A Tactical Problem for your Consideration

kzt wrote:One of the problems with the whole GA WH strategy is that it depends on squadrons at GQ for months. This tends to end badly.

Somehow, I think they'll come up with something a little more practical than that. If there's anyone in the galaxy that knows how to defend a wormhole terminus, it's the RMN.

The SLN squadrons must have calculated the worst possible range to hyper in at. With no hyper limit or RZ mentioned, knife range could be ugly as noted before. Farther out, they could hyper back out before at least some of those salvos arrived ... And then micro-jump behind the rest of those salvos. Or all the way in to knife range again. Either way, the defenders have lots of empty pods, and at least a squadron of very live SD's to handle. It would take a coldly calculating admiral to take those losses before the alpha nodes finished cycling, but that might be the most likely to succeed.

So I think hypering in at close range is the more dangerous basic attack plan. The only defense I'm coming up with is to have a software fire planning subsystem do the targeting and fire before the attackers can clear their sensor picture after translating down to n-space. And hope it's fast enough to cut them down to size before they get their own missiles (or grasers) off.

GA missile defense has relied on depth more than stiffness at any one layer. There would only be time for so much defense at these short ranges.

Sadly, I don't have time this morning to work the numbers if they hyper in at 1m km or 500k (graser range), or do it in two steps to suck off the pods.

Dca wrote:The SLN squadrons must have calculated the worst possible range to hyper in at. With no hyper limit or RZ mentioned, knife range could be ugly as noted before. Farther out, they could hyper back out before at least some of those salvos arrived ... And then micro-jump behind the rest of those salvos. Or all the way in to knife range again. Either way, the defenders have lots of empty pods, and at least a squadron of very live SD's to handle. It would take a coldly calculating admiral to take those losses before the alpha nodes finished cycling, but that might be the most likely to succeed.

So I think hypering in at close range is the more dangerous basic attack plan. The only defense I'm coming up with is to have a software fire planning subsystem do the targeting and fire before the attackers can clear their sensor picture after translating down to n-space. And hope it's fast enough to cut them down to size before they get their own missiles (or grasers) off.

GA missile defense has relied on depth more than stiffness at any one layer. There would only be time for so much defense at these short ranges.

Sadly, I don't have time this morning to work the numbers if they hyper in at 1m km or 500k (graser range), or do it in two steps to suck off the pods.

In ART in chapter 20 it is mentioned that the cycle time for a hyper generator is 20 minutes for a Sollie SD is 20 minutes. If they are cloisecenough to fire missles at, flight time will be less than that.

Vince wrote:Given the size of the egos of the SLN admirals involved, do you really think they will give up any of their toys to any of their rivals to play with?*

Byng was an exception in taking a Frontier Fleet task force because of his hatred of Manticore.

*Yes, if the SLN admirals are not spoiled children, they certainly act like they are.

The SLN is huge. Even with the MAlign actively working to prevent it, the odds are a handful of competent flag officers slipped in merely by random chance.

Essentially, you disperse you ships with ranges and attitudes needed to optimize the number of enemy ships that will be able to be immediately engaged with energy fire. Then you start your ships rolling as needed to give them 360 coverage and set weapons free on your fire control system. You know exactly where the rest of your squadron should be so the computers can exclude them in theory (and this is risky as hell anyhow).

Then you jump in as close to the center of the GA formation as possible and unload, under computer control, grasers and lasers at any non-friendly ship you detect. Then once your tactical section has a moment to understand where they are relative to the targets you fire your SDMs as fast as you can, with pods - if you have any - too.

You also start immediately cycling the hyper generators.

drothgery wrote:

Vince wrote:Given the size of the egos of the SLN admirals involved, do you really think they will give up any of their toys to any of their rivals to play with?*

Byng was an exception in taking a Frontier Fleet task force because of his hatred of Manticore.

*Yes, if the SLN admirals are not spoiled children, they certainly act like they are.

The SLN is huge. Even with the MAlign actively working to prevent it, the odds are a handful of competent flag officers slipped in merely by random chance.

True, but that random chance was used up by the two FF & BF Admirals in the command positions who decided to work together.* The other 99.99...95% of the SLN Admirals involved will be only marginally better than Byng.

Even having 2 SLN Admirals, one each from FF and BF being realistic about the situation and be willing to work together, stretches the bounds of credibility.

All of these options for attacking the terminus seem to be assuming that the GA force is just sitting on the terminus in plain sight. Of the GA commander is even remotely competent, that won't be the case. They'll be off the junction, in a position to rapidly bring an attacking force under long-range missile fire, with their stealth systems covering them. They may be lying with wedges down to avoid detection. They may be keeping most of their force in hyperspace. You won't know until you get eyes in-system, and good luck getting a scout in and out without being picked up.

Dafmeister wrote:All of these options for attacking the terminus seem to be assuming that the GA force is just sitting on the terminus in plain sight. Of the GA commander is even remotely competent, that won't be the case. They'll be off the junction, in a position to rapidly bring an attacking force under long-range missile fire, with their stealth systems covering them. They may be lying with wedges down to avoid detection. They may be keeping most of their force in hyperspace. You won't know until you get eyes in-system, and good luck getting a scout in and out without being picked up.

They would not be lying with wedges down. At a terminus, the enemy can translate inside their own firing range. It takes time to bring a wedge up, and you risk having your ship shot out from under you before your wedge is raised. And the premise stated that there had been enemy scouts in the system.

SWM wrote:They would not be lying with wedges down. At a terminus, the enemy can translate inside their own firing range. It takes time to bring a wedge up, and you risk having your ship shot out from under you before your wedge is raised. And the premise stated that there had been enemy scouts in the system.

I seriously question the premise that the SLN could get a scout in and out without being detected, and if it's detected the deployment will change. You can't translate within firing range if you don't know where the target is.

Dafmeister wrote:All of these options for attacking the terminus seem to be assuming that the GA force is just sitting on the terminus in plain sight. Of the GA commander is even remotely competent, that won't be the case. They'll be off the junction, in a position to rapidly bring an attacking force under long-range missile fire, with their stealth systems covering them. They may be lying with wedges down to avoid detection. They may be keeping most of their force in hyperspace. You won't know until you get eyes in-system, and good luck getting a scout in and out without being picked up.

This is not how the actual deployments have been shown in the text.