Junction defense units

Annachie wrote:Shoot at what exactly? The stealthed pods that you wont see until after they fire? The Moriarty controllers that are even more stealthed?

To my understanding the forts do have giant banks of predeployed missile pods at their disposal, and my guess is that they have massive fire control links built in too, so they resemble Forakers original idea of building Moriarty into SDs.
Mistletoe has shown the vulnerability of a defense system only based on stealth.

Zakharra wrote: I believe that was before Lacoon 1 and 2, right? If so, the earlier agreement ids now null and void since Manticore has taken direct control over -all- wormhole termini it can. And from that same book it mentions how unhappy, even if understanding, the Idaho government was at Manticore for taking control of the junctions. That's lost revenue.

Lacoon 1 & 2 didn't change Manticore's long established policy of granting a significant portion of wormhole revenues they control or guarantee to the systems that should have sovereignty over the wormholes.

Care to provide some texev regarding Idaho's unhappiness? The only thing I can find is:

A Rising Thunder
Chapter Three wrote:Which was how Lieutenant Tilborch and the crew of ZSNS Kipling came to have a ringside seat for what promised to be a most unhappy day in near-Zunker space.

“What do we do, Jannetje?” he asked now, never looking away from the display where a single Solarian merchant ship headed directly towards the terminus, escorted by six Solarian League Navy battlecruisers.

“What we do is get the hell out of the way and com home to Effingham.”

“But what about—?” van Calcar began.

“The Manties are the ones who announced they were closing the terminus to Solarian traffic, and Idaho backed them,” Tilborch replied, cutting her off. “You know where my sympathies lie, but we’ve got no official business poking our noses in. Besides”—he smiled humorlessly—“it’s not like Kipling was going to make any difference, is it?”

Whitecold wrote:

Annachie wrote:Shoot at what exactly? The stealthed pods that you wont see until after they fire? The Moriarty controllers that are even more stealthed?

To my understanding the forts do have giant banks of predeployed missile pods at their disposal, and my guess is that they have massive fire control links built in too, so they resemble Forakers original idea of building Moriarty into SDs.
Mistletoe has shown the vulnerability of a defense system only based on stealth.

Oh granted. But the discussion was about making more smaller forts when it's more likely that the GA will be using less and more moriarty systems.

Does make me wonder though. How many Dazzler mines surround the WHJ.

Annachie wrote:Shoot at what exactly? The stealthed pods that you wont see until after they fire? The Moriarty controllers that are even more stealthed?

It's definitely possible to either target the pods or blanket there area they have to be in - Hamish did it when he took Trevor's Star.

I don't remember any explanation of how Hamish took Trevor's star, beyond that he did it both ways.

stewart wrote:

SWM wrote:[

The Solarian League has already lost all their wormhole termini. It is too late for them to develop a specialized ship to defend termini they no longer hold.

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The Sollies may NOT have lose all their wormholes; They HAVE lost all the wormholes on the Lancoon I / II lists.

There are other wormholes, some controlled by Mesa / RA. I suspect there MAY be other wormholes not on the Lancoon lists.
Only your MWW / RFC knows for sure.

-- Stewart

The mission of Lacoon II was to sieze all wormholes that Manticore could reach, whether or not they were held by the Solarian League. That includes all wormholes held by independent systems. If the League hasn't lost all nearby wormholes by now, they certainly will have long before they could possibly develop, build, and launch an entirely new ship design.

Annachie wrote:I don't remember any explanation of how Hamish took Trevor's star, beyond that he did it both ways.

*edited for reference to wrong book... d'oh*

I'm not sure where it is in text (I think it's when Hamish is showing his brother and Caparelli the first SD(P)s under construction at Blackbird in EoH, but don't quote me on that). He attacked the system with a fleet large enough to defeat the fixed defences around San Martin, or the Peep fleet in the system, but not both together. That drew the Peeps off the terminus to try to catch him between the fleet and the planet, at which point a detached force of battlecruisers to translate in close to the terminus and blanket the pods and mines there with dirty nukes, clearing the way for several battle squadrons from Home Fleet to come through the Junction, tipping the balance in his favour and catching the Peep fleet in a crossfire.

Th key point was that, because they were concentrating on building mobile units, the Peeps hadn't put forts at the Junction. Before the war they were expecting to be the ones attacking through it, and once the war started they didn't have the shipyard capacity to spare.

Dafmeister wrote:

Annachie wrote:Shoot at what exactly? The stealthed pods that you wont see until after they fire? The Moriarty controllers that are even more stealthed?

It's definitely possible to either target the pods or blanket there area they have to be in - Hamish did it when he took Trevor's Star.

I don't specifically remember that bit of the attack on Trevor's Star (not even in RFC infodumps), but yeah if you're reasonable sure where pods are you can take them out "blind" with nukes. You apparently don't need to be very close.

After all, towed pods are apparently likely to get taken out missiles that are detonating 30-50,000 km from the formation (laserheads). That isn't explicitely stated, but if you only lost pods if nukes broke through much closer I assume that that would have come up in the defensive tactics descriptions - the closer the missiles come the easier they are to kill - so you'd have a chance to save some or all of your towed pods for later launches. But instead the assumption is that anything outside a wedge that hasn't launched is lost when the enemies first wave detonates.


And as I pointed out above, to get timely fire on ships in a wormhole's entry lane you need the missiles much closer than their maximum powered range. Pods deployed simply to defend a system or a planet don't need to be able to hit within a minute or two of detecting the enemy; but you do need to hit that soon against an enemy coming through your wormhole. That means pods targeted on a wormhole lane must be closer, and therefore less dispersed / more predictably placed, than pods for system defense.


Even so I'm sure parts of a terminus's defense are predeployed pods, but the forts are also apparently pod laying - so there are second strike capabilities from the pods protected by their armor and sidewalls.

Dafmeister wrote:

Annachie wrote:I don't remember any explanation of how Hamish took Trevor's star, beyond that he did it both ways.

*edited for reference to wrong book... d'oh*

I'm not sure where it is in text (I think it's when Hamish is showing his brother and Caparelli the first SD(P)s under construction at Blackbird in EoH, but don't quote me on that). He attacked the system with a fleet large enough to defeat the fixed defences around San Martin, or the Peep fleet in the system, but not both together. That drew the Peeps off the terminus to try to catch him between the fleet and the planet, at which point a detached force of battlecruisers to translate in close to the terminus and blanket the pods and mines there with dirty nukes, clearing the way for several battle squadrons from Home Fleet to come through the Junction, tipping the balance in his favour and catching the Peep fleet in a crossfire.

Th key point was that, because they were concentrating on building mobile units, the Peeps hadn't put forts at the Junction. Before the war they were expecting to be the ones attacking through it, and once the war started they didn't have the shipyard capacity to spare.

That discussion is toward the end of MOH when Hamish is with the Grayson reinforcements at Trevor's Star in a conversation with the Grayson admiral while they are awaiting Giscard's arrival during Thunderbolt.

Don

Trade might end up flowing through the junctions again, but most of the revenue would be the SEM's, not the systems as long as the SEM controls those junctions. And I can see some in the SEM pushing for the SEM to retain control of the junctions specifically for the revenue increases when trade starts going again.[/quote]

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Unless High Ridge were to return to power (figure the odds) I seriously doubt that Manticore would be syphoning off anywhere near as much as OFS and the local despots.
with Manticore (or a Mantie corporation) administering the wormhole junctions, MUCH more would be getting into the local system commerce.

-- Stewart