Solly Fleet Advancements

You could just as easily, and far more likely, use a merchant hull to haul the LAC's into the Delta bands.

You are still going to need some hyper capable vessel as a messenger boy. Otherwise these translation points do nothing but group a whole bunch of tasty morsels together in one spot for commerce raiders.

kzt wrote:

wastedfly wrote:Defending a translation point.

For merchants using Delta Bands:

Place your LAC's for anti CM role in both n space and in the delta bands with a couple DB able to crash translate and warn say a couple BC in n' space if they see hostile forces.

No reason to only defend n space. Defend the point said merchants will be coming in at. The H band itself.

The whole point of the LACs is to make up for the fact that the RMN has far too few hypercapable ships to effectively secure all their planets. If you need at least a BC squadron plus a dispatch boat squadron to cover every one of the 60+ planets that RMN is responsible for I declare the war over and the SLN the winner.

Hi Jonathan_S,

Excellent points!

The PRHN intercept of Helen Zilwicki was largely due to rather exceptional intelligence, the specific kind that's not going to be easily had right after the SLN raiders show up.

It's going to take a while, weeks if not month's, to monitor the system, find ways to get to the planet without attracting lethally dangerous attention, unless the raiders brought slow tramp freighters or db's to pretend to be media ships [oh, wait the GA knows all about that trick] etc with them to act as spies which would delay things ever further, all the while intercepting HD broadcasts etc regarding all the other SLN failures and disasters that occurred during their transit and scouting periods that might affect their willingness to commit suicide.

It may be the FF BC's that are sent out for commerce raiding become the last remnants of the SLN, if they don't attack, because almost everybody back in the SL is destroyed or surrenders in 6 month's to a year.

Guys, the basic premises of trying to fix the SLN founder in the face of what we do know, so this thread is again pointless.

Even including SDF shipyards, from my previous post, there are probably less than 150-300 SLN targets worth attacking in the first place, including all the military shipyards in the SL; very easy meat for approximately a dozen TF's for the old league core and another 12-20 TG's going after the FF in the shells, verge and protectorates.

The GA has over a thousand SDP's (1200+ by fall), well over a hundred CLAC's (2-300?) besides 2000 plus other warships.

Given MDM's, has anyone figured out an exchange rate that somehow permits the SLN to close with the GA, let alone occasionally win one?

If an old DD with 100 MDM's (in 10 tractored pods) can easily destroy a BC of ten times its tonnage, or 5-6 DD's at 40 M km or beyond, at what point does the SLN begin to think its going to win?

Right now the casualty exchange rate is well in excess of a thousand to one in favor of the GA, and no suggestion I've seen seriously challenges that.

Keep in mind, the GA has with its old SD's about as many SD's as BF has left in commission; then after Beowulf, I'm sure its SDP's alone will outnumber what's left of BF's before they're all destroyed rather soon after.

Before the SLN can start making plans to refit with the wonderful new tech it doesn't know it needs, it needs a base safe from the GA, ie at least one, but no one has bothered to point where it might be located and why the Ga can't destroy it.

If BSDF intelligence is still operating, the GA will know about the commerce raiding strategy long before the raiders reach GA territory.

Given how long it will take to recall and assemble them, then arm them with Cataphracts besides assembling their supporting supply TF's, and sending them all off, there could be plenty of time to alert and prepare all the GA systems.

Remember too that the MAlg expects them to fail, having probably war-gamed this scenario repeatedly.

Because they want the FF BC's and CA's away from the SL to give the RF its shot; the opening offer of protection after the foolish mandarins have sent off the best most modern powerful part of the SLN at the worst possible time.

Outside of Omosupe Quartermain, I don't expect the mandarins to last much longer; within 6-12 month's or possibly less, ie when the public realizes what fools they've been after the SLN is destroyed and there's no one to protect them any more; what's likely to happen won't be pretty.

The GA general assault on SLN bases may even happen before the commerce raiders or at least some of them leave in the first place.

Between Moriarty's, Mycroft's, lots of system defense pods and LAC's, NTM almost 20 years experience and training involving far tougher commerce raiding; the SLN FF raiders will be so far behind the learning curve, their casualties will be militarily prohibitive by any rational measure, though they won't know that, since communication even with db's with other TF's or TG's will take too long and the MAlg intends for them to be as isolated and ignorant as possible so they are wiped out easily.

Think about it; the BF will be effectively destroyed, including the reserve and shipyards (~7?) within a couple of weeks to a month on the outside when the GA attacks, probably not long after Beowulf.

FF bases and shipyards in the old league will also be hit in that time plus hostile SDF's and their shipyards etc within 6 month's, while smaller TG's hit FF bases in the shells, verge, and protectorates.

So what will be left of the SLN in a year?

Not much at all.

The SLN is still grossly ignorant of all the GA weapons, which the MAlg has been trying to replicate for a decade with poor or slow success, so the idea the SL can in a year or two come up with something new, then make millions is just bizarre.

All it appears to know at the moment is that it needs longer ranged missiles, ie DDM's with around a 30 M km range; which is so pathetic compared to the multi armed juggernaut they face including the LAC's which despite all of HH's testimony regarding them, hasn't apparently moved the SLN HQ at all.

We've all seen the cartoon of the man falling off the 100 story building saying "so far so good" or "Ignorance is bliss" etc, yet that's pretty much the attitude we've seen so far of the SLN senior staff compared to what it should be.

Its too late for the SLN to make such suggested ridiculous phased improvements when it will never have the time for such nonsense because 4 or 5 years is simply far too late.

Do you seriously think all our GA admiral heroes are going sit back and let the SLN try to close the gap?

One reason HH mentioned the LAC's, demonstrated the FTL.com, etc is because she knows the SLN doesn't have time to do anything about the GA's tech edge.

Again RFC has made this point repeatedly, so the idea of the SLN somehow recovering and eventually overcoming the GA boggles the mind.

L

Jonathan_S wrote:

Alizon wrote:And my impression of Hyperspace intercepts isn't that they can't be done may be a bit overstated. It's more difficult due to limited scanner range and engagement ranges are going to be tighter which tends to work against Manties with their longer range missiles.

However, there is evidence to suggest, primarily in Honor Amongst Enemies that vessels who really work at it can accomplish them with a little bit of luck. If it's reasonably possible to find a ship or two moving through hyper then how much easier would it be for a fleet or a convoy?

That intercept was helped by
1) having a lot of ships spread out - the Peeps had what at least 3 or 4 BC and some CAs (probably at least as many) strung out at max sensor range from each other.
2) Special geography - the Selker Rift had unusually clear sensor conditions and a rogue wave that required relatively slow transits.

So with a significant number of ships you could spread out and keep watch over a much larger than normal zone and your targets weren't going to blow by you at 0.6c so you could use your superior acceleration to overtake them (admittedly, by running an increased risk of having too much speed to dodge should the rogue wave pop up unexpectedly)


I think hyper intercepts are, normally, way worse than Vegas odds.

But there may be other risky Selker-like areas where the odds are much more in the raider's favor. We may yet see combat in hyper; but I won't be holding my breath.

Weird Harold wrote:
A third option?

3) The velocity multiplier is an average for each band, but the difference between the upper limit of one band is within a percent or so of being identical to the lower limit of the next higher band.

For evidence I offer Alice Truman's record setting flight from Yeltsin to Manticore, wherein it is implied that the higher one goes in a hyperband, the faster one's apparent velocity in N-space.

Go back and read the posts I was quoting. How does your point have anything to do with formation scattering during a downward translation across the walls between bands? You know, the conversation we were having?

Also, most of us here know that different bands have slightly different multipliers.

crewdude48 wrote:Go back and read the posts I was quoting. How does your point have anything to do with formation scattering during a downward translation across the walls between bands? You know, the conversation we were having?

If the velocity/distance multiplier is nearly the same from one band to another at the interface between them scattering will be negligible/unnoticeable when you cross the interface.

IOW, if the average velocity/distance multiplier for the alpha band is 62x but ranges from 0.6x to 600x then there would only be a displacement of 0.6x going from Alpha to N-space. (note: 0.6x and 600x are random guesses for illustration, not intended as 100% accurate.)

Weird Harold wrote:If the velocity/distance multiplier is nearly the same from one band to another at the interface between them scattering will be negligible/unnoticeable when you cross the interface.

IOW, if the average velocity/distance multiplier for the alpha band is 62x but ranges from 0.6x to 600x then there would only be a displacement of 0.6x going from Alpha to N-space. (note: 0.6x and 600x are random guesses for illustration, not intended as 100% accurate.)

Interesting thought, but it doesn't match other information we've been given about the Honorverse.

Specifically we've been told that
1) The FTL grav comm signals move as ripples along the next higher hyper wall at the speed of light for that band[1]
2) In n-space FTL comm give 62x speed of light communication.

That seems to require that the lowest alpha band, the one right against the alpha wall, have 62x expansion; not (as in your illustration) 0.6x.


While Alice got marginally more speed by pushing into the very highest Eta bands I suspect that was more like a 1-2% difference across the entire Eta band, not the huge range you were hypothesizing.

---
[1] This also means that the higher the hyperband you're in the less benefit you get from FTL comms and Apollo. By the time you're in the Eta band grav com is only 19% faster than light; depressingly less than the 6200% faster it is in n-space.

Jonathan_S wrote:[1] This also means that the higher the hyperband you're in the less benefit you get from FTL comms and Apollo. By the time you're in the Eta band grav com is only 19% faster than light; depressingly less than the 6200% faster it is in n-space.

You mean 6100% faster. 6100% + 100% = 6200% as fast. Note that "as fast" and "faster" do not mean the same thing.

The difference becomes obvious when you get close to 100%:

"50% as fast" = "50% slower than" or "half as fast as" (and please dear GOD do not say "two times slower" or I think my head will actually explode)
. . .
"90% as fast" = "10% slower than"
. . .
"99% as fast" = "1% slower than"
"100% as fast" = "as fast as"
"101% as fast" = "1% faster than"
...
"199% as fast" = "99% faster than"
"200% as fast" = "100% faster than" (aka "2x as fast".)
. . .
"6200% as fast" = "6100% faster than"

For whatever reason, there is a very abrupt transition between n-space and the lowest α band, and far less transition between α and β, and while we have textev of "sub-bands" in hyper, there do not appear to be any "sub-bands" of n-space nor any other bands in the "negative" direction along the hyper axis. Also, while Truman's activities indicate that there is some gain from going to the "top" of a sub-band, we don't have a clue how much there is.

wastedfly wrote:Defending a translation point.

For merchants using Delta Bands:

Place your LAC's for anti CM role in both n space and in the delta bands with a couple DB able to crash translate and warn say a couple BC in n' space if they see hostile forces.

No reason to only defend n space. Defend the point said merchants will be coming in at. The H band itself.

Yes, you could do something like this, but for each point you decide to defend, you need more LAC's, probably a good number of them because they can't very easily whistle up reinforcements from the inner system. They also can't stay on station for overly long periods of time, they're not designed for that so you're going to need to spend a lot of time rotating them in and out of hyper and you'll need hypercapable vessels to do that. You'll also need to recreate that force at each level you decide to defend.

This requires you to significantly increase the number of LAC's needed to defend a particular system, potentially several times more depending on the extent you wish to dedicate to h-space defense. If you don't have those kind of numbers then SLN task forces can either deal with the isolated LAC's in h-space or they can take advantage of the reduced strength of the n-space defenders to begin n-space operations again.

If you are dedicating that number of LAC's to the mission then the SLN has succeeded in drawing important production resources away from the key areas of operation. Compared the warships, LAC's are amazingly cheap, but it's not like they grown on trees. All these LAC's have to come from somewhere and remember this isn't merely an SEM problem, Haven and the Andermani's will have to deal with this as well.

Plus he's having major fleet units permanently garrisoning every system, enough that their are always some close enough to the hyperlimit to respond. So yeah, a squadron of BCs per each of the 20 some Talbott planets takes 120-150 or so RMN BCs of the 30some that are available. Which means you assign all your Talbott SD(p) squadrons to a planet.

So much for offensive action.

Potato wrote:Destroyers have virtually no economic or industrial premium over frigates, but have at least half again the combat effectiveness. Why buy a barebones Toyota Corolla when you can get a top of the line Camry for virtually the same price? It is incomprehensible to choose the lesser option when by any yardstick the destroyer ends up the better choice.

so your saying all those other weapon are free & require no additional crews? The SLN may call it a "light destroyer" if you like that better but it’s the same thing. You also don't have to design from scratch, a scaled down destroyer with minimum offensive weapons & the same AMS would be more like it. The US DEs of WWII were basically cut down Fletchers with only 2 turrets, 1 triple TT & cheap readily available engines. The point is you make a lite ship with minimum equipment and crew that can operate with the fleet as a hyper capable AMS screen with minimum equipment as expendable (you will lose some - but with the least loss per unit) that's a "frigate" by any other name. so while overall on a "per-ship" basis you may get "more bang for the buck" with a full-up destroyer, it also takes longer to produce and costs more which means on a "per loss" basis you end up losing more per loss with a destroyer than with a frigate. There’s also the "viable target" factor, the GA are more likely to expend missile on a fleet destroyer than on a frigate. which means if you send (say) 30 DD's as a forward screen, the enemy light units are likely to target those lead destroyers to get there AMS out of the way of the capitol missile, its less likely for them to actively target 40 or 50 escort frigates that way - most FC crews would ignore them and target the fleet DDs behind them near the capitols therefore most of your FF losses will be from "target of opportunity" on the part of the missiles AI, not active targeting. These ships (being smaller than even a DD) would also have a smaller hyper footprint and thus be less likely to be seen entering and leaving a system as an advanced scout. Which is another role they could be useful for when more advanced fleet units become available that can deal with the GA units on their own.

SWM wrote:The existing ships in the Solarian League Navy are quite adequate for those missions. They do not need anti-missile platforms for that. The only purpose for building anti-missile platforms would be as screen for a wall of battle, and the only possible targets for a wall are the Grand Alliance or the Mesan Alignment (which they don't believe in).

No, the SL needs all the AMS they can get until they can match (or come close to it) the GA's range & accel. advantage!