A Manticoran Disinformation Gamble

Weird Harold wrote:

Zakharra wrote:Any ship to ship energy weapon exchange is still a moot point at this time and even the SLN knows it.

You have too little faith in the abilities of Con-men, like Charles, and underestimate how desperate SLN R&D must be.

There's desperation and then there is plain stupid as hell. No one in the SLN should be buying the idea of close in ship to ship combat like there used to be 20 years ago in game. For that to be an option in a wall of battle, that wall has to get close enough to be able to use those weapons. and by now even the most stuck up, hidebound arrogant SLN officer will have realized the old style of battle is as obsolete as gunpowder cannons are in space.

stewart wrote:The loose analogy is much like the British and French navies when the Brits had rifled cannon barrels and the French did not. Range advantage Britain.
In another forum it was noted that the weapons disparity drops when the Sollies get in THEIR range, Sollie BC's can take out Rolands and (maybe) Saganami-C's with a heavier BC warhead IF they got in range. Much like a Jutland-era Battle Cruiser or Heavy Cruiser could take out a Spruance or Burke with their 10" and 12" guns, but the range of Harpoon and Tomahawk on the Spru-Cans and Burkes would not let that happen.

Eh, if you're loading your BCs with Cataphract-A's (and if you're the SLN and you're not, you're a fool), then unfortunately you have DD/CL-weight warheads on your missiles... and the Mark-16 Mod G-armed Manties effectively have borderline SD-weight warheads on theirs (and that's ignoring the electronics warfare disparities).

drothgery wrote:and the Mark-16 Mod G-armed Manties effectively have borderline SD-weight warheads on theirs (and that's ignoring the electronics warfare disparities).

By SLN standards, there's nothing "borderline" about it - the 16G's are more powerful than Trebuchets. (SoF, chapter 12)

If you want to remove ships from the SLN order of battle and don't want to go after BF bases, you are going to have to either destroy the OFS/FF bases and/or go after squadrons of mostly FF ships now deployed or soon to be sent out as raiders.

You could take a leaf from Mike's (and other's) books and, when attacking a detachment of FF you 1st demand surrender and then start killing ships one or two at a time starting with the most dangerous. Shortly the survivors should get the message and 1) abandon and scuttle or surrender. Either way you take all of the ships out of FF ability to use and while you will need to deal with prisoners you will kill as few of the SLN crew as possible.

While the Mandarins might not be thinking in terms of what they are facing in killed or captured SLN personal, all of the casualties and POWs are reaching truly significant numbers and at some point this should start pressure to end the war. With the GA releasing the scans of the engagements and the casualty/POW lists to the SL press, someone is going to start asking WHY is this happening and what is SLN doing to get the POWs back

Hi Brigade XO,

I think BF bases are major GA targets, especially the reserve, as eliminating the BF club will be critical to fragmenting the SL.

Slowly killing the FF TG's as Zavala probably mentioned in his After Action Report may indeed become the standard GA tactic.

Regarding SLN casualties, I believe the active BF was around 13 million, while the FF had at least 8 million more, so something near 12% has been removed so far.

Destroying the BF reserve won't reduce the remaining crewmen by much, except for the defending BF forces, but once the SLN losses reaches 30% or above, the SLN cohesion comes into question.

Once the BF is removed as a threat to the rest of the SL, going after the remaining navy bases, ie FF would be a priority.

Given the commissioning of the next 400 RHN SDP's this fall thru the winter, the GA could easily send a pair of SDP's with a couple of CLAC's and escorts, or even old SD's with several hundred MDM pods to all the FF and SLN bases left to reduce them to slag and debris.

I'd be surprised if there were more than 100-150 FF bases left after dealing with the BF and its infrastructure.

The time needed to do this might be only 4 month's into 1923 PD, so how long after that could the SL continue to survive?

Regarding the thread's tech disinformation ploy, there ought to be several concepts we never heard of that might be suitable, and who knows what RFC has in store.

Certainly Charles is going to crop up again in another anthology.

L

Brigade XO wrote:If you want to remove ships from the SLN order of battle and don't want to go after BF bases, you are going to have to either destroy the OFS/FF bases and/or go after squadrons of mostly FF ships now deployed or soon to be sent out as raiders.

You could take a leaf from Mike's (and other's) books and, when attacking a detachment of FF you 1st demand surrender and then start killing ships one or two at a time starting with the most dangerous. Shortly the survivors should get the message and 1) abandon and scuttle or surrender. Either way you take all of the ships out of FF ability to use and while you will need to deal with prisoners you will kill as few of the SLN crew as possible.

While the Mandarins might not be thinking in terms of what they are facing in killed or captured SLN personal, all of the casualties and POWs are reaching truly significant numbers and at some point this should start pressure to end the war. With the GA releasing the scans of the engagements and the casualty/POW lists to the SL press, someone is going to start asking WHY is this happening and what is SLN doing to get the POWs back

Theemile wrote:The problem withthis is the weapons on the fearless worked perfectly. They did the job they were supposed to do. A Grav Lance at 150,000 KM will pop a side wall - any sidewall like nobody's business and even a couple e-torps will eat the bigest, most armored ship as a light snack.

It's the implementation that sucked, the doctrine that was unusable. When mounted on SDs or even BCs in a pre-1880 environmnet, it would have been a showstopper. If it hadn't been for the laserhead, then the pod, The Gravlance would have been used numerous times in the 1st Havenite war. But instead of the main event, the energy dual became the event to avoid at all costs, and the Grav lance/e-torp combo became an historical footnote.

I suspect that after the first time or two it gets used the losing side will just know to roll behind their wedges and break off before the fight closes to grav-lance range. (Which is significantly shorter than laser / graser range)

Remember, breaking off and retreating was already the pattern; you rarely got decisive victories unless you could pin the enemy against something he was unwilling to lose. Although with overwhelming numbers you could probably put forces large enough to fight him on enough vectors that he couldn't roll wedge against all of them simultaneously.

The grav-lance would, in my opinion, be more likely to encourage that tactical pattern than to break it. Even if a Manticoran fleet can force a superior Peep formation to break off to avoid entering grav-lance range, there's nothing stopping the Peep from reengaging once they've cleared the range some.