Sphinx and Gryphon class SD

Zakharra wrote:I think the RMN's smaller ships are going to be resembling electrons, trying to be in four places at once when the commerce raiding starts. As will the SLN. all sides are going to need more of the smaller vessels.

Where the GA ships are used depends on the feelings of the nations in it. Will the SEM public really be comfortable with RHN ships possibly patrolling, running escort duty in Silesia or Talbot? Would the RH public like the idea of RMN ships passing through their space to the NE part of SL space? Only time and RFC will tell.

Jonathan_S wrote:Exactly how many escort ships will you need in Silesia? Isn't it the better part of a year's cruise from the League? Plus unlike before Manticore and the Andies have real system defenses in place - heavy enough to trash any pirate and most commerce raiding squadrons. Most of the convoy work before was just to have ships to secure the bubble of n-space around the convoy on each end. Maybe you still need to convoy across the Rift, but otherwise ships should be quite safe to route freely between any Silesian systems knowing that the SLN is unlikely to be able to defeat the system defenses to lurk in wait.

Now resuming trading out into the Verge is a bit of a different story, but will probably be less volume than trading within the GA and to the Andies.

I agree both of you mostly. But in raiding the SKM/GA commerce, the SLN is actually going in to raid the people they identify as "partners" or "collaborators", not the very distant homeworlds of the GA. There is just too much distance involved for them to score any quick victory points, so I doubt the SLN will do that. (And they need some quick victory points, politically).

More likely, their intell will be looking for closer "neutrals" for ambushing trading vessesls. I expect them to find some success there, before the obvious "ambust."

As for commerce protection, we should be just a couple months from the resumption of missile production in Manticore/San Martin, and the initial construction of the replacement yards. I suspect more of the new construction for 1923 will be lighter vessels; SDs will be constructed more for GA allies, than for Manticore's expeditionary needs at the moment. If Haven builds the SD hulls, Manticore may decide to build the lighter ships for escort/commerce protection. Selling lighter "export" ships would also be a political and financial boost.

Silesia: there are 34 systems officially.
In War of Honor, excluding the forces Harrington brought with her, there was a DN squadron and screen for the system defense of their forward base; there were the various ships we saw involved in the different incidents with the Andies; and there was an off-hand vague reference to "scores" of light warships on various patrol/escort missions that we never saw.

Since annexation, Sarnow has deployed LACs, light warships and cruisers to systems under his command; the text in HOS suggests he got most of the Avalon and Kammerling cruisers, and the 80-odd Saganami-Bs have to be somewhere. Want to bet the Sag-B didn't get a massive fire control upgrade after Tiberian? If it can now fire the same double broadside of the Saganami-C, then it can match the 40 missile salvo density of the newer ship on bow and stern targets. Maybe it can't stack the salvos; in most circumstances, that shouldn't matter.

I'd take that against a pirate. Or a Sillie or Havenite rogue naval ship. Or a Sollie raider. Once the n-space regions of arrival and departure are secured, a system generally has NO pirate problem anymore. (Which is part of the reason for the LAC deployments to Talbott.)

Which may mean, the imperial revenue from Silesia may exceed expectations.


YMMV.

Rob

stewart wrote:

Lord Skimper wrote:I'll only add a little comment on this subject, again.

They could be deployed to Silesia as system defense bases.

-----------------

You mean, to paraphrase a description of a current aircraft carrier --

"Two Kilometers of sovereign RMN territory" ?

-- Stewart

Just what are they defending against? Pirates like Warnecke? Sollie commerce raiders? Space Hamster Ninjas?

This isn't about ships. It is about politics.

By the time an SLN task group gets their orders(2 months), assembles(another month), transits to Silesia (8 months?), get slaughtered or captured (almost immediately) there won't be a Solarian League Navy to worry about. Even if they do kill some merchants, it is around 18 months before they get a report back. Do you think Pat Givens (and Sarnow) won't have a copy of their orders long before they can even get there?

Kolokoltsov and Kingsford need some victory points; they don't have the luxury of the time it would take to get those from Silesia. Even Talbott is almost too far.

Aside from Beowulf, they will need to pick a visible target where news of a victory will be available SOON. I would expect that to mean an attempt to retake one or more of the wormholes in their local space. RMN possession of the wormholes is more than damaging commercially--it is a direct challenge to the SL claims to sovereignty.

The thing is, they MUST assert their control over their own space; they don't have any sovereignty unless they enforce it. If they fail to demonstrate that control, other systems than Beowulf will re-think the political equation in light of their own future, even if they don't bail immediately. The League's federal government is thinking of itself as a "nation," but it isn't.

A League or a Confederacy is an association of independent states; it is an alliance, not a nation. Even under our Articles of Confederation, there were several incidents in which States nearly(or actually) declared war on each other. New York and New Hampshire over what became Vermont; other conflicts over a given State's territorial expanstion also rose. The very success of the Solarian League in minimizing internal conflicts has a lot to do with the distance between polities--with no close and easy borders no one is doing an imperial grab, like Mussolini in Libya, Ethiopia, Albania; or Hitler, in the grab of the Sudetenland, annexation of Austria, partition of Poland.

In the Solarian League, your own territory (system) is protected by the SLN due to your membership in the League.
What Kolokoltsov needs to worry about, is what happens when that perception of safety and security is gone, because the paper tiger of the Battle Fleet is proven useless?

I think Kingsford understands that; I don't think he will send anything to Silesia he will need closer to home.

Rob

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:Just what are they defending against? Pirates like Warnecke? Sollie commerce raiders? Space Hamster Ninjas?

This isn't about ships. It is about politics.

By the time an SLN task group gets their orders(2 months), assembles(another month), transits to Silesia (8 months?), get slaughtered or captured (almost immediately) there won't be a Solarian League Navy to worry about. Even if they do kill some merchants, it is around 18 months before they get a report back. Do you think Pat Givens (and Sarnow) won't have a copy of their orders long before they can even get there?

Kolokoltsov and Kingsford need some victory points; they don't have the luxury of the time it would take to get those from Silesia. Even Talbott is almost too far.

Aside from Beowulf, they will need to pick a visible target where news of a victory will be available SOON. I would expect that to mean an attempt to retake one or more of the wormholes in their local space. RMN possession of the wormholes is more than damaging commercially--it is a direct challenge to the SL claims to sovereignty.

The thing is, they MUST assert their control over their own space; they don't have any sovereignty unless they enforce it. If they fail to demonstrate that control, other systems than Beowulf will re-think the political equation in light of their own future, even if they don't bail immediately. The League's federal government is thinking of itself as a "nation," but it isn't.

A League or a Confederacy is an association of independent states; it is an alliance, not a nation. Even under our Articles of Confederation, there were several incidents in which States nearly(or actually) declared war on each other. New York and New Hampshire over what became Vermont; other conflicts over a given State's territorial expanstion also rose. The very success of the Solarian League in minimizing internal conflicts has a lot to do with the distance between polities--with no close and easy borders no one is doing an imperial grab, like Mussolini in Libya, Ethiopia, Albania; or Hitler, in the grab of the Sudetenland, annexation of Austria, partition of Poland.

In the Solarian League, your own territory (system) is protected by the SLN due to your membership in the League.
What Kolokoltsov needs to worry about, is what happens when that perception of safety and security is gone, because the paper tiger of the Battle Fleet is proven useless?

I think Kingsford understands that; I don't think he will send anything to Silesia he will need closer to home.

Rob

A cogent and well-thought comment, Neo-Bob; I pretty much concur completely.

Which does beg the question on where FF will send their ships for raiding purposes. They already control the Shell and Protectorates (for now), and just how much MMM traffic there is to the Verge worlds is debatable (if they were well-off, the OFS would have gobbled them up by now). Still, it is probably their best bet.

Talbott? It is probably closer than most systems and has the increased traffic due to being part of the SEM. On the other hand, Nine SD Squadrons, Four BC squadrones, and 53 lighter combatants have gone into Talbott--and none have come back. If I was a FF Admiral, I'd be just a wee bit leery about sticking my head into that particular chopping block....

NTM that FF does not know that the Meyers Sector has gone bye-bye (something that will come as a nasty shock, if Captain Alice Levinsky, commanding officer of LAC Group 711, has anything to say about it (see Mission of Honor, Chapter 20).

Besides, I expect that things are going to go to Hel...Heck so fast in the Protectorates (both mantie and MAlignment actions), those 'raiders' will never get to leave for Mantie space.

As for the wormholes, that little tactical exercise I posted a couple of weeks ago pretty well showed that any VCLN assualt will be very bloody (for them) and probably unsuccessful (you'd still need control of the other end).
However, I wonder if the occassional SLN light unit might hyper in, fire a salvo or two at any merchies in the area and hyper back out. Yeah, you'd lose the occassional DD or CL, and your missiles would go ballastic and probably miss everything, but it would tend to disrupt traffic at the wormhole and cause some delays....and that may be the best that the VSLN can do.

We shall see, eventually.

Armed Neo-Bob wrote:Just what are they defending against? Pirates like Warnecke? Sollie commerce raiders? Space Hamster Ninjas?

This isn't about ships. It is about politics.

By the time an SLN task group gets their orders(2 months), assembles(another month), transits to Silesia (8 months?), get slaughtered or captured (almost immediately) there won't be a Solarian League Navy to worry about. Even if they do kill some merchants, it is around 18 months before they get a report back. Do you think Pat Givens (and Sarnow) won't have a copy of their orders long before they can even get there?

If I were a Battle Fleet admiral who has an idea what may happen to the League, I'd be tempted to take that assignment, or even "demonstrate initiative appropriate to a senior flag officer in the field" and go off on my own, find out about the collapse of the League when I get out there, and come home with the political asset of an intact BF formation to secure a high place in some successor state. And if I were a MA sleeper, I'd be even more inclined to do so and return to the Renaissance Factor.

Kolokoltsov and Kingsford need some victory points; they don't have the luxury of the time it would take to get those from Silesia. Even Talbott is almost too far.

With Meyers punched out, it's even more likely so, although Kingsford and distant BF admirals may not know that.

Aside from Beowulf, they will need to pick a visible target where news of a victory will be available SOON. I would expect that to mean an attempt to retake one or more of the wormholes in their local space. RMN possession of the wormholes is more than damaging commercially--it is a direct challenge to the SL claims to sovereignty....

In the Solarian League, your own territory (system) is protected by the SLN due to your membership in the League.
What Kolokoltsov needs to worry about, is what happens when that perception of safety and security is gone, because the paper tiger of the Battle Fleet is proven useless?

I think Kingsford understands that; I don't think he will send anything to Silesia he will need closer to home.

Rob

Agreed. If they have to try to hit Beowulf at all - which is going to make every system government realize just what the League bureaucrats think of their sovereignty - they're likely to pile in all Battle Fleet can spare nearby. The wormholes are likely to deserve overwhelming firepower each too, just because Manticore has ships with DDM's and pods with MDM's at each of them.

Maybe Frontier Fleet units can trouble GA and SL defector commerce, but they are too likely to be too dispersed and too small to be good bets against wormhole termini pickets.

JeffEngel wrote:

Aside from Beowulf, they will need to pick a visible target where news of a victory will be available SOON. I would expect that to mean an attempt to retake one or more of the wormholes in their local space. RMN possession of the wormholes is more than damaging commercially--it is a direct challenge to the SL claims to sovereignty....

In the Solarian League, your own territory (system) is protected by the SLN due to your membership in the League.
What Kolokoltsov needs to worry about, is what happens when that perception of safety and security is gone, because the paper tiger of the Battle Fleet is proven useless?

I think Kingsford understands that; I don't think he will send anything to Silesia he will need closer to home.

Rob

Agreed. If they have to try to hit Beowulf at all - which is going to make every system government realize just what the League bureaucrats think of their sovereignty - they're likely to pile in all Battle Fleet can spare nearby. The wormholes are likely to deserve overwhelming firepower each too, just because Manticore has ships with DDM's and pods with MDM's at each of them.

Maybe Frontier Fleet units can trouble GA and SL defector commerce, but they are too likely to be too dispersed and too small to be good bets against wormhole termini pickets.

Remember that 3/4 of the Delegates/worlds thought Beowulf did betray the SLN admiral when they denied her permission to use the junction. So I don't think that many will think the SLN/SL is overstepping its authority/bounds since the ones admiral's views on how the SL constitution is viewed seems to be a p[relevant one to a lot of systems and bureaucrats: that is is what modern convention says it is. ie that the right to secede from the SL has been made invalid because its never been used before or that the SLN can override the authority of individual systems because it says it has reason to.

Zakharra wrote: Remember that 3/4 of the Delegates/worlds thought Beowulf did betray the SLN admiral ...

Also remember the level of corruption and that a good portion of that 75% voted as they were paid to vote regardless of their or their star system's actual beliefs.

Also, consider that there is a world of difference between agreeing to a theoretical premise and agreeing with the actual use of military force to prevent secession.

Weird Harold wrote:Also remember the level of corruption and that a good portion of that 75% voted as they were paid to vote regardless of their or their star system's actual beliefs.

Who is paying them? Why are they paying them?

Correct me if I'm wrong but from what I remember Sollies have something like 9 millions of range and Cataphracts have how much? Attack on any of wormhole would be a suicide, only question would be how long Sollies forces would survive. Attack on Beowulf, Talbot and Silesia would have similar effect, they have circa 100 SD in Sigma Draconis and 700 SD on the other side of Junction? Silesia is a much riskier target, because they could run into Andermani ship and even if Andermani isn't part of Alliance it wouldn't have a problems with turning unfortunate raider into scrap. Talbot is even greater risk, we don't have any allies there, but we have a lot of LACs, pods and ships. I will be surprised if some of the OFS base won't have any unexpected visitors.

Drakensang wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong but from what I remember Sollies have something like 9 millions of range and Cataphracts have how much? Attack on any of wormhole would be a suicide, only question would be how long Sollies forces would survive.

No. You can actually emerge from hyperspace well within energy range, much less SDM range, of the forces holding the wormhole. And if you are exiting hyperspace planning on shooting you will probably be faster to shoot then the people who are calmly going about their daily business just like they have for the last 4 months.

You can't get into hyperspace from inside the RZ right around the WH, but you can appear there.
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/125/0

Note the internal thoughts in OBS chapter 5 by CDR Harrington about the WHJ forts.

Attacking the isolated RMN forces holding the WH is actually a reasonably good idea if you want to report victories. Then drop a bunch of mines and move back off, leaving a few stealthy ships in RS with the rest in hyper.

kzt wrote:

Drakensang wrote:Correct me if I'm wrong but from what I remember Sollies have something like 9 millions of range and Cataphracts have how much? Attack on any of wormhole would be a suicide, only question would be how long Sollies forces would survive.

No. You can actually emerge from hyperspace well within energy range, much less SDM range, of the forces holding the wormhole. And if you are exiting hyperspace planning on shooting you will probably be faster to shoot then the people who are calmly going about their daily business just like they have for the last 4 months.

You can't get into hyperspace from inside the RZ right around the WH, but you can appear there.
http://infodump.thefifthimperium.com/en ... gton/125/0

Note the internal thoughts in OBS chapter 5 by CDR Harrington about the WHJ forts.

Attacking the isolated RMN forces holding the WH is actually a reasonably good idea if you want to report victories. Then drop a bunch of mines and move back off, leaving a few stealthy ships in RS with the rest in hyper.

Don't you run a risk of looking more like barbarian vandals that way more than the Invincible Solarian League Navy, returning precious wormholes to peaceful Solarian trade? Granted, how it hits the media is something the Mandarins may assume they can control, but they may be more careful than that and if they are - or they're just wrong about their control of spin - it may end up looking less like victory, much less a blow for peace and order, and more of cowardly backstabbing, the assassin in the night, leaving a wormhole that's an ongoing terror for merchants to use.

There may be a time that they are content to poke GA and GA-friendly trade however they can, but that kind of attack may not play well as the shining victory they need to have to show they can generate some.