A Tactical Problem for your Consideration

kzt wrote: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....

This is what bothered me about the introduction of heat-radiating fins in one of the most recent stories. Aside from the retcon-ish feel (gotta support the wing look in the new canon), how are ships supposed to be stealthy with these heat beacons? I was happier in my ignorant presumption of no waste heat dissipation.

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.

(Replying to your post, but mostly discussing MuonNeutrino's plans)
Yep, attempting to use the wormhole to evacuate is very likely to get your force destroyed. Even single drive missiles coasting in post-burnout on ballistic have a good chance of shredding your forces. You can't use most of your defenses and you're going to be in an extremely predicable location. So you're at risk even while beyond the normal range of the enemy (unless they're so far out that their missiles literally can't reach detonation point before you hyper through the wormhole)


Someone might be able to get a warning courier out under fire, but they'd need other ships nearby providing defensive fire - keep the enemy from simply lobbing missiles in on ballistic to nail the courier.


The flip side is that his plan 2 doesn't need the forces defending this terminus to jump through to set an ambush on the other end. Manticore already has other forces there, and even with no prior warning they'd be able to tear up anybody (even SDs) that tried to transit the wormhole. Yielding this terminus denies its use to you, but until the SLN sends forces through hyper to drive the defenders off the far end its also useless to them.

1) Send your picket through the wormhole to warn the other side that you have been engaged by a significant enemy force.

2) Let the Sollies have the wormhole. Flush the defensively deployed pods of large missiles at the Solly SD's, with sufficient numbers for almost certain kills on each. Crippled is fine, they don't have to be destroyed.

3) Run away from the rest, blowing up anything that is both fast enough and stupid enough to try to engage. Use only internal tubes, if possible. Do not use pods or limpeted smaller missile pods

4A) Wait for reinforcements.

4B) Send in Recon drones, verify exactly where all the Sollies are, and carefully approach with the most stealthy ships, all of which should be carrying every limpeted pod they can manage. Approach with hot hyper generators. Flush pods on the most dangerous enemies, and hyper out.

4B might be repeatable a few times, but the older ships might not be able to participate because the Solly sensors can potentially pick them up. So their ammo would be used to restock the more stealthy ships.

If the enemy is cataphract-armed, everything flushes on the Solly SD's as soon as the first Cataphract is detected, then tighten formation and run.

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.

Fillereta was competent, even if his personal life was loathsome.

Does defending the wormhole mean you have to sit on top of it? I could visualize a scenario where you simply parked the major portion of your force in hyper and when the bad guys show up, have a destroyer hyper out to give you warning and then when the bad guys hyper in you hyper in behind them out of their missile range and then smash them.

It seems to me that the secret here is generating a scenario that puts you within your own missile envelop and keeps you out of the bad guys range, more or like what Honor and Alfredo arranged at Sidemore.

Don

n7axw wrote:Does defending the wormhole mean you have to sit on top of it? I could visualize a scenario where you simply parked the major portion of your force in hyper and when the bad guys show up, have a destroyer hyper out to give you warning and then when the bad guys hyper in you hyper in behind them out of their missile range and then smash them.

It seems to me that the secret here is generating a scenario that puts you within your own missile envelop and keeps you out of the bad guys range, more or like what Honor and Alfredo arranged at Sidemore.

Don

Fights in hyper, in a grav wave like I think you get around a WH, are not favorable to the RMN. So I have my doubts that this is a good idea, the obvious SLN plan is go beat the hell out of the force in hyper in an energy range fight.

kzt wrote:

n7axw wrote:Does defending the wormhole mean you have to sit on top of it? I could visualize a scenario where you simply parked the major portion of your force in hyper and when the bad guys show up, have a destroyer hyper out to give you warning and then when the bad guys hyper in you hyper in behind them out of their missile range and then smash them.

It seems to me that the secret here is generating a scenario that puts you within your own missile envelop and keeps you out of the bad guys range, more or like what Honor and Alfredo arranged at Sidemore.

Don

Fights in hyper, in a grav wave like I think you get around a WH, are not favorable to the RMN. So I have my doubts that this is a good idea, the obvious SLN plan is go beat the hell out of the force in hyper in an energy range fight.

No, not every wormhole is associated with a grav wave in hyperspace. Manticore's, for instance, is not in a grav wave. You are either thinking of the description of the wormhole itself as being a kind of grav wave, or you are thinking of Resonance, which is a completely different phenomenon. Resonance does not affect hyperspace itself--it only affects transitions from hyperspace into normal space.

Send one Culverin through to warn the SEM that I'm about to fall back from the wormhole Fire every pod I can get in range at the SDs. Increase the range between your ships and theirs asap and have the destroyers firing any ECM heads they have to counter any missiles they get off before you are out of their range. After that survive and evade until reinforcements arrive and if the enemy commander tries to split his forces to box you in hammer any small enough for you to damage quickly but never let yourself be caught in range of multiple groups of enemy ships.

I've got a few questions, and a few observations:

What's on the other end of my wormhole? You don't just guard one end.
How many missile control channels are available?
How many missile pods can be tractored to the ships?

A Saganami-C has 128 missile control channels. The Agamemnon BCP is almost 6 times bigger, and is a pod design with Keyhole-1 (Mk 20 according to House Of Steel). I would expect at least 4 times as many channels. This means something around 1,600 to 2,000 channels total for all ships.

People are assuming it takes 200 Mk23 missiles to kill a Sollie SD. We know from the Great Solly Ass-Kicking At Spindle that Henke and Terekhov's fire plan was a case of over-over-overkill (over^3kill?). If you can kill them with 80-85 missiles, there are enough Mk23 pods to go around so nobody feels left out.

Is a ISLN Scientist really a SD, or more of a slightly overweight DN? It's smaller than a Bellerophon-class DN after all.

Since the ISLN has obviously been scouting my station, I would keep a couple of the destroyers cruising around in hyper looking for uninvited guests so as not to get caught with my pants down.
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"That hurt!"
"It's an ass-kickin'. It's supposed to hurt."

kzt wrote:

n7axw wrote:Does defending the wormhole mean you have to sit on top of it? I could visualize a scenario where you simply parked the major portion of your force in hyper and when the bad guys show up, have a destroyer hyper out to give you warning and then when the bad guys hyper in you hyper in behind them out of their missile range and then smash them.

It seems to me that the secret here is generating a scenario that puts you within your own missile envelop and keeps you out of the bad guys range, more or like what Honor and Alfredo arranged at Sidemore.

Don

Fights in hyper, in a grav wave like I think you get around a WH, are not favorable to the RMN. So I have my doubts that this is a good idea, the obvious SLN plan is go beat the hell out of the force in hyper in an energy range fight.

Another downside is that the cycle time on the hyper generators means that by the time someone can go Paul Revere and bring the whole force down anybody exiting the wormhole would have time to clear the "lane" and bring up their wedge. That means that even obsolete SLN junk takes more missiles to kill than if you'd been hanging out in n-space within 8-10 million km of the terminus "lane".

Now because of the RZ I don't think, even on a small wormhole, that someone could hyper in close enough to make it through the wormhole before defenders from hyper could repond. (And in theory you're holding both ends of the wormhole so you shouldn't have enemies transiting it. Even if they drove off the far terminus's defenders they shouldn't risk coming through. But that's theory - not necessarily practice)

Of course while in hyper you do have the risk of an enemy changing bands and emerging within SDM, or even energy range, of you. But if you're out by the terminus (and outside the RZ) you have a similar risk of someone dropping from hyper within range of you.


(Side query, because I can't quite remember. I know the Manticoran Junction's RZ is the biggest and most dangerous, but is the RZ of any terminus too dangerous to drop out of hyper within? And if so is that true of the entire RZ cone spreading from the terminus to the hyper limit of the star, or do weaker termini have RZ that are only dangerous for some of that distance?)