BB(P/C) for rear area security

The primary reasons people we have been seeing in the books to build forts is to protect what are also essentialy fixed assets such as the wormhole termini or a junction.

For the system infrastructure, the defences are primarily built in defences for the stations or other installations. They also seem to be deploying variations on minefields in relation to those installations

Everything elce is handled by mobile assets. That is LACs and by Hypercapable ships. The SEM Home Fleet is somewhat an odd approch as it has to cover three planets (and the assets around them and the individual systems in a three star system where the ability for the ships to move through hyperspace becomes nessisary for moving around before and during conflict. However, while there are various directions from which you can guess attacks may come from (where the planet and other things are in the system in relation to verything else impacting the system along with normal (and that moves a bit) directions of least-time transit from probable jump-off points, there really is no way to place your defending forces to cover everything from every direction. The soulution is to place the ACTIVE DUTY ships (including LACs) in positions or patrols that will provide flexibility and let you concentrate forces in responce to an attack when it does develop. At that point you will scramble and flush whatever ships at rest or engaged in something else such that they can join with your existing active duty ships and/or move to secondary positions for support or alternative defense moves.

No, there are in fact fortresses that cover the inhabited planets of the Manticore systems. I used to argue that same point and someone eventually posted a few chunks of text showing I was wrong and there were in fact fortresses around the planets.

kzt wrote:No, there are in fact fortresses that cover the inhabited planets of the Manticore systems. I used to argue that same point and someone eventually posted a few chunks of text showing I was wrong and there were in fact fortresses around the planets.

There are. In fact, a great deal of effort was made to expand and enhance the effectiveness of the fixed forts around Grayson, despite the smallish size of them. A planet is a "fixed asset" by its very nature, and having forts as the last line of defense is very important.

Does that mean all systems warrant them? Not so much. Extremely sensitive systems like Spindle, Lynx, and possibly Rembrandt might see some forts, but Montana or Nuncio? I don't think so. Despite being in an exposed position at the moment, Montana just isn't important enough, and Nuncio has the smallest population and arguably the worst tech base in the Quadrant. Other systems (probably) face similar reasons as to not fort up. Dresden, for example, is incredibly poor, and Split isn't much better off.

The systems in the Quadrant also don't have nearly as much orbital infrastructure to control, and they aren't in a good position to really help with the war effort at the moment. They can be covered much more cheaply by LACs and locally controlled pods, with perhaps a few mobile units at each place, minus the really sensitive areas of command.

Also, where would these things be built at? I'm sort of curious, are they built at the shipyards and then dragged to place, or what? I know they're assembled in pieces, but besides that...

Star Knight wrote:As Theisman confirmed in ART, you wont learn much from just picking up stuff. RMN security protocols work very well.

Yes but easy pickings means a greater risk of someone finding something useful.
Also, SL has a better techbase than Haven.

So even if it´s not very important, it´s still not something to be uncaring about.

During the early phase of the war, fortifications coulddefenda very limited volume. Their primary weapons were Grasers so effective range was only a few million kilometers at most. Mobile forces were needed to augment the fixed defenses. Given MDMs with theoretically unlimited range, one platform can theoretically protect an entire star system. This makes a fixed fortification far more useful and plausible.

Uroboros wrote:

kzt wrote:No, there are in fact fortresses that cover the inhabited planets of the Manticore systems. I used to argue that same point and someone eventually posted a few chunks of text showing I was wrong and there were in fact fortresses around the planets.

There are. In fact, a great deal of effort was made to expand and enhance the effectiveness of the fixed forts around Grayson, despite the smallish size of them. A planet is a "fixed asset" by its very nature, and having forts as the last line of defense is very important.

Does that mean all systems warrant them? Not so much. Extremely sensitive systems like Spindle, Lynx, and possibly Rembrandt might see some forts, but Montana or Nuncio? I don't think so. Despite being in an exposed position at the moment, Montana just isn't important enough, and Nuncio has the smallest population and arguably the worst tech base in the Quadrant. Other systems (probably) face similar reasons as to not fort up. Dresden, for example, is incredibly poor, and Split isn't much better off.

The systems in the Quadrant also don't have nearly as much orbital infrastructure to control, and they aren't in a good position to really help with the war effort at the moment. They can be covered much more cheaply by LACs and locally controlled pods, with perhaps a few mobile units at each place, minus the really sensitive areas of command.

Also, where would these things be built at? I'm sort of curious, are they built at the shipyards and then dragged to place, or what? I know they're assembled in pieces, but besides that...

Um, no.

Forts had massive energy armanments but they also had missile tubes, and unlike SDs, they could kill SDs in a Wall with missiles alone. They were also surrounded quite frequently by shoals of mines, systen defense missile pods, permanent decoys and so forth.

namelessfly wrote:During the early phase of the war, fortifications coulddefenda very limited volume. Their primary weapons were Grasers so effective range was only a few million kilometers at most. Mobile forces were needed to augment the fixed defenses. Given MDMs with theoretically unlimited range, one platform can theoretically protect an entire star system. This makes a fixed fortification far more useful and plausible.

Agreed. I miswrote.

However; even when missile armaments were involved that were not as decisive as energy weapons and even the biggest, nastiest SDMs had an effective range of only few million kilometers. The volume that a fort could provide missile defenses for was even smaller. This reality compelled a defender to fortify not only inhabited planets but their various industrial and ore processing platforms. The forts could be attacked in isolation and defeated in detail. With MDMs, forts have a theoretical capability to defend every target within the system out to the hyper limit. Given Apollo or LACS or recondrones or Hermes Buoys to provide FTL sensor data and perhaps FTL relay for FC links, a single fort can engage targets throughout the system.

The point is that while Skimper's original idea for a SD sized system control ship might be off, the concept of a large, DDM or MDM platform that can launch bigger salvos than a Nike is very valid.

HungryKing wrote:Um, no.

Forts had massive energy armanments but they also had missile tubes, and unlike SDs, they could kill SDs in a Wall with missiles alone. They were also surrounded quite frequently by shoals of mines, systen defense missile pods, permanent decoys and so forth.

namelessfly wrote:During the early phase of the war, fortifications coulddefenda very limited volume. Their primary weapons were Grasers so effective range was only a few million kilometers at most. Mobile forces were needed to augment the fixed defenses. Given MDMs with theoretically unlimited range, one platform can theoretically protect an entire star system. This makes a fixed fortification far more useful and plausible.

namelessfly wrote:Agreed. I miswrote.

However; even when missile armaments were involved that were not as decisive as energy weapons and even the biggest, nastiest SDMs had an effective range of only few million kilometers. The volume that a fort could provide missile defenses for was even smaller. This reality compelled a defender to fortify not only inhabited planets but their various industrial and ore processing platforms. The forts could be attacked in isolation and defeated in detail. With MDMs, forts have a theoretical capability to defend every target within the system out to the hyper limit. Given Apollo or LACS or recondrones or Hermes Buoys to provide FTL sensor data and perhaps FTL relay for FC links, a single fort can engage targets throughout the system.

The point is that while Skimper's original idea for a SD sized system control ship might be off, the concept of a large, DDM or MDM platform that can launch bigger salvos than a Nike is very valid.

Actually this is very valid. We've been missing something in this discussion - Any system the Alliance want to hold is going to have Mycroft - correct?

Mycroft is the KH2 daughter of the Havenite Morierty program. Morierty originally had 3 CA sized control platforms. The CA sized control platforms were found to be vulnerable to Manty tech attacks, so they were to be replaced by SD sized control platforms which contained defenses.

So, in essence, Morierty grew to 3 SD sized Forts. Mycroft will probably be the same - except each will now have KH2 modules.

So every system protected with Mycroft will probably have 3 medium sized forts protecting it.

Mycroft is the KH2 daughter of the Havenite Morierty program. Morierty originally had 3 CA sized control platforms. The CA sized control platforms were found to be vulnerable to Manty tech attacks, so they were to be replaced by SD sized control platforms which contained defenses.

It's just 1 control platform. Lovat was important enough to warrant 3 platforms, but that was just for sheer redundancy.

Duckk wrote:

Mycroft is the KH2 daughter of the Havenite Morierty program. Morierty originally had 3 CA sized control platforms. The CA sized control platforms were found to be vulnerable to Manty tech attacks, so they were to be replaced by SD sized control platforms which contained defenses.

It's just 1 control platform. Lovat was important enough to warrant 3 platforms, but that was just for sheer redundancy.

So every Morierty installation will have a single SD "sized" Fort with the missile control systems installed.

How better to tell a system "We think you're special" than with a high tech fort?