namelessfly wrote:The drift of the BB(P) thread got me thinking about commerce raiding given the evolving security environment in the SEM protectorates.
First and Second tier systems such as Manticore, Yelstin, Haven and the various systems involved in the Havenite wars are graveyards for even an SLN battle fleet. However; the newly annexed systems in Silesia, the Talbot quadrant, and the Verge are or will be getting nothing beyond LACs and missile pods with an occasional DD or CA dropping by to check on them. It would be suicidal for the SLN to raid these systems except may be with 100+ SDs. However; this defense posture does not preclude attacks outside of the hyper limit. Dropping into normal space to raid orbital platforms might not be practical, but it is open season on freighters once they cross the hyper wall.
The GA is short on ships to patrol the hyperspace volumes around it's newly acquired protectorates. It will be rough forafew years.
I suspect you're underestimating how hard it is to pull off an in-hyper intercept of a freighter without a stealthed ship or two playing Paul Revere in normal space to queue you in.
Inbound freighters are obviously tricky because they come in fairly fast up in the Delta bands and drop quickly into normal space (where they can be covered by LACs or orbital MDM pods)
But outbound isn't all that easy either. First it seems that conditions are poor enough that a single ship's sensors can't cover the entire hyper limit boundary, so you need multiple ships to even be likely to see an outbound freighter. Then the waiting raider can't really keep its hypergenertor in full readiness indefinitely (wear and maintenance) so there's a decent chance even if a freighter did pop across the Alpha bands heading up to Epsilon or Delta it's be 10 or more minutes before it go from Routine Readiness to actually jump up and begin the search. (RFC says even if it was in full readiness it still takes between 30 - 240 seconds to jump; based on size - so that's dispatch boat up to SD).
And even in a busy system there's a heck of a lot more downtime when there's no freighter traffic leaving than times when there is traffic. A system small enough not to rate hyper capable defenders is going to have even less. That's long waits for scarce prey.
Now with a ship or two lurking in normal space the raider gets a heads up on approximately when and where the freighter will be popping across the wall; so that lets it get positioned and the hyper generator on the trips ready to take chase.
But without that heads up there a lot of time for the freighter to get downrange and lost in the crappy sensor conditions. If it take a course change, or picks less than optimal hyper bands that search area gets a
lot bigger.
And that ignores such counter raiding tactics as traveling further out in normal space before jumping up to get beyond the sensor range of any likely ship picketing the hyper limit in the alpha bands.
And if the SL raiders spend too much time hanging out it gives Manticore time to realize what's happening and move a fairly small hunter/killer group from system to system trolling for the lurking raiders. Then the SL BCs risk getting chased down by a squadron of Rolands, Sag-Cs, or even BC(P) or BC(L)s; depending on how annoyed Manticore is.
All that said, a raiding force
might well get lucky and pick off a freighter or two before anyone realizes in-hyper raiding is a risk and targets begin taking precautions (leaving from randomized points along the hyper limit sphere; going well past the limit before jumping out; altering heading and bands a couple times on departure; etc; etc)
