Verge Liberation Movements

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:Personally, since we haven't seen any Havenite breakthroughs in ERMs or DDM/MDM for sub-wall units I'd prefer not to deploy their CAs or CLs units alone. I agree they've got the manpower to better handle these ground combat or police presence missions. But they don't appear to have a missile range advantage over SLN units.

Jonathan_S wrote:I'd think an early (but unglamorous) Bolthole focus would be upgrading the missile range on smaller Havenite units. ...

A lot of RMN ships also suffer similar deficiencies in missile range. Extended Range or Multi Drive missiles should definitely be a priority. I'm not sure that it would be that much of a disadvantage in a ground support role, though.

It doesn't, at least not directly. But the ground support ship is somewhat tied down by a reluctance to abandon ground deployed troops. So if a SLN force arrived to relieve the system or attack the GA units a Havenite sub-waller (or as you point out an older RMN unit) would be more at risk in a naval fight than a ERM / DDM quipped ship.


But that's really only an issue when they're deployed in homogenous units without support. Mix and match longer ranged units with SDM equipped one, or even ship in DDM/MDM pods for the older units to use in an emergency, and a lot of that concern goes away.

Jonathan_S wrote:But that's really only an issue when they're deployed in homogenous units without support.

What I meant by "homogenous" units is task forces from a single navy. Ground support ships should always travel with a CLAC and at least one "Space Superiority" (i.e. long ranged) Cruiser or larger. A freighter full of System Defense pods should be sent along ASAP to prevent SLN forces from re-taking the system when the cruiser(s) and CLAC have to move on.

Weird Harold wrote:

Jonathan_S wrote:But that's really only an issue when they're deployed in homogenous units without support.

What I meant by "homogenous" units is task forces from a single navy. Ground support ships should always travel with a CLAC and at least one "Space Superiority" (i.e. long ranged) Cruiser or larger. A freighter full of System Defense pods should be sent along ASAP to prevent SLN forces from re-taking the system when the cruiser(s) and CLAC have to move on.

Well as far as we've seen Haven doesn't have any cruisers, or even battlecruisers, with longer range missiles.

Last we heard their MDMs were still bigger than Manticore's original capacitor birds, much less their Mk23s. Big enough that even their SD(P) could (or at least didn't) carry broadside tubes. And they didn't have an ERMs or DDMs.

Seems to me that about the only thing smaller than a waller that could carry those monsters would be some class of BC(P). But we've never seem a Havenite BC(P) design "on screen" nor heard it discussed by any of the characters. They might well have one, but we've seen no evidence.

So barring that, Haven doesn't have a "Space Superiority" (i.e. long ranged) Cruiser. Any purely Havenite detachments (unless large enough to include an SD(P)) would have to settle for towed pods to match or exceed the range of Cataphracts; or even to significantly outrange the SDMs carried by SLN units.



That said, a recent Havenite ships is probably capable of taking on 3 or 4 SLN ships of similar displacement without anyone using pods. But it's also likely to get badly hurt doing so.

If you want to give Havenite unit a "space Superiority" cruiser it's going to have to be an attached Mantie or Grayson ship. (At least until Haven gets ERMs / DDMs of its own; and ships to launch them)

It's not that the Republican Navy doesn't have pods... It's more that they have been focused on their SDPs.I wonder how many of those pods a Mars class or even a BC could tuck under its wedge... I know that a Roland was carrying M23s, but those were a quite a bit smaller than an all up Havenite SDP pod. Then too, they could have ammo ship tag alongs.

Don

n7axw wrote:It's not that the Republican Navy doesn't have pods... It's more that they have been focused on their SDPs.I wonder how many of those pods a Mars class or even a BC could tuck under its wedge... I know that a Roland was carrying M23s, but those were a quite a bit smaller than an all up Havenite SDP pod. Then too, they could have ammo ship tag alongs.

Don

In (I think) Honor Among Enemies there's something about how the Mars class was built with overpowered impellers in hopes that the Peeps could capture or steal the secret of the Grayson compensator. It can carry a lot more missile pods than most heavy cruisers. Plus, of course, there's Shannon Foraker's "donkey" pods.
---------------
Zathras used to being beast of burden for other people's needs.
Very sad life. Probably have very sad death.
But, at least there is symmetry.

Imaginos1892 wrote:

n7axw wrote:It's not that the Republican Navy doesn't have pods... It's more that they have been focused on their SDPs.I wonder how many of those pods a Mars class or even a BC could tuck under its wedge... I know that a Roland was carrying M23s, but those were a quite a bit smaller than an all up Havenite SDP pod. Then too, they could have ammo ship tag alongs.

Don

In (I think) Honor Among Enemies there's something about how the Mars class was built with overpowered impellers in hopes that the Peeps could capture or steal the secret of the Grayson compensator. It can carry a lot more missile pods than most heavy cruisers. Plus, of course, there's Shannon Foraker's "donkey" pods.
---------------
Zathras used to being beast of burden for other people's needs.
Very sad life. Probably have very sad death.
But, at least there is symmetry.

The donkeys are deployed on scene prior to combat. Up until then, a cruiser, unlike a SDP, would have to carry them inside its wedge. There is no question that a Mars could tow more pods on scene given its power plant. But how useful the donkey would be would depend on how many fire control channels the cruiser in question would have. It would be pointless to deply more pods than you could control before your opponent's first salvo arrives and gets proximity kills on your deployed pods. The Mars class, while a powerful cruiser in its day is a pre-pod design and as such would have a comparatively limited number of control links.

Don

Widening the topic slightly, how long is it going to be before before OFS/SL starts seeing significant defections of Verge personell. Firebrand states in one of the books that he only joined up with OFS because it was the only game in town, and Thandi Palane joined the SL Marines as the way out of poverty. It's stated in one of the books that the SL Marines have a significant proportion of Verge recruits. How long before some of these elements start peeling off either to Manticore or to local independence movements?

MarkAustin wrote:Widening the topic slightly, how long is it going to be before before OFS/SL starts seeing significant defections of Verge personell. Firebrand states in one of the books that he only joined up with OFS because it was the only game in town, and Thandi Palane joined the SL Marines as the way out of poverty. It's stated in one of the books that the SL Marines have a significant proportion of Verge recruits. How long before some of these elements start peeling off either to Manticore or to local independence movements?

I think it will be fairly late in the conflict before we start to see defections because it isn't all that easy to defect individually (it's difficult to storm out of a spaceship because you don't agree with where it's going.)

Any defections are pretty much going to have to be unit defections/mutinies (except among POWs) and that's going to take some extraordinary circumstances to either shift the loyalty of command personnel or generate enough dissatisfaction among the lower ranks to fuel a conspiracy.

The OFS/SLN FF has had a lot of experience keeping cliques of troops from the same home-world from forming. For example, Thandi Palane would never be assigned anywhere near Ndebele and AKAIK she was the only marine from the Mfecane worlds in Adm Rozhak's marines.

"Firebrand" was in the OFS Gendarmarie and was released (actually ordered to resign, IIRC) before he went to work for the MAlign. I don't think most Gendarmes would be released so easily -- not that most of the Intervention Battalion thugs would want to be released to fend for themselves instead of being above the law as most IB thugs consider themselves.

I do think that the Gendarmerie -- especially the Intervention Battalions -- would tend to turn warlord/warlord's minions before any SL Marines/Marine units. (Other than the entire SLN/Marine contingent of the Maya Sector, who are already primed and equipped for the "Sepoy Option.")

MarkAustin wrote:Widening the topic slightly, how long is it going to be before before OFS/SL starts seeing significant defections of Verge personell. Firebrand states in one of the books that he only joined up with OFS because it was the only game in town, and Thandi Palane joined the SL Marines as the way out of poverty. It's stated in one of the books that the SL Marines have a significant proportion of Verge recruits. How long before some of these elements start peeling off either to Manticore or to local independence movements?

It could be quite difficult for significant defections to occur. If the League had any sense (and I'll admit we've seen precious little evidence of it so far), they'll have taken a leaf out of the Roman army's book and made sure they deploy units from Verge systems far away from their homeworlds - the Romans almost never deployed auxiliary (non-citizen) units in their home provinces, so they wouldn't feel any loyalty to the local population.

Better yet, don't use Verge recruits in homogenous units at all. The League won't have to deal with the kind of language barriers the Romans sometimes faced, so there's no reason why a Gendarmerie battalion couldn't be drawn from a hundred different systems, making the battalion far less likely to desert en masse.

MarkAustin wrote:Widening the topic slightly, how long is it going to be before before OFS/SL starts seeing significant defections of Verge personell. Firebrand states in one of the books that he only joined up with OFS because it was the only game in town, and Thandi Palane joined the SL Marines as the way out of poverty. It's stated in one of the books that the SL Marines have a significant proportion of Verge recruits. How long before some of these elements start peeling off either to Manticore or to local independence movements?

There is a case in Swallow with a 27 year SLM vet connected with the Allenbys who provided training to the resistance which was a lot better than than the opposition lined up with the system government. We don't have any word on how that turned out.

Don