A Tactical Problem for your Consideration

drothgery wrote: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.

I wonder how many of those 'competent flag officers' have been bought and paid for by the MAlign , or are actually 'generational mole' MAlign plants.

Dafmeister wrote:

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.

The premise was that the enemy scouts were detected. But remember that Solarian stealth is pretty good. Can you guarantee that those Sollie destroyers haven't done exactly what both Haven and Manticore have done before--drop stealthed drones to cruise the system and transmit updated information when the fleet drops in?

Alright, I'll admit that you definitely managed to pique my interest with this. I'll take a stab at my own response, here. Warning - multi-thousand word wall of text incoming!

Disclaimer: I have read the thread up through yesterday’s posts, so I do have the benefit of the discussion that had taken place up to that point. I had not read the ones after that at the time I wrote this, on the off chance there are any tactical gems there.

As an aside, it may well be reasonable to argue that the setup for how these sollie admirals got so many ships may be contrived. That said, it doesn’t affect the tactical problem or make it any less interesting, so I don’t think it really matters how they got so many ships - we can always substitute some other explanation.

Anyway, on to the tactical problem. First, I will be making a few assumptions here:
1) My BC(P) are most likely loaded with MK16E pods. (330 each = 9240 Mk16)
2) My ships all have upgraded compensators, so the practical limitation on task force accel is the acceleration of my BC(P) (~680g) and therefore that I can vastly out-accelerate any of the enemy forces.
3) I have the capacity to lug all of my pods along with me, limpeted to my ships’ hulls.

Apart from that, I will make the disclaimer that I do not have figures immediately available to me on things like the exact accelerations of various ship classes that are not on the wiki, hyper generator cycle times, the range of solly missiles, etc (my copy of HoS is also elsewhere right at the moment). If I want to treat the problem in more detail, I would greatly appreciate if anyone would point me to a place where those figures may be available.

In terms of pre-battle preparation, given the demonstrated ability of ghost rider platforms to remain active for very extended deployments if they do not have to maneuver, I think it is entirely reasonable to have a shell of platforms in place surrounding the terminus. I also think that given my vulnerable position outside the hyper limit, it is reasonable to assume that I will leave my ships with hot nodes, probably station-keeping wedges, and at at least a partial state of readiness. It is not reasonable to have them at general quarters the entire time, but I will maintain approximately a third of my ships at a heightened state of readiness on a rotating basis. The objective here would be to enable them to begin laying down salvoes of pod fire on incoming hostiles while the task force rushes to battle stations, so essentially this would require a heavier than normal tactical watch.

Once the actual battle is joined, whatever tactical approach I may take, the first step is to send my dispatch boat back to Manticore at top speed with a full tactical download, an explanation of my intentions, and an urgent request for reinforcements. I am assuming I have a dispatch boat because I find it unlikely that the admiralty would leave a task force commander without the ability to send messages in exactly this sort of emergency. If I do not have a dispatch boat, the Culverin class destroyer HMS Carronade will be sent instead, at a slight cost to flexibility in the tactical plans that follow.

That preliminary measure aside, I see two primary approaches that I could take - an aggressive one and a defensive one.

Tactical plan 1: the aggressive approach

This plan intends to meet this threat by attempting to destroy as much of the attacking solarian fleet as possible and/or forcing the remainder to retreat. It will require temporarily conceding the terminus in order to maneuver against the enemy, but it gives me the best chance of destroying a significant part of their force.

The first measure I take is to detach two of my older destroyers as pickets. The Culverin class destroyer HMS Bombard will translate the terminus with orders to picket the far side, while the Culverin class destroyer HMS Mortar will jump to hyper with orders to move far enough from the terminus to drop back into realspace undetected and picket this side. These destroyers are my insurance policy - if the worst happens and my force is destroyed, Bombard will alert any incoming GA forces and warn them not to translate into the energy fire of 36 sollie SDs, while Mortar will alert any GA forces returning from strikes and expecting to use the terminus.

The most obvious response to this attack is to move away from the terminus to attempt to maintain distance from the incoming forces, given that I outrange them handily. However, the sollies know this as well by now, and if they’re as smart as they seem they will be able to predict this response. Therefore, I will not do that, since even a couple of divisions of SDs dropping out of hyper within energy range would be able to wipe out my entire force.

Instead, I will remain stationary just clear of the terminus and open fire on the lighter FF detachment with my external Mk16 pods, starting with the battlecruisers. I am in range, but the sollies are not, so even with having to rush to battle stations I should be able to get off a good number of unopposed salvoes. This force is both easier to kill and more likely to be able to catch me later on, so it is the logical first target.

At Spindle, Saganami-C CAs are noted as having 128 control links each for 40 missile tubes (20 in each broadside, designed to fire off-bore 40 missile salvoes at any bearing). Saganami-B cruisers have slightly more tubes (19 in each broadside plus chasers) and retain the off-bore capability, but fire Mk14s rather than Mk16s. They probably do not have as much fire control, but 100 control links each does not seem unreasonable to me, and although their tubes do not fire mk16s I see no reason why their modern fire control cannot manage pod-launched mk16s. (After all, we know that units equipped with mk16s are still capable of managing pod-launched mk23s.) As a pod design, Agamemnons almost certainly have much more fire control, probably in the neighborhood of 200 links if not more. Rolands can manage a double-stacked salvo of 24 missiles (if not more - they *do* mass almost as much as a pre-war heavy cruiser). All together, this equates to at least 650 mk16 control links. (I am not aware of any references as to whether the older ships’ fire control can manage MDM fire. If they can, they may perhaps add another couple hundred control links, but I am doubtful that this is the case. They are mostly there to thicken the anti-missile defenses if something goes wrong, or they can participate if it comes down to a SDM-range fight to finish off lighter solly units.)

At any rate, even with only my modern ships I have the ability to lay down salvoes of over 600 missiles. This is about 9 salvoes before I exhaust my external pods. I do not have super precise figures, but my back of the envelope calculations suggest that both sollie forces will take more than 20 minutes to reach single drive missile range of me. Meanwhile, my own mk16s will have a flight time of less than 4 minutes. Even firing at only one salvo per minute, I will exhaust my external pods and have all salvoes reach their targets at least 5 minutes before the sollies can return fire. (We know this kind of fire rate is possible - witness Saltash. IMO the delay in firing follow-on salvoes at Spindle must represent intentional emphasis on the part of the manties.) This is 5600 mk16s, delivered in salvoes more than large enough to swamp the (weak) sollie missile defenses. Assuming about 20% are EW birds and that they stop about 10% of the incoming fire as Crandall’s fleet did at spindle, that’s enough for about 170 hits per BC, which should be more than enough to kill them.

My internal launchers and pods from the BC(P)s will more than suffice to deal with the CLs and DDs, especially given the disparity in missile defense capability. (That is, even inside of single drive missile range, a GA force can probably quite confidently expect to annihilate an equal size sollie force with relatively low losses, simply because we can stop the vast majority of their missiles while they can’t stop more than a small fraction of ours. This won’t help against SDs, but my force could quite probably take on the FF force even in SDM range once the BCs are out of the equation. I don’t *intend* to get into range, but even if I do the FF force is unlikely to be able to hurt me once I take out its BCs.)

I will continue to fire, picking off the remainder of the FF detachment, until either the sollie SDs fire cataphracts at me (if they have them) or until they are within their own single-drive missile range and have fired their first salvo, and then I will cease fire and translate out into hyper. (I will immediately begin to bring my hyper generators up when the enemy appears. I am assuming that on these smaller ships, hyper generators that are being held at readiness are capable of cycling up to a translation before the incoming salvo arrives. If it takes longer than that, I will of course begin my translation earlier.) I have sufficient Mk16 missiles available that I can afford to abandon one or two of the smaller follow-on salvoes in flight when I translate out, and I should be able to put enough missiles on target to essentially destroy the FF detachment.

In hyper, I can maneuver to any point I wish in the vicinity of the terminus very quickly. I will use this to gain an advantageous position without allowing the enemy to drop in on me along the way. The next target is the BF detachment. I will drop out of hyper on a vector that crosses their kilts outside of single-drive missile range (or, if they fired cataphracts at me, outside of cataphract range) - they may have altered heading since I hypered out, but they should not have been able to significantly alter their vector in that time, so I should still come out at approximately the right range. I will immediately begin bringing my hyper generators back to readiness, and while I cross I will empty my Mk23 pods up their kilts.

I only have about 110 missiles per SD, unfortunately, even assuming they don’t stop any (they won’t stop *many*, but they still will stop some). Therefore, I won’t be able to destroy all of the sollie SDs - I simply don’t have enough capital-weight warheads. Assuming that it takes about 200 hits to destroy one, and again assuming that approximately 20% of my mk23s are EW birds and that they stop roughly the same 10% of missiles that Crandall’s fleet did, I can probably kill about 14 enemy SDs. If I’m content to hit each target with only 150 missiles, I can attack about 19 instead - I probably won’t kill all of them outright, but the survivors will almost certainly be combat ineffective. It may even be plausible to go for about 100 hits each on about 28 targets - in that case I am unlikely to kill very many, but I will most likely batter each of them severely enough to greatly cut back their combat power, possibly enough that I may be able to finish off the cripples with mk16s.

With the same approximately 600 control channels it will take me about 6-7 salvoes to fire off every mk23 I have. This should, again, take less than 15 minutes from opening fire to last salvo impact. As soon as the last salvo hits, I will translate out again, hopefully before any ambushing forces have had time to be contacted and maneuver into position to drop out of hyper in front of me. I will also toss in at least one radical course change sometime during this firing pass, simply to further complicate their interception plans. I will drop back in on another passing vector, probably down one flank, and try to finish off as many cripples as I can with my internal (both magazine and pod) stores of mk16s. I probably don’t have the capability to *destroy* every SD, but I can inflict horrific losses on them and probably severely degrade the combat power of the remainder by damaging their outer layers (outside their core hulls) and thereby destroying weapon emplacements and sensor arrays and perhaps getting a few lucky node hits.

If they refuse to break off, they can still probably take the terminus away from me. However, they will be in absolutely no shape to fight any of the various GA task forces that will be returning this way, and once they arrive we should be able to retake the terminus. In the meantime, I can break off, hyper out again, and go into stealth to picket the terminus. Running dark they should not be able to track me well enough to ambush me, and I can keep an eye on the situation until more forces arrive. Meanwhile, my reinforcements coming from Manticore, warned by Bombard, can take up station on the other side of the terminus until this side has been retaken.

If the enemy fleet has cataphracts, the situation is more complicated, mostly because I will need to hyper out sooner, probably before the FF detachment is completely destroyed, and the remainder of my engagements will need to take place at a longer range sufficient to stay outside of cataphract range. However, I will still inflict massive damage on the FF detachment, and as long as I stay on my toes and make use of my mobility (and repeatedly hyper out to frustrate attempts to ambush me from hyper) the slow-footed solly forces will still find it hard to force me into range. I will inflict lower casualties overall, but I will still kill a lot of them, and I should still be able to picket the system until help arrives.

The weakness of this approach is that it requires me to concede the terminus. If the sollies wish, they could transit it and screw up our use of the entire chain, since I could not transit after them without risking transiting right into energy range of several dozen SDs. If the other termini are as strongly defended as mine they will be unlikely to be able to take any of them away from us, but it would still lead to quite the wild goose chase tracking them down. Thus, the other possible tactical plan....

Tactical plan 2: the defensive approach

In this case, my first action (after sending off my dispatch boat/message destroyer) would be to detach four of my Culverin class destroyers: HMS Bombard, HMS Mortar, HMS Howitzer, and HMS Parrott. These destroyers would have orders to hyper out immediately, move far enough away to drop back into realspace without being detected, and picket the terminus and warn returning GA forces of the situation.

Meanwhile, the remainder of my force will transit the terminus in a single mass transit. This should destabilize it for at least a little while, enough time for me to regroup and set up to blow the ever loving crap out of anything that tries to follow me through.

Weber is on record as saying that ships exiting a wormhole are left vulnerable, stuck on sails, for a time on the order of a minute or so, until they can exit the terminus and safely raise their wedge or sidewalls. It is also known that effective energy range is longer against a target without sidewalls, and therefore that a ship with sidewalls up can be in effective energy range of a sidewall-less target without the target being in effective energy range in return. With that in mind, if I have my entire force hanging out at close range of the terminus, within energy range of a sidewall-less target but outside of effective energy return fire against my sidewall-protected ships, supported by massive shoals of missile pods at a range close enough that flight time is on the order of seconds, and with the ability to target the unarmored topsides and bottoms of the wedge-less enemy ships, I can confidently expect to absolutely annihilate any solly force that tries to poke its nose through the wormhole after me. Even if I can only maintain a third or so of my force on the terminus at GQ on a rotating basis, the missile pods will still ensure my long-term ability to bar the wormhole. (This has been confirmed by David several times - in the age of laserheads, opposed wormhole transits are essentially impossible.)

In this case, with my picket destroyers to keep an eye on the situation and prevent returning GA forces from running unawares into the enemy SDs, and with an iron lock on the wormhole even before my own reinforcements arrive, I can keep the enemy force bottled up pretty much indefinitely. I also do not run nearly as great of a risk of the destruction of my force if the enemy manages to do something unexpected, and I do not allow the sollies access to the wormhole. The drawback of this approach is that *we* can’t access the wormhole either, since they can set up the same defense on the other side, and therefore that this wormhole will be closed unless the returning GA forces can retake the other side or until we can get forces to the other side the long way around.

The aggressive plan offers the greatest scope to damage the enemy, and the greatest chance of convincing them to break off and retreat. However, it is also the riskier of the two, and if the enemy has the stomach to absorb their losses they can still take the terminus and also gain the ability to transit it. The defensive plan is much safer and offers the enemy essentially no response or chance to gain the ability to transit the terminus, but it will result in less enemy casualties and risks allowing the sollies to bottle up the terminus for much longer.

Overall, despite their numbers, the sollie force is still on the short end of the stick either way, assuming they don’t have any surprises up their sleeves. However, the GA forces will definitely have to work for it this time, and they are unlikely to be able to pull off a complete victory.

You can't practically do a WH transition under fire. You have no wedge or sidewalls, you cannot use CMs and you PDLCs arcs are very restricted. You will get torn to pieces by even mediocre missile fire.

kzt wrote:You can't practically do a WH transition under fire. You have no wedge or sidewalls, you cannot use CMs and you PDLCs arcs are very restricted. You will get torn to pieces by even mediocre missile fire.

Was that directed towards my second plan? That is kinda the point - once I set up on the other side of the wormhole, they cannot follow me. They are not in range to fire on me when they first hyper in, so unless transiting a wormhole takes upwards of 20 minutes they should not be able to bring me under fire before I transit. If they have cataphracts that is of course no longer true, but in that case I should still be able to translate into hyper and revert to a variant of the first plan before being destroyed. (If hyper generator cycle times and missile flight times make it impossible to hyper out before a cataphract salvo could arrive, then the whole tactical problem is impossible anyway and so it's a moot point.)

I'm not going to try and respond to all the interesting and thoughtful posts here,except to express my gratitude that so many put some thought into this.

Some of my scenario may not have been as thoughtful as I had hoped (hey, I'm a deskbound bureaucrat, not a military genius). But I did want to try and present the Forum with a Scenario that wasn't a 'slam-dunk' and would let us postulate where the MWW may choose to go in the next book (or not-beware the whims of Mad Wizards...)

As I noted in the opening post, we've got at least a year until the next book, and finding topics to discuss that are not repeats of repeats (mercifully, there hasn't been a Frigate thread in months, albeit the only spaceship combat operation in Cauldron of Ghosts involved..... ).

Plus I wanted to try naming a bunch of ships--I think I did pretty good at that....

Now, back to my next project: The Grand Alliance Grand Attack plan....

SWM wrote:The premise was that the enemy scouts were detected. But remember that Solarian stealth is pretty good. Can you guarantee that those Sollie destroyers haven't done exactly what both Haven and Manticore have done before--drop stealthed drones to cruise the system and transmit updated information when the fleet drops in?

You assume that they did drop recon drones, go looking for them, and then assume you didn't find them all. However, information from those drones can't be picked up until the attack force makes its final alpha translation, so it's useless for determining where to make that translation.

Plus Solarian RDs don't have much endurance at all.

Dafmeister wrote:

SWM wrote:The premise was that the enemy scouts were detected. But remember that Solarian stealth is pretty good. Can you guarantee that those Sollie destroyers haven't done exactly what both Haven and Manticore have done before--drop stealthed drones to cruise the system and transmit updated information when the fleet drops in?

You assume that they did drop recon drones, go looking for them, and then assume you didn't find them all. However, information from those drones can't be picked up until the attack force makes its final alpha translation, so it's useless for determining where to make that translation.

Up until the time the fleet comes in, you can't tell how they are going to do it. The could send in one scout, just like they had before, who picks up the intelligence and jumps back out to inform the fleet. Then the fleet comes in. It would be foolish to put ships out in harm's way without wedges when you might be under observation by drones.

Duckk wrote:Plus Solarian RDs don't have much endurance at all.

We don't really know how much endurance they have.