munroburton wrote:OrlandoNative wrote:It's never said *all* SD's are within the core. The shell is also full League territory, and probably has some SD's and BF bases scattered through it as well; though near the outer periphery the bases are probably actually FF bases. The occasional BF task force could no doubt stop by for supplies. Almost certainly "more than a couple"; since the expanse of the shell is much vaster than that of the core. It has to be, since it *surrounds* the core. The area of a circle (though the SL is probably more like an ellipse/ovoid of some sort rather than a circle); increases as the *square* of the radius, not linearly. A sphere would be similar. So logic would suggest that there are probably even more BF *bases* in the shell than the core. Just probably not as big, since they likely concentrate on support rather than construction. What was noted was that no group of 50+ SD's *together* had been accumulated outside the core for several t-centuries. If, as I speculated earlier, the SLN had more of a "task force" than "fleet" mentality (due to only having faced small threats here to date), and each "task force" being 20-25 wallers at most, then it would fit perfectly with the "no group of 50+ outside the core" statement above.
As for sending *all* the SD's to Beowulf, the probability is near zero. While the Beowulf terminus might be the most *direct* highway of attack from Manticore into the SL, it's certainly not the *only* one. Indeed, there's a lot to be said in not choosing the obvious route. The Manties could just as easily attack from Talbot. Or backtrack Filereta's path taking out the support bases he used along the way.
Also, there's the Manty detachment at the Beowulf terminus. Given the results of the 2nd battle of Manticore, I'm not sure the SLN would want to take the chance of facing off against Manty SD's no matter what kind of numerical advantage they had.
Crandall's Task Force 496 had 71 SDs. Tsang's Task Force 11.6 had 100. Textev is that the last major engagement the SLN fought(before Spindle) was Farley's Crossing, which involved less than a dozen wallers, though there were 160 SLN ships in total battling about 500 opponents. That engagement was about 200 years in the past, so those wallers might even have been battleships. Crandall's training exercise was the first since 1831 PD when more than a squadron of wallers left the Old League.
When stopping at Frontier Fleet bases outside of the core, where exactly were those Battle Fleet squadrons of yours going to? And what were they planning to do when they got there?
I think they used to call it "showing the flag".
In any case, why are you assuming they were going to "do" anything? We have naval task groups scattered around the world, but none of them are necessarily doing anything of significance all the time. They're there in case they're needed. They train. They make the locals aware an eye is being kept on them. Lots of things, but not necessarily war related.
In any case, like I said, and you apparently overlooked, I doubt *all* the bases outside the core are FF. I would think that the inner and middle shell bases would be BF bases as well. Only bases in the outer shell and the verge would likely be FF. BF units might occasionally stop by a FF base in the shell if it were on their path, but I doubt they'd stray into the verge except for something like Crandall's exercise, and we already know how rare something like that was.
I would guess the BF bases in the core are mostly construction and mothball locations - it would make sense to have those two functions combined (since units coming out of mothball would likely need some serious refits), and we know there were more mothball sites than just the one near Mars. If so, it would be crowded enough there to keep ships *not* needing major service elsewhere.
As for the numbers of units under Crandall's and Tsang's commands, you have to remember that those forces were set up for specific reasons; so it's likely that the counts weren't the *normal* number of ships each usually commanded. Crandall's was to test endurance of a major fleet away from it's normal basing infrastructure. More ships mean more problems. It's very likely that several smaller task forces were assembled into one larger one just for the test.
Tsang's group was supposed to reinforce and aid Filereta in the attack on Manticore. With possible resistance from Beowulf, and the Junction fortifications, sending a small number of units wouldn't have much chance of even getting through, much less affecting the battle outcome. You'd need a significant number just to have a chance. So it's likely her group was composed of several smaller forces joined together for the exercise. She was probably just the most senior officer.
Remember, we don't even get a bit of the organizational breakdown of Tsang's fleet, and we don't as far as Crandall's either until she's killed and O'Keeley surrenders the survivors in her place. It's quite possible the ships under O'Keeley's direct command were originally a task force of their own, prior to the commencement of the test exercise.
