Changes in Battle tactics outside planetary hyper limits

This forum on the Honorverse is so long that even when I do searches I can't tell if a subject has been discussed before.

But here is a thought that came to be the other day. As Manticore is now capturing wormhole portals that belong to the SL and are deploying forces to hold them, is this going to lead to a different type of space battle than has happened before?

Almost all space battles before have occurred with in the hyper limit of some solar system, thus, all of those battles have occurred in "normal" space. There also have been battles that have happened in hyper space, like when Zelwiki's wife was killed. But wormholes are in the area of space where hyper jumps can be made. In Haven's attack on Medusa many books ago, Haven tried to take advantage of this fact in their attack but a navigational error foiled that attempt. Which allowed White Haven to bring a fleet in from Trevor'e Star.

But now Manticore is going to try to defend captured wormholes with out the benefit of forts guarding the wormhole. If the defending fleet moves out to engage an approaching enemy, what is to prevent the enemy from doing a leapfrog jump of those forces once they have moved away from the wormhole in an attempt to engage the enemy?

I can see opposing fleets approaching a battle with their hyper generators ready to go. That way when those really long range missiles get close, they all just jump. Then reappear somewhere close by to engage in the battle from a different direction.

How often can the jump engines be engaged? How small of a jump can be made? How accurate in their navigation could small jumps be? How well could I use jumps like these to harass defending forces causing them to use up their supply of torpedoes? Will mines have to be used as a sort of fort substitute?

Being able to jump in the middle of an engagement would seem to bring a whole new dimensions and complexity to space battles.

StealthSeeker wrote:But here is a thought that came to be the other day. As Manticore is now capturing wormhole portals that belong to the SL and are deploying forces to hold them, is this going to lead to a different type of space battle than has happened before?

It's questionable if Manticore actually intends to hold onto wormholes for the foreseeable future. The forces deployed are light enough to make an easy withdrawal and, well, are somewhat expendable. If the SLN would make a concerted effort, they could drive them off pretty easily (even an old-style SD will take a lot of firepower to kill). Manticore is holding them now to expedite the recall of the RMMM and to inflict a bit of economic damage, but holding them for long is unrealistic.

Almost all space battles before have occurred with in the hyper limit of some solar system, thus, all of those battles have occurred in "normal" space. There also have been battles that have happened in hyper space, like when Zelwiki's wife was killed. But wormholes are in the area of space where hyper jumps can be made. In Haven's attack on Medusa many books ago, Haven tried to take advantage of this fact in their attack but a navigational error foiled that attempt. Which allowed White Haven to bring a fleet in from Trevor'e Star.

But now Manticore is going to try to defend captured wormholes with out the benefit of forts guarding the wormhole. If the defending fleet moves out to engage an approaching enemy, what is to prevent the enemy from doing a leapfrog jump of those forces once they have moved away from the wormhole in an attempt to engage the enemy?

Absolutely nothing.

I can see opposing fleets approaching a battle with their hyper generators ready to go. That way when those really long range missiles get close, they all just jump. Then reappear somewhere close by to engage in the battle from a different direction.

The Havenite forces in the attack on basilisk actually tried to do this, but were just a bit too slow off the mark to pull it off.

How often can the jump engines be engaged?

Hyper generators have cycle times measured in tens of minutes.

How small of a jump can be made?

Unknown.

How accurate in their navigation could small jumps be?

Given that the nav systems are accurate enough to actually hit something as small as a hyper limit from several light years out, I'd say that there's a good chance high accuracy is possible in what is essentially open space.

How well could I use jumps like these to harass defending forces causing them to use up their supply of torpedoes?

Probably not that well? The thing is, each time you enter hyper, you need to kill your current vector, build a new one to your target destination, emerge, acquire the target, fire a salvo, get out, and all of that from a long enough range that the other side cannot engage you profitably (but somehow doesn't realize it can't engage you profitably). The cycle time of the hyper generators is the determining factor here: If it is longer than the flight time of the enemies' missiles, you will take a few hits.

Will mines have to be used as a sort of fort substitute?

No. Mines can be used to deny the use of a wormhole for a time, until they're cleared or drift off station, but they're not a substitute for a Fort (which can not only police the wormhole, but also the space around it).

StealthSeeker wrote:I can see opposing fleets approaching a battle with their hyper generators ready to go. That way when those really long range missiles get close, they all just jump. Then reappear somewhere close by to engage in the battle from a different direction.

How often can the jump engines be engaged? How small of a jump can be made? How accurate in their navigation could small jumps be? How well could I use jumps like these to harass defending forces causing them to use up their supply of torpedoes? Will mines have to be used as a sort of fort substitute?

Being able to jump in the middle of an engagement would seem to bring a whole new dimensions and complexity to space battles.

During the Peep attack on Basilisk, during Operation Thunderbolt, they tried to do exactly what you're asking. An attack force coming in to hit a wormhole junction BEHIND the attackers, but they overshot their hyper exit. Rather than nipping back into hyper to try again, it was explained that short jumps are really, really bad... in the best case, everything goes perfectly. If anything goes bad, you've scattered your whole fleet and/or you just bounced off the limit and probably killed yourself. So, that answers your question, short jumps = highly INACCURATE, and also highly risky.

During the Manticoran attack on Lovat, Grayson Admiral Yanakov employed the micro jump technique three times in a period of under one hour and destroyed three entire Havenite task forces with his initial deployment of the Apollo weapon system. However, he didn't do it for "small" jumps, he would jump a third of the entire hyperlimit which is huge, multi-millions of kilometers.

Mines are not going to make any return in the near future, forts are better.

The E wrote:

How accurate in their navigation could small jumps be?

Given that the nav systems are accurate enough to actually hit something as small as a hyper limit from several light years out, I'd say that there's a good chance high accuracy is possible in what is essentially open space.

Books have mentioned that microjumps are actually some of the hardest to get right. I'm a little surprised that that's true on an absolute level, but I can totally see why it'd be true on a percentage basis.

It would seem to me that errors in hyperspace navigation would come from at least 2 basic sources. Accumulated inertial nav errors during transit (the hyperlog isn't perfect) and non-uniformity in the hyperspace generator activation. The first I'd expect to get worse on longer trips, and possibly worse faster if you did significant course changes while in hyper.
But the second should be the same error distribution regardless of transit length. So for very short trips that form of error would logically dominate the total positional error. But the books make it sound worse than that; like somehow the hyperlog is less accurate on short hops...

(Now for formation work I could see that for short jumps you might not have time to average everyone's hyperlogs. On a longer trip you can, which means the ships will disperse based on their individual exit errors; but they'll all be targeting a common formation exit point. Entry and Hyperlog errors might cause their common target point to be off; but at least they'll still be relatively grouped. If all of them try to jump out and back ASAP the entry and exit uncertainties might multiply and result in significantly more scattering.

The E wrote:It's questionable if Manticore actually intends to hold onto wormholes for the foreseeable future. The forces deployed are light enough to make an easy withdrawal and, well, are somewhat expendable. If the SLN would make a concerted effort, they could drive them off pretty easily (even an old-style SD will take a lot of firepower to kill). Manticore is holding them now to expedite the recall of the RMMM and to inflict a bit of economic damage, but holding them for long is unrealistic.

Actually, I thought Lacoon 2 was part of a longer term strategy to defeat the Solarian League. Certainly the historical examples of the British close blockade in the Napoleonic Wars, the Union blockade of the Confederacy in the American Civil War & the British blockade of Germany in WW1. All of those were long term affairs & for the GA to inflict the kind of economic damage on the Solarian League they would have to maintain them for some time.

The E wrote:
It's questionable if Manticore actually intends to hold onto wormholes for the foreseeable future. The forces deployed are light enough to make an easy withdrawal and, well, are somewhat expendable. If the SLN would make a concerted effort, they could drive them off pretty easily (even an old-style SD will take a lot of firepower to kill). Manticore is holding them now to expedite the recall of the RMMM and to inflict a bit of economic damage, but holding them for long is unrealistic.

(snip)

No. Mines can be used to deny the use of a wormhole for a time, until they're cleared or drift off station, but they're not a substitute for a Fort (which can not only police the wormhole, but also the space around it).

In the beginning of ART Manticore was indeed only temporarily holding wormholes until shipping was confirmed to make transit. However, starting in chapter 26 Lacoon-2 began and they took permanent control of a wormhole at Stine which was the first SL worm whole in history to be taken by force of another military. Manticore came with the intent to hold it.

As there is no fort in place, and they may need to maneuver away from the worm hole in order to engage an attacking force, wouldn't it be advisable to leave a whole bunch of mines behind to prevent a small force from moving in on astro control while they are other wise engaged? And if that large number of mines were left behind, couldn't I think of them as a temporary substitute for a fort? They would most likely be able to hold the worm hole until the main force returned.

Somtaaw wrote:
During the Peep attack on Basilisk, during Operation Thunderbolt, they tried to do exactly what you're asking. An attack force coming in to hit a wormhole junction BEHIND the attackers, but they overshot their hyper exit. Rather than nipping back into hyper to try again, it was explained that short jumps are really, really bad... in the best case, everything goes perfectly. If anything goes bad, you've scattered your whole fleet and/or you just bounced off the limit and probably killed yourself. So, that answers your question, short jumps = highly INACCURATE, and also highly risky.

During the Manticoran attack on Lovat, Grayson Admiral Yanakov employed the micro jump technique three times in a period of under one hour and destroyed three entire Havenite task forces with his initial deployment of the Apollo weapon system. However, he didn't do it for "small" jumps, he would jump a third of the entire hyperlimit which is huge, multi-millions of kilometers.

Mines are not going to make any return in the near future, forts are better.

OK, however, taking over wormholes as Manticore plans to do in Lacoon-2 is something kind of different. Something that has never happened before to the SL where they are on the short end of the technology advantage. What tactics might they try to adopt to counter those long range torpedoes? Has navigation not improved over the years? Might it be something they would try to develop?

Let me repeat what I said to "The E".

As there is no fort in place at an occupied worm hole, and they may need to maneuver away from the worm hole in order to engage an attacking force, wouldn't it be advisable to leave a whole bunch of mines behind to prevent a small force from moving in on astro control while they are other wise engaged? And if that large number of mines were left behind, couldn't I think of them as a temporary substitute for a fort? They would most likely be able to hold the worm hole until the main force returned.

Couldn't mines make a sort of a comeback when utilized in that way?

Wormholes themselves have their own (small) hyper limits, thats why at uhh... one of the wormholes, a solarian flagged freighter was "escorted" by a squadron of BC's from extended range in. This was partly because of the hyper limit, and partly because they thought the slow approach would unnerve the Manticorans.

One salvo from a manticoran light cruiser, showed that it had the firepower to wipe them all out, and they reversed course and ran away. That Manticoran cruiser had 2 more in it's division, plus a few tincan destroyers for extra backup.


Under normal conditions, a light cruiser couldn't take a battlecruiser, and Manticoran missiles have such extended range there is literally zero point in "advancing" towards the enemy. If the hostiles are coming in, that the cruiser and destroyers can't hold, they can pop right through the wormhole, and then seal it behind them by making transit all at once. It wouldn't be closed for more than an hour or two, but that lets them open the range and be ready to "snipe" anything that comes through.

Mines are a bad choice because they're a) one shot, and b) not exactly precision weapons. The way Manticore has been pushing missile technology means their missiles are far more accurate than mines can be, and again it's a range issue. Any incoming hostile would be looking for mines around something like Astro Control, because thats where you put mines normally, this is why during the Battle of Hancock, the mines that Honor led Chin into were totally unexpected because they were "in the middle of nowhere"

First question is how many time can you make the hyper generator jump your ship back and forth from hyper in a short period of time before you start risking a malfunction?


Second is how many times can your crew can handle such jumps before it starts effecting them adversely?

Must remember that no matter how short a time it takes to cycle your engines that can still be a very long time in a fire fight.

Somtaaw wrote:Wormholes themselves have their own (small) hyper limits, thats why at uhh... one of the wormholes, a solarian flagged freighter was "escorted" by a squadron of BC's from extended range in. This was partly because of the hyper limit, and partly because they thought the slow approach would unnerve the Manticorans.

One salvo from a manticoran light cruiser, showed that it had the firepower to wipe them all out, and they reversed course and ran away. That Manticoran cruiser had 2 more in it's division, plus a few tincan destroyers for extra backup.


Under normal conditions, a light cruiser couldn't take a battlecruiser, and Manticoran missiles have such extended range there is literally zero point in "advancing" towards the enemy. If the hostiles are coming in, that the cruiser and destroyers can't hold, they can pop right through the wormhole, and then seal it behind them by making transit all at once. It wouldn't be closed for more than an hour or two, but that lets them open the range and be ready to "snipe" anything that comes through.

Keep in mind that the resonance zone, where it's unsafe to exit hyper, extend in a narrow cone from the terminus towards the system's hyperlimit. That makes it impractical to microjump from the system towards the wormhole; depending on wormhole power its a rough entry to hyper and then you need to ensure you land outside the zone (well off the direct line)

So ships coming from the local system are quite likely to advance on you through n-space; letting you use the missile range advantage you noted; and giving time to pull back through the wormhole before they can take you under fire if they have overwhelming force.

But against an attacker coming from another system you don't have the same kind of warning time. The actual hyperlimit around s terminus is quite small. On I don't even think it's as wide as missile range. So there's a chance that you will get taken under fire the moment they appears. You definitely would not want to retreat through a wormhole under fire; you're too vulnerable and would get destroyed. In this scenario you'd need to retreat through hyper instead.

Also to minimize he risk of ambush from hyper I'd expect light units interdicting a wormhole to be moving around randomized patrol patterns within a million or so km of the terminus, probably under low power wedges to make tracking them from a distance impractical. That's close enough to fire on anybody unfriendly coming through the wormhole while they're still vulnerable, no sidewalls or ability to fire missiles or CMs, but a large enough volume to search that an attacker's not going to be able to hit n-space guns blazing.