A Tactical Problem for your Consideration

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

And the way they and ghost rider drones are used are likely to be very different.

Though exactly how a tiny little drone with a multi-megawatt fusion reactor is supposed to be "stealthy" when it will be visually glowing due to black body radiation is just one those unexplained honorverse mysteries....

kzt wrote:

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

And the way they and ghost rider drones are used are likely to be very different.

Though exactly how a tiny little drone with a multi-megawatt fusion reactor is supposed to be "stealthy" when it will be visually glowing due to black body radiation is just one those unexplained honorverse mysteries....

SLN RDs seem to be fairly good, but less stealthy. In the beginning of the book series, Solarian stealth tech was at least as good as Manty stealth technology given SL tech was used for the missiles that almost got Elizabeth and Benjamin and did kill their prime minister types. If Honor hadn't been there playing 'sail plane' with her new ship, it would have succeeded. I think all the SLN needs to do is tweak the software a bit and add in a few more refinements. The RMN RDs are very likely to have longer endurance, but there's no reason for them to be all over better. Up to 10 years ago in the series, they were on par. So it shouldn't take that much to get them within spitting distance of SEM stealth capabilities within a year or so.

Where they will fall short is in the powerplant, miniaturization and the FTL, but I don't think it should be too hard to get a sample of the FTL tech. the SEM has hundreds of -thousands- of drones and platforms, of not millions, plus what has been damaged. It shouldn't be too hard for the SLN to get their hands on something. The MAlign has to be looking for it too and I can't believe that no one in the SEM or RH or even the Andermanis wouldn't succumb to the lure of money and sell a damaged one or six, or 'lose' one in just doing business of shipping uncounted millions of items here and there.. People are people after all and not everyone would be a card toting patriot of their nation.

Edit: I realized this probably isn't the thread for my post, so ignore it. >_>

One should never underestimate the power of plot.

For example, the process of science doesn't work really well when you only have government employees with security clearance doing basic research and publishing in classified publications across all the fields needed.

And I have now realized that I need to go back and change my plan. Oh well.

It was pointed out to me that Weber has said several times that you can't do the sort of precise microjumping I was thinking of. I don't know how I managed to forget this, given that as soon as it was mentioned the various passages immediately sprang to mind, but somehow I managed it. So, I can't do what I was planning. Looking back on it, I'm also just being too fancy in general, and I have a feeling Murphy would put in an appearance.

So, new aggressive plan. Still starts by detaching pickets, but after that, nothing fancy. Unload every mk23 pod into the SDs immediately while spooling up the hyper generators. Fire plans such as to hit each SD with 150 hits with maximum salvo sizes I can throw, and keep going until I run out of pods (given 650 missile salvoes, 20% EW birds, and 10% intercepted, I can hit 3 per salvo, so that's 18 SDs). At this range I can even fire at maximum accel rather than the normal low-power mode, which the sollies *really* won't like. I will also fire at 30 second intervals, because the objective is to throw as many missiles as possible before I'm forced off the terminus. If Zavala can fire accurately at 30 second intervals in Saltash, then I can fire at 30 second intervals here.

I can empty my mk23 pods in 6 salvoes, or 2.5 minutes from the order to fire. Give a couple minutes to get set, and I can still have 4000 mk23 downrange while the sollies are still 15 minutes from their own range. Flight times are under 3 minutes, so my first salvo is landing just as I'm firing the last one. At that point I switch to mk16 pods, and keep firing with the goal of landing the same ~150 hits on each remaining undamaged SD. I will not kill any this way, but I will shoot the heck out of their weapon emplacements and sensor arrays and probably knock out a few impeller nodes. I can still target 3 SDs with each salvo, so it will take me another 6 salvoes to target each remaining undamaged SD, or another 3 minutes. Alternatively, I can hit two per salvo for about 225 hits each, and work my way through the rest of them in 9 salvoes over 4.5 minutes. This will use up either 3900 or 5850 of my total of 14,840 mk16 missiles.

Either way, at this point the sollies are probably still at least 10 minutes from their own SDM range. Each SD has been battered. Of the 18 I was able to target with mk23s, a number of them are likely destroyed or hulked, and the rest are probably crippled. None of the remainder are likely to be in danger of exploding, but they've all lost large amounts of their surface emplacements and are significantly less combat effective.

At this point, the best bet is probably to kill as many battlecruisers as I can. I should have time for another dozen salvoes at least before I have to worry about hypering out. I can probably kill three solly BCs with each of them, so 12 salvoes is enough to kill all 36 sollie BCs. That uses up another 7800 mk16s, leaving me with either 3140 or 1190 mk16s, and takes another 6 minutes.

By now the sollies have to be wondering just what kind of sausage grinder they just stuck their... fingers into. Note that ART states that a solly SD's hyper generator can cycle in 16 minutes, so this is about how long it'd take before they could run away again. If they decide to break off, that's great, I win. If not, I keep working down the tonnage brackets starting with the CAs, and I keep firing until I run out of pods or the sollies get into range, at which point I hyper out (no microjumps here, just running). Each salvo can probably kill four CAs or CLs, so I can knock out roughly 8-20 of them with my remaining 2-5 salvoes.

I may not be able to prevent them from taking the wormhole given that I can't kill *all* of them before they reach me, but they'll be damn lucky if they have even 25% of their combat power left when the dust settles. I can picket the system as long as necessary, and when those GA strike forces return the sollies had better hope they've got their running shoes laced up.

This also gives them very little room to do anything fancy. About the only surprise they could pull would be to have cataphracts, and all this does is force me to hyper out sooner. I'll still get my mk23s off, and I'll still shoot the heck out of about 18 SDs. And if they blow enough of their cataphracts shooting at targets that'll hyper out before the salvoes arrive, I may even be able to come back for a second go at them. (If I *can't* hyper out before the cataphract salvoes arrive, then, as I said before, the entire tactical problem is unwinnable anyway and it's a moot point.)

And, of course, I can still try the defensive plan as well, though I think this one is a superior option.

edit: fixing silly number mistake.

SWM wrote:

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

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

We can infer from endurance shown from the Andies FTL RD birds in WoH. It is measured in a handful of hours at best.

The energy needed to accelerate a 150 ton missile to 0.8c over a few minutes should allow a low level of acceleration for quite a long time.

MuonNeutrino wrote:So, new aggressive plan. Still starts by detaching pickets, but after that, nothing fancy. Unload every mk23 pod into the SDs immediately while spooling up the hyper generators. Fire plans such as to hit each SD with 150 hits with maximum salvo sizes I can throw, and keep going until I run out of pods ...

Two points to consider:

1) Almost all Mk16E's will have been upgraded to Mk16E-1 standard and those are as powerful as first war capital missiles.

2) Standard Manticoran doctrine has been to talk to opponents both to avoid action if possible and to identify the opposing force commander(s)/flagship(s).

The first step in an aggressive response would be to target the commander(s) and work your way down until you find someone to surrender the survivors.

FWIW, I think you're making the same overestimation of salvo requirements to Kill SLN ships as RMN commanders have been making. IIRC, the initial estimate was that it would take 100 missiles to destroy a SLN SD, but that proved to be about double the actual requirement at Spindle; you're planning on three times as many hits as should be required.

Weird Harold wrote:1) Almost all Mk16E's will have been upgraded to Mk16E-1 standard and those are as powerful as first war capital missiles.

I think you're slightly mis-remembering the relative power - Helen's internal monologue in Storm From the Shadows says that the MK16G has 'very nearly as much punch as an all-up capital missile from as recently as five or six T-years ago'. In Shadow of Freedom it says that the mod G is more powerful than a solly trebuchet capital missile, so apparently RMN capital missiles are a bit more powerful than solly ones (not surprising) and the mod G is right in that general bracket.

Meanwhile, that same monologue in SFtS says that the mod E-1 had 'only' doubled its power compared to the mod G's factor of 5, so a mod E-1 is probably only 40% of a capital missile.

That said, I was assuming I just had the original mk16 since the scenario made no mention of mk16E-1s, but yes, if I have mk16E-1s, I may well be able to just blow up all of them. It would probably still be hard to actually destroy the SDs with the number of missiles I have, but each of them is going to take a hell of a lot more of a pounding from the missiles I can hit them with, and I'll have more of them to use on the SDs since I'll need less to take out the lighter ships. I'm still not sure I can stop them *all* short of their range of me, but I definitely can hit them really, really hard.

2) Standard Manticoran doctrine has been to talk to opponents both to avoid action if possible and to identify the opposing force commander(s)/flagship(s).

The first step in an aggressive response would be to target the commander(s) and work your way down until you find someone to surrender the survivors.

Normally, yes, but in this case I don't believe it's reasonable to try and do that. They just pincered the wormhole with 36 wallers and over 100 total ships - they're obviously not here to talk. In this case, pausing to have conversations is just going to use up enough time that I *can't* hit them hard enough to force a surrender before they can range on me. There are limits to how far I have to bend over backwards to avoid killing the people who are trying to kill me. Taking out the command ship to force a surrender is for when you're in control of the situation, not when you're the one on the receiving end of the ambush.

FWIW, I think you're making the same overestimation of salvo requirements to Kill SLN ships as RMN commanders have been making. IIRC, the initial estimate was that it would take 100 missiles to destroy a SLN SD, but that proved to be about double the actual requirement at Spindle; you're planning on three times as many hits as should be required.

According to Mission of Honor, at Spindle the calculations were that "experience... indicated that two hundred to two hundred and fifty Mark 23 hits would destroy... even the latest Havenite SD(P)" - so they hit the SDs with 400 missiles each for overkill. I'm postulating that sollie SDs require less hits to kill than havenite ones, but I don't think they'll take *5* times less hits. Keep in mind that even with 400 missiles (and about 350 hits) per SD, 9 of the 23 targets still managed to avoid being destroyed outright. 150 missiles is probably slightly overkill, but not by *that* much.

kzt wrote:The energy needed to accelerate a 150 ton missile to 0.8c over a few minutes should allow a low level of acceleration for quite a long time.

Now don't go substituting science for power of plot on us now.

Sollie "SD" are really only DN's.

If 250 hits for Havenite, then at most we are looking at 150-200 for SLN SD with its inferior physical armor, inferior sidewalls, and inferior size.

We know that Spindle was severe overkill for instance. Filaretta is unknown.

As for missile defense, SLN units best showing was at Monica and it has been downhill from there. Now it is to the point that RMN is using the missile defense systems on the SLN ships as homing beacons. Number of lasing rods per missile actually HITTING the ships is increasing. Thus total # missiles needing a target lock is also decreasing to MK an SLN ship.

If 150-200 is from pure physical specs of the ship compared to Havenite, then when one adds homing beacon lock from missile defense systems, I would have to drop the total to under 150 MK-23 missiles to MK a SLN SD.