Question about Beowulf tactics

SWM wrote:

SWM wrote:One more point which I just remembered. The Manticoran ships came through the terminus after the Solarians showed up. Then they snuck up on the Solarians under stealth. Beowulfans couldn't have transferred onto the Manticoran ships without giving everything away.

fallsfromtrees wrote:That's specious. I only suggested one person, and it would have taken a single ship going out to one of the freighters to transfer that person.

But the officer you want to transfer is aboard the Beowulfan navy ships near the Solarian ships. The ship you want to transfer this officer to is approaching under stealth. Exactly how do you think you can do this transfer without the Sollies seeing?

You misunderstood me. The officer on the Beowulf ships is the CNO. The individual I was suggesting speak from the flag deck of Truman's ship was the equivalent of the Secretrary of Defense. Different individuals completely.

fallsfromtrees wrote:You misunderstood me. The officer on the Beowulf ships is the CNO. The individual I was suggesting speak from the flag deck of Truman's ship was the equivalent of the Secretrary of Defense. Different individuals completely.

The SecDef or equivalent is back on Beowulf--half a day's travel away.

SWM wrote:

fallsfromtrees wrote:You misunderstood me. The officer on the Beowulf ships is the CNO. The individual I was suggesting speak from the flag deck of Truman's ship was the equivalent of the Secretrary of Defense. Different individuals completely.

The SecDef or equivalent is back on Beowulf--half a day's travel away.

They had Filareta's schedule in hand for months and he was at least a week late. Enough time for the Beowulf SecDef to go aboard the RMN flagship and basically duplicate what Theisman was doing aboard Harrington's flagship when Filareta came in.(Though perhaps the proper analogy would be White Haven aboard the Beowulfan flagship?)

I don't see the point, though. The reason Theisman was there is because Haven and Manticore were shooting enemies and his presence on Harrington's flag deck gave credibility to that new alliance, as part of a surprise revelation.

It's hardly pushing credulity that Beowulf and Manticore are buddies. At best, Tsang's task force backs off anyway and nothing else changes. At worst, it's ammunition for the Mandarins to say "They kidnapped the Beowulfan SecDef and brought him into a combat situation as a hostage!"

munroburton wrote:

SWM wrote: "fallsfromtrees"
You misunderstood me. The officer on the Beowulf ships is the CNO. The individual I was suggesting speak from the flag deck of Truman's ship was the equivalent of the Secretrary of Defense. Different individuals completely. quote
The SecDef or equivalent is back on Beowulf--half a day's travel away.

They had Filareta's schedule in hand for months and he was at least a week late. Enough time for the Beowulf SecDef to go aboard the RMN flagship and basically duplicate what Theisman was doing aboard Harrington's flagship when Filareta came in.(Though perhaps the proper analogy would be White Haven aboard the Beowulfan flagship?)

I don't see the point, though. The reason Theisman was there is because Haven and Manticore were shooting enemies and his presence on Harrington's flag deck gave credibility to that new alliance, as part of a surprise revelation.

It's hardly pushing credulity that Beowulf and Manticore are buddies. At best, Tsang's task force backs off anyway and nothing else changes. At worst, it's ammunition for the Mandarins to say "They kidnapped the Beowulfan SecDef and brought him into a combat situation as a hostage!"

You're missing the context of the situation. Beowulf was there protecting its citizens in the Junction Astro Control station. Manticore was there to protect the Junction itself which is Manticore space by agreed upon treaties. Their goals were similar, but not the same. By having a Beowulf officer or official on a RMN command deck, it would mean that either the RMN was was actively meddling on the affairs, political and military of an SL world, and a Core world at that, or that Beowulf was actively cooperating with an undeclared but known enemy of the SL. Either of those scenarios make Manticore and Beowulf look bad to all parties. It would be damned hard for Manticore to argue that it's not interfering when some of its ships (anywhere from just one ship to the sixty mentioned up in the thread) end up in/under the control of the Beowulf SDF. It would inflame tempers on all sides and damage Manticore's reputation.

From a pure public relations point of view, it would be hard to make the case that Manticore is not interfering anyway. The sorts of nuances you are describing here don't really make good print or video. After all, without Truman's presense, Beowulf's SDs get ploughed under or shoved aside.

So, the point being described here gets lost as it becomes apparent that Tsang would have gotten through the junction without Truman. Naturally enough, the whole bit about Tsang getting reduced to atoms by the junction forts gets conveniently ignored.

So yes. Legally Beowulf does have a right to defend its citizens. Yes, Manitcore has the right to defend the junction. But none of it matters. Beowulf is in cahoots with the enemy. Everything beyond that gets lost.

Don

Resurrecting this thread rather than starting a new one, since it isn't that old (1 month) and it has some pretty good discussions in it.

So of course I will post something completely different....

What kind of force can the SLN expect to bring to the party and how soon? We know from textev that it is about 60 days until Beowulf holds it's elections and Mycroft would be ready to spin up (Murphy willing), so can the ISLN put together a major force in that time.

Well, 500 SD's are no longer available (Crandall and Filareta saw to that) and 600 are at Tasmania (which takes about 3-4 weeks to get a dispatch boat to, IIRC), so you have around 1,000 SD's available, of which about 100 are under Tsang at Sol.

If figure being the 'home of humanity', along with important bases and leaders therein, that there is at least 100 more SD's in the Sol system, giving us 200. The reset are in bases in the Core systems as I recall textev.

So, how about this time-line:

Day 1-5: Mandarins come up with plan, sell it to Navy, Navy agrees and sends on dispatch boats (Manticore or Haven would have had them going in less than 24 hours, but the ISLN is still pretty arthritic).

Day 6-12: Dispatch boats (8ly/day) visit all SD bases in a sphere approximatley 100ly in diameter from Sol. This should cover a goodly percentage of the Core Worlds.

Day 12-16: Fleet task forces prepare to journey to Sol. For arguments sake, lets say the bases reached have 500 SD's and 360 are delegated to this mission. Again, reaction time is slow compared to the RMN or RHN, because the system simply isn't built to move that fast.

Day 17-25: SD's make their way to Sol (figure 6ly/day)

Day 26-34: Orgainize units and prepare for attack.

Day 35-42: Sail for Beowulf.

So, it should be possible for the ISLN, even given the slow response times inherent in the system, to put around 450-500 SD's at the Beowulf hyper limit before Mycroft can be deployed.

What happens next...depends...does Beowulf have Mark 23 pods deployed? Do they have the fire control to handle them? How fast can the SEM/GA ships out at Wormhole micro-jump in (want to bet Alice has had them practicing?). And what orders does the SLN commander have?

....And for all of that, odds are fair to middling that, just like the raid on Cathy and Anton's house, we'll never get to see it.

Hutch wrote:Resurrecting this thread rather than starting a new one, since it isn't that old (1 month) and it has some pretty good discussions in it.

So of course I will post something completely different....

What kind of force can the SLN expect to bring to the party and how soon? We know from textev that it is about 60 days until Beowulf holds it's elections and Mycroft would be ready to spin up (Murphy willing), so can the ISLN put together a major force in that time.

Well, 500 SD's are no longer available (Crandall and Filareta saw to that) and 600 are at Tasmania (which takes about 3-4 weeks to get a dispatch boat to, IIRC), so you have around 1,000 SD's available, of which about 100 are under Tsang at Sol.

If figure being the 'home of humanity', along with important bases and leaders therein, that there is at least 100 more SD's in the Sol system, giving us 200. The reset are in bases in the Core systems as I recall textev.

So, how about this time-line:

Day 1-5: Mandarins come up with plan, sell it to Navy, Navy agrees and sends on dispatch boats (Manticore or Haven would have had them going in less than 24 hours, but the ISLN is still pretty arthritic).

Day 6-12: Dispatch boats (8ly/day) visit all SD bases in a sphere approximatley 100ly in diameter from Sol. This should cover a goodly percentage of the Core Worlds.

Day 12-16: Fleet task forces prepare to journey to Sol. For arguments sake, lets say the bases reached have 500 SD's and 360 are delegated to this mission. Again, reaction time is slow compared to the RMN or RHN, because the system simply isn't built to move that fast.

Day 17-25: SD's make their way to Sol (figure 6ly/day)

Day 26-34: Orgainize units and prepare for attack.

Day 35-42: Sail for Beowulf.

So, it should be possible for the ISLN, even given the slow response times inherent in the system, to put around 450-500 SD's at the Beowulf hyper limit before Mycroft can be deployed.

What happens next...depends...does Beowulf have Mark 23 pods deployed? Do they have the fire control to handle them? How fast can the SEM/GA ships out at Wormhole micro-jump in (want to bet Alice has had them practicing?). And what orders does the SLN commander have?

....And for all of that, odds are fair to middling that, just like the raid on Cathy and Anton's house, we'll never get to see it.

There has to be at least 20 days worth of integrating all of the disparate elements that have been drawn from so many distant sources, as well as the pissing match between all of the various admirals as to who is going to be in charge or what. Granted you have allocated 9 days for that - Even Haven or Manticore couldn't have shaken down that type of ad hoc group in less than 3 weeks. In addition, Beowulf is 60 ly from Sol. At your estimated 6ly/day that is 10 days, not 8, So we have added 13 days to your schedule, making it day 55 that the attack goes in. Do you really think that there won't have been some major portion of Moriarty in place by day 55? The sollies are toast, butter side down.

fallsfromtrees wrote:

Hutch wrote:Resurrecting this thread rather than starting a new one, since it isn't that old (1 month) and it has some pretty good discussions in it.

So of course I will post something completely different....

What kind of force can the SLN expect to bring to the party and how soon? We know from textev that it is about 60 days until Beowulf holds it's elections and Mycroft would be ready to spin up (Murphy willing), so can the ISLN put together a major force in that time.

Well, 500 SD's are no longer available (Crandall and Filareta saw to that) and 600 are at Tasmania (which takes about 3-4 weeks to get a dispatch boat to, IIRC), so you have around 1,000 SD's available, of which about 100 are under Tsang at Sol.

If figure being the 'home of humanity', along with important bases and leaders therein, that there is at least 100 more SD's in the Sol system, giving us 200. The reset are in bases in the Core systems as I recall textev.

So, how about this time-line:

Day 1-5: Mandarins come up with plan, sell it to Navy, Navy agrees and sends on dispatch boats (Manticore or Haven would have had them going in less than 24 hours, but the ISLN is still pretty arthritic).

Day 6-12: Dispatch boats (8ly/day) visit all SD bases in a sphere approximatley 100ly in diameter from Sol. This should cover a goodly percentage of the Core Worlds.

Day 12-16: Fleet task forces prepare to journey to Sol. For arguments sake, lets say the bases reached have 500 SD's and 360 are delegated to this mission. Again, reaction time is slow compared to the RMN or RHN, because the system simply isn't built to move that fast.

Day 17-25: SD's make their way to Sol (figure 6ly/day)

Day 26-34: Orgainize units and prepare for attack.

Day 35-42: Sail for Beowulf.

So, it should be possible for the ISLN, even given the slow response times inherent in the system, to put around 450-500 SD's at the Beowulf hyper limit before Mycroft can be deployed.

What happens next...depends...does Beowulf have Mark 23 pods deployed? Do they have the fire control to handle them? How fast can the SEM/GA ships out at Wormhole micro-jump in (want to bet Alice has had them practicing?). And what orders does the SLN commander have?

....And for all of that, odds are fair to middling that, just like the raid on Cathy and Anton's house, we'll never get to see it.

There has to be at least 20 days worth of integrating all of the disparate elements that have been drawn from so many distant sources, as well as the pissing match between all of the various admirals as to who is going to be in charge or what. Granted you have allocated 9 days for that - Even Haven or Manticore couldn't have shaken down that type of ad hoc group in less than 3 weeks. In addition, Beowulf is 60 ly from Sol. At your estimated 6ly/day that is 10 days, not 8, So we have added 13 days to your schedule, making it day 55 that the attack goes in. Do you really think that there won't have been some major portion of Moriarty in place by day 55? The sollies are toast, butter side down.

It's certainly possible for them to do that. Doing so, however, would invite intervention from the 200 SD(P)s parked at the Sigma Draconis terminus, where they could easily translate into hyper for a micro-jump behind any attacker. The probablity of another totally destroyed or captured SLN fleet is very high.

However...

What if the SLN split up into two task forces, one of which takes position in the alpha band as close to the terminus as they can calculate? Possibly using one of their "newsy" dispatch boats to 'mark the spot' for them.

The second task force feints an attack on Beowulf and brings the GA SD(P)s running into energy range of the first SLN task force waiting in hyper.

Hell of a long shot. But if it works...

Nice idea, flesh out time.

So, no translating freighter, dispatch boat, or anyone else will happen to notice 500 SLN SD hanging out in the alpha band at the terminus of the most heavily traffic'd wormhole termini in the galaxy. Hmm. Guess the RMN doesn't have any DD's they place in adjacent hyper bands either!?

Only way possible, is for the SLN to SWAMP the terminus alpha hyper band with hundreds/thousands of ships with the ability to destroy all ships transiting instantly. All RMN ships as well inside graser range. Possible since they know when the fake operation will be undertaken. Then one has to assume times for reaction time, etc. Of course that DD could be chilling in the alpha band 30,000,000 km from the terminus. The SLN doesn't have enough ships in its inventory to swamp an infinite sphere.

0.0% chance at best killing those DD's in the alpha band without them able to translate first outside of pure luck.

wastedfly wrote:Nice idea, flesh out time.

So, no translating freighter, dispatch boat, or anyone else will happen to notice 500 SLN SD hanging out in the alpha band at the terminus of the most heavily traffic'd wormhole termini in the galaxy. Hmm. Guess the RMN doesn't have any DD's they place in adjacent hyper bands either!?

Only way possible, is for the SLN to SWAMP the terminus alpha hyper band with hundreds/thousands of ships with the ability to destroy all ships transiting instantly. All RMN ships as well inside graser range. Possible since they know when the fake operation will be undertaken. Then one has to assume times for reaction time, etc. Of course that DD could be chilling in the alpha band 30,000,000 km from the terminus. The SLN doesn't have enough ships in its inventory to swamp an infinite sphere.

0.0% chance at best killing those DD's in the alpha band without them able to translate first outside of pure luck.

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

Greetings Hutch, Wasted and Company --

A couple issues --
1) I will check again, but IIRC, the Tasmania SD's were a partial re-enforcement for Filareta prior to his rendezvous for the Mesan Dual-Drive missiles.

2) Did Alice and company deploy any pods already from their ammo ships ? 5000-10000 pods (2 ship load-outs) would do a "fair" job of covering the Beowulf Terminus with either Sag-C's or Nike's as control ships (minimum fire control without Mycroft).

3) no reason pods could not be deployed closer to Beowulf System proper -- possible outer system -- along likely approach vectors, again with Sag-C / Nike support operating with BSDF vessels in "joint training maneuvers"

4) Agree with Wasted Fly that a flotilla of DD's (doesn't even have to be Roland's) can monitor the Alpha Hyper Band and act as messengers.

-- Stewart