Hyperspace Combat and the Solarian Leauge Navy

kzt wrote:

Tenshinai wrote:And within grav waves? Well, why would any GA fleet want to fight there?

"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."

Doesn´t matter. They have superior sensor ability and stealth, until that changes, anyone of GA allowing itself to get caught in energy range in a grav wave deserves whatever happens to them for being idiots.

Alizon wrote:
No, of course the GA holds a number of advantages which they can use to good effect. But none of these creates the equivalent of being an SLN fleet caught in a gravity well in n-space by a GA fleet with MDM's.

Even with drones, n-space not only allows the drones to hide from SLN sensors, it allows the drones to count the rivets in the hull. Drones will suffer the same sensor penalties as any other kind of vessel reducing their chances of locating SLN vessels not using their wedge.

And I find some of the analysis here interesting, in what way exactly would an SLN fleet be in worse shape than to be caught in a gravity well by a fleet armed with MDMs?

Hyper affects sensors, by the books it apparently affects them to roughly equal degree(or close enough), if it cuts 30% from sensors of one ship, it does the same from another ship with twice as good sensors.

This results in ship A going from sensor ability 100 to 70, while ship B goes from 200 to 140. Still twice the effectiveness.

But, Ship B also has drastically better stealth and ECM than ship A... It also carries long ranged sensor drones that can negate the effects of hyper, with good enough stealth that ship A can´t even see or find them using their sensors in normal space.

Where does that lead you?

For me it totally screams AMBUSH TIME!

Yes, being in a gravity well means they can´t get away, but in hyper they might get a <30s warning before complete destruction, never even seeing who fired the incoming missiles at all.

(MDMs means i can have the missiles accelerate on first drive, then fly in ballistic and only activate another drive when needed for attack maneuvers)

The SLN ships are unlikely to be able to react fast enough to even properly defend themselves.

Tenshinai wrote:

kzt wrote:"You may not be interested in war, but war is interested in you."

Doesn´t matter. They have superior sensor ability and stealth, until that changes, anyone of GA allowing itself to get caught in energy range in a grav wave deserves whatever happens to them for being idiots.

The GA do have superior sensors, but their best sensor multipliers are the ghost rider drones, which are useless in a grav wave. The GA shipboard sensors are still better than the SLN shipboard sensors, but not by the orders of magnitude that the drones give them.

The amazing stealth of GA warships really doesn't mean anything at all against the commerce raiding policy that the SLN is going to be adopting. First, because you can't run your stealth all the time, and why would you run it when you have no idea that there is an enemy out there. Second, because no mater how good the stealth of the GA warships is, the merchies have NONE, and if you know where the merchant ships are, you can tell more or less where the escorts are.

If the SLN ships are in stealth hunting a GA convoy which is running at .5c in a wave, they will almost always sneak up on the GA ships. I don't know how close they will get, probably not all the way to energy range, but defiantly closer than the GA would like. But at that point, the SLN ships will be able to accelerate at about 5000g (thanks to the grav wave) until they reach .6c, and the merchies would be unable to escape, and at that point the GA convoy escorts would have the choice of either accepting combat or abandoning their charges. And, honestly, do you think that anybody trained in the Saganami tradition would abandon a convoy?

Now, on the griping hand, once they hear that the SLN is going to adopt a commerce raiding strategy, and if they figure out that the only place that the SLN has a good chance is in hyper, they should order all convoys to take a route five to ten per cent longer than a least time course to their destination. This would cause the amount of space that the League needed to search to increase hugely without greatly affecting transport times.

crewdude48 wrote:Now, on the griping hand, once they hear that the SLN is going to adopt a commerce raiding strategy, and if they figure out that the only place that the SLN has a good chance is in hyper, they should order all convoys to take a route five to ten per cent longer than a least time course to their destination. This would cause the amount of space that the League needed to search to increase hugely without greatly affecting transport times.

Exactly.

They should, in fact, randomize the courses. Otherwise cranking "10% slower" into the astrogation computer is likely to give a lot of ships the same course. And, of course, the commerce raiders can figure that out.

The same is true for leaving the origin and approaching the destination. A randomly chosen course there will make it a lot less likely that a commerce raider will be in position to attack.

Now the counter, of course, is to use several ships and assign one as the observation picket. When it picks up a merchant, it transits to hyper and tells the actual raider where its prey is. The raider can then go to the right place, transit back to real space and fire.

This is the same strategy that Admiral Henke used at Meyers.

JohnRoth wrote:

crewdude48 wrote:Now, on the griping hand, once they hear that the SLN is going to adopt a commerce raiding strategy, and if they figure out that the only place that the SLN has a good chance is in hyper, they should order all convoys to take a route five to ten per cent longer than a least time course to their destination. This would cause the amount of space that the League needed to search to increase hugely without greatly affecting transport times.

Exactly.

They should, in fact, randomize the courses. Otherwise cranking "10% slower" into the astrogation computer is likely to give a lot of ships the same course. And, of course, the commerce raiders can figure that out.

Sorry, I should have said, "a route randomly somewhere between 5 and 10 percent longer..."

Tenshinai wrote:

Alizon wrote:
No, of course the GA holds a number of advantages which they can use to good effect. But none of these creates the equivalent of being an SLN fleet caught in a gravity well in n-space by a GA fleet with MDM's.

Even with drones, n-space not only allows the drones to hide from SLN sensors, it allows the drones to count the rivets in the hull. Drones will suffer the same sensor penalties as any other kind of vessel reducing their chances of locating SLN vessels not using their wedge.

And I find some of the analysis here interesting, in what way exactly would an SLN fleet be in worse shape than to be caught in a gravity well by a fleet armed with MDMs?

Hyper affects sensors, by the books it apparently affects them to roughly equal degree(or close enough), if it cuts 30% from sensors of one ship, it does the same from another ship with twice as good sensors.

This results in ship A going from sensor ability 100 to 70, while ship B goes from 200 to 140. Still twice the effectiveness.

But, Ship B also has drastically better stealth and ECM than ship A... It also carries long ranged sensor drones that can negate the effects of hyper, with good enough stealth that ship A can´t even see or find them using their sensors in normal space.

Where does that lead you?

For me it totally screams AMBUSH TIME!

Yes, being in a gravity well means they can´t get away, but in hyper they might get a <30s warning before complete destruction, never even seeing who fired the incoming missiles at all.

(MDMs means i can have the missiles accelerate on first drive, then fly in ballistic and only activate another drive when needed for attack maneuvers)

The SLN ships are unlikely to be able to react fast enough to even properly defend themselves.

Well that's well reasoned within the limits you've considered.

So, how does that compare when the vessesl of fleet A (SLN) have their wedges on standby and fleet B (GA) is operating it's impellers. Who sees who first then?

Based upon information we have right now, Fleet B won't see fleet A until they are well within at least the SBM engagement range of fleet A and it's actually very possible fleet A might be able to pass right through, or at least in close proximity to Fleet A without noticing that Fleet A is there at all.

On the other hand, what is also clear is that the most detectable thing in hyper at long range is exactly the same thing that is detectable at nearly any range in n-space and that is the gravitational anomalies caused by the use of impellers.

Hence a SLN fleet even if it's sensors aren't up to GA standards, is almost certainly going to see the approaching GA fleet at ranges far beyond the GA fleets ability to detect them.

The main issue therefor isn't whether the GA fleet is going to see and wipe out the SLN fleet under these conditions, the question is how to you achieve an intercept. As has been pointed out, achieving such an intercept is going to be hard but there are several ways it can possibly be done.

1) The best can scenario is simply a combination of luck and good planning. In this case the SLN fleet determines the most likely intercept location and positions itself there and basically waits for the GA fleet to run over them, not revealing themselves until the GA units are in optimal range.

2) The second variation is to do the same as in example #1 but to send out pickets which can give advanced warning via whisker laser comm to the main fleet. Depending on how far out this series of pickets is, this may give time for the SLN fleet to make modest position changes before the GA vessels enter their own detection range making a good intercept more likely.

3) Position the fleet either in a hyper band one higher than or lower than the expected operating band of the approaching GA fleet. Place pickets in the expected approach band with orders to translate to the band being used by the SLN fleet to provide intercept information. The SLN fleet, if it's well positioned, can then attempt to translate into the hyper band the GA forces are using in close proximity to them.

There are several variations of these that can be used as well. For example if you want to attempt a low speed intercept then you may want to place your forces where you believe the GA fleet will be losing velocity in preparation for hyperband translations.

You could also heavily seed expected approach routes with missile pods. In n-space pods with SBM's are going to be largely useless as they can most probably be detected at ranges which exceed their engagement envelopes by a good margin. Such isn't the case in hyperspace.

And yes, there are any number of things that can go wrong. A SLN ship might activate it's wedge at the wrong time revealing the presence of the SLN fleet before they are in engagement range. A probing GA recon drone might detect the fleet or a screening destroyer might in which case the SLN fleet is in serious trouble but no more than they would be if caught in n-space. There's also the chance that SLN vessels might be able to escape or evade such a situation by translating between bands which is not an option in n-space while within the hyperlimit. So even if things go disastrously wrong, SLN units still have options which they don't have in n-space.

crewdude48 wrote:The amazing stealth of GA warships really doesn't mean anything at all against the commerce raiding policy that the SLN is going to be adopting. First, because you can't run your stealth all the time, and why would you run it when you have no idea that there is an enemy out there. Second, because no mater how good the stealth of the GA warships is, the merchies have NONE, and if you know where the merchant ships are, you can tell more or less where the escorts are.

Stealth also includes being less visible without actively running stealth.

Secondly, i wasn´t specifically talking of commerce raiding.

Thirdly, i don´t think you realise what i´m talking about here. It´s like having a wet navy convoy of merchants, you´re attacking with an 19th century battleship with WWII sonar and depth charges, and the defenders of the convoy are 21st century nuclear submarines.

You can´t see them unless you get lucky or they get lazy, they´re much faster than you are and attacking them is going to be difficult.

Fourthly, of course you run with stealth as much as possible whenever there is ANY risk of running into enemies.

And as merchants are slower than military ships, they´re going to be a lot less visible just by keeping speed down to what they escort.

crewdude48 wrote:The GA do have superior sensors, but their best sensor multipliers are the ghost rider drones, which are useless in a grav wave. The GA shipboard sensors are still better than the SLN shipboard sensors, but not by the orders of magnitude that the drones give them.

They don´t need to be orders of magnitude. If they´re 50% better while the ships are less visible, that´s still a drastic difference.

crewdude48 wrote: I don't know how close they will get, probably not all the way to energy range, but defiantly closer than the GA would like.

Not if they´re chasing. Meaning that they need to be lucky to intercept "silently"(without escort noticing them long before they´re in range).

And please, it´s "definitely" not "defiantly", those two words have drastically different meaning(certainly vs obstinate) and should NEVER EVER be mixed up.

crewdude48 wrote:Now, on the griping hand, once they hear that the SLN is going to adopt a commerce raiding strategy, and if they figure out that the only place that the SLN has a good chance is in hyper, they should order all convoys to take a route five to ten per cent longer than a least time course to their destination. This would cause the amount of space that the League needed to search to increase hugely without greatly affecting transport times.

As long as they have unpredictable routes through grav waves, it´s going to be very hard for SLN to do much useful.

And since all this is basic logic, it´s very likely that at least GA is fully or mostly aware of it.

John Roth wrote:They should, in fact, randomize the courses. Otherwise cranking "10% slower" into the astrogation computer is likely to give a lot of ships the same course. And, of course, the commerce raiders can figure that out.

It´s not that simple. Due to the degradation of sensors, even a tiny deviation of course, a deviation that can effectively be up, down, left, right or anything in between.

Remember that it´s hard to intercept merchants in hyper even when they are trying to follow the fastest route, put them a lightminute to the side and you need dozens of ships for each ship you needed to find it before that, just to have a slight chance of still finding it.

The same is true for leaving the origin and approaching the destination. A randomly chosen course there will make it a lot less likely that a commerce raider will be in position to attack.

Very. As the traveltime is barely dependent at all on small distances like entering hyper directly in the target direction, or 90 degree "up", such a thing alone will make it troublesome for raiders to say the least.

The most dangerous time will be when merchants come out of hyper and until they have entered the gravity well, as raiders using sensor drones can attempt interception by using a short hyper move.

Alizon wrote:So, how does that compare when the vessesl of fleet A (SLN) have their wedges on standby and fleet B (GA) is operating it's impellers. Who sees who first then?

Based upon information we have right now, Fleet B won't see fleet A until they are well within at least the SBM engagement range of fleet A and it's actually very possible fleet A might be able to pass right through, or at least in close proximity to Fleet A without noticing that Fleet A is there at all.

Of course. But while that is perfectly possible, fleet A will need a HUGE amount of ships laying doggo all over the place for that to be likely to happen.

Alizon wrote:1) The best can scenario is simply a combination of luck and good planning. In this case the SLN fleet determines the most likely intercept location and positions itself there and basically waits for the GA fleet to run over them, not revealing themselves until the GA units are in optimal range.

And with minimal deviations in courses used, this will require an obscene amount of ships used by the SLN for this.

Can be done, but very unrealistic.

Outside of a grav wave, SLN is likely going to be seen by drones long before they can fire.

And IN a grav wave, then it´s energy range that sets the minimum required detection range. And even using sails, useful energy range is -short-.

Alizon wrote:2) The second variation is to do the same as in example #1 but to send out pickets which can give advanced warning via whisker laser comm to the main fleet. Depending on how far out this series of pickets is, this may give time for the SLN fleet to make modest position changes before the GA vessels enter their own detection range making a good intercept more likely.

Whisker laser comm? To be able to use that, you must KNOW, EXACTLY, where the target ship will be when the laser arrives on target.

You can only use it if you can SEE the target ship, AND predict where it will be when the laser is supposed to hit it.

And do you really expect laser comms to not be degraded by hyper? I doubt that.

Alizon wrote:3) Position the fleet either in a hyper band one higher than or lower than the expected operating band of the approaching GA fleet. Place pickets in the expected approach band with orders to translate to the band being used by the SLN fleet to provide intercept information. The SLN fleet, if it's well positioned, can then attempt to translate into the hyper band the GA forces are using in close proximity to them.

Difficult but may be workable against convoys. Against GA fleets, SLN is unlikely to have the speed and/or hyper band advantage to be able to intercept.

Alizon wrote: So even if things go disastrously wrong, SLN units still have options which they don't have in n-space.

Quite true yes. I´m not saying they´re probably better off trying to fight in hyper, just that it´s very unlikely that SLN will be able to do much more useful with it.

No, I agree that it will be difficult for any SLN force to effectively bring a GA fleet into battle in h-space, at least early on in the conflict. I think there are things an SLN commander can do to increase their odds but the prospect is daunting regardless.

But if you give me an option which has a small chance of success vs. one which is certain obliteration, I don't know about you but I'm choosing the small chance of success option.

There is, however, one factor working for the SLN at least early on. Drones are expensive and not easily replaced after OB, Stealth and ECM systems are high tech systems with finite lives, this is why Aegis cruisers don't cruise around with the FC systems on all of the time.

Commanders tend to defend against the threats they believe are realistic and credible and pay less attention to possibilities they feel are remote. Hence, while they will burn through drones and run their equipment for long intervals if they feel they have realistic threat out there, spending drones and wearing out equipment to guard against something that, as far as I can tell, has never even been attempted, must less actually done is not going to be a high priority on any fleet CO's list.

What this means is, at least initially, an approaching GA force will probably not have a deep screen of light vessels probing a good distance ahead of them following a screen of drones and they will probably be taking a least time course from across the rift to their target system and will not in h-space be fully utilizing their stealth and ECM systems.

Now, if the SLN manages to make a successful intercept at some point, GA commanders will be altered to the fact that h-space intercepts are a realistic threat and will take appropriate action, but probably not much before then.

Now, there are those here that will argue that any fleet commander will look at the h-space fleet combat option and make all necessary provisions for countering it and I can't argue that it isn't prudent, but here's something to think about.

When the PRN was facing the RMN during operation Buttercup, they faced a similar situation to the one which now faces the SLN. Yet there is no mention from either the Peep side or the RMN side where the issue of h-space fleet combat was ever mentioned much less discussed. As far as I can tell, no RMN admiral took any particular precautions to defend against it nor any Peep Admiral any attempt to employ it.

Why is that. Well one reason would be that it's because neither the RMN nor the Peeps regarded it as an option and so failed to either employ it or defend against it.

Very possibly the same kind of attitudes exist both within the GA and within the SLN. But if the SLN could break that mindset then the might just catch the GA napping and with some luck, bring them to battle in an environment where they might actually stand a chance.

It seems to me that an effective counter to this would be to carry a couple dozen LACs at the entry point of where you were planning to enter in the hyper band where they were going to operate and spread out in a shell formation looking for goblins. Once its established that the coast is clear, enter hyper and plot a course designed to be unpredictable.

Don