Early Warning Picket for Beowulf

JeffEngel wrote:

wyrm wrote:I'd have thought that the quickest solution would be for Haven to strip one (or more) of their existing Moriarty platforms from a second-rank system and ship it to Beowulf. This also avoids any political consequences of a GA deployment in Beowulf orbit

Moriarty may be obsolete when compared to Mycroft, but it should be able to deal with SLN ships.

Then, once Mycroft is fully tested, it can be installed to replace Moriarty.

Keyhole 2 platforms with beamed power from a BSDF ship may do that too, without so much shipping. I doubt Keyhole 2 platforms from the RMN can offer any appearance of Manticoran strongarming.

Keyhole, and especially Keyhole 2, apparently requires significant additional shipboard support hardware and computers. (IIRC when retrofitting the Keyhole 1 SD(P)s for Keyhole 2 they had to slightly shorten the pod bay and use the newly freed volume for the extra hardware)

So it doesn't seem like you could just hand Beowulf a Keyhole 2 drone and the specs on its beamed power requirements.

JeffEngel wrote:Keyhole 2 platforms with beamed power from a BSDF ship may do that too, without so much shipping. I doubt Keyhole 2 platforms from the RMN can offer any appearance of Manticoran strongarming.

All the GA has to do is give Beowulf some remote platforms, missile control links, and perhaps a couple hundred pods of Apollo missiles and a few thousand pods of Havenite MDM missiles to provide extra punch (as they still beat anything that Sollies have and there will be a huge surplus of them around).

Edit: I saw "all the GA has to do" because I do not think engineering a Keyhole 2 platform to serve as a dedicated orbital platform would require that much time or re-engineering. Especially as I have to believe that the Manties were probably working at some point on getting the same capabilities built into system-defense platforms/control nodes. If only because of the drastic increase in defensive firepower that having having orbital Keyhole 2 command platforms supporting LACs would give the Quadrant as well as other non-vital RMN planets and bases.

Erls wrote:All the GA has to do is give Beowulf some remote platforms, missile control links, and perhaps a couple hundred pods of Apollo missiles and a few thousand pods of Havenite MDM missiles to provide extra punch (as they still beat anything that Sollies have and there will be a huge surplus of them around).

Here's a couple of AN/SPY-1 radars, why don't you go hook them up to something?

kzt wrote:

Erls wrote:All the GA has to do is give Beowulf some remote platforms, missile control links, and perhaps a couple hundred pods of Apollo missiles and a few thousand pods of Havenite MDM missiles to provide extra punch (as they still beat anything that Sollies have and there will be a huge surplus of them around).

Here's a couple of AN/SPY-1 radars, why don't you go hook them up to something?

Let me go dig up my old PC-2 cable and Hewlett-Packard 512 MB hardrive desktop and I'll do it!

wyrm wrote:

Eagleeye wrote: One in my opinion very elegant way to make sure, that Beowulf has all the safety it needs before Mycroft can come online, would be, to put a squadron or two of RMN SD(P)s into Beowulf Orbit.

I'd have thought that the quickest solution would be for Haven to strip one (or more) of their existing Moriarty platforms from a second-rank system and ship it to Beowulf. This also avoids any political consequences of a GA deployment in Beowulf orbit

Moriarty may be obsolete when compared to Mycroft, but it should be able to deal with SLN ships.

Then, once Mycroft is fully tested, it can be installed to replace Moriarty.

That's probably the best short-term idea for local defense. Whether to use stock RHN missile pods rather than Manty pods is a minor point, as either will work.

-- Bob G

Erls wrote:Edit: I saw "all the GA has to do" because I do not think engineering a Keyhole 2 platform to serve as a dedicated orbital platform would require that much time or re-engineering. Especially as I have to believe that the Manties were probably working at some point on getting the same capabilities built into system-defense platforms/control nodes. If only because of the drastic increase in defensive firepower that having having orbital Keyhole 2 command platforms supporting LACs would give the Quadrant as well as other non-vital RMN planets and bases.

You do realize, I hope, that Mycroft is simply "engineering a Keyhole 2 platform to serve as a dedicated orbital platform", and that Manticore has already given the plans for Mycroft to Beowulf and asked them to start production?

SWM wrote:You do realize, I hope, that Mycroft is simply "engineering a Keyhole 2 platform to serve as a dedicated orbital platform", and that Manticore has already given the plans for Mycroft to Beowulf and asked them to start production?

I still think Moriarty would be more than enough. Sure, you are restricted to ~70M km or so, I don't remember the range of Honor's first encounter with it, but even with only ~40M km range, it would still blow away an SLN task force.

Consider if it only had enough control links to handle 10K missiles per salvo, that would still kill 40 SLN SDs per salvo. About 10 or 11 salvos for Filaretta's attack, and I doubt that the SLN will send that large a force against Beowulf. OTOH, maybe they will send everything they've got, in which case there will be nothing left to defend the core worlds.

-- Bob G

Erls wrote:

JeffEngel wrote:Keyhole 2 platforms with beamed power from a BSDF ship may do that too, without so much shipping. I doubt Keyhole 2 platforms from the RMN can offer any appearance of Manticoran strongarming.

All the GA has to do is give Beowulf some remote platforms, missile control links, and perhaps a couple hundred pods of Apollo missiles and a few thousand pods of Havenite MDM missiles to provide extra punch (as they still beat anything that Sollies have and there will be a huge surplus of them around).

Edit: I saw "all the GA has to do" because I do not think engineering a Keyhole 2 platform to serve as a dedicated orbital platform would require that much time or re-engineering. Especially as I have to believe that the Manties were probably working at some point on getting the same capabilities built into system-defense platforms/control nodes. If only because of the drastic increase in defensive firepower that having having orbital Keyhole 2 command platforms supporting LACs would give the Quadrant as well as other non-vital RMN planets and bases.

You know, most of what Honor was worried about was the "visible" nature of Beowulf's defenses. We really don't know enough to judge whether the can actually take care of themselves.

In CoG there is mention of the fact that Beowulf had been updating and modernizing its Navy; and we do NOT NOT NOT know what that navy actually is. They put 36 SDs (no specs given) at the terminus, under their in-space commander. Was that all of them? We were told that the BSDF was aware of Manticores' capabilities, but didn't want to make any advances obvious. Suppose they built a missile (single drive-ERM) to fit their existing tubes, and then left it in storage until they needed it? Suppose they modified their existing ships fire control for off-bore firing? Suppose their "modernized navy" based their wallers on the 34-tube Vega class? Then each of their ships could launch 34+34+ 6(or 8) in a double salvo --call it 74 missiles. Tsang's combat advantage evaporates if she is facing the equivalent of 72 ships; if those ships engage before hers can, her numerical hull advantage may evaporate before she gets in range to attack the defenders. For that matter, we don't know what the respective fire rates are--if Tsang's ships fire at the older-BC rate of once every 45 seconds, and BSDF fires once every 20 seconds, she could lose several ships in each salvo, ending up numerically very inferior to the defenders before she fires a single missile back.

If this speculation were true (who knows, it might be), the ONLY reason the BSDF brought Truman into it at all was so the Sollies wouldn't make a fatal mistake and actually engage the BSDF. I will refuse to be surprised if the BSDF couldn't have killed all of those ships alone, with no damage. After all, they might also have had some few flatpack pods.

But that would have been the start of a civil war in the League, which was not a desired political outcome, given Battle Fleets in-commission ship-list. And it would unnecessarily reveal Beowulf's advanced naval capabilities, also an undesired outcome.

Off-bore capablity would be known from the deployed LAC groups; an ERM based more or less on the physical size of the Mk27c (a long ranged missile itself)could be designed; updating the fire control during normal refit projects wouldn't have raised any eyebrows in the SLN, because they weren't paying any attention anyway.

The fact is, the SLN is so far behind the GA, that even the older tech updates from the first war (ERM, off-bore) would be enough to blow them out.

YMMV, as always.

Regards,

Rob

you raise an excellent point. we do not if beowoulf has modified its SDF with improved tech. all we know is that there was no increase in hulls and that they looked normal to the sollies.

close to first line manty EW seems likely as does the extended range single drive missile as those are relatively minor mods and would not be obvious enough to raise any eyebrows even if the SLN bothered to pay attention.

I think FTL comm is also a strong contender, even if they have not been using it, it is the sort of thing that could turn the tide of battles alone, regardless of any other improvements.

Dauntless wrote:you raise an excellent point. we do not if beowoulf has modified its SDF with improved tech. all we know is that there was no increase in hulls and that they looked normal to the sollies.

close to first line manty EW seems likely as does the extended range single drive missile as those are relatively minor mods and would not be obvious enough to raise any eyebrows even if the SLN bothered to pay attention.

I think FTL comm is also a strong contender, even if they have not been using it, it is the sort of thing that could turn the tide of battles alone, regardless of any other improvements.

That Beowulf was modernizing its naval capabilities was in the text for CoG. ERM, and improvements in tactical fire control could be kept under the radar, if you restrict any use of them outside standard performance ranges, so it is possible. FTL not so much.

The current-as-of-1912 FTL comm uses beta-squared nodes, which are very obvious; older ones required the ship sending a message to reduce acceleration to zero while sending, due to node interference, and needed brevity codes when communicating with drones due to a lack of bandwidth. Not so useful now.

My point about the Sollies not paying attention is because they are too certain that what "they already know" is true, that they don't even look at anything. And while there is no evidence that Manticore shared any specific equipment, they wouldn't really have needed to, once Beowulf's engineers started looking at the problems and the given performance parameters. Just a challenge for them, not impossible.

SLN still has no clue about the actual performance of Manti equipment as a whole, just the missile ranges, improved compensators, and (for those who survive)the ew birds. Leaves a lot of systems they can't duplicate, until they know what they are.

Regards,

Rob