Nitpicking at A Rising Thunder...

stewart wrote:And keep in mind, Not sure which RMN Capt / Commo said it but "a sufficiently large SLN detachment may be able to push my squadron off this terminus, but I guarantee it will lose much more than the tonnage of my squadron doing it"

Mk 23's at long range, Mk 16's at intermediate range will thin out any SLN BC Squadron sent to re-take a Lancooned Terminus.

-- Stewart

The was Commodore Magellan, IIRC, Stewart

And yes, I expect that even he will be surprised (as was Zavala at Saltash) at just how much damage he'll be able to do.

That said, the GA is going to be seriously over-stressed and some areas are going to be lightly defended or protected by older, less-capable ships. Despite what RFC has shown us to date, you can't have state-of-the-art ships everywhere, given that you: (1) Need to take out the SLN and their ability to produce new ships (2) Defend your own space (3) Protect you merchant marine (4) Deny use of the wormhole network to the Sollies (5)Support (and protect) independence movements out in the Protectorates when asked (6) Employ raiding stragety against the remaining Sollie shipping....
I'm sure I'm missing a few points, but if you're the GA. you will have to run some risks using older ships on missions where they might be seriouly out-numbered, if not outclassed.

We shall see, eventually.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

Hutch wrote:

stewart wrote:And keep in mind, Not sure which RMN Capt / Commo said it but "a sufficiently large SLN detachment may be able to push my squadron off this terminus, but I guarantee it will lose much more than the tonnage of my squadron doing it"

Mk 23's at long range, Mk 16's at intermediate range will thin out any SLN BC Squadron sent to re-take a Lancooned Terminus.

-- Stewart

The was Commodore Magellan, IIRC, Stewart

And yes, I expect that even he will be surprised (as was Zavala at Saltash) at just how much damage he'll be able to do.

That said, the GA is going to be serioulsy over-stressed and some areas are going to be lightly defended or protected by older, less-capable ships. Despite what RFC has shown us to date, you can't have state-of-the-art ships everywhere, given that you: (1) Need to take out the SLN and their ability to produce new ships (2) Defend your own space (3) Protect you merchant marine (4) Deny use of the wormhole network to the Sollies (5)Support (and protect) independence movements out in the Protectorates when asked (6) Employ raiding stragety against the remaining Sollie shipping....
I'm sure I'm missing a few points, but if you're the GA. you will have to run some risks using older ships on missions where they might be seriouly out-numbered, if not outclassed.

We shall see, eventually.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

T'be fair, even an "older" GA ship is going to be substantially better than its Solly equivalents. Even without the pods it will be carrying.
Most the ships still in service, and deployed to the front lines or small/independent detachments, with Manticore or Haven will be the more modern ships. Likely Operation Icarus or later, and pretty much everything worth using is likely upgraded to Operation Thunderbolt or better equipment.
In addition, the GA has better institutional traditions when it comes to actual combat operations, much less actually doing the fighting. Haven might not have an exact equivalent for the Manticoran "Saganami Tradition", but they do have the better part of 20 years actual warfighting combat experience, even with all the purges and combat losses.
The Solarian Marines are certainly legit, for what good it does the League against the GA, but Battle Fleet's pretty much a (bad) joke, and Frontier Fleet's limited experience is with pirates and rolling over single system (usually Verge/Protectorate) SDFs. I mean, sure, FF is way better than BF, but that's not a particularly high bar to clear.

Hutch wrote: ...
That said, the GA is going to be seriously over-stressed and some areas are going to be lightly defended or protected by older, less-capable ships. Despite what RFC has shown us to date, you can't have state-of-the-art ships everywhere, given that you: (1) Need to take out the SLN and their ability to produce new ships (2) Defend your own space (3) Protect you merchant marine (4) Deny use of the wormhole network to the Sollies (5)Support (and protect) independence movements out in the Protectorates when asked (6) Employ raiding stragety against the remaining Sollie shipping....
I'm sure I'm missing a few points, but if you're the GA. you will have to run some risks using older ships on missions where they might be seriouly out-numbered, if not outclassed.

We shall see, eventually.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

Kytheros wrote:T'be fair, even an "older" GA ship is going to be substantially better than its Solly equivalents. Even without the pods it will be carrying.
Most the ships still in service, and deployed to the front lines or small/independent detachments, with Manticore or Haven will be the more modern ships. Likely Operation Icarus or later, and pretty much everything worth using is likely upgraded to Operation Thunderbolt or better equipment.
In addition, the GA has better institutional traditions when it comes to actual combat operations, much less actually doing the fighting. Haven might not have an exact equivalent for the Manticoran "Saganami Tradition", but they do have the better part of 20 years actual warfighting combat experience, even with all the purges and combat losses.
The Solarian Marines are certainly legit, for what good it does the League against the GA, but Battle Fleet's pretty much a (bad) joke, and Frontier Fleet's limited experience is with pirates and rolling over single system (usually Verge/Protectorate) SDFs. I mean, sure, FF is way better than BF, but that's not a particularly high bar to clear.

No doubt a Chanson-class DD could hold it's own with a War Harvest SLN DD. But what about opposing CA's or BC's?

And there will be no 'new' ships for at least a year or two, since Manticore has no building capability left and the Mantie team is just getting ready to leave (in ART) for BOlthole, so any new ships for the next 12-18 months will be current best-Havenite design, along with any bells and whistles that Manticore tech can easily add.

And both the SEM and RH had their problems deploying enough ships against each other--against the SL? It is going to be difficult. Very difficult.

We shall see...eventually.

Hutch wrote:As for the comments on a planet with a wormhole 100LY from Sol but not a SL member, you're probably right and I shouldn't have mentioned the OFS. My guess is that it has powerful Core members that are close friends (perhaps even colonized the place) and they have used that 'clout' to avoid becoming a SL member.

Still, I imagine that it would be...interesting.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

Certainly interesting. But it may not play out as using clout to avoid League membership so much as being friendly enough not to need League membership or to be a candidate for having it forced on it. For another parallel, consider U.S./Canada relations. The notion of strong-arming Canada would get simply bewildered reactions out of most of us in the U.S., and relations are close and friendly enough that, however much we throw weight around the rest of the planet, there's no imagined need to throw it northward. (And yes, I'm aware of warplans for invasions on both sides, but nowadays they're jokes or examples of planners with time to pursue esoteric hobbies.)

Mind you, that's not incompatible with also using clout to avoid the graspier elements of League policy.

Hutch wrote:

Hutch wrote: ...
That said, the GA is going to be seriously over-stressed and some areas are going to be lightly defended or protected by older, less-capable ships. Despite what RFC has shown us to date, you can't have state-of-the-art ships everywhere, given that you: (1) Need to take out the SLN and their ability to produce new ships (2) Defend your own space (3) Protect you merchant marine (4) Deny use of the wormhole network to the Sollies (5)Support (and protect) independence movements out in the Protectorates when asked (6) Employ raiding stragety against the remaining Sollie shipping....
I'm sure I'm missing a few points, but if you're the GA. you will have to run some risks using older ships on missions where they might be seriouly out-numbered, if not outclassed.

We shall see, eventually.

IMHO as always. YMMV.

Kytheros wrote:T'be fair, even an "older" GA ship is going to be substantially better than its Solly equivalents. Even without the pods it will be carrying.
Most the ships still in service, and deployed to the front lines or small/independent detachments, with Manticore or Haven will be the more modern ships. Likely Operation Icarus or later, and pretty much everything worth using is likely upgraded to Operation Thunderbolt or better equipment.
In addition, the GA has better institutional traditions when it comes to actual combat operations, much less actually doing the fighting. Haven might not have an exact equivalent for the Manticoran "Saganami Tradition", but they do have the better part of 20 years actual warfighting combat experience, even with all the purges and combat losses.
The Solarian Marines are certainly legit, for what good it does the League against the GA, but Battle Fleet's pretty much a (bad) joke, and Frontier Fleet's limited experience is with pirates and rolling over single system (usually Verge/Protectorate) SDFs. I mean, sure, FF is way better than BF, but that's not a particularly high bar to clear.

No doubt a Chanson-class DD could hold it's own with a War Harvest SLN DD. But what about opposing CA's or BC's?

And there will be no 'new' ships for at least a year or two, since Manticore has no building capability left and the Mantie team is just getting ready to leave (in ART) for BOlthole, so any new ships for the next 12-18 months will be current best-Havenite design, along with any bells and whistles that Manticore tech can easily add.

And both the SEM and RH had their problems deploying enough ships against each other--against the SL? It is going to be difficult. Very difficult.

We shall see...eventually.

The Chanson-class Destroyer will have at least a partial pod load available to it. Without the pods, it'd have to run, with the pods, it'd be able to smash whatever comes at it until it runs out of pods.

And as far as the only "new" ships for a couple years being the cutting edge of Havenite designs ... while they're not as good as Manticoran would be, they're still a lot better than what the Sollies can field. Sure, the margin of superiority between Havenite and Solarian is smaller than between Manticoran and Solarian, but current Havenite development started from the Erewhonese Manticoran-Lite.

Kytheros wrote:
The Chanson-class Destroyer will have at least a partial pod load available to it. Without the pods, it'd have to run, with the pods, it'd be able to smash whatever comes at it until it runs out of pods.

And as far as the only "new" ships for a couple years being the cutting edge of Havenite designs ... while they're not as good as Manticoran would be, they're still a lot better than what the Sollies can field. Sure, the margin of superiority between Havenite and Solarian is smaller than between Manticoran and Solarian, but current Havenite development started from the Erewhonese Manticoran-Lite.

At the moment a havenite ship may be better against the solarians then a manticorian one because the solly defences are so horrible, the havenite ship has more missiles and no apollo which given how terrible solly defense is is just a place where you could have 2 more attack missiles and is not much better then a standard control link at any range you would have to engage from, the larger number of missiles carried will mean that the havenite ship will not run out
As quickly.

"... if the Manty ships run for it ..."
then at least one will run *through* the wormhole!
Thus warning the other Manty ships.

We may be sure that at least one RMN ship will be
stationed near enuf for immediate transit.

HTM

BrigadeΔ wrote:
That is probably the best way for the SLN to hurt the grand aliance at the moment, drop a squadron (or even a division) on the wall out of hyper on top of one of the lacoon pickets, the Sagnami C's and Rollands will fight hard I am sure however even solly wallers will swat them like flies if they drop out of hyper within a 5,000,000 kilometers and **if the manticorian ships run for it**
you can still transit the no longer secure wormhole and ambush the unsuspecting ships on the other side of the terminus, it will not end the GA but you could at least have a few victories to claim. And even if your astrogation is not good enough, you have lots of ships and can leave a few dozen in an out of the way star system for practice.

Howard T. Map-addict wrote:"... if the Manty ships run for it ..."
then at least one will run *through* the wormhole!
Thus warning the other Manty ships.

We may be sure that at least one RMN ship will be
stationed near enuf for immediate transit.

HTM

Wormhole assaults, even against defenders still in the midst of seizing the wormhole, aren't wholesome prospects. I'd not rule it out, by any means, but it's not a plan that's going to fix things.

Another idea may be to send a message through the wormhole network to get a force to re-take that terminus from another direction. Coming out of hyperspace where you like (go ahead, indulge some sloppiness if need be) works out so much better for the force with the much longer ranged missiles.

JeffEngel wrote:

Howard T. Map-addict wrote:"... if the Manty ships run for it ..."
then at least one will run *through* the wormhole!
Thus warning the other Manty ships.

We may be sure that at least one RMN ship will be
stationed near enuf for immediate transit.

HTM

Wormhole assaults, even against defenders still in the midst of seizing the wormhole, aren't wholesome prospects. I'd not rule it out, by any means, but it's not a plan that's going to fix things.

Another idea may be to send a message through the wormhole network to get a force to re-take that terminus from another direction. Coming out of hyperspace where you like (go ahead, indulge some sloppiness if need be) works out so much better for the force with the much longer ranged missiles.

I think he means that the ship near enough for a quick transit is going to warn the forces on the other side that the Sollies showed up in force on the first side, and so nobody the Sollies might stop should transit back until it's been resecured.

Not that the defenders will immediately reinforce from the other side of the wormhole.
Let's be realistic - if there's time to reinforce via the wormhole in any sort of force, you have plenty of missile range to hammer the Sollies to scrap, and so you probably won't need reinforcements. Either that, or the Sollies are present in large enough force such that immediate reinforcements from the other side of the wormhole's pickets probably won't do much good.

Howard T. Map-addict wrote:We may be sure that at least one RMN ship will be
stationed near enuf for immediate transit.

No, the transit takes minutes to navigate the approach lanes, without a wedge or sidewall. You can't do it under missile fire, much less graser fire.

If the SLN pulls this off the fighting is over in a period ranging from seconds to under 5 minutes.

The critical issue you have with trying to garrison a WH is that you are in empty space. Boring empty space. For weeks or months. To fight your ship at full effectively you need to be a maximal readiness. You can only do this for a period of hours. The next step down you can manage for about 12 hours. After that you need to step down your readiness level quite a bit. In addition, you are guarding a WH with civilian traffic emerging from hyperspace all the time, which tends to suggest that you are not running around with your automated defenses set for a hair trigger.

The attacker KNOWS exactly when they are going to fight. They come in with weapons free, because they don't care if some random merchant gets all blowed up, and start firing missiles (and flushing pods) even before they have targets acquired and relay on updates in flight. In addition, they will be rolling and otherwise maneuvering to sweep the maximum area with their energy weapons.

So the defender is well behind the curve. If the SLN manage to get into energy range on emergence the RMN ship is just gone. If they are in SDM range the RNM gets a chance to get their defenses on line, but the crew are mostly not in pressure suits and the odds are that the best crew are not fighting the ship.