System Guard

SWM wrote:If you are suggesting yet another brand new design, you have to explain why Manticore would want to use precious yard space building ships for export when Manticore needs every ship it can build just for its own navy.

What yard space are you talking about? After Yawata strike, there can't be much yard space left!

Don

George J. Smith wrote:Maybe a court marshal is in order with a reduction in rank the penalty

<personal bugbear> Court Martial, as in military court.</personal bugbear> Sorry, I just get itchy fingertips whenever I see that one

I think Skimper needs to post using certain rules to allow a better understanding on what he is trying to do.


1. Problem: what problem exists to be solved
2. Solution: the solution to the problem.


The main problem from reading his posts deals with the problem. He is trying to make a solution to a problem that is not a problem. From that premise, his solutions are not workable.

n7axw wrote:

SWM wrote:If you are suggesting yet another brand new design, you have to explain why Manticore would want to use precious yard space building ships for export when Manticore needs every ship it can build just for its own navy.

What yard space are you talking about? After Yawata strike, there can't be much yard space left!

Don

The yard space that is being constructed, of course. The thread isn't talking about existing shipyards, but about the shipyards that are being constructed, and the ones Skimper is proposing be constructed.

At this point, at least some of the smaller new shipyards must already be close to finish, if White Haven was correct in his prediction on how soon smaller ships could be coming out of the yards.

ripsql wrote:I think Skimper needs to post using certain rules to allow a better understanding on what he is trying to do.


1. Problem: what problem exists to be solved
2. Solution: the solution to the problem.


The main problem from reading his posts deals with the problem. He is trying to make a solution to a problem that is not a problem. From that premise, his solutions are not workable.

A few weeks after Skimper first started posting, I suggested exactly the same thing to him. He completely ignored the suggestion, and has consistently refused to follow any suggestions on improving his posts.

I would take the term System Guard to imply forces that were to be stationed and deployed within a system and to include ground and atmospheric flight forces. You have to train them, equip them and give them logistic support.
That runs every thing from food to small arms and heavier ammuntion, uniforms, sting ships, radios, LACs (and their support needs) plus housing and training facilities. Some of that can be done on-planet. Some, such as the LAC and related spaced used gear would be flagged for early parts of the replacement of the orbital and other spaceborn infrastructure. Doesn't make sense to build LACs on a planet and if you are going to set up munitions and equipment lines for them etc, it would be in space.

Yes, the first phase of the reconstruction would likely include the slips and manufacturing lines to make the components for DDs and CA sized ships. Quite a lot of those materials (com and data lines, plumbing and enviornmental gear etc) is also needed for larger ships. It is a question of scale. A facility that can manufacture wireing and plumbing for a DD can just keep cranking out product beyond the amount needed for what is currently building in the DD range so that the product goes into a warehouse for the ships (and other things) you will be building in the next phase. Same thing with the manufacturing needed to build the power plants and controls for the ships. Aim for what you need most first and build up from there.

ripsql wrote:I think Skimper needs to post using certain rules to allow a better understanding on what he is trying to do.


1. Problem: what problem exists to be solved
2. Solution: the solution to the problem.


The main problem from reading his posts deals with the problem. He is trying to make a solution to a problem that is not a problem. From that premise, his solutions are not workable.

1. Problem: you have a huge opponent that you want to keep in the dark as long as possible about what you have. You want to be able to face them with a few hundred ships of the wall. You have a relatively small population.

2. Solution, a system guard. A police space force that has the weapons to deal with criminals but also hostile enemies. Terrorists that do Yawata strikes, or foster opposition on planets and blame you.

1a, the huge league population 10,000 times greater than the SEM, 500 times greater than the GA. Your small fighting force just can't take it all on. What are you to do?

2a, you could try to implement a crash speed draft. Or you can do what all armies have done for the past 1000 years 5000 years? You take a small number of the best soldiers best equipment best training and you go from place to place conquering the enemy. Honorverse problem is holding the territory. In Roman times it was easy. Kill all the men and make slaves of the children and women folk. Unlikely the Manties will do this.

So what you do is make a lesser armed lessertrained policing force to hold the area once your small but unbeatable force has taken over. The System guard is this force.

1b, you have criminals in an area you forcibly took over. They have relatively inferior weapons but prey on the weakest of forces you have mostly civilians. To express and impose your will your trying to exclude the locals which always fails. Northern Ireland, Cypress, Israel, Afghanistan, Iraq...

2b, System Guard, much like the local forces in Iraq and Afghanistan, good but nobody gives them nukes. Or Stealth or similar things. F16's typically. Ground weapons a couple generations old. Trained but not up to NATO spec. Good enough. Using locals keeps them motivated to prevent the opposition from coming back.

1c, technological superiority. You have it and want to keep it. You also want to have a second rate force that will leak everything you give them. You need this force but you can't give them the best of what you have.

2c, solution give a local System Guard in Silesia, for now, older tech systems. Older style, upgraded but not too upgraded toys. Let them learn the tacticsbut limit and capitalise on the leaks to explain tech that is going to give the enemies, Mesa, Alignment, and the League some carefully selected information but down play just how useful it really is.

- capacitor based missiles, lasers in LAC, better but not the best compensators, older Gryphon SD's refitted with "new" tech and missiles.

- let this leak, Star Wars Empire like, costly but it gets out. Plans for the Mk41. Use of the Cathract, let's the league know this is a good missile. Even the Manties are using it. Show stuff that can explain the nightmare results that they can't explain. Keeps them from figuring out how it is done. A prerecorded FTL Morse code type message greeting response thing. Make it primitive for the System Guard, let it leak. They then spend time looking for the way it was used and how the recordings were dubbed to make it look better. Appease their paranoia by making it look like it isn't quite as good as it really is. All sorts of stuff.

- make the GA navy look like a paper tiger with some very good but not technologically too far ahead to worry about. By the time the System Guard is purged of the leakers, the trails followed and plugged and newer tech slowly introduced. The older tech will be available for lease or sale to those League Verge and Shell worlds that fall in the coming campaign.

- the System Guard then fills the gap to the policing of home systems, backwater control and new captured / freed systems. Leaving the fighting force to go to the next target / system / world. Knowing that everything is secure and safe.

What thing makes this seem like a good idea?

The capabilities of the RMN are going to leak very soon anyway. Building a deliberately downgraded second-rank force is a waste of time, money, men, and about everything else, not to mention is an excellent recipe for interservice rivalry.
Second while there can and will be resistance groups, but to fight those you need army or marine troops. Any potential 'navy' they could muster can be blown out of space by the local picket.

Well, at least he explained his reasoning. It's still insane, but at least it's slightly less incomprehensible.

Okay, Skimper, now we have something we can actually analyze, though you haven't explicitly stated here what you want this System Guard to be composed of.

One really huge problem with your basic premise is that, by the time you can actually build the spaceyards in Silesia to build or refurbish the ships you want to use, it will be extremely obvious to the Solarian League that the System Guard is second-rate material. It will take at least a year or two just to build the construction yards. The League has already seen better technology in action. They know perfectly well that the cataphract is nowhere near as good as Manticore's missiles; you won't fool them by using cataphracts in your System Guard. They have already seen FTL comms transmitting full video and audio. They haven't seen all of Manticore's newest tech, but they've seen better than you are planning to put into the System Guard. By the time your proposed Silesian yards are putting out this System Guard, the Solarian League will have a pretty good idea what Manticore's capabilities are.

If your primary purpose in doing this is disinformation, it fails right from the start.