Implenting Case Lacoon I & II after Oyster Bay

namelessfly wrote:
I'll certainly concede that Manticore's reserves of old style SDs would be superior to the SLNs SDs. However; how many of them got toasted during OB?

Depends on where the mothballs are located. If I were in charge, I would do them in the orbit of the Planet Manticore A-2 (What's its name? Phoenix?) or at least in the space between the planets of Manticore and Manticore A-2. So they don't cause problems in the orbits (and the planet to orbit traffic) of the inhabitant planets and are not to far away in case you will reactivate them.

Another location could be in the asteroid belts ... its advantage would be the more or less instantaneous availability of tugs (because of the mining operations there) to bring them back to the yards, in case you want to reactivate them - or to bring them to the brakers, in case you want to get rid of them.

So I think the chance, that at least a big enough chunk of the mothballed ships survived Oyster Bay are not so bad ...

namelessfly wrote:I'll certainly concede that Manticore's reserves of old style SDs would be superior to the SLNs SDs. However; how many of them got toasted during OB?

Very few, I'd think. OB was targeting infrastructure, and unless an old SD was undergoing a refit (unlikely, as every slip was needed for new construction), it wouldn't have been 'in port' to be destroyed.

namelessfly wrote:I haven't done my usual anal retentive number crunching on this. However; the incident where the survey cruiser from the Torch Wormhole was ambushed combined with how the junction defenses at Manticore were originally designed suggests that while it is possible to protect the terminae with SD(P)s or forts controlling missile pods, the most economical way to interdict a wormhole is to station forces at the junction within energy range of the wormhole so that they can simply vaporize the attacking force before they get their fecal matter aggregated. An alternative strategy would be to have light forces and fortifications deployed at the terminae to act as early warning sensors and trip wires that would be backed up by squadrons of APOLLO armed SD(P)s.

An energy range defense only really works if you know someone is coming. I think it was in On Basilisk Station that a wargame was played out examining what would happen if the Peeps sent in a mass transit of battleships via the Trevor's Star route. The result was the total destruction of the battleships, but in exchange they inflicted extremely disproportionate damage on the forts because of the surprise factor.

Potato wrote:

namelessfly wrote:I haven't done my usual anal retentive number crunching on this. However; the incident where the survey cruiser from the Torch Wormhole was ambushed combined with how the junction defenses at Manticore were originally designed suggests that while it is possible to protect the terminae with SD(P)s or forts controlling missile pods, the most economical way to interdict a wormhole is to station forces at the junction within energy range of the wormhole so that they can simply vaporize the attacking force before they get their fecal matter aggregated. An alternative strategy would be to have light forces and fortifications deployed at the terminae to act as early warning sensors and trip wires that would be backed up by squadrons of APOLLO armed SD(P)s.

An energy range defense only really works if you know someone is coming. I think it was in On Basilisk Station that a wargame was played out examining what would happen if the Peeps sent in a mass transit of battleships via the Trevor's Star route. The result was the total destruction of the battleships, but in exchange they inflicted extremely disproportionate damage on the forts because of the surprise factor.

Part of it is also based upon whether the transiting fleet is ready for combat also. The Harvest Joy was not prepared for combat and the MAN ships were, in the case of the hypothetical Peep invasion, both sides would be ready, more or less.

bafoote wrote:Anyone get the feeling for "most SL shipping" to go through the Manticoran junction that there must be several wormholes near the ends of Hennessey, Beowulf, and Joshua? Otherwise how can "most" SL shipping go through their junction at all? Its not like SL shipping is going ot Matapan/Asegard, Andermani, Silesia, or Haven spheres of influence.

There might be, but there is no need to hypothesize nearby junctions. The known network is quite enough to support such a volume of traffic.

Suppose the practical range for shipping a product is 200 light-years. If you don't use junctions, you only have access to markets within 200 light-years of your source. But if you are, say, within 100 light-years of Joshua, suddenly you have access to markets near Erewhon, Phoenix, Manticore, southwestern Haven, the Anderman Empire, Silesia, Matapan, Asgard, Midgard, Beowulf, the Talbott Cluster, Mesa, and wherever the other branch of the Visigoth junction goes. You multiply your potential market by more than an order of magnitude. If you go through the Manticore Junction, you have access to well over half the population of the entire Solarian League, plus other well-developed areas. And the junction is by far the easiest way for the Core worlds of the League to reach their markets. It is the same reason that the Panama Canal and Suez Canal get so much traffic, except that the market advantage of the Junction is even greater. Additional junctions will magnify that even more, but there is plenty of incentive to use the junction with just the junctions we already know about.

Another thought. Why wouldn't Solarian shipping be going to Silesia, Haven, Anderman, Matapan, and Asgard? The US ships products to and from Oceania, Africa, South America, Southeast Asia....

The Core worlds of the Solarian League are the most heavily developed in the League. Do you think that the greatest profit margin on their tech production comes from selling to other Core Worlds? Bigger profits would actually come from selling to less industrialized worlds, if shipping is cheap enough. Conversely, there is probably a market in the Core worlds for lower-priced products (including both luxury and staple foods) produced by the cheap labor available in the outer worlds, just as there is in the US. And the Beowulf terminus makes shipping quite affordable between the high-tech Core worlds to the Verge and "barbarian" worlds beyond. The Core worlds constitute a significant fraction of the entire population of the galaxy, and the Beowulf terminus is their highway to the outer worlds.

That is an excellent point and the exercise raised serious questions about Manticore's defense posture and isolationist foreign policy. If I recall the exercise demonstrated that Manticore's defenses could cope but would be severely damaged if the PRH sent through the largest possible fleet allowed by a mass transit. However; if the Peeps had been able to simultaneously send through a second, similar fleet from another wormhole terminae such as Basilisk they could defeat the junction forts. The underlying reason for the PRH's covert operation to provoke an uprising of the Medusans was to provide a diplomatic pretext to sieze control of the Basilisk system. Once that was accomplished, the PRH would have had the capability to put enough wallers through the two wormholes to take out the Manticoran system. You will notice that the SKM's foreign policy changed dramaticly after the Battle of Basilisk. Earl Whitehaven also made siezing Trever's star and the Trever's star terminus a strategic priority. Once all terminae were under either direct SKM control or controlled by friendly powers, he could risk transferring ships from Home Fleet to Eigth Fleet for the offensive.

Also, the lesson learned here is that you should fortify every terminae of a wormhole network to defend it most effectively. Given the severely limited resources, the SEM might have to resort to fortifing only the various junction nexae plus have pickets at each terminae to give early warning. If a fleet drops out of hyperspace to pounce, one of the pickets transits to the junction to warn the defenders. If the attacking fleet is far enough out to make a missile engagement feasible, a powerful fleet of APOLLO capable SD(P)s could then be dispactched through the wormhole to defend the terminae. If not, you would have to wait for them to come through the Junction or send through a fleet of energy armament heavey SDs to defend the junction. This tactic runs the risk that the attackers might choose not to transit the wormhole and just sieze control of the junction which would severely complicate the SEM's defensive posture. Having a few squadrons of obsolete, energy armament heavey, SDs stationed at each Junction Terminae that could summon APOLLO capable SD(P)s if a missile based defense was feasible would be a better strategy. The only draw back is that you need 100s of energy armament heavey, heavily armored and shielded SDs to defend them. Fortunately; the SLN will supply them.

Potato wrote:

namelessfly wrote:I haven't done my usual anal retentive number crunching on this. However; the incident where the survey cruiser from the Torch Wormhole was ambushed combined with how the junction defenses at Manticore were originally designed suggests that while it is possible to protect the terminae with SD(P)s or forts controlling missile pods, the most economical way to interdict a wormhole is to station forces at the junction within energy range of the wormhole so that they can simply vaporize the attacking force before they get their fecal matter aggregated. An alternative strategy would be to have light forces and fortifications deployed at the terminae to act as early warning sensors and trip wires that would be backed up by squadrons of APOLLO armed SD(P)s.

An energy range defense only really works if you know someone is coming. I think it was in On Basilisk Station that a wargame was played out examining what would happen if the Peeps sent in a mass transit of battleships via the Trevor's Star route. The result was the total destruction of the battleships, but in exchange they inflicted extremely disproportionate damage on the forts because of the surprise factor.

Valid Point.

Weber has certainly failed to inform his readers where the mothballed ships are stored. This grants him considerable literary license.

The idea of strategic dispersion makes enormous sense to me. However; not all Generals seem to grasp this concept. I recall a certain US General who decreed that all aircraft at a certain, critical airbase should be parked in nice, neat, compact rows so that it would be easier to guard them from saboteurs. This made it extremely convenient for Japanese pilots to destroy them in straffing runs during the Pearl Harbor attack. Weber would have us believe that the RMN was so averse to the concept of strategic dispersal that the only missiles to survive the OB attack were those deployed on warships or on ammunition support ships. It seems that the RMN didn't have any missiles stockpiled at stations such as Lynx or Trevers Star or Basilisks or Hancock or Silesia...

Ok; I'm being a bit unfair. It is entirely plausible that the only APOLLO pods to survive OB are either deployed on ships or ammunitions ships. However; I find it difficult to beleive that the RMN was insane enough to store all of the Mk-23 pods and Mk 16s and all of the Buttercup era, capacitor fed MDMs plus all of the SKMs for light combatants and LACs stockpiled at only three locations.

Eagleeye wrote:

namelessfly wrote:
I'll certainly concede that Manticore's reserves of old style SDs would be superior to the SLNs SDs. However; how many of them got toasted during OB?

Depends on where the mothballs are located. If I were in charge, I would do them in the orbit of the Planet Manticore A-2 (What's its name? Phoenix?) or at least in the space between the planets of Manticore and Manticore A-2. So they don't cause problems in the orbits (and the planet to orbit traffic) of the inhabitant planets and are not to far away in case you will reactivate them.

Another location could be in the asteroid belts ... its advantage would be the more or less instantaneous availability of tugs (because of the mining operations there) to bring them back to the yards, in case you want to reactivate them - or to bring them to the brakers, in case you want to get rid of them.

So I think the chance, that at least a big enough chunk of the mothballed ships survived Oyster Bay are not so bad ...

DW stated that Manticore "owns" the verge shipping. Now maybe the cargo is taken out of their holds and then put into SL ships for the rest of the journey to the SL.

DW also has stated that Kalakainos and a couple other shipping lines have bigger shipping fleets than Manticore does. So, if the SL gets most of its revenue from shipping and say Manticore only "owns" 25% of the hulls, how can that add up to DW's stated 60% number?

The 100LY "sphere doesn't really compute when you have DW's stated 12x increase in transit time. If say the MWHJ cuts off say 50LY then they are saving on average 50% of their shipping time Not 12X their shipping time. To get the 12x shipping time saved via the MWHJ, one would have to be sending all of their cargoes to Silesia, Andermani, Beyond Basilisk, Haven, Hennessey, Lynx area and have NO shipping whatsoever inside the league itself. I am counting the Shell and protectorates in that group as said destinations aren't anywhere near a "known to reader" WHJ that would come even close to tieing into the MWHJ. Either that or all SL shipping is going between Beowulf and Joshua. Or a large portion of said shipping. By looking at DW's crude map this is not unthinkable as there is a very large volume of stars near these two terminai and would tie very closely into why the SL would want its 'mitts' into Erewhon.

I know we don't have an "actual" distance between Joshua and Beowulf, but a very quick guestimate from the map is about ~100-150LY as supposedly DW "drew" it on a napkin/envelope real quickly. Means average travel time just to reach said WHT(wormhole terminus) would be 37.5LY + Hennessey to Erewhon travel time of... 12 days. For a 12X increase they would then have to travel roughly 400LY. Maybe there is no transhipment of goods between worlds in the SL that obtain SL profits anyways. Maybe they all come from the Verge/Protectorate worlds. In this case they would have a 12X or nearly so increase in travel time as the average would be roughly an extra 200LY to the SL core and add up THERE and BACK as its a travel loop and one only needs 6X normal hyper distance to be traveled to obtain 12X increase in transit time.

All this to basically say, DW's numbers generally compute correctly =) So, there must be several junctions and bridges that tie very closely into the MWHJ that we don't know about. Can't wait to see a map.

Here's me begging for a new map. =^;^= Hopefully as soon as DW finishes the last 4 chapters and releases it for us to gorge on.

B

SWM wrote:Another thought. Why wouldn't Solarian shipping be going to Silesia, Haven, Anderman, Matapan, and Asgard? The US ships products to and from Oceania, Africa, South America, Southeast Asia....

The Core worlds of the Solarian League are the most heavily developed in the League. Do you think that the greatest profit margin on their tech production comes from selling to other Core Worlds? Bigger profits would actually come from selling to less industrialized worlds, if shipping is cheap enough. Conversely, there is probably a market in the Core worlds for lower-priced products (including both luxury and staple foods) produced by the cheap labor available in the outer worlds, just as there is in the US. And the Beowulf terminus makes shipping quite affordable between the high-tech Core worlds to the Verge and "barbarian" worlds beyond. The Core worlds constitute a significant fraction of the entire population of the galaxy, and the Beowulf terminus is their highway to the outer worlds.

namelessfly wrote:The idea of strategic dispersion makes enormous sense to me. However; not all Generals seem to grasp this concept. I recall a certain US General who decreed that all aircraft at a certain, critical airbase should be parked in nice, neat, compact rows so that it would be easier to guard them from saboteurs. This made it extremely convenient for Japanese pilots to destroy them in straffing runs during the Pearl Harbor attack.

Misconception of the threat. Nobody anywhere actually perceived that there was a threat to Hawaii, the warnings he got focused on sabotage.

Now Dugout Doug did lose an entire air force to a "surprise" Japanese attack after he knew we were at war. ...