sidewall, at least some missile offense and lots of auto-cannon defenses.

This is a perfectly reasonable defensive emplacement for something you can't afford to lose and which you expect to be attacked, such as a hyper terminus.

In a laser-head SDM missile environment, that kind of fort is simply a very expensive target, which was one of the few things that the Janacek admiralty got right. Upgrading the forts for the new environment probably means new construction.

In the long-range MDM with grav-pulse communication environments, those forts are even more expensive targets. If you look at the tactical description of Manticore II, you'll see that a fort simply isn't something you want to get stuck with. Manticore's ops plan depended on lots of small units (LACs) with good anti-missile weapons thinning out missile attacks before they even got into anti-missile range of the core SDs. KZT just posted another take on it that comes to the same conclusion.

So no, I don't think there are a lot of systems that have invested in forts, and the ones that have are probably reconsidering their defensive strategies. Or they've got their heads in the sand, which leaves their posterior positioned for you know what.

JohnRoth wrote:In the long-range MDM with grav-pulse communication environments, those forts are even more expensive targets. If you look at the tactical description of Manticore II, you'll see that a fort simply isn't something you want to get stuck with. Manticore's ops plan depended on lots of small units (LACs) with good anti-missile weapons thinning out missile attacks before they even got into anti-missile range of the core SDs.

Probably worth noting here is that 'fixed' LAC bases are another component to non-hyper-capable defenses in the modern environment.