Space Stations, Forts and Strategies

Space Stations, Forts and Strategies

The RMN has always been in a class by itself when it comes to ship handling and tactics. The tightness of formations, missile and anti-missile doctrine. Paired with superior and advanced technology the RMN always remained heads and shoulders above the rest.

It seems, however, that space station defense and tactics remained unchanged short of upgraded hardware and advanced missiles. But what about a different doctrinal paradigm, that paralleled the ever changing doctrine in other areas of naval warfare?

For instance, I never understood why space stations were not even more heavily defended. They are so important in terms of irreplaceable civilian lives, hardware and tech.

(Would a space station be akin to a rook on a chess board?)

Ships have screening elements. Why not space stations? Forts are primarily used to protect wormhole junctions. Cannot forts be used as screening elements for space stations, replete with advanced laser platforms?

I also think dedicated LACs as space station screening elements are needed. And of course the LACs should not be obvious. Perhaps forts that spew out LACs? Or dedicated station CLACs, that give mobility to a station's defenses.

Is there any way to alter present doctrine concerning space station support and hardening? Doctrine that includes the Apollo system and dedicated crews for starters. Any ideas to Forakernize/Hemphillize the doctrine? I can't help from thinking that if Harrington was space station commander, she'd have come up with some sort of Salamander station doctrine. I hate it that civilian lives are so easily taken within one's home system.

I don't know what can realistically be accomplished, in additional hardware or doctrinal shift, if anything at all. Perhaps it's an imperative for the Babes of Bolthole.

"We will not go quietly into the night."

Room for serious doctrinal and hardware improvement?

FYI

Space Station
A space station was an artificial stationary structure in space, often built to support life. Such stations could serve many purposes, including research, defense and starship maintenance and repair.
A station was usually a base of operations for any given nation, corporation, and civilian entities. Space stations were the backbone of interstellar trade and economy as well as for orbital industry. (HH2)

Fort
A fort was a large station used for defense of a star system, a planet, or a wormhole terminus. A fort's weapons-to-mass ratio was extremely high, and the installations were not hyper-capable. A fort had a 360° sidewall "bubble" for protection. A small fort's mass was usually in the range of sixteen million tons. (HH1)
The Royal Manticoran Navy deployed a large number of heavy forts to protect the Manticore Wormhole Junction and its many termini. (HH2)

Laser Platform
A laser platform was a station filled with numerous different types of laser turrets and missile launchers. They are usually built to assist in the defense of a fort. (HH1)

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cthia wrote:Space Stations, Forts and Strategies

The RMN has always been in a class by itself when it comes to ship handling and tactics. The tightness of formations, missile and anti-missile doctrine. Paired with superior and advanced technology the RMN always remained heads and shoulders above the rest.

It seems, however, that space station defense and tactics remained unchanged short of upgraded hardware and advanced missiles. But what about a different doctrinal paradigm, that paralleled the ever changing doctrine in other areas of naval warfare?

For instance, I never understood why space stations were not even more heavily defended. They are so important in terms of irreplaceable civilian lives, hardware and tech.

(Would a space station be akin to a rook on a chess board?)

Ships have screening elements. Why not space stations? Forts are primarily used to protect wormhole junctions. Cannot forts be used as screening elements for space stations, replete with advanced laser platforms?

I also think dedicated LACs as space station screening elements are needed. And of course the LACs should not be obvious. Perhaps forts that spew out LACs? Or dedicated station CLACs, that give mobility to a station's defenses.

Is there any way to alter present doctrine concerning space station support and hardening? Doctrine that includes the Apollo system and dedicated crews for starters. Any ideas to Forakernize/Hemphillize the doctrine? I can't help from thinking that if Harrington was space station commander, she'd have come up with some sort of Salamander station doctrine. I hate it that civilian lives are so easily taken within one's home system.

I don't know what can realistically be accomplished, in additional hardware or doctrinal shift, if anything at all. Perhaps it's an imperative for the Babes of Bolthole.

"We will not go quietly into the night."

Room for serious doctrinal and hardware improvement?

I think the defense of a station is treated as something you get with the package with defense of a star system. Generally, what would threaten one of them is visible and is being responded to as effectively as possible. One great benefit of mobile defenses - or stupendously long range missiles - is that they can cover the entire system, given a detected enemy, and detecting that enemy is given plenty of weight.

Things are different with spider drive attackers now. Detection is vastly harder, but if the attack isn't detected, you're not going to have an effective response anyway, and it's not going to help much to pile defenses on right at the point(s) where you can get hurt - not unless you've got and can keep on passive systems capable of handling graser torpedo strikes. Maybe the systems behind bowwalls and sternwalls can make for tougher shields for stations. Perhaps, if they can project a tough triangular plate, say, four such generators can wrap a station up in a tough pyramid. But assuming you can't turn that on and leave it that way, you'll be relying on sensor coverage for when to activate it, and that sensor coverage is likely to take the form of enough to alert you to an attack on the system as much as something closing in on you, if it's going to give you enough warning to flip it on.

JeffEngel wrote:

cthia wrote:Space Stations, Forts and Strategies

The RMN has always been in a class by itself when it comes to ship handling and tactics. The tightness of formations, missile and anti-missile doctrine. Paired with superior and advanced technology the RMN always remained heads and shoulders above the rest.

It seems, however, that space station defense and tactics remained unchanged short of upgraded hardware and advanced missiles. But what about a different doctrinal paradigm, that paralleled the ever changing doctrine in other areas of naval warfare?

For instance, I never understood why space stations were not even more heavily defended. They are so important in terms of irreplaceable civilian lives, hardware and tech.

(Would a space station be akin to a rook on a chess board?)

Ships have screening elements. Why not space stations? Forts are primarily used to protect wormhole junctions. Cannot forts be used as screening elements for space stations, replete with advanced laser platforms?

I also think dedicated LACs as space station screening elements are needed. And of course the LACs should not be obvious. Perhaps forts that spew out LACs? Or dedicated station CLACs, that give mobility to a station's defenses.

Is there any way to alter present doctrine concerning space station support and hardening? Doctrine that includes the Apollo system and dedicated crews for starters. Any ideas to Forakernize/Hemphillize the doctrine? I can't help from thinking that if Harrington was space station commander, she'd have come up with some sort of Salamander station doctrine. I hate it that civilian lives are so easily taken within one's home system.

I don't know what can realistically be accomplished, in additional hardware or doctrinal shift, if anything at all. Perhaps it's an imperative for the Babes of Bolthole.

"We will not go quietly into the night."

Room for serious doctrinal and hardware improvement?

I think the defense of a station is treated as something you get with the package with defense of a star system. Generally, what would threaten one of them is visible and is being responded to as effectively as possible. One great benefit of mobile defenses - or stupendously long range missiles - is that they can cover the entire system, given a detected enemy, and detecting that enemy is given plenty of weight.

Things are different with spider drive attackers now. Detection is vastly harder, but if the attack isn't detected, you're not going to have an effective response anyway, and it's not going to help much to pile defenses on right at the point(s) where you can get hurt - not unless you've got and can keep on passive systems capable of handling graser torpedo strikes. Maybe the systems behind bowwalls and sternwalls can make for tougher shields for stations. Perhaps, if they can project a tough triangular plate, say, four such generators can wrap a station up in a tough pyramid. But assuming you can't turn that on and leave it that way, you'll be relying on sensor coverage for when to activate it, and that sensor coverage is likely to take the form of enough to alert you to an attack on the system as much as something closing in on you, if it's going to give you enough warning to flip it on.

It isn't the attack that was so devastating. It was the sneak attack that wasn't even spotted until it actually occurred. Remember that all of the stations were supposed to have evacuation drills (and Weyland was in the midst of one of the drills when the attack went in), and the supposition was there would be sufficient time to evacuate the stations in the event that it appeared an attack was going to overwhelm them.

cthia wrote:Ships have screening elements. Why not space stations? Forts are primarily used to protect wormhole junctions. Cannot forts be used as screening elements for space stations, replete with advanced laser platforms?

Generally, if the stations are in danger, then the system has already fallen. Stations do have bubble shields. They did not have time to get them up during the Yawata Strike.

Manticore had not previously built forts in planetary orbit, but they are now. The text notes that all three inhabited planets of the Manticore system are getting forts with Keyhole II and LAC bays.

I also think dedicated LACs as space station screening elements are needed. And of course the LACs should not be obvious. Perhaps forts that spew out LACs? Or dedicated station CLACs, that give mobility to a station's defenses.

If you are worried about kinetic attacks, Manticore also has tugs which are designed to act as shields against such incidents, whether deliberate or accidental.

Why would Manticore need LACs specifically as station screening elements? Manticore has plenty of ships, including LACs dedicated to protecting the entire system. The stations don't need dedicated LACs; they are already under the umbrella of the LACs guarding the entire system.

Is there any way to alter present doctrine concerning space station support and hardening? Doctrine that includes the Apollo system and dedicated crews for starters. Any ideas to Forakernize/Hemphillize the doctrine? I can't help from thinking that if Harrington was space station commander, she'd have come up with some sort of Salamander station doctrine. I hate it that civilian lives are so easily taken within one's home system.

As I already noted above, the Manticoran planets are already getting forts built in orbit, with Keyhole II and LACs. Stations themselves do not need such things--in fact, installing them just makes them targets.

I think David has already answered your question in text.

Also, keep in mind that the Manti stations already have, in addition to spherical sidewalls, tugs and wedge drones that are designed to defend them from incoming missiles.

The fact of the matter is, if you can detect the enemy, you don't need much defense on your stations; you defend them by defending the system. And if you can't detect the enemy, no defenses are going to help.

Well said CrewDude48,

Plus kudos to every other responder above for your excellent points as well.

I realise topics are hard to come by sometimes, but this seems so self evident.

Cthia, no doctrine or technical improvement is possible or even conceivable if there is no warning.

L

crewdude48 wrote:Also, keep in mind that the Manti stations already have, in addition to spherical sidewalls, tugs and wedge drones that are designed to defend them from incoming missiles.

The fact of the matter is, if you can detect the enemy, you don't need much defense on your stations; you defend them by defending the system. And if you can't detect the enemy, no defenses are going to help.

Thanks for the response everyone. SWM, thanks for the info regarding the significant shift in system defense tactics with the upcoming addition of inner orbital forts, that would obviously have a positive effect upon space station security as well. I wasn't sure if forts could be used in this capacity - in defense of space stations alone, because there is the ever lurking cloud of a ballistic component of an enemy attack.

I'm also not certain, memory limitation (haven't completed a second rereading of most books because of my Johnny come lately to the H'Verse) if any other space station in the Honorverse was destroyed as a result of a direct naval operation, other than, of course, Vulcan and Hephaestus. I'm discounting Giselle -albeit it fell from a naval operation by the Mesan Alignment to kick off the New Tuscany incident. But it was destroyed from the inside therefore wouldn't fall under the same discussion.

At any rate, IIRC, no other station has been attacked but I seem to recall that both of Haven's attacks on the Manty home system shaped Manty tactics to protect from a possible targeting of the space stations? I'll have to research that when my leisure time permits.

One specific area that I thought would long have been improved are a station's shields. Space stations without impeller walls can put up "spherical sidewalls". They're just relatively weak compared to the regular sidewalls anchored to the impeller wedges. -wiki

I was hoping that vast improvement could be made in the area regarding "regular" sidewalls engineered for space stations, or an entirely new space station design. Without intimate familiarity with Honorverse hardware as many of my fellow boltholists, I guess I am subconsciously wondering why impeller wedges cannot be incorporated into a whole new radical station design for the sole purpose of regular spherical sidewalls. Used in conjunction with all that we know thus far, including the later versions of the Shrike which incorporated a bowwall and then later a sternwall as well.

At any rate, even before the Alignment stacked the playing field with unfair pieces, I never thought that space stations were as hardened as it seemed they would be, or could be - for something that has been sitting within your home system forever, where improvements in tech, doctrine and hardware are continually coming off the drawing board. I always see space stations as entities that are so heavily defended that enemy operations have to either specifically include a space station as the strategic area of attack, or control of the system, but not both due to heavy losses incurred if trying to directly take either. A later attack after system has fallen notwithstanding.

By the way, wanting to surround space stations with dedicated forts is a result of the many hours playing Stra-tee-go. Just seems that right next to your space station would be a likely place to deploy your bombs (forts)

Hey, perhaps I can design a new version of Stratego. One set in space, rather than the battlefield.

Anyways, thanks for your indulgence. I need to get back on a ship. Administrative Admiral is safe, but not much fun.

cthia wrote:At any rate, IIRC, no other station has been attacked but I seem to recall that both of Haven's attacks on the Manty home system shaped Manty tactics to protect from a possible targeting of the space stations? I'll have to research that when my leisure time permits.

If I recall instances correctly, the awareness of station vulnerability differs from awareness of planet vulnerability primarily in terms of being politically so much more available as targets: no Eridani violation there, even though wiping out space stations over (e.g.) Grayson is simply less direct mass murder.

One specific area that I thought would long have been improved are a station's shields. Space stations without impeller walls can put up "spherical sidewalls". They're just relatively weak compared to the regular sidewalls anchored to the impeller wedges. -wiki

I was hoping that vast improvement could be made in the area regarding "regular" sidewalls engineered for space stations, or an entirely new space station design. Without intimate familiarity with Honorverse hardware as many of my fellow boltholists, I guess I am subconsciously wondering why impeller wedges cannot be incorporated into a whole new radical station design for the sole purpose of regular spherical sidewalls. Used in conjunction with all that we know thus far, including the later versions of the Shrike which incorporated a bowwall and then later a sternwall as well.

Certainly the most effective defense of specific stations is going to be electronic warfare with the previously mentioned Keyhole systems, but yeah, I have to wonder myself if the bowwall/sternwall systems can't be adapted to provide something tougher than the traditional spherical shell. How much those depend on having an impeller wedge, I do not know, and how much having a token impeller wedge would disturb efficient-for-other-purposes station design, I also do not know. Maybe someone else does.

At any rate, even before the Alignment stacked the playing field with unfair pieces, I never thought that space stations were as hardened as it seemed they would be, or could be - for something that has been sitting within your home system forever, where improvements in tech, doctrine and hardware are continually coming off the drawing board. I always see space stations as entities that are so heavily defended that enemy operations have to either specifically include a space station as the strategic area of attack, or control of the system, but not both due to heavy losses incurred if trying to directly take either. A later attack after system has fallen notwithstanding.

I think the response to the vulnerabilities of fixed assets in the Honorverse has evoked mostly a response in terms of active defense by mobile assets rather than a passive defense by piling on systems on the fixed asset: find the threat and go kill it rather than try to resist it in place. I'd also peg that as a correct response, both because the author knows better than we do (in a pinch, he can make things so that that's a better response, or has already made assumptions that haven't been explicit to do so), and because it suits my own hankering after taking the initiative with tactical or strategic problems.

But that's not to say that the immediate defense can't be improved. Resources on fixed defenses have had a lower priority than the fleet - witness the condition of terminus forts at Basilisk for Operation Icarus. So how good they can make station defenses - both in terms of the implementation of existing ideas, and the development of new ones specific to those defenses based on the existing toolkit - is a standard far ahead of what we expect to find in the field.

cthia wrote:One specific area that I thought would long have been improved are a station's shields. Space stations without impeller walls can put up "spherical sidewalls". They're just relatively weak compared to the regular sidewalls anchored to the impeller wedges. -wiki

I was hoping that vast improvement could be made in the area regarding "regular" sidewalls engineered for space stations, or an entirely new space station design. Without intimate familiarity with Honorverse hardware as many of my fellow boltholists, I guess I am subconsciously wondering why impeller wedges cannot be incorporated into a whole new radical station design for the sole purpose of regular spherical sidewalls. Used in conjunction with all that we know thus far, including the later versions of the Shrike which incorporated a bowwall and then later a sternwall as well.

I'm not aware of any actual text-ev that spherical sidewalls are weaker than normal sidewalls. (Their sidewall generators appear to be vastly more volume intensive, but I got the impression that the actuall sidewalls were just as powerful) Now of course it doesn't have the impenetrable wedge as well, so the top and bottom of the ship/fort/station are less strongly protected with a bubble sidewall than with a wedge and normal sidewalls.

On the other hand the throat and kilt are more strongly protected with the bubble sidewall. Yes you can now throw up a bow wall or stern wall. But we've been told that the physics only allow you one full bow or stern wall at a time. So the best a ship/fort with a wedge can do it wedge on 2 sides, sidewalls on 3 (port, starboard, bow), and a buckler on the 6th (stern). You could flip which end had full protection, but since the bow opening is larger, when all else is equal, it seems better to spend your full coverage wall on that end. But the buckler wall allows a lot of firing angles that would miss both the wedge and the buckler to strike the ship directly. (It's still better than nothing, but nowhere near the protection of a full wall or a bubble)

So that's one reason not to try building a station with wedges and bow/stern walls. Also attempting to build something you could raise a wedge around would restrict your station geometry (not as much as if you wanted it to be hyper capable and had to had the tampered spindle hull form, but even a fort's hull form is more restrictive than a stations)

A couple of points here. Stealth is the key to what happened here. The attack was able to go in completely unengaged which meant that the defenses were undiminished when it was over.

That turned out to be a major sticking point for the Sollys with "Raging Justice" who assumed that the defenses must have been seriously weakened in trying to fend off the attack.

The second point to remember is that the original stations were build in an ad hoc manner over an extended period of time with the assumption that there would be time to evacuate if an attack should come in. In this case that didn't apply.

Don