Solly Fleet Advancements

Hi Imaginos1892,

Yup, right on.

We saw in AAC that old DD's were perfectly capable of performing such recon of alert enemy systems, and the RD's left at New Tuscany lasted at least 3 weeks, so I wouldn't be surprised if they couldn't monitor system traffic etc for a month or two, possibly 6-12 month's with more fuel etc.

But followup for military targets will be far quicker, HH did it in ~48 hours after the DD's hypered in.

90% of SL shipyard targets won't need more than a TG with a pair of RHN SDP's etc.

From the centuries of the MMM shipping throughout the SL, and the particular emphasis since so many freighter captains are reserve RMN officers, confirmed by all the detail behind Magellan's seizure of wormhole termini, the RMN ONI is quite on top of local conditions in the SL, Mike's ignorance regarding Mobious due to being 192 LY from her AoR.

Given the excellent background we've seen so far, ONI is on top of things, but transmission to CO's in the area needs some improvement.

L

Imaginos1892 wrote:**quote="SWM"**[quote="Imaginos1892"]Since this has turned into a what-should-Manticore-do-to-the-Sollies thread, here's my proposal:

I'm sure the ONI has a good idea which Solly systems are capable of building ships for the ISLN. Dispatch a bunch of destroyers and light cruisers to scout each system using a variant of what the Peeps did with Argus. Do a low-signature hyper translation far enough out that your ship is unlikely to be noticed. Accelerate, buzz past the hyper limit on a ballistic course, deploy a spread of Ghost Rider drones, let them spy out the system, recover drones and move on. Or, leave a few drones to sneak around after you're gone. Do NOT use grav-pulse communication; it might be noticed.

If the system is not building ISLN units, fine. Scout it again in a T-year or so. Check some of the less likely candidates in the meantime.

If there are ships under construction, schedule it for a visit by a modest task force a month or two before the first ones are finished. Give a few hours' evacuation warning, blow the ships to tiny bits, and leave. Make no special effort to destroy the system's infrastructure beyond collateral damage from taking out the ships and anybody that tries to stop you.

Since it takes over a T-year to build even a light cruiser, there will be plenty of opportunity to prevent the League from building anything, much less a fleet that could present a threat. Only systems that are actually attempting to contribute to the ISLN's war effort will be hit. After a while they're going to find it very hard to get anybody to accept a contract!
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It takes two to make peace. It only takes one to make war.

One potential glitch to this plan: how far out can the system detect a hyper translation?

If they have a detector array as powerful as Manticore's, you have to translate a couple light-months out to avoid detection. I expect that many of the Core worlds and other systems which are most likely to have shipyards capable of building large naval ships would have such systems.

But it is not a bad idea to set up that kind of surveillance in general. Ship construction is not the only intelligence that could be gained.[/quote]
At systems like that, it might be better to drop some drones from waaaaayyy out and come back for 'em later. The drones won't get too bored on the trip in.

My main point is, this is a low-resource way to keep a lid on even something as big as the Solarian League.
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Don't open that!! It's the original can of worms!**/quote**

Roguevictory wrote:Frigates are my personal favorite type of warship in both history and fiction but unfortunately RFC has clearly stated there won't be a return of frigates to use by the major powers in the Honorverse. If I were in charge of the SLN though I would be commissioning two new types of Frigate ASAP for design and production. One would be an escort type like you are suggesting. Te other would be a more heavily armed raiding ship to be sent into the Alliance's rear areas. I doubt they will do much real harm but really all I would be hoping for from them is to wreak enough havoc that the Alliance has to divert warships to hunt them down or protect targets against their raids without having to commit Battle cruisers and the personnel needed to crew them to the raids.

I'd point out that historic Age of Sail frigates equate more to a a CL or CA (or even, in the case of the 'super-frigates' maybe a BC). With an Honorverse DD equating more closely to a sloop-of-war, and an Honorverse FF more like a Gun-Brig.

That's why sailing frigates were long endurance, powerful ships, capable of tangling with most anything but a ship of the line. (While Honorverse frigates are the smallest hyper capable ship you can jam a few guns into, with poor endurance and limited capabilities)

I blame the Royal Navy for screwing up the term "Frigate" would have been a perfectly good alternative to "Cruiser"; since their roles were analogous. So we'd have had armored or protected frigates, then light and heavy frigates, and later perhaps battle frigates (or the return of super-frigates). That would keep with the historic basis that frigates were long endurance powerful units; not the slow sub-chasers the name got hung on.


For the raiding missions you're talking about I think you'd need at least a CL sized unit just to have the endurance to cruise to the GA systems and back (without being able to use wormholes as shortcuts).

It is my impression that MWW intends that Honorverse frigates are a hold over that stuck around because they were useful for minor powers. Look at the stuff BuNine has released about the early years of the Manticore colony, and the Travis Long stuff, avoiding spoilers.
Honorverse warships began as corvettes (no hyperdrive, maybe no energy weaponry) frigates, and maybe an unarmored wall of battle ship, which carried extra defenses, and might have had launchers more developed than cells or boxes. When the Compensator was developed, corvettes earned an acceleration advantage, and larger classes began to appear, probably starting with early recognizable ships of the wall, closely followed by early cruisers, or vice versa, the BC might actually have come first, in fact (one lineage became the BB, the other the CA) . Early destroyers were probably short legged, but were a derived design carrying missile tubes rather than the launch cells of their nearly identically sized frigate siblings (who retained cruising ability).

Jonathan_S wrote:

Roguevictory wrote:Frigates are my personal favorite type of warship in both history and fiction but unfortunately RFC has clearly stated there won't be a return of frigates to use by the major powers in the Honorverse. If I were in charge of the SLN though I would be commissioning two new types of Frigate ASAP for design and production. One would be an escort type like you are suggesting. Te other would be a more heavily armed raiding ship to be sent into the Alliance's rear areas. I doubt they will do much real harm but really all I would be hoping for from them is to wreak enough havoc that the Alliance has to divert warships to hunt them down or protect targets against their raids without having to commit Battle cruisers and the personnel needed to crew them to the raids.

I'd point out that historic Age of Sail frigates equate more to a a CL or CA (or even, in the case of the 'super-frigates' maybe a BC). With an Honorverse DD equating more closely to a sloop-of-war, and an Honorverse FF more like a Gun-Brig.

That's why sailing frigates were long endurance, powerful ships, capable of tangling with most anything but a ship of the line. (While Honorverse frigates are the smallest hyper capable ship you can jam a few guns into, with poor endurance and limited capabilities)

I blame the Royal Navy for screwing up the term "Frigate" would have been a perfectly good alternative to "Cruiser"; since their roles were analogous. So we'd have had armored or protected frigates, then light and heavy frigates, and later perhaps battle frigates (or the return of super-frigates). That would keep with the historic basis that frigates were long endurance powerful units; not the slow sub-chasers the name got hung on.


For the raiding missions you're talking about I think you'd need at least a CL sized unit just to have the endurance to cruise to the GA systems and back (without being able to use wormholes as shortcuts).

lyonheart wrote:If 120 Mk-16's are overkill for a FF BC [Saltash], would 60 or 80 Mk-23's correspond to 120 Mk-16's?

I'd say more like 30-40 Mk-23s would be equivalent to 120 Mk-16s at killing BCs. The 23s have bigger warheads, more and longer lasing rods, and one more drive.

So a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio is entirely justified.

TheMonster wrote:

lyonheart wrote:If 120 Mk-16's are overkill for a FF BC [Saltash], would 60 or 80 Mk-23's correspond to 120 Mk-16's?

I'd say more like 30-40 Mk-23s would be equivalent to 120 Mk-16s at killing BCs. The 23s have bigger warheads, more and longer lasing rods, and one more drive.

So a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio is entirely justified.

Nit: The lasing rods (laserheads, actually) used in Mk16s and Mk23s are the same, only difference being in the number carried - ten for the Mk23, six for the Mk16.

Mk13s have shorter laserheads. Vipers use these as well.

Hi MaxxQ,

Quite true.

OTOH, the MK-23's have rather larger warheads and that's before they are upgraded the way the Mk-16G's were with improved gravity generators and lenses.

L

MaxxQ wrote:

TheMonster wrote:**quote="lyonheart"**
If 120 Mk-16's are overkill for a FF BC [Saltash], would 60 or 80 Mk-23's correspond to 120 Mk-16's?

I'd say more like 30-40 Mk-23s would be equivalent to 120 Mk-16s at killing BCs. The 23s have bigger warheads, more and longer lasing rods, and one more drive.

So a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio is entirely justified.**/quote**

Nit: The lasing rods (laserheads, actually) used in Mk16s and Mk23s are the same, only difference being in the number carried - ten for the Mk23, six for the Mk16.

Mk13s have shorter laserheads. Vipers use these as well.

Also, Don't forget, Not all mk 23s are the same - I can see "reliably" using 60-80 per BC for conventional Mk23s, but only needing 30-40 for the Apollo version, all with ~1/4 being ECM missiles.

lyonheart wrote:Hi MaxxQ,

Quite true.

OTOH, the MK-23's have rather larger warheads and that's before they are upgraded the way the Mk-16G's were with improved gravity generators and lenses.

L

One might propose that the RMN controls at least most wormholes, which is a substantial advantage for being on interior lines. They might want some more not very heavy ships with longer legs than they have historically needed, as a new class. On the other hand, there are a huge number of freighters with little to do, and owners who would be willing to be hired for duty not excessively dangerous. Loading up a some of these with living quarters for lots of extra crew, and quarters for prisoners, would allow raiding relatively undefended systems, and then capturing and flying away with SL cargo ships. Freighters travelling with raiding squadrons substitute for the new class of warships.

Jonathan_S wrote:I blame the Royal Navy for screwing up the term "Frigate" would have been a perfectly good alternative to "Cruiser"; since their roles were analogous. So we'd have had armored or protected frigates, then light and heavy frigates, and later perhaps battle frigates (or the return of super-frigates). That would keep with the historic basis that frigates were long endurance powerful units; not the slow sub-chasers the name got hung on.

It's okay, just to confuse things further they later on ended up with frigates that where bigger (both in terms of length and displacement) than the destroyers that where around at the same time!

Hi Phillies,

Lacoon 1 & 2 have demonstrated RMN intel on the SL is superb, but the forces involved are clearly not intended for more offensive operations, until they're at least reinforced, though we have no textev for that supposition.

Until we have a map of the wormholes involved, we don't know where or how many wormhole bridges the GA now controls.

Consider this a plea for an updated map or two.

L

phillies wrote:One might propose that the RMN controls at least most wormholes, which is a substantial advantage for being on interior lines. They might want some more not very heavy ships with longer legs than they have historically needed, as a new class. On the other hand, there are a huge number of freighters with little to do, and owners who would be willing to be hired for duty not excessively dangerous. Loading up a some of these with living quarters for lots of extra crew, and quarters for prisoners, would allow raiding relatively undefended systems, and then capturing and flying away with SL cargo ships. Freighters travelling with raiding squadrons substitute for the new class of warships.